Happy birthday to my brown eyed girl

I can’t believe my baby turned 5 yesterday!  I think she had a fun day.  It would probably depend when you would have asked her.  Let me give you a rundown of her day.

She had school yesterday and it was her snack day also, so she brought cupcakes to share with everyone.  She came out of school wearing a birthday crown, and on the way home I told her that it was hers and she got to keep it.  Apparently she didn’t realize that because she got really excited and told me that, “This is the best day ever!!”  Not two minutes later, this was her state of mind.

   

All because I wanted her to put her hands down so I could get a picture of her shirt.  She proceeded to stomp up the stairs to her room crying, “This is the worst day ever!”

I guess she wanted to make a heart with her hands when I took her picture.  Once I let her, she was happy.

Next we went to McDonald’s with a play place for lunch.  She was crying when we left there as well, but that was because someone stepped on her hair when she was going down the slide.  I guess we’ll excuse that one.

After I took her shopping that afternoon to spend her birthday money that she got from my grandma, we went to Boondocks for her family party.  She was pretty excited to go there, but her brothers may have been a little more excited.   They were anxious to play laser tag and discussed their strategies for days. 

After dinner and games we went home for cake and ice cream and presents.  My mom’s neighbor made her cake.

She was very excited when she saw it.  I should have gotten a picture of her reaction, but I didn’t.

All in all it was a pretty good day.  She only had a couple of meltdowns, so I think we could call that successful.  It’s hard to believe that my baby girl isn’t a baby anymore!

Back in my day…

Bear with me as I wax nostalgic for a bit.

Is it just me, or did life seem to be much simpler 20 years ago.  I remember when I was a kid, growing up in Iowa, life seemed to be easy and relaxed. 

We had a little corner market not too far from my house called Balbort’s.  They had a few groceries (my mom said they were overpriced, so you only bought those if you were out of something and didn’t want to run all the way to the store) but what I remember most was the candy section.  I could have stood there all day perusing the selection of goodies to try and decide what I wanted.  They also had candy that actually cost a penny.  They were little individually wrapped red hard candies.  Since they were red, you would assume that they were cinnamon, but actually they were strawberry flavored.  I loved to get those because I could get a lot with whatever change I might have had.

There was also a 7-11 not too far away.  We would cut through the neighbor’s yard and walk down the back alley to the store and get Big Gulps.  Back in those days, that was a treat.  We also thought they were huge at 34 oz.  The 100 oz. Maverik mug nowadays would put those to shame!

One of my favorite memories was when my brother and I would go on  bike rides around the cemetery.  You might think that sounds creepy, but we had one of the most beautiful cemeteries, and it was pretty big, so we could ride around for what seemed like hours.  There were so many hills and twists and turns that it made it seem like we were on a treasure hunt the whole time.

I hope that when my kids are my age, they can look back on their time growing up and think that they had the best childhood too.

Drum roll, please…

Today is my mother’s birthday.  If you know her, you may somewhat comprehend what a momentous occasion this is.  If you have grown up with her, as I have, you know that it should be considered a national holiday, and needs to be celebrated as such by her family.

The funny thing about my mom and birthdays is, she really doesn’t care if you get her presents, although they are a bonus.  She especially doesn’t care if you spend very much on said presents.  In fact, she loves cheap crap!  (I think she has used those words in the past, so don’t blame me!)  The key to making my mother happy on her birthday is just to make a big deal about it.  She wants the celebrations and the accolades that go with having birthdays, and she wants to feel like it is her special day.  Trust me, I’ve had it drilled into me now, for… well, let’s just say a little over 30 years.  I really don’t know anyone else like that!  So here’s my shout out to my mom on her birthday!!

Socks, socks, and more socks!!!

What is with the socks laying all over my house?!  I swear they are multiplying and replenishing all over my floors.  I don’t think I can walk into a single room and not find at least one pair on the floor.

The root of the sock saga is that the G-man doesn’t like to wear them.  He says they are “uncomfortable”.  As soon as he walks in the door he takes the pair that he is wearing off.  Sometimes they land by the front door, but the majority of the time they land next to where he sits down.  Then when it’s time to go anywhere, he goes and gets a new pair, then when we get back,  that pair winds up on the floor, and so on and so forth.

Since that is G-man’s mode of operation, the Princess has decided that if it works for him, it will work for her, so her socks are flung around as well.  I’m starting to think that maybe I need to put some super glue inside each one so that when they put them on, they stay on and they can’t get them off!  (insert evil laugh here)  That will solve my sock problem!

Wordless Wednesday… not really wordless, but at least it’s Wednesday

 

The amusing thing about this picture is that I have one of each of my boys doing this, reaching for a Cheerio that dropped.  This is the G-man, the one I have of TRMinator is an actual picture on real photo paper.  It was taken before the days of digital cameras.  Here’s a history lesson for all you youngins out there, there was a time that we actually had to take film to the store to be processed!  If you were feeling rich, you could pay extra to have it back in an hour, otherwise you had to wait a day or two before you could see your pictures.  I know, crazy, huh?!?  It’s a good thing those dark ages are past!  Phew!!

The case of the missing ring pops

I’ve got another funny G-man story.  (I’m trying to distract myself from the whole house hunting situation.)

Last summer G-man went to Cub Scout day camp for the first time.  They have a trading post there where they can buy cheap crap as souvenirs if they want.  I gave him $5 to spend.  When TRMinator went the month before I gave him the same amount of money and he bought stuff to give to his brother and sister.

Well, when G-man got home from camp, I asked him how it went, if he had fun, and what he did.  After his answers of “Good, yep, and lots of stuff,”  I asked him what he got from the Trading Post.  He said that he got ring pops, (his favorite candy) one for him, one for TRMinator, and one for the Princess.  When I asked where they were, he said that when he was eating his, he dropped it in the dirt, so he decided to eat TRMinators since his was ruined.  Then he didn’t want to bring something home for the Princess and not TRMinator, so he ate hers too.  I just laughed!  That would be my G-man!

Just bottom-line it for me

Have you ever noticed that when politicians or celebrities are interviewed (mostly politicians) and they are asked a point blank question, they usually answer with a round about answer that never actually answers the question they were asked?  That really annoys me.  I’m the type of person, that if I ask you something, tell me what I want to know.  Don’t give me a bunch of stuff that I didn’t ask for.

I’m having a few issues with the G-man’s teacher right now.  When I logged onto the school district’s website this morning, I looked at his grades and saw about 5 or 6 missing assignments.  This is not a new occurrence, nor is the fact that I haven’t gotten any notes about missing work, I had to discover this little fact all on my own.  Most teachers send a note home every week saying if there is missing work, or not, and if there is, what it is that they are missing.  I don’t believe that we have even had one of these notes this year from G-man’s teacher.

When I have discovered this before, I sent in a note saying that G-man has some missing assignments, and asked for those to be sent home so we could do them.  What came home was just a mess of stuff from his desk, none of which were the actual missing assignments.  So the last time, I thought I would try a different tactic.  Thinking I needed to be more specific, I printed out the page of his scores and highlighted the missing work, and asked for those things to be sent home.  Well, the same thing happened.  So today, I am going to have to go in and talk to her after class and try and pin her down.  She’s usually very vague in what the assignments are, and sometimes I have a hard time keeping up with her thought process, no wonder the G-man is struggling.  Very frustrating!

We are going with our soon-to-be real estate agent (we still haven’t actually signed a contract) to look at some houses this afternoon.  There is one house that we are going to look at that is in a fabulous area, has great square footage and is at a fantastic price.  The problem is that it is a short sale.  In case you’re not sure what that is, a short sale is when the owners of a house owe more than what they can sell the house for and the bank is willing to take a loss just to sell the property.  Usually you can get a great deal when you buy short sales, the problem is, they can take forever. 

What we know, because we have done our homework, is that most of the time, the listing price for a short sale is completely arbitrary.  The agent and homeowner can list the home for whatever they want.  That doesn’t mean that the bank will actually take that price.  The bank will usually take about 88% of what is owed on the home.  Which, in this case I’m sure, can be a far cry more than what is listed as the asking price.

When I was talking to our agent this morning, he was going on about what a great opportunity this house could be and what a great deal it is.  He seemed a bit surprised when I didn’t share his enthusiasm quite as much.  I told him that I wanted him to get me a realistic number for that house because I knew that the asking price wasn’t.  They have been dropping the price just so they can get an offer to stall the foreclosure process.  I think our agent will find out soon enough that I am not interested in his fluff and his sales pitch.  I want the bottom line numbers.  I want to know exactly how much it is going to cost me.  I don’t put a lot of stock in conjecture, I want solid numbers.  I don’t care how much I like a house, if I can’t afford it, then that’s it.  There’s no such thing as “stretching ourselves” in my book.  It will be interesting to see how this whole house hunting process goes!