Tis The Season

We are busy as always. Thanksgiving always brings a flurry of activities to this house and this year is no different. What was different was Hubby got home last Monday evening and was home the rest of the week and that always keeps me busy. Last year, Hubby didn't make it home for Thanksgiving, so to have him home the entire week was a change. Thanksgiving here is also the beginning of little league basketball games.

Saturday was the kids first game. It wasn't actually a game as much as it was an exhibition. Bryce and Belle both won their games while Brady lost his. Brady wasn't as disappointed as I expected him to be considering his siblings won their games. Now maybe his coach will teach the teams how to run plays instead of focusing on certain kids? Maybe?

I spent Friday racking my brain trying to decide if the kids had everything they needed for the science fair that is a week away. I have salt, pepper, comb, balloon kit (with helium tank), string, cardboard, three different types of gum, construction paper and three display boards. If I need anything else, please put me out of my misery. I hate science fairs.

Today has been busy as well. We went to church this morning, came home for lunch and then loaded Hubby up to leave for the week. After coming home, I got busy. I vacuumed, moved my love seat and put up the tree. As of this moment, half of the limbs have been straightened while the rest wait for me to get up. They will be waiting until tomorrow. I will have to get in the attic for the rest of the decorations and can't do that until tomorrow.

Last Christmas was Zeus's first Christmas and this year is Callie's. She has spent a good deal of time bouncing around in the branches until she forced me to break out my spray bottle. She's given it a break for the last little bit and is playing with Belle's belt.

I also started other household chores when I got home this afternoon. I loaded and ran my dishwasher twice. I am now on my second third fourth load of laundry (and put away the ones I finished). I cooked the kids supper, got them in the tub and in bed. Now I unwind.

Because Hubby and I disagree on some television shows (I despise wrestling), I got some sewing done while watching The English Patient on the laptop in my bedroom. It was a movie that he was never interested in seeing that I wanted to see. While it was running, I fixed the head on a dog, an ear on another dog and sewed an arm on a santa claus. Bryce was nice enough to bring the dog with the fixed ear to tell me his arm is coming off as well so it has been put back in my bedroom until I can get to him tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.

I never realized the power behind a new stove. I am still adjusting my timing because it cooks so much faster than anything I've ever used. Where I used to be able start hamburgers and have plenty of time to finish my fries is now changed. The burgers cooked faster than I've ever had them cook. I can turn my oven on to the recommended temperature without having to adjust it down 25 degrees because the thermostat was a little off. If I had realized the power behind a new stove I would've snookered one out of Hubby a long, long, long time ago. I did realize, however, that now my appliances don't match. I have a white stove with an almond hood, almond dishwasher and almond refrigerator. Looks like I'll have to remodel my kitchen sooner than I had planned. Hehehehehe.

Giving Thanks

There are so many things to be negative about today, so much so that it seems almost everyone has something to complain about. I certainly have my fair share of complaints but I'll spare you those. Instead, bullets of things I'm thankful for.

►My wonderful husband.

►Three great kids.

►A house that is all ours.

►Food on our table.

►The true friends we have.

►Spending time with family.

While these are short, there is so much more I could elaborate. Instead, I'm going to spend time with my hubby. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thankful?

This morning started like most pre-holiday mornings. The kids got out of bed and fixed themselves a bowl of cereal (after watching a little tv first). I got Belle ready for basketball practice and dropped her off by the school at 9. I came home starving, because even though the kids each had cereal does not mean that I did. This morning, I decided that cinnamon toast sounded like a good way to start the day and went about fixing some for me and the boys. I started the oven, fixed my toast, placed the pan in the oven and walked to the living room to talk to Hubby for a minute. Then I started hearing noises. Popping noises. At first, I thought my cookie sheet may have had water in it, but didn't understand why because it had plenty of time to dry from the last time I washed it. I walked into the kitchen to check on my toast and found smoke rising out of my oven. I opened the door to find an oddly bright light, lots of smoke and a small flame. My broiler element was burning out and it took unplugging the stove to get it to stop burning.

Now is the time to put this situation into perspective. I burned out my stove. On the day before Thanksgiving! Words cannot describe the multitude of emotions that a person experiences when their stove goes out on the day before Thanksgiving. Upon further investigation, I found that the manufacturer of this particular dinosaur stove no longer sells the replacement element so I was forced to replace the whole thing. Hubby put her in this afternoon and she works much better than the previous one. I'm also appreciative that Mom is doing most of the Thanksgiving cooking otherwise my problem would've been much larger. Now if Santa will stuff my pocketbook to help cover her cost...

Sickness

Brady got up yesterday morning and climbed in bed with me like he has been the last few weeks. Only yesterday, he started to complain that he didn't feel real well. And he seemed to complain at times that he needed to be doing something. Like hanging his clothes in his closet. Or putting them away in his drawer. So imagine my surprise when he did get sick a little later in the day. He spent all day not being able to hold anything down, causing me to make a last minute trip to Wal-Mart for 7-up, jello and popsicles, none of which would stay on his stomach. Finally about 11:30 last night, he held down a couple of sips of 7-up and went back to bed.

This morning, I was shocked to find him climbing in bed with me. I had made sure when I put them to bed that the alarm wasn't set because I knew that I wasn't sending him to school today. He set it last night when he got his midnight drink and I never knew it because I didn't put him back to bed. He went back by himself. I let him know that he wasn't going to school and regretted that decision almost as soon as the bus ran. He had so much energy! He was eager to play the Wii but refused to eat a piece of toast because that's what made him sick yesterday. I felt better about keeping him home though when he complained his stomach was aching a bit after lunch.What I didn't capture was him jumping up and down because he scored a goal on his game. I wish I had his energy, even on a sick day.

Clean Your Room!

If I heard that phrase once growing up I heard it a thousand times. My room was very seldom clean when I lived at home. If I had friends coming to stay, then it might get cleaned. It might not. Now that I'm an adult, my room hasn't really improved. I admit that I am now responsible for much more than just my room. There's laundry to be done, floors to be mopped, bathrooms to be cleaned but last night and today?

I cleaned my room.

Don't get me wrong. It's still cluttered. Everything that doesn't have a place in the rest of the house usually ends up back there. As of tonight, you could walk through the room without tripping. Or having to step over mountains of debris. Or risk losing something just to make your way to the closet. It's straightened and you can walk without risking life and limb to do so. And now I can breathe.

All in the Family

At least a couple of times a week, I talk to Mom around supper time and she will tell me what her and Daddy are having. A good bit of the time, my response is "Ewwwww!" and Daddy is usually pretty good about judging when that will be my response. Tonight, I had to go to Mom's house for a few minutes. I was expecting them to go to church and not being able to stay long, but unfortunately Daddy worked late they missed church. So we had dinner with them. Mom fixed chicken strips because she knew it was something the kids would eat but when she told Dad what she was fixing, he wrinkled his nose. So she offered to fix something else, with him turning down everything. So she fixed him a hamburger anyway.

He came to the kitchen when she called him for supper, he was surprised to find a burger. "I told you I'd eat chicken."

Mom responded with, "I saw you turn your nose up."

And I countered with, "Now you know where I get it!" which elicited a grin out of him. I knew it wasn't just me!

George and Tyler

I am a bargain shopper. I love end of season sales so you can imagine how ecstatic I was to find these little creatures on sale last week at Wal-mart! I found these while shopping with Mom last Thursday. They were originally $.94 marked down to a quarter. A quarter! So she bought two of them, one in purple overalls and one in green, and gave me the green one. Friday, I went to the store, bought another purple and found these two with denim overalls. Obviously I bought them too. Brady came in on Friday after school and immediately went to play with these two. I asked him to put them down, one of them belonged to Memaw. He decided he was to choose which one she got so she told him since he chose, he got to name it as well. He named the one on the left (Mom's) George and named mine Tyler (yes there is significance to the names there for those who know me). I forgot to take Mom hers this past weekend, so I've had it for almost a week now and Brady can pick them up and still tell you, "This one is George." George is going home this afternoon, but not before Brady wanted a picture of him with his twin.

Chocolate Covered Randomness

To start, I must clarify something. I hate cherries. Could do without them permanently. I don't like them fresh, don't like cherry cheesecakes, and don't care for cherry flavored drinks. I do like chocolate covered cherries at Christmas. Or I should say I like the chocolate covered. I will bite open the chocolate and remove the cherry before eating it because in my eyes the cherry ruins the entire candy experience.

A couple of weeks ago, I stepped in dog doo. Yes, an astonishing fact considering I have three dogs but pertinent. That very same day, just before the mess, Hubby had picked up a new dispenser of toothpicks to take with him. After trying to clean my shoe with an old toothbrush, I asked him to give me a toothpick to finish the job. Instead of getting one out of the cabinet, he opened his package and then forgot said package on the counter when he left for the week. So the next day, when I noticed them, I let him know that he had left them.

"Oh, crap. Just don't use all of them cleaning dog doo out of your shoes."

"I'll just use them to eat your chocolate covered cherries."

"What?"

"Nothing. I didn't say a word."

"Yeah, uh huh."

Now this weekend, Hubby had to have a new box of candies because I ate four while he was gone (and left him with one sleeve). And I say Hubby needed a new box because honestly? I don't need an entire box of candy that I'm going to pick the center out of. He handed me one of the five that was left in the first box and of course I took a toothpick to it.

"Just eat the cherry."

"Krista!" Then I motioned for her to come my way and I gave her the cherry. "See. I ate the cherry."

"No you didn't."

"I did, too. Mini me ate it." He didn't say another word.

Callie

Callie's former owner checks the blog from time to time and shows her kids how big Callie has gotten. I got this picture of her this afternoon and had to share.
I catch her in bags often when she finds one. She'll climb in full bags, too. Reminds me of kids with boxes. Always something to do with an empty box. Or bag.

Sleep Deprivation Hurts

Lately, Zeus has decided that he must go to the door and meow to be let out into the house to use his litter box during the wee morning hours (we've hid the golf bag so he'd stopped sharpening his claws on it to wake us.) And he doesn't just meow. He screams with that tom cat meow that not only wakes me but can also wake the kids. Oh and Callie. Callie has to come down the hallway to my door and add her two cents. So I fuss at him to hush and eventually get up to let him out so that he can come back down the hall not ten minutes later to be let back in. Over the last week, I've averaged maybe 4-5 hours of sleep a night. For me, that's not good. I work better on eight hours.

After landing about 4 hours of sleep on Saturday night, I had to get up Sunday morning to go get Hubby from his truck. He had gotten into town about 3am and slept in his truck until we got there. He only slept about 4 hours himself when I woke him, so while waiting on me to finish checking my email when we got home, he and Gracie took a little snooze.That evening, Gracie and Callie played around Hubby. Who can resist that tongue sticking out?
One day Gracie will realize this isn't a wise way to sit.
The kids have also been keeping me super busy. Cheerleading season ended and we cruised straight into basketball season. Each of my kids are on their own team, practice twice a week, and Bryce and Belle are still going to strings practice on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. If we are really lucky, two of the kids have practice at the same time. Belle usually has practice at their school for basketball at the same time Bryce is at strings practice at the middle school. It happens again when Bryce practices basketball and Belle is at strings. That leaves me with fifteen minutes to get from the kids school to the middle school to get them on time. This week we have had two basketball practices on Monday plus a cheerleading banquet all at different times, a basketball practice and a strings practice on Tuesday and Wednesday, and will have one more ball practice on Thursday and again on Friday. I'm not running ragged. Never. But it is taking a toll on my blogging topics.

My Tom

The kids school hasn't held Halloween party since the year that Bryce started attending. Until this year, they usually had a fall party. Their fall party consisted of everything for a typical Halloween party but without costumes. This year, the school did away with the party all together and had a science day sponsored by the fourth grade classes. The fourth grade set up science "experiment" stations where they "supervised" and each student had to pay a dollar to be able to participate in the day. Bryce and Brady each paid their dollar to do these experiments and the second grade teachers held book character day for his class. I had less than a week to figure out a character for him that was simple enough to create with things we had here at the house. It had to be from a book that was a book before it was a movie and something his reading teacher would approve. While Brady talked about Dr. Seuss and other characters that he had read about, it dawned on me who he could be.

Tom Sawyer. At first it was a hard sell. Hubby and I took time to explain to him who Tom Sawyer was and about how he was a mischievous kid. How he wore plain shirts, cut off jeans or overalls and a straw hat and wanted to spend the day fishing. We even picked up a version of the book at Books a Million for the kids to read. Brady was sold at the word hat. If he could've gotten away with it, he would've went to school barefooted. I would've sent him in flip flops if he didn't have p.e. that day.

Sleeping Habits

Sleep is hard to come by in a house with three kids, five pets and a husband who snores occasionally. Thursday night, sleep was hard to come by for both me and Hubby. I managed to snag a couple of hours while he didn't get much more than that in his truck. Needless to say, after a long night of trick or treating, Hubby and I were both ready to crash by bedtime.

We take steps to ensure that what sleep we get is good sleep. We have fans running to provide white noise. We try to make sure the kids have been through certain steps before bed so that getting up during the night is minor. Hubby sleeps with ear plugs every night while I use them on the nights that he snores enough to prevent me from sleeping. Thursday night I didn't need them. And we crashed. Hard.

Around six Friday morning, Zeus decided that he wanted to go outside. So he started to sharpen his claws on Hubby's golf bag that sits beside the bedroom door. And the bag fell in front of the door, creating a lot of racket on the way down. Now I have learned to adjust to certain noises throughout the night and falling golf clubs were one of those noises. Zeus has knocked them over before so when they fell that morning, I held my breath and waited for Hubby to jump out of bed.

It took fifteen seconds for the noise to penetrate his ear plugs and register in his brain. Fifteen seconds for him to jump up and look out the blinds while trying to determine what it was he actually heard. So I asked him, "What are you doing?"

"I heard something."

"Zeus knocked over your golf clubs."

"Huh?"

"Zeus knocked over your golf clubs."

"Oh."

Now a few hours later, after we had been up for a while, I took the opportunity to explain the time difference that it took from when it actually happened to when he reacted. He still denies it. But he knows it's true.