fire!

there were some huge fires in our neighborhood today, i think it was controlled burn day. anyway, you remember i live in the country. well sorta. anyway, on our way home from school, we just had to drive by and look. we watched the ash fall to the ground like huge black snowflakes. it was pretty interesting. on our way home, we were driving farmville, looking at the fields of animals.

"hey, look at the baby horse!"
"oh, look at the cute little goats"
"hey mom, i see some nursing cows!"
"i see a mexican...bok bok bok"


wha.....huh?

fussy sometimes mixes words up. we had a good laugh about that one. and then i reminded the 6 year old to not say it.

with our backyard full of fallen ash grass, we found a cool new thing to do. it's called, paint-yourself-black-with-ash. we gave ourselves mustaches and beards. we colored our hands. and then we realized we just looked dirty. or like we were in a very bad ol' timey movie.

when big d got home, i decided to go for a run. which, ya know, when half the neighborhood is on fire, is probably not the smartest choice. i really wanted to get out there, so i went anyway. i could smell smoke the whole time. but occasionally i could also smell bbq. it smelled so yummy and good. and then i remembered that the fields that were on fire were cow fields. i thought it was funny how my brain put that together. i came home and had a grilled hamburger for dinner.

it's awesome having cool friends,

because they post cool stuff like this, and then i get to see it. thanks deb! i'm putting this out there for all the beatles lovies.

skipping

don't you wish skipping miles was as easy as skipping songs?

yesterday i was out running. i had my little ipod, and we were going along. i was tired. it was an end of the day kind of run, and i was feeling it. a song came up on my ipod, and i didn't want to listen to it, so i just skipped ahead.

and then i thought, "boy, it would sure be nice to skip to the next mile"

wouldn't it be easy to go for a 10 mile run if you could skip the crappy miles? that one uphill battle with the headwind and rain. i could go without that. i could be happy to just hit the easy, gradual downhills. or mile 9 of a 10 mile run. i love the last mile of a run. it seems you get so much out of a run when you know you are almost done.

now, if in my runs, i could skip that long hard uphill 3 miles, how would my legs ever get strong? or my lungs? how could i learn to endure a long run, without enduring a brutal headwind and stinging snowflakes? how would i train to run up mountains, if i didn't first do those horrible runs? those miles that are, at least, uncomfortable, and at most, brutal?

it's totally like life. all those things that are hard, really do make us stronger. even if it just a mental strength that comes from enduring the storms, or telling ourselves "one more mile". i think so many of my peers are used to being able to "skip ahead" that we have lost the whole point of the marathon. to use the old church phrase, "to endure to the end". enduring doesn't mean you are always going to get the easy downhill.

using my phone for more than calling

big d got me a new phone for my birthday. one of the things i like about it is that it has a camera. i am not a photographer, i am not even close. but i still need to take pictures, and i forget the camera a lot. i usually don't forget my phone. so it's cool that it has a camera. i got these a couple of days ago.

jimmy and fussy with their girl cousin. can you see them dragging her? you can't see their faces, mostly just imagine her going along with it, until she realizes that she has no choice. my boys are like that. it's all fun and games until you find a frog (or snake) in your pocket, right?

this is where we were headed. to see the sheep. it really looks colder than it was. it was a beautiful spring day. if you look close you can see a baby sheep. who knew sheep were born black? probably sheep did. but i did not. i got other pictures of the sheep, but it is all their back ends. which, while funny, isn't nice. i couldn't help it though, the sun was shining, and i couldn't really see what i was taking a picture of, with the glare on my screen.

harry showing off his mad skilz, like walking and complaining at the same time

fussy being un fussy. look at those mountains behind him. nice huh? and really, it looks cold because my kids don't know how to dress for mild weather. it's been a really long winter.

and this is how boys get stinky. actually they roll in pee. at least that is what my parents said. but i didn't get pictures of that. and i know that boys are always stinky. i've become used to the smell. they smell sorta like these barn animals.

jimmy loves kids. he loves smaller kids. i think he secretly wants to beat them up. but he still enjoys being the "parent" to any smaller child. she looks like she is enjoying him being right there too, huh?

enjoying being outside, leading the younger kids into the road. where are the parents of these kids? yeah, that is right, i'm taking pictures.

fussy and i stopped at the pond on our run the other day

yeah, it was windy, but the ducks were out, and who can resist feeding them stale gummy bears and throwing rocks at them? not this fussy.

i think he had some sunshine in his eyes. to which he was screaming because it has been a long time since we had seen sunshine. "what is that glowing orb in the sky" he would say? actually, he did tell us the other day not to eat the sun. good advice kid, good advice.

so that is what i had sitting on my phone. besides pictures of diapers. which i don't think you care about. that sounds gross until you realize i'm selling my stash of cloth diapers for extra cash i can use for video games. we have a problem around this house. it's called boys. and they eat a lot of food, break most of the furniture, and want to play lots of video games.

and yes, i realize this has to be the most random post ever.

what off track looks like...sorta

my kids can pull some really doofy faces. the end.

how to tie dye a shirt

or diapers. or socks. or the title could be, "how to keep your kids entertained on a rainy day"

notice the recent medicine counter on my kitchen sink and the shameless display of an over-medicated child. that's jimmy.

yeah, it was more fun than it looks. way more. unbelievable amounts of joy were recorded doing hippy art. but that is totally how we roll...

501

501 posts to my little ol' bloggy here. well, this post is 501.

i haven't updated because, well, because sometimes blogging is too much work. and i don't think anybody reads this anyway. but i will update what is happening in our lives. well, i'll sorta update, because it would be too boring, even for me.

we survived off track time. 4 weeks is a long time to be off track. 4 weeks in february is longer. 4 weeks on not really being able to go outside causes a lot of contention in the house, especially when you have 3 boys who are all different. harry wanted to read, chilli wanted to play for and be wild. and fussy didn't want his brothers to mess up his perfect life of being spoiled and momma's boy.

but we survived. we did have some sickness toward the end. a nice bout of stomach bug and sore throats. we did get through it.

we went to the history of ancient life, we went to the build a bear knockoff ( it was a promise from fussy's birthday) and we had a day of painting and building various crafts. we also made it to "the lightening thief". the boys put up with my running schedule, and i endured their sleeping schedule, which was usually in a tent in the basement. they pretended they were camping each night. and they read to each other until they would fall asleep. which resulted in harry reading the entire percy jackson series, and then re reading the first 3 books back to jimmy. who is chili, he just wanted me to change his name on my blog.

pictures and more to come later.