Boot Camp

The other day Kardynn and I were leaving a friend's house, as that friend was preparing to rush out the door for boot camp.  The following conversation went down on our way to the car.

Kardynn, "What's boot camp?"
Me, "It's a group of people exercising."
Kardynn, "Oh, I thought it was a place where people practiced so they wouldn't get scared at Halloween."

Ah, yes, Boo Camp.

Removing Rust from Concrete

A few years after moving into our house, we added a screened porch and stamped concrete patio to the back of our house.  The patio has been great and we've never had any regrets.  But one thing we did regret a little was putting what turned out to be rusty metal furniture on it because our patio was eventually covered in rust stains.  This coming Spring we're planning to have the patio re-sealed so suddenly I wanted to figure out some way to get rid of the rust stains.  I impulsively tried spraying some textured spray paint over the rust.  And while I thought that looked better than the rust stains, it definitely wasn't a great solution.  So then we tried some CLR.  That didn't work. Well, we eventually found a combo that worked GREAT. 

Bar Keeper's Friend and a wire grill brush

If you ever find yourself needing to remove rust from stamped concrete (or probably any concrete) go get yourself some Bar Keeper's Friend and a grill brush.  Check out the first block we tried it on. (I think it's fairly evident which block we cleaned up.)

Here's a before and after on another block.  See that big spot of rust there on that block on the left?

 

 Finally, here's a before and after on the whole patio. It's still a little powder-y from all the Bar Keeper's Friend but hopefully one good rain will take care of that.  It was time-consuming, I'm not going to lie.  But it definitely did the trick.  I'm even considering keeping the wire metal patio furniture (though I did spray all the legs with Rustoleum's Rust Reformer, first).

Refinished Table

On Monday Dwight and I refinished our kitchen table.  This is a table we bought with money that my grandparents gave to us, when we first bought our townhouse.  We bought it from a furniture store where they actually made the furniture.  In fact, we paid a deposit and THEN they made it.  So it's a great, solid, well-constructed table.  But it has certainly taken some abuse over the years.  The first major blow was after a night of playing games with Dwight's family.  We had played late into the night and then just went straight to bed, with plans to clean up in the morning.  Well, during the night our cats decided to play with the cups of water we left sitting on the table.  As it turns out, water on top of a score sheet, left sitting overnight, is not the best for a table.  And then I'm sure our attempt to clean it up afterward wasn't great for the table either.  Then throw four messy children at said table.  Not only are they messy eaters, they're messy painters, messy glue-ers, heck, they're even messy with their stickers.  So yeah, that table has had a rough decade (after a few easy years in the very beginning). But now it's back to it's original glory.  Yay!  It looks beautiful.  I wish we'd done it ages ago.

The 2013/2014 Routine

We're almost two months into the school year and life is settling into some sort of routine. The worst part of my day is when the alarm goes off.  I am not a morning person and 6:30 am always comes too soon for me!  The kids don't seem to be morning people either so waking them up and getting them out the door within an hour is my own personal hell.  And as if that wasn't unpleasant enough, I get to pack three lunches during that time which is another task low on my list of favorite chores.  But eventually we all find our way to the bus stop - or worst case scenario, to the school itself.  Several times a week, I then head out for a morning run.  I know I'm already starting to sound like quite the complainer but I do feel compelled to point out that the morning runs were a lot more fun when the weather was just slightly warmer than it is now. But I still love having that little bit of time to myself.  I listen to the radio and enjoy being outside and getting some exercise in the fresh air. 

I think you'll find that now that the kids are on the school bus and I've got my morning run behind me, I'm suddenly going to seem like a much more pleasant person. I'm loving not having to drive to preschool but I think it has turned me back into a homebody. I've been trying to get the house more organized, which I've discovered is synonymous with purging our possessions.  The more stuff I get rid of, the easier it is to stay organized.  I've been on a real quest to get all of our clothing down to manageable amounts.  It's wonderful to actually be able to fit all of our clothes into our drawers.  What a concept!

Around 10:30 I start thinking about getting Kardynn ready for school.  We make sure her homework is done and I prepare her a little lunch.  Then we enjoy a leisurely stroll down to the bus stop.  Once Kardynn is off, I usually have chores to tackle at home.  Lately I've been working my way through various projects.  If I have errands to run, that is the time when I do it.  Every once in a blue moon, Dwight and I have lunch together.  But usually I putter around doing housework.  I've been very diligently trying to not spend money and it seems the easiest way to do that, is to stay home!!

When the kids get home, I start thinking about supper.  I encourage them to immediately tackle their homework. And yet, inevitably, as soon as I announce that it's time for bed, someone suddenly remembers XYZ homework that they forgot to do.  "Oh well!  Too bad, so sad - time for bed!"

As much as I hate the morning, I love the few hours after the children go to bed! I think that's what gets me into real trouble because I always end up staying up way too late and then the vicious cycle repeats itself.  I'm gradually trying to work myself into an earlier bed time but so far that's not working out great.

In the meantime, as part of my quest to cut back on spending and simplify life, I didn't sign the kids up for ANY activities this Fall.  And that has been fantastic.  There's a direct correlation between my stress levels and the number of extra-curricular activities we're involved in.  I know all those activities are great for the kids but I think not having all those activities has actually been great for our family.  We're having family dinners together way more often.  And I don't think the kids miss them *that* much - my bank account certainly doesn't!

All in all, life is good.

Oskar

This morning I was mystified when I found a light bulb wedged under the dryer. And then I realized what must have happened. We keep light bulbs in the drawer in the pedestal under our dryer. So Dwight told Oskar to put the light bulb away under the dryer and Oskar, as always, took his words quite literally.

Carcassonne

I asked Oskar what he wanted as the prize for being the best helper and he said he wanted to play Carcassonne with me.  So we played two games.  And it seemed only fitting that we made a video out of one of them. 

So here you go, Oskar's reward for being a great helper!

Vote for the Best Helper

Who did you think helped out the most? (Of course the obvious winner is Mommy but of the kids, who helped out the most?)

I Wish I Could Rhyme

Dwight and I have been on vacation all week.  We've had such a great time!  Mainly we've just been taking it easy but we went on a couple of hikes, we explored some new places, we watched a lot of movies and...being the total dorks that we are, we made this music video for our kids.  I think Dwight was happy that I fully participated in a musical activity.  (In said euphoria, he briefly forgot how to spell the word "rhyme".)

It's been a great week and while it will be nice to see our children again, we are a little sad all the same, that our week is winding down.  But in the meantime, watch our music video...and remember you're not laughing AT us, you're laughing WITH us. 

Supper

This summer we have a crop share agreement at Great Country Farms.  I am loving the uber fresh food!  It is always so delicious. This week's bounty included green beans, garlic and blackberries.  The kids and I picked the blackberries ourselves...two days in a row. Yum!  (Also featured in this meal were tomatoes and basil grown by one of our neighbors.)

Rockets

Me to Oskar: "Oh, guess what?! I just got an e-mail with an invitation to Matthew's party."
Oskar: "Yes!  He's going to watch 'Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters."
Me: "Actually he's going to launch rockets into space, well, not space."
Oskar: "Yeah, into the air, not space.  Liquid fuel or air pressure?"

Seriously?! And here I was so pleased for catching myself on the "space" thing.   

Silent Storm

The other day we saw a silent lightning storm blow by.  It was amazing. I kept trying to catch one of the lightning strikes and was excited when I looked at my photos and saw that I did manage to capture one. It was so weird to see the clouds lighting up and lots of lightning but not a sound.

The Quest for the Perfect Salad

A couple of months ago my friend took me out for lunch to a cool little restaurant in Leesburg, The Eiffel Tower Cafe.  (We both have a little love affair with all things French.)  The food in general was very good but what particularly made us swoon was the "Wild Mushroom Salad with Goat Cheese".  I start salivating every time I think about it. Yum.

The first time we were there, the food was delivered and looked delicious but I told her I would resist the temptation to Instagram my food.  The second time I had no such scruples and I took this cell phone shot of that delightful salad. (It would be a mistake to find this salad lacking based on the poor quality of photos that my cell phone takes.)

The other day, after having tended to a sick child all day, I suddenly got a hankering for this salad.  (Which is not really shocking because ever since I first had it, I've pretty much craved this salad nonstop.)  As I was saying, I was hungry for this salad.  My husband was headed to grab something from the grocery store so I asked him to pick up greens, mushrooms and goat cheese.  While he was doing that, I made a balsamic vinegar reduction, which turned out to be pretty easy.

He came home with spinach as the greens. I wouldn't recommend spinach for future endeavors but it still wasn't bad.

 

Next I went to the grocery store.  I must have caught them right before restocking because they were a little low on things and didn't have endive so I tried it with romaine and a mushroom medley.  I liked the mushroom medley.  I liked the romaine better than the spinach but it still couldn't compare with the original.

So the quest for the perfect salad continues (because I'm telling you, this salad *is* perfect).

By the way, since I was already sauteing mushrooms, I also sauteed some tofu and put a tofu and mushroom mixture on top of some Shirataki Noodles.  That was yummy too.

We Got Cannibals Up in Here

This morning Kardynn and I were discussing the importance of being honest.  I was trying to drill into my little five year-old that every time she tells a lie, we trust her less and less.  She piped up, "Yes, it's part of being a cannibal."  I was startled and trying to figure out the connection until she repeated herself, "It's part of being ah-coun-able (accountable)."

I feel safer already. 

(For the record, it does seems to me that cannibal children have a mighty big incentive to be honest to their cannibal parents.)

This Week's Menu

The other day I mentioned that I was loosely following a meal plan at EatingWell.  Well I thought I would share the recipes that were/are on the menu for this week.  (All these images are from EatingWell's site.)

The other day we tried this recipe for Fettucine & Mushrooms.  I thought it was quite tasty although I would have preferred it with more mushrooms.  They were a little sparse for my liking.  If it I make it again, I will at least double the mushrooms.

Yesterday I made another batch of this Vegetarian Hot Pot.  This is my third time making it so clearly I like it.  Dwight and Oskar both enjoyed it along with me although the girls still aren't sold on it.

Other meals on the menu are Tofu And Veggies with Maple Barbecue Sauce.

Sausage, Mushroom & Spinach Lasagna

The Big Salad and Pecan Mushroom Burgers.

Third Grade Woes

Yesterday Oskar was playing with a fellow third-grader.  Knowing they had recently studied Roman history, I pointed out to them that it was the anniversary of the day Julius Caesar was assassinated.  Oskar's friend said, "Wait, that's a guy?  Up until now I thought it was a girl."  I chuckled but realized he had a lot of reasons to think that.  We always see Caesar depicted wearing a robe and with a laurel around his head.  And the average little boy probably isn't encountering the name "Julius" too often in his everyday life.

While I'm on the topic of little boy, perhaps fellow moms-of-boys can relate to this conversation I was having with my son.  I was trying to convince him that as soon as you feel the urge to pee, you should go do it.  (Um, yes, this kid is nearly ten and we're still having this conversation.)  But this is when I discovered that there was more to the tale.  He told me that XYZ Friend had told him not to go to the bathroom so much.  Wait...what?  I said, "Why on earth would he tell you that?!"  So he explained that he had confided to his friend that he doesn't think he's very cool at school. This friend is older so of course Oskar puts incredible weight in everything he says.  This is the advice his friend had for him, "Don't go to the bathroom so much."  I asked Oskar if he's been going to the bathroom a lot at school (because he sure doesn't at home).  It didn't sound like that was a particularly frequent occurrence for him.  But I guess his friend just thought that was the solution to life's problems. I'm still baffled by it.     

I tried to convince Oskar that that was terrible advice and that it's definitely NOT cool to be doing the potty dance at school...or worse. 

Meanwhile, I feel sad for him that he feels out of place with his peers.  I feel his pain...or at least I did back in third grade.  I remember struggling to fit in too.  I had always been so confident that if *I* had kids, I could spare them all the misery and suffering that I had gone through. But now that I do have kids, I've learned that it's not quite that simple.  Oskar's a really smart kid who seems to be interested in things many of his peers could care less about.  It seems to me that it's awfully hard to be smart and cool.  There are certainly plenty of kids who pull it off but I've known more who have struggled in their youth. Fortunately, by the time you become an adult, being smart is generally considered super cool...at least by all the other smart people.  *hehe*

Sweet Oskar

That is my wonderful son, Oskar.  Doesn't he look like a sweet, thoughtful, considerate child?  He definitely is. 

The other day he was talking to me about how much he wishes he could spend more time with his Dad.  I know it's a little hard for the kids to understand - now that Dwight works from home - that he's still not really available during work hours.  So I explained to him that Daddy has to work and that's how we earn money to pay for our house and food and everything else that we need.

Oskar's reply, "But how come you can't be the one to work?"

I take back that comment about him being a sweet boy.

Games to Recommend

We are a game playing family. Before kids, Dwight and I enjoyed playing games - particularly with his family. We would play card games (Oh Shucks, Dirty 13, Rook, et cetera) and board games(Acquire, Carcassone, Settlers of Catan, Balderdash).  It was definitely a favorite pastime when we all got together. But then we got busy (hello!...four children!) \and we seemed to forget about games for a while. 

In the last few years we've gotten back into it though. And it's fun that our kids can play games with us now.  Our game of the moment is "Dominion".  We have three different sets.  Oskar and Annika can both play Dominion...one of them is more competitive than the other but I'm not naming any names.  Some other adult favorites are "Citadels" and for a while we were into "Santiago".  I think those are both a little too political for the kids.  Sometimes my feelings get hurt so I'm pretty sure they'd have a tough time if an unlucky streak hit them.  Plus you need to have some level of poker face for Citadels. We have a couple of highly rated games waiting to try but we never get around to them since we're all still perfectly happy to play these other ones.

Another good game for the kids is "Ticket to Ride".

This weekend we had many rousing games of Dominion with my sister-in-law and father-in-law.

Dominion Cards

Everyone loves the Noble Brigand...not

Playing Citadels with Woodys

And, wandering off on a tangent but can I just mention that my super observant son noticed that in the edge of the cards there is an ever-so-small symbol to denote which set the cards come from.  Uh, yeah, none of us adults had ever noticed that.  He gives me hope for the future of the Engen line. (Hopefully the future has  need for people who are good at noticing tiny little symbols in the corner of cards.)

The Flu

My kids are each taking a turn getting sick, it seems.  It's very bizarre because they're literally going down one-by-one, one after the other.  It started with Kiersten.  It seemed we had finally gotten through the HSP fiasco when one day she announced that she was looking for her dad.  I told her that he'd gone off to play basketball and she said, "Oh, I wanted to see if he would take a nap with me."

First of all that made me laugh.  Dwight definitely has a reputation for sleep in our family.  But after the initial chuckle, I was slightly alarmed that she *wanted* to sleep in the middle of the afternoon.  I offered to let her lie down in my bed while I folded laundry and before I knew it, she was out like a light...for several hours.  More alarm bells were going off.  For the next several days she was a mess.  Her eyes were so blood shot and watery. She had a high fever. I felt miserable just looking at her so I can only imagine how she felt.  But she eventually got over it. When she was still coughing a few days later, I got nervous about the HSP returning so I took her to the doctor,  She shared my speculation that Kiersten had had the flu. 

A few days later, I picked Oskar up from an activity and was surprised to hear that he'd fallen asleep in the middle of it.  I got him home, took his temperature and sure enough - a fever.  He followed Kiersten's pattern almost exactly. I can just copy and paste from Wikipedia's influenza entry for their symptoms, "The most common symptoms are chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, headache (often severe), coughing, weakness/fatigue and general discomfort."  With an apparent flu epidemic sweeping the nation at the moment, it seems a pretty safe bet that they had the flu. 

Another week passes and then Annika comes home, says she doesn't feel well and falls asleep for several hours.  Well now I know the drill. 

Of course now I can't help but wonder if Kardynn will come home after school one day next week and fall asleep for several hours.  Although, I know she fell asleep once for several hours during the holidays so I'm hoping maybe she already had her run-in with the flu and it just didn't hit her as hard as it hit the others.

Hopefully Dwight and I continue to evade this!

Anyway, when the bug hits, they all end up missing several days of school.  When they're sick I don't mind if they sit around and watch TV or play on their laptops.  Kiersten has really gotten into e-mail.  The kids only have a handful of people that they e-mail but Kiersten has been sending those few people a lot of messages in the last few weeks.

One of her favorite e-mail recipients is my Mom.  She's always asking my mom to send her jokes.  Although I don't think my mom minds - particularly when she's traveling. (Mom frequently points out that only one of her four children is good about keeping in touch...and no, that child is not me.)


Mom actually travels a lot and most of her travels are international.  Unfortunately this means her laptop ends up in some sketchy places...like Nigeria.  (It's no coincidence that those "send-me-your-bank-account-number e-mails" are often called "Nigerian e-mail scams".)  Numerous times she's tried to legitimately connect to sites and had them lock her account because they could see she was trying to connect from Nigeria. Nigeria is a seriously hostile environment for your computer. And it would seem that she did indeed get her e-mail hacked the last time she was there because suddenly my kids are getting fake e-mails from her. 

Up until now, we've not had to worry too much about their e-mail accounts because of the small number of people that they exchange e-mails with.  But these spam e-mails made me realize that I needed to have a conversation with the kids and explain about some of the perils of the Internet - specifically viruses.  Because, while I'm jaded and wary, I was certain that my sweet, innocent children would click on any links that came from their grandmother. 

I knew the message had gotten through when earlier this week Kiersten informed me that she'd gotten a flu message from Grandma.

The Bed Fairy

We had a very nice New Year's surprise from Annika.  She had made everyone's beds and left one of these little notes on them. 





(Do not judge us for the fact that the bed wasn't already made.  Or at least don't judge ME.  You can judge Dwight since he's always the last one out of bed.)

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Well, this holiday season is one we're not likely to forget.

This year we decided to stretch the holidays a bit and for the last few days before Christmas, we let the kids open one gift every day. December 23 was one such day. Kardynn picked out a gift from Annika.

She was delighted to unwrap a Hello Kitty makeup/toiletry kit. The girls immediately started to play with it but then they moved on to other things.  They were using post-its and making "beards" and taking turns pretending to be Santa.  We watched several performances of Santa interacting with little girls.  (In this case the "little girl" is bigger than Santa.)

They had also opened a marble run present so everyone took a turn making a structure.

Eventually we encouraged the kids to take showers.  But after a while, Dwight and I realized that it had been quiet for too long.  I went off to investigate and found two little girls locked in the kids' bathroom - never a good sign.

They had taken the three bottles of Hello Kitty nail polish and decided to "highlight" Kardynn's hair.  I only took one photo before Dwight suggested that I was giving the wrong message by taking photos.  So I have no pictures of the ensuing buzz cuts...which probably would have been tricky anyway since I became somewhat emotional watching their beautiful tresses falling to the floor.  But I'm getting ahead of myself, what you can't see here are the additional "highlights" on the sides, not to mention the additional mess of nail polish that was unveiled when we removed the bun.  It was definitely impressive.  That one blue streak, for example, went the entire length of her hair.

 

I spent quite a bit of time reading online about how to get nail polish out of hair and most of the suggestions were for nail polish remover (which I did NOT want to put on my baby's sensitive scalp).  Dwight tried to get it off with water but that didn't do much on the thick glob of nail polish.  We thought about just leaving it, and letting her have multi-colored hair, but that didn't seem like a good idea either.  So eventually we decided to go with the second most popular suggestion on the Internet - cut off the hair.  We had warned Annika that if Kardynn's hair ended up having to be cut off, we would cut off her hair as well.  Initially she was enthusiastic about the idea but when she saw my reaction, as it was happening, she started to get second thoughts.  I'll admit, it didn't really seem like *that* big of a deal until I saw the hair falling to the floor and then it seemed like the worst idea we'd ever had. 

But, hey, it's just hair.  It will grow back.  And on the bright side, I don't think we have to worry about these two putting nail polish in their hair ever again.  Let me tell you that seeing those two girls with their bald heads makes me incredibly grateful for two healthy - albeit mischievous - little girls.