School's out, school's out...Yay!

Uh...what WAS I thinking? It was getting harder and harder to get the boys to bed at a reasonable time, and getting harder and harder to get them up in time for school at 7:40. I think Jonson had more tardy slips the last 6 weeks of school this year than he's had in his whole 7 yrs of school! I was so ready for school to be out to end those two battles. And end they did, but others have begun. They're bored, they're grumpy, they don't like each other, they don't like me, I don't like them, and on it goes. How many days until school starts again?

To Blog or Not to Blog, that is the...well, you know

I am not a very consistent Blogger. It's not that I don't have plenty to bore you with, it's just that most of what happens around here is kind of unbelievable. Take for instance a Monday morning, about 3 weeks ago. I took the boys to school, came home, and let the dogs out. I was having a sprinkler system and sod installed (thanks Springbrook Meadows HOA for you nice little "reminder" that I was in violation of the HOA by-laws with my dead grass), so those guys were here. The doorbell rang. It was the Avon lady with a delivery. Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang again, it was Fed-Ex with a delivery. Ten minutes later, doorbell. It's Ken, the yard guy. He needs me to look at something. Doorbell. It's the Schwan's man. I contemplate disconnecting the doorbell. I go to let the dogs back in because they're going to be working in the back yard. No dogs. Jonson left the gate open the night before. Get in car, drive around the neighborhood, looking for dogs. I see cats, squirrels, people walking dogs, people jogging, rabbits, but no sign of my escapees. I come back home, call Pflugerville Animal Control and leave a message, post an ad on craigslist, and plop down to drink a diet coke and ponder my next move. I was tempted to go up to the school and pull Jonson out of class to look for the dogs, since he left the gate open, but his class was on a field trip. As I'm sipping my diet coke, the doorbell rings again. A gentleman has found one of the dogs, and has brought her home. He saw the other one, but she wouldn't come to him, but he was going to go back to where he'd seen her and see if he could coax her to come to him. I decide to follow him in my car, walk out the door, close the door, but have no keys. Uh-oh. The door is locked. I try to call Jennika on the yard guy's phone, because I don't have my phone, either, but realize, before it even starts to ring, that I had to borrow her key the night before because Jonson had misplaced both of my keys. Okay. I'll get the garage door opener out of the Expedition, and see if by some small piece of luck (I'm not holding my breath here) the garage door might be unlocked. Nope. Ken (yard guy) suggests breaking the glass on the backdoor would probably be cheaper than calling PopALock, and I concur. However, the backdoor was open to let in fresh air, so no glass had to be broken, Ken just pushed the screen in, unlocked the door, walked through the house, and let me back in the front door. I get the keys AND phone, and head to the place where the other dog was spotted, but meet the guy who found the first dog was coming around the corner as I started backing out, and he has the other dog in tow. I introduced myself, thanked him profusely, and offered him a reward (he declined). He explained that he wouldn't have been home at all, but when he got to work that morning, he'd found out that his position had been eliminated, and he was sent home. And I thought I was having a bad day! Let me add, though, that all of this happened before 10:00 in the morning! To blog or not to blog...

Brotherly love...NOT

Seems like for the last couple of weeks, Jonson and Joseph have been in holy, living terror mode. For awhile, I was hoping it was the full moon, or maybe the change in the weather. Once those two things passed, I gave up trying to figure out what the cause was/is. If one of them is kind and cheerful, the other is gripey, grumpy, and hateful, or worse, like today, they are both in a bad mood. They are hateful and hurtful, both physically and verbally with each other, and verbally hateful and snotty with everyone else. You would think with the holidays looming, they would at least try to make a pretense of trying to be good. At this point, I would be happy if they would fake being nice to each other for an hour or two.

Tell me there's a full moon, please...

At least that would explain this crazy week! Or, maybe the weather's going to change, and the barometric pressure is rising or falling.

I finally broke down and hired an organizer to help me unpack the rest of the boxes in the office, and clean out a couple of closets. She came on Friday, and we got a lot done. We carried about 8 bags of trash to the curb, and she hauled off a load to Goodwill, and that was just the office. She came back on Monday to finish up the office, and work on the closets, and she was here just a little too long. She started wanting to move EVERYTHING! She decided that anything that had anything to do with outdoors, should reside outdoors...flip flops, swim fins, water shoes, etc. I repeatedly told her these things didn't do well outside because of they tend to deteriorate with the temperature changes. I finally convinced those things weren't going outside, so she put them in a box, in the closet with the beach towels (other outside stuff)! I hadn't asked her to do anything in the kitchen, but I did have a couple of cabinets that were pretty scary, so we knocked those out pretty quickly, but she wanted to clear the counter tops, rearrange my pet supplies, straighten up the tools on the shelf in the laundry room. Don't get me wrong, it looks great, but now my crockpot, which Jennika had borrowed, has no place to live, so I'll have to find a new location for it when it comes home. By 4:00, I was ready for her to be gone.

Of course, on Tuesday, Jennika's friends had their health emergencies, and I made the famous "snot trip" to Target with all the boys. As soon as we dropped Jacey off with his daddy, we came home, and I ordered pizza and pretty much vegged on the couch for the rest of the evening.

Toni came to clean yesterday, so I try to vacate the premises. If I'm paying someone to clean my house because I don't want to, I sure don't want to sit around watching them clean! I had some errands to run, so I went to the post office, bank, Home Depot, a vitamin/herb shop, Lowe's, with a stop at KFC for some lunch. I got home with enough time to watch a little TV before it was time to pick the boys up.

There was a lot of stuff in the backseat that I needed to get out in order to pick the boys up. On Mondays and Wednesdays, Jennika picks up the son of a former co-worker of hers and keeps him until his mom can pick him up after work, so there was no way he and Joseph were both going to be able to sit back there. I was loading the sodas into the cart to bring them in, and I saw a little dog next door, but didn't think anything about it. My neighbor was getting ready to leave, too. His friend hollered for him not to back up, there was a dog behind his car. I looked at the dog more closely, wondering if it was Jennika's Lhasa Apso. I said, "Dos?", and he came running. I collared him, dragged him into the house, put him in Pidgeon's crate, much to his disgruntlement, then had to hurry to get the stuff out of the car and get to school to pick the boys up on time!

After I picked them up, we went to Jennika's house to check on the other dog, Rebel. When Jonson opened the gate, she bum rushed him, and took off. We captured her, put her in her crate, and finally, came home. Joseph and Tyler don't play that well together. They're both used to getting their own way, but Joseph had homework to do, so that occupied him for about 30 - 45 minutes, and then I made them take turns playing the Nintendo DS. Jonson also got the Playstation going for them, so things were pretty peaceful.

I can only hope the rest of the week is less eventful!

Gross Little Boys

Apparently, even amongst little boys, there are levels of grossness. It so happened that this afternoon, I had all 3 of my little guys, Jonson, Joseph, and Jacey, with me. We were on our way to Target. The way that came about is another dramatic story, for another day.

Joseph and Jacey were in the backseat, watching a Sesame Street video. Jonson was in the frontseat, reading a book. We came to a stoplight, and I turned to check on the boys in the back, just at the time Jacey sneezed. It was a big sneeze, and he blew snot all over. I grabbed some Kleenex, handed them back to Joseph and told him he was going to have to wipe Jacey's nose. You would have thought that I had asked him to face the firing squad! He did it reluctantly, loudly making gagging noises, and saying, oooh, ugh, yuck, and any number of other things in the about 2 seconds it took him to complete the task. He then wanted to hand off the offending tissue as quickly as possible, and of course, this was about the time the light turned green.

I instructed Jonson to turn around and make sure Joseph had wiped Jacey's nose in an acceptable manner, and to take the tissues. This prompted more gagging sounds, ooohs, ughs, yucks, and a "Don't get those tissues anywhere near my Corn Nuts" comments from the front seat.

As I said, I guess even gross little boys have levels of grossness!

To Blog or Not to Blog

Well, I decided I would try blogging again, but I couldn't log on, so I had to contact Jennika and find out what was going on. As you all know, I am technologically challenged. I guess they were working out some problems on the website, but it seems all is well now. Trouble is, I don't remember what it was that I wanted to blog about! That's what happens when you get old, and have two "heatherns" to raise. That terminology comes from one of our favorite Baptist peachers, Brother Clifton Igo in Lamesa, Texas.

Speaking of the heatherns, Joseph has already named about a hundred things he wants for Christmas. There is one thing in particular I went ahead and ordered at Target.com. It's one of those items, new this year, that you never know if there will be a shortage of. He's been persistent about asking for this item for several weeks now, and rather than risk heartbreak on Christmas morning (and because there was free shipping) I went ahead and ordered it for him. Now I can only hope that he doesn't change his mind a dozen times in the next few weeks.

Jonson is turning into a teenager before our eyes. One minute he's a sweet, loving little boy, and the next, he's a raving, wild-eyed maniac! Heaven help us all! Of course, everything that he's asking for for Christmas has a starting price of $149.99+!

We're looking forward to a visit from Ogre and Ms J (my brother and sister-in-law). They are planning on coming down the day after Thanksgiving, and staying for a couple of days. We're all very excited to have them coming.

School days, school days

Okay, everybody's jumping on this blogging bandwagon, so I'm going to give it a try, too. I tried for awhile, but my thoughts were so all over the place, and a serious lack of time prevented me from getting into it. However, lately I've been thinking that maybe actually putting some of my thoughts in print, however random, might be helpful.

Jonson has begun his 3rd year (5th grade) at Fannie Mae Caldwell Elementary, so he's been there now as long as he was at Quanah Parker Elementary in Midland. The transition was not easy for him, especially considering the circumstances under which the move was made, but he's done very well. He struggled a bit last year, but he's a G/T student, and we're all planning on being up in his kool-aid more this year to keep him motivated. He's gonna love that!

And what can I say about Joseph? He's a Jekyll and Hyde type of child. He's either sweet, loving, and cooperative, or a wild, spinning, running, jumping, rude, what in the heck where you thinking when you did that, type. He (and his wonderful teacher, Breanna Barlow), survived kindergarten, and he's made it to first grade. His teacher this year, Mrs. Ruckriegel, has either met her match, or she'll whip him into shape. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the latter!

I'm still struggling with organization and moving boxes that haven't been unpacked, even after 2 years. While caring for John, I didn't have the time or energy. I now have the time, and probably energy, just not for THAT. I have a laundry list of chores that I carry over from week to week, but I do manage to mark a few of them off every once in awhile. I guess I lack the motivation, and then there are days like yesterday. The morning started off very well. The boys were ready when Russ came to take them to school, and I was getting a few things done, when I realized Jonson had not taken his medicine. I jumped in the shower so I could go up to the school and take care of that. As I was getting out of the shower, the doorbell rang. I was obviously in no position to answer the door, so I finished getting ready to head out. When I walked into the office, I saw Dixie running around in the front yard! She was very anxious to get back into the house, but there was no sign of Pidgeon. I checked the backyard, thinking maybe she'd had the good sense not to escape with her naughty sister, but no such luck. As I'm walking back towards the frontdoor, the doorbell rings again. It's my next door neighbor, Belinda, with Pidgeon, who is incredibily stinky, having rolled in something while enjoying her freedom. So, I get the dogs corralled, shut the gate that allowed them to make their escape, and go up to the school, only to be told by Jonson he DID take his medicine. I have my doubts, but I'm not going to argue with him in the school office. Back home to go to music class with Jacey and Lillie. All the babies were so cute (especially ours in their matching outfits), and they interacted with each other very well. It was very enjoyable watching them, and was definitely the highlight of the day!