House of Crackers

Changes...

2011-05-19T14:48:00.005-04:00

So you may have noticed that the blog looks different today. I have decided it's well past time for me to roll my sleeves up and redesign it a bit. Like all other projects I undertake, this will probably take a lot longer than it should. So, please bear with me as I attempt to try something new. In the meantime, please enjoy the basic template provided by Blogger since I could no longer stand to look at the blog in its previous state.

Making wishes come true

2011-05-19T09:05:00.005-04:00

Yesterday was K's final school field trip of the year. The class went to a local family owned market. K had been doing the countdown to the day of her field trip for almost 3 weeks. She was really excited to go, mostly because she was going to finally ride on a school bus.

(Since using the school transportation system would have my kids sitting on a yellow bus for nearly 2 1/2 hours each day, a neighbor and I take turns carpooling the kids to and from school thus depriving my kids of all the joys and delights that would await them if they were allowed to ride the bus.)

Ironically the market they visited was within walking distance from our house, but I still had to drop her off at her school 6 miles away. Since I was one of the parent chaperones, I waited in the parking lot of the school for 15 minutes & then hopped on board a big yellow school bus with the kids to travel the 6 miles back home to my neighborhood market. As expected K was thrilled with the ride.

It was a fun morning, the kids got a tour of the entire place including the stock rooms, receiving docks and even the large freezer where the ice cream is kept. Each child was given a paper grocery bag when we arrived and in each department we visited they were given something. It was like a grocery store version of trick-or-treat.

They picked out an apple in the produce department, small cookies from the bakery, a string cheese stick from the dairy section, a juice box from grocery and they even got to watch as 2 pizzas were made for them in the kitchen behind the prepared foods section.

(This may have been my least favorite part of the tour since we all --including the chaperones-- had to wear hair nets. It wouldn't have been too bad except for the fact that
1. The store employees all wear hats instead of hairnets - which by the way looked much cooler
...and more importantly
2. Many, many pictures were taken once the hairnets were in place. K's teacher was almost gleeful about getting pictures of us. Pictures I may add that she made sure she took so there was no photographic evidence of her in a hairnet. I fear those hairnet pictures will be appearing on the school's website in the very near future.)

But everything on the tour paled in comparison to the item that the kids got when they visited the meat/deli department. An item that is apparently coveted by children everywhere...Lunchables.

K squealed with excitement when she discovered the prize. K like her brother before her has discovered the harsh truth that her beloved mother will not buy Lunchables. When K accompanies me to the grocery store (which thankfully isn't too often) she asks for them and I always say no.

When she starts pleading her case I tell her the same thing I told her brother when he used to ask for them, "They're really not that good for you, and even if they were... you won't like them. I know they look cool, but trust me you'd take one bite and then decide you don't want to eat them after all. And I'll end up throwing them away and making you something else." To which always replies, "Oh I would love them, Mama I know it...please, please?!"

Clearly though I am not the only mean Mom that refuses to buy them, because most of the children reacted in the same way as my own child upon receiving their Lunchable - with total joy and excitement.

At the end of our tour the kids were shown to the loft area where they could eat the pizza that was made for them and drink their juice boxes. Most kids were disappointed that they couldn't eat their Lunchables right away, but they all decided that they would be eating them for sure come lunch time (our tour ended at 10:00, so the pizza was really like a mid-morning snack).

As we boarded the bus to head back to school, K looked at me and asked if she could eat her Lunchable for lunch. When I told her she could, she hugged me and declared, "It's my dream come true. I've always wished for a Lunchable and now I finally get one!" Seriously...all this joy over a few crackers and some bologna. Who knew?

While a lot of the kids in K's class headed to an extended day program once school was over at 11:15, K came home with me -much to her dismay- so we could eat lunch together. (K is longing for next year when she will head to all day kindergarten and can at last eat lunch with her friends instead of her boring mother.)

Once she discovered I was not going to let her eat the Lunchable in the car, she spent whole trip home planning out her Lunchable eating strategy (K forumlates an eating strategy before each meal. I have no idea why she does it or what it may mean. I figure if it gets her to eat, it's fine with me.) "I think I'll eat the crackers first, and then the cheese, and then the meat and then I'll eat the cookies. Or maybe I'll eat the cheese first and then the crackers. Or maybe...." I'll spare you the rest of her strategic ponderings.

As soon as I got the car in the driveway she was out the door and in the house. She ripped open the top of the Lunchable before she even got her coat off. She ran to wash her hands (under much protest) and then ignoring all of her previously made eating strategies proceeded to make the "sandwich" shown on the outside of the package. She carefully piled her meat and cheese between the two crackers and took a big bite.

She looked a bit surprised, then turned to me and said, "Hmmm...I don't really like it. Maybe I'll eat them separately."

So she ate all her crackers and then took a tentative bite of the bologna before asking, "What is this meat? It tastes like cold hot dog." I tried to explain bologna to her as best I could, but since I'm not really sure what it is myself, I'm not sure I was doing a good job. I finally told her she was right, it's just like a cold hot dog. To which she replied, "Well, I don't really like it."

I told her to try the cheese. She took a bite of it, then looked at me and asked, "Isn't this the same as the yellow cheese it our fridge? " When I told her it was, she took another bite then looked at me and then sadly looked over at the two cookies that came with her Lunchable.

"Don't you like the cheese?" I asked.

"No. Can I just have the cookies?"

The answer to that was no, so I ended up making her a peanut butter sandwich which she ate with zeal so that she could finally get to those cookies.

When I commented that I the whole reason I didn't buy Lunchables in the first place was because I didn't think she'd like them, she just replied, "Well I did like the crackers and the cookies. Maybe next time I'll have to try another flavor."

Hope springs eternal...

Row, row, row your boat

2011-04-27T08:29:00.008-04:00

Back in college Mr. Crackers was on the University's crew team (rowing team?). He often recalls his time on the team fondly and has shared many memories with me over the years. When I think of rowing teams (crew teams?) my mind has always immediately turned to that classic 1984 film Oxford Blues starring Rob Lowe. And while Mr. Crackers & I did not attend Oxford University in jolly old England, our college was located in the the town of Oxford (Ohio). The movie reference may help explain why, even though Mr. Crackers & I did not know each other yet back in those college days, when I picture him rowing (crewing?) a boat, I always picture him looking just like this:

Mr. Crackers love for boats with oars did not stop when he graduated college. Although he never joined the Atlanta Rowing Club, he often talked about it. So, on one fateful afternoon while driving through the north Georgia mountains, it came as no surprise when Mr. Crackers pulled the car into the parking lot of a canoe and kayak outfitting store. Admittedly though I was a little surprised when we left the store 30 minutes later with our very own (gently used) red canoe strapped to the top of our SUV.

Our friend Karen, who was with us on that fateful afternoon, took this photo when we got home with our new prize. You can see the pride & joy clearly evident on the face of Mr. Crackers can't you? You can tell he was ready for many canoeing (rowing?) adventures in our future.

Thankfully north Georgia was full of lakes and rivers, so Mr. Crackers and I (and our two dogs Max & Sadie) did have many fun times on the canoe. Although I will tell you that I will never again get in a canoe on a lake crowded with jet skis and ski boats on Labor Day weekend. I have never been tossed around so much in my life. I have learned that for me canoeing is best either on placid lake waters or on gently running small rivers.

But once C was born back in 2002, we never got in the canoe again - not even on a placid pond. Thankfully we were smart enough to realize that small active toddlers & canoeing were not a good combination.

So when we moved to Ohio back in 2004, we left the canoe behind in Atlanta with our friend Karen and never gave it a thought again. Or at least that is what I thought, until Mr. Crackers began talking last fall about how fun it would be to go canoeing as a family now that the kids were older. I kind of nodded my head and said uh-huh until I realized how serious he was. He wanted to plan a trip down to Atlanta to retrieve our old canoe from our friend Karen who was ready to finally get it out of her garage after 7 years.

While making our plans to get the canoe my biggest recurring question was always, "Where are we going to store it?" If my memory served me correctly, I remembered that the canoe was pretty large and I knew that our garage has got to be one of the smallest 2 car garages in America. I mean the thing just barely fits our 2 cars inside. In fact I can't even get into Mr. Crackers car if it's parked inside the garage. He has to pull it out in order for me to climb inside the vehicle.

In answer to my question, Mr. Crackers would just smile at me and say, "Don't worry, I've got it all planned out." Since Mr. Crackers is an idea man (as evidenced by his many past projects) I figured he had some plan up his sleeve, so I took his advice & didn't worry about it... for awhile. Until the next time I tried to figure out where the thing would go and I'd ask him the question all over again.

We headed down to Atlanta last week and the trip was really fun. We saw some good friends, had a blast showing the kids around the city we called home for almost a dozen years and after our trip was over, we strapped that canoe back on the car & headed home. After 7 years, we were once again the proud owners of a (gently used) canoe.

Once we got back to Ohio, Mr. Crackers began executing the plan he had hatched in his mind all those months ago. It involved hanging the canoe from the ceiling of the garage. It also involved many, many trips to Home Depot as he revised and then re-revised the plan a few times.

Pulleys, moving straps, heavy ropes, giant hooks, and a big red tarp were just some of the items he used trying to bring his plan into fruition. I tried to cheer him on during the day, reminding him of all his past project successes - but after spending one entire day trying to get his system to work, he shook his head, looked at me & said, "I don't think I'm going to get this to work after all."

Honestly, I was a bit relieved by this news. The longer he worked at it, the more I could picture the canoe breaking free of it's restraints and crashing down on our cars... or even worse on our kids. While I felt bad that he had tried so hard & hadn't gotten his plan to work, I felt like maybe we had dodged a bullet.

We talked briefly about some other options, including storing the canoe on some kind of stand outside the house. Little did I know that the next morning he decided to have another go at the whole garage ceiling system again. After another 2-3 hours of work he called me out the garage again. I thought it was to review a new plan he had, but instead it was to try to help him raise the canoe to the ceiling again. It was at that moment that I decided to air my concerns to Mr. Crackers. You know, the concerns I had about the canoe coming crashing down on our cars....or children.

To Mr. Crackers extreme credit he remained calm as he stared at me somewhat incredulously. "This might have been something that you should have shared with me a little sooner. You know, before I just spent 2 days working on this." he very calmly replied.

He was right. I should have spoken up sooner, but I really wasn't sure what the storage system would involve until he had spent quite a bit of time on it. I was trying to be supportive, cheering him on while all the time worrying about potential canoe disasters (as Mr. Crackers would tell you, I'm somewhat an expert at inventing things to worry about.) And honestly, he had spent so much time on it that I felt really bad telling him the whole thing was giving me some seriously bad juju.

In the end (after I am sure he silently cursed me for about 2-3 hours) he came up with plan B. A plan that seemed much less likely to smash our cars or kill our children if it had some kind of catastrophic failure. To his continued credit he called me out the garage to review the plans with me & make sure I had no lingering doubts about any potenial disasters before he put his plan into action (seriously the man has limitless patience with me sometimes).

And so, without further ado I present to you Mr. Crackers latest brainstorm...the side-of-the-house-canoe-holder (I probably need to come up with a catchier name, but that one works for now):

Here's another view of his handiwork.

Ta-da! Not only does it keep the canoe out the of the way, but it has the added benefit of providing our recycling container with a little shelter from the elements.

Thank you Mr. Crackers for your perseverance and your tolerance for your worst-case-scenario-imagining-wife. I love the new "system". And I'm also very happy the canoe is back in our hands again. With all of the non-stop rain and flooding that have been plaguing our part of the country for the past 3 weeks, we'll be getting more use out of that canoe than we ever imagined.

Updates around the house

2011-04-23T14:57:00.013-04:00

So, I think I posted back in January that we were going to finally re-do the kids bathroom. Since it's one of the smallest rooms in the house, you'd be right in thinking we could have done it all in a single weekend. But why get it done so quickly when we could stretch it out and have everything in total disarray for weeks?

It honestly didn't take us three whole months to complete. The wallpaper border was a little challenging and took a bit more time to remove than I had planned. But once I repaired all the walls (Someone needs to explain to me why the previous owners felt the need to use over 20 drywall anchors in the walls of such a small room. Once I removed all of them, the bathroom walls resembled a piece of lacy swiss. A delicious bit of cheese to be sure, but not anything you'd want your drywall to look like. Needless to say, I went through about half a container of spackle to fill all the holes and make the walls smooth once again) the painting only took a couple of days.

Mr. Crackers helped out a lot by installing the new light fixture, towel bar and new faucets. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. At some point I hope to put a wood frame around the mirror, but for now I'm calling it done.

For those of you who can't remember, here is what the bathroom used to look like:

It was a fish theme that had started to get on my nerves. The wallpaper border, the worn out rugs, the "Hollywood dressing room" light bar all needed to go.

Not to mention that the brass fixtures in the room had all started to corrode a bit.

So, I found this cute shower curtain at Target & we (eventually) proceeded to update the room to it's new look:

Voila!

I don't know about you, but I like it much better. The paint and accessories are bright and fun without being too juvenile. And I really like all of the new bronze fixtures in the room. I seem to have a thing for bronze, so now this bathroom matches the powder room downstairs. It's almost like we've got a design point of view for the house.

And I just fell in love with these little owl pictures I found on Etsy. They are so cute & just happened to match the colors in the shower curtain perfectly.

Since this room serves as our guest bathroom when we have overnight guests, I'm happy that we finally got the room done. Our first guest arrives in less than a week. Nothing like cutting it a little close.

We (and by we I mean Mr. Crackers) also managed to hang new shelves in the pantry and in the laundry room to make the room usable again after the "cabinet incident" back in February. All of these projects have had the nice side effect of getting us to organize and clean out a lot of the spaces where we had let junk accumulate. I ended up selling a lot of stuff on Craig's List and made a nice amount of cash from the sale of all of our old stuff.

So now that all that Spring cleaning is done, we're ready to spend a little time outside...if it ever stops raining. It seems like it has rained non-stop for the past four weeks. Hopefully all of these April showers will bring us some gorgeous May flowers.

I think my laundry room might be haunted

2011-02-23T13:08:00.003-05:00

So as you can tell I really haven't been delivering on either of my resolutions for 2011. Unless you count posting once a month as "more regularly" or if sitting at my computer can count as "exercising at least 3 times a week". Oh well, as usual I will shoot to do a little better.

It's kind of imperative I get going on the exercise regime as soon as possible since in the last 3 weeks I have had to retire 2 pairs of jeans. I was still able to wear both of them somewhat comfortably (a big thank you to whoever came up with the genius idea of adding spandex to denim. A marriage made in heaven for those of us in our 40's!). Although I could button & zip them up, I had been noticing that they were getting a bit snug around the upper thigh & derriere. In the end it was my keister that did them in. Apparently the task of stretching over my ever-widening tuckus was such a strain that the fabric just plum wore out. The first pair ripped as I was sitting down to play a game with the kids. I could have chalked that up to shoddy workmanship except for the fact that about a week later (while wearing a different pair) my daughter pointed out that she could clearly see my underwear through the holes in the bottom of my jeans. Hmm...it's probably a little past time to get myself under control again.

But before heading down to see what special kind of pain Jillian Michaels can inflict upon me today, I thought I'd share a little bit of the craziness that has been the House of Crackers over the past couple of weeks.

I'll start with Valentine's Day. This is a somewhat meaningless holiday as I seemed to have married a man (who just like my father) feels that it is a made-up/phony holiday created for the sole purpose of selling cards and flowers. And while I may agree with their opinion, I still like getting flowers from time to time & don't begrudge the floral industry their chance to make some money while at the same time delivering beautiful spring blooms to my doorstep.

But since flowers have not made an appearance in my house for many years, I choose to think of Valentine's Day in a different light...the day before my birthday. Having a birthday the day after Valentine's Day served me well in the years before I met my husband as in "Who cares that I don't have a Valentine, tomorrow I'll get presents & cake!". And it has served me well in the years after I was married when it was decided that we wouldn't celebrate the holiday anymore since we were long past the wooing stage.

Anyhoo, as I was saying I really had no expectations for Valentines Day beyond the fact that I would be helping out with my daughter's Valentine's Day party in the morning. Except for that small diversion, the day was looking like any other Monday. At least it was until C found the last tiny bit of ice left on the driveway and promptly fell down right as my neighbor arrived to drive him school.

He promptly screamed and clutched his left arm to his chest. He's a pretty tough kid, so as soon as I looked at the pain in his eyes, I got my daughter into the carpool van and then took him inside to assess the damage. Since I have no medical degree, my assessment didn't take very long, and my conclusion was simple. A trip to the doctor's office was in our immediate future. So instead of attending the Valentine's Party for my daughter's Early 5's class, I spent the morning in our doctor's office and then in our local Childrens' Hospital X-ray facility where we discovered that C had indeed broken his wrist.

I'm happy to report that it was a minor fracture and that it was splinted and he was able to return to school in time for his second grade class Valentine's Party. Thank goodness! He's still upset over the fact that he missed the class Christmas party because of an ear infection.

Sadly though, Valentine's Day wasn't quite done with me yet. Later that evening I was upstairs talking with Mr. Crackers on the phone when I heard what can only be described as a giant crash coming from downstairs. Knowing that C was down there alone with his newly broken arm put me in a tizzy. I frantically hung up on Mr. Crackers and ran down the stairs two at a time. Visions of him pinned under a large piece of furniture began running through my brain. When I ran into the kitchen, I was relieved to see him standing there looking at a magazine. He looked up at my panicked expression and simply said, "It wasn't me."

I did a quick scan & found nothing out of the ordinary in the kitchen and family rooms, so I headed toward the laudry room since it is adjacent to the kichen. It's a tiny room, really more of a hallway that links the garage to the kitchen than an actual room, but I figured I'd check and make sure everything was A-OK. But as soon as I started to open the door my nostrils were assaulted by the smell of alcohol. Lots of alcohol. My laundry room smelled like a distillery, and for some reason I couldn't seem to get the door open all the way. That's when I looked down and saw the 3" layer of broken glass all over the floor.

Apparently the noise I heard was one of the laundry room cabinets -- the one that held all the laundry detergent and most of our crystal vases along with a few bottles of alcohol -- falling off the wall and spilling its contents all over our tiny laundry room. Sincerely, forget the fact that it was Valentine's Day, this was shaping up as one of my worst Mondays in recent memory.

Once I called Mr. Crackers back to tell him what had happened (it turns out that screaming "Oh my God what was that!" Followed by "I have to hang up now!" is not the best way to end a conversation with a spouse who is making his way home in rush hour traffic.) I began to pick up the million pieces of glass that now carpeted the floor. Mr. Crackers walked in the door about 20 minutes later just as I swept up the last of the glass and helped clean up the rest of the mess. We were both happy that no one got hurt and that we didn't really loose anything that we really needed. In the words of Mr. Crackers, "We never used those crystal vases for anything anyway." Truer (and more depressing) words have never been spoken.

Thankfully, I'm happy to report that the rest of the day passed uneventfully. True to form, my birthday was great and filled with more than enough good stuff to make up for my lackluster Valentine's the previous day. It was a wonderful day that included both presents and cake as well as chocolate fondue. Trust me, the chocolate fondue was so good I completely forgot about the laundry room accident. At least temporarily.

We haven't had the time yet to fix the laundry room yet, so all of my detergent, dryer sheets and other laundry stuff has been living in a large plastic tote on top of the dryer. Since all of us were down to our last remaining pairs of clean underwear, it was time for me to do a little laundry yesterday. So I took the detergent out of the tote and placed it on the dryer so it was easier for me to access as I began my weekly laundry marathon. I put the second load into the washer & left the room to finish making lunch. When I left the laundry room the detergent bottle was on the dryer -- but when I came back 45 minutes later to change loads, the bottle had fallen off the dryer and the floor was now covered with bright blue Cheer laundry detergent. It's like there's a poltergeist living in my laundry room.

Seriously I don't know how else to explain that the bottle fell and manged to spill its entire contents (96 loads worth of detergent if the label can be believed) on to the floor. The bottle was completely empty. Not a drop left. I can't empty the bottle that well when I'm trying to squeeze out the last little bit. Clearly someone doesn't want me in the laundry room anymore (I mean someone besides me).

I'm still working on the laundry and I a little afraid to see what happens next. I just hope whatever it is doesn't ruin any of my jeans. Only a truly evil spirit would force me to go jean shopping before I can shed a little of the extra padding I've put on over the past few months.

Peace and other dreams

2011-01-19T13:22:00.005-05:00

Like many schools across the country, the school that my kids attend has been busy this week working on all kinds of projects to honor the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King. K brought this particular project home today & I thought I'd share it with you...

Dr. King had a dream... Peace

My dream... is to pet a unicorn.

Clearly our dreams aren't as lofty as Dr. King's...

Hopefully we may someday fully realize his dream (I don't think K has much of a shot at achieving hers though).

Blue, Green or Yellow?

2011-01-14T14:00:00.009-05:00

So I finally decided yesterday that it was time to join the party and get going with some New Year's resolutions. I suppose one of my resolutions should be to get a little more on top of things in a timely manner, but meh...I'll save my energy for other resolutions instead.

I won't bore you with the whole list (I can see the relief written all over your face), but I will tell you that one of my resolutions is to try and blog with a little more frequency than I have of late. While this resolution may go by the wayside as so many do, I'll at least make an attempt to get into the spirit (two weeks late) today.

In the almost seven years we've lived in our house, we've made a concerted effort to repaint and redesign the rooms to better fit our family "style". I'm not sure I could actually define what our style is, but I can tell you that it is very different than the people who lived in the house before us. The previous owners were really big fans of sponge painting and wallpaper borders. Not that there's anything wrong with that...I'm not here to judge. It's just that personally I don't happen to be fan of those two particular design tools. I'm more a fan of traditional paint jobs with an accent wall thrown in here and there to inject a bit of color.

Within the first two years we lived here we got most of the rooms repainted and removed almost all the wallpaper borders in the main living areas and bedrooms. It was a relief to put our own stamp on the place, but as life got more busy we slowed down and then finally stalled out completely with two rooms left unchanged.

This past fall we finally tackled one of those rooms - the office. Not only did the room have seafoam green carpeting, but it had a sports themed wallpaper border, a chair rail, and a maroon and tan sponge painting job. It was honestly a lot to take in, especially considering the office is the smallest room in the house.

Finally Mr. Crackers had had enough (Since I spent more time in that room than anyone else in the family I had become immune the room's wild decorative elements) and so we decided it was time for a change. Mr. Crackers took down the chair rail, made me a new desk and put a new closet system in place so that I could organize all of our ~~accumulated junk~~ important stuff. Once all the hard work was done, I repainted the room a light tan with a burnt orange accent wall (I wasn't kidding about that accent wall thing - I'm a huge fan). I'd post a picture of the completed office here, but I can't seem to locate them on my hard drive & honestly I'm just too lazy to re-take pictures to show you right now. But trust me, it looks great!

That left just 1 room untouched. The kids bathroom. Thankfully this room had been spared the sponge painting found in so many of the other rooms in the house, but it did have a wallpaper border - a school of brightly patterned fish. We didn't love the border, but the walls were a satisfactory shade of light blue and since the fish theme was an easy one to work with, we ran with it.

And seven years later we still haven't done anything to update the room. To be honest, I am really starting to hate the fish. I didn't like them that much seven years ago and they really haven't grown on me since that time. So since the walls need a fresh coat of paint anyway... you guessed it. It's time for a re-do.

I found a really cute shower at Target that fulfilled all of my needs:
1. It was ~~cheap~~ inexpensive
2. It was colorful, but didn't hurt the eyes
3. It was NOT a fish theme
4. It was whimsical but not too juvenile (I'm hoping to go another 7 years before the next update)

Now comes the hard part...what color should the walls be? Here's a picture of what we're dealing with.

Even though the walls are currently blue and I normally like to make a big change when I paint a wall, I'm still leaning toward repainting the walls a slightly darker shade of blue that is already on them.

I like the green too, but I think since our bedroom was close to that same shade when we moved in & I was so relieved to paint over it that it seems a little weird to reintroduce the color in another room (Of course since this room will NOT be sponge painted the green will probably look a lot better).

I'm really not sure how I feel about a yellow bathroom. Does anyone want to enter a bright yellow bathroom first thing in the morning? It seems like it might have the potential to permanently damage your retinas. It could be a little overpowering in such a small place. Hmm...I just don't know.

I put a ballot up on the wall so everyone can have a vote. We'll see what happens. Do you care to weigh in on the subject? What's your color preference? I'm open to all opinions at the moment, so fire away.

I'm slowly acquiring all of the accessories to go with the shower curtain. Hopefully within the next month or so I'll have the paint and everything else I need to start the job. And even though completing home improvement tasks in a timely manner is not on my newly minted list of resolutions (much to Mr. Crackers chagrin), I'll still try to have the whole thing completed by the time spring break rolls around. Since more regular blogging is on my list, I'll do my best to keep you updated on the status (or lack thereof) of my latest home improvement project.

Holiday recap

2011-01-03T09:18:00.012-05:00

Happy New Year! I know I've been absent from the blog for awhile, but honestly I've been way too busy hanging out in my PJ's until 2:00 every afternoon to write anything. Now that the kiddos are back in school and Mr. Crackers has returned to work, I figured it was about time to get back in the saddle again.

We had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas. We got to spend lots of time with my parents, my Grandma, and uncles, aunts & cousins on both sides of the family.

As predicted, the lights on the Christmas tree continued to go dark until we were left with a single glowing strand on the very top of the tree by Christmas morning.

It didn't seem to dampen the children's enthusiasm though...

We've built a lot of Lego sets,

we've played a lot of Wii,

(and I managed to show my family how bad dancer I really am...and to think I used to go dancing a few times a week in my younger days. Thank goodness that was long before the days of smart phones and youtube!)

we've played lots of board games,

we celebrated C's 8th birthday (Wow! How is it possible that he is 8 years old?!)

we even managed to get out of our PJ's a few times and leave the house to go see the movie Tangled (which we all loved) and visit our local Children's Museum.

And the whole family actually stayed up until midnight on New Year's Eve to welcome in 2011 (even though I think Mr. Crackers & I would have happily gone to bed long before the ball dropped - the kids were wide awake). I fear that Dick Clark's countdown proved to be a little anti-climatic. I think the kids were expecting something a little more dramatic for all the hoopla associated with the holiday. Perhaps next year they'll decide they don't need to stay up quite so late (a girl can dream, right?!)

But all good things must come to an end. So this morning we all woke up at our "normal time", dressed by 7:30 (bye, bye comfy PJ's) and got back into the swing of things. Here's hoping 2011 proves to be just as wonderful as the year we left behind.

The Spirit of Christmas

2010-12-20T19:42:00.004-05:00

Do you want to see something truly amazing? Something that will touch your heart? I know I sound like I've spent too much time in the greeting card aisle, but trust me on this. Head on over to The Bloggess. She posted a blog a few days ago where she offered $30.00 gift cards to the first 20 people who weren't going to be able to buy their children any gifts this year. Not surprisingly in this economy, those 20 gift cards disappeared quickly.

But since that time something truly incredible has happened. Since that initial post more than 800 gift cards have been given out. Most of those cards have come from individual donors who stepped forward have been matched up (by the Bloggess) with a family in need. Someone they didn't know who wouldn't have been able to celebrate Christmas this year without a little help.

Go look at the blog. It's inspiring and humbling. It's watching the spirit of Christmas at work.

7 years ago

2010-12-17T14:13:00.005-05:00

I thought it was time to share one of my favorite pictures with you again.

I will forever love this photo. It was taken seven years ago (wow!). We were a little surprised at his reaction since C was one of those babies who happily went to anyone. He'd let anybody hold him without becoming even the slightest bit bothered. When we first put him on Santa's lap he seemed fine, he was his normal smiley self. I think it was our backing away that elicited the scream seen in the picture above. My favorite part of the picture is the perfect smile on Santa's face despite the obvious distress of the wee child sitting on his lap. I remember seeing the pictures and wondering if we should order them - but they were so funny, we couldn't resist.

Clearly the experience did not scar my son. This picture with Santa was taken at the Christmas festival held at our church a couple of weeks ago. As you can see, C has definitely gotten over his Santa anxiety. In fact, he wore the red shirt, vest and hat with the express purpose of looking like the big guy. They chatted for quite some time.

We don't have any screaming pictures of K on Santa's lap because she wouldn't even let us get close to him until she was 2. After some coaxing and a chocolate candy bribe this Santa was actually able to touch her hand - but that was as close as she would come. There was absolutely no lap sitting.

This year all it looks like all of our Santa jitters are a thing of the past. In fact, I think this Santa was afraid my kids were never going to leave. This year the candy bribe was used to usher them off the stage so the next kids in line could have their turn. It's amazing what a few years will do.

A Christmas tour

2010-12-13T19:40:00.020-05:00

I've noticed that this time of year that a lot of blogs I read take their readers on a holiday tour of their Christmas decorations. They all seem to link back to other blogs and everyone's pictures look to me like they came straight out of a design magazine.

My home clearly doesn't look like a designer had a hand in any of the decorating, but it is a pretty good reflection of our family. And while I have no plans to link my blog to any of those other ones, I kind of like the idea of logging my decorations here so that I can remember what I do from year to year. I have a terrible memory & every year when we break out the Christmas decorations I wander around & try to remember where everything goes. Those people with skill at home decoration may view this memory lapse as a chance to mix things up a bit, but for those of us without that particular talent it's like reinventing the wheel every year.

I figured if I actually record what I did this year, it'll help jog my memory a bit for next year. So if the thought of looking at Christmas decorations bores the pants right off of you, please feel free to skip this post & return another day. You won't hurt my feelings, honest.

So with all that in mind, let's being the tour ...

Our good friend KK sent us this nativity set a few years ago. We all love it & it sits in our entry way every year. It's really the only Christmas decoration that you see when you first enter the house. It's small and very simple and is after all what the season is all about. I love it.

Our dining room is really the first room that is really decked out for the holidays that you see when you come to the house.

I think last year I hung a bunch of ornaments from the dining room chandelier. I couldn't really remember which ornaments I hung last year or even how I did it, so this year I scaled back (or maybe I was just lazy) and decided to just hang one ornament. It's working for me though.

The bowl of ornaments on the dining room table. These may or may not be the ornaments that hung from the chandelier last year. In a bout of confusion I decided just to place them in a bowl this year. Festive ~~and lazy~~ yet simple. It seems to be my theme this year.

My parents bought the kids the advent calendar gingerbread house and the train from Kohl's this year. They are a big hit. What's not to love? They are adorable and behind every door is a chocolate surprise.

In the past I always bought those cardboard calendars from Trader Joe's and after the first few days of Advent we'd start forgetting to open the doors each evening. I think there have been years where we threw away the calendars after Christmas and there would still be chocolate inside them. With these new calendars that is not a problem at all. They wake up and immediately want to know if they can have a chocolate. It's all I can do to hold off them off until after lunch.

This is perhaps my kids' favorite Christmas decoration...the nutcracker. He is played with constantly during the season. It may be the best $15.00 I ever spent at Target. Yesterday I had to rescue a small Calico Critters bunny from his mouth. K assured me that the nutcracker wasn't trying to eat the bunny, the bunny was just tired and needed a place to sleep.

One of our favorite holiday traditions is making gingerbread houses. My parents buy the kits every year and my kiddos along with my sister's children spend an evening after Thanksgiving decorating the houses.

Not surprisingly, the kids love eating the decorations as much as they like making the houses. It's the one time of year they have unlimited access to so many sugary items. All of the kids kept looking at us with wonder as we allowed them to eat whatever candy they wanted as long as they continued to work on the houses.

My sister finally had to cut my niece off. All of the other kids had finished their houses and had gone off to play but she had figured out that the longer she decorated the more candy she could eat. Once my sister saw that every ounce of house had been covered with candy my niece was finally cut off from her sugar supply and dismissed to the other room.

It's become our annual kick off to the holidays and we all look forward to it every year.

This is my favorite nativity scene. It was made by C two years ago when he was in Kindergarten. It's just 3 small pots, some wooden beads and three pieces of cloth. Simple. Beautiful.

I probably should have taken this shot when we had an actual fire in the fireplace. It would have looked a bit more festive. The lights on the wreath were the only lights that worked as soon as we plugged them in this year. (Of course now that I think about it, I replaced the light strand on the wreath last year.)

If you are wondering what is up with the piece of wood blocking the fireplace opening, let me introduce you to one of Mr. Crackers' latest inventions. He made it last year. It is a piece of pink foam insulation that is attached to a piece of wood to appease his wife who hated the concept of pink foam as a focal point in the family room. Add a couple of handles so it can be easily removed and ta da... you have a something that is both practical and attractive. It may not look as warm as a fire, but it sure keeps out all those cold drafts when we don't have a fire blazing.

I love these 3 little snowmen on the mantle. My Mom found them in a catalog. So whimsical. They make me smile. Their hats seem to be "wiggled wildly with excitement" (to borrow a line from the Rob Scotten book Splat the Cat).

This picture contains the favorite ornaments of both Mr. Crackers & myself. Mr. Crackers' favorite are the white doves. He found the white "love birds" at Target a couple of years ago. He always puts them toward the top of the tree right next to each other. "These birds are Mommy & Daddy" he told the kids as he put them on the tree. How could I not love this guy?

One of my favorite ornaments is the Christmas moose in the top corner of the picture. He reminds me of the felt ornaments my Mom made that used to decorate our Christmas tree when I was a kid. Well, except for this moose is a bit more goofy. He makes me smile. I'm not sure what it says about us as a couple that our favorite ornaments are so very different. It kind of gives you a glimpse into our lives doesn't it? Poor Mr. Crackers.

All goofiness aside, I also love this ornament. The colors and glitter look beautiful against the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree. And speaking of lights...

Our tree...it actually looks better in the daylight than it does at night. The dark mid-section isn't quite as noticeable. Mr. Crackers and I keep waiting for the bottom strand to burn out too. It hasn't happened yet, but I feel certain it will soon. The only new strand on the tree is on the top and I feel confident it will be the only one still glowing on Christmas morning.

A giant snowman and his many minions. The more I look at this picture the more disturbing I find it. They kind of look like a terrifyingly cheery snow army... I didn't even remember that we had a Christmas salt and pepper collection. I'm not sure how this collection even came into being, but the kids love it, so it's staying.

For the last item on our tour, I need to give you a little bit of a back story. Last year at Sunday school K made a nativity banner. It was made from just 4 pieces of felt on a white background. It very simply conveyed the meaning of Christmas & I loved it. I think though that K found the banner to be a little too simple. So, she corrected the problem this year with a Sharpie she found on the kitchen counter.

I like the smiles on Joseph and Mary's faces. Jesus looks a little bit toothy for a newborn to my eye though. But what do I know? I wasn't there now, was I?

And that (for anyone who actually made it to then end of this post) concludes our tour of the House of Crackers. You'll be happy to know that now that I've done it once, you won't be forced to go on this tour again next year. Since I've taken pictures of where all the decorations go, it will hopefully look about the same from year to year. So we'll all be spared from going through this again. See everyone wins!

O Tannenbaum - the update

2010-12-10T19:37:00.004-05:00

It appears as though we've lost yet another strand of lights on the tree. Oh well. We now have a tree that has gone completely dark around the middle but is still very brightly lit at the top and has one sad and lonely light strand at the very bottom. Not quite a Charlie Brown Christmas tree yet, but give us another week and we may get there. Seriously, someone needs to remind me to buy new lights next year.

In other news, we went on our annual Christmas decoration scavenger hunt this evening & had a great time. We stole the idea from a man that Mr. Crackers works with and it's become an annual tradition around here. There are a few items we never can seem to find, but it's still fun to try.

Here's our list if you want to go on a scavenger hunt of your own:

Santa Claus
Mrs. Claus
Rudolph
Reindeer
Elf
Snowman
Penguin
Polar Bear
Charlie Brown
Snoopy
Grinch
Tigger
Winnie the Pooh
Mickey Mouse
Angel
Ice Skater (we've never found one...maybe you will have better luck)
Sleigh
Car
Motorcycle
Train
Snow Globe
Sled
Star
Christmas Tree
Ornament
Wreath
Bow
Candle
Bell
Present
Candy Cane
Manger
Hanukah Lights
Icicle Lights
Palm Tree
Cross
Nutcracker
Snowflake

Hope you have as much fun hunting for decorations as we do.

O Tannenbaum

2010-12-08T08:30:00.007-05:00

Last Thursday we headed out to get our Christmas tree.

Every year I imagine our whole family driving out to a local farm to pick our own Christmas tree. I dream of us looking around at all the beautiful trees around us and settling on one that catches our collective eye. It is beautiful and full and fragrant.... And then we chop it down, strap it to the top of our minivan and haul it home where it will spend the rest of its short life decorated with white lights and sparkly ornaments.

But then as December comes, reality sets in. I look at our busy calendar and remember how cold December in Ohio can be. So instead of driving out to a farm, we head to our local home improvement super store to pick a tree.

Once at the store, a yearly pattern emerges. Mr. Crackers holds up a tree & says "What do you think?". Our son C is usually not even in the same row with us. He's typically running around, so hopped on Christmas tree fever that he can't even stand still long enough to look at any tree for more than 1.2 seconds. Meanwhile K is bundled up in her winter coat with her hat covering most of her eyes & the collar of her coat up over her nose. You can't really even see her face as she continually complains, "I'm cold!".

Once Mr. Crackers has the tree in his hands, I keep asking both kids, "What do think guys? Is this the one?" From the next aisle over C shouts "Yep, that's the one Mom". While K gives me a muffled, "I'm still cold! Can we go home?"

I try and give the tree a critical look while shouting "C, please come over here. Stay where I can see you please! Stop running around like a maniac!" Finally I say, "I feel like we should look at another one, before making our decision."

This goes on for about 15 minutes as Mr. Crackers continues to patiently hold up tree after tree while C runs around the store, K whines about the cold and I say, "Hmmm...I'm not sure this is the one. Maybe just one more."

Finally I reach a point where the whining and running start to wear on my patience and I decide that whatever tree Mr. Crackers is holding is the tree we are buying. Not necessarily because it is the prettiest or the most full. Simply because he is holding that particular tree when I decide it's time to go.

Thankfully, most of the time we've gotten pretty lucky. I mean, once you put lights and ornaments on a tree it typically looks really good, even if it isn't very full and has huge gaps that are missing branches. Put enough ornaments and lights on it, and usually looks just like every other Christmas tree we've ever had.

Once we bring the tree home, it is my job to put the lights on it each year. I am a crazy person about lights. I like a lot of lights on the tree, but I don't like to see the wires. I go nuts when I can see too many wires (insert Mommy Dearest joke here). Because of this lunacy it takes me a bit of time to get the lights on the tree. I blame this problem on my Dad who was afflicted with this same issue in my childhood. I remember waiting and waiting for what seemed like hours for him to get all of the lights on the tree. I also remember complaining about how long it took him to get the lights up.

So in a twist of irony and fate, I now do the same thing to my kids. Kind of... Since according to Mr. Crackers it is "EXTREMELY PAINFUL" to watch me put lights on the tree, I try to get the lights on when no one is around. That way, I get to take my time and be a true maniac about wrapping the strands of lights around each branch I come to. And the kids and Mr. Crackers don't have to watch me do it while continually asking, "are you done yet?" See, everybody wins!

Usually, putting the lights on the tree takes me a couple of hours. But since I am listening to Christmas music and am thoroughly wrapped up in the task, the time usually goes pretty quickly. This year though for some reason EVERY STRAND OF LIGHTS THAT WE OWN STOPPED WORKING! I know that sometimes I am prone to exaggeration, but I am telling you the truth. It was both incredibly frustrating and really odd. So, a job that normally takes 2 hours, took me ALL DAY!

Thankfully though last year we bought this tool:

O Light Keeper Pro Bulb Tester and Repair Tool, how I love thee!

Although it took quite a bit of time, my handy light repair tool and I finally got all but one of the strands working again. Admittedly there were quite a few bulbs out on each of the newly repaired strands, but since each strand had about 200 lights, they still glowed brightly. And honestly, I was just happy that I got the strands to work again. Now I know most normal people upon finding that their strands of lights were no longer working would just truck their hiney over to their local Target to buy new strands of lights, but as you now from reading this blog I am not normal.

So it was with a sense of pride (and also a bit of leftover frustration) that I finally announced to my family late in the afternoon that the lights were on and tree was ready to decorate.

We spent a really nice Friday evening decorating the tree and looking at all of our ornaments. While picking the tree may not have been a warm family moment, decorating the tree definitely falls into that category. Once we are done decorating, everyone shares with the family their favorite ornament and I think everyone's favorite changes every year. Decorating the tree is always one of my favorite things to do during the Christmas season. Maybe that is why I am such a lunatic about the lights.

As I came down the stairs the next morning, Mr. Crackers looked at me and said, "I have to tell you something. But first I want you to look me in the eye and take a deep calming breath. Are you calm?"

"Well, I was a moment ago before you started freaking me out What is going on?!"

"I just need you to be calm. Are you calm?"

"Holy cow! Just tell me what is happening! Is everyone OK?"

"Look at me. Just promise me you won't freak out."

"WHAT. IS. IT!"

" OK. Here it is. A strand of lights just went out on the Christmas tree".

"Oh. Is that all?! Geez, you had me really freaked out there for a second. I thought something awful had happened. A strand of lights huh? That's OK. Geez."

And it was. I'm not sure if that was his plan or not, but in terms of all of the terrible things that could have happened, the darkening of a strand of lights on the Christmas tree wasn't even a blip on my radar screen. So I may be a lunatic, but at least I have my priorities in order. Whew, dodged a bullet on that one.

Then two nights ago another strand blew out. Oh well. Our tree may be getting a bit darker, but it's still really beautiful.

Just remind me next year to get new lights.

Something's fishy

2010-12-07T13:07:00.006-05:00

I'll start this post by telling you that sometime this past summer we took care of a fish for a neighbor/friend for about a week (I originally typed that we fishsat for a friend, but it looked really weird & I was pretty sure no one would understand what I was talking about). And despite all of the fun trips and activities we participated in the rest of the summer, the presence of a fish in our home for a week seems to be one of the biggest highlights in the recent life of my two hooligans.

For weeks after, we'd hear comments like, "When I grow up & I can have a pet of my own I want to get my very own fish." Really!? Most kids want a horse or something with fur. A fish? I would remind them that we have a very sweet dog at home & tell them how lucky they were to have her. But, in the usual way they would ignore my comment and continue to weave fanciful tales about their future lives of fish ownership.

They must come by this love of fish from their father. When Mr. Crackers and I started dating he had a 20 gallon aquarium set up in his living room. I'm sure there were fish in it, but honestly I can't remember them. For me, fish are occasionally interesting to watch, but they don't really seem like pets. I mean you can't pet them or play with them or really even interact with them in any way. I'm not really sure they should be considered pets. To me they really seem to fall into the same category as house plants. You know, something that requires a little bit of attention from time to time but really act more as a part of the general scenery.

That may be why we've never really had the fish tanks (and we have 3 that we have moved from house to house over the years) filled since we have had kids. There were years when I could barely keep a houseplant alive. Taking care of fish in addition to the kids and our 2 dogs seemed ridiculous.

But I seem to be the only member of the family that feels that way.

About two weeks ago, while I was busy upstairs on the computer (Christmas shopping, not really working) Mr. Crackers and the hooligans started to quietly pull our 20 gallon tank out of the basement crawl space and get it ready for fish. By the time I came downstairs the kids were vibrating with excitement about the prospect of owning their own fish. Their dreams were finally coming true!

That Sunday after church we headed to our local pet store to get the fish. Everyone got to pick out a few and we came home with a total of 7 fish and a crab (the crab was my pick). We also joined the fish of the month club. Who knew such a thing existed? Apparently for just $2.99 we now get to come back to the store every month and get a free fish to add to the tank. Can you think of another "pet" that you can purchase by the dozen for just $2.99?! I'm telling you I don't think I'm the only one who thinks of them more as scenery.

Once we were home the fish were eased into their new aquarium and were promptly named. K named her guppies Angel, Angelina and Katie. C chose Cameron, Sweetie Pie and Snowbell for his orange fish (not to be confused with goldfish). Mr. Crackers picked Frank the Tank for his picasimus. And I dubbed the crab Milo.

In the days that followed both Angel and Frank left us for the big fish tank in the sky. Apparently it's pretty common for a lot of fish deaths in the early stages of aquarium ownership. Something about the "nitrogen cycle". My brain shuts down upon hearing anything involving chemical reactions, so I'm not sure I completely understand what is happening. But, thankfully Mr. Crackers knew it was coming and had warned the kids about it before we even got the fish home, so their deaths were not at all traumatic. Whew! And even better, the store has a return policy on all their fish, so we were able to get a store credit for the 2 that died. Wahoo!

The kids have had a really good time watching the fish. They'll sit there and stare into the tank for long periods of time just watching them swim around. I have to admit that I am also having fun with our new "pets". While I still find the fish a little boring (especially now that I don't have to count them a few times a day to make sure they are all still alive), I find owning a crab to be fairly interesting especially since Milo (the crab) seems to be an extreme recluse.

It's like a live version of where's Waldo. It takes me at least 3-5 minutes to find Milo every morning. A few times we've actually resorted to taking the castle out of the tank and turning it upside down to find him. And both Mr. Crackers and I have caught him hanging out at the top of the tank like he's poised for escape. The crabs in the store were all out and about having fun. It was like a giant crab party in the tank. Perhaps Milo is lonely. Maybe we'll have to use our store credit to buy him a friend.

But for now Milo, Sweetie Pie, Snowbell, Cameron, Katie and Angelina will have to wait. We've still got a couple of weeks until the "nitrogen cycle" is complete and we can add more friends to the tank.

In the meantime I'll just thank my lucky stars that we didn't have to care for my neighbor's cat.

simple color

2010-11-30T21:14:00.005-05:00

Ta-da!

Here's a preview of this year's Christmas card.

I took the picture when we were outside decorating the big tree & Mr. Crackers & I liked it so much that we decided to go with it as our card this year. And as an added bonus Mr. Crackers & I (and even more importantly our family photograper -- also known as my Dad) all get to take a year off trying to get all 4 of us to look in the right direction while smiling. A task that often took few glasses of wine to recover from.

In Living Color Christmas Card

Shop Shutterfly for elegant custom Christmas photo cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

I even managed to get it ordered before December (by the skin of my teeth). Now I just need to get them in the mail...

Thankful

2010-11-25T13:11:00.003-05:00

Today I am thankful for more than I can possibly say. The older I get, the more I realize how truly blessed I am. I am grateful for my health, the smiles and laughter of my children, the love of my husband, the strength of my family, and the friendships of those whom I see everyday as well as those that are separated from me by miles.

I am thankful for friends who have come home safely to their families after bravely serving their country overseas and grateful to all those I don't know who are still serving so far away from their loved ones.

I am thankful that I live in a country that celebrates the freedom of its citizens and sets aside a day each year so that we can remember how truly blessed we are.

Happy Thanksgiving from the House of Crackers!

All clear

2010-11-19T15:48:00.011-05:00

For about the last 11 months I've had stomach pains. They were somewhat intermittent and although sometimes painful, never seemed quite so bad as to warrant a special trip to the doctor. Just when I would consider seeking some medical help the pains would subside for a bit & I'd get on with other things.

Over the course of the past year I have slowly figured out some of the things that exacerbated the problem and did my best to eliminate them from my diet. I was very sad when I discovered that coffee, Coke, alcohol and spicy foods were some of the worst culprits. My abbreviated diet made feel like I was pregnant again -- but without the frequent peeing, weight gain, and childbirth that usually accompany a real pregnancy.

I found a couple of over the counter medications that seemed to help a little bit, but over the long haul the problems kept coming back. So, on a visit to my doctor for a separate issue a few weeks back I mentioned my ongoing stomach battles.

I guess I figured my doctor would prescribe something or give me the green light to take Prevacid everyday (being a rule follower, I didn't want to take it for more than the 2 weeks that are recommended on the bottle without a doctor's go ahead). Instead, I was told that I would be getting a call from a GI doctor and that I would be the lucky recipient of both an upper GI endoscopy and a colonoscopy! Wahoo! Apparently my family history was a deciding factor in going for the whole work up. As my new GI doc said,"You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family history." Bah-dum-dum!

The fateful day of my digestive adventure (this is what I will be calling my procedures from here on out since it sounds more daring and less like something that was done to me while I lay unconscious on a table) was Wednesday of this week.

Unlike some people in my family (& I'm looking at you Mr. Crackers) the part I was dreading was not taking the laxatives and cleaning out the pipes. No, what I was dreading was the day of clear liquids before the cleaning even started. You see, I'm a grazer. I eat all day long. I never seem to be able to eat a lot at any one sitting, but you can bet that about every couple of hours I'm looking for something else to stuff into my pie hole. So, the idea of not being able to eat anything substantial for an entire day had me in a bit of a tizzy. I mean really, I'm the person who eats all the noodles and chicken in a bowl of chicken noodle soup and leaves the broth behind. A day of nothing but jello, broth and hard candies sounded a bit like torture to me.

Where's all the good stuff?

When I originally scheduled my digestive adventure (see, it sounds better than colonoscopy doesn't it?) I had a few requirements: I wanted a day when I wasn't driving the carpool in the morning and one that was immediately proceeded by a day where I've got a lot going on. It just so happens that Tuesdays, especially Tuesday mornings are really busy, so I scheduled the adventure for Wednesday morning figuring that all that activity the day prior would keep my mind occupied.

Little did I know that both of my kids would get sick and that we would be spending all of Tuesday in the house together. And since the kids were lying on the couch watching TV in a somewhat vegetative state that my "busy day" would turn into a very long, very quiet day.

As you can imagine, I was doing everything I could -- cleaning, laundry, reading books -- to keep my mind off food. I eventually had to hide the cookies since I found myself clutching the bag several times almost involuntarily. The only upside was that since the kids were sick enough to spend the whole day on the couch, they were safe from my increasing crankiness. And trust me, I was getting really cranky. I was having daydreams about cheeseburgers. And it was just about agonizing to sit with the family watching them eat Chinese take-out for dinner while I forced down more clear broth while trying to pretend it was really chicken fried rice. Sadly, my imagination just wasn't that good.

I won't go into the details of the evening before my digestive adventure began (I hear you thanking me from here), but I will say that I really didn't get more than a few hours of sleep. Except for the lack of sleep, the process itself wasn't bad at all and as a perk I finally got to take advantage of the fact that we still subscribe to HBO. I have to say I got lucky and there were some really good movies on at 3:30 Wednesday morning.

By the time the sun started to rise, my preoccupation with food had been replaced by a new worry...anesthesia. I have luckily never been sedated before and was secretly terrified that I would be the 1 person in 100000 who would go under, have a reaction to the anesthesia and never wake up again. I knew myself well enough not go and do any research on the subject online. Past early morning Webmd research jaunts have proven that I have a tendency to overreact and focus on the worst possible scenario I find. Once the kids were up, the rest of the morning flew by and thankfully I didn't have time to worry about the risks of sedation.

Before I knew it I was at the doctor's office and found myself being called back to get ready for my digestive adventure. They had me undress and change into a giant hospital gown, yet for some reason had me keep my shoes and socks on. I'm sure I must have looked as weird as I felt wearing my a hospital gown along with brown socks and brown suede shoes. I felt a bit like a flasher especially since the hospital gown was about 5 sizes too big and despite all the fasteners I had to keep a death-like grip on the front to avoid flashing the nurses and all of the other patients in various states of consciousness.

I laid down in the bed and they put in an IV and rolled me into the procedure room. Once there, they told me they were going to mix a little "medicine" in with my oxygen and that I should make sure to breathe through my nose. I had a moment of worry, then I took one deep breath and said "Wow you aren't messing around, this stuff really packs a punch." And then after that, everything else is a blank.

Thankfully my Mom was there, because apparently (although I don't remember the conversation since I was still a little out of it from the anesthesia) the doctor met with me after the procedure and informed me that everything looked good. Whew! I was in the clear - no ulcers or other issues. It looks like my stomach just produces too much acid so I was given a prescription to take everyday to control it.

The next thing I can remember is getting back into my Mom's car and requesting that she drive as quickly as possible to the nearest Arby's -- even though I had been dreaming of cheeseburgers I wasn't sure my system could handle all that grease. And besides, I just can't get enough of that French Dip and Swiss sandwich. Whoever came up with that one is an evil genius!
I've been on the new meds for a few days & so far they really seem to work well. So, I guess in the end I got what I wanted: a prescription for something that is safe for me to take everyday. I guess I just had to go through a bit of an adventure to get them. With medicine in hand I feel like I'm finally ready to take on all of the holiday feasting this season...which is definitely something to be thankful for.

Where the wild things are

2010-11-19T12:42:00.015-05:00

Last weekend we went on a short getaway about 2 hours east of where we live. The area is home to quite a few state parks that have great hiking trails for families along with some really beautiful natural attractions like caves and waterfalls. We rented a cabin online a few weeks before and all of us, including my parents who were coming along, were excited for some family fun.

The cabin was really cute and managed to look better in person than it did on the internet . It was clean, well built and really cozy. The only thing that was a little startling was the amount of creatures that called the cabin home. None of them were still living, which I guess is a good thing. Honestly if I have to cohabitate in an enclosed space with animals like black bears and bobcats, I'd really rather they were dead than alive. But I guess I just wasn't really expecting to see quite so many dead things in such a small space.

When we entered the cabin the first thing I noticed were the 2 bear skins hanging over my head. Now truthfully, there was a picture of the bear skins on the internet, but I thought they were those cute fake rugs that you buy in stores that look like bear skins. For some reason it never occurred to me that they would be real.

Surprise! They were. They were really real. It became clear to all of us pretty quickly, that the owners of the cabin were AVID (some might even argue obsessive) hunters. There were deer heads everywhere.

There were also several stuffed birds and an animal that may have been a bobcat. Most of the animals had tags with names written on them. Whether they indicated who shot them or who stuffed them I really couldn't tell you.

The walls that weren't covered in actual animal hides, featured pictures of people posing with dead animals. Since neither I nor any of my family go hunting, it was an interesting and somewhat frightening glimpse into the family who had so graciously rented us their cabin for the weekend.

And just in case we were still curious about the owners of the cabin, there was also a photo album on one of the coffee tables that featured pictures of the family. There were photos of the construction of the cabin, as well as a lot more hunting pictures featuring many, many more dead deer. Let me just tell you that this family is doing more than their part to help control the deer overpopulation here in Ohio. They are certainly not resting on their laurels and wasting all of their outdoor time hiking and looking at waterfalls like a certain family I know.

But really, the most disturbing thing I saw in the photo album wasn't a dead animal. It was several photos of 2 boys just about a year older than C smoking cigars and holding shotguns.

Now every family has their own idea of what makes a fun leisure time activity. But seriously, arming my kids and then letting them light up cigars has really never occurred to me. I'm not saying that their choices are bad. I'm just saying that the idea of handing my own children a shotgun seems unwise. And the cigar smoking thing. Umm...just no.

It occurred to me several times over the weekend that these were people who you probably did not want to anger. It was a case of...I'm pretty positive that your family can ~~shoot, kill and stuff~~ beat up my family. And while our paths probably wouldn't cross too much in our everyday lives, I realized that these would be excellent people to befriend in the event of some kind of nation-wide crisis that would force people to live off the land and fend for themselves.

I'm thinking of a Red Dawn type of situation. You know where the Russians and Cubans team up to invade our country and cut-off all food supplies... And we are forced to rely on Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell and Jennifer Grey to battle back the Communist forces that threaten our great nation. Since I'm not really liking our chances in that kind of scenario, I'm just saying that I want to live near this family 'cause I know I'm not going to go hungry.

Anyhoo...despite that abundance of animals inside the cabin, we didn't really get to see any living wildlife on any of our weekend hiking adventures (not even a bird). Of course we did hear quite a bit of gunfire in the distance. I think hunting season may have started, which means all of the smart animals are probably taking a mini-vacation somewhere else.

But even with the lack of wildlife, we saw a lot of beautiful things,

And went on some really fun hikes,

And most important of all had a lot of fun just hanging out together.

Especially (at least for Mr. Crackers and the Cracker children) while relaxing in the cabin's hot tub.

So, thank you AVID hunting family where ever you are. We had a lot of fun in your cabin. And don't worry we cleaned up after ourselves. We didn't want to do anything to anger you, after all chances are you would make much better friends than enemies. And, at least until Charlie Sheen gets his act together, we may need you and your fearsome hunting skills some day!

The past 7 weeks in review

2010-11-09T14:06:00.013-05:00

Well...I have to admit that the last seven or so weeks have been a complete blur. I seem to forget every year that, at least around the House of Crackers, October is the new December. For some reason the month of October seems even more hectic than December with all it's holiday filled craziness.

And while I know there are a lot of people out there who can lead very busy lives and still find time to blog, I think you already know that I am not one of those people. When life is running at a hundred and fifty miles per hour, taking time for blogging seems to find itself at the very bottom of my to do list. But life, at least for the moment, has slowed down a bit and I have a little time to breathe once again.

In case you are wondering what had the House of Crackers hopping around like maniacs for the past month and a half, here's a small sampling of the goings on.

We were busy running to soccer practices and soccer games....

And going on a family trip to the zoo...

With Grandma and Grandpa

And did I mention we were busy playing soccer ....

And going to a local farm for some pumpkin picking...

And celebrating K's 5th birthday party with family...

And at a separate party for neighborhood friends (that for some reason I decided to design myself)...

And heading to a soccer tournament game in which C's team played their hearts out, but still lost ...

And attending school Halloween parties...

And fighting crime...

And a host of other things like school presentations, multiple trips to the dentist for C's ongoing tooth crowding issues and a couple of small redecorating projects around the house.

We definitely had fun over the past month or so, but I am happy that things have slowed down a bit. And thankful that, at least for a couple weeks until the craziness of Thanksgiving and Christmas come knocking at our door, we have a little time to slow down and enjoy the glory and crispness of my favorite season.

A (soon to be) million dollar smile

2010-09-16T12:44:00.004-04:00

I love to see my son C smile. Thankfully, he is a happy kid so I get to see that smile a lot.

His smile has been changing over the past couple of years as he has lost baby teeth and his new (terrifyingly large) permanent adult teeth have taken up residence in his mouth. Like his mother, C has lots of gigantic teeth all fighting to try and find a home in his small mouth. The result has been a lot of trips to the dentist.

For the past couple of months we've been heading to the dentist about twice a month so that he can keep tabs on the giant tooth party happening inside C's already crowded mouth. We've always known braces were a foregone conclusion with C - when he was just 3 years old the dentist started prepping us for that eventuality. More recently, the dentist commented that C could be "the poster child for orthodontics".

About a month ago the dentist placed a small rubber spacer between some of C's back molars to move things around a bit. He said that hopefully these rubber spacers would do the job more quickly and (my favorite part) more cheaply than putting a metal appliance in C's mouth. Since you can't go wrong with the quicker and cheaper option, we were on board.

About 2 days after the spacer was placed in his mouth, C --who had been banned from gum and all things sticky-- accidentally pulled the spacer out while eating a Tootsie Pop. Apparently I forgot to say the words "No Tootsie Pops" when reciting the list of forbidden foods. I called the dentist the next morning and he got us in to replace the spacer.

Even though we managed to hide all the sticky foods, a pattern had been established. The dentist would put a spacer inside of C's mouth and then roughly 3-4 days later C would find me and announce, "Mom, my spacer fell out again." At which point I would call the dentist and schedule an appointment where things would be looked at and another spacer would be placed in the back of his mouth. This has been going on for weeks.

So, I was not surprised when C made the announcement over pancakes last week that he had lost yet another spacer. But unlike all the past times, he added "And also, my tooth hurts when I bite down." That was definitely a new development. In the hustle bustle of the day, I forgot to call the dentist which I regretted when C came home from school later that day and told me that his tooth still hurt and that it seemed to be getting worse.

We headed off to the dentist the next morning for what I was hoping might be some good news like, "Hey that 6 year molar is finally 100% in and his back teeth look great. In fact that little rubber spacer has performed a miracle -- C doesn't need braces anymore! Oh, and that pain will go away just as soon as I snap my fingers."

Sadly though, the news wasn't so good. They took an x-ray and discovered that the baby tooth next to his 6 year molar had become somehow infected and needed to be removed. Right now. So I gave my consent and they loaded C up with Novocaine and "Happy Air" and pulled that baby tooth right out of his head. Once the tooth was out, the dentist showed me the X-Ray of C's back teeth and there was not a single tooth pointing downward. All of his teeth were pointing in various odd angles, none of which looked like they'd be helpful in the chewing process at all.

With the baby tooth now gone, there was no tooth now that could help hold the spacer in place and apparently the crookedness of those back teeth would only get worse. With no cheaper or quicker options now left to available to us, it was time to bite the bullet and get a metal appliance for my son's overcrowded mouth.

In order to start the process they took molds of his mouth (which was way more traumatic for C than pulling out his baby tooth) and told me that we'd need to come back in about 3 weeks to get more x-rays, photos and to actually get the appliance installed in his mouth. And so it seems that we have already started down the road which we knew we'd be heading down eventually. The long, winding and expensive road called orthodontics.

We got the information in the mail yesterday that laid out for us the total price of his new orthodontics as well as what portion our insurance would cover (which was not 100% like I had been blindly hoping it would be). Conveniently, the packet also contained a lovely brochure that gave us many different financing options.

Thankfully, Mr. Crackers had a little bit of stock that we sold to help cover the cost. We'll hold off on the financing option until they come back and hit us with the big guns...braces. For now we'll do what we can to juggle things a bit and I'll be taking plenty of pictures of what may someday be C's million dollar smile.

A change in personal style

2010-09-14T19:54:00.009-04:00

I feel as though we've turned a corner sometime over the past couple weeks here at the House of Crackers. I've started noticing that the closer we get to K's 5th birthday, the more she seems to be moving away from her fascination with princesses and all things pink and sparkly.

My first clue that things were changing came a little more than a week and a half ago. After getting at least 2 years of wear, I decided it was finally time to suck it up and purchase a new winter coat for K this year ( 3/4 length sleeves just didn't seem like they'd work to well for playing in the snow). One of my favorite retailers was having a pre-season sale & I happened to have a gift certificate for this particular store burning a hole in my wallet, so we decided to go ahead and purchase her new coat now instead of waiting until the weather actually dropped below 70 degrees.

I gave her two of options to choose from but both of the coats I had picked were pink. As long as I can remember pink has been her favorite color. When given a choice between pink and any other color, K always picks pink. Imagine then my surprise when she asked to see one of the coats in blue. When I showed it to her I was sure she'd decide that pink was the way to go, but instead she said that she wanted the blue one. "Are you sure?" I asked. "Yep. I like the blue. It's pretty" she said.

Then she surprised me again by picking blue snow boots (I know it's early...but seriously once I started to pick out the winter gear I couldn't stop myself).

The coat came in the mail today, and I tell you she was just as excited about the blue today as she was when she picked it out last week. What is happening here?

My final hint that things are a changin' was this week when she finally selected her Halloween costume. Ever since the Halloween catalogs started arriving in our house back in early July she's picked a different costume for herself every day. And all of them have either been sparkly or fairy themed or included a skirt made from boatloads of of tulle (I should also add that most of her favorite costumes have also been priced well above $60.00, which is a lot more than her mother is willing to spend on any item of clothing for either of her children) .

But this week she made her final costume decision and she didn't change her mind no matter how many times I asked her what she wanted to be for Halloween. Instead of the princesses or the pink sparkly costumes she formerly dreamed of, she instead picked out this costume...

Holy black vinyl Batman! If that's not a dramatic shift in personal style than I don't know what is. Hmm. I have decided to focus on the fact that Batgirl is a strong and powerful female crime fighter rather than the fact she wears a relatively short skirt made of shiny black vinyl.

I am hoping that perhaps this change in preference may be somewhat influenced by my son C. A couple of weeks ago he had decided that he wanted to be a superhero for Halloween because he liked the fact that all of those costumes came with lots of padding to simulate muscles. He had been bouncing between Superman, The Flash and Spiderman for the past few days, but once K made her decision, he finally settled the matter...

So, fear not, the streets of Gotham will be safe this Halloween (until around 7:30). You can rest assured that both kids will be carrying flashlights and wearing glow necklaces this year while they make their rounds collecting candy. Nothing says responsible parenting quite like sending both of your young kids out trick-or-treating in black costumes.

A quick tour of my accidental garden

2010-09-02T14:58:00.012-04:00

There are some strange things afoot in my garden this year. After a very hot and very dry summer, many of my plants have passed on to that big garden in the sky (in other words they've died of neglect since their owner frequently forgets to water them). But oddly, my garden seems to be thriving despite all of my efforts to the contrary. It seems as though the plants have taken matters into their own hands this year.

Every spring I get excited about the warmer temperatures and the thoughts of sitting outside on the patio surrounded by beautiful flowers while eating herbs and vegetables picked from my very own garden. So, every year I run out to one of my local nurseries and purchase flowers, herbs and tomatoes and eventually (after several reminders from Mr. Crackers that the plants won't be beautiful if they all die in the containers before I actually get them into some dirt) plant them in pots and mulched beds around the backyard. And for those first lovely weeks of summer I diligently water them and feel a fierce sense of pride in my beautiful surroundings.

And then...it gets hot. And we go on vacation. And I forget to water and those lovely flowers and plants that I purchased just 6 weeks earlier. And so they start to look like this....

(I just noticed that the flower painted on this pot is upside down...and I've had this pot for years. Yes, I know that the bottom of the pot doesn't match the top. I am really cheap when it comes to buying pots for outside...it's just something I hate to spend money on. I don't know why.)

Or in extreme cases, the pots start looking like this...

(The dead daisies that used to live in this pot have been put out of their misery so that you don't have to see the brown death that my neglect has caused. You're welcome. And yes, I know this pot is broken. As I mentioned before I hate spending money on pots for the patio. )

But then this year as plants began to die around the garden, I noticed something strange happening. New flowers and plants that I did not buy started appearing around the garden.

This was the first one I noticed. I didn't buy any wave petunias this year, and yet this plant was bravely growing in a small crack between the patio stones and the house. I have no idea how it got there nor do I understand how it has survived the past 4 weeks, but I've started watering it. I just can't bear to watch it die now.

(I have no idea what that broken pipe is that is leading directly into my house. I thought it had something to do with the heating/cooling system, but I was informed by my heating/cooling guy that it wasn't. He told me that frankly he couldn't tell what it was or where it was leading to. I'm scared of this pipe. I am also scared of all of the creatures that might be living in it. Sometimes I think of this pipe late at night & I'm sure it's some kind of highway system for all of our neighborhood rodents to gain access to our home. But that's probably a story for another day...)

Then I noticed this petunia growing in a pot that had once housed what I think was a beautiful African yellow daisy that I couldn't resist back in early May. Again, I'm not sure where this new plant came from, but I'm happy that this pot has a pretty occupant again.

It's not just flowers that are making their way into my garden uninvited. Mr. Crackers was weeding his roses about a month ago when he noticed another new plant. This cherry tomato plant seems to have found a home amongst the roses. It makes for a tricky harvest, but I'm not complaining. Free tomatoes (and no we didn't plant any cherry tomatoes this year either).

We have since found two other tomato plants growing around the yard. They haven't produced any tomatoes yet, but I'm pretty sure these are cherry tomato plants too. This one found a nice home next to the fountain and I've been making sure he's been getting plenty of water.

This little guy is growing right next to the play set, which is definitely not a prime location for vegetable habitation. I cut the plant back & even ran it over with the lawn mower, but it just keeps coming back.

I'm not sure what this all means, but I'm not complaining about it. Heck, I hope it continues. Maybe next spring I won't even have to go to the nursery to buy any plants. Maybe the garden will just take of itself. Wouldn't that be lovely? Maybe I could train them to help clean the house too. A girl can dream right?

P.S. Anyone need any cherry tomatoes? I have a feeling we'll have a bumper crop soon.

The first day of school

2010-08-24T13:09:00.006-04:00

Yesterday was the big day - both my hooligans headed back to school. C is now a second grader this year (I am having trouble grappling with this whole growing up thing he is doing) and K headed off to Early 5's, which I think is just a weird way of saying Pre-K.

C woke up early and was counting down the minutes until his first day of school would begin. I am more happy than I can tell you that he was so excited to head back to school. I was a little nervous for K who was switching schools this year & wouldn't know anyone in her class. But, I figured once she got there, she'd come out of her shell a bit & make some new friends.

We had our breakfast and headed upstairs to get dressed for the day. C got ready to go at the speed of light. He was dressed, had his teeth brushed, face washed and was wearing his shoes and backpack 20 minutes before we had to leave the house. Ahh...it's nice having a boy.

K was an altogether different story. I was looking forward to having her in uniform this year. I really thought it was going to simplify our morning routine. The options are really limited, so I figured all of our morning clothing battles/negotiations would be a thing of the past. Umm..not so much.

At the parochial school my children attend, girls can wear navy shorts, plaid jumpers, plaid skirts, navy skorts or navy pants. For early back to school, I eliminated a couple of the options above & only got her two pair of shorts, two navy skorts and two plaid jumpers. I figured we had our bases covered without going overboard.

When I asked her the evening before what she wanted to wear to school, she replied very excitedly "I want to wear my plaid jumper dress!" But when it came time for her to actually get dressed she wouldn't commit. She wanted to see all of her options once again.

So, I got out a pair of shorts, a skort and a jumper for her to choose from. After a prolonged internal debate followed by a quick game of eenie, meenie, miney, mo she decided to go with the navy shorts. So I (naively) put away all of the other options & we got her dressed for school. When she saw that her brother had picked out the same outfit, she was at first excited, and then her brow became furrowed.

"I look like a boy." she declared after looking at herself in the bathroom mirror.

"No you don't." I replied "You look like a girl wearing shorts & a blue shirt."

I then tried a couple of what I thought were other reassuring phrases, but it was a no go. We were heading back to the room for a change of clothes.

After a second round of internal debate and another game of eenie, meenie, miney, mo she picked the navy skort. But....as soon as she pulled it on, she changed her mind yet again and decided that the plaid jumper dress was really the way to go for the first day of school.

And so, she changed her clothes again. Thankfully, at that point we were out of options (How happy was I that I decided not to get the pants or the plaid skirt! We would have been late for school if she had made 2 more outfit changes.)

Somehow getting ready on our first day in uniform was taking longer than the days where she had been free to wear almost anything in her closet. How did that happen?

As we headed downstairs, she informed that she had it all figured out now...

"Mama, I have an idea. Today I'll wear my jumper dress, then the next day I'll wear my skort and then the day after that I'll wear my shorts. Then I'll just keep switching like that everyday. How does that sound Mama?"

It sounded good to me. But then so did the whole idea of uniforms, so what did I know?

Day two was today, and true to her new schedule she picked the skort.

I haven't have the heart yet to tell her that tomorrow is picture day. No uniform. I've picked out an outfit for her to wear,but it'll be a miracle if she actually wears what I've laid out for her without some serious debate.

And frankly, I'm scared to even contemplate her junior high years when her uniform options expand to include khaki bottoms too. We'll have to start getting her geared up for school about a week in advance so she can formulate a plan that includes khaki.

The perfect storm

2010-08-16T13:35:00.009-04:00

This past Saturday we headed over to a lake in Indiana where we met up with Mr. Crackers' parents & many members of his extended family for the annual lake outing. In total about 25 family members showed up for the event with 2 pontoon boats, a ski boat and a jet ski to ferry our floating family reunion around the lake.

The weather was very hot and hazy with some forecasted showers later in the afternoon. This may not sound like ideal boating weather, but honestly we don't really spend all that much time on the boats during the trip. What we do is anchor all the boats together to form this giant flotilla and then everyone gets in the water for a nice refreshing swim. The boats are really just there to hold our snacks and beverages.

As Mr. Crackers can attest, I'm not really much of a boating person, or a swimming person. I'm more of a sit next to a large body of water in the shade with a book and a drink while ocean/lake breezes keep me cool kind of person. But, since my husband and my kids love, love, love the water, I spend a lot more time in and on the water than I would normally be inclined to.

Thankfully the day was hot and the water in the lake was cool, but not so much that I got chilled too easily. Yes, I get cold really easily in the water. As I said before I'm really not much of a water person & also may be considered a bit of a wimp. But the water felt so great, I spent a lot of time in the lake with the rest of the family. It was really lovely.

Of course, Mr. Crackers found another way to stay cool. He fell in love with his uncle's jet ski and spent quite a bit of time zooming around the lake. I was sure pretty sure after the first hour, that a jet ski would be appearing on Mr. Crackers' Christmas list this year.

We probably stayed anchored in the same spot for about 2-3 hours until (for some reason that I don't quite remember) we decided to head across the lake to see how things looked on that side of the world.

Once we anchored in this new spot, which was very similar to our last spot just a bit farther east, everyone piled out of the boats and into the water once again.

Well, not everyone. By this time, I was pretty waterlogged and feeling a bit too fried by the sun, so I opted to stay on board one of the pontoon boats with a couple of Kevin's aunts and eat some snacks. Seriously, this family does not mess around the provisions. There was a cheese ball, Doritos, Pringles, Combos, pretzels and Oreos. In short, I was quite content to stay on board.

Just as I was contemplating applying sunscreen for what seemed like the 4th time, I heard someone say, "Was that thunder?"

I didn't hear it though and although the sky was a bit overcast as I looked to (what I now know was the eastern) sky, I didn't see any clouds looming ahead of me so I settled back down with my crackers, and Oreos, and maybe a bit of that cheese ball.

And then...I heard it. The thunder. It was loud enough to make me turn around and that's when I realized how important it is to scan all of the sky when you're on a boat. As I looked to (what I now know was the west) I saw a wall of black clouds that were apparently behind me the whole time. (Note to self...it's a good idea to keep an eye on the sky to the west if you're trying to see what kind of weather is heading in your direction. Duh!)

Anyhoo, just as I said, "Wow that sky is really, really dark.", we all heard a larger boom of thunder that was considerably louder than the last one. So, I looked over at Kevin's aunts & said, "Does anyone else think it's a bad idea to be caught in a thunderstorm on a metal boat in the middle of the lake?" There was a little bit of conferring and looking at the sky when one the aunts agreed, "Yea, we should probably start to head in."

That was all the encouragement I needed. I headed over the the water, pointing to the sky & telling Mr Crackers & his father my whole metal boat in an electrical storm concern. Apparently though, no else seemed as worried as yours truly. So, it took a bit of convincing (which may or may not have appeared to my husband and father-in-law as a small panic attack. I'll repeat again here that I'm not really much of a boater). Eventually though I think people began to agree that it may be wise to avoid the storm while on the boat (or at least they agreed that I seemed to be getting increasingly agitated & it was time to get me off the lake no matter what the weather looked like to the west).

Eventually all 25 of us loaded back onto the boats, but when we looked west to where the marina happened to be, we couldn't see anything anymore. The rain and the dark clouds had now obscured our view. And that black line was marching it's way right in our direction.

After a quick conference, (where I kept repeating "I really think we should start the engine & get moving now" with increasing amounts of conviction & okay yes, a bit of panic) it was decided that we should proceed east to the beach & see if we could find some shelter there.

And so our ill-fated race against the elements began.

I think we all knew we were going to get wet. Quite frankly almost all of us (at least those who hadn't been enjoying the delicious cheese ball and snack bar on the boat) were already wet. It's just that we all forgot just how cold the rain and wind of a summer thunderstorm can be...in a boat...out in the open...on a lake.

To my children's credit, they remained calm, even breaking into song, "Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day." This was good since it kept them occupied and allowed me time to contemplate our impending doom and estimate just how many life jackets were within my reach if we were going down. Thankfully the kids already had their life jackets on, so that was at least once less thing I needed to worry about.

Our last anchor point had been relatively close to the beach so we didn't have too far to go. It was ironic though, we were so close to land, but the wind and the rough waters was making it almost impossible for my father in-law to steer the boat up to the dock so we could get off. In an effort to help get the boat to shore, Mr. Crackers and his cousin jumped into the water (it was only about 4 feet deep this close to beach) and tried to help guide the boat in.

It was at this point that things took a downward slide. My father-in-law, worried he would hit his son with the boat since he couldn't see him, began yelling to Mr. Crackers to be careful. Then the rest of the family, my self included, started also yelling out helpful phrases like " Watch out!" and "Be careful!" and "Your Dad can't see you!" and even "Please don't get hit by the boat!". None of which the guys in the water could hear anyway over the sound of the wind and the rain and the thunder.

At some point during this melee, some family members on board the boat decided to hold hands and start praying. Out loud. Just as they finished the phrase, "Hail Mary, Full of Grace", my 7 year old son C reached his breaking point, and began to cry...loudly. He was truly freaked out by the lightning, the wind, the rain, our inability to dock and...the final straw - the sight of several family members with joined hands saying their prayers. I'm sure he thought we were all doomed. And, I have to admit that by now my nerves were starting to fray at the edges a bit too.

Finally the guys got the boat docked and I took the 2 kids and ran like a crazy person into the woods adjacent to lake for shelter. I know, you're saying "Mrs. Crackers don't you know that you aren't supposed to stand under a tree during an electrical storm?"

Yes, yes I did know that. And I'm here to tell you that when faced with a metal boat on open water, the middle of a sandy beach or under a group of trees as places to stand in the middle of a fierce thunderstorm I choose the trees every time.

I noticed two things once we were standing huddled together under the semi-cover of the trees. 1. I had lost one of my shoes in the mad dash off the boat.
2. We were standing in an area where the ground was covered with copious amounts of poison ivy.

I realize now that it was a bad idea to announce the fact that we were standing in poison ivy within earshot of my already somewhat hysterical son, but at that moment I wasn't really thinking ahead. My announcement seemed to just push him that much farther over the edge. Even after I tried to point out that he was in fact wearing shoes, it was for naught. He had already been through enough. So I cuddled him a bit closer and wisely shut my mouth.

Happily, there was no hail and like most summer storms, it was over pretty quickly. I think we were probably only hovered under the trees for about 8 minutes when it was all said and done. Mr. Crackers and a lot of the other guys stayed out in the storm by the boats the whole time. I'm not sure why since they were all tied up, but I think it has something to do with testosterone.

Once the sun started peaking out from the clouds, we headed back for the boats. I think by that time all of us were pretty much done with the boating trip, so we found some seats at steered the boat for the marina.

After everyone got a chance to dry off and change clothes, we had a great time back at my in-laws lake house (well, it isn't really a house and it's not really on the lake, but that's what I call it since it's not their primary residence and honestly I'm not sure how else to refer to it). Everyone brought a dish for the potluck dinner and the kids had a blast running around and playing with their cousins.

In the course of the day, only about 30 minutes of our time was spent on the storm. The rest of our time on the lake was relaxing and fun (and delicious!), but I don't think any of us will be forgetting this year's outing for quite some time.

Meatball subs of doom

2010-07-29T13:49:00.005-04:00

My in-laws are coming over tonight, and I had to run to Kroger earlier today to pick up some ingredients for the meatball subs I planned on making for dinner. It was going to be a quick trip to the store just to pick up a few ingredients I was missing...you know ingredients like meatballs and hoagie rolls and sauce (and some mozzarella too).

When Mr. Crackers suggested the idea last night while we were eating dinner, I told him that I didn't have anything on hand to make the subs but they sounded delicious! As we were cleaning up the kitchen he made the comment, "I keep forgetting you've got the kids all day long without a break. How are you getting things done?"

While he may have forgotten this fact, it has remained in the forefront in my mind all week. A late July and an early August free of camps, vacations and activities sounded like bliss to me back in June when we were running from VBS to summer vacations to family visits and back to more camps. I loved the idea of 3 weeks without commitments so the kids and I could just relax and really enjoy summer ...... and start to drive each other a little bit crazy. Now just 4 days into the "bliss" and I am starting to see the error of that decision.

The kids are not sleeping in like I had planned so there are no peaceful morning coffee breaks for dear old Mom. And while they do play together pretty well they are after all siblings, so there is a lot of yelling, screaming and attempted tattling.

As I reflected on Mr. Crackers words, I took a gander at the mess in the family room, and the sitting room, and the dining room, and thought about all of the messes in the rooms upstairs and replied back, "Yea, I'm really not getting anytime to clean the house. I started cleaning the upstairs bathrooms ealier today and only got as far as wiping down the counters before one of the kids caught my attention with something else."

Mr. Crackers looked at me and said, "Oh, that's not what I meant. I was just thinking that you wouldn't have any time to get the ingredients for the subs tomorrow night for dinner since you've got the kids all day."

"Oh that," I scoffed, "going to the store with them will be easy. They're both old enough now that they actually help out quite a bit in the store. We'll make a quick run and get what we need -- no problem."

Seriously, it's like I didn't even know my own children anymore. A quick and easy trip to the grocery store with 2 children? Well, let's just say that's not really something I see in my immediate future.

I attempted the "easy" trip with them this morning and after 1 hour and 15 minutes we finally had what we needed to make the subs. I spent most of the time in the store on 3 activities:

1. Trying to corral my hooligans so that they were out of the way of other shoppers while also trying to prevent them from touching EVERY SINGLE ITEM that their eyes fell upon in the store.

2. Taking them to the bathroom 3 -- yes 3 -- different times.

3. Backtracking down aisles several times because I kept passing items I needed while my attention was focused on item #1.

As with all shopping trips that involve my kids I ended up purchasing items that were not on my list, so my few intended items ballooned up well beyond what was allowable in any of the store's express check-out lanes.

Oh, well. At least I got something out of the deal too. As I was pulling the cart toward the check-out lanes I noticed that 12 packs of assorted Mike's Hard beverages were on sale for $12.99. It's like the angels were sending me a message or something. I mean, while a meatball sub sounded good, a Mike's Hard Lemonade to wash it down with sounded absolutely divine after the hour I just spent in Kroger. So I added the 12 pack to my now full cart and headed over the registers with a smile on my face.

And so goes another day of summer vacation...

Water under the bridge

2010-07-27T15:29:00.021-04:00

Last week we traveled with some good friends to western New York where we rented a cottage on a small lake. The cottage was in the quaint town of Batavia located between Buffalo and Rochester and while you couldn't pay me enough money to live in that part of the country from December - March, it is absolutely a beautiful place to be in the summer.

We spent the week fishing and swimming in the lake as well as visiting some of the local attractions. Since we were only an hour away, Niagara Falls topped our list of places we felt we really needed to go see.

After doing a bit of research we decided that the Canadian side of the Falls was where we wanted to be, so we loaded up the mini-vans and headed for the Falls...and parked on the American side. Apparently our friend Kris had heard from one of his friends that it was easier to park in America and then walk across the bridge to Canada -- which according to this friend equated to a walk of about 2 city blocks.

So we paid our $10.00 to park & made our way to the Falls. It was a somewhat cool overcast day, but that didn't damper our spirits (much). After we got the viewing area we realized that while the walk across the bridge itself may have only been 2 city blocks long, getting from the American viewing area to the Canadian viewing area would have been a walk closer to 3 miles. This was something that neither family was willing to take on with 4 kids under the age of 8. So, since we already paid to park, we figured we'd make the most of the attractions on the American side.

After a short time gazing at the Falls from above, while Mr. Crackers continually asked me, "What's next?", we headed to buy our Maid of the Mist tickets. Note to self: DO NOT drive to the Grand Canyon with Mr. Crackers. A 3 day drive followed by a 5 minute viewing of the Canyon while Mr. Crackers peppers me with the question "What's next?" will make my head pop off.

While I had visited Niagara Falls a couple times in my past, I've never ridden on the Maid of the Mist & I was excited (and a little nervous) to get on the boat and see the Falls from the water.

So we put on our blue ponchos and prepared ourselves for the trip.

My family...a bunch of goofballs!

Little did we know that these would be the last moments of the morning where we would see a smile on my son's face. Apparently Mr. Crackers & I had both (conveniently) forgotten that while he loves to swim and jump in the water, C hates to be splashed in the face with water. I mean he really hates it. Oops.

We boarded and at the request of our son (who may have already started to realize that he was going to get more than a little wet) we stood back a bit from the front of the boat. This was the moment I realized that I was not going to be able to take very many pictures of the Falls while standing near the front of the boat because of all the water... you would have thought the ponchos would have clued me in earlier to this fact, but it wasn't until I got that first cold spray in the face that I stuck the camera back in my pocket.

I did manage to snap a couple of shots without ruining my camera. I wish it had been a clearer day, but I was still in awe of the power of all that water crashing down. The American side of the falls was cool, but the Canadian horseshoe portion of the falls was even better (that is unless you are my son C and don't like to be splashed in the face with water AT ALL, in which case you won't really like either one of the Falls, but you will especially HATE the Canadian side)

Here's the view of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls as seen from underneath the boat's canopy where I stood with my now irate son C who kept shouting "I hate this! We are getting too wet and we are too close to the those waterfalls! I just want this to be over!" Well, at least he can say he tried it. And even though I also got nervous a couple of times, I loved it. It was a terrific experience.

After we got off the boat, we asked the kids if they were up for climbing the path that went closer to the falls and we were met with these expressions that were mixed with equal parts of crankiness, hunger, exhaustion and incredulity.

Apparently, none of them cared that the sun had finally made an appearance and that the adults could get better pictures of Niagara now. Since we were also getting tired & hungry, we beat a hasty retreat to Buffalo so we could dine on the chicken wings from Anchor Bar that made the city famous. Mmm...

After lunch, our friends decided to head over to Canada to see the Falls from that side. Based on my own children's reaction to the American side, we opted out and headed back to the lake house.

Once there, we put on our own water show.

Where my three favorite people demonstrated how much they like water that wasn't rushing by in rapids and falling down into deep gorges with tremendous power.

Water that was cool and still and begging to be disturbed with a jump or a dive.

The princesses and the frog

2010-07-12T14:44:00.015-04:00

We had a blast this past weekend with my niece M who was visiting with us. The girls spent about 85% of their time playing dress up. Almost every game they played seemed to involve some kind of princess -- usually played by M in full princess regalia including a gown, shoes and a crown. K varied between being a doctor, a Jedi knight, and the mother of the princess, who was coincidentally a princess herself. Both girls had a lot of fun spending time with one another. We had tea parties, went shopping, even played beauty parlor. Playtime definitely had a more feminine feel without their 2 older brothers around.

But, we did some other fun stuff too. We went to a small farm to see the animals, visited a butterfly exhibit at a local park and even managed to do a bit of frog hunting at our neighborhood pond.

We didn't manage to catch this big fella, but Mr. Crackers was quick enough to net a couple of his friends.

We've been catching frogs at the pond for years. K has never been the least bit squeamish about touching bugs or reptiles. This is a trait that she shares with her Daddy. My son C & I like to accompany them of their frog hunting exhibitions, but we only touch those things under a bit of duress. For the two of us, frog catching is a really more of a spectator sport. I really don't even like to try to catch them - that's Mr. Crackers game. Knowing my lack of coordination, I'd manage to trip right into the pond trying to net my first frog.

But K, she loves frogs. She loves holding them...

And she loves tossing them back into the pond again. We've tried to get her to gently set them back into the water, but she prefers the overhanded toss. The frogs kind of do a mid-air ballet as they tumble head over flippers before landing with a gentle splash back into the murky waters. I'm not sure they enjoy the ride, but at least it doesn't hurt them.

M wasn't too sure about all this frog touching and throwing.

It took some convincing from her cousin and her uncle. And they went through quite a few frogs in their whole catch-and-release fun until finally....

She did it. She reached out her little fingers and petted this small guy a few times. Mr. Crackers wasn't quite able to convince her to hold the frog, but then he's not able to get me to try to hold on to them either.

After a few failed attempts at catching another frog, we called it a night and headed home to get cleaned up.

I'm sure this guy was relieved to see us go. But he shouldn't relax too much, I'm sure we'll be going back again soon.

The estrogen levels here are higher than ever

2010-07-08T13:26:00.011-04:00

Well, I am officially on day 2 of the great child shuffle of 2010. My son C went out to California with my parents and his cousin A to visit his own personal version of heaven...Legoland. They took off for California yesterday afternoon & are probably running around like maniacs even as I type this post. I hope my Mom and Dad have taken all their vitamins and supplements. I'm not sure who is going to come back to Ohio more worn out from this mini-vacation, but I'm betting it's going to be my parents. Just thinking about traveling for 5 days with two energetic 7 year old boys makes me tired.

Since C was heading out on an adventure this week, I thought it might be fun if my niece M (A's little sister) came to stay with us. M is just about a year younger than K, and I knew they'd have a blast playing together. I figured they could dress up or play house without having their two brothers hijack them into one of the many Star Wars battles that seem to break out around here all the time.

So far, so good here at the House of Crackers. I think Mr. Crackers is feeling a bit outnumbered surrounded by so many females, but he's taking it all in stride.

With the heat wave here in the mid-west, all of our activities so far seem to be revolving around water.

We've played in the pool.

Run through the sprinkler.

Watered the flowers.

And gone to a local playground to cool off in the water park.

I think we're starting to get a little bit silly from the heat.

Not to mention more than a little waterlogged.

But the heat is supposed to break tomorrow when a band of rain and thunderstorms move through the area. So we'll move this caravan of fun inside. We're going to pick up my grandma and head to the mall to do a little shopping and a little eating. We'll have some fun female bonding time

Of course, I think we've already bonded just fine.

Weekend update with Mrs. Crackers

2010-07-07T14:17:00.019-04:00

Before I get too far, I wanted to give you an update on the status of all the summertime household projects that I mentioned in a previous post. If I had the time on Saturday morning to do a little blogging, I would have told you that I finally finished painting all of the shutters and that I had high hopes that by the time Mr. Crackers returned to work Tuesday morning that I would have the back door completed too.

A few short hours later it became clear that my painting karma had gone terribly awry and I'd end the weekend without a single painting project crossed off my to-do list. The first bit of bad news came as Mr. Crackers was getting ready re-hanging the last two shutters on the house (#3 on his to do list for the weekend, right after re-shingling the playhouse...Mr. Crackers is no slouch when it comes to project completion unlike yours truly).

What I should probably mention here is that when Mr. Crackers was removing the shutters from the house so I could paint them, one broke (I would have probably broken all of them if I had been taking them down...I was very happy that we only lost one in the whole removal process which was very tricky and involved using sharp tools while on an extension ladder). So, I ordered a pair of replacement shutters online (apparently you can't buy just 1 shutter) and painted them just like I painted all of the other shutters.

They all looked really good with the new paint on them. That is, they all looked really good until Mr. Crackers uncovered a problem with the new shutters (thankfully) before he hung them on the house. He had stacked them on top of one another so that he could drill holes to mount them, and as he pulled them apart from one another lots of paint began peeling off the shutters. So much paint was peeling that in about a minute and a half we had peeled half of the paint on one of the shutters using only our hands. Clearly something had gone terribly wrong. As I looked more closely at the new shutters now back to their original unpainted status, I realized that I had forgotten to prime them ....duh!

So, if you happen to drive by the house today (and let's be honest it'll look the same if you drive by the house next week too.) this is what you'll see. A nice house with freshly painted shutters on most of the windows...

Oh well...

I also tried to finish painting the backdoor, with different yet similarly troubled results. I spent a lot of time sanding and priming the door before I began painting it. Between kids and dogs, the door had seen quite a bit of damage done to it over the past 6 years, so I knew it needed a bit of TLC before painting. After a few hours on Saturday afternoon, I got it nice and smooth & took Mr. Crackers up on his offer to take it off it's hinges for the first coat of paint.

What I didn't think about was that the strong sun and accompanying heat wave that had hit us in the Midwest made painting the door in direct sunlight where we placed it on the patio a really dumb idea...Really. Dumb. Of course, I began thinking about it in earnest as the paint began drying almost as quickly as I was applying it so that I managed to immediately botch the smoothing technique I had completed only hours before...

At that point I put the brush down and just walked away. It seemed the best course of action after such a dissapointing day. Once I could face it again, I came back and finished the first coat of paint on the door (in the shade). Even though it's not as smooth as it could have been if I had been paying a little more attention to my surroundings, I think I still like color. And hopefully no one else will notice that the paint is a bit lumpy in places...(or if they notice maybe they won't mention it to me).

Oh well...

The good news is that the rest of the weekend (the non-project portion) went really well.

We did all of those things that make a Fourth of July weekend typically American. We got to go swimming, attend a cook-out, watch an local Americana parade, and of course get to see some fireworks.

We even went to a local amusement park for an afternoon of fun

We rode our favorite rides

And visited our favorite characters

We even managed to meet up with some friends and cool off a bit on the log flume ride.

Despite all the painting setbacks, I still consider the weekend a success.

Summer reading

2010-07-01T12:42:00.004-04:00

I enrolled the kids in a summer reading program at a local library last month (seriously, is anyone else in total shock that it's already July 1st?). C finally decided in the last 2 weeks of school that he liked reading, so I was hoping that the reading program would motivate him to keep it up during the summer months. I was also hoping it would provide something else for him to do other than following me around the house and saying, "What should I do now?" like he did all last summer.

The name of the program is Going Places with Great Books and the tracking sheet they gave to us is filled with tiny suitcases. Every time C spends 30 minutes reading a book, he gets to color in 1 suitcase. In total, the paper has 20 suitcases for him to color, which of course means that he needs to read for 10 hours to complete the sheet. Once we found the right books, including the Captain Underpants and Mighty Robot series, he was off and running.

By yesterday morning, he had completed his 1st sheet and I told him we'd run to the library to turn it in & pick up a second tracking sheet. I may have also said something like, "I wonder what sort of prize you'll get for completing your first 20 suitcases?"

As soon as the word prize was out of my mouth, three things immediately happened:
1. Both of my children strained forward in their booster seats with excitement.
2. Both of them began peppering me with questions about the type of prizes they'd be getting.
3. I realized that I probably should have read the brochure about the reading program a little more closely, because I suddenly wasn't really sure if there would be any prizes waiting for us once we got to the library.

Of course in hindsight perhaps I should have thought a little more carefully about the prize situation before I let those fateful words pass my lips, but it was too late now.

I immediately started back peddling a bit as I imagined the possible scenarios that would occur if we got the library and there were in fact no prizes for completing the first summer reading list. None of those scenarios seemed to end happily.

"Well," I said, "maybe they won't actually have prizes for you to take home today. Maybe there will be some kind of drawing that we can enter. Maybe they'll pull a name out of a bucket later and they'll announce the prize then."

As I looked in the mirror to gauge their reaction to my revision of the earlier prize announcement, I was met with somewhat hostile and disbelieving eyes.

"No Mama," said C, "I'm sure they'll be handing out prizes."

Hmm... I had a sinking feeling that he was going to be disappointed.

Well, we got to library and sure enough, there were no actual prizes to be had. A very young and perky librarian congratulated them on their reading achievement and then explained to the kids that they could write their names on a piece of paper and drop it into one of 5 buckets for a chance to win one of 5 different prizes. She also handed the kids the forms containing their next 20 suitcases and said something like, "Happy reading!"

We went over to the prize buckets so the kids could choose which drawing to enter. C went for the family pass to our local Bounce U and K dropped her name into the bucket labeled "leisure package" that included a lawn chair, bubbles, and a reusable plastic drink bottle.

While thankfully, there were no tears, the mood was decidedly a bit somber as we left the librarian's table. As we walked away, I noticed that there were some coupons attached to the new reading forms. "Oh look guys!" I said enthusiastically, "There is a prize after all! Here are some coupons for us to use. Look, a coupon for a free ice cream cone & check this one out...a coupon for a free meal at Beef O'Brady's!"

C turned to me with a very serious look on his face and said, "You know Mom, those prizes are really more for you than for us. All it means is that you have to pay less money the next time we go out."

When did he get so smart anyway? Since I felt a bit guilty about uttering the word prize prematurely (clearly I am slipping a bit this summer) I decided to throw them a bone.

"Who wants to go over to the Wii game section and pick out a new game to rent? It will be your prize for completing your first reading sheet!"

Suddenly, the mood of my offspring did a 180. "We do, we do!"

And so, another day of summer vacation passed peacefully.

Seeing Red

2010-06-30T13:36:00.007-04:00

About mid-May I decided that the trim work on the house was in desperate need of a face lift. The shutters and front door had faded to a hue I like to call "the color formally known as red". It was a light red/orange color that spoke volumes about how long it had been since the last time it had been painted.

I turned to Mr. Crackers & declared, "This summer I am painting all of the trim on the house." He smiled and nodded somewhat distractedly since I had already made the declarations, "This summer I am repainting all the patio furniture." and "This summer I am painting the chiminea." about 2 weeks prior to this latest statement. Apparently I had big plans for a lot of outdoor projects this summer. Outdoor projects are usually the specialty of Mr. Crackers, but since I have yet to agree to his latest idea (a basketball court in the side yard that seems to me as if it will violate all sorts of property zoning laws), and we seem to be at a standstill on trying to find the right pickets to repair our fence, I guess the outdoor projects fall to me this year.

So, we chose a color and I got to work the week before Memorial Day. I figured since we had a lot of company coming over for a cook-out it was the perfect motivator to get all my projects done. In hindsight, I may have been ~~crazy~~ a little overly optimistic about my painting capabilities time-wise. The good news is that I did manage to get the front door finished before company came (even if the paint was still a bit tacky to the touch...)

But I can honestly say that none of the rest of my list of projects was completed. Nevertheless, I felt I had some momentum going, so I decided to tackle the patio furniture next. I had gotten most of the set painted (OK, so I still needed to finish a chair and a side table...and alright, if I'm honest the rest of the set really needed a second coat too) when Mr. Crackers took down all the shutters so I could paint those the following week.

So, I took a short break on my patio furniture painting project and switched gears. I got managed to get the first two shutters painted and then....

rain

and more rain

and yes, even more rain

and then vacation managed to slow me down a bit

In fact, the shutters sat for so long that birds did their business and the spiders built their webs on my newly painted shutters...before I even managed to get them re-hung on the house.

For those of you who can't tell, the freshly painted (yet bird stained) shutters are on the left. The faded and not yet painted shutters (also bird stained) are on the right. Trust me, in person the difference in the two colors is a little more dramatic.

So, feeling a bit behind I got back into the swing of things this week & actually managed to paint another couple of shutters...

So now I am officially half way done with the painting of the shutters. Yea!

I celebrated this accomplishment, but making yet another proclamation to Mr. Crackers, "This summer I am going to paint the back door!" Seriously, you can probably already guess the look I got when making this declaration, can't you?! And since I can't seem to have enough projects "in progress" I decided to go ahead and start painting the door too...

I had the red paint, so I figured why not? I'm not really sure how I feel about it yet. I've decided to finish painting it (are you laughing?) and then decide if I like it. If not, I figure I'll just re-paint it dark brown (now I'm sure you're laughing... is that an eye roll too?) so it will match the dark brown paint on the patio furniture (you know, once I actually get done painting the furniture ...).

I better get off the computer and head outside to paint another 2 shutters since Mr. Crackers has "Re-hang all shutters" on his to-do list this weekend. Nothing like a little pressure to get me to finally finish a project.

The man, the myth, the legend...

2010-06-18T10:54:00.012-04:00

Since it's Father's Day weekend, I thought it was probably appropriate to do a little tribute to my Dad... or as I like to call him: The King of the Goofballs.

He and my Mom met back in the late 1960's when Dad was a Marine. He had dropped out of college to enlist and fight in the Vietnam war: an act that was both incredibly brave and patriotic - especially in light of this country's turmoil over what was a very "unpopular" war.

Despite the times and his experiences in Vietnam, He came back home to Mom with the goofy part of his personality intact.

Dad's always had a great sense of humor. I'm not sure, but it may have something to do with growing up in a house surrounded by women. He has always been outnumbered by the female members of his family. Growing up he had 11 siblings: 8 sisters and 3 brothers. I have a feeling that a sense of humor is essential if you grow up living in a house with so many women & only 2 bathrooms.

That's a vintage shot of his family circa 1977 at a family reunion. If you're looking for him, he's in the back row, second from the left.

Here's a more recent shot. He's a bit easier to find in this picture since he's sitting in the front row second from the left. This photo was taken at another, more recent family reunion...back in 2006.

Not only did he grow up surrounded by women, but when it came time to start a family he found himself on familiar ground when he and Mom had 2 girls. Thankfully the female to bathroom ratio was a little better for him. While the house still had 2 bathrooms, now he only had to share them with 3 females. The odds were definitely improving.

I'm not sure what to say except that he was (& still is) and excellent father. I mean, it takes a really special man to agree to wear a feather on his head & dance around in a circle so he can spend more time with his oldest daughter who thought it would be fun to be an Indian Princess.

And don't even get my grandma (Dad's mother-in-law) started...to her my Dad hung the moon. If you listen to her for any length of time you'll get an earful about all of Dad's wonderful attributes.

I can list a few myself...
He's a great photographer, and he also is quite a master at Photoshop. If he had posted any of these older pictures, they'd look a heck of a lot better. He is also a computer genius who has (seemingly) endless patience with those of us who can't seem to even get their printer and scanner working properly. He's also really smart and very logical which makes him a wonderful sounding board for his somewhat neurotic older daughter (thanks Dad!).

He's also a wonderful, patient and generous Grandpa. He loves spending time with all 4 of his grandkids.

And this is a man who takes his fun seriously! Even though he often refers to his grandchildren (and his children before them) as goofballs. I think we all know who the real goofball really is, don't we?

I love you Dad! Thanks for all you for your family. We couldn't ask for a better Dad or Grandpa. We love you very much. Happy Father's Day to you...King of the Goofballs!

So you think you can (Ukrainain folk) dance?

2010-06-16T14:55:00.010-04:00

My parents came over to the house this past weekend for a celebratory dinner of Chinese take-out after K's ballet recital. While they were here, my Dad was kind enough to come up to my office and get my scanner up and running.

You know what that means don't you? Yep, I have more grainy pictures from my past to share with you. Today's pictorial focuses on the very early 1980's when I must have had the desire to really delve into my cultural roots.

But since there were no Irish, German or Swedish extracurricular activities at my school, I decided to branch out & delve into someone else's cultural roots instead.

Despite my total lack of grace and coordination, I spent a lot of time in my formative years doing Ukrainian folk dancing. I think the program started when I was about 9 years old. My social studies teacher got our entire class really excited about folk dancing. So excited that we were all willing to give up time normally spent watching Tom and Jerry re-runs to meet in the school cafeteria and listen to Ukrainian folk music. How did she do this? I have no idea. Perhaps she offered us all extra credit, or maybe we were just really excited about all of the fringe on our costumes.

I remember more about the costumes than any of the dances we did. The white skirts were actually pillowcases and our red shoes were made from red rope and circular cutouts from a vinyl tablecloth. We weren't supposed to wear those shoes outside. Ever.

If memory serves, I don't think anyone in my class had a lick of Ukrainian blood in their background. Our teacher's parents had immigrated from the Ukraine and she spent much of that year immersing us in the Ukrainian culture. I'm not really sure why, but we went along with it. (I will once again point out here how much we all loved the fringe on the costumes.)

We even got to travel up to Toronto and perform for what I think was a group of Ukrainian students. Imagine their excitement. "Hey guys, do you want to see a bunch of German and Irish kids from Ohio do some Ukrainian folk dancing for you?" I mean really, who wouldn't be thrilled to watch a bunch of 10 year olds hop around the floor in pillowcases with bits of tablecloth strapped to their feet?

Despite all the practices and performances though, I can't help but notice I always seem to be looking down at my feet with total concentration. Dancing is not really what I would label a strength of mine.

But, at least I was enthusiastic. A surplus of enthusiasm is one of my defining (and some might say annoying) personality traits.

The excitement over folk dancing must have been contagious. It looks like my sister joined in the act the following year. My enthusiasm looks like it's waning a bit in this picture. Perhaps it's the lack of fringe on my costume that's got me so down.

Oddly, sometime later that year we stopped doing Ukrainian folk dancing and started doing country/western clogging instead. I have no idea why the sudden change occurred. I think one day we came in for practice and our teacher announced that now we'd be strutting our stuff to country music. I have never really been a fan of country, but my lack of interest in the music was more than offset by the thrill of getting to wear tap shoes! And twirly square dancing skirts! (also made from pillow cases I believe). Thankfully, I have no photos to share with you from my trip into the world of clogging.

The trip was a pretty brief one. By that point we were all starting down the slippery slope of adolescence and the idea of dancing around in pillow cases just didn't seem as cool as it once had. So, the group disbanded and we spent our newly acquired free time talking about boys and playing Atari (and watching Tom and Jerry re-runs).

UBOs

2010-06-06T20:44:00.004-04:00

I was just coming downstairs after taking an afternoon shower (I had gone for a run with a friend) when Mr. Crackers said, "Oh good you're done. I need you to walk around to the side of the house and look at something with me." While he didn't seem overly worried, I nonetheless had a deep sense of foreboding. I was fully expecting him to point out something like rotten pieces of siding on the house or something else equally expensive and time consuming to repair.

What I was not expecting was for him to point to one of the basement window wells and say, "Look down in there & tell me what you see." As I approached the area he was pointing to, I thought I would see some kind of small reptile like a frog or a turtle. But instead, what I saw was a UBO - an unidentified brown object. Well to be absolutely correct what I saw was a pile of unidentified brown objects.

Upon closer inspection (not too close though), I came to the realization that what I was looking at kind of looked like a pile of poo. Yep, I'm not going to sugar coat this, what I saw really looked like it came from the digestive tract of something. The question was...what in the world was going into our window well to relieve itself? I'll tell you this much, whatever had left these UBOs for us was by no means a small creature (if you get my meaning).

Thankfully, we were running late for Sunday dinner at my parents house, so our analysis of the UBOs were cut short since we had to get a move on. But, as we drove there our conversation once again turned to the window well as we both tried to figure out a logical explanation to how the poo came to be there.

It seemed unlikely that a large neighborhood dog was somehow awkwardly lowering the back half of his body into the well just to do his business. It also seemed unlikely (although admittedly somewhat more gross to contemplate) that a child or teenager would have committed this foul deed. We thought maybe raccoons were to blame, but to be honest we thought that perhaps our UBOs were too large to have come from that particular species.

Thankfully for all involved we tabled the discussion once we arrived at my parents house & instead focused on hearing about their wonderful cruise to Greece and Turkey -- which is obviously much more appropriate dinner conversation than what was lurking in the back regions of our minds.

Once dinner had concluded we decided to do a consult with my parents and see if they had any brilliant ideas on what could have deposited the UBOs (I have a feeling we will not be getting any dinner invitations anytime soon from anyone who reads this blog....). Raccoons were once again brought up a likely source, but none of us seemed to know what Raccoon droppings looked like. (Which is honestly something I think we can all be happy about.)

So, we did what anyone with an Internet connection handy does when faced with a question. We typed the words "raccoon scat" into Google to get a visual. Honestly, I have to say that this was something I really never dreamed I'd be using the Internet for, but low and behold we got the photos we were after (Ewww...) and discovered that apparently our window well had become a LATRINE for a COMMUNITY of raccoons. Umm...let me repeat that news again. We were dealing with a community latrine for a large group of rodents. On one hand, you got it hand it to the raccoons - you kind of have to respect an animal that is organized enough to do such a thing. On the other hand...EWWWW!!!

On every website that Google directed us to were giant warnings about the dangers of raccoon scat. The words blindness and death were used heavily in all of the articles and each one seemed to link back to an article written by the CDC. Suddenly the odd little UBOs we discovered earlier had become a life threatening bio-hazard. Darn raccoons!

Needless to say, we scoured the the Internet for advice on how to safely rid ourselves of the raccoon poo. Information in hand, Mr. Crackers bravely donned surgical gloves upon our return home to dispose of the poo ...and the rocks that touched the poo...and some of the soil below the rocks that touched the poo... and the shovel that touched the rocks and the poo and...(you get the picture).

Once the actual scat had been double bagged and thrown into the trash, I dumped 2 gallons of boiling water over the ground in what we will now refer to as the FORMER raccoon community latrine. Apparently the boiling water kills all the bacteria and (shudder, shudder) all of the roundworm eggs on contact.

As a safety precaution Mr. Crackers and I then poured about 2 cups of bleach onto the ground and then scattered moth balls on top of the whole kit and caboodle. I'm not sure what the moth balls were for, but my Dad thought they might discourage the raccoons from coming back again. Honestly, I was pretty willing to do just about anything to keep the raccoons from depositing more possible blindness and death into my basement window wells.

Mr. Crackers checked on everything this morning & I am happy to report we think the raccoons have moved their latrine somewhere else (either that or they are all crossing their little paws until tonight). The bad news is that he discovered an old and (thankfully) smaller pile of scat in another window well. Dang it! I guess I know what we'll be doing tonight...

Hint: I was not abducted by aliens

2010-06-05T10:02:00.007-04:00

So let's see, it's been about 2 months since the last time I posted anything here on the blog.

In honor of my return to (hopefully) semi-regular blogging again, here's a little weekend morning quiz for you.

The reason I've been absent from this blog so long is because:

A. I was abducted by aliens

B. I was falsely accused of killing Mr. Crackers & have been trying to catch the one armed man who actually killed him while trying to evade capture by law enforcement officers

C. I am your new American Idol

D. I got a little bogged down with other stuff

As uninteresting as it may sound, the real answer is D. Life got a little busy around here at the House of Crackers, and I found that I kind of ran out of "blogging" time. Thankfully though, summer has arrived and C is finally out of school and is finished with all of his extracurricular activities for awhile. Wahoo!

Even though we have a summer packed with vacations and lots of fun activities, I will be happy to step away from the daily school grind for awhile and take things at a bit of a slower pace.

We got a little jump start on summer over the Memorial Day weekend. The weather here in southwest Ohio has been really hot for the past few weeks, so we've been getting a lot of mileage out of our various sprinklers and water toys.

My Grandma was kind enough to pick this little number up at Target to replace a water slide that the kids had a couple of years ago that finally got so riddled with holes we had to throw it away.

The slide got a LOT of use last weekend.

By our third day, it also managed to get it's first hole of the summer. Really though, what do you expect for $39.99? I haven't got around to patching the hole yet. But that's OK. As usual, Mr. Crackers had an idea.

And so the water fun continued for another day. Thanks Mr. Crackers!

My Nemesis

2010-04-14T13:46:00.006-04:00

For the most part, the outdoor maintenance around the House of Crackers falls on the very capable shoulders of Mr. Crackers. He's a down in the dirt, get your hands dirty type of guy. He's the one who maintains the lawn, does most of the planting in the garden as well as initiating any large outdoor projects that need accomplished.

Since I am at home a lot more than Mr. Crackers, I do more of the smaller detail work in the yard like weeding, hedge trimming and occasionally trimming the grass along the picket fence that lines our backyard. Since Mr. Crackers does a lot of the mowing (especially in the Spring) during weeknight evenings, we just never really seem to get the trimming done right away. But after a couple of weeks the grass grows so long that I start fearing we may lose the dog or maybe even one of the children along the fence line, so I decide to try & get the trimming done while Mr. Crackers is at work.

And in almost all cases over the past 6 years, I have failed to get the yard trimmed completely on my own....why? Yard Trimmers are my Nemesis. They are my kryptonite. Something happens when a yard trimmer gets placed in my hands that causes the trimmer to stop working. Completely.

We are currently on our 3rd trimmer in 6 years. The first two were corded electric models that were really inexpensive & I would like to think would have broken down as quickly for anyone. The cords inside the trimmers would either stop feeding correctly, or the top of the cord dispenser would continually pop off or some other plastic part would just plain give out. Mr. Crackers would come to my aid once the weekend hit, but (thankfully) would have just as many issues as I did getting the thing to work for more than 5 minutes in a row. Needless to say, trimming has become one of my most hated chores (second only to ironing).

Finally last year after our second electric trimmer failed we decided to get serious and get one of those incredibly loud, gas powered models.

Since we got it about halfway through the summer last year, Mr. Crackers had fun playing with his new toy & usually did the trimming right after he mowed. Not only did it work well for him, but it trimmed the yard in about half the time as our old electric trimmers. By mid-summer the grass wasn't really growing really quickly anymore, so Mr. Crackers could trim about every 2 weeks & everything still looked good.

But, it's Spring again. And the grass is growing so quickly that Mr. Crackers is pulling out the lawn mower every 5 days or so. And yet, the grass along the fence hasn't been trimmed once yet. I would venture a guess that it was at least 6 inches longer than the grass in the rest of the lawn.

So, last night I asked Mr. Cracker to refresh my memory & teach me how to start the electric trimmer. It took him a few minutes (since it hadn't been used in a few months), but he finally got it started. He then taught me how to do it & I decided I'd get out this afternoon & get it done before we lost the dog or one of the kids in the tall grass.

Ha!

Darn Trimmer! I tried to start that thing until both of my shoulders were sore. But could I get it to start? Nope! I finally walked away in case I flooded the engine (can you flood the engine of a trimmer?). After about 20 minutes I came back & tried it again. And once again that flipping trimmer wouldn't start.

I decided to try some tough love and began cursing a blue streak (quietly so as not to disturb my napping pre-schooler or the other neighborhood children) every time I pulled on the cord and it wouldn't start. Even though I felt a little better for venting, the cursing didn't really help get it started either.

I was getting to be seriously disappointed by yet another lawn trimmer (now that's a phrase I never in a million years thought I would say). I was ready to throw the thing into the street when it finally sputtered & coughed to life.

Hooray! I set to work & began trimming along the fence. Boy does that thing vibrate. Even though it was getting a bit heavy I kept soldiering on determined to for the first time in 6 years get the entire lawn trimmed without the aid of Mr. Crackers. I was feeling a real sense of accomplishment as I trimmed along the final stretch of fencing. I mean, just wait until Mr. Crackers sees that I was finally able to do it. Wahoo!

Then, all of the sudden the trimmer seemed to slow down a bit, then it gave a cough and stopped completely. What the what?! Holy cow did I manage to break yet another trimmer?!

Nope. It was just out of gas. And of course it is one of those engines that need an oil & gas mixture. Something that seems entirely too risky for me to attempt to do with my past trimmer history. I decided it would be best to wait for Mr. Crackers and make sure I do it right. I really don't want another lawn trimmer death on my conscience. Darn it, I was so close. Oh well, at least I didn't break this one.

I guess I better go finish the ironing.

As if I needed more proof that I was getting old...

2010-03-04T12:16:00.005-05:00

I've recently been preparing myself for the shoe dilemma that has been plaguing mankind for years. "What do you wear in the spring & fall when the weather is too cold for flip flops, but too warm for boots?" Well, OK maybe mankind is dealing with bigger problems & it's just a personal issue, but I can never figure out what to put on my feet with capri's or jeans in the spring. I mostly end up wearing a pair of sneakers, but I know there is a shoe out there that will fit the bill without making me look like I am headed to the gym for a work out.

In an attempt to do a little research on the subject I headed over to my favorite online shoe store Zappos. I figured if someone had a shoe that would fit the bill it would be them. While I was browsing, I came upon something I found truly disturbing.

It's called a tube flop & I am at a complete loss for what to say except....Why? I am honestly a bit dumbfounded.

Maybe it's the stripes that are too much? Perhaps they'd look better in a solid color...

Nope. I still don't like them. How about basic black?

Yikes! Really? Can someone explain this to me?

I scrolled down to the reviews to see what people were saying about this new item & found a quote that I guess sums it all up " Tube Flops combine the awesomeness of tube socks with the comfort of flip flops. "

Oh....I see. No... I guess I really don't.

Probably my first problem is that the last time I thought about the awesomeness of tube socks was back sometime around 1978. Since then, tube socks have really lost their shine a bit for me. Besides which, if it's so cold that I need to wear socks up to my knees, what's going to prevent my toes from freezing off? Nothing, that's what.

I guess this must truly be a trend for the young folk. Darn those kids with their crazy rock music and their Tube Flops! Back in my day we wore our tube socks with sneakers and we liked it that way. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to head downstairs and take a Geritol.

Clearly, this will not be not the answer to my current shoe dilemma. I guess it's back to the drawing board (aka as Zappos) for me.

What do you wear on your feet in the spring? Will you be in the market for a pair of Tubeflops this year? Inquiring minds want to know!

San Antonio (or as I like to call it the land of sunshine and free flu shots )

2010-02-25T13:01:00.014-05:00

You may (or may not) be asking "Where have you been for the past two weeks Mrs. Crackers?" Well I'll tell ya, I've been in San Antonio, thank you very much. And so your next question might (or might not) be, "You mean you've been in San Antonio for the past 2 weeks?"

Umm, no..not really. I was in San Antonio for 4 days, I just kind of got lazy about doing another blog posting for the rest of that time. But, never fear! I am here to tell you all about my trip (and I promise that it will probably be just as interesting as it usually is when people pull out their vacation pictures and force you to look at them... umm. so sorry)

"Why San Antonio?" you might (but probably aren't) asking yourself. Well, Mr. Crackers had a conference that he was invited to attend in that fair city that just happened to coincide with the day I was cruelly evicted from my thirties and thrust headlong into a new decade (a.k.a. my fortieth birthday). Mr. Crackers had the brilliant idea that I accompany him on this trip & make it into a mini-vacation. My parents miraculously and generously offered to watch my two hooligans for a couple of days, so we jetted south.

Once I saw the convention center, I knew instantly that I had made the right decision to visit Texas. Not only was it beautiful, but it was also sitting under pretty blue skies without so much as a snowflake in sight. I was pretty sure we were going to have a great time (and let's face it, the obvious lack of snow also really added to the city's charm). And even though the city's temperatures were 15-20 degrees below normal, I wasn't complaining 'cause compared to Ohio, the colder temperatures in Texas still felt almost tropical. Plus, those cooler temperatures allowed me to break in my new $40.00 purchase from Marshall's. An "I can't believe it's not leather" pleather biker jacket...

I guess you can call it my mid-life crisis purchase. It's not something I would normally pick up, but I loved it. And after all, a $40.00 jacket seemed like a perfect welcome to your 40's present to myself.

Anyhoo...I spent my birthday wandering around the city's Riverwalk while Mr. Crackers attended hours and hours of (what I can only imagine) were somewhat mind numbing lectures...

Look flowers!

In February!

Yep, I definitely think I got the better end of that deal.

Don't feel too badly for Mr. Crackers though. Even though it was a "working vacation" for him, we still managed to see most of San Antonio's tourist sights together.

And I have to say that we also enjoyed the fact that while we were standing and getting our picture taken in a city with blooming flowers, that back home they were getting another foot of snow dumped on top of the foot of snow left over from the last storm. Not that I wished the snow to happen at all, I was just happy I got to avoid looking at the stuff for a few days. (And I would be remiss if I didn't take another moment to say a giant THANK YOU to Mom & Dad for watching the kids during a time when 2 days worth of activities/school were cancelled due to snow. Yikes!)

By the end of our trip, we managed to see almost everything that downtown San Antonio had to offer. I think we estimated that by the end of the day on Tuesday, we had walked about 10 miles that day. When Wednesday morning rolled around I was feeling all 40 of my years (plus maybe a few more). Which probably leads you to ask another question. "Are you afraid of public transportation Mrs. Crackers?"

Nope, we were just enjoying being outdoors (without having to put on our snow boots).

San Antonio was everything I expected: it was a place with beautiful scenery, friendly people and warmer temperatures. But, all good things come to an end and on Wednesday it was time for us to return to the snowy north. I was ready to come back though, I had really missed my two hooligans. So, we packed up our luggage, complete with all of the new souvenirs we purchased for the kids and for my brave parents who took those kids into their home during a snow filled long weeked and we headed to the airport.

On our arrival to the airport I got myself a souvenir too - my H1N1 vaccinne. That's right, not only do they have flowers blooming in February, but they give away free flu shots in the airport to anyone who wants one. Trust me, I'll remember more than just the Alamo.

White snow and pink eye

2010-02-11T13:10:00.008-05:00

Like everyone else in the eastern half of the country, we've had some snow recently. While we've had nothing close to the 4 feet many parts of the country have seen, we've got about a foot of the white stuff on the ground.

Along with the storm came two snow days. Sadly, our first snow day was spent traveling between the doctor's office, CVS and (even more sadly for the kids) my hair salon. Poor C developed an ear infection the night before the storm, so we braved the weather and the snow covered roads and headed to the doctor so we could get him a prescription for amoxicillan. After a brief trip home for lunch, I bundled the kids back into the car so we could make the journey to my hair salon. I have been waiting weeks for this haircut and neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night would prevent me from getting my split ends trimmed off.

We got back home just in time for K to take her nap & for C to announce that "something was wrong" with his right eye. The thing that was wrong was that it was red and tearing and covered in green goop. Eeek! Pink Eye alert!

I quickly called the doctor and got yet another prescription for the poor child who now seemed to be riddled with infections. Needless to say, we spent the rest of our first snow day indoors (scrubbing our hands and spraying Lysol on every surface that C had even thought about touching earlier in the day).

By the time our second snow day rolled around, C was feeling a bit better & his eye didn't look nearly as ~~gross~~ infected as it did the day before. I spent the morning washing every piece of fabric that may or may not have come in contact with his face. Trust me, it was hard enough putting drops into the eyes of my mild mannered seven year old son. I planned to do everything I could to avoid having to put those same drops into the eyes of my medicine-hating 4 year old daughter.

By the late morning the laundry was done & C was no longer contagious. He had watched two Star Wars movies and was finally feeling up to a romp in the snow.

Although, Mr. Crackers & I had done most of the digging out the day before, my 2 kids decided to help me shovel the front walkway...

...for about 3 minutes until I was told that shoveling the sidewalk was "boring".

I finished the rest of the walkway and then was told that my shoveling services were needed in constructing some snow forts.

Since the snow was so deep, "construction" of a snow fort just required me to dig a small hole in the snow so the kids could sit in said hole. Voila! A fort!

Once the kids had their fill of sitting in holes, we went on a short hike to the pond in our neighborhood. And by hike I mean that C walked ahead of me while I tried to pull my 40 pound daughter over 3 foot drifts of snow on a sled that was also weighed down with all of the snowballs that C was collecting for "later".

I have no idea what C is doing in this shot. We milled around like this for about 10 minutes until K decided she was "tired and done". So we headed for home and the exciting conclusion of our time in the snow: a snowball fight!

Since tears & screaming ensued within seconds of the snowball fight between the two siblings, I decided it would be safer if all snowballs were directed at me.

Thankfully, almost all of K's snowballs either missed me completely or hit my feet.

C on the other hand has quite an arm (and a terrific capacity for aiming at moving targets). After getting hit by about 6 snowballs, I declared the snowball fight over & we all headed in for some hot chocolate and another round of eyedrops.

Forty

2010-02-08T13:37:00.015-05:00

It's official... we are now 1 week away from the date when I will be turning 40. Hmm... I don't really feel forty (it seems less scary if I spell it out) so I'm not really filled with a lot of anxiety about it. Although I should admit that I quite enjoyed my thirties & I'm not really looking forward to checking the box 40-45 years old on any future questionnaires that come my way.

A couple of weeks ago Jen, who writes the blog Absolutely Bananas, did a tribute to her husband Jay who was turning 40. She posted 40 things that were worse than turning 40. I liked the idea, so I've decided to use her list as a jumping off point, but change a few items to better suit me (I mean honestly, I fall down the stairs all the time).

Here for your enjoyment are 40 things worse than turning 40 forty by Jen (& Karen):

1. Being eaten by wolves
2. Getting a leg caught in a meat grinder
3. ~~Poking your eye out~~ Developing an allergy to chocolate
4. ~~Running over a baby bunny or duckling~~ Running a daycare in my home
5. Finding a finger in my soup
6. ~~Irritable Bowel Syndrome~~ A week long migraine
7. Losing the winning lottery ticket
8. Mullets
9. ~~Being chewed up by hamsters, rats or cats~~ Living with a long haired cat (oh, the allergies!)
10. Bed bugs
11. ~~Falling down the stairs~~ Walking around all day with my skirt tucked into my underwear
12. Stepping on a rusty nail
13. ~~Kevin Costner with webbed feet~~ Working at Toys R Us
14. Lice
15. Drinking lumpy milk
16. ~~Taking the red pill.~~ Having to get braces again
17. Getting eaten by a shark
18. Teenage girls and boys
19. ~~Filet-of-Fish sandwiches~~ Developing an allergy to baked goods
20. The stuff Mike Rowe does
21. ~~Having gas on an airplane~~ Riding home on an airplane after a week at Disney World with an exhausted, screaming 2 1/2 year old on my lap (again...)
22.~~The Real Housewives of Orange County~~ Watching Ann Coulter on TV
23. Comb-overs
24. ~~Trying to figure out how to sync your iPhone to a new computer without losing all your music~~ Listening to New Age music everyday
25. ~~Taking your baby to get his shots~~ Having another baby
26. A root canal
27. Anything by Paris Hilton
28. ~~A runny nose when you don’t have a kleenex~~ Another allergic reaction to penicillin
29. Catching my hair on fire
30. ~~Windows XP~~ If the only station on TV was Fox News
31. Paying taxes
32. Accidentally brushing your teeth with hemorrhoid cream
33. The 80’s… back in style
34.Having the pilot of your airplane pass out from bad fish and all the other people pass out too and you have to fly the airplane but you don’t know how
35. Aliens that come to Earth to exterminate humans
36. Throwing up in your mouth
37. Dropping a baby
38. Stepping on dog poop. With bare feet.
39. Lower back pain
40. ~~Falling down and you CAN’T GET UP!~~ Turning fifty

Is it just me, or did about 5 of those items deal with allergies?

Honestly the list of things worse than turning 40 would take years to complete. I realize that it's just another number. And for the most part it's one I'm happy with (or at least not too scared of). I have been very blessed with a great family and a good life. Happy Birthday indeed!

Not exactly a dead ringer part 2

2010-02-01T13:27:00.010-05:00

With my 40th birthday just two weeks away, it is becoming more evident than ever that I am losing brain cells at an alarming rate. As my Mom correctly pointed out (and Mr. Crackers seconded) I was wrong in my last post when I said that I have never been told that I look like anyone famous.

A few years ago on vacation, my Uncle George & my Mom decided that in both appearance and personality that they thought I resembled Samantha Brown of Travel Channel (& Champion Door and Window television advertising) fame...

I will agree that our hair is very similar in color (apparently neither one of us was happy with the color we were born with). We both also have a rather large set of teeth - although truth be told I think I've got her beat. Pale skin? Yep, it looks like she is rather fair, but if I'm not mistaken it appears in most of her photos that she does have a bit of pigment to her skin. I'm not sure that she'd qualify as "fish belly white" like yours truly, but I think our skin color is close enough.

But even with this new information, I'm still not planning on changing my Facebook profile picture to Samantha Brown...

or Tilda Swinton . Nope, I'm just not participating in Facebook's "Doppelganger week".

I don't even have this picture on my profile anymore.

Instead, I've decided to go with something a little more classic...

Because you can never go wrong with a Olan Mills Wagon Wheel portrait circa 1983.

Not exactly a dead ringer.

2010-01-29T13:17:00.038-05:00

Apparently it was Doppelganger, a.k.a celebrity look alike week, on Facebook. To participate, you were supposed to replace your profile picture with a celebrity whom you have been told that you resemble. I noticed that several of my friends had switched their profile pictures to famous actors and actresses at the beginning of the week which seemed pretty strange. Finally, I was clued in to what was going on.

When I looked at my friend list this week, it was brimming with stars from both TV and the movies. I saw Anthony Edwards, Matthew Broderick, Valerie Bertenelli (the early years), Julia Stiles, Patricia Heaton and Traci Gold just to name a few. I have to say that in one case the resemblance to the celebrity was so close, that it took me a second to realize that the photo was Anthony Edwards and not the boy who I attended grade school with for eight years. In most cases, even if the resemblance to the celebrity wasn't striking, there were certain facial features that were similar once you took a good look at the picture (and maybe squinted a bit).

I have never been told that I looked like a celebrity. At all. Ever. I was once mistaken for an Austrian exchange student, but I was to blame for that one. I decided to french braid my hair and wear an apron style jumper to a meet and greet for some Austrian exchange students that were visiting from our sister city. In my oddly chosen outfit, I looked more like an Austrian than many of the actual Austrian high school students who were in attendance. I think everyone was waiting for me to start twirling and burst into song, "The hills are alive, with the sound of music..."

Other than that, the only person I've ever been mistaken for was another girl who happened to attend the same high school that I did. We both had the same hairstyle, we were about the same height and had the same fair skin that Mr. Crackers lovingly refers to as "fish belly white". Since she was a lot more popular than I was, I was often mistaken for her from a distance, and spent a lot of my high school years hearing, "Oh, I thought you were Molly."

Even though I was a little doubtful of the outcome, I figured I'd see if there a was female celebrity out there whom I might resemble. I thought that the easiest way to start would be to plug in some of my defining physical characteristics into Google Images & see what I could come up with. I narrowed my search to the three characteristics that I thought were most distinct about my appearance

I started with what I think is my most obvious physical characteristic, my height...or lack there of. While I like to think of myself as petite, my sister has been know to refer to me as height challenged. So, to get started I typed the phrase "short female actresses" into Google Images and got pictures of these ladies:

Umm, NO!

She's certainly a cutie (and man she's young), but no...no resemblance at all.

I wish...

So, I moved onto to my next item. Big teeth. Yep, I have big, giant teeth. Especially my front teeth. I try not to smile too widely at young children when I first meet them so as not to scare them. I typed "actresses with big teeth" into Google next to see what I came up with and got images of these ladies:

I think we can all agree that this woman is my exact opposite... the tan skin, the beautiful brown eyes (& let's agree not to discuss the difference in chest size OK?)

Just no.

Well, at least her hair is blondish. But other than that, it's a no.

Finally I decided to try my final characteristic - my fair skin (no Mr. Crackers I did not type "fish belly white skin" into Google Images). When I typed "actresses with pale skin" into Google Images this beautiful picture came up:

She is stunning. I bet Keith Urban never refers to her skin as fish belly white!

I also got an image of Tilda Swinton:

not a very flattering picture...can we do better?

Ahh...much better picture (not to mention the hair color is a little more similar to my own color treated hair). But is it a match?

Well, I think match is really too strong a word. I don't think anyone is ever going to stop me on the street and confuse me for Tilda Swinton (especially since she's probably about 6 inches taller than me while still managing to weigh about 15 pounds less), but honestly it's probably the closest match I'll be able to come with. Pale skin? Check! Light colored eyes? Check! Big teeth? Who knows...let's just wrap this up shall we?

Am I going to change my profile picture in Facebook? Nah, it'll just confuse people who will say "Geez I wonder who told her she looks like Tilda Swinton. I don't see the resemblance at all!"

Another Childhood Milestone

2010-01-26T12:37:00.007-05:00

Last night Mr. Crackers & C went to his monthly pack meeting for Cub Scouts. Since Mr. Crackers was a boy scout himself (many, many) years ago, he has taken on the parental responsibilities of this activity. I had to attend one of these so-called meetings myself a few months ago & I'll just tell you that if I had to go with C to any more of those chaotic pack events, his career as a Cub Scout would have ended months ago - but that, my friends, is a story for another time.

Anyway, last night was a shower night here at the House of Crackers. Both of my hooligans love to play in the water, so shower night is a happy night. Since C was gone at his pack meeting K got to take an extra long shower in my bathroom. Normally K's showers involve a lot of splashing, loud singing & a copious amount of soap (We seem to go through gallons of kid shampoo around here each month, but since the end result is clean children I'm not about to complain about it).

Since shower taking is such a loud endeavor for her, I feel free to wander about the house doing important activities ~~like playing Bejeweled Blitz and Word Challenge on Facebook~~ like putting away laundry or catching up on emails. Last night however I noticed that after about 5 minutes things had gotten really quiet...too quiet. My Mommy radar was pinging away as I yelled to her to make sure she was OK. After getting nothing but silence in return I started rushing to the bathroom calling for her again. Just before I got there she called out, "I'm OK Momma, but I'm not done yet. Just 5 more minutes OK?" Five more minutes of ~~Bejeweled Blitz and Word Challenge~~ downtime sounded like a good idea to me, so I returned to the office.

About 8 minutes later (I was really on a roll on Word Challenge) I went in to get my now somewhat pruney younger child out of the shower. When I slid open the shower door I noticed she was staring down at her hands. She said, "Where did all this hair come from Momma?" I looked down and noticed she was holding a dark clump of hair in her hands. My first thought was that she must have pulled the hair out of the drain ...Ack! But, then I realized that we don't ever really have hair clumps sitting on the shower drain (and I can't be more thrilled about that fact than I currently am). I further realized that the hair she was holding was dark like Mr. Crackers hair, but that it was also really long -- like 3 or 4 inches long.

I looked at her face & noticed there were two more clumps of dark hair there, kind of framing her nose. Holy Smokes! I then looked down at the floor of the shower & saw several more chunks of long hair. What the what?!

I started panicking a bit. Did our shampoo suddenly & inexplicably turn radioactive? Had K been accidentally exposed to radiation at International Day at school earlier that morning (perhaps someone may have been excited to show off the fruits of their former country's nuclear program...) ? I asked her what happened to her hair & in typical pre-schooler fashion she looked at me blankly and said, "I don't know." I really had no idea what to think except that I needed to get this child out of the shower immediately.

As I reached into the shower to pull her out I noticed something...my razor which is normally stored in the shower caddy out of the children's' reach was now on the lower shelf in the shower stall. I also happened to see that there were several clumps of dark hair now hanging from the blade of the razor. Apparently, K's recent growth spurt has enabled her to reach a whole new world of dangerous objects that were once too high to be of notice.

After doing a quick search to make sure she hadn't cut herself anywhere (thankfully she didn't have as much as the smallest nick on her skin), I asked her, "Did you use Mommy's razor on your hair?"

She looked at me with those innocent eyes and said, "No Momma. I just used your curler."

As I dried her off, large clumps of hair continued to fall out of her head. I calmly (& without laughing, thank you very much) told her that what she used was not a curler, but was in fact a very sharp razor. I tried explain how dangerous razors were & how lucky she was that she didn't get hurt. I think she finally grasped the gravity of the situation when I said, "You may have really done a number on your hairdo kiddo. I'm not sure yet what you are going to look like once we get this mess dried out a bit."

With both of us expecting the worst, we moved over to the vanity so I could use the hairdryer and assess the damage. Honestly, I can say that you really can't tell that anything happened. Sure, she has more bangs today than she had when she woke up yesterday, but other than that she came out of the experience with her hair relatively intact. It probably helped that she's got incredibly thick hair. I think mostly she just managed to thin it a bit.

And with that, another childhood milestone is behind us.

Tough guy

2010-01-23T13:37:00.010-05:00

C recently acquired a new look. In a relatively short period of time (around 36 hours) he lost both front teeth and got a black eye. No, he wasn't involved in an auto accident...nor does he play hockey or any other full contact sport.

It all started on a Wednesday afternoon when he came home from school & announced that his front tooth kept bleeding ALL DAY (he was very excited about this fact--apparently the blood was not accompanied by any pain). He then proceeded to open his mouth to show me one of his front teeth which was so loose that he could press it flat against the roof of his mouth or have it point straight out at me... Aaack!

I am not normally a squeamish person, but for some reason that wiggly tooth was a little too much for me to take. It seemed to be literally hanging on by a thread & I'm telling you that I was not going to be the one to pull it out of his head. I encouraged him to keep working on it, just as long as I didn't have to watch him to do it.

Once Mr. Crackers arrived home from work & saw the tooth, he quickly took matters into his own hands. He marched C into the bathroom and within 10 seconds the tooth was out.

The strange thing is that within the hour, his other front tooth became just as loose. When Mr. Crackers made the offer to pull that tooth as well, C resisted quite forcefully declaring loudly "I can't loose 2 teeth in 1 night Dad!" I'm not sure why this was a problem, but there was no changing his mind on the matter.

We put him down for bed that night fully expecting him to wake up the next morning missing yet another tooth. When that didn't happen & C had difficulty trying to eat breakfast the next morning, he allowed his Dad to pull his other front tooth as well. When I looked in his mouth to take a closer gander at the new gap, I realized why the baby teeth had come out so quickly. His permanent teeth were already sticking up above the gums.

As you can imagine he was very excited to go to school and show off his missing teeth. He got dressed and ready for school in record time!

After we finished eating dinner later that evening, C and his sister started their nightly game of "let's run around the house wildly chasing each other while screaming." It was a shower night, so they took the game upstairs while I started pulling things together for the second part of the game which is called "let's get in the shower and splash each other wildly while screaming".

As I crossed from C's bedroom into the hallway, I noticed that their game had moved perilously close to the stairs. I also noticed that if K backed up any farther she was going to tumble down the steps & our evening would quickly take a downturn. As I started running toward her to prevent her fall, I began barking out a steady stream of orders... "Stop it guys! K move away from the stairs! C I need to to back off now before she falls!" I then began to drop to my knees to get behind K in case she started to fall (I'd like to remind you at this point that K inherited my lack of grace and amazing capacity for clumsiness. By her 3rd birthday she had already been in a cast on 3 separate occasions. So while my reaction might have been a tad extreme it was not without reason).

Unfortunately C actually listened to me (I know, I was in shock too) and he began rising from his knees to get out of the way just as I was nearing the floor to get to K. Even more unfortunately, as we were both in motion we tried to occupy the exact same space at the exact same time. I felt my knee hit something hard & I went down. Less than a second later, I heard C scream. I knew my knee had made impact somewhere on his person, but I wasn't sure where (except that it was someplace very hard). When I went over to him I realized that the point of impact was on his head -- right over his eye. A lot of worry and many Guilty Mom feelings ensued.

We iced the spot to keep the swelling down & after a lot of frantic internet research we determined that we probably didn't need to make a trip to urgent care that evening. We did, however, visit the doctor the next morning to get it all checked out. Thankfully there was no permanent damage done. And after the initial pain wore off, C bounced right back to his normal goofy self.

It took a little while longer for my Mom Guilt to subside, but knowing that no permanent damage was done helped speed that process along. Of course, even though we all recovered from the incident doesn't mean it has been forgotten.

K tripped over my feet the next day on her way to the family room & fell to her hands and knees (I told you she was a bit klutzy right?). She wasn't hurt, but C looked over at me and said, "Mama, why do you keep hurting us?"

Oh Geez...something tells me that this incident will not be forgotten for years to come. "Remember that time when Mom gave me a black eye? "

You can never have too many Legos

2010-01-06T20:51:00.007-05:00

I guess it's time I finally recapped C's seventh birthday party shenanigans. We pushed the birthday party back about 5 days from his actual birthday in order to give me time to mentally recover from all of the Christmas festivities. I think next year I will look at pushing it back even farther, although next year I have already vowed that the party will not take place here at the House of Crackers (Of course I also said that after his sixth birthday...)

Overall, I have to say the party went really well. We had 6 kids who were able to make it & from what I could tell all 6 seemed to have a pretty good time. Thankfully there were no costumes to make this year (see blog post on last year's Jedi ponchos). Most of my pre-party preparation (try to say that 3 times fast) involved the sorting of 6 pounds (yes, 6 pounds) of Legos. I had a couple party activities planned & I thought the Legos would work well for the games & also provide me with a nice parting gift for all the kids who came to wish C a happy birthday.

We had a pizza lunch followed by a few exciting games of Lego Bingo. Don't you love how excited 6 and 7 year olds get participating in any activity where there is a potential to earn candy? After we got them properly sugared up, we went down to the playroom & passed out a bag of about 70 Legos to each kid. We then had a couple of rounds where the kids built something on their own & tried to see if the other party-goers could guess what they created. What was really nice about this for Mr. Crackers & myself was that while the kids were busy building the room was actually pretty quiet. Wahoo!

Since all of the kids appeared to have come down from their earlier sugar high, we decided it was time to give them their next fix so we all trooped back upstairs for ice cream sandwiches (C doesn't like cake). This had to be the lowest maintenance party I've ever pulled off. We didn't even need to pass out spoons for heavens sakes. Mr. Crackers just gave each kid an ice cream sandwich and a plate & we were done. Voila!

After a C opened his presents, we all headed downstairs for about 30 minutes of unplanned fun time. And that was then things began to unravel a bit... The two girls who came to the party were great! They went downstairs, found the art supplies & immediately started coloring & making pretty pictures to give to their Moms. The 5 boys (including my own child) decided to get into a game of dodge ball...in the basement...with real basketballs. Yikes! Mr. Crackers & I tried to re-direct them into other activities, but spontaneous wrestling matches kept breaking out all over the basement. Meanwhile, the girls were still peacefully coloring...

Finally Mr. Crackers & I broke out the parachute and got all the kids (even the peaceful girls) to join into a less physically violent energy release. It seemed to work for awhile, but then K (who had missed her nap due to the ongoing shenanigans) picked that moment to have a breakdown about some perceived slight.

In the end we stuck Toy Story into the DVD player & got the kids calmed down a little bit just in time for all the Moms to come & get their offspring.

I have to say I think we all had a pretty good time. When I asked C if he finally had enough Legos between everything he got for Christmas & now his birthday he shot me a pitying look and said " Mom, you can never have too many Legos".

We'll see about that. I'll agree until I start stepping on them around the house. So far he's been really good about that though. Hopefully that will continue.

I know one thing for certain though...next year's party will definitely NOT be here at the House of Crackers.

And then there was that time that I overcooked the Legos...

2010-01-05T20:41:00.007-05:00

I was busy getting ready for C's big Lego birthday extravaganza last week. C had requested another birthday party at home and even though last year I swore I would never do it again, I found myself preparing to host another birthday party for C's friends in my house. The theme for this year's party should be no surprise to you if you've ever met C (or have done any reading of my past blog entries)...he wanted a Lego party.

I had ordered 6 pounds (that's right, 6 pounds) of Legos on ebay & had been sorting through them in order to divide the pieces somewhat equitably among all of our party guests. We were going to use the Lego bricks in a couple of different games & I thought they'd also make mighty fine parting gifts for all the kids. As I sorted through them though, I realized that what I had was 6 pounds (that's right, 6 pounds) of specialty Lego pieces. In other words, there were really no basic Lego bricks to be found in the entire bunch. It turns out that most of my Lego purchase were parts from Star Wars or Power Miner Lego kits. This came as exciting news to C who was thrilled to see so many cool parts in one place, but it presented a bit of a problem for what I had planned.

As I mulled over what my next step would be, I realized that if I could get my hands on some regular Lego bricks, I could add them to what I already had & we could really go to town. I also recalled that a friend of mine offered up the Lego bricks that she used to have in her first grade classroom (she was and still is a teacher).

My friend was kind enough to tell me I could take whatever bricks I needed, so I spent the better part of an hour sorting through the big bin of Legos she offered and I took what I thought would work. After getting a decent-sized pile (about 1/6 of what she had) I decided they could use a good cleaning. Since these bricks had been in a first grade classroom for years, they had some of the typical grime commonly seen on well loved toys.

I filled up the sink with some soapy warm water & starting scrubbing the bricks...by hand...one at a time. It was a bit tedious, but I figured the bricks were free, so a little work on my part wasn't the end of the world. Mr. Crackers (probably rightly so) thought I had gone completely insane. " Why are you washing those bricks?" he asked me. When I explained about the grime & potential germs he shot me a look (you know the look...the one that says, how did I come to be married to this nut job?"), but wisely kept quiet & quickly left the room.

As he passed passed through he kitchen a few minutes later, he suggested that I just dump the Legos into the dishwasher. While this seemed like a good idea to me, I couldn't figure out a way to do that without losing all the the bricks to the bottom & ruining one of our only new kitchen appliances, so I continued washing them one...at...a...time in the sink.

On a second pass through the kitchen, Mr. Crackers said, "Why don't you just put them in some hot water on the stove? You know, kind of disinfect them like we did the kids' bottles when they were babies (that one time...)."

This, to me, sounded like a brilliant idea, so I filled up my big stock pot with water & dumped my pile of Legos right in. I stood next to the oven & occasionally stirred the pot to make sure everything was OK.

And it was OK for about 4 minutes or so, until I started noticing that the Legos began to look a little funny. I scooped a couple out of the pot & saw (to my horror) that I they had begun to melt.

I frantically ran the pot to sink & dumped out all the water & Legos to see what I could salvage. Mr. Crackers came into the kitchen to offer his assistance and after much searching, we discovered that there was nothing to salvage. I had managed to melt an entire pot of Legos....

Want to see my handiwork?

Yep, they are curved and dimpled...

Nary a straight line or 90 degree angle left in sight after I got done poaching them.

To make me feel a bit better, Mr. Crackers tried to build something with the partially melted Legos only to discover that the only thing worse than no Lego bricks are melted Lego bricks. You see, once they melt,even a little bit, they absolutely won't fit together anymore (Duh!).

Since it seemed really mean to give the kids a bunch of warped Legos, and since I didn't have the heart or will to search through the bin of Legos my kind friend offered me again, I ended up ordering a brand new bin of plain Lego bricks from Amazon.com. Thankfully they arrived in plenty of time for me to add them to the bags.

Since they were new, I figured it was safe to serve them to the kids raw.

2009 - The year in pictures...

2009-12-31T07:34:00.015-05:00

Last year I did recap of the year in pictures. Since I can't really think of anything better to do this year, I've gone ahead and done it again. Here is the year in pictures from the House of Crackers.

January - Fun in the snow!

February - Family goes on a Disney Cruise...pictures go missing from Mrs. Crackers' hard drive. Imagine cute (yet mischevious) children smiling in front of blue carribean skies. (I think I know what I will be doing this afternoon. Something tells me I will be trying to recover files from my recycling bin. oops!)

March - Finally a warm day! C celebrates by wearing cones on his head.

April - A perfect day at the zoo.

May - A Mother's Day weekend shopping trip!

June - K playing in the sand on family vacation in Hilton Head.

July - A visit with cousins...Mia & Aidan come for a week of fun.

August - C plays soccer... season seems to last 6 years.

September - K is finally old enough to take ballet lessons...there is much rejoicing!

October - A visit from our good friend Karen

November - A great smile from K on a beautiful fall day.

December - A holiday hug that warms a Mom's heart. For a moment all is quiet in the House of Crackers until C decides to grab K's new present from her for a closer look.

Happy New Year from the House of Crackers. May 2010 bring you health, peace & happiness!

Christmas 2009 sponsored by Lego

2009-12-30T07:38:00.010-05:00

Time to finally wrap up Christmas here at the House of Crackers. The fire hazard known as our Christmas tree came down early on the 28th. Not only do we like to get the tree down by the time C's birthday sneaks up on us, but we also wanted it down before our good friends come to stay with us in what has become an annual visit.

Looking back, Christmas day was a little more hectic around here this year than it has been in the past. We hosted both a Christmas morning brunch with my family early in the day, then later a Turkey dinner with all the trimmings for Mr. Crackers' family. While the events of the day had me spending a couple of hours in my kitchen, I have to admit that it was really nice to stay home. Both of my two hooligans got to relax a bit a have a great time playing with all of their new toys - 90% of which seemed to be Legos.

I really think in hindsight I should have bought stock in the Lego company sometime earlier this year. The only thing C wanted for Christmas was Legos. Well, I guess strictly speaking he did have one other request...he said he also wanted a robot that would "serve him". I'm not sure where that idea came from, but since Santa wasn't going to fill that request, realistically speaking all he wanted was Legos.

K also caught Lego fever this year. Her 2 big requests this Christmas were a Lego Duplo Zoo set & a "fairy, butterfly building set". (After a little investigation, I discovered that this was a Superstructs Pinklets set, which I know aren't really Legos but since it's a building set...it might as well be.)

Since it seemed a little strange to only get them Legos, Mr Crackers & I got a little creative with the gifts. C got a new radio for his room and a Jr. Electronics kit. K got some new Calico Critters to add to her ever growing collection of small woodland animals she can undress and leave naked in her room.

But since the hooligans had such a short list of gift requests, we made sure we had the Lego bases covered so to speak.

Even though we did try to diversify the gifts a bit, it is amazing how many Legos made their way into our house this holiday season. Between Christmas & C's birthday 3 days later, our home has been turned into Legoland. It seems like that red Lego logo or a pile of bricks can be found in nearly every picture I took Christmas Day. It's like where's Waldo...

Look Ma! More Legos!

Can you find the Legos in this picture?

Here's Katie's Duplo Zoo set. It's really cute & has gotten a lot of playtime over Christmas break so far. I have to say one thing for the Lego company. They sure know how to make toys that seem capture both of my children's imagination.

This is how one of C's large sets looked early Christmas morning. It was a Star Wars set with something like 900 pieces...

Here's how that same set looked a couple of hours later. Geez, that kid is getting fast. I have lost complete track of just how many Lego sets C has built over the holiday break, but let's just say that we've had to do some major rearranging in his room to give all of his new Lego sets a home.

While I am a little sad to see the Christmas season come to an end, it will be nice to get back into our routines again. I am craving a little quiet time once the 2 kiddos head back to school.

Now we just have 2 more events before our lives can get back to "normal". We'll be heading to our neighbor's annual New Year's Eve party on Thursday(which is always a great time), then we have C's birthday party on Saturday for his friends. I have quite a bit to do to get ready for the party, but since it's a relatively small one this year, I think I'll be able to finish pulling it together pretty quickly. The theme he picked this year (Lord help me) is ... Legos.

Looks like we may have to make a little more space in C's room before the week is out.

Seven

2009-12-28T06:59:00.011-05:00

For the past seven years, my son C has kept us smiling. OK, not all the time, but for the most part he is a really good kid with a great sense of humor. He is also bright, affectionate, curious, and outgoing. I don't think he's been at a lack for something to say since he came into this world.

Last year I wrote a blog in his honor showing 6 of my favorite pictures of him. Since today is his seventh birthday, I thought I'd share 7 more pictures with you.

This shot was taken when he was 5 months old, those cheeks are killin' me! He still sleeps with that blue dog & it's in much better shape than you'd expect for a stuffed animal of his advanced years.

He spent countless hours in the summer and fall of 2004 in just this spot. I'd get in the car later to take us somewhere and the volume on the radio would be at 10, the windshield wipers would start up & the heat would kick on full blast.

Oh, the green boots...we got those as a hand-me down from our neighbor. She raised 5 boys. I can't say how many of the boys wore these particular boots, but I can say they had developed an unpleasant odor by the time we got them.

Of course C fell in love with these boots on sight & it was a struggle to get him out of them. When several attempts at washing them failed to get rid of the odor, these green boots mysteriously disappeared one day never to be seen again...

This kid has always loved dressing up & clowning around. Here he is at around 4 1/2 in his favorite costume at the time.

I've always loved this picture...it's hanging on the wall right outside my office. A perfect fall day, playing in the leaves.

Our Disney trip. One of the best times we've ever had. It was two years ago and we are still talking about it. One of these days we'll make it back there again...

Have I mentioned before how much C loves Legos? The boy received 5 large Lego sets for Christmas (3 of them had more than 850 pieces) and 4 of them are already assembled. I'm sure he will put together the last large set today. We're having a Lego party next weekend with his friends for his birthday. It's an obsession I don't mind fueling...it kept him from asking for a Nintendo DS this year and has him occasionally turning down computer time or playing games on the Wii.

Happy Birthday C! Thank you for being the sweet, funny, zany boy you are. I love you more than words can say.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-24T10:19:00.002-05:00

May the gifts of love, peace and happiness be yours this Christmas Season. Merry Christmas from all of us here at the House of Crackers.

It's that time of year again...Happy Birthday Linda!

2009-12-21T16:15:00.009-05:00

In honor of my sister Linda's birthday last year, I posted some pictures from her past. Since I happen to enjoy ~~embarrassing her~~ commemorating her birthday this way, I thought I'd do the same thing this year.

Happy 38th Birthday Linda. Hope you enjoy the day (& the pictures!)

An Easter picture (I think). Is it just me, or does my dress look a little short? It also looks like someone (dressed in yellow) needs a diaper change...

It's not just a hat - it's a pair of sunglasses too!

I'd make fun of your pants in this shot, but what would be the point?

Now, I'll make fun of your pants!

Aww...it's an Olan Mills Wagon Wheel shot from the early eighties. Look how cute you are! I love those freckles!

Happy 38th Birthday ~~Linnie~~ Linda! Hope you had a great day. I love you!

It might be time for Barbie to update her wardrobe

2009-12-21T15:05:00.010-05:00

A few weeks ago, my sister & her family came into town for the Thanksgiving weekend. On their final night in town we all gathered at my Parent's home for a family dinner. After helping to clear the table, I ventured down into the basement to put the dirty napkins into my parent's laundry room. As I threw the napkins in the dirty clothes hamper, I happened to look to my left & was struck dumb when I saw this:

Did a tragic laundry incident reduce this load of laundry to 1/10th of their normal size?

Upon reflection, what seemed even stranger to me than the size of the clothing was the fact that all of these outfits seemed strangely familiar.

I just stood there for a minute afraid to move, trying to figure out what was going on. And then it finally hit me why I recognized these tiny clothes...they belonged to my sister. Or more specifically, they were the clothes that my sister's Barbie dolls wore during the mid 1970's.

Apparently, my Mom had kept a lot of Linda's Barbie stuff from her childhood & Linda had decided it was time to pass these items on to her own daughter. She & Mom had washed the tiny clothes in preparation for the trip back home.

I couldn't resist a closer look.

Shall we explore some of Barbie's favorite outfits from the mid 1970's?

A caftan! No closet is complete without one. I am really grooving on the gold and brown trim.

Nice pants Barbie! I'm sure this versatile pattern goes with everything.

Wow! Even my camera was shocked by the pattern on these pants.

Apparently Barbie was not afraid of bright colors. Here's hoping she never wore that sweater with either of the pants we just saw.

This one isn't too bad. I'd certainly pick this outfit over any of the other ones we've seen so far. It kind of reminds me of something Florence Henderson might have worn.

"Here's the story of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls. All of them had hair of gold, like their mother, the youngest one in curls..."

Um, this one just feels wrong, even for the 1970's. I'm just not sure this look was ever really "in fashion" was it?

And, I'm not at all sure what to say about this coat. Is it just me or is this coat just screaming for some platform shoes and a purple fedora?

Wow! While I am impressed by the durability of these clothes, I really think that it's probably past time for Barbie to go ahead and take a trip to the mall. Quickly. Seriously Barbie, if money is an issue, I'll front you some cash sister. If you won't do it for yourself, think of the children and run to the mall. Now.

I can only hope that my niece's own sense of style won't be permanently damaged by what we have seen here today. You can bet that I'll be paying close attention to her outfits in the Christmas photos this year.

Some holiday stretching

2009-12-10T14:16:00.006-05:00

In the spirit of trying to stretch our holiday dollar a little further this year, I decided that I would try & make something for the brave souls who enter into the classroom everyday & patiently try to impart some knowlege on my 2 hooligans.

I am not a very crafty person, so my options for hand crafted items were pretty limited. I can't sew, or knit or crochet... at all. I can bake, but I figured the teachers probably get pretty tired of the tins of cookies brought in by other families. Since I love making cards, I decided to get on the computer and try my hand at creating them all some personalized stationary.

For the most part, I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. Each teacher will get a dozen cards in 4 different colors with matching envelopes. I asked Mr. Crackers for his opinion on the idea and discovered that the concept of personalized notecards seems to be a complete mystery to him (to paraphrase Mr. Crackers a bit... apparently the appreciation of personalized notecards requires a vagina).

The most exciting part is that I had everything I needed for this project up in my office already, so the out of pocket cost for this project is $0. All it took was a little time & creativity.

Now that I've gotten started, I just can't seem to stop making them. I've been playing with the colors & fonts and designing them for other special people as gifts. And yes Mr. Crackers, all of the recipients will have a vagina.

Updates here & there

2009-12-07T14:00:00.007-05:00

Since I know you've all been on pins and needles waiting for me to do a little follow up on some previous posts, (said with a dose of heavy sarcasm) I thought I'd catch you up on things here around the House of Crackers:

~~Supper~~ Gourmet Club
You'll be happy to know that the dinner we hosted for ~~Supper~~ Gourmet Club on Saturday was a success. Yea! I'm sorry to say that I have no pictures to share of the evening because I was a bit stressed out about frying up my first ever batch of chicken for a group of people with discriminating palettes. (of course it could also be said I was too also too busy sampling martinis...)

The chicken turned out both crispy and juicy (which it should have been considering it spent 24 hours brining in a salt water bath, followed by another 24 hours soaking in buttermilk). It was a fun night filled with delicious southern favorites and tasty martinis. I think the star of the evening was the Bourbon Glazed Bread Pudding served with brown sugar ice cream (Haagan-Daz, I will be soon be writing a love sonnet for your brown sugar ice cream). Sweet, sweet bourbon bread pudding, where have you been all my life?

Now I just have to figure out how to get the smell of fried chicken, bacon & lard out of my house. It smelled delicious as it was all cooking Saturday night, but 2 days of living in a place that smells like KFC is starting to bring me down a little. A friend of mine suggested leaving out bowls of white vinegar & that seems to have helped a bit. If I ever make another batch of fried chicken again, I'll do it in a warmer month so I can open all the windows to air the place out a bit.

If I can't get the smell out soon, Santa will be expecting a plate of fried chicken when he comes down the chimney instead of cookies.

The Dining Room Dilemma
As a follow up to my post about my complete lack of decorating prowess, I wanted to let you know that we decided to replace the curtains in the dining room. Since the "Harry Potter" red plaid curtains in the room seemed to make Mr. Crackers' a little anxious when paired with all of the other patterns in the room, we decided to replace them with solid green panels. Of course it was also considerably less expensive than option #2 which was replacing the area rug. We hoped the new curtains would help us tie the conflicting patterns of the newly covered chairs with the patterned area rug.

Here's the result:

And from another angle:

Did it work? Hmm, good question. I will tell you that these green curtains definitely work with all of the patterns in the room better than the plaid ones they are replacing, but I'll also tell you that I definitely shouldn't be allowed in a fabric store again anytime soon.

Misplaced priorities on my to-do list
And finally, just thought I'd share what I did while K was napping today. I'm sure you are thinking I was working on the normal things that keep us all busy this time of year: writing Christmas cards or Christmas shopping or even starting to pull together my son's 7th birthday party which will be here in just a few weeks...

Nope, I spent my "down" time this afternoon organizing my spices & putting little tiny labels on them so I could actually find them quickly without doing my usual 5 minute spicy scavenger hunt.

I am very excited about the labels, don't they make it so much easier to find the spice you're looking for (yes I know I am dork, we've discussed that before haven't we)? In my defense, I will tell you that my Mom was performing the same task today & put the idea in my head so I will shift the blame to her. I'm just saying that if your Christmas cards are late this year, now you know why. It's worth though isn't it?

Thanks for the idea Mom. Hope you got your cabinets done too!

I'll take the lard... with a side of bacon

2009-12-05T13:53:00.004-05:00

This evening Mr. Crackers & I take our turn hosting ~~Supper~~ Gourmet Club. ~~Supper~~ Gourmet Club was the brainchild of a friend of ours who thought it would be fun to get together with a group of friends ~~once a month~~ ~~every other month~~ whenever we can find time on everyone's schedule, for a night of cocktails and fine dining WITHOUT CHILDREN. While I've always had trouble referring to the dinners as Gourmet Club (which definitely sounds a like something I would not get invited to under normal circumstances) the meals themselves have definitely warranted the title.

So far we've had delicious meals inspired by the cuisines of Italy, South America & Japan. All of them featured sumptuous food & tasty wines and cocktails. Truly, they have all been meals that rival the food found in some of the best restaurants around town.

So, tonight it's time for the House of Crackers to host the group. What is the theme, you ask? Well, Mr. Crackers and I picked Southern Cuisine. You see, one of the couples in the group (the couple whose idea it was to start the club in the first place and who are the "glue" that holds the rest of us together) will be ~~deserting~~ ~~abandoning~~ moving to Atlanta sometime in the next couple of months. Since we ourselves just moved from there a few years ago, it seemed a fitting theme.

But, this meal really won't be a true Gourmet Club event, at it's heart it going to be Supper Club. While there are a lot of innovative dishes that are part of the cuisine of the "New South" this dinner will be paying homage to traditional family-style southern recipes. I will be frying up my first ever batch of fried chicken. If you've never cooked fried chicken before, let me just tell you ~~to go to KFC instead~~ it seems like there is a lot that could go wrong....I am feeling more than a little pressure about this evening's dining experience. I know now why I prefer getting my fried chicken right from the Colonel himself (It only takes 5 minutes of waiting in line & it always tastes good). We'll also be having wilted salad, squash casserole and bourbon glazed bread pudding.
Mmm, I think my mouth is already watering.

I hope everyone has a great time tonight & that the food will live up to the high standards set by the meals we've had in the past. But perhaps I should lower my expectations a bit. Honestly, I will just be happy if no one keels over from clogged arteries by the end of the evening. The amount of butter, bacon, mayonnaise, and (lord, help me) lard that is being used tonight to prepare these dishes may have us all wishing this night of traditional Southern cooking never happened. It's a good thing we restocked the bar.

Bon Appetit Y'all!

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

2009-11-25T15:00:00.004-05:00

I just got a call from my parents that my sister & her family have arrived. Let the holiday festivities begin!

The older I get, the more I seem to like Thanksgiving. In fact, it rivals Christmas as my favorite holiday. There's just something wonderful about gathering together with family (or friends) and enjoying one another's company over a meal filled with comfort foods. When you add to that the smell of roasting turkey and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, what's not to like?

Last year I posted a short pilgrim story that C had written in kindergarten. To be fair, I thought I would let K handle this year's tribute to the holiday.

I know I have a lot to be thankful for. Now I can add the fact that I'm not a turkey to my list of blessings.

May your your turkey be juicy, may your gravy be smooth and may you enjoy the smiles and laughter of those around you.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

The dining room dilemma

2009-11-25T14:06:00.007-05:00

The dining room is the first room you see when you come to visit us here at the house of Crackers and quite frankly it's pretty uninspiring. The walls are a golden tan color, the floors are a honey stained wood and the dining room set is also a light golden hue. Even the fabric on the dining chairs is a solid color in the tan/gold family.

The only bits of color in the room are an area rug (whose primary colors are...you guessed it gold and brown with some bits of red & green), the curtains (which are red & gold plaid - Mr. Crackers thinks they look like they belong in a Harry Potter movie) and a mirror and hutch which are both painted a barn red.

I had been trying to think of something inexpensive to give the space some color without making it too dark. Usually when faced with this problem my first instinct is to paint, but since I wasn't sure what color to use, I had been mulling over some other options. A couple of months ago, it occurred to me that if I could recover the chairs it would be a really easy (and cheap) way to refresh the whole space.

So, last week I ventured to a local fabric store with my Mom and the paint swatches for the walls and the red hutch to see what I could do about giving the room a new look. I found a fabric that I really liked that matched my paint colors & ever better, fit into my budget.

Ta da...

I really thought it was pretty. I was bold and looked really good against the light wood and walls. I was really proud of myself - I was going to make a dramatic impact in a room and pull everything together for under $100.00. Wahoo!

Except, that once I started recovering the chairs, I noticed something. You see, while the fabric looked great against the walls and really set off the honey color of the furniture, it did not really match the carpet... at all. It turns out that the red in the carpet was not really the same red that the hutch & the mirror were painted and um... the brown in the background of the fabric is completely different than the brown in the carpet. Ooops!

Not only that, but it seems that the pattern I chose for the chairs doesn't really work well with the pattern in the carpet. In fact, they kind of fight each other for your attention.

Unfortunately, the room which was so boring that it was putting me to sleep is now filled with so many competing patterns that it is starting to give Mr. Crackers a headache (Sorry Mr. Crackers, I had forgotten about the patterned couch in the sitting room, oops.)

This picture doesn't quite illustrate the cacophony of pattern that assaults your eye when you come into the room. But trust me...it's a lot to take in.

So now Mr. Crackers & I are talking about either replacing the carpet (which would be significantly more than my $50.00 budget for re-decorating this room) or replacing the Harry Potter curtains (a far more likely scenario that is not nearly as budget crushing as getting a new rug.)

Oh well, I guess I won't send in my audition tape for HGTV's Design Star this year.

Finding the right look...

2009-11-14T15:27:00.002-05:00

I've mentioned in previous posts that my 6 year old son has been doing some experimenting with his personal style lately.

You may recall that at the beginning of the school year he was going for what I like to call "The Erkel" look. This uber-conservative style had him buttoning all of his uniform shirts to the top & tucking them into his pants so tightly that I feared he was limiting the mobility of the top half of his body. Since a lot of his time is spent in his school uniform his means of self expression is somewhat limited, so I tend to just let him do his thing.

One day about a month ago he declared that he wanted his hair put into "standing up spikes" for school that morning. I asked him what inspired this new style & he just said he thought it would look cool. So, I got out the gel & went to work. He got a couple of smiles & speculative glances, but overall he must have had at least some postive feedback since he's still at it. These days though he does it all on his own. "I don't need help Mom! I can do it myself!"

I have to say that I think he is starting to express his mood with hair gel. Some days he wets his hair & gels it into spikes on his head. Other days he gels it flat against his head and brushes it all forward (this look kind of creeps me out a bit & I can't seem to resist trying to get it to part off to the side) and then unexpectedly on other days he just leaves alone and goes au naturel.

My point is, I'm never quite sure what kind of hair style the day will bring. Case in point, this past Friday. Both of the kids were off school for teacher in-service days and the only plan we had for the day was a quick trip to K's pre-school for a 15 minute teacher conference. C had gone to the school back in the day & he was excited to see all his old teachers again. He was even more excited about the fact that we were heading to Toys R Us right after the conference so both of them could look around & start putting together a Christmas list (Santa Claus, Mr. Crackers' and I are trying to save a little money this year with all the pre-season sales that are going on).

Do you want to see what kind of hair style that the excitement of a no-school day paired with a trip to a toy store produces?

Wow-ee!
Yep, it's a "faux"hawk. I really have no idea where he's getting this stuff. I volunteer at his periochial school & I can tell you that all the boys I've ever seen there are pretty clean cut looking. I've never even seen a boy with long hair there.

His hairstyle made quite an impression with his former pre-school teachers. That is for certain.

What can I say? I guess he's trying to find his look. I'm a little afraid of what is in store for us in his teen years. If he's sporting a "faux"hawk at 6 what is he going to come up with at 16?! (shudder, shudder...).

I guess only time (& hair gel) will tell.

More bang for your entertainment buck.

2009-11-06T12:47:00.003-05:00

Earlier this week we went to the end of season pizza party for C's soccer team. After dinner most of the boys dissapeared into the game room never to be seen again. After a few minutes I wandered to the back room to see what my hooligan was up to. Large groups of unattended 7-8 year old boys make me nervous.

When I got to the room, this was the scene before me. There are at least 9 boys clustered around a video game watching a teammate play. You'll notice that C looks like he is using the top of the game as some sort of hand hold. I'm not sure what he was standing on, but I wasn't going to tell him to get down. That would mean I would actually have to supply him with his own money to play games.

Playing a video game at your local pizza parlor = $.50
Letting all your friends watch you play for free = priceless!

Tales from the utility room...

2009-11-05T13:09:00.013-05:00

About 2 years ago, Mr. Crackers & I bought ourselves a new water heater from a store that we'll call Smears. We've bought a lot of appliances from this company over the years (including a water heater that we installed in our previous home) and never had a problem until Mabel came into our lives (I have decided for no particular reason that I am going to refer to our water heater as Mabel for the rest of this post. It's just been one of those kind of days...)

Now Mabel (the water heater) worked really well for the first 2 months after we got her. We had hot water when we needed it & we never gave her a second thought.

Apparently though, Mabel was getting lonely & decided she needed some additional attention. So she decided that she would shut herself down overnight so that Mr. Crackers & I would be faced with an ice cold shower the following morning. This way she could ensure that we no longer took her powers of heating water for granted & would stop down and pay her a visit from time to time.

It didn't take more than a few days of cold showers for Mr. Crackers & I to call up our local Smears repairman to see what was going on. He came out & declared that the problem was that dirt & debris was getting into ~~the water heater~~ Mabel & causing the pilot light to shut off. All we had to do, he said, was get down on our bellies & use a shower brush to clean the screen near the pilot light and then use a vacuum cleaner to suck it all out.

Oh, is that all??

To me this seemed seemed a little strange, since I had lived on my own for almost 20 years & had never had to do this before. When I conveyed this sentiment to the Smears repairman, he said that these new water heaters were extra sensitive & that as long as we regularly cleaned her out that we could expect Mabel to have a long and healthy life.

And so, I got down on my belly every few weeks to clean out Mabel's nether regions with a shower brush (see exhibit A above). And every evening for the next 18 months, I would check the pilot light on the water heater before I went to bed.

But despite the cleanings & my vigilant checking of the pilot light, Mr. Crackers & I spent the next 18 months playing a game of Russian roulette "the shower edition". We'd have weeks go by where hot water was plentiful & we rejoiced in our warm morning shower. Then, randomly we would wake up (even though I checked the pilot light the night before) & we'd be faced with water cold enough to freeze the tenders off a polar bear.

Finally, after the frequency of the cold showers started to wear on us, I called the local Smears repairman again. He came to the house & after a quick check told us "Oh, it's the pilot light assembly. That has gone bad on a lot of these models. All we have to do is just change that out & everything should work again for you."

I told him our story about the ritual cleaning of the water heater & he shot me a look that said "Hey there crazy, do you mind leaving the utility room so I can get to work actually fixing your problem?" So I left him to his repairs feeling a little silly for having spent the past 18 months cleaning a water heater whose actual problem was a malfunctioning pilot light assembly. But, as long as the problem was fixed and we had hot water, I was ready to let bygones be bygones.

After that last visit, all was well again for a couple of months until.... yep, you guessed it, once again we were facing arctic morning showers. Needless to say, Mr. Crackers & I were starting to get more than a little cranky about the whole water heater problem. Mabel was definitely becoming a gigantic thorn in my ever widening backside.

I told the third Smears repairman all of our woes the moment he set foot in our house. I led him downstairs to the utility room explaining what had occurred at all of the previous visits & told him that we were really, really tired of the cold showers. As I turned to leave him to his job, he stopped me & said "Don't move! I can tell what your problem is just by looking at your hot water heater. Come over here."

I figured he was some kind of hot water heater whisperer or something. Clearly this man had a gift. I walked over to the water heater & looked where he was excitedly pointing. Apparently the problem as our flue. It was not venting properly. He could tell that by all the SCORCH marks on the top of the poor old Mabel. When I looked, I discovered he was right - Poor Mabel's topside had 4 distinct scorch marks. Yikes!

After receiving this concerning news we called our HVAC guy to look at Mabel's flue & since he was there we asked him to go ahead & do the annual service on our furnace. The furnace was rapidly approaching the 20 year mark & we'd been hoping to extend the life of it a bit by making sure we got serviced and checked every year.

Well, the good news was that the flue was going to be easy to repair, the bad news was that our furnace looked like it was not going to quite make it through the winter.

"How bad is it?" I asked. "Are we right on the edge of needing a new furnace?"

The repairman looked at me kindly (& kid of pityingly) and said. "Well, let me put it this way: your toes are already over the edge and you are starting to lose your balance. Even a slight breeze could push you right over. My recommendation is that you start thinking about a new furnace."

It's a good thing we had a lot of cash lying around the house that we didn't know what to do with. Oh wait... I must have gotten us confused with another family. We didn't have piles of cash, but we did have a problem that needed a serious solution. After the initial panic subsided, we were able to secure a short term interest free loan from the bank of kind-hearted and generous family members (or KHGFM).

After receiving many bids & getting many worried looks from HVAC contractors who left our house after seeing our furnace asking us "You have a working CO monitor right?" We finally got a new furnace (& AC unit since that was also teetering very close to end of it's natural life) installed yesterday.

Here it is....TA DA!

Isn't it beautiful?

OK, I know it's pretty utilitarian looking. Man, you'd think for all the money these things cost they could make them look a little prettier. I mean can we add a little color here? How about red, or even a nice chocolate brown color?

I'm thinking of hanging Christmas lights on it...what do you think? We spent so much money that I feel like we should be doing more with it than just using it to heat our house. I'm considering using it as a backdrop for our annual Christmas Card portrait.

We'll save the new AC unit for the Easter pictures this spring.

Oh and by the way, we had hot water this morning for our shower thanks to Mabel and her brand new flue.

October: the month in review

2009-10-26T14:06:00.024-04:00

OK, OK...so it's been about a month since the last time I even signed into my blogger account. Apparently reliability & consistency don't rank too high among my blogging virtues.

October always seems to be the busiest month of the year around the House of Crackers. Between soccer games, anniversaries, birthday parties, hayrides, and Halloween, we seem to spend every October running around like crazy people. By comparison, even December seems peaceful.

Now that I am in the final week of the month, I feel like I can finally start catching my breath a bit. I still have to host the Halloween party at K's pre-school on Friday & we still have a hayride & a soccer tournament to face before the month closes, but I think I am starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel.

Just to catch up a bit (if there is still anyone who still visits this blog in the off chance I actually write something), I thought I'd fill you in on what has gone on here at the House of Crackers over the past several weeks:

We always kick off October getting the house ready for Halloween. Mr. Crackers and I have always loved Halloween, even before the kids were born. We used to host an annual costume party when we lived in Atlanta. It was great fun & we'd go nuts getting the house ready & picking out our costumes... but that's a story for a different day.

While we don't throw a Halloween party anymore, we still love decorating the house and now that kids help out too, it just makes it even more fun.

We don't do anything too spooky, just a few ghosts hanging from the trees & a small ~~yet tasteful~~ graveyard. Usually the leaves on our large maple tree don't fall until after Halloween, but this year they have started falling a bit early.

I think it's helping with the overall ambiance. At least that's the story we are telling our neighbors. It sounds better than saying we won't get around to raking the leaves until after Halloween is over.

Around mid-month I attended K's field trip to a local farm. I would call it a pumpkin patch, but that would be generous since there were very few actual pumpkins there. I wouldn't have minded much except for they charged $7.00 per person to go on the hayride, which meant I paid $14.00 for the 2 of us to ride about 400 feet in a wooden wagon, and then hunt through a pumpkin patch cleverly disguised as a field of briers to try to find a pumpkin.

It was like Where's Waldo. I mean, look at that picture, can you even spot another pumpkin? I'm telling you, these pumpkins were hard to find. The few that we did find were either green or rotten. There wasn't a single pumpkin there larger than about 5 inches in diameter. K is proudly holding the largest, non-rotting pumpkin that we were able to find. Thankfully pre-schoolers can't carry very large pumpkins anyway, so they left the hayride as satisfied (and very, very muddy) customers.

Later that same week, Mr. Crackers took a day off of work and we headed over to a nearby Children's Museum for the day as a special treat for K's upcoming 4th birthday. We had a great time & even found that they had a Star Wars exhibit going on.

Is it just me or does it seem like every other post I write has some reference to Star Wars? It probably won't be a surprise when I tell you that C's Halloween costume this year will be Star Wars related. I bet I can guess what will dominate his Christmas list as well...

Later that same weekend we hosted a neighborhood party for K's 4th party. We invited a lot of the neighborhood kids for the puppy themed event. We played games, did a craft & of course had a pinata. Here is K whacking "Burrito" (yes, she named it) the puppy pinata.

I found the whole puppy pinata visual a little disturbing. It seemed wrong to be encouraging these small children to whack the dog as hard as they could until all of his guts spilled out. It was even more disturbing once poor Burrito lost his head.

Poor, poor Burrito. The kids weren't sad though....they were thrilled that Burrito was hiding packets of Skittles & M&M's inside his tired, broken little body. Rest in peace Burrito.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the month (at least for me) was the visit from our good friend KK. She & I have been friends for about 15 years. We met back in Atlanta when we were both still working for the company that sponsors that big parade on Thanksgiving Day. We hit it off instantly & have been close ever since. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding and one of Cameron's Godmothers (he had two - who couldn't use 2 Godmothers?)

She travels a lot and keeps herself busy with work and her passion for photography. Even though we keep in touch pretty regularly, time has flown by & she hadn't seen my two hooligans in a couple of years. I was thrilled that she was able to make the trip north for a visit. It's amazing how easy it is to hang out with good friends, even if you haven't seen them for ages.

The highlight of our weekend together (at least for my 2 hooligans) was a visit to our local pumpkin patch where low & behold they had pumpkins. Oodles of pumpkins & not a one was rotten or green ... and most measured significantly more than 5" in diameter.

We all looked around for a bit & took the opportunity to take our annual pumpkin pickin' pictures before paying for our booty & taking it back to the car.

Now all we have to do is carve them. Oops, I guess I need to add that to the to-do list this week as well. Maybe that light at the end of the tunnel is a little farther off than I thought.

Party dresses

2009-09-28T13:45:00.006-04:00

One of the highlights of my daughter's morning is our walk out to the mailbox. She loves to open the door & see what came for her. Usually the answer to that question is nothing. But on occasion she receives postcards from her grandparents or from traveling friends.

Typically I hand her all of the toy & kids' clothing catalogs that come to the house since she loves to look at them while I fix lunch. Usually her interest in the catalogs is relatively short lived. She looks at them once or maybe twice & then moves on to a different activity.

This pattern was changed about two weeks ago when we received a catalog from The Wooden Soldier. I handed K the catalog before I even looked at it & she was immediately hooked. She poured over it the entire day. She even brought it to her brother's soccer practice that evening so she could look at it some more.

It's two weeks later and she has been carrying that catalog around with her almost ever since. It was getting really ratty, but thankfully we received another catalog from the same company at the end of last week. This is really good since most days she wants the two of us to look at the catalog instead of reading stories before her nap time.

She has already picked out her two favorite dresses.

She has told me that I should buy her this first dress for her 4th birthday that is coming up in October. According to her "It's a beautiful party dress"...

She's right about that, but I think it might be a little dressy for the "Puppy Party" theme she has picked out. The vibrant red corduroy would make a really pretty Christmas dress. I can already envision how cute she'll look in the holiday family picture. And the best part is that it is only $92.00! Umm...what?! Wait a second here... I don't think I've spent that kind of money on a dress since I purchased my wedding dress 12 years ago.

It is a pretty dress, but seriously I cannot part with that kind of cash for a something that will be worn at a birthday party for a 4 year old where everyone will be wearing dog ears & running relay races with plastic bones (honestly I couldn't spend that much on a dress for a 4 year old even if the theme were Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous. No sir, I'm sorry but I just can't do it.)

Ok, on to the next. Maybe she just happened to pick out the one pricey dress in the catalog. What's your next favorite K?

Oooh. Good pick. Very pretty & the ivory satin is so practical (for sitting and staring off into space with your clean hands folded neatly on your lap). The price of this number is a mere $119.00. Holy Guacamole! What's going on here Wooden Soldier? You are killing me.

Now I'm not saying that these dresses aren't beautiful, because they are. And I'm not saying that this company is a little nuts for selling dresses at this price point, because I am sure that there are ~~a couple people~~ lots of people who think that $119.00 is a perfectly reasonable price to pay for a dress for a 4 year old. All I am saying is that none of these people happen to live in my house or anywhere in my neighborhood.

It should come as no surprise to anyone (except for K - who at 3 has no concept of the value of money) that she will not be getting a dress from the Wooden Soldier for her birthday this year. Instead, I'll be trolling through Target & Ebay to see if I can find an acceptable substitute for about a quarter of the price. Wish me luck.

I'm a little nervous about the fact she's not even 4 yet & her taste levels are running toward dresses that cost over $100.00. I can't wait to see what she's going to want to wear when she's ten. I'm picturing diamond studded jackets and platinum shoes.

A room with a new view

2009-09-23T12:07:00.012-04:00

Those of you who have read this blog in the past know that Mr. Crackers loves a good project. Most of his endeavours have happened outdoors, primarily in the backyard. In the past few years he has built a playhouse, a patio and a play set (I'm sure he's also built things that don't start with the letter p, but the alliteration thing is working for me today...).

Normally, I (kind of) head up the projects inside the house. Mostly because they tend to be smaller & involve wall paper removal or paint -- things that are well within my limited scope of home improvement expertise and don't have to be completed before the first snowfall ( I tend to have a problem letting my projects languish a bit before completion).

Recently though Mr. Crackers decided the time had come for him to put his creative stamp on something inside the house. He had won a small incentive bonus at work for a job well done (go Mr. Crackers!) and decided he knew exactly what he wanted to do with the unexpected influx of cash. He wanted to re-do C's bedroom.

He's been brainstorming ideas for the room for quite some time (I think I've mentioned before that Mr. Crackers is an idea man). I hadn't really ignored his designs but I figured they were far-off, if we win the lottery, type of ideas. (You know what I'm talking about... ideas like re-doing the kitchen, or buying a new car, or going to vacation in Hawaii... Good ideas without funding are really just dreams, and both of us do love to dream!)

But Mr. Crackers was ready to put his (newly earned) money where his mouth was.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I thought I'd show you a picture of C's room before the re-do. There were no issues with C's room as it was. His bed & dresser were the same ones used by Mr. Crackers when he was a boy, but they were in pretty good shape. It was a comfortable room, but one that was dominated by a full size bed that took up a lot of the floor space. Despite this, we've had years of fun playing with Lego's, dress-up clothes and Hot Wheels on the floorspace that was available.

(Please note that these pictures are pretty old & that C has not slept with rails on the side of his bed for a couple of years. I should also point out that the photos were taken in December & that we don't normally keep a Christmas tree in his room year round).

In short it was a good room for a growing boy, but Mr. Crackers thought we could do better.

His vision for the room included a loft bed which would give us more floor space for a desk & room to play. So with these ends in mind, we headed to our local Ikea store.

Low & behold, they had just what we were looking for & last weekend we got the whole thing set up. I have to say, it's pretty awesome.

Once I got over my initial fear that C would fall out of bed in the middle of the night & break all of the bones in his body, I have come to love this room. C loves it too. Not only does he have a lot more room to play, but he's got a big boy desk that's entirely his own. He spends hours at that desk drawing his favorite scenes from the Star Wars movies & looking at his favorite books & magazines.

The real unexpected bonus of the room is that I have stopped nagging C to make his bed since I can't see it anymore (frankly, making the bed when it is 5 feet off the floor & fit tightly into a corner is a near impossible task that I can barely do myself. Mr. Crackers has not only given his son a cool room, he's also manage to eliminate a chore for him!).

The shelving units are so cool. I love how much space he has now to display his books, stuffed animals & of course his many, many Legos...

I really can't believe how great the room looks. I'm really impressed that Mr. Crackers was able to visualize this layout & get it all accomplished for so much less than I thought possible. Mr. Crackers & Ikea seem to be a formidable team.

I'm also really happy that C has done so well in his new higher bed. Thankfully my fears of a fall have not been realized. He's been in the new bed for a week's worth of middle of the night bathroom runs & has never even stumbled down the stairs let alone taken a fall. I think I can relax a bit now.

We'll be putting all the finishing touches on the room this weekend. I found some Star Wars vinyl decals which will go up to replace the pictures from the movie Finding Nemo that have decorated his walls since he was an infant.

Well done once again Mr. Crackers! You are a good Daddy. C will be loving this room for a lot of years to come.

Tuesday mornings make me smile

2009-09-23T11:35:00.008-04:00

There are times that even though my children don't look much like me, I know they are mine.

K has been wanting to take ballet lessons for quite a long time (which is really saying something since she's not quite 4 years old). This fall she was finally old enough to take lessons so we got her signed up for the Tuesday morning class & bought all the appropriate paraphernalia.

I myself never took ballet lessons, I was missing the all too important "grace" gene that is crucial to success as a ballerina. I seemed to gravitate more toward sports where falling down a lot & injuring myself was a little more acceptable.

As you watch this video, I think you will see that I may have passed on this lack of grace & coordination to my youngest child. K is in the black skirt closest to the teacher who is attempting to teach them all how to execute a curtsy (just in case you were wondering...)

The good news is that grace isn't required for the 3 & 4 year old pre-ballet class - just a willingness to participate & have a good time. I think we've got those two items covered in spades.