Todd's a true cowboy...

Todd got bucked off a horse yesterday, and his boss at work said he'd never seen him so proud. He's a true cowboy now, you know.

The people at work made him go get x-rays, and luckily nothing was broken. He's just a wee bit sore.

The pain medicine they gave him came with the following possible side effects and instructions:

Contact your doctor immediately if you experience sharp or crushing chest pain; sudden shortness of breath; sudden leg pain; sudden severe headache, vomiting, dizziness, or fainting; changes in vision; numbness of an arm or leg; slurred speech; one-sided weakness; sudden unexplained weight gain; change in amount of urine produced; severe or persistent stomach pain; vomit that looks like coffee grounds; black tarry stools; itching, reddened, swollen, blistered, painful, or peeling skin; yellowing of the skin or eyes; dark urine; right-sided tenderness; severe or persistent tiredness; fever, chills, or sore throat; severe or persistent nausea; swelling of hands, ankles, feet, face, lips, eyes, throat, or tongue; difficulty swallowing or breathing; or hoarseness.

If it were me--I'd be stickin' with Tylenol.

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I finally finished a project!!!

I finally finished a project from my craft graveyard. I was invited (a couple months ago) to a girl's night where we met at the church to work on any project we had going. As I went through my stuff, I was amazed at how many projects I have that are sooooo close to being done.
I can't remember if I did this needlepunch last spring, or the year before. It's just been waiting for me to piece the fabric for the background. Todd made the frame, and I'm trying to decide whether to leave it this color, or paint it my favorite color--shitbrindle green ;o)

Just so you know....

Just so you know, calcium bonds with fluoride. This is useful to anyone who has a child who likes to eat toothpaste. The first time Dillon did it (early this week), I called poison control where they gave me this useful information. So, the second time it happened, I knew I could just give Dillon a sippy cup of milk or a Tums and he'd be fine.

Also, an entire box of chocolate malt-o-meal dumped on the kitchen floor will be just like having your own indoor sandbox.

Spring Bulletin Board for Brayden's class

Here's the latest bulletin board that I did for Brayden's teacher. The pink ribbon on the Easter basket is made from paper twist that I found out in the milk barn when we cleaned it last week. What a lucky find!
I was supposed to do an Easter/Math theme. I wanted to put something like 1 bunny + 1 bunny = lots of bunnies, but I thought it might confuse the kids.

I learned a few things while making this board, so I'll pass them along in case any of you ever have to do something similar:

1. Popcorn tree's look better if you don't put popcorn in the "V" part of the branch.
2. You can't color popcorn the same way as you color macaroni noodles. The food coloring will soak right in to one piece of popcorn, and the rest will remain white.
3. You color popcorn using dry tempera paint.
4. You can't glue popcorn onto a paper tree (that's already on a wall) using rubber cement.
5. You can't glue popcorn onto a paper tree using Elmer's glue either.
6. You must use a glue gun to put popcorn onto a paper tree.
7. Using a glue gun on a little piece of popcorn will result in lots of burns/blisters.
8. Don't try to use popcorn on a bulletin board.
9. Tissue paper tulips are harder than they look.
10. The rest of the tissue paper flowers are easier than they look.

Spontaneous family picture

While we were in Newton this week, we decided to get an updated family picture. The question is....how long will it be updated?

Caleb and Dillon just before family pictures.
I will blog the family picture as soon as my Mom sends me a copy.

Brayden's class program

Here's Brayden in his brown crayon costume. His part (which was memorized) was, "Today Crayola has a core of 120 colors".

Here's most of his class. Allie (the orange crayon) is our neighbor. We are constantly at her house, if she's not at ours. Miriam (the yellow crayon) is the girl who Brayden likes "because she's so pretty".

Todd's birthday

When I got Todd's birthday dessert out of the fridge, I took off the lid, and this is what it looked like. I'll give you three guesses as to whose finger "dipped" into the cake a few hours early. He covered his tracks well this time, 'cause I had no idea he'd been into the cake. Actually, it's not cake. It's Fake Eclair Pie, and it's Todd's favorite. It's super easy to make, but I rarely do, because it has to refrigerate overnight. Who thinks about dessert 24 hours in advance? Anyway, you can find me making this little treat every year on March 7th at 11:30 PM before I go to bed.

Dillon Strikes Again!

This is what Dillon looks like when he's covered in Pomegranate bodywash. While I was on the phone yesterday, he dumped about 1/4 of a bottle on the livingroom carpet. The spot was smaller than the last time this happened--only about the size of a Corel dinner plate.

I first cleaned Dillon up, making it as miserable for him as possible, but when I finished, he said, "Thank you, mommy".

It took nearly two hours to clean, but I didn't have as much foam as last time. After I wiped up all the excess soap that I could, I poured straight vinegar right on the spot and let it sit a minute (I think that is the secret). Then I took my Bissell "little green machine" and slowly sucked up the suds. The reason it takes so long is that you have to stop and rinse out the dirty water chamber every two minutes because the bubbles start to come out the top AND bottom of the machine, and it makes a bigger mess.

Valentine's Day

I have fond memories of my Dad helping me make the best Valentine box ever when I was in third grade. I remember I was about to cover a shoe box with aluminum foil and put stickers on it like every other deprived kid, when Dad came to the rescue. We made a shiny white box with a huge padded fabric/lace heart attached to the back. It was marvelous.

So you can imagine my disappointment, when Brayden came home from school with a plain old paper bag that we were supposed to decorate and return to school. We did the best we could under the boring circumstances. We painted the bag black and used an old toothbrush to speckle "stars". Then we used craft foam and glitter glue to turn it into a rocket. We found glow-in-the dark foam hearts at Wal-Mart, and we found a leftover "Braydenaut" from Brayden's Space birthday party (from when he turned five--I can't believe I still had one).

Hooray for Dillondoofer Day!

Since Dillon's birthday is the day before Dr. Seuss's birthday, we decided to do a Seuss party. I had great plans (as always) for the party such as Cat in the Hat hats for the boys, Yellow T-shirts with a star on the tummy (Sneetch shirts), a One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish pond with prizes, and we were going to make Oobleck. When time got short, we opted to have Green Eggs and Ham for breakfast and sort of a Seuss-ish cake. Dillon didn't know the difference anyway. We gave him a roll of bubble wrap (he calls them "Pops") and a balloon. What more could a two-year old want?

The best part of all, was that Grandma and Grandpa Salisbury made the five hour trip to be here for dinner, and the party.

Dillon got two sets of blocks, the Little People Market, an Aquadoodle board, lots of new clothes, a broom and dustpan (just his size), and more. A fun time was had by all.

Curious Dill...

I've been keeping a list in my mind of all of Dillon's "undoings". I'm sure I won't remember everything because it has become so commonplace, but I'll list the highlights:

Sharpie Marker Incidents:

Dining room wall; Mom's bedroom wall, mirror, and dresser; bathroom countertop; kitchen table and chairs; hallway wall. Best way to clean Sharpie markers? try hairspray and a microfiber cloth (right away). If you let it sit, you've got a problem--there's a reason it's called permanent.

Pen's, Pencil's, and Crayon's:

One library book; Mom's laptop screen (won't come off); Kitchen table; Every other wall. Best way to clean? Use a microfiber cloth and Don Aslett's heavy duty cleaner for pencil or pen. Use De-Solve It or a Mr. Clean magic eraser for crayon.

Incident's at the neighbor's house:

Dillon broke their glass cookie jar lid while trying to sneek some candy; he wrote on their hallway wall with a highlighter (it was easy to wash off); he drew a mural on their master bedroom wall with an orange (washable) marker; he used a dry erase marker to write on their bathroom countertop and livingroom floor (this came off easily, but just for your information: dry-erase marker does NOT wash out of clothes--even if you soak them in oxy-clean for a week). Dillon also got into their game closet and emptied the pieces of probably 10 different games all over their livingroom floor. High-Ho-Cherry-Oooooh.......DILLON!

Soap incident's:

Many of you heard about the day that Dillon dumped an entire bottle of blueberry bodywash (new) on his bedroom carpet. I got out our Bissell "little green machine" and used straight vinegar in it (to neutralize the soap). I still had foam everywhere. I used up two gallons of vinegar before I gave up. While I was cleaning this mess, Dillon dumped a box of cereal on the couch. This incident cost us about $12 when you add up the soap, the vinegar, and the cereal.

We've got numerous spots on our carpet and couch cover that are all related to soap. That dispenser is just so darn tempting to push...

Then there was the day I caught Dillon scooping laundry soap into the toilet downstairs...

Other Household Items:

Several rolls of toilet paper, packs of wet wipes, and a box of kleenex. I think you can picture this in your mind...

Toothpaste all over the counter, and all over in Dillon's hair...

One day he dumped an entire new bottle of Dishwasher Rinse-Aid on the kitchen floor/open dishwasher door. This was about $6 worth, so picture, if you will, Felicia with a turkey baster--sucking up enough Jet-Dri so that I can at least get one "serving" to fill the dishwasher compartment.

Little fingers + Crisco= a yucky mess

He squirted about 1/3 of a bottle of "pink lotion" on his carpet and hair the other day. Thanks to Calvin (and Jordan and Victoria) for the "stain extinguisher" that they gave us for Christmas. It fit the bill this time.

Last Tuesday, the day after I had been to Richfield to do all my shopping for the next few weeks, Dillon destroyed the last of my favorite lipstick. I spanked him for this one. I went to Royal's (our local grocery store) to see if they had my color. They had bright pink, brighter pink, and red. Luckily, Grandma and Grandpa were coming, so Grandma went to three stores to find Mocha Ice lipstick, and bring it to me. We don't even have three stores around here...

Later that day, he made another "bad choice" and when I started to yell, he spanked HIS OWN bottom and went on with his day.

He also loves to ruin Todd's Blistex. We probably spend $20/month on Blistex 'cause Todd can't live a day without it, and Dillon will go to great lengths to find it in our house.

Speaking of chapstick...Dillon found a gluestick the other day and started using it like chapstick.

And now we're on to the Fridge incident's:

We have a jug of water with a valve, that we keep in the fridge so the boy's can get their own water. Dillon had a hey-day with that. Several times he had the whole kitchen floor covered in water.

Three cracked eggs on the kitchen floor...

One day I caught Dillon in the fridge eating raw onions, and kidney beans (I keep them handy to throw on my salads).

Often times we found our milk jugs in random places around the house. We now have a fridge lock. It's great.

Toilet Incident's:

See the laundry soap incident above. There's also the time that I caught him scooping up toilet water with Caleb's water cup (I hope it was the first time).

One day, Dillon was happily helping me wipe down the kitchen table and I was praising him for being a good helper, when I realized that I hadn't given him a wet rag. Yup....toilet water.

Other:

He loves to play in my jewelry dish and scatter earrings throughout the house; He does the same with paperclips from the computer desk; He also took Brayden's child sized hammer and put some lovely dents in the hallway wall.

In closing (and in my defense) I have to say that there have been many more potential incident's that have been "foiled". I get panicked when I haven't seen him for a minute. The day I was sick in bed all day I was panicked because Todd was in charge, and he's not used to stopping whatever he's working on to check on Dillon every two minutes. My mom thinks we should attach a bell to him.....I think I might.

We've had severe non-linear waterfowl issues...(we can't get our ducks in a row)

Hi everyone! This entry is dedicated to Anita--we hear you've been checking our blog regularly only to find the same old page. We've had problems with our computer, our internet service provider, and our regular browser. Hopefully this will work so I can add the entries I've been saving up.