Thursday, April 30, 2009

Rain, Rain GO AWAY!!

Ugh! Day 2 of gloom! It is officially spring, where is the sunshine and birds?! The saying is "April showers bring May flowers"..... I'm beginning to believe that these old sayings just do not apply here!

MB has decided he wants his ear pierced. He saw a boy in high school who has his pierced and now thinks its the coolest thing. We told him that we would revisit the issue when he's in high school. He then asked how many more days until then! Then he decided that if he couldn't have his ear pierced that getting a tattoo would suffice..... Yep, he's going to be our rebel.

LB is not taking to his de-spoiling very well. He lays on the floor and thrashes around kicking and screaming if he doesn't get his way. He cries and cries and cries. Then he gets all insulted and try to play the guilt game by telling me that I don't love him any more. I've even had to give a few spankings (its a last resort, but it has gotten there lately). BUT, he's coming along. Hopefully he will learn that he isn't "the boss".

BB is rocking his accelerated reading. He almost has enough points for honor roll! We promised him that if he makes the honor roll we will buy him a Wii or DS game (a guy has to have some motivation sometimes!).

I have been trying to prepare for our garage sale. I think we have a date set (finally!) and I think I am almost done sorting the boy's clothes! I hadn't saved much until I got to the baby sizes and started remembering them in certain outfits (awww) and I just couldn't do it, so I have almost a whole tote of baby clothes. I've been making mental lists of things that I have sitting in nooks and crannies in the house that I want to get rid of. Reminds me of how many things I think that I just HAVE to have and then never use! I should just keep the money in my pocket!

Speaking of money! I got a bill from my dentist about 2 weeks ago. Most medical bills come with an area to fill in credit card info, but this one didn't so I just wrote our flex spending card info on there. I get the bill AGAIN last week with a note saying, "Sorry, we don't accept credit or debit cards".....seriously?! This day in age?! I know we live in the back woods, but credit cards are not a new fangled invention for pete's sake! Thankfully it was only $76 (after ins) so nothing to cry about, but still, why are we socking money into the fsa that we can't use?! Ok, vent over!

Oh and in exciting news....BB and MB FINALLY learned how to tie shoes last night. Yep, both of them within 15 mins of trying! We've been working on this for years! MB got it first which frustrated the hell out of BB, who tried to throw a tantrum (he likes when things come easily to him), but finally bucked up and did it! That means we can branch out in our school shoe purchases!!! We usually get them skechers, but BB always seems to trash his shoes sooo fast! They end up frayed with holes in them! Like this year, MB was begging for those cop light up ones (I had no clue what on earth he was talking about at first!), we finally found them and got them. BB got some tie ones that had to be returned (we thought it would encourage him to learn to tie shoes...not so much) so he decided he wanted the tank ones like MB's. They've both had them since the beginning of the year, MB's lights fell off, but otherwise they look fine, BB's are hashed! There are holes on either side of the toe box on both shoes (I just noticed this, he will be getting new ones)!!!

Well, I better get to cleaning while LB is occupied with lego star wars on the wii!

Monday, April 27, 2009

I'm trying to post more!

I'm trying to be better about posting on here, its not working.

Well, Papa broke my cat! He dropped a 50lb weight on Gizmo's back foot. It was an accident and Papa feels AWFUL, but Gizzy will live. He doesn't seem to be in too much pain. He isn't putting weight on it, but he isn't yowling either.

We had a toilet overflow this morning (well not overflow, but it was THIS close to over flowing). I questioned the boys, who denied putting anything aside for toilet paper in it. Turns out MB is just using too much toilet paper (I can't imagine where on earth he gets that habit). Good thing Papa decided to go in to work late so he could plunge the toilet for me!

The weather has been nice lately! The boys were outside TONS this weekend. Yesterday Papa and I were in the house when we heard this rumbling on the roof (to be honest my first thoughts were the boys had gotten on the roof). After investigating we discovered that the boys were throwing balls onto the roof and watching them roll down. Not too bad of a game EXCEPT that occassionally they would miss and hit the windows. Papa told them to go roll the balls off the roof of the shed in the back yard. A seemingly harmless activity, right? WRONG!!! Awhile later MB comes in and tells Papa that BB and LB are stuck on the roof of the shed! Do I know my kids, or what?! Turns out they found the ladder (which Papa had put on top of the clothes line, btw) and MB convinced the other two that we said they could do it.....yeah, BB got a lecture about listening to MB when he says that we say he can do something that we would never approve of. MB is naturally very inquizitive.....a good thing, but not always fun to deal with in a child! He also has a strong personality (again, where does he get that?!). Add that all to the fact that he's 6 and going through that "not always so truthful" stage, I'm surprised I'm not bald!

I have had an epiphany reguarding my baby (LB). He might, just might, be the teeniest bit spoiled. His brothers definately think this is true. I think Papa and G&G tend to agree. He is my little cuddle bug and I think he knows that if he cuddles up to me he'll get what he wants. He was beating BB with a plastic bat and got 2 spankings (he wouldn't stop!). He was DEVISTATED that I spanked him (don't judge me for spanking! I gave him warnings and tried to remove him from the situation, it just didn't work). I cuddled with him and told him that he needed to be a nice boy, but he also needs to learn that Mommy means business. His brothers hurt him and he comes crying, so they get in trouble, but I think he might be instigating some of it (DUH, right?). I've always made excuses for him because he's little, but he's going to be 4 in July and staring school in Sept, so we need to nip this in the bud.

Oh! That Skechers ad <------reminded me of my new shoes. I got a pair of those d'lites, they are soo cute! They have glitter and rhinestones on them! And they're sooo comfy! LOVE THEM!!

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Its been awhile!

Wow, I can't believe that I haven't posted on here since the 9th.....thats 2 weeks!

Not much has happened in the last couple weeks. We had a nice Easter. G&G came up and spent the day with us and we had a nice dinner together. The boys and I dyed eggs and we did an egg hunt (Grandma brought change for the eggs so it wasn't all candy). The boys were pretty impressed with the goodies from the bunny.

We ordered parts for our dryer, but as usual, Papa didn't listen to me and measure first so we ended up with the wrong size parts! Papa decided that we weren't going to bother with fixing it and announced we were going to get a new dryer!! We ended up getting a new set! FRONT LOADERS!! Whoo hoo!! They are so nice!

We went to Grand Forks last weekend. We stayed with my Parents and got to see my Aunts and Grandma for a bit, which was nice I haven't seen them in years. The boys got to play at Burger King with my cousin's kids, they loved it.

I got myself a shark steam mop. I like it! It works pretty good and dries fast. The only down side is that our linoleum has groves in it and the dirt and mud stick in there and nothing but a good hand and knee scrubbing can get that up (and I am not about to do that at this point in time, I'd be doing it several times a day to keep up).

Papa's route to work did end up getting flooded, so he had to take the backwoods way to work. Luckily, he only had to go that way one day and then yesterday it was passable. Seems like the water is moving out of our area and on up to Canada.

Well, now I'm caught up for the last 2 weeks. My life really is uneventful....not always a bad thing though.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

George Lopez

This guy CRACKS ME UP! Papa and I love his show. We laugh until we cry, especially when it shows flashbacks of him when he was a kid and his head is the same size as it is now.

I love when he says "Memer? You memer!".

I watched one of his standup shows on comedy central. HILARIOIUS!! I get such a kick out of him talking about his childhood, swimming in puddles and drinking out of the hose. Or when he talks about his aunts and other women in his family shaving their eyebrows and then drawing them back in too high!!!

He just has the greatest expressions! Funny, funny man!

Easter is coming!

Yay!! I love easter! The boys are pretty excited too ;). The bunny has all of his goodies ready (he has them stored in our closet).

The boys got out their bibles yesterday to find the story of easter. They came over to me sooo excited because they had found it. MB said, "See Mom!, it says right here "EASTER"!!". I looked over and he was pointing to. They had found the book of "Esther". I think they did pretty good for a 7 and 6yo. I helped them find the story and we talked about it for a few minutes (it was homework for kid's club).

We are all a bit disappointed because we won't be going to G&G's house for easter. Papa ended up having to work! We are going down next weekend though with a bonus! We get to see Great Gma! The boys enjoy seeing her (we don't get to all that often).

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Adult ADD??

Haha, if you've read any of my previous posts you might agree with me, I think I might have adult ADD. I am all over the place with my thoughts. Sometimes I'll be on the phone with someone and start and sentence and go off in a totally different direction, its crazy! My mind just goes a mile a minute. I have a hard time falling asleep without the tv on because I just lay there and think and think and think about all kinds of things.

I can multitask like noone's business though, I actually do best when I'm doing 2 or 3 things at once, it keeps me on tasks.

Its hard for me to concentrate on things like reading. I really have to be focused. Like when I'm talking on the phone I cannot have the tv on or anyone in the room talking because I just get lost and the poor person on the phone gets a very strange conversation.

Ahh, I guess just another "issue" to add to my laundry list of mental issues. But, hey, its almost cool to have a mental issue these days, isn't it?

Monday, April 6, 2009

I think I need to have another wedding

My trusty old crock pot still cooks great, but I have to use a plyers to adjust the temp. My electric griddle heats unevenly and I have to have a bowl under the grease drip area because the little grease catcher broke. We have place setting for 6.5 people (as long as that .5 person doesn't want soup or salad). Our silverware (that my G&G gave us) is still in good shape, but there are a couple of spoons that got attacked by the garbage disposal and a fork that BB stuck in the furnace vent when he was about a year old and bent one of the tongs. I got to thinking, "wouldn't it be great if after 10 years people just gave ya new stuff or you got to have another wedding?". Like household items should be a must at a 10th anniversary party!

I was thinking about the things I would put on a registry. We had no idea what we would need when we did our registry. We did pretty good, but we could do MUCH better today. I have to laugh when I think of the first time we attempted a registry. We had no idea what we were doing, we ended up with about 10 things on there all on the more expensive side. I think it was just the novelty of doing something wedding related. Thankfully, we came to our senses and went back and fixed it!

I also get a good chuckle when I see registries with dog bones and sporting supplies. I'm sure those snausages and that camping chair will come in handy when making dinner! Even if the person has an established home on their own, who can't use newer things?! I guess its just one of life's little mysteries....

Friday, April 3, 2009

One of THOSE days

You know, those days. The kind where you drop everything you pick up and everything just goes a little wrong (not catastrophically, but a little). I'm having one of those.

It all started this morning at 6:00 when I woke up to stare at the clock. I normally get up at 6:20 (don't ask), it takes me forever to fall back to sleep so I just figured I would lay there wake up slowly. After listening to rotten dog SNORE for 17 minutes, I got up. I went in to take a shower and remembered there were no clean washcloths-NONE! The boys and I shower every school morning, its a must. Soo, I dug through the cupboard and found a baby washcloth for myself and two flimsy hand towels for BB and MB (LB would have to wait!).

After my shower with the teeny washcloth, I went to get dressed when it hit me that if there were no clean washclothes the odds were against me having clean underwear! Yep, no clean washcloths, no clean underwear and then I realized.....NO CLEAN PANTS! Ok, they were clean, but our dryer is on the fritz and I overloaded it (with a half dry load and a wet, wet load... I know, I know), so we had pants and shirts in the dryer and undies and their pals in the washer!! So, I threw a shirt on and got the boys in and out of the shower and then scurried down to the laundry room to put pants on and start another load of laundry. I was a minor snafu in the scheme of things, but VERY day damaging!

I felt like a ringmaster trying to get the boys out the door for school this morning. MB's boots were wet (keep finding the deepest puddle then!), BB's gloves were wet (again with the water!) and LB was having a meltdown about something or other (ugh, no explanation, he's 3). We got to the school when BB comes to the realization that today is friday and we didn't practice his spelling words-OOPS (turned out not to be a bad thing, he got 100%)!!

Papa and I got in a disagreement (I like that word better than "fight" because we didn't actually have any physical contact (don't worry there, folks, we never do!) this morning, so before it turned ugly we decided to go to our own corners, him to the basement to lift weights and me to the mess that was my kitchen to begin cleaning. He commented on the dog hair on the couch, got the stank eye and retreated back to the basement to finish his workout.

After cleaning up a bit, I sat down to watch some Golden Girls (I love me some GGs!!) and calmed down a bit. The rest of the day went well and we even ordered out so I didn't have to cook (SCORE!)!

The sad note of the day is that we might be saying farewell to our dryer (its been a good old friend), but its 15ish years old (It was a leave behind from G&G!) and things like this happen when dryers get to a certain age. We ordered some parts for it and Papa will give it his all but, sadly, Papa is not a real great repair man (he has many wonderful traits, but repairing isn't one of them). I'm hoping for the best but expecting the worst (by next week I might be down there shocking it with the paddles-especially if I have no undies again).

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The value of a dollar

I was watching Dr. Phil a few days ago. It was about teaching kids to save rather than spend. They had a panel of kids on there that they asked how much different necessities of life cost (like house payments, car payments, utilities, groceries, etc). Some of the kids were way off, they had no clue. This got me to thinking about my own cubs (although the kids on Dr. Phil were quite a bit older than mine, I figure its never to early to learn).

Papa and I are really hoping to help the cubs get a realistic grasp on the value of a dollar. They like to go to the grocery store and plunk quarters into machines and get a little toy that ends up broken (or is broken right out of the machine). Before they know it $3-$4 is gone and they have nothing to show for it. We've implemented chore charts for them. They have a chance at earning $3.50 a week (.05 per stickers per chore completed). We are planning on letting them have some of it for fun money, putting some in the bank and taking the rest for donations.

We don't have a homeless shelter or soup kitchen around so the animal shelter is going to be our donation recipient. We plan on taking them to buy a bag of cat food or dog food and then taking the food to the shelter to donate it. They see those commercials for the ASPCA with all of the poor animals and usually end up asking why people are so mean to their pets, so we figure this is something they can relate to. They will be able to see the animals who are going to recieve the food they are donating.

Papa and I have had our own problems with credit cards, we want better for our cubs. We want them to be responsible with money are realize that it doesn't grow on trees.

Some people actually consider spoiling your children a form of child abuse (Dr. Phil being one of them). It makes sense.