“Good Lord, what is this crap you are listening to?”

“What do you THINK it is?”

“It sounds like the background to an Eastern European porn.”

“How do you know what European porn sounds like? It is a Russian pop singer.”

“Where the hell did you find a Russian pop singer to listen to?”

“I was letting The Son watch trucks with jet fuel on YouTube, and we watched one on the streets of Moscow, and then YouTube recommended this video of a girl who has a song called Traffic, so I clicked on it. You know, the YouTube rabbit hole.”

“Turn it off, it is horrific!”

“No, listen to this song.” (turns it UP!)

“Did you BUY this CD?”

“No, I burned it.”

“You have illegal Russian music? The Russian mob and Interpol are going to come after us.”

“No, it is legal. ”

“So you paid for it from I Tunes or something?”

“No, it was free.”

“I wonder why.”

“Listen, this is my favorite song.”

“No! It is so bad that it makes me want to have you pull over so that I can rob that convenient store just so that I can go to prison to learn how to make a shiv so I can stab it in my ear to keep from hearing anymore of this!”

“You are such a drama queen.” (Turns off CD.)

A prize (not yet determined) goes to the winning story behind this picture. Make sure you list a valid email address when you log in to comment. I will give you a hint: that is my FFiL holding The Son, Elvis giving a thumbs up, and they are all standing in front of a life sized T-Rex. You have 48 hours. Be creative. Go.

“For….God….so …um….the word!”

“Good!, that was close, and where is that it in the bible?”

“um…..”

“John……..?”

“John………Deere!”

What color are TheSon’s eyes? Excellent question. He has two different colored eyes. His right eye is a lovely bluish grey, it looks very much like MMiL’s. His left eye is blue as well, but about a third of it is a hazely-greenish color. It reminds me of JHJ.

What kind of job does TheHusband have that lets you stay at home? He is a computer geek who moonlights as a computer geek. His official titles are umm….hold on. “Honey, what are your official job titles?” “Computer Systems Administrator, and Product Support Engineer.  Why does the Internet need to know that?” “Never mind. Keep reading political blogs and getting mad.”  Yes, The Husband does have two jobs, but he sorta does them simultaneously. He is also in school. (He rarely sleeps, so I try to take an extra nap on his behalf.)

Are you one of those ultra conservative fundamentalist Christians? I am a Christian, and in someways I am very conservative, and in other ways I am pretty liberal. I think that Christianity is all about Grace, and I wince when I hear hate disguised as Christianity.   That is just so, so, so wrong.  I am a Methodist, in fact I am a sixth generation Methodist.  My great something or the other was a circuit rider, and we used his travel sized baptismal font when The Son was baptized.  Being Methodist was a deal breaker for The Husband and I, it was my way or the highway. Luckily, he felt very disenfranchised with his church, and will now quote to you out of the book of discipline to make his point.

I want to be a Stay at Home Mom, do you have any tips on how to afford it? I have been reading this blog lately which is all about a farm family, I was in awe of how she did it all, and then did a little research and it turns out they have oil wells, and are one of the wealthiest families in the Midwest. I felt a little cheated. Y’all, there is no oil well in our back yard. The Husband works very hard, and we are blessed, but we just plain do not spend much money. As for tips…well, I can just tell you what we do. We do not have cable TV, we gave it up for Lent one year and never turned it back on. We just recently turned off our home phone because we never used it, and did not even have our answering machine plugged in. We get our hair cut at the barber college. I get The Husband’s clothes on super sale clearance, and most of The Son’s clothes are from children’s consignment sales. We try to double up errands to save on gas, we never turn down a free meal at someone else’s house, we limit things like Christmas and birthday gifts….that is all I can think of right now, but you get the point. We have everything we need, and some things we want. It could all change tomorrow, but for now we are just having faith.

Are you really still breastfeeding? Yes. Next question.

Why do you never email me or call me back? Because I am a horribly lazy person? I do not have a good excuse, I just do not like talking on the phone, and only have a very limited amount of internet time between naps and snacks. Sorry, but I DO read every singe email and comment, so keep those coming.

What did you want to be when you grew up? In chronological order: The Princess of France, an actress, a veterinarian, a psychologist, a pediatrician, an actress, a speech and theater teacher, a political speech writer, a missionary, an NGO worker, a SAHM/writer.

What is your real name? Welcome new person! See the blue sentence at the top of the screen that says, “It’s my blog and I can dictate if I want to”? You can click on it and see why we use alter egos. I chose Hey You after thinking about it for all of three seconds, and now I kinda hate it, but it is all over my site and I am too lazy to change it.

Did you know that you were the next of kin for a wealthy Nigerian businessman and he left you millions in his will? Really?! Wow, let me email you my bank account information so that you can deposit it for me.

Keep the questions coming guys, I will be back on Sunday.

Introducing Tark (oldish ((jk)) ), Cat (29!), MG(8), and Westers (3) Tarkandsons.

-Remember that tick I found on my breast? (Breast sounds so clinical, but I really don’t like boob, we usually call them Nur-Nurs around these parts.) I found ANOTHER ONE. I am pretty sure this means either a. My breasts spend to much time outside or b….. actually there is no b, a is the right answer. I have breastfed more than my fair share in the great-outdoors. I think only women who live in mud huts and wear sarongs everyday have me beat at this point.

-Every time I tell The Son that big boys drink from cups, not Nur-Nurs, he grabs my hand and says “Nap-nap, Mama. I sleepy.” Can you tell nap time is one of the three times a day he still gets to nurse?

-We went camping about ten minutes away from our house this weekend. We came home and watched The Incredibles, took Benadryl and had naps yesterday morning, and then resumed our regularly scheduled camping experience. Shoeshe went with us on Friday night, and you know what she negated to tell me before she said she wanted to come? She has NEVER BEEN CAMPING!! (that gets one more exclamation point because we live in a gorgeous state, perfect for doing outside stuff)! She also did not bring a sleeping bag. When I tried to give her one of ours she refused….she slept on the cold, hard ground with a wee little mat and a blanket. I am assuming she will run screaming the next time someone offers to take her camping.

-We sing songs around campfires. I know, I know that sounds corny….and it probably is, but I do not care, I love it. Friday night Shoeshe had her guitar and played, and The Son and my Grandpa sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star together, and then my Grandpa sang You are My Sunshine to my Grandma. I hope I never, ever forget those moments. (Remind me to tell you sometime about when my other grandparents renewed their vows on their fiftieth anniversary.) Last night we were roasting marshmallows (smarmallohs to The Son), my mom started singing and The Son said, “No Grammy, onwe ((only)) Swoesee ((Shoeshe)) sing. I want Swoesee.” Aww. He loves her. (could be all the presents)

-Shoeshe left some guitar thingy and a book at the campsite. Whenever she comes to visit, The Husband and I play this little game called, “What will Shoshe leave us this time?” She just got back her camera and a bag of jewelry from the last visit. I am hoping next time she leaves that sweet (insert our Alma mater here) sweatshirt she was wearing.

-The Son has had a black eye this week (it came from an overly enthusiastic hug from a stick wielding, almost two year old buddy). Today before we put him in the tub to wash away the woodsmoke/bug spray/marshmallow odors and the playground dirt held on with pancake syrup and layered over dried leaf bits held on by more marshmallows he looked ready to pose for a neglected child poster. He even had on a droopy pull up and one sock. I did not take a picture, and it was only cute because he has never looked like that before.

-An extremely heavily edited version of this was published here. They left out the parts about The Husband, and I hate that because he should get every accolade possible heaped upon him for his superb daddy skills. It is still super cool to have something I wrote published in a real live magazine. They sent me several copies, so if anyone wants one, let me know and I will mail it to ya…..it is a real magazine, but they don’t exactly sell it at Wal-mart.

-We are going away (I know, are we EVER at home anymore?) at the end of this week with the elder (edited: but not old) Huckablogs, so this and maybe only one or two more posts will be all you get this week. How about you do this to keep yourself occupied, and email the results (heyyou at thehuckablog dot com) for a future post.

Maybe it is photo shopped, maybe it was just a planned joke between the churches, either way, yay for a sense of humor!  Unless they are serious, in which case, the Presbyterians are right, dogs do not go to heaven– but shame on them for starting a holy war.  I am calling the UN.

Now I am off to pack for a weekend camping trip with four generations worth of campers. Oh, and Shoeshe for a night, she is an honorary member of the family so she counts (I am unsure of her camping skills however. I will report back and let you know.)

We had two separate parties for The Son this year, and the overall theme for both was, “Your parents are poor.” For his actual birthday we had family only over for a Thomas the Tank Engine party. I spent exactly zero dollars on decorations. Okay that was a lie, I bought one mylar Thomas balloon that still has not deflated. I am giving it another week and then it is just going to disappear. I took a red sheet we already had and used it as a tablecloth, used a piece of blue felt as a runner, and then took a large toy train and used it as a centerpiece. I added blue and red streamers and set Thomas books and trains all over. Somehow not a single picture got taken of this, all we got were fifty shots of The Son playing with his new train table. (which, by the way, I got the best deal EVER on. I got it and all of the track for FIVE DOLLARS at a yard sale, I added it all up on Amazon and it is over $250 dollars worth of trainstravaganza.  All I had to do was refinish the top and give it all a good scrub down.  It looks brand new.  This made buying the expensive trains much more doable.) I made the cake, and decorated it at 2:30AM, so it is good there are not really any pictures of it.

We had his real party a week later at a local park, which I loved, because I did not have to clean my house at all. Here are his invitations, the second picture is the inside obviously. I was all OCD about the invites, they took hours, but did turn out pretty darn cute if I do say so.

For decorations we made a dog house facade of plywood, and put it in front of a pop-up tent, then filled it with blankets and stuffed dogs. The kids LOVED this part.

I just used paper green tablecloths (would you laugh at me if I told you I returned the first batch of tablecloths because they did not match the grass in the book?) on the picnic tables, and put stuffed dogs on top to hold them down. I found tiny little silver dog bowls at the dollar spot at Target, and ShoeShe used a paint pen to write each child’s name on them. My original idea was to fill them with puppy chow (subbed soy butter for peanut butter so it was toddler friendly), and use them as party favors, but we ran out of plates(oops!) so they all got used for fruit and cake.

I also took parts of a playground that we recently tore down at church, and made it look like a picket fence, then posted signs identical to the ones in the book. This was so cute and FREE! The only other decorations were dozens of different shades of blue balloons that I floated in the rafters of the park pavilion to look like the watercolor sky in the book, but somehow there are no pictures of that either. For favors I took balloons and tied them to a stuffed dog, and the kids got those, their dog bowls, collars and dog ears.

My plan was as soon as the kids got to the party they would sit down and color their dog ears, these were pieces of white foam pre-cut that were then glued to cheap headbands. While they were doing that, I would be pinning on collars I made for them of foam and felt, I spent forever doing this and most of the kids left on the collars for just a couple of minutes. I also had planned to paint their faces like little dogs, but only a couple of kids would let me. Lessons learned….two is too young for a lot of party activities still.

They still looked mighty cute in their ears and collars.

In my plans, after they were all doggied up, everyone would eat (hotdogs, chips, dip, fruit, and puppychow), and then we would have story time. I would read the Poky Little Puppy, and then pull out all of the things that the puppies see and smell. (You should have seen how cute the grasshopper Shoeshe made was) The kids were interested for two pages. Then they started randomly pulling things out of the box. I stand by the idea of story time, I think if we had let them run off energy at the playground first, it would have worked better. I did not even bother trying to get them to play the games I had planned, they just wanted to run around. I had planned on playing Poky, Poky, PUPPY! (think duck, duck, goose) and red rover, red rover.

The cake, however, the cake was perfect. Look at this people, have you ever seen anything so cute? It told the whole story, AND tasted good.

My planned agenda may have completely fallen through, but it was still a great party.

Did you know that The Son and I went to go see the Tarksandsons this weekend?  Well we did.  We drove several hours with Cars on repeat in the portable DVD player to a lovely town called Mount WherethehellistheMountain.   It is twenty minutes west of Mount ThisplaceisasflatasCalistaFlockhart’schest.  Misnomers aside, it was a great trip.  It made me realize how much I really miss my friends, and how they need to hurry up and move home.

I had to rush back on Sunday afternoon because I had a meeting at church.  I had been stuck behind this powder blue Oldsmobile for an hour.  Traffic was pretty heavy even though all that was in the area were trees.  Lots and Lots of trees.  So that you can get a proper understanding of the events that transpired, we shall have a dramatic reenactment using some of the nine million toy cars and trucks we have here at Huckablog world headquarters.

We do not have a Huckablazer HotWheel, so the part of the Huckablazer will be played by a blueish silver Shelby Concept car, just because I can. The part of the Oldsmobile will be played by the blue 3 race car.

Unbeknownst (spell check does not recognize unbeknownst, but it is too a word.  Right?) to me, a State Policeman had found the one gap in the trees to park.

I slowly but surely passed the oldsmobile and another old person car.  There was a big eighteen wheeler hogging more than his share of the road so I waited for a chance to pass him.

An Aerial view.

Then a giant toddler zoomed in from above and smashed the highway to smithereens.  Oh, wait. No, that only happened in the dramatized re-enactment.

Where were we? Oh yes, I was waiting to pass the big truck.  Cop was hiding. Toddler was now playing with The Husband.

All of a sudden the big truck slowed down a bit (I wonder why?) so I took the chance to speed up and pass him…right next to the cop.

He turned on his lights immediately.  I said more than “Oh, Snap.”

He got right behind me, and I knew what was coming.

I pulled over on to the ledge of the highway with cars zooming past.

I said that I was just passing!  I tried to explain that I had a meeting.  I said that the music from Cars‘ race scene MADE me go faster.  You can guess what happened next.

And just to rub salt in an already broke-who-has-$135-to-mail-me wound, I got behind that same blue oldsmobile again, and had to stay there the whole rest of the way home.

Now, as I said, Greg is great, but I could not figure out why The Son wants to see him so much.  At first I thought maybe The Son could not say his friend’s (Greg’s child’s) name, and that was really who he wanted to see.  When I ask The Son if he wants to go play with his friend, he is okay with that, but still asks for Greg.   Has Greg been slipping The Son chocolate or toddler crack when we’re not looking?  We also try to get The Son to say Mr. or Ms. in front of any adult’s name, and he resolutely refuses to say “Mr. Greg.” It was not until the day Greg wore a yellow T-shirt and The Son flipped out with joy that we finally figured it out.

The Son thinks Greg is THE GREG of Greg the Yellow Wiggle fame.   We have tried explaining it is not the same Greg, but so far he is still looking for Greg to trade in his red truck for a big red car.