Author: Superpaige (Page 59 of 180)

My fingers. They ache.

Today was Jenna’s third grade carnival at school. All year they earn market money for good behavior, and this carnival is one of the ways they get to spend their reward money. I signed up to man a booth. You know, supervise a game and then give out a prize. But then the mom in charge called me back and said, “Is it true that you do balloon animals?” Hmmm, I knew I should have kept my light under a bushel and never let anyone know I could do that. I was feeling generous, so I said that yes, I do, and yes, I would do balloon animals for the school carnival. I draw the line at dressing up in the clown costume, though. I’ve already got a gig scheduled and I don’t really want to dress up for the 3rd graders. So, today I got to the school by 9:15 to help set up and get ready. It was raining, but we were optimistic.

The day turned out to be nice, and I made something like a bazillion balloon animals for those little third grade rug rats.

(remind me not to hand the camera to my short daughter, who takes a picture from the worst angle, while I’m looking down at a balloon. Double chin shot time.)

My fingers are shot. My nails are damaged and ripped, and my hands were SCREAMING for lotion. But I survived. It was fun, it was for the kids, and they all had fun.

By the end of the two hours, the kids were supposed to go back inside to class, and I STILL had a line of 5-6 kids waiting to get their balloons.

As I walked out to the car, when I was finally freed from my job, my hands felt like they might fall off. I’m not conditioned for this kind of work! Now I remember why I’m not a clown.

Except on Monday, when I will be doing an appearance at the birthday party for my friend’s twins, who are turning 5. Oh, yeah. Because I’m so cool that way.

I’ve been in kind of an organizational/clean out the junk phase lately, and I decided it was time to tackle my office. My office/sewing room/place where kids play computer games/storage area for garage sale finds that I don’t know what to do with/craft area/mending area/place where broken things go to die/junk pile/big room full of clutter. Whew!

I’ve had a desk for my computer, AND a table for my sewing machine. It’s a little tight and crowded in here, but hey, at least I have a room of my own, right? I’m not complaining. But in a quest to streamline and make it a little nicer, I decided to eliminate the desk and put both the computer and the sewing machine on the table. One on one end and the other on the other end.

So far, I’ve got the computer moved, and I thank my lovely husband for hooking everything up for me. I deftly UNhooked it, but as far as hooking things up (especially when I just moved it across the room where there is no jack) I’m pretty clueless.

Does the blog look different? Because instead of facing North, as I have been for the last 8 or so years, I am now facing East. Instead of a view of a lovely wall, I now can look out the East window and see the little swallows who have made a nest in the porch eaves. I can also more effectively “Mrs Kravitz” and spy on my neighbors, watching to see who’s coming and going. Oh the fun.

Unfortunately, I can also get a nice view of the disarray of the office. Shelves need to be moved, the carpet under the desk spot is disgusting and dusty, and the sewing machine is now on the floor. So, yes, I still have a lot of work to do. And a lot of sneezing, from the vast amounts of dust that I’m stirring up.

Yes, I’ll post some pictures when I get it done (or at least when I give up and decide it’s good enough). But I just wanted to know if YOU like the new look. Because, honestly, the blog is now coming from a totally new area of the room. An area that’s never been blogged before! How does it look?

I have a wonderful mom and a super mother-in-law. Who could ask for more? I’ve had great examples to help me with my own mothering career. I also have a fantastic husband and great kids! This morning, in fact, my sweet daughter snuck in to my room oh so quietly to leave me a Mother’s Day card on my nightstand, then she showered and got dressed, AND wrote her own talk for primary this morning! I KNOW!

I asked my dear husband if for my Mother’s Day present he and the kids would plant my hanging baskets with flowers. DONE! I feel very blessed and honored to be the mother of such wonderful kids.

But, lest I gush and ramble on, let me share with you some definitions from the

Mother’s Dictionary of Meanings

Dumbwaiter: One who asks if the kids would care to order dessert.

Full Name: What you call your child when you’re mad at him.

Grandparents: The people who think your children are wonderful even though they’re sure you’re not raising them right.

Hearsay: What toddlers do when anyone mutters a dirty word.

Independent: How we want our children to be for as long as they do everything we say.

Puddle: A small body of water that draws other small bodies wearing dry shoes into it.

Show Off: A child who is more talented than yours.

Sterilize: What you do to your first baby’s pacifier by boiling it, and to your last baby’s pacifier by blowing on it and wiping it with saliva.

Top Bunk: Where you should never put a child wearing Superman jammies.

Two-Minute Warning: When the baby’s face turns red and she begins to make those familiar-grunting noises.

Whodunit: None of the kids that live in your house.

I hope you all have a wonderful mother’s day!

Happy Friday to you! I’ve got some random pictures to show you. Stuff I thought about doing individual posts about, but let’s face it, who has the brain power to figure all that out? Not me. We had a ward primary talent show last month. Each primary child was invited to share a talent, or to make a display. Once I picked up a ukulele from a garage sale, John decided he wanted to play the ukulele for his talent. Ok. So I tuned it up (it stays in tune for about 4 minutes), and he brought it. But then at the talent show, he decided there was no way he was going to play, so I had to “reward” him with skittles if he did.

Natalie wanted to display something for her talent, so she made this wonderful lemony concoction. It was actually very convenient that we could use this for Megan’s birthday party the next day. Thanks, Natalie!

Jenna played a song on the piano for her talent. I’m proud of her, since that’s a pretty scary thing to play in front of all those people!

Here’s Ryan at that same activity with a friend’s baby. He stole her. And if you think I’m going to let my husband go and see that new baby movie, you are sorely mistaken. Sorry, honey. If you want more babies, you’re going to have to get them yourself.

Changing gears a bit, I held a shoe intervention the other day. I dumped all the shoes out of the baskets in the mudroom. Most of them were on the floor anyway, but this is what it looked like.

Sheesh. I know. It gave me hives just looking at the mess. Then I sorted them out, matching up shoe pairs and figuring out which ones needed to be put away for the winter, and which ones needed to be thrown away, which could be donated, etc. The kids came home to this:

Then I made them claim all their own shoes and put them IN THEIR ROOMS!!! Now the mudroom looks considerably less shoe-ey.

Here are the boys on our new teeter totter. Robin and I went garage sale-ing last Saturday (yes, it was cold, and yes, it was rainy) and we found this teeter totter. Funny thing. It had a price of $30. I liked it, so Robin said, “Will you take $20 for this teeter totter?” I was going to offer, $25, but her request was better. Instantly I realized that I didn’t have that much cash, so I chimed in, “And a check?” Pretty gutsy to dicker down AND ask if they would take a check, but the guy was friendly and nice, and just wanted to get rid of his stuff. He agreed, as long as I shopped around and bought MORE of their stuff. I ended up spending $22 there, but hey, if they’ll take a check, I’m ok.

The kids were thrilled with the teeter totter, and even the big kids were out there riding it in the rain. These are “my boys”. The one in the middle is our part time boy, Robin’s son Jacob.

I’m going to do you a little favor. I’m going to save you from wasting your money on bad granola bars. Because friends don’t let friends buy bad granola bars, right? And I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to granola bars. In fact, I’ve hardly met a granola bar I don’t like. Until now.

When I saw the Quaker True Delights granola bars, I was intrigued. I got a free sample and a coupon in the mail, and I must say that the chocolate/raspberry one was delicious. So, when I was at the grocery store I picked up a box of the Coconut Banana Macadamia nut granola bars.

I was intrigued. Macadamia nuts? Yum. Coconut? Yum. Banana? I’ll keep an open mind.

Yuck.

It was actually so not good that I spit out the bite I had taken. I was chewing and thought, why am I still eating this? It tastes like the dried bananas went bad or something. So I Spit it out in the trash and threw the rest of the granola bar away. Ugh. No WAY will my kids eat it, I’ll tell you.

I’ll try to feed the remaining bars to my friend’s chickens, but I don’t know if even they will eat it.

Please, don’t waste your money. And Quaker? Try again.

I’m not one of those parents that goes overboard in their kids’ activities, I promise. They have piano lessons, some of them do band at school, and they do one or two sports throughout the year. Ok, I admit, Megan does go overboard on the sporting events, what with year round soccer, then basketball, softball, church sports, and whatever activity comes along that she wants to play. But they are all GOOD activities.

Softball/baseball is one sport that all of my kids will play. Well, not ALL of them, because my oldest son, Cole, doesn’t really do sports, and that’s ok. He has many other talents. But anyway, back to the softball. John has a cute little baseball team with all of his neighborhood friends, with one of the dads as a coach (not just any old dad, this guy played football for BYU back in the day, and he graciously coaches our little boys in all sports, and I’m very thankful!). Jenna is on a team with a friend, Natalie is on a team with a couple of her friends, and Megan’s on a team with three of her best sporty friends who she plays with on many of these rec leagues. I simply can’t sign a kid up for a sport unless there is at least one friend on the team, so that I’m not stuck driving them alone to every practice and every game.

Last night I took on the daunting task of putting all the games on the calendar. I used Google Calendar so that I could put repeating events on there, and make it easier to get every thing on, then I can transfer it all to the big desk calendar that is my “brain” and stays on the kitchen counter for everyone to see and add things to. Now I’m depressed. Because today’s schedule looks something like this:
3:00-4:00-Natalie’s practice at the rec center in American Fork
5:15–John’s game in Highland. It doesn’t start until 5:45, but we have to be there 1/2 hour early.

6:15-Megan’s soccer team starts the spring tournament. The first game is tonight at 7 at AF JR High. But since it’s a game, she needs to be there 30 minutes early, and I’m picking up at least one of her teammates, so I’ll have to leave at 6:15 to do that.
7:00-Jenna’s team practice at the rec center in American Fork

And this is MONDAY night. Monday night is Utah is supposed to be reserved for FAMILY HOME EVENING. How am I supposed to have a FHE when we are running all around the city taking kids to different sporting events? And dinner? You can forget about dinner on a night like this. I’m guessing it will be something in the crock pot that people can just eat when they are home.

And it’s not just tonight. Tonight is just the beginning. It looks like there is at least one sporting event/practice for every single day this week. Except Friday. And Sunday, of course. Add to that all the stuff we NORMALLY do, like piano lessons, bells practice, activity days, young women and young men, and it’s overwhelming. Oh, and did I mention it’s MAY? May is the last month of school, so each child will be having end of the year activities, field day, dance festivals, class parties and large assignments due. And, yes, it seems mom is required to be at or in charge of most, if not all of them. Dad? Yes, dad WILL help. He does go to his share of games, and he will be definitely going to a few of these things. When he’s in town. Did I mention that he seems to go out of town a lot now? And that this month he’ll be going to Japan? No, that won’t help me at all. I do have a 16 year old, but he doesn’t have his license yet.

So, Happy May! Take me out to the ball games, and then take me to the insane asylum. Or at least come and visit me there, because that’s where I’ll be by the time this month is over.

Oh my gravy.