The New Fall Season Has Started!

Starting next Tuesday we will once again enjoy the fascinating glimpses into one another's brains(?) that only the Top Ten Tuesday can give us. For the Season Premier we will have an extra special extended edition. This list will be of your Top Ten Movie Quotes. Since I cannot possibly narrow it down to ten I thought we should do twenty. Be sure to include any details that may be necessary to explain the quote. Set the scene for us, if you will. I would even allow groupings of several quotes from the same movies, if you have a particular favorite. Or four. Take Princess Bride, for example, there's 20 right there. Or Caddyshack. Or Fletch. See where I'm going here? It's not an easy challenge, but after sooo many weeks off I'm sure you're up to the task. So, girls (and Lloyd) get your list ready!

Me too, Auntie!

You stole my stolen recipe!? We didn't get to make it at all while Big Sissy was here. One day she picked a HUGE amount of blackberries and in an unfortunate accident they all ended up on the floor. Luckily I didn't have anything to do with them spilling. Neither did my kids.

The next time we got a chance to pick a bunch was the day that we made jam. But, don't worry, I made some after they left! You're right, totally yummy. There was one piece left when we went to bed and it was gone when we got up. That's how much Chris liked it.

More cousin love

They hated to say goodbye to each other, these little turds. As you can see in this video they really, really love each other. Not in a Cousin Jeff and Becky way. Or in a Cousin James and Becky way. Just in a regular cousin sorta way.

It doesn't take much

This summer's visit from my Big Sister didn't even require the weak excuse that she wanted to drive 20 hours out of her way to buy a car that she could have bought 1 mile away. Nope, this year I handed her an excuse on a silver platter. My phone call went something like this:

Hey, Beck, guess what? We're gonna have a big celebration here, but it's so last minute that I'm sure there's no way you can Knock knock knock, Hold on while I get the door. Holy crap, it's you.

It was really last minute and really fast driving. I torture Leanna for not making it, but that's all in fun, obviously we knew when we threw this together during the last few weeks of August that people would have other plans. We're just mean and like to pretend like we had tons of fun without her. She takes it so well.

It was a great week. If you enjoy 9 spaz cousins and 1 Baby Plankton. I do. Here's a video, judge for yourself. Leanna, just pretend you're the one taking the video. And that's your son dancing topless. See, no fun at all.

Dear Leanna: Wish you were here...

The following post will be incredibly obnoxious and I'm ok with that...

Dear baby Sister,

We missed you soooo much at Beck and Kiki's birthday party tonight at Mom's house. Probably as much as we'll miss you tomorrow when we all hang out here and then Saturday at the Big Event and the Big Event's After Party. We probably won't have any fun and we may just sit around and talk about how much we miss you. Or maybe we'll have TONS OF FUN LIKE WE DID IN ALL THESE PICTURES! You really missed out. We frolicked at Hare Field like children looking for money under the bleachers on a Saturday morning. We did cheers and the wave and cartwheels and played in the sand and ate all of the licorice and popcorn that we could find. It was a glorious display of athletic ability, muffin tops, and sisterly love and bonding.

Too bad you couldn't be here. Hope you're enjoying your vacation with the in-laws.

By the way, looking at these pictures has made us realize that we TOTALLY should have been cheer leaders. We rock.

Happy Birthday Big Sissy

Here's an old pic of your 4th birthday. Look at that adorable baby next to you!




Reasons I love my big sister Becky!




-For reaching 40 before me




-For not having bigger boobs than me, especially since you didn't get the big butt, so that would have really sucked




-For being a superb example to me throughout our lives without even having to try and for making me envious of your life enough to want to clean up my own

-For taking me to the stake dances

-For using makeup and hair accouterments and showing me how

-For being the one I could turn to in my time of need and for being geographically close enough to help and to have witnessed my situation. You're the only one who really knows what I went through.

-For loving Chris almost as much as I do and for reminding me of why we love him when I would temporarily forget during fights. Fights usually revolving around our attempts at doing projects together and not agreeing on who's the Project Supervisor.

-For driving yourself and your husband and all of those kids 20hours every time I have a baby or a baptism. No more of that! But I'm so grateful that you and Dewey have been so willing and supportive.

-For marrying a wonderful bro in law. He's one of my (our) favorite people and has been the best big brother I could ever have all of the many times that I have needed him.

-For raising great kids who are wonderful cousins and friends to my kids and for raising them in a way that I never have to worry about what they might teach my sweet innocent little angels. We don't need another cousin Jeff and Becky making out in the closet, now do we?

-For planning great sister trips

-For taking 4 of my kids to the beach over night tonight so that I can get my house ready for Friday. Even though I've only worked on this blog post and scanning all of these pictures since you left. You better be happy with my post and not mad at me for getting nothing else done in the next 24 hours!

HUGGIES!

Here you are feeding me/ruffy the dog

You must have loved me for having that body. I always make you look so good.
In our matchey-matcheys with Grandma. Were you pushing me or just glaring at the back of my head? Time to put your angry eyes away.Our dressy outfits before the little kids were born...Our "dressy" outfits after they were born...
Did we OWN a hairbrush or did we just REALLY embrace the natural look?

Highlights...of my week, not of my hair. Unfortunately.

-Kiki coming home from her trip. She took over 700 pictures, which we watched as a slide show on the TV and we talked for hours about all of the things she did and saw. We are all glad to have her home and glad that she got to go. She also brought us great gifts

-Superturd styling his hair with nail polish. Then dumping the rest of the bottle on the wood floor. Thanks for all of your suggestions and support. I didn't try nail polish remover. Mostly because I couldn't find any, but also because his hair is so short and I wouldn't want that stuff on his scalp. I showered him, which was anti-helpful. Then I buzzed his hair. The hair clippers didn't like that very much. They kept getting caught in the hardened pink mess. I gave up and cut it all with scissors.

-Kaila discovering that when she's really sweaty she can open the sliding door with her stomach. It warms my heart to know that if she ever loses the use of her arms she'll still be able to open that door.

-During dinner my son standing straight up on his chair and suddenly pulling down the front of his pants, and thrusting his hips forward to make his penis stick out as far as he could, then laughing his butt off. I think his father taught him that trick. All of the females lost their appetite. Chris gave him a high five and told me that he often thinks of doing the same thing. He did add that he does not think about doing that while having dinner with the kids. Just when we're out to dinner together. Because that would be more exceptable.

-Morgan finding a old lady wig at a garage sale and buying it for a quarter. The funny part is her putting it on in the car and telling us not to tell Daddy that it's Morgan. Just to tell him that she's a neighbor girl that came over to play and her name is Sarah. We were forced to carry on the charade for about an hour. At one point she announced that she hadn't met Morgan yet, but she'd heard that she was very nice. Finally, she dramatically removed the wig and showed Daddy that it was just Morgan, not Sarah. She's very tricky.

-My NOT highlight of my week was breaking down and getting my hair cut at Supercuts after realizing that something had to happen. It's not good, but it's better than my black roots and yellow ends. Gross.

Help Me

If a child were to pour an entire bottle of nail polish into their hair, thinking it was some sort of styling product, and then rubbed it in and combed it and rubbed in in some more and then let it dry, how exactly would you go about fixing that problem?

I'm going to go find the scissors now. Please share your suggestions.

Gifts from Afar

Video of The First Tooth MoJo lost

Back On American Soil

We FINALLY heard from the world traveler tonight. Their plane landed in Vancouver BC at 12:30 this afternoon and they didn't get across the border until 5pm. They searched their buses and bags, so it took forever to get into the US of A. Now they are on their long drive home. She's been awake for 28hours straight. We're happy, we want her to sleep tonight and get right back into the Pacific Time Zone schedule before school starts. She said that she has a list of all the foods she can't wait to eat and another list of foods she hopes to never eat again. That list starts with rice. No Big Chiney Hiney for her welcome home dinner. Possibly a marathon of drive thru windows, hitting all of her favorites and wrapping it up with the, always delicious, Taco Bell. I'll be posting more after she gets in.

video

Here's a video I forgot to post. Kiki caught this baby rabbit while Dusty's family was here. She says that I inspired her to be able to catch it by saying COME ON, if you can catch snakes you can catch a BABY RABBIT! I'm so encouraging.

Hey, Beck

One week until you come to my house. Here's what we're gonna make every day that you're here... Then we'll eat it all by ourselves and then we'll make more. Just for us. Because we'll be the little, red, cackling, hens that did all the work themselves and the whiney little punks don't get any. Neither do the children. We'll gladly share with any sisters who come play with us. I guess that would just be JennyPenny, because the other one isn't sticking around to show you her baby. It's probably better that way, though, because I do still want you to love your own children and seeing baby EmmyLouise might make you rethink that. She's that cute. And she doesn't squeal like a stuck pig or a terradactyl whenever you touch her or look at her or breath the same air in the same car or in the same house or on the same 5 acres as her. Baby Plankton misses you. We look forward to leaving you in charge of all 10 children and running far away for a nice relaxing break. I hope you're up for that after all of the blackberry binging and no purging.

Found on Gina Lee's Recipes (My Hips Don't Lie)

Pioneer Woman's Blackberry Cobbler
Melt 1/2 cup butter and set aside.
In a mixing bowl combine:
1 cup sugar
1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup milk

Mix all ingredients together with a whisk. Add melted butter and whisk together and set aside.
Butter a baking dish. Take two generous cups of blackberries. (Frozen works fine)
Give ‘em a good rinse and lightly pat them dry. Pour the batter into the buttered baking dish. Sprinkling the 2 cups of blackberries over the top of the batter. Try to distribute them evenly…Until they’re all in there. Sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar evenly over the top. Pop the dish into the oven and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour, or until golden and bubbly.
Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Day 10 - traveling from Beijing to Shanghai

It's day 10 and I haven't heard from my kid since that last email I posted. Yikes, I'm getting a little antsy. I know she's fine and I'm so glad that someone is taking these pictures and posting them so we can all see how she's doing.

These are the train cars that they slept in on their way from Beijing to Shanghai. Four people plus their luggage per room. At least it was one night. That's not HER room. I'm pretty sure they made them share with people of the same gender.

Breaking Dawn

So perfect.

School Clothes Marathon

KaiKai and I spent 5 hours shopping for school clothes for her this morning. Here's all of the stuff we got. Two of those shirts are for MoJo, two are for Kiki, one is for me, the rest for Miss MiddleSchooler. Everything we got her was hollister, aero, or american eagle. We spent $40. Total. For all of that. Last night she was up late searching Craigslist for those brand names at garage sales. We headed out before 7:30 this morning with our map and had the most successful school shopping trip we've ever had. I think we'll spend as much on all of them this year as we usually spend on one of them. Yeah!

I gave myself too much credit

Since Saturday morning I've been so proud of me for not exiting society and entering Twilight world. In my closet. With the door locked. I've been able to just read a little at night and I can still sleep without sneaking off after Chris falls asleep to read. This morning at 7:30 I started reading (somewhere in the page 550 range) and it got to that part of the plot line that owns me and my soul and my family will not hear from me until I'm done. Luckily, that's only 200 more pages. How does Stephanie Meyer do that?!

WAY better website for China trip pictures

Click here to go to OUR band's website of pictures. And to save you the time of searching for my child, here are the ones I found of her...

Here's practice, she's wearing a green and white striped shirt:

Here they are on the Great Wall:

More from the China Doll

Hello Family,
How is it in sunny Washington? I am half way across the world from you! That's too far!! Today we went to the Great Wall. It was AMAZING!!!! I took a lot of pictures but it was really foggy and smoggy. My camera can't capture the beauty of it anyway. Yesterday we performed at Tianemmen Square. it was 104 degrees, several people passed out. channel 8 got lots of coverage of Brandee, and i stood next to her the entire time! Maybe I was on tv! it should be airing sometime after the 8th of august. at the square there were tanks and guys with machine guns and a reallllllly small crowd. i was afraid we were going to get massacred by them, but the heat nearly did us in instead. this is for kai: i have seen this reallllllly reallllly realllllly hot guy a couple of times, he's australian ,and he looks like a hotttttter version of kevin jonas, with better hair. Brandee and i stalk him(even though she has a boyfriend), it's way fun, you should try stalking australian guys sometime. good times, good times. hey, so ummmm, our phone got shut off so i can't call you guys at all. and it costs either one dollar for as long as you want or 15yuan for 30 minutes to go on the computer. so i may be able to email you more often. i got a gift for Morgan and part of a gift for Stadd. Don't let Morgan grow! I hope she still fits it when i get back. If you go to www.hockinsonbeijingolympics.blogspot.com you can see the blog of pictures for specifically Hockinson. sweet. check it out, there's at least one of me on there.

Love you all!
Miss you all!
MackenzieXOXOXOXO

The Tweaker Stole My Baby

Did you know that there is no record on IMDB.com of that one line from Quigley Down Under about the dingo stole her baby? None. I'm not clear on whether it was "got my baby" or "stole my baby" and whether it was a dingo or multiple dingos. I just looked it up to get my title accurate for this post and I got nothin. I might have to rent it now. This is quite a predicament, as Superturd's little friend, Liam, would say. Yeah, he's three, it's ridiculously adorable. And disturbing because Superturd just started pronouncing Yes clearly last week.

The point I was trying to make was that tweakers broke into our shop and stole some stuff. By breaking in I mean driving up to our wide open shop and loading machinery into their car and driving away. How do we know it was tweakers, you ask? Because Chris caught them. Thanks to our trusty guard chickens. By guard chickens I mean that Chris just happened to be making sure they were locked in when we got home from our hot date (mom watched the kids and they were perfect and that wasn't how I was hoping it would go, not to torcher my mother, just that they were awful all day and then good when I left. Why would they do that to me? It's mean.)


So, Mom and I were watching Little People Big World and Chris went out with the spotlight to check the chickens. That sounds alot like choke the chicken, which reminds me of a hysterical story, but I'm already getting carpel tunnel, so I'll share that one later. Right, so Chris hears a sound and swings the spotlight around to the shop and there's a tweaker lady and a tweaker dude and the lady hastily explains that they were "just neckin" and the dude blurts out "we didn't take anything, I swear, you can come check if you want to" and Chris told them to take off before he shot them both. Next morning he found a few hundred dollars of missing lawn implements and in their place was a box of Sudafed and a can of spray paint. Totally tweakers! I'm not up on my Meth knowledge enough to know if a box of Sudafed is going to get you much meth, but I'll bet you right now that they had bad teeth. That's what Chris' step sister taught us about her job in the drug fighting industry, she always looks for bad teeth. That's how they know they've got a meth head on their hands. She told me that she could tell i don't do meth. That was nice. Of course, that was before that one tooth on the side crumbled. But, hey, Leanna's missing the same tooth, so I guess we'll go to rehab together. Maybe we'll see Ms Drinkey Drink there. Oops, no we won't. She got out last Thursday and starting drinking on Friday.


On the bright side, Chris did not except their invitation to come to their vehicle and check it out. Yikes. And we were motivated to go to Home Depot, not for that perfect shade of boring, but for fencing. And possibly a dog.

Me Too

We grabbed dinner at Shari's tonight. While we were enduring our almost endless wait for food, Dan Fogelberg came on the background music. He is one of my favorites after John Denver and Neil Diamond. I don't think Chris would get lucky in the parking lot after a Dan Fogelberg concert, though. OK, yes he would.

After he had been singing about listing to the rhythm of the falling rain for a few minutes MoJo turned to me and said Mom, I really like the fancy music they play in restaurants. My heart swelled with love for her. Then we arm wrestled to see who's boyfriend Dan Fogelberg is. I totally won.

Tiananmen Square and The Home Depot

Here's the news from Kiki. I still don't know whether the performance will be broadcast here, but now you know as much as I do.

Hey mom,sorry, i don't think i can call you today, as much as i would like to. we perform at tianemmen square on sunday morning at 8-9 so for you it's 5-6 on saturday. if this info doens't help then you can go to like nbc's website or something for more info.
love you, miss you,
mackenzie
i hope you see soome pictures of me on the website!!!!XOXOXO

In unrelated news, I have found out that trying to describe the color of paint sample that you want to your husband on his cell phone while he's in front of the paint counter at Home Depot doesn't turn out well for anybody. Explaining that it's a taupe/beige/light brown color that's not too yellow and not too grey, but definitely not a greenish shade, doesn't seem to help too much. I'm trying to match my new garage sale living room chairs to a paint color. Paint is never my strong point. That would explain all the gallons of full paint in my garage.