This weekend my son had 5 friends over. They went to Sky Zone (trampoline fun), a pizza place, watched movies at our house, had “epic” battles, ate so much food, and fell asleep in their tent around 1:30 or 2 a.m.

There were several funny moments during the party, but I will always remember them singing “Running Errands With My Mom” over pizza. http://youtu.be/wz75oAkPTPM
Despite the boys beginning the party again at 7 a.m. the next morning, I had a great time. I hope they did, too.

Yesterday was the hubs’ birthday. I brought home take out for dinner (aka I cooked) and we celebrated with cake. It was a nice dinner. Then, for some reason the hubs wanted to play Yahtzee. So we played Yahtzee as a family. If this was Facebook I would have posted this picture and everyone would think we were picturesque.

But moments after this picture was taken, my older son kept asking why the toddler had to be around because all the toddler wanted to do was build a tower with the dice. The toddler cried. The 7-year-old complained. And so on.

I was very tired yesterday evening but I was trying to keep my energy up because it was the hubs’ birthday. After bedtime routines had started, I sat on the couch surfing Facebook, and waiting for the 7-year-old to come out of the bathroom. The last thing I remember is looking at a Facebook post. Then I heard my son say, “Are you asleep?” I woke up and said, “No.”

I was still drowsy. I blinked a few times and focused on my son. He was standing in front of me wearing only my slippers. “Why are you naked except for my slippers?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Your slippers were in the hall,” he replied. “I came to tell you that I’m going to get in the shower.”

I was so sleepy that I traded places with the hubs and went to lie down with the toddler, giving the hubs naked kid duty.

The next morning (this morning) I saw a text on my phone. My 7-year-old had texted my cousins and me a photo of the fort he built at 10:08 p.m., well past his bedtime. I was about to ask my son about this when he showed me his arms.

He had hives everywhere.

After a visit to the doctor and a day of observance it turns out that he has a virus that is causing hives. The doc said she is seeing several cases of unexplained hives.

So the next time you see me post a sweet, smiling photo on Facebook, know that the photo is one moment in our predictably unpredictable lives.

I used to write love notes. But it’s different when you find one in your 7-year-old’s back pack.

My 7-year-old asked and asked and asked, and finally our elf  has arrived. He rarely sits on a shelf, though. Today he’s sporting a parachute, which got caught on our ceiling fan. I’m waiting for my 2-year-old to turn the fan on, sending Steve (that’s our elf) flying across the room.

While my older son believes, my toddler is oblivious. He’s also oblivious to how much he and Steve resemble each other with the same blue eyes and cheeky grins.

Here is a picture of my son after his haircut on Saturday.

Here’s a photo of an elf.

I’ve heard of people resembling their dogs, but this is the first I’ve seen a person resemble his elf.

My son went to the police department with his Cub Scout troop this evening. When he came home he said:

“Mom! I went to the police station and I got to see where they put the drunks. In the olden days, either the police or the drunk people would have to clean up the puke. But now there is a drain on the floor and it flushes the puke out. AND, we all got locked up for four minutes!”

“How was that?” I asked.

“Really good.”

Sigh.

This is the story my 2nd grader turned in to his teacher…

“Once there was a scarecrow named Isaac. He was a very smart scarecrow. He knew his times tables. One day Isaac went to the store to buy a new pair of clothes because his old pair was worn out. He went to the store. He looked for a bikini and some diapers. He finds his diapers and went back to the farm and had a fashion show.”

Thanks to my parents, my 7-year-old has had an iPod touch for a while now. He has been trying really hard to figure out how to send and receive messages on his iPod. He has poked that green message app and asked me how it works at least five times. Me, not knowing any better, said he needed to have an email account to send messages, so he talked about creating his own email account. In fact, he was debating which email provider he wanted to go with this past Saturday night.

I did not know about iMessaging until Friday for two reasons: 1) I just joined the iWorld and 2) one of my coworkers shared some iTips. She explained that iPhones, iPods and iPads can send messages to each other for free.  So, when my 7-year-old came to me last night about that green message app, I knew what to do this time. A delayed bedtime and several “Is it set up yet?” questions later, he and I were iMessaging.

He would type out a message, hit send, hear my phone beep and start giggling like crazy.

When he woke up this morning, the messages kept coming. It’s pretty funny to see how excited he is about messaging. He thinks of the most random things to share just so he can send me a message. Here’s a screen shot from this morning:

After I hit the send button I could hear my son reading my message out loud to the hubs and laughing.

He ran upstairs to find me. “You said have a ‘goo’ day! You forgot the ‘d’ on good. Goo day!” he said and started cracking up.

Let the messaging bloopers begin.

On Saturday my 7-year-old said this after crashing on his bike…he was half yelling and half crying: “I don’t know why you are pushing me to learn to ride my bike! You just want me to fail. You stand there all judgy, waiting for me to fall. And my friends who come out to cheer me on are really just cheering for you. I don’t need to know how to ride a bike. Being able to ride my bike does not affect my future!”

The next day he mastered riding his bike. He loved it so much that he rode around for four hours.

When I heard that kids would change my life I didn’t fully comprehend what that meant. This weekend it meant that I watched my favorite college football team in Kidland, but I was the amusement park.

I was lying on my stomach watching the game when my son plopped down next to me, lifted up the back of my shirt and started slapping my left love handle. Slap, slap, slap, giggle. Slap, slap, giggle. My niece thought the sound and jiggling were cool so she came over and started slapping my right love handle. Slap, slap on the right, slap, slap, slap on the left, giggles.

My nephew couldn’t be left out so he toddled over, kneeled down and bonked the top of my head with a stuffed snake. Boink! Boink! Boink! Slap, slap. More giggles. They keep me humble.