Mom Fail

I don't make Sloppy Joes very often.  I love that they are easy to make, can be put together ahead of time, and freeze well.  But it is not my favorite meal.  Thus, it has been a while since I last made it for dinner. I figured even though I didn't love it, the kids were big fans.

Sadly, that was a year or 2 ago.  Tonight, it was a colossal failure.  No one wanted to eat it.  Callie claimed she took a bite, but she really only bit into the bun.  Marian sampled it, nearly had a meltdown when her bun fell apart, and then bravely tried 2 bites of mine before claiming it was icky.  Rylee let me cut hers into quarters and nibbled from 2 of them before refusing another bite.

Yeah, I'm not feeling like a winner tonight.

Just For Grandpa

Marian had a project to interview a grandparent and put together a report on them.  She was so cute.  She was also quite behind, because she feels the need to make every single picture perfect and she's rather detail oriented.  She got permission to bring it home to work on over Christmas break.  I wanted to show her grandpa, but we forgot to take it to AR with us. I managed to get pictures of it before she finished though.  So, Grandpa, here it is! 

Young Love

Around Thanksgiving time, one of my children came home and admitted to having a crush.  A few days later, this child informed me with delight that their crush reciprocated the feelings.  Hmmm....  We had a little discussion about being too young to date.  The next day I was informed that at this school if you have a crush and your crush likes you back, then you are boyfriend and girlfriend.  This led to another discussion about being too young to date, and too young to have a girlfriend.  (Yeah, yeah, so it is my only son we are referring to!)

I told him that there would be no touching, not even hand holding, and no being alone together.  I suggested that this was a good opportunity to learn about being friends with girls and maybe a time to start thinking about the things he liked and might want in a future wife.  I know, too young to date but not too young to think about marriage!  She was a nice girl, quiet and sweet and they walked to and from school together.

Honestly, I'm still a bit at a loss on how to deal with it all.  I know they hung out at the park, but I think it was always with a pack of other kids, so I didn't make it a big deal.  It just seemed kind of cute and harmless.

Poor boy came home yesterday looking glum and said Emily (her name was Emily) had dumped him.  He seemed quite upset about it.  So I guess this whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing was more serious than I'd thought, which is not good. She dumped him in favor of another boy.  The brazen hussy!

I thought we'd talked about not having a girlfriend and it seems that was not really taken to heart.  Now I think I'll give him a few days to grieve, and then I'm going to have to lay the smack down.  Any advice?

Weekly blah, blah, blah

Sunday January 13, 2013

We made it through the first week back to school.  It went astonishingly well.  Sadly, it was an ugly, overcast week with a lot of drizzly rain, which was quite dreary. I got up early on Monday to run and was quite disgruntled to see that the street lights on the flight line were NOT fixed and now every single one of them is out.  Fortunately, I ran anyway and no MPs stopped me to tell me I couldn't be there.  It was a short run, since it was my first after 10 days off but it felt really good.

I made the mistake of thinking I could schedule my allergy shot before story time and still make it to story time.  I had to wait 30 minutes to get the shot and by the time I waited the 30 minutes after the shot, Rylee was done and it was too late. So we stopped by Walmart instead.  Somehow it wasn't the same.

Tuesday Levi and I ran on the levee and it went really well, but he got muddy enough I decided a bath was in order.  He was not pleased, but he sure looked nice. Wednesday the weather psyched me out and I spent quality time with the elliptical machine at home rather than running.  I also finally got around to converting Rylee's crib into a "big girl" bed.  Rylee was so thrilled.  Sadly, she did not want to actually USE it and did not take a nap,  Neither did she got to bed well in it that night and she didn't sleep well in it.  It did get better and she's back to napping properly and sleeping through the night (most nights!).

Thursday I had a 10am meeting at the school about Marian's 504 and I didn't have time to exercise.  The meeting was quick and painless.  I LOVE her teacher this year.  She really has a good one and I'm so happy about that.  Marian is doing really well and we didn't need to change anything on her plan. I had a massive headache by the time I got home and I was glad Rylee was in preschool so I could lie down.  That was about all I did the rest of the day till kids came home.  The headache finally went away around bedtime.  Ha.  The irony kills me.

Friday I didn't want to get up early and I didn't want to deal with the worry of getting caught running the flight line, so I didn't.  I went running after the kids went to school, which meant running with a stroller and a dog.  Sigh.  Not much fun either.  And it was an awful run.  My friend Jamie came over to hang out and let the girls play for a while and it was marvelous.  I love friends who make me feel like I'm interesting and they want to spend time with me.  I had a grumpy evening.

I got up Saturday to run with my running group.  It was suppose to be a "long run" but I was not going to try for 6 miles!  Fortunately, we have a lot of newbies in the group, so I went with them and we ran and walked 4 miles.  I was secretly glad.  It was a muggy 70 degrees and I know I'd have been down with a migraine if I'd tried to push in that weather.  So I was happy. I got out, I did some running and I stayed headache-free!

Callie and Marian had been invited to an awesome birthday party at the local animal shelter so I went to pick them up and then stopped by the commissary.  I got a little nappy-poo and Dan spent all afternoon and evening at Stake Conference.  The kids were really good and we had a nice evening.  Today was Stake Conference and I was so happy we didn't have to drive the hour to the stake center.  We got to go to our own building, so I was delighted to have an extra hour of sleep and delighted to not have to teach this week.  Did I mention it was 76 degrees today?  Thank goodness cooler weather is on the way!

So, a good week overall.  I think we're back into the routine of things and life is going pretty well.

How to be an Awesome Mom

Perception is reality, right?  People see you as awesome, therefore you are awesome!  Let's look into that some more.  

Here is how I portray this afternoon:

I let the girls make sugar cookies this afternoon. I rolled out the dough and gave them cookie cutters and they had a marvelous time.

I love Delaney's face here.  She chose the hand and foot shaped cookie cutters and was hilarious as she gave a running commentary on the hands and feet she cut out. Marian was methodical and meticulous.

Rylee wanted the little cookie cutters and took the cutting very seriously. 

Yeah, Callie really needs her bangs cut.  She was also not pleased to have a picture taken.  She was really good at rolling out the dough and cutting decent cookies.  After the first batch, I sat back and let them do their own thing and they rolled and cut and nibbled to their heart's content.

Then Rylee got distracted by Levi and went to play with him.

Now that makes me sound like I am an awesome mom.  Again, it is all in how you portray it.  Let's talk about how it really went down:

I found a tub of sugar cookie dough at the commissary for half off.  I thought, Hmmm..... $1.77 is a good price and I bet the girls would have fun with it.  So I got it.  I needed a bribe for good behavior so I could nap in peace today, so I offered cookie-making if they would play nicely.  They must have because I didn't hear them at all while I napped.

When I got up I thought I was an idiot for promising such an activity, but I dutifully cleaned off the table, thawed the cookie dough and turned on the oven.  Then I spent 10 minutes shouting- get out of the way, I can't roll out the dough when you stand there, move your cookie-cutters, no you can't use the Christmas ones, that's your sister's spot, move out of my way, no the dough isn't ready, get your hands out of the flour, stop shoving your sister, don't make me put this all away, get your hands off your sister's dough, I'm going to beat you with my rolling pin, don't stand right in front of me while I'm trying to roll this out, stop putting your hands in the flour bin, don't swat the flour, stop hitting your sister..... and on and on.   And I thought how this wasn't much fun at all.  So I got them set up and walked away.  

Surprisingly, they all got on quite well for the next 30 minutes, rolling and cutting and helping each other.  I popped the pans in the oven and took them out, otherwise I stayed out of it. It degenerated after that and I had to confiscate the last of the dough.  

The moral of the story is that I can make it look like a lovely family activity that was glorious for all.  In reality, it was work and sometimes not much fun at all, and I had grumpy feelings.  When I blog about it though, I can make me sound like I totally rock.  So this is a reminder that when you see all those crafty blogs and happy children, know that reality was probably much different than what is being portrayed!  (Or maybe it is just me!)

Just to prove that to my children I really am awesome, I let them eat all the cookies they wanted.  (It was store bought dough, so they weren't very yummy cookies anyway.)