Go to a place.. far, far away from here...

In this post I'd like you to close your eyes, (but not really, because I haven't mastered braille on my blog) and think hard. Think hard about things you really hate.

What do you see? Terrorists? Liars? Sunday night television?

Imagine you are preparing your three children for bed. They make a last ditch effort to stall, and drink water. They use the restroom. They put on their pajamas.
Now it's time to to take care of dental hygeine.

Before tonight, I would have told you, if there was any one chore I hated, it's flossing my kids' teeth. It's got to be the most pain-in-the-butt parental duty EVER.

But just minutes ago... it got worse.

So now in our not-so-fake scenario, you're flossing your almost7yearoldson's teeth, molars to be exact. In and out, hug the tooth, scrape it down. Ooh look.. there's a tight spot there, can't......quite......get....the floss out. Hmm.. let's just give a little tug and..........

SICK!!! That piece of food in between his back molars just flicked out and landed on your bottom lip!

DISGUSTING! REPULSIVE! UNBELIEVABLE! Curses!!

I ask you people, is there anything worse than having a piece of your son's chewed up food chilling on your lip for any amount of time?!

Well how about when you wipe it off and see the morsel in all of it's white chunky glory. Pardon me while I puke........

Last Year, Same Time

The kids have been out of school for 9 days, Cory's been gone for 24 hours, so that means I've got ONE little itsty-bitsy, teeny-weeny nerve left... and most days my children are on it! I recently took my first grocery shopping trip of the Summer with all three children in tow. I must boast that it was rather pleasant. I mean all I really had to do to keep them in check was give them food that I hadn't paid for yet while we strolled the aisles. That's normal, right??

I'm so happy it wasn't a repeat of last year's first Summer grocery shopping trip, which you can conveniently read about RIGHT HERE.

Happy Summer!

A friend brought this joke to my attention - Enjoy the laughs!! I sure did!

BBQ RULES

We are about to enter the BBQ season. Therefore it is important to refresh your memory on the etiquette of this sublime outdoor cooking activity.

When a man volunteers to do the BBQ the following chain of events are put into motion:

Routine...

(1) The woman buys the food.

(2) The woman makes the salad, prepares the vegetables, and makes dessert .

(3) The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with the necessary cooking utensils and sauces, and takes it to the man who is lounging beside the grill - beer in hand.

(4) The woman remains outside the compulsory three meter exclusion zone where the exuberance of testosterone and other manly bonding activities can take place without the interference of the woman.

Here comes the important part:

(5) THE MAN PLACES THE MEAT ON THE GRILL.

More routine...

(6) The woman goes inside to organize the plates and cutlery.

(7) The woman comes out to tell the man that the meat is looking great. He thanks her and asks if she will bring another beer while he flips the meat

Important again:

(8) THE MAN TAKES THE MEAT OFF THE GRILL AND HANDS IT TO THE WOMAN.

More routine...

(9) The woman prepares the plates, salad, bread, utensils, napkins, sauces, and brings them to the table.

(10) After eating, the woman clears the table and does the dishes.

And most important of all:

(11) Everyone PRAISES the MAN and THANKS HIM for his cooking efforts.

(12) The man asks the woman how she enjoyed ' her night off ', and, upon seeing her annoyed reaction, concludes that there's just no pleasing some women.

HAHAHAHA!!!

A Note To His Mom.

This is a copy of the paper my 6 1/2 year old son wrote about me..... his Mom. I added a few minor personal touches (ahem, corrections) which can be found in the parenthesis.

"My mom is the best. (Well, that's abundantly clear.... RIGHT, everyone?) She always helps me do my homework. (true dat) Sometimes she makes me help her cook. (What?! I wouldn't trust that boy within an inch of a flame) But she never plays outside with me. (Oh GREAT. I sure hope his teacher didn't proofread this. In fact, when I saw her on Tuesday I JOKINGLY mentioned, "Oh I bet my son has got something embaressing on his note about me." She told me not to worry about it.....I shouldn't have listened. Just an FYI, my friends, I reminded him how I play football and baseball with him all the time outside and he then replied with, "Well I meant you don't play outside with me EVERY time". Oh. Ok.... much better)

When my mom was a little girl, she liked reading. Without my mom, my family would be a mess! (This made me LOL. I asked with a huge grin, "The family would be a mess?!" Andrew's answer: "I just meant this room would be a mess." At least he's clear on my job description I suppose?)

I love my mom so much!

Love, Andrew

I've been reduced, to juice.

I can't recall how much I've actually publicized my diet on this blog, but here goes.

On January 6th, Cory and I got back into the swing of things by beginning to follow the Weight Watchers points system once again. He entered a Biggest Loser challenge with twelve other people in his building at work. We joined the gym. We rode our bikes. We counted and journaled and prayed.. OK, I did anyway. Cory didn't win the challenge, but he took 3rd place. He lost FOURTY-SEVEN pounds people! In only 3 months. Can you say amazing?! I hate men... well their metabolisms anyway. And I lost a measly........ I'm not going to say just quite yet. I will say that I've been incredibly motivated and dedicated to this new lifestyle. If I'm not at the gym in the morning, I'm jogging around the block. Or I'm staring at Denise Austin on our flat screen. Turns out just staring doesn't help you lose weight, who knew? On a serious note - I've been doing my weight lifting, my abs, my stretching, my cardio.. you name it. I've spent hours researching which foods have lean protein, which have staying power, how to jumpstart my metabolism... shoot.. I even went to my doctor and had her test my thyroid. Because, even after three months of doing allllll that, it seemed as if I couldn't lose any more than twelve pounds. My weight was up and down and all around.
But check this out. Yesterday morning I put a few chicken breasts in the crock pot and covered them in a jar of peach-pineapple salsa. By 5:30 I was warming corn tortillas (a weakness of mine) and shredding the chicken. My family thoroughly enjoyed the chicken tacos, but I... well I enjoyed my salad. With no salad dressing. NOPE. Just lemon juice. Un.heard.of. No ranch dressing, no croutons, no turkey bacon bits, etc. It was incredibly delightful and as a bonus - low in points. This morning I weighed myself, as I do numerous times a day (no lectures about that please!) and I can finally say out loud (or not so much) that I've passed that twelve pound threshold and have now lost 14 pounds! I honestly never thought I'd see this day! My doctor says for my height, build and body type that she would only like me to lose sixteen more pounds at most. I'm aiming for twenty-six pounds less by the end of the Summer at least. Hopefully a little earlier than that, we're going to Cabo San Lucas in June!

Drumroll Please......!

Turns out, my husband happened to be a decent liar.. Just for a week or so. He realized that I had figured out where we were going for our anniversary trip awhile back, (as I usually do) so he made up the spiel where it was NOT in California or Nevada.

So, to be fair, I have visited RANDOM.ORG and had the site generate a random number for me.

They say, the winner is #3!

Stacey commented:

"I am going to guess Portland OR! But were ever you go I am sure you will have a great time!!!"

Congratulations Stacey! I'll contact you about your prize later today!

And she was right! We had a great time in LAKE TAHOE! We haven't visited Lake Tahoe since we got married seven years ago and it was totally worth the wait. I've posted just a few pictures of the 200 or so that we captured. Thank you all for entering the giveaway!

Adventures in Tough Love.

Miss Priss (also known as Kaitlynn) is known to keep us laughing most days. EVEN THOUGH she's stubborn, hard-headed, determined, *like her mom*, etc... She's always a hoot. And darn cute if I do say so myself.

However, tonight's post is not about being cute.... or funny. It's about the other side of Kaitlynn. See? It's true, I tell ya.

One of our biggest battles, is getting the girl to keep her bedroom clean. I don't expect perfection, I don't expect the nazi-type organization that I prefer for myself, (please don't check my house for proof!), I just expect to have a decent size pathway from the door to her bed. At the LEAST. Before you form an opinion, I know she's fours years old. I know four year olds aren't necessarily very tidy. I completely get that. But this? This was out of control. The mess was flowing into the hallway and the upstairs bathroom and it was time to call it quits.

Whenever she's asked to clean her room, It's the same old six step process each time.

Step #1 - She makes a mess of unimaginable proportions.

Step #2 - We're on her case to clean it for days on end.

Step #3 - She refuses to clean it

Step #4 - Mom spends hours cleaning and organizing and silently cursing along the way.

Step #5 - The afternoon ends with me threatening, "Kaitlynn, I'm not going to do this again. If you don't keep your room clean, next time you are going to have to clean all by yourself."

Step #6 - Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

She knows how to play the game. She knows I'm going to break down and do it for her because I can't stand the clutter; especially when company is on his/her way. Hubby and I have been on her for almost a week now, to clean up the disaster that was (notice the use of past tense?!) her bedroom. She wouldn't do it. This past Saturday she stayed in her room until 2 p.m. and was not allowed to come out until she had made some progress. No dice. I finally had to let her out of the cage because we had a photo session scheduled with our photographer at 4 p.m. Fine, she won that one (again). She spent Sunday morning secluded in there also. Every now and then we'll send big brother Andrew in there to help her out, mostly for motivation. But that scenario just ends in him working, while she enjoys the scenery. Today.. it changed.

Today after awaking, I explained that she had one hour to make an effort on her bedroom. I just needed to see that she was at least trying. If I returned, and it was in the same shape as when I left, her room would be inundated with trash bags. And as you might guess, that's exactly how the story goes. I gave her a warning every 5 minutes, starting a half hour later, letting her know that that test time was almost expired. And an hour later, it was in the same, if not worse shape than when we started.

I stuck to my word this time and pulled a Dr. Phil. I'm not even the biggest fan of Dr. Phil. He's a bit pompous and self absorbed as far as I can tell. Or at least he comes off that way on television each afternoon. But his philosophy goes something like this: if you're having trouble with your children start handing out tough love. Take everything out of their room that is not a neccesity and they will have the opportunity to earn it back later. So that's exactly what I did this morning. I still can't believe I had the... guts? to do it. I had been wanting to do it for many days, but couldn't get past the fact that this would most likely create even more mess because I'd have to store a year's worth of stuffed trash bags in some other area of our home.

So off I went, my box Costco-sized box of garbage bags in hand, secretly moping on my way upstairs because I just knew this would be harder on me than it was on her. And wouldn't you know? She happily filled the trash bags with me. With a smile on her face. No crying. No, "Please, Mommy don't!" No, "You're the worst mother, I hate you!" I mean, I would have taken THAT over a chipper Kaitlynn throwing all her toys in the bag! I think she knows me better than I could ever imagine. Still, I stuck to my guns. I couldnt remove her toy box, book shelf, kitchen or vanity because they are just too big and bulky for me to carry downstairs on my own. (Cory is on the East Coast this week) But every stuffed animal, electronic toy, piece of dress up jewelry, Mr. Potato Head is now residing in our garage for Idon'tknowhowlong. Kaitlynn's got about 20 pairs of shoes thanks to her older cousin's hand-me-downs, and I even took those. I left her with a bed, her clothing, one blanket, one pillow and one pair of shoes.

She was also forced to spend the day in her room, doing nothing.. since that's what she does when I ask her to clean up after herself anyway, it really was just more of the same. She came out for each meal and to use the restroom and to floss and brush her chompers before bed. And of course, in true Kaitlynn style, she's still as bubbly and happy as always. I swear it's just to make my blood boil just one degree more.

Next order of business - when and how should she earn her toys back?

Disclaimer - I'm ready for criticism. I can feel that many will think I'm being too harsh on my four year old. But be forewarned that I don't get offended very easily.

AND - Don't forget to enter my first contest and giveaway. Just scroll down to the previous post and enter your guess in the comments section. 48 hours to deadline!