The weekend recap

As crazy as it sounds I'm kind of glad it's Monday. This weekend was a little on the hectic side and I need my routine back. 
Friday night I did something absolutely horrible. Audrey and I were in the living room dancing to music videos (yeah, I'm pretty horrible, but that's not the horrible thing I'm talking about) and having a good time. Apparently while we were dancing Sophie walked into the room to watch. I had no idea she was there and I turned around and when I did my arm smacked her right across the face. Talk about feeling like the worst mom in the world! I sat and held her while she cried and told me that I was a mean mommy and that I didn't love her. Luckily she was fine, no blood, no bruises, but it scared the hell out of me. Five minutes later she was running around the house and we were best friends again.
Then Saturday I decided to go and price some things for a bathroom project we are about to start. My husband was working, it was raining and I had three kids with me. Can someone reserve my padded room already? 
Sunday I ended up hosting a birthday party. I was talking to my mom on the phone last week and my brother stopped by her house and asked her to ask me if it would be okay if he had a birthday get together at my house for his daughter.  Normally he and his wife throw these huge parties for their daughter, but they are going through a divorce this year so I guess that's off. I didn't mind, just told him to call and give me details. Naturally he never called. The guy is clueless. So yesterday at 2:00 I had a house full of people I didn't even know and only a birthday cake. Good times I tell ya. Luckily though my mom and dad showed up with the rest of the party supplies and everyone ended up having a good time. At least I think this little monkey did.

 Hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Word of advice

Never, ever, ever let your four year old take one of these to the mall. Unless you want to stay there twice as long that is.

 

On to a better day!

If someone were to tell me to describe how my day went yesterday in one word I would have to say horrible. I had to take Kylie to the doctor yesterday for some weird mysterious thing she has going on with her legs. It turns out she has Henoch-Schonlein Purpura. What a mouthful right? The disease itself is not what was so bad, the doctor visit was. Her appointment was for 3:10. We did not even see the doctor until 4:30. I kid you not. Then Kylie had to have her blood drawn and Sophie freaked out. She cried so hard for her sister, it was just heartbreaking. All of the kids were so tired, hungry, and irritable when we left. 
I had to stop to buy milk on the way home so I told the girls they could grab a candy bar. Not something I normally do, but they had to sit in the doctors office for two and a half hours so I felt they deserved something. So Audrey and Kylie hurried up and picked theirs out and Sophie had another meltdown in the store because she couldn't decide what to get.

This was me.

Then we had to sit in construction traffic for twenty minutes outside our neighborhood. We finally got home and I made Audrey and Kylie start on their homework. Then when I was getting ready to put dinner on the table my parents walked in. And stayed. And stayed. And stayed. They finally left at 7:20 when I was telling Audrey and Sophie to go pick out a book for me to read to them. I finally got to sit down and eat my cold dinner around 8:00 last night. Yum! So I'm crossing my fingers and *hoping* that today goes much better. If it doesn't I may just have to have some of this tonight.

Be still my heart

If you have been reading my blog for even the shortest of time you will know that A) I am an anal retentive neat freak and B) I have a very tiny house. I am constantly going through my house and purging things. Finding neat ways to organize is a bit of an obsession hobby of mine. The one thing in my house that I really and truly hate would be the closets or in my case lack thereof. Like everything else in the house they are really small and like most people I tend to use them to hide the things I don't want to look at. For example in the girls bedrooms their closets have baskets and bins on the floors to store the toys that do not fit on their shelves. Today as I was browsing some of my favorite blogs I ran across this on the Knock-Off Wood blog. I swear it was as though the skies opened and the heavens began to sing. Is this not the coolest looking kids closet ever?!?

 I'm thinking I might have to add it to my poor husbands ever growing list of honey-dos.

This parenting thing

One would think that by the time you have three children you could pretty much parent in your sleep. In my case one would be oh so wrong. Lately I keep finding myself second guessing my parenting decisions. I hate this. I like to make a decision about something and feel good about it knowing I did the right thing. Apparently my parenting handbook (the one I got late that was missing half the pages) failed to mention that sometimes there are no right and wrong answers. Right now I'm wondering should I call the doctor about that weird rash Kylie has, should I go back to work to help out financially, should I put Sophie back in gymnastics even though I hated taking her last year? I hate to say a definitive yes or no because I hate to screw up, but at the same time I can't just keep saying I don't know to everything. Maybe I should call my mom. Not for her advice, but to see if she still has my magic eight ball from when I was a kid.

Wake me when it's fall please

I don't know about you guys, but personally I am so over summer. The heat this year has been awful (of course I'm pretty sure I say that every year) and without being able to enjoy our beaches as usual (thanks BP) it just hasn't been a very fun summer. So could we please hurry fall along?
I'm ready to look out my back door and see my favorite tree in the yard turn colors.

 I'm ready to light some of my absolute favorite yankee candles.

 I'm ready for the pumpkin patch and dressing my kids in their cute fall outfits.

 And I am so very ready for a Starbucks pumpkin latte.

 So if we could just kind of kick this fall thing into gear Mommy would be very happy.

FYI

  This smells really good in small doses:

However this does not smell quite so good in very large doses. As in half a bottle size doses. It's quite nauseating actually. Not naming any names or anything, but let's just say someone has had a very eventful week this week. 

Meet our newest family member

It has recently come to my attention that there is a new member in my family. Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Inbisible Guy:

 What? You don't see him? Don't worry neither do I, but Sophie assures me that he's right there next to her. And of course you can't really see him anyway since he's inbisible. Apparently Mr. Inbisible Guy has a mischievous streak a mile long. Just yesterday he ate almost every single piece of candy in the candy jar, spilled pretzel goldfish all over the living room floor, put blocks in every room in the house and took Audrey's stickers and put them all over Sophie's toys. I'm sure that he's a really nice guy, but quite frankly I'm ready for him to visit someone else for awhile. Oh and by the way, I do know how to spell invisible, but I was told that I was pronouncing the name all wrong. Silly mommy.

Backpacks and wine

It's that time of week again already! Can you believe how quickly this week has flown by? It's storming here so I'm just going to do a quicky post so I can *gasp* turn off my computer for awhile. 
Today is the last day of our first week of school. Other than one or two hiccups on the first day everything has gone really well. The girls seem to really like their teachers and classmates so Mommy is relieved. I just ordered Audrey yet another backpack/lunchbox combo. This is the third one so far. The first set was a princess Tiana set I bought on Amazon. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but Audrey loves Tiana so she was thrilled to get it. Sadly, it was a piece of crap. An expensive piece of crap. The "lunchbox" had no insulation, it was just super thin nylon meaning that nothing would stay cold and if a drink spilled it would leak. The backpack was equally thin and her water bottle won't even fit in the side pockets. So I ordered a set from the children's place that she told me she wanted. It was very nice, but way too big for her tiny frame. She told me that she couldn't keep the straps on her shoulders. Luckily they have a smaller version so I ordered it yesterday and hopefully it will work out. 
Last night I had the strangest dream. Normally I would just keep this to myself, but it I think it's too funny not to share. I dreamed that the girls and I were in one of those expensive little boutique shops. Why I would take my kids somewhere like that is beyond me, but that's how dreams go. Anyway, while we were in there Kylie knocked over a bottle of wine. The funny thing is just the top of the bottle broke. I took it to the woman running the shop and offered to pay for it. She told me it would be $330. Naturally I was freaking out because I didn't want to spend that much on something that I couldn't actually drink. She then told me that if I wanted to "pay for the damages" and not take the bottle with me she would only charge me $280. Good deal huh? Not. I was still freaking out over having to shell over that much when I woke up. And guess who was lying in bed next to me? Yep, Kylie the bottle breaker herself. I nearly died laughing. My husband of course tells me it's that nightly glass of wine I have before going to bed. I think he may be right.

I am in love...................with a shirt!

Some of you may not be aware of this because it's something I don't believe I've ever talked about on my blog, but I love to buy clothes for my children. Not just the basic necessities, but the cute, fun stuff. I mean I really love to buy kids clothes. When Kylie was an only child (for about all of two seconds) she pretty much only wore smocked dresses (we are in the south ya know!). If we wanted to go really casual I would buy her something from Ralph Lauren or maybe an A line style dress from Kelly's Kids. Then when Audrey came along I went on a Baby Lulu kick. I not only bought the girls matching outfits, but I also ordered the special bows and socks to match. Heck, at one time I even had three of the diaper bags from Baby Lulu so I could coordinate with them. 
Anyway, I'm sure you're all shaking your heads in disgust at me now and wondering what my point is. The point is that this is kind of a hobby for me. Some people might like to scrapbook, others may sew, do photography, or watch/play sports. I like to shop. That being said over the years I've bought just about every brand of kids clothes you can imagine. And lately I've been a little bored. The girls have to wear uniforms to school so I've been saying that this year since it will be Sophie's last year before starting school I am really going to have fun with her clothes. So far it's not worked out so great. All of the brands I usually turn to just haven't been all that impressive to me. At all. Maybe I'm asking too much, but I've really been looking for something cute and a little different. Too much to ask? Apparently so. Until someone recommended an Etsy seller to me. Normally I steer clear of etsy. There are just so many sellers on there and I get frustrated trying to search for things because every time I search for something on there I end up with 100's of pages and it's just too much to weed through. Also, I've heard so many horror stories of people ordering things on etsy only to wait forever on their items and in the end having to file with paypal to get their money back. Well this time I lucked out. Someone recommended the shop Piper! to me and I just fell in love. The prices are extremely reasonable so I thought I would order a few things just to see what I thought. It took about three weeks from the time I ordered until I received my package. Sophie didn't want to try on her new duds, so I got Audrey to do it for me.

This is the 'Little Miss' top. Isn't it cute? I'm not sure if we'll wear it with the skirt or not, but I just love it!

I also ordered a long sleeve top. You know just in case the weather here ever decides to drop back down to the double digits.

This is from the 'dress up' print. Cute, huh? The great thing about this seller is she lets you choose from a tank  top, short sleeve top or a long sleeve top. The other great thing? Only $14! By the way I am not recommending this seller because I'm getting anything (she doesn't even know I'm posting this), I just love to pass along great finds when I run across them.

Wordless Wednesday

Pure Joy

Linking up with Angry Julie Monday

 

Mommy has homework!

As much as I would like to say that yesterday was a raging success I can't, because well that would be lying. Sophie and I had a really nice day, we did a little shopping and I let her eat complete garbage fast food for lunch so she was very happy. 
The problems began to arise once Kylie and Audrey finally got home from school. I say finally because even though we only live 2.5 miles from school it took the school bus over an hour to get the kids home. Long bus route? Nope, there are only three streets on the entire bus route, all in our neighborhood. No clue why it took so long but it did and when the girls got off the bus Audrey was screaming. I ran to her and she was crying her eyes out. I had to threaten to call the school before she would tell me what was wrong. Only then did she tell me her tummy hurt. I told her to run to the bathroom and see if that helped. Umm, do you remember the scene in Austin Powers when he keeps peeing and everytime you think he's done he starts back up? Yeah. Apparently she was too scared to ask to go to the bathroom so she didn't go all day. Anyway, after that she was better so I gave her and Kylie their gifts. I've always given them a little something on the first and last day of school. Usually something simple like a book, sometimes a dvd. Well this year I kind of forgot so I got something out of my stash of American girl sales goodies I ordered the other day for Kylie and ran to Target to pick up something for Audrey. Audrey has been asking for a webkinz a lot lately, a cat in particular. So I headed to the toy section and there was one cat left and it was marked down to $2.38! Major score. 

 The girls were thrilled, but this thing here?

She had a meltdown because she didn't get anything. Oops. So after pitching a fit to end all fits she fell asleep. At 5:00. Meaning Mommy got to stay up very late last night. Which wasn't really a bad thing because it gave me a chance to work on my homework. Yes, that's right Mommy has homework. I have to write the kids teachers letters telling them all about their little quirks, etc. Maybe I should mention in Audrey's that she doesn't speak up in class so perhaps the teacher could try asking her if she needs to go potty? Right now I'm too tired to care. I think I may crawl back into bed and catch a little cat nap before Sophie wakes up and decides it's time to start our day.

Here we go again!

Kylie and Audrey started school today. I thought I would be happy to see this day arrive, no more arguing, a clean house, and no whining about what to eat for lunch. Now that it is here though I'm a little sad. Every year when school arrives it hits me like a punch to the stomach that my kids are growing up and there isn't a thing in the world I can do to stop it. As much as I love watching them grow and experience new things I just want to keep them little forever, but sadly that is impossible. *Sigh* Now before I get all maudlin and allow the tears to flow I'll share a few quick pics I took of them this morning. 

By the way, pretend you don't notice the funky white patch on my door. That's how my husband paints. Nice, huh?

And yes, I did take pictures of them waiting on the bus to arrive. I am that mom.  

I also took pics of them getting on the bus, but you can breathe a sigh of relief because I won't be posting them since other kids were in the picture and I don't want any neighborhood moms mad at me. Anyway, hope everyone has a fantastic day!

My inner Martha has died

Years ago I used to be a real artsy/creative type person. When Kylie was small I would always make cute little things for her room. She had a ladybug bedding set from Pottery Barn Kids and I bought her a table and chairs set and spent hours hand painting ladybugs on it to match her room. I painted  cute pictures to hang on her wall, made cute little pegs to hang her purses and hats on, I even painted a dresser she had. When people would come to visit they would see the things that I had done and say, "Oh, I love that. Where did you get it?" Well my friends those days are apparently long gone.
You see yesterday I got a wild hair to get crafty and well, it went horribly wrong. I decided that I wanted to paint a step stool for Kylie's room. Her bed is kind of high and I thought it would be cute to have a step stool next to it. Yeah, it would have been cute had I just left well enough alone. I took this poor innocent stool:

And ruined it.

 Go ahead and laugh. Really. I'll give you a minute or two. Trust me if you made something that looked like this I would be laughing at you so don't feel bad. Now in case you are wondering why I would put the letter A on something for Kylie's room wonder no more. I didn't. That is supposed to be the Eiffel Tower. The French weep. I just don't know what happened. Okay, I might have an idea or two. One, Sophie and Audrey were right up under me the entire time. Two, I did not have the proper size paint brush. Really stupid to use a big, wide bristle brush for something like that. So I admitted defeat sanded the top and painted over it. Hopefully she'll love her plain pink step stool. 

If not, too bad cause I'm done. 

 And no, the pinks do not match the room. At all.

Is it 5:00 yet?

It's been one of those days.

If the four year old could write you would be looking at three sheets of paper.

One more week!

 I cannot believe that in just a mere seven days I will be sending my two big girls off to school! It seems like I was just enrolling Kylie in kindergarten and already she is going into third grade. In a way I'm a little sad because it seems like we just got into a good routine and now it's coming to an end. At the same time I have to admit that I am looking forward to a clean house and getting everyone on a good schedule.
They both met their teachers last week and I think they were pretty pleased with who they were assigned. Kylie was a little sad that her bff isn't going to be in her class this year, but some of her other friends will be in there so I think she'll survive. Audrey was unhappy at first because her teacher taught kindergarten last year and is teaching first grade this year. She told me she did not want a kindergarten teacher so naturally I lied stretched the truth and told her that her teacher really was supposed to teach first grade last year, but they didn't have enough first grade classes so they let her teach kindergarten instead. That seemed to pacify her until she realized there are ten boys in her class. For some reason my girls still think boys are yucky. This seems so strange to me considering I grew up with three brothers and there were always boys hanging out at my house. Husband loves it naturally.
Anyway, I've been tagged by Jamie over at Trying to be super mom. for some Q&A. So here goes.....
1.  What guilty pleasure could you not live without? The internet
2.  What's your most embarrassing song on your IPod? Ice, Ice, Baby
3.  How old were you when you moved out of your house? 19
4.  What's your favorite movie from when you were a kid? Grease
5.  If you could spend a whole paycheck at one store, which one would it be? Target
6.  What do you do to make yourself feel better when you're mad? Shop
7.  If you could bring one famous person back to life, who would it be and why? Princess Diana. She seemed like such a wonderful, giving person and it broke my heart that she died right when she seems to have finally found true happiness.
8.  What's your favorite reality TV show? I don't watch reality television. 
See how boring I am? Hope everyone has an awesome week!