Standiford Family

Our little boy is so funny.  During the summer Megan began commenting on men without shirts.  She started calling them “half nakey”.  Kade is a little parrot sometimes and picked up this phase.  Anytime he’s without a shirt or pants or both he says he’s “half nakey”.  I make sure to point out that he’s “all nakey” when both shirt and pants are off.  (That’s me the correcting control freak.)

Today he was wearing some new pants that he’d just got and had gotten dinner all over his shirt (it’s not a new thing to have a dirty shirt, it’s usually his napkin) and had taken it off.  Then he had to run around saying he was “half nakey”.  After that got everyone’s attention he started saying, loudly, “armpit!” with his fingers in his pits, flapping his arms.

A few weeks ago we watched “Holes” for family movie night.  There was a kid nicknamed Armpit.  Kids on the movie were chanting “armpit, armpit”.  Kade, being the afore mentioned parrot, picked up on this lovely phrase too and uses it whenever he can.

It’s never boring around here when Kade’s in performance mode.  Here’s a few more pictures of him showing off his big belly and muscles.

Warning: If you don’t know or care about knitting you may consider this post boring. You can skim through it and check out the pictures.

A couple days ago I finally finished the project for Mickey’s birthday. I couldn’t do exactly what I wanted with it but I decided to give it to him anyway. I can always attempt the detail later, after some practice. I didn’t want him to wait anymore.

I suppose I should start at the beginning of this story. I was looking at sock patterns on line and through Knitting Pattern Central found a pattern called TechGuy Socks. There is a sock at the bottom of the page with a Mac Apple logo on it. This totally jumped out at me. This would be perfect for my computer geek. I knew I wouldn’t follow the pattern exactly because I knew there was no way he would wear wool.

I tried to order some Cascade Fixation yarn before I left for my trip but I didn’t try early enough so I could have it while I was gone. (I saw this yarn used a book from the library and thought it would work really well in socks for Mickey.) I found a place in Ohio to order from but to overnight three little balls of yarn was going to be $42! What! I could drive there and get it but the gas would probably be more than $42 and I had too much to do. I decided I would try a different yarn. I tried the sock about 4 times while in Utah but it didn’t work out. After settling back to normal life I ordered it from Yarn Market, the store in Ohio. It came in two days! I could have ordered it before I left and still got it in time. Oh well.

I had to figure out this yarn, it’s 98.3% cotton and 1.7% elastic. You have to pull it tight while you knit with it and I had to work out my gage. It took me a few attempts but it turned out really nice. The apple detail is something called duplicate stitch. You work a piece of yarn over the knitted item, kind of like embroidery or cross stitch. The main part of the sock is black and the stitches are tight. I couldn’t get it to work. I need to knit up a swatch of it and practice.

Anyway, Mickey seemed to like his socks and the idea of the apple. I pulled off a surprise too. He thought I was doing something for the laptop. (Janel, I think your present threw him off.) Kade was so happy that Mickey had his own socks from Mama (Kade had tried them on a few times while I was working on them) that he had to have his on too. He calls them slippers, they are a little big.

I went to get a picture off the “little” camera (we have two that we use, the other being the “big” or “good” camera {don’t get me started on cameras}) and found these fun pictures of us enjoying our dinner. I made Chicken Parmesan and Kade started slurping up his linguine. He was cute doing this so I had to grab the camera and take a few shots. He was having a hard time with the linguine so everyone took their turn showing him how to do it. They also got their picture taken. Kade had to have a turn with the camera too. He took an “artistic” shot of me. I think his finger blocked the flash causing the redness. I also got my head chopped off. I guess the linguine was the most important thing. Enjoy the pictures, we enjoyed the meal.

Our maple tree, our only tree, has been changing the color of it’s leaves for the past few weeks, a little at a time. I asked myself, is it Fall already? Then I thought the kids are back in school, soccer has started, and Notre Dame games are in full swing. I looked on line and low and behold the first day of Autumn was Sunday! We’ve had a hot start with a record breaking high of 92 yesterday. Well, Happy Autumn. Here’s our little maple tree dressing up for Fall.

This weekend has been rather hectic. I wanted to post this story yesterday but I didn’t really have time (see explanation below). Friday Megan stayed home from school and we tried to get some things done around the house. I had to finish getting ready for the Super Saturday. Betty said Meg could come visit her for a while if I didn’t want to drag around two kids while I ran errands. Meg stayed for about 6 hours with her. I think they both had a good time. I ran to Michael’s to pick up a few more things I needed for the next day. At 6:00 we did some set up at church. We had some help from Mike, Kelly G., and Greg. Thanks for your help. Then we headed home and had our family movie night. We watched the new movie, Barbie as The Island Princess. It’s a cute movie as all the Barbie ones are. I believe Mat is a romantic. She would get all excited and cheer when Ro and the Prince would meet or end up together. She’s funny. We put the kids to bed and then I had more prep work to do but I didn’t last long. I couldn’t keep my eyes open so I was in bed by 11! That’s early for me.

Saturday we got up early and headed to church to get things ready. Mickey got out a TV for the nursery and then he and the kids went to Megan’s soccer game.

I was at church until 2 doing the Super Saturday. It’s a craft day for women. Not many came. Maybe they aren’t crafty, I don’t know, but those who came had a good time. The big hit was a 72 hour kit. These are great for emergencies or to keep in the car in case you get stuck for hours on the highway. After the clean up I came home and napped for a couple of hours. I can’t really remember what else happened except Mickey and Kade went to the store for Kade’s dad date and they brought home a few groceries and a movie. I can’t even remember if I made dinner or not. After the kids were in bed Mickey and I watched The Prestige. This movie was recommended to us by the Williams. I liked it but was a little confused. The end cleared up some things but I think the ending could be better. I’ll have to watch it again.

Sunday Megan was still itching her head. We all went to church but Mickey, Meg, and Kade left after Sacrament Meeting with Mike and they went to visit Betty. I got to drive Betty’s car to her house after church. It was nice but different than both our cars. The kids snacked and visited with Grandma. Then we had to leave. Mat announced it was her teacher’s birthday and I thought we could make up something and take it to her, she only lives a few streets away. Mat helped me make up a recipe in a jar for chocolate chip cookies. Mattey, Megan, and I rode our bikes over to Sister Miller’s house and gave her the jar and wished her a Happy Birthday. It turns out her birthday isn’t until Wednesday. Oops, better early than late. We came home and I made omelets for dinner. The girls really like these with ham and cheese. Then it was bed time again. This is a happy and difficult part of the day. Happy for me because it will be quiet for a while but difficult because they don’t want to sleep. Anyone with kids knows this. Mat has also been coughing and sniffing. Great she’s getting sick again.

Monday morning I spotted more lice in Meg’s hair. I took Mat to school because we were running late. When we came home I got on the computer and started looking up ways to get rid of lice. Apparently the RID we used doesn’t actually kill the eggs, just the live lice. Nice. I found a few people raved about Denorex shampoo and some people rinse with vinegar to dissolve the eggs or at least make them less sticky. So we went out and got some Denorex and chocolate of course. That makes everything better, just ask Janel. I got Meg in the tub and used a lot of the shampoo in her hair. We let it sit for about 20 minutes, then rinsed, and repeated. This shampoo is for dandruff and it really makes your scalp tingle, also my hands.

Megan didn’t seem to mind. She lay in the warm tub listening to a story on CD, Hank the Cowdog. I rinsed out the shampoo again, it was only about 5 more minutes, and then rinsed her hair with vinegar. When I let Meg smell it in the bottle she said it smelled good but once it was in her hair she changed her mind. I then spent about 3-4 hours pulling out all the eggs I could find. My shoulders and back were sore and tight. Meg did really good. I asked her if I got lice if she would pick out all the eggs for me. She said, “No.” That’s nice to know. The shampoo really helped with her itchy scalp. She got to go to soccer practice at 6. Mat came home from school with her homework and a request for apples, something about the first day of Autumn and Johnny Appleseed Day. Luckily I had some burrito filling in the freezer because after all that picking and doing 5 loads of laundry I really didn’t feel like making dinner.

In the evening Mickey and I watched one of the handful of shows we watch together, Heroes. Mickey was thrilled to watch this show in HD. Personally I didn’t notice that much difference. Maybe with LOST I will. That’s going to be gorgeous.

So that was our long weekend in review. Hope you had a good one. Today is back to normal. Megan was lice free this morning so she went to school. Yea! I got my workout in while Kade watched Disney Channel. Time for my shower. Have a good week.

¡Warning!  The Standifords are QUARANTINED due to LICE!  Yuck.  Megan has had an itchy head for the last few days.  She went to the school nurse yesterday or the day before and she didn’t see anything.  I took her to our new doctor, Dr. Teters, today and it turns out she does have lice.  That means we all could have it.  We went to Target and got some one step shampoo treatment.  We all lathered up with the shampoo and waited the 10 minutes.  The reds didn’t have any.  Mickey didn’t have any.  I didn’t have any. We all lucked out.  Now I have to attend to a lot of laundry and tomorrow tackle a lot of vacuuming.  Like I didn’t have a bunch of other things to do already with Super Saturday two days away.  But I will put Megan to work tomorrow since the doctor suggested I keep her home, just in case.

So we went to the new doctor’s office today and the nurse that called us back is my cousin’s (Robb) wife’s (Jamie) mother, Lori.  (I know, confusing.)  And then when we went back to the room we saw our former nurse, Troy.  It was nice to already know people in a new place.  We really liked our doctor.  Thanks, Jordan, for the suggestion.  Although I had to do a double take because he looked nothing like his picture from the link above.  He has a mop of hair on his head.  It kind of threw me since I wasn’t expecting it.  Can’t he update his picture?

Yesterday was my Dad’s birthday and we got a chance to celebrate with him for a little while. Kelly made him a “Death by Chocolate” cake and we stopped and picked up some Papa John’s pizza and breadsticks before going over to my parents house. One of the reasons for getting Papa John’s was to support the girls’ school which was having a fund raiser and Papa John’s was donating 20% of the order price to their school.

We had dinner, a birthday singing, some cake and chatted for a little bit while the kids played outside and with the water. Somehow Kade ended up being all wet and Megan was apologizing but I’m not sure what exactly happened there. It ended up being a Barnes and Noble birthday for my Dad as we got him a gift card as his present and my sister had the same idea as well. Guess he’ll be doing some book shopping in the near future. Megan wants to go too because she got the same present from Tia also.

Hope the big birthday bash up at the range was all it was cracked up to be!

Today was a busy afternoon. Meg’s been wanting her hair cut for a few days but there hasn’t been much time lately. So today was the day. She wanted her hair very short, meaning above her ear. I said that was too short and talked her into cutting it to chin length. It’s a cute cut for her. Her hair is thick and straight. It has to get cut right or you can see the mistakes. I think I did pretty good the first time. She actually sat really still. Again I was already in the process when I thought of the before picture. What’s wrong with me?

Next was Mat. Her hair is thin and has body so I love to cut it, less work and the mistakes don’t show so much. Mickey came home in the middle of this haircut and got a picture of me at work. Mat looks really cute with short hair. She’s such a little pixie. Mat’s the little wiggly one. I can’t get her to sit still at all. It’s rather annoying sometimes. She doesn’t have a before picture either, why should she if the others don’t?

Here are the afters of the girls:

This afternoon Kade got a much needed haircut. (All the kids need one. Now I’ll have to tackle the girls.) This morning it was sticking out in several directions, this is after I wet it down. Kade’s probably the best one at sitting for a hair cut. (I do the cutting. I don’t like to spend money on my haircuts so there’s no way I’m paying for the kids unless I mess up.  That’s only been once.  I do everyones’ but Mickey’s, I don’t do clippers very well.) While I was cutting I realized I didn’t get a before picture. Darn. You’ll just have to appreciate the afters more. After I finished I asked him what he thought. He said it was perfect. Almost, I did have to do two touch-ups.

Yesterday on Megan’s birthday she had a great soccer game. In the first quarter she played goalie and successfully stopped three shots on goal. She also was instrumental in helping her team score a couple of goals as she quickly got them back on transition with her quick passes. In the second quarter she came out on offense and scored her first goal of the season. It was quite a game for the birthday girl.

I would have taken pictures but I ended up taking Kaden and Mattey with me and it is a little difficult being a fan, a parent, and a photographer. One of these games I will get some action shots. Speaking of the other games, I have posted the schedule for the remaining six games. You can see it here or access it anytime by clicking on the link at the top of the page.