We Are Moving! We Love Fireworks!

*UPDATED September 2, 2019 and we found our dream house in Peculiar, MO two years ago today. See blog post here!

My county is so uptight (ahem, Johnson County, Kansas)! Heck, my CITY is so uptight (naming more names: Overland Park, Kansas). It thinks it's like the hottest thing going and is so beautiful and fabulous and smart and witty. It doesn't want to do anything to dirty its reputation.

Reason #1 to move: So someone who lives in my city can't keep hens. In all the surrounding counties where I live, THEY get to keep hens. They get to have fresh eggs every day. It's not the houses are completely on top of each other and hens would bug the neighbors. I would personally keep mine under our deck, which is a lot of feet (like my measurements?) from either neighbor. I'm not saying I will keep hens. I'm just saying I want the OPTION. I want the FREEDOM to do so.

Reason #2 to move: We live on a corner which doubles as a racing strip at times. Trust me, I know. When Aron and I were dating, his brothers went over 100 mph up our street (before we lived here) on motorcycles. Aron and I also went pretty fast up our street. These days people still speed up and down our street and don't know the meaning of a crosswalk. Someone once honked at my kid for trying to cross!

Reason #3 to move: Fireworks. We love fireworks. I just found out that SPARKLERS and SNAKES are not allowed in my city!!!!! There is a neighboring county where the big assumption about them is that they are all backwoods, poor and dumb, and yet they somehow get through the 4th of July every year without too much trouble. My city is supposed to be all smart and rich and we can't have SNAKES! Like we are too stupid to water down our grass before doing fireworks or we will do snakes on wooden decks or house roofs.

So we go to the backwoods county where my family lives and we shoot fireworks and we have never had a problems. We've also in the past gone to my Mom's backwoods county in another state and have never had problems.

Joel likes to put fireworks under a cup and light them.

I'm sure it shocks you that I am all into blowing things up.

The booty! My cousin went with us to do the only shopping I truly enjoy.

This year I was like, "Kids, your dad is out of town so we'd better not do any fun, illegal fireworks while he's gone because if the cops show up and want to take me away for doing illegal fireworks, you need someone at home to care for you." 

Every other year I'm like, "Aron, I will volunteer to go to the Pokey while you stay home with the kids. Can I just real quick grab my laptop and a book? Maybe get a coffee on the way? I'll be back in a few days!"

50 Shades of Grey Half-Serious Book Discussion

Dad, this one is not for you. No soup for you today, Dad. This is what you get for having only one child and having it be a FEMALE. Let this be a lesson for you. Now go sit in the basement corner.

Is he gone? Okay, here we go with our scintillating book discussion, ladies.

1. So my friend who borrowed one of my zillion copies of "50 Shades of Grey" said it's not as bad as some of the older Anne Rice stuff, written under a pseudonym. I've never read Anne Rice, so you have to tell me. Otherwise, I have some questions ...
2. Why was Anastasia prescribed the "mini pill"????? Isn't that the one with less hormones in it, like they give to nursing women? And then the nursing women get knocked up? Why would the bazillion-dollar doctor do that?
   
3. Why does Christian act like he knows all about a woman's cycle but did not understand that when she was a week from her period she was pretty much totally "safe" fertile-wise?
   
4. Then when she was on Day 4 of her period (and not bleeding anymore???? at all? give me a break) he's all like "game on" ... when everyone who does natural family planning knows Day 4 is not necessarily "safe" pregnancy-wise. And, REALLY? He couldn't have done what he did on Day 4 of her cycle EARLIER? Gross. I am, however, okay with what they did on Day 2, which makes me some sort of nastycakes.
   
5. My copy of "50 Shades of Darker" should arrive any day now. I fully expect to open it up and find Anastasia pregnant. She was on the mini pill having all sorts of sex ... Don't ruin it for me if you have read it.
6. Regarding the ending, I was seriously in tears. What does that say about me? Anyway, I realized later that he could have stopped anytime doing what he did at the end. He did not have to count all the way up to whatever. He could have stopped when she was crying. But then we would not have books 2 and 3.
7. If you are squeamish sexually, DON'T READ THIS BOOK! I'm not saying I'm a freak or anything, but I did find the romance in it, and liked especially the semi-humorous emails that went back and forth between the characters. The book left me with many questions about the characters, and a cousin of mine says Book 2 is her favorite, so you know you can meet me back here soon :-)

EEEE ... just checked the mail and it is here. Catch you soon!

Freaking Friday: Freezing Frappes

Yes, I am aware that my kitchen counter makes it look like I live in a crackhouse. I can assure you I do not and that I am just not a great remodeler and will be getting on that task someday in the next 30 years.

I've blown through the Scooter's and Starbuck's gift cards I got for my birthday and now have to resort to making them at home. And it rocks. There are probably better ways to do this, but here is how I do it on the cheap at home:

1. Put a Starbuck's Columbia Via packet in a cup (they average out at about a buck a packet, so in the end I'm probably making a double batch of frappe that we can all share and it comes out to less than 2 bucks), add about 4 ounces hot water. Stir it up in the cup a bit.
2. Pour that mixture into the blender. Toss in some ice and some milk (sorry I don't have exact measurements here for you but that's just how I roll in cooking and baking and stuff).
3. I toss in some half and half also. I also like to put in some chocolate syrup to taste and have this yummy flavored creamer I like to use (chocolate toffee or something like that).
4. Dump in a bunch of ice and set the blender on FRAPPE!
5. There you go! Cheaper than McDonald's and better! You can use skim milk, sugar-free syrups, whatever you want.

Here is my friend, who made me these twice while I was at her place. Maybe in the comments section she can clue you in on how SHE does it ... (look, she even re-used my Starbuck's cup!)

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!