Miscellaneous Ramblings

Chocolate and school-ism:
I'd like everyone to meet Chocolate. No he's not an addition to our home, but merely a guest for the past weekend. Chocolate is the first grade class pet and we had the pleasure of hosting him for the weekend. Let me just tell you, when you walk into the room the morning after you bring a classpet home and he's belly up, your heart stops. Luckily, this is just the way he apparently sleep.s He looks completely like the male he was, sprawled out on his back with one leg up.

Other points to note, when said class pet comes home with a ball to roll around in, do not, and I repeat, do not let him roll around with a two year old in the room. Said two year old will proceed to try and bounce, spin and kick the ball as often as she can. Of course, it could be because said two year old is just evil....

In other news, the girls came home with school fund raising packets. They are selling Yankee Candle items. "Hey look ,your kids came back to school - time to send home a fund raiser. When this one ends, we'll give you another one..." Really though, I just need to say no, we're not going to do this one. So far, my family has been good sports, but one of these days, they're going to figure out just ho much they are funding my kids to go to school.

Meenie absolutely loves school. She goes three 1/2 days a week and has already told me "she's not learning enough and needs to stay all day. She also needs to go everyday". Which is why I was scratching my head as to why she didn't want me to leave this morning.

Einey also loves school. She is over her fears that first grade will be too hard. I'm sure it will be challenging, but her teacher is always there with encouragement. She shocked her teacher on the first day with how well she reads, so I guess thats a good thing! As she says "Tomorrow is going to be more fun than today."

Driving, driving, driving...
Yesterday, we decided to do something we haven't done in a long, long time. We woke up early, grabbed some snacks, the camera and hoped in the car. With no destination in sight, we just drove. After driving by a cement manufacturing plant, Husband and I heard from the back "what the HELL are those guys doing?" A quick "what" and repeated of said statement proved our ears were not playing tricks on us. Just don't go repeating that in school please! Now if you've read any other posts in this blog, you'll know the girls are fascinated with death and cemeteries. We happened to pass an old cemetery when the girls started asking can we stop? They love wandering through cemeteries looking at the stones and trying to find the oldest one (I know odd hobby). So since we were right near the big one where their Great-Meme was buried, we decided to stop. The girls hoped out and immediately found the one with their name on it (well last name, but you get the picture). Now this is the only person they know who has died, so we talked a bit. I have to say, they are starting to forget things about her. We pulled some grass back that was growing over hers and their great-pepe's stones as well as took their picture next to the stone. It also dawned on us that it was Grandparent's Day (when exactly did this become a holiday?) so it holds special meaning to us. We continued on our drive and I have to say, we didn't really see anything too interesting. I was a little bummed, but the kids were great in the van for 1/2 the day. It give me hope for when we decide to drive to Virginia (or gulp, Disney). We did end our trip at a small river (stream?) which we definitely want to go back and explore. Einey caught a frog (of course). It looks like a great place to take them fishing! A great place to relax, if only we could keep them still for more than 3 seconds!

We were driving through Springfield later that day and some Mass-hole cut us off. Husband yells "jacka$" out the window which was immediately asked "why did you yell checkers at that car Daddy?" Umm... they were playing checkers, thats why.

Soccer:
In other news, the child that could be found standing around mid field, watching the others run byy, well that would be mine. Einey would run a little bit, but if the pack got to far ahead, she would stop and watch them, waiting for them to kick the ball past her again. Then since the others were running towards the ball, she'd stand and watch them run to it. I think running is not for her. We spent 3 1/2 hours at the soccer field, because their games were scheduled for 9 and 11 am. This week - they are both at 9 am so I need to figure out how to split myself in half as Husband is working this weekend.

And lastly, how to keep your kids occupied:
This last week has been an eye opener of keeping my kids occupied. As the ysat and quietly watched the tree guys trimming some branches off the oak out front for FOUR hours, it dawned on me. Contractors are the best thing in the world. The kids aren't fighting or watching TV. They are however, sitting engrossed in front of a window, watching the work go on outside. As a bonus, after the tree guys let, the neighbor's house painters showed up! Now if I could just afford to hire more contractors...

And who needs toys? Moe has been loving the set of bottle caps she found. Those, along with a tin dish provide hours of fun. Pog is a great game -why did kids stop playing it? Oh yeah, because new toys come with batteries.... Grab a bottle cap and toss, grab and toss. Now all we need is some more cardboard boxes, because we all know how kids would rather play with those instead of the toys that come inside....