There's nothing funnier to a five-year-old

My seventeen-year-old niece left a pair of thong underwear in the car.

It's not quite as bad as it sounds; she had been shopping with ET and GG, so it was a brand new pair. Still on the clear plastic hanger. Tags on and everything. Really.

But you can imagine the hilarity that ensued when the twins found a pair of underwear lying around.

Little Girl held it up in the air and chanted, "Undies! Undies! Undies!"

She also said that the hanger was a magic wand and declared herself the Underwear Fairy.

It takes so little to entertain the very young.

A Family Photo for Father's Day

Family photos are always tough. Mostly because we have to stand so close to each other, which is just a breeding ground for shoving and fighting.

But the kids all got together for this little gem in honor of Father's Day.



Nice, huh?

My father-in-law pointed out to me, "You're the only one who looks happy."

"Yeah," I said. "And I'm faking."

The Story of the Beautiful Washing Machine

As I may have mentioned in my last post, we arrived in Birmingham in the late evening with a plastic bag of peed-on clothes, along with the rest of our luggage.

So even though I was super-tired when we got to my in-laws' house, it was necessary for me to wash some clothes. My mother-in-law said we could use her new washing machine.

As the kids were getting ready for bed, I entered the laundry room with the pee-clothes and a few other things to round out the load. I opened the the lid of the washing machine.

It was so beautiful.

Seriously. I actually called GG in to look at the inside of this machine because it was so shiny and CLEAN.

I felt like Indiana Jones.

(image from wikia.com)

I said to GG, "I feel bad putting our dirty clothes in this gorgeous washing machine." I was only half-kidding.

But I put them in anyways. After all, you can't leave pee-soaked clothes unwashed too long. I'd already delayed almost 24 hours, an unfortunate necessity while transporting the nasty things four thousand miles or so.

I delayed going to bed until the clothes were done so I could get them into the dryer. Even though I was dead-tired. But when the cycle was done, I got a nasty shock.

Someone had left GUM in their POCKET.

Yep. And what's nastier than a washing machine full of zillions of tiny gum bits? Not much.

So... I was stuck sitting up even later picking off and scraping up all that gum. 

Did I mention I was dead-tired?

But the worst part was: I had defiled this beautiful pristine piece of equipment within an hour of being introduced to it.

This is why I don't have nice stuff. And, if you have any nice stuff, you should probably keep me away from it.

My Long List of Apologies

We've just completed yet another torturous overseas plane trip. We left Honolulu at 8 p.m. one day, and finally arrived in Birmingham at 8 p.m. the next. Subtracting the five-hour time difference, that's NINETEEN hours of riding in and waiting for airplanes.

It was a pretty difficult trip for all of us.

(image from http://highsierraspotters.com)

So I'd like to send an open letter of apology to the following people:

1. To the stranger seated beside Little Girl and me on the plane from Honolulu: I'm sorry my child kept leaning on you when she fell asleep. And that she peed her seat.

2. To the people who got flashed: I'm sorry I forgot to pack clean underwear and my five-year old had to "go commando" after the seat-wetting incident.

3. To everyone seated near the cabin bathroom: I'm sorry for my daughter's ear-piercing, blood-curdling shrieks when she pinched her finger in the folding door. I took her inside the cubicle as quckly as I could, but I know you could probably still hear her. (I think even the birds flying nearby were cringing at the noise.)

4. To the people stuck standing up and sitting on the floor in the waiting area at the Seattle airport: I'm sorry my family took up all the chairs. In our defense, they really should have installed more than seven.

5. To the security team in the Seattle airport: I'm sorry we looked so suspicious. Or for whatever thing we did that made you swarm the area we were occupying with about twenty agents and a couple of bomb dogs.

6. To the odd-looking possible cross-dresser seated next to my teenage daughter: I'm sorry she thought you were an undercover agent. I think she was just still freaked out by the uber-security scan at the airport.

7. To the passengers on the last leg of the trip: I'm sorry I couldn't muster enough energy to properly reprimand the twins when they started that "Who can yell the word 'poopy' the loudest?" contest. I really tried,but I kept nodding off. (You know you're tired when you can sleep through a screaming contest.)

And, last but not least:

8. To my husband: I'm sorry I was so grouchy. I started out pleasant; I really did. It's just that the lack of sleep made all the nice leak out of me. I noticed that it seemed to work that way for you as well.

Anyways, I'm glad that's all over.

Until it's time to go back....

The cupboard is not quite bare....

We're about to go away for a month, so I'm trying to use up some of the food stored in the pantry and freezer. Therefore, as of last week, I am not buying new food.

You can imagine how happy the kids are about this policy.

They act as if our kitchen looks like this picture, which I got from a food pantry's desperate appeal for donations, dated several years ago.
(image from http://www.praythenews.org.nz)

Here's ET's account of her current quest-for-snack procedure:

1. Check refrigerator.
2. Check pantry.
3. Lower standards.
4. Repeat as often as necessary.

They are so deprived....

In my defense, here is my ACTUAL reduced-stock pantry: