lisamoe

My mother just called me at work to tell me that Jesse is playing the piano. Reading from sheet music and everything. I told her that Jesse doesn't know how to play the piano and she said that apparently he does. I find that mildly strange.

Oh well, off to Spaghetti Warehouse and Mamma Mia tonight with R and Jesse. Hey, maybe he can fill in if the piano player falls ill.

Today at work was just blah and boring, so nothing about that. After work though, I hurried home and told the kids if they could get ready in under 10 minutes, I'd take them out to the Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area and we could hike until the sun started to set. They were all for the plan, so we rushed over and walked a way up the 5-mile path to a ridge that overlooks South Tulsa and Jenks. It's nice up there, and only about a mile along the path, though it is pretty much uphill all the way. Of course the walk back is much easier if you turn around right there.

While walking, I asked the kids what superpowers they'd have if they could have superpowers. Jesse said "flying and super martial arts skills." Pretty standard stuff. Then Dingo said "invisibility.....and driving." I guess in his world driving is a superpower. So I asked them how they would fight crime with their powers and Jesse had a plan for beating up criminals with flying kung fu, etc. Dingo, however opined that he wasn't going to FIGHT crime, but rather would use his driving powers to drive to WalMart and his invisibility to take all the Lunchables when no one could see him. I see that I still have work to do with Dingo.

After our hike we went to the Chicken Char, where Jesse ran in and ordered us all food to go, and then we came home and watched "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" together. It was a good night.

I now have a high speed connection at home, thanks to oldmanpops. At least I have a connection when it's connecting, which is fortunately most of the time. It's pretty cool. On my email and lj I don't really notice a huge difference from dial-up, but on Neopets and when I was surfing travel sites for our spring vacation earlier it was very noticable.

This evening we've done essentially nothing. I ran a couple of loads of dishes and a couple of loads of laundry and other than that the kids have been showing me selected Avatar episodes and explaining the plot while I look up hotels in San Antonio, which is where I think we've decided to go. It has a SeaWorld and a Six Flags and plane flights aren't overly expensive. I offered the kids Mazzio's for dinner, but they wanted me to make them spaghetti instead, which is cool, as Mazzio's would run me $20 and spaghetti costs about $2.

Ok, off to the bath and some cinnamon scented bubbles. The kids are watching one of the same Avatar episodes again and really, the first time was enough for me. After I get out of the bath, I'm sending them to bed so I can watch an episode of Foyle's War.

So today at the Centennial celebration, which the boys went to with R and my folks, apparently Dingo was crowned "Mr. Centennial." I'm not at all clear on how this happened, but his father and brother assure me that it's true, he got a ceremony, a crown and a lot of stuff, and he'll be on the Channel 2 news tomorrow. My mother informs me that he had chocolate on his face at the time of the crowning, which is pretty usual for Dingo, but at least I had dressed him in a brand new shirt and clean jeans this morning.

It seems like there was a lot going on this week that I never put in here, but I can't remember half of it now. On Tuesday though, R and Jesse and I went to see I Can't Stop Loving You: The Music of Ray Charles at the PAC and it was very good. Great dancing and catchy music, what more could you want? Last night the kids went with my folks to see the Centennial fireworks in Jenks. Today Jesse's gone to Edmond for a geography bee practice and to eat at Fazoli's, which is this Italian fast food he really loves. Wow, that doesn't seem like much, does it? But I swear we've been really busy.

For anyone who just can't get enough of my kids (this pretty much just means you, mamaduck), here's a picture of them sitting on my scooter dressed up for BooHaHa last weekend.

( awwww...cute scooter! I mean, cute kids! )

Today Jesse got to go up in a small plane out in Owasso. There's some kind of program where local pilots volunteer to take kids 8-17 up in private planes and then answer their questions about aviation. R volunteered to take Jesse to that and since Dingo is too young to go, Mom and I took him to Chuck E Cheese so that he wouldn't feel like Jesse got to do something cool and he didn't. At 9:30 am on Saturday, Chuck E Cheese is really dead, so that was nice. It was unusually quiet. There were about 8 other people in the whole place. Jesse reported back that he loved his plane ride and by coincidence had gotten to go up in the same plane with two other boys who belong to one of his homeschooling groups.

The afternoon was busy but less exciting. We went to a "fall festival" in Sperry to watch my Mom's clogging group, went to Walmart and on the way back ate at White River Fish Market. When we got home, the boys and I made a white cake with cream cheese frosting and they had quite a lot of that for dessert. I also got to ride my scooter around the neighborhood just a little, to test out the recent repairs.

The headache I've had since Thursday lifted today, which was extremely pleasant. Also pleasant was getting a little time to fix myself up tonight. I plucked my eyebrows ruthlessly, colored my hair, took a long hot shower, filed down the three nails I've managed to chip this week, re-did my nail polish and put my new incredibly soft flannel sheets on my bed. Of course the kids liked them too, so now I'm in the living room and the bed is full of children, but I'll remedy that before I'm ready to lie down.

I'm apparently spending every waking moment that I'm not at work at the fair. R and I took the boys again last night. He rode the skyride with them, which was nice of him, as I hate the skyride. There were a couple of skyride accidents (one at a Six Flags and one at the Texas Fair) when I was about 9 and I remember them being in the news and scaring me and I've never liked skyrides since. Fine with roller coasters. Hate skyrides. We let the boys ride rides, went to the petting zoo and birthing barn, watched a kids' music show and got Jack the shish-ka-bob he'd been craving.

After I got home from the fair I ordered new tires for my scooter (can't wait til they get here!) and looked up some other parts I'm needing in various catalogs. I need a new air filter, parts to fix my right blinker light, and a "carb insulator" to begin with. My scooter runs now, but will run better with a little work. Tomorrow night I'm going to see about riding it around a little bit, maybe to the store and back just to keep in practice. I may ride it to work on Friday, since that's jeans day anyway and I won't have to change when I get here.

The kids are apparently really coming along at math. My dad has been doing Jesse's math class and called this morning to say he'd had a big breakthrough in algebra and they were going to Borders to get another algebra book to continue with. Mom tested Dingo on addition and subtraction flashcards today and he was able to do them all, which is good for 5, I think, as the PASS standards for his grade say he should just be able to count to 20 by the end of the school year. He's coming along just like Jesse was at his age. I think he's going to be ready for his multiplication tables very soon. In addition to being good at it, he seems to like math, just like his brother. They must get that from their Dad. I probably have some raw talent for math, but I never did like it much in school.

I'm sorry to anyone I haven't commented to or responded to on lj. I've not had much computer time at all from home and I try to keep my computer browsing and writing from work g-rated, which precludes responding to a lot of your journals. I have some things that are non-g-rated that I'd like to post too, but I have to get an hour in front of the computer at the house first and I don't know when that will work out. I'm getting frustrated at not having any time to post except from work, where I can't really always say what I want to.

So last night, the kids and I are headed to the car to go to dinner, cause I'm too lazy to cook and I realize Dingo still has his lunch on his shirt. I run back into the house to get a clean shirt for him and when I come out, he's in the driveway wailing "MAMA, there's a GINORMOUS spider behind the van!!!" I walk over thinking, yeah, ginormous I bet, and then I see a big ol' tarantula in my driveway. A big hairy freaking tarantula. The boys are fascinated and run to get their Pops to come see it, and while they're all looking at it, I'm thinking I can't leave this freaking hairy spider out in my yard. I hate spiders and the bigger they are the more I hate them. So of course I called jorjedatoy and asked her if she wanted a big spider, cause she's weird that way. She said sure, bring it over, and I made Jesse catch it in a tupperware pitcher with a lid, cause he's fine with big spiders, and I very bravely drove it across town and dropped it off with her. I guess if she doesn't want to keep it she can put it in her yard, as long as it doesn't remain in my yard.

I think this brings the total of interesting animals in our yard over the last couple of years up to: possums, raccoons, turtles, lizards, various snakes, a black widow (dead, though) and a big hairy tarantula. This is in addition to the regular cats, squirrels, mice, doves, various other birds, and frogs. I've seen rabbits and foxes not far away but so far not in our specific yard. The tarantula we found, I'm thinking it's a native Oklahoma Brown, but jorje would probably know for sure. Maybe she'll put up a picture of it if she keeps it.