A challenge...

I challenge any of you to sit and watch this baby and not at least crack a smile.

I have no idea who this kid is, but man, this cracks me up.

If you can watch this and not at least grin let alone laugh....you are broken my friend and need some help.

Big night in!!!

So what do we do on a thrilling Friday night you may ask? We gather around the wii for another round of virtual sports playing. We are hooked !

As you can see here, we ALL have gotten into it. Sunshine totally kicked my butt at tennis. She's fierce. I mean it, don't let her see your fear or she'll take you out. ;)

Feeding the ducks

So when you raise a family on one income (mom stays home and raises kids) you are sort of forced to get creative with fun things to do that are cheap , but don't feel cheap.

One of our favorite things to do only cost about $2 for our whole family. We buy 2 loaves of bread and go feed the ducks. We have a protected wetland within walking distance from our house so we brave the rain (Please, we're Oregonians, that was a joke) and head outside.

This time of year they are getting ready to nest so they can be really aggressive and hungry. As soon as we showed up they practically ran towards us knowing what we had for them.

There were regular old mallard ducks, and a bunch of Canadian geese. There were even some cool looking farm geese. Plus in these parts if there are swamp like conditions, there are nutria. Now if you aren't from Oregon and aren't familiar with nutria, they are like a cross between a beaver and a muskrat. They are pretty harmless to people, but they can make dams and a mess out of a yard pretty quick. They are considered vermin, but they are still kind of cool.

We got a couple cool pictures of the nutria and all of the ducks and geese too. We were amazed just how aggressive they were. My husband was able to get a goose to eat out of his palm and pet it at the same time. Usually they can be pretty nasty. But I guess we got him on a friendly day :)

recipe for disaster

1-wheat tortilla

1-oz peanut butter

1-oz homemade raspberry jelly

1-oz cream cheese

roll up like a burrito and VOILA!! You get a magnificent sticky mess that you will have to scrape out of his ears and eyebrows.

mmmmmm!!!!

Giddy up

So I don't really have anything clever to say about this other than this is just Sunshine watching TV.

Whenever possible, it is impairative that you do everything in costume. Today she's a cowgirl. you know, riding the range....watchin Dora. Whatever. This is what cowgirls do.

Ahhh the chicken and the road....

Ok normally I hate those horrible "cutesy" emails that get passed around. In fact if I usually just delete them if I see that it is just a foreword about how 70 angels will fly and grant wishes if I only send this along to 90 of my closest friends.....blah blah...

But this one actually made me laugh out loud. Which isn't easy to do.

My favorite is Jerry Falwell.

Subject: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

DR. PHIL

:

The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE' of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his 'CURRENT' problems before adding 'NEW' problems.


OPRAH

:
Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

GEORGE W. BUSH:

We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

COLIN POWELL:
Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road....

ANDERSON?COOPER - CNN:

We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

JOHN KERRY:

Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

NANCY GRACE:

That chicken crossed the road because he's GUILTY! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN:
To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART:
No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS:
Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY:

To die in the rain. Alone.

JERRY FALWELL:

Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth?' That's why they call it the 'other side.' Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media white washes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

GRANDPA:

In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS:
Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its life long dream of crossing the road.

JOHN LENNON:

Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.

ARISTOTLE:

It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

BILL GATES:

I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your check book. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken. This new platform is much more stable and will never cra...#@&&^(C% ........ reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN:

Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON:

I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE:

I invented the chicken!

COLONEL SANDERS:

Did I miss one?

DICK CHENEY?:

Where's my gun?

Little boys and haircuts

One of the biggest pet peeves that I have is long hair on boys. I know I am a total traitor to my generation and all, but long hair on boys drives my nuts. Even a little shaggy makes me a little crazy. So to keep up with the fast growing hair of my boys (and it does grow fast) I got real cheap real quick and I have been cutting it myself for years.

It never stops amusing me though. It never fails that right when the clippers go on, that's when either the nose starts running or like in this case, the tounge just comes out. It never fails we end up with a slobbery beard stuck to his face.

Just thought I'd throw in a before and after pictures. Why, you may ask....because I never get sick of cute pictures of my kids that's why. I mean C'mon!! How cute is this kid?!!

And so it begins...

Well we knew it would happen it would just take a matter of time. Sunshine loves to play the wii. Of course it didn't hurt that I got myself a pink controller. Guess which one she went for? My husband has a game that has horses in it and she LOOOOVES horses. So natuarally thats the game she loves. There's no escaping it in this family :)

She flies through the air with the greatest of ease.....

So Sunshine has some sort of death wish and always has. But what is weird is that she is like a cat...she always seems to land on her feet and she has 9 lives. Plus if she can fit her head in something, then she can fit her whole body, but thats something for a different post.

She has always had the strangest ability to walk on the backs of couches (with her eyes closed sometimes) and never loose her balance. So after a while, it stopped freaking me out and I stopped worrying that she was going to fall and break her neck. Most other people that are not used to her gasp and give me dirty looks like "are you just going to let her do that? She could fall and hurt herself" But once they are around her long enough...they get it too.

Here is just a small sample of her death defying feats. Note she refuses to just sit on a swing. Instead she insists on standing on it and they going as high as humanly possible without flipping the swing set and just to add a little more danger....she closes her eyes. I keep expecting her to request that I light her on fire or hand cuff her to the pole or something.

The importance of being centered

So Bug is really into the Nickelodeon show "Avatar". Which in all honesty, my husband and I have gotten into it too. It actually has a pretty good storyline that can hold our attention. Which says a lot :)

The story is about a little boy that was sent to save the world (Sound familiar? It's only like in every good story; that scenario) But it sort of has an Asian "type" flare where the boy has to meditate and "center" himself.

So the other day Bug and I were at odds most of the day. With school being out and the weather being so nasty, we are all just stuck in the house and in each other's space so it seems. All of our daily routines are all out of whack. So he was bickering about something and I sent him to his room to get a hold on his attitude. He kept yelling down the stairs "I'm going to go and get centered". I was like "yeah you do that and don't come out until you have a better attitude."

So about an hour goes by and I realize he's been up there for a while. So I creep up the stairs and look around the corner (because frankly I was expecting to see him asleep on his bed) But this is what I walk into. So I don't say a word....I do what any "blog obsessed mother" would do....I run and grab the camera before he realizes that I had seen him.

What is equally cute in this is that he even took the time to lay out the Lego's in a pattern around him. Not sure what that's about, but my guess is that's what he saw them do on TV. Either way, as soon as he saw me, the spell was broken and he hopped up and asked if he could come down stairs. Once down stairs, I asked him what he was doing while he was sitting all quiet up there. His response...."Thinking quiet thoughts so that me and God can hear each other better." Good answer.