Adventures of our family in 2011

I thought I would start a blog a long time ago, and have had many crazy events come and go at our house, and failed to write them down. I share them with friends regularly and they chuckle and shake their heads in amusement at how our house is a little wacky at times. So as I am procrastinating I thought I would make a post.

Being that we have kids in our household, it is rare that I get to go anywhere on my own. I am usually running around taking kids to some sporting event or practice, or to a friend's house. When I do get out my cellphone never fails to ring with a child wanting me for something. So it has become a running joke withme and a couple of girlfriends who know my life well.

One evening this spring, I actually made a date to go out for dinner with these 2 particular girls. I left the kids with these words, "If the house is on fire do not call me. Call 911." (I still had to drop a child off at a friend's house on this trip to town. After an uninterrupted dinner we went over to Sharon's house for dessert. I had been gone just under 2 hours total, when my cell phone rang. The three of us looked at each other in amusement and I unwillingly answered the phone. It was my dear husband Bob. It is now 8:30pm on a Saturday evening. He sheepishly says, "Hi. Uhm when you come home could you stop somewhere and get the biggest bandaids you can find?" Of course I need to know what the heck has happened now. "What happened?!?" Sharon and Linda's eyes are glued to me in interest at this point. "Well Josh cut his leg." "Do you need these bandaids right away?" (remember 8:30 Saturday night, most stores that are open will be closing very shortly and my evening out would come to a grinding halt.) Bob says, "No it's okay right now, I've got him stitched up." Bob is trained to do such things, let me say. As I am asking him what happened, Sharon's daughter brings over her laptop and she is talking to our son Zack on facebook. He is posting pictures of the event as it unfolded. So Josh is seriously afraid of getting attacked by a wolf when he goes outside at night. We've never had one threaten us near our house or anything, but this is his fear. He is a big strapping boy and an avid hunter. So, while he and his dad were outside in the shop, Bob was on the phone and Josh takes hold of a big and I mean big knife that they were using for butchering deer. He is swinging the knife around like a sword basically, enacting what he would do if a wolf came in and attacked him. In the midst of the swinging, he stabbed himself in the thigh. About an inch deep and inch and a half long gash. He got his dad's attention with his bloody leg and told him what he did. So they cleared off the kitchen table and Josh laid down on it where his dad proceeded to stitch him up with his stitching kit. So as Bob is recounting this craziness to me over the phone, the three of us are looking at the live feed coming through facebook of the wound and its repair. Amid peals of laughter Sharon grabs a flower she had in a vase and hands it to me and says, "You win."

Christmas had its ups and downs this year. We had an extra child join us for a week over the holidays. Josh's friend Leon came for a visit from southern Ontario. Leon (name changed) visited us for an energy packed week last March break. This week was no different.

As previously there was a lot of yelling on a constant basis, not in anger, but in a comedic tone filled with swearing to make it more entertaining. On the second or third morning of Leon's visit he came out of his room with about a good 2 inch scrape on his cheek. I was rather shocked when I saw it as I would like to send him back to his family in one piece. He and Josh were fooling around basically and he hit the foot of the couch with his face. He informed me that the swelling from his eye and lip had gone down from the night before. As I usually do in my role as a mother, I admonished them and said not to play so rough. He could have lost some teeth (or an eye). Another late evening I had to go downstairs because I heard mention of trying to do a blue angel. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it is basically lighting the gas from your farts on fire. Before I could get down there, I hear whoops and peels of laughter. Josh had succeeded. Thankfully there were no third degree burns, and the house did not go up in flames, but as usual I admonished them for being stupid (pardon the use of the S word) and not to do it again. I was not going to take his singed butt to the emergency room in the middle of the night and have to explain why we were there.

On the last couple of days of Leon's visit he ended up with a stomach flu bug. It hit him at both ends unfortunately. During one of his visits to the bathroom, he was seated (to put it nicely) and then realized he had to throw up. Instead of using the garbage can that is right beside our royal throne, he grabs a bath towel and throws up in it. Afterwards, he rolled up the destroyed towel and put it in the garbage can. I was unaware he had done this until later in the day when Bob found it and told me. Needless to say, I left the towel in the garbage. Leon didn't tell anyone he had done this. He did tell us however, that he had never thrown up before. That would explain one or two things, but not why he didn't mention the destroyed towel.

I spent the week picking up after Leon. Phone, camera, ipod, clothes etc. Did some of his laundry during the course of the week. The day before he was leaving I asked him in the afternoon, to bring me any laundry he had and I would do it, so he could pack everything clean. He said, "No it's okay. I'll just get my mom to do it when I get home." I confirmed that he was sure, and that it was no problem as I always had a load of laundry on the go. No, it was okay.

At 10:20pm, way past my usual bedtime I might add, Leon comes to me and says, "I brought all of my laundry down." Bob and I looked at him, and I said "What laundry, and where were you bringing it?" He replies "My dirty laundry, I brought it downstairs to wash." Bob and I sat in disbelief as we do often with a house full of teens. I said "Leon, I asked you this afternoon to give me laundry! We aren't doing it now!" He said, "Well I can stay up and do it." I told him no and that he had missed the boat and we will just pack his stuff as is. I sat shaking my head as I often do. My youngest Noah mentioned that the dryer vent/hose had come off the back of the dryer. I filed this in my memory bank for tomorrow and headed to bed. Tomorrow was a busy day. Bob goes to work. Takes 2 kids with him to babysit for my sister. One goes to volleyball practice in the middle of the babysitting. The five kids and myself have dental appointments at 1pm. Leon wants to go to a store which is only open until noon and we have to be to the airport by 3:30. We live about 25 minutes from the airport. My nicely organized schedule to get everyone where they needed to be was set in my brain. I am 99% of the time always on time or early. I am OCD about punctuality. It disturbs me to be late for anything.


After showering and making sure everyone was up I ask Leon if he would like help packing. He had been concerned that he would be unable to pack the things he came with back where his mother had put them. He and Josh were starting to look at taking some of our luggage with him, but I said no. Unless his mother was a rocket scientist and it was a requirement in this case, I am sure we could pack his bag. It is at this point that he informs me that he still has some laundry in the dryer. I remember he had a couple of things in the last load I had done yesterday and I went down to retrieve them.

When I walked in the laundry room, it was like a steam bath in there. Then I remembered Noah telling me the dryer pipe was off. The dryer was running at this point. So I shut off the dryer, turned on the exhaust fan, pulled out the washer and dryer and reconnected things and put them back. I was an annoyed sweating mess at this point. Also keep in mind I am pre-menopausal and the hotflashes come on their own. I don't need any help. The kids (no names mentioned) had pulled out the dryer looking for pingpong balls. Another factor to annoy me.

I start wondering why the dryer is going. I open it up, and the load of clothes inside is very damp. I think to myself, the stuff I put in yesterday should be dry by now. Then I open the dryer again and as an intact, wrapped Livesavers mint candy falls out, I realize this is not the load I had put in, but a full load of all of Leon's clothes. As I start sifting through it, I see clothes that I know he has not worn this week and some of Josh's clothes. It is now 11:15am. I need to have this kid packed and get everyone ready to head to town. I go upstairs madder than a wet hen. (Jessica affectionately calls me Mother Hen). In my rant at 2 teenage boys I explained I need to get to town and now we have wet clothes in the dryer (which I ranted some more, should not be there as he had been told the night before!) I also added that I could tell he picked up every thing that had been on Josh's floor and basically threw it all in the dryer dirty or not. He acknowledged my motherly laundry knowledge. He said he could take the wet clothes in a bag home. I said no, that they would stink by the time he got there, and his mother would just have to wash them all over again. Time is a valuable commodity to me and there is no way I will waste mine or anyone else's unnecessarily. So at 12:15 the clothes were dry. As I opened the dryer door, 2 more luckily still wrapped candies fell out onto the floor. I threw everything into a laundry basket with the rest of his belongings and told him he could pack it all at my sister's. We were hitting the road.

The dentist visit saw 4 out of 5 children with cavities much to their dismay. We left with new toothbrushes in hand and appointments for 4 months later for filings. When we got back to my sister's, Leon was all packed. See it wasn't rocket science after all. He had a true sense of accomplishment. We get Leon to the airport and the plane even left 10 minutes early.

We ate dinner in town, which we rarely do and got home around 7:15. Two messages from Leon's mom were flashing on the answering machine. I called her back to let her know that he got on the plane and was on his way. During our conversation she told me that he was ADHD and that he had gone off the meds he had been taking THE WEEK BEFORE HE CAME TO SEE US!!! I sat in a bit of a bewildered state listening to her as Bob wondered what the heck she was telling me. It sure would have been nice to know this before hand. The yelling, wrestling, flu, laundry fiasco etc would all have been dealt with in a different manner. Possibly a more calmish manner.

Two days later I am throwing yet another load of laundry in. As I am sorting through one of the full baskets, I notice that the socks look clean and washed. I do the smell test. Yep, these are clean. As I dig through this basket I realize ALL OF IT IS CLEAN! Then the little light bulb goes off over my head. This is the load of laundry that Leon had taken out and threw in a basket amidst the dirty ones, so he could do his FORBIDDEN LOAD!!! At that point I wanted to strangle kid all over again. I pulled out the wrinkled shirts that I was not going to iron, and threw them back in for another tumble in the wash.

And that was the first half of my Christmas vacation. The rest was spent basically sleeping in until 9am, doing laundry, tidying on a daily basis, doing some school work and relaxing. No complaints there.

New Year's eve was spent at home with Sharon and her family, and Karen and Bill (all friends' names are changed :) We ate and played cards. Very enjoyable evening. I actually stayed up until midnight.

On another day as I drove home with my daughter Jessica, she was recalling a discussion about driving and hitting deer. We basically had said that if you swerve to miss a deer on the road, and wreck your vehicle, your insurance will say it is your fault. You can't prove the accident was due to a deer, because it got away. So basically speaking, you are better off to hit the deer with respect to insurance coverage, not obviously health or safety-wise. So this topic was rumbling around in her brain as we were driving. She turns to me and says, "You know how you were talking about how it is better to hit the deer for insurance?" Of course I replied, "Yes." She asked ever so innocently, "So does that apply to humans too?" These children catch me at a loss for words often. I did quickly tell her, that no you should swerve to miss humans regardless.

At dinner on another evening, we were commenting that the new year was going to be 2012. My husband says, "Isn't that when the world is going to end?" Daughter Nicole ponders this and asks her sister, "If there is no food left would you eat me? " She starts looking at her legs and says, "My legs are pretty strong, good for eating." Jessica says, " Your tongue is the strongest muscle in your body." So of course Nicki starts feeling her tongue. Keep in mind while this is going on, we are a hunting family. We eat what we hunt. The children know that we don't hunt or eat carnivores like wolves, foxes or coyotes. We eat omnivores and herbivores. You know the meat and veggie eaters. So once again the little light bulb goes off over Jessica's head. She promptly says, "So does that mean we will only eat the vegetarians?" Bob and I burst out laughing. "Yes Jessica, we will only eat vegetarians if the world runs out of food." The girls' phys-ed teacher does not eat meat, so I advised them, they could eat her first.

Well this is enough of my ramblings for today.