My Life has Become a Box of Lucky Charms

And my kids ate out all the marshmallows. Really what is Lucky Charms without the marshmallows but a nasty semi sweetened puff of bleck that gets really soggy in milk? Aside from the fact that I want to blow out my brains-can I just start my life completely over-ok not the whole thing but the part where I actually wanted to have kids. Maybe I can invent a time machine and send my self back to when I had some sense of sanity. Then when I meet myself I will promptly smack myself in the face, tell myself to start drinking margaritas and get on a one way flight to Tahiti. This whole parenting thing is enough to put me over the edge. I thought that I really enjoyed 7th grade so I am wondering why I have to do it all over again-oh yeah that's right I had children and apparently I did not enjoy it enough or learn it enough the first time around. I did not struggle in school and neither did any of my siblings so why do I have only 1 child out of 4 that wants to do well in school and shows it? Two of my other 3 struggle like the day is long while numero 3 is fully able and capable but just gets lazy and sloppy. Why do kids have to be such little ***theads-now I am talking about other people's kids not mine at the moment. Connor came home to tell me that some kids at school are calling him a douchebag. Then he promptly asks the question "Mom what is a douchebag?" Now that word is not frequently used unless we visit certain people and then we just use clever acronyms to say rude things about people. QDB, PDB etc. Why on earth would you use a word like that around your kids knowing full well that they will gladly repeat it as soon as they can and it will probably happen in church? We try so hard to teach our kids to be Christlike and nice to people but then this happens and my Christlike feelings go right out the window. I told him it was not a nice word and just ignore them. What I really want to tell him is go up to them and karate chop them right in the face. He could karate chop them too because he has been taking lessons. Then after he Karate Chops them I will rain hellfire and lightning down on them a la Mother Bear style. I would like to add to my list of complaints that my icemaker still does not work-remember when helpful handy serviceman came out and told me that it would cost $400 to fix the icemaker? Well I shoulda just paid them to do it because we probably have gone through 400 bags since then and it is such a pain in the butt to go all the way to Wally's or heaven forbid all the way to the Fairgrounds. I think the universe is conspiring against me. Since school started Don has been home for Terrible Tuesday one time. Tuesdays are from the devil. Starting from 2:00 on I run kids back and forth from the school to piano to scouts to karate with a few intermittent stops at home for a bit to grab needed items for above mentioned places. After those glorious 5 hours we have 2 hours of homework and that is after dinner, showers, a bit of whining, crying and yelling and that is just from me. Cayden asked me the other day if there were pottys in heaven. In an effort to preempt any further discussions down that road I promptly replied yes there were pottys in heaven and that Heavenly Father made them just like he made everything else. Cayden then informed me that it was good that Heavenly Father made pottys in heaven because if there were no pottys in heaven then if he had to go poop then he would just have to poop in his pants and that would just be yucky. Well it's a good thing we did not get into that whole "you won't have the same kind of body in heaven" discussion because who knows where that could have gone. My friend and I were talking the other day about holding grudges and not forgiving people and getting offended etc and how that is like carrying a backpack full of rocks and how every time you get offended or hold a grudge or don't forgive you are adding rocks to that backpack. Well because we are funny people and it is much easier to use humor when dealing with touchy subjects like getting offended we decided that we would probably be carrying our backpacks for a long time but they would be designer and we would have the matching shoes to go with it. Let us now return to the douchebag story. This is part where I say that I am a good person and will not be offended and I will forgive the little brat that is being rude to my kid but at this moment I want to take out a few of those rocks from my backpack and throw them right at that rotten kid and watch his nose bleed. (Then I would quickly run up and offer him a kleenex of course). I read on Meridian Magazine today a whole article on the do's and don'ts of Sunday attire specifically nylons vs flipflops. I really try not to be a judgmental person ok atleast not for very long but seriously don't we and shouldn't we have better things to do then to discuss whether or not Sister So and So takes the prophets seriously and has respect for the church when she wears flip flops or heaven forbid sandals without stalkings? Forgive me if I am mistaken but shouldn't we be concerned with our own level of discipleship and our own progress and that sister's well being then what she has on her feet at church? Now I have judged some harshly on the fact that they have worn Crocs to church and then there's the lady that gets up and flat out tells the congregation during testimony meeting that she came to church in what she slept in. Well at least she was honest. Maybe if I wear rhinestones or sequins on my flip flops to church that will be respectful enough. Sherri Dew said once "that the final judgment will be a breeze compared to what we have put each other through here on earth". I concur-I hope it is easier than what I put myself through. Oh look my doorbell rand and there are 2 sweaty smelly tired boys and their grandparents who must have been sent as my angels tonight because I specifically said a loud prayer when I was getting in to the car today to start all this mayhem. I said Lord Help Me with all the gusto I could muster but not so much that I come falling back to the floor from overexertion. Lo and behold just a few hours later a call requesting permission to pick up the Karate kids and bring them home turned into an hour and 45 minutes of crying, fighting and cajoling and just enough time to get 2 bathed 4 fed and 1 on their own homework and the other adults in the room working on the duece to get his 47 problems of math done. This math is not for sissies either. You better bring your whole bag of magic and then go and steal some from the neighbors cuz your gonna need it. 14 math problems took 1 hour and a half. 1 single problem took 14 minutes alone. There has gotta be something better than this. While 2 relatively smart adult minds attempted to figure out the problem so that we could tell him what do, he sat and scribbled or rolled his head on the counter or complained that he was still hungry. Does it take every child this long to do this work? We are what 5 weeks into school and I am ready to throw in the towel. Connor makes good money mowing lawns and pulling weeds. Plus he really prefers to be out there than in school any way. I thought homeschooling him was hard but this is harder. Whatever happens just don't call the truant officer please. Maybe call in someone that will lock me up for a few days where all I have to do is sit and read and maybe watch TV in a little square room with a nice roomie named Tito from the Bronx. No cooking, no cleaning, no phone ringing just a nice stainless steel toilet and a plastic comb. Some days other than Tito it does not sound so bad. I wonder if they just sell the marshmallows for the Lucky Charms on their own-Then when my kids eat all of those my life will just be an empty plastic bag.

Labor Day 2009-Welcome to Pukeville

For Labor Day weekend we got the kids out of school a little early on Friday and headed to Provo. It was the usual exhausting ride but we did go to Wendy's in St. George and sshhh-I got a Frosty and hid it from the kids. We got to Provo around 7 that night and Chris and Anne were there after work getting Miss Lexie from my mom who had kept her all day. I am pretty sure there were football games on the TV and later Cody and Calley ran to Coldstone. Boy how I love Provo. Caleb started getting a cold earlier in the week and by Friday night had a fever. We quarantined him and loaded him up with Nyquil and sent him to bed. He woke up pretty good on Saturday. That morning Mawmaw took us all to breakfast at IHOP-our family favorite and then we had to hustle to get in haircuts, shopping, football food, and a massage before the BYU game started. We went to my brother's for the game and stuffed ourselves with pizza and soda, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and rice krispy treats. We also went through a large bag of Starbursts but mostly the pink ones. Sometime during the night on Saturday Connor woke up and promptly puked on grandma's floor. I was oblivious to the fact because my sweet husband took care of cleaning it up and getting Connor back to bed. Sometime around 5:30am my mom came in to tell me that they were taking Calley to the ER because she was having severe abdominal pain that she had had for 2 weeks and for which she had already seen a doctor once. I got up around 8 to get the update from the hospital and then got ready for church just in case I needed to go sit at the hospital with Calley so my parents could come back and get ready for church. Now some of you may think that we are really die hard Mormons and that we would go to church even when my sister is in the hospital but that is not the case. My brother Chris and his wife Anne were blessing their baby at 11 and that was the whole point of the trip up there anyway. My mom, Larry and Calley were home from the hospital by 9:30. Calley was ok-just needed to rest and not eat anything for a while. She had a blockage that was giving her lots of trouble. I went to wake up Cody and he informed me that he was currently enjoying the stomach flu and had already had his head in the toilet a few times. He and Calley ended up staying home from church. We went to the blessing (I got to hold the baby while Anne bore her testimony :)and then back to mom's to change and grab food for the luncheon and then back to Chris' to eat lots of yummy food. Even in Calley's misery she made a beautiful blessing cake for Lexie on Saturday that was quite tasty as well. Our family has stopped purchasing cakes from bakeries and Costco because Calley does a much better job. After the luncheon we headed back to mom's for the customary Sunday nap. Cayden got sick that afternoon and we ended up doing lots of laundry because he "just couldn't make it." After naps we played games-Sneaks and Linkity-watched football and chatted. We had to make an "ox in the mire" run to Albertsons twice for medicine, pullups and stuff that Calley could eat. Don and I were in prep mode just in case we got sick and could not drive home on Monday. Monday morning everyone woke up fine and Don took Connor over to Chris' so Connor could mow the lawn. I stayed in bed till the absolute last minute and then got up and packed so we could load the car. We all wore our BYU shirts and headed to the mall to go to Chic-Fil-A for their free sandwich promotion for wearing your sports clothing. That place was packed and the poor people working there were just slammed. It took a long time to order and a long time to get our food but Chic-Fil-A is always worth it. Thankfully we made it home without any further flu incidents. We even stopped at Texas Roadhouse for our FHE dinner since it was Monday night. We finally got home, unpacked and got ready to start our crazy insane week. I took my camera but I did not take one picture the whole weekend. 3 days is just not enough for me in Utah-it went by way too fast. Oh and by the way it is still hotter than Hades here and we are about to lose our minds!
P.S. Don and I got the flu Tuesday. It totally kicked our butts and it was a rough week.

Nothing to Read

This year has been a real disappointment for me in the book department. I just went to my Goodreads account and counted 12 books this year that I have not finished or barely even got started because they have been total crap in one way or the other. Some were total trash with language and adult content, some just could not keep my attention and there are so many that I have on my "currently reading" list that I really am not reading at all. I really love to read and so I am very disgruntled that I am having such a hard time doing it. I put a freeze on my book buying binges from Barnes and Noble because I have just been disappointed too many times to spend that much money on books. I have been ordering books from the library and patiently waiting for their arrival. This is one of my many self-help steps in trying to learn patience. I really like Goodreads and seeing what my friends and family are reading plus all of the comments and recommendations are helpful but books are so subjective that what one person likes another may not. So I am in a quandary with nothing to read.
P.S. There is nothing on TV either.

Second Verse Same as the First

I think that last week I really drove to Overton 27 times-I am really not kidding. Don actually stayed in town the first 2 days of school and left on Wednesday. The last 3 years he has had to be somewhere the first day of school so he has been unable to join in the jubilee of 6am risings/gripings etc. This year he was able to share in the bliss but I am pretty sure that he has already booked his travel for next year at this time. I forgot to mention that we had FHE the Sunday night before school started for the annual School Safety talk and Father's Blessings. It was a dang good thing because everyone was so exhausted by Monday night that the most we would have been able to for FHE was read a story assuming we could even get through the opening song. We had lots of appointments last week that I stupidly scheduled for the first week of school. We had dentals for 5 of us, 4 on the same day, 3 ortho appointments intermixed with carpools, daily pickups and deliveries of various children-mine of course, grocery store runs, mail runs, library runs and Mavericks nasty drink but gotta have it anyway runs and football fiascos. I can't remember if I even went anywhere but Overton. We had to eat dinner in all of this so Tuesday night we made a ton and shared some with a neighbor family. Connor was doing football but that ended abruptly Thursday night-don't ask. That alleviated alot of stress and driving around especially with Don being gone. There were no naps last week other than a 6pm crashing on Wednesday night because if was either that or the back of my head would have exploded. The worst part about the week was not all the running around but the fact that even though I was so tired most of the nights I could not go to sleep and then when I finally did around 12 I woke up quite a few times during the night and still had to get up WAAAYYYYY to early. It's like that silly anxiety that you can't go to sleep because your afraid that you won't be able to sleep and then you will be so tired when you have to get up that you can't go to sleep. That vicious circle was the bane of my existence last week and seems to want to be this week too. Wednesday was the day of the 4:30 dinner at McDonald's because we had just spent 2 and a half hours at the dentist mingled with my trips back and forth from the various schools to retrieve children. By the time we were done the kids were starving and McDonald's was close. Only $15 for the cost of my sanity that day. Thursday seems a blur-I think a headache was involved but I can't be sure. Friday was really more of a joke because Cody, Connor and Caleb went to school around 7:30 but Cody was done by 9:30. I did not even send Cayden to school because he would have been there only 45 minutes before I needed to check him out for his ortho-total waste. Immediately after getting Cody, Caleb had to be retrieved at 9:45 for his ortho appointment and then returned to school so he could get out at 11:45. The new deal is that every other Friday the middle school will get out at 11:45 to be more in line with the with the high school schedule. The high school gets out every Friday at 12:00 UNLESS you are Cody Adams who has 2 college classes that don't meet on Fridays. When that happens he is done by 9:30. After the ortho appointments and Caleb's return to school at 11 , Cayden's return to school at 11:15, Connor and Caleb's pick up from school at 11:45 it was time for lunch. Usually mint chocolate chip does the trick but this time drastic action was required. Dreyers Double Fudge Brownie with caramel got me through. It was a close one but we recovered. Saturday was cleaning day and peach bottling day. We got 20 quarts of peaches and the floor got mopped 4 times. Last year I had 40 lbs of peaches like this year but I made alot of freezer jam and just froze the peaches in ziploc bags. We ate all the canned peaches but 2 quarts but not hardly any of the frozen. We did eat some of them jam but there is still some left. I did have grandiose ideas about making peach butter and peach salsa but it did not happen. The boys mostly did their chores with out complaint but then I went to take a nap around 1. When I got up they had snuck out with out finishing, thinking I would not notice the vacuum in the middle of the hall, the clothes thrown haphazardly into drawers left open and the clothes that did not fit in the drawers thrown back in the dirty clothes bin. They need to work on their art of subterfuge. Saturday was Wally's pizza day as it has been the last few weeks. Sunday was relaxing albeit Family Grumpy Day-mostly mom and dad. We did salvage it a little by playing a few games and going to eat bundt cake for Taylor's birthday. I made her the cutest magnetic board covered on the edges with mod podged paper and glitter paint but I forgot to take a picture of it. It was alot of fun making it and it almost took as long to find the right paper than it did to put it together. (I hope it was not a violation of copyright Vicki cuz I "borrowed" the idea from your Piecemaker blog.) Nieces beware-you might just get one yourselves! Monday of this week started bright and early and this miserable heat just won't quit. I got up and walked/jogged 2 mornings last week and I have done 2 mornings this week but if I don't do it before 7 it just too hot. Monday was numerous errands and more importantly double fudge brownie with caramel for encouragement. Then another dinner for a sick friend's family that actually ended up feeding 4 families-us, a neighbor's family, sick friend's family and they had so much that they took their 2nd pan to someone else. The greatest thing was that the main casserole really could not have cost more that $20. It fed about 25 people. Pretty good I think! Something like the loaves and fishes maybe! Monday was FHE on respect based on the Family Grumpy day from Sunday. Disgruntled parents unite! Not the worst one we have had-did feel the spirit a bit but certainly was not the best one ever. Tuesday was a visit from the phone company to address our internet problems with dropping us ALL THE TIME. They got it all going by 12 and so Don and I zoomed up to the DMV to get the trailer and Suburban registered so that we could go out of town this weekend and not get stopped for an unregistered car. There is a story that goes along with this trip to the DMV but I won't bore you with the details-maybe later when I still can't sleep. We took a little jaunt into Walmart and got home just in time for the kids to come home and others to pick up. The boys started Karate last night, met Cayden's teacher at Back to School night and learned at a parent meeting that Cody will need to be selling his organs so that he can go on the Encore Choir trip in March. I may have to sell mine as well so I can go with him. HOLY CRAP it is just Wednesday! I am really having anxiety about how crazy things are and my lack of sleep thus my lack of energy thus my lack of patience thus my lack of domesticity. Oh and I "started" my diet yesterday. That does not bode well for mental stability. If you see me eating double fudge brownie with caramel just back away slowly and don't show any fear. Exhausted mothers can smell fear you know! And if my behind is the same size or bigger than it has been for a while keep that bit of info to yourself-I already know. It has almost become its own entity needing its own introduction. "Oh hi this is Jenni and oh and this is Jenni's behind. Please pull up another chair." Happy Wednesday-even though it will be Thursday when most of you read this-if you read this tonight GO TO BED!

Note to self-need to blog DMV stupidity, Cayden's grumpy donut day, and Connor's pirate scripture reading.