Friday, May 27, 2011

My To-Do List for Today

  • Tidy Kitchen.  Though tidy seems to imply that it just needs a few quick minutes to organize or put away dishes.  I could probably split this point up into at least 5 or 6 points : Empty dishwasher, fill dishwasher, run dishwasher, hand-wash cutting board and dishes that don't fit in dishwasher, wipe down counters and fridge and stove, put away miscellaneous papers behind stereo, clear off table.  See what I mean?  But I like one point, it makes it feel do-able.
  • Make Pizza Dough.  Actually make two pizza doughs.  But the bread maker does most of the work so this is fairly easy.
  • Make Cinnamon Buns.  I can't start this until after the pizza dough is done since I use the bread maker for all my kneading.  And for this one it is dependent on me cleaning up the kitchen since I don't want dirty crumbs in my buns.
  • Do Laundry, including bed sheets.  I actually don't have a ton of laundry to do, which is nice.  I just want to have my hamper cleared before we leave tomorrow.  Our bed sheets are desperately in need of a wash though, since they are our only ones at the moment.  My lovely daughters somehow managed to rip my other bottom sheet to pieces.  I have no clue how.  So now when I need to wash our sheets I have to strip the bed and can't make it until I wash the sheets again.  Hence they haven't been washed in awhile.
  • Pack.  Hopefully shouldn't take long, we're only gone until Tuesday.  I'm hoping to fit all our clothes into a small suitcase.  I doubt I can do it.  I am a notorious over-packer.
  • Get the Food Ready for the Trip.  Basically put everything into a large reusable grocery bag to be taken out to the car and consumed on our long drive tomorrow.
  • Clean Out Car.  This will kill two birds with one stone as it will give the girls a little outside play time.
  • Tidy House.  Like the kitchen, it entails much more than it sounds.  I doubt I will get close to done on this one, but I can dream.  If the floor is at least cleared I can feel ok.  My secret for that is to toss everything into laundry baskets to be put away whenever I get the time.
  • Make Cream Cheese Icing.  This should probably be located up by my other food points, but my list is basically random.  But this is an essential point.  Icing for our cinnamon buns.  Mmmmmm.
  • Pick Out Toys for Trip.  Gather together books, toys, and other random objects that will hopefully keep our girls entertained, along with large amounts of snacks, for roughly 14 hours.  Usually we have a DVD player for the car, but it is mysteriously missing (I think it was stolen).  

Thursday, May 26, 2011

I Knew It!

Just received my glasses and I am very close to hating them.  Actually, I think I do hate them.  Unfortunate.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Shopping Hangover

I can't think of a better name for it.  Does it happen to anyone else?  I guess I should explain what "it" is.  I go shopping, doesn't matter where, could be a department store, a thrift shop, online even, and purchase clothes or accessories for myself.  I am super excited about the stuff I bought.  Hurray!  I can't wait til it gets here (if online shopping) or I can't wait to wear it (if bought from a store and I have it in hand). 

But then I settle down and the cloud of shopping high fades away, and I am left with my shopping hangover.  I hate all my purchases.  Yes, I don't like a single piece.  Okay, maybe one, or two.  But the majority I definitely don't like and will never wear.  If they are from a regular store, I might let them sit in the back of my closet, banished there and probably never to see the light of day again.  If they are a thrift store purchase, I will most likely donate them right back to it. 

Quite stupid, isn't it?!  To buy something just to give it back.  But at least if I'm buying from a charity thrift store it's a good cause for my money.  What sickens me is the money I spend on new items.  Like the glasses I just ordered. 

Clearly Contacts was having a one day sale, where they were giving away free glasses frames, you just had to pay shipping and any costs of upgrading the lenses.  Well, I totally went for that.  My last glasses cost me somewhere around $250 (actually, now that I think about it, my Mother-in-law bought them for me, She's great!).  But that was 2 years ago, and that was definitely a case of "shopping hangover".  And the sad thing is I obviously tried them on.  Picked them out with my eyes wide open.  But once I got them home, totally didn't like them.  And since I was out of contacts, I wore them exclusively for a year.  Nobody can tell me that I don't sacrifice to save money.

So I jumped at the chance for free (relatively) glasses.  I ended up paying $43 since I had to upgrade my lenses.  The free lenses that came with the glasses don't go much past -2.00.  I was very excited about ordering them, though I knew that my husband wouldn't like them.

But now looking at the picture of the ones I ordered, I don't think I like them either!  I am so fickle, or something!  I guess I'll just have to wait until they get here, which should be tomorrow, so maybe you'll be hearing from me again, letting you know the verdict. 

Friday, May 20, 2011

Good Morning Girls Book Club - Week 1 Thoughts

I am doing the book club on Good Morning Girls, with an accountability group through Jolanthe at No Ordinary Moments.  We start reading the book next week, though my book isn't here yet and isn't likely to get here in time.  That is my fault for being undecided whether I was actually going to do it or not.

The first three verses of the week were on how nothing happens without God.  Without Him, we can do nothing (nothing that matters anyways).  The last two were about faith legacies in our children.  This is right where God has been speaking to me lately, how I try to be independent and do everything on my own strength.  Yet nothing works and I end up way worse than I ever was!

And I sometimes (most of the time) get very stressed and worried about my children's spiritual lives.  I want them to know and love our Father, but I worry that they won't or that I'm not doing enough to teach them.  Yet if I just trust in God, like the first verses said, it will all come through His will.  He is so good!

He is so good to be patient with me while I keep making the same mistakes over and over again.  Because this is probably one of the biggest areas of struggle with me, relying on God.  Too often I forget that He is here with me.  I am blinded by all the temporary things of earth.  But as I said, they are temporary.  They have no eternal value to me.  I need to "seek first God's kingdom". 

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Outdoor Parenting

The warm weather is back!  Hurray.  There was a couple of colder days earlier this week, with rain and wind, but now it is back to sunshiny bliss (though unfortunately the wind is still around).  I am definitely made for the hot days of summer.  I am amazed at how fast my body has adapted to the hotter climate down south.

Abby and Leigh love to play outside.  Absolutely love it.  Leigh will toddle around without a second thought about me, but Abby seems to be happier if I am actually around and watching.  If I am out of sight for more than a couple minutes she usually comes into the house looking for me.  This is where I am not sure exactly what I am supposed to be doing.

Their dad doesn't like me to leave them outside by themselves.  Our neighbour parks his trucks on the street so cars can't see our girls if they happen to step off the driveway.  I get that.  And he's also worried about just the unforseen.  Maybe they might get hurt.  Any number of things could happen.  I can see his points through it all.  But there is another side. 

I don't have a lot of "work" outside.  I could weed my flower bathtub (blech) or I could sweep the driveway (double blech).  I only have garlic planted in my big garden because our landlord will supposedly be putting in a retaining wall, right down the middle of it so there is no point in planting anything since it will be dug up, probably.  The garlic is there because I planted it in the fall.  And according to my husband's calculations it should be within the bounds of the wall, so hopefully I won't have to transplant the poor things.

So sometimes I take some hand sewing/patching outside and sit in the sun mending.  I actually really enjoy it.  Because I enjoy it, I feel like it is just a frivolous waste of time.  I should be doing some work, like vacuuming or cleaning the mold off my bedroom window or picking up the pieces of  'whatever-it-is' that the girls have ripped into tiny, miniscule pieces and thrown down the stairs.  Something that doesn't relax me quite so much.

Therefore I open the windows, at least all the ones that stay up without some kind of support, and I keep the front door wide open.  Every 30 seconds or so I make a trek outside to check on my girls.  This way I can keep working inside, making supper, or doing dishes, or whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing, yet they can play outside and have fun. 


But it does have disadvantages, like I stated above.  So what is the correct choice?  Mark's way or mine?  I don't want to deprive the girls of outdoor play time just because I can't keep up on the house work.  So maybe I just need to be less of a slacker and keep up better so that I have time to stay out there with them.  Because another huge disadvantage of keeping the door open is that we don't have any screen doors.  So all kinds of flies and bees and bugs make their way into our house.  They then proceed to pester us all evening, and possibly into the night.


Is there any winning solution?!

Monday, May 16, 2011

Meal-Planning Thoughts

I am constantly trying to get my life more organized, and a couple months ago I started planning my meals ahead so that I wouldn't be scrambling around at 3 o'clock with no meat defrosted and no idea what I am going to cook for our supper meal.  And I fell in love with it!  I loved planning my meals out.  I had a whole month written out and probably would have done more except I felt slightly nerdy. 

But nerdy is ok if it works!  But I have discovered a flaw in the whole meal-planning thing.  If you don't keep it up, eventually you run out of meals.  Which is where I am today.  I haven't looked at my meal plan calendar this past week, and consequently I have nothing planned past yesterday.  This is unfortunate.  Now I have to sit down and figure out what I am going to do, and that is the worst part. 

On the upside, it's advance pay-day so I will have some money for grocery shopping!  Hurray!  This means no more chicken soup with only celery and homemade noodles (which we had last Wednesday.  It was tasty, just a little boring.  Not even any saltine crackers to put in!). 

So I can plan my meals without having to seriously consider what we have in the house since I can go shopping again.  But I am also trying to be a little more frugal with my grocery shopping since we have a bad habit of just running to the store whenever we need something.  I want to make more budget friendly meals.  Or just budget friendly meal planning. 

I think my next post I write will be about my lack of effective communication skills, as this post is an excellent example of.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

One Person's Junk is Another Person's Treasure...

And now to break the bloggy silence.

So I had a garage sale today.  It was a combined effort between me and my dear friend.  I call her dear because she bought me a flower yesterday.  What a sweetie.  I think she did it because she found out that my hubby didn't get me anything at all for Mother's Day.  She was quite indignant to hear that.  But I don't want her or you to get all upset for me about it.  (Though I will admit it does satisfy me a little bit to have people on my side, so to speak.)  I didn't remind him of it at all, and without a reminder, he doesn't get things like that done very much.

But anyways.  She wasn't able to be here for it today, but if we didn't hold it today it would have to be postponed until June, since next weekend is our town's Blossom Day Festival parade and we both are planning on taking the little kidlets there.  And the weekend after that we are both out of town.  I was willing to host the sale without her in order to get this junk (treasure) out of my house.

But as life would have it, I still have junk in my house.  It was a beautiful day, except for the stinking wind that was trying to blow everything down.  But so nice and sunny that I have some burnt arms to prove it.  And I got a fair turnout.  Quite a lot of people came before my start time of 9 o'clock, darn early birds.  That'll teach me to put out my signs early.  Next time, I'm putting them out just before start time.  Take that!

We made a fairly good amount of money, but there is still quite a bit of stuff leftover, so we will probably try again next month, since another friend of ours has some stuff to get rid of, but had been out of town and didn't have time to get it ready for today.

My kids kept pulling toys off the table and playing with them.  I am very frustrated that these toys I'm trying to get rid of they suddenly are in love with.  Just can't win.  But hopefully I can hide them until next time.  All in all my girls were well behaved.