Our New Tradition (I hope)

I saw an idea on a craft website and changed it to fit my ideas and my family. We made a family time capsule. I used a quart jar and made a label that I taped to the outside of the jar. Then I took pictures of every one in my family (John took the picture of me). I printed those on index cards and wrote the name of the person, their contribution, age, favorite food, and favorite color. I added the pictures plus the thing that each person thought they would most like to add to represent them in the jar. It was more fun for me than anyone else, but I hoping that in years to come the New Year's Eve time capsule is something that the kids will look forward to.

Help!

OK, I guess I need to confess something before I get to what I need help with. I suck at cleaning the bathroom. It is probably because I didn't really clean a bathroom much until I moved out. (Yes, Carrie that means that it was usually my turn, but I just wasn't going to get in the middle of you and Marleah blaming each other when the bathroom would get cleaned by one of you either way.) I know that I have been out of my dad's house for almost 11 years and this is pathetic. I think the other reason is that apartment bathrooms are so much easier to clean. The tubs and showers are so smooth on the bottom that the dirt comes right off.

Now for my need. I need some ideas on how to clean the bottom of my shower and the doors. The bottom of my shower is textured, and I can't seem to get the grossness out of that stuff. I have been using Scrubbing Bubbles and now have some white patches, but I can't seem to get the entire shower floor clean. The doors are covered in soap scum and I have tried many things that look good while I clean them, but the next time I look at them they are all white again.

**I will spare you the pictures of my gross shower.

My Great Bras

Since breastfeeding three children, it has been difficult to find a bra that gives me the support to make me look like I have cleavage again. (I know too much info, but oh well.) I am happy to say that this month I have found not just one, but 3 bras that give my deflated balloons the support they need! Why am I sharing this with the world? The answer is simple. I am so dang excited! In the past I have settled for anything that will just give me enough support that I don't feel like I am, as my mom would have said, flopping around. I found that those kind of solutions were just making me look flat. I tried a padded bra a few years ago when I was done nursing Noel, but I hated how it always had to be reshaped after it was washed. Thank goodness for new designers. I can now have some bras that harness me and give me the shape that I have been wanting!

My Favorite Christmas Moments of 2008

One big highlight was having a clean house!
The kids LOVED that Santa wrote a thank you note for the cookies!

Poor Sean got one less gift than Eric, so we let him open a the gift from my parents (it was labeled for John and me). It turned out to be a foot massager. He was quick to let us know that that was not a fun present.

Noel had a very Tinkerbell Christmas. She wore this dress over her jammies until we made her get dressed. Then, she wore it over her clothes until we left for John's parents' house.

Eric opened a Wall-E "chapter book" and excitedly said, "How did someone know that I wanted this!" (He is not very secretive when he wants something bad enough.)

Scooby-Doo...Who Knew

Slowly but surely the days of Thomas the Tank Engine are disappearing in our house. That means that the boys are growing up and Noel just isn't as interested in Thomas (big surprise). For a while we went through an in between phase of watching things here and there. They all like Disney movies and some Dreamworks movies, but nothing like the obsession that was Thomas for so many years. Now, they have found their new niche. Scooby-Doo! Eric seems to like the mystery involved. Sean likes the humor. Noel LOVES that there are girls in the movies. So there we are. Something for everyone! (And I thought that finding something that the boys and Noel would all like would be difficult.)

Mamma Mia: The Good and the Bad

Last night I watched the movie Mamma Mia. This is a movie about a girl who is getting married and wants more than anything for her dad to walk her down the aisle. The problem is she doesn't know who her father is. When reading her mother's diary she finds that there are three possibilities. She decides to invite all three potential fathers to her wedding believing that when she sees them she will just know who her father is. As the movie goes forth, there are some predictable small twists and turns. Then ends fun and, yes, predictable.

I liked the basic idea of the movie. It was fun and full of energy. I could tell that the actors had a lot of jun singing the songs and doing the choreography. That was the main plus to watching the movie. At the same time, it was also a negative. It made me wish that I saw it on stage instead. I wanted to be able to feel the energy that could only be felt when watching a live performance.

Yes, there were a few songs that felt a bit misplaced or like they didn't need to be there at all (after all it was basically Abba's greatest hits with a story connected). However, I think that the main flaw was that the script didn't transfer to the screen very well. Over all, I would watch the movie again because it was fun, but I think that it would have been MUCH better live on stage. I may have to find out when it will be in Denver again.

Anthony's Bithday

I am not overly sentimental about my brother, but on days like today how could I forget him. Anthony was born December 18, 1976 (exactly 19 months before me). He died August 30, 1996 (about a week into my senior year). There is more to him than that though. I have some great memories of him.

Christmas time was always interesting with my brother. Most people put up their Christmas tree a little after Thanksgiving. My brother insisted that the tree was not put up until after his birthday because he hated being reminded that his birthday was so close to Christmas and wanted to make sure that they were completely separate. He would get mad if his presents were wrapped in Christmas paper. That meant that my parents would have to buy birthday paper just for him (even my presents were wrapped in Christmas paper most of the time, and I have a July birthday). After his birthday, he was very into Christmas. He prided himself in the fact that he would buy us presents that were not on our lists. Sometimes that was a good thing and sometimes not so good.

Anthony and I were close. For quite a while we share at least some friends. (He had a huge crush on my best friend when I was 14 or 15.) That means that we hung out together sometimes. We had some sort of party when I was in 8th grade (probably a Christmas party). I seem to remember that basically it was my friends and boyfriend that was there. We played truth or dare. Anthony dare my boyfriend to kiss me. That was my first kiss. Latter that night, we went for a drive. Some how we ended up driving around a cull-d-sac with everyone in the car yelling with the doors of the car open for some girl that my brother wanted to see.

I remember Anthony telling me that if anyone wanted to fight me he would take care of them. At the end of 8th grade that time came for me. A girl that I hardly knew was talking about beating me up because I was friends with someone she didn't like. When I got home from school, I told my brother (him being my protector and all). He told me that since it was a girl he couldn't do anything about it and to have Marleah (our younger sister) help me.

I got my first job thanks to my brother at Kenny Rogers Roasters. My fist day I worked in the dish pit (yuck!). The first thing that he did was take me to the back and introduce me to the person that we would be working with (Anthony was training me) that night. It went something like this..."Jesse, this is Rosa. Rosa, this is Jesse. He really likes you." Jesse and I both blushed, but that started an interesting friendship. Anthony ended up walking out on that job twice.

My last memory of him was a day at my mom's house. We were both stopping by there before going to the drive-in that was close. His girlfriend was driving her car. My boyfriend was driving his car. (I don't remember why we were at my mom's, but that is not important to this story.) He said to me, "Hay, Rosa, my girlfriend's car is better than your boyfriend's car." I responded, "Hay, Anthony, my boyfriend's car is better than your boyfriend's." To that he responded in his fake gay way of talking some how. We both had a laugh and went on our way.

I think all in all Anthony and I had a typical bother-sister relationship. He was my protector from the evil boys in the world, and I was the one that hid him from Mom and (mostly) Dad when he would come home drunk and stoned. We both would have fun torturing our sister (she still won't let me forget about some of that stuff). We would hang out when we felt like it. We would fight when we disagreed.

Letter to Santa

Eric wrote this letter to Santa at school this week.

"December 15, 2008
Dear Santa,
For Christmas, I want you to give me the tallent of making a paper airplane.
I have been a very good boy this year! Have fun on your trip around the world.
From,
Eric"

More Sentences

I know that others are probably not as amused by Eric's writing as I am, but this is my blog and I want to share what my goofy son writes. I wonder how he comes up with this stuff sometimes.

"A yummy candycane decorated it's self at my house at 1:00!"

"A cooku snowman with bat wings ran into a wall at my house on Christmas Eve!"

He seems to really like "excited marks." Again, I spelled and puntuated as Eric did.

Decorating the Tree pt.2

Eric, Sean and Noel decorating the tree.

Decorating the Tree

We decorated the Christmas tree bout a week and a half ago. I have just been too lazy to get the pictures from the camera onto the computer, and now it seems that I am having problems loading the pictures on my blog. I have some great pictures of my kids putting the decorations on the tree, but I must settle for before and after pictures for now. I will try to get the others posted soon.

The Secret Woman

I finally finished The Secret Woman by Victoria Holt. My step-mom, Bev, gave me this book and said that it was a good mystery/romance novel. (I started reading it about 2 weeks ago.) It started out very interesting. There was a mysterious death. There was a best friend that "looked out for" the main character. The main disappointment was that the main romance was the main character and a married man (they didn't do more than talk and hold hands, but still disappointing). About halfway through the book there was another mysterious death and more conflict added to the book. It seemed that after that it just dragged on more and more. More conflict was constantly added with a bit of a story added to it. It got to the point that I just wanted to know if my suspicions about what had happened in the case of the first mysterious death were right. Of course I was right. One person was the center of all of the mysteries. BORING! She ended up accidentally killing herself by drinking the poisoned drink that she had fixed for someone else. It was a very anticlimactic ending to a book full of mystery after mystery. My suggestion would be that no one should read this book unless they really have nothing better to do.

Christmas

Seeing all of the decorations going up has made me reflect on past Christmas's, both when I was growing up and since being married.

I remember going to see Santa at Kohls when I was little. We would go to the mall in Indianapolis and follow the foot prints to Santa where we would take turns sitting on his lap and tell him what we wanted for Christmas (I always wanted a new Cabbage Patch doll).

My first Christmas memory was when I was five or six. I, just like every other little girl, wanted a Cabbage Patch doll. After opening up my presents, I found that the only Cabbage patch that I got was a six inch doll. That was not what I had planned. I, also, got some kind of letter saying that I was on a waiting list for a real Cabbage Patch doll. When it was my turn, my mom took me to Toys R Us. We went to the customer service desk, and I got to pick out my own doll. That was excited. I am not sure if I was more excited that I got to pick the exact doll that I wanted or that my name was pick on the list before my sister (I think it was about a week before her which is a long time when you are that old).

When we lived in Indiana, Christmas time always meant that we got to go see Grandma and Grandpa Mitchell a few days later to have Christmas with them. It was always fun to play with the cousins. We loved Grandpa's cookies! We were always sad when it was time to go.

Fast forward a few years. We had moved to Colorado. I was hard to make it to Michigan to see Grandma and Grandpa. Mom had moved out. Us kids still loved Christmas. We loved getting presents for each other. We lived through my dad listening to his Readers Digest Christmas tapes all of the time. To go along with that was his off key renditions of the songs as they played. (I hated it then, but miss it now.)

I remember one Christmas Anthony and I were so excited about what we had gotten each other. We rarely asked what the other wanted, but somehow always picked out something that the other loved. We decided to tell each other what we had purchased and made a pact not to let anyone know (I think I was 15 or 16). I remember that he had given me one of those paper fans to go on the wall. I don't remember what I got for him. Then, we tried to stay up all night watching movies (they weren't Christmas movies, more like horror movies). Gosh I miss him sometimes!

A few years later, Mom and Anthony had just died a few months before. We all missed them very much. Dad had received money from Anthony's life insurance. He decided to use a good portion of that to try to make sure that Marleah and I got almost everything that we asked for. He really wanted to make it special. We made a trip back to Michigan that year. We had decided that we would stop in Nebraska to visit my mom's sister on the way there and back. It was good to see her.

I hope that I can be a good parent like my dad and give my kids the kind of memories that when they get older they can say that I did my best and they have great memories.

Eric's Sentences

In school Eric is occasionally given the assignment to write "juicy" sentences. They usually have a seasonal theme. Lately, he has been coming home with sentences that make us laugh.

"A realy tiny gingerbread man was dancing in the police department in 1617! That's one old gingerbread man!"

"The fat butted turkey was driving realy crazy at my church on my birthday on January 10th."

"Lary the smelly pumpkin was rolling in the park all the time in the afternoon!"

I spelled everything the way that Eric did and used the same punctuation.

Top 10 Things I Thought I Would Never Say

10. My boobs are not pillows.
9. You do not need to wear boots with your jammies.
8. I only want little boys for prayer time, not dogs.
7. Who peed in the cat box?
6. You really need to learn how to wipe your own bum.
5. Who pooped on the floor?
4. I can't vacuum with your bike in the living room.
3. No, I will not kiss you there!
2. Where are your clothes?
1. No one wants to see your naked peepee!

Thank you, Tara, for this wonderful idea!

Going to Grandma's

I was letting the Sean, Noel, and Haley play for a while so that I could get some other stuff done this afternoon before getting Eric. When I went to see what they were doing, thinking they were in the boys' room, I found them in the bathroom. They told me they were taking a sleigh ride to Grandma's.

Ahh memories...

I love my kids. Sometimes they can be extremely irritating. Sometimes those irritating moments become hilarious stories later.

Last night, we were sitting at the table drinking hot chocolate after putting up the Christmas tree and watching Santa Clause. I starting thinking about when my boys were littler. I looked at Eric and started telling him about his "dog" phase.

Eric went through a phase when he wanted a dog so bad that he acted like one almost all of the time. When he talked he would speak in "dog." This meant that he would try to talk and bark at the same time. One day when I picked Eric up from primary (he was a Sunbeam), his teacher told me that Eric had said the prayer...in dog. His teacher, a young newlywed with no kids, thought it was the best thing ever. I was so embarrassed. Last night I couldn't stop laughing while telling this story.