Owen's first day of school

Today was Owen's first day of preschool. He did great! He was not clingy at all but walked right in and started playing with the toys. When I picked him up he didn't want to leave!

We talked about what he did at school and he said they had circle time, lunch, outside playtime and computer time. He's also walking around singing some song about a rainbow.

So this morning Scott left with the girls and Skylar and I took Owen (but Scott will take him from now on). Skylar and I came back home and she played in her exersaucer while I did the elliptical for a while. Then she went to sleep, I took a shower, and I had something like another 2 hours before she woke up. It was sooo quiet. I cleaned up the house a little, checked out the internet for news, checked some blogs, had a quiet lunch.... It was the BEST DAY EVER!

Some pictures

The continual depletion of my Lasik fund

I have a Lasik fund. I have talked about this before here and here and here and here and here.

Since we've been back from vacation I've been trying to be vigilant with my Lasik fund. What I do is everytime I go to the commissary and spend money on groceries, I put whatever extra amount necessary to get to the next number evenly divisible by 10 into my savings account. Karin? You with me? I didn't think so. Example: If I spend 112.78 I put 7.22 in my savings. For every other purchase I make I put whatever extra amount necessary to get to the next number evenly divisible by 5. So if I spend, say, 17.33 I put 2.67 in my savings. (which is a wonderful way to save money by the way because it doesn't seem like a lot but it adds up fast) Also, with it being summer I've not been driving as much and I've not needed as much gas for the car so every other week or so I would put what I normally spend on gas into the account. I also put money in there from the stuff I sell on ebay, which has turned out to be a lot of stuff other people want to pay me a lot of money for.

To wrap up all the technical stuff, I had several hundred dollars in the account. And yesterday I spent it. Again.

But is was a deal. A heck of a deal. It's just like my dad's so I already know how to use it and that it's awesome and that I'm going to love it.

And it will be here Wednesday!!

Ms. Freud

"Ashlyn, how was school?"

"There's a new girl in my class. Her name is K******."

"Are you trying to be friends with her?"

"No. She has anger issues."

The teacher meet & greet

Friday we went to the school to meet & greet Ashlyn and Haley's new teachers for this year. There was a lot of anxiety leading up to this visit, as Ashlyn was worried she would get "Mrs. Miller the Killer" and she really really wanted "Mrs. Glover the Lover"...

Ashlyn: Mom! I just can't have Mrs. Miller the Killer. I just can't!

Me: Ashlyn, I'm sure that's just a joke. She's probably not that bad.

Ashlyn: MOM! She actually killed a kid in her class once!

I swear, kids will believe anything you tell them. This is good in some ways, like how I can tell them that even though I have had 4 kids I have no earthly idea how babies are born because I'm not a doctor. However, in this instance it's a little annoying. All summer we've had to have this conversation. I'm happy to report that Ashlyn was put in Mrs. Wallace's room, who is a new teacher at Glenmore this year, but who has over 20 years teaching experience. Mrs. Wallace is short; she comes up to about my shoulder, making her shorter than Nana. She is very loud though, extremely loud, so loud that when she talked I immediately started getting a headache. I feel sorry for Ashlyn.

At the meet & greet Ashlyn had to fill out a form saying what college she wanted to go to, what she wanted to major in, and what she wanted her job to be after college, because Mrs. Wallace thinks it's never too early to start planning for college. So they are going to start planning this year, in 3rd grade. Whatever. Anyway, Ashlyn immediately wrote that she wanted to be a photographer and she wanted to go to the University of Georgia. Mrs. Wallace asked if she wanted to go to that school because they had a good photography department (because Ashlyn, at 8 years old, is very knowledgable about the courses of studies offered at UGA) and Ashlyn said she wasn't sure, but she had picked that school because Pops told her if she went there he would pay for it. Pops is going to regret he ever told my kids that in my presence. Because he promised.

Haley got Mrs. Owens, who we had requested, who is just the greatest. Ashlyn had her for 1st grade and we loved her then and we love her now. I cannot begin to say how happy I am Haley is in her class. We got to her classroom right after the rainbow threw up all over the walls, leaving them so bright that the colors burned into your corneas so even with your eyes closed you could still see them. Just going into that room makes me nauseous and dizzy. Haley, of course, took one look around and said "ooooh, pretty!" which ought to give you a little idea of what it actually looked like because when Haley says that it's perfectly okay not to look, but to just know it your heart it's really "ooooh, overwhelming!" She is upset though about Christopher being in her class as he was mean to her last year in kindergarten. Really he was mean to everyone, and Mrs. Owens assured me she already knows that, she has already been warned about it from the kindergarten teacher, and she is not having any of that nonsense in her classroom. See? Mrs. Owens is truly wonderful, and when she talks to you little hearts full of love radiate off her and envelope you and make you feel all happy and safe in 1st grade. I on the other hand had Mrs. Johnson, a mean mean lady who was like 70 for a 1st grade teacher.

So we're happy with the teachers we got (Ashlyn actually physically shuddered when we passed by Mrs. Miller's classroom) and this should be a good year. I am also happy that the few school supplies that were ruined in the Great House Flood 2007 did not include the notebooks that MUST NOT HAVE PERFORATED EDGES as I don't know if the BX has any more. Turns out it was just a regular spiral notebook that Haley needed but that Mrs. Owens told me not to worry about replacing, she'd take care of it since we've been having such a bad week due to the Great House Flood 2007. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy Mrs. Owens?

The First Day of School

Today is the first day of school and I am sad. Sad that the girls will be gone for 8 hours each day and I won't hear their constant arguing, na-na-ing, whining and crying. Oh no wait, that's not sadness. That's relief. I was confused. My bad.

Pre-school time

Today we enrolled Owen in preschool.

He says there's no way he's going.

I put him in the two day a week class so it's Tuesday and Thursday from 7:45 to 12:45. This way Scott can drop him off on his way to work. The preschool is on post and run by the Air Force and is called the Little Dude Ranch or something close to that but also equally stupid. It's still costing us out the butt for him to go for two days because it's based on your rank and Scott's a captain and all and so this is about the same as when we always have to take a turkey or a ham to company functions and the E-4s get to take a 2-liter of Sam's Choice Cola.

Anyway, he starts next Tuesday whether he wants to go or not.

The San Angelo Inn

"I can't find my horse book. I left it here and I can't find it."

"Haley, you must have taken it with you because I don't see it anywhere. Don't cry. We'll all look for it."

"Maybe the maids stole it!"

"Haley the maids did not steal your horse book. Look in all the drawers, maybe Owen put it in a drawer. Ashlyn, go in the bedroom and look in the drawers for Haley's horse book."

"Mom! It's not in here either. I've checked all the drawers and--HEY! LOOK! A HOLY BIBLE!"

The KLST Newsman

Today as I was sitting outside making an itemized list of our damaged stuff the KLST news van pulled up. A very dapper gentleman jumped out and another burly guy grabbed a huge camera and they both made a beeline right to me. Scott saw them coming and retreated quickly into the house but I was a little stuck. I politely declined an on-camera interview and then after he kept on begging for "just 5 minutes" I politely but firmly declined. About that time the trashmen came and the camera guy videoed them hauling away all our trash and Owen standing by the road sadly watching as they loaded both his Elmo chair and his rocking chair onto the truck.

Then the camera guy tried to talk to trashmen into picking up the carpet from the front yard and putting it on the truck too because that evidently would make for really good news and the poor guys tried and tried but the carpet was still soaked and they couldn't really move it. Scott came back out about this time and went down to tell the guys they didn't have to haul that away because the nice people from A1 Reliable Carpet Care and Restoration were coming back today with a trailer to get it and the camera man filmed all that too so we will probably end up on the news anyway.

By the way I must tell you all that one of my greatest fears is being the person they put on the news after some disaster. If you ever watch CNN after hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, etc. the people they put on never seem to be able to correctly conjugate verbs. And if they put me on the news, even though I have a college education, that would totally be me.

Michelle the Insurance Adjuster

Michelle, I love you.

Michelle took an itemized list of all our stuff that was damaged over the phone. I claimed every single thing that got wet. She then had me assign a price to each item. We have full replacement costs and she deposited the money in our bank account today. If we find anything else we're just supposed to give her a ring and let her know and she'll take care of it. And when we move out of the hotel we have to fax her copies of our bill from there and all our food receipts and she'll put that money in our account straight away.

Michelle, have I mentioned that I love you?

Understatement of the year

"Um, I guess I'm going to have to take some leave."

It's raining, it's pouring, and I'm making an insurance claim

Friday it rained. I may have mentioned it here. Saturday morning Skylar woke up at 7. I heard her on the monitor and got up to get her and stepped in a puddle. At first I thought "My gosh, Sally peed in the floor!" I wondered for a split second why she didn't wake us up if she had to go. Usually she will scratch at the door or put her face right beside yours and whine. Then I took another step and there was more water. I walked around the end of the bed and it was over the top of my feet. The entire house was flooded. Every bit of floor space was covered.


By 7:30 I had talked to our property manager, our landlord, USAA, and the really nice people over at A1 Reliable Carpet Care and Restoration. The water extraction team arrived about 9 and it's just too bad that the day didn't start to get any better at that point but still continued to go downhill. Our landlord does not have flood insurance. The carpet people needed money up front. They would not take the landlord's credit card over the phone. People were calling back and forth and long arguments ensued. Oh, and the water extraction team showed up wearing wranglers and cowboy boots.


About 4 hours later the water was mostly sucked up and the carpet and padding were all in the front yard. So we have lovely cement foundation floors now, which aren't too bad in that they are cool and it's hot here. All the furniture is in different places and rooms and I'm afraid Frosty is going to have a nervous breakdown very soon. We also have fans, huge fans that are loud and create a continuous 30 mph wind inside the house. To imagine the noise just imagine living inside an airplane hanger. That's the noise. We currently have 7 fans in the house.


The nice people from Reliable Carpet Care and Restoration came back today to check the moisture levels in the walls and found the walls are still saturated with water up to 10 inches in some places. Worst case scenerio would involve pulling off the baseboards to speed up the wall-drying process. They are bringing 12 more fans tomorrow. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the house smells really really badly. We are moving into guest housing at the Angelo Inn on Goodfellow tonight.

My next post

There may be a while before I make my next post, as I cannot seem to decide on a title. I've narrowed it down to three though:

Waking up to a shit storm
A bitch called Mother Nature

or Scott's question from this morning that he repeated about 100 times:

I mean, what the f***!

Borderline obsession

"Amy. I have a problem. I need you to do me a huge favor."

"What is it?"

"I need you to come get my kids."

"What?!"

"Amy. Our house is flooded. There's water everywhere. Lots of water. When you walk it covers your entire foot. I don't know what to do. We have to get all our furniture and stuff out of the house right now. They're ripping up all the carpet and padding. Scott is yelling."

"What?!"

"Amy. Even the Red Cross is here."

"Oh my gosh!! Hey! Are you taking pictures for you blog?"

The Shopping Trip

This weekend is the tax free weekend here in San Angelo. Since we needed to do some back-to-school shopping I decided I should do it today so we could save money not paying tax and because I figured the mall wouldn't be too full of people on a weekday as opposed to a weekend day.

When we left the house it was sprinkling ever so slightly, but when we got there it was pouring. I mean you could have honestly called it a deluge. Huge, driving drops that were falling too quickly to be absorbed by anything thereby causing flash flooding right in the JCPenney's parking lot. There is no umbrella in my car. I didn't know what to do. I called Amy, who was shopping at Ross, who didn't even realize it was raining. 10 minutes later I'm still sitting in the car waiting for the rain to let up and Amy calls..."We'll put the kids out first and then park." We dropped all the kids off at the door to the mall and parked. I had to get the stroller out of the back of my car and Amy is standing there with her gay pride umbrella which for some reason is not helping at all and there is no kidding 6 inches of water in the parking lot and it is raining like a mother. By the time we got in the store I was soaked from my knees down. Amy was soaked all over. I don't know how she was so wet, but I felt really bad for her.

Shopping is an experience with my 4 kids and Amy's 2 kids. There are several problems. The first is that they won't stay together. At all. So they are running every which way and there's nothing I can do except yell for them and draw even more attention to us. Another problem is they are short, too short to be seen over the racks of clothes, so I'm yelling for them and they are literally two feet away from me not answering so I look like an idiot. The third immediate problem is they get bored easily. So bored that less than an hour into the experience Amy and I are standing in line to pay and Kenny says "Hey! Let's play tag!" Amy said no, they couldn't play tag and Kenny asked hopefully "Hide and Seek?" Um, NO! I lost years off my life and we had only been in one store.

And damn Old Navy for putting bins throughout the store that hold soccer balls and bouncy balls.

Also, the kids are getting old enough to have their own opinions about what they are and are not going to wear. Gone are the days when I could buy clothes and they would happily put them on. Now I point to things and they sneer up their noses and my gosh if you could have seen the tennis shoes Ashlyn wanted you would have died. And we had to have a conversation with Chase about black jeans and different shades of black jeans that lasted entirely too long. Not as long as the conversation about the tennis shoes though.

We made our way through the mall and got to the food court and between the 8 of us we ate at 4 different restaurants. And it took forever. Then we went to Sears. That's where most of the remaining hell broke loose. Owen wanted brown shoes and he was trying them on in between begging me for another pair of Cars shoes and Haley was pushing the stroller. Fast. Running. While tipping it backwards on it's back two wheels. On another row where I couldn't see her. And she tripped. The screaming. Oh the screaming. And Skylar was giving anyone who would listen an earful of baby jabber, she was so ticked off. She was yelling and it wasn't a baby cry, she was pissed, plain and simple.

On our way out of the mall we stopped in JCPenney's at the bathroom and Chase took Owen in and I guess he immediately pulled down his pants without waiting to get in a stall and then broke in front of two other guys who were already in line. And then to Chase's embarrassment Owen wouldn't let him close the stall door so everybody got to watch.

We got outside to the parking lot and it was still raining and behind us the mall collapsed.

Target went pretty smoothly (I bought an umbrella) but Hobby Lobby was a joke. Never take children into that store. They have furniture in the front part they are trying to sell. We were standing in line and the kids wandered out to the furniture and all of a sudden we couldn't see them anymore. And Amy's in the next line mouthing "I can't see ANY of them" and I was totally cool about it, because I was pretty numb by then and really, where can that many kids disappear to? You want to know? They can hide. Really, really well. I walked outside and Nope, couldn't see any of them. I called them and heard lots of giggling and they slowly started coming out from behind the furniture and then Kenny climbs down out of a $1000 armoire. After that I took them outside to play in the road.

Scott and Brian don't realize what we go through with the kids so they don't have to deal with it on their days off from work. If Scott had been with us today the kids would have had the hell beat out of them three times apiece easily. Several times today I looked over at Amy and she was laughing. Bent over, howling, and I know full well she was only doing it to keep from crying. There are no words to describe the events and feelings from today. I can only say it's days like this one that make me mix prescription drugs with alcohol.

On the way home we stopped at the mailbox. In it was a package from Nana and Pops, and I really have to take a second and say "Good Job!" to my dad, who managed to get over $100 worth of clothes for the kids into one of those flat rate priority mail boxes. Don't worry, I'm sure the wrinkles will fall out eventually. We also got an envelope from Meena and Papaw which contained gift cards for the kids to spend at JCPenney's. The problem with that is I'm not sure they will let us back inside the store. After today I feel like they probably put someone at the door with a bullhorn and the next time we try to get in they'll be yelling "Oh, hell no!"

Home Alone

There is a lady who lives one street over from me who sells Creative Memories scrapbook stuff. Today Amy and I walked over to her house because Amy needed a tape runner refill and I needed a tape runner. Amy and I have 6 kids between the two of us and this scrapbook lady lives less than 100 yards from me. For this reason we decided to leave all the kids at home and go by ourselves. Looking back we probably could have made a better decision, but of course hindsight is always 20/20.

I would like to say that Skylar was asleep, so really that's only 5 kids, and Chase is 10 so he was in charge so you can't count him as a kid so that's 4 kids and Ashlyn is mature for her age so you could argue that there was only 3 kids here. I don't think you would necessarily win the argument, but you could argue nonetheless. I would also like to point out that being the responsible parents that we are we made sure to leave my cell phone number for the kids and we told them they were not to leave the house unless there was a f-i-r-e (we spelled it to Chase and Ashlyn as not to cause any undo panic) and if there was indeed a f-i-r-e to make sure someone please got the baby out too. F-i-r-e is no joke after all, as we learned earlier this week.

If I had to make an educated guess I would say we were gone about 45 minutes. We had been gone roughly 8 minutes when my cell phone rang and Chase told me Haley was crying and would not stop. I told him we were on our way back, which was a lie of course, but it seemed to calm things down for the moment so all was good. However, upon returning home we found that a whole host of things had transpired while we were out. That book The Cat in the Hat now makes a lot more sense to me. A LOT of stuff can happen in 45 minutes. Honestly, I don't know where they found the time...

(When we left the house we told Chase to lock the door behind us. This was actually Amy's idea but I agreed out of nothing besides pure ignorance as this was the first time I'd left them at home)

1. Haley was riding a push toy and Kenny pushed her too hard and she fell off and "broke her arm"
2. Haley locked herself in the bathroom to pout.
3. Kenny, who is smooth like buttah, went in the bathroom to console her.
4. Haley and Kenny spent a large amount of unsupervised time in the bathroom together.
5. Owen spilled popcorn all over the den.
6. Owen joined Haley and Kenny in the bathroom to chaperone.
7. Owen and Kenny had a falling out over something and Owen hit Kenny.
8. Kenny slapped Owen on his face.
9. Chase and Ashlyn are in the den oblivious to all of this because the television is on.
10. Chase and Ashlyn got up to see what is going on because they can no longer hear the tv.
11. Chase locked Kenny in a closet until he agreed to apologize to Owen.
12. Ashlyn figured that Kenny was in the closet for "about 3 minutes"
13. Kenny came out of the closet and allowed Owen to slap him so they would be "even"
14. Everyone present agreed this was totally fair and unquestionably the right way to handle the situation.
15. Skylar woke up.
16. Haley and Kenny climbed onto the top bunk and refused to let Owen climb up so he stood at the bottom and hollered non-stop.
17. Chase and Ashlyn fed Skylar sweet potato puffs.
18. We knocked on the door and Ashlyn flung it open without even looking to see who it was.
19. We walked in and Skylar gave us a look that plainly said "I know what you did and I'm telling!"
20. Sally chewed up another freakin float from the swimming pool.

The next half hour was spent trying to sort out all the stories. Amy decided the worst thing that happened was Chase locking Kenny in the closet.

At this time I don't think I'm qualified to make any more decisions.

Warm fuzzies

Last night we sat down to dinner to eat the descendents of Bambi and Rudolph. I myself ate two bites of Bambi and one of Rudolph before I decided I would rather just fill up on sweet potato and creamed corn. Scott of course ate it, though there was really never any doubt of that, and the kids seemed to enjoy it too. Owen kept going on and on about how he just loves chicken while he was cramming it into his mouth and the girls didn't seem to care either.

While we were eating we commented on how warm it was in the house. By the time we finished eating we were sweating. It was around 90 degrees in the house then and we found that the air conditioner was not working. Scott got his tools and his three very willing non-helpers and they worked on it until after 10, during which time Owen learned a new word. It was unbearably hot and I was all worried because Amy and the boys are supposed to come over today to scrapbook--yes, you heard me right, I am going to attempt to make a scrapbook--and my goodness it was just too hot to be here. I had our property manager's number out and was watching the clock this morning at 6:30 trying to decide how early was too early to call and Scott started messing with it again and it came back on.

Thank goodness it's working right now because today is supposed to be another hot one. It reminds me of the time we lived in Fairbanks and there was no air conditioning because, well, it's Alaska and all, and it got really hot one summer and we all used to go to Fred Meyer and walk around to cool off. Amber, Tina, anyone? You know you remember!

And she's up!

Life is about to get even more fun.

Right before the house burned down

If you think this is bad, you should see the flat iron.

Happy Friday!

Where's the Beef?

Scott came home from work saying that one of his soldiers was moving to another duty station and had cleaned out his freezer and brought in some meat. When someone mentions "meat" to me, I think of beef. So let's all take a second so I can think again.

Just so I am certain you understand what you are looking at:
1. Wild game uncooked sausage
2. Deer hamburger meat
3. Wild game uncooked sausage

Questions anyone? Because I have a few. Firstly, what is wild game sausage? Sausage is pork, right? So is this from wild pigs? Like the wild pigs that used to chase us down our sidewalk in Hawaii? Oh. Nope, I'm not eating that.
4. Elk steak
5. Elk hamburger meat
6. Deer butterfly steak
7. Deer hamburger meat

Questions? Here are mine: Elk? Really? The other, other white meat? How do you cook elk? Amy looked it up on allrecipes.com. Guess how many recipes there are for elk! TWO! One for elk chili and one for elk chili. Oh, and if you don't like elk chili you're screwed. My second question has to do with the deer butterfly steaks. How do you pluralize the word "butterfly"? Yeah, that's what I thought too. These three speak for themselves; I am horrified nonetheless. Wild game jalapeno cheese sausage and regular wild game sausage.
I spoke with my uncle earlier tonight. He lives on a farm and hunts, hunts for and shoots pretty deer that he then hangs on his walls. He is the type of person that when you start speaking of deer meat and elk meat and whatnot his voice gets all wistful, like "Please oh please invite me to dinner!" and I knew he would know what to do with this type of "meat".

He was helpful-- Make chili. Make spaghetti. Oh, the steaks are going to be gooooood, maybe marinate them a little. --- And when I got to the wild game jalepeno cheese sausage he kind of murmured Wow and then I actually heard his mouth start watering.

I am now offering dinner invites to each and all of you. Come one, come all, and please eat this stuff so I don't have to.

I've found La-La Land

Today we went to the PX to buy Scott a new alarm clock. Every 6 months or so he builds up a tolerance to the buzzers and they begin to fail to wake him up. So he is late for/missing P.T. This morning I was awakened at 5:59 to a stream of obscenities that would have made Dana White proud. Time for a new clock!!

While at the PX Haley said we should check for Ashlyn's spiral notebook that CAN NOT HAVE PERFORATED EDGES. This PX is so crappy it's not even funny but I'm always game for anything so I agreed and lo and behold there they were. I spotted them immediately, as they had a golden beam of light from heaven shining right on the front of them. And right beside them? None other than THE FOLDERS FOR CHASE! Right there, glowing with the fairy dust of a thousand fairies, who then flew over and kissed me square on the mouth.

It did not beat me. It had me down, but I fought and I persevered. I am the champion. The champion of school supplies.

Lady, where's the food?

Today Skylar sat at the kitchen table in her bumbo. I don't know why, since we have a perfectly good high chair, but it was something Ashyn wanted to try and she didn't cry so we didn't mess with it.

She's awful cute, but my goodness, her ears! This is something she gets directly from me. It's the reason I have all this hair, you see, to cover up my ears. So we will grow Skylar's hair to cover hers, but right now she'll just have to suffer through, much like I did when I was her age. You can sort of see mine in this picture where I am in some sort of metal apparatus prepping for my many many many future trips to the O.B. office. They can be seen better here, where my hair is long enough to cover them, however I am wearing pigtails which stick out further than my ears, cleverly drawing the eye away from them (good call mama!).

Back to today though, she was super proud of herself for being at the table, though when she noticed there was no food on it she got a little loud. And she was cute sitting there, really cute and smiley, until I tried to take the picture, when she decided that if I was standing there fooling with a camera I certainly had time to get her some food and right after I snapped it she began to cry. Because we never feed her and she's starving. All 17.5 pounds of her 6 1/2 month old self. Starving. What a shame!

Scott's new truck

Last weekend Scott and I went out and got him a new truck. There was nothing really wrong with the old truck, except that only 1/2 of our family could fit into it at any given time and even then I'm relatively sure we were breaking a few child safety laws.

So now we have a brand new nice smelling (by that I mean it doesn't smell like "army" yet) truck that comfortably seats 6 people. It's charcoal gray (I would have picked black but my gosh Jennifer black shows dirt too much--my bad I thought it was a truck or something) and it's big and loud and Scott's all excited.

So let's all say Yay! for Scott and his new gas hog.

Jeez

Today Amy and I took all our kids to Mr. Gatti's for some lunch and good fun. So let's see...there was her two children and two step-children and my er, 4 kids, so that's um, 8 kids total: Dylan (13), Bethany (12), Chase (10), Ashlyn (8), Kenny (7), Haley (6), Owen (3), and Skylar (6.5 months). Amy and I are both 33, in case anyone out there is wondering or cares. And yes, we deserve medals, bight shiny medals. Or cash.

3 hours later Amy and I were both broke and I'm pretty sure Mr. Gatti's will never be quite the same. And because the playdate was so successful we decided to cap it off with a trip to WalMart to finish up buying school supplies. With all 8 kids. Apparently all that Dr. Pepper and dessert pizza went to our heads.

I have come to accept the fact that I will never be able to find a spiral notebook that does not have perforated pages (it MUST NOT have PERFORATED PAGES, NO, don't try to send your kid in with a notebook with perforated pages) for Ashlyn so my school supply shopping will never ever be complete. I know this because WalMart doesn't have them. And if WalMart doesn't have them then they must not exist anywhere except in some 3rd grade teacher's twisted mind. Also, there is some type of folder that Chase needs that is on the shelf right next to the spiral notebooks that DO NOT HAVE PERFORATED PAGES. You know, right beside them. In La-La Land.

At some point during the time at WalMart Owen decided to lay down on his back on the bottom of the buggy that Kenny was pushing at warp speed around the store. Some time after that his shoe became lodged in the bottom of the buggy. Owen became upset and Kenny started lagging behind us, pushing the buggy while bent over trying to help Owen get his foot unstuck. This, in case you don't know, causes massive weaving of the buggy, which can then crash into displays and/or other unsuspecting shoppers. And Kenny's all pointing and gesturing to Amy and me and we're up ahead kind of pretending we don't know them and nodding and saying "Yeah, we see Owen! How cute is that!" not knowing he was stuck until some stranger stopped and began to help. So Amy and I ran back and to make a long story short we had to take the shoe off to get Owen out. Not a big deal, but attention grabbing for sure, as people heading towards the check out lines all gawked at us as they passed by, probably thinking we were on some day-care center field trip.

Then Amy forgot that she needed some butter and so she went back to get it while I mama-ducked my way to the front of the store with all the kids straggling behind me. We passed a man whose smile faded as the line of children parading in front of his buggy seemed to go on for miles. And he asked me. You knew he would ask me. Somewhere inside everyone there's a little bit of class that somehow flies right out the window as soon as you pull into the WalMart parking lot. That's why you see all those freakin weirdos in WalMart all the time.

"Jeez lady, are all these kids yours?" (eyes bugged out)

And I got to say "Er, no, only half of them are mine." (weak smile)

But you know, somehow that didn't make it any better.

The Man of Her Dreams

"You know, when we were at DLI in Monterey he used to bring leftover fried chicken to work and leave it in his truck. Then, during lunch he would go to the gym and work out and leave the chicken on the dashboard to heat it up. After he finished working out he would come out to the truck and eat it for lunch."

"Oh. My. God."

"Yeah, I didn't find out about that until way later."

"Hmmm. Do you think he does that kind of stuff because of his training...um, him being a Ranger and all?"

"No! I think he does it because he's a redneck!"

Sittin' pretty

Skylar is getting really good at sitting up on her own. Now if only she could figure out the pacifier...

Passed out

Without a doubt, Owen was overcome by the sheer energy necessary to successfully pull off this outfit.