Fishing

Jeff and I took the kids fishing last night. Fishing is his passion and from a young age he taught them how to cast their own line out into the water. They practice in the front yard...at passing cars.

Here is my sweet boy, concentrating hard...and he has not yet realized that he has no hook on his pole. (c'mon are we really going to give a 3 year old a hook to swing around? We don't do that until they are 4!)


Kimberly is all business...I think she has my nose...

Or maybe like the rest of her face...she has her fathers nose.

All that I know for certain is that she doesn't have her front tooth...but she did catch her very own baby bass.

Since nobody takes pictures of me, I have to take them myself. I call this one..."Girl enduring mosquito bites for the sake of good clean family fun."

I call this one "Nose."

Jeff always lets the kids reel in the fish after he sets the hook. This is Kennen's catch of the day. Despite the look of disgust on his face, he was smiling and saying, "Cheese!"

By this time Kimberly had abandoned fishing for her new little friend. Mr. Turtle.

And this was about the time that Kennen realized that he didn't have a hook on his fishing pole. I told him to get up and keep fishing and he replied with, "I can't...I don't have hook!"

farm animals.

Tonight Jeff made dinner. Well he dumped a pile of chips on a plate, covered it in cheese and microwaved it for me. I was laying on the couch...watching 60 minutes...eating my chips...minding my own business. My plate was balanced on my stomach and Kennen came running into the room...


..."BUTTON MY PANTS MOMMY! PWEEEEEESE!" (hey the kid at least goes potty and wipes his own butt...I don't mind snapping his pants!)

I had a huge cheesy nacho in my hand so I put it in my mouth and held it between my teeth so I could use both hands to snap his pants back together. Suddenly Kennen burst out into raucous laughter and said,

"Hahahahaha! Mommy! MOMMY! You look like a COW Mommy! Mooooo! MOOOOOO!"

Success!

This weekend I decided to try something new. I made my first 'Honey Do' list and taped it to the refrigerator. If you can't decipher my note it reads:

1. Clean out garage.

2. Hose/Sweep garage floor.

3. Put M.R.E.'s and bottled water back in attic crawl space.

Love You Babe!

You know what? It friggin worked. Jeff woke up and got started on it as soon as he ate. Granted he slept until 11:45 am but my garage is clean and I can actually park in the garage and even better than that...I can actually open the truck doors all the way open to get the kids in their carseats. He lugged all the 'hurricane' bottled water back into our attic for the next storm, along with the M.R.E.'s. That would be 'Meals Ready to Eat'. Like army food. Cool huh? They dont expire for about 20 years!

I am impressed with the Honey Do List! It is much more effective than nagging. I highly recommend it! Hmmm...now what should I put on next weekends list?

A week ago today...

...was my first hurricane party. This is my favorite picture. Enjoy! :D

The damage of hurricane Ike

Wind damage? no.

Flooding? no.

Electricity out? no.

Water off? no.

Ice and food shortages? no.

I just heard the announcement yesterday that the kids wont be going back to school until next Monday! (insert knife stabbing horror movie sounds...reeee! reeee! reee!)

Wasn't summer long enough? I could just let them watch too much tv and deal with the whinings of "I'm boooooored!" Or I could sit them down at the table and play Teacher Mommy and listen to them cry and whine because their brain is working too hard.

Okay now I'm whining. I wonder where the kids get it. :P

We are blessed.

Jeff went back to work today to assess the damage at the site. Nothing it too terribly wrong with the building except for some minor roof damage. However, a lot of Jeff's coworkers are still without power and water!

Jeff called me and said that his boss and another guy were coming to our house for ice. When they got here we loaded them up with capri suns for their kids, water and lots of ice and frozen bottles of water. One of the guys had a tree land on his house! We really lucked out because in our neighborhood, it is business as usual. People are jogging, shopping, watching movies just like nothing happened. We definitely dodged a bullet. Thank you God!

Electricity is Awesome and some awesome parenting!

Friday we had a proper hurricane party with the neighbors. We made our master bedroom into 'The Saferoom' by boarding up the windows with plywood. I tucked the kids into my bed and then proceeded to go outside in the wind and get drunk off my ass! Smart, right? I think it was just a coping mechanism for dealing with the hurricane. I puked in the street and my 15 year old neighbor walked me home. Apparently I babbled on about how she should never drink and after she deposited me into my house, I smiled and said, "Happy Hurricane!" Then I curled up with my kids and passed out.

Jeff was full of even more drunk awesomeness! After I went home, my neighbors watched him follow me inside 2 minutes later. The party was over, the wind was picking up, and all the families went into their own houses to hunker down for the storm. This was around 10pm. Over the next 3 hourse Jeff went on a little adventure. He was still ready to party apparently. His wife, who is usually the voice of reason, was passed out so he was free to wander the neighborhood in search of more fun. He doesn't remember being out at all during these 3 hours but various neighbors vouched for good time guy. We were told that he puked in one friends yard, he snoozed in another friends yard, and then he knocked on the door at 1:30 in the morning at another friends door 'to see how they were doing.' Rick was still awake and so he stood outside and hung out with Jeff and laughed when Jeffs hat blew away. I'm so glad this was Jeff's last stop because Rick is responsible and I'm sure he told Jeff to go home before he blew away.

I woke up at 3:00am to the howling wind. Kennen was up with me and he was my little buddy. We ate a bowl of cereal together and looked at the storm on tv. I saw Jeff sleeping on the couch and I covered him with a blanket...having no idea that he probably had just gotten home. He is such a shithead...but he's my shithead. The power went out at 3:30 and Kennen and I cuddled up. He kept murmuring, "it's wowd!" "it's dart!" "Mommy, big hur-wa-cane" "it's big, not tiny" goodness I love that boy. Kimberly slept through the entire thing!

We were lucky enough for our power to turn back on at around 12:00 noon the next day so that is only about 9 hours without power. I feel bad because there are many parts of Houston that are still without electricity. Once the power turned back on Kimberly was flipping through the channels on the tv and she said, "Electricity is Awesome!"

The End.