BUBBLES!

It's not snowing in the house... it's bubbles! I forgot how fun our bubble machine could be until my 12 year old dug it out of the basement and set it up in the bathroom. After playing in the spout of bubbles for awhile, he left the room and left the machine on. When I went in there a little while later, I burst out laughing at the bubble pile on the floor. It was very slippery, and very easy to clean with a towel from the laundry. (Always clean with dirty laundry... it must be washed anyway, so why dirty anything else?)
New Year's Resolutions are six days away. I'm an optimist at heart, but this past year I've been more uptight than I ever remember being in my life. I don't like it. Happy is better. So here's my resolution - laugh more. Laugh every day. Find fun in ordinary things. Find fun with you!
What is your New Year's Resolution?

Playground for Parents who Hate Kids

Yesss! Heather Justesen chased the Kindle formatting demons away with her mad skills! Now that the PDF monster is off my back, I'm now pursuing regular old WORD publication on my own, with the kindly offered resources that have dropped neatly in my inbox. THANK YOU! I love you for caring. (I love you anyway, but caring is a bonus!)
Okay, so, Christmas is all about loving and caring and hugging and sharing and taking your kids to the playground in spite of the snow. Right? But any parent who would take their child to this playground would most likely dress their little ones in shorts and t-shirts and pour water on the slide before sending the child down in order to make their bums stick to the metal. I mean, look at that drop at the end of the slide! It's got to be two feet tall or more! If a little person is barreling down and there is no one to catch them at the end, which any parent who lets their child play on this slide would not be, then the child falls their entire body length to the ground.
Some fun.
Maybe they aren't done yet... maybe there's a giant inflatable pillow installation pending... or a hidden camera for a candid camera TV show.
What was the most memorable play experience you had as a child?
And Merry Christmas, one and all... I love Jesus.

E-book NIGHTMARES!

Sorry, this is a scrumbly week. (Don't look up "scrumbly," it's only in MY dictionary!) I just can't seem to figure out how to publish e-books and it's driving me insane! All that beautiful writing time spent scrolling through web search results and all that wondrous creative brain power spent trying to figure out unfamiliar terminology!
WHO SAID IT WAS EASY? You must have computer parts in your genes!
Well, at least you can look forward to "Playground for parents who hate children" next week. Really.
I have a picture and everything.
What is hard for you to do? Do you keep trying, or shift your energy elsewhere?

Surprising Thanksgiving Eating Contest and Cauliflower Ships

Are you tired of Thanksgiving stories? Well, this one is weird, so it's worth going back in time a couple of weeks. Most of you know that I have boys. And boys don't generally think much about their weight. So before Thanksgiving dinner, my guys weighed themselves. After dinner, they weight themselves again. The differences ranged from 4.4 pounds gained to .8 pounds lost.
SAY WHAT? LOST?
Yes, lost.
HOW DID HE DO THAT? He ate. I saw him. But this is the son with the killer metabolism, who got so tired of eating continually in high school that he began eating normally and started losing weight.
Hm. He and I ought to split our metabolism and do co-transplants.

On Thanksgiving, even our entertainment was food-themed. When the grandchildren got together to do a play about the Pilgrims coming to America, they found a couple of mattresses stacked in a bedroom. "Hey!" our 7-year-old granddaughter said with wide-eyed excitement. "Those can be the Cauliflower!"
"Um," her nearly 10-year-old brother said, "You mean the Mayflower."