Halloween sloth

The allergies are acting up today, so I decided early on that I would dress up as a Halloween sloth. I really wanted to lay here and do absolutely nothing, but I ended up going to school to take goody bags to teachers and watch the parade of book character costumes. My girls went as a Pippi Longstocking and Junie B. Jones. So very cute.

I did some laundry, grocery shopping, cooking and napping. Every year for Halloween dinner we have the same thing: pizza cups. Now, don't confuse it with "Pizza in a Cup" like from "The Jerk", but biscuits in a muffin tin with browned beef, pepperoni, bacon and pizza sauce. A little cup of pizza. We then went with our dear friends and their children for the 6th year in a row of Trick or Treating.

Several houses later, including those of two of our ministers, we arrived back home....candied up and tired. The kids are now sleepy and I am headed for that direction very soon.

I enjoy Halloween. I enjoy the creativity of costumes, the cheap scares and the fellowship it inspires. But most of all, after attending a crazy costume party with our friends, Brian and I decided to be a couple. That's what I love most about Halloween. Peace and Marty Womble, friends.

Difficult discussions

This picture really has nothing to do with anything, but I found it in the basement on the easel. I believe G did it. It looks like one of her hurried robots. But, the sentiment is somewhat apropos.

The boy was not feeling great, nor sounding great, so we were heathens and stayed home from church. While it felt good to sleep in, there is always something missing when we don't go to church. The kids have their best friends there...as are ours. While at home this morning, we chose to get some cleaning done and help the kids ready their book character costumes for tomorrow. S had some 4H work to do for school, so we assisted in that as well. We took an afternoon jaunt to the boy's soccer party, where he received his first ever trophy. He has been holding that thing as though it is as fragile as a baby. I am so excited for him. He is so proud of himself and his team. On the way home, I received a call from someone close to me. We discussed pleasantries and then got down to business. We have a mutual friend who has gotten in some messes. It is hard to watch someone you love continuously mess up. Well, I was talking in code and synonyms so as not to have questions from the little ears in the back of the car. Thinking we were in the clear, I went on about the evening and began to work on goody bags for G's class. S had not yet had real dinner since cheeseless pizza was not an option at the soccer party. So while I set out the candy in little anal retentive rows, I could see the sideways glances from her and knew the wheels were turning. She also knows of another situation with a person she may never meet due to the decisions they have made. I won't go into detail, the inferences you make are probably accurate, but they are painful ones for our family. As parents we want to shield all the bad things from our children, but we can't. Have I given her all the details? No. She is a child and she does not need to know. But I feel an obligation to answer her questions as best I can. It saddens me to know that she may never meet someone due to their decisions. She'll never know the personality, the kindness of the individual when meeting in person. What broke my heart and warmed it at the same time was her response. She wanted to have her Christmas gift money go towards the expense incurred when communicating with this person. While I beamed with pride over this unselfish act, I was angered that it had to be in her thought pattern at all. People make mistakes and some make big ones that they, and their families, pay dearly for. As a mother, I pray that my children will make good decisions in their lives and will never have others discussing their potential demise. I just never thought, after a breakfast of pancakes and a happy soccer party with pizza, that I would be having that kind of talk with my oldest. Thank goodness she got involved in the Halloween challenge on Food Network. I hope that is what stays in her mind...but I know it won't be.

Pumpkins

We awoke this morning to a wet, cold day. The sun had yet to appear, but it was forecasted to make an appearance. The boy joined us to get warm and greeted us with a nice seal bark of a cough and a juicy, goopy nose. Thank goodness he was still very cheerful...for 5:50am...good grief. This is when I started really hoping that we would not have soccer games. Pooled water...36 degree temps...cruddy boy...why not go and risk getting pneumonia or a leg injury. When we got the email a bit before 8am that there would be no soccer, I let out a "Whoop whoop" that could be heard throughout the neighborhood. The girls immediately began to cry, well one was already crying due to a ripped contact lens, and the boy was handing out toilet paper(his solution for all types of injury and heartache). After having a mommy talk with the girls explaining that this was all for their safety, we soothed their broken hearts just a little with a special breakfast out to Panera. It is amazing the power of hot chocolate. Still on our quest to find iPhones and the ideal new cellular company, we ran to a new AT&T to attempt to talk with a non-nimrod. That is not nice, but if your commission depends on you selling items, and someone came in to purchase an item, you would think they would try their best to sell that item to you....instead of saying "Why would you want one of those?". Just saying. The lady was very nice and helpful and knowledgeable, so we left with lots of FOOD for thought(thanks, Don Dare). When then headed on our merry way, going home so Brain could crunch the different numbers. The kids were relieved to have lunch,. The girls had many sword battles on the Wii, the boy rested and I got in a friendly argument with our current cell company about the Android operating system. It was nice to politely vent to a friendly, well-meaning but unhelpful employee. Then I realized out of the blue, somewhat of a Quantum Leap so to speak, that we only had one pumpkin to carve and we needed to get at least one more and get a carvin'. Dear Mr. Don at Kroger informed me that there were no more at anyof their stores and "Why don't you go to Pratt's?". So I did and, $8 later, had two more pumpkins to deal with. The girls each picked their pattern of choice from this year's latest Pumpkinmasters offerings. A fairly calm activity to do with sick ones and tired parents. The kids were thrilled with their results and we were ready for them to go to bed.

As we now sit and watch the UT game and, as of right now, sorry Vols, I think about what the past two months have given us. We have had good exercise, lessons in team building, listening to coaches and being a good sport....and the pleasure of watching some excellent games. What we have missed is real together family time. Being together today, smooshed up on the couch and enjoying each other's company , I realized how much I had missed that kind of activity. We are always so busy during the week and the time is drawing to a close, though somewhat slowly, for the children to want to be with their parents in this fashion any more. S is growing up so fast, it takes my breath away to see her. So are G and the boy. Slow down, Time!

So, I know they were disappointed and cried, but I will take a good family bonding day like this over soccer anyway. And I'll cherish every single one.

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Annoying apps

I probably am not going to write much this evening. I uninstalled and reinstalled my BlogPress app in hopes of getting back a more iPad friendly way of writing this blog. Once reinstalled, everything looked good. I was so excited to write about today, especially since I had taken lots of good pictures to chronicle the goings-on. Well, as a good wife of an IT man, I have absorbed a teeny tiny speck of the computer advice he has given me. I went to save what I had written so far, which was fairly sizable with pictures and some drawings to come. Well, all of a sudden the app failed and I was staring at all 6 versions of Angry Birds my kids have uploaded. The dramatic "Nooooooooo" screamed from my mouth, followed by a quiet string of profanity. Don't judge me...it was inspired writing(cough cough). Needless to say, I was very disturbed and annoyed and hacked and shafted. But, alas, it was all gone, just like Ralphie Parker's Christmas turkey after the Bumpus dogs got a hold of it. No barbershop photos, photos of Fin, photos of cell phone companies, no blogging with photo explanation of our oldest putting her new contact lenses in. Nothing. So, I went the old fashioned route and went though the website. So , I am now going to give you a mini rundown of our day: the boys are shorn at Jerry's, spilled coffee all over myself at Panera, changed clothes at home, went to Verizon and AT&T to see about iPhone options, argued about our current service with our current carrier, ate lunch, snuggled with boy, got G warmed up after soggy Ijam's field trip, watched my oldest show me how she puts her contacts in and succeeded in not barfing on the floor, ate pizza with the family, watched The Great Pumpkin with the kids and the the final season of "Chuck" with the kids, watched the girl take her contacts out, again without barfing and sat down on the couch to blog and listen to Keith Morrison on Dateline. Now, don't try to replicate my day for your own excitement...few can handle quite this much fun. Work up to it. Now I am secretly(not so much anymore)hoping that the last day of soccer is cancelled and the we can have an easy morning. Oh well, que sera sera. We'll deal with whatever we get. Now off to bed to watch the rest of Dateline. It is a life of excitement most can't handle. I know you are allllll jealous. :)

Busy day, weird stuff and fun evening

Today was an interesting day. It started off in kind of a wet and dreary way. The kids went to school and I ran errands. Then, after perusing the Lego nation at Target, I went home to clean and sort mounds of laundry. While I enjoy the break that T/Th's without kids provides, I find them to be extremely lonely. So, while sorting the laundry, I find odd programs to have on for background noise. I can't even tell you what I watched...the remote was buried under the laundry and I worked to find it by putting laundry away. After getting that done, I went to get the boy from school. We went to see his allergist, Dr. Ellenburg. We were delighted to find out that Fin is now down to yearly visits with him....hopefully never to have to progress to shots ever. Fin was delighted to show the doc and NP how his skeleton shirt glowed in the dark and could dance. It's the little things, you know? After arriving home, the kids prepared for soccer. The Brain was very disappointed to not have the stalker neighbor girl experience today. He was prepared to go to war if the acorn throwing started again. Well, we are safe for another day. I prepared for my once a year outing of the grown up kind. My "sister" and I went to eat and to a haunted tour of Blount Manson, well really the area around the mansion and downtown. It was nice to have adult conversation and grown up food and beverage and good laughs and a rainy, interesting walk downtown. We have decided to start writing material for and preparing for the haunted tour of our own neighborhood next year. Highlighting the house burnt down by an insane person, the place where the attack dog lives, the street where there is excess litter. Interesting and chilling info like that! It was a fun evening and I learned some things:

(1) scallops taste so much better whenI don't prepare them myself
(2) Ghost stories are all in the delivery
(3) I need to be better about purging items in them fridge. Apparently Sarah said her yogurt tasted weird tonight. When Brian looked at the foil tab top, it read "Aug 17". Don't judge me...they dug it out from the bowels of the fridge. Okay, bad choice of words.
(4) any sequel to "The Dancing Outlaw" has got to be entertainment gold....and full of drugs and profanity.
(5) My husband is a smart aleck for teasing me about my compromised bladder integrity(due to three children)when headed out on a haunted tour. I didn't have one accident out of fear, or for any other reason.
(6) As hard as it is, I love being a stay at home mom and really miss my kids when I am daway from them.
(7) My husband is a saint for putting up with me and I so appreciate him letting me have a break.

Tomorrow is a day full of excitement, so time to ZZzZZzZzZZzzzzzz........

Bizarro day

I am determined that I live in the bizarro world. I know I live in my own little world lots of the time, but today has been a doozy. I was accused today of always having a bad day, so I need to either stay inside forever, not tell anyone I had a bad day or just accept the bad days as the norm. Honestly, none of the options sound pleasant at all. I need a place to vent, so I will just comeuppance with a new option...I will create an imaginary friend. It seems to be the only option at this point. Anyway, this is how the day of strange went. After taking charge of Sarah's glasses at soccer last night, we woke up this morning to realize that the glasses were nowhere to be found. Oh crap! What are we going to do? I sent the girl to school "spec-less" and tore the house up looking for them. Nothing. So, after mailing a package and running a few other errands, the boy and I took a jaunt to the soccer fields. Miracles do happen because the sweet little Vera Bradley glasses were l
Nestled in the grass, covered with dew. It was a miracle. After taking the glasses to their happy girl, we went to the grocery store. Relatively normal. After putting groceries away, we met our friends at the zoo before the weather gets awful. This is when my child decided to lose his mind. I think he wanted to show off for his friend, but he broke every rule he knew. I can only hope that we will be able to have another play time with them. He had an almost 10 minute power snooze and was ready for more. We picked the sisters up and headed home to do homework before going to church activities and dinner. This is when things got interesting. G's friend has desperately wanted to "see the inside" of our house. I told her that would be fine...I just wanted to talk to her mother before I let her in. I wouldn't send my child to a strangers house before getting to know the people a bit first. For the past several days, the kids have come to our house as we were getting ready to leave. Today, we went upstairs to do homework, put laundry away and let me wash my hair. All of a sudden, there was a pounding on our door. Then kicking. Then screaming for G to come out and play. The kids went bonkers. I hissed at them to be quiet and wait until they left. I had too much to get done, as did the children, and I could not get into playdates and messing at that point. Well, they stayed and pounded and stayed and screamed for G and stayed. Then the boy decided to go downstairs and let them in since they were screaming. He thought they were hurt. After the behavior at the zoo and now trying to open the door to strangers, he was in super mega trouble. The girls continued to pound and kick and scream. Then, they started throwing acorns at the picture window. I am not sure why they thought that that, after kicking and pounding, would make a difference in whether we answered the door or not. I finally was spotted peeking out of a top floor window. I then opened the window and said we were doing homework and leaving in 10 minutes, which was all true. I then told them to have their mom call me so we could talk and make plans. This will not happen. I feel so terribly sorry for these. Girls. They need a friend and a house they can visit that is safe and stable. As much as I want to be that house for them, I have to take care of my children. It saddens me that children have
Agents that allow them to wander around and have no clue as to where they are and really not care. I just ask people to pray for these children. I worry about them.

At least we are ending the night with Modern Family. That makes things a bit more tolerable. We just found out that the stomach bug is going around Sarah's room. Let's hope we don't get it. I don't have an ample stash of ginger ale and saltines at this point.

I will do my best to have more positive posts. Guess we need to go back to Pizza Inn.