boys say the funniest things...

Number Four told me my head looked like a meatball. When I asked why, he said "Cuz it's in a circle."

Nice way to start the day.

it's nice to have boys...

and it'd be nicer to borrow them to somone.

#3 mouths off, so #4 whacks him, #2 tries to stick up for #4 and #1 yells at them all. #3 shoves #4, then #1 and #2 hold down #3 so #4 can get another "free" whack in.

boys say the funniest things...

I pulled my pickle jars out of the canner and Number Four told me, "If you put my butt in there, I would say, 'My buns are burning! My buns are burning!' "

I don't even want to know where this came from.

romance is dead

Overhead in an Omaha hotel (while in a double bed):

Hubby: "These beds are for newlyweds, not 14-year-weds."

Me: "Hon, today was 15 years."

I let him squirm for awhile before telling him that I too had forgot our anniversary. And the sad thing is that we were both okay with it. No roses or chocolate or jewelry to celebrate 15 years of marriage. We simply rolled over and slept.

That was gift enough.

bedroom flooring

So, I have another detour in my plans to get to the bathroom project upstairs. Instead, we switched gears (again) and starting installing the maple hard wood flooring in the upstairs bedrooms.

It's pretty rustic looking. Not sure if I'm in love with it, but hubby absolutely is thrilled with it.

We purchased it from an Amish guy in Wisconsin and the price was very reasonable. Installation so far has been decent, but we have two more rooms to go.

The hardest part? Cutting the flooring for around the wood floor vents. Very thankful right now that we're able to cut outside on the porch and that we have both a table and a compound miter saw. Can't imagine doing this project without either of these.

So thank you Jet and Dewalt for building great tools that work well, even when you work them hard.

laundry floor reveal

Here's the laundry room floor - complete just in time for the delivery next week.

I CAN'T WAIT!! Hauling 14 loads of laundry to the laundromat is not exactly a pleasant experience, given all the smells and my phobia of overly perfumed detergent and fabric softener. Can't tell you how many times my clothes came out smelling like something other than my lavender-scented natural detergent, or how many times I had to pass on an open washer because it was COVERED inside with cat or dog hair.

Laundromats are not easy on the pocket book, especially when washing machines have a tendency to eat dollar bills. Hauling around quarters got to be a bit tricky when you're trying to juggle hampers, soap and a bag of change.

Okay, okay, I'll stop complaining now. Here's what the flooring looks like. I did a little inlaid rug pattern in the walkway. My only regret is that I didn't use a lighter colored grout. That way the design would have popped out more. But, I'm consoling myself by knowing that darker grout will hide more dirt since there seems to be a never-ending supply of it around here.

What you see in the background is supposed to be a mudroom shower and a big closet, but who knows when that will ever get done. I'm just happy to get a real laundry room, that I'm not even going to worry about it. :)

under garments

A recent conversation between me and Number Four.

"Mom – is underwear tighty whities?"
"Yep."
"Then I’m not wearing dem!" (This coming from the child who wears his undies on backwards most every day, and it doesn't seem to bother him.)

"Is all underwear tighty whities?"
"No, not boxers."
"I’m not talking ‘bout boxers!" (Apparently, boxers aren't underwear?)

"Is my underwear tighty whities?"
"Yep."
"But they’re not white!" (How do you argue with that?)

life's little disappointments

Number Three: Where are we going for summer vacation?

Me: Omaha.

Number Three: Are we going anywhere else?

Me: Nope.

Number Three: Oh man! I wanted to go to Mexico!

unfinished business

Right now, I probably have about twelve different “projects” that are waiting patiently for my undivided attention or my uninterrupted time, both of which are in rare supply these days.

I have a pair of knitted socks that were supposed to be a birthday gift for someone - only one sock is done. I have slate half laid out for a laundry room floor - mainly because I got stalled while trying to decide which direction to stagger the pieces. I have half a garden weeded, but that I’m blaming on mosquitoes. I nearly got carried away the other day after donating a half-pint of blood to the thirsty buggers.

There is a stack of magazines that I have (for two years now) intended to rip out pages of kitchen ideas, gardening tips, recipes or other inspirations for future projects (and so that I can get the pile away from my nightstand.) There are (well, I won’t even confess this number) tons of new books to read that I can’t seem to find the time for. Boy #2 got an ipod a month ago and I still haven’t loaded any songs from iTunes on it. I think he has actually forgot he even has it. It’s nearly July and I have yet to make new folders to file all of our 2009 paperwork.
To top it all off, my washer and dryer conked out on me two months ago. (You can only imagine the pile of clothes calling my name.) That problem cannot be resolved completely until the tile project is finished because hubby won’t let me buy new appliances until the flooring is done.

All of this adds up to unfinished business, and lots of it, in my life. Some of it irks me. Some of it stresses me out. Some of it, I’ve just plain given up on.

I sometimes wonder if I don’t have a slight ADD problem because it is very difficult for me to actually complete one thing before I move on to the next thing. Or before I HAVE to move on to the next thing. Then I realize that I’m a mother. In my world, motherhood equals a short attention span. There is no possible way to finish things when you have four kids (or probably any number of small children) at home. You are constantly being interrupted by requests for snacks, appeals to break up fights and those pesky meals that need to be prepared. Just when I get into a project like weeding, I’ll realize that it’s lunch time. Or rather I’ll be reminded by at least two carnivores that it’s time to eat. Then, after cleaning up all the crumbs, spilled water and cherry pits, I’ll get into, say tiling, only to realize that I should have started planning supper a half an hour earlier.
The interruptions are never-ending, which makes my unfinished business never-ending.

To be honest, it would probably be like this even in a kid-less world. I’d just find different things to interrupt me, like Facebook, coffee breaks and phone calls. Wait, I already do all that. The key, I think, is how I respond to the interruptions (and their end result.)

In his wonderful book, “The Rest of God”, author Mark Buchanan advises to “become hospitable to interruption.” I will never experience the possible blessing that God-ordained interruptions could hold for me if I get cranky about them or disregard them.

Sometimes those interruptions come in the form of flowering weeds. Sometimes from two boys with their fingers around each others’ necks. Or from another one, begging for animal crackers. And sometimes, it’s a phone call from a friend asking for prayer.

All of these interruptions will prevent me from doing whatever it was that I was doing. Temporarily. It is quite simply my choice as to whether I view them as intrusions or pauses. Buchanan advocates managing time less and paying attention more, drawing from Moses’ prayer in Psalm 90:12 - stopping to number our days aright. Or as the Message puts it: “Teach us to live wisely and well.”

A mother’s work is never done, but there will come an end to kissing boo-boos and making Play-do snakes. I choose to live wisely when I am unselfish with my time. “The world of the generous gets larger and larger while the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller,” says Proverbs 11:24. The tradeoff is that the unfinished business can seem to grow in direct proportion to the amount of time I redeem for interruptions. But according to Buchanan, a generous person will actually have more time because she will give herself first to God and then to others. Or perhaps she simply looks at her time as something to give rather than something to hoard. Or she considers reading about Little Critter more important than finishing a blog entry.

Some interruptions are God’s way of letting me know He’s got some unfinished business with me - business that can’t be completed if I ignore them.

bottom of the wash...

A wet soggy mess is what I found the other day. Somehow, our 10-year-old washer conked out, leaving unspun clothes after it's demise. Which is just loads of fun when you live in the country, you're in the middle of a construction project AND you have four boys.

We purchased a new LG front load washer/dryer combo and had the delivery put back a month, hoping it would give me enough time to finish the new laundry room floor. I figured I could live without cabinets and doors in the room as long as the water was hooked up and the workhorses were running.

So I had to take a little detour in my plans to complete the upstairs bathroom. Now, I'm installing the same slate as in that room, in just a slightly different pattern. And hope to get it done in just under a month - otherwise my new appliances will be sitting in their boxes without a home or a job.

Wish me luck.

dinner table conversations

"Mom, how come you get all the cilantro in your sandwich?"

"How do you know I have cilantro?"

"It smells funny."

Something is seriously wrong with this kid. And his father. Cilantro-haters. Must be a stray gene somewhere.

mary, mary quite contrary...

Even though I’ve reached the ripe old age of Never-You-Mind, I still haven’t figured out this nursery rhyme. My tattered copy of The Complete Mother Goose doesn’t help at all. I want to know why Mary was so contrary.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she was gardening. That I get. I could be the Mary in “Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” Only my response would more like this: with weeds galore and more in store and ten dirty toes in a row.

Never mind we haven’t had rain in, well, I’m getting to old to remember any more. Never mind that I have four little boys who want to “help.” And never mind that my hose doesn’t quite reach to the newly-moved garden that needed more sun.

And yes, I know the solution to problem number three is an easy fix - Wal-Mart is only five miles away. But, have you ever walked inside a store that contains Oreos, baseball cards and squirt guns with four boys? I’d rather lug my watering can with the broken nozzle to each little garden bed to refresh some not-so-fresh looking peppers and cabbage. (That problem also has a solution called Wal-Mart, but...)

Problem one I can’t fix. Problem two I can’t either. Well, I tried and I gave up. Well, okay I didn’t try very hard.

I had this BRIGHT idea that four boys could have fun planting their own rows next to my garden with the seeds I had left over. But it took some doing.

First the ground was too hard. Then it was too hot. Then it was too cold. Then I just didn’t feel like it. Hubby got the ground tilled up (for the second time) for me, or rather for them.

I figured the boys could experience some real-life science, real-life chores and maybe even some real-life sweat. Who knew you could get so much out of one simple little project? Like procrastination, irritation, bug bites and sunburn. It’s enough to water MY garden, let alone four more hodge-podge rows of who knows what. Because of course, then comes the weeding. (I can almost hear the whining already and see all the dirt clods getting thrown around. I’m raising boys, can you tell? Anything can turn into a war and then into a wrestling match.)

I think I know why Mary was contrary.

She probably needed a hammock in the shade and a few servants to tend her garden. And, I’m guessing she didn’t have rows of watermelon, pumpkin, two beans, one huge mass of carrots where the seed packet got dumped out and a puny little tomato that got trampled, twice.

Remember, she had pretty maids all in a row. I have pretty dirty faces all in a row. Well seriously I don’t know if you can even call them rows - they sort of zig and zag a bit. But, they’re labeled whose is whose with favorite rocks and sticks and even a hoe handle.

Now they want to plant apple seeds and raisins and whole dandelion heads. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if one of the littler boys got planted, head first.

If I’m being honest, my life isn’t much different than Mary the Contrary. I make big plans. I get crabby about said plans. I work, work, work to get plans done, but do not enjoy one single second of the work. And then I find something more to plan.

The good news is that God has a funny way of tapping you on the shoulder sometimes and forcing you to smell the dirt clod that just got thrown in your face. After you get the grit out of your mouth, be sure to look around closely. You might just find four delighted boys poking holes in dirt, babbling non-stop about what their row contains and how they’re going to eat an entire watermelon this summer.

And you know what? They can eat the whole thing. Life’s too short to be contrary. Or stingy. The four boys God planted in my life are more fun than silver bells and cockle shells.

That’s how my garden grows.