Zucchini Bread, Know What, Craziness, a Dreaded Call From the Bus Driver

The other day we were watching a friend's daughter who is the same age as Sarah.  When Beth came over she liked playing with the kids, however, she couldn't quite pronounce Noah's name correctly.  She kept calling him, "Know what".  She would say, "Know what [Noah], come here!" and "Know what, don't do that!"  It was pretty funny to hear her talk to 'Know what'. 

I got the world's biggest zucchini the other day from a friend.  When I brought that home the kids were so excited because that meant I could make zucchini bread.  Since I am the only one who would eat any form of zucchini outside of zucchini bread I decided to make the whole zucchini into zucchini bread.  We ended up making three different batches ending up with a total of 10 loaves of bread.  Unfortunately, that seemed to take a toll on my Kitchenaid mixer because on the last batch my mixer died :(.  I am trying to find a place to repair it because I really use it a lot.  Good thing we have 10 loaves of zucchini bread to last us until I can get it fixed.

The other day I was at playgroup at the park with my three youngest kids.  Playgroup happens to be during lunch so I brought lunch for everyone.  Since the only thing for lunch Daniel likes is nuggets and Sarah can't eat anything different than Daniel for lunch she had to have nuggets, too.  I packed the nuggets into baggies for each kid.  While we were there I got busy chasing Noah down when Sarah wandered away with her nugget baggy.  By the time I caught her, her nugget baggy was full of sand and leftover nuggets.  Yummy!  However, I had to keep the baggy away from Noah because he thinks rocks are a delicacy and eats them every chance he gets.  The sand didn't seem to bother Sarah either.  Yuck! I've given up on asking why you would want to eat that I just have to shrug my shoulders and think my kids are so weird!!

Daniel can say some pretty funny things.  The other day he was watching Spider Man when he casually commented to Aaron saying, "Being a Super Hero is going to be so easy for me!"  Josh overheard him and asked him in a teasing way what would come easy to him--hitting people or kicking people.  Daniel got embarrassed at this point and didn't say anything else.  Maybe his super power is kicking, hitting and screaming--if that's true, all my kids have super hero powers in my book!  What a funny kid!

Yesterday was Breakfast with Grandparent's Day at Josh and Daniel's elementary school.  Grandma T was nice enough to come up and have breakfast with Josh and Daniel.  Josh and Daniel rode with Grandma to school. Before they left I tried to explain to Grandma how to drive to their school, but she just figured Josh and Daniel could tell her the way.  I just shrugged my shoulders and said ok.  It wasn't fifteen minutes later when I got a call from Grandma telling me she was lost after following Josh and Daniel's stellar directions to their school.  I told her how to get there and they got to breakfast in enough time to for Josh to grab and eat 3 donuts and juice.  Daniel brought his trusty poptart along and grandma grabbed something to eat there too.  The kids had fun showing off their grandma to their friends after they finally made it to the school by NOT following Josh and Daniel's directions.

This morning I got a call from Matthew's bus driver.  I always cringe to see any number from the school on the caller ID.  However, it wasn't a bad thing.  His bus driver is a really nice lady with two special needs kids herself so she can understand what it's like.  She was calling me because Matthew insisted that she needed to call me to let me know that he needed to wear his jacket tomorrow.  She then told me that she thinks Matthew is such a fun boy.  That made me feel good that she enjoys having him on the bus.  I will also be sure to have Matthew's jacket ready for him to wear tomorrow, though because if I don't I am sure I will be getting another call from the bus driver at the insistance of Matthew.

As for our house plans they finally got signed off by the engineer and passed on to the city for approval.  This means they should start digging our house in the next week.  I am so excited!!  This week we also got to get the process of picking everything out for the house (outside colors, inside colors, flooring, appliances, etc.)  Unfortunately, we had to take the kids along for those things.  It didn't turn out so well.  We have a return appointment to finish up all the choices for the inside of the house.  Last night we had to take all five kids to pick out appliances.  It got pretty ugly because it took us about two hours and by the end the kids' had had enough and were picking on each other and screaming.  I am sure the store was more than ready to have us leave by the end!!  Noah got the worst of it, unfortunately.  He was strapped in the stroller for containment purposes and didn't like being contained at all and was letting us know by the loudness of his screaming.  I told Matthew to go walk around with him in the stroller to try and keep him quiet.  Matthew, ever the button pusher, collapsed the stroller down while Noah was sitting in it.  The worst part was in trying to straighten out the stroller Noah stuck his finger in the hinge and it pinched off part of his fingerprint and left a huge blood blister on the tip of his finger.  Poor kid!!  It took him a while to calm down after that one.  Good thing that happened on the way out of the store!  Next time I think we will try to finish everything up while most of the kids are in school because we are way too outnumbered to try to concentrate and do serious things while trying to keep track of what five energetic, screaming kids are doing at any one time!  I still had a headache this morning from all the screaming last night!!

Here are Daniel's soccer team pictures:  What a ham.  I can't get blogger to cooperate so the pictures are turned sideways and upside down.  Just tilt your head!

 Sarah still thinks naptime is dress up time.  After laying her down for nap today and hearing her scream I ran into her room to see what was wrong.  She had put on a shirt and couldn't get it off--that's why she was screaming.  She couldn't possibly be stuck wearing only the first choice of shirt of course!!  Anyway, after about an hour of multiple rescues, I gave up on her nap and let her come out.  This was the latest naptime outfit for today:  

My personal favorite is the backwards tank top with the tutu tucked in her diaper.  She thought she looked fabulous and I guess that's all that matters.

 In our rental house we share a backyard with some horses.  We went out and fed them some carrots today and the kids loved it.  Daniel mostly liked watching the horses eat the carrots from me and Sarah rather than feeding them himself.  That kid is afraid of anything four legged and furry--I swear!  I did coax him into feeding the horse once, though.  Baby steps-baby steps--maybe by the time he turns 20 he might be able to touch a four legged furry animal!

While I was getting dressed this morning Sarah helped herself to the bread.  No, one slice would not do if you can have a small hunk of every piece of bread in the loaf.  Nice. 

 Someone got a hold of my phone this morning because I have a ton of pictures of the garbage truck on it.  It's just what I want is a ton of pictures of the garbage truck.  Awesome.  Good thing there is a delete button!

Occasionally I look at the freebie aps and I found this one:

It's called Larry the Talking Bird.  This little bird will repeat back anything sound you make or say.  It was fun for about the first minute and ever since then it hasn't been as fun.  I get to hear any screaming or crying not only the first time, but a second time from the stupid bird.  However, I can't delete it because it is Sarah's favorite.  She can play with this little bird for hours if I could stand it.  I must say as annoying as it is, it sure has come in handy at the grocery store to keep her occupied while sitting in the cart!!

As for Noah as you can see from the video he is one of six main reasons why my house does not stay clean for very long--the other five being Aaron, Matthew, Josh, Daniel and Sarah.  Whenever we clean up all the toy food gets put in the toy kitchen sink.  As soon as Noah sees the toys sitting in the sink he goes to town picking them up and throwing them out on to the floor.  He has developed a pretty good arm.  He may have a future in baseball if he keeps this up.  And magically all the toys end up back inside the sink for him to do it all over again.  The kids get pretty frustrated when I tell them to clean up because they aren't the ones who made the biggest mess.  Noah just gets excited to see the kids clean up because that means he has a sink full of toys to throw again.  The stinker pants!!