When It Rains It Pours

As I pulled out the mop yesterday, I did it dreadfully.  I had been sick for over a week and the floors had been neglected accordingly.  It's not the cleaning of the dirty floors that I dreaded though, it was the fact that I knew...as every mother does...that cleaning floors only makes them dirtier.

Washing floors is kinda like washing your car.  It pretty much guarantees that it will soon begin to rain.  After you wash your car, it will rain water from clouds in the sky.  After you wash your floor, it will rain milk, juice, soda, and pretty much anything except water, from various little people living in your house.   This phenomena is proportional too.  The deeper the clean, the stickier the rain.

This was in the back of my mind yesterday as I started cleaning, but I just couldn't stand the fingerprints and marks on the walls any longer so I crossed my fingers and scrubbed them off.  When I tucked the kids in last night and all the floors were still clean, I was tempted to think that maybe I had beaten the system.  But alas, gravity was just laying in wait for a more opportune food item.

I offer this for proof of my theory that cleaning floors only makes them dirtier: This morning Ethan dropped an applesauce cup.  It didn't just splatter across the floor and onto the baseboards, but you guessed it, all across the wall too.

No "I Love You's"!

My youngest child has aquired a very annoying habit of calling me back into his room 5 minutes after I have tucked him in for the night.

Mom!

Yes, Ethan?

Can you spread my blankets?

I already spread them.

Mo-om!

What, Ethan?

Where's my baby jaguar?

He's right next to you...

Oh.

Moooohommmmmmmmm!

Go to sleep, Ethan.

You forgot to give me a kiss!

No, I didn't.  GO to sleeeeep.

The list goes on night after night and he knows he's running out of options
so last night he went for one more that he just knew would work...

MOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!

Ethan!  Be quiet and GO to SLEEP!

Mom, I love you.

No!  Stop calling me and go to sleep!

...No "I love you's"?

NO!

I'm a terrible mother. 

I confess! I did it!

 Reposted blog entry from August 9, 2007

Of course, I don't remember doing it and it was my husband that confessed that I did!

Here's the story...
I took the car over to the new house to paint.  My husband called and asked me to come bring him the keys to the van so he could move some stuff. I hop into the car and spend the ride over chatting with Asha about how we are going to see Daddy and Daniel. She's so cute calling out, "Dadi, Danda, whey!" (Daddy, Daniel, we're coming!)

I get home and we all hop into the van and head over to the new house. At the security gate, the guard tells us that someone just ran the gate at our old house without stopping. (this is a big deal) He tells us it was a white car.  My husband  says "our car is white." The guard says they only got the last three of the license plate -XXX.  My husband  says, "That's our license plate." I say, "Are you sure its ours?" Surely I didn't run past two stop signs, the guard shack, and a guard and not know it! I can't remember doing it but it had to have been me. And it better be because my husband tells the guard it was me and we head back over there.

We sit at the guard shack while security forces (Military police) and a bunch of rent-a-cops chew me out, pour over all our ID's and talk to each other and other people on their walkies or whatever. Daniel, who is never at a loss for questions, fires one after another to rub it in. "Why did we come back here? Why are we stopped here? Why can't we go? What are they doing with your ID's? Who are they talking to? What are they talking about?" etc... My husband is just sure that they are going to impound our car and cart me away to jail in hand cuffs right in front of our kids. He also reminds me that if this were another base (and not East Housing) that I could have been shot at when I didn't stop. We sit in silence for a moment and I tell him that on the bright side, the paint will be dry by the time we get back home. :) I don't think he saw the humor in it that I did though because he wasn't amused...

In the end it was just a ticket for failure to stop at a stop sign -though I think I might have really enjoyed the quiet respite of a cell for the night. :)

Top Ten Tuesday: Things I love about you

I love your generosity.

I love your dependability.
I love your attentiveness.

I love your intelligence.
I love your initiative.

I love your strength. 

I love your leadership.

I love your sense of humor.

I love your perspective on life.

I love your way of loving me.

Happy Valentines Day, my Love

A photo journal of our 7 week trip to Alabama

Reposted blog entry from May 30, 2007 

This one is for you, Josh. Since you "need" pictures to look at.
They are all photos from our trip.

So we packed our bags



and went on a trip.



...a very long trip.



We set out from California on our way to Alabama



 where my husband had an Air Force class to complete.



We stopped in Dallas to see his sister



and her family



and my sister



and her family





Then we got back on the road



When we got to Alabama, the hotel room was much smaller than we expected.



So the next week I took the kids on to South Carolina to visit my brother and his family.






Since we were so close, I called up my friend Lori for a visit.




But then it was back to our cage



uh, I mean, hotel, where we met some new friends



and got into the swing of things.



It felt like a zoo



oh, wait, I mean, we went to the zoo.



Then Asha got the chicken pox.



My husband also hurt his ankle and I took a class.
But then after 5 weeks, it was all over and time to get back in the car for the long ride home.



We stopped in Oklahoma



to see my parents



before heading back to the beaches of California.





It was nice to get home and unpack our things



but the best part was getting to sleep in our own waterbed.




The end.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

After flying from South Korea to Texas for a much needed visit with friends and family, Christmas morning found the kids and I huddled around a small hotel bed. There was paper and ribbon strewn about the floor, and presents set to the side. Daniel had a deck of cards that he bought at the dollar store a few days earlier and he wanted to play. He wanted to try his hand at cheating that is. The deck was marked so he knew what we had. It wasn't really an unfair advantage though, because Asha attempted to lie when she was asked for a card and told Daniel to "Gold-fish." I'm pretty sure he was more annoyed that she couldn't get that it was 'Go Fish' than the fact that she wouldn't produce the card. Ethan was sitting in my lap eating string cheese. He quickly (and loudly) pointed out, "Mom, you have two fives!" Well, who needs a marked deck when you have a helpful brother!

People are fond of saying, 'Enjoy them while they are young, you will miss it when they grow up.' In the every day drudgery and throws of the battle, I am not convinced I will miss them being little. But I do know for sure that I will look back at moments like this with great fondness and know that I did, in fact, enjoy them while they were young.

I'm Such a Loser

I will deny it if confronted, but I'm not ashamed of it.
Yes, being a loser makes my life so much easier.

For example, my daughter's 6th birthday was last week.
A kind friend gave her this.

I think I lost it within hours of the first time she played with it
(and got the hair colors all over herself, the table, the floor, the counter...) 
I'm pretty sure I will never find it again.

I've been known to lose really annoying noise toys.
I've lost toys with lots of little parts that I'm tired of picking up.
I've even lost whole collections, like the popcorn kernel one. (Don't ask)

Sometimes its clothing that I lose.  You know, the shirt that someone else gave them that they love and want to wear all the time, but its so ugly that you can't bear for them to be seen in it and hope that no one thinks YOU bought it for them?  Yep, I've lost a few of those.

But while I'm not ashamed of it,
I do hope no one ever realizes what a loser I am.