September 2022 in review

Stuff. Okay, it’s now October 1, and I’m having slightly more intelligent things to say: Stuff and nonsense.

Yep, that sounds intelligent. On to our busy month.

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September week 1

Interestingly I don’t have pictures of most of the things that were most interesting.

For instance, we had a going away party for one of The Artist’s friends, but I don’t have a picture from it. She was a relatively recent friend, but they had clicked fairly quickly, so we are both very disappointed she’s moving. That bottom right picture of the scary-looking green “cat.” Yes, cat is in parenethes because it is that ridiculous looking. She loved her going away present, which included the ridiculous cat and some other things that made us think of her.

The other event not pictured was a college fair, which I guess makes sense because who is going to take pictures of something like that. It was insanely crowded and there were quite a few out-of-state colleges. I think there might have been at least half of the colleges there were out of state, which my kids weren’t particularly interested in. It was also insanely crowded and hard to get around with the way it was set up. It was less than ideal.

In other school news, I think this recipe is from Fiji, but I’m not 100% sure. It’s from the country where the recipes were either all ingredients I could never get ahold of OR just cook some Mahi Mahi and flavor it how you want. So I cooked some Mahi Mahi with a white wine sauce, and it was a nice meal.

We had our Not Back to School pool party and there were so many people there. I’ll have to download a picture to add in later.

We went out one day while Superman was at work, and I got a picture of The Artist taking a selfie with Batman, which greatly amused me. She likes to take selfies with her brothers.

The picture of me with the Artist comes from the going away party, I guess I did get a picture, just none with the friend moving.

Sadness.

And then that picture of holding hands. For whatever reason Batman and The Artist decided to hold hand and then said whoever let go first was a loser, and you know lots of terrible stuff, so they sat there aggressively holding hands and refusing to let go, to the point they climbed into the car while still holding hands.

Can you explain my teens?

I certainly can’t.

Teens are weird sometimes.

September Week 2

Now heading back to type up this week, this statement will make more sense when you read week 3.

First, off is the boys working on their Life Skills class (Present Ticia thinking, this reminds me I need to check on how it’s going for them).

Then I finally got to get Flamecraft to the table, I backed it on Kickstarter and finally got it, and then had to wait for a time I could play it with the boys. It was just as awesome as I thought it would be.

We got news of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing, and since the boys have the window cling on their van, they got texts from quite a few friends checking to see how they were doing with the news of her death.

Which greatly amused me.

The Artist is responsible for announcements at her AHG troop, this particular day I was staying to volunteer, so I snuck a picture of her.

We had a delicious meal from Libya, we made the meal before we studied the country because we had this one week where we studied 4 countries, but I knew there would be a riot if I had us eat that many meals of unknown food. We made it for gaming, and there were no leftovers at the end of the night.

I don’t know why I’m sitting on the teens, I’m sure someone thought it would be hilarious to steal my seat.

And finally, Superman and Batman went to a special dinner for people at their Kung Fu, they were very excited by it, but Jeff and I thought it sounded very not fun. They came home having enjoyed it, and talking about all their fun there.

September week 3

Okay, so I’m totally writing this all out of order. I apparently forgot to write week 2, so here’s week 3 being written while I’m remembering all the stuff, and I’ll come back to week 2.

I started the week with Mexican Pizza Day. In case you haven’t heard of this little-known not holiday, it’s the day Mexican Pizza came back to Taco Bell. I had originally planned to go torment Superman at his work, but I accidentally ended up having people over for dinner while he was working, so I couldn’t go while he was working, but was forced to get lunch, his work was short of workers and the dining room was closed, so we were forced to go to another location. There was much sadness, but I got a Mexican Pizza.

Saturday the boys had another show and so we went to support them, I got a couple of fun pictures of their solos.

Our geography meals for the week were: Mongolian dumplings (I forget the exact name it was something like puzz?) and a Myanmar chicken. The dumplings were a hit, other than I would puree the onion next time because I cannot mince the onions small enough.

I continue to get pictures of The Artist and Batman tormenting each other. It seems to be their love language, that’s what she says. They happily poke at and torment each other.

And that bottom picture…. So Tara is coming to visit with her young children that are still at the put things in my mouth stage, so we were desperately cleaning so we wouldn’t kill the kids.

Let me share the conversation as it went during one cleaning moment:

Boy from upstairs: Mom, what do you want us to do with the boxes of books?

Me from downstairs: Be creative with them, but not too creative. [Mom you need to add that you went on for 5 minutes about be creative but not too creative, that was a 5-minute rant]

Unidentified boy: Okay (various shoving and moving sounds are heard from upstairs)

Girl from downstairs surprisingly next to me as I get tea: What? No, Mom, don’t say that! What are you saying? Put it in the attic! Don’t be creative! Why would you say that?

Me realizing my mistake as I hear excitement upstairs: Not in the attic and not too creative.

Giggling is heard from upstairs. Excited giggling as they move the boxes of books. Giggling like they are 5-year-old girls and not almost 18-year-old men.

Episode title: Creative moving

Alternative title: Creative cleaning

As I typed this up, I turned around to giant thud of something falling down the stairs.

Life in my house is never boring…

Week 4

Friday Aunt Tara and her family got here. We were going to go see Hadestown back in January, but it got delayed to this week.

So, that giant picture is Me, The Artist, Tara, and my sister-in-law Jenn going to go see it. Afterwards we went out to dinner together, and our first attempt to go was this strange new restaurant that was “Many kitchens, one dining area” to have many restaurants in a much smaller area. It’s really set up more to be an order your meal online and then have it delivered by Uber Eats or something similar rather than come in and sit down to eat. So we ended up driving all the almost back to my house before we found a restaurant that didn’t look ridiculous.

We ran several one-shots, and that meant making potions! Tara did not like the potion I made for her. It was a rather innocent combination of a pink fruit drink and maybe Mountain Dew? I honestly don’t remember what all I put in it.

We made our Maldives meal. It took a while to find one everyone would eat, and I could get the ingredients for. After much searching I discovered I could sub out a few items and make it. It was more or less popular. The food disappeared at the end of it.

At one point the guys all got together and played Zombicide, and for some reason The Artist decided to annoy Batman by sitting in his chair (bottom middle). A friend of mine had posted on Instagram how she grew up an only child and was surprised how much siblings wrestle even into their teen years. She was talking about brothers doing that, and I thought of this picture and laughed at her poor innocent self, not realizing it’s all siblings, not just brothers.

We were going to go down to the Austin Science and Nature Center, but Austin City Limits was happening, so the route to easily get there was closed down, so we re-routed to the Arboretum and the toddlers happily walked around looking at all the plants and various things there. It was a success tiring kids out. A goal I remember being quite a priority when the kids were in preschool and I wanted them to nap.

We celebrated Christmas with them (so everyone could see presents being opened) and I gave her daughter a vet hospital I remember The Artist loving when she was little, but totally forgot how much her brother would also want to play with something like that, so there were a few fights about that.

I do not miss that part of preschoolers.

All right that center photo…

SO, The Artist and I got into this long discussion about how she needed to take the trash out to the curb at night because she had to leave early in the morning and probably wouldn’t remember. She really didn’t want to because she had just gone back upstairs and wasn’t wanting to come right back down to get the trash taken out.

We argued back and forth and finally I agreed she could set an alarm to take it out, but if she DIDN’T then she had to wear a button all day long saying, “Trash Liar.” I sat there and designed the button with great plans of her wearing it (knowing full well now that stakes were involved I would probably be wearing it).

She very pointedly at 8:15 took the trash out while staring obnoxiously, if I do say so myself, at me. So I finished designing the button, printed it off on shrinky dink paper and wore a giant “Trash Liar” button all day long. She was so incredibly pleased.

Parenting teens is fun.