Author: jclawver

This and that

  • I’ve misplaced my iPod. I am bad enough at cleaning the house with it, I can’t imagine what I’ll be like now. Booo. I need my crutch! I am going to dig out our 80s-inspired iPod that is the size of my head and see if I can duct tape it to my body. That should get me through the day, I hope.
  • The kids didn’t have school yesterday so we went down to Kevin’s office for lunch. The boys were happy when practically the whole office went with us. They just looooooove Kevin’s coworkers. Brian especially enjoys spending time with the office manager, Juliet. He makes sure to sit with her and walk with her and give her hugs. He got mad at me once and said, “I don’t love you anymore. I just love Daddy and Juliet.” A couple of weeks ago a bunch of us went out to dinner, including Juliet’s parents. Brian was really excited to meet them. I joked that he was meeting the in-laws. It’s so cute to watch and Juliet is so nice to him.
  • I had a (bad) dream last night that we were moving to Utah, where we would be isolated in our liberal, hippie views AND we’d have to deal with constant four-foot snow. Kevin was thoughtful enough to buy lots of Christmas decorations so our new neighbors would like us, though. Hmm.
  • As far as I can recall, I have never voted for a winning presidential candidate before. (I honestly can’t recall which candidate I voted for when Clinton was reelected, which wasn’t my first election.) It’s nice for that streak to be over.
  • We’re going to the in-laws for Thanksgiving and I am really looking forward to seeing everybody. Kevin’s brother and his family, including a baby, will be there. YAY. And an aunt, cousin, and and a grandma are coming too. Lots of family time! I love it when the boys get to see their extended family. The downside is that we are staying in a hotel, which is my least favorite thing to do with kids. Worse than 4 hours at the Health Department without a lunch break, even. But that is what happens when your family quadruples in size, yes? So, nice problem to have, all things considering.

Baby, you can drive my car

A friend of a friend is trying to win SUPERBOWL tickets to surprise her awesome husband (no, it isn’t me or mine, heh, but I only have super cool friends so it is easy to see how you could get confused) from work. You can help her out by texting 57533 with the message P00077804. The person with the most texts wins! If you’re in the mood, help a girl out, ok?\
This brings back memories of my first Christmas with Kevin, before we were married. I stood in the RAIN for FOUR HOURS to get tickets to a basketball game with the REIGNING NCAA Champion team, Arizona. Woot woot. Fun times. So, yeah, if you can help, that would be great. Thanks!

Learning and Junk

  • Brian really likes a song called “High School Confidential.” (It has already been established that I am a bad mother.) He doesn’t hear the words correctly though, so when he sings along or requests the song he says, “Ha stu compadoo.” He comes by his misheard-lyrics heritage naturally, as I have been known to mangle a few songs in my day. (My favorite is thinking that “Raspberry beret” was actually “Rags, baby, hurray.” Which is totally supported by the line that follows. Of course, had I only known what the title of the song was, I probably could have saved myself some embarrassment.)
  • Max has been “provisionally” put back in the gifted program at school. He has been tested, and received passing scores, so they are letting him back in. I think the scores still need to be formally evaluated or something and then he can be in for real. He had to meet 3 of 4 requirements for ability, achievement, creativity, and motivation to be eligible for the program. They took last year’s CogAt scores for the ability portion. The accepted minimum is 96, he scored 99. He received a 98% on the creative test, the minimum accepted is 90. They tested this by having him draw pictures from various doodles. (True story.) They used the Hawthorne test for his motivation score. I have no idea what this test is. He needed at least a 90 and got a 97%.
  • As part of his nightly homework, Max has to read for 20 minutes and write about what he read in a journal. Last week he was reading one of the Harry Potter books. He wrote, “The introduction Luna Lovegood foreshadowed” a specific occurrence. His teacher was all, “Whoa” when she read that. Because, really? A third-grader talking about foreshadowing?? Crazy! I wasn’t overly impressed though, because I assumed Max had read that thought online at the Potter wiki and then unintentionally plagiarized it. So I asked him about it. Turns out he came up with it all on his own. Momma says, “Whoa!” For the record, he learned about foreshadowing from Homestar Runner. (It’s already been established that our kids are weird.)
  • In other Max school news, he is working on his first research paper! He picked the topic of “How laws are made.” This has led to many political and historical discussions at the dinner table. Kevin is pretty much in heaven. 🙂 I remember my first paper was in the third grade too. My topic was Botswana. I don’t remember anything that I learned, except its location. Heh.
  • Kevin and I voted on Saturday and it was exciting to mark my choice for The President of the United States. I haven’t been that excited since the first time I voted. There are reports that over one million people in Ga, about twenty percent of the eligible voters, have voted already. There is early voting going on at our local library this week too. Every time I drive pass, which is several times a day due to its location, the parking lot is overflowing, which is very unusual.
  • I went used-book shopping last week and bought many, many trashy beach reads. Stuff like Tom Clancy and Dean Koontz. They are fabulous in their utter lack of anything educational in them! I also bought a collection of classic short stories by American writers for Max. I started reading the book, to check its content. What a snoozefest! There are probably only half of a dozen good things about being middle-aged, but not having to read “classic” literature anymore is definitely one of them. (Thanks, Mom and Dad for my college education. I appreciate it, really.) Excuse me now while I snub the book I got for Max and read about a genius dog who can play scrabble instead.

Update Schmupdate

We took the boys to the beach over the weekend. It’s so nice to be able to go whenever we want. We go so frequently that we don’t even take the camera every trip. We can just go and enjoy it without having to be so intent on documenting every. single. moment. to make sure we never forget the fun we had!

I remembered!

So the other reason I am a dork is because I accidentally ruined our iron. I usually keep a cup of water nearby to refill it as I am ironing but sometime last week I grabbed a cup that held the remnants of melted diet-coke-covered-ice. It looked just like water! I didn’t realize the problem right away and almost ruined some clothes. And then after trying to clean the mysterious goop off of the iron, I finally realized the goop was coming from inside the iron. When I tried to burn it out, Kevin accused me of trying to burn the house down. Finally we just decided that buying a new iron was the best solution. :P\
This is related to Kevin and/or his work because I discovered the mysterious goop while ironing clothes before meeting a bunch of his coworkers for dinner.\
The End.

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Categorized as Jen

Mom’s Morning Out

A PS to my prior entry- Auntie M’s comment about her never opening the door reminded me how profusely grateful the women were that I did open the door at least. They kept thanking me over and over again. It was sort of weird.\
Today was Brian’s first day at his new preschool. I had so many options of how to spend my time: nap (which was high on the list since I only got 4 hours of sleep last night), clean the house, go to the beach, or exercise. I decided to do it all! (Well, except for cleaning the house, ha. But I did two loads of laundry before school.) First, I took a brisk walk around the neighborhood. There are 4 houses for sale in the immediately area. Hmm. Then I ran into the house, switched from sneakers to flip flops, put on sunscreen and headed to the beach where I snoozed for an hour and a half until it was time to pick up Brian. YAY for the beach. I switched back to my sneakers and purposefully arrived at Brian’s school early to check out the track. I even jogged. True story. There is a beautiful path that the winds through the woods, passing a couple of ponds. It was really nice. I don’t have anything to show for my time. No dinner made, no toys not on the floor. But it was a really nice morning, nonetheless.\
Brian did really well at the school. He played with the other kids and followed directions and just generally acclimated well. This week the class is focusing on the letter F, so they got to try French Toast today. Tomorrow, firefighters and a fire truck are coming to visit. We picked a great week to start, right? The class also has music, Spanish, and ceramics. How cute is that?

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Categorized as Brian, Jen