A Few Too Many Mothers... I think I have written before how Rayna has gone from referring to her brother very formally as "Gwouglas" (never just "Doug") to her more recent favored moniker, "My Son-boy"! Well, it seems that Doug doesn't question her motherly position over him...this morning Doug and Rayna were the slowest to finish their breakfasts, so Darcy and I had already left the table. From the other room, we overheard Doug presently ask Rayna for permission to leave the table! She granted him permission and he got down! Poor kid...he has three mother hens directing him!  ¶ 8/26/2005 09:43:00 AM 0 comments

  Yet another froggy day... We have had so much rain lately. Last week during yet another cloudy, gray morning...
Rayna remarked to her older sister, "It is so froggy out this morning!"
Darcy: "It's WHAT???"
Rayna: "Froggy."
Darcy: "WHAT???"
Rayna: "Ribbit. Ribbit. FROGGY!!!"  ¶ 8/24/2005 10:33:00 AM 2 comments

  In Rayna's words... The English language is never mundane in the mouth of a three year old!...

Oft' have we heard Rayna remark with utter conviction, "I don't very like this!"

Rayna was in a black mood recently because her mother had had the audacity to go to work and leave her behind in the care of her grandparents. Later as they were enjoying a walk outside her Grandpa Cochran found a brightly colored blue-jay feather on the ground and thought his little granddaughter would enjoy having it. He handed it to her expecting to hear an exclamation of admiration over the beauty of the feather. I think he had mistaken her dramatic tears as I had left a half hour or so earlier for broken-heartedness! So, he was caught completely off guard when instead of expressing delight, the quietly simmering wounded one threw the feather down with utter contempt as she wehemently spat, "I HATE THOSE BIRDS!"

Last night in a tiny, small voice she confided to her older sister, "I've been sad all my life..."

This morning, as Doug left for his first day of first grade (having been bear-hugged and kissed all over at least three times by his little sister as he had tried to get out the door), Rayna dissolved into tears as the school van pulled away from our house. Darcy asked her in a voice of motherly concern, "What's the matter, Honey?" And Rayna replied in a voice filled with tragedy, "I miss my son-boy."

Twenty minutes later, fully recovered from her devastation, she was waving a pony tail ring in front of my face bugging me to put her hair back into a pony tail (which it is too short for, but I always lose the battle of trying to convince her of this and just surrender and do the best I can with the short little wisps of hair that cover her head). Always one to go into great detail about everything, she informed me that this particular pony tail ring "was my favorite when I was growing up too fast." And when would THAT have been? In her eyes, she has lived a very, very long life, indeed!  ¶ 8/18/2005 07:18:00 AM 0 comments

  Aaron is off to Rolla....
Here's the whole group (minus Aaron's Dad Eric who is taking the photo!) that was at Rolla this past weekend to see Aaron get settled into his new dorm room!  ¶ 8/17/2005 09:56:00 AM 0 comments

  Sssssppppp....Sssssppppp.....Sssssppppp... Doug: "Fought"
Doug's Mom: "I don't understand 'fought', can you say S-P-R-I-T-E?"
Doug: "Fought!"
Doug's Mom: "No. It isn't pronounced 'fought'. It is pronounced "SRPITE". Say "Sprite"."
Doug: "Fought!"
Doug's Mom: "Sssppp...rrrr...ite."
Doug: "Fought!"
Doug's Mom: "Ssssppp....Sssspppp.....Sssssppp..rite."
Doug: "Ssssp...Ssssp....FOUGHT!"

The conversation grinds endless on like this for another twenty minutes. Finally Doug accidently enunciates something somewhat close to the name of the drink he is requesting and his mother heaves a sigh of relief that her duty to correct that mispronunciation is over for the moment...only to immediately hear the very next request leap from his mouth for "MuhmuhMip"....(Spiderman)....here we go again..."Sssssppp....Ssssspppp...ider Mmmmmannnn".

Between Rayna and Doug their mother is beginning to feel that she may be a rather ineffective communicator!  ¶ 8/16/2005 09:22:00 PM 0 comments

  Lesson in modesty lost in the translation... Conversation from today:
Rayna's mother: "You look very nice!"
Rayna (happily): "I know."
Rayna's mother (gently leading): "Can you say 'Thank you'?"
Rayna (brightly): "Your welcome!"  ¶ 8/16/2005 09:04:00 PM 0 comments

  Wednesday, August 9th??????????? Hey, Adam....your computer is a little bit confused! I think today is TUESDAY August 9th....not WEDNESDAY!
~Aunt Monica  ¶ 8/09/2005 09:04:00 AM 1 comments

  Well where's the PHOTO????? Hey, Adam, as I recall there was a couple of PHOTOS with the original e-mail....you need to put at least one of THOSE with your story!!!!!.........maybe I will see what I can do!....
~Aunt Monica  ¶ 8/09/2005 09:01:00 AM 0 comments

  Atom Bomb going out with a BANG!




















































guess I'll pretty much just paste what I wrote in the email I sent :)
sorry about the lack of these here pics for a few hours though...like my head peekin out of the side of the post though? heh heh


it all started the second to last week of camp, when Matt or someone suggested that I shave my mustache...and, y'know, joking around we came up with other stuff, like shave my head, and I remember saying shave a donut into my hair (heh heh), but it got me thinkin and I decided I wanted to spike my hair on the last day...for anyone who knows me in person, or knows me very well online, that alone is probably a great shock to you :D with good reason: I'm not the kind of person to care about how my hair looks, so I've never even *touched* hair gel or anything
the people at camp were also shocked, campers and staffers alike :)

first I asked Lindsay for advice, since she helped Matt highlight his hair, but for some reason she directed me to the other Matt, our bald supervisor O_o lol...not that I even noticed till I asked him, but it made it funny :) he directed me to his wife, Danielle

the day came, and I found myself sitting around in the foyer with a third of the staff, waiting for a meeting that we were pretty sure bald Matt told us about, but after half an hour, I got the idea to go over to his house to spike my hair, under the guise of finding out what's going on...when I got over there, there was already one staffer there, Kat, so she was the first to see, and the only one to see it in the making :) and both her and Danielle thought it was hilarious that I was spiking my hair :)

well, when I got done, we talked about what to do, and decided I ought to wait till lunch, and come in a few minutes late and suprise everybody, but I don't know where we were actually going after we left O_o it was still half an hour till lunch...maybe hide in the dump room...but as we were walking to wherever, Jamie and James M came up on the gator (small vehicle), so I hid behind Kat...popped back out when they got close, and all 4 eyes almost popped their sockets :D Jamie said he was *wonderin* why I was hiding behind Kat! I could barely contain myself :)

I explained what I was doing, and he offered me a ride to our dorm, where nobody was at the time, so I could hide out till lunch, which I gladly accepted and hid in the bathroom for half an hour

when it came time to leave, I ran towards the back of the dining hall so nobody (hopefully) would see me, but a couple of the staffers who were sitting outside the side door did...never figured out if they saw my hair though, they mighta just thought I was a java-hyper loony :)

the first thing I did was go to the dump room, and fortunately for me, the closest person was James R, who I wanted to get first...I ducked my head where he couldn't see me, called his name so he'd look, and popped my head up, but he didn't hear me...this happened quite a few times, louder each time, to the point of literally yelling, so I finally just looked at him and asked if he was deaf, at which point he saw me and almost became the 3rd person to lose their eyes, lol...started drawing a crowd, and I figured I'd go show everyone else...that was alot of fun, I could barely contain myself again :D
too bad Julius, the Big Head Man (inside joke between me myself and I!...well, at least on here :) ) wasn't there :( ...and Ariel...and David...but James, Jamie, Shilo, and whoever else I really wanted to show, were :D and Matt, of course (lol...since he's our supervisor-boss-man and all!)

since I'd shown myself to everyone, I thought I'd go ahead and start eating, and it was about that time the campers that were eating with us started coming in, many of them saying that they liked the "new do" O_o one of em even said he thought it "looked you", but I thought "HA HA, sucker! you don't know me!" and told him "what?!? no it's not! I've never done this before!"

I don't remember if it was before or after that, but I saw a couple stragglers come in and enter the serving line, so I got up and hurried to a spot beside the exit door, but one of em got there first, so I told her to be quiet...jumped out at the other girl, and scared her pretty good, and then I quickly found myself surrounded by several of the other campers wanting to take my picture, and one wanting to be in them (guess who that would be *raises an eyebrow at anyone not able to figure out), I guess cuz they've never seen such a sight before! and wanted to prove they had actually been there, not just found it off the internet :)

I started asking someone if anybody had a digital camera, I don't remember if it was camper or staffer, but one of the guys who took the first pic said he did, and he'd email em to me if I gave him my addy, so I did and said I wanted a side and back pic of my head too...then I went and finished my sammich and enjoyed the situation

and then I had another sammich *drools* :D ChickenE sammiches with mushturd and mayo...mmmmm

and when I was leaving, I noticed another great ambush opportunity >:) I knew about 4 or 5 people were behind me, so when I went out the door, I turned to the side and ducked below the window, and when they came out, I jumped and yelled...ironically, one of them was Jenni, who I had somehow managed to scare quite a few times that week, and she told me so (as if I didn't know!...maybe it was for the campers she was with :) )

I think that was about the end of my exploits that day, but speaking of Jenni, the first time I got her that week, we got a shipment of new mattresses that week, and stored alot of them in the kitchen in our dorm...I felt like ambushing somebody, and I think it was night too, so I crawled into a space in between em and waited...Jenni and Tiffany were the first to come along, and I yelled pretty loud, and as suddenly as I could, and Jenni screamed for about 10 full seconds, and I am *not* exaggerating! if I was, it would be 30 seconds :)
it was awesome :D :D :D












you'd best watch out fer me! I'm WERNIN ya! especially you, little girl Darcy! MWAHAhahahaaaa!!!  ¶ 8/09/2005 08:06:00 AM 1 comments

  Off to Texas...
Well, Darcy is officially on vacation in Texas now!

She is spending six days with Pop John and Yea Yea. It is always pretty traumatic for the two little ones when big sister waltzes off for a vacation on her own...but they are managing to cope. Darcy left for Texas by way of Wichita. Grant and I took her to Wichita to meet up with the Murrays, so we all got to visit with the kids' great grandparents before seeing Darcy off.

Darcy got to spend the night with her Great Aunt Nancy and Great Uncle Robert and her second cousin, eleven year old Jessica, Sunday night before leaving late Monday morning with her grandparents for Texas. She reportedly only stayed up until 2:00am (quite conservative for her!) and then was back up again at her usual 6:00am. I thought she would sleep all the way to Texas today, but we got a phone call this afternoon from her. They were en route to a Burger King and Darcy hadn't yet slept at all, nor had any inclination to sleep. She was busy reading her books in the back seat! It is probably a good thing that her little sister was not along with her because......

Kids sure have unique ways of entertaining themselves...

Last week as we were making a trek home from running lots of afternoon errands, I was appalled at how Darcy and Rayna were amusing themselves in the middle seat of the van. Doug (in the very back seat of the van) was quietly making a hood for his batman action figure out of a napkin that he had torn and was busily twisting just so. The girls, however, did not have a batman action figure
or old napkin to play with, so they had to make do with Rayna's belly button. One of the two had discovered that Rayna's belly button is quite versatile. Left alone, it is an 'inny', but tweaked just right by Darcy with the proper amount of internal abdominal pressure applied by Rayna and...
WHAA-LAA...it becomes an 'outey'! This provided hours of amusement for my two daughters.

(When at home, they entertain each other by drinking large quantities of water and then jumping up and down. A quite audible sloshing sound is emitted from the depths of their stomachs. All three children have this treasured ability....and they practice often so as not to LOSE this skill!)  ¶ 8/01/2005 01:50:00 PM 1 comments