Memories to last a lifetime

Yesterday we watched 2 of our best friends marry each other.  We were honored to not only be there, but to be a part of their celebration.  Scott was a groomsman and I was a bridesmaid.  It was a fantastic weekend, starting with pedicures for the gals on Friday then the rehearsal and dinner friday night, all the wedding festivities on Saturday and finally a brunch this morning.  We will be seeing them all again soon, as we have plans for wine nights, football viewing parties, tailgating, even going to our HS Homecoming game this year.  It is things like these that tell me that we made the right decision moving back home.  Spending time with people we've known over half our lives is wonderful.  We still miss our friends and family in Texas, don't get me wrong, but there's nothing better than spending time with old friends and knowing that despite the years, and the times apart, the friendships haven't changed a bit.

Some of my favorite moments of the weekend:

1. Seeing another friend from HS at the rehearsal dinner, even though she was there for a completely different reason.  Talk about a coincidence!  I was thrilled when I found out she was going to be there, the last time we'd seen each other was my wedding day!

2. The grooms great aunt telling her companion "I got the cute one" in Tagalog as Scott was walking her down the aisle.  She didn't realize Scott's mom is Phillipino and he understood her.

3.  When I saw them right after the ceremony, I said "Hi Mrs. D_____" to the bride.  The groom, who we've known since HS (he was our best man) said "that's my WIFE!" in a very giddy voice.  It was so sweet!

4.  Dancing with my hubby, kissing him, and having our other HS friend say "aww you two are still as in love now as you were Junior year."  We really are, if not more so. 

5. Seeing my hubby dressed as one of the village people doing the YMCA with the rest of the groomsman.

And then there is this:

High School, early 1998, at our Sadie Hawkin's dance.  My hubby is on the left, the groom is on the right.  Our good friend KJ is in the middle.

The same 3 guys, 12.5 years later.  Same poses, same guys, and funny enough, same song;  Gettin' Jiggy Wit it.  We were standing by the dance floor chatting and when that song came on, I said "I gotta get another shot like the one from HS!"  and they all very willingly, (I'm sure the alcohol helped) obliged. 

I'm thankful for all my friends, old and new.  I'm thankful to have such wonderful people in my life.

My King

My almost 7-year old son and I had the funniest conversation yesterday.  We were in the car and he says "When I grow up, I'm going to have a castle."

"Really, B?  What are you going to do with it?"

"I'm going to live in it, and I will be your king."

"You're going to be the king?  What will that make me?"

"You will all be [insert sweeping hand gesture] my humble servants."

At which point Meghan pipes up and asks "Can I be queen and help you build your castle?"

And he tells her "I'm not going to build it.  I'm going to buy it online."


Ahhhhh children are hilarious.  Hopefully my mom still thinks they are funny in 2 days when we get back.  We're in a wedding this week so she's holding down the fort.  Good luck, Mom!! 

an organized mess

my house is cluttered.  Always.  No matter that there's plenty of room for the 5 of us as well as all our various personal items, there's still stuff everywhere.  We may have 2 cabinets for the sole purpose of holding DVD's, but there are still DVDs crammed (without cases of course!) next to the DVD player, on top of the DVD player, on top of the speaker, and on the mantle where we've placed them after removing them from the steely grip of the baby, after finally managing to catch her as she ran down the hall with her prize, cackling all the way.  Of course, we could put them in the DVD binder, which has plenty of open slots, but nooooo.  they go on the mantle, where they will likely sit for weeks until one decides to look thru them, usually in an attempt to find the very movie they are, at that moment, desperately wanting to watch.  They will search for 30 minutes to find that ONE movie, ignoring the vast piles of movies sitting within reach because those aren't THE ONE.  I'm as guilty of this as the rest of my family. 

There's clothes spread throughout the house.  Now, I can at least say that none of them are mine or my husband's.  We do manage to keep our clothing in our room.  The children however, well that's a different story.  And the items I find make no sense.  I find my son's undies in the living room on a daily basis.  I have no idea why, since his room is downstairs and that's where he gets dressed, and I don't recall ever seeing him remove any undies in the living room, but there they are, stuffed under the end table, on the couch, or in the middle of the wide open floor.  WHY??  And it is usually only undies, occasionally a pair of PJ pants or somethig.

Of course there are toys.  There's 3 children in this house.  Enough said.

Try as I may, I don't think my house will ever be clean and stay clean for more than a few hours at a time, and I'm lucky if I get that long.  So I will settle for organized.  How can a messy house be organized, you ask?  Oh believe me, if it can be done, I'm the woman to do it.  Take my craft room for example.  I have an entire bookcase (7 foot tall by 3.5 foot wide I believe) and a 9 cube shelf all dedicated to yarn.  It looks like it is just thrown on there haphazardly,  but I assure you that is no the case.  I know almost to the skein exactly what yarns I have, at least by looks if not by name, and can grab it on the first try.  It is an organized mess.  Part of the reason it LOOKS messy is because some are skeins I pulled from the center and they are half used so they are flat and pulled apart, some are balls of yarn that have a hard time fitting on the shelf without rolling off, and some are small hanks or cakes that are hard to stack, but a knitter would know instantly that they are arranged by not only weight but fiber content and brand as well.  Some is even sorted by color (I have an entire cube devoted to purple sock yarn.). 

My closet is pretty messy, but I hope to tackle it tomorrow.  It shouldn't take long, I just need to redo the stacks and re-hang the clothes my 4 year old pulled off the hangers on the lower rack when she was trying to hide from her brother.  Even when it is organized, it doesn't look it because we have one shelf that runs the length of the wall right in the middle, and racks on top and below it.  Since we have an abundance of tshirts and jeans, they don't all fit in the drawers so they go on the shelf.  I have a stack for Scott's jeans, shorts, my tshirts, my long sleeved shirts, my tanks, my shorts, my jeans, and my "pants I swear I will fit back into as soon as I diet some more" (Ladies, you know what I'm talking about!)  Scot's tshirts and our pj/sweats etc go in the dresser.  barely.  He has 2 full drawers of tshirts, I think it is time to clean some of them out.  But once again, even though it looks messy, it isn't.

I'm terrible at cleaning.  I'm slow, I get distracted very easily (SQUIRREL!) and I usually end up leaving one task half done while I start working on another.  I'll be loading the dishwasher, notice a pair of boys undies on the kitchen floor (agan, WHY??) so I go to take them into the laundry room, where I remember the clothes I washed the night before, so I go to put them in the dryer, which is of course still full, so I take the clean clothes to our room to fold.  Meanwhile, the dishwasher is still open and half loaded and the washer is still full of wet clothes.  by then the baby is awake, so I forget all the chores I was working on to tend her.  Ahhh, a day in my life.  However, when it comes to organizing, it is a different story.  It may take me a while, mainly because I pause to look at things and sort things, but if I have the time I need without distractions from my family, I'm quite adept at organizing.  Meg's closet is an example, there's a drawer for everything and everything has it's place.  I spent over an hour in there last week, and she's managed so far to keep it clean. 

My favorite example of my organized mess is from High School.  I had forgotten a pom pom at home and needed it for the game that night, so Dad said he'd bring it if I told him where it was.  I told him it was under my red sweater, next to the big box, on the floor by the top right hand side of my bed, next to the green combat boot.  I could literally hear him rolling his eyes over the phone, but it was right where I said it was. 

I will likely spend part of my day organizing tomorrow, since my room is starting to annoy me, and I need to find a spot for all the paperback books that are littering the house.  Just like the DVD's, they are everywhere.

books and being self sufficient

Not that those 2 things are related.  In fact, they are two completely different topics at least for this blog post.  What can I say, I'm lazy and didn't feel like creating two separate posts :)

So, reading.  Are you the type that reads a book once, then moves on?  do you regularly try new authors, or do you stick to your faves?  I will admit I am stuck in a rut, but happily so.  I read a lot of Nora Roberts, the Twilight series, and, well, that's about it.  When I do branch out, I read contemporary romance, not the historical stuff, not the mystery romance, nothing with bad guys.  Just simple girl meets boy, they fight, they fall in love, they fight some more, and they live happily ever after.  I do try to read other things.  I downloaded the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because a lot of my friends reccomend it, but I haven't gotten past the first chapter.  I don't like books with lots of characters to keep track of, or with twisting plots that confuse me.  I know I'm making myself sound stupid, but really, I'm not.  I just read for relaxation and to me if a book is overly complicated, it is more like school than relaxation.  Take the Outlander series, for example;  Yes, it had a great plot, but there were so may charactes and so many bad things that happened to the characters I liked (I like happy endings, happy middles, happy everything!) that I had a hard time.  I finally gave up in like the 4th or 5th book (I'm amazed I made it that far) after the author spend 500 pages on ONE DAY.   So I put the book back on my shelf and went back to my trusted Nora Roberts.  I mean, I'm so picky I don't even like the stuff she wrote as JD Robb, too much mystery and crime etc.  My faves are her series books, the trilogies etc.  I have htem al on paperback and am slowly accumulating them on my Kindle as well, since I re-read things multiple times.  And some of them, no matter how many times I read them, never fail to make me cry.  I'm a sucker for a happy ending.

OK, different topic.  I finally made coffee for the first time today.  How awful is that?  Scott always makes it.  I also have been cooking more.  I've begun to realize that I am not a very self sufficient woman, and that is completely ridiculous at my age.  I'm very blessed to have a wonderful husband who is a helpmate in everything, but I think I've gotten to the point where I'm letting him do too much because it is easy.  He does all the cooking because he's better at it, but he's been working a lot and I don't think it is fair to ask him to cook every night on top of everything, so I've been trying to take over that.  And I usually get up and around before he does, so why on Earth can't I handle making the coffee??  I had him show me how he makes it yesterday so that I couldn't use the excuse of  "I don't know how" anymore.  Plus, he was so happy he had coffee when he got up that he agreed to load the dishwasher.  WIN!  :-D  My biggest challenge though is this weekend.  Friends of ours are getting married soon, and the bachelor party is this weekend.  The bachelorette party was a couple weekends ago, and he handled the kids all weekend while I was gone, so I keep telling myself if he can do it, so can I.  I will admit though, I'm so used to having him arounnd to help me (especially since he works from home) that the task is a bit daunting.  For example, I'm going to have to take all 3 kids to the grocery store BY MYSELF!  GASP!  :-)  Neither one of us ever does that.  We'll take one or sometimes 2, or all 5 of us will go together.  I considered trying to go before he leaves, but there's no room in the fridge for more milk even though I know we'll run out probably Saturday, and I realized tht millions of women handle grocery shopping with multiple kids all the time.  So can I, right?  I need to work on being more sure of my capabilities!!  They're just kids, how hard can it be??

if you don't hear from me in a week, send a search party.  The kids will have probably tied me up and stuffed me in a closet so they could eat all the cookies  they want.

Notme strikes again!

Anyone with younger kids knows of their friend "Notme".  This is the little pain in the ass imaginary friend that takes everything and makes all the messes.  I know this because whenever I ask my kids who is at fault, they insist "Notme!"  Well, yesterday I'm pretty sure Notme took my new iPod touch that I got for my 30th 25th birthday.  We still can't find it a day later.  I had it in my pocket and 45 min later I noticed it wasn't there.  The best we can figure after retracing my steps (I didn't leave the house) is that it must have fallen out of my pocket maybe on the couch and SOMEONE (Notme!) took it.  That's what I get for putting kids games on it I guess.  We suspect the 4 year old but she's got a memory like a wet noodle.  We tried getting information out of her today and she finally said "well, it was on the couch, then on the counter, then in Liberty Hill. .  ." Considering we haven't been to Liberty Hill since March, I think maybe she's confused about the chain of events.  SIGH.  The bottom line is that my new iPod is missing and no one knows where it went.  Well, except for Notme of course.

In other news, we got the baby's ears pierced.  She is 15 mos old and when we were in a store the other day a blind gentleman said "awww he's so cute."  SHE was wearing a white outfit with pink flowers all over it.  It's not her fault she has no hair.  Well, I'll amend that.  She has hair, it's just in the form of a mullet.  It is so short on the top that I can't get a bow in it, but long enough in the back for a ponytail.  Poor kid!  At least the earrings make her look more feminine.  I got her little amethyst ones, even though that isn't her birthstone, because I dress her in a lot of purple and they are pretty.  She did great!  I had given her a sucker before they started so she had something to distract her.  She sad on my lap while they did it, and she fussed a bit but as soon as I stood up, she realized it was over and stopped crying.  While we were there (we went to Claire's) I offered, repeatedly, to buy new earrings for the 4 year old who's been wearing the same earrings for 9 months.  She stubbornly refused.  She said I could buy some but she wouldn't wear them.  Um, no thanks, not gonna waste my money!  So we got home and started talking to her and I kind of got the idea that she thought it would hurt if I took out her earrings, so while she was distracted I just took one out real fast, and she realized that gee, it doesn't hurt.  Then all of a sudden she thought oohh, now I can have new ones.  She's been bugging me ever since to take her back to the earring store.  :::::sigh:::::  I should have just left the old ones in!

Off to do more laundry (the bane of my existence) and look for my ipod.  I told the kids if I find it in a spot that makes it look like it was one of them, I'm taking all the kids games off it and they won't be able to play with it anymore.

Fireflies!

Tonight we got to do yet another thing I've been looking forward to since we moved back home.  We took the kids out to hunt for fireflies!  It was hilarious, Scott and I trying to chase (or hobble, in my case) after these suckers while the kids tried coming up with strategies.  Brendan even gave us a pep talk when we suggested we try another night.  "No, tonight is the night!  The most important night ever.  We can do this.  WE WON'T GIVE UP!  All we need now is. . . Armor."  I half expected him to run into the house, paint his face blue, and strip down to his undies before running back out!  Then he tried coming up with a battle plan, telling us "OK, I'm the general.  Let's split up!  Momma, you go that way.  Daddy, you go down there.  Meg and I will go to K___'s house.  Let's go!"  We nixed that idea because we didn't want them running all over the block, but we did continue to hunt in and around our backyard.  Finally Scott managed to snag one, but we weren't able to get it in the jar before it flew away.  I promised the kids we wouldn't give up, we'd try all summer until we manage to catch a couple. 

I felt like a kid again chasing after them.  It was a little trickier than I remember, but that could be due to the fact that I'm almost 30, have worse vision than I used to, especially at night, and have a messed up knee.  However, I certainly don't remember them being this hard to catch!  Those suckers are FAST.  I won't give up though.  I want my kids to remember the times they spent catching jars full of fireflies with their mom and dad.  I have fond memories of running all over the neighborhood with my friends catching them on warm summer evenings.  It makes me happy knowing my kids will have the same type of memories.

Babysitters

Since we no longer live near the kids' grandparents, we've started looking for babysitters.  Scary for us, since we've never actually needed to hire one before.  I'm a little nervous about leaving the kids with someone they don't know very well, but lets face it, Mom and Dad really need some US time away from the kids!  We try to sneak out sometimes, I'll join him while he's fishing on the dock, or we'll try to have a glass of wine on the deck after we've put the kids to bed, but more often than not the kids end up joining us.  The past week or so we've ended up staying up until almost 2 every night, just trying to catch up on our shows and with each other, since the kids have been fighting bedtime (it gets darker later here than in TX and it has royally messed up our kids' bedtime routines!) and not going to sleep until 9:30 or 10 every night.  Last night we ended up staying up until like 2:30 just talking and catching up with each other.  While I do cherish the fact that after almost 10 years of marriage, we still have that much to say to each other, I DO have 3 kids to take care of as well as laundry and houswork etc, and I DO need some sleep!  LOL.  The great news is that we live in an AWESOME community with tons of available sitters.  I put an ad out on our neighborhood email list and within 2 days had like 15 possible sitters.  Some I think might be a bit too young (a few 13 and 14 year olds) to take care of all 3, but they might work if I just need someone to watch Erin while we take the other 2 to a movie or something.  I know I started babysitting when I was 12 and didn't have any problems, but then again I grew up with my mom running a home day care so I had taken care of kids for years.  There were also several high school and even college kids that responded, and almost all of them have taken a red cross babysitting course that seems to be a big thing now.  We met with one gal who was really nice, got along great with the kids, (even Erin, who tends to be very shy, warmed up to her after only about 30 minutes) and is a trained lifeguard so I know during the summer if the kids want to swim while she's here, they will be in good hands.  Our shorefront is pretty shallow though too, so I don't need to worry too much.  We're going to give her a chance on Saturday night, it is my Grandma's birthday so we're going to take her out for dinner. 

I know my mom thinks I'm a little rediculous when it comes to sitters for my kids, and the fact that I've never hired one.  But then again there never was a need to, whenever we mentioned possibly hiring a teenager, my MIL offered to watch them, and we didn't really know many teenagers anyway.  We did hire my brother a few times but that's it. 

In August though, I'm going to be in a wedding (we think Scott is too, according to the bride, but as the groom hasn't manned up yet and actually asked him, Scott is not making definite plans yet LOL).  Between the rehersal dinner on Friday night, then the wedding and reception and aftermath on Saturday we're going to need a sitter for quite a bit of time.  Since we may stay overnight on Saturday rather than drive home late at night (and quite possibly a bit drunk) we decided to beg my mom to fly up instead of leaving the kids with a teenager or even a college kid.  We offered to pay for the ticket even, and thankfully she said yes as long as she can get the time off.

Yes, true, part of it is that I worry that a teenager won't take as good of care of them as a grandparent would.  That's a big concern, but an even bigger concern is that my children will go crazy and the babysitter will run from our house screaming in terrror.  At least I don't have to worry (much) about that happening with my mom.  I'm honestly very glad I have a long list of sitters because I'm terrified that my children will be the Dennis the Menace of the neighborhood, and when the sitters see our number on the caller ID they will ignore our calls!  I love my kids dearly, but they are a total handful!  I plan to meet with a few others on our list and introduce them to the kids and give them a try.  I remember sitting for some terrors because their parents paid well, hopefully if we pay well we'll get some good sitters to agree to watch our monsters LOL. 

For all you parents out there who have hired sitters, any advice?  I'm only going from my perspective as a former sitter, and if truth be told, a damn good one at that.  I'd hire me in a second.  I never talked on the phone or had people over, I followed the parents rules, I played with the kids, I cleaned up any messes, I was awesome.  I hope I can find a sitter who is that good.  :-)