A mop and a bucket

Well, Clay came home and sopped me up with a sponge and wrung me out at Bread Company. I ordered the butternut squash soup and then I spent the entire time I was eating it wishing I had ordered anything but. It was like a large bowl of baby food heated up with a bunch of brown sugar. Blehky.

Now let's see if I can give you something to smile about...

For Thanksgiving, I have to admit that I was very creative in the decorating department. I put a glass hurricane on a white salad plate, put about half a bag of coffee beans in the hurricane, stuck a candle in the beans, tied a bow around the outside of the hurricane and there you have a delicious smelling center piece.

Now, don't forget to blow out the candles when you're done with dinner or you might come back into the kitchen to see the coffee beans on fire and you might have to run the cute plate and blazing coffee beans to the sink and then the hurricane might burst into a few pieces.

Home is where, exactly?

Lord? Are you there? It's me, April.

I know I haven't been talking to you about the house thing lately, I sorta figured you were tired of my incessant whining. I envision you clenching the bars on the Pearly Gates and banging your heavenly head against it while screaming to Saint Peter, "Why?! Why won't she just do what I want her to do?!!!"

So, here's the thing God, I think I may not have been paying attention when you told me where you want me to be. Is it here? In Missouri? Because my heart just really isn't here, I'm pretty sure I left it a few hundred miles west. I'm trying, really, I am. I've been trying for eight years to make this place my homeland. I have moments when I start to feel all warm and cozy here and then the chills take over again.

I feel like we moved to Missouri to be spiteful. I think we thought there would be family here, there's not. I think we thought we would find that niche, we haven't. I still feel like I'm a visitor, an outsider, the person that doesn't really know how to act, what to say, where to be, what to do. I don't feel like that when I go back to Kansas.

When I'm in Kansas I immediately connect to people. I feel comfortable walking in my shoes. It's all so familiar, pleasant, comforting. I speak their language.

Lord, I long for community. I know we've shot ourselves in the foot many times by commuting to a church twenty miles away, home schooling our children, living in an interstate community where people drive to work miles away. Are you nodding your head in agreement, Lord? Are you telling me to wake up? Smell the chicken shi...uh, crap?

Is it me? Am I just not accepting what you have given me? How many times have I looked around and mumbled, "What the heck am I doing here?” I never did that in Kansas. How many times did we silently struggle with packing up and moving back? But, we stuck it out thinking You had brought us here. Were you saying go back? Was it so hard because You thought eventually we would open our eyes and see the blinking neon arrow pointing back home?

I don't feel like I'm living the life that you gave me. I'm in a foreign land. Is it too late to go back? Can I get a do-over?

Am I suffering from comparison? Is my sinful nature getting the best of me? Can you shut off my desire to be elsewhere? Can you take away my fantasy of finding a home that fulfills all my desires? Can you show me where the heck you want us to be?

Lord, I'm trying to put it all in your hands. I'm trying to see the bright side, which is difficult when I live in a big, long, dark, brown, turd that I can't call my own. Show me something Father, this time I'll try to listen with my eyes on you.

Your ever questioning servant,

April

Pick up some take out!

I'm gonna write this real quick before all hell breaks loose in my kitchen, oh wait, that already happened.

So, I'm making the whole feast by my little old self and I'm dragging my butt getting it all done. Duh, I'm in here blogging instead of cooking. Last night I tried to make pie crust and it turned out all weird and gucky (yes, that's a word in my house). Usually, I can fix it, but nothing I did made it better, so I threw in the towel and let the kids play with it.

I think I cursed myself when I was in line at the grocery store yesterday. The clerk was saying how she can't make a pie, never has, is scared to attempt that blah, blah, blah. I was thinking it's not that big of a deal, the crust is only like three ingredients, you really can't mess it up, geesh, follow a recipe. Yeah, I've been trying to dislodge my foot from my oral cavity all morning.

I did buy a couple of frozen pie crust so I baked one for a pudding pie and made a pumpkin pie in the other. I set both the pie and the empty pie shell on the oven. You know what what I'm gonna say, don't you? Was your thought going in the direction of the two year old? He decided to eat the empty shell for breakfast and after I calmly threw away the rest of it and removed him from the scene he snuck back in to get a few finger swipes of the pumpkin pie. He really is the cutest devil I've ever known. I hope he lives long enough for me to retell this story to him as an adult. I'm thinking his life span is getting shorter by the minute. Actually, I think he's driving me to an early grave. He'll have to tell his kids how rotten he was to his mother and how she died so unexpectedly one Thanksgiving day.

Back to the kitchen I go. Happy Thanksgiving.

My fancy date

Practicing for our ice dancing routine

[Okay, I had to remove this picture for the sake of my friend Melanie, who thought my dress was see-through. It was not, just a weird reflection from the flash, but I'll save you all the shock of thinking your seeing too much of me.]

The Tango

The Bruise....oooh lovely.

I tried for an hour to put my hair up and then decided to do the Marsha Brady look. I was going to post a bunch of pictures of the building, but Clay took them off my camera. It's not often that an architect gets to go to a big fancy event to celebrate his building. I was so proud of him.

Who's answering your door?

We're traveling to Louisiana and I'm in a hotel with high speed, so I can finally post some pictures and it won't take me all day.

This guy gave my kids quite a scare during their trick or treating adventures. I have to admit he was really funny, he spoke in a high Shaggy sorta voice.

I'm feelin' a lil' green

Whatcha think? Keep it? Change it? Too green? Hmmm, does it make my butt look fat? Cuz, that's really the clincher to anything. If it says big butt then it's gotta go.

How 'bout Baby Ruth?

My husband thinks I need to omit "The Big Long Turd" bit in my bio over there on the right. He said that if our landlord ever reads my blog that they might not think that was so funny and they might ask us to move. My reply...

What should I call it? The big long Baby Ruth?

Y'all ready for this?

I thought I’d share a couple of my most embarrassing moments just to make you all feel better about yourselves. You know what? I could probably dedicate an entire blog to April’s humiliating situations. Sad, but true.

Okay, we’ll start off slow...

After a J.V. basketball game that I had been cheering for I went down to the girls locker room to find my friend Sonya who I swore went down to the locker room just seconds before. I was yelling in a very high sing-song voice, “Sonya?! Sonya!!! Where are yooooo-hooo?!” I turned into the locker area where all the benches were and there the entire visiting Varsity Basketball team was sitting staring at me. Their coach somberly said, “I don’t think Sonya is in here.”

And now for a really juicy one…

I was probably three weeks post partum from my second child. Suffice to say I was pretty chunky, I mean beefy chunks, big marbled dipped in batter and fry it up chunkeeee! So of course I wanted to go get a snow cone.

My husband and I drove to the snow cone joint and parked as close as we could, cuz it’s hard to walk too far when ya got some beefy chunks to hall. The sun had set and the only light illuminating the parking lot was the glow from the neon on the snow cone shack.

We unloaded our little ones and lumbered across the parking lot and up the wooden decking of the snow-cone shack. We stood in line behind three beautiful young girls dressed in short-shorts and tank tops. They were so young and so thin and I remember feeling so old and so fat. They got there snow cones and walked off into the night.

We stood by the shack to enjoy our sugary ice and let our daughter take heaping spoonfuls of the sweet goodness. Like any two year old she became instantaneously sticky. I had gulped my snow cone down and was feeling a bit, shall we say, uncomfortable so I volunteered to go back to the car and get some baby wipes to clean her up. This would also give me the opportunity to relieve some of the pent up “uncomfortableness” that was swirling in my intestines without any of the other customers waiting in line at the shack knowing, hearing or smelling a thing. So as I entered the darkness of the parking lot I let freedom ring. I was probably "back firing, big juicy sounding, fat old lady rip-roaring flatulence" for three or four steps before my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I turned my head to see sitting on a bench not 15 yards from my car those three beautiful teenage girls frozen in silence with their spoonfuls of snow cone lifted halfway to their mouths agape in disbelief. God have mercy!!! I opened the passenger door of our car and hid myself in the back seat shaking my head and thinking, “I have to walk back by them! God please kill me now, just let me die!!!!”

After a few minutes I gathered the strength and decided the best thing to do was pretend I didn’t know they were there. I made a bee line to my husband told him not to ask any questions, just get the car and meet me on the other side of the shack. I told him the whole story on the way home.

For the past ten years every time we go get a snow cone guess what story we tell?

"Hey honey remember the time you farted the length of a football field and scared those poor little girls half to death?" Yeah, we're not short on exaggerations.

I'm in fabulous shape, thank-you!

I went to work out with my husband at the YMCA yesterday at 5:45am. I thought the place would be fairly empty and I wouldn't have to worry about people watching me.

However, as you can probably guess, all the really dedicated, hard-core, ripped bodies were there working themselves up to a nice glossy shine.

The only person I can really make fun of (because that makes me feel better about myself) is the guy leading the spinning class. I won't be joining that class purely out of fear that I would spin myself right off the bike and onto the scary instructor who would chew me up and spit me like I was a piece of gristle. There's also the fact that I don't want to stick my bodaciousness up in the air to remind all the spectators to put Jell-O on their shopping list.

Who are the people that get up before the sun to tone their bodies? "Not I", said the tall blond haired woman on the elliptical machine.

And that concludes my morning work out routine. So let's talk about my evening work out. It consisted of:

- informing my 4yo not to lock his little brother out of his room.
- listening to the 4yo cry because now he has locked himself out of his own room.
- consoling the 4yo that I can't unlock the door so he'll have to wait until his dad gets home to fix it...shhhhh it's okay, you'll be able to get in your room again, shhhhh.
- falling asleep at 7:00 pm while trying to watch the news.
- being jolted awake by a 4yo yelling "MOM!!! Levi is coloring on the carpet!"
- scrubbing permanent marker off the carpet (Goo-gone, I love you)
- deciding that breaking down the door is really the best solution because these boys have to go to bed or, or, or....stand back boys I'm breakin' it down!!!

So, yes I had a mini-kick boxing class and I won.

Serene Sunday

Heard at church-

"It smells like someone took a dump in the foyer."

"Good grief the entire church smells like poop."

"It still smells down here, did someone not take the diapers out?"


That's what my husband heard. What he didn't know was that his son was the culprit. Levi should win the prize for stinkin' up God's house in a very unholy way. So, I apologize to all my fellow brothers and sisters for the offensive smell that may have caused some of you to go out for a breath of fresh air this morning.



On the way home from church-

The little stinky monkey (or should I say giant stinky ape) had a major melt down. He cried for the good part of an hour. He was so worked up that he started the yasnuffing bit. You know, whaaaaaa, yasnuff-yasnuff, whaaaaa ya-ya-ya-yasnuff. He feel asleep and continued to do the yasnuff spasms for a good 30 minutes. Poor thing. It's so hard being two.

C is for Cookie and that's good enough for me.

Chickens
It was just a matter of time. I knew it would happen eventually. Chickens in the HOUSE!! On our way out this morning one of the kids, because I can so easily blame them and not myself, left the garage door open and the door to the house.

It's bad enough to walk in your garage and have a bunch of big birds staring at you from atop a bicycle rack. It's worse walking in your office and wondering why a chicken is standing in your chair looking at the computer screen.

In fact how do you know that a chicken isn't writing this? Someday I'll come home and they'll have us locked out and we'll have to live in the coop. They're kinda creepin' me out today. Bok, Bok.

Clarity
I have none, especially when I write. I wrote a terrible post over at Larger Families about, umm, uhhh, what was I saying?

Anyway, if I just had a British accent I would sound smart (Madonna). Here's my two cents worth on that whole thing. I know she's whacko, but for crying out loud she could bring the entire Afican nation home with her for all I care! The baby she adopted now has a chance to survive in this world. I guarantee if she was Sally Smith from Kansas nothing would have been said about that adoption. And that's why I like the color blue. I know, I'm coming through clear as a bell.

Conversations

A Proud Moment for Homemade Pasta Sauce

Ike- Mom? Dad? I have a question for you.

Us- Okay.

Ike- Remember when Mom made that disgusting sauce? I said to myself, "I gotta eat this, I gotta eat this", and I did!

Us- Is that your question?

Ike- Yeah, I ate that disgusting sauce!

Us- Okay! Way to go Ike!


Convorting

The govnah of Missouray was quite lovely. He shook my hand three times. He's short (but that's just from my point of view, which any person under six foot is considered short) and I think he may have been trying to compensate for his lack of height by wearing black cowboy boots. But, I thought that was cool, so yee-haw govnar Blunt.

Tonight I party like it's Oct. 31, 1517!
The day Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenburg Castle church. I know! Crazy Presbyterian People that we are, this is a reason to get all nutty and gather together for drinks, food and , oh please!... Let there be dancing so I can try out some of my new robot moves. But, maybe I should save those to humiliate my children in front of their friends, I don't want other parents stealing my moves.

Tomorrow I go to the opening of the fine arts building. I'm wearing a sleevless dress and accessorizing with a dark purple bruise on my right bicep and a nice red scratch from some chicken wire on my hand. Oooh, April you classy lady!