The Trials of a Busy Mom

Month: June 2014

Museum of Curiousity

I may have mentioned my love for Thanksgiving Point. It’s SO fun, and so close to me, and such a great deal if you have a family pass (which we do).

I love that we can take a couple of friends and just go for a few hours, and not feel like we need to see every. single. thing in order to get our money’s worth.

So, on Monday, I invited a couple of John’s friends to go to the new Museum of Curiosity with us. It’s half price for any guests that we bring, so it was only $6 each for his friends.
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We’ve already been twice, but it’s always fun, especially with 10 year olds that I don’t have to worry so much about them getting lost. I stayed in the same general area and told them to stick together so we wouldn’t lose just one of them. They started out in the jungle area, climbing, climbing, climbing.
Then we went to other areas and tried out experiments with movement.

They loved racing things to figure out which one would go faster, or maybe, being boys, they just love RACING anything (these three tend to get competitive).

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In Kidopolis, I was reading my book out in the center, not really sure where those boys were, and John came out and called me in to watch their play. Sure enough, they were in the cutest little stage, where there are a couple of backdrops and some costume items, and they did a “play” for me.

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Then we went over to the movie making area and they made a short stop motion film and then a movie with the green screen.
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If you haven’t taken your family to this amazing museum, you might want to try it out. Go with a friend who has a membership (like me) so it’s half price!

Dreaming about my Grandma

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I seem to dream about chickens a lot. The kids tease me that I dream about chickens more than I dream about them. Hmm. Last night I dreamed I was at my Grandma’s house. I was there to water her lawn and plants for her while she was gone. My grandma passed away several years ago, but I could still hear her voice telling me to make sure to water the roses. Then I went and collected eggs from her chickens. I was thrilled to collect SO many eggs, and I didn’t even know she kept chickens.

Funny. Now I miss my Grandma, AND I want my chickens to lay more eggs.

First week of summer!

We’re coming to you live from summer break. Looks like we made it through the first week of summer with very little injury, and not TOO much complaining.

We tried to do some fun this week, and I think we accomplished it.

We went to Thanksgiving point farm
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We oohed and awed over the animals, went on a carriage ride, John got to ride the pony,
and ended up purchasing 5 more chicks (you can never have too many, I always say).

Jenna taught two of her art classes.
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Natalie and I went to 3 rehearsals for our play, “Fiddler on the Roof”.

Megan went to work 4 days.

John went fishing with a friend.

Natalie went to a party at the park.

Jenna spent LOTS of time playing with her friend, Marin.

Paige had two bell rehearsals.

We played with our birds.

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We went to the museum of Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point.

Ryan rode about 80 miles on his bike this week. Jenna, John and I joined him on a bike ride on Saturday night and we went 7 miles. Today my butt hurts.

We also read a lot, did a bunch of weeding, pulled out two dead bushes, the kids each had a turn to make dinner (with my help, of course), had 3 piano lessons, and we implemented FOLD Friday, where everyone is supposed to fold their laundry. It didn’t go over too well, but we’ll try again next week.

I would say we did pretty well for our first week.

Kitchen paint– failures, flops, and finished

I was all excited to paint my kitchen. I bought paint that I thought would work and got right to it.

Unfortunately, the lighter of the two colors (called cucumber something) just looked like hospital green,
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And the darker of the two colors (called gumdrop) I liked at first, but after painting all day, wasn’t so sure.
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It was just too….. Bright Kermit the frog green. Too…something. While I like that color and it makes me happy on it’s own, with the hickory cabinets, it was just too much. I put a picture up on facebook and commented that I wasn’t sure about it, and got many comments. Many more comments than I wanted. It’s not THAT bad, folks. But, that prompted me to figure out what color it should be, and to repaint it even though I had spent a whole Saturday painting already.
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So, I searched the internet for greens, earthy greens, greens that go with hickory cabinets, etc. I even tried the gold paint that I have in the front room, thinking that might look good. It didn’t.
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For someone who can usually pick a paint color pretty easily (and I scoffed at my neighbor who has repainted her kitchen 3 times and had painters tape up for months. How cocky I was. No more), it was frustrating to not be able to paint. And I had kind of lost my confidence. I finally ended up on the shirwin williams paint site, and uploaded the picture of the bad green paint behind the stove and used their little program to visualize how different colors would look there. It’s hard to get a good shot of the kitchen, so many shadows from cabinets, etc, but I finally thought I had found something. I went to the hardware store and had them make up two samples for me.

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Oh, yeah, that looks good…. NOT.

I tried in a different spot.
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I decided to go with the lighter of the two samples, which, turns out, was called “Bengal Grass” (only someone who knows my high school mascot would realize how awesome that name is), and went and bought a gallon in semi-gloss. Thankfully, since I had already done the scrubbing, the taping, and taking off the plug covers, it went pretty fast to cover up that bright green with the darker, more earthy green.
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But then I had to start on the wall above the upper cabinets. Climbing, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning (who cleans up there? NOBODY, that’s who!), climbing back down…ick. And so exhausting! Kind of frustrating that it took me so long to paint up there, plus, there were some spots in the corners that I didn’t know how I was going to paint. Need longer arms.

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I got a lot done the day that Megan got out of school by 10 am or something. There I was, up on a ladder, and she agreed to help me. SO much easier with another person to hand you things, joke with, and who actually paints.
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Oh, and she fits back behind the fridge better than I do, too.

I got most of it done that day, but was still frustrated about the parts I couldn’t reach, even with a ladder. When I came home from an extra bell rehearsal last Saturday, I was surprised to see that Ryan had finished off those difficult parts for me! Hooray! He said he ended up sitting ON the fridge to get that top corner spot.

I’ve been meaning to post a great picture of the finished room, but it turns out my kitchen is clean for about 2 seconds and then it’s a disaster again. Plus the lighting is not great in there, with just the one window over the sink, and I haven’t gotten a great picture that shows off how nice it looks (at least I think it’s nice, and since I’m the one who does the cooking in there, it’s my vote that matters the most, right?), but these will have to do.

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I’m happy with the color. I’d better be, because I don’t anticipate that I will be wanting to do that again real soon.

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