It’s Connie’s Fault

Connie is my friend.  We’ve been friends since we were single and had no kids.  Now we have eight kids between us. (This may seem like a repeat of the last blog, but the ending is even better!)  We have many similar addictions, including but not limited to: collecting Fiestaware dishes, garage saling, loving a blue and yellow kitchen, chotshky old quilts, re-upholstering furniture, gardening, homeschooling, scrapbooking, playing games, framing pictures of our kids and she is the one who introduced me to Goodwill.  (Even before Darla!)

That’s all well and good, but Connie also introduced Larisa, my then 13-year-old non-thrift-store-shopper, to Goodwill and boy, did we have a laugh-til-you-cry time of it! At the mention of a Goodwill store, Larisa’s lips turned up a bit, like when you’re smelling a distasteful odor, but you can’t quite figure out where it’s coming from.  She had never shopped at a USED clothing store.  She was grossed out at the thought of wearing pre-owned clothing.  You would have thought we told her that we were going to pick through a garbage dump in Mexico!  So we made the most of it. (I’ll admit that I originally fostered the same feelings and lip-curling, but I had been won over by this point in time.)

We were heading to the mecca of recycled merchandise with Connie and her three daughters who were quite accustomed to shopping at Goodwill.  Larisa’s lips were stuck in the “bad smell” position.  Larisa started asking questions like, “Do you try on the clothes in the store?” (…. and the F U N began…..)  I don’t quite remember which of us gave the terrifying answers to Larisa, but we all joined in the mortifying fun without cracking a smile! 

Us: “Yes, but there are no fitting rooms.”

Larisa: “Then where do you try them on?”

Us: “You try them on over a bathing suit.”

Larisa, horrified: “WHERE?”

Us: “Right in the aisles.”

Long pause for embarrassing mental images on Larisa’s part.

Us, reassuringly, “Don’t worry, we stand close and make a circle around you so no one sees.”

Another one of us:  “Didn’t you wear your bathing suit underneath your clothes?”

Larisa: “NO!!!”

Us: “Don’t worry, we’ll get you one there, so you can try on the clothes.”

Larisa: “…. um….  ewww…..”

And we let her believe it all until we were in the store and she saw the dressing rooms.  It was priceless.  To this day, when we are heading to Goodwill, with Connie and her girls, or Darla and her girls, we ask Larisa if she has on her bathing suit so she can try on the clothes.  Bwahahahahahahaha!

Larisa has come a long way… last weekend, she wasn’t impressed when I ventured off to TWO Goodwill stores without her… on 50% off day!!!  So she jumped in the car and went by herself!  Thatta girl!

It’s Darla’s Fault

Darla is my friend.  We have been friends since we had a combined total of four kids.  Now we have seven kids.  We have multiple similar addictions including, but not limited to: scrapbooking, collecting scrapbooking supplies, visiting voting booths with sick kids, decorating our kids’ rooms, making crafty decor items, killing centipedes, refinishing old furniture, playing games and finding BARGAINS! But most recently, she has led me to my current addiction: shopping at Goodwill on 50% off day.

It all started last summer in the dark of a Friday night when my phone rang.  It was Darla.  In her most sinister voice she asked if I would accompany her the following morning as an accomplice to score some goods.  I agreed.  She had been to Goodwill on Friday night and scoped out some dandy items for her girls’ rooms.  “Pre-shopping the sale” is what this is called. 

This was not a beauty pageant, in fact, I think she asked if I would at least brush my teeth before she picked me up in the get-away car at 0-dark-thirty.  Saturday morning, the alarm rang, I grabbed some sweats, brushed my teeth, found a hat and was out the door.  She looked a little worse than I did, as she had not found a hat.  Her red hair was sticking up a little more than usual.  Possibly it was a scare tactic.

As early as our arrival at the store was, 30 minutes prior to the doors opening, we were not the first people in the race for the 50% off pre-owned merchandise.  There were five people ahead of us.  Darla was eyeing up these early morning shoppers and she figured only one lady with a toddler might cause some grief. She was fairly determined that she could outrun (or trample) her on the way to the furniture section.  She carefully emptied her coffee cup in the bushes by the front door and secured her travel mug in her purse for the pending pursuit.

As we stood in line, Darla outlined the open door procedure for me in a hushed voice.  She had scoped out a shelf, a table and a crib mattress that she was determined to SCORE!  However, the furniture always goes fast, so if she took time to get a cart, one of her items might be grabbed by an offending shopper.  So, Darla instructed me to take her purse, as well as my own, and head straight for the carts.  I was to immediately drive to the furniture section at the far southeast corner of the store.  She would single-handedly seize all three items.

NINE O’CLOCK on the button the doors opened and the stampede began.  Darla was gone in a red-headed flurry.  With both purses encircling my arm, I acquired the first cart I found and bee-lined to the southeast corner.  Darla is good, baby.  Within 27 seconds, she captured the mattress, threw it on her desired table, clutched the shelf in both arms and sat on the mattress on top of the table.  Still makes me giggle thinking about it!  SWEET SUCCESS!  That toddler’s mother still doesn’t know what happened!

Even when Darla and I are off on scrapbooking retreats in Prescott, Arizona, we make sure we hit the Goodwill store on 50% day.  The deals are simply too good to pass up…. and after all, it’s now an addiction.  (I visited two stores this past Saturday…. 50% off day, baby!)

Zooo-rific Week!

Other than two more cases of strep throat in our house (bringing the total up to FOUR!), we had a great week with our Canadian family here for Spring Break!  We played games, found geocaches, went to the park, did lots of dancing with the wii, went to the library (whoo hooo!)  the zoo and celebrated Jennie, my sister-in-law’s birthday.  Fun fun fun.  And I forgot to mention that we ate Martha Stewart’s cheese cake Oreo cupcakes.  We should have taken a picture of the joy on our faces, but no.  We were too consumed with pure joy.

We did take some zoo pictures, well, actually I am not sure who took these pictures.  I put the camera in the car and was surprised at the end of the day when I discovered 132 new photos!  Lovely!  Thank you family of mine.  (I was a little scatter-brained by Thursday.)  Here.  Enjoy!

Please stay tuned for fun crafts that I have up my sleeve!!!!  (Thanks to Jennie!!)

Mary Mary Quite Contrary…..

My garden is 67% planted!  Yeah!  I ended up with six half barrels of my magic soil mix…. that includes some empty 2L bottles that I placed in the bottom of the barrels to take up space.  It’s sort of like the bricks in the toilet tank… remember that, anyone? 

I bought one plant, a cherry tomato, and Nora helped me plant it yesterday after the rains came down and the floods came up.  But not a seed found its cozy bed until today… when sunny skies returned to Arizona, and winter is now over.  My rainy day yesterday was spent indoors pouring over gardening books to figure out which plants need full sun, which plant grows with which companion plant, how many seeds to sow in each barrel for each type of plant, etc. etc. etc.  Of course, I drew a plan.  You gotta have a plan!  If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.  If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time! (Sorry for all the clichés….. I’m a tad on the tired side.)

And the planting began…. green onions, bell peppers, carrots, spinach, cilantro…..

Yes, those green onion seeds are teeny and hard to plant.  But not NEARLY as hard as the carrot seeds!  I could barely see them, let alone try to pick up two at a time for each of the 96 little holes destined to cultivate Peter Rabbit’s favorite veggie!  Those carrots will NOT be coming up in perfect rows like Mr. McGregor’s garden.  I may have even missed an entire row…… anywho…. the proof will be in the pudding in about two weeks, when they come up and I see what really happened.

The reason I’m only at 67% is because I forgot to soak the peas and zucchini seeds before planting.  They will go in tomorrow with the beans.  More pictures to follow as the joyfulness in my heart grows with each little sprig of green that pushes up through the earth.

SpRiNg BrEaK!

Yes, we are a week late, but for a good reason.  Homeschoolers can take Spring Break whenever they want to!  So we did school all last week while our friends played.  This week, Rick’s brother, wife and daughter are in town to PLAY!  It started yesterday and shall continue for another six days!  WhoOoooo HOoooOOoo!

Today’s business was: street hockey game, dressmaking and container gardening.  Unsurprisingly, I chose container gardening.  (Only because I had half of the soil mixed on the tarp when the trip to the fabric store was announced.)  After much calculating and price shopping, the final mix for the ultimate container vegetable garden turned out to be: 1 cf (cubic foot) each of perlite, peat moss, compost and mulch.  There are so many different mix recipes out there, I had to do my research.  I do like the book The Square Foot Garden, but his mix is very expensive.  So I found all the ingredients and mixed it myself, well, with the help of my two sons and my 7-year-old daughter who LOVES to help!  And I added mulch.  Hey, it’s cheap and adds roughage to the mix.

Funniest thing happened as me and my sister-in-law were leaving the store with a flat-bed cart piled with huge soil bags….. the cart hit the first of the pavement bumps leading to our get-away car and half of the bags fell off onto the ground.  As we were laughing and setting our purses down to pick them up, a lady in a wheel chair pulled up and asked if she could help.  “Sure!”  (I was thinking, what exactly is she planning on doing to help???)  She held the cart still while we piled the bags a bit more securely.  That was nice!

One thing I did know was NOT to use the soil in the ground in AZ!  It is the same clay that the Hohokam Indians used to make clay pots.  After the sun shines on the clay soil at 120 degrees, it is as hard as a clay pot fresh out of the kiln!

As mentioned before, I was given large plastic barrels that were cut in half long-ways for my containers.  Yes, the hardware store sells cute little wooden fences for a 4′x4′ garden bed, but like I said, these were FREE!  And required next-to-nothing in set up.  I filled six of them today with my miracle mix and will plant tomorrow.  The heat and sunshine are always a concern here for wilting plants in the summer, so I lined the barrels along the west wall of our backyard, so they only get sun until 2:00.  Then they can recover until the next morning sunshine kisses their little leaves again.

(Pictures to follow when plants appear.)

Classic Elderly Gentlemen

My daughter and I were out about town and, oh, did we have some good laughs brought on by some GREAT old men. 

We were entering Walgreens when we noticed a line at the register of four or five people… including a heavily tattooed young woman and an elderly gentleman.  The man either needed hearing aids or simply had a booming voice… which could be heard throughout the store as he commented to the young woman, “Darlin’, you’ll grow to regret them tattoos!”  Larisa and I both burst out laughing as we made our way out of sight.  I’m sure his comment and volume made that young woman’s day!  Classic!

An hour later, we were eating In-N-Out burgers in the parking lot and a silver old-school mini van pulls in towing a light green fishing boat.  The small type of vessel that holds four people on a good day, and three elderly fishermen on a sunny day like today.  Sitting in the middle of the boat was a while plastic lawn chair…. for back support, I’m guessing??  The men slowly climbed out of the van…. VERY slowly.  These men were in their 80s at least.  The tallest of the bunch exited the van and we had the pleasure of viewing his outdoor adventure attire:  camouflage pants and a white t-shirt that said “Shut Up and Fish!” on the back.  Another burst of laughter without forewarning.  Classic!

YUMMY Chicken Vegetable Soup!

I’m slowly figuring out how the Lord got us lined up with this little Colombian princess that is now ours forevermore. I’ve wondered about the match, because we were on the 5-6 year-old list and we were assigned a 7-year-old. How did that happen???

After a battle of the wills today over a bowl of chicken vegetable soup, I gained some insight.  This is what I imagine went down: when our little darlin’ came available, they looked intently into the eyes of all the mamas on the 7-year-old list and none of them had strong-will written in their eyes.  No drill sergeants available.  So they moved down to the 6-year-old list of waiting families and looked intently into all the eyes of the mamas until they saw deeply into mine.  They glimpsed an iron will.  They saw unbending nerves of steel.  They saw a mama who almost had three teenagers and everyone was still smiling.  Steel = Love sometimes.  They saw a mama for our girl, and we got the call.

There is an upside to nerves of steel, it’s called mercy and grace.  That’s where my husband comes in.  I remember him telling me one time as we discussed some of our other strong-willed children, “How will they learn of God’s mercy and grace if you don’t show any?”  Alright, already. (It was a timely reminder.)

As the battle of the soup went down, my 17-year-old daughter kindly offered advice from her own experience from behind the eyes of one of my strong-willed kids.  My little non-soup eater wouldn’t even bring the spoon to her mouth.  Total strong-will in action.  Larisa explained, “It’s because if she brings the spoon to her mouth, you win.”  I replied, “I know, but I always win.”  Larisa added, “She doesn’t know yet that you always win.”   Ah!  Brilliance, from another strong-willed child of mine.  So I asked her, being that she was so full of wisdom, what she would do in this circumstance if this was her little non-soup eater.  She jokingly half-yelled, “I’m only 17!  I’m too young for this kind of stress!”  HAHAHA!  I’m 44 and I’m too old for this kind of stress!

While the non-soup eater sat at the table several times in front of the yummy soup, we heard her mumble several lines in Spanish that had us leaving the kitchen quickly so we wouldn’t be caught laughing hysterically!  Here’s a few we could understand: “I like the United States, but I don’t like this soup!”  HAHAHA! ”I am not going to eat this soup because I want waffles. Everyone else is eating waffles!” and  ”In Sevilla, no one made me eat food.”  Aha!  The true answer.  We’re breaking some bad habits.

So after being heated up for the fifth time, hunger pains got the better of the princess and she ate the soup.  In my defence, the entire family ate the same chicken vegetable soup and it was pretty darn tasty, if I do say so myself.  After she raised the soup spoon to her mouth several times, she was rewarded with homemade waffles and she’s been smiling ever since.  See?  Mama wins.  Of course this completely drained mama and she needed a nap…. and Rocky Road ice cream.  THIS is why the baby weight never leaves!

God Cares About the Small Things!

It’s testimony time.  Please allow me a few moments on my soapbox to share the little surprises and victories in my life.

I am a farm-girl trapped in a city-girl body and life.  I’m not sure where my love for all things country came from (minus the music), but I have strong dreams and desires for raising animals, growing veggies, fruit and nuts, spinning wool and diggin’ in the dirt.  We’ve had gardens in the past.  We’ve raised chickens and rabbits in the past.  Currently I have a few potted flowering planters and a plum tree that has a promising collection of blooms.  However, I’m secretly sucked into the backyard-garden section at every and all bookstores.  The book The Encyclopedia of Country Living makes me drool and salivate simultaneously.  Right now I have a book from the library titled The Backyard Homestead that clearly lays out how to raise all the food you need in as little as a quarter acre.  This is my idea of a piece of heaven on earth!

A few nights ago, in the dark of the night, I asked my husband how long he thinks we will live in this house.  The land here is not large enough for my illustrious plans.  There is barely room for a garden.  Container gardening is all that we could do here for the time being.  He gave me his answer, which did not meet my deepest desires.  Long enough to raise chickens, but not long enough to plant nut or fruit trees or berry vines.  {sigh} 

Last night after a lovely dinner at a Mexican cantina, Rick drove us through the back alleys behind some homes that sit on an acre each…. I rolled down the window and thirstily sucked in the country-smelling air.  Horses, grape vines, goats, chickens, sheep, grapefruit trees…. ahhhhhhh.  The slow trip in the darkness did my heart good. 

OK, so today we stopped by a friend’s home, that is a mile from our house, to buy farm-fresh eggs.  They have horses, chickens, a lame goat, two big, fat pot belly pigs and two little two-day-old pot belly piggies. Darling!  I even held one! They just finished planting their garden in fiberglass barrels.  It was truly lovely.  It gave me ideas just to see their set up.  When I got home there was a message on my cell phone from that same friend asking if I could use eight of the barrels for planting a garden.  Oh, could I ever!  It was an answer to an unspoken prayer!

God does care about the desires of our hearts, no matter how small.

My Fishy Destiny

Remember back a year or two ago (and the previous four years before that) when we kept having guppy population explosions in our family fish tank?  If not go here: http://mysistersjar.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/overpopulation-a-worldwide-issue/

And here’s another: http://mysistersjar.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/feeding-the-fish/

Well, for the past 2 months we’ve only had the bottom feeder and the white fish who eats baby guppies.  I’ve been meaning to stop by Petsmart and pick up a handful of guppies or platies to brighten the tank.  However, it’s low on my priority list…. so it hasn’t happened yet.  Nora, our 7-year-old, loves watching the fish swim, but I must admit the dead-as-a-doornail bottom feeder is less than thrilling.  And the white fish is sort of in a coma after eating all his tank mates.

Today we went to pick up Austin, our 14-year-old, from a friend’s house who has a 50 gallon+ tank.  I took Nora inside to show her the underwater wonder of it all.  Well, lo and behold, they were experiencing a platy population explosion.  Yes, we walked out of there with four new, sunny-orange fish for our boring tank.  Nora was thrilled!  So was I!  If it’s free, it’s for me!

The end of our day did not go as planned, as is common in this household.  The original plan was for our family to go to church together in blissful harmony.  Well, the girls went to church and the boys went to a football game.  The boys will go to church tomorrow morning while the girls have their beauty rest ….. and homemade giant waffles.  :o)  Back to the fishy story.  Before we ran out the door to church, I set the large ziplock baggie holding our four newest family members into the fish tank to equalize the temperature of the water so the fish will not go into shock and die.  When we got home from church, the miracle of life had occurred and there are now at least 24 more fishies in our tank.  YES!  We got a pregnant platy and she gave birth to possibly 20 babies within two hours of being ours.  And the cycle continues.

P.S.  For those who have closely followed this story through the last years, you may be asking yourself if I put the baby platies in with the white baby-guppy-eating fish.  NO!  The white fish did the circle of life and swam in the tunnel that leads to the sea.  Happily ever after.

The 21st Century Awakening

Yes, it’s true.  I got a new phone.  It’s not a smart phone, for I am not that smart yet.  I’m working my way up from the razor flip phone I upgraded from yesterday.  Slowly.  Sad part is, I do not have time to learn to use a new phone.  I’m a busy woman with life flying by at a rapid pace.  When the salesman handed me the phone, I handed it to my 14-year-old son and requested, “Here, figure it out and then fill me in.”  BIG mistake on my part.

My current ring tone, that I do not know how to change, is a jaunty rap number that makes me want to flick my head back and forth when the phone rings.  It truly brings a smile to my face, but it is so unconventional for me.  Hello!?  I’m a 44-year-old mother with four children.  Some sense of decency must be upheld.

And my wallpaper on the new fangled device is a picture of a frying pan filled with scrambled eggs.  Nice.  I can’t figure out how to change that either.

Yesterday, I took a picture of some shorts at TJ Maxx that I intended to buy for one of my boys.  I was going to send it to him to see if he liked them…. but of course, I couldn’t figure out how to send it.  So I just bought them.  Thankfully, he liked them.  Later that night his sister was looking through the obnoxious pictures my children have already taken on my phone when she paused and asked, “Why is there a picture of someone’s rear end on your phone.”  Then I had to explain that it was the shorts in the store hanging on the rack…. that I couldn’t figure out how to send.  They all laughed at their mother.  Laughed!  Gah!

My FAV5 numbers were transferred over with my old sim card, but the FAV5 pictures did not make the transition.  Without much forethought at all, I asked one of my sons to put the right pictures in the FAV5 slots.  Well, one of my top five is the house phone.  So now there is a picture of the house phone handset in my FAV5.  Nice.  No smiling faces yet.

Today (day two of owning the phone) I noticed the battery bar blinking red.  I had to search for the cord to plug it in, for I hadn’t even opened the box yet.  All was fine and dandy, other than my 44-year-old eyes barely being able to distinguish the correct position to plug the cord into the phone.  Good grief it’s small.

Then we went out to dinner tonight and I left the phone on the kitchen counter plugged into the miniscule cord.  One of our sons stayed home and while we were out I called my cell phone to check on him.  I asked, “What are you doing?”  He laughingly replied, “Rockin’ out to your rapper ringtone.”  Nice.