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!

I feel like such a grown up!

I am so excited today! I feel like I am an official grown up I just finished making... wait for it.... LASAGNA!!!!

I cannot wait for dinner!

We have swim team practice from 5:30 till 6:30, but it will only take 20-30 mins in the oven and then ready to eat. And during those 20 mins I will be sauteing up some yummy veggies to serve with it. Zucchini, Squash, Green beans, onions and garlic in butter MMmmmm I am SOOOO excited!  Can you tell? Can you see my eager fingers tapping on each other with the stupid grin on my face?

Tuesday night I made Fettucini Alfredo for dinner. I added mushrooms and left over parmesean garlic chicken and served it with roasted Asparagus.

See! I told you that I feel all grown up!

It has been a while since I cooked, and even then it was NOT fancy stuff. Just normal stuff. boring food.. that is all. But this week I had a friend call and ask for a recipe.... a recipe that took me like 30 mins to find... and of course, it was literally the LAST place I looked for it. So by the time I found it, my living room floor had recipes ALL OVER it! So I made lemon aid :-)

I sifted through every recipe that I had loose on the floor (not the books, that would be a job for another day) and got rid of the ones that I didnt think I would make (ingredients we dont like, too much work, there were six of the same thing... you get the idea) and then set up a menu plan for the week.

It was so cool! I didnt even know that I was doing it, but I prepared myself to go grocery shopping. I already knew what was for dinner, so I knew what I needed to have on hand for those recipes. And now, I have three more recipes that I know where to put... either get rid of because I will NOT be making it again, or in my binder to use next time. (Oh, I have a bunch of printed out recipes in page protectors that I keep in a binder. That way I dont have them all over the place loose (well, not those ones anyway) and I can take one page out when I need that recipe. the Page protector.... protects the page from all the mess that gets on recipes when I cook too)

Alright, I also want to talk about my new table and our trip to disneyland, but maybe if I just save it, I will have the gumption to post another day too :-) And next time will be with PICTURES!!! Yay! I love reading blogs with pictures.

Something sweet

This is a wonderful idea posted by the Flanders family. I hope to use this in a few more months :-)

Candy Kiss Chains Our kids use these to count the days until Christmas. We make them right after Thanksgiving, then beginning December 1, we cut off one chocolate kiss per day until Christmas. To motivate the children to think of others, we tell them they cannot have the day’s kiss until they’ve done something sweet for somebody else — which may mean reading a picture book to the baby, making their sister’s bed, folding their brother’s laundry, raking a neighbor’s leaves, etc.   Supplies You Will Need to Complete This Craft: 25 chocolate kisses long piece of plastic wrap yarn or ribbon in Christmas colors scissors gift tag for name (optional)   Do It Yourself By Following These Simple Steps: Cut a yard-long length of clear plastic wrap, and lay it flat on the table. Position 25 chocolate kisses along the edge of it, leaving a little space between each kiss. You may use more than 25 candies if you want to start counting early, fewer if you’re making the chain later in December. Carefully roll the kisses into the wrap, forming a long tube. Young children may need help with this step, as the wrap is very clingy. Ideally, there should be at least a double layer of wrap around all the kisses in the chain. Cut yarn or ribbon to uniform length, about 4″ long. This is easily done by wrapping it loosely around your hand twenty-six times, then cutting through the loops once. Tie a piece of ribbon or yarn between each kiss. Tie it tightly, so that the kisses won’t fall out.You should have extra wrap left at one end, but do not cut it off yet. Staple or tie a name tag at the top of the chain (especially important if you have more than one child making this project). The excess plastic wrap will help in attaching the tag. Then hang it on your bulliten board, and you’re ready to go. Remember to “do something sweet to get your treat!”

A hand made gift...

Another wonderful craft idea from the Flanders family. Hopefully my family will forget about this before they receive it :-)

Christmas Heart Ornaments

Rebekah and Rachel made these pretty little hearts for an ornament exchange this Christmas. Of course, their brothers wanted to help, so we ended up making several for our own Christmas tree, as well. I’ve never had a child yet who didn’t enjoy working with clay, and these are easy enough that even our four year old was able to make one without much help. The design may look dainty and delicate, but oven-baking makes these ornaments fairly durable.

Supplies You Will Need to Complete This Craft:

• large package of Sculpey white clay
• small packages of Sculpey clay in red and dark green
• metalic paper clips
• gold cord for hanging
• wire cutters
• aluminum foil or cookie sheet

Do It Yourself By Following These Simple Steps:

Roll a ping-pong sized ball of white clay into a long, uniform roll, approximately 3/8″ diameter.

Fashion it into the shape of a heart by slightly pinching the ends together to form top of heart, and pinching another point to form the bottom. To make it easier to transfer ornament to the oven, you may want to work on a piece of aluminum foil or a cookie sheet.

TCut a loop off a paper clip using wire cutters, and bend the ends up sharply (sort of like a wide “W” with the loop in the middle). Press this into the top of the heart and smooth clay back over the sides of the “W”.

Flatten the heart slightly by pressing all around the edges gently with your fingers.

Use the sharp end of a paper clip to make indentions all around the top surface. These “holes” need not go all the way through the clay, only about half-way down.

Cut a loop off a paper clip using wire cutters, and bend the ends up sharply (sort of like a wide “W” with the loop in the middle). Press this into the top of the heart and smooth clay back over the sides of the “W”.

Take a little bit of red clay and roll it into a snake-shape, slightly thicker in the center and pointed at the ends. Coil this into a rose, place it between the leaves and press it into the heart by using the pointed end of the paper clip to bore a small hole in the center of the flower. Bake according to package directions. Once it has cooled, thread a loop of gold cord through the paper clip eye and hang it on your Christmas tree.

A beautiful reminder

It's not so much what you say As the manner in which you say it;

It's not so much the language you use As the tone in which you convey it;

"Come here!" I sharply said, And the child cowered and wept.

"Come here," I said- He looked and smiled And straight to my lap he crept.

Words may be mild and fair And the tone may pierce like a dart;

Words may be soft as the summer air But the tone may break my heart;

For words come from the mind Grow by study and art-

But tone leaps from the inner self Revealing the state of the heart.

Whether you know it or not,

Whether you are mean or care,

Gentleness, kindness, love and hate, Envy, anger, are there.

Then, would you quarrels avoid

And peace and love rejoice?

Keep anger not only out of your words-

Keep it out of your voice.

Author Unknown