Super Hero Day

So what does a dad do when he is home with two boys that are missing their brother at school?  They have some super hero time!  The boys LOVE playing with all of their masks, helmets, shields, capes and light sabers.

If one boy has a mask or helmet on the other MUST have one as well.

They show no favoritism when it comes to super heroes.  Here Gus is sporting a Captain America shield, Iron Man mask and Spider-man underwear.  

All heroes have to sleep eventually.

Gus

I've been told Gus makes a good dog name.  Looks like it does.

Soccer, Soccer, Soccer

**Long post, lots of picture.  But they are 5-year-old-soccer-players-in-action-pictures, so they are cute and funny**

My in-laws came out to watch one of John's soccer games.  All of us were excited to see them, but John was especially ecstatic that they were coming to watch him play.  The only negative was that this was the first time the team played in the afternoon on one of the hottest weekends thus far.  So the kids weren't as peppy as usual.

 The Ref has to check to make sure they have on all the right gear.  We discovered this a couple of weeks ago when John was told he couldn't play unless he had cleats.  I was thinking that 4-5 year old soccer wouldn't constitute the need for cleats, but I was wrong.  John is now outfitted with all he "needs" in order to play.

 Anders promptly found a little girl to play with.

Look at that trouble-maker.

 John is ready, can you tell?

Anders is hot and tired.

 I love the fact that the ball is behind him.  We probably need to work on the hand-eye-coordination.

 John was dribbling down the field and fell.

 But he wasn't about to just give the ball to the other team.  He quickly got up and tried to pass the ball to a teammate.

This is the dynamic duo.  The little girl in the sunglasses is Ashley.  Ashley is the little sister of Breanna, a classmate of Johns.  Ashley and John are not afraid to go after the ball.  John also told Ashley he thought she was cute the first day of practice.  She then promptly turned around and yelled to her mom, "Mom, the boy in front of me just told me I was cute!"  Everyone laughed.  This was the day everyone knew who John was.

John actually pays attention in practice.  The red team was throwing in the ball and John went right over to this girl and stood in front of her.  He looks a bit nervous though.

Grandma's cheering, Gus is falling asleep, and Anders is trying to decided when to run onto the field.

 John likes to be the goalie.  But he needed a little direction.  Check out the next picture...

 After this incident Hans told him to squat down to get the ball so it couldn't go in between his legs.

 And  he listened.

 He also wasn't afraid to dive after the ball.  He actually was able to stop the ball here.

Too bad his reflexes were a little late here.  Good try though.

 Grandpa and his boys

I love action shots....so here you go.

 Where is the ball John?

 Gus likes to try out various nap spots.

Go, John, Go!

The Start To My Day

I guess the title of this post should be Do As I Say, Not As I Do.  Because of a bonehead move I made, I had a rather interesting morning.  And by interesting, I mean painful, time-consuming and frantic.  Yesterday was our day for Minookas annual unlimited trash week.  Before you go making fun of me for making a big deal about a trash pick-up, let me tell you that one can only put out what fits in the trash bin.  Beyond that, you need to pay for additional bags or items.  The items we put out yesterday would have costs us about $100 to throw out any other week of the year, so excuse me if I make a big deal about trash.  But I digress...

I wanted to get everything out as early as possible to make sure we didn't miss the truck.  Since we did not have time to get it out the night before, I started hauling stuff to the curb when the kids woke up around 6:30.  Oh, yes, and I was wearing flip-flops, which would normally be fine except that I was carrying large, heavy items and big pieces of wood.  If I saw Hans or the boys doing this, I would have quickly made them change into sneakers.  Evidently I felt invincible.  That won't happen again.  I stared carrying a big piece of plywood with some 2x4s screwed into it to the curb.  The whole piece was probably 4'x5'.  It was bulky enough that I couldn't pick it up, so I kinda did a half carry/half scoot.  During one of my scoot moves, one of the splintering boards and my foot had a bit of a collision.  Upon further inspection, I saw a piece of wood sticking out of my foot.  I quickly removed that piece and proceeded to the curb.  (Do you see how insane I am?  100 dollars people.  I'm not money motivated when it comes to working, but saving is another story.)

It didn't take long for the pain to set in and for me to realize that there was still a piece of wood in my foot.  Hans tried to get the piece out, but that only caused me to scream unkind things to him.  And about him.  We decided a trip to urgent care was the way to go.  Trying not to drip blood all over my house, I patiently and painfully waited for John to get on the bus for his last day of school and then we loaded up the other two boys and headed to the doctor.

The doctor felt around a bit and then said, "Okay, what I am going to do is numb the foot, get a scalpel and start searching."  He had me at "numb the foot."  He came back into the room with a slew of tools and the digging began.  And continued.  And continued.  After about 5 minutes he said there must not have been anything in there.  He couldn't find anything but he wanted to be sure so he cut a little deeper and the tip of the scalpel hit something hard.  After feeling completely deflated when he thought there wasn't anything in the wound, and mad that I not only didn't wear the proper shoes but I also just wasted $200 at the doctor, I was glad to hear that there was something there.  Glad really isn't the word.  Not sure what word I should use to describe my emotion.  Now came the hard part.  After more cutting and searching and cutting, he couldn't get the piece out.  He was just about to bandage me up and send me to a podiatrist when he made one last ditch effort.  One more cut and search later and out came a nice little piece of wood.

After all was said and done I had 4 stitches, a heavy antibiotic, heavy painkillers, a tetanus shot, a sore foot, and a piece of wood in a specimen jar.  Yes, I kept the piece of wood.  That little bugger cost a fortune!

Garage Sales

I had a garage sale this weekend and I am not one for garage sales.  Don't get me wrong, I know people who get pretty awesome stuff at garage sales, but they also tend to go to numerous garage sales and look through lots of junk before finding a treasure.  I would actually go to more garage sales, but I just don't have time.  And, if I planned to get myself out of the house early on Friday or Saturday morning, that would inevitably be the day that all three boys and the dog decided to sleep in...and that would just make me a bit frustrated.

As far as hosting a garage sale, this was pretty new to me.  In my lifetime I have only participated in two or three garage sales and they were all fundraisers.  I've never thought about having a garage sale because I try not to keep that much stuff in my house that I don't want.  Aside from Denver where we stayed 2 1/2 years, Hans and I have only managed to live in a house for 8-12 months before moving so I would just make a trip to Goodwill to drop off all of the stuff I didn't want to pack.  However, when we moved into this house last year, I knew the Village of Minooka had a village-wide garage sale every year, so I thought I would show my support for my village by hosting a garage sale in which I kept all of the profits.  But I wasn't really in it for the money.  I just wanted someone else to take all my stuff.  The more items I sold, the less I had to pack into my car and take to a donation center.  I heard several people saying, "This is the cheapest garage sale I've ever been to."  That's right, people.  Tell your friends.  I'll give it all to you for a quarter.

My in-laws were there for the last day of the sale.  They came to town to see John play soccer, but they were also kind enough to sit outside in the hot sun and keep me company.

The boys had a great time playing with Grandpa...and Grandma.

 Anders was able to entertain himself for a long while with two empty cups.  And people wonder why I'm selling his toys.

Gus had fun being Darth Vader for most of the morning.

The great thing about not expecting much from a garage sale is that you aren't disappointed and have no stress when deciding to close up shop a few hours early. I'm pretty confident in my decision not to do the garage sale thing again.  For those of you who find deals, keep it up.  You will always make me wish I would get my act together and go garage sale hunting.  For those that host garage sales, more power to you.  You are a more patient person than I am.  Although I did manage to clean and organize my garage.

The Chronicles of Anders

Anders is a bit of a stinker.  All of my boys are.  This morning I was woken up, as usual, by a babbling Anders and Gus announcing that Anders was awake.  In case I didn't hear it for myself.  Hans told Gus to go into Anders' room and say good morning and that we would be in there in a second.  We heard a little bit of a laugh and then Gus yelled, "Daddy, Anders peed out of his crib."  Thinking Gus just couldn't be right, we went into Anders room to find Anders had taken his diaper off and had indeed peed on the floor in front of his crib.  I guess Gus got to see the whole thing and thought it was pretty funny.

After I clean the carpet I will be finding the duct tape in order to keep the diaper on.  I'm thinking he is a little young, but if he knows enough to pee outside of the crib and not inside of the crib I might want to start introducing him to the toilet.  I just got Gus to stop peeing on the floor.  I was hoping for at least a couple week break before the next kid decided to pee all over the floor.

Man's Best Friend

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in the Fiene household that doesn't have this type of relationship with the dog.  I love him, but he drives me absolutely insane. 

FURminator

Fritz has a huge, and I mean HUGE, shedding problem.  I had dogs growing up and I don't ever remember either one shedding this much.  It was getting to the point where I felt I was picking a small animal worth of hair off my clothes every time I left the house.  My sister in-law Ashley told me about the FURminator.  She said it was worth every penny.  Being the penny pincher that I am, I just couldn't see myself paying more than $5 for a brush/comb for a dog.  I don't even spend that much on a brush for myself!

But after dropping a basket full of clean clothes on my freshly vacuumed floor and discovering I had to re-wash everything because of all the dog hair, I finally had enough.  I didn't care how much it cost.  After reading the reviews and seeing the customer pictures on Amazon, I was convinced this thing would be worth it.  I was also pleased to discover that it was only $20 and not the $60 I was prepared to spend.

I have to tell you that I've never been so excited to get a package in the mail.  I ripped that thing opened and, within seconds, was brushing Fritz.  After about 7 minutes of brushing I got this pile...

And, that doesn't even include what was stuck to my clothes or the rest of the floor where Fritz was laying.  Now, I can't say my house is dog hair free, but it is a million times better.  His coat looks better and when he walks into a room you don't see a trail of hair behind him.  If you have a dog and have a hair problem you absolutely NEED one of these.  You won't be sorry you made the purchase.

*This is absolutely, positively NOT a paid advertisement or review.  This is just how much I love this comb.  Sad huh?*

The Chronicles of Anders

Anders is a toot.  He may be the toughest kid yet.  That's right, folks.  Out of the three kids there is not an easy one in sight.  I'm told everyone has one easy one.  It just wasn't meant to be for me.

Anders likes to relocate items.  I can be a bit OCD about things being where they should be.  So Anders and I don't make a great team in this regard.  Lately he has taken a liking to putting things in a floor vase I have in my living room.

I knew he was putting random socks in there, but I didn't realize he was putting other things in there.  I decided to empty out the vase one day and got this...

See that shoe there?  I have been looking for that shoe for almost 2 weeks.  I thought we lost it.  I was pretty upset because they had only been worn once.  The boys were also happy to find various toys that had gone missing.

There he is going back for more.  I wonder where else he hides things.

Fair Warning...

If you kiss Anders, then you have kissed Fritz.

This is a sight I see several times a day.  While it looks like Anders is trying to eat or bite Fritz he is actually wanting a kiss.  Fritz is happy to oblige.  I find this extremely gross.  But, at the same time, it is sweet.  The boys love their dog.

The Tales of John

I have to admit I'm not ready to laugh about this incident yet.  And it happened over a week ago.  I know someday I will laugh.

Sometime last week I was being yelled at from the basement.  When I went to the door to yell back and say "Don't Yell!" I saw a good sized hole in the wall right at the bottom of the stairs.  I honestly didn't blame my children first, which is a first.  I was quickly trying to remember if we had just moved any pieces of furniture down there....no.  Then, since the hole was in the area where Fritz stays while we are gone I thought maybe he did it.  I decided to ask John if he knew anything about it.  I called the boys over and pointed to the hole.

"Do you know what happened here?"
Gus immediately became enthralled with the hole, my first sign he had nothing to do with the hole getting there.  (But most assuredly he will have something to do with the hole getting bigger.)  I then looked at John.
"Do you know?"
He immediately looked to the floor and the tears started.  "Yes."
"Well, what happened?  Were you angry and decided to kick the wall?"
"No, I just wanted to see what was behind it."
"You weren't mad?"
"No, I did it quietly and calmly.  You didn't even hear me and you were right upstairs."

The end of this story is that John now knows he need to ask before destroying things and, in the next few days, he will learn how to repair drywall.  Repairing drywall is a very useful skill to have, so I don't feel bad about this at all.

Oh- and my prediction was correct.  Between Fritz, Gus and Anders, the hole has gotten bigger.

Jimmy

I realized when I was looking through my pictures that I don't have any of my cousin Ericka.  I plan to remedy that the next time I see her.   I had a good time trying to get pictures of Jimmy because he hates having his picture taken.

 He was refusing to pose for a picture so I waited outside the basement door to snap some pics.

 I'm not sure what Aunt Diane is saying, but I love the look Jimmy is giving her.

 And, because I keep snapping photos, I too am getting the look.

 Jimmy just refused to pose with his mom.

What a stinker!

Next time I will focus my efforts on those who want their picture taken....I'm talking to you, Ericka.