Fold My Laundry Please

We spent Saturday at the zoo.

The wait in line to get in wasn’t too bad…

…unless Daddy tried to keep you from running away!  I’m just noticing that even her hair droops when she’s upset.

There were neat things to see.

And fun things to do.

The kids enjoyed the petting zoo.

Chickens are cool!

"Bik!  Bik!  Bik!  Bik!  Bik!  Bik!"

I first noticed this lady when we were waiting for the shuttle from the parking lot to the zoo and then I saw her again inside one of the exhibits.  Who wears shoes like this to walk around the zoo all day?

"Yookit!  Bish!"

Just poppin’ up for a photo op!

The elephant was impressive.

As were the tigers.

"Look, Mom!  Striped horses!"

Towards the end of the day, most of the animals looked like these hippos.

At least the polar bear had the decency to fall asleep right next to the window!

Despite the fact that Ethan said his favorite part of the day was the bus ride from the parking lot to the front gates, we all had a really fun day!

This morning, Ethan volunteered to give our morning prayer.  He’s gotten in the habit of saying the exact same thing every time, a habit I’ve been trying to break.  This morning he surprised me by saying a totally original and spontaneous prayer.

"Dear Heavenly Father, please bless Daddy and his work.  Bless that his work will stay healthy.  Please bless our house and keep it safe from ghosts.  If you have to let ghosts in, make sure they’re good ghosts.  I don’t really like ghosts so I’d like to not have them please.  And please fill up our bottle of Anti-Monster Spray so that we don’t ever run out.  And please bless Daddy in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen"

Apparently, he’s very concerned about ghosts!

In case you were wondering, this is Anti-Monster Spray.  ‘Cause everybody knows monsters hate things that smell good.  Make sure you spray it in all the corners, closets, and other skootchy spots just before falling asleep at night!

I got tagged a couple of times with an e-mail meme today and decided that intead of responding to each person who sent it to me, I would just put it in a post and tell everyone to come read it here.  It’s a pretty basic "Getting To Know You"  meme.  I hope you enjoy learning more about me.  I know I enjoy talking about me!

1.  What is your full name?  Melissa Victoria Davenport    

2.  What are you most afraid of?  Spiders!  Those things are creepy!

3.  What is the most recent movie that you’ve seen in the theater?  Superman Returns.  I know, I need to get out more.

4.  Where were you born?  Phoenix, Arizona

5.  What is your favorite food?  Spaghetti with marinara sauce (preferably meatless)

6.  What is your natural hair color?  Brown, but not the dull, boring one, the GORGEOUS one!

7.  Have you ever been to Alaska?  No, but I would love to visit.  (Key word in that answer = visit, not live)

8.  Have you ever toilet papered someone’s house?  Twice.  The first time we got caught and were told we had to clean it up in the morning…and then it rained over night.  NO FUN!  The second time was one of our teacher’s houses in high school.  We had a blast and used up a ton of toilet paper!

9.  Have you ever loved someone so much it made you cry?  Yes

10.  Have you ever been in a car accident?  Yes.  I was fine, not a scratch on me, but my car was totalled.

11.  Croutons or bacon bits?  Both!  And don’t forget the sunflower seeds and raisins!

12.  What is your favorite day of the week?  Saturday…my husband is home and we’re free to go out and do something fun as a family.

13.  What is your favorite restaurant?  PF Chang’s…I love me some lettuce wraps and Chang’s Spicy Chicken!

14.  What is your favorite flower?  Calla Lilies

15.  What is your favorite sport to watch?  Gotta say ice hockey!  Now that is a good time, especially live!  Go Phoenix Coyotes!

16.  What is your favorite sport to play?  Ice-skating.  I’m not very good at it any more (it could be because I’m about 80 lbs heavier than I was when I skated competitively) but nothing feels more like flying in my opinion!  Soccer is a very close second.

17.  What is your favorite drink?  Caffeine Free Pepsi

18.  What is your favorite ice cream?  Strawberry, if I can find it without chunks of strawberries in it.  Those frozen strawberries hurt my teeth.

19.  Disney or Warner Brothers?  Disney

20.  Have you ever been on a ship?  I’ve been on several ferries and a lot of boats, does that count?  Oh, and a raft once!  I almost forgot about that!

21.  What color is your bedroom carpet?  Dark Brown

22.  How many times did you fail your driver’s test?  None

23.  Who was your last e-mail from?  My husband…he sent me a love letter!  *sigh*

24.  When is your usual bedtime?  11-ish

25.  What is your favorite TV show?  "My Name Is Earl", though I only watch them when they come out on DVD, because if I can’t watch the entire season in just a few days, I’ll never see the whole thing.

26.  Who was the last person you went to dinner with?  My husband and children

27.  What are your favorite colors?  Blue, Purple, and Green

28.  How many tattoos/piercings do you have and where and what are they?  None.  When I was a freshman in college, I told my mother I wanted to get a tattoo and she said that it better say, "Paying for my own college"!

29.  How many pets do you have?  Just two preschoolers and a toddler.  I’m kidding!  I’m kidding!  I don’t actually have any pets though we did have a caterpillar in a jar once that we kept alive long enough for him to make a cocoon, turn into a beeeautiful moth, and then set him free.
     
30.  List something you would like to do before you die.  Finish up my many half-done cross-stitch projects!

31.  Have you ever been to Hawaii?  Not yet!

32.  Have you ever been to countries outside of the US?  Yes.  I’ve visited France, Mexico, and the Canary Islands (Spain), and I lived in Germany for 3 years as a child.

33.  What were you/will you be doing at 31 and 32 years old?  Being fabulous!  Oh, and running myself ragged chasing the children.  But mostly being fabulous!

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for!  Who will Melissa tag with this meme?  May I have a drumroll please?  I tag Teresa, Leigh, Txmommy, and Amber.  I also wanted to tag Mary and Wordgirl, but Mary’s blog won’t let me leave comments for some reason and Wordgirl recently had a loss in the family and I thought it might be rude to tag her in the comments after such a heartfelt description of a life truly lived.  But if either of the two of you happen to read this and want to participate, please do!  If you do the meme, please leave me a comment letting me know, although I read every single one of your blogs daily, so I’m bound to find out about it one way or another!  I hope you have as much fun answering these questions as I will have reading your answers!

I am sick again.  Thank goodness that this time around it’s not the Flu of Death.  This time it’s only a cold.  And it seems to be passing me by pretty quick.  I woke up on Saturday morning feeling like gravity had doubled.  I got up, got dressed, ran some errands (in the pouring rain), came home, and melted.  Yes, melted.  I felt horrible.  When I went to bed Saturday night, Andrew wasn’t feeling so hot either, so we spent all of Sunday in our pajamas resting.  Today I’m finally feeling pretty good.  I think I’ll spend today over exerting myself to make up for all the days I spent lying around (and for all the lying around I’ll be doing tomorrow when I realize I wasn’t quite well yet). 

I think it’s safe to say that we all love chocolate (except for those few freaks out there who don’t, no offense).  And if you’re allergic to chocolate, I’d like to offer my sincere condolences.  I look forward to each holiday knowing that there will be themed chocolate products for me to hork out on.  And its okay to do that, because it’s a holiday and I’m celebrating…something.  Most likely, it’s chocolate I’m celebrating!

But now the FDA wants to expand the definition of chocolate to include products made of vegetable fats and oils instead of actual cocoa butter.  Dave Kellett described them best on his blog entry for today on his Sheldon daily comic website:

"You know what kind of ‘chocolate’ that is. You’ve bitten into it and known immediately. It’s that fake, waxy, powdery ‘chocolate-flavored’ stuff that sits there for weeks after the first bite…because it tastes like foot powder. It’s the weird-brand Easter bunny that no one wants. It’s the fake M&Ms that taste like pebbles. It’s the chocolate chip that tastes like a tooth filling gone wrong."

You can actually read more about it in this article written by Cybele May for the LA Times (you can check out her Candy Blog here).  Did you know that it’s the cocoa butter that actually protects the antioxidant properties in chocolate?  Neither did I until I read the article.  Cybele also says,

"…the FDA does have a way for other citizens to voice their expectations. It’s buried deep in its website. Until April 25, the agency is accepting comments — by fax, mail or online — on a docket with the benign-sounding name of ‘2007P-0085: Adopt Regulations of General Applicability to All Food Standards that Would Permit, Within Stated Boundaries, Deviations from the Requirements of the Individual Food Standards of Identity.’"

There’s so little in this world that we can do something about, and I realize that this isn’t a "real" cause to fight for, but would it really be so hard to spend 5 minutes clicking on this link and letting the FDA know how you feel about chocolate?  Don’t do it for yourself, do it for the children.  Okay, do it for yourself.  What will we do for our guilty little pleasures if there’s no decent chocolate left to dig out of its hiding place and snarf down while you hide in the pantry from the children?

After spending some time folding and putting away laundry, I walked by the kitchen table to see all three children sitting on top of the table with crayons in hand coloring on pieces of paper. Closer inspection of the table after I chased them off of it showed that not only paper had been colored on.  My table was full of colorful scribbles brilliant works of art.  After intense questioning, I concluded that "Not Me" was the perpetrator of the heinous vandalism.  Apparently, however, Mr. Me had already fled the scene of the crime.  Luckily, the marks were able to be cleaned up with only a wet washcloth and lots of elbow grease.  As I sat at the table, rubbing as hard as I could, my poor arm screaming at me to stop and the mess only a quarter of the way cleaned up, Gideon sidled up to me and said, "Oh Mommy, you wiped off my spaceship!"  I hope Not Me is able to live with his guilt!

Was there ever a song that made you cry whenever you heard it and your kids loved it and found it on Youtube and insisted on playing it over and over again while you sat behind them crying silently so that you wouldn’t disrupt their fun because, really, its quite silly that this song gets to you so very much, but it was written by a mommy for her babies and is sung by her cute little three year old girl, and then you realize that your kids are singing along with it now because they’ve watched it so many times in a row that they now know the words by heart and you’ve been crying so much that your face is a streaky, puffy mess and you just can’t find any tissues?  Not one freakin’ tissue anywhere!

To read the lyrics and the story behind "The Cuppy Cake Song", click here.

I saw this on Txmommy’s blog today.  While I’m at the store buying cookies, tell me, what kind of cookie are you?

You Are an Oatmeal Raisin Cookie

On the surface, you’re a little plain - but you have many subtle dimensions to your personality. Sometimes you’re down to earth and crunchy. Other times, you’re sweet and a little gooey.

Okay, we’ve all heard about accidents involving the Nintendo Wii where the remote’s safety strap breaks and the remote crashes into the television.  I found a site dedicated to pictures and stories about Wii accidents.  It’s called Wii Have a Problem.com and it’s full of some of the most hilarious stories about the Wii sent in from all over the world.  Some of my favorites…

Man Breaks TV, Recreates Event on Safer Medium

Attack on Girlfriend Proves Fatal to Boyfriend’s Wii Privileges

There you have it, more Wii incidents than you ever cared to read about.  A word of advice, use the links on the right hand side of the page if you want to avoid looking at a ton of pictures of broken safety straps on the Wii-motes.  Have fun!

Me:  Ethan, can you see what your sister is up to?  She’s gotten awfully quiet all of a sudden.

*Ethan dutifully runs off to check on Aurora*

Ethan:  *walks calmly back, sits on the couch*  She’s in the bathroom with a roll of toilet paper and a fishing pole.