Laundry Woo Hoo Day

On Saturday, Perry was getting a load of laundry out of the dryer when he noticed that the entire load had some sort of brown stain on them. Digging further in the drum, he found an empty brown crayon wrapper. This was Mischa's load, and probably about a third of her clothes. I just about threw up right then and there. I hit the web and the Crayola website has a great stain chart. Several forums I went to had the same advice. On Monday, I ran to the store for the ingredients I needed. I had enough WD-40 at home to do half of the load. Of that load, just over half came out clean. After more WD-40 was bought, I did the rest of the load and redid the half that needed it. On the second load, a few from the first load still needed a little help, and only one dress needed some help. I was out of propellant for the WD-40, so I just put some color safe bleach on the stains, and used my bleach pen on the white ribbon of the dress. Everything came out, except for the ribbon stains, and they are a whole bunch lighter. I figure if I get to them every time I wash the dress, they should be gone in 2 or 3 washes. I cannot tell you how relieved I am. It took about 8 hours in all, but it saved me from shopping.

Nature's Twinkle Lights

We went to see Night at the Museum at a park by our house last night. It was a perfect day- not hot, not humid, no mosquitos. We had a picnic dinner, then set the kids out to play for the few hours before the movie started (this was the only downside to the outing- a movie that starts at dark, when dark isn't until 9:00). While we were waiting for the movie to start, the DJ of the sponsoring radio station mentioned the lightning bugs in the trees. This park runs next to the Chattahoochee River, so there are a ton of trees. It looked like a stadium where everyone was taking pictures at the action on the field. I have never seen so many lightning bugs going off at the same time, so often. It was a really neat thing to see.

Almost Over

Two more days. Just two. And then I'll be sleeping in (if you can count 7 a.m. as sleeping in).
One more event- the Cub Scout Space Derby. That is tomorrow, and is officially the last activity on the calendar. I've survived the hardest part, which was yesterday. Caleb's class party was yesterday and I think it went pretty well, even though we had to stay indoors because the smoke from the south Georgia fires was paying us a visit. The volcano cake smoked (I'll have to post pictures), no sand was spilled in our dolphin key chain craft, and most of the class finally got me their thank you notes to the teacher so I could gather them into the binder. I feel a little guilty, though, because I haven't gotten any teacher gifts from the kids. I was just so burned out in Caleb's class (and he did a letter), and I just donated to the baby shower we had for Mischa's teacher a few days ago (and she wrote a letter, too), but we didn't do anything for the TAG teachers. Maybe I'll have them write a letter to put in their boxes on Friday. I just don't feel like going into another store for a long time (Perry'll be glad for that, lol). I ended up babysitting last minute for 3 kids until 4:30, so I was almost too pooped to go to our Girl Scout Service Unit's dinner at one of our favourite Italian places. Almost. I might've rethought going, but registrations for next year were due yesterday and since I had two parents give me their registrations yesterday morning (they were due last Tuesday, but only half the group gave me theirs) I couldn't go drop them off at the registrar's house until it was almost time for the dinner. I had a little frustration with our treasurer, who is crazily involved in school activities, complaining to me about having to get her stuff to me last minute for the registration. Even though she had the paperwork filled out about two days after I gave it to her and all she had to do last minute was fill out three checks. I had talked to her Monday about dropping everything into my box Tuesday, but apparently she forgot she agreed to that, so I had to run past her house on the way to dinner to pick it all up. Ugh. But it's over. The dinner was good, it was fun meeting new people, and the waiter had us sing happy birthday to a guy who swore he couldn't be embarrassed. Now I have to turn my attention to the house, which has been woefully neglected in the past week. Ugh.

What a Deal!

I've had my eye on this since the Fall, when some friends of the family got it for their birthday. Back then, it was selling for almost $70 (which was cheaper than what it was when it was purchased for the birthday). About a month ago, I saw it for $35 at Wal-Mart, and almost bought it. They had tons, so I decided to keep a really close eye on it. Last week it was $25. I had already picked up two Spider Man 3 twin sheet sets and two Spider Man 3 throws for the boys' beds, so I figured I would buy two of them this coming Saturday for Christmas presents. I went to Wal-Mart last night with Caleb to get some things for a project and they were gone! I decided to peruse the toy department, thinking maybe they got moved to a different section. I saw a cart filled with toys that needed to be put back, and right next to it was one of the forts. Marked down to $13!!! I grabbed it, but was very sad to only have one (with 4 kids, I wanted at least two). I passed the clearance section in the front of the store and to my joy, they had about 10 more!!! I grabbed 3 more so each of the kids would have one. When I got home, I called my friend about the deal because she had talked about getting another one, and we started talking about how great these would be as presents. I ran over to Wal-Mart at lunch to see if they had any more left, since I wanted to get some for two of my nephews here in Georgia (or at least the second one will be by his birthday). There was one left. I was bummed. I decided to see if the magic of last night would be repeated, so off I went to the corner of the toy section. And in the same place, next to a cart filled with toys, was another fort. Woo Hoo!! Since Caleb already saw them, I'm not saving them for Christmas, but they won't be pulled out until after school ends. If the kids dare to complain about being bored now, I'm going to have to give up.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Yesterday started out normally enough....

After school....

After dinner.....

It's a little hard to tell in that picture, but Caleb lost his first top tooth. The other one is loose, too. It takes forever for his teeth to grow in (Mischa lost one after he lost the bottom two and hers has grown all the way in already), so he might be making friends with a blender in the near future.

Click here for a great giveaway! People who can do this are so amazing!

Menu Plan Monday

I have no idea what's gotten into me- almost everything this week is a new recipe.

Saturday- Chicken Caesar Salad- we went and saw Spiderman 3, so I grabbed a package of pre cooked and sliced chicken, a bagged Caesar salad kit and some fresh Parmesan.

Sunday-Ranch Chicken, rice, corn.

Monday- Kielbasa covered with BBQ sauce, sour cream and chive potatoes, rolls

Tuesday-Quick and Cheesy Sausage Rotini, Yummy green beans, bread sticks

Wednesday- Chicken enchilada casserole

Thursday- Saucy Pork Medallions, stuffing, peas

Friday- Girls' Night Out- the boys are going camping, so my daughters and I are looking forward to our traditional meal of Pizza Hut and ice cream.

For more yummy ideas, head on over to I'm an Organizing Junkie.

The New Baby

Here's the latest addition to the John family. The kids are excited, since that means they get a computer again (theirs died a few months ago). This will be a great help on our trip to the Southwest with our new GPS software and downloading digital pictures of the reunion. I've never done the laptop thing before, but I'm excited, especially since I saw that Hearts, Minesweeper, and Freecell are on it, lol.

Cakes

I've started doing a few cakes again. This first cake was one I did for the Blue and Gold banquet for Cub Scouts. I did two cakes, but Perry took the digital to England, so I don't have a picture of the first cake, which was a smoking volcano, yet (haven't developed them). Little Hawaiian dude wasn't eaten, so we brought him home for Perry's birthday.

This next cake was done for the son of one of the women I visit teach for his baptism.

I'm going to do the volcano cake again for Caleb's class party, so I'll have some pictures of that soon. I might modify it, though, and make the volcano out of styrofoam instead of cake. We had about 50 people at the Blue and Gold and still had a little bit of the cake leftover, so I can't see a class of 20 eating all of it.

The Sexist Stomach Bug

I am back in the land of the living. The girls and I were hit the other night by some sort of stomach bug. A few weeks ago, Caleb threw up twice in three days. Never complained about a stomach ache, being tired, anything. Just got sick in the middle of the night in his bed (not a great way to be woken up at 2 a.m., btw). Josh got sick a few days later. Just once. Complained of an earache a few hours later, but the next day he was running around and didn't really even remember the earache. So when I went to pick up the kids at my friend's house the other day and she told me Anneliese threw up, I thought, "there's her one". We get home and she throws up on the driveway (whew, not in the car), and I thought, "well, she's done". Hahahaha. I forgot the sense of humour God has with me. We used all but 2 of our towels that night. She didn't have much in her stomach, but not even a sip of juice would stay down. I went up a few hours later to watch American Idol and just felt weird. Not sick, just weird. By the time AI was over, I was nauseous. I went downstairs to tell Perry, only to find Mischa in the bathroom. She was so cute. She came out and told us that Heavenly Father told her, through the Holy Ghost, that she was going to be sick and she needed to get to the bathroom. Liese was done being sick by 10 p.m., and at 4 a.m. was wanting to eat and kept it down. She was quite the chatterbox then, too. Mischa didn't fare so well. We sent her to bed with a bowl, which she lined with a Wal-Mart bag so my "bowl wouldn't get dirty", but she was up all night. I was sick a few times, but so nauseous I couldn't sleep. I actually took two two hour naps yesterday (I have to be on death's door to sleep during the day). Perry called from work, saying he wasn't feeling sick sick, just like he had hunger pangs without being hungry. He was nauseous for just a few hours at home. I don't know why the girls were hit so hard, so fast, but in the end I'm glad that only half of us had to suffer and at least one parent was functional.

Wax On, Wax Off

We went to the school's walk-a-thon yesterday. We ended up showing up late (but at least Perry got to go with us!) because of some miscommunication the family I babysit for on Monday had with each other, resulting in the mother telling me her son would be home at 4:30, instead of the 5:30 she told me a few weeks ago. We only walked a mile out of the 2 miles and we could've probably done the second mile before the trail closed, but the kids were starting to complain and lag a bit. We had a Mexican dinner catered in (not too popular with the kids, but I thought it was tasty and I'm not too fond of Mexican food). At the end of the dinner, they had a prize giveaway for the person who raised the most, class that raised the most, and grade that raised the most. It was a very successful fundraiser, with all but $200 of their $15000 goal raised by last night. They also had a raffle. They raffled off an 8" TV, some CD players, gift certificates to a sporting goods store and an ice cream place, two lucky people won a pound of chocolate (the little girl I watch in the morning was one of those), and then they announced the last prize of the night. Six months of unlimited karate lessons. I just closed my eyes and chanted "Caleb, Caleb, Caleb" in my head. The assistant principal announced, "Caleb....J". I opened my eyes and looked at Perry. Did I hear right? He's been bugging us to do karate, and our dr. thinks it will be good to get him involved in non-classroom activities so he can experience success in multiple fields, so this is just perfect. Of course, check with me in a month when I sign him up and he shows his siblings his karate moves (he had had the gift certificate in hand for all about 30 seconds when we gave him this talk). And now Mischa is starting to bug us about karate lessons...