Porter was Here

The other day i went to grab a few apples to put in my juicer. I saw this:

I knew instantly who it was.

Because this happened over and over every summer:

I called Porter.

I asked him if he knew what happened to that apple.

He quickly responded, "That was me. I did that. "

Exasperated, I asked, "Why didnt you eat it all? Why did you just bite it and put it back?"

He shrugged and said as he walked away, "'Cause it wasn't a tomato."

Reason number 800 that proves this child is very different from the others.

shelf life

The other day, I was in the library absently staring at the books on the shelves, when I realized something. You can tell everything about someone by the books they have on their shelves.

Their hobbies:

 Their goals:

Their major in college:

If you look at my shelves you can see my religion:

 

You can see I am a mother:

 I read poetry:

You can tell by worn bindings which are the favorites:

 You can tell children live here:

 You can tell someone reads for fun [me] :

 And someone reads to learn [not me]:

You can tell we  have a diabetic child.

You can see we have a daughter (thanks to the entire shelf of american girl books).

You can tell we have boys (thanks to the star wars, lego and superhero book shelf).

Which artists we find interesting, what we find funny, and places we would like to visit.

Everything you need to know about us is right there on the shelf. 

Our shelf life.

Although some things may not be entirely explained:

anatomy of a sunday afternoon

Sunday is my favorite day of the week. It's the only day I know we will all be together (for the most part). It's also the day we unplug. The TV stays off, the ipods are docked and the itouches are turned into us. (too much of a temptation to play temple run 2). We do this so our older kids will engage. I think it's just really easy when you are raising a bigger family to allow some kids to tune out. To be there in the room, but not present. I want my kids to have memories of being together. And for that reason, we have an unplugged day once a week. (Our one exception to this is, we will occasionally watch a movie as long as its something we are all doing together.)
So what happens when you unplug?
You get bored kids.
But here is a secret: bored kids usually translates into some kind of fun if you ride it out.

Our afternoons, consist of:

Racing home from church and jumping immediately into ratty house clothes. Then lunch. We are a fan of rituals and traditions here, and it seems Sunday lunch is always the same. Tuna sandwiches and strawberries.
We sit around our table and talk about church. What happened, what we learned, which is usually a nice segway for Brian into some kind of lecture. The kids moan and groan (little ones leave the table and Hailey goes to the piano to play the Harry Potter theme song), but they listen. They digest it. And hopefully, it helps them somehow.

The party somehow makes it's way into the library

where Jonas ponders,  Hailey reads, Luke gets his diaper changed, Porter plays, Caleb gets hyper and Brian and I try to hold some sort of conversation.

Usually someone makes someone cry.

And someone gets reprimanded and consequently pouts:

Hailey or Jonas will spout of random facts about the Titanic or Abraham Lincoln [hailey] or about the earth or how things work [Jonas].

This particular afternoon, Hailey told us the history of candy. Caleb listened with all the love in his heart.

All the talk of candy reminded Jonas of those jellybeans that taste like all sorts of disgusting things. I remembered I had box saved.

 In this box of jellybellys there are two kinds that look the same. One is gross, while the other is good.

  I gave the kids the same color, knowing that one or more would end up with the barf flavor, or skunk spray, rotten egg, or pencil shavings.

Hilarity ensued.

 Laughter and more laughter.

Usually people start to fall asleep. [Luke and Brian].

Then we bring the party down by setting out art stuff. This time, just plain paper.

Caleb the capitalist, always tries to sell his artwork for money to everyone.
The afternoon slowly ends and bring on the evening.
I love Sunday afternoons. The chaos, the talking, the laughing, even the yelling and the crying. I know someday I will be sitting in my quiet house with no one but Brian to talk to, and I know we will talk about this time. These afternoons, when we were tired of the loudness, the chaos, these afternoons we wished for some peace and quiet. We will speak of them with fondness and wish with all our hearts we had one of them back again.

Minus the poopy diapers. Neither one of us will miss those.