Sunday, August 30, 2009

I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up If I Tried....

Thursday was B's 13th birthday. Let me pause for a moment to soak that in a bit more. I'm still finding it fairly odd to be the mother of a teenager. {long pause} We let him have a friend over. I went & picked up said friend Thursday morning & brought him home Friday late afternoon. It went pretty well other than N & J being jealous that Mr. E was here for B, but they survived it all.

B had received a couple of checks as gifts. He wanted to cash them & buy a game for his Nintendo DS - Friday. It was important to get this on Friday! So we waited for Mr & Miss H to go home & then I loaded all the boys in to the truck & headed to the bank to get there before they closed. We made it at 4:15 (they close at 4:30). Checks cashed. All set.

Then we dropped Mr. E home to his parents. I tried at this point to convince B to wait. I offered to take him to Game Stop (cheap used games there). Nope. Game Stop is an hour away and we couldn't get there until sometime next week or later. He wanted a brand spanking new copy of Mario Cart for his DS now!

Off to the next town where Wally-World resides. I stopped at Agway to get another bag of chicken feed (they are going through a 50 pound bag a month - is this normal for six chicks??). Sorry this is getting really rambling. If you are still with me, this is where "life" showed up.

I parked the truck & went to get out when J piped up from the back seat. "Mom, I don't have any shoes." WHAT??? Seriously? Yup, he walked out of the house barefoot. We always wear shoes. He just started realizing he could go barefoot & decided now would be a great day to do this. ::sigh:: I locked them all in (B is 13 now after all) & paid for my chicken feed & got that loaded up. Then tried to figure out what to do. Should I go home or carry him through the store (NOT!) or let B go in to Wally-World all alone while we waited in the truck or what? I told B that we'd have to head home.

This is when I spied The Dollar Tree across the street. I swung in. I dug $1.50 worth of quarters out my console since I had zero cash on me and was not going to use my debit card! I was on a mission & sure enough, I found a pair of boys flip-flops in the store. Now I was just worried about J being able to, you know, walk in them since we're a Croc family here.

Over to Wally-World we went. I gave J some quick pointers on the flip flops & we headed inside. I let B & N head over to electronics while J & I hit the restroom. Is that TMI? At this point I knew I was not up for making pizzas for "Pizza Night" so we took a quick walk through the frozen food aisle. I grabbed a bag of french fries and a bag of chicken patties and, well, um, some cookies. I was stressed!

We found the older boys over by the video games playing some of the display models. B had his game and all was well with the teenager now & off we went to head home. Phew!

And some big news - at least for this family - I made chicken burgers and fries for supper and everyone ate them. Let me say that once more....

everyone.....ate.....the.....same.....thing.....for.....dinner!!!!

Before you all give me the "well, what's the big deal? We do that all the time" comments. The Berry household isn't known for all members eating the same thing at every meal for a number of reasons. Mainly because as a new mom I made a number of mistakes and it took me three kids to figure out how to fix them. Obviously we're getting there, but I was SUPER excited. Not all that healthy, but oh it was so easy. Nice!

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That was Friday. Saturday was fun. I spent it at my sister's. I'm pretty sure that was a normal day. Today, Sunday, was not a normal day. Today I spent cleaning. I cleaned:
  • two bathrooms at my house
  • one bathroom at Grandma's house
  • swept one floor at my house
  • swept three floors at Grandma's house
  • mopped three floors at Grandma's house
  • vacuumed one floor at Grandma's house
  • got B to vacuum one floor here
  • vacuumed the entry way at my house
  • detailed my truck
And that's when it got weird...

We have a Suburban and it has a great cup holder attached to the back of the center console in the front for those sitting behind the driver and passenger. We typically don't use it but the boys will flip it down occasionally. I was pretty sure it was up. I was vacuuming away & had all the middle seats flipped down to vacuum under them. I went to flip them back up & could not budge one set of them. Apparently the drink console thingie was flipped down and this made it impossible for me to flip it up. No matter how hard I pulled. I had to get hubby.

Hubby has been working hard all weekend trying to get our chicken coop in the barn built so we can bring home our six new chicks. The chicken tractor (ducking & blushing) is too small for 12 chickens. The chicken coop will be too big but I'm okay with that. It means we can get more eventually. Hubby wants to try meat birds at some point.

But I'm getting off the subject again....

We are going on a field trip tomorrow to kick-off our new homeschooling year. I babysit two kiddos plus a friend & her son were going to come with us (notice that verb usage please...). After I finished cleaning out the truck, I decided to get ready for the morning by buckling in the car seats. I have extras ones here that I use so we're not constantly swapping them. Mr. & Miss H's mom is great about me taking the kids with me on field trips.

The first one I did was Miss H's. I was putting her in the middle of the middle row. I buckled in the seat & then pulled it out to lock the belt & started to feed it back in to tighten it. It wouldn't feed in. At all. It was just stuck there. I yanked. I pulled. I maybe cursed just a tad. I finally had to get hubby. He yanked. He pulled. He took it apart. He cursed just a tad. He pulled some more. Nothing. It's broken. Somehow when I went to feed it back in, it twisted up. Now it's all locked up & unusable which means we'll be making an appointment with the dealership at some point to have them fix it. This also means that my friend and her son had to find another ride for tomorrow. I have eight seats but only seven seat belts. ::sigh:: I was looking forward to the adult conversation on the two hour drive there and back.

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So anything odd happened at your house lately? Please say "yes" so I can feel a bit normal. Thanks so much.


PS: I apologize for this rambling nonesense post but sometimes the stories have to be shared.

6 comments:

  1. Had to laugh about the shoe trouble! Nic did that one time to me at the ball field. He said he forgot to put on shoes for his excuse. After I carroied him and my big ball purse while fussing plus having to sit for 2.5 hours on the bleachers, he has never done that again! :)


    Oh, no, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!!! Odd things do happen here!!!!!
    Kayla

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  2. All of them ate THE SAME THING?? Seriously? I would LOVE for that to happen in my house.....
    It'd be like rainbows and unicorns dancing, it never happens...

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  3. We all eat the same thing, almost every day...with the exception of fish days. Scotty won't eat it. Hannah has taken a liking to tilapia AND salmon (our "go-to" fish" so she eats those too. I make the kids eat what we are eating. I can't tell you how often I hear "ugh, I HATE rice" or "I don't LIKE hamburger"...but you know what? They eat it. If they DON'T eat it, they get it for snack that night...and by then, they are usually hungry enough to eat it (they do get their other "snack" after they've eaten). By golly, I am NOT a restaurant (and yes, I DO use that line often).

    As for weird, nothing much out of the ordinary here...thankfully so!

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  4. How about my 8-year-old saying to me, "Mums, you know what? I can peel my skin off and eat it."

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  5. LOL with the shoes. This has happened more than once with us. Sounds like one of my days!

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  6. It was a long time ago but once we did go out without someone's shoes and had to stop and buy some. Very frustrating!

    I'm still not used to being a Mom of a teenager and I've got 2 years experience!

    Jodi

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Oh thank goodness! I'm not here all alone. Thanks for leaving me a comment. It helps that I'm not always talking to myself. Right? Hello?