"I can build it - yes I can!!"

"I'm leaving on a jet plane...don't know when I'll be back again..."

Actually I'm leaving in a minivan and I'll be back Sunday. Where is she going - you ask?? What destination is her glamorous life leading her to now - you say??

Why, it's a Women's Retreat!! No, not my church's Women's Retreat, I'm piggybacking onto Jen's retreat as I feel that 1 retreat per year is not sufficient enough for me at this time! We leave in 3 hours.

THA-REE OW-ERS!!!!!

This is what I must do in the next 3 hours:

1. Waste time posting a blog entry

1. Pack

2. Make treats to bring

3. Make treats for hubby to bring to our bible study (that I'll be missing tonight)

4. Shower

5. Finish compiling/printing out stand-up comedy routine (I'm performing at the retreat)

6. Make & pack a dinner to bring with me

7. Straighten up house since 6 ladies could potentially come inside when they pick me up.

Hmmnn - I'm sure there's more.

But - I'm so excited about what I accomplished this week that I have to share!! Our kids' bedrooms are located on the upper floor (commonly known as the attic). The boys have the smaller room and the ceilings slant all the way down to about 18" off the floor at the end of the room - so it is always an issue as to how cramped it is in there. SO, hubby came up with the idea to build custom-sized bunkbeds. At first I thought "HELLO?! You can't put bunk beds in a room with such low ceilings!" But as we got to talking & planning - we figured it out! Here is a before shot looking into the bedroom:

And after:

The closet before:

And after:

This is the other side of the room if you are looking from the beds:

I still need to build some sort of shelving systen for ^^ that end of the room. But the bunk bed opened up TONS of space in the room!! I am QUITE pleased with it. So, I'll guess we'll just have to see if the bunk beds hold!! I'm not schooled in the ins & outs of building furniture & I'm quite sure I didn't use the right kind of screws. Oh well - if they plunge to the ground - the mattresses are foam & it's only 3 feet down, right...?

"CANNONBALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Sadly, I have no morbid rat photos to share with you today. *don't all cry at once* But oddly enough - I have a little tale Dach...

So, yesterday while I was homeschooling *Well, I wasn't actually homeschooling, I was chatting on the phone with a girlfriend - hey, homeschool is flexible, isn't that part of the draw?! I think we may have actually been discussing homeschooling, such as: How much we were trying to avoid homeschooling/why on earth we ever decided to homeschool/what we'd do with 6 hours of silence every day if we didn't homeschool etc...*

Anyway - I feel like a better person if I say I was homeschooling when I was supposed to be homeschooling. So, for the sake of the story...

So yesterday while I was "homeschooling" I realized Dach had been quiet and missing for a little too long. *For those of you who reside in homes that are lacking in the 3-year-old dept. - "quiet" and "missing" are not the optimal adjectives you would want in the same sentence with your child's name* Upon investigation - I found him completely naked and dripping wet, standing on top of the toilet and readying himself for apparently ----ANOTHER CANNONBALL---- into a tubful of water where a rather nervous-looking 5 year old sister was bathing & bracing for impact!

From the book of "Phrases you thought that would have been painfully obvious":

"We DO NOT jump off the toilet into the tub!!!"

"Ratslayer III - A Father's Revenge"

Current Conditions:

It's currently pouring down rain at a 45 degree angle. *thinks* Gee, I think I'll run around outside with no coat on and prance around until I'm completely soaked so that I will have all the more laundry to wash. Oh wait - that wasn't me...that was Zane! Thank you child, I really didn't have enough to do. Perhaps you'd like to smear some mud on the carpet and dump a container of apple juice on the kitchen floor to complete my cleaning torture...

***Due to the graphic nature of the following entry - parental supervision is advised***

So after Hubby saw Dach's shoes, he went on a rat-trapping frenzy. He "excitedly" went down to the basement this morning to check his traps and lo & behold he discovered this:

(um, this a little gross - you may want to skip it)

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That would be a picture of an overturned rat trap and a trail of blood leading behind the dryer.

Are you ready for the rigamortis-laden rat that hubby dragged out from behind the dryer?

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Poor Hubby, what a way to start the morning! I'm thinking that waking up to cook breakfast for kids beats the heck out of waking up to scrub rat blood off the laundry room floor. Apparently, I don't have it so bad...

Buffet a la Nike...

Apparently, because I’m doing such a extraordinary job at keeping our food under lock & key from the rats – they have altered their diet to the following…



Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Evidently I have rats with a flair for athletics. Sadly, I didn’t think to record The Dach’s reaction to the rats feasting on his beloved-can’t-wear-any-other-pair-of-shoes-without-throwing-the-mother-of-all-fits shoes. Otherwise you too could listen to the high-pitch wailing that is rendering many a local dog deaf.

“Hey Rats!! How about you forego my child’s shoes and eat some POISON out of one of the 4 ratropolis community centers we have sitting around the house?!?!”

[Don't worry, the shoes were at the bottom of the stairs in the unfinished basement not in the bedrooms or anything. We haven't seen any sign of them anywhere except the basement. Hey, dear sister-in-law "I bet you can't wait to come visit -my guest room that is located in the basment- in 3 weeks!!"]

Question of the week...

This week's question: If you could give one thing to your children, what would it be?


Nyquil

Disease & pestilence update...

I just threw up. No, not flu related - conjestion related. As in "cough till you puke". I've had a cough/sore throat on and off for a week that finally decided to turn into something today *sigh* I'm having "8 weeks of sinus infection flashbacks" from this fall. I just doped myself with Sudafed, cough syrup, Flonase and am sucking on a Coldeez...am I missing anything?

*Look around* Hmnn, apparently I missed the household memo that went out endorsing the practice of roaming about the house while eating a danish. Gee - I can ALMOST see the floor through the crumbs...almost. It's just such a mystery as to what could POSSIBLY be attracting rodents to our home...

Speaking of rodents - Mr. Exterminator came back yesterday. Dach took one look at him and loudly asked "ARE YOU THE MOUSE POOP MAN?!?!" He set up 4 "bait stations" aka chambers of poisonous death nuggets. Of course he did this with 4 children trailing him asking incessant questions: "What are you doing?" "What is that?" "Rats are evil!" "Why are you putting that there?" "Are you going to kill the rats?" "Rats poop in our house." "My dad killed 2 rats!" etc., etc, etc...

In other news - after sucessfully affixing the 30 AWANA patches the other day I hit a "cleaning groove". Hubby took the kids to AWANAS and left me to my cleaning binge. I purged 5 black hefty bags of stuff for Goodwill out of the basement. 5 bags!! *taps toe waiting for standing ovation* I also purged out 1 black hefty bag of garbage which, when combined with Hubby's 3 bags from earlier this week brings our combined purged garbage total to 4 hefty sacks! Apparently there were 9 hefty sacks of stuff in the basement we didn't need - and probably still more! Some things are HARD to toss! "But this is REI brand/GAP etc... I could sell this on EBAY!!" Too bad I have no TIME to sell the stuff on EBAY!

Later that night I rewarded myself with a taped episode of American Idol until 20 minutes into it - the power went off! The whole block went dark! So, apparently ...it's bedtime! It was Midnight anyway. The downside was that Hubby could not wear his CPAP machine to sleep (sleep apnea device) because it requires electricity. So Wed night was pretty much 6 hours of me nudging a snoring Hubby. Ironically the power came back on at 6:01am. His alarm went off at 6:10am.

Needless to say I was a little tired on Thursday. That was also the day that Maisie announced "It hurts to swallow." Turns out she has strep throat. Did you know that (in children) nausea is a symptom of strep throat? I didn't either. Of course we didn't realize how bad it was (or that it was strep) till about 9pm that night. As a rule of thumb - my children do not incur presciption-requiring diseases during business hours. Luckily via my on-call Dr. and a 24 hour pharmacy - we were good to go. I finally got her first dose of Amoxicillin in her around 11:something pm and got her to bed for the night by Midnight. Dach & Maisie were bedside by 2am "I have to go potty. I want to sleep with you. Do you think the Sonics will make it to the playoffs?" *I don't know what they wanted - but on 2 hours of sleep I wasn't entirely interested.* I shipped them back to bed and Maisie was back downstairs at 5:30am with a fever of 102.7. After doping her up I sent her back to bed for a couple of more hours. Could I please sleep for 8 hours without distraction, please? Please?

Well, Maisie is on the road to recovery & it is a beautiful sunny day - so it looks like we are heading to the zoo (because we don't live in one)...

Could we just give them stickers & call it good?

A photo of parental guilt:

This would be a photo of the 30 - yes 30 - AWANA patches that need to be glued/sewn on the vests of 4 children. 30. Apparently if you ignore them for 5 months - they don't go away - they just pile up in the drawer so that each week when your naked-vested child arrives at AWANAS you can feel the rush of bad-parent-guilt. *sigh* Why can't we just give them something disposable like a sticker or better yet - a piece of candy every time they memorize a verse? I will now attempt to affix these to the vests *So help me if anyone comes home with another patch tonight!!!* while simultanously cooking dinner for 6 - all in the next 2 hours! *top ramen, anyone?* Be sure to tune in to my 10pm performance where I will complete all of my bible study homework while folding 5 loads of laundry! Which reminds me, if we are going to consider ice dancing & beach volleyball Olympic sports - I've got a few categories of my own I'd like to submit for consideration...