Brotherly Love

My daughter is 5 going on 15. She's into all things "grown~up". For example, Audrey bought a "priracy journal" (privacy journal, i.e., diary) with some of her Christmas money. It's very "grown~up" with a pen light and lock and key. My mom has written little love notes to her and she occasionally asks me to narrate her drawings but perhaps she ought to keep it locked and hidden away more often, as the other day I was cleaning up and found several pages ripped out and discarded on the carpet. I glanced at them to see why she would deliberately tear out pages in her precious book and this is what I found:

Entry #1:

Audrey

serelle

cheek your

panse I think

you problly

bumed you smell

Mom's translation:

Audrey

seriously

check your

pants I think

you probably

boomed you smell

("boomed" in case you were wondering is another word for "pooped" around Hosmerville, don't ask...)

The second entry was very similar to the first, but in slightly different sloppy handwriting. So I knew there must be at least 2 co~conspirators involved:

Entry#2:

Audrey you

smell like a

rutin egg

sereasly.

cheel your

panse. I think

you bumde.

I work with my son every nite doing homework and I know his writing, so I had a suspicion as to whom the author of entry #1 was. As a mother who knows who her sons "hangs" with (and also because entry #2 had capitalization and punctuation~ a dead giveaway this came from an older, more knowledgeable scholar) it wasn't too difficult to figure out his partner in crime. Sure enough, when confronted about the anonymous entries later, Austin immediately threw his cousin under the bus. And after some coaxing and prodding, eventually admitted to the other half of the "crime" himself. I actually thought the whole thing brilliant, (imagining the authors giggling to themselves as they wrote and Audrey's look of indignation as she discovered their work) but did my best to remain calm and serious as I tried to explain why that possibly wasn't the nicest thing to do. As for getting these siblings to get along and appreciate and love each other, I am at a loss. "This is all part of a normal brother/sister relationship", is what I keep telling myself. Right?

Audrey Is 5!!!

We were so busy celebrating yesterday that I didn't get a chance to send out birthday wishes to my beautiful princess. Happy birthday, Audrey Catherine Grace!!!! You truly are a real handful now;) I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOOOOOVE YOOOOUUUUU~OH! (sang Buddy the Elf style.)

Excuses, Excuses

Can it already be the middle of March and I am just now doing my first post for the month!?! My main excuse reason for not blogging is because a couple of weeks ago our wireless router decided to conk out on us. Tom called tech support and, of course, got a foreigner he could barely understand (does anyone else always get some non~English speaking person when you're making technical calls or is it just us?) After a couple of minutes into the unproductive phone call Mr. Foreign Guy tells Tom he can no longer help him without charging him for the call because our router is out of warranty. GRRR!!! So, because we are too cheap to buy another router at this point our laptop is now a desktop downstairs in the basement, plugged in at the wireless source. Not quite so easy to bang out a quick post. But today I found a way around the system. I logged into blogger and went to the posting page before unplugging the laptop and bringing it upstairs. (*except I just realized that without being connected I can't do spell check)The girls are watching Toy Story and I have a quick chance to catch up a bit. Let's do bullets for some random bits of going ons:

• Austin started his spring b~ball at the Y. Last week in his first game he shot 100% for 14 points and loved every bit of playing time.
• I started track. Yesterday. With all 3 kids in tow. No babysitter this year, so I have dubbed them my junior assistants. I have "hired" my own track assistant who will be available to get practices started (while I'm doing afternoon carpool) and hopefully help keep things organized and running smoothly. (Running smoothly... because it is a track team... aww, nevermind.)
• I am waaay behind on laundry. No surprise there, really.
• We are really enjoying the bright, sunshiny spring weather.
• Audrey turns 5 on Thursday. She wants pink cupcakes with flower sprinkles for her classroom birthday treat. I will be baking Thursday morning.
• Audrey has also requested to go to Rainforest Cafe for her birthday dinner. Not sure when we're gonna squeeze that in as the nearest Cafe is 2 hours away, Thursday is a school nite (duh) and...
• Tom and his brother will be out of town this weekend for some sort of auto conference. I'll be single~parenting it, with the help of my MIL.
• Tom will have his own turn at single parenting in April when I head to West Michigan for an entire weekend of scrapbooking with friends. I am so psyched! We have reserved a house overlooking Lake Michigan. It's been set up for scrapbooking getaways. With a sauna and hot tub on the deck and DirecTV, I may not get a whole lot of scrapping done. But I am definitely looking forward to getting away!

I'm hoping that when I reconnect to the internet this will all post or else this session has been all for naught ( and I thought I was being sneaky.) We shall see. Actually, if you can see this, then it has been a successful post. If you're in Michigan, enjoy the good weather this week. I heard the "s" word may be in the forecast for this weekend.