Spring Cleaning

I have the spring cleaning bug today. Must be from being at my sister's house where it was over 70F one day and always above 40. Because it is well below zero today with the high only getting to 10F. Blah.

But my house is getting clean. I dusted and scrubbed and de-cluttered.

I have a new technique for cleaning up the clutter. I take EVERYTHING that is not where it belongs that I have collected from the entire house and put it all on the dining room table. The kids then are responsible for clearing it all off. Whatever they leave behind I throw away. So far they have not left anything on the table. :)

And the house looks so much better. Now I just need to work on organization. We need some places to put things.

Thursday in Bullet Points

• The days are starting to separate from each other now. The last week felt like a big blur of days. LOL
  
• The kids are off to school today so I am going to sneak into town and have lunch with my husband.
  
• I also get to go and register our new car today. That is going to be a hefty check to write. I am thankful we have the money though to do it with.
  
• We brought my Mom's kitten home. It is having a hard time adjusting to life with four other cats. So far it hasn't come out of hiding. The poor thing.
  
• I also need to go to the store. We are out of just about everything here. Not sure how that happened when we weren't even home. Shopping is good therapy though. :)

Stress

As you can imagine right now life for me is very stressful. As I got up the morning of my Mom's funeral to get in the shower, I noticed my face in the mirror. Suddenly, at the age of 33, I had a new crop of pimples. Ugh!

I have always had pretty severe acne. Thankfully as I get older it seems to be getting better. But stress is always a trigger for me, it seems. I am so grateful to the companies who make acne treatment products. When I was a teenager they still thought chocolate caused pimples.

How times have changed. Now I wish my skin would follow suit. ;)

We're Home

We got home late last night. I am having a hard time going back to life as usual. Partly because of my sadness and partly because of the break we had while at my sister's house.

The dumbest things make me cry. I was listening to an onstar commercial on the radio and I started crying again last night.

Then we came home and found our front door wide open and all the lights on. Apparently the neighbor girl we hired to feed the cats came over and "forgot" to shut the door. She also forgot to feed the cats. She came in and played on the laptop and left it appears. I can only imagine the amount of propane we went through with the front door wide open in this 15F weather.

I am overwhelmed and exhausted right now so I will likely be missing yet for a day or two. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

Christmas Wishes

Every year as we get closer and closer to Christmas I try to think of cool presents my kids can make for our family.

The last few years we had made some kind of photo project. Then after Christmas this year I found out about these custom printed calendars. They are a perfect gift for grandparents or any relative who likes to see your family year round. :)

I think we will give them a try this year and see how they look. The kids will think it is so cool to have their picture on a calender.

Update

I have a few minutes so I thought I would pop in and say thank you to all of you for your thoughts and prayers and to answer a few questions.

My mom was not sick. This was totally and completely unexpected. We don't know at this time what she died from. She died almost 5 days before my sister and stepdad had someone break into her house. When I got the call they had just gone in and found her.

They are doing an autopsy but we won't have the results for at least 6-8 weeks.

I am doing okay. I didn't have the greatest relationship with my mom but she is my mom and I love her. I am sad mostly about the way she left the earth and that no one was there with her.

Her funeral is Monday at 2 p.m. so I should be returning home on Tuesday.

My sisters and I have spent the last two days preparing for the funeral and cleaning out my mom's house. That was not a fun job for a lot of reasons. Some are too gruesome to share but let me just say I never want to have to do that again. Thankfully my sister's and I got along beautifully and we handled the situation with great maturity. That is not something many families can say. Death in the family usually brings out the ugly in people. Thankfully it didn't in ours.

I will try to post more later but most likely it won't be until I get home. I thank you so much for your continued prayers. As I read the comments I cried again. That you all are thinking of me means so much.

I got a call at 3:00 this afternoon that my mom has passed away.

I am leaving to go to my hometown right now.

Really People!

Yesterday two kids had a stomache ache. Today another one is home throwing up.

We can really stop acquiring germs any day now.

Really!

Good News, Bad News

It is Monday. I am here. I survived the weekend. Barely...

I got the Tamiflu on Friday about 6 and took the first pill immediately. At that point I was taking two aleve twice a day and it was not making my body aches and head aches even SLIGHTLY better. I was ready to curl up and give in. Then sometime during the night that little pill must have started working its magic. The headache and body aches ended and just that made me feel 100% better. Today I am still coughing and have a sore throat but for the most part I feel okay. That prescription was worth its weight in gold, or the 80 bucks it cost, despite what my husband may tell you. (We haven't met our deductible for the year yet.) Just wait until he gets the flu and then I will laugh as he whines at me. Muhahahahahahahahaha!

A very good blogging friend, Thrice Blessed Momma, has unexpectedly passed away this week. Some of you may have seen the comment her cousin left on my blog. Here is part of the email she has sent me:
Helena, left us on Thursday, February 21st. But now she is with peace and her husband Andrew. She had told us that the people she had met blogging were like a family to her. Please keep Madison, Zoe, and Jonathan in your thoughts and prayers.
Doctors are unsure as to what the cause of death was at this point. They think possibly an aneurysm. Helena's husband also died a few years back and so she was raising her triplets by herself. They are five years old. I cannot imagine the pain they must be in after losing their dad and now their mom in just a few short years of each other. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers. ***Update: There is more info about Helena on The Dairy Wife's Blog.***

We went to the movies yesterday (with all 7 kids) to see The Spiderwick Chronicles. It is a good movie. I really enjoyed it. The ending is a bit scary for the younger kids (half of mine had their hands over their eyes) but it was well worth going to see. I do think this is a movie we will be purchasing. I always can tell when it is a winner when the kids spend the next week or two quoting lines from the movie.

My sister is coming to visit us this weekend. I think the kids are going to burst out of their skins waiting. I get to cuddle my niece and nephew too. It makes the week ahead a little easier to face. Of course I will spend the week scrubbing the house down. Well, if I ever get off the computer that is. :)

Holy Smokes!

We were watching one of those design shows on HGTV this weekend and they had the coolest t.v. console. The t.v. slides down at the touch of a button INTO the cabinet. On the design show they had this in their bedroom. "What an awesome way to hide a t.v. in the bedroom!" I thought. So after some research online I found a page full of tv lift cabinets.

I am so totally in love with this one. A t.v. cabinet and fireplace in one! And while they are spendy, if you compare the price of a fireplace and lift cabinet alone they aren't bad. And shipping is free, which is even better.

Quiz Time

After doing some shopping this past week, I am curious as to how many of you are brand-specific when shopping.

I mentioned quite awhile ago that I almost never buy brand name anything. But note I said almost.

There are some things I am particular about. Like Kraft Ranch Dressing. It is the only one I like (well that and the one they use at Perkins but they won't tell me what that is). And I used to only buy Cascade but lately I have been buying the Walmart or Target brands with similar results. And I always buy Aquafresh toothpaste for sensitive teeth (same ingredients as sensodyne but about 2 bucks cheaper).

So it got me to thinking. What brands do you buy of the following products?

Toothpaste:
Macaroni and Cheese:
Bread:
Shampoo:
Diapers (if you buy em):
Soup:
Cereal:
Peanut Butter:
Toilet Paper:
Dishsoap/Dishwasher detergent:
Frozen vegetables:
Yogurt:
Anything else you buy a specific brand of:

To-do more

I have fallen off the exercise wagon for the last several months. I had finally gotten my motivation back when the flu hit. I would like to get back to Denise Austin in the mornings but now she only has one show on and it is on at the exact time I need to get up and get moving in the morning. So then started dreaming of an exercise room in our basement. Only our basement is icky. It would involve a lot of work to make it an exercise room. And the only exercise equipment we have is a treadmill right now. My husband dreams of the day we can buy weight benches and free weights to use.

I guess we will just have to add an exercise room on our list of things to do to the house. I don't think that list ever gets shorter. It just keeps changing as time goes on.

Spring cometh?

Today it was 45F here! It was sooooo nice. We took the kids to the park to play. While it was wet and mushy it was glorious to get out of the house, feel the sunshine, and watch the kids play and run.

While we were there we heard sirens and pretty soon the ambulance pulled up across the street from the park. The kids thought that was rather exciting until they realized nothing happens after the ambulance parks outside someone's house. :)