Ode To Joy (I haven't done one of these in a while) - Enjoy The Life You Have

So it is almost 10:00 in the morning. Everyone in my house is still in their PJ's. Addison is upstairs crying for me to come get her. I can hear one of the kids banging on the floor right above me. My sister and her family are in town from far far away and they are going to the children's museum today and invited us to go. The thought of getting in my car and driving downtown and parking and then going to sit in a room with 100 wild children is very unappealing to me, but I feel guilty because I would like to spend time with them. My house is mostly cleaned up from our Christmas disaster but there is still a lot that needs to be done and I am expecting a surprise visitor some time in the next few hours. I just asked Zac to get Addison and play with her. He just got out of the bath and got dressed in clean clothes. But the clothes he got dressed in are pajamas. I am stressing out because I said I was going to put my house up for sale right after the first of the year and that is only a week away and I still have an unbelievable amount of work to do before that can happen. We are about to run out of milk and bread so I am going to have to go to the store sometime today. And really right now all I want to do is go get back in my nice comfy bed and stay there for the rest of the day. Just one day off. That is all I want. Just one day to not HAVE to do anything.


So I just went back and read what I just wrote and my goodness! I sound so ungrateful. Oh poor baby, I have such a hard life. I am sure there are plenty of people who wish they had my to do list. I really want to delete the above writing, but I am going to leave it. Because most of you reading this are stay at home mom's like myself and I am sure you feel the same way sometimes. But when you really stand back and look at the big picture, when you think about all the people in the world who struggle everyday of their lives just to have food to feed their children, well....being able to go to the store to buy bread and milk shouldn't be such a burden to me. I am glad I have kids healthy enough to bang on the floor incessantly. I am thankful I have a nice warm safe house to clean. I am thankful it is an option for me to take my kids and go do something fun. Some people don't have that option.

Ok, I feel better. I am all ready to go and do the things that need to be done. I just might get ready and go enjoy my life today.....

The Day After

I came downstairs, turned on the computer (which I haven't done in a while) and realized that it has been a long time since I have posted. I didn't even do my Monday Morning Musings. So I am going to pretend it is Monday, although I have mused on a Wednesday before. Here it goes:

I have eaten way too much junk in the past week.

If I think I have had too much junk.....I don't even want to think about what my children have had to eat....so let's move on....

I am so glad my dear parents decided to watch Oprah's Favorite Things this year because we had our own little favorite things show yesterday. My dad might pretend he hates Oprah, but I think deep down inside he has a little "O" crush.

One of the "favorite things" we all got was a new flip camera about which I am so excited to use. I took it out of the packaging and got it all ready to use but there ain't no way I am taking video and then posting it for the world to see right now. Every room in my house is filled with the day after Christmas disaster. Believe it or not, it was actually clean on Christmas Eve.

I bought my kids way too many presents. Is it too late to take them back?

Why is it that I only have 4 kids, but right now at this very moment I can hear at least 10 different toys/games/music going on in the house?

Poor Steve had to go to work today. I am trying to be OK with it by acknowledging that the more he works, the more house $$$ we have.

I cannot wait to take down all my Christmas decorations.

Does anyone want to come help me clean up my mess? PLEASE!

Flashback Friday - You Say Pajama

Allyson, Farrah, Lauren & Kristy

Steve, Lauren, Kristy, Farrah, Allyson, Sam, Baxter & Toby

I figured since this whole Christmas month I have been doing pictures from Christmas 1996 I would finish it up with these. Christmas Eve 1996 in Dallas Tejas. We are all dressed in our traditional Christmas Eve PJ's. This was also the night Steve and I surprised everyone with some exciting news.

I remember that day so well. We had only been trying to get pregnant for about a month and I thought, if I am pregnant it would be so fun to surprise everyone on Christmas Eve. Steve and I went to the store to buy a pregnancy test. We both went in the bathroom at my parents house and we were so excited. We examined that satiated stick so closely. We didn't think I was pregnant at first, but then we saw this very very faint second pink line and got out the instructions for the test, looked at the line again, looked at the instructions. It said even if the line is faint, you are pregnant. We were so excited. We made a card for my parents to open that night at my grandmothers house. It said to Earl and Kay on the outside and on the inside it said Merry Christmas Grandpa and Grandma Snow. My mom started screaming when she read it (imagine that). That was a fun time.

Preferences

So, let me preference this by saying.....Just kidding. I'm not that dumb 2 days in a row. My alarm went off this morning and I must have been dreaming about how brilliant I was, because I sat straight up in bed and thought, "I used preference instead of preface in my post yesterday!" And then I thought, "No I didn't. There's no way." So I hopped right out of bed and, well, sure enough, there it was. I did have a very active 12 month old crawling all over me when I was trying to type that post. And she was banging on the keyboard and trying to dive over the edge of the chair onto her already skull fractured head. So in the future, just know that I usually have about 10 other things going on as I type, and my full attention is not on the words that are coming out of my fingers.

Now, on to the good stuff. Does anyone else watch "The Next Great American Band"? Well, what is wrong with you? I am so excited because tomorrow is the season finale and I hope The Clark Brothers win because they have been my most fav-O-rite since the beginning. They are brothers (really now!) and they do bluegrass. And they are yummy. I mean that in a strictly musical way. Gosh! I am a very HAPPILY married woman with my own YUMMY husband (in an unmusical way). Here is a song they did last week. Click on it to watch. You're gonna watch it, right?

Current Song Stuck In My Head

I need to preface this by saying that I have no control over the songs that get stuck up there. As much as I love High School Musical 2, this song has been hanging around a little too long. Like over a week now. I am hoping that by posting it here it will help to purge it from my head. Kind of like when you have a reoccurring dream and you draw out the dream.....I'll tell you if it works.

It alternates between the above and below version of the same song

ATTENTION: Calling All

FREAKY PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

Gather round and listen up!

LEAVE ME THE HECK ALONE!!!!!!

It started this morning when I was looking at the stats for my blog (which by the way I know people are still here readin' even if you are not saying anything) and it shows me if someone finds my blog by doing a search. I get pretty normal searches. Except for yesterday. Some perv was on my blog and it really makes me ANGRY! And not just any perv, the worst kind of perv. So I promptly removed myself from search engines and blog listings.

Then just a little while ago I took myself down to the local WalMart (please read with a heavy hick accent) to get the last few items I needed to make my Christmas shopping complete. I took Aubrey up to my mom's work while I was there so she couldn't see what I was buying. My mom had to leave work to take Lauren to a doctors appointment so she brought Aubrey to Walmart to me just as I was leaving the store.

She pulled up at the front of the store and gave me Aubrey. Then I started walking to my car. When I got close (I was parked all the heck of the way at the end of the lot) my mom pulled up beside me and said I was being followed by a scary looking guy. We looked around and he was gone but my mom said he had just been right there behind me. There was a car waiting behind her so I told her to pull into a parking spot and I would get the girls in the car and talk to her about it. As soon as she stared to drive off, Mr. Creep-O materialized and started walking up to me. I looked over to where my mom was and he saw that she was just on the other side of my car and he asked me for money. I told him I didn't have any and he left. My mom said he was right behind me when I came out of the store and he stopped and watched everything we were doing when I got Aubrey out of her car. Then he started following me again. She had a really bad feeling about it so she also followed me to my car, thank goodness! She said he was right behind me and every time I would weave in and out of cars, he would do the same and he never took his eyes off me.

If you know anything about me you know that I am pretty much just normally freaked out anyway. That's just how I come. So this has made it so much better. I was going to go to the grocery store after I left there but heck if I'm gonna go now without an armed escort. It makes me mad because I am normally very alert when I am out like that (like all good freak-a-zoids should be) but I was so concerned with trying to keep Aubrey from seeing what was in my cart that I was paying no attention to anything else. And another thing that makes me mad is that I just stood there like an idiot when he came towards me (durka-durka-doo). I have seen plenty of Oprah's to know better. I KNEW I was being followed. I KNEW I should have faced him and yelled, "STOP! DON'T COME ANY CLOSER!", and then jabbed my key in his eye. Is it silly to wish I could go back?

I am just glad my sweet little girls and I came out of it unharmed. I am so grateful my mother was there and was more aware than I was. And I wanted to share this story with all of you so you can remember when you are out shopping at this crazy time of year to always be aware of what is going on around you. And don't forget to yell STOP!

Monday Morning Musings - My Baby Poops Better Than Your Baby

So I stayed up 'til 1:30 in the morning to watch the Survivor finale. I was so glad my little Toddy won. He has been my favorite since the beginning. However, what was up with him during the reunion show. You would think given his lifestyle preferences he would have had a little more fashion sense about him. Thank goodness I didn't have any cookies in the house. I kept craving them the whole time because he looked like a Kebler elf. Seriously. The mullet? The vest? I couldn't find a picture of him but you can click here if you are just dying to see what I am talking about. You have to wait until you are about 35 seconds into the video.

Ok. I'm back. I just had to take a little "break". My dear sweet little Addison needed some major help. She has this talent for pooping and pooping BIG. Like the kind of poop where you are holding her out at arms length thinking, "Holy cannoli, I don't even know how to begin to clean this up". She is all nice and clean and brand new now.

It was so late last night and I just couldn't stop watching Survivor and a commercial came on and it was for The Nutcracker. I had another vampire moment (that is what I am going to start calling it when I try to make my real life and my fantasy life match up) because I thought, "Why are they advertising the Nutcracker after Christmas. Oh, this must be and old recording. No, I just recorded this tonight. They must still do the Nutcracker for a couple weeks after Christmas. OH MY GOSH!!!! WHAT IS MY PROBLEM? CHRISTMAS HASN'T COME YET!!!!"

So you know I have said before that I have little papers all over the house where I have written down blog ideas as they have come to me. Emily found my paper that said, "Emily-Oops I did it again". Now every time she sings a song she makes me a post it note with her name on it and the song she was singing.

I have a confession to make. My hypothetical opinion survey wasn't exactly hypothetical. We were all so lazy on Saturday. The kids finally got dressed because Zac got invited to play at a friends house. Then the girls got dressed except for Addy because she can't dress herself. I actually took a shower but I didn't put in contacts or do makeup or hair. When we went to pick Zac up from his friends we were all starving. I didn't feel like making dinner and so we decided to go out to eat. I picked the one place where I thought we would be safe. IHOP. Usually when we are there we are the only one's there. But just as we were sitting down at our table, in walks a girl from my ward. I am so glad she could see nasty me and my orphan looking children in public.

I know that everyone is busy getting ready for Christmas and getting ready to go out of town, but come on people! I feel so all alone her in blogger land. I feel like I am back to talking to myself again for a little entertainment.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Shanty Town

Gingerbread houses. What could be more Christmasy? My mother bought gingerbread house kits for each of the kids and my sister so they could have fun building and decorating them, and then enjoy their festive aura and spicy gingerbread scent all December long. We did have fun assembling. The proof is in the pictures:

AubreyEmily
Zac
Lauren
They turned out so perfectly sweet:
So then you might be wondering what would possess me to forever ban gingerbread houses from ever entering my happy little abode again. Our fun little works of art have turned into this:

Our own little gingerbread shanty town.

And this is the kind of stuff I have been hearing on an hourly basis for the last week:

(please read the following quotes in a high pitched, whiny voice)

"MOM!!! SOMEONE KEEPS EATING CANDY OFF MY GINGERBREAD HOUSE!!!!!"

"MOM!!! NOW THERE ARE 37 PIECES OF CANDY MISSING FROM MY GINGERBREAD HOUSE!!!"

"MOM!!! EMILY HAS CANDY IN HER MOUTH!!! I THINK SHE TOOK IT OFF MY GINGERBREAD HOUSE!!!!!"

"MOM!!! NOW THERE ARE 42 PIECES OF CANDY MISSING FROM MY GINGERBREAD HOUSE!!!"

"MOM!!! ZAC IS IN THE KITCHEN PULLING CANDY OFF THE GINGERBREAD HOUSES!!!!"

"MOM!!! NOW THERE ARE 49 PIECES OF CANDY MISSING FROM MY GINGERBREAD HOUSE!!!"

It has just brought so much fun to my holiday season. I think we are about to have a free for all, sugar mania, tear down the walls, shove it in your mouth as fast as you possibly can, gingerbread house distructo session, and what's left after that is going in the trash.

Flashback Friday - Christmas 1996

Allyson and Farrah

Steve and Allyson
We had to force Steve under the tree for this picture. You can tell he looks thrilled.