Can I pull off the win?

So a few weeks ago, one of my favorite food blogs was participating in a menu contest against two other food bloggers. They asked their followers to go and vote for them, and at the end someone's name would get drawn to win $300.

I voted everyday for two weeks. And I am convinced I am going to win the money. I even know how I am going to spend it.

On these:

Currently, my boys are sleeping on the very same bunk beds my brothers used when they were growing up. They are in a sad state. Check out the missing bars underneath.
And that is the better of the two.

The other bed frame is missing half of the bars. It now resides on the ground, not underneath the top bunk, just in case that, too, should suddenly lose half it's bars in the middle of the night. Here's what it looks like:I must say, Isaac's bed-making job doesn't help any. But the poor mattress sags to the ground when you sit in the middle.

I find out tomorrow if I win the $300 dollars. I've told Steve a dozen times this week, "I can't wait for April 30th, when I will get my money."

When.

Not if.

(Are my hopes going to be dashed tomorrow? I'll let you know.)

This year's Pinewood Derby entry:

The ice cream sandwich...

Not the fastest, but definitely the coolest (or it would be if it were an actual ice cream sandwich).

What you do for fun if you don't have a Wii.

This is not a picture of dog poop. Really, it's a picture of those elongated dirt clumps you get when you aerate your lawn.
Around here, we like to use them as sidewalk chalk. Laura calls them "Envirochalk" because she thinks they are good for the environment.

And bird poop apparently doubles as finger paint...if you're really hard-up for entertainment.

Making bagels.

Belated (and kinda boring) Easter images.

Sunday morning concert.

Yeah, this looks like I caught her reaction the first time she saw her basket, but actually this picture was taken several hours after, and I think she was just about to sneeze.

His favorite part. And yet, two weeks later and it's only half gone. What is wrong with that kid? Seriously!

Here's my gluten-free basket. No chocolate because the Easter bunny knows I have a hard time remembering to eat fruits and vegetables if there's good chocolate in the house.

I hope your Easter was more blog-worthy than ours. (Not that we didn't enjoy it.)

April ambiguity.

I like to think we keep things pretty random around here, and this post definitely won't disappointment you if randomness is what you're after.

Here's the present Noelle gave me a few days ago while we were playing outside: And yet another present:

What does your family do when it's 80 degrees outside and sunny?

Well, our family swims in the indoor pool. At least that's what we do when it's a "residents-must-go" party. The kids had fun...

...until Isaac fell in the pool (with his life jacket on, but he still thought he was going to die). As an added bonus, you also get to catch a glimpse of someone's (I won't say whose) hairy belly.

Oh, yeah. We also found a house we like. Should we get it? Should we not? We don't know. But what we do know is that...

...I really like this kitchen. It looks like the kind of kitchen that would look pretty even if there were a bunch of school papers stacked messily in the corner and crums scattered, well, all over, and a full sink of dishes, doesn't it?

And this is the biggest selling-point for Steve (Isn't it pretty?):

Course, buying a new house means selling the one we're living in, which sounds like LOADS of fun. Anyone want to buy our house? I promise I'll clean the bathrooms first.

Isaac's Field Trip, and also I am dissatisfied with many things...

...first and foremost, my Norton antivirus software.

I think Norton should rename their software "Norton Mostly Kinda Antivirus."

As Isaac says (being completely influenced by Star Wars), my computer is malfunctioning--to the point that it will only let me upload three pictures to this post, no matter how hard I try to load others. And I called Norton when my computer alerted me to a major virus take-over, and they told me I should take it to Best Buy and have the virus removed for a couple hundred dollars...to which I replied (in my head, because I am spineless), "Then why am I paying you seventy bucks a year to prevent a virus?"

Sigh. Moving on.

Pictures of Isaac's field trip. Three pictures. Whoop-de-doo.

Beef #2. We went to the Englert Theater in Iowa City to see the musical "Are You My Mother?" (which was my FAVORITE book when I was a kid.) We were all excited. The kids, too. They had all read the book beforehand. Then we get to the theater and the play begins, and guess what? It was crap. Let me tell you why it was crap.

They changed the whole story. From the opening scene the snort was the bad guy trying to destroy all the trees. (Remember in the book, he was the hero who returned the bird to his nest?) So half the story was along the lines of "Save the trees, snorts are bad." The other half consisted of the baby bird trying to find his mother, and in the process he picks up a hen, kitten, and dog posse. At the end they burst out in a song that exclaims, "A family doesn't need a mom and a dad! A family can be whatever you want it to be!"

I'm sorry, come again?

All the kids around me were saying things like, "This is boring." "This is not the same as the book." "This is stupid." (I think I was the one who said that last line.)

Alright, in the playwright's defense, I know part of what he/she was trying to do was send the message that kids should know that their family is legit, even if they don't have a mom or a dad, that they shouldn't feel as though they aren't as important as the kids who have both a mom and a dad. I get that. But I kinda feel like there's this giant movement called the "Families Don't Need Both a Mom AND a Dad" movement and part of its message is that the traditional mom/dad family is obsolete. Like it is in society's best interest to get rid of the old family model and come up with a new one. Which gets me all sorts of mad.

Seriously, I paid five bucks to see that play and I want my money back. Then I could put it toward that $200 I need to pay to get the virus removed from my computer.

PS...I know this post is angry and grumpy, but I wrote this on two hours of sleep after staying up all night with a pukey kid. I'm sure I'll read this later and regret the tone.