What is wrong with this world today?

Today I awoke to the news that the schools were shut down for the day due to a bomb found in the school, the post office and the local power company. If that wasn't bad enough, they found at least 4 more around town.

My safe little town has become the home of sickness. Mental sickness. I believe that the person or persons who made these explosive devices have to be mentally ill. What would drive a person to do this? The bad economy? Losing your job, your home, your dignity can mess a person up, but this badly? Being treated poorly by bullies your whole life? That could make someone snap.

I do not know what caused this person to do what they've done, but I am not alright with it happening. If I felt that I needed to blow up a town, I think I would know that I needed mental help asap. Get HELP. Don't put a bomb in my children's school or my neighbor's mailbox. Get help.

I am not scared, or worried or freaked out. I am just confused as to what would cause someone to do this. We live in a pretty nice town. People are nice. People are supportive. The community helps where it can. There IS help for people who need it. Something has been happening to bring morals down over the last few years. Our safe little town has left us disillusioned. We've had about 5 bikes stolen from our yard or around town and had a burglar in our car in the middle of the night that our dog scared away. We've had a bomb threat every year for 3 years, and now not only a bomb, but 7 of them.

I just don't even know what to say. It is sad and frustrating.

It was a bomb in our high school

The news has released that it was an "incendiary device" at the high school. I am assuming that they were all 3 bombs in the school, post office and power company, but only the school officials have spoken about what they were told so far.
Why bomb the school? I don't understand.

Our town is even on CNN now. I hope the bomber is happy with the publicity. I am ticked.

Bomb threat in Princeton, MN

Donnie and I were snuggled in bed at 9am and Donnie thought he heard Devon, the only kid still in public school. He does have a tendency to sleep in sometimes and end up tardy.
So we get up and find Devon making breakfast at 9:30. What are you doing here?
Turns out that he was sent home because there are 3 suspicious packages placed around town, and they closed down all the schools. There is a package at the high school (4 blocks down our street), the post office (about 4-5 blocks the other direction) and the public utilities (4 blocks another direction).
The bomb squad from St. Paul is on their way now, but at one point several roads in town were shut down from the threat. Here is a brief news report on it.

I'll update when we find out what they found in the packages. I'm suspecting it was nothing, but it is weird that it was at several places.

Update**
So far the packages were "devices that look like bombs" but we don't know if they are or not. FBI is involved, probably because of the post office. The areas are clear now, so the treat is over, and life is resuming back to normal. Except for not having school today.

Wow, learning experience

This week the kids and I are studying the Renaissance era and arts and crafts that were popular in those days. So today my neighbor let us come over and learn about pottery and we got to try to make something on the wheel.
I learned a LOT.
1. Pottery making is fun.
2. Pottery making is hard.
3. Pottery making is a great abdominal work out. (not even kidding)
4. Pottery making is MESSY.
5. You can't make pottery with long finger nails.
6. It is totally worth every penny to pay for someone's excellent pottery work.

Now when we go to the Renaissance festival on Friday and watch the pottery deomonstrations we will know just how talented they are.

Next up on our list is to learn about artists and try painting............. yikes!

Later in the week we are going to make cake, and while that isn't in the time period, we are going to make a castle and possibly knights and figures out of fondant to go with the time period.

Organization

How do you go from unorganized to scheduled?
I like the freedom of doing things when we want to, and it mostly works for the kids to do school on their time because there is no fighting me. I give them a list and a deadline to have it done, and that is all I care about, having it done by the end of the week.
However, that doesn't work well with Trinity yet, so I need to get more organized and schedule days and times to work with her. Every day is just too much. But I think 3 days a week should be good for her.

The big change I want to see is Cody and Hope-Anne developing a schedule with their dogs. The puppies need time in the kennel and time to play. The kids don't like to kennel the dogs much, but that doesn't work out with potty issues. Thankfully, Parker is about potty trained, and even my stubborn stupid dog is pooping outside now, hehe, but Nova is only 3 months old and is not there yet.

So, how do you even go about MAKING a schedule and sticking to it?

Time to think ahead!

It's probably a good time to start thinking about ordering your holiday cards. I love this one from Tiny Prints. With our picture and name, of course, lol.
The prices are really competitive, too. I was surprised. What I like is that the selection is so big.

Check out the holiday photo cards and the Thanksgiving invitations. Great selections!

Now to get a new family picture taken, but without Drew this year. Sad.

How do people find things to blog about without kids?

Kids are just such a perfect combination of humor, aggravation, and cuteness!

This morning Hope-Anne asked Sam what he wanted for breakfast. He insisted he wanted meatballs. Hope-Anne finally asked him to show her the meatballs he wanted.
He brought her to the pantry and pointed at the Fruit Loops.

What were we thinking?

I don't know why we have dogs at all, but why do we have THREE?????
And how on earth do you potty train a puppy? We take them out all the time. The pups will poop 3-4 times outside, then come in and you think, they should be empty now, but NOoooOOO. They poop again.
The like to wrestle. And that is fine, but they have to wrestle at my feet. And unplug my laptop or pull my mouse off the table right out of my hand.

And my dog smells funny. He needs to go to the groomer again. Ugh.

Anyone want some dogs?

Arachonophobia

Spiders and I do not get along. I am petrified of them. I know it isn't rational. Most of them are not poisonous to me. They are all a LOT smaller than I am. But they are sneaky and creepy and evil looking. They terrify me! I can't even pick up a dead one with a paper towel.
I will admit, I am getting more brave, though. I actually took pictures of TWO spiders this week.

I went away for a couple of days and of course the kids don't think it is their job to load the dishwasher, just let the sink fill up until "someone else" cleans it up. Well, while I was gone they saw a web in the sink. The knocked it down, but didn't bother finding the spider or cleaning the dishes out. So, the spider built another web. Which is what is keeping ME from loading the dishwasher.

I moved a pot off the top of the pile of dishes and found the wolf spider.
Those little things (they aren't all little, they do get quite big) are hairy and ugly and make funnel type webs. We have them bad. I am scared to do my laundry! So I bought a bunch of Hedge Balls and Donnie put them in the basement like the instructions said to do. My basement is reportedly free of spiders. But they all moved upstairs.

Great.

Donnie was so sweet. I posted this pic on facebook and said that he better come kill it or there would be no clean dishes. He came down and didn't just flush it away with water, which would make me afraid it was hiding in those dishes or would crawl back up the drain and eat me. He know that about me. So he trapped it in a bottle so I could see he got it and it is OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!!!

Isn't he awesome?!!

(though I am suspicious that he actually let it go outside rather than threw the bottle out with it trapped inside. so I think it will be back to get vengeance.)

The Man Trap

Donnie's cousin's son got married this weekend. Seeing as he has made it to 33 years old without getting "trapped" into marriage, the name Mantrap Lodge was just the appropriate venue to have a wedding weekend.

The event was amazing. People could go up Friday night and stay in a cabin and join in the groom's dinner and have a bonfire and stuff. Then there was the wedding on Saturday afternoon, followed by a dinner and dance. Again, there were cabins to stay in, and breakfast in the morning.

Instead of the normal gifts at the tables for the guests, these guys went all out. So far above and beyond, it was just overwhelming. They made gift baskets for the people who stayed in the cabins. Baskets loaded with chips and candy and hot chocolate and coffee and creamer and sugar packets. Not kidding, the baskets were the size of a small trash can. For the children that were registered to stay, they each got a basket with some toys, books, baby snacks. Just amazing!

We weren't planning to stay, but Donnie's mom got sick, and his brother didn't show, so we stayed in their place.

Another amazing part was that the bride and groom spend months making all the wine for us to drink! I am not fond of red wine, but it was still pretty good. The white wine, however, was A-Mazing! It was like the finest champagne without the bubbles. And yes, my dear friends, you know what that means. I drank a lot of it. LOVE champagne. Seriously, the best wine I have ever had in my life. (not that I drink wine much, lol, cause I don't)

Mantrap Lodges are overlooking Mantrap lake. It was beautiful scenery!

At the right time we were to follow the trail to the wedding area. These signs leading to the wedding were so cool, they weren't just painted on, they were carved in and painted. We did need to stick to the trails because of the poison ivy.

The wedding was overlooking the lake. It was quite beautiful. (and I hear that the guys watched a boater reel in a nice sized fish)

The only sad part was that even though the wedding was only 20 minutes long, so very easy to sit through for the kids, they didn't mention God even one time. So sad. (not his upbringing)

Look how sweetly Sam sat through the ceremony! I just want to kiss those plump little lips!

Here is an unconventional cake for an unconventional couple! I think the filling was bulging because it was HOT in the reception hall. The cake was very good, and I am not a cake lover.

I had a great time, and I think everyone did. It was a lot of fun.

Overheard at my house

Hope-Anne is working with Trinity on her Bible verse for Awanas, they learn it in parts.
Hope-Anne "For God so loved the world"
Trinity "So God loved the world."

Hope-anne "For God SO loved the world."
Trinity "So God FOR loved the world!"

$100 and 6.5 hours in the ER and all I got was this lousy BB?

Boy did we have a day today!

Last night, pretty late in the evening, Sam let us know that he'd stuck something in his ear. It was a plastic BB for a pellet gun. (Yeah, loving those teenagers right now) Do you know what size a pellet is? Exactly the size of Sam's ear canal. Mmmhmmm.

We tried flushing it out with water. All we got was Sam screaming and a drenched towel. We tried sealing his ear with gum and a straw to suck it out. No dice. I wanted to try glue on a stick, but the only glue I thought would harden quick enough was hot glue gun glue, and that's just wrong.

We let him sleep, because I wasn't going in at midnight. I called for an appointment first thing this morning, and wouldn't you know, there was NOTHING open. None of the doctors wanted to make an opening, either, they wanted him to go to an ENT so nothing happened to the ear drum if he wiggled.

Finally the nurse talked to our doctor who isn't in clinic on Fridays and he said go to the ER, because he will need to be sedated. (do you think he knows my son?)

Off we went. Even though it is a $100 copay. (gulp)

My doctor met us there and he tried glue on a stick with Sam awake. Not only did it not work, there was NO way it was going to happen with Sam conscious. It was pretty apparent by the way Sam was hiding under the sink from the doctor, but got even more evident from the screaming and bucking while trying to get it out, lol.

The catch............. Sam had to have not eaten in 6 hours before they could put him under. Ugh. 3 more hours in the ER before they can even START. I needed to get my mother in law home, she was being discharged from the hospital after a 9 day stay. They were very kind and let me leave and come back when it was time to sedate him. So I got that taken care of. But we still had time to kill and had to keep Sam away from food.

We got home to get some lunch, making Cody sit outside with him to keep him away from food. But Cody, the one who didn't put his BB's away, didn't obey and brought him in the house where we had to fight him for the piece of ABC gum he stole out of the trash. Then we had to take the dog water dish away from home, hopefully in the nick of time. I decided we needed to kill time at a park. One without a water fountain. So we went to the riverside park. Where he proceeded to fall in the river.

So we went back to the hospital with him soaking wet. LOL

He was not happy to be back at the ER. Not one bit.

Sam is extraordinarily attached to Hope-Anne right now, so she was with us. She got to lay on the bed next to him while they put him out. He did lay down better with her there, but he sure fought that mask. I would too. The anesthesiologist said "Hey Sam, don't worry, this smells like your dad's dirty socks." Helpful, no?

The BB did NOT want to come out. No way no how. They tried the glue on a stick, they tried a couple different kinds of wax removal sticks. They tried suction. They tried a balloon on a stick, but at first it wouldn't go in. Lots of blood. Finally he had to force the balloon thing in and blow it up and the BB came out with much pulling. It would have been traumatic to have Sam awake for that. His ear canal is scratched up pretty badly, but his ear drum is unscathed!

He woke up screaming. Screaming! For 45 minutes. We tried to give him Advil for the ear pain, but he freaked out. He ran across the room and grabbed a garbage bag out of the trash and started scrapping his tongue with it to get rid of the medicine, lol. He finally just passed out from the screaming and was out cold. We slipped the medicine in while he is sleeping and that seemed to help. He didn't wake up until we were driving home.

We have to put ear drops in his ears every 4 hours. He hates ear drops. With a passion. Even when his ears are not hurting. (we do drops to soften his wax) You can see from the picture how well that went over.

And there you have our day. lol

It is also parents night at football tonight, and I am not leaving Sam, so Donnie is going without me. And it is karaoke at church, which we are going to miss. Sam does seem to be feeling better when he is on pain meds, but we still have a risk of infection with that scratch in his canal. I am sure it will heal fine, though.

The doctors instructions on the discharge papers "Never stick anything in your ear smaller than your elbow." Not even kidding, lol.

My week

I've had some fun, and some not so fun times in the last 8 days.
Donnie's mom has been in the hospital for 8 days, but finally comes home today. (Friday) She was blowing up like a balloon with water, and they are not sure why. Probably her congestive heart failure. We think she is on the mend, but she does have to have her heart stopped and restarted in about a month. A little scary, but common.

We bought a used vehicle that will actually fit us with our not adult children! We are buying it from a friend who offered us an amazing deal that we are so thankful for. It is an SUV that seats 7!

Devon is in football this year and we had fun watching him at a home game this week. He is playing JV to get play time, and subs on Varsity. He gets to play a LOT for JV and it is fun to actually go to a game and have him play so much! He is number 34, putting his helmet on in this picture.

It was so enjoyable getting to watch Devon play, but we didn't realize how warm it was and didn't bring enough to drink for the kids. As you can see, Trinity was about to get heat stroke! So we left at half time. We were bummed, but we their health is important.

One day I was driving Sam home from visiting Grandma at the hospital and saw THIS sitting on my windshield right in my line of vision. I could see nothing else.

Yes, a GIANT spider on my window. It was probably big enough to almost cover a........... dime. I didn't even crash, though! Aren't you proud of me?

When I got Sam home and headed back to the hospital, the spider was no longer on my window and I was a bit more freaked out when I didn't know where it went. But I survived, and didn't drive into a lake or anything, Anna.

Schooling has been going pretty well. Cody and Hope-Anne are adjusting great! Hope-Anne and I, not so much. It is hard finding time to sit down and work together without Sam being a brat, destroying my house, or taking a walk to the police station down the street. He lets the dogs out of their fence all the time. Spills things. Bugs Donnie in his office. Trashes the house.

Sigh........... we will figure it out, but it is going to take time. Today was art day. Hope-Anne took out paints and painted faces and hair. Not my idea of art, but they had a blast. And cleaned it up.

See what 20 years does to you?

I will admit, I am a testing addict. Pregnancy tests, that is. I buy in bulk. I guess when you *could* be pregnant any month and want to be pregnant, you want to know right away, lol. Please don't judge me, lol. I'm not alone, I know I'm not.
Anyway, I chart my cycle and I wasn't sure that I actually ovulate every month, so my doctor has me testing for ovulation. So I bought those in bulk, too. (I can get 25 of each kind of test for the price of ONE test in the store, so I'm saving money, people!)

Well, I get worked up taking negative test after negative test, so I gave all my tests to Donnie and told him not to give them back to me unless my cycle is late. I told him to hide them good, because I WILL be searching his office for them.

I shouldn't have given him my ovulation test strips, though, so I asked for one yesterday. He was working and asked if I wanted to leave the room or have him tell me where they were. I said "They are in the wall." He said "What?!" I said "I know they are in the wall."
How did I know that? Well, after 20 years of marriage, I know how his brain works. He knows that I am not going to put my hands in there because a spider might bite it off. Where else would he put it?

I guess I should explain the whole wall thing, lol. We turned a storage room into a normal room by adding a window and started sheet rocking it. We aren't finished yet, and there is a slope to the roof on part of the wall, but that makes a pocket behind it that we haven't sheet rocked yet. Partly because we ran out of money, then were too lazy to finish it, and it is probably way beyond our minimum sheet rocking talent. So, there is a big space that is open.

I coined a new phrase

Man stupid.

I know that men don't like to listen to women's problems. I know that it gets worse when it is the same problem over and over and over and over and over. But before we married them, they were more than willing to listen and offer great sympathetic words that let you know that they cared and understood.

After you've been married, oh, 10 minutes, it all comes to a screeching halt and they get Man stupid.

You know what I mean. You want to talk out your emotions, your frustrations; they want you to shut up and bring them a beer. OK, so Donnie isn't a beer drinker, but still, he doesn't want to listen to it, especially more than once. After it gets to the point that I am in tears, he will try to be a good husband and listen, and offer sympathetic words. But men's sympathetic words come out like this "Get over it and trust God already." Man stupid. (not that he said those words, but that is how it comes out)

Donnie is very intelligent, but I am going through some intense grief about twice a month, and he doesn't feel the same way as I do, so he doesn't sympathize, and he's heard it before, so he just doesn't know what to say, lol. It's pretty frustrating for both of us.

After one of those stupid comments I told him he was Man Stupid, and he thought that was pretty funny, though he thinks he is Woman Stupid.

Don't you just love married life and communication issues?

Stray Affections Book review

This is a good book written by a fellow Minnesotan. I enjoyed reading about and getting engrossed in Cassandra's life and watching the story unfold.
Check out the author reading her book!





Summary
In Stray Affections, the last thing that Cassandra expects out of her Sunday is to be mesmerized at a collectors’ convention by a snowglobe. She’s enjoying some shopping time, with husband Ken at home tending their brood of four young boys, when she’s utterly charmed by the one-of-a kind globe containing figures of three dogs and a little girl with hair the color of her own. She can’t resist taking the unique globe home—even if means wrestling another shopper for it!
The beautiful snowglobe sparks long-dormant memories for Cassie, of her beloved Grandpa Wonky, the stray she rescued as a child, and the painful roots of her combative relationship with her mother, “Bad Betty” Kamrowski. Life in Wanonishaw, Minnesota is never dull, though, and Cassie keeps the recollections at bay, busy balancing her boys, her home daycare operation, and being a good friend to best pal Margret. But after a strange—flurrious, as Cassie deems it—moment happens with the remarkable snowglobe, Cassie and the people she loves are swirled into a tumultuous, yet grace-filled, and life-changing journey.
“As a believer, I know the power of forgiveness and new beginnings, and of a God, and family and friends, who love me the way I am,” Charlene Ann Baumbich says. “The heartbeat of change flows through those wonderful gifts.”
With the quirky, close-knit Midwestern small-town feel that made Charlene Ann Baumbich’s acclaimed Dearest Dorothy novels so popular, Stray Affections invites readers to experience the laughter and the healing of second chances.

Author Bio:
Charlene Ann Baumbich is a popular author and speaker and an award-winning journalist. In addition to her Dearest Dorothy series of novels, she has written seven nonfiction books of humor and inspiration. A bungee-jumping, once motorcycle-owning grandma and unabashed dog lover, Charlene lives with her husband and rescued dog Kornflake in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. She loves telling stories, laughing whenever possible, and considers herself a Wild Child of God.

If you'd like to learn more about "Stray Affections" or to purchase this book, go to Random House.com.

Enjoy!

You need to watch a little ways into the video. Totally worth it! We were sitting in a traffic jam on the way to the Minnesota State Fair and I amused myself with playing with my new camera. Watch Trinity's face when we were talking about eating foods at the fair. Priceless!

And now for something completely different!

I'm not going to blog about the T.O.T. right now! I know, right?!

We kind of lost our minds in July and let Cody get a puppy. But just to prove how completely stupid we really are, we let Hope-Anne get one, too. Her puppy is half Australian Shephard, which is an amazingly smart breed of dog. We had one a long time ago and she was so smart and fun and wonderful. We miss her so much. We are hoping Nova will be even half as smart as our Mesa was. Donnie and I attemped to garden this year. We fenced off a small area (to keep the rabbits and stupid cats who pee on everything out) and even put some manure in it. But after fertilizing it we actually kept adding rows of food, so not all of it was fertlized. And by "we" I mean Donnie.
I wanted some lettuce, and that worked out great! We had fresh lettuce all the time. I also wanted cucumbers, but they didn't grow at all. Donnie planted corn and carrots, but didn't weed them down when they came up, so they were really close together. Not good. LOL We had Donnie's dad plant potatoes to get him out of the house and moving his aging body. Those turned out pretty good.
Here is one of the very, very small potatoes, but we actually got a lot of normal size potatoes.
Here is our corn and carrots and potatoes. Go ahead and laugh, we did!

We did get some somewhat edible size of corn and carrots, too, but mostly not of the carrots. The corn was pretty good, actually.

It was a fun experiment that we are going to repeat next year. Hopefully we learned from our mistakes. And by "we" I mean Donnie. I told him to weed out the carrots several times, lol.

I should rename my blog

This blog could completely be about the Tornado of Terror. He is a monster! He has just under 2 months left of being a 2 year old, and then what excuse do I have for his behaviour? LOL

My sister and her two girls are here this weekend, and one of her girls is 7 weeks younger than Sam. She, also, is a T.O.T. So, we have two of them in the house. Not sure we will survive. LOL Well, we will, but Donnie may end up missing a digit or two.

Sam was having a fit about some toys that were put away and got sent into Donnie's home office with him. Donnie wouldn't let him out of the room while he was having a raging fit, but Sam wouldn't give up. Donnie held his hand in the way out of the room. So, Sam clamped down on a finger. Hard. So hard that Donnie had to squeeze his jaw open to get out of it. He was pretty sure he was going to lose the finger in Sam's mouth! He's fine now, just a bit swollen and bruising inside.

He hasn't ever been a real biter, so it was totally unexpected. But, yeah. That was fun.

On the funnier side, he is terrorizing my niece, and that IS pretty funny. She is possibly a little more of a terror than Sam, but not by much. She won't go to anyone but her mom, and nobody better touch her mom. But Sam dares. He does. He not only dares to touch Aunt Liz, he also wraps his arms around her neck and tells his cousin "MY momma." And the war begins. "No! My mama!" and back and forth it goes. Until poor Kenzie is crying. And he still doesn't stop. And we just laugh. Even in church. It started and we told them to be quiet. The got quiet, but they sat and mouthed it back and forth to each other!

The two of them have had us laughing all weekend, and it is wonderful!

T.O.T struck again

I made a cake for a friend last night, she is sick and was craving buttercream icing. I figured I should put it on a cake, though she only wanted the frosting.
Sam destroyed the cake while I was letting it cool, lol. Little turd!

Oh well.

I am really excited, this weekend my sister and her two girls are coming to spend the weekend! She has her own T.O.T. who is 7 weeks younger than Sam. So there should be plenty of fun going on here! Donnie is seriously considering leaving, lol. Actually he is invited to a 4 wheeler weekend at a childhood friend's house with a bunch of other friends. Devon works, and he is bummed to not take all his boys.

I am busy cleaning and doing laundry. The mountain is getting smaller, but with my crew, it will pile back up long before I reach the bottom. I don't even know what is on the bottom of the pile anymore.

Soon I will be homeschooling again. Trinity, Cody and Hope-Anne will all be home this year. I am not looking forward to it, but I am looking forward to not having to deal with the middle school. I just had so many issues there, and I am done. We'll make the best of homeschooling and have a good time!

Nothing else is new here, just enjoying the end of the summer. Enjoy your last summer days!

Texas Instruments TI-Nspire

Math is something I struggle with big time. Calculator or not. But my kids have to deal with it in school, and as they start taking SAT and ACT and go into college math classes, they are going to need all the help they can get. (thought they do seem to have a much easier time than I had, thanks to their dad's genes)
I was thrilled to get to review the TI-Nspire handheld calculator! This calculator is amazing! So amazing that they sent me a Texas Instruments TI-Nspire for Dummies book along with the calculator, lol. I'm not joking.

The calculator is top of the line and is so versatile in it's uses. It even does graphing. I was scared off by the two interchangeable keypads, but the college kids were excited to give it a try. Even my brother, who is amazingly smart and well educated, wanted to get his hands on this.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
The TI-Nspire handheld is the latest in learning technology from TI, creating a dynamic dimension for students to visualize concepts and take an engaging, interactive role in their learning. Features include:

1. Linking multiple representations
2. Interchangeable TI-84 Plus Keypad*
3. Permitted on SAT**, ACT, PSAT/NMSQT** and AP**exams PLUS Praxis and IB exams when used with the TI-84 Plus Keypad

The calculator gives several versions of a problem to help people really figure things out from different angles-algebraic, graphical, geometric, numeric and written. The screen size is really large, which I love.

I also appreciate that this calculator is approved to use on those college placement type of exams. What a help! This is a great calculator to invest in while your child is in high school and a scientific calculator is required, because this one will stick with them through college. It is a great use of your money as a parent. Plus, you can even personalize your TI-Npsires at TImathrocks!

This post was written as part of a program for Family Review Network and Texas Instruments, who supplied the product for review.