Make It Work Wednesday

Tucker is a Monopoly wunderkind. We have regular Monopoly and Monopoly Millionaire. I prefer Monopoly Millionaire about a million times over regular Monopoly. There are several really good reasons for this:

1. Monopoly takes FOREVER to play. Even if you use the fast track version with the extra red die. And when it comes to board games, I get bored after about 30 minutes.

2. Monopoly messes with my sense of organization. It's impossible to keep the money neat and it bugs me when it's not all turned the same way. (I blame my past life as a teller for that last one.) And when my kids have this huge pile of money and property all tossed together, I find myself actually resisting the urge to straighten it out when they look away. Plus, if you get to the point where you can actually add houses/hotels, they don't fit neatly on the board and they are always getting pushed out of place. Drives me nuts! In addition, my kids have played with other kids who have been allowed to cheat, and that doesn't fly in our house, so tears and anger are almost always included. No fun!

3. Since Robert and I insist we play by the written rules included in the game, gone are the days of the chance of landing on Free Parking and scoring a huge pile o'Monopoly money collected from taxes, fees, and such. I'm probably just bitter about that because I seem to land on Free Parking a lot. Also I land on Go To Jail a lot, but with all the hotels and houses Tucker scatters across the board, sometimes that's way more of a blessing than a curse.

So, with this edition of Make It Work Wednesday in mind, I not only agreed to play Monopoly with Tucker (we started a game yesterday but had to leave for Meet the Teacher day), but I actually was the one who suggested it.

We played the fast track game. He annihilated me. He was willing to trade me 3 of the 4 railroad properties for Boardwalk. That only worked to his advantage though, because he ended up with 3 houses on Boardwalk and did not once land on a railroad after we traded. Not once. And my two house Oriental Avenue rent of $30 didn't really hold up against his $700 rent for his 3 house Kentucky Avenue. How many times did I land on Kentucky Avenue? About 7. How many times did he land on any of my properties with houses? About 3.

But what I DO love about Monopoly is that Tucker practices a lot of adding and subtracting and he learns about managing money (even if it's sort of abstract). When I looked at it as the Daily Dose of Dahl version of the Cosby Show episode where Cliff teaches Theo about money, well, it became a lot more fun.

This and that, and not much else

I post more often when I have a few themed days a week. So, starting this week, I'm introducing three new weekly post topics. 

Megan Mondays: my friend Megan often comes up with excellent blogging ideas. From now on, I'm going to keep a list of ideas from her and write about one each Monday. Don't worry - names will be changed to protect the innocent. The guilty are on their own and will not be protected. HA!

Make it Work Wednesdays: this can be anything I've tried in the last week. It's a great way for me to force myself to try something new. Pretty sure skydiving won't be included, but you never know. 

Photography Friday: We live near Asheville, NC now and it's beautiful! I've been meaning to work on my photography skills for over a year and there's no time to start like the present. 

I'm also open to suggestions. Recipes, kid stories, misadventures in pintrest crafts...you suggest it, I'll write about it. 

See you guys tomorrow for Make It Work Wednesday! 

Rants from crazytown

If you know me in real life and you know me well, you know that my tendency is to put up with something that irritates me until I just can't take it anymore and then I just sort of....snap. If you didn't know that, well..now ya do. 

Of course, after I 'snap' then I think a lot about how I need to improve my communication skills and figure out a way to be on a path that is much more even keeled overall. I mean, nothing shows you how annoying your own behavior is until you see it in echoed in either another family member or your own kid. And nothing is more annoying than be annoyed by your own behavior reflected back at you. And nothing gives your future teenagers more ammunition to crawl right up under your skin than spelling it out for them two billion times. AmIright? 

So yesterday, I went downstairs to do the four hundred loads of laundry that managed to pile up in one short week. Mind you, I did my and Robert's laundry mid-week, so we are pretty much talking about kids' laundry plus sheets and towels. So. Much. Laundry. I don't quite understand it. 

I'm having serious issues with low iron...again. I'm taking iron supplements, I'm eating tons of dark leafy greens and have added lean red meat back into my diet about 3 times a week. Still feel like s**t. I'm tired. I'm cranky. I'm impatient. I just feel very run down and awful. Yesterday, I didn't drag myself out of bed until almost 10 am, and even then, I only wanted to crawl right back in.  But alas, Tucker was out of socks and shorts so laundry duty called. 

I felt crappy on Friday which lead to skipping my workout so I thought, well, I'm going to be downstairs doing laundry for hours, so I can take Focus T25 nice and slow and get caught up. 

It seemed like a great plan in my mind. 

Ha! I had to keep stopping for breaks and backing up the DVD to make it through. So my two 25 minute workouts stretched into almost 1  hour and 30 minutes. 

Our downstairs laundry room smells like mildew this week and I can't figure out where the smell is originating. I have cleaned and mopped and bleached it repeatedly since the great plumbing backup of  May.  Gross. All of this plus endless laundry plus kids coming in and out wasn't helping my general disposition, which was super grumpy to begin with. 

Which leads me back to my original point. I feel like I have been harping on the kids to shut the door completely when they go either outside or into the garage for decades. The kids and I had three separate discussions about shutting doors just this week. So when I would hear someone coming in or out, I would call out.."Close the door please" as a polite reminder. 

Imagine my...disappointment/irritation/frustration/anger... when I start to take clean, folded, sorted laundry upstairs and find that the door to the garage is once again wide open. 

Seriously!?!?!?!?!?!?!!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

In the time it takes me to walk over and- I admit it - slam it shut to announce my displeasure, my irritation has bloomed into full grown, flat out, rage. I go into our bedroom to hang up the clothes I don't put in the dryer and I try to talk myself into calming down. The kids have a friend over and it's not his fault my two can't seem to shut a door so I walk around in the bedroom muttering to myself. 

It doesn't help. Obviously.

So I count to 50 and decide to go ask the kids nicely to go. shut. the. door. again. 

I hear someone say something and I'm walking down the hall about going outside (oh no they di'int!) and before I can actually use my common sense and logic, my mouth is saying "Tucker and Sara can't go outside because they are incapable, apparently, of being able to shut a door they open!" 

::crickets::

By this time I get to the kitchen and Robert, Tucker, and Sara all have this look on their faces like, "Oh boy...here she goes..." which of course only makes me more irrational. We send the friend home, and in all honesty, he was probably glad to get out of there. I know I would have been! 

Once it's just Robert and the kids, I start pacing back and forth through the living room and kitchen throwing my hands around dramatically and giving my 'why do we have to repeat ourselves' speech. it goes something like this: 

'The door to the garage was open. Again. AGAIN! I mean, did we NOT just talk about this THREE different times this week? I mean, I am speaking English, right? You guys do understand the words that are coming out of my mouth, correct? No one is hearing impaired in this house. No one is PHYSICALLY incapable of shutting a door. You seem to be able to OPEN the door just fine. Is there a force field or some sort of barrier that prevents you from closing the door? I don't get it. Why is it so hard? Every day we say the same things - don't jump on the furniture, no running in the house, pick up after yourself, SHUT THE DOOR!!!!!!! Can you PLEASE tell me WHY you don't or won't shut the door?!?!?!'

image from brittanyshiver.blogspot.com

::crickets:: 

I look over and both the kids have their heads down. Great. Now I feel like the ass - which I kind of should, actually. It's just a door. The open door isn't really the problem. It's just a symptom of a bigger problem which is, of course, that Robert and I have told the kids what seems like five MILLION times to do/not do the simplest things in the world....and yet....and yet......

ARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. 

It makes me crazy. 

Please tell me I'm not alone in this. 

The one about displaying grace at church...

Last week was vacation bible school at the church we attend near Asheville. Robert and I really like this church (and our community) so we were excited that the kids would have a chance to meet more kids and hopefully make some connections.

I offered to help out, so several nights, I stayed and did whatever was needed. It was a lot of fun!

Wednesday night as the kids and I were leaving (along with everyone else), I opened my car door and started to get in. I had one leg in the car and was in the process of ducking down to sit in the seat.

And then my other knee buckled. So instead of just sinking down into my car seat, my head slammed at ear level into the top of the door frame. The recoil and shock from that resulted in my falling straight down onto the ground on my butt with my other leg still wedged in the car.

Also of note: when my head slammed against the frame, I *may* (and by may I mean totally did) have screamed out "SH*T!! because it really hurt and it just flew out of my mouth. Sorry, Jesus. :(



I clumsily got off the ground and into the car somehow and drove away quickly, really embarrassed by the fall and what I had shouted out. In the church parking lot. With lots of kids and parents around.

Mortifying.

The next day, I was completely prepared to go and face the music and apologize where necessary, but right before we needed to leave, Sara fell in the huge puddle that had formed in our downstairs hallway from an a/c leak and we ended up taking her to the ER to check for broken bones and the need for stitches - both of which she fortunately escaped. Needless to say, I didn't make it to vacation bible school that night.

On Sunday, we were visiting family so we went to church with them. Arriving just in the nick of time before the service started, we were hurriedly escorted to a pew towards the back of the church.

Whew! Safe!

Then came the first hymn. There was apparently a men's choir visiting and they were sitting behind us in the pews. When the music started, they used their outside voices inside. And while they had beautiful voices, it was kind of like someone had switched on a surround sound movie in the middle of the night at full volume with the largest speaker right behind my and Robert's heads.

 

It startled Robert and made me giggle. As the choir slowly filed out of the pew and towards the front of the church and the actual choir area, I was having difficulty controlling myself. The next hymn a few minutes later was then belted out by a beautiful soprano voice from directly behind us as well. And, it made me giggle. There was a gentleman sitting in front of us who had been way generous with the cologne and every time he moved, a wave of it would hit me right in the face. Normally, that wouldn't be funny. Normally. But apparently this was not going to be a normal day. Nor could I stop myself from staring at his toupee...which was not on exactly correctly.  Oh dear.

I thought I had regained control of myself by the end of the hymn, but then the first prayer was extraordinarily long and um...thorough. Normally, I would have found it beautiful and touching (which it was), but you know how when you are trying not to giggle somewhere really inappropriate that everything becomes funny?

Yeah, it was like that.

Finally, she finished and the minister took over. Only he was particularly impassioned about his sermon and kept stretching his words out at the end of his sentences with extra syllables. So 'watch' turned into 'wat-tttttttcccccccchhhhhaaaaaaa' and 'relic' turned into 'rellllllllllllllll-iiiiiiiicccccccccccaaaaaahhhhhhh'.

I was shaking horribly from trying to hold in my laughter and tears were streaming out of my eyes. When we stood up to sing again, Robert, who had been mostly ignoring me and paying attention to the sermon like a good Christian, looks over, sees the tears, and assumes I'm crying.  To which he says, "Are you CRYING?!?!" and I swear it bounced off the walls. I couldn't answer. I couldn't do anything but think about butterflies and weed pulling and deep breathing.

It. Was. Horrible.

After staring at my shoes for a few minutes, I felt like I was good to go. Until I looked up and noticed that there was a gentleman asleep at that very moment. So I pinched my hand really hard and concentrated on memorizing phrases from the bulletin.   It's the only thing that got me through.

This was SO not my week to be in church. Guess I'm really lucky this didn't happen:

Lucky pennies are debatable

Yesterday was the first official day of summer vacation for my kids. For me, as ALL you stay at home parents know, every day is a vacation. ::snort::

Sara was pretty much done with kindergarten after the graduation hoopla around 9:30 on Tuesday and while Tucker was stuck in school for a full day on Tuesday, he was out two hours early on Wednesday.

To my great and thankful surprise, neither child woke at the zero dark thirty. I woke up around 7:30, and the kids were up within 15 minutes after that. That totally works for me. Anything after 7 is heaven - being that I'm as much of a morning person as say...oh, a vampire.

I left this week pretty much open as far as planning anything was concerned. Next week we are going to be crazy busy, so I'd hate for my kids to forget what bored feels like. HA!

We did have a doctor's appointment for Tucker at 10:30. Somehow, he developed a nasty infection around his right middle fingernail and I really didn't want it to spread any further or end up with the fingernail having to be removed. That happened to Robert around Christmas last year and it looked painful and gross.

The morning passed quickly but pretty well. The kids were excited to not be in school so they played really well together and we all hung around in PJ's until it was time to get ready to go. Which, may I just add, I'm impressed to share that they had that rare morning of not having to be asked twice to do anything nor did they complain about what we had to do.

I knew we were going to have to fill out a ton of paperwork for the new doctor's office, so we showed up about 25 minutes early.  Between my having to flip through eight years of Tucker's medical records and what seemed like a really busy day, by the time we got back into the PA's exam room, it was close to 11. No big deal, I was as much to blame for that as anyone. ::Note to self..when not on a military base, have the kids socials with you at doctor and dental appointments::

Things went great with the exam, we all liked the PA and the office staff and we were out of there in no time with a prescription for an antibiotic.

In the exam room, I noticed two pennies just sitting on the couch with heads up but I didn't pick them up. I figured I'd leave them for someone who was having a much rougher day than we were.

Our next stop was the drug store to fill the prescription. I got out of the car and saw yet another penny on the ground, heads up, all shiny and pretty. I picked it up on a whim, thinking if this was the third penny I'd seen within an hour, maybe I should pay attention.

We drop off our prescription, run into my neighbor and chat for a while. The kids were behaving wonderfully in the store, not being wild or asking for a bunch of stuff. Once we got the amoxicillin, off we went. Our next planned stop was the grocery store because they have this amazing salad bar plus I needed a few things.

To my complete and utter amazement, Sara decided she wanted salad for lunch and Tucker decided he wanted fruit. ::happy dance for voluntary healthy eating::

I fixed my salad, Sara fixed hers, Tucker filled his fruit container and then I went to get some soup. Sara decided she would like some fruit too, so I stopped what I was doing and helped her get fruit. The kids were waiting on me to finish up and Sara accidentally dropped her fruit container, which burst open and fruit went everywhere. So we all quickly picked up the spilled fruit and threw it away. We got her more fruit and headed to the checkout line. I was trying to carry two salad containers, my keys and wallet, a very, very hot container of soup, and a large cup of iced tea. How I didn't drop something, I will never know.

The store was super busy so I decided against grocery buying and we headed to the self checkout area since that was the only place without a line. I had to enter a code for every item (frustrating) and the self checkout would give me an error message if I tried to put both fruit containers or both salad containers on the scale at the same time, so it was taking me longer than I felt it should go pay and go.

Sigh.

I look up and see a lady standing about 10 feet behind me with a couple of packages in her hand. An older gentleman was approaching her in one of the store versions of a hover round. Instead of steering slightly to the left or right, and I do mean slightly, he gets within six inches of her and barks, "ARE YOU WAITING IN LINE OR JUST STANDING THERE?!?!?" The poor lady, the kids, and I were all startled at the volume and tone of his voice. She replies nicely that she's in line, but trying to give us some space. Awww, thanks kind stranger!

Instead of just going about his business, Sir Grumperton McHatefulpants starts grouching at her about blocking the aisle and how inconsiderate she is and a bunch of other stuff that made me say, "Wow." Then he  sits there and glares at her until she takes a giant step back so he can continue on this way without having to change direction in the slightest.

image from http://www.zazzle.co.uk/grumpy+old+man+art

I feel badly for this lady and I catch her eye and say, "Sorry!" to which she snaps, "What are YOU sorry about?"

Um, well, now I'm not sorry about anything. Sheesh.

I finish as quickly as I can and we get out of there. I try not to let our less than optimal grocery experience make ME grouchy even though the kids are swinging the bag with the fruit in it around like it's a carnival ride. I'm trying not to spill the soup, which is still scalding hot and appears to be actually melting the lid I put on it, while holding my cup, trying to hang onto my wallet and untangle my keys from around my fingers as Sara yanks on the door handle and starts shouting for me to 'LET ME INNNNNNNNNNN RIGHT NOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!'

I finally get the doors unlocked and everything in the car and home we go. The kids immediately jump out and head inside and I'm all - 'HEY! You guys need to grab all your stuff from the back seat, please!'

Grumbling they come back and get the items they brought into the car, plus their fruit. That leaves me with hot soup, cold sweating drink, two salad containers, keys, phone, wallet, medical records, medication, purse, and plastic eating utensils.

But I make it upstairs without dropping or breaking anything, so that's good. I want Tucker to take his medication before he eats and open up the prescription bag to discover the pharmacist forgot to mix up the amoxicillin powder.

Ugh. Really not wanting to go back out after the last 15 minutes.

So we sit down to eat our $20 worth of healthy food. Tucker takes a few bites of fruit and says, "I'm full."  Uh huh. I bet. I ask him what he's going to do with the rest of the fruit. "Throw it away...." Um, no. It's $5 a pound and that container was packed full - which is what I tell him. He gets teary eyed and admits that he doesn't like it because all the flavors are all mixed together. I resist the urge to talk about kids who scrounge food from dumpsters to survive or who are happy to get a cup of non rotten rice a day. Instead I ask him to come up with a solution  - which he does - and he rinses the fruit off in the sink and sorts the fruit into separate small bowls.

Sara, to my great and utter surprise, eats her salad and her fruit and then hugs me and says thank you.

Huh.

Didn't see that coming.

My salad ended up having slimy peas and my soup was burned. Bummer.

So, after we ate and cleaned up, we went back to the pharmacy and got Tucker's medication fixed and stayed in for the rest of the day. I'm thinking that I'll share that lucky penny with someone else the next time we go out. Too bad I can't pass it off to Sir Grumperton McHatefulpants.

Graduation blues

My daughter, who is six, graduated from kindergarten today.

I am.......ambivalent....... about such things as kindergarten graduations.  I can actually better understand a pre-school graduation because the transition from pre-k to kindergarten is (in general) more drastic than say kindergarten to first grade.

The school the kids attended before we moved in March didn't do the graduation ceremony thing. I was cool with that. The new school does.

Coming in to a new school so close to the end of the year, I knew there would be a lot of things that everyone else would know that I wouldn't - such as where to find out what time said graduation started and perhaps the amount of minutes before the ceremony starts one should arrive in order to find parking, sign in, and a seat in the tiny little auditorium.

Until today, all I had seen about this graduation thing was a sheet the room parent sent home about the celebration afterwards and what needed to be sent in. For GP (general purposes), the only time I had seen was 9:30 am.

On my way to school this morning, I started thinking about that.

Prepare yourself, my train of thought may astound you.

If the celebration is at 9:30, chances are high that the actual graduation is before that. School starts at 8. So logic would lead to the conclusion that the ceremony would be sometime between 8 and 9:30.

Duh.

I asked the teacher who was helping in the drop off line if she knew what time graduation started. She didn't, but suggested I call the office and ask them. When I got home a few minutes later, I saw that Sara hadn't taken her book bag out of the car. So I opened it and crumpled at the bottom was a graduation program. It started at 8:30, which meant I had enough time to freshen up, grab my camera, change clothes, and head back to school.

I got there at 8:27. There was no legitimate parking to be found, so I parked on the side of the road beside the parking lot halfway into the forest. It was way more impressive by sight than by description.

I power walked into school, where the last of the kindergartners were filing into the auditorium. I signed in, slipped into the auditorium, and realized Sara's class was closest to me on the stage, so I was seeing their backs. So I walked around to the other door so I could at least see her and she could see that I was there.

The auditorium was packed, which made sense after seeing all the extra cars parked around the school. Each kindergarten class sang their own little song, then all the students took turns walking across the auditorium to get their 'diploma'.

I have to admit, it was cute.

It was also really hot and stuffy in there. By the time Sara's class was up, I was sweating, just like everyone else near me. The older I get, the less I like crowded places and being shoved in small rooms with a ton of people I don't know, so I was a bit anxious to get out of there and once the kids started filing out, I took off and waited for Sara in the hallway. Immediate relief.

Now, here's the thing. Luckily, Sara had agreed to dress up this morning and she looked adorable. Most of the other kids were dressed to the 9's - party dresses and little suits. Wow. Parents and grandparents and I'm sure some aunts and uncles were there with balloons and flowers and cards for the graduates. Double wow.

I hadn't brought anything like that for Sara. It's flipping kindergarten.

We made it into the courtyard where there were tables set up with treats and punch. I helped Sara make a plate and we sat down so she could eat. It was a beautiful day outside and we were sitting on the edge of the   sidewalk kind of in the middle of the area, so we had a great people watching spot.

I was surprised how many parents were really dressed up too - like it was a high school or college graduation or something. I found it all very....interesting. And kind of foreign. I think it's great to have a little celebration at the end of the year, but seriously? This was treated like an actual graduation.  I'm surprised there weren't new bikes or scooters wrapped in big red ribbons waiting in the parking lot.

Sara asked me on the way home (because she got to leave after the celebration) what the first grade graduation was like and when Tucker would have his second grade graduation. I explained that she probably wouldn't have another one until high school. She was devastated. And that's a lot of my problem with 'graduations' before high school. Why on earth is a high school or college graduation special if you've had them every few years since you started school?

If I'm going to eat clean and healthy, it's going to have to taste good

I admit, I have a meh attitude about a lot of things.

As in -

Pesticides on the affordable vegetables? Meh, I'll wash them really well versus paying over double for 'organic'. However, that's mostly because I have my doubts about whether 'organic' is really 'organic' anyway.

Anyway, this particular attitude ended up with the fam and I at the Farmers Market this weekend. It was our first time at the Asheville Farmer's Market so I wasn't sure what to expect. We drove around and looked first, then parked and walked around only to discover that in the outer areas, it was cash only.

Fair enough, but then we had to go up towards the main building to get cash and we ended up walking through that building to take a look. That's where the bakery and assorted vendors are, you know the ones that sell honey, quilts, odds and ends, various forms toys and things. Everything in that building is more expensive.

Back we went to the outer stalls where apparently, a gallon of strawberries costs $5 more if the person selling them speaks English as a first language. The cheaper Spanish speaking strawberries looked better anyway. They probably got an extra dose of pesticide. It's okay, I'll wash them twice.

My find of the day was a bucket of zucchini and squash. I've been trying to find some decent looking specimens for ages and the grocery stores I frequent have a poor selection so far.

When we got home and unpacked everything, I eyed up my zucchini and decided I wanted to make this recipe I saw on Facebook via Pinterest where you top the zucchini with tomatoes, parmesean, and olive oil and bake them.

So, I did that today! Yay! Also - pinterest success story! (Trust me, I have many failure stories!)

Without further ado, here is my version of zucchini pizza boats:

Aren't they beautiful? I sliced two very large zucchini in half

 I used the small end of a melon baller to scoop out a shallow trough

 I mixed a tablespoon of olive oil with some garlic powder, italian seasoning, and pepper, then brushed it over the zucchini.

I crushed up 8 whole Ritz crackers and mixed them with about 1/3 cup of Parmesan cheese

I sliced and diced roma tomatoes and spread them out on top, then sprinkled the parm/cracker mix on top

 I baked them at 325 degrees for about 40 minutes. (Next time I'm going to bake them at 350 for about 25 minutes or so instead)

End result? Oh. My. Gosh. They were super yummy. I could only eat one half, though. 

The kids wouldn't try this, but Robert and I loved it and can't wait to finish them off tomorrow. The next time I make them, I'm going to slice the zucchini into circles instead of halves and make them appetizer sized. I think if we grill the zucchini first and then top and bake, it will be even more yummy because they wont get soggy from the romas.