Shoes

Ok, I am more of a morning person than a night person. Since having kids, I'm usually in bed and fast asleep by 9pm. Being a morning person means that I'm usually cheery in the morning and grumpy by nightfall. Battling allergies and a bit of a cold this week and still dealing with the time-change has made me a bit of a not-any-time-of-day person. So this morning, I am running around doing the last minute things, like redoing Katie's hair for the 5th time, trying to get Zachary to finish brushing his teeth (good heavens he must have some really clean teeth) when I get a minute just long enough to throw on my sneakers. I get them on and take the first step and realize there is something inside my shoe touching my big toe. Well, considering that we have played on a playground full of pebbles the past several days, I just give my foot a jiggle and think this will dislodge the item long enough for me to get Zach to school - as it is now beyond the time we are supposed to be departing. No such luck - it lodges underneath my big toe and I feel more against the other toes. Considering that I have had the terrorizing experience of having spiders and crickets (not to mention a cockroach) in my shoes in years past - I decide that I must remove the shoe and find out the contents - good, bad or ugly. Preparing for the worst, I remove the shoe and out pours a load of ..................... goldfish! At first I was really ticked off because good heavens how long is it going to take me to get all this greasy, crunched up cracker out of my shoe. The more I cleaned it out though, the funnier it got. Neither kid has owned up to it - though both were cracking up - I think it must've been a group effort as the goldfish were pushed all the way up into the toe area so they wouldn't be readily discernable. That means that someone smarter than a 2 year old had to have helped................I wonder who that could've been.......hmmmmmmmmmm......

For all who are wondering, I am still cooking dinner 4 nights a week and Mike takes the weekend duties. He still is the culinary wonder and loves just opening up the cookbook and preparing something new and different. We are still doing Mexican Food Mondays - but this month we saved almost $400 just from taking the difference between the cost of home cooked meals and restaurant meals. That's more than enough incentive to keep us cooking - not to mention me dropping 4 pounds!!

Sports Family

Here are some of the pictures I took this week. Zachary is really kicking our tails at soccer - as you can see from the photos above of him stealing the ball from dad! Mike finally gave up and then I had to get out there and play with him. I actually had to remove my leg braces AND cheat to score against the little toot! Katie's getting very good as well. She can dribble the ball now while at a full run - pretty good for a 2 year old. Zach is also loving football. He and Mike have been playing catch (as has Katie). I won't play football with Zach now unless we use the stuffed football because he throws the ball too hard. Zach's hands have grown so much that he's finding it a lot easier to catch the ball. He's also doing great with his accuracy in throwing it - a little too accurate for my liking! He's beaned me between the eyes 1 too many times for me to play a "simple" game of catch with him. At the end of the day, they both still love to be American Idol contestants - the last photo! They were a'rockin' and a'rollin'!!! Too bad I couldn't catch a photo of them with their microphones - that was really hilarious! It's been a fun week - and I fixed the computer without laying out any $$$ - so all's well!

Technology

This will be a long post because my computer has been messed up all week.

Ugh! I hate technology sometimes. Ok - it's great having a toaster, a blender, electricity and air conditioning but I think it must have been some sadistic jerk who invented the computer! This week has made me want to take a sledgehammer to my laptop........yet again. Are there computer fairies that come during the night and mess with your computer?

Well, I went and registered Zachary for school. I thought I'd be upset, but instead I wasn't - I was kind of excited about this new phase in his life. Of course, it could just be that I'm ready for him to go to school all day too! LOL! This city is "school of choice" under a federal court decree, which means if you're white, you don't get a choice - you get what's available under a lottery system. The lottery system works this way - first choice goes to African-Americans, then siblings, then people who live within the bus routes that serve that school, then everyone else. We, unfortunately, do not have a neighborhood school and we aren't African-American, so that means we're at the bottom of the list to get into a school. We chose the closest school to us and are hoping he gets into it. It's not the best school in the district, but it stays pretty consistent in it's testing scores and it's a smaller elementary. It has a new principal this year and she already knew the name of every child in the school - pretty impressive since there are 300+ students there. It's also on a year-round calendar (balanced-calendar) so Zach will start at the end of July, get 3 weeks of vacation in the fall, 2 weeks at Christmas, and another 3 weeks for spring break and dismiss at the same time in May/June as the other schools. In essence every 9 weeks he'll get a nice break so we can take some vacations and not have to worry so much about having every other school's spring breakers to contend with.

Zachary's been on spring break this week and even though the weather has been pretty uncooperative we've had some fun. We've played outside a lot, had friends over, ate lunch and played at McDonald's and we're going Saturday to Walmart to get his picture taken with Spiderman! We haven't told him yet, he just thinks we have to go shopping tomorrow - it should be a great surprise!

Katie is doing much better the past 2 days...........finally. She's finally kicked the croup, upper respiratory infection, antiobiotic-resistant ear infection (so far on that one), yeast diaper rash and yeast infection. If it wasn't one end - it was the other. LOL! When I was washing her hair yesterday I noticed a huge bump on the side of her head. I stopped and was immediately alarmed until I examined the other side of her head and discovered a similar bump. Great - her head is exploding in size again which can only mean one thing - she's growing again. That also means the clothes she's got right now probably won't fit in a week or so - which probably means I'll be reshoeing the clydesdale again as well! LOL! I told Mike and he thought it was funny until he looked at Zach and discovered his hair wasn't sticking out on the sides of his head because it had grown out some - it was because his head has started exploding too! It's so funny with them - their heads expand outwards before their body shoots upwards. Good thing I bought his jeans long the last time and have been rolling them up. Now I understand why my mom always did that to us!! Lucky for me, pants these days for kids have adjustable waists - unlike my mother who was the darting/hemming queen!

Ah well, time to go back to pulling off the data from the computer (for the 3rd straight day) so I can reconfigure my computer and not lose anything. Takes a while but is definitely cheaper than the $199 the Geek Squad wanted. Will post photos as soon as we're back up and running.

Groovy Girl, Future Golf Star and the Big Race

Lots of fun had by all...............even when Katie fell down in the big race. Mike's pretty sure he's given birth to the next golf star on the PGA circuit. Zach's pretty good and really likes golf. Maybe he and dad can go play 9 holes this summer.

Katie has really gotten into shopping. She doesn't care if we buy anything, she just likes to window shop. She, mom and Mimi are going to be some window-shopping fools in the upcoming years!!! Look out Galleria, here we come!

The weather this week has just been goofy. It was 78 on Wednesday (reminded us of home) and snowing on Friday. What's up with that? The kids are getting cabin-fever pretty bad. So, even though it was only right at 40 degrees this afternoon, we bundled them up and sent them to burn off some energy. After chipping some balls around the backyard, they decided it was time to race. 30 minutes later they were still racing and mom and dad were worn out just watching all that energy being expended! One things for sure, if Zach doesn't like golf we can certainly put him in track and field later on since he sure loves to run!

Barney!!!

Rhyme Time Barney is just the coolest! She moves and she grooves to the beat!! Amazing any of the pictures came out since I was doing the "boogie-woogie" with Katie! She is finally feeling better - can you tell? LOL! It's been pretty nice here the past couple of days with temperatures in the mid-70's. Kind of weird to have temperatures in the 70's and snow on the ground - it's just not normal! LOL! We are enjoying this weather to the fullest extent prior to it plunging back down to the 30's and 40's Thursday.


I have been working on my first quilt - pictured above. It's the "wing-it" pattern - something I'm very good at! I utilized this method when I learned to make drapes - the first try or two were, well, not exactly keepsakes. I think this one falls under that category, but will provide warmth or a padded place to sit in the basement until we get some furniture down there. I did enjoy doing most of it, well, except for the 5 hours of cutting it required for all the squares. Think if I do this again I'll use squares larger than 6"x6"...........maybe 24"x24"! It was fun laying out all the different patterns - although I see from the picture that I got a few too close together. Guess I should've waited until I'd had more than 4 hours of sleep! LOLOLOL!

Mulching Man!

What a great helper! Zach's old enough now to where he really does help Mike with the "to do" list instead of making the list longer. Boy, he loves that dragon-fly shovel in the picture. He thinks he's king of the world when he gets to dig like dad. Best $2.27 find at Target's end-of-season clearance last summer! Got one for him and Katie!

I had to take Zach to the doctor Saturday due to an earache and lo and behold, he's got 2 infected ears. The doctor gave him his least favorite antibiotic to take and it's amazing what a miraculous recovery the boy has made after having to swallow that thick gunk down for a couple of days. This morning he declared "Mom, I don't need any more medicine. I'm cured!". Yeah, right Houdini.....! LOL!

Our tulips Mike planted last fall are already sprouting up - all 200 of them! I had originally bought 100 of them for me to plant, but when he offered to plant them, I gladly offered to go buy another 100 for the backyard! LOL! They hopefully will make for a beautiful Spring display.......should Spring ever get here in earnest! Guess I need to start thinking about things to put on Mike's "list" while he's gung-ho and ready to do things outside. Think I'll contract someone for window washing this year though considering the redneck exhibition he put on of how to light your house for Christmas. I might have to use that picture for our Christmas cards this year!

Ewwww!

I had a doctor's appointment today with the MDA clinic at Carle Spine Institute. I got Zachary out of the car, walked him onto the sidewalk and go to Katie's side to get her out and right then Zachary throws up on the sidewalk. Katie said "Ewwww - gross!" as only an almost 3 year old can - although I had to second the motion! I put both kids back in the car and called from the cell phone to reschedule.....times like this are when I love my cell phone. Then being the ever-overpacked mother that I am, got a bottle of water out of my diaper bag and hosed off the sidewalk, located a bucket in the car and asked Zach to use it if he felt the urge. I have to say I am so amazed with the matter of fact way that I handled it - I would have freaked out 6 years ago over something like that! It really felt like something from "One Fine Day" where Michelle Pfeiffer has the mom-bag with literally everything in it - too bad I don't have her body or looks! To feel organized for once though was a great feeling - and it may be the only time in my life that I get to feel that way! LOL! As far as Zachary, he's feeling much better now. He ate raisins at school and they always seem to upset his stomach - I guess he's got some form of intolerance to them although he handles grapes just fine. He's back up and running around and eating - so all is well...............although I'm still slightly grossed out.

Goldfish, a movie and robots

Goldfish and Disney's Hercules! Who knew?! The other picture is Zachary's "Robots". They walk across the floor gobling up everything they come in contact with - especially if it belongs to his sister! They both are getting cabin-fever with all this cold weather. I took Zachary to speech today and let Katie play in the school's gym. Good gracious I don't think I've ever seen that girl run that much! She would throw a ball and immediately chase it and pick it up only to throw it again. It was better than having a dog - she can throw and retrieve! LOL!

I did our taxes this past weekend and was pleasantly surprised that we are getting a refund. With the taxes always comes the yearly assessment of our finances and retirement outlook. We finally sat down and tried to figure out where we needed to be when Mike retires. Mike said someplace warm and I said walking on a beach! LOL! It's been interesting using some computer software to do all the computations for us and getting to play with the numbers. We are in the process of making a budget - which we do every year. A couple of weeks ago I researched how much we were spending on restaurant food (from McDonald's to Outback) and was astounded at how much money we were, in essence, throwing away. We decided to cut back our restaurant habit to 1 night a week and only an occasional McDonald's run. Then my dad suggested we take the difference between what we would have spent at the restaurant and what it cost to make at home and put it in a savings account. Well, after only a week we have saved quite a bit! I'm thinking of collecting tips at home now! LOL!

Snow, snow and more snow

Every time we think winter is coming to a close - it sneaks back and nips at our ankles. Mike said he was either going to need one of those lamps you sit under to get rid of the winter blues or take up a new hobby like woodworking, whitteling or playing the harmonica. I've turned up all the lights in the house! LOL! Now we know why bowling, alcohol and ice fishing are so popular ....... and not in that order! We had "freezing fog" last week and it was a beautiful morning - and yet, since it's ice, it is a bit of a driving hazard. These pictures were taken at the college close to us and came out better than I had anticipated. Of course, as usual for this time of year, both kids have come down sick. On the bright side, both are getting better today and I have gotten a full night's sleep - things are looking up! Not to mention I am slowly figuring out this blogging thing!