Juice

When Bert makes juice everyone agrees it is the best. It is the sugary powder mix plus more sugar. Iced Tea is so thick you can't see through it. Usually the juice tastes like liquid Jello.

Yesterday:

Bob asks " Hey Bert did you make the juice?"

Bert answered "Yes I did, and it is good too:"

Bob answered "So it tastes like diabetes?!!"

Leaving

We had two kids move out, home for good, in the last 2 days. Which has got me thinking about what do you leave behind? There are books and articles and sermons about Leaving a legacy, and making a great impact. Anthony left today and while he has been here since before us and has been friends with the guys here, but he is the one who from my perspective had the most love/hate relationship with everyone in the house. He is 13 and has some annoying tendencies, and can be really cool and you see the pure kid in him. He has to act tough and tries to compensate for being the youngest, but as he left today I think everyone was a little sad. There were secret handshakes, and words of wisdom. "Don't smoke POT, or Ill come and beat you up!!!", "call to check in with us" "take care and be good".

In thinking about what I would say to him, I choose " take care of your mother and don't do anything to hurt her." I figured it would cover lots of things : putting others first, loving his mom, and hopefully thinking about making good choices."

I am not sure what Darren choose, but they went to Wawa or somewhere for breakfast, on the drive to drop him off.

What would you say, if you could leave someone one sentence ?

toys, Toys, TOYS

this week i have been in charge of sorting, separating and rotating some of Brody's toys from the "secret stash" in his closet. Maybe it is because he is a boy and all his toys have small parts, or that each set is not related to the next, but I was overwhelmed at first. The job got done, but I decided that if our children(none on the way) ever get to the point of needing to rotate toys and i have to worry about storing them, I think it will be a sign that WE HAVE TOO MANY and it might be time to donate or trash some.

It could be I am fooling myself, maybe all those Barbie pieces I had were just as frustrating to my mom, but maybe they could all be thrown in to one container.

Do people with kids feel overwhelmed by the volume? can toys push you out of your own house? How do you weed out the not needed toys without feeling guilty?