Frag'n Friday!

Head on over to Mrs. 4444s neck of the woods to see all the Friday Fraggers that actually posted on Friday.

*After taking a few nice outdoor walks this week, winter decided to rear it's ugly head again and remind us that we still have a few months left where the temp might very well be below 30 degrees.

*The Michael Jackson movie This Is It is out on video. If you didn't see it in the theater, I would definitely rent/buy it! We of course had to buy it and I am sure it will get worn out while 2 girls try to learn every dance on it.

*Justine found out the #1 song on the day she was born. Of course, this intrigued me and I had to find out the #1 song when I was born. It was The Turtles: Happy Together. When K was born it was Hypnotize by Notorious BIG and when B was born it was I'm Your Angel by R Kelly and Celine Dion. If you want to find out this cocktail party fun conversation topic, you can go here.

*At BJ's yesterday, my mom, B and I got to watch an infomercial live. Not much out of the ordinary goes on at our little BJs. Yesterday, over the loud speaker, someone was yammering on about getting a free pairing knife at aisle 7. Well, the idea of a free take home gift and a free lunch full of samples was almost too much to handle! We watched a very outgoing man sell knives. You had to listen to his 7 minute speal before you could get your free pairing knife. He was just like an infomercial because he showed you the amazing things one knife would do and then added in a bunch more knives, a juicer tool and a mini chopper!!! B was beside herself with excitement and wanted us to buy the set for $40 (a $230 value!). We had to talk her down and just accept our free knife and head back to our free lunch....

*Does anyone know where I can get a money tree for my backyard?

*Following twitter and watching the President's speech the other night was hysterical. Someone wished they were still in college playing the drinking game where you do a shot for every time Pelosi stood up. They would have been in a coma by the time the speech ended.

*The Winter Olympics start in 13 days!!! Anyone have any ideas for the opening ceremonies party I want to have?

Happy Weekend!

Help a Mom Out, Would Ya?

To the Makers of Confetti Frozen Pancakes,

Really?

I have never had a problem getting my kids to eat pancakes from the moment I started giving them solid food. Many times we even have pancakes for dinner. It is fun to have the choice of regular size or mini size, I will give you that. However, different flavors of pancakes have never even been desired.

So why are you taunting my kids with confetti pancakes? Couldn't you make confetti frozen corn or confetti milk or confetti fish sticks? Those items I do have a hard time getting my kids to consume. Maybe you could figure out how to grow zucchini with confetti in it? How about asparagus with confetti? I might even eat asparagus if it had confetti in it.

These are just some ideas for you while you are sitting around trying to screw with the minds of parents who's main concern is getting their kids to eat vegetables and drink milk.

If you'll excuse me, I need to sprinkle some confetti on my salad.

Sincerely,

Connie Fett Tee

Hot Date Night

B and I are enjoying an evening alone. I ran to the store and returned with potato skins, salad, grapeade for her, wine for me and Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice-cream.

She said, "I would date you. You have a good sense of humor, you're nice and you buy good food."

Hmm, that's something to put in the personals, right?

Frag'n Friday!

One of these weeks I am going to remember to write down(as they happen) all the funny stuff that happened over the week so I can then put them in my fragments. Now my brain is like a popcorn machine, the things I remember are like the popped popcorn, the things I can't: the kernels. Go check out Mrs. 4444s for other fragmented bloggers.

*I tried to find the original post about the Bingo game from Hell, but could not find it, so I will recap. 3 years ago we started renting out our house in the summer. That first year, I left a bingo game in the house with a cool cage and little yellow balls that would fall out of the cage one at a time. For the next year I would find little yellow balls in the couch cushions, under things, in corners, pretty much everywhere. Some kid must have taken that thing and launched it! Well, we are selling the house now and I was cleaning out stuff today and look what I found!

I think that game was possessed!

*I attempted to give blood yesterday for Manic Mommy's big blood drive. I filled out all the paper work, got my finger pricked, blood pressure taken and then the nurse couldn't find my vein!!! She saw it on my arm and as her shaky hand went to stick in the needle, she missed and then spent about 5 minutes trying to get it to go in. Uggghhhhh! Don't worry, Manic! I am not an easy quitter. I will try again after the large bruise on my arm goes away so people can see my vein again!

*Is this a well loved dog or what?

*Here is the following conversation I had with B this week...

Me: 2 important people died last year that were famous in the 70's

B: Who? Michael Jackson and?

Me: One was a woman and one was a black man.

B: Who was the black man?

Me: Michael Jackson

B: No, he was not BLACK! He was WHITE!

I cannot make up what goes on in that girls head. :)

Happy Weekend!!!

Discretion? Hmm, not here.

I am a born and bred New Englander. That means that I have the strict morals of the Puritans. Synonyms of puritanical are prim, prissy, prudish and square toed (huh, never heard that one before)*. Keep this in mind before you read my story.....

B recently changed pools for her swim lessons just to see if she liked one pool/gym better than the other. We have gone 2xs to the new place. The ladies locker room is lovely. Very nicely decorated, couches, tv, big hot tub, steam room, sauna, big showers... you get the picture. Last night, K, decided that she was going to come sit in the hot tub while B was swimming away in the pool. I gave her the heads up that this was a very naked locker room. I don't think she believed me.

So I get B set up in the pool and come back to the locker room. K is not undressed yet. A woman walked over the hot tub in a bathing suit and gets in. K decides that she does not want to get in with said woman. She decides to go for the steam room. As she is in the steam room, another woman comes into the locker room and starts undressing while talking to hot tub woman. What I could gather was that they were both teachers in their late 40s/early 50s. Not supermodels by anyone's standpoint.

K comes out of the steam room with her eyes bugging out of her head. I cannot see the hot tub from my vantage point, but peer around the wall to get a visual on the 2 women, who's conversation I can clearly hear. They are both butt naked. This means that the first woman who got into the hot tub with her bathing suit on, actually took it off while in the hot tub.

Um, ewwww!

Is it just me or is being naked in a public hot tub gross? Maybe the problem is that I am so NOT comfortable in my own skin that to stand around a locker room carrying on a conversation while naked would be something of a nightmare to me.

Listening to the girls relaying the story to my mom on the phone the minute we left the gym, makes me believe that being a puritanical New Englander is genetic.

*Thank you dictionary.com for those synonyms. I swear my toes aren't square.

Sing Me a Song

My sister and brother in law bought the girls a Memorex Sing Stand Home Karaoke System for Christmas. This one gift has provided us with hours of amusement. You can actually plug your ipod into the microphone stand and sing with all the songs. You don't see the words like real Karaoke, but you sing along with the artist.

Or you use it to call your kids to dinner when they are upstairs playing.

When you invite some friends for dinner and provide accessories, adult beverages for the adults, fake champagne for the kids and said Karaoke system. You get a bunch of belly laughing. I am not allowed to put on the video (kids said so), but they didn't say anything about pictures. The girls LOVE dressing up their cousin (and truly, I don't think he minds too much).

Then if you give the "I'm too cool for this singing nonsense" cousin your camera, things can get a little out of hand!

This is his dad putting a sparkly silver belt on his head.

1/2 a pic of B singing away.

A blurry pic of K...

I think he was channeling Austin Powers when he told K to give him her best tiger impression. "You're a tiger. Think like a tiger. Give me a grrrr".

All in all, if you are looking to spice up your January, I highly recommend this mic stand. (And some wine and a camera.)

Frag'n Friday!

Phew, it is still Friday, which means I can still jump into the Friday Fragments sponsored by Mrs. 44444s. Good thing, because I have been collecting frags all day.

For example, this morning, B says as I am dropping her off at school.... "Hey I had a dream about Daddy having a girlfriend last night."

Me, "Really? Was she pretty?"

B, "I don't know. All I know is that you bought Daddy flowers to give to her and you didn't seem to mind."

Seriously? Am I really that nice?

Gretel has always slept on the couch or the floor or a chair since she was a puppy. We bought her a dog bed once, but she really just used it like any another piece of furniture. However, I guess I never thought of buying her a $150 beanbag chair at Pottery Barn. That seems to be her preferred night time spot.

I have to give the oil guy credit. He has tried twice this week to make it up our very steep, unplowed driveway. No one is living in that house at the moment and the very steep driveway makes for a very nice sledding hill. It is very unusual for Cape Cod to have snow on the ground for over a week and we have had it here for a month! Hopefully some of that snow will melt tomorrow in the 42 degree temps we are suppose to have!

Oh, and the big scoop I had yesterday.... wound up being in the paper and I just hadn't read it. Ugh, disappointing!

My girl, K, is at Rock Night tonight at a skating rink. This goes on every Friday night, but somehow I manage to "forget about it" and not remind my kids that this is an option. One of her friends invited her and since I don't have to drive 15 minutes there and back, I said, "OK". Back in the day, hahahaha, I got to go to "rock night" (that's so not what it was called)and it was at a roller skating rink. My friend Melissa and I would scout out the boys and cross our fingers that one of the cute ones would invite us to skate for the "couple's skate". We may have gotten lucky once, but mostly we stalked the cute boys and skated. Oh and of course giggled and then wrote about it in our journals when we got home. Oh, to be a fly on the wall right now at the ice skating rink......

My heart goes out to the people in Haiti this week. I haven't watched much on tv, but this morning I saw a 9 year old boy get stitches in his leg with no novocaine or anesthesia. He had his mom laying on top of him while he was crying. Just another reminder to be grateful for what you have. And, trust me, I am.

Salonnnnnn Fabulouuuuuuuus!

I went and had my hair "done" today. I can't think of any other place that can give you the experience of a salon.

I went from looking blah to fabulous in a few hours.

I got town news before it even landed in the newspaper. Big news. Huge.

I read a good article in More magazine.

I heard all about my friend/hairdresser's new baby. I asked her to bring him in and he could just sit on my lap and snuggle while I had my hair cut. No such luck. It was Grandma's day to play with him.

I chatted with my mom awhile because she was getting her hair cut at the same time and no, we did not plan that.

At the salon, they offer you tea and coffee. They have wars over how hot it should be. The receptionist plays DJ and takes suggestions. They hug me. They basically make me feel like a million bucks.

Maybe I should make my appointments every week, not every 6 weeks?

Memory Lane

Seriously, in January, I have to rack my brain for something to blog about. I can only complain about the weather so many times before it gets a bit redundant. So today I went back to when I first started storing pictures on my computer to see what I could find.

B, in these pictures, is in 1st grade. So sweet and innocent!
And she still likes jumping waves today!


K is in 3rd grade in these pictures. She looks so young! And her face was still roundish!

Often times I would get a nice shot and then they would deteriorate into something like this...

Nice to see that some things haven't changed...

400!

This weekend was my 2 year blogaversary!

And this is my 400th post!

I spent the weekend taking family photos. Very important family photos, that is.

The girls have played dollhouse for as long as I can remember. When they were smaller, it was with Little People or Barbies or American Girl Dolls mixed in with the Fisher Price Loving Family. Now it is just the Loving Family people. When they were little, I tried to play with them, but they were too bossy. They would tell me what to say and where my person should be. I felt my creativity was being compromised, so I let them play by themselves. Now they will play for hours together on the weekends if their busy schedules allow. {It's a secret though, so don't tell their friends, ok?}

From what I can gather, there are 3 main families. They all have names and they each have a house. They go on camping trips down the hall, their kids have babysitters, there is a "difficult" child in each family and everyone has a name. And they each talk certain people and their certain people are not all in one family. To an outsider, it is confusing. To them it is pure bliss.

This is Susan's house. She has a large family.

This is Jeanette's house.
I think this is Melonie's house.

This is Jeanette and her family:

This is Melanie and her family:

This is Susan and her family:

And this is the whole neighborhood:

They were the most cooperative groups that I have ever taken pictures of. I didn't even have to tell them where to stand. And other than Timmy, they didn't give me any back talk either.

Here's to your Health!

B is in a 10 week Health Class that meets every day. 5th grade health. I'm not sure they get into THAT until 6th grade, but I am sure it will be a dinner time discussion.

Yes, that is right. B thinks it is wonderful to share everything she has learned in health at dinner. It's no wonder K is so thin. She gets so grossed out during these conversations.

Last night's discussion was on organ donation (Right Hallie?Aren't you proud?!) and my mom was here, too.

B, "So Nana are you an organ donor?"

Nana "Yes, I am."

B, "How about you, Mommy?"

Me, "Yes, I am. It says it on my license."

K, "Oh you guys are grossing me out. No one is going to take my stuff out after I die!"

B, "Then I will hunt you down and take it out myself. Don't you want to help someone live after you die? Or do you just want your body and organs to shrivel up and be wasted in the ground?"

This makes me wonder a bit how the Health teacher explained this. He has also put the fear of God into her when it comes to smoking. Perfect! Big present for him at the end of the year. She has nightmares about smoking and getting sick from it and how bad it is for you.

She's currently looking for a real juicy topic for her oral report due next week. She was going to do infected bug bites, but has changed her mind. Not juicy enough, I guess. Feel free to suggest something, just make sure it is suitable dinner table conversation.

Whatcha doin?

Whatcha doin? (I love how the little girl on Phineus and Ferb says this line)

I would love to say I am being very busy and productive and working off those pounds for the new year, but I am sitting in a chair in a sunny window dreaming that I am in Aruba.

What's up with that?

The girls are back at school and it's like I have some sort of malaise where I cannot get up and get anything accomplished. Yeah, so I have a sinus infection, big whoop, what else is new? It didn't stop me from sledding for 2 hours yesterday at the hilliest golf course on Cape Cod. Of course, it did slow me down a little walking up the hills. Why did I never put in that patten for ski lifts on golf courses for lazy sledders?

Sledding can be a very dangerous sport. I saw quite a few accidents yesterday and saw my life flash in front of me as I went over a jump sideways and flew off my sled. The parents that were there were hard core sledders. We had the need for speed. We didn't mind that the wind was blowing 25, that hail was coming out of the sky or that our kids were cold. Did we jump in and help make the jumps higher? Yup. Did we give the kids an extra boost so they thought they were Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation trying out the new wax on his sled? Yup. Did we join in and hog the best sleds a little longer than we should have? Yup. Did this mom offer up cocoa and freshly baked slice and bake cookies to the masses? Yup.

OK, so after being a "cool mom" and shoveling for 2 days, I guess, sitting on my pretend beach is well deserved. Just hope I can get up in time to pick up the kids.

Oh, wait, maybe I will just send the pool boy.

Day 1, 2010

“One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: to rise above the little things.”

―John Burroughs

This is the quote of the day from Real Simple. It fits my day. I was thinking that I needed a re-do of the first day of the year because it didn't turn out quite the way it was suppose to.

I had expectations for today. It is after all the first day of the new year and the new decade.

This is going to be MY year. It is going to ROCK! That is what I woke up saying to myself this morning.

Then the washing machine hose came out of the washing machine while it was full of soapy water. Oh, did I mention that the washer and dryer are upstairs? Yeah, I haven't done much laundry this vacation week and was just getting ready for a slew of laundry. The clean laundry was on the floor in front of the machines. Yup, soaked. Along with the wall to wall carpet, along with every towel I could put my hands on.

Matt happened to be here and was able to put the hose back on the washer. I bundled up a bunch of wet towels to take to our rental house to double up on my washing. I had to take Matt's truck. I left the radio on while running in the house which killed his battery (which was on it's way out anyway). He had to come over and jump the truck with my car.

I went to a lovely party with the girls and had made beef stew in my new crock pot. Delish, right? Of course it was, but the crock pot was so full that some sloshed over in my trunk. Mmmm, that will smell good for awhile, right?

All this caused me to be a bit crabby. (The girls would say, very crabby).

But, I came home, looked at my quote of the day and have decided to adopt this resolution.

I think this is actually one I can keep.