Questions I Asked My Kids: Ep 70

For those who follow me in the Insta you saw that we were at an air show yesterday. It was incredible to watch. The Canadian Air Forces’ Snowbirds were in town at our tiny, little airport. Nine fighter jets demonstrated their precision with formation fly overs and high speed fly bys. 600 kmh to be exact. Having grown up near an air force base and the U.S. Naval Academy, I have seen a few air shows. The Blue Angels and The Thunderbirds always fascinated me. I was still as excited as the kids to see this one. So was DW. I would absolutely love to fly co-pilot in one of these.

After the show we got to meet the nine pilots and get their autographs. They each signed the boys hats and a poster for each of them. Then we spoke to the lead technician. He was great to answer all of our questions. He even let us look in the cockpit! I couldn’t believe when he told us the planes were built in 1965. They are 53 years old!

1. What was your favorite part of the Air Show?

Crash: The tricks. My favorite trick was when they would go straight up all together then spread out with a smoke trail to look like fireworks
Bang: When the planes looked like a hand and when they went sideways and passed each other really close and when they went over us really loudly.

2. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Crash: A Snowbird pilot
Bang: A dog washer and a chef (I thought he’d be a Snowbird mechanic after talking one for a half hour last night. He says no, that’s too hard)

3. What is something you learned at the Air Show?

Crash: Its hard to fly in the wind and if a bird gets caught in the jet engine the bird is dead.
Bang: How they make the smoke. There’s these two things holding deisel and pipes connected to the back of the plane. Then deisel comes out of the back behind the engine and makes smoke.

4. How do you talk to someone who doesn’t speak your language?

Crash: You wave and shake your head yes and no and try to translate
Bang: Hand motion. You could write on a piece of paper and if he doesn’t know the letters you can translate it.

*5. What’s a good name for a dog?

Crash: Jaxson
Bang: Gizmo

**6. What’s a good name for a baby sister?

Crash: Shareeya Wayga (this is what he wanted to name the Bang while DW was still pregnant)
Bang: Leeya

7. What’s your favorite junk food snack?

Crash: Chocolate brownie cake
Bang: Bear paws

8. Who do you know that lives farthest away from us? How far away are they?

Crash: Nana and Pop Pop. They live 50 miles from here
Bang: Uncle B and Aunt Sara. They live 2,000 km away

9. What should we do this weekend?

Crash: Have my friend over so we can make YouTube videos. We want to make a try not to laugh video.
Bang: If it’s nice we can play in the sprinkler or have a water balloon fight or fly a kite if we don’t get electrocuted.

10. What do you wish Alexa (Amazon Echo) could do?

Crash: Clean my room and give me money
Bang: Have a face and arms and play every song in the world.

* We are not getting a dog (yet)

** We are not-no-way-in-hell getting a baby sister

This is how much these birds love flying…

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It’s Zero Word Wednesday!

Teaching Bad Kids Good Music

Okay… sorry. They aren’t bad kids, per say. They just do bad things sometimes. And if I’m being honest the bad things they do really aren’t bad. They’re more out of curiosity or wanting to try to help. Like when Crash watered the flowers this evening, except he drug the hose across the flowers he was watering. Luckily no flowers were harmed in their watering.

So anyway… on to the good music. We can all agree music has changed over the years. There have been plenty of “The Evolution of Music” videos made demonstrating this. When I say “good music” I obviously mean what is good to me. It may not be good to you. That’s the joy of music. What my kids call “good music” is nonsense to me. They’re into electronic music produced primarily for video games for mobile devices. Not to bash electronic music, there is certainly some good stuff out there. But to me good music is The Doors, The Who, Bon Jovi, Queen, Billy Joel.

Our home assistant Alexa can play all of them. Of course, she can play the boys’ video game songs, too. And the song that has only one word repeated over and over and the word is “nom”. I dare you to listen to “nom nom nom“. Let me know how long you listen. The winner gets a prize. The loser gets an ear ache.

They are already familiar with AC/DC. Thunderstruck, You Shook Me All Night Long, Back in Black. Listen to the Money Talk. Tonight they were introduced to Behind Blue Eyes, Light My Fire, and Bohemian Rhapsody. Naturally, while listening to Freddie Rhapsody it Crash states, “this doesn’t sound like rock and roll.”

“Just you wait, buddy.”

I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the fandango
Thunderbolt and lightning very very frightening me
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo Figaro – magnifico

Then he was impressed.

Then we listened to “Fat Bottomed Girls”. I don’t need to tell you they loved that one even more.

What “good music” do you use to impress your kids?

Sunday Share: Week 22

I love my Sunday Shares. It’s a chance for me let you know what I’m reading. It also allows me give shout outs to those who I think deserve a virtual high five. I try to have a mix of veteran bloggers and some new to the scene. That’s what the blogosphere is all about, community. We all get bigger by building each other up. So if there is someone you’d like give a lift to, leave me a link down in the comments so we can go check them out.

Wonderoak
We can’t give them perfection. We can give them something better.

Man vs Mommy
On getting more than just requisite help from school…

Dream Big, Dream Often
On the news and giving it up…

Rosie Culture
A response to her younger self to a letter to her older self…

Blended Hope
A number to call to “report” some parenting happening…

As always, come follow me on Twitter and Instagram, too!

Nothing gets kids to talk quite like bedtime…

Go Ask Your Father: Helicopters, Peppercorns, CCs, and Cancer

Welcome to the weekend! While that might mean 2 days without work, there is still plenty of homework to be done. Have you seen the mess of my kitchen? Painting is a nightmare! Are your kids as needy as mine? Dad. Dad. Dad! Mum. Mum. Mum! Look at this. Watch me. Did you see me? Sometimes I’d like to tell them to go swim in shark infested water wearing a meat suit. Unfortunately, we don’t have either sharks or a meat suit.

How fast do helicopter blades go?

Really fast. Or about the same speed at which kids will touch wet paint after you have told them not to touch the wet paint. There is a ton of math in engineering and piloting a helicopter. And not that easy math either. This is fancy, harder than high school math. Sin and Cos and velocities and fuel consumption equations. It looks like art, but it’s math. Different helicopters have a different rotor rpm. Also, a helicopter will adjust it’s rpm to fit its needs. Weight, speed, wind speed, and temperature will effect its rpm. For the sake of this question and the satisfaction of a 10 year old, helicopter blades spin anywhere from 250 to 600 rpm.

Where do peppercorns come from?

Funny enough they come from the exact same place as eggs and milk – the grocery store. Did you know peppercorn is a fruit? Once upon a time it was a luxury and only available to the wealthy. In Once Upon A Time, I would not have had the luxury of having peppercorn. Peppercorns come from a peppercorn plant. Go figure! In the science community it’s known as piper nigrum. Native to India, they are grown around the world now. The different colors are produced by preserving the pod at different stages of ripeness or by using either the whole pod or its inner seed. You can get black, green, white, and red peppercorns. Pink peppercorns come from an entirely different plant not related to piper nigrum. Pepper is an antioxidant and antibacterial. It is also a carminative meaning it helps prevent intestinal gas. And that’s nothing to sneeze about.

What does cc mean?

In our house it could mean chocolate capacity. My face can hold 350 CCs of chocolate. I know because I measured. In email, however, it means Carbon Copy from the ancient days of using carbon paper to replicate documents. Sadly, this question has nothing to do with chocolate or email, though. When playing Mario Kart the races are divided up by CCs – 50, 100, 150, and 200. The higher the CCs, the faster the karts go. This is because CCs stands for Cylinder Capacity, or more scientific and mathematical it means Cubic Centimeters. Cylinder capacity = cubic centimeter. Therefore, the larger the cylinder the more gas it can take in. The more gas intake it has, the more it’s explosive force and therefore more energy. My kids have 97,000 CCs. This holds true with real life vehicles, too. CCs are also used to measure medicine. I’m sure you’ve heard on plenty of doctor dramas (yay for Grey’s Anatomy and The Good Doctor) to give a patience x number of CCs of a fancy medicine name. CCs are equivalent to milliliters (mL). CC should also be written in lower case (ccs) but I used upper case to help differentiate it. Plus, I’m not a doctor.

What happens if they find cancer?

Remember last week when the boys were asking about breast cancer because DW was going for her annual boob flattening check up? Well, we’re not done talking about boobs yet. According to lexicographer, Jonathon Green, there are at least 212 synonyms for female breasts. He would know, he wrote the most comprehensive dictionary of slang. I guess that makes him the human version of Urban Dictionary. Anyway, DW had swift response to this question. There was no thinking about what would happen should she discover she has breast cancer. I support her as much as her favorite bra. She will have it/them removed. Mastectomy. The end. You can guess down in the comments what they asked about after this answer.

Questions I Asked My Kids: Ep 69

It’s little Friday also known as Thursday. It’s kind of like being Friday’s little sibling. The boys have touched wet paint no less than four times today. They were given explicit instruction to stay out of the kitchen. It’s getting a new color. Eucalyptus green. I fully expect hungry koalas to show up any time. We’re on phase two of the kitchen makeover. We repainted the ceiling for phase one. Phase three will be to paint the cupboards. The boys want their rooms painted, too. That’ll be phase four and five. Follow me on the Insta to track our progress. You’ll even find DW climbing on the counters! And here I was hollering at the kids to get down!

1. What animal would be fun to shrink to the size of a dog?

Crash: A whale
Bang: Elephant

2. What animal would be fun to grow to the size of a dog?

Crash: An Ant
Bang: A mouse

3. What ice cream flavor do you wish someone would invent?

Crash: Dragon’s breath
Bang: M&M, Caromilk, Chocolate bar ice cream with spaghetti

4. How many kids do you wish mom and dad would have?

Crash: 2
Bang: I’m not sure you would like this but 18. 8 girls and 10 boys.

5. Tell me a joke.

Crash: Why can’t you write with a broken pencil? It’s pointless.
Bang: What’s the car behind the engine of the train? The Coal car. What is coal? “Tender and Chooosy!” (tender because that’s what a coal car is called and choosy instead of juicy)

6. What three things does a parent need to be?

Crash: Kind, loving, and patient
Bang: Grown up, a hero, and, a mother and father

7. What are you most scared of?

Crash: Death.
Bang: A haunted house. That’s the only thing I’m legitly scared of.

8. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Crash: Working at Hasbro making Beyblades
Bang: Dog washer, and a builder.

9. What would be a cool job for dad to have?

Crash: Astronaut
Bang: A train engineer

10. Did you have any dreams?

Crash: Me and some of my friends had a beyblade arena from the show and had third evolution beyblades and we were having a battle royale.

Bang: Mario Bros! Remember when I dropped the tablet down the stairs, I was pretending Mario dropped it and the screen turned green. Then the whole world turned green! Then it said “The End”

Feel free to orgasm the day away!

LawnBoy and Responsibility

Responsibility is a tough lesson to teach. It’s an even harder lesson to learn. We’re all learning. It’s a two steps forward, two steps back and cha cha kind of dance. Or perhaps it’s a Hokey Pokey. Either way, today Crash mowed the neighbor’s yard.

The Reasons:

* He likes to help others

* He told her he would mow it

* He might get paid

* His Dad made him keep his word

He’s strong enough to start the mower on his own. He’s also strong enough to push it. Those are two key components of being able to mow a yard. A little hard work never killed anyone. It was also something he could take pride in. The before and after were as plain as the freckles on his nose on his face. Our kind neighbor did pay afterward. Hopefully it’s a reward that will keep him doing it all summer.

Will this responsibility help teach him to be responsible in other aspects of his life? One can hope. Perhaps not enough to pick his laundry up off the floor or bring his shoes in from outside. But perhaps he’ll see there are rewards for hard work. If you take pride in your work, you do a job and you do well because it’s intrinsic, not because you’ll get paid for it. Getting paid is good, too, though.

I love hard work. I could watch being done all day long.

Isn’t the reason we had kids was so they could help us with chores? That’s why farmers have big families. They have more chores than us non-farmers. We teach them to clean up after themselves. We teach them to cook and make a bed and pee IN the toilet instead of ON the toilet. Responsibility is a big word.

How do you teach it?

Sunday Share: Week 21

It’s Sunday of a long weekend. We’ll be singing Happy Birthday to Queen Victoria tomorrow. It’s been raining all day here and now that it’s 6pm I’m just want to put on pajamas and stuff my face with Double Stuff Oreos. It’s fun to make quadruple stuffs with them. Perhaps I’ll just open ALL the cookies, scrape the delicious innerds in a bowl and eat it with a spoon. Or just dip the cookie in it. MMMM Oreo dip.

This week’s reads are sure to delight. Feel free to share a link in the comments below of a post you enjoyed this week, even if you wrote it.

Accidental Hipster Mum
Trying to protect our kids…

Elen Grey
New foods and grunts.

Building the Love Shack
Spring, robins and a lesson learned…

J.A. Allen
Laura Mae share some inspirational ways to become inspired…

Second Wind Leisure
A photo challenge and a unique point of view…

You can follow more fun, food, and dysfunction on Twitter and Instagram.

Go Ask Your Father: Fans, Vibrators, Trampoline Physics, and Boobs

Amen Halleluja! It’s Friday! Here in Canadaland it’s a long weekend. Victoria Day and all. And Prince Harry is getting married. Do you have your recorders set to record? I know some who have their recorders set to record EVERY channel airing The Wedding. A teacher arrived at school today dressed as if she were invited to the wedding. It was great!

Now lets get this weekend started!

How do fans cool us off?

Fans make us cool by cheering loudly for us. The cooler we are the louder they cheer. My fans are willing to holler down aisle six of the local grocery store, “Hi! Mr. Wood!” Of course I holler back. But he wasn’t talking about those kinds of fans or that kind of cool. When moving air hits you, whether it’s a fan or the wind or a kid running by at mach 2.3, the wind will feel cooler than nonmoving air. As the air zips by your skin it grabs tiny particles of moisture like a boy stealing a cookie out of your hand. Not wanting to be stolen by itself, the moisture takes a bit of heat with it because it takes energy to turn from the liquid on your skin to a gas in the air. This energy comes in the form of heat. You feel this loss of heat as coolness. This is why you feel colder getting out of the shower, pool, lake, pond, ocean, or mud puddle. As the water evaporates off your skin it takes heat with it on a date to make a cloud. If only I could achieve Ryan Reynolds coolness this way.

How do cell phones vibrate?

By getting a call, email, Twitter or Instagram notification. But what makes it buzz and

shiver and vibrate like it’s trying Zumba for the first time? A motor, but not any regular motor you find in your Harley. This tiny motor is only one centimeter long. When it receives it’s electrical signal it spins a shaft on which is an offset weight. Offset here means that it’s lopsided, like my friend’s head. So it’s heavier on one side than the other. Therefore, when it spins it shakes like a Big Wheel on a cobble stone road. This kind of motor creates a vibration in 360 degrees as the weight spins around the shaft.

The other kind of vibrator your phone might be equipped with is small but powerful. Size doesn’t matter, right? This motor works in much the same way as a shaft vibrator, by spinning an off center mass. However, haptic motors create linear (side to side) vibrations as it’s just a disk that spins. Imagine a record (LP?)(vinyl?)(giant black CD) that has one side shaved off. Now imagine spinning it 17,000 rpms. All this about shafts and vibrators reminds me of Buzz and Woody. (from the movie!)

How do you launch us on the trampoline?

The boys love it when I join them on the trampoline. However, I’ve discovered I’m exactly I-can-only-jump-for-a-half-hour years old. Not to brag, but I am a good launcher though. According to Bang, I’m a better launcher than Crash. I think it’s because my ass weighs about fifty (WTH? Only 50?) more than he does. There is a bit of science happening and I find it rather interesting. There is a lot of fancy math about elastic energy, but I’ll leave that out of this post. It’s certainly not what I’m thinking about while I’m jumping. Imagine shooting your spouse with a rubber band elastic. If you were wise you’ll only pull the elastic back a little bit so it flies gently. If you’re a glutton for punishment you’ll haul back on the elastic, let it fly, then run like hell. The more tension you put on it, the more potential energy you give it. Therefore, the more potential energy it has the more it transforms to kenetic when you let it go. The same thing happens on the trampoline, though it happens vertically as opposed to horizontally like the elastic. My extra 50 pounds gives the trampoline more potential energy as my weight pushes down harder. If I time my landing just right, I get the mat at it’s maximum tension at the exact same time as 50 pound Bang lands. Then he’s launched skyward with three times the amount of energy that he could have given it by himself. Or 50 pounds more force than if his brother had launched him.

Why do you have to get your boobs checked?

Bang is a boob man. He loves to demonstrate that he is exactly boob height to his mother. That’s a good height to be. Obviously, this question was not directed at me. Though men are not immune to breast cancer, either. Which sort of answers the question. DW left for her mammogram appointment a half hour before we left for school and the boys thought it strange. Naturally, it triggered many more questions which will make their debut in the coming weeks. Breast cancer occurs when malignant tumors form either in the cells of the lobules (the milk producing glands) or the ducts (the passages leading from the lobules to the nipple. If left undetected it will spread to underarm lymph nodes. For cancer cells, the lymph nodes are a highway to the rest of the body. Annual screening tests are ideal for catching it early. So no matter if you’re A cup or DD cup, go get checked. Or get you’re hubby to. He’d be a fool to turn that chore. By the way, no cancer has been detected in DW since she start doing annual mammograms.

• According to BreastCancer.org 1 in 8 women will develop invasive breast cancer.
• Breast cancer is the second only to skin cancer.
• A woman’s risk of breast cancer doubles if she has a first-degree relative diagnosed.
• 85% of diagnosed breast cancers occur in women with no family history of breast cancer.

Save the whole woman while you’re at it

Questions I Asked My Kids: The #MyMomChallenge

Erika, The Dorky Mom Doodler, Mom, doodler, and general, all round great blogger, set forth this #hashtag challenge on Mother’s Day. These questions are all about our loving, beautiful, slightly nuts, Mother. Or as I call her, DW. Dee Dub is her rapper name.

I saved these questions for today as the gift that keeps on giving. And because Thursdays are questions days, not Sundays. So Happy Belated Mother’s Day. Here’s your laugh.

1. My mom is _____ years old and weighs _____ pounds.

Crash: 40; 190 something
Bang: 41; 15

2. My mom is good at cooking _____ and is not so good at cooking _____.

Crash: Lasagna; Keto pizza
Bang: pancakes; nothing, she cooks everything good.

3. If my mom were a superhero, her name would be ______ and her superpower would be _____.

Crash: Tara; shooting lasers out of her eyes
Bang: Supermom; Flying and punching and kicking

4. And if my mom were a villain, her name would be ______ and she would use her evil powers to _____.

Crash: Bad Mom; Take over the world
Bang: Taralee the Villain; Join her evil and apacolypse the world

5. I love it when my mom ______.

Crash: Snuggle me
Bang: snuggles me!

6. When my mom is driving, she _________.

Crash: gets white knuckles
Bang: is not a maniac

7. I like it when my mom _______ and I don’t like it when my mom _________.

Crash: lays with me at night; yells at me
Bang: plays games with me; yells

8. My mom does not like to _______.

Crash: Be annoyed
Bang: go on the trampoline

9. My mom does ________ the best and _________ the worst.

Crash: Snuggles; Pokemon battles
Bang: everything; cooks speghetti

10. I’m thankful for my mom because ___________.

Crash: She loves me
Bang: She’s the best hugger.