Making the Grade

Riley's buddy got ahold of a blank report card. Normally this would be cause for concern, but apparently his third grade imagination just isn't as strong as mine would have been...


1000 absences and tardies per quarter, graded zero on everything, and a few, "You stink's!" in the comment section.

A New Project!!!

Aren't we lucky? Spring's coming and I have all these ideas for the garden and the flower beds, but no. We'll get to work on repairing this:

Riley, who saved the day. Notice the two smaller buckets collecting water in the background.

Waterfall. Soaked bedding.

This is what it looks like when your toilet overflows for oh... I'd say at least 1/2 an hour.

Earlier today Shannon was worried that the toilet was backed up after he'd used it, and I checked it out; everything was fine. Then tonight, Ken used the bathroom and said it was plugged and not to go in there. I didn't. Wish I had.

A while later Riley came upstairs and asked if it was raining and we said no. I offhandedly mentioned to Ken that the toilet was plugged and maybe we should look into it, but nah, neither of us thought it was anything other than the bowl filling up. A little while later Ken muted the TV and we sat there listening for a second, then looked at each other and ran.

Water was everywhere upstairs in the bathroom and hallway. In Riley's room in the basement we had water flowing from two recessed lights and the heating vent. All told, at least five gallons accumulated in the basement alone, and an additional two or more gallons were all over the floors upstairs. Ugg.

Ken's hitting the basement with the wet vac right now and I'm washing all of Riley's bedding and the massive amounts of towels we used to collect the water. Thankfully we still had plastic sheets on Riley's bed, or we'd have lost that mattress for sure. And thankfully Riley was still awake and noticed the problem before it had gotten any worse.

And now, for those who thought we were stupid to drywall the basement ceilings, let the "I TOLD YOU SO's" begin...

Crambone

Corey and I were watching Tom and Jerry today when this came up. We both yelled "Crambone!"

Dazed and Confused

So I'm sitting here staring at the computer tonight around 11:00 PM because I feel like crap and have no life, when suddenly I hear footsteps rushing up the stairs. It must be Riley; I wait for him to come in and tell me he can't sleep but he never surfaces.

Just when I think it's time to go see what he's up to, I hear Riley rushing through the kitchen. It seemed like he was in a hurry to get somewhere when the next thing I hear is the door to the garage opening. I holler out for him, thinking he must be looking for me, but no answer. "Fine... I'd better go see what my little guy is up to," I think.

I head to the garage and Riley is nowhere to be seen. I yell for him again and I hear him scurrying around behind the car. I peak around the van just in time to yell, "Riley, wake up! You're in the garage, not the bathroom!" He was dead asleep, standing at the ready over the toy box full of basketballs and baseballs.

I'm pretty sure I wasn't too late but I'm not going to bother going out there tonight to find out...

Corey at the Eye Doctor

The good news is that Corey's eyes are actually improving for the first time in a long time! He did a great job for the doctor and was very cooperative. The bad news? Corey doesn't think very highly of me...

He was doing an eye test, reading letters off of a computer screen from across the room. Here's how the conversation went:

"What letter is this?" M! (It was an H.)
"What letter is this?" O! (It was an O.)
"What letter is this?" M! (It was an H.)

"Hey," yells Corey, "that's just like my mom!"

Easter Pictures

Shannon's haul.
Riley.
Corey.

The boys.

All done.

Seriously?

At 11:20 PM, the night before Easter, I realize that while I bought a lot of plastic Easter Eggs, I completely forgot to buy candy to put into them. It's going to be a long night...

*** Update #1: No. Way. Ken just called (12:07 AM, Easter morning,) and Walmart is COMPLETELY OUT of Easter candy. Is that even possible?

***Update #2: Meijer is out of Easter candy, too. Seriously? So at 12:30 AM on Easter morning, Ken hit the nearly depleted bulk candy bins (located right next to the dog food!) and got a lame assortment of gummy candies and gum balls. I can't complain, it's more than I managed to get...

A Week in Nebraska

I'm sure it's been traumatizing for everyone that I haven't posted in a week, but honestly, not much has been going on. I've been in Nebraska for a week, and it has been a pretty smooth visit and the boys are actually getting pretty good at this visiting stuff. I went out for drinks and to watch my sister dance over the weekend, ate at Val's with June, and helped the boys dye eggs the other day, otherwise I've just been visiting with the family.

My brother had a rough time of it the other day, he was heading in to work and a lady was frantically trying to flag him down. He pulled over and quickly realized that the lady had accidentally hit a bicyclist. Dan called 911 and ran over to help the poor guy, but it was obvious to him that the cyclist wasn't going to survive, but Dan did what he could to try to console the man and help in any way he could. We found out later that the cyclist had in fact died soon after responders arrived at the scene.

Dan plus death equals a very bad thing, but so far he seems to be doing okay. He feels horrible for everybody involved and hopefully this incident won't drag him down. I'm just grateful he wasn't driving down the road a minute or two earlier or he may have been the one to drive into the bike. Ugg.

I'll be on the road all day Friday, so maybe by Saturday morning I'll have something fascinating to post about. Maybe Ken repainted the entire house while I was away? Maybe he got my old computer fixed while I was away? Maybe his snowmobile taking up a ridiculous amount of space in my garage mysteriously disappeared while I was away?

Hmm... don't get excited, I'll probably have nothing to write about except for a messy house and a weeks worth of my husband's laundry in need of my attention.

The Joke that Wasn't

Okay, my friend Kim has had her house up for sale for a while now, remember we live in Michigan. So I called her up and asked if I could borrow her FOR SALE sign for April Fool's Day and she said sure. Well, after thinking about it, that type of thing had been done before in our neighborhood, so I thought of something else.

I drove by and grabbed the top portion of her sign and with my brilliant scrapbooking skilled transformed "Price Reduced" into "SOLD." Kim was in on it, so this was a joke for the neighbors. I then took this picture and alerted all of Kim's neighbors to the 'fact' that her house was purchased.

Poor Kim, she cannot tell a lie, and had a hard time co-conspiring with me on this one. Finally after the phone started ringing with sad friends on the line, she gave up the joke and let everybody know what I had done. The good thing, though? Kim now knows how much she will be missed when her home finally does sell...

April Fools: Parent Version

Last night I was a little bored so I did a little googling for April Fool's Day ideas. I learned how to do a screen capture and turn it into wallpaper. After I did that I figured out how to remove all of our desktop icons. The result looked something like this:

When Ken finally got home from work and got onto the computer, his first question was, "Why is Colleen looking at this crap?" His second question (after trying to close out the internet page a few times) was, "Why wont this shut down?"

It was successful, but it didn't take Ken long to figure out what I did. He's used to my pranks. So are the boys...

Once they were all safely asleep, I suggested to Ken that we switch all of the boys into different beds. All was fine until Corey woke up at 2:30 AM disoriented and hysterical. It took about 1/2 an hour to get him to calm down, and by the time we went to return him to a bed, Shannon had woken up and found his way back to his own room.

Ken thought that the switching bed thing was okay, but he had a better idea. Riley takes a joke pretty well, so this one was on him. It looked something like this:

Riley ended up sleeping like a log in the bathtub, and Ken and I both got up to my alarm (which Ken has rigged to read later than it really was - thanks, honey!) so that we could watch Riley's reaction. Shannon, as always, was the first one up, so I told him to go start the tub like I always do every morning. I wish I had gotten a picture of his face when he saw Riley snoring away. Riley, on the other hand, just woke up, looked around, and said with a smile, "Can I sleep in the bathtub again tomorrow?"

Well, I only have fifteen hours left in the day, I must go figure out what else I can pull off...