hide-n-(sensory)-seeking

I spent two and a half hours on the phone yesterday evening with an incredibly skilled and patient customer service representative, fixing the problems on my computer that I have been struggling with for several months now, and spent $80 to have only partially fixed elsewhere. The problems themselves were caused by a different and abhorrently unskilled and impatient cutomer service representative, who failed to really investigate and troubleshoot a minor error, and instead felt the best way to kill a spider was to blow up the house. Well after blowing up my computer, the error was still there! Because, of course, the problem wasn't the house, it was the spider, which happened to be in the yard! After hours, litteraly of searching, looking up technical terms, and scouring forums, I not only identified the problem, but also solved it. Great. I now had only one thing on my computer working, while everything else was either missing, not not working. I attempted several methods to ...

Scene: Victor is is the recliner. Zak is sitting with him, mostly on the arm of the recliner. They are playing games together on Victor's phone. Victor: Is that a patch in your jeans? Zak: Yeah. Victor: Huh...did your mom put that on? Zak: (sort of snorts) No! Mommy never puts patches on! She just buys new pants. Well, not new pants, but Goodwill.  These are hand-me-downs. He made me laugh at the spot on truth of his statement. Yup. I've yet to meet a pair of pants that can last longer than two months on that boy without wearing clean through the knees. That's too often to be hauling out the iron just to fix something he's going to shred again by the time I turn around. Almost all we have ever gotten with patches already there he managed to tear through around the edges of the patch anyway.  We keep a couple good pairs for when we go out and holes are innapropriate, but at home, he can wear the ones with holes. At $3-4 per pair, that's letting a boy be a boy wi...

Grace wanted an art project to do. Something different. Don't ask me how this popped into my head, but it turned out be the different she was looking for. Supplies are easy and mostly things everyone has on hand with one exception. The colored cellophane sheets were something I had ordered from Amazon not to long ago, we don't always just have these in the house. I suppose craft stores might also sell it. Supplies: Two sheets of paper (Any color, but we chose printer paper because it is a bit thinner which makes some of the cuts easier.) Good scissors. Crayons, markers, or paint. (Grace wanted to use crayons) Tape or glue. (Grace wanted to use tape) Colored cellophane sheets cut into various sizes in select colors. 1. Decide ahead of time how big you want your hanging "window" to be. 2. Place the two sheets of paper together and fold them in half together short-ways. 3. Outline the outer edge of your "window"...

There once was a baby, who planted some seeds. She watered the soil, and sunlight it needs. When little spouts popped up she jumped, overjoyed. Then dumped out the soil and the greens, she destroyed. True story. :)

Saturday is our Library Day. We go every week when possible. Everybody loves it. We have two bags now that we take with us. Returns. And Recheck. Daddy goes down the list calling out titles, and little people scurry around the house digging books from under pillows and piles of paper, matching DVDs with the correct covers, and sweeping arms under the couch in search of strays. Kit squeals with delight as she asks every person in the family if "you're coming too?" and we all say "YES!" Even Grandpa is easy to get out the door on Library day. Upon arrival, Daddy sees to the business of returning items, picking up orders that have arrived, and rechecking the ones we aren't quite finished with. The rest of us fan out in search of this week's adventures. The rule is the kids must select at least one item before getting on the computers. Really, this is mostly a rule for Grace. While not our biggest techie at home, she L...

We had one of those days recently where we were just seriously getting on each others nerves. It had the makings of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. So instead of moping around and snipping at each other until Daddy came home, I decided we needed a change of view. I gathered a few supplies and had the kids help haul them outside to the back yard. Which is where we spent the rest of the afternoon. I ordered a pizza and we ate cross-legged and picnic style under the shade of our pecan trees. We played games. The kids climbed up and down the slide, in and out of the sandbox, and when they got bored with those we pulled out the paint. I don't remember the last time all three were that quiet at the same time without being asleep. We go outside a lot. And we have fun. This day felt different though.  A few toys, s...

A little over a month ago Victor cane home with a handful of discount DVDs. Many of these were movies we used to own on VHS, but got rid of after we no longer owned a VCR. One of these movies was An American Tail. I grew up on this movie. I knew every word to Somewhere Out There .  And somewhere in there, I did kind of know that it was a story of immigration. But I don't recall that being of any great interest to me as a kid. So imagine my surprise when during our most recent viewing, my kids were pelting me with questions relating to the plot line, but of course launched into the much larger and messier root discussion about immigration.  There was a lot of pausing happening, and a lot of we'll look more up on this later. Over the course of the next few weeks our discussions were amazing. We made a trip to the library, and nearly gave Daddy a hernia when he carried the bag loaded with books that a very nice young man at the research desk helped me track...