havocandmayhem.com

"Does Jesus want us to Trick or Treat?" How do you answer that? My thoughts are bouncing from "why would He care?" "why would we even ask Him?" "Where did you get this idea from?" "what *would* Jesus do? Would He go trick or treating? I've never met any Jewish people who have ToT issues, so maybe he would. Would it fall under the 'rendering unto Ceaser' rule?" Having thoroughly distracted myself in a matter of a second & sidetracked onto the Roman rule of Egypt before Cleopatra came to the throne and the SPQR mysteries, I fell back on the standard I-have-no-fucking-clue Mom answer. "Well, what do you think honey?" him: "I don't know." me: "Do you want to go trick or treating?" him: "yes" me: "so we'll go trick or treating then" Did I pass up a 'teaching moment' by doing that? A more on top of it mom would have used that question to discuss the history of t...

Mayhem says as I place the recently carved things on the storage bench outside. "why do the pumpkins make you angry?" I ask. "Because they are not scawy." Apparently non-scary pumpkins can be a source of annoyance to a 3 year old. Who knew? However, when it got dark out & I put lighted candles in them he was happy. They were now jack o lanterns according to him and were now scary enough for him to be happy. He says they are supposed to scare off the other pumpkin ghosts. It is interesting to see what bits of information are actually retained in a child's mind from what you have told them. We got the pumpkins while at Fox Chase Farm on an outing with the boys school. It is a Christian school & I was once again amused to find my family choices being misunderstood. We don't do Easter baskets or the Easter bunny at our house & we don't do egg coloring or egg hunts (though we color them at Ostara). This bit of information makes people think we m...

My kids are picky eaters. I was a picky eater. I accept their pickiness as my just reward/punishment for my own behavior. My food karma as it were. My mother never said "I hope you have a child just like you." but it happened anyway. Given my own past I know at some point my picky eaters will decide they only like the most expensive things on the menu and will only eat half of it. So I have that to look forward to. What do you do when your kids refuse all veggies and only accept apples & grapes for fruit? You hide things in the foods they will eat. An all protein diet or an all carb diet, which is what my kids vary between. is not a good thing. I considered buying Deceptively Delicious http://www.deceptivelydelicious.com by Jessica Seinfeld recently. But in the end, did not. I already own The Sneaky Chef,which is the same premise, and don't use it much, so another book on the theme seemed a waste of money I could otherwise spend on trashy romance novels. Apparently...

We had our first visit of the year to a pumpkin patch on Thursday. A little later than in the past but that makes for fewer pumpkins & gourds overall & that is a good thing.  Each of the boys got a small to medium pumpkin & a couple of gourds.  Tomorrow we are going to a Harvest festival where we will come home with fresh cider, lots of apples & possibly another pumpkin or so and yet more gourds.  Pumpkins are not included in the cost of this visit so we might yet escape.  On Wednesday we go to another pumpkin patch & the entrance fee includes a pumpkin & a few gourds and apples.  So I conceivably will have a half a dozen pumpkins, a dozen or so gourds and who knows how many apples to deal with. DS1 is of the opinion that the main use for a pumpkin is pie. Whenever any asks him about carving a pumpkin he says "We're making pie!" Fresh pumpkin pie is a PITA and takes the whole damn day.  But we make it because he is actually sug...

Yep, that's right, my kids are getting pre-owned gifts for Christmas, unless the brand new version costs nearly the same. They are into the FP Imaginext stuff. We just got Havoc the new pirate ship for his birthday. Mayhem wants a pirate ship too.  Ebay has a couple dozen of them in older models at reasonable prices.  So I bought one.  It's in perfectly good used condition.  It's a different style & color than his brother's & that is all that truly matters.  I may buy a couple of the smaller ones as well, one for each boy. Then we can have a whole pirate fleet sailing the living room floor!  I'm also on the look out for a FP digital camera or near equivalent, though I am tempted to just get a cheap used regular digital, for Havoc and we're getting Mayhem a L-Max for his b-day in January.  I'll probably get that new but the games used.  Then there are the movies & books off of half.com for the boys & other kids I need to g...

I've been reading regency era romance novels lately. Light, fluffy things, wiht romance, sex and mystery in them. Real mysteries - murder, embezzlement, nefarious schemes, spies, not romantic 'does she like me' mysteries, though you can't have a romance novel without those mysteries. I suppose it says something about me that I am mostly reading these books for the actual mysteries, not the romance, certainly not for the sex. I skip over the sex. Simply cannot cope with reading it. Some things strike me about the romance novels, and i know some of it is publisher dictated. The hero must always be masterful, dashing, over protective and reluctant to admit he loves the heroine. The heroine must always be strong willed and sexually inexperienced. Even widows. Judging by the romance industry there were a hell of a lot of virgin widows of much older men in the 1820's. Or widows of men who simply didn't care enough to bring them to orgasm. Is it so terrible to have had...

When dividing cake batter between a single round layer and 9 cupcakes, pour the cupcakes first.  Tomorrow is Havoc's 5th birthday.  He asked for a single layer cake for his little family party tomorrow and cupcakes for his classmates on Monday. He wanted a vanilla cake and vanilla icing. He doesn't like chocolate.  We colored the white icing orange at his suggestion, though it is really more of a peach color because he insisted on putting more red in.  Then he & Mayhem put colored sprinkles on the cake and cupcakes.  Half that cake is a solid mass of sprinkles due to Mayhem just upending his dish onto it.  I'll be sweeping sprinkles off the floors for days to come. DH is camping tonight. He went with us to the zoo today and then he and a friend went north to camp & me and the friend's family went south home.  We stopped at a diner on the way.  I firmly believe that I should never take more small children into a restaurant than ...

I quit 2 of my CTs.  I've just felt so blah & so totally lacking in motivation & inspiration the past month or so that I don't think I'm doing a very good job for them. I didn't want to quit.  I've been dithering about it for 2 weeks now, but today I made myself sit down and send the PMs. Just fading away with no word is not my style. I really enjoyed working with them which is why it took me 2 weeks to bite the bullet and resign.  I just haven;t been in a scrapping mood lately & my time to do it is limited. I've spent that time re-reading an old mystery series & right now have no real desire to do anything else.  I go through these phases every now & then.  I'll be back scrapping soon enough, I just don't know when & it's not fair to the designers for me to just hover in the background not contributing. I've remained on Jane's team.  She does PSP scripts & right now isn't doing too many, so I don't feel l...

I have all this free time.  A whole 9 hours a week completely childfree.  I feel like I ought to be doing something useful. Something more that surfing the web. I do clean but that takes about 20 minutes,maybe. Im thinking I need to do something that earns money, because having free time while your spouse works is just wrong. I don't really think that, but that is sort of an underlying thing...I *should* be earning money again or I should be doing something to get me on the path to earning money in 2 years when the kids are both in school full time.  I suppose if I was spending the whole day scrubbing the floor on my hands and kneed or washing the clothes in a bucket with a washboard & mangle I'd feel differently.  I'd be *working*.  Right now I am killing time. I suppose I should get some of my folks stuff up on eBay and reapply for my work at home phone agent job.  I used to work in telecom.  I was a call routing specialist.  It was a good j...