The Monkey Barrel

Archive for the ‘John’ Category

Yes I know you’re all very excited as am I that I have come to week 3 on our Monkey Tune Tuesday and delivered the goods again! Wshew, this could be a pattern ya know.

Today’s offering is actually due to John’s enrollment this summer in music camp. I heard about this amazing family through our church who was puttin on a harvest festival a few years back and The Hunt Family Fiddlers were the headlining entertainment. We were actually unable to attend that year and so missed the opportunity to see these guys. We heard lots of fantastic things about them afterward and continued to hear amazing things from friends of ours whose kids were taking violin lessons from the girls.

I started doing a little of my own research on them and found their website and their fb fan page and man oh man was I surprised by the site. The group consists of dad Clint, momma Sandy, twins Jesse (20) and Jen (20), Josh 17, Jonathan (16), Jord (14), Justine (13), and JJ (11). This family is world renowned and have been on many talk shows, performed world wide and won world championships in fiddle and step dancing competitions including IN Ireland! And to top it off, they’re a family of NINE, yes that adds up to SEVEN kids folks. And I thought I had a hard time keeping just my three monkeys entertained!

John’s first day of camp was yesterday and he is absolutely loving it and loving talking about music with other kids his age. There will be a concert on Friday afternoon at 2p.m. for the kids to show off their mad skills and share with us what they’ve learned. And I am thankful to have this family just around the corner from our humble abode to learn from. I’m seriously considering fiddle lessons for myself in the fall and letting Luke pick an instrument for himself as well.

To learn more about these guys you can visit Hunt Family Fiddlers There are some audio tracks and video clips to see their inspiring talent and even a store to purchase one of the five cd’s they’ve produced. Their latest offering is Hearts Held High and I HIGHLY recommend that you and all of your dearest friends and relatives purchase a copy. And also, check out their touring scheduling and see if they’re coming to a city near you. This is whole family fun people and how often can you find that??

Our morning in pictures. Enjoy!

1:30 a.m. Thursday morning – a warm little hand jiggles my arm, and a sleepy voice whispers, “John threw up and he’s in the bathroom” I crack open an eye and peek at Luke and ask, “Did he barf on your bed?”. Luke says, “No, I don’t think so, but he’s in the bathroom.”. Oddly, Fred hears this conversation and as I crawl out of bed and go to the bathroom before going to John, he beats me to it. I wander down the hall and hear Fred and John talking in the bathroom and figure Fred’s handling any future yarks in there and veer over to the boys room where my mostly asleep, unsuspecting personage stumbles onto the scene.
The words carnage, and explosive, and other expletives chased each other rapidly in and out of my head. It was like a scene from CSI in there, only not blood, but recycled lasagna. John has a loft bed and Luke’s comes out from under it so the beds create an L. How Luke missed the vomit covering his bed, and got out of that room without an ounce of it on himself is a freakin miracle. There was hardly an inch of that room untouched. I didn’t even know where to begin to start cleaning up. Oh, and because God has such a sense of humor and to add to the mayhem, the boys had been playing legos earlier in the day and had not cleaned them up so nearly all of their legos were on the floor and the ones that should’ve been safe by remaining in their boxes, were also baptized with gore by sheer virtue of their proximity.
The best way to begin really is just to begin and so with shirts over our noses, window sash thrown high, and armed with towels, rags, and powerful cleaners we started in. Beds were stripped, legos removed to a bath of bleach and hot water, and the beds and mattresses were scrubbed. Tackling the carpet was the epitome of the nightmare. We started out using some carpet cleaners but I finally said screw it and filled a bucket with hot water, bleach, and oxy clean. I figured a bleach stain trumps a vomit stain any day of the week. And oh my gosh I thought my arms were gonna fall of and the skin on my hands would be peeled back to the bone. I loaded the first two loads into the whining washing machine and groaning dryer and pulled out sleeping bags and sheets to set up a sick room. Making sure they were settled for the moment, we both stumbled off to showers. Fred stayed with both boys downstairs to keep watch and I got to sleep around 3 a.m. until about 7 when a sweet, kind, wonderful neighbor had a tree crew come in to blast me awake with the sound of nature being murdered. And yeah, if that makes me a tree hugger, hippie type person then sue me. Or you can blame J.R. Tolkien for making those trees come alive in his books and leaving a hard and fast impression on my little soul that they really do talk and move and live.
All in all, I think we managed to survive Barf-O-Rama 2010. It’s early days yet to know if anyone else has picked up the bug. I hope never to have another encounter with such a disaster of this proportion ever ever ever again, but I think we’ll secure a bucket with a bungee cord to John’s bunk from this moment on, just to be on the safe side.

Merry Christmas and Happy New year!

We’ve had a lot of difficulty of late with the boys arguing and talking nasty to each other. Luke can be a pest and John is short of temper and there’s just been a lot of snapping even toward Fred and I. So I was talking to the boys about it and explaining to them the importance of being a servant to each other and putting each others needs and wants before their own but not having much luck getting my point across. I hate to lecture ad-nauseum and try to find good object lessons to drive the idea home. It usually involves an analogy that has to do with bodily functions. They’re boys, you have to speak their language, and gas and laughter are generally it. But this time, it just wasn’t cutting the cheese, so to speak.
But I think I’ve hit upon genius if I do say so myself. Last night I sat down with both of them and made lists. Each of the boys had to come up with 10 ideas of something really nice they could do for their brother. Lemme tell you that part alone nearly made me wanna give up the idea. I never thought they would find that so hard. So with a few promptings from daddy about what they would like someone to do for them, we turned it around into something they could do for each other. After about a half an hour we had 20 great ideas. I took each paper and cut out each idea and folded it up and put them all into a jar.
I sat them down again and told them that from now on, when they talk ugly to each other, or are unkind to one another, they will go to the jar and pick out a piece of paper and whatever it says they will do for their brother. The ideas range from putting away each others laundry, to letting someone go first in everything all day, and buying a gift with their own money at the dollar store. Each time they have to go the jar and execute one of the deeds, the deed will be followed by a sincere apology to the offended party.
My hope is that the jar won’t have to be used as punishment for long and that they will come up with other ideas on their own to add to it and that each idea will become a habit and way of life for them in how they treat not only themselves but others around them. They really do get along most of the time and Fred and I often marvel at how much they enjoy and love each other without much of a thought to it. But we want always to encourage them to put other peoples needs before their own and most especially their brothers. I’ll keep you posted on the results of this experiment.

We finally got the new platform bed up in john and luke’s room.   Check it!

My brother used to subscribe to a magazine when he was in the Boy Scouts called Boys Life. I really wish I’d read more than the funnies in it. Maybe it would have prepared me better for raising the hooligans I call sons. Perhaps there were articles on how to pack a perfect sand ball for hitting with a plastic bat in a way that didn’t fling particles into a younger siblings eyes. Or maybe there was a column that offered advice on how to organize all your toys into a crazed mess over every available floor space in your home that makes sense to naught but a little boys brain. I wonder if anyone wrote about how to keep a young mans fingers from straying into his nostrils absent mindedly or picking a wedgie publicly and REALLLLY diggin to get that bad boy out without a thought to the passerby near at hand. Was advice given on how to reassure your young sons that sharks live nowhere but aquariums and oceans and that taking a bath will not produce said creature from your drain hole? Were there instructional articles on how to amass every ounce of dirt in the surrounding county and pile it into hair, ear holes, fingernails, elbows, knees, toes, and butt cracks? A comic commentary on the never fail properties of a well timed fart gag anywhere, just about any time had to be in there somewhere I’m certain and boys are full of it and able to command it at will. I would have found great value in reading anything published having to do with distinguishing smells that emanate from beneath beds, inside closets, and hampers, and bathrooms that no matter how hard I clean, insist on smelling of old caked urine. I would also have been pleased to read in the culinary commentaries that every mother should purchase at least one metric ton of macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, and root beer per child to secure their sons survival. It would have saved many a slaved over meal. Were there write ups on volcanoes and the abject fascination with burning hot lava? Volcano week should seriously be considered on the Discovery and National Geographic Channels. My boys would be glued to the television. And speaking of glue, was anything written on the use of copious amounts of glue sticks and tape and staples to create original comics to peddle to your aunts and other bus riders and neighborhood school children? I should also own stock in those companies. There should’ve been something said about masked marauders hiding under beds and waiting stealthily for dripping wet parents wrapped in towels and ignorance, waiting so quietly to grab their ankles and send them shrieking to the ceiling sans towel and dignity to the soundtrack of giggling and hysterical laughter. But then, I suppose, had they included any of those things, I would never have wished for a son and gotten three that have made a daily, chaotic, insanely frustrating, crazy, manic, amazing, blessed, beautiful life

While watching shark week shows last night I overhear John and Luke on the couch and the conversation went a little something like this

Luke : (quietly) mumble mumble Dear Jesus, mumble mumble mumble sharks mumble mumble mumble
John : Luke why are you praying about sharks?
Luke : Because John, I don’t want the big sharks to come and eat me so I’m praying to Jesus to close their mouths if I’m in the water.
John : Luke, don’t be silly, sharks don’t eat humans. They eat seals and sometimes they mistake us for seals because seals are a part of their natural diet.

My kids kill me!!!!!!!!!

A few weeks ago we started hearing an odd sound coming from the bathroom. It only happened occasionally but pretty soon it was with every flush. The kids started calling it Chewbacca. They began specifically going up to use that toilet and gales of laughter would ensue. Occasionaly I’d find an obscure light sabre and oddly hacked toilet paper on the floor. Luke started wearing his Darth Vader helmet to go potty and his Lego Star Wars underwear became hugely popular again. Whenever friends or family would come over they were ushered sneakily upstairs with whispered giggles about our new family entertainment. About a week ago I noticed that a few seconds after Chewbacca’s call came an answering groan. So now we have one wookie howling and it’s companion groaning in response like some weird mating ritual, in our toilet!! I had no idea our potty was the galaxy “far far away”. I almost don’t have the heart to have Fred fix it because it has produced so much joy, but fear of a growing colony of wookies and the ensuing hairballs give me caution.

John’s birthday was a smashing success. I got an idea into my head around Halloween to do a mad scientist party. At the time my intention was to hit all the after halloween sales and get interesting things for the treat bags and maybe some wigs and things to dress up myself and Fred and John as the scientists. Bed rest put paid to being able to shop for it and then Noah came and the rest is history. So my sister in law Dawn sends me a link to an article the Pilot had written on a local company that does Mad science after school things and camps and clinics and parties. I kept it handy and when John’s party drew near I called ‘em and booked it. There was just no way I was up for doing all that work myself. We were hugely impressed with mad scientist Flyin Ryan and his presentation. The kids were engaged from the moment he spoke until he was loading his car up to drive away. I cannot say enough about the company. I’m keeping tabs on their summer camps and have every intention of enrolling John for one of them. If you are interested in checking them out, go to http://www.madscience.org/locations/hamptonroads/ Hopefully I’ll be able to post pictures soon as I figure out how to get ‘em off the new camera!