My, What a Big Cactus!

It's Craig's birthday on Friday so we'll be celebrating as much as we can this week. Last night Jack told him that we were planning on making him a surprise hunting cake which is obviously no longer a surprise! I do have a few other things up my sleeve though.

This is one of his favourite pictures, taken on our vacation out west in 2000. We drove all through Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming and South Dakota. He left a little bit of his heart in Moab I think, which was an amazing place. We took David Grey's album "White Ladder" and every time I hear Babylon it reminds me of cruising through the magnificent red landscape of Utah, with my arm dangling outside of our gold Mustang. It was a wonderful holiday.

When we got to Yellowstone Park in Wyoming we heard wolves howling outside our cabin door and we got chased by real indians on Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation. We hiked through Arches National Park, Mesa Verde & Monument Valley. And we had a beer in the Shady Lady Saloon and brothel in Silverton, Colorado. We stayed at a log cabin at the bottom on Big Rock Candy Mountain and we camped under the stars at Devil's Tower (site from Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind). Good times.

It's the one holiday we can't wait to do again, when the boys are a bit older and not so much of a handful. I would like Jack and Danny to gaze out across the Grand Canyon and take in it's grandeur. Right now Jack would want to visit the gift shop and Danny would be trying his best to base jump from it.

Missing my Sister & Oobleck

After we FINALLY got the lads to bed tonight we sat back and looked through 300 channels and still didn't see a decent film to watch, so we watched Tosh.O for the whole night. Good lord that man is funny. I would highly recommend him to anyone with sense of humour.

It's been a good day. I rang my sister Jenny this morning and wished her a happy 46th birthday and I got to speak to all my nieces and my great nephew AJ. He had the wonderful northern England accent that I miss and wish my boys had. I love that he chatted with Jack and can't wait for them all to get together next year. I miss my family A LOT. I know I'm going home in 12 months time but times like this make me very homesick and it can't come soon enough. So Happy Birthday Jenny - I wish I could spend it with you.

What else? Well after Jack read "Bartholomew and the oobleck" we made oobleck today with him, which was great. I think Craig and I were more obsessed with it than the kids. It's a mix of corn starch (corn flour or custard powder in England), water and food colour (optional) and it's odd. You can pick it up like a solid matter and then it runs through your fingers as a liquid. Apparently you'd be able to run across it in a pool. Craig and I spent far too much time messing with it and going "I don't get it.." Our kids have no hope do they!

Black Friday without being Pepper-Sprayed

I'm glad I didn't venture out today for Black Friday, given the shootings, pepper-spraying and general stupid behaviour. People are NUTS. A couple of years ago when I was 8 months pregnant with Danny and couldn't sleep, I got up at 3am and went to Wal Mart on Black Friday just to experience it and there were grown women fighting over $3 pyjama sets. They were made of nasty polyester and 100% flammable but those women were like a pack of hyenas. I haven't been out since.

Today I hung around the house instead with the boys and then took them for a play-date with a friend of Jack's from school, which was lovely. Me and the mum got to have a nice natter while all four played well. I was surprised how comfortable our Danny was, given his tendency to hate new situations. It was a very pleasant experience indeed and as always when I meet other mums, I get some ideas that I think I can incorporate into my parenting. I need all the help I can get!!

Afterwards we went to the fish shop to buy more fish to try and kill. Our Danny was so funny in the shop and kept grabbing the sale assistant by the thigh and dragging her over to the tanks and pointing things out to her like "big pink fishy!" and "look, a blue lobster!", She was a good sport about it and we came away with a tiny catfish, yellow snail, two glow-fish and a couple of danios (how could I not get Danny-ios!). I give them a week before they're floating and eyeless.

Craig came home deer-less but I do hope he gets one soon. I would imagine that the anticipation is huge, knowing that once you shoot one you probably have to track it for a while before it dies. Then you have to call the regulatory service (ODNR) and report it and get the tag number. And then you have to field dress it before getting it to your car and to a meat processor. When I asked Craig how he'll know if it's dead he said you poke it in the eye (ugh). If I can't stomach the thought of that there's a good chance I couldn't field dress it, which entails opening it from neck to end and pulling all it's guts out. There's just no way I could do that. Not that I'll have any problem eating venison burgers, sausages, steaks and casseroles this winter I should add.

So it feels like the weekend's over but it's just beginning as we have another two days off work yet. They are calling for rain tomorrow though and SNOW maybe Sunday. Boooo! Not snow please Mother Nature, not yet!

A Happy Thanksgiving

We've had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. This morning we went for our annual turkey-day hike and even though it was 39 degrees F the boys messed about in the streams until we had to force them home, soaking wet. We literally emptied water out of their wellies at the car!

We met several dogs & owners along the way. The black dog on the right was found at a local park last night by a woman we met. She is going to try and located the owner tomorrow through shelters and vets but thinks maybe the poor pooch was dropped off at the park as she had no collar on and was running back and to, looking at the cars as if she was saying "have they come back for me?" Heartbreaking to think that might be the case. Both Craig and I would have taken her if one of us had of cracked but I feel like our life is full enough right now. Still, she was a gorgeous dog and Cody had fun with her.

Danny was like the dog whisperer and played with them for ages.

Then it was home for our turkey dinner. I do love the American version with cranberry sauce and corn bread stuffing. And Craig's mash is to die for! Danny, not surprisingly, refused to try any of it. For desert we had pumpkin pie and ice-cream then headed back out to the park before we all fell into a turkey coma.

It'll be bed for Danny soon then we are going to watch the second Narnia film with Jack. Life is good and we are lucky. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving too!

My Happiness List

I just finished The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and while I wouldn't say that it inspired me to jump into a big project myself, it has made me more conscious each day about how my attitude affects not just my wellbeing but everyone around me. Remember the line "If mum's not happy, no one's happy?" I used to think that meant "everyone needs to make mum happy", but now I clearly see it as "mum has the power to make all around her unhappy", and I really don't want to do that.

The book made me look at happiness as a subject, which really is about what makes you feel good. So I have thought a lot about what makes me feel good and sometimes to really get to the bottom of it I had to think about what makes me feel bad and reverse it. For example, when I've lost my temper with the kids I feel bad or when I've drank too much I feel bad. The book also made me realise I've been going through life looking to the future to a time when I'll be a better mum/wife/daughter/sister/friend, because right now I'm just too busy.

So I haven't come up with a big written project, blog or list of goals but I have adopted a handful of resolutions that I will carry with me each day and try (and sometimes royally fail) to do. They might sound a bit cheesy but this is how they sit in my head so I can remember them:

1. Be Pam

2. Act how you want to feel

3. Lighten up

4. See Craig

5. Gaze lovingly

I think 1-4 are self explanatory. Number 5 is something new that Craig and I have started doing. You go into your kids bedroom and watch them for a minute as they sleep. It only takes a minute but it really helps, especially for me right now as Danny is such a handful. It makes me realize how little he is and how much I love him. As Gretchen (and every older mother on the planet) says "the days are long but the years are short" - which is hard to acknowledge when you are in the midst of toddler-rearing!

So that's it. My little 5-point list isn't very profound and it doesn't include personal health or clutter control or hobbies or other things she mentions, but these 5 things are definitely achievable for me and do make me feel happier if I do them.

Oh Christmas Tree

We spied the first Christmas tree on our street last night so pulled the car over to the house to wonder at it. Both kids got excited and were pointing at the "priddy lights" as Danny calls them.

Jack asked if we could get ours out of the box and I said that, actually, we will be buying a real tree soon because mummy always loves a real tree that smells of Christmas. Jack of course was not content with why we couldn't get one out of a box NOW, so wanted more reasons for the real tree. So I talked about the smell again.

And the needles in your feet Christmas morning
And the need to de-clog the vacuum cleaner of needles all winter
And the destruction it causes when the cat jumps into it
And the nasty scratches it gives Daddy's arms as he drags it out to the curb in January
And the fact we're just thankful it doesn't catch fire each year

At which point Craig and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. It's a stupid thing isn't it, keeping a dangerous fire-hazard in your house each year because you love the smell of pine needles. I'm still getting one though.

Or maybe we'll get one of these ....

Read all About It!

My mum sent some goodies for the kids today and included a couple of pictures of me and my sister Jenny. This was taken during our holidays at a holiday camp in Rhyl, Wales in 1973 when I was four years old.

There's two reasons I wanted to post this picture:

1. I am astonished how much Danny looks like me because I always thought he looked like Craig.

2. I have NO IDEA what my mother dressed me as for the fancy dress competition! It's pretty obvious what my sister and the Welsh girl are. I'm somewhat foggy on the scary clown-boy on the end wearing his granddad's pants. But what on earth am I?

Feel free to guess and I'll post the answer after I've asked my mum.

Sadistic Shopping Spree

It's hard to lose weight when Craig's mum sent him Thornton's toffee for his birthday. He and I attacked the bag like a couple of walkers from a zombie movie, complete with sound effects "agrhh, om om om, argh". We managed to deter the kids from having any by telling them it was coffee and they couldn't have any till they're 18. It worked a treat.

Stupidly, we took them Christmas shopping today to buy toys for other kids. Are we sadists or what? Jack spent the entire time at Toys R Us begging for toys and Danny was in some kind of sensory overload, gazing up and down the aisles and every now and then pointing at toys and whispering in awe "Ni Hao Kai-lan!". At one point our Jack got hold of a teddy bear that was bigger than him and refused to put him back so we had this rather surreal argument in the middle of a busy store with him hiding behind it and me looking like I'm telling the bear off.

So I got a teeny bit of Christmas shopping done at least. Next I'll be out looking to buy 15 boxes of Lego for the lads in our Jack's class. I got volunteered at the last PTA meeting to buy all the Kindergarten boy toys for their Christmas party which serves me right for leaving the meeting early for my XFactor party (thanks Mr's W!) I'll get reimbursed though and I'm actually quite looking forward to getting and wrapping the presents. It's putting me in the Crimbly mood!

I did however make a solemn promise to Craig today. I am never ever ever taking the kids Christmas shopping again. What was I thinking?

And we probably won't go shopping in that part of town again either. It was in the better part of town but good lord they were a miserable bunch. The parking lot was full of road-ragers and the shops were full of really angry and fed-up looking people. In my area of town, we aren't millionaires but we at least enjoy ourselves when we go shopping and we are civil when driving.

A Sentimental Old Fool

The older I get the more sentimental I'm getting but tonight I really crossed into loopy land. Remember our fish Bert & Ernie & Garrett? Well boggly-eyed Bert died about a month ago and for the last two days our orange goldfish Ernie's been looking a bit off.

It's not down to being ill treated. Oh no. This goldfish tank has been pampered to death and I feel like the only other thing I can do for them would be to take them out each evening and lick them clean. The tank cost me 5 bucks at a yard sale and the set-up has cost a small fortune. As soon as I go to the local fish shop they must nudge each other and whisper "here comes Mrs Muggins again, let's see what we can fool her into buying this time".

The last 2 days Ernie has been listless, then started hiding under the filter, then rolled upside down and finally died tonight. While all this was going on Garrett (the Plecostomus) was hanging out with him, snuggling up to him and following him wherever he half-swam, half-floated along. At one point, as Ernie was gasping for breath, it looked like Garrett was trying to blow air in his mouth.

When I told Craig all this he burst out laughing and said "Pam, he's waiting for him to die so he can eat him". Then to hide my shame that once again I'd been a muppet, I said something about the mouth-to-mouth episode which only made him smile more and ask me to look out for a book at the fish shop that talks about fish giving each other CPR. What's really sad about all this is that not only do I feel foolish but I also feel sad. I was kind of wishing that fish liked each other, you know, like they do in Finding Nemo.

When I went to the fish shop tonight to buy a net so we could scoop Ernie out and give him the right send off down the loo, I went out on a limb and asked the salesperson if perhaps Garrett was Ernie's friend or was indeed waiting to suck him once dead, and she looked at me like she couldn't believe I'd asked and said "well he aint his friend".

RIP Ernie.

Now let's get you out of there before Garrett sucks your eyeballs out.

Loss in our Community

I love our little corner of the neighbourhood. Since we have a corner lot and live on the end of a school property, we really don't have any direct neighbours but we have several houses opposite and around our property. Each one of our neighbours are great and we count ourselves lucky to be surrounded by nice people that are either retired (and therefore watch your house) or have kids to play with our boys, or are just, well, magnificent people.

Recently our little community has lost some people and it's been a sad state of affairs. Ralph was in his late 80's with Alzheimer's and recently he moved in with his sister in Cleveland and now he's in a secure locked facility where I don't think he'll last long. It's hard to imagine him, as active and strong as he was, being locked up like that. Ralph was stationed at Burton Wood Air force Base in Warrington (Craig's birthplace) during the war and he would always come over to chat with us. During my maternity leave with Danny he came over with a shoe box full of pictures from the war and we sat for a couple of hours, which is a nice memory to have of him.

Then earlier this week we lost a wonderful man, Edd, who died of cancer. He owned a landscape company and he was always coming over to do stuff to my lawn and he even gave us a lawn mower when ours broke. He was so cheery and so eager to do his bit. He would come out each winter and snow-plough the road and help the older people get their drives clear. I know his wife will be devastated. I'm going to the viewing tonight and not looking forward to it to be honest.

One of the houses has been empty for 5 years but the elderly owner living in a home won't sell it because he's convinced he's coming home one day. And our direct neighbours just inherited a another, bigger house and will be moving in the new year.

So our little group is changing and I feel sad about it. I'm hoping that new people moving in will be young with kids or just as wonderful as the people we just lost.

Things I Would Have Said

I was going to talk about the teacher conference I had today about Daniel and about how he crawls under tables when a guest speaker arrives in his classroom but that needs too much explanation

I was going to talk about how much weight I want to lose since I have become a big fattie & why Weight Watchers doesn't entice me anymore since our leader was so narcissistic

I was going to talk about the fact that I haven't drunk wine in 2 months and will never drink it again for reasons I was going to disclose

I wanted to talk about the crazy group of republican candidates and their humour value each day as I listen to their messed-up debates and see their supporters holding up misspelled, bigoted and hate-laden placards

I wanted to say how proud I am of all the Occupy people and how much I appreciate them making a stand against the greedy people that cream off the top and don't give a crap about the working man.

I was going to post pictures of our gathering last night to watch XFactor USA with people that were funny as hell and made the evening a good laugh. Best line from Simon? "The good news Stacy is that your hair looks better than last week"

I was going to talk about a guy at work who drives me NUTS

I was going to post a video of Jack singing Katie Perry's "Firework" but since the Jerry Sandusky thing I'm doubly-paranoid about posting anything on here that attracts weirdos. This breaks my heart because I have family and friends in England that come to this blog to see the boys.

So instead, I'm going to post about my beloved Buckeyes. The students of The Ohio State University that are graduating this fall and will play football for the last time on Saturday in the shoe. I will be there to salute them and cheer for them and I'm sorry that they had to bear the cross of a coach that got witch-hunted and a program that got humiliated and torn apart. Doesn't that all seem so exaggerated and unwarranted now that other universities have much bigger issues? Doesn't our boys getting tattoos and being paid $200 more than they should have seem outrageous? It does to me.