Mornings with Papa (and Audrey)

When my little family makes it upstairs for breakfast at a reasonable hour, (i.e. before 8:30) we can typically catch Papa on his way down to the bathroom to fix his bedhead.

Audrey starting asking quite some time ago what had happened to his hair to make it stick up all over.

The conversation will usually go something like this:

Audrey: Grandpa, what happened to your hair?

Papa: I got into a pillow fight with your grandmother.
Or: I slept on an egg beater last night.
Or: I had a brain-quake.
Or: I had a brain storm followed by a folicular typhoon.

The first few times, Audrey looked at her father or me to see if Papa was kidding. After a while, she just started responding with: Oh, Grandpa, you're so silly.

Papa has obviously enjoyed the dependability of Audrey asking this question because he comes up with something new and more imaginative or outlandish every time.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent somewhere around two hours up in my parent's room asking grammar questions. I was up to my eyeballs in text and found that I was confusing myself with it, so I went to the Human Lexicon and asked about everything that was causing me issue. I think I wore him out with all of it.

The next morning, he came down the stairs and before Audrey had time to notice him, he gave me a surly glare and said, "I was wrestling with a dictionary ALL night because someone asked me questions for two hours!"

I laughed, not apologetic in the least and as Papa made his way down the second flight of stairs, Audrey piped up.

"Oh, so THAT'S what happened to your hair!"

I couldn't possibly have come up with a better comeback, myself!

Monkey Brains

I've talked about hair on a couple of occasions... Actually, several. But who's counting? Besides Blogger?

Ben is bald(ing). He doesn't find this fact amusing. He also finds very little comfort in the fact that I think it looks good on him. I wrote a blog a year and a half ago about men being bald and not hiding the fact.
Occasionally, Ben will allude to something he wished he could do with hair if he had some. I just think to myself that he couldn't possibly be any more attractive to me than he is on the days he shaves his head and face. I suppose he makes up for his lack of head hair by growing interesting facial hair.

Audrey has a long, full head of hair. It's interesting to me that I like making her hair pretty and resist getting it cut when I chopped all my hair off at the first opportunity. I have had several hair adventures with Audrey over the years. If you're interested, look here, here, here, here and a recent fabulous picture that a friend posted on Facebook. Audrey was a flower girl that day.

Henry has had simpler styles but still just as fun. Check them out here and here. We are currently trying to grow it out some so that we can take advantage of whatever curliness decides to reveal itself.

As for me, I've had long hair, short hair and very short hair at various times of my life. Since having kids, I haven't seriously considered growing it out again. My most interesting hair adventure can be found here. When the blue started to fade, I used red dye on it and it came out somewhat purple-ish. I haven't dyed it since. It's almost not worth it when you end up cutting it all off a month or so later.
So generally speaking, I use up any creativity I have in finding interesting ways to style my hair. I've had it smoothed down, barretted, pinned, head-banded, flowered and, most often, spiked. It's surprisingly difficult to find hair product that can keep my hair spiked all day. By the end of the day, the back and/or sides are getting fuzzy looking.

So, back to the title of my blog, I found a new hair gel! And so far... I LOVE it!

It's called Monkey Brains. It comes in a yellow banana container that has an MP3 player-listening monkey with crazy hair on it.

When you squeeze it out of the tube, it's a strange shade of yellow and that, combined with its thickness, reminds me vaguely of a grub.

Sure, it's target market is preteens and teenagers... but, really... I don't care. I can dig a hair gel that keeps my hair looking almost exactly the same after having slept on it all night.

Of course, before I bought it, this scene ran through my head... you know the one.

If anything, it just made me want to buy it even more.

You don't have to tell me I have a twisted sense of humor. I already know.

Discovery Gateway

I'm sure I've mentioned before that there is a really cool hands-on children's learning museum up in Salt Lake. My kids love it and I've promised pictures.

I attempted to fix Hank's hair before we left.

Curly boy!

It ended up afro-puffing out fifteen minutes later.

There is a whole house that is just Audrey's size. She LOVES it! She loves to pretend to cook, especially. 

She's driving to the store. :)

Someone needs to talk to the store owners about the unsanitary lack of packaging for most of the foods!

Checking out... note the single lettuce leaf next to the bread.

Henry loves the water table. He looks for all the ducks and hoards them.

This is a little room attached to the outside of the play house. I think it's meant to be a tree house.

 The only problem with things being kid sized is that we can't join them in quite a few places. (This fact is likely more than fine with my children.)

When you go upstairs, there are a lot of areas set aside for constructing. The kids hardly know which way to go when we go up there. 

There is a little machine that has a program similar to Mad Libs. I did a couple. :)

As you can imagine, I did a lot of giggling when I made these.

We have a membership to Discovery Gateway and plan on going up at least once a month. It's great for the kids and a lot of fun for everyone.

The Big 3!

My little girl is 3!! I'm blown away by how short a time it's been and, at the same time, how 2 minutes feels like an eternity while sitting by her when she's on the potty.

We got together to wish her happy birthday. She'd been talking about her birthday for WEEKS before, so she was good and ready for the cake, candles, song, gifts and family.

She had a little difficulty with the candles. It took several tries to get them all blown out and, in the end, she needed a little help. There's always next year, right?

Audrey asked for a pink cake with pink frosting. I wish I could report that she loved it immensely. I wish. There's always next year, right?

As a side note, here is a glimpse at what my new haircut looks like. :)

Audrey was the consumate gracious gift-recipeant. She ooh'd and aah'd and squealed in all the appropriate places. She hasn't been very good at the sharing aspect, however.... There's always next year, right?

We were glad when it was all over. It's exhausting to have a birthday party. Thank heaven we didn't do a proper kid party with invited friends. There's always next ye-... er.... century, right?

So easy, even I could do it...

Shy and I have decided to have a craft night; monthly, bi-monthly... we haven't quite figured it out yet. We had our first one last Saturday. We excitedly ran off to the craft store with one idea in mind. When we got there, they didn't quite have the materials that we were wanting to use. So, we ran off to a different section to get materials for another craft. Hmm... they didn't have that stuff either. We wandered for a bit (see: nearly an hour!) trying to come up with something that we could take home and work on. Shy finally mentioned the headband idea that I'd been looking at doing but dreading at the same time. (I'm not terribly confident with a sewing machine yet.) So, we sat on the floor and looked through remnant fabrics. Half an hour later, we ran around the store looking for elastic. We eventually asked an employee who looked at us blankly and pointed at the rubber band balls. Uhh... yeah. One super-speed trip to Walmart later and we were on our way home with our goodies.

I've been hunting for cute crafty ideas for quite some time now. I found this fun headband idea here.

The boys left for 4th Meal and we started cutting up our fabric. When it finally came down to braiding, Shy couldn't find her safety pins, so we used push pins on the wall (not the best technique). I managed to get one headband sewn together before Ben came over and announced that he was ready to go home.

"I'm almost done with this one," I said as I pushed the fabric gently through the sewing machine and promptly got it stuck in a huge, tangled thread mess. Shy patiently picked apart the mess while my Post-Surgery Honey-Bunny gave me a too-tired-to-give-you-an-irritated-look-but-I'm-going-to-try-anyway stare. I smiled apologetically and got back to sewing my rescued mess together.

A couple of days later, I finished off the lot and I now have six cute headbands to wear. (And I have been nearly every day.) Dad wandered into the kitchen while I was sewing the batch up and asked if I was going into business with Shy.

"What?"

 

"Are you going to make some big bucks selling those?"

I informed him that the possibility was rather unlikely at which he turned back to his spring rolls with a grunt.

Anyway. I think they're adorable! Don't you?

I'm wearing this one today:

I have enough fabric left over to make about 50 more... I still need to make smaller versions for little Aud. Still... Christmas Gifts anyone?? :)

Haircut, Sky Donut, My Shoes

Henry's mohawk was starting to get out of hand. It was hanging in his face and wasn't nearly as cute as when we first cut it, so we buzzed it off. Looks pretty good, eh?

We've been having interesting spring weather. Warm one day, snowing the next. This was an interesting cloud formation that Ben snapped a picture of. Looks a bit like a funnel cloud trying to happen. Not something you'd expect to see in the shadow of the Rockies...

And... my shoes... I LOVE these shoes. I think they're super cute and, since I got them a size too big, pretty comfortable.

The reason I bring them up is that Ben participated in the Walk a Mile In Her Shoes walk-a-thon a couple of weeks ago. And, yes, he wore my smashingly cute shoes! Good thing I got them a size big, or he wouldn't have been able to wear them. I was slightly disturbed yet intensely amused by his enthusiasm.

He came home with a t-shirt, new found respect for those of us who sacrifice comfort for beauty and very, very, very sore feet. He said he didn't understand how women could do it and that it cured him of any passing interest in trying out my shoes.

The t-shirt has joined the ranks of Audrey's pajama drawer and the shoes are back in my shoe trunk. The respect is still there in his eyes every time I put on a pair of high heels.

He also got a lot of comments and pictures taken while he participated in the walk. His physical fitness instructor even toyed with the idea of giving him extra points for actually wearing those shoes.

Today, when I asked him to put the shoes on so I had actual proof of the fact, he refused saying he'd never wear those shoes, or any other women's shoes for that matter, again.

I suppose I should be immensely relieved instead of mildly disappointed.