Oh give me a home, where the ma-squitos roam!

I originally hail from the town of Burlington, Iowa.  It’s a place nestled on the banks of the Mississippi River.  It’s a nice little city that hasn’t changed much in the last 14 years since I’ve left.  If you’re not familiar with the midwest, it can be very humid and buggy in the summer.   Thankfully it was cooler, so the humidity and bugs weren’t as bad when we were there a few days ago, but I still got several bites that were pretty good ones!  I think that Iowa bugs are super bugs.  They could beat up Utah bugs in heartbeat!

The Princess and I were able to go home (I guess it’s really only home for me, Utah is home for her) to Iowa for six days.  We just got back last night, and I’m happy to report that she was very good on the plane both ways.  I’m even happier to report that I didn’t lose my patience with her even once and wish that I hadn’t brought her!  I suppose it helps that we had a mini-DVD player and new movies for her to watch.  Boy, is it hard to travel these days, with being able to go halfway across the country in 3 hours and watch movies the whole time.  We have it rough!

My grandma and aunt and uncle still live in Iowa, so I try and get back once a year to see them.  This time my cousins and aunt that live in Virginia were able to come also.  My mom was there too, but she got there about three days before I did.  It’s fun to go and see my family and “get back to my roots”.  The funny thing about Burlington to me now is, the roads seem so narrow and the speed limits low!  Oh, and what seems like 4-way stops on every other corner.  I guess I’ve gotten used to wide shoulders, turning lanes in the middle of the street and 4o mph speed limits just about everywhere!  I know, “waa waa!”

Here’s some pics to commemorate my trip!

Burlington has some of the most beautiful parks!

 

Don’t mess with the princess!  These are guns from one of the world wars, I think.  I loved climbing on these when I was a kid.

 

Continuing the tradition on making cherry pies in the fire.  We always made these at my grandma’s whenever we had a fire going.

 

We had lunch at Hotel Nauvoo, and they were doing free carriage rides!  Awesome!

 

We had to take some pictures of us in front of the temple!

 

My grandma!!  I love her!!

I just realized that I didn’t get any pictures of all of us together!  I’m going to have my cousin send me all of her pictures, and maybe she has some.  If she does, I’ll post it!

Wrong thing – right time

Is it bad to be glad that something bad happened when it did?  I know that makes no sense so let me explain.  I got home today from having lunch with the hubby and had a message from the G-man’s teacher on the machine.  She said that he fell off some equipment on the playground and cut his chin and got some blood on his shirt,  and that it was up to me whether or not I wanted him to come home.  So I ran to the school thinking that I would just give him some Tylenol and he could stay for the rest of the day.  When I got there, he looked kind of pathetic, and it tugged on the ole heartstrings, so I told him that he could come home.  I checked his chin, and it didn’t look too bad.  Then when we got home and I took the band aid all the way off to put a new one on, I saw that the cut was actually lower on his chin than the band aid was, and it was actually pretty deep.  Of course, doubting my skills at telling whether a cut needs stitches or not, I called the hubby and told him to come home and look at it.  Sure enough, he said it did, so I called Wee Care to take him in.

Let me insert a little tidbit here.  The princess jumped off the couch a couple of months ago and the wall magically jumped out in front of her and she gashed her head open.  In case you didn’t know, head wounds bleed like crazy. (we didn’t know that, we do now!!)  In a panic, we rushed her to the ER and suffice it to say, her 10 stitches cost a heck of a lot more than the current 3 in the G-man’s chin.

So the whole, “is it bad to be glad that something bad happened when it did?” question.  The princess and I are getting on a plane tomorrow morning to fly home to Iowa.  (we are leaving the house at 5:30am, yes, AM people!!)  I have been thinking that I’m so glad this happened today and not tomorrow!  First of all, the hubby isn’t taking time off from work because the boys will be in school all day.  So by the time he got home to look at it, it probably would have been too late to do much.  And hubby probably would have had to call me to see where to take him, and where the insurance cards are, and all that good stuff.  I handle all this stuff, so he hasn’t had to do anything like this.  I’m sure he could, he just never has.  The biggest reason of all that I’m glad this happened today, and not while I’m gone?  I would be a nervous wreck if I were 1300 miles away, and knew that my baby fell and needed stitches and I wasn’t there!  I know, pathetic, but I don’t even care!

Fun weekend

We had a fun long weekend in Vegas.  After the incredibly long drive, we had some good times. (I must report that my DJ abilities weren’t too bad, I only cut off a few songs here and there.  I just might be getting better!)   My BIL took us out on the new boat to Lake Mead on Friday and the kids got to go tubing, knee boarding, and wake boarding.  The water was marvelously warm, and a good time was had by all. The hubby, TRMinator and cousin, getting ready to go on the tube

 

I guess the princess had as much fun as she could take

 

Same with the G-man

 

I had to put this one in to prove that the hubby got up on the wake board!

It was fun to spend time with the family and sit around and chat with my SIL’s.  Now after spending time with my hubby’s family this weekend, I get to go home to my family next weekend!  Woot! Woot!

Just call me the DJ

We are going to Las Vegas this weekend for a nephew’s baptism.  The hubby’s brother and his family live there.  We haven’t been to Sin City in about 3 years because they have been coming up here for holidays and such lately.

Let me tell you something about myself.  Any trip in the car that is longer than an hour is like an eternity to me!  So the 7 hour drive to Vegas is just about torture.  It’s not that the kids are annoying, they are usually pretty good.  They have movies to watch, DS’ to play and I usually load them up with snacks. (although the high pitched whine of, “I have to go to the bathroom!!” when you are 50 miles from anything close to civilization is a bit unnerving)  It is me.  Sometimes I think I have the attention span of an gnat.  I get bored easily.  So to alleviate my boredom, I spin the tunes in the car.   I put myself in charge of the MP3 player and play the part of the DJ for our trip.  The hubby would like for me to insert here that I will be spinning the tunes on the new Zune HD.  For some reason he’s pretty excited about that, I think it has something to do with the fact that he is a techno junkie and any new electronic gadget is his drug of choice, especially if it is on the Zune platform.

Part of the problem with my DJ abilities is that while one song is playing, I am looking for the next song to play.  At least half of the time, I cut one song off to start another.  My ever patient hubby just laughs at me and waits (sometimes in vain) for me to get through one whole song, and every once in awhile,  a whole album.  It’s really kind of become our little joke.  I’m the schizo-DJ, and I think I am okay with that.  It could be worse, right?

A day of scrapbookin’

As previously mentioned, I spent Saturday scrapbooking with my sisters in law and my MIL.  So here are some pictures to prove to the husbands, that yes, in fact, there was some scrapbooking going on!  (there should probably be a bit more emphasis on the word some)

See, we are high tech when we scrapbook! 

 

Did you notice the TV isn’t even on?  That’s how focused we are!  (and by ‘we’ I mean ‘them’)

 

Wow, look at all those pages getting done!

 

Then there’s me.  Watching all the creative juices flow around me, but not quite able to tap it.

 

Oh look!  There’s the promised one page layout that I actually finished!

 

But wait there’s more!  Yes, I got two, count them, two layouts done.  Granted, everyone else was gone by the time that I finished the second one, but that’s okay.  I got two events in my children’s lives scrapbooked.  Now for the other 999 that I still have to do!

Friday Ramblings

If I follow the template of the blogs that I read, I should be calling this Random Friday, but I’m going to be a rebel and buck that trend.  (boy, am I rebelling or what!!) 

Right now I am relishing the fact that I don’t have anywhere I have to be at any certain time!  I do have to go to the store at some point today, but that can be whenever.  Oh yeah, I guess I have to get the boys from school too.  Oh crap!  I told the TRMinator that I would go to the library for him also.  Well, I guess I do have stuff to do today, so I probably shouldn’t sit here all morning.  Oh well, it was nice will it lasted.

So the princess started preschool this week.  I got some pictures of her on her first day, but it didn’t even occur to me to take pictures of the boys on their first day.  I don’t think it has occurred to me for the last several years.  I might get more worked up about it, but I know they could care less.

Funny back to school story that I’ve been meaning to write down that actually happened a couple of years ago.  On the G-man’s first day of  1st grade, I made him his lunch, but he also had some money in his account because they eat school lunch on pizza day.  He ate his home lunch, then went and told them his name and ate school lunch also.  I just laughed when I found out he ate 2 lunches.  I can just picture the look on his face when he realized that all he had to do was tell them his name and he got to have school lunch too!  Of course I explained to him, that that’s not how it’s supposed to work, but it’s still pretty funny.

TRMinator and the hubby are going camping tonight for scouts.  G-man was going to go too, but now I think he’s changed his mind when he found out his friend wouldn’t be there.  Glad it’s them and not me. (I hate camping)

Tomorrow I get to go scrapbooking with my sisters in law.  I’m missing out on the Scrapbook  Expo tonight, (the whole, hubby is gone, thing kind of leaves me with the other two kids, and I am NOT taking them to the Expo!) but I’m going to my MIL house tomorrow to scrapbook with the girls.  Actually it will be closer to me just watching them with a blank look on my face while they get tons done.  They are all immensely talented, while I am just ho hum.  I’ll be lucky if I get a page done.  Oh well, family time, right?  That’s the spirit.

I think this is probably enough rambling for now.  I’ll try and come up with something good next week!  (don’t hold your breath)

I’m covered in glitter!

Man, glitter has a way of sticking to you like no other!  The reason I am covered in glitter?  Halloween!!  That’s right, Halloween is in a perilously close 53 days.  I think that this is my second favorite holiday, Christmas being my first.  I love Halloween because I love making my kids costumes.  This is the one time of year that I really go all out sewing things.

I guess you could say that I know my way around a sewing machine.  When I was growing up my mom ran an alterations business from home, so I just watched her and learned how to do it.  Whenever my mom got a new sewing machine, she would keep her old one and that one would be mine.  I have memories of her sewing on her machine, sewing for people, and I would be on my machine making my dolls clothes with whatever scraps of fabric were lying around.

So you would think with a master seamstress for a mother, that I would have had all homemade costumes, right?  Wrong!  I didn’t want homemade ones when I was a kid.  Back in my day, (you know when we had to walk to school uphill both ways) I always looked forward to the day when we go to go to Jacks (the Iowa version of Shopko, which coincidentally was bought out by Shopko about 10 years ago) to pick out my costume.  I remember all the boxes would be lined up on the shelf just waiting to go home with me!  This was the day of plastic molded masks and vinyl printed dresses that made up the body.  I loved it!  I can’t remember what I was any year, I just remember what seemed like an eternity of boxes for me to pick from!   Ah, good times.

My kids are not so lucky.  Or they are lucky depending on your point of view.  Usually they can pick what they want to be, some years, though, I have to prod them in the right direction.  For instance, this year the princess wanted to be Cinderella, which I was okay with, and was all ready to make.  Then I went to go get the pattern and saw a really cute fairy type one, and decided that she needed to be Tinkerbell instead because that would be much more fun for me to make.  She likes Tinkerbell, so it’s not a huge deal.  Maybe she can be Cinderella next year. 

The TRMinator wanted to be a cowboy this year.  At first I told him no, that was too boring, but now that I’ve decided to undertake the crazy task of making a Star Wars Clone costume for the G-man, TRMinator may get his wish to be a boring cowboy.  No offense to anyone who is a cowboy this year, I just thought it would be boring to make.  I mean, what else would I make besides a vest? 

Now, I guess it’s time to get back to the glitter.  Only 53 days to go!

What’s that smell?

Aahh, Labor Day, the smell of fall is in the air.  Well, fall can just take it’s smell and go back to where it came from, because I am not ready to give up summer yet!  Summer just seemed way too short this year.  Here in Utah we had a rather long, cold and wet spring.  I was wearing jeans into June, for pete sake!  That’s just not right!

It didn’t help that my kids are on year round school, and they only had a six week summer.  I enjoy having my kids home because once school starts, the homework starts.  I found that the best way for my G-man to get his homework done in a timely fashion is to do little games and incentives with him.  I’ve got a limited repertoire of those, so once he’s tired of those I’m not sure what we’ll do.  As of now, I can still keep up with the TRMinator’s 6th grade math.  Give me a few more months, and I’m sure I won’t.  That’s when the hubby is going to have to step in and take over.  (He still uses all that stupid math that we learned in high school that we all thought we’d never use again!)

For some reason I’m also having a hard time adjusting to the schedules again.  Which is weird because I’m usually a very schedule-oriented person.  I’m just not ready to be running all the time yet.  Between soccer practice, piano lessons and two boys in scouts, there is something everyday.  

Fall is here whether I like it or not.  I guess that just means I’ll have to get ready for… Halloween!! (more on that tomorrow!)

Taking the plunge

I have decided to enter the world of blogging.  I’m not quite sure what possessed me to do such a crazy thing, maybe the fact that several of my friends have blogs and it seemed like fun, or I  am deluded into thinking that someone might actually want to know the mundane happenings of my life.  Either way, I’m taking the plunge.

In case you happened upon this blog by mistake, stay and hang out!  Let me tell you a little about myself.  I am married to a computer whiz extraordinaire,  who, in a small corner of his office, in a very unobtrusive way, is running the world!  (his words, not mine)  I have three great kids, who I am sure will be mentioned on here from time to time.  The TRMinator is 11, going on 35.  He is a very sweet boy that is growing up fast, which makes me feel old!  The G-man is 8, and is into Legos and annoying the princess.  The aforementioned princess is 4, and the only girl, hence the title.  

Hopefully this will be a fun alternative to keeping a journal, if you can call it an alternative, since I don’t keep a journal, and haven’t since I was about 19.  Oh well, call it what you may, this is a peek into my life!