Diary – ally-cat

Freaky Friday

Today was Freaky Friday where I was the kid and Lucas & Arianna were my parents all day. So I let them make all the decisions while I whined about being hungry/thirsty/whatever. It is hard being a kid and having to wait on your parents to feed you since you can’t get stuff yourself. They were oddly eager to have to do the parental chores like dishes and laundry (novelty I suppose) but still decided around 7pm that they just wanted to be the kids again.

I’m really tired but I can’t go to bed because that is just giving in to the oppression (1:30am). Guess I’ll go start a new book. #GrownUpChoices

rileys purple cat

Blog, Diary

So Last Week

Tuesday: up at 9am, swim lesson w/ Ali 10-11, grabbed lunch and headed to Cumming for a water playdate with Erin & kids, came home to pick up Allison and headed to Acworth for working in the record store and then dinner at The Old Mill (which I apparently missed seeing Kristie there by about 10 mins), didn’t get back home until almost 8pm, fell asleep at 11:30pm

Wednesday: up at 9:30 to go to the doctor, home for 45 mins, then took kids to Acworth for Lucas’s doc checkup, then lunch at a new restaurant, then got haircuts for the kids and worked at the record store, followed by dinner with Kristie, didn’t get back until 9:30, about to fall asleep sitting here

Thursday: up at 9am, swim lesson w/ Ali 10-11, grabbed lunch leftovers at home, headed to Acworth w/ Ali to work on the record store, ending with fooood

I was going to type a bunch more than this but never did so this is all you get, Diary

Blog, Diary

Zombie-Ghosts Problem Solved

So I never liked the idea of cremation. I don’t like the idea of just not existing anywhere anymore. I would have no base for my ghost to haunt. But i hate the idea of my dead body rotting and falling apart. I don’t want to be raised as a zombie to shamble around in rotten bits.

Tonight I learned on Beauty and the Beast that cremation doesn’t immediately burn you to dust. I knew a regular fire cant burn a body…its not hot enough. I just figured cremation had a super-duper heated fire. Buuut turns out cremation uses its super-duper heat “until there are only brittle, calcified bones left, which are then pulverized into “ashes.” ”

My dilemma is solved! I’ll just have them do half the process and bury my bones.

Diary, Dreams

Dreams Wasted

I fell asleep dreaming about writing a story about a princess. I then dreamed that I was a princess writing a story. She (I) wrote pages of notes…in my dream. Woke up and realized all that writing was wasted. I hate when that happens. (I once wrote a whole page essay in high school to wake up and find the essay gone).

I actually bought a voice-to-text program for these exact situations….when I’ve had a dream I want to remember and have lots of thoughts I’m trying to hold in my head before the details and then the dream itself slip away from my being awake. Ironically, I’ve had such congestion from allergies that my throat is raw and I can barely speak today.

Blog, Diary, Kids

25 Days of Christmas; Days 1 & 2

I’m attempting to do something Christmas-y every day until Christmas. It is harder than I thought it would be, especially since I’ve been sick the past few days. Honestly, I also think this wasn’t the best plan simply because it can put a little extra pressure on me to come up with something every day. But then, I come up with so much Christmas stuff to do anyhow I do it to myself and poorly prioritize.

Day 1 – Canes and Cocoa

Cherokee Parks does an event called Canes and Cocoa where the kids come and have an Easter egg-type candy grab. This is the second year we’ve done it, along with the Boltons. Bags filled, we then all had hot chocolate and cookies, plus a chat with Santa.

Day 2 – Botanical Gardens Lights

I so love Christmas lights and the Botanical Gardens has the best I’ve ever seen! Also our second year doing this, but I had the time to see and do more this year than last: the greenhouse that was like a fairy jungle (Lucas was kinda scared of this since it was so dark), the bridge walk through the trees (we were on the bridge over the road and i pointed Lucas back up behind us where you could see all the lights going up the hill and his comment?, “look at all the cars!”), and make s’mores. Of course Lucas was most interested in the trains and ran around all the different tracks with glee.

Blog, Diary

just stuff

something kinda pathetic but as paul said “not surprising”….Disney Jr is a disney channel for preschoolers, and they came out with a movie, Sophia the First, which is basically an animated kids movie of the Princess Diaries plot. I’m way more interested in watching it than lucas, and actually told him to settle down, i was trying to watch the movie

I’ve discovered http://www.giftcardgranny.com/help/ which i think is the coolest thing ever and plan to start buying michaels, target, and amazon cards to basically use as currency.

i noticed arianna “cruising” today: walking along the edge of the couch while holding onto the couch

Blog, Diary

The Great Lake Allatoona Cleanup

Today our Girl Scout troop went to The Great Lake Allatoona Cleanup, which is a big community effort to pick up trash along the shore line of Lake Allatoona. Sound boring? It wasn’t!

It began with a pontoon boat ride over the lake out to a cove where our group was dropped off.

It was very rocky; we climbed over fallen trees and driftwood and all over the place trying to find trash like a dirty Easter egg hunt. And unfortunately, we found a lot of it, including: a tire, a second tire that still had the metal wheel part inside, two hats, TWO SHOES (for those of you that know my thing about lost shoes…*I* was the one that found TWO shoes on the side of the lake), a toothbrush (??), and a ladder.

After an hour of picking up the trash, the boat came back for us and we headed over to a park for a huge picnic. We got free food and drink and they had music playing. The girls tried yellow watermelon- something I’d never even heard of (WTG girls, trying something new).

Climbing around the rocks in the sun was some sweaty work…so what better way to cool off than go jump in the lake! We weren’t actually at a part of the lake with easy public access, but what do you expect will happen when you take a large group of kids near water in the heat?

Tina had gone off with Little Deb (her 3 year old daughter) for a few minutes. When she came back looking for us, she spotted her older daughter Heather out in the middle of the large creek running nearby. Just when she was thinking she was going to have to fuss at Heather for getting in the water, she realized we were ALL in the water, including me!!

The section everyone used to reach the water was this narrow, down hill mud bank…which I totally fell in of course. I’m 31 years old and still getting skinned knees.

We trekked out into the middle of the creek; this was a *lot* harder than it originally looked because the whole creek bed was uneven rock so finding steady footholds was hard. After a couple of slips, the girls gave up trying to stay dry and just sat down in the water. The water even swept Heather over backwards down a 6 inch waterfall like a White Water slide. In fact, some other kids were purposely riding the waves like that.

Trying to get back to land, we came up with a people chain to pass each other down the line towards the shore. “What’s gonna work? Teamwork! What’s gonna work? Teamwork!” (They were singing it).

Diary

decoupage

A big thing I’m seeing on Pinterest lately is Mod Podge. It seemed to have so many uses I couldn’t quite figure it out. It’s decoupage. “Decoupage (or découpage) is the art of decorating an object by gluing colored paper cutouts onto it….” Okay, that could have some seriously cool applications.

For my first project, I took an old chalkboard from when we were kids to make into a decorated felt story board based on a Pinterest I saw from here: http://www.oopseydaisyblog.com/2010/05/make-your-own-flannel-board.html

Now I am decoupaging scrapbook paper around the wooden frame of it. A lot of work for something I probably won’t use that much, but I wanted to start with a project that I wouldn’t care too much about the results.

I also learned a couple of things so far: do a little bit at a time, it dries fast and the paper sticks. Also, since it dries so quickly, don’t let a 3year old help unless you really don’t care.

Here is the finished project:

Diary

Consignment sales

It’s consignment sale season. All the churches are doing big sales of baby and kids stuff and I have been having soo much fun with it. First I went to the All4Kids sale in Roswell and got like 80% of Lucas’s fall wardrobe for $100 (nothing for Arianna b/c all her clothes come from Shelly and she is set right now). Then this weekend I participated in the big one in Canton at First Baptist Church. I volunteered for three hours as a worker to set up the sale which also got me in to the preview sale. I now know the trick to consignment sales is to get in to the preview sales before all the good stuff gets snatched up. I spent another $130 and now have a ton of stuff for Lucas for Christmas, including two biggies: a spring rocking horse and a play kitchen. When I went back Sat morning after the sale was over, it was insane how much stuff had cleared out. The gear and toys seemed to sell really well, as did older kids’ clothing. There were tons of girls clothes and smaller sizes so those didn’t sell as well. I didn’t have time (too much procrastination) to get all my other stuff together, but i did get about 100 items of Lucas’s old clothing in the sale, of which 29 items sold at approx $70 profit. Not as much as I had hoped for (was hoping for at least $100 to offset what I had spent at the first consignment sale), but better than $0 if I had just donated it all. There are a couple of other consignment sales coming up. I already signed up for one of them. I won’t even have to do much work for the second one since I already have all the old inventory together.

Blog, Diary

jewelry, 2.5, 31

Lucas had his 2.5 yr old doc appointment on Friday. He was 31.6lbs (68%) and 38″ tall (90%). Dr Kola said he was doing great; he also did well on his evaluation questionnaire. Usually he scores poorly in the communication section, but this time he got 6/6 of the questions.

Afterwards, we had lunch with Sarah and Shelly. Sarah gave me a toonnn of Shelly’s old clothes, so I am definitely set in the wardrobe dept for Arianna. After lunch, we went to Target so I could pick up “a few things”, half of which I now need to return Monday because I went overboard.

Saturday I took the Girl Scouts to the Bartow History Museum for a jewelry making badge workshop. It was a lot of fun. I like the workshop field trips where the organization takes the lead and I don’t have to really do anything but follow the girls around. We saw a private museum collection of jewelry ranging from 1000 yrs ago to 50 years ago, glued beads on hair barrettes, created a pendant out of stone and wire, made a Native American totem inspired pendant by drawing totem animals on wood tiles, and braided twine and ribbon together to make the necklaces. We also did a scavenger hunt in the museum to find various details in the displays. We had a new girl, Linia, join us for the trip – yay for new scouts.

Tonight we had a 31 purse party for Lauren’s 31st birthday at my house. Paul was an awesome help in helping me get the house cleaned and ready for the party. Lucas helped, too, by picking up all his toys and the baby clothes for me. I got Lauren a cake from Publix (yummm) and had a fruit tray and rice krispie treats for some snacks. Susan (Lauren’s step-mom) and Katie (Lauren’s half sister) came for the presenting, along with my mom, Jenn and her mom Judy, and Amanda and Macy. Lauren brought Ryan with her so Ryan and Lucas were running/toddling around. It was so much fun hanging out with everyone, and I ordered some really cute stuff.