havocandmayhem.com

Tomorrow is trick or treating. Today is the school Halloween party & the kids get to go to school in costume. Well, Havoc gets to dress in costume, as long as his face isn’t covered, he isn’t wearing a hat ,or carrying any weapons real or fake. Mayhem has to wear pajamas. “So everyone can participate in the fun.” I don’t get that sentence.  Havoc had to do the same thing last year. But not this year. And last year Mayhem, in pre-k, got to wear a costume. So obviously it’s just kindergarteners who might not be able to go to a party if people were to dress up in costume. If it were issues with someone in Havoc’s class then I would think the restriction would still be enforced.  I understand some people don’t do Halloween for religious reasons.  What I am not understanding is why this ban is specific to kindergarten? The Devil is only after 5 year olds? I assume there is a kindergarten teacher who doesn’t celebrate Halloween, because I can’t think of anything else. H...

So I was in Wal Mart a month or so ago Which is exactly where you would expect a fantasy to begin right? The fantasy of being the sort of person who does not shop in Wal Mart. But I am that sort of person, just sometimes I get these ideas in my head and I forget just whose life I am leading. I call them my Martha Stewart moments. I needed table linens. Actually I needed table plastics. The dog had somehow snagged a claw in the last decent looking wipe off table cloth (ok, vinyl) we owned and ripped it. My table’s surface is…unattractive.. It’s the table from DH’ family kitchen & was low end balsa, later covered with fake wood look stick on plastic. It needs covering. Off I went to Wal Mart, the source of my previous table vinyls, to purchase some new ones and some plastic placemats & to see if my one time buy of 8 white cotton napkins could be repeated. (I saw them once on sale for $5 and have never seen them again) Table vinyls were only available in bright aqua. My ki...

This is the list I came up with after all my searching this weekend. I tried to limit the overlap but there still is some there. I’m not doing pages on all of them but I think it is a good start point of ideas. I may end up using it more as a list of things for my 365 Project rather than do them all as scrapbook pages, then put together a photo book that is a mix of both. Opening Pages                         Title                   Vital Statistics                        Your Name                Your Birth Sign          Family Members        ...

Because having a blog isn’t narcissistic enough. I am a digital scrapbooker. I’ve been doing it for 4 years now and have over those years been active on a number of boards and done a great many challenges.  Mostly I scrap my kids but sometimes the challenges are to scrap something about you.  Recently we had a discussion on one of the forms about Scrapbook Fantasies Book of Me blog . She gives you prompts all year & you end up with I think around 35-40 prompts and 60 pages.  I’ve been thinking about doing some sort of album of me for a month or so now. Maybe a collection of scrapbook pages about me or maybe an All About Me Project 365 next year. Me me me me me me ME!!!! Sorry, just had to get that out. Now back to…um..me. I am self-centered enough to want an entire book about me but I am realistic enough to know that if I went with a photo project probably by mid February I will have run out off interesting ideas and be taking pictures of my toothbrush and s...

The feline edition This is the kitten Ashes, who is about 4 months old He is fierce with his older siblings.    Smoke does not always appreciate the playfulness Thor studiously ignores Ashes waiting to pounce Because he really doesn’t mind For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

The boys have had their first dose of the H1N1 vax. Mayhem was the very last kindergartner to get the vax, so I got to sit in the cafeteria for almost an hour waiting for him (I played Mini Ninjas on Havoc’s DS.  I think I may get one for myself for Xmas instead of a Kindle) because they didn’t tell us what order the classrooms were in, they just said 8:30-9:15 kindergarten vaxing. First grade was 9:15 to 10:00. The universe smiled on me and Havoc’s class was the first one of the first grade group, so I was able to take both boys at once & get it over with. Mayhem was a trooper. Had he not been watching her I don’t think he would have flinched but he did have a moment’s panic when he saw the needle coming. It was over too quickly though for him to work himself up. Havoc on the other hand freaked out. Mayhem tried to help, telling Havoc that it hadn’t hurt, it was ok and things but Havoc was having none of it. I held him so the nurse could get to his arm while he cried &...

I’m not pro vax or anti vax. I’m sort of in the middle. Some things make sense to vax & some things seem more like hype from pharm companies. Purely a personal thing. My boys are on a delayed vax schedule that has dragged out so long I still have an active waiver at the school for a vax Mayhem hasn’t had yet that he ‘should have had’ 2.5 years ago & will actually get at his yearly physical in January. Havoc finally had a chicken pox vax last month after I kept dithering about it for 4 years & finally accepted that he just won’t be catching it. Flu vaxes are not high on the priority list. We do all the preventative stuff and I think my healthy kids don’t need the vax & since the availability of the stuff varies wildly every year we don’t get it so others who need it more can. Then the H1N1 came. I haven’t been inclined toward it either, not because it hasn’t been tested enough or the other arguments against it but for the same reason as the regular flu one. We are ...

Mayhem can read and Havoc is a wiggler. That is the short summary of our parent teacher conferences. I suspected Mayhem could read as a result of his report card but I had no frame of reference for those numbers. His teacher showed me the actual test he was given. He got 25 of the basic letter sounds right, he got all the blends but CH, read all the words on the semester 1 part & correctly spelled 6 of 7 short vowel sound words, missing only SIT, spelling it SET. He did so well she gave him the second semester set of words and he read half of them. And he has had us convinced that he can only read STOP, ON, OFF and THE (apart from words like Chili’s, Kraft & Pepsi). So we will be doing far more encouraging him to sound out words than we have been when we read together & have higher expectations than we have had of the results. We haven’t really had any expectations actually but now we have a baseline so we can go from here. Havoc is doing well academically. Apparent...

I have a few this week. We went to the apple harvest festival. I made some apple butter Then we made gingerbread cookies These guys are bit ticked they haven’t been featured lately But it is their own fault because they have been busy hibernating For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

I spent the day, off and on, tearing my house apart looking for a glass jar of exactly the right size and shape. I wanted something small, sort of an elongated votive candle holder, only a bit bigger & maybe square. Like a rocks glass only a bit smaller & taller. I almost went to Wal Mart looking for one but as DH pointed out “A lifetime of collecting candle burning impedimenta and you don’t have a small glass jar?” Which, yeah. Where are all my small decorative jars? I can remember seeing them on shelves and tables. Of course after awhile you get to that point where you can picture whatever it is you are looking for sitting on whatever it is you are looking at even if you are 100% certain you never put any votive candle holders in the freezer. Yet in my mind I can see one, sitting there on the door shelf, next to the waffles.  I can remember moving them out of the way of small hands. I can recall thinking numerous times, I should move that before it gets bumped and b...

I’ve mentioned before one of the peculiarities of our local public school system is the bible bus. Once a month for an hour or so, students get out of school and go to this bus/rv/trailer that parks in the soccer field and have Bible Study – with parental permission.  Havoc & Mayhem don’t have permission. While I do take them to vacation bible school every summer for a couple of weeks, I think going monthly is a bit much for a couple heathen kids. *** I have no idea  if this is normal, common or legal. They have been doing it for 70 years. I assume they would have to allow kids out for my ‘comparative religion van’, with parental permission, if I offered it. I went to a Catholic school in a mostly urban environment in a different state in the 70’s. Rural public school in the 21st century is the great unknown to me.*** I was talking about it at dinner the other night because Mayhem brought a second permission slip for it home. It isn’t a ‘choose yes or no’ slip. It’s a ...

I am at heart a monogamist. I choose a man and I stick with him.  It is not for me to have several crushes going at once or date a couple guys at the same time. While I support the idea of the poly lifestyle in general (assuming everyone involved is adult and agreeable to it), it is not for me personally.  I feel guilty when I am attracted to another man.  I feel like I am cheating in my heart if not with my body. So I am apologizing in public for my infidelity. Harrison, I am so sorry. I have loved you since I first saw Star Wars in 1977.  Han Solo made my 10 year old girlish heart giggle with joy. Indiana Jones made my teenage heart think more explicit things. Sabrina made my adult heart hurt with longing. However,for the first time you have a true rival for my affection. Oh sure John Bon Jovi attracted me briefly and John Taylor from Duran Duran. But those were passing teen crushes. My brief flirtation with Adrian Paul during the Highlander the Series years?...

This week l took only a couple photos & spent most of my time editing them in various ways in Lightroom         For more Weekly Winners please check out Lotus at Sarcastic Mom .  Thanks for stopping by!

The boys brought theirs home yesterday.  Both of them are doing well with a few surprises here & there. The first was Mayhem. Mayhem claims he doesn’t like reading (my God! someone switched my baby in the hospital!) and appears to be incapable of realizing that the T H E on one page that he knows is “the” is the same as the T H E on the next page. But then he’ll start reading signs on the road while in the car for products we don’t see on TV “live nude girls”, “school bus crossing” etc. Mayhem is sneaky. He always has been. As an infant I would put him on his back on the floor, leave to get a drink and find him on his belly, and vice versa. But it was a month before any of us caught him in the act. I think he doesn’t like showing people while he is learning & some day I am going to look up and see him reading Anna Karenina instead of Cat in the Hat.  His report card bears this out. They test them for emergent reading skills. Base line is 20 at the beginning of the ...

Wal mart? Stopped carrying evil dip this week. I’m both grieved and relieved. I saw it there Monday when I went to buy Havoc’s Nintendo DS & Mini Ninja’s as his birthday present. I had to get string cheese & the dip is visible from the string cheese display. I didn’t feel pulled toward it though. I just thought to myself “oh yes, evil dip.” and walked away unscathed. Today I was back in Wal Mart, returning some DS accessories and had to get yogurt. Out of habit I looked at the dip display and noticed there was no evil dip! Not only that, there were no other types of dip by that maker! Nothing from that company was on the shelves and the shelves were stocked with some other cheaper brand. And their artichoke parmesan dip had peppers in it. I hate peppers in my dip. So, I am at last free of the malevolent deliciousness that is evil dip. *sniff* Wish I had known though. I’d have bought some on Monday. The evil dip was right when it insisted I buy it before it di...

from this to this   in 7 years. Where is my baby, my little boy? Off on your own path already, with friends and interests and sayings I know little about. In situations I can’t control, making choices I can’t help you with, giving you advice you don’t seem to hear. Wasn’t this supposed to happen later? Wasn’t there supposed to be more time? You are 7 years old today. You are smart and funny and when you apply yourself you are quick to learn. You can do anything if you decide you want to. You get along well with your classmates & are doing well at school. You have developed a sense of drama which is excellent when you are reading aloud and a bit much when you are unhappy about being told no or fighting with your brother. You are clever and inventive. You’ve built an entire clubhouse in the woods for your friends and designed the sign. You created a go kart. You’ve mastered the two wheeler in your careful step by step way. You can swim underwater and read just about put...

The problem with August & September for me is that they are just too hot to run the oven too often. I like to bake bread. My favorites being cheese breads. But I really don’t like having the oven on for an hour when it is 90 degrees or more outside.  Most of the summer I stick with na’an and other flat breads because I can make them on the grill or on the stovetop. But it’s baking season now! I have a loaf of cheddar cheese bread rising and plans for an apple & cheddar loaf this weekend.  I also want to  make feather puff bread, which has cottage cheese in it & sounds like it might be good with apple butter. (I’m making apple butter next week after we go to the Apple Festival. Apple butter & applesauce & variations on them are about the only thing I can successfully make in a crock pot). Then there is my beloved pepperoni & pecorino bread which makes the best grilled sandwiches I spent the summer experimenting with various flatbread recipes t...

We went to Great Wolf Lodge earlier this week for a 2 night stay Most of the time was spent in the water park When we came home Havoc decided to master the 2 wheeler For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom . Thanks for stopping by!

This post is disgusting and icky and gross and shows some probably poor parental judgment though at the time it seemed ok. Once there was a little a boy. He woke up on the last morning of his vacation with his “belwy hurtin”. His parents, reflecting on his high carb, no fruit diet of the last 2 days diagnosed constipation and sent him off to sit on the potty where their suspicions appeared to be confirmed. A box of (freaking expensive!) undiluted apple juice was procured. The boy drank it and in about 20 minutes was feeling ready to join his older brother at the waterpark. The park was practically deserted at 9am on a Tuesday morning & the boy & his friends ran around enjoying the lack of lines. Then the boy can back to his parents saying his belly was hurting again. His father took him off to the bathrooms & his mom bought another ($1.50 for a little juice box!) box of undiluted apple juice. (The boy regularly drinks half water/half juice). The boy returned from the po...