Birthday Season

Even though Hubby's birthday was yesterday, Buddy's birthday on September 24th marked the beginning of our family's birthday season. Less than four months and all six of us have birthdays, all amidst Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day.

Buddy turned 15 this year. He's at that stage that he doesn't like for me to take his picture. It makes me sad.

Our football has been sort of flat for a while, so he got a new one from our friends. I'm not really sure who decided it was a good idea to put a bow on his head.

Said friends are also huge Michigan fans. They asked permission to get him a Michigan shirt. We acquiesced. Buddy does tend to cheer for them when he watches them play.

Now if they ever play the Razorbacks, that will be an entirely different story.

I Didn't Know Mascots Wore Cups

Overall we are a sports family. Chatty would be the biggest exception.

Today around our house there was some discussion about Pablo Sandoval, nicknamed the Kung Fu Panda, getting hit by a baseball in an area that would be the least desirable place for a man. The clip was shown on ESPN's Not Top Ten or one of their similar lists and so talk was rampant. Except for Chatty. She wasn't around when we were all talking about it.

Hubby has been out of town for the week. Tonight at the dinner table Buddy asked him if he saw what happened to the Kung Fu Panda. Buddy told Hubby that he didn't think the Kung Fu Panda wore a cup because he actually acted like it was painful (Buddy plays catcher and of course wears a cup, has been hit sometimes by foul balls, and says as long as you have a cup it shouldn't hurt that bad).

Chatty chimes in, "I didn't know mascots wore cups." (She thought it was a random character, not an actual team mascot, like when the president characters ran out at Nationals' games, and he got hit by the ball. Although the Presidents are tied to the Nationals and aren't really random, but that's where her thought pattern was going.)

I think this one tops the bucks and points.

And yes, having a boy that has played baseball for so many years has led to cup being a common part of everyday vocabulary, other than one you drink from.

Tour The Rooms — Buddy's Room

We (as in Hubby and I) bred a sports lover. It's evident in his room.

When we refer to his room with other people, we say, "It's the one with the big men on the wall at the top of the stairs."

Buddy loves red. If we'd let him have his walls red, he would have. But with the red shelves it would be just too much.

So we picked a green that reminds us of the Green Monster at Fenway Park. It's by Behr and is called Vineyard.

This is the view when you walk in the room. The denim curtain panels I recycled from old bed skirts here.

You can see all the card collecting he does. He's been at it now for just over seven years. It's even how he learned to alphabetize.

Standing in front of the window looking back toward the door wall, this is the view:

I guess we should say, "Big men on the wall and tiny men on the shelves," when we are referring to his room.

And here is a better look at the bed wall:

I just got the duvet cover at Ikea last week. Buddy had been using his duvet with no cover on it for a year. We just hadn't been able to find anything we liked. Ikea finally had a few new patterns, and this one seemed to work.

The funny thing is that Hubby brought Buddy a new pair of Razorback pajama pants home from his trip last week. They are plaid and almost match the pattern and color perfectly. We told him when he wears them he'll be camouflaged and we won't be able to find him!

I guess it would work during a game of hide and seek!

The red wall shelves and shelving units are from Ikea.

It's Official

We can't move.


There is too much painting happening around here!

Buddy's Birthday

14

Buddy turned 14 last Friday, September 24th.

I changed out the window gels, also known as the sticky things hanging on the door to keep the birds from flying into it.

Hubby took Buddy to a Tigers' baseball game.

We had Dairy Queen ice cream cake per Buddy's request. His favorite is the Oreo Blizzard cake.

When I went to pick it up, the lady wasn't happy with how it was done. She wanted to redo it and asked if I could come back in a few hours to pick it up. We weren't in a hurry since it was still before noon, so I said sure.

When we went back to pick it up, the replacement cake wasn't the Blizzard cake. She realized that, and she wasn't going to sell the first one because she was unhappy with the decorating, so she gave us both of them for the price of the one.

My family who thinks ice cream is a food group was extremely excited!

Buddy has seen all six Star Wars' movies in the last couple of months. His friends at our church here have gone on and on (incessantly) about Star Wars and how they couldn't believe he hadn't seen them. I saw the original three many years ago. Hubby fell asleep during the original movie when I tried to get him to watch it just so he knew what Star Wars was all about. That's been since we had kids, but before they were old enough to watch. He's not a sci-fi guy.

So our kids had never seen Star Wars. They know a lot about sports though.

Buddy and Caboose are hooked on Star Wars now. So I picked this DQ cake. I picked up the little rings at the local cake decorating store.

We teased him that we got a Caillou cake. He was glad we were kidding. Hubby and I are just goofy enough to do it.

Trivia time!

On September 24, 1996, Buddy's actual birth day, according to the Chicago Tribune "the average price for a gallon of gasoline at the nation's pumps rose in the last two weeks to $1.2918, up 0.17 cents since Sept. 6, according to a Lundberg Survey of 10,000 gas stations nationwide. Consumers are now paying just over 9 cents a gallon more than this time last year."

What we wouldn't give to be paying that again!

The Chicago Tribune also published an article on this date regarding the Internet, the rapid increase in the number of users, and dial-up networks/internet service providers. It stated, "the country's largest commercial dialup computer service, America Online, has won one battle but lost ground in another over recent days in the ever-running battle to keep growing as Americans continue to flock onto the Internet.

The victory came late Friday afternoon in Philadelphia, when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals canceled an order by a lower court that barred America Online executives from blocking junk e-mail in the face of widespread customer complaints."

I'm wondering what happened there?

Later in the article, this is what it said about internet service providers: "The service was winning in the courts, but a reversal came when a major industry survey was released Monday, showing that Americans appear to be moving away from using big commercial services like America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy and the Microsoft Network in favor of smaller, often local, companies called Internet service providers.

The Odyssey study found that even as all four of the big on-line services were losing potential customers to the small service providers, America Online did much better than the others.

Between January and July, America Online grew from a 14 percent share of all households with PCs to 18 percent, while CompuServe dropped from 6 percent to 5 percent and Prodigy dropped from 5 percent to 4 percent. Microsoft Network remained at 1 percent."

I haven't heard a couple of those names in a while.

Tomorrow, spacers. Next Monday, braces. He's growing up so fast. And he is so totally taller than me.

Love ya, Bud!

Stitch Marks and Blisters

Tonight Buddy played a ball game with no injuries, bruises, or stitch marks.

Then he got home.

Buddy and Hubby were tossing the ball out in the yard before they came in the house. They were talking and tossing. Buddy pulled his glove down too soon from in front of his face. He just doesn't normally do things like that.

Sparky was totally impressed because he has stitch marks on his nose. That's the sign of a good injury to her. She loves stitch marks.

Buddy's nose appears to not be broken. He's had lots of ice on it to keep the swelling as low as it is. There's been a lot of blood. Hubby had to pour some water and rake the grass so it didn't look like a crime scene.

Really, Sparky had sunscreen on over the weekend. She is our sunburning child. She never goes without, and she uses the serious stuff. We just don't know what happened.

She has the unfortunate first of blisters, for her and all the kids.

I'll just add that if Chatty were here and not at horse camp, she'd be all over the Brady Bunch line, "Oh, my nose!"

"Those Look Like Our Old Bedding," said Chatty as she walked by....aka Repurposing

Cleaning out my garage and my garage sale boxes has given me some ideas.

Last year, of course, we were happy that the third matching cabinet with the big hole cut out for an old and big-backed television didn't sell. I've referred back frequently to the post about the hole picture.

Now that I'm actually taking things that didn't sell last year to the one of the local charities, I'm making lists of the items for tax purposes. I'm going through the boxes, putting the items on a list, and putting them in a different box.

As I was doing this last week, I found two twin-sized bed skirts that are a chambray denim. They used to be on the girls' beds when we lived in Illinois. They had to have bunk beds due to the small room size in Virginia, and now we no longer have twin beds.

Usually the middle of bed skirts is a very thin white fabric and often tears easily. Ask me how my I know. But these bed skirts have fabric in the middle that is exactly like what hangs down on the sides.

I decided that if I cut off the skirts, I could use the middles and have two panels to use as draperies for Buddy's room. He only has one window.

I had to rip out two seams on three sides of each one. The second seam was the one that included the serging on the edges (I think that's what it's called), so I ended up with rough edges on those three sides.

I originally thought when I took out the seam that I'd have finished edges on all sides and then the one side with an original hem. I wasn't anticipating a second seam that combined the serged edges. It ended up taking me about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to rip out all the seams.

I bought two packages of those drapery clips and kind of folded the unfinished edge over when I clipped them on. It was easy to do since there was a semi-permanent fold. I left the two sides unfinished and the bottom has the single edge that is hemmed.

You can't really tell the sides are unfinished since it's bunched, but it's okay with me if it shows a little anyway. This is my grass-stained knee baseball kid with big Fathead men all over his room.

This post is linked to DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land.

Humph!

Last night Hubby did the unthinkable.

He realized Buddy was taller than me.

None of us had realized it before that.

Of course, it could have been the illusion of the fluffy hair I have (that's why I had to use my finger and show you where my head really is).

He's a full inch taller than me now.

I had Hubby secretly follow Buddy up the stairs to see if he ran off to tell the other kids.

He did.

Buddy said to Sparky (our resident shorty at 4'11" who will always be my favorite child!), "Sparky, I just accomplished something that you'll never be able to say you accomplished."

Of course the plan was to tell her he was taller than me knowing that she never would be.

But before he had the chance, Caboose chimed in with his two cents.

"What, you kissed a girl?"

Buddy says over everyone's laughter, "No, I'm taller than Mom!"

Of course it lost some of it's impact by then.

From Jericho to Gezer — the Land of the Olderites?

In our defense, we encourage our children to refer to people as older rather than old. And I can't think of any time that Hubby and I have ever used the word geezer, even in jest. Ever.

************

Sparky reads to Caboose from the Bible every night when he goes to bed. The other night she was reading from Joshua 16:1-4 "The allotment for Joseph began at the Jordan of Jericho, east of the waters of Jericho, and went up from there through the desert into the hill country of Bethel. It went on from Bethel (that is, Luz), crossed over to the territory of the Arkites in Ataroth, descended westward to the territory of the Japhletites as far as the region of Lower Beth Horon and on to Gezer, ending at the sea. So Manasseh and Ephraim, the descendants of Joseph, received their inheritance."

Last night out of the clear blue, Caboose tells Buddy, "There was a town named Gezer in the Bible."

Buddy says, "I bet that's where all the old people lived."

Caboose says, "Yeah, I bet that's where all the old people moved."

Buddy says, "Yeah, all the old geezers. I bet that's how old people got to be called old geezers, because the Bible is from a long time ago."

A few minutes later out of the blue, Buddy says, "I bet that's where Methuselah lived."

We've now been informed by Sparky that they learned it from Zach and Cody on one of the Suite Lifes on Disney Channel. They just had something this week on the msn homepage that Zach and Cody taught boys bad behavior. I guess I have some verbal proof now.

And two boys will be heading to Respect 101. Just as soon as we can get done giggling about it.

It's Buddy's Birthday!

We're celebrating a birthday at our house today!

We now have a teenage boy to go with our teenage girls.

One of those teenage girls made him a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch today.

Guess where we're going tomorrow night when the girls are gone on their youth trip.

Guess whose Dad had more fun playing with the wind-up zamboni on top of the Dairy Queen ice cream cake than he did.

Happy 13th Birthday, Buddy!

Awana Bible Quizzing

Today was a big day for Buddy — Awana Bible Quizzing for Book 4 in Truth & Training! He had quizzed for Book 1 in Illinois when he was in 3rd grade, and then the last two years while we were in Virginia our club did not participate in quizzing. So this was his first year to quiz since the 3rd grade.

Our church had two two-people teams quizzing for Book 4. One was made up of two girls, and here was Buddy's team before they got started this morning:

I whited out their names and our church name on their tags.

The last few weeks the question Hubby and I have been fielding has been, "Does Buddy mind being on a team with a girl?" Our answer was, "No, he has sisters."

His teammate's parents have been fielding a similar question, "Does she mind being on a team with a boy?" Their answer was not no because she has brothers, which she does, but instead, "No, as long as he's good."

It's all about priorities with us girls, isn't it?

Both Buddy and his teammate won individual ribbons for getting a perfect 10 out of 10 on the multiple choice section of the quiz. They also won second place overall for Book 4. Here they are with their team coach, who also happens to be the lady who cut my hair a little over a week ago. Small world...

Congratulations! We're proud of all that time you put in studying.

Meet The Kids: Part 1

In light of the recent posts that have seemed to focus on Caboose and his hilarity, which happens on a fairly frequent basis in our family, I thought it was only fair to try and introduce the personalities of the other three children. I decided to interview them individually and post them on separate days. I don't have set questions, although I will start with the same first one; from there I'm just going to roll with the punches. I started with Buddy, who is 12 years old, the only other boy in the family, and just over three years older than Caboose.


What would you like for people to know about you?

I love baseball. I love the St. Louis Cardinals. I'm a catcher.

Is there anything unrelated to baseball you would like for people to know about you?

I like math. I hate language.

Remember that we try not to use the word hate in our house, please. So why do you always tell me you despise school so much if you like math?

Because I'd rather do so much more stuff.

Like what?

Play catch outside, or watch Sportscenter on TV.

You'd think this boy's life revolved around sports or baseball or something.

So who is your favorite baseball player and why?

Albert Pujols because he is a good guy and a good player.

So what do you think of your brother garnering so much recent attention on the blog?

What does that mean?

Getting.

It's gettin' boring.

Do you think your brother is funny?

Sometimes.

Do you think you are funnier than him?

Not usually.

What do you think about having two older sisters?

It's fun sometimes, sometimes not. They team up against you.

What would you like to be when you grow up?

I would like to be a baseball player, but I know I'm not, so I don't know.

When do you think you might decide?

I don't know.

Do you think you'll get married when you grow up?

No way.

Why not?

It's disgusting.

What's so disgusting about it? You wouldn't be here without it.

It's just absolutely disgusting.


What do you think about being interviewed?

It's weird.

What do you like most about Michigan?

Every one is real friendly.

What do you like least about Michigan?

My best friend isn't here.

Do you have any closing thoughts you'd like to leave with the readers?

I don't like soccer. I like to read books. The Boston Red Sox are my second favorite baseball team. And that's all.

Well, as you can tell, this boy is all about his sports. If you didn't know it before, you certainly do now. My final non-sports related thought: he's my cutest brown-eyed child. Of course, he is my only brown-eyed child.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Buddy!

Our Little Buddy turned 12! He was born on September 24, 1996, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I never stopped sweating for the last four months of pregnancy.

No, seriously. You know in the movie Father of the Bride 2 where Steve Martin's character is bundled up for winter in L.A. and covering up in bed like he's frigid, and Diane Keaton's character is throwing the covers off herself like crazy? That was just about us. I had the ceiling fan on high, which was directly above our bed, a rotating fan on the nightstand rotating up and down my body, and then a smaller little fan sitting on things in my open nightstand drawer pointing directly onto me. Hubby would beg me to get in bed and block the air because he was freezing even all covered up in the middle of summer. I slept with no covers and was still sweating. Louisiana and pregnancy in the summertime is brutal.

I was determined to find Buddy's first scrapbook in the garage downstairs yesterday because we kept out all the picture albums when we were putting things in storage. I found every single box labeled with completed albums except for the one with his in it. I looked through that garage three different times. I'm assuming it accidentally got put in the storage unit. But I'm super bummed because I wanted to scan and post a few pictures here with his birthday post.

Buddy's birth was fairly uneventful after his sister's premature births. I don't want to give away their story, so I'll kind of leave it at that. They induced me three days early with him because I was retaining so much fluid, although it wasn't doing anything to my blood pressure or causing any other problems (I gained 70 pounds ~ eek!). The doctor also didn't want him to get any bigger because I was very close to an elective c-section based on the ultrasound weights.

My mom and stepdad came from Arkansas to stay with the girls, who were still two years old, while we were at the hospital having Buddy. They got my iv's all hooked up, and the doctor broke my water right around lunch time. After that I had an almost constant contraction for 20 minutes straight. When the nurse came in and asked me how I was, I told her I wasn't doing so good in a voice that was kind of monotone just trying to keep it together. She looked at my paper, which Hubby had looked at and told me would just start to dip before it went right back up, and said she'd go call the doctor. See, the last time they checked me I was only dilated to three, and if I remember right you had to be a four before you got your epidural. I guess my paper looked bad, because they never even checked me again and next thing I knew Mr. Anesthesiologist Guy was my new best friend giving me my epidural.

I was fully dilated and ready to push around 6 p.m. I pushed for about an hour and made a little progress. I pushed for another half hour and the doctor thought he had even gone back up a little. They knew from the first hour his head was big, so she said it was time for a c-section. The nurse had to push him back up through the birth canal while the doctor pulled him out. Buddy was born at 8:22 at 8 lbs. 14 oz. and the bad mom in me can't remember his length without that silly scrapbook, but I think it was 19 or 20 inches. Hubby and I were amazed at the little barrel-chested boy we had. Now we're just amazed at the size hat we have to buy him!

Our baseball lovin' boy wanted to go sit in the front row at a Tigers' game this year for his birthday. New best friend Stub Hub helped us out. You see, the front row people don't have to go sit down after the teams get done warming up. They get to stay down there and hang out until the teams come back out. He wanted to do that. He usually gets something baseball related for his birthday. Last year it was a Kirby Puckett one-of-one card, the year before that it was an Albert Pujols autograph card, and he had his birthday party at Busch Stadium one year, a Fredbird Birthday Bash.

Since we don't have our pictures developed yet from the Tigers' game, I decided to post some pictures from Buddy's all-star little league games in July. He's playing his favorite position, catcher, and we bought a cd with the rights to these pictures so I'm allowed to post them and print them as I wish.

This next series of four pictures is a play in progress. It was a force play at the plate because the bases were loaded. The runner was called out.




This boy loves his baseball! And we love him! Happy Birthday, Buddy!