OH YEAH! I've improved!

289 words

Speedtest

Observation

As I was looking over my blog today, I realized something. That picture of me, right over there on the right. Yeah, I've seen it hundreds of times, it's the same picture that is on my IM's too. Anyway, I'm standing close to a sign on our wall that says "Home is where your story begins." However, I just realized today that it is over my head and says "HO." How come nobody points these things out to me? I feel like Elaine on Seinfeld when she sent out the Christmas cards with her picture and she didn't realize she was exposing herself in it. Oh well, everybody's seen my "Ho" picture now....I'm leaving it.
Love,
Your Local Ho

Finger Exercises

118 words

Speed test

I got this from Reagan's blog. Joey and I did this test several months ago, because he was claiming that he typed so much faster than me. HA! I kicked his trash, by like thirty some words a minute. Who? Me? Competitive? Naaaah......only with Joey when he makes a claim that I KNOW isn't true. Take it and post your results!

House Call

Last Thursday was the first day of Spring Break for the Bigs. Aaaaah. I get to sleep in. For three blissful weeks, I don't have to wake up when it's still dark, and try to drag kids out of bed and get them ready. I was SO looking forward to sleeping in on Thursday.........then along came Jack.

Jack enters my room at 6:30 am. I hear him, and feel him climb up on my bed, but keep my eyes closed. Jack leans over me and starts talking to me. I ignore him. Jack repeats. I ignore some more, and keep my eyes closed. I'm hoping if he realizes I'm not answering, he'll go back to bed. After playing this charade for a good fifteen minutes, I realize that I'm crazy. He's not going to shut up and go back to bed! WHY would I think he would go back to bed? Of COURSE he wakes me up early on the first day of break. I resign myself to getting up, and sit up in bed, to which Jack responds with "OOOOH MOM! YOU AWAKE!" I mumble something back under my breath, grab a tissue and blow my nose. Then I start coughing. Jack leans over in my lap and says "Mom, you got a cold? Or you got a hot?" I close my eyes, shake my head back and forth, to clear my ears, and say "What?" Again he repeats it..."You got a cold? Or you got a hot?" I look at him and start laughing. He says "Here, let me see" He then grabs my arm, puts his hand on it, feels it for a few seconds, literally THROWS my arm back down and says "Yep, you got a hot"

So, I guess my early morning wasn't a waste after all. Not only did I get a "wake up call" from a three year old, but I also got a house call and was diagnosed with "a hot." I'd better stop taking that cold medicine.....evidently I've been treating myself all wrong.

WHAT did he say? Part II

Elijah was assigned to give a talk in Primary this week for Easter Sunday. We prepared a great object lesson complete with Easter eggs. He chose five kids to come to the front and gave them all a plastic egg. He instructed them not to open it until he told them to. Then, Eli built up about what is probably inside their eggs. "Do you think it's candy? It's probably candy, because that's what we get in Easter eggs. I can't WAIT to eat the candy." After a minute or two of build up, he had them open their eggs, to find.....(drum roll please)..... absolutely nothing. He then went on to talk about how Easter is when we celebrate the empty tomb of Christ. That even in "emptiness" we can find "sweetness" by overcoming death through him. He did a great job, with just one little hitch...
We had went through his talk three times in the morning. He always got hung up on the word "crucified" and would ask me what it was. After three times, I figured when he got to that word during his talk, he may pause, but would remember what it was quickly. Boy was I wrong! Instead, this is how that part went:

"Jesus' friends took his body and placed it in a tomb after he was CIRCUMSIZED."

(Yes, that's supposed to read "CRUCIFIED")

I let out an audible gasp and blurt out "CRUCIFIED, THAT'S CRUCIFIED, ELI!" Eli reads on, oblivious to what he had just said. Every adult in there was laughing so hard they were wiping away tears. Most of the kids were clueless, except for the older ones, who were snickering and repeating it back and forth to each other. All in all, it probably took second place to his prayer a few months ago, complete with swearing. (Please see post titled "WHAT did he say?")

He spoke clearly, he spoke slowly, and he delivered his one liner like a professional comedian. He, of course wasn't trying to be funny. However, I think maybe we should start selling tickets to sharing time whenever Eli has to take his turn at the microphone. Hope it gave you a laugh too!

Just Another Week In Paradise

It's been a crazy week here at the Nielsen Nuthouse, but then again, that's basically the norm. I picked up a couple extra shifts at work, and last weekend was my regular weekend to work also. So this means, I was gone a lot of evenings in the past week. When I am gone a lot at night, I usually have a week's worth of "surprises" waiting for me. It's just a matter of time before I find them all.

Surprise #1- It was the last week for the "Box Tops For Education" fund raiser at the Bigs' school. This means we were tearing off Betty Crocker box tops in everything that was in the pantry. After all.....the winning class gets an ice cream party and evidently that's a HUGE deal. Campbell's soup labels are also worth money, but I only had a few soups that were actually Campbell's and call me crazy, but I'm not too keen on having label-less cans in the pantry . So I helped the boys gather up the box tops and we divided them evenly for them to take to their classes. After being gone several nights, one morning I walked into the pantry to get something. When I glanced over at the "soup shelf", there were about three dozen soup cans staring at me, and glistening in all their NAKED glory. I immediately call Eli into the kitchen, because if you know Eli, you automatically know that this was an Eli type of job. He comes bounding into the kitchen "Yeah, Mom?" I walk him into the pantry and simply point to all the naked cans. He gets this HUGE smile on his face and says "I KNOW! Can you believe we forgot all of those! I think my class is going to win now!" I respond "Well, OK, but first of all, they have to be Campbell's labels and second of all, how am I supposed to know what's INSIDE the cans now?" Eli's jaw drops open, his eyes get big and he says "Oh, I didn't really think about that." So the next day, I delivered three dozen label-less cans to the food pantry to help needy families. I figure it's kind of like a lottery ticket.....they won't know what they have until it's opened. On my way home, I stopped at the store and spent a small fortune to restock my pantry with canned goods. Which brings me to......

Surprise #2- After working my weekend shifts, again, I walk into the pantry one morning and notice that there are not many cans on the bottom two shelves. Funny, I JUST restocked those. Then I think for a minute and figure my family must have went on a soup fest over the weekend while I was at work. Six meals, five males, that makes for a lot of soup. So I shrug it off and make a mental note to once again, stop at the store and restock my soups. Fast forward three hours when I notice that the garbage is full and I need to take it out. I untuck the top of the bag from the can, pull up on the drawstrings and....NOTHIN'! It doesn't budge. I make a second attempt and really give it my all. The only thing that happens is the bag stretches, and the drawstrings rip through it. Lovely. I bend down to just pick up the whole can and carry it outside to dump, and about give myself a hernia. This thing weighs a metric ton! I lift a few papers and tissues off the top, to see a giant mound of canned goods, thrown into the garbage can. Not open, complete with labels, just tossed in there. The garbage is literally filled with all the cans that were within Logan's reach. I "unpack" the garbage, and again, restock my pantry with canned goods. I then make a mental note to purchase a retina scanner to install on the pantry door for access. I'm getting serious now. On to......

Surprise #3-I then head downstairs to check my e mail. Our office is off of a large room that is basically without purpose. So, it became our food storage room. We have about six sets of shelves and our deep freeze in there. Logan likes to go "shopping" in the food storage room, and help himself to any item he can reach. This explains a lot when I turn the corner into the office to see powdered sugar ALL over the desk, both computers, the printer, three office chairs, the carpet, and anything else that has a horizontal surface. By this time, I am standing with my toes over my mental cliff. I look at the five pounds of powdered sugar again, turn off the light, and walk back upstairs. Sometimes, I just have to wait to deal with things, and this was one of those times. Instead, I got in the van and wandered the aisles of Target to find my "inner peace." Aaaah the joys of retail therapy.

The Grandaddy of them all...Surprise #4- Last night when I tucked Jack into bed, his room REAKED. I briefly looked around for one of Logan's old diapers that got left in there, but didn't see anything. This morning when I went into his room, the stench was still there, and it was BAD. I KNEW it was an old diaper that was hiding somewhere. I begin to tear apart his room, because the smell is starting to make my eyes water. I pull the bed out, I tear the bed apart, I look in the closet, in the dirty clothes basket, in the toy baskets. NOTHING. I know I have a sensitive nose, but this thing HAS to be found, it's potent and down right nasty. I get down on my hands and knees and start smelling areas of the carpet for lack of anything else to check. My nose leads me to the heating vent. I pull it out of the floor, look down the duct where I find.......POOP! Yes, HUMAN POOP in the ventilation duct in Jack's room. I yell "JACK? DID YOU POOP IN HERE?" "No!" he says and then runs off and hides in my closet. What on EARTH would posess a three year old to do this? To make a long story short, Jack confessed, is grounded from TV, and spent the rest of the morning in his room, wearing a diaper. I told him if he doesn't know where to go to the bathroom that he has to go back to wearing diapers. Ten minutes with a diaper on was all it took for him to be remorseful. I spent over an hour cleaning out the heating duct. Nothing like poop that has had hot air blowing on it all night long to freshen up a bedroom. I can't even begin to tell you how gross it was cleaning it out. Then, in the middle, the heat kicked on and I was getting blasted in the face and hair with poop scented hot air. Oh, the glories of being a mom to toddlers. I just kept thinking of what Joel asks me...."So... when we were making out on the football field at the University of Iowa, did you EVER imagine it leading to THIS?" No. No I did not. Good thing love blinds us to the suprises that lie ahead! I'm assured by every grandparent that we will look back on these days and miss them. So, I am inviting all parents of grown children to come have a day of surprises at my house. I'll even supply the rubber gloves and lysol. Any takers?