Some catching up on things

Now that August is nearly over, I thought I better clean up some questions I have had on my blog. I linked the post I'm answering in the heading of each section.

1. Poll Question

Thanks to everyone who answered poll. Here are the results to how people clean up spaghetti noodles:

• Wait a couple of hours till it is dry and sweep: 54%
• Sweep it up right away, there are few things worse than stepping on wet spaghetti noodles (especially in socks): 27%
• Try to not get noodles on the floor because they are such a pain to clean up:9%
• You don't know that easy way to clean up noodles?!? I will email you right away and let you know the secret!:9%

Special thanks to Claudia who emailed me the secret to cleaning up spaghetti noodles. Want me to share? Own a dog. Who would have thought it could be so "easy"? I tried a skunk, but that didn't work too well for me. ANyway, I am glad to know I am not alone in waiting to sweep!


2. Hamster Wheel and Jellyfish Graveyard
To answer Tami and Andrea about these two things, the hamster wheel looked like:

To answer the jellyfish graveyard, there is a pipe on the beach that feeds water to a pond. It is covered in stains. I told my kids they were probably just rust spots, but they insisted they were deceased jellyfish.
"How do you know?"
"Because it looks just like what the jellyfish we took inside did after a day."
Great. Just great. Actually, when I went out to take the picture, there was a jellyfish congealing on the pipe. They were right. Unfortunately.

3. My Sister's family project

Channing wanted to know about my sister's project that led to such a fantastic picture of me. My sister and her husband made my dad a "Where's Waldo" type book. It included pictures of family members photoshopped into random group photos. On each page there was a mug shot of the person my dad should be looking for. I have the picture of Peter stored away for some future post . . .

4. How we got the unwanted PS3

Kim wanted more info on how we got a PS3 despite the fact that we already own a Wii. Since the question came from the "What I Learned" Post already linked in #1, I linked this to where I thought the story was originally published. The answer harkens back to Father's Day this year. When we went to buy our big screen TV, we had set aside a certain sum of money. We decided to go with a lower PPI (thanks consumer reports!) and that left us extra money. Money the salesman could sniff burning my husband's pocket.

He convinced my husband that the deal they were running for Blu-Ray players would make it a perfect time to buy. Since PS3's count as Blue-Ray players, it reduced their price quite a bit. Did it matter that we don't own blue ray discs and didn't need another game player? Apparently not. As a passive (aggressive?) protest the only technologically able adult in the household (ME) refused to hook it up for a couple months. Until our Clearplay broke and Peter came home with a game he had bought (and begged for a while).

5. I got tagged

I kept meaning to post these photos. I was supposed to take a picture of 10 things without any prep and post them. I combined them into 1 picture because 1) I like Adobe Photoshop and 2) the family is watching Indiana Jones on our PS3 and I don't want to see it again:



1- Dream vacation (our house this summer fits that bill)
2- Self portrait (Thank you WebCam)
3- What kids are doing right now (Last Sunday- making cookies and reading)
4- Closet
5- Favorite Room
6- Favorite Shoes
7- Laundry/Mud Room (washing machine in hallway, pile in bathroom)
8- Guest bathroom (Just removed that color from our bathroom in NC before we moved!)
9- Kitchen Sink
10- Fridge (Was it supposed to open, oops, my mistake!)





6. I Am Supreme Lord of Catan 2 times in a row!! (that is not catch up on anything, just bragging- I stole the victory one dice roll away from Peter winning :)