Month: October 2006 (Page 1 of 3)

My kids were so excited to wear their costumes, they got up early just to put them on. By 9:00 some of them had already been in costume ready to go for 2 hours!

John hasn’t quite gotten the concept of the whole Daylight savings time, so he just comes in my bed “earlier” than before. Today I looked at the clock and it was 5:00 when he crawled in and started kicking me and grabbing my hair. While I treasure our “special together time”, I just wish we could start at a decent hour–like 7:00. He does go back to sleep, about 5 minutes before I need to get up to help the other kids get ready. Oh well.

So today I’ll be going to John’s preschool party, take some pictures, then go to Jenna’s Kindergarted party where I will be manning the “pin the nose on the Jack-o-lantern” game. I may or may not dress up in a clown costume. I have one hour to get all my noses and blindfolds ready and get myself into costume.

After school today, we’ll go to Ryan’s office and trick or treat cubicle to cubicle. It’s a lot faster and warmer way to get boatloads of candy. Ryan forgot our candy contribution–it’s still sitting among the family fallout on what I think is still the kitchen counter. I haven’t seen it in a while, so I’m not exactly sure. I’ll get to that…soonish.

And then we’ll do the traditional neighborhood begging for candy from the neighbors–how fun!

I hope you all enjoy your Halloween and we’ll have lots more pictures to share soon.

The travel agency handling the Cancun trip sent some documentation with flight times and some info, and it said we should have current passports, and if not you need to take a bunch of stuff like your birth certificate, drivers lisence and marriage certificate. So, I decided I’d better get a new passport (International traveler that I am.) Neither Ryan nor I could find or remember where we’d filed our old passports, but he eventually found both of them. His had just barely expired and mine had been expired for 6 years. An hour at the post office and $350 later, we’d completed our passport applications.

My advice to you–get your passport, or if you have one, renew it before it lapses. It will cost you SO MUCH LESS if you don’t have to expidite it. The regular processing takes 6-8 weeks, so if you need one before then, they hit you with almost double the cost to get it in 2-3 weeks. So be like Sandra Bullock in “While you were sleeping” and get your passport, even if you have no plans of traveling. It’s good for 10 years, and chances are you’ll need it in the next 10 years, right?

After torturing my two small children in the post office for a long wait in line, we got out of there. They hadn’t been bad, but they hadn’t been especially quiet, either. They had found three other children whose parents were also waiting in the long long line and started playing hide and seek. Not much of a challenge when there’s a bench, a display and your mom to hide behind, but they still had fun. After I left with the kids, Ryan stayed back to talk to a cousin of his who was there at the post office, and he overheard a very large man say rudely, “I didn’t know this was a nursery.” Well, excuse me, mr. Large man, but what else are the kids supposed to do while moms wait for an hour in line? Maybe you don’t have children, or have never been around children, but those kids were behaving pretty darn well considering the circumstances. As long as they aren’t screaming or hitting you or throwing up on you, why don’t you give those kids (and their parents) some slack?!

I wasn’t actually there to overhear the rude comment, because I was on my way to the library, where we got a much better deal. For a mere $2.60, we were able to check out two DVD’s, a VHS movie, about 24 books, and 3 CD’s. It would have only been $2 had I not had a fine, but since the Library is not in my own little city, I have a hard time getting things back in the required time, and most every time I go in I have some kind of fine. Oh well, I consider that part of the price of checking out books. My kids were so happy to get new books, and when I got them all home it was a sight to behold–all of my kids sitting and reading new books. That’s what I call a bargain!

It’s early in the morning (well, before 8:00, anyway), and I have nothing cute and witty to say. So, here are my random thoughts:

–Our inflatable frankenstein is having a rough time of it out in the wind. It’s like he’s break dancing out there or something. The humane thing to do would be to unplug him until the wind stops blowing, but then I’d have to go outside, and it’s cold out there right now. I’ll wait until the next batch of kids leave for school, and have them do it.

–I LOVE the new Josh Grobin song, “Don’t give up.” It’s awesome!

–We went to our ward Halloween party last night. Lots of fun. The youth put on the games, including the football throw, a make your own bat craft, bean bag toss, musical chairs, eat the donut from the string, etc. Then there was a little parade, costume contest, and a trunk or treat. I told the kids they could eat 3 pieces of candy and the rest was going into the old rubbermaid shoebox. After much complaining and whining and “it’s mY candy, I should get to keep it”s, we indeed dumped it all –It didn’t fit! I had to dump it into a bucket! Can I use that same candy to give to the trick or treaters next week? I don’t have a problem with it, but I’m sure the small people won’t go for it.

–My knees hate it when I go to the kickboxing class on Tuesday. I don’t particularly like it, either, but my knees hurt for two or three days afterwards, and I could hardly walk up or down the stairs yesterday. I’m old and fat and not made for exercise.

–The average american sends an average of 46 text messages per week. Um, I guess I’m not average, or those teenage girls are using all of my texting time. The topic of conversation in nursery the other week was how high the cell phone bills of certain girls in the ward went ($800) because of text messaging. My advice to parents out there? Don’t give your kids a cell phone. But that’s just me. My oldest is a boy who has no interest or use for a cell phone (like his dad) and hopefully never will.

updated to add: Um, it’s snowing right now. Great!

Ryan and I have been invited to an 80’s party this weekend. We are supposed to come dressed as our favorite 80’s couple. Some things that came to mind were Devo (pointy hats), Robert Palmer dancers (I don’t think I could pull off that look, though, and don’t own anything that tight and that short, so that’s out), Wham, A flock of seaguls? I don’t know!!!

So, I was thinking maybe Cyndi Lauper–I could rat my hair real big, find some legwarmers and a skirt, rip a t-shirt to wear over another t-shirt, lots of makeup….What do you think? But then who could Ryan go as? Phil Collins? He’s kind of bald.

I need some help here. Any great ideas?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m in charge of the PTA Reflections contest at the elementary school. The entries were due on Friday, and I’ve gotten a few stragglers in today, but I’ve pretty much got all the entries. Today I counted, listed, and categorized them, and looked over the film/video, dance and music, since there are so few entries that I can pretty much judge them myself. There is only one dance entry. A 6th grade girl who did a cute dance to the song “popular” from Wicked. The theme is “My favorite place.” Although it’s a good dance, she’s a good dancer, and it’s fun to watch, I’m not getting how the Popular song has ANYTHING to do with “my favorite place.” Since she’s the only entry, I guess I have to give her an award (something like 1st place in dance–there is no second place, third place or anything else), but I feel like not. I feel like not giving her any award at all (besides the candy bar and certificate for entering) because her thing doesn’t go with the theme AT ALL. But that would be rude, I guess.

What say you? Should I be a hard nose and only award those that I think deserve to win, or should I just give her (and others that are not very heavily entered) an award?

I’ve only got about 60 entries, which seems so low to me. In another school we had over 100 entries just in visual arts, and here I’ve got 60 total. I guess I could have done more in the publicity department, but I put up posters, put messages in the newsletter and did a skit at the kick off assembly. I guess I could have done more, like make announcements in the morning announcements, sent more notes home, etc. But honestly, I think that the kids who are going to enter are going to enter, and the kids who have no interest won’t. It’s the same families that enter every year, those families that encourage it. Is it like that at your school?

Oh, and I’ve had these things here in my office since Friday, right? John has already broken one of the 3-d art things. Yep. I’m the responsible one alright.

Every morning at some dark hour–usually around 6:20– a small person creeps into my room, climbs onto my bed, wedges himself between Ryan and I, and says to me “turn around” so he can grab a hunk of my hair. Then he proceeds to squirm around, often getting his cold little feet right in the small of my warm back. He also manages to kick Ryan on the other side, twisting and turning (all while holding my hair) and trying to be quiet until he can stand it absolutely not one moment longer. Then he starts whispering in my face that it’s time for breakfast. It’s a lovely way to wake up in the morning. Especially on the weekends when we were out late and really really want to sleep in. It gets really exciting when he brings friends into our bed with him. This morning it was his older brothers large stuffed dinosaur appropriately named Rexy. I’m not sure if he went all the way into Cole’s room to get the dino before bringing him into our room, but he was there. Apparrantly he kept hitting Daddy with the dino until he asked him in his politest grumble to “not hit me with the dinosaur.” I missed that part because I must have been dozing. Or on other mornings he comes in in his soaking wet jammies because size 4 diapers do not hold in all the liquid he drinks at teeth brushing time. That one gets me up immediately, so maybe it’s a good thing.

Yesterday I won a trip to Cancun!
I KNOW!
I can hardly believe it! KODJ is doing a contest where you have to guess the correct room number between 1 and 1000. I have been trying to get through 3 times a day, and writing down the incorrect guesses when I hear them. So, at 5:00 on Friday, there I am, dialing away (like usual), and it starts ringing. Rockin’ Rob answers and says “Hi, how are you?” and I’m thinking, Could I be the right caller? Wow! Because I’ve been calling for a week and a half and never gotten to guess. He asked if I had a guess ready, and I said, “Well, I didn’t hear the 2:00 guess, can you fill me in?” and he actually did! I knew it was around 435-455, from the previous guesses who had narrowed it down, so when he said the 2:00 guess was 442–too high. So, I told him my guess was 440. This was all off the air. I told my kids to listen, because mom was going to try to win something (nothing new there), and then he comes back on with “I’ve got Paige from Highland here, and she’s ready to guess.” So, I guess room 440 and he starts messing with me, with “Are you sure? That’s really the room you are picking?” So, yes, I stuck with 440, then he “knocks” on room 440 and instead of the crickets chirping or an elephant or whatever their other wrong guess sounders are, the party music starts to play, and he says, “Paige, you are going to Cancun!”

After all the excitement and information getting, I asked if he could tell me some details, and he said he didn’t really know the whole story, but all the winners are going as a group, and he thought it was the first week in December. Well, the 1st week in December is about the only time I could absolutely NOT go, since the Bells on Temple Square Concert is December 8th, and I CAN NOT miss it. So, all night I keep thinking “what ifs” and could someone else take the trip instead of me, blah, blah, blah (I’m such a worrier!). So, today I checked the KODJ website to see if there was specific information, and found out that it’s the 16-23 of December. I will have to miss the Tabernacle Choir Christmas concerts, which are the 14-16 of December, but since we haven’t started rehearsing that music yet, I’m hoping that it won’t be a huge pain to get a sub to ring for those concerts. I’m bummed that I will miss it, because it’s an absolutely amazing experience, but how can I turn down a FREE trip to Cancun?

Now the work starts. I’ll have to figure out childcare for my 5 children, get EVERYTHING Christmas related done early, figure out how many Christmas concerts, parties and other events I will be missing and how will I get my children there, and other things that the job of Mom requires. If any of you would like to take a day to watch my kids, go ahead and sign up now, as I’m looking for volunteers. Thankfully I have my parents and Ryan’s parents who are close, and we will *I hope, I hope* be able to work that all out.

Oh my gosh, I also need to lose 10-15 pounds!

I just read this great quote, which I agree with, and will pass along to you:

Happy Friday, and remember: Friends don’t let friends pay full retail.