Pre-reading quiz: What makes this post different from anything I’ve ever posted, and has a specific functionality in this post?

I was standing here by the computer tonight looking at something Scott was doing.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Caleb shoot down the hall to the bathroom.  I actually thought to myself how nice it is once kids gain that big step of independence.  You don’t even have to take them to the bathroom, they can pretty much get it done themselves other than a few buttons and zippers here and there.

All of a sudden a wail pierced the silence.  I headed down the hall and in the ten or so steps it took me to reach the bathroom, Caleb was screaming and tears were streaming.  I thought surely he had slammed his finger or some other…ahem…extremity in the toilet seat.  But I hadn’t heard a thing.  I kept asking what was wrong and he could even speak.  He just pointed at the toilet and continued wailing like a banshee with his pants around his ankles.  Scott was on my heels to see what all the commotion was about.  He kept asking what was wrong as well.  We could get no words from the bright red tear stained face.

About that time, I stepped back a bit for a better look in the toilet…the right angle if you will.  You know, to see back in the bowels.  That’s when I saw it.  A silver bumper frowning at me.  License plate number Oscar-Foxtrot-Papa-8-5-7.  The 53 emblazoned upside down on the white paint with red and blue racing stripes fading into the deep, dark porcelain abyss.  I let out a huff as I pulled up my sleeve.  Yes that’s right folks, I plunged my arm over wrist deep down into the yellow water for retrieval.  You want me to make you some sandwiches?

Scott hadn’t been able to see what was wrong until my hand emerged with the little love bug.  Who obviously I must love dearly.  Almost as much as my own little love bug who accidentally dropped Herbie down there.  Scott scooted by me in our painfully small bathroom to comfort the still-wailing child.  I began running hot water over Herbie and my hand.  At that point, I started to lose it.  It is just cruel to laugh at a three year old who is obviously upset beyond words, so I turned my head and hid my face as I stifled my laughter.  Within thirty seconds or so, his face had returned to a pale shade and I lost it.  Mine turned bright red and tears welled up in my eyes as I laughed hysterically.  By that time, Caleb found the humor in the situation also after a little reassurance that Herbie was okay, had not been flushed and would not have to be thrown away (like the paci that landed in the toilet this summer).

PS I honestly would have taken a picture had he not been so upset.  You probably can’t decide whether to say “Aaaw man!” or “Thank God!”

Answer to the quiz: I never use capital letters in the title with the exception of “I.”  They were used in this post in combination with the phonetic alphabet to write Herbie in the john.

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One last warm and fuzzy (quite literally) story for 2008.

Perhaps I should have been “unschooled.”  In my readings about homeschooling, I’ve become quite familiar with this term, meaning child lead learning.  Teachers/parents make learning tools accessible to children and help them to pursue their own interests to the fullest on the premise that children have an inborn hunger for knowledge and will learn what they need to know in the process.  So in other words there is no curriculum or lesson plan is used.

Well last night, I checked my mommy board (I hate that term) real quick to see the results of a friend’s ultrasound today (she was right thinking pink! haha) and I stumbled across this video someone had posted.  The story brought tears to my eyes, but of course my -is this real- alarm went off.  So where do you go when you need to check a story’s validity?  Why Snopes.com of course!  And it is absolutely true.  I was amazed.

Alternate youtube video link

So on to the unschooling part.  First I had to look up the story and read everything there was to read on snopes.com.  From there I said “Hmm, this was in the 70′s, I wonder if Christian is still living?”  So I looked up lions on wikipedia to see what their average lifespan is.  Then Scott asked why Christian didn’t have a big mane in the video.  So I continued reading the rest of the article, including information about the mane.  Then I saw that the animal conversationalist involved, George Adamson, was killed, so I looked him up to read more about him.  I would have liked to continue reading about his work and “Born Free,” but I had to go put Caleb to bed!



After watching the video with her daughter, one of the moms on my board said her daughter asked, “Mommy can we get a baby lion?”

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We’re having it.  I think it was about 60 yesterday?  So why not make use of it.  Caleb seemed to sense early yesterday morning that it was not as cold outside, and randomly asked to go play in the sandbox.

Though he looks armed and dangerous….he didn’t actually throw this sand.
Not for the most part anyway.

I can hardly believe tomorrow is the last day of 2008.  My brain has shifted gears here in the last few days with the realization that I have a lot to think about, a lot to plan, and a lot to learn about homeschooling.  I can’t believe Caleb will soon be four.  The older he gets, the faster it goes.  My brain is a bit of a wash today.  So any fellow homeschoolers with advice on where to start, feel free to leave words of wisdom.  It is a very overwhelming feeling!  (As far as comments, be patient with me.  I’ve had a massive spam attack on my blog the last few days.  A few “good” comments [the non porn related ones] have ended up in my spam list, so if your comment isn’t showing up, rest assured, I am trying to remedy the problem and make sure regular commenters are on a safe list.)

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After Santa came

Santa did save him a cookie, he did!

Yum

I don’t know what’s up with this expression!  I guess because it is a “Charley book.”  And a pop-up book too.  Our first I believe.

Opening the Sprig Discover Rig, which already had at least seven miles on it.

This train plays music as it goes over the notes.  Scott of course, built the Star Wars theme song right away (shown here)

Opening THE Herbies

An important part of Christmas, something I can’t ever remember doing as a kid.

Growing up, our house never looked like this Christmas morning.  We had to open one thing, fold the wrapping paper neatly, etc.  It couldn’t be messy.

We built a HUGE train track in the living room floor.  We moved the couch for the Christmas festivities.

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Merry Christmas

Love,
The Cats

Warning, this picture will un-blur on mouse-over. I’m giving you an option not to see the carnage!  It isn’t horrible per say.  Mainly becaue I didn’t include the head in the picture.  It was….up on the porch…on the doormat of course.


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I ran around this morning like a complete nut again. I crammed two days worth of errands and “to-do’s” in this morning. The whole time I was chanting in my head “Make it to naptime, then it is smooth sailing from there.” I finished up the DVDs and the grateful client came and picked them up during lunch. His wife called me about two hours later to say that they were wonderful and they had cried for 40 minutes watching them!

Walmart was surprisingly not as bad as I had expected. I put Caleb in the stroller so I could zip around quicker than with the cart. We actually walked right up to a momentarily vacant self checkout!

Caleb was way too wired to even take a nap so I’m waiting on him to fall out as I type. He is a combination of excited and overtired right now so here’s to hoping he doesn’t put up a huge fight.

Tonight…was magical. Each year the Santa gig gains a little more momentum. He has a better understanding this year and has been counting down the days. We treated ourselves to take out from Pizza Hut for the first time in a while (we cut waaay back on eating out).

I set up the elf snowy footprints on the steps and put the gifts (the tracking pajamas and the Polar Express book) outside.

Prints stamped with SC on the bottom for Santa Claus

Scott ran around and rang the doorbell while I doubled back to nestle the wrapped bell under the tree. Caleb threw the door open and glanced at the presents for a second, then his eyes darted out to the street. He moved so he could see further down, looking for Santa, an elf, or a sleigh.

He tore into his gifts right away and was thrilled with the book. He was so anxious to read it, we could barely get his jammies on. I made stovetop hot chocolate and cooled it down a bit with some half and half. ‘As thick and rich as melted chocolate bars’ – from the book. We all sat on the couch together and read the book sipping our hot chocolate. When I had finished, I asked if Caleb had checked under our tree. His eyes widened when he saw the box and upon picking it up and hearing the sound, his breath caught and he said “I hope it is a reindeer bell!” We read the book a second time at bedtime. He is still pretty restless. I can remember laying just as quietly as the boy in the book listening for sounds on our rooftop. It is so amazing to give the magic of Christmas to your kids.

This year’s tracking pajamas (so Santa will know when boys and girls are asleep in their beds)

Santa’s cookie plate…Caleb wanted to draw a smiley face (he had a hard time with the contours of the plate) and write his name ( I make dotted outlines and he traces it).

Stay tuned, there will be many more pictures to follow, I’m sure!

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We raced through the mall and got our place in line.  Santa was on a break, and Scott headed to the bathroom while Caleb and I waited.  He returned a few minutes later and stood there with his arms crossed.  He leaned over close to me and said “I peed beside Santa.”  It just cracked me up!

The generic mall Christmas tree. At least it is really tall.

We’ve been waiting in line over an hour.  But mom says we’re almost there.

Okay, we’re drawing social security at this point.  But Charley and I are being good.

Finally at last…Santa, Meet Charley!  Up close and personal.  Charley actually jumped right into Santa’s beard.

Now Santa, if you’ll think back with me…to the first time you met Charley.  And Caleb screamed at you.

Last year was our first success (third try).

But this year, he was eager to hop right up there with Santa and tell him what he wanted for Christmas.

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How is it possible that we have been counting down the days until Christmas, yet suddenly I wake up this morning and think, “AH!  I only have two days!”  I knew this last night when Caleb asked seventeen times after getting in bed last night how much longer we had to wait on Santa.  But, abiding by the procrastinator’s creed, I somehow end up freaking out in the final hour with a laundry list of things to do.  I finally saw a light at the end of my DVD project tunnel yesterday.  I should show you the adorable cover and a few details from it.  I’m very pleased with how everything turned out.  I’ve been working for hours with pictures and a few videos of my brother inlaw’s grandson.  I put them all together with music into a 35 minute slideshow DVD, complete with a custom Lightscribe label (where the label is burned directly onto the disc) and a photo birth announcement-like DVD case insert.  I actually still have three more DVDs to do for them, but those will not be nearly as time consuming as this has been. Hopefully a few hours of work, and the other three will be done, for a total of six DVDs!

So now that you know where I’ve been the last couple days…

I somehow managed to forget the ham for the ham and cheese hashbrown casserole when shopping the other night.  So I need to go by the grocery store.  I need to pick up Caleb’s prescription (Did I tell you we finally switched to Zrytec so we could get chewables!), we have to go see Santa tonight!!  I figured we could get away with skipping it this year, but Caleb seems to sense that he really  needs to talk to the man to get his list in!  So after Scott gets off work, we’re heading to the mall to see Santa.  Camera and camcorder in hand, because we’re those parents.  I plan on blowing off the $25 picture and just taking my own.  Anyone else shocked at how expensive those pictures are?!  Oh, we have to return a pile of library books.  My washer just crapped out, full of clothes and water (I think hubby will be able to fix it though). I have to arrange all the Christmas Eve delivery stuff.  The elf dropping of the tracking jammies…I haven’t even wrapped them yet!

So I’m feeling a bit frazzled.  Raise your hand if you’re feeling the same way.  If you’re smiling calmly thinking you’ve got all your ducks in a row, go away, I don’t like you very much right now!  Haha, nah just kidding.  Kind of.

Hopefully you’ll be seeing Santa pictures on here tomorrow.  The way he chats up perfect strangers in stores, I don’t think he’ll have a problem sitting with Santa, but you never know, last year was the first successful year, but it wasn’t in a mall, so there wasn’t as much pressure.

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“…I’ve seen better days…”

Remember this guy and this one?

Let’s just say they have been WELL loved.  And that this Christmas gift is actually “needed.”  He is gonna flip about that!  We are so excited.  But I thought it was really sweet…we were talking about these poor Herbies yesterday, and Caleb said it would actually be just fine if Santa brought a new wheel for the very well loved Herbie his mommy painted.

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I’ve been busy behind the scenes the last two days.  Upgrading my wordpress install and adding/subtracting a few things here and there.  The fun stuff first.  I’ve added a chatbox over there in the sidebar.  No email address required.  It refreshes every five seconds, so you can chat amongst yourselves or leave a message, let me know if you find something cool you wanna share, anything.  Let me know just how you combat crumbs in your couch.  For me personally, on the 8th day, God invented the dustbuster.

Also, I created a visual site archive.  By created, I mean I downloaded a cool wordpress plugin that allowed me to create a neat site archive.  Snazy if you will.  Be forewarned, it is a bit computer intensive, so enter with care if your computer locks up easily.  You can click on each month (or date) on the chart and a snipet of the post will pop up, many including pictures since I post so many.  A lot of the photo thumbnails have gotten me clicking around in the archives trying to guess just what the photo was.  Some of the pictures, you really can’t tell.  So it is a good boredem buster for those who might be sitting at work bored to tears with nothing to do.  I’m not mentioning any Amber names.

Now for the not as fun addition.  You may notice a disclaimer made its way onto the navigation bar.  This was brought about by a recent rather uncalled-for comment left on an old post.  It is something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.  I tried to keep it as short and to the point as possible, even somewhat humorous.  I suppose it is one of those necessary evils when the situation arises.  So that wraps up the fun for tonight!

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