$chool $upplies

I just finished school supply shopping for the kids. Oh. My. Gosh. Seriously? I can feed my family of 6 plus two day care kids for over a week for what I had to spend on school supplies. And that does not include clothes and new backpacks. We're just talking the lists that get sent home at the end of the year. And I buy stuff on sale! It's insane! And just a note to Staples and Office Max? The reason you run out of red grading pencils every. Single. Year. two weeks before school starts is that you do not order enough! Bravo to Office Max for ordering some for me though. Enough for this year and next.

A JOB!

The teenager got a job, long hair and all! He starts tomorrow at Fuddrucker's . Hooray!

One More

Weigh in today and I'm down one more pound. Not a huge loss, but it's a loss and that's what I'm going for. I knew my results might be a little skewed this week as I stayed on track all week but my two biggest calorie days were Saturday and Sunday. What I love about Weight Watchers? It fits my lifestyle. I can still eat birthday cake and movie popcorn if I plan for it. Hopefully I'll have a bigger loss next week, but this is a marathon not a sprint. It's a lifestyle change that I'm making for my health, not a dress size goal.

Happy Birthday!

It's my sister-in-law's 40th birthday! Go wish her a happy one!

The BEST Customer Service!

Remember this? Well with the credit from last time the teenager ordered two new shirts. One of them was out of stock and they thought they would not be able to get anymore so they credited our account the amount of the shirt and shipping plus $10 for the inconvenience. Then? The shirt came in. So they sent it to us. For free. As a courtesy for the delay. So now we have a credit plus the t-shirt. They surely know how to keep customers!

I Rock!

Wanna know why???

There were chocolate iced Krispy Kreme donuts at VBS today. Right in front of me. These are my all time favorite donuts in the world. I did not eat one. Not one bite! Go me!!!

One More Day

of VBS. It's fun, but I'm tired of the whole thing. Tomorrow is the celebration lunch and then it's over. Thank goodness!

Rite of Passage...

I can vividly remember being in 5th or 6th grade and standing in the lunch line at school. The other girls were making fun of me because my legs were hairy. They had all started shaving already but it hadn't even occurred to me. I went home and asked my mom about it and she said no. She would not let me shave. So I stole her razor and did it anyway. I taught myself how to shave my legs. I don't even know if my mom EVER talked to me about shaving. I did not want any of that experience for my daughter. She's at the point where not a lot of her friends are shaving, but I thought she needed to shave her underarms. She wears a lot of tank tops and it was becoming noticeable. So the two of us spent a long lovely afternoon in the bathroom yesterday teaching her to shave. It was so much fun and such a bonding time. We talked and laughed and had shaving cream all over the place. My daughter has silky smooth legs and a memory of her mom teaching her about being a girl...

3.5!

Three and a half pounds lost last week for a grand total of 8.5! I'm surprised I lost so much this past week as I wasn't making the best food choices near the end of the week. All that VBS exercise must have paid off though!

Sick...And the weekend

I'm not doing so well today. Sick enough that I bailed on Karin for VBS. Or rather, I was forced to. Mark would not let me get out of bed. He' s been working from home today so he could do the driving and taking care of the 8 kiddos. He's the BEST! I hope I start feeling better though because this sucks! My stomach is a mess.

We had a lovely weekend. Friday night SB had one of her two best friends over. They both go away for most of the summer, so it's nice to have one of them back. The other one comes back at the end of this week and we'll have a slumber party before the summer is over. Only 3 weeks until the kiddos go back to school! That makes me really sad...

The teenager's girlfriend is here from Texas for a visit. She is really a sweet girl. And she keeps the teenager in line for sure!

Speaking of the teenager...For two years he's been bugging me about getting a tattoo. I was very noncommittal, thinking he would change his mind before he was 16 which is how old you have to be with parental consent. No such luck! So on Saturday I took the teenager and girlfriend and met up with two of his friends at a, very surprisingly, very nice tattoo shop. He got a really beautiful tattoo of a cross on his upper arm. It is hidden by his shirtsleeve because that was the only way I would agree. I do not want to have to deal with my Mother-in-law over this one!lol! Watching them do the tattoo was painful for me, but the shop was great. The guy who did it said he was glad I was there and had consented. He said he spends so much of his day trying to fix bad illegal tattoos that kids get in garages that he loves to see parents in the shop. I guess I'm either the coolest mom in the world or the stupidest! No need to share your thoughts on that one!

Saturday was also the day for a date with FE. Mark and I take each of the kids on a date right before school starts. Just a way to spend some alone time with each of them since they don't get much of that. We went to dinner and did some shopping that FE wanted to do and just talked to him for a long time. We then came home and watched "Wallace and Grommit:Curse of the Were Rabbit". The Princess and I both fell asleep during it! Not our kind of movie. After the kids went to bed Mark and I watched Cinderella Man. What a GREAT movie. I highly recommend that one!

Yesterday was a lazy day. After church we went to dinner with my mom and then she brought the kids back here while Mark and I went to see Lady in the Water. Not a terrible movie, but wait for the DVD.

I'm going back to bed now! I need to feel better!

Help Me Obi-Wan

FE tied one end of a piece of string to himself. The other end to the railing in the living room. When his daddy told him to untie himself and bring him the string, FE said "This was the only string I found that wouldn't break". He used an entire package of dental floss...

More Excellent Customer Service and other random tidbits...

I ordered a couple of shirts for the teenager from this website. We ordered 2 large shirts but got one large and one XL. I emailed them about returning the shirt for a large. They said I could either return the shirt or keep it and they would give us a gift certificate. We chose the GC option to save the hassle of shipping it back. They gave us a $20 GC!! The shirt was $15 or something originally. And on top of that, when the teenager washed the shirt it shrunk enough for him to wear it anyway, but what awesome customer service!

In bad customer service news, here is a store not to order from. I placed an order on June 5th for Father's Day. Two t-shirts. They were supposed to ship in June, then July, now August. I never one time heard from the company that the order was delayed, I only found out when I went to check my order status. They would not ship the item in stock unless I paid extra for shipping even though the delay was their fault. I cancelled my order yesterday.

VBS has been fun but tiring. The toddlers are getting tired as well. Thank goodness it's a 4 day week. I'm PMSing as well so that's not helping my exhaustion.

And the heat! It's so hot here. I'm a native Arizonan but even I am finding this summer's heat too much to bear. Not o mention the idiots who bought the house next door to me chopped down the 30 year old pine trees in their front yard over the weekend. The trees that shaded my driveway and the side of my house. What for you may ask? Well we don't know yet because they can't seem to get the stumps out of the ground. IDIOTS!

Today is day 10 of my new start with Weight Watchers. This week is hard as it always is for me when I'm PMSing. I'm just so tired and want to eat everything in site. I'm hanging on so far though.

The Princess is a daredevil. Her swimming is amazing! She went off the big diving board last week. The lifeguard was waiting at the bottom with the big floaty thing (I don't know what it's called) for her to grab on to when she jumped. But the Princess? She jumped over it! On purpose. Did I mention she's the youngest and smallest in her class? She's the only 4 year old in level 2 which is actually the 4th level of lessons in our city, and she's shorter than anyone else by a half a head. And she's the only one who went off the board by herself without someone to catch her at the bottom. And she's definitely the only one who jumped over the floaty thing! All my grey hair? Caused by that little girl!

5 Pounds!

Woohoo. I knew I was doing well! Down 5 pounds this week! The first week always shows the greatest loss so I know it will slow down now, but I'm off to a great start!

Busy Weeks Ahead

Vacation Bible School starts tomorrow. Karin and I share music teaching and toddler chasing duties. It's always fun but exhausting. My voice feels like it's going already, but I'm hoping I'm just tired tonight! In addition to VBS, it's also the last week of swim lessons, SB has gymnastics and FE has his art class. I also have two additional kids for the rest of the summer bringing the grand total of kids in my house to 8. The teenager is pretty much on his own, but I do still have to drive him around and feed him! I need a nap already!

We had a lovely weekend. VBS practice and scrapbooking on Friday night. I'm doing a bit of mystery shopping and I had an assignment on Saturday. We went to dinner with my mom last night and just relaxed and played all day today.

I have been a very good girl! I know I've said it a hundred times, but I really want to lose some weight. 63 pounds to be exact. I stuck to my Weight Watchers plan all week, even with the evil cake Karin made on Friday and going to dinner last night. I also exercised several times. I'm anxious to see what the scale says in the morning. Mondays are my weigh-in day. I'll let you know!

I Miss Film

I was getting my stuff ready to scrapbook tonight and going through pictures and I decided I really miss film. It was so fun to go back through the pictures we had taken with a film camera and see the ones that are so adorable now because of the imperfections. Expressions that on a digital camera we might have erased. The fun of opening that package of photos and seeing what turned out and what didn't. Not that there weren't disappointments about a certain picture not turning out but there was such an element of surprise sometimes. I think digital cameras have turned us in to compulsive picture takers. Taking pictures until you get exactly the perfect shot. I think we might be missing a lot of other fun moments in our quest for perfection...

Teehee

This ever happen to you? When I waitressed, (on and off from the time I was a teenager until SB was born) particularly after a really busy shift, I would have very vivid dreams of work. I think the repetitiveness of the job and being on my feet all day contributed to the vividness. The teenager just woke up and told me he dreamt all night about grouting tile. Guess what he's been doing at work?! His dream seemed a bit more interesting though since it also contained George Bush and little tree frogs!

Sick Kiddo!

The teenager has a totally hacking cough. He sounds like he has a middle of winter chest cold! He was upset last night because he really wanted to work today but he felt so terrible. He set his alarm to get up this morning but didn't make it out of bed. Hopefully a day of rest will help him feel better!

Upside Down!

Upside Down!
Originally uploaded by mlm4.

The Princess has decided that the world looks much better upside down. The kiddos were watching a movie when I took this. This is how I see her most of the time now. For some reason sitting upright is not on her agenda these days. Is anyone surprised??!

7

There are 7 children playing hide and seek in my house right now. There may not be enough Tylenol in all the world..

GREAT Customer Service!

It's so rare to find really good customer service these days so I just have to share my most recent encounter.
A couple of weeks ago the six of us went out to dinner which is never an inexpensive undertaking, but since the teenager is on the all red meat all the time diet and cannot be satisfied by anything less than about 24 ounces of beef it becomes even more expensive! We decided to go to Lone Star Steakhouse since it's only a few blocks away and they have lots of red meat on their menu. Mark and The Princess and I had been there for lunch a year ago because she wanted to eat there on her summer "date" with us. The food had been good and the service excellent, so we decided to try it for dinner. What a nightmare. It took forever for anyone to even acknowledge us even though it wasn't busy. The teenager ordered an appetizer and it honestly took over 20 minutes to get it. And then it was cold! I was not given what I ordered, the teenager's steak (which he likes Medium rare) was still mooing! It looked raw! No drink refills, etc., etc., etc. Not a good experience. By the time it was over and we got the bill, it had been a two hour dinner. I was not in the mood to argue with anyone and just wanted to go home. The bill was around $100. Ouch!
The following day I emailed the corporate office, not expecting much. The last time I did that I got a $20 gift card to whichever restaurant it was. Anyway, about 4 days later I got a call from the regional manager for the restaurant. He was very apologetic and said that never should have happened. They had several other complaints from the same time period and they were so sorry, blah, blah, blah. He assured me that the problems had been fixed and they were going to send me a little something so that we could come back in and have the "proper dining experience" that they were striving for. I really thought I'd be getting a little gift card that would be useless since we wouldn't be going back.
Yesterday in the mail? I got a letter from the corporate offices. The letter is profusely apologetic and is a voucher for dinner for 6, up to $120 value. Way to do the right thing Lone Star!

Back to the grind...

Vacation is over. We packed a lot in to the week though and had lots of fun. For the next five weeks I have two extra day care kids. I have them every summer for some amount of time. They are good kids and they are in the same classes as SB and FE so it's fun for them to have friends here.

The teenager went off to work today! Karin's Mike needed an extra hand as his two normal workers are not available this week so he asked the teenager. It was almost like sending the kiddo off to his first day of school!

Mark and I saw Pirates this weekend. I will only say two things...

1) I was not as impressed as many others seem to be

2) seems like a whole heck of a lot of people do not care what kind of images their very young children live with in their precious minds. SB was just allowed to watch the first one on Saturday and she's 11. She will not be seeing the new one as it is far darker and I don't think she needs to see those images when she closes her eyes. Think about it people! The move is rated PG-13 for a reason!

I am scrapbooking this weekend. That means this week I need to get my stuff together! I haven't yet figured out what to work on though...

The "Date"

SB and I went to lunch and the movies with her crush today. We went to their in common favorite restaurant. They ordered the exact same thing. They barely spoke. Even though they talk all the time at school. And they talked the whole time we were at their house earlier this week. SB and I ran to the bathroom before the movie started and I asked her why she and the crush were not talking to each other. She said "We were mom. You just couldn't hear us because you and Mrs. M were talking SO LOUD!" Oops!

Fry's, You're Dead to Me!

So the teenager had a job interview at a grocery store today. He was all dressed up. Dress shirt, nice pants, dress shoes, etc. His long hair in a well groomed, low ponytail. His interview started 15 minutes late and lasted approximately 30 seconds. Because they asked him if he would cut his hair. And he said no. I totally do not blame him at all. He has amazingly gorgeous hair and he looks good with long hair! I'm a little surprised that a grocery store has a policy about long hair, particularly if it's well groomed. I've seen far too many carryouts at this grocery store with short hair that was not well kept. I don't get it! But, in some good news, the Dairy Queen three blocks away from our house is hiring. The teenager went over and turned in an application there. They did an interview on the spot and called him back for a second interview tonight. They've already seen his hair! And they sell yummy ice cream! Woohoo! So wish him luck! And Karin? Look for me at Albertson's!

Two Movies

Mark and I saw two movies last weekend, both good, both very different. Saturday we saw Click. I am not a huge Adam Sandler fan, much of his humor is not for me, but if you can get past some of the raunchy humor? This movie has a great message. I told mark as we left that I don't ever remember having so many emotions in one movie. I laughed hysterically, groaned at the innuendo, smiled at the cuteness and cried my eyes out. I definitely recommend!

On Sunday we saw The Devil Wears Prada. Another good choice! This role was written for Meryl Streep who is one of my all time favorite actresses. And Anne Hathaway was good as well. It was a little difficult to see her as all grow up since The Princess Diaries movies are well loved here and that's all I've seen her in, but she was adorable as usual!

Fireworks!

We had a lovely 4th of July! We did our usual fireworks thing at the local community college. It is really a lot of fun. This is our 12th year at the same place. The kids can run around and have a great time playing while we wait in the grass for the fireworks to start. And the show is always amazing. I really cannot imagine seeing fireworks any other way. Surrounded by families, mine and hundreds of others with wonderful music and a great display... It never feels too crowded. And all the kids have always loved it. All the kids, minus the teenager, went as infants and not one of them has ever missed a year! We can't seem to drag the teen along anymore though!
Anyway, hope you all had a wonderful day as well!

Friends and Fun

Last night we went to a BBQ at the home of some friends. I am friends with the mom and SB is friends with one of the kiddos. A boy. They've actually had a mutual crush on one another for several years. There are 4 children in this family as well. They live out in the middle of the desert on a large piece of land so there was plenty of room for all of the kids to just have a ball. I honestly cannot remember the last time we've had so much fun with another family. The kids ran around, played, and generally kept themselves busy for 6 1/2 hours! I think they would have been fine for another 6. It was the grown ups who got tired! We got to visit with their donkey and chickens. The kids gathered eggs from the chickens. We ate hamburgers from a cow that had been grazing their land in February! We got to see the turkeys they are raising for their annual turkey butcher (which we have been invited to for years, but have never gone. I think we may have to this year). The kids drove a full size tractor on their own! They also got to ride in the bucket and sit there and watch fireworks. SB rode a horse bareback. They all climbed on top of a toy hauler and drank rootbeer floats and watched fireworks. We had so much fun. And no running after the kids to make sure they didn't get into anything so it was fun and relaxing for the adults as well!

Parenting tip # 6,567,890

When you come home from grocery shopping and dispatch your children to put away the frozen foods into the freezer that is in another room? Check on the freezer afterwards. Just in case the door didn't get closed all the way. And was open all night. Causing everything is said very full freezer to defrost/melt.