Beware the Becave!

The kids and I ran over to the mall today. Like with most errands, I took longer than I'd meant to. So, since Tessa hadn't had lunch and had been repeatedly complimented for being so well behaved, I decided that she deserved a Mickey D's cheeseburger --a favorite of hers. A trip through the drive-thru, and we were on our way home. One snag: they put onions on the burger. I always order them sans onions, but they must not have heard me, or they forgot. It happens. So, when we got home, I did my best to scrape off all the onions. However, the burger was already starting to look diseased because of her digging onions out of it while in the car. When she sat down at the kitchen table, the mutilation continued. I had to get baby brother fed and put down for a nap, so I took off to Cole's room for a bit.

During that time, some serious screams of horror came from the kitchen after I didn't answer the incessant calls for me. I didn't worry too much since these same squeals come from seeing dark threads on her clothes or a hair in the bathtub (all bugs coming after her), plus, she knew where I was. She peeked around the corner to Cole's room to see me put my fingers to my lips to shush her. The baby's got to sleep, hermana! She crumpled onto her knees to cry and then ran off.

Baby down.

The search for Tessa commences.

She's trying to hid under my bed. "Go. Eat. Your cheeseburger!" (I never thought I'd have that demand escape my lips.)

She starts crying about the "becave".

"What are you talking about?"

"The science kid! Becave, Mom. Becave. On the science kid!"

She's having a breakdown the closer we get to the pile of cheeseburger. Finally, I stop to sit with her on the floor to find out what she's talking about. "Okay. Stop crying. Let's use your words."

"Becave, mom. On the science kid. Look at it! It's brown"

"Um. Meat is brown." It takes me a little while..... Decay.

She's afraid that her cheeseburger is decaying and I'm forcing her to eat it. Doesn't she know that it's a Mickey D's cheeseburger and could take weeks to decay? ;)

I walked over to the "decaying" burger with her, and we had a chat about why it looked the way it did. I salvaged some of it and she let me feed it to her. She wasn't about to touch it with her own hands. But she ate it. The terror inducing treat for being good.

McDonald's, I said NO onions.

Sid, WHAT illustrations are you using on your show?

Some DO's and DON'Ts of Home Repair

BATHROOM FLOOR

DO take bathroom laminate that looks like this and somehow make it better.

It grosses me out everytime. Jake had just taken off some weird glued on plastic strip where the floor meets the tub. Ick.

DON'T forget to take the toilet tank lid off before you set it in the bathtub. It may possibly fall and shatter.
DO have friends who already have the necessary tools for you to tile your floor.
DO recognize that projects for the inexperienced are nearly always harder than they seem, and believe husband when he says, "I'll never do that again. NEVER."
DO stand back and admire your handiwork and recognize that $70 to tile your bathroom floor is pretty great.

We still need to caulk the plumbing fixtures, but you get the idea. Muuuuch better.

DON'T expect to just buy a toilet tank lid at the store, especially when said toilet brand hasn't been around for 20 years.
DO (maybe not the best advice here, but I'm going with it anyway) make a new and different brand toilet tank work with the existing bowl.

BACKED UP WASHING MACHINE DRAINPIPE/FLOODED CARPET

DO your best to clean up watery mess in front of the washer.
DON'T believe that "your best" stops at a towel dried carpet.
DON'T spray a ton of Febreeze on said carpet when it smells a bit mildewy a couple of days later and expect that it will take care of everything.
DO try Liquid Plumber/Drano to see if you can fix the problem yourself before calling a professional.
DON'T have your husband pour said Liquid Plumber down the washer drain without having communicated and agreed on what the next step should be.
DON'T assume you and your husband think the same way.
DON'T run a small load of wash the next day believing that the smaller amount of water will be fine, even if the clog isn't completely clear.
DO check to make sure that the hook-pipe-dealy-thing was put back in the drain because if you DON'T, it is pouring water out on the floor both times that washer load drains.
DO panic if you turn the corner toward your laundry area and step into a marsh.
DO borrow a shop vac.
DON'T believe that toweling your entire hallway and part of your bedroom dry after this is actually going to work, even after an entire night of fans.
DO pull up your carpet to try to dry it from underneath.
DO call someone who knows what they are talking about (i.e. Dad and Sandy) and face the music when they tell you the carpet padding is gone. Time to move on. Get it up, and get it out. Apparently the big sponge underneath carpet takes a miracle to get completely dry.
DO head to nearest Home Depot for carpet padding, and proceed to Tetris your dry carpet padding together in place of your cut out nasty wet floor sponge.
DO your best to stretch the carpet back into place.
DO rent a RugDoctor to get that icky smell out of your carpet for good, and borrow a massive floor fan from the best HT around.
DO express gratitude for saving the carpet from a financially untimely death.
DO get around to calling a plumber, because babysitting the washing machine during each load is getting old.

DON'T ever assume we have any clue what we're doing when it comes to home repair.
DO recognize that we'll pretend we do.

When Mama came

My mother joined us for the last week in February. We had such a nice time with her. We surprised her by taking off in the middle of the week to spend the night at Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine. (Love those middle of winter discounts!) What a fun place. We had a fantastic time, and it was just nice to mix it up and get a change of scenery after the kids had been so sick. Cole was still having a little bit of a rough time, but the indoor water park humid air was actually on the helpful side.
Here is Tessa's wolf impersonation:
Tessa LOVED this place. She was not happy when we finally had to go after the second day of swimming.

Grandma was so nice to hang out with the kids so Jake and I could take off for a little bit and go on the bigger water slides. I love water slides. There was one, however, that I did not love.
Here's the big wave pool:

Besides GWL, we just took it easy at home. Grandma got to see Tessa at her dance class, we had a great visit with the Morris', we had Wii Just Dance battles, movie night, girls' night with Tessa so Jake and I could go to the seminary teacher and wife fireside, etc. Her trip was over before we knew it.

Love you, Mom.

Visitors

I believe this hat might be number 212 in my dad's collection....

We love visitors. Nothing is better than doting grandparents, right? My dad and stepmom, after a two day snow delay, came to spend some time with us. We celebrated Valentine's Day together, and even a birthday, Christmas, and Easter in a way.
The kids were sick during this visit, but Gma and Gpa were patient with our inability to roam. And Gpa was patient with Tessa's sassy sick attitude. We still got some fun action in --including putting in some extra shelving (Yes. This was fun for me.), 75 cent movies, Olympics, and just plain catching up.
We made our own heart shaped pizzas for the Valentine dinner. We also had our fill of heart shaped Jello jigglers. What? My father feeding Cole Jello jigglers? .....Are you really surprised? Didn't think so.

These two get so busy back home. We were grateful they were able to come down and hang out with us.

Brrrrrrrrr

Unseasonably cold here? Yes. We had a huge snow storm a couple weeks ago. This was already more snow than I'd seen combined in my time here. I felt like I was driving in Salt Lake again as I was running errands with the kids. I found myself grumbling about the stupid cold snow when I finally realized that no one was commiserating with me. I looked at Tessa in the rearview mirror and noticed how she was was taking in the scenery with wide eyes. She was excited. She wanted to play. Just because I grew up with it and have had my fill, doesn't mean my kids have. I have to remember that. It really was beautiful; plus, it wasn't sticking to the roads. That's always good. Tessa talked about her plans to make a ball when we got home.

Her bare hands scooping and chucking. What a happy kid.

Cole didn't mind being a target....behind the door.



It kept snowing. And snowing. And snowing. This is what the same tree from above looked like the next day:

Snow day! Jake even got the day off. Happy man. It did mean, however, that my dad and Sandy's flight was delayed. Last year their flight delay was because I booked the wrong month. This year, it was Mother Nature's fault.

We were bummed that we had to wait a couple more days for Grandma and Grandpa, but this dad and daughter made the most out of it. Snow man! (And not one that is only 5 inches tall!)

I loved that there were snowmen everywhere we went. Frozen sentinels throughout neighborhoods. In Utah, your snowman usually lasts only about a day --until some jerk kid slams into it on the way to or from school. Here, because it's such an unusual sight, there seemed to be respect for the snowmen. The sun was their eventual demise.
My snow angel. Can you believe I let her out in that in only tennis shoes, especially since she had a little cough and a runny nose?
Me neither. ....she got the croup that night.

Lawton is OK by me.

Good friends of ours from our Salt Lake days have ended up in Oklahoma. Yay! That's a manageable visit! We took off last weekend to go see them for a long needed change of scenery.
We left on Friday evening. Is this a tangent story? Yes. I'm VERY good at those. It was dark, we were somewhere near the northern Texas border, and we needed gasoline. We pulled into a gas station so the gals could use the restroom and Jake could fillerup. No gas. A gas station out of gas. So, we went along to the next one. A couple of the pumps were covered up, and I began to believe I was in the middle of a horror movie. No offense, small town Texas, but something about you creeped me out.....and then a chance of being stranded.... One of the papers over the pump read, "Regular Don't Work". I had a good laugh and wished we would have taken a picture, but remembered we seriously needed fuel. Tessa kept informing us that we were lost. Don't worry. The next gas station had some, and we safely arrived at our destination. There's your anticlimactic story for the day.
Okay, so, back to our trip:
On Saturday morning we went driving around on a nearby wildlife preserve to see buffalo, Texas longhorn cattle, and the lakes and mountains. Prairie dogs were also on the agenda.
Here is Gabe trying to coerce one back out of his hole. No idea why this approach didn't work. :)
We drove through a town called Medicine Park. Weeeeeeird. Any place settle by hippies is going to have, ahem, ....personality. I loved it. It needs a blog post all on its own. (Next time, Melissa, next time.)
We drove over to Meers, OK to a very famous burger joint. We were warned about the "ambiance" ahead of time, but a place doesn't stay open for a hundred years unless the food is worthy of it, even if the dog and cat kennels are what greet you on the way into a place. (Leaving your pets in the car while you eat = not an option!) The place raises their own Longhorn beef, and it has had the same owner for about 50+ years. I believe that owner started decorating/leaving garage sale purchases around when he moved in and has never stopped. Featured below would be the "Seismic Buger". One pound of meat. Yes, we shared with spouses, and yes, we still packed away a half a pound of hamburger apeice. Yum.

This is the inviting entryway to the restaurant:

And then in the next picture, behind us the stairs lead up to the cashier. Past that is where the actual eating takes place.

We had such a great and fun weekend. Good company is the best.

gaining momentum

on the weight thing. That's good news! Cole gained 6 oz. in two weeks. ....or if we go from what the pediatrician had, he's gained 11oz in the last two weeks. We think we can, we think we can, we think we can....

He gives awesomely slobbery kisses, clicks his tongue, is amused when he pats/smacks surfaces, and is starting to sit up for several seconds before he gets tired and slumps his long self over like in the above picture. And now, as I watch her climb onto his walker while he is in it, he also puts up with his sister way better than I would.

Speaking of the sister, Tessa started her dance class last week. Talk about excited. She is the smallest one in there. I'm certainly not used to that. She marched right into class and started chatting right away about her leotard. She is not shy.

She took the directions to stand on the star very seriously.

Today was her second class. I had to keep moving away from the window because she would turn and start performing for me. She dances in between the teaching, which makes me laugh. She flits and hops around like a little bird the whole time.