SchlegelRock

So, if you’ve known me for a while you know that I’m not the biggest fan of Thanksgiving.  I have no problem with the seeing family part but I really do not enjoy the food.  I don’t know when this started.  Possibly childhood. I can’t think of anything traumatic in my past that would lead me to such un-American taste buds but here we are.

My mom called yesterday and said that she would rather go to Black Angus, our local steak house, than cook.  Holy crap.  That was the best news I’ve heard in a while.  When her parents were alive they would go there occasionally, so she thought it would be nice for all of us to go.  I was doing back flips in my heart just thinking about a big fat steak and fries for Thanksgiving.  Since I don’t like the food you can imagine that I don’t experience the Thanksgiving stuffed feeling that comes from gorging on the traditional meal.  I decided to change that today.  I ate my meal, filet mignon with sauteed mushrooms and blue cheese on top (I get shivers just thinking about it) and asparagus.  Then I went to town on the kids fries and ranch dressing.  I had three refills on my Coke and ate all the bread and butter I could get my hands on.  It was heaven.  Then we went back to my mom’s house for carrot cake and butter pecan ice cream.  This will go down as the best Thanksgiving ever!!  I could actually feel my stomach popping out.  What a great feeling!  No wonder you guys look forward to Thanksgiving so much.

Now, it doesn’t end there.  Scott’s parents had us over for dinner tonight for a traditional Thanksgiving meal.  Elaine did a great job with the spread and everyone ate up.  We got turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing.  Then for dessert we had Cheesecake Factory Pumpkin Cheesecake.  Ooooh, droooool.  It was so good.  Then with a couple of games of Uno it was a perfect end to a really great day.

Do you guys play games with your kids?  We only play when we go over to the Schlegel’s but it is a hoot to play with our kids.  They’ll throw a Draw Two down with maniacal laughter and just get the whole table laughing along with them.  I had a really great day today and I’m so thankful that we have two sets of parents here to visit with and enjoy the day.  Happy Thanksgiving!

What are your favorite games to play with your kids?

As you’ve seen, Oliver has rather long hair.  It touches his shoulders.  I LOVE it but Scott keeps asking me to get it cut so I decided I would do it, but it had to considered a gift to Scott.  So this morning I took a picture of Oli a year ago and told the lady at Super Cuts to cut it short again.  Well, sort of short.  I couldn’t take it all off.  I think I would have died if I had done that.  So, without further ado here’s Oli with his hair cut.  It just goes to show how much I love you Scott.  Merry Christmas! (Oh, and Max got a trim too.)

This is the picture I took in.

This is how it ended up.  Pretty stinking close.  I had to be kind of a jerk though and kept saying, “I would like it shorter please,” over and over and over again.  It paid off though.  I think it looks great.

Three cute boys.  All with short hair.  Sigh.

Oh my gosh, you guys.  The weather is fabulous here right now.  When we were at the park skating there was a girl in a bikini playing sand volleyball.  A bikini!  In November!  The kids are just learning their way around skateboards right now.  Every once in a while Scott takes them out to the basketball court and just lets them play while he skates around them.  He tried to teach Max to jump and flip his skateboard over and then land on it.  He’ll get it.  But right now he’s just doing some great leaps into the air.

What did you guys do this weekend?

Tru got his cast off Tuesday.  I have to admit I was surprised by the immediate outcome.  I thought that he would get the cast off and totally be swinging his arm around and jumping up and down but that’s not what happened.  He totally cradled his arm so tenderly and it had sores from where the cast rubbed against his skin.  The skin on his elbow is completely gone.  It’s several shades lighter than the rest of his arm.  It’s Thursday now and we went to the park today and there were no complaints at all.  He did a great job playing and being a kid.  It’s nice to have a fully functioning child back.

This is a picture of Oli the other day.  I had woken him up from a spontaneous nap and he came out to the living room with me.  Next thing I know it’s silent so I went looking for him and he was totally asleep on the stairs.  Too cute so I thought I’d share.

*I wrote this post a month ago when we bought the Pilot and have been trying to get my video (like the one I did with the Mazda) processed from YouTube.  It’s not happening so here’s the post without the clever video, much to my chagrin.  Just know that my “My other car is a Horcrux” license plate is firmly affixed. Although, thanks to my mom I now want a “This car is a Portkey” one.  Christmas is coming up and a portkey has a lot less evil connotations than a horcrux.  I’d put it on Scott’s car but he’s not as devoted to Harry Potter as I am.  Silly man.

Well we did it.  We bought a new car.  That’s not entirely true.  Scott bought a new car.  After three friends telling me they loved the Honda Pilot I decided to go check one out.  We found a used one at the local Acura dealer and went Saturday morning to drive it.  I instantly fell in love.  The back seat isn’t really made for adults, but we do have three children that can fit back there no problem.  And the best thing about the car is that it has this little picture on the dash of the car and when you open a door a little door opens on the picture.  Do you know how many times I ran around opening and closing all the doors on the van trying to figure out which one had been left open.  Genius product.  I believe the Odyssey has it too.

So anyway I drive the car and am totally in love (it’s got more power than the van which is a total plus).  We decide to leave the Pilot and go home and think about it.  By the time we got home we were going to go 

back Monday evening and buy the car if it was still there.  Scott had a Church meeting Saturday night so it prevented us from going back immediately.  That night Scott got back from his meeting really late and I assumed he just got caught hanging out talking to someone but lo a behold he had a key in his hand when he walked through the door.  After his meeting he raced over to the Acura dealer and bought the Pilot for me.  The best surprise ever!!

I L-O-V-E, love, love it.  It is so much fun to drive and the kids fit really nicely.  As you can see I fit 6 kids in without any problems.  Well, except the noise!  I will admit that I have been a little intimidated by it because it’s so stinking nice.  I’m terrified that someone is going to jump out and hit me again. I guess that’s only natural considering. 

Well thanks Clisty, Summer and Julianne for suggesting the Pilot.  And thank you Scott for the awesome, super-fantastic surprise!

Why is that?  Why do I have three potty trained children that cannot keep the pee in the toilet?  At friend’s houses, at school, in the car, in the dining room, at the park!!!  Holy crap.  If they would even give me one minutes warning I could at least get them to a bush.  Just kidding.  I would at least get them off of my carpet.  I guess the one’s where there is a bathroom in the same building is the one that baffles me the most.  And yes, it is all three of them that are currently peeing in their pants.  I’m about to have a nervous breakdown.  One of them actually said to me today that he peed at school but didn’t tell anyone and is still wearing the same pants.  I guess that might be OK if it was the first time.  This happened last week also.  Is there a puddle of pee under his chair just waiting to be stepped in?  Did he only pee a tiny bit so it really wasn’t a big deal?  I don’t know the answers to these questions.  This has been going on for three weeks now.  Every time I turn around at least one of them has peed somewhere other than the toilet.  I’m baffled, I’m perplexed, I’m sick of cleaning up pee.  But I digress.  I know in a few weeks I’ll have a clean and tidy house, car, classroom, park, etc.  and I’ll forget all about this.

 I just thought you might like a change of pace from the election so I decided to throw all my garbage on you.  Thanks for letting me vent.  I mean there’s nothing I can do, right?  It’s just a passing phase, right?  I look at those angels and think “Why are they doing this?” and I have no answers.  Oh well.  Has this happened to you?

Every year since we’ve lived here we’ve gone around our condo complex to trick or treat.  There are a ton of units that give out candy.  So much so that we only did four buildings before I cut the kids off.  You see because there aren’t a ton of kids around here and candy bags are so large people give out handfuls of candy to each kid.  And we don’t want that much candy in our house so I’m the mean mom that steers my kids home when their bags are half way full.  When they get older I don’t care how much candy they bring in but as long as they are little I like to carefully guard their candy to kid ratio.  I took this picture on the stairs coming down from one of the units.  In case I forgot to tell you before Max is Indiana Jones, Tru is Captain America and Oli is Iron Man.

 Halloween is so fun!  How did your evening go?