Happy Birthday to Me A Day Early

Yay! Tomorrow is my birthday. I am almost 30. That scares the crap out of me :( I have already gotten some nice presents from people, the ones who didn't know not to send them to me before my birthday - lol! I'm saving the cards to open til tomorrow, though, I'm not a total birthday Grinch. Besides, I like it this way, it's like my birthday all month long! I'm so smart.....

What a Week.....

Well, I am totally slacking on my posts. In my defense, this has been an incredibly trying week. Adam left for TDY 3:30 Monday morning. The next day, Sue and I and the boys had TONS of fun swimming at her hotel and hanging out all day - I am so lucky to have such a great MIL! But she and the lady she had driven down with left Tuesday morning, and that's when the fun began.....

Tuesday I decided to go to Sam's Club and stock up on some basics so I wouldn't have to drag both kids to the store as often. Cereal, pasta, flour, diapers, yogurt, ground beef.....etc, etc. That was all fine and dandy. On the way home I remembered I had stuff to drop off at Airman's Attic, so I stopped by there also. In the parking lot, I realized that my driver's side window, which was all the way down because of the beautiful sunny weather, was now STUCK all the way down, and there was a thunderstorm on its' way! I hurried into AA and got my stuff done, came out, and it had rained, hard. So, I figured, "I'm a trooper, no big deal" and set my jacket on the seat and drove home. I left the flour in the car because I was tired and frankly, didn't want to deal with it. By now, it was almost time to pick Anthony up from school, so we went inside for a potty break and got back in the car. I tried my window again, and lo and behold, got it to work a tiny bit, then pulled it up the rest of the way, where it now stays. Picked up Anthony from school, then needed to unload the flour and get it in the house. As soon as we pulled in the driveway, the neighbor kids wanted to come over and play. I started unloading the non refrigerated stuff, and the flour was last.....as I picked it up, the bag got caught on a metal piece sticking out of the stroller, and.....yup, you guessed it, half a 25 pound bag of flour, on the garage floor and in the back of my van. Then the kids and their friends started running around in it, creating a tornado/whirlwind of flour, spreading it all over the house, the garage, and the driveway. I sent their friends home and went inside and wanted to scream.

So that was Tuesday. On to Thursday.....

The kids were stir crazy in the afternoon, so I decided to let them run around outside while I sat on the back porch and tried to read. The dog kept trying to get out, so I closed the inside door so he couldn't push the outside door open. If only I had known Ayden had been playing with the push lock on the inside door earlier........I tried to open the door a few minutes later, only to find it locked. Yup. The front door was locked with the deadbolt, because I lock it as soon as I walk inside. The door from the garage to the house was locked because I was freaked out about someone being able to go in my van and use the garage door opener, then get into the house that way. And of course, safety-conscious me had gone around to all the windows the first night Adam was gone and made sure they were locked. So we were pretty much screwed. The only good thing was that I had my cell phone in my pocket. Oh, and I should mention, there was a thunderstorm coming, we were ALL barefoot, and Anthony was in his underwear-lovely!
I called Security Forces and explained what happened. The guy was probably thinking I was a moron...he asked me if I had my car keys so I could drive to meet someone at the housing office to get a spare key. No, I said, they were locked inside with my house key. How did you lock yourself out again, he asks? So I explained to him the craftiness of my two year old....I don't think he got it. But a few minutes later, while I was sitting in the rocker in the garage balling my eyes out, and the kids were strapped in their car seats in the van because they kept running down the street and I got tired of chasing them, a VERY nice, polite housing maintenance guy pulled up and introduced himself: Hi, I'm so and so (I wasn't listening to a word he said) from housing maintenance.....YAY! He saved the day. He was so nice, and he didn't even say anything about me crying, which was a GOOD THING, because I probably would have cried harder. He just said, it's alright, it happens all the time. So it was all over.

I know there was more stuff that happened this week, but I either can't remember, or I'm purposefully blocking it all out, lol. Those are just some of the things that really stuck out. Yesterday I ended up having BOTH kids at the CDC for a few hours, luckily the 2 year old class had a spot because somebody had cancelled, and I was RIGHT on top of that one! It was a welcome break, I got some housework done, and enjoyed a quiet house for a few hours. And it ended up only costing 12 dollars for 4 hours! I think that's a pretty sweet deal. I may just start doing that once a week.....

So today I'm waiting for a call back from a wildlife guy I called last night because some of the neighbor kids found a bird that was just a little bit older than a baby that had hurt it's foot. It's still sitting in a box outside on my back porch (don't worry, it's still alive). The dog keeps trying to figure out where that scrumptious smell is coming from every time I take him outside. It looks a little bit better today, but what do I know?? I'm just really hoping this guy doesn't stick me with a thousand dollar bill or something, for this bird somebody found on the ground. I love animals as much as the next guy, don't get me wrong, but I can't afford to save every baby bird who falls out of its' nest!

Well, on to see what today brings in this adventure called MILITARY LIFE.........

Yuck.

Waaahhh. Wah. Wah. I'm sick. I'm pathetic. I feel like a limp vegetable. Yuck. Thanks Anthony!

Motivate Me Monday and grrrr.......

I'm so annoyed! I finally have a Target in the area, and they don't have fresh produce. I found a coupon for a dollar off a lb. of apples, and they are on sale at Target for 1$/lb. Grr. I wonder if the commissary has apples on sale....

I'm really into apples because I used the dehydrator to make apple chips this weekend. They turned out soooo yummy - just ask Ayden, he ate them all in sacrament meeting, lol. Anyway....here's my list of things to do today for Motivate Me Monday:


-figure out if Ayden is actually enrolled in Early Head Start next year

-finish the pile of laundry waiting for me

-be consistent with Ayden's time-outs (that is obviously an ongoing one!)

-potty-training (another ongoing one)


I love going through and finding everyone's blogs with cool stuff on them. I found a really great one where the girl uses her food storage to make a bunch of great sounding recipes (store what you use, use what you store). Her link is on the top right. If you can't see it, her blog is called Safely Gathered In.

What's for dinner?

I'm sick of obsessing over being a housewife. That's it. Just plain sick of it. I guess I do a pretty crappy job of it, because my house is NEVER clean. And I always forget about making dinner til the last minute. My laundry is never 100% done. There are always dishes in my sink. That's the frustrating part - it NEVER ENDS. Ever. If I had a 9-5 job, there would be a beginning and an end.
When you're a housewife, your job starts at 3 in the morning when your little one wakes up puking (and of course, you're the one who has to get up with him, because your husband has to get up for WORK in the morning, which you know NOTHING about.) Then you lay down on the couch with your child, hoping he'll go back to sleep, and wake up just in time to jump in the shower and take your other child to school.
Take one child to school, then the other one is off to the doctor. While you sit at the doctor with "sick child", he starts to throw up. So you quickly run with him to the bathroom. While you're in the bathroom, the nurse comes out to the waiting room and calls you, and you miss your appointment, because you're in the bathroom. So you now have to wait another hour and a half or so (with a sick, whiny child who smells like vomit) for the next appointment, but you think, "At least they HAD another appointment", because part of being a mom is trying to stay positive. You get the doctor over with, then you realize you have no food in the house and you have to go to the store. Yay! Fun!
You get to the store, and your child, (who started feeling better about 2 minutes before you saw the doctor, so now you feel like a total jackass for taking him in, and think the doctor must think you're a total hypochondriac about your son's health) has a huge tantrum because they don't have the special shopping carts with the trucks attached to them that he likes. So, you bribe him with (insert bribe, Ex: goldfish, candy, fruit snacks, chocolate), and you start shopping. Your mind is in 72 different places, so by the time you get to the checkout line, you realize none of the foods in your cart even resemble any complete meals, but it's too late now, because the lady is already scanning them, and there are 3 people behind you in line. Plus, by this point, your sick child is screaming because he's tired and wants to get out of the cart.
So, you get home, get the food put away, put sick child down for a nap, and fall asleep in the bed with them. You wake up just in time to pick up your older child from school. By this time, sick child is now fine, and both children bounce off the walls because they said "Mom can we have marshmallows for a snack?" And you, in your tiredness, say, "OK, sure, that's fine", without even listening to what they asked for. You finish up the chores you should have been doing when you collapsed into bed with sick child this morning, then it's about that time, and husband comes home and asks, "What's for dinner?"
Now, to a non housewife, they would skim over this story and say, "So what? You took a kid to the doctor and the grocery store, then came home and took a nap? What's so hard about that?" But to a housewife, they see all the emotions attached to this day; guilt, sadness, self-doubt, frustration, helplessness......you name it.
So the whole point of this post is that I am sick of obsessing over being the "perfect everything". I just can't do it! I'm happy with who I am and the way my house looks, I don't have mold growing or bugs crawling everywhere, and my kids are happy and healthy. I wish I could say I don't care what other people think about my life, but I do. I'm trying REALLY hard not to, though. I hate it when people think housewives don't do anything. It's harder using your head than your body.

I should know better.....

I really should. I should know by now that if I leave Ayden alone with a drink....he's going to spill it. Duh Kathryn.