Crazy, Crazy, and More Craziness

My poor neglected blog, but it was a busy summer and the fall now has been even busier, and I didn't think that was possible. Thankfully, soccer season is almost over, which will free up some time. Less shuttling around of children. And for the record, Mason LOVES soccer! He would play and just have a big grin on his face the whole time, for him, it was a total thrill! Matthew likes it, but I don't think he will ever love it. He likes the socializing aspect the most...strange considering he was the toddler/preschooler that had socializing issues. Go Figure!!! School seems to be going well for the boys, conferences are right around the corner so we shall see what that brings. In the meantime, Mason has the flu. We made it through Halloween, totally got lucky on that since I've heard of several families where at least one sibling was sick on Halloween, see example here. But the next morning, which was one of the best mornings of the year to sleep in, Mason was up at 5:30 am!! Yeah, I was thrilled! Not!! Grrrr....I got real testy with him and then tried to go back to sleep for awhile. Didn't work and it's just as well. By 8 am he was on the couch with a fever. And coughing. And chills. And throwing up. Let's just say he hasn't hardly touched his Halloween candy and the rest of us in this house are waiting for the other shoe to drop, as in, when are we going to get it?!?

Old Man Winter Has Arrived

Although, clearly, Old Man Winter has lost his marbles and didn't realize winter wasn't supposed to start until today!!! Somewhere, there must have been a little miscommunication because we have had just nasty weather for the last week. (And quite frankly, while I'm crabbin', he kinda forgot to let up last June. It was freezing on the last day of school!!) Anyway, the weather outside may be a bit frightful and downright frigid, but there is always a little entertainment to be had.

These two pics are of my back deck this morning....just a few drifts you see.

This is looking NE off my front porch. I'm amazed my ornaments in the foreground survived the wind from the night before. I was sure I was going to find at least one broken one this morning! My kids are rather wimpy and strange and weren't really interested in going out in the snow much. The first 2 days they wanted to go out but now they are more interested in finding entertainment inside the house. So first was a little "Rad Daddles" time:

So do you like Matthew's drum set? And how about Mason's microphone as he is the 'singer'?! After all that work, lunch was in order:
Followed by Andy's realization that he just simply needed more beer. I also think it was an excuse to go check up on Grandma Dee and her cookie selection while he went over there to see if she needed anything. So off he trekked to the store and I managed a shot of him when he came home with his success: ;)

I was almost embarrassed by his beer selection, I think I would have chose differently but, whatever. He did end up giving two of his beers away to some lady with a grocery cart that wouldn't quite following him while he was trying to walk home. Apparently, she kept trying to get his attention to point out the fact that he had some beer. Gotta love SE Portland! ;)

I spent the afternoon baking....

I made some fabulous blue cheese crackers too but I forgot to take a picture of them. They are rather dangerous because I could see getting into those by far more often than the cookies!

Oh and I should mention the cats, or mainly Geusseppe. There has been evil lurking in his mind. There is evil lurking in my mind too. I haven't shown Matthew these pictures and I might just print out a copy for him and leave it in his room. Because I'm sure he doesn't want Geusseppe messing with his Webkinz! ;)

Stop The Presses!

It is possible to have a successful dinner in the Crabby Amy household! I was sure it wasn't true....someone always wines, doesn't like what I have fixed,(ahem, Mason), doesn't like the texture(occasionally Matthew) or is upset that I have gone on strike for the evening and actually has to fend for himself (read: husband). But tonight, the stars (all four of them!) aligned. And all I was doing was using up stuff that was taking up space or was on the verge of going bad. Nothing special, just penne pasta that had been in the cupboard for awhile, Italian chicken sausage that had been in the freezer for awhile, and veg that was from the farmers market on Saturday. Which, by the way, the farmers market is full of bounty this time of year....get thee there very quickly and buy, buy, buy!! yum! But back to my eaten dinner, I just kinda threw it all together with a little half & half in the sausage and veg once it was cooked and that was the sauce to go with the penne. And my kids loved it! Mason asked for seconds and trust me, this never happens unless it's some kind of processed, non-naturally occurring in nature, sort of food. Andy loved it, (of course that could have been the wine talking ;)!) and I was very satisfied with my dinner. A very good end to a very trying day. (hence, why the wine was opened while I was cooking. I didn't add it to the food, more important to drink it!)

Weather

Rain, rain, go away!! Actually, after the weekend of 100 degree temps, I am not entirely upset to see the rain. But I would be a lot happier if it was only a one day event! Anyhow, tonight has been quite rainy and apparently the weather will be quite stormy tonight into tomorrow. So what's my point? I ran up to Fred Meyers tonight to just pick up a few groceries and my particular Fred Meyers is going to undergo a remodel very soon. But before that remodel starts, they decided to repave the upstairs parking lot. Well, after today's rain it will be interesting to see what they do because all over the grocery section of the store were buckets and buckets and buckets....catching the raindrops coming from the cracks in the ceiling. The ceiling were the parking lot is right above it. I suspect Fred Meyers ran out of their own buckets because they were using merchandise plastic tubs and styrofoam coolers to catch the perpetual drops! It's a good thing the store wasn't particularly crowded since maneuvering a shopping cart around all of the buckets/coolers was challenging! (thank goodness my kids were at home with daddy!!) After awhile, I felt slightly uneasy and decided to end my grocery trip... I'm sure the ceiling was fine but I sure wasn't about to find out the hard way!! ;)

Just Because....

Just because it's summer.....must mean that I am lacking in inspiration! I have neglected the blog lately. Not on purpose but I haven't really found anything terribly inspiring and now that "birthday season" is over (oh thank god!!) it's time to actually get a few things done around the house. Like paint that damn cabinet in my bathroom that I have meant to paint for almost a year now! I started sanding it this week and now it's officially sanded and primed but not painted yet. ::sigh:: Oh and Andy has been working on the deck(s) which desperately have needed a good cleaning and staining. He spent 6 hours on Saturday doing the cleaning part... and hopefully after today the rain won't come back for awhile so he can do the staining part! (I will help if I have to....not that I am jumping for joy at that chore!) Real exciting stuff over here! That along with swimming lessons daily, making sure we go to the library so that Matthew has plenty to read (a major chore! he fights having to read!) for the summer reading program, gymnastics classes, and probably other things that I am too tired to remember right now. In fact this week, a friend of mine pointed out that I had said at the beginning of summer how I looked forward to the end of the school year just so that we wouldn't have so much daily running around. Yeah....that worked out well, huh?!

So just for fun....a few more "diva" pictures of Mason's friend Clara from a couple of weeks ago at a BBQ at her house. Of course, when you put Mason in the pictures, the dynamic changes a bit! ;)

I don't Understand!

Around SE Portland, I see plenty of people getting into the "reduce and reuse" mode of things, particularly with grocery shopping and the popularity of reusable grocery bags. As I understood things, wasn't the point to cut down on the useage of those plastic bags that are going to be in our landfills forever? I thought a lot of people got that point, but apparently not our local newspaper! Why oh why does the Oregonian insist on delivering its paper in a plastic bag? On a perfectly good July sunny day? I just don't get it.....do the people in charge over there not get the message about our environmental problems? Or maybe it's just because I am a mom and occasionally notice the ridiculousness of of some things and look towards the future for my children. I am just vastly confused!

Sometimes Things Do Not Go As Planned

So last Saturday night was a camp out for moms and sons that was put on through Matthew's school. It was a sign-up type of event that was a fundraiser (and did quite well as I understand, yay!) and Matthew and I had really been looking forward to it. It was muggy and hot last Saturday but our spirits were high and It promised to be an exciting adventure for both of us. For Matthew it was just because camping is cool and a bunch of his school buddies would be there to play with. For me, it was the adventure of actually doing all the work myself (yes, I often have Andy do the things like set up the tent!) and having time to hang out with my kid and with a lot of other moms of boys!

Well, we carpooled with our friends Karin and her boys and got there (out at Oxbow park) in good time. I got everything set up easily and fairly quickly and then grabbed a bite to eat as there was still plenty of lunch stuff to be eaten. It wasn't long after this that Matthew began complaining of a headache. I figured he needed to eat and hydrate himself and then we had planned on going on a short hike on some of the trails. Of course, we hadn't gotten very far and Matthew kept saying he felt like his stomach was in his throat and he had to throw up. Great......so I encouraged him to at least aim for the bushes and not in the middle of the trail. In that process, (he ended up not barfing at this point) Matthew got his first introduction to stinging nettle! So now he was too busy crying to notice that he still felt sick.

We finally got back from the walk but then Matthew finally threw up. I wondered (hoped) that maybe it was just an upset stomach so I had him drink some water and rest for a bit in the tent. But of course the lure of all the other kids playing was too much so he went out again and I went to go converse with some of the moms. But again, it wasn't long before I saw Matthew throwing up again over in the bushes and this time I got him to lay down and stay in the tent. He did fall asleep and I began to figure how I was going to get out of there before Oxbow shut down their gates at 9 p.m. Naturally, getting a cell phone signal was almost impossible but I did manage to get a text through to Andy. I was still chatting with some of the moms about my predicament and how I was going to get my sick kid home when my phone actually beeped at me and Andy had left a voicemail saying he was on his way!

When Andy got there he helped me pack up our stuff and Matthew didn't wake up for any of it. Poor kid! I should mention that before he fell asleep I had told him that I was going to have to call daddy to come take us home early and he was devastated. He cried and begged me not to call daddy but I wasn't interested in being stuck there all night with a sick kid! I mean, who knows what will happen at 3 a.m. ? Matthew could be up puking and I really don't want to chance being stuck in the park! So we went home and Matthew pretty much forgot about being upset about leaving since the curvy road getting out of there was real tough on him. We had to stop in Gresham to get a plastic bag at Safeway because this was the one time I was unprepared and didn't have one in the car. But we got home and got him into bed and boy was I feeling a bit disgruntled, knowing all the others were back at the camping spot and sitting around the fire and eating smores!!

The next day Matthew still looked rather pale and sat around watching movies all day. By Monday he was fine but we are both now looking forward to next year. Since we weren't there very long, I didn't get too many pictures but here are a few. And for a much cheerier and brighter account of how most everybody else enjoyed their experience, go check out Amber's blog. :)

I have to still laugh at this last picture! Just before I snapped it, the boys noticed I was about to take their picture and suddenly yelled "Camera Alert"!!! I clicked and then they ran! ;)

I Threw a Tantrum.....

For some reason....we seem to get plenty-o-door to door salesmen here in SE PDX. Irritates the hell out of me. We finally had had enough. So we bought a lovely little sign for our front door. Something along the lines of "NO SOLICITING"!! In bright red, and can pretty well be read from the street. And even if you can't read it, the message is usually pretty damn clear. Apparently, not today. This young gentleman rang the door, informed me that he wasn't trying to sell me anything he was trying to give me an updated, wireless alarm panel. Whatever.....I was annoyed but also right in the middle of cooking dinner (which is probably why we got the damn sign anyway, it's always during dinner!). So I basically told him I knew nothing about the alarm (yeah right!) and he would have to talk to my hubby later. I know, I know, I should have just told him to go away and never come back but I was unsure. Basically, hubby nixed the whole idea (fine with me!) and kept pointing to the sign when the guy came back. And in the end we were both annoyed that the guy even came at all. So in my fit of irritation..... I produced this...


wonder what other information I could get out of a sales person? ;)