Erin: 34, Stinkhorns: 17

Frank is officially my stinkhorn spotter.  He finds them, then holds the bag for me while i dig up the eggs and the dirt that is contaminated by their yuck.  We make a good team.

We arrived home today from the zoo to find 4 stinkhorns and 5 eggs in the front bed.  I said, "eeew, Frank, we've got some work to do."

he said, "that's okay mommy, it's just stinkhorn season."

as i was putting Ford to bed, Frank stood outside and really gave the fungus a piece of his mind:

"Stinkhorns: I am NOT going to take your season anymore!"

"My mommy HATES you!"

"I'm going to put up a sign: NO STINKHORNS ALLOWED."

here is the sign that he cut, drew, and then gluesticked to the front door:

 

it may be hard to tell but that is an orange stinkhorn with brown goo, with the standard circle with the line through it.  

I had nothing to do with any of this, other than cleaning the gluestick off the door and replacing it with tape.

Michael came home and said that i have corrupted my son's mind.  I say it's bonding.

Here is me digging up stinkhorns last week

here is frank looking like frank

and here is ford, making the quintessential Ford gesture of greeting and excitement.  forgive the lighting, but i have never been able to capture it in a picture before:

two index fingers pointed at you...as if to say, "Duuude. what's up?"  where could he have learned this from?  yes, that is roman, his most favorite person in the world, behind him.

and here is my most favorite person in the world

 

today he came home early.  he told me not to bake the cookies i had planned on making because it was a nice day and we should get out.  said he needed a new wallet.  we all got in the car, and as we were driving towards the store, he stopped in front of a spa and said i had a 5:00 massage scheduled with Venetia.  

mighty mike.

breaking in the new computer...finally

 

  

is there a better way to break in a new computer?

Getting back outside again: the week in pictures

Ford has crawled face-first off the deck 3 times

Sand cone

note the tongue that appears during deep concentration

feeding the ducks near Wal-mart.  We saw two dead turtles and lots of duck poop.  The geese scared me, but I pretended it was the best time ever.

Frank decides to eat some of the old bread that he was feeding to the ducks - while admiring  cool flowers

In the helicopter outside Kroger

Goofy

He pulls up and stands like a bear - like this.

9 months already.  I wish I could keep him this age forever.

fishing in the laundry

Frank putting on a demonstration of how David beat Goliath for his "buddies": Tomato the dog, Bobby the bear (like Hank), Spike the bunny, and Monkey who he got from LaLa for "Balance Day"

Michael made crepes today.  Nutella and strawberries is good.  So is michael making breakfast and letting me sleep in.  So is Fall.  So are babies in their diapers and little boys in their pajamas.  

It will be a little while before I write again. I've got some work to do here at the house.

this is a picture michael took.

i like it.

Oh no! Its Angus! Cover your mouths!

Super sweet

Okay. are we done now?


It is now 1:30pm, Ford has already spit up 8 times today. Twice on my skirt, once on my shoulder, 8 times on himself. Seriously, how did we get so lucky in the vomit department?

****
Here is how I am going to tackle my laundry/cleaning problem:
1. prayer - my small group is helping me with this
2. punishment...of myself. I have told myself this week that i cannot go to the gym until the kitchen is clean, and that I cannot go shopping until the laundry is put away.
I did not make it to the gym on Monday. I did not make it shopping yesterday because it took so long to do that crappy laundry. But today, my house is almost clean, people. Hooray.

Here is how I am going to concur the sweet tooth:

1. Prayer, (I am just now adding this, because I had not thought to do that before, but as my friend says, God is in the details)
2. I am going to stop before I eat something sweet or junkie and say to myself, "Self?...will you feel better about yourself if you eat that 3rd bag of mini M&Ms? OR will you feel better about yourself if you don't?" (Last night this stopped me from going back for a second ice cream cone.
Dreyer's 1/2 fat Mint Chocolate Cookie. It is tasty stuff.)
3. Eating fruit and drinking lots of water

Driving, brushing, rolling

Have you ever tried to put three carseats in the back of a sedan? If you can avoid it, I recommend doing so. Yesterday, we picked up our friends to go to the zoo. It was very fun and totally worth the labor, but man it is hard to wrangle all of those latches and buckles. Mini vans were invented for a reason. Perhaps someday my dream for the Odyssey will come true. (I can't believe I dream for a minivan.)

Two days ago, Frank was brushing his teeth. (sorry if this is too much information) As his supervisor, I was watching him and decided to go to the bathroom. I got the toilet paper off the roll and he just stared at me in shock.
"How do you not fall in?" he asked in amazement that I had taken my hands off the commode. "Well, I guess my bottom is big enough that I don't fall in," I said.
Frank says, "someday I will be big enough not to fall in, too."

I am struggling now with which stories are blogworthy. So much of my day is truly mundane that I don't think you really want to hear all of the gory details. e.g.: Ford crying before he falls asleep, frank throwing tantrums on the floor, the ongoing saga of how i can't stand my hair...do you really want to know all that? I think not.

I don't know how to make captions on here, but the picture of Ford looks identical to one of frank at the same age. He is growing too fast. Has rolled twice from tummy to back, and almost one time from back to tummy.

post Easter sugar crash.

 so many jellybeans, and enimans (as frank calls the M&M). I am hooked on the mini M&M. It is so cute and tiny. As your eating it you think, "this is so tiny, it can't be bad for you...well I guess I will have 4 tiny packs of them, then."

We did have a beautiful picnic/egg hunt. The sun came through after the storm, and it was perfect. A bit muddy for my heels, but they will clean. I will later post some pictures Myrna took of the family. She is my resident photographer. I am seriously blessed by that family, and I will suffer when they move to Mexico to start Young Life.

Today, I was able to go to a cardio-sculpt class at the Y. All I can say is that there were ladies in their fifties exercising in front of me, and they seriously kicked my butt.

I am attempting MaMaw's chocolate pie again for Anke's birthday. I'm a bit nervous as the first time it was chocolate soup with giant merinque. The second time I made it, it was perfect, but I forgot to write down what I did to make it so good. I'll let you know how the third time goes. Frank will be assisting me, which amounts to him eating all the ingredients on a stool next to me.

Inspired by the Easter egg hunting, Frank has taken to hiding all of his candies around the house. Snickers in the desk drawer, jellybeans under pillows. He laid out all of his jellybeans on my bathroom rug this morning planning which day and time he will eat each one. Where could he have developed such an obsession for all things sweet? Perhaps it is because his dad requires his own Easter basket full of candy each year? Perhaps when Frank shows me a piece of candy and says to me in all seriousness, "Daddy is not going to eat it, right?" that I should know we have issues. well, there are worse things in this world than loving candy, i suppose. I hope your Easters were blessed and wonderful.

aside note: decaf sucks

some pictures to start

This is a brief summary, in pictures, of the past three months.