The Brady Bunch

Halloween

2008-11-01T10:28:00.010-06:00

My, oh my! I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am to have Halloween over. Halloween is my favorite holiday, but this year was a little crazy. My girls are getting too old to really go trick-or-treating, although they still do some. But in an attempt to get them off teh streets on this drunken holiday, I suggested we have a Halloween party here at my house. I gave the girls carte blanche about how many people they invited, knowing that most kids would already have stuff they would be doing. But then, a few days before, panic set in. And the girls started getting all emotional and anxious. And I had just about had it.

Halloween morn' we were up early (having taken teh day off from work to spend with the girls) and did not have a moment to chill the entire day. I took teh girls out trick-or-treating at 5 so we could be back by 7 and finish putting together the stuff for the party. Kids started showing up at 7:30, even though the party started at 8. And we had the crazy mix of the 15-year-old-too-good-for-everyone high schoolers mixing with teh 14-year-old-we-are-the-top-of-the-food-chain middle schoolers and the 10-year-old-it-is-fun-to-make-prank-calls fifth graders. All roaming my house. While I did my best to be inconspicuous but still make sure noone was finding a dark room to do what teenagers do. Augh! And when my last kids left at midnight, I sat in shock looking at my house that I had spent the day getting perfect. And whimpering.

Anyway, here are some fun pics of the night!

The weekend again

2008-10-10T18:33:00.002-06:00

Boy, am I glad that the weekend is here. We have had a week! The most notable "thing" is that our cat got sick. Very sick. Now, remember, I do NOT like my cat. She scratched my kids so often and so badly that I nearly got rid of here about a year ago. However, Audrey LOVES her. Even if she has given her many, many scars. And she plead her case and cried big tears and gave me the puppy dog eyes. So, the cat got de-clawed instead of de-homed. Well, she just seems to get worse. She still has her back claws and has decided that my new black leather sofa is one of her many beds. Now, we have little scratch marks all over the sofa from her climbing up to sit on the headrest. She goes to bed in Megan and Audrey's room every night. Since our move to Sandy, she has decided that a new, fun activity is to get up at around 2 - 3 a.m. and paw at the door to get out. Since I can't sleep through it, I have to get up and let her out the back door. Every night. It's like having a baby again. One that I don't like. And I was nearly at my breaking point with her again when she bit Audrey on the nose the other night, enough to break the skin. I mean, serious consideration was given to taking her to the pound.

So imagine my surprise when, a few nights ago, I got a full night's sleep. No cat pawing at the door. I woke Megan up and, since the cat did not come running out at lightening speed, I asked her if (improbably) she let the cat out that night. "No," she replied, "she is still in here." And there she was, sleeping on Audrey's bed. Still. And when we got home for the day, she was still not up and moving. The next full night's sleep had me thinking that something serious was going on. By the third night, this cat that I had been thinking three days before about taking to the pound, was instead taken to a vet hospital. Where I spent money on keeping her around. Where I was told that I may have to spend more money to keep her around, because they weren't sure what was wrong with her. They just pulled a pediatric response and put her on antibiotics.

So now, I think she may be getting better. So the question is: What do I do with her if she recovers fully and gets back to her night-waking, nose-biting, litter box-stinking self???

Boys...

2008-09-09T20:48:00.007-06:00

Boy oh boy! We have boy fever in our house lately. First, Taylor, who has never been into boys, has suddenly developed her first honest to goodness crush. She is new to her school, and doesn't know the boys there very well, and has not been asked to Homecoming. Suddenly, she wants to go. She is looking at dresses and dropping hints with friends about the boy she likes...they are planning on having a dinner or some type of get-together to invite him so that she can spend more time with him. She has gone so far as to tell me that she plans to ask HIM to Dogpatch! Oh, no! It has begun.

Audrey has been boy crazy since birth, so her refreshened sense of boycraziness is no shock. What is more of a shock is how boys are treating her. Mind you, she is in the fifth grade. She told me tonight that a boy at school, who she doesn't like (because he's mean to me, Mom!) told her today that he liked her hair, and he liked her shoes. She told him to leave her alone and walked away, and he called after her, "Baby, come back!" 5TH GRADE!!!

Megan doesn't seem to have been bitten yet this year, so she is currently my only child that I can pretend is still my baby. Augh!

And all the while, I am still living in a very barren desert called my social life. Who'd have ever thunk that my kids would outdo me on this particular topic? Every one of my kids will probably be dating before I get around to it. (sigh) I guess it is just the life of a working single mom!

Adding some "Back-to-School" pics

The Bandwagon

2008-09-01T17:33:00.000-06:00

Well, since everyone I know has a Blog, I thought it was time our family jumped on the proverbial bandwagon. Family updates:

Taylor just started high school. Yes, that makes me officially old. She is taking French II MMM(Mother Made Mandatory) and Journalism. She is pretty excited about her new press credentials that she gets to go along with that class, and Mom is pretty excited that she is following in family interests. For those that don't remember, I was the newspaper editor in high school and it is one of my fondest memories of those years. Taylor has also joined the drama club and had her first meeting on Friday. She is still working at Classic Skating and loves it. It is fun to watch her getting more social.

Megan is in her last year of Middle School. She is taking Spanish II MMM. She is also having a lot of fun with her new Theatre class, and is making new friends already in her first week of school. She has recently become a more-than-avid reader. Sometimes, I struggle to get her out of her room and interacting with the family because reading is her preferred form of...well, I was going to say "entertainment" but I think the correct word is "living." Taylor went through the same thing a while back, and she still reads more than most, but she is finally out of her shell, so I have great hopes for Megan as well. Is it just me, or is it crazy that I have two teenagers???

Audrey just started 5th grade in a new school. We have lived at our house for about 5 months, but it is just now that we have found a 10-year-old girl almost immediately across the street that she has become good friends with. She is now definitely a young lady, no longer a little girl. Shock to my sensibilities. She is very into girly things...makeup, dresses, boys. Perhaps having two older sisters that are discovering their girlihood has something to do with that, but whatever the cause, BOOM! It is practically another teenager.

I am still working for US Bank, although I am doing it now with much more enthusiasm than I have in the past. My old boss was fired a little over a year ago and his replacement has been such a breath of fresh air, I actually enjoy going to work. Things are not the best for our industry (small business loans) with the economy in such sad shape, but we are still have more production now than I ever experienced in a full year with the old boss. It feels like their could be a future there, now.

Well, as I am new to this crazy world of blogging and can't think of anything else to write, I will sign off. But I will include a couple fun pictures of our family to spice it up. Bye!