Exhaustion

I am overly exhausted lately! There is just so much that I have to do. Today I will be heading out to buy supplies to make Welcome Home banners with the Family Readiness Group this weekend, something that wasn't supposed to happen til the following weekend but had to move up thanks to last minute requirements from others. Of course I will be doing this after a work thing I said I would help with on Friday night and Saturday morning, all while packing for my trip to D.C., yep I leave for D.C. on Sunday evening, oh and on Thursday I have to be at Dakota's first home football game, and then I need to make sure all of the laundry is done before I leave for my trip and go shopping for the kids so that they will have food to eat while I'm gone.

There's not enough time!!

How about a quick game of catch up...

So this last weekend was a crazy whirlwind...here's a breakdown in key words...


300 funnel cakes

business in the front party in the back

who doesn't put the living room in the front yard

I can't find anything to buy with my free gift card

that's a big sandwich

how about a glass of vododka?

Menu Plan Monday

This week is another busy one for us so I kind of thought this would be a cool way to help stay on to of things...

Monday- Mojo Steaks with Baked Potatoes and fresh green beans

Tuesday- Pesto Italian Chicken Pizza

Wednesday-Rissoto with spinach and ham

Thursday- Spaghetti with Italian Sausage

Friday-Pot Roast with chocolate chip cookies for dessert

Saturday-Cajun Chicken Pasta

Sunday-Hummus Pitas with new potato salad on the side

I love it!

Vintage Thingie Thursdays

I have a lot of "favorites" in my house. My husband knows that in our many moves there are those things that I would probably fall apart if I did not have, my art work is a huge one of those things, but the 1950's Cocktail tray above is like a security blanket to me. Years ago my parents had a house full of vintage goodies and I fell in love with almost everything. I acquired this cocktail tray from my mother as well as quite a few other great vintage pieces I will be saving for later, and it makes me feel like home. My parents no longer live in the house I grew up in, so I can't honestly go "home" anymore and with our extremely transient lifestyle, having special pieces that can make you feel warm inside is so very important. So I hope on our next upcoming move that this tray makes it safely and can start making our next house feel like home.

Participate in Vintage Thingie Thursdays at Confessions of an Apron Queen

Making an Ass out of myself is what I do best

I'm one of those people who hates taking time off from work. It took me a year to make the doctors appointment for the thing on my back, I'm usually so swamped with doctors appointments for the kids that I put myself on the back burner. So today when I leave work to go to the doctors I expect to be back within 2 hours, not still sitting in the waiting room 2 hours after my designated appointment time. My patience which was already thin was shot when once I was seen by the doctor he told me I was booked for a follow up for a procedure that had yet to be done, the procedure I was there for. They could not do what they needed to today because they did not block the right amount of time out and therefore I would have to come back. I won't be going back, I don't have time to go back. I have zero confidence in this doctor and his staff who can't book a proper procedure. I threw a shit fit, complete with slamming the door open and stomping out 2 year old style, you should have been there it was so cool, NOT! And yes the pity party I held for myself on the car ride home included tears of complete frustration. I missed almost a whole day of work for nothing, nothing at all. Even if I wanted to go back and try again there's no time, between my already ridiculous schedule and upcoming conference in DC I am swamped.

So my twin with hair & teeth as Dale likes to call it will be hanging around for a while longer. Sweet.

Hair & Teeth??

So I sitting patiently in the waiting room of my Doctors office waiting for them to cut a lump out of my back. This sounds worse than it is. Its nothing bad, but it doesn't make me any less nervous. My nervousness was compounded when at my last visit the Doctor doing the incision shared with me the results of his traumatic brain injury. Hopefully he still has steady hands.

Oh and yes babe if it comes out wit hair and teeth they will keep it for you to see whan you come home, you're gross.

Hey DJ Play my song!!!

So in our house we're not real morning people...well ok I'm not a morning person and Aidan yeah he's definitely not but the other two kiddos are probably decent morning people. So I have been trying to find a way to combat my morning crankies and not send the kids off to school with my bad morning mood. Now every morning we take my Ipod ( I originally typed this as eyepod :) plug it into the speakers and the kids each get a turn to play DJ. We have a ton of music in this house, we love music, at last count our cd count was up to almost 2 million (slight exageration), so to say the kiddos have lots to choose from is putting it mildly. Here's how today's playlist has sounded so far this morning

Mom's 1st Choice- The Beatles "Here Comes the Sun"

Maddy's 1st Choice (for Aidan she said to try and get him out of bed)-Green Day "Boulevard of Broken Dream"

Mom's 2nd Choice- Tom Petty "American Girl"

Maddy's 2nd Choice- Cake "Love You Madly"

Dakota's 1st Choice- Bob Marley "3 Little Birds"

Aidan's real 1st Choice- The Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams"

Mom's 3rd Choice- Damien Rice "Cannonball"

Maddy's 3rd really 4th choice- Incubus "Drive"

Dakota's 2nd Choice- Aqualung "Strange & Beautiful"

Aidan's 2nd Choice- Franz Ferdinand " Take me Out"


And after all of those groovy tunes I sent each kid out the door headed to school with head phones in their ears and I-Pod shuffles attached to their shirts. I hope this makes for a good school day and that they don't get their I-Pod's confiscated.

Vintage Thingies Thursdays

When I was in middle school I fell in love with vintage clothing and almost all things vintage. The summer before my freshman year in high school my mother took me school shopping at some of the finest vintage clothing stores we could find in the Tampa Florida area and we hit pay dirt at one store that was going out of business. I found so many amazing pieces that I was completely outfitted for that school year and at a small price of $100.00. My most treasured prize found that day was a 1950's cocktail dress in perfect condition for $5.00. I loved this dress more than anything and when homecoming came around I was very excited to wear the dress to homecoming. To say I stood out a bit from all of the mermaid and early 90's ball gown type dresses is putting it mildly, but I never felt more beautiful in my whole life. I still have the dress to this day and I hope my daughter who is already showing signs of loving vintage herself will wear the dress. I don't have a wedding dress to pass down to her but I do have a lovingly cared for $5 vintage cocktail dress that feels like magic when wearing it and that I think makes me happy to have saved it!

If you're in the Tampa area one of my favorite vintage clothing stores is still around in Ybor City on 7th st, you can't miss it, if they had a website I would post it but I have been going there since 1988 and the store almost feels like home to me!

Is it Halloween yet?

I am so very very ready to start decorating for Halloween and Fall! Last year I was completely against white pumpkins but this year I kind of dig them. That just shows you how fickle my tastes are, it's amazing I've kept my husband around so long (wink wink). I love this time of year!! October was always the best month in our house growing up. It was the month that my over worked mother would actually slow down a bit and get some decorations out and make our Halloween Costumes and she would start cooking delicious things like Pumpkin Soup and make Pumpkin Bread and we would go in search of amazing Pumpkin Ice Cream! I plan on making and doing some of these things with my own kiddos this year!!

Here are some of my current Halloween/Fall plans for the kids and I

1. Go to the Pumpkin Patch
2. Find some cool branches to spray paint black
3. Find a new costume for M and D, preferably making one at home
4. Make Toasted pumpkin seeds with the kids after we carve awesome pumpkins!
5. Make a cool Halloween vignette in the front yard, complete with grave stones, dead trees scare crows bats and more!
6. Make pumpkin bread as a family

I am very excited now!

Scared

I am really very scared for the first time since he left. If he weren't to come home I can't imagine what I would do, if there was a knock on the door I'm not sure I could go on. This is too much.

When the cat's away

So today I pretty much have the office to myself. IT's nice and quiet and allows me the chance to catch up on doing what I call "Internet Nothingness" or IN. This is basically where I look at things on the internet that I never have time to. I am currently reading up on how to do silhouettes of our family, which I think will make awesome Christmas gifts this year for my mother. I am also reading a ton of blogs and generally "lurking" in on other people's lives. I should be working but I'm alone so I don't think anyone will notice.

I have decided that I would like to be a stay at home mom for a while, you know try it out and see if I really will go crazy as I have always claimed or if that's just an excuse that I make up to cover up the guilt and jealousy I have when talking to SAHM's. This is definitely something to talk about I think with "V" and see what he thinks.

***Update*** I am still sitting here checking out more IN, and adding new blogs I'm finding to my blog roll...in case you were wondering.

Did I tell you...

That we are indeed moving once again. We're heading back to the East Coast, and I am so EXCITED!!! I almost wish we were leaving sooner! I love to move and see new places and experience new things! I've loved our time in Kansas and I've made some great friends but its time for us to move on. I'm now super absorbed with learning all there is to learn about what will be our next new home town. So the next few months will be so very busy, we'll be living our everyday lives while getting ready to finally welcome Dale home and then send him off again to go to school then we will all join up together at out new home ( we may even buy a house like real adults) and then maybe after all of that craziness we can settle down for a bit. We'll be ready once it's all said and done to just be able to relax.

The BIG 3-0

I turned 30 yesterday. It wasn't quite the momentous or terrifying occasion I thought it may have been. It was a rather good day, but fairly normal,I still came home to my children listening to loud shitty music while laundry sat to be folded and homework was left undone. A friend did take me out for a few delicious margaritas which was great.

I feel like I should make some major changes in my life now that I'm 30, like quitting smoking or losing weight, or just generally not being such a Debbie Downer but I think I'm just as lazy in my 30's as I was in my 20's so I would probably never accomplish any of that so why try.

Greetings from homeworkland!

It's not so nice here in homework land. The air is kind of stuffy and everyone seems grumpy. There are no disgustingly cheesy tourist t-shirt shops where I could buy a t-shirt that say " I went to Homeworkland and all I got was this lousy t-shirt", homeworkland is not cool enough for cheesy tourist t-shirt shops.

This is the part of going back to school I dread the most. The crazy thing is a few blog posts back I swear I said "Yeah Summer is over and life goes back to normal", why didn't you punch me?? Why didn't you say "hey you sill cow, going back to school means months in homeworkland".

Doing homework with my kids has never been fun, I have friends with crazy kids who actually enjoy doing their homework...that's right I said they enjoy it. My children not so much, my children will do anything and I mean anything to scrape by. I can only imagine that this is a genetic abnormality passed down to my children from my side of the family seeing as I stabbed my mother with a number 2 pencil in the hand one evening when I was around 8 years old as she tried to help me with my homework. Luckily my kiddos have yet to hear this story and so my appendages are all safe, but my emotional state of being is not as lucky.

If we make it to the end of the year, no scratch that, if we make it to the point where Dad shows up and joins us on our extended vacation to homework land I will be amazed.