Wordless Wednesday | Say CHEESE

Kids Say the Darndest Things | December Edition

Me: "Well we can write Santa a letter if you want. To tell him what you want for Christmas?"
Lily: (exasperated) "Can't we just Skype him?"

Lily: "After breakfast we're going to play with God." (the baby Jesus in their nativity set)

Lily: "Santa Claus... RAWR!!!" (get it... Santa Claws?)

Sam: "Do you know who brings us snow?"
Me: "Who?"
Sam: "Jack Frost and Elsa!" #riseoftheguardians #frozen

My Digital Smile Identity Crisis

If this doesn't make you smile, then I don't know what will! A WHOLE blog post on emoticons ;o)

I'm not really sure what it says about me that I've spent 45 minutes researching emoticons. 

But what can I say, I'm curious. 

And I'm also a new-Mommy to an iPad Mini. Which doesn't really have much to do with this conversation of smiles, except for the fact that there are an ungodly amount of emoticon options at the tip of my fingers and it kind of freaks me out. 

But first of all, let's talk emoticons and business.

When I started the photography business, I tried to stay away from winking at people in my writing. That seemed like the professional thing to do. But I found that it wasn't "me" and so I started to include my typical emoticons in my facebook correspondence with clients. 

I also kept liberally using emoticons in my writing here on the blog. I mean geez I'm not taking myself too seriously here, obviously.

And besides, in this modern digital age, even "professional" businesses consider the use of emoticons to be a necessary evil. 

You gotta communicate your emotions somehow!

I love this quote from Scott McDowell about using emotional cues... 

"Until keyboards can actually perceive the emotional content of our digital messages (not so far off!), emoticons may be the simplest method of clarifying tone. I’ve had to let go of my own perception that emoticons are silly. They may currently be our best tool for elevating the emotional clarity of digital messages."





So now the question is this: should I embrace the more normal, accepted noseless smile?

Because apparently I'm behind the emoticon times.

Because this ;o) is not recognized by Facebook (curse you Facebook that's the emoticon I've always used! I like big noses, okay?)

But this :) is okay. Or even this :-)

But not this ;o)

In case you're curious, here are 100 of the most popular "emojis"  and if you're feeling particularly bored you can browse through 2,242 over here!

All this to say I'm going to have finger spasms every time I try to smile at you guys now ;o) ;)

Also, this is probably the silliest blog post ever.

So what do you think about this random quandary of mine? What kind of emoticon do YOU use? Please tell me in the comments :o) :)

The True Story of How My Husband Jinxed Himself into Marrying Me

Once upon a time there was an adorable guy named Jesse.

Who told his mom he "would NEVER marry a girl named Jessica."

*ahem*

How did that end up for him?

Until next time,

      theJESSES

                          #neversaynever

Adventures in Deutsch | I Love My Kids, but Not in a Creepy Way

So apparently there are two different ways of saying "I love you" in German. And there are appropriate and inappropriate contexts for each phrase.

And guess who's been messing that up for the past three and a half years? This girl.

Oops!

Reason #532 it's important to learn German from an actual German. (blog post about that right here.)

For example... I love my girls, oh yes I do.

But NOT in the same way I love THIS GUY. Tracking?

In English, I guess we just know from context whether we're talking about romantic love or... what would you call it? "Normal" love?

Anyways, obviously there's a difference between the kind of love you love your kids and the kind of love you love your LOVE. 

Whew that sentence was a doozy... still with me? ;o)

So to say "I love you" to your kids you say, "Ich habe dich lieb" (lieb is pronounced leep)

To say "I love you" to Prince Charming you say, "Ich liebe dich"

You do not, generally, say "Ich libe dich" to anyone other than Prince Charming. Apparently that gets you a confused look from real Germans. They're like... she loves her kids? Eh? *facepalm*

Have you had any funny adventures in a foreign language? Please share in the comments so I feel less like a dork! 

Kids Say the Darndest Things | October Kid Quotes

Sam was taking some extra toilet paper to the upstairs bathroom to "help" me ;o) She came downstairs in a panic... "MOM!!! They're STUCK! They gonna be stuck FOREVER!"

#sammytoiletpaperhands

Sam: "Mom! Can we watch Rudolf the Red Nosed Bambi?"

Jesse: "Do you guys want hot chocolate while we carve pumpkins?"
Lily: "YEAH! With mushrooms! But not the kind of mushrooms we put on pizza!"
Me: "Uh... You mean marshmallows?"

Lily: "When I have a baby, I'm going to name her Rainbow Flower Sparkly Jewel"


Tell me your kids most hilarious quote lately. I'd love a comment section full of good laughs!

Kids Say the Darndest Things: Summer Wrap Up

"My whole name is Lillian Jayce Aiguk and Sam's whole name is Sam-ian Jordan Aiguk!"

"Mommy! At school there's a boy named 'Yo High Ness' (Your Highness)"
me: "Um, do you mean Johannes?" (pronounced yo-HAH-nes)

Laying in the sun, she says: "I'm gonna get a tan-burn!"

"My belly hurts, it's going to have a baby soon!" (first food baby after a brunch of treats AND hot chocolate!)

"MOM. Today I want to be the boss of YOU, okay? Just for today." (After a particularly rough morning in Momville when I had the nerve to require that she and Sam help me put their laundry away)

Crepes = "creepies" as in "Can I please have some more cinnamon-sugar creepies?"

me: "Sam, stop eating the egg shells!"
Lily: "Why not? They're like chips!"

me: "I'm going to make lunch soon."
Lily: "Okay! Make it YUMMY!"

Dad: "Hey Sam I like your bandana!"
Sam: (incredulously) "I'M not a BANANA!"

"Can we go to the zoo to see lions and tigers and triceratops?"

We have this cool book called The Busy Body Book (amazon affiliate link here) and so we're learning about fitness and the different functions of different body parts. So on the page where it talks about how our healthy food gets digested and used by the body, I had to explain to a 3 and 4yo what an esophagus was. Sammy said, "sof-o-gus? I yike dat word. Is dat a German word?"


I hope you got a little laugh out of these two crazy monkeys! Have a great day from our house to yours! 

Kids Say the Darndest Things, March Edition

This is the pose and face I got (without any direction) when I said "hey the light is really beautiful right now can I take a few pictures of you?" to which Lily replied "OH YES PLEASE!"

She was "ready" by the time I came back with the camera! Oh so natural, Lil ;o)

Some favorite quotes from Lily lately:

"Daddy is my favorite boy, but don't tell him." (Of course I told him, that's way too cute not to tell!)

"Mom! We don't have to get a puppy now! We have HIM!!" (She exclaimed with glee as she danced around holding Sam's Clifford stuffed animal. Mommy, the non-dog-person, is greatly relieved that Clifford will suffice for now!)

"I wish I had some coffee. But not your coffee Mom, KID coffee. Speaking of coffee, I need to go PEE!"

Sam, who wouldn't stop talking during this random little photo shoot, has been saying: 

"I yike you, I going to keep you." (She said as she wrapped her pudgy, sticky little hands around my neck and squished my face into hers. GAH)

"Is Daddy shaving his prickers off?" (translation: prickers = whiskers) 

"Ladies FIIIIIRST" (She says this now almost every time we go through any door. She holds it open and chants Ladies First in a very sing-songy voice until everyone has gone through. Even Daddy, who put up a fight and protested at being called a lady, but ultimately lost.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When your kids make you laugh, be sure to write it down immediately OR YOU'LL FORGET! That was some of the best parenting advice I got when I was pregnant with Lily and I'm so glad I've rushed for a pen whenever I chuckle. These silly sayings will be gone in a flash! 

I'm Like a Deer in Headlights. Or, How Lily is Teaching Me What True Beauty Is.

Lily's been asking some really hard questions lately...

"Mom, am I bew-ful?" [beautiful]
"Mom, do you yike dis dress, is is bew-ful?
"Dad, yook, I'm a princess... a bew-ful princess! Do you yike me?"

She's even gone so far as to ask "Will they yike me at school with this dress?"

When she first started showing us that she was concerned what others thought of her appearance I wanted to run for the hills. Seriously, I almost choked on my coffee. I just wasn't ready! 

See, I thought I had years YEARS I tell you! I was supposed to figure out ahead of time how to teach and explain to my [much older] daughter all about good godly character and how it's WHO WE ARE not WHAT WE LOOK LIKE that makes us beautiful.

But she's just four! And she's wearing a blue princess dress. And you know what? I think she IS beautiful! One of the most beautiful creatures in the world!

So when she asks if she's bew-ful, everything in me wants to shout "YES BABY! You are sooooo beautiful I just LOVE your dress and you have the prettiest crown EVER and let me smooch your cheeks cause you're just so. darn. BEAUTIFUL."

But I know I have to stop. (Or at least reel it in somewhat) Because now I see that she's already old enough and now is the time... now is the time to talk about what really makes us pretty. I remember watching this video awhile back. It still gives me chill bumps.

My four year old is already picking up on our culture's obsession with outward appearance. And I'm her first line of defense. And oh boy you guys should SEE how terribly I screw up these conversations!

I stutter and stammer my way through what I hope are coming out as age-appropriate sentences that explain the vastly complex situation we're facing here... and I feel like she's thinking this...

So yeah. Thank God these conversations will happen often and will change in complexity over the years. Just like our conversations about what a man's you-know-what is for. Ahem. Yep, that's already happening, too.

I'm trying to be mindful of what character qualities make us beautiful... I'm drawing more attention to things I see in myself that I want them to emulate.  But it's surprisingly hard! Because no matter how much you try to think you DON'T buy into culture's message of "external beauty trumps all", you do. At least a little. At least I do.

So it's kind of interesting actually... I'm re-learning what makes me beautiful as I try to teach my daughters about beauty. "Mommy is smart and always trying to get smarter. Mommy loves to read, do you want to read with me?" "Mommy is strong and working out to get stronger. Do you want to do yoga with me?" "Mommy is kind and caring and friendly and sacrifices time for others..."

...and these things are more beautiful than what her makeup looks like or what clothes she has on or what the number on the scale is this month. 

If I sound overly dramatic here, fear not. We don't take ourselves too seriously in this family. And I'm not throwing out my makeup or ditching all our Disney movies.

We are always striving for balance... and with the mother they have (hi, I'm Jessica, and I tend towards extremes in all areas of life!) they are going to be constantly learning THAT right along with me, too!

So yes, my girls will grow up knowing Momma likes to wear makeup and high heels when she goes out. But they will also hopefully see many many more instances of a joyful inner strength of character. One that serves and cares for others, instead of being afraid of opinions or appearances!

Whew, Lily. You're making me think all deep here!

*deer in headlights!!!*

He's So Cool, and Did You Guys Know Computer Guts are COLORFUL?

The other day I was sitting on the couch reading out loud to Jesse while he tore apart one computer and, using some new parts that had just arrived, turned it into two computers! 

I wasn't really interested in the process, which is why I was reading to him instead. BUT THEN.. then I realized how colorful the computer guts were! You know how much I love bright colors! And the rest of it was so intricate and visually appealing that I just had to grab my camera :o)

As he continued the taking-apart-process, he found something that made us both laugh...

..a pretty nice sized piece of broken glass! Which we laughed about because we both knew what it was from... my ginger-ale explosion of last year.  If you want to read about it, here's the post.

We laughed because we just can't believe no one got hurt AND the fact that we are STILL finding glass, almost a year later! The computer was in a corner on the other side of the tv... how it got a piece of glass inside it is beyond me! Moving on...

I love that J taught himself how to work on computers. He's such a nerd. A cute nerd. My cute nerd ;o) 

So there you have it. Some random pictures of the insides of our computers. And broken glass. Just because.

Or rather, the moral of the story is "Oooooo computers have pretty colors inside!"

Kids Say (and Do) the Darndest Things

Okay, first things first: this is an un-staged hug, captured on camera!  Seriously!  I didn't even say "okay hug Sammy!" or ANYTHING!  I was just sitting there, minding my own business (I think I was trying to spot a gluhwein stand while I waited for J to finish buying our most recent artwork print for the wall) and I looked down to see what all the giggles were about and BAM - Cuteness attack. So there you go.

Back to the more serious stuff.  I mean time for some funny kid sayings and happenings..

(PS we found the gluhwein/hot chocolate stand... they are "modeling" their mustaches in this pic.. LJ is obviously grumpy that I'm interrupting hot chocolate consumption.)

Here are some recent funny Sam-isms: 
-"Noosic" = music
-"Susher" = flusher (i.e. toilet flusher)
-"Yamma-yemon" = watermelon
-"Some-Yammi" = salami

Silly story #1: 
While we were flossing teeth, Sam leaned over with no warning and licked me from my chin to my nose.  It was so gross but I was so surprised and shocked that I almost peed my pants laughing!  Ew.  (And yes, the laughing surely did NOT discourage the licking... took a few days to nip that in the bud haha)

Silly story #2:
I was teaching them to use the space bar on the computer to pause a movie themselves... so they can pause for potty breaks without me.  But they kept pressing it too long.  To demonstrate the quick nature of it, I added a sound effect while pressing pause, "see? fast, like 'BOOP!' this"  And now, they say "can I BOOP the movie?"  "I going to BOOP it back on"  And it's kind of sticking, too, because J and I have caught each other saying it instead of pause.  Kids...

Lily-isms: 
-"Coffee-cat" = copy-cat
-"Baina" = banana
-"Danks" - thanks

Lily quote #1:  
Me (looking for my lens cap) "Now, where did I put my..."
Lily: "Super-suit?"  [Name that movie, Pixar Nerds!!!]

Lily quote #2:
Jesse: "Okay, Lily, now you have to make a wish, then blow out the candle! ... What did you wish for?"
Lily:  "THE CUPCAKE!"

Lily quote #3:
(in the car) "Oh! I have a hair Mom!  I think it's mine.  I'm gonna put it with the others.  OH NO!  It won't stay!"

Side note about hair - Lily was VERY unhappy with my choice of a short hair cut.  She was all "I want the old hair back, I don't yike dis new hair" and she also likes to throw in "you have short hair Mom, yike a boy.  You should grow it yonger and yonger yike Punzel's hair"  (Rapunzel's hair.  Yeah.  We've had a lot of talks about gender-neutral hair haha)

And now, for some Lily tree-decorating-techniques...

The pictures say a thousand words, right? :o)

I hope Double Trouble brought a smile to your face today.  These posts are always so therapeutic for me... they remind me how lucky I am to be blessed with two little monkeys who don't always drive me nuts!

I Love My Sparkly New Baby and Sam Loves the "Toys" it Comes With

Ta-da!!!  My Love told me "good things come to those who wait" and I didn't really believe him because I hate waiting.  But he sure did deliver on his promise to find me a good, reliable vehicle!  This shiny new [to us] 2012 Ford Focus is named "LOLa"... you say it like low-la but you definitely have to write it LOLa because she's named for the goofy guy who sold it to us and the fact that he listed his car on Ramstein Yard Sales and used "lol" in a sentence.  So we LOLed at him and named the car LOLa.

Anyways I'm also calling LOLa our first "big kid car" because it's the first time in our lives we've spent more than $3,000 on a car.  GO US!  Did you know, when you spend more than $3,000 on a car, that it comes with all sorts of fancy things like power locks, power windows, cruise control, and...

...panic buttons.  Why, oh why, do they make those buttons red?  It's like they're asking for every child on the planet to pleasepressthisbutton.  Like seriously look at it?  If you had a choice, which one would you press?  Duh.

Sammy, bless her heart, made sure that everyone in the neighborhood was well aware of our  new car situation.  First thing this morning, LOLa's first full day at home, I was giving the girls a bath.  Sam was dressed first so I sent her out to wait for us in the living room.  As I'm washing Lily's hair I hear a car alarm go off.  And I think "oh, that sucks, someone's car alarm is going off before 8am on a Saturday."  And then Jesse slams out of the bedroom and down the hall and I think "oh, that's our car. crap."

So yeah.  The panic button works great.  Other than that I'm not really a car person, so I can't give you any real stats.  But I can tell you that I love bright red.  And I love that this thing is *pretty much* guaranteed not to break down on me any time in the near future (side eye to the Saturn and Mercedes) soooooo it's basically the bestest most awesomest car ever.  In my opinion.

Most Awkward Photo-Bomb to Date

Sorry for the blog-crickets.  Normal life has ground to a little bit of a halt as both girls are pretty sick.  I'll also be adjusting to life-without-guests soon.  Wait, you mean there's no one else here to entertain my kids?  And I don't have an excuse to visit the bakery every other day?  Well, I might keep that one up, just cause it's so yummy and our time left to enjoy fresh German bread is limited, right? ;o)

Anyways here's a funny photography story to entertain you for a bit...

The little girls in the middle of this picture are Lilo's granddaughters.  And the woman is our landlady Dianna.  We were sitting across the crowd eating our dinner when I spotted them and started snapping some photos.  I knew that Lilo wasn't going to be able to make it to the festival (her health isn't so great lately) so I thought I could try to capture it for her.  She was pretty disappointed she couldn't come.

My zoomy-zoom lens allows me to get pretty up close and personal from a distance... but I was having a hard time a) getting a shot where they didn't look grumpy and b) getting a clear shot without stranger's-head-bokeh in my way.

It wasn't until that last shot there (after taking, oh I don't know, 15) that I stopped and gasped.  Jesse thought something was wrong!  I flipped the camera around to show him - "That's our neighbor from across the street!"  We almost died laughing when we looked back through the pictures and realized that she probably thought I was taking pictures of her and her husband!  Super embarrassing.  

And I'm 99% positive she thought I was taking a picture of her because she came up to us about five minutes later to say hi.  We don't even know their names, and I was just so embarrassed.  What was I supposed to say, "hey what's up listen I wasn't taking pictures of YOU for the last ten minutes..."  Right.

This is the best I could get with a heavy duty crop job.  Oh well, at least I got some awesome pics of them climbing the May pole the next day.

Moral of the story: watch what you're doing when using a zoom lens.  Things can get weird if you don't!

Kids Say the Darndest Things (in the Car)

Before I got back to my regular scheduled broadcast, the girls each said something really funny while driving to and fro during our Keukenhof trip...

Sammy:  "Oh NO!  There's POOP on yours neck MOM!  Take it offa you!!!"  (in reference to the small mole on the back of my neck at the base of my hair line.  Apparently she'd never noticed it before!)

Lily:  "Mom I want to be alive!  I don't want to sleep!"  (Alive = awake)

Life with kids.  Car rides with kids.  Gotta love it!

Kids Say (and Do) the Darndest Things, April Edition

I've had these random every-day iPod Touch pics accumulating for awhile... the girls are in a funny phase where they want to "lie down and nap" every time they're in a shopping cart.  So they can often be seen as such whenever we're at the BX.  They also love our washing machine, cause they can see it spin.  They do silly things up in their room, like take all the bedding off their beds and put a sheet on the rocking chair (where do they come up with this stuff?) and they can also often be found sans pajamas and snuggling in the same bed.  Goofies.  They have the coolest Daddy in the whole world, who obliges their requests to "ride on the adogador" (escalator) every time we go to the BX.  For no reason.  They just go up, and down (and sometimes a few repeats, depending on how rushed we are.)  What a guy!  I love my family and I love my life.

I also thought I'd take a second to hit you with some recent kid-quotes...

-Lily was watching steam come from my cup of tea and she said, "Mom, I see the hot coming out!"

-Lily was playing pretend one morning and she looks at me dead serious and says, "I'm going to visit Aunt Brother's house."

-Lily had a blanket around her shoulders like a cape so I asked, "Are you a superhero?" and she looked at me incredulously and replied, "No MOM!  I'm Lily!"

-They are recently obsessed with the movie Rise of the Guardians, and Lily calls the Boogie Man the "Cookie Man"... "Oh no!  No, no Cookie Man, you so mean!"  "The Cookie Man's so scary, Mom!"

-Sam can kind of count to five... but she frequently misses 4.  "1, 2, 3, 5!"

-I banged my knee on the dining room table and shouted "Ouch!" and Sam looks at me and says, "Hurt yourself?"  and I said, "Yeah I banged my knee"  and she said, "Cry now?"

-We were eating a spicy batch of chili and Sam exclaimed "So spicy!  Napkin please!"  so I gave her a napkin and she proceeded to wipe her tongue.

-When "counting" sit-ups for Daddy, Sam got stuck... "One, two, two, two..."

-I sing a teeth-brushing-song every night, to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat: "Brush, brush, brush your teeth, brush your baby teeth!  Brusha brusha brusha brusha, brush your baby teeth!"  and Sam stopped me the other day and complained, "I no baby!"  so I had to change it to "brush your tiny teeth!"

Help!  I'm surrounded by adorable-ness!  

When Lacto-Fermenting Experiments Go Wrong

Alternate titles for this post...

The Tale of the Drive-By Ginger Ale

How I Accidentally Almost Killed My Husband

The Most Depressing Two Hours of Cleaning Ever

Or... (according to Jesse)...

Top Ten Reasons to Leave Ginger Ale to the Professionals

My Wife Tried to Kill Me with Health Food.  Literally.

Just Say No to Lacto-Fermented Beverages

This is the tale of how I single-handedly caused the greatest destruction my beautiful living room has ever seen.  And almost seriously hurt my husband in the process.

Lacto-fermenting (at least my experience of it up until Sunday night) is not generally a dangerous process.  It's the art of using good bacteria to convert the starches and sugars of food into lactic acid... which preserves the food and makes the nutrients in it more digestible for your body.  I've never really blogged about it because I'm still new (and now after I share this story you probably won't want to hear about any more experimenting ha!) but it's how I make our homemade saurkraut and yogurt and it's not really that big a deal.

I had a gallon of ginger ale that was fermenting in these pretty glass jars... I was really excited to see if homemade ginger ale tastes at all like conventional ginger ale... but I will never find out, because the jars exploded.  

Let me set the scene.  Jesse is napping on the couch, the girls are napping upstairs, and I am reading in the bedroom.

I am so thankful that God's got my back.  If this had happened any other time that day someone would have gotten seriously hurt.  Possibly ER-worthy.  The girls often play and read on the love seat right next to where the bottles were. And if the force of the explosion was enough to gouge and scratch the windows and walls nearby I shudder to think of my sweet Monkeys being near it.  Kinda makes my stomach hurt even now.  And even the fact that I was out of the room and Jesse (though in the room) was napping, is quite miraculous... I am usually in the living room during the girls' nap but Jesse was playing video games at first and I was reading a really science-y book so I needed quiet to focus.  So I was safe in the bedroom.  When he decided to take a nap, he covered himself completely with blankets, in his usual fashion.  And thank God, cause there was glass on the pillow he was laying on.

So while I feel bad that he was so rudely awoken from a nice Sunday afternoon nap, I'm thankful he wasn't sitting up playing a video game, facing the bottles when they exploded!  Eeeeek!

Okay so I'm just leaning up against the wall in the bedroom, reading my book.  The living room is on the other side of the wall and at this point I know Jesse's asleep because it's quiet out there... but I was comfy in our room so I just stayed there.  Until I heard a huge pop and then glass hitting the wall right behind my head.  Again, God had my back, cause I ran out into the living room without thinking and immediately crunched on glass... but I was wearing my moccasins so I wasn't hurt.

It took J and I about 5 seconds to realize what had happened... poor guy was delirious (and barefoot!) when I suddenly yelled "THE GINGER ALE!" and we looked over to see the remains of the four bottles dripping what was left of the liquid all over the floor in the corner.  I'm so glad Jesse was there because I was in shock.  I didn't even know where to begin with the clean up but he was all "towels! shoes! hurry!" and off we zipped to get started on this HUGE MESS.

Soaking up the liquid was the first priority because there is still a hole over in that corner where the heater-fixer-guys will be coming at the end of April to put new pipes in.  It's only covered with a piece of plywood and they just recently repaired Lilo's ceiling so we obviously didn't want to cause MORE water damage.  Oy veh.  But we think that we got most of it.

The main problem was that there were shards of glass all over our living room and kitchen.  Also a problem, I hadn't done the usual toy cleanup before putting the girls to bed so there was an abnormal amount of dress up clothes, wigs, and stuffed animals all over the floor.  Covered in glass.  So I just started taking everything out of the room, to be thoroughly sorted and cleaned later.  When I went through it all the next morning, I shook glass out of the girls' wigs... blankets... magazines... !!!

Here are some of the alarming places we found relatively large pieces of glass:  all the way in the kitchen, inside Sam's bib, under the book shelves, in the dress up clothes, stuck in the couch, and in the garden seedlings by the window! (We're going to have to be careful to wear gloves when planting cause we weren't able to get all the tiny pieces out of the dirt... thankfully only one plant was damaged but a few lost leaves.)  Can you believe I didn't take pictures of all this?  I was just in such shock, and we were so in over our heads with cleanup because of a mistake I made that I didn't feel like grabbing my camera would be appropriate.  I kind of regret it now, of course.  Cause man it would have made for some crazy pictures!  

Some of the worst damage:  gouges in the wall next to the heater where the bottles were sitting, gouges and scratches in the actual glass of the window behind it (and the wood paneling), serious gouges in the kids' white board that was right in front of the bottles (we pulled pieces of glass right out of it!), and some pretty decent scratches in the side of the tv. (thankfully not the front!)

I can't believe I did this!  I felt so bad about it and I was just dumbfounded as to why it happened.  I actually sent a trouble-shooting email to the author of my Wild Fermentation cookbook and he got right back to me the same day... he said that sometimes actively fermenting liquids can be really powerful.  So basically he wasn't all that helpful.  But apparently I didn't make a terrible mistake, which makes me feel a little better.  If I ever get up the nerve to try it again, I can put plastic balloons over the tops of the bottles to allow air pressure to escape while they ferment.  But I won't be trying to ferment ginger ale again any time soon!  

What were the girls doing during this two-hour clean up?  Destroying the upstairs.  I was checking on them at intervals and making sure everyone was taking potty breaks.  They did get into the closet and pulled out a box of too-small shoes after they got bored of taking the bedding off their beds.  But I'm the one who sent ginger ale shrapnel all over the living room so I can't complain about harmless kid-messes.  We have our suspicions that Sam flushed a good portion of a roll of toilet paper down the toilet.  But no one was fighting or crying.  Or bleeding.  So I consider it a win.

"Our Mommy's crazy, you guys!  She's always trying weird hippie things in the kitchen, and now look what happened.  Did you know she made us wear shoes for two days because she was afraid that she hadn't vacuumed all the glass up? Moms..."

Moral of the story: be careful when lacto-fermenting homemade soda.  Don't be like me and set it out right in your family's main living area.

The End.