Friday, May 20, 2011

I am so Proud

The other night around 8:20, a miracle happened. Both of our children were asleep (not the miracle).  I was reading a book (not the miracle), the house was clean (house cleaner day, don’t get your hopes up, I didn’t clean it, that is not the miracle), and someone knocked at the door.  Odd.

I wiggled free from Ivy and answered the door to find the neighbor girl holding a measuring cup.  It was the day I had been waiting for!!  A neighbor borrowing something from me!  I silently held my breath as she started with her request.  All I could think in my head was, “please let me have it, please let me have it”.  She holds out her cup and asks if she can borrow a 1/2 cup…here it comes….. of vegetable oil.  I HAVE VEGETABLE OIL, I scream in my head.  It’s a MIRACLE.  The joy.  Not only am I not borrowing something from them, but I have something someone wants.  I am a now a true neighbor.  (For those that know me well, it is not unheard of for me to want to make cookies and have to set out to the store to buy the flour or sugar or more before I start; having what they wanted, was a big deal).

I race to the cupboard, offer to let her take the whole bottle to which she was very sure that the cup would work, and pour my ingredient into her little cup, fulfilling my neighborly duty of borrowing out a cooking ingredient. 

I closed the door and returned to the couch to read, all the while feeling so proud of myself for having vegetable oil in the cupboard.

Generous

I decided it was finally time to drag out the maternity clothes.  I couldn’t do this however, without dragging out all the old baby clothes, both boy and girl stuff.  I had never really put anything away the right way, plus I had Angie and Emilee delivering clothes to be stored at all kinds of random times.  So, the bottom line was a lot of clothes.  I took all the clothes and figured the best way to start was by sorting them into girl, boy and pregnant person clothes.  The beginning of the sorting looked a little like this:

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I had more clothes than I expected.  I realize now that I can wear all sorts of clothes for the next 4 months and if I buy anything for this baby, Greg should get mad at me (I didn’t say I won’t, I just said he shouldn’t be happy, I know I totally will anyway).

All I could do was sort these clothes, after that I was at a loss.  It was time to call for reinforcement…Angie!  After all, I don’t need any of the boy clothes, while she could use some in the future for Evan and perhaps she will have another boy.  She took the boy bin, I took the girl bin and we sorted.  Goodwill, save, consignment, garbage.  We sorted for hours and finally came up with a good pile for each and clothes we would actually put small children in again.  I washed all the maternity clothes, sent all the others to the garage, and loaded up the car with consignment and Goodwill clothes. 

Angie ended up with $8.00 cash and a $4.00 credit for the consignment store and I walked away with $16.00 cash and a $19.00 credit.  That sure felt good. 

And now to the point of my story, yes there is a point.

I had the Goodwill bag to drop off.  After a lovely day of running errands, meeting up with Greg, having a picnic in the back of our car and stopping for ice cream, it was time to make the stop to deliver the goods.  I pulled up, gave them the bag, took my receipt and drove away.  I was talking to Angie when the drop was made and I made a comment that I always worry when taking things to Goodwill, what if I delivered the wrong bag, or what if my favorite sweater just happened to make its way into the bag and tried to give itself away.  We laughed and I drove away to buy some hairspray.  Upon arriving, I grabbed my purse to get my wallet when I discovered it was not there.  It only took two seconds for me to realize that I DONATED my wallet to GOODWILL.  I was putting Ivy in her seat after the ice cream stop, holding her ice cream, mine and my wallet.  It was then that I decided to casually toss my wallet to the front seat.  I watched the little purple guy fly into the Goodwill bag.  I laughed to myself that I had better get that out.  By the time I hooked Ivy in, walked to the front and took the first delicious bite of my ice cream, all thoughts of the wallet had disappeared as I was much more focused on the ice cream. (Oreo and Mint Chocolate Chip). 

I yelled to the car of children, “I just sent my wallet to Goodwill in that bag!”  Owen started crying and pleading with me to hurry back there, to go get it.  Ivy pretended to care and faked cry a little bit.  We turned the car around, only a mere 10 minutes from the source of the drop-off. 

I hopped out of the car to about 8 guys working on gathering donations, and made my awesome statement, “I just dropped a bag of clothes off and the bag had my wallet in it.”  Boy, I sounded smart.  I received a few snickers and was told it was found and was up front with the management.  SIGH!!  Owen and I were so happy (and of course Ivy was too although she had no idea why).  Everything was there, the cash, the cards, the license and the Costco card. 

I like to give generously, but next time, I won’t give away quite so much. 

Saturday, May 14, 2011

A little trip away

It was a gloomy gray morning, I woke up and looked outside.  “I need to get away to somewhere warm”, I thought to myself.  This thought was quickly followed by one somewhere along the lines of “ok, warm it is”.  I quickly planned a trip in my head to San Diego.  This would be great, we would go to Sea World, walk on the pier, hang out at the beach, and eat too much food.  We are going! 

I came downstairs for my early morning phone call to Angie and told her of my pending plans.  She was in.  It seems that we have had a little more rain clouds this winter than those in the past and it wasn’t hard to convince her.  Now, with a family that is so very close as is ours, I really can’t plan a trip to San Diego in good conscience without inviting the whole crew.  I called Emilee, Ben and my dad, I proposed the plan, and before we knew it, we had plans to go to Disneyland in addition to the events stated above. 

The plans became plane tickets, the plane tickets became plane rides, the plane rides became rental cars and we were there.  Everyone had a slightly different trip planned, Emilee drove, Ben flew to San Jose, my dad flew to LA and everyone had varying stay dates.  Angie and I arrived on Thursday.  We started out basking in the sun while we waited for the rental car husbands to return.  It wasn’t long before we packed up the bags and moved to the shade.  It was sort of like, “Bright light, bright light!” as we haven’t seen a lot of the sun here.  The rental cars finally arrived and when I saw Steve pull up, I was a little worried.  The rental car I picked said "Economy" and would hold 5 passengers and 2 bags.  I figured I would trade passengers for bags and we would be fine, but when I saw Steve’s teeny car I was confident I would be leaving Greg’s back at the airport.  Greg came out of no where behind Steve to help load in the bags and I asked if we would all fit.  Very confidently he told me we would be fine and smiled.  Ok, this should be fun.  We hauled our bags over to an UPGRADED car for the same price.  I was so proud of Greg, now his bag could come!!

It was off to the hotel and a quick stop for lunch at Souplantation.  I will never understand why they don’t have those here.  Mmmm. Mmmmm.  We even went twice while we were there and if Owen had his way, a third would have been in the plans as well. 

Lunch was good, the hotel turned out to be perfect.  Finding the hotel was an event in itself.  Angie and I wanted a place on the beach and almost got a rental house for way too much money.  We regained our senses and decided to go really cheap away from the beach.  We read the reviews and kept looking.  We ended up in a hotel on the beach for a reasonable price and even got a discount if you mentioned the Neeleman reunion when you booked it.  It had all the requirements we wanted, breakfast, beach, fridge, and clean. 

Thursday night after dinner we discovered Yogurtland and thank heavens we did.  It was one of those do it yourself frozen yogurt shops.  The mint yogurt with Oreos was a favorite of the kids and I and let’s say we went back there more than twice.  (And, the best part, they have one here.  A little ways away, but WHO CARES!)

Friday was a day at the beach in the sun, taking pictures and eating snacks. 

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Saturday was DISNEYLAND.  We had all been disgruntled for weeks after finding out that they would be closing at 5:00 that evening for a “private event”, but that went away when we learned it was the world premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean 4.  Now it was cool.  We had our list of rides that closed early, hit those first, and made our way around.  Ivy was not a fan of Pirates the ride, she covered her ears in the dark and cried down the hill, but she LOVED Small World.  She stood on the bench and danced and pointed and smiled.  It was definitely the highlight of my trip for Ivy.  She would have stayed on the merry-go-round all night if we would have let her.  Owen loved the Buzz ride as much as last time although he told me he was more excited to see his cousins than go to Disneyland, that was the highlight of my trip for Owen. 

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Sunday was SeaWorld.  It was a little chilly that day.  A tad breezy and cloudy.  Not the sun we left for, but it was fun just the same.  I love SeaWorld after Disneyland, it is nice to move at a slower pace and we were all happy to rest our weary feet while waiting for the shows to start.  Ben put us on a strict show schedule which worked perfectly!  We ended the day with a delicious Mexican dinner in Old Town.  The worst part of the day was the shopping episode for our souvenirs.  Ivy picked four things and would not put any of them back.  Owen wanted three things.  A day of Disneyland, a long day at SeaWorld = I really didn’t care and bought all of them!  It made them happy (of course now they all sit in a pile on the floor next to me, and I am not sure what happened to the promise from Owen that if I bought all of those things he would play with them everyday). 

Here is my documentation of SeaWorld in pictures – awesome.

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We ended our trip with another day at the beach, a walk along the boardwalk, swimming in the freezing ocean, a small baby girl with a fever, another trip to Yogurtland, plane sickness by Owen, too many snacks on the plane, tired kids, happy kids, happy parents, cousins that didn’t want to say goodbye, pants that were too tight, a lot of stuffed animals we don’t need, a lot of chilly wind and a trip that will go down in the books as one of the best!

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Friday, May 13, 2011

Quick Reflection Then Back to Life…

I feel like I never sit down to write anything anymore.  I was simply disgusted when I found out I had 1 lone post in April.  ONE.  What kind of memories am I creating for me and my future.  I decided in May I would turn things around and post all kinds of things about my life.  Here we are almost half way through and what do I have: Yep, ONE post.  So this brings me to the most important question of my day: What do I do with my time and what am I going to do about it? (I suppose that I have posed two questions, but this is a serious matter and I couldn’t fit it all into one question)

1. Read Facebook posts.  I have no idea why I do this.  I never write anything, I never post anything, and most of the time people that do post things are people that I either a. always know what they are doing anyway or b. people that I haven’t seen since high school and I don’t know why I really care anyway.  With that being said, I do it anyway.  I get on EVERYDAY and most of the time it is multiple times.  It is like I am addicted to procrastinating and avoiding the things that really need to be done.  So here we go, a public announcement that I am not signing in to Facebook for 1 month. Goodbye post reading. 

2. Check blogs.  I love reading blogs.  I love reading the ones that I wish I wrote, I love reading about people I know, I love reading the ones about people who are living through life changing events and discovering a new life, and I love reading the ones that have wonderful ideas, the how to blogs  (as a side note, I recently found  www.younghouselove.com.  I am a fan.  It has wonderful ideas and fun projects that I am going to do).  So the question here is, why do I check some of the blogs throughout the day. Again, to waste time, to avoid what must be done.  And what am I going to do about this: Check blogs in the morning only.  (or at night, but the point being one time a day, I don’t really think things will be updated, I am just in the habit of clicking to click).  Ok, so there I go.  Once a day. 

3. Try to Work.  For some reason, I continuously try to get work done when it is impossible.  When Owen is at school, Ivy cannot play alone.  She never does anything on her own when he is gone.  He can be outside while she is inside with me and she can play and gather and do things on her own, but when he is gone away, mostly at school, she will not let me work.  I know this already, so why do I continuously come home and sit at my desk.  She will then open the drawer, climb up on the desk and sit in front of me.  I try to check some emails, get a few things done and start my at home work day, yet it always ends up in one of two things happening.  1. I get frustrated with her cause I can’t get anything done, or 2.  I can’t get anything done and then I click on Facebook and blogs, but I do it all the time anyway, like this will be the day.  How about no work while Owen is at school.  This would be a good time to pick things up around the house, she loves to help do that.

It is time to management my time and my day better.  I will start now.  (just right after I check out the daily post from younghouselove.com…I forgot about that one today….)

And should I be concerned that the neighbor girl just came in with a plastic knife and a slightly evil look on her face and said “Owen is being mean to me.”.  Hmmmm, maybe I should check that blog later and go outside.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

A great deal and a baby update…

I feel like I am always trying to catch up.  I feel like this on a daily basis, however, after lying around for approximately 12 weeks, I am REALLY behind.  I am behind on the cleaning, the shopping, my work, being a good mom, paying the bills, and so on and so on.  Slowly, but surely, I am digging my way back and out.  I have even taken on two projects including buying a big bunk bed for Owen and painting his room – which has had amazing results and deserves a post of its own; and painting the bathroom (which probably also deserves a post of its own and once it is finally complete, may get that). 

In any event, what better way to continue to dig your way out of what has become your own life than a mystery coupon for Old Navy.  After organizing my desk for a mere 2 hours on Thursday night, I came across a coupon: Save 20-50% at Old Navy, just bring the coupon in and have the staff scan it to see how much you will save.  I put that aside in the keep pile.  I have no idea what happened to the keep pile, but nonetheless, I found the quickly forgotten coupon on the floor in a pile of toys today while cleaning.  Oh yes!! my brain exclaimed, I will have to use that.  In one of my many telephone conversations with Angie today, I came across the little bugger again on the floor in the kitchen.  “Oh, by the way, we should head to Old Navy soon, I have a great coupon, let’s see, we can use it until ….TODAY!!”  20% sounded nice, but was it worth the trip there, I wondered.  It would be worth it for 50%, but they are all probably 20%.  We decided we would hope for the best and make the trip. 

I packed up my sick baby girl, Angie dragged her sick self out the door, Owen and I left in our pajamas and it was off to hope for a 50.

And! today was my lucky day!! 50% off EVERYTHING.   And! (again), they were having their own sale of buy something and get something else 50% off.  Angie shopped, I shopped, Ivy shopped, and Owen shopped to our heart’s content.   It all seemed so familiar – reminded me of the last time I got 50% off, it was glorious then and with the sun shining outside, even more glorious today. 

Bottom line: Total bill $876.00  Total amount paid $341  Total savings $535!!  HOORAY for cleaning my desk in the nick of time!  

And in other news, I am starting to feel better.  In the last week I did not take my Zofran 4 of the last 7 days.  That is progress and exciting progress at that.  And! (such exciting news tonight) SHE looked great at the ultrasound on Friday!!! 

Throwing up less, saving a ton of money, spending two hours at Old Navy with my two children and not losing my mind, finding out we are having a girl, and a lot of sun has made this weekend a good one.