Category: Uncategorized (Page 105 of 118)

I have an 11 1/2 year old boy, so you wouldn’t think we’d have all that teen boy stink already, would you? But apparantly, they do not have to be teenagers to begin smelling like one. Yesterday I walked into his room for some reason or another, and when I opened the door, I was assaulted with such a rank smell that I thought I might throw up. It smelled like smelly boy plus… I don’t know. I swiftly grabbed all the clothes from the floor (not that many, really, for such a bad smell), and started a load of laundry. I grabbed his coat, a towel flung over the back of a chair and all the stray socks I could find, and put them in the laundry room, too (oh, my freshly painted landry room that was clean for about a day!). Then I rummaged around in a kitchen cupboard until I found that little plug-in air freshener that I had bought a while back, and plugged it in!

When the poor boy came home from school yesterday, I practically pounced on him and told him to go and take a shower, right now, and don’t forget to put on deoderant. I don’t want to punish him for being a smelly boy, I just don’t deal well with certain smells, and would like to not have them in my home.

In discussing this with Ryan, I said that that’s why teenage boys have a room in the basement. Why? he asked, so you won’t smell them? Exactly. My brother had a room in the basement, and I’ll bet that’s where you and your brother’s rooms were, right? I was right. Well, we aren’t quite ready to plonk a bunch of money that we don’t have into finishing the basement just so I won’t have to smell my boy, so we’ll work on hygene and general cleanliness habits and hope we can improve things a bit. Which reminds me..I have to go and strip his bed.

Last night my sweet Jenna just couldn’t sleep for some reason. She was up at 10:45 (right after I had gone to sleep, so when I woke up I was really out of it) and wanted a tape to help her fall asleep. I started a tape really quietly, so as not to wake her sister who she shares a room with.

At sometime around 1:00 she was back in my room asking about something or other. I don’t know if it’s the same with everyone, but I sleep REALLY soundly for the first couple of hours, and hav a hard time waking up. So, I really wasn’t sure what time it was, what she needed and all that. I told her to go use the bathroom, and I heard her softly crying as she did so. She wanted another tape. No, I said, you should have been asleep long ago, and you don’t get a tape. She cried all the way back to bed, so I went and sat by her on her bed. It only took about 5 minutes for her to fall asleep. But how long did it take me to fall asleep? Probably about an hour. Ugh.

My point about the other parent is–if Ryan had been here, he would have still been up, so hopefully he would have been the one dealing with the sleepwalking (or just not asleep) child. But alas, Ryan is not here, he’s in Las Vegas for the week for a big Consumer Electronics Show. And I miss him.

Well, it’s been an eventful day of playing with friends.

I took the kids to the “Meet your Teacher” at church this morning, and we brought a friend home with Jenna. A friend, who, altough cute, has a bit of a phobia about the stairs. Jenna told me “Maddie’s afraid of heights and wants you to carry her up the stairs.” So, I told her there was nothing to be afraid of and I would hold her hand as we walked up the stairs. She started crying and said she wanted to go home, so what was I to do? I carried her up the stairs. And I carried her back down the stairs when they wanted to come back down. hum.

I instructed the other kids to call around UNTIL they found someone to play with, so Megan found a friend to come over, and Natalie went back with the friend’s mom to her house to play with her friend, Cole had a friend come over, too. Lots of kids, but less trouble.

Ryan cleaned the old fridge (I helped a little), loaded it up, and took it to his parents’ house. They will replace their 40 year old fridge in the garage with our 12 year old fridge. It will seem like new to them.

I watched “Chicago” (it was a lot different than I remember it, seeing as I watched it in the hospital right after having had John), and cleaned up. We had a lovely dinner of stuffed potato skins and pizza. Now the kids are piled in Ryan’s office watching him play some kind of video games, and I’m blogging. How exciting!

We’ll play games, pop popcorn and watch movies tonight, and have a very low key stay at home New Years. I got tickets for us to go the New Year’s Eve celebration for youth up at the conference center “First Night for Youth”, with Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband, but Ryan doesn’t want to truck “all the way up there”, deal with parking and traffic, and try to keep our kids well behaved for 3 hours (or however long they lasted). So, we’ll have a casual night here. Which is nice, too, since we have church at 9:00 in the morning and don’t really want to stay up late.

Maybe someday we’ll be invited to a New Year’s Eve party, or have friends over ourselves, but for now, we’re content to stay home with the kids.

Happy New Year!

Wow!

I don’t know about you, but Birthdays for me are kind of a let-down. I work really hard to make sure my kids have fun, special birthdays, and always remember my hubby’s birthday, too. With my birthday being at a very inconvenient time of year (4 days after Christmas–eek!), it’s often forgotten and most usually glossed over.

So yesterday, I was feeling kind of down, anticipating that my DH would once again underwhelm me with his casualness, and I complained about how my birthday was such a non event. I’ve been quizzing the kids “Do you know when Mommy’s birthday is?” the answer was usually not specific, or just plain no. Ryan told me not to get depressed yet, it’s not even my birthday, and who knows, it may go really well.

I must sincerely apologize to him, because he really pulled it off this year. When John woke up, Dad got him up and changed him, and made him his “p-butter toast” that he wants every morning. Then he got the kids up and they made me breakfast in bed that was even yummy (scrambled eggs with ham!), and they all brought it up on the “you are special” plate on a tray. The kids had all made cards and Megan even gave me a present that she bought herself, a black purse with a pink P on the front. I absolutely LOVE IT! I love the fact that she picked it out herself, and it’s a really cute purse! Ryan said, “I’ll give you your present when you come downstairs.”

So, after eating my breakfast in bed (alone), I took all the packaging off the purse, and brought my tray down to the kitchen to see my kids eating breakfast. Then I looked up and saw—-

A Brand New Refridgerator!

Right there in my kitchen. It wasn’t there last night! How did he do it?

Wow! A new fridge! The kids were all jumping out of their seats with excitement, and Ryan was so shocked that I didn’t know, and told me the whole story about how it was ordered but not here in time for Christmas, and he had to pick it up since he couldn’t risk having it delivered when he wasn’t here, and how he drove the whole way from North Salt Lake with this big fridge in the back of his little truck, and how he hid it in the neighbor’s garage, and how he and his friend Larry brought it in last night after I was asleep, and he couldn’t believe I didn’t hear them making all the noise. I seriously did not hear a thing! He took all the food out of the fridge and freezer, threw a bunch of stuff out, and transferred it to the new clean fridge without me knowing it. I am so impressed!!

So, I must say, he really surprised me with this one, and I must let him off the hook for all the less than wonderful birthdays I’ve had in the past (like him saying he couldn’t possibly be ready by December 29, so we would celebrate on January 29, instead. Come to think of it–that year I believe he got me a freezer. Do I sense a trend here?).

The kids and I are going out to do something fun now. We’re hoping to catch a movie, and then Ryan and I will have a date tonight. So, everyone, the Birthday is a success!

Here’s my girls in their new Christmas pajamas.

After all the preparations, parties, concerts, buying, hiding and wrapping of presents, listening to, singing, and playing Christmas music, eating lots of food I shouldn’t and having so much holiday fun, it’s hard to accept the fact that Christmas is over, and I’ll have to wait a whole year for another Christmas. I guess it’s the after Christmas blues. Oh well, on the bright side, the weather is nice, no inversion has set in to make us depressed, and we have all these new toys to keep the kids busy, right? What I NEED to do is start my diet, get out there and exercise, and clean my house. What I am doing is shopping around for a replacement dual screen dvd player for the car, since the one I bought for the kids didn’t work, and when I took it back to Toys-R-Us they didn’t have any more. Any suggestions?

How do you handle the after Christmas blues?