Sept. 20, 2007 Hi! I tried to get this off to you a lot earlier this morning, but the little whosit woke up right as I sat ready to type at 5:45 - exclaiming that the tooth fairy came during the night. Now how is a 6-year old supposed to go back to sleep with that excitement in his life?!?!? You all did miss out on a mystery in my home this week. Chip (the hamster for those new to our e-mails!) has been given a new freedom the last few weeks. We open his cage at 10 p.m. & he runs all night (we see him in different rooms looking at us if we wake up) - but he always returns to his personal retreat center by 5 a.m. for his food and nesting, where we seal him in from the cats for the day. This has gone on for about a month, when he decided to test us the other night & not return. Hmmmmmmmmm. Two days later our cat tried to bite us every time we touched his stomach. A major tummy ache. It didn't take even Camden too long to come to a possible hypothesis - hamster missing 3 days, cat with a serious tummy ache.....I put a radish in his pen and still thought him to be missing when I noticed the radish had been tampered with. We then realized we just had a teenage rebel situation. Now I've heard the loudest possible noises next to our refrigerator in the paper bag area. I pulled them all out, most parts of each bag missing, with a serious little bed made and all kinds of sunflower seeds added to the home. A little homemaker we did have! Needless to say he lost his privileges and is stuck in his original home for good for awhile. He should have known better than to test me. Now for what the cat's problem was, who knows!
January 11, 2007 Excerpt from Newsletter Good morning! Ready for a snowstorm to hit?!?! You'll all enjoy the latest saga in my parenting skills - this time once again with our little hamster friend, Oreo, who had been missing for a week. We even made our own CNN show for Camden during our mining recovery mission. Stu got me up on Tuesday morning and asked me to come in the living room - we heard the most pathetic little scratching behind the main living room wall. I said, "Oh, Stu, you're going to have to study in Grand Island today, you can't listen to him die." Then I scratched lightly, trying to regain contact... a pathetic little scratch back - different area of the wall. A little later we heard the scratch from inside a bookcase - so you should see the back of the bookcase now! Four hours of drilling every 10-15 minutes, CNN news reports every 10 minutes to report latest contacts with the trapped...then suddenly, a little head just popped out!!! Eyes almost swollen shut, dragging half of his body behind him, the most pathetic little friend you've ever seen. He grabbed a little radish, dragged it up to his upper deck, and has slept for the last 48 hours - still in ICU recovery. All members are accounted for in the family & Daddy is the hero!!
December 28, 2006 Newsletter (Nyquil) Good Morning! An entire pot of coffee may not be enough to kick start me this time. I have no words of wisdom, no book review, no anything for you this morning. For here, in brief form, captures the last 24 hours of my little world... Chuck E. Cheeses, Lincoln Children's Museum, and Nyquil. Enough said?
I made the critical mistake of asking Camden, "What should we do for my birthday?" Need I elaborate on what his brilliant suggestion was (the suggestion came with little green eyes sparkling with the excitement of what nirvana was to him)?!? Then, on the way to Lincoln I accidentally took 2 Nyquil tablets instead of 2 Dayquil tablets. When a mother can't keep her head off of the table at Chuck E. Cheese's amidst complete chaos & overstimulation - you know that she has serious problems.
So...needless to say, I have no New Years' Advice, just enough coffee in me to say... May you have a fantastic 2007. May you have desires for a shine in your eyes, hope in your individual stories of life, and the comfort of knowing you are sheltered in your heavenly Father's hands. Have a great weekend! I hope you can come by! Susan
Art With Children December 7, 2006 Newsletter Good morning! Besides the fact that there was no filler to make my coffee taste good, the caffeine has infiltrated my blood stream & my fingers have the capability of typing a note to all of you!
I'm glad that none of you were able to see me once again yesterday attempt to show some domestication skills with Camden. I woke up, knowing I had the day off, and decided to pretend that I didn't need to work on orders, pay bills, clean the house, cook, etc. and (mistakenly) got out a book on Children's Christmas Crafts - Oh, the joy of this season (I say that as I roll my eyes!) Camden & I flipped through it (me with hesitance, knowing my capabilities in the art department, Camden having no clue that I didn't possess this ability & so excited about all of the prospects. We picked out pages with what we could put in the store window on the kids' side (always on my mind to change - but it's just not one of my strong points to change my window!).
After heading this full of dreams child to the art section, piling up on the counter glitter, felt, straws, construction paper, sequins, sparkles, jewels, snowflakes, etc. - back we trecked full of expectations for our beautiful creations.......fast forward to my home scene an hour later: Camden shooting balloons all over the house (from our decopauge project to make a snowman to put treats in) coming up with incredible bodily function sounds that appealed greatly to his five-year old funny bone, Pomeranian paw prints all over our wood floor with red, blue, purple, green glue & glitter in each footprint, shredded newspaper that didn't stick to the one balloon that we had glue all over... you get the point. Failed domestication in the mothering department once again!
So for all of you moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, day-care workers, preschool teachers, neighbors, anyone trying to pull of a great Christmas project - more power to you. Please make extras of anything you're capable of pulling off - Camden & I came up with not even one completed project! The joy of the season - I think I'll stick to the refrigerated sugar cookies at the grocery store, Camden getting art experience with his other teachers, and me back to not trying to pretend I'm someone I'm not!!! Needless to say, I'm glad the little creator is still asleep right now & I can think about the store!
November 16, 2006 Airport Parking Lot I wish you could have observed Camden & I when we flew back into Lincoln last Thursday night. The incredible pride that I had in my mind for actually pulling off a trip (not losing tickets or missing connections) as we gathered our suitcases in Lincoln. Little did I realize how important a teeny bit of information would've been for me to store in my head - where we had parked. You would've all just rolled your eyes to see a little whoseit pulling his Cars backpack and me pulling my suitcase in circle after circle of the parking garage in the dark, continuously pushing our car beeper button to try to hear the car beckon us. When Camden suddenly heard (two stories down) our car saying, "Welcome home, you two!" we just couldn't be more excited, yelling back over down two flights, "Hi car!!" Details, details, how hard that tiny word is for your Susan!!! Thank you for letting me constantly try to pull off running a store, when all of you know I'm just pretending to kind of have it together!!!
November 2, 2006 Newsletter Homemaking Good morning!! I almost had a panic attack 10 minutes ago, for I couldn’t find any coffee in the kitchen. After frantically searching, I found an almost empty bag in the refrigerator……..so now I can begin my morning! I have one funny story that may get you feeling better about your domestic abilities, regardless of what your abilities may be. I decided to take it upon myself to cook a meal for my family on Tuesday night (choosing one particular nonmemorable meal plan that I’m good at – pork chops with Emeril seasoning sprinkled on, crescent rolls, and a spinach salad on the side). I asked Camden if he wanted to set the table. A huge smile crossed his face, he went over to our hutch, and began pulling out our china, with precision in detail, pride down to the placement of antique tea cups. In other words – it was such a special occasion to sit at the table for a meal that he didn’t even know that we don’t use china when we sit at the table! I have a plaque up in my kitchen that says: This Week’s Menu: Sunday: Eat at Mother’s, Monday: Chinese Take-out, Tuesday: Mexican Take-out, Wednesday: Pizza, Thursday: Bucket O’Chicken, Friday: Leftovers, Saturday: Take Me Out! You may now understand why I just had to buy that plaque – it is SO me!! I even took cooking in 4-H for four years. I was the only one that got a white on my cake for decorating, and I was so proud of that cake when I took it in. Oh, the pains of childhood affecting the family in my present………! Back to option B for the family, "Would you like Life Cereal or toast?!?!"
October 5, 2006 Pumpkin Eater Friend Good morning! I'm heading to the grocery store to grab some pumpkins for around the store for our open house the next few days. I LOVE putting pumpkins around! Let's just hope a little visitor that we had come in last year that ate the insides of all of our pumpkins doesn't show his little presence this fall - I'll keep you informed! Whoever he was last year would come in, eat out a perfect little circle in the back of each pumpkin (one per night) - eat the entire inside out of the pumpkin, not leave a single crumb or mess. I felt like I was in the midst of a Beatrix Potter story - his little carvings were so cute. Once I got past "cute" and tried mouse traps (he moved those to the side), rat traps (he just took those underground with him) - Lonnie at the Coop looked at me with a quizzical look and stated, "Why don't you just get rid of the pumpkins?" His question didn't give me a real sense that he thought my mind was very adept (is this the right word?) at making logical decisions! So, with that memory - off I go to the grocery store!!
Fly Strips September 21, 2006 Newsletter A battle was waged in my home this week that I'm not sure if I have a chance to conquer. On Tuesday morning I went through the entire rigmarole (is that a word?!?!) of the coffee making experience, tiptoed around the house loving the silence, tiptoed back to my coffee & in my perfect mixture of filler/coffee cup a fly was floating. I couldn't believe his nerve. You have to understand that the amount of flies in our house is absolutely ridiculous, but up to this point I pretended to not notice their intrusion. I knew that Stu had little fly strips somewhere, so after 10 minutes of rummaging through what seems to have become a million "junk drawers" - bingo! I found the little strips. I had no idea that the beautiful amber color of those strips hanging all over my house would so perfectly correlate with my Laura Ashley color scheme! So - beware if you visit this week - you have to duck all over the place, or your head becomes stuck to these strips. I didn't realize I had such a sadistic side - for to see the little black dots struggling for survival on the strips I have taken great pleasure! And the black dots all over the amber strips perfectly matches my black picture frames. So - maybe I am winning, my coffee was unintruded upon this morning!
September 14, 2006 Newsletter Houdini Hamster Good morning! My coffee is brewing, and I made a full pot for myself this morning after the ordeal I am still trying to recover from at 3:00 this morning! This week we experienced our first "missing pet" episode, for our little hamster, Oreo, (I'm sure you can't figure out his markings) escaped a few nights ago. He had spun his wheel so hard that his entire cage had plummeted off of the dryer, breaking the top off, thus letting little Houdini escape. We have searched high & low for this little creature, to no avail. Last night as I stumbled sneezing towards the allergy drugs, low & behold, there my little friend was in the center of the kitchen on his hind legs just looking up at me. I was so excited, I exclaimed (and scared him to death) "Well, hi little Chip!!!" (his nickname). Little did he deserve such a smile, for he made himself hide all around the house from me for the next hour. I didn't realize that I had so many negative names in the back of my mind for little rodents. Needless to say, I conquered - he is in his broken pen, taped up with duct tape as we speak!
August 10, 2006 Newsletter Inability to accomplish anything in the heat. Good morning! It's kind of tough to even get going when you know that in about an hour the heat is going to want to send us all to our basements for the day. I'm kind-of beginning to envy the life of our little hamster. He sleeps all day, then has incredible surges of energy all night - completely oblivious to the fact that humanity is dying of heat. I'll have to admit to you that this week I am behaving as if vallium were a part of my blood stream. Walking in a daze. I have only one piece of advice for you this week that has seemed to work great for me. Have absolutely no goals. Yesterday I tried that and it was amazing how I didn't have to feel guilty for all that I wasn't accomplishing in my new drug-like state.
