The week in review

Finally, our internet is back up!  And we didn't get such a bad deal for the inconvenience...we were without service for a week, but Verizon is giving us a month's credit on our account.  I can deal with that!  But now that I am a "blogger" (sounds so nerdy), it was a pain not being able to update my little site.  I had so much to talk about.  I'll give the quick rundown....potential titles only; the content can be up to your imagination:

* Underwear shopping with Nolan, or, "Mommy, you're fat! Hahahahahahaha!!!!"

* Why do old people think they just rule the world

* There's a fine line between "chic" and "1st grade arts & crafts project", and I'm teetering on the edge

* Choco-NOT-a-lotta

* I have more clients now than I did when I was actually working

 * The Makeover

I'm so excited about the makeover one, I'll give you a hint!

Friends & Coffee

To do: call people about cakes, clean floors, Big Lots (?), get stamps

Not an exciting to-do list, but I'm not bored by it.  I'm so thankful that I'm able to be home and get these kinds of things done. And the fact that Abby has a day off today makes it even better!  I love having my little drop-out wannabe home for a change.  Parent-teacher conference tonight - whoa.  It's hard to believe that I have a school-age kid.  That's so "old"!!! 

Yesterday was such an emotionally "full" day.  It started with a nice little tiff with DH in the morning - over coffee.  Ahhh.  Gotta love the Sunday morning tiff.  Nothing like it to really prepare me to go worship God at church, right?   (We're buddies again, fyi.)  But it was difficult, because he was on his way to more training in Monroeville, and stayed overnight last night...so that was the last real interaction we had before he left...which stinks. 

After church, it was just the kids & I...I was using my Sunday afternoon to be totally lazy - we were all very tired.  Well I picked the wrong day not to vaccuum, because I got an unexpected (but pleasantly so!) visit from a friend bearing chocolate.  After a little small talk, she really hit me with some heavy stuff.  Our little afternoon social call turned into a major heart to heart, which I am so glad I could be there for. 

Then it was my turn...during AWANA Sunday nights, I've taken to going to everyone's favorite over-priced coffeeshop and relaxing with an engrossing book for an hour or so.  I really love that time that I have all to myself.  But I love it even more now, that some of my friends have started to join me!  I've had more amazing, uplifting, satisfying talks over the last month than I may have had all year.  That could be an exaggeration, but not by much!  I hope they continue...and that I can be as good of a listener & friend that my 3 dear friends were to me last night.  Thanks girls - I love each one of you!!!

Halloween...check.

Whew...whew.  I like to be festive, but I am so glad Halloween is finally over.  I'm just TIRED!  I think we did way more holiday-related activities than a day like Halloween deserves.  But it is what it is.

The whole Halloween-fest '09 started Tuesday, when the kids & I ventured downtown via the much-begged-to-go-on Johnstown Inclined Plane.  Truth be told, that was pretty much our favorite part of the outing.  The kids got to give the man their tickets themselves, which was just adorable.  Then I got to hide my own terror/nausea/panic and pretend that it was great fun to ride down the world's steepest incline from Westmont to downtown. Actually, seeing the kids' faces, and their total fascination with the whole experience, made it really cool.  The parade itself was fine, but we left a little early because frankly, I think even the kids were bored, and miffed that the candy thrown at them from the floats was mostly just those gross, fake-tootsie roll-flavored chewy things.  Seriously, people.  Give them something that won't sit in the bottom of the Halloween candy bowl for months and months until I finally throw it away.  Also, it was raining pretty steadily, and we were wet, tired, and cold!!!  But the kids were troopers and we had a good time.

Then it was on to Thursday, with each of the kids' Halloween parades at school, and to a pumpkin farm that evening.  By then it had stopped raining - yay! - and it was a really fun day, although packed full.  First was Nolan's preschool parade.  I sewed him a pumpkin costume that I was sure was 100% unique.  So when the kid came out the door wearing NOLAN'S COSTUME, I thought, "oh no!  they got the costumes switched...what is Nolan going to come out as???"  I put his name on the bag, but not in the costume itself.  Darn it!!! But then, another kid came out in the same costume....then Nolan came out in his costume!  I guess Simplicity 2788 is a lot more popular than I realized.  :)  Next was Abby's parade, which was too cute...it's so strange, she's such a "big girl" all of the sudden.  There she was, walking through the school's parking lot with a bunch of "big" elementary school kids - and looking like one of them.  Hard to believe.

 

THEN it was on to a local farm with a corn maze, hayride, and all kinds of fall fun.  I was so glad it didn't rain, because I'd already told the kids we were going.  We went with some of my MOPS friends and kids, and if that was the only thing we did all fall, it would have been perfectly great.  Moms & kids alike had such a great time.  And I learned that picking out your own pumpkin from a pumpkin patch is really overrated.  YUCK!  Our shoes got encrusted with mud, and we really had to pick through the pumpkins to find a decent one that didn't have "goo" on it (as Nolan liked to say).  But everything else about the little farm trip was great.

I'm getting tired just trying to recall all this.  The rest is short and sweet: we went trick-or-treating with Tyler & Uncle Mo on a VERY chilly night with two not-in-the-greatest-of-moods kids.  You do the math.   But you can't say they weren't the cutest little trick-or-treaters out there...

Fall fun

 rolling down the hill

 

Ferndale Homecoming (that's Ian & Jenny - in HC court!)

 

 

Jumping in leaves

***

Soon to come...picking out pumpkins, Halloween parade (to & from which we will be taking the long-promised Incline ride), and trick-or-treating.  The costumes are done and they are CUTE!!!  I'm sure there's more stuff going on this week, but the calendar is very hard to read right now.  Abby took the liberty of writing in her "special classes" for school - the ones that rotate each day...

and for November...

"...won't Mom be pleased." - Mercer Mayer

A Betty Crocker Moment

To do: rest of laundry, fridge (didn't do yesterday), and figure out what people are getting for Christmas.  I'm making a lot of things this year, so I have to start on them...like yesterday. I have two free hours this morning while Nollie is at preschool.  We'll see what happens.

So...on to the fall activities that have been going on around here.  Here was the idea: mini caramel apples.  What could be cuter.  Especially given that I kind of...ate...enough caramels out of the bag to make it not a full enough bag to do regular-sized apples.  Not all in one sitting, mind you...just here and there...I felt pretty sheepish about it if that makes anyone feel any better.  So anyway, what could be cuter, easier, more kid-friendly than these little mini-apples you can make? 

Certainly not these...

 

There.  It's out there.  This is what happened to our Betty Crocker moment.  I guess my first red flag was when the melon-baller wasn't turning out nice little spherical mini-apples.  I guess that's why it's not called an apple-baller.  But no matter...they would still taste good, right?  I had that caramel so smooth and silky-looking, it was a thing of beauty.  All I had to do was get the sticks for the kids to poke into the little misshapen apple thingies.  I turned the burner down waaaay low, left the stove for about 7 seconds, and came back to what looked like a layer of tar on the bottom of my saucepan.  And bubbling caramel with little tar bits all through it.  But NO MATTER, I could just dip the apples in the good parts of the caramel, right?  Sure!  So, at this point, at the dipping stage, it hit me why you don't normally see caramel apples that have the skin off.  DUH!  The caramel doesn't stick to the inside so well, or even at all.  I had to take a paper towel and dry these stupid things off as well as I could, and THEN dip them in whatever caramel I could salvage BEFORE it got too cool to coat the apples.  I had to reheat it once, which was kind of the proverbial nail in the coffin.  With Abby watching me try to dip these things, asking me questions like, "is it supposed to look like that?" and "is the caramel going to taste good?" I was fighting the urge to just burst into tears.  But I held it together, gave up on the apples, and got the kids some sprinkles from the cupboard that they could roll their (un-carameled) apples in and eat.  They thought it was just awesome.  :)

aggravation

I am so aggravated today.  "People" (ahem) have been making  me feel angry, frustrated, USED, unappreciated...you name it!  Instead of venting about it all (which is what comes naturally to me)...I want to share this.  I read it a few months ago when I was feeling this way and it really was like being hit with a gong - I just "got it."  It's from a Kay Arthur devotional...it's amazing how God can even use a mere 10 minutes a day...I read this one often...

"Have your circumstances been difficult lately?  Are you feeling uptight about everything that's going wrong?

When you let the worries of life get to you, it can affect your relationships with others.  You become frustrated, pound things, set them down hard, or slam them!  You're tempted to vent the frustration of difficult circumstances in one way or another on a person or an object.  You find yourself wanting to chew out the kids, kick the cat or throw out the dog, hide and glare behind the newspaper, or just tune out the family and turn on the TV - loud!  Or perhaps you only want to slam the bedroom door, crawl into bed, and pull the blankets over your head.

Beloved, this is not the way to handle frustration!  When things get difficult, God says, 'Let your gentle spirit be known to all men.  The Lord is near.'  (Phil. 4:5). 

God is there, my friend.  Shut your mouth, and willfully give your frustrations to Him.  Then take a deep breath and let the Spirit take control.

Today, Father, I take all my frustrations and worries and drop them at Your feet.  Breathe Your peace into my heart so that I can respond in love to those around me rather than letting circumstances rule my life."

What a relief to be able to "let the Spirit take control."  God knows what's wrong in my life and He knows how to fix it. 

the anti-climactic first post!

Well hi!  I created this blog to put all the stuff on that I don't want to bore people on Facebook with, if that makes any sense.  I think more people should have blogs for that very reason.

Anyway, to start the ball rolling, here's my to-do list for the day (and this is always in addition to my "regular chores" which are, indeed, a chore)....  This is an actual list that I wrote down over coffee this morning.  I do this almost every day.  Abby (my dazzlingly clever 6 year old) has even gotten in on it.  Sometimes she adds things to my list, and sometimes she makes her own (adorable) list.  This is my way of making sure that I don't sit around and be lazy all day, which is my total natural inclination.  When I was a new mommy, I would put things on it like, "brush teeth" and "get dressed," just so I would remember to do those things, and also so I could have something to cross off and feel that I'd accomplished something.  I'm proud to say that those things are pretty much automatic now and I've moved up to the big leagues.  Or at least the pony leagues.  ;)  So here it is, in no particular order:

Laundry
Contact MOPS girls
Mail the thing
Clean out fridge
Make bread
Call Trisha about meals
Call Andrea
See about Lia Sophia people, call Helen

Try to contain your excitement.  (That's an instruction to any hapless readers, not an item on my list.)

In reading other people's blogs, I have noticed that they're a lot more interesting with pictures, so let me put up one of my adorable kids!  (I know.......but mine really are adorable.)


See?  ;)  That's Abby and Nolan at their birthday luau last month.  Their b-days are 2 years and 8 days apart, so we usually have a big family & friends party for both of them at the same time.  I think this year was the funnest (?) one ever!  Kids were everywhere.  It was a blast!

Abby is 6 & in kindergarten, and Nolan is 4 & in preschool (2 mornings a week). More on the kids later. 

At the moment I have to....well you see my list up there!