The 100 workout

At the beginning of summer I told my family that I wanted to get in shape. They were very supportive, but trying to exercise with three kids around just wasn't working out so well and my plans kind of fell by the wayside. I decided I would try again when the kids were in school and I had some free time to myself. Since school has begun I've been riding my bike around the neighborhood in the mornings. I'm not sure if it's helped any yet, but I'm sure if I keep it up then eventually it will.
A few days ago I was trying to catch up on some of my favorite blogs and ran across something interesting. Leslie over at There's More 2 Les mentioned that she and her husband were starting the 100 workout. I've never heard of it, but thought it sounded interesting. 

I've decided to give it a try. I am making one slight modification though. The running. Right now it's 99 degrees and humid where I live (hello...fall? Hurry up will ya?) so I'm going to substitute running with bike riding. I would love, love, love it if some of you decided to participate along with me. I have a hard time staying motivated and I think if I know some of you are doing it along with me it might help keep me motivated. Any takers?

Sometimes you just need to remind them

Yesterday my husband had a few small errands to run. Kylie asked to go with him and he of course was fine with that. I mean a nine year old is generally pretty to handle right? Then Sophie found out that her sister was going somewhere and asked if she could go as well. My husband looked at me with one of those looks that clearly said, "Help me out of this. Please. I can't handle more than one kid at a time." So what did I do? Why I did what any good wife/mom would do. I looked at my baby, smiled and said, "Sure honey, you can go with daddy. Why don't you go ask Audrey if she would like to go as well."   The look on my dear husbands face was quite similar to the look a man gets when he's playing catch and accidentally catches the ball between his legs. Did I feel guilty? No. For one reason my children are (now) pretty well behaved. I knew that they would not give him a hard time or do anything wrong while they were out so he had nothing to fear. For another reason with his work schedule as it is the kids really don't get to see him or spend much time with him. That's right I wanted to give them a bonding experience. 
So off they went. Apparently it was a good trip because I only received three phone calls during the hour they were gone. Note to self, next time hide hubby's phone before he leaves for optimum fun. When they made it back home before I even had a chance to ask how things went he said, "Honey I think every time you take the kids somewhere by yourself you should get a medal. Really. I know they are good kids, but I don't see how you do it. They make me a nervous wreck." I told him that I really didn't want a medal, but that a new purse or  shoes would do just fine every now and again. "Absolutely, you totally deserve it." was his response.
Mission accomplished.

Keeping the tooth fairy busy

Yesterday morning when I sent the girls off to school I crossed my fingers that Audrey and Sophie would lose a tooth while they were gone. Yeah, go ahead call me a crappy mom. That's okay, I totally agree with you if you do. You see I hate dealing with loose teeth. It grosses me out big time and I always make my husband be the one to pull the teeth around here. The bad thing about that is is he's rarely home to do it. He works 13+ hours a day and when he gets home at night Audrey and Sophie are already asleep. Anyway, when they left yesterday morning they both had a tooth dangling and I just knew they would fall out during lunch. Nope, didn't happen. I thought surely it would fall out during dinner, but that didn't happen either. I knew at this point that I had to do something otherwise they would end up coming out during the night and they would swallow them in their sleep (trust me this happens. Kylie did it about 3 or 4 times when she was younger.) I took a tissue and wrapped it around my finger and told Audrey to bite down on it. She did and her tooth came right out. One down, one to go. I tried the same thing with Sophie. The little stinker bite down alright. She bite down on the wrong side of her mouth and nearly took my finger off! She ended up panicking and I told her we would deal with it in the morning and I sent her to bed. Around 9:00 my husband came in from work and I guess Sophie heard him. She jumped out of bed to show him her loose tooth and the next thing I knew she was showing me the tooth in her hand. Thank God!

By the way, she is wearing the same nighty Audrey wore when she lost her first tooth. It cracked me up when I was looking at the pictures and realized that.

After her tooth was pulled she went right to bed and fell asleep. The tooth fairy then sat down and composed a "so you've lost your first tooth letter" for Sophie and gathered up some money for the little snaggle tooth girls. Then the real fun began. Here's just a reminder of the kind of bed the girls share:

How lucky we are that the tooth fairy can fly right? I mean, I would sure hate to be the one to try to smuggle not one, but two teeth out from under those pillows way up there without waking up two little girls. I mean, call me crazy but that sounds like it might be a little hard to do. Luckily all went well and this morning I had two very excited little girls.


My lame attempt to get a picture of the snaggle tooth kids.

 I still can't  believe that not only did my youngest start kindergarten last week, but she lost her first tooth too. Hopefully now that she's got this milestone behind her she'll slow down a little and let me enjoy having her be little just a bit longer. Something tells me that's probably not going to happen though.

Mommy scores bigtime!

In the early years of my marriage before I had children my husband and I would often go to antique stores or thrift shops in our spare time. Mostly to look for cool little nick-nacks or the occasional piece of furniture. I tried to go a few times when Kylie was small, but quickly found it was just more trouble than it was worth going to places like that with a child. Over the years I would read on various blogs about someone going into one a second hand shop and finding a great deal on something and I would think that it would be so cool to do, maybe one day I can try it.
Well my friends that day arrived today. My husband now has Wednesdays off and he told me about a new shop that opened nearby (I think it was a goodwill store, but I'm not sure). I told him that I wanted to go and check it out so off we went. When we got there I was far from impressed. Instead of having racks and shelves everything was in a bin on tables. A complete mess and most everything looked like garbage. We walked around for a minute or two and I told him that I was ready to leave. He said okay and as I was walking towards him to go I saw it. An American girl bitty baby doll. I picked it up and couldn't believe my eyes. We have a couple of them already, but this one looked ten times better than ours. No marks or scratches anywhere! I checked around to make sure there weren't any other little treasures (there weren't) and hurried to the register to pay. Now, does anyone want to guess how much this set me back?

I paid a grand total of............wait for it.................




                                                 .50! 

My husband actually asked me if I really wanted to buy it because it didn't have clothes. Silly man, we have suitcases full of bitty baby clothes already! So have any of you tried thrift stores? If so what are some cool things you've found?

A tiny little project

A few years ago right around the time Kylie started kindergarten she began an annoying little habit of uttering the phrase every mom hates to hear. I'm bored. It was like fingernails on a chalkboard to me and I cringed everytime I heard the words come out of her mouth. In part because it was annoying, but mostly because I remembered saying it constantly when I was a kid. I just knew that if my mom heard her say it she would die laughing and say something about coming full circle or something. So I basically banned those words from my house. I told the girls that anytime they said they were bored I would give them something to do that would keep them from being bored. Like clean closets. Occasionally they will slip up and say it, but generally all I have to do is give them a look and they stop. 
Well guess what? Today I found myself muttering that I was bored. Not good. With the girls in school I'm kind of at a loss of what to do during the day. My house was clean and I didn't really have any errands to run so I decided I needed a project to do. I hopped in the car and drove to Hobby Lobby. First of all let me just say, it's so weird to be able to just decide to go somewhere and do so. Usually I have to get at least one little person ready and then deal with carseats. Second, I think this is probably the only time I've ever been to Hobby Lobby and not had to say, "Don't touch that!"  I have absolutely no idea what I want to do, just that I want it to be something small I can do before the girls get home. I go into the section where they have unfinished wood and I spot one of those wooden containers with a lid. I decide to decorate it for Kylie's room. In part because she tends to collect crap stuff all the time and I thought it would be a good place for her to put it. And also because she likes to pick on me for always buying little decorative boxes for her and her sisters to keep in their bedrooms. Anyway this is what I made:

Nothing fabulous of course, but it matches her room and helped keep the boredom at bay for a while. Now I just need to figure out what to do with myself for the other 178 days the kids are at school.

First day of school

Well I knew it was coming, I just didn't realize it would be here so soon. The day that we go from this:

To this:

Even though autumn doesn't start until September it looks like our summer is officially over. The girls began their first day of school today. I was very good and did not cry (yet) and they all left with happy smiles on their faces.

2nd grade



4th grade



kindergarten

They all three got out of bed this morning without any protest (yes, I know by the end of the week they'll all be whining about waking up), ate breakfast, got dressed and then they all had to sit down and watch Curious George. Watching Curious George has become a bit of a school morning routine around here.

Then it was time to load up and head out the door.

But I had to take a few more pictures first. Obviously.

Yes, even at the bus stop.

And now I am experiencing the strangest thing ever. Silence. A sound that I have not heard in my house in almost ten years. Right now it's a bit unnerving, but I'm sure that in the days, weeks and months to come I'll come to look forward to this time. For now though it just feels strange and wrong.

Discovery center take 2

Yesterday I posted about our little fiasco with taking the kids to the discovery center. Well today I'm going to post about our success. After our last botched attempt we promised the kids that we would try to take them again before they started back to school. So this past Wednesday that's what we did. This time we made sure to check the traffic report before we left. And we also brought snacks and things to entertain ourselves with on the chance that the traffic report proved wrong. Luckily there were no traffic problems, just a little rain. The first thing the kids did was head towards the train station.

They "bought" their tickets and hopped aboard where they were treated to tea.

Then they decided to head upstairs for some more fun. 

I so want one of these things!



First they went to the local Mexican restaurant where Sophie fed the burro a burrito.

Then it was off to the supermarket to pick up a few things.

Then it was time to head to the television studio to film a segment on canoeing.

And then we ended our little trip learning all about pulleys or pushies as Sophie kept calling them.

And yes, my big behind did give this one a try.

We ended up having a great time and I'm glad we gave it another try.

The outing from hell

About two weeks ago my husband and I made plans to take the girls to the Lynn Meadows Discovery center.  The kids love going there to play and are always asking to go so needless to say when we told them we were going they were super excited. Well you know what they say about the best laid plans right?
Normally it takes us about 45 minutes to get to the discovery center so we decided to leave around 11:00. We thought we would drive over there, take the kids to lunch and then go to the center. We were driving down the interstate when we noticed traffic in our lane start to slow down. Then it stopped altogether. Awesome. We ended up sitting on the interstate for over 2 hours. That's right 2 hours. Guess how far we traveled in that time? Less than three miles. At this point the kids were all three in tears and I was pretty close to it myself. Finally we made it to an exit and duh, got the heck off the interstate. We stopped for lunch and decided that we would take the highway instead. We got in the car thinking we would soon be to our destination. Wrong again. What we failed to realize was that in the town we were in there was a huge shipyard nearby and their dayshift employees were just getting off work. Did I mention it was a huge shipyard? As in lots and lots of traffic? Combine all these people getting off work with all of the people getting off the interstate and you have a recipe for disaster. So we entered the second phase of hell. This time instead of sitting on the interstate  for two hours we sat on the highway for two hours. Needless to say by the time we got to our destination we realized that the center would only be open for an additional 30 minutes. Luckily we were able to talk the kids into going to the nearby beach instead.

Even better? There was a nice outlet center nearby so mommy got to go do a little bit of shopping before heading home.

Mommy and Me day

A few days ago Kylie and I had a much, much needed Mommy and Me day.  I try to do one on one things with the girls every so often, but lately it just hasn't worked out for me to be able to do so. I told my husband that I really wanted to do something with Kylie because she's going through that weird tweeny phase. You know the one where your child loves you to pieces one minute, but despises you the next? Well for a couple of weeks now we've been a one car family (long, stupid story) so that really put a dent into our plans, but finally my husband had a day off so we finally got to have our big day.
We went to her favorite restaurant for lunch and talked, talked, talked. It was really nice. Then we went to the mall where she *gasp* held my hand the entire time! Honestly, it was heaven! Then we went to the beauty salon where she got her hair cut into a cute little bob. She had been growing it out for awhile, but was getting sick of all the tangles and decided to get it whacked off. 

I tried to get a picture of her cute haircut, but it didn't come out that well.

 Afterward we went to Panera and treated ourselves to some frozen lemonade. All in all it was a really great day and I cannot wait until our next Mommy and me day comes up.

Shaking my head

A few weeks ago I took the girls to my mom and dads house for a visit. It never fails that when we are over there my mom and dad will try to start finding kid shows on television for them to watch. I've explained to them many times that the kids would rather go outside and play on the huge tire swing or in the sandbox ('cause you know I'm a big meanie and don't have anything fun for them to play with at our house) but they still have to go through this little routine. Every time. So last time we were over there my dad asked the kids if they would like to watch The Flintstones. The girls looked at him like he had two heads and then asked to go out and play. My dad could not believe that my kids did not know who Fred Flinstone was so I was determined to remedy this situation. I'm not a big television person so it took me forever to find the channel with The Flinstones on it (cartoon network btw), but I finally found it. I put it on and called the kids into the room so they could watch this piece of pop culture history.

Audrey came in the room first. Her reaction? "Oh my goodness! It's the cereal people! Kylie, quick you have got to see this!" Kylie and Sophie came running into the room and the kids all three just laughed and laughed because they couldn't get over the fact that the guys from the cocoa pebbles commercial would have their own show. Seriously.
Then we come to the smurfs. We saw the preview for the movie while we were at another movie and I remember thinking to myself, "guess we'll be seeing that one next."

 Umm, no. The girls told me they thought that that the concept of little blue people running around was just creepy. Honestly, I kind of have to agree with them. This weekend Audrey begged me to take her to McDonalds and buy her a happy meal. Imagine her horror when she opened her meal and found one of 'those weird little blue guys' staring up at her. I told her she could just set it aside and we would add it to the donation bag and then I kind of forgot all about it. Until this morning when I awoke to yelling coming from her bedroom. I ran in there thinking that she and her sisters must be killing each other, but instead I found this scene of carnage:

Apparently Papa Smurf (or the weirdo in red as the kids call him) went a little crazy in the dollhouse. I'm totally hanging my head in shame as I've apparently failed my kids on pop culture.