Glad the Muso Discussion Kept You Busy While I Was Gone...

It really is something when I don't even visit my own blog for a week and the discussion just keeps rolling along...

For those of you who I don't call when I am freaking out completely, I will fill you on the week...

Monday: sent kids off the school, had a nice walk at the Lake with Hubby, who also introduced me to a new thrift store where I found a great big bag of goodies and spent the afternoon in peace and quiet sorting junk while Hubby applied to jobs online. Vin came home from school with a fever. Made chicken soup for supper. Went over to A and J's to talk church and chill after the kids were in bed. (thank goodness for Sara).

Tuesday: Kept Vin home from school, took tons of photos for ebay, fussed over Vin. Fretted over taking sick kid to pick up Mattie from school and called on A to save the day. Hubby called at 3 saying his tooth had broken off, exposing a nerve and came home looking white as a ghost. Scrambled to find a dentist only to find out that he couldn't get in til Wednesday at the latest and would need a painkiller prescription to make it through the night. Unfortunately, he had all the signs of a drug-seeker, so that posed a bit of a problem. Finally found a clinic that would prescribe for him around 5 p.m. Rewarmed the chicken soup, ironed a shirt and got ready to go to ...are you ready for this....a movie. I kid you not. Robb had to introduce a movie (the Jeanette Oke "Loves Abiding Joy") because of the parnership between FCS and Fox Faith Films. Drove like a maniac with hubby on Vicadin to introduce the movie to ....4 people. He was required to intro it, or face the wrath of Millie, his new DM, who we are all afraid of. (Again, thank goodness for SAra).

Wednesday: Vin seems better, so I hold off on original plan to take him to the clinic. Work dutifully all afternoon. Hubby has job interview at 2 p.m., picks up Mattie at 3:00 p.m., dentist appointment at 3:40 p.m., Parent Teacher conferences at 5:00 p.m. Around 2:30 p.m., Vin gets worse and is miserable. I can't think of a thing to make for supper and we have to go anyway....Robb has tooth pulled at 4:45 p.m and arrives at the house with novacaine puffy face and gobs of gauze at 4:58 p.m. Pile the kids in the car with Barbie and the 12 Dancing Princesses for the kids to watch on Dad's laptop (which he dropped on Tuesday morning, did I mention) while we have conference. Apparently Vinny has been sorely missed while he has been gone and Mattie is wonderful reader, even if spelling has escaped her altogether...go figure..with 3 schools in 3 years. Leave the school, head to the clinic in Walmart. Yes, that's what I said...in Walmart....the girls and dad have supper in the Walmart McDonalds while we discover that Vinny, who is jumping around and smiling charmingly at the nurse, has an ear infection and strepped throat and a fever of 102 degrees. He's still jumping around, btw. Drop off the prescription at the pharmacy, head to the McDonalds for a chicken sandwich, get Mattie a new writing tablet, head to back to the pharmacy where Charleigh's now too full diaper leaves wet marks on my hip, Vin drops his open bottle of orange juice on the floor, and we convince the pharmacy to give us two bottles of childrens' Motrin Cold Formula, even though we DO really look as though we will go straight home and cook up a nice batch of meth. Arrive home to put kids to bed, discovering along the way that Charleigh has used up all of the wipes on her doll's bum, kiss kiss kiss, shut off lights, check the email, yada yada yada, take a shot of Nyquil because that big wet kiss Vin gave me earlier this week is now catching up with me.

12 Hours later....yes, that's right...I slept for 12 Hours straight...I emerge to find Vin and Charleigh watching cartoons, My Vicadin-popping husband dutifully at work taking a tonge lashing from Millie for some imaginary offense, Mattie at school, a pot of coffee waiting and the strangest feeling of having awakened from a not so much bad, but dizzyingly confusing dream.

Yeah, so Musos. Annoying.

A Weekend Photo-Diary

Whew....is it really Monday afternoon? Here's a brief overview of our weekend...

Friday, my brother Ron, aka "Uncle Pookie" stopped in to visit on his way from TX to IL. The weather here was terrible and it stormed all Friday night. I caught this pic Friday afternoon during a break in the heavy winds and rain.

On Saturday, despite unpromising weather, we decided to head over to Eureka Springs, which I knew my brother would love. Always our first stop, we had lunch at "Big Jesus" (okay, its real name is Christ of the Ozarks, if you must know). Ron spoiled the kids rotten and took tons of photos, which should be pretty hilarious considering how much peanut butter they had on their faces.




Since we got like ...no sleep...on Friday night, it was no wonder these two caught a cat nap when we got home.

Saturday gave way to Sunday, which was Mattie's 7th birthday. I don't even want to deal with the fact that I have a seven year old now...she's such a big girl! She declared getting her ears pierced to be "the best birthday present EVER." She certainly does look pretty as a princess.


While I made Mattie's birthday lunch (mashed potatoes, gravy and roast...her FAVORITE) Vin took a few photos. He's super cute at this and does a great job of taking my picture, which is hard to do! And, oh, hey...I found my glasses! Now I have a choice!

Then it was time to open presents and have cake. Aunt Ashley's purse full of goodies was the bomb. Now I just have to keep Charleigh out of it!


So that's where I've been. Don't worry blog fans, I'll always keep you posted.

Hair Apparent

Robb desperately needs a haircut, but he is pretty nervous to let me at it just yet.

Sometimes I am in a good hair place and sometimes, I'm not. Sometimes I can give a great cut that wears really well, and sometimes, I just don't quite get the image in my head before I start and something less than stellar occurs. Vin's most recent cut isn't my favorite. My sister got the worst one ever. Even Sara has gotten a butchering at least once from me. I tried to squeeze in a trim on Charliegh's bangs the other day, since she was already in the tub....I don't know if you've ever tried to snip a moving target, but the results were not good. Especially on her pretty, pin-straight locks. I tried to repair the damage on a second try, but it's gonna be at least two weeks before they even start to look right. And with my own mop, I decided to do a quick dye to cover my now grown out highlights, which had become pretty dry and obvious. I used a color I had been successful with before, but for some reason, it is a little too dark....really it is almost black and with a dash of red lipstick, I bear a striking resemblance to Snow White. I think I'll take a page out of Donna's book and go goth for a little while.

So yeah, Robb's hair...it might just have to wait until I'm back in a good hair groove. Or maybe I should go ahead...it'll be okay in two weeks.

Happy Thoughts

(hard to believe that title is actually a snarky remark about my sister's ex boyfriend)

But anywhoo, I would just like to post a couple of things that made me very happy today:

I made cowboy cookies for my family because I knew they would love them. The kids walked in the door after school and followed their little noses straight to them and declared me the "best mom EVER." I even saved a big glob of dough and put it in the freezer for hubby. This is the exact same feeling the Proverbs 31 woman has about winter coming and her family having warm clothes already.

My toilets and floors are clean. Even the disgusting parts on the floor behind it. AND the refrigerator...bye-bye fuzzy bean dip. And the very best part...tomorrow is garbage day. The wonderful Garbage Men who take away my grody trash every week without me even having to ask them to. I love the Garbage Men.

My morning glories. I don't know who named them that, but really they couldn't have a more fitting name. I look out there and just feel happy.

Cool weather. I opened all the windows and let the cold in. And when I say cold, I mean 69 degrees. Perfection.

and how could I forget...

NEW TV SHOWS!!! whooo hooooo!!!! I will gladly get my work done so I can chill for the premieres.

I'm Digesting....

When we four kids were hungry teens, Mom would make a huge bowl of taco salad for lunch on Sundays. When I say huge I mean like an 8 quart stainless steel bowl full, which, if we had friends over, she would just throw more chips into. We would heap our plates and just eat until we couldn't stuff any more in. We all laughed our heads off the day my sister crawled away from the table and lay down on the living room floor, a few feet from the table.

"What are you doing?" mom asked her.

She patted her tummy and groaned as if it was taking all of her mortal power to do so,

"I'm digesting."



There's all this stuff that is happening or not happening right now. God has been setting the table to teach me something, feeding me information, and I just feel stuffed with it. And I can't really blog about it because right now, I'm just lying on the floor trying to digest it.

Positive

I write a lot about the things that drive me nuts. I do that for two reasons...so that I don't explode and to make people laugh. Really, most of the time, that is what I hope people do when they read my "I'm so frustrated I could scream" posts. I am always blown away by how weird a day can be and I really want to be able to laugh it off...eventually.

Optimism often eludes me. Probably because I don't think very quickly on my feet and I try to prepare for the worst-case scenarios ahead of time by trying to guess what I might need to prepare for. Example: Last night I was awake from 1:30 to 2:30 am wondering if we still had that life insurance for Robb and if so, would it be enough to cover everything, which led to a "how would I do that" scenario. This is not exactly worrying, mind you, just a contingency plan to fall back on should I find myself in the worst-case scenario. I'd be a basket case then, and wouldn't be able to think straight, so it's a good thing to think over when I am rational (and I use that term really loosely). It's actually rather comforting because I haven't ever needed to employ one of these contingency plans. I tend to think that I could be very optimistic indeed if I had more "worst case scenario plans" in place.

But there are lots of postive things that are happening, which I tend to gloss over since they don't require action on my part. But for the record here are some positive things that have happened lately:

we got renters for our house

Robb's feet are much better and at his appointment yesterday, we were told that we have a credit that they will be refunding, since our insurance actually covered something.

Because we no longer need to insure the contents of our house in MI, our monthly payment should go down.

A 800 dollar credit card bill was refunded because of mistake we actually weren't to blame for (for a change).

We got our state tax return back (which is good for a couple of gallons of milk anyway).

I went to an estate sale yesterday where I was the first one there and got my pick of the items, which were being sold for very low prices. I've also been very fortunate at thrift stores lately.

My kids have been absolute pills this week, but they are so cute...I don't remember ever enjoying being a mom as much as I have in the last few months.

Robb has a new District Manager who is tough as nails, but he is going to ask for an interview with her next week for the managers job...again. New DM means different regional VP, which means....who knows????

So...there you go. God is taking care of us and meeting our needs. He has been whispering to me that He does actually have a plan. So I'm trying to be on board with that whatever it is!

So, how did it go?

So we had our launch service yesterday and some have called and some have emailed wondering how it went.

The short, flat, and uninteresting answer is, "I don't know."

The longer answer is that I was doing the kids ministry and had the unusual expectation that I would just do it myself with Sara so my good friend Hannah-who said at one of our first meetings that she flat out refused to do the kids ministry and has since done three, I think - and Meredith, a veritable wonder-woman with children- could actually go to the service for a change. It was a nice plan, but when we got two nine-month old babies, and 4 toddlers, 2 of which were screaming at the top of their lungs, well, I had to call in the reinforcements. Up to this point, we haven't had any baby-babies, and Charleigh has been the youngest. I had this great, big kid lesson planned and all these little ones...Oh, and we had a 9 year old, my older two, and 3 more kindergartners. Thank goodness for Sara's "moose song."

So over on the other side, where things weren't all rice noise-makers and stickers, they had a service and I guess it went all right. I still don't know many people, though we did get acquainted with some more people at lunch. I think the whole leadership team is still kind of percolating and hopefully, it will be smoother next week.

Oh my...we have it again next week.

VERY FUNNY VIDEO HERE

I'm going to get to work very soon, but first, I've gotta watch this video again. My friend Darla recommended these guys on her blog, but I couldn't watch the vid in her link. I found this one this morning on another blog I love. Have fun!

I know I complain a lot, but at least I didn't do this.

Isn't it funny....

...how it takes such a little thing -like missing paperwork or a 15 inch metal spring- to derail us?

When James writes about counting it a joy to fall into temptations, I don't really picture those temptations coming in the form of the dog running through the house with muddy feet and Vin pouring syrup all over his shoe.

That's why I love Rich Mullin's song,

We Are Not as Strong as We Think We Are

"Well it took the hand of God Almighty
To part the waters of the sea
But it only took one little lie
To separate you and me
Oh we are not as strong as we think we are

And they say that one day Joshua
Made the sun stand still in the sky
But I can't even keep these thoughts of you from passing by
Oh we are not as strong as we think we are

We are frail we are fearfully and wonderfully made
Forged in the fires of human passion
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage
And with these our hells and our heavens
So few inches apart
We must be awfully small
And not as strong as we think we are

And the Master said their faith was
Gonna make them mountains move
But me I tremble like a hill on a fault line
Just at the thought of how I lost you
Oh we are not as strong as we think we are

We are frail we are fearfully and wonderfully made
Forged in the fires of human passion
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage
And with these our hells and our heavens
So few inches apart
We must be awfully small
And not as strong as we think we are

And if you make me laugh
I know I could make you like me
Cause when I laugh I can be a lot of fun
But we can't do that I know that it is frightening
What I don't know is why we can't hold on
We can't hold on

It took the hand of God Almighty
To part the waters of the sea
But it only took one little lie
To separate you and me
Oh we are not as strong as we think we are

When you love you walk on the water
Just don't stumble on the waves
We all want to go there somethin awful
But to stand there it takes some grace
Cause oh we are not as strong
As we think we are

No we are not as strong
As we think we are

Walk on the water
Walk on the water
If we could just hold on
Just hold on
"

yeah, what he said.

Hanging in there....

After three days of straight up frustration, I'm still hanging in there. Yesterday, I took Charleigh for her shots, which only required:

two reschedules
frantic search lasting approximatly one solid day for old immunizatin record
phonecall to old dr.'s office for a copy of her immunization record that I lost
phonecall to the MI courthouse for paperwork proving Charleigh's name change
check to courthouse for certified copy.
trip to FCS to pick up faxed copy of paperwork
2 hour wait at clinic where I was the only caucasian in a room of about 35 people...a good experience but also a little uncomfortable
tounge-lashing from clinic for attempting to use wrong insurance (I've never used either kind of insurance we have)
trip home to retrieve correct insurance card

I also lost Mattie's immunization record (okay not lost, by both mis-layed in the same wrong location as Charleigh's) and while searching for that I found the DVD we were supposed to return to the library last December.

And somehow Calvin's kindergarten physical paperwork never made it into his file, so I found that too and took it to his school nurse.

I used to be so organized. Now I'm just a loser. When I called my parents to vent, my dad said, "Well, honey, what do you expect when you move 8 times?" Yeah, that'll be my excuse.

But on a good note, the buyer of the chair accepted the refund I sent for the lost chair coil, so hopefully that saga will be over.

Oh, I and I forgot to say that Charleigh didn't cry and didn't even flinch with her three shots. She was still giggling at the nurse after the first one and completely forgot about the other two when she saw the "Boots the Monkey" sticker they offered her for her troubles.

I'm going to need to take off my cranky pants...

...soon.

Labor Day: I'm not a fan

You know how on Friends, Chandler hates Thanksgiving?

I think that's how I feel about Labor Day. It's a worthless, frustrating holiday. Topping out the worst Labor Days ever was when we lived in NYC and we were robbed...not just robbed, but literally "the perp took a dump on the floor" to quote the rookie cop at the 123 Precinct. I know that between the drug-addict thief putting on our New Life Island Christian Camp T-shirt and our Lesbian neighbors both named Liz being witnesses and my actual underwear being left in the driveway by the thief, it has a certain comedy attached to it. But that's because time heals...

Its going to take me awhile to get over yesterday too. Robb had to work all day, so I basically declined to treat the day like a holiday. Instead, I had a pile of ebay work to do, which mainly involved dismantling two Danish Modern lounge chairs and packing them to ship. I got partway through the project and realized that one of the coil supports was missing.

Long story short, my children and their friends next door were playing and one of the six of them decided it was a good idea to remove one of the coils and play with it. Yes, that's right, as in "Let's take one of the parts out of the antique, made in Yugoslavia, unique and unreplaceable chair that mom sold for 200 dollars." Of course, my children know that touching any of my ebay stock is strickly verboten, but none of them thought to come and tell me about it either. I inquired with the neighbors and they "have no idea" where it could be, though one kid told me one story and told her mother a completly different one and my two are more than likely too small and too weak to have pulled the coil off. Hours of looking for it led me to research online where I might find a replacement. No dice. They aren't made anymore. I have tried to contact the buyer with no success. Meanwhile, I need a very Cosby-esque consequence to meet out to my children. And I'm not too happy with the neighbors either. I think the word I'm searching for here is LIVID.

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, Labor Day could be erased from the calendar for good. I'm pefectly happy to squeeze in my last picnic the day before the kids go back to school.

Kid Highlights

So we went to the Jones Center to swim yesterday. They have a super duper indoor slide, a great toddler area and all three, make that four counting Daddy, have a blast every time we go. You have to be 48 inches tall to do the water slide alone, and last time we were there about a month and a half ago, Mattie had a solid inch or two to go before she was tall enough. Yesterday, she marched up there and low and behold, she had hit it. (No wonder she's been eating us out of house and home!) So she climbed the four flights of stairs by herself and went down that slide without being scared at all. For my cautious, level-headed first born, who doesn't have a daredevil bone in her body, I was quite impressed by this accomplishment.

Vin opened his backpack and pulled out a little book all about the color "red" and proceeded to read it. It's his first full week of school. He also declared that when he grew up, he wants to be the "countdown guy" for when space-ships take off. I'll bet that actually pays pretty well...go for it, Buddy!

And Charleigh has begun to say her own name. Ask her who she is and she will reply, with the twinkling mischief in her eyes that she is "Scheiney!" Yes, she is. That nickname is gonna stick, I think.

BYOB

Bury your own breast?????

The Saga Continues

So Robb's job. Weird, I tell you. Found out today that everything is going to be shaken up again. It's not public knowledge yet, so on the off chance that somebody who manages a FCS in District 29 is reading this, I don't know anything. My lips are sealed.

Here's a catch 22, though. He is only allowed to work 40 hours as a interim manager. Okay. But regular managers are salaried and usually work upwards of 45 to 50 hours a week. So he can't get everything done. It is not humanly possible. So he gets behind and is stressed out because it affects their bottom line, which he actually cares about, inspite of everything. He's a good guy and I'm proud of him for being so responsible. Not super-responsible, but just the right amount of responsible.

So I went this morning and helped pack up return boxes. I was bored at home and wanted to be around Robb after him being gone all week. So we had a Ryerse Family Bookstore Morning. The kids watched the new Bible Man Video (snore) and the new BOZ video (The Christian Barney...because apparently that Freaky Purple Dinosaur is also a complete heathen) which Charleigh loves. It was kind of fun and nice to know I can still contribute something to the work force....even if I didn't get paid for it : )

FCS...it's a job....and kind of a trip.