Melinda Beth: January 2010

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Saturday, January 30, 2010

Spinning Sarah

Last weekend my husband took the kids out and I stayed home to make some progress on house organization. He took the kids to a church Primary activity, to the library, to the park, and finally to Walmart. I have to say that my husband is a lot braver than I am. He took this video while at the park. It really makes one wonder why they even install an apparatus such as this one. It's a little crazy.

Other than that, not much else in the news. It was a cold and rainy day here so we worked on more home organization. My husband rearranged and cleaned out his office while I cleaned the kids' room closet and sorted more clothes. It was a very productive day, but we still didn't quite finish. Home organization is a continual pursuit.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

1000th Post

So a friend of mine posted her 100th post today, which made me look to see what number I was on, and low and behold today is my 1000th! How cool is that? A while ago I had meant to remember and celebrate and I'm so glad for the reminder because I totally would've forgotten!

So what better topic to post about for a 1000th post than to post about organization. I've been on an organization spree the past week. I think it might be a pre-nesting thing, or maybe just the fact that my house has been in absolute disarray going from 2 months of morning sickness, to Thanksgiving, to Christmas.

My husband finally kindly requested for me to get his office in order because that is where all the junk ended up over the holidays. His "office" happens to be the old boys' bedroom until we moved all the kids into the large master bedroom last January. So the closet in the office is, or actually was, full of bins of boys clothing. Now that I know we are having a boy, it's makes the whole organizing kid clothing thing easier. Basically I emptied out the office closet and moved it all to the current kids' bedroom closet. The office closet will now be a food storage closet full of 6 gallon buckets and #10 cans and I'm quite excited about it. Pictures will come soon.

Anyway, sorting the boys clothing was quite exhausting today. Sizing can get so confusing. There are:
1-3 months
3-6 months
6-9 months
12 months
18 months
24 months
2T
3T
4T
5T
Size 4
Size 4/5
Size 5
Size 5/6
Size 6
Size 6/7
Size 7S
Size 7X

I just don't always know how to group them together because the sizing can all be so different. I wish there was more standardized labeling amongst the brands. Because, seriously, you would think that size 4T and size 4 would be the same, but they are not. Size 4 is really about the same as 5T. And then Gymboree loves to label their infant stuff 6-12 month and 12-18 month and it always seems to run huge. Oh the dilemma of which bin to put it in!! Anyway, enough of the rambling.....

Two days ago I took care of the major sock issue we were facing. Children's socks were EVERYWHERE in our house. I bought a nice over the door shoe organizer at Walmart. Each child gets their own pocket for their socks. There are also pockets for the different sized tights, slips, ruffle socks and brand new packages of Target clearance socks. My husband laughed at me when he saw my solution. He didn't have faith that it would work because he thought Jason would likely get into it and there would be socks scattered around the bedroom in the morning. So far so good. I told my husband I have to at least attempt a solution. So here is a picture to prove what a genius I am:

Slips, tanks, ruffle socks, and knee socks.

Tights

A pocket of socks for each kid, including the new baby and the 8th pocket is for more ruffly socks. Poor Sarah only has 3 pairs of socks. I have no idea what happened to all of them.

Packages of brand new Target clearance socks.

Yay for organization!! And yes, a 1000th post could've been so much more interesting, but this is my life.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Be careful or you'll crack your head open

Tonight as I was washing the dishes after dinner the lights were flickering on and off. It had nothing to do with the power or storms, but rather some little hands. I turned my head and saw Jason by one of the kitchen light switches. I warned him to not play with the lights or he would be in big trouble. Again the lights began to flicker. I turned around and stearnly told him he was in big trouble. He blamed it on Rachel. I thought he was lying because he looked guilty. I failed to see that Rachel was at the other switch across the room flickering the lights as well.

As I finished washing the dishes, Jason took matters into his own hands to solve the problem and decided to remove Rachel from the source that was causing him to get in trouble. He moved the chair that Rachel was standing on to get her away from the switch, causing Rachel to tumble to the floor. I didn't see it happen because I was washing the dishes, but when the crying seemed serious enough I decided to take a look. I rescued Rachel from her supine position and as I lifted her, blood dripped from her head. Emily gasped. I gasped. It freaked me out because I don't like to see blood dripping from my child's head, but I examined the wound it was only about a quarter inch gash caused by hitting the corner of the baseboard (I think). I'm sure she will be fine without stitches. Her hair should cover the scar. Plus I didn't want to miss my night out at a church meeting to learn how to be a coupon wiz.

We put the guilty suspect in charge of janitorial cleanup:

I returned home a coupon whiz. But before I went home I stopped by the grocery store to use my rain check for Buy One Get One Hefty trash bags, which also had a $0.55 coupon attached to each box. I saved $15.14. I really needed those bags too. We were on our last one! Yay for BOGO and coupons!

Monday, January 25, 2010

Watching The Bachelor....

Friday, January 22, 2010

Happy Birthday, Rachel!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Ouch

I spent half the day bent over my bathroom sink trying to get stains out of clothing. Now my back is killing me!! Looks like I'll just have to watch TV or read a book tonight. Darn!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Walmart

We went to Walmart tonight and got McDonald's ice cream cones. We also bought a new scale. Woo hoo! Now I get to track how much weight I gain.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

It's a...

BOY!!

We're excited! We need another one of those.

Monday, January 18, 2010

One More Wayback

Sunday, January 17, 2010

More Wayback

From age two, Jason has been a chocolate scout. If it's there, he will find it, especially chocolate chips.

2009

Hmmm. Apparently he may have inherited it....

1978

Today Jason made it through the entire church wearing underwear with no accidents. I had confidence in him and didn't even bring a spare. Well, I was planning to bring a spare, but we were already running five minutes later than usual and when I realized I forgot them as we were driving down our street, I made the executive decision not to go back and get them.

Jason is having a difficult time adjusting to being a Sunbeam in the big Primary. For 2 out of 3 weeks he's fallen asleep during sharing time. Today one of the teachers came to tell me and thought I might want to get him. I walked into the Primary room where the leader was teaching a lesson and he was sitting in his miniature plastic chair sleeping as his head bobbed and rolled all over. I went over to him and whispered, "WAKE UP!!" Then I took him to the potty. I think that helped to wake him up. But seriously, from a 3 year old's perspective, what's the point in staying awake when there are no toys and most of what you hear is, "Wa wa wa wa wa wa wa . Wa wa wa wa wa wa." Let's hope next week is a good underwear and no accidents Sunday too. (However, I will bring a spare next week.)

Also Jason wore pants all day long without wetting them. He did poop in them later in the evening, but no wetting. Yay! Anyway, his reward for going potty while wearing underwear and pants is a toddler handful of chocolate chips. This afternoon when he was rewarded, he went into the family room to brag to his siblings. He said, "Hey guys! I went pee on the potty. I got choca chips." When there was no response, he said louder, "Choca chips!....Choca chips!!..... Choca chips!!!.....CHOCA CHIPS!" I think he was a little disappointed that nobody was jealous.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Productivity

I'm whooped because we had a productive day today. My husband got the oil changed in his car. I planted some spinach, carrots, and lettuce. I hope it grows. It's worth a try at least until April when we plan our usual crops. I found some heirloom seeds to buy online. I want to try heirloom tomatoes and peppers this year. I grocery shopped. Now I'm about to clean my kitchen up, except my back is very weak and tired, so I took a break to sit down and blog. Apparently on Facebook this week it's "Wayback Week", which means it's encouraged to post some old pics of yourself. I had my parents send me some of when I was a baby and toddler. Here is one:

1977

Look familiar?

2009

If only I had a Cheerio on my head.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Tum Tum Tum Tum

All I can say tonight is:

INDIGESTION! Bring on the Tagamet because Tums just don't cut it. Yes, I'm getting fat. My abdomen is pushing into my esophogeal sphincter and my lungs. I guess it will be 4 more months of uncomfortableness. People at church are always surprised when I go back to church so soon after having a baby. But the truth is that I feel 100 times better the week after I have a baby than I do the four months before I have a baby, so why wouldn't I go? I am able to bend over and grab crayons and sippy cups off the floor while sitting on the pew. I can breathe and sing hymns easily. And I can walk without waddling. So, no, I am not one of those women who declares, "I LOVE being pregnant!" It has it's perks though. Like the fact that I can go eat a big fat piece of cheesecake right now and wash it down with a glass of milk and a Tagamet capsule and not feel bad about it. I also like that I get to decide what restaurant to go to when dining out. However, we don't dine out quite as often as we did when we had 1, 2, or 3 kids.

Today I had some insurance issues to deal with. Seriously, insurance issues can take all day sometimes. I was trying to figure out how to deal with primary and secondary insurance. Anyway, while I was on the phone and computer, the kids were playing "bus station". My husband found a bus ticket in the kitchen this evening. On the front it said:

Stops:

Poopland

Anusland

Nice. Apparently I spent too much time on a particular planet in our Solar System lesson yesterday and my son got fixated on a particular body part. But you have to admit that "Uranus" is a hilarious name for a planet. The book we were reading was telling us that "Although the weather on Uranus cannot be seen by the naked eye, it is highly active." Uranus also "contains a thick layer of methane in it's upper clouds." It was an entertaining lesson.

I think I really needs some more adult time. Sorry.

Now to leave you with a short educational Animaniacs clip that teaches us about the planets:

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Random Rambling

Mondays might be a slow blog post day for me for the next several weeks because the Bachelor is on. I have my priorities.

Not much new is going on right now. I'm having a difficult time getting back into the swing of things. We have a more relaxed homeschool schedule during the holidays and I took an extra week off after the company left to kind of wind down. So now the kids are having a hard time kicking into full blown school mode. All Sarah wants to do it play. I don't blame her. I crashed this afternoon at 4 PM on my bed while the kids watched TV. I didn't even hear the phone ring when my husband called. He said it worries him when I don't answer because he thinks I must be rushing a kid to the hospital.

Now I have a kitchen to finish cleaning, ornaments to take off the tree, and some more TV to watch. I'm also trying to balance my reality TV shows with some literary excellence. I've chosen to read Emma by Jane Austen. PBS is broadcasting a 3 part miniseries beginning January 24th, and I thought it might be fun to watch, as well as the movies with Gwenyth Paltrow, and Kate Beckinsdale. I've never been much of a novel reader, probably because I have ADD or something. I have a difficult time finishing anything including books and projects. I'm more of a short story and magazine article kind of person. Or better yet, just give me a good quote. I'm also a fan of Rachael Ray's 30 minute meals.

So that's all for now, folks. Not even a picture.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Youth

Today at church we were introduced to a new missionary that is serving in our ward. My first thought when I saw him was, "Wow. I didn't know that they let the the Young Men go on missions." In other words, he looked very young, in the 10-14 years old range. Anyway, I don't feel bad about mocking his youthful appearance because I've experienced people thinking I'm younger than I am. Unfortunately my voice doesn't help any in making me sound more mature. Now that I'm in my thirties, looking and sounding young doesn't bother me. But in my teens and twenties I failed to realize that it might eventually be flattering. It's weird though because when I study myself in the mirror, I see exactly a 33 year old in physical appearance, which makes me believe that I must just simply exude immaturity. I'm ok with that. I will always think fart sounds are funny.

My husband reminded me at lunch today about a time after we first got married. I was 24 years old. We were both serving in the Youth program at church and were chaperoning a youth dance. I was standing around chaperoning and a boy came and asked me to dance. I danced with him. He was about the same height as me, probably about 15 or 16 years old. I think I asked him if he was having a good time. Then he asked me what school I went to. It wasn't until that point that I realized he actually thought I was a teenager. I thought he was just a nice kid trying to be nice to a youth leader by asking her to dance. My brain immediately raced to find the appropriate response in order not to embarrass him or myself. I didn't find it and I just simply said, "I don't go to school. I'm a leader." I don't remember his response because it was at that point that I tucked the experience into the back of my memory. I felt so bad for him because I could tell he was embarrassed. Thankfully the song ended and I quickly went back to my fellow youth leaders and laughed off the embarassment with them. I'm glad I didn't tell the kid I was pregnant. It still cracks me up to think about it. I'm sure if the lights weren't dim, he would've seen that I was nearly 10 years older than him and that the ring on my left hand was not a CTR ring.

So yay, for youthful looks. I guess. I see the crow's feet, sagging lines around the mouth, and fading collagen. So I'm thinking maybe it's my youthful chest that can still fit into a pre-teen training bra that gives me a younger appearance? I don't know. I just hope to live to be a ripe old age and that my voice will deepen as I grow older.

Now here's a picture depicting the delicious part of youth:

And a here is a gift from my older sister this past Christmas:

Seriously, what's the point in growing up? Maturity is so boring.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Happy New Year

My sister took these pictures on New Years Eve:

That evening we brought in the New Year with:

Fox News

Fake snow from Big Bear, CA.

Mini weiners and other snacks.

Chocolate covered marshmallows.

Pie and Sparkling non-alcoholic white grape juice.

Whip Cream

Lots of it.

Happy New Year!

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

The Homemade Gifts

So tradition has it in our family the kids draw names and they make that person a gift. Of course they are young and require help and brainstorming assistance, but it's a lot of fun. Emily told me this year that it's her favorite part of Christmas.

So this is what we came up with this year. I apologize for some not-so-good photos. I actually broke out the camcorder this year and put my sister and dad in charge of taking the photos. And it's not that they aren't good photographers, it's just that they are not blogger photographers. They aren't thinking, "I need a good photo for the blog." Also, someone set my camera to the Kids and Pets setting, which of course makes sense, but for some reason my camera doesn't take good pictures on that setting. But here they are:

To: Wendy

From: Bradley

Yarn Dolls

There is a Dad, Mom, little girl and little boy. Wendy is holding the little girl. One of these days I will have to get a family photo before they get destroyed. I got the idea from here.

To: Sarah

From: Wendy

Ring Toss Game

This is Jason holding one of the ring toss poles and pretending it's an umbrella. Credit goes to my dad for making the ring poles.

But it never occured to me that we didn't even need poles. We could've just used Rachel's head. (The counting bears have nothing to do with the gift.)

To: Jason

From: Emily

Super J Cape

Emily designed it. I sewed it. I am ashamed to say it's already falling apart. I need to do some mending.

To: Rachel

From: Jason

Jacob's Ladder

Wendy is holding the ladder. It's basically 6 pieces of square wood that I Modge Podged some polka dot print paper to and then my dad helped me to carefully nail strips of ribbon to make a nifty toy. The ribbon nailing was a little more intense that I had thought it was going to be and I was thankful I had my dad with his patience and help. (Notice my polka dot socks too.)

To: Emily

From: Rachel

Trick Wallet

This was fun and easy to make. I saw a video tutorial online that I modified. It's pretty much cereal box cardboard, fabric, and elastic put together with some masking tape and a hot glue gun. The outside has a matching floral print. Emily thought it was pretty cool.

To: Bradley

From: Sarah

Stilts

These are pretty cool. My dad gets full credit for making these fully functional. There are holes to adust them higher. Bradley hasn't tried them outside yet because the ground was so soppy and now it's just too cold. But hopefully soon.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

What did Santa bring?

New pillows!

Santa's elves must have seen how gross the old ones were.

A Rubik's cube, race cars and punch balloons.

A Zero Gravity Laser for Bradley.

A Fisher Price schoolhouse for Rachel.

A car carrying case for Jason. (Looks like Santa is a little biased toward Target.)

A Magic set for Emily.

Rapunzel Barbie for Wendy. (However, Wendy's favorite gift, that she asked Santa for, was a necklace that was in her stocking. I failed to get a picture of it.)

Barbie Clean Up Pup for Sarah.

Santa also brought some games - Hungry Hungry Hippo, Guess Who, Apples to Apples Junior, Let's Go Fishing, and Hyper Blast. Apples to Apples Junior was a total hit.

And he left some movies - Up, Fairytopia, and Tinkerbell Lost Treasure.

Good Job, Santa! He must have thought those kids had been good this year.

Monday, January 04, 2010

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was a day of festivities. The weather was rainy and humid. I actually needed to turn on my air conditioning to only find out that it didn't work! I just spent $225 earlier that week to fix the heater upstairs! I set aside the frustration and decided not to worry about it until it gets warm again. Right now on January 4th as I write this, it's 27 degrees outside. The last thing I need is AC. Here are some pics to describe December 24th:

The snack spread. We had cheese and crackers, vegetables and dip, beefstick, pretzels and cream cheese, Goldfish crackers, rye bread dip, and 7 layer bean dip with tortilla chips.

After snacks we opened some presents from Aunt Chera and Grammy and Papa Dave (David's parents and sister.) Rachel got a cute little bunny from Chera that came from London. The kids also got some magazine subscriptions to kid magazines from David's parents and some toys.

We took a dinner break. It was ham, scalloped potatoes, sweet potato casserole, rolls, and Jello. The kids pretty much ate Jello, applesauce, and Goldfish.

After dinner we opened more presents. Mommy and Daddy gave the kids Target clearance clothes and each a toy. Jason got a T-shirt that says, "Be Green. It's Cool." (His favorite color is green.)

Emily got a Knifty Knitter. It's pretty cool. I've been having fun with it. I think next year everyone will be getting scarves from Emily.

The kids gave Daddy a pickle jar of 60 Reasons Why They Love Him. I got the idea from Family Fun Magazine. We originally tried to gather 365 reasons, but 60 is all we could come up with, for now at least. We'll have to add more later. My favorite is: "He's good at shooting bugs with rubber bands." -Bradley

David got me a WD TV Live. David was extremely disappointed that I didn't' get more excited about it. I thought I was getting an iPod with a speaker system, so I had to shift modes and try to understand what a WD TV Live even is. Basically it's a technological device that allows you to hook it up to your computer network and watch things you have downloaded to a hard drive on your TV. I'm still trying to learn it. But it is pretty cool. The kids already know how to work it. It's cool because we can watch our camera videos on the TV now. Supposedly there's a way to watch Hulu and other Internet stuff on TV, but we need to get a new compatible router and some software. I'm such not a tech geek. It takes me a while to learn this stuff.

The traditional Christmas PJ pose. My parents found these cool pajamas at Gymboree this year. It's amazing they could find them all in the right sizes. Too bad they didn't have adult sizes. Normally it would be a picture of just the kids, but Jason was being stubborn and needed to sit on a lap.

To be continued...

Sunday, January 03, 2010

All is Well

I'm alive. I'm alive. I told my husband that I hadn't posted for nearly two weeks. He said I better or he was going to log into my account and post that I was dead. Now that would be cruel because you all love me. Right? So here I am attempting some catch up. I am a horrible Blogger when company is in town. I kind of feel like I should be spending my time with them instead of on my computer and I think I made the right decision the past two weeks because we had a great time.

Here are some pics to show the festivities. I may have to do this in batches over the next week. I'm not looking forward to getting back into the swing of things, so reliving the Christmas magic might be nice:

Baking cookies. And lots of them. It was a sugary and delicious mess.

Waiting in line for Santa.

Not everyone was that excited to see Santa.

The best picture we got.

I love cotton candy. I totally don't understand why my kids won't eat it. It was even Wendy's favorite color purple. I guess they don't like the texture.

Riding the train. Sarah got to ride with David's sister.

I got to ride with Rachel.

Jason rode with Papa.

Roasting marshmallows. Jason is interested in Rachel's shoe.

Guilty suspects found the cookies.

To be continued....

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