My 9 year old daughter is a hoarder

Our daughter's room isn't huge and so she had the great idea of getting a loft bed so as to make more space for herself.  We had the genius idea to listen to her.

I just went up there to change her sheets - which by the way is the biggest pain on the planet.

OH MY LORD. Here is an inventory of what I found:

Note - I am known for exaggeration.  i.e. "I had a million things go do today!" or "Literally I wet my pants because I was laughing so hard" - neither of those statements would be true.  This list below sadly is the honest to God's truth.

27 stuffed animals (granted they were varying sizes, some tiny, but still that is insane)
5 socks
a trash can (clean fortunately but wtf???) filled with 13 books
8 other books strewn about
1 body pillow
1 regular pillow
a sleeping bag case -not the sleeping bag, just the case it goes in
7 water bottles. SEVEN!  Photographic evidence below

3 sleep masks
1 flashlight

Where is there actually room for her in this bed?

Mark my words, this child will be on a future episode of Hoarders and will have dead cats buried under 11 years of newspapers. This is a problem.

Not so green

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.

That's embarassing

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 :)

The vortex of combs

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?

The dog's water bowl

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.

Reasons to be nervous when a toddler is alone for more than 3 minutes...

No children were harmed or drunk in the making of these photos - although I definitely drank after cleaning up the messes.

My son is so proud because he put his shoes on all by himself. We have no plans of going anywhere for a few hours, but he has been walking/tripping around the house with his shoes like this since early this morning. Of course will he not allow me to fix them because they were "all done myself".

While I applaud his independence I am revolted by what this is doing to my house. Yesterday we went to the Duck Derby, an outdoor festival. The event was a lot of fun but his shoes got so grimy that I am now cringing each time he takes a step. My plan was to clean those green germ/dirt carriers this morning but the little guy got to them first. Darn you Dollar General for having super cute and enticing bright green crocodile looking "frocs"! (If you don't know - "frocs" are fake Crocs.)

The good news? He has finally decided to settle in and watch a TV show, leaving my newly cleaned floor alone. The bad news? He absolutely refuses to take them off and so now the yicky is on my couch. I can't win. A stronger mother would fight the fight to get them off his feet but luckily it is the couch in the kids playroom and I don't sit there very often. I'm sure by the time I sit there the dirt will have rubbed off on my kids and I won't get any on me - and that is really what matters right?

P.S. I have to thank my new friend Tara for my pretty new blog makeover. She was so incredibly patient with me. Although I am very computer savvy as far as the things I do with my computer - with anything outside of my day to day stuff I am clueless!

Also, crazy small world story. I stumbled across Tara's website and saw that she does blog makeovers (see bottom right hand side of my blog and you can find a link to her site). I emailed her some questions on what she does and what I wanted for my blog, etc.

She wrote back and said she saw from my blog that I live in Kansas and said she used to live in Kansas - which was weird b/c she now lives in Canada. She went on to tell me about herself and one thing that she mentioned is that she does some marketing for her parents business. When I went back on her website to see the designs I could choose from for my blog, I ran across some of the ads she has done for her parents' business. The business is a place I have been to a million times - and some of you might have too. They own the great place in Shangri La on Grand Lake - Island Joe's Kentena! As usual, I'm sure I will be there many times over the summer.

I love things like that - it makes this big crazy world seem just a bit more welcoming.

The messes they make

It must be a full moon because my children have gone completely insane in the past few days.

On Friday I was exceptionally busy with work and so I kind of let the children run wild for a bit while I was trying to get stuff done. It is awesome to work from home but the days the kids are out of school are a bit challenging.

Truth be told, I knew Z-man had the box of Cheerios and I clearly knew that he is a 2 year old boy, but I didn't know the damage that could be done with a box that was already 9/10 empty. It was keeping him quiet and I have a dust buster and 2 dogs so I figured it would be worth it for the free time I was getting in return. So I got busy with my work.

After a little while, I started hearing a crunching noise and then realized it had been 45 minutes since I had laid eyes on the little goof ball. I got very nervous -and for good reason. He had taken every single Cheerio out of the box and somehow must have figured out how to clone because there were waaaaay more Cheerios around my kitchen and dining room than were in that box, I swear. The pantry door that he has been trying master for the past few weeks was wide open too. Just my luck this was the exact time he figured out how to get in there.

When I found him he was rolling on the tile covered in the Bisquick flour that had turned our kitchen into a winter wonderland and my guy into a little snowman. The crunch crunch noise I was hearing was the dried pasta noodles he was happily munching on. They were strewn across a bed of shredded cheese. His sister, trying to be helpful when I asked her to grab him some cheese for a snack (I guess I should have clarified. I meant string cheese, the kind they both eat like 5 times per day) had handed him a full bag of shredded sharp cheddar. Nice.

You could have fed a small country with the amount of food on our floor and my little guy was quite pleased with himself. I was not.

It took two days, but I finally got the last glob of Bisquick cleaned out of my grout. Tip - don't put water on Bisquick when you are trying to get it off your floor because then you just have to clean up pancake batter. Start with a vacuum. Oh well, I will know that for next time - and let's be honest here there will be a next time.

Not to be outdone, it was my daughter's turn. On Sunday I was sitting on the couch working in my freshly cleaned house. Are you noticing a theme here? Obviously I need to quit my job so that my house can remain in some sort of presentable shape. My daughter comes and snuggles up next to me and says:

"Mommy! Mommy! I have a surprise for you!"

99.2% of the time, this is a good thing. Usually she has drawn me a nice picture or she has made up a song for me, etc. Excited about what sweet thing she has done to show me her love, I asked what it was.

"I took all of yours and daddy's socks and t-shirts out of your dresser drawers and dumped them on to the floor." Wow, wasn't expecting that one.

"Why exactly did you do that?" I asked the obvious question.

"Because I wanted to make a mess." We've taught her to be honest. I guess we've done a good job.

Oh well, I guess it could be worse, she could have dumped all of our clean clothes on the gooey glob of Bisquick.

My car, the storage container

I guess if I have a blog I should get used to being totally open with my life. and therefore I am going to publicly share the contents of my car that I just cleaned out. I spend a lot of time complaining about my husband's hideous car but maybe I should take a look at myself and realize I'm not so perfect (okay I really have known that for quite awhile, I just forget from time to time).

In my defense, (after you read this list you'll realize I really need one), every single time I walk from my car into my house I have at least one child in my arms, a purse, and either my children's school bags and lunch boxes, or six bags of groceries. It might not be a great excuse but it is the reason that everything that goes into my car stays there until a day like today when I take the time to clean it.

You may be wondering why I am sharing this list with you. Don't blame ya. But I really think the randomness of it all makes it kind of newsworthy. Or maybe not, you decide.

Here is a totally honest list of the items I just took out of my car:
*2 1/2 pairs of children's winter boots
*11 cents
*8 jelly beans stuck to the plastic covering in the back (which can thankfully be pulled out and cleaned)
*1 Easter basket complete with grass
*1 broken kite
*1 purple fuzzy vest size 4T
*1 blue winter coat size 2T
*no less than 58 rocks. (My children are going to be geologists or at least they better be because it will make me feel better that we steal rocks from every landscaped place we patron)
*a multitude of stray Cheerios
*4 coloring books - but oddly no crayons
*1 of my husband's business cards
*1 Tupperware container filled with a piece of cake from who knows when
*3 tennis rackets, 2 in racket cases, 1 not
*1 odd looking machine type part that I cannot identify
*1 can of pink tennis balls
*the letter "Q" magnet from our Leap Frog fridge alphabet thing
*2 water bottles
*1 umbrella stroller - aha! Finally something that should actually be in a car
*5 golf clubs
*1 fishing lure (I'm not really sure what a fishing lure is, but I'm guessing that is what this yellow/orange floaty looking thing is)
*1 Cooking Light Magazine which is hilarious because I don't really cook - maybe that is why it is in my car and not in my kitchen
*1 PB Teen catalog (I don't have teens)
*1 half full bag of Sunflower seeds which had spilled and were everywhere. When I gave my husband a dirty look on this one he blamed it on our 4 year old daughter. Can't really see how it could be her fault they were spilled all over the front passenger seat considering she is always strapped into her car seat in the back...
*1 bathroom towel rack that apparently didn't make it out when we did our last Goodwill drop off
*1 KU visor (Rock Chalk Jayhawk!!!!)
*2 kazoos and a maraca
*1 goat (okay just kidding on that one)
*crumbs galore

Yeah, well that was embarrassing! With all of that stuff you'd think I drive a Hummer, but somehow it all managed to fit in my mid-size SUV and it honestly didn't seem all that messy until it was all strewn across my driveway.

Okay off to get the car professionally cleaned so my children don't contract Malaria (or something of that nature).