Gojira Lives

Some Days Jeffrey just isn't himself!

Good Morning World! 

MOM! I'm going outside to play.

MOM, I'm hungry!

MOM, I'm going back outside to play.

BAM!! BAM!! BAM!! Take that you space alien!!

Jeffrey can you please hold it down while I'm driving..

But MOM! There's a giant three headed alien trying to get me!

Oh yes, sorry I didn't notice.

MOM! Katherine is messing up my Lego house!

MOM! There's a giant bug in my room... 

I think those tacos were a little on the spicy side mom.

Can I have a glass of milk?

MOM! Come see what Katherine did this time!!!

But WHY do I have to clean my room?

Is it really time to take a bath already? 

Where's my toy boat?

OK OK, I'm putting down the toys and going to bed.

No need to get so pushy!

Good night world! 

The great and fearsome monster heads to bed, so he can once again be ready to fight another day.

The Great Front Seatini

You, yes you in the back row with the blond hair and freckles...
What question do you have for the all knowing all powerful front seat-ini?
Ask anything... your deepest most thought provoking question, perhaps one that has plagued mankind for years...
Whatever it is the Great Front Seatini will put an end your eternal wondering...

"If you were made out of chocolate and you started to eat yourself...
Would it hurt?"

You're on your own with that one kid.

Please always remember and never forget....

Make one mistake in this house and everybody (and her brother) will remind you until the end of days.

Take for example several months back. I was making Jeffrey some noodles. The kind that come in the little plastic container with a couple different packets inside that have to be added at different times during the serving process.

 I took the outer wrapper off, peeled the top back just enough to add the water and stuck it in the microwave.

5 minutes later the timer goes off and out comes the noodles. Jeffrey is hovering next to me to make sure I do everything just so. Probably making sure I don't add anything extra that would otherwise ruin the taste of his lunch. As I pull the top the rest of the way off I hear a gasp from behind me:

"MOM!!!!"

"WHAT??"

"LOOK!! LOOK!!"

"WHAT AM I LOOKING AT????" (panic setting in)

"YOU LEFT THE SAUCE PACKET INSIDE THE NOODLES WHILE THEY WERE IN THE MICROWAVE!!!!"

(Cue my deep sigh of relief)

"Is that all?"

"What do you mean is that all???  Now what are we going to do?"

"Well we might consider opening them and adding them to the noodles like the instructions suggest..."

"How can we do that?? They've.... been..... microwaved!!!"

"And?"

"And that's not how you are supposed to do it! Look at the packet! It's all swollen up."

"Thats because it got hot inside. Nothing bad happened to the sauce."

"But when you open the packet its going to explode all over the place and there won't be enough to add to the noodles and they won't taste good!"

(Always thinking with his stomach, this one)

I eventually got him to calm down enough to let me snip the end and pour the ENTIRE package into the noodles and serve them exactly as per package instructions.

As nice as it would be to say that was that, we know in this house that is never that.

Now every time I go to serve noodles, I hear the stampeding sound of Jeffrey feet barreling towards the kitchen to try to catch me before I slide the dish into the dreaded microwave.

"MOM MOM MOM!!! Did you take the sauce packet out??"

(At this point how could I ever forget??)

And it doesn't end there. ANY time I am cooking something packaged that requires microwaving I get the same 20 questions.

"Are there any packets left inside?"

"Did you check?"

"Are you sure?"

"Did you pull the package back far enough to really be sure?"

I tend to trip him up occasionally by answering that I have decided to live dangerously and did not actually check to see if anything was lurking within the depths of the package. And no, I wont let him see because he too needs to learn to live dangerously.

Judging by the horrified look on his face I don't think that's going to be happening anytime soon!

School Starts WHEN??

Can Wednesday get here any faster please?

It's time for them to start school and spend a little less time with each other.

I had some errands to run today and on the way home these were just a few of the things I felt compelled to say to the back seat:

"I don't care if everyone IS Kung Fu fighting, you can't do that while I'm driving"

"Jeffrey, your sister has asked you twice to stop breathing on her, please listen"

"Katherine stop singing "Dude looks like a lady" while looking at your brother"

"Jeffrey get your foot out from under Katherine's rear end right now" (How he accomplished this while strapped in correctly I do not know)

And then there was what drifted out of the back seat

"Stop that!"

"Stop what?"

"What you're doing"

"What am I doing?"

"You know what you're doing so stop it!"

~~pause~~

"NOW what are you doing?"

"I'm flapping my arms like a bird"

"What are you doing that for?"

"Because I wasn't doing it before and you told me to stop what I was doing so I stopped NOT flapping my arms like a bird."

Please let Wednesday get here tomorrow.


This says it all:

Forget the bucket, abandon ship!

So here we are.

Life unexpected.

Not where I thought I'd be at this point, but I guess if I was really honest I would say I didn't give it much thought so maybe thats why I'm in this predicament.

I have spent the better part of my life hurling through the days trying to get to some future event, or through a current event and hoping it all turns out OK.

But the honest truth is I really believe it will turn out OK..every piece of it. Even when at times, like now, it all feels like a fancy balancing act. I saw a juggler once who was doing his whole routine standing on a plank that was on a barrel on its side that was on another plank that was balanced on several planks that were standing up on their ends. It was fascinating to watch. Its not so fascinating when you live it.

Especially when I didn't build the tower. Someone else built it and put me up here. But because I am not fond of breaking my neck by falling off or losing any of the things I am juggling, I roll to the left, roll to the right and try to keep all the things that have been thrown at me in a intricate dance flowing from one hand to the next.

Now don't get me wrong, I take full responsibility for where I am in my life. Or I should say I take full responsibility for not making plans and ending up here with a rather confused look on my face.

So what does one do when they find themselves fighting a losing battle while bailing water out of their lifeboat? I think it's time to get a better lifeboat. I don't think a bigger bucket is gonna help right now.

High Fashion

I have decided that this will be Jeffrey's outfit for the first day of school.
I think he will be a hit!
Or was it that he WILL get hit?
Either way... I wonder how many of these lovely plaid jumpsuits they actually sold??

Old Photos Revisted

So here's the thing. Sometimes I have no idea what to write about.

My kids have behaved themselves enough that there is no reason to make fun of them.

I wrote about my cats yesterday so I can't use that.

So here I am writing about nothing to write about.

Is that cheating?

Sometimes I click thorough other blogs trying to get an idea. But more often than not the blog fairy who is in charge of delivering the "Next Blog" seems to enjoy sending me "This blog is in Estonian... would you like to translate?"  five times in a row. At which point I give up and go on to something else.

I guess I could post a bunch of pictures since I spent the better part of  yesterday scanning and uploading to Facebook. My girls love to see pictures of themselves when they were younger and being the proud mama that I am, I dont mind showing them off.

I took hundreds of pictures and untold hours of videos when they were young. Unfortunately I didn't have the money to buy a good camera or even decent film. I guess when you buy 35mm film at the dollar store and get it developed by a send-it-through-the-mail bargain basement developing company you cant expect great results. But at least I was using 35mm older Nikon that worked most of the time with a nice telephoto lens.  My parents (who could have afforded something really nice) used a dime store 110 instamatic that took some of the worst pictures I have ever seen.

Everybody in the picture was about an inch high and depending on how long they had had the film laying around, the tint to the picture could be anything from deep pink to light green.

I have been trying to scan some of them into my Photoshop program and fix them to the best of my abilities....but herein lies the problem.... my abilities suck! The program is amazing and can do SO many different things but it has a mile high learning curve and I keep getting worn out trying to climb it.

I made some good progress yesterday and restored some pictures that were nearly unrecognizable but it took me the better part of 4 hours because I kept having to look up the how-to's.

So I guess I will end this less than thrilling post with some fruits of my labors. Please keep in mind how bad these were when I started. Just the fact that I was able to restore them enough to remember the moment a little more clearly is a really big deal! I love the pictures of Christopher with my dad. He adored Chris more than anything and my biggest regret is that he died when Chris was only 6 so any picture of them together means the world to me.

 Here are the girls in 1991 with my grandma who was about 86  at the time. The picture looked like it had been taken through a rose tinted filter..

Boy, Em loved that hat. It was a train engineers cap that used to be Christophers before she appropriated it.
Heres another from the same day. This pic was green. And so green that the girls looked like they were peering at you from behind an algae filled fish tank.

Here's a great shot of Chris with my dad in about 1988. This was so hazy and green that you couldn't see anyones face.

Heres a group shot  from the same day as the above pic. This shot was also green but when I removed that tint, a slightly pinkish one showed up. But at least I can see everyone.
This is my mom (on the left), her sister Margaret, me, Chris and Sarah.
Chris just loved those cowboy boots, I still have them!

I have several more that I will be adding to this post so stayed tuned.
I've got a photoshop job to put together for the hubby.
Keep your fingers crossed it doesn't take me as long as the last one.


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OK, so back to post a few more repaired pix from yesteryear

Here is Chris on his 1st birthday 1986 at my parents house... the photo was so dark you couldn't see my face

Here's Chris and my dad in late 1986.. this pic cleaned up pretty well but I had to crop it down because there was more pic of the room than the people in it!

Here is me and Chris in March 1987.... about 6 weeks before Sarah was born. Again the picture was green and dark so I was happy that Chris' face came out so well.