What's on My Camera?

Time for another edition!

We went to Gabe's and Paige found a pair of Nikes that were size 22.

I found a thong in size 5XL.

Be careful. You know what they say about horizontal stripes. They aren't very slimming.

On a recent date night, Ron showed me his office.

"This is Sparta!"

This was supposed to be a sweet pic of me and my sleeping boy...

But it ended up looking like a creepy pic from The Others.

What's Grosser Than Gross?

Pulling my old sandals out and finding they'd gone moldy everywhere my feet had touched them?

Or the black fur I found growing in the back of my fridge?

Or the beige goop settled in the bottom?

This is a photo of the blood pillow I gave Elizabeth for her birthday. (My mom sewed it because I am sewing machine-challenged)

If you recognize the hat as yours, too bad. It's mine now. It sat there for a year and no one claimed it!

Harrison is going to be a 'Tween-age Werewolf" for Halloween...

He looks extremely bored. Let's try this again:

That's more like it!

While I was bleaching Sadie's hair, Calvin came down for a visit!

I quickly grabbed the camera.

The kids say this picture looks faked, like I photo-shopped him in.

Not that I would ever do such a thing...

Sadie's hair didn't want to 'come up', in the parts that she'd dyed black months ago. I left the bleach on twice as long as it said, rinsed it, and applied a second batch, again leaving it on for twice as long. This was as good as it got.

This morning, it was Nancy Spungen in my house!

Who am I kidding? It was Drew Barrymore playing Nancy Spungen.

Wait! How can you tell

Nancy Spungen from

Courtney Love, you ask?

Easy! Look at their dates!

As soon as a pic of Joe as Sid Vicious exists, I'll get that to you.

Kitchen Ogre

We spent the day in Weston. While visiting my in-laws there, we had a fantastic dinner of fruit salad, chicken, steamed broccoli, seasoned potatoes, baked beans, and sourdough as well as pumpernickel bread. For dessert, vanilla ice cream and orange-craisin cookies.

Shortly after dessert, we left for home.

When we arrived home, less than an hour later, the kids began sniffing around for food.

Often, in the mornings I wake up to a sink full of dirty dishes, all the eggs, bread, milk, cereal, and bagels having been eaten in the night.

My routine lately tends to be staying up late, laptop on the kitchen table, guarding our food.

One child came in at 1:00am and proceeded to pour a huge bowl of cereal that took half the box, and would have used a quart of milk, if I hadn't stopped her and made her put it back in the box.

After I (once again) sent Harrison to bed, he grabbed some paper and a pen on the way, but later came out to show me what he'd drawn:

More Adventures at the DMV

Today I drove my minivan, complete with 5 kids, to the DMV so my 18 yr old could get her "big girl" license.

Before I went in with her to sign a form for "proof of residency", I warned the kids-

"I'm leaving you guys here. If you screw up and make a racket,

and get me arrested, you won't go to Playgroup!"

On a side note, our homeschool group will be making these adorable guys from matsutake, so I'm putting out the call for empty toilet paper tubes:

While I was in the DMV, I used the restroom.

Next to the sink was an empty toilet paper tube.

Score!

I put it in my jacket pocket.

When I came out of the DMV, my children were not fighting in the van.

They were not yelling in the van.

They were not throwing things at each other in the van.

Because... my children were not in the van! They'd gotten out and taken over the car parked next to ours. *

* which happened to belong to an extremely patient guy named Joe Conway.

Just... Don't Ask

Harrison climbed into Tessa's pants.

Why he did this, I do not know.

Sometimes, it's better not to ask, and to just lunge for the camera.

Get The Party Started

Paige planned a Tim Burton movie night for her 14th birthday.

Movie nights are hard, because not everyone knows the rules.

Yes, if you talk during movies, you go to the special hell.

It seemed like a cool idea, a Tim Burton movie night. What actually happened is the people who wanted to watch the movie sat down to watch it. The people who talk during movies sat down on the same sofa and drove the other people crazy. Those people got up and abandoned the movie because they hate trying to watch a movie with others talking through it. And the people who were left were all talking and not watching the movie.

In short, no one was watching the movie!

When that movie ended, the movie watchers tried again, repeatedly.

Shushing the talkers doesn't work because the talkers respond with,

"I was just saying I have that exact same hoodie as the girl that was in that car, and that I got it while I was staying with my cousins in New York over spring break. God! What is your problem?"

"Shhhhh!!"

"Ohmygod! One time, at 4-H Camp, they played that song at the dance, ohmygod, Tyler was so funny! Do you remember? Did you go to camp that year? No, no that was the year that I took my green blanket, remember?"

"SHHHHHH!!!!!"

If you do not get invited to the next movie night, try to work out why.

Paige's cake was Tim Burton-inspired.

See how many Tim Burton references you can find.

Some folks brought guitars. Tiffany crept into Arden's room late at night and smuggled out her keyboard and they had a jam session in the kitchen. That was really cool.

Round Two:

Sadie's and Joe's party was a surprise party. The key to pulling off a surprise party is having the birthday boy and/ or girl actually show up.

Several people offered to come early and help set up. All bailed at the last minute.

Sadie and Joe were supposed to show up around 4pm and they managed to get here around 6pm. By then the food was gone, and folks were eying the cake. Some people got tired of waiting and left!

But arrive they eventually did, and they plowed right into the crowd of party guests:

Half-assed Watchmen cake.

Opening gifts.

I made a huge pot of chili that was devoured rapidly. One of the guests made hot cocoa from scratch. We brought out the video game systems, and the younger set enjoyed those.

The older kids went outside.

A lot.

Ron, Lord of the Flame

We had a large bonfire, which none of the party-goers would go near. They stayed up in the woods, and girls in flip-flops froze their toes off.

Half the invited folks did not bother to rsvp or show up. Of the half that did attended, many seemed to want only to get drunk or high. When it became obvious that I was not supplying, the party broke up rather rapidly.

And thus begins a new stage in parenting.

The "you don't have to get drunk to have a good time" stage.

I hear it lasts the second eighteen years.

Absolut Power

Today the kids in Charlene's Humanities class at the Learning Center were given the assignment to draw me, as their queen. What would the art look like? How big is my temple? How big would I be, compared to everyone else? Would I have minions? What would I take with me to the afterlife?

Most students depicted me as huge, stomping on very small people, with words like "Obey Me!" thundering from my mouth.

Above is a drawing one of the students did of me (complete with the false beard of a pharaoh), ordering my minions about.

I am sitting on a backless throne constructed of vodka bottles.

("Are they empties?" Ron asked)

Thumbs Up!

(warning! very graphic!)

As a treat for Paige on her birthday, we were heading out to the Mall. The plan was while at the Mall, we would also meet up with friends, and bring two additional kids back with us.

Arden was in the van attempting to remove glass from a trinket box, and cut her thumb.

Caleb came over and showed us his bruised hand!