Questions that Come to Mind During the Daily Straightening Up of the House

1. Do other stay-at-home moms feel like they need a housekeeper, or is it just me?

2. Are there some extra kids in here? I really don't think one kid could make this mess.

3. Why did my husband let my son empty out the contents of my purse? There are credit carts, bobby pins, old receipts, etc. scattered around the living room floor!

4. What is Colter's obsession with being under the table all about? He's playing with his big cardboard bricks under the dining room table now. He's also taken to having picnics under the table. I suspect he may be goofy.

5. What was going through God's head when he created dust mites?

6. Why is my son no longer under the dining room table, but ON TOP OF IT?

7. How long should a two-year-old stay in the corner for standing in in the middle of the dining room table when he has been told not to climb said table?

8. How many shoes do I wear in a day, and why do I not put them in my closet when I take them off?

9. How does the hallway transform into an obstacle course so quickly?

10. DIDN'T I DO THIS YESTERDAY!?!?

Favorite Foto Friday---Mr. Bubbles

Bubbles make bath time more fun! My water lovin' bubble boy loves to hide his toys in the bubbles, make bubble beards, and pretend to swim in the tub. He would love to stay in the bathtub until all the bubbles are all gone and he's all wrinkly! It takes a long time for Mr. Bubbles bubbles to dissolve though, so we usually end up convincing Colter to say "Bye bye bubbles" and watching them get sucked down the drain before we begin our lengthy bedtime rituals.

Bubbles!!!!

Mohawk...Soaphawk? A Nice Relaxing Bubble BathFor more FFF pictures, go visit Kiss the Frog 4 Me.

Look Out Martha Stewart...

I can make homemade finger paint!

Colter and I needed something to do a few days ago, so we got creative on the front porch with some nontoxic, edible (not to mention cheap!) finger paint made of a couple tablespoons of flour, enough water to give the flour a paint consistency, and food coloring.

This boy is not afraid of messes!I asked Colter to say "cheese" for the camera. He held up his paint-covered hands and growled at me instead. RROOOOOOAAAAARRRRRRRR....It's the scary paint monster!

Any offers? I'll frame and matte a painting if anyone wants to purchase a piece from the Colter collection. We call this one The Dance of the Finger.

We played in the pool afterwards to get the paint off. :
Painting with flour and water was fun, but it didn't take long for the flour to start to dry on our hands and get kind of crusty. It probably came off easier than real paint, and I didn't have to worry about Colter eating it. :) Plan on swimming or taking a bath after this project!

Wordless Wednesday--Fingerpainting Preview

Delbert's Alive!

After overcoming several complications during surgery, Delbert is alive and kicking. It's so nice to be able to access my files and pictures on our brand-spanking new 20 inch HP monitor. Hopefully, if this monitor ends up going bad, it does BEFORE the warranty expires!

Oh, I Wish I Were a Dell Computer Expert!

That is what I truly want to be!
For if I were a Dell computer expert,
everyone would be in love with me! I could get my computer to work.

Well, I had the best of intentions. I really intended to post more. Really! My computer, Delbert, apparently does not think I should post more though because sometime over the weekend, Delbert became ill. Hopefully, he's just ill and not dead, for I am really quite attached to Delbert, even though he decided to get sick only two weeks after his warranty expired! Isn't that just like a man? Err...I mean, computer?

From the symptoms Delbert is exhibiting, I am guessing that his video card is broken, but I'm not really sure, and if I'm right, I'm not really sure what to do about it. Probably, the smartest thing to do would be to call the tech number, but I'm sure I would get some guy with a really thick Pakistani accent, and I'm so awful at understanding accents that are different from my own. I am accent challenged. When my inability to understand accents is combined with my inability to understand computers with Windows Vista, it's not pretty.

Fortunately, my husband was able to get our old laptop, Della, hooked up, so I won't have to curl up and die from Internet deprivation. That would have been sad. :) Now that I have a computer that's actually working, maybe I can figure out what's wrong with my poor Delbert! I hope so--I don't know what I'd wear to a computer's funeral.

Haiku Friday

Neglection of blog

leads to a heart broken of

no comment sorrow.

I'm back! I'm posting

again--no one knows or cares.

Was I gone too long?

Blog friends are missing

blog world not immune to change

even games are gone

Sarah's flown the coop--

on a break from FFF,

so I will haiku.

Haiku day? How fun!

Always new memes and new friends

in the blogosphere.

When I first started my blog, I went through a phase during which I participated in several memes (blog games) and had a lot of fun doing it. Over the past year however, I just haven't had the time to devote to regular blogging and have done a lot of cheating (several times, I've caught up with a little of what's going on by backdating posts, so I still have some entries that show my son's antics because the purpose of Life in the Woods is to have a sort of diary for him).

Now that I find myself unemployed and husbandless for the moment (no divorce--see previous post), I'm feeling the need to find some memes again. A long time ago, I ran across haiku Friday and bookmarked it, but now that I have the time to play, it looks like there's not as many people participating. It still looks fun though! The English teacher in me loves the idea of writing in haiku form. :) For those of you that may not know, a haiku is a Japanese form of poetry that follows a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. For more info go here.

In a few weeks, chaos will return. I'm taking a few classes, I might find an online teaching job, who knows? I'll probably post regularly for a bit then flake out again. Oh, well. I've never claimed to be consistent. Have I? If I have, I lied.

Where Oh Where Has the Summer Gone?

Our daddy days of summer are officially over. :( John had to go back to school this week to spread the joy of quadratic equations, logarithms, polynomials, and other such mathematical nonsense fascinating information to his eager pupils. We're missing having him around! To distract Colter from asking "Where Daddy go?" so many times, we've been doing a little of this...a little of that... and a whole lot of this!

I've been trying to keep Colter really busy this week. That way I only have to explain that Daddy had to go back to school 34 time a day as opposed to 239. We miss and love you honey!

P.S. Yesterday, our distraction was a random trip to a water park where we had SO much fun. I was doing such a good job distracting Colter though, that I distracted myself as well and fell into a pool!!! I slipped on one of the ladder rungs and ended up with my legs somehow tangled between the wall and the ladder! I wish I would have had my camera! I have lots of bruises but thankfully, no broken femurs. I'm such a graceful person. :)

Wordless Wednesday--Aspens

¡No hablo Espanol!

¡Hola!

Warning: This post is full of whining and complaining. When writing this post, the author threw Philippians 2:14 out the window. Proceed with caution.

I have to teach myself Spanish before sometime next spring, and I am NOT excited. Long, long ago, I earned 24 hours towards a master's of arts degree. After I started working full time, I did not take anymore classes and basically ignored the fact that I needed to learn a foreign language and take three more classes to finish the degree. One of the stipulations of earning the degree is finishing it in eight years. I have somehow gotten so old, that this is my last year to finish it!!!

Sigh. I don't wanna go back to school!!!!!!! Sigh again. It would be really silly to just let those graduate hours go to waste, but I don't wanna go!!!! Really! I registered anyway though. Yet another sigh. There actually are several classes that I would be interested in taking, but since I'm a full-time mommy, I have to take classes that fit the best with our family's schedule. I signed up for the only online class offered, southeast Asian writers (I have never heard of any of the authors listed!!!!!!), and a form and theory of poetry and prose class on Wednesday nights. Blech. These two classes, which are very near the bottom of classes I would have chosen if scheduling wasn't an issue, are going to cost around $1600!!! Double blech. I think I will get a $500 grant, so maybe the classes won't seem so ridiculously priced. I guess everything is ridiculously priced now though. What's a gallon of milk up to now? Twenty smackers? :)

I'm one of those weird people that really liked school and love to learn, so even though I'm being awfully negative about going back to school, I'll honestly probably like the English classes I have to take. The problem is going to be somehow learning Spanish! For a master of arts, recipients have to know a foreign language. The language requirement can be met by taking classes or passing a test. The classes would cost another $1600, so I'm going to try to teach it to myself and pass the test. Pray that I have an aptitude for foreign language!!!! :) I've checked out some stuff from the library and am using a CD that I got for free somewhere. I might have to start watching Dora the Explorer soon. I have discovered, however, that my husband somehow knows any word or phrase I throw at him, so hopefully having him as a tutor will help. I knew he had three years of Spanish in high school but didn't know he remembered anything. The man is full of mysteries. :) I wonder what other secrets he has kept from me? Maybe he has a secret bank account in Switzerland...

I'm done complaining. For now.

¡Adios!

My Future Daughter-In-Law :)

Rachel has a new baby girl! She's so precious! The baby. Not Rachel. Although Rachel is quite precious to me, but normally one doesn't refer to adults as precious, but if one did, Rachel would certainly be precious too. I'm such a good rambler. Anyway, go here to tell Taylor Rose and her precious mommy hello!!! I love baby feet!

Future Bookworm?

I can only hope!Sometimes silence is scary. If I happen to leave Colter in a room by himself for a few minutes, and the house suddenly gets strangely still, I never know what I might find when I run to discover the reason for the quiet. Sometimes though, I find a sweet little scholar reading in his room! Even though it makes a big mess, I love it when he sweeps all the books off his shelf and onto the floor into a big pile. It's so cute when he sits in the middle of the pile to "read." It gives me hope that maybe someday, someone in our household besides me will read something other than sports books and the news (I love you, John, even though my inner bookworm really wishes you would pick up some fiction every now and then).

I Do Believe This Boy Is Darling...

Don't you?

These are just a sampling of Colter's 2nd birthday picture retakes. The pictures that my sister and I took in June a week before his birthday got eaten by the picture monster! The pictures mysteriously disappeared, so we had to try again. Even though Colter has already been two for a month and a half, I'm kind of glad the original pictures got lost because the second photo shoot turned out better. He actually smiled a few times. Yay for smiling two-year-olds!

Strange But True At The Zoo

On a beautiful 70-something degree day on the first of August, we visited the zoo for the third time this summer. We met my sister, brother-in-law and their three kids there, and Colter enjoyed exploring the zoo with his cousins. Zoo trip number three involved a crazy dancing monkey, a shaggy bear looking for pretzels, and an argument about a gibbon. It also involved some strange things depicted in the following photographs.

Look closely at the picture below. See the lady mowing? Although I didn't have a big lens with me to take a good picture, see the cheetahs the arrow is pointing to? See the fence? See how the fence is NOT between the lady and the cheetahs? What's up with that? Isn't that against some sort of zoo safety policy? What if the cheetahs decided it would be fun to catch the mower woman? It's not like she would have heard them over the roar of the mower. Even if she did hear them, I doubt she could get away. Didn't anyone ever tell her that cheetahs can run 70 miles per hour? This doesn't appear to be the wisest way to spend a Saturday morning. The lady almost deserves to be eaten!


Speaking of eating, we happened upon the alligators at feeding time. Look closely in the gator's jaws. Can you identify its lunch? It's a BUNNY RABBIT!!! One of those cute, white rabbits with the pink eyes that people keep as PETS! When we walked past the alligator enclosure, a zoo keeper was tossing dead bunnies into the alligators' mouths. Eww. Thankfully, none of the little kids that witnessed the scene were too traumatized.

This isn't all that weird, but we thought it was funny. Mr. Elephant appears to have a crop of grass growing on his back. I guess he likes his food to go.

Have you ever fed a giraffe? At our local zoo, there is a deck over the giraffes where visitors can buy wafers to feed the giraffes. It's great fun, but watch out for the tongues! Giraffe tongues can grow 18-20 inches long! Really! Go here if you don't believe me. :)

All in all, it was a fun day, although I really was concerned that the cheetahs would eat the mower lady. It was fun to watch Colter interact with his cousins. He and my youngest nephew, Justin, who is only nine months older than Colter rode together in Colter's big Radio Flyer wagon. They got along well most of the day, but when we came upon the gibbons, my other nephew, Tristan, mistakenly told us to look at the baby gorilla. Justin said, "Oh, no, that's a spider monkey." Colter responded by saying, "No, ga-illl--a" so for a minute the dialogue between Colter and Justin was

"Spider monkey!"

"Ga-illl--a!"

"Spider monkey!"
"Ga-illl--a!"

"Spider monkey!"
"Ga-illl--a!"

You get the idea. It got kind of heated. Two-year-olds think they know everything. Sheesh, boys. It was a GIBBON.