The Trials of a Busy Mom
I just found out that Einstein Bros. Bagel shops in the Salt Lake City area (including Bountiful, Draper, Layton, Logan, Midvale, Ogden, Orem, Park City, Provo, Salt Lake City, and Sandy) are giving away free bagels every Friday until March 27, 2009.
I don’t have any more details than this, but I think I’d better find out where the nearest Einstein Brothers is and snag my free bagel.
I have an announcement to make.
We have a new member of our family. He’s about two years old, grey and white and has feathers. It’s a new cockatiel, and his name is Churt. Weird name, I know, but it’s starting to grow on us. Are you surprised? No, of course you aren’t. Thanks to the magic of freecycle, and a family out there who didn’t think they could give this little guy the attention he deserved, we now have him.
Here’s a picture of Popcorn and Churt. Popcorn is in the front, and Churt is in the back. They are not totally identical. Churt has a little bit of white on his head, so we can tell them apart, but not from far away.
When I brought in the cage with our new little friend in it, Popcorn immediately flew down to investigate. “Wow!” he said, “It’s someone who looks just like me! I think I’m in love!” only it sounded like chirp, chirp, squawk to us. But since he’s been here, Popcorn has been close by. If we take Churt out to play with him, Popcorn flies down to be with him, too. It’s cute.
Sundance, our wise old bird who we’ve had for over 15 years, is less than interested. But I kind of figured he wouldn’t care. He’s old and doesn’t really want to play anymore, but we hope that Popcorn and Churt will get along and play and be friends. Right now Churt is in his own cage, but Popcorn is often in the cage with him, or on top of the cage, or by the cage. I’m hoping to someday get everyone in the same cage so we can do away with the whole two cage thing, but for now I’m ok with two cages.
So, in case you were counting, that brings the bird total at our house to 8. We’ve got the three cockatiels, then there are 5 parakeets up in the girls’ rooms. Yes, that’s a lot of bird seed.
Are you in a “Home Improvement-y” mood? Do you need new knobs for your kitchen cupboards? Are you itching to get started painting your sons’ room? (Yes, I am, thank you very much.) Are you almost ready to go and buy your seeds and potting soil to get started on that spring garden? Or maybe your snow shovel bit the dust. Or do you just need household things like tape and garbage bags and windex and boring stuff like that. Well, friends. I am here to help.
Wouldn’t it be nicer to save $10 on all that stuff? Why, yes, it would. That’s why you want to go quickly over to Lowe’s website and print your coupon for $10 off your $50 purchase. Really. And the nice thing is, you can actually just hit the back button and print out more than one. These do expire March 2, so you’ll have to plan on using them soon, but if you’ve got a looming home improvement project, it just might help.
You’re welcome. No, I’m not going to come over and Do your home improvement project for you, silly. I’m just going to help you save a little money while you do it.
Oh, the fun we had yesterday. Seriously. After I forced my children to do their jobs, we went out and had some fun. I call it Free Fun, which is the best kind.
1st- We stopped at Krispy Kreme with report cards in hand. Since we had four report cards, we got 6 dozen for each, thus two dozen free donuts. Yum, if you like that kind of thing.
2nd- We went to Toys R Us. I’ve had this giftcard rattling about in my wallet forever, and since littlest pet shops were on sale buy one get one free, we thought we’d check it out. The selection was terrible on the littlest pet shops, but we did manage to pick up four of them to use for future birthday party gifts. We also got some valentines and a hot wheels car. I used my gift card, but didn’t manage to use it all up. There’s still $3 on it. I should have just turned around and picked up something for $3, but didn’t want to hassle with it, so back in the wallet it goes.
3rd- We had some Barnes and Noble gift cards to use up, so off we went to the book store. The girls each picked out a book, I got a book each for Cole and Megan, and bought To Kill a Mockingbird for myself. I’ve (gasp) never read it, and I’ve been meaning to. So, now I own it, and have no excuse not to read it. John was a hard sell, and didn’t want any books. He did, however, want the baby Jaguar from Go, Diego, Go. What can I say, I’m such a pushover. I let him get his jaguar instead of a book. That whole venture cost me $7 after the giftcards. Not completely free, but almost.
4th- We stopped at Del Taco and got four free kids meals with coupons we had from Reflections.
Last- was a stop at the grocery store to get our free Redbox rentals for Monday. If you didn’t already know, you can get a free rental at redbox every monday if you go to their site and sign up. They’ll send you a code every week. And you can use it more than once if you use different credit cards. So the kids picked some silly Mermaid movie, and I picked Mama Mia. They watched their movie last night while the pizza cooked (we made individual pizzas for dinner–yes, I am that fun), and then had donuts for dessert.
Ryan picked up the kids at my parents’ house, and they also had a fun fun weekend. They helped my dad put up and take down flags, they went to the planetarium, and my mom got them started on knitting and crochet projects. And we actually missed them.
It was a good weekend for everyone.
Now if only we could find a way to get the truck’s suspension fixed for free. That would be REALLY great.
I’m enjoying the sound of a semi quiet house right now. A house with only 3 kids in it. Three kids who are getting along quite nicely. And I’m thankful for parents who are willing to take a couple of kids for a few days. I asked my mom if she’d like to have some helpers, that she could put them to work ALL she wanted, and maybe give them a lecture or two on attitude and obedience and all that jazz. As it turned out, it worked out nicely because my dad had volunteered to set up the flags for their neighborhood for President’s Day, and he could use some help with that job. Well, There you go! Help for their grandparents and a little sanity for me. Win-win, right? And we didn’t have to make a special trip, because my parents were coming here for a wedding reception Saturday night, anyway.
It was quite nice getting the kids ready for church this morning. Only three kids to dress, do their hair, and help find their shoes. There was no arguing, no teasing, and no complaining. Without the teenagers, the house is such a calm and quiet place. Seriously. We’ve been having a little attitude and conflict and sassy going on, so it’s nice to have just a couple of days without that.
The younger kids were a bit jealous when they found out that the oldest two got to go to “Grandma Camp”, even though I told them they were going to a work camp. Kind of like in the movie Holes, where they have to dig and dig all day. But without the scary Sigourney Weaver character. I told them they would have to shovel snow, set up flags, and maybe even (gasp) vacuum, and that when they come back they’d better have had an attitude adjustment. But I don’t think anyone believed me. They know that their grandparents love them to death, and think they are just the cutest things since new babies, and would NEVER make them do WORK or PRACTICE THE PIANO like their mean old mom does.
It’s good for all of us to have a little bit of time away from each other, I think. The kids have a great time getting to feel special by staying with Grandma and Grandpa, and we as parents get a little bit of a break from the five kid thing, and the siblings get a little bit of a different dynamic by not having the teenagers there. They get to feel like “the oldest” and maybe get to do some things they don’t normally get to do.
Hopefully they are being well behaved at Grandma camp, so that they don’t ruin their chance of every doing this again. So, thanks Mom and Dad! You are the greatest!
It’s hard to decide what today is. Is it Valentine’s day? Is it Friday the 13th? Is it V-day the 13th? Well, whatever it is, it will be a fun day.
Valentine’s day for the elementary school kids really is where it’s at. My kids have spent the last week making valentine’s boxes, which I just realized I forgot to get pictures of before they left the house. Oh, well. Maybe when they come home. They’ve also had fun writing out their valentines. It’s good practice for the 5 year old to write his valentines. He gets to write his name over and over, which is a good thing for him. And you know there will be parties and candy. I’m helping out in Jenna’s 2nd grade party today. I am supposed to do the craft, and I always end up picking crafts that are too hard, and can’t get done in the time we have. Well, not this year. I’ve picked about the easiest craft you can get, 
and hopefully we’ll have time left over to play simon says or something silly like that.
My junior high kids have not done anything at all for valentine’s day. They didn’t even ask me to buy candy to give to their friends. Oh, wait. I take that back. Megan wrote little poems for her friends. But it’s no big deal for them, I guess.
As for me and my sweet heart, we have a ward party thing tonight. It’s “Macho Chef Night”. That means the men are supposed to whip up their best recipes and come and impress everyone with their mad cooking skillz. The funny thing is, men’s cooking usually revolves around the grill, and it’s the middle of winter and no one’s going to be grilling right now, are they? So,we plan on showing up and having many great MEAT dishes, and DESSERTS. Because men don’t make anything resembling fruit. Or salad. There will be lots of GREAT meat dishes and dessert dishes, though, I guarantee it. That doesn’t bode well for my Biggest Loser challenge, where I have to weigh in tomorrow morning. I have only lost 4 pounds in almost 3 weeks, and this week I haven’t really exercised because of this lingering sickness and overall feeling of ick. So, I can’t just go and eat only meat and desserts–ugh. I’ll have to try to eat only veggies and fruit all day so I can have my share of MEAT tonight.
Tomorrow, on the real valentine’s day, I’ll be up at the crack of 7 to go to two basketball games and a soccer game. I’ve also got books for my kids for valentine’s presents, and that’s about it. I picked up books while working at the book fair, but after I picked one for Megan that I thought she’d like, I see it on the counter yesterday. She’s already reading that book from the school library. I can’t give her that book! I’ll have to see if I can exchange it today while I’m at school.
I heard on that radio that according to some survey, this song is the #1 romantic song of all time. So, if you are planning a romantic rendezvous of some kind, you might want to make sure this song is loaded up on your ipod. Or something (for those of us who haven’t entered the world of ipods and technology, you know.)
Or you could just sing it, like this guy here. And if you click on that link, you’ll understand why I didn’t want to embed the whole thing and put it here on this here blog. Ick.
And a few words about my dear husband. My sweet hubby who last night in the car told my son that “There’s only one know it all in this family, and I’ve already got it covered.” He’s just so sweet, isn’t he? He’s the man who sent me this romantic ditty.
Isn’t he the greatest? Well, he stole my heart years ago and still has it. How could I not love him? Well, to my dear sweetie, I say, back at you, babe. You are the best. And there’s a Costco right close to your work, and they have lots and lots of roses, in case you were wondering.
It’s not often I type the words “smooth endoplasmic reticulum” and “golgi bodies”. That’s why it’s so great to have kids. We can re-learn all that stuff we talked about in biology so many many years ago.
Ryan keeps giving me updates on how long we’ll have to wait. I guess we’re down to 5 days now.
It’s just a little something we like to call our Sunday night date. You know, some nice together time as we watch the amazing adventures of the race. How about you? What do you and your sweetie watch together?
John just said to me, “If you don’t know how to say ‘Mom’, then you don’t know how to love.” Wow! How sweet it that?
Thanks to facebook, I’ve gotten in touch with one of my mission companions this week.
I had kept in contact with her for a while through Christmas cards, and then,like most people, she dropped off the radar. But through the magic of the internet, she’s found me. And what do you know, she’s living in Germany?! After we emailed, she called me, and it was so much fun talking to her. That brought back such great memories of the fun times we had in Germany. So, then I had to go and look up the pictures.
This is where we lived in the great city of Duisburg.
Nice area, right? That’s what we thought. We were in a Turkish neighborhood, which was interesting. But we were always able to find a good Döner kebab, and got invited in for tea with the neighbors a few times.
We worked hard trying to find and teach people the gospel, but we also had a lot of fun.
This is a picture from one day when the Elders must have been out of money before they ran out of month. They called us in despiration, “Sisters, we’re starving and we don’t have any money.” I’m guessing they had used their money buying kebabs. We were kind and made them lunch. It looks like it was pancakes. And why are we eating off an ironing board, you might ask? Well, we didn’t want to out and out break the rules, and the rule was the Elders were not allowed in our apartments. So we had to come up with a creative solution. I think this was in the hallway or back landing or porch or something like that.
Gosh, don’t we look young? That’s because we were young. I was about 23 at the time. As much as I don’t like to admit it, that was a long time ago.
We were allowed one day a week to do our personal stuff, like laundry, letter writing, grocery shopping and the occasional outing. It seems like most of my pictures are from that personal day, since that’s when we were allowed to let loose and have some fun.
And after I became “friends” with my old friend Tammy, face book recommended a couple of other people that I might just want to be friends with, and I found a couple of Elders from the mission, too.
So here I sit at the computer. In my pajamas. Not going to church today because Megan and I are still getting over our bout with the flu. And I’m looking over my mission pictures and laughing.
Memories…like the corner of our minds….
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