I’ve only read one post from this blogger,
, but it cracked me up, especially when reading some of the comments, too. My favorite quote from the post, though, was “I mostly had the right ingredients.” This is wonderful because this is half the reason so many of my own cooking creations fail. For her, it worked. For me, it rarely does. When you end up substituting half the recipe…you kinda get a whole new monster. My other favorite part of this post was a rude commenter from Paul’s soul-twin that said, “I’m at a loss for why you continually find it so incredibly difficult to follow directions made easy enough for a preschooler.”
Today we did a family + Dad outing to the Southern Museum of Locomotive History for the Trains, Trains, Trains event.
They had a bunch of model railway clubs come out and set up model train sets everywhere and the kids could operate the trains.
Mr Ken from the Early Childhood Education department had a cute train craft for the kids to do.
It is Day 16 of the new year and I’m still going strong on my new cleaning regime. I know that it is still really early in the year, but I’m excited about it. I’m enjoying reading blogs like Organizing Homelife and Clean Mama to get ideas and motivation.
I went to the Container Store the other day with Mom. It was my first time going in there and oh..my..gosh that place is heaven in a store for a person like me. I wish I had one near me (closest one is 50 minutes away) so I could shop there every week. I bought an Elfa door system to hang up my gift wrapping stuff. It was $60 which is a lot, but I liked it better than the cheaper versions that had to be screwed into the door. the gift wrapping stuff was all over the place in my storage closet and I’m very excited about my new, neat area. I also request that any future gifts to my family arrive wrapped and not in a gift bag because i have SO MANY gift bags and tissue paper. I got the idea via Pinterest.
I got a squeegee for doing windows and mirrors today in the mail. I was trying it out and Lucas asked what that noise was. I said I was playing with my new toy. He informed me grownups didn’t have toys. I’m impressed with the ease of use of cleaning the windows with the squeegee instead of 20 paper towels and elbow grease.
One of my problem areas was this kitchen counter. I would use it as a catch-all way station for stuff that needed to be put away elsewhere in the house.
I got these nice little baskets at Michaels to put up on the counter as a stuff depository. One for each level of the house, I can sort stuff in them as I go and then take the whole basket with me to put away items which keeps my counter top clear.
For 2013, most of my goals are the same as they have been the past few years. I’d say I typically only ever accomplish 1/3 of what I set out to do. So maybe my first goal should be to complete my goals? ;P
1. Get on a daily schedule to be more productive. Instead of just a To Do list, I need to really start budgeting my time so that I stop wasting away hours looking at Pinterest and reading blogs.
2. Be healthier (a multi-part goal):
- Exercise more often: exercise at least 4 days a week
- Go to bed earlier. no staying up past midnight, Cinderella!
- Stick to myfooddiary.com
- Kick that coke addiction, just say no!
- lose weight!
3. Try to read a book to Lucas every day
4. Modern Housewife Extraordinaire: get the house organized and stay on top of cleaning
5. Read at least one educational book. Yeah, I’m probably the second biggest consumer of books of anyone I know. This goal is to read about something that doesn’t have fangs.
6. Set aside time to work on my hobbies like scrapbooking and writing. Get Europe 2010 and Arianna, Year 1 scrapbooks completed.
7. Spend more time actually doing all those projects I’m Pinning for Lucas.
8. Cut my debt in half.
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.
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
oct 22, 930pm
i kinda haven’t been around the kids much in several days, esp arianna. i came in and sat down in my office chair when she was crawling around the room. she crawled up to my chair and started being fussy, so paul picked her up and put her in her bouncer trying to give her a bottle. she didn’t want that. she crawled back out of her bouncer and back over to hang from my chair. i said “maybe she wants her mommy” and picked her up, and she got this huge happy grin on her face” she really was crawling over to see me and wanted me!! oct 22, 2012 11:45am
Watching tonight’s episode of Switched at Birth has me fearing the teenage daughter years. (“What is happening with our children!?”–Katherine) Sad thing is, for once tv drama is pretty realistic as far as teenage girls go. at least 15 years is still far off for me having to deal with a rebellious teenage girl.
Poor little guy is really sick. He coughed really hard and threw up all in his bed. While I was changing the sheets, he kept saying, “Mommy, I’m sorry I did that.” I just wanted to cry that he feels so bad about something not even his fault. I kept telling him it wasn’t his fault, and it just happens sometimes when you are sick, but he still felt bad about it.
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).
Today was Lucas’s first day of 3yr old preschool at the Methodist church down the street from us. I let him pick out his own clothes (from choices I laid out on his bed), he helped me make his oatmeal breakfast, he brushed his teeth all by himself, and we sang a ‘Going to School’ song. At the classroom he ran right over to the toy cars. When I said I was leaving, we hugged goodbye, and I let him push me out the door (literally – an idea I read on Babycenter saying that it makes the child feel like he is in control of your leaving). Then he ran right back over to the toy cars. I was really worried about him getting upset when I left. I had tried to leave him at daycare right after Ari was born and he went into hysterics about being left so I didn’t take him back again. Luckily, this went very smoothly and so everyone was happy.
I asked him what he did today and he actually answered me! Usually he will just tell me one mundane fact like, “I drank from the water fountain,” and never what he actually learned. Today he told me they learned about yellow. He told me that the kids danced and the teacher danced but that he didn’t dance because he was nervous. He said they didn’t go on the playground (disappointed voice). I figured they wouldn’t today because it had rained this morning and it was all wet, so I asked him if he got to play with the toys in the classroom instead and he brightened up and told me he did “lots and lots”. He said he played with the other kids, too. He said he had fun and did want to go back.
ally-cat 