Oh, and a sing along for you!

Dylan heard the Schoolhouse Rock classic, "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here" on the news the other morning. Having never heard the song before, he attributed incorrect lyrics to the music. His lyrics were,

"Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your Ass Over Here"

I hated to correct him because it was just so funny and inappropriate to hear him sing it, but he really thought those were the words to the song!

Never mind the Mollusks, here's the Sex Pistols

My supervisor once gave me a wonderful piece of advice - "Find something to do that has a beginning, a middle and an end. So much of what you do is going to be vague and unsolvable, you need to be able to accomplish tangible things in your life."

One of my things is cooking new foods. I have been learning how to make double layer cakes, and most recently, I tried to make stuffed clams. The kids wanted to keep the clams as pets, but I nixed that idea and cooked the clams. Two days later, they were still talking about what their clams would have been named.

The pet clams

In addition to my culinary adventures, we have been quite busy in our house. Dylan moved up another rank in Tae Kwon Do to "Cammo Decided." I think he is almost halfway to his black belt! He also went on a great field trip this week called "Earthworks." The kids learn about science and nature, and each child gets to play a different role within the facility. He was a botanist, and really enjoyed the day. I wish I had pictures of that, but they only allowed a few parents to go on the field trip.

Graduating to Cammo Decided

Lauren had been wanting to take Katy to school for show and tell, so I made arrangements with her teacher to have the dog visit on Thursday. I love to see Katy with other people. She has such a positive effect on everyone she comes in contact with. She is truly a magical dog!

Katy working her magic in first grade

Speaking of cute animals, I was working from home the other day, and I kept hearing this tapping noise. I couldn't figure out what it was, and it was driving me crazy! Finally, I discovered this sweet little robin tapping on the back of my sliding glass door. I thought it was so sweet!

The Rockin' Robin

Lauren and her girl scout troop went to see "Beauty and the Beast" last weekend. It was fun to watch her enjoy the show and appreciate theater. Just don't ask her to sing or perform in front of you. She has made it clear to me that she is ONLY interested in being a spectator!

The Girl Scouts

She also lost both of her front top teeth. There's something so hard for me about that - it's like she has really moved on from being a little girl and now she is a BIG GIRL. It makes me sad, and yet so happy because she is so adorable.

All she wants for Christmas is her 2 front teeth.

Lauren's class also hatched chicken eggs. The chicks were so adorable and fluffy! There was a lot of peeping and flapping in the chicken brooding station after they were all hatched.

Hot chicks under the heat lamp.

We are headed to Florida for Spring Break. I am so excited to get away from Kansas. We will be spending a couple of days in Orlando at Disney World, and then spending the rest of the time in Jupiter with Joe's parents. I know we will have a blast!

Oops, I did it again.

I know it has been awhile. I started this blog so our families could see what was going on with us and I haven't been keeping up very well. I am sorry about that!

We made it through the holidays and have started the new year off well. Lauren and Dylan are doing great in school and Joe's job is going as well as can be expected. My private practice is slow, but with this economy, I'm not surprised. I am hanging in there, though. I did complete my training to become a MOCSA (Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault) advocate last week. This has been a big goal of mine for a long time, and it is an issue that is very near and dear to my heart. I have seen too many lives and too many families destroyed by rape and sexual abuse, and I really wanted to do something about it. You can find out more about them at http://www.mocsa.org/. I will be traveling to local hospitals providing crisis intervention to sexual assault victims. I am excited and terrified about this new path in my life.

We recently did an inventory of the kids' shoes, because each of their closets were beginning to resemble a black hole into which shoes would disappear and never return. Joe laid all the shoes out in the hallway for us to go through. I have to say, it was quite an interesting sight. Notice that there are TWO pairs of pink cowgirl boots.

That is a lot of shoes.

Even though I seem to have inadvertently encouraged shoe-hoarding behavior in my children, I had a very proud parenting moment yesterday. Joe has been sick this week, and that means single parenting for me. I didn't feel like cooking at all, so I decided I'd take the kids to McDonald's on the way to Tae Kwon Do. When our budget issues were different, my kids were getting to be pretty entitled about going out to eat, and definitely not appreciating it. If they went somewhere with fast food, they expected a Happy Meal/Kids meal of some sort. Then they wouldn't drink the drink in the meal, only half the food would get eaten and the stupid toy would end up on the floor of the car. So I quit taking them and gave them some stupid speech about how they don't appreciate things, McDonald's is a privilege, etc.

Last night I announced very casually, "Well, we need to get moving if we want to go to McDonald's before Tae Kwon Do." THEY WERE SO EXCITED. They were jumping up and down with joy! When we went to McDonald's and I didn't buy them Happy Meals, they each got something off the dollar menu, they split small fries and they both drank water. But they were so thrilled just to be able to go through that drive through and eat McDonald's. It was so cool to see that I'd finally returned that excitement about something so small back to their lives.

As some of you know, Lauren is very particular about her hair. She doesn't like barrettes, ponytails, pigtails, braids... none of it. So imagine my surprise when she asked me to style her hair like this:

I can't decide if she looks more like Napoleon Dynamite's Girlfriend or Chrissy from Three's Company.

In my never-ending quest to be crowned Mother of the Year, I caused Lauren to get a fat lip. You see, she and I like to pretend we are in the Cirque Du Soleil. I balance her on my feet, I spin her around, bounce her from my feet to my ankles... it's quite a spectacle. I like to think of it as a wonderful use for my gigantic, muscular, tree trunk legs. One night we were practicing the very thrilling and dangerous one-footed balance. It looks like this:

The one-footed balance on tree trunk legs.

We have an agreement that if she feels like she is going to fall, she is to fall ON me. Well, that is a nice theory. About 2 seconds after this picture was taken, she grabbed the coat rack in front of her and pulled the entire thing down on top of both of us. Yes, I know. It was irresponsible of me to be practicing these exciting, intricate and dangerous acts so close to the coat rack. But we are REALLY good! Aside from the fat lip, she was okay. We were thankful that it wasn't worse! I think our Cirque Du Soleil days are over, unless I can get her to come back and practice on the trampoline. Imagine what we could do on a trampoline!

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day.