Sunday Super Mom Fail

During the week I can pretty much keep a good routine. The house is never spotless, but it's presentable and I normally know what we're having for dinner by noon. But when the weekend comes, all that goes right out the window. By Sunday my house is a wreck and dinner is normally very late.

Tonight I had Riley try on his Halloween costume for the first time. He's going to be Luigi and since The Mario Brothers are a huge thing at our house, I was afraid he would never take it off if I let him try it on earlier. He excitedly puts it on and IT IS TOO SMALL. I convinced him to take it off and ran to Wal-Mart to try and exchange it. Of course they are all picked over and the only Mario related costume is Waluigi.

Not exactly the cute costume I'd hoped for.

I called home and got the "okay" from Riley to get Waluigi and was reminded that we hadn't had dinner yet. By now it's going on 8:00 - my kids bedtime! I picked up some frozen meals and headed for the customer service desk to make the costume exchange. Since I didn't have my receipt, they needed my driver's license. Which was in my wallet. In my car. Heading back out to the parking lot I realized I didn't drive my car, I drove my husbands! So I ran back to the customer service desk, told them I would just take the Luigi costume and headed home.

So my family got frozen dinners at 9 PM and my son will be wearing a tight Luigi costume for Halloween. And now you can feel better about the ways you messed up this weekend. :)

Tomorrow is a new day...

Rainy Days and Wednesdays (And Pinterest!)

I'm feeling a little down today. I think the sleep deprivation and gloomy weather has finally gotten to me. I hate feeling like this and can't wait to snap out of it!

So what makes this grumpy girl smile? CRAFTS! I saw this idea on pinterest:

And loved it. So I whipped out an old cookie sheet, painted it turquoise and added a ribbon. Then I took my makeup (99% of it was free with coupons!) and stuck some magnets to the back of them. The end result...

It's cleared off my counters and it's so much easier to find the color I want. Pretty and functional!

Now excuse me while I go listen to the Carpenters and look wistfully out the window...

Your melancholy Mighty B

Hey! It's Okay Tuesday!

It's Okay...

MMmmmmm....Come to Momma!

• To not know what a cider doughnut is, but be certain I would love it.
• To just throw the pajamas away when dealing with a diaper explosion.
• To eat more Gerber puffs than the baby does.
• To be annoyed that I can no longer buy books through my Kindle app. I do most of my reading in bed. If there is something new I want to read I don't want to run out to my laptop, buy it, then try and get cozy again.
• To be thankful for Fall Break on Friday because it means I don't have to drag the kids out of the house to take Riley to school.

Do You Elf?

I love finding new Christmas traditions for my family, but I'm a bit disturbed by one I've been seeing a lot of lately.

Hellllooooo

The Elf on the Shelf. I love the idea of it. The elf comes to your house to watch and make sure the kids are good, then reports back to Santa. Each morning, the kids can look for the elf in a different place. Some of the poses I've seen online are really pretty funny!

But I'm not to sure of his little smirk. Is he a scary elf that will come to life at night and kill me in my sleep? Or maybe a pervy elf who will hide and watch me undress? Will my kids like it? Or become paranoid that this thing is watching them?

I both love and hate the Elf on the Shelf. Do you have one?

Today...

• I have strep throat. Again.
• The dog had me up at 5:30 so she could go investigate what was outside. (By the way, it was just the rain. Stupid dog.)
• I busted the zipper on Riley's winter coat. It's not fixable.
• I lost my car keys ("in the great big foam" - inside joke!) which caused us to be late dropping Riley off at school.
• The cat puked in the dining room.
• My sweater got caught on the door and now has a lovely hole ripped it in.
• The trunk lid fell on my head when I was loading groceries. And then my kids got to hear mommy curse loudly in the Meijer parking lot.
• Tried to pick up my coke from Wendy's to take a drink while driving and the lid popped off and I dumped coke in my lap. While still driving.
• Something broke at work, so my poor husband hasn't gotten to come home yet. He's been at work for almost 16 hours.
• My kids were like cracked-out monkeys all night because they were upset daddy wasn't home yet.
• Oh yeah, I turned 31. :)

Not the best birthday I've ever had, but it certainly could be worse. I just kept laughing wondering what was going to be next  (maybe that's a sign of maturity?) and singing this song in my head.

"This is the stuff you use to break me of impatience, conquer my frustrations. I've got a new appreciation. It's not the end of the world!"

Half-Time Show

Brenna LOVES to dance and is determined to be a ballerina one day. Riley is participating in a basketball camp this month and Brenna thought the crowd (about 20-30 parents and siblings) needed a little sideline entertainment.

What a performer. No idea where she gets that from. :)

What Gracie Sees

Looking up is something new for Grace. Because of the pressure of the extra fluid in her brain and her low vision, she normally keeps her eyes downcast. Seeing her look up makes my heart sing.

Grace recently had her follow up with the opthamologist. We still don't know how much she can see, but the nystagmus (eye's shaking) and strabismus (eye crossing) is getting better. He asked if I think she is seeing better and I wasn't sure how to answer that. Sometimes I feel like she can absolutely see. Other times she won't look at something that's right in front of her. She seems to see better with her peripheral vision and when it's especially well lit, but tends to hold toys very close to her face often.

Grace looking at her ring. It's hard to know if she does this because she can see them better
this close or if this is just a quirk. She does this frequently.

So many things about Gracie's condition are "wait and see". Will she be able to see normally? Will she need to learn braille? Will she be able to attend school without special assistance? Will she run into things a lot when she starts crawling/walking? There is no guidebook on what to do when your child is visually impaired. No "What To Expect - The First Year with your VI Baby".

Maybe I should start writing one...

Happy Pin-Day!

Pinterest is my new favorite way to waste time. I've gotten so many good ideas from there (Follow my boards here!) but was worried that I would never actually implement them. Thankfully I have friends who aren't afraid to call me out. :)

I actually tried the "Egg McMuffin in a Muffin Tin" idea. What it was suppose to look like was this:

I greased up my muffin tin, cracked in my eggs and it looked like this (I forgot to take a picture right away, so this was after like 30 seconds in the hot oven):

Not to bad, right? The "recipe" tells you to take a muffin, slap on the egg and cheese and you have yourself a sandwich. What they failed to mention is that the eggs DO NOT COME OUT OF THE MUFFIN TIN. And the yolk doesn't cook all the way so it looks weird.

The sandwiches were okay. The biggest downfall was in the middle you would get a bite that was only yolk *BLECH*. And I am still trying to scrub that egg out of my muffin tin. I'm seriously considering just pitching it and asking Santa for a new one.

I am considering the Muffin Tin Egg Muffins my first pinterest fail!

Hey! It's Okay Tuesday!

It's Okay...

• To forget why you put your kids in timeout....or forget that they are IN timeout.
• To sign up for and be excited about Oprah's Life Class. She's just a little successful, she may be able to teach me a thing or two!
• To feel like everyone else my age is grown-up and I'm just playing the part. I don't feel 30.
• To not be strong enough. I know I'm not strong enough to be everything that I'm suppose to be.

You've Got a Friend in Me

We dance a lot in our house. Here is Brenna and Riley dancing to the end credits of Toy Story 3. Riley was trying to dance like the aliens...Brenna was doing the flamenco. My favorite part is the full-on body roll at 37 seconds. Enjoy. :)

{Day 5} Never Ending

Laundry has taken over my house. I've tried to keep up with a "two loads a day" routine, but what ends up happening is I wash and dry two loads, but they never get put away. I've decided to try dedicating two days a week to doing only laundry - and hopefully it will break me of my "Just leave it in the dryer" habit.

Maybe if my laundry room looked like this, I'd spend more time there?

My laundry days will be Tuesday and Friday since they are the days we normally have free. Yesterday I spent the morning doing laundry and was surprised at how quickly I got things done. But it's only been one day and the laundry basket in my bathroom is already overflowing. How do people do this? Or does my family just produce a ridiculous amount of laundry? Can I only do laundry two days a week and still have clean pants?

Only time will tell.

Hey! It's Okay Tuesday!

Hey! It's Okay....

To be a woman and not like Dirty Dancing or Top Gun.

To hate Jersey Shore, but enjoy Jerseylicious.

To be so thankful that Amanda Knox and the hikers imprisoned in Iran are all free. And to be a little scared of ever leaving the country because of these incidents.

To think jeggings are ridiculous.

These are NOT pants. I repeat, these are NOT pants.

{Day 3} Smack That

This video makes me laugh SO HARD. Enjoy :)

{Day 2} Stinky

I've recently started working in Tiny Town, the nursery/toddler area at my church. I work with the one-year-old group and it's heartwarming, fun, exhausting and very busy. Today there were 16 little ones. About half way through the service something started to smell. A lot. As a mom, I knew that distinctive smell could only come from one thing. Poo. While another worker changed diapers, I tried to figure out who the pooper was so we could get him/her changed pronto.

Photo: Pinterest

So I spent my morning sniffing toddler butts to see who the culprit was (turns out there were 3 culprits!). It was quite a productive (pun intended!) morning!

31 Days of....What?

A few of the blogs I follow kept mentioning this big blogger fest where everyone writes about their passion for 31 days. (It's going on at The Nester if you'd like to find out more!) The idea intrigues me. Sharing my passion for 31 days! But then I thought, what is my passion? My kids? Avoiding housework? Pillsbury Sweet Moments Cocoa Carmel Obsession brownies? I really have no idea. But I'm still going to try and participate. I'm not going to link up - because that would hold me accountable to actually posting every day in October. I'm not up for that kind of pressure! But I certainly am going to try.

31 Days of Crocheted Shorts?

Maybe I'll find my passion. Maybe I'll make you laugh. Maybe I'll just share a song or a picture of a dog in a Halloween costume (one of my most favorite things EVER.). Who knows. It should be annoying, boring, crazy, exciting!

Can you handle 31 days of the B?