The Robin's Nest

My latest article

2011-10-06T18:53:00.001-05:00

Yay! My latest article is out. This is the longest one I have had published thus far and I'm signed up for an even longer one for the March issue. So excited! How cool is it that people pay me to write? I'm a lucky girl.

Here it is - click through to page 38.

The Hills

The super powers of a Superman costume

2011-08-27T16:00:00.003-05:00

I have no issue with the high cost of Halloween costumes. I would venture to say we get more wear out of our Halloween costumes than most people on the planet. Zachary insists on wearing his costumes all day long about once per month come rain or shine. I usually look at it as one of those "it's not worth the fight" situations and with a roll of the eye just let him do it. Then we usually spend our day at home and I catch up on the laundry and housework. Yesterday was different.

Although my daughter has been in school for two weeks, it is just now the end of the summer for Zachy. He has one more week until school starts. There have been moments where the week after Labor Day can't get here fast enough.

Yesterday he wanted to wear his Superman costume complete with cape. Fine, whatever, throw it on, let's get going we are going to be late! We rushed out the door to walk sissy to school and met up with our neighbors along the way. Our sweet little 5 year old neighbor was very sad that he didn't have such a get up on and so my little superhero loaned him the cape. It was so genuine and thoughtful and I smiled at that amazing gesture that put a smile on his friend's face.

We went along our day of errand running - Target, Hancock Fabric, the Library, etc. All along the way, countless ladies sweetly exclaimed how much safer they felt with a real live superhero in their midst. That thrilled him each time and he offered to get rid of any monsters or bad guys that they ran into. I saw person after person nudge their friend and point at my little guy with a huge smile on their face. I think he should be given a medal for the public service of smiles and laughter he spread around the Kansas City area. Me included. It was really fun and I was proud to have this creative, outgoing and wonderfully angelic boy on my arm.

But on the walk back to school to pick up sissy, I saw the true awesomeness of the super powers of my Superman. A woman pulled up to us in her car with tears in her eyes and said she spotted us from two blocks away. She just had to turn around to come talk to us. Apparently her son wore the same type costume practically everyday for a year until it was in such shreds it no longer covered his little body. That boy is now a senior in college and 21 years old. She said that seeing us was a joyous walk down memory lane and it brought her happily to tears. She thanked us for making her day and reminded me to enjoy this precious time because before I know it, my little super hero will be a 21 year old man ready to graduate college and face the world. Now guess who had tears in their eyes?

Life has been crazy this week. I'm conflicted on the job front, my husband has been traveling like a mad man and school started at its usual hectic pace. That was a reminder I really needed. I thanked the woman, picked up my little superhero and laughingly piggy backed him all the way to the school.

Ode to my old mailman

2011-07-14T13:00:00.001-05:00

It is no secret around here I loved my mail man at our old house. In fact my husband thinks our 4 year old son looks suspiciously like the mailman. But that is just silly, our son is much shorter than he is.

Mr. Mailman is super hot and really nice and I felt like I spent more time with him than my husband. I saw the guy just about everyday (Sundays were a sad day for me) and it was usually the highlight of my 3:00 hour. He put up with a ton. I never had my mail ready when he got there. I would have to hunt under the couch for stamps, look in drawer after drawer for a pen to address things and check in about 12 places to find a return address label. Believe it or not these were not tactics to keep him around longer, I am just that unorganized when it comes to my mail. Half the time I asked him to go deliver everyone eles's mail and then come back to me so I would have my stuff ready for him. The guy had to think I am a fool, but he smiled and couldn't be nicer about it all.

Our new mailman is nice but I don't even know his name. My old mailman told me who my new mailman was going to be when I told him we were moving. I remember his nickname has something to do with crazy - something like lunatic Larry. Instead of walking he drives his little mail truck to each house - and I don't blame him, it is 363 degrees here right now and the houses have much larger lawns in between them but I am just not getting the same vibe as I did from my old dude.

I should probably be nicer and get to know him like I did my last guy. I should probably offer him a drink on the hot days - but I think I would feel like I was cheating on old mailman. Maybe I will test him this week and ask him to come back for my stuff and see how he handles it. Then I can determine if he is worthy of Christmas cookies.

My 4 year old pimp

2011-06-27T13:19:00.002-05:00

My son just turned four and he is really cute - as all four year old boys are. However he has a skill that I'm not sure many kids his age have mastered yet - picking up women.

I was getting him from school one day a few months back and his teacher was cracking up. She explained she had a doozie of a story for me. She wasn't lying.

Apparently she was sitting next to Zach at lunch and he was quietly munching on his PB&J sandwich. All of a sudden he turned to her and said "heeeey girrrrl" (I wish my computer could talk to you so you could hear the perfect R&B sweet slow talk he did it in.) The teacher, not knowing if she had heard him correctly said, "excuse me Zachary what did you just say?"

Zachary, "I said, heeeey girrrrrl. That is what my daddy told me I should say to the ladies."

After I hung up with my divorce attorney I fell all over myself apologizing to her that my son was trying to pick her up. Thank God for her being her because she thought it was hilarious and actually had to excuse herself from the table to bust out laughing in the hallway. She then proceeded to tell all the other teachers about it and now as they pass one another in the halls they all shout out "heeey girrrrl".
Nice legacy for the Gedmans to leave behind at our little Christian preschool.

Fast forward to a few days ago when my husband (ok, I didn't kick him out after that incident but believe me he is walking on thin ice here) and Zachy went to Best Buy. A sales girl came up to them and started discussing whatever item they were there to purchase. At a lull in the conversation she bent down to Zach and said "Hi cutie, what's your name?"

His response? "I'm Zach", then lazily points his thumb at my husband and said "this is Dan."

She ate that up and Dan was pretty sure at that point he could have taken her behind the refrigerator section and had his way with her. He said Zach is the best wing man he's ever had. Nice.

Can't wait to see what he is like at 16.

Have you ever moved 4 people and 2 dogs by yourself? I have

2011-06-09T16:18:00.001-05:00

Wow, I'm the worst person back from hiatus ever. But I have an excuse, actually like 401 of them. Here goes:

1) Decided on a Monday we were going to rent our house out instead of sell it. Had to find renters.
2) Found them by Wednesday. Realized on Thursday we had to move out so they could move in.
3) Found movers.
4) They came 7 days later.
5) However, 4 days after we knew we were moving but 3 days before movers were coming we had 30 people at our house for end of year soccer party. "Welcome to our home, do you mind packing that glass after you use it? Thanks much!"
6) Husband was out of town for work 95% of this time.
7) Parents Day Out ends for son, so he is home - husband out of town, so he is not. I had to pack.
8) Son got stomach flu and threw up for 4 days.
9) Daughter's last day of school came the day before the big move. Lots of end of school yearish things to attend.
10) Movers came. Was not prepared. Was stuffing random doll shoes and dog brushes in boxes as they were carrying them out to the truck.
11) Husband was back in town but had a video shoot on day of said move - NO HELP.
12) Moved to new house. Had to get kids rooms sleepable in about a two hour period.
13) Side note - son walked into new house and exclaimed "Wow, what a lame house!" Then he went on excitedly talking about how lame everything was. I'm thinking he didn't quite know the meaning of that word. At least I'm hoping he didn't because I've been killing myself here trying to move us all into the home where all of their childhood memories will be held. Ungrateful kid...
14) Husband stepped on a rusty nail day 2 of new home had to get a tetnus shot. I had to unpack.
15) I stabbed myself with a rusty sewing needle day 3 of new home, had to get a tetnus shot. I had to unpack.
16) Son stepped on a carpet tack day 4 of new home- luckily dr. said he has had his tetnus shot. I had to unpack.
17) Still waiting on E to do something that merits a tetnus shot- hasn't happened yet. She is always the showoff.
18) Son turned 4. Earned worst parents of the year award by ignoring his bday on the actual day because we were having carpet installed that day. Thankfully he can't read a calendar. Had a grand family celebration the next day though. I figure it really worked in his favor since he had to stop sucking his thumb on his 4th birthday - so he got an extra day
19) Held a bday party for 8 of his closest friends four days after said birthday
20) Had a BBQ at the new house for about 12 people for a work thing for my husband.
21) Have been actively looking for a new job through all of this. Have actually applied to several and have two interviews next week.
22) Have had no cable or tv this entire time as we haven't decided which route we want to go with our service so have had to entertain the children in between unpacking boxes filled with couch pillows and lawn chemicals.
23) Interview about 20 people for an article I am writing for a local magazine.
24) Drink. Heavily. That one is self explanatory.
Whew! Okay, so maybe it is only like 24 excuses but I still think I have been one busy person. Sorry. Really I am going to get back to blogging. Try and carry on all of you my loyal readers (dad), I know it will be hard but it will be worth the wait. Thanks!!!

Worst Stay at Home Mom EVER

2011-05-10T11:35:00.001-05:00

So I am not working currently. This has all occurred in the past few days. Long story. Don't ask. It will hurt your brain to try and understand it.

Although I have worked since the day I had kids. I always had visions of myself being this amazing stay at home mom. Cookies and milk waiting for the kids as they come home from school to tell me all the details of their day. A house so spotless that you might actually want to serve a meal on the floor. A cute little apron worn while cooking a perfectly balanced meal all the while sporting beautifully coiffed hair - all complete with shiny pearls around my neck. Yes, I truly thought I could be that 50's Leave it to Beaver Mom.

Wanna hear the reality?
Currenly I am sitting here in my yoga pants and a fleece jacket (even though it is like 900 degrees outside, but can't find anything else clean) with my hair haphazardly thrown in a bun that has not been brushed since yesterday. As I look around my messy house I am sniffing the smell of a birthday cake in the oven. That would be the birthday cake I forgot to cook for my son's class today. His birthday is is after school is out for summer and so his teacher and I decided I would have his birthday party today at school. Yeah, guess who forgot about that until they got to his classroom and the teacher reminded her??? Yes, that would be me, stay at home mom of the year.

When I go up to school to deliver said cake I will also be taking Honey Bear's bag that I forgot. Honey Bear is a stuffed animal that gets a chance to go home with everyone in the class for a few days. This past week was our turn. I was feeling pretty cocky as I walked into school knowing I had gone above and beyond and had printed out photos of our time with him, cut them in fun shapes and glued them around the a two page story written from Honey Bear's perspective about his adventures with our family. Got a bit deflated when I realized I forgot to return the bag he travels in.

This is all after I forgot to pay the mortgage, then when I got it together enough to pay it, tried to do so at the wrong bank, forgot to buy napkins and then served my family juicy baked chicken legs for dinner last night and forgot to take drinks on the picnic my son and I went on yesterday.
It isn't pretty around here. I am such an organized person normally. I pride myself in getting things to school before it is due and having my children's socks match and things of that nature.

I need a job so I can get it together or my family may not survive.

Monte-sorry?

2011-04-21T21:43:00.000-05:00

In the continuing saga that is my life, I have been researching prekindergarten schools for my almost four year old little guy. Until now he has been attending what I consider a normal preschool program. Each class has their own room, the classes are separated by age, they have a solid structure to their day, etc.
Today I toured a highly recommended Montessori school. I am a really laid back person but this place made me feel like I am wound tight as a Twizzler. I do know the Montessori philosophy is a tried and true one. In fact my brothers and I went to a Montessori school when we were young and I have numerous friends who send their children to Montessori schools now. I do believe in its benefits - afterall I'm pretty sure all kids need to know how to tie shoelaces (even if kids shoes have gone the way of velcro) but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the difference between this school and the one we have been attending.

My feelings of trepidation started when the woman who runs the school could not shake my hand because I had caught her in the middle of cleaning out the bunny cage. Hand shaking issues aside, she was very nice. During our tour she was a bit distracted by something that had happened just a few minutes before I got there (something bunny and poop related I am guessing). I get that, I work from home and have 2 kids and dogs. I live my life distracted.

But being me, I started in on my list of 346 questions - all of which seemed to have the same answer - the kids work at their own pace and are allowed to explore what they like to do and who they are in their own time. I'm cool with that, truly am, but I also have a 4 year old boy who needs to be Kindergarten ready in about 16 months so I want to make sure he isn't so busy exploring his interest of standing on his head that he forgets to learn his ABC's.

I know it doesn't sound like it but I really liked this school, it is just the laid back attitude and lack of walls that completely threw me. I'm still trying to shake the feeling I was in a drug induced Alice in Wonderland dream. The boy who couldn't be older than 3 that walked past me wearing a lab coat carrying a beaker filled with a bubbling blue liquid and had a bunny rabbit hopping happily behind him had a lot to do with that.

Stay tuned to see where Z man ends up. Next week we tour a private Catholic school...

A note to the birds

2011-04-12T13:20:00.001-05:00

Dear birdies in my neighborhood,

I guess I should take it as a compliment to my house keeping skillz that you guys keep slamming into my windows but I'm a little tired of cleaning off bird shaped smudges. Also, the heart attack it gives me every time you do it has truly shortened my life expectancy.

PLEASE STOP!

Thank you,
The Robin's Nest (and yes I get the irony)

Someone please buy our house or it is going to burn down

2011-04-05T10:09:00.001-05:00

My kids are typical kids. They are messy and break stuff - but ever since our house went on the market they have really upped their game. They cannot stop breaking/destroying/soiling/scratching/denting/putting holes in/ripping things.

About a week ago Z broke a bottle of bright red nail polish on the white carpet in our master bedroom. Nice. Bright red isn't even a good color for him.

Yesterday I walked into a blue polka dotted kitchen. After much interrogation of the kidlets I unearthed that Zachary had wanted to be a cowboy and decided to lasso his yogurt stick. After I finished scraping 1,000 blue dots off of the cabinets/floor/sink/paint on the wall/light switch/windows/cookbooks/kitchen rug/how much damn yogurt is in one of these sticks/, we (well not really me) came to the conclusion that this mess was my fault and I am a bad mom because there is no way he can be a real cowboy without a rope.

Yeah, right I am going to give this kid a rope, Lord knows what kind of damage he would do to our house with that. Someone please buy our house now, I'm not sure we have enough insurance to cover what is going to happen next.

KU/VCU the good and the bad

2011-03-28T16:56:00.000-05:00

How KU's loss to VCU affects me:
As you may remember I have an amazing ability to make everything about me. It is a gift really. But the horribly upsetting loss to VCU yesterday is affecting me in many ways - both good and bad.

1) Mopey Husband. The thing I hate even more than KU losing is the way it makes my husband mope around. I did ask and it will apparently take about four days for him to get over it. He said by Wednesday he will be able to not think about it every other thought. So that is good, looking forward to having him back.

2) For Sale House Love. Spring Break last weekend and KU this weekend, our poor house FOR SALE had no chance. Now that it all over, just as I thought, we already have a few showings lined up this week. Let the bidding war begin!

3) Cleaned up Husband. Admittedly he is definitely not one of those who has a standing haircut appointment every 4 weeks - but he was getting a bit scruffy lately - even for him. I hadn't said anything and was probably about a week away from doing so when yesterday after the game yesterday he announced that he can now get his haircut. Okay, great. Wait, huh?

4) New House Love. The kids bathroom in the new house has this ugly vanity with those Hollywood lights going up and over the entire thing. E loves it and she is going to be sooo mad at me when she finds out my plans for that spot. Please don't tell her. I don't plan to until it is already done. I'm sneaky like that.

Not only is it ugly, I find it to be dangerous. It is a little desk surrounded in lightbulbs that I know my kids will either break and slice open lots of body parts or burn the heck out of themselves on - who thought that was a good plan? Anyway, the hubs has agreed to tear that out and add shelves in their place - but he couldn't do it this past weekend because of the game. So next weekend the hammers start swinging! Woo Hoo! I can get abnormally excited about storage space, it excites me in ways it just shouldn't.

If we are keeping track here, it seems there are more good things about KU losing than bad. But I'd trade it all and take a KU victory just to have the uber happy husband. Awwww.

I'm baaaack!!!

2011-03-22T21:03:00.000-05:00

So yeah my hiatus was more like a pregnancy. Nooo, I'm not pregnant I just could have had a baby in the amount of time I was away from blogging. Did you miss me?

Crickets

Ahem, okay I get that. There were like 2 people who read this blog and I'm sure they moved on just fine without the daily chaos that I call my life.

When we last visited the Robin's Nest, E was starting Kindergarten and Robin was starting a new job. Fast forward to now and E is almost out of school for the summer and Robin's (that would be me, why am I talking in the third person?) job seems to be coming to an end. Unfortunately I was told I will not have a paycheck after May. I'm a cool nice person and all but I am just not going to be able to work for free - especially considering we own two houses. Oh, did I not mention that? Yeah, we bought a new house about six weeks ago. Our current hosue is on the market, wanna buy it?

This isn't an oficial post, I just wanted to say I'm baaack - I'm picturing it in that creepy Jack Nicholson way from the Shining. Who knows why. I clearly didn't get un-weird during my hiatus.

Stay tuned for some good times!

My dad the movie star

2010-09-16T08:44:00.000-05:00

Even though I am on a blogging hiatus, I had to post this because my father is on his way to stardom. Not long now before I get to attend the Academy Awards. And you can say you knew his daughter way back when...

Check it out:
I'd like to thank the Academy

Blogging Hiatus

2010-09-06T10:18:00.001-05:00

For the one or two of you who actually read this blog I thought I should let you know that I am on a self imposed blogging hiatus. My new year's resolution was to take the pressure off of myself on the blog and I am going to assert that right now.

The kids are in school and activities which makes life CRAZY busy and I have started a new job. Add that to a husband who works a ton, constant chaos in my head because of the house addition we might be doing soon, and you have a busy person who doesn't feel very creative and is kind of checked out of blogging for now.

I know this will not make a major impact on the world, not even a tiny ripple, but I just thought I would let you know.

When my headspace gets cleared up, I will be back at it.

Thanks!
Robin

Special Promo for you guys!

2010-08-25T12:24:00.002-05:00

Full disclosure: My brother and sister in law own this company.

However, that does not stop me from thinking it is a great idea and one you will want to check out if you are or you know someone who is getting married.

The website is Wedzines and it is so cool! You (with the help of the Wedzines editors) can create a custom wedding magazine about you and your soon to be spouse. There are some really cool things you can include in the book - AND they are being nice enough to give a special gift to you guys.

Here is what you need to do:

1) Go to Wedzines and check out all the fun stuff you can do!
2) Register here
3) Enter promo code: ROBINSNEST which is good for a free standard digital Wedzine (a $20 value)
4) Post it on Facebook and tell all of your friends how cool Wedzines are!
5) Enjoy!

5 question friday

2010-08-22T08:48:00.003-05:00

Yes, I know it is Sunday and for a person who is punctual to the point that it is annoying, this is killing me. But with the crazy week I had (husband out of town for 5 days, 1 kid starting kindergarten, 1 kid starting preschool, starting new job, preschooler battling stomach flu, and so on) I have not had time to write my own creative blog so here goes this awesome thing from My Little Life. And I have to apologize with this new computer I cannot figure out how to copy the cute little linky guy for this. I will figure it out one day.

1) Do you have any nicknames and if so how did it come about?
My first nickname was Robinsky from my parents. In high school much to my parents' horror my nickname was Boner. Not for the reasons you are thinking, dirty minds. I was a good girl in high school, it wasn't until later that I became the degenerate I am now. Somehow my name went from Robin to Robone, to Bone to Boner. My husband likes to call me Bob which drives me crazy, I'm cool with Rob cuz it is short for Robin but BOB? That is a man's name (yes, yes I do realize Rob is a man's name too. I didn't say it made sense).

2) What is your birth order amongst your siblings?
I'm the third (baby) and the only girl. Greatest situation EVER!

3) In the movie of your life who would play your significant other?
He has to be cute and funny just like my husband. So I'm going with Paul Rudd. He is a Kansan too - perfect!

4) What is currently your favorite song?
I have no idea, SAD.

5) Are you saving money for anything right now? Big or small purchase?
We just made a large purchase that is attached to the back of our house. Because our wallet asked for a breather, all purchases of any kind are on hold. Next up possibly an addition to our house or a new overstuffed chair for our living room.

Hubs is back in town now, kids have started school and flu is out of here. Hopefully this week I will be funny, creative, etc. Stay tuned!

Those advertisers are speaking to me

2010-08-18T11:05:00.001-05:00

E started Kindergarten today. I'm not sure how this happened, because it has gone so fast. However it also seems like she has always been in our lives and I cannot imagine anything without her.

It is amazing how much I pay attention to all of those back to school commercials wondering if I have purchased her the right things and if there is anything that I can buy that will ensure success in friendships, school and all around adjustment to life. I've been in advertising for 14 years, you would think that I know that all of these ads are made by people sitting in a room who probably don't even have children, however that does not stop me from wanting to pull out my credit card and consume, consume, consume.

The one that totally speaks to me is a mom who wishes she could take her child in the classroom and tell all the other kids what a great kid she has. I so am fighting the urge to do that. If I could, I would make a Powerpoint presentation on E and all of her amazing traits. She is incredibly smart, hilarious, sweet and considerate, unbelievably sassy (and not always in a good way) creative and a budding artist.

I'm proud of my little big girl and she did an amazing job walking in the school like she owned the place and didn't have any qualms about me leaving her. Not sure I felt the same way :)

I will learn to love my PC, I will learn to love my PC, I will learn to love my PC and why I love Geeks

2010-08-17T07:40:00.002-05:00

I am a Mac girl, have been one since college and have really really been one for the past 8 years while at my old company. For my new company there is a need for me to have a PC because of a certain software that we use.
I got my brand new fancy schmancy PC the other day. It has Windows 7 which according to the 1,000 commercials I have seen on it - is awesome. My husband who is pretty smart with this stuff tried to help set it up to work with our wireless Internet. No luck. We literally worked on this all weekend. It would tease us by working every once in awhile but never for a long amount of time. It was so infuriating. If you walked away from the computer for one second, the Internet would stop working and anytime my husband tried using his Mac with the Internet, mine would shut down.

I was so incredibly close to hopping on a plane and going to California to retrieve my beautiful Mac from my old company's IT guy. I had offered to purchase it but they needed it as an extra. But this time I wasn't going to be so nice about it. I wasn't above holding said IT guy up at gun point. If he would just hand over the Mac, no one would get hurt - except maybe my PC.

My husband left town for work on Monday AM and left me alone with this mean horrible beast. I had never gotten it to work at all on my own so I was totally screwed. Finally, after 5 days of this, I called the Geek Squad (1-800-Geek-Squad) and told them of my woes. (Note: I am so pathetically dependent on the Internet that I had to call someone to get me the phone number to the Geek Squad because I recycle all of the phone books I receive immediately and get all phone numbers I need online) I was ready to set an appointment and have some guy come out for 13 hours and pay him $1,000,000 to figure out this mess.

The guy was super nice and asked me if I had hit FN key and F2 key at the same time. Uh, no. "Well try that," he said. SUCCESS. YAY!!!!!

I am so excited to have Internet I cannot tell you!!! And I love the Geek Squad.

And I am trying to get over the fact that my computer made my husband and I look like total morons for 5 days. We are going to find out a way to get along, we really will.

Star studded week

2010-08-13T11:45:00.001-05:00

So we had a big party on the new deck this past weekend. Seriously are you so tired of hearing about the deck? I need to shut up about it. But I guess you can tell how much I love it.

Because my husband spent two weeks gallivanting (okay yeah I know it was for work but I like to say gallivanting anyway) around Europe with them, he became pretty good friends with some of the rappers who are his clients. So these guys came to our party on Sunday. What better way to christen the deck than to have Tech N9Ne and Krizz Kaliko hanging out? It was awesome. The hubs told me I wasn't allowed to geek out and ask for their autographs or anything. You will be proud, I didn't. But I never get to see these famous people he gets to work with so it is kind of exciting for me.

Although we had some famous dudes at our house this weekend, this post is really about my dad and his start studded weekend. As you may or may not know my dad is working his way towards an Academy Award. He is so adorable and actually spent a day this week filming a major Hollywood movie. You have to go read his blog about it all, it is very entertaining.

http://actingyourage1.blogspot.com/

Really am going to start charging for the use of our yard

2010-08-12T06:30:00.003-05:00

The other day I wrote about how some of the neighborhood children use our corner yard for their lemonade stands. Since I wrote that post we have had a few more little entrepreneurs set up shop. And like I said, I really am okay with it.

But the people selling their homes are seriously starting to annoy me. I watch the realtors in their high heels and dark suits pull up in their shiny Mercedes, leave the engine on, glance around quickly to make sure no one is looking, dart to my yard, stick their sign in, hop in their car and peel out. Seriously, how hard is it to just come and ask me if they can stick a sign in my yard? I would say yes. I really would. There are a lot of advantages to someone on my block selling their house. Potential for my property value to go up, potential for new kids my kids' age, potential for a new best friend to sip margaritas with on my new deck and much more. But when you don't ask, guess what? The second it gets dark out, I'm going to go and rip that sign out.

There is a homeowner on our street who did it today. She is selling her house For Sale By Owner. Granted she lives like 10 houses down from me and we have never met, but I would think since we live on the same street it would just be good neighborly niceness to take the 30 seconds to walk to my door and ask me if she can put her sign in my yard. I watched her put the sign in. Didn't even look up at my house while she was doing it. I expect the realtor's to be less sensitive to me, but I really take much more offense to the FSBO chick doing it.

Guess what I will be doing about 9:30 PM??? Really, really, really I need to get a life and get real things to worry about.

Disclaimer: Just so you don't think I'm a huge ginormous ass, I don't throw their signs away. I just pull them out and stick them on the sidewalk. Just enough to annoy them and have to stop and put it back every day.

Disclaimer 2: I don't just sit and stare out my front window all day. It just happens to be the view from my kitchen and office - where I spend all day long.

The long awaited deck...

2010-08-10T07:25:00.002-05:00

Our deck is done! Our deck is done! Here are some photos. Everyone is invited to come and hang out. We can probably fit 200 of our closest friends. It is a large deck! Hehe, I said large deck.

This is where my husband cooks delicious dinners for us.

This is where I sit and drink and let him do that.

Warning, this deck has a tendency to turn you into a lush. Not sure how it happens but every time I set foot on it I start drinking. Very strange - it must have magical powers.

This is where we eat those delicious dinners.

I am a happy woman! If you don't see me blogging for a few days, come to my deck, take the margarita out of my hand and tell me to snap out of it.

Code Yellow

2010-08-06T07:10:00.017-05:00

I was a star player in a Code Yellow yesterday at Kohl's. What is a Code Yellow you ask? Well let me tell you.

It is when a rambunctious little 3 year old feels the need to run away from his mommy and disappear into thin air

It is when a mommy grabs her 5 year old holding on to her for dear life and runs frantically through the store yelling said little guy's name

It is when strangers look at mommy like she is 1) a crazy woman or 2) the worst mom on the planet

It is when those strangers are correct

It is when mommy tries (not very successfully) to hold her tears over the fact that a horrible stranger has most likely snatched little guy and walked him right out the door trying in order to reassure sweet scared sister that her brother will be found any moment

It is when mommy has every Kohl's employee looking for the little guy and gives death looks to any employee who isn't searching under beds or in the clothing racks because mommy knows that all employees heard the Code Yellow! announcement over the loud speaker and cannot fathom why they are not about to pass out from panic like she is

It is the complete stopping of time

It is by far the scariest thing that has ever happened to this mommy

It is the absolute release of tears after, what seems like 4 hours, the loud speaker announces that little guy has been found and is at the front

It is the tightest hug you have ever given your terrified child and the ability to squelch the monster lecture you want to give him about the danger of what just happened

It is letting your children know how special they are and that you love them more than anything in the world

It is something I hope you never experience

Bieber hair

2010-08-04T09:18:00.001-05:00

My 3 year old has Justin Bieber hair. If you don't know who that is, good for you. But if you do know who he is you might think my child needs a hair cut and you would be correct. Z man refuses to get one and although I am the mom and should probably assert my authority I really have no desire to put some poor hair stylist through the agony of trying to hold him down. I know from experience that it is not fun.

The funny thing is that it has been so long since he has gotten a haircut that the hair has gone back to being cute. Sort of like if you hold on to your clothes for long enough they will come back in style.

Plus now we have a fun thing to tease Z with. We call him Bieber all the time and he insists in his cute 3 year old voice "I'm not a beaver, I'm a little boy!"

Meanest Mom on the Block

2010-08-02T11:12:00.001-05:00

We live in the corner house and often times kids use our yard to hold a lemonade stand. I'd by lying if I told you I haven't thought about going out and asking for 10% of their money for the use of our yard. I'm not that big of an ass, I wouldn't really do it, I just think it would be hilarious.

Today two girls from the street set up shop in our yard. One of the girls lives in the last house on the other end of street, another corner, so I'm not sure why they didn't use her yard - but whatever.

She rang our doorbell and asked if I wanted to buy lemonade. I explained that my kids were in the bathtub and I could not leave to go outside right now. I assured her I would buy some later. And I truly meant that. I knew E would be excited to go out and purchase it.

10 minutes later she rang the doorbell again. I know it was her because I peaked out of the window upstairs. With kids still in the bathtub, I ignored her. 10 minutes later the doorbell rang again. By this time my kids were out of the bath and E saw the pushy lemonade salesperson at the door and yelled to me to answer it. I was busted.

Like I said, I did have every intention of buying the lemonade from the girls but I was in no hurry to pop my happily splashing kiddos out of the bathtub for it.

I answered the door and pushy lemonade girl asked if I was going to buy lemonade. I responded "Yes, I do plan to but, as I said last time, I am getting the kids bathed and I will do it when I can." Off she went back to ~~bully other people~~ sell lemonade.

At this point I was annoyed, but I still gave E $1 and told her to get herself and Z man some lemonade. Z man said he did not want any.

E skipped along with her dollar bill and came back with a red Solo cup containing no more than 3 sips of lemonade in it. For her safety, as it was at the edge of the yard and close to the street, I watched the entire transaction and I know E didn't drink any of the lemonade.

Now if you have read my blog for more than 12 seconds you know I am prone to exaggeration but honestly there was about 1/4 inch of lemondae in her cup. I took a picture of it because it was so ridiculous! Unfortunately my photo does not do the absurdity justice.

Just curious, I asked E if she had gotten any change and of course, since she is 5, she looked at me like what the hell is change? I was really annoyed by now because I really felt they were taking advantage of E since she is only 5 and didn't know any better.

NOTE SO YOU KNOW I'M NOT A TOTAL JERK: I always give kids more money than they are charging for their lemonade.

I marched out to that lemonade stand and told the girls that E accidentally forgot to get Z man's lemonade (knowing perfectly well he didn't want any) and that I needed another cup. Because the mean mom was there they filled this one much higher. I didn't give them any money for it (I could see their sign at this point and it said $.50/cup which is what I ended up paying) and walked off feeling justified. Had they been less stingy they would have gotten to keep that extra $.50.

Yay! Mom Power! Way to stick it to a couple of 9 year olds, Robin! What is wrong with me? Why did this bother me so much? Clearly I need a hobby.

Construction Peep Show

2010-07-28T07:30:00.004-05:00

22 days until Z man needs to be potty trained for preschool. Major derailment this weekend - apparently he is allergic to potty training because once boot camp began he started throwing up everywhere and continued to do so for 3 days. That was not fun, but nothing can deter me from my goal of getting him to start preschool on day 1.

Clearly I'm all about him learning preschooly type things like sharing with others, using scissors and gluing thing to paper, but really I am most worried about the break I need during the day for the few precious hours he will be there.

I'm trying the "be naked at all times" method of potty training and as you know we have deck construction going on. Z man LOVES the activity outside and really likes to watch the guys use their tools. He logs a lot of time watching them out the window - sans pants.

I'm sure the guys are really appreciating the view from their side:

You cannot even imagine how many "My! What a big deck you have!" jokes have been made by my husband and myself. We are hilarious.

Not so green

2010-07-25T10:29:00.004-05:00

Am I the only one who has a table that looks like this when they leave Baskin Robbins? I feel very bad about the tree that gave its life so my son would no longer have an ice cream covered face and hands and legs and ears and shirt and hair and - well you get the picture.

Oh and fun fact, I knew a girl growing up named Robin Baskins.

LV love

2010-07-23T07:00:00.010-05:00

I get the itch a lot. The decorating itch. I love to decorate and redecorate and then redecorate again our house. Recently we got some new windows and, as I write this, there are shirtless guys (Z man keeps looking out the window saying "they're neekid!!!") working on our new 12 foot by 50 foot deck. I'm a happy woman! (Let me clarify, I'm happy because our deck has been started, not because there are 1/2 neekid men in my backyard - although that doesn't suck.)

But every once in awhile I see a picture in a magazine that inspires me to paint a wall or recover a chair and this photo totally spoke to me in that way. There is a spot on the side of our house where the paint is starting to peel - so clearly we need a new paint job and I'm thinking this is really the way to go.

What do you think?

I'm Stealing It #12

2010-07-21T20:59:00.002-05:00

My friend Lindsey passed this along to me. I have not done it yet and neither has she but she will be doing it tomorrow so I will report back on what she thinks.

If you go to this site you can have Mickey Mouse or one of his friends give your child a call! It is free and you can tell them your child's name and something you want them to mention.

For example I have a little guy who has to be potty trained in exactly 28 days and that might be a great incentive for him. I am going to let Mickey know (HOLY CRAP 28 days!!!!! I'm in trouble! Sorry for the interruption it just really hit me) that we are potty training and he will let him Z man know how proud he is.

I also have a big girl who is going to Kindergarten next year. Although she is excited about it, tomorrow is her last day at the school she has been going to for years and she has a great deal of anxiety about that. It might be nice to hear some encouraging words from Mickey Mouse.

I think this is a terrific idea and can't wait to use it!

My week

2010-07-18T10:06:00.005-05:00

It has been a great week since the hubs got home. Very action packed.

We ate things out of my garden! People this is huge, I have a charcoal black thumb and the fact that I grew things that are edible is amazing. Seriously my kids are the only things I've ever managed to keep alive.

My son got his foot caught in what looks like a foot guillotine and I had to have hubs come home early from work to get it out. The crazy kid was more worried about me having to break the toy than getting his swollen, bent foot out. When I gave him the option of breaking the toy or wearing the toy forever - he chose the forever route.

We headed up to cute Weston, MO for one night and had a great time. Going to a winery town and doing wine tastings like there is no tomorrow is a brilliant thing to do the night before this:

I ran a 5K at 7:00 on Saturday night that was in no less than 3,000 degree heat. I had a pretty impressive showing - 104th in your age category is pretty good right? Please hold your applause.

I'm waiting to find out, but I'm guessing there were like 105 people in my category. Don't know why the logo will not let me show the whole thing but if you want to find out more about it, go here

Quite a fun week, so glad to have the hubs home!

UPDATE: 5K race results were posted and I was actually 95th out of 130 in my age group. Pretty pathetic but at least I didn't come in last :)

Yay! He is coming home today

2010-07-12T13:23:00.002-05:00

The hubs is coming home today! I'm super excited. I'm busy scrubbing the house from top to bottom and scrubbing the kids from top to bottom as well. I want to make sure everything is all shiny for him.

I realize that he must be a large part of my blog because I have literally had nothing to write about for the past several days. Sorry I am so boring.

I'm sure I'll be back at it in no time. Thanks for hanging in there my friends :)

Why we love daddy

2010-07-09T07:34:00.003-05:00

Day 12 of 15. We are in the homestretch people. I think we are going to make it.

So they do not forget him (maybe I am being a bit dramatic) I thought it would be nice to put together a list of reasons the kids love their daddy. For your viewing pleasure here they are:

E's list:

1) He is nice
2) He is funny
3) He is so silly
4) I love to go to Old McDonald's with him
5) He is a great daddy

Z's list:

1) I love daddy's sunglasses
2) I love you mommy
3) I love me
4) His favorite color is green

My list:

1) He kills spiders
2) He entertains the children from about 6:00 PM on
3) He builds better Lego contraptions than I do
4) Wine is much more fun to drink with him than alone. Although... wine is much more necessary when he isn't here. Go figure
5) He gathers and takes the trash out to the curb on trash day and then brings the trash cans back in after they have been emptied
6) He is a better snuggler than a pillow

I'm over it, come home!

2010-07-07T08:29:00.004-05:00

Day 10 of 15.

I originally thought the hubs leaving town for 2 weeks would be miserable because of the lack of help with the kiddos, but I did not anticipate how much I would actually miss him.

After almost 10 years of marriage/mortgages/careers/kids/housework/chaos who knew how much I really like being with him? I guess that is a good thing. So, okay, message received. I like my husband. Noted.

You can come home now.

Check out my latest article in KC Parent magazine!

2010-07-02T11:15:00.003-05:00

I am lucky enough to be a freelance writer for a local parenting magazines, KC Parent and KC Baby. Usually I write light hearted things about the craziness of childrearing but this most recent article was a very important one because it covered the topic of SIDS. Writing serious was a stretch for me but I learned some incredibly valuable information.

Check it out here

Keep your kiddos safe and have a Happy 4th of July weekend!

Twice in a month! I'm getting spoiled.

2010-07-01T07:06:00.003-05:00

I was given another award and I am over the moon about it! It definitely takes the sting out of having a husband who abandoned me and went playing around Europe for two weeks. (Okay really he is there for work but I don't get quite as many sympathy points when I say it that way)

Kelly over at Kelly's Breakroom bestowed this Sunshine Award honor on me and I couldn't be more honored because I love reading her blog! She is funny, honest and super cool because she can still rock it on a Ms Pac Man Machine.

Part of the award is to point out other blogs that you enjoy reading and I am going to do that - soon. I just wanted to recognize Kelly for her nice award now - I'm the kind of girl who doesn't sleep until she gets all her thank you notes out. This is my virtual thank you note to Kelly.

The kiddos and I are leaving town tomorrow to hang out with mama and papa Robin's Nest at their lakehouse. I'm really looking forward to that - not just because I love my parents so and can't wait to see them - but because I am going to have some help with the rug rats for 4 days! Single moms out there - this is a HUGE shout out to you. I'm just beginning day 4 of the hubs being out of town and I'm about to throw in the towel.

I take it all back!

2010-06-30T06:43:00.000-05:00

Still glowing from my brave frog rescue, I woke up in the morning to my son trying to get out of his bedroom by shaking his door handle. Before I could get to him, the inevitable happened, Z man locked himself in. Trying to squelch my freak out from my daughter I ran around the house grabbing everything small I could stick in the hole of his doorknob. Scissors = too big, earring = too small, pen = just right but not long enough, so on and so forth.

E piped in with "Daddy always uses a Q-tip." Always? This happens often? How was I not aware of that?

After a lot of 5 year old gibberish and stressed mom talk back and forth I figured out she meant a toothpick. I got a box of toothpicks and ran back to Z's room. Granted I had tried to shove many things into that hole over the past 7 minutes, but really I had no idea what I supposed to do once I actually got something in there.

I stuck the toothpick in and jiggled it all around poking and prodding at things to no avail. All the while I'm cursing Dan for being in Oslo, Norway because I could not pick up the phone to call him. If he were on this side of the world he could at least ~~make fun of~~ sympathize with me while I was attempting to free Z man from what had now become (in my mind) a room full of dangerous, sharp, poisonous, menacing, choking hazardous, items.

There is clearly a God out there because he 1) gave us a child with a happy go lucky demeanor. The entire time Z kept saying "Mom, you are so silly, open this door!" and unlike me he wasn't freaking out and 2) God heard my inner panic (it is possible the neighbors heard it too, it was loud) and opened that door because I KNOW for a fact that it was not my clumsy fumbling of the toothpick that did it. (Vows to go to church more often)

So yes, I take back everything I said yesterday, I cannot live without the hubs.

If I am doing this on day 2, what will I be doing by day 15?

2010-06-28T23:02:00.007-05:00

As I have mentioned ad naseum, yesterday the hubs left town for 2 weeks (15 days actually) and today the construction dudes finished installing the door that will exit out to our new deck.

On the outside of our house we have several window wells that are attached to our basement. Two of these wells are full of leaves and will be covered up when the deck is installed. I decided I should clean them out before they get covered up. It is like when you move your stove to rescue the stray green Lego your child kicked under there and is yelling at the top of his lungs for - then you end up scrubbing the floor behind the stove. No one is ever gonna see it, but you do it anyway.

So at 10:00 PM I got out a shovel and started shoveling leaves into a garbage bag. The fact that I thought of cleaning out the leaves, knew where a shovel was and then actually did the task is truly a freaking miracle. Hubs is in charge of all things leaf-like. Maybe next I will try to mow the lawn! Just kidding.

Anywho, In the first window well I found a baby frog and honest to God my scream was quiet enough to not wake all of the neighbors. Wow! Who am I? Did I mention I do not do critters? I looove animals but just not ones that hop, slither, squeak, etc. in my home.

I rescued the little guy and took him over the grass so he could hop off into froggy happiness. In case you are wondering - Noooo I did not touch him - I put him on my shovel and gave him a lift.

On to window well #2 - and guess what? Two more frogs! One big one and one baby one. I rescued them both and shuttled them over to what I am assuming was their long lost baby brother/son.

Although my heart is still racing like I ran a marathon, I'm SUPER proud of myself! Maybe I could survive if the hubs decided to run off and stay in Europe.

Realistically, what is going to happen next is:

1) I will not stop thinking about the initial sighting of frog #1 and the way in which he scared the Holy BeJesus out of me.

2) I will continue to itch and freak each time I feel something on me for fear that a frog somehow jumped into my house and onto my being.

2) Tonight's sleep is completely screwed because I am convinced there are other baby frogs that got scooped up in the garbage bags and are sad and separated from their mommy.

I'm a very complicated person...

We have a winner!

2010-06-25T22:12:00.009-05:00

Congratulations One Frugal Lady - you are going to have a happy mother in law because you won the Dishwasher Art! Look at you gaining points with the MIL - nice going!

Tomorrow when I have more energy I will notify you by email and let you know the next steps.

For everyone else - please check back to The Robin's Nest in the near future for a few reasons:

1) I have some other great giveaways coming up soon and you would not want to miss them. If you know a bride, a man or a wall that looks lonely you will want to check these upcoming giveaways out.

2) I'm super funny and have lots of totally entertaining things to say. Also, I'm not cocky in the least.

Sorry I have not been a good bloggy blog friend this week. I've left this giveaway up for like a week now and have not posted any new material - but if you had lived in my household over the past 10 days you would have done the same. Here are some of my better excuses:

1) I quit my job and took a new one. Now for those of you who do not know, I work from home and my new job will allow me to do that as well- which totally rocks. That change might not seem like a big thing to most of you since I can still work in my pajamas and my commute is still from my bedroom down like 8 stairs to my office, but I've been at my old company for 7.5 years and it is saddening me to make the move. With that being said, I'm SUPER excited about my new opportunity and cannot wait to see what it brings.

2) Construction started in our house a few days ago. We (when I say we, I don't mean me or the hubs, come on really?) are ripping out two windows and turning them into doors that open to our soon to be built 12 foot by 50 foot deck! Yay! If you have lived through construction you know it is very disrupting to the daily normalcy (if you can call it that) of your life.

3) My daughter has had 2 melt downs in the past two days that are not just contenders but clear winners for the Guinness Book of World Records (Have I ever mentioned that my 96 year old grandmother is actually in that book? Well, story for a later time...). Really I'm to the point where I am seriously questioning my abilities as a mother and am wondering if we would all be better off if I just ran away to Uruguay and didn't leave a forwarding address.

4) My husband is leaving for Europe on Sunday for 2 WEEKS. Yes, you read that right. He is leaving me alone with E and Z for two weeks while he gallivants off to Europe for work. I have been doing all of his laundry this week so he can have stuff to wear in Europe. I said Europe as many times as I could to get my point across, did I succeed? I can't imagine I have to elaborate any further on this one. I'm assuming just for the mere fact that Europe is involved and I am not going, I get a sympathy pass on the not blogging thing, right?

Anywho, sorry. I will try to be a better blogger this upcoming week - that is if I have not been gagged and blindfolded by the children while the hubs is away in Europe and no one is around to rescue me until he comes home from Europe.

Giveaway!

2010-06-19T06:41:00.001-05:00

I have got to say this is one product I never knew I needed until I saw it! Now I am loving the seasonal ones and want one for every holiday. It has to make doing dishes more fun, right?

Marti at Dishwasher Art told me a bit about herself:

"I am a retired 70 year old who loved to paint as a hobby. A hobby that was more expensive than profitable. I had all these paintings hanging in my basement with no place to go (friends and relatives already have their walls covered).

One day I was looking at my all white kitchen and knew I had to do something to brighten it up. The only two flat surfaces I had was the refrigerator (which was covered with to do lists and grand kids pictures) and the dishwasher. Then it hit me --the dishwasher would be a perfect place to display my art. After some research and trying various printers my art work was transformed into a magnetic panel. Thinking others might like to jazz up their kitchens, I started my web site.

My art has now found a home in all fifty states as well as many other countries (France, Great Britain, Italy, Canada, Australia, and Germany."

How great is that?

Marti is being nice enough to give away one of the dishwasher panels to Robin's Nest readers.

Rules for entry:

1) Go to dishwasherart.com and tell me which panel you would want if you were to win. Leave a comment on this post. This must be done before any other entries will count. (1 entry)

2) Tweet/blog/shout from your roof top (okay not really, that is dangerous)/ about this giveaway and come back and let me know what you did to spread the word. Make sure and leave a direct link to your posting. (1 entry per medium)

3) You don't have to be a Robin's Nest follower to win but it sure would be nice of you. We have fun over here!

Open to US residents only.

Contest will end on Friday June 25th and winner will be selected at random. Winner will be announced and emailed (please make sure and leave email address in your comment or make sure it is easy for me to find) and has 48 hours to respond. If no response, another winner will be chosen. So on and so forth.

Happy looking and good luck!

Note: Dishwasher Art is providing the panel at no charge to me and I provided my honest opinion. No other compensation was received for this giveaway.

Rainbow, rainbow where for art thou?

2010-06-17T06:45:00.007-05:00

We had the most beautiful double rainbow last night in Kansas City. (Note: I did not take this picture. It was taken by Holly O'Keefe and it is the actual rainbow from last night.) My daughter could not have been more excited. This was right up her alley. If you ask her what her favorite color is her response is always:

"Weeeeelll, it used to be pink and purple, and before that when I was a baby, it was blue and yellow, but now it is rainbow!"

We happened to be in the car when this magnificent color explosion appeared and we made every attempt to find its end point but alas no leprechauns were to be found. However, it was really fun and I think maybe the thrill of my kids' young lives. We got home, got in pajamas and stared in awe out of my daughter's window for another million hours.

Then as rainbows do, it disappeared. All hell broke loose. E flipped out. She missed the rainbow. At first it was really cute and sweet. Then as is the way with this 5 year old drama queen, it just got to be ridiculous. Major fit of sobbing ensued and all the explanations in the world of how rainbows would not be special if we saw them every day fell on bright red tear-soaked deaf ears.

Exasperated, I finally asked her what it is she would like me to do about the fact that the rainbow was gone and her response: "Paint the sky"

At that point if I had a ladder big enough I would have given it a try.

Someone get this kid to preschool

2010-06-14T19:38:00.008-05:00

Thank goodness Z man is starting preschool in the fall. His ABC's need some serious work. He sure does look cute doing them though and really you have to give him credit for his big finish. Who taught this kid jazz hands?

Summer in my 5 year old's eyes

2010-06-11T08:42:00.001-05:00

I completely stole this idea from Yankovich 6 Pack and I am really glad I did.

I asked my daughter to make a list of 30 things she wanted to do this summer and I have shared it below:

1) Go swimming (sweet! we have already done that like 7 times!)

2) Go to the spray park at Uncle Bucky's. (Note: My brother is Uncle Bucky. Bucky is not his name but that is how she said "Uncle Brett" when she was little and it has stuck. Also, Uncle Bucky lives in Washington DC and has a spray park 3 houses down from his house. This one is probably not gonna happen.)

3) Have a little jog

4) Buy special kid jog clothes (what is with her and jogging?)

5) Go to the park (again DONE!)

6) Take a walk in the stroller (We do this all the time. Maybe we have not done it since it was technically "school is out for summer summer time" but we can check this off really easily)

7) Paint

8) Collect leaves

9) Go to the neighborhood park. (There is a tiny little thing I guess you could call a park at 75th and Mission - a major intersection by our house. There is literally a bench there and that is it but since we drive by it 1,435 times a day she really wants to go. I can accommodate that request - maybe we will even walk there in the stroller. Look at me killing lots of birds with very few stones.)

10) Go to the beach. (Hmmm. Oh wait we are going to my parents lake house and we can totally find a beach there. It will be an Oklahoma beach and I don't think that is probably what she is wanting - but it's not my fault she wasn't very specific.)

11) Get the mail (We will do this 5 times a week for the entire summer. She is going to be in hog heaven.)

12) Got to a garden to see pretty things. (Is that a diss on our landscaping?)

13) Have a bike ride (Super simple to accomplish numerous times. This kid is easy!)

14) Buy another snow globe when we go visit Uncle Bucky. (I just visited Uncle Bucky when on my business trip this past weekend. I got her a snow globe and her brother broke within 24 hours of us having it. But yeah, we still aren't going to DC...)

15) Help daddy build a lemonade stand. (Strangely she did not mention actually selling lemonade)

16) Hug and kiss Z. (Seriously how cute is our kid?)

17) Go shopping, like for toys (I knew it had to show up somewhere)

18) Drive to Pump It Up. (Ummm... do we have to go in?)

19) Plant some flowers (again dissing our landscaping)

20) Have a nice, cozy summer. (Oh my gosh. Heart melting. Cute kid)

21) Play the farmer in the dell. And then she said: "Don't worry I will teach you."

22) Get more nail polish. (This kid has like 12 bottles of polish but heck her summer wish list is so easy I think I can accommodate this one.)

23) Buy some sunglasses (Good plan)

24) Cook with mommy (Fortunately she is too young to realize I CANNOT cook.)

25) Do a secret for mommy because you are such a nice mommy. (Aaaah. Probably buttering me up so we can do #17)

26) Make a rainbow. (I mean wow, she is so stinkin' cute)

27) Do the outside exercise. (She loves it when I come home from a jog and I bench press her in our front yard.)

28) Take gymnastics

29) Get my own candle in case my room smells stinky. (Huh??)

30) Play pretend

This has got to be a new tradition. I am going to ask my kids to make this list each summer and see what they say. This was too cute and I am going to to feel like a rock star mom by the end of the summer because we can do just about everything on here!

What do your kids want to do this summer?

My first Award!!

2010-06-09T07:15:00.018-05:00

I have been crazy busy with work for the past two weeks. By far the busiest I have been in quite some time. Of course those were the exact same two weeks my kids had a break from "school" before their summer session started. On top of the craziness I had to leave town on Saturday morning for work and got home Monday night.

I got to stay at my brother's house though which made the trip infinitely better. His darling house, great wife and adorable kids were a huge perk to my travel.

Anyway, I got home late Monday night and my kids had me up at the crack of dawn. I was exhausted but imagine my surprise when I came home to the coolest thing ever - an award for my blog!

Jenny has a cute blog that I have really enjoyed finding. She has a ton of children and handles it all beautifully. In the small world it continues to be, we actually live very close to one another!

There is the award - isn't it pretty? It truly made my day.

Now there are instructions that go along with the award. I must pass this along to some amazing bloggers and I have to share 10 things about myself that you do not already know. I must say that I do not expect the blogs I list below to do all the instructions that come along with it - I just want to let you know that I love you guys!

1) I am allergic to cats. Boring but true.

2) I have turned into a crier. I cried at the Kindergarten Roundup meeting for my daughter, I cried last night at the rehearsal for her ballet recital. I cry a lot. I was NOT this person before I had kids.

3) I am the youngest of three children - and the only girl. There were definite advantages to that. I was a bit spoiled and I loved it! But I turned out to be a nice person, so it's all good.

4) I have no natural instinct for cooking. My husband can throw things together and make something fabulous. I can follow a recipe to the T and make something mediocre.

5) Although I make fun of him a lot in my blog, I am very proud of my husband. He works really hard for our family and is an amazing and wonderful partner.

6) I know of 11 people whose birthdays are on April 23. I think that is strange.

7) I share the exact same birthday as Nick Lachey - same year and everything. I spent a summer at a school in Switzerland and spent a lot of time with Robert Di Niero's son Raphael. Raphael and I have the same birthday as well - although not the same year.

8) If I could do it all over again, I would have gone to school for interior design. People keep telling me it isn't too late, but I'm entirely too lazy to start all over again.

9) I never missed not having a sister as I was growing up because I had really cool brothers who were very good to me.

10) I just did a post a few days ago about all the tid bits you never wanted to know about me. You can find it here.

In addition here are some great blogs that really deserve this award and places you should definitely spend your free time checking out.

Acting Your Age. This is my dad's blog. It is so cute and he is even more adorable. The blog chronicles his walk to stardom. I do not expect him to pass this award on as I am sure he doesn't read any blogs other than mine and his but I have to give him a shout out!

Momma Amma. Another person who I found that lives very close to me. She is very creative and has super cute kids.

The Mother Load. Another person who lives by me. Kansas must be chalk full of talented blogging ladies. She is funny and has really interesting posts.

Alabaster Cow. This girl is funny, really funny. Enough said. You have to check her out.

Penny Pinchin Mom. She always has the latest deals and coupons and because of her I've scored some great stuff!

Little Green Notebook. She posts such beautiful items that I am in a constant state of stress on choosing which direction I should go in completely redecorating my home!

Live Off Groupon. I'm a Groupon junkie. If you don't know what Groupons are, go here. This guy is living solely off Groupons for a year and it is pretty fascinating. What a fun thing to do!

Lex Loci Lori. Like me, she is originally an Okie but she currently lives in Colorado (we lived there for about 3 years) so she must be cool.

Enjoy!

The sensitive father

2010-06-07T06:23:00.002-05:00

Like most kids, my kids are picky eaters. But because we live in Kansas City and because my husband recently purchased a new Smoker and has not stopped smoking things for more than a 5 minute period since, my children love BBQ. Gates sauce is a favorite in our household and my daughter will eat it on anything. It isn't normal how much our 5 year old likes it. She loves anything and everything BBQ'd and I know this because I think my husband has smoked every kind of meat known to mankind since he got his new toy.

Today we were driving past a graveyard (bet you are wondering how these are related) and my daughter was really fascinated by it and asked where her great grandfather's graveyard is. I looked at the hubs and kind of gave him the look of why don't you take this one. You see my husband's grandfather was cremated and I was just not sure of how to explain that to her in a delicate manner. I can now for certain tell you how NOT to explain it.

D: "Well honey, when they die some people's bodies are buried like the people in this graveyard."

E: Getting impatient. "I know that dad, I'm asking where Grandpa's grave is."

D: "He doesn't have a grave. His body wasn't buried, it was BBQ'd."

It's unfortunate that we live in the BBQ capital of the world. I'm pretty sure my daughter is never going to eat it again.

I've outdone myself this time

2010-06-04T06:25:00.007-05:00

Tonight is Jazzoo. It is a super fun party at the zoo that we go to every year. The dress for the evening is "creative black tie"- which puts a lot of pressure on me. Creativity is in my blood, no doubt about that. See the posts here. However for some reason I choke each year. Unlike my mom who as I wrote here last year would probably be able to skin a kangaroo and make it look adorable as her attire for the evening, I freeze when it comes to ideas for the party.

But this year I have really outdone myself. This week and last week have been insanely busy for me with work - I mean insane! And of course to top that off, the kids were on a two week break from school. With these variables I have not had time to come up with anything for Jazzoo -but someone was watching out for me and made it happen anyway.

See:

Sorry for the disgusting picture - of my pale white legs.

Isn't that perfect? I think it is very zoo-like. I'm gonna tell everyone I got in a tussle with a lion! But of course, just like finding the perfect dress for a party and then someone else shows up in it - my friend Lindsey apparently yesterday went out and got the same accessory for herself. She REALLY committed. The lion scraped her wrist, knuckles, both legs and her feet. Geez, my friend group is clearly clumsy!

Sometimes I actually get it right

2010-06-02T07:15:00.007-05:00

Our daughter is on swim team. I use the term "swim team" loosely as my daughter doesn't know how to swim. At this level it is basically swim lessons.

Our pool has two kiddie pools and one big pool. Totally my fault but because our little guy has to stay in the kiddie pool our daughter spends her time there as well. Because of this her swimming skills are not what they should be.

Yesterday was her first "lesson" and there were about 15 kids in the class. The kids started in the big pool holding onto the side with one hand and holding onto the kick board with the other. They numbered the kids into 1's, 2's, 3's and 4's. E was a 1.

They asked each group to use their kick boards and kick to the other side of the pool.

1's took off. E stayed.
2's took off. E stayed.
3's took off. E stayed.
4's took off. E stayed.

She was the only child left.

I'm a rule follower. Always have been and so I was a bit taken aback that E had not done what was asked of her.

I went up to one of the coaches and said "She is a 1 but she didn't go." He said, "oh this is just for fun, it's okay."

I think he thought I was a bystander tattling on her. I went on to tell him that I am her mother and I think she needs some extra help as she is scared. I walked away feeling like a despicable stage mom.

A couple of coaches went to her and helped her across. I could see her fear begin to turn into a smile. By the end of the lesson, the coaches had convinced her to actually let go of the side and swim to them a few feet away. Stage mom was on the sideline in tears.

I was so proud of her for taking that leap of faith. She struggled a bit and I had to resist the urge to plunge into the pool fully clothed and swim her to safety. She went under water for a second and came up coughing and crying - but she did it! The coach held her and calmed her - but who was there to calm me? Thank God big sunglasses are fashionable.

At times I get so frustrated with her because I know she can do so much more than she is willing to try. She is a cautious child and even though I was a rule follower, I was willing to try everything. Although she was literally the only child in the group that could not swim, I was beaming with pride when she kicked her little legs and held herself up unassisted for about 3.6 seconds.

I cheered and hugged her and made a huge deal about how she swam.

Her response? "No I didn't, I sank."

I pointed out that before she sank, she did swim and we now know that she can do it.

Although she walked away from that lesson never wanting to swim again I was able to turn it around and make her proud of what she accomplished. She is actually looking forward to her next lesson tomorrow and so am I. Even if she is behind her peer group she is working harder and trying harder than any of them. For that she is my little hero.

Most of the time I totally screw things up and give my children oodles of ammunition for the therapists they will inevitably have but this time I think I really got it right.

You search and you come across me - that has got to be a disappointment

2010-05-31T18:41:00.001-05:00

I'm the kind of nerd who LOVES spreadsheets and such and so I find Google Analytics thoroughly entertaining. One part allows you to see how some people ended up on your website by the search words they put into their search engine.

The people who stumble across me fall into 3 categories as you will see below. I think I am safe in saying that 100% of them were disappointed that they ran across a mom blog.

Category 1: Tech N9Ne
For those of you who don't know, he is a rapper for which my husband directs music videos. I have written a few posts about things related to him (here and here) and here is what Google Analytics told me people typed into their search engine and unfortunately for them came across me. Being the wonderful person I am, as a public service I have added some notes in green italics so these people do not walk away without the answers they need.

1) What to wear to a Tech N9NE concert (From what I noticed, not a lot of clothing is necessary)
2) 16 year old at Tech N9NE concert (Probably not the best idea)
3) A mom rap w/ two kids (Not sure what to say about this one. I can't rap, but I have 2 kids)
4) How long does a Tech N9NE concert last (Not long enough)
5) Is a Tech N9NE concert crazy (Yeah, crazy fun)
6) Tech N9Ne concert what to wear (See #1)
7) What should I expect from a Tech N9NE concert (See #5)
8) What songs have they played at the Tech N9NE concerts 2010 (rap songs)

Category #2: Robin's Nests
1) Ants in a robin's nest (That sucks. Try Orkin.)
2) Do they have higher nest for robins (I can't answer this question without more information. Who is they?)
3) What to do when robins mom is gone (Rest assured, my mom has not gone anywhere. I mean she could have left and gone to the store or something but then she will be back.)

Category #3: Miscellaneous
1) KC Parents magazine (It is a rocking magazine that has this amazing freelance writer named Robin. You should totally check them out.)
2) Put cake in ass tube (HUH? Which one of you was searching for that?)
3) Sprained her ankle (ouch. elevate it and put some ice on it. Have two glasses of wine and then go to bed)

The laziest post ever

2010-05-28T10:31:00.006-05:00

I'm beat from working like a mad woman yesterday and so I'm going the lazy way out on this blog. This is a cut and paste from one of those things people make you do on Facebook. I did this in January of 2009.

Here are all the things you never wanted to know about me:

1. I had no middle name until I got married
2. I traded down on last names when I got married.
3. I love to clean out closets and have no qualms about throwing anything away
4. I can cross only one eye
5. Some of my best friends in the world are people I have known since I was about 3 years old
6. I do not know how to make a pot of coffee (update May 2010- I have now made a few pots of coffee. Not sure why it took me so long, it is quite easy)
7. I hate painting my toenails because my feet always freeze when I do it
8. I cannot sleep without a down comforter on me no matter what the time of the year is
9. I may have been involved in a drunk late night mugging of a passed out college guy (I did not take the money)
10. I have read about 2 full books since my oldest child was born more than 4 years ago (update May 2010 - daughter is 5 1/2 years now and haven't read any additional books - lots of PEOPLE magazine though)
11. I have never had a cavity (update May 2010 - I had 2 cavities about a year ago. How did I go 30 something years without them and now have them? Not cool.)
12. I never had braces
13. I never ever want my husband to write a song for me or sing to me even though he is the lead singer of a band
14. I love interior design and constantly think about redecorating every room in my house over and over
15. I really hope my children have as great of a life growing up as I did
16. At the time, I was the youngest patient Dick Story had ever put in contacts. Had to get rid of those glasses
17. I recently found out that my mother was actually highlighting my hair when she told me she was doing a "conditioning treatment" on my hair. That started when I was in 5th grade.
18. I can make the most annoying noise on the planet with this fake laugh I do. It drives my husband insane - hence the reason I do it.
19. I did not fill my car up with gas myself until I got to college.
20. I have never gotten a speeding ticket
21. If you give me a word, I can immediately say it back to you backward
22. I once saw Pink Floyd in Venice, Italy
23. My first car was a yellow 1978 Country Squire Station Wagon with fake wood paneling - even though my father owned a car dealership.
24. I was one of the only 2 people who did not get accepted in chorus when trying out in 7th grade.
25. I was an extra (along with the rest of OKC) in the movie Surviving with such stars as Molly Ringwald, the guy from Gremlins (Zach Galligan), River Phoenix, the girl from Poltergeist, Marsha Mason, Paul Sorvino. I wore my brownie uniform in my scene.

Love notes to my guy

2010-05-27T07:14:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was the dog's day for their annual visit to the vet and apparently in order to see the their entire picture of health, the vet needed their morning delivery.

I went for a run in the morning and left this note for my husband who was still in bed at the time.

The good news is his day could only get better from then on, right?

P.S. When did I start writing like a serial killer?

Super cool give away - on someone else's blog

2010-05-26T08:27:00.003-05:00

I saw this on Momma Amma's blog and I just thought this give-a-way was too cool not to mention. I haven't been reading this blog until now but with the name of it (Let's Have a Cocktail), I'm sure she and I will be fast friends!

This give away is really awesome, I just wonder if I could ever find a photo where my kids are doing something as cool as her kid is in that one! Most of our photos have one if not both of the kids doing a combination of crying/hitting/screaming/picking a nose/etc.

Go here and check out how you can win some personalized art for your wall.

The things people will do so they don't have to hang out with me

2010-05-25T09:15:00.005-05:00

I'm training for a 5K. Yes, I do realize how pathetic it is that I have to train to run 3.2 miles but that is my reality. I exercise quite a bit but I just don't run long distances (not that 3 miles is a long distance) - until now.

My friend Erica and I decided to run it together and we decided to train together - eventually moving toward training for a 1/2 marathon. This is going to be so much fun especially since the 1st 5K we signed up for is at night and there is drinking involved afterward. I will totally run to a summer brew/glass of wine/etc.

5K signed up for, running schedule and plan in place, music list downloaded to ipod, cute new shoes and running clothes, we were ready to go. Yay!

Next day, Erica broke her ankle.

See:

She did have a cute pedi going on there though, didn't she?

Geez, if she didn't want to be my running partner she just had to tell me.

My daughter, the super model

2010-05-24T07:19:00.008-05:00

Admittedly my daughter did take a modeling course last summer but it was not really what you think of as modeling. It was a great experience where they learned manners, learned about nutrition, about how to take care of their bodies and some tips on fashion. It was extremely age appropriate and in no way taught my daughter to pose for every picture like this:or this (and don't worry she was not let out of the house in this outfit)Because they are not my children, in several of the photos I cropped out other kids. They are all standing next to one another in a normal fashion and smiling sweetly for the camera and then there is a dead space and then my kid in her super model pose. Where does she get this?

Need some gifts? Look no further...

2010-05-19T07:08:00.000-05:00

I love jewelry, always have. I got that from my mom. Some of the rings she has could blind you and they are fabulous. When I started having kids my jewelry wearing got put on a back burner until my mother-in-law bought me this awesome bracelet - it was basically a modern day charm bracelet.

I love my bracelet and for awhile I was getting great additions to it each holiday from my in-laws and my husband. It was fantastic because my kids couldn't destroy it but it entertained the heck out of them when we were at a restaurant. When they got restless, I would pull up my sleeve and we would talk about the different charms and where they came from and what they each meant. After awhile I stopped getting new charms and my sad bracelet sits waiting for someone to add to it.

Well check this out! This awesome website, Coppins Gifts, has bracelets similar to the one I have called DaVinci Beads but they are way more affordable! No more waiting for someone to buy the charms for you - you can definitely afford to score these on your own whenever you feel like it. The charms are adorable and there are millions to choose from.

This site has other great things you should peruse as well. I'm loving the My Pillow Pets. We have some road trips in our summer plans (God, help me) and those would be perfect for the kiddos!

Coppins Gifts is definitely a must check site for now on whenever I need to purchase a gift.

My worlds are colliding and it is fantastic

2010-05-18T07:11:00.004-05:00

So, I admit it. I watch The Hills - and The City too - don't you judge me. I know you watch stupid TV too. Yours might be a different special kind of dumb, but dumb nonetheless.

If you live under a rock and don't know what The Hills is, it is a ridiculously over the top show about a bunch of obnoxious rich LA twenty somethings. Does Heidi Montag and 438 plastic sugeries in one day ring a bell?

Although I think Heidi looked prettier before and that her face (well her top lip really) resembles a platapus a bit now, I'm not judging her plastic surgeries. Hell, if I had the money and the cajones, I would have oodles of body parts lifted, tucked, sucked out, plumped up and placed back where they originally started. Probably wouldn't do it all in one day though...

But I digress. I love the Hills and don't care what you think about that. I get enough grief from my husband.

As you might know, my whiteboy husband directs rap videos which in itself is really funny. Anywho, while watching the Hills this past week they featured Tech N9NE, one of the rappers who is a client of my husband's!

That was fantastic for a lot of reasons but the main one is that my husband is no longer allowed to give me crap about watching the deliciously terrible show. His client's music was on there and in some way that probably involves lots of algebra or something, that relates directly back to him, right?

In the score of life, wife: 12,465 husband: 6

Worst mom ever

2010-05-14T12:08:00.006-05:00

We were robbed!!!

Oh wait, no we weren't, I'm just the worst mom ever and have not been to the grocery store in like 10 days. Notice we are not low on alcohol though - priorities people!

Since butter and yogurt for dinner won't fly two nights in a row I guess I will go to the grocery store today.

Mommy's Little Helper

2010-05-11T13:45:00.018-05:00

This morning the kiddos and I went to the park to burn off some energy. By the time we got home it was time for lunch.

E looked at me and said, "Mom, you work so hard. You should take a rest and let me make lunch." Absolutely, I cheered!

We decided on ants on a log as the main course.

So after I

got out the peanut butter
got out the raisins
got out the knife
got out the cutting board
got out the lunch plates
got out the celery
cleaned the stalks
cut the ends off of stalks
figured out what to serve with the rest of lunch
gathered those items
plated it all
made drinks
set the table

E got to work and assembled the ants on a log

Then I cleaned Peanut Butter off

the counter
3 knives and 1 spoon
the peanut butter jar
the cutting board
the bottom of the dishwasher
the stool she stood on
her shoe
her elbow
all 10 of her fingers and the 2 palms
her brother's hair
the celery bag
the raisin container
my knee (how did she get it there?)

and cleared the table

Aaahhhh, so relaxing. Isn't she so helpful?

Happy Birthday to my Blog!

2010-05-09T10:24:00.009-05:00

It has been a year since I did my very first blog post. Happy Birthday bloggy blog!!! (To be 100% accurate my blog's birthday was 5 days ago but I'm not organized enough to get it exactly on the right day).

For my kids I usually make a cake based on their latest love - like these (kids cakes) but what kind of present do I give my blog?

1) More attention?
2) Better writing?
3) Less inane ramblings?
4) A clean out of the 1,422 blogs I started but never finished?
5) More readers so it feels loved?
6) A stronger grasp of punctuation?

I'm thinking all of the above wrapped up with a pretty bow is the least I can do for it considering what all it has done for me in the past year.

A$$ Cake

2010-05-06T08:09:00.005-05:00

Growing up my mom made the BEST cake. It is called Harvey Wallbanger Cake and it is fantastic. We call it "Harvey" for short. I absolutely love it.

Fast forward numerous years and my mom made it a few times when my in-laws were around. They too became Harvey Wallbanger Cake addicts - seriously it is like crack. So I got the recipe from my mother and made it for my father-in-law's birthday one year. It was horrible, I mean truly disgusting. I'm not a great cook, believe me, but I can follow a simple recipe. This one did not work out. It tasted like ass and thus became known as "Ass Cake".

We were all very perplexed and decided my mother had done what Marie Barone did on Everybody Loves Raymond when she left out one specific ingredient for a recipe she gave her daughter-in-law in order to remain the only person who could make her recipe delicious. Didn't seem like my mom's MO but what else could it be - it couldn't be my fine culinary skills, could it? Oh yeah wait, it could, I suck at cooking.

I tried to make Ass Cake on several occasions over the next few years - and successfully I might add - but I was not so successful in making a delicious Harvey. My mother in law even used my recipe and tried it a few times and she is a great cook - but alas - Ass Cake.

If you want to try it - and really who wouldn't want try something called Ass Cake??? - here is the recipe:

Ingredients

1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
1 (3.5 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
1/2 cup vegetable oil
5 fluid ounces Galliano liqueur
2 fluid ounces vodka
1/2 cup orange juice
1 cup powdered sugar

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour one 10 inch tube pan.
Combine cake mix and pudding mix in a large bowl. Blend in eggs, vegetable oil, 4 ounces Galliano, 1 ounce vodka, and 4 ounces orange juice. Mix batter until smooth and thick and pour into prepared pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Let cake cool in pan for 10 minutes then remove and place on cooling rack. Spoon glaze over cake while it is still warm.
To Make Glaze: Combine the remaining 1 ounce Galliano, 1 ounce vodka, and 1ounce orange juice with the powdered sugar and blend until smooth. Spoon over warm cake.

If you want to try making a Harvey - use the above recipe only add 4 eggs. Yeppers, we weren't putting eggs in the recipe each time we tried to make it - wow DUMB.

I didn't realize that until this past Thanksgiving. I was at my in-law's house and my father-in-law had requested Ass Cake. Sweet man, he had faith that one day I could do it right. Okay truth be told I actually think he was thoroughly entertained by the fact that it kept coming out so horribly. So I decided to give it one last shot. I sat down with the recipe and started to gather the items.

"Um, Valerie?" I asked

"Yes, darling?" My mother-in-law said.

"Do all cakes need eggs?" I questioned.

"Well, yes I think so. I have never run across a recipe that didn't need them." She answered.

"This recipe has no eggs in it! There is our problem." I shouted

Wow, impressive! We had both make the cake probably 4 times or so and how we never noticed that it didn't call for eggs I will never know. I had written the recipe down wrong!!!

It is sort of like the time I bought some boots, wore them for about a year, and then noticed that one boot was a size 6 and one boot was a size 8 - and strangely I wear a size 7. But that is a whole other story.

So I went online grabbed a Harvey Wallbanger recipe (why I didn't look into the magical world wide web for the recipe years ago to check my recipe I'll never know) which calls for 4 eggs and made a delicious cake! Ass cake no more!

Sometimes I'm a special kind of moron.

Potty training is not such a saga anymore!

2010-04-27T10:27:00.007-05:00

A friend of mine has been talking about how she is going to start potty training her son who is about a month younger than Z man. I was in awe of her because in my head we were not even remotely close to potty training Z. Outwardly I was her greatest cheerleader and asked her to let me know how it goes - inside feeling DEEP envy. Visions of the potty training boot camp I was going to have to conjure up for Z in August right before pre-school floated into my head.

If you have read my blog in the past you know how not successful we have been in the potty training arena with this kid. Things ranging from him wearing the toilet seat on his head, thinking the pee pee comes out of his finger, his sister trying to train him and other sagas have not given me much hope.

But on Sunday Z was taking a bath and told me he wanted to get out and get a diaper. I saw this as a great sign that he knew the signs his body was telling him. I took him out of the tub and told him to just sit on the potty while I looked for a diaper. I faked looking for a diaper and said I couldn't find one so maybe he should just try the big boy potty - and he did it!

You would have thought he just graduated from Harvard by the big deal I made out of it. I was truly that excited but really more shocked than anything. So far so good, he has gone several times since them and I think we are on the road to potty trainedeness. You could never have convinced me that this road would be traveled down before he even turned 3! We have a long ways to go until he is fully trained, but I'm thrilled.

Is it weird that I am kind of sad about this because it confirms my little guy is growing up?

I'm Stealing It #11

2010-04-21T11:00:00.007-05:00

When I was in 6th grade there was a statewide competition for kids to develop an ad about seatbelts. This must have been about the time it became a law to wear one. It is so crazy to me that people ever got in a car without putting on their seatbelt. I feel naked without one - which leads me to the awesome ad that I developed back then:

"You're never fully dressed without your seatbelt." - Can you tell I was Annie obsessed at that period of my life?

Sadly, I didn't win even though that was fantastic ad copy - just ask my mom, she thought I should have won too!

So with seatbelts in mind, I had to share this. I just saw this seatbelt ad on Facebook and it honestly made me cry. No doubt that I'm a huge sap and cry over everything since I had kids - but I stole this from my friend Pren's Facebook page and wanted to post it here:

click here

Ask and you shall receive

2010-04-19T12:19:00.006-05:00

This weekend we went to Smoke 'n Fire BBQ store as a family. Usually we try to avoid taking both kiddos to places that have large expensive items - but didn't have a choice on this one.

We walked in and for some reason Z decided he needed crackers and began announcing this in an above appropriate voice level. The thing about this kid is that when he gets something in his head he does not let it go. About every 15 seconds he announced to the store "I want kwackers, kwackers where are you? I can't find you."

I explained to him that just calling out for something does not make it appear and that as soon as we got home I would be glad to give him crackers. I then was able to tune him out (as I do it about 287 times per day) and continue shopping.

About three minutes later a very nice man who works at the store came up to me with a package of crackers. He said he had heard the call and thought he should do something about it. I was pretty sure that we should have been booted out of the store for our disturbance but instead they couldn't have been more friendly.

My daughter's response? "Well, I guess you can just call out for things and make them appear."

Boy this is not a good thing for them to believe.

I know I am supposed to correct them, but it is just so cute

2010-04-13T12:25:00.008-05:00

Like all children, my kids have some things that they say that are just too cute - even if they aren't technically the correct way of saying the word or phrase. I realize the good mom thing to do is repeat what they said in the correct manner so that they will learn - but is it bad that I just want to hold on to a few of their adorable phrases? I will probably find out that answer when they head to college still talking like toddlers. But for now I am going to enjoy them. A few of my favorites:

"Goose forward please" - this is Z's way to ask someone to scoot forward

"Glittering is bad" - this is E's way of talking about litter. As I have said many times, our world would be much prettier if people were glittering instead of littering.

"All the singalallies" - E's version of singing Beyonce's song All the Single Ladies. I prefer E's version

"Sank you" - E's way of saying thank you. I know this is one I should really correct considering she is 5 1/2 but it is really sweet.

"No kank you, no kank you, no kank you" - Z is the politest mad kid in the world. When you do something he does not like such as put him down for a nap, insist he takes a bath, or suggest he stop hitting his sister he uses this phrase. We get comments from people all the time about what a polite angry child we have.

"I'm going to hit you now mommy!" Z has the grammatical portion of this phrase down pat but I just love how he gives us warning each time he is going to hit. It is a good thing because he is a pretty strong kid and usually has some sort of object in his hand that will maim you if you don't move out of the way.

"I wub you mommy" - Both kids have used this same one and I say it back to them - how can I not? Clearly this is my favorite.

100th Post

2010-04-06T13:39:00.005-05:00

So this is my 100th post. I've been sitting on that thought for two weeks now thinking I had to share some major truth or amazing insight to my readers for this momentus post - and nothing has come. But today I realized maybe that is the point. Blogging for me is just that - for me.

There are some amazing people out there who blog. They have made it into a business, have huge followings and it is their livelihood. That is awesome for them and to be honest, early on I had aspirations to be those people but alas, life got in the way. I'm okay with that.

In the 11 months that I have been writing this blog, I have spent a lot of time thinking about my what I am going to write and how I am going to make it funny. Doing that puts a lot of pressure on my brain and with a full time job, 2 young kids, a workaholic husband and 2 crazy dogs, I don't have time to for unneeded pressure (of course who does?). Now I do love to write funny - it is in my genes - and my kids and husband are extremely entertaining. If I wrote every funny thing they did, I'd have blisters on my fingers from all the typing.

With this 100th post I am going to now relieve myself of the pressure. SWOOSH - gone.

Blogging to success (if you consider followers a success) takes a lot of work. Not only do you have to keep your blog up but you have to continually read/comment on other people's blogs. There are many blogs that I enjoy and like to comment on but I am no longer going to troll the Internet for people I can read and comment on only to hope they will return the favor.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly hope people enjoy what I write and I would love to have many many followers. I know there are numerous people who read my blog but do not comment per se (meaning they don't comment online, they often do let me know that they read the latest entry), and that is fine because just like I don't want to pressure myself I certainly don't want anyone who reads my stories to feel pressure either.

So what I am rambling on about here? Who knows. But for now on, pressure is off. If I feel like writing, I will write and if nothing comes to my head I won't - or maybe I still will and it won't make sense but I will not stress about it. The other goal I had for this blog from the very beginning was to have a collection of snapshots from our life that my children can enjoy for years to come. Mission completed there.

Thanks for reading.

I have nothing to say

2010-04-01T13:27:00.004-05:00

The weather has been beautiful and the kids and I are enjoying it immensely! We have been outside as much as possible. Several trips to the park, rides in the wagon, picnic on our front porch and much more.

I haven't had time to blog because I am having to much fun enjoying this weather with my kiddos. The novelty will wear off soon I'm sure and I will have time to organize my thoughts into some writing of some sort.

Hope you are enjoying lovely weather too!

Poor No-man

2010-03-24T14:15:00.011-05:00

This past weekend it snowed 7 inches in one day. Love that unpredictable Kansas March weather! My poor little guy was sick and couldn't go outside to play but our sweet daughter decided he would feel better if she built a snowman by the door for him. She went to work with her 5 year old hands and built, what in my opinion, is the most glorious snowman ever.

Z loved looking at it out the window and kept saying "beautiful no-man!" - he leaves the "s" off of snowman which makes it all that much more cute.

Like Kansas does, it was 65 degrees the next day and our snowman didn't take too kindly to that. It looked very much like a snowman crime scene when you looked out our front door. When Z saw the melting mass of snow, he began to yell "poor no-man! poor no-man!"

Once he recovered from that, it actually proved to be entertaining to see how much our no-man melted each day and I had high aspirations of taking a picture yesterday of only the scarf, hat and gloves laying on our lawn.

However, when we got home from running errands someone had set them on our porch. Apparently the neighbors don't take too kindly to us leaving our outerwear all over the front lawn.

Victory is mine!

2010-03-18T22:28:00.009-05:00

Although it is March Madness, I am not speaking of a basketball victory (although I'll throw out a Rock Chalk Jayhawk!). I am talking about a much more important victory, one that truly matters - I won the argument of the race car bed!

V-I-C-T-O-R-Y

If you don't know what I am speaking of, click here and it will bring you up to speed on the major battle that was brewing in our household. It's all kind of a blur now and to be honest I'm not sure how I did it. I wish I could remember what exactly was said by me that put the ball 100% in my court and led me to win, but I don't - which really stinks because I'd like to use those argument skills again in the future. Oh well, I'm just glad it happened.

Here is where we netted out with Z's big boy room. The only thing it is missing is new window coverings but I gotta say I think it is adorable. I was taking the pics in a hurry for something else so when I have a minute I'll tidy his room a bit and take some better photos and post them. Wait, who am I kidding? No I won't.

Oh and I have to say that although I had purchased bedding for my son's big boy bed about 5 minutes after he was delivered, when I got to the actual designing of his room 2.5 years later, I bought all new bedding. My husband really loves it when I do things like that! It definitely isn't the first time and I can't imagine it will be the last. Oh well, that is what Craigslist is for. Anyone in the market for some cute boy bedding?

KC Parent magazine

2010-03-10T15:46:00.003-06:00

As some of you may know, I write articles for a local parenting magazine called KC Parent. I just started doing this last year and I really love it! I have done research on things I would never have thought about before and I have been able to share some of my best parenting tips to people around the city.

The magazine belongs to the Parenting Publications of America and this past week they had their big award ceremony. More than 110 magazines and websites were competing for these top honors.

KC Parent received 9 awards including Most Improved, Website General Excellence, Investigative Reporting, several Front Cover awards and much more.

A direct quote from our editor "this was our first year to ever win an editorial award for the magazine in the 6 years we’ve been competing as we won in the Personal Essay category as well as the Investigative Reporting category."

And this was the first year I was writing for them - coincidence? I think not!

Okay, none of my hard hitting stories on things like "Transitioning Your Child to their Big Kid Room" and "10 Steps to an Organized Refrigerator" won any of the awards - but still I am very excited to be a part of such a great magazine.

I am one of "those" moms

2010-03-03T15:07:00.008-06:00

What is that you ask? You would be right to assume my carpet needs a serious vacuuming - living in a house with two furry dogs and two furry (okay not furry but messy) kids - it normally does. However the carpet had actually been vacuumed just a couple of hours before this picture was taken.

This is my apology to all the mothers out there that I have judged when their children cut their own hair. I always had the same response when I heard a child had done that: "What kind of mother leaves a child alone with a pair of scissors long enough for that to happen? That is just bad parenting."

Well now we know, apparently I'm that kind of mother - hence the gobs of hair on the floor. Thankfully my daughter has a pretty thick mane and you cannot tell she went all Edward Scissorhands on her head - but I was not pleased when I found out that she had done this.

This is something I would expect from our crazy 2.5 year old and so he is never allowed to be alone with anything sharper than a tennis ball, but my smart, rule following, timid daughter? Never in a million years would I have thought she would have been that kid - or more importantly I would be that mom. I'm guessing this is a first in a very long line of days that I am going to have to eat my words.

My Mother the Artist

2010-02-18T14:58:00.003-06:00

I have written about some of the amazing people in my family - my dad and his new career as an actor, and my grandmother who is 96 years old and just published her 8th book - but I realized today that I have not written about my mom. She is pretty amazing herself. Clearly I'm the black sheep of this crew.

About 8 years ago my husband and I bought our first house in Denver, CO. It was a super cute house that was more than 100 years old. After buying the house and doing a few improvements we were out of money. I called my mother and asked her to paint us a picture for an empty wall because we couldn't afford art. My mother at that point had never painted anything and said she would give it a try. I didn't just pull this out of the blue, she is an incredibly creative woman and has always been able to draw so I figured she could paint as well.

So here we are, 8 years or so later and she makes a real living as an artist (www.joyrichardsonart.com)! She is often invited to hang her paintings in different galleries and restaurants and had an extremely successful showing in the Oklahoma Art Festival last year - and will be there again this year. She has people calling her often for commission works and she has made a name for herself as an artist. It is all really awe inspiring from a person who had never painted anything until they were about 60 years old.

You should see my house. It is like a Joy Richardson museum. I still have that first painting she did for us. It is hanging in our bedroom. I keep searching my mail box for my 10% commission check - afterall I am the one who got her started - but it just hasn't shown up yet. Hmmm...

I'm Stealing it #10

2010-02-14T08:14:00.011-06:00

I have never been much of a coupon person. When I remembered, I would use those Bed Bath and Beyond coupons that I get about 3 times per week, but other than that, couponing wasn't something I understood or took the time to organize. And to be honest I still do not understand about 90% of it. Couponing is a very detailed process that takes a lot of work.

Even though I am about as far as you can be from being serious about it, lately I have sort of gotten into this whole deal. I will never be like those ladies on tv that get their $200 grocery bill down to $11. But I have picked up a few tips and have been saving a lot of money actually.

Before now, the thing I never understood was how people saved money. To me it seemed when I would take a coupon to a store, the store brand of that item would be less expensive than the brand name minus the coupon. I have been in marketing and advertising for like 15 years so I fully understand that in the majority of cases the store brand is just as good as the brand name item and often they are made by the same company but just have different packaging. So I would end up buying that store brand item and leaving with an unused coupon in my hand. Don't get me wrong there are certainly some exceptions to this - i.e. have you ever tried non name brand Saran Wrap? Does not work.

So anyway, I have figured out that the trick to coupons is pairing them with a store sale on that particular item. Like I said, I am not huge into this and I do not sit down with the circulars from my grocery store to see what is on sale each week and build my family menu around that. If I did I would save a boatload on my grocery bill but I am just not that organized - yet - stay tuned maybe one day I will be! But I do cut coupons (well not cut, print them off on my computer) and if there is an item I need or foresee needing and if that item is on sale, I buy it using my coupon. Cha-ching - saving money!

I was at target the other day and my bill was around $90 but with my coupons I got it down to about $70. That is real money I saved! It was kind of exciting.

This post is definitely not a coupon tutorial, I really just wanted to share a few websites that I use because I have gotten some amazing deals. I have REALLY enjoyed using online coupon codes - much more than using in-store ones. By now you probably know to never buy anything online until you have typed that store's name into google with the word "coupon" - the majority of the time you can get at least free shipping.

The coupon code deal that I am most proud of was on a pair of Crocs boots for my daughter. Who even knew Crocs made kids boots? Well they do and they are cute and perfect snow boots. Anyway, the deal was that you could buy one get one free and get free shipping for $13.99 by entering a certain coupon code. The boots are normally around $40 or so. So I bought two pairs for my daughter - in sizes bigger than she wears now. I bought a yellow pair for $13.99 and was getting a pink pair for free. I got an email the next day letting me know that the yellow ones had run out but they were still sending me the pink ones - for free!

Here are my favorite sites to visit:
Wicked Cool Deals

Brads Deals

KC Penny Pinchin Mama

Some of these websites have tutorials on couponing that I have not taken the time to read but I assume they are probably very helpful and will teach you a lot. I know that CVS has some amazing deals with their Extra Care Bucks program. I have not figured it out yet but I need to sometime as it seems people are actually making quite a bit of money off their purchases. Not sure how that works.

Anyway, I just wanted to share. I am totally stealing these great deals from these other people's hard work - but that is what they have developed their websites for. So far it has been sort of fun and I'm proud of some of my purchases. Some of the deals I have gotten were just amazing!

Happy Shopping!

Goal!

2010-02-02T13:25:00.006-06:00

He watched an entire episode of Max and Ruby inside this basketball hoop and when it was over he screamed bloody murder that he was stuck and needed out. Weird kid.

Suburban mom attends first TECH N9NE concert

2010-01-30T08:52:00.011-06:00

Thursday night my husband, Dan, came home, picked up the phone and called our babysitter to see if she was free the following night. He wanted to take me on a date. I was unbelievably excited about this because we have not spent much time together for the last couple weeks due to crazy schedules. Not to mention how cute it was on his part to initiate the whole deal.

Friday morning he called me when he got to work and told me he just remembered his client, TECH N9NE was playing in Kansas City on our date night. As I've written about before, my husband and two other guys own a production company. One of the things they do is make music videos and some of their clients are rappers. That is so very different than what I do on a daily basis.

When they play in town, Dan likes to go to the concerts to show his support. I stay at home with the kiddos on those nights and watch movies about Princesses. It is totally understandable that he wants to support them and he asked me if that would be okay to do on our date. Attending a rap concert is not exactly my idea of a romantic evening but we were going to go to dinner beforehand and he said we wouldn't have to stay all that long. Okay, fine he talked me into it.

Never mind that I rarely listen music with lyrics about anything other than letters of the alphabet or animal noises. I'm a mom with two kids 5 and under, what do you expect? Dan makes the kids listen to good music - he doesn't stand for the kid music and so they actually have pretty good taste - Spoon is a big favorite of theirs. But when they are with me I let them listen to whatever they want.

Anyway, Friday night came and we headed out for our date. BTW- what does mid thirties suburban mom of 2 wear to a rap concert??? I've got to be honest, I did go through a rap phase when I was 16 along with all of my friends - but I have not revisited it since then.

Dinner was lots of fun, afterward we went to a bar to grab a few drinks and then headed over to the concert. I so did not want our evening of quiet to come to an end but alas we had to go. My "not so sure about this whole deal" mood soured a bit more when we walked up to a long line outside the venue that wound around the block. Top that with the fact that it was 11 degrees and snowing - this was not starting off well.

After standing there for about 5 minutes, a guy with TECH N9NE and crew who knows Dan walked up, took us out of the line and brought us in a side door. Not bad.

Inside we got a drink and started pushing our way up toward the front. The place was packed! We came to a standstill in the dead middle right by a gated area that housed the lighting and sound for the concert. The guy running the sound said "hey Dan, come on in here." Score! We got to watch the entire concert in an area that, had it not been gated, would have housed about 25 people smashed into one another - but instead it was us and the sound/light guys. There were even stools to sit on. Things were getting better and better.

About thirty seconds into the concert I was hooked. The crowd was so excited and there was so much energy. Sadly I think the last concert I went to was Jim Cosgrove, Mr. Stinky Feet. It just did not have quite the same feel...

I do happen to know a lot of TECH N9NE's songs because I've seen the videos that my husband directs. About 2 minutes later I was on the stool rocking with the crowd (see I'm a total mom - what a dorky thing to say). It was so much fun! There is one song at the end where girls lift their tops - I was so into this whole deal, I think Dan was getting nervous. He said I was not allowed to do that because A) I have children and B) There were cameras filming everything. He's no fun!

After the concert was over we went backstage. It took all my willpower to not embarrass my husband thoroughly by asking for a photo with Tech and Krizz Kaliko. I had only met them before for about five seconds at the Strange Music Christmas party this past December but they all gave me hugs like they had known me forever. They could not have been nicer and actually spent a lot of time telling me that my husband is awesome and extremely creative. Coming from guys who just played to a sold out crowd who were dancing and singing every word to their songs, that is a pretty big compliment.

The evening was the best date ever. Suburban mom is now a rap fan.

My kids never cease to amaze me

2010-01-23T22:25:00.005-06:00

I'm sure the two people who read this blog (thanks mom and dad!) know by now that Z man is a crazy child. I love him to pieces and adore the craziness that his small little body houses. He is so him and I would not want it any other way. His new obnoxious habit is guzzling a drink in the kitchen and then spiking the cup on the floor. Unfortunately it is hilarious and I have an extremely hard time disciplining him because I am laughing so hard. I mean where does he get this stuff? He is only 2!

Over the holiday break we moved Z to a big boy bed. Seeing him in his crib he just looked smooshed and he had been waking up ridiculously early for the past several weeks, figuring he was uncomfortable we thought it might be a good time.

I was a nervous wreck over this switch. Allowing the maniac that kind of freedom could not be a good thing. The things he does directly in front of my face are unbelievably dangerous/appalling/messy/bizarre/frightening/defiant/insane so I could only imagine what he would do when left to his own for hours and hours on end. And to make matters worse we got him a bunk bed. Not to worry, we aren't total morons, we do not allow the ladder on it unless a parent is in the bedroom. He sleeps on the bottom bunk which is a full size bed.

The first night he slept in his new bed I spent a good hour "Z proofing" his room and probably another two hours making sure the front door was locked, car keys were no where to be found, securing the baby gate by the stairs, ensuring all chemicals were under lock and key, leaving lights on in various places in our house so when he did escape he would not fall, etc. etc. In addition, I slept for about 30 seconds that night as I was convinced there was NO way we would get through the night without him roaming the house and finding every danger to be had.

Here we are close to 1 month since the switch happened and the kid has not attempted to get out of his room, sleeps in until about 9:00 every morning and goes to bed without a peep. When he wakes up in the morning he just yells for us to come get him and he doesn't even get out of his bed. Whaaaat? This is not the Z man I know. This is just not sitting right with me. He must be plotting something.

He put a candy cane where???

2010-01-17T10:17:00.013-06:00

My friend Lindsey's son speaks exclusively in Dora the Explorer speak. It is hilarious and actually also very amazing. When driving down the road he comes up with these amazing scenarios of how we need to get to the place we are going.

"You need to go through the prickly forest, over the shaky bridge and past the winding river to get to my house!"

It is so cute and shows what an imagination he has. To be honest, I'm impressed with his dedication. He can go on with it for a long time - my kids get bored of just about everything, other than making a mess, in 1.7 seconds.

The other day my son transformed himself into Swiper the Fox, a character from Dora. I was very excited about this at first because I saw all sorts of potential for his creativity and imagination. Unfortunately Swiper the Fox is a thief. He steals things from Dora and her friend, Boots the Monkey, then hides the item so they can't find it. Really - should I have been surprised this is the character with which my child would most identify?

So Z spent several days taking things out of my hand/sister's hand/random strangers hands and throwing them across the room saying "Ha Ha Ha, you'll never find it now!!!" - a direct quote from Swiper. It was sort of cute and funny (well other than snatching the random stranger's wallet) for a little while - except for the things we still cannot find. That kid has an arm on him.

There was one incident in particular that really made me put the kibosh on our resident Swiper.

My daughter had received a green and red striped candy cane from a friend at school. She was very excited about it and talked about it the entire ride home. When we walked into the house we did our usual routine which involves she and I bending over the sink and washing her hands to eliminate the Pre-K germs she acquires in a day.

Since we were not paying attention, Z snuck the candy cane out of E's school bag then walked up behind me "Ha Ha Ha" - and before I knew it uses all his 2.5 year old brute and shoved the candy cane straight down my pants and inside my underwear. "You'll never find it now" Z yelled and ran off.

Um, no, actually that candy cane was pretty easy to find...

That's embarassing

2010-01-12T14:17:00.003-06:00

On Christmas Eve my mom and I ran some errands to finish up those final little things. We were at the grocery store and I told her that I needed a new mop. I had mopped our floors that morning and so they were squeaky clean at this point but I was very excited to have a new mop because I just had never liked the one I had. We had some major discussion on mops pros and cons and picked one out that looked good. Christmas, New Years and other festivities ensued.

Fast forward to about 10 days later when my mother called me. She was at the grocery store and was in need of a new mop as well. She was calling to see how happy I was with my mop. I had two choices here, 1) lie and tell her that I loved the mop and it has changed my life or 2) tell her the truth and let her know that it was 10 days and probably 1,000 spills later and I still had not used it yet! I opted for option #2 embarrassing as it was.

I am now happy to report the mop is awesome but it does not compare to the mops I rely on daily - our dogs :)

I'm Stealing It #9

2010-01-07T18:59:00.009-06:00

I was pretty excited for my kids to start school on Wednesday. After all it had been 16 days since they had been at school soaking up all the amazing things there are out there for them to learn from their wonderful teachers - oh yeah and I needed some peace and quiet.

Wednesday morning I woke up ready to cook them a hearty breakfast and send them on their way. Flipped on the TODAY show and in glaring letters right there, scrolling along the bottom, Shawnee Mission USD CLOSED. WHAT? It hadn't even started snowing yet, how can they close school? Granted there was snow on the ground but only because it had not been warmer than 2 degrees for like 12 days, that snow was old - left over since Christmas Eve. Admittedly it was supposed to dump like 6 inches of snow in like 3 hours but that wasn't going to start until like 3:00 PM - couldn't they just go to school for a few hours???? Apparently not. Laughingly, my husband headed out the door to work leaving me with these crazed banshees to handle on my own.

As I am writing this, it is now Thursday evening and we are about to close out day 17 of not being in school. So far we have survived although my best guess is that they will not have school tomorrow either. Check back with me tomorrow night.

Boy you have to get creative when you have two children under 6 cooped up in a 2,500 square foot house for 4 days straight. We tried all sorts of things.

*Baked about 19 dozen cookies and decorated them
*Played with every single toy Santa and family gave us (thank God for Christmas and new toys appearing recently!)
*Painted toe and finger nails and every other part of our bodies we could think of
*Watched every television show that ever was - twice
*Crawled up and down and down and up and up and down the bunk bed ladder which is not attached to the bed unless an adult is there to supervise
*Cleaned out closets
*Organized bookshelves (it is amazing what you can get your kids to do when they are bored)
*Ran 248 laps through the kitchen/dining room/living room area
*Punched, slapped, tickled and hugged each other to death

and so many more things that I cannot remember. Of course at this point I can barely remember my name.

I saw many other mothers on Facebook who were crazed as well and I was thrilled when people began giving each other suggestions for boredom busters. One stuck out to me as the perfect solution.

I have been feeling terrible that my kids could not go out and play in the snow when it was so fresh and pretty but with the meteorologists telling me that exposed skin would get frostbite within 20 minutes, that was not something I was going to risk!

I took a big empty bucket outside and filled it with snow three different times, dumped the snow in the bathtub, got the kids dressed in warm clothes and let them have at it.

We determined it was not enough snow to build a snowman but it was enough for little people to make snow angels, throw snowballs at one another and have good clean fun. Total, the gathering of the snow by mom as the kids watched in wonderment of what I was doing, the dressing them in their snow gear, playing in the snow and getting out of their snow gear ate up about 2 hours of my day. Not bad!

How cute is my dad?

2010-01-05T10:51:00.007-06:00

My dad is awesome. He has been a very successful business man for many years and tried to retire at one point but drove my mom crazy within one day of being home (something about trying to reorganize how she has arranged items in the refrigerator for the past 40 years) and so now he "offices".

My husband finds it hilarious that my father has made the word "office" a verb, but based on all the friends I have whose fathers "office" I'm thinking it must be an Oklahoma thing. Until recently I wasn't sure what he did in that office other than forward along emails he found hilarious - but now I know. My father is plotting to take over Hollywood.

The man has always wanted to be on tv. There was about a 4 year period of my life where every 6 months or so a new package would arrive in the mail that housed his latest "Survivor" audition tape. He actually hired an ad agency to help him with these videos. Unfortunately Survivor never bit. So now he has moved on and is striving for much greater things. My dad recently finished his first acting course and he is not going to settle until he has been cast in a major Hollywood movie. He is even hoping an Oscar will be in his future.

Where he is right now in the process is that his head shots have been taken and I believe he is looking for an agent. You have to check out his blog which is chronicling the path to his fame. My dad is so adorable - which is probably not what he is wanting to hear. I think he hopes to liken himself to more of a Paul Newman type - but I can't help it, he is my dad after all.

Follow his journey and it will be fun for you to say you knew of him way back when....

Acting Your Age

Happy New Year

2010-01-04T10:35:00.001-06:00

Our holiday break was great fun. Lots of nice family time. Santa was very nice to all of us and we had some great evenings with friends. Everything I could ask for.

However, I am pretty sure everyone is looking forward to school starting Wednesday. Well - I know I am. So much in fact that I got my children all dressed and bundled for the balmy 3 degrees it was outside today. Packed lunches, warmed up the car, packed backpacks and headed out to school which was not open. OOPS! I knew that, I really did. I think my subconscious mind wanted to believe so badly that they were going back to school on Monday because that is when I had to go back to work that I was trying to will it to be true. But the lack of vehicles in the school parking lot laughed in my face and told me it was not to be.

Good thing I work from home!

Holiday Break

2009-12-10T10:17:00.003-06:00

As with everyone's home, things are crazy around here right now. I just realized I only have 2 weeks until Christmas and although I am very very good about shopping early, there are always little things that I save for the last minute. I just realized today that today is officially beginning the "last minute"!

I'm going to take a holiday break from blogging. Between finding a the perfect gifts for those last few on my list and living out my dream of being the perfect mom by baking up a storm of cookies, Chex Mix, more cookies, and many more things with my kids by my side, I cannot give Mr. Blog the time he deserves.

Happiest of Holidays to your family and I'll see you soon!

What's your 96 year old grandmother doing?

2009-12-04T22:33:00.008-06:00

What is your 96 year old grandmother doing?

Mine just published her 9th novel!

It would take a year's worth of blogs for me to write about what an amazing woman she is and about all the unbelievable things she has done in her life - but check out this site to see a little bit more about her latest book.

Check out my latest article in KC Parent magazine!

2009-12-02T14:18:00.001-06:00

Check it out here:

Increasing Independence

What are you most thankful for?

2009-11-28T10:11:00.010-06:00

I have worked so hard talking to my children about the spirit of "thanks" at Thanksgiving. We discussed all the things they are so very lucky to have (loving supportive family, food at every meal, a nice warm home, etc.) and my kids over and over again made me pictures showing me how thankful they are for all of those things. I was feeling pretty good about myself knowing I had done a fabulous job as mom and had gotten the true meaning of Thanksgiving through to them.

On Thanksgiving day we did the traditional cook all day long, spend time as a family, set a fancy table, etc. The meal was ready and we all sat down to eat. My 2 year old son yelled out "Happy Birthday Papa!" - okay clearly he did not pick up on the correct message.

BUT I still had my sweet thankful daughter who would make me proud. Halfway through the meal my daughter asked if we could go around and say what we are all thankful for. Wow! Great idea from a 5 year old - this was my shining moment! This was moment where everyone would see what an amazing mother I am and what a truly special child I was raising.

She had Papa start (whose bday by the way is not until January) and we went around the table taking turns sharing what we were the most thankful for. I smiled with a warm heart knowing E was going to make me proud by saying she was thankful for her family, friends, food, clothing, shelter, etc. All the things we had discussed for the past few weeks.

It was E's turn.

"I'm thankful for rainbows and unicorns!"

I'm not seeing much point in working on the meaning of Christmas.

I guess I can't say I wasn't warned.

2009-11-22T06:56:00.007-06:00

Saturday we held my daughter's 5th birthday party at our house. I have spent weeks planning, purchasing and organizing for this event. She wanted a "flower"party. I had no idea what that meant but since that is what she wanted, that is what she was getting. I'm a believer that birthdays should be special for children and it is a great way for them to see what it is like to be selfless and do nice things for others in your family.

On Friday night my husband was nice enough to take the kids out of the house so I could flower myself out. I made flower shaped sandwiches, a flower cake, a pin the petal on the flower game and much more. I left the cleaning of the house and decorating for the next morning.

In the morning I asked my husband to please clean off our front porch. We have humongous trees in our front yard and they have been dropping their leaves with a vengeance the past few days. Our porch had a good 6 inch layer of leaves on it and actually posed a danger as it no longer looked like a porch and 6 steps.

Dutifully my husband went out to work on the porch. 3.5 hours later he still had not reappeared as he had trimmed the hedges, cleaned out the gutters, mowed the lawn and Lord knows what else. How do you get upset with someone who has worked so hard? I truly appreciate all he did, but I was wrangling, feeding, bathing 2 children all the while trying to get the party decorated and organizing the 4 craft stations I had planned for the 11 little girls that were coming to my house.

30 minutes before the party was to start I went out to ask the hubs if he could finish up his project and please come in and shower. I was greeted with this scene of a much dirtier and smellier porch than we started with!

Apparently the porch right in front of our front door was the landing pad for all the gutter gunk he had been knocking down - and we had people coming over any moment! Really??? Men!

I must say he did get it cleaned up with seconds to spare and with several nasty comments muttered under my breath.

Unfortunately I can't say I wasn't warned. I distinctly remember an incident from when I first started dating my husband. His parents were having a Greek Easter feast at their house and we were about 1 hour out from the party starting with 30 of their best friends showing up for a day of food/cooking/drinking in the beautiful backyard. As my mother-in-law was running around cleaning, cooking and arranging table settings, my father-in-law decided it was an opportune time to power wash the back of the house and roof, spilling black goo onto the back patio right where the party was to occur. Again, a great task that should be taken on at some point but just not moments before a party is to begin. My mother in law's head was to a point as was mine yesterday. Clearly this is hereditary.

Letter to Santa

2009-11-19T06:36:00.003-06:00

I am pretty well done with my kids' Christmas shopping but I decided we had better write a letter to Santa to see if there were any surprises as far as requests go.

Here is the letter my 5 year old dictated for St. Nick:

Dear Santa Claus,

I like all the presents that you will give to me. You are so nice and I'm so happy that you came to my school. You are so sweet and you are so nice. I like you so much! You always let me sit on your lap when you go to my school. Dear Santa Claus you are so much fun. I like you, I love you Santa Claus. Thank you for all the nice presents you give me. I like the presents.

How does Rudolph's nose glow? I like you Santa Claus. Why don't other reindeer have shiny noses? I like you Santa Claus, you are so nice and I love you too. Oh Santa Claus I like you and you are so cute. Santa Claus, why is it not snowing today? I want you to be thankful. The End.

I counted and she complimented Santa in some form 9 times - think she is trying to butter him up? The funny thing is she didn't even ask for anything. Does that mean I can take all her presents back?

Potty Training Saga Part III

2009-11-16T21:35:00.005-06:00

I am trying my best to get anyone other than myself to potty train my son but is isn't going all that well. My daughter still takes charge on it every once in awhile.

The other day we were with my son's good friend who is a few months older than him. The friend is awesome because he is potty trained. He had to use the bathroom and his mother and I thought this would be a wonderful teaching opportunity for the unbelievably uninterested in anything to do with a potty Z man.

We all trotted into the bathroom and Z's little friend pulled down his pants and did his thing standing up. Z watched in fascination and was very excited for his turn. He and I got his pants down, his diaper off and Z stood there over the potty waving his pointer finger over it. He kept shaking the finger and looking at it and shaking it again. Finally he pronounced "All done! It not working."

I think we are actually going backward on this whole deal. Last time I checked, pee pee does not come out of your finger. Clearly we have a long way to go on the potty training road.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2009-11-11T06:50:00.008-06:00

Monday was my birthday and my husband was awesome. I went to the gym first thing in the morning and when I got home he had dressed, breakfast'd (yes, I use that as a word - and cereal'd too) the kids, and had emptied the dishwasher. How could the day get any better?

Several hours later, to my surprise, the doorbell rang and a man was holding a beautiful arrangement of flowers. I've told my husband repeatedly he does not need to send me expensive flowers (grocery store ones will do just fine) - and I really mean that. But WOW! He had really outdone himself on this most insignificant of birthdays.

I smiled at the delivery man knowingly and reached out my hands.

ME: "What a great birthday it is! My husband is the best!"

The poor delivery man looked very embarrassed.

DM: "Ma'am these flowers are for your across the street neighbor but she isn't home, I was wondering if you could hold them here and give them to her when she gets home?"

Awesome.

On the bright side, I did get to enjoy the smell of the flowers all day because she didn't get home until much later on - or maybe I didn't check if she was home until much later on, well whatever. And the poor girl really is the younger version of me. She even shares my birthday, she really has no chance.

We're Making Memories Here People

2009-11-05T08:58:00.002-06:00

A favorite photo from my childhood shows me sitting on my parents retro space ship looking kitchen table wearing a brown/orange plaid dress with my long hair in two pig tails. My brothers are sitting next to me and we are all watching intently as our father carves a jack-o-lantern. Our young faces are bright with fascination and amazement at what my father is doing. I have always loved that photo because it captures such a great family activity and is exactly the kind of moment I hope my children will hold dear from their own childhoods.

Wanting to create that same memory for my children this past weekend, I gathered the biggest pumpkin we had off the front porch and brought it inside. All morning long I teased our children with a fun activity we were going to do later that day. Organizing the knives, black marker, paper trash bags and bowls for gathering the pumpkin guts/seeds for the yummy roasted seeds I would make later, I was ready.

I gathered my excited children around the kitchen table and got my husband ready for carving. He started drawing the face he would cut out and the kids were eager with anticipation - for about 3 minutes.

Here is a photo of my husband carving a pumpkin all by himself. I'm sparing you the picture of my children watching Max and Ruby on tv.

Either my mom just caught my brothers and me at the right time, or my kids are lame.

The Swine Flu is a JERK

2009-11-02T20:32:00.009-06:00

I hate the Swine Flu, I mean really really hate it. Nope, no one in my house has it but I hold it directly responsible for the most miserable afternoon of my life.

It all actually started before today. For weeks that flu took countless hours of my time during which I obsessed over whether or not to vaccinate my children. I read no less than 1,254 articles that all told me something different about what to think and feel.

Then when I finally made the decision to vaccinate my children, I could not find a place within a 500 mile radius that actually had the vaccinations. Thousands of hours on the phone, visiting different doctor and pharmacy websites and hair loss from pulling my locks out, I was totally unsuccessful in my search.

So today I decided the least I could do was vaccinate myself from the regular old flu (my kids had their regular flu shots weeks ago). Low and behold the CVS Minute Clinic I walked into had H1N1 vaccinations - and the ones to spray in my kiddos noses to boot! No shots required. Score!

I picked my kids up from school and we scurried over to CVS to make them swine free.

2 1/2 hours, 4 bags of snacks, 2 new coloring books, a new box of crayons, 2 bottles of pink Vitamin water, 7 time outs, 2 requests for the handy vac from the guy behind the counter to clean up aforementioned snacks, 25 glares, 3 sympathetic grandmas trying to entertain my children, 11 screaming fits, 32 separate sets of tears, 17 promises to talk to Santa Claus about the My Little Pony they had in the toy aisle, 438 threats to take away everything my children own, 2 separate instances of blood, 16 laps around the entire store, 2 knocked over aisle displays, and no less than 8 fights over who got to sit in the KU Jayhawk chair, my kids are swine flu resistant - hopefully.

Good thing is that the vaccinations are free, bad thing is my bill came to about $376 - oh and we have to go back in 4 weeks for another dose. Not sure I wouldn't rather have just dealt with the damn flu.

Costume Contest

2009-10-31T07:11:00.006-05:00

Enter your little cuties in this great costume contest from the Kansas City Repertory Theatre and you could win $1,000! That'll buy lots of candy.

Go here for more details.

The kids got a carrot in his ear

2009-10-26T11:34:00.010-05:00

Like most 2 year olds, my son loves pretending he is on the phone. He has used countless items around our house as a "phone" such as remotes, books, shoes, my arm and his very favorite, a big blue calculator.

If you are the person he is calling on the calculator the conversations might get a bit boring because they always go the exact same way:

Z: "Hi, what doin'?"

Z: "Nufin."

Z: "Okay, bye bye. Wuv you."

From my end however, it is really cute - well that was until he grabbed this particular household item to use as his phone: Now it is just getting weird - especially because he was using a dust pan as the part to speak into.

I'm not busy!

2009-10-23T13:43:00.007-05:00

How is it that the last couple of weeks I have been extremely busy:
- traveling for work
- when not traveling, doing my actual work
- being the co-chair of the Entertainment Committee of a charity ball
- dealing with sick children
- one million other things
and I was able to write new posts for my blog?

Here we are this week
- no travel
- charity party is over (we raised $100K!!!!)
- work is pretty light
- kids are healthy
yet I have had not found one minute to write anything for my blog?

Makes no sense. Kind of like my life.

Hopefully I will get really busy again next week and therefore write several new posts.

Potty Training is going swimmingly

2009-10-19T07:36:00.007-05:00

My daughter has been slacking in her duties of potty training her 2 year and 4.5 month old brother. I guess I can't be too upset with her since I have done NOTHING toward the furthering of his use of the toilet.

Yesterday my husband asked me to buy Z some big boy underwear with a character he really likes on them in hopes to get this whole thing kick started. I trekked to Target and got some pretty spiffy Elmo undies. I'm still not really ready to hit potty training hard core but I figured we could at least start talking about it with the little guy.

Brought Elmo underwear home and Z really liked them. We picked the pair he wanted to wear first and put them on. Z happily ran around the house yelling "Elmo potty!" about 1,000 times. Of course he had zero interest in sitting on the potty or going anywhere near it.

About 15 minutes later it was bath time and we hiked upstairs to get squeaky clean. I asked the kiddos to get their clothes off. Z refused to take off his undies. He had also gotten new shoes that day and I had to wrestle the kid to the ground to get those off. It was very clear that Elmo undies were not going to come off without World War III ensuing. I really had no choice but to let him crawl in that way.

I'm really glad he likes them but so much for my theory that having Elmo on his underwear will help with potty training since won't want to get his beloved Elmo wet...

The vortex of combs

2009-10-16T06:46:00.013-05:00

We all know there is a tiny monster who lives in our dryer that happily munches away on socks. He only chooses 1 sock from each pair and has a great laugh when you spend time searching for it behind your dresser, on the top part of the dryer drum, under your bed, in your refrigerator, etc.

In my house we also have another place that things disappear to. It is our brush/comb vortex. I find it very strange because there are only two of us (the females) in this house who actually use a comb or brush but they manage to get sucked into this vortex almost on a daily basis.

Yesterday I had to travel to Milwaukee and back for work. Clearly in meeting with clients, I needed to have freshly brushed hair. It's not like my home life where there are days that the only thing that gets run through my hair is a race car driven by my son.

I showered, got all squeaky clean and was ready to do my do. No comb or brush to be found. I searched high and low and could not find any of them! I have several combs and brushes for just this reason. I never use my daughter's brush for fear that since she is a school aged child, one day she might bring home the dreaded lice and I DO not need that issue in my head in addition to all the other issues I have going on already.

But I was desperate and so went on a search through her stuff to find her brush. Couldn't find that either. Then I saw it, her pink princess vanity - there had to be something in there. And I was right! There was a huge pink plastic comb shaped like a heart with princess bobbles on it, gemstones, and stickers galore. Let me tell you it wasn't easy styling my coif with that thing but I made it work - I had to. I stuck the comb in my bag as I headed out the door to catch my airplane. Got to the Milwaukee airport, pulled out my large pink heart shaped comb in the bathroom and in my professional business suit and high heels, began to freshen up. I ignored the looks of the women around me who stared in awe at the ridiculousness of what I was doing. The 5 year old set looked at me with envy.

Had my meeting, everything went great. We were all standing around talking afterward and someone looked down and said "uh oh, someone lost their comb" - and there it was. In the middle of my clients, my bright pink princess comb was staring up at us. I kind of ignored it at first and then someone else walked to our circle and pointed it out. Of course I did what any grown up would do in this situation - blamed it on my daughter.

"Oh my gosh, how funny! My daughter likes to sneak things into my bag when I leave town so that I think about her while I'm gone - this must be what she put in this time! Silly girl!"

So tell me - what in your house mysteriously disappears?

Vroom Vroom goes his bed

2009-10-11T07:22:00.007-05:00

I'm a dork. That is a fact. I have had the bedding for my 2 year old son's big boy bed for about 2 years now. I found what I liked, bought it and haven't wavered on my decision once. In addition, over the past few years I have spent many happy hours looking for the right accessory that will go in this spot or the perfect color blue lamp shade, etc.

Z is still in a crib but he is very close to learning how to propel himself out and break one or more body parts. That means room transformation time!!!

My husband really never gives much of an opinion on anything and normally he lets me interior decorate to my heart's content. Although he doesn't interject very often, when he does, 100% of the time it is annoying. His last strong opinion was when we got married almost 9 years ago and he had a major opinion on the weight of the everyday knives we were registering for. Here we are, a short 9 years later and he has another opinion.

This time his obnoxious opinion is on the choice of big boy bed for our son. He wants a race car bed. Let me repeat that - he wants a race car bed. Yeah, I do mean one of those very large, very plastic, very red race car beds.

I'm a snob - can't help it. I not that big on plastic toys for my kids and so you can probably imagine a race car bed is not in the design schematic I have drawn up for Z's room. Yes I'm not kidding, I'm that big of a dork I have a drawn up layout of his big boy room - did it for my daughter's room too.

So here we are. Every day I walk a line of "hmmm... he never insists on much, maybe I should let him have this one thing" to "Oh my God, there is no way in hell I am putting a race car bed into my design plan." I'm at the point that I'm considering paying someone $400 to build me a wood, chic race car bed for the little guy. Yes, I have gone so far as to price that option. I'd do it but I don't think that would satisfy my husband's race car fantasy.

I realize many a wee boy has been incredibly happy in a red plastic race car bed and I'm sure Z would absolutely love it, but let's be honest - it is all about me :)

My daughter summed it up best. We were talking about the bed and I was mentioning many cool and appealing to the eye options that we could get for Z. My husband asked our daughter which one she thought Z would like better. She said, "Dad, you know you are the one who wants a race car bed." Exactly!

Maybe I should get one for the hubs and let him sleep in it so he can get over never having one as a boy and leave me alone to design away.

Can't wait to see what she names her kids

2009-10-07T15:12:00.008-05:00

You have probably gathered by now that my 4 year old daughter is totally crazy - but that is what I like about her.

Every Wednesday her class has Show 'N Tell and the item a child brings to share must correspond with the letter of the week. This week is the letter "E".

At first she was just going to take herself because her name starts with "E" which I thought was cute and clever - but that idea went out the door. After rummaging in her toy box for an "E" item she found a colorful stuffed Elephant that she got as a gift from her Aunt Hilary. The elephant came named and has a cute book that goes along with him. His name is Elmer proven by the fact that ELMER is sewn on his side in large letters and the accompanying book is called "Elmer the Elephant".

I'm sure her teacher and everyone stared at her like she was a bit nuts when she introduced her elephant whom she calls Walmart. Don't ask me why, I can't break into that brain of hers.

Can't wait until it is "J" week and she takes her pink, curly pig-tailed hair, female baby doll named Baby Jesus.

I'm going to let my 4 year old do the mothering for now on

2009-10-04T19:09:00.011-05:00

We live in a split level house and my husband and I hang out on the middle floor while the kids often play downstairs. They rarely make the trek up two flights of stairs to their rooms quietly - there is always a pit stop involved where they come chat with us, etc.

My husband was watching TV the other day and heard the soft pitter patter of feet as the kiddos went up both flights of stairs quietly. In my house quiet = bad. 100% of the time that means they are up to something and 89% of the time that something is not good.

My husband went upstairs a few minutes later to assess. As he walked down the hall toward their bathroom where their voices were coming from, he heard:

E: "Pull your pants down Z."

E: "Good boy!"

Then he hears the familiar rip noise of each side of a diaper coming off.

E: "Okay Z, now sit on the big boy potty"

E: "Great job! Here is a book to read, now go pee pee, sweetie."

My husband walked into the bathroom at this point and couldn't help but crack up, be in shock and be a little concerned all at the same time. E then asked dad where she can find the stickers for the yet to be developed potty chart because "she was just so proud of Z for trying the big boy potty".

Of course my 2 year old did not produce anything - but my daughter is already more successful in her potty training lessons than I have been. So far my attempts have only yielded tears and a toilet seat around Z's head:

I'm thinking this is fantastic! Let the 4 year old potty train the 2 year old - she seems more motivated to do it than I am and she is easily bribed with toys, etc. Potty training your brother because your mom doesn't want to is totally worthy of getting a pony, don't you think?

The dog's water bowl

2009-09-29T13:12:00.004-05:00

Today is a gorgeous day so the kids and I were outside enjoying the fantastic Kansas City Fall weather. E and Z were playing on the swing set, I was picking some weeds out of my flower bed and the dogs were happily sunning themselves. It was Normal Rockwell kind of stuff.

One dog got up lazily and wandered to an over turned toy that had filled with water during the last rain storm we had. She began to drink. It was dirty water and who knows what kind of bugs, etc. were in there that would not sit well in my dog's stomach.

Dog: "Slurp, slurp, slurp"

Me: "Francis, yuck! Do not drink out of there, it is dirty!"

E: "Yeah Francis, you can't drink out of there, that's not the toilet!"

Norman Rockwell is turning over in his grave somewhere.

I'm Stealing It #8

2009-09-28T18:19:00.003-05:00

I have not stolen an idea in a long time. Not that there aren't a plethora of amazing ideas out there but because life has been crazy busy and I haven't had time to write about these great things. However, I stumbled across the following and I love the idea and wanted to share. I think it could be so cute for so many things.

Make your own Scratch Off Tickets!

I am going to make these for my daughter's next birthday party. Of course everyone will win something as I don't particularly want a brawl to break out amongst the 5 year old set. But I actually see quite a bit of other uses for this as well.

I am clearly not clever enough to come up with the idea but I am smart enough to steal it from someone else. I don't even know this person, just found her who knows how. Check out her description on how to do it - looks simple enough.

As she said, the trick is mixing metallic paint and liquid soap for the scratch off part. She must be some sort of mad genius scientist to have figured that out because I never would have come up with that!

Scratch off tickets

A crystal ball into their future

2009-09-26T09:01:00.014-05:00

The house across the street and down one sold recently and soon thereafter a "For Rent" sign went up. Thankfully two young girls moved in. For the first couple of weeks we did not formally meet but I could tell they were nice girls who would be good neighbors.

I finally had the opportunity to speak to one of the girls. She was walking her dog and we were just getting home from running errands. I took my crazy children over there to say hello and introduce myself.

It was really fun talking her because it turns out we have quite a bit in common:

1) She and her roommate went to the same college that I did and were in the same sorority I was - a million years later of course

2) I'm from Oklahoma and went to a small private high school
- the roommate (whom I have not yet met) is from Oklahoma and went to a rival small private high school
- there were several girls from my high school that were in their sorority pledge class
- I know older siblings of several of their friends

3) The father of the roommate I was speaking with is a Ford dealer
- my father is a Ford dealer

4) The roommate just moved back to KC from a major metropolitan city. I moved to a major metropolitan city right after college and then moved back to KC.

I came home and reported back to my husband all about our cute new neighbors and how we have so much in common and how they totally remind me of myself right out of college.

His response?

"Did you tell her to be careful or your life is what hers will be in 10 years?"

He is sleeping on the couch.

The steps to my mental breakdown

2009-09-24T08:35:00.010-05:00

Our house was flipped before we moved into it. On appearances only it looks cute but it has been proven to us more than once that a lot of things were put together with gum and Elmer's Glue. One of those things was our front steps. The flippers put terracotta colored ceramic tiles on them - not a great plan for outdoor, high-traffic stairs. After about 2 years of weather changes the tiles started breaking and we had to have them re-done. Re-done included pouring, stamping and staining concrete.

We used this one particular company who at this time will remain nameless but trust me I'm very close to naming them. They were recommended by a friend and they did a decent job - when they showed up. They would do one thing and then take like a 3 - 5 week hiatus before they started the next part of the project.

Here we are now.
1 year and 5 months since they gave us an estimate.
1 year and 3 months since they started the project.
11 months since I have seen them.

The problem with that is that the steps are NOT finished yet.

I've tried quite a few things to get this company to come finish my steps but my new tactic is calling them every single day. Of course the phone always goes to voicemail when I call. I only have one guy's cell phone number so he is the lucky one who gets to hear my voice daily. I started out snooty letting him know of my frustration but since I get bored easily I have now changed it up a bit. Each day I have a new personality. Thus far I have used anger, humor, and calmness.

Here are some other tactics I am working on:
Threats
Spanish (just for fun)
Tears
Psycho Screaming
Silence
Lawyer Speak
Speaking each word backwards (I have a weird ability to do this)
Calling every minute for 3 hours

Still working on some others. I'm sadly having a good time with this and I might even be disappointed when (if) they actually finish our steps - what am I going to do with my time?

It's official! I'm a mom.

2009-09-21T10:53:00.008-05:00

I took my kids to a place called Penguin Park yesterday. I had heard about it a few times and since my husband was gone all day to the Chiefs game, the kids and I had some free time. I figured it was as good a time as any to make the trek to the park.

As you can see, the park is really cute!

Sadly some less than civilized teenagers (I'm speculating on their ages here) felt the need to destroy the park. They spray painted horrible things of the verbal and visual kind all over the entire place. Thank God my children cannot yet read or interpret spray painted gentailia or we would have left immediately. I spoke with a mother who lives in the area and she had been at the park the day before and Penguin Park was graffiti free at that time. So some hooligans (total mom word) had done this destruction as their leisure activity on Saturday evening. Jerks.

One of the geniuses also spray painted their name - full name, first, middle and last - on the side walk. Realistically I can't imagine anyone, including these kids is dumb enough to write their own name on something they defile - it could be the name of someone they hate, etc. But still I figure it is something to go on and so I took a picture of it and I plan to email it to the police. See - there it is right there! I'm SUCH a mom. And even more mom of me I took this disgusting situation as an opportunity to talk with my kids about other people's property and how we need to respect it, etc. I'm really growing up :)

So tell me, when was a moment you realized that you are totally a parent and there is just no going back?

Circus Review

2009-09-17T08:03:00.019-05:00

We went to the circus last night.

A great time was had by all - eventually. For quite some time my daughter sat there with her fingers in her ears due to a loud explosion (on purpose) that happened early on.

I did eventually get the fingers out of her ears.

Our 2 year old was a bit freaked out by all the activity in the beginning and stuck close to daddy. There are definitely a lot of colors, sounds and a multitude of things going on - but it was those exact things that eventually won him over.

Like all kids, our children get extremely distracted by bright, glowy, shiny, expensive things and my husband and I are totally the parents who buy that kind of junk for them.

Here are a couple of pieces of advice in the Barnum & Bailey souvenir toy department:

1) It might just be my children, but they have an impressive ability to turn any item into a weapon. This $1,324.59 toy was no different. I'd be surprised if the people around us enjoyed the fact that our children continually hit them in the head with these toys. The kids aren't up yet this morning, but I cannot imagine there is any way we will get through this day without one of them hitting and lacerating the other one in the face with these things. Who thought it was a good idea to develop a toy for young children that spins around at blistering speeds with stars attached to strings??? Better yet, who thought it was a good idea to purchase them? I'm looking in their father's direction...

2) If you do decide to mortgage your house to purchase this toy wait until after the circus is over. We lost the kids to this toy for quit a bit of time after purchasing them during intermission and it did not matter how many acrobats were flipping around, hanging from dental floss 300 feet in the air, our children were enthralled by the toys.

All in all it was really fun and our kids fell contentedly exhausted into bed asking when we can go to the Circus again.