18 posts tagged “bailey”

The only thing I loathe today is that I'm having a hard time concentrating enough to study for my board exam. I'll absolutely die of embarrassment if I don't pass....which to a normal person would be impetus to buckle down & study. Me, I got as far as coming upstairs to get the laptop for the CD-ROM that came with the study guide. Now I'm blogging.

What do I love today? Lots of things.

1. I love that Bailey starts at her new school tomorrow and is very excited. (And a little nervous.)  We had Meet the Teacher last week and Miss Williams (soon to be Mrs. Douglas - she's getting married a week into the school year!) seems very nice. I think Bailey's in good hands. Now to make sure we can manage the tuition payments every month. We've got a decent little tuition nest egg stashed away should we need it, but we're hoping we can absorb it. (Which means no more shopping for me - waaah!)  When Joey starts, it's going to be a little more challenging. But it'll work out.
2. I love my Minnesota Twins! Seriously, when did I get to be such a baseball fan? I've kind of slowly gotten into it over the past few years but this year has been my dive off the deep end. We have the best back-to-back hitters in the AL (if not all of MLB) and the best catcher and first baseman in the AL, and possibly some of the best right fielders and second basemen as well. What we really need now is some good pitching. Watch out, Detroit!
3. I love Joe Mauer. He's dreeeeamy and so awesome. Well, ok, I don't love him, but I do like him. A lot.
4. I love that I finally found the wherewithall to go back onto South Beach. I wasn't going to, but I spent most of last week hating myself for having gained 10 lbs back over the past 6 months, and I finally decided to quit whining and do something about it. What a concept. It's only the second day of Phase 1, and I'm not as motivated as I was last time, but maybe after the scale moves I'll get more excited.
5. I love that my house has been painted (exterior) and partially relandscaped, and that a new sidewalk is on the docket for sometime this month. It's a mess right now - all buckled and crazy. I'm surprised no one has taken a face plant on it yet.
6. I love that, after a first week of saying he hated it, that Joey has finally decided that he likes being on his football team. He's going to be a defensive end and possibly a tight end as well - I think it helped to know where he's going to be. He was kind of hoping for something a little more glamorous (who doesn't want to be th QB or RB or WR?) but now he's convinced that every position is important or else they wouldn't be out there.  He was so excited last night after practice that one of the coaches had watched him hit and told him "That's the way to make a hit, Joey!" I guess the coach even told a couple of the other guys later that they need to hit like Joey had.  And? He's totally adorable in his pads & helmet. :)

Alright, time to study. I was tempted to study blood bank today because I knew I'd know 99.9% of the answers, but I actually found that boring. How weird and sad to find it more interesting to realize how much you don't know.

My father-in-law informed me yesterday that he read in the weekend paper that the school we'll be sending Bailey to next year just got approval from the state to go to a 4-day school week, as a cost-saving measure. We don't get the paper and the online version didn't say anything about it. And the school's website doesn't say anything either.

Three questions come to mind about this:

1. Is this official? Don't the parents get to vote on it? We signed the statement of faith which means that we get to vote on important matters. So either that doesn't take effect until fall when she's actually a student, or the vote took place before we were "in the system," or the parent vote hasn't taken place yet because they were waiting for the school board & the state to approve it first.
2. I find it a little bit curious that they didn't at least mention this to us as a possibility when we were interviewing. On the other hand, that was way back on March 2, so maybe the idea was still so far in its infancy that it wasn't worth mentioning. Maybe it hadn't even been born yet.
3. What will we do with Bailey on those off days when the rest of us suckers are at work/school? She regularly stays home by herself for a few hours at a time while we go out, and we have a security alarm, so she would probably be fine staying home by herself. Maybe I could give her a chore list or something. I would also have to find out if there's a state or city law concerning how old a child has to be in order to stay home alone, and for how long. For some reason I'm thinking it's 10, but I'm not sure. My mother-in-law said that Bailey could come to their house, but I don't know how serious she was. Also, we were hoping to completely do away with any day care costs as far as Bailey's concerned.

So I guess we'll see. Hopefully we will be hearing from the school soon so that we can figure out how this will all work. I'm not against it; on the contrary, I think it's a smart idea. Do you think I could convince the Mayo Clinic to follow suit so I could work a 4-day week? Nah, probably not.

Someone tell me why I decided to have both of my kids in the same month? Oh yeah, I didn't plan that.

The good part about having their birthdays ten days apart is that you get the parties done with in a couple weeks' time and then you're done for the year. The bad part, in our case anyway, is that February comes shortly after Christmas so while we're just getting the tree put away, it's time to start thinking about planning parties.

This year they both wanted slumber parties. And the only way it would work out is that we would have them two Fridays in a row. Eight eleven-year-old girls singing karaoke ala American Idol, followed by nine nne-year-old boys wrestling and roughousing ala Indiana Jones.

Just because I thought it turned out so cool, I'm putting up a picture of the dessert I made for Joey's party. Given the theme, I decided to forego regular old cake and do that dirt dessert that was so popular a few years back.

The good thing about them getting older is that they can entertain themselves for the most part, and in my experience don't seem to want as much structured activity. The part that doesn't get any easier is that you still have to make sure that no one's being mean and no one's getting left out. So even though we're not on constant duty like we used to have to be, it's still exhausting to have a slumber party, let alone having them two weeks in a row. So I'm glad that birthday season is over for another year. We do have one quasi-birthday left, I guess. My parents try to come up in February every year for a weekend, and while we'll probably have some sort of birthday cake, it won't be a party per se, and I won't have to plan anything because my parents don't expect much (God bless 'em). They don't even expect that my house will be clean, which is good because it probably won't be. And my mom never makes snide comments about the state of my house or offers to "help" me clean it up. She's awesome that way. (And in other ways too.)

Your kids do find ways of embarrassing you, have you ever noticed that? This morning during breakfast the boys were talking about how drinking even one drop of alcohol when you're a kid will kill you.  Joey went and said that his parents drink wine and that sometimes they ask him & Bailey if they want a sip. Of course all the boys were just dying and I'm thinking, do NOT go home and tell your parents that Joey's mom & dad give them wine to drink!! Imagine how that could be misconstrued. Very rarely, we give them a taste of our wine. I wouldn't even qualify what they get as a sip. (BTW, I wrote a post a while back on why I allow my kids to have an occasional taste of wine - and a great discussion ensued...and thinking back on it now I wonder if their idea that alcohol will kill you hinges off of what Amy Sue said in her comment to that post.)

Anyway, so now everyone's gone home and we're cleaning up (thank goodness for paper plates & cups, and a dishwasher for things we can't throw away! And a good vacuum cleaner) and I'm thinking about getting some homework done. Joey's playing with all his new toys (he got 4 Nerf guns!!). Today is Joey's actual birthday so he gets to choose what we have for supper. He chose Pizza Hut - works for me!!

We now return me to my regularly scheduled life.

As mentioned previously (I think), we're having a Super Bowl party tomorrow. We have the potential to have a LOT of people here! Which is going to be fun. We spent a good part of today beginning the prep work, you know, the kind of things that can be done ahead of time like making snack mix and picking up some of the clutter around here (some of it won't get picked up....I'm not going for a housekeeping award here, I just don't want anyone to be completely repulsed). The rest (bathrooms, floors, the remainder of the food prep) will have to wait for tomorrow. Fortunately, I have awesome friends who are bringing food as well, so I don't have too many things I have to make.

The kids are getting into it, too. Joey was thinking this morning that since there are going to be a lot of people here, it might be nice to have some signs to help them out, "you know, like when you're in a store and they have signs that tell you where things are."  So today he did his part to get ready for the party by making what turned out to be a lot of signs around the house. Bailey decided to help out too.

The floor plan of my house is such that when you first come in the door you can go straight ahead to the kitchen, upstairs, right to the dining room, or left to the living room. Joey remembered that I'd said that some people who aren't interested in the game might want to sit in the living room and chat, and that maybe we should bring up the tub of baby toys that we keep around for visitors. Thus, when you first enter the house, you will see this:

About halfway down the hallway, taped to the door jamb that leads into the dining room (and on your way back to the kitchen), you see this:

At the end of the hallway, a sign hangs in the doorway to the kitchen, to help you find the things you came for: FOOD and FOOTBALL:

A note of explanation about the above sign: The down arrow refers to the fact that you have to go downstairs if you want to watch the Super Bowl in HD. The right arrow indicates where the refreshments (his word) are, and also that we will probably have the TV in the kitchen on, but not in HD (or, as Joey put it, "the regular Super Bowl").

Once in the kitchen, you see these signs:

 

A big concern for Joey is how to let people know where to put their shoes and coats, since we may have to put them in more than one spot in order to accommodate everyone. On the doorway to the mud room:

And at a 90-degree left to that doorway is another important sign, a last-minute epiphany for my little signmaker:

And more direction to get the football watchers to the right place (the basement family room):

(We're giving out prizes at the end of each quarter.) At the bottom of the stairs, just before you make a right into the family room:

I told Bailey that it probably wouldn't be a big deal if someone's phone rang. She said she knew that, but apparently she just thought it would be a cool sign. I hope no one actually thinks they have to turn off their phone. 

The kids thought it might be important to designate the upstairs as the kids' play area:

Bailey thought that the kids needed a prize drawing as well. (I don't think she has a prize figured out yet, though.) She decided to ask the kids a tricky question and then out of those who answered correctly, draw a winner. This is upstairs, taped to our bedroom door (which will be shut) at the top of the steps:

...I don't think any of our guests will get lost in our house, do you?  Especially given that they've all been here before and our house isn't that big........

First of all, how cute is Bailey in her new glasses? She has actual double vision. Strange, huh? I'd never heard of it. It's not astigmatism, either. Apparently her eyes truly don't work together so she sees two images. She was so excited to get them and wear them.

Second, check out my new shirt! I'd posted a while back that I saw a shirt with this saying on it and thought it was so funny. Steve Betz, being awesome, found this shirt & sent it to me.

Since I haven't written anything on here in 11 days (that's got to be a record), I suppose an update is in order. Really not much has happened around here, and I've been extremely worn out.

• Class has started and I really hope I don't drown in all the work.  This semester is something they call study guides, meaning it's all review. Which is good in that I'm not comfortable with everything I've learned up to this point. There are a lot of questions I have to answer, followed by online open-book questions and closed-book tests. I'll be done with my first one soon, one credit worth...only six more to go.
• The diet's going awful. I have not lost one pound, but I've definitely cheated. I'm not giving up, though, just modifying my plan a little. I at least want to lose the 5 I gained over Christmas, and with any luck, five more.
• We made a whirlwind trip to Illinois last week for the funeral of Brian's uncle. I think I'd only met him once, but I'm glad we could be there for them. It was a very nice service. They seem to be doing well, although now that things are settling down and they have to establish a "new normal," this might be when things really get hard.
• We decided to have a Super Bowl party this year. I did it on a whim and invited ten families (11 counting us). So far 7 of them have said yes and the other 3 haven't replied yet. We could be up to 50 people!! My house isn't really that big, but we'll make it work. These are all friends from church, and in our church this year we're trying to be better about connecting with each other - which means getting together. The more I think about it, the more I am PSYCHED!
• We have two birthdays in February in our house, so thus begins the party planning. So far it's looking like American Idol and Indiana Jones. (How much do you suppose it would cost for Indy himself to make an appearance?)

I think that's about it. Happy Monday!

...that the excursion to the American Girl store went very, very well.  I didn't hear any whining or demanding, just lots of little girls walking around as if they were in Wonderland. Despite my worries, I have to admit it was rather sweet and I enjoyed it.  Walking past one girl, I heard her exclaim, "It's beautiful!!" I'm not even sure what she was looking at but it made me smile.

All of the kids had a great time (except for maybe Joey, but he still did well).  The party actually started last night when two of Bailey's friends from across the street came to sleep over. The plan was that we'd all get up in the morning and they'd come with us to the store.  The younger sister ended up deciding around 10:30 that she needed to go home, so she did and she came back this morning. We left around 8 for the hour-long drive to the Mall of America, stopping at IHOP for breakfast before we went over. (IHOP is on one side of the MOA, and IKEA is on the other; how awesome is that?) We got to the American Girl store about 20 minutes after it opened, and the three girls and I looked around while Brian and Joey stepped out to the middle of the mall to Nickelodeon Universe, literally 20 yards away. We'd promised Joey a ride (that turned into two rides) since he obviously had no interest in the AG store.  The girls were cute, figuring out how much stuff they could buy with the money they had - we even whipped out a calculator at one point. Bailey ended up going a little over, but we covered her (I'm not totally mean). It's fun to see her so loving her new doll and so proud of herself for having earned so much of what she got, which was the doll, two outfits, a pair of glasses, and a new brush. I hope she feels the sense of accomplishment of having worked for something. She's already planning how she's going to pretend that the new girl is the sister to the one she already has.

As for me, no trip to the Mall of America is complete without a stop at Nordstrom Rack (the Nordstrom outlet store).  They have an incredible shoe rack. For instance, I'm a size 10, and normally at a department store clearance there will be maybe half a row of 10's, maybe a full row if I'm lucky. Here, there are FIVE ROWS of just size 10 - and not only that, but there's only one of each shoe on the rack so there's double the inventory!! It's like a trip through heaven. I had two pair in my hand: a Steve Madden pump in navy and a Born heeled Mary Jane in brown. I loved them both, but for the sake of my marriage I narrowed it down to the navy pump, because I needed that pair more.

After that it was a quick stop at IKEA and then the trip home. Right now Brian & the kids are out sledding with some friends. I think I'll go see how they're doing. There's not much snow on the hill across from our house, which is strange considering we had 2 feet on the ground only a week ago. We had a couple of warm days, though, and it's amazing how fast the snow goes in the well-traveled areas when the temp goes above freezing. I don't think we'll have to worry about melting today, though - it's plenty cold out there!

Tomorrow we will venture out with three hyper little girls and one full-of-attitude little boy for all of our very first foray into the American Girl Store.  I can see this going two ways: one, they will be very well-mannered and behave themselves the entire time.  Or two, they will be overtired from tonight's sleepover and be crabby, whiny, and disobedient. My money's on #1, but you never know.

What I'm more worried about is what kind of constituency we're going to find in the store. Now, because I can't afford (nor would I pay) $95 straight-out for a doll, Bailey was required to come up with half the money for the doll on her own. Which she did - and I'm proud of her! She did chores, dog & cat-sat for the neighbors, and asked for an AG gift certificate for one of her Christmas gifts. She's been working on this for months, and she not only has money for half the doll, she has enough extra money for a couple of outfits as well. Now, I know that plenty of parents buy their girls numerous American Girl dolls and that those girls are not spoiled, but part of me has to wonder how many Veruca Salts will be there, screaming "I want that! And that, and that, and THAT!" I might be way off there, but I'll be curious to see what it'll be like. Of course, Veruca probably got all the American Girl stuff she wanted for Christmas, so Mr. & Mrs. Salt have likely been & gone. In that case, if it's just the poor people like us hanging around, we'll be ok.  If not, I guess I'll have an interesting story to tell tomorrow.

One thing that guarantees to be good is that prior to going to the Mall of America, we'll be stopping for breakfast at IHOP. Can't go wrong there!

Would you believe I'm actually looking forward to it?

I'm not sure what it was, but I just wasn't feeling Christmas this year.  I enjoyed it - I can genuinely say that seeing my familes was the best part. I think it was just that with all the activity, and my classes, and etc, I never really got a chance to slow down enough to really meditate on it.

The Swedish dinner I've been talking about and preparing for was on Friday.  I did it for Brian's family. Only one of them is Swedish and he was familiar with pretty much everything I made, although he said some of the things were different than what he'd had. I'm not sure what he thought of the meal overall, but the rest of the family loved it. And I think they really meant it when they said that too - they RAVED throughout the meal!  So the final menu was potatiskorv, meatballs w/gravy, boiled potatoes & onions w/dill, rice pudding w/lingonberries, pickled beets (a last-minute addition my mom reminded me to make), limpa (rye bread), hardtack (crispbread) w/bond ost (a type of cheese), and spritz & pepparkokar (thin ginger) cookies. Everyone was stuffed!  I'd made almost everything from scratch, except for the hardtack & pepparkokar, so I was rather emotionally invested in this meal.  In a way I guess I considered it a gift to Brian's family - which is why I would have been hurt if people had refused to try things (unless they'd tried them before).  If they tried things and didn't like them, that would have been fine.  Except for the kids - there's only so much you can do there to get them to even try things.  I was really impressed with my almost-13-year-old niece; she tried everything, even the pickled beets! (And Bailey tried the beets too, which I'm sure she wouldn't have if Andrea hadn't.)

Unfortunately, at the time the meal was coming together, I didn't really get to take any pictures of the food itself.  Here's a shot of my table, though:

I'm told that Swedes have coffee & rolls late in the afternoon (called fika [fee'-ka]) so I also made some cinnamon rolls (with cardamom in the dough, of course) that Santa Lucia came to serve:

 

The meal went well.  Everyone was so stuffed that no one wanted the cake I'd made for dessert!  Which is funny, because I hadn't originally intended to make it (I was just going to serve the cookies for dessert), but then I was told that we were also going to have a birthday party for Andrea that night so I should have a cake.  Andrea opened her presents but we never did have the cake or sang "Happy Birthday." And I'd even bought cool candles that burn in different colors.  I guess we'll have to wait until the next birthday to use them.

One of Brian's sisters and her family stayed at our house. They havev 3 kids near our kids' ages, so it's always lots of fun to have them here. The kids all get along really well - to the point where the boys even argue occasionally. :) They left today so now I'm just doing post-company laundry, catching up on the last few days on Vox, and watching the Vikings suck it up. (OK, so Berrian just scored a TD. Maybe they're only semi-sucking it up.) It's all good as long as the Bears lose.

I went to Target the day after Christmas. I usually do this but I wasn't planning to this year.  Primarily, this is because I was going to work a half day on Friday. That didn't happen, as I decided on Thursday that I just had too much to do in preparation for the dinner that night, and my mother-in-law also wanted to have a family picture taken (they're on my fb if you want to see them). It was supposed to be a studio picture originally, but that didn't work out. Side note: in this picture I'm wearing the sweater I picked up at Target that morning as my reward for passing chemistry. It was 75% off, which was an added bonus!

Tomorrow it's back to work! I'm kind of glad to be getting back to regular life. I really enjoyed this Christmas, but I feel fat (my own doing, I know) and I'm ready to get back into a routine. We're starting hard back into South Beach on January 1 (we're waiting so that we can have movie & junk food night w/the kids on NYE). I'm not ready to start school up again, but fortunately I have a couple of weeks before I have to worry about that (they always start the online courses a week later than the classroom courses, which is fine by me). And I'm going to start exercising again, starting tomorrow. I've been doing it very sporadically over the last month, and I'm definitely feeling it.

OK, well, the laundry's ready to be switched and I'm going to go see if the Vikes can close this out.  Later!

I love this meme that's going around, and I needed something to write today.  Bailey's answers are in red and Joey's are in blue. They collaborated on part of one answer so that's in purple.

Two things: 1) "Huggies" and "Kissies" are actually what they're called in our house.  2) They do still call me Mommy.

What is something Mommy always says to you?
I need hugs
I love you

What makes Mommy happy?
Us obeying her
Huggies & kissies
 
What makes Mommy sad?
Not obeying her
Not obeying God
 
How does Mommy make you laugh?
(sily giggles) Tickles!
Tickles
 
What was Mommy like as a child?
Bad.  (giggling) I don't know!
Boring.  I don't know.  You've never told us about when you were a kid. Loving.
 
How old is Mommy?
35, I think it is?
68!  Just kidding.  Um, 36? How old is Daddy? [37] 37??!! I'll go with 36.
 
How tall is Mommy?
Let me guess....6 feet?
I'll say....um....um....I'm thinking.  Four feet eight inches.
 
What is Mommy's favourite thing to do?
Not study.  No!  Spending time with us.
Spending time with us and watching TV.
And watching TV.
 
What does Mommy do when you're not around?
Work or study
Work or study
Together: Most of the time! [What about the rest of the time?] Sitting around, doing laundry, doing chores. watching TV
 
If Mommy becomes famous, what will it be for?
Being an awesome mom.  Or for being an awesome singer! :)
This is a hard one! Getting a good job!
 
What is Mommy really good at doing?
Working. Also, doing chores and making desserts
Studying, also watching TV. also, loving us
 
What is Mommy not very good at doing?
Ice skating
Playing baseball
 
What is Mommy's job?
Working at Mayo Clinic
Teaching at Mayo Clinic - I can't remember what you teach
 
What's Mommy's favourite food?
Dessert and cheese sticks
Cheese sticks and buffalo chicken
 
What makes you proud of Mommy?
She makes us money and buys us cool stuff like doughnuts
Loving and getting a good job
 
If Mommy were a cartoon character, who would she be?
Charlie Brown [Why?] Because he never really gets things that he wants, but sometimes he gets what he wants. 
Surely not Patrick, you might be Squidward.  Actually, I'll go with Squidward.  [Why?] Because sometimes you're grumpy and Squidward's grumpy, and you always want quiet so you can do stuff. [Bailey: Not always.] No, not always.
 
What do you and Mommy do together?
Spend time
Spend time doing huggies & kissies
 
How are you and Mommy the same?
We're both girls.  And.... um....we both like watching TV sometimes.
I'm not saying this is any better than Bailey, but we're both smart.  We look the same.  We like TV or electronics.
 
How are you and Mommy different?
We don't really look alike.
Mommy's a girl and I'm a boy.
 
How do you know Mommy loves you?
She gives us lots of huggies & kissies and she says it every night.
Same thing as Bailey.

I just wrote a long post about my week and now it's gone.  Internet Explorer just completely flaked out.

Short version:

1. I'm exhausted.  It's been a long week.  Not in a bad way, just a lot going on.
2. Charter sucks.  Fortunately it will soon be gone from our lives.  I don't care if they offer it free, after next week we will never be Charter customers again.
3. My Norwex party went well.  I'm getting free stuff!  If none of my guests end up booking a party, I might book a second one so I can get a free mop.  (I can't talk about having a mop without thinking about Michael Richards' character in UHF.  Yep, the Weird Al movie.  Rent it if you want a mindless laugh.)
4. For the first time in a month I'm feeling semi-caught up on school.  I think it's because I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  Just a couple more weeks, hopefully, until I get a break.
5. Bailey came home from camp yesterday.  She had fun.
6. The bathroom remodel is going well.  Brian had the place gutted as of last week and Monday-Wednesday, the plumber, electrician, and ductwork guy came & went.  Yesterday Dale Earnhardt, Jr. came and hung the sheetrock.  Who knew that was what he did during the week?  I wouldn't think he'd need a second job, but whatever.  :)  Some pictures:
   

   Kind of a before shot