A Sticky Situation

My three year old is determined to give me a heart attack.  Two days ago I noticed Jack's mouth was full of something.  He opened his mouth to show me what it was and it was a HUGE wad of gum.  It looked like he had twenty pieces of gum in his mouth.  I'm sure you can imagine.  Sticky slobber oozing out of the corners of his mouth, and his mouth slowly opening and closing as he's trying to chew a whole package of gum.  He tries to confirm what I already know by telling me what it is.  As he says "gum," more drool falls out.  I freak out because I know he has no intention of just chewing it; he swallows every piece of gum that he gets.  I'm just picturing this huge golfball of stickiness stuck in his stomach for seven years.  I know, I know, that's not true, but still.....  And that's if he doesn't choke on it first.  I'm thinking to myself, it's a good thing Halle and I just did a CPR refresher course this week.

He spits it into my hand, juicy gum slobber and all.  Where did he get gum?

I then remembered that Halle got a whole POUND of Sour Patch gum from her friend.  I had told her when she first got it that she needed to put it out of her brother's reach.  So I start yelling at Halle.  "Your brother could have choked!  I told you to keep it away from him!"  She's telling me that she did by placing it up high on her bookshelf.  She walks into her room.  This is what she finds:  one stool on top of another stool.  I'm guessing he tried to reach with the first stool, and couldn't, so he put another one on top of that!!!!  As you can see, the mother load of gum is sitting on the first shelf, and on the stools lies an open and empty package.  Then I start freaking out (again) thinking of all the ways he could have broken his bones climbing up there... or how the whole bookshelf could have fallen on him.

So today I was doing some laundry and pulled a load of clothes out of the dryer.  There was this super icky residue completely and utterly STUCK to every square inch of my dryer's drum.  What in the world is it?  Turns out Jack had some more pieces in his shorts pockets that I did not know about.  Those wonderful treasures coated the whole dryer and probably the whole load of clothes (I haven't checked them yet because I'm too scared to look.)

doesn't that look like a whole lot of fun to clean?

Thankfully Halle wanted to see what she could find that would clean it.  She spent a solid twenty minutes wiping out the dryer.

So, if you ever need to get gum out of your dryer, you'll need a dry rag, a bunch of windex, and a whole lot of elbow grease.

Never a Dull Moment

I know it's a part of life, but something is always breaking!   It's like we never have a break from the breaking!  Hmmm, let's see.  I'll just go over the things from the last 8 months or so that I can remember.  :)    This list doesn't include the routine maintenance annoyances like having to buy new ink for the printer or new water filters for the fridge.... or the things that we just deal with because it's the last thing we want to worry about (like the small leak from my bathroom faucet.) It also doesn't include the kids that keep me on my toes or the major expenditures that they accrue (like Jack breaking our TV or paying $500 for summer swim league.) No, these are random unplanned, poorly timed things that have required some serious effort or $$$$ to fix, or both.

The pool had a leak.

We fixed that only to find out there was another leak by the waterfall.

The pool hose then needed to be replaced.

Our hot water heater went out.

The electrical panel went out on my van.

Pool chlorinator broke.

Brian's leaf blower broke.

Printer broke.

Something happened to Brian's car (can't remember, but it had to be fixed.)

All of the massive amounts of rain has caused a small lake to form in our backyard.  There is no where for the water to drain because our french drain system was overridden by the new construction behind us.  There are bullfrogs galore that have taken up residence in our backyard as a result.  Not to mention the mosquitoes.

Hail storm has done major damage on our roof.

My teeth suck.  That's a whole other sob story.

Computer screen cracked so bad it's almost unusable.

Transmission in my van went out.  They fixed it and before they could return it to me, it went out again.

Pool pump broke.

Our dog died.

The back brakes went out on my van this weekend.  Those had to be replaced.

So what spurred on this post?  Well, probably the fact that I just soaked up a gallon of water from under my kitchen sink from a leaky faucet!!!

Just when we save enough money for something special, something freaking breaks!!!  I'm at a point now that I just laugh when it happens because there's nothing else I can do!

I'm happy to be alive and I know we are very blessed.  But..... if you feel like one thing after another keeps breaking, know we're right there with ya!!

Jack's recent milestones

Jack has grown by leaps and bounds the last two months.  He's talking so much more and putting together 7-8 words sentences.  He's interested in learning his letters, too!  Before, I would start singing the ABCs, and he would yell, "Stop, Ma!"  We progressed to him saying "A, B, X."  Then he would laugh because he knew he was being silly.  Stinker.  Now we are up to G!  He recognizes almost all of the letters and even knows sounds, so I just have to be patient with him.  The girls were sooo easy when it came to this stuff.  They were in the early stages of reading by his age, but he's just a different character.  

He is observant and can take apart and put things back together.  He likes to tinker.  He likes for things to be orderly, almost to a point where he is OCD about it.  My favorite thing he says lately is, "I got it!  I got it!"  This is in reference to him taking care of something like opening the door for me or bringing the trash can up the driveway.  He's my little man.

He is super smart, but is just so much slower in the language department.  He is getting there, though!

he is practicing his letters

  

other than the first one, these are his Js.

Arden's recent school stuff

Arden has been doing really well at school.  Other than one incident where she got in trouble for talking to her friend, she has had no conduct issues.  This is very surprising to me considering how much she talks.  And talks.  And talks. 

The top picture is from a kindergarten perfomance the kids put on.  The poem below that is what she recited for a grade in her class.  Everyone in the school had to recite a poem, and the top two kids of each class went on to recite for the school.  She was one of the kids selected from her class!  She practiced hard and did an excellent job.  She spoke loudly, didn't wiggle, and made great eye contact during the times I saw her rehearsing.  I asked her if she was nervous when she got up to say it and she said no, not at all.  She likes public speaking and she says it's easy.  What a great gift to have; I still blush when I have to talk in front of people!  Her original poem was about basketball, but the teacher didn't allow it because it had one slightly inappropriate line in it.  Oh well....  She didn't win for her grade, but I'm still very proud of her for doing her best.

She also got an art award saying that some of her artwork is on display at the district's instructional center.  We're going to swing by there next week to see what it is, because she had no clue one of her art pieces got chosen. 

Bye bye wisdom teeth!

Every dentist I've ever had has told me I needed to get my wisdom teeth taken out.  They were impacted and causing crowding and other problems.  This Wednesday I finally had them removed.  My oral surgeon told me there was a good chance that I would lose feeling in my lower jaw because I'd waited so long.  See, the roots of the teeth had grown and were embedded in the nerves of my jaw.  Thankfully, though, I didn't lose any feeling!

This is me looking like a chipmunk, as if my cheeks aren't chubby enough.  My right side is worse since the top and bottom were taken out from that side.  My top one was way up there, growing toward my ear, and practically in my sinus cavity!  STUPID teeth.  I'm so glad they are finally out.

Crawfish

The day of the hail storm we had a crawfish boil.  Together with our neighbors we had a total of 80 pounds of crawfish.

We had a few mishaps (in addition to the hail.)  BJ, our pool guy, is also Craig's brother in law.  Craig is our neighbor from Louisiana that we had the boil with.  BJ brought his dog, a boxer named Roxy, over to the crawfish boil.  We had "pantyhose chicken" sitting on the table waiting to be boiled.  Basically it's a bunch of chicken that you stuff into a pantyhose (to keep it all together) and throw into the boil so it can pick up all the cajun flavors.  It's really good for the people that don't like crawfish.  Roxy jumped onto the table and took off with the pantyhose full of raw chicken.  She was so sneaky that we didn't notice until she was ripping it open in the yard.  The only thing that saved the chicken was Parker, our cat.  He was passing by so Roxy forgot the chicken and chased after Parker!  Haha!

There were some other funny things that happened, but honestly I can't remember because I have brain fog from all the medicine I'm on right now (wisdom teeth surgery).

We had to cut the whole crawfish peeling and eating short because the storm came on suddenly.  I spent two hours peeling the remainder of the crawfish (about forty pounds) that we didn't eat so I could make some dishes with it.  I've never made either dish, but I used the crawfish tails to make etoufee and crawfish fettucini.  They were both delicious!

Oh Hail No!

We've had a few hail storms in Houston the past two weeks.  Although fun for the kids to see, this is not good for our roof!  We have an adjuster coming out next week to take a look at it.  We can actually see pieces of our roof falling into our pool every time it rains now!  The insurance company is so backed up from all of the clams that it's taking nearly three weeks for the adjuster to come out.   Here are some pics from the first hail storm.  This day had the weirdest weather I've seen.  It was the clearest perfect day.  We knew a storm was coming, but had no idea that it would be bringing hail.

Some areas around us got pieces that were the size of baseballs!  Pauline's roof was damaged so much that she got a leak.  Just look at this weather chart.  5 pm was sunny and 82 degrees.  The kids were running around playing in the water and it felt hot outside.  All of a sudden the temp dropped nearly 20 degrees and the storm came.  A few hours later the sky was perfectly clear again.

But here is a beautiful double rainbow after the storm.  Reminds me of God's promises to us.