Two Little Fairies

And this year's Halloween costumes are...

Life's Little Surprises

This morning I had my MOPS meeting and at the last minute I decided to go. MOPS is a group of stay at home moms that meet at a church in Houston and basically provide support to each other and a break from the kiddos every other week as childcare is provided by the church free of charge. The speaker today was supposed to be the church's pastor and he was to talk about marriage. I'm not a big fan of listening to preachers talk about marriage because the marriage they usually talk about is not my marriage. And we like our marriage the way it is thank you very much.

Apparently the pastor forgot that he was supposed to be talking to us and instead we got an assistant pastor whose wife is in our group so basically he couldn't say anything that would tick her off...the world submissive didn't come up once. Amen.

He actually talked about the role of the stay at home mom, a role that after two years I'm starting to settle in to. The talk was pretty good, especially given the fact he had all of ten minutes to prepare. He spoke about our role as our husband's helper and assistant. He made the point that it's not the easiest job in the world being the sole breadwinner for an entire family (especially in this economy) and that as the primary shopper in the family we, as the wife/mother, should take care of the family finances in a very frugal manner. This in turn makes our husbands feel more secure in their role as breadwinner...they feel as though they have won enough bread.

On the way home I began to go over in my mind all that I have spent on decorating our new house in an attempt to have a nice place for my breadwinner to come home to. As I started to feel guilty I began to list the items I could still take back rather than hang on the wall. Then it came to me...a sign.

I checked our mail and found a check from the insurance company for overpayment on the house insurance at closing.

What guilt was I talking about?

Would You Like Some Rant With Your Lunch?

I just got back from having lunch with Ryleigh up at her school. It was fun, hanging out with all those little kids. They're all so cute and sweet and....JUST KIDDING!!

God bless our teachers, those kids are crazy! They make you take your kid and go sit over at a table by yourself and what an excellent idea that is. I still could barely hear my kids over all the chatter though. After we were done eating Ryleigh took me over to meet all of her friends. There are some really sweet girls in her class but the boys were just out of control. An all girls school isn't sounding too shabby right about now. After lunch all the kids had to line up against the wall. I was talking to Ryleigh and her friends and then I turn and look over and the boys are holding their lunch boxes up in the air and letting the other boys kick at it. Geeze! They responded well to me telling them to stop but really, I now get what Ryleigh is talking about when she says the boys are always causing trouble. Man, I love my girls.

What killed me though was seeing what some parents send in their child's lunchbox. And would you believe it, the kids with the most fatty and sugary items are the ones that are already overweight at the age of 5. Go figure. I'm not saying that I'm the role model of health consciousness, but really, if you send BBQ potato chips and sugary kool-aid to school with your kid for lunch you can just expect them to grow up and have the habits and the health of someone who ate BBQ potato chips and sugary kool-aid every day for lunch. Word.

Back to Kindergarten

Tonight was a sort of orientation at Ryleigh's school for the parents. I got to sit in Ryleigh's classroom and hear from her teacher about what the curriculum is going to be like and what the expectations are going to be for the year.

Basically, she needs to be able to read "See Spot run." by the end of the year.

See how easy that was? And I didn't use up a valuable hour of your life like her teacher did of mine tonight. So, what was talked about for the remaining 59 minutes and 52 seconds of the orientation?

Well, for one, it was explained that if we need to change our child's mode of transportation home for the day, we need to let them know as soon as possible... and in written format, like a note, on paper... written in pen, pencil or grape jelly, whatever is handy. For safety reasons, obviously...

So this one dude raises his hand and goes: "This is just a suggestion, but you guys should set up something on the website that would allow parents access by password only where we could submit a request to change the transportation." And this other dude goes: "Yeah, that would work really easy, I know how you would write the code to do it." And the original geek, I mean dude goes "Oh, it would be sooooooo easy. I would do it for free if they want me to."

And as I roll my eyes and wonder if these guys work for the government given the amount of wasted time they would be willing to endure in order to avoid having to write a sentence on a post it once or twice a year I think to myself....I so love my totally non-geeky husband whose first thought would have been; my wife takes care of the note writing around here.

Pictures from the Frio

We Both Got An Education Today

The day that the mover's showed up to deliver our household goods I found a little something waiting for me on the front porch. It was what appeared to be an animal turd of some sort. It was large enough for me to notice, but not large enough to be from a cat or a dog, even a small one. The turd was about an inch long and of course Avery stepped right in it because the laws of physics clearly dictate that when a one inch turd is on a 25 square foot porch and a child is approaching, that child will certainly and without fail step in the turd.

So, I quickly washed the squished turn off of her shoes so I wouldn't be picking it out of the cracks of her soles later and spent the remainder of the day and at various moments since then wondering what creature left such a lovely "welcome home" gift on my front porch. Of course I decided that it was most likely a snake. A small snake, but a snake. Snakes are what I fear seeing in my front garden the most and the lack of snakes is what I think made Newfoundland the most appealing to me. Kind of funny considering I grew up hunting rattle snakes and even found a few in my own backyard.

Fast forward to today, a nice Sunday, a good day to take my eldest daughter to the Children's Museum for a little mommy and Ryleigh time. In the newly renovated outdoor area of the museum there is a building that sort of looks like a cabin in the woods. Inside the building is an exhibit devoted to woodland type creatures including a special section on tracking such creatures. And the feature method....turd identification! Oh snap...I'm gonna find my turd.

Y'all.....it was a toad turd. And since I failed to take a picture of the actual turd and thought it would be kind of creepy to take a picture of the fake turd at the museum I have scoured the internet for a picture that might make this post come alive for you. There is a lovely video on YouTube which I contemplated posting but since I don't know if you are eating at the moment and I am not drunk, I'll let you go find that one for yourself.

Movin' On

Today is the 44th day in this apartment. That is 44 days of sleeping in the most uncomfortable bed I've ever slept in. Well, I take that back, the hotel we stayed in at Trey Brown's wedding had a worse bed. Not only was it uncomfortable, it also had some sort of red stain on the side of the mattress and I refused to be anywhere near the comforter, which meant I spent the whole night shivering. But the beds in this apartment are definitely a close second. My back is quite sore and my shoulder (which I dislocated several times as a teenager and had surgery on when I was 19) is killing me. Tonight, it ends.

Tomorrow the movers will be bringing our things to the new house. AND, Mattress Firm will bring the new mattress. We won't have a fridge for another 9 days and we won't have cable until Monday, but I will be sleeping on a Stearns and Foster pillow top tomorrow night. Amen.

I really am not a great housewife. I know this, I admit it, I belong in a cubicle. I belong in front of a computer or in a conference room at a random and pointless meeting. I really feel that, I am comfortable and confident there. But I am working on this whole housewife thing. The kids and the "wifely duties", I've got that down. Tending to the house...not so much.

In an effort to do better, I have decided to take a more active interest in decorating. And this is big for me because I hate decorating. I really do. I remember how in college my friend Davi had her apartment decorated so awesomely cute and she always seemed to have just found some sweet deal on everything that she used. I would spend twice as much money and end up with a nice rug, not a whole living room. And she can sew...I've had a sewing machine for four years, it's still in the box.

So, for the 44 days that I've spent in this apartment I have studied things like color combinations and patterns and materials and you should see the stack of magazines in my living room. I have spent hours wandering around decorating stores, just taking it all in, hoping that some of it will sink in. My friends tell me that I need to be willing to buy stuff and take it back if it doesn't work out. This is hard for me as well, spending money on something that really will serve no purpose except to sit there and look pretty. But I'm working on it, and I think it's going to be good.

I spent the weekend painting our bedroom and the dining room. I'm not showing any pictures until it's all done, but I think it's going to be fabulous. Hopefully, maybe. And yes, this is why I have been so absent on my blog, I've been studying.

One more glass of wine and I'm off to bed, got to get some good sleep, tomorrow will be a very big day!