Thursday, July 31, 2014

August 1, 2011

Three years ago today, on August 1, 2011, my husband, oldest two children and I stood outside these gates in Ethiopia:



And we walked in through these orphanage door:


And met this little girl for the very first time:


Meeting your nearly 3 year old daughter for the first time in an orphanage in Ethiopia is an experience I still cannot put adequate words to.


Oh, the fun these 2 sisters have had over the past 3 years since this first touch!

It is hard to believe it has been 3 years since we met her.  But today at lunch as we talked about the anniversary, my 11 year old said, "It's really hard to remember life before Little Girl!"

Indeed, it is!  She is so much a part of all of us.  We wouldn't want to imagine our family without her in it!

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

If She Had Superpowers

The 13 year old girl we sponsor in Ethiopia recently wrote us, "If I had super powers, I would create a medicine to relieve all HIV sufferers all over the world of their pain."

Oh, don't you just want to hug her?

She has a beautiful smile and was just accepted into a new elite school program because she is so smart.  AND, God just got the logistics worked out so that we'll get to meet her soon when we travel to Ethiopia!!  I am so excited to be able to hug her and tell her in person how proud we are of her!!

The photos below are from our first trip to Ethiopia 3 years ago when we got to meet Mathews, another of our sponsored children.  Meeting him was such an amazing, surreal experience.  I will never, ever forget it!  Praying everything works out as planned for us to meet Tsion this time!





Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Best Bag for Mission Trips

I'm packing right now, so travel products are on my mind.  But, it did occur to me to share my favorite bag for packing donations/supplies for mission trips in case it helps anyone else. 

It's this duffel:





The bag is awesome because it holds a ton, but then collapses really flat and small for transporting back home once you've dropped off the donations! 

It's a tough bag.  We bought two in the large size and they have seen us to Ethiopia twice and the Dominican Republic once on mission trips.  And I loaned them to my friend who traveled to Ghana for an adoption and still the bags look new!

And now back to packing . . .

Monday, July 28, 2014

Photographing Four Children

I was going through pictures recently, and I came across these taken after my oldest son's 5th grade graduation at the end of May.

This string of pics can otherwise be known as why I hire a professional photographer once a year -- to get just ONE GOOD PHOTO OF THE FOUR OF YOU!  Is it too much to ask, really??!







Thursday, July 24, 2014

Jeans Shopping With My 11 Year Old Son

I fell into a panic last night that our Ethiopia trip was coming up so soon and I was not ready, so rather than blogging I spent time last night ordering 24 bottles of nail polish, 10 soccer balls, 300 balloons, rocket balloons, bottles of bubbles, and jump ropes.  

What?  Doesn't everyone take 24 bottles of nail polish with them when they travel to Africa?!

We'll be spending time with kids in the different care points so the nail polish is for painting the kids fingernails and all the other stuff is for playing with the kids.  Nothing breaks down language and cultural barriers and allows connection quite like nail polish and rocket balloons!

Oh, and travel toilet paper!  I ordered some travel toilet paper.  You know you are in for an adventure when your packing requires travel toilet paper!

 

_______________________

Then this morning I panicked again when I realized that the 11 year old, who is going with us to Ethiopia, had outgrown all his jeans, and jeans are pretty much what he needs to wear every day of our trip.  Guess I should have thought of that little detail sooner, because it has been months since we've worn jeans around here, but really, for none of them to fit, the boy has done some growing!

So, tonight after dinner, the 11 year old got the pleasure of me taking him to Old Navy to do some jeans shopping.  Typically I buy the kids clothes over The Internet, once they ship I have the kids try them on at home, and then I return to the store what doesn't fit.  Therefore, my kids have been totally spoiled and have not spent much time in dressing rooms or hunting for their size at a store.

My son got an education tonight!  He is now very well versed in the different sizes and styles of Old Navy jeans.  You have the 5 different styles - super skinny, skinny, straight, boot-cut, and loose.  Then within each style there are sizes (like 10, 12, etc. that correlate loosely to the child's next age).  AND THEN there is the further break down of each size into slim, regular, and husky!

Needless to say, I had the boy try on about eleventy-million pairs of jeans before we figured out exactly which combination was right for him!  12 regular boot-cut, 14 regular straight, 14 slim boot-cut, 12 slim loose fit, and on and on!

All while I stood outside the dressing room door.  Because he's an 11 year old boy, you don't get to go in there anymore as his mom, which is a little sad.  But, OF COURSE I was right outside the door to his dressing room and he had instructions to come out as soon as he had the jeans on.  I certainly wasn't leaving the judging of acceptable fit up to my son (my daughters, yes, my sons, no)!

So, while I stared at this:

A lady walked by holding her baby boy and I thought, "Just wait, you blink and he'll be trying on jeans with you on the other side of the door!"

Really, my son was good-natured about the whole thing and even suggested some of his own size combinations to try, "Mom, maybe I should try the 12 slim loose fit."  Don't even get us started on the fact that there is such thing as a slim in the loose style or a husky in the skinny style!  

I think it would have been less complicated to become rocket scientists, but we did discover the 11 year old's best size right now is a 12 regular in either the bootcut or straight fit.

My boy reached his personal wall in shopping with his mom when I began laying out various jeans accross the floor in Old Navy so that I could compare colors once we'd definitely decided on the size and style we needed.  "Look, this one is darker.  And this one has the faded parts there along the thigh." I said as he began to twitch and looked around to see if anyone was staring at us.

Then as I dug way into the back of the shelves to find certain colors I deemed best in his size, he began begging me, "Mom, let's just get these!  I like these!"

When I complained that one pair had what I referred to as a "wrinkled fly" and we needed to look for a different pair, I sensed that I was pushing the whole shopping thing a little too far.  I saw the look in my son's eyes that I've seen in my husband's eyes many times over the years.  It is the I-have-to-get-out-of-this-store-right-now! look and I knew then that it was indeed time to go.  I brandished my 20% off coupon and headed to the check-out.  As we left the store with count them THREE pairs of jeans that fit the boy for a total of $36 with tax, I congratulated both of us on a successful jeans shopping expedition!


May your weekend be as merry!  


Half-Past Kissin' Time

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Load Your Own Dishes In The Dishwasher

This summer I decided to up the expectations for my kids.

For one, it is no longer acceptable to just clear your plate after lunch, leaving it by the sink as you run off to play.  Now you must also dump the contents of the plate and load it into the dishwasher!

I taught them all the proper plate positioning for our dishwasher.  My 7 year old demonstrating the technique:



I have no idea why I didn't start this sooner!

Find more Works For Me Wednesday here.

Monday, July 21, 2014

I finished a book!

I loved to read as a kid and read a ton just like my kids now do.  But, me, now I read to my kids, and I read the Bible, but otherwise I do not set aside much time to sit down and read a book for myself, to myself.  And it doesn't help that I'm always "reading" about 8 books at one time, no joke.  There is the Bible studish book, the Christian living book, the solving world poverty issues book, the adoption-related book, the parenting book, etc., etc.  And I typically don't finish a book, I just read a bit of each of them over the course of months.

But, another lovely aspect to our week-long vacation a couple weeks ago, was that I actually read an entire book!

And it wasn't even in a book I read in during the car trip, there was another I read then.  This book I started on our first full day at the beach and finished it by day 5!  It was that good and it helped that I had the time to read while on vacation!

Here's what I read:



It is a fiction book, but based in fact, from the 1850s to 1920s there really were trains that carried orphans and homeless children from crowded Eastern cities in the U.S. to the rural Midwest in the hopes of finding homes for them.

The book was a fascinating read and right up my alley as a person with a heart for orphaned children, but this book would appeal to a wide audience.  

Reading this book cover to cover in just a few days was so enjoyable and inspired me to make reading more of a priority even in my non-vacation life!

****This post contains an affiliate link, but I truly did read this book and would strongly recommend it to my friends and family!****

Thursday, July 17, 2014

In case the chaos wasn't high enough already, we now have a bright blue dog!

Right now I'm in the uncomfortable situation of re-entry into the real world after an awesome week-long Florida vacation and simultaneously, furiously planning and preparing for our upcoming Ethiopia mission (vision) trip.  The worlds coul not be more opposite, and I do feel huge gratefulness at being able to experience both.  But, the abject poverty so many people live in, children very much like my youngest daughter who was born in Ethiopia, has a way of making you feel guilty for your excees.  But, I'll take the uncomfortableness of stradling both worlds because really I see God there in the need more abundantly than here in the excess.

On to a lighter subject,

I taught my 11 year old to make quesadillas, which happens to be the favorite lunch of all 4 of my kids.  Can you appreciate the awesomeness of this situation?




And for a really, really huge 1st world problem:

The dog went to the groomer this week.  She left our house looking like this:

and returned looking like this:



Quite the transformation, right?  It's her "summer cut" I keep saying, but really it's her my-fur-was-super-matted-and-my-human-did-not-want-to-pay-the-comb-out-fee cut.

But, here's where the 1st world problem comes in, we did not even get to enjoy our clean, crisp dog for 18 hours before she somehow managed to get a large blue spot on her backside!




No, that is not a glare or blip from the camera.  Her fur is really bright blue in a large spot on her hind leg!

What in the world?

The 6 of us humans have put our heads together and the only explaination we can come up with is that she rubbed up against our chalkboard wall that currently has a large blue drawing!

But, unlike typical chalk, it does not rub off the dog!

Really, the ridiculousness of my life never ceases to amaze me.
 
Half-Past Kissin' Time

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Tips For An Easier Beach Vacation With kids

We just got back from a beach vacation with our kids and I have some tips that made the travel easier.  We've done this same vacation the past 3 years in a row so we've learned some things.

I laughed when I saw this funny article about a mom on a beach vacation with her family, but it can be true if you are not careful, the "vacation" can turn out to not really be a vacation for the mom (or really both parents)!  We've certainly done trips in the past with 4 kids or even when we had 3 kids where it felt like even more work than being at home and I was exhausted at the end of the trip (yes, I'm talking about you Disney!).

So, here's a quick list of tips that help the beach vacation actually BE a vacation for the parents:

  • If you are driving and leaving early in the morning (we left at 4:30am), put the kids to bed the night before in the clothes they will wear on the trip (you'll want them wearing comfortable clothes in the car anyway).  This way you just get them out of bed, have them visit the potty, and then put them straight in the car -- so easy!
  • Leave in the wee hours of the morning and the kids will be sleepy, disoriented, and most important, quiet for the first couple hours of the trip before the sun comes up!
  •  Rent a beach house with a washer and dryer.  I know, wash equals work while on vacation, but it is tons easier than packing enough clothes for your family to survive the week without doing wash and plus it's nice to return home and not have a mountain of vacation laundry to tackle!
  • Before you leave home, write up a grocery list of things to buy once you arrive at your destination.  Plan to have easy breakfasts and lunches in the beach house to save cost and hassle of eating out every meal and then splurge on dinners out. 

  • I plan for one super easy dinner in, that way if it is raining one evening or we're all too tire or sunburned and don't feel like going out to dinner, there is a meal I can make at the house.  This year I boiled pasta added a container of store-bought pesto sauce and a package of those pre-grilled chicken strips for an easy pasta dinner.
  • Eat on paper plates.
  • Every year we turn our beach vacation week into junk food week as well.  You know the sugary cereal I say "No" to the other 51 weeks of the year, I allow during the one week at the beach.  Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms -- sure, but just for this week only and nobody let me read the list of ingredients!   Also, things like Twinkies that were staples in my childhood, but my kids have no idea about, we expose them to it during beach vacation week.
  • With big families where you don't want everyone drinking after each other (I'm a freak about containing potential cold and stomach virus germs to one member of the family as much as humanly possible; you never know when someone is about to get sick and already contagious before you even know they are sick), label water bottle lids.  My system is to label "Mom", "D" for Dad, and then numbers 1 through 4 for my kids, with 1 being the oldest, 4 the youngest, etc.

  • Pack bleach wipes and have kids quickly wipe down bathrooms and empty trash every other day, this way the messes don't pile up.
  •  To make the sunscreen application process easier (and when you have 4 kids and need to reapply every 80 minutes, you want anything to make it easier!), we used these Wet Skin Sticks for the kids' faces.  It goes on quick, they don't have to be super dry so it's great for re-applying while they are swimming, and with a stick instead of a liquid you don't have to worry about it getting in their eyes!
  •  
     
  • It's a family vacation, but that doesn't mean you have to spend every single minute together!  Trade off childcare with your husband so you each can go on a bike ride or shopping alone for an hour or two.  And we had rest time nearly every day of our vacation where we came back to the beach house and everyone was expected to rest or read quietly in their bed for 45 minutes to an hour.  That time definitely helps bring some parental peace!
  • I pack each person's clothes in one of these packing cubes, that way I am not having to help each child find their clothes and pajamas.  They have their stuff separated in their own cube.


  • Really I think the number 1 thing that made the trip so easy this year and a real vacation for me the mom was that we'd done this vacation 2 times already.  I knew the layout of the house, knew the amenities, and how to get everywhere in the little beach town.  We knew how to rent bikes and have them delivered to our rental house.  We knew the restaurants that were good to eat at and even what to order!  Sure, there is something exciting about a new adventure, but with 4 kids there is nothing restful about a new adventure! 





 
**** This post contains affiliate links, but I only link to product I own myself and truly love.****

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Favorites from our Seaside Vacation

The House.  We've rented this same house for our vacations the past 3 summers.  The kids refer to it as "our beach house".  Ha!  We can dream!


 Beautiful beach with crystal clear water

 Relaxing!

Bodyboarding!  Even I figured out how to ride the waves this year.  Such fun!


We rented a kayak one day.  The boys had their turn first.  I asked my 8 year old daughter if she wanted to ride next and she said, "If nothing bad happens to them, then I'll think about it, but if something bad happens to them then I'm not riding."  Smart girl!

The boys survived so the girls and I took over the kayak.

Watching my kids bury each other in the sand is always fun!

Eating dinner at a restaurant and having this view:



Girls in white dresses:


 A pool with no rule banning inflatables like our hometown pool does:

Watching frozen in the outdoor ampitheater

 Sandcastles

Tetherball was a hit with my oldest this year


And last, but not least, walking or riding bikes everywhere for the whole week!

We drove 10 hours to get to Seaside from our home, unloaded at the beachhouse, went to the grocery store to stock up for the week, and then parked our car and did not drive again for a full week!  We were able to walk to the beach and pool and restaurants and shops.  It was such a great break from our regular lives where we are always running around in the car mulitiple times each day!


Monday, July 14, 2014

Our Favorite Family Vacation Destination

We just got back from a week in Seaside, Florida, our favorite family vacation spot!



We've rented the same beach house for 3 years in a row now and honestly this year we thought might be our last as we expected to be ready for a new destination next year, but we had THE BEST WEEK and now we all want to go back.  Who needs some place new?  Seaside is pretty near perfect!

More details on the trip to come, including some tricks I've learned about traveling with 4 kids and still being able to enjoy the trip myself.  For now, though, re-entry into the real world is tough and ALL THE THINGS that I must now get caught up on leave little time for blogging.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

What the First 28 Minutes of My Day Used To Be

In case it wasn't clear already, I've been going through my blog archives a bit lately!  Here's a post that is definitely a whole lot more hilarious to me now that it is 4 years later and I never wake up to children with poop accidents anymore!  From Jan. 27, 2010:

13 Snippets from my morning:

7:00 am - (It is a non-Shred work-out day because I plan to run later in the morning with the jogging stroller.) I wake-up to the sounds of feet pounding down the stairs. I hear my 2 year old telling my husband who is already in the kitchen, "There's dirt in my bed! Somebody need get dirt out!" I instantly know it is not "dirt" in the toddler's bed, but likely poop from an overflowing diaper. Pull covers up to my chin. Do I have to get up?

7:03 am - Realize no other mom is showing up today, so I must do the job. I get up, put on running clothes and begin working on packing 6 year old's lunchbox with all his favorite things, just like the day before.

7:10 am - Husband tells me, "He didn't eat any of his lunch yesterday. I unpacked it all last night and just some of the bread was eaten, nothing else."

7:13 am - I'm feeling the joy of packing a lunch that may return to me uneaten. Instead of writing, "Have a SUPER day. Love, Mom" on the napkin for the lunchbox, I write, "EAT YOUR LUNCH! Love, Mom"

7:14 am - Pour myself some cereal and coffee and head into dining room where my 3 children and husband are already happily eating breakfast.

7:15 am - Am OVERWHELMED by the smell of poop! And amazed that everyone is eating and nobody seems at all bothered by the smell! "Does Toddler have a dirty diaper?" I ask (Toddler still wears a diaper for sleeping). "Don't you smell that?!!"

7:16 am - Husband does not, in fact, smell that, but does manage to lean over to check the diaper status of the toddler sitting next to him. "He's not wearing a diaper!"

7:17 am - The realization hits. Toddler got his bath early last night and was put in jammies without a diaper since he'd still be awake for a while. Then when we put him to bed we didn't think to put the diaper on since he usually gets the diaper with the jammies. Suddenly the "dirt" in his bed makes perfect sense to me. My husband still doesn't get it. "Yeah, I didn't know what he meant about the 'dirt'"

7:18 am - Because I have already poured the milk on my cereal and not had even one swallow of coffee, I opt to try to finish a few bites of breakfast before dealing with the situation.

7:19 am - Toddler is done eating, gets out of his chair, and comes over to me. Toddler wants to sit on my lap! Smell is overwhelming! Breakfast is over!

7:21 am - Toddler gets hosed off in the bathtub.

7:25 am - I head into Toddler's room in total fear of what I'll find.

7:28 am - Thankfully not too bad, as poop hunts go anyway (yes, having 3 children it is not my 1st experience with such things). Fairly easily cleaned up, all the while explaining to my 4 year old daughter why there was poop on the floor. Sheets and jammies in the washer on hot with the color-safe bleach. Bathtub needs a bleach treatment, too!

What can I say? It's a glamorous job!

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Remembering Operation Rescue Stuffed Bulldog

Anybody been reading long enough to remember when I used to post in "Not Me Monday" and write about things I did NOT do (but really did)?



From January 31, 2010:

I did NOT display extremely poor parental judgment skills and allow my toddler to take his large, stuffed bulldog (aka. "Big Duke") security item into the place where my older kids have swim lessons.
Somehow in the craziness of drying off 2 kids, helping them get dressed, talking with one swim teacher about the next month's lessons, keeping the certificate of 1 child for a swim level completed absolutely dry, taking 2 kids to the restroom, and supervising 3 on the playground, we did NOT leave Big Duke behind at swim lessons!

Big Duke was NOT discovered missing at bedtime.

I did NOT make a phone call the next morning that went something like this, "Do you have our stuffed bulldog?"
I was NOT really having to work to keep from giggling and thinking of this book (Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity) the whole time!

My husband did NOT suggest I just wait until next Thursday when my kids have swim lessons again to get Big Duke since the place is not real close to our house.

When my 2 year old looked at me and said, "But I LOVE Big Duke!" I did NOT completely cave and drive over there in the rain Friday morning.
I did NOT return to my car and text my husband, "Operation Rescue Stuffed Bulldog = Success"!

And after all that. . .

There is absolutely, positively NO WAY at our very next errand 15 minutes later, I let my toddler take Big Duke into the Sam's store!

And into my older son's basketball game the next day!

Seriously, what's wrong with me?!!!

Maybe it's this. Just look at that smile on my little guy's face, so happy to be with his buddy Big Duke in the Sam's Club!
Reunited and it feels so good!! (Don't ever say the 70s didn't bring us any good music when you've got a song like that)

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Update on The Library: My friend and foe

I had my 4 kids in the library this week and there was a mom there with her 3 little kids.  Her toddler was running around like crazy and every time the mom tried to stop the toddler, she'd scream.  Finally the mom said to her older 2 kids, "We have to go.  We'll come back another day without the baby!"

I smiled at her because oh how I remember those days!  Only now that my kids are 11, 8, 7, and 5 years old can we go to the library and everyone mostly behaves!  Even Little Girl can find a book on her level and quietly sit looking at it, instead of doing cartwheels, running around, or wildly pulling books off the shelves like she did last summer.  But we had years of scenes in the library before getting to this day of near library-bliss.  It occurred to me that I even wrote a post long ago about my troubles taking my kids to the library.  

Here it is "The Library:  My friend and foe" from June 8, 2009:

I love the concept of the library. You know, millions of books all free for the reading. Adventure and knowledge just waiting to be unlocked!

I love books. I don't get to read my books as much as I'd like, but I do daily get to read The Book (the Bible) and children's books, and I am thankful for that.

It brings me great joy to see my children loving books. My daughter, in particular, loves books and can recite many of her favorites, word for word!


But the thing is, in actuality, the library and my children don't really mix well.

I have yet to have what I would consider a really good library experience with my children. Maybe the library + one of my children would be fine, lovely, enjoyable even? But I am usually in the situation of the library + 3 of my children and that = chaos!

Imagine toddler wildly pulling books off the shelf, standing and bouncing on the various stools, attempting to scale the fish tank! Older kids running and yelling in a place where that sort of behavior is very frowned upon. Not to mention I am usually trying to find a particular book I've wanted to share with the kids and that distracts me from their behavior long enough for things to go very bad very fast!

This past week's library visit our downfall was the discovery of the movies you can check out from the library for free. I mistakenly pointed the kids to the roundabout rack with kid movies and said, "Let's find one that would be good to check out!" Suddenly, the rack was spinning around so fast, kids were grabbing movies, and movies were flying. I'd pick a few up and return them to their proper place only to have more movies fly off! It was quite the scene before I was able to get things (kids) under control and get us over to the check out desk.

But the check out desk has its own commotion. And do you know why? Because about a year ago I thought it would be such a neat idea for the kids to have their own library cards. I loved the image of them carrying their own book choices up to the counter and handing the librarian their card to check them out and, of course, thanking her after she scanned their card and books. But in reality it is not so idyllic and I just know those librarians breathe a sigh of relief when we finally leave!

The library should also really have stricter limits on how many books they allow us to check out because I apparently cannot enforce a reasonable limit. "Sure!" I say as my kids pick out more and more to check out. But when it comes time to return over 20 library books, it is not so fun trying to find them all within our house!

Give me a swim meet or running a marathon, but the library? It wears me out.

But still I solider on. In fact, we are going back tomorrow. Why? Because I am determined to have a good library experience with my children.


Monday, July 7, 2014

A Surprising Blog Post That Has Seen A Lot of Traffic

I rarely look at the stats for my blog, because I just don't have the time, but when I do, I'm typically surprised by the posts that have seen the most traffic.

For example, do you know one of my top ten most viewed blog posts is "Trapped in a McDonald's Playland!" from July 27, 2009?  According to Blogger, it has been viewed 1,753 and counting!

Maybe there is an unknown epidemic of children getting trapped in McDonald's playlands and parents are often Googling the search term "trapped in mcdonald's playland" because if you do that, my blog is the 4th result that comes up!

It's too bad that I had no idea at the time I wrote that blog post that it would be read so much because really my post offers no real useful advice on getting one's trapped child out of the McDonald's playland, unless you count "send an older sibling up after them" as helpful!

Here's the original post in all it's glory (from July 27, 2009):

We nearly never go to McDonald's, but we traveled to visit family this past weekend, and stopped to eat at what my kids call "Old McDonald's" on the car trip there. I most certainly did NOT laugh so hard at the following incident!

It was NOT my 2 year old who climbed to the top of the playland and began loudly calling, "Mommy, come here! Come here Mommy!" 




Did you see his little face and hands in the center of that last picture? Here's the zoomed out pic. so you can see how stuck he is right in the middle of this biggest-McDonald's-playland-I've-ever-seen! Seriously, there was no easy way up there and no easy way out!




Thankfully he has older siblings because I was wearing a dress and I'm a bit claustrophobic. I've done the whole rescuing-a-kid-from-a-playland thing before with my older two and I get a little trapped and panicked feeling up there! My husband played the "I'm 6 feet tall; I can't get in there" card. So we sent our 6 year old up there to rescue his brother. His first attempt was unsuccessful. Next we sent our nearly 4 year old daughter up. Success!! She was able to gently talk him up to the top of a slide and then he rode down on big brother's lap!

Why is it that my kids as 2 year olds seem to have no trouble scurrying to the top of those things, in fact they do it so fast before we can stop them, but then need help getting down?!!


Thursday, July 3, 2014

How to Really Celebrate the 4th of July

Happy Birthday America!

May your 4th of July festivities be filled with joy.

And maybe some hot dogs and watermelon!


(That picture is from July 4th six years ago, my 3rd child thoroughly enjoying his Independence Day food!)

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

For the Love of Butter

Someone couldn't help herself when the tub of butter was left a little too close to the edge of the counter.  

And when you stick your entire furry face into a tub of butter to lick the inside, well, you end up with a serious case of greasy face!


And then somebody has to bathe you and buy a new tub of butter.