Easter Egg Chaos

The Easter Egg dying...I've learned this is one of those "family fun" activities that you idealize and people post about it on social media making it look awesome and fun but it's generally a fiasco.  The younger the kids, the bigger the fiasco.  This year, Ben and Tessa were quite civilized and fun while dying eggs.  They know how to gently ease the eggs in the cups instead of dropping them from six inches above and splashing dye everywhere.  They care about design and color.  They don't break eggs with carelessness.  They were so excited to dye eggs they asked about it all day. They monitored the boiling of the eggs, the cooling and the drying.  It would have been a fun activity...but...there was also a two year old and a baby involved.  I almost waited until a time when Milo was sleeping to do this but I thought he's two and a half...he should be part of the fun.  The other kids dyed eggs at that age.  Well...he was a nightmare. He wanted to dip his hands in the dye and stir the eggs around in the cups with a spoon so I had to hold every up so he didn't spill everywhere.  He cracked his eggs and I thought I could distract him with a shrink wrapped egg but he wanted it "opened" meaning he thought the wrapper should come off.  Finally I distracted him with technology just so he would leave the other two to enjoy themselves.  This morning he broke two more eggs while the other two were at school.  Hopefully they don't notice.

So, here are the eggs the civilized members of the family made.

Ben picked out the kids at Walmart with Justin and they chose a PAWS monster kit and a golden egg one.  The gold one didn't have nearly enough paint for a whole batch but the ones they made are pretty cool 

Surprisingly neat work for the age group...

I kept a few white eggs for my favorite shrink wraps!  Milo broke this little monster this morning...Most of the eggs were two big for the wraps! They were only larges not jumbos so next time I will have to buy mediums.  

Ben was very serious about this activity.

Allan has an annoying habit of dipping his paws in glasses of fresh ice water to get himself a drink.  Usually he only wants water (of course he would take milk but open glasses of milk aren't a regular occurrence around here) but not juice, colas, tea or coffee.  Here he is dipping his paws into and drinking dye water!  I was so annoyed by this...I use vinegar with egg dye tablets before adding the water so the water I imagine tastes like vinegar.  I can't imagine it tasted good. 

He had blue water on his paw!  I haven't checked to see if it stained his delicate white paw.  He deserves it if it did.  

Here is Milo's wreckage from before I stopped the madness and made him do something else.  When this tray finally meets its final days in approximately two years it will be happy to go into the dumpster.  

This is an egg Milo broke and then left on the living room floor.  I don't like to eat hard boiled eggs so I'm not exactly an expert at boiling them although I have learned enough to know you put the eggs in the cold water and then heat the water instead of dropping the eggs into boiling water.  These were obviously not boiled long enough but at least they are solid enough not to run all over the place. We have a hard boiled egg making machine that makes perfect ones but it is packed away in our storage unit along with all our other frivolous small appliances and our Easter decorations. 

I wish we had them because the kids love Easter.  Tessa spent the afternoon playing with fake eggs and an empty 18 pack carton.  

Justin bought them jumbo eggs when they bought the dye.

Milo instead chose this giant sucker full of smaller suckers.  It was a sticky, sticky day for him. 

They even brought this sour gummy work egg with feathers for me!  I let Tessa use the egg for her trinket games.  

Back to the topic of appliances, the fridge I was so proud of myself for "fixing" by doing a huge defrost warmed right back up to 49 degrees over the last few weeks so the last option was to call an appliance repair company.  We really didn't want to resort to that because Justin researched a few of the parts he thought might be malfunctioning and one was $300.  Well...it turns out this guy had a trove of parts for late 90's era Maytags and it only cost $46. It was still in the original box.  I am so relieved.  That fridge has been vexing me for two months.  I REALLY enjoyed my properly chilled Diet Dr. Pepper this afternoon.  I REALLY hope the repair solves the problem long term.  It's hard to believe a fridge from 1997 is now 20 YEARS OLD!  I cleared off the top (if you recall from a New Year's resolution post I did a year or two ago, the top of the fridge is one of my clutter and junk problem areas and it ends up being where we stash things we don't want the kids to get and also food items that don't fit in the cupboards like large bags of generic brand cereal) so the guy didn't end up with a cascade of junk falling on his head if he had to pull it away from the wall.  Allan discovered the open expanse and went ahead and did his wildcat surveillance thing that he does so well. He even went on top of the cabinets and peered over the all into the living room.  No threat detected...time to get down and sleep on the bed. 

Ever since we sold the house we have had a never ending avalanche of maintenance issues including a bad clogged drain (I snaked that nightmare myself!) furnace issues requiring multiple visits from the HVAC company, the fridge, and also our TV has multiple LED bulbs burned out and it has spots on the screen and during the day you can barely see the picture because it is so dark.  At least the TV is not attached to the house. 

Spring Catchup

Spring is here!  It's a typical Northern spring, complete with snow on the ground (rapidly melting right now at least) and a rain/snow/sleet weekend sh!tstorm brewing...again.  I was trying to think of something to post about but every day is like groundhog day lately. So here is a quick list of fun happening around here.  It's kind of like the social news of a small town newspaper where you can see who's kid was home visiting from college with their dorm roommate, who hosted bridge and who returned from Arizona that week.

So, earlier this month we were Baptism sponsor's for my cousin's son who was born a month before Calvin.  We travelled to Northern MN for the service and had a nice family get together complete with a four generation photo.

This is when you notice that my 86 year old grandmother is wearing the cutest outfit of all of us.  Look at her, with her non-grey hair...

We got a reasonably nice family picture, if you don't look at the kids' faces.

Two weekends ago I managed to get to the hair salon for the first time since November and I chopped off the stringy situation on my head.

I was pleased as could be when I left the salon.  Of course, after washing it I never could replicate this look again and it is back to it's fuzzy self again but that's OK.  

Calvin turned three months old a few days...oh crap...it's already been a week...ago.  He's really starting to enter the "established baby" phase where he smiles and coos and will even lay on his play mat for longer than a few minutes batting at toys.  

He makes funny faces and has some great expressions.

Over the weekend I bought a pack of cheap toothbrushes (for myself) and Milo ripped it open and was carrying them around the house. Ben picked one up one morning and was brushing Calvin's head with it.  I started to make him stop but then I realized Calving was really enjoying it.

He was talking and smiling and seemed very calm.  Who would have thought?

He's so cute these days.  I notice his little stages more than ever because he is the last baby.  

St. Patrick's Day zoomed by with no acknowledgement at our house.  I wore a green plaid shirt and that's about it.  A friend hosted a themed playdate on Friday so we got a fix there and she even made a rainbow out of fruit and that was enough for me.  Tessa said a girl in her class had her house majorly messed up by leprechauns. They had a trap for them at her school and she has had lots of questions about where they live, what they look like, etc. and this myth is so full of plot holes I don't even know how to lie about it.  I'm all for fantasy and childhood magic but the leprechaun thing is one legend I just want to tell the truth about right now.  I don't need to be trashing my own house.  I usually skip right to Easter decorating but all of it is in the storage unit so we've got nothing.  I will overcompensate next year!

Happy 6th Birthday Ben!

Ben turned six...last Wednesday.  It's already been a week.  The day, March 7th, was a Wednesday and so was the day he was born.  What a strange thing to think back on.  I'll never forget leaving the house at 6:30 a.m. to head to the induction in a light snow shower and I was really sad to say goodbye to Allan for some reason.  I had NO IDEA what I was embarking on.  And here we are.  He's a happy and functional Kindergartner.  He didn't get much of a celebration this year.  Justin was gone for work and I just couldn't do much.  I bought a cake at a grocery store and he opened presents which I didn't even wrap.  Justin's mom did.  I did manage to find a happy birthday banner from last year (lego themed) and I hung it outside his room with some balloons so he would see it right away in the morning.  His teacher gives the kids a nice gift bag of the little trinkets they all love and he got a football puzzle eraser, a pen, a car and a little figurine thing with sticky hands and feet that you can fling around and it sticks in funny positions.  They encourage non-food celebrations (buzzkill but its the new normal) and he chose extra computer time. He seemed satisfied with the day. This is the first year since he was a newborn that we haven't been skiing in Montana on or around his birthday and it feels weird.

Here is the cake I chose.  Of course, those plastic balloons caused a fight.  Three kids, two bunches of balloons and a mini meltdown from a two year old.  Fortunately, they were almost instantly forgotten about.

Ben got some good presents including several lego sets, a soccer ball, a book, a trivia flashcard game and a quilt made by my grandma.  He was so excited to start building his legos that he never even ate any cake.

Here is his new quilt.

Allan got into it soon after.  

And now...a flashback because it's fun. 

 And one extra of the awesome Allan cake I made a few days after his 1st birthday.  I'm still very proud of it!  He didn't eat either of his cakes.  He didn't much care for food and still doesn't care about cake that much.

And finally...not his original birthday but his going home day on that beautiful 70 degree March 10th.  This year was completely different and we would never have been outside dressed like this if he was born this year.

Our First Wrestler and Other Things

I'm coming to you from ND, where March is definitely in like a lion where we are in the worst snow storm event of the winter.  The news stations have been talking this storm up since last week and pretty much ever district in the state except BPS (even neighbor city Mandan) cancelled school today. Based on the comments on their FB page you would think they asked kids to face certain death by not cancelling.  It's even more dramatic than the wildfire smoke/outdoor recess controversy of September 2017.  It hasn't been directly stated but I believe they know they will have to cancel tomorrow so having school today was a way of avoiding having an extra day at the end of the year but who knows.  I drove him and Tessa to school this morning and it wasn't bad at all besides snow falling but when I picked Tessa up and there were only four kids left in the room.  Only seven started the day out of more than twenty and three picked up their kids early.  Maybe I'm not taking this seriously enough.  It was pretty bad driving home because my wipers were caking with heavy snow and it was hard to see through my windshield.  Ben is riding the bus home and I'm not worried.  As a bus kid myself I know that buses pretty much plow through anything and not much can go wrong driving 20 mph on neighborhood streets.  I'm glad I don't have to go out again.  I'm also glad I got the kids out of the house for the morning because I had to tackle an unpleasant task-defrosting and cleaning the fridge.

The fridge has been acting up for a few weeks.  First the freezer was not cooling and we put a thermometer in there at it was barely below freezing.  So Justin did a major defrost of just the freezer and even removed the panel in the back and melted ice with a hair dryer. Then after a few days I noticed the fridge was not keeping things cold and the thermometer revealed it was only cooling to 48-50 degrees when it should apparently be between 35 and 40.  We remained in denial about it for awhile but last night I knew it couldn't be ignored and I decided to defrost the whole thing before resorting to calling a repair man (I am home alone this week and we really don't want to spend money on it since we are moving soon).  So last night I emptied the whole thing and put most of the food on the deck.  I filled two large coolers and then left everything that wouldn't be hurt by getting wet in boxes.  And wet it did get with rain, sleet and then snow.  The kitchen was completely trashed with expired condiments, embarrassingly disgusting shelves and drawers that haven't been cleaned for...well...I'm not going to tell you...and lots of beer and pop cans and juice boxes all over the floor.  If you saw it you probably would hesitate to eat anything I prepared every again.

The good news is I woke up to a puddle of water all over the floor even though I used towels in the fridge and freezer and had a bowl of water to catch the melting water (I guess it drains in a different way) and now the fridge is properly cold again. I hope it lasts.


The bad news is I now have a backlog of sopping wet, snow drenched towels, soggy cardboard boxes and water streaked floors to deal with.

I am a bit behind on posting.  One fun thing I have meant to post about is Ben's wrestling.  About a month ago he brought home a flier from school about a two week wrestling program that would be taking place after school at each elementary school.  It cost $10 and only entailed two weeks of practice and two meets so, even though we don't come from wrestling backgrounds, there was no reason to say no.  I just can't say no to cheap and accessible activities that involve physical exertion.  The more the better. Ben enjoyed it quite a bit and it was kind of fun to watch.

These first pictures with the grey shirt are from the first meet two weekends ago.  The referee there is someone we know so that was a fun coincidence.  He said Ben did good and had a good grab or something.  I don't remember the wording but he said it was good for his age group.

Yes, that is a girl.  It was a big uncomfortable to watch but at this age they are physically equal so why not I guess?

There were no awards or scores kept at these tournaments.  Every kid got a ribbon.

These pictures with Ben in a black shirt are from Friday night a few days ago.  

He ended up being poked in the eye but he took a short break and finished the match.  The second kid he wrestled was a real face clawer. 

Way to go. 

Tessa's school had a week of theme days to observe Dr. Suess's birthday and to my delight, the dreaded "dress as your favorite Dr. Suess character" day was not on the list.  Monday was "wear crazy colors" day, Wednesday was Wacky Day and Friday was Crazy Socks day . 

She said she won for wearing the most rainbow things because she had a rainbow shirt, necklace, skirt and pants.  There was no prize.  Apparently they just counted as a class.

This was on Wacky Wednesday also known as Tessa's every day style day. I didn't get a picture of her socks outfit.  She wore a pair of my Christmas socks with snowmen on them as thigh highs.  

This is a bit off topic but I thought I should post about it sooner than later-my Valentine's Day flowers are growing.  How weird is this?

That snapdragon stem is still green!  I am waiting to see if the new buds open up.  Now it is even leaning toward the window to find sunlight.  I looked to see if it had roots sprouting but it doesn't.

More Olympic Observations

So now the Olympics are over...sigh...I'm proud of my consumption this year.  I watched so much cross country skiing I know that track by heart.  What a torturous activity in appears to be...especially the uphill parts.  I got kind of bored with the coverage of all of it at the end...it was like "Lindsay Vonn, Lindsay Vonn, commercials about amputees, Lindsay Vonn..."  There were some exciting highlights though.  Such as...Kikkan Randal and Jessie Diggins winning gold in a cross country relay.  Apparently, there wasn't enough activity going on so NBC was able to replay the race about ten times but I watched it every time because I'm a sucker like that.  

It was awesome...they beat a Scandinavian (Sweden in this finish) in a cross country skiing event!  Jessie was the final leg and the one to cross the finish line and she was so full of joy it made everyone in America smile I think.  The big talk was about how Kikkan Randall was the only mother representing team USA although I swear I saw somewhere else there were four.  But either way, if you read any commentary on social media posts about her everyone was like "Blaaaah no one makes a big deal about male Olympians being fathers!  Equality!"  Yes, true, but in the context of being an elite athlete being a mother does kind of matter...Men don't lose at least a year of being in their physical prime to have a child and women inevitably do.  Even the best can't perform the same while pregnant and they almost have to lose the time training during pregnancy.  Nice work, Kikkan, I can't imagine!  

Speaking of Olympian parents, skier David Wise has two little kids.  David Wise won gold in the ski halfpipe event (such a weird event full of almost outlandish falls.  Almost every competitor ended up splayed at the bottom of the pipe at some point with equipment strewn all over the place).  The cameras loved showing his wife and two kids celebrating with him.  

So sweet...but I can't be the only one thinking this...two preschool age kids...one appears to be a toddler...probably who still wears diapers...so fun...bringing two little kids on a three week international trip...to South Korea...on a completely opposite day/night schedule as the US...OK.  Let's acknowledge how terrible this must have been for his wife. It's a once in a lifetime thing to watch one of your parents in the Olympics but that younger child won't even remember. I'm sure some other family members were present and maybe a nanny but probably not a nanny.  Most Olympians aren't rich unless they get to be in commercials.  Definitely not rich enough to fly an extra person to South Korea to babysit their kids.

Speaking of commercials, I almost enjoy Olympics commercials more that Super Bowl commercials.  The previously mentioned theme of amputees and inspirational para-Olympians can bring a tear to anyone's eye.  My favorites include the one about the various people being told they CAN'T and at the end the lady with the new prosthetic leg uses some VR goggles to take her first steps while virtually walking on a beach (I love the Killers song playing in the background), the one where the nurse picks up a baby born with missing limbs and we see her progress to a gold medal winning skier and the old but awesome one where the war Veteran who's lost his leg and has a prosthetic adopts the misfit dog who's also "been through a lot".  I even like the more upbeat and endlessly played commercial where Michaela Shiffrin zooms around charging a bunch of stuff on her credit card.

Another thing that stood out this year...the OAR aka the Olympic Athletes from Russia.  O.A.R. is a band I like so I constantly had their music in my head during this Olympics.  "Love and Memories" anyone?  And even with being banned from representing their own flag because no one can stop using performance enhancing drugs, two athletes STILL got caught using them at the Olympics.  I have to wonder how much drugs those athletes have been using all these years.  At least the OAR figure skaters still dominated while being clean.  I read an article that pointed out that at this Olympics there haven't been world records shattered constantly like in previous years and we may have reached the peak of human performance so I can understand (kind of but not really) how an athlete might turn to drugs to overcome their plateaus even if their plateaus are actually a peak.

A few more of my favorite moments:

When Germany and Canada tied for the gold medal in two man bobsled. It was a real display of unity.  These four were having a real love fest in their interview on TV together and it was cute.  What are the odds of a tie anyway?  They go down to the hundredth of a second!



The USA Women winning gold in hockey.  



You would think having a big love pile would be dangerous in hockey...all those blades!

I watched when Ukranian Oleksandr Abramenko won the first gold medal for Ukraine in aerial skiing.  Some Americans lost to him but I was still really happy for him.  He was delirious with glee and disbelief.



The replay footage this year was really good for all the events.  The skiing and snowboarding especially.  Camera technology has really come a long way.

I tried to watch the Closing Ceremony last night but it just got too weird as usual.  Once the athletes had paraded in I lost interest in the strange performances and music. Happens every Olympics.  After the giant dancing parrots from Rio two years ago nothing can really hold my attention. Watching the athletes letting loose is the best part.  I have to wonder if they get to enjoy a few beverages if they choose beforehand.  I would be all over that although not enough to dull my memory of the experience.  I suppose afterwards they go crazy if they want to.

Now I have to wait two more years for the summer Olympics in Japan.  Oh well, it will be here before we know it.

Valentine's Day 2018

Here I sit, surrounded by the wreckage of Valentine's Day.  With two kids in school to have Valentine's Day parties the influx of tiny cards, candy wrappers and little trinkets is bigger than ever this year.  They love it though, so what can I say?  It was a fun day.

Tessa had to make a box for her class party.  Ben's class made bags at school (yessssss) so he only had to bring his cards and candy.  Tessa wanted a Frozen box which was awesome because we have a lovely tube of Frozen wrapping paper in the basement.  It is technically Christmas paper but nothing on it was exclusively Christmas-y so it was perfect.  I tried to cut a few snowflakes with hearts in the patterns but they didn't turn out very good so she got juts plain snowflakes.  She plastered a few stickers at random places on the box and it was done.

She returned from school with lots of fun treats.  She herself chose Disney princess cards and heart shaped Jolly Rancher lollipops which are really delicious.  We practically had to give Milo an intervention because he was so obsessed with them. 

Tessa actually wore that baby headband to school. 

One lovely classmate had a whole bag of fun including sunglasses and a necklace.  

Here is Ben's bag.  I'm not 100% sure what it's supposed to be. 

He chose paper airplane cards.  He came home with lots of cards and candy treats.  He even got a Valentine from a 5th grade girl from the school bus.  So cute.  It was funny seeing the older kids (the older classes made boxes) hiking to school with their various creative ideas.  My favorite I saw was a giant cardboard box decorated like a rubik's cube.  Ben's Lego from the last two years of preschool is still intact in his closet.  Will it see another Valentine's Day? 

Here are my V-day flowers.  

I bought a bunch of Valentine candy the day after at Walmart. There were a lot of those heart shaped boxes left!  Maybe Russel Stover should consider removing those lethal fruit cream chocolate bites!