What have the twins been doing?

Things that the twins have done recently:

I went to the bathroom and whil I was gone the twins unrolled all the aluminum foil onto the kitchen floor.

(That's what the foil looked like after I rolled it back up.)

I went in during their nap and Baby Girl had a screw that had somehow been removed from Baby Boy’s bed. She was stabbing a toy dinosaur in the eye with it and informing me that the dinosaur needed a band-aid.

They also crawled under the sheet and hid there, giggling together.

Then I found these brown handprints on the babies’ closet door.

Fortunately, I discovered they were made of chocolate milk and not…something worse…

Just another week with three-year-old twins!

Bird of Paradise

Last week I was pleased to able to go out to breakfast with a group of other moms.

We sat outside on the lanai of the restaurant.

(A lanai is a covered porch. Are you amazed by how I use Hawaiian words with ease? Well, mahalo!)

There was a very nice view from the lanai. It really was like paradise.

Until the bird showed up.

No, not that kind of bird of paradise, which is a lovely plant.

A regular brown and white bird, arriving with a whole bunch of other birds to see if anyone had dropped anything on the ground to eat. (Unfortunately, we had.)

This particular bird was perched on a beam above my head.

You can GUESS what happened next, can't you?

Suffice it to say I had to change my shirt when I got home.

Unfortunately, even in paradise, there's still poop.

The Saga of My Van, or The Detailer's Nightmare

We had a little mishap with the van a few weeks ago.

Namely, my husband backed it into a tree, and both the back window and left rear taillight shattered.

I was just glad it wasn't me who had done it, actually.

I thought we could just get the rear windshield replaced, but when the glass replacement man came to the house, he said the tailgate was dented a little and I’d have to take the car to a body shop.

Then the body shop said they’d have to replace the whole tailgate!

This was getting to be an expensive little mishap.

Anyways, in the meantime I was driving around with a tarp duct-taped to the back of my van for three weeks.

And it rained for a solid two of those weeks. The tarp wasn’t holding up too well under the deluge.

By the time I turned the thing in to the garage to be repaired the rear carpet had been soaked through and subsequently dried out several times. It was getting pretty gross back there.

We rented a van to use while ours was in the shop. The kids were pretty excited about the new and pristine vehicle. They asked if we could keep the rental instead of getting our own van back.

I assured them that the rental only seemed nicer because they hadn’t had a chance to ruin it yet.

Although they did have a week to try. I had to keep checking for trash every time we got out. Usually at least one of the kids had to be called back to remove some nasty thing they tried to leave in the backseat.

Today the garage called and said our vehicle was ready to be picked up, so I returned the nice clean rental and went to get our own dirty damp van back.

But I got a pleasant surprise. The mechanic told me that because of the glass in the interior from the broken window they’d had the van cleaned by a detailer.

I looked inside and I couldn’t believe it! This was the cleanest my van has ever been since we purchased it.

It was like I could hear the Hallelujah Chorus playing in there when I opened the door.

Those detailers were really thorough too. They degunked my cupholders. They degunked the KIDS’ cupholders! (And THAT was some serious gunk!)

They had taken everything that was inside the car and put it in two big trash bags.

It was pretty amazing what was in the trash bags. I expected the books, and toys, and general trash.

But there were a few unexpected things:

1. Four shoes--only two of them matched each other.
2. Only one sippy cup. But it had enough mold in it for two or three!
3. The air freshener I’ve been looking for several months.
4. Enough pens, pencils, and markers to supply a small school.
5. A couple of blankets. Because it’s so COLD here in Hawaii we need those.

Also in one of the bags was a small bag about half-full of trash. It looked as if they had started out trying to just put the garbage in there and then realized the impossibility of sorting through all the junk in the car.

I could imagine the poor guy with his little bag pulling things out: “Okay, this is trash; this is trash; this is trash….Wait a minute! It’s ALL trash! Hey Joe? I’m gonna need a bigger bag here!”

Anyways, I’m very grateful to whatever poor soul detailed my van. Dude, you put in a full day’s work!

Now to keep it clean….

I can't make this stuff up, folks!

I just received a touching proposal on facebook, and I can't decide if it's some kind of scam or just...pathetic.

It could go either way.

Okay, here it is, verabitim:

"My name is Robert by name from Syracuse NY,i am new on here and searching for new friends and i check across your name then i like what you write about your self that why i send to you OK ,I am a 41 year old lady seeking for a serious relationship that would last forever, I work in as house construction,I'm also the only child of my parents,I am a very responsible Man and who treat his Woman like a queen,I'm very respectful and do what my Woman wants me do......I truly seek for a very responsible Woman."


Wow. What Woman can resist this?
 
It was accompanied by a blurry picture of a white guy with a kid.
 
On the one hand, it reads kind of like one of those scams: "please to mail back $1000 when you receive my check for $2000 i am trying to escape from Liberia thanks you vry much."
 
But then it also seems almost sincere. Except that he can't have read anything about me on facebook where it clearly says "Relationship status: MARRIED."
 
In any case I can't see what possible scam could run this way. But what else could it BE?
 
And NO! I'm not friending this guy back!

A Mother's Day Mess

 On the afternoon of Mother's Day I was standing in the kitchen when suddenly the sink began to burble.

Suddenly black water began gushing up from the drain. I stood staring at it as the sink slowly filled with murky and slightly chunky water.

This is bad, I thought.

We've had some plumbing problems before. Previously I wrote about a major toilet back-up, in Old pipes+big trees=big problems.

As I watched the nastiness gurgle up in my kitchen sink, I suddenly remembered a conversation I had with my neighbor a few days before, in which she told me how a sewer backup had caused a mess in her bathtub several months ago.

What she'd actually said was, "Turds! In my TUB!" She'd added, "And I hadn't even GONE that day! Whose WERE they?"

I know. I should have warned you. Ewwwww....

Anyways, as the gross mess threatened to overflow the bounds of the sink, I realized I'd better stop staring in horror and DO something!

I grabbed a bucket and yelled for help.

What followed was like a three-bucket fire brigade, involving me, my husband, and GG. We scooped up bucketsful of the disgusting water and fled out the back door to dump it in the yard.

In the middle of this scene the twins appeared and GG stopped scooping water and hustled them off to their room, shutting them in. They started yelling like crazy from in there.

Boo and a couple of her friends appeared from the back of the house to see what was going on, and we shooed them outside. From their bedroom, the twins continued to scream about the injustice of missing all the action.

ET never emerged from her room and missed the whole screaming-bucket-brigade drama.

We kept it up until the sink finally stopped regurgitating and settled down to a low level of nasty water at the bottom. Then I called maintenance, who fortunately arrived quickly.

They warned us not to flush the toilet, until the mess had been sorted out, as disaster might result.

Again, ew........

There followed a marathon scraping, plunging, and snaking session that took over the kitchen for the next three hours.

But there was good news! It was only backup from the garbage disposal, not the sewer. No turds were involved. (Whew!)

All in all, an interesting, albeit messy, Mother's Day.

The TV: Our Enemy or Our Friend?

So we've implemented a system to limit TV viewing around here.

I guess it was Spring Break that really killed things for me on that, what with the older girls sitting around watching those decorating and cooking and makeover shows. All. Day. Long.

And then, of course, for the younger set, there's the incessant inanity of the Disney Channel. Zach and Cody plus Hannah Montana, please kill me now! Ya THINK?!

Anyways, it just HAD to stop.

I know, I know, we probably should have taken care of this years ago. But truthfully, we never had cable TV until we moved to Hawaii almost two years ago and there was no "free" TV on the air.

Then we had to make a decision: get cable TV, or have no TV at all.

Well, we chose wrongly, I'm afraid.

I told the kids we would have to limit their TV time somehow, or else I'd pull the cable plug for good. They were shocked by this threat, but I'm perfectly willing for the TV to go to video/DVD's only.

The kids said, "What about the babies? They LOVE TV!" I pointed out that the babies would be perfectly happy to watch the three Braney videos we own over and over for the next year.

Then they realized this was serious, and had to go along with the limits.

Now we've got an elaborate chart system where the kids have to sign up for an allotted TV time for the week, and then turn it off when the time is over.

It's working okay so far, I guess.

ET says she hates it. Which, as my husband says, is proof that it IS working well...