Reading Material

Would you eat a 747 to prove your love to someone? I just started reading this book because it caught my eye at Goodwill. (Yes, I buy books at Goodwill sometimes. I know I'm cheap. I like to call it "frugal".) Anyway, it's not a bad read. Not to give the book away, but this guy grinds up pieces of the plane and puts it in everything he eats and drinks as he tries to set a world record. I don't think I could ever go that far for love. (Sorry, sweetie.)

Until next time --

Mommy and Me Yoga

I don't get yoga. Tawna and I went to a mommy and me yoga class with Emmie and Malee yesterday. It was weird. On the bright side, I was getting to spend one-on-one time with my middle child. Of course, every time I leaned forward she climbed on my back and other times we kept knocking heads. But it was good.

Many of the mommies were not watching their "me's", so we had a little visitor coming to our mat. She was preceded by a horribly stinky diaper smell. And then SHE WOULDN'T LEAVE! I seriously thought I was going to pass out from the smell. She just sat right next to us and smiled. I kept saying "Go find your mama, little girl" in the nicest tone possible, but I was getting frustrated by the minute. Did her mom have ANY idea that her child was stinking up the place? Finally Tawna saved the day by taking the little girls hand and going around until she found the mom. (Who didn't have the decency to even give Tawna a pleasant look.) At least she took her kid out after that for a diaper change.

The instructor was sweet, but she kept calling out weird things in her chirpy little voice like, "In this position you should be feeling very organic." Huh? I felt like taking a nap; did that count? I also felt very theatrical; as if we were filming the next Karate Kid movie. Only we never saw any more action. We just stood there like wobbly cranes while the clock slowly ticked.

After maybe 7 or 8 minutes of class Emmie and Malee were off rolling around in the corner of the room. As I glanced at them enviously, I decided my yoga days were over. For good. :)

Great Day

Yesterday was awesome. The kids and I went in the morning and met with our home team (minus the husbands) to go swimming -- indoors, of course! I got most of the house cleaned while the kids napped and then got dressed up to go out with Ethan. He wanted to go on a date, so we had a delicious dinner at P.F. Changs. It was so relaxing, and very different from our experience at Applebees earlier in the month! Then my very patient and sweet husband went with me to the new scrapbooking store; Archiver's. I think he felt a little conspicuous. :) It was the last day to use the coupon they had mailed out so of COURSE we had to go! It was kind of weird shopping for scrapbooking stuff with him a foot behind me the entire time, but I was still very happy to have his company. (Thanks babe!) I'm definitely going to have to go try one of their scrapbooking nights soon. Thanks also to my parents for watching the kids! They loved every minute of it and so did we. :)

We're going to have to do this date night thing a little more often . . . but this next time I'm guessing we'll be dropping by Cabela's.

Watch What You Teach Them

Allison is into rhyming lately. Sometimes she gets it; sometimes not. She was being a goofball today at breakfast and Ethan teased her, saying "Allie, you're such a nerd!" Her response? "Daddy, you're such a turd!" She didn't even know that she had used a real word, so Ethan got to explain it was a word and it wasn't the nicest one to go around saying.

Kids!

Perspective

Yesterday I found a fingernail in the toaster,
Today the dryer yields just seven socks.
Ah, mysteries of life:
Whence fingernails?
Where socks?
Where are the mates?
And why not six or eight?
I long to search for Holy Grails
Or even joust at windmills. . .
Instead, I rewash glasses
Left less than spot-free
By eager childish hands
And hang sheets out on windy days
And never do catch sight
Of one brave armored night.
But when a little boy thanks God at night
For “the best mommy in the world” –
Strange windmills lose their charm
And I’m content
To fetch a grail of water
Before he goes to sleep.
Quixote, wait another year!
I still am needed here.
-- Joy Jacobs

Car Salesmen

Finally deciding you really need a minivan is bad enough, but now we have to shop for one??? Great. That means car salesmen. That means pages from various Thrifty Nickels strewn about the house, concentrated in the master bathroom. It means hours searching eBay and Craig’s List and autotrader.com and cars.com and so on. It definitely means giant spreadsheets will begin to form, calculating the life expectancy of various models and charting the estimated cost per mile. My master spreadsheet already won’t fit on any two pieces of paper I’ve ever seen, but who would ever print this garbage anyway?

Raise your hand if you’ve ever researched a car, seen that car on a sales lot, asked a salesman for the price, and then lost consciousness when he quoted a figure several thousand smackers above the most ambitious of blue books. Did I mention I hate shopping for cars?

Saturday we thought maybe we’d found something. A trade-in just hours old, maybe minutes, with stickers still decorating the back window and evidence of a very well-fed child army mashed into the carpet in the back. I quickly assumed the “interested buyer” pose, the automotive shopping equivalent of Wayne’s “can I help you” guitar riff. The salesman appeared almost instantly, in a cloud of black smoke if memory serves. I swear I caught the last bit of his transformation into human form, but I can’t really be sure. They’re sneaky that way. Anyway, I steeled my nerves and asked the standard “how much”, which was followed by absolutely nothing helpful from him. I guess he didn’t have enough time to figure out how much they could take me for, so there just wasn’t a price for me that day. A million bucks? No good. After all, what if I had two million?

Private sellers are basically the same thing minus training. The biggest difference is that evidently private seller vehicles are all filled with gold and precious jewels. Probably left there by a rich old grandmother. And of course when you make any offer lower than the asking price, you have personally offended the seller and his grandmother and possibly her lost jewels. Blue book? Guess not, his is green.

All this aggravation, and the prize is a MINI VAN!?!?! Something very wrong has happened to my brain that this is an acceptable situation. Might as well apply for the handicap sticker now, we’re gonna need it.

--Ethan

This Is Why You Get a Babysitter

Saturday night we went to Applebee's to use a gift certificate I had gotten for my birthday. We have always taken the kids with us when we go to dinner and they are always great. They weren't exactly bad this time, but they were a challenge. First, Ryan wanted to gnaw on the table. He then was frustrated because he wasn't getting any good "bites". (Yes, this grossed me out but I did scrub the whole area with antibacterial wipes once I saw his intention.) So he was kind of fussy; not real loud, just fussy. Then Emmie and Allie started poking each other and arguing over whose milk belonged to who. None of this would have been a problem if we were sitting next to another family, but unfortunately they seated a very old man and woman next to us. They were (not-so-subtly) staring at us. Then Allie had to get out and go potty so I took her to do that. Right after that our food came and we prayed. Then Emmie accidently fell off the edge of the booth. If you know Emmie well at all you know that she is a DRAMA QUEEN. So of course she broke out into sobs and wails. I scooped her up and quickly took her out of the restaurant until she had calmed down. We got back and managed to have a few minutes without incident until Ryan got one of his little hands on my plate and pasta bowl. Before I could even stop him he had pulled them off the edge of the table! Luckily I had already put the pasta into a to-go box. You see, the waitress had already dropped our check. And to-go boxes. Do you think maybe she was trying to tell us something?

The dishes didn't break, the kids stopped making noise, and even though the old man was muttering something about "kids" the old woman did give me a sympathetic smile as walked out. What a night!

It's Always Nice to Win the Door Prize

Tony Roma's has great ribs. So needless to say, when I saw that we could have a free dinner there if we sat through a presentation I knew we couldn't turn it down.

The event started at 6:30 last night. We invited Alex and Laura to join us. We sat with the girls across from the guys; Eddie and Tawna came too and invited another couple. The menu gave us a choice between a FULL rack of ribs, chicken, prime rib, salmon, and a big salad. I'm embarassed to say I actually ordered the salad because it looked so good. It was really filling too -- with chicken, apples, walnuts, craisins, etc. It just seemed kind of silly with everything else that was available. But I don't regret it.

The presentation was all about fire safety and awareness. It was put on by Masterguard. I'd never really thought about fire safety much. I mean, the last time I did a fire drill was way back in middle school probably. It was a good wake-up call for Ethan and I because we've always just assumed we'd be able to get our kids out ourselves. We've always assumed the fire alarm would work perfectly (which apparently they don't usually do).

Besides the free food and a couple of kid-free hours with my hubby and friends, we won the door prize: a fire extinguisher! It does seem kind of funny for a door prize but after THAT presentation I'd be willing to bet there were more than a few people who would have taken it.

The best part of the night was walking out the front door of Tony Roma's with a fire extiguisher -- that was . . . different.

My late New Year's resolution: I am never burning a candle again.

. . . or using the dryer . . . or curling my hair . . . or cooking . . .

Brrr

So we turned our heat off several days ago when it felt like spring had arrived. We've had the windows open lately and it has been beautiful. Last night around 4:00 am Ryan was upset and I went in his room to make sure he was okay. His jammies had come unbuttoned and he had one little cold leg sticking out. I brought him back to bed with me just to warm him up. This morning when I woke up I decided to check the thermostat because I was FREEZING. Turns out the house was about 60 degrees! Yikes. That is way too cold. We didn't have any windows open either; it's just the way the weather gets around here. Thankfully all the kids were dressed warm for bed last night!

Why I Hate the Mall

Last night it was raining and we decided we wanted to get out of the house. So we thought, Let's go to the mall. That would be fun! Ha. Fun like going to the dentist. Anyway, we went and laid on the select comfort beds for a bit. The salesman gave Allie and Emmie balloons so they were happy and busy. We entered our names in a drawing for a free bed. It would be so much more convenient if we could just win one, wouldn't it?

Next we went to Mrs. Fields and picked out cookies. The girls split a big frosting-covered one; I had a toffee one; and Ethan had chocolate chip (I think). They were delicious and it was so sweet to see our little ones smile and giggle over their little cookie.

We were just starting to clean the cookie crumbs off the table when . . . thunk! A huge piece of gum came flying down from the upper balcony. Some teenage kid threw it at our table. Nice, huh? I was very grossed out.

We let the kids go see the puppies at the pet store next but Ethan and I were definitely ready to leave the mall. The more we looked around the more we felt out of place. I don't know if it was because it was Friday night or what; but it seemed like it was just teens milling around.

I think next time we'll just go to Target . . .

Notes From All Over

* Faith is playing over at our house all day today with Allison. We went to the Ivey's for a bit and watched some videos of their girls doing ballet. Allie still has troubles pronouncing her "th" sound so she calls her friend "Fafe".

* Last night our home team and the Crabb's home team got together and worked on finishing the infant nursery at church. If I don't paint again for a year I won't mind a bit.

* We are on the hunt for two things: 1) a vehicle to replace my Honda Accord, and 2) a new mattress. I can't believe we might actually buy a minivan. This is too disturbing to write about now. I may have to blog about that later. The mattress: this I am excited about. We bought the absolute cheapest thing when we were first married -- it's time for the thing to go. The question is . . . do we get the sleep number bed or what? I don't know a blasted thing about any of those beds.

* Ryan is suddenly ALL over the place. No, he's not crawling. Not quite, anyway. He does roll, and shimmy, and inch, and twist. Basically he gets where he wants to be. He is just dying to play with his big sisters. They are mothering him more than ever too. Allie has decided that he can be her "Baby Alive". (For people who do not play with kids all day, there is an ad running right now about a baby doll that actually drinks and does, um, other things.) Anyway, she is so excited that she has a Baby Alive. She even calls him that.

* Emmie's new favorite song is "Jesus Loves Me". She sings or hums it all the time. It occasionally is usurped by the Barney song, but mostly "Jesus Loves Me" is her chart topper. We think she has a good voice. But what do we know . . . we're just the parents.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a . . . hawkito?

Yesterday Allie was eating breakfast with Emmie and her dad, and she started making a funny noise. "Guess what that is, dad?" she asked. "What?" replied Ethan. "It's the sound a hawkito makes!" said Allie. When asked for more information, she replied that hawkitos live near coyotos. What a weirdo. :)

A Completely Useless New Skill

I forgot to mention when writing about our trip to Wildhorse Canyon that I discovered a new talent of mine. Ethan is crazy about this band called Fallout Boy and he wanted to listen to them on the way back. He told me the lyrics are incredibly hard to understand. As an example, he decided to play a little blurb that he and Phill and some of the guys on the worship team could not figure out no matter how many times they listened. Anyway, he played it and I guessed "we're going down, down in an earlier round, and Sugar we're going down swinging"? I swear I thought he was going to drive us off the road. Apparently those are the exact lyrics. The guys never even figured them out but had to look up the lyrics on the Internet. He was VERY surprised. We tried a few more lines and for some reason I didn't have any problem figuring them out. I'm not a big music person either, so this was crazy.

When I try to think of why I can decipher impossible lyrics, the only answer that I can come up with is I've spent the last four years with babies and toddlers! I'm guessing that's the only reason. :) Can any other moms relate?

A Budding Photographer

Since I am always taking pictures, it was inevitable that Allie would want to start doing the same. Here is one of her first attempts. I actually let her loose with the camera and then downloaded the photos later. This picture startled me at first! She was very proud of herself. This is a doll the Ivey's handed down to us and the girls love it.

Birthday Present

My birthday was last week and I love what Ethan gave me -- a new racquet and a great back pack that goes with it! It also came with 3 racqetballs and safety glasses. (I'm still debating whether or not to use them!) He specifically looked for a pink racquet; which I appreciate. He knows that I still want to feel like a girl when I'm all sweaty and gross. :)