Superpaige's Pad

The Trials of a Busy Mom

Category: Kids (Page 16 of 19)

Wacky Wednesday

December 19, 2007 / / 2 Comments

It’s been kind of a rough morning here. My little guy, John, greeted me this morning with, “I threw up last night, but I feel better and can I have some breakfast?” What? Not really the good morning I’d like. He didn’t look sick or anything, so I had to ask Ryan. Yes, indeed, he had thrown up and Ryan stripped his bed (Thank you, honey!). Now those bedclothes are sitting in the laundry room waiting for me to wash them. Hooray! (Oh, and don’t tell my sister, or we may be banned from all the upcoming family activities.)

My little Jenna, who complained that her tummy hurt last night, STILL has a tummy ache and doesn’t want to eat anything. She’s staying home.

My Cole missed his carpool, so I got to drive him to school in the major snowstorm.

My usually responsible Megan said, “I’ve got to get my stuff ready,” as she handed me the note. The note that says, please have these things here by Tuesday (yesterday)…A tinfoil covered piece of cardboard 12 X18, a can of white frosting, a king sized candy bar, and a bag of smarties. Well, now, how am I supposed to supply smarties when I don’t have any? We had the rest of the stuff, and I sent a bag of lifesavers instead. That will have to do.

My excited Natalie was thrilled about the read-a-thon today and needed my help to find a pillow, books and snacks.

But what to my wondering eyes should appear, but an email in my inbox that made me extremely happy. I won a High School Musical MP3 player from NWI Parent. How fun is that?

Which reminded me that I forgot to pick a winner for my pay it forward book exchange. Silly me! So, I had my sick daughter pick a number, which was 2. That means that Amy is my book winner! I’ll send her out an email and then she will receive this fun book in the mail soon.

Now I’ve got to figure out if John is going to his preschool party, figure out what I’m wearing to my fancy dinner party at the Grand America Hotel tonight, order pizzas for the class that had the most reflections entries and take those to their class at 1:30 (yes, that ordeal keeps on going on, doesn’t it?), and finish my neighbor gifts. I’m hoping the rest of the day goes a little more smoothly.

Nativity Creativity

December 7, 2007 / / 2 Comments

I have this beautiful Fontanini Nativity set that I got when I was living in Germany. It looks like it’s carved wood, but it’s really made from durable resin. One of the reasons I love it is because I don’t have to worry about it if the kids play with it. I remember as a kid playing with the nativity set and having the people travel around the house to come and see the baby Jesus. And I love letting my kids play with my set. Sometimes things get a little bit crazy, though. The other night I came home to see all of the nativity people gathered around….the bird cage. Hmmmm. I didn’t like that one, however, since I don’t want to have to scrape bird poop off the baby Jesus.

john

John is especially creative in his Nativity Play. I heard him over there making gun and bomb noises. “Boom! Get the baby!” My ears perked up and I came to take a look. All the people were laying down and he said, “They’re dead. They are all shooted. By a mean Lamanite.”

Ok. Well, then. Carry on.

Proud mom

December 4, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Last night we went to the “Christmas in the Rotunda” art show awards night that the local library puts on.  My three girls had entered winter pictures for the art show, so they were excited to see if they won anything.  Imagine our delight when we saw a HUGE purple ribbon on Megan’s picture.  She won Best in Show!  Along with that came a $20 prize.  They even took her picture and told her that “the Mayor would be delighted to see who won”.  We were all very excited for her.  Natalie also won , a purple ribbon and a $5 prize.  Jenna was a little disappointed that she only had a green ribbon for participation, but she seemed to be ok with it.  They didn’t really divide this contest into age groups, so she had a better chance of winning, since she’s the oldest of the kids allowed to enter.

Of course I forgot my camera, so I have no picture YET, but I’ll hop down there to the library in the next few days and take some pictures so I can post them here.

—–

And by the way, today I’m giving away John’s old race car toddler bed.  The problem, however, is that so many people would like to have it, and I hate having to decide.  I think I found someone who’s little boy will really enjoy it, and the mom is very appreciative, so I think it was a good choice.  I wonder what I’ll find to give away tomorrow!

Christmas Fun, it has begun

December 1, 2007 / / 2 Comments

I received a fabulous present in the mail the other day.  It’s Michael W. Smith’s It’s a wonderful Christmas CD.  And fabulous, it is.  In fact, you can listen to snippets of the album if you click on that link there.  My favorite song is “Christmas Day” with Mandisa.  If you need some new Christmas music to listen to while you decorate that tree or make cookies, check it out.

Today I put up our Christmas countdown calendar.  It’s a cute little Santa with 25 pockets.  I used to just fill every pocket with candy, but now since there’s 5 kids, I can’t really put 5 candies in every little pocket.  That just wouldn’t fit.  So in some pockets there are candies, but in others there are little pieces of paper labeled with the fun thing that we are doing that day.  Today’s paper said “Go to Italo’s Christmas show”.  Italo is Julene’s step-son, and he’s in “Return to Christmas”, a Christmas variety show at the Scera Theater in Orem.  It was lots of fun.  We really enjoyed the show, and the kids were even very well behaved through the whole thing (popcorn helped).

Some of the other pockets have little cards that say things like: make cookies, wrap presents, sleep in sleeping bags by the Christmas tree, go see the lights at Thanksgiving point, read a Christmas story, watch a Christmas show, go to Mom’s Christmas concert, deliver gifts to the neighbors and things like that.  I hope that the little clues will be just as well received as the candy is, but we’ll have to see about that.

Does this ever happen at your house?

November 30, 2007 / / 6 Comments

Last night we went out to dinner to celebrate the end of a certain large event that we won’t talk about anymore. While enjoying our dinner (which was awesome, by the way.  Mimi’s cafe rocks!  Great service and they let us use gift certificates for ALL FIVE kids’ meals!), the subject of homework came up, and we learned that two of my children had major assignments that were due the next day.

One child said that he was writing a report on Galapagos tortoises, but assured me that had done most of the assignment already, and it was on his flash drive.  Oops–did you mean the flash drive that you currently can’t find?  Good luck with that.

The other child was supposed to do a book report on a biography.  She had chosen to read a book about Michelle Kwan.  So, on the way home, I asked that child to tell us all about Michelle Kwan to prepare her brain for the book report she had yet to write.  She told us that Michelle had started skating at age 6, that her inspiration was her hockey playing brother (or maybe it was cousin.  Anyway, someone played hockey), and that she had won some competition when she was 13.  The end.  Hmmm.  “Did she go to the Olympics?”  I asked.  “I don’t know.  I haven’t finished the book” she says.  It’s a good thing it was dark in the car, so she couldn’t see the smoke coming out of my ears.

When we got home from our lovely dinner, I assigned the Galapagos writer to work on my computer, and the Michelle Kwan biographer to come and dictate what she wanted to say to me in Dad’s office.  Then the real drama began.  She couldn’t FIND the book on Michelle Kwan, and when pressed, she admitted that she had only read two chapters.  She then decided to do the report on Harry Houdini, since she also had his biography there.  I left her to read and do some research for about a half an hour while I went to go cool down and watch 30 Rock (hilarious, by the way).  Twenty minutes later, I came to check on them.  It’s about bedtime by this time.  I check report boy, and he’s got ONE WHOLE PARAGRAPH done, and one picture.  Biographer girl has finished the first chapter.

I lost it.

I did a great job of making them both feel horribly guilty that they a-hadn’t mentioned that they had these assignments, and b-hadn’t started working on it until now.  I made sure that they both knew they were destined to fail their respective classes and would only be qualified to work at a gas station if they kept up this pattern of behavior.  Not my finest moment.  I went off to put the other children to bed, not knowing what to do with these two.

After teeth brushing, stories and prayers with the other three, I came back to see what, if anything, I could do to help my two slackers not fail.  We decided to do a timeline of Houdini’s life, and I asked her to write down the important dates from his life that she had read about (birth, death, marriage, important events, etc.).  She came up with about 10, and with a little help from me, we got the dates right, printed a few pictures from the old internet, and got a reasonably decent time line put together by 9:30.  I sent her off to bed.

Galapagos boy had pulled it together and done a halfway decent report, complete with 3 or 4 pictures.  When I read it through, I was pretty sure that he had put it in his own words and not just done a cut and paste job from the internet.  (Especially the part about “these turtles are important because if they weren’t there, the sailors wouldn’t have had anything to eat”).  I encouraged a few changes, put new color ink in the printer so the pictures wouldn’t look all striped, made sure he had an appropriate bibliography and had covered all the points listed in the assignment sheet.  I gave him a folder to put it in, then told him to go to bed when he was done.

I dragged myself up to bed.  Exhausted.  Feeling like a failure, myself.

I know this little crisis could have been handled better, but I’m not exactly sure how.  I just want my kids to be successful, responsible people, and part of that is getting good grades, turning things in when they are due, and not leaving big assignments until the very last second.  I also don’t want to be the tyrant mother that my kids are afraid of and they don’t want to admit anything because they know their mom will jump all over them.  I want to be the nice, understanding mom.  The mom who helps them through the tough times, not the mom who yells at them for causing their own tough times.  I guess maybe I was a little bit of both last night.

And this will be the last time I blog about Reflections. Really.

November 28, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Today was my awards assembly for our school’s reflections contest.  Hallelujah!  This morning I left my house at 9:00, with all the entries, awards, medals, and certificates piled in the car.  I dropped John off at a friends, and drove to the school.  Since it was icy, I had to carefully pick my way along the sidewalk from the car to the school about 5 times back and forth as I brought my many boxes of stuff into the gym.  As I was setting up for the 1st assembly at 9:30, I realized what I had left home.  The basket of candy bars.  EEERG.  The kids were promised candy bars, and if I didn’t deliver candy bars, someone might complain.  I called my friend, who was going to come and help me, but I only got her answering machine.  I tried her cell, but no answer.  At 9:15 I saw her walking down the hall.  She was a complete doll and drove to my house, and picked up the candy bars.  Crisis averted.

At the assembly, we showed the slide show that Cole had made for me (pictures of all the entries set to music), then we showed our first place film/video winner, a darling claymation that I just love, and then handed out the awards.  For the lower grades that goes pretty fast, and we were done in one hour.

I had set up the non winning entries on tables, so that afterward, they could just come and pick up their entry, certificate and treats.  But then I had kids coming saying they couldn’t find their entries, and teachers saying that they had a child in tears because they thought they had entered, but couldn’t find it.  One or two art entries I can understand, but 10 that we can’t find?  I went to go look in my car between assemblies, and found a box right outside the door full of ….you guessed it….art entries.  Ugh.  I had put that box down so that I could open the door, but then forgot to go back and get it.  Oh well, crisis controlled.

The second assembly went well, with the kids clapping and cheering more than the little kids.  By the end of the slideshow, they were really cheering.  The words “We’d like to thank the following businesses for their generous donations” scroll by, and the cheering gets louder.  What?  Oh, I see.  They see the names of the businesses….Coldstone (cheering and screaming), Hale Center Theater, (crazed cheering).  By the time they read “Boondocks”, I think someone’s going to go home with larangitis.  I’m glad they were excited.

After delivering a few art entries to the younger kids, cleaning up the few extra medals and certificates, and collecting all of my boxes, I’m exhausted, but very relieved.  Hooray, it’s over!

I just have to get the entries ready to move on to the next level, but that won’t take me more than an hour (I hope).

So.  It is done.  Thanks for putting up with my whining and complaining.  I’m glad it’s over (and I’m sure you are, too!)

Tomorrow night we will have our celebratory reflections dinner, and use some of these free kids meals the kids won.  Mimi’s cafe, anyone?

And right now my kids are arguing over who gets to be the baby Jesus with the newly discovered nativity scene.  And I wonder why we lose a piece of this nativity about every year?

Oh, the relief. Oh, the joy.

November 26, 2007 / / 4 Comments

My husband just came home early (shock!) and surprised me with some much needed good news.

a-Ryan left work early today and  took the van to the second repair place.  The first place fixed a bad injector for us, but recommended that we take it to a different place that does more electrical work to fix the horn/cruise control.  So, he took it to that place today, and JOy of all joys, they just hooked the little connection back up and now it works fine.  No Charge.  Did you hear that, people, NO CHARGE?!  After all the work we’ve had to do on cars lately, that was a such a blessing.  Thank you, kind repair guy.

b- There was a UPS package on the porch for me containing the much anticipated reordered medal for the reflections program in two days.  Breathe a big sigh of relief on that one!  I am SO READY for this one to be over, folks.  I’ve already turned in my “PTA resignation”–in other words, I won’t be doing reflections again next year, thank you very much.  I’ve just spent WAY too many HOURS on this volunteer job.  I blame myself because I’m not very good at delegating (it’s too much work to explain what I want to someone else, if that makes sense).  But now I have the right medals, and today I called all the parents of the winners, and I am seriously ready.  Then hopefully I can move on to more fun things.  Like Christmas cards.

On a side note, soon after Ryan came home, there was a phone call for him, and it was someone from MyTowne.  Hey, I thought, he must have won something from that web site (yes, I entered him).  So, when he was off the phone I went in to his office, and asked if he had won something.  “Yeah,” he said, “They said I had won Kurt Bestor concert tickets for tonight, but I told them no.”

“WHAT?  YOU TOLD THEM NO? ”
“Didn’t you just say we were going to an indoor soccer game for FHE tonight?” he asked.

“Well,  YOU could go to the indoor soccer game, and I could go to the concert with one of the kids!”  I couldn’t believe he would say no to free tickets.  I then had to explain to him that at any time, if someone calls and tells you you have won something, or there is a chance to win something for FREE, then the answer is Yes.  How long has he been married to me and he didn’t understand this?

And one more unrelated thing, John wore a tie to school.  An orange t-shirt that says ‘polo’ on it, shorts, and a blue tie with white polka-dots on it.  No, I don’t know why, but when he picked out his clothes this morning, he brought down the tie and wanted to wear them.  Whatever.  I’m sure his preschool teacher got a nice chuckle from his appearance.  The boy won’t use the potty, but he doesn’t mind wearing a tie.  I will never understand him.

Let’s drag this out a bit more

November 19, 2007 / / 4 Comments

You may know that I’m in charge of the PTA Reflections contest for our school. If you didn’t know that, well then you haven’t been paying attention around here. For the past two weeks, I’ve had 151 entries here at my house, and I’ve been in charge of getting entries judged, tally the scores, calling businesses and collecting freebies. About a week and a half ago I ordered medals. I found a company online with good prices. Plus I could order from the comfort of my own home instead of driving around town to order and pick up. Because basically I’m tired of driving all over for this PTA job. I’m getting tired of my PTA job, and maybe, just maybe a little bit burned out.

So, when my medals arrived on Thursday, I rejoiced (hooray! They came in time) and glanced at them (Cool!) and set them aside until after my dinner party on Thursday (Lots of fun!). On Friday, I took another look at them and realized I had to hook all the ribbons on to the medals. I enlisted the help of my lovely daughter, Megan. As I’m struggling to clip the ribbons on (Ouch! These things are killing my fingers!), Megan looks at the one she’s doing and says, “Gross.”

What? What is gross? What’s wrong? I come to see, and I see the medals, and don’t see anything wrong.

Upon closer examination, I realize that the bas relief-ness of the art medal may present a problem.

I’ve tried to blow this little picture up a bit so that it’s more of it’s actual size. Do you see anything that might present a problem? It’s art, right? There’s an artist’s palette, the Parthenon, The Venus De Milo. Art things. Oh! I just realized that giving these awards, which are in 3D, may be a problem for your average 5th grade boy. Or girl. Oh, the titillation. Since this realization that this may be a big mistake hit me on Friday night, and I don’t have the phone number of the principal at home, I got to stew about it all weekend. I mean, the assembly is TUESDAY, as in Tomorrow, people.

This morning I went in to the school to run it by the principal, and he laughed and said we would be better off if we got different medals. “I can just hear the phone calls already.”

So, we get to drag this ordeal that is reflections out just a bit LONGER and have our assembly NEXT week instead. Which is fine. The only reason I scheduled it before Thanksgiving was to get it over with. I called the medal people, and yes, they can replace them with a more appropriate, although pretty generic medal. They will of course charge me a 15% restocking fee and I’ll have to pay the return shipping and more shipping on the new stuff. Ka-ching. That will eat up the extra I had in the budget, but it seems worth it, don’t you think?

My supportive husband, Ryan, had really gotten a kick out of this whole thing. He laughs that I’m distributing soft p*rn to the kids at school, and suggested that he grind all the Venuses off with a grinder. Or we could draw little t-shirts on them all with a sharpie. Because that won’t draw attention to it at ALL. Ha, Ha. Really funny.

Leaves and more leaves

November 12, 2007 / / 10 Comments

About a week ago, a friend called me and said, “We’re going to go and rake leaves! Come with us.” Since we live in a newer subdivision, none of us have big old trees with lots of leaves, so we don’t really get to experience the fun that is raking leaves. So we tossed the kids in the car and drove over a few streets to an older street in our ward, and got out the rakes. Actually, we don’t even own a rake, so we asked if we could use theirs. It was a glorious fall day with the sun still shining and the kids had a wonderful time raking leaves with their friends.

Did I say raking? I meant playing.

Can you find Paige?

Or Natalie?

We had so much fun the kids didn’t want to stop. They raked up ALL the leaves they could find in this one yard, and also from the gutters and even the house across the street. They wanted to go back the next day!

We had to bring 4 bags of leaves home to put in our garden, according to the kids. I don’t think we really need that for mulch, but who was I to say no to a few bags of leaves. The problem wasn’t the leaves in the bags, however, it was the amount of leaves the kids tracked into the car and the house. When they undressed that night, there were even leaves in their underwear. I had to vacuum out the car, since the crunched up leaves were attaching themselves to EVERYTHING.

It was a fun fall free for all!

Metal Mouth

October 18, 2007 / / 3 Comments

My little girl has braces! She went in on Tuesday and got the braces on the front four teeth (top and bottom). She’s also got some little spacers in the back so she can get a herbst (?) appliance put on in two weeks, that will help pull her bottom jaw forward and help even out her overbite.

So far she’s not complaining about pain too much, she just can’t figure out what to eat.    Here’s the before, during and after shot of her:      

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