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!

What Can $50 Buy?

For $50, Pete's work buddy bought his World of Warcraft characters and all their stuff. (Pete, are you ever gonna blog about that?)

And because we were all sorts of thrifty, we immediately went out and blew it all! But this is what it got for us:

Three Happy Meals from McDonald's, and two adult meals at Bajio's (YUM!)...


...tickets to the movie theater to see Bolt which was...okay. It was showing at the cheapos. The two youngest slept the whole time, Pete even dozed off, and the two older boys were all "Can we go yet?" Needless to say, it's probably not a buyer. But still kind of cute. And we also got...




...the new album by The Fray. Pete loves them, and I like most of their stuff.

We also rented Fireproof, which I really liked. It's a Christian film starring Kirk Cameron (Mike Seaver!). It's about a couple that are on the verge of divorce. I think it's really universal, because they fought about chores, and money, and addictions, and proper work relationships, and how to spend spare time. It talks about "never leave your partner behind", and loving someone no matter what. I just realized I've seen a lot of movies lately. Hmm.

Yep, a good (expensive) weekend.

In My Defense...

Go read Pete's latest post. Go on. It's short. And frightening.

If you know me at all, you know about my intense hatred toward the online game called "World of Warcraft", also known as WoW. I have told Pete that my own person Hades would be me playing WoW.

So what would possess me to play last night?

Pete and I bargained: I play for 30 minutes; he cleans the toilets and bathroom mirrors. My hatred of cleaning toilets is just slightly behind my hatred of WoW.

I kind of feel like I sold my soul for a mess of pottage, though.

Mostly I tried to figure out how to run. I really wasn't good at it. I have no idea what my character was, whether she was a warlock or a rogue, etc. Her name was Samehair, because she had the same hair color and 'do as me. I get lost really easily in 3D games. I used to play Goldeneye on the N64 with my sisters, and we'd just play the shoot at each other part of the game. I would get so turned around in there.

A level 43 guy walked by me, laughed in my face, pointed a gun at me, then ran off. I asked Pete if there was a way to flip people off in the game. The same guy came back a few minutes later, as a level 3, and asked me to join a group with him. He was all, "Hey, I was the level 43 in here earlier." I wanted to be like, "Oh, you mean the one that was a jerk to me?" But Pete grabbed the keyboard and said, "No thanks dude lol." Waaay nicer than I would have been.

I know that Pete's secret fantasy is that this kind of thing happens to me:

(This clip is from a show called "The Big Bang Theory", about these nerdy guys that live across the hall from a wannabe actress that is a waitress named Penny. It's a really funny show.)



But he's dreaming big. I told him that if he wants me to play WoW with him, that he needs to scrapbook with me. Then we could finally get his box of mission stuff and the 5 little kid pictures that we have of him into a nice presentable format. I found this really cheesy video with a song about scrapbooking. (Kar and Lex, this video is for you! The next time we're all scrapbooking together, we'll have to turn this video on.)



So...I most likely won't play again. Unless I have other household chores I don't want to do. Or if by some miracle Pete really does want to scrapbook with me. I'm not holding my breath, though.