Superpaige's Pad

The Trials of a Busy Mom

Author: Superpaige (Page 115 of 180)

Wow, I did it!

October 28, 2007 / / 6 Comments

Yesterday I did my very first 5K! Shocker, I know. But I wasn’t in there for the competition of the thing, but simply to prove to myself that I could actually do it. It started back when I walked four miles to my friend’s house and back, and my friend Lisa saw me as I was coming home. She suggested this Halloween 5K, and that wouldn’t it be fun to get a group of us together and enter this race. Well, fun was not the word I would have used, but she did get me thinking. So I’ve been trying to include 2-3 mile walks in my routine, and this past week I was hoping to do 3 miles three times. I actually didn’t reach that goal, but I did 2 1/2 miles on the treadmill on Monday, and then 3 miles on Wednesday. So I knew I could physically walk that far (3.2 miles or something like that), but I don’t go fast at all.

So we went over to the rec center last night, donned in my workout gear. We picked up our t-shirts, pinned on our numbers and got our free glowey necklaces. No costume for me, although I did wear a blinky LED necklace, and a blinking hat to be festive. One of my friends showed up in a purple wig, and the other was wearing a cute little witch costume over her clothes. Some of the people there were REALLY dressed up! There was a member of the band Kiss (he looked just like the one on the right, only skinnier), complete with tight black pants, white makeup, long black hair and major platform shoes. I don’t know how he did the race in those shoes, but I guess he did.

There were two guys dressed as “snorkelers”. They had on full body wetsuits, masks and snorkel gear, and both were holding inflated innner tubes. I asked one of them if he had run the whole race with that snorkel tube in his mouth and he said he did. He said the hardest part was that the mask kept fogging up and he couldn’t see where he was going in the dark. He just followed the glow necklace of the person in front of him.

I had already been assured by one of my neighbors that she was NOT running, and she wanted to make sure she’d have someone to walk with and not be left in the dust by our running friends. I agreed to walk with her, since I wouldn’t be doing any running, either. But this friend walks 3 and a half miles every morning with her dog. What was I thinking? As we started out, we did actually jog for a while, but that was mainly so we wouldn’t be run over by the throngs of people behind us. After everyone spread out we slowed to a brisk walk. Her brisk walk is about my fastest walk possible, with a few paces of jogging thrown in every once in a while to keep up.

I’m sure I was not the most pleasant walking partner (she’s used to the company of her dog, after all), but we talked the whole time, and she got a good laugh when we went through the cemetary and a very very tall man crept up on us to scare us. I kept asking her if she thought we were almost done, and when the people directing us said we were just over 1/2 way, I said a little too loudly “You have GOT to be kidding!” But I made it. I did the whole thing, and came in under 50 minutes. My friends were there cheering at the finish line, and it made me feel good. I had not tripped, passed out or gotten lost along the way. Oh, and I came in #245, if that means anything. 245 out of what, I do not know, but I know there WERE people behind me, so I wasn’t dead last, at least.
When it was over, we went back into the building to find some water and eat a banana. We also picked up our little goodie bags with raffle tickets in them and then went to see if our ticket matched any on the prizes. Oh, Goodie!, I thought–contests! Yes, I won……a water bottle. Wow. Since there weren’t many people left, they let us pick a second goodie bag and see if that had a winning ticket, so I picked another one. Sure enough, I won another water bottle, so I gave it to a friend. DaNae, who had been one of the ones pushing us to do this, WON first place in her age category (which was also my age category, and I looked to be about 17th, by the way). She was very excited about this win, and assured us she was going to mount this ribbon and frame it.

So, overall it was a good experience. I would probably do it again, if pressed upon to do so. I’m proud of myself that I could actually do something like this. So, if I, an almost 40 year old overweight, out of shape mother of 5 can do it, you could do it, too.

Pictures

October 26, 2007 / / 1 Comment

I’ve had some pictures I’ve been wanting to post for a while, so today’s the day.

Does this ever happen to your rolls? I’ve had three cans explode in the past few months. Weird.

Remember my cool playground cover that I sewed in the spring? Well, here’s how it looks now. It didn’t even last 6 months before the wind shredded it! Frustration.

Have you even seen the bathrooms at the Grand America Hotel? They are fabulous!

Here’s the tomato juice that we put up this year. It makes the best taco soup!

Here’s the big big tv in it’s new spot after we got things organized.

Of course to get to that point, first things looked like this: and my kitchen table looked like this, since we had to take everything out of the shelves and cupboards, and since we lost the center section, there’s that much stuff that didn’t have a home.

And here’s a couple of my favorite pictures from Ryan’s birthday. We were driving to St. George that day, and we stopped at a little Mexican Restaurant in Cedar City for his birthday dinner. The food was NOT great, and I wouldn’t recommend it, except for the birthday treatment. They brought out fried ice cream and sang and put the birthday sombrero on Ryan. All the kids loved that! and even Mom got a turn to wear it!

And if you still haven’t seen enough pictures of our family, feel free to click here to see Disneyland pictures!

Ummm, Bleach

October 24, 2007 / / 4 Comments

My bathroom has been smelling a bit like a four year old boy and his friends frequently use it for the past few days.  So today, instead of going to the store to return the two pairs of pants that I bought for my poor flood wearing son (you should see him at church, the poor thing.  He’s grown out of all church pants!)–the size 14’s that are not big enough for my 13 year old son.  What? Anyway, I decided to stay home and clean the bathroom.  And it’s a good thing, I did, since that same flute forgetting son called me and asked if I could bring him his flute (AGAIN!), and since I’m coming, would I mind bringing him his lunch?  Errg.  Anyway, I did get that bathroom cleaned.  And it smells so good!  Don’t you just love it when the whole bathroom is clean?  The toilet, sink, shower door, mirror and even the floor are all clean.  Until the kids get home at 3:00.  So, if you were planning on visiting me in the next hour and a half, you would be treated to a nice, clean, crisp, bleachy smelling bathroom.  After 3, all bets are off. Now I’ve got to go and vacuum the family room–hooray!

Works for me–post it notes

October 24, 2007 / / 6 Comments

While looking at my son’s grades on powerschool and realizing all the assignments he has not turned in, I came upon an idea.  Instead of printing out assignment lists for each class, which is yet more paper for him to lose in his backpack, I grabbed a stack of post it notes and just jotted down each missing assignment on each post-it.  He is then able to take those notes and when he finds  the assignment buried deep in his backpack, he sticks the note on that assignment and can show it to me, so I can check it out.  It seemed somehow easier for him to manage those little notes, and he has a visual reminder of what still needed to be done.  The assignments that he couldn’t find, he stuck the reminders on his binder.

I also love post-it notes for leaving reminder messages for the kids in the mornings.  “Take a shower”, “don’t forget to wear warm clothes today” or even “I love you”.

So, that’s my works for me idea for today. For more great ideas, visit Rocks in my Dryer.

What’s your dream job?

October 23, 2007 / / 5 Comments

You know when you are a kid people ask you what you want to be when you grow up? I wanted to be a veterinarian. Then I wanted to have a pet store and call it ‘Paige’s Pet’s’. Then I wanted to be an actress and a singer. Then I wanted to be a teacher.

Now I’m a mom. It’s really a combination of all of those jobs, along with a doctor, psychologist, maid, chauffeur, cook, party planner, nanny, wet nurse, costume designer, tutor, and personal assistant. I really enjoy my job as a mother. I love my kids, and I get joy out of keeping my house running semi-smoothly, and taking care of my family.

But if I had my choice…my dream job, right now it would be…

a talk show host!

I would love to have Oprah’s job. Or Ellen’s job. Or even Howie Mandell’s job. Of course, you kind of have to already be famous to be able to have your own talk show, so I guess I’m out of luck.  But I would have a blast talking with people, giving things away, and generally saying clever things that my  writers write for me.  I think I could do a good job.  Would you watch my show?  (just say yes, since it won’t ever be happening)

But that leads me to my question for you today.  What’s your dream job?  Do you already have it?  What would you really love to do if you could?  Be a firefighter?  A doctor?  Operate Space Mountain at Disneyland?  What’s your dream job?

wrong number

October 22, 2007 / / 1 Comment

The other night, the phone was ringing. I was asleep already, but from the depths of my grogginess, I heard it ring a couple of times before my non asleep husband who was working downstairs answered it. Then I heard it ring again. Hmmm. I went back to sleep. When it rang again at around midnight, I knew something was wrong. Someone is hurt. Someone MUST be in the hospital or dieing, right? I stumbled downstairs to ask Ryan what was going on.
WRong number, he said. What? Then why does he keep calling once he knows it’s a wrong number? Ryan said he didn’t speak English and he kept telling the guy that this is the wrong number and to Please stop calling, but he kept on calling us. And he’s called again the next day! And the next! I’m wondering how I can block just that one number so he can’t call us again. Do any of you phone savvy people know how to do that?
I’ve also been receiving calls from the Census Bureau. They sent me that huge packet to fill out, and of course I didn’t get to it right away. Then they started calling and asking if I could just spend a half an hour and answer the questions over the phone. Well, that motivated me to just fill out the packet and send it in, so that they would stop calling me. But then even AFTER I sent it in, they kept calling. We haven’t received your information, and it’s getting close to the deadline, they would say. BUT I sent it IN!

Some things I don’t want to do today but have been putting them off until the last minutes and absolutely HAVE to get done

October 19, 2007 / / 2 Comments

I’m not ALWAYS a procrastinator. But mostly. I have this huge list of things that just need to get done “sometime” and it looks like “sometime” is now today. In my defense, we have been on vacation, then I had a sick child, and yesterday I had play group with 6 little boys at my house. So I haven’t had a lot of time to run errands. So today’s the day. After I drop the boys off for preschool, I need to:

1-Go pay my stupid ticket and register for traffic school. I’m SO looking forward to this. GRRRRR.  (Done. Paid, and registered for dumb traffic school)
2-Go to Hale Center Theater and pick up some free passes for reflections. (Well, I WENT there, but the person I needed to get them from had “just left”, so I’m have to get them some other time)
3-Hopefully go to Sizzler and pick up some free gift certificates for reflections. If the lady calls me back in time. (She didn’t call me back at all, and when I tried to call while I was in Orem, their line was constantly busy)
4-Go to the school and get some reflections reminders copied, then put them in the teacher’s boxes.

5-Go to the grocery store and buy carrots, snack size baggies, and yogurt. Oh, and toilet paper. Must not forget that one.

6-Organize a quartet to sing in church on Sunday. Yes, I know it’s Friday and I should have done this at the beginning of the week. So sue me. And then we need to get together and practice this thing sometime before Sunday. I have it all worked out in my head, I guess I just forgot to actually call people and let them know that they were singing with me. (Well, I have the accompanist, and have a tenor and a bass, and I’m working on an alto.  I think we may have to practice Sunday morning before Church)
7-Set my tivo to record Music and the Spoken Word for Sunday, since my sister Amy is doing the art for the spoken word part again. Oh, and if you missed seeing the Bells on Temple Square on last Sunday’s broadcast, that will be replayed this Sunday at 8 am and 4 pm on KBYU. (SET)
8-Finish calling the moms and organizing the 1st grade Halloween party. Oh, and make sure that it’s not at the same time as the 6th grade Halloween play. (Left some messages)
9-Sew the curtains for my office. (While I didn’t start on the curtain sewing yet, I did stop at the fabric store and buy some fabric for the family room curtains.  So that should count, right?)
10-Start on Natalie’s Halloween costume. Yes, I know I’m getting a late start, but I thought all the kids could just wear costumes that we already have. Silly me.

11-Find some kind of a musical concert that Cole can attend before next Thursday so that he can write up a concert report form.

12-Clean out the crock pot from yesterday’s dinner. (DONE, and put away)
13-Call other businesses and beg for free stuff for reflections. Even though I already sent them letters, I’m not getting any responses. So I have to get on the phone and start begging. I hate begging. (I talked to and picked up free kids meal certificates from TGIFridays and Chili’s.  I left messages and/or requests with several others)
So, there you have it, folks. My all important list. I’ll come back here and update when I get these things crossed off, so I can share in my joy. Wish me luck. And good luck on your lists today, too.

Metal Mouth

October 18, 2007 / / 3 Comments

My little girl has braces! She went in on Tuesday and got the braces on the front four teeth (top and bottom). She’s also got some little spacers in the back so she can get a herbst (?) appliance put on in two weeks, that will help pull her bottom jaw forward and help even out her overbite.

So far she’s not complaining about pain too much, she just can’t figure out what to eat.    Here’s the before, during and after shot of her:      

I’m sorry, but I honestly have no idea who you are

October 17, 2007 / / 1 Comment

There I was, walking out of a store with a lovely diet coke and a chicken ceasar salad for later. Yum. Up drives a silver van, and the lady driving is waving. Oh, maybe I know her, I think. I wave back. She stops. She rolls down the window and leans over to say, “Hi, Paige! How are you!?”

“Fine! How are you?” I ask. She knows my name. I MUST know her. How do I know her?

“Are you still in the Bells on Temple Square?” she asks.

“Yes, I am,” I reply. Still wracking the brain. Come on, brain. Who is this? Is she from my ward in Lehi? PTA? High School? Where do I know her from?

“Oh, I watched that concert when it was on tv, and saw you. That must be fun,” she says.

Who IS THIS PERSON? I am trying to figure it out. She knows I’m in bells, she recognized me on tv… “Oh, it is so much fun. This year’s guest artist is going to be the King’s singers,” I say trying to figure it all out.

“The nurse practitioner in our pediatrician’s office’s brother is in that choir with you,” she says. She told me that name, and sure enough, I know the nurse’s brother. He stands behind me every week. But heck if I can figure out who this nice and friendly woman is.

We wrap up our conversation and I walk away. “Who was that?” Megan asks me.

“I honestly have no idea,” I told her.

In driving home, I was waiting for it to click in. You know, that light bulb moment that you sometimes get AFTER the moment when you need the information has past? It didn’t come. I’m still wondering. So, if that was you, and you were talking to me in the parking lot the other day, I am so sorry I didn’t remember your name. Why don’t you e-mail me and remind me, because it’s really bugging me that I can’t figure it out.

A Disney Recap

October 16, 2007 / / 10 Comments

We are back from our vacation! We had a great time.  We did some things right and some things wrong on this trip, and to share what I’ve learned and enlighten you so that you don’t make the same mistakes, here we have our list.

Good things

**I bought lots of snacks from Costco before we went. The most helpful were the Sunny Delight bottles. They have the little pop up drink tops, and the kids could keep them in their fanny packs and have a drink when they wanted. They also enjoyed the granola bites, ritz bits packages, and the fruit snacks. Plus, then we didn’t have to spend as much money in the park on snacks.

**I packed extra socks and at least two pairs of shoes for each child, so that if one pair made their feet hurt one day (or got soaking wet) they had another pair to wear the next day.

**We stayed with some friends of ours in St. George on the way down. The kids LOVED playing with friends, it was a free place to stay (with breakfast included), and it was fun to see them again. They also invited us to ditch our hotel and stay with them on the way back, but we didn’t want to impose TOO much. When they insisted we come for dinner, though, we readily agreed.

**Birthday badges. Always a fun thing, and then you can get those free tortillas from the tortilla factory in California Adventure.

**Fast passes. Because there was a mix-up when we were entering and they wouldn’t let us use the tickets I had bought on line and sent us to guest services and then guest services told us we didn’t need to come to them, but should be able to use those passes at the main gate and it was a general pain and a run around (whoo–long run on sentence, isn’t it?), the lovely Jen at guest services gave me a fast pass for any ride we wanted for the whole party. It wasn’t the magical fast pass by any means (which I tried and was SO close to getting TWICE, but no go on that one), but it saved us some time going on Space Mountain (and by “us”, I mean everyone ELSE who went on space mountain. Although I did brave quite a few yucky rides this time, that isn’t one of them). We also used fast passes on lots of other rides, saving us lots of time, I’m sure.

**Meeting friends! I have a roommate from college who lives about 3 hours away from Disneyland, and they have annual passes. So, when I ask if they’d like to meet us, their answer has always been yes. I guess they go about once a month to Disneyland, and they don’t get tired of it–imagine that! So, they met us there on Friday, and their two kids are the same ages as Cole and Megan. They had a BLAST together, and it really gave them something extra to look forward to. On Saturday night, when John was asleep and Jenna had been begging to just go back to the hotel for about an hour and a half, we decided to call it quits for the day (we’d only been there for 11 hours, I can’t believe they would be tired!). Our friends were nice enough to keep Cole and Megan with them for another 3 hours. Then they didn’t have to be slowed down by “the little kids” and could go on all the fun rides they wanted (at least until California Adventure closed. Then they realized that we had taken their passes with us, so they could not go over to Disneyland without those passes and just made their way out of the park). I’m glad that our kids can be such good friends, even if it’s just for those couple of days at Disneyland.

**We rode three rides that I had never ridden before. The finding Nemo ride, which is new, of course, was one. We ONLY had to wait an hour for that one, and apparently that was a “short” wait. Everytime we saw the line or talked to anyone else who had waited, they had to wait longer. Another ride was Peter Pan. I don’t know why I’ve never ridden that ride before. There were probably long lines and we didn’t think it was worth it. But that was a fun ride! Same thing with Pinnochio’s Daring adventure, or whatever that one is called. First time for that one, too.

**And the Block Party Bash. I just LOVE that parade! There was no one in front of us, so John and his little cousin, and all the little kids were just dancing the night away with Boo and Sulley. It was so much fun! If you’ve never watched that one, it’s one to catch. And I love those army guys!
**Earplugs. With seven people in a hotel room, it’s nice to have a set of earplugs to drown out the noise of everyone breathing. Not that I want them to stop breathing, I just want them to be quiet about it.
**Ziplock bags. Helpful for keeping your stuff dry when you ride the Grizzly rapids ride, and also great for all those snacks.

**Character breakfast. We splurged on a fancy character breakfast on Sunday at the PCH grill. Lilo and Stitch and Minnie and Max were there to take pictures with (the only character pictures we have, by the way, since they all had extremely long lines). It was also a fabulous buffet, with everything imaginable to eat for breakfast, even chicken nuggets! I don’t really consider chicken nuggets to be a breakfast food, but there were some members of our party who enjoyed them for breakfast. After making the kids skip meals and living only on snacks for a few meals of our trip, it was nice to be able to say, “Sure, have more bacon if you’d like,” for once. And eat they did. I think Jenna had about four pieces of sausage, Cole had about a pound of bacon, and lots and lots of Mickey waffles and pancakes. Even though it was a LOT of money to spend on breakfast, it was fun, and I’m glad we did it once. Besides, then we could skip lunch, since we were all so very full.

Some Not so Good things

**I bought some “Sparkling Rain” flavored carbonated water (a whole case of it) and NOBODY liked it. Yuck. I still have most of a case of it, if anyone’s interested.

**Jackets. Or the lack of them. For some reason one of the kids didn’t end up packing a jacket, even though I’m pretty sure I put it in the bag for them. So on the cold or rainy days, it was not good for her. She had to wear just a long sleeved shirt over her t-shirt, and then on the rainy day, she had to wear a jacket of John’s that was too small for her. I wish I had made sure that every single person had a sweatshirt, a jacket AND a hat.

**Lines. As I said before, we took 1/2 of Utah with us to the park, and the lines were long and obnoxious. Enough said.

**Traffic Jams. We hit some kind of traffic jam on the freeway going through Las Vegas, and we should have just gotten off. Thinking it would clear up any minute, we stayed on the freeway. For an hour. Dumb. We should have just gotten off right then, drove through the city, and then gotten back on.

**Stroller rental. Even if you can get a free stroller rental in the park, you really should just bring your own from home, anyway. My brother-in-law, who we were traveling with (he won a trip, too!), told me that he could get two free stroller rentals each day with his Disney Visa, so we wouldn’t need to bring a stroller. Great, I thought. Less to pack. But you can’t get that stroller until you are inside the park, so what do you do with all the snacks, jackets, and general crapola that you schlep into the park with you until then? You carry it, that’s what. And what do you do with the child when he falls asleep in the park and you can’t take the stroller out of the park? You carry him, that’s what. So, even if you CAN get a free stroller rental, you really should just bring your own if you have a child 4 or younger. I should have thought that one out better.

Overall it was a fabulous trip! We had so much fun with our kids, and I am so glad we were lucky enough to go. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with the washing machine.

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