Car Trouble

Ordinarily I don't think about my car. I get in, I drive. It's when things go bad that I get grateful for what I had or I cruse the problem that arises. As with most things, things that go bad happen in threes.

1. Thursday morning I was rushing out the door trying to be on time for carpool pickup to get to school. In some hurried state, I managed to flip a switch and my "automatic sliding doors" were no longer automatic. In a panic I thought that maybe a fuse went out and I figured that I would stop at the dealership after I dropped off the kids. Well, it was almost comical to watch me manually open the doors for the kids to get out at school. It was reminiscent of my childhood and yelling "All clear?" just to ensure that no fingers were harmed in the closing of the sliding door.

As soon as I parked at the dealership, I said a quick prayer that the car would work again. I was prompted to look at the switch the controls the doors and realized that I had inadvertently turned it off. Silly of me, but I think God needed a laugh at my expense.

2. Later that morning... I was driving on a country road and a rock hit my windshield and chipped it. The weird thing was I wasn't driving behind a car when it happened. The only other car on the road was about 25 feet in front of me on the other side of the road. How does that happen?

3. Friday morning. When I got in the car to leave, my battery was dead. Michael was still home and was able to jump start the van. That entailed backing his truck onto the street, rolling the van down the driveway so that the jumper cables would reach. In the midst of buttons being turned on and off, the door lights got left on overnight.

Maybe my car is trying to tell me something, just not sure what that is. I think that Jack might clean it and I'll try and give it a little extra love as I'm running around this weekend. Wouldn't want my car to get cranky and start doing these things on a regular basis.

100 Days of School

Today was the 100th day of school. Emma's shirt says it all.

Before school, Emma came bouncing down the stairs already dressed for school. That was a little unusual, but it was dress of choice day and I figured that she was excited to pick out her clothes. Her initial outfit consisted of the green shirt as the bottom layer followed by another t-shirt and a sweater covering them. She was also wearing a long brown shirt scrunched at her waist layered over her jean skirt. To really pull this off she needed mismatched leg warmed, alas she does not own leg warmers.

I did have her take off the brown shirt, but I was ok with the rest of the outfit. I didn't realize what the green shirt had on it.

After school, Emma is holding her lunch bag in front of her covering her shirt. She very quietly says, "Mom, I have to tell you something." I immediately think, "What did she do?!" Emma continues by lowering her lunch bag and shows me her shirt.

I was a little confused, thinking that maybe she did it at school. Nope, she had planned out the whole thing the night before. I was honestly too relieved that she hadn't misbehaved in school to care about the shirt. Emma and I had a talked about how we treat clothes and sneaking. I'm not sure it was a very effective talk considering I had to keep turning around and laughing.

Grounded

A week ago Jack got grounded. It involved homework and something about him "not minding being grounded" when he decided he'd rather get a D on an assignment than do it. When he thought that being grounded was better than doing homework, I knew that I had to be serious when I explained how being grounded was going to work.

Instead of one week of grounding, it turned to two. No friends, no video games, no computer, no tv (I have been letting him watch all the princess movies that the girls have watched), no Legos.

It might have been the Legos that sent him over the edge, but he decided that being grounded wasn't such a good alternative after all.

As for me? Well, him being grounded essentially means that I'm grounded as well, right? Actually it hasn't been as bad as I thought. I've enjoyed not having to drive to playdates, listen to "Can I watch...whatever tv show?" We have another week to go, hopefully my sanity will remain in tact.

Blue Tape

I took a long break from painting and decided that I needed to get back in the program this week. You know, New Year's resolutions and all.

The most satisfying part of painting is when the bulk of the wall has color on it. Second to that satisfaction is when you get to pull the blue tape off the wall and see that (hopefully) crisp line that is achieved.
I still have a lot of white walls to cover, but I'm getting closer to my ultimate plan of "no wall left white".

A Night Out

I had talked to the mom of our usual babysitter earlier in the week and semi confirmed a night to have her come and babysit. In my head...I thought that I would call and confirm and then surprise Michael. Well, I forgot to do both.

Come Friday afternoon, I had a moment of clarity and remembered the date. I had already emailed a friend to let her know that I would come do a girl's night at her house. Why is it that things seem to happen at the same time? Girl's night out or date with hubby?!!!

Michael and I ended up going to a nice place for dinner and enjoying the evening to ourselves.

Note to self; go get a new calendar!!!

It's the Cheesiest!

A lover of all things pasta and cheese related, macaroni and cheese is the cheesiest. Earlier this week, I actually made shells and cheese....from a box. It was just that kind of night. In an effort to redeem myself, I made from scratch mac n' cheese.

It's not that hard to make once you have the basics down. The first time I made it, I measured every thing and made sure I had the exact cheese that it called for. Ha, that was a long time ago. I'm more like Julia Child...a little bit of this, a little bit of that. A little for you, a little for me. The mac n' cheese turns out different every time because I never have the same cheese, but it's still good.

Photo Toy

I found a new toy. It's a photo application for my phone. Actually one of my neighbors was taking pictures of Lily and and knew that I needed to get it.

I'm usually not a tech junkie, but I had to figure out how get the application on my phone. I had to update the software on the phone and then figure out how to get it from itunes to the phone. Yup, I figured it out.