Twenty Two

Twenty Two...
That is the number of hours I spent in the car with my husband and three small children this weekend. We made the hike up to NY to see my family.
I must say here, in a bit of mommy-braggadociousness
( ** new wordage alert... Mommy-braggadociousness, to make a proud statement about one's child in a purely humble way, not an in your face your kid bites kind of way, cause that would be mommy-stuckupitybragging. Getting the two confused can cost you time and friends...oh, and the term bite was not literal in its use there, sorry for any confusion, as the mom of a former vampire, I would never joke about that.)

So, my three little stinkers were so good in the car. I have always been very opposed to DVD players in the vehicle. I want my boys to have to read and play and color, not sit and zone out in couch potato mode... BUT alas... Kohls had too good a sale to pass up and we got a portable DVD player for the trip.
Well, I am proud to say, that it was not over used at all. We were on the road a good 5 hours before we ever used it, and when I broke out Peter Pan, still wrapped in its cellophane, I knew, this was a good cave on my part.

Here is the picture... and yes, that is my kids laying down on the floor. We are bad parents who lay down two of the second row seats so they can get out and stretch a bit. I have determined that any sheriff or child advocate group that wants to condemn me can travel across country with my kids and see how they fair if they are never allowed out of the booster seat, AKA Car-Jail.

This was also Alden Angel Baby Status test time... would he turn into a shrieking banshee on the road? Would his normally calm demeanor vanish when tied down for all those hours? Nope! He was great and I was so happy. He did have an allergic reaction to the borrowed pack and play we used and his little eyes swelled almost shut, just like Em's do. We think it may be a dog allergy, but who knows? I was just glad the swelling went away (eventually) cause really, it ws not such a cute look for him.

So, seeing my family was good. Saying goodbye was no fun. The trip home was uneventful save this little story...
We are driving along, only a couple hours from home. If you have ever traveled with children you know that you could feasibly stop every fifteen minutes to use the bathroom. Well, having boys is a good thing here because they can, well...
Oh, let's just be honest here everyone...

Boys can totally pee in a cup and save you the stop.

Mind you, you must be prideLESS enough to hold the cup, keep the urinator standing still and say "Keep that thing pointed DOWN!" So, we have had two such recent "fill ups" in our old take out cups. They are waiting for dumpage at the next stop. (what did you think I dumped them out the window while driving...ewwww, and how would you explain that littering to a cop?)
Now, I wake from my motion induced sleep and see Micah switching lanes and some car getting, well... ticked. They come charging up the right hand lane, only to be met with the back end of a semi. Um, hello??? Did you think that semi was going to move for you and your little two door red car? So, the guy in the passenger seat waves a water bottle at us...

Huh?
Are we now offering drinks as a form of car cursing?
"Well, take this Pepsi you Coke loving tailgater!"
"Drink my poison Evian you slowpoke!"
"Gatorade to YOU!"

Whatever, waving the water bottle was weird at best.
So, several miles later, she, the driver, is back on our butts and now, my Micah is grinning and just staying right alongside the semi.... Box Out Style.
"Really, dear, are you doing this on purpose?

"What?" he asks, shocked. " I am just keeping with the flow of traffic. Am I being Vinbedient?"
DOH! My own words coming back to get me!
So, he moves over to the right lane and as small red car speeds by, the guy waves his water bottle out his window at us, dumping its pitiful remains out.
Dude, if we want to dump car beverages, we have so got you beat with our little pee bombs here...
Not to mention, our car sits like 10 feet higher than yours, so unless you know something about gravity we don't, that was the weakest from of road rage ever.
The best part???
The "Baby on Board" sign prominently (and proudly???) displayed in the back window...
Very nice.

Here are some recent Scrapations. (**double whammy today on the wordage alerts folks... scrap + creation = scrapations. I like it.)




And a little book reviewage. I just finished "These is My Words" by Nancy Carter. It was of course a recommended read from THE LitChick. I really could not put it down. It is a fictional diary set in the late 1800s in the Arizona territory. Great characters and the author really makes you love the main ones. I think one way I judge a book is by the way my imagination responds to it. Am I picturing the settings, the characters faces, etc. This was a good one for sure!

One of these things...

One of these things does not belong...
Do you all remember this game from your Sesame Street Days??
Well, let's play a little game of it courtesy of Micah, my love.

Gum
Gum in mouth
Gum being chewed
Gum being left in your pants pocket for the 1345th time causing a sticky gum mess in the dryer that your wife has to painstakingly clean out with a wash cloth and rubbing alcohol.

Now which of those does not belong???

So... I think you know where this is going. And I feel the need to point out, I am not a venter-wife. You know the kind of wife who gets together with her girlfriends and trashes her husband. Nope, I am not a husband trasher. HOWEVER... this subject needs to be addresses in a more public forum lest my head explode...

And were Micah not so amazing about everything else in life, this would tempt me to teeter over the edge of sanity in a true Mommy Dearest moment. If you have not seen that movie, you will need to in order to get a proper visual image of me, standing over the open dryer door, rubbing alcohol soaked washcloth in one hand, and mascara-tear streaked eyes yelling... "NO MORE GUM IN YOUR PANTS POCKETS!!!!!"
In my mind, I have the Joan Crawford voice and all.

But since I am a sane person and would never act as such (plus, my mascara is waterproof) I will tell the tale here.
I know, you are thinking... what's to tell? What's the big deal?
Well, to me, a completely clean dryer is a big deal, and since I put all that time into vacuuming out the lint screen, the last thing I want in my Martha Stewart dryer is gum!

So, that was the big event at our house tonight. I didn't vent it to my girls, I won't call my Micah any names... I just gave him the stink eye, and made it a blog story...

I wonder if he will remember now?

I don't know, considering all the things I mess up this seems pretty trivial, but hey... I am still in my ethyl induced high so...

Here is the scrapwonderment... yeah, I am straining with that wordage, we won't even give it the alert.
This is a mini-mini I made with some of my DT goodies from Memorable Seasons. It is about 2½ x 2½ inches.

This is the front cover...



The inside pages, they alternate between the colors when the book is put together.


The back cover:



Thanks for letting me blogvent... I feel better already... ;)

Mother's Day and speeding grannies....

So I hope everyone had a lovely Mother's Day. Despite the fact that we got some bad news, Micah still managed to make me feel well loved, cared for, and special. Now, I am not a big Mother's Day kind of celebrant. I like being treated like a queen all year long, rather than have a gift and card thrust at me once a year to make up for 364 days of neglect. Thankfully, my Micah is like that. He could forget Mother's Day and it would not upset me. (in fact he has done so, but he will delete this blog if I tell that story again. ROFLOL.)
We had a lovely start of cards, school made gifts from Lincoln, snot covered kisses from Emerson, and a beautiful frame for the new and improved office.

As we were about to head to church we got a call. I knew what the call was, and before I could get out "Don't answer it!", Lincoln did. It was a call about a family member passing away. Now, some people can discuss matters of faith and death in eloquent terms, I am not one of them. My Aunt is gone, and I don't know if I will ever see her again and you know what, it sucks. That is all there is to it, it just sucks. I don't throw around the "suckage" term lightly, because a) I don't want my kids to say it, and B) I know it makes me sound crass. But, it is fitting for this I think. The sadness and sobs that emit from my body are indescribable. I will leave it there. I warned you, no Pulitzer worthy description of this kind of thing is in me yet, maybe with time...

I will move on to a situation I found quite amusing, not because I am treating the aforementioned topic flippantly, but because I am already crying and want to move on, lest I spend the entire day that way.(again)
I was on my way to pick up Lincoln from school and all of the sudden there is a car on my tail. Really close on my tail. Now, I admit it, in times past this would have resulted in the Jude's "Slow-Down-Tick-Off" approach. That simply means I would slow down to like, 25 miles an hour in a "You think I was going to slow before... HA!" type fashion.
But, alas, after a freakish man and his road rage scared me to death, I am a good girl now. Also, I finally decided my large SUV parking had improved enough to put my church magnet on the excursion. So, knowing that little piece of magnetized rubber is there helps to keep me in check. Who wants their pastor to say, "So, I got a call about some crazy woman driving and running people off the road..."
" Huh? What? Who? Me????" hmmm....

So, I didn't react. I just kept going along, and when we approached the intersection where it drops to 35, I, being the law abiding citizen that i am, obeyed. I thought the driver was going to crawl up the back end of us. Really, the cars in front of me were 35ing it too, so I was not being totally vinbedient. (**New wordage, Vinbedient = that would be the combo of obedient and vindictive, when you obey just to spite someone, not because you want to or because it is right.)

Well, when we get to the school zone, we are all stopped by the crossing guard, and the car whips out to get in the school turning lane. (this is not Lincoln's school) I look and see... A GRANDMA! I mean, a white haired, roller-set weekly, drinks tea and scones, kind of Grandma. I was shocked that such aggressive tailing was in her. I think, "well, maybe she got the last minute Pick the kids up call, and she was worried"... but alas...

Tailing Granny was NOT going into the school! The public library entrance is down the same drive, and that is where she turned in! I was going, "HUH??? The LIBRARY is why you were kissing my bumper?
What, is Jodi Picoult's book finally in?
Is Danielle Steele actually AT our library serving tea whilst reading excerpts today?
Are the People magazines in the 25 cent for sale pile?"
Oh, wait that last one is why I speed to the library.

I seriously could not believe this was the cause of such driving madness. Maybe she really takes those due dates to heart...

In the scrappy world, here are a couple of LOs... One for Unpubbed. And there is still time to lift Beth's LO too, and win a RAK from her. Go check it out.

And one for Memorable Seasons Design Team. This first one is the new Basic Grey Boxer line... It has great patterns and colors.



This one is the We r Memory Keepers White out line. I LOVE the edges.

So, I will pimp the store by saying Jill has these available so head over there to buy them up... herein ends the pimpage.

Scraptivity and Movies

So I went to movies last night with some other gals... haven't done that in forever.
"Why?"... you ask... "Is it because of the kids? The babysitter thing? What?"
Well, the main reasons are as follows:
1. I think it is utter nonsense to pay more for a movie than a meal.
2.Teenagers + cell phones = one ticked off Jude. Really, if you are intelligent enough to text, drive, and eat a cheeseburger at the same time, you should be smart enough to know to turn OFF the blasted thing in a movie.
3. Children being dragged to inappropriate films makes me seethe. Your three year old, they don't need to see Knocked Up, Austin Powers, or The x-Men movies.
4. I cannot lay down, eat popcorn in my pjs or run to the bathroom while the movie is paused at a theater.
5. If a movie stinks, I am now financially invested in it, where as I can take that netflix and send it right on back with nary a care.
Well...
I went last night.
I suggested "Made of Honor". It looked all cute and "My Best Friend's Wedding-ish". Plus, McDreamy was a bonus.
I was sorely reminded why i don't go to the movies. I was shocked to find that...
Small sodas are now $4.25, and a small popcorn is $4.50. That is sheer insanity. I refused to buy any of that anyway.
Then, I see it...
FIVE lovely children ages 8 down to about 3, all weighted down with popcorn, drinks, candy, and nachos... each of them has this stuff. Seriously had to be like $20 worth of food each. Then I think, wait a minute... this is a 9:35 PM show... why are these kids here and what possible movie are they seeing??? And yes, I know they are not my kids and blah,blah,blah, but really... is this a good thing?


On to the movie...
So disappointing. I was all set for a good chick flick. What I got was gross amounts of vulgarity that seems so strained at points it was painful to watch, a leading man who I thought deserved to NOT get the girl for all his bed-hopping ways, and an end that was predictable from the word go.
I am embarrassed to say I saw this movie.
Seriously, it was that bad.
I usually check movies on http://www.pluggedinonline.com/ but it was not up yet when I checked last week and I thought, "Hey, its PG-13, it can't be that bad."
Yes, yes it can, and was.
If that is PG-13, I shudder to think what R now looks like.
Do I sound old?
Oh well, it is the price I am willing to pay to offer this opinion, especially if any of you was considering letting your teenage daughters go see it.
Oh, you should also know...
McDreamy's hair was sideparted and very disappointing...

Here is some scraptivity from last weekend when I went to a crop. Yes, those are the knockedupedness pictures I am still scrapping...



And these are from the NSD on line crop at Memorable Seasons. That was challenging as all my scrap stuff is in the mudroom while Micah finished painting the office. So I cropped whilst inhaling paint fumes, and I gotta say, I think paint high Jude scraps better than normal Jude...
"Scrap your scraps" challenge:


"Use Your Stash Challenge" and clearly, I did... check out those smokin flower brads! (In my defense this was the first kitchen scrapped LO, so it is right that is awful.)


"Make Your Own Clear Flower Embellishment" challenge


"Use What's on Your Desk" challenge


"Ad Inspiration" challenge. I should say this is the worst scan ever! The patterned paper is a peach color, not yellow... schmanky scan...


And finally, "Button-Button" challenge

So, that should be enough scraptivity and movie reviewage for a while.
(check it, new word AGAIN... reviewage. very nice.)