Common Mom

We walked out of the house today to take the kids to the bus stop and saw this . . . it made me giggle.

Lots going on today, so in lieu of a new post, have a good giggle on my behalf with this recycled post

My 7 year old is really cracking himself up lately. For example, last night he finished reading to me around 8:30. I tell him I’m way tired - I mean I did just spend an hour herding cats at soccer practice (it was a blast . . . really . . . we had tons of fun!) - and that I’m heading to bed. He usually asks me to stay so he can read to me a little longer, but tonight he just said “OK - goodnight. Are you getting in bed RIGHT AWAY?” Um, Yes, I tell him.

So I walk in to my bedroom (hubby is gone flying this week, so it’s just me), get ready for bed, and pull back the covers to hop in. I SCREEEEEAAAAMMMMMM and almost jump backward out the window!!! While I’m regrouping, I hear my 7 year old in the hallway, laughing as hard as I’ve ever heard him laugh. The little turd had put a huge toy spider in my bed under the sheets!!!

Ha ha ha - very funny Jason! If I was willing to stay up with him while he has bad dreams for the next month, I’d get back at him. I’ll just have to find another way to even the score.

Let the games begin!

My friend, Ami, had a link to this eBay auction on her blog today. HAHAHAHAHAHA! I almost died laughing - you have GOT to read this if you haven’t already This truly strikes a chord with me because we had a Pokemon Card “incident” at school last year and my son is banned for life from ever owning another Pokemon card.

Well, Jason has made it through his first full week of 2nd grade and he’s doing great so far - woo hoo! He even came home yesterday and said how much he loved his new school - whew!

I have to giggle though . . . we’ve been talking about getting him some “spirit wear” - you know, a t-shirt or something that has his school’s logo and mascot on it. The school mascot is the Thunder - which made me think, can that really even be considered a mascot? How do you dress as “thunder” - a cougar, a tiger, a cheetah, a bear . . . all excellent mascots with actual costumes. But Thunder? I guess it’s appropriate given that we have a thunderstorm pretty much every afternoon here in the summer.

Anyway, back to the spirit wear. We’re at the meet the teacher night last week and he and I are walking down the hallway when we see a sign for the spirit wear . . . only they’re calling it Thunderwear - “Buy Your Thunderwear Here!” Jason almost loses it rolling on the floor laughing hysterically.

Really? I mean, could they have catered more to the young boys at school in calling their spirit wear Thunderwear? Apparently it’s especially funny to a boy who likes to read Captain Underpants books

EDITED: Adding a photo of the Thunder logo . . . really, lightning with the word thunder written on the cloud . . . very profound!

 

But can’t you just see the girls walking around in those shorts with the words written across the backside . . . Princess, Volleyball, Thunder

Or not! Conversation with Keira - 4 year old . . .

Mom: Hey, how was school today?
Keira: It was good. We had lots of fun.
M: Excellent. And how was lunch?
K: Good. Did you know that Ms. Lupita doesn’t let us do funny stuff at school?
M: What? I think that’s not true. I know Ms. Lupita and she’s a great teacher with a great sense of humor. She loves funny stuff!
K: No she doesn’t. Like when I do funny stuff like fart and burp to make the other kids laugh, she says that’s not appropriate.

My little princess shines through again.

What was the number one song on the day you were born? Go here to find out! And please share

Mine was Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me by Mac Davis! I knew every other song on the list for my birth date in the 70s, but not that one!

Keira’s preschool teacher is on vacation for a couple of weeks. We got to school a bit early yesterday because I had to get to work for a meeting, so I didn’t get to see who her substitute teacher was. I also got to school a bit later to pick them up, so I didn’t see her after school, either.

When we got home, I asked Keira what her teacher’s name was. Her response almost left me rolling on the floor!

“I don’t know what her name was. But she had long hair in a beautiful pony tail on top of her head. She had on a pretty purple shirt with sparkly pink hearts and flowers on it and a beautiful skirt. She wore blue shoes . . . shoes that covered her toes, but not her heels . . . kind of like flip flop shoes. But I don’t know what her name was.”

OMG!!! I fear that I am raising the next Joan or Melissa!!!

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a bucket of green army men? You know, those teeny tiny 1-2 inch tall green army men in various combat poses standing on those little plastic platforms. (The army men are one of my favorite parts of Toy Story, btw.) My son decided he wanted an Army theme for his birthday party, which is just fine with me. We’ve got a heavily wooded yard, so we figure the boys can play capture the flag and run around in the trees with their little plastic army hats on. We also got this fun pinata shaped like an Army tank. The great idea that the hubby and I had was to fill the pinata with little green army men. So we went to Target, absolutely positive that we’d walk to the toy section, grab a bucket of green army men, and be on our way. Much to our surprise, there was no bucket of green army men. There wasn’t even a teeny tiny bag of green army men! So off to Walmart we went. Again, disappointment.

We were absolutely flabbergasted. Really? No bucket of plastic green army men? “How can this be” we thought?! Back in the day, we could walk 2 blocks to the tiny local grocery store and buy a bag of green army men for a penny! They were EVERYWHERE! Apparently that is not the case anymore. I figured that one of the stores would have them online, so I get online Monday morning and go to Walmart.com. I type in army men and come up with all kinds of movies, video games, even books - but not one single toy! Really?! Off to Target.com and Toysrus.com with the same results. Who woulda though getting a bucket of green army men would be so tough! I even tried Oriental Trading Company - they’ve got tons of crap and an entire section devoted to an army birthday party - they HAVE to have a bucket of green army men! Nope . . . but hey, they do have a 48 pack of green BENDABLE army men. Oh, and did you know that there are 12 items in a dozen? I’m totally serious . . . Oriental Trading Company said so . . . over and over and over. “4 dozen per lot. 12 items per dozen.” I decided to “keep that in mind” as my kids say when they can’t decide which “thing” they want to choose.

I finally give in and google “green army men” - well, you can only imagine what kind of results I got for that! Not the kind of stuff I really wanted coming up on my computer at work. Next I tried army men toys. BINGO! Turns out, there’s actually a Web site called plastic-army-men.com. Who knew?! I also learned that you have many many choices when choosing your plastic army men. You can get men from all the different wars! Really, I just want a package of about 100 plastic green army men - I really don’t care what they’re wearing. I found the 100 green army men package that I was looking for, but the thing is, the company is in Canada. I am not. While I could get a gazillion green army men for $15, the shipping was also $15! Sorry, but not paying $30 for some green army men that had a 2-4 week shipping average and may not make it for the party. I was about ready to give up and fill the pinata with candy (ICK!), then decided to head to eBay, where I of course found tons of auctions for huge lots of plastic army men with all the trimmings. Again, excellent prices - buy now and for only $20 you get over 500 green army men, tanks, and whatever else you might ever want to accessorize them. Oh, and they are BRAND NEW too! Of course, shipping will cost you $20, but that’s OK, cuz look - you’re getting all these cool brand new army men for a mere $20!!! Um, no thank you. So I tried Google one more time. This time I tried plastic army men. Apparently THAT was the magic phrase. I got 5 whole sites this time to try, and I was happy as a clam when one of them, http://www.backyardartillery.com, offered me 100 plastic army men (I got to choose green or tan!) for $6.99 and only wanted to charge me $6 in shipping. And get this, the order will be here in 5 days!

So, here’s to hoping you have GIRLS, because they are much less likely to request little plastic army men for a birthday party. But if you do have boys, you now know exactly what to do and what NOT to do to find those darling little plastic green army men.