I’m now coming into the very recent memories, so it’s become much easier to get these posts consolidated. At this point, I’m picking one week from the month in review to move over here to see how the month went.
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January
Notice the difference in these pictures. We started off the second week almost warm enough to wear shorts. Yes, that is Superman wearing shorts as he rakes leaves, but he’s a teenage boy and insane.
The middle left picture is Jeff’s final Christmas present. I ordered almost all of my presents the weekend after Thanksgiving, and yet a disturbingly large number of them didn’t show up until late in January.
The middle right picture is a sketch of Princess as we watched Gilmore Girls together. We’ve been having fun watching the show together, and she draws while watching as do I.
We ended the week with a record snowstorm for the Austin area. Our home got about 3-4 inches of snow, and for the first time ever I made a snowman over 6 inches tall. If we had gathered all of the snow in the yard, we could have made an even bigger snowman, but we were pretty proud of this snowman.
Adding in story from week 4:
But that bottom middle picture, that’s the true story here. Saturday I continued my troubles with pressure changes and had a horrible migraine. While the boys were off at Kung Fu I headed to take a bath.
I was getting out and noticed I’d missed two calls from Princess, so I called her back and here’s the conversation:
Me: Yes, daughter
Princess: You know that glass dish we cook everything in?
Me: The one with the ham in it?
P: Yes, that one, well this is another blender story.
Me: I’ll be out in a moment.
I come out and Leezard is in her crate and Princess has her shoes on. She proceeds to explain how the dog has pulled the dish off the counter, and it shattered and she discovered Leezard happily eating that giant ham as fast as she can. Somehow the dog doesn’t have a single cut on her.
We then proceed to spend the next two hours cleaning up the shattered glass that has gone from the kitchen, around the corner, and almost to the front door.
It was truly impressive in ways I cannot fathom.
All this to say, I am now down one 9×13 Pyrex dish, and the dog spent a significant amount of quality time outside by herself.
February
The great snowstorm, the first time Snowpocalypse hasn’t been used sarcastically by Texans.
For the second time in a month, we got more than an inch of snow, which then turned into single-digit temperatures with windchill in the negatives. Then friends and family started losing power. Then people started losing water.
Meanwhile, we never lost power, but all the friends who lost power were too far away to feel safe driving to my house to huddle up because of the icy roads.
We spent the entire week playing our new family campaign (those two top middle pictures are the map I made of the house we’ve inherited and my character’s theory on who was causing the problems), and playing in the snow.
Batman in particular loved it, and we went out a few times pulling the kids behind the car in the wagon. It was hilarious to watch, and Batman and Princess loved it. Superman thought it was cold and wasn’t a fan.
We also tried sledding, but we don’t have any hills particularly nearby to try sledding on, so that trial was not successful, but we did have fun slipping and sliding down the frozen playground.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Babybel cheese, but as a kid I used to take the wax around it and sculpt it into random things. As a joke a year or so ago I made a sculpture of Mac for Princess and gave it to her, which she promptly returned to me, which started this whole thing of both of us trying to hid that stupid “wax sculpture” on the other person’s desk.
This of course meant I had to make a new dog sculpture of Leezard and give it to Jeff. He was not excited by it, and we all spent 10 minutes throwing the sculpture at each other and trying to keep Leezard from eating it.
I do recognize this isn’t as hilarious as I think it is.
And that final bottom middle picture is Princess’s Valentine’s Day card to one of my boys. I think it’s quite cool.
March
These next two weeks of March are all about the geography. I’m attempting to finish off Europe, and most of the countries left we don’t have that many resources on. So, it’s lots of watch the Geography now video and then cook a meal and I’ll have to admit I’m sometimes getting the meals mixed up.
I gave Superman, seen reading and pacing up above, the sequel to Mortal Engines and the first Maze Runner book for his birthday. He loved the Maze Runner series so much, he went out and got the other books in the series. We watched the first two movies on Sunday, the 14th, and he got progressively more annoyed as it went further and further from what happened in the books.
I felt his pain.
But, that weekend, the boys went up to Dallas to visit their grandparents, and Princess and I first had the Awkward Unicorns over to watch the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which we didn’t finish, then spent the rest of the weekend watching way too much Gilmore Girls.
Oh, and my kids are so done with their sign language professor. The last quiz video was blurry, and they all sent emails on Tuesday, well before the due date, and before either of her two weekly “office hour” sessions, they also let her know some of the other assignments, that required interaction, weren’t up yet.
She didn’t respond until Sunday afternoon, the day it was due, and she basically said, “I can’t fix the video quality, it’s probably on your end (I watched the video, it wasn’t, it was her video that was blurry).” Then put up most of the assignments to get turned in, but didn’t get the other ones finished.
It’s rather annoying to have this going on when I had a great sign language teacher in my college days.
It’s really frustrating to me to see it handled so very poorly, and know this is their introduction to college.
April
The end of April had Jeff and the kids heading up to Dallas to visit his parents and his uncle who was down to visit. I stayed behind with Leezard (finding a last-minute dog-sitter would have been a nightmare, and it let me enjoy a weekend by myself).
I spent the weekend working on all sorts of projects, the one I’m proudest of, organizing the pantry. It’s amazing how much easier it is to find objects once everything is in a container with a label.
Well, the labels will come soon. I started labeling them, but I was in a mood and stopped before I started labeling the bins “liquid” or “stuff.” I already had a sauces and powder, which my kids endlessly made fun of.
Jeff got news, he’d earned a raise, which is a big deal since they hadn’t given out raises for the past couple of years, so we went out to eat as a special treat, and then he was being silly and acting like he was a poor beaten kiddo when he didn’t get his salad at the same time as everyone else. So, of course I had to get a picture of him.
And, we’re finishing up Oliver Twist, which was… not my favorite, it definitely reminded me why I don’t like Dickens. I had to laugh at this chapter title, which is half a page long for a chapter maybe 4 pages long.
And that is our April.
I need to just start taking random pictures of kids because I’m realizing I don’t really have as many pictures that aren’t the dog now that the kids are bigger and really don’t want their pictures taken.
May
We started off the week with Artist leveling up, yep I like that change, so now she’ll be Arist (though The Artist kind of works in my head). She is now officially a Patriot in American Heritage Girls, and earned her Pioneer level award, which was super hard to earn.
Here’s what she had to do in two years:
- plan two events (one just for her troop and one bigger event that can be a service project)
- Complete at least 30 hours of service (she earned over 200 hours)
- earn at least 1 badge in each frontier (for at least 6 badges)
- participate in 2 big events for AHG
- mentor a younger group
- and probably some other stuff I don’t remember
And she did it all!
Not to mention earning over 100 hours of community service, so she earned the Gold Presidential Service Award.
The very next day we headed up to Iowa to see my new nephew, he’s super cute and we spent the week playing board games and hanging out.
List of games played: Coup, Last Night on Earth, Shadows of Brimstone, Dresden Files cooperative game, Super Fight, Smash Up (Artist now wants the World Culture expansion and she’ll be willing to play it)
I got an inflatable T-Rex costume for Christmas, and the kids decided to all get their own costumes so they could surprise their aunt and uncle with our amazing rendition of “I’m a Little T-Rex” and on our way back we got pictures at all the different welcome centers, and by all I mean Texas and Missouri. It was a blast!
June
I’ve got this in a bit of a mess, but here we go.
Batman got the Touch of Evil 10th Anniversary game, so we’ve played that several times this month, and I didn’t even play all the times we played it together.
Then Jeff had a blast giving Leezard fries, but leaving them on her back, which completely confused her, and made everyone laugh.
Batman also started his first official job working in the kitchen at Sonic. While he likes making money, he’s not as thrilled with working the fry machines.
We made the Fat Rice recipe from Burkina Faso, which went over better than the previous chicken and rice dishes I’d tried recently.
Then we had the second session of The Artist’s gaming group, and celebrated one of the girl’s birthday. It was an awesome session, full of just what makes D&D so fun as there were so many improbably stories of things working that really shouldn’t.
And finally, Superman started work at Taco Bell on the same week, and most of his first two sessions of work were training, and we went and were quite obnoxious about ordering from him and taking pictures. Though, now that I think about it, I somehow missed those pictures as I was putting together this week’s collage. That’s disappointing.
July
We started off the week with our new foster dog, and figuring out how to work him into our life. This has incredibly mixed results. He’s scared of men, but he’s slowly accepting the boys, but Jeff is still sus and he won’t get near Jeff (and yes, I did just use sus instead of suspicious, I have teen boys who play Among Us, it’s part of our family vocabulary now.).
The Artist was working on something with paint and came downstairs with paint on her nose, and it really threw me off. At first she was throwing a fit about me taking a picture and hid behind the plate (middle right), but eventually, she posed for me (bottom left).
We cooked a meal from Costa Rica, it was vaguely like Costa Rican empanadas, but in all honesty, it was more of “empanadas a la Ticia.” I later went back and tried the Costa Rican shredded beef and that was a big hit with the kids.
But, the most amusing picture, is the top left picture. We were in line to get fireworks and the boys were teasing The Artist, and I was taking pictures of them, and a lady in line behind us offered to get a group picture of us, and so I got a fun family picture by accident.
This was also when I got a message from a random guy on my blog Facebook page asking me to do something sexual because of the alternate meaning of my blog name. This sent me on a tailspin trying to figure out a new blog name.
As you can see, I ended up with Adventures in a Messy Life, and everyone is telling me either:
- “messy life one. Much more you too as your stuff has an unpolished charm… that really was meant to come out positive not like a backhanded complement.”
- “I also love “Messy Life.” It feels very authentic, which is how I perceive you and why I admire you!”
- But then my blogging friends all said, “It makes me think of a cleaning and organizing blog.”
I guess you just can’t win them all.
As I’m working on writing this on July 20, my super helpful tech guy from David and Sallie are still working on final details. I was impressed when I asked him about doing this and he said, “You could do it yourself, and here is the step by step of how to do it.” But I was a little scared of doing it myself, and since there were some other hiccups, I was very glad I hired him to figure it all out for me.
August
And this is when school truly started in earnest. Of course, most of our school now is truly boring to watch and take pictures of. We finally studied Cuba, which the boys were super excited to learn about for some strange reason. Our meal was not super popular for it.
The boys had their first show for the demo team, it was outside in the parking lot. It was fascinating to see.
I completed the quilt block for the month, it was quite a challenge to get done, and I had to be so incredibly careful as I sewed the seams.
Story time
As I said, we read 1984 this month. The kids all hate it. They hate it with a fiery passion that I have not seen before. They hate it more than Animal Farm. They all got together and attempted to convince me we really shouldn’t watch the movie, instead we should just watch the Overly Sarcastic Production summary of the book.
They were willing to PAY ME to not watch the movie. That’s how much they didn’t want to watch the movie.
After much debate, and Jeff saying I could not accept money from them.
I was rather disappointed by that, I was going to extort annoying chores from them.
But, after much debate, we ended up with watching the OSP video and then the Alternate History Hub video on 1984 and ending with the STNG Chain of Command part 1 and 2 episodes with the 4 lights.
We had that all settled, and then I revealed we were going to read The Great Gatsby next month, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth started again.
Superman really wanted to read All Quiet on the Western Front, I visibly shuddered when he mentioned reading that book. I did not enjoy reading that book, and don’t see a reason to inflict that on myself again, I at least see a valid reason for reading the pain that is 1984.
Batman wants to read Warhorse, and my shudder was even more pronounced when he mentioned that. Jeff and I went to see the movie as a date when it came out. I thought I was taking Jeff to a war movie he would enjoy, instead we both sat there in horror for 2 hours as we watched terrible things happen over and over and over again.
Jeff truly wants to ban Batman from reading the book. He hated the movie that much.
The more he tries to ban the book/movie, the more Batman wants to read it.
The Artist didn’t want to read either of the war books, and was desperate enough not to read Great Gatsby that she was willing to propose reading Beowulf rather than Great Gatsby. Beowulf is ridiculously short and that is how she picked the book she wanted to read.
Jeff was totally on board with this because there’s an adaptation of an adaptation that he super loves (13th Warrior which is an adaptation of Eaters of the Dead, which is one of Jeff’s favorite movies).
So, after much debate and begging from the children they are now reading all of their requested books.
That means I have to endure TWO World War 1 books, and not just two World War 1 books, but two gawd-awful depressing books (and spell check I really don’t care if you think that’s spelled wrong, that’s how I’m choosing to spell it).
OH, and final picture
We had our Not Back to School Pool party with our co-op, which the kids all really enjoyed. The Artist sat at a table with her friends and talked for two hours while the boys happily played and wrestled with almost every kid in the pool as they organized various pool games.
All in all, everyone had a goo dtime.
Now, I really am done, and I’m going to track down an Excedrin Migraine because my head is killing me.
September
I FINALLY made our dessert for Burundi, I kept buying the 4 bananas you need to make this, and the kids kept eating them before I could make the dessert. It only took me an entire month after we studied the country.
Then I went to Sams Club with my Mom and found this pumpkin spice ravioli, I don’t even know what that is or what it would taste like.
The Artist and I went to a 9/11 parade and ceremony together with her American Heritage Girls troop, she just loved me grabbing her to take a picture.
Then the next day she was volunteered to take part in an art competition at youth group, and was SOOOOO excited by that.
That bottom right picture is a hilarious meme about youth groups, or I thought it was hilarious: Youth pastors before the camp game begins: Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
And that bottom middle is Leezard and Romeo discovering the hole in the fence, right before they took themselves on a bit of a walk about in the neighborhood.
October
We got new families joining our small group with young kids, so we needed a good place for kids to hang out, and we decided to clean up our movie room and make it presentable for kids. While we were tearing the whole thing apart we figured, why not paint it, so paint it we did.
Then we realized, “hey, there are some furniture we need for this,” and so we picked up a large shelving unit to hold the boys board games. Which of course means goofing off in Ikea.
Then as we were working on the front yard, Leezard showed us her new trick. She’s figured out she can shove the boards she doesn’t want out of the way, and voila a handy dandy way to escape.
The picture in the middle is of The Artist at an event, where she gave her testimony and explained how the Bible and God have helped her through hard times. It was an amazing story, and if I thought it wouldn’t be incredibly unfair of me to share it without her permission I would, because it was awesome.
We finished up the week celebrating the birthday of one of my Awkward Unicorns (that bottom right picture). She loves her present, we put her art on a t-shirt and she super loved it.
November
We started off November watching Batman’s movie from September, yes we got that behind. He chose to read War Horse, but we said no way will we watch the movie again, so we watched Alvin York, which also takes place during WW1. Of course, its snacks were basically the same as for All Quiet on the Western Front.
Then I have a couple of interacting with dogs pictures, because they endlessly amuse me. Romeo decided to climb up on my shoulder and sit there for some strange reason. The absolute middle picture is the dogs cuddling with Superman, and the bottom right picture is Leezard cleaning the dish in the dishwasher, because that’s funny to me.
I finally got our dessert for Angola made, but I made it wrong. It was supposed to be this cool coconut candy, but it was… well, coconut soup. It was bad.
I couldn’t remember if I shared this in the October memories, but I wore my T-rex costume for church to direct traffic, and it very much amused people as they came in to church. I even had one child who came back to say “hi to the dinosaur.”
We’re studying Iraq right now, and our library had several books on the subject, and Superman volunteered to read one of the books, which greatly amused me.
And finally, last night I had my Awkward Unicorns over to watch movies, and what did they choose? That’s right, Veggietales, the children’s cartoon. They all had a blast and were happy, so it worked.
And I literally only got Week 1 done and then stopped, GO ME!
December
All right, so this was a very bitter sweet week.
We’ve been fostering Romeo for about 6 months now, and he’s been getting progressively more aggressive to the point he bit my Mom on Thanksgiving. I called the adoption agency and told them he needed to find a new foster home, and they sent someone out to evaluate him and she agreed with me. They picked him up two days later, and I spent the two days between when the final call was made and when he was picked up crying my eyes out because I hated giving up on him, but at the same time I couldn’t trust him around anyone visiting the house and given how often we have people over that just wasn’t viable.
I’ve been trying to hop around the different continents as we’ve discovered if you eat too many foods from one country type, they end up all mashing together. I’m back to continent hopping from time to time, but I somehow ended up with about 3-4 countries in a row that all ate a large amount of rice and somewhat sweet meat, so here we have a chicken meal with pineapple in it, this from Micronesia, a small island that’s part of Oceania area.
Most Sundays we stop by Rudy’s to get breakfast before heading off to church and serving in the parking ministry. Every now and then I have some kids who are more energetic than others, and this particular morning Batman was highly energetic and Superman just wanted to sleep more. He really has a hard time with working to midnight on Saturdays and then getting up the next day for church.
And finally, a mildly silly picture when one of the kids decided I needed to wear Jeff’s reading glasses in addition to my glasses. They find it quite amusing to do. I find it mildly annoying.
And I’m picking this collage for the featured picture because, even though it makes me cry, it’s important to remember all of the month, and this was one of those big moments.
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