The Common Room: Collected Rules My Mama Never Told Me I'd Need to Make

So, I used to be a blogaholic... I know, I know, once an addict, always an addict. So I will just say that I am in in a slump. Anyway, every once in a while, miracle of miracles, all six of my children will take a nap... at the same time... in the middle of the day! During these rare moments of solitude and sanity, I usually catch up on laundry and lunch dishes and email and bills and grading papers and... oh, you get the point?... ok.  But once in a blue moon, I will get to read a blog post :-) Today was such a day as this... Oh I just love it when that happens!!! This is what I came across today. What a comical reminder of how normal my life really is :-) 

The Common Room: Collected Rules My Mama Never Told Me I'd Need to Make


And now I have a few to add...

* I am so excited that you figured out how cool magnets are!! I really am! You are so creative to figure out that if you put one on one side of a ceiling fan blade and one on the other side, they will stay there... I even am quite impressed that you figured out for yourself that if the fan is off balanced, it will not spin very fast, so you are so clever to evenly weigh it down. BUT  new rule in our house... YOU MAY NOT hurtle 12 dairy magnets through the air via ceiling fan launch!

* When you are quick enough to catch a cricket in your hands and it jumps to escape, you may NOT proceed to tell your siblings that "this" is what it feels like when a cricket bites you and then pinch them as hard as you can... The cricket did not bite you, and you did not pinch yourself to determine that that description was accurate... chances are good that since they are crying and you were not, it was not quite the same feeling.

*If you have not developed breasts, you will not be wearing bras... There will be no negotiating on this one...

*Taking your little brother into the bathroom and locking the door so you can throw bowling pins at him is NOT better than tattling that he is being a pest.

*When we send you to bed, tuck you in, and pray with you, we intend for you to go to sleep. We do NOT intend for you to lay quietly in your bed until 3am and then wake up your siblings to invite them into your room to play board games.



What rules did you not know you needed to make until you had kiddos that taught you otherwise?

Words that come back to haunt...

I am new to blogger and am still trying to remember all the little details... sign on name, web address, password... you know. that trivial stuff :-) Anyway, I could not remember the blog address when I was trying to share it with a friend, so I went searching for it... My favorite search engine is Swagbucks so I typed in my blog name and WOW! There was SO much info with my name on it! I started clicking around just to see what I could find :-) Look at what I found...
 
In response to a "friends" blog post on being a "head counting kindof family" :-)

challmeyer wrote- "I think it is one of those hidden surprises that God lets us in on when we are following in the path that he has for us... yes, it is chaotic, but oh, SO rewarding and enjoyable :-) I only have four of my own for now, but we are trying to axpand :-)We drive a fifteen passenger van and OFTEN carpool or "babysit" with/for friends. Last night we were on the way to an out of town swim meet and had the van loaded down... in the rearview mirror all I could see was kids... all ages of kids playing together (14yrs-18mos). Paper rock scissors, hand games, telling jokes, helping out the littler ones, singing songs together, and LAUGHING!!!! My heart was SO blessed!"

1-1-11 Heading to the Beach

Since then, we have been blessed with the twins and we are still Chaotic, but still so rewarding as well. We still babysit and trade and carpool and share.... we still fill our home and our hearts with children and laughter and love... and we are still SO blessed!  :-)
So I just thought I would share my little story with you :-)

The most amazing toy !

Saturday was a BEAUTIFUL day!! The sky was BRIGHT blue, The white clouds were BIG and FLUFFY :-) It was cool, but not cold... It was a Park Day for sure! :-)   Oh, and it snowed the night before... my little town sits only 440 feet above sea level... these foothill are RIGHT behind my house!!! That was worth taking pictures of! Even if I did have to pull off the road to get a clear shot.
Ok, back to the park... Last week sometime, I was talking with a friend of mine about places to stop and play when we go into town. We both live outside of town by about a half an hour and when we go to run errands, we usually try to get as much done as we can. That makes for a long day for our children. AND usually means eating out. UNLESS, we pack a lunch and head to a park... so now we are caught up... ANYWAY, her husband is a landscape engineer and designed the park nearest to my church. So that is where we decided to go on Saturday :-) 

This park had THE COOLEST TOY!!!!!

The kids are calling it the spider web. They must have played on it for an hour before I told them that we had to leave. They were climbing all over it, hanging upside down, squeezing themselves through tiny little openings and back up again. They pretended that each little opening was a different land... one was Narnia, one was Pony land, one was under the sea, one was candy land.... you get the idea...  They would climb down into this little hole, and when the came out the other side, their faces were excited and wide... They would shout with such excitment "WOW! Look at all the candy!" or "Oh my gosh! The trees look like people!!!" or "WOW! I can breathe under water!" And each time, they were excited again. They would play in their new "land" for 5 or 10 mins and then they would crawl back up through the same little hole that they came through before and find a new hole to go down and start all over again. :-) It was the MOST fun thing to watch EVER!

 Lizzie was in Narnia climbing on the back of a sea serpent.

Steven was in Spiderman land... I hope he was one of the good guys

 

 Jeremiah was just really cute :-)

 Allie was "Under the Sea" I think she might have been at the surface of the water watching a ship or something.

Rebekah was in Ponyland... I think she was riding on the back of a pony, flying through the sky...

But, I have to add one more of the whole spider web so you can get a feel for it...

 

Isn't that Amazing?!! Heather got to come back with us later. She was dying to know what the other kids were talking about. Apparently I forgot to let them climb back into the "real world" before we left the park, so they were all stuck in Narnia :-) 

Ok, only one more picture... that way I can show you where Heather WAS when we all came to the park the first time....

Heather and her partner at AWANA Jamboree. Look at how well they did! Congratulations girls!