Curly Straight

Julia is dancing to the same song this year as she did last.

Little Itty Bitty Ones. Someday I'll get that song out of my head.

soccer camp
basketball camp
piano lessons
dance lessons
tball
baseball
karate

Whenever I ask Thomas to do something and he does it, he says "you owe me a solid."

ParaNorman.

Cute. A little scary but my kids think all movies are scary.

Belly laughs all around.

I'm tempted to watch it again with them just to hear that sound of them laughing so hard.

ParaNorman.

Cute. A little scary but my kids think all movies are scary.

Belly laughs all around.

I'm tempted to watch it again with them just to hear that sound of them laughing so hard.

So we need to figure out a way to get weeds to stop attacking our brick patio.

I know there's a homemade solution, but I tried it last year and it kind of worked, but not really and I didn't use the high acidity vinegar. The weeds have come back two fold, they are taking over.

So we talked about it and came up with the possible solution of gray sand that goes into the cracks of the bricks. Almost like brick grout.

So I go to Amazon and type "gray stone dust to fill in bricks" and a gravestone pops up! a $3300 gravestone that one can buy on Amazon!

I have perpetual coughing and eye stuff (never ending case of pink eye - just gorgeous) happening but we are cutting down trees and planting a garden (yay!) and growing and sprucing up for spring.

I'm accidentally getting a half bathroom remodel - crack in the sink led to a new vanity, which led to it being a different size than the other vanity, which meant the floor needed to be fixed. Which means that I'm going to be the only person in the world with a bathroom with a hardwood floor. But I kind of like that.

It's great here. It's nice being in the country right now, especially after such a long, cold and snowing winter.

Pretty much loving life.

Despite the fact that I have pink eye (pink eyes, actually, because it's both), I still can so easily get sucked into looking at fabric for curtains online. For hours. Hours, I tell you. It's just like when I'm looking for artwork online, I feel like I'm in a museum and I get sucked into the screen like it's an anteater and I'm its Ant A La Mode.

I know exactly what I want in my mind, it's just a matter of finding it on one of hundreds of website.

I am thinking green to match the walls but with a pattern with blue and maybe even some yellow. I want it to make the room pop, but still be a little subtle and certainly not too girly. A fun pattern with shapes is good but I'm trying to keep away from circles and squares now. Luckily etsy is hooking me up once again, and leading me in the right direction.

As soon as the curtains are decided upon, I'll have to figure out a new comforter too. Whee!!! This is fun.

By replacing almost all of the lightbulbs in our house and instead installing LED lights, our electric bill was CUT IN HALF.

He also just set up my google calendar on my (giant) Android, exactly the way I wanted it to be.

Alleluia!

LOVING tball right now.

Loving it!

And it's only going to get better as time progresses.

Julia: When are we going to buy munchkins?

Mama: I don't know. We can. Oh maybe for the baseball parade. Oh, but maybe not, that's not really a healthy snack.

Julia: Mama. It's a parade! We all need sugar at parades.

It's official:

The next two months are going to be spent searching for baseball pants and gloves.

"Have you seen his/her baseball bag?"

I can hear it already (my voice asking it too, we are equal opportunity losers of stuff in this household). OK, OK, it's mostly me.

We are going to have a specific place for the baseball stuff and if it's not there, um...well, yeah, that's the problem. Who really cares?

But I'm going to try. I really am getting more organized.

I think that having a label maker and a laminator would take my already happy life to much higher levels.

Tonight I was supposed to fold laundry, get the donations ready for Big Brothers/Big Sisters, post a condo online, and exercise.

What I did: posted the condo online and spent the rest of my time online searching for the perfect leather wristlet just a tad bigger than mine (to fit my giant phone) not made in China, which apparently does not exist. I'm finding it, though, I don't give up.

Getting up early to exercise. I'm going to, dammit.

My dream came true this weekend.

On Saturday, my 7-year-old ran one mile with me.

Today when I asked him if he wanted to go again, he said, let's do a mile and a half!

I am not quite sure he had a concept of how far that is. He did ask me at one point how many inches are in a mile. I'm not quite that good at math on the fly and he forgot about the question by now.

I'll be sure to figure it out for him and let him know. He'll love that.

He liked the run, most of the time. He absolutely kept up with me and even kicked it into turbo (and that's a direct quote) a few times. Toward the end, the complaining started - what have I gotten myself into? I think I'm going to faint! - he told me. Before that, we were having a fun conversation. It was nice to have nothing to distract me from him.

It was a great experience, he didn't faint, and hopefully it's going to help him with sports and instill a lifelong love of running in him. I know that with him by my side, I would run for miles and miles.

I get a really strange, yet satisfying, feeling when I e-read a book on my phone or my kindle and then later on open in my cloud reader and I'm way ahead of where I was before and it asks me if I want to skip ahead to that page.

Heck yes, I do!

I'm not big on jewelry. I have never liked the way it feels on my body. My wedding ring and earrings are pretty much all I wear, all the time. I'm happy with expressing myself with my outfits and my earrings can say a lot too. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't turn down a big ole pair of diamond earrings, or maybe even a bracelet, but I'm not quite sure I could pull off a necklace. I would probably end up literally pulling it off, because I don't like having things around my neck. Messes with my ninja skills.

I'm going through a mad spring cleaning phase right now (well, today) and I decided that I don't wear some of my earrings and wasn't into some certain styles anymore and I need to come up with a reasonable solution. With anything that I am sick of, doesn't fit, is ugly, didn't work in that sport in the house, usually means throwing the said item(s) into a bag and waiting for the next Big Brothers/Big Sisters donation truck to come. You can schedule them to come but it's always weeks away.

I did pack away a few for the truck, but some were just too cute to get rid of and will fit in perfectly with my red purple hair (oh did I mention that? It was kind of by accident but I think it's growing on me. Maybe.) so I couldn't do it. It's like when I come across one of the cute outfits or hats that the kids used to wear. I have a very hard time donating certain things - the really special things. I have a special box for each kid that I keep items from their childhood that I just can't bear to give away.

Anyway, I have no emotional attachment to these earrings but I did recently discover a really cute consignment shop so I'm thinking about packing them into cute bags and seeing if I really do have taste as cute as I think I do.

Now that I have weekends free, I have more time to do stuff like that, as well as clean the heck out of the kid's room. I cleaned Julia's room today as much as I could. It's much better but still needs some love. That girl needs to find a place for her stuff. We helped Thomas with that and his room is often the cleanest one in the house. I also found myself sweeping around the laundry machine, which had obviously never been done and putting watercolors and brushes into bags and labeling it with a big black sharpie. I've been wanting to do this stuff forever, but haven't had time!

Sigh of relief.

Some things I'm good at...some I am not. One that I am not good at is starting the roll of tape once it has been used already.

Getting those little tabs of tape to turn back into one wide piece of tape is frustrating.

Now that I have apparently used up all my insurance on my phone, I need a new safe case.. (Whoopsie, that thing is slippery! No, actually, no lie, one day I looked down at it sitting at my desk and it was cracked. I'm telling you the truth. The other time, I admit that I dropped it. I dropped the new one already again yesterday, but thankfully it didn't crack. Phew.)

Apparently the OtterBox is the strongest. But I looked up reviews and somehow the way it fits my phone is just so, that when you use the phone, it presses down and breaks the screen. Yeah, no thanks.

So I want something cute that will make my phone bounce when I drop it. I mean if I drop it. C'mon, what are the chances?

I have googled, etsyed, ebayed and mypointed every mix of leather phone sleeve samsung galaxy nexus flip case protector for the last two nights and still haven't found anything that I want. I will. I'm on a mission. I do not give up when it comes to shopping. It's out there, I can feel it.

Mama sings a beautiful song.

Julia: Mama, did you know that my teacher Miss J is not that good of a singer? But
Miss C sounds awesome every time she sings.

Mama: oh really Julia?

Julia: yes. And you sound just like Miss J.

3 full days of sick
+
2 full days of husband traveling for work
+dance class and karate and kickboxing thrown in
=
tired tired Mama
please weekend get here.

Julia's dress up gear involves a sword and a princess dress.

"I'm a princess ninja." she tells me.

You know what is not fun?

Waking up on Monday and thinking it is Sunday.

Weekend, come back!