WANTED!

Ashley found a use for all that extra modeling clay she had left over from her Forest Project.

What a better thing to do than make a giant rose.

Take a guess who was in here...

We continue out and see that the toilet paper is now chewed into pieces...I bet you can guess who it is!!!

Speaking of bathrooms...I have finally gotten a bug in me to update ours.

I'm tired of the 80's honey yellow oak and am ready for something different than the bare basic track house throw together bathroom.

My plan was a $3.00 can of paint and a new mirror...it has turned into something else...

(more of that story to follow later)

Don't know how much this bathroom will ever be fabulous (no space) but I can at least update the cabinets.

Word to the wise Sponge brushes DO NOT work well with stain...

AND      stain     STAINS   everything

This weekend we had our Ward Chili Cookoff.

Lesil got to come visit with us since her parents were out with Steve and Tahna.

I walked in the room to see that I was WANTED.

I did have a heads up that I was participating in something that night but I wasn't real sure what it was yet.

We got our yummy bowls of chili and cornbread and sat down to hear an announcement that anyone who turned in a person on the big wanted posters would get 100 Grand and the perpetrator would go to jail.

What they were doing this now!!

Guess who ratted me out on my first bite.

I sat at the "jail table" for the rest of the meal.

Maybe it wasn't a bad deal though...Jeff got me more chili and I didn't have to help children do anything ;)

This is the nice Medina family who donated helium balloons, popcorn and cotton candy that night.

Ashley's new best friends....

and mine too because he's helping us with our bathroom...long story...

The kids were wanted too (but didn't have to go to jail)

Taylor aka Smiles McGee  was wanted for

furniture scratching!

Ashley aka Sunny Dis Position was wanted for

Batting Eyelashes

and Jacob aka Many Winds Machak'n was wanted for

Bow and Arrow Theft.

(someone must really know Jacob to give him that name)

I got 2nd place for my cornbread muffins for the second year in a row.

When I was making them I thought to myself  

"Where is that recipe I used last year...I got second place with it..."

Honestly presentation probably has something to do with it rather than the recipe :)

So a new week and new projects...

Book Fair is coming up and 1000+ fliers give me something to do while I'm sitting at the table trying to get Ashley to do her homework for 4 hours (literally)

The homework itself doesn't take 4 hours but the getting drinks, going to the bathroom, getting snacks, getting stuff out of the dog's mouth, going to the bathroom again, getting more Kleenex out of the dog's mouth, getting her CD player to listen to music, wanting me to feed the cat, dropping the pencil, getting a different CD, needing another drink and being hungry again and wanting another snack all happens before 5 words are on the paper.

Duct taping her to the chair has come to mind more than once.

I am a broken record of "Come sit down and do your homework"

A broken record that gets more and more frustrated as I no longer have time to sit at the table but need to make dinner, clean up after dinner, help the other children and greet Jeff as I am told...

I'm tired, I don't understand my math, is this math problem right, I did my ABC order but I still have one word missing can you help me find it, is the answer 6 (from across the room and I have no idea what she's talking about), I want dessert (with a full plate of dinner next to her), I'm tired, I don't want to read any of those books, Mom come sit with me!

Homework was 4 hours the day before too, even a bribe of Juice it Up with a promise to finish homework quickly didn't help...it just created more distractions and lots of slurping.

I spend so much time trying to establish good school work habits...thinking that they will stick.

When you teach them young you'll have to worry less about their schoolwork as they get older and figure out how to stay on top of things themselves. That's how its supposed to work, Right?

I guess not.

You get a progress report that should be titled "shock and awe" and it gets barely a shrug from your older student while you are now assured you have failed as a mother.

Just wait until they get older and don't tell you what their homework is, the fliers stay in the dark hole of their backpacks, assignments get missed, forgotten and attitudes towards teachers sour as they think they are somehow above all this boring school stuff.

 

Your advice will fall on deaf ears as they assert their burgeoning sense of independence realizing that you can't "make them" do anything they don't really want to do. 

 

Well in a sense they're right.  

 

But...you know the old saying "You can choose your actions but you can't choose your consequences". Luckily choosing consequences is a special right reserved for God, the laws of nature, and parents.