My rant for the week....

Can I just say how much I dislike the ice cream truck(s) around here?? S E R I O U S L Y!! We have more than one, but there is one in particular. I am ready to scream!! (and not for ice cream!) She comes every DAY and sometimes more than once. I understand, between us, the next door neighbors, and 3 other houses within sight there is 18+ kids. And they ALL know where to raid their parents stashes for change. Car consoles, tops of dryers, random baskets, closet shelves, junk drawers, couch cushions, floor of the master closet, if they want change they will find it. And the kids have like these ears that seemed to be specially tuned in to hear the tinkling sound of the music from a half mile away. So they have their money and have their treats bought before we poor retarded parents have the chance to even figure out whats going on. I have never despised the song "Popeye the Sailor man" so much in my life. Can she at least get a new song if she's going to literally PARK the stupid van in FRONT of my freaking house for 15 minutes a day?? And I have pretty good kids, but its like they hear the song and they will do whatever it takes no matter what rules they have to break to get their stupid treats. They sneak, and if one kid dosen't have a quarter to get something, they will all pitch in and everybody gets something. Which is actually nice. I guess. However, On Sunday, we found Dayton 3 STREETS away with the 5 year old neighbor boy standing in line at the ice cream truck. WHAT???? There will be no ice cream buying this week for ANYone. I've totally had it.

On the dog front, all is still well. He is doing great and being a very good calm boy. I got a tip of where to get him groomed for cheap where I don't have to have a shot record, and he got a real good bath today. He came home with a bandanna on. Funny. He does still sneak off and mark his territory which really ticks me off but he is getting fixed in a couple weeks so that will take care of that. We are all liking Mack the dog. He's cool.

I spent the afternoon with Sadie at the Swapmeet selling popcorn. If was pretty good, but kinda slow for a Saturday. We didn't do bad for just a couple hours. But now I''m tired. I've had an extremely busy week. I know, shocker. :D Mark is working (yay, an extra shift!!) and it's gonna be pizza and baths and BED. And then I'm working on a COOl new popcorn flavor. Its top secret, it will be fun if it works. We are going to be selling at the Ostrich festival for sure too so that is exciting and very scary because it is a really big deal.

I'm too tired to put up pictures tonight, but I will soon.

Updates finally-with picture!

So much has been going on! Where do I even start??? I guess I'll start with what I have pictures of. Anyone who knows me will be totally shocked to hear that we got a DOG. I know, ew, not for me! We are not dog people whatsoever. Not me, not Mark. One of his co-workers found him and asked us if we could take him (he already has 2 big dogs) and Mark and Cade went to "look" at him, which we all know spells trouble. The kids have been asking us forever for a dog too of course. When they brought him back I actually started crying because I just couldn't stand the thought of a dog. But then I guess he won me over, plus if we gave him back to the guy he was going to take him to the pound and he'd get put down. He's a bulldog breed, and for that matter kind of a reject of his breed. He's definetly NOT cute, but he grows on you. He dosen't jump, he's house trained, he's too short to sniff crotches, I haven't had to feed, water or walk him because the kids do it, he dosen't bark (not even at other barking dogs) and has already been learning some things we've been teaching him. He basically lays around and chills out all day but has fun playing with the kids when they are around. He's actually kind of funny, he teases us! We don't let him on the furniture, but if he sees Mark is going to sit in his chair he'll run ahead and jump in his spot. He did it to me once too. Punk. :) And he keeps our floors clean :D The downside, he is kinda smelly, even after a bath and he has marked a few times here and there and he needs to get neutered. We will have to have him checked out and get his rabies shots too. Anyway, the kids are thrilled, and so far he meets the criteria for sticking around so I guess he's staying. We named him Mack as in Mack truck (the logo is a bulldog) so everyone say hi to Mack!

He's super nice, lets see how it goes.

On Thursday I got to chaperone Cade's 6th grade to the Renaissance Festival. We had never taken the kids so I took the opportunity. It was really fun. If I had an extra 300 bucks laying around it would be fun to take all the kids. Anyway we had a fun time and Cade's group was well behaved. We had giant turkey legs and watched sword swallowing and jousting and saw lots of fun things and people. Heres Cade doing knife throwing and watching the joust. Fun times.

It was the first time I ever chaperoned for Cade, how sad is that?? Oh well it was a good one. Next week I'm going to the museum with Dayton.

Monday I spent painting my stairwell. Yikes. It is so HIGH up there and my legs were dead the next day from going up and down the ladder a gazillion times. It turned out ok. I struggled with my ceiling line, but considering i was 30 feet in the air with my face 4 inches from the wall trying to paint straight, it's not too bad, I'll live with it because I won't be redoing it anytime this century. At one point I was on the ladder on the stairs with one side of the botton of the stair balanced on 2 nested stepstools and a paperback book, with Mark holding it steady. *insert scream* I painted the whole upstairs as well, and got rid of all the blue but I don't have a pic of that yet.

Blogging to come: Awesome fun GNO with my jr high/high school friends and lots more projects

Holiday

Did everyone have a lovely Valentines day?? Ours wasn't too bad, althought we had it early. This weekend we spend getting ready for popcorn sales, Mark had to work both weekend nights for the NBA weekend, and I told Sadie that I'd put together her class valentines party since her boy teacher wasn't too interested in doing it. Her class was just so happy to have a party so I didn't have to do anything too fancy. Literally, they ate and we played hangman. 5th grade, what can I say?? Sadie was the class hero because she convinced her teacher to have the party. Funny kids. Mark and I snuck away for lunch at Cravings while the kids were at school. That was it. We tried to make it sorta romantic. And I got him the new Enya CD even though we said no gifts. Finally I one-upped him!

Saturday morning I had put out valentines plates and lame-o little bags with some candy in them out on the table before the kids got up. I was in getting ready and I could hear their little feet running around upstairs waking each other up. Dayton sneaks up into my bathroom and whispers "Mommy do we have to wait upstairs until you come down with us??" Referring to how we go down on Christmas moring. LOL I'm like, uh, no, you can just go. :D So cute, it made me wish I had sone something better for them. I made them all a special breakfast of scrambled eggs, cinnamon toast and chocolate milk. Then we scattered for the day to our many various activities. Saturday night My MIL came over for yummy soup dinner and we watched the Wedding Date. It was cute and a good chick movie for a couple of dateless ladies. :D

Good things coming up this week, I won't have much time for blogging. If you are wondering what I am up to it will be one of these activities:

Cleaning
Painting
projects
decorating
sewing
party planning (can't wait for friday!!)
making popcorn for the gunshow this weekend


Unfortunately sleeping is not on this list. :D

Project Home Makeover

So I have caught the home project bug really bad. I'm on a mission. I have a lot of stuff about 80% done right now and about 6 things I want to get done this week. Then had to take a little time out for this:

SO today I am the mom and maid and then tomorrow back to the projects. I've stolen a big load of inexpensive ideas off the internet which is great, but usually inexpensive translates to timeconsuming. And I've got some BIG projects going too. I will give you a few little hints as to what I have been up to:

And I've had this fun new activity going on:



I've been saving tons of money (seriously, like a few hundred dollars already!)so that has been fun but also a little time consuming to get the hang of it, plus I made this sa-weet organizer. This binder holds the ones I know I will use, but the ones I have on my actual purchase list go in a different thing (like an envelope up till now).


So yes, dramatic changes going on, lots of work but lots of fun.