Dirty Dishes

How long is a dishwasher supposed to last nowadays?  We’ve been in our house for over four years now and we were the first occupants.  After the first year the racks started to rust out.  Now, it seems like every time we run the dishwasher, the dishes aren’t clean (and not just from the rust but from food that was rinsed)!  This is extremely frustrating as the reason for using the dishwasher in the first place is to eliminate the need to wash the dishes by hand.  Now I’m doing both AGAIN!  I hate the thought of replacing it already (I never did replace the racks) but I’m tired of the dirty dishes!  Besides, I don’t have time to run and empty the dishwasher and then wash them again by hand.  What would YOU do?

No, I’m not SuperMom!

I’ve decided that I can’t do it all anymore.  I got a flier in the mail yesterday that says “STOP wasting your weekends on housework.”  That’s exactly what I’ve been doing.  Between catching up on the laundry, trying to squeeze in proper housecleaning, lesson plans for work, and spending time with the family as well as cooking meals, working out, and church, I have no time.

Today I called a house cleaning service.  I was quite taken aback with the pricing, remembering the $40 I was paid when I cleaned my brother’s house.  Granted, he was a bachelor and had a 2 bedroom 2 bath house with a partially finished basement.  I have a 4 bedroom, 3 bath house with 3 kids and a dog that seems to be shedding its entire coat all over the kitchen floor daily.  I’ll have to do some more calling around.   I still remember the feeling of turning around at the door of my brother’s house to see how the cleaning looked and thinking how nice it would be to come home and have the house CLEAN.  What a nice thing to come home to.
And you know what?  Life IS too short !

School Lunches

Apparently I must be doing something right when it comes to making lunches.  Instead of the school lunch of Asian Spiced Drummies, whole kernel corn, apple slices, wheat breadstick, oatmeal chocolate chip cookie, and cold milk, my kiddos chose peanut butter and jelly sandwich (strawberry for Taylor, grape for Jocelyn, and sugar free blackberry for Wesley) crimped into a round shape (from Pampered Chef!), Pirate Punch apple sauce, fresh strawberries for Jocelyn and Wesley and grapes for Taylor, M&Ms (a small pack split 3 ways), Taylor had a pudding cup instead of applesauce, and Kool-Aid juice pouch.  Jocelyn told me today that “lunch was awesome!” and the younger two haven’t requested hot lunches at all!  Easier on the pocket-book at $1.75 each, that’s for sure!  Tomorrow Wesley has already requested his peanut butter sandwich and chocolate chip muffins.

Tip that I use:  bake on the weekends, baggie it up in snack bags, and freeze it all in a freezer-safe bag.  All you have to do is take out the treat in the morning and it will be thawed out by lunch.  Works like a charm for busy moms like me!

Surprise!

In honor of Mom’s 60th birthday, we threw a surprise party for just the family. We all showed up Friday night at 6 pm with a potluck dinner, a mocha cake from Bagatelle, and gifts for the birthday girl! Even with Jocelyn blabbing that we had ordered her a “special cake”, Mom didn’t have a clue!

First Day of School

Cell Phone Etiquette

I could be wrong here but does anyone else object to using a cell phone in the restroom? Today the family and I were in the mall when nature called. I headed to the ladies room off the food court. When I was in the stall I could hear someone talking but no one responding. I thought, “You have got to be kidding me! Someone is using the toilet AND talking on their cell phone?” What happened to the time when you could do your business in private without everyone else hearing it? And the toilets flushing? Not the best background sounds. I think it’s stinks (pardon the pun!) and I feel sorry for the people on the other end of the phone that have to hear it. I’m all for multi-tasking but that’s ridiculous.

Tomorrow’s the Big Day!

School starts tomorrow!   The children have their backpacks ready and I’ve blown the dust off their lunch boxes.  Tomorrow we’ll be heading out the door at 6:45 am so I can drop the kiddos off at latchkey (I’ll get to take pictures at the school this year!) and head to MY school to be sure I’m ready for all of my students.  Taylor will be in his final year of elementary school (5th grade), Jocelyn will be in 2nd grade, and Wesley starts Kindergarten.  More pics coming tomorrow!

What a Blessing!

Jocelyn, age 7, was baptized Sunday morning! She was so excited the night before, she could hardly sleep! Here are a few pictures of the day. The first one is the Children’s Minister, Ms. Brenda, with all of the children being baptized Sunday- Hope, Austin, and Jocelyn. The other 2 are of Jocelyn in the water.  It was an exciting day!

A Good Deal or Two

For those of you who don’t know me, I love a bargain.  I love to cut coupons and get stuff for next to nothing.  For example, probably about a month ago I cut out a coupon for a free 16oz bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce.  I don’t particularly care for BBQ sauce but Taylor does.  Wal*Mart has been sold out of both flavors for weeks.  Today my persistence paid off and there were some on the shelves (luckily the coupon hadn’t expired!).  It was $1.56 so all I paid for it was the tax.  Even if I don’t like to item I usually redeem the coupon and then turn around and donate it to our church’s food pantry.  I did that a lot with baby formula when I was breastfeeding!

Today we headed to the Goodwill.  Thrift stores are like a huge garage sale and although you frequently have to hunt through stuff, the store by us is set up quite nicely.  The parking lot was that full when we got there (at 9:30am!) that something HAD to be going on!  Yup, all donated clothing was $1.10   Every cart in the store was taken and people had them piled full of clothing and other items.  Ken didn’t have much luck but I hit the jackpot with a pair of khaki capris, a navy skort, a skirt, a tank/capri pant set, and a tank/skirt suit.  Jocelyn got 2 pairs of fancy jeans and a denim skirt with an American fabric flounce to it.  All 3 children ended up with some junk toys and I also got a cool basket to put in my classroom.  It came to less than $15 with my Goodwill savings card.  Aaaah, I love a bargain!

3 Days of Inservice down. . .

2 more to go.  Wow, we sure have covered a lot.  My brain is tired already and the students aren’t even there yet!  So what can we be working on, you might ask?  We’ve been going over a ton of data.  Anything from State Reading results, State Math results, DIBELS scores, MAP scores, etc.  One of the fun things we did last week was talk with the teachers that had the 3rd graders last year to see what our students will be like.  We also went to a workshop and got FREE books!

Monday will be a long day as we’ll have more meetings in the morning, working in our classroom in the afternoon, the open house until 7pm and then back again Tuesday morning.  I’m looking forward to meeting my students!