Become an M & M

This is my vision of me as an M&M. becomeanmm.com

This is Audrey. Could you have guessed?

Dancing Fool

Last night Aaron sent me a link to some videos on You Tube. They were songs we had played in marching band in high school. He said I would get bonus points if I took pictures of the kids dancing to the music. So here are the pictures. The songs were "Vehicle" and "Land of 1000 Dances." Very danceable. Audrey was asleep, so she's not in any pictures. Caleb was watching the videos while he was dancing.

My favorite. (above)

Some pictures

Julie has found her nose. Except she calls it "eye." No big deal - she calls everything on her face "eye" but can point to the correct body part (eye, ear, nose, mouth) when I ask her to. Then she points to the same part on my face.

Trimmed up the bushes last week. Here they are.

If you look on my left arm (on the right side of the screen), you can see my goofy sunburn line. It's a rectangle on my bicep.

First of the season...

My first sunburn of the season. I was outside weeding this afternoon, then got distracted by the large and very ugly juniper bushes in front of our house. We are going to rip them out next spring, but for now, we've decided to prune them into bonsai-like shapes. So I pruned. I was out there for several hours.

Like a dork, I didn't even think about sunscreen. Well, I *thought* about it once, but didn't do anything about it. So I'm going to have funky tan lines - I had on gloves, a watch, and my MP3 player was strapped to my left bicep. I'll try to get a picture here of *those* lines in particular. And I got burned on the small of my back where my t-shirt rode up. Nice.

Caleb was back at school today (yay), Audrey is still fine, and we think Julie is finally getting better (woo hoo).

Under Siege

Still.

I'm still under siege. The nasty tummy bug has the Nolen family tight in its clutches. Julie is not faring well, and Caleb is home again from school. Of the last 8 days of school, he's been 4 1/2 days. We are consuming copious amounts of bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast; otherwise known as the BRAT diet. It's supposed to be good for tummies under siege. Audrey seems to be on the mend, and Steve and I are, too.

Since I've been with children pretty much non-stop for 20 days, I'm growing weary. Plus I'm getting cabin fever. I was 1 1/2 weeks behind on some errands, so we spent 3 hours today running around. I had 17 stops to make. No kidding. I made a list. I let the kids have their MP3 players and a few toys and we were off. They were fine in the car but horrible in the grocery store. No wonder I don't take them shopping anymore.

Just wanted to post an update.

And Liz - I like clocky. Unlike my 2 "little clockies" who get up when I should have gotten up, I can ignore clocky and not worry about making it toast for breakfast when all I really want to do is sleep. Also unlike clocky, my 2 don't hide. They stay right in my face until I get up. Grrr.

...Calgon, take me away!

It's 7:37 a.m. Usually I'd be finishing up Caleb's lunch for school about now, or helping him gather his stuff up so we could leave at 7:50. But not today.

I'm home with all 3 kids and I don't feel good.

I'm pretty sure all 3 of them have the tummy bug in varying degrees of severity, with none being as bad off as I am. How lovely is that?

So we're going to take life slowly today. No laundry. No vacuuming. No cleaning. Just TV and playing (for the kids) and knitting and listening to Harry Potter (for me). It's also really cold outside and we're under a snow advisory. But if I get desperate, I'll bundle up the 2 big kids and send them outside.

Right now all 3 of them are in Julie's room. C & A are playing checkers on the big bed in there so Julie can't reach it, but they're in the same room with her to keep her happy. Very thoughtful of them.

Fashion alert: today Audrey is wearing a hot pink cheetah print sweatshirt with red gingham leggings, frilly white socks, and her new butterfly sandals. She picked it out herself. Julie is wearing a sweatsuit that's a bit too small and her lovely tummy is showing. She didn't pick it out herself. She likes to brush her hair. Maybe it's wishful thinking.

I'm not sure what Caleb is wearing - he's getting dressed right now. But it's not as easy to be creative with his clothes since they're all boy clothes that pretty much coordinate regardless of what he puts together. As he comes in I see he's chosen a pair of his "Park Lane pants" as he calls them. They're the pants from his old school's uniform. He loves them and since he has several pairs, he wears them a lot. He chooses them over all other pants.

Caleb asked to take a picture of me. Ok. In all fairness, I'll post it, too. I'm committing a fashion no-no: a navy blue t-shirt and black pants. But they match because they both have cat hair all over them. So there.

Fit to be tied

This post was removed upon request of two of Caleb's political supporters who feel the contents would be harmful to his run for the White House in 2048.

Wednesday morning - just the girls

Caleb's at school today, Steve's at work, so once again it's just the girls at home. Even the cat.

Speaking of cats, Julie's favorite kitty past time is to grab the cat's tail as the cat passes, then Julie walks behind the cat holding its tail. It looks like a weird leash. The cat doesn't seem to mind. In fact, Julie seems to abuse Grey Cat more than the other 2 kids did and Grey doesn't seem to mind. Go figure. Maybe she's still so happy to see us after our 6 month absence that she doesn't care what Julie does to her.

Caleb gave me a couple of chuckle moments this morning. He came into our room while I was watching the weather and told me that he wanted to watch it too. When I asked perplexedly, "Why?" he told me that Mrs. Bowyer (the aide in his class) watches the weather and that he told her that he was going to work on watching the weather, too. Oooooohh-kaaaay. Whatever, kid.

After this proclamation, I told him to go get dressed. He said that he wanted to get dressed with Steve. He meant that he wanted to stay in our room and not be bothered with getting any clothes. I told him that he at least needed clothes to get dressed with Steve.

So after Steve went to check on Caleb 5 minutes later, he comes strolling back into our room chuckling. I asked him if Caleb was getting dressed and was surprised when he told me that not only was Caleb not dressed, he was playing in his room. This surprised me because normally Steve would be irritated and would at least be getting the paddle from our closet as a motivator for Caleb. So when I asked Steve what was up (meaning why wasn't he mad with Caleb) he told me that Caleb said, "Mom said to at least get my clothes. Here is my shirt and here are my pants," then he went on playing.

So we're to the point now where he takes my words literally and uses them to his advantage. Great.

Steve told Caleb that I meant that in order for him to get dressed in our room, he needed "at least" to have clothes.

Changing topics now, here's a picture of the Audrey-colored ottoman:

This shot looks fine. No green apparent.

Julie is chasing the cat with her toy hammer. Nice.

Up close you can faintly see the marks underneath the seam in the upper 1/3 of the picture. Overall it's not bad. I think I've become a faithful customer of Sofa Mart and their warranty and cleaner.

On another note: we've started a new discipline program with the big kids. They have a certain number of tickets each day. When they misbehave they lose a ticket. If they lose all their tickets, they go to their room for the remainder of the day, only to come out for meals and bathroom trips. If they keep all their tickets, good for them. As it was explained to me, they don't get rewarded for behavior they are supposed to be using just as adults aren't rewarded for acting like we're supposed to. For example, if you don't go to work drunk (or high), you don't get stars by your name on a chart. But if you *do* go to work drunk, there are negative consequences.

We've been doing this program for almost 2 weeks and so far it's working pretty well. We're on the first step (of 5 steps) with 15 tickets. Soon the number of tickets is going to be reduced by 3 to 12 (step 2). The number of tickets is reduced when they can go for a few days in a row without getting all their tickets pulled. The goal is to get down to 3 tickets. And we'll stay on 3 tickets forever. Until they're 100 years old, I imagine. This system is from John Rosemond and a friend told me about it after I had a particularly tough morning with Audrey. Surprisingly enough, Caleb is the one who has lost the most tickets in all. One day he went through 14 tickets in 3 minutes. It was ugly, but he got himself under control for fear of losing all his tickets.

So we're on a good path with the big kids. Julie, on the other hand, is another matter. She's moved from just screeching when she's mad at her sister (or brother or parent) to screaming and shaking with what can only be described as "baby rage." Uh-oh. Not pretty. We're going to have to nip this in the bud.

We've all been trying to get over a tummy bug we picked up over Spring Break. Caleb had it first (Wednesday), then I got it over the weekend, closely followed by Steve and the girls. Caleb had it worst (he usually does if it's a tummy bug), but he's better now and is at school. The girls and I have missed Bible study on Tuesday and will miss again tomorrow because of it. I felt lousy yesterday and Audrey is complaining of an upset tummy today. I think she's still contagious and I don't want to get anyone else sick. Maybe I can catch up on laundry and do some housework.

The house looks awful. We came home from Spring Break and just dumped stuff. There's still things we took with us that I haven't touched since we've been home. How shameful! I should get my large (but somewhat smaller than last year) hind end off this chair and do some work. I have a new wonderful MP3 player loaded up with Harry Potter books that I enjoy listening to while I do housework, so I really don't have any excuses. Just laziness. My greatest foe.

Ok - I'm going now to do something productive.

We're Home

We got home from visiting grandparents late yesterday afternoon. Consequently, our house is now trashed. We have a pile of dirty laundry that's about 4 feet across and 2 feet tall, but most of the clothes came home clean. I did laundry a couple of times over Spring Break while we were gone. So we have empty suitcases standing around and laundry baskets with clean folded clothes waiting to be put away. The muck tubs are full in the kids' rooms with toys that I cleaned up last week before we left.

After church and lunch out today, we came home and all 5 of us crashed. I think we all slept for 2 hours. Everyone is up now - Audrey is trying to find a granola bar for a snack, Steve and Caleb are playing video games, and Julie is playing with a rather noisy toy in the living room.

I think the thing I missed most about home while we were gone was my coffee. We have a friend here who owns a coffee shop - he roasts his own beans, too. He's turned me into a major coffee snob. Or maybe it's just the way I make it here that's not quite the same when I go elsewhere for a cuppa. But this morning I had a nice cup of Brian's brew. Brian is our coffee friend.

The girls had new dresses for Easter but since the dresses are these little cute sundresses, we had to layer shirts and tights underneath and sweaters on top. Not as cute as I had envisioned, but they were still cute. How can Audrey wearing a pink dress not be cute? And Julie is just cute anyway.

So maybe tomorrow I'll get a call from my eye doctor saying my contacts are ready. I haven't worn contacts since Caleb was born. In fact, I quit wearing contacts when Caleb was born. Too much hassle to have a child and try to deal with contacts. But now I don't care about the hassle. At least I can say I don't care. We'll see when I have to start messing with them again. This time I only had to pay $25 for the contacts since they're "medically necessary." Apparently the difference between my eyes is great enough that it warrants insurance paying for my contacts. Whatever. I'll take it.

I need to go now. Steve announced "somebody stinks" and didn't get up from his spot on the couch to see who it is. Too busy playing X-Men with Caleb.

Post Script to Yesterday

The permanent marker Audrey used was Bic brand - not a Sharpie. I've found in the past that it's not as permanent as Sharpies. This observation held yesterday as well. Audrey slept for 2 hours and awoke with the green marker still in place, but with some added smears that transferred to her face from her hands while she slept. Most of the marks and smears came off with baby wipes, but she's still green-tinted on her hands and a little on her face.

As for the ottoman, it looks much better than yesterday. We got it from Sofa Mart 18 months ago and bought the extended warranty - which means that we got some wonderful stuff to use to clean the fabric and a guarantee that if the wonderful stuff couldn't clean the fabric, the piece of furniture would be cleaned by Sofa Mart people professionally, and if the stain still didn't come out, they would replace the piece. So as of now, the prospect of having a lime-green-marker-free ottoman still looks promising.

So yesterday could have been much worse. As Liz pointed out, *I* could have ended up green.

The Day I've Been Dreading

It finally arrived...the day Audrey busts out and does a totally in-character yet unbelievably naughty thing.

She colored on her face with green permanent marker.
She colored on her hands with green permanent marker.
She colored on her shirt with green permanent marker.

She colored on my new ottoman with green permanent marker.

I was sleeping at the time. I had a wicked evil headache and after I got Caleb from school, I put Julie in her crib, got the 2 big kids some snacks, and turned on the TV. Then I laid down. Silly me. I assumed the kids would be fine.

So I awoke to find chalk on the sofa (just pieces laying there - no real harm done) and my daughter turned into Spud, the Jolly Green Giant's sidekick.

These pics were taken after spankings and after she had been sent to her room. She was screaming and woke up Julie, who cried for the next hour.

I knew this day would come, I just wondered how it would unfold.

Just a Regular Wednesday

Gigi - glad to have you back! Julie's hip check was fine. The doctor's parting words were, "I'll see her again when she falls off the monkey bars and breaks her arm." He said she looked perfect, which is good because she started walking on Wednesday while Dad was here. She just stood up and took off. I'm glad Dad got to see it.

So now my project for the week is cleaning my house. I'm having a party here on Saturday (a Homemade Gourmet home show) and I feel the need for my house to be presentable. Actually, I want it better than presentable. So my kitchen counters were totally cleaned out on Monday. I love my toaster oven, but it now has to live in the garage because there's not really room to use it in the kitchen. And I put all my little bottles of random stuff (lotion, hand sanitizer, medicines, vitamins, etc.) in a pretty wicker basket with a muslin liner. So the counter looks much less cluttered.

Now I'm working on the living room. I cleaned off some bookshelves last night that had become a dumping ground. They're clutter- and dust-free. Now I just have to deal with the clutter I just removed. So I'm heading next into the office to put away books and papers I just cleaned off the bookshelf. I cleaned the office 2 weeks ago, so I'm not likely to get sidetracked by stuff that I need to do in there.

I have to figure out after I do the office how I'm going to handle all the DVDs we have. Since we take a lot of them with us when we travel for the kids to watch, we don't really use the cases, but we still have the cases. Most of the DVDs are in a big CD binder, but we're out of room. I think I'm going to have to buy some more. We already have all of our music CDs in about 4 huge binders...this includes audio books, too. Harry Potter, in fact, has his own CD binder.

Speaking of HP, I've loaded the first book onto my MP3 player and I'm listening while I'm doing housework. It's the only way that I can stay focused on what I'm doing.

Signing off now. Time to get back to work.

More Work Today

Spent this morning sanding the ceiling then cleaning up from sanding the ceiling. It's not a big area in the living room ceiling - maybe 6x8 feet. But there are 6 seams that I taped & floated 2 days ago that I had to sand down so that I could float again. Or mud, as I would say before I was set straight on my terminology. The pics are from right after I finished sanding. It's 6 hours later and I still feel nasty. I'm about to get in the shower but I knew I had to post this before Steve gets home because he has developed a habit of playing games on the laptop from the time we put the kids to bed until he goes to bed. So I have to get my computer time in early.

I can still feel grit on the kitchen floor, but I'm not going to be too fastidious about cleaning it (get what I can) because we're going to go through this whole process again tomorrow. All the furniture is covered with tablecloths and sheets. At least my couches will be mostly dust-free.

Pet Peeve Rant

Yesterday I got to experience my pet peeve twice in one day.

I call the phenomenon "lane zooming." You know - it's when a two-lane road narrows down to one lane because of construction, and there are those people who think that waiting in line like normal polite people is beneath them and they zoom up the lane that's closing and then try to cut in front of everyone.

I hate that. With a passion. It's the one thing (besides my kids) that causes me to yell. I get so mad when I see those people in my rear view mirror just zooming up the lane beside me. Then they put their blinker on and expect those of us who have been waiting in line to just let them in. NO. It doesn't happen. I become belligerent. I don't let in zoomers. Ever.

Have you ever experienced this phenomenon on the interstate? I love it because truckers will drive in the closing lane, but they won't go faster than the speed of the other lane. Basically they are keeping zoomers at bay. You can zoom up to the semi, but you ain't going past it. I love those truckers!

So yesterday during the second lane zooming episode, I decided to try the "trucker move." At first I was only over the stripe a little bit, but after about 15 cars just went around me I decided that I had had enough and just pulled out into the other lane. I stayed at the same pace as the "slow lane" and the person behind me kept my spot open for me. I think he appreciated me pulling the trucker move because he had tried driving on the stripe, too, to no avail.

I got really irritated during the first episode because I was 2 vehicles back from a bus. When it stopped (for 10 seconds) to let someone off, 10 cars zipped in front of it. I was livid. Because those stupid 10 people made the rest of us wait longer.

I always think, "These people wouldn't cut in front of me at the grocery store, so why do they think it's ok to cut in front of me here?"

I will admit that sometimes I get caught off guard when a lane is closing. I will discover that I'm halfway up the closing lane before I realize that I should have gotten over 6 cars earlier. At that point, I stop and try to get in where I am. I don't zoom up to the front and expect special treatment. And I always wave to the people who let me in. When I'm guilty of minor lane zooming, I don't expect that the first person beside me will let me in. If I have to wait, so be it. I don't try to muscle my way in, which would be easy to do in my big honkin' SUV.

2 Fun Sites

www.presidentialdoodles.com

www.crazythoughts.com

More Progress

An hour later - 10:45 - all the supplies are put away. I reckon I'll start taping and mudding this afternoon. And then I'll tape and mud the 2-year-old repaired hole in our living room.

This was Audrey's "helper" outfit this morning.

Julie was working at her tool bench while we were working on the wall.

Progress

Taken while Dad was walking Caleb to school around 8:00 a.m.
Taken just a couple of minutes ago - 9:45 a.m.

I Kid You Not

She came up with this outfit on her own. dc is here and had just given them their brand new tool belts. She said she was a "princess fairy worker" - fitting. I particularly like the the workgloves. I wish they had those in my size. They are green with white polka dots at the wrist and have little pink satin ribbon bows on them.

dc just left with Caleb. He's walking Caleb to school this morning. Caleb is on his bike and dc has his coffee mug. They're both ready for the trek. Dad got here yesterday afternoon. He's going to help us put the wall back up between the big kids' rooms. We went to Lowe's last night and bought the necessary supplies, so by the time Caleb gets home from school, there should be a wall. He was upset because he wanted to help build the wall and upset also because he and Audrey can't play "bookseller" or "toyseller" anymore. They would trade toys and use her short dresser as their sales counter.

We met Aaron & Laura for dinner last night at El Paragua in Espanola. Julie started saying "Tia" while we were there. She said it well and often!

I'm going to sign off now and go find some hammers. We have to take down the trim around the current hole between the rooms before we can build the wall. The girls are still asleep, so I won't do anything right now, but I figure I'll get ready.

Lovely Day

Beautiful day here. The sun is out, the sky is blue and I can see hints of spring around the edges of winter.

I just got back from walking Caleb to school. He wanted to ride his “2 wheeler” to school today. And of course, Audrey had to ride hers, too. She has a trike with a handle for me to push. Julie rode in the frontpack and now my shoulder is killing me from one of the straps.

I took advantage of Audrey’s desire to pause the TV satellite feed. She decided that she needed a snack and then used the WC. All of this took about 9 minutes. So while the TV was paused, I vacuumed. Again. This time I focused on a 3.5’ x 5’ section. It took the whole time to get the light on my vacuum to go to green. Finally! I have a section of carpet that’s clean. And I know it’s clean because I vacuumed it from 4 different directions just to make sure I was getting the dirt.

I’m ready to have my floor clean. The knees of Julie’s clothes are perpetually dirty and the bottoms of our socks are dirty, too. I guess I’ve stirred up dirt that had been packed down and hiding. How gross is that?

Signing off now to go pick up the office. I’ve been using it as a dumping ground for a couple of weeks and it shows. I’m almost done excavating my desk, then I’ll file and shred. It’s good to not have a big project to be working on so that I can tackle some of these little projects that get pushed to the side.

Actually, Steve and the big kids are going to Clovis for the weekend to see his brother’s family. They’ll leave here Friday morning and get back Sunday sometime. I think I’ll try one big project while they’re gone. I’ll post pictures after.

Milestone

I sent off the final payment on our Sequoia yesterday. I actually sent it Express Mail, which ultimately didn't do me any good. It doesn't take 1 day like mail from normal places, but 2 days. So since I sent it Thursday afternoon, it should get there by Saturday. But the place is closed on Saturday, I'm sure, so it will be Monday. I think I could have done Priority for that, since it's just going to Plano.

Regardless, the payment has been sent and will be received within the date range specified with the payoff quote we got.

So now we turn to Sallie Mae - lovely student loans. We consolidated several loans 9 years ago, but in the intervening years have only paid down $5K. How frustrating! But now, thanks to Dave Ramsey and his "debt snowball" concept, we can start throwing money at it left and right since we've paid off our other debts (student loan, 401(k) loan, Sequoia). Now we can use the payment amounts from those debts to "evict Sallie out of the guest room" in Dave's words. We'll be debt free except for the house next spring. To celebrate, we're taking the kids to Disneyworld. Plus we fixed our W4 (again) and increased our exemptions to some ridiculous number because we got a refund this year from the IRS. So we'll be able to throw that money at Sallie, too.

I'm so ready to be done with debt. It's going to feel strange when all we owe on is the house. But then we're going to start throwing money at that, too. Well, actually, we won't start throwing money at that until we have 3-6 months' of expenses in an emergency fund, max out retirement, and max out college funds for the kids. *Then* we'll pay off the house.

We bought the "Financial Peace Jr." kit for Caleb & Audrey. I don't want them to fall into the same traps that we fell into. I don't want them to be normal. Normal is broke. I want them to be weird. I want them to be financially free. So now is the time to teach them. They tell people that they get "commission" and they have no idea what an allowance is. They get paid when they work. Just like the real world. And when one of them sees something on TV that they want, the other kid says, "Save your money."

Speaking of saving for something, Caleb is saving up to take Steve to go see the new "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie on March 23. He's excited about saving up for it and excited about seeing it. I think he'll get a kick out of buying the tickets himself and buying snacks himself. I remember paying for stuff when I was a kid. I particularly remember going on a clothes shopping spree as a senior in high school with my money from my job at Sonic. I bought some awesome clothes and I was so proud of them. I don't remember all of the clothes, but I do remember one green and cream striped blouse. It was my favorite forever.

Enough about my pay-off-debt-and-become-financially-independent obsession. I'm going to go now and just surf and do nothing.