Games Preschoolers Play

Disappearing Act- This little gem of a game is one my preschoolers have perfected. It can be played either indoors or outdoors. When played outdoors, however, the stakes are higher, creating a more exciting game! To begin with, the preschoolers act as though they are contentedly playing in the sandbox or with blocks. Mommy checks every 5 or 6 minutes, eventually becoming lulled into a false sense of security. This is when the game actually begins. Mommy will begin a project, say, boiling macaroni noodles, that requires her attention for about 10 minutes. No problem, because, as previously stated, they are playing contentedly, right?
Wrong. They have just disappeared. Quietly, furtively, like little skunks. When Mommy looks again...no children. Not even tracks. She aborts the 10 minute project, muttering under her breath. After approximately 15 minutes of frantic searching, she gets the Mule, to check the far-reaching places. This is when the little darlings re-appear out of the doghouse, whining about how there is no macaroni.
The object of this game is to drive Mommy crazy.

Dumb and Dumber- This game is just like it sounds. Mommy is generally looking for a child's favorite pair of shoes that he must wear or dissolve on the floor in a puddle of tears. The older sibling is following Mommy around, offering pointless information about horses or bugs or dolls. Finally, Mommy, in desperation, asks the sibling if she has seen the shoes. Blank stare. Has the littlest child seen the shoes? Blank stare. Are they outside? More blank stares. As Mommy is trying to wrestle unwanted shoes onto the screaming child, the sibling stands up to reveal the missing footwear.
The object of this game is to drive Mommy crazy.

Phone Tag- This is a game that is particularly popular at our house. The children play in their rooms with their dolls and cars or trains, again lulling Mommy into thinking she has time to call her friend and drink her tepid, bitter coffee from breakfast. About 7 minutes into the call, the children start requesting all forms of nonsense they know they can't have, from Halloween candy to fishing poles. Mommy shakes her head no, and continues to talk. The volume rises, and the urgency in the little voices increases....PPLLLEEEEAAASSSEEE!
Mommy pauses the conversation and in the most polite tone she can muster, redirects the children to appropriate toys. Children then start clinging to her, like starving monkeys, not backing off on the petitioning. Finally, Mommy grabs a wooden spoon, still trying to talk, and the race is on. At some point in the pursuit, she will have to hang up, in order to spank the highly mobile monkeys. The moment she pushes the end button, the game is over and the children have won.
The object of this game is to drive Mommy crazy.

I Spy- (Let me preface this game by reminding you that these are the children who couldn't locate their shoes that they were seated upon. ) You can't play this game without something hidden deep, deep in the dark recesses of the cupboard. Generally it is candy from Halloween, two years past, but it can also be the free go-cup from the Stop-N-Slurp, if there is only one left in existance in the world. The preschoolers will tune their sonars to the object, long abandoned by the parents, and start pointing and haranguing. No way. The Mommy is not falling for this trap. More pointing, rolling around on the floor, carrying on. No way. The Mommy knows better. She's played this game before. Daddy comes home and Mommy dashes to the lavatory for the first time in 3 hours. The Daddy usually hasn't been given all the information, so while Mommy attends to the urgent matter at hand, Daddy obligingly climbs on a chair, digs through the cupboard and retrieves the object which can now be pulled back and forth between children, fighting and snarling like badgers.
The object of this game is to drive Mommy crazy.
(No, see, Daddy doesn't go crazy...he goes back to work.)

I won't describe the other favorite game, Quit Breathing My Air, because I referred to it in the post with all Angus' pictures.

Alright, alright, alright! Enough snow, already! Once again, we have a thick blanket of snow outside. No one is happy about it. The farmers don't have their crops all in. The ranchers still have calves dropping. The gardeners want to be out planting. The stay-at-home moms have exhausted all their possible entertainments. The teachers are banging their heads against their cluttered desks, because the lesson plans were written when it was 70 degrees out, and none of the outside projects will work, now. The dogs are crabbily pulling snowballs from between their toes, the blackbirds are yelling, the black cat is glaring from her perch on the deck....

So my plan is to do laundry and bake a Key Lime Pie, in defiance of the snow. Any Key Lime pie fans out there? It's the most spring-y, southern pie I can think of, and even now, typing this post about it, causes me to almost drool. I know. That's dreadful, but it's true!

I don't have the real Key Limes, obviously, but I have the juice in the fridge....pretty close for a Montana girl. My friend, Karen, the cattlewoman that I idolize ALSO happens to make the best Key Lime pie I've had. Can you believe that? There's a reason we're friends... She's also quite good with brisket. And no, you CAN'T get her phone number! Find your own super-heroine!

There are a myriad of Key Lime pie recipes, and I'm not sure what the true, original version was, but my favorite is with the pastry crust and meringue. And don't be putting green food coloring in that pie!

So, if you happen to be in the neighborhood, on your snowmobile, stop by this afternoon to help fold socks and have a slice of pie!

Out the front door

Actually, this first picture is of the reservoir South of my house. I took the picture standing on our deck.

It turned out to be more of the clouds than the reservoir, now that I look a little closer! The kids and I take the Mule down there, sometimes, to look at the ducks and geese.

This is the view from the top of our driveway, looking North. I love how country roads look; like they just go on forever! My little gardeners (or, actually, theyare sort of UN-gardeners...) and I went to get the mail a couple of days ago, and look at the yearling heifers across the road.
On the way, we saw some antelope, and they were totally unconcerned about us.

Some of the yearlings; these are the heifers that remind me of junior high girls.

They don't go anywhere alone, always in a tight bunch.

They have two speeds: stopped and suspicious, or a complete run away from anything.

They aren't grown up cows, yet, and they aren't still calves, so they are having sort of an identity crisis.

Their hair is usually frizzled and if cows got pimples, they'd have them.

(Note the chins in the air...they are trying to figure out if it's time to break into the shoulder-to-shoulder run!)

These girls are the popular ones. You can tell by how they are at the head of the bunch and they're whispering about those other geeky "calves".

Aren't they funny?

So that's what's out my door. There are fields all around me, too, and the Pres. and VP of Lang's Fork Inc. are scurrying to get them planted before the big rain that's coming. Pictures of those later.

So, you had a bad day...

At the risk of revealing my redneckedness (yeah, it may be a Jeff Foxworthy word),

this series of photos reminds me of the HeeHaw song my brother and I used to sing, to make my sister do this.

It went like this:

Gloom, dispair, and agony on me...

...deep dark depression, excessive misery!

If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all....

...gloom, despair, and agony on me.

In actuality, his sister was singing, to make him this upset! They have been going through this sibling thing, where one of them will find an annoying look or sound to make, and the other one screams for the song or glance to stop, which encourages the first child to enhance the annoyance another level, which causes the second child to scream louder....you get the idea. Usually, they both end up taking an express trip to their individual bedrooms, by their ears, for some quiet time.

Usually, this would be where I would tell you that that sort of behavior comes from my husband's family tree, but in this situation, it's totally from the Duttons; the teasing, the temper, the drama for mama.

Drats.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up...

...to be school clerks! (Sing along, if you know the tune.)

Don't let 'em add numbers and write them reports;

Get 'em involved in music or sports.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be school clerks.

They're always at home and they're never alone,

Especially with those that they love....

(Or something like that.) (Apologies to Waylon Jennings)

Every Tuesday, the day after a board meeting, I'm just all wrung out. And we have a good school board; that's not it. I just feel like I'm carrying the whole school on my back: teacher, students, board, parents, employees. (Good think I got the Elastigirl haircut, huh?) And really, there's no reason for it. All I do is pay the bills, type the correspondence, and file reports. As Ty Yost used to put it, "Even a trained monkey could handle that, Mary Jane!" Some days, I think the monkey would be better at it!

Our meeting went off without incident! Thank you to those who were praying about it. There were a couple of tense moments, but they passed, thankfully, without anyone really losing their temper or saying anything hurtful. AND, this is really big for my household, they established a bus route right past our turnoff, so instead of driving Maggie 12 miles to school, I only have to take her 3/4 of a mile! What a blessing. AND I only have to send one transportation contract out, instead of 4. Nice!

School clerks, in Garfield County, are appointed every year. During the re-organizational meeting, in May, the board either re-appoints the clerk, or has the option of canning them. And the clerk has the option of declining the appointment. (Hee, hee!) Every year, I ponder the decision, then, because of the big bucks, I accept the appointment.

It has been really challenging, to do this job, from home. I had to get off a business call, once, because *Maggie squeezed her frog too tightly in the bathtub. She hollered for me, and when I got there, I saw the deceased amphibian floating with his tongue out, and dead flies in the water. Explain THAT to the Office of Public Instruction! And when I was preparing for my audit, I was crunching numbers and cutting out pirate hats, because it was Wayland's birthday, and what's a birthday without pirate hats? Explain that to the guy on the other end of the line, who's trying to assist you! (**Oddly enough, it was the same guy. He had changed jobs, but was still taking my frantic calls....for free.)

But I have met some really great friends doing this, gotten a real inside look at where our tax dollars go, and a faster internet connection. And once a month, I get the stress of the corporate world, complete with laptop and agenda. And I get to wear professional clothes to all the trainings, in lieu of my usual office attire, calf-slobbered jeans, peanut butter smeared t-shirt, bare feet, baseball cap. Really, there's not much more you could ask for in a part-time, work-at-home job, is there?

*For those who wonder about me letting Maggie play with the frog in the bathtub: it made sense at the time, okay? At least it wasn't in her room, where she could put the dead frog in the heat vent. You laugh, but she honestly thought the heat vent was a good place for garbage!

**And this gentleman is now a good friend, The Lord Master of the Universe. (His title, I perpetuate it...) He still takes calls, I think, for the entertainment value. He really does have a rubber-candy-butt-chicken at his desk and he really does know more about school finance than anyone else I can find. Oddly enough, all the other clerks I befriended "retired" shortly after I got their phone numbers....Coincidence? I think not!

Be honest, now....

Do I now have Helen Parr/Elastigirl hair?

Sunday Sundries

This is one of those scattered, random posts, with a lot of little things that are completely disconnected. You know; like my train of thought, jumped off the track....

Did you know you can get your blog printed and bound into a soft-cover book? And I know that sounds completely silly, but Aunt Bert was the one who has been pushing me about it, because she wants my kids to have a copy. And truthfully, it's a lot easier to do it that way than to try to scrapbook it all over again! Also, this is the lazy woman's journal. Sort of. Anyway, if you are interested, you can go to http://blog2print.sharedbook.com/ and it walks you through it. It's incredibly simple, and surprisingly cheap. I think all of my 2008, with pictures AND comments, turned out to be about $24.95. That's it. The shipping was included in that price. And if, for some misguided reason you want a copy of Cohagen Chronicles, I can get you one too. (And yes, all your comments are in there....which I'm tickled about!)

Daisy has a sidekick! Wayland came home and announced a steer calf has been added to my herd. I'm going to meet him tonight, and feed him. As of right now, he's been named Festus, because that's the perfect western sidekick. Either that or Tonto, but I like the name Festus for a calf. Daisy is going to be SO thrilled, because she was getting very lonesome. And the kids are going to be SO thrilled, because now there's a girl calf for the girl, and a boy calf for the boy. I think, once again, we are the only thrilled ones on the place. Ah, well...

Today, I attended a planning meeting for Vacation Bible School, that is to be held the first week of June, in Jordan. The theme is Crocodile Dock...a swamp theme! All I could think of was my friend Patricia, in Florida! We are going to attempt to do Montana version of the swamp. THAT ought to be entertaining...

I have the daunting job of doing the Bible stories and lessons that the kids experience, rather than just listen to. I need to come up with Pharaoh's throne, the Red Sea that can part, a burning bush that doesn't burn. Now, don't get me wrong, but if only God could part the Red Sea and do a burning only not engulfing bush, how am I, a mere ranchwife, to reproduce those miracles? They have suggestions in the packet, but STILL!

If you have ANY swamp ideas, that can be cheaply made, OR ideas for the above mentioned miracles, I'd certainly welcome them. Also, if you live in the area, and are interested in sending your kids to VBS, or if you are interested in helping, contact me, and I will welcome you with open arms, and brownies. Yes. I am willing to make brownie bribes. No scruples whatsoever.

Okay, I think that's it. And would you please hold our little school in your prayers? We have a meeting tomorrow night, and really, I don't think it's going to be a peaceful little get-together. But perhaps it will, with divine intervention. So, thank you for that.

Hope your Sunday is beautiful. And blessed.

Oh, and the new hair-do took the wind, dirt and cap treatment, yesterday, and held up pretty well! Hoorah! (Because I just knew you were all dying to know that little bit of information....)