Of berries, bikes, bad weather and brides....in no particular order.

I'm starting with weather first because I'm sick of it. I don't know why it's so hard this year for the weather people to tell us if or when we are having severe storms. They're either popping up out of nowhere, or they tell us they're coming and they don't. My personal favorite is that of last Friday and early this morning, where they say things are weakening or just not coming near us at all, and yet I'm awoken by some thunder and lightning only to discover there's a tornado warning nearby. Poor southern Ohio will have been under a tornado watch for about 20 hours straight by the end of the day if the current watch stays in effect. Luckily the weather was able to cooperate for Memorial Day weekend. It was quite lovely and we had a nice cookout at my mom and step-dad's that Sunday.

At any rate, this rain of late is doing wonders for my plants. The strawberries are a little experiment I was trying with Xander, but then I discovered my neighbor Dena gardens and she offered to start some seeds for me. I'm doing all containers this year until I see if I'm successful, as I don't want to rip up my yard to find I'm not good at growing things. I'm horrible with houseplants so I wasn't expecting much from these. The strawberries are looking great though, and it was fun to watch Xander learn how to plant them, then put them in the sun, and he even helped me water them. I discovered, however, that 12 strawberry plants isn't going to put a dent in my kids' consumption of the fruit. Xander is very proud of the strawberries so I took a picture of them yesterday. The other little plants you see are the ones from Dena that I need to re-pot. They're tomatoes, cucumber and green pepper. One of each, just to see how they do.



Xander also just got his first big boy bike. Jason had told him he could use some birthday money to buy it so they went last week and picked it out. Just so happens that it matches the helmet he got last summer at the Safety Fair. Xander loves his bike and is quite good at it, just got on and took off. He's already riding it around the block and we've been leaving the cars in the driveway so he can ride in the garage on days that it rains.



Nomey has a helmet, too, and insists on wearing it even if she's not riding her tricycle. They even wore helmets to help me wash the car on Sunday.



Other than that we've not been doing much. The kids and I have gone on a few playdates with our MOPS (Mother's of Pre-schoolers) group and I went out for Mexican and dancing with some friends last Saturday night. Something about having two kids and turning 30 has reduced my ability to decide what makes for good "going out" clothes, so I let Jason choose my attire on Saturday. He was quite pleased with the end result and even took my picture. He attempted to go fishing with Xander and his dad last Sunday but that didn't go so well.





Our next big adventure is a garage sale at my mom's next weekend. She already sold some of our baby stuff to a girl at her work, but I have tons of clothes and other things here that I hope to get rid of as well. So please pray for me that it doesn't rain next Saturday, so I will not have spent hours pricing all these things for naught.

Also, Jason's cousin is getting married this weekend, so congratulations Nellie!!! All of you family members making the trip to Punta Cana we hope you have a fabulous time.

Mother's Day

So Mother's Day was going smoothly...the kids had been behaving, Jason got up early and fed them lunch and they were quietly coloring at the kitchen table. Enjoying my lazy rainy day I was still in my pajamas and halfway asleep on the couch when "it" happened. If you live here, and you know me fairly well, you know what I'm talking about. Yes, the tornado sirens went off. My mom has always said I have selective hearing, but I think a tornado siren could bring me out of a coma.

At first I thought it was routine. Our old house was in Franklin County and they test sirens at noon on Wednesday, but our new house is in Delaware County and they test on Saturday. So I thought that's about right, it's lunch-ish time and it's Saturday. But then I remembered that no, it's Sunday, and it's after 1 p.m. Surely, I thought, there couldn't be a tornado when it's not even 60 degrees out, the dew point is low and there's been no heating of the sun in the atmosphere since it's been raining all day. I'm a connoisseur of weather, always have been, and I've hung out with Jym Ganahl www.nbc4i.com/midwest/cmh/authors.Bio.-content-midwest-cmh-authors-jim_ganahl.html enough times to know that even though tornadoes can be sneaky, the conditions just weren't right.

But true indeed it was, as I turned on the TV and saw the giant weather-map, the one they force you to watch the whole entire time the storm travels until it reaches the next closest state. Because we all know that whoever broadcasts the weather the longest, and shows you the most videos of the impending death (be it tornado, flooding, snow, what have you) is the best news station in town. So anyway, I had a slight panic as Xander starts asking "what's that noise" and Jason's in the driveway looking for funnel clouds, when I realized that the storm isn't even coming towards us. In fact, if anything it was starting to get a little sunny, so I couldn't even take any good scary sky pictures. It was going towards Jason's parents house though, so luckily we had been there the day before because they don't have a basement and things would not have been pretty had I been there for that. And speaking of which, we had a lovely cookout there and then we took the kids out to the neighborhood pond to race remote-controlled boats. There were some baby ducks at the pond as well, so the kids had two things to get excited about.





Once the storm hoopla was over things got back to normal and the kids were none the wiser. They both took nice long resters and I spent all day on the couch. Made myself some tomato soup for lunch and ate it in the family room. Then I finished reading my all-time favorite book that, for once, was actually not checked out at the library -- "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler." If you're familiar with the book, which I know some of you are, don't laugh at me, I'm quite aware that it's children's literature. But I've loved it since the third grade when my teacher, Lynn Thompson, read it to us. I love the idea of it, the mystery of it, and the fact that sometimes what you find on the journey is more important than what you were looking for. To my credit, it WAS a Newbery Medal winner, and I'm not the only adult who enjoys it. The comment section at Amazon is full of other grown-ups who still love this book. www.amazon.com/Mixed-Up-Files-Mrs-Basil-Frankweiler/dp/0440431808 So to those of you teachers who sometimes feel like you don't make a difference, you never know what your students will remember 24 years after they leave the 3rd grade.

After my book I labeled some photos in an album from last year's vacation. I've come to terms with the fact that I will never ever get around to scrapbooking them, and that's okay. So I wrote on all the little tabs next to them in the album while I watched the "Jon & Kate Plus 8" marathon. tlc.discovery.com/tv/jon-and-kate/jon-and-kate.html If you've never seen this show it's about a family who had fertility treatments when they couldn't have a baby. They had a set of twins and then wanted another baby and ended up with six. So this show follows them around and on bad days with the kids I just have to watch one episode of this show and it makes me realize maybe things could be worse. Though there have been days when all of their 8kids collectively are behaving better than the two of mine. Oh yeah, and I ate a Cow Tail without having to hide from the kids in the laundry room.

Jason and the kids got me very nice cards and our combined Mother's Day/Father's Day gift will be painting the office and putting up shelving. Jason was going to make steaks and baked potatoes for dinner but the rain kind of put a damper on that, so we fed the kids and then after they went to bed he went and got us a late dinner, my choice. I went round and round of course because I can't ever make decisions. I kind of wanted Bob Evans breakfast food but thought it's really too much money to pay for breakfast things I can make myself. I always want Chipotle and Jason would have gone to get it because he loves it, too, but I couldn't justify sending him on a 40 minute round-trip when gas is $4/gallon. Oh wait, sorry, it's only $3.95. Finally I decided on Donatos. I got a Big Don sub and a small cheese pizza, ate half of each and then had yummy leftovers.

Tonight my mom and step-dad took us to dinner at Max & Erma's which was tasty as usual (best tortilla soup EVER) and the kids were fairly well-behaved. I got them to pose for pictures there on various chairs in the lobby and before that we had a nice time at the playground outside of Jason's work while he was there attending a meeting. Xander put on a great show of singing and dancing on the outdoor stage, but sadly my new phone apparently doesn't E-mail high resolution videos.



Xander, being the ham that he is.



I was in a bad place to take a picture with the streaming sun, but the kids were side by side and strapped into a cart at Home Depot, so it was a rare opportunity to get them together without Jordis trying to run away.




Jordis didn't want to share the chair at Max & Erma's, so Xander sat on a stool and scouted the parking lot.



Thanks to everyone that contributed to my Happy Mother's Day. I think I got more E-mails, cards, phone calls, texts and MySpace posts than I get on my birthday, and I appreciate every last one of them.

The first post!

So today's weather is fitting with the name of our blog...mayhem. For anyone who doesn't know, one of my biggest fears is tornadoes. Tonight we had tornado warnings in the county to the west of us and the two that border us on the north. Mind you none of the counties were the ones under the actual tornado watch, as is typical. But no worries, I knew they weren't headed our way so it was okay. But as is typical with the weather here, we'll go from tornado warnings today to the possibility of some snow over the weekend. Which is precisely why I made sure my kids' birthday party was indoors this year, which seems to have been a teriffic idea.

Speaking of party, it's been a busy week here with both the kids having a birthday this week. Jason's parents came last Saturday to bring presents, then Xander got cake and presents from us on Tuesday, his actual birthday. More presents and more cake to come this weekend with Jordis' birthday and their joint party.

Anyone who was at Xander's first birthday party will find his "waiting on cake" pose below a familiar one.




Also this week the kids and I took a trip to the park with Aunt Mo. I'm still learning how to do the picture thing here, so hopefully these won't be so scattered next time.

Xan and Aunt Mo being loud.

Jordis says, "Don't look at me!"

It took this to get Jordis on the twisty slide, but she went over and over again by herself.
















Peek-a-boo!














Jordis was the Michael Jordan of the park.