nothing much

Quick summary, nothing too exciting.

Knitting - no progress since the lake, but I will finish the touring wrap before the end of June. I'm setting that deadline now.

Garden - We have purchased tomato & jalepeno plants. I just have to put them in the ground one of these days before they die. I spent 45 minutes pulling weeds that grew while we were gone. I'm about a 1/3 of the way through. Ugh. I need a day of just tackling the beds and I don't know when I'm going to get it.

Wii Fit - We finally set it up Tuesday night. I don't think I would call it real exercise. I haven't done any of the strength training, maybe that is hard. The balance games are fun. I'm practicing downhill skiing for our trip to Calgary next spring break.

Schedule
Tomorrow - Ballet (make headbands for recital), t-ball practice
Friday - swim party after last day of school, end of school dad's club party
Saturday - dance recital, indoor soccer, tball game, suite at Rangers game
Sunday - J's party at Texas Stadium

Surprise!

No, I'm not pregnant. We're home early. We decided yesterday to come home last night.

We figured the kids would be tired out. They spent the day at a birthday party, playing with cousins and fishing. We threw them in the car at 5:00 with glorious dreams of them immediately falling asleep and staying asleep the whole 7 hour trip home.

Our plan started out well. J & B both crashed hard. It lasted about an hour. We were then left with three cranky kids coming down off major sugar highs strapped into car seats for 6 more hours. No one approved of the other's movie choice, no one was happy with the temperature of their water bottle, everyone was hungry at once, and the m&ms that Aunt Sheila sneaked into the car didn't last near long enough. B was close to mutiny when they were gone. We listened to "More mms" for many miles. DH & I resorted to ignoring and turning up the music in front, which finally made him switch to yelling "No song" instead.

B kept yelling (on and off) until 11:45. We pulled in the driveway at 11:59. Luckily, he transferred to his crib with a diaper change and never woke up. He was tired.

J actually slept in until 7:56 which is like sleeping until noon for most people. I dozed until almost 9:00 this morning.

I'm back to the reality of quarreling children and mounds of laundry. But at least I'm not stuck in the car for 7 hours with the children today.

Enjoying the lake

We're having a nice visit at the lake. The weather is exceptional. Not hot, not cold. No swimming but the boat rides have been very nice. B is old enough that I don't have to follow around behind him constantly watching what he grabs or tries to eat. ILs have been entertaining the children so I've been able to enjoy a little quiet time. This afternoon, FIL & DH ran errands, B napped, J went to play with his cousin, A read in bed, MIL rested in her room. I spent a lovely hour on the porch with my knitting. There was a nice breeze and it was so quiet. Well, as quiet as nature can be.

If only life could be like this all the time.

High Tech Lake

There's high speed internet at the lake now. I've got my laptop connected. I'm sitting on the screen porch enjoying the nice weather. It is beautiful. Such a nice thing.

But I'm sitting at the lake on my laptop. I got some emails from work with problems. I'm working! Not a nice thing.

Hopefully I'll figure it out soon and got back to just relaxing & enjoying nature.

I need to learn how to count

I'm knocking out my list. J's glasses are fixed. Cookies are baked and decorated. Not beautiful but done. Teacher cards & gift are done. Kid cards are done. The front has a picture of the class. The inside looks like this:


I did have counting issues with the goody bags. I had to get enough for 25 kids. I was thrown by the fact that all junky toys are sold in packs of 4/6/8/12. Easily enough for 24 kids, not for 25. I couldn't count on one child being absent. I thought about not giving one to J, but he's the kind who cries.

I bought a bunch of stuff and came home to stuff bags. I was about 19 bags into it when I realized that I can't count. I bought several toys that were packs of 4. I bought 5 packs. 4 x 5 = 20 not 25. Crap. I'm an embarrassment to my B.S. in Mathematics.

Back to W**#Mart I went. Once back at the store, I realized there were not enough packages of the toys for the last 5 bags. I bought 2 packs of girly toys instead. I came home and made 19 boyish treat bags and 6 girlish treat bags and all is done.

P.S. Tragic news. I walked out front today to see DH wielding a broom. He was sick of all the cobwebs outside and decided to clean. Yep, I believe our spider is a goner.

Car conversations

This was our conversation on our way to Braums for an ice cream treat.

B: Chicken.
Me: No, B. We're going for ice cream.
J: No, he's saying that he saw a chicken in that yard.
Me: Wouldn't it be nice to have chickens. Lot of chickens and lot of fresh eggs.
J: No, because there they would have more chickens and we would have too many chickens.
Me: No, because you can't have baby chickens without a rooster. We wouldn't get a rooster so we would just have regular eggs, not baby chicken eggs.
A: Why do you have to have a rooster?
DH: You just opened a big can of worms.
Me: You just have to have a rooster.
A: Is it like you have to have a mommy and a daddy? Do the chickens get married?
Me: Yes, in a chicken sort of way.
A: What is a chicken sort of way?
DH: See, you're really in trouble now.
Me: Well, they don't get married in a church.
J: Why not?
Me: Because there are no chicken priests.
J: Oh.
B: Chicken, chicken, chicken! No, ice cream!

Aren't children fun???

My day is ruined

I have all this stuff to do today and just what just happened?

The UPS man showed up with my Mother's Day present. Now all I want to do is open it up and play!

I don't have time for this. I'm going to have to hide it in the back of my closet until I get back from the lake. I don't know if I have enough willpower for that.

I missed another one

May 15th was National Chocolate Chip day. I like chocolate chips. I would have liked to celebrate with a nice pan of chocolate chip cookies. I've been wanted this book ever since Sister #5 told me about it. Maybe next year, I'll buy the book and try a new recipe from it.

I have another one of those days. The to-do list is huge.

• bake two cookies cakes for DK party
• buy goody bag stuff for 25 kids for DK party
• plan obstacle course & other games for DK party
• marinade chicken for dinner
• decorate cookie cakes for party
• make teacher cards for party
• make kid cards for party
• take J to get his glasses fixed (again!)
• laundry for lake
• pack for lake

DH I know will tell me I'm doing too much and to skip the cards for the teachers & kids. But I can't skip. And of course work is calling me wanting me to finish something stat. Just what I need to take. I guess I don't have to sleep tonight and I can sleep in the car on the way to the lake tomorrow.

A new pet

A new pet has arrived. He/she has set up house outside our front door. The boys are fascinated. Even A thinks it is cool, except she would never admit it herself.

But since my friend K in Seattle reads this blog and I know how she feels about such critters, I'm only including a link to it. Click it if you dare!

K - I swear this one never lived inside my house.

New pet

(I'm trying not to be too descriptive for K's sake, but it is in the process of capturing it's next meal.)

Learning to ride a bike

J's been ready to ride a two wheeler for a while. Over Easter he practiced on a little bike at the cousins' house. He did pretty good except the pedal was broken and his foot kept sliding off. DH's been talking about taking the training wheels off his bike since March. He finally did it today.

Off he goes!


Don't run into the curb!


So proud!


This one I had to take. Poor B couldn't keep up and got left behind. Of course I had to snap a pic before I went to get him. He looks so cute & little crying by himself in the middle of the street.


My hats off to DH who discovered after he taught J to ride a bike that we had a record high of 99 today. He knew it was hot but didn't know it was that hot. Lucky for J because if he had realized, DH never would have agreed to do it today.

Bad mom again

It's Sunday night. We had a long full weekend of too much to do. We're all tired and worn out.

I had my usual Sunday night crap to do. We had the barest of pantries. There wasn't much there beyond 2 cans of black beans & 2 cans of tomatoes. Once I got laundry going, I headed off to the grocery. We needed a lot of basics. It was almost 10pm when I drove home.

Boy, did I get angry when I drove past our house. A's light was still on. It was 10pm and she was still up reading. If you have ever woken a "not-a-morning" child up for school after they went to bed 2 hours late, then you can understand why I was upset.

(Okay, I have to apologize to my whole family because I did the exact same thing 95% of my childhood. They weren't allowed to talk to me in the mornings because I was that bad. I am a mean, angry morning person. That just made me all the more upset because I know exactly what tomorrow morning is going to be like.)

I tore into the garage, practically threw the groceries to the floor and flew into her room, I think I started yelling (in a loud whisper so as not to wake the boys) the minute I stepped into the house. A immediately started crying. She forgot, she didn't realize it was that late. I responded with an "I-don't-care-if-you-forgot-you-are-not-allowed-to-read-at-night-ever-again. Turn-off-your-light-immediately-and-go-right-to-sleep!!!!!!"

As I put away the groceries and listened to her cry, I started to breathe again and decided that maybe I hadn't handled that well. She is only eight years old and I shouldn't hold her responsible for putting herself to bed at the correct time. I should have checked to make sure she had gone to bed before I left for the store. I am the parent, she is the child. A couple more deep breaths and I went in, apologized and kissed her. I hope she'll forgive me and go to sleep quickly.

After that, I need to go shopping for a kitchen alarm clock that will go off at 8:30 every night so I remember to tell her to go to sleep.

I survived

It is 8:30 am and I am home and, although I got very little sleep, I am still alive.

We lost three girls before bedtime. All their moms had decided that at 10:30 the girls were done and took them home. I think the moms just didn't want to sleep on the hardwood floors. We called another mom to get a girl soon after that. I'm not sure what happened there, but it was one of the girls I predicted would leave.

There was a strange middle of the night incident where two girls were up making a racket. I went to investigate. For some unknown reason they had unzipped their sleeping bags and couldn't zip them again. I to find zippers and rezip in the dark.

I did get a tiny, tiny bit of sleep. I wish I could take a nap. Instead I'm off to a day of t-ball, dance recital rehearsal, indoor soccer and a Rough Riders game.

So is life as the mom of 3 kids.

Extra luck for me tonight

I was going to ask for extra prayers but that might imply that there was actually something wrong. Nothing is wrong except for the fact that I am one of the chaperons at the Brownie sleepover tonight.

I know that I will need lots of extra patience tonight. I don't deal well with my own children when they make excessive noise/whine/cry needlessly/etc. I'm not a very empathetic/sympathetic/overly caring person. Yes, if my kids fall down and skin their knees, I hold them and clean them up and sometimes give them a bandaid. (As a direct result of growing up with my mother, I'm very stingy with bandaids. She always said let it air. DH insists that I give them a bandaid to make them feel better. I think it is a waste because they pull them off withing 10 minutes of putting it on.) But if my kids fuss because they aren't getting their way or they get hurt while messing around/fighting with sibling/doing something stupid, well then they need to buck up and deal.

So if I don't do this well with my own children, then how am I going to deal with 19 8 year old girls? Lots of deep breaths and Hail Marys tonight for me.

Luckily the troop leader, aka Sister #2, has decided that there are strict rules on this adventure. If a girl gets up crying for her mother, the mother will be called to pick the girl up and take her home. We're not dealing with homesickness. Mothers were warned ahead of time that if their daughters cannot make it through the night, they need to come sleepover too.

Another chaperoning mother said she needs at least 7 hours of sleep and she is fully prepared to be the mean one and make them go to bed. I pray that works.

Still wish me luck. I think I'll need it.

Blog spamming

Wow! Four posts in one day! I guess I can take a break for a week or two.

How to make a dish towel apron

A friend of mine asked me how I made aprons for A's party.

I bought a pack of dishtowels from Big Lots, 3 for $3.00. They were big towels, maybe 20x30.

I held the towel up to A and folded in the corner so that it slanted from her shoulder to her waist. I then sewed the towel about an inch away from the fold to form a pocket for the tie.


It was long so I folded it up and sewed a pocket. That sort of sagged in the middle, so I sewed it up the middle making two front pockets.


After I finished sewing, I pulled yarn through the pockets formed from sewing the corners. I started at the waist on one side, leaving a loop at the top to go around the neck and then back down the other side.


I did find that they needed help putting the aprons on. The girls picked the apron up by the yarn to pull around their neck and the towel would just slide off the yarn tie. Instead I had the girls hold the towel at the top while I pulled the yarn and tied it back. I used wool-ease thick & quick yarn as the tie on the apron. I really wanted to find some clothesline type rope but couldn't find what I wanted. The yarn was a quick and easy solution. Next time I do this I'll use a dark towel with light thread so you could actually see the stitching. But hey, it's only my first tutorial.

The birthday party

Saturday was A's birthday party. It was a last minute effort on my part. I planned it and knew what I needed to do and then did nothing until Thursday night. Luckily this was the easiest party I've ever thrown. The girls baked a chocolate cake and then decorated cake layers.

I baked cakes & made aprons on Friday afternoon. I crumb coated the cakes & made fondant on Friday night. I iced the cakes and colored the frosting Saturday morning.



After a break for J's t-ball game, I cleaned up, gathered supplies and did a few last minute things. We were all ready by the time the girls arrived.


It helped that there were only 4 girls there, including A. I think they all had a fun time. Here is the result of A's efforts.


I think my favorite part of the afternoon was when I told the girls that part of baking is cleaning up. I handed them rags and the spray bottle and had them clean the table and then had them vacuum the floor. They were lucky, I didn't make them wash the dishes too!

J's first t-ball game

Saturday morning was J's first t-ball game. I wasn't enthusiastic about him playing, mostly out of selfishness. I didn't want to deal with the hassle of another weekly practice and a Saturday game. I was looking forward to the break.

I have to admit I enjoyed the game. It was amusing to watch. Most of the boys didn't know where to run, fielding was awful, there were few outs and everyone got to score a run. Coaches were there to pick up the boys and make them run to first base when they ran after the ball they just hit. Balls dribbled right past the gloves and through open legs. The boys all had a great time.

Of course, I took pictures. I had some major lens envy. There were two ladies there with big ole lenses on their cameras. I like my camera, but it would be nice to have a fancier lens to take better pictures at sporting events.

Starting lineup


Waiting to bat


Running home

Hannah Montana made her cry

One of A's birthday presents was the Hannah Montana Wii game. It consists of doing dance moves while listening to Hannah Montana music. It was this or karaoke High School Musical game. I went with dancing over singing (not that she doesn't have a beautiful voice, but hours of A singing the HSM songs would be like torture!)

This afternoon is the first time she's played the game and she cried. You learn new moves with each song you perform. It got to "Make some noise" and you have to do a "stir the pot" move. She did the practice session and she couldn't get it work. Everytime, Lily would say, "Oops, let's try again!" After the 15th or so try, the tears appeared.

I tried to give her suggestions, circle your arms slower, put your arms out straight and then circle, etc. My helpful hints were met with bared teeth and a terse "No, Mommy, that's not it." Finally DH convinced her to let me try. I figured out you have to hold the remote and nunchuk straight up and down for it to work, you cannot be pointing during this move.

Thank heavens for DH and his persuasive abilities, because I was not happy about the Hannah Montana meltdown.

A's birthday

Today was A's birthday. She's 8 years old. I can hardly believe that it has been eight years. I remember that day so well. I could rehash her birth story but it was just a boring normal birth. I have gorier more interesting ones with the boys.

This morning J woke me up around 5:15. A was up out of bed at 6:30. She was very excited. Not only was it her birthday, it was also May Crowning. All the second graders got to wear their First Communion dresses and process in for the May Crowning. It was a busy morning. I was all stressed about getting her dressed, remembering all her clothes to change into plus figuring out when to bring birthday snack to school, I actually forgot to wish her a happy birthday. She had been up for 15 minutes or so when I realized I hadn't mentioned it.

Despite my harried morning, I managed to finish a lot on my list. I do have stuff to do tomorrow but it seems manageable right now.

• Frost cakes for decorating
  
• Color icing and put in decorating tubes
  
• Color fondant and roll out
  
• Gather supplies for cake making
• Decorate cake boxes
• Make salad for evening party
• Buy wine & bread for evening party

If I get up and get moving, I might even have time to go to J's first tball game tomorrow morning.

So much for being open minded

Last night in my late night grocery run, I walked down an aisle past a group of teenage boys. There were 6-7 of them and they seemed to just be wandering. My first thought was that they were up to no good. I immediately scolded myself. I had absolutely no reason to think badly of them. They hadn't said anything to me, they hadn't done anything wrong, they weren't acting (terribly) obnoxious.

As I was checking out I saw them walk out the door and walk past my car.

This morning DH decided that since it isn't suppose to rain for at least a week, it was time to get my car washed, waxed & detailed. (He had a good coupon or he wouldn't have done this.) He drove my car around back and started to clean out all the kid trash. He quickly came inside and asked me if I knew I had a long scratch down the side of my car.

How upsetting. I absolutely know it wasn't there yesterday afternoon when I picked up the kids. I did go to ballet, the dollar store & JoAnn's yesterday. But every time I parked away from other cars and/or there were plenty of people around. I suppose that it could have happened at one of those places. But honestly, I'm going back to my gut reaction with those boys. I think they keyed my car.

DH took it for the wash & wax. They were able to buff out some of the scratch but not all of it. My poor car! I tried to take pictures of the damage but since my car is so nice and shiny now, it was reflecting everything. Here's the best I could do:

too much to do

I have a big list:

Today:

• Order Baskin Robbins cake
• Make aprons
• Bake cakes
• Crumbcoat cakes
  
• Make Fondant
• Lunch w/A at school
• make recipe cards for cake and icing for goody bag
• print copies of cake recipe for party
  

Tomorrow:

• Clean house
• Decorate cake boxes
  
• Color icing & make icing tubes.
  
• Roll out fondant icing
• Make Asian Slaw salad for evening party
  
• Buy wine for evening party
• Buy bread for evening party
• Pick up b-r cake

I went out after the kids went to bed last night to get errands out of the way. I swung by Sister#2's house to get coupons for JoAnn's. I stayed too long talking. I finally went to JoAnn's. I walked in the door at 8:59 as they were announcing that the store was closing. At least I knew exactly what I needed and was out of there in less than 10 minutes. I had an expensive trip to the grocery store. I decided to save myself one thing for the party and I bought ready made icing. I had no idea how much I needed so I bought all the white icing they had left. I think I got 12 cans. I'm sure it will be enough but I didn't want to fall short. I also had to buy cashews for the Asian slaw salad. Wow, I forgot how expensive cashews are. I spend close to $30 in icing & nuts alone.

To-Do

I have a massive list of to-dos this week. I need to write them down before I forget one of them

• Shop for A's bday presents
• Turn in VBS application
• Training 1pm today
• St. Jude's meeting 7 pm today
• return stuff to target
  

Shoot. I just got half way through and I don't remember what else I'm suppose to do. I know there is more.

Anna is having her birthday party on Saturday afternoon. It is a baking party. They are going to bake a cake from scratch. Then I'm going to have ready made cakes for them to decorate. It was going to be a small party. She invited 6 girls. 3 of the girls are going to be out of town so it is going to be a very small party.

To-do list for the party

• Make 4 cakes
  
• Make 4 aprons
  
• Get rope/ribbon for aprons
  
• Make fondant icing (*)
  
• Get cake boxes
• Get a birthday cake (**)
• Make chef hats
  

* I planned to make fondant icing for them to cut shapes out of, but that is low in my list.

** I am debating having a birthday cake. I intended for the girls to take home their decorated cake as the party favor. Anna wants to eat them at the party for the birthday cake.

Monday mornings stink

I could tally the reasons why, but it is sufficient to say that I don't like Monday mornings. I'm thinking of crawling back in bed and starting over again after a couple of hours rest.

First Communion

This morning was First Communion. A has been waiting all year for this morning. She got up, felt woozy and had to lay back down. She had a bad case of the nerves. We talked about all the things that could go wrong. She could throw up on the priest when she goes to receive communion. She could go to the bathroom and tuck that back of her dress in her tights and walk around like that. She could step on the dress and rip the skirt off. She could trip and fall on her face. Once she started laughing about all the awful possibilities, she felt better. Luckily, everything went smoothly. A & twin cousin E actually stood next to each other. They were very excited to be together on this important day.



I made the Bible cake with the cake pan that Mom always used for all religious occasions. The color is off in the picture, bad lighting. The icing job isn't exactly what I wanted, but it worked fine.

Tball Parade

Last night was the PK-1st T-ball parade at the YMCA. The firetruck was there to lead all the teams around the track. J enjoyed it even though his uniform in yet. He wore his cap and waved his flag.



B is very enthusiastic about baseball. He picked his baseball outfit and insisted on his baseball hat. He wanted to wear J's baseball shoes, too. In fact when we went to run errands yesterday morning he did put on J's baseball shoes and I didn't notice until I heard him clomping around when I got him out of the car at our first stop. Last night he was mad because it was a parade and he wasn't actually going to play baseball. Luckily there was a sandbox to soothe all tears. I don't know how he's going to handle it when J actually starts playing tball game and B realizes that he doesn't get to play too.

My crazy dream

Here was my dream from last night:

I was on a reality dating show and I had fallen in love with the quarterback of the Giants (but it wasn't Eli Manning, he was definitely cuter with dark curly hair.) I was going to marry this guy immediately, but he was also a doctor and was on call and had to go into the hospital. Marriage would have to wait until the morning.

Of course in the morning I remembered that I was married with children and couldn't figure out for the life of me why I was on a reality dating show and about to marry the quarterback/doctor, except that he was really cute. I didn't think that would fly with DH. I was trying to figure out a way to break up with him when the tv people handed me a paper bag. It was McD Happy Meal leftovers. On the bag was a written apology from the show and the quarterback. He was not going to be able to marry me because he had impregnated another contestant (who happened to be someone to went to college with Sister#2) and he was going to marry her instead.

I was really mad because I wanted to do the breaking up, but I was on a beach and the tide started coming in. The waves were really strong and I had to leave.

So, was it something that I ate yesterday?