another school year...

The kids went back to school a few weeks ago, and we are finally getting back in the swing of things. Hard to get used to waking up again after spending an entire summer teaching the kids to sleep until 10am.

Billy started kindergarten, which is bittersweet, because he is the last to go, but also now I have time to actually get something done. He seems to really like it, and everyday, when I pick him up he tells me what he had for lunch, and shows me his new spork. The other day I went to pick him up and the first words out of his mouth were, "Mommy, today I had a corn dog with honey. Bees make honey. How do bees make honey? They had beans today, but I didn't eat them because they were green?" That is a little dose of the everyday pickup conversation, just change the food items.

Katie and Jack are settling in nicely, same school, different teachers, all is well.

Emma started middle school, and she seems to be doing well with it, I think the whole idea is harder on me than it is on her, I can't believe that she can be old enough to go to middle school.

After the first week, she comes home with a backpack full of books so heavy she had to keep stopping to rest on her way home, and those were for only half of her classes. I can't believe they have kids hauling this stuff around and don't even give them lockers. That night I went out and got her a very high quality rolling backpack to try and ease her load.

Today, Emma comes home and she is carrying her big binder in her hand because she got four more books, and there wasn't room for them in her backpack, and even with the rolling backpack she comes home exhausted. When she walks in she is exasperated and says, "That's it, I'm not bringing my textbooks to school anymore." I ask how she can do that, doesn't she need them for class? Her response, "No, they keep a copy of them under our desks."

She has been taking 60lbs. of books to school everyday for no reason, and I have been ranting about how awful they are for 2 weeks. It cracks me up that she can be so smart, and so absentminded at the same time, apparently this was the first that it occurred to her that not everyone was hauling all of their books around. It is absolutely impossible not to love that girl.

toilet humor...

We had a birthday party for Katie last weekend at Mike's mom's house, and it was a lot of fun. They have so many cousins to play with, and they really all do play with each other, nobody ever gets left out of the mix. So although I always leave with a headache, I also always have a good time there.

At one point during the party Mike and Billy had this little conversation:

Billy is in the bathroom when it takes place.

Mike: "You okay in there?"
Billy: "Yes, Daddy I really like this bathroom"
Mike: "Why's that"
Billy: "Because when I poop the water splashes me on the butt"
Mike: (laughing hysterically)
Billy: "Isn't that cool?"

This is a perfect example of how most conversations go with this kid, even when he is in trouble one of us will usually have to leave the room so that he doesn't see us laughing.

Some people want well mannered kids, or studious kids, or kids that are orderly and helpful, I am not one of those people. Not that I would kick them to the curb for any of those things, but I appreciate when they can find the weirdness of a situation, when they look at things and see what they can be, instead of just what they are supposed to be.

We have a fan in our house that has a fairly small opening so that you can blow all the air in one direction, Jackson figured out that if he put a beach ball in front of it, the ball will spin in the air for hours at a time. We brought the same fan to my mother in law's, and our niece Lizzy, used it to blow the tissue paper from the gifts across the room, laughing her butt off the entire time. I love that, it's such a great approach to life.

I am married to a pessimist (reading this will come as no surprise to him), for everything that I want to do, he will have at least 5 reasons why it is a bad idea, or how it won't work. I love my husband, but it is very annoying. I prefer trying to see how I CAN make it work, I think more gets done that way. Everything we have from cell phones to microwaves, to the computer games that he loves so much (not to mention the computers he plays them on), came from someone looking at the old version, and thinking they could make it a little bit better.

Whether you believe we evolved from apes, or we were created on the sixth day, you can't deny that we have come a long way, baby. After another argument with Adam, because he was going on about how she should do the dishes because, after all she was created from his rib, Eve couldn't hop on an airplane to see her mother (partly because she didn't have a mother) because there were no planes. If you would have even suggested such a thing, right after they asked, "Where did you come from, I thought it was just me and Adam in this garden?", they would have thought you were insane. There were no big metal birds to take you visit your mother in Florida, or for a girls weekend in Vegas.

People can fight forever about creationism or evolution, it's sort of like politics, I'd rather just keep it to myself, either way it's all in the past. Talk to me about innovation, because I can go on forever about where we might be going.

I think I will end this post here, now that it has taken such an odd turn.


**20 best update**

I didn't mention in my previous post that the guy had some criteria for picking the "best of all time" using staying power, critics reviews, Grammy noms, etc.. because where is the fun in that? I wanted to know what your favorites would be if you could make the list.

Love all the feedback, considering that even my dad emailed me to find out why Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas', and Lawrence Welk's Polkas, didn't make the list.

I would have to agree with you, Mike, on Soap Opera, it is still one of my favorites to date. I would also throw in Dixie Chicks - Fly, Meatloaf - Bat out of Hell, and Red Hot Chili Peppers (any of their first 4 albums).