You are visiting the home of Elzee

Drop me a line
(real quick so you can
go check on your kids)

A puppy, even in her sleep

When Brandi was about 12 to 15 months old, she learned a 'cute' little trick from her Uncle Jack. He would scratch his face and make a panting noise. Brandi, in turn would then lift her leg and say PSSSSSSSSTTT!

One day we were travelling in the car and she was sleeping peacefully in her carseat. I was feeling a little bit cold and wanted my husband to put the heater on for a few minutes. I said to him "could you make it just a tiny bit warmer in here?" So he, being the sarcastic character that he is, opened his mouth and exhaled a few deep breaths. Sure enough, without so much as lifting her head or opening her eyes, Brandi lifted her leg and said "PSSSSSSSTT!"

He knows what his memory work means!

It was the day of my brother's wedding. Someone had taken 3 year old Ken from the church to the reception hall for me. Later, when I arrived at the hall I quickly discovered where my son was. As I was walking across the parking lot, I could see him standing at the top of the stairs. As I drew nearer, I realized with horror, what he was doing. He stood there, pants around his ankles, seeing how far down the steps he could 'shoot his pee'. Meanwhile at the top of his lungs he kept repeating "Psalms 6 and 2" "Psalms 6 and 2". That was his current Sunday School memory work. Well I had to get a bible to look up the verse, and appropriately the verse read "OH LORD, HELP ME!"

The $1100 baby

It was payday and we were going to go to the bank, cash the cheque and treat the kids to McDonald's. Brandi and Ken were in the back seat of the car and baby Jed was securely fastened in his carseat in the front. For some reason (I don't remember why, now) we had to stop at my brother-in-law's house. Both my husband and I got out of the car to attend to whatever it was that we were doing. When we returned to the car I noticed Jed had a little piece of paper in his hand. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I wrestled the scrap of paper away from him. It was then I discovered it was the last corner of the paycheque. He had eaten the rest of it!! My husband had a little explaining to do the next day when he went to his boss for a new cheque. The worst part of it for me, was having to go home and make supper, because we then had no money to go to McDonald's!

An introduction to Jed and Tyler

When Jed was 5 years old, circumstances were such that my 3 year old nephew, Tyler, and his 6 month old sister came to stay with us for four months. Tyler and Jed usually got along very well. Many times I wished they would fight more often because at least if they were fighting their minds were occupied. One on one, both Jed and Tyler could be a bit of a handful but together there are no words to describe their behavior. I don't think they intentionally set out to do bad things, they just had a way of convincing each other that what they were about to do would be a good idea. The following little stories are little things I wrote down during the first three weeks we had Tyler. These are honest to goodness, unembelished true happenings that all took place within a three week period. By the end of the three weeks I quit writing everything down because I just didn't have time for it. Somehow we survived that 4 months and even looked forward to the times Tyler would come back and stay with us again. He stayed with us off and on for 5 years.

The first little incident with Jed and Tyler happened the very first day, the very first time they went outside together. In the basement they had found a can of white spray paint and decided that the garden tools, their rubber boots and the bumpers on the car would all look better in white.

Why I still haven't landscaped the yard

A few days before Ty arrived, I had picked up my perrenial plants, shrubs and trees. We had lived on our 5 acres of unlandscaped property for a few years and I was quite excited to be finally planting some greenery. I had wonderful visions of my blooming lilac bushes, different bulbs and shrubs adding color all season long. The maple trees were going to give shade in the heat and an array of color in the fall. All of these wonders of nature were sitting on the verranda in pots awaiting the day the ground was ready for them. The boys decided they would like to find out just how well my now nice and white shovels would work. When I checked outside I saw that they had finished 'planting' all my plants for me....not at all in the places I had intended them to be. I hadn't intended for them to be in quite so many pieces either! I did manage to salvage 1 lilac bush, so I suppose I can look at it as being not a total loss. And you know to this day, five years later I still have not landscaped my yard. I keep thinking, only about 10 more years and they'll all be gone from home! Then I can move into a nice little finished off house with a nice little finished off yard.

Over the bank!

We have a fairly long driveway that is built up, so it has steep banks on either side leading down to a nice little creek below. Well such a situation as this is just too tempting for little boys. Eveything in sight which can be moved by two little (yet extremely strong) boys went over the bank....that pretty well meant anything weighing less than 3 tons. I'm sure the only reason they never rolled the car over the bank was because they never thought of it. If they had put their minds to it, I'm certain they could have accomplished it. Their bikes were the stupidest thing. They would ride them, get tired of them and throw them over the bank. Of course fifteen minutes later they would scream for help getting their bikes back. Well Mommy soon tired of that little game and the bikes remained over the bank for a couple of days. Then the next time it was a couple of weeks.

One day I found a jar of canned peaches over the bank, right beside the empty one with a spoon in it!

Jed was in kindergarten and went to school in the afternoon. One morning after playing outside I called him to get ready for school. I asked him where his blue glasses were, which he had been wearing 1/2 hour before. "Over the bank" was the answer I got. (surprise, surprise) I sent him back out to find them, and of course he couldn't. But he did come up with the silver ones which had been missing!

Spring Yard Cleaning

Then there was spring yard clean up day! We had a fire going to burn some garbage.....silly us to do such a thing before the boys were grown up and gone from home. The first thing we discovered in the flames was Jed's bike.(This was before I decided to leave them over the bank for an extended lenghth of time). Fortunatey the fire was still quite large and they couldn't get too close so not too much damage was done. I yelled at them and warned them of the dangers of fire and all that, but I guess anything short of tying them up probably wouldn't have helped. A while later I found Brandi's great big teddy bear with half his face an entirely different color and shape than it was originally. This time they were made to stay in the house. The next morning I realized that at some point they had gotten back outside. There in the coals were a pair of brand new socks, a pair of skates and Jed's glasses. The skates and glasses were salvageable, the socks were not. I guess we'll never know what else was thrown in and consumed by fire.

The freezer is in the garage (where I can't guard it)

As suggested by the title our freezer is in the garage, which is downstairs from the kitchen and living area. Needless to say I should have had it wired with an alarm system. A neighbor was over for coffee one day and we were discussing our respective children and their little escapades. We looked out the window to check on the kids and saw Jed and Tyler walking down the driveway holding hands. Such a sight touches a mother's heart and she is forced to say something she'll regret. Like "You know they aren't always bad. They look so cute and can be a joy to have around." Of course after a second look I realized one of them was holding a bag of frozen strawberries and the other had a bucket of Cool Whip. They were quite enjoying 'dipping and eating'.

My husband insisted on parking the car in the garage where I could neither see nor hear the kids. He insisted "They have to learn sometime." Well please, not on my time! One morning we went to go somewhere in the car only to discover it had been painted white with Cool Whip. The Cool Whip now goes in the upstairs freezer!

Oh yes! The ice cream episode. One afternoon I was cleaning up the yard and went to pick up the icecream pail that was laying beside the sand bank. The lid was on so I took the lid off to dump out the sand. Underneath 3 inches of sand, the rest of the pail was filled with melted ice cream. My little angels had taken a new pail of icecream out of the freezer, eaten all they wanted and filled it back up with sand.

Those BIG light switches

It was a fairly quiet day and the baby was sleeping. The big kids were off at school and Jed and Tyler were outside playing. I had five minutes to myself. (Whatever possesses a mother to think she can time 'to herself'?) Anyway I sat down with a cup of coffee. Shortly thereafter the power went out. I breathed a sigh of relief that I already had the coffee made! The power was only out a few seconds before it came back on. It then flickered a few times and went out again. After a few short power outages I realized that while the power was out in the dinning room, it was still on in the kitchen and vice versa. I raced down to the ever silent garage, where the electical box is located. And yes, there standing on the freezer were two inquisitive little boys. With large innocent eyes they turned to me and asked "Mommy, what are all these big light switches for?"

I try to occupy them

I must seem like I totally did not pay attention to my kids, but really it's amazing what these two could do in 45 seconds! One day I decided, I don't care if nothing ever gets done around the house I'm going to spend every waking minute occupying their time, with me at their side. While we were sitting at the table cutting pictures from the Christmas catalog and glueing them on construction paper, Jed unscrewed the lid on the bottle of glue...You guessed it!! That little bottle white glue that takes about 15 minutes for me to squeeze 3 drops out of, became empty in about 4 1/2 seconds, right on top the pile of papers. As I'm cleaning up the glue I hear Tyler say to Jed "Look I'm making a road for our cars". Like an idiot, I thought he was drawing on his page! I looked up to see him with scissors in hand, using the pointed end to scratch a map into my wood table. That map is still there right beside my dinner plate every night.

The day they entered the forbidden room

Let's not forget the event that, I think after 5 years, is the only one that I can still get angry about, if I try real hard!! I'm sure this is the most upset I got with the boys. Doesn't 'upset' sound like such a mild and gentle word? The boys can testify that 'mild and gentle' or even 'upset' are not words they would have chosen to describe their mother that day. Words like angry, fuming, furious, livid and on the brink of murder would probably more suited to the occasion. Brandi's room was (still is) off limits to the boys. All my craft things (which amounted to hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars worth of stuff) was being stored in her closet, which had no doors on it at the time. One day they decided to break a rule and enter THE ROOM....how uncharacteristic of them to disobey! They dumped the large basket containing rolls of ribbon . We're talking 30 or 40 rolls here. Many were completely unrolled but many only half unrolled so there were a few cardboard centers snarled up in the mess too. The bottles of glitter were a real treasure, it looked so beautiful in their hair, the craft stuff, on the bed , in Brandi's clothes and all over the toys. There was a sandwich bag full of one color so it doesn't take too much imagination to realize how beautiful everything was. Of course there were a lot of very interesting things which had to be unpackaged and spread out for closer examination. The absolute most exciting find of the day was the fabric paint. It was 12 or 15 little pots of it, like you get in a paint by number kit. I was amazed at the coverage you can get from that amount of paint. I guess I got a better deal on it than I thought. They had painted the side of Brandi's waterbed, her carpet, her dresser, the wall the door, a wall in the hall and their hands and feet. Needless to say everything they touched or stepped on had spots of paint on it. The worst part I discovered a week or so later. Brandi was in a speech festival, I went to check if her two good dresseswere clean so she could decide what to wear. The boys had painted them both with red and blue paint. One dress was about a year old but it was still in good shape and it fit her well. That dress was probably my favorite dress she ever owned. The other dress was the one I had just made for my neice's wedding. I think she had only worn it twice. Of course, being fabric paint and having over a week to set it never did come out.
You may wonder why these boys can still walk or how they made it to their next birthday. I wonder that myself sometimes!!

The 'minor' things that don't warrant their own headings

One thing I've learned through the trials of mothering is:

"God's grace is sufficient"

2Corinthians 12:9

Thanks for staying , I hope to see you again.