LOL

LOL stands for Laugh Out Loud... you probably know that by now. I just wanted to share with you some funnies over the last couple of days that got me LOLing.

Mia came home from a snow trip with Grandpa Davis and said to me, "I brought you something." Well, how nice! She came up to me and said, "I didn't have anything to put it in so I had to wrap it in garbage." Mmmm... I'm thinking. She carefully unwrapped the granola bar wrapper and revealed a pinch of marshmallow that she saved for me. This is no ordinary marshmallow, it's the carmel flavored ones... "special". I looked into those sincere, dark brown eyes, took the bit of marshmallow, removed what fuzzies that I could, thanked her and gulped it down quickly trying not to think about what else might have gone down the hatch with it. LOL!

Yesterday Andrew was faced with a dilemma. While we were driving down the freeway a small yet potentially dangerous beetle like bug had landed... um, how shall I put this... "between his legs". I didn't notice the bug at first, what caught my attention was his twitching hand as he debated whether to swat the bug and risk a self inflicted injury or to let it continue to crawl on him. Hard to multitask important decisions like that while you're driving 70 mph. LOL!

Speaking of bugs. Sierra came shrieking into the room the other day, dancing all over the place, with something pinched between her fingers. "There's a bug!" she said. She knew she wanted to kill it but halfway through lost her nerve and it freaked her out. I finished it off for her. LOL!

Tonight Sierra came to me crying wearing nothing but her Dora undies. "What's wrong?" I asked her. "I don't have any cute jammies," she sobbed, "I don't like those other ones." Thankfully I had just done the laundry and we found some cute jammies in there. Crisis averted. LOL!

I just love little things like these.

When Life Gives You Lemon Juice...

I was waiting for gas at the Costco station today. Usually they have the best price and it's conveniently located to a lot things I do (like shop at Costco). It strikes me every time how many vehicles are being filled up there. There's always a line and it's not like they don't have 10 stations!! What is the world coming to? Honestly! It makes me want to ride my bike. But then again, it would be hard to fit all the kids on or behind the bike and fit all my super sized Costco groceries in there somewhere, too. *deep breath* I guess I'm doomed to be a minivanner... at least for now. Speaking of super sized Costco shopping, I made another shopping mistake last time I was there. You know when you're tired and you have to pick up some groceries but you don't have a list, so you just wing it and end up with some weird things but not everything you need? Ya, I did that the other day, Costco style. I was just getting some basics to get us by until I actually had my list. I remembered as I went down their baking aisle that I needed some lemon juice. I'm not sure why it didn't register with me at the time that I did not need 96 ounces of lemon juice, (two 48 oz. bottles). On the bottle it says "the juice of 31 lemons". Hmmm... What would I do with 62 lemons? Thankfully my sweet sister-in-law passed along a great article in Real Simple magazine about uses for lemons. I guess I'm set in that department! In fact, I don't know why I'm spending time blogging. I should be... sanitizing the chopping block or removing soft cheese from the grater. When life gives you lemon juice... remove tough food stains from plastic!

Great Grandparents

The van was quiet as we pulled on to the freeway... something that's odd with our crew of 4 kids. The first to speak up was Mia. "Mom..." she said, "I'm gonna miss Grandpa's sticky buns and stuff." "Me, too" I said. We had just said our goodbyes to GG and Gpa, my grandparents, outside of Denny's. When we hit the freeway, they went north to the airport and we went south towards home.

For the past week and a half we have had a wonderful visit with my Grandparents from Michigan. It's been nearly 5 years since we saw them last and this was their first time meeting Sierra and Eliza. The kids got to spend plenty of quality time reading books, cuddling, sharing old stories and enjoying plenty of family meals. Grandpa did make sticky buns, and dinner rolls, and cinnamon rolls. It was great. Grandma made a nice gravy for the meatballs and a wonderful veggie soup. It was so nice to have an extra set of hands around to help with Eliza, rounding up the wayward alpaca, and keeping the dishes moved along. They got to watch the kids in PE class and it was fun to celebrate Mia's fancy birthday with them here, too. David, Cheryl and Mackenzie made many trips down here so we could all be together and my mom even slept on the couch several times to extend the visits. It was a wonderful time and they will be missed!!

I hope we can get up to Michigan to visit them next. Andrew's never been to their neck of the woods and Josiah doesn't remember when he was there last. He was only 17 months old.

I love you Grandma and Grandpa. THANK YOU!!!