Swingin'

Our sweet neighbor put up an awesome swing in the backyard. My children adore it, and spend many hours (ruining the knees of good pants) enjoying the simple pastime.

Middle E has a hard time fighting for equal swing time with her big sister. Big E's sheer determination and strength usually win out in any fight over the swing.......Middle usually ends up wandering the edge of the backyard, entertaining herself while she waits for a turn.

So the other day, when she happened upon the empty swing *with nary a sibling in sight* she was thrilled! I think she stayed on there for a good 45 minutes! It was so fun, I had to capture it on film. That's what good mothers do, right? ;-)

P.S. Who loves the clashing prints? You gotta love being a six-yr-old.....

Blowing the bank on a birthday bash?

Our middle child is turning 5 next week. Because we ripped our children away from their family, and the huge family parties that went with that, we feel they are entitled to a fun birthday party. :-) This philosophy has evolved since we moved to CO.....before we felt no need to throw a birthday bash for our kids. They were fine with some family and a cake. But this eases our guilt a bit. (lol)

Now, just because I say that we are throwing a fun birthday party does not mean that we are spending lots of money. If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you know the frugality that rules our household. I don't want my kids to expect excessiveness in regards to their special day. I love them and want them to feel "celebrated", but I don't want them to expect something great every year.

All of that to say......Middle E wants a "spring party" because she was a spring baby and she adores all things spring. Flowers, fuzzy baby animals, butterflies--you name it, she adores it. :-) So the decorating/paper supplies/favors part was relatively easy......search the Easter clearance and we were set!

(I will post pictures later, and tell you how much money we spent on everything and what we did.)

Just for fun though, I decided to look on-line for party rentals. Did you know you can do pretty much anything for a birthday party? Theater, cooking, bounce places, children's museums, pony rides, etc., etc. And you pay an arm and a leg for most of them! (What happened to the good old days of "pin the tail" and "blindman's bluff"? ;-)

That got me thinking. I should hire myself out to run kids' birthday parties! It is crazy what people will pay to NOT have to run their kid's birthday party. If I was a real entrepreneur, I would go for it. Here are a few ideas that I came up with--ones I didn't find on-line:

**a traveling petting zoo.....I wish I could find one for this party!
**cooking class at your home--kids can then eat what they make
**hiking trip, complete with picnic :-)
**traveling puppet show (which the kids can participate in after the performance)
**painting party--allow kids to paint their own canvasses, after short instruction time
**karaoke party--music and machine supplied, along with costumes!

What do you think? Should I go into business? :-) I just don't have the time for another project, but it is a fun thought.What about you? Have you done anything "away from home" for your kid's birthday? Was it worth it to you to have someone else run it? And how much do you typically spend on your child's birthday parties?

One of those days

I had a fabulous post all typed out and ready to publish yesterday for Mommy Monday, but I wanted to upload a picture to finish it all out. One problem: my incompetent computer (for some reason) must not like my photo program, so it shuts down everytime I try to download a picture. I cannot begin to describe how frustrated I am at the moment......if any of you have any advice, please let me know!!!!

This photo-downloading problem has made today's post less than perfect also. It would have been a much funnier documentary on "a day in my life" if I could have posted a picture of the star of this story.

Oh well. You can try to imagine.......


The story starts this morning, as I began my day with a small sinkful of dishes that needed to be washed. But as I was running the water, I noticed that it did not seem to be heating up. Curious.
My husband came out of the bathroom to report that the shower was not warming up either. Down to the basement.......hmmm, the water heater seems to be turned off.

Step back in time a few months...... Our middle child, in true middle child fashion, has some quirks in her personality. (If you are a middle child, I am sorry to offend you but it is true--you all have a stereotype!) She can often be found playing by herself, doing weird things, and she is very quiet--some would even say sneaky--about her doings. She spent the weekend at my in-laws' house last winter, and while playing alone in their basement, "happened" to turn their furnace off. They discovered this in the morning after they awoke to a 54 degree house. It was thought a coincidence, merely an accident. Until the next time she stayed at their house and it happened again.

Now fast-forward to this morning....as soon as my husband realized that the water heater was turned off, our suspicions turned to our middle daughter. She swore up and down it was not her, but we still have our doubts. Not to worry though--everything was back to normal, the dishes got washed, and my hubby had his steaming shower.

Until several hours later, when I happened to meander past the water heater and decided to take a look at it. I figured I should know what to do if it ever turned off . Curious. It was off again.

The afore-mentioned child in our family was again questioned. Again she swore innocence. Now I was beginning to breathe threats.....

Several hours later I decided to take my 3 kids (plus my babysitting kid) for a walk. The entire 30 minutes of walking she alternated between crying loudly that she was tired and yelling angrily that she couldn't keep up with me. Then she would hold onto the stroller and drag alongside, making my pushing chore twice as hard. By the end of the walk, she was definitely not my favorite child.

But to top off my day with my dear middle one, she pulled one more prank that got her dessert taken away and sundry other punishments. In the middle of a wild and harried dinner (Daddy was watching a recruit play tonight and was not home to help calm the storm), dear Middle Child decided to take a break from playing with her spaghetti and head to the bathroom. She was in there for a very long time, and finally emerged without washing her hands. So she was sent back in to finish her bathroom duties. After another 15 minutes in there ( I kid you not, and I knew that it signaled catastrophe, but I could not go in and check until I had cleaned up the smallest monster), I finally went in to see what the hold-up was.

She was scrubbing the bathroom sink with her toothbrush. Not a big deal, you say. No, except that it was dripping with hand soap, which was also slimed all over the sides of the sink and the faucet. And she still had half of her supper to finish.

It was the last straw. I am sorry to say that I yelled. Loudly.

She still gave me the sweetest kiss as I tucked her into bed. As we always say at our house, "it's a good thing she's cute!" :-)

Success at last!!!

Well, mostly anyway......Middle E has finally graduated to big girl undies, after a long and frustrating power struggle. She still has the occasional accident (more occasional than I would like, but one cannot complain in these circumstances!) So--to celebrate the big step in her life, we promised her that we would take her to Chuck E. Cheese for an evening of fun. We left the littlest E behind (as well as the camera, which I could kick myself for doing) and had fun with just the two "big kids".

I remembered going to Chucky's when my little sister was a kid, and that it cost my parents an arm and a leg for some gross pizza and broken rides/games. I didn't want to pay $15 for a less-than-tasty pizza, so we ate at McDonald's on the way(not much better, I know, but we were dealing with preschoolers here.....), and then just played games when we got there. I found some awesome coupons for tokens on the Fat Wallet forum--$10 got us 40 tokens with 60 free!-- along with a printable reward chart for pottytraining. Middle E was able to receive 10 additional free tokens for being pottytrained, so she was in heaven. :-) And this particular Chuck E. Cheese was extremely clean and well-kept. I was very impressed!

It was a fun night--I think we enjoyed it as much as they did, and I did come away with one picture from the evening, compliments of the Chuck E. artist's booth. Thanks, Chuck!

I spy with my little eye.....

Our middle E has a very unusual personality....I think she is best described as "quirky". She is definitely on her own agenda too. It is very amusing to sit and watch her at times, in her own little world, happy as can be. (Then that happy little world is usually crashed down upon by her older--and much more aggressive--sister!) :-)

For some reason, she has an obsession for finding small round objects and pretending they are "eyeglasses". She must have seen it in a movie......anyways, she often finds them on the ground or other disgusting spots and promptly puts them up to her eye. While I am slightly grossed out by this, her father is EXTREMELY grossed out by it and usually does not allow the "eyeglass" to be kept. While we were on vacation though, she found one of those rings from someone's drink container and was thrilled to death with it. Josh did not have the heart that day to take it away from her--she was just so excited. So she kept it and happily spent the rest of the afternoon with her eyeglass to her eye. :-)


As I was thinking about that again tonight, it struck me in a different way. Many times in my life and especially in my parenting, I do not take the time to "spy" things in others' lives. I so often focus on the big problems or annoyances looming in front of me in regards to that person, and I fail to take in the needs they have or the special talents and character traits that they possess. As I watched my middle E this afternoon, I realized I have been very guilty of this in her life. She has the "middle child syndrome", as many call it, and it plays out in her behavior, her obedience (or rather, lack of it) and her reactions to others. I have been so focused on all of these negative things in her life that I have not been taking the time to "spy" the good things she does or even the emotions she is feeling right now. Paul exhorted his readers to be "tenderhearted" as Christ was.....I know that I do not exhibit much tenderness at times. I pray that I will be able to spy the little glimpses of kindness, love, or vulnerability in my child (children, husband, friends, etc.) and then respond as Christ would have.


And here is a documentary of her ingenuity at work........ :-)