Surprise! Wednesday and Happy Fourth of July!

It was sooo convenient for me that the Fourth of July fell on my Surprise! Wednesday (see my kid Summer Schedule here).  Although, because we had so many surprises today, I'm afraid that all future Surprise! Wednesdays won't live up to this one.  Hmmm, didn't think that one through, did I?

Anyway, of course I must have cute Fourth of July clothes for the kiddos.  Here's model Shelby:

Then, I decorated Noah (ever since my boys were babies, I've LOVED the backs of their necks, is that weird?):

And then we decorated our front yard using a Pinterest idea that actually worked! Surprise for me, too!  Yay!  FINALLY!  (My Pinterest fails are well-documented on Facebook and here on my blog.)  It's just a star stencil cut from cardboard, the grass wetted inside of it, and flour sprinkled on top.

Our original plan was to do all 50 stars, BUT we pooped out at 21 stars because it was so blasted hot.

Our dog Tiki licked up our practice star in the backyard.  Weird dog.

You can see the photographic evidence around her mouth.  Weird dog.

For lunch, the Rocket Dogs were a huge hit (thanks AGAIN, Pinterest!).  They didn't turn out quite as perfect as the Pinterest photos (what DOES?), but were still mostly recognizable as rockets, right?

The Rocket fruit and marshmallow kebabs were also a hit!  (To be fair, these would be hard to mess up, even for me.)

After lunch we enjoyed a very LOUD swim in our friend's pool (THANK YOU for sharing your pool with us while you're on vacation, awesome Newman family!).

For a while, I felt guilty that our kids made SO much noise and that Janell would probably have to profusely apologize to her neighbors when they returned home.  But THEN, I got a text from Janell talking about her In-N-Out Burger eating exploits.  Yeah, so now I don't feel so guilty, JUST INSANELY JEALOUS!!!

I didn't plan on swimming, but thought I could gracefully board a huge floating chair without getting wet (despite never having been graceful a minute in my life).  Yup, here's how that turned out.   Yay for Mark being at the ready with the camera INSTEAD OF HELPING ME.

Since we've rarely been around for the Fourth of July here in Syracuse, we were excited to see the fireworks from across the lake and got ourselves set up amidst the dirt and bugs.  Yeah, not my typical happy-place scene, and next year I'm 100% certain we'll do something else, but ANYWAY.

Shelby adorning herself in as many glow necklaces, bracelets and earrings as possible.  Of course.  That's how my girl rolls!

She also had fun WAITING FOREVER for the fireworks to start by pretending Daddy was her stallion and she was a knight.  That worked well until the glowstick being used as a whip did NOT work out well.  For Mark.

 

And then when waiting forever turned out EVEN LONGER, she started out with the tantrums.  You can see her about to blow in this photo.  I sincerely apologize to those sitting within 1/4 mile of us (all of whom I'm sure read this blog) who had to listen to her ear-splitting complaints.  Oh wait, water carries sound, right?  I need to apologize to everyone across the lake at the stadium, too, then.  UGH.

Meanwhile, Shelby's dorky brothers entertained themselves in other ways with the glowsticks:

At some point, party pooper NOAH changed out of his Fourth of July shirt.  Hmmmpff. 

I used a glowstick (NOT the one from Noah's nose) in a more clever manner, to make sure my Diet Coke did not go missing in the dark.  Because then there would have been ADULT tantruming to add to Shelby's.

The fireworks were farther away than I thought they'd be, but hey, it was something new and different.  A life experience (as I tell the kids when something did NOT go as planned or expected).  Independence Day is still one of my favorite holidays, we're incredibly blessed to be citizens of this country, and Happy Fourth of July to all!

Summer Success! (so far)

Well, today marks my first day of my super-organized kid summer!  It's the first summer we've spent in Syracuse (we usually ditch NY and go summer in the Idaho mountains with my parents, but we decided to do something different this year, like LIVE where we actually LIVE) so I've scoped out all of our options here in lovely upstate New York and put together a mighty-fine plan, if I do say so myself.  And, viola!, here it is:

• Thunder Island Mondays
• Screen Time Tuesdays - free-for-all, unlimited computer, TV, Wii & DS time (my favorite. just kidding. well no, not really.  okay, it's sad but true.)
• Surprise! Wednesdays
• Trip Thursdays
• Artsy Fartsy Fridays 
• Board Gaming Saturdays
• They're-All-Daddy's Sundays (my second favorite :)  )

Thunder Island is a very small-town waterslide park up north of us, nothing fancy or shiny but then again, it IS small enough to keep track of the kids easily.  And, for whatever reason, the kids LOVE it (until we take them to a Raging Waters or Typhoon Lagoon and they experience a real waterpark, but for now it will be just our little secret, that Thunder Island IS the most amazing waterpark in the world, okay?).  Anyway, our first Thunder Island Monday was a success - here's the evidence:

I very seriously honestly truly nearly died a few times at Thunder Island in the heat, despite my new shaded camp chair and my portable little clip-on fan (Diet Coke miraculously revived me, whew!), BUT the kid gang had a great time, and it WAS nice getting to listen to whatever music I wanted to on the way home with them all sacked out.

Oh, and that's why I have no other photos to share other than these two - I couldn't bring myself to leave my shaded chair to go into the scorching, blazing heat to take photos (Mark very sarcastically wants me to point out that it was only 84 degrees, which I KNOW it was NOT.  Try 184 degrees!!  Seriously honestly truly!!!).

Connor & Noah braving Thunder Island's new weird little zipline

Day One - check!

Only eight more Thunder Island trips, THANK GOODNESS.  These are NOT my favorite.

Pinterest Fathers Day Pressure!

So, by now you've heard of or become addicted to Pinterest, right?  Well, what started out as love and joy for me, has turned into an internet site which has now added 135,548 things to my already too long to-do list.  All of these recipes and crafts and kid activities are now haunting me - DO ME DO ME DO ME.

And Father's Day was no exception!  Hundreds of the cutest ideas you will ever see, and I had plans to make the cutest thing of all - painted frames, chalkboard thought bubbles, perfect kid photos, kids holding D-A-D letters, etc etc etc.  Oh, and the meal I was going to cook!  Angels would sing about the Thai chicken (Mark's favorite) I was going to create!

Yeah, well, here's what got done - these Fathers Day questionnaires.  No, they're not framed.  Or even wrapped.  And they ONLY got done because I'm home from church with a sick Connor who has diarrhea.

I can't complain too much, though, because Connor's intestinal ailments started at 4:00am this morning, and he woke up Mark to deal with it (thank you, my son).  So, Mark's Fathers Day started way too early, and with cleaning poop.  Although, as a dad, that IS Mark's number one job.  He scoops the dog poop in the backyard.  He probably changed more dirty diapers than I did over the course of 3 kids.  He cleans the litter box every night.  As Noah pointed out a few days ago,

"Daddy is a mighty smeller!  He can smell poop from anywhere!"

Is that astounding ability the hallmark of a great father?  If so, Mark is KING indeed.

And Mark politely declined my offer to cook today - he decided to cook his own Fathers Day meal - BBQ ribs.  It's better that way, trust me.

So, anyway Happy Fathers Day, Mark.  The kids got pretty much everything wrong except your age and your hair.....status.  Well, maybe your favorite animal IS horses, just like Shelby, and maybe you really do love Canada's fiddlehead ferns, just like..........no one!  But I do so love Noah's comment about loving his dad "because he drives safely home from Africa." 

Mark likes the idea of making me go camping.  Me, not so much.

"Fiddlehead ferns?  NOT!"

 

We love you, Markli!

Creature Feature Saturday!

Well, what was supposed to be a girls Saturday with the boys out camping, turned out to be a family creature feature day thanks to rain.  YES, my boys are kinda wimpy, first-world, suburban, white-bread kids who whimper and whine if a raindrop touches them (Do NOT look at me like that!  They certainly do NOT get that from me!  Ahem!).  Anyway, I decided they needed toughening up...

I remember watching creature features with my dad.  I don't know how I remember this since growing up in the remote mountains of the Columbia River gorge in Washington, we only had one blurry TV channel - ABC.  And of course, that was in the olden days before even VCRs (gasp!).  So, in addition to hundreds of episodes of TJ Hooker and Love Boat, I guess ABC had creature features!

Anyway, we were all laying around on Saturday morning around 9am wondering what to do with ourselves, and I stumbled across a SyFy movie called MegaGator.  YES!!!!  Paydirt!  Noah even donned his favorite monster shirt for the occasion:

Aaaaaaaaaaand his face was pretty much frozen in this expression for the whole day. It rarely changed, even when we offered him his favorite snack, Doritos.

But have you ever watched a SyFy creature feature? Woah.  Lots of blood and gore, and the acting, well, it kinda makes you wish YOU were being put out of your misery by the MegaGator.

So, we switched to a couple of Mark and I's favorite movies, the first being LAKE PLACID.  Another MegaGator movie, BUT with good actors with great chemistry, and a screamingly hilarious script.  We had an edited-down version, in which we didn't get to see the people getting edited-down, if you know what I mean.  HA HA HA

Connor abandoned our Creature Feature Movie Fest after about 20 seconds of MegaGator, though he did pop in from time to time to complain at us about watching these "idiot movies."  He was trying to be a tough guy.  But creepy music creeps Connor out, even if he won't admit it.  *Mommy must remember this for future use…heh heh heh*  Here's a typical scene in the living room from this day - Shelby disbelieving, Mark with his usual TV expression, Connor's look of studious disgust, and Noah covering his eyes:

Here's one I love - Noah, Shelby and Mark all completely engrossed:

Shelby and Mark after a particularly witty Lake Placid exchange:  "I'm rooting for the crocodile!  I hope he eats your friends whole.  Is that a crime??  To wish for the eating of law enforcement?!?"  (gotta love Betty White)

After Lake Placid ended, Noah made peace with it by saying (in a VERY small voice, especially for Noah), "Well, the crocodile was just hungry."  Shelby echoed his sentiment with, "Yeah, the humongwous crocodile was just hungwy.  It couldn't fwind crocodile food.  So it HAD to eated the people."

And with that, we moved onto Mark and I's all-time favorite creature feature, and one that would probably make both of our top ten favorite movies list - TREMORS!  We've seen it probably 537 times and never tire of it.  However, it HAD been a few years since we'd last watched it (in other words, BC - before children) and forgot how awful the language was (it's PG-13).  Oops.

Again, we love Tremors more for the hilarious script and chemistry and banter.  Well, and Kevin Bacon, of course.  That might be me more than Mark, though.

• Earl (L):  Darn it, Valentine, you never plan ahead.  I mean here it is Monday, and I'm already thinking about Wednesday.  Wait, is IS Monday, right?
• Valentine (R):  Yup, we plan ahead, that way, we don't do anything right now.  Earl explained it to me.

Maybe you have to be there, but trust me, this movie is hysterical.

You know, I think I'm doing this blog post solely because these photos of Noah CRACK ME UP so much, and I had to document them.  Is it wrong to take so much entertainment from my scared little 7-year old son, whom I love more than life itself?  Nah!

Anyway, here's my 

"Ode to the Funny Frightened Faces of Noah"

And my personal favorite, one that's going to make me laugh out loud for the rest of my life every time I see it:

Here's Shelby, not scared at all, trying to figure out a scene from Tremors:

Meanwhile, here's Noah:

Connor coming in, again to tell us how dumb we are for watching creature movies.  We told him it was just for fun.  Connor:  "IT'S ABOUT WORMS EATING PEOPLE!  HOW IS THAT FUNNY?!?!!?!?"  And then a scary scene came up, and Connor ran away.

After our double feature Creature Feature movie fest, Shelby was BEGGING to watch another one, and she wanted it to be about SNAKES.  I'm sorry, Grandma (who hates snakes).  I'm just not raising her right, I guess.  Anyhow, since we didn't have Anaconda (darn), she made do with playing "Wormie" with a cat toy:

And here's a tip, should you find yourself now wanting to watch a creature feature - don't EVER watch the sequels to Lake Placid or Tremors.  They're awful.

Finally, this seemed like a good blog post in which to post our newest iPhone app obsession - Freaky Faces!