A good Christmas song is "Celebrate me Home".

A bad Christmas song is "Christmas Shoes" .

They must have read my blog

After karate yesterday we decided to go to Braum's but I warned the kids not to play in the playland. When I pulled the car up I could see that the entire playland had been ripped out. There were visible stains on the concrete floor. "Look at all that whiz." I commented to the kids. Ben cracked up.

And speaking of odors...

On Thursdays after karate, I usually take the kids somewhere for a treat. A few times we went to Braum's which is a fast food/ice cream shop. They have the filthiest playland I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of playlands. The playland does not have tables inside, just a bench, so I was sitting at our table outside with Abe, while the other kids played. When it was time to go I went in to the play area to tell the kids and had to immediatly cover my nose. Inside there was this weird sickly sweet smell, but terrible, I couldn't put my finger on what it was. As we were getting in the car I said,
"It smelled in there. What was that smell?"
"Melted ice cream mixed with whiz." was Ben's prompt reply.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Needless to say, now we go to Baskin Robbins.

An Inconvenient Smell

For the last week, a mystery odor has taken over my kitchen. I'm not really sure what it smells like, but it is not good. My first thought is that it was coming from underneath the oven, but there was nothing under there that would cause it. Different members of the family smell it in different places. Sometimes it seems the smell has gone away for 1/2 a day but it always comes back. I thought perhaps an animal died in the kitchen somewhere. I cleaned under the major appliances, even disconnecting the dishwasher and pulling it out from under the counter so I could see if something was behind there (nothing). The smell is actually making me a bit crazy. Two days ago while sitting on the kitchen floor investigating, I decided I couldn't take it anymore and used a hammer to pry the front baseboards off of 2 of the cabinets. No, there was no dead mouse in there as I had hoped to see, but there was plenty of disgusting crap. Cobwebs like I had never seen before, sawdust, construction dirt etc., and thousands of dead bugs - mostly ants and rolly pollys. Despite the fact that there were about 500 of those egg sacs that spiders make, I did not see one single spider. There were no animal droppings or any evidence of larger animals being down there. Yesterday, while lying on the floor trying to vacuum it all out with the attachment hose, my hair got sucked into the main part of the vacuum where the brush spins around and some of it got ripped out. Today the smell is still there. Oh odor gods, why must you torture me?!

Spongebob Squarepants Pumpkin

This is from a few years ago, but we have such fond memories of this pumpkin.