Author: Superpaige (Page 148 of 180)

Ok, I’ll admit it, I’ve got nothin to write about. Empty brain. Nothing’s going on. Except that there was a HUGE lightning storm that hit our neighborhood last night. I’m sleepin along, minding my own business, when FLASH! It was like someone turned the light on in my room, and then BOOM, the loudest scariest thunder. And then the rain pounded down like rocks. It was a seriously wicked storm. I lay there trying to go back to sleep hoping that our house doesn’t get hit by lightning or flood or something.

Anyway, moving on…

I mentioned about this gift certificate to Merrell shoes, right? Well, in checking the website, I really couldn’t see spending that much money on shoes (even hypothetical free gift certificate money), and they are all really athletic hiking, outdoors-y shoes, not the kind I usually pick up on clearance at Target or Kohls, you know? So, I thought about being really nice and giving the gift certificate to Megan’s soccer coach, since she IS the outdoors-y, go for a 4 hour bike ride, coach 10 year old girls in the rain kind of gal. But then I found these shoes and decided I needed them. In the black. You always need black shoes, right? And I can use them for Bells, since I need comfortable black flats for standing there for hours. Yes, I’ll admit it. I was sucked into the shoe store, and it spit me out a chewed up shallow person who won’t share her gift certificate.

Since those shoes were not quite the limit of my free shoe-dom, I asked Megan to come and look at the website with me, and see if she saw any shoes she thought were cool. Some of them have big Ms for Merrell or Megan on them–that would be cool, right? She looks at them and says, “I don’t really need any shoes. I’ve got those two pairs that don’t fit me yet in my closet, anyway.”
What?
Someone’s offering you FREE shoes, and you say you don’t need any? I am beginning to wonder if this child was switched at birth. I mean, she’s got this athletic streak going on that I know she didn’t get from me or her dad, she’s skinny as a stick and she doesn’t want shoes? So, I call in the next one, who I know will not fail me in her shoe shopping. Natalie. The child who’s so much like me it’s almost painful to watch. “Natalie,” I say, “can you come in here for a minute?” So, she comes in and I ask her to look at these shoes and see if there’s any that look like fun to her. It doesn’t take us long before we’ve picked out these, and our gift certificate is pretty much spent.

So, now I get to wait in breathless anticipation (well, maybe not breathless, as that could be dangerous, if not fatal) for our cute shoes to arrive. I just hope I can wear them without a slight tinge of guilt that I could have given the gift certificate to a very deserving soccer coach. Maybe I’ll go and get her something from Bath and Body works. Even sporty people like lotions, right?

Ok, I know I already posted something today–something boring about the wind (although I did include that lovely picture of me in 3rd grade–wearing the same shirt as a boy I can’t remember his name)

. But here’s something I was just sent that made me laugh. Hopefully you’ll get a kick out of it, too.

Peace, out.

It was a windy night last night. I hate the wind. I hear it howling outside and the windows shake and sometimes they make a strange moaning noise and the wind tries to push it’s way inside. It keeps me awake. I heard it last night and thought about getting some earplugs, but I didn’t know exactly where they were and didn’t feel like getting up to search for them. That would wake me up too much and then I really couldn’t get back to sleep (not that I could sleep with that wind).

I hear a scraaaaaaaping sound, and know that something of ours is being blown down the driveway. I remembered my cute green watering can that used to be sitting on my porch. Where did that go, for heaven’s sake? Blown away, probably.

This morning, as I opened the door for Megan to go and get on the early bus, I see our little tykes basketball hoop out in the middle of the circle, and a neighbor driving around it. Oh, the embarrassment. When you can’t even contain your kids’ toys in the bounderies of your yard. What a shame.

Oh, and Tina, this picture is for you.

I think if I thought about it long enough I could name at least 10 people in there. Krista, Carolyn A , Ken C., Roy G., Amy G., Matt ?, cindy, Kristine, is that Drew?, and you and me, of course.

Happy 3rd grade reunion.

Ryan’s back. And really there’s no trouble, I just thought I’d throw in a song lyric there for the title of this post.

Ryan went to Denver for 5 days for a big geek fest, complete with cheerleader babes and lots of blinky lights. He came back Saturday night. Just having him gone for a few days reminds me how much I rely on him. For heaven’s sake, I had to do ALL the driving! He doesn’t do all the running kids around that I do, but it’s nice to be able to have him pick up a child from soccer or choir or a friend’s house on his way home. And when he’s here, he usually gets to go to at least one of the weekly soccer games so I don’t have to attend them all. And he helps a lot with getting the kids to bed!

So, I missed him, and I’m glad he’s back.

It never fails. As soon as I go in the bathroom and start….well, using the bathroom, one or more of my children immediately decides that they need me. John could be playing happily by himself for hours, but once I go upstairs to use the bathroom or do my hair or makeup, he pops in. “Hi, Mom! I was yooking for you!” he says happily.

Today while I did my hair and makeup, he amused himself by taking out all the tampons from the drawer. He lined them up on the edge of the tub, and said, “I’m making a treasure map!” Well, when some of his treasure map fell into the tup (empty, thank goodness), I tried to persuade him to go and play with something else. But he was not interested in playing with something else and said, “I need to get the candy!” So, he climbed into the tub to get the “candy” tampons. Then he put them all back in the box, but then took the box with him. I was trying not to make a big deal over it, so I didn’t say, “No, those are Mommy’s special tampons, put them back in the box and don’t ever touch them again!” I did say that those things belonged in the bathroom, and went to go find them. I found them all lined up nicely in the box in his room.

Someday maybe I’ll tell him this story, when he’s about 17 and really embarrass him. He wouldn’t believe me, though.

Mel over at the Amazing Shrinking Mom found this weight loss simulator at Prevention.com. You can put in your current weight and your goal weight, or if you’ve already lost weight, you can enter your starting weight and your current weight.

So, here’s me at my current weight, *gasp*, and then how good I’ll look when I reach my goal weight.

And just for fun, I put in 125 pounds to see what I’d look like in Heaven, when we all have perfect bodies. Go check it out! It’s fun!

Yesterday was not the best day. Without going into all the long boring details, it started with Jenna having cut her own hair, then we had some escalated yogurt throwing in the kitchen later on, some climbing on the counter to get cookies that I had said no to, and a shouting match over practicing time. Needless to say, I’m not too proud of my reaction to all this, I did too much yelling and ate too many cookies.

Today is a new day. So far there’s no hair cutting, everyone found their shoes on time and I went to a yoga class that they are getting started at our church. Even though it wasn’t what I’m used to, it was a good class, and fun to be there with friends. Tamra, who was teaching today, led us in some headstands. I pretty much gave up, because I kind of have a fear of going upside down, and honestly, I don’t think it’s possible for me to balance the large mass that is my body up in the air without the aid of my feet. But thanks to DeEtte, who kept nagging me to “just do it”, and telling me I could do it. She helped me “kick my legs up” and held me there until I got stable (it’s against a wall–it shouldn’t be that hard) and I actually did a headstand (or something quite similar) for several seconds. I wished at that moment I had a camera (or DeEtte had a camera, since I was upside down at the time) and could have a picture of me in the old headstand pose. Not that I would show it to you, because I’d be all yucky in yoga clothes, with my shirt kind of falling down revealing parts of my stomache that really should not be seen. But I would have proof that I did it-even if just for a second. It was empowering. I’ve never thought I could do that, and here, I just did it. Wow.

When I hear the word “Sale”, it gives me a little rush. Especially if I’m at Kohls. I really get off on a good bargain. I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but in the past week I went to Albertsons 4 times to try to get the very best deals. After Melinda told me about printing your own coupons, I had to print a WHOLE bunch of coupons, organize them all so that I knew exactly how many of each item I needed to buy to get the absolute best deal. The problem was, the store kept being out of the things I needed to complete my coupon quest. They told me there would be a dairy shipment Tuesday morning, so I went Tuesday at 1:00. Nothing. Nothing that was on the sale list was left. Oh well. I tried. And I did get my 3 month supply of cereal, fruit rolls and popcorn. Anyway, I digress. When bargain hunters like me hear the word SALE, we expect it to be a sale! 20% off, 30% off, even 50% off are acceptable numbers. So when I see numbers like this, I say: 2%? Are you kidding me? That’s not a sale, that’s a….. a….. a joke! That’s what it is. You can’t qualify something as a “sale price” if it’s 2% off the original price. Ha! I laugh at you and your silly sale!

A while back I heard about a lady who won all kinds of things from “contesting”, and she entered sweepstakes for about an hour every night while her husband watched television. Well, I didn’t realize there was a whole new avenue of contests that I should be pursuing. So, I took an hour here and there and filled out bunches of contest entries on the web. What I got was a whole bunch of mail from chambers of commerce. “Thanks for your interest in visiting…Houston, Denver, ” and the like. hmmm. I just threw those into the trash and didn’t think much of it.

This week I got a letter from Merrell Footwear. When I opened it, it said “Congratulations! Merrell Footwear and Hooked on the OUtdoors Magazine, thank you for your participation in the American Airlines Sweepstakes!. yada yada yada….something about a GIFT CERTIFICATE!

Well, this could be some interesting sort of spam or trickery, so I went to their website, and yes, indeed, there are shoes. Expensive shoes. Hiking shoes. And I have a gift certificate for $110! I could buy one pair of shoes or boots for me (starting at $70) or a couple of pairs of shoes for the kids (they start at around $20). More shoes for your buck if you stay in the kids sizes, obviously, but where’s the fun in that? I think I’ll be doing a little online shoe shopping!

(Oh, and on a side note, they just mentioned on the radio that today is National Chocolate Day–so, let’s not let a good holiday go to waste! Bring on the chocolate!)