We tried...

really
really
hard.
Turns out popsicles keep tears away and kids from running off.

Wish we had thought of it about 45 minutes earlier...

bugs and glitches and such

So I am using a different computer for my blogging and whatnot and have just discovered two very disturbing facts. #1 - this computer eats my itunes. I just bought 3 albums on itunes, got my recipt and poof! they are gone never to be recovered. I want to call Apple and cry about it but I am about 90% certain they won't give a rip. And disturbing fact #2 - this computer won't let me upload photos. This is so sad because my pink birthday party was last night and I have some fabulous pictures. Cute pink decorations and grown men hula hooping. I know you are really sad to be missing out for the time being. IT (aka Aaron) is working on it. We better figger it out soon cuz we can't afford to go buying a new computer!!

Happy 4th!!

Thanks so much for the sweet birthday wishes. We had a pretty laid back day since the real birthday party will be on Saturday.

Hope you all have a great 4th! Please think of/pray for my Marine brother who is currently in Iraq for his third tour. He has been there a week today, and will be there for 8 months. Here he is with his wife Ashley last July.

Happy To Me!

On my sister's second birthday we took her to one of those make your own bear places and she went around the store saying "Happy to me! Happy to me!" As a result we named her teddy bear Toomee and frequently will say "Happy to me!" Instead of Happy Birthday to each other.

Today is my birthday, so "Happy to me!" We aren't doing much today since I will be having a big party on Saturday (yes, I still give myself birthday parties). I did take the kids to have cupcakes for breakfast and to the zoo in celebration. I forgot the camera, which is a huge shame becuase the bakery I took them to was adorable. These are the cupcakes I made for Monkey's birthday, I haven't made anything special for myself today.

I am celebrating the rest of the day by cleaning house and watching the history channel. The Presidents is on and I am a sucker for American history. This week has been chock-full of entertainment for me. It just now occured to me that its probably because of the 4th. Duh.

So. Back to our trip. On Tuesday we went to Disneyland, which was actually fun despite the fact that it was the middle of June. We didn't have to wait in line longer than 30 minutes, though my Monkey just couldn't understand why he had to wait in line at all. It is suprisingly difficult to convince a 3 1/2 year old that he does, in fact, have to wait in line like everyone else. The last straw came after a particularly long wait for a ride that ended up breaking down just before it was our turn. We gave him the choice of seeing Mickey or waiting for the ride to work again and he chose to leave the line and see Mickey.

I won't go into detail about what transpired during that wait. I'll just leave you with this picture and the knowledge that we packed it up and called it a day right after this.

My family assured me that Monkey was very well behaved for a 3 year old in a theme park for 8 hours, but I still have my doubts.

There's No Place Like Home

I am soooo glad to home! We had a great trip, which was only a teeny bit exhausting with 5 little ones and two unruly dogs. The chaos was like nothing I have ever experienced. These 5 munchkins woke up and hit the ground running each and every day. They didn't stop until they passed out each night. They were all pretty much a blur for the entire week.

We took them to dinner at the marina in Oceanside, looked at the boats, and made complete messes of ourselves with ice cream. When we got home we tried to get them all settled down for bed, but that was a complete failure. At one point my monkey was so tired and wanted to go to sleep soooo badly, but his cousin was playing cars on the race track that was on monkey's sleeping bag-while monkey was in it. Poor monkey couldn't cope and wanted to call it a trip then and there, but I managed to calm him down and get him to sleep in the dining room in his little beach tent.

In the morning all was forgotten, probably just as much because we were going to Disneyland as because he got a decent nights sleep (sort of). Tomorrow I will tell you all about Disneyland and why you shouldn't take tired children to theme parks. Oh wait, you all are smart enough to know that already...

Over the weekend we started a garden. My plan was originally to get a wheelbarrow and plant our little garden there, but wheelbarrows are expensive and I had already made one impulse buy for the week, so there you go. We planted our garden in the bups above. I was good and I labeled all the cups, but then in their excitment to plant all the cups and seeds got mixed up, so we'll just be suprised when they grow.

This is a lesson in patience for all of us. Monkey has been pretty disapointed that flowers don't just appear when you water the ground (me too, son, me too). When they do appear he'll be pretty excited. I have to be patient when he asks 5,000 times a day to water his "planets". Hopefully my kids will have a greener thumb than me. I swear my house is where bad plants come to die. Though some hydrangea I got last year which I thought I murdered, has sprouted back to life and is quite lovely. I guess there is hope for all of us!

Happy Mother's Day

Yesterday I had the best proudest, most wonderful parent moment of my life.

We were invited to serve food to the residents of a homeless camp with some friends. This stretched me in many ways because this wasn't a soup kitchen where the volunteers stand behind tables and serve food or where you make up some take home boxes and hand them out, and the only contact you have is a brief hello.



This was a BBQ put on by an amazing ministry called Project 61(no website, though. boohoo) The members of this group go out to a homeless camp in our area every two weeks and provide more than just food to the people who live there. They provide the residents with friendship, laughter and most importantly their actions show these residents that they are human beings deserving of love and respect.




It is hard to put the whole experience into words. I was saddened by thier living conditions, amazed at their tenacity (one man made himself a lovely garden complete with a pirated watering system), heartened by their ability to relax and have fun with us-most of whom were complete strangers.



We chose to bring our children with us, a choice that we were unsure about, but in the end proved to be just what they (and we) needed. We had brought birthday party horns with us and I gave the bags to Monkey to hand out to people. He took his little bag of horns and walked around the crowd offering them. He and several of the residents played and ran around with their horns.



Monkey is just at the age where he will make blunt (and rude) observations (like "that lady is fat" or "why do you have no teeth?") so I was worried he might do that, but my boy was wonderful. He played and talked and ate, blissfully unaware of missing teeth and dirty clothes. He explored the camp (under our watchful eye) and made new friends. He sat down with a man and played with his toys, a scene that just broke my heart.



They have a camp "toybox"-an old Folgers coffee can with 5 or 6 small toys inside. One man told me that during the day they will sit around and play with the toys. When the man (whose name I didn't catch) saw that Monkey was going to sit down and stay awhile, he brought Monkey the toybox. The man was very quiet and just watched Monkey play, but there was a very slight brightness in his eyes that wasn't there before.


When we left they made us promise to come out again. They said they didn't even care if we brought food with us, they just wanted to talk and visit with the kids. They just wanted to see their friends again. We will definitely be going back. I pray that experiences like this leave my kids with a respect for life and for people.

As we pulled into the driveway Monkey said to us "That was a great party, Momma. " Yes, son, it was. And that is the best Mother's Day gift I could have ever gotten.

Just in case you didn't already know...

We are the biggest dorks ever and have the pictures to prove it. These are from our last trip to DL. I love how in the first pic we are concentrating soooo hard. Because, you know, we are saving the intergalactic world from the evil emperor Zurg.

And in this gem above I look brain dead. Notice the little white bump? That is a 4 month old peanut. Was she ever that small? I love how monkey's head just barely comes over the top of the ride. He loved that one. So did we, obviously.

Tomorrow hopefully I will be far enough along in my latest project to take decent pics. They looked really weird today so I improvised with these pics.

Well, Handmade Parade is over and for a few days life is going to be peaceful until I start getting ready for Baz Biz and the Maker Faire. Sacramento Craft Mafia and Missy will have booths and Handmade Parade and little lovelies handmade will have a small presence there as well.

Saturday night after things had died down from HP and the yard was (somewhat) back to normal, we had friends over for dinner and margaritas. Nothing like spaghetti and margaritas to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. What can I say, I was tired and didn't feel like cooking or shopping for food, so we ate what Aaron could make without too much assistance.

Sunday I woke up not feeling 100% (no, it wasn't the margaritas) and stayed home from church with monkey boy. I think I just needed to sleep in, because I felt so much better after, that I actually decided to try to tackle my ridiculously messy craft room. After working on it for a few hours it looks not much better. I had layers and layers of stuff piled on my table. I need to get everything put away and dealt with so that I can get in there and create without being bogged down by clutter. I'm hoping that someday some organizational "bug" will get me and I'll be a neat freak. Ha.

Back to the craft room and more organizing. Oh and the cute little bottle above is made by the amazing Vallen of Queenly Things. Go tell her she needs to open an etsy shop!

Simplify

I am filled with a desire-no-need to simplify my life. To declutter, clean, streamline. I am realizing that our needs are few and we just have too much. I emptied out my closet, the kids closets and toy chests, and our bookshelves. Of course it all just gets transferred to the garage until I can make a massive trip to Goodwill or have a garage sale.

Hopefully soon I can have a garage sale to raise some much needed funds for my 3-Day walk. I got my first $150 this week, which is very exciting. Aside from the fact that I signed my life away to raise $2200, getting the first pledges makes the whole endeavor feel very "official".

Ahhh. The closets are calling. More purging is needed...

He's Superfly

Check my boy out. Just too cool for school. He had his first dentist appointment today and he is just chill there in the dentists chair. The good thing about him is that when he is unsure about something he is really good and really quiet, which works out perfectly for doctors visits. Hoestly I think they won him over when they showed him the Blue's Clues toothbrush before they got started. If only that worked for me...

As a reward for being the chillest kid on the dentist block I took him and peanut to the zoo. At one point I looked up to see him climb onto this bench and recline back like this. Ahhhh king of the world. Must be nice to be so dang cool, huh?

In between all my parenting mumbo jumbo I have been crafting, I promise. I need to get ready for Handmade Parade, you know. Missy and I are super excited about it and have all sorts of fun things up our sleeves. Even though the one in May isn't even here yet, we have been brainstorming about the one we are doing in the fall. Good good stuff is on the horizon!

Maybe tomorrow I'll have some crafty pics for ya. You know. For my crafty blog here...

Joy of Parenting

There are days that I love having kidlets and days where I...well...don't. Yesterday was one of those days. It wasn't a particularly bad day, just an irritating day. At three years old Monkey Boy has achieved the omniscience of God-the kid thinks he knows everything.

"Who are you talking to, mom?"

"Daddy."

"No you not."

Kid, mom knows who she is talking on the phone with better than you do.

or

"Mom, where is sister?"

"She's taking a nap."

"No, she not."

or

"Mom, is the sun going to bed?" (It's 7:30 and the sun is going down)

"Yup"

"No it's not."

Ok, fine. Technically its not. Whatever, you're three.

Really, I don't know why I find this so irritating. Maybe because I am closer to a three year old in maturity than a 27 year old. I am constantly amazed at how quickly Aaron and I can get drawn into an argument with this pint sized know it all. Now I just ignore him past the "no it's not" but I am irritated nonetheless.

My irritation grew as we cleaned his room and I found several broken toys and ripped books among his stuff. There is really no greater crime against kid stuff than ripping up a book in my opinion, and Monkey knows this. I nursed the books that could be saved back to health and mourned the loss of the ones that had to be thrown out. After I did this I looked up to see my kid shoving matchbox cars through a little hole in the wall of his closet (it is on the huge list of things to fix around here).

Like I said joy of parenting.

(don't you love how much he hates being on my lap in that pic above? and notice he tatooed himself with a green marker)

The Colors of My Life...

I love color. When we bought our house the thing I was most excited about was getting to paint. We painted deep, dark, rich colors in our front room, bedroom and our son's room. They are gorgeous colors, but they are not my colors. I think maybe I thought they were, but after three years of living with them and one pregnancy where the darkness of our front room practicaly drove me nuts (below) I realise that light, bright and fun is what I need.

Army Green, Ralph Lauren Paint

We are going to be remodeling our kitchen in the next couple of weeks, and I am absolutely ecstatic about new colors, cabinents, curtains. Right now it is a bright white, but we'll be painting the walls a new color. We were thinking the green, but now a pale yellow is speaking to me, but we'll see when the time comes what I pick.

Smokey Plum, Behr Paints

Our bedroom is the picture above and it is the one room where the dark color dosen't bother me. I think it is because the windows in there provide so much light and all our bedding is white, so the color dosen't overpower. If we ever move, though I'll be working off the color palete above.

I got this little stack of fabric today to make coasters from, but I am thinking I might be using a few in future curtain and or pillow projects. They are so yummy. I am not a huge orange fan, but I am really liking the paisly today. No worries-I'll never paint the walls orange!

I hope this comes through! It's the catwalk scene from Kinky Boots, which I watched during the kids naptime yesterday. the whole movie cracked me up, but this scene shattered me, it's so funny. The stuffy British owner of a failing shoe factory decides to make boots for drag queens - "2 1/2 feet of tubular sex". Drag Queens have a hard time finding shoes to support their weight, you know.

The owner is strutting his stuff because the drag queens didn't show up to model his kinky boots. If you haven't seen this movie, you MUST, it's HILARIOUS!

It's the perfect cheering up movie clip, which today I needed.

It has been three years today since my dad died. It's weird how surreal the experience was and, at times, still is. I think what made it so strange for me was that I was moved out of the house, and had stopped seeing and talking to him on a daily basis, so it was hard to think he was gone. He was just at work, or at his house, but not gone.

I just deleted everything I had written here about him, I think because nothing I could say would do him justice. He was one of the most complicated people I have ever know. Maybe the most complicated. He was a genuis. He was maddening and hilarious and weird. He loved all movies scifi or action or political, but wouldn't hesitate to take me to a romantic comedy. He took me to Clueless, French Kiss, and Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. And He loved them. He would have taken me to Kinky Boots, I'm sure. That scene would have cracked his stuff up.

The weekend before he died my family traveled down to SOuthern California to say goodbye to my brother, who was leaving for his second tour in Iraq. For weeks after hearing Dallas was leaving for Iraq everyone on the family had a bad taste in their mouth. We all felt something might happen to him, so we drove 6 hours to say goodbye to him and left to go home the next day. We all stayed in a hotel and in the morning, my dad had to get up and go to work. He worked his weeks in So cal and flew his plane up to Nor Cal for the weekends.

I remember sitting, eating breakfast and looking up to see my mom out the window saying goodbye to my dad before he drove away. I thought for a second about going out to say bye and decided not to because I would see him next weekend when he came home. It was on his way home the next week that his little plane crashed into the side of a mountain. It is definitely something I regret, but I try not to dwell on. I just make sure now that I tell my family how much I love them all the time. So much so that my son frequently rolls his eyes at me, "I love you, too momma. Stooop!"

Kay. Now go hug your kids, call your parents give them some love and go watch that clip again, so that you can be all cheered up, now that I brought you all down.

I am a Looooser!

Do you see that stash of pink and brown fantabulousness above? That is from my swap partner, Nancy, who has been extremely patient with me because she hasn't gotten her stash from me yet. Nancy, honey, thank you sooooo much for this awesome stuff!! You won't be disappointed by your box (just by the time it took to get to you...)!! She was the sweetest and even sent my two kiddos those great duckies. Can you believe it? Cute cute! She sent a notepad, bookmark, thrifted watering can, CHOCOLATE, handmade coasters and warming pad (which smell lovely, what is in them?) and my favorite, brown embroidery floss and a whole beading kit!! Thank you so much Nancy!

And do you see the sweet confection of a potholder below? That is from my potholder swap partner, Amy. Thanks Amy! The potholder and the recipe look great!

How was your weekend, friends? Mine was pretty busy. We have been playing catch-up since being sick and it is not fun. Friday was the first day I left my house in two weeks and since then it has been nuts. On Sunday, I was at a friends house visiting and Aaron calls me. My son is hollering in the background and Aaron calmly tells me he swallowed a penny and what should he do?

Greeeaaaat.

So I tell him to call the advice nurse who is basically useless and tells us to take him to the urgent care center (yeah, the same one I was in two weeks ago for my kidney infection. We are all on a first name basis) since Monkey boy was crying and seemed to be in pain.

So I hopped into the car, drove home, we dropped our peanut girl at a friends house and were on our way. Funny thing is once we got into the car monkey was just fine. No more tears, no more pain, but since we started the adventure, what the hey, let's finish it, right?

So we go to the doc, wait 45 mins go in take an xray, where we can see perfectly that he swallowed a dime. Even better. Thinner, smaller, it'll pass through him just fine. So later today we are expecting a return on our little "investment". The doc suggested washing it up and putting it in his baby book. I think not.

But hopefully we have learned a valuable lesson on putting things into our mouths... We are gonna get the monkey a piggy bank so he can learn to save his money properly.

So how was your weekend?

Spring Flowers

I am ready for spring, can you tell? I put my pattern girls away for a bit to work on these flower pins and hairclips. I really love them! And they are so super easy to make. I used a few of the flower tutorials that are out there right now and then sort of tweaked them. I'm not big on following directions, so I modified them to my liking. How do they look?

So, yesterday was Valentines Day and Aaron and I were going to go to the movies, something we haven't done in ages. However, the night before both our kids decided to cry and be generally unhappy until 2 in the morning, so we were pretty beat. Besides, is it just me, or do movies seem like a crappy date now? When we go out, I want to talk and visit and have adult conversation. We can Netflix movies anytime. Although, occasionally we rent a movie and say, "dang that was probably awesome on the big screen!" Like Moulin Rouge and Marie Antoinette. Great movies that were probably completely unforgettable in theatres. I still need to see MA, but I can tell from what people are saying that it was awesome.

Maybe I should Netflix it right now?

BEWARE:This Post is Full of Freaky Circus Clowns!
So, if you are afraid of clowns, this is not the post for you! Come back tomorrow when I have less creepy fodder!

I promised awhile ago to devote a whole post to our favorite kitschy breakfast eatery Pancake Circus, and here it is. Chock full o' freaky clown goodness, too. The food here is great, cheap and service is uber fast. So fast that is you tell the waitress (whose name might actually be Marge or Peg or Sue or some other diner waitress worthy moniker) that you need a minute, she almost looks at you like you asked for escargot or something. We needed about 15 minutes and she was really getting a tad testy with us. Luckily the kids are cute, they charmed her into not caring so much. She even brought our monkey boy a huge hot chocolate with a massive mound of whipped cream.

The two clown pics down there are from the cash register area, which is so saturated with freaky clowns it creeps me out a bit. Basically the sad clowns are the ones that are creepy and you can see that there are a few there. Why? Why paint a sad clown, people??

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

What a fun Mail day it was for me yesterday! Not only did my order come in from Amanda, (who is quickly becoming my very favorite person to shop with) but I also got a sweet little brooch from Heidi at Everyday Cookies. It is so fun to open up the mailbox and have sweet little treats like that. Miss Amanda even threw in some extra goodies for me - her storybook cards (they made the trip quite well, dear!) and a pattern for my little girl. I cannot wait to sew it up!

On Friday over at Inspire Co., Amy posted these bon bons she made for a friend. As soon as I saw them I knew I needed to make some! I went a bit crizazay doing them and made like a dozen of them. These are the ones I am going to keep for my decorations. I am sending a couple with some swaps I'm in. I think I might use a few as pincushions. They are pretty perfect for that, I think. They have also inspired me to try to make some that look like muffins and cupcakes, so I might try some of those later this week.

I have a HUGE list of things I want/need to make right now! I am finishing up my valentines for the Vday Postcard swap on Flickr and the thank you's for the brooch swap. I want to mail them out Tuesday. I also picked up a few Vintage pattern catalogs at an antique store yesterday and have been painstakingly cutting out the beauties to make collages and cards from.

Since it is a three day weekend, my lovely amazing husband will be home and I'll get a full day to craft, while he can help with the kiddos. Soooo, that makes my goals for this weekend pretty lofty- finish up those Valentines, the thank yous, make a couple collages and a few cards. I think it can happen! We'll see. Shockingly the kids prefer me to Aaron with boo boos and general sickness and since both kids are still getting over being sick, that means lots of whining for mommy.

Not that I don't want to take care of the kids, but sometimes Mommy needs a break, right?

When It Rains It Pours...

When we do something round here we like to go big. Especially when it comes to illness and baby births and stuff like that. When I had my peanut girl we were taking care of my little sis while my mother was on a dream vacation to Italy. She was to be gone three weeks. No big thing. I still had six weeks till my kiddo was born. Week 1 sister comes home with a memo from teacher saying that the class had a "ringworm" epidemic. Luckeee. We took all the necessary precautions and avoided it. Week 2 my peanut girl decided she wanted to come early, but since it was too early I was put on bed rest for a week. Did it and the day they let me off bed rest I went into labor and well...So week 3 rolls around and I have a new baby a two year old a 7 year old and my poor sister comes home with the dreaded ringworm. By the way, my mother in law deserves a medal for helping us while I was in the hospital. She bore the brunt of the drama on the homefront and plenty of drama there was.

In the true spirit of us doing things big, this week I am recovering from the aforementioned kidney infection (of which I am pretty much fully recovered), but my kids didn't want me to feel bad being the only one sick and all. Soooo. Monkey boy had the flu and Peanut girl has pneumonia.

I think he is pretty much recovered because he is back to being all snotty to his sister today. Of course, she being sick has made the slightest touch from her brother absolutely deadly. She is also basically fine just a yucky cough. It all just adds to the chaos that is our life. Bedtime is interesting right now. We sit the kiddos on the counter in the kitchen and assembly line the meds and graham cracker bribes until the deed is done. They are good sports about it. But they also think graham crackers are cookies.

All the sickness has led to longer naptimes which equals slightly longer craft time for me. Can't complain about that! So I have been making my little swappy thank you gifts for the gals who participated in my swap. It has been really really fun! I would show you, but I'm pretty sure my readership basically consists of these gals and it would spoil the surprise and we really can't have that, now can we? Sadly the pics will have to wait till next week, after they have been mailed out and hopefully arrived. I'll post next week fo sho' gals!

Oh and thanks for the logo love! I went with D after much agony. I'll show you the site that it was for when I get the go ahead to show the public!

Dear Cold and Flu Season:

I am officially over you. Not that I wanted you around to begin with, but in past years you have had the decency to infect us for only a week or so. This year you have officially overstayed your welcome. Your nasty, icky, annoying germs have been plaguing us off and on since November. November! I don't even let people I like stay around that long!

Please pack up your belongings-your cough medicine, ibuprofen, thermometers, Kleenex, chicken soup, humidifiers, children's cold medicine- and vacate the premises immediately. As in right now. Your presence cannot be tolerated any longer! Because you have chosen to overstay your welcome (though, truth be told, you never were really welcome) my poor family has been stuffy, chough-y and generally feeling gross for far too long! Be gone!

Sincerely,

Claire, Aaron and our munchkins

***

If only it were that easy. Too bad we can't just send an eviction notice to germs and tell them to take a hike and have them actually leave. Wouldn't that be lovely? I know we are not the only ones who have been dealing with the round robin illness this year. Lots of families we know have been perpetually sick since the fall-kids just keep infecting each other again and again in a yucky kleenex and vitamin C filled cycle. Maybe this is just normal cold and flu season and I am only feeling it extra hard this year because I have a three year old in preschool activities. Maybe I just need to get over it and accept the germs as part of my life from mid-November to March. Maybe we need to have vitamin C IVs from now on.

Whatever.

Sorry girls. I'm grouchy and sick again and my darling babies are finally feeling better, which I am thrilled about, but I truly do not have the energy to take care of them today. They are finally "napping". I can hear them singing in their beds, which is so stinkin' cute. I hope they fall asleep, though. Please, PUHLEEZE fall asleep little ones!

I very briefly considered calling my mom to take them for the day, but I know she'll just laugh at me and say "I had 4 kids and no family to help me and I always managed to take care of you when I was sick." It's basically her version of a "I walked uphill both ways to school in the middle of a January blizzard" story. So instead I whine to you guys about it. Aren't I nice? I swear, I'm not going to post again until I have something interesting to say.


**Blogger still won't let me add pics. Anyone else having this problem?