When Legos go bad

or a trip to the Children's Museum

Mark and Robbie had to go to the local boy scout council in downtown Indy yesterday and since it's just down the street from the Indianapolis Children's Museum http://www.childrensmuseum.org/ we decided to go there to actually use the membership we bought when Sam was here and we all went.

They've torn up the entrance area since we were there in July so they could add on to it and there are Lego construction guys all over the place. This is what happens when they are over-worked.....

And this must be thanks for a job well done?

Just a picture I took at Turkey Run State Park in July. It makes me think of the line "Tree stars" from The Land Before Time even though the baby dinosaurs were talking about leaves to eat and not the light coming through the leaves. It's another one of those pictures to me that my definition of the photo changes with my mood. My friend, Kelli, has an amazing bench shot like that in her amazing Ireland photos. I want to take pictures like her when I grow up!

I was trying to find a song in iTunes today and can't find the original version of it. What About Me? by Moving Pictures. One of those emotion saturated pop songs from the 80s but I've always liked it a lot just the same. I found the video on YouTube today and it is definitely an 80s video! And in a sidenote I never realized until today that they were the same group that sang Never on the Footloose soundtrack. The song playing when Kevin Bacon (and his dance double) is dancing his angry dance......another emotionally saturated moments of the 80s! C'mon what femal teen in the 80s wasn't waiting for Ren to dance his way to her and ready to tell Lori Singer what she could do with those skanky red boots?!

No scrapping zone

I haven't scrapped in the past couple of days due to cleaning Wednesday and errands yesterday. I feel like that layout is mocking me on the table over there! "You don't know how to finish meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" (Hmm, should I be concerned I've gone from having conversations with Belle and Daisy to having them with my scrapping stuff???)

All week I have been eating healthfully. I cut out all the junk food snacks with the exception of one Coke (down from two a day) and eating a couple of pieces of Robbie's birthday cake over the week. Normally I'm a stress eater and this week I've avoided all the M&Ms, chips, etc and have been eating fruits and carrots. So yesterday I go to the doctor for a follow-up on my upper respiratory infection two weeks ago feeling sure I had lost at least a pound. According to their scale I was .12 ounces short of a pound! That's just not fair! The nurse said they don't record ounces for adults so according to my chart I DID lose a pound. She got an eyeroll on that. The doctor asked me if I had been exercising as well and I told her "Ok, let's go over this again!" She laughed and told me to add exercise. There's no justice in the world, I tell ya!

Today I'm feeling a little wiped out so I don't think much is going to get accomplished today in the scrapping world either. That's ok, I don't think anything else around here will get accomplished either!
;-)

Birthday Boy

Yesterday Robtar (nicknamed as a baby after Reptar from Rugrats) turned 8. There are two things my son knows very well and they are Pokemon and all things Star Wars. We debate over which set of movies is better. I say the original three movies (Luke Skywalker and Han Solo??? le siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh!) and he votes for the newer set of three. We saw the animated movie The Clone Wars yesterday. It was better than I anticipated but still loooooooooong in some parts and no Luke or Han in sight! It was fun to watch Robbie get so into it though and he and Katie were whispering over a couple of scenes a few times.

So what do you get a Star Wars expert? Why this of course!

And I can bake pretty well but I can't decorate a cake all purdy to save my life! My kids have come to love those candy letters and decorations on their birthday cakes! Katie wanted to decorate this year so I let her go to town. The two orange stick looking things are light sabers. I did one and Katie did the other. Hey, have YOU ever tried to make a light saber out of icing???

I didn't think so!

I laughed, I cried...

and now I worry that I'm traumitizing my oldest every time I type or say "dot, dot, dot"! Those of you that have seen Mamma Mia will get that! lol

So I was going to write about this last night but after Gilligan's, I mean Robbie's, tour on the bus that was just too good to not write about! Yes, we're concerned that his bus driver doesn't know what the heck she's doing (she was late again this morning) but we had to laugh about it too. I kept singing "Where in the world is Robbie's scho-ool bus" last night. I'm just so witty!

But anyway...(heehee) while the kids were at school Mark and I went to see Mamma Mia yesterday. First time we've been somewhere without the kids since we were house hunting over my birthday I think! We were both laughing out loud several times during the movie and both trying to stifle the chair dancing during the songs. And then it happened. The scene where Merryl sings Slipping Through My Fingers. I had read the lyrics on Jeanne's blog and thought they were very sweet but couldn't place the song. That in no way prepared me for the impact of the movie scene and the lyrics put together! I sat there with tears literally FLOWING down my face and trying to not sob out loud so I wouldn't ruin the movie for others in the theater. For a good five minutes I sat there silently sobbing. And I thought I was a cynical person! I could apply the lyrics to my own life though and I was just verklempt! But we loved the movie so much we went straight to the Borders in the same shopping plaza and bought the soundtrack. I listened to it before the kids got home from school (well, before Katie got home since Robbie was on a pleasure cruise!) and I got weepy again during that song. Just rip out my mother-beating-heart and stomp on it why don't they?!

Now for the mundane...I took the van to Midas this morning for an overdue oil change and to find out why a low tire pressure light seemed to be stuck on since the tires looked fine to me. One of us ran over a nail and it was embedded in the tire and it was slowly losing pressure. Glad I took the van up there! So they repaired the tire, changed the oil and changed out the air filter. The guy brought it in to show me and said we didn't have to change it out but the thing was FILTHY. I asked him how much it would be to change it and he said "$900". I gave him the "I am not amused" look that my children know oh so well and he said "I'm kidding, I'm kidding! $19.95 and it's changed!" Hopefully his comic stylings will improve by the next time I go in there! lol

I went to Target after that and got Robbie's birthday present and because I AM such a cool mom I bought the kids the new Jonas Brothers cd that came out today. I'm told that someday Nick Jonas will be my son-in-law. 11 yo and she has her future planned out!

Eventually I'll get the few first day of school pictures uploaded to the computer. I only got one of Katie because she was giving me the "Mooooooooooooooom" attitude. We talked about how when she gets nervous she gets snarly. No idea where she gets that! 0:-)

the wheels on the bus go round and round

and round and round and round! Sit back, pop open a cold drink, put up your feet and listen to the tale of Robbie's bus trip that would rival the U.S.S. Minnow and it's three hour tour! Mark took today off so he was here for the fun and excitement too! We walked down to Robbie's bus stop more than five minutes before the bus was supposed to come this morning. There are several kids and parents there already. After about 10 minutes people are looking at watches or their cell phones and muttering things like "I wonder where the bus is????" Not one but TWO buses go by and both times the drivers wave and mouth "Not your bus" as they go by. So we all stand around and wait some more until 15 minutes AFTER the bus was supposed to get there it finally shows up. I should have known things wouldn't go well when I noticed the woman driving wasn't checking kids off a list or anything like that. But did I register that fact at the time? Nooooooooooooooo!

Mark and I walk back to the house and watch some tv for about 20 minutes until it was time to drive up to Robbie's school for a "Tears and Cheers" breakfast. As we're driving past the school to go to another parking lot entrance I say "That's Robbie's bus that just pulled in!" Did I mention this was after school was supposed to start??? We walked Robbie to his room and he tells us how they made "two big circles around our neighborhood" and the bus driver said she was lost. Ok, I'm assuming they were the last or second to last stop due to the timing of the schedule and the school's start time so it's a straight shot down one road and then onto another which is the same road the school is on! But again, I'm giving the woman the benefit of a doubt since it IS the first day of school.

This afternoon we head down to Robbie's bus stop. We and all the other parents wait and wait some more. This time we're seeing EMPTY buses go past but not our children's bus. 40 MINTUES, yes folks, 40 MINUTES later we see a bus coming down the other side of the road. It stops down near the little playground and a kid gets off. Mark exclaims "That's Robbie!" So he's now not only not at his stop but on the other side of the road (which happens to be the side we live on but that's not the point!). As Mark and I are walking down the median to cross over and get Robbie we see and hear kids on the bus pointing to the corner we were just standing on and almost yelling "There, there, there!" So then the woman stops the bus on the wrong side of the street and lets all the kids off. It was a swarm of parents running into the middle of the road (the main thoroughfare through the neighborhood that connects one semi-major road to another). We get to Robbie and ask him why he was let off down there and he said "She was asking us where we were all supposed to get off the bus and I told her this was our house."

Are you still with me? So this woman is asking kids in kindergarten through fourth grade where they're supposed to get off the bus. I called my mom, a veteran school bus driver, and she kept saying "no, no, no" as I was telling the story and I kept saying "Wait! It gets better!"

I asked Robbie if his bus went into any other neighborhoods besides ours and he said "Mom, we went by the same things so many times and she kept saying she was lost....I have NO idea where all we were!" I had to laugh. Poor kid! If Mark had gone to work today he would have beat Robbie home!

I've been humming the theme to Carmen Sandiego the whole time I've been typing his saga. I'm wondering if I should get the kid a GPS unit so he can direct the bus!

My girls

I'm still feeling cruddy and now Robbie has a cold too. But I couldn't just put him out there in blogville and not brag on my girls too. I'm not feeling very wordy today so today I'll just post this photo of my beautiful AND intelligent daughters!

This was taken at Botanica in Wichita at a Girl Scout Mother/Daughter Tea in April.

TGIF

It's been a day full of irritations and I was going to rant but sitting here typing I thought "I don't even want to go through the whole nit-noid mess again!" so instead I utter that familiar refrain when things start to irritate me in Indiana.....I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.

I will say that when we went to the ice cream social at Robbie's new school last night (more irritation there!) we had a surprise. We walked into his classroom, saw his teacher and we all thought she looked like she could have been a sister to his teacher from last year. Those of you who heard stories from second grade would understand why that might not neccessarily be a good thing! When I, she who hates personal confrontation, actually says as politely as possible to a teacher "I don't think at this point it would matter what he did, it would still be wrong." that should tell you something! But it's a new year and a new school. Funny story although it might not reflect well on my son's intelligence...lol....his desk is in a group of three and the father of the girl in his group was sitting in the third student's (who wasn't there) desk. He stuck his hand out to Robbie and said "Hi, I'm XXXX" and said the name written on the desk. Robbie just said hi and started unpacking his stuff but when we were eating supper last night he said "How OLD was that guy?! And how many times do you think he's been in third grade???" Mark and I lost it!

Then later on in the night the three of us were watching Ace of Cakes on Food Network while Katie was playing on the computer. They were making a cake for the premiere of Kung Fu Panda and one guy was working on dragons. Out of the blue my son starts singing Puff the Magic Dragon! What do you do when you're almost 8yo son starts singing folk songs from way before he was born? Why you start singing along of course! After we composed ourselves from cracking up Mark and I sang along with him.

I can't imagine a world without the Robtar!

Here I am!

Ok, since Jeanne has told me that myspace doesn't count here I am in blogger-land! Yet another thing to confuse me and suck away my time on the computer. Like I need another distraction!

I'm a recent transplant to the Indy area. Once my husband retired from the USAF in 2005 I thought we'd be planting some roots in Kansas. I guess we were only temporarily planted because now we're here in Indy for his new job. To say I was unhappy about the move MIGHT be an understatement. ;-) I hated leaving my oldest behind at college, hated leaving my job and the friends there that made it a tad less crazy and I might not have hated leaving behind being a girl scout c0-leader so much but I did hate leaving my friend and leader! After two months it's safe to say I'm adapting, I still miss Wichita like heck but I'm not feeling hacked off about it like I was. And now the urge to throw the kids into the van and head west on I-70 has pretty much diminished! A fact that my huband may or may not be happy to hear! lol

Ok, I feel like I'm writing a report on what I did for summer vacation! I have the crud and just got some prescriptions so I could start to ramble so I wrap up this first entry by saying in additon to my family and two dogs I love to read, scrapbook and take far too many pictures! I have so many talented friends who also blog (Jeanne, Kelli, Toni, Nikki to name a few) and post their art online. I'm not sure my stuff measures up but I'm sure I'll post some of it anyway! Right now I'll attempt to leave you with a favorite photo I took this summer. We met up with my parents and my brother and his family in Sandusky, OH at the Great Wolf Lodge last month. There's a shot of Robbie coming out of one of the tubes that I just love!

He was nervous about them at first but after he went on one with Mark we couldn't keep him away from them!