The Movies

I have something to say tonight. I will NOT be watching Mr. Popper's Penguins when it comes out later this month. I am so disgusted. Have you seen the trailer? If you want to go watch it...go for it. I refuse.

If you have read the book, you know that Mr. Popper is a poor house painter who dreams of the Arctic and loves all things Polar exploration. He is delighted to get the penguins in the book. It seems in the movie, Mr. Popper is a businessman who is pretty well off in a slick apartment who spends at least part of the movie trying to get rid of them. And let's just say his family is not eating beans all winter.

And the names? In the book the penguins are named Captain Cook, Greta, Columbus, Victoria, Nelson, Jenny, Magellan, Adelina, Scott, Isabella, Ferdinand, and Louisa.

In the movie, they are named Captain, Nimrod, Stinky, Loudy, Bitey, and Lovey.

How intellectual are today's movie-goers?

Can I stand outside the movie theater and interview people and ask them about the names of the penguins in the book? Do you think they could come up with even a few of references? Huh? Can I?

Look, if I had never read the book I am sure this movie would be perfectly entertaining. I understand the need to modernize old books. I thought they did a pretty good job with Ramona and Beezus. I don't mind that it's been modernized--but Mr. Popper was POOR! And he was well-read. And he was delighted about those penguins.

Which is probably why it is such a delightful book.

I'm skipping it. That is all.


Now, while we are on the subject of movies...I have a question and tomorrow I'll answer it.

What is our standard for deciding which movies we watch as Christians?  (annoying made-over-book movies are not the issue here)

And lastly, I just wanted to give God the glory. My friend in real life was hit while driving her van last week. She is pregnant.

The inside of her van. She jumped out of the passenger side door.

And both she and the baby are fine. FINE. A little sore...but safe. Praise God! (The driver who hit them is fine too.)

My Romantic Husband

He gets an award or something. I mean it. He helped me clean the WHOLE house this weekend. Everything from my huge to do list on this post is done! (Except the pedicure.) Everything is moved. Everything looks amazing and like I can actually keep up with it!

I don't feel snowed under anymore is what I'm saying.

EVEN the laundry room. Are you appreciating the miracle here? I have a little bit of laundry to do. But look! A floor!!

AND....we found chairs for the living room. They were from a craft and antique mall in our town and are probably from an estate sale. One has a rip on the arm that will need to be sewn up and S had to fix the legs on one chair. Other than that, they are great. Along with our $20 garage sale couch...we have us a new living room!

There is a 3rd matching chair across the room.

Double recliner couch, baby!

Needless to say...I am VERY happy and ready to start the week! Of course, there is still a lot to do (inside of closets and cabinets). Just wait until you see the homeschool room! Hope you had a great weekend too. Maybe next weekend we can actually go have fun since our house will be clean!

It's Like Dominos....or Maybe a Train Wreck

There isn't any reason to have the computer table in the living room since all we have is a laptop.

We could also do without the TV cabinet. Do we even need the TV?

Yes, for the Wii and for videos. (We still have videos, OK?)

OK. The Wii and TV and VCR/DVD player could go in the playroom. Isn't that what playrooms are for?

Then we could put extra seating in the living room and be able to have more people over for Bible study/dinner, etc!!!! Yes! This is a go!

Hey! I could use the old TV cabinet to store books/teaching materials in the homeschool room!

And that means S wouldn't have to build shelves in the homeschool closet. Instead, I'll stick the girls' bookshelves in the closet for them to keep their school stuff on.

And I wanted the printer in the homeschool room anyway. (It's in the TV cabinet right now.)

I have a small shelf in my bedroom that would fit the printer just right. I can move that to the homeschool room.

But what about the books I have on that shelf? They can go in my nightstand!

What about the doll clothes that are in my nightstand? (Don't ask.) They can go in the plastic drawers that are in the homeschool closet right now and need to come out anyway to fit the bookshelves!

1. Move books off girls' bookshelves. Put on black shelves in homeschool room.
2. Move bookshelves out of girls' room. Stick in homeschool room.
3. Move dollhouses out of playroom in order to fit TV. Put them in girls' room where bookshelves used to be.
4. Move cedar chest from homeschool room to playroom to put TV on. Move wooden cube from homeschool room to put DVD player on.
5. Move movies out of TV cabinet. Put in wooden cube.
6. Get plastic drawers out of homeschool closet. Have girls go through artwork in drawers.
7. Put doll clothes in plastic drawers. Put in playroom.
8. Move books off of small bookshelves and put in nightstand.
9. Move small bookshelves to homeschool room.
10. Move printer from TV cabinet to small shelf in homeschool room.
11. Have husband move TV, etc. to playroom. Wires confuse me.
12. Make a path of some sort through homeschool room.
13. Have husband move TV cabinet to homeschool room.
14. Make playroom look like a playroom again and find a place for everything.
15. Ditto the homeschool room. This could take awhile.
16. Find chairs for living room for cheap!
17. Find place for computer table.
18. Take self for a pedicure.

19. Don't be like me.
20. Trust me. Just don't.

Deep Thoughts and Thursday

I have many deep thoughts today but it's Thursday and my house is a mess all around the edges. Seriously, the kitchen table is clean, the living room floor is clean.....but all around the edges there are stacks and piles and mess and sacks to be donated or sold.

Piano practice with a partner.

I don't have time to be deep today. Plus, I'm still thinking on it. I e-mailed Carrie to rant about people (who go to church) raving about seeing a certain movie that did not sound....um, inspirational. I read the review for said movie at pluggedin.com and wow. I was floored. So I e-mailed Carrie about it and we got into a conversation about TV and movies and modesty and just where is the standard? Then we both went to church last night and guess what was talked about at both churches??? Weird. And then I got home and read a blog post that fit so I sent it to her and S and I spent all evening talking about these things.

Little Bit slept in the living room for weeks when her tics were so bad. She slept ALL over the living room!

And I'm still mulling it over in my mind. I have to do that for a while before I can write it all down for you.

But it's Thursday right now and my house is only clean in the middle. Also, I have to clean out the TV cabinet today so we can move the TV to the toy room and the cabinet to my homeschool room. Not that it will fit in there right now. We are finishing up school in the middle of a war zone in there, I'm tellin' ya. At some point we will probably  have to finish the year at the kitchen table because I started on this rearrange a bit early. Oh well.

I love sewing these dolls! Aren't they cute?

Hoping to remove mass amounts of stuff from my house today.....and mulling deep thoughts in the process....

What are you doing on this fine Thursday?

Neighbor Etiquette

When we first moved into this house, our girls were the only children on the block. All the same neighbors I grew up with still lived here except now they were retired or widowed. The man across the street from my parents remarked how nice it was to have some little kids running around again.

Then, one lady's grown daughter moved back home with her three children. Then the folks next door had their children and grandchildren move in as well. You would think with all these adults living in the same house with all these children, that everyone would have plenty of supervision, right?

Ha.

These children slay me. They used to just open our backyard gate and ask if they could play. I mean they would just walk right in our backyard! I had to tell them they could not do that. Then, little boy from next door would open our gate and just stand there watching us swim. Um. Wow. He didn't speak English then, but he understood to scoot when I came crawling out of the pool and marching straight for him! It really worried me because I could just see him coming in when we weren't home and drowning. Needless to say, we lock the gate now.

Across the street girl and our girls play a lot together. But she'll come over to our house and ring the doorbell 5 or 7 times a day! Actually, that's not quite true. Each time she comes over she rings the doorbell multiple times until we answer. So what's that....60 times a day? ARGH. I had to tell her not to do that.

I have to go outside with my daughters if they are going to play in the front yard. I have 6 really good reasons why. First of all, we live on a main thouroughfare through our neighborhood and cars go really fast. The friends across the street dart back and forth without so much as a sideways glance and I do not trust my daughters to not be influenced by that bad behavior.

The other 5 reasons live in a large circle around our house (probably less than a mile square) and can be found on the sex offenders list. I've looked at the map.

Anyway, I end up being the neighborhood babysitter when we play in the front yard. I've hesitated to let friends play in our backyard because playing in the backyard invariably leads to coming right on in the house and I don't feel comfortable having children whose parents I barely know playing in our house. Especially when no one knows where they are.

I share all this to ask you a question. We have a pool. It's just an above-ground pool from Target. But it's the only pool on our block that I'm aware of. The kids next door jump on the trampoline and watch us swim and ask every day if they can come swim. The kids across the street have asked if they can come swim. They've only played with that one little girl 3 or 4 times but she asked if she could come over! I am appalled at children asking if they can come swim. I've talked to my girls about how we do NOT invite ourselves places.

Can you imagine walking into a friend's house (as an adult) and seeing a beautifully decorated cake sitting on the cabinet and saying, "Ooooh! Can I have a piece of cake??" Can you imagine doing that? I do not want to teach my girls to behave that way. You don't see your neighbor having a party and yell over the fence, "Hey! Can I come??"

I do not want these kiddos coming over to swim. I'm sorry, but I don't. I do not want to play lifegaurd and spend an hour saying, "don't hang on the side of the pool like that. Stop that--it's not safe. Quit getting in and out, you're getting grass all in the pool......" etc. etc. etc. Well behaved children who have actually been taught some manners might be a different story. And inviting one means an instant invitation to three at once with brothers and sisters. And I have no doubt they would call a friend to come over too!

Plus, once they've been over to swim once, how will I EVER get rid of them?? They'll be bugging us all day. I'm already glad we are still doing school so when these kids are out and come knocking (or ringing) we can honestly say, "Sorry. We are doing school right now."

Am I awful? I suppose I should be thinking of ministry opportunities and we do try to give a lot of attention to the little girl who they play with a lot because she seems lonely. She has horrible excema and I gave her some lotion for it. We try to love on them and be nice and friendly. The girls just smile and nicely say, "Not today" when the kids ask if they can swim. Back in the old days I suppose I could have invited them in for milk and cookies and really invested in these kids' lives. Today--I have concerns about that.

OK. So how do you handle neighbor kids?