Month: January 2007 (Page 3 of 4)

I’m pretty proud of myself that I actually have done my mile a day walking for the past week and a half. Most days it’s been 2 miles, to make up for the first two that I missed, and Sunday, which I took off. Yesterday as I was just finishing up with mile 2, the treadmill sped up considerably, nearly making me lose my balance, and then just stopped. What? So I turned it off, then on, and pushed start, and nothing. Same story today. No treading action on the treadmill. What am I going to do now?

Our conversation at breakfast went something like this:

Child 1: Do birds cry?

Mom: I don’t think so. I don’t know.

Child 2: They sometimes swimper a bit like they are trying to cry.

Child 1: I guess they are always happy.

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Last week at the mall, we had to take a bathroom break. I took the two youngest into the family bathroom with me, Cole went in the boys, and the girls went into the girls. When we met back up in the hallway, Natalie was excited to tell me that she had found a quarter in the napkin machine. “I always turn it to see if a napkin will come out, but I thought I saw a quarter in there, so I stuck my finger in there and wiggled it until it came out!” She was very excited! “I wonder why they have napkins in the bathroom, anyway? I guess it’s to dry your hands.”

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After much work and paper towel testing, the science project is IN! Hooray!

This morning I had a near perfect shopping experience. Let me bask in the glow of my satisfaction just a bit and share it with you.

9:59 — I dropped John off at his play group. One minute early, I’m sorry, but I had a lot to cram into my two hours of freedom, and I didn’t want to waste a second of my free babysitting.

10:14 — arrive at Costco and dash in to pick up the enlargements we ordered yesterday. This wasn’t really a fun part of the shopping experience, but necessary, as the science fair project is due tomorrow.

10:17 — leaving Costco and driving toward Albertsons.

10:21 –arrive at Albertsons. I lugged in a pencil box full of coins that I have been meaning to cash in at a coinstar for quite some time. After reading through the instructions, I dumped all the coins in, enjoying that little chink chink chink sound (it’s like a slot machine in reserve) and watching it add up my money for me. I had $53 in coins, that I decided to turn into an Amazon.com gift card. If you cash it into a gift card, they don’t take the 8% cut they would take if I just got cash out.

10:27 (approximately–I really didn’t look at my watch to see what time it actually was, but it probably took me 5 minutes or so to turn in all those coins). Grab a shopping cart and the latest ad and head to the Quaker sale. I’ve mastered the art of these dumb “10 for $10 sales”. I just get 10 of each item I’m going to get. 10 boxes of three different flavors of Captain Crunch, 10 granola bars, 10 instant oatmeals, etc. Then I’m not trying to remember if I GOT ten of something and don’t have to keep recounting what’s in my cart. Oh, and don’t waste your time on other things that aren’t on the big sale. I did add some chicken tenders (buy one get one free), baby carrots (also BOGO), cheese (BOGO) and a few cans of Pringles at $1 each. With my $12 off $120 coupon, my total came to $119.48 for 116 items. “Today’s total savings= $304.51”. And I was out of there in just over 1/2 an hour!

11:05–We’ve got the goods loaded in the car, and I realize I DO have time for a quick stop at Kohl’s, since it’s one of their customer appreciation days and you get 15% off if you use your Kohl’s charge. I figure I’ve got a good 30 minutes to shop (I would really have liked longer, but you take what you can get!) Perusing the clearance racks, I found 2 shirts, a jacket and a cardigan for me, a pair of flannel lined pants for Cole (the Klondike derby’s coming up and I’ve got to keep my boy warm), 5 pairs of pants for the girls, and four birthday present items for future kid’s birthdays. With my 15% discount, my total came to (ching) $80.54.

11:54–Run back to the car, throw the bags in the front seat and drive like crazy through American Fork to get back home to pick up John from his playgroup.

12:06–Pick up John. I was 6 minutes late (oops!), but couldn’t get him to come out of there for another 10 minutes, anyway. His friends all have WAY more fun houses than ours, with finished basements and lots of space for the little people to play. But I’m not focusing on that right now.

I am –Woo-Hoo– celebrating the fact that I got
a- Such great bargains, and
b- All that done in my two short hours of child-free time.

You may now congratulate me on my efficiency.

Ok, so I’m not the greatest cook in the world, I know that. I do tend to make a lot of mac and cheese and hot dogs for lunch (for the picky three year old), and I have been known to feed the family pizza from Costco or chili and cornbread for dinner. I’m not like Mel, who whips up a new and fabulous recipe every night for dinner, or Sharmyn, who makes Chocolate Babka from scratch. But I’m ok with that. I can cook up a decent meal and often make good desserts, which may or may not be from a mix. Nothing too fancy, though. But I had this dream last night that I was making soup to take to a church function, and it wasn’t thickening up. So, I added a cup of concrete mix. (Yes, I do indeed have concrete mix in my pantry right now, but it’s left over from a project at Christmas time, and in no way would I get it confused with something like flour and add it to a soup. And I’m really going to put that in the basement sometime very soon.) It wasn’t by accident, either. I put it in on purpose to make my soup thicker. Then (in my dream, remember–I didn’t really do this, ok?!), I proceeded to take my soup to the church function. It was at my parents’ church, the old one on Butler hill, remember? And I wandered around trying to find the primary room (was it upstairs or downstairs…who can remember these things?). When I found the dinner, everyone had already filled up their plates, (Thank goodness) and I spent the rest of the evening trying to get people NOT to eat the soup that I brought. I didn’t want anyone to get sick (or worse) from eating my concrete soup!

So, dream analyzers–go ahead and analyze this!

It’s sometimes hard to have any any kind of self esteem when you have kids.

For example…the other day the kids were watching tv and a big long commercial for Nutrisystems came on. The kids watched, fascinated by the weight loss stories, and my lovely daughter said, “Mom, why don’t you do that? If your order now you get a weeks worth of food for free?!” Thank you, child. I know I’m fat, why don’t you just come out and say it?

Then today when I was sticking to my resolution to walk at least a mile every day, the small one came down and cried “Mom, don’t walk!” over and over. You know how hard it is to keep walking on the old treadmill with a 3-year old screaming the whole time? Well, I did my mile, but only one. And I had to keep putting him on the couch, since he wouldn’t go back upstairs and watch Arthur (which I turned on just for him).

And just a few minutes ago, my almost 6 year old said to me, “Mom, you’re weird.” Thanks honey. Now go and pick up your backpack before I throw it out the front door.

Today as we were driving home from our semi-monthly obligation at Jenna’s Kindergarten class to cut, glue, staple and colate for a couple of hours (always a thrill), the UPS truck was just turning out of our neighborhood as we were pulling in.

“Hey, there’s the package guy,” John said. I think we may have been getting more than our share of deliveries in the month before Christmas if he knows the UPS guy.

And speaking of deliveries, I wonder if that book I ordered from Amazon is here yet? I think I’ll go and check the front porch or the mail box.

I took the kids to see Open Season last night at the old dollar theater. It was cute, and not nearly as obnoxious as the last movie I took the kids to. But this morning they are all singing this song. No, I don’t take the kids out to movies very often–what of it?

Yesterday Ryan left town for a week. He’ll be enjoying the sunny skies (or at least not snowing and blowing arctic winds) of Las Vegas. No, we’re not moving there, thank goodness. Actually he probably won’t see much of the skies at all, sunny or other, since he’ll be practically living at the convention center for the next week. I hope he has a good time, meets lots of people who generate lots of business for the company, and remembers to bring us back lots of spiffs from the show.

I did manage to get the tree taken down yesterday, although it is actually more of a two person job. I took down most of the Christmas decorations, but not all of them. What I didn’t do is clean the house, so it’s kind of a bare non festive mess. Because, honestly, is it possible to clean the house with 7 kids running through it? Not here, it’s not. I kind of did some damage control and got the front room vacuumed and free of all fake pine needles, but I didn’t get it cleaned. So, now the house is just kind of depressing. Not quite free from all Christmas decor, and still a mess. Ugh.

We also worked on the science project! Hooray! We had four different kinds of paper towels. Onto each, we poured 1 ounce of water, then put quarters on the towel until it broke. Well, we had 40 quarters on that sucker and it was not breaking. We had to find something heavier, so we used tuna cans. One paper towel actually held 10 tuna cans before breaking. We did each brand three times and averaged their scores. Megan has made a nice graph of her results, and she’ll type up a report and we’ll include some pictures, and I think that will be it. Nothing fancy or flowery, just a simple, basic science project.

We don’t have church until 1:00 today. Not my favorite time slot for church, but our ward is so huge now that we need the whole building. We can’t share any classrooms or anything, so we have to be last until they split our ward. What are we going to do until 1:00? Well, I made pancakes (forgot about the fasting thing–oops!), am having the kids all do their practicing (that they have totally slacked on since they haven’t had lessons in two weeks), baths and showers, and I’ll do their hair and maybe paint some fingernails. To try to avoid fighting and screaming, I will let them watch selected amounts of tv or movies. I’m sure it will be a long morning. But the nice thing about church from 1-4 is that when you come home, there’s not much time before the kids go to bed! It will be an adjustment, but we’ll get used to it eventually.

So, there’s our weekend in a nutshell. I hope your weekend is shaping up nicely, and you are enjoying the freezing cold!

Before my Christmas stuff is totally packed up and put away (which might be a very long time, yet, as I’ve only just started), I wanted to share a few memories and photos from Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, we always tell the Nativity story, and either act it out with costumes or use the puppets that I made a few years ago. This year, the kids didn’t want us to read the story from the Bible, they said they knew it already and could do it themselves. They put in a few things that aren’t in the Bible version but that they learned from going to see Saviour of the World. They did a great job and it was, as usual, a fun take on the Christmas story. Here’s a picture of them all taking their curtain call after the performance.

On Christmas morning, John was probably most excited about his “Cars” items, and he’s played every day with his little McQueen and the “Dinaco King” as he calls him.

Natalie was thrilled with her almost American Girl doll, and Jenna really enjoyed this Lion that you stuff yourself (like a build a bear, but the at home version).

Cole got a fun build it yourself electronics thing with circuits and things that I don’t understand all that much. He seemed very excited about it, though. And here’s miss Megan with her new movie.

The best part of Christmas is getting together with family members, so here’s a few pictures of our family parties we enjoyed.

Ryan’s mom made a whole bunch of knit caps for all the kids to chose one (or two) and then gave the rest to humanitarian services. I couldn’t believe how excited the kids all were to pick out their own hats.

So, there you have it, folks, a few memories and a few pictures (ok, a lot) from our Christmas here. Happy thoughts before we take it all down and return to the barren humdrum of January.

That is the sound I am making because I just dropped my needy John off at preschool. Now I’m starting my little vacuum in the kitchen and going down to treadmill for a mile or so.

Ha Ha, I’m free!

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Updated:

I’m back, and so is John. I didn’t want to sound like I wanted to get rid of my cute child or anything, so let me explain a bit. When you go away on vacation for a week, you know the risks. The kids will either be mad at you for leaving, be mad a Grandma for being the one to tend them, or they’ll have a great time. Luckily, my kids had quite a nice time with all their babysitters (who took them swimming, to Carl’s Junior, to Subway, to a family Christmas party–they were no slackers!), but when Mom and Dad got back, a certain someone named John has not wanted to let Mommy out of his sight. He’s been clingy and needy, but that’s to be expected. We can handle it. But by this week, he was really getting tired of his mommy time and wanting to play with some of his little friends. Friends who we could seldom find during Christmas vacation because they were either out of town, busy or just not home when we were.

When the kids went back to school on Tuesday, John was very excited to go back to his preschool, too. So, over to Mrs. Powell’s we went. I was a bit early, so I waited until 9:00 to see if some other parents came, since I wasn’t 100% sure she was actually starting preschool on Tuesday. When 3 cars were there, we all figured we must be right. We went up to the door, and shock! it was locked. It’s never locked. So, we rang the bell, and no one came. We were beginning to think that preschool did NOT start on Tuesday. Sadly, we pried our children away from the door and tried to explain to them that Mrs. Powell wasn’t home and there would be no preschool that day. (Eventually poor Mrs. Powell came to the door in her bathrobe and said there wasn’t school today. She had looked at the school calendar that said they were starting public school on WEDNESDAY, and therefore hadn’t planned on preschool that day.)

I tried to pacify John by telling him that he could come to yoga with me. When we pulled into the church parking lot, he said, “That’s not the yoga church!” since we had gone to a yoga at a different church before, but this was where it was this time. Unfortunately, no one showed up for yoga, so I left, realizing that I didn’t have my yoga mat in the car with me, anyway, since I wasn’t driving my normal car.

Poor John was so sad. No friends to play with. Only Mommy. AGAIN. I took him with me to Kohls and Target in search of after Christmas discounts and he was pretty good, but not happy.

So, today, there WAS preschool, and he was so excited! I was excited to have just a couple of hours by myself, too. I did do my 2 miles on the treadmill, took a nice shower and got dressed, and that was about all I got done before picking him up, but it was still a nice little break for both of us.

I have a bit of a problem with money. Spending it.

And car repairs. Especially spending money on car repairs.

You see, I’m a bit of a thrify-nifty (some would call me cheap) and only like to buy things when they are ON SALE. I hate paying full price for anything. I get a thrill out of buying on sale.

There are no sales on auto parts or repairs. If there were, then we might have a few extra alternators or gaskets around because –hey, they were such a great deal, and I will need them someday. But alas, car repair is no place for the sale shopping bargain hunter. When something breaks, it needs to be fixed, and unless you have an extra vehicle in storage, fixed right away.

We have not had the best car repair record in the last little while, with one car and then another in the shop for what seems like endless and expensive repairs. Each time I nearly have a fit when I hear how much we have to pay. Well, Tuesday, the brakes in Ryan’s old truck seemed to stop working. Brakes are something that you can’t really live without, so he took it in to be repaired. After $700 something, he got his vehicle back. ERRG. When I complained at how much money we keep putting into that hunk of junk of a truck, he keeps reminding me that buying a new truck would be much more expensive. Yeah, but then we’d Have a new truck. He also told me in so many words that I need to stop freaking out each time we have to get a car repaired. Freaking out?! I’m not freaking out. Is it too much to ask that the car NOT break down in the very first week of the year?

I think we may need to get a credit card that is only in Ryan’s name that he use ONLY to do car repairs. Then I don’t have to know how much it’s costing us, and then I won’t freak out. He wouldn’t even have to tell me he was taking a car into the shop, he’d just mysteriously need a ride to work, and when I asked where that particular vehicle was, he could tell me it was on vacation. Hmmm. That wouldn’t work, either, because I would demand to know, and he would tell me.

I just need to go to my happy place when we talk about car repairs. La La La, La I’m not listening.

But, on the bargain side, I just found the BEST place to get your car washed. There’s a new Firehouse Carwash right by Target in American Fork. For $6.50 you can get the basic wash ($6.90-ish with tax), but if you are a Costco member (and who isn’t these days?) you get 10% off, so with tax, it comes to $6.21, I think. You get to take the car and the kids through the cool washer thingy (which is very entertaining for the 3 year old crowd, believe me!), then, when you come out the guy DRYS it with a towel. THEN you can use their powerful sucking vacuums for 10 minutes for FREE! It’s a deal. I went yesterday and then went back today with the other dirty car. It was too cold and I didn’t have time to use their vacuums, but I know they are there, so next time I’ll plan beter (you know how you have to pre-clean your car to clean your car? ) So, I’ll rejoice in my small car washing bargain, and block from my mind all repair costs and do my breathing exercises, thank you very much.