you would think that by now i would have it all figured out

But I don't.

I took notes on my Blackberry yesterday because I had one ridiculous chaotic incident after another.

Let me start by saying that this house is big on discipline. In fact, my side of the family often refers to our home as "boot camp" and my nieces often get threatened with having to come here for a period of time, "to straighten things out."

Hmmm. I don't know if that is a compliment or not.

Let me just explain myself here. In our defense, discipline is a necessary priority or CHAOS WOULD REIGN!!!

I am going to give you a glimpse of my afternoon yesterday. One afternoon people, not even a full day.

Keep that in mind.

And be warned.

Our morning of school was pretty uneventful, in fact, it went a little smoother than normal because we had a birthday party to look forward to in the afternoon.

And the party involved "scales and tails." Enough said.

To start off the excitement, I sent my men ahead of me to load themselves into the van, only to find an intense argument over a pen and a pad of paper between my two eldest.

It quickly resolved when I offered to just forget the entire outing.

Of course, I had not been out of the house since the invite arrived was not prepared for the party and needed to stop at a toy store to get a present for our sweet little friend.

As we walked into the toy store, the boys instantly gravitated to the costume display and picked out the $30+ costumes that they want for Halloween.

Oh perfect. Let me just load those in the cart for you.

As soon as I tore them away, Rufus went r.u.n.n.i.n.g. down the main isle literally screaming the list of what his brothers should come and look at.

Note to self, we need to work on self control.

Because I couldn't string him up by his toenails I didn't want to continue on this path, I corralled the troops for another set of threats a behavior pow-wow.

Fast forward - we've picked our present and were at the cashier. Mostly, the boys stayed nearby, but as I'm pushing the cart toward the door, I notice Sauce one little man was chewing on something.

After a short deposition, I find out that he FOUND a Skittle on another cashier counter.

And despite the flu season descending down on the human race, he decided to eat it.

Oh yummy.

Next, we drove the 20+ minutes while I hollered from the driver's seat asked the boys to please stop farting the ABC's with their armpits.

And dear Lord, please don't do it at the birthday party.

There was a smack from a hand to an eye and plenty of crying and blaming and not taking responsibility for a bad choice.

Then there was the pleasant discovery that Rufus decided to spend his free time in the van by tearing up paper into miniscule, itty bitty pieces which he did NOT feel the need to confine to a neat pile.

My beloved wonders why my van is such a mess all the time. Hmmmm.

The party was a great time. I think the fact that there was a hired entertainer to show the children snakes, spiders, lizards, and turtles kept my children from thinking they needed to provide the potty talk.

Nothing's cooler than reptiles pooping on themselves.

We dashed through the drive thru for a quick dinner and then went straight to basketball practice for The Hunter and Sauce.

Where I then had to take Rufus and Squirt to the bathroom about 624 times (did I mention I finished potty training?). One trip involved a man-sized poop so big that the industrial strength toilet couldn't flush it down the first time.

I know, TMI. But seriously?

We topped that off by going home for a reunion with Daddy, jammies, stories, and bedtime.

And later checked up on the ruckus coming from from the big boys' bedroom.

Only to find that there was a farting contest going on - and not with the armpits. We promptly opened a window for fear of a random spark and explosion.

So, see. Imagine if we felt discipline was optional.

an extra set of hands and a lot of extra love

My little Rufus has someone wrapped around his tiny little finger.

My Aunt Mary Lou, who we affectionately call "Aunt Louie" is just magic around little ones.  All it takes for her to visit us from Atlanta is for Rufus to say, "Aunt Wooooie, will you come for my birf-day?"

Abracadabra, ala-kazam, Aunt Louie is here for a weekend visit.

I love it.

In the past, she has been a help by happily tagging along with whatever little men activities we have going on.  She is a great help and so generous to us.

This year, since she arrived in the heart of our fall colors, we brought her on the chairlift and went to the top of Park City Mountain Resort for a little walk.

Grasshoppers galore were one of the highlights of our mountaintop walk.

The good news is we have TWO fall birthdays, so she was here last month and will be back next week.

I am We are so excited.

halloween costumes

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date night

While my hunters were hunting this fall, I took the opportunity to use some free tickets offered by our community soccer program to take my Sauce on a little date night.

I have been quite neglectful thus far in my parenting career to take time for one-on-one date nights with my boys.  It is definitely something that I've discovered is worth moving up my priority list.

Sauce has been ga-ga about sports from the time he could sit on his own.  His first word was "ball" and he has always been a little star in athletics.  It was a no brainer to take him to youth night at the Salt Lake Real (pronounced "Ray-Al") professional soccer game.

I pawned off the littlest men for the evening and Sauce and I went on our adventure.  I was pretty impressed that although some of his friends from his soccer team were there sitting around us goofing around and really not paying attention to the game, Sauce was captivated.

He watched and cheered as if we were watching the Chicago Bears out on the field.  The visiting opponents were the Chicago Fire soccer team, so I was torn as to who to cheer for.

Before the game:

All the youth soccer teams go to go out on the field for the National Anthem.  See my sauce in the lower left corner of the big screen???

My soccer star:

My handsome date: 

About a week later, Sauce brought up to me that he considered our date one of the best nights of his life.

I'm smitten!

if nowhere had a middle, this would be it

I have quite a bit of backtracking to do this fall.  I've blogged about homeschooling, but probably neglected to say how worn out and unmotivated I am as a result of it.

My house is a mess and all I want to do at the end of a day is curl up on the couch with my remote control in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, and get affectionate with my DVR.

Needless to say, blogging fell a bit down the priority list, but I do feel quite accomplished that my men have clean undies.

Anyhoo, about a month ago, my in-laws, who have chosen the names "Hunca Munca and Pop Pop" came for a long weekend visit from the great state of Pennsylvania.

For some time now, Hunca Munca has been pushing to go on a certain adventure.

An adventure digging up rocks.  She has an affinity toward rocks and all sorts of things that live and grow and pretty much just sit in the ground.

We live in the green, treed mountains, but there are portions of our state that are dry, barren desert.

120 miles away, to be exact.

And she wanted to take my men there.

What's a geode, you ask?  Go here to find out.

Luckily for me, this wasn't a trip that our little Squirt would enjoy.  So, I got the pleasure of staying home with him for the day (essentially by myself when you consider his nap).

The day, although long, was profitable in terms of geodes.  I think The Hunter counted 148 in their two full buckets that they brought home.

 

 

As an added bonus, they stopped to see an original United States Pony Express station.  Which was also in the middle of nowhere.

They all came home ten hours later, dirty, exhausted, and full of stories
to tell. 

Now, what to do with the 148 geodes????