A little bit of heaven right in my own living room

Shocking right? It can be hard to spot amidst the clutter of toys, markers, rock collections, etc. But it's there.

And it looks like this:



I am actually a little ashamed to admit that it took me six long winters to figure this out. But should one decide to take one's well loved, faded old blue nintendo chair out of the closet, set it up in front of the fireplace and kick one's feet up on the hearth stones - that certain someone would find an itty bitty piece of heaven right there.

Oh, I have cozied up to the fireplace many a wintry day since we moved in. But it has been a love/hate relationship. I love how toasty warm it is, until that instant where I have sat there too long and my back starts to feel like it's on fire and I am jumping around all crazy-like trying not to let the fabric from my shirt touch my back. Then as soon as I've cooled back down to room temperature I scoot myself right next to the fire again and the dance repeats. But, I have discovered that if you turn around and sit with your feet closest to the fire - it doesn't happen. ever. Maybe your bare feet are tougher, I suspect mine are.

It really is amazing. I could nap right there. I could sit there all day and read, knit, day dream, the possibilities are endless. Except that my children would not permit me staying in one place that long. So really I haven't experimented with how long I could actually park myself right there. And lets face it, at some point I would have to take myself to the kitchen for sustenance.

If you should call and I don't answer, odds are I'm relaxing right here....




p.s. I am aware how freakishly long my feet look...Its a Newman thing.

The hidden dangers in brushing your children's teeth

I must have skipped over this part in the Parenting 101 presentation.

The part that says if you kneel on the linoleum in the bathroom floor in such a way that you would be able to see into your child's mouth and thus confirm that you are actually brushing their teeth properly, then the blood vessel(s) that run across your knee cap will EXPLODE.

Not even joking.


And that the very nearly asleep current husband will crack one eyelid, mumble something about his wife being a hypochondriac and pull the covers up a little higher over his shoulder. So I sat for a bit with scary veins throbbing and burning and watching my knee turn purple, knocked out some Dr. Oz dvr events and went to bed.
One a side note: This has happened once before. once. And that time involved same current husband, a fierce competition, and a bright yellow tennis ball hurtling toward my ankle at who knows how many million miles an hour.
And that was my own fault because I looked at said fast moving ball, thought "My husband would not really be trying to hit me with that" and stood my ground. I didn't move an inch. Which I probably should have because that ball collided with the knobby little bone on the outside of my ankle, exploded the blood vessel there and felt exactly the same as what just happened to my knee.


This is what it looked like in the morning.




So weird. I was sure when I told my mother about it the next morning she would be all kinds of concerned and have very motherly advice on why it happened and how not to let it happen again. NOPE. Verdict from the mom column: It happens, get over it.

So. I'm glad it's not shorts weather outside. And don't you think that knees are kind of ugly and strange looking anyway, aside from the giant purple bruises?

Broken Arm - Take 2

second verse
same as the first,
a little bit higher
and a little bit worse.





This is what happens when little 3 yr old girls try to fly like a fairy at the neighbor's house. I don't think enough pixie dust was used. Obviously.

Three more weeks and we should be good to go.

On a separate note, isn't Em's rock collection lovely. Now if only she would be happy keeping it somewhere other than the kitchen counter.