Wednesday Wonderings

*Think the real purpose of a smartphone might actually be to make me go crazy. Can't seem to compose a message using swype without having to correct half the words. Magically, infuriatingly, "Work" becomes "quirk," "let" becomes "key," and "talk" becomes "gadfly," along with some other unmentionables that had me laughing so hard right before bed last night that I couldn't fall asleep. And really, folks? Is gadfly even a word?

*Supposed to be reading "Lord Jim" by Conrad this week for my English class. Good thing it's not called "Lord Jim Goes to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade" or I might not get through it. (Well, okay, I might not get through it anyway.)

*Exactly what will I complain about when I finish school? I'll have to think of something.

*Christmas shopping is so far from done that it's not even funny

*Seems as though the kids like to complain about dinner even when we're having something they like: "What's wrong with these mashed potatoes? Why are they so watery?"

*Thanksgiving, plus Thanksgivings 2 and 3 (in which many leftovers were consumed) has me done with turkey until next November.

*One day I am going to see about getting a research grant to study the unexplainable magnetic forces with which my children's clothing is drawn to the bathroom floor. I mean, surely there must be a scientific explanation. I'll be sure to publish my findings.

*Started "James and the Giant Peach" with Julia tonight. I sure hope I don't find out halfway through that Roald Dahl was a woman...

*If this is what we call "after school snacks" at our house, I really shouldn't wonder about the kids not eating dinner, should I?

*"Thou shalt not covet" does not apply to a fancy beach cruiser stored in the garage for a neighbor, right??

That's it for now. By the way, gadfly apparently means nuisance, pest, or meddler. Cannot wait to incorporate that one into my vocabulary. Watch for it, folks.

Better Than That Macy's Garbage

The day before Thanksgiving, I wondered aloud to my dear husband why we never watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I remembered enjoying it as a kid and thought maybe the girls would like it. So, yesterday, we tried it out, and I got my answer.

Turns out the reason we never watch it is because it's as Boring as All Get-Out.

Boringer, in fact, than watching grass grow, paint dry, etc., etc. Maybe if it were just cool floats, there would at least be a little bit of a higher level of enjoyment. But alas, the floats all appear to be boring throw-backs from years past, the parade is continually interrupted by strange performances from people I've never heard of, and the whole thing really just feels like one giant commercial for NBC... interrupted, of course, by actual commercials. Perhaps to see it live would be a different experience altogether, but, for my part, I am ready to swear it off for good. Even watching it over the kitchen island whilst I was occupied with 25 other things, I still felt myself becoming bored to tears on many more than one occasion. Call me a grinch, but even I have some standards regarding the way I waste my time in front of the television.

On that note, here are some pictures of the girls on the day of their school's Vocabulary Parade, which conveniently debuted on Halloween. (Way to go, MP Elementary, for being politically correct enough to shun real costumes on Halloween while being cool enough to make up another reason for the kids to dress up.)

The second graders were tasked with creating a t-shirt that illustrated a compound word, while the kindergartners had the more mundane task of decorating a headband illustrating a high use word, like a day of the week or a month of the year. Julia picked "jellybean," (which is fitting given her "Julie-Bean" nickname) and Vanna picked "January." She decorated the crown herself, but she was feeling a little left out in the t-shirt department, so I did a shirt for her to go with her themed headband.

I'm telling you guys, I wish you could have been there, because this parade was waaaay more entertaining than that atrocity we subjected ourselves to yesterday. So, while you turkey continues to digest, I invite you to feast your eyes on stars of the third annual MPE Vocabulary Parade.

showing off her fancy tee

ever made a snowman with a candy corn 

for a nose and nerds for a mouth?

Maybe it's time you tried...

cute shirt for a cute girl

Parade in Progress

stopping for an autograph

the lovely onlookers

Vanna with her class

(at this point, she was holding the bottom

of the shirt up because the cotton balls

had started to fall off. Oops.)

P.S. Hope your Thanksgiving was resplendent with yummy food and lovely company. I know mine was!

Transroomation

Okay, peeps, I apologize in advance for the plethora of pictures that you are about to experience, but there is just no way around it. This is the post in which Savanna's "room" becomes an actual bedroom. It's pretty exciting stuff. (I'm just happy that we remembered to take pictures throughout most the project, since we are generally pretty terrible about that.)

Our house has four bedrooms, but since we are using one of them as an office, we  decided to convert a strange loft-type room upstairs (that we have no use for otherwise) into an additional bedroom for Savanna, to eventually be shared with Alexa once we have another baby. And that is exactly what "we" (read: Craig) have been working on since we moved in at the beginning of August.

The room already had walls and a space for a door, but also had four troublesome open windows that needed to be closed up, (with framing, drywall, cardboard filler, more drywall, lots of layers of joint compound, texture, and paint)  in order to make it a bedroom...along with an actual door. It's been a long process, with a steady break for just about the whole month of September, but we (ahem, Craig) have been back in business for the last few weeks and now Savanna has real walls, paint, and an actual bed to sleep in. (This poor middle child of ours seems to always be the one to get the shaft.)

 Anyway, here is the process and the proof.

starting the framing 

beginnings of drywall 

filling up the space with cardboard for noise reduction

the view from the hallway that goes 

nowhere during the filler/drywall part.

(more on this awesome hallway later)

Craig risking life and limb to fill in the 

windows on the staircase side of the room

more drywall 

framing the door

getting lots of help from these lovely assistants

a real door

texturizing before painting

Dusty Daddy

starting to paint

(this part usually goes really quickly with help from the kids)

bunk bed wall

one million miles of tape 

two million miles of tape

going for the plaid effect

checkers, anyone?

lots and lots more taping

pure fanciness

getting the bunk bed together

more bunk bed fun

Voila! Bedroom in Wonderland.

Craig is amazing. As usual.

(But I don't know how he would have done 

it without his talented sub-contractor)

Next on the agenda is framing in a closet so that Savanna doesn't have to keep going across the house to get her clothes out of Julia's. That one is in the works right now and hopefully will be operable pretty soon.

A Good Reason to Stall

 I really should be reading Uncle Tom's Cabin right now. I gathered up my book and my notes like a good little student when I suddenly remembered on my way upstairs that I had to hop online to renew an overdue library book. And, 20 minutes later, here I still am. (Craig is in the other room enjoying his new surround sound right now. His homework is a lot funner than mine.)

I know that everyone is probably up to their eyeballs with Pumpkin/Halloween pics and pretty much over it. I mean, Thanksgiving is just a little over a week away. Let's get on with it already, right? But here are some of ours anyway. Lots, lots more to come, on account of I seem to be very, very short on time these days. But as long as I post before next Thursday, then I figure I'm not technically behind, right?

I'll keep telling myself that while you enjoy our little Halloween Gallery. (Hallowallery? Galloween? I'm still working out the kinks on that one.)

Daddy gets all the points here. I stood on the sidelines and look pictures while he did all the dirty work involving the pumpkin guts. Such a stud.

Love them the pumpkins. And the girlies.

Better Squeeze This in While I Can...

Hooray! We finally live in a city with community activities that are both FUN and FREE. (In Laveen, things were either fun OR free, but rarely both.)

Good ol' Goodyear had a fabulous fall community festival, chock full of pumpkin decorating, animal petting, and general revelry. I won't lie, though...the most exciting part for me was probably the acquisition of four (FREE!) reusable shopping bags. If only my old Save the Earth Club could see me now!

Can't believe she's mine

Sorry, future Julia, for posting this picture

in which it appears that you are creepily attempting

to strangle your sister, but I couldn't pass it up.

(We all know you were just trying to get her to 

face the camera, which, incidentally, she never does.)

See, future Lexa? You always looked away at the last second.

Apple cheeks and pumpkin stickers

Love this "get me out of here" face 

almost as much as the strangling picture

That's better, but check out Lexa's averted gaze...

(This picture is dedicated to the Lady in Yellow, 

who will never know that her headless visage

 has been repeatedly featured on a stranger's blog.)

Triple Decker

two baby chicks

Julia ran up to me right after this picture

was taken with an incredulous yelp that 

the chick had just peed on her hand.*

Note that the rabbit is looking at

 the camera and yet Alexa is not...

Chillin' out, maxin,' relaxin,' all cool

She can't say her sisters never taught her anything

Fin. Halloween pics to come!

*the reason I started this blog in the first place is so that I would have a place to write things like "incredulous yelp." For some reason, they frown on cool phrases like that in academic papers.