Happy anniversary to us!

This weekend is our anniversary weekend!

On Saturday (Aug. 30) we were together 13 years, and today, Sunday (Aug. 31) we were married 12 years.

My husband took off work Friday and he's off on Monday for the holiday. (We got married on Labor Day weekend for that purpose!) He was off for three days in a row and we had a really nice time.

Our big day was Saturday afternoon. My sister and her husband came for the weekend, and they kept the girls. They all went up to my parents' house for the afternoon. The baby went to spend the evening with my sister-in-law, his favorite girl (besides me).

While my husband went to take the baby to his sister's house for the evening I had a spa afternoon! The main part of it was a good haircut, something I haven't had in a long time.

When he got back we went to eat at Olive Garden. We set out for Carino's actually but they were too full and so was our second choice, Applebee's.

We left there full and laden down with to-go boxes, and headed for downtown. We parked at the trolley barn and waited for a trolley ride, but the trolley was taking too long so we just walked to our destination ... the ball park! We went to a minor league baseball game, the farm team for the Angels. It was nice because it's something we rarely do, plus the night was perfect. It was just the right temperature with even a little breeze. The nice weather came from the park sitting right on the banks of the Arkansas River.

We left the game around 9 p.m. and decided to catch the trolley back to the car. We took a trolley tour and close to an hour later got off right at our vehicle.

We didn't do anything special today, our wedding anniversary day, except for spend the day together, which is always special. We plan to do pretty much nothing tomorrow too.

There was no big vacation this year but the best part of a vacation is just spending days on end together anyway. We get to do that until Tuesday. Yipee!!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US!!!!

Now for a bit of sap. Just skip this part.

We've known each other for years, since around 1979. He liked me when we were teenagers/young adults, but I always thought he was weird. But there was always something very special about him. Anyway, he asked me to go out with him in 1994 and I said no after thinking about it for two weeks. I did leave the impression that I would want him to ask me again, and finally he did, about a year later. By that time I had started to see him in a different light and I really liked what I saw. On Aug. 30, 1995 he asked me to date him and I was delighted to say yes. On Jan. 12, 1996, he asked me to marry him and again I was delighted to say yes. Our wedding on Aug. 31, 1996 was wonderful and the days, months and years just get better.

House for sale update

There isn't much to report on the house for sale front. We had a few showings right at first but then they tapered off. My daughter said it's because I keep trying to keep the house clean. She said if I'd just let it go for a while then we'll get a call about a showing in a few hours!

With the short sale option a possibility after we've had the house up for sale for three months coupled with the fact that we overhauled the budget with some immediate success, we aren't overly worried about it.

We'll just take things as they come!

School drop-off lanes

I thought that school drop-off lanes were pretty easy to use and fairly self explanatory, but evidently not.

Why must some people park their vehicles right in the drop-off lane and then go inside the school with their kids?

Doesn't common sense dictate that you park somewhere else other than the drop-off lane so that your car won't be in other people's way? Maybe in the designated parking areas?

Okay, this is the first year that we've regularly used the drop-off/pick-up lane at this school but I've used it on numerous occasions during the past two years. I don't think I missed the thick manual that they released on how to use this lane. It can't be just me.

This morning a woman pulls up right in front of the school, parks her car in the drop-off lane, piles out with all of her kids and goes in the school with them. One of the kids is a pre-k student (no uniform) so she had to go all the way in the school and to the classroom to sign that child in. YOU PARK IN THE PARKING SPACES FOR THAT, NOT STOP IN THE DROP-OFF LANE! The parents who are dropping off/picking up pre-k students are actually supposed to pull up and park at the back of the building rather than block the drop-off lane in the front.

There's no one out there directing traffic in the mornings but it's a very small school and honestly, it's not that hard to understand how to do things.

People are just as inconsiderate in the afternoons. There is a line formed in front of the school and when you get up to the school they assist your children into your car. It is very orderly and safe. But you have your people who get tired of waiting and get out and go into the school to check their kids out. In the meantime everyone else in the line has to drive around their car.

One day this guy in front of me WOULD NOT drive up. It was his turn to drive up in front of the school so they could get his kids in his vehicle. Evidently he saw his kids and he was waiting for them to come get in the truck and he wasn't about to move. But it doesn't work that way. You move your vehicle up and the people in the four or so cars directly in front of the school get their kids. Then they move and you move up and get your kids. You don't just get them when you see them and they DO NOT run out to the cars when they see their parents.

It's aggravating that some people are so self-absorbed that they can't figure out how to use the drop-off lane and they can't grasp that they aren't the only ones using it. How hard could it really be to park in the designated parking area?

I'm really getting tired of it as there seems to be an instance every day. I believe I'm going to go back to using the back of the school for drop-offs/pick-ups. There isn't a lane back there, you just pull up, park, and do what you have to do. You don't block anybody if you get out, and it's actually a lot less frustrating. We have used the back for the last two years because of having pre-k students to sign in and out. We don't have any this year but I believe I'm going to keep doing like I was doing anyway.

School starts today!

The kids are all back in school today! Yipee!

They were so excited about getting back to school, and I was too. It's been a long, overwhelming summer but then again it seemed like school starting back sneaked up on us!

We did our school supply shopping at Target late last week and learned a valuable lesson ... local stores don't order enough see-through (clear or mesh) backpacks so you have to buy them as soon as they put them out. I saw some really cute pink mesh ones with brown floral detailing at Fred's last week but when I went back a few days later to get them there was not one to be had. They took their backpacks from last year to school today and chances are they'll have to use them again this year.

I still want to get some lunch bags for them since I let them take their lunches sometimes. I'm going back to Target to get those later this week.

They were all fine with their uniform clothes from last year.

Hooray for school!

Time to go back to school (almost)

Summer break is almost over.

Thank goodness!

Oh no! Where did the time go?

I'm greeting the end of summer break with mixed feelings.

I'm mostly feeling relief. This summer has been long, tiring, stressful, frustrating, and nerve-wracking. I kind of dreaded the start of summer, but it's inevitable so I entertained positive thoughts. I made plans to work the first few days of the week and then take all the kids on a “field trip” at the end of the week every week. We even made a list of places we wanted to go, all free places right in the area.

We started off behind our “field trip” schedule. We didn't get to make our fun trip the first week or the second. Things just seemed to get steadily worse as I struggled to care for five children (including a diabetic and a one-year-old), work, and do everything else that life requires.

I didn't make any adjustments but just kept trying to plod through everything without exploding. Finally my younger sister suggested I rearrange my work schedule, spreading my work out more evenly over the entire week and better utilizing times when I had fewer children around. I immediately put her suggestions in action and they worked!

I felt much more in control of the routine, but by then most of the summer was gone and I didn't feel like my kids had much of a fun summer. I feel kind of bad for looking forward to the start of school when the kids haven't had much fun. It could be that I'm just being too hard on myself and expecting too much. Whatever the feelings, I can't go back and redo the summer and the fact is, school starts in a week. It'll be time to rearrange the routine, again, just after I finally got it to a workable point.

Kids gone for the weekend

All of the kids except for the baby are gone for the weekend!

One of my niece's is at her father's house for the weekend and the other three girls went to their grandmother's for the night last night. All four of them will be back tonight.

We are just going to take it easy in the meantime. I'm going to catch up on work and housework and make a short run to the grocery store. My husband is in sore need of catching up on his rest and sleep.

For right now we are sitting out on the front porch watching the baby romp around and listening to the sound of lightly-falling rain. So peaceful.

House for sale!

Things are moving along as planned with the “house for sale” arrangement. We've had a few showings but no offers so far.

A few days after we put it back on the market, we got a call at 6:15 p.m. for a last minute showing that evening. I had ducked out for a while, my husband had just laid the baby down for a nap, and the house was most certainly not show-worthy. (I hadn't done my all-night clean-up that I was planning.) He turned them down, mostly because of the baby being asleep. Needless to say, I spent the next several hours (on until the next day) getting the house ready to show.

We went a week and a half without a showing, and then I got a call at 1:30 p.m. earlier this week. I looked around at my five-kids-have-been-here surroundings and hoped for something other than a last-minute showing or even one in an hour. Thankfully, the showing was scheduled for 6:30 p.m. that evening, giving me plenty of time to clean and place things in their proper places.

Another call came yesterday at 3:15 p.m. asking for a 3:30 p.m. showing. I asked if they could push it back to 3:45 p.m. or 4 p.m., and they agreed to 3:45 p.m. We all jumped up and started putting things away. I didn't get a chance to vacuum but the house was neat and clean when we left.

I have a rule when we have our house up for sale: it must be no messier than what we can clean up in less than an hour. The last time we had it up for sale we got a lot of calls scheduling a showing in one hour.

The funny thing is, before I got the call for both of these showings this week I looked around at the house and thought that I needed to go ahead and straighten up. I need to start listening to myself!

We are just taking it one day at a time, not making any other plans for housing right now because we know a sale may or may not happen.

Round two ...

It was only a matter of time and now, time is here.

Our house is going back up for sale this evening.

We were in quite a bit of a financial jam this time last summer and ended up putting our house up for sale. We left it on the market for the entire contract of six months, but did not sell it, obviously. We had some interest and some offers but none that we could accept. They were quite a bit lower than our asking price and we couldn't go very low and stay in the black, which was the goal.

The sale of our other house plus our income tax refund last spring bailed us out of the jam and so when the realtor's contract expired we didn't renew. We knew that we would come to this point again and felt deep down that we should keep the house on the market, but frankly, we were tired.

We have come to the realization that not being able to make our mortgage payment is more of a permanent situation than a temporary one. In light of that we must make another valiant effort to reduce our monthly housing expenses, and we start by selling our current house.

The housing market is no better, probably worse. But we must give it another try. I did discover an interesting and very helpful piece of information today in talking with the mortgage company. No one shared this with us before because we evidently didn't ask the right questions, and a mortgage company or a realtor isn't going to volunteer this information because no one makes money like this. There is something called a short sale that can be done when you cannot make your mortgage payments and must sell your home, but cannot get the value of the loan. Your realtor submits some paperwork to the mortgage company and you submit some detailing the family's income and expenses. The mortgage company may or may not approve the sale for less than the value of your loan and your debt will be considered paid in full.

Now, this information, as helpful as it is, would have been more helpful last spring. We had a very interested buyer who made us a sincere offer, but it was a few thousand dollars less than what we owed on the house. We couldn't come up with the difference since we had just forked over quite a bit to prevent foreclosure (another lesson we learned last summer) so we had to pass on the offer. If we had known about this short sale option, we would have most certainly tried to get that approved.

Maybe this time we can stash this information away and use it if we must.

I didn't expect the house to go up for sale so soon and now I have all manner of cleaning to do. My husband called our realtor yesterday and they set up an appointment for this evening. He'll be coming by with paperwork and a sign for the yard.

We'll be going back to living in a bare bones house and a lot of hurried house cleanings for showings. It's not easy living in a house you are trying to sell when you have five kids in the house all day long every day!

We are hoping that we can sell the house and find other, less expensive, quarters. Things won't be any easier on us financially but we would like to at least be able to meet our bills each month. We've pared down to about as little as we can expense-wise and no one is able to take on any more work. My husband is already working two jobs and I am doing the best I can with mine.

We may have some changes on the horizon soon!

Again ...

We are getting ready to put our house up for sale, again. We had it for sale from August to February of this year and took it off the market after our contract with the realtor expired. We had some offers but we couldn't go as low as the offers and still come out in the black.

We could have either renewed with the realtor or put our own sign out in the yard and kept it on the market, but frankly, we were tired. We were able to get ourselves out of the fix we had been in, albeit temporary and we knew that. Reality is hitting and before it gets too bad, it is time to try to sell the house again.

It's not something we want to do, not something we wanted to do before, but it's getting to be a bit much and there's not any real relief ahead.

I'm running some lists of a few minor improvements we need to make to the interior of the house through my mind right now, and will post them in a day or two. I also have to make lists of what I need to do to each room to make it presentable, and then there are the lists of things to do to the house before each showing. I still have the showing lists and will post it later on when we actually get the house back on the market.

Now the memories of getting the house in order for a showing, four kids ready for school (well, two actually come ready), and all of them plus a baby out of the door by 7:30 a.m. headed to school are coming back to me. Not that I could forget them!

New house in the family

My sister-in-law finally got tired of crazy neighbors, nutty office people, AND her rent going up so she is moving out of her apartment in to a house! She started the move today and will have it completed the first of next week.

It's a great house, much bigger than her apartment and is the same price per month as her apartment. She really likes it and the kids do too.

They are still about the same distance away from us as they were (five minutes maybe) and in the same part of town.

The house has a huge kitchen, a good-sized living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. There are big closets everywhere and a laundry/storage room to die for. She's also got an outside storage shed/garage and a nice backyard. The area is right beside the interstate but it is quiet without a lot of traffic and people walking up and down the streets.

It's got us to thinking about trying to sell our house again to find cheaper living quarters. We love our house but the payments are consistently too much to handle these days with no change in sight. The last time we tried to sell our house we couldn't go low enough on the price to get rid of it because we hadn't been there long enough to pay all that much on it. We have briefly discussed either getting our same realtor back or putting it up for sale by owner.

Provided we can sell it, we are much more familiar with the area now to know where to look for quality but economical housing, and we have a sister/SIL who is obviously wonderful at it who we can get to help us! ;)

In the meantime the girls are going to enjoy riding their bikes around out in the new backyard. It's flat and so is the road behind the house!

Nine years ago on this day ...

My first child was born.

It's hard to believe that I have a child who is nine years old and that I've been a mom for nine years.

Those first couple of years with her were really rough but she mellows out with each passing year.

Now of course she has a six-year-old sister and a 14-month-old brother!

Nine years ago today ...

I was at the end of my first pregnancy and ready to have my first child! My due date (the day before, July 7) had come and gone with me lying on the couch to prevent another blood pressure spike like the one I had experienced two days ago, on July 6.

At 4 a.m. on the morning of July 8, my water broke! How exciting! I went back to sleep for another couple of hours and then got in trouble with my husband when I told him two hours later. We got ready to go and headed to the hospital an hour away. We stopped to help some stranded motorists on the way, a story that is funny now but back then seemed perfectly normal. I wasn't having any contractions and my husband always stops to help people on the side of the road.

The day progressed slowly at the hospital and finally at about 7 p.m. the doctor and my mom thought it might be best for me to receive a small amount of Pitocin. This would stimulate my contractions and get things progressing, which really needed to happen seeing that my water had already broken. I was very hesitant but I trusted the doctor and even more so, my mom.

Boy, did things ever get going. That was a really long and painful labor but that child still wasn't born nine years ago today. She was born nine years ago TOMORROW! She was born at 12:41 a.m. on July 9.

Before I was a Mom

(This was on one of my favorite message boards and I just love it.)

Before I was a Mom


Before I was a Mom
I never tripped over toys or forgot words to a lullaby,
I didn't worry whether or not my plants were poisonous,
and I never thought about immunizations,

Before I was a Mom I had never been
puked on
pooped on
chewed on
peed on
I had complete control of my mind and my thoughts
and I slept all night

Before I was a Mom
I never held down a screaming child so doctors could do tests
or give shots,
I never looked into teary eyes and cried,
I never got gloriously happy over a simple smile,
and I never sat up all night watching a baby sleep

Before I was a Mom
I never held a sleeping baby just because I didn't want to
put them down.
I never felt my heart break into a million pieces when I
couldn't stop the hurt,
I never knew that something so small could affect my life so much,
I never knew that I could love something so much,
and I never knew I would love being a Mom

Before I was a Mom
I didn't know the feeling of having my heart outside my body,
I didn't know how special it could feel to feed a hungry baby,
I didn't know that bond between a mother and her child,
and I didn't know something so small could make me feel so
important and happy

Before I was a Mom
I had never gotten up in the middle of the night every 10 minutes to
make sure all was okay
I had never known the warmth, the joy, the love, the heartache, the
wonderment or the satisfaction of being a Mom

Most of all I didn't know I was capable of feeling so much, before I was a Mom

Another ear infection (Saturday morning doctor run)

The baby has another ear infection, the doctor has just declared this Saturday morning.

This is the third one he's been diagnosed with in his short 14-month-old life.

He's to take an antibiotic for 10 days, ear drops for pain a few times a day, saline and vapor rub for stuffy nose. The doctor made all of that sound so very easy to administer. I think I'll call him when it's time for the medicine fight. ;)

I'm not really surprised with this trouble (ear infections, etc.) When he was born I had the feeling that he'd have allergies and eczema, and I started looking for them right away. Sure enough, they happened.

His eczema was officially diagnosed at five months of age. He uses a one-percent hydrocortisone cream and lots and lots of petroleum jelly for that!

Looks like we are going to have lots of trouble for the next few years. One of his older sisters had eczema (she grew out of it thankfully) but still has allergies.

So cute!

The baby signed "I love you" to his dad last night! It was so cute and unexpected. He was waving "good night" to his dad when I put up the "I love you" sign and he actually copied it! He held his middle finger down with his thumb, which is really quite similar to how his six-year-old sister signs it!

He knows several signs — Momma, milk, more being the main ones — but very rarely uses them. He also knows how to say a lot of words but again he rarely speaks. When he does, it is usually a word he hasn't said before and it's very clear. He just prefers to communicate in "caveman." As you can imagine that involves a lot of grunting, screaming, and hitting.

Recipe collection (more cooking in store)

Since I was griping and whining about all the cooking that I am now doing on a daily basis in my previous post, I thought I'd point out that I'm keeping an online recipe collection/blog called I Hate the Kitchen. (Yes, I really do hate the kitchen.)

It's got a lot of really easy recipes that I've either made up, have tried, or am planning to try in the near future.

This is working out better than my paper collection, and I do use the term "collection" very loosely.

I've also subscribed to a daily newsletter from All Recipes that has good ideas.

Posting on the Internet does seem to make the daily dreaded chore of cooking a thousand times (okay, it's only three but it seems like a whole lot more) slightly more pleasant.

Summer break (is it over yet?)

This morning I was hit with a stunning revelation as I woke up. It was both good news and bad news, but mostly bad.

Being as it was the first day of July, that meant that I had survived ONE WHOLE MONTH of summer break. That's the good news.

But there is another MONTH and a HALF of summer break left. That is the bad, awful, terrible news.

I have felt terribly overwhelmed this summer, especially on Mondays. My husband has been home on the weekend and so has helped with all the kids. (By all the kids I mean our three and our two nieces.) I'm left by myself with all of them on Mondays so I guess I struggle to get back into the swing of things at the beginning of each week.

I feel like I've been blindsided by the constant cooking, sweeping, fighting, somersaulting, mess-making, more cooking, and more sweeping that goes on continually and my inability to control any of it.

The funny thing is, I'm surprised by these feelings I'm having because I had planned on a very nice summer with the kids. I had planned two or three workdays for myself (Monday-Wednesday, of course very flexible) during which time they would do quiet activities around the house and play outside. We'd take one of the last days of the week and do a fun "field trip." We made a list of fun (and free!) things we could do around town and all looked forward to doing our activities.

We got off to a late start on our trips, sad to say, and still haven't caught up. I do feel like I'm getting a little work done, although the house looks like a tornado tore through every single day.

This summer has been a disappointment for me for all of those reasons and because last summer was so nice. I made my mind up last summer that it was just going to be awful, what with three more kids than normal to take care of all day long (the new baby plus my two nieces had just moved over by us). I made plans for friends to drop their kids off at our house, and the kids had fun with their friends right here. It worked wonderfully. We also did some visiting ourselves on the weekends when my husband was around.

So I figured if last summer turned out nicely then this summer surely would. How wrong I was. I just don't seem to be able to get a handle on everything going on.

Every day is just a big mess of cooking breakfast, cleaning up from that, trying to do a few minutes of work, cooking lunch and cleaning up from that, trying to work awhile and clean up the house before figuring out what to cook for supper. In the meantime I'm sweeping the floor 10 times, wiping up spills, dealing with all manner of whining, crying, tattling and tending to the baby. I'm tired of it. I don't have the energy to think much about our field trips or even my errands I need to run.

I've been trying to get the kids to help me clean up and take care of the baby but sometimes it's so much trouble. I expend more energy trying to get them to help me than I would if I just did it myself.

Well, to be fair I know that most people deal with a lot more than this every day, and there are some things I could do to make things easier on myself.

But honestly I am not looking forward to the rest of the summer. I know that's awful but it's the truth. *sigh*

Free labor (not really that free)

Here's my little son, willingly sweeping the floor. He likes the Swiffer too.

His sisters are not as willing to help with housework, but I just announced to them that they must participate. They are folding towels right now and are going to have the laundry presented to them for folding all week, I'm afraid. Between trying to work and take care of them and cook and clean and ... well, I just don't have the time to do everything that needs to be done.

Although right now I expend more energy trying to get them to complete a task than I would if I just did it myself, they need to know how to do housework and I need the help.

Big day (or two) of fun

My kids had a big day (really two) of fun last week. We started off the day with a trip to the humane society for a new program they have called "Smarty Cats." It involves reading to their cats, of all things. When I heard about it I thought it was so crazy and I just had to submit the idea for a story. It was approved so off we went to read to the cats. Just as I expected, cats are not very good listeners but the girls had fun playing with them anyway.

After playing with the cats we went down to a worm farm to check that out for a story. We found out how to run a worm farm and we also saw his day lilies, organic garden, and a pond that the man built himself. The girls had great fun looking at the goldfish in the little pond.

That night we took them out to the river to see a screening of "Happy Feet." They show movies for free every Wednesday night in the summer on a huge screen right on the river. The movie was stupid to me but the kids liked it.

They walked over a new bridge after the movie and then all the girls went home together to my husband's sister's house. Oh boy, a slumber party for them, and some peace and quiet for us!

After everyone finally woke up and got around the next day, the kids and their auntie/mom went to the store for picnic stuff (I ran into them there and ended up with two of them) and then everyone came back to our house for a back porch picnic. They followed that up with a dip in the new pool their auntie/mom got for them.

Wow, now that was a lot of fun packed into two days.

Baby's walking!

The baby, who is now 13½ months old, started walking this past Sunday! We were all sitting around dressed waiting on time to go when he just started toddling around. He's been working on getting ready to walk for some time now and this past Sunday afternoon he was finally ready!

He's so cute because he holds his arms up and out and plods like a zombie. Now he's even more destructive than ever with the new world that walking opens up to him.

He's been able to climb up the stairs for some time now, but with him being able to walk we have to put the gate up at the bottom of the stairs if he's downstairs and at the top of the stairs if he's upstairs. He was walking around upstairs yesterday and got frighteningly close to the stairs. His balance is still a tad off, of course, and it would take nothing for him to topple down the stairs.

It's really neat to see him walking around and the entire family is getting a huge kick out of it!