It's a Hurricane!!

Seriously, OMGosh it just started! The trees are all bent in half from the wind and we are getting pummeled with rain!

Needless to say, Soccer practice is cancelled tonight.

Needless to say, my kids wouldn't have gone anyway, because they have SPOTS.

:-P

SPOTS...

Status: Frustrated. DANG Frustrated. My kids have spots! Out, out damn spots!!!

Okay, so two weeks ago Thing Three develops a rash. A pretty severe one that covers his entire body and face, and it looks angry and red, like hives. We go to the Dr., and he is baffled. Thing Three's ears and throat look fine, but the rash came on so quickly, the Dr. was confused. So he gives us a bunch of lotion and sends us home. Two days later, the rash is WAY worse. So I had HUBBY take Thing Three in, and see a different doctor, and she says "that rash is viral" and they test him for strep, and it comes back POSITIVE. So we quarrantine him for a day until the antibiotics kick in, and in a week, he's better.

Cut to last night, just as all three Things were eating an early dinner before soccer practice, and Thing Two noticed a rash on his arm. Then after an inspection by me, I find that it's his whole body. Just like Thing Three. So I run Thing One to soccer practice, and lug the three boys to the Dr., and they test Thing Two for Strep.

It came back NEGATIVE. But the rash is identical-- its onset the same. The nurse says to go home and wait. If the rash gets worse (HELLO! IT WILL!!!) to call again. But we must have tested too early.

Well, Thing ONE now has the rash too. So I've called the Dr's office and heck be damned I'm not going to be told to "wait." We need treatment NOW!!! Of course they took my name and number and said they'd call me back. Still waiting...

I hate spots.

White VS Wheat Bread...and the Winner Is...

Status: It's STILL raining! Hubby actually made the "Ark" joke last night. Soccer fields are closed, and it looks like we won't be having practices tonight. DARN. I'm all choked up about that one...especially since I would have had to break away early anyway to run the kids to Cubs/Activity Days at the church that is THIRTY MILES AWAY...

*Ahem*

Okay, Hubby and I got ambitious and made six loaves of homemade bread on Sunday--Three honey wheat and three white. (Can I say, I love my Bosch mixer??) Anyway, the kids and I have been eating the bread for toast, sandwiches, etc. and I am surprised at myself. I actually prefer the wheat bread over the white bread. Weird for me. Seriously.

I grew up an exclusively white-bread girl. My parents always bought white, and the few experiences I had with wheat bread were...less than stellar.
My mother, bless her, would make homemade wheat bread and (sorry mom) her loaves were so dense they probably weighed about 20 pounds each and yes, she made us EAT THEM. So I quickly grew to loathe wheat bread. YUCK.

So, when Hubby and I were first married, I bought white bread. He came from a wheat bread family. So we had "His and Hers" bread. Then we had kids, and I realized wheat bread was healthier. And I knew that if I raised them on wheat, they wouldn't care that they weren't having white.

So, yes, we are a wheat bread family--and I am liking the taste over white! White bread to me seems so...plain. That's the only word to describe it. Wheat bread is nutty, flavorful...healthy, everything white bread isn't.

I am surprised at myself! I guess I have finally grown up in the Bread department...?

Oh My SOCKS!!!

Status: Waterlogged. We've had two straight days of heavy rain now. And I mean Nonstop. Should I start building an Ark in the backyard???

Okay, I have concluded that I am going STRAIGHT TO HEAVEN for the amount of laundry I do for this family. Who knew that one girl and three boys (one of them being a baby) could churn out so much dirty laundry?

Not even including Hubby and Myself, in here. Add us in, and well...lets just say the piles of dirty clothes have reached astronomical proportions. You could probably see them from space.

But nothing is more time-consuming (or rather time sucking) than washing and pairing up SOCKS. I remember my mom had this nifty trick, where she would safety pin my dad's socks together before she washed them, probably so the dryer wouldn't eat them, but I look at my piles of socks and think "who has time to do THAT?"

First there's the matter of Hubby's socks. Highly Infuriating. A) He has lots of them and B)You can hardly tell them apart. Some are black, some are navy, some are navy-ish and black-ish, some have miniscule patterns you can only discern with a microscope, and most of the time I have to either pair them up in front of a sunlit window or a 1000 watt bulb, or I might make the mistake of pairing a black sock with a french navy sock and we might have a catastrophe on our hands. Like the one time when hubby called me up from work and thanked me for his one blue sock and one black sock he was wearing in his meeting with the President of the Company.

Then there's the boy's socks. Crew socks, ankle socks, anklets, soccer socks, church dress socks, I have to pair all those up. Don't get me started on Thing One's (our only girl) socks. Since she was blessed with KANGAROO FEET (my side of the family) she and I have barely discernible socks. So I have to be extra careful not to pair her socks with mine, or vice versa.

And the baby's socks. I swear my dryer eats at least two or three baby socks with every load. I have to rummage around to find them all. I have found them in crazy places. Sometimes I don't find them at all. I suspect the dryer has shrunk them all to nothingness.

And this is just SOCKS. Don't get me started on sorting underwear.

I must go lie down...

PUMPKINS!!

Okayyyy, it's AUGUST. And everywhere I go, I see pumpkins and scarecrows and crap. WTFreak?

This year is flying WAY too fast! Oh, and it got dark early last night. Oh, and guess what else? It was only 67 degrees this morning! Brrrrrr!!!!

Life's Little Embarrassing Moments...

Okay, I had one of those yesterday. I was all fired up (per my previous post) to be all daring and drop the kids off for Jumpstart in my t-shirt nightgown and slippers, and so, well...I did it.

Lo and behold, something happened that NEVER happens. After I dropped them off, I was starting to accelerate out of the drop-off zone when one of Thing One's friend's moms shot out of the school and started running after my car, waving me down. She wanted to talk to me.

I had a dilemma. Knowing my state of undress, should I stop and face the consequences, or just keep going and pretend I didn't see her? The latter was tempting...

Well, it wasn't the latter, because I COULD see her, she was right beside my passenger side window, waving an arm and yelling my name. So I had no choice but to stop, and roll down the window, after which she proceeded to lean in and greet me and start talking about their Summer, and how was mine, and did I get her email, yadda yadda yadda.

And of course since I was driving, my nightgown had hiked up a little and well, lets just say I wasn't in the best (or most modest) of positions. MORTIFICATION. And she just kept on talking. And talking. And talking.

Mercifully, there was a car behind me, needing to get out, and since I have a big car, it couldn't get around me. So she let me go. Of course her last words to me as she said goodbye were "Love the jammies--I wish I could pull that one off!"

As I drove away, cheeks blazing, of course I was thinking I DIDN"T PULL IT OFF YOU SILLY BECAUSE YOU HAD TO COME UP TO MY WINDOW AND SEE THEM!
I mean, isn't that the whole point of wearing jammies? Because NO ONE will see you??????

Yeah, that was an Embarrassing Moment. Granted, it's not as embarrassing as the time when I was chatting animatedly with a new friend I'd met at church in the foyer, (church had ended and there were about 500 people milling all around us) and I suddenly felt a draft and realized in horror that my VERY WHITE slip had fallen down around my ankles.

Yeah, I don't think anything will ever top that one...

Is it Only Wednesday???

This week is dragging on forever. Today we only have to run to Sports Authority and to the Children's Hospital (Thing Four needs his harness adjusted) and hopefully...traffic willing...will make it to the first soccer practice of the season.

Oh, and we're out of milk. Where does it all go??? I buy four freaking gallons a week! Two skim, two 2%. What is the deal?

Must run the kids to Jumpstart. How many of you dare me to drop them off wearing only my long t-shirt nightgown and my fuzzy pink flip-flop slippers??? Why not...I don't have to get out of the car!

HA! I'm going to do it!

We're in BIG Trouble Now...

Guess who's found his thumb?

None of my other Things were thumbsuckers. Not one. This is a whole new experience for me. Should I worry?

HYUAHHH.....

Status: Exhausted. We had thunderstorms all night and Thing Four woke up at 1am and decided he was hungry. THEN at 4am Things 1-3 all ran downstairs while I was warming up another bottle and informed me they couldn't sleep because of the thunder. I shooed them all to bed.

Don't worry, we are registering for school this morning and they are having their school pictures taken. Can you say DARK CIRCLES under the eyes??? I have a little makeup stick somewhere...

It could be worse. One kid across the street got whacked in the head with a golf club (one of the heavy ones) right above the eye a few days ago. So he has a black eye and six stitches for school pictures. I suspect a makeup stick won't be able to fix THAT. Eeks.

Today will be another yucky run-around day. Run to Jumpstart, run to registration, run to the grocery store, run to the sports store to buy more soccer stuff, run to the haircutters (before registration--Thing Three has a mop top) and somewhere in there I need to make cupcakes for a visiting teachee and four loaves of wheat bread.

Tomorrow is even worse. I CANNOT wait until school starts! Then it will be just me and Thing Four at home, my house will stay a LOT cleaner, and the chaos will end. Sort of. Replaced by new chaos that the demands of having multiple kids in school will bring, of course.

It never ends.

ps: I wouldn't REALLY use a makeup stick on my boys--although I have been tempted once or twice.

Soccer Mayhem...

Status: Wanting the weekend to not end. Read some chapters from a friend (should be finished up today) and relaxed. Now it's time to run my A** off...

Ah, the little annoyances and difficulties that arise when you have multiple kids in multiple sports. I got the soccer practice schedules for all three Things (Thank HEAVEN Thing Four is only three months old!) and let me just say, it's going to be a juggle.

Two Things have practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But Thing Two has practice on Wednesday and Thursday. Thursdays will be tricky, because practice times are overlapping, and at different soccer fields, and OF COURSE one of the Things has practice LATE so Thursday nights will be nearly three hours of soccer practices for me and Thing Four to sit through.

Tuesdays nights aren't so bad, but I still have two hours of soccer practices to sit through. I intend to bring a book, let me tell you.
But this could be problematic because my personal trainer comes on Thursday nights, and they have Cub Scouts and Activity days on Tuesday nights. And of course Hubby can't help out at all, because he works late usually. Or he's traveling.

Excuse me while I go get a tissue, I have these sudden urges to weep, lately...

Okay. I'm back. So, this should be very interesting. I think I could get a bit of writing done if Thing Four doesn't want to be entertained every minute. We'll have to see.

I'd better make friends with the other soccer moms stat. So we can carpool. It's the only way I will keep my sanity, for sure! BLEAH.

ps.. CONGRATS MITT ROMNEY!!! (Okay, I like to remain bi-partisan on the blog but I couldn't help myself). :-)