Pick Up the Poo

I can only imagine all parents deal with this to some extent - disobedience and lying. I mean, it's normal for a kid to test his or her boundaries, right?

Last week Mac decided to test his. He peed on the stairs. About 5 feet from a bathroom. And about 8 feet from another bathroom. And 9 steps and another 5 feet from another bathroom. Get the picture?

I asked him what was going on. He said he couldn't make it to any of the aforementioned potties.

Me: Oh no! Are your pants wet? (I knew this was not the case)

Mac: No.

Me: So how did you have an accident and not get your pants wet?

Mac: I pulled it out of my pants. (you know, "it," the part that pees)

Me: You had time for that but not to make it to the bathroom?

Mac: No. I just decided to pee on the stairs.

I made him clean it up, of course. But I wanted something else. Because not only did he pee on the stairs, but he lied about it.

So I told him maybe as punishment he needed to go in the yard and pick up the dog poo. I'm thinking I'm pretty smart. The punishment fits the crime and all. Besides - we have a chihuahua, he'd spend 5 minutes out there with a shovel and bucket, find nothing, and be done. I mean really - chihuahua poo is tiny and there's no telling where it might be in our big yard.

But Mac bursts into tears over this.

What on earth? I didn't think it was that bad. It's not against the law to have your kid clean up the poo from your yard, right?

I took his hand and calmly asked why he was crying.

His response: Can I at least use a NAPKIN??? **waaaaa**

I couldn't help myself. I busted out laughing. My poor boy thought I was going to make him pick up poo with his bare hands.
He was not too amused with my laughter, so I had to calm down and reassure him I would never make him touch poo with his bare hands. Then I decided that the mere idea of handling poo napkin-less was enough and let the rest of the punishment slide. 

My poor sweet boy.  I'm still laughing over this one!

Cut Up Your Credit Cards

A long, long time ago, I was a naive 19 year old college student who wanted to go on vacation but had no money for said vacation. So I got a credit card. It was free money, right? Pay over time, right?

That "free" vacation wound up costing me my dignity.

//getting onto soapbox

Because I had to pay it back - plus 18%. I don't remember how much that vacation was, but let's just say $500. I paid an additional $90 for that vacation over the course of a year. More if it took longer to pay off.
Over the years, my credit was increased. And I got an additional Department Store card for "emergencies." But then Department Store upgraded me (to commercial card) and I could then use the card at more locations than just Department Store.
Then we got married and had a baby. Baby things counted as emergencies, right? And the credit card was convenient.
Then the company my husband worked for went bottom up with 2 days notice. He started his own company. We used the credit cards to survive for a few months.

Over the past 12 years, I have gotten completely out of debt once six years ago - about $5,000.
Only to rack it back up again within two years' time.

We have not spent money on those cards in over THREE YEARS. But we are still paying. We have a very nice payment plan set up for the stupid 19 year old me card, that was a primary mode of survival 4 years ago when the company Marshall worked for failed. That is very manageable and everything is going to the principle. That company has worked very hard to work with us, and I am so grateful.

But our other card - the emergency one that then went commercial - did not work with us.

So, I will be completely honest, I stopped paying it. We had Mac's legal bills, household bills, and no money. And all the credit cards were maxed out. So I stopped paying when they wouldn't lower payments or accept a principle-only payment plan.
They got nasty, I got nasty.
Finally, they had a lawyer threaten me. They probably would have spent twice what I owed suing me. And didn't they realize I didn't have the money in the first place? If I didn't have it, I didn't have it.

But suddenly we came into an amount of money that would cover the bill.

I called the attorney in charge of my case, who had send the letter demanding the full payment. I cried - I mean cried - paying that debt.

I called Marshall when it was done and sobbed to him. He asked why I was crying and I said it was because I felt so stupid for falling into the credit card trap in the first place. I felt stupid for not paying anything on it (he reassured me we had nothing to pay and had tried to work something out with them).

And when I hung up the phone I literally went prostate and cried my eyes out. I cried from sadness over parting with the money that could have been used on more useful things for us. I cried from the exhaustion that dealing with a debt causes.
And I cried from relief that finally I could be done with this nasty blemish in my life.

Then, in the midst of my tears, I began praising God. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," I called out. God, through the hand of generosity, had lifted my burden. We still have a roof over our heads, we still have food to eat. We are still going to Disney (why did we not pay this off first? We should have. I admit that.). I walked around the house for 15 minutes with my hands in the air whispering "Thank you," to the Lord.
So grateful!

With credit cards, you pay so much more than the money you initially "borrow." So much more. We paid about 1.5 times that amount (so $500 becomes $750+), and some people wind up paying twice as much! You pay in your emotional well being. You pay in your relationship with your spouse and children. Having debt hang over you eats away at you.

People, cut up your credit cards and pay them off! We are now credit card debt free aside from one card we have an easy payment plan (all going toward the principle) for. I feel such a weight off my shoulders. I don't feel like I have to watch my back anymore.

Credit cards are evil. Pure and simple. And if you can't live off your own income - reduce what you are spending and get rid of the cards!

//off soapbox

For more info about going debt free, we recommend doing Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University Class. It is rough, but well worth it and we are on our way to financial peace and a better life for us and our kids. Our first steps were/are paying off the cards and eliminating excess spending like satellite/cable and the home phone.

The Time I Dyed the Shower Purple

So, remember when my BFF and I decided to put purple streaks in our hair this past August? No? Let me remind you:

The purple didn't last too long in my hair, but you know where it did last?

My shower walls. Yeah. They started off very purple. Very. Purple. I promised Marshall that one day I would clean those walls and restore them to their previously pristine "old lace" status.

Except I didn't. Whoops. I meant to. Really I did. I had hoped that over time the color would simply go away. Between two kids bathing and two adults showering I figured it would disappear down the drain.

The color did, however, fade. Purple turned to pink. But it was still, well, pink. And very apparent on my shower walls.

Eventually I got the motivation I needed to remedy the situation. My in-laws were coming up for a visit. And while the kids thought the pink shower was pretty awesome, I highly doubted my mother-in-law would feel the same way.

It took a lot of elbow grease and more bleach that I would care to admit, but finally my walls did come clean. The purple was no more.

Maybe next time I'll dye my hair blue...



Disclaimer: I am writing this post to take part in SITS Girls' giveaway. My shower walls were very purple/pink and I really did need to clean them. Which, eventually, I did.
I received information about Clorox’s Bleach It Away campaign and am sharing my messy moment for the chance to win prizes from The SITS Girls. To learn more about the messy moment program, check out www.BleachItAway.com.  Sharing your story on the Clorox fan page gets you entered for the chance to win $25,000 and daily prizes, and you can grab a coupon for Clorox® Regular Bleach.

What's Under There?

Recently in one of the circles I travel we were discussing where things wind up - particularly things that wind up under the bed. I thought I would share the contents of our under-beds with you.

Now, under SB's twin bed is a toddler bed. It's what Mac uses when we have guests staying with us. But shoved around the edges of that are a variety of toys (mainly the small and toss-able kind). And shoes. And baby doll clothes, bottles, etc.

Mac, lucky kid, sleeps in a queen sized bed. When he graduated from the crib, the queen was already in there for guests, so he just slept there. There is a lot of stuff under his large bed. My doll collection being one thing. And luggage. And toys, stray socks and who knows what else!

Now, under our bed is some soft luggage, my Bachelor's degree (wonderful place to keep it, there), a world of missing left socks, bedroom slippers, a heating blanket and an entire population of dust bunnies.

I would take a picture to show you, but my household is asleep and I can't go around with the camera flash going off all over the place.

So what's under YOUR bed? Do you keep it clean? Cluttered?

The Nuisance of Modern Convenience

I love my cell phone. And my laptop. And facebook, and blogs and pinterest. I love my apps.

I love all those little things that make my life easier. But easier is so much harder for those things that I can't press a button to have done (yet).

There is no app for washing dishes. So I check twitter instead.
I can't sit back and fold laundry, but I can sit back and read blogs all day.
Writing my book is not as easy as posting a status update.
My kids are hungry, but instead of cooking, I'm on foodnetwork.com looking up recipes to foods they won't eat.

My wonderful, lovely modern conveniences are creating a huge nuisance for the rest of my life! For instance, right now I could be washing dishes, folding laundry or playing with the 10,000 children in my house. Instead I'm blogging. Because I love you best, apparently.

And don't get me started on my phone. We cancelled the home phone a few months ago and just use cell phones. Except my old phone only accepted every other call. And it would go silent - completely silent to where it needed to be rebooted to make sound - at least once a day. It was a crappy phone and only a few months old. Thankfully my hubby got me a new phone this week! Yay!

But it's not just a phone. It had an 8 megapixel camera! Seriously? In a phone? So it's a camera phone. And it has apps. Coloring apps, facebook, twitter, apps to track what I eat, what I spend, even apps to track my monthly cycle. Seriously. It's all convenience which means that as I stuff my face I can track how many calories I am consuming, get depressed, and eat some more.

If I spent one hour less on the computer each day, I could get so much more done. However, blogging is something I'm trying to do to build a following so that when I am one day a published author, you all will go out and purchase 10,000 copies of my book so it will be a best seller.

Okay. I feel better now, I just walked away, swept the floor, and came back.

How much are your groceries?

Today I read an article about reducing grocery bills. And I'm all about bring thrifty, so I perked up reading the tips.

I highly recommend it! We follow several of her tips already (taking food out of the big boxy packages, organizing the cabinet, etc) and I do find that it helps. We aren't wasting food.

According to one book (referenced in the article), Americans waste 40% of their food. That means that for every $1,000 you spend, you're essentially throwing $400 in the trash. Ouch!

The USDA has estimated what groceries should cost per person for 4 plans - thrifty, low-cost, moderate and liberal. I'm thrifty, so that's what I went by.

$643.80 a month! For thrifty? The liberal plan was $1054! For a month!

I'm still baffled at the $643.
My grocery budget for a month is literally half that. $80 a week = $320 a month. That's my budget. I try really hard to spend between $40-60 a week on groceries (Most weeks I can make the $60. Occasionally I use the whole budget of $80, sometimes I can get away with $40.)

Now, factor in our eating out. We eat out too much. Let's say we eat out once a week for about $30. That's $120 a month. Let's round up to $150 to be liberal.

So $320 plus $150 is $470 for food per month. That's still $173 LESS than what the USDA says.

I'm guess I'm better at being thrifty than I thought!

Well, that's a relief

I hate fruit. I mean, really. I don't eat it. I might have an apple slice here or there or a stray grape - mainly just to look good in front of my fruit-loving friends. So they don't think I eat nothing but chocolate and peanut butter (not together, though, that's just gross). I think the only fruit I eat willingly is watermelon, but it's not a fruit, it's water on a giant green container.

But I don't like it. No strawberries, blueberries, citrus...the sight and smell of peaches makes me gag. Literally. Gross me out. *bleh bleh*

But my kids love it. They would eat fruit all day every day. Now, there are a few they don't like. SB can't stand blueberries, and by association, Mac doesn't like them anymore. But for the most part. They love fruit.

I even occasionally buy my children peaches. Occasionally. Like two or three times a year. Just so they remember they still like them. I hold my breath as I quickly peel and slice the delicate flesh and pass it to them and then quickly wash my hands so I don't wind up with icky peach juice lingering on me.

But usually it's strawberries, cantaloupe, bananas, apples, etc. The "usuals" I guess. I'm just so glad they like fruit. And that I'm not afraid to serve it to them despite my aversion.

Stopwatch

The other morning my living room looked like a Toys R Us threw up. Rather, Toys R Us, WalMart and Candyland combined.

I am not a cleaner-upper type. I don't mind messes and I have a general outlook of, "well, I would clean it, but then the kids would just mess it up again, so why bother?"
SO as a result, my children are not great cleaners - at least at home. They seem to do okay elsewhere.

But I had read a tip earlier of taking 10 minutes to get a general tidy up. I thought, "I can do that." Actually, no, I thought, "The kids could do that."

So I found an online stopwatch and showed them 10 minutes on the count-down timer and told them that whatever toys left on the floor when the timer went off would be thrown in the trash. I had every intention of following through and cringed at the thought of tossing a few of the beloved babies and cars in the dumpster.
But I started the timer. At first they were picking up one thing here, one thing there... but when I said the had seven minutes left and Lightning McQueen and Baby Lulubelle were going in the trash if they didn't hurry they sped up.

I did pause the timer for an urgent potty run, but the resumed the clock and they had every toy off the living room floor with a minute to spare.

I can't believe it worked!

Now, almost everything was dumped into the toy bin in the play room, but whatever, it's the play room and my living room looks a little more like a living room than a day care center. So I'm happy.

So give it a try - 10 minutes, threaten the bejeebers out of the kids and see the magic unfold!

I am a Gardening Genius

And by Genius I mean, "I have no idea what I'm doing but God sure does because our garden is off the chain!" (I totally don't know what "off the chain" means aside from I hear the Cool Kids say it at the mall, so I assume it's something grandiose and wonderful.)

Totally off the chain. Totally.

So back in the spring, when it wasn't 10 bajillion degrees outside, the kids and I decided to plant a garden. Like a real one. Like, I made Marshall borrow my dad's dirt tiller thing and make me a garden. With rows and everything. (How very domestic of me!)
So the kids and I got seeds and these little planter things so your seeds could sprout. The kids loved it. We planted and day by day we agonized over watched the seeds sprout. It was very cool.

Then came the wonderous day when we planted our little spoutlings in our totally awesome for real dirt garden. If you know me you know what an accomplishment this is. I touched dirt ON PURPOSE. I deserve a medal.

Then the garden took off. I was shocked. I mean - it's producing real food. Food we can actually EAT. It's amazing. Why don't more people do this? Seriously - it's the best thing ever. I spent $0.20 on a packet of cucumber seeds and we're now swimming in them! I'm giving them away, we're snacking on them all day long. I now want to make homemade pickles! I just saved us like $200 (okay, maybe it's more like $10, but whatev...).
And we're total squash addicts here. Fried zucchini? Yes, please! Sauteed yellow squash? Mmmmm, Yummy! We have more squash than we can handle. I won't need to buy veggies for the rest of the summer. I even shredded a yellow squash this week and secretly added it to spaghetti sauce. Shhh, don't tell the kids.
We're also growing beans - which I have a handful of, and tomatoes which are currently refusing to ripen and are giving me so much grief!

And somewhere in the mix are supposed to be peas and okra, but I'm not sure if they're going to actually grow edible stuff or not. And we have some carrots with quite a coiffer of green up top, but when I looked underneath, it was very sad. And that poor carrot died. So sorry, little carrot.

So I am a genius. I planted about $2 worth of seeds thinking the kid would just enjoy watching them sprout and I've now saved us a ton of money and I don't have to go to the store for fresh veggies!
This summer: a garden. Next summer: the world!

Beans and some of our delish cukes.

Next year: no pumpkins along the driveway.

I'm Gonna Wash That Grime Right Outta...

That Shirt!

I made my own laundry detergent! Yes, me! Be amazed, people, be amazed.
I thought I would share the process and outcome with you!

• These are my ingredients. That's it. And I think these cost me about $8. I only got one bar of soap for the time being. If I like it I'll get more.

•  The first thing you do it grate the soap. Yes, grate it. I went to the Dollar Tree and got a cheese grater just for this job and I'm glad I did. It was messy. And looked just like cheese. The kids thought I was cooking something wonderful. In hind sight, I needed a finer grater though - I was making a powder and these pieces were too big. Anyway, grate up the entire thing into a container.

• Next you add in your Washing Soap and Borax. One cup of each.

• Be careful when you open your Borax in these new fangle boxes...it spilled all over me. I'm glad this was a washing agent because it got all over my pants.

• Next you mix it all up in your container. I, again, got this from the Dollar Tree just for this use. You can see where it would have been better to grate the soap finer. My soap chunks are too...chunky. It should have been more powdery. Oh well. Lesson learned. The scoop is an old OxiClean one.

• So once it's all mixed together, use 1 tablespoon of the mixture in the wash. Here I'm washing Mac's sheets.

And Voila! Done!
I do have to say that we've been very big on perfume free in the last 4 years. I used All Free & Clear most recently and Marshall and I both thought it smelled like chemicals, even though it was "perfume free." And the Fels Naptha soap does have a clean "scent" to it. It's not bad, but it does have a scent.
It does a good job - I've only washed the sheets so far. We'll see how it does with clothes with some ground-in, dried stains.

But it seems the #1 question I've gotten is, "WHY?" Why not just buy the giant container or Tide or go back to using the all-natural stuff we used before (Allen's Natually, of course, which we loved).
When we started cloth diapering, I used Allen's to wash the diapers. And I realized that I loved the dye- and perfume-free detergent and if it could get gross poop off a diaper, it surely could take care of the ketchup stain on my favorite shirt.

I loved Allen's. It lasted forever. But I thought I could try to make my own. A little cheaper and didn't have to wait for it to be shipped to me. - which was good because when I got home from the store with my ingredients I discovered Mac had peed all over his bed (nap with no pull-up). So the concoction was put to use right away!

I'm not "crunchy," or even super "green." I just wanted to see if I could do it myself. I wanted to save money and KNOW what I was using to wash my clothes. I don't know if I'll do it again, but I figured it was worth a try, right? That's why I did it.

Planting the Garden

We planted the garden this week. It was very therapeutic for me, even though the idea of touching dirt grosses me out. But SB has been so insistent on a garden this year we really put forth the effort to make one.
Marshall tilled up a huge patch of grass (well, huge in our world...quite small in other people's worlds) and we set to planting it.

We planted peas, squash, cucumbers, green beans, okra, carrots, onions and a ton of flowers. For some reason many of my seeds did not pop up, so I'm putting them back in the little hothouse box to see if they happen to sprout. I plan to get some tomato plants and maybe one or two other things that are already sprouted for good measure.

Our pea sprouts... I need a little lattice something for them to cling to...

Do you do your own garden? What do you plant?

I've spent 83 hours changing diapers...

I thought it would be interesting to see what percent of our lives we spend doing certain things. If you recall a few months ago I had counted that I walked into my kitchen 34 times in one day...and that didn't count the fact that if we had left the house we would have entered through there as well.

So here are a few percentages I thought you would enjoy today!

• The average person spends 33% of their life sleeping - that's 26.4 years if you live to be 80!
• On average, we spend almost 8 years sitting on the toilet - that's 10% of your life!
• Children spend about 33% of their time in school, but over 18 years it works out to being 12% of their life (cherish this time!). That's 2,340 days from Kindergarten to 12th grade.
• In the first two years of life, a child will go through anywhere from 2500-2900 diapers PER YEAR. 
• If it takes a mom 2 minutes to change each diaper, that's roughly 83 hours a year changing diapers (that's 3.5 full days).
• If the average wife/mother spends 45 minutes making dinner 5 nights a week, that's 3.75 hours/week. That becomes 195 hours or 8.125 days per year. Over the course of 45 years, that works out to spending one whole entire year devoted to nothing but cooking dinner (not counting breakfast or lunch).
• If you hand wash your dishes (as I do) and it takes you 20 minutes a day to do that, in a year you will spend 121 hours or 5 whole days washing dishes. That works out to being just over 1% of your entire year.
• Count double that for laundry - so laundry and dishes together make up 15 days out of your entire year.
• Cleaning is an ongoing thing. 30 minutes a day in tidying doesn't seem like much...but over a year that's 182.5 hours a year (7.6 days).

And why is it people say we "don't work." I work plenty!

Coupons

I don't understand how to use coupons.

I mean, I get how they work - you print/cut out the little slip of paper and get cents off a product.

But I don't get how you walk away with $80 of groceries for only $5. I have an online friend who paid $1.60 for $147 worth of groceries. And that was only because her total had come up negative and they made her buy something to give her a positive bill!

I take coupons to the store - but my $0.35 off a brand name product - lets say zip-top bags - is still more expensive than the store brand. So I buy the store brand. Now, some things are better off with the name brand - trash bags, oreos, etc... But for a lot of items the store brand is just as good or better and cheaper than the name brand even with a coupon.

So how on earth are people coming up with negative balances from using coupons when I, at most, save $5. Don't get me wrong - I'm happy with my $5 when I can save it - but I want to be saving $50! Or at least $15!

If you are a champion couponer, please explain it to me. And don't just show me websites - I've been to them all and I still don't get it. Anyone want to offer to walk me through the store on my next trip to figure all this out?

I Hate To-Do Lists

I hate To-Do lists.

They're never done. Never. No matter what, the to-do list is ever growing and seldom changing.

Let's take a look at a typical to-do list in my house:

1. Laundry
2. Dishes
3. Straightening up
4. Pick up prescriptions
5. Feed kids/dogs
6. Make dinner
7. Get anniversary card

Notice anything? Five of those seven things are DAILY TO-DOs! They are never crossed off the list! I can do a load of laundry, but guess what?? There's another load still waiting! ARUGH! It's a never ending cycle of to-dos that will never get the glitz and glamour of coming off the list.

So here's what I do. I make a "Ta-Da" List instead. Make a list of things you accomplished today, both big and small. Because even if it's not on your to-do, you did it and that's what counts.

Here's today's Ta-Da List:

1. Fed kids/dogs
2. Load of laundry
3. Put dishes away
4. Picked up prescription 
5. Went to fundraiser lunch for a local group who's home burned down
6. Took said lunch to Marshall's office so we could all eat together
7. Picked up boxes for best friend who's moving
8. Made tea & kool-aid
9. Blogged!

Look! I did two more things than what's on my to-do list! Isn't that amazing??

So next time you have a daunting, never ending to-do list... maybe rearrange it into a Ta-Da list instead!

Cleaning Up

I'll be the first to admit, I'm not a stickler for making my kids clean up. I'm not a cleaner, so how can I expect them to be cleaners, too?

In my most humble and scattered opinion, toys are just going to wind up all over the floor again, and beds will be slept in again... so what does it hurt to leave them out? Saves time and effort.

I do appreciate tidy though. Living room toys in a box/buggy/stroller pushed off to the side of the room counts as clean enough to me. I vacuum, I keep things fairly neat when necessary. I "Clean" (complete with capital C) when social workers visit or I'm entertaining. But there are still toys scattered around.

I mean, seriously, I have 2 kids. I have two very young kids. The minute I've picked up they're right behind me whirlwinding again, making a mess of things.

I realize I should be teaching them to clean up after themselves - and they do to an extent. Spilled popcorn gets cleaned up, dirty clothes go in the hamper, couch cushions need to make it back onto the couch after playing "swamp." So we're not spotless, super-clean people. At least we don't belong on Hoarders.

But, as I said, I'm not a neat freak, I'm not a clean-up queen. My kids are not pick-up fanatics. And that's okay with me.

Putting on Your Game Face

Have you ever paid attention to moms when they're shopping? I was at Wal-Mart today doing my grocery shopping and getting a few other things and I started to notice the looks on some of co-shoppers faces.

Most of the women shopping around me wore faces that were downright depressing. They looked sad, downtrodden - whether they had children in their midst or not. I understand that deciding between bananas and pears isn't that exciting, but man, it was like death.

Other moms sported the angry look. Truly POed. What were they angry at? Rising prices? Lack of selection? Or maybe the fact that their 4-year-old was screaming because the baby had a fist full of their hair.

Still others had a completely blank expression. Not happy, not sad or angry. Not even thoughtful as they debated over which brand of yogurt to get. I followed one mom wondering, "What is she thinking?"

The smallest portion looked happy. They were either without kids (like myself) or their child was being a complete angel for once and they were gloating (it's okay, it's well deserved!). Or maybe they had just snagged a great deal on Double Stuf Oreos.

People watching is so much fun - but please, Moms of the World, smile once and a while. It will keep you from having frown lines and smiling is proven to help release endorphins which help you feel better anyway!

Happy Shopping!

The Dish Fairy Did Not Come

I don't have a dish washer. Well, I do - they're called my hands. But I don't have an automatic dish washer that's as simple as load, push buttons, then unload. How heavenly that would be!

No, the dishes must be hand washed. And yet again, the Dish Fairy has not come. That means I, the domestic goddess that I am, must go into the kitchen and muck the oatmeal out of the breakfast bowls myself. Did I mention that this oatmeal is from last Friday? Yeah.

Maybe if I wait long enough the children will learn to wash dishes. But that's probably a bad idea seeing as they're still preschoolers and should not handle knives. Not to mention the fact that I'm sure they would miss key particles of food stuck to my favorite non-stick frying pan.

Enough procrastinating... I guess today, I'm the Dish Fairy.