Prettier with power...

We are living in a fairy-scape of ice!  The sunlight shimmers in the branches, reflecting zillions of tiny points of light.  The breeze makes a faint tinkling sound like hundreds of tiny wind chimes.  It's gorgeous.

Unless you have no shower, no coffee, a dozen loads of wash waiting, a puddle on the floor from a mini fridge icebox defrosting, it feels like an eighteen wheeler hit you the night before (whatever stomach-yuck most recently ventured home from the schools), you're in the middle of the upheaval of swapping rooms around (Fearless Leader and my laundry is somewhere under a pile of toys) and there are four kiddos home from school making more mess.  Ummm hmmmm....  I had a moment of serious contemplation.  Perhaps the best course of action would be to leave the puppy licking up the defrost puddle while I ran screaming from the house and slid my way towards the nearest gas station with a bucket of caffinated sludge simmering on a back burner?  Maybe a gas station in Hawaii? 

The phone rang during that moment of hysteria.  It was my dad calling to see how everything was going and checking to see whether the kids had school.  He must have heard the flight plans taking shape in my caffine-deprived brain, 'cause my parents showed up half an hour later with a very large cup of coffee, doughnuts and big buckets of water so that we could at least flush the toilets.

My heroes!



As the caffine seeped into the frantic little places in my brain, the world started looking right again.  (Everything looks a little brighter if you can flush toilets.)  We laughed, we shared a meal, we toured the town  picked up parts for the next house project and we even snuck in a game of cards.  And the power turned back on by late afternoon. 

      Now, a few days away from the stomach bug, with a cup of coffee in front of me and the laudry caught back up again, isn't our ice pretty?

Streph vs. Browns Playoffs, round 2

We are headed for some serious overtime.  We thought we were ready for this playoff.  The team was healthy, strong.  Maybe a little smug for having gone all winter undefeated.  Not even a sniffle. 

Until the streph faceoff...

The first player down was Miss Sassy.  She fought hard but was finally benched with a 101.4 fever, ear infection and streph. 

Next down were team mates Mom (yup, me) and Nana.  Possibly due to all the consoling and chicken soup making for Miss Sassy while she was benched.  Team captain, Fearless Hubby, and our starting line-up, oldest two kiddos, rapidly followed suit.

Youngest kiddo was left holding the family game.  Until Monday.

Streph 7 vs. Browns 0

And team captain and oldest kiddo recently issued reports of returning scratchy throats...

Green Smoothies!

A friend of mine told me about green smoothies.  I had seen recipes before combining spinach and other such yucky green stuff with fruits in smoothies and reacted the way any sane person would... EEEEUUUUUWWWWW!  Why would anyone contaminate a fruit smoothie with green stuff???

She promised me that I wouldn't taste the veggies.  She promised me that I could actually drink the stuff.  And she was right!  Huh!  Who woulda thought that you could hide spinach, carrots, bok choy, even celery under a couple pieces of fruit?  But, even better (or more unbelievable), who woulda thought you could get KIDS to drink their veggies???  After playing around with some fruit/veggie combinations, I added a big handful of spinach and a couple of blueberries to the kids favorite shake.  When they asked about the funky color, I blamed it on the blueberries.  Well... the gullible kids loved their banana, BLUEBERRY, yogurt shakes!  Honestly!  Even after I admitted that the blueberries alone did not provide the exotic color....

Now my teens request green shakes.  They are mindful of getting the proper amount of fruits and veggies into their daily diets and are thrilled to be able to sneak a few extras in painlessly.  Best of all, though, is watching Miss Sweetie Special Silly-Pants come running when the blender starts making a racket.  She is notoriously difficult to get veggies into.  Now she giggles when I tell her to drink her spinach! 

Our favorite, so far...

one or two bananas
an orange
BIG, BIG handful of baby spinach
a single-serve yogurt (any flavor, but vanilla is best!)
@half a cup of milk
3 ice cubes

Just throw it in the blender and give it a whirl!  Then get creative & see how many veggies you can hide in your shakes :o)

Have a happy day!

Still not organized...

Ok... I seem to have a theme going on here...  I'm in a couple of town bands playing this goofy instrument.  What I lack in talent, I seem to make up for in clumsiness.  And disorganization.  I have an exceptionally long and unwieldly trombone stand, a complex music stand that I have yet to master putting together, and music in no particular order falling out of my folder.  I'm also not known for moving slowly nor for paying attention to what I'm doing.  Yeah... a goofball.

Soooo... this seems to be the week for fixing me.  Well, sorta.  I had to miss a concert last week and one of the goofy guys above (we'll call him MOE) borrowed my music and played my part.  I'm always peeking at Moe's music, trying to figure out what piece we're playing next.  (Sheeesh!  Organization...)  So, when he gave me back my folder, there was a surprise for me!  The music was all in concert order!  And an even better surprise... trombone jokes and pictures punctuated the empty spaces between pieces!  But, as always, the loose pages that don't fit into the page protectors wound up falling to the floor at some point during the concert.  Oh... and I kept laughing at inappropriate times during the concert as I discovered the new jokes.  Soooo.... almost organized. 

And fast forward to a concert Satruday with the other band!  Not knowing if I would make the concert, I had given my music to one of the guys for safe-keeping.  (Always safer not in my hands...)  When I got my folder back, it was all in concert order!  (Definitely not the way I had left it, just in case you were wondering.)  My friend, guy-in-the-outragous-green-sparkly-I'm-so-jealous-that-he-found-that-great-hat, took pity on my lamentable systematization.  Ok... total lack of it.  I happily set up for the concert... and forgot to bring in my stand.  Until it was too late to go get it.  Guy in the great hat shared his music stand.  I haven't been in this band for very long.  I guess he didn't know my history with music stands.  (The flute players in the other band might consider helmets concert attire.) For the first song up, Trombones on the Rooftop, our conductor wanted the trombones to stand.  Trying to be helpful, I leaned forward to adjust the music stand higher.  And promptly pulled the top of the stand right off the bottom, sending BOTH folders of music to the floor...  Mmmmmhmmmm... the concert was delayed a few minutes while we scavenged our music off the floor and great-hat-guy and I frantically searched for music from a communal pile between songs.  But, look!  The photo was taken after the concert!  He's still speaking to me!  And the music is safely in his hands again.  And I *promise* I'll remember my music stand next time.  Or at least try to remember my music stand...

One more quick happy thought!  This beautiful ornament arrived in the mail last week!  It's from Attilla the Mom!  You *know* I've got to love a moniker like that!  Her screen name is just the beginning of the snark you'll find on her blog!  Check out Cheaper than Therapy for fun reading!

Ok... that's all for now!  Back to the Christmas countdown!  Have a happy day!

comedy of cats and dogs

I have a couple of new post ideas circulating, but haven't got time to write them this morning!  So here's an "oldie but goodie", originally published on my now-defunct Kwilting with Katie blog midwinter last year.  Enjoy!

It's been a wild weekend.... Just to set the stage leading up to Sunday night, our eighth-grader brought home her health class assignment, an electronic baby, on Friday. Friday night, the electronic baby was up every hour and a half. I was up every hour and a half with *my* baby who was panicking, afraid she was going to fail health class. Saturday morning, Addie, a very cute but exciteable dog that we are pet-sitting arrived. The afternoon was spent bowling with the acolytes then attempting to watch a concert that our oldest daughter was in. The electronic baby had other ideas.... Sunday, we rushed off late to church. Have I mentioned the electronic baby schedule? After church, Claire (the 8th-grader) had a friend over. Add one *more* electronic baby. Shannon (our youngest) lost a loose tooth Sunday afternoon; always a traumatic ordeal for her as she cries because the tooth is dangling by a thread but she doesn't want anyones fingers in her mouth. Our dog-on-loan spent the afternoon Sunday wedging herself between my knees and barking at every noise. Unless there was a glimpse of a cat. Then there would be a romping chase complete with barking, hissing, and spitting.

Sunday night arrives. The cats take shelter in the girls bedrooms far under the beds. The friend and extra baby go home. Claire's baby goes into a quiet schedule for a while. Addie and our dog sack out watching football with Don. And ice starts falling from the sky. Ahhhh! The perfect excuse to curl up with the girls and watch a movie we've been trying to find time to see.

All goes deceptively well until the girls go upstairs for bed. "Mom! One of the cats peed on my bed!" Right through two quilts. So... eleven-o-clock finds quilts churning in the washer and Don and I taking turns babysitting two cats and a dog in the bathroom enforcing a "get-used-to-each-other" approach. On one of my trips out of the bathroom, I discover that the tooth is *not* under the pillow. I also realize that with about a week's worth of work to go on the book proposal and a cat ignoring litterbox ettiquette, I need to remove all the quilts for the book from the house. When the enforced "time-in" for the animals ends, a big, hairy tooth fairy with a five-o-clock-shadow and a flashlight heads into the 10-year-old's room to look for a tooth while I start skating repeatedly across the driveway carrying armloads of quilts.

Just another quiet night at the Brown house....

Hubby's solution...

Have I mentioned that my husband and I are the parents of teenagers?  Two teenagers, to be precise.  With two more rapidly approaching teen-hood.  Add in the boys that are now quasi-members of our teen zoo and all the buddies that drop in for food hang out here, and there is a distinct lack of brain cells circulating in this house.  Parenting teens is a great exercise in multiplying fractions.  One teen, one brain.  Two teens, half a brain.  Three teens, a quarter of a brain.  The herd of teens running around our house?  Oiy!
 
For the uninitiated to this teen phenomenon, it goes something like this.  Teen brain wakes up and realizes it has a sister.  Down to half power.  Somehow, the brain still manages to get ready for school.  Then the teen body carting this brain around steps onto the school bus where most of the remaining brain cells get sucked into a vortex of co-mingling teen brain.  One of my kids says she sleeps on the way to school.  I think she is actually experiencing a state of shock while her brain tries to adjust to the current loss of function.  Or perhaps she is getting ready to bail out any remanining cells upon entrance to the great brick building called high school.  It really is an amazing phenonenon to behold.  High school functions in some special kind of time warp.  Distinctly separate from the reality most adults inhabit.  The teen brain just doesn't stand a chance.  The vortex of brain cells is too strong.  Soooooo... when the teen steps back off the bus in the afternoon, still reeling from the onslaught of "teen-brain-itis" and with teen friends in tow, we are dealing with something like a genetically altered version of the kid that slept at our house the night before.           

The sharing of brain cells has resulted in, well... teenagers.  With all the prerequisite loss of logic.  And a hefty dose of sass.  With some pouting thrown in for good measure.  My husband has always relegated dealing with teenagers to me.  Something about having all girls and possesing the respective anatomy.  Like estrogen is some mystical element vital to accessing a teen girl's brain.  He fails to understand that there is very little brain left to work with and I am actually an adult and therefore, by nature, thrown out of the teen-brain loop.  But I've gotten used to dealing with teen-brain.  Perhaps a better description is that I'm a bit numb to it.  I've developed a strong resistance to getting sucked into teen reasoning or reacting to erratic behaviour.

I should know better than to leave poor hubby unattended during an outbreak of teen-brain-itis.  Really.  He is inaduquately prepared.  And missing estrogen.  But I left the house briefly last night with one of our teens to return a boy to his actual place of residence.  When I returned, hubby described the horrific aftermath of my less-than-60-minute desertion.  The remaining teen ran into computer problems trying to print out a report.  Functioning on end-of-the-day brain power, this was a serious issue and quickly escalated to falling apart.  Enter unprepared dad.  Sensing rapid loss of control of said situation, he reacted the best he could.  He gave our 16-year-old a TIME OUT.  Pointing to a chair and everything.  Needless to say, this did not go over well with said teen.  By the time I arrived home to plug the printer in, dad and teen were nearing some cosmic eruption of epic proportions.  Yes... I just said, PLUG THE PRINTER IN.

Have I mentioned the vortex that seems to have engulfed our home?  And that it feeds off of teen brains?  And that we will have a third teen in January and a fourth teen in a year and a half?  Multiply by all the additional kids hanging out here and it sure makes for interesting life at the little brown house on the hill....

Sooooo... since I can't seem to catch a picture of a teen detatched from other teens, I'll leave you with a photo of hubby and me.  This was taken a couple of days before the printer issues, so there may be a bit more gray in hubby's hair now....

   

       

Clunk-o-War...

Oldest kid is 16 now.  Oh boy....

Seems like just last week, the BIG QUESTION of the day was what color cup the Victor of the cup-o-war got to use for dinner.  Yup.  Cup wars were big around here.  Whining, shouting, tears, hair-pulling.  Whatever it took to win the covetted cup.  And woe to mom if the pink cup was not washed in time for the meal.  Not that it deterred the battle.  The troops would just duke it out over the second-favorite color... 

But now, the BIG question is about car keys....  I hopped into the driver's seat last week 'cause we were running late to church.  From the excessive amount of pouting that ensued, you would think that I had committed a far greater sin than gyping the kid of 20 minutes of driving time.  Like maybe something along the lines of withholding chocolate.  Or telling the diaper story.

Soooo... for the past few months, Hubby and my dad have been busy checking out Clunkers-by-the-side-of-the-road.  Both guys have been regularly reporting on trucks and cars parked in the weeds.  Oh boy!  A grown-up-male (oxymoron?) version of the cup war.  At least the guys don't have enough hair to resort to hair-pulling....  Really, I didn't take the competition too seriously.  I figured the challenge was just barely heating up.  No time-outs had been issued or even threatened.  I was sure we had months of car one-upmanships to endure before a winner was declared.  Until dad called up mighty proud of himself.  Guess what he found?  Um hmmmm...  Dad is Victor of the clunk-o-war. 

Actually, I'm not even sure it qualifies as a clunker.  Hubby has had every tire and tube and gasket and what-all-else torn off the little white car in his quest to inspect the winning clunk.  And hubby would show no mercy if he felt the clunk was not properly qualified for ferrying his daughter back and forth.  But all he could find was a gasket that needed replacing.  Huh.  Go figure.  A clean win.  With no messy battles or fist-fulls of hair.  Victory by sneak-attack before battle was even fully declared.  Score one for dad!  

I'd celebrate dad's win, but I'm guessing both contestants are out scouring the roadsides for clunk #2.  Second kiddo starts driving on a permit in June...  

And oldest kiddo?  She figures she made out pretty well in the clunk war.  Until it's time to pay for gas.  Maybe then she'll let me drive to church....  

Safe church...

Hmmm...  a bunch of us went for "safe church" training this weekend.  We learned all about protecting the parishioners; especially children, youth and the elderly, from all kinds of nasty abuse.  Yuck.

Then, on Sunday, our youth group met with our new rector.  And promptly knocked him flat playing a game.  Hmmmm... apparently safe church training forgot to cover protecting the rector from the youth!

More trombone sass...

Oldest kiddo and I had a concert tonight, so, of course, we were on our best behavior.  C'mon!  Did you really fall for that one???  We have these great red shirts that we wear for the summer season with a charming logo and the name of our band.  But our conductor gets a *special* shirt identifying him as the DIRECTOR.  Now wait a second!  Everybody knows the trombones are WAY special!  I mean, we can sorta read music and everything!  Pretty good at tipping over music stands, bonking people with our slides and generally annoying anyone in close proximity to us.  So... we decided we needed special shirts, too.

At our last concert, we were...

Tonight's concert got maybe a little closer to accurate...

We have two concerts left.  Any good ideas?

And, Lucie... WE MISS YOU!!!!  Hope you have some especially snarky (your word!) suggestions for naming this goofy crew for upcoming concerts :o)  Love ya!!!

Have a happy day!

Just a guess...

I'm thinking that the trombone players are the goofballs of every band.  The conductor of band #2 asked last night, "does anyone have any questions?  Trombones, do you have any questions?"  Incredulous looks all around our row.  TROMBONES???  ASK QUESTIONS??? 

One of the guys piped up, "we are issuing no statements at this time."  Oh, yeah!  Trombone sass!  (Being very new to this band, I am practicing good behavior for a little while.  Probably a very little while...)

Yup... so glad to be a goofball :o)

Have a happy day!

Disney? Or a day of blueberry picking?

My husband and I took youngest kiddo to Disney last week.  Isn't Disney every kid's dream?  Not around our house.  I am soooooo glad to say that my sassy, independant kiddos have little desire to be sucked into one of America's biggest conglomerate businesses :o)  We visited for an afternoon.  That was plenty for all three of us!  I don't need chirpy music, constant parades and vacuous, cheery smiles to remind me that I'm happy.  Heck!  I only need to get up in the morning to have fun!  (Although a cup of coffee helps!)

Oh... not that Disney is all-bad.  We had a wonderful dinner with a friendly waiter and chef.  The chef came right out to talk with us about Shannon's allergies.  He made sure that the pasta was safe for her to eat.  What a treat!  This kiddo *almost never* gets to eat pasta in restaurants.  And there must be something to be said for all the wide smiles and piped in music.  Even in hour-and-a-half-long lines, the crowds waited patiently.  People smiled at each other.  And chatted. 

But, really, Disney is not my thing.  It's just so... fake.  I'll take good ole' New England any day.  We have blueberries.  And maple trees.  And cows.  And *home* :o)

Yup.  I'll take home.  No piped in music required for a good time.  We got back to a sunny, breezy, beautiful New England summer.  I did the responsible thing... and skipped unpacking and laundry to head out to the blueberry fields with the kids!  It was a day filled with laughter and very real smiles!  We picked 12.5 pounds of berries.  Well... we finished with that many.  Our blueberry bandit (daughter #3) filched berries from our buckets all afternoon!

Have a happy day!

Oh, we take a Polaris conference soooooo seriously!  NOT!  As usual, we are all about anything goofy!

  Is this a preview of what is to come in just four short years?  Oiy!  I may have a few more gray hairs by then....

Have a happy day!

Vacation in Maine!

Did I mention that my family is rather... goofy? My oldest daughter (top row, third from left) planned a murder mystery dinner for 15. Yup... FIFTEEN! Our night of hilarity is a favorite for the neighborhood! Our upstairs neighbors came out and snapped pictures. For us... and plenty of their own! We slowed the traffic down for a few minutes... My dad (the vivacious redhead in the front row) stole the show as he flaunted his new wardrobe!

Yup... that's my dad!

Oldest kiddo really outdid herself. The cast list includes "Ima Heckler," "Ron Dewing," "Lottie Cash," "Flo O. Cash," "Lawrence Suit," "Pat Prime" (NOT "Past Prime"... no matter how many times my husband said it!), "Ann O. Ying," "Char Broil".... and one of my favorites...

"Cici the monkey!" Yup... my little one with extensive special needs had her own part! "Cici" loved dressing up and sitting with all the goofy people for the mystery! And when she wandered away from the table (not until nearly the third act!), she spent several minutes squealing happily at her reflection in the hall mirror!

Oh! Here are lovely twin sisters to the deceased! Before they found out that one of them was plotting to "kill" the other over the inheritance. Well... what was left of the inheritance after my dear husband, the financial advisor from Vegas, got his hands on it....

Oh... and the wasted fortune wasn't left to the twins after all... It was left to "Kay Nein" of a yappy dog rescue society. Too bad Kay didn't really love dogs...

We also had in attendance a competitor with a nasty temper, "Ann O. Ying", and her model "DD" (my dad), and her (his?) sticky-fingered hair and makeup artist, "Belle Chesnought", a tough and boozed up security guard, a disgruntled (and black-mailed) chef, a bitter photographer, an overworked assistant, and a traveling gypsy who had overstayed her welcome.

Oh... and the deceased's aging top model who was in danger of being fired... (yup, that would be me!)

We sure are having fun!
Have a great week!

naming our puppy

This post originally appeared on my other blog, but it is fun and happy... really belongs over here! Have a happy day!

Soooo... on April Fool's Day, we *really did* get a puppy :o) Since I was substitute teaching on April first, my dad picked her up for us. I talked with the man we were getting her from and worked out all the details. But I forgot to ask what her name was. All day long I wondered.... I hoped it would be something fun or quirky. But a good, basic name would be ok, too. The only kind of name that would really bother me would be the really-Disney-pink-froo-froo type of name like Princess or Fifi.

Hmmmmm... I should have known better! I pulled in the driveway and Dad introduced me to "PRECIOUS"! That's kind of *beyond* Disney-pink. That's like Disney-fuscia!!!! Uh oh... dilema! We spent a week gagging every time we said her name.

Luckily, she didn't seem to realize that she had this ultra-feminine-prissy-froo-froo name. She is a lab... all tongue and wiggle with not a bit of brain. Her back end overtakes her front end sometimes, sending her into a sideways wiggling scramble as her front end tries to catch up. When she moves quickly, her skin arrives abruptly a second or two behind her frame. She usually moves quickly, so her skin seems in a constant flux, wondering just where it should hang. And that tongue! 5:30 in the morning is such a happy time for our puppy! She takes a flying leap onto the bed, lands on me and starts licking any body part sticking out of the blankets. (The fact that I like 6:30 better dampens her enthusiasm *NOT ONE BIT!*)

But back to the name dilema.... After a week, we realized that our puppy came as readily to, "Goofy Dog," or, "Puppy," or, "Hey You," as she did to, "Precious". Maybe it was all that gagging? So we started trying on different names. The only trouble was that we were starting to get used to Precious. The gagging was just a little choke, not a full-out retching noise now. But, really, she is a LAB! No lab should be stuck with a Disney-esque name. And to watch her practically turning upside down wriggling with joy, front end and back end competing for the lead, she has not a stitch of ladylike refinement and dignity! Soooo... we compromised. She gets to keep, "Precious," but it is like that obnoxiously long, we-have-16-generations-of-Mathildas-first-name that gets shortened to an initial. "Precious," is now, "Precious Wiggles!" Or, "P-Wiggles," for short. (Very appropriate first initial when counting the number of new spots on the carpet...)

But all jesting aside, P-Wiggles is a joy! She rides with me each morning to bring the girls to school. And every morning, she is amazed and overjoyed to discover that we found our way home again! She spends the next 5 minutes wriggling and licking and running around the house and bouncing. Like I just pulled off some amazing magic trick! If I'm home, she follows me around, trying to lie on my feet. While I was cooking my oatmeal a couple of days ago, she moved and lay down in a new space three times in just a couple of minutes. "Sink or stove, Mom??? Make up your mind so I can get some rest!" And if I am gone for a couple of hours, she somehow goes into overdrive and stores up a week's worth of greeting. Ahhhhh! Puppy love :o)

Now if we could just teach her to tell time....

thimbles full of coffee

I do love my morning cup of coffee! After getting all the girls off to school, I curl up with my oatmeal, fruit and a mug of my favorite vice. I spend about a half an hour checking in with my friends on Facebook or catching up on my blogs. It sounds silly, but that little bit of relaxation gets my day off to a good start. Working from home, I enjoy that bit of connection before beginning my day.

Sooooo... this week, we're on vacation! My morning cup of coffee has been interupted. I almost brought my favorite mug, but opted not to because it is breakable. This week I am drinking out of pink thimbles, instead! Sunday morning, my husband and I laughed as we tripped over each other making multiple runs to the coffee pot for another 1/4 cup of coffee.

This morning, I opted for a different solution. I enjoy an uninterupted breakfast. So I grabbed two thimbles and filled them up! My ten-year-old caught me taking a picture of the little mugs and asked why I was doing something so silly. My 15-year-old laughed and assured her, "because she's mom. It's what she does!"

Ah! Coffee and kids who understand my zaniness! Gotta love a vacation morning!

Have a happy day!