Yesterday, I took Jax out to buy his First Communion outfit. We decided to nix the suit so we just purchased a pair of navy dress pants and a white shirt (with clip-on tie!). I also have a navy vest that he might wear too. Anyway, I had to buy size 10! Granted, the pants are size 10 slim, but still size 10!!! Where did my little boy go?

We have had pouring rain for the past three days so baseball games have been canceled (Dex's was on Friday night and Jax's was yesterday). Today, we were invited to a picnic bbq at a local park and it pissed rain. Fortunately, the park has a large pavillion that had a fireplace so we stayed relatively warm and dry. It was fun but would have been great if the weather were nicer. It is so cold that I might have to turn the heat back on in the house!

O.M.G.

Someone please shoot me if I ever say that I will host a home birthday party for a six year old again. Seriously. It was so challenging (what a nice word) to keep these kids from killing each other or wrecking the place. The good part is that Dex said he had a great time and did not want the party to end. :)

Here is a picture of him:


(please disregard the toothpicks that I forgot to remove before the photo).

And here are all of the wizards:



Again, I do not know why these pictures look so grainy. Click for bigger if you like.

Things that made this party interesting are:
- the kid who showed up after his mom said they were not coming
- the kid who arrived one hour late because his parents mixed up the party time with a party for next weekend
- the lone girl who wanted to go home because the boys were "Too loud!"
- the milk allergic child who insisted that it was ok for him to have ice cream (after his grandma called me and told me he could not have any).

Thankfully the rain held off during the party so they were able to go outside for a bit. Now it is raining on and off so we are just waiting to find out if Dex's baseball game is canceled. Oh, I hear thunder. Now I will just wait for the call...

Early Weekend

The kids have Friday off school so I decided it was the day to have Dex's birthday party (his birthday is on Wednesday). He wanted a Harry Potter theme. I tried to talk him out of it since I have BTDT (Jax's 5th birthday) but he was adamant. So, I made black robes (capes). Again. I did find some little glowing wands so I did not make wands this time. The activities will be Divination Class (guess the number of jelly beans in a jar), Potions Class - I made purple cabbage juice and it will turn red when we add vinegar and greenish/blue when we add laundry detergent (I got that one from here. Last will be Spells and I will have them practice some spells and we will have them make a bottle of pop explode (same as Jax's science experiment. They will also pin the scar on Harry's head then eat pizza and cake. I hope Dex enjoys it!

The rest of the weekend will be filled with baseball (Friday night and Saturday afternoon) as well as a bbq on Sunday. Let's hope the rain eases up some.

MIL is arriving on Tuesday. She really wanted to come for Jax's First Communion but it will be nice that she will also be here for Dex's birthday.

Mom Is So Mad

Dex has been walking around for the past couple of days singing "Mom is so maaaad!" in a kind of familiar tune. I finally asked him today why he is singing that.

Dex: I saw "Drake and Josh" singing it.
Mom: When were they singing it? I don't remember that song.
Dex: Well, do you know "The Blues Brothers"? They dressed up as "The Blues Brothers" and sang it over and over again "Mom is so maaad! ba-da-da da-da Mom is so maad!"
Mom: (spits her tea) Dex! They are singing "I'm a Soul Man"!
Dex: Oops! (walks away singing "I'm a Soul Man!"

Ramblings and Rumblings

Busy weekend for us. I took the kids to their school's jamboree (fun fair) on Saturday then we had two baseball games (overlapping at two different fields, of course). After the second game (ended at 6:45pm), the team set up a camping grill in the parking lot and we had a team bbq. It was a lot of fun.

Today, after church, I had to run Jax over to have his baseball team picture taken. It was originally scheduled for two three weeks ago but was canceled due to rain. Afterwards, I took Dex to a birthday party at a skating rink. He had a blast! At first he said he was not going to skate. Then he did get on the ice but would not let go of the wall. The rink had 5 gallon buckets that kids could use to keep their balance. So, after skating around for an hour, he was able to skate unassisted (not well, but he could skate!). See for yourself!

The next week is still very busy. I am so looking forward to June. Tomorrow, I have a doctor's appointment (just a check-up). I will have to boot home to get Jax to swimming lessons on time. On Tuesday, Dex has an allergist appointment. Friday, the kids do not have school but I am having Dex's birthday party that day. I need to sew 10 black capes (Harry Potter Robes) before then. Oh, and plan the rest of the party. I have no idea what the kids will do besides pin the scar on Harry's head (yes, this will be very similar to Jax's 6th Birthday Party when he too had a Harry Potter theme).

Oh, and Stephen told me that his mom is coming for Jax's First Communion after all. She wanted to come then said no then she called today and said she was coming. She arrives next Tuesday. Stephen said he is not sure how long she is staying but it will at least be a week.

I still do not know exactly what Jax will wear for First Communion. I will need to take him out shopping next weekend. Oh, and we need to make a banner for Jax to hang on the end of the pew by next week.

I am behind on my blog and forum reading. I have completely knitting and felting that big booga bag but have not yet finished putting the handles on it! I have to start the next book club selection too. I am so looking forward to the end of this month so I can take a breath!

Here is a photo of me with the lowlights and new cut:

I don't know why it looks so grainy. Click on the picture to see it full-sized.

May has got to be the busiest month of the year! I swear it is busier this month than December!

So I caved. I went six months, one week and 3 days without colouring my hair. And it looked it! But today, I went to a salon and had some lowlights put in my hair to blend in the grey. I hated that line of grey/brown hair so much. The lowlights are subtle - you can still tell that I have grey hair but it blends in so nicely and that line is pretty much gone. I will go back in a couple of months for lowlights again but she will put in fewer. I also had a haircut to chop off the bottom 2" of my hair because it was dry-dry-dry! And it was too heavy for summer. But now it looks so much nicer.

I cannot believe I waited six months to do this.

Miscellaneous Stuff

Thought I would share some photos today.

This is a family picture taken yesterday (Mother's Day). Notice the bad hair day had by all (Gray hair for me and too long, Jax needs a haircut desperately, Cars and Dex need to brush their hair and Stephen is just losing his:


This picture is of a big booga bag that I am knitting as a gift:


This is the stepping stone that Dex made in Art Start:

Happy Mother's Day

It is early but so far my day had been wonderful. I slept in until almost 8am! Whoo-hoo! Then, I came downstairs and all three of my boys rushed over to hug me. Then I opened presents - stepping stone from Dex, Still life pastel drawing from Jax, Pez dispensers from Cars and a new cell phone from Stephen.

Not sure what else is in store for the day but I know it will be a fabulous day!

And here's a picture of my phone!

My friend put her dog down today. G-dog was 13 years old and was almost crippled. He could barely walk and he often fell down trying to walk across the floor. She struggled with the decision and after consulting with a friend (who is also a vet), she decided it was time.

The problem was that her dh did not think it was time. He accused her of rushing it and making the decision because G-dog was an "inconvenience" to her (yes, true it was inconvenient for her to carry a 60 pound dog up and down the stairs). He then told the kids that their mom was making a hasty decision and last night told them that maybe it was not yet time. How unfair to those poor children to do that to them knowing that their dog was going to be gone the next day.

Then he told my friend that he resented her for making the decision, that he probably will hold it against her for a long time and might not be able to forgive her.

Ok, the guy is obviously hurting and upset that their family pet is being put down but that is just so cruel and mean to say to someone who has to make the decision on her own. He refused to see that the dog could not walk down the hall without struggling or falling. He is the one being unfair to the dog for making G-dog suffer because he is not ready to say good-bye.

And my poor friend is then going through this alone. Well, she of course has her friends but not the support of the one person whom she really needs support from.

This has opened my eyes too because I can see that I have such a wonderful husband. There is no way he would ever say such cruel and hurtful things to me. Ever.

Extinction

Polar Bears have been put on the endangered species list. So why the hell is some "Big Game Hunter" allowed to pay money for a licence to shoot them? This guy paid $45K for a chance to bag a polar bear. The weird thing is that the bear he killed is actually a Polar Bear/Grizzly Bear cross that they have never seen before in nature. Wow - how cool! Bears who have a very slim chance of ever crossing paths and their mating seasons overlap a little bit managed to get along for a short time to mate and produce an offspring. And some dumbass shot it!

I am not morally opposed to hunting. If you eat what you hunt then great...but to shoot an endangered animal is morally wrong. Wrong. So this guy manages to hunt and shoot an animal that is a cross between two endangered animals (grizzlies are endangered too).

I am not an animal lover, normally. I mean I like cats, can tolerate dogs, am in awe of horses but that's about it. Spiders and bugs are for squishing only. Cows and pigs are for eating. But please leave the polar bears alone.

Ack!

1) A bear was sighted going into the small wooded area that borders the north side of the school yard. No recess for the kids all day.
2) Tuesday afternoon = baseball practice for Declan. I remembered at 7:45pm - three hours late.
3) Incisional Endometriosis hurting like a bugger today.
4) A friend is putting her dog down on Friday and I cannot stop tearing up about it. I don't even particularly like dogs.
5) I signed up to deliver a meal to someone who recently had a baby. I remembered about it on Sunday night at 11pm. The meal was supposed to be delivered the previous Monday.

I need a vacation.

Ok, I think I am over my spider scare. Thankfully, I have not seen another spider - big or small - all weekend!

Book club is to meet this coming week and we are in for a tense meeting. Long story but host first asked to have the meeting in a restaurant then asked to change the date. Now one cannot make it because her dh will be out of town. Another is ticked off that it got moved to a date she would prefer it not be held so she is going to boycott it - maybe. Another told me she thought there was bad blood between the host and the boycotter anyway (I did not suspect that) so she thinks boycotter will diss host.

OMG! I cannot believe this is all happening. I do not want our book club splintered like this! It feels so high school. Let's hope that it will all blow over and we will be back to smiling, reading and laughing by next month.

Oh and the book? "The Virgin's Lover" by Phillipa Gregory. I am thoroughly enjoying it!

Shaky

No kidney infection! I just must finish out my round of antibiotics and I shall be all better. :)

I wish the cure for embarrassment was as simple. I have just a moment ago realized that I did a complete bone-head move for Museum Night last night. I put up the wrong description of the art work for the kindergarten class. I described the art and "based on" artist for a different project! And about eleventy billion people read it? OMG - I am blushing as I write this. I feel like a total moron! ~breathe~

And to add to my moronic state, I had to have my neighbour come over this morning at 7AM to kill a enormous, gigantic, monstrous spider that was in my house. Jax woke me up just before 7:00 to tell me that there was a big spider downstairs. I asked him if he could get it but he said it was too high. I asked him to tell Stephen to get it. I thought Stephen was in the shower but it turns out he had left for work already! YIKES!

I bravely crept downstairs and almost swooned in fright at the sight of the monstrosity. It was up on the wall right where the wall and ceiling meet. There was no way I could get it myself. Not because of its location. Because of its size and location. I went as far as getting the fly swatter but I knew that I could not get it. What if I nicked it and it ran off (these suckers are FAST)? What would I do?!

So, I had to bite the bullet and wait until 7AM to call the neighbours. I got washed and dressed (there was no time for a shower!) and I called over there. Tom said he would be right over but I knew he was shaking his head in disbelief at me (backstory: I called him once about 4 years ago to kill one of these huge buggers, then another time to kill one but that time he was in my house painting it so it is not like he had to come far - only down from a 10 foot ladder, then last year because I saw what looked like a rolled up rubber band in the corner of my kitchen counter but almost fainted when I realized it was a spider).

Anyway, just after I called, Tom's wife, Lynn, arrived home from driving her dd to high school so she came over to kill the spider which was pretty humiliating. She was taken aback at the size of the thing but managed to squish it with seven kleenexes, then two damp paper towels to clean up the wall.

Ok, so just HOW big was this spider you may ask? Huge! The body was about an inch and a half long and the thick, meaty legs were about 2" long. ~shudder~ I frigging hate spiders. I had arachnophobia. I would sweat and swoon at the sight of spiders. Eventually, since there are always a billion spiders all over our rhodies and our deck in the summer, I was able to go outside without shaking to squish them, and in fact, I don't usually kill them anymore unless they are in my way (like on the bbq or in a chair). So, in one fell swoop, I have become a jumpy, nervous coward. All day long I have been flinching when, out of the corner of my eye, I spy a mark on the wall or the floor only to discover it is a piece of lego or a scratch in the paint.

I will probably have nightmares about them too. Time for a visit to the Crazy Doctor, I think.

In Over My Head

Why is it that everything always comes to a head at the same time on the same day (or close to it?). This is always the busiest time of the year for me and I always forget by September or whenever and commit to doing too many things that all end up occurring at the same time.

First Thing: Mother's Day tea and MOPS and I had volunteered to decorate our table. I bought pretty blue flowered paper plates and napkins for our table and a new blue (plastic) tablecloth which I spend 1.5 hours hot-gluing blue flowers onto until the wee hours of the night last night (word to the wise - hot glue MELTS plastic tablecloths and it burns skin very quickly!). The party store where I bought the paper goods also had these pretty blue flower-shaped lollipops so they were a nice touch to the table.

Second (and third and fourth) Thing(s): Art Start Museum Night. What a HUGE PITA. HUGE! I spent this afternoon while Cars napped creating name tags for the kindergarten class' Art Start projects (granted, I could have done this sooner but I knew I would have the time today so why not wait until THE LAST MINUTE?). After Cars awoke, we rushed to the school to put up the art. Ash watched Cars and Dex as the park for 1/2 hour while I put the art up (Jax was on a playdate). Except after 30 minutes, I was no where near done. The only thing I was near were tears! It took ONE POINT FIVE HOURS to put everything up and that was with HELP! I did Jax's class fine (it took 30 mins to tape up coloured butcher paper and then the projects) but then I had to the same thing for friggin *40* kindergarten classes and then glue on name labels (I was stupid not to have done this beforehand).

Anyway, I had to call Ash after the 30 mins and tell her to drop my kids off at the gym (she was just at the park beside the school). She came down and started helping me which I really appreciated. Then a really sweet couple (their dd is in Jax's class and they go to my church) came over because they were done putting up the art for one of the other classes and they spent 30 minutes applying pieces of tape to the art projects so I could just slap them up. OMG, I was soooooo grateful for their help. And like I said, that took 1.5 hours! I had NO idea that we would have to put up the butcher paper borders ourselves (we are talking two 4x8 feet sheets and two 4x12 feet sheets).

Fifth Thing: First Communion classes for Jax. Ok, no stress for me, right? WRONG! I realized he had not yet done his homework for the class. Also, because of the time of the class, we had to have dinner a little earlier. I was so exhausted and ready to drop that instead of driving home after dropping him off, I sat in the car and read a book. It was heavenly! A friend from book club, whose dd is also taking the classes, did the same thing. Ok, it seemed indulgent, spending 1.5 hours away from everyone and just reading reading reading, but really I was doing it to save money because the price of ga$ is nuts (at least that was my excuse to Stephen). ;)

So, this fall as I am signing up for school volunteering, MOPS volunteering, Religion classes and Little League for spring 2007, I will remember this day and hopefully have the sense to at least chose things that will not all culminate at the same time.

Now it is 10:30pm and instead of going to bed since I am exhausted, I am writing a very wordy blog entry. Ok, off to bed now.

Back Pain + Doc who is Out of the office =

Another trip to Urgent Care this afternoon.

I started having back pain today in the general area of my kidneys (on the left side) so I called my doctor who is out of the office and her receptionist told me to go to Urgent Care. Pfft! Right. So I called the nurse line provided through dh's work and they told me to go back to Urgent Care. So, I did. The infection does not seem to be cleared up according to the tests they ran. I am now on Cipro (so I am well protected against Anthrax!) and I have instructions to call them back on Friday afternoon because they should be able to tell from the tests they are running if I have a kidney infection (Forget them calling *me* - "So many people look at these results we cannot be sure if you will get a call or not so you should call us").

This is exhausting.

Recovering

Ok, the bladder infection is gone but the anti-biotics have caused another problem. Nothing that won't be better in a few days.

Stephen arrived home safely on Sunday. He had a great time. He lost money, ate well and enjoyed the company of his oldest and dearest friends. An all-around successful trip.

Today, I am going to take the stepping stones out of the moulds and wrap them in small-sized pizza boxes. The kids will get to take them home for Mother's Day this week...or maybe we should wait until next week since Mother's Day is not until the following Sunday? I will take a picture of Dex's and post it.

This week is "Teacher Appreciation Week". The kids were to take something in everyday this week for their teachers. I have lost the list of what goes in which day (like a flower one day, a small gift, a letter of appreciation, etc) so my kids' teachers have received nothing yet. I am so disorganized. Oh and trying to get Jax to write a letter of Appreciation for his teachers will be like pulling teeth. I will just get him to write "Thanks!".

Ok, I haven't had a shower yet today and I have to pack lunches (the Cars and Dex will eat at school while I take out the stepping stones, then Dex will go to class at 12:30).