Tricky Day

I start off at a very young age fooling my children on April Fool's Day.  It's the day when I spend most of my time smiling and even laughing out loud to myself about the sometimes mean jokes I play on my family and friends.  I have to justify this to my youngest children by calling the day "Tricky Day"... because mommy does "tricky" things to trick you.  It's all in good fun.  Right?

...and if you've read my blog before you will know that April Fools Day isn't complete until one of my children cries.  Sad, but true.  I first discovered this unfortunate tradition began when I stuffed Sierra and Michaela's lunches full of plastic food and Sierra, devastated, locked herself in the school bathroom during lunch and refused to come out to find the real lunch I had given her teacher.  This was after I claimed to run out of gas and made them walk the last few blocks to school that morning.

This year I realized all my best jokes have used up on the two older girls; I swore them to secrecy and brought back some of my favorite jokes.  The cheese sandwich for lunch was a total winner and the bonus was that nobody ever cried with it...  How could you be upset to get a cake and frosting sandwich instead of a cheese sandwich??!!

See Scotty and Andrea loved it!

But then...  For some unknown reason Andrea lost it.  Please note the REAL cheese sandwich sitting next to her plate right in front of her.  I think the fact that I had tricked her finally sunk in and it was devastating...  Better toughen up kid; this family doesn't produce sissies.

I still needed to get the girls, so I caught Michaela with the common, "OH MY GOSH you missed the bus!!" ...which actually backfired because she ran out of the house in such a hurry she forgot her homework and I had to bring it to her.  

Sierra needed a really good joke because she is the one who loves the holiday as much as I do.  I needed to step up my pranks for her so I prepared some nail polish ahead of time to dry out on some wax paper.  Then I peeled it off, placed it on her beloved iPad, and left it in her room for her to find. Hee Hee.

I even put Poozie's bunny nearby so she would get blamed.  It's a cruel day kids...

I tried to "spill milk" on Michaela's computer, but it didn't work so well....

As the children get older they are also able to be traumatized a little more.  I refilled the insides of Oreos with toothpaste and simply left the box on the counter.  Some of the best tricks are all about being patient and waiting for an innocent child to just take a cookie for no reason at all...  just like I knew they would!  HA! 

I even spread the love to our friends by sneaking into their house and dropping off a small container of minty fresh Oreos.

Last, but not least...  here are my chocolate chip cookies I baked with love...  Love, mashed potatoes, and black beans!  This really didn't fool anyone because I couldn't get them to brown right, BUT it was hilarious feeding them to our chickens the next day.

There you have it.  OH, but wait...  I couldn't just stop there.  I decided to let the whole town enjoy my pranks so I posted something on the town facebook page about how I totally agreed that our town had to many apple trees and what our "small farming" town could really use was a Target.  I referenced a non-existent argument and petition I read online and sat back and watched people fume about how it would ruin our small town feel.  HA!  It only lasted a while before someone caught on, but it sure was funny for a little bit.  :)

OH, but wait again...  there is still. even. more.  Scotty was home sick from school so when I called into the front office to let them know I went on about how he clearly got sick from school because he was fine when I sent him; I said had some wonderful ideas about how they could keep their school cleaner.  Maybe wash every doorknob several times a day, add vitamins to the school lunches, walk the halls with wipees cleaning sick looking children's hands...  I said if they were too busy the moms could help and we could be called the germ patrol and have matching shirts.  I went on and on and then said that I forgot to mention the date of my call ....APRIL FOOLS DAY!  

:)

Green Day ...about a month late.

Every year for the past five years I have posted pictures of our Green Food.  I can't believe I didn't do it this year.  OR tell anyone about the super mean things I did to my children on April Fools Day!  (Yes, I made at least one cry.)

It is a rule that you aren't even allowed to come to the table if you aren't wearing green.  Happy wasn't here; he was at work.  That's another story.  :)

Even Blue has a green collar on.  :)  

PS.  Blue is huge.  He's a good dog, for the most part... He does have his moments where he just can't help but chase a chicken or jump on a kid or eat an entire car seat, but all in all he's a pretty good "little" puppy.  

Thursday Night (freezing cold) FUN

Scotty looks like a rock star with his ski guitar.  :)

I would like some Wonder Mom points for taking four children skiing every Thursday night in below freezing temperatures.  (I would also like to know where to cash in my Wonder Mom points.  :)  I'd like to have a nap and maybe a vacation somewhere warm and sandy.)

This whole ski club thing sounded like a great idea before the POLAR VORTEX from CANADA showed up ...now I'm freezing my tushie off every Thursday night because it turns out "ski club"doesn't mean that your kids are in a club that takes them skiing.  It means that you get a special deal on weeknight lift tickets and then you take your kids skiing.  :)  True, next year Scotty will be old enough to ride the bus and go on his own, but Andrea still has a ways to go so I think this is a new winter activity for me.  Wheeee......  :)

Thankfully I signed #1, #2, and #3 up for lessons so everyone except for the five year old goes off for an hour in a different group.  Sounds perfect and what am I complaining about?  HA!!   It's the, getting all the snow clothes and skis and boots and snacks loaded into the car so we can leave as soon as they get off the school bus.  It's the, wrestling boots onto feet and making sure every part of everybody is covered so we don't freeze to death.  It's the, $4.00 hot chocolates and eating sandwiches for dinner before the hour drive home.  It's the, getting home AT bedtime and arguing with kids because they "didn't get to do anything"....

All my whining aside, it's actually really fun when we are there.  If nothing less, "ski club" forces me to take the kids skiing.  :)  It really does force me too.  You should hear the excuses I try to give myself all day on Wednesday.  Of course, I finally got to take out Michaela's snowboard last week and impress Scotty and Sierra with my awesomeness!!  Scotty actually does think I'm awesome after my snowboard moves ...and falls.  :)  It's been 16 years since I've been on a snowboard and I was impressed it was like riding a bike!

The kids enjoy it too... Michaela finally got the concept of snowboarding, Sierra does great, but still insists sking with her family is boring (like a good 13 year old should), Scotty goes super fast and it freaks me out, and Andrea is a super star; she is finally making turns instead of going down the hill like a tiny pink rocket.

So every Thursday please think of me and the torture I am enduing ...all in the name of well rounded children.  :)

Blue ...our DOG!!!

We got a.....  DOG!

The entire family has been bothering me for YEARS to get a dog and now that we live in a big house with lots of land I started running out of excuses.  I found myself falling back on the "because I said so" reason ...which by the way is still a perfectly good reason.

Of course I did still have the reason that it would be ME taking care of the dog and that I PERSONALLY was not ready for the extra responsibilities ...then I started thinking **secretly**...  that it might be fun to have a dog and that I did have more free time lately.  I couldn't admit my secret thoughts to anyone because I didn't want to be pressured into my choice so I started **secretly** visiting puppy stores to see if I really liked dogs.  :)  Turns out I do.  HA!

So Christmas night I gathered the family around the table after dinner and gave them a leash and collar and said they could have a dog.  Screaming and jumping ensued...  even some tears on my part, but I wasn't sure if they were happy or scared ones.  :)

Little did we know how hard it would be to actually find a dog.  I was really against getting a dog from a puppy store ...just because that sounded wrong on so many levels, but it got really difficult when I realized there are NO shelter or rescue dogs from New England!!  All the rescue dogs that are here have actually been imported from the South where less smart people think that dogs should not be fixed...  So shelters in the south ship their dogs up north and that is how we got Blue.

Blue is from Little Rock, Arkansas.  He drove 1500 miles to Portland, Maine and then our family drove two hours to go pick him up from his quarantined foster home on Janurary 23rd!  He actually came with the name Raleigh, but after a long process and very detailed voting process he was re-named Blue.  He was born on October 1st and his mommy was a Boxer/Lab mix...  that's all we know.  :)

Our house is getting used to our new four-legged friend and so far so good.  He's a mellow dog as far as puppies go, but he still likes to run through the snow and chase red laser dots around the house.  The chickens hate him, the cats dislike him and the guinea pigs could care less.

I'm sure there are many Blue stories to come ...like today when he managed to tear apart an entire roll of paper towels.  If you can't imagine the mess that would make, take one paper towel and tear it into tiny pieces and throw it all over your floor.  Now imagine doing that to 149 more sheets.  That's how big of a mess it makes.  For extra authenticity of the scope of the actual mess you could pour a cup of water in the corner and pretend it's pee.

I wrote BOOKS! :)

TA DA!

Look what I made!  I printed two books; one of our time in Denmark and one of our time in Germany!  

These books are my blogs!  :)

First of all I can't believe I wrote so much!!  

Second of all, I'm super happy I did!  I might have forgotten about that guy in the parking lot I cursed with living in Denmark forever or the time I was threatened to have the Danish cops on me because I was forcing my daughters to play volleyball against their will.... or the time we tried to make corn dogs in oil so hot it would melt metal!  ...and my stories are complete with pictures!  

The books are really cool and I'd be more than happy to print one for someone if they want some good reading!  (only $130)  :)  HA!

I do think it was well worth it.  What if the internet crashes??  I'd lose my blog forever and all the pictures and everything.  I'd be sad.  :(

There you have it...  my books.  :)

More Happys in NH

Baby steps to starting my blog again...  

Here are lots of pictures from waaaaaaayyyy back when Paul's sister came to visit us for two weeks during the summer.  Two weeks is BY FAR the longest time we have spent with Sandra and her kids, but it was really fun to get to know them all better!

During their time here we ate.  Lots.  Everyday.  

Good thing Sandra cooked us dinner for the most part.  :)  I stole some of her recipes and as a matter of fact we are eating her white fish and gnocchi recipe tonight!!  

The lobster dinner was the most amusing.  :)  Everyone ...EVEN THE KIDS ...got their very own lobster.  None of us really knew what to do with it though.  :)  Sierra tagged out.  She doesn't eat birds or crustaceans.  I predict she will be vegan one day.  Anyways......

We also had water fights and played on the trampoline...

AND then it was the Fourth of July!  YAY America!!!  Oh, I forgot about Canada Day.

 First it was Canada Day!!!   YAY Canada!!!

Which was really the only reason I had to make a American Flag cake.  I can't be outdone by the Canadians and we all know life is a competition in which I must win.  :)

For some American culture we went to Boston and wandered the streets for a while.  We didn't go anywhere in particular, but we had researched where to BEST ice cream place was in Boston.  Sandra and I thought we would treat the kids to the best ice cream ever at the end of the day so off we go.  We finally made it there and it turned out to be a little cafe in an interesting part of town...  Very yuppie-ish.  ...and the ice cream was very special indeed.  All natural ingredients.  All organic.   All disgusting.

$75 dollars later we left and the kids were slightly grouchy about the event.  I couldn't argue with them, Michaela's mint ice cream really did taste like bad toothpaste.  It was like they tried to flavor it with REAL mint leaves, the nerve!  Oh well, it's not like we walked two miles for this special ice cream or anything.  ...Oh wait.  We did.

Sandra and kids have already booked their stay for next summer and a good thing too!  Things fill up quickly here at the Happy Hotel.  We only had eight nights of vacancies this summer...  otherwise we were booked every night.  Please place your reservations as soon as possible to get the best room.  We won't turn anyone away, but you may end up in a tent.  :)

AH.  I left out beach pictures.  

We went to the beach on the Fourth of July weekend.  CRAZY crowded, but it was fun and we got to stop and eat at Petey's which is our new favorite "clam shack" on the coast.  :)

Lost TOOTH!

I had no idea my little Andrea was getting so big!!  I never would have guessed her tiny teeth were even old enough to fall out.  She's barely five!

Sure, she's mastered sarcasm and eye rolling just like her older siblings ...she even has a pretty good "whatever" going on, but even still, she seemed like my Little Poozie.

A week ago I was at Sierra's open house at her school and she sent me a video of Andrea's TWO WIGGLY TEETH!!  As I watched the movie I gasped out loud at the back of the room ...only loud enough for the back few rows of parents to turn and stare, but I couldn't believe it...TWO wiggly teeth!  And today Poozie has a tiny hole where one of her tiny little teeth were.

For the record (since that what this blog is) ...her class went on a field trip to an apple farm to pick apples today.  I'm pretty sure that a few bites of apples fresh off the tree caused this little tooth to loosen up quite a bit today.  :)  However, technically it didn't fall out while eating the apple; it fell out right after she ate a tiny green sucker.  She had finished the sucker and was chewing on the stick and POP.  Out fell the tooth!!

There was minimal drama, but there was a few seconds there where I thought the whole event would go horribly wrong.  When Andrea showed me the tooth she seemed pretty concerned.  I quickly put on my excited face and proclaimed a party was in order!!  She was then a little worried when she saw some blood, but I told her it was from her tooth, not her mouth and that seemed to make it all better.  :)

Then I lost a tooth.  I lost the tooth that Andrea lost.  UGH!

Parenting at it's finest.

- Little five year old loses her very first tooth and entrusts her mommy to hold it so that it stays safe until bedtime for the tooth fairy.
- Mommy places tooth in the kitchen on a piece of paper even though she was thinking how bad of an idea that was as she was doing it.

(Mommy was obviously tired from her long day and clearly not able to be held accountable for being making such a dumb choice of leaving a teeny tiny white tooth on a big white piece of paper on a huge and cluttered kitchen counter.)

Needless to say I panicked twenty minutes before bedtime when the tooth was no where to be found.  We swept and searched everywhere.  I had no choice but to "borrow" a tooth from Sierra's collection of broken teeth she's been saving up.  (Ewwww, but thankgoodness!!)

Yes, I was less than truthful with Poozie.  I gave her Sierra's broken tooth and acted like the world was good.  I'm sorry Andrea, but the tooth fairy was so excited to take your cute little tooth she took it from the counter while we weren't looking.  It happens sometimes.  Impatient Fairies....