Friday, October 30, 2009

A Craft Post (next thing you know I'll be giving out recipes!)

Today was JR's school Halloween party, and this is one of the few pictures I have. He was excited for me to eat lunch with him (I figure I've only got a year or two more for that to be cool), but the real hit of lunchtime was breaking out the camera. I think these guys enjoyed posing more than girls! After lunch I headed to JR's room to help start setting up for the party, and it was nonstop from that point on. I helped kids get on their costumes, and then went to work at my craft station. I thought I had planned 2 easy crafts, but with 18 kids, that's a lot of work no matter how easy the craft. At one point I looked at myself and noticed I had paint and glue all over my hands, jeans, and shirt (and I think there was also some glue in my hair). Obviously, I need some little girls in my house...A girl mom would never have been so messy at the craft table! We made hand print ghosts and pom-pom/pipe cleaner spiders. The hand print ghosts worked out great and were a huge hit with the kids and parents. The glue didn't hold the pom-poms to the pipe cleaners as well as I had expected, so that one was a bust. Here's one of the only other pictures I took today...JR modeling his hand print ghost. I know it's covering his face, but by this point he was so jacked-up on sugar I was surprised he'd even hold still! So, no, I don't have any pictures of his class in their costumes, but you aren't missing anything. Every little girl had on wings, a princess hat, and/or a tiara. And, of course, they were all completely bedazzled. All the boys dressed in martial arts type wear (like JR), or were a character from Star Wars.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Tooth is Exposed!

JR has one thing totally in common with both his grandmothers (which is entirely unlike Jason and me, so we know he gets it from them). He completely freaks out if anybody touches something that is going in or near his mouth. Of course the grandmothers don't actually freak out (although I know they're freaking out inside). They just politely give the person whatever it was they just "borrowed"from them. Granny Sherry will give up her prized Route 44 Diet Coke in a second if somebody takes a sip, and my mom was forever giving one of her cousins her brand new lipsticks as every time she saw her, she'd ask to use some. (Both grandmothers also have an obsession with wearing flip-flops, but I think that's another issue.) Jason and I didn't inherit the "other people (especially family members) have germs" gene. Naturally, we don't tend to share drinks with complete strangers, but Jason and I think nothing of drinking after each other. JR, on the other hand, is exactly like his grandmothers. At dinner he'll ask, "has anybody else eaten off this? has anybody else touched this?" And if he thinks somebody (in particular the babies) has, he'll politely say, "no thank you". So, I'm actually really happy JR doesn't read my blog because he would absolutely die if he saw this picture. The babies absolute favorite toy in the house: JR's tooth brush. I spend most of my day trying to keep them out of JR's bathroom. And the second my eyes aren't looking at them, I find them on top of the sink "brushing" their teeth. They love for me to brush their teeth with their own toothbrush, but of course, stealing JR's brush is infinitely better with it being "mechanical" (as JR refers to it). So, JR, I'm sorry. And Grandmothers, I know you're cringing for JR as you look at these pictures!

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

My Pumpkins Are White!

One of the good things about Colorado living is that I get more photo-ops. Not only do we have the first day of school picture, but we also get to have the first snowy day of school picture. Now let's stop and take a moment to examine the first snowy day of school picture. You'll notice JR has on a sweatshirt, jacket, snow-gloves (as apposed to cotton gloves that get wet in the snow), a hat, and you can also see the tops of his snow boots. Harry has on a jacket. Jason and I have told him a million times (and when I say "a million", I'm actually pretty accurate) "Harry, it snows here. It snows a lot. You need a big coat, and you definitely need some snow boots." But since the Chinese know better about all things, (especially about states they had to look up on a map to even know where they were coming to live) Harry doesn't need any winter wear. The things he had in Beijing (that gets maybe an inch of snow a year, maybe) will be just perfect. And as we walked outside this morning to take the first snowy day of school picture, Harry let out a yelp. And though my Chinese is a bit rusty, I'm pretty sure that yelp was "Whoa! Snow feels cold and wet as it hits your bare head...It doesn't feel like Styrofoam peanuts at all!"

Here are some more pictures from today. I can honestly say I never thought I'd have a pumpkin covered in snow. In Houston we were just trying to keep them from mildewing before Halloween...not freezing!






Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Wrestlemania!

I live in a man house. There's very limited drawing and coloring (and the drawing and coloring that does go on is all blood and guts). There's no playing with dolls or dress-up (except for Kyle's love of carrying a purse). Nothing is bedazzled, nor do we participate in craft projects that involve glitter and sequins.

Here's what goes on in our house:


The manly activities, like wrestling, (as seen here) begin the second the people in this house wake up. (And yes, the babies sleep in separate cribs, but the first thing Reed wants to do is get in Kyle's crib.)


And since we have wrestling matches daily, I figured they needed wrestling names for when they start on the pro circuit. Here they are (according to the pro wrestling name maker):

BUNKHOUSE NOVA
and
CAPTAIN BLADE

(My daddy's going to be so excited that part of Kyle's name is "Bunkhouse" he's not going to know what to do with himself.)

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Word of the Day

It was pumpkin carving day here at Haunted House Ingy, and JR was set on carving two pumpkins. And just so we're clear on what took place today, I took the liberty of looking up the word "carve" in the dictionary of JR.
"carve"
-verb
1. to jump around the driveway excitedly
2. to scream at the neighbors across the street "I'm carving a headless horseman! It's so cool!"
3. to flutter, shimmy, and gyrate while Dad does all the actual work
4. to wince and cringe over "pumpkin guts", but agree to touching them as it was the deal that JR must touch the guts in order to carve pumpkins
5. to have pumpkin guts cause dramatics to ensue

And you know I'll always have a camera at the ready for ensuing dramatics:




And here's JR with the finished products. (You might be wondering about all the random pieces of paper on our front door. JR's been quite busy with the magic markers lately. He's decided our front door is the perfect place to showcase his artwork....yet another reason why I really don't care for our stainless steel non-magnetized refrigerator door!)


A close-up of Jason's handy work. Good job again this year, Jason!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

I Couldn't Make This Up Either

I went to the doctor today (I'm fine, just a routine visit) and as I was checking in I noticed a black Lab wandering around behind the counter. Surprisingly, I've now lived here long enough that at that moment it didn't even strike me as odd that there was a dog (especially a Lab since 95% of the population here owns one, usually two) hanging out. I went on back to the exam room and really didn't give it much thought again until the dog followed the doctor into the room. Can I repeat that for emphasis...followed the doctor into the room. And I guess this is normal practice because the doctor only sent the dog back out because Kyle and Reed were with me. When I was finished, there was the dog sitting at the door waiting for the doctor. I then went to check-out, and guess who was behind the counter. Yep, another dog! I think this one was some kind of Shih Tzu mix since it had an overbite. Now I will say dogs wandering around the doctor's office and behind the counter are quite entertaining for my under 2 crowd. But as I was discussing with my friend, Caroline, as cute as it is to walk into a little boutique and see a "store dog" wandering around, I'm not sure it's cute at all in a doctor's office. In fact, wouldn't you think that's breaking some sort of health code? I mean, is that even legal? Of course it's legal here in Durango, I'll probably be the one who ends up on the Police Blotter for even mentioning it. But dogs at the doctor's office? Surely that's as dog loving as it gets here!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

There's Danger and Diagramming Today!

As we were getting toward the end of Tiny Tots today I thought, "Wow. They didn't ask the kids to do anything crazy." But of course, I was wrong. It was about that time the teacher started dragging out the big blue mats. I should know by now that "big blue mats" are really just a way to alert the parents that it's time for the danger portion of class. I couldn't imagine what in the world the kids were going to do as she started setting them up. She stood one mat up on its side leaning it slightly against the wall (so it was about 7-8 feet tall), then left the other mat on the ground. And here were the instructions: climb the mat (Um, there's nothing for them to hold on to) and when you get to the top, turn around and slide down it. (Um, it's pretty much at a 90 degree angle, won't the kids just fall 7 feet to the floor?) Reed was first so I turned to the teacher and said, "I have no idea how this is going to work. What should I do?" She suggested holding Reed at the waist, but he (like me) didn't really understand how to climb the mat without anything to hold on to, so I just kind of pushed him up as far as I could with him sitting in my hands. He then "slid" down (I was holding onto him). Then it was Kyle's turn. I should have known he wouldn't need any assistance since he's able to scale everything in our house. So here's Kyle's turn climbing the mats in diagram form. (Please remember I was trying to make the mat look like it was standing on its side, which requires 3-dimensionalish drawing...and that's pretty mathy, and y'all know how I feel about math.)

Okay, so diagram 1 shows Kyle scaling the mat. He just dug his little feet in and went straight to the top. (And in no way, shape, or form does Kyle have that much hair. I was just trying to show that was the back of his head.)


Diagram 2: Yep, he went straight to the top...and stood up! I would have had to climb the thing myself if I needed to get to him. (And BTW, one of the moms did have to climb it when her son got up there and got scared.) After Kyle stood up and got a bird's eye view of the gym. He sat down and dangled his feet over the side.


Diagram 3: And then he slid down! It was pretty much a half slide/half free-fall drop, but he did it. Twice.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

New Title!

So what do you think of our new blog title? It's always bugged me that we didn't have a fun, catchy title. "The Ingy Family" just didn't seem to cut it. I've been trying to come up with something for awhile. And although "Jan" is pretty easy to work with (my favorite I came up with being "Jivin' at the JANBOREE"), I wanted something that included the whole family since they're my main blogging subjects. Needless to say, not only is Ingersoll a mouth full to say, it's also really hard to rhyme and/or use in an alliteration (there's a reason it's always easy to find "I" stationary). Of course I tried to work myself into the new title proclaiming myself Empress of the Ingpire, but I guess that'll just have to be implied.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Hair It Is

Growing up my mom used to tell me that I had to find a husband with good hair because we were just all out of hair genes. Well, I did just that. Jason has all kinds of hair, and luckily so does JR. I know I'm lacking in the hair department, so I wasn't really surprised to see JR's drawing of me only contained 4 strands of hair. I tease, curling iron, velcro roll, and spray it...but JR's right, it does pretty much just look like this:


Now what I wasn't expecting was for JR to already realize how superior that Ingersoll hair really is. And just in case you have any questions who's who, JR has ever so graciously labeled himself.
Really? Bald? He's drawn himself a head full of hair o' fabulous and didn't even give me my 4 strands. These Ingersolls and their hair...it's so amazing others appear bald in their presence. But on the bright side, at least he drew me skinny!

Saturday, October 17, 2009

More TXans in CO

We met my cousin, Sarah, and her husband, Steve, bright and early this morning (8:00 AM) for breakfast. They've been vacaying in Colorado and drove through Durango this morning on their way home. As we were getting in our cars to leave, Jason and I were commenting how nice it was for them to stop and see us (especially since they have such a long drive ahead of them today). JR said, "Did they drive all the way from Texas just to have breakfast with us?!" No, JR, I know we're a pretty fun and fabulous family, but even we aren't that fabulous. We took a quick picture this morning (I edited myself out since my eyes were closed) but look how cute Steve, Sarah, and Reed looked. Especially since Sarah and Steve left Ouray this morning at 6:00! (Coincidentally, Reed decided that would also be a good wake-up time for himself....sigh...)

Thursday, October 15, 2009

An Ingy Announcement

For those of you who know us well know that "Ingy Announcements" usually mean it's time for us to move again. So, in that fine tradition, I have an Ingy Annoucement for you: We aren't moving. Yep, you read that right...not moving, staying put, settling in. It was officially announced today that Jason's new title/job is "Business Unit Director of the Southern Rockies". Which for the Ingy Family means: get comfy cause we're going to be here for awhile. Of course "be here for awhile" has a lot different meaning for us than most (normal) people, but it does look like we're going to be Durangoans for a bit. Yee-Haw organics, recycling, bicycling, and dog loving...the Ingys are here and all up in your business!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Mary Lou Part 2

Last week I predicted they'd break out the pommel horse at Tiny Tots today. Well, it wasn't the pommel horse; it was the vault. So much easier, right? They were to run up to the vault, jump on the springboard, and land on top of the vault feet first. This happens to be one of the skills JR is still working on in his gymnastics class, so of course it's totally appropriate for the 3 and under crowd. Obviously the babies were never going to be able to jump feet first onto a 4 ft high vault, so basically they stood on the springboard and I slung them up there stomach first. You'll just have to imagine that one since I don't have any artist renditions of that particular apparatus. But what I do have for you is what we looked like when we moved on to the bars. They were to do bat hangs (hang and bring your feet up to your hands) from the high bar. I needed to be in ready position to catch them (since they were hanging 7 feet off the ground), but for some reason I was being attacked by a swarm of gnats. It was about that time I found myself breaking out in a flop sweat. The heat was on in the gym (since it was 45 degrees outside), I was wearing pants and long sleeves (since it was 45 degrees outside), my children were dangling from the bar above me, and I was being mauled by a pack of gnats. And as Jason will confirm, I don't do well with bugs (swarming, crawling, or otherwise). So here we are today. Babies hanging, and me slapping gnats. Thankfully nobody was injured in the hanging/gnat fiasco; we all came out of it unscathed.
(I actually drew this to resemble me swatting gnats, but after looking at it, those gnats could also double as my flop sweat....so really, it works both ways.)

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Junk Yard

My mom and I have one very serious thing in common. We love sweets and junk food. And when I say "love", I mean we really don't care about eating anything else...except Mexican food, of course. Jason likes to say that if my mom and I ever lived together and only had to worry about feeding ourselves we wouldn't have any "real" food in the house. I'm not sure what he means by "real food" since Oreo Cakesters, Nutty Bars, and those pink cake cookies with the sprinkles that you can buy in bakery departments are quite real. (Not to mention delicious.) My mom and I are completely opposite from Jason and his mom. Jason's one that would rather eat a hamburger than a candy bar, and once while ordering Blizzards at DQ JR said, "Granny Sherry wants a salad blizzard!" I freely admit my love of junk food. If there are pop tarts in the house, I just sit and think about them (until I go eat them). And as I was telling Jason the other night, I'm quite sure that just like my TV boyfriend, Adam Richmond from Man Vs Food, I could complete The Kitchen Sink Challenge (a 2-gallon sundae with 8 softball-sized scoops of ice cream). Okay, so maybe not. But I could put a good dent in it. And although I like to joke about things here in Durango, I'm very serious about one place: The Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I believe it's the original RMCF, and although it's quite touristy and you can actually visit them in malls throughout Texas, I don't care. I love it. And I've recently become a fan of one particular item...the M&M covered marshmallow. I get one everytime I can, and it's now JR's favorite too. JR had some friends over yesterday and after lunch they were all too happy to accompany me to check in on my marshmallows. Here they are before I passed out the goodies. And just like after eating any "real" yummy food, I had to pass out the Wetwipes when they were finished!

Monday, October 12, 2009

The Right to Bear Arms

I'm actually in shock over how cute JR's school picture turned out. He's not making his squinty smiley face, crazy eyebrows, and you can barely see the red spots on his chin from his Chapstick issues. I'm not a fan of school pictures, and I certainly didn't have high hopes for this one. The child was wearing a sweatshirt hoodie as he left the house, so I was bracing myself for his hair to be in every possible direction. But what I wasn't expecting is that one of my child's appendages would be missing. Check out his left arm. Oh that's right, he doesn't have one! Pretty conspicuous if you ask me...the native Texan that hunts wildlife and has parents that don't bike hundreds of miles on the weekends has his arm mysteriously disappear in his school picture? Hummm, coincidence? I think not. Anybody have the number to Fox News? I smell a conspiracy!

Sunday, October 11, 2009

The Great Pumpkin

As I mentioned, yesterday we rode The Great Pumpkin Express to The Great Pumpkin Patch. (On a side note, TGP Patch doubles as The North Pole when the Polar Express starts up.) After meeting Charlie Brown and Lucy, we spent about an hour and half at TGP Patch. The kids had a blast with all the activities, but as you'll see, I think they had the most fun in the hay maze selecting their pumpkins.






Kyle was probably the most excited about the train ride. You can see in the first two pictures he's holding his own train that he brought along for the ride. Here he is running at a full Kyle sprint towards the train as it was pulling up.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

I Couldn't Make This Up

We just got back from riding the Great Pumpkin Patch Express. I'll have pictures and an update soon, but I just have to report what I saw. On the train home I noticed a woman with short hair that had a tattoo on her neck. It caught my eye as an odd tattoo. Surely it wasn't what I thought it was. On closer inspection, it was exactly what I thought it was. Now y'all know how I feel on this subject, so you might not believe me when I tell you that her tattoo was...wait for it...the recycling symbol. I kid you not. Green arrows, the whole bit. I told Jason about it and we've now lived here long enough that his reply was: "I'm not surprised."

Interview with a Vampire...I mean, Harry

The kids didn't have school yesterday. (Not sure why, probably because the school district figured the kids needed some extra days to work out before ski season starts.) So I took JR and Harry down to Farmington to have their haircut and for me to sneak in a quick trip to Target and Hobby Lobby. Harry woke-up about 10:40 yesterday, which was totally fine...I wish I could sleep 'til 10:40. But then he slept all the way to Farmington and back (It's about an hour and 15 minutes one way). I just assumed he must have sat up all night, as teenagers do. So when we got home I said, "Wow, Harry, What time did you go to bed last night? You must have stayed up late."
Harry's reply: No, I went to bed at 10:30.
Me: Really? You must be really tired to sleep all the way to Farmington and back.
Harry: No. The sunshine makes me sleepy.
Me: What? How's that, the sunshine is supposed to make you feel awake.
Harry: No. The sunshine puts me to sleep. At school if the sunshine touches me, I want to take a nap.
Me: Huh. I guess you must be a vampire then.
To which Harry started laughing (he loves the Twilight movie). He then told JR, "JR, you better watch out! I'm a vampire!"
Now Harry has told us all along that he doesn't like sunshine (and we have tons of bright sunshine here in Durango). I just thought it was him being Chinese. (The Chinese will never admit anything is better than something they have in China. They're very communist that way.) So we just assumed his dislike of the sunshine was because he only gets to see it about 6 times a year in Beijing due to the pollution. But, no. Seems I've got a Chinese exchange student that loves to eat, and happens to be a vampire.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Chapstick-A Tale of Woe

So instead of dying of embarrassment, I'll just go ahead and put it out here:
When JR got home from school yesterday he casually mentioned, "Oh, by the way, Mommy, you don't need to put any Chapstick on me tonight. I got some at school." Knowing that JR doesn't take Chapstick to school I pressed further.
Me: What? Whatd'ya mean?
JR: I went to see the doctor at school, and he put some on me.
Me: The nurse put Chapstick on you? Did you ask him too?
JR: No, Mrs. (I forgot her name, but she's the music teacher) sent me. And then the doctor put it on, so you don't need to put any on me tonight. Okay?
Me: The teacher sent you to the nurse for Chapstick?! Oh my goodness! I'm so embarrassed!
JR: I know! Can you believe she would send me down for Chapstick?
Me: I'm not embarrassed for the teacher! I'm embarrassed for you...and me!
I can only imagine what this woman must think of my mothering skills. But as y'all know, I'm trying my hardest to get Chapstick, Blistex, lotion, I think I even tried to sneak some Neosporin on this child. You should see the dramatics during the "home doctoring" sessions. Squeals, jumps, flailing, and flinching don't even describe the half of it. And actually, I have no idea where he gets his hatred of moisturizing. Jason has Chapsticks strategically located in our house, car, and his office. And I'm so greased up that I usually have to de-grease before leaving the house. But now that I've shared my tale of embarrassment for all to hear, I think I'll go ahead and give the school a call. I need to find out what they put on his face...it actually does look better!

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Mary Lou Who?

I keep forgetting where I live. If I had remembered that I live in Extreme Fitness Land, I would have realized that the 2nd lesson of Tiny Tots is of course when you let your children hang from the regulation height gymnastics rings. So not kidding...2nd lesson and we're already dangling from the rings. Guess that means the 3rd lesson they'll break out the palmal horse. Now you know I've always got pictures, but there's just no way I can whip out a camera while I'm waiting to catch my children that are suspended 18.86 feet above the ground. (I looked it up.) But, never fear! I have completely reenacted the scene for you in illustration (except for the teacher, but she's not a main character in my story, so I left her out).
Now, as you can clearly see, I had to stand on the giant blue mat and hoist my kids up to the rings. (I'm so short I could barely get them up there.) I then had to wait for Ring Swinger to let go and make sure he didn't land on Other Brother who was crying at my leg wanting it to be his turn. (Kyle could hang on longer, but Reed could pull his legs up by his face.) And you'd think that would have filled up their hanging quota of the day, but I actually had to pull them off the door handle as we were leaving the building.
And if you're wondering when I had time to create this little portrayal...Well, I actually did it while Kyle and Reed were busy "drawing" their own little masterpieces. Note to self: colored pencils are now about 15 minutes worth of entertainment.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Fact Sheet

I mentioned we went to a barn party Saturday night. (It was fun and the scenery was gorgeous.) But besides the fun and gorgeousness, we discovered two new really interesting facts about JR.

Interesting Fact #1-Winning 2 liter bottles of soda is mind-blowing excitement.
Oh yes. There was a ring toss game (toss the rings over the tops of the soda) and everytime I looked up I'd see JR giddily running toward me holding another 2-liter. I'm sure he would have won more than 3 (not because of his ring toss skills, but out of shear number of times he would have played) had he not had to keep walking back to the car with Harry to put his winnings away. For some reason I missed getting a picture, so I told him today, "JR, let me take a picture of you with your Fanta you won." JR's reply: "But Mom, I won 3 of them, I need them all in the picture."
Interesting Fact #2-JR seems to have overcome his irrational fear of face painting.
Towards the end of the evening he came to us and said, "Can I go get my face painted?" Jason and I looked at each other and said, "Sure!" And low and behold, check out that work of art...Snake on Face!

Monday, October 5, 2009

Farm Town

I was lamenting on Facebook the other day that I'm turning so "organic" I can hardly stand it. Saturday we headed over to a farm in Aztec, New Mexico (about 45 minutes away) to pick our, you guessed it, organic pumpkin.

Apparently, the babies were under the impression the trip was for them to add pictures to their modeling portfolios.



But not one to stand still long enough to model, JR couldn't decide what he liked best.
Was it the corn slide?


The corn maze?


Maybe shooting gourds and corncobs at pumpkin targets?


Could it have been enjoying a cold beverage with his friend Mack?


I'm thinking it was the hay ride. Just look how thrilled and comfortable he looks in this picture! (I promise not two seconds before this picture was taken JR turned to me and said, "Mommy, hold my hand." As you can see I got overly excited about such a request and here's the result.)


I don't know....He looks pretty proud of that pumpkin!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Happy Day!

JR sang at church this morning! Okay, so I'm not sure how much singing he actually did, but there were some awesome dance moves going on. I know some of you might be shocked to learn that we aren't going to a Baptist church, and actually our friends, Mark and Shelly, asked us just last night why we didn't go to First Baptist. Jason and I looked at them with all seriousness and said, "Um, because we couldn't find it." Yes, we live in a teeny-tiny town, and we knew the Baptist church was on 3rd Ave, but the sign is so small you can't read it from the street. And, I mean...that is SO un-Baptist like. I just assumed the church with the itty-bitty sign you can't read must be the Presbyterians or the Episcopalians. Anyway, here's JR and the other River Church kids (they call them River Runners, isn't that cute?) They sang "Happy Day" and "Mighty to Save" (which happens to be my favorite song). You can also see our above mentioned friend, Mark, playing the keyboards. I only have Happy Day posted since the videos are so long (full length for the grandmothers), but at least watch until they start jumping in circles. It's pretty cute!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

So Corny

It was a big, busy fall activity day here in Beautiful-Weather-Picture-Post-Card-Gorgeous-Trees-Land. Not only did we hit a pumpkin farm with a corn maze this morning, but we spent the evening at a Barn Party hosted by our church. I'll have details of the days events in upcoming posts, but I just had to post this picture.


That's Kyle. (Not that the dramatics didn't give it way.) And yes, that's corn he's sliding into. I didn't even know "corn slides" existed. This picture just cracks me up...look at that face!