Do you have an ugly couch?

Okay, I just happened upon this when I was on AOL checking my email. Apparently there is a contest for the ugliest couch in the world and this has photos of some current entrants and past winners. They are pretty bad... and great if you need a laugh. It makes me grateful that my couch and love seat are fairly decent looking, even if they are hand-me-downs from the 70's.

Ugliest Couches in the World

Things Russell has done in the past couple weeks

Here's a sampling of things Russell has delighted me with in the last couple weeks. He:

1--Loosened the lid on a Costco size container of Taco Seasoning and then threw it across the living room. The lid came off and taco seasoning filled the carpet.
2--Dumped a box of baking soda in the living room carpet.
3--smeared half a jar of peanut butter in the living room carpet and all over a step-stool from the bathroom.
4--smeared a stick of margarine in the living room carpet
5--dumped about half a bottle of blue raspberry flavored snow cone syrup in his bedroom carpet.
6--dumped a bunch of water and juice into the bread machine on top of the dough that had just finished kneading.
7--cut holes in my nice, expensive sheets (not sure if this was him or Ruby)
8--dumped a whole bottle of silver paint onto the red sign I had just painted and was letting dry.

On the plus side, I shampooed my living room carpet last week. Of course, since the margarine was today, I have to do it again. I have definitely gotten my money's worth out of the Hoover Steam Vac I bought when Ruby was about 15 months old. I've had it over 4 years now and have used it at least every three months. There were some time periods in there when I was using it every day. That was Ruby's poop-smearing phase. Boy am I glad Russell has not had a similar phase---You hear that sound? That's me knocking on wood.

Of course, amid all his mess making, he likes to crawl into my lap and give me a hug and say, "I wuv you, Mommy." It's hard to stay mad for too long. He's just so darn cute.

The Digger

The San Jose Water Company (which is a private entity not owned by the city) has decided to replace all the old fire hydrants with new ones before the end of the year. There have been a couple of crews working on this in the neighborhood between our apartment and Ruby's school. Last week we just happened to walk past one as they finished using the jack hammer on the sidewalk around the fire hydrant. We decided to stand and watch them dig up the area around the hydrant. They had a big Cat bulldozer/digger that they used to dig up the sidewalk and the dirt about four feet down. Russell thought this was great. Even I thought it was pretty cool. I was amazed at how smoothly this thing worked. It almost seemed like it was an animal digging with its hands. We watched for about an hour, which is when the crew decided that the pipes were weird there and they were going to have to come back another day and dig up the street, too. I had to drag the kids home.

The day before that Russell and I watched a crane lifting roof panels from a truck onto the new building under construction at Ruby's school. Russell just loves that kind of stuff. He's really into Bob the Builder and tools and big machines.

Saturday was an event at Ruby's school called "Holiday in the Garden." The "garden" part is because the school is in the Rose Garden area of San Jose. It is, in fact, across the street from the Rose Garden. It's a big fundraiser for the PTO (similar to PTA). They decorate the kindergarten area and have booths and food and other things for sale and various performances and a silent auction. The kinders and first graders kicked it off with singing several songs. Ruby was very cute. I helped set up that morning. I also made a "north pole" for the decorations around our classroom. It was a six foot tall PVC pipe with red tinsel around it in a tree stand. I painted up a sign for it that said "north pole." It turned out pretty well, despite some attempts by my children to sabotage the project (one of which involved Ruby painting my kitchen cabinets red and another of which involved Russell dumping my entire bottle of silver paint on the sign). I decided to donate the north pole to the PTO for use in future years. I don't really have anywhere to put it. It did look really nice with the other decorations, though. Our classroom area was decorated so nicely that the PTO decided to have the Santa pictures in front of our display instead of inside the classroom.

Well, I'm off to dinner with some friends from our ward.