I’m relieved to share that the air conditioning was repaired at minimal cost, the party was a hit, Monkey finally broke his fever and we all slept happily through  the night.

I have about eleventy million pictures from the last few days of  the insanity leading up to and culminating in the boys’ first birthday party, but I’m too lazy busy hanging out with my friends and family here in Texas to sort through them.

I’ll get to them this week before I leave for Kansas City, but I had to share today’s organized chaos with you.

We were so proud of ourselves for surviving yesterday, for juggling 24 kids, 14 adults, a swimming pool, a bunch of food and a piñata without any broken bones or visits from family services, I guess we figured we’d celebrate today by cramming at least half as many people into the kitchen with two giant pans filled with boiling oil.

It’s this kid’s fault. He asked for fried chicken and fixins, and that’s what he got.

I made at least three jokes about cutting the cheese, and he didn’t get any of them.

Anyway, we started with a healthy breakfast.

We bought Wal-mart out of chicken pieces, shortening, peanut oil, and potatoes and made a grand mess out of the kitchen while frying, boiling and mashing up lunch.

Behold the fried chicken breast. Soaked in buttermilk, battered and fried to golden crispy perfection.

Pop provided home-grown tomatoes and cucumbers, a healthy compliment to our starchy grease-fest.

My aunt found some cool cups with name tags on them.

After ensuring that the men and children were in a semiconscious post-smorgasbord state, the ladies began to sort through my grandmother’s tin of buttons, collected by four generations of women who knew their way around a sewing machine. These days, we’re handier with  Cricuts than Singers.

While we were raiding the buttons for scrapbooking spare parts, my aunt began to nod off at the table. For some reason, my mom asked my grandmother about a computer mouse she had loaned her.

My grandmother leaned over my snoozing aunt to peer through the curtained French doors into the den, and after noting that Monkey had fallen asleep in his play pen, declined to go inside to get the mouse.

“Ok,” my mom said. “Don’t let me forget the mouse is in the den.”

My formerly slumped and sleeping aunt startled at the word mouse, jumped up and yelled, “OH SHIT!”

It took us a minute to realize she hadn’t suddenly developed Tourette’s, but had overheard wrong that there was a mouse in the room with the baby!

Now, my grandmother, who used to scold us for saying the word “fart,” or for even being so bold as to pass gas in her presence, didn’t bat an eyelash at my aunt’s profane exclamation, and instead began cracking up with the rest of us.

Where has my grandmother’s sense of propriety gone?

I blame this guy.

You were nervous, so you mugged for the camera.

I’ve never seen you so full of joy. (Well, maybe on our wedding day. But that might have been panic.)

Things were confusing at first, but you learned quickly.

Soon, your hard work paid off, and things began to be fun.

Your little man, your mini-me? He became your shadow. “Daddy days” began.

You were thrilled to find he shared your love of gadgets!

You introduced him to theChive.  You’re both a fan of GWFLBP.

He watches the door when you leave for work, waiting several minutes before crawling off, a bit disappointed. He squeals when you finally walk back in the door at dinnertime.

He smiles that smile that is just for you when you get him out of bed in the morning, cackles when you tickle his cheek with your beard, and grins the biggest grin when you pop him up on your shoulders.

You’re best buds.

But it’s the things he doesn’t realize yet that will make you a great man in his eyes. You work hard at a stressful job. You love his mom every day, all the time, even when she’s a PITA. You worship God and strive to make the best decisions for your family.

Happy First Fathers Day to a father who was born to be a Daddy.

Mama and Monkey love you, PMASH.

If you don’t have kids, getting some action really only requires the presence of a willing partner. (Or maybe not, right?)

Even with one kiddo, it’s still possible to knock boots on a fairly frequent, spontaneous basis.

But throw another child into the mix –  heck, here, two even – and the planets have to align perfectly for there to be any mattress dancing. Add to that a mother in law who stayed for a week, and you can understand why my husband began humping my leg anytime we brushed too close in the hallway.

So this week, we had to schedule sex for the first time ever.

Baby in bed at eight. Big kids passed out by 9:30. In the immortal words of Marvin Gaye, let’s Get. It. On.

Only, see, we’ve got to turn the baby monitor on since we’re shutting the door. We normally don’t do this, but there’s a sleepwalking ten year old and an eight year old with a mouse bladder staying here and it’s so not my job to explain the birds, the bees and the beast with two backs to these guys.

So yeah, door shut, monitor on.

And since my son has slept with music on since birth, the campy strains of the Glee soundtrack begin to waft through the air. There are many songs from this collection that would be appropriate for a situation like this. Some Color Me Badd, perhaps. Lionel Richie. Bell Biv DeVoe even.

But no. Do you know what starts playing?

Olivia Newton Freaking John. Physical.

And suddenly all I can think about is sweatbands and leotards and leg lifts, which are so not sexy, at least not to me.

Hubby doesn’t care, he’s like, I can tune it out (I WANNA GET PHYSICAL, PHYSICAL) and I’m like (LET’S GET PHYSICAL, PHYSICAL) what? I can’t hear you over the awfulness.

So we wait for the song to be over, which isn’t happening, because she’s only completed 492 of the 981 times she screeches PHYSICAL, PHYSICAL throughout this hot mess. Then we agree since we can’t turn off the monitor, and if we turn off the music Monkey will probably wake up and then we’re totally screwed( or not screwed, as it were) we’ll just turn on the tv and drown out the terribleness.

Oh and look what’s on! Jersey Shore.

Great, ’cause nothing is sexier than Dorito-tanned, fist-pumping STDs screaming “T-SHIRT TIME” at you.

And I’m sitting here in the middle of the worst mash-up ever to hit the airwaves (Physical! T-shirt time! Physical! Come at me bro!) thinking that I’ve just discovered a way to prevent teen pregnancy.

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I heard rumor on the Twittersphere that Shell was hosting a #RockintheBump link today, and the timing sounded perfect, because this was me exactly a year ago.

I feel fantastic here. Beautiful, radiant, pleasingly pregnant even. I had just returned from a romantic shopping trip with my husband where we made a Build-a-Bear monkey for Monkey. We caught in a rainstorm on the way back, and even with the lump of baby in between us, being kissed in the rain still made me swoon.

Fast forward two weeks.

Somebody. Take. It. OUT.

She has everything I could want in a daughter in law: Smarts, looks, attitude, plus her parents are some of the coolest people I’ve met in Kansas City.

Her mom and my husband had a hot romance for about 15 minutes when they were 8th graders in Vermont eons ago. Through the miracles of relocation and Facebook, I now have an awesome friend and parenting role model. (She has four kids, bakes amazing cakes, has a social calendar that manages to squeeze 25 hours worth of stuff into each day, and still finds time to do things like donate her hair to Locks of Love today.)

I just adore her, and as you can see, my son is quite twitterpated with her youngest.

He’s not really a fan of kissing yet though.

It’s 95 degrees up in hurr. We are not going fishing. We are not going to the park. Forget the roller coasters.

We are going bowling, dudes.

Names have changed to protect the awesomely craptastic bowlers.

Oldest nephew is IK – “I know,” because he knows everything. And doesn’t mind telling you.

Younger nephew is PT – “Pish Tosh,” we introduced him here. (Holy crap, that entry is about balls too. WTF?)

You can’t spend two hours talking about balls with a straight face unless you just go ahead and get all the jokes out in the beginning.

IK has some graceful form here. He confused skipping stones with bowling, causing one of those loud BANG noises that make the attendants wince.

PT is an awesome bowler. He gently places the ball on the lane, and we all stand around blowing on it so it will reach the pins before the close of the business day. Little shit picked up this spare, if you can believe it.

There was something strangely sexy about watching my husband bowl. Maybe it was that he’s so damn good at it, and nothing turns me on faster than talent. You handle that ball, baby!

Monkey weighed less than that ball when he was born. Now he’s such a chub! Be right back, gotta nom on that thigh real quick.

I was proud of the little boys who bowled pretty well without bumpers. I think I threw more gutter balls than both of them combined, but I blame it on the lack of beer.

Please, let it rain tomorrow so I can declare it a tv/video game day without feeling guilty about being a slacker.

Linked to Lovelinks #10! Link up!

I went to Hobby Lobby today and didn’t even step foot in a scrapbooking aisle. Picture frames? Nope, walked on by.

No, I was there with a higher purpose.

Airplanes.

Can you believe they’d never been to Hobby Lobby? Poor kids thought I was going to make them look at silk flowers when we walked in.

But no! The Coolest Aunt Ever marched straight back to the kid craft kits, struck a shazaaaam pose in front of the rockin’ “Make Your Own Justin Bieberish Dog Tags” and totally wowed the younger boy.

Dog tags do not a rock star make, however, so we also had to pick up a School of Rock Super Bedazzled Glove, Choker and Tie set.

There. Totally cool.

Then we marched into our first ever guitar lesson with an actual professional rock star, announced that we liked rap, sang a few bars of Flo Rida’s “Low” in our hillbilly accent, declared we’d rather play the drums anyway, and got stuck practicing “Peggy Sue” for the next week.

(Thank you to our friend T, who has way more patience than I.)

The boys and I took a trip to the country today to tour the Shatto Milk Company, driving down long, winding, hilly rural roads, roads that were endless, much like this sentence.

In reality, we only drove about 40 miles, but I guess they they take longer when you aren’t playing “Count the Starbucks,” and are instead stuck with “I Spy Something Green.”

It was a beautiful drive, mostly because the kids were quiet and agreeable, having been promised a chance to milk a real live cow.

And milk a cow they did, informing me on the way home that their hands smelled like udders. Completely acceptable, if you consider all the possible odors that could be carried on little boys’ hands.

Monkey didn’t really give a cow pie about the whole thing until the end, when he got to try chocolate milk for the first time. He’s really hoping there’s more where that came from.

We met the “cream of the crop,” the top producers of the farm that can produce up to sixteen gallons of milk a day. I remember being pretty happy about sixteen ounces.

True to my word, I lined them up to milk a cow that was so over this by now, I’m sure.

I loved getting to see the partially automated production line. I eat and drink and never think about where my food comes from, so it’s amazing to see what it goes through before it hits the table.

This guy crated the milk as fast as it came off the line. I’m partial to sweet older men, and he was no exception. He was adorable, right down to his cute wrinkly elbows.

I love the Shatto logo and the clean design on their products. Nothing fancy or cutesy.

The owner, Leroy, was cracking us up at the end of the tour with his corny jokes. He was very personable and good with the kids.

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to let the boys pick out their favorite flavor. They thought it was neat that the big store had the milk from the cows they had just met. It made them wonder where everything else was from!

The oldest was head-over-heels in love with the gold-medal-winning Root Beer milk, professing his awe at the “power of root beer,” what ever that means. The youngest stuck to chocolate, “third best in the world, but they’re working on it.”

*If you’re in the KC area, and can’t make it out to Shatto, you can pick up some locally-produced milk at Price Choppers and Hy-Vees. The Root Beer Milk comes highly recommended!