Just another manic Tuesday!

We started out today getting ready early and dropping off the van for the seasonal tire swap for snow tires along with an oil change, and the DVD player that I bought (off eBay!!!) to replace our broken one in the van installed...finally! It works! Yay!
Happy Kids for holiday travel--CHECK! Did not have to spend $1000 to replace it--CHECK!

After my darling husband was dropped off at work, no matter how badly Joann's, the grocery store and about 5 other places tempted me---it was off to the library to drop off books and get new ones and back home to do schooling. We are on a mission to stay on task daily so eventually when we have snow we can give up and run outside to play! :) It seemed like only 20 minutes later and an English assignment finished that it was time to hit the orthodontist follow-up appointment. Now I am not sure why but all of a sudden I don't like this guy anymore. Is that wrong? He seemed fine but today he seemed almost impatient with Dakota's curiosity regarding his own teeth molds and what it was really going to be like in his mouth...I think that is a fair enough investigation! How do you tell an orthodontist that you would like him to forward his plan on to someone who is fun with kids because someone is getting $1200 of my money and I would prefer it to be the one that makes my kid feel good!!! Let's hope someone just threw up on him during a fitting and he was just having a bad day!

Yep...10 years old and Dakota is destined to get top braces and an extender in the roof of his mouth. We will wait until January so my flexible spending account will "account" for all of it! lol
He isn't looking forward to 10 months without gum or sticky candy but hopefully this will be all he needs. He has only lost like 6 teeth so far but this is mostly to make room in his mouth for the ones coming in the future.

Sam's 15th Birthday!

I would like to say this was an exciting and fun filled day...unfortunately with us being all spread out as happens frequently throughout the year...there were wired, tired and at times just obnoxious children gathered teasing Sam as he ate his "burrito as big as his head" from his favorite Mexican joint. Then as we weaned him into his celebration tonight with opening two gifts out of his numerous that we will save for the weekend...more teasing, obnoxious behavior. Someone really needs to talk to these kids parents...oh wait!

At least the pj shorts fit and he enjoyed those for bedtime. But...the basketball I picked out looked surprisingly miniature compared to our jumbo sized teenager as he seems to be growing in the middle of dinner. Ah well, hopefully our plans for the weekend will more than make up for our fumbles! Can't have perfection all the time! ;) Happy Birthday Sammy-Do!

Two for Tuesday

#1: I got quite a bit done yesterday, what a great feeling! Laundry is mostly done, house is mostly clean, mostly is a great adjective in my vocabulary! We even got to watch Brady Bunch on dvd which is our new obsession as a family--maybe it is the parallel of the blended family with kids stuffed into rooms maintaining balance or maybe it is just because the parents are so great at getting their kids to talk things out and I dream about being as good as them one day! But we love it! Even our 12 year old begs to watch! We finished up the night playing Candy Land which was a blast!!

#2: Plenty more to do today! Return shoes that don't fit, purchase toy for tot to donate for Ken to dress down at work all week--using my coupon for Build A Bear to make it cheaper! YAY! I Love it when things like that work out! We seem to average a trip to our library about 4-5 times a week since it is all of two blocks away, so I am sure we will find a way to make it there as well!

I am sure hoping as I do more blogging to become one of those amazing moms who bakes, creates, plays, discovers and finds time to capture the moments with pictures, unique fonts and scrapbook posts that look like it took them all night! Creating things is in my nature, my nature just doesn't talk with my brain very often to be prepared to do things! I get so inspired! I am ready to start making things for Christmas gifts again, hoping to be unique, fun, fabulous and a great outlet for my creative energy in this next month!

How Many Days Until What?

Do you ever feel like someone hid your calendar and then right before a ton of things are about to take place they give it back? Sometimes I feel like that when we have trips coming up or big weekend events and it seems like looking forward to something for so long. We have our Weekend to Remember coming up this weekend and while I have known this for weeks, it means getting my house cleaned (as usual but still needs to be on my to-do list with a better job attached!) and it means helping my parents out by having groceries stocked up in the house. Remembering which clothes makes me feel attractive to wear for our date nights with my husband. Plus, somewhere in there I am teaching my boys and hoping to finally sell some items I have had on craigslist for a while! You can tell times are tough when things I put on craigslist last more than a week!!!
The weirdest thing is that I get so excited for trips and things like we have this weekend and often I become paralyzed when it is time to pack like I don't know where anything is and I don't know what I normally wear! What exactly is that??? LOL

Snow Day!

We already had big fluffy snowflakes today! Making it hard to believe we are 20 days from Thanksgiving! Luckily, we had a wonderful day of school and had a grand time at the library among other things! I still have bagels to attend to in the dough phase upstairs, so we shall see how those end up turning out! :)

I love adventures!