Author: Superpaige (Page 140 of 180)

This morning, after trying to ignore John for about an hour (it was 7:00), he came back into the bed and was humming and beeping and making all kinds of noises.  I turned over to see what he was up to, and he had a calculator and was pretend playing on “his gameboy”.

“I’m the blue guy, Mom,” he said.

“Can I be the red guy?”  I asked.

“No.  There’s only one guy,” he said.  Then he made crashing noises (spitting in my face as he did it) and said, “there goes that rock.”

This went on for several minutes, with me throwing out suggestions, like, “watch out for that rabbit,”  CRASH!, or “there’s a car,”  CRASH.  It was quite immaginative, and very fun to see him pretending like that.

Then I won’t have to feel bad that I’m too cheap to buy him a game boy. He can just play the calculator!

I forgot to welcome my friend Kristy to my little list of blogging friends over to the side there. Kristy and I worked together at my job of jobs…Coverstar, back when Ryan and I were first married and I couldn’t find a real job. I started as a receptionist and worked my way up to purchasing agent. Yep, I ordered, bolts, screws, powder coated anodized steel, sheet metal, gears, plastics, butt splices (one of my favorites), and other various things I knew NOTHING about. Kristy kept me sane, or she tried to. Obviously we both failed, and we are now both crazy. But I welcome Kristy to the blogosphere, and I invite you to go and read her site. She’s far more entertaining than I am.

Yesterday when I said I was going to go and clean a closet, well, I DID it. It took me over an hour and my garbage can is now full, but it’s done. Nice closet. Now about the rest of the house….hmmm.

I realized at yoga when I looked down at my shoes that I had taken off, that I was not wearing matching shoes. I have two pairs of the same Cherokee shoes, one blue and one black. I had on one of each. Oh, so I wore non matching shoes to yoga, that’s no big deal, until I realized that I wore those shoes all day yesterday. THOSE shoes. That pair of non matching shoes. All day. Oh the shame. My friend DeEtte said I must have too many shoes. Yes, I’ll admit that I have a lot of shoes, but I don’t think that’s the problem. I think the problem is that I’m an airhead.

It’s COLD out there this morning.

It’s COLD out there EVERY morning.

I’d like to be a good neighbor and go socialize with my new next door neighbors, but it’s too darn cold out there, and last time I walked over to chat they weren’t home. I’m not doing that again! I feel like I have to dress like a polar bear to go outside. Brrrrrrr!

But anyway, I’m participating in a little organization challenge, called Smart Habit Saturday, and you are supposed to chose one goal to work on for the week. I’ve chosen an organizational goal for this week, and that is to clean out one drawer every day. On Saturday I started by cleaning out one of the “junk drawers” in the kitchen. Yes, sadly, we have more than one. The one I tackled was where we had been putting owners manuals for appliances, etc. I thought I had put a gift certificate I got for my birthday in there, and I was actually looking for that. Didn’t find the gift certificate (darn), but I did find a host of other crap that got thrown away. I also took all the manuals and put them in a file, and now they are happily filed away, instead of sloshing all over in the drawer.

Today the kids are out of school, and it looks like we’ve had a closet explosion in the girls’ room. So, I’m going to work on that one. It’s not a drawer, but I’ll count it anyway. Hopefully I won’t get lost myself in there, and I’ll be able to accomplish it without going into anaphalactic (yes, I know it’s spelled wrong, but I really have NO idea how to spell it, so I’m just guessing) shock from being in their extremely messy room for more than a few minutes.

Oh, and can you tell me what movie our post title comes from today?

I’m pretty proud of myself that I actually have done my mile a day walking for the past week and a half. Most days it’s been 2 miles, to make up for the first two that I missed, and Sunday, which I took off. Yesterday as I was just finishing up with mile 2, the treadmill sped up considerably, nearly making me lose my balance, and then just stopped. What? So I turned it off, then on, and pushed start, and nothing. Same story today. No treading action on the treadmill. What am I going to do now?

Our conversation at breakfast went something like this:

Child 1: Do birds cry?

Mom: I don’t think so. I don’t know.

Child 2: They sometimes swimper a bit like they are trying to cry.

Child 1: I guess they are always happy.

*******

Last week at the mall, we had to take a bathroom break. I took the two youngest into the family bathroom with me, Cole went in the boys, and the girls went into the girls. When we met back up in the hallway, Natalie was excited to tell me that she had found a quarter in the napkin machine. “I always turn it to see if a napkin will come out, but I thought I saw a quarter in there, so I stuck my finger in there and wiggled it until it came out!” She was very excited! “I wonder why they have napkins in the bathroom, anyway? I guess it’s to dry your hands.”

*******

After much work and paper towel testing, the science project is IN! Hooray!

This morning I had a near perfect shopping experience. Let me bask in the glow of my satisfaction just a bit and share it with you.

9:59 — I dropped John off at his play group. One minute early, I’m sorry, but I had a lot to cram into my two hours of freedom, and I didn’t want to waste a second of my free babysitting.

10:14 — arrive at Costco and dash in to pick up the enlargements we ordered yesterday. This wasn’t really a fun part of the shopping experience, but necessary, as the science fair project is due tomorrow.

10:17 — leaving Costco and driving toward Albertsons.

10:21 –arrive at Albertsons. I lugged in a pencil box full of coins that I have been meaning to cash in at a coinstar for quite some time. After reading through the instructions, I dumped all the coins in, enjoying that little chink chink chink sound (it’s like a slot machine in reserve) and watching it add up my money for me. I had $53 in coins, that I decided to turn into an Amazon.com gift card. If you cash it into a gift card, they don’t take the 8% cut they would take if I just got cash out.

10:27 (approximately–I really didn’t look at my watch to see what time it actually was, but it probably took me 5 minutes or so to turn in all those coins). Grab a shopping cart and the latest ad and head to the Quaker sale. I’ve mastered the art of these dumb “10 for $10 sales”. I just get 10 of each item I’m going to get. 10 boxes of three different flavors of Captain Crunch, 10 granola bars, 10 instant oatmeals, etc. Then I’m not trying to remember if I GOT ten of something and don’t have to keep recounting what’s in my cart. Oh, and don’t waste your time on other things that aren’t on the big sale. I did add some chicken tenders (buy one get one free), baby carrots (also BOGO), cheese (BOGO) and a few cans of Pringles at $1 each. With my $12 off $120 coupon, my total came to $119.48 for 116 items. “Today’s total savings= $304.51”. And I was out of there in just over 1/2 an hour!

11:05–We’ve got the goods loaded in the car, and I realize I DO have time for a quick stop at Kohl’s, since it’s one of their customer appreciation days and you get 15% off if you use your Kohl’s charge. I figure I’ve got a good 30 minutes to shop (I would really have liked longer, but you take what you can get!) Perusing the clearance racks, I found 2 shirts, a jacket and a cardigan for me, a pair of flannel lined pants for Cole (the Klondike derby’s coming up and I’ve got to keep my boy warm), 5 pairs of pants for the girls, and four birthday present items for future kid’s birthdays. With my 15% discount, my total came to (ching) $80.54.

11:54–Run back to the car, throw the bags in the front seat and drive like crazy through American Fork to get back home to pick up John from his playgroup.

12:06–Pick up John. I was 6 minutes late (oops!), but couldn’t get him to come out of there for another 10 minutes, anyway. His friends all have WAY more fun houses than ours, with finished basements and lots of space for the little people to play. But I’m not focusing on that right now.

I am –Woo-Hoo– celebrating the fact that I got
a- Such great bargains, and
b- All that done in my two short hours of child-free time.

You may now congratulate me on my efficiency.

Ok, so I’m not the greatest cook in the world, I know that. I do tend to make a lot of mac and cheese and hot dogs for lunch (for the picky three year old), and I have been known to feed the family pizza from Costco or chili and cornbread for dinner. I’m not like Mel, who whips up a new and fabulous recipe every night for dinner, or Sharmyn, who makes Chocolate Babka from scratch. But I’m ok with that. I can cook up a decent meal and often make good desserts, which may or may not be from a mix. Nothing too fancy, though. But I had this dream last night that I was making soup to take to a church function, and it wasn’t thickening up. So, I added a cup of concrete mix. (Yes, I do indeed have concrete mix in my pantry right now, but it’s left over from a project at Christmas time, and in no way would I get it confused with something like flour and add it to a soup. And I’m really going to put that in the basement sometime very soon.) It wasn’t by accident, either. I put it in on purpose to make my soup thicker. Then (in my dream, remember–I didn’t really do this, ok?!), I proceeded to take my soup to the church function. It was at my parents’ church, the old one on Butler hill, remember? And I wandered around trying to find the primary room (was it upstairs or downstairs…who can remember these things?). When I found the dinner, everyone had already filled up their plates, (Thank goodness) and I spent the rest of the evening trying to get people NOT to eat the soup that I brought. I didn’t want anyone to get sick (or worse) from eating my concrete soup!

So, dream analyzers–go ahead and analyze this!

It’s sometimes hard to have any any kind of self esteem when you have kids.

For example…the other day the kids were watching tv and a big long commercial for Nutrisystems came on. The kids watched, fascinated by the weight loss stories, and my lovely daughter said, “Mom, why don’t you do that? If your order now you get a weeks worth of food for free?!” Thank you, child. I know I’m fat, why don’t you just come out and say it?

Then today when I was sticking to my resolution to walk at least a mile every day, the small one came down and cried “Mom, don’t walk!” over and over. You know how hard it is to keep walking on the old treadmill with a 3-year old screaming the whole time? Well, I did my mile, but only one. And I had to keep putting him on the couch, since he wouldn’t go back upstairs and watch Arthur (which I turned on just for him).

And just a few minutes ago, my almost 6 year old said to me, “Mom, you’re weird.” Thanks honey. Now go and pick up your backpack before I throw it out the front door.

Today as we were driving home from our semi-monthly obligation at Jenna’s Kindergarten class to cut, glue, staple and colate for a couple of hours (always a thrill), the UPS truck was just turning out of our neighborhood as we were pulling in.

“Hey, there’s the package guy,” John said. I think we may have been getting more than our share of deliveries in the month before Christmas if he knows the UPS guy.

And speaking of deliveries, I wonder if that book I ordered from Amazon is here yet? I think I’ll go and check the front porch or the mail box.