Need a laugh?

For post #200, I'm going with an easy Internet thing. We received an email from the fire chief, which turned out to be a cruel joke to play on a pregnant woman!! But, after I went to the bathroom, it was REALLY fun!

Mom, don't bother clicking through until you are at home, you MUST have speakers. And I know, it is nine minutes long, but I promise you will laugh for at least six of them!!

Http://videos.komando.Com/2008/06/04/mans-surprising-laugh/

April Fooled

I thought I would let you all in on the joke I played. Yep, I played an April Fool's joke, and it worked.

I went to familyfun.com because I am not creative. They had this joke, which suggested to put an elastic around the sprayer at the kitchen sink. My elastic didn't fit right, so I thought about it, and since the sprayer is black, I used electrical tape. Oh yes I did. And then I laid down with Z for a nap, giggling uncontrollably.

When Dustin and Brian got home, I waited. Then Z woke up, and went out to see them. I waited. He asked for grapes we had just bought that morning, and Dustin took some and rinsed them for him. In the kitchen sink. Nothing.

I got up. I asked him about the grapes. He gave me a weird look, and kept saying, "Yeah, I just rinsed enough for Zachary." I kept looking at the sink, and he kept saying, "What?"

Not enough tape. Electrical tape has this interesting stretchy quality, and so it had stretched.

Dustin and Brian joined in the giggling as I retaped it. With lots of layers. Then I ended up going to Walmart. I called as I headed home at 5:00, Dustin was still doing homework, and so I asked Brian to start cutting the english muffins for english muffin pizzas for supper.

When I got home, Brian said, "Mom, it works! I spilled pizza sauce, and went to get a dish cloth, and forgot and sprayed myself!!" We laughed heartily, especially because Brian has been working through a list of practical jokes he's played on others all day long!

Dad arrived minutes later, and got in the shower after a day in the cold mud, having dressed for 50 degree weather. Oops. When he was dressed again, I moved to the dining room to wash the table and asked him to make Kool-aid. Then I asked Brian to put away the Cheez-Its he had snacked on. So Brian was in the kitchen, watching and waiting.

Oh yeah. Not only did Bill get wet, but Brian laughed so hard he fell to the kitchen floor.

Who do you suppose Bill assumed the guilty April Fooler was? Yup. He turned the sprayer on Brian!

I laughed and laughed! Brian was still laughing when he said it was Mom, who was still safely around the corner where the sprayer would never reach! I did get a big wet hug though, and reminded Bill I don't have any other (maternity) clothes , so be nice to me! It was blissful.

Next year I am doomed.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop offs at tedium and counter productivity."
~ Erma Bombeck

From the Cricut Newsletter, I TOTALLY agree.

Now, this is more like it:

You Are a Chocolate Shake

You are a total hedonist. You are drawn to pleasure. You are an expressive, over the top person. You're naturally dramatic. You're the type of person who always chooses quality over quantity. Life's too short to not have optimal experiences. You're proud of being picky.

What Flavor Shake Are You?

I WROTE A POEM

To a form, even, called a pensieve. Robin, over at Pensieve, (and yes the spelling is a play on pensive Nicki and mom, read her blog post for the explanation!) created her own style of poem, she describes it like this:

Pensieve: A titled, five-line poem; each line correlates to one of the five senses--sight, sound, scent, taste, touch--and describes the subject (title). The goal is for the reader to take on the poem as his own, being able to "experience" your subject through your words, by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling what you described.

I totally loved the thought. She is holding a contest, you can enter either a haiku or a "pensieve" on the subject of Winter or Christmas.

I chose both ;-).

So, here it is, be gentle.

Christmas Tree Hunting

The cold bites the skin, but the hopefuls press on
The laughter fills my ears, as snowballs are tossed OVER my head!
The green of the firs is deep and everlasting, as our Savior they represent,
The smells are faint, teasing, but promise to explode in the warmth of our home,
The cocoa warms the soul, comforting and bringing peace.




*edited to add*

click here for more poetry with the same guidelines!

Nicki asked if you can vote for me, I don't think so, but leaving her a comment about liing mine could never hurt!! She's supposed to pick her favorite, and their IS a prize at stake!!

Fun with Friends

My dear friend S needing a sitter for a bit turned into a great photo op! We are fully in the middle of fall, and their back yard has a few large, and beautiful maple trees (my mom is scoffing somewhere at hearing that! She hates to rake their leaves!) that are shedding their leaves in glorious living color! Zachary and her boy, J, had a wonderful time playing together!

They have several kids, and an enormous fenced in yard, so they have accumulated a ton of outdoor toys, including TWO playsets, for a total of THREE slides! A three year old's paradise!

Her boy is just a few months younger than Z, but there's a big difference! J's favorite word is "Mine!" He does it in the nicest possible way, but it helped to be at their house this time, because having him point to something and announce, "That's mine!" didn't faze Zachary a bit (like it does when they are together at our house)!

We did have a wee bit of trouble, you see, they have a door from the house to the backyard, and also a gate from the driveway. We wanted to grab a sweater from my car for Z, and didn't want to go in for fear that Mommy would be suspiciously absent! So I tried the gate, and found the sliding latch a bit rusty. I went to the door against my better judgement, and found that someone upon our going out had hit the lock, and we were STUCK!

I thought fast though, and realized the little piece of rope J had been playing with might just do the trick! I wrapped it around the slider, and with that bit of grip and leverage we were out!

Note to self: always check those door knobs! Especially at other people's houses where you don't know the tricks to get in or out!!

J was catching some serious air as he bounced!!

The good thing about J is that he has no problem sharing or taking turns, just so long as you know the item is his as you use it!!

They even were sized well to share the swing, they were so cute!

I have to throw in here a picture from that afternoon, we sure got our outside time! We were going from Melissa's to the park, and in the neighborhoods there you can actually walk places, unlike here. Well I was afraid my "no nap today" toddler wouldn't make the walk back after the playground, so I drove along slowly to allow the kids to walk to the park! Dono did well, but didn't think twice when Brian offered him a ride!

Fall is my favorite season!!

The Desert of Maine

So, in a last attempt at summer fun, literally the day before school started, My mom and I took the boys for a walk in the desert.

No deserts in Maine you scoff?

Not true. There is actually one such phenomenon, right here in the pine tree state. My friends, I introduce you first to the lovely landscape that graces most of our area:

Yep, we have a LOT of trees!! Not just pine, but really, there is vegetation almost everywhere. And in the fall they put on their most beautiful colors!

So, it would behoove anyone out there who might be planning a little trip to where "the way life should be" is, to stop by and see just how cool nature can be! In the middle of all this forest, down a somewhat winding road through, oh yes, trees, you come to a building. Go in, pay a couple of bucks, and walk out the other side and into this:

This is no gravel pit, people, which is what I honestly expected. It begs to be touched, it's soft and almost silky! It took less than a minute for Brian to remove his sneakers, and only moments after that the rest of us were carrying our shoes, too!

It was a vast carpet of softness, like nothing I have ever experienced!

It was originally farmland, and in the 1900's they switched their focus to sheep farming. The sheep ate through the topsoil in one little patch, and uncovered this soft sand. The wind, rain, erosion, and natural way of things took it from there. After the sand had taken over so much, over 300 acres at it's largest point, of course the farm was shut down. They turned it into a tourist attraction, even building a little water spring house along the brook. The sand kept blowing, however, and the spring house?

Well, it's buried now! Really, check out this tree!!

Surreal. We had a great tour guide, they drive you around on a little bus kind of thing,

and he did a great job of explaining how it all happened, and the fun details like the man who brought an ultrasound equipment thing and could tell them that the spring house filled evenly with sand, and is being preserved in mint condition!

He also told us that for a while they had a real live camel, but it was problematic, so they have swapped to this:

I think the most amazing part, however, is that the forest is striving to reclaim the land. It's a living, breathing (albeit very slow) science experiment, the trees drop their leaves or needles, those break down, decomposing to a rich compost soil, and then as the nearby weeds and plants shed their seeds, more and more can grow. the desert is down to just about 50 acres, if I remember right!

And you may be wondering about ants... there weren't any to be seen at first. Then as I waited for mom to walk back along the trail we had driven along, I sat in the shade. that's where the bugs are, and frankly I can't blame them!!

The tour guide said he and the other employees take turns throwing bright, shiny, colorful stones onto the sand for kids to scavenge for, so the boys of course went looking for pretty souvenirs!

Not content with the rocks, mom also treated them each to another souvenir, and Michael wanted to make a sand sculpture. They have different colored sand throughout the desert, depending on the mineral content, all of it as soft as can be. For a small fee, you can fill a little bottle, stamped with the desert's logo, in layers. It was very beautiful.

I wish I had taken a picture of just it, because we didn't do well enough getting the air out, and now it's all a uniform color, still pretty but not the same!

So, now you know. My mom is, well, 20+ years older than me, lived here her whole life, and never knew about it. One of Maine's best kept secrets, I guess!!