Trash can baths

Who wants to know:
Why did I find 5 of my children bathing outside today…in a 32 gallon trash can? And a wheelbarrow?

Maybe you all would have fun guessing the answer?

Cheap fun: pipe cleaners

I always wondered what pipe cleaners were for, aside from the obvious.
In the course of one afternoon, the girls went from looking slightly bored, to twisting simple flowers, to the wild and crazy Seussian creations you see here.

Psalm 23, just oozing with cuteness

Marci shared a link to a video on her blog that is destined to be quoted in our house for decades to come. My kids are cute and I’m pretty fond of them, but I could almost trade in all 8 of them for the little munchkin in the video. She’s that cute.
Sorry, girls.

Pampered chefs and pampered kittens

My sister has decided to become a Pampered Chef consultant, and being a nice person I decided to host her first party.
If anyone wants to place an order, I can hook you up. Really, it’s just $2 or $3 more to get it right to your door than if you want to come to my house. Unless you want to come to my house.
This makes a good excuse to get off my seat and clean my house.
Here’s what I have to do the children have on their list of things to do:

• Vacuum under furniture. First they’ll have to put away the 30 socks that we’re sure to find behind the couch.
• Straighten/dust bookshelves. This entails finding a place for the books that don’t technically fit on the shelf. Maybe.
• Clean around edges of floors in all living areas. This is where the baseboards would be if our house was finished. This is where we have a small crack between the plywood and drywall because we are living in our house as we finish it.
• Wash windows. The natural light should save us money on our electric bill once we get rid of the fingerprints, noseprints, elbowprints, footprints… Spell Check is telling me that there’s no such thing as an elbowprint. Spell Check has never been to my house.
• Clean the microwave, trash can, cat box and gerbil cage. I hope nobody gets confused and puts a gerbil in the microwave.
• Hang a hook in the bathroom for the hand towel. So that visitors will believe that we wash our hands after we use the bathroom.
• Wipe down the chairs and scrub the edge of the dining room table. Because, gross!
• Condition the leather couches. Because after we clean the windows, the lovely sunbeams streaming through the windows will toast the leather.
• Move tools and building supplies out of sight. On second thought maybe we should leave them in plain sight to give the impression that are tirelessly working on the house.
• Tell my hubby about the teeny, tiny abandoned kitten that Kaitlyn found in the burn pile. “Oh, he’s so tiny and sad,” said one girl as they tried to dropper-feed the tiny mewling creature. “He wants his mom,” said another. “Somebody lick him!”

Ummm…no.

Frog & Prince

What can I say? He’s had us squealing with laughter and disgust for a year now. Happy birthday to my little guy.
This video is not for the faint of heart. Just for the record, we wanted the yucky face. We didn’t think he would really do it. After all, the girls had tried unsuccessfully for ten minutes off-camera to get him to do it.

How many times can you use the phrase "8 kids"?

We pulled into the bank drive-through yesterday and the kids got right to business:
“Mom, how do you spell 8, as in 8 kids?”
“I love our big van because all 8 of us can fit in here!”
“I wonder how many other families have 8 kids like us.”
“I wonder if they have 8 suckers in the bank?”

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, our bank often gives out candy in the drive through. Tragically, our windows are darkly tinted. The teller never knows just how many are hiding in my van.

In a stroke of genius, somebody yelled, “Sound off!”
“One!”
“Two!”
“Three!”
“Four!”
“Five!”
“Six! Seven! Eight!”

Sadly, the two youngest were asleep in their carseats. We must have lost credibility when Six also yelled Seven and Eight.

It didn’t work. We didn’t score a single sucker. But we were laughing for the next 10 minutes, which is better than candy. So maybe it did work after all.

Gas math

edited to add my 2 cents’ worth

I filled up the van this afternoon and calculated the gas mileage. Bear with me, because I did all of the following in my head while driving.
358 miles divided by 29 gallons = approx. 12 mpg.
“12 miles per gallon? That stinks,” thought I.
Then I played with the numbers some more. I’m a numbers person.
12 miles per gallon = about 520 feet per ounce. 2 tablespoons of gasoline moves my 15 passenger van 540 feet.
2 tablespoons to move 5 or 6 thousand pounds of steel, flesh, and diaper bags 1/10 of a mile. Even at $3/gallon, that’s less than 2 1/2 cents. Not a bad deal.
Based on moving pounds and feet, I would have to move my own carcass nearly 4 miles to get the same level of efficiency. I don’t think 2 oz of chocolate would get me that far.
Maybe chocolate covered coffee beans would do it…but not 2 cents’ worth.

Can’t…stop…laughing

This is better than Cute Overload. I missed a lot because I laughed til my mascara ran into my eyes, and I was rubbing my eyeballs raw trying to see what I was missing. In spite of this, I still managed to laugh myself sick. It was great.

Two legged dog
Monkey teasing tigers
Crazy animals – don’t miss the cat and the ceiling fan, but you might want to stop after the cats and dogs. Let’s just say that monkeys can be pretty disgusting!
Smart animals
Duck feeding fish

HT to Knitting, Horses and my Family

Commonsense precautions

When I was in public school (I attended for 5 years), we did fire drills. The alarm would ring deafeningly, and all of the deafened children would obediently line up and follow teachers outside.
I know from my mom’s experience that they used to (or still do?) have earthquake/bomb drills in Southern California schools. The children would hit the floor and crawl under their desks on cue, waiting for the all-clear.
I also know from my in-laws’ 2 year stint in Florida that some schools (or most, or all?) have alligator drills, in which children are taught to run in a zigzag pattern to evade hungry alligators in the school playground. Yes, this is for real. Unless my in-laws have been secretly laughing at me for the past 9 years.
Hmm. If it’s not for real, I’m not sure I want to know. Believing that alligators should be on the list of dangers in public schooling has been too much fun.
Anyway…
My dad started a new job in Oklahoma recently, and mom tells me that all the houses up there are suspiciously new. She also said that Dad’s employer has a rule that is not uncommon up there: all employees must back their vehicles into the parking spaces at all times.
Why?
So they won’t be playing demolition derby on their way out when the next tornado hits.

Quotable kids

5yo Becca, in a hot van yesterday:
“I’m so hot I feel like a piece of toast with the toaster set on number five!”