the things of life

i am presently sitting at a paradise bakery, enjoying christmas carols, free wi-fi, and a banana chocolate chip muffin BY MYSELF. sweet solace!

everything is pretty perfect. except i have a zit under my right eye that is slowly, but surely growing by the hour, impinging on my vision and concentration. of course we are going to take a huge family picture tomorrow- with chris' mom, step-dad, and all of chris' brothers and sister, and their families. 10 adults, 2 teens, 3 toddlers, 2 infants, and 1 giant zit. The promise of a great picture to be sure! :)

the other day chris was on his way to lead his high school boys' small group. he stopped to get a coffee since he was tired and early. the girl taking his order must have been new. chris asked for cream and sugar in his coffee, and the girl asked him if he wanted half and half. as in half and half cream, right? chris said yes. and when he drove up to the window he saw the girl take his coffee, bring it over to the sink, pour out half of his precious java, dump in half a cup of half and half cream, add sugar, and hand it to him. yikes. my wonderfully polite husband just felt sorry for the poor girl and drove away without saying anything. it helps that the coffee was free. sometimes stupidity is so shocking it just leaves you speechless.

and in our continued efforts to have a very casual home where pottying is cool, but not forced, i put topher on the toilet the other day ago, right as he was finishing up his bath. he looked like he was going to drop a deuce in the tub again. and that is not cool. ever. so i put the boy on the can, and he peed in the toilet! but first he peed all over me. soaked shirt and pants. thanks tophy. for everything.

finally, chris and i got a giant check in the mail from our insurance company. something about having had double coverage on the house or something like that. who cares? we got paid folks! $900! and then we brought the van in for a simple oil change. wouldn't you know there was a leak here, brake pads needed there, something loose somewhere else, and all of it came out to $900. oh Jesus. thank you for your provisions! you have a great sense of humour by the way.

Thursday's Thing- Garanimal Pants

buying kids clothes is something that i love and loathe all at once. there are just so many cute and beautiful things out there to buy. but there's never enough money. and the thought of spending more than $10 on any item of clothing is killer for me because i know they are going to grow out of whatever i am buying them. and FAST. too fast.

an awesomely great 'investment' is in Garanimal pants, that they sell at Walmart. they come in boys and girls sizes 12 months to 5 years. i am generally not the biggest fan of Walmart clothes. but if my kids need pants, i go to Walmart. the picture above is of three of Lily's pants. i bought the jeans and khakis a year ago. they are size '24 months' and she still wears them, even though she is 32 months (oh time flies! no weeping. must post about pants without weeping...) the black stretchy pants are also Garanimals, and they were actually a hand-me-down, which means some other kid wore them for about 6 months to a year, and they are in perfect condition! no holes, no rips.

the pants are all pretty 'thin', which is just fine for living in Arizona. they are nott too hot in spring, and just warm enough for our winters too. the thinness of the material makes it more comfortable for the kids to play in, and sit in (compared to some other pants my kids have). they also all have elastic waistbands, that are shockingly not too loose (my general complaint against the clothes at Walmart) and not too tight (cause no one likes a muffin-top. not even on a 12 month old. just joking. topher's got a sweet muffin-top and we are all proud of it!)

the best thing about Garanimals is the price. the jeans and khakis are regularly about $5, and the leggings are about $3.50. and they always go on sale at the end of a season. so awesome. considering the fact that you can drop $25 for a pair of pretty stiff jeans, that have embroidery, or characters on them, which doesn't even make them 'matchable' with every outfit, at Gymboree or the Gap, this is a smokin hot deal.

Great Pics- Part II

i said i was going to post more pics after my awesome Topher pic last week, but like most of this year- i don't know how time has flown by so quickly.
so here are a couple more of my fave pics that barb took. i am saving a great one or two for our Christmas card... which i guess we need to start working on before Christmas gets here tomorrow...

Confessions of a Pathetic Shopaholic

how much would you pay for the above dress? $25? $10? $6.50 plus your integrity?...

august 29th i wrote a post about our moving from a lifestyle that could have been tagged 'seriously excessive' to a lifestyle that would be tagged 'only what's necessary'. i mentioned going on a shopping freeze that would include buying any kind of clothes or accessories for either myself or the kids, cause we all had more than enough stuff to cover our bodies for the next couple of months, if not years (more for myself, since i am no longer growing, and i still wear shirts that i bought 8 years ago.)

this post may have meant nothing to any of you. lots of you probably didn't even read that post. but i have to admit it has helped to keep me 'clean' for the last few months, for fear of having to share that i failed and bought something that i didn't necessarily need. there was a period of time when lily had a lot of mismatched pjs, due to our many moves (we have since recovered all the right tops and bottoms!), and almost everytime i went to either target or walmart, there would be a pair of pjs for lily in my shopping cart until i would get to the checkout and realize that though i loved lily in matching pjs, she did not NEED to have matching tops and bottoms to go to bed. this honestly happened about five or six times. and i refrained from giving in to my obsessive need to have new stuff cause i knew i would have to 1.write about it. and 2. tell chris.

now don't get me wrong. chris is no tyrant. he did not put me on this shopping freeze. i did it to myself. he is just severely supportive cause 1.it's saving us money and 2. he is a man of his word, and he expects others to be as well.

so i was really great for two months. and then i broke down last week. it started with our family picture. chris and james have matching gray polo t-shirts, so we decided they would wear those, the kids would wear colorful polos, and the girls would wear something complementary to all that. well, i couldn't really find anything 'special' for lily to wear. so i went shopping. yes. i was already prepared to break my word for the sake of an awesome family picture! but then the unexpected happened- i found two cute gray polo shirts for topher and sungu to wear that would match their dads! so i bought those instead of a dress for lily. cause truth be told- she had a dress she could have worn all along in the picture. i did however also buy her some ribbon for her hair though. i am a shopping monster!!!!!!!!!!

AND THEN... i went back to target the next night with my sister so we could stroll about with no kids. so wonderful. jeehon was actually looking for some shirts. i was just 'helping her out'. until i came across the above pictured dress. i am all about long dresses. i had wanted one all summer, and was so happy that they were such a huge fashion trend this last year. but i just could not bring myself to buy one for full price. this dress was $24.99. then it went down to $17.48. then it went down to $12.48. then it went down to $6.24. and then... i bought it.

c'mon reader! does your heart not skip a beat when you see a price tag with not only one, but THREE sale stickers piled haphazardly on top of one another? judge me if you will. but all i can say is i tried. i failed. and i am moving on. with my awesome new dress in tow.

Thursday's Thing- COFFEE!

here is a post about another mom-essential: coffee. well, it's a momming-essential for me. a lot of my beautiful friends here in arizona actually don't drink coffee. it's the strangest thing. when we go to starbucks i am the only one who ever gets an actual drink that isn't water. but for those of you in the east valley who appreciate a good (and cheap!) cup o' joe, read on.

the hidden gem in the cheap coffee world is Krispy Kreme. there aren't a ton of locations in arizona, but one of the three that i know of is a 3 minute drive, or a twenty minute walk (i know cause i have done it)from our apartment. their regular, everyday price for a 10 oz cup of coffee is $0.25. yes. i said it. twenty-five cents. hello? is this 1978, or some other crazy time before i was born???
this coffee is always a touch bolder than i would like, so i actually ask for 1 cream and 3 sugars. (i generally like to just drink my coffee with 3 sugars, no cream.)

another great deal is- believe it or not- a regular coffee at Starbucks. a tall (12oz) is $1.50. this is pretty great considering Dunkin Donuts sells their coffee for about the same price. but the best thing about Starbucks right now is that if you buy a bag of Starbucks coffee at the grocery store (usually for about $6 -$9), and you bring the empty bag into a Starbucks, they will take the bag and give you a free hot cup of coffee. so basically you paid about $4.50 to have a butt-load of home-made Starbucks coffee, only to be rewarded with someone who will take your garbage and give you a free coffee at Starbucks. the bag says you can redeem the bag for a tall coffee, but chris has brought in a bag before and gotten a venti. you might need to show a little leg, something chris is always willing to do for something free.

Great Pic- Part I

I just got a disc of amazing pictures that Barb, my wonderful jack-of-all-trades mother-in-law took. This one is hilarious and I am posting it first because it is from Halloween. Apparently he stayed in character the whole time he was out trick or treating with his Nana, not saying a word. One person giving out candy even correctly identified who he was trying to be. That means his costume was a success!
Tomorrow, or some other time in the not too distant future, I shall post more pics.
Enjoy!


Here is a picture of my sweet little Topher


Here is a crazy picture of my disgruntled, crazy-eyebrowed, charlie chaplin look-a-like Topher.

Wonderful Ignorance

This is going to be a quick post, cause it's late and I still have lots of random things I need to do. But it is too funny not to share.

Two nights ago I was giving the kids a bath by myself, cause Chris was working till 9pm. We all sit on the potty right before we go into the bath (I sit on the potty, but I don't go into the bath) but no one is ever able to produce any pee, except for me, cause I am not only a big girl, but I am also a good girl. And I know this cause Lily tells me so every time I make a pee. (This is our superslow, supercasual stroll into potty training for Lils and Topher.)

Then the kids get in the bath, and Topher almost always takes a stance like he is going to pee. I have caught his pee in a cup twice, which he doesn't like, so then he stops peeing, then sits in the bath and ruins everything. Sometimes I drain the water and start all over again, sometimes I don't. Let's be serious, it's gross, but that's life.

So this fateful night, two nights ago, Topher looked like he had to pee at the beginning of the bath, but I didn't catch anything. Then we proceeded with bath time, and as we were getting ready to wrap things up, Lily was sitting facing the faucet, catching the water as it pouring out. Unbeknownst to her, there was something pouring on her back, but she didn't notice cause she was already wet, or maybe she thought I had turned on the warm shower without her noticing, but lucky for Topher that she did not notice that he was peeing on her back, and a little in her long hair. Oh the verbal lashing he would have gotten from his big sister! Lily also did not notice that I was soaping her up again, and rinsing her off again.
Ah, ignorance saves the day once again!