Highs and Lows

Low: Forgetting my camera for our trip. Yeah, I'm a big winner. (So, to compensate, the internet will be providing pictures to fill in the visual gaps that would otherwise be in this post.)

Low: Troy letting our cat, Memo, out of the house, after we had kept her inside so we could take her to the vet to kennel her for our out-of-town trip.

Low: Slipping on the icy/frosty stairs as I go outside to try and find our cat. And, slipping again on the icy/frosty stairs coming back in when I can't find her, and getting a huge bruise on my shin.

High: Our cat coming back about 20 minutes before we headed out of town, so we could vaccinate and board her anyway. YAHOO! Especially since she never comes back that fast after being let out.

High: Our hotel, Embassy Suites. The swimming pool, the yummy cook-to-order breakfast (got a Denver omelet both mornings-yum!), the pull-out couch turned bed, the free parking, etc. etc. etc.
Low: Troy drawing with pen on the leather chair in the hotel room. After much scrubbing on my part, luckily it (mostly) came out. Very grrr.
High: Jakob losing a tooth at dinner the night before Pete's test. Did you know that the tooth fairy can come to hotels?

High: Eating dinner at Village Inn. I ordered a crepe that had Nutella (chocolate) and cream cheese on the inside, and bananas and strawberries on top. It would have been slightly scary to watch me eat it because I was scarfing it down so fast. But from here on out, when I make crepes, I'm totally adding the cream cheese.

Low: Having to threaten the kids within an inch of their lives to get them to stay in bed and go to sleep that first night. And then waking up at midnight to Jakob's watch alarm (which he somehow manages to set all the time even though I un-set it all the time), and finding Brock playing by the front window that looks out to the hallway at the front of our hotel room. At midnight.

High: Going to the Utah Museum of Natural History. It was easy to find (about two blocks from where Pete was taking his test), and we were the only ones there, along with a grandma and her 3-year-old grandson. The kids didn't really care about the mineral section, but loved the dinosaur bones and the bugs section, which made me squirm in my skin, because even though that tarantula is behind glass, it's still big and hairy and a spider. There's a little play area there with puzzles and a digging area, and I think we spent the majority of the time there.

High: Going back to the hotel and getting a little nap, along with Troy and Ivy. It was awesome.

Low: While dozing in and out of consciousness, my other boys were watching Pokemon 12: The Fight Against Some Very Angry Dragon Guy that Keeps Blowing Up the Good People That Can Open the Different Universes. Yes, I believe that was the actual title, and it very much sucked.

High: Getting coloring books for all my kids, along with new color crayons for each of them. Hours of entertainment.

Low: Not having a yellow crayon in my/Ivy's crayon box. I mean, who doesn't include yellow, but has three purples in there?!?

High: Eating at Benihana Friday night. Oh, mama! And an extra bonus-they have this yummy soup as the first course, and it has mushrooms in it. I hate mushrooms, but Jakob wanted to try my soup, and he ate the mushroom part!

Extreme high: Pete passed his CIH!!!! Congrats!

High: Going to see Pete's parents, and having all his siblings and the in-laws and the nieces and nephews come over. It was wonderful to see everyone.

High: Jakob got to spend the night with his cousin, Ethan. He did great, especially since that was his first sleep-over.

Low: Running into a bit of a snow storm on the way home.

High: It wasn't too bad, and it was only during a small part of the drive. The kids were great in the car, and even slept some of the way.

Low-and-High: Being tired. I have oodles of laundry and catching up to do, but it was an awesome trip.

Take 2

I'm being lazy/non-energetic/still recovering from surgery/uncreative today. No, check that-that's how I've been feeling for the last, oh, 5 weeks.

But, go here for details on our upcoming adventure.

Also, go here for exactly how I've been feeling lately.

Bossy

This morning-

Jakob: "Mom, why is Troy so bossy?"

Me: "Well, I don't know."

Jakob: "Mom, when you had Troy, did you maybe really have a girl, and she kind of got...mixed up when he was a baby and you had him instead?" (I'm thinking he was asking if Troy was switched at birth. I have no idea where he'd hear about something like that ever happening, but whatever.)

Me: "Trust me, Jakob, I know that Troy is part of our family."

Jakob: "Well, he's really bossy. Did he maybe get hit in the head when he was little with something to make him bossy?"

Me: (trying not to laugh) "No, I think he was just born that way."

New

The Nat Pack been facing a lot of changes lately, some of which have been awesome, and some maybe not so much. But as Sheryl Crow says, "A Change Would Do You Good".

Last night I got a new booster seat for Troy-boy. (By the way, there are some booster seats on sale at Walmart for $13.50.) He saw it this morning and is so excited. He just thinks he's all sorts of grown up. I wish it would translate into the potty training realm, though. We've been trying to potty train him, but that's very hit and miss. He'll try to change his own diaper, and I keep wondering why he can't just figure out the whole potty-undies correlation, but whatever. I wish my kids were the types that just take charge of that. I know kids like that exist; well, I think kids like that exist-but maybe only in a galaxy far far away. This morning he pulled out his red Bumblebee shirt (he also owns a yellow one and a blue one), and told me, "Mom, my tummy feels yucky, but this Bumblebee shirt will make it feel better."





I got a new computer, because our other one died. It's very little, and very cute. Now maybe I'll find the energy to start working on my online scrapbooking again.

Ivy's had the most changes. Her new trick is climbing up things. It's been kind of a blessing in disguise, because she's been able to climb up on my lap as I haven't been able to pick her up since my surgery. But we have to be extra careful about leaving things on the table.



And although she's a good climber, she's not good enough to get out of her crib. So we got her a new big girl bed. It's very pink, and has princesses on it. I'm thinking I might need to repaint the walls, or rethink the wall decorations, seeing as how they all went with our nursery theme of Winnie the Pooh. Maybe someday, I guess-I'll just add it to the mile long to-do list, that starts with hanging the new window blinds I got for our front room.

Oh, and also this Sunday Ivy gets to try her new nursery class, because she's 18 months old today! YAHOO!! (Well, unless she's like my boys, and hates it, and I have to sit in there with her for at least a few months. But you never know.)

Also, she's getting 4 new teeth. The child already has 12 in her little noggin-this will make 16!

Jakob has a new interest-Bakugan toys. Maybe anta-Say will bring some for istmas-Chray. But I'm thinking I'm going to have the kids help me clear out the unused toys before Christmas. I've done this before, and it's worked really well: I tell the boys how there are some kids that can't afford new toys, so we need to give our toys that we don't use to a store (D.I.) so that they can have toys for Christmas. So then I have them help me organize all the toys (blocks in the block bag, dinosaurs in the dinosaur bag, etc.), and then I have them take turns picking their 10 favorite toys to keep, and we get rid of the rest. (I'm not a super toy Nazi, though- If they pick a dinosaur, they get all the dinosaurs, and sometimes I still hang on to some toys that they don't pick-I call them Ivy's 10 toys.)

And I got new pain meds on Monday, because dang. I will hopefully be able to lift my kids, and vacuum and the like next week, though. It may hurt to do it, but I'll be able to.

Finally, Pete and I have a new obsession: a game called Plants vs. Zombies. It's hilarious, and fun, and the kids love watching us play it. Which I'm going to go do right now, because I have a very patient Brock sitting on my lap, ready to watch.

YAY for new things!

Hallow-yawn

Halloween came. Halloween went. And I really didn't do anything for it, because a) I've been feeling awesome, and b) two of the kids got swine flu the Tuesday before, so we were all kind of quarantined to our house for a couple of days. (By the way, Tamiflu rocks!) We didn't carve pumpkins, Brock didn't get to go to his preschool party, and I have zero Halloween decorations to put out in the first place. Just call me the Halloween Scrooge.

But, my kids were well enough by Thursday, so they got to go trick-or-treating with Pete on Saturday. Troy was "Optimus Plime" (according to him: most "r"s in words he replaces with "l"s), Ivy was a chubby butterfly, Jakob was Bumblebee, and Brock was Spiderman.

I'm glad that we got costumes over a month in advance, but I was kind of sad that I wasn't able to dress them up in something where they all fit together. Example: last year my friend and I dressed up our families as all the characters from "The Wizard of Oz", and it was so cute! It's just that every year my kids end up being super heroes, and I know that Brock has been Spiderman before. But I need to remember that to them the characters are so totally different, even if it's not to me. I kept trying to convince my boys to be a group, like the 3 Musketeers, or Blue Man Group, or the 3 Amigos. But they weren't going to have it. Maybe next year? But if not, oh well, because when I was a kid, I dressed up as Annie for at least two Halloweens.

Note to self for next year: don't be a Downer Dan about Halloween!