Month: August 2006 (Page 3 of 3)

Many thanks to my sister, Amy, who was willing to help me out when I called her in a somewhat frazzled state and asked, “Do you need a helper today? I’ll bring you Megan, and she can help you do whatever you want. She’ll babysit the baby, help with the kids, fold laundry….?”
She graciously accepted my child so that we could have a somewhat peaceful day without the horrible attitude. Since her return, we’ve tried to get to the bottom of the situation, find out WHY she’s acting out so much, and used several tactics to try to keep her in control (one of which was Dad charging her for each time she talked back), and had a big old talk with everyone this morning on being nice. We even did the family cheer, which was instigated on our Disney Cruise way back when and goes something like this: We can—–be nice!
We can—–be nice!
We can—-be Nice! Hooray!!
So, we’re all going to try extra hard to not annoy the 10 year old time bomb.

They are all outside playing right now. It’s perfect weather and it’s started sprinkling a little bit. I wonder how long they’ll stay outside. Hopefully long enough for me to do my hair and sweep the floor. (Yep, I’ve got big goals!)
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In other news, the kids did well in the Highland City Art Show, with each of the girls winning ribbons on all their entries, and Cole winning one for his oragami sculpture.
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I’m trying to be patient. I just returned from yoga and am trying to remain somewhat relaxed. I’m trying to enjoy the last 3 weeks of summer vacation with the kids, because I know once school starts we’ll all be so busy that we won’t have time to just “hang out”. But the grumpys and talk backs have invaded the house and I don’t know if I have the patience to kindly dispell them without losing my temper.

I wish the kids would take advantage of the free days–play outside, play with friends, do something! But instead they pick at each other, making the littler ones cry (as if that makes them happy), and want to watch tv 12 hours of the day. I do my best to encourage, but they seem to take that as nagging. Yesterday I called a friend for Jenna, and had three extra kids over here for most of the day–just to keep them from being bored. But the worst offender (I won’t mention any names here, but it starts with an M) doesn’t want to call friends, or calls one friend and then gives up. She’s also the most grumpy and downright disrespectful. I ask her to please practice the piano and she blows up in a huff about how she Hates practicing (imagine that spoiled little girl from Charlie and the Chocolate factory without the Brittish accent) and I never let her do anything, and I’m always making her practice. Well, I haven’t gotten any practicing out of her in about a week, even though I keep asking, so I don’t quite understand how that could be ruining her life. Ugh.

We have nothing on the schedule for today, but we’re out of milk, so that means a trip to the grocery store at least, a trip to Costco at the most. I wish I could drop them off at the Theater for Summer movies, like our parents did when we were kids. But taking them to a movie means actually TAKING them ALL to a movie, and I don’t know if I’m up to that.

So, off I go to change a stinky diaper, help John get dressed (his pink eyes are much better today. Did I mention he had pink eye? Oh, well, he does), take a shower myself, clean up the breakfast dishes and figure out what we can do that would be slightly fun and entertaining for the yahoos. But first, we need to get ourselves organized, cleaned up, and get some kids de-grumpified. Now where did I put that de-grumpification medicine?

Wow. We haven’t had rain in a very long time here, and we’re so sick of the hot weather, that the rain yesterday and today was a welcome relief. Except for the fact that the neighborhood bike parade that I had planned was supposed to be last night. At 7:30. So, at 6:30, when the rain started pouring down, I thought, “Oh well, it will stop shortly,” and then at 7:00, I thought, “well, I’m sure it will stop very soon,” and then at 7:25 my friend called and said, “so, what are we going to do, eat ice cream in my garage?” (It was a bike parade and ice cream social). We decided to cancel, push it back to next Monday night. Wouldn’t you know it? It stopped raining by 7:35. It would have been wet and splashy, and I’m glad we didn’t try to do it anyway, but I got to make quite a few phone calls.

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Over at “BooMama’s” Blog, she’s got a blog tour of homes going on. (I couldn’t get it to link directly to that post, but if you scroll down a couple of days, you’ll see it.) While I didn’t add myself to the tour of homes, (that would have involved getting my house all clean so I could take pictures, post the pictures, etc. And since I’m much too busy attending parties for Harry Potter and planning bike parades, I haven’t the time or the energy to get my house all that clean) I think it’s a fun idea. And I wanted to post a picture of my front door, just because it’s so dang cute right now. So, here it is: My front door!
I just love that Uncle Sam, and I especially love that I found it at a garage sale for $5. Since it’s August now, I guess I should take it down. But since I love it so much (and it’s really really heavy!) I’ll leave it up just a bit longer. Isn’t it cute? Go ahead, tell me how cute my porch looks!

I keep trying to get the bold to stop being bold for the whole rest of the post, but it keeps on doing it. Weird.

(I fixed the bold issue — Ryan)