With the kids out of town and Friday the 13th upon us, we found it to be the perfect time to break out a game we found at the thrift store months ago – a Murder Mystery Party.  After a check to make sure all the contents were there, we started inviting friends to attend a murder mystery party at our house:

Dear Name of Character Here,
Hart’s untimely death casts suspicion on us all.  The police report has already been filed (see enclosed).  We must meet quickly in order to solve the murder and clear our good names.
Hosted By:
on Friday, June 13 at 6:00pm
Please RSVP by Wednesday, June 11
Please bring a dish to share – no poison

We sent this email to each guest along with the police report detailing the homicide.  We began with our game night regulars, then when some of them couldn’t make it, we tried to cast accordingly.  The casting, by the way, just happened to work out perfectly.  Originally, we were going to have to make a male character female, but once we switched some things around based on which guests were coming, it all worked out.  And in retrospect, the swapping male for female thing would not have worked well at all!  My husband and I were originally going to be the married couple, but those characters were a few decades older than us, and the characters we did end up playing had a secret infatuation with each other, so we were both pleased to discover this in the course of the game.  Unfortunately, when my turn came to come up with a ‘formal accusation’, evidence dictated that I point my finger at my husband, aka, secret crush, but that’s how you play the game.  Each guest came in costume and character and stayed that way for the roughly 3 hours we played the game.  All in all, a lot of fun, and we’ve already had several people who were disappointed that they couldn’t make it.  So, we’ll have to scour the thrift stores and / or the intenet in hopes of finding another one of these Murder Mystery games to play…  providing we can get all (almost 4!) kids out of the house for an evening again…  hmmm, that might be the REAL mystery! 

Recently there was a news item about a train that spilled its cargo – with a twist.  Instead of the usual hazardous chemicals that spill from trains like hydrochlorlic and phosperic acid, acetone, liquid soap, antifreeze, fuel, coal, and herbicide; this particluar train spilled its contents of tallow, also known as animal fat.  Unlike other hazardous spills, this one was dangerous in a different way than possible human ingestion of chemicals.  The fat on the roadway caused it to be slippery which led to numerous car crashes.  To make matters worse, apparently the rush-hour vehicles got the tallow on their tires and tracked it around the entire area, causing more complications in cleanup.  And you thought rush-hour traffic was aggravating enough all by itself!

Animal Fat Leak Wreaks Havoc For Commuters
ELMHURST, Illinois – An eastbound Union Pacific freight train carrying a load of animal fat sprung a leak as it passed through DuPage County Friday, dousing intersections between Elmhurst and Lombard with the slippery goo.

While my mom has had the kids this week, we managed to fit in 2 movies of opposite genres: the suspense / horror flick,  Prom Night (2008 remake of the 1980 film), vs. the silly comedy, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Adam Sandler’s new movie.  Suspense / Horror wins this time, hands down.

Prom Night  – an easy, old fashioned slasher movie.  I really liked that the villian and his motivations were unveiled in the first scenes of the movie.  I didn’t have to waste the rest of the movie worrying about what was trying to get the victims, why, and how many of them the victims needed to eliminate.  Predictable yet startling – don’t expect too much and you’ll have fun.

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan – ok, I really wasn’t expecting much from this movie.  The previews had basically said it all.  A former Israeli terrorist fighter is looking for a fresh start and decides to become a hairdresser in the US.  The movie is what it is – a really dumb comedy.  As crude as Adam Sandler promises to be, you have to have a certain type of sense of humor to enjoy this movie.  I didn’t have a bad time at the movie, but many of the jokes got old before they were done using them and the humor became even raunchier than expected.  While Adam Sandler does have a few worthwhile movies to his credit (Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer are my favorites), this is not one of them.  Oh, well, it was bargain night at the movie theater, so $8 for two of us to see a movie, get 2 pops and some popcorn was well worth it!

In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been lately (or even if you haven’t) – Grandma has helped us get one last little vacation before baby arrives.  We were going to head to New York, but decided not to do that, thank goodness.  Admittedly, the gas prices were the original deterrent, so then we explored taking a Greyhound bus there, but in my huge condition, I didn’t see any opportunity for good rest on a long bus trip.  I am really glad we declined the big trip, though, because my feet have been killing me, just from everyday tasks, like cleaning or shopping.  I would have had to cut short all of our sight-seeing in New York or rent a wheelchair for the week.  And staying home had afforded us time to do much needed catch-up work around the house.  We’ve been making landscaping plans, and I will be very excited to see how that turns out in a few weeks when it’s finished.  We cleaned out the famous closet o’ games, and we didn’t even need to knock down the wall to expand the closet as I was talking about in another post.  We found enough room for all of our games by sending all the kids’ games upstairs to their room.  Our house has lots of built-in shelving and drawers, and the kids had a huge cabinet in their closet that wasn’t even being used.  So, up went all the kids’ games.  I am a little concerned that they will tear apart their game collection and scatter pieces and whatnot, but they will have to be taught somehow that this is not going to be tolerated.  Most importantly on our vacation without the kids, we acheived the cleaning of their room.  It is a huge bedroom, and we have all 3 of our girls sharing it, but until we cleaned it, they could barely fit in there because they had so many toys.  Whenever we’d make them clean it, we noticed that they would play in there for such a long time afterward because they actually liked having all the open space.  So we donated about 90% of their toys to charity while they were visiting with Grandma.  It might sound mean, but we kept the important stuff, and like I said, they actually enjoy their room and the things in it much more when everything is picked up and they have fewer thins to appreciate.  I will keep you posted on how well (or not) this is received when they get home.  They will probably forget exactly what toys they once had, and by donating everything, more kids can enjoy them.

Even though it took an entire day of cleaning to reach the bottom of the toy pile in their room, we have managed to fit in lots of fun for just hubby and me.  We’ve gone shopping several times, and yesterday we were in Toledo all day getting good food, seeing a movie, and taking in a Toledo MudHens game.  If you’re not familiar, the MudHens are minor league baseball.  I’ve been wanting to get to a Chicago Cubs game last year or this year, but with the baby coming, I’ve ruled it out until at least next year.  So, minor league baseball it was, and we had a blast – I got my live baseball game fix for awhile…  there’s just something about hearing the crack of the bat, the slap of the ball in the glove and the other sounds of a baseball game in the beautiful summer night air.  And it was a great game.  Seems a player from the Detroit Tigers was rehabbing with the MudHens, so we got to see a major-leaguer pitch for a few innings.  The Hens were up 3-0 early in the game, then they let Indianapolis tie it up, only to hit a walk-off homer in the 9th with 2 outs to win the game – awesome!  And if you’re not from the area and want to experience food that is uniquely Toledo, I recommend a restaurant called Tony Packo’s to you.  Their menu is somewhat limited; there aren’t very many choices, so pass on it if you’re a picky eater.  But if you’re like me and you like to try all different kinds of ethnic food, give it a whirl.  They serve Hungarian food, namely sausage, cabbage rolls, and chili mac over dumplings.  It’s really good and a unique dining experience.  It’s also really interesting how we heard of the restaurant in the first place.  We were in a thrift store and I saw this stuffed baby in a diaper with a tomato head.  I thought it was really cute, even though it creeped my husband out, but it was only 5¢ so I bought it.  Turns out, it’s a character from Tony Packo’s as labeled on the rear end of the baby tomato.  I googled Tony Packo’s, found out it was a restaurant an hour away from us in Toledo, looked at the menu, and we decided to give it a try.  The guy who works their marketing in the gift shop really liked that story.  What’s weird though, is that while gutting my kids’ room this week, the baby tomato never surfaced.  Hmmm, I wonder what happened to it?

Sometimes you get more of what you want from a vacation by staying home.  In this age of the horribly high gas prices, the media has even coined a new word for the ‘vacation taken at home’, but I can’t recall what it is.  If you know, post it in my comments – it’s bugging me that I can’t think of it.  Anyway, by staying home, we saved a ton of money on gas alone, and we got some things done around the house that we will appreciate for months or even years to come, all while having a great time with just each other, no kids!  Thank you, Grandma!

After getting to watch week #2 of the new Mole season UNINTERRUPTED by kids since they’re with Grandma this week (can’t put a price on that by the way, it’s funny how simple pleasures like watching a favorite tv show uninterrupted can feel really nice :)), I am going to change my mole guess from Clay to Kristen.  I don’t really have a good reason why; she was just acting kind of moley.  And her way of sabotaging the task could have been to get that chain to keep falling off the bike, cuz that was unfortunate.  Clay had like, one comment during the whole episode, and I just don’t think they would shove the mole into the backround like that.  And I have to add that I just knew this week was going to be the end of Liz somehow.  Chris thinks the mole is Paul, going with his first week’s guess.  I guess what I will do is give everybody a point for every week they guess the mole correctly at the end once we find out who it is.  Do you have a guess this week, Jamiahsh?  I got your comment on my other mole post, and I will repost it here:

After watching the first 2 episodes. It is definitely NOT BOBBY. Trying way too hard to draw attention to himself with his ‘overexertion. It could be Alex… unless he really did leave his journal behind by mistake.
 

Interesting comment.  We too, think that Bobby is drawing way too much attention to himself to be the mole.  He’s just coming across as a lazy jerk, and it’s not fun to watch.  I will go with Chris’ theory on him – he is trying to throw off other players by acting like the mole.  I see Alex as the guy who wins everyting – there’s always one of those on every reality show – and I don’t think he’s the mole.  I don’t know whether or not he left his journal laying around on purpose.  He could have done so or he could have left it accidently and just tried to cover it up with the explanation of trying to throw others off.  But anyway, another good episode, and here is where we stand on mole guesses:

Lisa – Clay, Kristen

Chris – Paul, Paul

Jamiahsh – Clay, ?

For a few days now and a few more days to come 🙁 the temperatures in our region have been over 90°.  For a pregnant woman of my girth, it is proving disasterous.  I am so lathargic – I don’t feel like doing ANYTHING, including eating!  The house is a mess, and the kids have been cooped up because I’ve been cooped up in the a/c.  It’s not the best a/c though because we have window units, not central air, so it’s still hot!  Luckily, the kids are going on vacation with their Grandma and will get plenty of stimulation next week.  After that, I have to hope and pray for an arctic streak until I deliver the baby in mid-July or we won’t make it.  Since I’m sitting here doing nothing, just as I want, I decided to post this poem as a distraction to myself in lieu of the heat.  It’s a poem by Shel Silverstein, and I had to memorize it in 5th grade.  While I no longer have it memorized, certain lines keep running through my head as I sit here and boil.  Enjoy and stay cool!

It’s Hot!
By Shel Silverstein

It’s hot!
I can’t get cool,
I’ve drunk a quart of lemonade,
I think I’ll take my shoes off
And sit around in the shade.

It’s hot!
My back is sticky,
The sweat rolls down my chin.
I think I’ll take my clothes off
And sit around in my skin.

It’s hot!
I’ve tried with ‘lectric fans,
And pools and ice cream cones.
I think I’ll take my skin off
And sit around in my bones.

It’s still hot!

I had my ultrasound yesterday, and something occured that has left me in shock; that’s why it took me a day to blog about it…

My doctor is a female who has 3 sons.  Actually, 2 of her sons are the exact same age as 2 of my daughters, because our dr. was 9 months pregnant when she delivered my 4-year-old, and she was on maternity leave when her replacement doctor delivered my 19-month-old.  But anyway, during my ultrasound yesterday, she was talking about how her other dr. friend came to visit over the weekend, and he has 4 daughters.  He was wistfully throwing around a football with her sons and she was talking about how into sports girls are in this area, trying to console her friend because he didn’t have boys.  She was telling this story because we have 3 daughters and one on the way, and my husband is starting to feel like the character Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof who is famous for having 5 daughters.  So anyway, the dr. gets to the point in the story where she’s talking about lots of girls in our area being active in sports.  All of a sudden, she kind of pauses, then she goes, “wait a minute…  what’s this?”  Seems the ultrasound had picked up a certain little “bleep” on the radar that hadn’t appeared on the February ultrasound…  Seems our little Lyndsey or Evangeline is going to be Christopher Vincent instead!!!

It’s especially funny because my dr. has a reputation in the area for being wrong about these kinds of things.  I’ve heard stories of at least 5  of her patients’ babies whose gender was predicted wrong; inlcuding one from the delivery room nurse I had when I delivered my second daughter.  I am glad this “misdiagnosis” happened now rather than at birth, otherwise our firstborn son would be going home in pink – after 3 girls, pink and purple onsies are all I have!  And in the past 24 hours since I found out, I’ve been looking around the house, noting how easily and unnoticeably we’ve emersed ourselves in pinks and purples over the years.  We have pink blankies, bedsheets, clothes, stuffed animals, doll’s clothes, furniture, carpet, curtains, pillows…  the list goes on and on and on.

We are ecstatic; we’ve never had a little boy in our house, so it should be interesting to say the least.  And my greatest wish of course is for a healthy baby anyway, gender is not a concern.  But now that we know he’s a boy, I do feel kind of lost.  I’ve never had a boy baby before, and I had gotten into a sort-of comfort zone with my girls…  I even had a nice system worked out with their clothes.  The clothes that my 19-month-old was growing out of weren’t even getting packed away in the basement – I was just keeping them around for the new baby to use!  My girls are close enough in age where I was just putting all their clothes in one closet, and they would make the transition to the next size seamlessly – I thought I had it all figured out!  The good news about the clothes is that my sister has gratiously offered us the use of her boys’ clothes.  She has a baby who will be 2½ months older than baby Christopher, so if we can keep the transportation line open between her home in Illinois and mine in Ohio, we shouldn’t have to put our baby boy into any pinks or purples.

And that reminds me…  I got my husband to promise me (somehow, we have both forgotten how!) somewhere between the last 2 baby girls that if we were to ever have a baby boy, I would get to name him Christopher after my husband.  Now that it’s a reality, he is getting cold feet about the name, but I am not letting him out of this one!  People have suggested using Christopher as a middle name, but Vincent was decided upon way back in 1999 when my husband’s father fell ill and passed away – I was pregnant with our first child when he was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), and we agreed that when we had a boy, he’d have the name Vincent…  little did we know it would be 9 years later!

So anyway, I just wanted to share our happy news with everybody…  Doctors can be wrong, and it seems our family is the latest victim of our doctor’s reputable gender inconsistencies.  And here is the poll we took way back when in February (before our first “gender revealing” ultrasound – or so we thought!) of some of our family and friends’ predictions.  It was just for fun, no prizes or anything, but the people who thought they were right really were not (including our whole family except Taylor – good job, T!), and vice versa!

 Gender Prediction – Feb. 2008

GUESSES:
Mommy – g
Daddy – g
Taylor – b
Sammie – g
Mary Beth – b
Great Grandma and Great Pa – b
Shirley – g
Keith and Trudy – g
Linda – b
Jamy – b
John – b
Elizabeth – b
Jenny – g
Tracy – g
Gerry – g
Tim and Kim – g
Austin – b
Sharon – b
Lilly – b
Vickie – g
Kristen – g
Sue – b
Megan – b
Carol – b
Grandma B – g
Cathy – b

12 guesses for girl – 14 guesses for boy

FEB 11, 2008 – ULTRASOUND / DR. says IT’S A GIRL!!!
JUNE 3, 2008 – ULTRASOUND / DR. says IT’S A BOY!!!

Does everyone remember this boy band from the 80’s?  I remember them well because being a young preteen girl at the height of their popularity meant that their marketing was pointed directly my way.  I went to 3 of their concerts, had my bedroom wallpapered in New Kids posters, and had everything from tapes (for younger readers – that’s what we played music on in those days), buttons, t-shirts, books, magazines, and stickers to trading cards, shoelaces, and even a Joey McIntire doll.  Yes, it was ridiculous and more than a little embarrassing.  But girls will be girls, and the group had a clean-cut, boy band image, so my parents willingly obliged my fanfare.

You may have heard that the band has reunited.  Yes, I’m serious, and yes, I’m talking about now, in 2008, when the members of the group are over the age of 30 and some are pushing 40.  Why now, you ask?  Probably because pop culture has a way of recycling itself.  They often resurrect fads decades later when people who were kids at the time of the fad can now enjoy them again as adults (now that they have their own money to spend) and share them with their own kids.  They did this with a number of fads from the ’80’s – My Little Pony, Cabbage Patch Kids, Strawberry Shortcake, Transformers, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and now, The New Kids on the Block.  What perplexes me most of all about this whole thing, is that they didn’t change the group at all.  They are out there, singing the same songs they sang as teens and early twenty somethings, about dating girls and “Hangin’ Tough”.  They are attempting to perform the same dance moves they made popular decades ago, and results are not pretty.  I was one of the biggest fans of the group way back when, and now I say they’re terrible.  I don’t like the music anymore (it was of a genre they used to call bubblegum pop – and it’s definitely the type of music you grow out of), they sound terrible singing it, the lyrics are ridiculous, if not downright creepy, coming from near-middle-aged men, and the dance moves are horrible.  They are actually going to tour this (circus) act come fall.

So why now?  Why do we need an updated version of New Kids on the Block?  Actually that’s not even right.  There’s nothing updated about this group except their ages.  Everything else is EXACTLY the same!  An updated version would be better musically and probably make a whole lot more sense.  There’s what I talked about earlier – the fad revival tactic.  I guess that’s why they did it.  But I find it amazing that they found enough people who thought this was such a good idea that they made it happen – inlcuding the 5 original members of the group.  Some have gone on to mildly successful movie or solo music careers.  Some have raised families.  But how someone got all 5 to agree to resurrect the New Kids on the Block circa 1991 is astounding.

If you don’t believe me about how terrible they are or if you just like to watch train wrecks in action, check this out.  Help me figure out who looks more ridiculous – the group or the fans.  This video is part one of three, but you’ll only want to see the first part, if that, trust me:

This seems a little strange to me, but the other day my husband suggested that I should put everything into my blog.  Every to-do list, shopping list, etc.  Anything I’m putting into my computer should be in my blog, he says.  I’m a person who makes a lot of lists.  I’ve even been known to make a list of the lists I need to make!  It might sound dorky or anal, but it makes me feel better and more organized – I’m a busy person with a terrible memory, so any way I can feel a little closer to keeping my head above water when daily life becomes overwhelming is worth trying for me.  And often I do so with lists.  So, upon the advice of my husband, a person whose knowledge of everything seems to know no limits (and no, I’m not being sarcastic!), here goes – hope it doesn’t bore you too much, but here is my To-do List for when Grandma has my kids for just under a week – an event I am anticipating so anxiously that it seems to have SLOWED the passage of time…  We were going to take a trip to New York, but we declined it because of gas prices and in favor of getting things done around the house, sigh.  Besides, I don’t know how a woman who is 35 weeks pregnant would fare walking around such a big city!  Such a shame, though, it’s the LAST time we will be kidless for a long period of time because Grandma can’t fit 4 kids into her car to take them all at the same time 🙁

To Do While Kids Are Gone

RELAX!
clean game closet
organize kids room – clean out their toys, add toddler bed, create play room
hook up hose
clean out laundry basket o’ junk
clean out playpen
wash baby’s clothes – (now that we just found out we’re having a boy intead of a girl, I have no boys’ clothes to wash!)
pack away Disney’s clothes (now that we won’t be needing them for the new baby!)
fix pipe in upstairs bathroom – and the light that got broken and flooded because of the pipe!

When I was in high school, I was in a peer group called Snowball and one of our activities was to write “warm fuzzies” about each other.  Warm fuzzies are kind thoughts.  When we told family and friends we are now expecting a boy instead of a girl, we got lots of warm fuzzies, so I decided to collect them in one place so baby Christopher can read them someday.

Lisa,
How exciting to find out about your new son, we are so excited for you.
Love, Linda
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YES!!!!!!!
I knew you guys could do it! Congratulations!!
Mary Beth
——————————–
Hooray!!!
That is sooooo great. I can’t wait for HIS arrival. I sure Dad is as excited.
Jamy
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Wow!  No wonder you are in shock!  I’m excited for you.  I had 3 boys and the last was a girl, and I didn’t know till she was born – no ultrasounds in those days.  All I can tell you from my experience is the girl was nothing like her brothers, from day one.  For me, 3 boys were easier than one girl!  I’ll be interested to see how your experience is.  Can’t wait to meet little Christopher.  I have one of those as well. (He is and was the “toughest”, most bull-headed of my boys.)
Shirley
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  You are going to love having a son. I know I was very nervous about having a son because I wasn’t sure if I could feel the same way about a boy as I did about Abby.  Because she was a girl, I thought we had this unusual bond that couldn’t possibly exist between a mother and a son, but it turns out that gender has nothing to do with it.   I knew I’d love him, but I wasn’t sure that there’d be that “click” I had with Abby.  I’m glad to reports I was very wrong.  I’m positively in love with my son and couldn’t imagine life without a boy to raise.  I’ve often said that I’d have a whole ball team of boys before I’d have another girl, so if that tells you anything, you’ll LOVE having a son.  HOORAY for you!
Tracy
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