Oh NO! Mr. Peeps!

Yesterday I was in my room and Livy came running in, in a panic.

"MOM! Mr. Peeps fell. Morgan accidentally knocked him over."

You see, our Mr. Peeps (elf on the shelf) is different than other people's.  He looks like Santa and is made of wood and is not allowed to be touched.  If you touch him…he goes away.

So I rushed in to find Morgan bawling, Owen standing in awe, and Mr. Peeps face down on the couch.

It looked like a crime scene….albeit a hilarious one.

Morgan was certain she had killed him.

I ushered the kids out and told them I needed to help Mr. Peeps up.  Morgan went back into her room wailing.  Really, you would have thought Jersey had died or something.  I "helped" Mr. Peeps up onto the shelf where he felt safer and explained that to the kids.

No matter how many times I told Morgan he was okay and that he wasn't going to go away (I think that was her fear) and that Mr. Peeps knew it was an accident, she would not stop crying.  It took a good 10 minutes for her to calm down and realize all was well.

Yikes.

Halloween 2012

Halloween.

It's come and gone.

I always like November 1st.

There are plenty of things I don't like about Halloween. 

But lots that I do.

I love the weather.

I love the sense of community with everyone out and about.

And I love how excited my kids get about their costumes.

Morgan wanted to be "Midget Joe" this year (a Dayton Family folklore character), but when I came home from the store with things for the other kids' costumes and explained they don't have "Midget Joe" paraphenalia at the store she was disappointed.  I told her they do have a devil costume or a cat costume, and she got very excited and wanted to switch to a devil right away.

Livy of course helped her put her "outfit" together as Morgan explained she wanted to be a "cute" devil.  And then she proceeded to tell me through the evening about other devil costumes she saw that "didn't even look like devils."  Clearly she is the real deal and they are not. (I must say, this costume is fitting for her at this stage in her life.  Hard, hard, hard this one has been!)

I think Owen rocked the Werewolf costume pretty well.  He really likes to stay in character when he wears a costume. :)  He didn't even recognize himself when he looked in the mirror.  It freaked him out a little bit.

Olivia's number one goal every Halloween is to scare her cousin Tatum.  She can't wait to get her make up on and look scary so she can run over and freak Tatum out.  As we get ready she devises all kinds of plans to sneak into Tatum's room and scare the heck out of her.  She doesn't ever carry them out, she just likes to talk about them.  She couldn't really talk with her teeth in and her jaw started hurting from holding them in all night.  But she would not take them out…it would "ruin her costume."  So committed that one.

Ready for Trick of Treating.

Everyone in character?  Good.

Dividing up the spoils.

Until next year…..

Totally Gross Party...

Owen turned 8 on Thursday.

Today we had his "Totally Gross Birthday Party".

And it was….totally gross.

They grabbed gummy worms at the bottom of whip cream…using only their mouth:

Morgan actually won this one.

Who doesn't want to shove their face into whip cream?

They pulled body parts out of "brains".

They grabbed marbles out of ice water with their toes.

They smelled baby food in diapers.

They ate baby food too. (well, some of them did)

They searched for cockroaches in "barf". (this one made me want to barf)

They had a grand old time.

And then we had cake….

 A TOTALLY GROSS cake.

It makes me nauseous just looking at it, even though I know it's made of yummy things.

Making a wish.

I gave everyone matching T-shirts that said, "That was TOTALLY GROSS!" on them.

Crazy kids. :)

And then it was over and I realized once again….

This boy is growing up.

Oh how I love him. :)

The Case of the Broken Violin...

Everyone loves a good mystery right.

Especially at our house.

My kids love to sleuth things out.

So a few days ago Olivia opened her violin and I heard a scream from the other room.

I thought she might have broken her leg or something.

Instead she had opened her case to find her violin looking like this:

Since we had just been gone on Fall Break for a week it seemed very strange that it just broke sitting in it's case.

The kids started sleuthing right away. (okay, and me too!)

Immediately they thought of Crew and Dane…3 houses away. Boys who love to be destructive.

Olivia was certain it was one of them.

Shane told her several times he didn't think that was possible because Crew wouldn't really be capable of zipping the case back up after breaking it and Dane just probably wouldn't.

We continued to think of possibilities and then Morgan, in her very sure way, told us all what had really happened.

"It was Jersey"…the dog.

"How do you know?"

"Because I looked her in the eyes and she looked back at me with sad eyes….and then she licked me four times."

Well, I don't think there's ever been a more clear-cut case.

It was the dog!

Snoring vs. The Jiggly Leg

I sort of wondered if Shane's Jiggly Leg would go away when he got his new knee.

The answer is no, it didn't. :(

At 3:38 am it was in full swing again.

Jiggle-jiggle-jiggle.

Aghhhhhhh!

It gives me anxiety because I can't stop counting between jiggles.

It will shake the whole bed and then I start counting, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5…." and I just wonder if it will be right on the same jiggly schedule every time.

It generally is.

At 3:40 I lovingly reached over to him, put my leg on his jiggly leg and put my hand on his chest to get his attention.  Then I whispered, "I love you, but I'm going to have to cut off your leg."

He said sorry and rolled over.

Then I sat there wondering if I would prefer snoring over the jiggly leg.

Which would be better?

I finally settled on the jiggly leg because it's quieter and it's attached to a really cute guy.

…And then I went back to sleep.

(*You'll be pleased to note that Shane's leg is still intact as well.)

The Champion

You probably think I'm writing about a person.

I'm not.

I'm writing about our toilet.

It's called The Champion.

About a year ago we replaced the toilets in our house because the ones that were here when we moved in were gross.  Shane said, "If we're going to get new toilets let's get really good ones."

So we went to Home Depot and said, "Give us your best toilet."

That is where we got The Champion (it is literally called that on the box).

It touted being able to flush an entire bucket of golf balls at once!

I'm not sure if it can really do that, I've never tried, but it can get my 9-year old nieces doo-doo down without clogging, which is more than I can say for our other toilets.

But all of this is neither here nor there, my point in talking about The Champion is its height.

It is a "chair height" toilet.

This means a couple of things.

One, my feet can't be flat on the ground when I sit on it.

I hate that.

I feel like a five year old with my tippy-toes touching the ground.

But number two, this is what I hate most of all, I have gotten used to this "chair height" so when I go to sit on any other toilet there is a millisecond of panic that shoots through me thinking that somehow the toilet I was about to sit on disappeared because my backside should have hit it by now.

Then I am rudely jarred out of this panic because I hit the toilet harder than a person normally should.

It's not pleasant.

And I'm thinking that The Champion isn't such a champion after all.

Too much information?

Oh well.

Taking Over the World… :)

What's up Zaharis?

That would be ONE...

TWO...

THREE! 

That's right….All three of my awesome kids got selected to student council as their class representatives.

It all went down exactly as I would expect.

Olivia wrote reminders to herself about writing a speech.  

She thought about it and wrote out what she felt was important.  

She wanted to let her class know she would represent them well.

She delivered her speech with confidence.

She won by a landslide.

Owen decided the night before that he'd like to run.

Olivia wrote his speech for him.

Olivia made him practice his speech several times.

Olivia chided him the morning of his speech for wearing sports shorts instead of looking nicer.

Owen reluctantly changed his clothes to appease his sister.

He won--I'm guessing by a landslide.

Morgan didn't write a speech.

Morgan simply raised her hand and said she'd be interested in doing it.

Every other girl in the class raised their hand and said, "I vote for Morgan."

She won--by a landslide of girl votes.

All three of them did this on their own.

"Why do you think people voted for you?"  I asked each of them.

Olivia: "Because I get good grades."

Owen: "Because I have good actions."

Morgan: "Because I'm really nice and everyone loves to play with me."

Morgan is never shy about her awesomeness. :)

Congrats to my babies!

Represent.