Not a Green Smoothie

Yesterday we celebrated my nephew's birthday.  My brother pointed out it has been a while since I've blogged.  Apparently, even though I see him more than all of my other siblings and even my husband I think, he wants to hear more of what's going on in my life.  Or maybe he wants me to write some riveting stories about his son. If it's the first, I can oblige. I'm lacking in the second though.  I hope a couple of pictures will be enough.

Last week I cleaned out my freezer and let it defrost.  Sometimes it has issues so I'm just hoping to prolong it's life.  (One day when we were at my mom's house, my mom assked if my fridge ever stays closed.  Something about my kids constantly looking for food wherever they go.  That may explain the issues.  And just a few minutes after writing this I went into the kitchen to find the fridge door wide open, not a kid in sight.  Nice.)  I had some frozen fruit in there to try a green smoothie that's all the rage.  I happened to have some spinach leftover from a family dinner that I will talk more on in a minute.  I put the two together, prepared myself for greatness, and got this. 

Brady said it looked like liquid poop.  That's a direct quote.  I reluctantly agree.  I'm thinking too many strawberries.  It tasted pretty good though.  My kids even drank it.  You really don't taste the spinach.  (Speaking of spinach, someday I'll have to tell you about all of the good times we had rouging spinach.  What's that you say, you don't even know what that means?  It's only one of the best jobs ever for teenagers!  Ah, the memories.  I never thought I'd be able to actually eat that stuff.  But I do, and I even like it when there's good things like strawberries, feta cheese and candied walnuts with it.)  I haven't gotten up the courage to try the smoothie again.  I need more spinach.

Onto the family dinner.  My little sister has been dating a guy for a while and some of us who live here hadn't met him.  So we had a family dinner at my house where he was introduced to the mass chaos of dating the youngest of nine children.  There were kids everywhere, and they weren't just mine.  My kids helped peel the potatoes. 

They worked very hard.  I won't show you the floor after they were done.  It wasn't pretty. 

The dinner turned out well.  We had plenty of mashed potatoes and gravy, which is generally the standard with which we judge a successsful dinner.  Her boyfriend is very nice and was nothing short of amazing with all of the kids.  I don't even think he was pretending either.  The next morning, one of the kids said, "I like Chris."  They all heartily agreed.  It was pretty cute.  Hopefully, they stay together for a while.  They're a good couple. 

Brady had a science fair project he got to do.  He chose to determine the best combination of vinegar and baking soda to make a film canister rocket go the highest.  This is our "ruler".  You can't see the marks on it, but there's marks every 6 inches.

Here he is mixing up the baking soda and putting it in the lid of the canister.

And here's the ruler again.  But this time there's a cute little face in the window.  By the angle of the head, I'm pretty sure it's Tyler.  Just so you know, the film canister went much higher than our "ruler".  We may have done some estimating, very scientific.  I was pretty surprised at how high they went.  And if you're wondering, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda mixed with a drop of water so it fits into the depression in a Fuji film cansister and 6 teaspoons of vinegar produced the best results for us.

He also painted a box for the scouts soap box derby.  Sorry, no pictures of that.  He chose to do a Snickers bar.  It looked pretty good until Tyler decided to help when nobody was around.  I had to fix that.  Brady said I did an ok job, not as good as his though.

I finally took some pictures of Isaac in the monkey costume we borrowed.  Just pretend it isn't three months past Halloween.  Isn't he adorable?

He's even adorable when he doesn't smile. 

Of course, now I'm realizing I forgot to give him his banana I made to go with the costume.  Story of my life.  I'm blaming Mommy brain. 

And here's the birthday boy waiting for his dad to bring him his cake to blow out the candle, which he didn't.  He had to go to the cake.  And then he blew out the candle so fast (it was a number candle) I didn't get a very good picture.

Here he is digging through his bag of clothes to find a real present.  He pulled them out and tossed them on the floor as fast as he could.  No stopping to admire those.  It's nice to have a couple of girls who appreciate clothes as presents.  Boys, not so much.

And here's the present he was looking for.  Real Steel.  He jumped up and down and gave his dad a hug.

There's the past couple of weeks of our life in a nutshell, minus the temper tantrums and crying and tattle-telling and breakdowns.  It would not fit in a nutshell if I included all those.  Plus, I try to tell myself if I don't write about them, I can pretend they never happened.  It's just all smiles and laughter at my house, and you'll never know any better.