Month: October 2009

Halloween 2009

The kids were so excited to dress up for school yesterday. Ethan wore the ghost busters costume (which was WAY too small for him, but there was no telling him that). Tyra wore the black kitty costume, Jeremy was Snoopy, Dinah was a ladybug, and Chloe was a zebra. Kyle and I talked about how we wanted to dress up, and it just didn’t work out this year (need to start planning NOW for next year) 😉 so I ended up wearing my high school prom dress (YAY I got it to zip up and I could still breathe!) and I’m glad nobody asked me what I was because I couldn’t decide between midieval or hippie (sorry there aren’t any pictures of me 🙁 Kyle didn’t take any). And since Kyle was a stinker and didn’t work on finding a costume for himself I made him wear the potato sack costume. 😛

CIMG2752

Like my macho sack of potatoes? The costume reads: “Be beautiful in a potato sack. Looks like a sack, feels like a sack, IS A SACK. Fill with 100lbs. or more of charm, and save money on new French inspired creations. Guaranteed to loose shape without ironing. For evening wear, add Mink trimmings.”

We stayed for the costume parade at the school, and I got it on video.

CIMG2749

We were dissapointed though, that the parade consisted of the 4 kindergarten classes and the parade of everyone else (including the afternoon kindergartners) would be later. Which means that Kyle missed it completely and I got LUCKY in that I picked Tyra up from school and found out that the parade was going to be happening shortly thereafter, so I ran home with the kids and got the camera so I could get a picture of Ethan in the parade and we got back to the school before the parade started. Bummer though that they didn’t walk all the way around the school. I picked a spot against the wall to keep the way clear so the parade could go through. THEN people started filling in the path to the hallway, and the parade came down the other hallway into the big room and they walked around the room and BACK down the same hallway! So I was completely unable to get a picture of Ethan in the parade, and Tyra, Jeremy and Dinah didn’t even know that the parade had happened because they were sitting on a bench and in the stroller and couldn’t see a thing. 🙁 So that was a complete waste of time.

After Ethan got home from school ( and he had changed into the clown costume because he finally had to admit the ghost busters one was too small) I loaded the kids up and took them to Kyle’s work so they could trick or treat there. We were quite late, and things had died down a lot, but the kids still got candy and were totally thrilled about it. Unfortunately though Kyle couldn’t come home with us because he had to go to the second job.

I brought the kids home fed them and then we went to our ward’s Halloween party, and the kids really enjoyed that. I spent the whole time feeding/burping & holding Chloe, and following Dinah around the cultural hall to make sure she didn’t run away. 😉

Today we had a great time helping the kids decorate their pumpkins. Jeremy made his homegrown pumpkin into a pirate.

CIMG2755

Ethan told Kyle what face to cut into his pumpkin. Tyra wanted to use these little light pegs pumpkin decoration kit thingy that we have, and I helped her make a cat face. (She did NOT want to put her hand into the pumpkin to pull the seeds out though, Kyle and Dinah helped her with that). And Dinah made her pumpkin a princess.

CIMG2760

We had our traditional pizza for dinner (which surprisingly the kids didn’t eat). Then it was time to trick or treat.

Ethan went as Spiderman, Tyra was a pink dog, Jeremy was Snoopy (again), Dinah was a smaller pink dog, and Chloe and I wore our same costumes as yesterday (Kyle didn’t dress up). We left the basket of candy on the porch, and we went around the block as a family and that was about it. We had fun though and by the time we got home the candy was ALMOST gone so I topped the basket off with some glow sticks. I stayed home with Chloe so I could warm her up and get her ready for bed, and Kyle took the kids to hit a few more houses, then they all decided they were too cold and we were done for the night. 🙂 Here are some very tired pink doggies:

CIMG2769

I hereby declare Halloween a success because no kids were lost at any point during the festivities. 😀

Strep Throat and Pink Eye

Ethan woke up yesterday complaining (crying really) that his throat hurt. 🙁 So he didn’t go to school and I took him to the doctor, and yup he has strep throat. So far he’s the only one of my kids that has ever had strep throat. I don’t think I’VE ever even had strep throat, so he must get that from his daddy (Kyle has had strep throat before).

Then yesterday when I went to pick Tyra up from school, she had a pink eye. She had some marker on her cheek so I wondered if she just poked her eye with the marker and it was just irritated or something. Then when I went to pick her up from school today, her teacher came up to me to mention the pink eye and said that ‘pink eye’ is going around the class. OK, so I went home and called the doctor to get her some eye drops, so that she wouldn’t miss any school. Fun week huh?

The Worst Birthday I’ve Ever Had

Yup that’s right. I think I can safely without a doubt say this is the worst birthday I’ve ever had. “Why?” you ask? Well I’ll tell you.

The day started out fine. I woke up early and got Kyle up so he could get started on painting the bunk bed for the girls. After awhile he wanted to take a break so he came inside and we made a nice breakfast. I watched a few old movies with the kids to keep them occupied while Kyle was out painting the bed some more. After awhile we decided that spray painting the bed wasn’t working at all, and I got frustrated because it is taking FOREVER to paint that stinking bed, and it just isn’t looking any better. SO I went to home depot. I wanted to get some hooks so we can hang the shovels and rakes and things up in the garage, so they aren’t on the floor anymore. I got the hooks, and a new snow shovel since the one we have is lousy. Then I went to the paint department to see if they could make the paint we were using in a bucket (so we can brush it on instead of spraying it on). Home depot couldn’t do it so I went to Lowes. They got close, which is good enough for me. Hey at least they tried. 😉

When I got home we went out to the garage to install the hooks and hang up our tools. Sandy helped a bit, then she went inside to watch the kids. Robert helped Kyle make the holes and I stood there to tell them which hooks to use for what and where to put them. We were almost done, when Robert and Sandy decided they needed to hit the road and head home. Kyle and I finished the last couple of hooks ourselves, then we went to put the lawn mower and bikes back in the garage. But wait….where’s Jeremy’s bike? Uh is it on this side of the house? No. On the other side of the house? No. It couldn’t be in the backyard, the kids can’t get the gates open. Is it up the street somewhere? No. Hmmmmm.

I went inside to ask the kids what they did with Jeremy’s bike and wait….there’s a kid missing. Where’s Dinah? Is she in my bathroom? No. In one of the kids rooms? No. Did she fall asleep someplace funny (the kids didn’t have a nap today)? No. Shoot! Where’d she go….. GASP! Could she be somewhere with the missing bike!??

I went outside to inform Kyle that in addition to the bike being gone, Dinah was gone too. I went up the street to look for her and he went the other way. I went down the trail to the next street over, searching for her (we’ve gone that way bike riding before) but no sign of her. I walked all the way around back to our house again, and when I saw Kyle I asked if he had found her. “No”. UH WHAT? She’s still missing? (Ok now I’m really starting to panic.) I jumped in the car so I could cover more ground more quickly, and started driving around our neighborhood. Looking everywhere, HOPING that she wasn’t in somebody’s backyard. I drove up our street, down the next around over to the school, thinking that maybe she went to go play on the slide in the kindergarten yard (she likes that slide) NO sign of her. I saw a police SUV in front of the last house by the school, and I thought about asking them to help us find her. But the officer wasn’t in the car so he must have been in the house, and I didn’t want to interrupt whatever might have been going on there, so I just kept going. I called Kyle, he thought I was calling to say I found her. I asked him to call some neighbors and get some help looking for her, it was nearly dark, she had been gone for quite a bit of time now. And once it gets dark, it’s going to be impossible to see her. I drove around closer to the church since I hadn’t gone that way yet. Then I came home, got the other four kids in the car, so that Kyle could go out looking too.

Kyle had called Sandy and Robert, and they drove back to help look for her. And some of our neighbors went out on foot and on bikes, to look for her, some being assigned to look behind houses. Ok as if I wasn’t freaking out before, NOW I’m really freaked out!

I rolled down both front windows in the van and slowly drove up our street, and down the next, calling her name out each window. I got to the end of the street behind ours when a police office stopped me, and asked me if I had lost a little blue eyed, blond about two years old? UH YES! OH MY GOSH that was the third time I had gone that way. I saw the police cars there all three times, they had been there because the guy that lived there saw Dinah pushing the bike past the school, all by herself. He took her home and they called it in to the police. Had they kept her on the porch I would have seen her the FIRST time I went that way, and we would have had her back before it got dark, and before we started seriously freaking out.

The officer asked me to pull my car over in front of his, and he went inside to get her. The people that lived there brought her out, and she was just as happy as could be. (NO clue in her mind about how scary the whole situation was for the rest of us). The officer asked me what the situation was, WHY she had gone missing in the first place. He wanted ALL of my information, my name, my phone number, my address, Dinah’s name….(I guess so he could write up his report to account for his time????) Now she is home, and safe, but the whole thing was a total nightmare!

Happy Birthday to me!

The Great Garage Cleanout

Sandy and her boyfriend Robert came up to visit, and since they were trying to find the cats in my garage so they could take them in for their shots, they helped me clean out the garage too. HURRAY! Kyle is just about NEVER home (working 2 jobs still) so I just leave giant messes, such as the garage, alone and try to take care of the kids, laundry and dishes. And IF I get around to taking care of anything else it’s just a bonus. So since we needed to find the cats, and that meant moving things out of the way to get to the cats, we made 3 piles.

  • One pile of stuff that Kyle and/or I need to sort.
  • One pile of stuff we don’t need any more to give away.
  • And one very large pile of GARBAGE.

The pile to sort is the biggest by far, but I KNOW that a great deal of that is garbage or give away stuff too, it just needs to be sorted. 😉 But check out the garbage pile:

CIMG2714

WOW! We’ve been storing a lot of trash!

Then since they drove up in Robert’s pick up truck he and Sandy filled it up with a load of stuff to take to the dump. Well really it was just the broken box spings from Kyle’s old bed, Kyle’s old and nasty recliner, and Nana’s videos!

CIMG2716

Yes that is a lot of videos. And they’ve all been sitting in the garage since Nana moved in here back in 2005. Then she moved out about 15 months later and the videos stayed in the garage because she couldn’t take them to the nursing home with her. Then she died about a year later, and those tapes have been in the garage….until now!