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!