Taste Bud Hypothesis

Yesterday I decided to try a new recipe for dinner. The kids get home at different times after school. As each one arrived home, I asked them about their day and then gently added, "There are mushrooms in our dinner tonight." I thought a little bit of warning would ease the reaction when I actually served the meal. Well, it might have worked for some kids but not Kat. She went on and on about daring to serve mushrooms to her. Finally, I explained to her that I got the recipe out of a cookbook written by a mom with ten kids who reported that this was her kid's FAVORITE meal. Her response? "That figures." OK, I'll bite, "What does that mean, Kat?" Well, she explained, Heavenly Father only gives each family 3,000 taste buds. He knows how many kids will be born into each family and each kid is given a pre-determined number of taste buds. So, while she, herself, was given 1,000 taste buds, a child born to THAT mom of ten was only given 300 taste buds.

While I am not totally blaming Kat, I got a migraine after this conversation/explanation. Kat is one of a kind and did NOT eat the mushrooms.

Tonight, as I was preparing dinner, Luke was asking me a bunch of random questions. I was answering them without thinking until I finally stopped and wondered what he was doing. "Nothing mom, don't worry about it." And then, he suddenly asked me to come and take pictures with him with the iphoto booth. As we sat there taking pictures, he piped up with, "Don't worry, Mom, I don't need these for school or anything. But, could you email them to teacher?"

Pretty sure THAT one won't be able to pull off lying to us :)

Where, oh, Where Has My Zebra Gone??

What? He is in the Rubbermade container?

Pajama Gladiator

Papa gave us this DVD for Christmas. At that time it wasn't on YouTube. I hope whoever uploaded it did it legally! This short film is so delightful. We have spent hours watching it. It will only take six minutes of your day, but I bet you will watch it more than once!!

Bread Baking Day

What did I do today? Baked bread!! I tried Sara's wheat bread recipe this time around. I also, as luck would have it, stumbled upon a English Muffin Bread recipe! I have been looking for one for about ten months. And where did I find it? In a cookbook I own. Go figure. Matt loves English Muffin Bread and I hadn't found a recipe for it. It is so yummy. I could have eaten the whole loaf....but I didn't!

All this bread was baked by 10:00. How efficient am I?!?!?!

Brief Look at Our Week

The kids are back at school. Were yesterday, also. I like it better when they are home with me! Oliver isn't very good at playing games and just gives me blank stares when I talk to him. Yes, I am a crazy cat lady!

Matthew turned 38 this week. Sorry, Dear, was that a secret? The kids decided he "wanted" to go to Steak and Shake for his birthday dinner...so we did :) Someone asked us if Matt really wanted to go there and I informed them that Matt has had 38 years of free agency and that has abruptly come to an end. No one with children has free agency!!! He was a very good sport and we had a great time.

We got him Jelly Bellies and a poster with all the words we collected from family, friends and co-workers. He was very surprised by all the kind words and could actually guess who donated which words. True to my promise, I have not reveiled the identity of the two co-workers who contributed words. But, they were some of the best words given!! Feel free to identify yourselves!!

Other than the birthday celebrations, we are having a relatively quiet week. Track is going well for Ali. Kat continues her unit on the solar system. She is going to Mars one day, didn't you know! Luke has passed off all his multiplication tables and now working hard on division. Up next for us is Solo and Ensamble, the science fair and Pinewood Derby. We feel everything will lean toward our favor as we have an engineer in our pocket to help with the science fair and Pinewood Derby.

Matt continues to be the "smartest person in the world" and a fabulous father figure. He went into work a bit later just so Ali and her friend could talk in his car after he drove car pool. The children love Matt. I tried to buy their love yesterday by purchasing straws at the store. They love straws. They loved me more for half a second and then returned their adoration to Matt!

That is about it from the Paine household. What? What was that you said? There is a chance of snow over the weekend?!?! Well, keep that info to yourselves. We need to stay in school and finish the year on schedule!

Snow Day #7

"Hello Williamson County parents and staff. This is Carol Birdsong. Members of the Williamson County Schools transportation department and their spotters have been out assessing road conditions this afternoon, and they are reporting that we have a great number of secondary streets and rural roads in all parts of the county that are still covered with snow and ice. So, while we want to get back to school tomorrow, we have determined that we cannot safely transport students tomorrow. So, school will be closed in Williamson County tomorrow, Tuesday, February 16. Again, no school in Williamson County tomorrow, February 16. Thank you."

Three more snow days and we are going to school during our summer vacation!

Happy Birthday Matthew!!

Luke's Valentine's Box

Remember the days when we made our Valentine's boxes in school? That was probably one of my most favorite part of school. All that glue, glitter, lacy hearts, sequins, etc. And the mess! We had glitter in our school carpet for weeks!! Sadly, my kids have never experienced that kind of wonder. They have to make their boxes at home, with boring ol' me! It is a terrible tragedy. I am not a crafty person and don't have great stuff laying around to make a glamorous box.

Luke is the only one still in the Valentine Box stage. And this year, his took a little different direction. Matt is a scuba diver and instructor. He gets this fabulous, high gloss magazine every month. We decided this year it would be fun to make Luke's box an ocean of sorts. We had everything planned except the opening. My vote was just for a slit in the top. Luke's vote was for a drawbridge. Of coarse, a draw bridge. I told him a slit would be easier. He turned to me and replied, "It's ok, Mom. We have Matthew this year. He can do it." After some planning and measuring, the drawbridge was made.

As Luke got out of the car this morning, he surveyed other kid's boxes and turned to me and reported, "My box doesn't look like anyone else's." It was said with a lot of pride.

A New Theatre Holiday?

Recently I have seen this decorated door in our neighborhood. I couldn't fully see it but it has fascinated me because it has the comedy and tragedy faces on it. I was worried I had forgotten to wish my dad some sort of "happy theatre day!" Yesterday I finally snuck up and took a picture of it. Now that I see it enlarged I realize it is for Mardi Gras. I liked the "happy theatre day" better. So....

Happy Theatre Day, Dad!!!

Numbers

My husband loves numbers. Luke loves numbers. We have all become much more aware of numbers since we became a family :) This pictures is for my prime number loving husband!

As I posted this Luke said, "Do you know 2 is the only even prime number?" Yes, we talk about numbers a whole lot!

6th Snow Day and counting...

This week we had our 6th snow day. There are 10 built into the schedule before we start into the summer vacation days. But the way we are going....we might just use all 10!!

Sacrement Meeting

Ali played Come, Come Ye Saints in Sacrament Meeting today. If we could find a new Hymn arrangement, she would play a new song! Good thing we are in a new ward.

She did a phenomenal job. The best I have ever heard her play. Brett Raymond accompanied her. They really work well together. He realizes that the way she plays it is the way she wants to play it...regardless of the music at times! Good thing he can arrange around her :) Hopefully we can get him or Randy Kartchner (also in our ward) to arrange some new music for her.

Someone left this comment on their facebook:

"heard the BEST Sacrament Meeting musical number ever today! Thanks to Ali (14 yr. old flute GENIUS!) and Brett (best pianist ever!)...it was truly "heaven on earth" and made my heart swell!"

Oliver the Terrible...

...pretending to be sweet :) This is Oliver's favorite place to be right now. He curls up in the basket for hours and hours a day. We can carry him anywhere we want and just stays curled up.

Oliver the Terrible

Dear Husband,

I know you told me to be the bigger "person" when it comes to dealing with our zebra, Oliver. Why is it you sound so much like my dad at times? You both love to be the bigger person and rise above things. But, I digress. Back to the issue at hand: the zebra. He is driving me crazy. Please see the below photos as vidence. These were all taken within a five minute period.

Later today, when you receive a package that is kind of wiggly, just accept it. I don't want to ruin the surprise for you....but it will be an orange zebra!

Love,

Your Wife, mother of an orange zebra

Dooped by the Twelve Year Olds

Monday was a "snow day." Kat invited friends over to play...I mean hang out. By four o'clock that afternoon school was canceled for the following day. "Can my friends sleep over?" was Kat's immediate response.

About ten minutes after Matt and I had given her permission for her friends to spend the night one of the girls came downstairs in her very own, personal PJs. Matt and I looked at each other at the same moment realizing what had happened: somehow Kat had planned this all along and the girls had brought their stuff from the very beginning!

"Winter Break"

Today begins day four that we are all home together. School has been cancelled. Church has been cancelled. When the school called yesterday, at 2:00 pm, to cancel school for today, I was a little stressed out. I actually told the kids the call was to remind them there was school the following day. I decided to worry about the fall-out of that lie when they got to school today and it was empty. But, I forgot to factor in texting, instant messaging and facebooking. My lie lasted 1.5 minutes.

Nashville must have some of the best weather people around. They forecast snow, the school district cancels school and IT SNOWS. How often, in the real world, are the weather people actually correct? I have been dumbfounded three times now to have school cancelled with blue skies and snow shows up the following day.

When I was young, this is what it looked like....

There were two criteria for which school could be called off due to severe winter weather conditions. The first was so many inches of new snow. Sadly, I am forgetting the number, but I am sure it was around 6-12 inches of new snow. The second condition was if it was 20 degrees (or more) below zero. Did I mention I grew up in Idaho? I remember kids driving snow mobiles to school.

If there was chatter around school (not internet chatter) about bad weather coming, we would get very excited about school getting cancelled. Just like the kids of today, we would plan and scheme about what we would do with a free day!

The morning of the expected school closure found us kids up and huddled around the radio, tuned to an AM station starting at 5:30 AM, praying for Madison School District to be called among the closed schools. Sometimes we would have to wait 30+ minutes for an announcement as the district had until 6 AM to make a decision regarding the school being closed.

You might be wondering if it was often our little hearts were made happy by our superintendent. Well, it wasn't often enough! One winter we were SO happy because it was 20 below for like two weeks IN A ROW!! And what did the school district do? They changed the 20 below number to 40 below and made us only get a "late" start @ 20 below!!!! They didn't get a lot of love from us after that little change. You see, in Rexburg, you could bank on multiple days out due to negative 20 degrees!

Here, in the South, they figure it is best to be prepared and cancel school 24 hours ahead of time! It is very comical.

What have we been doing with our unscheduled "winter" break you might wonder? We have played games, eaten, played with friends, played in the snow, eaten some more, went to Costco to buy more food, played more games, made a rule about ONLY playing card games as board games take way too long and we kill each other by the end, tried to watch a sacrament meeting on BYU TV with no success (yes, the kids were VERY sad about that one, made zip-lines from the upstairs to the downstairs for our Littlest Pet Shops, made snow frogs, read, watched movies, updated our facebook pictures, txted, im-ed, practiced the flute and now...blogged. I would just like to add that Oliver has been on one. Matt told me that I am the adult human and that I should just find a way to deal with Oliver. Yeah, right! Oliver can be evil!!! One day the world will know of his evil not and not say, "He is SO cute."

Here is the zip-line Kat made. Unfortunately Kat fired her mechanical engineer as he did not live up to her expectations :)

Here is the boy and his snow frogs :)

And last, but by no means least....Oliver the Devil!

I guess we will repeat everything today and hope we are getting up and on the bus by 6:30 tomorrow morning!