Specificity works! (also begging…). So yay! I got the fancy little slimline Casio Exilim camera that I wanted for my birthday (thank you parents, Hubby, and SIL). It’s teeny tiny so it fits in my purse/diaper bag/crochet bag, has video capture, and it’s even red. So cool!

Apparently if you email everyone who might buy you presents with the make and model of what you want, a picture of what you want, where to buy it, how much it costs, where to get online coupons for it, and that if they possibly might do a group gift, you are much more likely to get what you were hoping for as your birthday present. Who knew?

This is the first time I can remember that I’ve actually had something over about $30 that I’ve wanted for my birthday, so being that particular felt really weird but now I have a cool new camera. Yay! Plus my Hubby bought me this cool new Wireless SD Card that automatically uploads your pictures to your computer through your wireless network.

What that means is that all I have to do is be in the house and turn on my camera, and my pictures get sent to my computer. I don’t have to mess with adapters or any of that stuff. I do have to plug it in to get the video on the computer, but even that is pretty uncomplicated.

Last week Hubby worked 76 hours on site (as opposed to at home) between Monday and Saturday, so we basically didn’t see him all week. I spent most of the week trying to keep the kids nice and busy so they didn’t drive me totally crazy. We went to the park with the wading pool, the library, Grandma’s house, Bunya’s house (Grandma on the other side, the Russian side), and ate half a flat of fresh Oregon strawberries.

Since it is strawberry season, I had to make my favorite strawberry season breakfast that I (and now the kids as well) look forward to all year. See? Strawberry crepes. Just tell me this doesn’t look delectable.

What did you have for breakfast (also known as “neener neener, I had yummy crepes and you had nasty corn flakes”)? If you have only had those flavorless loser California strawberries that they try to pass off as real fruit in the grocery stores, you have no idea what you are missing. It’s worth living in Oregon rain country just to get good berries for two weeks in the summer.

As my son astutely pointed out, Oregon berries don’t have all that white blech in the center of the berry. They are red all the way through. I’m going to buy a whole flat this week so I can freeze half and, well, wolf down the other half. That should probably hold me for another year.

Okay, well I guess that covers this year’s ode to strawberries. I did make one other discovery recently that I am planning to put to good use this summer. As you know, me and mopping do not get along well. So the week before Family Camp I was trying to get the house clean in an effort to not have every ant in the county trailing along the kitchen floor eating all the leftovers my children graciously leave for them.

I asked my charming children who wanted to play Cinderella. The girls all tripped over each other with excitement so I gave them a mop bucket with some soap and each of them a rag, and they mopped the entire floor. Did a pretty good job of it too! Georgie decided he didn’t want to play (!), but would rather be the Wicked Stepfather and go around telling them all that they were having way too much fun. Overall it went very well.

This week I decided that this new game needed to be a more regular event, so they played again on Monday. Georgie decided he didn’t want to miss out this time and mopped as well. Unfortunately, this added an unstable element to the otherwise fairly tame mopping time, and I had to reprimand the children for trying to clean the ceiling by throwing the rags at it, mopping the walls by spinning cloths on them (which sprays mop water all over the house), and doing target practice by dropping rags from upstairs over the staircase railing to bullseye into the mop bucket. Should this behavior occur again next time, mopping will again become a girls only activity. Argh!

So I leave you today with some video of my mopping maniacs (note Faithy’s cute hat that I actually made). The video is about a minute long. Thank you, Mr. Disney!

In case you’re really bored and have 27 seconds more to burn, here is some video of Henry rolling over. It was late at night on Saturday while George was still at work so I was going to take pictures of Henry and fiddle with my new camera. He didn’t seem to like that idea though and immediately rolled over for the first time. I switched the camera to video mode, propped Henry back up (because he liked it so well the first time as you can tell….), and shot this:

Ciao!

Actually we did have this for breakfast! Per Nichol’s request. I miss two things in Oregon. Corn, and sometimes strawberries. Ours here are pretty yummy - I don’t think the rain is worth the exchange though.

Oh and I can’t see the videos. :( :(

You can’t see the video? Hmmm. The Youtube uploader on my blog software is being wacky. I can see the video here but it’s really jerky, which it isn’t on Youtube. Just check it out directly here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBsv9-ZBPrs and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAOne22_B0s.

Those crepes look yummy! I used to be a bit offended when I heard people say that California strawberries were terrible, but after tasting the strawberries here I agree hands down! There is NO COMPARISON! I have to agree with Georgie, too much white in the middle of those CA berries! (I’m a sounding like an Oregonian yet?) LOL! We want to go and pick some ASAP, as soon as we are all over our nasty colds….think we got the yearly “after camp sickness.” Uughhh!

Love the mopping idea! Looks like they are having a ball and mommy gets a clean floor out of it all! What could be better! I let my girls watch the video and now they want to “play Cinderella.”

And last but not least….HURRAY FOR HENRY! Glad you got it on video for dad! He is so cute!

OOPS! I guess I’m not sounding like an Oregonian by saying, “I’m a sounding…” LOL! Sounds like someone with a stuffed up head who can’t type well! SORRY!

Yeah, we have a couple kids here are aren’t feeling great (Kyra & Faith) and I’m starting to wolf down Airborne because I’m feeling a bit weird myself. Chicken soup tonight!

And yes, you are sounding like an Oregonian. I can’t help it if we have far superior strawberries. Hehe.

Good luck with the mopping. I quite like doing it here. It keeps the kids occupied and does something constructive that I then don’t have to do. They miss a few places, but overall it’s considerably better than before hand and they’re usually fairly thorough.

The floor does tend to take longer to dry because Faith doesn’t wring out her rag so she mainly just drips puddles all over. I run a towel over the sections that she has obviously been at when they’re done. They sure do have a good time though.

I showed George the video of Henry as soon as he got home Saturday night (at 1am). I’m pretty glad I got that on video too.