Plan no more

I really should learn that I was meant to plan something and then get excited bout it. Ever. That if I do plan something I should leave many hours of wiggle room for everything to go wrong. It's not bad when things go wrong per say. I just happens. 99% of the time I roll with it and it isn't a big deal. Usually that is because 99% of the time it doesn't really matter. The 1% of the time that I get really excited about something and I plan it, is when it stings too much when it falls through.

I really do dislike this trait about myself. I should be of the age where I don't get excited until its actually happening.

I have just found this nifty thing in my Word 2007 (and for those of you that are still using 2003, let me tell you…2007 is just awesome…after 4 mo of it I find new stuff each day that I love in it) where I have button called publish. If I hit it, it updates my blog. I don't have to log into anything or go online. It also auto corrects the fact that I love to type in all lowercase and generally I type how I speak. So for anyone that it bugged, it now fixes it. It must know I don't have time for capital letters.

how loud does a school hallway echo?

today was the first day of school. every year on this day i walk the kids into school and into their respective classrooms. yes we've met the teacher and we know where we are going, but on the very first day being walked in is a must. bus can start tomorrow, but today we need mom to walk us in.

normally this is no problem and i didn't think it would be today. we were up and dressed and out the door with minimal issue (this really means I had to find two shoes I just set out last night and mick mick kept undressing himself so we were running 10 min behind - but i had prepared for 30 min behind so we were all good in the end)

those of you that know anything about the first day know that every parent it seems walks their kid in. you also know that the school will never, in 1 million years have enough parking. they don't want you hanging out there all day, they are trying to corrupt your children don't you know, why should you witness it.... i kid, but really, there aren't that many parking spots.

so there are cars parked on the street for 2 blocks every direction. i park as close as possible, haul out the little ones, everyone straps on $200 dollars worth of school supplies, backpacks, tubs, wet wipes and a gallon jug of purell and we head in to begin this wonderful year. we navigate down the hall and drop sydney off. at this very second the lightbulb goes on in both 2 year olds heads. they have the look of "wait, she gets to go in that cool looking room with all the awesome stuff in it and i have to stand in the hallway and then walk away from it". mick mick seemed to instantly decide the best course of action on this one. he promptly sits down, cries as hard as he can and screams as ear piercing and shrill like as one can. 5 teachers poke their heads out, and 4 others actually walk out. i scoop up captain screamer pants and off we scream to the 5th grade hall. drop both boys off at their classrooms and off we go still screaming out of the building. now, up until this point ashleigh just has a look of dismay on her face. she's still going along with this walking out of the really cool building but i can tell we have 20 second left until melt down. we're 60 seconds from the car....

now, i think i could have made it had she not seen the playground. she did, and it was all over. she was not about to walk away from a place that had 3 slides that were bright and shiny and new to her. so she jumped up and down about 4 times in that little hop toddlers do during a tantrum, sat down on the sidewalk in front of the school and promptly screamed and cried.

keep in mind that i still have captain screamer pants tucked under my arm kicking and flailing in his glorious moment. i scoop this one up, who promptly does the "go stiff and stay straight as a board so on a good day you can slide right back out of moms arms" move. 30 seconds to the car, 30 seconds to the car is my mantra in my head right now. we make it to the car, a bribe of holding the chapstick for miss screamer pants and the promise of taking a stick with him in the car to mr. screamer pants allows safe placement in the car seats. any of you know that this is very much worth any bribe because trying to buckle a stiff screaming child in is quite possibly on the list of top 200 most difficult things to accomplish while frazzled.

and at 2:30 we get to do this all over again......thank goodness for the car line though. we only have to drive around the circle, collect the big three and no removal from car seats necessary.

mike gets to do 1st day of school next year. all by himself. *snickers*


*** oh hell, i just realized that i forgot to give them money for their drinks at lunch and i forgot to pack a snack. good thing i'm not in the pto or they would boot me and my torn jean wearing self out***

do you hear what i hear

silence.....golden silence. it is 9pm on a Sunday night and i can assure you that this will be the only night that it is totally silent in my house at this time. why you ask? because tomorrow is the first day of school, and all clothing is neatly set out and backpacks are full of the endless amount of items that one must bring these days. babies are asleep and i don't even have one tv on. i know. crazy.

in an effort to continue my productivity today i organized and cleaned out the kids closets. they weren't here for the afternoon so i promptly took the time to pull out any faded, too small, ripped or stained clothing and put it in dark bags so that i didn't have to hear "but that's my favorite...." 54 times when i know good and well that the item would fit either 2 year old it's so old. yay me. i even had time to unload and re-load the dishwasher, pick up the dining room where everything seems to get left and refold all the blankets mick mick pulled out of the blanket trunk in the living room. 5 minutes after the big 3 got here, it looked like i hadn't done a thing.

i'm trying something new this year. for some reason there is a huge fight every night on who takes the first shower. i do not understand this, because if you were a child and you actually thought about the fact that you are in a family with 5 children and 2 adults and all 5 children took showers in the evening, then you would quickly deduce that the first shower gets an entire showers worth of hot water. however, this never ever ever happens and we fight about it. constantly. so this year, initials are going on the calendar and if yours is up first there is no fighting or sighing or rolling eyes or TRADING either. it is the law.

i am a bit sad that for the next 9 months my alarm clock is set to go off every week day at a much earlier hour than i would like. i am spoiled. i suppose the amazing thing that i love love love about having your own company with an office off of your house is that you can sleep till the little ones want to get up and then roll on into the office in whatever you want. usually that is in the 7 o'clock hour. however this summer we had them sleeping until 8ish and that was the coolest thing ever. since school begins at 7:30 my alarm is set a few hours early. i will try really hard not to be cranky in the morning when it goes off. blah.

mike gets home tomorrow night. i cannot wait. i've missed him so much this cd release. he's in for a few nights and then gone for another week....and then my friends....normalcy returns....(okay well as normal as this life we have can get)

the ice maker on the freezer is out. i forgot to get ice when i ran to the grocery store this evening to get any remaining "lunch making" items we needed. i also forgot miracle whip. i didn't tell jordan this. hope he likes ranch dressing on his ham sandwich. i know you're thinking "why didn't she make a list?", i did, mick mick was playing with it while we were in the aisle debating blue vs black binders and i thought i had everything after the 10 min long debate that exhausted me to the point of finding the nearest check out lane and getting out of there quickly.

tomorrow's menu request for 1st day o school breakfast is blueberry muffins. before you people think i am so awesome of getting up and making these from scratch you should probably do a shot of tequila or two and realize that i am taking the processed crap from martha white and dumping it into a bowl and mixing with water. i overachieved today cleaning out closets....making blueberry muffins from scratch would be way too martha stewart of me. and she gives me hives.

Music to check out: Radney Foster - This World We Live In - I'm obsessed with the song Kindness of Strangers right now. the lyrics are just so wow.

on another note

am i the only one who sometimes misses the original iron chef. i do like everything with americanized ingredients, but i miss the translator man who would say "qui- san" 50 times per episode. the passion in which he said this has not been matched by alton brown.

yay for productivity

i have come to the realization that as of right now, what you see is what you get. in terms of how this blog thingy works. in other words, i totally suck at making this look nice. i am sure as the weeks and months go on in this journey the light bulb on making it look good will come on or i will stumble upon the instructions that seem to be hiding on how to make this look nice. i know jack squat about html. just enough to get me in trouble by deleting really important parts of code. so all this being said. get used to it.....it's the best i got right now.

today was pretty productive. i added more to the puzzle that is the floor. really it's not a puzzle, but rather my ass being lazy on finishing the dang thing because 459 other things are consuming the top of my priority list. hallway is almost done being re-floored. if the kids think i'm crazy now, wait till the hear me standing on the ladder yelling 'victory is mine' when i finish it. i also got quite a bit of laundry done - this is no small feat so do not scoff. there are many of us in this household and lots and lots of laundry is generated. you know, i do think that the purple jump suit people that offed themselves waiting for the mother ship were onto something. they didn't have to sort anything. all the same color. the little ones would love this. however the middle one would protest much i do believe as it had no glitter or sparkles and not one ounce of "cute" in a purple sweat suit. heeey, do you think if i did this they would put me on "what not to wear" cause that would be fun to go grown up shopping. more on this later as i need to work on perfecting my "surprised" face when they show up to tell me that making my kids wear all the same color of stuff is a wee bit eccentric.

i get to cross off of my list "go to mens warehouse". not that i ever wanted to go there much, but our friend kevin was in need of some female style guidance (purple jump suit - seriously) on some dress clothing and knew i wouldn't let him walk out of there in anything resembling an outfit that is going to have him on the pages of glamour with his eyes blacked out. i had pre-warned him that we had a 30 minute window before the little ones revolted sitting in their stroller in a store with nothing to interest them and that it wasn't really a store where one could bring goldfish to tide them over. it was pretty painless. i trained him well on what colors to say and what to tell the salesman before we went in. however, i did almost fall over into the shoe trees when the sales man put a "sport coat" on him that made him instantly look like a 79 year old man. it was all i could do to not giggle. i just wish it had the suede ovals on the elbows....

mick mick's favorite new phrase is 'alll aboooard'. he's obsessed with trains right now. i love love love this phase in little boys. so we went around yelling his phrase all day. it makes him giggle and i love his giggle

we also ate popcicles outside this evening. it wasn't 100 degrees out so it was perfect. see - that is productivity.

school starts monday. i'm ready and yet not. i really really hope that this year is better for jord than it was last year. i feel like last year i was frustrated all year and he was only frustrated when it came time to be accountable for his grades. i'm trying new tactics and new approaches and hopefully it works. he's such a smart kid, it's infuriating when he doesn't even care to try.

so here's to new beginnings....new week, new school year, new blog, and me going to new york to get new clothes (kidding on that one)

is it insane

that i am this happy. of course there is always room to grow, learn, teach, become better each day. but i have the most fabulous not to mention hot husband. children that are healthy and happy and make me laugh really hard each day. family that loves me and keeps me going. work that is always exciting and really hard. friends that are some of the best people to walk this earth. and inspiration in the little things.

thank you Lord for everything I am blessed with. i am one blessed woman.

starting off

I think that this could be good.
Stay tuned as I figure this thing out.