There's something about a clean refrigerator...

How's that for a catchy title?  

This morning I cleaned out the fridge.  I removed everything (well, I didn't do the stuff in the door...I just realized I forgot that part).  Dismantled the shelves, washed them in hot soapy water, dried them, threw out the expired stuff and replaced the good stuff.  It looks so nice.

Lil Sis and I went out for lunch to celebrate our hard work.  She didn't really help, but she likes to celebrate.  We also got a few things at Wal-Mart and then went to our favorite grocery store to buy stuff to refill the fridge.  In the spirit of celebrating the upcoming holiday, I caved to Lil Sis's request to use the cart that looks like a truck.  She rode for awhile, then we needed her compartment to hold all the stuff and she was eventually ejected from her driver's seat.  She was very helpful in loading up the cart and counting gallons of milk (3) and cream cheese blocks (5).  I may have overdone the cream cheese, but I firmly believe that you can never have too much cream cheese in the house this time of year.  There's hash brown casseroles to make and dips, and cream cheese frosting for pumpkin bars, etc.

We bought a spiral ham (the smallest one I saw) and ordered a fresh turkey (12 lb) that we'll pick up on Saturday for our Sunday dinner.  We decided to make two meats this year.  Not sure why, we just wanted to have options.  I think we'll also have some leftovers.  We're cool with some leftovers.

Wow, when I began this post, I thought, what am I going to post about?  And now, I'm wondering, how can I babble about the refrigerator for this long?

Yesterday, when Big Sis unpacked her backpack after school, she showed me a turkey she had colored that was attached to a paper.  On the paper, she wrote "I am thankful for family and I am thankful for God and Jesus and friends and food and waddr".  I asked her what the last word was... it's 'water'.  I think that's a pretty awesome list.  Note to readers:  she goes to public school.  So I think this is extra cool!

I'm Here!

I'm back.  I didn't really go anywhere, I just haven't posted.  The above photo was taken on our way to Omaha recently, when we stopped at a rest area to geocache.  We found the cache and we were supposed to take our picture with the camera enclosed in the cache, however, the camera was full, so we used our own camera.

To celebrate the end of the first trimester, Cool Daddy-O took a day off work and we went to the zoo in Omaha.  It was a fun day.  After the zoo, we found our first out-of-state geocache.  It was pretty easy.  We tried to find a second one, but ran out of daylight.  It was in a wooded area, it was getting dark and our gps was acting weird.  

We have spent the past few weekends doing some deep cleaning, preparing to host a family Thanksgiving dinner.  Today's task was washing windows, doors, and curtains.  To celebrate the completion of this task, I spent a couple hours at Target.  

Well, that sums up my excitement.  We're watching the Iowa Hawkeyes trounce Minnesota.  It's pretty exciting!

A Snickers update:  we've been visiting the vet regularly.  For now we've changed his food to prescription diet food and he's recently started taking Amitriptyline for treatment of "litter box incontinence".  Things are improving, but not yet perfect.  We'll continue this treatment and hope for continued progress.  

My new promise to myself.  All future cats will be female.  No future cats will be persian.  I've owned 3 and haven't had such good luck overall.  Their personalities have been AWESOME, however, the health problems, not so much fun.

Current gas price: $1.61. How low will it go?

One more thing:  I'm going to make an effort to post a bit more often.  

I'm here!

Yeah, I'm still here.  You see, I've been spending my spare time on face book.  It's soooo addictive.  I really need to blog.  

We've been having fun and enjoying fall.  I'll post some pictures soon... I promise!  Meanwhile, I just completed the task of switching seasons in the girls' closet.  It is fall / winter in there now. The Christmas shirts that I bought on clearance at Target last year are all ready to go!  They've already worn their new Halloween shirts!  We are with it in the clothing department.  Now I just have to get with it in the blog department.

Oh, and I finally used the iTunes card I got for Christmas.  I downloaded an album by a guy I've never heard of and I love it.  The artist is Joshua Radin.  I also downloaded a few tunes by Patty Griffin and Dave Barnes.  I'm listening to them now.  It's nice to have some new music to listen to.  It's also nice to save a Christmas present this long and enjoy it in October.

I just remembered this time of day, this time of year, the sun blinds me when I'm sitting at the computer. Fortunately, the leaves are still on the tree and are just beginning to turn shades of orange.  Yeah, I'll post some pictures of the tree too... later, after I check face book :)

Help me!!!!

One more random thought.  I bought some coffee beans (Blueberry Cinnamon Crumble) at my favorite coffee house today with a 20% off coupon.  I think I just got a whiff of it and had to write about it.  Can't wait until I can make a pot!

My Geocaching Nightmare

I had a bad dream last night. In my dream, we were at a geocaching event...we were competing with other teams in northeastern Iowa to find all the hidden treasures first. In the dream, Cool Daddy-O and I were in the house of a little old lady who was no longer living in her house, but had left all her stuff there. We found the cache in a cedar chest in her bedroom and when we went to leave the house to look for our next geocache, we saw a woman vandalizing our car. She made a comment (as she was keying the car) "your car looks too nice to be a used car" and continued to scratch it. She then was able to get in somehow, and put it in reverse and crash it into a tree, completely smashing in the trunk, where all our geocaching treasure information was. We were then out of contention. I then realized that she was a crazy geocaching woman and didn't want us to win. I tried dialing 911 on my cell phone, but kept dialing the numbers in the wrong order and never did get any help. That's when I woke up.

It was the most detailed dream I've had in a while and thought I'd post about it before I forgot it. The dream was very realistic!

In my real life, not much exciting is going on. I did manage to get the house clean enough to host a group of moms for a play date / meeting about our moms group. This year, I'll be the "table mom coordinator" and I had a meeting with the table moms today to talk about the upcoming year.

I guess it's not such a bad thing that the toy room was a mess when they arrived, because now, it actually looks better than when they got here, if that's possible. We have some more organizing to do, but it's getting better.

When everyone was here, I had one of those moments when I looked up at the ceiling and was appalled by all the cobwebs attached to the ceiling. It was rather gross and disgusting, actually. I guess I should attack the ceiling with the Dyson sometime. I hope everyone else was content to keep their eyes away from the ceiling. At least the floor was clean! :)

My Ill Fated Attempt To Clean the House

Lil Sis: I'm having so much fun today!

Me: Why?

Lil Sis: Because I'm making a big mess! (loud laughter to follow)

I think I've lost control! I'm attempting to organize and throw things away today....we also call it taking control of horizontal surfaces. As I'm making progress in the living room and kitchen (slowly), the living room floor is being covered with game pieces...Memory, Go Fish, Candy Land, and a Little People fishing game. There would be another fishing game in this mix, if the pieces weren't soaking in soapy water.

Yeah, we had a wasp in the house and sprayed poison to kill it. Well, in our haste to kill the wasp, we didn't remove everything that was exposed to the poisonous fall out before annihilating it. The good news, we successfully killed the wasp. The bad news, I had to wipe down a lot of stuff that the spray dripped on. You see, the wasp was in the living room light fixture and ... well, I had a little lesson in gravity.

Fortunately, Snickers (who was also chasing the wasp) seems to be o.k. In fact, it was Snickers who alerted us to the wasp flying about the light fixture.

Hopefully we don't suffer any ill effects from spraying poison in here. I did turn off the A/C for the first time in many weeks and all the windows are open. It's a cool day and kinda nice to have the fresh air in the house.

Just last night, we moved all the games to a spot where the girls can have easy access to them, in hopes they'll play with them more often. I guess my wish has come true!

Oh, and she's still wearing her jammies! I think she's really getting into her element of being the only kid at home during the day.

Collecting Ribbons and Coupons

This evening Big Sis and I went back to the fair to collect her artwork and ribbons. She earned a whopping $4.50. We haven't yet talked about what she'll do with her winnings. Perhaps we'll just put it in the bank. Or, perhaps, she could use it to pay me to clean the toy room. Yeah, there's a story that goes with that statement :)

This afternoon, I asked Big Sis if she'd help put toys away in the toy room while I folded and put away her clothes. I gave her the option of earning 50 cents if she did it herself, having me help her and earning nothing, or paying me 50 cents to clean the toy room. She got out her coins and we counted her money. She decided she would be happy to pay me to clean. I told her we should talk to Cool Daddy-O about her decision and see what he thought.

After discussing all the options again, Big Sis decided that she would rather clean the room on her own and make some money. She worked for awhile and made nice progress. Finally, she decided she needed a break. She became engrossed in a TV program and said she'd finish later. I decided to reward her and give her half the money since she had completed much of her task. She said she'd do the rest tomorrow.

Here's a close-up of the collage that won Best of Show in her age group.

The other highlight of our day was a family effort. One of the local gas stations offers a free newspaper with the purchase of gasoline. There was a coupon that I wanted multiples of. So, we took both cars to 2 gas stations, where we each purchased the amount that qualifies for a free paper. I went to a 3rd gas station and squeezed in some more gas in my car and got a 5th paper. What was this coupon? It's a buy 1 get 1 free coupon for the hair color I use. Since I have so much hair, my hair stylist uses 2 boxes to color my hair...and I color it every 6 weeks. Each box costs between $7.50 and $8.70 depending where I buy it. So, we figured we saved about $40 in hair color expense, or looking at it another way...it makes the gas much cheaper.

Yesterday I had a great afternoon. I was able to spend a couple hours hanging out at Target. We needed to get a second car seat for the second car. I'll be taking the primary kid hauling car to Iowa City on Friday and Cool Daddy-O will need to drive the girls around town for various activities. The new booster seat has 2 cup holders. The old one doesn't have any. Big Sis is willing to share her extra cup holder with Lil Sis. What could be better?

Who Doesn't Get Excited About Their Dyson?

Check this out! I spent the afternoon cleaning off my desk, going through my pile of things to do. The girls hung out in the basement playing and watching TV.

As I was dusting the desk, they came upstairs. It was like pulling teeth to get the girls to help pick up toys. Lil Sis became interested in helping with the dusting. That set Big Sis in motion....she just had to do something too.

So, she got the vacuum out of the closet, asked me how to plug it in and turn it on. She was on a mission and did a fantastic job. She vacuumed the living room, hall way, her bedroom, and mom/dad's bedroom. She was so excited! Cool Daddy-O was quite impressed when he arrived home and found her in her room pushing the vacuum around! She even came back to the living room when she was all done and caught a few spots she missed the first time.

Lil Sis tried, but said it was too hard to push around. She did her part, though, and unplugged it and helped wind up the power cord when Big Sis finished.

Cool Daddy-0 and I went out on a date tonight. We had a delicious meal and then headed to Menard's to hang out. We had so much fun and when we finally checked our phones to see what time it was, we freaked out. It was 9 p.m. and we hadn't done our shopping at Target yet. We had coupons we had to use!

All was well. We paid for our books (yeah, I know, it's not a book store, but they have great prices on books). The trip to Target was successful, yet uneventful.

Yet Another Nice Day

A few hours ago, this flower was quite droopy. Yeah, not good. Little Sis and I determined a cold drink of water would be the answer. And it's a good thing. After watering the plants on the porch, we ventured to the back yard. Oops...things didn't look so good there, either. We simulated a brief shower for the garden. The tomato plants look like they'll live, after all.

I spent much of the afternoon organizing all the preschool and kindergarten papers that came home recently. Our "horizontal surfaces" (aka counters and other places that collect paper) were in bad shape. Things don't look a lot better, but I did throw away and organize a lot of stuff today. However, while I was doing that, the girls drug out more toys and now it looks like a tornado went through the living room, destroying Little People land. I will continue this project tomorrow. And. I. Will. Win!

The school was spared from the tornado.

However, the minivan suffered major damage.

Before we could make supper, we had to run to the grocery store. We were only gone 30 minutes (we were moving really fast in the store) as we had to get back before Big Sis got off the bus. We had to go before she got home, so I could get started on supper. We ended up stocking up on the essentials, even though we only had mushroom soup on our list. I actually cooked a yummy meal for supper, too. We had baked pork chops with a mushroom gravy sauce, baked potatoes and corn casserole.

Upon arriving home after school, Big Sis declared today to be the worst day ever. Her 7th grade buddy visited today and they were playing basketball in P.E. She said they were playing and all of a sudden she was hit in the cheek with a basketball. I gave her a hug to console her. I also told her she was lucky the ball didn't hit her in the nose. I told her that would have hurt even worse. (Yes, my glass is half full.)

Tonight, while Cool Daddy-O was cruising the neighborhood in the old John Deere, the girls were running on the concrete driveway. Note: they've been warned it is not safe and it would hurt really bad if they fell. Well, Big Sis fell. As she was crying big crocodile tears, little sis was crying sympathetic tears. She was scratched up, but barely bleeding. We sat and snuggled on the porch steps. We talked about what happens when running on concrete and falling down. Little Sis soon arrived carrying baby wipes. She wanted to help Big Sis get all cleaned up. We managed without band-aids.

After Cool Daddy-O returned, he and the girls pulled a bunch of weeds. Big Sis kept declaring her super strength when she pulled the weeds up by their long roots. We're very happy the girls like pulling weeds and are taking full advantage of their enthusiasm, because we know it's just a phase they're going through, and all good things must end at some point.