Fly Invasion of 2008 ~OR~ Flies are drawn to Rainbows!

Last summer my house was invaded by these horrible, gigantic, child chasing, dog teasin, dizzy making beasts. Most people call them flies. Here we call them the Invaders!

At one point last year I counted over 40 flies on my ceiling in the kitchen! YUCK! We tried the fly swatter thing. That was just enough to make them laugh, yes flies laugh I've heard it myself!

Kirke and I finally sat down to devise a plan to rid ourselves of these beasts once and for all! We tried sprays, traps, strips, even stripping didn't work although we never saw our neighbors again after that attempt.

Finally I got an idea. My ideas are never conventional mind you. I have this Rainbow Vacuum. It doubles as many things. The part the salesperson doesn't tell you is that it will suck flies right out of the air!

I discovered this when I was at my wits end! I didn't even tell Kirke what I was doing. I simply grabbed the rainbow, lifted it onto the counter in the kitchen, took off the power nozzle so I just had the long handle part with the canister at my feet. Kirke came into the kitchen to see what I was up to and almost died laughing! Men!

Soon enough the little beasts were drowning in the rainbow's water collection tank. One by one they lost the battle. It was so funny to see them trying to hold on to the ceiling as the suction got closer and closer until they finally gave up and I won! Then Kirke joined me by using the broom at the outer edges of the kitchen and dining room and chasing the beasts in my direction. We were a real fly destroying team! The beasts lost that battle and the other flies must have heard the news of our fly destroying machine because we never again had that many flies invade at one time.

And we got a screen door for the backdoor. Too bad over the winter that screen door died and now I don't have one at all.

Flies BEWARE because I'm ready this year!



Oh hey want to know what makes me laugh? Everytime I click to spell check it tells me I'm spelling Kirke wrong! I've been saying that ALL along! Let's add an "e"! Who does that??

The Interview

I'm not sure how this started. I was talking to Tayton and decided he would make a good interview victim subject. So I typed up a few questions and asked them to both of the boys. I quoted them exactly despite gramatical errors. Enjoy!




First I talked to Tayton:

~What is your name? Tayton David Best

~Are you named after anyone? No. Am I right? (yes he was named after people...David is a very prominent name in our families)

~How old are you? 6

~What is your favorite thing to do? play with Pokemon and watch Pokemon

~How many years have you been alive? I dont know how many? umm 12?

~How old is Mommy? 21 is that right?

~How old is Daddy? is he 25?

~How many pets do you have? two but we used to have three

~Who named your pets? you

~What would you name them? I would of called scrappy uh you know, pikachu and allie the same name (allie)

~If you had all the money in the world what would you do with it? spend it on a bunch of pokemons and food

~What do you love most about your house? hmm...the part that we have a garage.

~Why do you like your garage so much? because we have a pool in it and we have bikes in it.

~Do you want another brother or sister? no.

~why not? because

~What do you like best about your brother? That sometimes he plays with me.

~What do you like best about Mom? (thinking for a really long time) .....that you come upstairs sometimes and sometimes you let us watch tv down here.

~Is that all you like about me? yeah

~What do you like best about Dad? that he carries us sometimes

~If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? In alaska still

~Why? because we dont get paid very much here

~If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life what would it be? can I pick two of my favorite chips? doritos and sun chips and fruit (so much for one thing)

~How old will you be when you get married? 21

~What grade are you in when you graduate from high school? college

~How many planets are there? 8 since Pluto aint one anymore

Name them? earth, sun, mercury, venus, earth, and thats all I can remember but Pluto isn't one anymore because it was this big(hold up hand in a circle). They took it down and brought it to Earth and put it in a museum.

~Why do you want to be when you grow up? a firefighter or maybe a builder

~How can you tell if someone is old? If they have white hair they're old isn't that right?
~What are you? a kid

~What is your favorite song? its a pokemon song


Korbin:

~What's your name? Cool Dude but not I want to talk about Scrappy

~Were you named after anyone? Yeah I was named after Tayton because he was born first

~How old are you? 5

~What is your favorite thing to do? play and eat

~How many years have you been alive? a long time like a thousand years

~How old is your mommy? 21

~Daddy? 29

~How many pets do you have? 2

~Who named your pets? you and dad

~What would you name them? I would name them scrappy and allie-allie

~If you had all the money in the world what would you do with it? pay everything (what does that mean?) that means a lots I would buy everything even all the houses

~What do you love most about your house? the kitchen the bathroom the laundry room, garage, the stairs the hallways,the bedrooms, the playroom, the sleep room, the tv room, but that's it.

~Do you want another brother or sister? another brother because so Nicholas and Tayton can play with each other and I would have the new brother to play with.

~What would you name him? Nicky

~What do you like best about Tayton? I like my brother if he plays with me, that's it the end.

~What do you like best about Mommy? I like my Mommmy more than my brother because he doesnt like me sometimes and you like me all the time and so does dad.

~What do you like best about Dad? I like most about my daddy, oh, wrestling with my Daddy

~If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be and why? This house because it's so big

~If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life what would it be? so sad, lasagna. (bazonya)

~How old will you be when you get married? 26

~What grade are you in when you graduate from high school? first grade

~How many planets are there? a lots but not Pluto because they took down Pluto

~Name them? pluto the sun and moon

~What about the planet we live on? I dont know the name

~What do you want to be when you grow up? monster truck cool dude

~How can you tell if someone is old? the green lines on their hands

~What are you? a person and I'm a little bit of old

~What is your favorite song? Sing it.


So now I want to challenge all of you to interview one or two or all 8 of your children and see how many laughs you get! Post your interviews on your blogs for everyone to enjoy!

I can't believe they did that!

Korbin came down the stairs today with his hand steady next to his side. I knew that something was up. I saw a hint of green under his hand. I told him to give me whatever it was that he was hiding. I thought it was the scissors from yesterday. But no, I wasnt that lucky. Instead it was this:



Yep that's right! My brand new, very sharp Pampered Chef paring knife. Seriously? Give me a freakin break! What on Earth was he thinking? What on earth were the other three kids older than him that knew he had the knife thinking? What was a brown haired 8 year old doing when she cut herself with said knife and didn't tell anyone? He had it in his pants pocket ALL day today! I'm lucky my son is not my daughter now!

Don't worry though. I sat my two down and told them how they could die from using tools they aren't old enough to use properly. I'm going to lose my mind. He's 5. Not even 5 1/2 yet. Just plain 5. And about as bone headed as can be!

Whats next? Good thing WE don't have any guns in the house! Ugh... life.

On the upside I just went to this blog Booking Mama entered to win Drivng Sideways by new author Jess Riley.



Go enter but if you win please let me have it!

He did what?

As my day progressed today, I realized we had a Relay For Life committee meeting. Oops! So I spend a good part of the afternoon preparing for the meeting since I was asked to do the talking tonight. Anyone who knows me knows that I love to talk and have no fear of public speaking need time to prepare for these things. I have to have at least two or three minutes to look over notes before I begin my ramblings!

The boys were in the company of 5 other children at tonights meeting. During the committee meeting we were getting ready to start and realized that our agendas had to be separated. I started passing them out and asking people to tear them in half to separate the committee part from the team captain parts. Someone asked me why we had to rip them. I replied that we didn't have any scissors and forgot to cut them before we left.

To my surprise here comes Tayton. He's been wearing his fishing vest for days now. He comes up to me and says "excuse me mom excuse me". "Yes Tayton?" I reply in my sweet loving motherly way. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a pair of scissors. This kid is great! He's always got strange things in his pockets. He also had a roll of scotch tape. Crazy kid! He saved us from lots of tearing though!


Amber was over tonight after our meetings. I decided to unhook my crummy Vonage Router and hook up the Belkin router Kirke bought when he was in Maryland. Yeah as much of a computer geek as I try not to admit to be I could not get it work right. I decided not to waste time fighting with it and called Belkin.

First of all when you call a company like this don't expect the worker to speak very English very well. I was on the phone with the first lady for oh I don't know an hour? Something like that. Long enough that when she put me on hold to transfer me to someone who knew what they were doing might be better able to assist me, I threw my phone at to Amber and ran to the bathroom. Unfortunately I didn't have time to grab my bluetooth and more pepsi. I think that Amber saw smoke coming from my hair being on fire from having my phone up to my head and overheating for so long because she brought me my bluetooth and a fire extinguisher. She also filled my drink, I just love her! I think she was scared that I was gonna go off on the poor Belkin guy and knew Pepsi makes me happy!

Finally after a gazillion hours and the onset of a horrible headache we got it running good woohoo for the guy I don't know that I told I wanted to kiss! I was just so stinking happy that he actually (after another hour) helped me fix my problem. He was in India, it was only ten in the morning! How would you like to start your day dealing with computer dumb, angry Americans like me? Poor guy!

Korbin/Cool Dude came downstairs with a strip of money taped to the front of his shirt. He has a major infatuation with money. He finds change everywhere, steals it from my car even and hides it in strange places. Today he wasn't hiding it very well. His brother must have whipped out the handy dandy scotch tape from one of the billion pockets on his vest so Korbin could keep his beloved money close to his heart.


I was trying to get him to get pajamas on at the time. We were wrestling around and his pants started to fall and his little white underwear were hanging out. I pretended to spank him. His response to this was to drop his drawers and moon me! I went to swat him and that little snot "tooted" as we say! I thought I was going to die from laughing so hard. I of course told him that it is never okay to moon people once I stopped laughing. Gross little boy! I should have had girls!



I'm not sure what happened with this picture. Tayton took it and the color was all off and crazy. This is the best I could do with it. Sorry! Notice the money...

The Worst Part of a Deployment

Last night I went to bed and I discovered the worst part of my husband being gone. You're probably thinking its going to bed alone every night, worrying about his safety, dealing with kids crying about missing their Daddy, having to move heavy furniture on my own, fighting off grill fires myself, chasing around two boys with no help, carrying in groceries, all of the housework being put on me, going to doctors appointments on my own, being lonely, living by the computer waiting for the next IM to come, trying to financially budget his needs there with ours here, worrying about car troubles, carrying heavy kids, or of course having no one to cuddle with and watch tv. Well you're wrong. There is something far worse than any of these things!

Ticks! Yep that's right, when my husband left I lost my tick hunter/killer. Yesterday I had to weed eat the knee high weeds in my dog's yard. Anyone here knows that my house is a tick magnet. I'm pretty sure that every week in the wee hours of the night a plane flys over and drops a couple hundred pounds of ticks directly over my house. The boys can walk from the house to the car and find a tick on them. It's so creepy. So after I did the back yard yesterday I felt all creepy crawly and tickish.

When I went to bed last night I was not convinced that I was tick-free. I twisted and turned and looked for ticks in the mirror but dang it all there's no way I can see the back of my head or various other tick zones. I laid in bed and tossed and turned and even turned on the light a million times because I swear there was something crawling on me.

At one point I got up and went into my bathroom. As soon as I turned on the light a little huge spider went running across the floor. I couldn't scream and have Kirke come running in laughing at me to kill the spider. Nope I had to suck it up and grab the nearest object and chase that sucker down and kill him myself. Gross!

I don't love it. I miss my tick hunting, spider smasher. This is definately the worst part of a deployment. Tick tick tick. They're everywhere!

Well we had a better day..

Today was better for us. We even got up and got some things done. I'm declaring my time of pouting and being moody over when he gets to his destination and I can send off my first package.

Tayton has been having issues with wearing shoes. He usually sheds them pretty quick whenever we get somewhere but lately he's been forgetting to wear shoes when we go somewhere. I had to carry his heavy (39 lbs now!!!) butt into the commissary and push him in the cart the whole time. Darn kid!

I'm gonna glue shoes to his feet! Or I could just leave a pair in the van for him. Except that would mean I put them on him and took him in the store. So if on the odd chance he kept them on until we got home then we'd have to remember to put them back in the van. Never mind it's too much work. I'll do better to just threaten to make him walk to the store instead of being carried in and hope he starts to remember.

Guess what? ZZ Top is coming here!! YAY!! I'm so excited. And guess what else? I'm sooo taking my camera in this time! August 31st we will hire our sitter and run out the door singing! I can't wait! And I'm really interested to see what specimen of people ZZ Top in Missouri brings. I hope they remember their clothes or I'm gonna need to stab my eyes out!

Today Sucked

Nothing good happened today. I'm pretty sure of that. So since I'm in a pissy mood I won't bother you with it. Instead I'll show you this slide show of one of our river trips before Kirke left.

Tupperwho?

We have these Tupperware team meetings monthly with our director and the rest of her team. It is usually fun and I get to laugh. The ride to the meeting was fun as usual but the meeting was blah today. Here are the notes I managed to take:

*Every Midget Seal counts! (Our director said so, apparently we are an equal opportunity midget loving company!)

*(referring to our Director) "Use her and Use I we're here to help!" (she said that too! And she just got a free car, not a company car, it's hers to keep forever even if she quits TW tomorrow! Here's a picture)


They like to put us in it and take our pictures. Weird...like hmmm...too bad it's not yours sucker! No really its for motivation to earn our own, I think. This picture is Brandy, Amber, Roxy, a little girl we don't know and I.

*let the hugging begin

*We've met our quota of Kathy/Cathy's for the team. There are three at the table and it's starting to freak me out. Like the gremlins they keep multiplying.


Those were the best of my notes. I took some real ones too but those were my wandering thoughts or noteworthy moments.

We watched the movie Juno the other night. I loved it! It was very funny and I loved the music it cracked me up! Amber hated it though. Which made me love it even more! So of course I volunteered to drive to our meeting tonight which meant I got to play my ipod! Woohoo, I limewired the song Loose Lips right away when they left to get ready for the drive.



Please don't hold the comments made in this song against me just because I like the song doesn't mean I agree completely with the politics of the song....And it's really freakin fun to try to sing the song. I told the girls I'd learn all the words so I can sing it much better then I did tonight. (sorry girls)

Here's the words cause they make me laugh! I need to laugh!

Loose Lips by Kimya Dawson
I got the lyrics here!

loose lips might sink ships but loose gooses take trips
to san francisco, double dutch disco,
tech tv hottie, do it for scotty
do it for the living and do it for the dead
do it for the monsters under your bed
do it for the teenagers and do it for your mom
broken hearts hurt but they make us strong and

we won't stop until somebody calls the cops
and even then we'll start again and just pretend that
nothing ever happened

we won't stop until somebody calls the cops
and even then we'll start again and just pretend that
nothing ever happened

we're just dancing, we're just hugging,
singing, screaming, kissing, tugging
on the sleeve of how it used to be
how's it gonna be?
i'll drop kick russell stover, move into the starting over house
and know matt rouse and jest are watching me achieve my dreams

and we'll pray, all damn day, every day,
that all this shit our president has got us in will go away
while we strive to figure out a way we can survive
these trying times without losing our minds

so if you wanna burn yourself remember that I LOVE YOU
and if you wanna cut yourself remember that I LOVE YOU
and if you wanna kill yourself remember that I LOVE YOU
call me up before your dead, we can make some plans instead
send me an IM, i'll be your friend

shysters live from scheme to scheme but my 4th quarter pipe dreams
are seeming more and more worth fighting for
so i'll curate some situations, make my job a big vacation
and i'll say F*CK BUSH AND F*CK THIS WAR
my war paint is sharpie ink and i'll show you how much my shit stinks
and ask you what you think because your thoughts and words are powerful
they think we're disposable, well both my thumbs opposable
spelled out on a double word and triple letter score

we won't stop until somebody calls the cops
and even then we'll start again and just pretend that
nothing ever happened

we won't stop until somebody calls the cops
and even then we'll start again and just pretend that
nothing ever happened

we're just dancing, we're just hugging,
singing, screaming, kissing, tugging
on the sleeve of how it used to be

Oh and another funny Best Boy moment. We were leaving the battalion the other day after we dropped off Kirke. Korbin and I were crying and Tayton said "Mom why are you guys even crying, he's only been gone a few minutes?"
It was funny. He's so logical in his little mixed up mind!

Today at OT he spun and spun and spun in super fast circles for most of his hour of therapy. All Katy said was "wow it sure is taking a long time for him to process that information". I said "you're gonna be dizzy when you get off of there" and she pointed out the truth "that's not gonna happen". He doesn't get dizzy because his head is in a sort of constant dizzy state so it doesn't phase him. He loves circles, spinning anything like that that is repetitive and never ending it's soothing for him. It works, we're okay with that.

****Hey Kirke, I want to know if you're really reading my blogs over there or just watching the videos and checking out the pictures. Lets play one of those fun little games I like to play. You know, the one where I leave the longest voicemail ever just rambling about nothing? Then at the end I say something stupid like "if you listened to this whole message you'll say the word apple when we talk again". Yep here we go, if you've read to the bottom of this My Love, you'll mention our first kiss when we talk/email/IM again!

Dear God,

Here are the boys saying prayers tonight. It's been a long time since they had to pray for Daddy in Iraq....and it shows.



By the way it's now midnight and they are still awake talking away. Tomorrow Tayton has OT so it'll be a good time to fix our whole "sleeping till 10 am thing and get onto something that resembles a schedule.

Friday night we went to Brandy's to let the kids play after a delicious dinner at the big MD's. Here are some pictures of them playing and trying to crash into each other.
Here's little Korbin.

Little Megan

This is Elizabeth.

Naughty little Tayton.

And last Nicholas!

ZZ Topless

I was supposed to attend my college graduation on May 31st in Springfield even though I'm still finishing my last class. I'm a responsible college student and have worked very hard for the past two years doing online courses. The thing about online courses is that you're basically paying out a ton of money to a University for them to simply give you a book and a syllabus and say teach yourself.

Well as responsible and dedicated as I am to my education I decided my time would be best spent doing responsible grown up things. So we went to a ZZ Top Concert at Ft Knox. The previous "we" included me, one of my best friends ever, her 11 year old daughter and some of her other friends. Kirke was sweet enough to stay home and watch all three boys.

I expected that a concert on a military base would have mostly military and military families attending. I could not have been more wrong. The crowd looked as if every trailer park in Kentucky vomitted it's residents right in the middle of the Ft Knox airfield. And if that wasnt bad enough, appearantly many of these people didn't even have time to get dressed before being spewed all around us!

I decided that my time during the opening bands would be best spent taking pictures of people around me to share with all of you. I could not believe what I saw. It didn't take long before the well dressed normal people around me joined by pointing out people that I just had to get a picture of and even letting me use their camera phones when mine died long before ZZ Top even came out!

I saw more topless men that one day than I have in my entire life! Men who found it appropriate to take off their shirts just because they could. It wasn't the great looking guys or the young guys either. It was ugliest, creepiest, most tattooed, pierced nipple, beer belly having group of men I've ever seen!

Women who were probably 30 years old at the very first ZZ Top concert 30 years ago tried to wear the exact same outfit this time as they did 30 years ago. Old ladies with bra-tops on or their tank tops rolled up under thier bras, with their bellies hanging over way too tight jeans or shorts were freaking me the heck out!

And for your viewing pleasure here are the best pictures I could manage from my cell phone. I appologize for the picture quality, it was the best I could do since the tickets said "no cameras" and I was the only one in the audience who actually obeyed and left mine in the car, stupid me!!

First we have the Topless:










And now on to the original ZZ Top Groupies from first few years!






And here are some of my favorites:

This lady walked between our chairs and the row in front of us, very very close in front of us and then she stopped. With her tail right in Wendy's face. I did what any good friend would do and took pictures. I even pretended to "reach out and touch someone"!



Next we have some of my least favorite hairstyles if you can call it that, of all time:






This girl looked like she rubbed a dandilion on her head to get that shade of yellow blonde!



I didn't read the dress code before we left but I'm pretty sure it didn't include wearing pants that your butt will try to eat the whole night!


For a minute I thought that Britany and Avril were at the concert.



And these pictures, well take a look:




And now so that you can forget everything you just saw here's a picture of Cool Dude!

I'm Losing My Mind Already

Well it's been a long day. We came home from dropping off Kirke around 1. I edited all of the pictures Amber took for us and then I let the boys watch cartoons and I laid down for an hour. When I woke up we waited on Amber and to get here and then we went to McDonalds for dinner with Brandy's family. Then we decided to rent 27 dresses and go to Brandy's new house to watch it. Good movie but too long in my opinion.

We just got home a little bit ago and found a pretty little gift all for me! Thanks Roxy!! Guess what it was? Give up? Ok ok I'll tell you.....socks! Yep lots of very cute socks just for me. Socks make me happy and it worked! Thanks so much!

I was feeling pretty good right up until my horrible mind tricked me. Kirke's plane was late leaving St Louis so they missed their connecting flight to Kuwait. The airline put them up in a hotel for the night. In my little jumbled up mind got it in my head at midnight that they were stuck in St Louis for the night. I got so out of hand with this thought that I got excited thinking we'd load up and go on up there to spend tomorrow with him since his flight is a red-eye. As if that wasn't bad enough I even asked the boys if they'd like to go spend the day with daddy tomorrow. They of course said yes. AND I even text messaged Kirke to tell him we were heading to St Louis.

Then my brain kicked back in and said "hey stupid he's not in STL he's over 18 hours away". Oops. Then I had to re-break the boys hearts and tell them Mommy got confused and Daddy isn't in STL. I feel so disappointed that I had let my error in my head get so out of control so fast that it hurt so bad when the reality sunk in. We can't just go and see him anymore. After tomorrow we can't call him or text message him just because we want to either. Is it too late to decide this military lifestyle isn't for me?


Ok lets laugh a little okay. So the Brigade Commander (I think that's who she was she was a Lieutenant Colonel) was talking to my boys and even presented them with a Brigade Coin for their support of the Army. Afterwards she was talking to me and asked when I was due. Yep that's right I've lost around 30 pounds, probably gained 20 back by now but still, and she thought I was pregnant. She said "and when are you due?" and I looked at her and said "never"! She looked like she might panic at this point and said "oh I'm sorry, I can't believe I just did that" and I said "yeah after my hysterectomy we decided we were done having kids". Then a few minutes later I saw Amber pointing the camera in our direction. I decided I'd use that moment to show my mean face at her (she didn't see but who knows who might have) for asking me if I was pregnant!


Then as I looked at the pictures Amber took I realized my shirt made me look about 5 months pregnant. I burned it put it in a bag to donate to goodwill as soon as I got home. Actually I threw it in the trash but decided now that is a wasteful thing to do and I wanna go green so we'll recycle that shirt to someone who is pregnant.

Here's some more pictures for your viewing pleasure (or not if you don't want to see what it really is like for a military family to say goodbye for over a year).