11 Lessons Learned in 2011

1.  Perhaps a green zone should be established when Nerf Wars break out inside the house. 

2.  Buying a label maker is asking for trouble. 
Once all the people who live in a house with a label maker get their hands on this revolutionary thingamajig...an insatiable label-affixing crime spree will ensue and it just can’t be stopped.

Over the holidays I was doing some cooking and happened catch a little white something under my stove's hood...

 

Upon closer inspection this is what it said:

(definitely the nefarious workings of a teenager.)

Then while mopping the floors I flipped the chairs onto the counter top and discovered this little beauty:

 

The whole label maker idea sounded like a great idea at first...

 


3.  Turning into a grandparent isn’t so bad.  
 Especially if your grandchild is one of the cuter 2011 models that comes with hair long enough to comb into a plethora of weird hairdos.  I’ve never been more amused by a slobbery little thing in all my life.

 That said, it’s the idea of being married to a grandpa that’s the hard part—especially if said grandpa thinks it’s okay to start referring to his wife as "Grandma".  Definitely not okay.

4.  Men suffer from cramps too.  
 Just ask Mark.  Twenty miles into his first marathon his legs cramped up and he had to limp into an aid station.  Once he got there he said that his cramps hurt so bad that he “didn’t even mind that two dudes were rubbing his legs down with Icy Hot.”  I should have sent him to his race with a couple of Midol--that would have done the trick, as I know a thing or two about cramps.
(TMI yes, I know.)


But, just to cover my bases after my grandpa remark in lesson #3,
for an old guy "Ojii" (that's grandpa in Japanese) runs pretty darn fast.

  
5.  Everyone should have an extra hand. 

Seriously two are not enough.  But the third hand has to be  
a fake foam one that looks real enough to creep people out.  You’ll be amused for months on end freaking people out with it.  I’m not sure how I ever lived without one.  Life is so much more enjoyable now.


6.  You can use a piece of seaweed as 
a tow rope.   
Yeah, that one surprised me too.  But when Deanne's quad wouldn't start and we all forgot to bring a tow rope, you gotta get creative.  In our case the creative one was "McGuyver Mont" who seems to always come up with ridiculously insane ways to turn problems into genius solutions.

I must admit I was laughing at him when I saw him grab a long seaweed kelp-ish thingy and drag it over to the quad!  But Mont, of course, had the last laugh.  It totally worked!  Way to go Mont!  Lesson Learned!

You can barely see the slimy tow rope but it' there, and it got us out of our little sandy pickle!

7.  Connor may have been Spider Man in another life.  
Over the past year I keep catching him hanging out on rooftops. 
Is that a sign of some serious malady that I should have him checked out?  You just can't keep the kid off the roof...of anything.

Here he is in the red shirt enjoying a sunny day at the dunes. 

  How do you get your chair up there??

Over the summer I repeatedly heard loud banging on my rooftop and discovered it was Connor playing catch with his trusty football  
on top of the house.  

 I’m not sure why but the kid seems to like the roof.  Go figure.


8.  Your sink can sink.  

I came downstairs one morning to find mine had settled into the abyss of the cupboard below.  Who knew that could happen??  Certainly not me.  It went down like the Titanic--full of china and silverware and less than a third of its contents made it through safely.  Unfortunately both were thought to be unsinkable.


9.  Never pave an extra-wide walkway to your front door. 
Your teenage driver will use it as a road.

 I think every kid has a full time job, which is, to scale all chores down to the least amount of exertion for every required task.  They are masters at this.  In Mitchell’s case the twenty extra steps from the driveway all the way up the front walkway was way way too far to carry some stuff into the house—so he just popped his car in reverse and backed it right up to the front door.  Yep, this year I learned that a WALKway is not just for pedestrians. 


10.  If it has an engine in it,  
the Skillmans will race it. 

11.  People should never move away.
You just miss them too darn much.

And yes after all these years we still even miss these people...

The things you learn.