Haunted Hayride Revelations

(Could alternatively be titled, "How Family Memories Are Made.")

(Hmmmm, could also alternatively be titled, "Turns Out Mommy Won't Fight Zombies For You, Instead She Will Sacrifice You to the Zombies To Save Herself.")

It was a time of terror.  For them.  And me.  And a time of tears.  For me.  And them.


Revelation Number 1.  We need to toughen Noah up.

Here we are on the way to our long-awaited and much-looked-forward-to family outing to Hilltop Ranch's Haunted Hayride & Maze.  It was all fun and excitement driving there, singing along to Ghostbusters and Monster Mash.  That is, until Thriller came on and ended with its maniacal cackling evil laugh and I announced, "And with that, we're HERE!  Ha ha ha ha haaaaaa!!!!!"  As you can see from the photo below, Noah went downhill quickly after that.  Shelby, of course, was nonplussed.  For the moment, anyway.  *insert Thriller evil cackling laugh here*

And I suppose me Googling photos of horror movie characters on my iPhone to show the kids beforehand on the ride over probably didn't qualify me for any Mom-of-the Year awards.  But HEY, they asked!!!!  And did you know they made a Freddy vs. Jason movie?  I didn't.  Huh.


Anyway.  Revelation Number 2.  But Noah is seriously the cutest-while-terrified little boy ever.

The Beginning of Revelation Number 3.  Noah may be growing out of his Mommy's Boy stage.

I kept reassuring Noah I'd hold his hand and not let go and would protect him no matter what.  This did NOT reassure him (as you can see from his face in this photo).  Whaaaaaa??????

Revelation Number 4.  My third camera in 2 years blows chunks. 

Nice family photo, eh?  I thought the numskull I asked to take it for us spit on the lens or something.  Until I saw all the photos before and after that, that *I*, the master of photography (ha!) took.  Stupid blurry chunk-blowing camera.

The Finalization of Revelation Number 3.  Noah prefers a friend to his Mommy for comfort and reassurance.

Ungrateful punk Noah decided that Lucas, the little 6 year old on the ride who he met 2 nanoseconds ago, was now his best friend and he wanted to sit by him, NOT by his Mommy!  Noah ditched his Mommy who loves him and would protect him and fight off zombies for him!!  (In the face of mortal danger, this turned out not to be true, but more on that later….)  Anyway, cue the Mommy tears.  Noah doesn't need me anymore…..  *sniff sniff*

Revelation Number 5.  The bad news is, I am not a good Mommy under duress.  The good news is, but I have an excellent sense of SELF-preservation. 

After the first creature jumped out and scared Shelby and I (we were together at this point and holding hands - remember, Noah ditched me), I immediately spun around screaming and literally twirled Shelby through the air, landing her SMACK in FRONT of me, meaning IN BETWEEN me and the creature, like I was offering her up as the sacrifice to save my own petrified self.  What kind of mother DOES that as her first reactionary instinct??!?!?!?

So, for the rest of the haunted walk Shelby blubbered (I really can't blame her) and Mark had to carry her the whole way through.  Bad Mommy was now shunned and was walking at the back of our family pack.

Revelation Number 6.  Connor knows bad stuff and bad words.  Oh, and maybe don't scare the crap out of your autistic kid even if he's begging for it.

Connor knows the names of all the horror movie characters and what they look like.  I have NO idea how!  I know I showed them photos beforehand, but like I said, he and Noah already KNEW who all those characters were!  We don't watch those movies.  I mean, Mark is a bigger horror movie wimp than Noah (for whom Diary of a Wimpy Kid was a horror movie)!! 

Connor attempted to put on a brave front, complaining how dumb this was, yadda yadda yadda, and then he tried to sneak off into the haunted maze portion by himself.  Well, I actually saw him leave, but by this time Connor was being so annoying that I pretended I didn't see him leave and was happily letting him go.  Is that bad??  Anyway, Haunted Hilltop staff guy got mad and made Connor come back. 

Now finally having permission from cranky Haunted Hilltop staff guy to be in the maze, here's macho Connor, sternly interacting with the Saw creature, with his hands on his hips, probably telling it how lame it was.  The creature, shamed at being unable to scare, slunk back into the forest.

Unfortunately, I do NOT have photos of when it all changed for Connor (I had to manufacture one).  After his previous victorious encounter with Saw creature, Connor was emboldened and actually went INTO the forest to taunt the next hiding creature.

However, Connor picked the WRONG CREATURE this time.

Jason creature was NOT intimidated by Connor and ran out of the forest with chainsaw blaring, chasing Connor!  Connor starting running around like a chicken, in circles, flapping his arms wildly and jumping and shrieking, "WHAT THE F!!  WHAT THE F!!  WHAT THE F!!"  At this point, I may have peed my pants a bit. And I don't think it was from Jason chasing my little son with a chainsaw, but more about how does my son know this language???  I was mortified, aghast and laughing all at the same time.  (I mean, the only time I personally use that phrase is when I'm watching The Walking Dead.  Or Real Housewives of Orange County.  And Connor doesn't watch those with me!  I mean, WAIT, I never use that horrible language.  Or watch those horrible shows. oops...)

Anyway, our family became quite the spectacle at this point, with Connor in full-on FREAK OUT mode (we've seen some impressive autism meltdowns in our time, but we have NEVER seen him quite like that), Mark trying to calm Connor down, and me desperately trying to figure out what was going on (remember, I was at the back and didn't see how this all began -  all I heard was a chainsaw and the F word being repeatedly shouted in my wee little 9 year old darling son's voice). And frankly, I don't even know where Shelby and Noah WERE at this juncture.  Maybe Freddy Krueger was babysitting them?!?  I just don't know.


Revelation Number 7.  Don't forget to put jeans, rather than thin cotton pants, on your children when they're going to be sitting on haystacks.

After exiting the hayride (all of us MUCH worse for the wear after what will forever be known in our family as the "Jason Incident"), Shelby jumped off the trailer frantically scratching her tushie, and, to the great amusement of the waiting crowd of people, yelped, "Itchy bum!  Itchy bum!  The hay gave me itchy bum!"

Revelation Number  8.  Maybe next year we should stick to the carved cute and non-threatening pumpkins at Beaver Lake and leave the scary stuff to the … well, to the more brave than us.

I don't think I want to know any more of our family's dark side character flaws.

The Literal Manifestation of a Butt Face (sorry, Grandma)

We found ourselves in a serious predicament last week when our church's talent (or un-talent) show rolled around.  We'd signed up both Shelby & Noah to do performing acts with Daddy, but then Shelby & Noah came down with fevers and weird speckled throats. 

We didn't want to let the show down, so we decided to save the Noah act and contrived a way for Noah to be there "in spirit."  We made him a "face" on a stick.  We had to cut other parts of the act, like simulated wind, rain and costumes (it would have been majorly, epically awesome - eh there's always next year!), but it still worked.  Oh!!!  And little did we know that we'd just struck KID ENTERTAINMENT GOLD!!

Noah seriously fell in love with his face.  Posing with it….

Dancing with it….

Lounging with it…

KISSING IT!…. (I do NOT know who he's observing that's kissing like that, okay? Yuck)

Ummmm, more posing with it…

Naturally, Shelby began begging to have her very own face.  And naturally (especially after now realizing the potential I'd uncovered for hours of kid entertainment), I happily complied!  And besides, having two Shelbys would be a dream come true!  :)  (well, sometimes, anyway)

And if one face was good, then two was BRILLIANT! They had face fights….

And face kisses…

Watched Scooby Doo together…all four of them...

And Noah proudly taught Shelby his "butt face" pose.   He was VERY proud.   As for me, his mother, the one that's supposed to be raising him into a proper gentleman, well…I was cracking up too much to reprimand him for using the "b" word.  And "tushie face" just isn't as funny, am I right??

For a couple of hours, Connor remained oh-so-mature and above all this face nonsense.  But HAH!  He finally caved!

Connor admiring Noah's buttface technique:

And of course, all toys left on the floor eventually become cat fodder:

Another perk:  Shelby never has to be lonely when she's home from preschool and waiting for "her boys" to come home!

By the way, here's how "Noah in Spirit" looked while performing on stage with Daddy (video stills, not the actual video - sorry!):

Yup.  Well, moving on ... despite my constant nagging them to keep their faces upstairs ("Put your faces upstairs!"  "Take your faces away!"  "Three faces is enough to look at!"), the kids insist on keeping them downstairs where they can be played with as soon as the urge hits them.  So, when not in play, the faces reside in our library books basket.  And basically scare the crackers out of me every time I turn around and do NOT expect to see people in my living room!

What Legos Can Tell You About A Person

Editors note:  This is the first of a few late summer entries onto my blog.  We had a fabulous summer that kept me too busy to blog much, but so fabulous that I MUST blog about it, even if it is a few months late!

One fine summer day (and evidently a pajama day), my two sons were happily playing with Legos together.  Yes, together, and happily!  THAT is the magic of Legos.  Especially when you have 97,345,323 Legos.  One Lego LESS than that amount, and they would NOT have had enough to share and get along.

After a couple of quiet hours (can I get a WOOHOO!) Connor & Noah came running downstairs, eager to show me their amazing Lego creations.

Connor showed me his modular design Lego rocket ship which could launch a separate rocket, all very technical, well thought-out and precise.  VERY Connor.

Noah then showed me HIS Lego rocket ship.  And I cracked up laughing when I saw it and I still crack up every time I see it.

Noah...well, you see, Noah built a party ship.  A rocket ship full of Lego party people from an alien to a ninja to Darth Vader.  No controls or modules and not really very technical or precise.  But very social.  And VERY Noah.

I'm pretty sure Connor's ship would have dominated Noah's in an epic galatic battle.  But Noah's little gang would have at least had fun going down.

I hated babysitting when I was a kid, didn't know if I even wanted to have kids, then waited a long while to actually have kids, BUT I always knew that if I had kids I wanted to have boys.  And sure enough, I LOVE these two boys crazy mad and they entertain and crack me up every single day (and of course, they also infuriate & irritate me and are stinky & dirty every day, too).  And mostly what cracks me up is how radically different Connor & Noah are.

My ideal dream family was to have three boys, but it turns out I was wrong about that.  Because along came Shelby, my little girlie.  And she's extra awesome and not-over-the-top-girly because she carries around dinosaurs and Hot Wheels cars in her purses, and she loves snakes.  I have a joke with Shelby that she's my favorite dress up toy to play with.  I think having a girl after having two boys was extra fun, and I DID go extra wild with the girlie clothes and girlie hair clippies and girlie jewelry.    Oh, and can you see her shiny blue toenails??  Squeeeee!

Recently, I found myself watching the Real Housewives of Miami (no judging!  I just watch for the joy of palm trees and flowers!) and thought their newest cast member looked like Shelby.  What do you think?

It's reasonable to assume that Shelby would resemble her.  After all once upon a time, I looked very much like that hot babe on TV, too.  See? A stunning resemblance, wouldn't you say?

Mindy Z - best roommate ever!

UPDATE ONE HOUR LATER:  I'm too vain. I couldn't leave that photo up without showing what I really looked like at 20.  Maybe not as hot as that Miami chica, but hot enough.  Albeit with very poofy red hair.

(By the way, that's me hard at work at the BEST JOB EVER - I worked as the receptionist at the USU Football players dorm.   I actually was rarely in that office because I was usually out in the games area playing pool with the cute boys, all the while getting paid.  Seriously, BEST JOB EVER.)

Oh, and for the record, I'm not sure how a post about Legos and boys morphed into photos of me at 20, so don't ask or try to figure it out.  Just go with it.

...And All Were Happy in the Land

Everyone is happily settled in school and so far I'm happily enjoying my 3 kid-free hours every morning, basically accomplishing nothing aside from fulfilling the stay-at-home-mom role of watching soap operas and eating bonbons.  DID I MENTION HAPPILY??  YES. AND  ALONE.  AND QUIETLY.  And ALONE!!!!!  Actually, it's not soap operas but I am quite enjoying Jeff Probst's new talk show.  And actually not with bonbons (yuck) but usually with my preferred breakfast of microwave popcorn (yum).

So far, second grade SEEMS to be going better for Noah than first grade did.  Here he is at his desk, where we noted his placement at the END of a row.  Mrs Rosen has already evidently discovered that it's best NOT to have blabbermouth Noah placed in a group of kids who could serve as his audience.

Noah's China obsession continues.  Each second grader added a country or place they'd like to talk about this year.  Some kid wants to know about "big rock."  Bwa ha!!

Mark and I cracked up at this note about Noah, authored by Noah.  It starts out very neat (which we've been hammering him on for over a year now).  Annnnnnnnnnnd there, as you get to the end, its pretty much illegible where he evidently became bored or saw something else more exciting going on that he just HAD to be a part of.  He's just SO NOAH - yes, being "Noah" is an adjective in our Ritchie vernacular now.

Noah has only been in trouble twice that we know of.  His first grade teacher sent notes home nearly every week about some unacceptable behavior of Noah's (most were justified, we're not faulting her!).  This year, he was in trouble his very first day for talking (at which point we presume his desk was moved to its lonely and audience-less end of row position).   His second "incident" was for wearing his favorite monster cyclops hoodie with the hood UP and over his face, trying to scare the girls.  I guess he practiced on Shelby first.

*sigh*  SUCH a Noah thing to do.

And I absolutely LOVE this photo of Connor.  He may be in big bad middle school now, but he still comes home and puts on his penguin slippers. Kind of a Noah thing to do, don't you think?  :)

The Hills (of Cicero) Are Alive With the Sound of Music

Actually, Cicero has exactly zero hills.  And, thus far anyway, we have exactly zero music.

But we DO have a new trombone!  What a ruckus THAT caused in our household today!  And by ruckus I mean loud screaming for turns to try it out.  And lots of trombone honking.  But so far, the honks definitely beat the screeching squeaks from Connor's turn at the viola last year.  *shudders in memory*

Connor has decided on learning the trombone for middle school band and in his rabid enthusiasm and excitement insisted on getting it THAT VERY SAME DAY we turned his permission slip in.
  

Do you see a common theme/fixture in all these photos?

Shelby was FASCINATED with the trombone.  Obsessed.  Absolutely completely psychotically OBNOXIOUS.

It didn't take Connor long to discover the number one appeal of playing the trombone - the sliding thing that he could BONK people with.  I clearly remembered getting bonked more than once in band because the flutes had to sit in front of the stupid trombones.  *grumble grumble*  Connor started with Shelby, the nearest target.  I kinda sorta couldn't blame him, though.

Shelby protested by sitting IN the trombone case.

Upon his arrival home from school, Noah joined the ruckus and got his turn.

Connor decided to try and silence Noah's attempts by plugging up the trombone.  With his hand.  It didn't work.

Shelby then tried to help Noah out by continuously shoving "the instwuctions!  the instwuctions!" in his face.

Noah brought in the princess wind-up music box to add to the music fest.  Someone please help meeeee!

While Mark relived his glory days as a trombone player in high school, Shelby spotted the camera, forgot about the trombone temporarily, and started modeling and posing.

And at last, it was finally Shelby's turn.

Don't let the flower hair clippies and her silver sparkly shoes fool you - this little girl is girlie-girl in appearance only.  She hangs pretty much exclusively with bros, after all.  Whatever boys can do, she can do better.  Or louder, anyway.  She carries Hot Wheels cars and dinosaurs in her (pink flower) purse, she can burp louder than anyone in our family AND she's our kid LEAST afraid of bugs.

TIME OUT: As I sit here typing, Noah just ran through my office with Connor and the trombone chasing him.  Had to take a blog time out to remind Connor that the trombone is NOT a $900 toy.