The Easy Way Out

I am trying to keep up with this NaBloPoMo thing, but I currently have 3 sick children and I am running on about 4 hours of sleep. So, I decided to take the easy way out and just post a few of my favorite quotes. Read them all, just skim them, or don't read any. I am going to bed now!

"The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy." -Helen Hayes

"I refuse to think of them as chin hairs. I think of them as stray eyebrows." -Janette Barber

My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint." -Erma Bombeck

"A man's got to do what a man's got to do. A woman must do what he can't." -Rhonda Hansome

"I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on."
-Roseanne Barr

"I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb....and I'm also not blonde." -Dolly Parton

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." -Catherine Aird

"Mothers of teenagers know why animals eat their young." - Author Unknown

"I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them." - Phyllis Diller

"My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it." -Buddy Hackett

"You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back." -William D. Tammeus.

"Raising kids is part joy and part guerilla warfare." -Ed Asner

"People who say they sleep like babies usually don't have them." -Leo J. Burke

"One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is." -Erma Bombeck

Silence Is Golden

For those who are visiting for the first time. I have 4 children. One was at school. The other three, well............



Shhhhhhhhh, silence is golden!! hehe

8 Random Things About Me

I was tagged by BALDWINS GIRL to do a meme. I normally try to avoid these things because it seems like once you do one you get sucked into some sort of meme vortex. But, since there seems to be a decent number of new people reading my blog that don't know a whole lot about me, I figured it might be fun to share some extra little things about myself.


Here are the rules. When tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list eight random things about yourself. At the end of the post, you must tag and link to eight other people. So, here goes...

8 random things about me:

1. I am related to Lady Godiva. Maybe that is why my children think we live in a nudist colony and run around without any clothes on all the time!

2. I refuse to watch the movie The Princess Bride because it gives me nightmares. My name is NOT Inigo Mantoya. I did NOT kill your father. Please DON'T prepare to die!!

3. When I was a teenager I punched my BFF while we were camping. I don't remember exactly why. Probably because I was a teenage girl and I was camping.

4. I was 20 when I had my first child. She was 2 months early and we thought we might lose her. She was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy when she was 2 and wears a brace on her right leg and to me, she is perfect.

5. I hate fish. I despise them. I don't swim with them. I don't cook them. I won't eat them. I don't even like to talk about them. I avoid bridges because if the bridge collapses and I survive, I will have to swim amongst the fish to get to safety. Ick!

6. When I was a child everyone at school called me "Val." One of the boys in my 3rd grade class decided it would be funny if, instead of calling me "Vowel," he called me "Consonant." It stuck and up until the day we graduated high school that is what he called me.

7. I have never had an alcoholic drink. Ever. (Don't bother to comment and ask if I have tried a sip of this or a taste of that. I haven't. )

8. I LOVE to make others laugh, but I'm content if I just make myself chuckle. :)


Ok, so now I am going to tag 8 others. Some I know well, some not so much. Do it if you like. (The names are linked even though you can't tell. The links show up in blue and that is the color of my background)


1. Hey, It's Jude
2. Burnt Cookies
3. The Life Of Tracy
4. My 5 Little Monkeys
5. The Cochran Clan
6. Mom Of The Year...Not
7. Life Needs A Hefty Bag
8. Anyone else who has some random facts they feel like sharing!!

Photohunt: Flexible

Flexible: (adjective) bending and snapping back readily without breaking.
I believe she fits this definition to a tee!! (I promise I am not going to use a picture of my baby every week. But when I saw the theme was flexible I knew my photo needed to be of her!!)


PhotoHunt

My Fabulous Bag

This is my diaper bag....


Isn't it pretty? I LOVE this bag. I want to marry this bag (That is if I wasn't already married to a wonderful man. Love you sweetie!!) It is red. It is shiny. It is youthful. It is eye-catching. It is, in a word, FABULOUS!!! It is everything I want to be. Ok, well I don't want to be red. That would probably mean I had a really bad sunburn. Been there, done that. Not going back, thank you very much. Well, and I guess I don't want to be shiny either. In fact, I pay good money for cleansers to keep me from being shiny. But you get my point. I hope.

So, this amazing bag of mine is impressive in more ways than one. It still looks marvelous from the outside after being carted around everywhere I go and it is big enough that it can hold all the crap that I needlessly cart around with me. See....


The contents of my bag consists of:
3 pens (1 that didn't work)
1 UN SHARPENED pencil (maybe I could poke someones eye out if they tried to mug me..??)
3 stickers (2 were transformers and one was veggie tales)
2 things of lip gloss
1 tube of chap stick...cherry flavored, of course.
1 coconut lip butter (from The Body Shop...best lip stuff EVER!! Only problem is it tastes so good I usually just lick it off as soon as I put it on!! and can you tell I came form a cold climate?? A girl can never have too many moisturizing lip products.)
1 watch (That never gets worn because it just becomes a toy for my baby and then my wrist ends up covered in baby slobber)
1 rattle (Sassy rocks!)
1 small toy dog
61 cents (see, mugging me would be a mistake. You would end up with 61 cents and only one eye)
1 hair clip (the big claw kind. I am not sure why I have this. I don't even use this kind of hair clip!)
3 rubber bands (essential for the "baby likes to yank the hair out of my head" phase of you baby's life)
3 kids games
some cheese and peanut butter crackers
1 bottle nipple and a 2 oz bottle of premade formula (even though my baby drinks double that)
1 electronic 20 questions game (I LOVE this little thing. Very handy for waiting in the doctor's offices)
1(?????) plastic link (don't ask me what I was expecting a child to do with 1 link)
2 pacifiers (neither of which were in containers so they are both covered in "bottom of your diaper bag" crumbly stuff....kinda makes it pointless to have them)
a PLETHORA of old receipts (mostly from Target...can I get a hoot hoot??)
1 crinkly baby book
2 baggies stuffed full of wipes (Yup, 2. One for changing diapers and one because I am an experienced mom and know that in the course 1 trip to the grocery store you can use wipes approx. 32 times... i.e. wiping shopping cart, wiping little hands after they run their fingers down the side of the dirty car in the parking lot, wiping faces after eating free samples of BBQ chicken, wiping off baby spit up, wiping off my hand after catching the BBQ chicken sample that was being spit out.....you get my drift.)
5 diapers (4 in my baby's size and one for my niece when I have her)
1 travel size bottle of lotion
1 small bottle of water...half empty...or shall I say, half full :)
an empty tic tac container *shrugging shoulders*
1 box of crayons (cause you never know when you are going to need to color something!!)
an old grocery list
1 bib (at least it was clean!!)
my wallet
1 old man finger puppet
1 thing of dinosaur flip cards (my 5 year old is wacky over dinos)
2 easy reader books
and last, but certainly not least, a bag of jumbo sized jet-puffed marshmallows (cause ya never know when you're gonna need something to bribe the kids with!!)

You'd think I would have better biceps. Oh well. C'est la vie.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

I was walking through my kitchen the other day and I looked into my pantry and happened to notice something that didn't seem quite right.....can you spot it? (And NO, it isn't that my pantry is all messy and disorganized!!!!) Look closely......



Did you find it?? It's up towards the top......kinda left center. See it? Can you tell what it is???





It's a friggin' shoe!! Somehow Kyle's shoe managed to park itself on the very top shelf of the pantry. Good gravy what have I gotten myself into?? This was the same day the boys decided to "decorate" the walls with markers (good thing I am a smart mommy and only buy washable...thank you crayola!), Kyle convinced Evan to try to eat a piece of paper and he choked on it and threw up, Mikaily fell while running on the tile floor with socks on (something I have told her NOT to do at least a thousand times!!) and busted up her elbow (we thought she might have broken it...but we lucked out this time), the boys poured out an entire bottle of elmers glue and painted my table with it and Alaina peed all over the carpet.

But the good news is....I just saved a bunch of money by switching my car insurace to Geico!!! *sigh*

The Many Faces Of Alaina

Today, my baby girl is 5 months old! I can't believe 5 months has gone by! It seems like just yesterday she looked like this.....











Today, she looks like this....


I know, isn't she just the cutest thing you've ever seen?? (One of my best qualities is that I am a humble mommy)
She is such a magnificent baby. She gives her smiles away freely and when she smiles, she doesn't just smile with her lips, she smiles with her whole face. She loves it when I give her lots of kisses on her neck. One of her favorite things to do is sit on my lap when I am typing and pound on the keys to drive me nuts. h jv ghnh,bhfbgv gbbyv c3ftrrrrrez ---------- See, she's already a little blogger!! I'm so proud! She deals with her brothers and their assassination attempts very well. (That's a whole other post!!) She has learned to get her point across through facial expressions. Like, when her brothers are acting all psycho to her, she has learned to shoot them the, "You talkin' to me??" look.......


She has gotten REALLY good at the "But don't you love me??" look (check that one out 5 posts down if you haven't already).
Let's not forget the "Are you serious??" look...

The ever popular "Is this my good side?" look......









Here is her "No pictures, please!" look....










And last, but not least, is the "Man, life is GOOOOD" look......

















My adorable little Alaina, the world is a much better place with you in it.