The Sock Box

Prologue

I come from a family of eight kids. I never ever had to mow the lawn but my primary responsibility was doing laundry. I actually enjoy doing laundry of all the household chores I am required to do as the goddess of my home. I liked doing the laundry growing up because I could go into the laundry room and no one would bother me because I was doing laundry and clean clothes were gold in my house. In the laundry room we had two boxes that were never empty. There was the sock box and the ironing box. I am sure everyone knows that there are always the mystery unmatched socks that seem to go into some black hole somewhere. My mother and I decided that the dryer ate them. We would remember putting socks with their matches in the washer but by the time all the clothes came out of the dryer some were missing. I hated the sock box. I could never find a matching pair of socks. I never had any matching socks in my drawer and everyone in the house seemed to have the same problem but the sock box was always full of socks that did not match. I always felt trumphant when I could get the unmatched socks down to less than five. I would ask my Mom if I could just throw them away and she would never let me.

I am against having a sock box in my house. I think the sock box would make me crazy. When I do laundry I put all the socks in a pile then I match them and if there is an extra it just goes into the owners drawer where it waits for it's mate to appear. Sometimes it's mate is in the drawer waiting for it. About once a year I go to each child's drawer and pull out the socks that have had no mate that returned to them and I throw them in the trash. Inevitably the mate returns from it's sabbatical within a few weeks but I don't care because I tell myself it's just a sock and it really had a fair chance. Now that Mya and Cory are folding their own laundry I just give them all their socks and they have to match them up. Mya doesn't even bother matching them and I saw her wearing mis-matched socks this evening. I asked her what that was about. She said she couldn't find any matches so she just grabbed what was there. I told her that I know she has a lot of socks in her drawer and she just shrugged. That means she just didn't feel like going to the trouble of opening her drawer and really looking. I didn't really care because she is a kid and they are supposed to have unmatched socks, right?

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So here is the story that goes with the pictures. I know this story is only funny to me but it did trigger the memory of the sock box and well that was worth it for me. And for some odd reason I can't type before my pictures, it keeps kicking my type down below the pictures. Okay, so one Sunday I was putting on Ballerina's white lacy socks. I noticed that everything matched except the lace. Two different socks. I figured I must have matched wrong and other set of socks were most likely paired together in the drawer. I turned around to go get them and Em was standing there wearing the other set of unmatched socks. I showed DH and he thought I was crazy for even noticing and he wouldn't have noticed that in a million years. That's because he's a boy and I am a girl.

I know it's only funny to me. I apologize to anyone who waited for an exciting ending but really what can you expect from a story about socks. But please come back to my blog someday because I am going to post a picture of something absolutely disgusting. It will be off the hook.

It's great to be a kid...

All of these pictures were taken by my Mya and Cor.

Here is Ballerina drinking the pond water AGAIN. We have told her not to drink the water a gazillion times, we are just waiting for her to grow a 3rd arm. In the background you can see my DH's project for the fire pit.

Mud Brownies baking in the sun.
All my tupperware ends up outside.

I think this picture of Cor speaks for itself.

Mya

This is part of the life cycle of a pretzel.

This is one of my all time favorite pictures.

All kinds of things are happening in the waterfall.

Em.

Mya.

I took this picture this morning. You might be like me and find this rubber chicken a little creepy but thanks to Anth giving it to my girls they have developed an unusual affection for it. We took him on our walk this morning and he must have been tuckered out because he has been put down for a nap.

Journal Jar Question: Did you belong to Scouting or 4-H? Tell about your experience.

I didn't do either of those but every summer our church has a week long girls camp. We had a camp manual and we had to complete and pass-off outdoor, emergency, and spiritual goals. First year is 12 year olds and the 4th year is called Pack-in. It's called Pack-in because we would be required to complete a long hike wearing a heavy back-pack. I had to miss one year because of my surgery for scoliosis. But I think my first year was the funnest because I had waited to be old enough to go because I had envied watching my sister's go. I always made new friends each year that I would later see at other church activities. There was always a good spirit and even though most the time was spent learning outdoor skills. I think it helped me to develop a strong testimony of Jesus Christ. An added bonus was being taught and surrounded by adult women who also had high standards.

I fortunately have had a lot of experiences going camping with my family but so many of the girls that went then and it seems like even more now never went camping before or after their girls camp experience. We who had camping experience liked to secretly make fun of these girls who did not. Some of the girls hated camping and sometimes they had to go home early because they couldn't stand it. Other girls thought it was the funnest thing they had ever done and were determined to make their family go camping afterwards. For pack-in we camped in tents away from the main camp. My parent's and my aunt and uncle were the pack-in leaders. For the hike my Dad would load each girls pack and unpack any unnecessary items, such as makeup. Girls would see if somehow they could sneak it past him which they later figured out only made their packs heavier. And most, except for the truly vain girls gave up on makeup by the 2nd day.

It's hard to camp with little children because of the whole running off thing. But I still enjoy it. We hope to someday go more often when Ballerina is past the wondering off stage. Actually right now she is in the running off on purpose and no sense of danger stage.

My husband gets irritated that I bring makeup when we camp but I am not a fifteen year old girl and I guess I am vain, even when camping.

Journal Jar Question for Monday

I have a journal jar I started using to help me think of things to write in my journal but now that I blog I don't write in my journal so much. So I thought I would use the questions for this.



Question: What special skills did you learn as a child? Who taught you?

1. Sewing: Mom, Grandma, Great Grandma, and Aunts
2. Cleaning and house keeping: Mom
3. Crosstitch: Self taught
4. Make believe world creating: Cousin and BFF Stephanie
5. How to ride a bike: Cousin Evelena (she is one year older than me)
6. How to be kind: Oldest sister Staci
7. How to not get caught: Older sister Jenna
8. How to drive: Dad but mostly self taught
9. Camping: Mom and Dad
10. Cooking: mostly self taught, my Mom preferred that we learned by watching and not asking too many annoying questions.
    
11. Asking a lot of questions: self taught
12. Lying with a straight face: I am sure I picked this up from my older brother Brady but I don't remember.
13. Fixing my hair and makeup: Sisters Jenna and Staci
14. How to put together an outfit: Sister Jenna
15. Sense of humor: Dad and DH before he became my DH

I tag anyone who reads this post to answer the same question.