Sleepy weekend

There's been an UNREAL amount of sleeping around here this weekend!  If last weekend was super-busy, this has been the opposite.  Well, except Saturday morning we got motivated and retextured our entire living room ceiling.  It only took us 4 months :)

Anyway, poor Patrick is now our #1 sicko and yesterday he was unconscious more than he was awake - 3 NAPS! Joe was home all day, so lucky for me I got to take 2 hours of nap with Patrick - I was loving the tiredness. Same thing today - after being up only two hours he came back to bed and said "I need a rest" and (weird, it wasn't even 8:00 yet) I did too, so Joe took the other two and hung out while we snoozed. While I am SUPER hoping Joe and I don't catch this; while it has produced some memorably sweet moments with sick kids, I doubt it would produce anything of ths sort with sick adults and jobs and meetings and such.

I should mention that while I napped yesterday (Eli was asleep, too) Joe got crazy and ripped out the basement carpet! 

One thing continues to lead to another and we're planning on rearranging some furniture once the carpet's installed, so Joe lugged out one of the couches to the garage, leaving us seat-less for all those movies my sick kids want to watch.  Well, solved that problem - we moved the guest bed into the family room so we can get busy and rip out the carpet in Caroline's room.  Makes a nice lounger, don't you think?

Bring on the move marathons, cold and flu season!

Cheetos dreams

Eli's fever gave him fitful sleep last night, which kept interrupting our Netflix date, "Water for Elephants." We enjoyed it and didn't want to be interrupted so much so we finally just got him to hang with us - it was so nice!  He snuggled right in, complained that we already ate all the popcorn but drank his juice anyway, and LOVED the elephant and the train parts.  After the movie was over the got some ice cream in the kitchen, just stretching out our special time with him, and he saw the bag of cheetos on the table from lunch, so he had a little midnight snack of ice cream and cheetos!  Joe said we might not be winning any parenting awards with our snack selection, or our timing, but I think it was all about the exceptions in life, the fun times when you eat junk at random hours and enjoy each others' company.  Reminds me of so many times eating shrimp rings and drinking Pepsi for lunch - not the most balanced meal, but those weird meals did more for my spirit than any whole wheat sandwich and apple combo could do for my body.  Hope you enjoyed your special time, Eli!  And thanks for being sick :)

snot and songbirds

YUCK.  Caroline’s been under the weather this week, getting worse each day (at least getting snottier and grumpier each day!), and Eli woke up this morning with a fever.  Sick kids are no fun, but WHINEY sick kids are just awful-waffle.  We’ve tried to have fun staying home – playdough, coloring, movies, reading – but in the end it’s still a messy pile of criers laying on my lap, rubbing snot all over the place. For everyone’s sake, I hope this doesn’t last much longer! I’m pretty sure my patience is being tested just as heartily as their antibodies are.

 2 sick kids meant no Joy School, today, but Patrick still loves singing “I’ve got Joy,” one of our favorite songs from school.  We sing it often (and loudly) enough that Caroline has caught on – she chimes in “ooooohhhhhh, baahhh” during the pauses.  I tried for 10 minutes straight to get it on camera, but no luck, just lots of singing from Patrick and I.

Eli, aside from his recent sickness, is doing well – when we ripped out the carpet in their bedroom Joe took down the crib and now Eli sleeps in the trundle.  So far so good (it’s only been 2 nights and 1 nap) but we’re looking forward to building some bunk-beds in the near future.  Yep, building, DON’T ASK. But even before being sick he’s gotten in a nasty habit of whining for things instead of asking.  For instance, on Tuesday the Patrick went to Joy School at R’s house so she teaches the big kids and I watch the little ones, Adam and Benson and my own.  Adam was taking an unexpected afternoon nap and as we pulled away with Benson but no Adam, Eli whined “where Adaaaam?!?”

“He’s at home sleeping.”
“Where Adaaaam?!?”
“He’s at home, sleeping.”
“Where Bensaahhhn!??”
“Uhhhhh, he’s right next to you.”
“Where meeee?!?”

That’s it, we’ve reached the height of whine! Let's fast-forward to being well now, eh?

Busier than usual Wild Hair

What did you do today? Well, I don't know about you but we got a little crazy today. One of those "wild hairs" my sisters claims we're famous for (I have no idea why!). Last week we decided to pull the trigger and order us some new carpet! It's a big expense, but it's a big deal - a good amount of the carpet is original to the house (about 30 years old). In order to save money (plus we need to paint all the baseboard trim) we decided to rip it out ourselves - hooray! Wild hair #1 today: rip out carpeting. Check!

 8:00 a.m. (some furniture moved before I remembered to take a "before" picture)

1:00 p.m. - Carpet and pad ripped up except under Patrick's bed, which weighs 10,000 pounds.

Wild hair #2: Demo wood wall paneling. In addition to carpet we are also putting in laminate flooring throughout the main floor, but BEFORE we lay flooring we need to texture the ceiling (from when I scraped it way back in October, remember?), and as long as we're texturing the ceiling we might as well do the wall project we've been talking about since the day we moved in: taking the paneling down to a wainscote and drywalling the top half (which involves texturing, thus the combo). So in a classic case of One Thing Leads To Another, we are doing the wall because we want laminate floors but I scraped the ceilings. Somehow that's all related, I swear! The boys were big helpers - anything to stay up past their bedtime! 

7:30 p.m., just getting started. 

9:00 p.m., all ripped off!

Date Night, but not for me

Yesterday was rough.  Joe had to work in the morning, I had to work in the afternoon, we've hardly seen each other this week, and the kiddos were a bit nuts.  Okay, LOTS of nuts, and they drove Joe nuts while I was at work yesterday afternoon.  He felt bad that he was rough on Eli especially (who yesterday tried flushing a roll of toilet paper down the toilet and flooded our downstairs bathroom) and wanted to have a nice day with him today, so they took some quality time this afternoon and went out and got donuts from Krispy Kreme!  Patrick hates to be left out of the fun, but Joe told Patrick he was going to bring home a surprise when they got back (he didn't tell Patrick they were off the K.K.). When Joe initially walked in he brought Eli's half-drunk single-serve milk from Krispie Kreme and told him THAT was the surprise.  Patrick was genuinely excited and thankful for it, it about broke our hearts! What a tender, sincere boy, and we were totally playing a joke on him!

Happily, while the milk WAS delicious, there were donuts to be had as well.

  

Eli, who got donuts at the shop AND at home, loved the sugar rush.

Let's play house

Patrick's friend Alli was over to play and I listened in on the conversation:

Alli: Phone's for you
Patrick: Sorry, I can't get it.  The crocodile is still eating me.

I think they were playing slightly different versions of house :)

2 posts in 1 day? You guys are so lucky

Since it's Valentine's day, and this is a Valentine's craft, today is the last really acceptable day to post it, even though I already posted.  But feast your eyes!  And don't laugh when I say, "It's SUPER easy!"  because it is.

I got the idea from http://thriftydecorating-nikkiw.blogspot.com/2012/02/inexpensive-valentine-art.html 

While we were in Pueblo visiting Kari we headed over to ARC, where I picked up a couple frames for 99 cents.  Nice frame, eh? The suggestion was to paint it, but this finish was still too nice. Then, they don't get the newspaper for the personal ads on the inside of the heart, so Kari suggested combining two ideas, the plaque that says "the Blahblah's, Established 19blahblah" and then the paper rosette heart.  I think it turned out so great!  As you can tell I added my own touches, changing the colors and sizes of roses, as well as doing a little chalk shading on the edge of the paper (black) and the inside of the heart (pink).  Although I love the original, I think mine was dang cute, too!  Too bad it's not actually MINE... enjoy it, Kari!

Picnic

Monday was gorgeous!  Warm and sunny but still snow on the ground, perfect to shove the kids out the door and not feel too guilty that they're freezing in the snow.  It was so perfect, though, they refused to come inside for lunch!  They needed to eat before naps and I was starving, too, so I brought the kids' table and chairs from the back yard to the driveway (no sun in the backyard) and we had a nice li'l picnic.  It sure made mac&cheese and pb&j feel a whole lot more special!  We also had hot chocolate, as there was a tiny nip in the air (according to me, who is always freezing). Hopefully we'll do it more often as spring slowly arrives, but who knows, I always forget about fun ideas like this.  So in case it doesn't happen again, I got a few photos!

Lovely lunch, tablecloth included!

Messiest eater on this planet. 

He needed some sunglasses.

Whitney

What to say about one of the best singers out there, who is no longer out there? Whitney, I'll miss you - you don't realise how many bad dance parties you inspired in young girls (specifically my sisters and I at about 10 years old).  I can't even believe how much less press than this is getting than Michael Jackson's death - she was so much more awesome! 

Now and forever I promise to belt your balades in the car to annoy and mortally embarass my kids.

All dressed up, everywhere to go

Funny, all day I planned on writing about Caroline being a total girly-girl and already dressing up, but my sister beat me to it this morning!  I'll post anyway.

I am AMAZED at feminine tendancies already showing up so strongly in Caroline. She loves talking on the phone (though I think that is a toddler tendancy, not necessarily a girly one), trying on shoes, carrying around a "purse" and now, trying on clothes.  She found Patrick's church vest this morning and was so obviously trying to put it on, I was SO impressed!  Eli still just brings me his clothes rather than trying it himself.  I helped Caroline put the vest on and she strutted around and then wore it all day long.  I think strangers thought she was pretty strange herself, but I was too proud to notice.  I guess that's how the Joli-Pitts must feel about boyish Shiloh, eh?

Wild Hair

When my sister Kari got a wild hair to relocated her entire master bedroom I liked that she told me she got a "Kirsta and Joe wild hair."  I guess we DO get some pretty crazy ones!  This one wasn't one of those.  I just got sick of coloring books and crayons only having a home on top of the fridge, where it meant I had to get them down and I had to put them away, even though I'm not the one who uses them!  So I relocated. 

Coloring books/supplies went down to where the coats were, the coats got moved to the door. With the fridge newly clean I cluttered it back up a bit with a crafty li'l project - weekly menu planning.  I'm excited to see how well I use it, I am horrible at planning more than 30 minutes in advance but hope the sheer cuteness of this will force me into it.

Snow fun is no fun

Has anyone noticed there's a little bit of snow outside?  My kids did, including Caroline, who was so excited to get outside... she was even patient while I got her dressed in her World's Cutest Bibs...

... but then she took a minor faceplant into a drift.  Well, outside fun lasted about 30 seconds.

Crafting WIN!

We've been busy crafting this week! My sister sent me a link from Pinterest (which I have since joined, so no need to bug me!) of how to make this gorgeous rose-like wreath from fabric. I happened to have about 2 yards of crimson fabric laying around - homemade curtains from our 1st apartment!  So I cut them into strips, cut the strips into squares, and folded each square twice and rounded the corner.  I got a circle about the size of my palm.

I bought a floral-foam wreath at Michaels for $5.99, of course using my 40% coupon, so it was really only $3.50 or so.

Patrick was my big helper - we worked on the wreath during the kiddo's nap times.  He was SUCH a good glue-gunner! I only got burned once.

I re-folded each circle

and he put a dab of glue on the point.

Then I smooshed the fabric down, putting my fingers on the inside of the folds. 

It took 3 days of nap-time work, but I think the results are SO GORGEOUS!  Pinterest was right-on for the ease of crafting and the great results.  I'll just change the ribbon to green for Christmas, but I'd also love to try making one in other colors, or white! 

 Thanks, Patrick, for being my big helper!

Great comments, all!

So the wallet is back, the bad days are hopefully behind us.  The old man was nice, but weird.  For instance - he found the wallet in the bread store parking lot, told me he had seen me leave the store with donuts so he knew I HAD shopped there, yet he took the wallet home instead of returning it to the store.  Why?! When he was trying to find how to contact me to get the wallet back there's no phone number in my wallet (lesson learned), so he thought about returning the wallet to the LIBRARY since I had library cards in there.  Again, WHYYYY!?!?  It was less then 10 feet from the bread store entrance, where he had JUST seen me shopping, and you want to return it to the LIBRARY??  I returned to the freaking bread store like a normal person, since that's where I dropped it, but I would never head to my nearest library to look for a wallet I didn't lose there.  While I appreciate, with deepest gratitude, that there are good and honest people out there (as many [MANY] times as I have lost my wallet it has ALWAYS been returned and NEVER had cash or cards taken from it), I am a little disappointed in the sheer lack of common sense in this situation. Also, dang it for dropping my wallet in the first place, and dang it for not checking my phone messages! That was all my fault.

And now, comments to the comments:

Kari: Yep, getting back money that you thought was gone for good, even $20, can make your day :)

Angela: You CAN renew online, but only if you do it before your license expires.  Mine expired in December, which I was dumbfounded at, and only discovered in January.  Joe's was issued a year earlier and doesn't expire until 2014! I thought maybe he flirted with the DMV ladies.  Turns out, they changed policies and USED to issue 10-year licenses but changed it to 6 years instead (more revenue? They love sticking us in lines and laughing? The DMV chairs need warming? Who knows).

Amy: (about the last post) You're right about TV time - it's a balance.  Like how much chocolate to eat during the day, you have to find a happy medium :)

Sheesh

Monday was rough.  We had an awesome morning, ran TONS of errands, I was being SO productive and then.... I pulled a Kirsta.  Like I've done at least a dozen times before, I lost my wallet. I put it on the hood of my car and drove off, onto 120th Ave in mid-afternoon traffic.  Before I even got home I realized my mistake so I whipped the car around and searched.  I searched and searched and SEARCHED.  I got out on every instersection, running up and down the side of the road and even sometimes the median; I went back to the parking lot TWICE (in case I'm blind) and went back into the store we were at when I'd been such an idiot... NO WALLET.  So after an hour (all 3 kids in the car the whole time, mind you) I gave up, went home, and called the credit card companies to get everything cancelled.  There's certainly nothing good about losing a wallet, but the silver lining is that I didn't have much cash in it, my drivers' license was already expired, and I wanted to buy a new wallet but hadn't gotten around to it.

Today was rough. I needed to get a new license, and there is NEVER a good time for that, so we bit the bullet and went.  First, though, I called to make sure I had the documentation I needed, and they gave me their location, which I mapquested before I left: 11900 N. Washington.  So prepared!  We were even out the door by 9:00.  I got to about where the DMV should be (on mapquest), and it's the post office.  So I went into the post office to ask, it must be next door or something and I'm blind (still considering that as an option), but they assured me it was down the road around Washington and Malley.  I drive down, and my empty light comes on.  I drive around and around, it's a dilapidated old strip mall and the parking lot is EMPTY so surely this ISN'T the DMV, where it's always packed.  I have to get gas, so I head down to the nearest gas station.  There happen to be a cop, he assures me the DMV is IN the dilapidated old strip-mall parking lot, so I am SURE of it this time.  I drive around a minute, and THERE IT IS - with a sign on the door, last week it relocated to 11900 N. Washington!! Just opened up yesterday.  I've been driving around for an HOUR by now (again, 3 kids in the car) and we finally find it - ACROSS THE STREET from the freaking post office. In yet another dilapidated strip-mall parking lot.

It's packed, of course, but because I don't have an old license to surrender I have to take a ticket rather than stand in line.  I'm watching the ticket ticker, watching the line, watching the ticker, watching the line... if I'd had my old license I would have been done in an hour, flat.  With my ticket it took TWO hours (with 3 kids, mind you) to get my stinkin' license, which was expired anyway but I didn't have it to surrender.  We ended up taking a side-trip to Walgreens before my number got called to pick up snacks since what should have been one hours somehow turned into three... so it cost me $21 for a license, $6.50 for snacks, $15 for gas (I only have cash, you know, what with no credit cards and reserving $21 for that license) and $4.40 for a bottle of aspirin for the headache that has become my life.

I got a phone call at 3:00 today from some nice, old, honest man that he HAS MY WALLET and has been calling me since Monday (I seriously stink at checking my messages - WHY?!?!?) so I can come get it.  I could have saved myself one hour on 120th driving up and down, plus one hour at the DMV in line instead of with a ticket, and probably another hour on the phone, calling about cancelling my cards, PLUS my tank would not have been on empty from all that stupid driving around.  GARRRRR!!!!

I really hate it when I pull a Kirsta.