Anything Can Be Anything Else

Next to the word "utilitarian" in the dictionary is a picture of my sister. Maybe even this picture of my sister. No toothpick around when you're in a fancy restaurant and there's a little chicken stuck between your molars? Not a problem, especially when you're wearing pierced earrings!

The Larger The Family, The Less Freaks

One of the greatest benefits of having a large family; relatability. The larger your family, the less chance you have of being a freak. You can't be a freak when there's someone else just like you in your family. And there's bound to be someone else with your same issue, skill, disability, whatever when you can barely count how many cousins you have.

For instance, Cole got his first migraine yesterday, and now has to deal with that. "You've got migraines? Papa and Brookey get those too, you can talk to them about how they deal with it!"

That phrase could go on and on for days. "You've got diabetes? Kyle's got diabetes, you can talk to him!" "You wet the bed? Your mom wet the bed 'til she was 13, you can talk to her!" "You want to be a wedding coordinator? Your Uncle Ed was a wedding coordinator, you can talk to him!" "You stole your mom's car and drove to Nashville? Talk to Nathan!"

And on.........and on........................and on.

It's to the point where you have to work hard to be the first anything around here. Although Zachary was the first with asthma, so he's got that going for him.

Six O'Clock Scramble

I'm loving the Six O'Clock Scramble service. Every Wednesday I get an email with 7 healthy and easy dinner recipes. The menus list the nutritional information for each recipe, as well as a grocery list. Every recipe I've tried has been delicious, and even the kids have liked them. I signed up through a Mamasource deal, figured for $15/yr I could try it out. The best part is not having to think about what to cook for dinner.

Priorities

Brooke: I had a dream that I called you in a panic because Jeff was stuck in a meeting and I needed to get to the hospital. You were bedazzling a pair of jeans for a comp and "just couldn't get away".

Monday Mornings With Zachary, Zach and Miss Sophia

Ava's Fashions

A slightly English moment, with a long black toggle cardigan and a tomato red corduroy newsboy cap. A good look for her.

Cheese?

With Zachary's bad attitude and Ava's occasional bouts of freakishness, getting a nice family picture is always a trial around here....

Go Right, Young Man

Another of Bonnie's cute kids becoming "famous on the internet", as Colson says. Here's one of my brother Eric's pictures of little Joshie, used in a photographic dictionary online.

Joshua in the spotlight.

He Can't Face It

Ah, Zachary....he's always been the most expressive of my children, by FAR. When he wants you to know how he's feeling or what he's thinking, he can do it without speaking. His face can speak volumes.

I took him for his bi-weekly allergy shot yesterday. When Zach goes to the doctor he gets very serious. His brow furrows, he nods or shakes his head solemnly in response to the nurse's questions, he raises one eyebrow when the nurse asks him to do something out of the ordinary. It's just a lot of facial drama.

He couldn't get his allergy shots yesterday because when the nurse listened to his lungs she heard a lot of wheezing. So the doctor came in and checked him out, told me to take him home and spend the next few hours trying to get the wheezing under control, and call back in the next day or two. Zach was listening and doing his dramatic serious faces.

As we walked out, the doctor says to one of the nurses, "Wow, that kid is WAY too expressive in his face to be a 6 year old. With expressions like that, you'd think he was a 70 year old man who'd lived a really long and hard life!"

It reminded me of another Melissa story, because Zachary is Melissa reincarnated. One night Melissa and I went out to dinner at Red Robin. We ordered, and before our food came Melissa got very involved in telling me a story. I don't remember what the story was now, but I do remember that it was VERY IMPORTANT to her. The waitress brought our food and I started eating, but Melissa was too engrossed in the world-shattering details of her story to eat yet. So she continued with the extreme eyebrow raising, the dramatic hand actions, the half-raised out of her seat forward chin thrusting movements....

This went on for a good 10 minutes. As I recall, she was so into this story that she even let loose a couple of forehead self-smacks. If you've never seen Melissa smack herself in the forehead, you've obviously never seen her in her natural state. When she's particularly amped up about a topic, her forehead turns beat red...from the repeated blows she inflicts upon herself while saying words with hard consonants using extreme enunciation.

Anyway, a few minutes later, the waitress returned. She had a very concerned look on her face, and she looked at Melissa and said:

"Is your food okay? My manager has been watching you, and he just told me I needed to come ask you how your food was, because he thought you looked really upset about something..."

I reassured her that the food was lovely, my friend was just overly excited about her recent release from the Norristown State Hospital.

(Speaking of that hospital, if you're ever in Norristown you HAVE to drive through the grounds. It is INSANE [pun intended]. It literally looks like the scene for every scary movie you're ever seen. Old brick buildings with broken window panes and ivy growing so thick it covers up doors....and when you drive in through the gates it's hard to find the exit, so you're just driving deeper and deeper into an Alfred Hitchcock nightmare.)

Sir, Yes SIR!

Zachary requested an "Army" party for his birthday this year, so I asked my Dad to play drill sergeant. He swallowed his Marine Corps pride for Zachary, and here are some video clips from boot camp. My camera died, so Eric has the rest of it on his phone. I'll post that when I can.

Or By A Comma When The Feeling's Not As Strong

Sometimes Eric makes me laugh out loud. You know the Schoolhouse Rock song Interjections? If not, don't talk to me.

Anyway, Eric was playing Madden 2012 the other day, and I guess his team got the ball away from the opposing team, because Eric started hootin' and hollerin' and singing at the top of his lungs:

"Interceptions (Hey!) show excitement (Yow!) or emotion (Ouch!)"

Zach and Luke. "Mom, Luke is my zero-est best friend. That means he's not my first best friend or my second best friend, he's not even a number because he's just the best one."

Some daughters may tell their parents they love them, or buy them pretty Hallmark cards. Not my girl. She writes her love notes to Eric and I in old dirty toothpaste residue at the bottom of our master bathroom sink. Neither Eric nor I can bring ourselves to wash it away. (it says Ava heart M + D, in case you can't see it. Unless she knows a Maude and a DeSean, I'm assuming it stands for mom and dad)

Saw these at Target and had to get 8 of them for family movie nights plus friends.

Phonetic Lesson

Someone posted a facebook status last night that still has me completely baffled:

"We are grieving the loss of our beloved goat..."

A sentence I could never have created even in the depths of my twisted brain. Aside from the obvious oxymoronic issue that is blatant in this sentence, try saying it out loud. It's even more outrageous. Just by virtue of the way the word "goat" is pronounced proves it can never follow the word "beloved". I mean, really, the world beloved should never be used to describe any word beginning with a hard [g]. Isn't that a phonetic rule?

Baseball Lesson

Me: How was your game last night?

Colson: Not so good. We lost 5 to 12.

Me: Oh, I don't care how the team did, how did YOU do?

Colson: I did good.

Me: So what did you do to help the team?

Colson: I played outfield and second base, and batted.

Me: Great! Did you catch the ball?

Colson: No.

Me: Did you hit the ball when you went up to bat?

Colson: No.

Me: Oh, so what did you do?

Colson: I played second base.

Me: But you didn't catch or hit a ball?

Colson: No.

Me: Um, you do know that to actually play baseball you have to do SOMETHING with a ball, right? Either hit it or catch it or something....you have to touch a ball at some point. "Playing second base" doesn't mean you just stand there looking cool and striking a pose in your new uniform. In fact, you can't really even say you "played second base" unless you actually, um, PLAYED second base.

Colson: *annoyed grin and exasperated tone*....YES

Of course, as it turns out, he did touch the ball a few times, but they were grounders so he didn't consider them "catching" the ball. I just like to mess with him.

Best Advice: Don't Believe In Yourself

Yesterday I told my daughter something that I wish someone had told me when I was her age. It was in regards to math, which is uncharacteristically hard for my little genius girl. Uncharacteristically if you're not me. To me, it's right in character for her, because she IS me, and math was my nemesis. For Ava and I, words and grammar and history and logic thinking are like blinking. We barely have to think about it, our instincts take over. And we trust our instincts, because they're correct 99.9% of the time.

Numbers, on the other hand.....and the hard part is that we can't even believe that our instincts wouldn't be right. For us, if we understand the concept, that should be enough. For instance, Ava understands that the problem 57 x 23 means that you need to make 23 57s and add them all together. But then to actually have to DO that is frustrating. Isn't understanding what it means enough? That's how our brains work, we conceptualize. Actually doing it is the grunt work, and it's in the grunt work that dumb mistakes are made.

Ava's in 4th grade math this year, so the years of math that are easy for anyone with an IQ over 70 are over. She's realizing that math isn't going to be breezy for her. I had to give her this piece of advice yesterday:

"For you, when it comes to math, don't trust your first instinct. Don't believe your first answer. Before you move on to the next part of the problem, go back and double check, and then triple check what you already have. In math, you have to be RIGHT. There's no such thing as "close" in math. So if it takes you longer to get to RIGHT, that's ok. It's better to be right than to be fast.

In language skills, your first instinct is always correct. Because that's who you are. Math is different. You're just like me, and we have to change our brains when we do math. We can't trust ourselves when numbers are around, so we have to slow down and triple check."

I think she got it. While it's not going to make math easier for her, I think it will lessen the amount of mistakes, which will lessen her frustrations.

The best advice I can give my daughter, in math anyway, is Don't Believe In Yourself. Not many kids need to hear that, the few that do all live in my house.

Parenting 101

Here's a little clip from an old Parenting seminar my Dad gave. He traveled the country speaking and teaching for years, and Parenting was a topic he was called upon to teach often. In this clip, he uses my brother Andrew and I as examples, as he often did:



My brother Andrew also found a great comment posted on a blog that allows people whose lives were touched by the Navigator ministry to leave their stories. Here is one that mentioned Dad:

TMS Has Been My Foundation

Stories March 17, 2010
I was raised in an alcoholic household with a father who beat me abusively, and a brother who molested me sexually. I used sports as my escape and my anger was used up in weight training, football and hockey. I played football one year in college, but my third knee surgery ended my sports career. Three of my closest friends committed suicide and I was lost. For six months, people on campus told me they were praying for me.

On the 4th of JULY, 1980, I asked Christ into my life. I lived in a boarding house where a brother from The Navigators lived. I told him the next morning I got saved, he thought I was nuts, but asked me later to pray. We prayed out loud together and he began to disciple me. He asked me to do the TMS with him, and I did the first book by the next week’s meeting. I went through the entire system in 6 or 7 weeks. I went on a Nav training program the next summer in Syracuse, and was able to lead three co-workers to Christ. Stayed with Navs for two more years, but all staff went to Australia.

Then suddenly Bob Lewis who was NE regional director took an interest in me and discipled me for several months before I got involved with Campus Crusade. I have been through many trials and tribulations, and 30 years later the TMS has been my foundation, and scripture memory has truly kept me from walking away from the Kingdom. Thank you for your ministry. I have never shared this with anyone before, and not quite sure why I do so now. God bless you in all you do.

~James

Navigator Connection: Ben Blackinston, Bob Lewis, Roger Sheppard

Posted by The Navigators @ 10:57 am

These Are The Moments

Eric and I were having a fun conversation the other day. He tried to make a "moment" out of it, and of course I couldn't swallow my response:

Eric: I love making you laugh.

Me: And I love laughing at you, so we're perfect together.

My 9/11 Anniversary Tidbits

My beautiful friend Meredith Stead and her husband John Knapp live in the financial district in Manhattan, 6 blocks from the World Trade Center site. I found yesterday that Mer had kept a diary that day, and the subsequent week. You can read it here, at the bottom of the home page.

Here's a story I missed somehow back then, this photo that ran in the Sept. 12th, 2001 edition of The New York Times, entitled The Falling Man, which depicted one of the 200 "jumpers" of 9/11. The photo created much controversy, it has a very interesting story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/the-falling-man-10-years-later-6406030

Fire Starters

Another fun Ava artwork, this one entitled "Fire Fun".

Ball Boy

My favorite @LittleRFL video so far (my youngest nephew):

The Muppet Movie

Something reminded me the other day of the Muppet Movie. As I've said before, Andrew introduced me to the Muppets early in my life, and this movie was a favorite. I shared the main song from the movie the other day, but there are so many more good ones. Mind you, I only saw the movie maybe once, but having a big brother who could play any song on the piano after hearing it once kept musicals playing on and on in my life. I may have only seen any movie once, but the songs lived on day after day at our piano. I'd sit on the bench with Andrew while he played all of the Muppet Movie songs, and he'd teach me to harmonize and do the Muppet voices. My husband always wonders how I know every line to every song in every musical we see. Now he knows.

The soundtrack isn't available on iTunes right now, so you'll have to let your kids watch the YouTube clips and then buy the movie for them.

This one was a classic Andrew/Suzanne piano duet. We'd do the whole montage. We still say to each other once in a while, to end a phone conversation, "I'm gonna go home, read a book, have a couple of beers, take myself for a walk and go to bed". "There's somethin' irresistible-ish about 'em". Again, the modulation always thrilled me..."2, 3, 4...."

Kermit and Fozzie come upon The Electric Mayhem playing in a church. "They don't look like Presbyterians to me..."

And the quintessential Muppet Movie song, Kermit and Fozzie Movin' Right Along. "A bear in his natural habitat, a Studebaker".

The song that always makes me tear up. Little ugly Gonzo singing about someday finding his family and his home....Puppets make me so emotional.

To end it all, the only version of America The Beautiful that can put Kate Smith's to shame, Fozzie Bear's.

Don't let your kids grow up without the Muppet Movie experience. And then, for a small fee, invite my brother Andrew over to your house to enthrall them with his Muppet soundtrack piano renditions.

It's All Downhill From Here

I forgot to share my brother Andrew's video message to my parents, who celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary last week.

Back To School

Today begins year 4 of cyber schooling! Now that Zachary is out of Kindergarten and into 1st grade, all three kids will have an extensive schedule of online classes. They'll have at least one per day, doubling up on the days they have Advanced Learners online classes. The online classes are great, because they complete a lesson during each class. So I get to mark something as finished when the class is over, and I haven't had to do anything.

Maybe I'll try and post screenshots from k12's online school, it's impressive in it's user friendliness and it's look and feel. Until then, you can click around a sample lesson from the online school.

Our last Chincoteague stop was to see Misty's hoofprints in front of the Roxy Theater.

Ava mourning Misty II

Dreamy

*sigh*

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