Charleston Falls Night Hike

I guess it has been a yearly event for a long time, but this was the first time we had heard of it. From 6~9PM tonight you could walk the 1/2-mile to the falls and see the falls (a trickle at this time of the year) with some faint colored backlights.

The first highlight was when we met this jolly old fellow on the trail...



As you might guess, it was about 32 degrees out....

Then Cindy took a picture with the falls as a stunning backdrop....



However, as you can (or can't) see, our simple digital camera doesn't have a long exposure setting, so everything behind us showed up black.

On the trail to the falls, Allyson was content to be carried, but on the way back she ran most of the way, chortling as she played footsie with Makenna.

But the real highlight for Allyson was the dog she got to pet.
She just loves dogs, and we are more than happy to let her interact with them--just a long as they don't live at our address and/or leave landmines in our yard!



(This photo somehow reminded me of the old B-movie, 'Devil Dog: The Hound from He__.')

Just what WAS Cindy doing all afternoon?

Well, to hear her tell it, she was "Makin' babies all afternoon!"

(She made 73 little Baby Jesus' as part of a Primary craft activity tomorrow.)

Sorry I missed it!

Day 3 of Framing.....

UPDATE: They worked on Saturday too, and the second story is pretty much framed now too.

Sight Reading

Tonight we were reading from the Book of Mormon, and Makenna begged to read first. (Being a pretty good reader for a 1st-grader, it is really quite amazing to see her sound out some of the big words she comes across in the scriptures!)

However, tonight her sounding-out wasn't quite up to snuff.

She read, 'And King Mosiah did cuss...'

And verily, Mom and Dad did chortle!

Unfortunately, Makenna seemed to think we were laughing at her misreading of 'cause' instead of the visual picture her misreading painted.

Then again, as I seem to remember, King Mosiah had some excessively wild and rebellious sons, and as such her mistaken rendition, though not scriptural, could quite possibly be factually correct.

Mr. Manners Returns

Dear Mr. Manners,

The recent new tastes of my 8-year-old son—for the sake of anonymity I’ll call him Clameron (as he ‘clams up’ whenever you try to have a serious discussion with him)—concern me greatly.
Yes, like every boy he loves to play soccer, throw baseballs, and act like a real stinker to his sisters, but his taste in music is keeping me up nights worrying. Worrying as I hear it playing in his room every night, somehow lulling him to sleep—those melodies transforming into frenetic jousting of harmonies, the keyboards flying madly between octaves, and then the denouement triumphant!
What is a mother to do?
While other mothers can brag about their children listening to dreamy Zack Efron, Hannah Montana, or those fabulous American Idol musical superstars, I must hang my head and confess that MY SON (sob!!) only listens to that punk rocker of his century, (another sob!!) Beethoven!
And it is a piano concerto! Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat to be exact!
And my husband is the one who dug out this old CD of his and gave it to him to listen to!
They are conspiring against me! What can I do?
I do so want to have a normal boy!

Yours sincerely,

Keyed Up and Pale in the Heights
__________________

Dear Ivory Keys,

Tempting though it is to segue your cry for help into a recital of that trite motif of the atonally droning chorus of pop psychology, ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ I must refrain, as you are obviously already suffering from classical cognitive dissonance.
For the problem is much more discordant than you might imagine, and may even be a prelude to even greater mischief of the cacophonous kind.
(Excuse me as I now leave the verbiage of musicology behind and don the robes of psychology.)
You see, this particular piano concerto is commonly referred to as the “Emperor Concerto’ and as such, repeated listening to it could lead your little Clameron to fall prey to a superiority complex.
Yes, as he hums and conducts the complex harmonies of Beethoven in his mind while his slack-jawed peers drool onto their Ipods as they revel in those musical maestros you mentioned, he may subconsciously draw conclusions that could lead to such visions of grandeur.
And such, he would probably end up with anti-social behaviors such as prizing education, thinking critically, contributing to society, and maybe {gasp) even taking a liking to Mozart.
Be that as it may, there are two easy steps to snap him out of this self-destructive behavior.
1. Get cable or satellite TV.
2. Make him watch the Disney Channel 24/7.

He will soon be cured of any nonconformist behavior, and will be able to converse ably with his friends about all the nuances of the latest wacky antics of Zack and Cody, Raven, Hannah, and the East High teens.

Sincerely yours,

Mr. Manners
PS: Please let me know if you need a prescription for his slack jaw, as I will be glad to write one for him. (I have already included your own personally inscribed prescription with this reply.)

What a difference a day makes!

Today they started framing.....

Smart Alec!

So, here I was at the computer playing a time-waster game where you have to unscramble 8-letter words to score points.

Ol' Cameron came over to see what I was doing right when a new scrambled word popped up. He looked at it for all of 0.25 seconds, then suggested "Obedient!"

And the little rat was right!

Yes, I realize that this takes irony to an entirely new level--he has never been so quick to show obedience! (I assumed that he didn't even know that word, much less have the ability to recognize it when he saw it!)

Mmm....fresh-baked bread.....

Cindy was on a baking roll today, and pulled off a couple touchdowns.

She first made a batch of cinnamon rolls using Tamlee's great recipe--where you are eating hot cinnamon rolls approx. 1 hour after you start making them.

She then made 2 loaves of bread. Allyson, who is cutting 3 teeth as we speak, slammed down 3 whole slices (it didn't hurt that they were generously slathered with the saltier Amish butter)! Cameron and 'Kenner stepped up to the plate too, and as a result there is just 1 loaf remaining.

Yes, once again I am glad that I taught Cindy how yeast was our friend, not something to be scared of!

We all got 'elf'-ed....

These may take the place of a family Christmas letter!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9577556864

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9603359085

Kermit visits....

To keep the kids from being too bored on Friday while Cindy was out shopping, I borrowed an activity from my sister Tamlee's playbook (circa 1986).

The result was the Singing Frog Trio belting out a "High School Musical" song:



The kids have enjoyed watching and re-watching the video I took too.

There was a lot of tongue-action going on--and frankly speaking, it was kinda gross!

Black Friday

As usual, Cindy was out of the house to shop with her similarly-demented girl-buddies at 3:45 AM.

I, being more normal, got up at 5 and was one of the first ones in line at Lowes for a doorbuster or two, then on to Staples for a couple more.

I was home at 7:30 AM.

Cindy was home at 4:30 PM.

We were both asleep by 9 PM.

Simple Pleasures

Allyson has picked up the new habit of looking for and picking out the toe-jam every time a sock comes off.

She is quite meticulous, leaving no toes unspread.

Turkey Day

It didn't help that our power went out at 7 AM and wasn't restored until after 11 AM, but we were able to get the turkey cooked by taking it to Dean and Kay's house across the street.

And as you can see, it ended up being a fine affair of fine foods in large quantities, and we even had some extended family to boot! (Carlton, Liz and Hunter joined us.)



Not seen in the above photo are the 7 pies (2 pumpkin, 2 pecan, 1 lemon (with cream cheese), 1 fudgy chocolate, and 1 choco-brownie pie). If you do a headcount (and include the photographer) that translates into 1 pie for each person over age 2.

Mama Myopia

And it continues....

Allyson has learned lots of new words:
--Apple
--Outside
--Silky (her blanket)
--PooPoo
--Bath
--Cereal
--Dean (our neighbor)

Other words we might have heard are:
--Misanthrope
--Flatulence
--Perdiddle

But still, but when it comes to saying 'Mama' or 'Mommy,' she clams right up or completely ignores the eager prompts from stage left.

As Cindy wonders, 'Maybe I didn't nurse her long enough. Or maybe this is her revenge for when I slapped her hand during the last nursing session while she was intent on maintaining her toothy grip of death.'

(Maybe I can get Allyson to say, 'Got Milk?' instead?)

Concrete Evidence

Well, we now have a concrete floor to match the concrete walls.



The plan is to start framing next week....

Slouching towards Gomorrah.....

Well, I now possess my own cell phone. That makes 2 for our family.

Sure, it is another Tracfone, and only for occasional use, but it is still a sad day.

Really sad.

Of course, I get Cindy's hand-me-down---she has sucked most of the minutes off of our existing Tracfone, so now I get the one with only 120 minutes left and she gets the new one that has a whopping 820 minutes for a year. (I figure that in three months I will have about 100 minutes and she will have about 600!)

OK, so that's not a lot of minutes, but then again, it is more than enough for us and it only costs $99 for a year of service.

Timberrrrrrrr!

On Saturday I joined Cameron and an entire herd (pod? gaggle? decibel? terror?) of Cub Scouts and their leaders to cut down the vermicious honeysuckle at Carriage Hill Metro Park.

The honeysuckle in question is a Chinese variant that had trouble growing in the area when it was planted in the US, so the government stepped in and of course it is now choking out all the native plants and trees in a number of states.

Gee. Who would've thought that a well-meant government program could've had such unintended results? [Insert deeply sarcastic tone here.]

But I digress....

According to the pre-event literature, only the 11-year old scouts would be wielding the pruning saws and loppers, but since I was with Cameron I let him go ahead and have some destructive fun. (I apologize for the fact that this may have directly resulted in every cub scout and even some pre-cub scouts ending up armed. But no one was hurt!)

We lopped and sawed and sawed and lopped, and 2 hours later Cameron was still a'rarin' to keep going. Being drawn to the saws, he took especial pleasure in finding big trunks to saw through.

I was really quite proud of him--he worked like a demon!

As he pronounced in the midst of his honeysuckle killing spree, 'The only thing funner than this is making fires!'

(Sadly, there were no cameras at the event....)

Toddler Terrorist

Cameron loves to lay down in front of the TV, his feet up on the entertainment center.

As he innocently (if anything that boy does can be considered innocent...) gazes at the screen, Allyson likes to saunter up and do any one of a number of things to him.

--Squat down and slap him up alongside the head.
--Lean over and slap him right between the eyes.
--Try to kick his ear off.
--Lob a toy at him from 12 inches away.

For some reason Cameron finds it annoying.

We just smile quietly to ourselves and at Allyson, as we see the gospel, specifically, The Golden Rule in action.

She is merely doing to another as she has seen others done to by that other.

Funnily, she doesn't do it to Erin or Makenna.

Live-blogging at the Floyd home

The previous post about buffalo wings makes one think of yummy chunky bleu cheese dressing. The following should completely replace that yummy image with another chunky--and much less tantalizing--image, and I sincerely apologize.

It is 1:42 AM on Saturday morning.

Erin had planned to sleep at a friend's house tonight, but at 11:30 PM she called to say her stomach was hurting, and after a second call at midnight I went and picked her up.

She had mentioned that she felt like throwing up, so I even took a barf bowl with me in the van.

Arriving home, she felt barfy but didn't spew any chunks, and she finally got to sleep after 1 AM.

15 minutes ago, I heard her lurching into the bathroom and then I heard a big splat. A big WET splat.

Getting up, I peeked around the corner and saw Erin frozen in mid-stride. Unfortunately, that mid-stride was about 3 feet shy of the toilet, and the floor was covered with little chewed bits of raw carrots and other flotsam and jetsam.

Obviously not wanting to step into the existing mess, she barfed again where she stood. And probably again. Thanks to her height, the chunks and liquid splattered quite handsomely.

One could even see that the pizza she had eaten for dinner had been festooned with at least one partial mushroom.

Cindy was able to extricate Erin, and get her into another room.

Armed with a squeegee and many paper towels, I was able to get all the visible stuff up. As you might image, a rose smells like a rose, and barf doesn't. The stink--actually the noxious fumes--was tremendous, and it almost caused Cindy to add her own bit (bits?) to the effluvium.

Cindy is now mopping up and doing some laundry (Erin's winter coat for some reason had been lying on the bathroom floor and was unluckily within the 'Splatter Zone.')

Afterwards, Erin said she felt MUCH better--her stomach didn't hurt at all.

No surprise there!

She apologized, ruefully saying, 'I was trying to get to the toilet.' Then she promptly went back to bed.

The only mystery during this entire episode was, Where did Erin leave the barf bowl?

Alas, the mystery was solved. Sherlock Holmes is not needed here.

It was in her right hand the entire time.

She is clearly blessed with mouth-floor coordination, but she obviously needs to work on her hand-mouth coordination.

Still, though the barf (and toilet) bowl was sadly empty, our cup can truly be said to be half full, as she didn't do this on the new carpet!

He shore ain't my son!

"So Cameron, are you going to watch the game tomorrow?"

"Am I going to watch it!? It's the biggest game of the year!"

He continued on, "I don't care about Michigan State, but I hate Michigan--I hate the color yellow!"

Yes, tomorrow is the big Ohio State-Michigan football game.

Yawn.

Maybe I'll watch some of it with Cameron and give my own brand of commentary.

And who knows, maybe Ohio State can continue their streak!

(Of course, per another friend, even if they do make it to the championship game they'll then have to play a team from the SEC that has actually played against real competition in almost every game....)

Yet it is a good excuse to microwave up a pack of buffalo wings, though....