Not so adventures of the St. Clair clan...

Some things just shouldn't be done naked.  Let me leave that there for a minute...  I erroneously thought our boys had approached the age that they could decipher between acceptable and unacceptable naked activities.  In the unacceptable category: tree climbing.   Actually, I'm not as surprised as I probably should be that I had to educate our boys on that (potential future grandchildren - you're welcome).  They were pretend camping.  Their clothes were hanging from the tree branches because frankly, they couldn't fit everything in their backpack, and they didn't want stuff getting full of burrs.  I can appreciate that.  Also, it didn't work.  Their stuff still got full of burrs.   But why was a child up the tree naked?  It was time to change out of pajamas and into work clothes, of course. Of course.   Sometimes I want to get inside their brains, and sometimes I want to stay very, very far away.   "Hey...

 "Mom, can you leave?"  I refuse to be insulted.  My cup is half full.  Because I am  leaving and they are staying.   It's a sleepover day at the grandparents, and you would think it had been months since the boys were last there.  In reality, it's been three days and only two since they last saw Grammy.  Nonetheless, they were excited.  We only live twenty minutes away, but on the drive over they couldn't help but ask, "how much longer?"...twice.   Grandparents are the best.  I think so too.   Yesterday, I was also wondering "how much longer?!"  Today, of course, the boys have been the best!   I almost didn't want to give them up for the day.  Almost.  They were playing outside in the cool of the morning, and it was like two boys I haven't seen in weeks.  I think the heat has been making everyone cranky.   I ran out and snapped this photo, so that next week...or tomorrow...when...

 I try not to be a hot mess of a mom.  At least not in public.  Some people wear it like a badge, and some fake it until they make it, or at least until they are back in the car.  I try to be in the latter camp, but if ever there was a day... I started out my day by completely melting the handle off of our BBQ chimney.  Probably not something you want to do ever, much less during fire season.   Next, I embarrassed myself as only I can do...twice.   After lunch I watched one of our boys meltdown over a sucker that didn't even belong to him.  It was such an incredible fit that I finally picked him up and deposited him in his bed for an impromptu nap.   Only one baby girl would nap today. Only one baby girl would go down at bedtime.   In addition, the piles all over our house, and porch, and deck, and garage are threatening to take over...and it scares me that they might actually succeed.   In the midst of all ...

 My preferred décor style is somewhere along the lines of rustic Scandinavian.  I think that's a thing.  Clean, uncluttered, with some bright pops of color.  Walking through our house, you would not get that vibe.  Our current look is more along the lines of dirty socks with a splash of Band-Aid wrappers.  Our kids, who practice zero hygiene, are suddenly very adamant that they must keep fresh bandages on their scrapes and cuts.  That means changing them about every seventeen minutes.  Normally, I'd approve of these sanitary practices, but I've seen where their dirty little hands have been, and they definitely aren't washing those as often as they are changing the dressings.   Dirty socks and wrappers are just the start though.  Instead of fancy wallpaper, we style the walls with muddy handprints, colored pencil drawings and a hint of crayon.  The windows we don't bother covering because it's already hard for the light to make ...

It's exactly a million degrees outside right now, and even still....sometimes a girl's got to bake.  I couldn't silence the retro craving I was having for chocolate revel bars.  On the upside, it only took my oven 90 seconds to pre-heat to 350 degrees.  It was already two-thirds of the way there.  I love chocolate and sweet things.  Even in the heat.   Speaking of sweet things.  These girls have not been.   They are spending copious amounts of time in baby jail.  We're trying to set them straight early.  I wasn't prepared for the fighting to start so young.  Or the climbing on basically everything.  The newborn stage was mentally exhausting because of the sleep deprivation.  This stage is physically exhausting because they are on everything, into everything, and doing it all in two different directions.  Also, Carter basically hasn't stopped crying since the day she was born.  So there's that.  Lor...

I'm on the edge of my seat, waiting for something.  I don't know what it is.  I feel a strong urge to share our space and to serve others in someway, but I don't know exactly how.  We have kids, projects, and obligations, and yet... I was listening to an interview of Amy Grant the other day and ironically she was saying something similar.  She also had a great quote, "The real lesson for me has been to let it come to me because I have wasted a lot of energy throughout my life chasing things that weren't really mine to participate in."   That resonates with me.  I have jumped into things in hopes of blessing others, but it was at the expense of my own family.  I get stressed, and grumpy, and don't give them the time and energy they deserve.  So I'm waiting and wondering how God might use us and the blessings we are enjoying.   In the meantime, we are working on a giant garden, egg laying chickens, meat chickens, and whatever else we ...

 Remember the kids at school who were so cool because they could flip their eyelids inside out?  It was like the coming of age in the second grade.  By third grade they were mesmerizing the rest of the class by shoving thumb tacks through their callouses.  In the fourth grade, they were able to whistle by blowing on a piece of grass between their thumbs.  I'm pretty sure those kids grew up to be movie stars.  Somehow I missed the boat.  Bad jeans...highwaters actually.     I thought I'd give my kids a leg up by teaching them the joke about "see" food.  That was a mistake.  I should have seen  that coming. Ha. Ha. Ha.  Please don't laugh, it will only encourage me.   Our kids don't have much hope in the cool department.  Have I mentioned this before?  Their dad had the nickname "Pineapple Head" in high school, and well, I was wearing Little House on the Prairie dresses up until the ninth grade....