Children old enough to do chores....

PRICELESS

Shout out

Lots of things to celebrate today, if you're a Berning:

Happy Birthday, Shelley!
Happy Birthday, Stacia in Ada!
Happy Birthday, Justine!
Happy Anniversary, Mick & Stacia!

Whew! We hope you all have terrific days. xxxxooooo

And, a drumroll for me.... only two more weeks of tax returns!! I must say, the government has not made my job easier this year. I have had so many calls today from people who usually extend their tax returns, but are not going to do so this year because they want their share of the Economic Stimulus Package the government is sending. Hhmph.

Lazy Sunday

Aubrey spent the night with a friend. Do you think they got much sleep? This is how she spent the afternoon: Jerry took the boys for haircuts:
You can kind of see the cereal boxes on the floor behind them. They are having a lego war, and decided cereal boxes would make the best fort.

I received a lovely package via UPS Friday afternoon. I was so excited! I thought maybe I'd ordered something fun and forgotten about it, or perhaps someone sent me a present. No such luck. It was a HUGE pile of work for me. So that's what I've been doing this afternoon - trying to catch up on my stuff. That doesn't sound like much fun, but I'd much rather be doing it on a day like today (rainy, cold, dreary) then in a couple of weeks when the sun will SURELY be out and I will want to plant some flowers!

Since you asked...

It was almost balmy at soccer this morning. I think the air temp was 44 degrees, and the wind was only blowing 10 mph or so. Geesh. I am SO READY FOR spring!

Jerry and the boys planted the Shumard Oak in our backyard this afternoon. If we can only keep Barney from digging it back up, it might have a chance! It is really only a stick with roots.

Shumard Oak

How about that? I didn't know there was such a thing. I wanted to make some silly puns about family trees, but I restrained myself :) Click here for some more information on the Shumard Oak trees.

For those of you who didn't know, my paternal grandmother was Evelyn Shumard Wiles.

Drat!

Double drat! Triple drat!

Jerry and I got home from the office today, and guess what was waiting in the mail for us? A note from the school nurse. Jackson's vision is 20/70 and 20/40.

It's my fault. I totally jinxed it; just TWO days ago I was putting Aubrey's glasses back in her case and thought to myself how lucky we were that the boys had good eyesight, especially considering how poor Jerry's is.

We have an appointment at the optometrist on April 8th. I'll post pictures, I promise.

A small guilt trip... for the Bernings

Look at this happy woman. What could possibly make her smile so?
Why look, she is reading our blog! She LOVES the blog. She wishes all her children would blog!

In addition to being happy, she is also very talented. She took her own picture!

Ahhhh...Spring!

It was such a nice day Tuesday, that we decided to break out the sidewalk chalk. And look how green our grass is getting!

The Easter Rabbit Lives, Also

A short addendum to the Easter Bunny post below:

After the Easter Bunny visited our neighborhood, Jerry took Jackson and Luke to K-mart to purchase an innertube for Luke's bike tire. Apparently, there was also a live Easter Bunny there.

Jackson said to me yesterday: "Mom, I guess that must be the Easter Rabbit. Cause, you know, they looked a little different. Maybe they're cousins or something."

Maybe. You never know!

Guess who's growing?

Yep, she's officially 5'0" now. She's just a little bit excited about that.

The Easter Bunny Lives

Look who visited our neighborhood Sunday:

and then hopped away!

Miss Nosy Neighbor

You know that crazy lady who snoops on the neighbors from her window? It turns out I am that lady. Shocking, huh? This was too good to pass up though. Look at this closely:

You are going to have to use your imagination, because this was taken from Aubrey's bedroom window, through the blinds. I was too chicken to actually open the window and stick my camera out, or to walk down the street and take the picture! Okay, see the lift thingy that is in front of the house? There was a worker standing on it WITH A PLUGGED IN MITER SAW actually cutting pieces of siding twenty feet in the air!!!! I'm pretty sure that it is mentioned in the owner's manual of the saw as something never, ever to do. "Do not operate saw while standing on the platform of a mechanical lift as it is raised twenty feet in the air. Platform may be unstable and you may cut your arm off."

In my defense, no one actually lives in the house. And I wasn't snooping to start with, I was just making Aubrey's bed and happened to glance out the window. Really.

***Update*** Jerry assures me this was perfectly a perfectly safe and reasonable thing to do.

Miscellany

It's a slow day on the creative side of my mind. Actually, it's been a slow couple of days. Not much blog fodder around here! We did have a very nice Easter dinner with Mick, Stacia, Grant, and Talia. I forgot my camera, so no pictures from Easter Sunday. My children all looked beautiful, though. Trust me! I know this is hard for you to believe (at least those of you with children), but Luke even complimented his sister on the way to church. "Wow, Aubrey, your hair looks great!" So here's a couple of odd pictures, just to make for a more interesting post:
My new oven, complete with lemon meringue pie inside.
You never know when you might be under enemy attack. It's best to be prepared, even when making a jam sandwich. This just tickled Jerry and I, so I grabbed the camera.

The Best News

"He is not here, for He is risen!" Luke 24:6

Girl's Weekend

Although the details aren't ironed out yet, I'm so excited! I get to have a fun weekend in Dallas with:
I'm sure everyone has much smaller hair now! And also, we get to stay with Shawn, a friend from college:Her hair was big, too, just braided in the picture! My kids are DYING laughing at these pictures. I never, ever thought I'd be an object of ridicule when I permed my hair!

I am a loser dog owner

You probably guessed from my earlier posts that Barney is not my idea of the ideal dog. He is not very bright, as compared to Sadie, or really, to most (I wanted to say "any" but restrained myself) other dogs. He is a sweetheart though - he loves to cuddle and the kids absolutely adore him. He is good-tempered and doesn't bark, much. So overall, he's not too bad.
So here's my loser story - that's right, me the loser doggy mom! I put him out to go potty last night while we were watching the K-State game (go Cats!! They won!!), and never gave it a second thought. This morning, at 7:00 or so when I came downstairs, I heard him crying. Now, he sleeps in his kennel in the basement every night, and never, EVER, cries to be let out. I thought it was strange that he was crying this morning, so I went down to check on him. Imagine my surprise when I found his kennel completely empty! You guessed it, I had left the poor little guy outside all night. Luckily, it only got down to 45 or so last night. Luckily, I say, because that is still too cold for the neighbors to have their windows open! He probably cried all night. I did give him an extra bone today :)

Happy Easter!

Nothing quite says Happy Easter like the smell of six dozen hard-boiled eggs in your refrigerator!
Aubrey made some beautiful glittery marbled eggs.
The kids and Talia with all the eggs (minus six or so that were devoured!)

The boys spent some time out learning soccer skills from Uncle Mick and Talia:

I raise my kids right!

Jackson has great faith in this guy. He's picked K-State to win it all, baby. I'll let you know how his bracket does. On the other hand, Aubrey has them losing their first round game. She is more of a realist, I guess.

Happy Belated Birthday, Grandma Lois!

I missed the day, and have no excuse. I hope you had a good one!

Can you stand more pictures of our house?

'Cause we got new carpet this week, and I wanted to share. You might have to double-click on them to get the full effect. Exciting, I know. And that big black garbage bag is not trash, it is clothes waiting to go to Goodwill. It looks attractive, huh?

You know, I really LIKE leeks...

Who knew? I made this Pan-Roasted Pork Loin with Leeks from dcrmom for dinner tonight. It was a big hit all around! Super easy to make, and lots of flavor. I had never met a leek before today, but I think we'll be great friends. I served them with roasted brussels sprouts and new potatoes, as the recipe suggests. Can't say as I'm a big fan of brussels sprouts. Here's a picture, just to get your taste buds working:

This was not MY pork loin. I can't take food pictures for some reason. Let me assure you, however, that mine was just as beautiful as this one. I artfully arranged it on the platter, interspersing the brussels sprouts with the potatoes. Very pretty!

Four is a crowd!

We had a fun visit today from Marilyn, (our dear friend and Jerry's secretary for thirteen years from Syracuse). She and Tim got a darling puppy several months ago, and gave his sister to her mother, Virginia, aka Meme, for her birthday. They found out last week that another sister was up for adoption, so they brought her to Hutchinson for their daughter, Kara. Man, those dogs were busy! We had all three dog siblings (Meme came from Winfield to go home with Marilyn for a few days). Barney was bewildered for awhile, but quickly jumped in on the action. By jumped, I mean literally JUMPED. It was a lot of fun to see them all play. Here's the kids with all four dogs:

Kara Kohart Miller with Honey, Meme's dog, Jackson has Daisy (Luke kept calling her Peanut Slash Daisy because Kara is going to change her name), Aubrey has Razz, Marilyn's dog, and of course Luke has Barney. We weighed all the dogs. Barney came out on top at 12 lbs. Daisy has been undernourished, perhaps even malnourished, and is only 5 lbs. Razz is the biggest dog, but he weighed less than Barney. Hhmmm. Doggy diet on the horizon at the Berning house?

Does this mean I'm a soccer mom?

I love daylight savings time. I do not love when the alarm goes off at 6:15 and it is pitch black out. I do not love when it is 7:30 and the sun is still not over the horizon. I do not love 34 degrees and wind. I do love watching my son play soccer! Here he is, running for the ball:Note the gloves and stocking hat. He had three shirts on and two pairs of pants. His poor little nose was bright red! Here's how us soccer moms spent the game:
And here's what we did afterwards:
Luke has a game at 1:15. Here's hoping the temperature hits 40 by then!

Enough already!

If you've left me a comment lately you probably got a message that the blog only allows moderated comments. I went to that because I got a few comments from people I did not know - one of them was definitely spam. Anyway, I'm still new at this blog thing. I just figured out how to delete comments if I don't like them - (only took me nine months to figure that one out!) So, I'm done moderating comments. Comment away, everyone! It's so fun to get them.

It's a ring, people!

Yes, believe it or not, it's a ring. See what I mean about Elvis? I had one person guess it was a brooch, and another guessed it was a belt. No, just an unbelievably big ring. And he picked it out of a box full of prizes!

Aren't Grandparents Great?

Mom and Dad have my kids - well, except for Barney. I'd have sent him along if I'd thought of it. He is seriously lonely. We are getting new carpet Monday, and he is not entirely potty trained yet. I'm not sure what we were thinking, but it's too late to back out now. We might have to borrow our baby gate back, Marilyn. I think I might just lock him outside for the rest of his natural life if he pees on my new carpet. One of Jerry's patients, Laveta, told him that she used to breed and raise dachsunds. Apparently the ONLY way to train them is to take the outside every hour on the hour, and then they still don't 100% get it. We have decided he is either the dumbest dog on the planet (right up there with the chickens), or an evil genius. I am leaning toward evil genius. I gave him a bone this morning, and he immediately ran and hid it in his kennel. He came up looking all innocent and asking for another bone. I gave him one, and he hid it under the couch, then ran right back up to me and asked for another bone. See? Evil genius.

This picture is for you, Nolan:

This is why we don't give him a ball very often. He rolls it under the couch, then cries like mad until we get it out for him. Then rolls it right back under the couch. Evil genius, I tell you!

Back to the thing about grandparents being great, I did accomplish a lot yesterday without my children. Today I am determined to get everything on my desk mailed out to clients. Then, when my kids come back Friday we can play in this beautiful weather! It was almost 80 degrees yesterday. Jerry and I grilled steaks and went for a walk. Absolutely lovely!

Someone has been brainwashing my child...

but more on that later. Today was a beautiful day - no wind, perfect temperature. We decided to take the kids to Dillon Nature Center for a hike. It turned out to be not quite as much of a hike as we had planned, but still fun. We saw deer tracks, turtles sunning on a log, and lots of geese in the lake. It was a nice, relaxing Sunday afternoon. This statue was in the front lawn when we pulled up:

Jackson spotted it right away. Here's how the conversation went:

Jackson: "Look at that, a bald eagle! I know why they're called bald eagles. It's because they're really, really smart birds, and bald means smart. Bald is another word for smart, actually."

Me: "Really? Did your daddy tell you that?"

Jackson: "No, I just knew it. But it's different than when your head is bald. Sounds the same, just spelled differently."

Luke: "Yeah. When you're bald it means your brains are pushing out your hair."

Me: "Your daddy told you that, right?"

Luke: "No, I just knew it."

Jerry: "I'm going to buy those boys some ice cream!"

Okay, we were DYING laughing. I have no idea which of you Berning men is brainwashing my children, but I will find out! Jerry swears it was not him.

Sadness in Bulldog Country

Aubrey's friend, Amy Norton, her mom & sister celebrated Amy's twelfth birthday while they were here.

Well, the Syracuse boys' basketball team failed miserably at state once again. They can't seem to make it past the first round of the state tournament. Guess it must be pretty intimidating to play in Bramlage.

Krista Norton and girls, our friends from Syracuse, came up late Wednesday night and then left Thursday for Manhattan with my kids. The kids were thrilled beyond belief to go! Not so thrilled at the game apparently, as Jackson fell asleep during the second half. We were planning to drive up today to watch the second round game (assuming they won, which they didn't.) Oh well! *Stop reading now if you are waiting on me to do your tax return* Since we were kidless last night we went to Wichita and did a little shopping, ate at Carraba's and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I should have been working, but you parents know we have to take advantage kidless-ness!

Luke hooked up with his friend Jesse Wallace in Manhattan, apparently. He spent the night with Jesse, so Krista informed me. She isn't sure where he is, but I'm sure things will work out and he'll make it back here. I've only been gone for seven months, and I've already forgotten what it's like in a small town - people just take your kids! Aubrey and Jackson are hanging with Krista and her girls at the mall, then coming back here for the night.

Aubrey sent me some pictures of Amy and her (she and Amy?) at the game on my phone, but I have no clue how to get them to the computer. Guess you'll have to use your imagination!

The Mousetrap

Do you remember group projects from school? Were you always the kid who got stuck with the lame-o kids who were either too lazy or thought they were too cool to do any actual work? If this is not ringing a bell with you, just ask Aubrey. Her teacher assigned a project for science that sounds like a lot of fun - each group was to design and make a mousetrap using found object (read: junk). It had to involve five steps and had to actually work. Poor Aubrey's group consisted of a girl who ONLY wanted to run the hot glue gun, a boy who thought he was too cool to do anything to help, and another boy with special needs. Last week, Aubrey designed the mousetrap and had it mostly functioning. She took it to school, and this is what happened:
Charlie, the cool kid, broke it. (Ignore my thumb, please). Luckily her daddy stepped in and helped. They spent four hours working on it last night. Here's the finished project:All's well that ends well! Aubrey was happy with her mousetrap.

See, he IS Elvis!

Look at the prize Jackson picked out at school today. He has his father's fashion sense.

From my oven...

Just for you, Carrie - here's a picture of MY cake:
A food photographer, I'm not. It took me four shots to get one this good! So here's the professional photo from Picky Palate's blog:

I thought I'd better bake yesterday so I could justify the new oven. Here's a recipe I found online, for Starbuck's Coffee Cake. The lady who posted this recipe is Jenny from The Picky Palate. She is a competition chef. I think I'll give her Chicken Taquitos a try!

Grandma's Manicure Set

Mystery solved, thanks to Grandma Lois. The manicure set belonged to Eldora Miller Shumard. Next mystery - what would have been in the little jar? I don't know if you can pick it out in the picture, but it is about 1" in diameter and has a lid. Surely not fingernail polish? Any ideas?

Grandpa, Aunt Jo, Uncle Larry, Dad, I'm hoping you can tell me more about this:


Grandma had it in the basement bedroom on the dresser, and I chose it when all of us girls were picking out something of Grandma's years and years ago. I don't remember who it originally belonged to. Do any of you remember? I love it and always keep it on my dresser.

Complete!

Here you go - the finished project! I'm sorry about the sun shining in the window over the bathtub. I can't seem to remember to take pictures when it's dark out.

Forewarned is Forearmed

If you know me well, you know I am terrified of spiders. I don't know if "terrified" adequately describes it. My palms get sweaty, my stomach does flipflops, I can't breathe, all at the sight of one. I'm getting nervous just writing this. Anyway, I know of two spiderbites in the past week. One of Aubrey's classmates has a bite, and my Grandmother has one also. I just wanted to warn you, so you could call the exterminator for some preventative spraying. That's what I'm doing. Right now!

The oven is in!

Jerry, Mick, and Ted installed my wall oven this weekend. I made some rolls Sunday afternoon to try it out, and they were perfect! Love, love, love having an oven again. Well, I had an oven, but you know what I mean! Here's a picture of the installation process:

In this picture, Jerry is connecting the electric supply for the oven. It had to be hard wired in, not a simple plug-in. I wasn't really thinking about what he was doing when I snapped this photo; but he about peed his pants when the flash went off. He thought it was sparks from the wires. The look on his face was priceless! Honestly, I didn't do it to be mean. Just trying to document the remodeling process, you know!

Skating

We took the kids skating with their cousins Saturday night. It was a lot of fun! Jackson started off clutching Nolan's hand, and barely made it around one time. I thought he'd be sitting with me for the rest of the evening. Instead, we suddenly realized he was back out on the floor by himself - and he was skating! He hasn't mastered the "glide" yet, but he does pretty well. I wish the video above had sound so you, too, could be partially deaf from the music! Am I getting old?

Here's a picture of Jackson and Nolan the first time around:And here he is as a pro! Note how Luke is following along protectively - what a good big brother!I noticed how Bethany and Aubrey both seem to be all arms and legs right now - my girl must be growing up!
One of the funniest things was when the dj played the Cha Cha Slide. All the kids were "dancing" out on the floor while they were skating, and Jackson joined right in. He fell down a few times trying to do the stomps, but he got right back up. That's when we needed the video!