Friday, August 29, 2008

Superman and the Toothless Wonder

I thought I'd share some great pics I have taken of the kids in the last couple weeks. We'll start with Blake. When Adam and I bought all that clearance crap from The Factory Card Outlet last weekend, one of the purchases was a Superman costume. Here are some of my favorites:




I've mentioned before Emily's loose teeth. Well, she's had one on the top that's been very loose for some time. I told her I wanted it out by the time she took her 2nd grad pictures next Friday the 5th. I just love grade school pictures where the kids have big gaping holes in their mouths. When Em lost her first tooth it was just before her 1st grade pictures so I told her to make sure to smile so we could see the missing tooth. That was a little awkward because the missing tooth was on the bottom, but none the less, she did it. So today after school I noticed this front tooth was very loose and I said, that's it, it's coming out. Well after alot of wiggling, and crying, and some Anbesol Jr. I grabbed a hold of the tooth and just then Emily jerked her head back and the tooth came out (anyone experiencing some deja vu from last Sunday? Yeah, me too.) This time though the tooth was a little more in there than the last one so it was a little painful for Emily. I think we were both kind of surprised when it happened. Afterwards she was playing with the hole in her mouth with her tongue. I said, "Does it feel weird, Emily?" She said, "Yeah, I can feel my gungs."

"You're what."

"You know. My gungs."

"Spell that."

"G-U-T-S."

(me laughing) "You can feel your GUTS?"

(Emily laughing) "Oops. No. G-U-N-G-S."

"Oh. RIIIIIIGHT. Your gungs."

So she things the fleshy things that hold her teeth in are called gungs. Not gums. How cute.

Here's the gaping toothless wonder:



Also last Monday night while my sister kept Blake overnight, we took Emily to the sky bridge at night so she could be up there while it was all lit up and check out the city below. As you can see, Emily wore her best downtown chic. She was so funny. When we got on the elevator she was like, "OK. Now I can get dressed." and she opens up her little plastic Cinderella purse, pulls out a necklace, puts it on and then puts on her shades. Adam and I just giggled at her.




I also took a couple of pictures from the same places I took them during the flood. Unfortunately since we were there at night they didn't turn out as well, especially on a sky bridge lit up in purple and green lights. I did take one of the Centennial Bridge, however that came out kinda nice but a bit blurry:

My bestie is BACK!

In case any of you were worried about my computer bestie, he's back in the game. Turns out it was just a bad power supply. I found a new computer dude who came to the house at 5pm, picked up our CPU and had it fixed and ready to go before 8pm. Gotta love the new computer guy.

Also, I've been planning a bowling party for Emily's 7th birthday in a couple weeks. Pray I don't kill a kid...we've invited 14, plus our two. Not to mention the 13 something adults and any random parents who may show with their kids. Yikes!

Oh, and the FlexSpend chic said she would "forward on my concern." We'll see...

Oscar from "The Office": The Dundies are kind of like a kid's birthday party, and you go, and there's really nothing for you to do there, but the kid's having a really good time, so you're kind of there? That's...that's kind of what it's like.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Do I really wanna know the secrets that you keep...when you're talking in your sleep?

Here's something Adam just said in his sleep as I posted the last blog:

Adam: "I touched it. Oooooooooohhhhh."


Uh...what?

He's gonna kill me when he reads this, lol.

The FSA update...

Here's the email I got from the FSA people:

Amy,

They were unable to get any documentation on this. It was past the 110 days that they allow for a dispute, but they still tried to get a receipt from the provider and that the provider did not provide the receipt. You will need to take care of this transaction. You will have to provide documentation of the expense, send a check to refund it back to your FSA, or send in receipts for 2008 out-of-pocket expenses to off set the $96.52.

Thank you.








Here's the response I sent back:

Anna,

I'm sorry but I think this is a bunch of crap. They took over two months to come back and say, "Sorry, it's been too long." This is MY money that is being withdrawn from my paychecks and it is not being properly handled. I want to dispute this further. Forward this on to your manager, supervisor, everyone who is above you.

I will send in any receipts I have to help offset the amount, however I am not sending in any checks for this amount. That would be like admitting this charge is mine, which it is not. I don't HAVE documentation of this expense because the expense wasn't mine. I've talked to both the doctor's billing department and the hospital billing department and neither of them have any charges for me for ANYTHING having to do with Trinity Medical Center in 2008. The last charges they have for me were in 2007, in December. No, this was not an amount used for a 2007 bill. My 2007 Flex Spend money was used up IN 2007. If your organization wants to say this is my charge, then SOMEONE can find the receipt with my signature, and it needs to be done now, so I have time to use the rest of my flex spend dollars. If this issue is not resolved and my flex spend balance cannot be exhausted because of this issue, you will be hearing from my attorney. I will also be forwarding this matter to anyone I can get to listen to me. The city attorney, my local congressman, EVERYONE.

Amy

I'll keep you posted. Grrrrrr!

Monday, August 25, 2008

A mostly great weekend

I had a pretty good weekend. Friday Adam and the kids and I went out to eat. Nowhere exciting, just Steak N' Shake. After that we headed to PetSmart to get some treats for the birds and a mirror which we were told would quiet them down a bit. I haven't really noticed a difference. From there we walked over to The Factory Card Outlet. We bought a bunch of clearance crap which none of it rang up on sale. When the cashier said, "$34.18." Adam and I both said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What?" After everything was given the once over again and corrected our total was something like $10.34. Better.

After there we headed to Hy-Vee liquor store to get some alcohol for a get-together we were planning for Saturday night. We had invited over two other couples who live in our building and their kids for Saturday night shenanigans. I made jello-shots. Lots of them. They were great. Except for some of them never set up. Never got hard. Not sure what happened there but we all got our fill of the ones that finished nicely so whatever. I also made non-alcoholic ones for the kids. Since I made the adult shots grape and cherry I had Emily pick out jell-o for the kids that wasn't even close to purple or red. She picked blue and green. The kids were all calling them jell-o shots too so let's hope they don't head back to school talking of weekend parties, card games and jell-o shots.

So the party was a lot of fun. Got to know some of our neighbors better. It's nice to have people close to us that are the same age with kids close to the same age. Lets just say that many, many shots were done, mostly by the men, at least the hard stuff. If the office doesn't call on Monday about the noise we all made then it was a total success, lol. We had to end the night when Adam started dozing off on the couch. I think most of us were pretty tired anyway. Well, except for a couple guys that I heard were up till the wee hours of the morning.

With the party came three extra kids and three times the mess. It wasn't a big deal, Adam and I pretty much expected it especially with the ginormous amount of toys that Blake and Emily have. The cool part of that, though was that at one point while I was clearing crap off the kitchen table and such the rest of the adults were in Blake's room tossing toys into the toy box. His room was such a mess, omg. There wasn't a piece of floor to be found. It's mostly organized now so whoohoo for party guests who clean up.

Sunday Adam, Emily and myself all slept in while Blake found mischief in the living room. I woke up at 9:30 and found him cutting up an old magazine with a pair of scissors. Also there was a giant sharp knife on the couch. Nice. Adam woke up not long after that and made breakfast for everyone. As we were clearing off the table Emily commented on her loose tooth. She's got about 5 or 6 loose ones but one on the bottom that's REALLY loose and the adult tooth is half-way up behind it. I saw her wiggle it and it was ready to GO! I told her it needed to come out RIGHT NOW. I bribed her with a new pair of earrings from the mall if she could get it out before we left. She grabbed a paper towel and went to work. After about 5 minutes I said, "Let me see it." I took the paper towel and it pulled down toward her lip. She moaned a little bit and started to jerk away and just as she did off it popped. I was like, "Wait, wait!" I didn't want her to swallow it or something. I'm not into toilet tooth hunting. So Emily got three new pairs of earrings at the mall only because the ones she liked (shaped like ice cream cones) came in a set of three. We also got Em some new ballet slippers and tap shoes since she's outgrown hers over the summer. Thank god for Payless BOGO sales because that saved me about $10. After some lunch we stopped in Spencers where Adam bought a winter face mask (you know the knit kind that a lot of your gas station robbers like to wear) This one has a red skull face on it. Very Adam. I'm sure he's counting down the days until he can go out and wear it at 3am while plowing snow. From there we let the kids play in the play area a bit and then it was off to Wal-Mart for groceries.

At Wal-Mart we bought some bacon and cheddar black angus beef patties and sweet corn to have for dinner. OMG! It was one of the better dinners we've ever had. The burgers were so fabulous and the corn. Wow. So good. In fact I'm going back when I get off to buy more for dinner Monday night. Mmmmmmm. In fact I may just buy a few extra ears and make them for Blakey and me for lunch. This is what Emily said about the corn at dinner after I said the corn was awesome. "It's not just awesome. It's fantastic."

I hope you all had a great weekend too!

My Best Friend Might Be Dead.

It's true. My companion that has been a trusted pal since 2003 might be dead. I'm pretty upset about it. Not sure how to react. I'm trying to keep my chin up. Trying not to think the worst but I have that dark feeling in the pit of my stomach. I just know he's dead. We met in August of 2003. It was a great friendship right from the start. My husband gets jealous sometimes because sometimes I like hanging out with my bestie instead of him. We could stay up all night long hanging out just playing games and shopping online.



He got sick once last year but got fixed right up and has been better ever since. I thought we had overcome a big hurdle. He was his old self again. Even had a little more spunk. This time though, it's different.



Tomorrow I'm planning on calling in a professional to see if he can be brought back to life. If not I'll have to get a new best friend. It'll have to be done this week though because I can't be without a best friend for long.

BTW, my best friend is the computer...I live a sad existence.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

I wanna be a part of it...FIRST DAY SECOND GRAAAAAAAADE!!!!

Well on Wednesday my little girl started 2nd grade. I really can't believe it. I can't believe how time has gone by. 2nd grade. She even rides the bus. Like. The bus. Like, I walk her down to the end of the apartment parking lot and she gets on a bus. With other kids and everything. I don't drive her. This is the first time since preschool that I haven't taken my little girl to school myself. Hmph. So there ya go then. There SHE goes then. How weird.

One of the coolest parts is that during this whole process I've gotten to know another mom who lives in our building downstairs. She has a 1st grader and a little guy that will start Kindergarten next year, so her kids are close to my kid's ages. Emily and the little girl ride the bus together and sit together and do bus-like things, you know how it goes. I'm thinking about asking her if she wants to set up some kind of schedule so maybe we can watch each other's kids so we can go workout. She keeps mentioning getting the boys together but I don't think she understands how crazy Blakey is. I fear she'll find out the hard way and never speak to me again. In fact, I can see Blake getting on her last nerve and then I hear a knock at the door. When I answer it all I find is Blake in a basket with a note around his neck.

Emily had a little drama on the first day that I ended up e-mailing her teacher about. Em had gone to lunch with her class. They all sit together in the "cafeteria". That's how Emily says it. She says, "They call it a (quote-fingers) CAF-UH-TEER-EE-YUH." (end quote fingers) Not sure why she says it that way. Maybe because this is the first school she's gone to where they have a designated room specifically for eating. At her preschool and her last school they ate in the gym. At EM Christian School they ate in their classroom at their desks. I suppose an entire room used simply for eating may seem silly after that. But I digress.

So Emily's eating and the rest of her class finishes but she's not done yet. They all line up (minus Emily) and some teacher (not her own) takes the class out to recess. Emily finishes eating and now she has no idea where to go. She asks a (quote fingers) caf-uh-teer-ee-yuh (end quote fingers) worker who simply puts her out in the hall. She wanders off and finds a teacher who simply points her to what sounds like a random direction. Emily can't find her class. She finds another teacher who then actually TAKES Emily to find her class. Apparently this teacher wasn't even sure where to FIND the kids outside and it took them a while. By the time they found the rest of the class, recess was almost over. Em's teacher was nice, however and set Emily up with a lunch buddy the next day so she would know where to go. She also promised to talk to the lunchroom aides to ensure it doesn't happen again and to let them know there are new students who don't always know where to go. The rest of the week (all 2 days of it) went off without a hitch so it must have worked.

On Thursday I was finally starting to feel better. I was actually able to be up and about and cleaned up the apartment and such. Friday I still had a slight pain in my side that is kinda weird. It's like the pain won't let me totally fill my lungs up with air so sneezing and yawning are practically out of the question. It does seem a little better now (Saturday morning) so hopefully in a couple days I'll be back to 100%.

Today my plans are to go buy a couple pairs of jammies. I found some cute v-neck tshirt nightgowns at a store in town so I'm gonna get a couple of those. I'm also heading to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy this http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=112700&RN=31 for our bedroom. I love it. I've been looking for something brown/light blue or brown/aqua for our bedroom that wasn't too dark. Our room is so dark and has such poor lighting that I wanted to brighten it up without girl-ing it out.

Other than that I have no definate weekend plans. I have to work again tonight but that's about it. Hope everyone has a good one!


Cliff Huxtable: Son, when we went to the store, you picked up that shirt and
said, "Dad. I gotta have this shirt for the first day of school." And I looked
at the price of it, and I said, "This is very expensive for a sweatshirt.". Then
I looked in those brown eyes of yours and I said, "Well, my son wants it , and
I'll buy it for him." Now if fashion dictates that you cut those sleeves off,
make some alterations, that's fine with me. But somehow, some way, in this
lifetime, you're going to wear those sleeves.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Still blah...

I'm still feeling shitty. I slept most of the day today and painfully made my way to Emily's Stash and Dash night at school.

Last December I went to the ER for what was thought to be appendicitis and after 5.5 hours there, several tests, scans and being prodded in places I've only recently begun to forget about I was diagnosed w/ something I've long forgotten the name of but went something along the lines of some kind of inflammation of nodes in the stomach or something. I think I have the same thing again. This pain feels almost exactly the same only not quite as painful and it goes across my whole lower stomach, not just on the right side. It also came on just as suddenly. Literally like one second I feel perfectly fine and the very next I'm in extreme pain. I've decided to call my doc tomorrow morning but I have a feeling I'll be either in his office or the ER by the evening. *sigh* I'll keep you updated.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

I'm dyin' ovah heyah...

Home sick from work today. I was totally fine when I woke up somewhere after 4am to pee. My alarm went off at 5:40 and I reached back to hit snooze and I had a sudden shooting pain across my stomach. It hurt like hell. I laid there for a minute and it just wasnt going away. Went to the bathroom to try to puke. No luck. No way I'm makin' it to work today. I wasn't even sure I was going to make it off the bathroom floor. Called my boss. Crawled back in bed. Hubby left for work. My dad is here b/c he was planning on watching the kids anyway, thank god!

I laid in bed for a while but it seems laying down only makes it worse so I'm checking e-mail and such. Did finally "go to the bathroom" if you know what I mean (TMI? Yeah, I think so too) and I feel a little better. Maybe I'll live...

Monday, August 11, 2008

How I spent my weekend...

Some people I talked to on the phone:

1. Jim--most of my voicemails from Jim are very upbeat and make me giggle, if not blatantly laugh out loud. Some of them go like, "aaaamyyy??? (pause) Where are you???? (pause) Are you there? (as though I can hear him on the voicemail as he's talking and I'm choosing to ignore him. Like remember when we all had answering machines?) (pause) (Famous Jim laugh) O.K. call me!" This voicemail was very downbeat and sad sounding. My poor, smart Jimmy still hasn't found a job despite his master's in accounting. AAAAAND his computer fried. (BOO!) Hang in there Jimmy! Soon you'll have a fab job and we'll be together again, drinking.

2. My sister
3. Adam
4. My dad
5. My dad
6. My dad
7. My dad...the man calls constantly

Some places I went:

1. The Wagonwheel--despite the fact there was no karaoke Adam and I did eat two AWESOME chicken philly sandwiches
2. The Tiddly Tap--I just love saying it. The Tiddly Tap. They DID have karaoke. Adam and I dug the vibe of this bar. It reminded us a lot of The Nickelodeon where we used to go in Coralville.
3. Wal-Mart--shopping for Emily's birthday present with my sister. I bought hairspray, a bandanna (see below) and a vitamin water
4. Gordman's--more shopping with my sister. I bought some very cute brown ice cream bowls that were $20.00 then $9.99 then 75% off so I got them for about $2.50. I love the Gordman's.
5. Target--still more shopping. I got two outfits for my cousin's baby for fall/winter, toilet paper and a bottle of water. Did I mention my sister was the one buying stuff for Emily's birthday? I'm not planning on getting her anything yet because I still have a month but I do have some things picked out like this and a cute suitcase at Gordman's. We don't usually get her as much since we also have the party and food to pay for.

Some things I heard my alcoholic neighbor screaming at 3:00am:

1. YOU'RE JUST LIKE YOUR FATHER! (to her 18 yr old daughter)
2. YOU'RE A DIRTY FUCKING WHORE! (to her 18 yr old daughter. Heard this one at least four times)
3. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM, JASON! (to her 18 yr old daughter's 20-something boyfriend)

Some people I saw at the Tiddly Tap that I already knew:

1. Jason (the above mentioned boyfriend)

Some people I saw at the Tiddly Tap that I didn't already know:

1. Michelle, the 40 yr old drunk woman that sat next to me who was completely right when she said she couldn't sing
2. Drunk old guy with a big wad of cash in his wallet who kept buying everyone drinks. He bought me 2 beers and said, "What's your name?" When I said, "Amy" he said, "No one gives a fuck, Amy. Drink your beer."
3. Dave, the bartender with the sweet 'stache.
4. Tanya, the red-head with a bad dye job wearing the short mini-skirt and flowered underwear (don't ask)

Some awesome gossip I heard when we got home from the Tiddly Tap:

1. Apparently before he went to the bar, Jason, as previously mentioned, told the 18 yr old girlfriend he was gay. Apparently she was outside crying and then she peed her pants. LOL! Here's my theory. That boy's not gay! He just wants the FUCK out of that house! I think he thought, "what could I say that would get me the hell out of here the fastest? Oh, right! I'm gay!" Done. And done.

Places I went out to eat or got food from:

1. Village Inn--slow service, which happens to us EVERY FREAKING TIME WE GO THERE! I don't know why we punish ourselves. Meals were decent though.
2. Adolph's--mmmmmmm
3. Harris Pizza--yay for us they screwed up our first pizza giving us a pepperoni and mushroom instead of a sausage and mushroom. We got to keep both and got one free. Sweet!
4. Hy-Vee Chinese...mmmmm sesame chicken

Weird people I saw:

1. There was a bachelor/bachellorette combo party that wandered into the Tiddly around midnight. They had an 80's theme. The groom was tightly wound in his two polo shirts with the collar up and his tight-rolled jeans. He was pretty bossy. I just wanted him to relax and stop being such a freak of nature. I heard him telling some of the rest of the party, "Ok, we gotta catch the bus so you gotta get your name in because you're singing. Ok, go up there and pick out your song but hurry because we have to get back on the bus." Then later. "Ok, we gotta go we still have to do the stripper dance on the bus." Something tells me this guy passed out an itinerary to everyone before they left that left very little wiggle room for anything spontaneous. Of course this party included the 42 year old woman that had to dress like Madonna with the white lace corset, black lace leggings, BOYTOY belt buckle and Payless black heels. You know she got this outfit straight out of her closet.

Dumb thing I heard someone say:

1. "That is very gay. I'm sorry but that's gay to me. "(This was said when Adam and I were admiring one of the 80's guys WWF Hulkamania bandannas that was tied around his leg. Michelle--drunk woman mentioned above--made this comment. Honestly I don't think she realized they were all dressed in a theme. I think she thought the guy WANTED to wear the bandanna around his leg.)

Something I wore that I'll be wearing again:

1. Bandannas, do-rags, whatever you call them. Love them! I love wearing them outside, around and about, at the pool, wherever. They keep my hair out of my face and are pretty freaking cool. Wish I would have been doing it all summer.

Monday, August 4, 2008

...and now Weekend Update with Dennis Miller Amy Warren

I had a somewhat uneventful weekend. I already blogged about my shopping experience for all of Emily's school supplies and new clothes. Still gotta pick up those dry erase markers. Ugh.

Adam got a call on Saturday morning that he is to report to the office on Monday morning to find out where he's working for the next couple of weeks. They've finished 1/2 of the bridge he was working on in central Illinois and they wont start on the other half until the 15th so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he'll be in town now for a while. That would be sweet because Emily has a back to school night this Wednesday so Adam would get to come too. Also, her first day is the week after so he can hear all about her first day straight from the horse's mouth. Whoohoo.

Today I did some cleaning and Adam and I got groceries. Seriously, could food be any more expensive??? I was appalled at the price of basic necessities. A 5lb. bag of potatoes? $4.30. A tub of butter? $5.98! We had about a half a cart full of stuff and it came to $103. Even the teenage bagger said, "How much???" to his fellow teenage cashier because we didn't have a lot of stuff.

I can tell that Emily's starting to get a little nervous about her first day at a new school with new people. She tends to clam up a little when you talk about it. Now I'm just waiting for the night terrors. That's right, night terrors. She tends to get them when she starts getting stressed out, like when it's close to the first day of school. They are a pretty scary thing to go through with her because one minute you're sound asleep and the next minute you hear her screaming and crying like never before. She'll get up and run into our room and all Adam and I can do is stand there and look at her in disbelief. She looks back at us like she's never, ever seen us before and even like she's scared of us. She doesn't want to be touched or consoled but will sometimes sit on the bed next to you while she freaks out. This lasts for a very long 15 minutes or so, sometimes longer and then she just calms down and goes back to bed like nothing ever happened. In the meantime Adam and I can't get back to sleep because our hearts are pounding. The next morning she has no recollection of what happened during the night. It's the weirdest thing. I warned one of our sitters about it. I'd hate to have one of the girls here to watch the kids overnight while I'm at work and have that happen to them.

Tomorrow I'm applying for a different position at the hospital. Trauma registration. It is still a part-time job but the hours are better, 6pm to midnight. This would allow me to be home when Em. goes off to school and comes home. Also in the winter, when Adam is laid-off, he can get up at 2 or 3 in the morning to go plow snow with the bro-in-law without having to worry about me being at work and having no one to watch the kids. I will be working a few more days a pay period but I think having the better schedule will be great, not to mention the extra pay! I hope I get it. I haven't told anyone in my department yet. I'm just so tired of my supervisor scheduling me for whatever shift she damn well pleases. It's getting very old and very tiring trying to keep some sort of a sleep schedule. One schedule I literally worked at least once on each shift and when I would sleep I would wake up every two hours in a panic thinking I was supposed to be at work. I didn't know if I was coming or going. It sucked!

I had a brilliant idea last night at work. I've been wanting to have the family over to play cards so everyone can see our new apartment. I decided to do a "house warming/bon voyage/anniversary" party. My sister and brother-in-law celebrated 20 years of marriage this last May and they are taking a vacation to celebrate at the end of September/first week of October. The last time they went on a vacation was their honeymoon. I'm soooo not kidding. They haven't even taken a weekend getaway. They're going to Las Vegas and then to Anaheim to Disneyland. I booked their flight and hotel last weekend, so now it's official. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to have a party for the immediate family and close cousins the weekend before they leave. I'm going to do a casino night theme. I really wanted to throw a big surprise anniversary party for them in May but Adam wasn't back to work yet and I just didn't have the funds. This will have to do. If I had an extra $300 or so and could rent a nice place cheap I would still do it and keep the casino night theme and invite our entire family and sis and BIL's friends. Sadly I don't have a money tree growing on my deck so a smaller party with close family only will have to do. They deserve it. I'm so stoked! A huge party with all of our family would be so awesome though. On my mom's side our family is huge. Let's just say I'm the youngest of 34 grand kids and there's even more great-grand kids and I think we're up to around 7 or 8 great-great grand kids, maybe more. There's considerably less on my dad's side and when you factor in the fact that my sister and I don't socialize with about 80% of them, those numbers really drop. There's a lot of scurvy peeps on that side of the fam. *shiver*

On a completely unrelated note, did you know raw vegetables tend to get your innards moving, if you know what I mean? Did I tell you I ate almost an entire bag of cauliflower a few hours ago while I watched "Paranormal State"? Yeah...so I've got that going for me right now. Explains why I'm still up at 2:30am, eh?

Finally in closing, I want to give a shout-out to my new blog-reader, Lindsay. After checking out her myspace page and blog I think we used to be conjoined twins. She's much braver than I, though. She's about to have her THIRD baby which is her THIRD son! Yikes! Good luck with that Lindsay! Next time you feel like you want to scream, (and I'm sure that's often) you can scream into my blog!

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Back To School? Really? Already??

So it's back to school time. As of today (Saturday) Emily has 11 days until the first day of 2nd grade! I can't believe the summer has gone so fast. Man, I'm really gonna miss her everyday while she's off getting an ejamacation! So, with back to school comes new clothes, new lunch boxes, backpacks and supplies. I bought all of that (and more) this weekend. I did it this weekend because my lovely state of Iowa does a "tax-free" weekend each year before school starts and this was the weekend (yesterday and today only, not sure why they don't do it on Sunday too). Not really sure how much I saved, probably not a whopper of an amount but if you're going to be buying the stuff anyway, why not save a few pennies, right?

So on Friday I went with my sister to the Wals-Mart. Wait, first we ate lunch at the fly-infested Wendy's, THEN we went to Wals-Mart. Let's just say it will be a very, very..........VERY long time before I go back to that Wendy's. How gross. We could hardly eat because the flies were about to carry us out the door. Then, as if my dining experience weren't pleasant enough, Blake had to go potty so when I took him in there he went in the stall, shut the door and as I admired myself in the mirror I heard something wet hitting the floor. I looked down and saw pee splashing. When I opened the door there sat Blake. While he WAS on the toilet, his junk was very much OUTSIDE of the toilet. Nothing was hanging down if you get my drift. He sat there watching himself pee over to the side and had this look on his face of horror and not knowing what to do to correct the situation. By this time it was pretty much all over with.

"I peed." he said.
"Yeah, buddy. I see that. Let's just get out of here."

I pulled up his pants and darted out of there. Sorry to the Wendy's employee that had to clean up the floor but I imagine if you don't seem to mind working in a fly infested restaurant, you wont so much mind cleaning up pee, making it's way to the drain.

So Wal-Mart. The working mom's friend. I decided we should hit up the school supplies first since I figured it would be the most packed. I'd rather battle the other 127 moms crammed into two aisles while I'm still fresh, not tired and cranky. Emily's school supply list wasn't bad this year. All of the typical things. Spiral notebooks, crayons, folders, etc. I learned when Emily was in Kindergarten to buy more than what is needed on the list. Why? Because when they run out and the teacher sends a note home, "Emily needs a new blue folder. Emily needs a red crayon." Then you have it and you've spent $0.13 for it. Instead of going to the store to buy one in MARCH when they are $1.47 a box and all you need is that ONE STUPID RED CRAYON. While I was in the aisle with the notebooks and folders I heard one mom asking where the single subject spiral notebooks were. Another mom said, "They're out there in the center aisle for five cents." My ears perked up. I grabbed the folders I needed and headed out. Someone said they saw a sign that said "Limit 24". Emily needed 2. I bought 23. I thought I grabbed 24 but oh well. I think we'll have plenty. Emily also found a bunch of cute backpacks for $5. I had her pick out two. Why two? Because they're cheap, and by that I more mean cheaply made. You know how kids are. They drag their bags everywhere. By Christmas time there's a big hole in the bottom and pencils are falling out. Again, this way I'm prepared. You wont see me at Wal-Mart in five months: A) Trying to FIND backpacks in the store in January and B) Paying $13.47 for the same stupid bag I could have gotten for $5. After we had all of our supplies (including a $5 Batman backpack for Blakey because he might be heading off to preschool this fall--more on that later) we headed to the clothes.

Let me just pause for a moment and say something to the purchasers for Wal-Mart. STOP BUYING HANNAH MONTANA SHIT!!!! I'm so fucking serious! Give me a damn break already! Emily is not (thank god) into Hannah Montana. She could care less about the bitch. She does not need a Hanna Montana shirt, Hanna Montana jeans, a matching Hanna Montana hat with co-ordinating socks! I saw an ENTIRE ROUNDER RACK full of t-shirts marked $3. I went over there and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM was Hanna Montana. Wow--selling pretty good I see! Anyway, we did find a few things, a couple pairs of shorts (one for gym class--can you believe they change clothes in 2nd grade??) some shirts, socks, a whole lotta shoes, a pair of pants and we were done!

Today I hit up Target. I still needed a 4-pack of dry erase markers off the supply list and I wanted to pick up a couple more pairs of pants for Em and maybe a cardigan or jacket. I found this dress:



How cute is that? I bought a pair of black leggings for her to wear under it. I wanted to find a pair of black flats to go with it but couldn't. I also picked up a striped polo dress, some pants and an awesome robot hoodie for Blake.

Strolling through the clearance stuff I got these for myself. They were $29.99 and I got them for $7.49:



These for Adam which were $34.99 marked down to $8.74:



And I got myself a very cute black leather purse which was $39.99 marked down to $9. Sorry, couldn't find a pic.

So I still left without the stupid dry erase markers. Target was out too but Emily's going to be one stylin' chick this year in 2nd grade!



Lisa Simpson: Jimbo made a couple of drawings of his house in the second grade, but I can't vouch for their accuracy. The teacher gave them a frowny face.

About Me

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In no particular order I'm a wife, mother, sister, daughter and general observer of humans.