The way I see it.

More from 1st Communion

 
Alvin and I got Connor a ring that looks like a crown of thorns to commemorate his big day. He's pretty proud of it, but can't remember to leave it alone/leave it on his hand/put it in one place if he has to take it off. From what I understand, it's causing him problems on the jungle gym as well. In any case, If he hasn't lost it in a month, we will take it to be engraved with the date.

 Telling his buddies about his ring prior to mass.

 Getting in place for formal portraits at church.

 

 Class group shot. I cut off everybody's feet while trying to cut out the heads of the adults in front of me.

  Father Joe was the one who gave Connor his 1st Communion, but the priest who married Alvin and I was also at mass in order to give 1st communion to his great niece, who was part of the class. It was the first time we had seen him since we got married. The years have not been kind. I leaned over to Alvin and said, "I hope we've aged better than he has since then."

 Grannie and Papa

 My brother and sister-in-law.

Just realized I'm missing the picture of my sister and brother-in-law. Will have to add that one later since it's on another computer.

Conversations with Connor: behind the scenes at First Communion

 
We just wrapped up a busy weekend with the school carnival, two cookouts, visits from family members, and the big event, Connor's first communion. Sunday morning was a crazy mix of preparing breakfast, family members arriving, trying to get the tags cut off of Connor's suit jacket, tearing the house apart searching for dress socks (never did find him, so he wound up wearing a pair of mine), etc. And of course, it was raining, as well. Connor and I hopped in the car (late) to get to the church by 11 for pictures, and that's when he mentioned, "Hmmm. I guess I should have taken a shower. I didn't take one last night, and I told Dad I would do it this morning, but I never did."

"Connor!" I exclaimed.

"Oh," he continued. "And nobody ever combed my hair ..."

"Are you kidding me?!" I shouted. "Oh for the love of Pete! Unbelievable! Did you at least wash your glasses like I told you to?"

"Well, I put some spit on my fingers, and I kind of rubbed it on them."

Christmases with Connor, and the best birthday ever

 
So the boy is 9 now.

Hard to believe.

If you know Connor at all, then you know what a little weirdo he is when it comes to Christmas and birthday gifts. In short, he can never come up with much of anything that he would like. In fact, I don't believe that he's ever had more than one thing on his Christmas list, and he's generally pretty 'meh' even about that one. Back when he still believed in Santa, it was a big deal to go sit on his lap and chit chat with him, but when Santa wanted to know what he wanted for Christmas, Connor never had any idea. Alvin and I gave up a long time ago on ever experiencing that look of complete elation a child gets when he really, really, really wants a particular thing for Christmas and then finally receives it on Christmas morning and is practically beside himself with glee.

He asked me several weeks ago if I was going to get him clothes again for Christmas. I laughed and explained that the reason he winds up getting clothes is because there's hardly ever anything that he says he wants. So if there was something in particular that he wanted this year, to be sure to tell us, because we need to know, and I knew other relatives would be asking, as well. He seemed surprised by this and said, "Well, you never asked me to make a list." Which is actually completely untrue, but it's been so long since I've even bothered, I'm not surprised that he wouldn't recall being asked to do so.

So I sat him down and asked him to make a list. At the top of the list was the Megamind game for the XBox. Great start. Santa's on a budget, though, and so I mentioned to him that he needed to be sure to include some things other than video games on his list.

So he sat

and he sat

and he sat

and he thought

and he thought

and he thought.

And the next time I checked on him, he had two items on his list.

And the #2 item on the list was a military lego set.

Which, if you know Connor at all, is an utterly ridiculous request. Because Connor has buckets full of legos already. 

And he only plays with two of them at any given time.

And they have to be the thick rectangular kind that have 6 dots on top.

(I believe it's 6. It might be 8.)

As for the rest of the legos in the bucket, he has never once played with or built anything with them.

Not once.

So I told him that.

And he told me that I should just buy it anyway

and if he didn't wind up playing with it, I could just return it.

:-P

So I said, "Is there something you might like to decorate your room?"

And he said no.

And then I said, "Maybe you'd like a new scooter or a pair of skates that fit you. You've outgrown yours."

And he said no.

So then I said, "Well, would you like gift cards to go to restaurants that you like? You liked that peppermint hot chocolate you got at Starbucks. Maybe you'd like a gift card so you can go get another one of those."

And he sighed and said, "I'm just not much of a shopper."

And that was the end of that.

Fast-forward to Black Friday. Alvin had to work and took Connor with him. To entertain him, he gave him all the newspaper inserts and said, "Here. Make me a Christmas list."

So Connor sat

and he sat

and he sat

and he thought

and he thought

and he thought.

And he couldn't come up with anything.

So Alvin pointed to things in the ads, and said, "What about this?"

And Connor would say, "Nah ... I probably wouldn't play with it."

Or Connor would point to something and say, "Hey, look at this!"

But when Alvin would ask him if he wanted to put that on his Christmas list, he would say no, not really.

So by the time he was done with list-making, this was his list:

"WHY oh WHY can't I EVER think of anything to ask for for Christmas?!"

No joke. Alvin was going to save the piece of paper it was on, but before he could swipe it, it wound up folded into a paper airplane or an origami frog or something, and it got lost or thrown away.

A few days before Christmas, Connor decided he didn't want the Megamind game after all.

What he really wanted was the Criss Angel Mindfreak Platinum magic kit with the bonus instructional video on how to levitate.

The problem is that by the time he determined that that was what he wanted, I didn't have time to get it ordered online.

And I had no idea if they are sold here locally.

So he had to make do to the Megamind game on Christmas.

But luckily, the Criss Angel kit got here in time for his birthday.

And I think this is the closest to that Christmas morning glee we're probably ever going to see.

 


Hopefully I can get a good shot of him levitating here pretty soon. He's pretty good at it.

His only other request on his birthday was to go to Chuck E. Cheese.

So we met a couple of friends, and that was that. (Somehow the Z-man always manages to stay out of the range of my camera.)

 

He's pretty easy to please.

In fact, he said it was his best birthday ever.

 

It's a Christmas (almost) miracle! A post from me!

Man, this blog of mine has turned into more of a 6-month checkup. Here's to more consistent posts in 2011!

In the interest of getting up to date before the end of the year, here is a recap of the last 6 months or so:

 
We swam ... and swam and swam and swam this summer, and had weekend cookouts pretty much every week with the neighbors next door. Hoping to put a gate between the yards in 2011 to make all of this even easier in the future. Hooray for neighbors with pools!

  Both of the neighbor girls asked Connor to marry them this summer, but apparently Kali asked first, so it was determined that Haylee needed to set her sights elsewhere. LOL! (Originally she decided on the boy across the street, but last I heard, she has met someone new in kindergarten, and she plans to have 42 children with him or something like that. Ha!) We're not quite sure how much longer Connor's going to want to go play over there because at any given moment, one of the girls may be attempting to kiss him or announcing that they are playing house and she and Connor are having a baby together. Speaking of babies, Connor got a crash course in the birds and the bees over the summer after we looked across the pool and saw Kali pinning Connor against the wall and yelling, "Mom? Can I tell Connor how to make a baby?" Yikes. LOL

 
The tomatoes were a bust in the garden this year, but the big winners in the 2010 garden were our okra and jalapeno plants. By the time the season was over, I think the okra was something like 10 feet tall. You can see in this picture how much taller it is than our 6-foot fence, and we still had a month or two of the season left when this was taken. The jalapenos were so productive that I began canning salsa and various hot pepper jellies this year, in addition to a variety of other jams and jellies. We just finished up the last of the canning last week when we pulled the blackberries out of the freezer to make blackberry jam, blackberry syrup, and blackberry jalapeno jam. This is just a portion of everything I canned this year. I wish I wrote down exactly how many jars got filled, because it was a lot!
 
 

 
Connor started 3rd grade this fall, and it is going great. I *love* his teacher this year! He recently made the tough decision (or shall I say we made it on his behalf, because he couldn't bring himself to make it himself) to quit karate. He was only one belt shy of getting his black belt, but he still had a year left to go because they only offer the black belt test once a year, and his heart just wasn't in it anymore. We're also taking a break from swimming lessons for the forseeable future, so that leaves him with gymnastics class (he tosses around terms like front tuck and front pike, and I have no idea what they mean) and religious ed. We lost Sprinkles in the house for about 4 days this summer, and after a few months of going back and forth about it, Sprinkles went to live with Connor's aunt.

 
 
Connor joined the Cub Scouts this year, which I think he's enjoying quite a bit. This picture was taken just before he went out for an hour trying to sell popcorn and didn't successfully sell one thing. Goshdarnit, he was so excited to do it, too. :-( Not a good year for popcorn sales, as far as we can tell. Anyway, he is learning some good skills so far, such as how to change a bicycle tire and how to tie knots.
 

 A friend took him to a belt loop fair on a rainy day in October (Alvin and I went to see the Social Network while they were gone, so I am pretty sure we got the better end of that deal), and he is well on his way to filling up that belt with various achievements such as bb shooting. He might have to gain some weight to make more room on his belt! LOL!

Moving along to fall, we went to the Tulsa Maize with friends, which (at least I thought) was fun, although only one of the kids actually went through the corn maze. Go figure! Paintball target practice was a hit, though!

Connor was an Ice Wolf Ninja (whatever the heck that is) for Halloween this year. I bought the costume on clearance  on Nov. 1 of last year, and let me just say that it was a complete miracle that it was long enough this October!  
I've gotten back to doing some scrapping after a long break, and I did some holiday doodle collections for DDE.    

I've been crafting up a storm in general lately; it's like I say every December: 'Tis the season to make stuff!  

Fall garlands ...

 
Winter garland ...

 

Decoration for our light fixture inspired by Two Peas ...

 

Connor helped by ... Oh, who am I kidding? This was not helpful at all.

But both the guys got involved at certain points ...

  
 I live with freaks. For reals. ;-)

  

Reindeer candy cane covers and nut wreath, inspired by Martha Stewart ...

 Connor and I made this handprint snowman ornament found on eighteen25 ...

And he was gracious enough to pose for me for our Christmas cards and mix cd ...

 

(He was sooo embarassed about this, too ... we were out on a VERY busy street, and he kept telling me how he could see that everyone driving by was staring at him.)

He must have been on a mellow song for this one.

    

I've been obsessed with craft blogs in general for the past month or so, and have a long list of projects I'd still like to make. Connor has been on a bit of a craft kick, too (But he'll deny it if you ask him.). He has changed so much in the past year. Instead of wanting to watch TV or play video games 24/7, he is just as likely to be asking to do a craft, or cutting out paper snowflakes, or drawing, or working on a new magic trick he found online. His origami kick ended abruptly a few months ago when he ran out of origami paper (and by then, was too spoiled to go back to using scrapbook paper instead), but he just got some new paper for Christmas, and we're a little shocked to discover that he hasn't forgotten how to make all the shapes he has learned.

 

Alvin is still taking online classes, but after a particularly rough one during the fall semester, he is going to take a break this spring.

I have continued my couponing efforts this year, and we can definitely tell from our stocked pantry and toiletry stash that my efforts are paying off.

Well, I guess that pretty much brings us up to date. We made it through Christmas without (too much) of a meltdown (from me). I even got it together enough to make use of our Advent boxes, which for the past few years, have been hung on the wall, but often remained empty. Connor's favorite Advent boxes tend to contain instructions to have hot chocolate or a treat of some kind, but hands-down the most memorable Advent box activity this year was when we went to see the play "A Charlie Brown Christmas." 

It was SOOO CUTE, just the right length for an 8-year-old, the perfect size theater for young audiences (not a bad seat in the house), and we were able to get pictures with almost all of the main characters when it was over. (I think we're just missing Linus and Lucy.) So glad we went to this! I can't wait to scrap it!

 

Peppermint Patty (left) and Marcie. Her whited-out glasses cracked me up!

 

Charlie Brown (His face is so much thinner in person ...)

 

Jamming with Shroeder and his piano ...

 
Hanging with Snoopy ...

 
Sally ... (This girl was soooo gooood! She sounded so much like the cartoon Sally, and I realized after the show was over that that was not acting on her part. LOL!)

 

We hope everybody had a great Christmas! Doesn't Connor look grown up in his suit? Expect to see it again come First Communion time in a few months!

I will leave you with a recent Christmas-themed conversation with Connor.

Connor (after giving me a piece of chocolate): That's what Christmas is about, right? Giving. ... Wait. Is Christmas about giving? Or is Christmas about the birth of Jesus?

Me: Well, it's kind of about both. God gave us Jesus ...

Connor: And the Wise Men gave Jesus gifts.

Me. You're right. They did.

Connor: Let me guess what they brought him.

Me: Ok.

(Now, I really figured that they must be talking about this at religous ed, and I expected him to get the answers correct.)

Connor: A crown, a sack of money ... and a binky with a baby toy.

 

Mother of the Year, here I come.




 

 

If we lose consciousness, it's because we're just hemorrhaging money around here

A comprehensive list of the items that have broken, had to be replaced, or otherwise required our financial attention in less than 2 months:

both cars (one twice, and it still has something wrong with it)
one set of blinds (not so much a big deal except that if we replace them, I figure they will no longer match the other five sets in the same room)
Alvin's foot
dishwasher
both airconditioners
vacuum cleaner

GAH! When will it end?!

Swim, grill, fold paper. Repeat. (Our summer so far.)

Since last I wrote, the neighbors put in a pool. We have been lucky enough to snag season passes, so you can guess where we've been a lot since school's been out. Between the neighbors', daily swimming at summer camp, and regular ol' swimming lessons, we are going through sunscreen like it's going out of style this year. Alvin thinks he's never going to get caught up on the laundry, what with all the wet towels and swimsuits. Speaking of swimsuits, Connor's gotten so skinny as of late that the swim trunks that he's been wearing for about 4 summers now are now actually too big for him. Looks like he's going to have to grow into them again! LOL!

Our Fourth of July was pretty low-key. Alvin hurt his foot last weekend and wasn't in any position to make the long hike to watch our local fireworks show, so we watched what was being set off in the neighborhood from the driveway. Definitely not a professional show, but not too shabby, nonetheless. We had our neighborhood bike parade earlier in the week, which concluded with a popsicle party at the park. I wound up adding  decorations to Connor's bike at the last minute because he complained that morning that I hadn't done enough to it. When I asked what more I could do, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well, you could paint it ..." Hmmmm. Guess who's in charge of decorating his own bike next year?

 
Our grill has been getting a workout as well this summer. Tasty summer food. Mmmm mmm mmm. Seems like every weekend, if we're not grilling here, then we are grilling at the neighbors' house. I'm starting to get a few vegetables out of the garden, but the tomatoes, like last year, have been a disappointment. I don't know what the deal is - the romas and cherries are fine, but I've gotten exactly 2 regular tomatoes out of 9 plants. I think it just got too hot for them to be fertile, and things would probably have picked up in the fall, but today I got irritated and yanked 8 out of 12 tomato plants, and I'm going to replant for the fall here in a week or two. Pfft. My okra's going crazy, though, with leaves bigger than my hands.

Connor went to visit my parents a few weeks ago, where he learned to play Sudoku and entertained anyone who would watch with lessons on making oragami. He came home after a week with 2 trash bags full of folded paper and tales from my step-mother about his OCD. Heh. Little did she know that we've been joking about him having OCD for several years already! Since being home, he hasn't slowed down with the oragami since, which is why at any given moment you can find

 
piles of puppies ...

... star boxes ...

... ducks ...

... bow tie dollar bills ...

... more puppies ... 

... and holiday wreaths laying in piles around the house. We can't even get him to eat anymore because he's so preoccupied with whether or not his napkin is a square (and therefore, perfect for oragami).

He's also branching out a bit into oragami towels ...

... we found the directions for this elephant on You Tube and made it to surprise Alvin one night. He actually thought it was an anteater, but we won't hold that against him. LOL! I figure if nothing else, he's got a career ahead of him working on a cruise ship!

What made it into these pictures is just a small portion of all the oragami he's made in the last month. When we pulled him off the bed after the pictures were taken, here is the scene that remained.

Alvin built a climbing wall up to and over the swingset a few weeks ago. It sat like this for entirely too long while we waited to get the climbing holds in the mail. We finally got them screwed in today, and the first thing Connor did was climb to the top of the wall to make himself look available to the neighbors. Then he got down and went to their house to swim for 4 hours. LOL!

I guess that's all the news that's fit to print. I'm still couponing up a storm ... Between all the coupons and the oragami laying around, Alvin may have to move out pretty soon. Heh! Here are a few of the items I've gotten for free since the last time I posted. Connor keeps saying, "This must be the best year of your whole life because you got that many coupons! In the last pic, everything was free except for the pudding, so I got the whole batch for 91 cents!

  

Blogging again: The "whoops, I missed all of Spring" edition

I'm not sure how the months fly by so quickly, but I have a dickens of a time getting the ol' blog up and going again after an extended absence! Had to blog, though, before I forget how!

We had lots of fun this spring. It's always such a relief to see the sun again after the long, dark, dreary winter. Alvin kind of laughed at me when I first started talking about having Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I think once he got started thinking about it, he realizes that he is sensitive to the winter lack of sun, as well.

Seeing the tulips pop up also helps put an end to the winter doldrums. :-)

I was determined this spring that Connor was going to learn to ride his bike without training wheels once and for all. He's avoided it for 3 summers now, bailing on me after a single attempt each time because it was just too hard. But by this year, he had crossed over into "I don't want to do this because I'm 8 and I should already know how to do this by now," territory. He just didn't want anything to do with his bike at all, and told me flat out that he "just doesn't like trying new things," but yeehaw, something finally clicked for him this time, and he's been a bike-riding fool ever since! Other new things for him this spring were learning how to play pool (he LOVES it), getting his first lesson in mowing the lawn (Having a tall kid has it's benefits - HOORAY FOR SLAVE LABOR!) and shooting hoops on his new basketball goal.

Alvin already bought Connor his own (kid-size) pool stick, and says give them a year, and they'll be out hustling for money. LOL

Connor also started getting into oragami a couple of weeks ago after we borrowed an Activity TV video from the library. Unlike another video that we tried, this one goes slow enough that Connor is able to follow along. (Great way to use up leftover scrapbook paper!) He's made quite a few different shapes, but memorized the directions for an oragami duck, and at one point I think we must have had 50 of them laying around the living room! They also have a website with instructions at activitytv.com.
  

Alvin went back to school in the spring and passed his first class with flying colors. I guess the next one will be starting up pretty soon. During the break between classes, he built me a birdhouse for Mother's Day to add to my collection along the back fence. I figured he would pick up a kit or something easy for he and Connor to put together, but instead, he built me one from scratch (using some of the wood from the karate boards Connor has broken during belt tests over the years) and Connor painted it. Isn't it cute? It looks like our house! It even has a working garage door. :-)

Here it is after Connor and I painted it. Looks just like our house, doesn't it? :-)

I've got my garden planted, and most things are either blooming or even starting to set fruit by now. Alvin built me a third planter box this spring, and I've got them all pretty much filled to the brim now. Our garden keeps expanding every year; this time we have 12 tomato plants, 6 bell peppers, 2 banana peppers, 2 jalepenos, 4 okra, 4 strawberries, 3 blackberries, 2 blueberries, lots of onions, garlic, basil, rosemary and cilantro.

Other than gardening, my obsession for the last month or so has been extreme couponing. I used to be a coupon user back in the day, but I was never particularly effective at it ... I was certainly never like the ladies that you read about getting piles of groceries for pennies. Anyway, I finally just started buying mostly store brands and forgetting about coupons altogether. I have been to the 918 coupon queen website before, and I'm not sure why I didn't realize at first what a gold mine I was sitting on, but I happened upon it again recently and I guess I saw just the right post at just the right time, and finally realized that there were some amazing deals to be had. So I've been following their matchups for about 6 weeks or so now, and I've gotten the following for free (only paid tax).

 
It's fun! Free rocks! :D  

Blogging, bullet-style

• Check it - my pool shark of a husband, who, despite great ability, has never been able to compete in a tournament setting because he chokes when he's playing for money, has been NUMBER ONE in his pool league for the last two weeks! I had to post this pic tonight because it might not be accurate for much longer! 
  

• Connor's class put on a special program for Valentine's Day. The kids sang songs and told jokes that you could tell they didn't understand. LOL!  Their "costumes" consisted of a plain white shirt and a thick roll of red ribbon, which was tied around the boys' necks like neckties and in the girls' hair. Not sure if this was a recession-inspired costume or just a stroke of simple genius, but either way, it was totally adorable. The front row of seats was reserved for moms who had purchased them during a recent school auction. I overheard one saying that she had paid $60 for hers. That's unbelievable to me!
• I am finally making some progress on my New Year's resolutions; priority #1 being the massive cleaning/purging of the house. I am pathetically slow when it comes to this task, but at least I am finally moving. Lately I have been watching reruns of Clean Sweep, which is helping to motivate me. A few weekends ago, Alvin and I took everything out of the master bedroom closet for the first time in 10 years. The dust! Holy cow!
• Alvin spent a recent weekend stripping the wallpaper border out of our powder bath and another day repainting the whole room after an incident during his last home poker game. We are debating whether we love wallpaper enough to redo the border or if we should just move on.
• Connor won a good citizenship award at school and gets to have a popsicle party with the principal tomorrow. He is excited.
• He is 2 belts shy of his black belt in karate. It seems like karate has gotten really serious really fast all of a sudden, and I am starting to feel like 8 might be a little too young to be trying to get your black belt. We have been debating about what activity he should pursue next, since the apple didn't fall from the tree with regards to his interest in organized sports
• We found out yesterday that a co-worker is butchering one (some?) of her cows, and we can get ground beef for $1 a lb. Holy hamburger Batman!
• More snow in the forecast. Enough already! It's been a long, grey winter again, but we are starting to see the first signs of spring. I am disappointed to report that our Solatubes do not magically create light where there's none to be found, BUT we had clear blue skies the other day, and when I walked out of the living room, it was bright enough that I actually started looking for the light I had forgotten to turn off!
• My hairdresser was running super late this week, but I had a thoroughly entertaining time waiting for my appointment. You just never know what kind of conversations you're going to overhear or become involved in when you go for a haircut these days! LOL!

Conversations with Alvin: Tracking our progress edition

Alvin: "I will be the first to admit that we wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for you. You're just better with money than I am. I'm better than I used to be, but I'm no where near as good as you are. I mean, if you weren't around, I think I'd be ok, because I'd be thinking more about the future, and Connor's future ... but I wouldn't be in the position that we're in together.

I'd probably have a bigger tv, though ..."

Conversations with Connor: Snow edition

Me: I'm not such a big fan of snow.

Connor: Me either.

Me: Really? Why don't you like snow?

Connor: It's freezing cold, you might get frostbite, it freezes your eyes ... it freezes your whole body ... you might get it down your pants ...

Me: You might get it down your pants?!

Connor ... and if you're having a snowball fight, and you're a team of one and you're up against a team of two, the two people might throw snowballs at your face at the same time.

...

And I've had that happen.