Eli At The Beach

I decided that since I did take an insane number of pictures at the beach, that I needed to find a way to break them up into different posts so that my readers wouldn't balk at the number of photos in one GIGANTIC post.


Do I even still have readers?


Hello? Anyone?


Eli's very first steps in the ocean. Ever.

I am so glad I captured this moment. Don't you remember your very first time to see and touch the ocean? It's something that can't quite be described that is etched forever in your memory. And my little Eli turned out to be quite the beach bum.









After our first full day at the beach, Eli was WIPED OUT. And it's no wonder. He attacked every single wave. And I'm talking jump-into-every-wave-yelling-at-the-top-of-his-lungs-and-use-every-single-ounce-of-energy attack. It's funny, but being at the beach brought out the quintessential Eli. The Eli who challenges every single thing. The Eli who makes his own way, even when another would be easier or safer or make more sense. The Eli who is not daunted by what others think he should be doing. The Eli who does not back down and sees a battle in everything. The ocean was a good place for this. It allowed me to see who Eli is without being frustrated or at my wits end because (for once) he wasn't battling me. It also let me see that when Eli has something to challenge him physically and mentally, he is so much more pleasant to be around. My brother was like that. I think I'll just store this little nugget of insight away for the future and spend more time looking for ways that Eli can wear himself out.

It also increased his appetite tenfold. I mean, the boy could put it away! Sheesh. I can't imagine what his teenage years will be like.

Luckily, a good's night sleep helped him recuperate.

And We're Back

Did you miss me? :)

It's funny, but I missed posting on this blog while we were on vacation this past week. I had every intention of posting while we were away, but the condo where we stayed had spotty internet at best and just didn't feel like leaning over the third floor balcony to find the best connection. Call me crazy. And while I would love to post all 947 photos from my trip (and I am sooo not joking on that number!), it's going to take me a few days to edit and sort through them. In this wonderful age of digital photography, I seem to take waaaayyy to many pictures and then have to spent a good amount of time sifting out the really, really good ones. And there were several good ones!

But I do need to leave with you a recipe. We made THIS yummy pasta dish the first night we were there. There are no words to describe how utterly delicious this dish is. And it was easy! I was going to use basil instead of parsley because I'm not a huge fan of parsley (I think it tastes like soap), but there wasn't any at the grocery store where we shopped. So I bought diced tomatoes seasoned with basil, garlic, and oregano and added just a little fresh parsley. My only tip for this dish is add lots of salt. And I mean LOTS. I added what I thought was a good amount (a good sized palm-ful) and we ended up adding much more after it was cooked. Also, use the widest, thickest foil you can find. We had a smaller, cheaper roll of foil and while we did cross it over, some of the "juice" leaked onto the baking sheet...nothing that couldn't be sopped up with a good piece of bread!

Please make this for me. You'll thank me later. I promise. And be checking back as I start to post all the pictures from our very first family trip to the ocean.

Eli's Legomaniac Party

I do love me some birthday parties!

That's why I can't believe it's been almost a week since Eli's birthday party and I'm just now blogging about it! We've been a little BUSY and DISTRACTED, I guess.

I think Eli loves Legos almost as much as he loves Star Wars. And he's starting to form his own opinions on what kind of birthday he wants. (I dread the day he tells me he just wants to take a few friends bowling and have a slumber party!) So I started looking around for fun Lego birthday ideas and there were a bunch so I started to get excited too! It started with the invitation which I found on HERE.


After invitations were sent, I started thinking about decorations. Eli had decided on red and blue as the colors. Mainly because I bought his birthday shirt HERE and there were limited options. (Is ETSY not the greatest place on Earth?!) Instead of streamers (because that would just be way too easy), I decided to decorate with paper chains. Guess who got to put together paper chain as one of his jobs for the TALLY sheet? Even though I made about three times as much as I needed they turned out spectacular and I'll probably use this idea again!


I also made a "Happy Birthday" banner...with the help of my friend, Ashley, and her Cricket! :)


The food was kept pretty simple. Cupcakes.


A personal Lego cake for Eli.


Ice cream. Is my new platter from WALLY WORLD not to die for?!


The dessert "table" looked awfully festive!


Our guest list was a little shallow this year. Summer birthday parties are always a hit or miss when it come to guests, but the smaller number was actually so much more fun because we got to do each "game" slowly and enjoy it!



And I had several games planned for the party. Games like "Guess How Many Legos" in a large jar.

There were 946, by the way.

The kids dropped legos from our balconey into a plastic bucket.


The "Who can build the tallest free-standing tower in one minute" game.



Lego Charades. I gave each "team" a card with instructions to "build something that floats" or "build something you can ride on".



The Nena-Phoebe team made a flying refridgerator. Nobody guessed that.


The best game, by far, was the "Find The Lego" game. I piled whipped cream on top of a candy lego and told each boy they had to find the lego without using their hands. So. Much. Fun. And a great photo op, too!







Phoebe decided against playing because it might "get her shirt dirty!"


Eli loved his lego cake!

I forgot to take a picture, but the inside was "tie-dyed" red and blue using THIS technique. Although I didn't use a "diet" cake.

Each guest took home a Chinese take-out box that contained one of those little bitty lego packages you can find at Christmas and Easter at Target for about $2 each and some LEGO CANDY. You can really build with them!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELI!!

Please Don't Report Me To CPS

So far, this has been a pretty rough summer for Eli so far.

Saturday he got a major sunburn and a thousand little scratches from a "Water Day" birthday party. And yes, I did apply sunscreen. Liberally.

We're treating with aloe vera, Motrin, and Solarcane.

Yesterday, he fell down the stairs, knocked his breath out, and gave himself a huge goose egg on the back of his head. (No pictures.) We treated with an ice pack to the head and lots of hugs.

This morning, he got kicked in the face and the thigh by one of THESE horses. After a visit to the pediatrician and an x-ray, he's been diagnosed with a possible concussion, no broken bones, no lost teeth, and a deep tissue bruise on his thigh.

You can't see it very well from this picture, but he has a nice "hoof" shaped bruise.

We're treating with ice packs, Motrin, the occasional "rousing" during tonight's sleep, and a Star Wars marathon.

I think we'll just wrap him in bubble wrap the rest of the summer.

Today Is A Big Day For Us

Wordless Wednesday

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush

The day before THE INCIDENT our neighbor called and said that his mulberry tree was in bloom and we were welcome to come and pick some. They were leaving town and he was going to leave us a ladder out if we wanted to bring the kids over to pick some mulberries.

I've always envied my other blogger friends who can experience those "pick your own (fill in the blank) farms" because we don't have any near us. Well, except pumpkins and pumpkins don't necessarily make my skirt fly up. However, mulberries sounded interesting. Other than the song, I know absolutely nothing about them. And our mulberries were on a tree, so it made me question the validity of my only pre-existing knowledge.

We all donned our mulberry picking clothes and grabbed the only non-plastic bucket I had that wasn't being used in my decorating (I was worried the mulberries would stain). Here's what we found when we got there.

I wasn't sure which ones were ripe or if they all were or what so Eli did a taste test for us. The dark ones are ripe and the red ones are (apparently) very tart!

So then we all got to pickin'.




This picture is to prove that I did more than just take pictures!


After we had all turned our hands blue (so meant to take a picture of that!), we headed home so I could figure out what to do with these little babies. I decided to stew them and then make a crostata, based on one by GIADA (although my recipe called for some fresh lemon juice and apricot preserves). Since I didn't know how to stew mulberries, I just stewed them like I stew dried apricots (but without soaking them overnight first) by simmering them in water with a little sugar until they are all broken down and mushy. I'm very technical, you know.

Here's how it turned out.


The mulberries were only marginal, but that might have been because I didn't use enough and they seemed to make a little mulberry "crust" over the crostata. Or maybe I just stewed them wrong. Who knows. It was yummy enough...especially for breakfast the next morning with my coffee.

So maybe sometime soon we'll go back around the mulberry bush and I'll branch out with some mulberry muffins or mulberry compote. Makes me hungry just thinking about it!

30 Things About My Brother On His 30th Birthday

Friday was my little bro's 30th birthday and because of THE INCIDENT, I was a little distracted and didn't give his birthday the post it deserved. It's the big 3-0, for heaven's sake! So here are 30 things you may or may not know about my brother in honor of his 30th birthday.

1. He sleepwalks. A lot. We have several funny family stories all involving Ben when he wasn't awake.

2. One year for Halloween, he was He-Man and I was She-Ra. My mom made the costumes and they were awesome!

3. He loves chocolate pie. So does my mom. Guess who gets his favorite dessert made for him all the time?

4. One time he dropped an entire grape-juice laden communion tray during church.

5. He won't wear sandals or flip flops.

6. In college, he and some other guys ran to Harding as a fundraiser.

7. After my Sr. banquet at church, he performed an impromptu "Bob and Bill Show" with little cowboy hats on his hands. The first few lines went, "Hi! My name is Bill! I like to rope and I like to kill! Hi! My name is Bob! I like to ride and I like to rob!" The "show" lasted the entire way home (about 20 minutes) and was entirely made up on the spot. It. Was. Hilarious.

8. He has elastic skin on his face. On long car rides as children, we'd have Ben lean over into our laps and we'd stretch his face all over the place. What can I say? It was before portable DVD players.

9. He was the one who introduced me to THE TWILIGHT SAGA. He's always been pretty good at book recommendations.

10. He has extremely long toes and fingers.

11. His ears stick out at the exact same angle as Eli and Phoebe. Mine do, too. I just happen to wear my long enough to cover them up.

12. He makes me laugh more than any other person on the planet. He always has.

13. His life's mission is to annoy and bother his sisters.

14. Eli idolizes him. One Christmas Eve, as Ben was lying in bed with him to help him get to sleep, Eli said, "There's uncles...and then there's Uncle Ben."

15. He won the Fighting Hawk award in football his Senior year.

16. He hates Diet Coke. Growing up, when we got soft drinks, I'd ask him to taste mine and make sure it was Diet Coke (real Cokes made me nauseous) even though I knew it was... he always had such a horrible reaction! (Insert evil laugh here)

17. He is forever quoting movie lines.

18. When he was a baby, he was so fat, people called him "Ben Jowly".

19. In elementary school, he and his best friend "shared" girlfriends. They had two at school and two at church. Worked out for everybody, I suppose.

20. He's a very good snow skier. On his first trip (I think he was a freshman in high school), he was skiing blacks on his very first day. It was very sickening for his older sister who was not so good.

21. His handwriting is ultra tiny. Very legible, but you-need-a-magnifying-glass-to-read-it tiny. My dad says he needs to find a bigger font.

22. He designed his and Sarah's wedding invitation. I thought my mother was going to have apoplexy because he was taking his own sweet time, but they were really cool.

23. I owe my vast knowledge (really) of Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and X-Men to him.

24. He painted a very cool, giant flower on his and Sarah's bedroom wall. And their house is full of really neat art he's drawn/painted over the years. My favorite is a gigantic picture of his "mean" face.

25. When he was a waiter in college, a very sweet old lady tipped him 50 cents and told him he was the very best waiter.

26. He played table tennis with (and beat, I think) PATRICK CRAYTON.

27. When Carrie was a baby and would cry, he would lie on the floor, rub her back and sing "LOUISIANA SATURDAY NIGHT" to her.

28. He was also the one who called her "Carrie Beary the big, fat fairy". In his defense, he was four.

29. When he was about 8, he wore a neon yellow cap with the biggest brim you've every seen flipped up all the time. I'm sure it was very cool at the time.

30. He is a funny, kind, so-nerdy-it's-cool, creative, sweet guy and I am blessed to have him as my brother.


Happy Birthday, Ben! I love you bunches!

Will Work For Dollars

It's official.

We are that family.

You know the ones. The ones where if anything happens in the neighborhood everybody automatically knows who did it. That kid up the street who always seems to be in trouble.

Our position was permanently solidified yesterday when our neighbor called to find out if we had any windows that had been shot out like his back window. They had been out of town and found it upon returning home. Brad went to investigate and found a window with a BB sized hole in it.

Guess who was playing with a BB gun on Monday?

After a grueling interrogation (I don't think bamboo shoots were used, but I can't be sure), Eli confessed to accidentally shooting the neighbors' window. Unfortunately for him, he hit the nicest window in our part of the neighborhood. A floor to ceiling, single-pane picture window. One the homeowners love, I'm sure. Why he couldn't have hit a bedroom or basement window is beyond me. It's a $740 window. Brad was livid. He wanted to ground Eli from everything until he was 16. I told him that was a bit unreasonable. So he said Eli could be beaten like a red-headed stepchild and grounded from everything this summer. I told him that was also unreasonable since grounding Eli would also ruin my summer...and that beating was probably illegal. Eli is grounded from the Wii for lying by omission until he pays us back for the window. And just how is Eli going to pay us back for the window?

One $1 job at a time.

It's going to be a looooong summer.

He's going to be doing A BUNCH of extra jobs around the house, each equaling about $1. There's already a running tally sheet on the fridge for jobs accumulated. How much he'll actually have to do is still being decided. I think he should have to "repay" $400 since some of the blame has to be put on the parents who allowed to use the BB gun in the first place. When I relayed the story yesterday morning to my hair gal, she took pity on him and had Eli fold towels, sweep the porch, wash all the hair color bowls, and take out the trash. When we headed to McDonald's for lunch today, I made him get a hamburger and apple dippers off the dollar menu and water because "I just don't have enough money to buy you a Happy Meal since I have to pay for the window." This afternoon he vacuumed out my car. Tomorrow's jobs include taking out all my bathroom trash, cleaning the banister and stairs, wiping down all the windowsills with Pledge, and cleaning the baseboards in my bedroom. I figure if I can find about 5 jobs a day then it will only take him till the middle of August to work off his debt.

Like I said, it's going to be a long summer.

If anyone has any menial jobs a 7-year-old can do, let me know. I'll send him over because I'm bound to run out of things for him to do occasionally. I don't think we'll have him stand at the end of our road with a cardboard "Will Work For Dollars" sign.

Yet.


And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my little brother, Ben, who never did shoot out a window with a BB gun, but did teach my little sister how to jump off the roof of our house onto the trampoline. It's the BIG 3-0! We love you!