Nolan's little instruction book for life

Nolan: "Hey Mom, I have a new rule for me"
Me: "yeah, what's that?" - at this point thinking it is going to be something profound as he is clearing his breakfast dishes without being asked....
Nolan: "I think I need to have dessert before I take a shower from now on"

Coloring Nolan's world

Nolan loves to color. That is actually an understatement. Nolan colors every day, numerous times a day and will color anything. As you can imagine, we have a lot of crayons and with 2 younger siblings that like to break crayons we have more broken crayons than whole. The quantity of broken crayons is a problem with Nolan because he will dig through our tub-o-crayons until he finds a full size crayon in the color he needs. Nolan's addiction to crayons is actually comical. He tends to hoard crayons. He has been known to hide a box of crayons up in his top bunk away from the crayon-breakers. Hmmm, maybe I should seek out a "CHA" group for him (that's Crayon Hoarding Anonymous to you and I). Anyway, so when the pencil boxes from school were brought home and the number of broken crayons greatly increased, Nolan and I sat down to a little crafty fix to this problem. We made crayons! Not rocket science, but fun nonetheless.

We started by separating out all the broken crayons. Then we started peeling all the paper off of the broken crayons. This is somewhat tedious and great fine motor work.

Did I happen to mention that we have A LOT of crayons?

Once we had everything separated, I took an old mini-muffin pan and sprayed it lightly with Pam. If I had paper muffin cups I would have used them in addition to the pan.

We broke the crayons into smaller pieces and mixed up some of the colors. Put them in a preheated 250 degree oven. The melting time will vary. You will see there is a big difference between Crayola crayons and the cheap ones that you get from restaurants. Yes, we are "those" people that take all the crayons with us that they hand out to keep kids happy before the meal arrives.

Voila! Here is the final product. The mixing of the colors makes it fun. It would be neat to try different shapes/molds. There a few crayons that all but a small area melted, so there is still a crayon stick in the circle (as can be seen by the yellow one on the bottom left). This is because of the varying melting times. The yellow crayon must have been a Crayola!

Note, the above picture is not Nolan's normal coloring! He was just trying out all the colors and scribbling. Below is a sample of Nolan's coloring....

Nolan seeking bride. Must be Amish.

Nolan - Mom, when I get married, I know where I'm going on my honeymoan (yes that's the way he said it!)
Me - Yeah, where?
Nolan - Dutch Wonderland
Andrew - Don't you think you should take her somewhere more relaxing?
Nolan - Like where?
Andrew - The beach would work.

The bad Angel made him bite his nails.

Me: "Nolan are you biting your nails again?"

N: "Yeah, I'm sorry. I'll try not to"

Me: "Good"

N: "It's just that the bad angel on my shoulder told me to and the good angel told me not to, but I listened to the bad angel"



If only we all could explain so easily why we choose to do things we shouldn't do.

Movie time guessing

Kids are pooped after playing in the snow, so they are settling in for a movie. Instead of the usual battle of picking the movie, I decided I would pick and there would be no arguments. These kids are nuts, typically when I put a movie in they will guess the movie within the first 10 seconds of the first preview on the DVD.

So the guessing begins... "I know" is unanimously screamed. I tell them to come whisper in my ear. Andrew says in my left ear "Journey to the Center of the Earth" while at the same time Nolan was whispering in my right ear "I don't know tell me". Nice try Nolan! However I will give him props because by the time he got back to the couch and they were 15 seconds into the first preview sure enough he yelled out "RV!" Righto!

Happy Chinese New Year

Simon: "ouch"
Me: "did you put them up your nose?"
Simon: "yes"
Me: "Simon you don't put chop-sticks up your nose"
Simon: "OK"
Nolan: (from the other room all matter-of-fact) "hey remember when I did that with french fries?... (mumbling something)..... but we still got ice cream"

The marriage - job link

Nolan, my 6 year old stereotypical middle child, gave some insight into the economy this morning. He stated very emphatically, "Well actually, I do want to get married cause I want to get a job". Hmmm, where do you go with that one? If everyone would just get married, then everyone would be employed? Get married and get a job so you can be out of the house? A marriage will be his job?

I chose to just stop with my deep thoughts and chuckle at the funnies that are always coming out of their mouths. How blessed we are, when we listen to their deep thoughts instead of our own.