Vegas, Football, & Halloween

So, I am really bad at this blogging thing I have decided. I have lots of fun reading them all but just don't write them. I don't know why. My life is just not all that interesting I guess.

I sent Curtis away this morning to Las Vegas to play football. I know he is with his team and coaches so technically he is not alone. But I feel like I sent him alone. It totally sucks I couldn't go with him. Not because I wanted some kind of vacation or anything but so I could cheer him, so I could hug him, so I could take his picture and be on the sidelines you know? *sigh* I hope he behaves.

I don't have any pics of him in full uniform yet. Here is one of Josh.He looked so cute. His team was pretty fun to watch. They didn't have much talent and didn't get a lot of the plays but man they had heart. Full of passion. It was fun. Curtis' team was more intense, they had more on the lin since they were older. They were fun and I cheered and yelled. But Josh's team was pretty fun.

For a fundraiser to help go to Vegas Curtis's team worked one night as server's at the Golden Corral. So of course I harassed him. When it got to the point I asked him to go get me 9 green m&m's he just looked at me and said no. Ha Ha Ha. But he still had to clean up the mess I made with crackers. Hey -- if he wants a tip he needs to earn it I say.


So I hope he has tons of fun. And behaves. If you can do both in Vegas. If not..well then I root for behaves. *sigh*

So Halloween was fun. I didn't have to do anything. How awesome is that? Curtis went to a friends house for a party and Aaron took Josh to his parents. I put a bowl of taffy (leftover from last year but really..they are kids, they wont care) on the porch and put on my headphones to listen to my book and sewed some Christmas projects that maybe possibly if I'm lucky I can finish by then. The kids waited until the night before Halloween to get costumes. I took Josh but Curtis still had homework so I told him I would get him something and he would be stuck with it. Josh picked out his stormtrooper one and I found a banana for Curtis. I laughed and knew it was mean. He would hate it. I big yellow banana. Ha ha ha.I was looking forward to the nast look. (I know I'm a sadistic mom. I get it from my dad.) I got home and showed it to him. He took one look at it and SWEET! He loved it. Go figure.


Also, I took them to go see the symphony just before Halloween. Curtis has to see a concert a quarter for his music and guitar classes and I thought this would be fun. It said Halloween Hijinks. I figured we could go, listen to some classic Haloween music and stuff. They could live through that. Little did I know that we were actually going to see Hansel & Gretel the OPERA. Ha Ha Ha. Oh the nasty looks from both Curtis AND Aaron. You know that look - the one that says

What have you done??

Or more importantly

What have you made ME do?

Ha Ha Ha.

Boo

It's Halloween time again. Time to buy (or make) costumes once they finally decide on what they want to be. It is also time for scary movies. I admit I really like a good scary movie. However I am pretty picky about it. Slasher flicks simply don't count as a scary movie. Startling, disgusting, shocking, but not scary. To get the best ones you need to go back before too many special effects were around. When you have that creepy music, you see the person go into a room and maybe see some shadowy movement and a scream. It's so much more effective when you have to imagine it. Much like an almost naked woman is sexier than a totally naked one. (I know a lot of men might deny that just in the hopes you will show them a totally naked one to prove your point, but they know I'm right.) Your imagination is better. Which is why seeing some crazy person cut someone into pieces is bloodier, more shocking, and definitely more gross, it's just not as scary as if something from the shadows took them and you hear screams and sounds form the dark but don't see it. At least in my opinion.

So here is a list of really good scary movies. Anything from Hitchcock. We watched the Birds one Halloween when I was little. It was a Saturday night. On Sunday we wake up and outside our bedroom window there are hundreds of birds. All on the fences, the trees, the power lines, everywhere. We are totally freaked out. Out of nowhere a pigeon flies through the bedroom window and lands on my brother's bed twitching. We, of course, screamed like Hell just walked in. My dad runs into the room ready to kill whoever broke the window. We are all huddled up as far away from the twitching bird as possible. My dad just stands there for a minute,looks at the bird, looks at us and laughs! Laughs!!He takes the bird and says

Oh good! Lunch!

Yes, I promise this is a true story.

Also, the original Haunting is a good one. Yes it is black and white. But when they make the walls breathe --- oh man, very creepy. The Shining is a good one. Also The Changeling from the 70's. It's slow but trust me. The Silver Bullet by Stephen King, mostly because of who the bad guy was. It didn't seem right. Psycho of course. The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I watched that when I was about 8 or 9. My bed was about 1 1/2 to 2 feet off the floor. This, I decided was the perfect size to hide a pod under. I don't think I slept for a week. My brother was maybe 12 or 13 when he saw The Fly. I admit I have never seen it, but he didn't sleep for a while unless my dad was there to periodically slap him with a flyswatter. No really.

Now the Body Snatchers took first place for a long time. But recently I watched an episode of Doctor Who. (Yes, I am I sci-fi/fantasy geek.)The story seemed cool, but the more and more I thought about it (and I couldn't help it) the scarier it was. It was about lonely assassins. They were aliens of course. They came from the empty places in space. They were called that because they could only move, only be, as long as no living thing could see them. This included each other. They looked like statues of angels and they always had their eyes covered. Now I know this doesn't sound so bad. But here is this girl staring at this statue that wants to kill her, and in the background she is remembering the doctors words.

They are incredibly fast, don't turn around, don't even blink.

How can you possibly run from that?? How long can you go without blinking??? How do you hide from that? I know I am not explaining it well but trust me -- just watch it. It's in Season 3 I am pretty sure.

So, in all of this, I think the scariest things come from our own imagination. Also, the scariest stories are not really about monsters, or men in with chainsaws, but from the unknown. The bogeyman in the closet you never see, but can hear. The whispers in the dark. The things you can't hide from, you cant even find, until it's too late. Then ..... Gotcha!

Happy Halloween

My Family As A Sitcom

So my Auntie Robin (my parents good friend, our babysitter, and one of our very favorite people) came to visit a couple of weeks ago. We all came over for family dinner (once a month 2nd Sunday tradition) and started just talking about stuff since we had seen her. Told some fun jokes, talked about funny stuff we remember from childhood. She looked at us and just started laughing. She said "you can't make stuff like this up! This is like some TV family show". This comment came after several remarks about my father's finger. For anyone who doesn't know my father these make interesting tales. Due to an accident (he cut his hand with a skill saw) his finger was amputated just before my 16th birthday. He kept it in a jar in the freezer for a while. At first he would ask us to go scratch it for him. Um...no. Love ya, but no. On my first date he took it out of the freezer to show it to the guy -- "This is what happened to the last guy who brought her home late." You know that AT&T commercial where the dad is going around knocking on cars and he tells the camera - "Sorry dear - now come Monday you are going to be the girl with the crazy father no one wants to date"? Yes- that was me. Except I was already weird so having a crazy father didn't much surprise anybody.

Then he took it to the Natural History Museum and they freeze dried it for him. So he put it on a necklace with all of his teeth on the string. Yes, his teeth. (yes he wears dentures and does not put the necklace in his mouth. I know you didn't ask but it had to have crossed your mind.) We have some great pics of the kids picking their noses it I will have to find. We have a lot of moments like this. Kind of like -- Mom where is the ice cream? Mom says, in the downstairs freezer under the badger." Now to us this makes perfect sense but to others -- maybe not so much. So I started thinking about my family, and thought -- she's right! We are a pretty strange bunch. We talk in movie quotes, dad tans his own leather, he has a tipi, we have body parts on strings, can jerry rig anything! Sometime we spontaneously burst into song and everyone knows all the words. We toss around phrases like - "you should have seen his face as we snuck around the deer at the bottom of the stairs" and have the deer not actually be part of the punchline. And you know, that makes me feel pretty cool.

(This is all of us with our boo-boos we got in one month. Trying to be cute with the hear no evil see no evil thing. I think we were actually saying see no ouchies, hear no ouchies etc etc. The ER just started reserving us a bed)

For my science project in 6th grade I decided to do a report on how to brain tan leather.(And for those who don't know - it is work!! Lots of time consuming work! How did those women do it with all those buffalo??) I thought it was a pretty cool one and I could gurantee no one else would be doing it (unlike the baking soda volcano). So we had the hide, stretched it out and boiled the brain. As a side note - deer brain smells like turkey when you boil it. It does NOT taste like turkey though. Just FYI. I took it to school explaining the whole process and everything you have to do after you brain it and brought samples of the one we did. I also brought a new hide with a boiled brain so people could smear some on if they wanted. What was funny was how many girls did it while the guys looked like they would pass out. I got an A. And a note never to do anything like that again. But I got an A.
( Yes the snake is real. Dead and stuffed with wires but real.)

And the time we had a new neighboor move in next door. A nice sweet little old lady. A day after she gets settled she wanders into her back yard. We just so happen to have the tipi up with our horse tail scalp hanging off the top, a couple skins stretched out and were boiling some buffalo skulls to get all the tissue off and bleach them white. Now to us that was normal. She almost had a heart attack -- what devil worshipping monsters had she moved next to???

Lots of fun moments. The kids playing dad's teeth. A picture of everyone squeezing in a four seater out house. (Because who doesn't want someone next to them in the outhouse??) Me catching a fish with my feet. My dad with a fish hook in his nose trying to catch the damn fish that jumped off the hook that is now in his nose. My cousin Kristy and I getting stuck climbing up Pig Pen, then getting bored of waiting for someone to rescue us so we found a way to climb down. Christmas time with all 80+ of us Sqeezing into my Uncle Clem's house so we can listen to my totally awesome Papa talk. (and of course presents. Some normal, some not so much. Who doesn't want their own fish pillow made with personlized fabric huh? Everyone needs those googly eyes staring at them on their beds.)

Ahhhh family. The more other family's I know the more grateful I am for mine. No offense to my friends or in-laws, they are all good people. But I wouldn't trade my crazy fam for anything in the world. Love ya guys!!

Um Really? He He

Ok so I saw this quiz on my cousin Angelic's page and said why not? Except I am not sure what to say. I really did think he was hot and kinda still do. But do I admit to that???

Your 80s Hunk Is

John Stamos

Who's Your 80s Hunk?

Football !

So it's football time. Yay. No really though, I have never been more interested. My husband calls me a Giants fan now although I don't consider myself that dedicated. (in his family fan leans more towards fan-atic) I watch with him because I could read a book snuggled with him on the couch while he cheered and yelled. Last year I actually started watching though. I wanted to understand what was so fascinating. That meant I had to learn the rules. I stopped him from teaching me the actual plays because I just don't want to care that much. But the rules were fine, then I could know why he was cheering or yelling. So I started rooting for the Giants one week they were playing the Cowboys. Mostly because my husband hates the Cowboys, not because I particularly liked them Then I just kinda stayed rooting for them. I'm not sure why. Maybe because they seemed like an underdog. Maybe because Eli was Peyton's little brother and all little brothers should get a chance to shine. Anyway - just kept rooting for them, and hey, they won. That was fun. So yay for football, something we can watch together.


But now, I have signed up both my sons to play football. This is something I struggled against for a very very long time. I thought it was too rough, would teach them to be mean jerks, make them more violent, coaches would be mean, I hate cocky jocks etc. etc. Then I realized that I have seen way too many football movies, and I don't live in Texas so I am probably ok. Josh who is now finally 8 and can play sports in leagues is loving it. I think it's pretty cute to see these kids in pads running around, practicing catching and stuff. They are just starting and learning and it looks fun. I don't know what will happen when they actually have to play a game and can't just randomly tackle people but it should be amusing.


Curtis however is definitely a teen. The 13th birthday just made it official. Anything that takes effort and isn't electronic just isn't fun. And let's face it -- football is hard! He has 2 hours of practice 6 days a week,(which since I go to all of these have to ask myself -- what was I thinking??) running, learning etc. He is the only one on his team who has never played before so he is doing double catch up. But you know, apart from some grumbling in the beginning about how I was forcing him against his will, it has been amazing to watch. He hurt his ankle the second week so we had to ice and soak it all week after practice but he just kept going out there and doing it. He never asked to quit. He told me he had to prove to my us and himself he could do it. And he is.In 3 weeks he is 10 times better than he was. He goes out and always listens to his coach (who is marvelous and teaches exactly the way Curtis learns)and does what he is asked, changes what he is told to change, and doesn't quit. Is this my kid??? Well yes as soon as we get home the teenager comes back. No - actually he is better at doing what I ask him to do and doesn't argue as much. Holy cow. This is great! If this does nothing else but teach him self-confidence then it is worth all the ungodly amount of money we have put into this. So then I listed all the good things this could teach him - play as a team, work together, listen to your leaders/teachers/parents, follow directions, not to mention the benefits of being physically fit, and that life outside of video games is good too.


So now I am an official fan of football. Even if it means my schedule is now full from now until November.