Maddening

The votes are still being counted, but Initiative 522 is trailing. While I am not really surprised, I am dumbfounded that we are here. 

The cost of food will go up if we label foods that contain GMO ingredients. ....

How does this statement make any sense? Companies change labels ALL the time and there are no cost changes. 

I don't remember a major uprising when the FDA required foods to be labeled for trans fat in 2006. 

I definitely didn't read anything about energy drinks costing more when they changed their label a few months ago to replace the word supplement with nutrition. 

The same company that posted a $1.48 Billion profit this year, donated $6 million to defeat the initiative, and I am supposed to believe they are protecting the consumer from rising costs. I am quite sure they do not care about my costs. They care about their costs and how those bottom lines are affected if GMOs are labeled.  

It is actually a bit maddening. 

The only saving grace? My kids are learning and listening.  

(I would elaborate except I cannot trust what I might say if i drifted off to 

Sleep....and that is happening. )

Therefore, tomorrow's  post: How I am making a difference.

One Day

In the future, I am going to wish I had this blog to look back on to remember my life.  Owen asked me a question the other day about something he used to do as a baby, and I realized I have mom brain and could remember nothing.  If I spent half as much time writing about my life as I do reading about other people’s lives, I would have a pretty good history to look back on.   

The problem with getting behind on writing is that there is no good way to start again.  I have SO many pictures, SO many things to talk about, and SO many things going on in my head.  Where do I begin?

Today:

I spent the day cleaning the house.  I decided to let our housecleaner go at the beginning of the summer and I remembered quickly why we hired her.  But, with the kids getting a little older, it was harder to justify keeping her (well that and the fact that I owe Angie a ton of money and I am sure I am capable of cleaning my own house).  I cleaned for hours and didn’t even finish.  I am not sure if other people struggle so much with keeping a clean house or if I am just raising a bunch of baby pigs.  I think I have 4 pigs living here, and yes, I still have three kids and no, I do not include myself in that figure. 

We spent the night at a “trunk-or-treat” collecting a lot of crap.  There are a few times when I wish I could unlearn what I know about food.  Without a doubt, Halloween would be at the top.  I see them all with their little buckets full of candy and their little smiling faces and sparkling eyes, and I know that I have no choice other than to let them eat it.  I try to smile back and look excited, but it is really hard.  Luckily, for Halloween they are very excited to leave their candy out for the Great Pumpkin to take during the night in exchange for toys and presents the next day.  The Great Pumpkin will then store our candy until December when it is time to make gingerbread houses.  The only problem with this plan is their plan about the amazingness of what is coming.

Tonight:

The girls are upstairs asleep and Owen and Greg are watching football together.  I can only imagine how excited this makes Greg.  He is calm on the surface, the kind of calm where you act all cool and collected so as not to put any added pressure on the wonderfulness occurring in front of your eyes, but on the inside he is dancing, cheering, jumping, and most importantly: praying that this does not end.  Owen loves to use his imagination, he can’t have too many stuffed animals, he can often be found in a costume of some sort, he loves to play school, he says he is never playing baseball again, and he does not like football, that is, until a few weeks ago.  Owen just ran upstairs to put on a jersey, and now I hear him yelling at a player, asking questions, and has just informed me that the only thing better than watching Iowa football with his dad would be for me to join them and bring some popcorn with me. 

His newfound love for football stems from an amazing program Owen participated in this year.  Owen is a Bruin Buddy, a little buddy to one of the football players on the high school football team.  The school pairs up the football players with an elementary student, and the little buddy gets to run down on the field before the home games, join their buddy in the locker room after the games, join in one of the practices, have their buddy come to the school at recess and lunch, and attend classes at the high school with their buddy.  Greg is absolutely obsessed with the program, and I am sure even more now considering he is watching football with his son and they spent the night last night throwing the football and practicing tackling.  If we had a life savings, Greg would probably give it to Owen’s buddy to show his gratitude.  Good thing we don’t.

Tomorrow night the little buddies and their players are going roller-skating!

*****************

There it is, candy and football, I guess that is where I start…..

That made a good day

Two things started this day right 

1. I put on a little orange dress for court today and Owen turned to me and said, "you do always look so good in that dress". Ha! Sweet little son. 

2. The carpool was looking very suspicious on the way to school today when suddenly they all started laughing. One of the twins announced that Owen and Jordyn were holding hands. They all screamed with laughter and became embarrassed. Jordyn declared Owen did it, to which I believe 100%. 

I will have to watch that boy. As an aside,  he went through the yearbook and found the cutest girl in every class the other night. Trouble in the making that one... He takes after his dad. 

Reasons to hide from school

School has arrived, and although I mostly like it, for three reasons I would consider homeschooling. Here they are in no particular order. 

1. Packing Owen's lunch. Honestly, it is horrible on so many levels. He barely likes anything, I try to limit his wheat intake, and add to that the poor child in his class with life threatening egg, dairy, and peanut allergies, leaving me to wonder if everything that is in his lunchbox could be dangerous. It is awful I tell you, and it just got more awful when I found out today that he needs a healthy snack everyday. The healthy snack is in his lunchbox!! 

2. Bedtime. Curse bedtime in fact. We barely have a routine, getting ready for bed around here mostly consists of me asking kids to get in their pajamas and those children laughing silently to themselves as they just don't. It is quite heroic if they are in bed by 9:30, and please take note I did not say asleep by 9:30 (that is another battle all together). 

3. Getting up.  That is all on that. It is self explanatory. 

Well, since homeschooling is not in the cards, I put the kids to bed last night,  got up this morning, and packed Owen a lunch.  

Not much else I can do I suppose. Carry on!!

Shopping girl

The girls and I went to buy toilet paper last night and accidentally decided to get Ivy school clothes. 

That girl loves to shop. She was so full of life and energy as she tried things on, looked for her size, and decided what she liked. She would have stayed there all night if I let her. In fact, the only way she was willing to leave was when I told her we could go to other stores today. 

We finally left the store at 10:00. The second we got home she started busily telling Greg about shopping and started to lay out all her clothes for the world to have a better look.  Once we had taken sufficient pictures to her liking of the line of clothes, she decided she would take a bag upstairs and clean out her drawers to make room for the new clothes. She left for a bit and came back down with two bags and declared she was giving all her old clothes away. I am quite sure what we bought last night does not have drawer filling ability and when I said we could look today, I meant another shirt or two.  I realize now she envisioned walking through the door looking like Pretty Woman, excessive bags in hand. 

When she woke up today, the first words out of her mouth related to shopping with a gentle reminder to make sure we went today. 

She is sitting next to me reciting over and over what we need to do today and the things we forgot to buy, including the tap shoes and ballet shoes for her new dance class. 

She is doing dance, gymnastics, and swimming. She has put in a request for soccer and T-ball. She is going to school everyday, including one full day and can't wait to eat lunch at school. Add all of that to her obsession for shopping and the fact that she just turned 4 two months ago, and I hope I can keep up with her as she gets older!

She is crazy, but truth be told, I am a little obsessed with her. 

Security Guard Day

July adventure in the books

It is 12:05 am and our return ferry is about to set sail for home, all the little ones are asleep in the back, and I am sitting in the car as we move across the water.

With July rapidly coming to a close, we needed an adventure. A few Internet searches lead us to settle on a 30 minute ferry ride, followed by a 30 minute car ride to our destination of a small street fair, carnival rides, and fireworks on the lake. We had never been across the water in our car and we had never been to Silverdale and we certainly had never heard of Whaling Days. 

We arrived a little later than expected due to a 90 minute ferry wait on the way out, and we are due to arrive home a little later than expected because we missed the 11:05 ferry by about 7 minutes. We obviously didn't mind, I mean what good is an adventure without a little adventure. 

The lesson of this adventure, if there is one to be learned, is that if we thought we may one day move to Silverdale, we won't. The town was a bit scruffy and a little rougher than we prefer, no one was allowed to be alone (not even Angie or I) and we were sure a fight was going to break out any minute. And while the people seemed nice enough, there was a high percentage of very young people smoking and entirely too many people that should have been wearing more clothes.  

We arrived a little later than planned and we were headed home a lot later than planned, but traveling mishaps were not the only mishaps of the July adventure. 

For example: 

1) there was the time that Owen stepped in a bush on the beach and as he pulled his feet and shoes out of the bush, he was covered in stickers and unable to move.

2) or the time when Owen threw a log and somehow ended up with what he called seaweed legs

3) the time that Owen, Ivy and Evan were about to go down the slide together and right before they took off, Ivy tried to straighten her mat and it took off without her, she was left with her sticky little legs touching the slide and was forced to scoot herself down while crying all the way as Evan and Owen slid gleefully down together.

4) the time we set up shop to watch fireworks and after waiting two hours, watched the first one go off behind a building;

and finally,
 

5) the time when ( this was my personal favorite) Ivy pushed Owen off a bridge into a little ditch during the fireworks, in the dark. (It took me a minute to figure out who fell. He was completely covered in the brush and I wasn't sure if he was wet or gone and I could only see his foot. Once I realized he wasn't dead or drifting off to sea, I laughed my butt off. A stranger had to help me heave him out. I am the worst mom, I laugh now just thinking about it, I even laughed at his whimpering self after we pulled him out. I honestly had no choice.)

Despite the mishaps, we laughed really hard, loved the fireworks, enjoyed the lake, did something different, stayed out too late, and were reminded we love where we live. 

Success!