Hap-pee Halloween

So far I have found no perks to traveling alone.  Alone meaning without Brian.  We still have a few more days until we can officially move into our new house.  Unfortunately, this move can not happen soon enough.  Brian spent last week commuting two hours.  Now this may not seem like a big deal to some, but when he is gone from 6:30am-8:00pm it's a big deal to us.  Side note: the kids' bedtime is 7:30, so this puts a kink in our schedule.  Anyway, so instead of us sitting around in a boxed up house the whole time, I decided to take the kids to my mother's house in Georgia for a couple of days.  This saved us from getting cabin fever and saved Brian a lot of driving.

There have been four incidents now where we have gotten in the car, driven about 20 minutes and Ella announces that she has to go potty.  Thankfully, I have not been alone and we are able to stop at a gas station and one of us takes her in.  Well, about 45 minutes into our drive home from Georgia I hear those ill-timed words, "Mommy, I need to go potty."  I groaned.

With still over an hour more to drive, I knew that I could not hold her off until we got home.  I pulled into the nearest gas station.  I considered my options:

Option 1)  Leave Aiden and Riley in the van and lock the doors.  It'll take less than 5 minutes.  They'll be fine.  Well I ruled that out pretty quickly.  This is the kind of thing mothers get arrested for.

Option 2)  Unload all of the kids, put their shoes on and attempt to take Ella potty while holding Riley and keeping Aiden from crawling on the floor under the stalls.  Public restrooms are so disgusting.  I have a germ-a-phobia too, this cannot end well.  Next...

Option 3)  Scope out junk in the van and create a porta-potty.  I think I'll go with this one. 

An empty water bottle.  Nah, hole is too small.  Wipe box.  I could take all of the wipes out and she can pee in that.  Hey, it even has it's own lid!  Hmm, I'll consider that as Plan B.  A Halloween bucket.  BINGO!  Thank you Jack-in-the-Box for putting your Kid's Meals in a Halloween bucket!  I preceded to put my plan into action.  She squatted into the bucket (which she thought was funny and yet disturbing at the same time).  Luckily I had a gallon of water on hand as well.  I rinsed the bucket out a few times and dumped it into the grass.  Mission accomplished.  I didn't have to unload the kids and I didn't run the risk of getting arrested.  I pat myself on the back for thinking so quickly.  Like I said before, there are no perks to traveling alone.

Needless to say, that bucket's not going anywhere.  She may be squatting in it again soon.  Hap-pee Halloween! 

Cheetos

I'm feeling a little high strung today and my kids are driving me crazy!  I know it's me, not them, but this is what I observed today at lunch: 

Neither Ella or Aiden wanted to eat their sandwich.  Brian had allowed them to eat Cheetos earlier and after that it was all they could think about.  Cheetos are gross.  I'm not a fan of the orange crusty fingers either.  He thought he was being nice by giving them something special.  I don't think we've ever bought Cheetos before, but he caved when Aiden asked while they were at the store earlier today.  In fact, they only eat them at their Gramama's house.  I don't usually allow them to have that kind of stuff here.  Now that I think about it, I think it was the Cheetos that got me all riled up.  This is beginning to take on a relationship much like the monkey shirt. 

Anyway, so after getting hyped up on puffed cheese and not eating much else, Ella spilled her milk.  It never fails.  She then decided to lap it up off of the table meowing in between licks.  I cringed.  Aiden in the mean time was weaving in and out of the legs of the table and crawling around on the floor.  Dancing to music that only he hears, he whacked his head under the table.  His incredibly loud crying pierces my ear drums every time.  I closed my eyes.  When I opened them I looked at Riley.  She was chewing on a lid to her Puffs and smacking the table at the same time.  I glared at Brian and he grinned back at me.  "Is it just me, or are they acting crazy?"  I asked him.  "Actually, I thought they were being really good"  Seriously??  I'm gonna need a nap.

They look sweet and innocent don't they?  Don't be fooled.  

I take back what I said before, it's not me, it's them.  They are the crazy ones.

The Move

Well you may have noticed a gap in my posts.  It's tragic really.  My computer died and Brian takes his to work.  I usually blog during the kids' nap time, but when Brian's home I don't want to spend our few hours alone at night ignoring him by blogging.  And there's that other thing too.  We're moving!  It's kind of a time consumer.  Riley woke up at 3:15 and while feeding her I heard Ella go into our bedroom.  Well there's no way I'm going back in there.  When I go back to bed (if I go back to bed) Ella's tree house has my name on it.  I know she's sleeping on Brian's side, but I can't sleep knowing she's there.  It's 4 am now and I find myself wide awake and practically starving.  While eating my bowl of cereal I looked around at the mayhem that now surrounds me.  Boxes, yard sale junk, toys, unfolded laundry.  Is it possible that I could just close my eyes and when I open them that this will all just go away?  No such luck.  But it got me to thinking.

It's funny how moving makes you throw away things you once thought you could not live without.  For instance:  I threw away practically everything from our wedding.  It was in a box under the house and everything inside smelled like stale moldy cardboard.  Going through our wedding stuff went about like this, "(pictures)Oh, wow, look how skinny we were!" *toss in trash box* "Hey, this is the pattern to my dress!" *toss in trash box, take it back out, and reluctantly toss back* A folder with all of our flowers, cake and colors that we had ripped out of magazines *set aside to keep, only to toss it 5 minutes later*  Although I may regret this decision later, it's gone now.  I've moved on.  This time it's a box with keepsakes that my parents so prudently kept for me.  Old baby clothes, pictures that I colored and school reports.  I have to admit, all of my children have their own keepsake boxes too.  Yes, I chunked the baby clothes and some pictures.  But I'm not ready to throw away my entire childhood.  I actually managed to salvage some old toys for the kids to play with.  Ella has hit the Barbie jackpot.  I don't even think they make furniture like that anymore.  I mean I have a kitchen sink with a dishwasher that squirts water!  The Polly Pockets (the real ones that are about 1/2 in tall) may have to wait.  That kind of poses a choking hazard for Riley. 

The kids are getting more and more excited about the move.  At first Ella wasn't sure she wanted to move.  She was under the impression that her toys were not coming with her.  After clearing things up she's been OK. They have enjoyed being involved in the packing.  I'm not sure they are getting the concept of 'keep' or 'toss' when it comes to their toys though.  They are tossing things that I'm pretty sure they don't want to get rid of.  I'm planning on building them a huge fort as all the boxes stack up.  Maybe this will distract from the fact that most of their toys are packed and I've left them with only a few things to play with.  They've proven to not need the toys though.  They are thoroughly enjoying the empty boxes that I had so valiantly hunt for.  Note to anyone looking for boxes:  Shoe Carnival.  There's a dumpster in the back.  All you have to do is get a Wal-Mart buggy, turn it on it's side and hoist yourself in.  If someone happens to be taking their smoke break and happens to see you, just pretend you don't see them.  You're not doing anything wrong!  The boxes are yours for the taking, they were dumping them anyway and hey, it's recycling!  P.S.  They get their shipments on Monday, so Tuesday is your day to dive.  This is all just hypothetically speaking of course.  I definitely did not do this on Tuesday.  OK, maybe I did.