Diva Party

I'm going to post way too many pics. Sorry. I can't narrow them down. The girls got hair, makeup, and nails done and they got to make their own lip gloss to take home. Plus I had pizza and ice cream cake for them. Ty stayed and helped me clean up between activities (we'd leave the room and when we came back, he'd have all the dishes cleaned up from pizza, stuff like that). He also was in charge of the iPod so we called him the dj. He did a great job picking songs the girls loved and they all sang so loud I'm sure the patrons upstairs could hear them. It was by far the most fun, easiest party I've ever thrown. Plus the salon opened a bottle of sparkling wine so while the girls had soda, I got my drink on. One girl didn't rsvp and I didn't know if she was coming or not so since I already paid for five girls, E took her place. Also in one pic, G is blowing out a pretend candle on her cake. I forgot the candle.

Hannah Montana, eat your heart out!

Renovation Update

Despite what you see in the pictures, I'm basically doing this alone so it's taken me two weeks to get the living room painted and the flooring ripped up. This week I'm starting in on the dining room. I really want to have this done by Steve and E's birthday (4/4). Here's my "befores" - sorry they're all just old pics. I didn't bother taking any before I started in on the painting.



E wanted to help SO badly. She sanded and helped paint primer. It wasn't until I got to the actual painting that she decided it wasn't that much fun anymore.




Wiping the ceiling down to get it ready to paint:




Pulling the staples out of the padding (there were like 3,000,000 of 'em)




Scrubbing up dirt and stuck-on carpet padding:


You can see what the floor looks like without carpeting. It needs refinished. We're hoping sometime this summer...

Happy Pi Day!

S3 took a frozen pie to school for Pi day (today is 3-14, get it?). He wanted me to bake one but I just laughed at him.

He's really looking forward to Pi day in 2015. Yes I know my son is a geek. But he's a cute geek.

Links for ya:
Wikipedia's Pi Day
Official Pi Day Website
Pi Day Songs
How to Celebrate Pi Day

Coming Soon to a Living Room Near You

Bring Out Your Dead! But I'm Not Dead Yet!

Wow, talk about the plague. Between pink eye and the stomach flu, I don't think I'm ever going to get to leave this house ever again. So far E and G have been home with pink eye and the day after E went back to school from that, she came home with the stomach flu. Now Ty is home with it. Thankfully Steve came home from Missouri yesterday and I got to slip out to the library for a half an hour. I was running low on reading material.

Not much else to say here. It's been a heck of a week.

Learned Something New Today

After church I needed groceries so the kids and I quickly changed and headed out to Sam's Club. We were all in a pretty good mood; our bellies were filled with cheeseburgers and iced tea and we were ready to shop.

As we walked in the front door we saw this cool game set up called Rock Band complete with two guitars, a drum set and a microphone. Steve is in Missouri and since we didn't have to rush through shopping and we didn't have anywhere we needed to be, I gave my go-ahead to the kids to check the game set up a little closer. Ty immediately sat down at the drums, G grabbed a guitar and E gravitated toward the microphone. I cajoled S3 into picking up the second guitar telling him it would be fun.

So it seems like Ty on the drums is in control of the selections - music and etc. - so he starts trying to figure out what pad to bang on to get the result he wants (the next screen) and every time he manages to figure it out, G would push a button on her guitar and send them all back to the main screen. Rinse and repeat about five times until finally I said, "G! Do NOT TOUCH another button on that guitar until I say so."

Ty gets to the next screen (finally!) and now the instruments have to pick their level of play. Two of them choose "easy" and S3 is trying to figure out how to be a bass instead of a guitar when G pressed that button again and sent them all back to the beginning. Rinse and repeat about five more times until finally I got Ty to just push everyone through that screen and the music finally started.

Well they must have picked the hardest song ever to try to play and besides that, both the girls just stood there dumbfounded, not understanding the point of the game at all and very quickly they all four failed to perform and the game was done. All of this took about 15 minutes or so and it looked as though other people would like a chance to try to fail so I declared our time with the game to be at an end.

G and E cried and whined. Ty was just about pulling his hair out in frustration - over the game set-up, over failing at the game, and worst of all over his older brother who was having himself a FAN-tastic 13 year old pissy moment (silent mind you. It's all in the body language).

"So what did I learn today?" you may be asking. I learned why Steve always says, "No."

Totally Random

In the car on the ride home tonight, out of nowhere E says, "Wouldn't it be funny to tape a duck?"

Desperate for Help

S3 has a science fair project due next week. Of course he waited until the last possible second to work on it. His theory is: Which Wrigley's Gum Flavor Lasts The Longest?

Here's what I need help with (if you're willing). Wrigley's makes five flavors, Doublemint, Spearmint, Winterfresh, Big Red and Juicy Fruit. Can you please buy a pack of gum and chew a piece and time how long the flavor lasts? If you can talk your family into it, can you get your family to chew too? Even better would be if you'd be willing to chew all five flavors but I know that's asking a lot.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

G plus Trampoline equals

At least they were a little loose before G knocked out her sister's teeth. The dentist says it's hard to knock out a tooth that's not ready to come out anyway. I say he doesn't know my little red head. E was just happy for the money the tooth fairy brought.

Cupcakes Anyone?

G wanted a cupcake cake for her birthday party at school this year and she wanted it to look like a soccer ball. I had a hard time finding a place that would make one (yes, I was too lazy to make the kid some cupcakes) but finally I did and I ordered it for Monday morning.

Monday morning I drove to Sam's Club, walked back to the bakery, gave the girl my name and guess what? No cupcake cake. Well whatever the kid needed cupcakes for her birthday so I bought a Sam's club sized pack of 3,000,000 cupcakes. I paid, walked out to my van, buckled up and started to pull away when I suddenly realized....

.... I ordered the cake from the SuperWalMart next door.

{GULP} Happy Birthday?

Saturday was G's 9th birthday and boy was she ever excited. She talked about her birthday every day from the moment the calendar page turned to February. On the Friday before the big day the kids and I were driving to a basketball game and once again G brought up her birthday the next day.

Ty, having had enough of the birthday reminders, decided to put G in her place by saying, "Technically your birthday was nine months ago."

{Gulp} Eh, er, um, oooookaaaaay.... I guess now we're going to have a family discussion about conception.

Hi. Didja Miss Me?

Don't even ask where I've been. Lazy I guess. I just haven't blogged. I was surprised to see it's been since December 5th though. I thought I'd blogged at least once in January. I'll try to give you a quick update.

- Steve is still hard at work. They found some way to do a remote start-up with one of their factories so thank you God, he's been home these last two months and not in Korea.

- S3 is finishing up a looooong, boring basketball season. Basketball is not my favorite sport nor is he exceptionally good at it. He is athletic so he does well but it's not like watching him play soccer or baseball where he's usually one of the best players.

- Ty is a reading machine. I'd have never guessed he'd be my reader but let me just say I'm so glad we re-found the library. Does anyone know of any good youth stories about spies? Spy stories are his favorite.

- G is still playing soccer. She's finally on a team of girls her own age (rather than one and two years older!) and she's regaining her confidence. It's good to see. She's growing her hair back out so it's kinda scraggly right now but it grows fast.

- E cut her hair for LoL also (I don't think I ever told you guys that) and at first I was upset we'd cut off all her beautiful curls but it's so cute, it's ok. She's doing great in kindergarten and all my worries about her motion sickness and the school bus seem to be for naught, thank goodness.

- I am hunting for a new job. I've been working at the facility for 2.5 years now and I'm getting worn out. I wanted to be able to help and to give care and I feel like I'm so rushed and stretched now that I barely have time to do the minimum for my residents. I'm now looking for home health. I think I'll like the one-on-one much better and I'm hoping to time it right that I'll still be able to study and watch the kids' sports games.

I think that's about it. It's good to be back :)

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

Sorry to interrupt the vacation post but I have important and very exciting news. I just received a phone call from Millersville University. They have accepted me into their Pre-Medicine program.

Disney In November (days 3 and 4)

I keep trying to make this quick but it's hard because we do so much every day. Day three we went to Disney/MGM and had a blast. They even talked me into going on Rockin' Rollercoaster, which if you know me at all, you'll know I'm terrified of thrill rides. However I found to my surprise that I really, really enjoyed it. In fact one of these days we're here we are going to finish the stuff we missed at MGM and I'm going to ride it again.



Also for any of you who wonder why there are so many pics of the girls and not as many of the boys I'll tell you, it boils down to this: the boys are big enough that they want to do their thing and their thing does not include posing for their mama.

Disney In November (days 1 and 2)

Yes, we're in Disney again. This time on our dime. We drove down to Florida on Turkey day, spent the night in Daytona Beach and then scooted on over to Disney. The ride wasn't bad at all. The kids kept pretty entertained and there was minimal traffic.

Here's where we stayed in Daytona. It was literally right on the beach.



MD and I went for a walk first thing in the morning. Her daughter A went jogging and then S3 and his bud C went for a swim in their shorts. The air was cool but the water was very warm.







We went to Epcot around lunch time and I think we managed to do all the rides in one half of the park. My feet sure think we did anyway.

Finding Nemo



Mickey plays peek-a-boo with Ty at the Garden Grill.





Today we headed to the Magic Kingdom where we rode nearly every ride there. Seriously. We kept hitting the lines just right so while we had to wait, it was never too long. E fell asleep on the bus ride back to the hotel. Random pics from today:









When we rode "It's a Small World" I tried to get a quick picture of Steve and the girls. Apparently Steve had other plans because it took us three tries before he stopped fooling around long enough to get a nice pic.







Ok, last picture for tonight; I'm beat. Sorry the quality is bad. It's from my phone. I think I'll probably be back to blog again on Monday. Good night!!!

Happy Veteran's Day

Thank you to all who have served. From my family:

BIL Jer, Army
Pop, Army (Vietnam)
Gramps, Navy (WW2, Pacific)
Grandpop, Army (WW2, Europe)
Steve's Papaw, Army (Korea)

My dad

Gramps