I have a new friend named Craigs

list.

Want to see my cool new finds?

No. It's not the complete series or Harry Potter books.

Nor is it books on pregnancy which are il-placed next to the South Beach Diet book.

And it's not the one and only scrapbook I've attempted.

It's a new home office! Craigslist got me the bookshelves, the corner desk, the over stuffed chair and the big rug all for one low low price of $300! Now Kirk is all set when he starts his Masters in Global Business Management at Thunderbird in the fall!

I've lost my marbles....

And my curtains.

No really. I can't find my curtains.

I took them down a couple of weeks ago when it looked like this: ( We're focusing on the windows as this is a stock photo which shows the old seat cushions and light fixture. )

Then we added this:

And now I can only find this:

And this:

But I'm missing a couple of the side curtains. Naturally, they weren't where I had the other ones.

I swear I must be getting old.

In case you ever wanted to know.....

Those temporary tattoos you get in the current Happy Meal at McDonalds take forever to fade. I initially thought they would be like the cheapo Shrek tattoos from the Corn Pops box that lasted a couple of days or at least until the next bath. So when I put them on my two oldest boys the Saturday of Conference weekend, I thought for sure by the time church rolled around the next week, the pirate skull and crossbones picture would have been long gone from their forearms.

FYI: McDonald's temporary tattoos are more titanium than temporary.

We got the Happy Meal on April 5th. This is a picture of what it looks like today.....10 days later.

My nailpolish doesn't last this long! Right now, I'm just hoping it will fade by the time he has his three year pictures taken next month. I'm blissfully hoping that maybe his quick-tempered, unstable two year old disposition will fade along with it. At least I know his chocolate Cocoa Puffs residue on his face is temporary.

Deal of the week

We're mostly women, right? And as women, we must and will share a deal if we see one. It's some unwritten law or something. So, this is my deal of the week as shared with me by my mom.

"Bountiful Baskets"

Every two weeks, at various locations around the valley you can pre order and pick up a basket of fruits and vegetables. You need to place your order by the Wednesday before and pick up is that next Saturday morning at the designated times.

Each week the basket contents vary. Each week they also will have different items like breads or cheese or like this week, strawberries.

So here's the deal. The first time you place an order, you pay about a dollar or two more than the other times. Then for each order after that, for $15.00, you can get this:

There's a couple of bunches of bananas, 2 onions, a bunch of broccoli, a jicama, some tomatoes, mushrooms, 9 apples, a bag of grapes, 7 large carrots, 4 red peppers, box of small strawberries, bunches of spinach and a bag of romaine lettuce.

For an extra $8.00, I got a case of strawberries!

Here's the even better deal! They do charge a 1.80 fee when ordering online. So, get a few friends to go in on it with you and have one person order 3 or 4 baskets under their account and have them be the one to pick them up so the order fee is spread amongst more people which makes it an even better deal. Every little bit counts these days!

HaPpY AnNiVeRsArY!

Happy 9th Anniversary Kirk!

The modern gift for a 9th anniversary, by the way, is leather. Intriguing......

The mom of the year award goes to.....

So Erik got into trouble today because he went into Ian's room and woke him up. I scolded him and told him he is never ever allowed to go into Ian's room when he's asleep. Erik covered his eyes and face with his little hands and proceeded to perform his one man act, "I'm embarrassed because I know I did something wrong but I'm going to do my best to make you feel guilty" cry.

I walked back downstairs and a few minutes later Erik came down too. He walked over to me and said, "I don't have time for this!"


Wonder where he heard THAT before?

Random thoughts

Someone recently posed the question: How did we know our family was done?

So this is something I've been thinking a lot about over the last couple of days and I was reminded of my own personal experience. While I was pregnant with Erik, I was perfectly content with him being our last. Throughout the whole pregnancy I thought things like, "This is the last time I have to get this huge," or "This is the last time my back will kill me every day" or "This is the last time I have to lose my lunch on a daily basis for nine months." And I was completely fine with that! Then the day came when Erik was born. That afternoon as I was holding him and resting, I heard a very distinct and clear voice say to me, "Don't get too comfortable because you aren't done yet." It was so loud that it startled me enough to look around and see who was in the room. No one else was around except for me and my little baby. I remember saying out loud, "You've GOT to be kidding me!" and wondering why couldn't that "feeling" wait at least until I got out of the hospital after just having had a baby! Or at the very least until the morphine wore off!


I was nervous and worried since it was a long and emotional year of charting and fertility drugs to get Erik here. I had what is called a "Luteal Phase Defect". But, I trusted that if it was what we were supposed to do then it would happen for us again. After six months of charting and finding that I had the same LPD as before then suffering through a chemical pregnancy, I decided I needed to start my first round of progesterone before moving on to the fertility drugs again. To my surprise, that was all it took! About three weeks later, I had spotting and started to get negative pregnancy test results after days of positive ones. When I went in for my blood test my number was only at 14. In order to register on a pregnancy test that I was using it needed to be at least 24. I thought for sure I was miscarrying again. I went in a couple of days later for another blood test to make sure my numbers were doubling like they were supposed to and my number was over 250! To this day, I'm not sure why I was getting positive tests one week and then nothing as well as the spotting. The only explanation I could come up with is that maybe I had double ovulated that month and the earlier egg that implanted didn't stick.

As the pregnancy progressed, we were anxious for the ultrasound appointment. Shortly after Lauren was born, I had a very profound dream of a girl with pretty long, blond hair that flowed at her waist. She was about five years old and in my dream she was skipping away from me. I started to call for her by name, Eden. She stopped then turned her head to look behind her towards me, smiled then skipped away. I caught a glimpse of what she looked like. I took a mental picture and embedded the image in my mind thinking I would recognize her again someday. Seeing what my own daughter Lauren looks like now, Eden was very similar, but different. Eden had a long, narrow face and a similar smile. The rest of her features were uniquely different. I had a feeling that I had just gotten a glimpse of a future daughter. So, to our astonishment of having subsequent boy after boy after boy, I began to question who this little girl was and why she wasn't coming to our family like I had thought she would. Since Ian was born, I have felt very sure that our family was complete. So I struggled with who was Eden and why do I have such a strong connection to her?

After some inner searching for answers, I felt at peace knowing she does belong to us and was our first child that we had sadly lost at eight weeks. My feelings were confirmed when I looked up the word Eden in the thesaurus. I read the synonyms Heaven, Next World, Perfection, Paradise. With each word, I felt confirmation that my dream was not just any dream and that her name was not just any name. I know that she will be ours to raise someday and I feel honored to have been able to meet her in this life, if only in my dream. I humbly recognize that not many are blessed with the same privilege.

What I also know for sure is that all of my children were meant to be here and that they will grow to do big and important things. I have a lot of peace in knowing that our family feels complete now.

Ian's ONE!

Ok so it was a week ago and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it. Which, if you think about it, actually isn't so bad considering I have four tubs filled with pictures and mementos sitting under my bed, one for each child, still waiting to be scrapbooked.....someday. We didn't even do his "party" until Sunday the 23rd because I was worn out from our family Disneyland trip. And honestly, after three previous "first birthday extravaganzas" I'm feeling a little burned out...... poor kid. That last child syndrome is a big bummer.

I'll give you the Cliff's Notes version of his year in a nutshell.

March:
21st: Born weighing 7 pounds 15 ounces
Didn't have a name until our last day in the hospital
Spent first six weeks with jaundice and getting fun needle pokes.

April:
Ate. Slept. Pooped. Slept. Ate. Pooped. Ate. Slept.

May:
Saw first smiles and belly giggles
Ate. Slept. Pooped.

June:
Cut four teeth

July:
Got in to a noticeable eat/sleep pattern

August:
Turned over front to back and back to front

September:
Able to sit up on his own

October:
Survived a plane trip and week at DisneyWorld
Had fun celebrating Halloween as a puppy dog

November:
Lucky for mom and dad, started to crawl right after we returned from DisneyWorld
Got RSV

December:
Had no idea what Christmas was but sure loved the wrapping paper

January:
Easily entertained by big sister and brothers

February:
SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT!
Had first of two back to back ear infections and bronchitis

March:
Survived a slightly more difficult trip on mom and dad to Disneyland
Had second of two back to back ear infections minus bronchitis
Pretty close to walking all of the time which has not been encouraged by mom and dad. That last child syndrome thing again.
Turned ONE!

I'm too EXCITED to sleep......

Not because we'll be spending the day at Disneyland tomorrow, but because......

the new IPO will start trading!!!

And I will be ready with laptop in hand to place my order as soon as I can. Splash Mountain and the Dumbo ride will just have to wait...... sorry kids.

Didn't realize I was such a geek, eh?

A mom of a two year old should know by now

That if he doesn't want his pop tart broken in half

to make it easier to dunk in milk.....

HE DOESN'T WANT HIS

POP TART BROKEN IN HALF!

This is not to be confused with other days when he does want them broken in half, just on certain days when he feels like it and as the mom,

you're supposed to know whether it is a "break in half" day or not.

And the only way to make it all better is to tape it back together again.

Lesson learned.

And yes, that is colored marker stains all over his hands.

I didn't EVEN want to go there. Although, maybe they should have been my first clue how my morning was going to go.

And the winner is ...................

ME!

For the "Most Creative" cake!

And the prize isn't a seven day cruise for two. Something about "not being in their budget" blah blah blah. Instead, I won a $20 gift card to Charlestons.

I'll take it.

This is family award number two for being the "Most Creative". The last one was for my son's scarecrow competition in the fall.

If only I could be creative when it comes to meal planning and organization.

A new meaning of "Brokeback"

Jack brought home a flier earlier in the week about a Cake Decorating contest his school is having at a Rodeo fundraising something or other tomorrow. At first, I was tempted to enter but then realized we wouldn't even be able to go so I decided to forget about it. That is until my husband encouraged me to do it.

So I cowgirl'd up and did it.

There are supposed to be prizes for the best Rodeo theme, Best school spirit, Most creative etc. I tried to make something that would put us in as many categories as possible in order to hopefully win something. So, I went with a cowboy boot and a Rattler ( school mascot and school colors ) coming out of it.

Two days, seven cakes, two batches of frosting, a gazillion toothpicks, and a huge disaster of a neglected house later.......

Unless the prize is a seven day cruise for two........

I'm left wondering if it was really worth it.

Like was the time it took to do this:

Really worth this:

Or was working on this:

Worth the mess like this:

Or was I doing this:

Instead of preventing this: ( that is pieces of fondant that the two year old left on the oven for the baby to spend a hour picking off and eating )

Was two days of my life doing this:

Worth neglecting two days worth of doing this:

Jury is still out by the way. All I feel like I have to show for all of the effort is a hand still stained with red food coloring, a weekends worth of house cleaning and an aching back.

"Don't worry about bitin' off more than you can chew. Your mouth is probably a whole lot bigger'n you think. " Texas Bix Bender

Redneck Pool table

Don't you wish there was an alternative to not only a less expensive option but also not having to have a pool table that takes up a whole room?

Well look no further! If a seven year old can build it.....so can you!

The only supplies required are cups ( Styrofoam or plastic work best as opposed to mom's nice glass glasses ), masking tape and a small plastic ball.

Then enjoy hours of fun!

Birthday Party Etiquette 101

1. If you are throwing your child a party, don't expect the parents to drive 20 minutes each way to drop their child off in a skeevy part of town at say, Skateland, then make the parent "hang around" the skeevy part of town for 2 1/2 hours to pick their child up. Either have the party at your house, or drive the kids yourself.

2. If you are throwing your child a party, be sure to order enough pizza for everyone to at least have one slice.

4. If you are throwing your child a party and the invitation says it is from 10am until 12:30pm, a parent should expect that the party is ending at 12:30pm. Not earlier.

3. If you are throwing your child a party at a hypothetical place possibly mentioned above, it is important to stay until all of the parents have arrived to pick their child up. It's not proper etiquette to leave a seven year old by herself at a place like Skateland located in a skeevy part of town. It is irresponsible and unacceptable.

4. Don't allow your child to go to any more parties that don't take place at the host's home.

Baby's first words

Ian got the boot Monday from Mommy and Daddy's room. He is now in the crib in the nursery. You may ask WHY we are just putting him in his own room when he's going to be a year old next month.

I'll tell you why. We're lazy.


It's just too easy to keep him in the pack and play at the end of our bed instead of up a flight of stairs and down a hall. It also makes the middle of the night feedings easier. ( Yes, we are still doing that too ). Remember.....L.A.Z.Y.

I put a dark sheet up in his window so his new room is nice and dark. His afternoon naps have been a solid three hours! Do you know how much you can do in three hours!?! Uninterrupted?!? Can you even comprehend the magnitude? I had time to exercise AND shower.

It has been Heaven.

So today, I turned on the baby monitor to be sure to hear him if he woke up. A couple of hours into his nap, I heard some rustling and stirring in the monitor. I thought he was getting ready to wake up. Then I heard this........

"Mama! Mum Mum Mum. Mamamama....."

Oh my goodness! I heard my baby's first words! He's a genius! An Einstein in the making! I started to calculate in my head how much a Harvard or Stanford education would set us back. What if he's one of those who will graduate from High School at 12, College at 16 and Med School at 21? He could totally be a Doogie Howser! I loved watching Doogie! I thought how amazing it was that he said his first words before he even started to walk. Next thing I know, he'll be asking me to check his proofs of the Pythagorean theorem or type his thesis all before he's even potty trained! Am I really prepared for that?

I was utterly ( so to speak ) amazed to hear with such clarity the words my child prodigy was saying.

That is until I heard other voices in the background. Voices that didn't belong to any of MY kids. Then I heard a woman's voice. Again....not mine.


I really need to switch the baby monitor frequency once in a while. Oh well. I guess he can still go to Harvard someday.

For your pets listening pleasure

Songs on this tail-wagging CD include:

I'm your doggie

Scratch my back

I love food

Squeaky Deakey

and if you order now, you will receive the hit single

"Rover got run over by a Range Rover"

by the popular group The Sheepherders.

Pet lovers who bought Ask the Animals CD also bought Cat-a-tonic.

The CD with song titles such as

Cat Thinks He's a Dog

Felinicity

Litterbox Boogie

It's All About Me-Ow!

And of course, last years award winning song

"Kitty Knows More Than I Do"

by Catty

___________________________________

Albums coming soon:

For fish lovers: Opening a Can of Worms

For Horse lovers: Pony Up!

For Bird lovers: Crying Fowl

Let me just once again direct you here.

If you give a mouse to a second grader

My daughter's class at school has a fun tradition. Each week, a child is picked to be the "student of the week" and along with that recognition comes a bag filled with fun things to take home. It is centered around the theme from the book, "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie". Inside is a pet mouse just like the one from the book, the book "If you take a mouse to the movies" and a composition journal to write about your exploits with mouse.



My daughter's entries included a lot of time watching tv with mouse. Not only is that not very exciting, but it also shows how bad of a mom I really am. She was excited to have mouse for Valentine's Day.

As for the rest of the week......well, I thought I'd journal about the untold stories of mouse at our house:


If you give a mouse to a second grader, her two year old brother might think it was cute and decide to give it a milk bath in his bowl of leftover cereal ten minutes after it was home. And if you give it a milk bath, it might just get snatched up again by the two year old who will then run away with it. And if a two year old runs away with it, odds are the mouse will get lost. For a very long time. And if the mouse gets lost, the parents have to spend their evening looking in odd places to try and find it. They will look in the toy box and under the bed. They might even look in the garbage or out in the play house. And just as the parents are about to go to bed, the mouse might show up under the couch cushions.

The next day, if you give the mouse back to the second grader, you should tell her to take extra good care of it and be sure to hide it from her two year old brother. You also might tell your second grader to stop throwing the mouse so that it won't get smacked by the ceiling fan. When she's done throwing it, she will then decide it would be fun to take off all of its clothes just in case she wanted to lose those too.

Then she will hide the mouse and only bring him out of his hiding spot to play when she wants to show her friends how cute he is. She might even suggest taking it with her to the Friday night babysitting group but if mom was smart, she would tell her "NO!". The mouse will most likely stay hidden the rest of the week until the day before she needs to return him to school. And as soon as she brings him out of his hiding spot, her two year old little brother will find him. So the second grader will probably find an even better hiding spot for mouse. And when the next morning comes, the second grader will forget where her new hiding spot was. And if you forget where your new hiding spot was, mommy and daddy spend the already late morning because they overslept looking for mouse and will probably end up using naughty words.

But soon mouse is found and all is well with the world. Mom and dad are probably relieved to not have the stress and saying, "Where's mouse?" or "Do you know where mouse is?" every hour. And chances are, mouse will be sent to the home of another second grader who will treat it the same way.

You know it's been a while since you've posted

when you have to sign in to your blogger account.

sigh.


Life has been busy.

And tomorrow is Super Tuesday. Whatever your political affiliation may be, personally, I will be secretly hoping that my MoJo ( or MoVoFoRo = Mormons Voting For Romney ) will smack McCain's arrogant smirk upside the head by losing to Romney in his home state.

And speaking of losers, I'll probably watch American Idol too.

Nothing like an exercise DVD

like this one to show you how white and rhythm less you really are.

I'll be the first to admit that it's marketing at its finest. Slap a picture of a half naked Will Smith look- a- like on the front showing off his sweaty six pack. I mean, who wouldn't think that it genuinely works? Or at the very least, work better than the other "Abs of Steel" or "Six Minute Six Pack" videos collecting dust on my shelf.

Let me give you a tip. I can get a better workout typing a blog about "Hip Hop Abs" than actually doing it. I quickly learned that arms, legs and abs weren't meant to move in opposing, abnormal directions. I knew I wasn't doing something right when less than five minutes into the workout, "Shaun T" was sweating like a pig and I might as well have vacuumed.

So as not to seem like I didn't give this DVD a chance, let me break it down in a slanguage that some with the exception of my spellchecker, might understand.

---------------------------------------

Da DVD is whack, yo. Don't go spend'n Benjamins on it y'all 'cause it ain't kickin it like in the crib yo. True dat. But I want to give a shout-outz to the fly girlz yo. You go girlz! Word. So, instead of git'n dis DVD, go 'n git u some nice bling bling. If u know what I'm saying, give me a shout-outz and say, "Hey......Ho.....Hey......Ho!"

------------------------

Guess tomorrow I'll vacuum.

Big Boy Room

Here's some pictures of my latest project. Erik's new BIG BOY ROOM! Yes. We still need to buy him an actual bed......right now he's still in the crib. But this will be his bedding:

His room is a Firetruck theme. I painted what's supposed to look like a ladder around the center of the wall. The red fire hats are those plastic ones that my husband got from a local restaurant called the Firehouse Grill by his work. Makes for a good decorating on a budget idea!



I still need to make the curtains but the material is sitting on the floor. One thing at a time........






Erik thinks his new big boy room is "Tool!"

You MIGHT be the parent of a two year old if.......

If you've ever had a whole can of Quaker Oatmeal poured all over your kitchen and family room floor in the time it takes to fold a load of laundry.....you might be the parent of a two year old.

( side note: Why is it a child is quick to tattle on another for looking at them funny, but when a child is pouring the contents of a new oatmeal can on the floor, no one thinks to say a word to mom? This, kids, is one of those times when tattling is perfectly justified. )

If you've ever had your kitchen rugs thrown into a pile so as to not hinder the moving of the kitchen chair to the counter in order to find the candy stash....you might be the parent of a two year old.

If you've ever had a baby look like this thirty minutes into their normal two hour nap.....you might be the parent of a two year old.

.

I have a new motto:

Will trade two year old for chocolate cheesecake.

Engrish 101

I've been told that English is hard to learn as a second language. One reason is because many of our letters have multiple sounds like the letter "C" for example. Is it "c" as in Cat? Or "c" as in Cinderella? Or is it "c" as in how my 2 year old pronounces "c" which makes a word like "cool" sound like "Tool"?


We had a foreign exchange student from Norway many years ago named Oyvind. I remember he had a hard time understanding English phrases such as "Going to hell in a handbasket" or "The writing's on the wall" and probably more fitting, "What we have here is a failure to communicate."



So I can understand why English would be hard to learn.

To further emphasize this fact, my husband gets a Christmas card every year from a friend he knows in Japan. And every year I have myself a good chuckle at the Japanglish straight out of a Google translation website as I try to read and decipher the point she is trying to make. This year's letter was no exception. In fact, I think I laughed so hard I had tears..... I thought I'd share a little with you:

"My brother love painting. It went to Heian Jingu Shrine. A red is very beautiful. There was an event once in 20 year said, "OKIHIKI" in Ise Jingu Shrine. It builds a shrine once 20 year or it gets it. Ise Jingu Shrine where the god in the emperor family is enshrined purifies the tree used when rebuilt."

This is when I lost it:

"It went to the zoo in the family after an interval of years how many. It was not put in a dull as of old cage. It was bred as much as possible in the condition similar to nature. We enjoyed it like the child."


And that, my friend, is where we get the English phrase, "What we have here is a failure to communicate."

Ahhh. Christmas Break

When does school start again?

This is a conversation that took place at my house today:

Me: Lauren, STOP kicking your brother!
( Lauren continuing to kick and brother yelling "OWww!")
Lauren: NO!
Me: YES! And you will spend 5 minutes in your room for every time you tell me "no."
Lauren: NO!
Me: 10 minutes
Lauren: NO!
Me: (flustered )20 minutes
Lauren: NO! Hey! It's 15 minutes! We're counting by 5's!
Me: Fine. 15 minutes!
Lauren: NO!
Me: You're up to 20 minutes now.........

(silence as she contemplates her predicament then picture me dragging her up the stairs to her room because she won't go on her own.)

After about 5 minutes, she comes back downstairs thinking her punishment is over. I told her she had 2 choices. She either spent the rest of her 15 minutes up in her room or she had to pay me a dollar.

She went upstairs then came back downstairs and handed me a dollar and told me she better be extra good because she didn't have any more dollars.

I'm thinking I just found me a new part-time job!