A picture to prove it...

We got invited (invited ourselves) to go camping with Brandon's brother and his family. It was a blast, now that we are home and all the laundry is washed and the trailer is cleaned out and nobody smells like OFF bug repellent OR campfire. The kids played in the stream, rode bikes, played games, played with cousins, played with the "camping barbies" (yes, they really do have "camping barbies", they are the barbies that you bring camping hoping that they will get lost out in the wilderness and be left, a kind of thinning the herd if you will). The kids had a blast. Brandon cut firewood (I call that work) and I lounged around between meals and watched the Prince grow.

What did I, mother of the year do for 4 days? I ATE, I ATE ALOT! I pretty much woke up and had a small bowl of cereal, not wanting to waste calories on breakfast and lunch, I ate sparingly for the daylight hours, so that I could eat at breakneck speeds from 6p.m.-till I fell asleep out of dutch oven food exhaustion. We ate alot of dutch oven cooking, actually I got all the ingredients put together and bossed Brandon around the campfire, telling him how to cook said dutch oven meals (I really don't like to smell like camp fire, so I only get close while A-roasting marshmallows or B-throwing a dirty plate into the fire, like chuckarama, you need to get a clean plate between helpings). I know that you want pictures, and here is the 1 and only 1 picture that we took the entire "memory making" weekend...





It is a picture of a relatives headstone that we may or may not be related to. Brandon has been wanting to check out the Fruitland cemetery, a very happening place by the way, and look for this headstone of this person that he thinks may be a relative. (A genealogy thing, I'll never understand.) As we pulled into the tiny cemetery, pulling our 5th wheel if you can imagine,

Brandon says "get the camera I want to take a picture of this headstone if I find it"
I reply, "No, you can't because I was to lazy to get the camera out of my purse and take pictures the entire camping trip and I don't want this to come back and haunt me."
He says "It will only haunt you if this headstone is the one that I really need and I don't get all the information right."
So I say," Okay, but maybe take a picture of the 3 stinky ornery, buggery kids running around this blankety blank cemetery."
He just laughs, I go back to reading my book...(The Choice by Nicholas Sparks and by the way it was really good) and after about 5 minutes everyone is piled back into the truck and we are going down the road,
I ask "did you get any pictures of the kids?"
He says "No, they were running around and I didn't want them in the picture with the headstone of the guy we may or may not be related to"
I say, "Great, we might as well have stayed home, now I feel guilty because I didn't get any pictures of the great weekend" (great because we are on our way home, it is like one of those trips that you don't realize is great until you are home, and then it gets better as the days go by and you realize your normal life is dull and the camping trip was super fabulous!)
So long story short, don't mention around us that your family is going camping for a long weekend (we may get ourselves invited, or you may feel compelled to invite us) and don't ask me to scrapbook anything that had to do with the 24th of July weekend, unless you want to see a headstone of the relative that Brandon may or may not be related to.
Keep your dutch ovens greased, Doreen.

Tickers

So I was checking out people I want to know better (BLOG STALKING) and I noticed almost everyone has a ticker or a countdown to something great happening in their life. I even have a "back to school" countdown, so I am guilty of the countdown frenzy.

One ticker that I came across was quite terrifying...A NURSING TICKER. Apparently people want other people to know that they are breastfeeding and bragging about how long they can keep up the feeding frenzy ( I am not bitter about all you great nursing moms I'm not). I saw this and was a little taken back. Maybe it is because I will never win the award for "best breastfeeding mom of 2008", so I found this said ticker a little crazy/gross. It just struck me that you shouldn't have to announce how your feeding a baby if their oh, I don't know, under 6 months. Most babies have to eat, and most moms breastfeed or give a baby a bottle so take note...YOU SO NOT HAVE TO ANNOUNCE THIS!! I have never read an obituary (and I read them all) that said "baby starved right to death". It is just a given that if you have a baby your feeding them something.

To illustrate how this works I have added a breastfeeding ticker, (FYI I am done nursing, this is just for your enjoyment I swear, and I want to feel like a cool mom.) I also love the picture...Both mom and dad are not wearing a shirt, does dad just want to feel as agitated and frustrated as the mom that can't nurse with her shirt on, or with out 23 pillows surrounding her, or without the tv remote, the phone, a 59oz glass of water and 2 or 3 magazines strategically placed around her while she feeds her baby in the most relaxing and natural way there is? I am still not bitter, I LOVE YOU ENFAMIL and AVENT. p.s The prince now weighs 16 lbs. So literally "suck that" breastfeeding warriors. I am still not bitter, breastfeeding is just not for everyone. (at least that's what my husband keeps telling me)

The bearded lady

WARNING GROSS STUFF WRITTEN IN THIS POST...KEEP A THROW UP BOWL CLOSE BY!!

I knew there was a problem when I went through the drive through at the bank and the teller asked if I was going to use the $20 cash back to buy a razor. I am a hairy mess. I am having "hormone" issues (that's what I call gross stuff) and I am blaming it all on having a baby boy. So GOOD NEWS: I made an appointment to have a lip, chin and brow wax, and now I am no longer the bearded lady. Maybe that's why I can't get a date with my husband, he has a "no more facial hair than me" policy and I don't make the cut. Anyway, so back to the waxing thing...I go and get all smoothed over and the girl asks if I may be interested in LASER HAIR REMOVAL on my chin and lip. I am thinking she must think I resemble a billy goat, what with my hairy chin and matching "stach". So I say, "I may be" (yea,when monkeys fly out of my butt) and take the paper. As I am driving home and at every red light feeling my smooth as a baby butt face I am thinking... Maybe I do want/need Laser hair removal, I could feel this silky smooth all the time. I am still thinking about it. I wish my dentist would do laser hair removal or even just waxing while I was all numb from getting my cavities fixed, two ouch things in one appointment...GREAT!!

One bad thing about getting waxed is that now I have no goatee or mustache to "shadow" my acne. ACNE I said. I told you this whole post is gross. I thought that you are supposed to outgrow zits in like the 11th grade. I guess I am now going through "mom puberty", you know it is when you act all crazy and ornery all the time and you have zits and you are lazy and all you want to do is lay around, and if I didn't have morals I would want to "neck" and "heavy pet" with my husband, and if you could text faster than 3 words a minute I would text someone something cool in the text language that I can't even figure out. So one reason that I think I will pass on the laser removal is that I like my acne to be covered up part of the time, and I like to go and as my sister Julie says, "feel pampered" even if that "pampered" is essentially ripping out my lip hair by the root. It is one of the perks having as much facial hair as the bearded lady.

Irrigation

As you can see by the picture, it is swim season at our house. Join us every Tuesday for the irrigation turn, err I mean swimming in our hillbilly pool. Last year I was pregnant with the Prince and very sick, that combined with the Cryptosporidium outbreak (people with diarrhea going swimming, moms changing their babies diapers by the pool, basically any type of pooh except Winnie the Pooh in the pool area. Super gross, I know.) makes me dry heave at even the thought of swimming in the public pool. But no worries, I am getting better, I can at least talk about people with diarrhea, I just can't talk about moms changing babies diapers by pools, even though I change about 8 a day in my own home. So we haven't gone public swimming for about a year. We have been swimming in our ditch every Tuesday though, and let me tell you, it is a blast. Just like the Public pools we also have rules.

• If you think your drowning CALM DOWN AND STAND UP! the water level is about 2 feet and since none of my children are vertically impaired this is not a problem. The problem is when they are playing and "forget" that they are in the ditch and start "floundering" around and get all freaky and think they are drowning. There is no life guard, unless you count the guy we take the water from and he doesn't give a crap what the kids are doing as long as it is not on his water turn.



• Wear shoes, unlike most public pools where they are all about the no shoes in the pool, I prefer my kids to have their shoes on, it is very embarrassing to explain to insta care that your child has a cut foot because they were chasing a stick down the ditch and cut their foot. It is also fun to take off your shoe and watch it float down to a sibling, this is hard to do if your shoes are in the house. So for the love and the $10 co-pay, wear shoes.



• Wear a swimsuit or not, I don't really care. Again, this is where the public pool and I are different. Wearing a swimsuit at the pool is fun,but at the ditch it is just one more thing for a mom to wash, and I am really not a washing/drying type of mom in the summer. Swimming in your clothes in the ditch is like a "wash" and playing OUTSIDE until you dry is like a "dry", making just 1 less thing for me to do. As you can see in the picture, Oakley is in her swimsuit, and that is because she is in a "mermaid" phase and really thinks that she is a mermaid while she is wearing a swimsuit. Thanks TV show H2o Just add Water!



• Bring your bikes, Bring your dump trucks, just don't bring your littlest pet shops or Polly pockets, they will float away. The public pool frowns on boys bikes IN THE POOL. But not here, this is a bike wash, and a cool refreshing swim all in one. Dump trucks are also allowed, just make sure they get put away so I don't run the darn thing over while backing out of the driveway.



• There is no wait 30 minutes to swim rule. As soon as the water is turned down the ditch it is everyman for himself, just get out there kids. Imagine me in my Drill Sargent Voice..."Move it Move it Move it...", the Drill Sargent voice that I use at home, not the one that I use in the Primary at church, totally different tones.



• If you have diarrhea, feel free to swim...DOWNSTREAM key word here is downstream. I will not be going into more detail on this, it is common sense.



• Do not drink the water! Any questions see the rule above. We are at the bottom end of the irrigation ditch's and you never know, some mother may be changing her babies diaper on a ditch bank UPSTREAM. Totally Gross.



• If it is not Tuesday, WE ARE NOT IRRIGATING! Ask my 7 year old with the hideous scar (didn't want to explain to insta care) from pulling the head gate up his leg while trying to steal water ON A THURSDAY! I told him that is Karma working for ya, it is illegal to steal water, he is just lucky he wasn't shot by the guy who's turn is on Thursday.

So, if you are driving by and see us playing in the ditch, Do Not Call DCFS. They are aware that we still play in the ditch even though the year is not 1984. (Thanks for the call of concern) Feel free to find some cut offs or a string bikini thong (both not allowed at the public pool) and join us.