A Hypothetical Life Lesson: Repeated

Today I read Taylor's post about the scariness of choking.  It made me reminisce over my own experiences with choking.

And they aren't actually FOND memories, but they are now funny stories, and that's all that really matters right?  Because, clearly sometimes the WORST experiences make the BEST stories.

And I'm all about the stories. 

So, in my reminiscing, I read a few old posts regarding choking.  They are a few years old, but I really wanted to share them with you again.  I could just post links, but experience has taught me that readers don't always click on the links, no matter what the promise of laughter is dangled in front of them...

Well, at least I am too lazy to click on a link. Perhaps i shouldn't paint my children with the same brush as I myself, eh?

So, without further rambling, I will happily PASTE a previous post involving a humorously choking child.
And her hypothetical mom...

Let's pretend for a moment, shall we? Let's just say, that hypothetically one child has a ring pop that she is eating. The other child wants to taste it. Now, the latter child has a ring pop, but cannot eat it until after her game. Child number one offers to let her sister taste it. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

The mother of this hypothetical pair pipes up, "No, you can't share your sucker, your sister has a cold." The hypothetical mother in this hypothetical situation then witnesses her hypothetical daughter, who is having a surprising moment of a sharing spirit GIVE HER SISTER A LICK OF HER SUCKER. Well, this hypothetical mother then said, "Okay, now you're going to go throw that sucker away. I don't want you to get your sister's cold."

Hypothetical child of the ring pop disappears around the corner....presumably to dispose of her sucker in the bathroom trashcan....

Time is passing by...

Passing by.....

Now, let's just say, hypothetically speaking, of course, that child of the ring pop comes bursting around the corner, face VERY red........................coughing..................... choking.................gagging.

Hypothetical Mom: Are you choking?
Child makes gagging and coughing sounds, but is moving air, so hypothetical mom, who could possibly be, hypothetically, a nurse, tells child to go to the bathroom, and follows her.

Just to add a little interest to this purely hypothetical situation, let's pretend it's picture day for basketball, and child with a cold's entire team and their parents have witnessed all of the above exchange.....If this were not a purely....hypothetical situation, you can imagine the gasps and murmurs of concern....

Mom and child who is not choking on her sucker (so she is vehemently denying at this point) quickly make their way to the bathroom. Child who is not choking, continues to cry and make gagging noises....

Hypothetical mom: Did you go around the corner and chew your ring pop as fast as you could instead of THROWING IT IN THE TRASH?
Child shakes head emphatically no, but continues to cry and cough.
Hypothetical mom, now holding coughing child's face in her hands and looking as mean as she, hypothetically, can.....IS THERE A PIECE OF SUCKER STUCK IN YOUR THROAT THAT IS HURTING, THAT IS MAKING YOU COUGH, MAKING YOU GAG, AND MAKING YOU CRY!?!
Child, no longer meeting Hypothetical Mom's eyes, slowly nods yes.
Hypothetical Mom (with, quite possibly, hypothetically speaking of course a look of smug victory on her face): Well, that's what happens when you don't mind your mommy. Drink some warm water, the candy will dissolve, and stop hurting in a little bit......

And with that she leaves the bathroom, hypothetical crying child in tow.

Now, let's say Hypothetical Mom and child round corner to find everyone anxiously watching for them and asking after the well being of this hypothetical child....

Hypothetical Mom in all her hypothetical nurseyness replies, "She's fine, she just had to learn what happens when you don't mind your mommy"....quiet laughter is heard in the hallway from various other hypothetical parents.....

So, in the above hypothetical situation, one might assume that the hypothetical child of the ring pop would have learned to mind her hypothetical mom. Sadly, one would be VERY wrong in making that assumption....

Hypothetical child of the ring pop had received a juice pouch from her hypothetical teammates after her hypothetical game....

Hypothetical Mom: Do not open your juice pouch. We don't want to spill juice on the church floor. You can drink your water....

You can see where this is going, can't you? No one ever accused you of being slow Dear Reader....

At about this time Hypothetical Dad is back with sandwiches to share with his hypothetical family between 2 games and 2 sets of team pictures....

Hypothetical Dad: I thought I heard your mom telling you not to open it....Oh well, it's open now, hurry up and drink it....

Let's pretend, just for a moment, now humor me here....that the hypothetical mom's head spun around so fast it nearly broke the sound barrier, and saw this hypothetically EXTREMELY DISOBEDIENT child sucking on a juice pouch....Now, let's pretend that hypothetical mom RIPPED the above juice pouch out her hypothetical child's hand and carried it to the trash herself.....

You see, Dear Reader, the hypothetical mom can learn a hypothetical lesson....Never trust a hypothetically EXTREMELY DISOBEDIENT child to actually throw away her treats!

The end.

Hypothetically, of course.

Disclaimer
This is a hypothetical situation. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the hypothetical author's imagination or are used hypothetically, and any resemblance to actual hypothetical persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental. Hypothetically speaking, of course. 

Now, wasn't that fun?

For more choking fun, how's about I post a few more jollies for you to enjoy?  Of course, you will have to actually click on the links and FOLLOW them.  That may require more fortitude (read here: time) than you have at the moment.  If that is true, I will understand.  Barely.

How to Perform the Heimlich Maneuver.
Rasslin'  Attention:  this post has NOTHING to do with choking, but it popped up in my "choking" search for my blog.  And it made me laugh all over again.  So, I'm linking it.  Because it's my blog, and I can do that.

Can I Please Have Some Secret Jam and Toast?

Friday night as I sat in the back yard, staring at the three holes where a dog had decided to uproot two iris and a malva I sighed to myself that apparently I was going to have to go to the store to buy some unsightly fencing or I would have no flowers left.  Gentle Reader, if one wants to have a gloriously beautiful yard  with no holes or uprooted plants, I fear one should avoid acquiring animals of the four legged tail wagging variety.

Somehow the trip for fence supplies turned into a trip to buy goodies for a tea party.  The girls were each having a friend over, and I was desperately needing to mow and do various other projects, but once the tea party idea took root, there was no going back.

As we planned our menu, Bookworm suggested that we most definitely needed jam.  I sat there, stumped and silent for a moment.  "Jam?"

"You know, 'Could I please have some secret toast and jam?'"  she quoted in her best British accent. 

So, of course we had to have jam.  I bought some cheap white bread to make cute shaped sandwiches, and put grape jam and cream cheese on some of them.  It was rather quite good if I do say so myself.

We feasted on fruit salad, tiny crustless sandwiches, carrot sticks, cheese and crackers, mini blueberry muffins, and strawberry shortcake for dessert.  We had strawberry limeade, iced tea, and lemon water as our choice of beverages.

I picked up the girls around ten, and then worked quickly to get ready for the party.   As I was preparing my messy porch and weedy yard kept calling my name.  After all, there was never any question that I was going to blog the event.  And undoubtedly those pictures would depict the shortcomings of my yard... I began to lecture myself that if I wait for the perfect moment to have fun, those fun times will pass me by.  Because I'm fairly certain that my girls will not grow up and dwell on the out of control crab grass in our yard, or the mud tracked all over the porch, or even clumps of dirt tracked through the house.

I think instead they will remember an unseasonably warm March morning where we had a tea party with friends, and they all proved virtually incapable of being at all proper or elegant.

But I decided that if they can overlook my weedy yard, I could try and overlook their fingers in the fruit bowl as they fished out bits of mango, or their double fisted clutch of the tea cups...

 After the tea party, they changed out of their tea party gear and had a dance off in the living room, while I continued my hand maiden role and cleaned up the mess we made in our morning full of fun.

Once the mess was cleaned up, it was time to get myself cleaned up so we could head to the movie to see "Mirror, Mirror."  And just in case you are mistakenly reading reviews and considering skipping it, I have to say we all five unanimously LOVED it.  Absolutely laugh out loud LOVED it.

So, all in all, we had a perfectly glorious "girls day."

What special memories are you making with your children this spring?

Peeps On a Stick

 Last week we finally fetched my girls from their grandparents after being away from home for eight whole days.  We met my dad at a nearby lake.  As we were headed out Studmuffin asked what we were doing about supper, "Because we will be getting there about 6 and you know the girls will be hungry."

So, we threw some drinks and condiments into an ice chest, grabbed a bag of charcoal and chips then ran into the store to grab enough hot dogs to feed a small army.  After all, my 16 year old nephew and one of his friends was going to be there too, so I figured it wouldn't be possible to have too much to eat.

Anyway, I have more to say about our trip to the lake, or rather to SHOW you about our trip, but today's post is not about the lake. It is about Peeps.

Or rather, S'mores made out of Peeps.  

 

Perhaps we should call them S'Meeps?

Why do all of my posts begin with topics that are irrelevant to my actual post?  Gentle Reader, it is entirely possible that you should pity the people who are frequently inundated with my circular conversations.

 So as we were dashing through the store, grabbing all beef hot dogs and buns, Studmuffin caught site of some Peeps.  "We should make S'mores out of those!"

 And so we did.

Car Conversations...

I laugh.

A LOT

And I laugh LOUD.

I can't help it.  My family is really funny.

As we were driving to Tulsa on Saturday we had two hysterical conversations.

"Babe!  There is a giant blue gorilla in front of David Stanley Chevrolet!  Let's go there and buy a car right now!"

"Sorry.  We can't go there until they add a giant inflatable crocodile."

Truly Gentle Reader have you ever in your life bought a car where they have a giant inflatable?  And why is it so often a gorilla?  I would like to see the statistics on improved car sales directly proportional to giant inflatable gorillas.

We were listening to Bookworm's iTouch.  We had it plugged into our car stereo, and it was on random shuffle.  Popcorn was singing along to one of the songs from her new Selena Gomez album.

"Do you already know all of the songs?"  I asked her.

"I know every word to every song on this CD" she stated proudly.

Not missing a beat, her dad added "And yet your math facts elude you."

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Expo

This past Saturday we went to the Wildlife Expo.  It was a great day, and I thought you would enjoy my synopsis of it in pictures along with my random thoughts involving said pictures.  For example the picture above makes me laugh.  I look awkward, and my daughter is ducking down between us so we can look sweet and in love, but it is just truly hard to take a good photo holding the camera yourself.

There was a dog show involving labradors and golden retrievers.  I have much to say about this, but can tell you the rest in about a week.  See the girls?  They kept getting closer and closer and closer...Thankfully they didn't actually climb up on the stage like some kids!

The kids went kayaking.  I now am quite certain I need a kayak.  A two person one to be exact so I can go have fun when Studmuffin is fishing with my family over fall break.  I will strap it to the top of our Apache tent camper and drive it merrily down the road.  As I am the Queen of All Things Cheap or Better Yet Free, please advise if you know where I can get a cheap/free two person kayak.  Thank you.

We all got to pet an alligator...
And a millipede and snakes, and many other creepy crawlies.

Oh look!  Another self portrait!  How impressive.  I look fake.

Studmuffin gleefully posed with his new trophy:  Smoky the Bear.

Another beagle?  On top of the beagle who did NOT move to my house this summer, despite his attempts, we have had a beagle pup who lives one mile north of us show up in our yard a lot lately.  The girls bonded with this mama immediately.  What is God trying to tell me about beagles? 

Oh, lookey there!  Another self portrait.  I was feeling quite photogenic, apparently.  Too bad I'm simply pale and ghostly.  Oh, and look at my daughter in her dad's old Browning hat.  How sweet.

The girls stood in line to do a mini ropes course.  I sat on a bale of hay while they waited their turn.  Who knew walking around an expo and standing in line could make one's back ache so?

The Boy Scouts were on safety patrol.  As we were headed home, we stopped at Braum's where I ran in to grab milk and there was a group of scouts leaving.  Apparently one of them tried to mistakenly climb in our vehicle.  Their troop master stopped to tell Brent he was sorry for the mix up.  Brent said, "Yeah, he can track wild animals but he can't find his car in the parking lot!"

My husband...He's funny.

Popcorn did a mountain bike trail.  Alone.  Studmuffin had taken Bookworm to brush up on her archery skills, and my back was too unsteady for such folderol.  My last thought as she peddled away, "Please God, don't let any psycho pedophiles jump out and snatch her before the next kid comes down the trail."

My thoughts are never irrational.  Why do you ask?

If only I'd snapped this photo a split second later.  She totally wiped out.  It was great.  And unexpected.  And she laughed, so it was okay for me to laugh at her.

I see this photo, and my brain says, "Bend and SNAP!"  If you do not know Legally Blonde, that statement makes no sense.

Bookworm endeavoring to prove that she does have a future in archery...And that a scholarship in said field is totally a reasonable expectation.

We stopped at Pop's on Historic Route 66.  You must put HISTORIC in front of Route 66.  Not sure why, but you must.  Probably because it's historic...as in obsolete now that the interstate has come to town...

They have more sodas than you can fathom.  Bookworm went with Faygo made in Michigan....

This is Popcorn realizing her soda was from....LEBANON???  She had apparently grabbed a bottle from the international soda section.  Studmuffin and I both thought it tasted like a wine cooler... 

Seagram's golden wine coolers...

Do you remember Bruce Willis singing that commercial in the 80s/90s?  He is totally to blame for my sampling that bottle of sparkling goodness in college.

And, for our GRAND FINALE!!!!

Oooooh!  Look at the happy couple!  She with her Round Barn Root Beer and him with his Dublin Doctor Pepper...

Now.  Wasn't that fun?  What fun things has your family done recently?  Do tell!

In a Pickle

Last Friday we had Family Game Night.  We love family game night.  We go through phases where we faithfully do it every Friday.  Then, we get busy, and Mom & Dad are too tired and cranky to put up with Bookworm's meltdowns when she loses and Popcorn's frequent chair abandonment in the middle of her turn to do cartwheels...

But this Friday we were all in great humors and in peaceful harmony, so we decided to trash the family harmony and play games.  We started out with our standard, Sorry.  We play Sorry every time and every single time certain family members are poor winners and somebody else is a sore loser.  The person playing these roles varies from one time to the next...

Y'know.  Just to keep it all fresh.

This past Friday Popcorn drug out her game In a Pickle.  She got it for Christmas, and for some strange reason we have not played it since last January.

Here's the premise of the game.  Each player has five cards, with nouns listed on them.  There are four cards in the middle of the play area.  You play your cards either directly above or below an item to make it where the items are progressively bigger...

For example, I had an atom, so I put that above the skeleton.  Popcorn put a chicken below the skeleton, and then the next item could be a barn...so an atom is in a skeleton, which is in a chicken that lives in the barn.

Once a card has four cards in it, like the above example, it becomes a "pickle round."  In this round, you can only play larger items on the final object, like a barn could be in France, which is in the Universe...The round goes around the table one time, with the person who played the fourth object (like the barn) getting an extra turn.

Is this making any sense?

Well, the hilarity of the game is how creatively our family can think.  My husband becomes very frustrated.  Popcorn asked what a scandal was and promptly played it below an earthquake...Which Bookworm then said was all in "thoughts."  We laughed uproariously at this...

However Studmuffin was not happy that I said everything could fit in a dictionary...Even a universe, so then the dictionary could fit in a library, which could fit in a parking lot...

See what I mean?  The game is really fun.  The best part is when a player challenges your thought process and you say "well, France could fit in the river, because it's the Mississippi River, and all of that water can totally cover France."  Or when Popcorn threw down the noun "reflection" and stoutly proclaimed that a canyon could absolutely be in a reflection of the water...Or when I declared that a forest was in the headlights of my car.  No, not the entire forest, but certainly the headlights were shining and there was the forest, dead ahead in them!

These statements made the girls and I laugh hysterically while Studmuffin got very frustrated with our crazy thinking.

There is no point to this post.  I just wanted to share our fun with you...

And perhaps give you a good idea for an inexpensive, yet very fun Christmas gift!  Or, perhaps you need a ten dollar birthday gift for your next child's party...

Now you've got one! 

What special things do you do as a family?  What memories are you making with your family?  Do you have a favorite family activity? 

Do you have any great family games that we may not have discovered?  Please share.  We all exchange games as our family gifts, so we could use some new ideas!

Pictures Mostly Unrelated to Posting.

I cried during worship service today.  I couldn't even say what I was crying about.  I just felt God's presence so strongly that I wept.  We were singing a silly VBS song, and two little kids went up on stage when the music minister saw them doing the choreography.  That was it.  I couldn't even mouth the words when they started motioning to "Baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."

Do you ever have moments like that?  As I was weeping, I was trying to figure out what the deal was.  I'm not sure if it has to do with my study of Daniel this week.  I had been steadily reading a chapter a day until I got to chapter nine.  I got bogged down in all of those weeks and sevens and my mind was toast.  I dug up an old study guide from a Beth Moore study I did on Daniel five years ago, and skipped to the week focused on chapter nine.  The first several days were focused on Daniel's prayer.  Therefore I've been really focused on prayer and my prayer life.

Daniel understood scripture and understood that it was relevant to his life.  He understood that his prayers were important.  He knew that God was listening.  So I've been asking myself:  Do I really truly believe that my prayers are meaningful?  Do I truly embrace that God is answering my prayer before I've barely begun?  Do I, do I, do I...

So that's really got me thinking.

This week I officially change to my new schedule.  I will be working Monday through Wednesday from now on.  I am pretty excited to have the extra time home with the kids, but I'm also silently stressed about the decrease in pay.  When I made the decision I knew that I knew that I knew that God was calling me to be more committed to my kids and less committed to my job.  So I took the leap.  And now I'm looking at the ground and it seems very far away. I am wearing shoulders for earrings as I type about this change.  It's one of those things where it will be a good change for the family, but it is a scary change too.

I could also have been crying because my kids are both leaving for kids camp tomorrow morning.  They will be back Thursday night.  

My oldest was invited to her best friend's dance recital followed by a sleepover last night.  I really wanted to say "no" because she will be gone four days after tonight.  However, her friend has been talking about this dance recital since she stayed with us over Christmas, and Bookworm said, "Britni will be heart broken if I don't go to her recital."  So she went.

Popcorn was pretty bummed.  She is very dependent on her sister.  Bookworm has a little celebration when her sister is gone, and goes in her room and arranges all of her stuff exactly as she wants, and lays around reading books and just generally enjoys being alone.  Popcorn mopes around and scuffs her feet a lot and heaves huge sighs the entire time her sister is gone.

 We decided to spoil her.  We feasted on Frito chili pie and ice cream for supper.  Studmuffin had her mow with the riding lawn mower.  That was pretty big stuff, but I was mowing with the push mower, so again I failed to take pictures.  After we finished mowing it was such a beautiful evening that we decided to light a fire and roast marshmallows.  

It was a great evening.

Irony

My girls went home with my folks for a few days following our camping adventure.  The kitten my dad had brought home for Popcorn last summer had kittens of her own, and they had to go see them.

Studmuffin & I came home and unloaded the pickup, failed to put a single thing away, and crashed on the couches.  Me with a trashy romance, and him with the laptop....

About 5pm he said, "Do you want to got to Raisin' Cane for dinner?"  Honestly, Dear Reader, I did not.  But my Grandma always said that if your husband offers to take you out to dinner, even if you have dinner cooking, you GO.  Take that meat out of the oven and stick it in the freezer, put your makeup on and GO.

So, I went and pulled my frizzy camp hair into a neater pony tail, slapped on some mascara, changed out of my holey camping shorts and put on my practically brand new American Eagle plaid shorts (I bought them the summer we moved in, which may be three years ago, but they're the newest pair of shorts I have) and climbed into the car.

Raisin' Cane's was closed. Darn it.  But we ended up spying this little gem on our way to Slim Chickens.

Now, granted a cat clinic all by itself is not funny. However if you view it in light of where it is situated....

Next door to a Chinese restaurant?  That is just priceless...

And yes, the second image is grainy.  It happened in the process of my rotating the image.  I know so little about editing pictures from my phone...But it is still ironic, right?

Hello?  Is anyone out there?