Yesterday

I figured I'd just do a quick catch-up since I didn't post anything on here yesterday.

We did a lot of running around. A LOT.

We had to pick Emily up from her slumber party. And then drop The Dude off at his playdate. *giggle* OK, I know it drives him nuts when I call it that, but I think it's funny. He was actually going to hang out with his best friend to do some fantasy football stuff that I really don't understand. But, it was his first day off in almost 2 weeks and he got to go and hang out with the guys and have fun - he deserves it.

Anyway, after we dropped him off, we headed to the mall to get haircuts for the older 3 kids. If any of you have seen that advertisement from JCPenneys for the free haircuts for kids throughout the month of August - it's true. The only "catch" that I ran into was that in order to put a tip on my card (I had NO cash with me), I had to buy something. So I now have a teeny tiny bottle of lotion that I had to pay $2 for in order to use my card and add the tip. Oh well.

While we were there, a couple of friends came by to visit and to get some of the strawberry jam that they had wanted. One of my girlfriends brought her brand new baby boy, so I got some quality baby snuggles in before I handed him back over to her and let her take him home. It's funny - even after having 5 kids, I still forget just how tiny they are when they're born! This baby isn't even 3 weeks old yet, so he was tiny!

After we left the mall, we came back home for a while so that I could get some things done around here, and then we had to take Daniel to a birthday party about 10 miles from here. It was at a park, so rather than drive back home to turn around and drive back to get him, we just hung out in the park and the kids played for a couple of hours.

It was funny. I sat on a bench and watched the kids and observed other people in the park. We were between 2 parties, and the difference in them was amazing. The party to my left was a Mennonite family - the women and girls were all wearing their beautifully simple dresses and sneakers, and the men and boys were all wearing jeans and button-down shirts.

To my right was a group of people who couldn't have been more opposite. This group was a mixture of every horrible stereotype that could be imagined. Biker guys wearing denim and bandanas, macho women wearing halter tops, skinny guys with cigarettes and no teeth, guys with long hair and tattoos and girls with no hair and more tattoos.

What fascinated me the most about these two extremely opposite groups of people was that the kids - all of the kids, including mine - were playing together on the playground. They had no preconceived notions about each others' appearances. They saw each other as an opportunity to make a new friend, even if it was just for a few hours. They didn't judge each other by the way that they were dressed or their hairstyles or what their parents looked like. They were just there to play.

Wouldn't the world be a much better place if everyone could have that attitude?

Anyway, after we got Daniel back from the party, we ran home and the boys got baths, and then we went and picked The Dude up from his friend's house and took him back to his house, and then we came back here and the kids went to bed. In the meantime, I got a call from my father to let me know that my mother had fallen again and is back in the hospital. I don't know much other than she broke her wrist and her upper arm (on the same side) and she'll be having surgery, possibly as soon as today. I haven't heard anything yet, so I'm just going on the No News Is Good News assumption for now, otherwise I might lose my mind. It's more than a little frustrating to be so far away and not be able to help, but all I can do is wait for news.

The rest of the day today is filled with laundry, cleaning, preparing the sand plums that I picked the other day to get them juiced, getting the kids ready for school tomorrow, putting the finishing touches on Sarah's new bookbag, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

If I get her bag done today (I need to, since her first day of school is tomorrow) I'll post pictures of that later.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Transmission Fund update: $1096.65 raised, out of the needed $2495.21 (44% of the way there).
If you want to help, you can click here.

It is January, right?

The last time I checked, January was still considered a winter month.

So how is it that I was making sun tea on my front porch today?

This weather has just been bizarre, to say the least. But I tried to take advantage of it after I picked the boys up from school.

I had managed to get a hold of bikes for Daniel and Jared right before Christmas, but I haven't given them to them yet because they need a little bit of work. But I pulled Daniel's out today and figured that with some new tubes and tires, it would be as good as new.

We have limited places here in town to buy things like that, so I did what I could to avoid going to WalHell, but I ended up there anyway.

Holy crap! I had no idea that tires were so expensive! I mean really, it's a kids bike - not a car! It was going to cost me $50 to get new tires and tubes, but they sell brand new bikes for that price! I wasn't happy about it, but we left, empty-handed. We stopped at the hardware store, and they had tubes cheaper but no tires. I went ahead and bought the tubes but I'm going to hold off on the tires for now until I find some at a better price.

Once I officially gave up on the bike project, the boys went out back to play for a little bit - with no coats.

While they played around on the swingset, I wandered around the yard, scoping out the work that I'll need to do in the spring. Even though I've seen this fence post and tree dozens of times, it still amazes me.

I would love to know how long it took for the tree to surround the metal.

I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do tomorrow. I have a bunch of things that I need to do, even more that I want to do, and some that I should do. I really should get back down to Wichita to try to exchange the DVD player that I bought the other day, since it's defective and has eaten one of our DVDs - and if I do that, I can look for bike tires while I'm at it. I have tons of cleaning that needs to be done (imagine that), and I really want to go to a playdate. At this point though, I'm fighting to stay awake, so I'm thinking that I might just crash for now and figure out what I want to do in the morning after I take Alex to school. If I'm going to do the Wichita trip this week, I really need to do it tomorrow or it's going to have to wait until Thursday - and I'd really rather just get it over with at this point.

With my luck though, even if I do go to bed now, I won't sleep....blah. Too much on my mind yet.

Yet another busy day

Started out at an open house for Alex's class...

Then a drive to Wichita with Daniel for a playdate. The day started out pretty overcast but got nice and sunny later...

Then my first attempt at replicating Mom's peanut butter pie....and my first attempt at making meringue, which was almost declared a disaster. But it worked. I had to make something to take to a Boy Scout dinner for Jared...

Sadly, I have no idea how the pie tasted, as I didn't get a piece of it.

Then a drive to the Boy Scout thing....get a load of (a) how tiny Jared is compared to other kids his age, and (b) the other kid's shirt:

Dinner there was good - especially since I didn't have to cook it or clean up after it - but by the time that we were done eating, I just wanted to come home and crash. Of course, now that we're home and I have the opportunity to do exactly that, I have a million things to do.

We have to get up early tomorrow - on a non-school day - to get Sarah to basketball practice. Not really happy about her having practice when there's no school, but there's not much I can do about it. She's got it Friday morning too. :( We're also going to attempt to do a little bit of shopping tomorrow to get Sarah something for her birthday.

One thing I can say for sure is that I *WILL NOT* be stepping foot inside any store on Friday. I refuse. I hate to shop, and I hate crowds. I don't care how much money I can save by shopping that day - the legal fees that I would have to pay to defend myself from killing someone stupid would negate any savings at that point. I am not a patient person when it comes to shopping - I want to go in, get what I need, and leave. I don't want to have to beat someone up in the process.

One of these years, I'll actually do my Christmas shopping throughout the year, like I always say that I'm going to do.

Haha. Yeah, right.