Day 5 Photo - Gum Please !!! Rotten Apples anyone?

Day 5 Photo

It's an Ode to the Starbucks gods. I love this drink, yes I know it's not good for me but .....

I find it was worth the picture and the $4.17.

It's really great on a hot summer day, we have so many of those in Houston.

Here is little man asking for a piece of gum. Usually I give in to the kids, it's sugar free and they are pretty good about keeping up with the gum. It's just the repetitive asking of the same questions over and over that drive me to the brink of insanity.

Notice in these 2 pictures the nervous neck pulling. First what's up with that and second I know exactly why he is nervous. It doesn't always do a body good to ask repeatedly for something like gum or the tv or the wii or well really anything else over and over and over again. I don't always handle this kind of bombardment very well. Hence the nervous neck pull, he thinks I might not answer the question in an appropriate way? My response could be one of soooo many. Today we all ended up with gum in our mouths which put smiles on all our faces, next time there is no guarantee what mommy will say or how she will say it. My poor kids live on the edge of constant nervous neck pulling !!!

Today on our way to camp The Rhino pulls out an apple that I gave him to put in his bag a while back, you know the one he told me that he ate for a snack. Well it had since gotten a really bad bruise on it, from when he played catch with it before he actually placed it in his bag. Well when he reached in his back to pull it out he accidently stuck his finger in the rotten spot. Let me just preface this by saying that I have been carrying wipes in my bag for 8 years and I use them every few minutes. SO we have a smelly rotten apple in the hands of a fairly intelligent 8 yr old boy who now has rot on his fingers. So instead of asking me for a wipe or telling me he got this rot on his fingers and he needs to wash his hands, he proceeds to wipe it on the seat. Yes wipe it on the seat. And I proceed to blow a gasket. I had no other choice, heavens are you kidding me! So if anyone ever wants to find out what rotten apple smells like I will be inviting them to sit In The Rhinos seat !

Day 4 Photo - Self Portrait

Yet another self portrait. This is a coffee pot, obviously. I love these old ones, they are so kind of Gulf Stream like. I think it's the color, I love this shiny chrome. To bad for me, not even the distortion on the coffee pot can make my figure sleek and slim, oh well. Maybe I could say the curve of the coffee pot reflects the curves of my figure??? or maybe not.

All kidding aside these last 2 days feel really heavy on my heart. I feel like everything around me is YELLING at me to remember how fragile life is and how much my family means to me. No one is sick or dying but it just seems that I have forgotten how quickly the things change.

Day 3 Photo

Today was rather uneventful really. This picture comes from something in my house. This 30 day project is sure going to be a challenge.

This is My Table. We eat every meal here including the big family dinners we have every Sunday, of course we can't fit ALL the family but all the adults and the littler kids fit. I wish I had a huge table, preferably round , that would fit like 12 or 14 people. I'm not sure that will ever happen but a bigger table in the dining room would be a possibility. Ahhh what a thing to dream about.

Day 2 Photo

At first I wasn't going to comment on my picture but then I thought what the heck. This is the light fixture that hangs over my brothers dining room table. I think it's a great fixture, sort of industrial but still warm and inviting. I love the way the photo turned out.

30 Days of [Blank]

I got this from my friend Terri at her blog A Girl in the South and she got it from somewhere else. It's a challenge, that for 30 days straight you decide to do something. There were alot of suggestions talked about amongst people, but I thought to challenge my self I would do a picture a day of something other than my children. I easily take pictures of my kids every day so I thought this might be good. Yesterday I took this picture :

I'm not sure that I think there is anything special or even particularly interesting about this picture but it is out of my realm of comfort. I like taking pictures of people, there is a distinct good or bad line, are they smiling or laughing or frowning or what. I think thins will be challenging for me, so I am going to try to keep up with it. Wish me luck and hope that I can learn something from this. Oh and Terri has decided that she will be making a new drink every day for 30 days, it might be worth checking her out.

Where Do They Go ....

I'm just wondering where does an 8 yr old boy "go" when he is sitting in the living room by himself, in his warm cozy moose slippers in the middle of the Houston summer? and how do I get to that happy unaware place, even for a moment.

In these first two photos he really had no idea that I was even around. He makes these like airplane/shooting/diving/ jumping/dying noises all the time so I really am used to hearing them. Today the thing that really threw me were the moose slippers. It's like almost 100* outside and he takes to the slippers. I guess that place he goes has snow? ice? is on a glacier? It must be pretty intense to require the need for external warming devices.

I kind of long for this ability to escape in such a way that really you can't hear anything or see anything. Don't get me wrong, I do day dream sometimes, and when I "wake up" from a daydream I'm still in the car or packing a lunch or folding laundry so how much of me was still in the present. He has no clue that any other world exists outside of what he sees or is looking at in his head. I know this because often I have to physically touch him to get him to respond, or sometimes yelling really loudly does it too.

So that's a whole other question, what is he seeing or looking at? Can some grown person explain to me. I just want to get back to "that" place for a minute or 3.

The Moose Skates

Grandma Betty's moose slippers come out of hiding every once in a while. They are so loved. I'm not sure that she ever actually wore them but I know that she loved them. I remember them sitting on the floor in her bedroom for years just longing to be worn. Well that time is here.

All three of the kids love to practice their skating skills in them. They like to mop up all the loose dog hair with these slippers.

It looks like there is some dog hair or dirt waiting under this chair to be swept up by a floppy eared moose.

The moose "skates" work with or without socks.

Sometimes big sisters need to help little brothers when they first start using the moose "skates". I love this picture.

And then sometimes Little Man just needs to take off and try the moose skates for himself.

Until next time Moose Shoes, we love you !!!