One of Those Days

Oh, I hope tomorrow is a bit better than today. Today wasn't all bad, just too eventful for a single day.

• I woke up to discover the trash had been taken out before the school bus came. If I need to expand on that, well . . . .


• a neighbor was in a car accident, but she is now home resting. Her car is totaled.


• the youngest started her acting career today, performing in a kindergarten play about a werewolf. (???)


• Jake the dog is still acting weird after yesterday's incident when he went crazy, started growling, jumping, choking himself on his chain, and then scaring himself by doing the toenail skid across the wood floor which resulted in his water dish spilling and him shaking for hours.


• one teenager came home from school in a good mood.


• one teenager came home from school and asked if I could take him and a friend to the funeral home for a viewing for another friend's mother who had passed away. Soooo sad.


• The last teenager got a call for a job they applied for. YES!!


• But the best of all is that I got a call saying my new nephew was on his way! Auntie Em is sooooooo excited! I kept checking FB all night to see if there were any updates, since phoning isn't always the best idea when there is such a time difference.

Guess Who?

This is a picture of the kid's cubbies in the mudroom. Can you guess who has which cubby? Not as easy as you think, huh? (The top one is just art projects.) And, yes, the mess to the right is mine, it's my "desk."

The "S" Word

Our local weatherman has been saying alot of "s" words lately. (I blame most of them on the groundhog, who I don't believe in anymore.) But tonight he said something I hadn't heard in a long, long, time. Can you guess what it was?

"Seventy."

Stop! Go Back!

I do love spring! Not only is it the start to gardening season, it means the garage sales are staring also! I used to go to these huge rummage sales in church basements where you could get as much as you could cram into a paper grocery bag for a huge sum of $2. I would take all three little ones with me, plop the littlest in a large carboard box which I would push around the church filling with whatever treasures I could find. I even bribed (shame on me!) the kids with promises of "new" toys if they were REALLY good during the free-for-all sales. To make a long story short, our house was full of garage sale toys and I came away with clothes for the kids (some of which we still have today, I stocked up so well) and so many blue jeans for my quilts/crafts!

The funniest part of my early garage sale memories is one October/November day when TDQ was about 4 years old. We were driving somewhere and she started sobbing and yelling, "Stop! Stop!" When I asked her why, she replied that she had seen garage sale signs and she was certain we were missing some really great sales (toys!) It took me a long time, but I finally convinced her that garage sale season was over and the signs were really political signs for the upcoming elections.

Horses: Regular or Unleaded?

Top Things I Did This Week To Drive My Kids Crazy

I try to be a fun mom, really. The problem is that I don't like to play board games or sports, or freely hand out money for pop, or buy an endless supply of Hot Pockets. What I really like to do is play pranks. Harmless, no-one-gets-their-feelings-hurt-type pranks.

1. I love to yell "I'm in There!" when someone knocks on the bathroom door and I am really in the laundry room.


2. I leave random notes on their FB page for the whole world to see.


3. I throw their shoes into their shoe cubbies in the mud room. Right where the shoes belong, but the kids go crazy looking for them.


4. I pause the tv with the DVR, hit skip backwards, then hit skip forward. This makes the tv move frame by frame, which can make the people on tv very funny looking with half open eyes, or mouths really opened wide or just generally hilarious.


5. Another tv trick I play is to turn the channel to something the kids really don't like to watch, like The Cosby Show, or M*A*S*H. Nothing clears the room faster than 1 minute of Bill Cosby. I don't know why, I always loved listening to his comedy on my parents records.


6. When their friends come over, I ask the friends about school. Or their parents. Or what they've been up to. I'm always warned later, "Don't do that! You embarrass me!" I make sure I ask more questions next time.


7. And finally, I wave at their friends as I drive down the street. And I might even honk the horn. All while my kids are cringing in the passenger seats. Ahhh, I love being a mom!

April Fool's!

April Fool's!

from the weatherman