a little road trip

I forgot about the ROAD part of our trip :)  Here we are on the way home.  My kids all like to sing ... especially in the car ...

               and clap ...

and raise their hands with the music ...

It was a bit hard to get Buddy from my angle ... but please notice that he's singing too :)

Having a rest stop ... Honey Bunny has his shoes on the wrong feet ...

At the hotel ... these two really like to be together -- often in the same small space!  They just had an intense squabble ... and as soon as it was over ... they were back to sharing close quarters.  They were looking at Lego magazines ... or "lego-zines" as Honey Bunny calls them.

The kids were into picking up maps at the rest stops ... so voila ... we had ourselves some geography :)  Halo came up with a map game that they enjoyed for a pretty long while :)  And they are all kind-of smiling at once ... what a wonder :)

And as we hit Illinois or wherever ... Driving Machine donned his scarf ... and declared that one good thing about our state {versus Florida} is that we get to wear scarves :)  Oooh, lucky us ;)

a little blessing and perfumania

~BLESSINGS~

I was at Target this noon ...

And, of course, I've been to Target lots of times ... with my kids. And most of the time ... if I'm there long enough ... I notice several older ladies seem to give me this look that says ... oh, you're so lucky to have little ones ... and I'll attempt a smile and think yes, I am -- although blessed or fortunate are probably more appropriate words. But then my next thought is sometimes negative ... like ... but I'm so tired and overwhelmed...
 
Today, however, while I was at Target and receiving some of these "you're so fortunate" looks ... I didn't feel like smiling back. I wasn't feeling particularly thankful for my blessings. I was tired. Just tired. {I'm still recovering from sickness and I had trouble falling asleep last night. And then I awakened at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep.} But the fridge was empty ... other than a little milk and cheese and a few condiments ... so I had to go to the store in order to provide lunch -- albeit a late lunch -- for my blessings.

Anyway, after getting about three of those looks, I was prompted right then and there to call my children "blessings" instead of "kids" or "children" to help me be more thankful for them :) It worked. When I told Ezzie he was a blessing ... he said he wasn't :) But then I explained that a blessing is a special gift from God :) So ... as we did our shopping ... I said, "Come on, blessings." "Let's go, blessings." "Little Blessing, hold my hand." You get the idea :)

SEVERAL HOURS LATER ...

~PERFUMANIA~
Tonight, we were at Sam's Club ... still working at filling up the fridge ... and before I realized what Foofie was doing {I was kind-of in a fog}, Foofie {one of my blessings} tried on all of the tester/sample perfumes as though they were mosquito spray ... she told me afterwards that she did twenty squirts of each bottle ... ten on each arm.  Meanwhile Buddy {another blessing} was loudly telling her a few times that she's NOT a woman. "You're NOT a WOMAN! Perfume is for WOMEN!" And my Halo blessing was busy putting on too much parfum as well ...

Instead of saying something sensible like, "Put down the perfume."
I said to Buddy ... "Well, is Halo a woman?"
Because, you know, I was in a fog ...
I was aware enough, however, to notice that Buddy was not exclaiming at Halo ... just at Foofie.
"I don't know," he answered.
So ... he turned to her and said ...
"Are you a woman?"
"I'm becoming one," she replied.

Is this dialogue not nuts??? This probably wouldn't have happened if Husband hadn't taken off for the restroom ...

As I was retelling the perfume drama to my husband, he praised me with making my best sound effect ever -- the perfume squirt sound :) It was a proud moment ;)

And then he solved the woman question for all of us and determined that Halo is not a woman yet :)

And then we drove home with two highly fragranced gals -- and our windows open some -- while I explained proper perfume procedures :)

a little wigwam

After being super sick Friday and Saturday with strep ... I was feeling quite a bit better by this afternoon. The amox helped a ton ... but laughter {thanks to Little Guy} helped too :) Oh, and the sunshine was nice as well ...

"You need a haircut, Little Guy," I said.
"I don't want short hair," Little Guy responded immediately. The words flew out of his mouth without a moment of thought.
Long hair already??? At two and five-sixths???

"Where are the big kids?" I asked Daddy and Little Guy {shortly before suppertime}.
"They went to wake up the deers," Little Guy answered with a straight face.
I think he was teasing ... because when I repeated his answer back to him ..."They went to wake up the deers???"
He smirked and said, "No-oh."
He knew they were playing in the woods -- and he had heard something about building a wigwam -- at the back of our field {meadow sounds nicer though, yes?}.

After supper, the kids asked us to come see their incredible wigwam {which they intend to be a hideout to investigate crime}. So ... Jeff and I followed the kids down our road -- we don't like to walk through the meadow because it is sort-of like a marshy field :) -- and turned down the adjoining road ... to get to the back of our lot where the wigwam is situated. All the kids piled in and thankfully ... Daddy has a super smart phone that takes okay pictures :)
After climbing out of the wigwam ... Little Guy asked if we were going to go see the wigwam now. Apparently it didn't live up to his expectations ...