I went out to breakfast with my Mom and brother yesterday, and had to tell them how excited the kids were when we announced on Thursday morning that we were taking a trip up to Bowling Green, Ohio. You would have thought we told them we were taking a surprise trip to Disney World!!! It was HILARIOUS!!! "BOWLING GREEN!!! SISSY/EVAN WE'RE GOING TO BOWLING GREEN!!!"

Mind you, BG is about 20 minutes north of here. No amusement park. No trip to the mall, a park, or a toy store. We ate at Big Boy, and went to a yarn store.

Isn't it nice to have kids who get excited over the little things?

We took the kids to the Toledo Zoo on Thursday. They had a blast, as usual. Here are some pics of their time there:

This chimp was making all sorts of faces at the girls!

The E man on the gorilla's back. No matter how many times we have been to this zoo, we always see something new. Last time we went, Memorial Day weekend, we got to see them feed the sharks. This time, we discovered a part of the zoo we had never seen before... Gorilla Meadows. It was cool. There was a silverback, and about two or three babies and a female all outside, playing around. They were active. It was REALLY cool. And on the inside of the exhibit, there were some younger gorillas playing around. The exhibit is a glassed in area, with an overhang where the animals can sit up on top of you and watch you as you look up at them. It was awesome.

And then this one I am rather proud of ... I am FINALLY getting the hang of Photo Shop Pro 8.

All in all, the kids had a wonderful time, and I got to go to the yarn store afterwards. I mean, I can't go up to the zoo and not go there... it is two minutes from the zoo. Patrick rues the day of that discovery.

Oh and I can't forget to add this one...

She's BAAACCCKK!

And after over one month vacation from the blog, my  husband said I "need" to blog! I told him that he has a fully functional blog as well, but he said "you are much better at that than I am." I call it "work procrastination."

Ok.... so lots of stuff has been going on here at the Pitt house since the end of May.

We have a Kindergarten graduate. We have a Safety Town graduate. We have a two year old. We have two very bored children, one of whom is driving her parents INSANE! Just kidding. We have a child who has discovered the art of moving the kitchen chairs to the location she wishes to be in, climb on the chair, sit in the sink, and say "crog" (frog) because she wants to see the frog that my inlaws gave me on our last visit to their house (it is a running thing with my father in law and I).

In fact, here is the little nipper now, in her favorite place. Don't mind the NASTY MESSY sink...

We have three less teeth just within the last three weeks or so. McCayla lost her first top tooth in Kentucky, then she lost her second this week, as well as one of the bottom ones the following day (pulled out by Master Puller Mommy in the drive-thru as we were were getting milk. We don't have a picture of that missing tooth, but we do of the top front teeth:

Before... snaggle-tooth, eat your heart out!

And after...

We went down to the inlaws cabin in June, and spent some time down there. It is always fun traveling with these three (she says sarcastically) but we have found the saving grace, and we don't know why we didn't have this idea before.... the portable DVD player. We rented one from a rent to own place, and it was the best money we have EVER spent. Popped Evan full of Dramamine (gave some to M, too... just in case), and we were GOOD to go. There were a few hours where all we heard were the occasional line from Nemo, or "watch this, Evan... this is gonna be funny" even though Evan had seen the "funny thing" as many times as his commentator sister. And you will read this admission here first.... yes, I let my kids watch SpongeBob SquarePants. There... I said it.

Here's a pic of the kids on the boat, and I have to say that Miss M was QUITE the little fisherman. And she is SOOOOOO modest about it, too (insert another note of sarcasm). "Mommy... who's the best fisherman?" "Mommy, who caught the most fish?" when she KNEW the answers to the questions. We have to work on modesty here, I think.

Oh look... there's a third child there... who IS that? Oh yeah... that is Evan.

Here's a good Evan story... I told this to Patrick last night.

A naked Barbie has infiltrated our house. I don't know how it happened. I don't know where she shed her clothes, but she is living in the living room. She is too big for McCayla's doll house, so she spends her leisurely hours, lying on our living room floor. I am going to put her to work soon because she needs to earn some money for clothes.

Evan discovered "Naked Barbie" yesterday. He spent about an hour playing with her. Moving her arms here and there. Moving her legs. Pulling her legs out to look at the cool inside. Barbie didn't utter a word. Evan has decided that he loves Naked Barbie. He looked into those shallow, blue eyes of hers, said "I love you, Naked Barbie" and continued to kiss Barbie's non-clad breasts. Think I should be scared?

Evan also has an affinity for Dressy Bessy. However, Dressy Bessy is not Dressy Bessy. She is Curly Shirley (CS for short). CS was purchased by Mommy for McCayla when she was a baby. This is the original, not the new one they try to pass off as a suitable replacement. The blue velvety vest. The pink buttons. The orange and white polka dotted legs... not sure if those are socks or she has some kind of pox. The vinyl belt and vest. The zipper. Ahhhh... the memories. I was terribly thrilled when I won her on Ebay, and I gave her to McCayla.

McCayla, in those days, was NOT at all interested in dolls. I thought the zipper/snap/button/tie functions would enthrall her for hours. She probably played more with the box the doll came in. She did, however, rip her leg to the point that the leg was hanging on by mere threads. I took the doll away from McCayla, keeping her for another child.

Well, the "other" child is the boy. He LOVES CS, probably as much as Naked Barbie. He has spent hours playing with CS because she feeds Evan's obsessive/compulsive side... did I ever mention that we call him Monk? He buttons her up. He unbuttons here. He opens her vest. He snaps her belt. He hides little pieces of paper in her zippered pocket. It is a love relationship that will never go wrong.

He asked me if I could tape her leg. I told him that I couldn't because the tape could never fix what had been done. He said "ok" and then minutes later, I see a purple, vinyl-clad foot fly through the air and land on the floor next to me. I never heard a peep from her. He sat there looking at those googly eyes, and said "oh well... she lost her foot. Now all she can do is sit and lie around on the sofy-couch."

Here are some more pictures of the happenings here...

And this one I call The Time Warp...

Phew... and that was after only ONE cup of coffee!!!

I think I need to preface the account below with this background:

When I worked at Cedar Point I would have to go in with my shoe in my hand, ready to kill at LEAST 8-10 spiders a night. I worked a normal 8-5 shift, but to make extra money for law school, I waitressed four of the seven nights, not getting home until after midnight. And in I would walk with my shoe in hand, killing as many as I could get my shoe on. From that point on, I have HATED spiders. And these weren't those piddly little ones... these were the size you would find on major bodies of water (here, Lake Erie).

The excitement of working in your basement....

I have my "office" down here in our spider-infested, cobweb-ridden basement. I am also down here with the cat's litter box. What do the two have in common, you query? Well.. here's a tale..

I heard the faint "buzzing" sound of a flying insect, hoping beyond all hope that it was a fly, but knowing from the distinct sound that it was my arch nemesis, the bee. It decided to fly around the light to my left, and I looked on my desk... I had a can of air freshener... insert cat litterbox discussion here.

Ra is known for laying some atomic poops in his box as SOON as I sit down to work. I SWEAR that cat waits until the last moment, holding it in until I sit down. I hear that scrtchscrtchscrtch sound as he is digging in his box, looking for that prime place to make his odiferous deposit. And NO amount of covering up covers up the stench. I just look at him and say "WHY do you even bother?" So I clued in that we have some pretty smelling room spray up in the kitchen, so I ran up to grab that yesterday morning to cover up the daily stench.

Back to my flying enemy. I decided "well I'm gonna spray it" and I did. Well, that made it madder, so it flew directly at me. I ducked as fast as I could, and the bee decided "hmm... look ... a window" so it flew over to it. Good... a place for me to really lay on the room spray. So I am shooting it with the room spray, filling the air with the sweet smell of vanilla, island orchard (whatever THAT is), and cinnamon. Death to a bee never smelled so sweet.

The bee became entangled in what I thought was an abandoned spiderweb. It wasn't abandoned. Its gatekeeper came crawling out, all eight, spindly legs deftly maneuvering its death trap. At this point, two of my least loved creatures (I hate spiders as much as a I hate bees) are facing off, and I am cheering the spider on... until I remember that the bee is covered in room spray. I didn't want the spider to touch the bee, so I started yelling ... yes... yelling at the spider... NO! Get away from it! You don't want ANY of that bee! The spider did not heed my warnings, and it went to check the bee out.

Now, I don't know if spiders will trap bees in nature. I know I wouldn't touch a bee with a 10-foot pole, but spiders ... eh... who knows? The spider touched the bee once, and retreated. It was acting kind of loopy, and I thought it was only a matter of time before it met its demise.

I couldn't stand the drama anymore. I knew I had to put the bee out of its misery so I took off my trusty bee-killing device, my well-worn, well-loved Birkenstock, and I smashed the bee. I stood there with shoe in hand, looking at the spider, thinking that it was rather contradictory that I was cheering this spider on to get the bee, and didn't want it touching the poison yet , as I was smashing it into oblivion, I thought ... sorry, I just don't do spiders, either.