so funny

At bedtime last night Otto told the funniest joke in the world.

We've added don't laugh contests to our nighttime repertoire of discussing the day's best and worst events, reading, thumb wars, and no blinking contests. Last night we were having a don't laugh contest and we were both playing for keeps. No one was gonna give. I said, in a sad, serious voice of drama, "you should think of the saddest thing you could ever think of like a sad sad little fish swimming alone and crying and another mean big fish swims up next to it and farts and laughs and swims away." Otto laughed... I won!

sidenote: I know. I KNOW, but I wanted to win.

So we had another contest and we were making the most serious, meanest, saddest, squished up faces ever and Otto said in a very very sad, serious voice, "You know what I'm thinking about?"

"No, what?"

"I'm thinking about the saddest thing I can think of in the whole world... and it's an elephant pooping on a worm."

And then I died laughing.

He is the funniest person in the world. Bedtimes are my favorite favorite favorite. The end.

currently | body moshing

Currently is a weekly feature with ♥ Randalin of Harvesting Kale ♥ and I am her happy co-host each week. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. What have you been eating, drinking, watching, reading, learning this week? Over here, we have been...

Eating and eating and eating and eating... Junk food has ruled after-hours here at the Muth homestead. With all the guests we've had in town and late nights spent catching up and watching movies and watching Under the Dome (the radness) and even taking the kids to a movie (oh boy), we've just been eating garbage hand over fist. I even made homemade chicken tenders that I intended to bake but then ended up frying and the moral of this story is: we're all going to die of grease poisoning. I like to call eating like this shocking the system because you know you've got to keep your body on its toes. Jump start the ol' metabolism or whatever.

Drinking coffee and beer. I'm writing a book about how good this has been for my complexion, it's called "Chin Zit".

Watching my kids watch Monsters University with their Nana. Otto was a movie rockstar. Miss Etta ate all the snacks we'd smuggled in practically before the previews had ended (insaaaaanely long previews). She head-banged and body-moshed (ha, I feel like such a granny saying that, "she was doing the moshing like the teenagers do at the rock and roll concerts!") to the movie's songs while on Nana's lap and had us all cracking up. Then she spent the last hour of the movie roaming the hallway that's around the corner from the movie seating, trying to bust open the fire extinguisher and eat scavenged popcorn off the floor. Just us and every other parent with a kid under 2 in the theater... I was the caveman mom chasing her around saying, "no touch, no touch!"

Reading zilch. We've had loved ones in town. I've done nothing but eat garbage and drink zit potions and laugh and wallow in their awesome company. That's not totally true, we've been reading Where the Sidewalk Ends at Otto's bedtime and he loves it in true kiddo fashion, hurray! Why he's obsessed with the Paul Bunyon poem is beyond me but he also loves Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout so I'm down.

Learning to make chicken nuggets. I'm going to get a wire rack and start making baked ones by hand in big batches to freeze instead of getting them pre-frozen at the store. I'm way too excited about this plan.

That was this week. Here are next week's themes:
loving, craving, missing, listening, wishing 



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a new look and some thoughts on having a fellow morning person in Otto

Ot & Et has a new, wonderful look that I can't stop drinking in with my eyes! All thanks to the most amazing urban folk artist Jenn Shepherd. I found Jenn while window shopping on Etsy one day and just instantly fell in total, hopeless love with the hand-drawn charm and cute-but-not-cutesy-ness of her illustrations. There is something uncanny in what she does that I connect with on such a gut and soul level. Isn't that the best thing about art? It can just get right to your soul in a way you can't even explain and express what you are all about without saying a single word. Jenn was kind enough to create the new custom header for this blog. I look forward to doing a whole feature on Jenn and her shop in the very near future, in the mean time you should head over to Etsy and check her stuff out. She and her shop items are all just super super cool.

Around here we are smack-dab in the middle of back-to-back visits from loved ones, so this blog isn't getting much attention, understandably I am tired yo. My best friend and her 5 year old were here for the weekend and we just relaxed and wore sweat pants and had beer and let the boys play and we all ate everything we ever wanted and just talked and wallowed in our perfect comfortableness. It was amazing. 

While everyone else slept til 7am like sane persons Otto was up bright and early every day right at 5 and shot out of a cannon. "Let's color and watch a show and have a snack and play legos! I have to poop! Where are my pants? See you downstairs!" Since he wakes up right next to me I got to wake up to the alarm clock of his morning requests and suggestions and every thought that came into his head. My job was to say, "Shhhh no one else wants to be up right now, let's silently go downstairs as silently as we can and don't forget to be quiet as you go silently and don't say a word." So he'd chit-chat his way downstairs and out of earshot. The house can sleep through this at 5am because it's 5am and who wakes up for anything at 5am? Nobody but a fellow morning person and I'm the only one in the house. 

Otto comes by his bright eyed and bushy tailed-ness honestly. I'm a morning person. Straight up I am. 5am on a vacation day feels nuts to me too but I can roll with it because I really love mornings. I remember being the second one up my entire childhood. See, my dad is the morningest person in the world and always beats everyone else up, makes coffee, and works a crossword. I love that Otto inherited this morning person trait from us. Wakes up with a smile. Wants to start the party with the rising sun. I love spending my mornings with him enjoying the quiet while everyone else slowly wakes up around us.

Coffee and hours of coloring with my favorite four year old made for some pretty great mornings this weekend... followed by the best days. 

currently | let's take beach baths

Currently is a weekly feature with ♥ Randalin of Harvesting Kale ♥ and I am her happy co-host each week. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. What have you been capturing, releasing, sending, mending, recommending this week? Over here, we have been...

Capturing memories but not many photos. Blogger license revoked? This inability to take a photo seems to be my theme lately. ::grumble sound:: I even got a birthday check that is going specifically towards a second lens for my new-to-me camera that I bought this spring (a sweet Nikon D200, my first big girl camera) so soon I will have 2 lenses which is super exciting! My new lens (probably also new-to-me) is gonna be a wide-angle compared to my current 50mm. That'll be great for in the house since it's been hard to get great perspective shots inside... Um? Have you gone to sleep reading this yet? Sorry! Ha.

Releasing having a bone to pick with [fill in the blank]. I have a new friend at work who is like a much cuter, younger, caucasianer Mr. Miyagi and one of the things she has gifted me with is this saying, "Release." It just means, even though you know you are right and the world is wrong, just let it go. Magic word! Sometimes just calming myself down momentarily from all the things I want to worry about that I can't control and all the people I want to face-punch because they're morons and just whispering, "release," reminds me that it's all in my head and I can let it go.

Sending my family to Home Depot for house projects. Remember our hoarder neighbor who has jam-packed her back yard with a squirrel amusement park? Well, we bought some bamboo privacy fencing to roll out over our back fence to block the view of the rabies party. Rob is half-finished with the project since this past weekend and it already helps to blur the view although I wish it was a bit more opaque. I'm considering laminating some of the kids' art and hanging it up on the bamboo "wall" just to further block the situation beyond the fence. I wonder if this would be cute or tacky as hell? I guess we'll see! At least we don't have to watch the local wild animal community having garbage orgies anymore, because seriously, ewwww. I am so so so excited to reclaim my back yard! We also got a wire frame for our sugar snap peas and I planted some lavender. Yippee!

Mending my kids' dresser with new pulls as part of my project-per-month project. I also did something cool in the bathroom for the kids that's kind of Montessori-at-home inspired and I'm going to hang up a picture in their room that I thrifted 2 months ago. Doing things!

Recommending... this category was my great idea but now I am at a loss. I already have the "blogs I read" section on this blog which pretty much covers it although I do need to update that page because I've started reading quite a few of you Currently ladies on a more regular basis. I recommend you run yourself a bath, make yourself a cup of sunset coffee, grab a Vogue, put on some good music, and have a lady moment. Do this on a beach in the Caribbean and bring me along, will ya (we can have side-by-side beach baths like in a Viagra commercial, it'll be magic).

That was this week. Here are next week's themes:
eating, drinking, watching, reading, learning 



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