Day 20.... Give a kid a Cactus day!

Rex and I always do our shopping on a Saturday morning.  Usually early early early to beat the crowds and to allow us to then have the rest of the weekend "free"! :D

This morning we had planned to leave about 7am, go to the bagel place, have some coffee and plan our "attack"!  ... so naturally we woke up at 8:45.  And then faffed about.  So that it was 9:30 when Rex called and found out the hair appointment he thought he'd missed yesterday was actually this morning.... at 10....  Gah.  I had him pour my cuppa tea into my to go mug and he and I said bye to the kids and hustled out.  3 minutes down the road and I realized I had left me tea at home...   4 minutes out and I realized I hadn't had breakfast!!  Great start!! :D

We made it to the appointment only a couple of minutes late and I face timed with my kids whilst I waited!!  I hate to run out on them first thing in the morning if we haven't really had time to say howdy!! :D  "Morning Jess!  Watch your siblings for me! Thanks for making Tea, see you later!!"

After the hair appointment it was on to the grocery stores which we at full swing and full capacity!  Everyone seemed to be in fine spirits though and it's not like we were in a big hurry!    I decided to do  my Random Act in the grocery store and thought I would buy some flowers for someone today.  Whilst I was checking out the flowers and plants I spotted a young girl (perhaps 8 or 10 years old) and an older boy (maybe an older brother or possibly her young father) and they were checking out the floral display.

The girl was pointing at various things and off she went into the refrigerated section with all the flowers.  I asked the man who was with her what she was up to and he said "looking for something for Mom"  :)  Awww...!  She came out of the fridge with a small bunch of yellow tulips and her brother / dad said ..." uummm....."  !  I left them to it and went a picked out a pretty pink Christmas Cactus.  I have one that flowers every year at this time and it's lived for years now (if I can do it anyone can!  I have a black thumb!  Plants tremble at my name!) and my Mum has one that's over 40 years old!  Christmas Cactus plants are a good investment in my opinion!!  Anyway I picked one out and also a package of pink gum... because... gum...!!  I paid for it all and popped the receipt back into the wrapper of the plant and went to track down the two I'd met earlier.  I found them soon enough and caught the girl's attention.

"This is for you!" I said.  "It needs some water and some love but should last you a long time and will make some pretty flowers!"

She was so thankful I was really touched.   She seemed genuinely pleased and seemed to be very happy about the gum too! :D

Anyway, there ya go... today's act!

After that Hubby and I went on to more stores... I went to Michael's and was able to pick up a bottle of glitter glue, get to the check out ( no line! ) and out again in only 3 minutes!  Now, if you ever shop at Michael's you will know why hubby totally missed me walking out the store as he sat in the car looking for me!  He was imagining I would be an age!  I've NEVER been in there without a line before!!

Trader Joes next... and wine sampling!  Great idea on an empty stomach!  Honestly what must they think of me in there!!

Panera Bread for lunch then home to my babes one of whom was COVERED in tomato soup!

Tonight we sat and watched The Santa Clause movie... somehow watching a movie with a 15 year old, a reluctant 12 year old, a crazy 2 year old, 3 dogs and 2 cats is not as relaxing as one might hope.  Dogs want out, dogs want in, baby wants attention, baby needs diaper changing, baby needs to poop, dogs want to sit on you, dogs want to wrestle with each other, 12 year old wants hot chocolate, hubby wants coffee, baby wants milk, baby wants to make you pretend to drink a cup of epsom salts she's poured for you as long as you then go "PooOOOooeeee" and make spitting noises.... over and over and over again....

So, yeah, we "watched" the movie and then put the kids to bed.  (I should be clear that Jess of course puts herself to bed...!! LOL!  )

Now it's time for hubby and I to have a little peace and quiet and the animals have all worn themselves out too.

Night all!

Day Nineteen. .. Not at all staged.

Tonight's post really IS going to be a quick one....  LOL!!  Hubby is waiting for me to watch a movie with him.... soooo... here goes! :D

Ok, but first I have to show you the neat pancakes I made for breakfast this morning.....

Cool eh?? :D I made the snowman one for Millie but in true Baker form she refused to eat it because it had a face.  Jack refused to eat a Mickey Mouse one some lovely lady made for him at a restaurant once when he was about Millie's age!! LOL!!  Oh how we laughed!!


So we had a very leisurely start this morning.......    waaaaay more TV than I will ever admit, thank the lord for Netflix and streaming Curious George that's all I can say!  I did provide ample snacks ( and way too much chocolate and ice cream), toys and books....   !!  Eventually I got myself moving, and made two big batches of Gingerbread dough whilst listening to a podcast of Serial. ( not heard of it? find it, download it.  It's awesome!)

Millie helped me stir..... sort of.....

You will notice her clothes on the chair behind her.....   *sigh*

Tonight Jess and I went to the Stage Theatre here in town to see our friends in the production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.  It was such fun and so well done.  We like to read the book every Christmas since our friend Alicia introduced it to us some years ago.  It's just so funny.  We decided to do our Act of Kindness there and after we'd collected our tickets we approached the snack bar and basically bought candy for the next 14 people in line!! :D  Fun fun fun!! :D

So, see, I can be quick!!

No cat pics tonight... he's outside, silly sod.  BUT here are some dog pics... you know... for whatever reason! :D

Lucy LOVES when Lilly comes to stay!! :D

Yogi under the table chewing on something noisy..!

Night all! :D 

Day Eighteen! A quickie!

Tonight's post will be short and sweet... but probably not...  I just got back from a late night Christmas shopping / date escapade with hubby and have put the kids to bed and got the lunch ready and prepared tomorrow's smoothie and now want to write a fairly quick post before I go to bed! :D har!

So... here ya go!  Today's Act of Kindness is sort of two fold.. or even rather three or four...   To start with we sent 3 bags of fudge with 3 gift cards to Jack's para's and his teacher today.  But I forgot to take a photo so it didn't happen.  Boo.  Of course it did, but, you know.  Anyway, we also had a bag of cookies spare from the other day's baking binge and when our lovely UPS fella showed up, well, guess where the cookies went? :D  He's SUCH a nice man and has been our UPS guy for years and years.  He's just lovely.  He really deserves more than cookies, but that's what we had, so that's what he got! :D

Picture...!! :D

Of course you can't see the cookies... but there ya go.  Trust me, he got 'em! :D 

So then what else happened today?  Well I had two little girls here for Daycare today along with Millie.  They are such LOVELY girls, it's really a piece of cake to watch them and I love doing it!  Here they are playing together...

And here are the three of them...

I like the above pic because my house looks relatively clean and tidy.  Don't be fooled! :D  It wasn't TOO long after this was taken that Millie took an entire cup of Ovaltine and dumped it over her entire body necessitating a bath.  She loves baths so I suspect that was all part of her plan! :D  ( and yes, she is watching Frozen.  Again.  Money well spent on Amazon I can tell ya! ) 

Later in the day Mary and Charlotte came over and the girls ALL went downstairs to play together and make a movie!  I was left alone and with so much to do... so I did this instead! 

Please note the mistletoe hanging over the sink.  Whomever is doing dishes gets kissed!! :D 

But yeah, I made those stain glass thingys with tissue paper, construction paper and contact paper.  Easy peasy and lots of fun! 

At five o'clock we were all sitting watching Winnie the Pooh's Christmas ( or something!) and the little girl's grandpa came to pick her up.  At 5:30 Lilly dog arrived for her Christmas visit whilst her lovely owner goes home for the holidays and at 5:40 hubby arrived from work ready to take me shopping at the mall!  As I said earlier we got back about 10ish, then it was hustle the kids to bed and get my chores done for morning and a "quick" post... how did I do?!!? :D

I just went into the kitchen for something and came back to realize all the animals have congregated around me!  I feel like snow white! :D  

Helper cat, Yogi, Lucy and Lilly! :D  Herman has since arrived too but he missed getting his picture taken!

So there ya have it!  My day in a nutshell!  I can't wait for tomorrow, Jack's last day at school for a couple of weeks!  I'm really looking forward to having him back home! :D

Night all!!

Day Seventeen Trash Talking!

Today started out BUSY!! :D  We agreed to meet my lovely friend Diana and her beautiful daughter at the skating rink again today which necessitates an early start from our house.  But first breakfast, the getting to the bus of Jack, getting Millie up and fed and persuaded into clothes, seeing Hubby off to work, putting the dogs out, feeding the dogs, putting the dogs out again, washing the dishes, changing my shoes, finding Millie's boots, putting the big dog in the crate and putting the garbage out for pick up.  And right away that's where todays act of Kindness came in!  The garbage men!  We treated them to a bag of cookies and yes, another Starbucks gift card each.  Honestly I don't know what people did without Starbucks gift cards!  I mean, if you don't  drink coffee they have tea or hot chocolate or cold drinks and food...  I really don't go there very often, I'm not a huge coffee drinker and I don't like a lot of additives in my drinks BUT I do love a Peppermint Mocha when the season calls for it!!

Nothing like eating food you found on top of the trash can!

Not fancy, but I hope they like it! :D

After everything was said and done we hightailed it to the van, this time making sure Millie had her boots ( but evidently forgetting her Mi' (mittens) ) and headed across the town to the ice rink. The instructor had brought a pair of skates from home for Jess to wear and offered them to us for a bargain price at the end of the lesson.  I snatched them up and insisted Jess take the box too... hey, I can wrap 'em and  use it for another Christmas gift!  Hah!  How fun to have your own pair of ice skates... I always wanted skates when I was a kid but we never had the chance to go skating really.   

Fancy skates!  Filthy glass...! :D

We went by Target on the way home to pick up some bits and pieces (including Yoga pants which were on sale.  I accidentally came home with a "skinny" pair ... har har... THAT wouldn't work... I look bloody HORRENDOUS in skinny yoga pants!  Like a pair of toothpicks with a big fat ass. )

When we arrived home at our front door the dogs started barking and I said... "hmm... Yogi sounds a bit too close to the door to be in her dog crate."  Sure enough... she had busted out!!  Happily she hadn't destroyed anything other than the blanket that had been in the crate with her...  Yikes.  I was very grateful the curtains, the tree and the dining room chairs were still intact! 

Innocent?? :D  Pah!

 Millie insisted I sit with her and give her some "side" so I did whilst Jess and I watched The Incredibles together.  Predictably Millie fell asleep for her nap so I took the chance and shot back to Target to switch out my pants!  Terrible waste of gas I'm sure, but I REALLY wanted to change them.  LOL!!  Don't judge me please!! LOL!  As it is I haven't even tried them on yet!  I guess I'm afraid to incase they look awful on me!  Only a few things can make my rear look decent and most of those things involve copious amounts of lycra!! 

Anyhoo, I get back home and Millie is still napping!  Fabulous!  Jess digs out her roller blades and proceeds to roll about the place as I prepare cookies, bake bread and make dinner.... Diana's delicious baked spaghetti squash!  Later, when Millie wakes up again I had to snap a pic of her because she was STILL wearing Clo' !!  She'd managed to stay dressed from 8am until about 4!  It's a record!  (she DID try really hard to pull off her socks but they weren't socks, they were tights and she could NOT get them off from under the poppers on her vest and her jeans!!  (not my first child!!) 

Millie!  Still in Clo' !! :D

Now it's late, Millie is hopefully sleeping .... hubby is PROBABLY sleeping alongside her and the other two kids are most likely snoring too.  Helper cat has shown up again tonight, hauling his stretchy self out from under the couch now no one is around to chase him or otherwise mess up his groove.  He's a really loving cat when he wants to be... but it's so DRY in the house that if I pet him his fur sticks to me with the static and gets all over my face .... ack!  

He's just waiting for me to pet him!!  He looks so serious!

So anyway, now it's time to get the dishes washed, the kitchen back in order and I'm going to work on finishing my book...  I don't really want to finish it because I love it...  weird eh!?  

Toodles!

Day sixteen .. Recycling dude and a Christmas Tree dilemma.

So today was another easy one for us!  I baked a batch of oatmeal and choc chip cookies and put them into gift bags.  I then added a $5 Starbucks card and set the cookies and card out for the poor fella who has to pick up our recycling every week!  He's a nice guy and very conscientious, I hope he enjoys the cookie and a nice warm drink somewhere... MAN it was cold out this morning! :D

The next project was to decorate the Christmas tree... now... some might say I'm a bit weird.... (shut up you) because I like to have all my chores done before I do any "fun" stuff so I wanted to wash dishes, make the beds, run the laundry etc etc before I could decorate the tree but Millie wanted to nurse nurse nurse and poor Jess was desperate to get started on it...  I promised I would be ready by noon.  I sort of was but just could NOT get motivated.  I wasn't sure where I was going to put the tree ( we usually have huge ones but this year because of the puppy it is much smaller ) and we have enough decorations for two seven foot tall trees and this year we have one about four foot tall so we have to decide what to put on and what to leave off... you know, silly ass first world problems like that.   So we began what ended up being a really complicated rigmarole.  Firstly I strung the tree with colored lights and then we chose a theme ( we don't usually have much of a theme ) .. blue and silver and white decorations.  We put the ornaments on, stood back, and Jess said we should probably have white lights rather than colored to go with the silver....  so we took everything off again ( one plus of a teensy tree!) and re strung it with white lights.  Put all the ornaments back on... hmm... now if we set the tree next to the Eiffel tower with it's LED white lights our tree lights look like yellow teeth.  

We turned off the Eiffel tower lights here because it looked crazy!

Took everything off again and put on white LED lights....  yuk.  Too big, too garish.  At this point I gave up and slung the lights over the tree and quit.  I decided to wait until Hubby got home to see what he suggested.  We went through various scenarios including going out and buying new lights etc etc.  Finally, after a little pity party on my behalf we came up with a new plan.  Or rather I opened my eyes to what Christmas is really about.  I had been totally caught up in making the tree "look pretty" so I wouldn't let the kids really hang any ornaments or anything... they could PASS me them..  ( what is WRONG with me ) and I'd even said to hubby that if I let them do it "they would wreck it" !!  I KNOW!!  I SAID that....!  But anyway, as I said, I did come around and realize that the BEST way to decorate that tree was to put the colored lights BACK on and let the kids totally do it themselves with NO help from me at all!  

Teamwork!

Millie working hard ( can you tell Blue is her favorite color?)

She cheered after each addition!

Jess the tinsel tosser!

Concentrating!

Safely tucked away from the dog ( I hope! ) 

And the tower gleams alone!

And you know what, the tree has never looked more beautiful.  Making memories people!

G'night!

Day Fifteen.. Neither snow nor rain

Today's Act was an easy one and one I enjoyed doing.  Our mail carrier, Becky, is a lovely lady.  She's so friendly and kind.  When Millie was born she and Cathy, the post mistress, both came over to have a look at her!  She leaves candy for the kids on Valentine's day AND ON THEIR BIRTHDAYS!!  (How does she know it's their birthday?!) .. so to give her a little surprise was a no brainer for me!  I'd cooked up another batch of fudge ( oh fudge how we love thee! ) and put it into a pretty bag and then into a nice dish.  That along with a greetings card and a small Christmas tip was tucked with the mail into our mail box.  A little something extra for her on her rounds this morning!

The rest of the day was spend fuddling around.  Sometimes it's hard to get moving on a Monday following the sloth of Sunday.  Today was one of those days!  I had a lot to do, and got only a little done.  Never mind.  Progress is progress, right?? :D  I got the beds stripped, changed and washed, I ordered a BUNCH of Christmas gifts online, I made dinner (boxed Mac and Cheese... shhhh!!) which the heathens scarfed like I never feed them!  Believe me if I'd slaved for hours in the kitchen over some exotic gourmet dinner ( or heck, something with more than one pan...!) you can bet they'd have turned up their noses at it!  But box Mac and Cheese ( albeit G/F ) was a DELIGHT!  Two whole boxes, three kids...  **blink and you missed it!!**

So there ya have it!  Tonight it's blowing a freezing gale but none of the promised snow.  I really would enjoy just a little of it, just to make it feel a little more seasonal.  Hubby has offered to do the dishes if I wanted an early night... DO I want an EARLY NIGHT?!!?  Heck yeah!  So at 8:30 at  night Millie and I are headed up the apples and pears!  (I hope to read a little in bed, SUCH a treat!)

Catch y'all on the flip side!!

Day Fourteen ... What goes around..!

Well today started in the 50's, cloudy and drizzly.  An odd start for a winter day but there ya have it!  I'd promised the kids that I would take them to the dog park so they could run with the dogs again and I had also promised to take them to the mall so they could so some Christmas shopping and I had ALSO promised myself we would get the Christmas tree today.    Hubby went out this morning with his bud for his usual Sunday morning breakfast so I got the kids ready, two sets of clothes each, two pairs of shoes each, three kids two dogs and one Harried Momma to go.  We went first to the dog park and everyone had a great time.  The puppy is getting the hang of the place now and knows where we are when we pull in.  She was barking and rocking the dog crate no sooner had I turned off the engine!  She was in puppy paradise!

  

This was Millie's first time to the dog run though and she caught on FAST!!  She ran like mad to keep up with everyone!! 

It was pretty muddy which is why I suggested the two pairs of shoes etc....  one puppy got a little friendly with Jack....  LOL!!

So from the dog park it was straight on to the mall.  We live out of town so it didn't make sense to drive home and drive back when the mall is only a few minutes from the park.  We gave the dogs some water, put Yogi back in her crate with a chew and a blanket and we changed our clothes and shoes to look a TOUCH more presentable for Christmas shopping!  ... To the MALL!!

I like the Mall at Christmas time but only for the atmosphere.  SHOPPING at this time of year is disgusting to me!!  I hate if I don't know what I'm looking for and I wander aimlessly from store to store dragging unwilling children and nursing sore feet.  Bah!  We wandered around a bit as a family and then Jess said she'd like to go her own way for a while so we agreed to meet up in thirty minutes by the food court.  Jack, Millie and I pressed on in search for a gift for Daddy...  but instead we chose Runza fries and a salad!  We met Jess and all had a snack to keep our spirits up!! :D 

Of course it's fact that Runza fries are simply a carrier for ketchup...!

And then who did we see on his way back to the HUGE crowd in line to see him??  Oh yes, the big man himself! 

Well we were having a pretty good time considering!  We really expected it to be a lot more stressful and I think if we had stayed very much longer it would have begun to get that way so we boogied on out ready for home.  As we were leaving we spotted the carousel and the large line of folks waiting their turn.  I made a quick enquiry as to how much the tickets were ( $2 each ) and so explained about our random acts and told the lady I would like to buy the next 7 tickets.  We quickly ducked out of the way as the lady began to explain the deal to the customers.  I hope they had fun!

So off we went home.  The dogs got in the door and flaked out and we all pretty much did the same.  I made another batch of fudge ready for our trip to the tree farm and after a while we gathered ourselves up ready to go again.  We go to this farm every year and headed off excited to pick out this year's tree.  Imagine our chagrin when we encountered THIS....

SOLD OUT?!?!  :(  Boo.  So we drove off to the big city and wow....  there are hardly any trees anywhere.  Those that remain were cut in SEPTEMBER ( can someone tell me why they have to be cut in September??? ) and were SO expensive....  So anyway.  We came home with nothing but are making a new plan.  We haven't quite figured it out yet, but we will.  I'm sure we'll have a tree by the middle of next week.  One way or the other!  

So tonight sees us eating dinner in front of the TV watching Alvin and the Chipmunks nibbling fudge for afters.  It's raining and 55 degrees outside...  oh do hurry up and snow or I'll never be able to get my shopping done!!  

No cat tonight... he's outside enjoying the balmy temps!  

Toodles!