monday funday at the zoo

Last Sunday I was left with the serious conundrum of...do I or don't I take the kids to the "kid-friendly, acres upon acres to chase posterity, and lot's of animals to ask endless questions about" zoo OR (among lots of other bulleted points, of course) "stay home all day on a Monday."

Oooo. Tough choice. 

Look lively, kids. We're going to the motherloving zoo.

Great. Great. Everything was great and the kids were so excited to see giant orangutan and he was equally excited to get felt up by handsy young'ens.

Rhett later whispered that he knew it wasn't a real orangutan because it didn't have nipples.   (Hmmmm? I blame current tip toeing around age appropriate anatomy discussions.)

The queen on her throne.

And of course pictures of some of the animals. Bless their hearts for letting us stare at them. The momma orangutan had a BABY and it is one of my life's greatest wishes to hold a baby orangutan. I mean for the love of cute, a monkey in a diaper slays my heart. Plus both boys look like baby orangutans when they're born so there's the whole nostalgia aspect that makes my heart's desire less weird. 

And if the animal's weren't fun enough, the zoo has a great splash pad that amazingly wasn't thronged by wagonloads of kids.  

The older boys were happy playing for many minutes and then Rad grew bored with that scene and started looking for an escape route. 

Of course he did. 

He did the not cute smile and sprinted away and just as I was about to catch him he would get a second wind speedy-gonazales himself to just out of my reach. Fine. Karma's a comin' kiddo. 

Exhibit one for karma: Falling in front of a cute girl while your momma takes pictures...hard Monday Rad, hard Monday. #boomgoesthekarma

And to prison with him.

The pale one is mine. Our DNA doesn't get that tan.

And the one trying to lick our friend is also mine. Apparently our DNA also promotes puppy like tendencies. I might never be a grandma....

And lastly to end the day, a camel ride.

Stare. Down. 

And the camel name was Crockett. He was a sharp shootin', rootin tootin, camel. Many thanks Crockett.

And thankfully all the animals wore out our little animals. Cute.

The dog ate my blog

No one noticed you were gone you self absorbed mom blogger you.

I know. I know.

Oh, I know.

I noticed though.  I hate not blogging and these few weeks were no exception.

But it felt like it was time for a unofficial lowering of the standards around here. I needed to pop a chill pill.  So we lowered them. And then we liked that so much we lowered them again. We are nothing if not dedicated to the current moment's cause.

But we're back with mediocre avengeance for your blogging enjoyment.

So here's little rundown of where I've/we've been:

1. On the way to visit Dad at work, Rhett announced that he didn't love me anymore and that he only loved Dad "because he is more awesome" but he thinks that Rad might love me. Maybe.

2. Perturbed is Rad's middle name when he continually doesn't make the preschool drop off cut. He manifested it by maintaining this expression the whole way home.

3. No way was I going to observe from a safe distance all the fun of getting nice and muddy. (Says she who usually hates to get dirty or have dirt in her presence.)

4. So, basically I guess you could say that teaching Rad the in and outs of hide-n-seek is going well. Really, really well.

5. Rhett's really into taking pictures of clouds and even more into interpreting those clouds. Can you find the hidden chameleon, and rabbit on a trampoween? Me neither.

6. He: saw the dinosaur and mistook it (briefly) for a kangaroo. 

    He: he saw the T-Rex kept meowing at it.

    Me: proud owner of some astute children.

7. Rain! Which means I won't have to complain about the excessive heat much longer. !!! Rather I can revel in the soon to be perfect weather, perfect weather, and the perfect weather for the next 6 months which more than makes up for any remaining and pungent heat induced BO that I may or may not get in the summer. 

8. So...there's that face Rhett makes...when he get's his very own shaved ice for the first time.

9. The rigors of raising boys into young men. Teaching them to build binoculars, wear aprons and actually read the instructions.

And I'm done....all out of boring steam.

But I trust September is going just as swimmingly. :)

The pantry that Pinterest could have built better: a reveal

 So you know, we moms, we sometimes have to fake it to make it, because it's just freaking hard to cover all your bases all the time. So we pretend we are what we want to be: the overly-crafting, perfectly sensory'd household, organic yet fun and spontaneous, and really realllllllly well dressed mom. With an organized home. Can't forget the organized home part.

On the whole fake-it-to-you-make-it-list item the only thing I maybe actually can pull off is the organized part. I probably look boring, but I love me some organized.

Anyway, I love our kitchen but I have to be honest in admitting that a great majority of our food is shoved, stacked, wedged into the pantry and designated shelves because we have no place to put it. Our pantry is small...tinier than a closet, and some of our shelves were sagging from the weight of the food. Since we coupon we tend to stock up and we really want to have an awesome food storage so we need a better place to store it all.

So where are you going with all of this, Concise Miller?

Well over Labor Day we redid the closet under our staircase. It wasn't being used for anything so it seemed like a great place to expand our pantry/food storage.

I like dark walls and I cannot lie. I like big shelves and I cannot lie. I like Nate Berkus rugs and I cannot lie. I like the new pantry and...yep I cannot lie.

We're still figuring out the organization part. We have learned not to put the glass spaghetti sauce jars on the bottom shelf. There was a very close call with a spaghetti sauce christening but thankfully a miracle interceded and there was no sauce on my rugs. (Thank you Saint Spaghetti!)

I do owe my child laborer's a big thank you for their tireless efforts spent in the throws of some big canned goods rearranging project of the "grocery store" (Rhett) and the constant taking of cans pineapple and green beans and making a trail up the stairs (Rad).

The cement boxes are actually planters that are holding all of Rhett's preschool goodies. Last year I tried just putting them all in a folder, but the folder turned into a disaster so the boxes seemed like a slightly more genius idea.

They looked a little flat so I cut some paint sticks and stuck them on with painter's tape and ta-da cement planters with paint sticks on them. Oooo....ahhh....

We do have one more wall (on the left) that in a few months we'll had a few more shelves to as well.

Okay! I'm finished.

Wait.

Can't forget the before.

Bow-chicka-blah-blah....

herding, date night, and Kristi Yamaguchi

Jake's gone till late tonight and I've got a lot of insignificant stuff to say and the boys only want to talk about someone named Shauna (no idea who that is so we're going with imaginary friend...) and not listen to my ramble (don't blame them) so I'm blogging. It's like grocery shopping when when you're hungry. Dangerous.  So buckle up, exit out, or raise your hand if your name is Shauna.  

Who else feels like getting their kids from point A to B is like herding cats? Or some sort of terrorist negotiation. "I will only walk forward when promised a blue Icee and fully smudge your sunglasses when (not if) you give them too me."

It's like they've never used their legs before. We take three steps forward and the legs just don't know what to do next.

Move forward?
Sit down...no...?
Stare at the sky?
Comment on bird eating off the ground?
Try and pick up something unrecognizable from said ground?
Side step forward?
Cupid shuffle to the right?
Cupid shuffle to the left?
Beg to be carried?

Recently, on a trip to a local tumbling gym (surprised I didn't say Target or Chick-Fil-A? This old girl is learning new tricks) we were walking out and followed very s-l-o-w-l-y by a car driven by an idiot to our parking spot in a relatively empty parking lot where said idiot waited and waited and waited and waited as I loaded and buckled all two Miller children into their car seats...an event in and of itself. It somehow seems to take eternity X eternity to get everyone belted and content. So hopefully the wait was worth it, bizarro.

And you know that feeling when you pull into the driveway and you know that deeeeeeep breath you take before you have to get kids out of car seats and herd them inside while somehow propping the front door open and sprinting the groceries inside before one of the toddlers escapes down the driveway to the Never Never Land that is the neighbor's full of yard decorations yard? It's the worst right?

And to end this tangent, a quote from Rhett after a trip to the pediatrician that, "everyone was SO good...I didn't cry and Rad didn't cry and EVEN MOM didn't cry!!!" Fist bumps, fist pumps, and all.

Moving on.

Date night...

...where all your dreams come true, right Julia?

Right.

Although there were no victorian dresses or long flowing hair with us astride a mighty steed, maybe with the sun setting in the background, a la a trashy romance novel...it was f-f-f-ff-f-fff-f-f-u-u-u-u--uu-nn-n--n-nn-n-n-n.

 

We ate Nemo and all his friends. Sorry Pixar. 

Jake always asks why I take pictures of food and I think the answer is pretty obvious. So I can look at it while I eat Goldfish crackers for lunch. Solidarity for SAHMs with sub par lunch options right?

We hit up Happy Hour and got a little too happy with the half priced menu and some how ended up with 10 rolls of sushi, edamame and crab won tons. And 6098 calories later we are still happy sumos. 

^^^The most awkward lone-female-in-front-of-a-blue-wall-picture you will ever see. I told Jake he should compliment how long and thin my legs looked thanks to my Target wedges and he told me I look kind of like a graceful giraffe. Thanks. Good thing we're on this for the long haul honey. 

And lastly,

At church I have the awesome chance to work with the youth, which means chances like this ^^^ to seize all blades of glory and sequined dreams had by girls of the 90s who watched and envied Kristi Yamaguchi.

It's inevitably going to take till 2025 or 2040 to master skating backward, so I think I've missed my chance to grace the Olympic ice. But I'm never giving up on wearing a purple sequined leotard. Never. No really...it may be on my bucket list.