Moving

Funny thing... I have all my stuff that I need on a daily basis, but all the other stuff that I need once a month, once a year, once a life... is all at the old house. You look at the new house and see everything one would need. And not much space to put anything else... Where on earth am I going to put everything else that isn't here yet? I'm getting together a list of things that won't make the cut to the new house. I call it the new way to spring clean. Just move to a smaller house. It's amazing what junk I kept. Don't tell my mom it's junk though. She tried to pack it all in her suitcase with her when she came to visit. :) Love you Mom!

Where Has All My Patience Gone?

I swear when I had just two, I could handle anything. I remember people telling me all the time that they were just amazed at how well I handle it all. I think they could also see how #2 cried all the time when he was little and knew it would just break them down.

Well, I think it must have along the way, broken me down. I don't know when it happened. It might have been over a period of a few months, 1/2 a year... I don't know. But I have a fuse about 3 minutes long. You know in the life of a toddler, it takes them 3 minutes just to get going.

Remember that thing about "counting to 10" and then you can calmly take care of things? That doesn't work. Try counting to 101. Sometimes the magic number is 137. Try it. By the time you get there, the problem is either over and they have moved on to something else or it has gone from one crying to all of them crying. At that point, I just send them all to their rooms.

Problem solved.

Ice Cream Wars

I love ice cream. My fondest memories from childhood are going to Thrifty drug store over by Williams Brothers grocery store and getting a cone with two scoops. Depending on my mood, I would sometimes get mint chocolate chip or cookies and cream or chocolate malted crunch. (Of course there was the cool ice cream shop downtown that we would very rarely go to that had that bubble gum ice cream that was just to die for!)

Anyway... we always had ice cream at home too. I still remember at least 5 nights a week we would get a bowl of ice cream after dinner when we were just relaxing watching tv or playing a game or whatever. It wasn't a huge bowl, but it was definitely not on the skimpy side. I would fill that thing up.

You would think that I would have been hugely overweight or something... I really wasn't. Thank goodness for my 5'10" frame. Then, enter ice cream after children. I'm afraid of it. I keep it very far away. I know that I have no self control. Growing up in a house full of 6 people, if you finished off a carton of ice cream, everyone knew who did it and how long the carton had been open (ie: how many days it had been open.) Here at my house, I can finish off a carton by myself and no one will even know it was there to begin with. I can't be accountable to myself. I'm not programmed that way.

Enter my loving husband. He knows I can't stand anything to do with coffee. The smell, the taste, the thought.... Yuck! He will go out and periodically want an ice cream treat and since he knows I won't go near coffee with a 10 foot pole, he gets Hagen Daaz coffee flavored ice cream.

Lord bless him!

Potty Training

Why is it so difficult? Little boy is almost 4! He wants the party that we keep promising if he goes potty in the toilet, but he just doesn't want to go!

When we were on vaca this weekend, he went once in the toilet and Daddy immediately went out and got a chocolate chip cookie that was almost the size of his head. We broke it in pieces and he got to eat most of it. (He shared a little bit with his sisters.)

Now everytime he thinks he wants to go to the bathroom he says, "I'm ready for another celebration!" (Meaning, "I gotta go potty.") However, he'll sit there and sing and touch the walls (very gross in public restrooms, can I tell ya!) and not go at all. Errrr....

Oh well... I guess I'll be homeschooling this one. :)

Hiking, The Natural Child Sedative

We went camping. Well, actually we stayed at a resort with little cabins, so there was no yucky camp food, or tent, or anything remotely camp-ish. Just the nature part. We had so much fun. We woke up, took showers, then went to breakfast. After breakfast, we would go on a "nature walk". It ended up being 2 hours walking through the woods.

"Why would you do that?" you ask? When was the last time YOU were able to take a nap while you were camping? :) We came back, had lunch, played at the playground for a few minutes, went back to the lodge and EVERYONE took naps.

Sweet sleeping bliss. And fresh air. Gotta love it!

Don't Worry... They Weren't Sharp

Little Monkey #3 was playing in my craft room. I knew she was making a mess, but I knew what was in there to "play" with so I wasn't worried. I went in to check on her. She was sitting on the floor and had pulled out the drawer with all my craft scissors with decorative edges... She had gotten the pinking shears ones and was holding the scissors in one hand and her foot with the other... I think she was trying to trim her toenails. I'm sure I have a pair of gardening pruning shears around here somewhere she could have used...

My New Blog

Okay. So here is my new anonymous blog. I have the other one. But I thought I could get in on this "tell the world about your crazy family in an anonymous way and maybe you might get rich in the meantime" thing.

I'll let you know how it goes. :) In the meantime, all the cute family pictures will be posted on the private blog and I'll just be doing double duty and adding only the funny, non-identifying information on this blog. What do you think? Have I completely lost my mind yet? Yeah, I thought so too....