Alexis' no good, very bad day

Alexis is having a bad day, and I feel really sorry for her.

Yesterday she was perfectly fine, but this morning she woke up and her eyes were crusted shut from gunk pouring out of them all night. And she has puffy eyes and a runny nose. The doctors office called in some antibiotic eye drops for her, and even though her eyes aren't quite so gunky anymore, I'm afraid she is still contagious.

I told her this morning that she wouldn't get to go to school, and though she was sad she was okay with it. But I just barely called the school to excuse her and I guess that's when she remembered what today was. Today is the last day for the student teacher that's been in her class. They were going to have a party and Alexis really wanted to tell her goodbye. She cried and cried and cried, and I even cried for her! Please remember I'm hormonal, but she just sat there sobbing in my lap and there was nothing I could do to really make it better. I know she'll probably forget all about it in a few days, but that doesn't make the moment of sadness she feels any less painful for her or me.

And tonight she was supposed to go eat at Carl's Jr. (with a play place!) with her dad and brother and some friends, but she probably won't be doing that either. Poor girl.

And to top it all off she has to have eye drops in her eyes!

The bright side is that I let her have a doughnut for lunch. She needed it.

And I had a cinnamon roll for lunch. It's snowing--I needed it.

facts

Oh am I tired.

That is life these days. Tired, tired, and more tired.

With some sewing thrown in. And a few other projects.

And the ever present, ever loud, ever messy children.

Here's a question: Have my kids always been this messy, or does it just seem worse because it's so painful to bend over and help them clean up?

Here's some interesting facts about Alexis:
-She has bitten her lip three times today. Three! And every time she screams like the world is ending.
-She called Tyler "Chubby Buns" the other day and I'm pretty sure it's the best nickname I've heard yet.
-Today she told me that her class needs 5 mom volunteers for a field trip but that I am forbidden to go because she wants it to be special.
-Also today she was "hula" dancing and it was one of the cutest things I've seen her do. She tied two capes around her waist to act as her hula skirt, and a thin necktie around her chest area to support her you-know-what's. And if it weren't so revealing I'd show you all a picture.

Here's some interesting facts about Tyler:
-He does indeed have "Chubby Buns", but they are getting decidedly less chubby as he gets taller and less baby like.
-He is also very tired today, which means he likes to snuggle with me more and listen to me less.
-He is one of the most loyal brothers I have ever seen and also one of the scariest T-Rex's I have ever seen.
-He likes to help me with whatever I'm doing--whether it's sewing, cooking or cleaning.
-While I'm watching Jeopardy he asks every 5 minutes if it's over and who won. When it is over he has to know who won and is often times upset because it wasn't the person he wanted to win. (He never wants the girls to win--only the boys.)

Here's some interesting facts about me:
-I have zero interest in going on a field trip with a bunch of kindergartners. Too stressful for me, I'd spend every other second counting kids to make sure I have them all.
-I've done pretty well at keeping up with my dishes and keeping my kitchen clean for about a week!
-I get to see some of my good friends from college this next week and I can't wait!
-Next week I'm going on a 4 wheeling trip with Jeremy and his parents and brother. There will be no bathrooms (maybe a port-o-potty if I'm lucky) and I'll be sleeping in a tent. I will also be 30 weeks pregnant. I'm a little nervous (or a lot depending on the time of day and my hormones!)
-I have begun reading "Anna Karenina" and hope to actually make it all the way through.

Here's some interesting facts about Jeremy:
-He had the Rhino painted black because someone offered to do it for free. It looks cool.
-He's getting stuck with the kids a lot over the next five days but he hasn't complained. (Maybe I should give it a few days...)
-He graciously offered to build some sort of portable bathroom enclosure for our trip.
-Those are all the facts I have about him because he doesn't talk much and I don't see him much more than that.

And now I have filled my blogging quota for the week--too bad it wasn't more interesting. And just because everything is less lame when a picture is involved, here's one of Tyler helping me make pizza dough.

a follow-up

Yesterday morning Alexis was very distraught to discover that, yet again, Lucky and Larry (the leprechauns) had not come to get the letters she left for them. Evidently she had been leaving them out for three nights in a row and I was entirely unaware (see the post below about the pregnancy stupids). Fortunately, as I sat there searching my brain for any excuse as to why they hadn't come (again, the pregnancy stupids), she chimed in with, "Oh! They probably couldn't see the notes, they were too high for them". Then she promptly placed them on the floor, where they remained through the rest of the day.

Naturally guilt set in. As my mom put it, Alexis forced my hand. A leprechaun would be coming that night.

But first this leprechaun had to spend an hour on the phone calling every store in the area trying to track down those gold chocolate coins. Eventually they were found and all that was left was the note. Jeremy took pity on me and whipped up something way better than I would have. Of course he stole a lot of it from the Internet, since we have no idea what a leprechaun would write in a note, but we made the last two lines our own!

Then we hid the gold around the living room, rolled up the note like a scroll and played a few tricks. Green water in the toilet bowl (which I stole from Rachel, thanks! and which totally freaked Tyler out), a couch tipped on it's side, the family picture on the wall hung upside down, Alexis' backpack hanging from the light fixture, and some shoes found in the toy box.

I have to admit--it was fun! The kids reaction was totally worth it this morning and it's nice to do something out of the ordinary every once in awhile. It's just the planning ahead that really kills me.


The best part has been that all morning whenever they notice something slightly off around the house (and trust me, there's a lot of things) they blame it on Lucky. Lucky moved the cereal boxes into a different order, Lucky put a helmet in the laundry room, Lucky moved a blanket, etc. And for some reason if I were the one to do any of these things it would just be annoying, but because they think a leprechaun is doing it it's really funny and cool. I wish Lucky would have given that some forethought and gone through the humongous pile of papers and artwork in the corner of Alexis' room and thrown some out--because I'm not allowed within 10 feet of it.

anyone seen my brain?

I just have to take a minute and let everyone know that I have a major case of the pregnancy stupids. Some people sugarcoat it and call it "absentmindedness" or "forgetfulness", but the fact is that I'm really just plain stupid these days.

Today I walked Alexis to school only to return home to realize I had locked myself out of the house. This might not seem so stupid except that I did it just last Friday too. You would think that would have reminded me to take keys with me. I'm too large to jump the fence where we have a hidden key, but fortunately last time I was able to send Alexis over. This time she was already at school and I had to call my mom to come let me in.

Last week I made rolls with dinner and put in 2 tablespoons of salt when the recipe called for 2 teaspoons. As I was pouring it in I thought to myself "boy, this seems like a lot of salt", but I just kept on pouring.

Now I'm not normally a gourmet cook, but I manage to make most of my meals without any large mistakes or burning anything. Yesterday, however, was a whole different story. I decided to make a meal I've made hundreds of times and is quite literally the easiest recipe in the world. You throw about 5 ingredients in a crock-pot and stir. All afternoon we smelled that cooking and looked forward to eating it--especially poor Jeremy who was fasting. When it came time to eat, I took the lid off the crock-pot and the stuff was burned black and bubbling! It seriously looked like I was cooking tar in there. Poor Jeremy was so hungry that he ate about half of his piece of chicken before I demanded that he stop.

I'm telling you, it takes a major case of stupids to burn dinner in a crock-pot! The thing is a slow cooker, meaning it should basically be impossible to burn anything in there.

I can think of a million and one more daily examples of my pregnancy stupids, but I'm already feeling bad enough about my current state of mind. If things continue to progress on this downward slope someone will need to send help. For the safety of my children, the health of my husband, and the life of our fish.

Lucky is trouble

For whatever reason, I'm not a big holiday person. Christmas is of course a big deal, and the past few years I've tried to make Valentine's Day fun for the kids because Alexis loves Love, but other than that I do the bare minimum that is required of me to get through the holidays.

I'm a super fun mom.

So, you can imagine my joy when Alexis has been coming home all week talking about "Lucky" who leaves notes for her in her class. You can probably guess, but Lucky is a Leprechaun.

A LEPRECHAUN!

I've been trying to remember everything I ever knew about leprechauns, and this is what I've come up with: I vaguely remember watching a movie when I was younger with leprechauns and banshee's and I'm fairly certain they were all evil and scary. And also, is a leprechaun's job to protect the gold at the end of the rainbow? That's all I know about leprechauns and both of those things I'm obviously a little fuzzy on.

Now thanks to our local public school system I have to try and explain leprechauns and shamrocks to my kids--and set a trap to catch them on St. Patrick's Day.

A TRAP!

How do you set a leprechaun trap anyway? I suppose next I'm going to be required to make sure everyone is wearing green next Wednesday.

I can manage to scrape together Easter baskets, and I let Santa Clause take all the credit for a fun Christmas, I even buy fireworks (sometimes) for the 4th of July, but I cannot celebrate St. Patrick's Day! I just don't have it in me.

I'm thinking it might be time to start homeschooling. The effort required to do that has got to be less than celebrating all these crazy holidays, right? Also, I will get rid of our T.V., we don't get the newspaper, and I'll censor every conversation my kids have with any outside influences, making it impossible for them to find out about things like this.

On second though, maybe I'll just go to the dollar store and buy a green necklace so the poor girl doesn't get pinched to death.

travel log-ish

It would appear that blogging while pregnant is difficult for me. Actually, it's getting to the point where doing anything while pregnant is difficult--especially bending over. As in, bending over to pick up that toy on the floor. Oh, and that one over there too. And the sock in the corner. And the wrapper under the couch. And to help Tyler put his pants and underwear back on after using the bathroom, etc., etc., etc.

So, we went to Phoenix last week. Jeremy hasn't been back there in 6 years and has really been wanting to go. While there we saw a spring training game (Angels vs. White Sox), got together with a lot of his old high school friends that still live out there, swam, and basically just enjoyed the sunshine. I can definitely see myself becoming a snowbird when I'm old--with or without Jeremy. Though I hope he chooses with.

We were all healthy and the kids loved the plane, despite how late it was. If I could do the trip over the only thing I would change would be to not start out so late, the kids never really caught up on their sleep. They did pretty well but definitely had their grumpy moments--as did I.

Jeremy and I flew separately because we were using flyer miles, it's a long story. But on the way home our flights were on different airlines but left and arrived home at the same time. However, the kids and I managed to miss our flight. Tyler told me he had to go to the bathroom as our flight started to board (which he never says, so I took him seriously!) and I thought we had enough time. We hurried and as we were getting back to the gate I noticed a person boarding but figured we were probably the last ones. I got to the gate and handed the lady my boarding pass and she got really snippy with me. "What's this for? You're not on this flight anymore! We paged you several times." I thought maybe she was annoyed with me but was going to let me on anyway, but nope. She shut the door and left me standing there confused and ready to cry. At this point the kids and I were all REALLY tired and they were pretty bored from waiting in the airport for an hour already. They put us on standby for the next flight, but if we didn't make that one we would have to wait until noon the next day. We had already returned the rental car, we didn't have a hotel room and Jeremy had all our luggage. So I cried, then Alexis cried. Then we prayed. And fortunately we got on the next flight! Tyler slept the whole flight home, Jeremy picked us up and when we got home I ate my weight in Twizzlers--a good comfort food.

The kids on the flight to Phoenix (watching Tarzan)

Hole in the Rock

This picture makes my heart swell with pride.
She wanted to climb that rock--that's my girl!

Tyler's favorite thing in all of Phoenix--a dinosaur to ride on!

This picture shows what every one's favorite part of the trip was--
having Jeremy around!

Angels & White Sox game

I only put this in as evidence that I was there.
Kindly ignore all my extra lbs.

The kids in front of the Mesa Temple

Jeremy's h.s. friends and spouses (and red eyes cause I'm lazy)

Now we're back to our normal routine, with some rainy skies. And Tyler appears to have entered the terrible three's stage. At first I thought maybe he was still tired and trying to catch up on sleep, but unfortunately that's not it. He's just 3. Maybe by the time this next baby is 3 scientists will have discovered the cure for terrible three's. I would gladly donate $$ to that cause.

Fun facts

Life is just getting peachier and peachier around here. Here's some fun facts of the past little bit.

Fact 1: Jeremy hasn't had much of a voice for the past week and a half.
Fact 2: Jeremy has had flu like symptoms since Monday.
Fact 3: Jeremy has been unable to help with much of anything, including packing his stuff for our trip.
Fact 4: Alexis threw up last night.
Fact 5: Tyler has been crying ALL morning and throwing ridiculous fits.
Fact 6: Tyler does not feel well.
Fact 7: My kids typically go to bed around 8 pm.
Fact 8: We're booked on a flight tonight that leaves at 9:30 pm, and doesn't land until 11:15.
Fact 9: Jeremy is not on the same flight as the kids and I.
Fact 10: If anyone throws up on me while on the plane or in the airport I will be booking myself a separate hotel room for the trip.