The Pregnant Minnow Babysitter Mystery

Man, we got punchy at bedtime on the 4th of July.

Before bedtime Michael noticed that our single minnow was looking slimmer. She had gotten chunky when we were in Wyoming and looked like in her clear belly she had extra poop or something. I kept joking for weeks that she was pregnant. We know nothing about minnows ... do they lay eggs, do they carry babies like in a womb, what the heck?

Anyway, then Michael notices a teeny weeny minnow swimming around. We found two more after that. Okay, so she is a single mother minnow because her man died BEFORE we went to Wyoming, like in early May. We had my mom look after the minnow while we were gone.

So as we are trying to go to sleep, their friend called my mom Nanny Pregs because she looked after a pregnant minnow.

Then we called her the Pregnant Minnow Babysitter. I said, "But that sounds like my MOM is pregnant."

Callie says, "What if Tutu was pregnant and the minnow is babysitting HER?"

Then we got into the logistics of them having an uncle who is a tiny baby by my 62-year-old mother.

This is how we homeschool, folks ... all day and all night and at the oddest moments they learn stuff by joking around. So today we are hitting the internet to find out about minnows and how they reproduce. Maybe we'll also find out how old the oldest woman was when she delivered a baby.

So thanks, Mom, for babysitting our minnow. Who knew she was pregnant or you might have been able to throw her a baby shower?!

Wait, according to this, eggs would need to be laid, then the male would fertilize them. So why did the female lose her darker belly once the babies were born? And if the eggs hatch in 3-10 days, what the hell? I mean, is she like boy and girl minnow all in one? How did this happen? Am I just being dumb and can't figure this out? Was it Immaculate Fishception?

Thankful Thursday: Why Your Life Sucks and What You Can Do About It by Alan H. Cohen

This is funny. My BFF loaned me this book and I read it a while back. I realized the other day that I need to (1) get the book back to her and (2) get the book out of my house since I’m trying to reduce clutter. So I open it up to any random page in preparing to type up this post. Of course it is the part on page 143 that says “You Identify Yourself as a Savior”.

Yep. That about sums up why I was meant to read this book. It says, “If you have been a mother, therapist, doctor, minister, or teacher for a long time, you may become so immersed in your role as a helper that you don’t know who you are without it.” Yes, this is why I try to “rescue” my kids from situations they don’t need rescuing from. This is why I try to mother everyone I meet and always have, even before I had kids. This is why I see someone kinda getting picked on in a homeschool group and I feel like I have to be the one to step up, to fix it. After all, if I don’t do it, who will? I’m HELPING someone who is being BULLIED, right? Not always, not really.


[Let me stop here and insert something my mom has made me think about. She wants to know, basically, about standing up for others who might not do it themselves. How long do you stand by? I liken it to America helping out in WWII ... if we had not, how many would have died? And yet you can't save everyone. Keep in mind the author is not married and does not have children, so he can afford to let it go and be a little selfish. Let's see how he behaves when he has children or a wife who is getting crapped on verbally or emotionally by someone ...]

There are a lot of good things about this book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is struggling with anything. It’s like a cheap dose of mini-therapy. This book will speak to you in a different way than it spoke to me, I’m sure, but here are some other things in the book that really hit home for me:

Stop trying to please everyone. Just be yourself because you will never get 100% of people you know (or don’t know, if you blog!), to like you.

“Honesty builds strong and reliable relationships. You win more by standing in your truth than by saying what is expected.” How can someone trust your YES if they never hear your NO?

“Rote facts stimulate the mind, but leave the soul wanting. Skills go a longer way.” Like how I took typing at the urging of my dad in 8^th grade. That skill has always kept me employed and helped me with my being able to write quickly. Memorizing dates of battles and the Pythagorean Theorum, not so much.

Chapter titles include:

You Give Your Power Away

You Expect It To Suck

You Get Fooled by Appearances

You Waste Your Energy on Things That Suck

You Keep Trying to Prove Yourself

You Say Yes When You Mean No {guilty!}

You Think You Have to do It All Yourself

You Try to Fix Other People

You Starve Your Soul

You Forgot To Enjoy the Ride


I give this book 3.5 Dove chocolate hearts because much of it is common sense that we just need to hear again and again!

Wordless Wednesday: Happy 4th of July!!!

Moshi Monster Monday: Clay Creations

Sometimes my boys get creative and like to make things out of clay. Here are a couple of their favorite Moshi Monsters made in Claymation ... :-0

General Fazuki

Diavlo

Joel Turns 11 and Aron Goes Back to Wyoming

HAPPY JULY!

I'd love to know what you think about the weekly themes I've been trying out. I'm really doing it for some discipline on my part.

For instance, Wordless Wednesday is easy ... I have so many cute kid pictures that I wish Wednesday was like 3 times a week so I could post them all. Maybe I'll also make it Workout Wednesday.

I like doing reviews of stuff I have around the house, so there's Thankful Thursday.

Tackle-it Tuesday is to hold me accountable to doing SOME task I've been putting off ... weekly!

Monday will probably evolve from Moshi Monsters to something else depending on when the kids get tired of them.

Am hoping to get back into the Aron and Kerrie Love Story, and you'll see why below. Here's the weekly wrap-up:

Sunday Joel turned ELEVEN, we went to church and Aron left for Wyoming. We had a friend over, and later my niece/goddaughter, 2 nephews and SIL came over. The littles had some zipline fun while my SIL and I hung out talking. It was really nice.

Avengers Legos!

A Thor hammer! I'm so glad he still likes this kind of stuff!

Me and the boy who made me a mommy 11 years ago this day, the best 30th birthday present ever (5 days late).

A hug before Daddy has to leave. I can't look at this without crying.

Monday found us at the movie BRAVE with 2 extra kids. Yes, I am a little crazy, but it is a GOOD crazy (there is a diff!). So me and 7 kids went to the movies. Do you take food in? People still hop my butt about my McDonald's sock thing, and I wonder if they shower before they get in a public pool, if they never take food into a movie, NEVER break any dumb/expensive rule. Good for them. I wish I had a picture of the kids in their 3D glasses!

Tuesday was Belton Water Park, Tutu's Valentine's present for the kids in lieu of junk and candy! We hadn't been to her place for a while and it was nice to chill there.

You gotta have nachos at the pool!

A great woman from church gave Michael this shirt for his birthday ... My Life Rocks.

Wednesday found us at my friend's house, and another friend came over. There were 15 kids there! I splurged on California rolls and a big watermelon fruit boat. We stayed until late at night, and the kids had a blast. I have found a friend I can be with all day and we can watch kids and cook and clean and I can work on the laptop while she reads a book and the kids watch a movie. We are like Sister Wives (!!!).

Big Eva (Beva) likes to wear Little Eva's (Leva) clothes. The problem is that Leva is at least a year younger than Beva.

This is my friend NOT freaking out when the kids spilled soapy water all over the floor. She threw towels down and soon had a clean floor!

We have a friend who used to have a Facebook profile picture of herself  with a book covering most of her face, so we did a photo shoot so we could have pix like that, too. It turned goofy.

Thursday ... ugh. Dentist for 2 deep fillings (don't put off dental work, people!) and a cleaning. Jordan, thank God for her, watched the kids and nobody cried when I left. On my way home I stopped by the apartments where Aron's friend lived in 1995 ... where we met! It made me very nostalgic and made me miss Aron so much and want to dive into writing more of the Aron + Kerrie = Love Story! Later we picked up a friend and went to the pool.

Friday meant cleaning for Joel's birthday party, going to the party store and grocery store, baking banana bread. Later our friends came over to play for a few hours.

Saturday was Joel's birthday party. We sure do have some great friends and family. Tutu and Dave came later and sprung for pizza. UPDATE ON KITCHEN: I actually picked up the sanding tool thingie and USED IT for a few minutes! Yes, I am sanding the wall a little before I spackle it and then sand it again 100 more times. I've decided to tackle that project since I'm just shuffling writing papers around anyway and accomplishing NOTHING.

We sang Happy Birthday to Joel before my friend came with the gluten-free (don't ask!) cake. I gave him this cupcake and told him we could not afford an entire cake. Haha.

Here's the gluten-free cake (actually very tasty!) because a friend of mine eats this way with her family and offered to bring it, which was super sweet. I am freaking out that he is 11.

I'm thinking about doing this kind of stuff as a video for you to watch. What do you think? I have a camera on my laptop and it might be faster (and super funny with kids running around behind me in various states of undress since it's summer) to do posts that way once a week. If Aron keeps traveling, he might really dig it ... to see us as we are in daily life.