Juice

I bought someone's juice today. O.K., it was actually last month, but I still think about it a lot. We were visiting Lake Arrowhead in CA and I had run into the grocery store for some ice cream for dessert. Joe & kids stayed in the car because I would "just be a minute". I actually was able to decide on a flavor super quick and was at the cashier in record time. Quickly I scanned the shortest lane and thought I made a great choice.

There was only one woman in front of me, friendly looking, all her groceries already up and being scanned. I put my ice cream up and started scanning the magazine headlines. I didn't even realize that it had been unusually long (yes, I was enjoying the guilty pleasure of gossip reading without having to worry about three kids emptying all the impulse candy items at kid level) until I heard the woman apologize to me. I started paying attention and realized she was paying with some WIC coupons and food stamps and the cashier was being very very picky about what order things were scanned in and that it was the exact right product. He looked at me with an impatient and exasperated look in his eyes, clearly not happy at the extra work this woman was giving him. I just stood there watching their unhappiness with the situation and each other, still holding the magazine.

They finally got down to her last four items, 3 different gallons of juice, but apparently she had selected the wrong brand and the cashier told her she needed to go back and exchange them. She looked back at me apologetically and I asked, "can I buy your juice?". She was confused for a minute and then started nodding her head and thanking me. The cashier took a little longer to catch on. I had to tell him about 4 different times that she didn't need to go switch her juice anymore because I was just going to buy it. She finally was able to leave with her groceries and the cashier was silent. He didn't say a word or even make eye contact with me until he started to hand me my change. He paused before he gave it to me and said, "that was a really nice thing you did for that lady. I've not seen someone do that before". If he only knew. Part II coming soon.

Vaseline

I am thankful Joe doesn't go out of town too often, but he is getting ready for a trip in the near future and I was debating whether or not to head to my parents to have some extra help while he is gone.  I know I haven't had all brain cells functioning for almost 5 years now because somehow in the past month I had forgotten about the events of a single day the last time he was gone.  

Here is the email I wrote Joe:

Hi love,

not a lot of energy right now, but just so you have a rundown of my day...

 9:45 at Dr. office w/ gabe - has a nasty ear infection which is why the cough/cold hasn't cleared up yet, now on antibiotics.  He also had to pee in a cup - first time peeing in a cup.  So off to the bathroom we went where he refused to go, he wouldn’t even go near the toilet… so back to the waiting room we go where the nurse gave him 2 juice boxes to drink.  He was unusually quiet, just sitting there drinking his juice when he looked up at me with a confused look on his face and asked why he has to drink all this juice and… “why does the doctor want me to drink my pee?”  He must have thought we all were nuts!  The first time peeing in a cup he thought he had to drink the cup!

11 – tried to open new bank account.  Basically waste of an hour, and waste of the 2 plastic piggy banks they tried to distract mak with while we were meeting.  She broke them in 10 minutes.

12 - took gabe to field trip at weather station with new class.  Fun time.

normal afternoon, thank goodness.

mom and dad had dinner @ USAFA so i was on my own for dinner/bedtime, not a big deal EXCEPT:

gabe told me this morning that he flushed a paper cup down the toilet because he "wanted to see what would happen", but it didn't clog until i used the potty tonight when my parents were gone.  kids were upstairs and the toilet was OVERFLOWING!  I yelled at gabe to come help and see exactly what happens when you flush a cup down the toilet.  He had to hold the bulb thing in the toilet while i went and found a plunger.  got it all fixed, good teamwork.

then at bedtime, mak said she needed to puke.  she was just being dramatic b/c gabe has been sleeping with me b/c he's sick and she wanted to sleep with me too and wanted to be sick.  soooo she went to the bathroom and sat by the potty while i tucked gabe in.  i went to check on her to find her dropping one-by-one paper towels in the toilet.  she made it through over half-a-roll.  did not like fishing those out, I have had enough of the toilet for one day.

and as if that wasn't enough......

you know that mak has had a difficult time staying in bed after tuck-ins, getting up an insane number of times.  WELL, she actually been rather quiet tonight and only came up a few times.  one time she came up with her Treeva hat on and asked if i could get the trolls out of her bed.  After I conquered all of the trolls I thought she was down for the night.  She was real quiet and I thought she had fallen asleep.  ooohhhh noooooo, she came up about an hour later looking like a greased little piggy.  She was covered head, hair, neck, and face in an almost entire tub of VASELINE!!!!!!  She told me that she wanted shiny hair just like Cinderella's.  I am not kidding.  I laid her on the kitchen counter and tried to wash it out in the sink, but even palmolive couldn't get out the vaseline.  she may have dreadlocks at her 3-year birthday party.   

i am exhausted, but laughing.  can't handle a whole lot more, but hanging in there

zip-a-dee-do-dah

Playing legos and singing songs, what a great start to the day!

Comings & Goings

So much has happened in the past month I was debating where exactly to start...

As you can see from the picture, we are no longer in sunny San Diego.  Our heads are spinning from the events of the last few months, but we are excited to have finally arrived in Colo Spgs and start settling in here.  I'm not the only one in the family who is confused by the change in climates.  Gabe insists on wearing his warm-weather clothes and has asked me everyday when he can wear shorts again.

For my sake of family documentation, a little review of the past 4 weeks:

Mid January all 5 of us fly to CO for final stage of a job interview for Joe.

This new job becomes official which leads to...

packing, goodbyes, packing

car troubles (sharing a car for several weeks while constantly going in different directions was a feat!)

visiting Disney one last time, packing, becoming a landlord

and then the real fun began - moving truck arrived, we shacked up at a hotel and lived out of our car, 3-day road trip with 3 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cars, and one saintly grandmother.

We arrived safely (and sanely) in CO, but despite bathing in purell after all those hotels and McDonald playlands we still had some extra germs tagging along for the ride and were at Urgent Care for pink eye and ear infections.  

We also had to make the difficult decision to say goodbye to our 15-year old Golden-doodle, Kopa.  She was an amazing dog and a sweet part of our family.

It was definitely hard to leave San Diego, but even harder to say goodbye to sweet friends.  The kids hanging in there with this transition, but we are all eager to find a routine and find some new connections.  Gabe started at a new preschool this week, but hasn't yet talked about someone he wants to come over to his house.  When that happens I will breathe a sigh of relief and welcome the feeling of normalcy returning to our lives.

Whew!

sugar and spice and everything nice

A quiz for the trivia (or trivial) minded:

In the past 24 hours Makena has:

a) bitten the head off of one of Joe's original Star Wars figures

b) dropped the water pitcher putting a nice gash in her ankle

c) ripped out the back screen door by "just walking through it just like this"

d) all of the above

here's a clue:

Despite the lack of photographic evidence, the correct answer is d) all of the above.  And in all of her sweetness, she assigned the family roles to play for The Little Mermaid.  

In the role of:

Ariel - Makena

Eric - Gabe

King Triton - Joe

Flounder - Ford

and surprise, surprise guess who she said I could be?????