open mic night

Yoda loves to be funny, loves to be the life of the party.  She reminds me so much of Punk at this age - anything for a laugh.  But she's shy like Kooka was, slow to warm up, so I was pretty surprised when she took to the microphone like this, for her stand up comedy routine:

over the top

Practicing in the studio is almost as much fun as practicing outside. This is what Kooka's singing class, Over The Top does every Thursday:

And this is what we did today.  I love teaching this class . . . 

turk

Road trip time is fast approaching, and for the first time since we've been a family, one of us is staying behind.

Turk, our beloved 2007 Dodge Caravan won't be coming with us. We sold him, to a lovely older couple who live right in town, and considered a 120,000 mile van "practically new".  I know he's in a good home, with many more trips planned - but, still, it's hard to say goodbye.

 The new blue van is nice. The doors open automatically, it doesn't smell like old french fries yet, there are two places to charge a cell phone - but new blue hasn't earned his keep yet. He's never carried my newborn baby home from the hospital. He wasn't here when Rico and the big kids and I took our very first road trip together - and our second, third, fourth, fifth.   Turk is the one who carried us to our wedding. He single-handedly moved our entire house - even the sectional couch. He carried everything when we built our new basement. When Rico traded his convertible for a mini-van, let the kids name it, and drove it across the country just to see where I grew up, I knew he was staying for good.

Turk has so many of my favorite memories.

I am probably the only person in the world who is depressed about the fact that my husband bought a brand new car. Goodbye Turk - I miss you already.

this is why

This is why Rico built that studio downstairs.
This is why I asked him to.
This is way better than sleep.
This is what happens at 2am when Punk and his friends get together.

quirks

Everybody has their little quirks.

I know what mine are. I never finish an entire can of soda, would eat pizza every night for dinner, hate to go to the dentist, never match the sox from the laundry and refuse to reach into any crevice that may harbor a toad, snake or other unsightly vermin.

I thought I knew Rico's too - thought I knew what I was getting into. I knew about the habitual email checking, his particular need for crunchy peanut butter, and the fleece pants he refuses to throw away.  I knew all of it - and still, I married him.

But nobody told me about the dandelions.

The dandelions could be it.

In the interest of the earth, our tree-climbing middle child and our grass-nibbling youngest child,we made a joint decision to not have our lawn chemically treated. Seemed like a good idea at the time.  What I didn't realize, is that Rico intended to keep up his personal vendetta against every dandelion within 25 yards of our front door.

He spends hours outside with gloves and a butter knife, prying broadleaf out of the grass.  I knew it was getting serious when he came home with a wicked gleam in his eye and said, "Hey - guess what I got for us?"

It wasn't often he looked this excited.  I could only imagine what it was - a babysitter for Friday night? Tickets to a dinner theater? Candles? Roses? That new George Clooney movie from Redbox?

A dandelion picker.
Not kidding.
A big wooden stick with an even bigger fork on the end of it.

He was positively beaming when he held it out to me, and I don't think I was imagining the smug look of disappointment on his face when he said, "I reallllly thought you'd notice and give me one, but since you didn't I had to go buy it myself."

For real?
If he had given ME a gift like that, I most certainly would have found another use for it.

I don't even think I had time to gather my thoughts and form a complete sentence, before he had grabbed his paint bucket and his new prized possession and headed to the front yard to obsess with his new love.

I guess it could be worse - or maybe not.

Right now my biggest fear is that I'll come back from grocery shopping to find him talking in hushed tones on his cell phone. I'll check the bill to find that he's made 47 calls in the past month to a horticulturist. I'll find weed&feed catalogs under his side of the mattress. The history on our computer will be backlogged with sadistic videos of dandelion torture.

Here's hoping for an early freeze.

props to treats

Treats has the best ideas (and is neck-n-neck with Melanie for snide remarks).  Anyway - she sent me this link . . .and I think I am going to do every single thing on this lady's blog:

Come Together Kids

it's always something

It's springtime in Minnesota, which means walks in the park, new sand in the sandbox, hopscotch on the driveway and (because it's us - and nothing could ever be Brady-Bunch perfect) - a ginormous swarm of 30,000 bees in our crabapple tree.

I didn't make that number up - and according to Rico's friend, the beekeeper, that's playing it safe.  A hive of honeybees can hold between 30 to 40 thousand little stingers inside - and of course, they've decided that this summer, the tree above Yoda's new sandbox is going to be the honeybee equivalent of the local Dairy Queen.

I noticed it two days ago.  I was on my cell phone picking dandelions (don't get me started - that's another post entirely), when this overwhelming buzzing noise took over.  I thought it was the phone. 

I also thought Yoda was busy picking dandelions as well - it looked like she was picking dandelions - she should have been picking dandelions -  but no. Little miss fear-factor was bending over each flower, reaching out with her tiny paw, coooing "BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ" and trying to snag wild bees out of thin air a'la Mr. Miagi.

Thank God her Kung Fu reflexes have not fully developed. I'm sure she was hoping to snatch one of these little beauties to present to her allergic father as an early birthday gift.

Anyway, once I realized what she was up to, I looked up. Every single pink blossom on our tree was moving - it was literally swarming with bees. We're talking Amityville Horror proportions.  I was sort of waiting for them to start buzzing "geeeettttttt oooouuuuut".  But it didn't happen - at least not before I grabbed Yoda and darted into the house.