Welcome Garth!

<--- That's my Garth. He's my about-to-turn 40 enginerd husband who jumped in feet first at the opportunity of guest blogging when I offered. That's the face I captured as he typed. It appears he really enjoyed himself and perhaps now understands how this blogging thing is therapeutic for me.

The following is Garth's rendition of a typical weekend in our home & the antics of just 1 of our children. We get this typical fun x's 4! Yay us! Take it away Garth...

I’ve never been deluded enough to think having four children would be easy. On the contrary, I knew it would be hard. Not E=mc2 hard, but hard like solving a Rubik’s cube while driving a forklift hard. This weekend was a brisk reminder.

Friday was uneventful. No drama, a few family games, dinner in with all of us.

Saturday began with Wilson’s basketball clinic at 9:00 AM. Now mind you, getting somewhere at 9:00 AM on a Saturday can be a challenge with our family. Fortunately, clean underwear, sweat pants, teeth brushed, a quart of coffee and we were out the door. Jackson, Everly and Brenden stayed at home while Marissa and I both went; her to take pictures and me to bounce a mini basketball with a 6 year old. Believe it or not, it’s one of my weekly highlights. What Wil lacks in skill, he doesn’t even come close to making up in coachability. In other words, basketball may not be his sport.

(that's a yawn. he's totally into this as you can tell...)

Saturday evening was Marissa’s grandmothers 80th birthday party. We chose to bring all the kids. I like to bring them to things like that – it helps to socialize them. I liken it to taking several wild animals for a walk on the strip in Vegas.

In two hours I went to the bathroom 8 times – and never once for me. Wilson peed 3 times and pooped once. Jackson peed twice. Everly peed and needed a very nasty diaper changed. I didn’t have any wet wipes so I used a clean cloth napkin from the restaurant. In case you’re wondering, I threw it away. To top it off Everly puked – EVERYWHERE. On me, on her, on my shoes, in the hallway of the restaurant, on the door of the men’s room, on the floor of the men’s room, and on the wall of the men’s room. She was pretty much done by the time we got to the toilet (our kids have puking issues, she wasn’t sick - puking is like a sport to them. a sport they play very, very well).

Oh, I forgot to mention Wilson cut a big clump of hair off his head earlier in the day. We’re not sure why, just seemed like a good thing to do, according to him.

Sunday had great promise and generally nothing of much significance transpired, with one exception. Marissa has this otoscope. It’s a medical device used for looking in ears. For those of you who know Marissa, you’re all nodding your head going “of course she has an otoscope for looking in peoples ears”.

Anyway, she likes to look in the kids ears from time to time and then dig out some huge boulder of ear wax. The kids know not to put up a fuss - resistance is futile and Marissa can be relentless. When it came Wilson’s turn, he told Marissa she could only look in the left ear but not the right. After 3-5 seconds of careful negotiations (which went something like “get your ass over here”), Wilson was subjected to a right ear examination. And what do you know? We found what appeared to be a small red BB. We thought it was from the kids’ air soft pellet gun which made perfect sense to me. “Hey, here’s something small and round. I think I’ll shove it deep in my ear canal. That’ll be awesome.”

After a brief consultation with Marissa’s mom, the retired RN, Marissa irrigated his ear with olive oil and then a mixture of peroxide & water. She then pulled out a now slippery, small, round Christmas tree ornament with tweezers. Yes, I said A CHRISTMAS TREE ORNAMENT. It was small and round, but it also had a sharp wire protruding from it. I’ll let that sink in for a moment.


I expect you’re all asking yourselves the same thing Marissa and I pondered, “why?!”. I can hear his little brain saying “what if I just…?” What frightens me more is whether he considered other objects. Maybe a Goldfish cracker (nope, too delicious), a marker top (too big), or maybe a shard of broken glass (ohh, now that has potential).

That’s it. Those were the high points. Just another typical weekend at the family asylum. Weekends are rarely calm, quiet, organized or efficient. They are, however, fun and filled with many memories. I wouldn’t give them up for anything, the memories or the kids.