Category: General (Page 8 of 11)

It’s full blown summer around here. You know how you can tell? Well, here are some sure signs that it’s summer at my house.

–We are our of bread. And milk. Constantly.

–The blow up pool comes out.

–When I make macaroni and cheese, I cook up 3 or 4 boxes at a time, and there are very few leftovers.

–At any given time, there may be 10 kids here. Or there may be none.

–Otter pops; and lots of them.

–I seem to care a lot more about the state of my toes.

–The kids say something like, “can we eat lunch outside?” and I say, “Um…Ok.” instead of asking why in the world they would want to eat outside.

–The kids stay up late to play. Last night, in fact, Cole was at one friends playing night games, Megan and Natalie were at another neighbor’s playing wiffle ball, and Jenna and John went to another friend’s house to play. All after 8:00 pm.

–We go to the library once a week. At the present time we have 56 items checked out. That is a potential nightmare when it comes to returning all of those items, you know. But it’s a risk we’ll have to take to raise readers.

–Every day is a celebration. It seems there’s a pot luck, party, someone’s anniversary, family party, celebration or what have you every single day. Not that I’m complaining, since I’ve planned about half of them, but it makes it dang hard to stick to any kind of a diet or meal plan with so many eating out opportunities.

–There’s some sort of sunscreen opportunity every day.

–Shoes? Where have all your shoes gone? Are these your shoes? Who’s shoes are these? We don’t even have anyone who wears this size. If all the neighbors brought all the stray shoes and put them in a pile in the middle of the road, it would probably block traffic. I have one friend who said she keeps a crate or a basket on the front porch, and puts all the extra shoes (not belonging to her own family) in the box. I think that’s a good idea.

–There’s really nothing good on tv. All the regular shows are off for the summer, and the new replacement shows are things like “Who will he pick to date, a 20 year old or a 45 year old.” Whatever. Thankfully there are some movies to tivo, reruns of Gray’s Anatomy tonight, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

–Dinners become pretty lax. Scrambled eggs sounds like a pretty good dinner, sure.

So, those are some of the signs of summer here at our house. What are some of your sure signs of summer?

We were driving home from Salt Lake yesterday after doing some errands, and I thought, “We could stop in quickly at IKEA and get some wedding gifts, right?” Well, I don’t think there is any such thing as stopping quickly at IKEA, but we tried it. First we went up to the restaurant to see if Michelle was working, which she was. So, we said hi, asked how she was, (fine, thank you, she said, but without internet for another week, and she has moved into her new house–just in case you were wondering how she’s doing) and then let her enjoy her break while we went shopping. When I say we, I mean me and 4 kids. One of them was at a friend’s house, but really, 4 kids, 5 kids…what’s the difference. I picked up one of these, one of these, few more of these (since I gave all of the ones I bought away for teacher gifts. When wandering by the as is department, I found a couple of these rugs for $1.00 each. A DOLLAR! No way could I pass that one by. So, I brought the rugs home, and put them in my bathroom. One by the sink, and the other by the shower. How cool is that?

And something totally unrelated…I went to yoga yesterday and somehow managed to injure something in the region of my right shoulder blade. So now everything I do that required me to move my arm, back or shoulder (which is a LOT) is accompanied by a small amount of pain. And little “Ow”s and “ouch”s can be frequently heard from my general direction. I’m hoping that it gets better soon.

And…My little guy is running around with a small Paco (the bird from Maya and Miguell on PBS) toy “shooting” everything. When I pointed out that Paco is a bird, not a fighter jet, he said, “No, Paco Shoots! He has a big tummy with lots of shooter stuff in it!” And then runs off to make more shooting and explosion noises. Um, ok.

Why must people call me in the mornings? Why? Do they not know that I have 3-5 children IN MY FACE at that time, and no matter how many times I ask them, tell them, whisper loudly to please be quiet while I’m on the phone, they just HAVE to talk to me while I’m on the phone.

“Mom, can I have scrambled eggs? Can I? Mom? Scrambled eggs?” “MOM, I NEED LUNCH MONEY!” “She’s poking me!” “La-La-lala-La-la,” “But I can’t FIND my socks!” is all going on while I try to talk to whoever it in that has called me before 9 am. I go into the other room to try to have a bit of quiet and THEY JUST FOLLOW ME!

And really, what good can come from phone calls in the morning, anyway? It’s people calling who want something from me. People who are just calling to say hi or to give me a bit of good news don’t call before the kids leave in the morning. They call at a better time, like 10. Or in the afternoon when I’m bored. But no–morning callers want something.

The first call was from a sweet little lady in my ward. She was out of town last weekend and I did the music in RS for her. No big deal. This time she was calling to thank me (sweet, but really not necessary) and then ask if I’d talk about my experience in the Bells on Temple Square for the 5 minutes for music time.  No problem.  But then she somehow dragged the conversation out so that we were on the phone for at least 5 minutes, maybe longer.  5 long minutes of me walking around the house trying to avoid the little people who were very intent in their need for mom.

Next we had a call from a lady in a nearby neighborhood.  She used to be in our ward before it split, and I love her to death.  I would LOVE to sit and chat with her for 1/2 hour or more.  But not before the kids leave for school.  Her kids are in high school and jr high, so obviously they’ve already left for school by this time, or she wouldn’t be able to call me, now, would she?  Chat, chat, avoid childen, say, “I’m on the phone!” about 3 times, and then she asks if Ryan could possibly help them out with a computer issue.  I should have known.  So, Ryan, if you’re reading this, Ruth wants you to call.

8:40.  5 minute to get the girls’ hair combed and poorly styled, shoes on and backpacks on.  The phone rings again.  I saw who it was and wasn’t going to answer it.  I already knew that this person was going to ask me if I could watch her preschooler.  Wasn’t going to answer it.  But one of the helpful children answered it for me and brought me the phone.  And I found myself saying that yes, I would watch her preschooler.  No problem.  You see, she didn’t realize that Tuesday was the last day of school.  I really don’t mind.  John loves playing with Tyler, and I usually pick him up from preschool on Thursdays and bring him home with me for an hour or two because his mom plays tennis on Thursdays.  So John will be happy to have a friend to play with, and it’s not like I’ve got anything important scheduled for this morning anyway.  Unless you call cleaning the bathrooms important.  Which it is.  Important and necessary (if you don’t think it’s important, just stop doing it for a few weeks and see how important and necessary it becomes).  Just not urgent.  It’s not like I had a lunch date with a friend (why DON”T I have any lunch dates with friends, anyway?  I think I need to work on that!) But I don’t have any programs at school, no important shopping to do, just a nice day at home to do some housework.  So, no, I really don’t have a problem watching her little munchkin, but must she call before 9?

I need to put a block on my phone.  If someone called, it would automatically go to the voice mail that said in a nice female voice, “The number you have reached, 7.5………… , does not accept calls before 9 am.  Please leave a short message, or try your call again later.  Thank you.”  But don’t think I don’t want your calls later in the day, because I do.  In fact, I’m just here, cleaning the bathrooms.  There’s nothing I’d love more than a distracting call from a friend to get me away from the drudgery that is toilet cleaning.

1-And it came to pass that there was much laundry. For after the seventh day, the laundry piled up higher and higher until the people could not find any clean socks.  So, there commenced much washing of the laundry.  And the washing of many socks. Therefore, it must needs be that there is much folding and sorting.

2-And it came to pass that after much laundry was washed, there was a basket; and insomuch as the basket was full of socks, there must needs be much folding of socks.  And two shall be the number of socks that go together.  Not three or one or four.  Two. No more, no less.  And each child now hath many many socks in their baskets.  Socks that must be putteth away into the drawers. Now all the people haveth many pairs or socks.
3-And a warning will be given unto the people.  If there beeth any complaining that they cannot findeth their socks, the great washer of the laundry will be very angry, and will smite them with a curse.  And such curse will be that they will have to do their own washing, until such day when the great washer of laundry is no longer angry with them.

4-So let it be written, so let it be done.

We are embarking on a lovely journey here at the Erickson household.  One we have taken many times before.  It’s called potty training.  Yes, I have somehow successfully (ha!) trained my 4 other children to use the potty, and now it’s little John’s turn.  This morning, since his diaper was dry when I went to change him, I told him it was time to sit on the potty, and by some chance, he managed to pee while he was sitting there crying.  Unfortunately, he peed on yesterday’s  clothes that were draped on the side of the bathtub (that’s what I get for not putting them away), but he peed nonetheless.  And there was much celebrating.  I had promised him that if he used the potty (even once), we would go to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving point, so off we go today.  He also got to wear the undergarments of the 3-year old boy….”Cars” pull-ups.  Yes, he did promptly wet in them while we were at Jenna’s class to help out, but he has at least sat on the potty twice more to “try”.  Unsuccessfully.   But he’s  going to  sit on that potty every day.  I’ll keep you posted on how much success we have with this one.  Wish us luck on our journey.

Jenna came to me this morning with a sad look on her face and said she needed to tell me something. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she had been scratching an itch on her leg (inside the cast) with a spoon, and the spoon fell in. Oh well, I told her, you get your cast off today, and I’m sure they’ve found weirder things inside casts than a spoon. But I did manage to reach a finger in there and pull the spoon back out, and she’s relieved. I think she was too embarrassed to have the doctor see a spoon falling out of the cast when they cut it off.

In other news, we went to the pet store to buy stuff for the new birds last night, and we also needed a few things for the other birds, and we ended up spending $43 on bird stuff! I should be glad, actually, because bird stuff is pretty cheap compared to dog stuff. When I mentioned that to Ryan, he agreed. “Yeah, if you had a dog, you’d have to get a whole new house for me.” Right.