Quick Funny from Rylen

I love it when little kids mispronounce words. It's so cute. I rarely correct them because I just find it adorable and actually miss it once they learn to say the words correctly.

Right now, Rylen says "chicken" when he means "kitchen." The other kids have corrected him often enough that sometimes he tries really hard to pronounce "kitchen" but it usually still sounds like "chicken."

Which is why he ran through the kitchen a few minutes ago squealing with laughter and came over to tell me that he and Lucy (the cat) were playing a game.

"Lucy chase me through the chicken!!"

Teasing just a little bit, I said: "The chicken! Really?!?"

Knowing what I meant, he tried to say "kitchen" instead.

"Lucy chase me through the chi... the chi... the kich... Lucy chase me through the living room!" 

Ha!!

Throwback Thursday

So the challenge for Throwback Thursday was to click back through your blog at random and link to an old post. For your enjoyment, here is a throwback to 2011 about my childhood career plans. :)

http://5shields.blogspot.com/2011/10/thats-lot-of-firemen.html

Quick Funnies from Rylen

Rylen coughed loudly and I must have looked startled because he patted my arm and told me: "It ok, Mommy. That just my mouth."

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I found some pudding in the fridge and offered it to Rylen with his lunch. His eyes grew wide and he exclaimed: "Oh my gosh! I need have it in my tummy!" (Coincidentally, I often have the same reaction to such treats. ;-) )

Playdates Are Serious Business

My kids are always coming home from school and telling me that "So-and-So wants me to come play at her house. When can I go?" or "Can my friend What's-His-Name come over on Saturday?"

To which I respond: "Did you get her phone number?" "Did you give him our phone number?"

Sometimes this is met with a blank stare, the child in question having forgotten again that I need that sort of information in order to set anything up. Sometimes they tell me that they wrote down a phone number and put it on a piece of paper. But having seen the tiny scraps of paper with random numbers (sometimes enough to make up a complete phone number, but not always) and no name attached that my kids bring home from their friends, I assume they are sending the same sort of scraps home with others.

And then they wonder why the other mom and I never get in touch to set up time to play.

So when a coupon for free (pay only shipping & handling!) business cards came in the mail a few weeks ago, I had a sudden brainstorm. Business cards for the kids!

Now all the kids have stash of cards in their backpacks to hand out when they and their friends start talking playdates. It doesn't solve the problem of the paper scraps my kids bring home, but at least it gets my contact info to the mom in a way she can use.

Call Me Bubba

We are in the habit of calling all of our kids by various nicknames. For instance, Haley is also known as Hays, Hazy, Haybee, Missy, Sissy, or WaKeeny (long story). Preston might be called Press, Presto, Ky (for his middle name Kyler), or Potawatomi (again, long story). Brekken becomes Brek, Brekki, Brekster... You get the idea.

So one of the nicknames we use for Rylen is Bubba. It evolved from Baby, which we called him when he was (not surprisingly) a baby. As he got older, we didn't feel like we should keep calling him Baby, and it became Bubba. But he's also Ry, Ry-Ry, Rys... I don't think that Bubba is used all that more often than any other.

But lately Rylen has really latched on to Bubba. To the point that if we call him Rylen, he gets red in the face and angry and insists, "No! I Bubba!"

Yesterday after church I asked him if he had fun in his class. With a very sad face, he informed me that: "My teacher not call me Bubba."

And last night I checked on him while he was sleeping, only to hear him murmur: "You call me Bubba."

So for now, I guess we'll be calling him Bubba. :)

The Spell-Off

It was only a week ago that Haley won her class spelling bee and qualified for the school bee. Today she competed against other 4th and 5th graders to see who would move on to represent Hudson Academy in the district spelling bee.

She prepared for the competition by diligently studying her word list. And by borrowing a pair of glasses (sans lenses) from her friend so that she would "look really smart."

The spelling bee began with 12 contestants. They tried hard, but some stumbled and were out of the competition. Haley stopped each time to think hard about her answer before she began to spell. One hand on her chest, she would close her eyes and take a few deep breaths while she got her answer ready. Then she would slowly and carefully spell the word. I was surprised to realize how invested I was. Of course I always want her to do well, but I found myself clutching my hands together in anxiety as I silently cheered her on.

When asked to spell "cinematic," she really amped up the drama. After thinking about the word for a moment, she began to spell. "C-I-N..." And then she stopped. She stood stock still, thinking about the next letter.

The atmosphere in the gymnasium was so still you could hear a pin drop. All those elementary students (2nd - 5th grade) and none of them made a sound. Everyone was waiting breathlessly to see if she would pull it off. It felt like an eternity (but was probably only 5 or 6 seconds). Finally, she looked up at the judges again and continued. "E-M-A-T-I-C."

"That is correct," the judge responded.

The level of tension had been so high during her long pause that the whole gym erupted in spontaneous applause (in spite of the rule to hold applause for the end of each round) at her successful spell.

By the end of round five, ten of the twelve constants had been eliminated. It was down to only Haley and her friend Mikayla. They went back and forth for seven more rounds!

Finally, Haley was given the word "derivative." I held my breath a little. She had struggled with this word during practice. And she made a tiny mistake. Mikayla then had to spell a word correctly for the win... she received "winnow." *sigh* That's the way a spelling bee goes; even in the same round, not all words are the same level of difficulty.

I was very proud of Haley. She had a quick moment of sadness at missing out on first place, and then rallied and was thrilled with her 2nd place finish. She is already looking forward to competing in the district spelling bee in February.

Way to go, Haley!

Monthly Menu Planner Randomized Spreadsheet

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook earlier today. A bunch of us chimed in with ideas and suggestions, and in the course of the conversation, I had the thought that you could probably build a spreadsheet in Excel that would handle most of that. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it could be really useful. I try to menu plan so that I can plan my grocery lists, but I always run into problems deciding what to make. So I thought I'd try building the spreadsheet.

Since a couple of people asked me to share it when it was done, I thought this was probably the easiest way to pass it along.

The first time you use it, you'll definitely need to spend some time on the back end to set it up. If you just want a simple randomizer that will assign each of your main dishes to the days of the month, you can probably set it up in 5-10 minutes. If you want the more elaborate version that includes all your recipes, it will take a couple of hours. To use the menu planner, you'll have to have a computer and Excel (it might work with the Open Doc version of Excel). If you're not very familiar with Excel, I'll try to walk you through how to use it for this.

This is what you'll get for your monthly meal plan. The Date column lists the days of the month 1-31 (if there are 28, 29, or 30 days in a month, just ignore those days on the planner). For each date, a main dish is listed along with the type of food and how it's prepared. That way, if the random sort has ended up giving you chicken 5 days in a row, it's easy to see that and you can do a re-sort.

To sort your monthly list, you click at the bottom of the Excel screen to go to the Randomizer sheet.

Click the column header for column A.

Then click the Sort and Filter button. You can sort smallest to largest or largest to smallest - it works either way.

When the Sort Warning pops up, choose to Expand the Selection. Then click Sort. Excel will randomize the numbers in the first column and then sort them.

If you go back to the Monthly Planner sheet at this point, you will see that it updated to show the new order of all your dishes. That's all you have to do on a monthly basis to re-order the dishes for your menu. You have a month of dinners planned out and if someone complains, you can tell them to blame the computer, after all, you didn't choose what to fix that night! ;)

If you want to use the menu planner, just leave a comment with your email address or shoot me a message on Facebook. I'll send you the files for the Simple Menu Planner, the Menu Planner With Recipes, and Instruction sheets for setting up both files. Let me know if you have any problems downloading or using the files and I'll try to troubleshoot. :)