But didn’t school JUST start?  And wasn’t the kids’ first weekend a THREE day weekend?  Yes and yes.  But to be fair (pun intended), this 4-day weekend was not planned in advance, well not entirely, anyway.  It began with Monday being Fair Day for the kids – our county fair opens tomorrow, and the kids are off school on Monday to go to the fair and also because many of them have 4-H projects that will be judged at the fair on Monday – that was a planned day off.  So then today, my husband was driving our daughter to school, when he realized he was the only one on the road and at the school.  At least, that’s what he thought -it was so foggy they couldn’t see much of anything…  so they returned home only to find that there was a two-hour delay because of the fog – our phones had been turned off so we didn’t get the early morning call…  So anyway, the 2 hour delay turned into an entire fog day because the dense fog would not clear early enough for the school district to send the buses into the country to pick up the kids.  Fog Day on Friday + Fair Day on Monday = the first 4-Day weekend of the new school year,  taking place on only the third weekend of the new school year!  Luckily our student calender is set up to include 5 calamity days, and in NW Ohio, early morning fog is considered a calamity, I guess!  What will we do when the 5 yearly calamity days are taken out of the calendar since the governor’s plan calls for calamity days to be phased out?  Wait and see, I guess…

And now I have to totally rearrange my day  –  so much for advance planning!  I’ll have to juggle the not-4-kid-friendly errands I have with my husband’s planned business call – keeping 4 kids quiet and out of the way for that?  Good luck to me!  These are the times when I wish he had his own office…  The benefits of working at home outweigh the negatives of him working at an office of course, but on days like these, ugh!  It’s funny because I’m not native to NW Ohio and so both fog days and fair days are new to me – man, would I have loved these as a kid.  As an adult…  not so fun.  Maybe we can have another calamity day later this year when we have nothing planned and we can just sit inside and watch movies and play games all day…  Then, let it snow!

I did not go to Walmart yesterday, but I still have enough of a complaint to sit and write a blog post about the place!  In case you’ve missed my other (many) Walmart rants, I’ll save you the search and link to a few of the various episodes depicting the times they wronged me.  Like this time.  And this time.  And this time, to name a few…

So anyway, back to last night – I needed tartar sauce for dinner and didn’t realize it until after the kids got home from school, so I ran out (for what I thought was going to be) really quick to get some.  I went to Walgreens first, but they don’t carry tartar sauce, so I went across town to Dollar General, and they don’t carry tartar sauce either.  Is this a side effect of living in a small town – it’s hard to find the things I need last minute if needed?  If so, I will gladly take it in exchange for the traffic, air pollution, and the general stress that exudes from larger cities (see hubby’s blog post about a recent news article about the most stressed cities – ew).  But most likely the apparent lack of tartar sauce in rural NW Ohio is due to scenario #2 – ever since we got a Super Walmart a few years ago, the competitors have phased out certain grocery non-necessities like tartar sauce.  Why should they carry old crusty tartar sauce when no one buys it there because everyone shops at Walmart?  I begrudgingly include myself in that category – you can read those previous posts of mine if you really want to know more about my Walmart paradox and why I shop there.  (At least my kids were never slapped by strangers, and I haven’t shown up here – yet.)

If you’re still with me – I’ve linked all over the internet in this post, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve lost some people –  I’m going to blame Walmart for my lack-of-tartar-sauce problem.  And in case you’re wondering how it all turned out, it really wasn’t a problem after all.  We just convinced the kids to try ranch dressing instead of the tartar sauce, and they actually liked it – well, until the ranch dressing came out too fast and spilled and incited a tantrum that caused a chain reaction that ruined dinner, but that’s another post!  And before my comment board lights up with healthy eating advice, I’m already aware that the kids really shouldn’t grow up so sauce-dependent.  But in these parts where the kids outnumber the adults, you must adapt to survive, and “pick your battles” is essential parenting advice!

On a random note, I decided at the last minute to kind of theme-up game night a little bit last week.  I went to the library to find some background music to put in the kitchen CD player during game night, and the first thing I found was a Garth Brooks Greatest Hits collection – and not one of the two that I owned back when I was a huge fan – one of the reasons why Garth Brooks became intolerable, what a sell-out.  But he has some really good songs, and I thought it’d be great to hear some of them again.  Realizing I’ve tortured enough unwitting souls with my love of country music, I looked through the regular music.  But it was the adult section of the library, and I had two of the kids with me, so I was in a big hurry and all I could find was an Elvis greatest hits collection.  Thinking about it on the way home, I remembered a recipe I had come across months ago and put aside – Elvis’ favorite sandwich in a cookie.  What was Elvis’ favorite sandwich?  Peanut butter, banana, and bacon.  So I made the peanut butter, banana, and bacon cookies, we rocked to Elvis, even though he ruined more than a few people’s careers in the Mafia, I think.  I didn’t come across anyone all night who was ecstatic about my Elvis cookies, but they were more for the experience of emulating Elvis (this would have made a fun dress-up version of game night, haha) than they were for people to find delectable.  I, for one, found them tasty, but not great.  I’m not a big cookie person anyway, and I found the combination of bacon and banana quite interesting, though in a good way.  Coincidentally, I found out that 3 days before our game night was the 32nd anniversary of Elvis’ death, so it ended up being a tribute of sorts, I guess.  I like the idea of themed game nights once in a while, especially if it doesn’t require much extra dough (pun intended) or work.  How about we light up the comment board with suggestions for possible future game night themes?

*** – Here is some bonus footage – the Elvis cookie recipe.  Enjoy and let me know any alterations and feedback you have!
From the article where I read about it:
“Go with your gut – not your head – on this one; the combination of peanut butter, bacon, and bananas really is delicious.
ELVIS COOKIES
Makes 30 cookies
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup crumbled cooked (very crisp) bacon (about 6 strips)
1/2 cup diced firm banana

Heat the oven to 350F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. (I did some research because I didn’t want to buy many extras like parchment paper, so I just greased a cookie sheet with margarine and it worked fine. So in place of the parchment paper, lightly grease a cookie sheet.) In a large bowl, combine the peanut butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. Use an electric mixer on medium to beat until well combined. Beat in the egg until just combined and set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour and the baking soda. With the mixer running on low, add the dry ingredients, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Gently mix in the bacon and the bananas, trying not to mash the bananas. Using slightly wet hands, roll rounded teaspoons of dough into balls and place on the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between them. Dip the tines of a fork into water, then use it to flatten the cookies until they are about 1.5 inches around. Bake on the middle rack for 11 minutes. Cool the cookies on the baking sheet for 2 minutes, then remove with a metal spatula to racks to cool completely.

NOTE – a guest commented that he wished there was more bacon!

I will be one of those frantic parents in the Walmart checkout line on the first day of school.  I’ve never been there to witness them myself, but I know they exist; I’ll find out for sure tomorrow when I join them.  Yes, I planned ahead well enough to buy the necessary school supplies, but what I failed to do was to supervise the middle-schooler who was excitedly stuffing her new backpack, apparently ignoring the direction to “pack what’s on your list”.  Not really her fault – like I said, I should have been supervising her more carefully.  But as a result, our 4th grader now has a locker full of 4th grade school supplies AND Kindergarten school supplies (she brought them to school last Friday during orientation), while our Kindergartner has an empty backpack.

We could follow our oldest daughter into her new middle school tomorrow to repo her sister’s school supplies, but I’m pretty sure being the only student whose parents follow her into school (especially with little brother and sisters in tow) could cause her emotional damage beyond repair.  I’ll take my chances at Walmart.

Well, summer is officially over – school starts tomorrow!  I could be like everyone else and say “where did the summer go?”, but for me, it actually didn’t go as fast as I would have thought.  We were so busy; though it was good-busy; not like so-much-work-to-do-busy.  But much fun was had and I enjoyed every minute!  Last week was spent at school open houses and orientations, as well as a training event at our church to allow us to volunteer with our church’s student ministries.  That was an interesting evening – it began with us volunteers breaking off into groups of about 15 and making lines.  We were given a spoon tied to a string which was wound around a “spool” ie, an empty tube of toilet paper.  The first person in the line (me) was to put the spoon down their shirt and pants and give it to the next person who was supposed to put it up their pants and shirt, then to the next person who was supposed to put it down the shirt and pants, effectively “threading” the line of people together.  Kind of strange, I thought, but what’s going to happen once we’re all “wearing” the string???  It was a little scary, but luckily, the threading was the entire ice-breaking activity, and the rest of the evening was pleasantly spent listening to a guest speaker while munching on all kinds of orange snacks (orange was the theme for the evening – I never really thought about how many party snacks are orange before!).

Today we had so many activities and volunteering planned for church that we were on the go from 8:30 in the morning until about 3:30 in the afternoon.  Busy, but it was time well-spent, especially since we finished up the day with Kidstuff (a cute show with a wonderful message for the kids) and then a carnival with LOTS of treats and fun for the kids; they had a blast.  Good thing too – we need to get settled down early tonight in order to get our oldest to school by 7:30 in the morning!!!  She is starting middle school, and yes, to those of you who have asked – she will be switching classes, kind of like the “block” style they had when I was in middle school.  My daughter has a homeroom, but then she switches for language arts and math and perhaps other subjects as well.  And they do gym class strangely – there are 4 classes: gym, music, technology (typing, etc.), and art, and they take one of these 4 classes every day for 9 weeks and then switch to another.  That sounds pretty cool to me!  I would have LOVED it if I only had to worry about gym for 9 weeks of the year!  But, being in middle school also means that she has to change for gym class, poor thing – I remember that aspect of middle school making a lot of kids really nervous.  And at orientation last week, the principal gave us parents a talk about making sure we wash the gym clothes – the kids are getting to “that age”, she said, which prompted me to whisper to my friend nearby, “I’m not ready!”  But my daughter IS ready for middle school, and she seems to be making her way from tween to teen in no time –  UGH!  Poor thing got her first pimple just in time for the first day of middle school, but she doesn’t seem to mind too much, so we’re not making it a big deal.  It’s not like we’re publishing it on the internet for the entire world to read or anything…  But what are moms for?  She can thank me when she’s older and finds this through some sort of google search or something.

Our second oldest is starting Kindergarten.  This is our “difficult” child; our strong-willed one.  Samantha has a mind of her own, and some of the things she says leave us in stitches – others leave us shaking our heads, but we’ll stick to the positives here.  It seems that Samantha has the same Kindergarten  teacher that her sister had a few years ago, and my husband and I are chuckling to ourselves about the unintentional “joke” we’re about to play on our local school system.  We are wondering how many years it will take for word to spread amongst the teachers in town about how much of a…  well, difference there is  between Samantha and her big sister…  No need to go off about it here, like I said, we need to call it an early night, but it will suffice to say that any teacher of Taylor’s who gets Samantha 4 years later will probably be surprised 🙂

I was going to write about the younger two as well, but it’s bedtime already and this post is long enough – that’s what I get for not blogging regularly, I guess, an über-post!

A few weeks ago, we learned a friend from way back was going to be in the area on his way from Illinois to Florida with his family, so he came by and brought the fam.  That in itself was very unusual – after 10 years of friendship and various business associations and partnerships, we had somehow never gotten around to meeting his family in person.

But on this day earlier this summer, they all stopped in, and his wife and two kids (the oldest was off on some kind of school function) were really very nice, fun, and interesting people – we had a great day together.  Their kids, although quite a bit older than my kids, were nonetheless kept entertained by my kids, especially their pet rats.  Overall, it was a great visit with a nice family –  we really should have gotten together sooner!

And I have some advice for our friend: appreciate what you have, buddy.

I don’t know why he does some of the things he does, but he sometimes acts, um, I’ll call it restless, and now that I know how awesome his wife and kids are, it’s going to be that much more difficult for me if I continue to hear about any more dumb choices on his part.  He seems to be going through some sort of mid-life crisis, so I can only hope that he finds what it is he’s looking for without hurting those wonderful people who love him!

While I’m on the topic of date night (see my previous post)…

This week we did not feel like mini-golfing again on date night, so we went bowling instead.  I did so well, we got a printout of the scores, much to my husband’s dismay – I’ve already mentioned how he has bad luck at physics-dependent sports like bowling and mini-golf.  And I got tons of practice at bowling as a kid – I was in a weekly bowling league for I don’t know how many years.  Later in high school, I took bowling in gym class and joined intramural bowling after school where I  was crowned, “Female Bowler of the Year” for the two years I was in it –  not a difficult feat, seeing as how there were under 10 girls involved, but still, if we had had a competitive bowling team in high school, perhaps I would have been a high school athlete, hehe!

I’ve spent about 23% of my adult years pregnant (!) and most of the rest of those years raising small children who would wreak havoc with a bowling ball, so needless to say, I have not had a chance to hone the skill I developed as a youngster.  I do enjoy the occasional bowling game,  though, and rarely do I top my previous bowling average from back-in-the-day: 132.  Well, the other date night, not only did I top my old average for the two games we played but I somehow tied my all-time high score!  Well, anyway, here are the scores, and this reminds me to make joining a weekly league a priority when the kids get a little bit older!

And about the title I chose for my post…  I just finished reading the book Columbine by Dave Cullen, and it was a fascinatingly detailed account of the 1999 Colorado high school massacre dissected from just about every angle.  If you like to read true crime or just want to know every detail about the massacre (it holds a special fascination for me since it was unfolding just as Hubby and I arrived at our honeymoon destination after a 24-hour road trip back in ’99), you should read this book.  It’s both sad and informative, and the author does mention that the Michael Moore movie, Bowling for Columbine, has little to do with the circumstances involving the high school massacre.  But, Bowling for Columbine is a catchy title nonetheless, which is why I borrowed it, not because I’m a Michael Moore fan.  Actually, we saw a parody of his movies the other day, and I will be sure to include the movie review in an upcoming post called “It Was A Redbox Summer”.  Stay Tuned!

Earlier this month, I got a whim on date night for us to go mini-golfing.  Apparently I was not the only person who felt this way – the local mini-golf course was packed end-to-end with groups of golfers – on a Wednesday night!  We began our putting only to find ourselves stalled at every hole waiting for the group of 4 in front of us – which backed up the group of 2 behind us, etc.  We didn’t realize it was this crowded when we began golfing otherwise we probably would have chosen something else to do (not big fans of crowded places), but it ended up being lots of fun; we found plenty to chat about while waiting to play the next hole.   Among the topics were the strange occurrences befalling the behavior of our golf balls.  My husband’s normally bad luck (especially at laws-of-physics sports like mini-golf and bowling) seemed to be exaggerated, especially by my good luck.  An example – my husband took his shot, then I took mine, and my ball hit my husband’s ball sending it further from the hole, while mine bounced off his and into the hole for a hole-in-1!  Unintentionally, of course 🙂  After a few more of those wacky incidents and (to my dismay) the appearance of dozens of live frogs in the mini-golf pond, we had had our fun and were finished.  But on the way home, we couldn’t help but notice the full moon beaming overhead – a coincidence or is there something about a full moon that makes people want to mini-golf?  Friends in the fields have shared with me that hospitals and law enforcement agencies are extra busy on the nights of full moons – interesting.  How about you guys?  Did any of you have a sudden golfing urge last Wednesday night / early Thursday morning?

Yesterday was gong to be a huge catch-up-around-the-house day for me; I had big plans – unpack the suitcase from our unwillingly shortened venture earlier in the week (my son has decided to be the first one of our kids who doesn’t travel well.  He won’t sleep away from home, and he cries in the car – not cool for a family fond of road tripping), catch up on my email, and read and write some blog posts, among other things.  I got through the email and caught up on my fellow tangents bloggers posts (this task was made especially easy since one of us has seemingly disappeared), but I never got around to writing any posts of my own.  Time just slipped away from me yesterday; everything seemed to take forever.  I had a huge shopping to do at my favorite place (bold represents sarcasm) Walmart.  I was so tired that I got to the store and was waiting in the customer service line before I realized that I had forgotten the credit card at home – ugh.  At least I only had one kid with me to reload into  the car, otherwise it would have taken even longer.

Aside from the busyness and the fact that I should go to bed earlier but never will, I’ve been sleeping much better lately – that Claritin is a life-saver!  Still can’t get a cat though – we took the kids to the Humane Society the other day (just looking – we actually left without a new pet, hmmm, don’t think that’s ever happened before!), and I just gazed at a cat and sneezed; I didn’t even touch it!  What a shame because our friends have 2 litters of teeny tiny adorable farm kittens right now!  But back to why I was so tired that everything took forever yesterday.  My husband was asked to review the local community theater’s youth production for the newspaper, so we took the kids (minus Sir Climbs A Lot) to see the show.  Well, shows, actually, the turnout was so great for the youth theater this year that there were actually two plays.  And a few of our game night friends were involved, so it was fun to see them on stage.  But by the time we got home and got the kids settled down to start writing the review, it was past 11:00!  And because the turnout for youth theater was so great (which is an awesome thing), we had 37 kids to mention in the review.  And here’s the doozy – 37 kids to mention and no program!  There was an error at the printing company, and the programs were not ready for our special dress rehearsal pre-screening on Thursday night.  The director made us a partial cast list, but it still took awhile to figure out who was who enough to write a review.  Luckily, the kids had done a nice job and the shows were adorable, so some of it was easy writing, so we were chugging along (well, I was playing a video game since Hubby was chosen to write the review and needed my computer, but I was helping) when all of a sudden, something comes FLYING into our living room.  And no, it wasn’t the usual parade of kids – I mean flying literally.  It was a displaced wild bat (we have pet rats, not a pet bat – yet), and it was flying panicked around our living room.  I’m not afraid of bats, but it was a sudden thing to happen at 1ish in the morning, so I cowered next to my husband until it left the room.  I was really afraid it would fly into the halogen lamp – I’ve smelled the roasting bugs that became victims of the halogen; a bat in there would leave quite a mess, poor thing.  So anyway, now we had to locate the bat and show him the door.  In case you’re reading this and you’re horrified and re-thinking any future visits to our house, be assured that like fellow rural NW Ohio older homeowners (wait, I said that wrong – I’m not old, the house is!) we’ve had a bat in the house before.  And like the previous occurrence, this one was captured without incident and returned to the wilderness.  But first, we had to build a bat relocation contraption and stumble around on chairs at 1:30 in the morning trying to catch the thing.  But we managed, and he happily flew away when released outdoors, and it was still before 2 in the morning.  But my poor tired husband still had to finish that review – which is where I got my post title; I can’t believe that bat interfered with my sleep cycle!  All was said and done and we were both asleep just before 3, followed by a busy (and forgetful) Friday with a game night which led to another late night.  Yawn.  So why am I sitting here blogging instead of napping?  Oh yeah – 4 kids = no napping.

Our town holds the distinction of having Ohio’s oldest city band – it’s over 150 years old.  Remarkably, this city band has had only 3 directors since 1888 – the current director has conducted the band for 48 years!  But at the age of 96, this was his last year with the band – and last Wednesday’s concert was his last.  The turnout was incredible – for a small rural town, an audience of 1,000 was beyond expectations, I think.  Usually, we can hear the band concerts from our backyard, but there was a threat of rain for this last concert of the season, so they moved it across town where they could have it under a roof.  We drove over for just a little bit, and even though we stayed in the car in the parking lot (sleeping kids), it was very enjoyable to listen to the band in the night air.

I would have liked to play for the band under this band director, just to meet him and be a part of town history, but my schedule does not allow for this as a hobby right now.  I guess I’ll have to wait until my kids are grown and I can play under the direction of the city band’s 4th conductor since the 1800’s – providing I still have the skills to play in a band, that is –  I am quite rusty even now, let alone years from now!  But as I was saying, the city band as we know it is about to change…