Hitting... or Missing the Target

Hello Everyone,

We are back after a week at Dave's family reunion in Bountiful, Utah. After a week of being dehydrated by Utah's dry heat, I think I must have been a bit too smug about returning to our much superior summer climate... the heat seems to have followed us home have had several days of being roasted alive (OK, don't laugh you Phoenix people). =] It has cooled off some and it is supposed to cool off more next week, so here's hoping!

I guess our major events of the past few weeks were getting off to the reunion and getting home. I wanted to do something to make the drive more fun for my kids, so I decided to take them to Target and let them help me pick out some treats for the long car trip to Utah. We don't usually buy a lot of junk food, so I figured this was a great opportunity to regress. Two hours later we walked out of Target with our treats and the few items we needed to buy, still all alive and speaking to each other (barely...). In the process of this two hour trip to Target, I learned a few valuable lessons. 1) Don't try to do things for your kids that are fun or exciting. It only gives them new material to fight over and they will whine that they aren't getting more than you are offering them. 2) Never offer your children choices and try to come to a point of mutual agreement. Democracy is overrated. 3) Don't negotiate with your children. Diplomacy is overrated.

In the process of trying to choose cookies, chips and candy to take on the trip, I spent about 90 minutes on the treat aisles listening to my children try to persuade each other to the merits of Pringles vs. Cheetos, Swedish Fish vs. sour watermelons and EL Fudge vs. Scooby Graham Cracker bones. The argument over cookies was particularly bitter, with Jared lobbying hard for scooby snacks and Camryn insisting that her life could not be complete without EL Fudge. Instead of doing what a good mother should have done (leaving the store immediately with no treats), I thought, "This will be a great opportunity to learn to discuss and compromise on a disagreement." I obviously had either forgotten how old my children were or had not spent much time recently around 4 and 5 year olds. We ended up indeed reaching a compromise: Jared and Camryn each chose a box of cookies and mom chose everything else, along with a threat to throw it all away if there was so much as a whisper of complaint. As a postscript, after Camryn's valiant battle to get EL Fudge, she was so excited when I finally gave her one to eat in the car. She took one bite and said, "Mom, I don't like these."
-->
The family reunion was great... all of Dave's siblings were there and we had a blast. I suppose there wasn't much eventful to write about... it was all fun and anybody who would care to hear about it was actually there. We had a formal family photo taken (which involved two hours of intense wardrobe deliberation to coordinate outfits for the ladies), went to the lake to do wave runners and have a picnic, went bowling, and made the requisite trip to Cafe Rio. We filled in our time with ping pong and speed scrabble tournaments. We also enjoyed a fabulous 4th of July meal, courtesy of Dave, Jen and myself. =]

Alas, too quickly the trip was over and everyone went home. Except Dave and I. We debated intensely for half a day whether the kids and I should stay longer or go home and at the end of it we all ended up going home too. Dave and I are both hyper-analytical and tend to operate under the assumption that more deliberation and analysis will lead to a better, swifter outcome. I think we have proved that this is not true, in fact it is often the opposite... sometimes you just have to pick one and more deliberation doesn't add anything.

So home we went. We made it through Sunday, but Monday morning dawned with no groceries. Given our trip to Utah and our other upcoming trips this summer, I thought it would be a good time to turn over a new leaf of economy and thrift-- at least in my grocery spending. So I decided that when I went to Costco that day, I would go to Winco (located across the street) instead of the more expensive but closer to our house option of Safeway. We went to Costco and with the help of $1.50 hot dogs and lemonade made it through in reasonable time. Then we went to Winco to pick up 5 or 6 things that we needed that they didn't have at Costco. We weren't 5 minutes into the produce aisle when I was greeted with a chorus of "I have to go to the bathroom...." After a 10 minute detour we returned to our shopping. We slowly made our way through the store and I was perusing the dairy case when Jared urgently announced his need to go to the bathroom-- again. "Jared, you just went!" "But, mom, I really have to go!" Unfortunately his unusual walk combined with his taking the opportunity to sit on any low object he could find convinced me of the sincerity in his request. So off we went to the bathroom again. By the time we got out of the bathroom a second time, my brain was in total meltdown and my capacity for making logical decisions was at zero. Not only did I not stick to my list, but I spent about 10 minutes debating whether or not to get ice cream (should we get yummy treats or stick to the list? should we get yummy treats or avoid empty calories?) and another ten debating whether to get "Udderly Chocolate" or "Vanilla Bean" (should I go with the tried and true or try something new? the new may be yummy, but it could be too sweet like the last new ice cream flavor we tried... maybe I should just get strawberry) Maybe there is actually an inverse relationship between the amount of time spent deliberating and the positive outcome of a decision. We finally made it out of Winco. My "5 things" that I picked up came to almost $100. Maybe I would have been better off going to Safeway. We left for home a mere 3 1/2 hours after we left for our little shopping excursion.
-->
Luckily, I had the foresight to throw our cooler in the trunk so all of our Costco groceries weren't rotten by the time we got out of Winco. We went home, put the groceries away and I took advantage of the time while the kids were watching a cartoon to look at Quicken and try to figure out where we are and reconcile the accounts. I spent a fulfilling two hours trying to close a savings account with .08 in it, finding out that I CAN'T close an old checking account from California over the phone because it has no money in it, and realizing that my Mastercard account wouldn't balance because they had automatically given us a new card with a new number (why we would need this I have no idea) and were transferring all purchases to the new card.

While I was spending these satisfying minutes on the phone with customer service asking "Why am I seeing additional transactions that are the exact opposite of every transaction I have made" I see Camryn walk by the office with a bucket of water and rags. "What are you doing?" I ask her in between sentences. "I'm washing the house," she replied. "What exactly are you going to wash?" I queried. "The house," she responded. A few minutes later I wandered out with the phone to find her splashing a window over the carpet with her wet rag. "Camryn, please clean something else that's not on the carpet. I'm on the phone..." I heard her say something about the floor and that sounded better so I said OK. Five minutes later Jared bursts in the room announcing, "Mommy! Camryn is making a huge mess! There's water everywhere." I go downstairs to find that Camryn had indeed been trying to create a river on our kitchen floor. "Camryn, what are you doing?" I asked. "Look, mom.," she said, "I'm washing the floor and now it sparkles!"

Anyway, to summarize the rest of our week, Dave left on Wednesday for a ten day Asian tour of Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. We had a fabulous day on Thursday picking raspberries and marionberries and swimming at the YMCA with friends. We had a less-than-fabulous couple of other days involving attempts to clean the house, going to a birthday party and otherwise trying to pass the time. Last night I took the kids to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner (I calculated that if I worked it right it could kill about 2 hours before bed). Unfortunately, Camryn fell asleep on the way there, there was a 20 minute line when we got there and then Camryn spent most of dinner with her head on my lap in between my attempts to prod some mac and cheese into her mouth. Jared, on the other hand, had a great time. Every time I turned my head he was heading back from the buffet: "Hey mom, I got more pizza" or "Look they have watermelon jello!" He was particularly proud of his ice cream sundae, making several return trips to perfect the toppings, ending with a 1/2 inch layer of oreo crumbs.
-->
In pregnancy news, I'm now 18 weeks (19 weeks on Tuesday) and this week my belly popped out. Not that I looked un-pregnant before, but now there's no mistaking it: it's quite large. Not that I like being bigger, but it's at least nice that you can tell I'm not just putting on weight. I can feel the baby move pretty much every day now. (I felt the baby move for the first time at the family reunion.)

So, yes, lots of excitement and earth-shattering events. Hope you all are doing well.

Love,

Karen
------------------------------
Quotes of the Week:

Jared: "Mom, I have a joke. Why did the clock go to the restaurant? Because it wanted to spill all of the food dishes." (Laughter from Jared and Camryn. Silent groan from mom for the umpteenth time.) Camryn: "Why did the chicken go to the park? Because it wanted a soda!" Silence. Jared: "That's not funny."

We usually watch cartoons on PBS, but Jared has figured out how to use the remote control, so sometimes I catch them watching Nick Jr. or other programming. I think I have taken our former lack of commercials for granted.... Jared: "Mom, did you know that the chocolate milk with the bunny on it has more vitamins than regular milk?" Me: "How do you know that, Jared?" J: "Because it said so on TV. And if your bathroom smells bad you just need to get a thing that you plug in and it will smell good." Camryn: "Yeah, it even works while you are gone." J: "Yep, every 15 or 30 minutes."

Camryn: "Mommy, mommy! My primary teacher has a real baby! I was so nice to it. I held the baby and didn't even drop it. When we have a baby, I will be a good big sister. I will hold the baby and be gentle and not poke its eyes."

Camryn: (After cutting a pet food ad out of the paper) "I cut out a coupon for pet food for our dog." Jared: "Camryn, we don't need it. We don't have a dog yet." Camryn: "But we're going to get one." Jared: "But not for like five years."
-->
Jared: "Mom, what will happen to a starfish if you touch it?" Me: "Good night, Jared." J:"Will it bite you?" Me: "No. Nothing will happen. Please put your head on the pillow, the lights are out already." J:"What will happen to a dried-out starfish if you put it in water?" Me: It will get squishy and yucky, a dried out starfish is dead. Have a good sleep! I'm going out now." J: "What if it's not dead yet?" Me: "GOOD NIGHT!!!!"

An Important Announcement

My dear family,

It gives me great pleasure to be able to inform you of a singularly important event in our household. Last night, Jared lost his first tooth!!! He let daddy pull it out with his fingers and it came right out (apparently they decided against the brick, car, or pliers methods). This morning he even found money under his pillow from the tooth fairy, only adding to Jared's excitement.

Dave was kind of afraid that it hurt Jared when he pulled it out, but it turns out that Jared was actually starting to pant and yell because he was SOOOO EXCITED. Anyway, just thought I'd let you know.

Karen
[Note: Jared lost his 2nd tooth the next day.]

Letter from Camryn to Grandma Rogers

(I sent the following email to mom/grandma, per Camryn's instructions.)

...................

Camryn wrote you this letter this morning. It says:

"PEZ LET ME PRROR DOG GAMO ROGRJ"

Translation: Please let me borrow your dog Grama Rogers." Apparently she wants to borrow Marty from you for a while. =]

Karen

Adventures and Excitement

Hello everyone,

We had another week full of amazing adventures and excitement. Among our week highlights... Jared now has two very loose teeth. His two bottom front teeth are pretty much hanging on by a thread while his adult teeth are coming in behind them. He informs me that he can't eat anything hard until his teeth comes out. He also spends large amounts of time diligently wiggling his teeth to speed their removal from his mouth.

This week I continued with my cooking adventures. It seems that I always have some fetish thing that I'm currently wasting money on. Since I've already cycled through paint color samples, curtains, home decorating stuff, scrap-booking supplies and plants for the garden, my latest spending item is... cooking ingredients. Yes, it is less dangerous than many other things I could be spending money on, but it is still money spent. I've also encountered the weird phenomenon of trying to cook more things faster to keep using up all of my ingredients before they go bad. So on Tuesday, dutifully using a lot of ingredients, I made Sausage Polenta Lasagna with zucchini and salad. This dish sounded fabulous to me, so I was really excited to try it. Jared did not share my enthusiasm and only with great persuasion was he induced to try one bite, which instantly convinced him of this dish’s hideous flavor. C'mon, it's basically cornbread and sausage with cheese. How bad can it be? Apparently bad enough that he was downing large quantities of zucchini to try to fill up. At least I didn't have to pester him to eat his vegetables. Camryn on the other hand, saw this as a great opportunity to kiss up and told me repeatedly, "I like it mommy. I REALLY like it. It's very yummy," although when it came down to it, she only ate a few bites more than Jared. Dave came home and ate it and said it was pretty good. Apparently he did not recognize the need to gloat and celebrate how glorious my cooking is after it has been repeatedly panned and abused by my children.

Wednesday the kids had a trip to the dentist. Jared got sealants on his teeth while Camryn had a teeny filling. Camryn was surprisingly good for her filling, which was done with no shot and abrasion instead of a drill. As a reward we got Costco pizza for lunch and then went on a marathon trip through Costco, Target and Fred Meyer. Our trip to Fred Meyer resulted in a plethora of new ingredients, so we had a remarkably good dinner of steak with baked potatoes, cream of broccoli soup, Mexican Chunk Vegetable Salad and fresh watermelon and cantaloupe. So now instead of a plethora of ingredients, we have a plethora of leftovers.

Thursday we had an uneventful morning of housecleaning. That afternoon I took the kids to swim at the YMCA. They rode the waterslide about a hundred times and I ended up catching not only them, but some other random kid whose mother apparently thought I worked there. This wouldn't have bugged me except he kept going down face first and backwards, making him somewhat difficult to catch. After a tasty leftover night, we went to meet some friends at the McDonald's play place and have an ice cream cone. I would like to insert here that I have done the dishes immediately after dinner every night this week. Strangely, my kitchen has stayed very clean all week. On Thursday, for the first night this week I missed doing the dishes and alas, the kitchen has been dirty ever since.... After McDonalds, I put the kids to bed and entertained myself until bedtime. I had a hard time going to sleep and so did Dave--- though for different reasons. He didn't get home until 3:00 am.

Friday I took the kids to our ward park day at Wilsonville Town Center. The park has a huge fountain/water feature (roughly 10 feet wide and 40 feet long). The kids happily played in the water for hours, despite the typical Oregon cycle of sun/clouds/sun/clouds/sun. When they had sufficiently exhausted themselves, we had lunch at Wendy's. They got chicken nuggets, fries and mandarin oranges, but they didn't get a happy meal or ice cream because while we were walking in they were arguing over who got to hold my "ring hand." I had warned them that if they kept fighting they wouldn't get a toy or a treat, but they were undeterred. Nonetheless, Jared was very miffed when we ordered our food and he found out that he wasn't getting a toy or ice cream. I told him he wasn't getting it because they were fighting over my ring hand. "You aren't letting us have a toy or ice cream because we were fighting? That's really weird, mom." I replied that I thought it was weird that they would fight over something as silly as which hand they got to hold. Jared said, "No, mom, you're just really weird." After lunch we looked in a pet store that happened to be next to Wendy's. We oohed over the cute puppies and Jared started to lobby for getting a pet sooner than when he turns ten. Unfortunately, in the room with the puppies, there was a leather-looking ottoman with a large bite taken out of it. I considered this a bad omen for our leather couches, so we went to look at turtles.

The rest of Friday we went trekking around Tigard and Beaverton to return an item and buy another pair of clearance maternity pants from a different Target. It was truly a complete waste of an afternoon. Speaking of other notable happenings, Friday I wore maternity capris for the first time. My two pairs of pants that still fit were both dirty, so I finally succumbed to the indignity. They were actually cute and not obviously maternity, but they had one problem. My tummy, though starting to protrude, is not really that big yet and not big enough to hold up my maternity pants, which have a large wide elastic waist. So all day I was faced with the pants problem typical to Camryn: they fall down to the spot of smallest girth, which, strangely enough, is now my hips. So I faced a day of sag and pull, sag and pull. I guess I can at least sympathize with Camryn now.

After our afternoon of wandering around, I made delicious Cashew Chicken for dinner. I was ticked that the cashews I bought specifically to make this dish were strangely almost gone when I opened the can (despite the assurances I had been given that if we opened them early there would still be lots left for my meal). So we had Chicken with Cashew Garnish. The kids heartily approved of the accompanying white rice with butter. They even tried some of the chicken and pronounced it "pretty good" and then didn't eat much more of it. I put the kids to bed and was making muffins to amuse myself around 10:00 pm when Dave called to say that they were running a wafer through the tool and if it worked he would come home in about 15 minutes and if it didn't he would probably be there all night, but that he was really optimistic that it would work. I have not yet succumbed to the triumph of hope over experience, so after making a second batch of muffins (triple berry yogurt muffins just didn't hit the spot... I needed the applesauce muffins dipped in butter and cinnamon sugar) I put in a movie and watched it happily -or at least contentedly- by myself. (BTW, I just have to say I'd forgotten how funny the scene in "Hitch" is where after the breakup, Sara's moping on the couch, watching the cheesy "You had me at hello" part of "Jerry Maguire," crying and squirting whipped cream out of the can directly into her mouth.) Dave actually did get home before dawn, arriving around 3:00 am, starving and worn out. Luckily I had cold Chicken with Cashew Garnish and muffins to save the day.

Surprisingly, Dave and I were both zombies on Saturday morning. So we spent the morning taking turns fending off the kids with alternating doses of muffins and cartoons. So after sleeping WAY longer than I care to mention in this email, we finally got up and ate some muffins ourselves and got started on the day. After working in the yard for a while, we went on the Saturday trek to Home Depot to get stuff to try to fix our sprinkler setup. Then we took the kids berry picking at Gramma's Place (about a mile from our house). We were lucky to catch the end of the strawberries and the beginning of the raspberries, so we got both. Camryn stood happily holding a bucket saying, "Thank you for helping me pick berries, mommy and daddy," while Dave and I crouched on the ground looking for strawberries. Then we went to the raspberries and picked until Camryn and Jared were complaining incessantly about the pokies on the ground and we had about half a bucket of each. I didn't check beforehand how expensive they were, so I was a little worried that we'd picked so much. Besides, they were charging us $1.25 each for the buckets. I picked up some zucchini and bananas and our total came to $11, including buckets. So we ended up paying about $3 each for a half a bucketful of fresh berries. So we went home and happily gorged on berries by the handful. We then took the kids to "bouncer day," which was actually a bunch of bouncers set up to advertise a fireworks stand. Dave happily bought some while the kids bounced at $3 a pop. Meanwhile I picked up Papa Murphy's which we quickly ate before I ran off to play the organ for the adult session of stake conference.

Now is it just me or is the adult session of Stake Conference discriminatory against people whose children are younger than age 12? I called probably 5 different babysitters and all of them were booked already or, surprise, babysitting for their parents to go to the session. So I went by myself and Dave stayed home to watch the kids. I got a good laugh out of the second hymn, "Love at Home." Despite it's uplifting message, it has never been one of my favorite hymns, partly because it always seems to turn into a dirge that goes on forever-- as we sing we are given hours to contemplate the "beauty all around" and "joy in every sound" which seems to last interminably ( i.e. LU-U-U-V A-A-A-T HO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-ME, LUUUUUV AAAAAAAT HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOME). My friend who was conducting was debating whether to conduct it in two instead of four, so I thought she would agree with an up-tempo rendition of it. She did end up conducting it in 4 (as written), but when we sat down she said that she could barely keep up with me, I was taking it so fast. I, on the other hand, actually enjoyed the hymn for a change, like the pleasant feeling of a brisk walk instead of the frustration of being stuck behind a slow dump truck. The other thing my friend who was conducting mentioned is that when she used to play the organ in the ward, there was a woman who used to criticize her for taking hymns to slow and making them too "boring." Apparently this same woman was sitting in the front, grinning from ear to ear.

After completing my hymn and postlude responsibilities, I returned home to Dave. Ready for some evening relaxation, I changed into work clothes and we worked in the yard. Dave tried yet again to figure out a hose sprinkler system that will actually water our yard while I finished planting some plants. Finally, when it was 10:30 or 11:00 and too dark to do anything else, we went inside and settled on the LoveSac to watch a movie. The movie was over and we were discussing one of the talks at Stake Conference or some other random topic when Jared came downstairs informing us that he had just barfed. We immediately went to survey the damage and he had not just barfed, he had sent white and red chunks flying into his sheets, over the side of the bunk bed, into all the cracks in the wood, onto Camryn's bed and onto the white carpet below. After attempting to clean up this disaster in the dark, we finally turned on the lights, which woke up Camryn, who was delighted with watching the proceedings and reminding us several times, "I didn't barf like Jared did." By the time we cleaned up the sheets, mattress pad, mattress, carpet, wood and everything else that had been hit by the projectile vomit, put the kids back to bed with barf buckets and towels, and finally climbed in bed ourselves, it was almost 3:00 am.

So, surprisingly, this morning we were zombies again. We took turns telling the kids to go play for a few more minutes until finally I got up to put on a scripture video for them and pour cereal for Camryn and get a breakfast of saltines and Gatorade for Jared. Jared seemed to be feeling much better, so maybe it was just an overdose of berries by the bucketful, combined with jumping on a bouncer and pizza that didn't agree with him. We did end up going to Stake Conference at 12:00 and amazingly enough, we even got there before it started. We went the whole day without any other unpleasant stomach incidents. We completed the day with a visit from our home teachers and then Dave and I going comatose for two hours in the afternoon, followed by taking turns trying to convince the kids to play just a FEW minutes longer before we got up to make dinner. We had a gourmet dinner of waffles and berries (Jared and Camryn both declined the berry part of the dinner) before putting the kids to bed.

Anyway, hope you had a week equally full of excitement and adventure.

Karen

-----------------------
Quotes of the Week:

Camryn: (interrupting the prayer) "And bless that I won't have the scary jellyfish dream."

Camryn: (giving the prayer) "And please bless that there will be no volcanoes or hot lava in our house."

Dave and Jared were having a discussion at dinner of different ways to pull his loose teeth out. After Jared vetoed plans to attach his teeth to a car and then drive away or tie his tooth to a brick and then throw it out the window, Jared said, "I don't think the brick is a good idea. A brick is heavier than a car."

Today Jared read some of "Tarzan" to Camryn, word for word, out of the book!

Am I A Little Bit Obsessive?

Hello,

I realized I left something out of my update..... oh no! How dare! I realized that I cannot rest until I know that it is complete. Yes, this is a sign of being obsessive. OK, maybe it's time for me to get a journal and stop bombarding relatives with endless accounts of our day-to-day minutiae. After all, how could you live without knowing about my snack wrap lunch and how we picked strawberries? The suspense would just kill you....

At least know that you are one of the favored one who I expect (or at least hope) will humor me in my obsessiveness.

Karen
.....................
On Tuesday I took the kids to lunch at McDonald's with some other moms. The kids played happily on the play place while I chatted with other moms and ate one of my worst lunches in recent memory. Since I don't really like McDonald's, I thought I would just order a few snack things. I ordered an apple dipper, a small order of fries (which the kids took care of in short order) and a Chicken Snack Wrap. I made the mistake of getting a ranch snack wrap, so my sandwich was doused with large quantities of marginally flavored mayonnaise. Despite efforts to remove some with a napkin, I only succeeded in removing everything except the chicken and the tortilla. I was left with a rather slim and not very appetizing lunch. After our McDonald's outing, we went to Target and then went 10 minutes down the road to go strawberry picking! The kids and I ran into a friend who was there with her daughter, so we picked until they left. With the three of us diligently laboring for over an hour, we went to check out and found we had picked 14 pounds of strawberries.

On the way home, I was coming home a roundabout way because of traffic and didn't see a stop sign until the last minute. I slammed on the brakes and one of our boxes of strawberries went flying, throwing strawberries all around our car, under the seats and into the carpet. We pulled over and spent 10 minutes trying to gather all of them up before resuming our drive home.

So... after more-than-an-hour of diligently picking berries, I even-more-diligently spent the next two days making two batches of freezer jam, two strawberry pies (which the kids informed me that they didn't like) and bags of frozen strawberries. Oregon strawberries are sweeter than California strawberries, but unfortunately, they are about half the size (I think my kids specialized in finding especially small ones...). So I spent upwards of three hours one day endlessly removing hulls and slicing strawberries. Fun stuff!

Postscript to "A Week at the Zoo"

I forgot to add the part about our "zoo." Jared's new hobby is collecting insects. His first pet was "James," a garden spider that met it's unfortunate demise when mommy accidentally hit his spider bowl, turned it over and smashed him trying to catch him again. Jared was distraught, but after many tears and finding a new "James" he finally got over the tragedy (funny enough, he wasn't distraught at all when he accidentally brought James II to an unfortunate early demise. He also has caught a moth, a "rolly-oly" bug and several other species. So far we have managed to keep Jared's zoo outside on the deck.

Jared also built a nifty lego plane that has four engines: one fire, one steam, one electricity and one gas... I guess he's looking into alternate fuel sources already.

Karen

A Week at the Zoo

Hello family,

Welcome to another rambling tour of life at the Porters. We have had just another normal, crazy week. Our last week has been full with all kinds of fun events. To my great relief, Jared had his last day of T-Ball on Saturday. Try as I might to enthusiastically watch five and six-year-olds take three tries to hit the ball off the tee and then throw it past the base 5 minutes after the runner passed, I had a very hard time being an enthusiastic spectator. However, I was glad that Jared enjoyed it and had fun. The coach's wife went WAY over the top: she made a photo album, a gold medal, team baseball cards, a fun foam water bottle holder, a hat and a cute certificate for every kid on the team. Wow, it made me tired just looking at it. Between the gold medal and his "YMCA T-Ball" trophy, Jared was thrilled beyond belief. He is now convinced that his team was the winning-est team ever... after all, he has a gold medal and a gold trophy to prove it. The other highlight of Jared's week was getting to eat lunch at school like one of the big kids on Tuesday. Even though it was at 9:30 am, for "lunch" he got to have a corn dog AND chocolate milk. Wow, if only his mom were so nice.

-->On Tuesday I took the kids to lunch at McDonald's with some other moms. The kids played happily on the play place while I chatted with other moms and ate one of my worst lunches in recent memory. Since I don't really like McDonald's, I thought I would just order a few snack things. I ordered an apple dipper, a small order of fries (which the kids took care of in short order) and a Chicken Snack Wrap. I made the mistake of getting a ranch snack wrap, so my sandwich was doused with large quantities of marginally flavored mayonnaise. Despite efforts to remove some with a napkin, I only succeeded in removing everything except the chicken and the tortilla. I was left with a rather slim and not very appetizing lunch. After our McDonald's outing, we went to Target and then went 10 minutes down the road to go strawberry picking! The kids and I ran into a friend who was there with her daughter, so we picked until they left. With the three of us diligently laboring for over an hour, we went to check out and found we had picked 14 pounds of strawberries. So I diligently spent the next two days making two batches of freezer jam, two strawberry pies (which the kids informed me that they didn't like) and bags of frozen strawberries. Oregon strawberries are sweeter than California strawberries, but unfortunately, they are about half the size. So I spent upwards of three hours one day endlessly removing hulls and slicing strawberries.Wednesday was the last day of kindergarten. Jared is now an official kindergarten graduate (yep, he's bested both of you, Lindsay and Meg... =] ) We celebrated this momentous occasion with a classroom promotion celebration, complete with ice cream and an informal diploma ceremony . His teacher had made very cute memory books and "diplomas" for each of the kids. They each came up, shook her hand, got their "diploma" and she shared a memory of them from the year. This was very cute when it was Jared's turn but very tedious when it was time for the other 24 children to have their turn (at a minute and half each, it really added up....). Her memory of Jared was that he was Mr. Dash--- he would dash into class, dash around at recess and dash out the door when it was over. She also said that he had made excellent progress in reading. After school got out, we celebrated the last day of school by having a friend in his class over for lunch and then going to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. Jared got bright green and blue sherbert with Mike and Ike's mixed in--- Yummy!

My exciting item of the week was more cooking experiments. My grand meal of the week was Herb Roasted Wild Sockeye Salmon with Red Potatoes and green salad. I went to the store and despite not being a big fish person, they had the most beautiful tempting ruby-red salmon-- and it was even on sale! Believe me, it was glorious, and the kids were duly appreciative. Jared loved the salmon but prounounced the potatoes "yucky." Camryn refused to taste the salmon, but at least tried her potatoes-- and about 5 slices of bread. Dave came home late and duly appreciated it cold and leftover. My other concoctions of the week were Red Pepper and Walnut Stir-Fry, Thai Spicy Rice Pudding (made with coconut milk, allspice and cinnamon- yum), Tomato Basil Panzanella (a great salad made with leftover stale bread softened with water) and Top Ramen. Yes, it seems that the pregnancy foods that have really stuck are Top Ramen and baked potatoes with cheese and sour cream. Just can't get enough....

The kids love playing on our trampoline. They probably spend close to two hours a day jumping on it... or standing on it and throwing toys and other objects into the tree above them. I have learned not to be too bothered by this until last week. While they were jumping on the trampoline I took a phone call and went upstairs. A few minutes later, Jared and Camryn came up with very guilty looks and Jared said, in a much-too-trying-to-be-excited voice, "Guess what? A kind of funny thing happened, mom. We were out jumping on the trampoline and then some guy's head popped up." I instantly knew something was up, so I went outside and sure enough, there was our neighbor's head above our fence, telling me that my children had been throwing large rocks into his yard and at his house and some of them were hitting it. I thanked him and instantly marched the kids up to bed. I don't believe in raising my voice, but I do admit that on this occasion, my voice went above its normal decibel range. I'm also not a parent who generally believes in spanking as a tool or a threat, but I must admit on this occasion to threatening to spank my children repeatedly and send them to bed for the entire day if this EVER happened again. After they spent a long period of time on their beds, I had them make cards to take to the neighbor and tell him they were sorry and would never do it again. Camryn drew a picture of kids throwing rocks at a house with an "X" through it and Jared wrote, "IM SORE FOR THROING ROKS AT YOR HOWS."
-->

My other parenting dilemma has been with Camryn. Recently she has been the less difficult of the two until.... this week they were jumping on the trampoline with friends and apparently Camryn decided it would be funny to moon everybody. After taking her inside, having a time out and explaining that showing her bare bottom to people was not funny or appropriate behavior, I figured we were OK. But then later the same day it happened again. This time Camryn had a LONG time out to think about not doing it again. After spending a lengthy period on her bed, she insisted that she would remember to never do it again. Then two days later she started to do it again... in the freezer aisle at Safeway. I marched her to the bathroom and, I'm ashamed to admit, because I couldn't think of anything else to do without permanently abandoning our shopping cart of groceries, she got a spank. I felt terrible and stewed and debated later over whether I'd done the right thing. But... the good side of the story is that she hasn't done it since. Between this and an incident of her using a certain slang term for hot dog, I have started to really wonder whether I have done an adequate job as a parent or if I just haven't been sufficiently worried about the negative peer influences at preschool.

Despite her troubling laxity at keeping on her underclothing, Camryn is very aware of other moral dangers. In particular, she is our family expert on the evils of coffee. She often points out that there is a store across the street from us with a bunny on it where people are buying......COFFEE. These people, she informs us, are "not listening to Jesus." In family discussions, if it ever comes up what Satan might want us to do, the very first item on the list from Camryn is [said with a suitably dark and dismal tone], "Drink COFFEE."

So now I get to the bee-in-my-bonnet part of my narrative. I have really been itching to fix the border of our backyard. So after my cooking enrichment group on Thursday, I dragged the kids to Al's Garden Center for 2 hours to look at plants. I stewed and debated and couldn't decide while the kids amused themselves by taking off their shoes, splashing in puddles, playing hide-and-go-seek and getting wet in the fountains. After selecting an obscenely large number of plants and taking them home, I set them out in my yard I realized that at least half of them wouldn't work. So on Friday I went back to Al's Garden Center (this time without the kids, who were playing with friends). This time I spent 2 1/2 hours, exchanging, debating and selecting, then finally came home to start working in the yard. I was discouraged to start with because on Friday morning I went on a cleaning rampage: I cleaned the kitchen, swept and mopped or vaccuumed the floors, cleaned the downstairs bathroom, even cleaned the family room windows (including our resident bird poop of two months) and when I was done.... it just didn't look all that different. Maybe I need to hire an organizer or something. So, I wanted to do SOMETHING that would make an impact. So I started working in the yard.
On Saturday morning, after a breakfast of coffeecake (and some careful explanation to Camryn that it did not have coffee in it) I went out and kept working. I felt all the strength and gusto of a pioneer woman taming the land.... after all, I was attacking rock hard clay soil that would only scrape off in 1/2 inch segments with my shovel and bare hands. My ego was much deflated when Dave came out with a pickaxe and loosened up the spot I was working on in about 5 minutes flat (it only would have taken me 2 hours). But by the end of the day on Saturday (OK, by 9:00 pm), I had turned the soil, mixed in bags of soil builder and planted probably 30 plants. Dave attacked the yard with equal exertion until about 10 pm, in between fielding two conference calls. So 1/2 of our yard looks pretty good now... only another 1/2 to go. After all of this exertion and a late bedtime on Saturday, Dave and I both fell asleep at 8:30 pm on Sunday night.
-->

We had a nice Father's Day, including a lovely dinner at a friend's house (by far the best and most kitchen-friendly way to treat your husband). Actually, I made Dave's special father's day dinner tonight instead. After a morning of panic at attempting to clean up the chaos and mess that had accumulated during our weekend of work on the yard (punctuated by Jared and Camryn erupting into fights over Camryn sticking her foot in the drawer when Jared was trying to close it, Jared not sharing his treat with Camryn or Camryn trying to steal Jared's treat), I finally got things to a state of semi-order by afternoon, at which point Camryn fell to pieces and threw a series of fits for the rest of the evening. For dinner, Jared suggested that we eat our meal as a picnic outside. This was fine for about 10 minutes, until Camryn decided she did not WANT a picnic and started using that as her fit-throwing-reason-of-choice.

Today while I was cleaning, Jared and Camryn experimented in the kitchen. Jared invented a sauce of cinnamon, sprinkles and corn syrup, to be served spread on an english muffin. This he made especially for me, to eat as my lunch treat (maybe he was trying to give me a taste of my own medicine). He also wrote a recipe that reads, "STORT [start], BUTERFLI SPRINKLS, SINAMUN, HALUWEEN SPRINKLS," etc. .. He also created a new sensation, the "Bardino Burger," a tasty crustless sandwich with a filling of butter, salt and pepper, microwaved to warm perfection.

In other random news, on Friday night, a friend's child we were babysitting fell off the trampoline. Funny enough, the trampoline enclosure went up that night. At any rate, we - and the friend's child- are still alive and the kids are -at least currently- asleep. =]

Karen

------------------------
Quotes of the Week:

Jared: "I'm going to have another Cars party for my next birthday and we're going to have a race with 200 laps!"

Camryn: "I'm going to have a baby soon, because I'm almost a grown up. You're a grown up when you are 14." -->
------------------------------- Postscript to "A Week at the Zoo":I forgot to add the part about our "zoo." Jared's new hobby is collecting insects. His first pet was "James," a garden spider that met it's unfortunate demise when mommy accidentally hit his spider bowl, turned it over and smashed him trying to catch him again. Jared was distraught, but after many tears and finding a new "James" he finally got over the tragedy (funny enough, he wasn't distraught at all when he accidentally brought James II to an unfortunate early demise. He also has caught a moth, a "rolly-oly" bug and several other species. So far we have managed to keep Jared's zoo outside on the deck.

Jared also built a nifty lego plane that has four engines: one fire, one steam, one electricity and one gas... I guess he's looking into alternate fuel sources already.

Karen