We promised a motel...they got a tent.

We were going to have fun this past weekend. We told the kids we'd go to either Hot Springs or Eureka Springs. We even went as far as telling them we'd stay in a motel. That got them excited. Then the burn ban was lifted so we stayed home and burned. So we went to Hot Springs, which is about 1 1/2 hours away. Still we maintained the illusion that we'd stay in a motel. When evening rolled around, we realized that an hour and a half drive home was preferable to forking out more than $50 to sleep in a strange bed. So we drove home. The kids were disappointed. We told them we'd let them pitch a tent in the living room. That got them excited! Hannah exclaimed "This is the best day ever!"

So, we pitched the tent. Hannah and Hypatia were so excited. Dylan didn't really care and went to sleep in his top bunk. The girls cozied down for a good night's sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, my Mommy Radar went off, and I woke up. It was Hannah, calling my name. I went in to check on her and she said "I'm not comfortable. I can't sleep." A half asleep 8 year old isn't capable of figuring out the solution to this problem in the middle of the night. Their brains just don't function at that time. So I said "That's okay. Just go get in your bed." So she did. And she slept fine. So much for pitching a tent in the living room.

Hypatia, on the other hand, slept soundly in the tent. She begged me to come and get her up in the middle of the night and take her to the bathroom so she wouldn't pee in the tent. She's a bed wetter and she was concerned about ruining the tent. I managed to take her to the bathroom during the night and disaster was averted.

Wade Story

I went into the children's bathroom and I noticed that he had written on the toilet. Sigh. Whatever. It's in pencil. Then I open the toilet seat. Ummm...he also wrote IN the toilet. The toilet bowl has scribble marks all in it! Ewww!!

Its a recurring theme: I'm stupid!

Ok, before you non-existent readers think that I have a low self esteem, I'd better say that I am a happy, well-adjusted, confident person. I know I have self worth and I am not depressed, or down in any way. Because of this I am quite capable of calling myself out on the stupid things I do. I love myself anyway, so I'm okay with it, you know?

Anyway, a friend of mine started back to nursing school today. She had asked me if she could drop her 2 school aged children off at my house before school, so they could catch the bus with my children. No problem! Well, I let everyone sleep in because we didn't get enough sleep over the weekend. When 6:55 am rolled around, I was only half awake and the children and hubby were asleep. Our house is big enough that we didn't hear any knocking on the back door (she knows to use that one, and besides, the front has a broken doorbell anyway) and I only realized that she had been there because I heard the car leaving our long gravel driveway! I ran outside and I couldn't catch her! I drove over to the school to see if she was waiting there with the kids. I called her house to see if she was there. I couldn't find her! I feel so bad! What a flake! My house was a mess. The dinner dishes were sitting on the kitchen table and no one was anywhere to be seen. (I'm sure she looked in the window and saw all of this, since the windows are right by the back door and you can see my kitchen and the table, in all it's messy glory.) I called and left a message on her home phone and apologised profusely! I hope she trusts me again! I'm usually not a flake, really I'm not!

We burned our yard...ON PURPOSE!

I never knew that out in the country people burn their leaves. Its against the law to burn when you live in the city. But not where we live! We live in a small town and unless there is a burn ban, you can burn, baby, burn. The weather had been so dry that we had a burn ban for a while. We hadn't raked our leaves, and we have almost 2 acres of yard, with plenty of trees. The leaves were thick. When the burn ban was lifted we did some burning. Our front and back yard are now a barren black wasteland!
This is our front yard. Now my house has soot tracked in all over. What a mess! But I expect that this spring our yard will be nice and green! I actually helped a lot with the burning. It was fun, and it didn't get out of hand or anything! Dh said I must really be enjoying myself or I wouldn't be out there helping him, because I never help in the yard. He's right, of course!

Why am I so stupid?

So it sit on my hiney all day and waste my time. I eat tons of homemade cinnamon rolls with yummy cream cheese frosting. Then when I start cleaning something, like maybe a couple of really gross toilets, my tummy starts to hurt really bad. I'm scrubbing the toilets, doubled over in pain, and its my own d*** fault.

Note to self: Half a pan of cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting can make you feel like crap if eaten in one day. Lighten up on the saturated fat, woman!

Man, am I stupid or what?

My daughter's deadly Christmas gift

Hypatia, my 5yo daughter wanted a musical figurine for Christmas. Luckily she got a snowglobe musical figurine thingy from Grandma, because Mom, Dad, and Santa failed to follow through. Anyway, she just loves it. She sleeps with it, and she takes it with her wherever she goes.

I was in the bathroom the other day, enjoying a few minutes alone. Who am I kidding, it was Christmas break and all my kids were home. No such thing as privacy. I didn't even bother to shut the door. It was wide open. After a minute or two, I hear Hypatia screaming in pain (Moms can tell by the quality of the crying). I immediately yelled at Dylan, her older brother "What did you do?!!" I said. She came into the bathroom just howling. When she gets upset and tries to talk, she is completely incoherent. She sounded something like "iiiigooossslleelllkksithhpoeldjthghhhelkllstkkkhttt." I was still sitting on the toilet, but Hannah was comforting her. She was trying to explain what happened. Finally she was calm enough to get it all out. The story goes: She had been laying on the floor holding her musical snowglobe up over her head so she could gaze into it, when, suddenly, it slipped out of her hands and fell onto her forehead. OUCH!!! She had quite a bump on her noggin. OOPS! I guess Dylan wasn't to blame!

Edited to add: Well the pretty music/snow globe thingy eventually broke and then Hypatia cut her finger on the glass from it. We couldn't tell if she needed stitches or not, so we almost took her to the emergency room, but then later decided to just seal it with super glue and duct tape. It was just fine and it wouldn't have needed stitches anyway.

Typical 2 year old
Wade is into everything. I'm glad I don't keep anything dangerous under the kitchen sink. I have a couple of jugs of vinegar that I keep there and I found him with an open jug. He had spilled it onto the floor (only a few drops, strangely enough) and he was sampling it by licking the floor. yuck!

Oh Cristmas Tree...How do I put you away?

Oh Cristmas Tree...How do I put you away?

About 6 years ago, my dh got all excited and bought a huge fake Christmas tree. I have no problem with the fake part. The huge part was a bit of a problem. We had just bought our first house and it was tiny. Only 1100 square feet. So, of course the living room was tiny, and figuring out how to fit it in was not easy! Then there was the added problem of where to store it during the months of January to November. The tree is 7 1/2 feet tall, which is not too tall, but it has a rather large base circumference, and is very full. Trying to squeeze that thing into a teensy weensy living space was a pain. Every year, I loved the tree (in a fake, modern, non-organic, commercialised Christmas sort of way), but hated dealing with it. Four years after buying it, we moved again and bought another 1100 square foot house. Sigh...more of the same. Squeeze the tree into a little living room. Finally my dh got sick of it too, and after last Christmas, we gave the tree to my brother and SIL.

Well, luckily, dh included the condition that we could ask for it back if we bought a bigger house. Because, guess what! Within a few months we bought a much bigger house (if I had known that giving the tree away would produce such results, I would have done it sooner!)

So we asked my brother if we could have the tree back, and he ungrudgingly returned it (thank you!). My kids and dh put it up in our spacious living room, and it wasn't in the way at all! The box in which it has been stored (lo these many years), had finally seen its last Christmas, though. It was falling apart. Dh hauled it out to the trash. The other day I finally got around to taking the tree down and now I have piles of fake tree branches in piles on my living room floor. Dh and I are trying to figure out how to pack the thing! We have plenty of storage space, just no box big enough to store the ginormous thing.

(edited to add: Its STILL sitting in piles in our living room a week later. Maybe we can just leave it there until next Christmas?)

(its now Jan 16, and the tree is now in piles in the garage/workshop. I've got to do something with it!)

(now its Jan 22, and we have it in some boxes, ready to go into the attic)
What does a 2 year old know about computers?

My 2 year old son, W is so smart. He knows how to get my attention when I'm on the computer. There are many options. He can push the little button with the moon on the keyboard, and that puts the 'puter in hibernation mode. Or he can push the power button on the tower, which turns the whole darn thing off. If I'm playing Zuma, he has figured out that hitting the space bar will pause the game, but he gets confused sometimes and hits the space bar even when I'm not playing Zuma and wonders why my screen didn't pause! LOL.

Anyway, My preference is the moon button...uh, oh, here he is...

Ok, I'm back. Anyway, the moon button doesn't shut down any of the programs, so I don't have a hard time getting back to what I was doing...which was wasting all my precious time on the stupid internet. Gee, maybe I'm missing a bigger lesson here. Maybe I should be the one to turn of the computer?

My final point

Which brings me to my final point. I have found that I waste too much time on the internet and computer. So, lately, I have devised an ingenious plan. When my 9 year old son goes to school, I have him lock the mouse and keyboard away in his treasure box. I don't know the combination, so I can't get to it. It has helped immensely! No temptations! I still have to talk myself into actually doing housework, but at least the computer is not available for distraction. I still find things to waste time on, though. I did 4 Sudoku puzzles yesterday.

Today I was a bad girl and "accidentally" forgot to ask my son to hide the mouse. So here I sit on my fat arse! Sigh. Will I ever change?