As a Crow Flies

I took my three smalls with me to run errands the other day. Todd really doesn't like being in the car for very long at all. On the way home, we had the following conversation.

Todd: "Mom, why do we have to take this road to get back to town."

Me: "Because it is the only direct road we have back to our town."

Todd: "Wouldn't it be faster if you found a shortcut that takes us straight to our house instead?"

Me: "If there was a road straight from here to our house it might be faster. The shortest distance between two points is always a straight line, but we can't drive in  a straight line from here to our house."

Todd: "You could if you would make the car drive the way a crow flies."

Me: "Maybe, but even if we drove straight through on a crow's path, we would have to drive up and down over the hills and mountains between here and the house and that would probably slow us down quite a bit."

Todd: "Not if you had crow gear installed in the car so we could fly over it instead of driving."

He makes a good point.What do you think the mechanic's reaction will be when I ask him to replace my 4-wheel drive with crow gear?
 

Happy birthday, Todd!

My baby boy turned 9 today. He woke everybody up saying,"You HAVE to tell me happy birthday!" I told him, "No! You have to stay little!" Somehow, I don't think I am going to win that argument.

We usually only have small family parties, but he really wanted to invite friends to his birthday this year. Despite the short notice, he had a lot of kids show up! They aren't even all in this picture. I think we were still rounding up some who were playing football in the field. 

Todd listened to everybody sing "Happy Birthday" to him with his usual personality traits shining through. I love this kid. I really do. Sometimes I think I should have named him Isaac since it means "laughter."

Then, being the well-trained child he is, he blew out his candles slowly to make sure I got the pictures. These candles are great for that, though, because although they aren't trick candles they are difficult to blow out!

After presents, cake, goodie bags, and hotdogs, the boys all went back out to the field to play football and have some swordfights on the hill. I had fun sitting on the picnic table and cheering for the littler guys. It distracted me from thinking about Todd only having 364 days left of a single-digit age.

Happy birthday, Todd! I love you! And for the record, I still think you should stay small for a long time!

Todd wants to be a gummy bear....

I can tell you that Todd is funny, one of the funniest people I know,  but sometimes it is easier to show you than to tell you.

He is always cracking me up.

This weekend, he and one of his friends wrote new lyrics for the song "I Wanna Be A Billionaire." Then he and another one of his friends performed it for me today.

Here it is for you to enjoy! (Todd is on the right.)

The Coconut Experience

A few weeks ago Todd  asked me to buy a coconut for him. Somewhere along the line he had read about drinking coconut milk from the coconut, and decided he wanted to try it. In fact, he even asked me to make sure it had "fresh milk" in it.

How does one ensure a coconut is fresh? I truly don't know, so I offered to go on a tropical vacation and pick him one straight from a tree. To my deep consternation, he didn't want me to do that. It would take too long.

So I went to Walmart and found my monkey a coconut. Then he had to wait three days due to back-to-back football games to try it. When we got home from his Saturday game, he immediately got his coconut out of the fridge and got Jack to drill it open for him.

Then he found a straw, and with every ounce of pent-up anticipation in his little frame, he took a deep drink of his coconut milk.

The verdict?

He wasn't impressed. So Beth tried it...

and wasn't impressed.

So Kyle tried it... and wasn't impressed.

This has me thinking I really should go on a tropical vacation and bring home a coconut with fresh milk to see if we might get better results.  I would make that kind of sacrifice for my children because I am a vacation-starved loving mom that way.

Don't worry about the rest of the coconut going to waste, though. After his initial disappointment, Todd perked right up. "Mom!" he said, "If you can find me some long grass to make a hulu skirt out of, I can turn this into a coconut bra and do the hulu dance for Halloween!"

On second thought, maybe I better stay home and make sure my boy isn't going out in public wearing a coconut bra.

Patience is a Virtue

The elementary school focuses on a positive character trait every month, and then awards certificates to the kids whose teachers select them for modeling that trait. These are called the Kid With Character awards. January's word was patience. In January all three of my little kids were independantly chosen to receive the Patience award.

Ironically, January had so much snow that the monthly assembly was cancelled. The kids had to be patient and wait until February's assembly to be recognized. When Beth was called to the stage for her award, she could hardly contain her excitement and was beaming from ear to ear.


After passing out the awards, the principal commented on how impressive it was that all 3 of the Wellborn kids were chosen for the patience reward, particularly since the teachers don't discuss their selections with each other. She said something about asking Jack and I how we raised patient children.

I suspect it has more to do with having so many brothers and sisters than it has to do with any one thing we have taught them. With six siblings sharing everything (bathrooms, bedrooms, vehicles etc) you pretty much HAVE to learn to wait your turn. Add to that a zero tolerance policy for hitting/kicking/wrestling and you have a pretty good recipe for raising some fairly patient kids.

As proud as we are of all of them though, we had to laugh when they were all chosen for this award. It is obvious that none of their teachers have ever seen them have to wait their turns for the video games.

Congratulations, my little ones. We are proud of you and love you!

The Joy of (not) Cooking

A couple of months ago I decided it was time to teach my kids to cook. They can make basic things, like mac and cheese, scrambled eggs, toast, etc,but it was time to move them onto the next level.

I started out by having one kid in charge of dinner each night. With my supervision, they have been learning to braise meat, season sauces, cook rice, etc. Now I just have to let them know which meal they are making and they can pretty much get it made on their own.

This is working out really well for me. I have six kids at home. I cook dinner on Tuesday nights at the church, and then one of them is in charge each night for the rest of the week. And so far, they think this is FUN and argue over who gets to cook. I have the younger ones paired up with the older ones, and I still supervise, but my workload has dramatically decreased.

Our church had a chili cook-off a couple of weeks ago to raise money for the youth group to go on a mission this summer. It was Todd's turn to cook, so I let him make our chili.

He made chipotle chili. He opened all the cans, cooked the meat, and added all the spices.

Boy, did he ever add the spices.

It was great chili, but you have to be able to take the heat if you wanted to eat it.


Jack said Todd's chili was the best tasting chili there, and I agreed. We are biased that way, and we like spicy food. The chipotles gave it a true Southwestern flavor. It was incredibly yummy.

Sadly, Todd didn't win the chili cook-off, but if there had been a burn-down-your-esophagus-and-make-a-beeline-for-the-lemonade category, he would have cleaned house.

Better luck next year, buddy!

Friday Fieldtrip Date

I made arrangements to take last Friday off at both of my jobs.

I had a date.

With a much younger guy.

He had been planning it for weeks. The night before he packed us a picnic lunch: PBJ sandwiches, bananas, bottled water, and peanut butter cups.

On Friday I went to work for a couple of hours, then met up with Todd at his classroom. We were on our way to the 2nd grade fieldtrip at The Butterfly Palace.

We started out in a maze of mirrors that was too dark to allow for any pictures. It was very cool, though, and as each group of kids would make their way through it and reappear in the waiting area the other kids all clapped for them.

Then they had a chance to pet a blue-tongued slink. I passed on that opportunity. I prefer critters of the warm-blooded variety.

The next stop was to visit and admire all of the rainforest creepy crawlies they take care of. This is one of those lizards that runs across water. I am not sure if he was smiling at me because he was flirting or because he thought I might make a tasty meal.

Beth would have gone crazy over the frogs. There were fat frogs, skinny frogs, tree frogs, blue frogs. That sounds like a Dr. Seuss book doesn't it? I thought the poisonous blue ones were the prettiest, although I do think "pretty" is subjective in amphibians.

This was a fun picture to take. I loved seeing Todd's reflection in the mirror twice. Half of Todd's class comes to our children's program, so in this room I kept hearing, "Miss Jennifer, look over here!" "Miss Jennifer, I found a (insert critter name here.) Most of the critters have chameleon defenses, so some of them were a lot harder to spot in their habitats than others were.


I really thought the floating frog head photo prop was hilarious, and maybe a bit creepy looking. I wouldn't want to wake up to a giant body-less frog staring at me. But Beth might. I should frame this one for her room.
After the rainforest tour, we donned some cool 3D shades and headed into the theater to see a movie about the life span of a butterfly and a preying mantis. It ended badly for the butterfly. I don't recommend this flick if you like happy endings for your National Geographic specials.


Then we were at last headed into the hermetically sealed butterfly room. I am not kidding about that part. It is illegal for the moths and butterflies to escape, so we had to enter a small anteroom, shut the doors, then open the opposing doors to enter the butterfly room. Fortunately, it doesn't last long enough to really let the claustrophobia kick in.

There are people in this world whose entire job is to raise and care for butterflies. Then they bring packs of school children in and release newly emerged butterflies so the kids can watch them take off for the first time.

This one spread its wings, waited for them to dry off a bit, and then flew right towards me and landed on my hip.

Todd sidled up next to me and managed to coax my new-born friend to ride on his shirtsleeves instead. The outside of this butterfly is that lovely blue, but its inner wings are brown with dots. Those pretty dots are supposed to look like eyes to predators to keep these guys from being preying mantis food.

The whole room was full of beautiful things.

Beautiful butterflies flitting, drinking nectar, and eating bananas. I loved watching that nozzle attachment curl up when this one was done eating. (My ability to identify scientific anatomy confounds astounds you, doesn't it?)
Beautiful birds hopping from limb to limb on the trees.
More beautiful butterflies that looked like they were painted with glow-in-the-dark watercolors.
Beautiful flowers and foliage of all sorts.

Beautiful kids whose faces were lighting up every time a butterfly lit on them.
In my completely unbiased opinion though, this creature, with his big huge brown eyes and comedic personality was the best-looking critter there. My butterfly stayed on his arm the whole time we were exploring.

A lady saw my pitiful attempts to take a photo of Todd and I together, so she snapped this one for us.

These big chairs made wonderful photo props!


Then it was time to head back into the anteroom to leave. To avoid having to send Todd to jail for releasing a butterfly, the lady carefully removed our winged friend from his sleeve.

Then the kids hopped back on their buses to wind their way back to school, and I waved goodbye to my young date and all his buddies before climbing in my car to head back home.

It was an awesome date. Thanks, Todd... let's do that again soon!

Todd's Sunday Art

Curly Joe and Curly Moe

(Please excuse the bad photo colors... I had my camera on the wrong setting and I didn't want to mess with editing them tonight.)

Except for their eyes and freckles, my two little guys look just like their dad, right down to their thick, unruly curly hair. This is about as "long" as it gets because their hair doesn't grow out, it grows around. It waves all over the place, horns sprout up around their ears and on the napes of their necks, and curlycues spring out from their cowlicks. They have hair that many girls envy. I love their thick, shiny locks, but when it gets too unmanageable I have to sit them down for a shearing.

Last night it was time to buzz off all those gorgeous curls. (They will be back in full bloom in a matter of weeks.) On their heads it doesn't nearly look like as much hair as it really is, but once it is all sheared off there is enough for a few wigs.


Todd particularly likes having his hair curly, but in the end they are both happy to have it shorter again. It makes it a lot easier to see the bunnyears when the horns are gone.

Cardboard and scrapping

I was re-organizing paper goods during the Tuesday Night Dinner, and asked if anybody wanted the empty box.Todd immediately claimed it and made it a home, a car, a dance club, and several other structural identities. It was the cheapest fun he has had this year! (and I am pretty good about finding cheap or free fun!)

I have been participating in a couple of challenges since the new year. One of them is working out three times a week at Curves. Trust me, NOBODY wants to see pictures of that. So this is my photo today for the Photo a Day Challenge I am part of. That silly box rode home with us and is set up in my pretty blue room. It wasn't the decor style I was going for.
And this was for a template challenge I am enjoying. I have developed an incredible love of digi scrapping with blank templates. I loved these pics of Todd rocking out the ukelele.
The big challenge I am part of is the amazing digi race with two challenges a week. This was my layout for the first one. I am so impressed that I am done with mine a full 4 nights before it is due. I am not known for doing things before the last minute. I had to black out the depressing journaling because my blog isn't about the aches and pains of life. I try hard to keep it happy and upbeat even when I'm not! :0)


The crop I was going to go to the other night was cancelled, but has been rescheduled for next month. I stopped by Johanna's store the other day and armed myself with a black ink pad. When the crop gets here I will be ready to create some sloppy junque pages. Of course, knowing me, I won't print the photos or gather the papers until about an hour before I have to leave for it. After all, I was the one they parodied in the "If it weren't for the last minute I wouldn't get anything done" quote.

Does it surprise you...

that Todd would receive a "TopTurkey" certificate? It shouldn't. I am sure the rest of the kids in his class also received one, but I have compelling proof that he really is a turkey.
Meet Senor Todd. (I don't know how to make my "n" and "enyay" with my keyboard. Just pretend I type fluent Spanish.)

He has arrived to protect our borders from stray chickens, immigrating cows, and curious horses.


He's got his eye on you.
This is 70's Todd. The sideburns do me in. He woke me up Sunday morning wearing these. It was quite the curious sight to open my eyes to. I laughed and asked him where he got them. He said, "I grew them." And then he told me how he has to be careful to leave them on the plastic so they stay sticky. Everybody grows facial hair on sticky paper, right?
Josh bought these for Todd and Talon the other day. Talon's was a goatee. Too bad I didn't get to take pictures of both of them with furry faces. They both could have received a Top Turkey certificate.

"Pruning"

I was reading about fruit trees this year and learned that if you want your apple trees to produce good fruit you should prune them a bit every year. I am sure there is a right way to prune an apple tree and a wrong way to prune an apple tree. I am quite certain the pictures you are about to see are exemplary of the wrong way to prune an apple tree.

I came home from the grocery store and Jack told me he had to show me what Todd and Kyle had done. Do you see all these limbs and sticks?? That was one side of my apple tree.

This is the rest of the crime scene in full. Josh and Jack were talking on the porch, and Mystery came out and asked them if they knew the boys were cutting down the tree. In just a very short period of time, they had climbed the ladder and the pallett (Todd isn't nearly as bold as Kyle in his tree-climbing approach), looped Jack's tool belt over one large limb, and were madly sawing away the branches. My poor decimated apple tree did not look like a V when I left the house. (Notice the other limbs in front of the tree?)

Rule number 360,000 I never thought I would have to make.... No Pruning the Trees Without Parental Permission and Supervision!

Birthdays!

Seven years ago I was laboring with an epidural to bring this guy into the world. It was a quiet morning, and the only ones in the room were Jack and I, and the doctor and the nurse. My doctor was a good man who listened to me when I said I wanted the epidural at 3, and everything about birthing this baby was easy. When he was born, the doctor was telling jokes and all four of us were cracking up. I have always felt that Todd is as funny as he is because he was literally born in a room full of laughter.

We won't be having cake and presents until this weekend, but we all gave him hugs and kisses and birthday spankin's today. My funny little guy, with his crazy, curly, cow-licked hair, those big huge eyes, and his larger-than-life approach to everything is now 7. Happy birthday, Todd! We love you!
I took him to the park this afternoon while we waited for Chet's pottery class to end. He spent the time sliding down the tunnel head first and upside down. That is just how he rolls!


Today is also my sister-in-law Sam's birthday. Happy birthday Sam! We love you too!

Catch Up #2... Todd's newest book, Faith's directions

Todd has been penning his latest best-seller. Only one page has a storyline, and the others have had their ink bleed through the paper so much that the scans don't look great at all. But it wasn't the story line that grabbed me. It was the credits on the cover. He sat there so intently and sounded out "illustrated" as he spelled it out. I think my little first-grader did a really good job figuring it out too! He spelled it like it sounds! Apparently, Deth Pool is a "sartit" hero. Are there any comic fans out there who can clue me in to what "sartit" is?
Now, onto the directions Faith and her friend gave me the other day to drop her off at said friend's house. Ready?

Take the road to Berryville. (okay... there is only one main road from our town to Berryville. I hope she doesn't mean one of the backroads.)
Pass the horses.(yeah.... horses... which horses, since half the town owns them??)
Turn at the corner. (which corner??? turn left or right????)
Across the street are three houses. (across the street from what???)
It's the third house. (I think I passed the wrong horses.)

Street names, people. Street names and immobile landmarks... these are the key to giving directions people can actually follow!

What's that smell?

We went to a local farmer's market/garden the other day to pick up some herb plants. I had the kids smell the basil, and got different reactions. Chet said, 'That stinks!" Kyle said, "mmmm, that smells good!" Beth said,"Let me smell it again! It does smell good!" and Todd said, "That smells like spaghetti and meatballs." Awwww.... that just warms my Food-Network-Nerd heart!