The Trials of a Busy Mom

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How was your Valentine’s Day?

Or, as my single friends call it–“single awareness day”? Ours was good. Since Valentine’s Day was on a Sunday, it seemed to stretch through the whole weekend. Friday were class parties, and I was in charge of coordinating the third grade party. Jenna’s class was a lot of fun, and the party went well. While I was there, I checked out the science fair. There were a lot of soda experiments, and a LOT of popcorn experiments. Natalie ended up with a second place ribbon for our project. Yes, I say “our” project, because what kid does their own science fair project without a TON of help from their mom or dad? I’m going to see if I can get Dad to do the next one.

Friday night we did indeed watch the Olympic opening ceremonies. Wow, that’s one long program. At 10:00 I turned it off and made the kids go to bed (two of them were already asleep in the family room). When we went to watch the last hour the next day, the torch lighting was cut off. The program just went too long. But it was amazing! The kids are loving watching the Olympics. They’ll watch ANY event, no matter how boring.

Saturday was the usual kind of Saturday around here. Basketball games, and Ryan went to try to install some fun equipment at a friend’s house, then let Cole drive down to Spanish Fork to get the slide projector and screen so we can do a slide show for Family Home Evening. There were, as usual, some harrowing moments, but I was not there to freak out, so that’s good. At home we frosted Valentine cookies, the kids played and I did some puttering and cleaning up. I’m also working on some sewing for the kids’ bathroom. I’ve got the shower curtain done and now I need to work on the window treatments and pick a paint color.

I made dinner for the kids, and invited Ryan out on a DATE for valentines’ day. Big Mistake. I should have just skipped all Valentine celebrations and left that for another night. I called ahead to Texas Roadhouse, because I had heard how awesome it was. I called at 5:20 and they said “It’s about a 90 minute wait.” So, we planned on getting there at 6:30. Ha! There were THRONGS of people standing around outside the restaurant. Hordes, even. While waiting, we chatted with another couple of parents from Megan’s soccer team (who TOTALLY got in WAY before us), then had a lovely chat with a PTA friend of mine and her husband. We were checking out the “couples” that were there for the Sweetheart’s dance, critiquing the girls’ dresses, and why in the world would she wear that summer dress and those sandals to a dance in February? Anyway, we were there a LONG time. Then we saw our next door neighbor, who was there with hubby AND three kids. Her wait was looking very long, so she told me later they bailed and went to Chuck-a-rama. We persevered, however, and about 8:10, they called out our number.

Was it worth the wait? I guess. The food was amazing, and the service was FAST. They need to get you OUT of there in a hurry, to seat more guests. We enjoyed watching the busboys take over a table. It was about 90 seconds from the time one couple left until the next couple was seated. Seriously, they’ve got that system down. We ended up eating the rolls, the appetizers and the salads, and brought the steak and sweet potatoes home. Yum. I’m looking forward to eating that sweet potato for lunch.

Sunday, the actual Valentine’s day, was a JOYFUL day around here (note the sarcasm there, if you can). Ryan and I had been asked to speak in church. Groan. But, I guess it was our turn. We haven’t spoken in…I don’t really know how long. We had such a huge ward for a while, with new people moving in all the time, so the new people always got assigned to speak. We’ve been a smaller ward for about two years now, and somehow we have stayed under the radar. Until now. We were assigned to speak on Music. So I found a great talk on music by Elder Russell M. Nelson, added a few personal experiences and my own take on it, then found some additional articles and took a quote or two from each of them, and -bam- talk done. I thought it was a decent talk. But when it came time to give it, I realized I was going too long. Seriously? Too long? I NEVER go too long. I must not have been doing my customary ‘talk really fast when I’m nervous’ thing. Yay, me! So I actually had to skip over some of my talk in order to leave some time for Ryan to give his talk (after the special RS number “love at home”). My favorite quote from the whole talk was this one, President Young said, “There is no music in hell, for all good music belongs to heaven. It would be punishment enough to go to hell and not hear a note of music for all eternity.”

Anyway, the talk is done, and now we can reset the clock and hopefully not have to speak for a long long time.

After church we went up to my parent’s house for dinner. Dinner was yummy, and we had fun playing some games while Ryan earned his keep and did some computer fix ups for them.

Aside from the talk in church, it was a nice valentine’s weekend.

When we got home and the kids were in bed, it was time for some serious valentine’s day fun.

We watched the Amazing Race together. What? Did you think I was going to say something else? Get your mind out of the gutter. Did you watch it, too? What did you think? It’s too early to pick favorites quite yet, but the ditzy blondes annoy me, and I don’t really like the overly gayness of others. I really like those cowboys, though. I hope they stay in a long time. Here’s a great wrap up in case you missed it.

My plans for the day

Happy Friday! Whacha got going on today? Fun stuff?

Well, my plan for the day include a valentine party for the third graders,
checking out the science fair,
lunch with my boy John,
various cleaning up and laundry duties,
homework nazi and trying to get the kids to do their various cleaning up and laundry duties,
making dinner for a lady in her ward and her family of 10,
and watching this..

The Olympics begin!

Projects

We’re never without a project around here. After Ryan cut a hole in the wall of the mudroom, he put up some cabinets in there. You know, to “cover up the hole”. But really, he patched up the hole and painted the wall, so you can’t even tell there was a hole there. But I got some new cabinets anyway. Hooray!

In honor of the cabinets, I cleaned and dejunked that tiny room so that it looked like this.

Notice I said “looked” like this, because we’ve since piled some stuff on those counters, as we usually do. My favorite is that there’s a spot for my big buckets of wheat, sugar and flour, instead of those being on the floor somewhere.

My son,when he saw the cleanliness of the room, said, “We have a sink in there?” Yes, dear, there IS a sink. And we’ve lived in this house for how many years? Almost 9?

Another project that I’m glad to be done with is Natalie’s 5th grade science fair project. I won’t go into a whole bunch of boring details, but what started out like this

ended up like this

And it’s turned in. *Sigh of relief*

Last weekend I also spend many frustrating hours in John and Jenna’s room. I asked them repeatedly to clean it, and they basically ignored me for weeks and weeks (what? Is someone talking to me? I didn’t hear anything!), and when the kids had the day off of school on Friday and began the day by fighting, I sent them up to their room. Let’s just sum up the morning by saying that there was quite a bit of yelling, some crying, some nasty looks, and at lunch time I told them they could leave the room and I would continue on without them. Seven or eight bags of trash and a few to DI, and the room was finally clean. Well, not completely clean, as I hadn’t even started on the clothes closet, but I was tired by then. After rearranging and vacuuming and washing sheets and throwing away and organizing it, I let them back into their room, where they said, WOW! Unfortunately, I did not get a picture in the 30 seconds that it was clean.

I also got some new chairs for my living room. They look kind of like this:

Oh, wait, it’s this chair below, only there are two of them.

I got a SCREAMING deal on them, with both chair delivered to my door for under $300. Anyway, I can now get rid of the silly rocking chair that I spray painted, but then whenever it bumps on the wall, it leaves black marks, and a white wicker chair. The chairs came this week, and I’m thrilled with them. Except that they smell like new leather. Don’t like that. But the kids were thrilled with the boxes, and John has one up in his room and wants to sleep in it. Um, no.

And, Ryan got a whole bunch of parts delivered yesterday from a certain bathroom company, and they are sitting in the garage. If that doesn’t have the word project written all over it, I don’t know what does. We’ll expound on this later.

So, what are YOU working on, Hmmmm?

What a crazy dream

Oh, what a crazy dream I had last night!

Two bloggers that I don’t know in real life, but I read their blogs, were visiting me. As we were chatting about our kids and such, Cole came home from school. He had a big box of empanadas (#1) that were left over from a friend’s party. I put them in the freezer so we could eat them later. I looked outside the back window and saw a big pile of animal poop right outside the door (#2). “Kids, look at this!” I cried. The kids came over to look, and I showed them the new pile of poop. “That cougar must be close.” While we were looking, the 2 year old daughter of one of my blogger friends slipped outside. We looked, and saw not a cougar, but a strange creature stalking through the backyard. One of the kids ran out and grabbed the little girl and pulled her inside to safety, just as the strange animal attacked. It looked like a lemur, with black and white stripes and a long tail,
but it walked on all fours and had the triangle shaped ears with tufts of fur at the the top like a lynx.
It had crazy cartoon eyes like this Lemur
There were two other cat like creatures with it, but they were not as noticeable. The lemur thing was throwing itself against our back door, trying to get at the little girl. In a panic, I handed the camera to one of the kids, and said, “Take Pictures!” because it’s not every day that crazy animals attack in your back yard, and I wanted proof. (#3) Then I tried to find the number for animal control. (#4) I was looking it up in the phone book (why a phone booK, I wonder? Do we even HAVE a phone book anymore?) and got the number, but I was on hold. Still in a panic, I told the kids to hurry and call the neighbors and tell them to not let their kids outside (#5).
Then I woke up to John standing right next to me asking if I could come downstairs and help him pour the milk for his cereal. Bizarre!

But there are reasons why I dreamed this stuff.
#1-Cole and Megan went to a youth activity last night where they went to four different homes and had a little mini lesson about some other country. They tasted the food of that country and learned a little bit about the culture. At one house, they ate empanadas and talked about Chile. Hence, the empanadas in the dream.

#2-On Sunday, I noticed a pile of what looked like poop way out in the backyard, and I asked Ryan what he thought that black spot was. Nothing, he said. The next day, a neighbor posted on facebook that her kids had found a huge pile of poop and some tracks in their yard, and thought it was a cougar.

#3-Ryan was skeptical that there was any cougar activity when I told him about it, so of course I would want proof.

#4-After several other neighbors commented on about also having huge piles of poop in their yards, neighbor Chris posted that she had indeed called animal control, and they confirmed that it was a cougar, that they follow the deer. They hunt at night, and they shouldn’t bother people or pets, but just to be on the safe side, you might want to bring in your dog or cat at night.

#5-When I talked to a different neighbor yesterday, she said, “Did you hear about the cougar roaming around? The kids are scared and don’t even want to walk to the bus stop alone.” So, of course, in my dream, I would worry about protecting the kids, don’t you think?

So there you have it. We now live in Cougartowne, and it’s affecting my dreams. In a lemur sort of way.

I’m back!

My computer is back! Hooray, Hooray! Maybe you didn’t even notice it was missing, because I’m such a good faker, but it’s been gone for a couple of days. It hasn’t been far, just in Ryan’s office. But still, out of commission is out of commission. Before that, it had been limping along for a couple of weeks. It freaked out and froze whenever I tried to run windows. Ugh. So my dear husband, as soon as he had some free time, got it working again. Yes, he is amazing.

What else is going on?

–I made salmon tonight. The kids were not thrilled, but Ryan was. ‘Nuff said.

–Friday night we went out on a double date. Fun! I had won some ticket to the Collin and Brad show, and we invited our good friends Tess and David to come with us. And I must say, a good time was had by all. We went to dinner at the Garden Restaurant, then walked over to Abravanel hall for the show. As we were finding our seats, I heard someone call my name. It was Don and Nancy–parents of one of my best friends in high school. I haven’t seen them in at least 10 years, but it was SO fun to chat with them! It was kind of a bonus! The show was fun, I laughed until I cried. They did funny improv sketches. One of the most notable was the mousetrap skit, which goes like this.

–I’m making chocolate frogs. Yep. Harry Potter party coming up this weekend, you know. I’ve also made a sorting hat and some wands, and I picked up a bunch of many flavored beans today. Oh, the preparations!

–The science project is underway. More on that later.

–Today I had to tell my children that they are getting up too early. Yes, you heard me. Too early. I keep hearing children walking around (and I can see that the hall light, which turns on automatically when someone walks around in the hall or stairs, is on) before 5:00am. BEFORE. What the what? I asked Cole how early he’s getting up, exactly, and he said around 5:00 or 5:15. Too early. I ban you all from getting up any earlier than ONE hour before you leave for school. It’s not like they do their hair or anything. Sheesh!

Every little bit helps

Emergencies seem to bring out some of the best in people. Our hearts go out to those suffering in Haiti. They are enduring such loss. Loss we cannot even comprehend as we sit in our heated homes on our comfortable sofas with plenty of food to eat, with our families nearby. I’ve been impressed with the way the rest of the world is quick to react with offerings of love, prayers, support, and most importantly, money.

There are so many different ways to give, and give we must. Even if all we can give is one dollar, it’s a dollar that will help out in the rescue efforts. How should we donate?

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we give through our fast offerings. That money goes to help those in need in our own neighborhoods as well as throughout the world. A church news release on January 13 stated:

“Two planes, one departing from Denver as early as Thursday and another leaving from Miami later this week, will each include over 80,000 pounds of food and emergency resources such as tents, tarps, water filtration bottles and medical supplies donated by the Church. Transportation is being provided by Airline Ambassadors and Food for the Poor will aid with distribution in Haiti.

“We are constantly assessing needs to determine how our resources can directly help the people of Haiti,” said Nate Leishman, manager of the Church’s humanitarian emergency response efforts. “We are fully committed to this ongoing process and doing our best to help wherever we can.”

These new shipments are in addition to emergency supplies, including personal hygiene kits and supplies for newborns, being sent by truck from the Dominican Republic, as announced early Wednesday by the Church.

Giving to the Red Cross is another great way to help. And they’ve made it so easy to donate. Just text “haiti” to 90999 to make a $10 donation. It’s been reported that over $3 million has been raised through this text campaign already. Isn’t that amazing. While I was at Costco today, they asked if I would like to donate to the American Red Cross. I did. And it was easy.

I didn’t give a LOT, but I did give. And I will continue to give through my fast offerings and other means. Because every donation helps.

There are a lot of bloggers who are committed to raising awareness of the need for money in Haiti. They are also committing to raise funds.

Money Saving Mom is one of my favorite blogs to check for deals and coupons. Now she’s committed to donate $10 for each blogger who donates, writes a post about their donation, and links back to her site. As I’m writing this, there are already 359 bloggers who have linked to her post. On her site she’s listed many other bloggers who are also matching funds, making donations, and really stepping it up for each comment they receive.

Mommy Snacks

The Diaper Diaries

Lamp Unto My Feet

Scrapbook of Sorts

Mom’s Toolbox

Cha-Ching on a Shoestring

Thrifty Northwest Mom

Saving Money Plan

The Happy Housewife

4 Hats and Frugal

Cincinnati Coupons

Baby GoodBuys

Another Mom’s View

The King’s Court

The Frugal Girl

Mrs. MoneySaver

SwagGrabber

Puget Sound Prudence

Saving Money in Missouri

Heavenly Homemakers

Pennies and Blessings

Faithful Provisions

She Saved

Saving with Amy

The Prudent Patron

I Heart Publix

Frugal Living and Having Fun

A High and Noble Calling

Sharpen Your Scissors

Cincinnati Cents

Coupon Lady Online

Common Sense with Money

The Homespun Heart

Ava’s Mom

Bargain Blessings

Coupon Geek

The Gothros

Saving Bits and Pieces

The Suburban Tree Hugger

My Litter of Six

“Deal”lightful Savings

Sixth Cents Saving

Really, Are You Serious?

Christian Frugal Mama

Sharpen Your Scissors

The Krazy Coupon Lady

The Stearns’ Weekly News

Making Time for Mommy

The Simple Life of the Boreings

The Frugal Find

The Coupon Basics

My Fave Deals

Thrifty on the Dollar

My Blessed Life

Kingdom First Mom

The Thrifty Couple

Frugal Living NW

My Pet Savings

Mama’s Laundry Talk

Frugal Follies

The Haney Life

Covenant Homemaking

Coupon Teacher

Mommie Cheapest

Won’t you commit to the challenge? Make a donation, blog about it, and then link up to one of these sites. I haven’t included all the links to these blogs (sorry), but if you go to here you’ll be able to click over to each one of those blogs. That will increase the amount of money going to help the people in Haiti. Every little bit helps.

Are you a lurker?

Hey, do you know what today is? It’s National DeLurking Day.

I think I know most of you who do actually read here, but if you by chance are visiting and not ever leaving a comment to say hello, it’s your time to come clean. I’m just sayin.

So, have a great day! And if you’ll excuse me, I have to referee the children. One of them seems to be hogging the Wii.

I’m hoping for the big M

It all started the week before Christmas. I was crabby and short tempered and wondered why in the world I would possibly be crabby right before CHRISTMAS! Oh, dang, it must be PMS. I looked at the calendar to see when the last occurrence of my “party” was.

Dang. I haven’t been writing these things down for quite some time. I tried to think back to the last time, and I figured out it was just after our vacation to San Diego. That was the end of November, so that would be about right. Darn. I HATE PMS, but the only way to get rid of the PMS is to experience the MS, and that’s no fun, either. Why did it have to be right during Christmas? Oh, well. I resigned myself to the inevitable, and stocked up on diet coke. The chocolate and candy were no problem, since it seemed with every ring of the doorbell some yummy sugar laden goodie was being delivered.

Christmas came and went. My period, however, did not. I kept thinking it would be here the next day. Then the next day, and the next. I started to wonder when it was going to come, and there began to be a nagging fear in the back of my mind–what if it didn’t? Every weird smell started to set me off. When I took the kids and cousins to Boondocks the week after Christmas, two of the kids picked out these squishy caterpillar things for their prizes. They smelled like gasoline and plastic. Not kidding. I had to crack the windows on the car on the way home, and I banished those squishy things to the basement. Was I overreacting? I don’t think so.

Could this be the beginning of “the big M”? or was it “the big P”? Is there another choice?
I started to think about how my life would change if we were to have another baby. For one thing, would it be healthy? I’m 42, now, for crying out loud. And crying out loud is just about what I did. I CAN’T be pregnant. Can !? But we’re so past that stage now. We don’t have kids waking up every three hours, we don’t have any of that STUFF it takes to have a baby. How would we do it? I would have to take a year off of my fabulous bell choir. I would have to “start over” with one more baby. The caboose. Every day, I waited. No period. The Monday after the New Year, I bought a pregnancy test. I waited until Tuesday to take it. I didn’t want to know. But I did want to know. The stress of not knowing was killing me. What would Ryan say? I know what he would say, he’d be thrilled to have another baby. But as a man, he’s not the one who has to go through all the changes, all the work, all the crap–of having a baby.

Tuesday, after the kids went to bed, I finally took the test. I read the directions twice, then I peed on the stick. And I waited. I brushed my teeth, and I waited. After the whole three minutes, I looked. That little test could change my life. Would it?

Negative. Not pregnant. I exhaled. While a tiny part of me was sad that there would be no baby, I was relieved. Good. I get to keep my life. I like my life. I like the kids and the fun ages they are, and I don’t want to miss all of that by having to focus all the attention on a baby. And I’ve already been blessed with 5 wonderful, healthy children. An embarrassment of riches, really. Relief. I had been going through all those scenarios in my mind, calculating that when this baby is 10, I’ll be 53. When this baby graduates from high school, I will be 60. Sixty! Ack! Both of my sisters are at the moment pregnant, and I wouldn’t want it to seem like I was just jumping on the bandwagon.

But if I wasn’t pregnant, where was the period? I waited. And waited. After three more days I wondered if I should take the second test (there are two in the box, you know). I didn’t. I waited. Friday, I finally had some light activity, and I was hopeful. Seriously–hopeful, that it was indeed the start of something. By Sunday, dear Aunt Flo had arrived. And I was indeed relieved.

In the coming months, as I get older and closer to the “Big M”, I’m sure this will happen again. I’ll just keep that back-up EPT test in the closet.

Big plans

It’s a Thursday morning, and I have NO plans for the day. Seriously, NO PLANS! No meetings, no volunteer time at the school scheduled, no pressing grocery shopping needs (since I’ve already spent my $25 for the week –sigh–), and no sick children home. No parties to plan, no rehearsals to go to, no house guests, nothing! I’m still in my pjs and it’s almost 9:00. Woo-Hoo! I’m thrilled. I think I’m going to work on cleaning up my room, maybe bake some whole wheat bread, or start working on this disaster I call my office. Or maybe not. MAYBE (evil laugh) I’ll crawl back into bed! How would THAT be? Oh, the excitement is overwhelming!

I’ll check in later and let you know what I actually did with my “free time” from now until noon, when John comes home from school.

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