Birthday recap

So I finally decided what I wanted for dinner last night. I chose P.F. Changs. The kids would be ok with Chinese noodles and my Mom and Mother-in-law had never been there before and I knew they would like it.

My husband and kids got me a pink iPod nano and two monogrammed travel mugs. I really love the pink and green one. I have been getting these monogrammed mugs for people for gifts lately but I did not have one. There is a lady in my neighborhood that makes them and does other cute stuff. I am always there so she knows what I like. I was impressed that my husband actually called her and collaborated with her on this.



My bff got me a darling set of pink and green make up/toiletry bags monogrammed in green. I love them. They are my favorite colors and I don't have anything that nice for my stuff.


My in-laws got me a nice check with some nice numbers on it. I love this kind of gift because I'm kind of picky so I really do like to pick out some stuff for myself. Or put the money to some use that no one else would think was worthy of birthday money, but I appreciate.

Now for my mother's gift. I have mentioned before that she has already bought me a month of Nutrisystem for my birthday. Well, I was at her house the other day and she was asking me if there is any other little thing I would like for my birthday. I jokingly said "oh, about this much cash" and held up my pointer finger and thumb about two inches apart. And she was joking back holding up her fingers asking "now, this much?"

So she shows up last night before we head out to dinner with this cute little green gift bag. She says that she wants me to open it at home. So I set it down with the other gifts and we head out to P.F. Changs.

We come home and sing Happy Birthday, blow out the candles and I start opening gifts. When I get to my Mom's gift I am totally expecting some little earrings or a bracelet, something small. I start digging through the tissue paper and I see three bundles of cash about as thick as I told her I wanted.

Oh, she thought she was pretty funny with this. She couldn't wait for me to open it and was so proud of how clever she was. I was pretty surprised and thought it was pretty funny too. She had some fun getting it together. She went up to the bank that I used to work at when I was in college. There is a lady there that worked there back when I was there. So my Mom asked her to get it together and they both were pretty excited to be in on this little gag. The lady made sure that she put some older bills in there so it would look thicker because my Mom wanted it so thick.


So I had a pretty nice birthday. Oh and my husband unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher yesterday. That was a nice present by itself.

Oh and I almost forgot my favorite dessert, ice cream cake. I always get ice cream cake for my birthday and my husband can never have a piece because he always gives up treats for lent. So it's just me and the kids eating the leftovers. Too bad for him!

My Mother-in-law also offers every year to make me whatever food dish I want. This year I had a taste for that vegetable pizza. She made me that and delivered it last night. (She is super nice and I am super lucky.) So I have been snacking on that today.

Between breakfast, dinner and cake yesterday and vegetable pizza, secret hidden girl scout cookies and leftover ice cream cake today I am totally blowing any progress I had made with starting Nutrisystem. Luckily I have a whole box full of cardboard food to get me back on track.

I think I need an intervention.

Still deciding

I still have not decided what I want for my birthday dinner tonight.....

BIG decision........ like Sophie's Choice.

Sneaking girl scout cookies from my secret stash today.

These activities don't exactly work well with my previous post about joining Lotta's club to better myself...... Guess I have more work on myself to do than I realized!

Now back to dinner....... Chinese, Mexican, hmmmmmmmm

Gin In My Apron Pocket

Lotta over at Mom O Matic has started a new club. Back when I first found her blog she had a weight loss group called the "Future MILF group". She lost 35 pounds. WOW. Quite a feat.

The new club is not just a weight loss group but "focuses on working on your sanity, your life and your looks" and is called "Gin in My Apron Pocket." I have decided to jump on the bandwagon because I could always use some improvement.

Tomorrow is my birthday. My Mom usually buys me a nice big ticket item that I wouldn't/couldn't buy for myself. This year I asked her to buy me a month of Nutrisystem. That is sad, nice, exciting all wrapped in one.

Now on my actual birthday tomorrow I will not be eating any Nutrisystem food. As delicious as it is (wink, wink) I am going to stray from the cardboard boxes and treat myself. I am meeting my bff for breakfast in the morning with our youngest children. And then I will be going out to eat for dinner with my husband, kids, mother and mother-in-law.

I haven't decided what I want for dinner yet. I act like I am on death row and I might not get the last minute pardon. This might actually be my last good meal. So it is so important that I choose the correct meal. THIS IS WHY I HAVE TO DO NUTRISYSTEM! Because food is waaaaay too important to me!

Mundane tasks

If I have to unload the freaking dishwasher and reload it one more time I'm totally going to lose it. And of course, I'm going to have to do it. Who else is going to do it? I'm the only one that the sink full of dishes is really bothering.

I think I forgot my meds today............

Gory eye picture

Here is a shot of son's eyes that I took tonight. They are healing nicely. I expected worse.

He had the surgery on Thursday. He wound up having snow days at school on Thursday and Friday. Lucky break for us because he had some time off to rest and heal on Friday and he is not behind the class on anything. Plus he has a perfect attendance record going and this did not mess it up.

I find it amazing that he could have surgery on both of his eyes and go home that night. He was back at school today with no restrictions. I mean good God, someone cut into his eyeballs less than a week ago! This is craziness!

Perfectly average

This afternoon was my children's annual check up with their primary Pediatrician. Everything went smoothly for both kids. Nothing new that we did not already know about.

I did accidentally lie to my daughter and tell her that nobody was getting any shots today. Because poor baby girl got three of them. I forgot about those. But now she won't get anymore until she's eleven.

They are both "perfectly average" as my title says, because they are both in the 50th percentile for both height and weight. Just your average run of the mill kids.

Now if there was a percentile for personality, idiosyncracies, quirkiness....... oh boy, son would be off the charts......

And daughter...... she could score pretty high for whininess these days.

It's all over......

Last night we attended our annual school auction for my son's catholic school. It is the major fund raiser for the school. They count on drumming up enough cash that they do not have to do all the other crappy little fund raisers throughout the year, like selling wrapping paper or pizzas or stuff like that.

This year I was on the basket committee. It was basically my Bunco group that was the basket committee. The gal that is kind of the lead Bunco gal somehow was volunteered to head the basket committee so she asked all of us to help. We all picked a theme basket to make. And then we shopped for bargains to create these baskets. Parishioners also donated random things and we tried to put them together to make up baskets. With all these different themes in mind we could keep an eye out for things for each other while shopping for our bargains.

We wound up with some really nice baskets. Another lady had control over the baskets for several years and the responsibility was taken away from her. I can't say exactly why, but there are several theories. Anyway we were not really nervous, but anxious about our debut of baskets under a new regime.

All the donations and baskets were housed in the old convent by school. Since there is such a shortage of nuns the convent is not functioning as a convent anymore and the school/parish uses it for a variety of functions. All of our stuff was on the top floor. This floor basically looks like a dorm with bedrooms and a large multi person bathroom.

I had never been on this floor before and I have to say, I was hoping for some paranormal activity up there when we would meet there at night to work on the baskets. Got nothing. Sister Mary Whatsername never tried to contact me. Now, it could have been that I was talking sooo much that I couldn't hear her. She was probably saying "Woman, please shut up. I'm trying to give you all an important message and you can't shut your mouth." And now my whole Bunco group missed this important message.

So back to last night. I think the baskets were a hit. My husband and I bought one. And speaking of buying.... there were two different rounds of silent auctions, a blackboard auction, the baskets and then the oral auction. Last year my husband left all the bidding to me and beforehand I picked out some sensible things from the auction book and bid on those. This year I did not come with a plan and for some reason my husband decided he should start bidding on things.

Now we are both bidding on things in the silent auction and I'm getting a little worried. Some of the things my husband is bidding on were just things his friend was bidding on that my husband would then outbid him by $2 just to piss him off later when we won. So we came home last night with a random bunch of new crap. Just what this house needs is more crap.

Since everyone had a baby sitter when the auction was over everybody went out to a neighborhood tavern. And once I'm out, I'm out all night. My husband and I always act like we've just been let out of prison for one night and we'll never get to go out again. We have a problem leaving at an appropriate time. So at closing time we finally went home.

Needless to say I am dragging a little today. My husband promised my son that since he was so brave during his surgery that we could go out to his favorite restaurant. My son reminded him of this promise today. So we are headed to California Pizza Kitchen for an early dinner.

As much as I like a party and going out with friends, I am glad the auction is over. It seems like we have been super busy socially lately and I'm looking forward to a little break.

My boy Rico Suave

On the way to the hospital this morning son made some phone calls to his Grandmothers. He also gave my bff a call. Now bff has a daughter that is five days younger than son. We did that totally on accident. Anyway son and bff's daughter are betrothed. They have been since they were born. We figure everyone will definitely like the in-laws this way.

So he is chatting on my cell phone with my bff and I hear him say to her "Can I talk to my sweetheart now?"..................... Where does he come up with this crap?

P.S. Bff also has a son that is 18 days younger than my daughter. They are also engaged. And that one was planned.

Operation successful

Today was son's eye surgery. Here is a picture of him after the surgery in the hospital. I'm so glad it's over and it looks like everything went well. Although it didn't look like that when he first opened his eyes.





Here is a more close up shot. We are home from the hospital here. I am trying to give you a visual of how bloodshot his eyes are. I enjoy gruesome stuff like this. Hence my posting of the close up. Sorry if this disturbs you. They actually look pretty good here. They looked horrendous the first time he opened his eyes.



And here he is at home with his little sister who was a little leery of him at first when she saw those eyeballs. She was very tired after spending the day with Grandma. She claimed Grandma made her dance all day. Grandma can be a real toughy. I'm hoping she didn't break the whip out on her to keep her dancing like that.



As I said, I am glad that the whole thing is over and it seems to be a success. When he first came out he was very sleepy and kept his eyes closed for quite a while. You could see through his eyelids that they were swollen though.

Before son came back to us the surgeon came to our room to tell us how it went. He said everything went well and that he actually wound up correcting both eyes. We had thought that only the left eye needed correction. He told us what to expect in the next couple of days. We were anticipating that he would tell us to keep him in from any outside recess and sports. But he said he could go back to school tomorrow and resume any activities that he felt up to.

So we did not think we had any more questions for him and let him leave. Then they bring my child back to me who sleeps for a while and then starts flickering his eyes open. His eyes are bloodshot and very swollen and his left eye (the one that was turning in) is now facing all the way to the left. And I'm thinking, um what the hell happened here. Nobody said anything about him now having a huge wonk eye.

I started thinking about this child's luck and how whatever can happen, happens to him. So I am envisioning them saying they had over corrected it (which is a possibility with this surgery) and how they won't be able to do it over for three months and how he's going to have to go to school for the rest of the year with one eye looking at the wall.

I start asking my husband and the nurse if they are seeing what I am seeing and start asking a lot of questions. So the nurse decides she should page the surgeon and have him call back to the room so I could talk to him.

He eventually calls and I question the crazy eye and he says "oh, yes I should have explained that to you more clearly". Apparently he gave that eye a shot of anaesthesia that numbed the optic nerve. So that eye was just rolling wherever and settled over on the left. It has since corrected itself. THANK GOD.

Oh and he said that the eyes would probably be even more swollen tomorrow with possibly some bloody tears. I'll try to capture that on film too!

Old and Tired

Went. out. last. night... Very. tired... Head. hurts... Chest. hurts... Too. old. for. this...


P.S. Actual chest cavity hurts, not boobs, it wasn't that kind of night!

Happy Valentine's Day !!!

Daughter has a fever. She woke up in the middle of the night at 102.2 degrees. She had the aforementioned ear infection. She also has been sneezing lots of crap for the last couple of days. And now we have the fever.

I can't really complain because (knock on wood) this child really has rarely been sick in her five years. She has a touch of allergies. But that can be fixed quickly with some Claritin. And she went through a round of ear infections a couple of years ago. But that ran it's course.

Now the son is a different story. He is my challenge in life. He is always coming up with new and interesting ways to test me. I think I'm passing. We'll see.

A week from today he will be having a little outpatient surgery on his eye. He has strabismus and amblyopia. Which means he was not using his left eye, for who knows how long. And because he was not using the eye it started to move a little bit.

His eyes are not moving together at the same time like they should be. His depth perception is thrown off by this and it can cause him headaches. So the surgery will hopefully fix this. And hopefully not be over corrected, which apparently can happen causing a second surgery.

I am hoping it is a success because it's the only way to correct the strabismus. The amblyopia can be corrected with patching the good eye, which we have been doing. But man that is a pain in the ass. The kid doesn't like it. It's hard to fit in during the day around activities. He doesn't really like to wear it out in public. He rubs it. And now he knows how easy it is take off and he does.

He has a perfect attendance record at school. He did not miss a day in Kindergarten and has not so far in First Grade. So our plan is to take him out a little early on Thursday to have the surgery. Then they say he should be able to go back to school on Friday if all goes well.

Now the tricky part is that he can't eat so many hours before the surgery. So he can't eat lunch at school on Thursday even though he will be there during the lunch hour. My husband is taking the day off from work that day. So I think maybe he will go sit with him at lunch to make sure he does not take any offerings from his friends.

I know we sound crazy. Other people would just take him out of school for those two days. But I never claimed we were normal people so that is our plan. Wish us luck!

Dilemma

So say you were treating your daughter to McDonalds for lunch but you were trying to be good so you order yourself a salad. Then when you get home and start looking through your bags you see that you were given an extra bag of food. Say this extra bag has two crispy chicken ranch snack wraps and two baked apple pies......

Hmmmmmm crispy chicken wrap vs. grilled chicken asian salad with low fat dressing......

Oh and the apple pies....... They were good. Ooops I mean... What would you do????

Great birthday present for a child

My bff's son's 5th birthday is at the end of this month. I got him a custom graphic t-shirt from Alex & Jett for his present. It was delivered yesterday and it is sooooo cute. I wish I could show you a picture but it has all of his personal information on it so I won't.

I got him the "Monsters" t-shirt in blue & green. His Mom helped me pick out the "tagline" that goes at the top. That t-shirt is supposed to look like a poster for a Monster flick at the movies.

I was expecting it to be cute but the quality of the t-shirt is really good too. I think I am going to get this same thing for my niece and nephew's birthdays in March.

Favors for friends

Today I was talking to one of my friends that has children at the same school that my son attends. She had mentioned that she was without a car today because she had left it at the dealership for some winterizing.

She has a 2 1/2 year old daughter in addition to the two boys at school. Yesterday we had freezing rain all day and today we had low temperatures so our streets and sidewalks are all ice. I did not want her to have to walk the couple of blocks to school with her little girl on the ice so I volunteered to grab her boys when I got my son and drive them home.

So when I went to school at pickup time I decided to walk over to a house right across the street from school where I had left my favorite pair of sunglasses the week before. I was pretty excited to get these back because my backup pair pinch my large head.

Feeling like I accomplished something I walk back over to the school lot and find some people to chit chat with. The bell rings and all the kids come piling out. A Mom of one of my son's friends yells over the crowd to me that my son couldn't find me and asked her for help. She gives me some trouble about being a good mother and I tell her how he stole some pasta from the fish fry on Friday night, blah, blah, blah.

Now as I grab my son from her I commend him on approaching her for help. Just last week I had a conversation with him about that situation. I was afraid I was going to be late to pick him up one day but I made it in time. I decided I should make sure he knew what to do if I was not there to get him. He did just what I told him to do.

So I compliment him on listening to my directions and we hop in the car and start the heater because it's really cold out today. We wait for our turn to pull out of the lot and I'm asking him about his day and I'm driving home.........

AND I FORGOT MY FRIEND'S CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!

I didn't make it all the way home. I remembered and flipped a u-turn and started to call her but she was already calling me. The school office had already called her. I told her to call them back and say I was getting them because I was already back in front of school.

I can't believe I did that. I don't forget anything. And when I walked in to the school office to get the boys, the younger one looks at me and says "why didn't you watch for me." I felt like the biggest ass. I mean how hard was that to remember.

I have this image of the two boys standing out in the cold waiting, while I'm chit chatting away and walking to my warm car. Luckily my friend just laughed it off. We'll see if she trusts me again.

Fish Fry

Alright this post is a little late. But I mentioned the story in my last post so I thought I'd go ahead and write about it.

Friday was the first Fish Fry of the Lenten season. All the good Catholics like to show up on the first night and get seen by the Pastor for extra credit. So our family headed down to our parish school cafeteria where my son attends first grade. It is packed. I mean standing room only. There is a line down the hall like they are giving away money. And I mean big bills, like fives!

Of course, they aren't giving away any cash. They are just selling some crappy food. But we aren't really there for the food. We're there to socialize. I know you thought I was going to say we were there to support our parish. Yeah that too, but especially to socialize.

So while we are waiting to get into the cafeteria in the long line down the hall my son decides he can't wait with us and has to walk ahead in and see who he can talk to. In his own head he is running for an office of some sort.

We finally make it in and place our orders. We see some friends with some open spots at their table and make our way over. We track down our son and get him to sit down and eat about half of his crappy cheese pizza before he takes off again.

Now because this is a catholic function there is beer available. And for the bargain basement price of $2.00 a can. So my husband and I are treating this like happy hour and letting our children run wild.

We are finishing eating when we see some friends of ours just getting their food. So we wave them over and give them our seats. This way we can keep drinking $2.00 canned Anheuser Busch products and move the socializing around to other tables.

So all of a sudden there is a large crash in the front of the cafeteria by the food line. A clean up crew starts assembling because a plate had shattered. Now I've had several beers at this point and I figure I don't need to be worried about this mess because my kids have already eaten and are off playing.

So I resume talking when out of the corner of my eye I see a friend of mine approaching and carrying trays of pasta with my children following her. She tells me that she was up at the front of the cafeteria when my son stepped into the food line and took a tray. I guess his sister thought this looked like a good idea and followed him.

So he turns around with his tray and drops it. And like a nice boy and good big brother he takes off leaving his five year sister standing there with her tray when the entire cafeteria turns around to see what the ruckus is about.

When he sees that the mess is being cleaned up and it looks like there won't be any punishment he returns to claim a replacement tray. That is where my friend gets involved and helps them to the table.

I'm a little shocked to see them coming with food because I haven't paid for any of it. So my children basically stole three meals from the church.

They have the gall to jump in the long line in the first place and just take what they want. (Like they are neglected because their parents are loaded and they need to fend for themselves.) Then after losing one of the first dinners they stole they steal a replacement.

And like the good parents that we are that's when we decided to book it. Well, after they finished the pasta they stole. Because you know I wasn't up to feeding them when we got home after all the beer I had......

Daughter is sick

I just got back from the pediatrician's office with daughter. She has an ear infection. Damn, I thought they grew out of those things by now. A couple of years ago she got them all of the time. So when she presented with the symptoms I knew it was infected.

I thought of "Mama Fidel" this morning because she had a post the other day where she said she was going to take her daughter to the doctor. She said "her breath is smelly and my friend CVO said her ear smells infected (ha ha, yes she's a nut, too)".........

I left her a comment on that post stating that I wish I had a friend that could smell infections. Because that could come in really handy.

I could have used that friend this morning. It would have saved me a trip to the pediatrician's office and ten bucks. I could have just called and said that my friend could smell the infection and they should just call in a prescription. I wonder how that would go over.

I have a silly story about the fish fry at school last night that I'll get to later.

My first real comment!!!

I received my first real comment last night!

"queen mommy" from "From Talbots to Target" was kind enough to leave me a comment welcoming me aboard and commenting how she did the stay at home thing for a while and then preferred to go back to work.

I can understand both sides because being at home all the time is a test of patience. For me, I always say working about two days a week out of the house would be nice. I did enjoy the social aspects of working in an office; going to lunch, having adult conversations and having a task with rewards and recognition. Because you know, there isn't a whole lot of recognition at home. But I hated being trapped in an office 45 - 50 hours a week too.

I enjoy the flexibility of staying at home. I like that if school calls because my son needs something I can run up there right away. I like being able to volunteer at his school. And I like being there waiting for them when they both get out of school. I really like that if they are sick I don't have to worry about how I am going to handle work. And the casual attire is nice too.

I find myself so busy with all the crap you have to do with kids in school, I am always amazed how women that work full time get everything done. I don't know if I could do it. I mean, all the laundry, grocery shopping, homework, meals..... on top of the full time job. How are they not exhausted? And then some of these wonder women are working out too. They have their act together. Me, not so much.

Now back to "my first real comment"..... There is someone else who has commented on my big three previous posts. But that person ("bff-sahm") is my real life "bff". We refer to each other as "bff" as a joke, but we are really "best friends forever".

I decided when I started this blog spontaneously a couple days ago that I was not going to tell ANYONE, except, you know my bff. She knows everything about me, all my secrets, everything. So I trust her to read it and not be shocked by anything and still love me.

She was nice enough to comment so I didn't feel like a total loser. I did say yesterday that I was feeling a little silly because I was posting and she was the only one commenting. I mean we can do that on the damn phone.

Oh and my husband knows about the blog too. That's a given with us. I usually tell him EVERYTHING. Sometimes that is a mistake. Sometimes by bff has to tell me to keep my mouth shut and not tell him every stupid detail about something that will just piss him off and he doesn't really need to know.

He won't read it anyway. He gets the blog thing, but doesn't really get the blog thing.

It's just that I am a horrible liar. I have no poker face. If I try to lie I feel everyone can just see it on my face and read my mind that I am lying. So I tend not to try. This means sometimes I have to avoid people that might put me in the position of having to lie to them or hurt their feelings. I avoid confrontation too. Yeah, I know. I am working on it.

So thanks "queen mommy" and "bff-sahm" for the comments. It's like getting that recognition I used to get at work, only a lot more fun.

Happy Birthday Daughter

Today is Daughter's 5th birthday. We already had her family birthday party this past Saturday so she was a little confused about whether or not she was already five. So now she is officially five years old. I can't believe my baby is five. That happened so fast.

She is happily play Disney Princess Enchanted Journey on the Wii right now. I find it so crazy how easily she picks up how to work these types of things. She does it better than her seven year old brother.

We've been having a family game of shuffleboard on the Wii before bath time every night. My husband and I think it's important to teach our children how to play bar games. You know, so they will be cultured and all. I mean my husband and I did really fall in love over bottled beer and a jukebox in a small local tavern.

We've been working on darts on the Wii. But that is a little harder for the kids to pick up. We'll keep working on it.

Ash Wednesday

My Mother and Mother-in-law just took my daughter to a local pub for lunch after Grandparent's Day at her preschool. They were nice enough to bring a fish sandwich home to me when they dropped her off.

Daughter and I will head to mass at son's school in a little bit to get our ashes today. I'm still not settled on what I want to give up for Lent this year. Like I mentioned in my first post, I am a weak person. So this is hard for me every year.

My husband always picks something he really loves just to make it extra hard on himself. He is weird like that. He likes to test himself. He has discipline. I do not.

I usually try to give up cussing. This is actually hard for me because I have quite a potty mouth and I enjoy cussing. So that is a sacrifice for me.

My husband wants me to give up pasta. Now this would be quite a sacrifice for me too. But I think he's a little more worried about my butt and not my Christianity.

First day on the job

I am fiddling around with this blog thing trying to set it up. I truly don't know what the hell I am doing. So it is taking some time to figure it out.

I am a weak person. So I have opened up a one pound bag of peanut M&Ms. The cute red, pink and white Valentine's day ones. Now I have a problem. You see, if I leave them out on the counter in the candy dish, when my husband comes home from work he will be able to tell how many I have eaten out of the bag. So if I want to get rid of the evidence that I have eaten any M&Ms, I will need to eat the whole bag and hope that he does not notice that the bag is missing from the drawer.

Looks like I better start hitting that candy dish. This means I have five or six hours to polish off the bag. This shouldn't be a problem. However, I won't want to share with my children when they get home from school. This cuts down on my time.

Maybe I should quit posting and start my M&M project.

I am a major procrastinator and do not follow through with anything 100%...... except eating.