Hanna Is On A Mission

Hanna has plans today, at least some sort of crazy idea that she is leaving because this is just a dumb family according to her and she does not need a family. She has decided that she is going to run away to her old school where she can as she puts it "be the boss and do what she wants to all to time".

There is one problem with this plan of hers she can not find her way to this school, for that matter she can not find her way anywhere. She thinks she has solved the problem because she asked Lauren to help her get there. I think Lauren could get to the school without getting lost, but she told Hanna that she had to charge up her power chair before going so far away. (That was good planning on Lauren`s part). Hanna went out to the garage to plug in the wheelchair and she was sitting there on top of a pile of boxes waiting for the light on the charger to turn green indicating that the chair is ready to go. I do not know how long it takes to charge a wheelchair battery since we usually plug it in over night.

Dad came home and offered to take the kids bowling so now Hanna has to make a choice to go with everyone else or watch for the green light. I hope she goes bowling and forgets all about running away.

Weekend Rewind

We had a great weekend, well that is all of us except for Hanna who just could not help but get herself into a heap of trouble. I will spare you the details because it is all just to exhausting to rehash, lets just say it involves the usual lying and stealing.

Anyway Karre drove the first 1/3 of the trip and then we picked Jared up and he drove. We stopped to pick up Uncle Dave, Kris, and the two kids and we drove to northern Minnesota where we met Rene` and about 350 other relatives. The kids of Dad`s aunt and uncle were throwing a party to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. These people have 12 kids, 39 grand kids, and 39 great-grand kids. In another week or so there will be two more to add. Anyway we ate, visited, and let the kids run around. There were plenty of kids of all ages so everyone could find someone to hang out with. There was a softball tournament and volleyball, too.

A few more details about the food. There were 3 grills going with pork chops, chicken, and burgers, fresh sweet corn, salads, fresh fruit and vegetables, and of course cakes, cookies, and deserts of all kinds.

After hours of enjoying ourselves outside and then taking the kids swimming there was a dance too! These people play as hard as they work and that is pretty hard. I am usually in the majority in this Scandinavian state of Minnesota, but this part of the state is Polish through and through and we Scandinavians are those who just happen to marry into this clan of wonderful people.

By the way after all of this partying almost everyone made it to Sunday Mass as well. We sure had fun.

Wait Till Dad Gets Home

I am trying to get things organized as we need to go to northern Minnesota this weekend to attend a "Polish Party" with all of my husbands family. It will be great fun once we get there, but first I have to pack everything for everyone up. I have been trying to get this done for hours now, but Paul keeps unpacking while Allen yells at him to stop, and the two girls are arguing over who gets to wear what.

Paul found out that I had not put in his favorite car shirt, which has a rather large stain on it, so I threw it in hoping that he would get lost. He has unpacked the shoes and is as he puts it playing shoes, (that would be clomping around the house in every ones shoes) and when he is done with a pair he just throws them where ever they happen to land.

Allen is trying to be helpful and retrieve the shoes and other stuff and put it back, but I told him to stop because Paul started throwing shoes at him and I do not want to deal with Allen throwing them back at him.

Lauren and Hanna have two closets and four dressers full of clothes that they MUST share. They do not share underclothes or long pants but everything else belongs to both of them since they wear the same size. One would think that they could each find three complete outfits to take along as well as pajamas, and a swimsuit. They both seem to think that they need to have the hot pink shorts and neither of them will give an inch. No one gets to bring those shorts as they are now on my top closet shelf. Hanna is not packing anything, (I guess she does not need clothes) since the only thing she wants to wear are those shorts not even the hot green ones that are the same as the ones I took away. I am finding all of this rather crazy since her favorite color is green and she always wears those. Lauren thinks that she should bring long jeans and hoodies. It is supposed to be 85 plus and humid, but since she is always cold I will let her do her thing. I told her that she had to put in at least one pair of shorts and a t-shirt just in case she decides that she is looking silly dressed for winter.

I give up on this project. I am leaving them for Angie and Karre to handle while I go get groceries for the weekend. I will wait till Dad gets home then I might have a chance to finish what I started early this morning with a little less assistance.

Spuds

Yesterday afternoon I was busy so I had asked Karre to wash some potatoes for dinner as we were going to have loaded baked potatoes since i couldn`t think of anything else to make and we had lots of fresh vegetables to put on them. She washed the potatoes and put them into the oven to bake. After awhile she came and told me that it smelled like french fries. When I went to investigate i discovered that she had stabbed thirteen of the spuds and they were cooking just fine, but number fourteen was splattered all over the oven.

I had just cleaned the oven about a month ago and sure had no intention of doing it again anytime soon.

Karre says "so that`s why you stab potatoes, I thought it was just some crazy mom thing that you did for the fun of it".

Oh yes, I have great fun stabbing spuds, maybe to take out some of my frustrations after dealing with the nutty system all day. In that case we will be having baked potatoes very often.

Two More Weeks!

Two more weeks today and I send them out the door to school, at least four of them, the kindergartner does not start until two days later. Are we crazy here in Minnesota or what? Why the heck aren`t these kids in school? I guess it is because some folks are supposedly making some bucks by having the kids on vacation until after Labor Day. For me the bucks have already been spent for the summer and now it is time to get back into the school routine.

Karre will be a senior this year and she has been working so she is not getting to me, but the rest of them are running out of things to do and even when there are things to do they need to be supervised ALL the time so it gets a little crazy. Hanna and Lauren have both gotten themselves into trouble lately, Lauren just being immature and not getting what she wants and with Hanna it is the same old battles that we always have. Allen is Allen, he does not cause much trouble, but he still needs to be supervised, dressed, fed, entertained , toileted, fed, entertained, toileted,fed some more, showered, teeth brushed, toileted, medicated, put to bed, and then we get to start all over again the next day. Paul my busiest of busy bodies is now able to play for about thirty minutes at one thing (thanks to new meds) but he is so impulsive that you never know what he will do next, he needs a great deal of intervention and redirection all day long, and he talks ALL the time. If he is awake his mouth is running and that nonstop chatter, which for the most part has nothing to do with anything that is going on around here is driving me nuts.

It is time for them to go to school so I can have a little peace and quiet around here. I am counting the days of in my head 14, 13, 12, 11, etc.

Mori

A few weeks ago Karre brought home this Caterpillar. She named it Mori which she says means forest is Japanese. The kids put it in the fish bowl and fed it Milk Weed leaves for several days until it turned into a chrysalis.

This morning Mori turned into a butterfly. Karre says he is a male. I have no idea if she is correct or not so I will go along with that.

Karre, Allen , Hanna, and Paul took Mori to the park this morning to set him free. They were there for nearly two hours. I guess Mori wanted to stick around. Finally they left him on a tree.


Paul got very close to Mori. He looks a little bit traumatized here. Paul avoids any kind of critters if at all possible. For him to get this close to this butterfly is amazing. Hanna does not believe that the Caterpillar really is the butterfly since she did not see it change. I guess a little magic is okay since getting her to understand is never going to happen.

No Parking

This is the "No Parking" sign that is in our front yard this morning. They are resurfacing the streets in our neighborhood so that means that all vehicles had to be moved off the street, we have to keep all kids off the road, and we get to enjoy the smell of tar all day long. After today we get to drive on the rock pile that is being spread on the street. This street project reminds me of a summer a long time ago.

Jared was eight, Trevor was seven, and their neighborhood friend Krystalyn was also seven. The city had put "No Parking" signs (likely these same ones from the looks of it) out all around our neighborhood because there was a national softball tournament at the park at the end of our block and they wanted people to be parking at the high school and bus over here instead of on the lawns here. Well anyway the kids decided that there was no need for those signs to be out there so they went around and pulled all of them up and piled them in the tree house. As soon as I figured out what they had done I gave them a couple of hammers and loaded those signs into the wagon and I sent them around to pound all of those signs back into the ground where they had come from in the first place.

The kids had just finished putting every last one of them back, I think this was much harder work then pulling them out had been, when a guy driving a yellow city truck drove up and started pulling them out again. Jared was furious, he couldn't believe that this guy was taking those signs down after all of the work he had done to put them back. Trevor and Krystalyn asked the guy if they could help him collect the signs and he let them, so they went around the neighborhood walking the curb picking up signs.

I called Jared this morning to see what time he was going to get here to work this evening and I told him about the "No Parking" signs being out there and he just chuckled and said that he remembered putting those signs back. We will never have trouble with these boys and signs, ever.