Kathryn is doing a giveaway.  I would like to be the give-a-getter.  And so, my photo journalistic plea to be the new owner of a fancy Chicco stroller:

Oh! Daring Young Mom!  We have never owned a posh stroller!  We have only owned "economical" working people strollers!  We had a pretty good one until it got mildewed in the Rainy Place, but now we are reduced to this!  Our 5 year old $13 K-Mart special!

Exhibit A: 

She won’t even sit for fear of getting a dirty bum!

Exhibit B: 

The taped handle!  The tape looked okay until it got wet or oldened underneath or something!  NASTY!

Exhibit C:

Broken! This little piece snapped off the other day!  Now, the canopy (that has never actually provided any kind of sun or rain protection due to it’s size, shape and location) won’t stay up on its own.

Exhibit D:

The gimpy wheel.  It has NEVER since the day we bought it, functioned properly.  It doesn’t turn right.  You have to back up and push forward, back up and push forward, back up and push forward.  I can manually lean down and fart with it, or push the stroller using only the back wheels with the front two in the air and Spider’s face facing the elements. 

Exhibit E:

The cuteness.  ‘Nuff said. 

Did you know that a toddler can actually suck the color out of a washable marker?  In the mouth long enough, the tip of a red marker becomes white.  It’s true.  I witnessed it today.

I also learned today that in a relatively sterile looking environment, such as the Jiffy Lube, that small children can make incredible messes?  They WILL dump water all over the chairs and suck color out of markers.

In case you were wondering, small children will also color their entire legs with marker in the car.  One year olds intoxicated with washable ink will unravel all the toilet paper in the public restroom while you wash your hands.

I used to think it was difficult to take three children out in public.  I now know that it is not the number of small people that accompany you, but the specific individuals that you bring along that make the difference in your ease of excursion.  Two children in public can just as tricky as three if you take the right ones with you. 

We’ve been in the new house nearly a month. 

I like my new house.  I don’t love it yet.  I love what I see that it will become, but no love for the current state of it. 

In fact, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, there are things about my new house that I do not like at all.  I am glad that we have a house, happy that we aren’t paying rent and very thankful we are not transients anymore.  But why is this house the way that it is?  I hate so much about the things that this house chooses to be…

I have a hatred,  A HATRED, I tell you for the oven.    The oven is at least 13 years old, and has taken on quite the teenage attitude– it burns everything it touches.  It has a sort of obnoxious dial for adjusting the temperature:

See how there is only a mark for 350, 450 etc.?  And only a mark in between for the temperatures ending in 00?  What about 325?  375?  And it’s not like you can really tell which temp you are on even if you are going for one with a mark.  There are about three postions that could all be 350, or at least the oven wants you to believe it’s 350– the 350 mark (as I am discovering) probably really means 400 or more. 

Curse you Whirpool!  Curse your poor design skills!   Curse your inability to make appliances that hold up over time!  Take your oven back to the fires of Mordor where it was formed! You must pay for what your Satanic teenager has done to my bread! 

The flatness, yes, my fault.  But THE BURNING!!!!!  It tastes okay, I guess.  A little burny. 

The oven officially sucks.

They are the mark of distinction in someone’s bathroom. They are a touch of class. They are a total handwashing experience for all the senses. They are:

The handsoap dispensers from Bath and Body Works. 

I just like them. They’re pretty, they smell good, they’re… fancy. I have always liked them, and felt so special when I used them at someone elses house, but I have never bought them.  I always felt they were too expensive for me. Too out of my league. Too at the mall.  

But, I got a B & BW gift card for Christmas in the amount of $10, and there was really only one thing I knew I could buy.

For two reasons, I had to buy the handsoaps. The first being that, because of the business I am in, as a matter of principle, I choose not to purchase the same product from a competitor that I could buy through my own business. For example, we sell eyeshadow, so I won’t buy one from M.A.C. no matter how cute the color, but since Mary Kay doesn’t make shampoo, I go with Biolage. Make sense? I can get body wash and lotion and such from myself, so I won’t buy it from Bath and Body Works.  Why?  B & BW is not tax-deductible and really  how would it be if some random stranger said, “Ooh, you smell nice, what is that?” and I said, “Oh, it’s from Bath & Body Works, it’s such and such, but I sell Mary Kay and we have lots of nice smells, so do you want to try one of them?” If such an event ever were to happen it would be so much better to be able to say, “Oh yes, it’s Bella Belara. I sell it, would you like a catalog?”

It’s a business thing.

My obvious second reason for buying the handsoaps, is my covetousness for them. So when I was at the mall this last week, I decided to stop in at the Bath and Body Works.

The soap was on sale- 3 for $10. Perfect.

Because I had decided to do this stop on the way out, upon entering the store, Sugar had a meltdown. Assuming (falsely) that I could get one for a buck, I bribed her with the promise of a chapstick. She calmed down and I found my soaps.  Engineer was thrilled and he wanted to carry one, but Sugar was disappointed at the price of chapstick. My wallet forced to instead buy a $3 body wash that smells like Cherry Pie. (’Good for kids,’ said the lady though when I got home discovered that the label says “for adult external use only.”) But at least I got my soap.

I have since discovered that the soaps are not only a hit with moms, but are also well loved by 4-year old boys. My son who hates washing his hands, foamed up at least five times the day we brought the soaps home. He put a soap in every bathroom and announced it to us proudly.  I don’t know if he loves it because of the foaming action or the smell or because he grew attached as he mothered it while lovingly carrying it to the car.  I don’t care the reason, I am just pleased with his new and bizarre interest in hygiene.

Sugar forgot about the chapstick and the bodywash so today, I smell like Cherry Pie. Good for deceptively impressing my more domestic friends, but not very good for selling lotion.

I got the best phone message the other day.

My little sister who I had seen a week earlier called me and said, "Hi, I am calling because I missed you and want to hang out with you this weekend.  Call me back.  Bye."

THE BEST PHONE MESSAGE EVER.

It is soooo nice to be near family again.  It is so nice to be around people who not only want to hang out with me, but actually make the first move and call me first. Wow.  Amazing.

So today, Charming, Aunty Jessica, the kiddos and I piled in the car for a tour of a few of our local farms.  It was wonderful.  The weather was inconsistent, but it was sunny for our hayride where we enjoyed gorgeous views of the valley and only rained when we were in our car driving.

We ate corn and we saw pigs. 

A good day.

P.S.  Check out Sugar’s coat.  She put it on this morning and said, "Mmm.  Cozy." 

How far would you go for a great deal?

I drove 20 minutes the other night to go gorcery shopping at Albertsons even though the church is only three minutes away.  I couldn’t help myself.  It was the big Quaker ten for ten sale.  But driving there, I kept thinking, "gee this is really far, am I really saving that much money?  Will the cost of the gas justify the savings?"

I spent $74 and saved $78. My pantry is stocked full of useful things.  I drove a total of 40 minutes, was in the store for less than 30 (kidless, yay!) and my name brand cereal was only one dollar per box.

But the driving!  Living in this new place, I find that I must drive at least twenty minutes to get most places.  It only takes me about two or three minutes to get anywhere in the town, which is great, but the town is small.  There is a lot here considering the size, but not everything I need or want. 

I’ve been getting depressed lately because Engineer is not in Pre-School.  The cost of it here is so high, and there would still be some driving involved.  (Not to mention, not much enrollment space).  I toyed with the idea of sending him to a local co-op (three minutes away!) where I would have to find a sitter for my girls and help out once a week and still pay $100 a month, but canned it because of the sacrifice involved.  But as I explored other less expensive options, I took into account the driving, and now I think he’s going to the co-op.

I want him in school so badly, for his sake and mine, that I am willing to do a little more than I might normally.  And I really don’t want to drive 2-3 hours a week so he can go.

And yet, once our house sells, I am willing to drive Sugar 20 minutes to gymnastics because she is gifted in the sport and it is soooo good for her. 

It’s funny the things I am willing to do and those I am not.  The trade-offs I make.  I think the twenty minute drive to the Alby’s was worth it.  But I am still looking to see if there is a store closer. 

Well, I have had a request for pictures.  So here are some of the things we’ve been doing since we’ve come to the new house.

We had a birthday and got the best present ever!  (WE even opened it before anyone else was in the room!) 

We’ve been eating breakfast in our usual, glamorous fashion: 

We went to the beach again:

We went to a baptism for Aunty Jessica:

And we’ve been just hangin’ out:

…waking up at 5 am because the baby is crying, and then not being able to go back to sleep for an hour, but then having another kid start crying just as you’re about to fall asleep.

Sometimes when I am going about my life, doing mundane daily tasks and the like, I come up with funny little thoughts that seem to formulate themselves into lines right out of a novel.  This has happened to me my whole life as I can remember the same thing happening as a kid.  I would be walking through a park or something and in my mind I was figuring out how I was going to word passages for my great novel.

It happened the other day when I was putting things in my closet and trying to figure out where to hang the lingerie.  You know, that kind of lingerie.  I had two choices– in the back near the winter coats or in the front where it would be the first thing anyone (including my mother) would see when they walked in there.  I couldn’t really put them in the middle in between the shirts and pants, so in the end I  put them in the back of the closet.  And then I heard it:

She kept her lingerie where she kept her secrets, in the back of her closet where they weren’t open to the public eye.  

And I thought it would make a great line in some novel.  Although I will probably never use it, since it seems a little too racy for anything I might ever write. 

Engineer: What kind of bread is that?

Me: It’s french toast bread.

Engineer: How many French are in there?