It's not so much an identity crisis as an identity carnival

Grace has a healthy imagination.  She has, at one time or another, pretended to be a grandmother, a dog named Sweet Dog (and, since then, Baby), a bride, a lion, a princess, a brand new mother, and Laura Ingalls Wilder at various ages.  She also dressed like Cyndi Lauper, but not on purpose.  Plus, there were the days of the Wish Piggy, a piggy bank that Grace deposited coins into to get Josiah to turn into a wide variety of creatures.  (Each of those links will take you to the corresponding blog post.)

More recently, she has pretended to be an Indian named Indiana (I think it's because it sounded feminine and...um...Indian at the same time) as well as a ninja.  This has been going on for at least a year, but has recently been an every day thing again.

When she was dressing herself to go to her best friend's house for her older sister's graduation party and said, "I know exactly what I'll wear," I could hear it in her voice that she was up to something...

Like this.

Grace (7) the petite ninja.  That's our puppy Bono in the corner behind her--she was trying to blend in with her surroundings.

Posing

I managed to get her changed into something a little less...black, seeing as it's late May.  But she still signed the graduation card as "Indiana."  

A St. Simons kind of humor

When you visit a new place, you can expect to see some humorous things, such as signs giving (what should be) common sense advice like "Do Not Feed the Alligators."

I don't think anyone would ever have to tell me not to feed the alligators. Seeing that sign on open property is pretty much enough to keep me in my car!   ;)

There are also the humorous stories that come about from talking with the locals, like when an older man told me the history of this pelican. 

The man declared that this old pelican is the most photographed thing on St. Simons Island.  The pelican sits all day long on a ladder at the edge of the pier and is fed daily by the fishermen who come to the pier because he is too old to hunt for himself.  He will not bother going after any fish that are accidentally thrown off the pier when the fishermen throw a portion of their catch to him but is content to eat what lands on the pier.  (And, yes, people are constantly taking pictures of him.)

Then there are the things that just struck me as funny, like the pelicans flying in formation over the beach

 

and the black crows that joined the seagulls in looking for bites of food among the blankets and umbrellas, like they would just blend in.

There are funny political campaign signs...

"Rootin' for Tuten"

There are the quirky things you find in quirky downtown shops...

like yoga frogs

 

 and really useful signs.

 

Some things you find humorous because of the company you keep, such as when my 6 year old daughter found wedding dresses in the back of a shop.

I heard Grace squeal, and when I saw what she had found I commented that I would have loved to have seen the expression on her face when she saw the dresses...so she did her best to recreate it for me.  Somehow, I think this is a pale imitation of reality.
 

All of these things are delightfully quirky, and not too terribly out of the bounds of the ordinary, right? 

However, some things will take you completely by surprise, such as a notice of velociraptor that was "found"...

"Very bitey"...I love it!  I wonder if the person ever gets any phone calls?

The Wedding

We had a wedding earlier this week! 

The bride arrived to the ceremony on horseback (and the groom on...um...dogback?) 

The bride is wearing a baby doll dress that was mine when I was a little girl; her veil is a piece that came off one of Grace's princess tiaras.  She is riding on Barbie's horse. The groom is wearing an outfit I sewed from scraps.  He is riding a fluffy white dog.

and, immediately after being pronounced husband and wife, departed for their honeymoon...in a boat. 

Maybe they were going on a cruise...

Savannah Highlights

This post is from October 2009--yet another post I found languishing in my drafts folder flashback for you.


When we went to Savannah for Michael and Brandi's wedding, it never even occurred to me how confusing a downtown area could be. On the way from the hotel to the church for the rehearsal, our GPS had a nervous breakdown and began asking questions such as, "Did you go inside?" "Are you still in Georgia, USA?" "Do you still love me?"

Yeah, I made up that last one, but the others were just so funny...especially since we were running late to the rehearsal and needed the GPS to be clear-headed enough to just do it's job instead of constantly asking for reassurance.


We checked into our hotel around 5:15 p.m. after stopping something like 50 times on the way and, after feeding the kids a little something, changing into appropriate clothes, and dropping the kids off at Dad and Kathleen's hotel, we were (not surprisingly) late to the rehearsal which started at 6:00 p.m. I was "Reader #1" in the ceremony, so my part to practice had already passed...which was probably just as well because I walked into the sanctuary and saw this

and wondered how I could get someone else to read for me. Seriously, what made me agree to do the reading?!  Oh, yeah...'cause I love my cousin.  :)  


Want to see more photos of the wedding or of the cathedral?  Click on these links:

The wedding

The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist

Wow. Talk about a bad neighborhood.

This sign will likely look familiar to some of the moms in my homeschool playgroup. It amused me enough to take a picture of it a few months ago...and as I drove along my route this week, I noticed that someone finally added the necessary "D" to the sign. I was wondering just what kind of barbershop that was, and, really, who would even want go to a barbershop where you needed to use guns? (The only danger was from two businesses sharing one sign.)

"Fry Urgol" still hasn't been fixed yet. ;)

You Get What You Pay For

Or, rather, "You gripe about what you don't even have to spend money on because you are 14."

This is what I found one morning when I opened our pantry. Robert (14) had critiqued our bread...The label now reads "'Healthy' White Blandwich Bread."


Yes, "Healthy" is in quotes. I guess Robert already doesn't trust food labels, and yet he shamelessly copies a mayonnaise commercial's use of the made-up word "blandwich."

My 14 year old also criticizes our cereal purchases:



Note: I don't buy "good" cereal (by his standards) because it lasts somewhere between 2 and 3 mornings around here.

This next shopping list, though, is by far my favorite one. Robert (whose real name starts with an "N") had made a list of things he needed/wanted. I added "N's this, N's that" to the list--you know, before he could think of any other "needs." He wrote his response to my addition, and I added my response, too, trying to mimic his handwriting.


Hmmmm...wonder why he scratched out that part? ;)

Funny boy...

I was looking through my photos on the computer just now and ran across these photos from a recent trip to Athens.




I noticed that my 13 year old

had renamed those two photo files with "greatest place on earth" in the file name. ;)

Wordless Wednesday: Hmmm...

Visit 5 Minutes for Mom, Shibley Smiles, and Baba's Farm Life for more Wordless Wednesday fun.

Overheard: Fun with personification

In the car on the way to church Wednesday night...

Me: Look, Grace! Doesn't the moon look huge tonight?

Grace [with just the slightest hint of a pause]: The moon had a birthday, so it's another year older. That's why it's so big.

Well, now you know.

The moon looked so much more beautiful than the one decent (...sort of) shot I got of it.

~~~~~

In the car on the way to the library, while we were stopped at a red light...

Grace [laughing]: Oh! They look like puppies playing in the road! Whooooooa! Now I wanna go over here! Whooooooa! This is fun! Oh, look! They're playing together!

Josiah [looking up from the book he was reading]: What puppies?

Grace: I'm talking about the leaves in the road! They move when the wind blows!

~~~~~

And, once again, I am kicking myself for not writing down conversations as they happen. I know there was (at least) one other example of personification in something either Josiah or Grace said, but I can't remember it. Boo.

Serving suggestion?

See "Serving Suggestion" above the back of the truck?

So...fill up a truck this the ice cream and grab a spoon?

When I have nothing else to say, I show you old photos of a praying mantis

It has been a looooooong week. It has been such a long week, I can't even begin to compose anything you would want to read. So, with that in mind, I decided to post something that has been sitting in my drafts folder for nearly a year.

~~~~~

Mid-November 2009

Earlier this week I decided it was finally time to cut down the morning glory vines we have in several places in our back yard…even though there are occasionally some blooms because the weather is still warming up as though it’s not November. As I was hacking away at one of the thicker sections, I saw something eying me warily…a praying mantis!

Grace, the fearless one, immediately wanted to know if she could “pet” him.

Then, of course, we both took pictures of him. And she kept trying to pet him.

The praying mantis kindly let Grace "pet" him gently for a few minutes, and all the while Grace was saying, "He likes me! He knows I'm his friend!" (She also plays with rollie pollies, ladybugs, crickets--just about anything except ants and spiders...and crickets.)

With the praying mantis being so large, it was just a little creepy to me when he would turn his head to look at me. You just don't see many bugs looking right at you.

After he’d had enough of the paparazzi, especially the touchy-feely one with a princess crown on her head, he began casually walking his way across our patio and played on the Tonka truck

and with a little pink poodle Grace had brought out.

When he ran out of toys, he walked over to the grass and tried to be invisible again. (I think I heard him muttering something about camouflage...) He wasn't as tolerant of Grace's petting anymore, and Grace, being the sweetie she is, left him alone.

The week Josiah becomes totally self-conscious about the size of his feet

On Tuesday, we drove to Athens to celebrate a couple of March birthdays (my brothers/the kids' uncles).

The birthday boys

After leaving the restaurant, the kids and I ran over to Academy Sports because they have the best prices I've seen for baseball cleats, and Josiah just began Spring Ball practices. I had him check the size of the shoes he had on (because I seriously can no longer keep three growing kids' shoes sizes in mind) and proceeded to hand him size 6 cleats to try on. None of them fit him.

Then, of course, Josiah tells me, "Oh, yeah, these shoes I have on are a little tight on me now." OK...the largest sizes I've seen in the cleats has been size 6. Josiah found a store employee and we asked her if there were any size 6 1/2 cleats in the kids' section. Um...no...the size 6 1/2 shoes are in the men's section.

Excuse me? My seven year old is now getting shoes from the men's section? Really?!?

Really.

As we were laughing about this shoes shopping experience and walking to the front of the store to check out and buy Josiah's first pair of men's shoes, Josiah sighed and said, "I guess I'd better get some age on me to catch up to my feet."

;)

The next day, I measured my socked foot against his socked foot and found his is only about an inch shorter than mine, and I don't have dainty little feet. I wear size 10. Robert's feet are bigger than mine already, but he is, after all, nearly thirteen and nearly as tall as I am already.

Josiah went to batting practice on Friday night and the first thing his coach said to him was, "Hey...What size shoes do you wear?!" (When Josiah reported this to me, I thought he was joking; he wasn't.)

So, please try not to stare. He's getting a little self-conscious as it is. He told Jason, "You know how Mom said that when I hit size 13, I have to buy my own shoes? I'm afraid at this rate, I'm gonna have to make my own shoes..."

Ummm...Did I mention he's a little dramatic?

An unintentional blogging break

It's been a wild several weeks. A quick recap for you...On Thursday, the day we were expecting the "big snow" (ha), I took Robert to the doctor for an ear infection and pink eye. Yay...pink eye. (For the record, it was the first time in several years that Robert had been to the doctor for anything but a well visit. And it was our first experience with pink eye with the kids. I guess that's why he got hit with a double whammy.) Before we left the exam room, the pediatrician poked her head back in the room and said, "Oh, and if the other kids get pink eye, go ahead and start them on the eye drops, too, and just call on Monday for a refill."

She sounded so casual about it. I knew what that meant...

As we were driving home from the doctor's office, it started snowing! It looked promising for a little while, and Josiah and Grace were very excited to start playing in the snow as it fell in beautiful, gigantic flakes. In the next photos, you can see a few white blobs of snow falling:


If you look closely in the next photo, Grace has a white blob of a snowflake as a nose. Josiah had already given up on the playing in the snow thing because, quite frankly, it was merely cold and no fun at all, so Grace was left to play outside by herself. (I was taking these photos from the door because, hello, it was COLD and I'm no longer impervious to the cold weather like my daughter.)

It only snowed briefly that evening, and this is all we got:


That night, Grace had pink eye. Yay...

And the next morning, we didn't even have snow to play in. It was the non-snow event that I'm convinced was promoted only to boost sales of milk and bread. A conspiracy, really. See?


Robert and Grace soon had clear eyes with no signs of pink eye (or "The Pink Eye," as Josiah was calling it). And it really looked like Josiah had successfully avoided "The Pink Eye."

Or so we thought.

Sunday night, Josiah started with signs of (the) pink eye. Ugh. I practically had an assembly line going with the eye drops, and by Monday morning we were completely out and calling the terribly swamped pediatrician's office for refills so I could continue the assembly line. Yay...

By Friday, I was at my own doctor's office for a sinus infection. The upside of it? It was first illness-related doctor visit in, oh, about four years, so I figure I can't complain too much. And I made the physician's assistant laugh when I ranted about the new albuterol inhalers--how it's really the asthmatics causing the depletion of the ozone layer, and that's why they had to change the inhalers to the new, seemingly ineffective CFC-free ones.

I'm easily entertained, and so is the P.A. He even made up a bumper sticker about it.

The P.A. was impressed that I had managed to avoid getting The Pink Eye. I took large doses of vitamin C all week, so that helped...but I have since found out that it may have also caused the low blood pressure I had the day of my office visit. Oh, the look on the nurse's face as she finished taking my BP! She looked shocked and, nearly whispering, said, "Your blood pressure is 90/50!" Well, that explains my lack of energy and how I could barely hold a thought in my head...

Yes, I do tend to be on the low end of things with my blood pressure, and I was, after all, sick.

Yes, I've quit taking so much vitamin C.

And, yes, I am feeling completely better.

I just can't seem to get back in the swing of the blogging thing since early January. But I will try harder now, OK? :) I hope you have a great weekend!

Just think of it as an encore performance...

I have some more Andrew Peterson for you--one serious; the other...notsomuch. :)

I'll give you the humorous one first: A song about cheese. And not just any cheese, but it's the gooey white cheese you get at Mexican restaurants. Intrigued? Well, you should be. Check it out! You will laugh and then laugh some more. :)

On a more serious note, this next one is a song I would recommend to our praise and worship leader if I thought I had the spiritual gift of song selection.

Oh, I kid.

(But I also would be glad to loan him our Andrew Peterson CDs...)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV)


Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”
Revelation 21:5 (NKJV)

Happy New Year!

One of us would make a really great elf...

My sister-in-law Cindy sent this to us recently...click here to see our family as ELVES. Grace's reaction was "I'm as big as Daddy!" And I don't know how many times I've heard, "Mom looks like a boy!" So thank you, Cindy... ;)

Also, click here to see Retooning the Nativity. It's a clever little video commenting on the details of the Christmas story.

Merry Christmas!

So maybe you really can rush Mother Nature

My son Josiah is known for his kooky ideas inventions, such as the giant birdbath, an interesting desk, and a swing on one of the trees in the front yard.

He does the best he can with what he has on hand...like a tree that isn't the kind of tree that would be good for a swing.

His most recent invention was born out of impatience. He is anxious to rake leaves, and the vast majority of ours are still, well, firmly stuck on the trees.

So...he's going to help them fall with what he calls

The Leaf Swacker.

Swack!

Swack!

Swack!

You can see it's going to take him awhile, even with this marvelous invention. ;)

It makes a great "rock star" prop, too. ;)

Patent pending...

If you give a girl a protractor

If you give a girl a protractor

she's going to want to trace it.

So she'll ask for some paper and crayons.

When she gets the crayons and the paper, she will draw the cutest rotund girl with a dimple at her chin.

(Grace always draws a dimpled chin when she draws faces of people!)

...And then the little girl will tell you that she drew a picture of you.

~~~~~

The next morning, the little girl's Daddy will hold up the protractor and ask, with a gleam in his eye,

"Can you draw a picture of me?"

And the little girl will say,

"No, Daddy, you're too big!"

And you will laugh and laugh...

If you are looking for an honest babysitter, I can recommend one for you...

Last week, Jason and I had a babysitter. (Whoo hoo!) When we came home from our date, we found Grace, who doesn't like to go to sleep in her own bed, asleep in the sofa cushions beside the babysitter.





The babysitter sighed and, nodding towards Grace, wistfully said, "I'm looking forward to having one of those someday."


I chuckled and told her, "You have to be careful, though, because sometimes you have to earn one like this," as I gestured towards the boys' bedrooms.


Without skipping a beat, our babysitter said, "Well, you earned her."

;)

Wordless Wednesday: Three feet?

Robert called me over to see this sight a few days ago:

Now, you may be curious to see what the child who wears these shoes looks like...

Josiah, October 2009

;)

Visit 5 Minutes for Mom for more Wordless Wednesday participants.

Click here to see my previous Wordless Wednesday photos.

~~~~~

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