DQ and Grudge Issues

So, the kids were very good today and my mom wanted to do something special. Given their options, the kids chose Dairy Queen. This is a small town and the choices are very limited, so that was about the best we were going to get. Both Mom and I felt guilty, but we went anyway. The service was slow and terrible. My french fries never appeared, despite me going back and asking for them. DQ did agree to upgrade them to a blizzard though, so I didn't gripe.

However, I must now tell you why I generally do not partonize this particular establishment. Its because my family can carry a grudge very well. My brother Adam is especially proficient at this. A good 5 years ago when he was recently post-mission and living at home, he and his good friend Jon went to this same local Dairy Queen.

This is what Adam looked like back then. Okay, not true. This is a high school shot and this event occurred after his mission. But I do not have a picture of that and this one is so cute.

Adam asked for a mint shake and he asked for oreos on it. He was told that oreos were a blizzard topping, not a shake topping, so no, he could not have what he wanted. Adam was confused. Surely customer service would allow them to add what he wanted. So he asked if he could order his shake and order the oreos seperately on the side. He was told no. Adam was trying to understand this and he swears he was not confrontational or angry, just curious. He had just returned from a mission and had endured all sorts of confrontation and grief. So this was nothing- he could hold his temper and not be swayed! Still, Why could he not pay for extra oreos and add them himself? He just couldn't, he was informed rudely. So Adam ordered his oreo-less ice cream treat. His friend Jon asked for an Oreo blizzard that DID include oreos and requested that the oreos be on the side. The kid behind the counter said "NO. You'll just give them to your friend."

Now who cares?! Why would they not be accomodating? And I am serious. This did occur. And on to our story....

Adam asked why, in a reasonable tone, why could he not have the oreos? The manager flew around the corner screaming, "This is Dairy Queen and we do it the Dairy Queen way!" Adam was pretty cross by now, yet still he reasonably asked for a comment card or customer service number, or someone higher up. The manager threatened to call the police if they didn't leave, then rattled off a number. Wisely, the guys left. Later, when Adam called the number, it was a dirty adult hotline.

Fast forward to this year. His wife, Savannah, was tired of not getting to go to Dairy Queen, as she did enjoy their food. She finally wrote to Dairy Queen expressing her unhappiness, telling this story, and requesting that they do something to apease Adam, so that they could again visit their establishment. She recieved a letter stating that the shake Adam wanted did NOT come with oreos and thus the manager had taken the appropriate action.

Needless to say, Adam is not apeased. And I swear that this is true. Okay, it is as true as I recall it being told to me. Oh, and Savannah does have that nasty letter still so you will know that I did not make up such an absurd event.. And this is why I felt guilty taking the children there tonight!

Perhaps if you are really lucky, I will share my story of why I do not use AT&T!

Semi-Political semi-thoughts

I do not usually stray far from my usual blog- pictures of the family and minute details of life. However, my uncle sent this in an email and I thought it was both amusing and worth thinking about. Add to that that I really am not a fan of Al Gore, and I quite enjoyed this:


John was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called 'pullets,' and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs.

He kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced.

This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters.

Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing.

Now, he could sit on the porch And fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.

John's favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but this morning he noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all!

When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, could run for cover.

To John's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring.

He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.

John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.

The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making.

Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.

Vote carefully this year,
the bells are not always ringing.

The Eternal Tree House

Well, I thought I'd start with something different today! Today was the end of Summer Reading Program day at the library. So I dragged all 4 kids out there. Joshua and Marian had done the program, so they got a ton of free books. Callie wanted me to hold her the entire time and Delaney roamed around. Since Marian and Joshua got to go select their books off tables, sometimes they needed help choosing. That's when Delaney would suddenly decide she wanted to be right next to me and Callie would get concerned. After the first round of book selecting, I had it solved. Delaney and Callie read the books and were content. Towards the end, All 3 of my girls were sitting there "reading" the new books. Too cute!


And on to the ever-lasting tree house. The sad thing is that I worked on it from 1pm till 7pm tonight and I looks very similar to when we began. Sigh. Let me mention that it was 87 degrees at 8:30 this morning when I got home from my run. And that doesn't take into account the humidity. Ug. I drenched my clothes today. I am a sweaty girl anyway, but today was exceptional! I seriously could have wrung out my clothes after working on this tree house. I had drops of sweat rolling off my elbows, eyebrows.... well, everywhere!

Here I am with Joshua. We are hammering in the logs to make the ramp. It was a great idea, that looks cute, but isn't as user-friendly as I had hoped. And it was time consuming to do. Yes it was!

Here is the finished product though. The kids LOVE it! Delaney can scramble up it, but not down. It takes all of them a little while to go up and down, and they did it over and over once it was up! It is a little steeper than I envisioned, and not as textured as I expected. I mean, its a little more slick. I thought it would be more ramp-like, but its more like climbing a steep wall- you really do need the rope.

Sooooo, we got the entry done. We got the facia up and then started on the roof. I mean my dad and I. He did all the work and I handed him nails and stuff. We got the main body of the roof done before I headed in at 7 to put kids to bed. Roof means we put up plywood and put metal roofing over it. What fun. 15 feet up in the air.... how do you do it!?! Well, it helped to have the tractor. Dad stood in the bucket and I raised him and the plywood up. Hee hee hee. It was fun!

Especially for Dan Mc

Here is the treehouse with the walls up. There is a doorway there on the left. We'd talked about a doggie door on the right, but we didn't have one, so it got boarded up. still, we can always go back and put one in. Same thing with windows. We'd like windows so it won't be dark inside, but we haven't got any. We need to aquire some small windows, and we don't want to pay a fortune for them, so we're stuck on that right now. The brown seemed like a good choice, but its a little boring looking now. I hope the door and windows will liven it up.... Well, wait till you see the railing; that's pretty lively.

Here's me and Delaney! We (as in me, Dad and Callie) went traipsing through the woods yesterday, looking for proper sized branches and small trees to lop down to make our ramp. Dad had a grand time with the chainsaw and Callie helped me toss the cut logs into this wheelbarrow. After we were done, Delaney went for a ride. She is cross in this picture because I had stopped moving! She wanted to keep going. Oh, and the ramp is not constructed, although we have all the materials now.

Isn't my dad the greatest?! Look at this railing?!! Is that not the cutest thing yet?! Now that it's up we feel a little better about all the kids roaming around up there while he's working. You can see where the ladder is- that's where the future ramp will be installed. There is an opening there for entry.

This is my favorite picture. Joshua said they all had to wear paper hats to be in the tree house. So my mom made them all hats. They are too cute!

Today Dad had some help from a ward member and they put in the rafters for the roof. It involved an incredible amount of time cutting precisely and measuring exactly. It is very exciting to see so much progress and to have it nearly done. And did I mention that Delaney scales the ladder all by herself and climbs into the tree house?! Monkeys, all of them are monkeys! (And why is that not spelled monkies?)

For those of you who are construction minded, here's a shot of the rafters from inside. The roof will slant back from the tree and then off to the 2 sides. Yeah, that was descriptive! You'll see it when its all done. We've got metal roofing ready to go, but we're running out of time today and its stinking HOT out there!

This is how much fun the tree house is already! Just imagine what Callie will look like when its all done!

It's Getting There!

Okay, Dan and Miranda were complaining that they saw no treehouse progress. Here it is, picture by picture. And let me tell you, it took a LOT more time, energy and work than any of us expected!

We got all the supports up. There was a minor issue with the one that didn't take well to torque and needed some repairs. Once the support beams were done, a spiderweb of other supports was put up inside the spokes, and the floor laid down. The floor is like decking.

Once the floor/decking was down, the wall structure was put together and put up. Hard work! And taking pictures in the evening makes for bad lighting! Sorry.

Half the 6 sides will be enclosed, and here you can see that the wall structures are all up. Joshua is making faces at me. Last night we painted all the siding and its being installed right now. More pix of that later.

Here is Marian's self portrait. I think she's so cute and funny!

Tree House update and Marian

The treehouse is coming along nicely. There was an uncomfortable moment when one of the support beams failed miserably and broke, but once that was taken care of, things have continued to progress. As I mentioned, it is 6 sided, and 3 of those sides will be enclosed. 2 of those 3 walls currently are up, although I have no picture of that. The 3 front sides will be deck and still need a fence. Or do I mean a railing?

As it is, the 3 oldest kids climb up the ladder and "help" Grandpa on the floor of the treehouse. So far we are lacking a plan for the roof, although we intend to put in a doggie door and a regular door. Did I mention that we went 6 feet up and the walls are also 6 feet high!??! Its like a mini-house! My dad is doing an amazing job. Much better than I could have even imagined! I've even been up in it. I had to help lift the side frames up, and it was a little scary. I do not like heights. Aparently my children do not have that problem! They are such good helpers.... and thirsty ones!

And now I must mention another non-fear my children possess.... or don't possess. Marian is a famed lizard hunter. She loves bugs of all kinds and goes after anything. Today she found a salamander with a blue tail. I thought that was pretty cool. A few minutes later, my mom came busting through, looking for her camera. Marian had found a snake in the garden and brought it to the porch. It was a little baby snake and he was not happy. He coiled up and opened his mouth and even struck at some toes. The kids thought it was a hoot. Mom and I were a tad concerned till we had the chance to google it and decided it was a garder snake. The little guy managed to squeeze through the deck and got away, much to Marian's disappointment. Here he is before his great escape:

You did What?!!

Yes, it has been an exciting time for us. We aquired some hermit crabs. Not something I'd normally have thought to have as a pet, but my friend Beth asked if we'd like her 3, and I thought they'd be more fun and easier to care for than fish. (Will this be a problem Kirsten?!) They are surprisingly cute and fun! The kids can hold them and they'll pop out of their shells and scrabble around your palm and up your arm. Or off onto the floor. The children aren't very good at holding them yet. I find the little eye-stalks adorable. The little things totally look like Sebastian on The Little Mermaid! I think it is quite fun that the crabs will be all curled up in their shell, and as soon as you put it in your hand, the legs poke out, the eye stalks pop out and suddenly its off and running. It makes me feel special that they like me, really!

So, that was one exciting thing. The other thing is an Oh-Shoot-What-Have-I-Done kind of thing. Some of you know that my parents like real estate. They love to look at houses. Last year we bought a little rental place and its done nicely for us. Since I was back in the area, I did some looking. We have the most fantastic Real Estate agent and it has been very interesting to see him work. Anyway, I looked at a house today, put in an offer and it was accepted. Did I want to do that?! Hopefully it will be as self supporeting as the first one.

Tree House Day!

Joshua has been planning HIS tree house since we got here. My parents kept planning to build one, but the plans kept getting more and more complicated. I would have done a nice simple one, only a few feet off the ground. Uncle Dan and Mom wanted something a little more exciting. Dan and Miranda came to town this weekend and the thing actually got started on! They designed a hexagonal shape that will wrap around the tree completely. They wanted it to only be attached to the tree, and wanted it nice and high. They chose 2 trees close together and plan to add a swinging bridge to the second tree, and a walkway of some kind that will extend over the fence, since both trees are on the other side of the fence from the house.

It was a nasty hot and muggy day. The kids were sweaty headed and red cheeked from it, but they wouldn't come in the house. They had to "help" as much as possible. Here is what our fun looked like.....

Here the kids are helping Grandpa unload the truck. They think it is such fun to play in the truck.

I think this was the first arm they built. There were 6 of these, extending like spokes around the tree. That's going to be the support system, and the floor will go on top. Right now, only the 6 spokes are finished. And it did take most of the day! Marian was being a helper here. Actually she just liked to climb the ladder.

Joshua is sulking because he got in trouble for jumping on the wood. And I think he thought he would get to do more things. He said it was "boring", but he didn't leave!

Here Dan and my parents are measuring out the distance for the last supports. The sky was grumbling and we wanted to be done before it exploded. Just as a fun fact, we did get lots of thunder and lightning and a whole 3 inches of rain last night!

So, the tree house is begun, and we'll see how long we take to finish it. Since we'll only be here another 4 weeks, I hope its not that long!

The Great Tadpole Rescue

In early June, Joshua wanted to catch tadpoles in the pond. I told him it was too late, all the tadpoles had grown into frogs. A few days later, I was looking in the fountain and to my surprise, hundreds of teeny tiny tadpoles were flitting around. Now, the fountain is not normally home to little animals. Usually it cascades water and small things don't do well in it. However, my parents had left for a trip and the kids had disconnected the pump and the frogs apparently discovered this.

Now we had a colony of cute baby frogs swimming around. Whoo-hoo! Science in action. I thought we could give them a month to grow up and move out. Unfortunately, when we got back from the reunion, Dad was concerned that the frogs were still reproducing, and worried that he'd never get his fountain back. It was looking pretty green and fuzzy by then.

Dad decided it was time to give the tadpoles the boot. The kids were excited about helping. We caught almost all of them. There were a few casualties, but I think we got them all. Millions of little tadpoles were scooped up into 2 buckets for relocation to the pond. It took several hours to get them all. Marian was very good at spotting the ones that were hiding. Delaney just wanted to drink the nasty water. Oh, and you can see the van getting cleaned out in the background. (Score for me, I cleaned, vaccummed and washed the carpet!)

So, here is how we passed the morning!

What to do with a Spoon

Delaney thought she was a big girl. She got her own spoon, and what did she do with it? Why, just what anyone would do with a spoon! She ate...... and then she wanted to share. So thoughtful.

What IS an Alphorn?!

After the last post, some of you are wondering just what the heck an alphorn is. It is a reeeeeealy long tube with a bell shaped horn on the end. If you are Elias, it is a good place to put your head.

My aunt and uncle play the Alphorn. It is a Swiss instrument and it is pretty cool. And enormous. Sue and Steve dress in traditional Swiss clothing and play their horns.

You can see them here, at my brother Adam's wedding. They are in traditional Swiss dress, which makes sense, because they ARE playing a traditional Swiss instrument!

At our reunion, they brought 3 alphorns. I did not know that my cousin Liz's husband had learned to play as well. Between the 3 of them they played some beautiful music. It is really imprssive and so lovely. I was exceedingly jealous, since I have no musical talent. Anyway, after they finished, they let the kids (and grown ups) give it a whirl. That was neat. The kids loved it.

Family Reunion fun

And in no particular order:

Callie was fascinated by my cousin Catherine's 3 week old baby. All the little girls were.

Joshua read Calvin and Hobbes books on the drive and now thinks it is hysterically funny to make silly faces whenever he gets his picture taken. I think it is only a slight improvement over the horrible fake smile he use to do. At least this is what he really looks like!

Sometimes it is really cool to have oddballs in the family. My Aunt Sue and Uncle Steve play the Alphorn, and they brought their horns to the reunion. They sound so pretty. Even the kids couldn't make it sound bad! Joshua tried it out and thought it was great.

This was too cute. My cousin Stacy's youngest, Sara, and Delaney were poking their fingers in the hole there. They were so adorable together.

The Sunday afternoon activity involved water balloons and a big water fight. Marian was cross because someone got her wet. She was in the line of fire and got hit.

Garden of the Gods was a cool place with rock formations that were just amazing. Marian loved climbing up them. Here she is with my cousin Robert on one of the smaller ones.

Poor Callie did not feel well last Sunday. She tossed her cookies, took a long nap, and then was cuddly the rest of the day. Here she is snuggled with Uncle Adam. That's Uncle Dan and cousin Miri in this picture too.

Here are most of the kids at a rest stop on the way home. That's Katie and Aaron on the end. Being able to trade out kids in cars really made things go well on the drive. Marian LOVED Katie, and Callie and Aaron got on really well. Nathan (not here) tolerated Joshua, who worshiped him. So traveling with Andy's kids wasn't so bad, and was actually better than driving with just my own.

Family Rocks!

Heh heh heh... I just realized that I can use Miranda and Dan's pictures that are on their computer. So I am putting in some shots now.

This was the great park the kids had so much fun at. I loved that I could sit and visit with my family and keep an eye on them. Delaney had no fear. She climbed right up this slide and went down all by herself. It was a wee bit faster than she expected, but she did it over and over! Here Katie is making sure she makes it okay.

This is my family. Missing is my big brother Andy, his wife Kera, their brand new baby Emma, and their 2 year old, Matthew. Also not present is Jonathan's wife Kristy, and their 2 youngest- David, age 2 and Emily, about 3 weeks or so. And Deborah's husband Ian could not get time off work, so he's not there. I feel that the shirt chosen were a bit drab. We should have gone with the kelly green. It did have a picture of a family tree on the back and that was cool.

Here is my Grandmother with almost all her great-grandchildren. There are about 5 missing and another 2 on the way. We take the whole multiply and replenish the earth thing very seriously! I think we had around 48 adults and 38 children. Most of the kids were 10 or under, most were under 6. They had a very good time! As did I.

Oh, in this last picture, you can tell which kid goes with which family based on shirt color. There was white with the Swiss flag, red shirts, and royal blue. And then there was our boring sage green. This will have to tide you over till I get back to AR and download my pix. I know you can hardly wait!!

Traveling with Children

Well, I am almost home from the reunion! I'm not sure how I feel about spending more time in the car than at the reunion. I love my family and we had a fabulous time. It was nice to see Dan for even just a few days. If you ever need a large family gathering place with great kid stuff, El Colorado Lodge was great. And there was lots of cool stuff to do. Pictures will have to wait till I'm back in AR and can post them.

So, We drove to Tulsa, to Dan and Miranda's. Then it was another long day and one short day of driving to get to Colorado. Same thing on the way back, but right now we're at Dan and Miranda's. We'll stay a few days. Dan flew back to DC straight from CO, so its me, all 4 kids, my parents, and Andy's 3 oldest- Nathan, Katie and Aaron. Yep, 7 kids, 5 adults. Makes for fun travel. Yesterday and today's travels were further enhanced by Delaney's non-stop puking. Fortunately, one she was empty, I only gave her water, and this morning we tried some yogurt. When she vomited all that up, it didn't stink too badly and it didn't stain or make a big mess. And every time she drank anything, it came back up. She was so pathetic.

The other kids were very good. It was great to have 3 cars to choose from and we could seperate them into groups of who got along best with whom. I ended up driving a car full of girls today. They were great. I don't know how I will handle having to just drive my own 4 children, with all their quarrelling.

And with these rambling, incoherant thoughts, I will leave you. I'll see about pictures this weekend. Happy 4th of July!