You Don't See That Every Day

Take for instance the peach. An impressive fruit, although a quiet one. It doesn't call attention to itself, like, say the mango - whose name you can say over and over and try and sound exotic. Maaaaaaaaaaangooooooooooooo. The peach has a pleasant color. A reddish and yellowish hue on the outside hiding the beautiful dark peach color inside. It's not yellow, nor red, nor orange, but ... peach. And then the taste. The taste isn't knock-your-socks-off like a mango or a berry (any berry). It is more of a subliminal taste, enticing your taste buds to an enjoyable flavor. This morning for breakfast I had my first peach of the summer off of our very own peach tree in our yard. It was wonderful!

The backyard has become a sports arena this week. Today I am hearing the sounds of a baseball game from the four children out there. "Run! RUN!" yells one sister to another. "I AM!" yells the younger one back at her. And then I hear, "You better go back to third or I'm gonna tackle you." Yes, baseball can quickly turn into football here. Earlier in the week when I had had quite enough of their attitudes I sent the 4 of them out to pull weeds. Out of the house, ahhhh, peace and quiet. Next thing I know, they are done with the weeds (nice job!) and are putting together a kid Olympics for themselves. They had out a measuring tape and stopwatch and all kinds of different sports to complete. And each of them won first in their age division. It takes me back to when I was a kid and we had a game of softball in the back field nearly every night. The neighbor kids would come over and we would split up into teams. We would often play until we couldn't see a...

Ranting today about: Memory. For a moment there I actually almost forgot the topic. My memory is going, or mostly gone, or just comes back in spurts. It's kind of like Swiss cheese. Randomly missing parts.This past week I have had 2 phone messages. I wrote down "Call (name)" so that I would remember to return their call. Thankfully they were not super duper important must return right away life or death phone calls. Because I forgot to call back. And then as I was feeding or changing someone, I would think "Oh, yeah I gotta call them" and then promptly forget. My poor friend must think I don't care anymore. I just keep forgetting to call people back. Last week I went to the store to pick up some chili for the guys to take on their campout. I wrote it on my grocery list. I mentioned it to my children who were with me the entire time. And I forgot to buy the chili. Got everything else though. Ah, memory, come back to me. My rant today: I love l...

We had a bit of a segregated weekend this time around. G took the boy out to the woods for some backpacking/camping. They were gone for about 28 hours, but it was all good. I had the girls, who had birthday parties to go to, so in between those and getting Jamba Juice, we had some good 'girl time' together; the clincher being when we locked my purse, with cell phone, keys, etc. in the truck. I had high hopes of checking out the farmer's market and the downtown basketball tournament. Instead we spent 2 1/2 hours trying to get back into the pickup. I am very thankful for AAA and my sister; plus the shade we 'happened' to park in.

After yesterday's posting I realized how often we use certain movie lines in our everyday speech around here. They just fit so well at certain moments. I have a few members of the family here that have an amazing ability to remember movie lines after hearing them maybe once or twice. My husband can quote the whole movie "National lampoon's Christmas Vacation". Here are a few of them we use most often, see if you can guess which movies they come from: "As you wish" "That there's a rec-re-ational ve-hic-le" "Laugh it up furball"

Severed Heads -- heard around our place frequently, usually from the Man of the house. for example, this conversation was heard again this week: Daughter: Dad, I want to show you something. Dad: It'd better not be a severed head. and this one: Daughter: Daddy, we bought something today. Dad: If it's a severed head, I'm going to be very upset. Do you know which movie that lines comes from?

Expectations. Everyone has them, whether they are good or bad. Last week all 5 children went to the eye doctor. I decided to get the eyes checked on the 4 older kids, since both G and I wear lenses. (I have had glasses since I was 7; G first got glasses in 6th grade.) We were there for nearly 2 hours, since all 4 had to go in and out. The older two had their eyes dilated, and this added some extra time onto the appointment. All in all, the kids did pretty well. None need glasses yet! As we were preparing to pay and leave, the doctor commented on how calm the children were, and how well-behaved they were. He said something to the effect of how rowdy his own 2 are and they would never have been so good for so long. I was a little surprised, b/c I thought they were just acting normal (my kids, that is). Later that evening G and I talked about this and we thought that maybe it has a lot to do with expectations. If you expect your child to obey you and behave in public, then ch...