It has just been a really crummy week.

That is all.

I hope to be back with some un-crummy-ness quite soon.

sigh

I worked eight hours washing strawberries and putting them on sticks this morning. I came home to shower, pay bills, hug the kids and I'm off to tutor for 4 hours.

I am tired.

I know we've discussed this before, but

I am the best mother ever. Evidence?

For Melody's class


For Dixie's class


I have discovered that everything looks better when delivered in a basket:




Play-Doh was $10, 4 sheets of scrap paper were $2, and 3 packages of stickers were $5.

I already had the cricut machine, glue stick, red and green cardstock and two little helper girls.

A small collection of pictures

See why I don't fit in the bed anymore? I guess it is worth it, to see all the people I love all snuggly like that.



A few from the jammified-bouncin'-birthday-bash.





Dixie, with Uncle Brendan. He comes from a long line of champion ticklers. I am sure pictures exist of his father getting me in this same hold, at that same age.



All 25 kids (and Dowlan). I am hoping the faces are tiny enough as to not offend any guests by posting their children on the Interwebz.



Enjoying some of the birthday gifts



I present to you . . . Sticky!





Due to the Marryin' Dress, her nipples and navel are not visible. But I did zoom in on the face. Have you ever seen such bliss on Dixie's face?



Last night, the girls' room was pretty much clean when they went to bed. They played in their room an hour before school this morning. ONE HOUR. That was all it took to accomplish this.







(Please note that my camera is making pictures really dark, so i have to use the 'lighten' feature on iPhoto, which makes colors quite wonky.)

Random Funny

When I was student teaching, I was observing the music teacher. I sat in the circle between two kids and asked the little boy next to me his name. It was Noel. I told him, 'Oh, wow! That's my middle name!' and the kid on the other side of me said, 'Hey, it's my last name!'

So we had the first, second, and third Noels, sitting right there.

Hmmm.

I keep staring at this box. I have stories, but they aren't forming. I'll update a bit instead:

• The water problem was a crack in the casing of the whole house water filter. We got a new one, but it was just different enough from the first to have to redo all the plumbing surrounding it. I was outliving my usefulness and went to bed about 10:00. When I awoke, the plumbing fairy had finished it all, taken out the trash, cleaned everything and had everything back in it's place.

• Charlie now knows all his shapes and recognizes letters as letters, even if he doesn't know their actual names. He calls everything O, C, or W-M. He spent most of today naked from the navel down. He sat on the potty for a bit before discovering that it was more fun to pee on the carpet. He felt the need to poop coming on, tried a bit on the potty, then asked for a diaper. I came home between work and bunko and he ran out to give my van a hug and kiss, but wouldn't come near me.

• Melody had her 'Kindergarten Readiness' test at school and was a + in everything except 'waiting her turn to speak'--just like her mommy! She got her beloved deer in the mail today, thanks to a fabulous fan, and the world is right again. She has also stopped dressing in Christmas and Easter dresses every day. We have discovered Gymboree leggings and she adores them. They are comfy, actually fit her scrawny body, and are colorful and bright. As much as I miss Mme Fluff N Stuff, it is nice to not have to buckle petticoats into car seats every day.

• The longer this school year goes, the more I am convinced that having Dixie wait a year to start Kindergarten was absolutely the right thing for her. Five days a week of five hour preschool is strenuous enough for her. I can't imagine having her gone two more hours a day and with a more rigorous curriculum. She is thriving where she is. She has also adopted Sticky, who is the Queen Over All Of Us. She found a fairly straight four-foot stick in the yard. She has a face, belly button and nipples drawn on and plays dress-up with the girls. We had a formal adoption ceremony for us and she sleeps in Dixie's bed, beside her. The girls love stringing beads to make her tiaras and necklaces. I have a pic here somewhere.

• The weight loss was not courtesy of stress. If I were the kind of person that lost weight due to stress, Sticky and I could share clothes. Thanks for all the congrats!

• We still know nothing about any jobs for Dowlan.

*drumroll*

I have lost 20 lbs.

This is me, falling apart

warning: I copied/pasted this from another forum. it is not spell checked, punctuated or edited in any way.

Yesterday:
i took the kids to church, by myself. dowlan was home working on contract work. we're starting to get charlie used to being in the sanctuary, so i had all three in there. I got to sing hymns with charlie's hand stuck in my mouth. I'm sure God got a laugh out of that one. When it was time for the sermon, i took charlie down to the nursery.

After church, we had this once a month thing called LIVE where they do, well, a live show after lunch. I hate that they make us wait until EVERYONE trickles slowly across the parking lot before we can eat. I ran myself ragged keeping Charlie out of the food. I pass him off for a minute to take the girls potty. Then I get the kids' food, sat it down, get mine and almost get my second bite in my mouth when Dixie spills lemonade. I can't even get it cleaned before she is whining for more lemonade. I clean it up, I get more lemonade.

My butt is four inches from the chair when I notice the puddle under Charlie's chair. Apparently his dinner roll has been bathing in his water cup. Up again, clean again, almost down again. The girls need more chicken. Up again, fetch again, almost down again. Charlie is done eating and ready to make a break for it.

He is so tired. I make the girls PROMISE to not leave their chairs while Charlie and I run to the parking lot with the pile of stuff to drop off and to grab the stroller. Every ten feet, he falls into a heap on the floor. I have so much stuff I can't carry him. We're almost into the garage. These overly charming strangers want to chat about when their son was that age. I get the stuff dumped, I get him in the stroller, I shut the van, I hoof it back to the girls.

Who are no where to be found.

Thankful that the boy child is immobilized by a five-point harness, I begin looking. I find them in the bathroom. It had, after all, been almost twenty minutes since the last time i took them potty. I am furious. They are required to sit at the table and not go play while we wait for LIVE to begin. I stroll Charlie back and forth until no blue eye is visible.

LIVE begins. Due to technical difficulties, there is no sound. SO the people on stage decide to get every one to scream really loud. Seven times. Fortunately, Charlie is unmoved by their howls. LIVE is a little too long and the girls are a little too wild, but we make it through. It is time to go home and I am glad.

We keep getting invited to Super Bowl parties. I keep inviting people to The Super Bowl of Laundry and they all decline. Melody and Dixie realize that it is a good friend's birthday and that we will see her tonight and can we please get her a present and make her a cake. We go into Walgreen's, glaring at the Girl Scouts with their sugary boxes of dietary failure. We buy a cake mix and go home.

Daddy takes the kids outside and Melody won't go. She wants to help me. I get the cake pans in the oven while Melody starts to empty the clean dishes. Every single knife she finds, she pulls out, thrusts into the air, and shouts, "I fight this battle in the name of God!"




TODAY

I *almost* made it to the gym today. I got up, dressed, dressed three kids, fed them all, packed lunches, gym bag and backpacks, dropped the girls off. Charlie and I started to head towards the gym when I realized that I am beyond exhausted. I am coughing and sneezing WAY to much to go be in a pool for an hour. I come home and bum around. Dowlan works on his contract. Charlie plays, then naps.

everything was ho-hum until about 45 minutes before it was time to get the girls. we hear a thunk on the front porch and a weird noise from the laundry room (opposite end of the house) at about the same time. i run one way and he runs the other.

i have no idea what made the noise on the porch, but dowlan soon discovers the source of the laundry room noise. water is spraying out of the pipes.

fortunately, our hoses and pipes arent inside a wall.

water is behind the washer dryer and deep freeze in the laundry room and soaking into the floors on all four walls. it is under the inside part of the a/c unit. it is in the pantry and behind the fridge and soaking into those walls.

we have the water all up and the deep freeze out. im sitting for a minute while dowlan gets rid of the children, then it is time to deal with all the sogging stuff. then we get to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it. then i go to work for three hours. then come home and help dowlan finish fixing it and get it all cleaned up.

we cant turn the water back on until it is fixed. this might get tricky.

Help a girl out

For Christmas, Melody wanted one thing and one thing only: a baby reindeer that is light brown and so little that it still has the white spots and no antlers because then it would be a mommy, not a baby and it needs to be small.

She has been going on and on (and on and on) about this since August. Mid-September I bought her one. As we were leaving the store, she caught a glimpse of it. When we got home I secreted it away.

Apparently, I am quite good at hiding things.

You see where this is going, right? I have been through every closet in our home. Every box, every drawer, every hiding spot. It is nearing February and she is still miffed that the baby deer is all alone in the house and crying for her mommy but she's so small that her crying can't be heard and she is all alone very scared. She even has a mommy picked out, courtesy of Goodwill. Every day, Dash can be heard crying for her babe.

Please tell me that someone out there has both a small deer and a soft spot for my family. The deer I had bought her was a Webkins, but any small deer will do. It just has to have spots and no antlers. Please, oh please, oh please.

tuba_g@hotmail.com

I'm amazing

I know this is true because Tracy said so.