Monday, May 31, 2010

Weekend in review.

I'm already counting down the weeks till another long weekend. We stuck close to home, trying to make time stand still.

I hit success at CVS again. All this for $65. Total saved = $132!


Sunday night the boys slept out in the tent. I never thought they'd make it, especially after fireworks started somewhere nearby. I'll tell you a secret, it wasn't the younger of the Morgan men that called it quits. We forgot that we haven't replaced our air mattress yet since the water damage last year, so Dan's back had had enough by 2am.

Nathaniel was great prepping for his great campout. The way he was saying goodbye for the night, you'd think he was moving to China. Telling me to be safe in the house, make sure I shut the door, wishing me & Audrey a good night. He came in at one point to 'check on us' to make sure we were ok without them in the house.

Monday we headed to the Memorial Day parade. We stopped for ice cream on the way back, cooked dinner on the grill and the kids were asleep before 6:30. That's the sign of a good day!

Here's the fam... You can tell everyone is having a great time waiting for the start.
Manchester has all the cool stuff - Roller Derby Girls! I can't wait to go to an event.


Can't get enough of the Roller Girls.


I felt bad for the bands.  If they screwed up a note, they got sprayed by adults holding water bottles.
Don't you think that's a little cruel? I guess they take band playing very seriously around here.


Love the Canadian haze we're experiencing?




Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Summer fun.

-

Little Miss A.

Man was it hot yesterday. Hot again today, I'm so not ready for this.  We're trying this year to avoid the air conditioners in the house.  I never liked them last year, way too loud and the air always smelled a little funky. I missed having windows open and they're an eyesore.   So we're experimenting with fans in strategic spots of the house.   Dan's still trying to convince me that this will work and we won't all die from heat exhaustion.

I got a new toy yesterday - Blackberry 8520.  It was a tough decision between the very cool looking Droid or the upgrade of the BB that I already have.  I went practical - avoided the touch screen, stuck with what I'm familiar with, low cost - and had the BB overnighted. It came yesterday and I Love It!  What a cool phone, highly recommend it. I'm in love.

I'm considering having the cat shaved. She's dying with this heat & all her hair. I keep thinking we got a new rug, nope, that's just the cat making herself low to the ground and as spread out as possible. I think she slept in the tub last night. 

Audrey's appointment went great. She performed right on cue: naming all the animals on a puzzle with each of their sounds, counting to 11 without being prompted, jumping repeatedly off a high stool and giving the Dr a heart attack each time. She has 2 molars still to go but everything else checked out fabulous.   I didn't get her stats - they weighed her in kg and getting her length was torturous so I'll look those up later in her chart.  She got the chicken pox vaccine and 3 CareBear stickers.   

Nathaniel never remembered the shots part of a Doctor's appointment, it was always so easy to get him in there.  Audrey takes one look at the M.A. and FREAKS right out. Good thing she doesn't take it personal!  I can barely get her up on the table for the exam because she KNOWS that's where bad things happen.  She's strong and even stronger willed.  Poor thing. 

We came home after and put the new sprinkler toy to the test.  I took lots of great pics and will put them up before the end of the week.  The water was very cold cold cold but it sure felt great!   Next up, setting up the pool! 

One interesting fun fact: I had the Dr look in N's ears to confirm his tubes are still in - he Swears one fell out and he's been asking me to talk louder a lot, so I've been very anxious for his hearing test in June. Anyways, both tubes are still there, one is barely hanging on but he's also managed to get some sort of bright purple object lodged in his right ear. She said it's small and not in the way of the drum.  He insisted he didn't put anything in his ear and she said we were ok to wait until the ENT appointment to deal with it as long as he doesn't complain.  Weird huh?

Nathaniel had a rough time at it yesterday. One of his little friends is turning into quite the meanie. I guess he punched N on the head while out on the playground (N wasn't the only one he was abusing).  Then getting ready to do the sprinkler, he slipped off the top step on the second floor and did one of those Scarlet O'Hara somersault falls and landed heavily on the hard wood floor at the bottom. It was nauseating to hear and I can't even imagine how much it hurt.  Then coming in from the sprinkler, he was of course soaking wet and went running into the house, slipping & falling hard onto the kitchen floor. THEN he went to bed and about 45 minutes into his sleep, we hear a massive bang upstairs because he fell out of bed!  What a bad day!

I'm pampering myself tonight with a cut & color appointment. I've never ever had my hair colored professionally before. I can't wait.   Blonde? Red? Brown? What will it be?  

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Monday, May 24, 2010

New week...New desk folliage.


I totally struggled through today. I stayed up WAY too late last night watching Lost. I'm hurrying through this post so I can finally spend the rest of this hot & humid day pouring over various websites that will help explain the gaps that I don't quite understand. 

I finally ran today.  I went after work to try to avoid some of the heat and set out for 2.8 miles.  The last time I ran was April 21.  Insane that I've gotten this far away from it. Picked an easy route, busy road. Lots of traffic = less allowing myself to walk, I'd hate for someone to see me do that, so it helps with the mental game. However, busy road + trash day aren't a good combo, peeee-ewww!

But, I made it!  It hurt and I was slow, but I made it.  Back to square one I guess.   Total time was 35 minutes, felt pathetic. I know I did the first 2 miles at a 10 minute pace, so that's not bad being so out of practice. I hit a big hill and walked the next .4 miles then very slowly did the rest home.  I wanted to puke.  I'm trying not to beat myself up about regression.  

Tomorrow I'll get to go at it again. I won't get to go until later, so it'll hopefully be cooler.  Audrey has her 2 year physical late in the afternoon, so I'll wait till Dan gets home later to head out. 

After my run, I picked up the kids, we wolfed down some dinner and headed to the park to meet up with friends.. We walked the trail  - one mile - then scrubbed down in the tub and both children very quickly passed out, with sweet little sugar plums dancing in their heads. 

I'll post stats from her Doctor's appointment tomorrow night, stay tuned!
-

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Friday nights at Wal-Mart

So I went to Wal-Mart last night in need of food and a bunch of randoms.   I generally don't mind Wal-Mart and can tolerate all the weirdness of it because I can get things so cheap.  

Anyways, N was helping me shop, he picked up some celery and just started eating it. So I threw the rest of it in a bag to pay for it.  Did the rest of the shopping and went to checkout - there's no sticker for the celery.   Kid can't find the code for it.  Started arguing with me that they don't sell celery that's not in a bag and am I SURE that this wasn't in a bag because there's no sticker and he can't ring it up without the code.  Asked if I knew how much it was, I made up $1.49.  He didn't believe me and insisted on calling a shift leader.  So he rings Everything up and we're all just standing there waiting for a precious shift leader to get a price for celery.  There's now a line behind me.  Shift leader isn't coming.  He's still going on about stupid celery out of the bag.   

I shut up. I just kept looking at him while he talked nonsense but I wouldn't respond to him.  I could SEE the celery from his check out area.  He could've just walked over, or asked someone close to us.  I refused to walk over because he was just being such jerk trying to argue with me about it not being in a bag because THEY DON'T SELL IT THAT WAY.  

Then he's giving me all kinds of excuses about why the shift leader wasn't coming.  Well, it's 10:00 and they usually count cash drawers at 10, that's what we do at this time of night you know, we count cash drawers and did you notice how quiet it is in here right now, it finally quieted down.   

He wouldn't shut up. 

N was touching the checkout bags and he snapped at N - You can't touch those, they need to stay where they are! 

Then I started thinking maybe he had some ocd issues and I was trying my best to be nice. 

Then he looks at me, line behind me is growing, he's getting totally uncomfortable about it.  I'm just standing there being silent.  He says "so, do you even really Want this celery???"   

Kiss of death right there buddy.

me: I wouldn't have put the celery in the cart if I didn't want it now would I? Isn't there possibly some other way you could find out the precious code for the celery so we can all move on with our night? 

him: um, no. I need a shift leader. (i think he peed himself a little)

Fat ugly haggard shift leader starts to wobble over, totally annoyed that we pulled her from counting her cash drawers, or whatever they do in those back rooms with the really bad two way mirrors. Cashier is totally proud of himself that he's about to BUST me because he's right and I'm wrong.  'do you know the code for the celery'    THREE OTHER CASHIERS yell out the lovely code for it.  Those three same cashiers were standing right around us the whole time. 

Look at that, Celery rang up for $1.49. 

Idiots. 

Friday, May 21, 2010

Happy Two

We've gone from this:

To This:


And from this:
To This:

Happy 2nd Birthday Baby Girl!


Thursday, May 20, 2010

Video Randoms

It's long, I'm warning ya. And it's just randoms thrown together.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Daycare for a year....$17,000



Skechers that they HAVE TO HAVE...... $60


Oatmeal that they HAVE TO HAVE because they refuse to eat any other brand.......$20 a week


Bi-weekly haircuts because he's obsessed with short short hair.....$14


Getting this note from your child at the end of the day.....






PRICELESS.


Friday, May 14, 2010

I think I like this game

I've always seen people with coupons but never quite caught on to how they get them. I'd try the paper here & there but the coupons were always for stuff we'd never use so I ended up always costing me money to buy the paper to look for coupons that were supposed to save me money.

I spent this week researching different online communities that provide updates on sales, printable coupons & random promotions.

I made a list tonight of all the stuff we need that's available on sale at different stores then went over to CVS at 10pm to do my first attempt at beating the system.

I think I did pretty darn good. Out of pocket, I spent $51. Total cost of everything I got......

$158!!! 

Go ahead, try and tell me that's not amazing!!

It's all stuff we use regularly too so I don't even feel I bought stuff just because...

This is fun!

I will admit, I was a little embarrassed during the check out scene.  All 22 year olds standing behind me at 11:10pm, with their munchies in hand, all looking way too cool. Me in my meme sweats, slippers, hair pulled back, make up wore off, a hoodie sweatshirt that apparently the cat had been sleeping on and a handful of coupons.  I looked like the biggest mom-dork ever.  But at least I saved some bucks!


Tomorrow, I will conquer Shaws.  I also have coupons for haircuts for the boys and am returning our cable boxes to Comcast since we're minimizing our service with them.  Funny thing is, we're not loosing any features, just finally got someone to put us on a different plan that's going to cut our bill $40 a month!

I'm on a roll. 

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Spam Mail

(i still don't know why my spacing is so screwed up.... I can't invest any more time into it right now to try to figure it out)

I hate spam email. I very rarely will open and even less rarely do I forward them.


We all know no one is going to knock on my door or call me on the phone, I won't win $1,000,000 from Microsoft or cure cancer if I forward the dumb email to 5 of my closest friends. I'm not going to win a gift certificate to Applebees or a free car from Honda.


But yesterday, I opened one of those emails. It was a bunch of questions and 2nd graders had answered the questions. Well, they say it it was second graders. Could've been this man getting paid to see how many computers he could hi-jack. Who knows.

Either way, I turned it around and asked Nathaniel the questions to see what he could come up with...

Enjoy:


Why Did God Make Moms

Because kids needs parents


How did God make mothers?

He put bones in
What ingredients are mothers made of?

peaches, lemons and apples, cinnamon and oranges
Why did God give you your mother and not some other mom?

Because I prayed to God for you
What kind of a little girl was your mom?

a small one and then she growed up
What did mom need to know about dad before she married him?
That he's really old
Why did your mom marry your dad?

Because she wanted to
Who's the boss at your house?

Mommy
What's the difference between moms and dads?

Daddy's build and Mommy's don't build
What does your mom do in her spare time?

Sit down and rest
What would it take to make your mom perfect?

Make her happy
If you could change one thing about your mom, what would it be?

She needs to paint her fingernails a different color

Monday, May 10, 2010

Monday Randoms

I was [ ] close to playing hooky today from work. All I wanted to do was lay on the couch with the cat and the remote and watch TV Land reruns all day. But I trudged through and made it to 4pm. I even got in some gym time at lunch.

Just a glimpse of our morning. I overslept until 6:20. Dan forgot to put the trash out, so add that to the list, I had forgotten to repack their nap bags for school so we turned around to grab those too. Rushed rushed rushed but I still made it to work on time. The temptation to just call it a jammy day was overwhelming. To top it off, while I was helping Nathaniel with a wardrobe malfunction, Audrey decided to feed the cat. I'm sure Mazie was thankful for all the floating food in her water. I've got to admit, she didn't do That bad of a job! She even put the bag away.


Saturday, Tait came over to play for the morning. I snuck a picture while they quietly sat for a brief moment. Audrey is just one of the boys.

Sunday morning goofing around with the webacm. Just call us the Strong family.


She's a dancing queen!

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Wii

I thought the point of playing Wii was to get you up & moving??

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Yesterday was wear a cap to school day for Nathaniel's class.
He wanted to make his own hat just like "Mr C and his Collosal Cap"
Cute cute ya ya but that's not the point of the story.
We got to school and his friend Dylan was crying, he forgot to bring in a hat.
Luckily, Nathaniel brought an extra hat so he handed the extra one to Dylan and said he could wear it for the day.
Dylan was so excited he instantly became his best friend for life. Or at least until after nap time until he found a new best friend.
It was the sweetest thing ever. He melts me.
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Saturday, May 1, 2010

Spring is here

As I sit with the heat on in almost May, I'll think back to early April when it was beautiful out and we were able to play outside for endless hours.