Playing on the roof and other adventures

So we had that little storm the other night. I spent part of the day yesterday outside cleaning up the rest of the mess in my yard. There were some more branches on the main part of the house roof, so I had to get the ladder out in order to climb from the garage roof to the house roof. I got as much of the stuff off as I could, but the roof is in really really bad shape - and just reinforced the idea that we need to get out of here and get a better house soon.

Yep, I used the rake to minimize the amount of walking
I had to do up there.

Contemplating whether I could go over the top to get to the
back - an idea I quickly dismissed when I stepped on a
really spongy spot.

Ladder: Fail. There's no way I'm getting up on the back
part without a taller ladder.

All of the rain has done wonders for the flowers....
....and the stray trees.

I didn't really realize how bad it had gotten until I got
all of the crap pulled out of there.

This flower bed wasn't *as* bad.

But it looks better now.

Today, The Dude and I took the boys out for a while. Daniel definitely needed new sneakers, so we headed there first. I ended up deciding to get Alex a new pair too. Here's the scary part - somehow, both boys managed to fully skip 2 shoe sizes at once. Daniel went from a 10 straight into a 13, and Alex went from a 1 to a 4. How does that happen? I mean, I know ..... they're growing boys, they grow up so fast, blah blah blah blah..... but seriously? That's some major foot growth. I found myself sitting on the floor in the middle of the store contemplating the fact that they are growing up entirely too fast.

After we did that, we did a few more things before we decided to do something fun.

I have no idea. None.

Apparently, Daniel had too much fun.

Storm Shots

We had a really quick - but powerful - storm blow through here tonight. The storm itself lasted maybe 15 minutes, but it was pretty brutal. I've seen reports of winds anywhere from 60-90mph in the area, but I'm not sure what we got right here where we are - all I know is that it was really windy for a short time.


We got off pretty easy here at our house. A few small branches, but nothing major. But when I looked out the side door, I saw that Nice Neighbor had some pretty big ones down in her driveway.  We waited until everything calmed down and then went outside and helped her drag it all to the curb.

Nice Neighbor's driveway.

Kind of hard to see, but this is everything that we dragged
out of her yard and over to the curb.

While we were standing in her driveway talking after we dragged everything to the curb, there was another loud crash from her backyard - we looked and there was an even bigger chunk of a tree that had just come down, so the kids helped me drag that around to the curb too.

After that, we headed off across town to check on The Dude and his mother to make sure that they were ok - and they were. They only had a few small branches down.

This one actually landed on his truck.

Down the street from The Dude.

Betting this guy is homeless right now.

Then we took off to go to another friend's house - I had seen pictures that she had posted on facebook and so we wanted to make sure that she was ok. She's fine, but her roof and porch have seen better days.

Notice how it landed in between the two houses?

Meanwhile, around town...

There's a boat under that tree too, along with the trampoline.

The calm after the storm....

After we got back home, I climbed up onto the garage roof to get the branches down from there. Unfortunately, I couldn't reach all of them so I'm going to have to get out there with the ladder tomorrow to get the rest of them down.

Just another day in the life around here....

Snippets

The Dude watched the kids while I worked for a few hours today.

I taught Alex how to sew a button back onto his shirt. Maybe I should teach him how to patch his knees next.

Alex, Daniel, and I went to Scouts. Daniel got his book tonight, so he's an official Scout now. He's ecstatic.

We came home, and found The Dude in the kitchen, cooking.

He cooked, so I did dishes.

We picked out some movies, and he went out in the rain to get them from the closest Redbox.

We all had dessert, and the boys got ready for bed. Hugs and kisses all around for everyone.

And now, The Dude has challenged me to stay awake for an entire movie. I think I can this time. I'll sew to keep myself focused.

Seriously. I don't know what I did to deserve this kind of life. It's days like this that remind me of how wonderful it really is.

If you want to see a perfect parent...

....you'd better not be looking at me.

The Tooth Fairy letter got posted on another page today. And as usual, the haters came out to play.

Usually it doesn't bother me. I've heard pretty much all of it. But this time, they were a little more harsh than usual. I was called some pretty colorful names, and was my parenting ever questioned this time!

But you know what? As much as it annoyed me, it got me thinking.

People are so quick to judge other parents. But why? Are there any perfect parents out there?

I'm not perfect. I freely admit that on a regular basis. My kids aren't perfect either.

I curse in front of my kids. Not all the time, but it happens.
My house isn't perfectly clean. Sometimes, it's downright disgusting.
I usually manage to get a shower every day - but not always.
My kids' rooms are usually a mess.
I spank my kids when they need it - but it's not often.
We eat more junk food than we should.
Sometimes we eat out because I just don't feel like doing the dishes.
The kids probably get away with more mischief than they should.
I don't keep everyone on a set schedule, and I don't always enforce bedtime.
Sometimes I have to bribe my kids to get things done around the house.
I sometimes breathe a sigh of relief when they aren't home, and maybe enjoy the peace and quiet a little more than I should - and I don't always feel guilty about it.

People don't always agree with my parenting style, and that's ok. I was raised by parents who were significantly older than most parents of kids my age and I grew up in an age when a parent could backhand an unruly kid in the middle of the grocery store without anyone else batting an eye. I'm not scarred for life by how I was raised - in fact, I think it made me a better person in the end (although it took me a very long time to admit that).

Who would have thought that such
a silly letter would cause so much
of an uproar???

But for all of my perceived failures as a parent, I think that my kids are turning out pretty darned good. They are all above-average students and for the most part they're pretty well-behaved (although they all have their moments). And I sincerely believe that part of that is because their parents don't put up with any crap. We are not the type of parents (me, their fathers, their stepmothers, The Dude) to coddle our kids and protect them from every single little thing and give them participation trophies just for showing up. They have responsibilities, and if they don't do them, there are consequences, period.

There are no perfect parents. People need to remember that once in a while - especially before they run their mouths and judge someone else's parenting based on a random letter floating around the internet.

Random stuff and a super-ish moon

Just a typical day around here. Kids staying in pajamas all day, playing around, getting into fights, and all of that fun stuff while I cleaned and sewed and did all of that fun stuff.

I'll tolerate the room being a disaster just to see them playing together.
Nicely. For hours.
And yes, my boys are playing with Barbies.

OK, seriously? How does this happen on a spool of thread? 

I kept reading stuff about the supermoon and saw various articles indicating that it could be seen either tonight, tomorrow morning, or tomorrow night. Or maybe all of the above. Maybe none, if there were too many clouds. Anyway, at about 9:30 tonight, I tossed the kids into the van and we went to a local park to try to get away from the city lights so that we could check out the moon.

It wasn't very impressive, but the kids enjoyed running around like lunatics in the dark for about half an hour while I tried to get some decent pictures.

Emily is wearing the purple shirt. Do you see that really
faint green blur directly to the right of her? That's actually Daniel.

The green blur o' Daniel again.

He doesn't stay still very often.

Checking something on my phone. And obviously we didn't
get away from the streetlights.

Emily was playing around with the camera.

One of the better shots of the moon - just as we were leaving,
of course.

So now I'm going to sit down and sew and maybe watch a movie. Tomorrow's plans involve church and........ pretty much nothing else all day. Although I'm pretty sure that "nothing else" will involve dishes, and laundry, and cleaning, and yardwork.

The fun never ends!

So what does Emily think of the Tooth Fairy letter?

It's been almost 6 months since I posted that silly letter to Emily from the Tooth Fairy. And today she surprised me by saying "hey Mom, I know you made that Tooth Fairy letter famous".

I about fell over, because I didn't think that she knew about the uproar that was caused by it.

I asked her how she knew about it, and she said that she saw it on my computer one day. I asked her if she had read the blog and she said no, so I showed it to her. She knew that I had it, but had never really paid attention to it before. I showed her where I had initially posted the letter and the reaction that it got there. We looked through some of the shares of it and I showed her where it had been posted on BuzzFeed, and I showed her some of the nasty comments too.

Her reaction?

"You mean people thought that it was bad? I've known that you were the Tooth Fairy since I was about 6 years old!"

I told her that people told me she'd be scarred for life because of it, and she rolled her eyes at me.

So yeah. For all of the people who think that the Tooth Fairy letter was such a horrible thing to do to my kid...... she's rolling her eyes at you, too.

A few pictures from the day...

So we started out with Jared's swim lessons.....

But while he was at his lesson, I took Emily, Alex, and Daniel to a nearby park to kill some time.

He wouldn't leave me alone. My left knee must have
tasted really good. Or bad. Whichever.

The look on his face......

Kind of creepy.

Yeah. They're mine. No doubt.

After the lesson was over, we went back home for lunch, and then came up with a spur-of-the-moment plan to go to the lake to swim.

You might notice that there are no pictures of Alex in the water. He got to spend the entire time at the lake sitting on the blanket beside me. One of these days he will learn that some behaviors are simply not acceptable. *sigh*

Yeah, it was a rough day.

I did swim a little bit. Emily and I made it across the swimming
area. Helped that the water level is still really low, otherwise
I wouldn't have made it.

The crowd was almost unbearable.

Emily and Jared built a "waterpark" in the sand.

"Something's wrong with my bucket, Mom!!!"

Brotherly love. For the moment.

They always manage to find a treasure under the water.

After we got done swimming, we took showers and then headed back into town to get something to eat before we went home. Daniel was really having trouble taking bites out of anything because his front tooth was just about dangling out of his mouth. After we got home, I convinced him to let me work on it.

He fought, he screamed, he cried....and then it came out of his mouth. Mortified, he screamed bloody murder - then saw his tooth in my hand and busted out laughing. And then ran away crying