Youngest...

OK, I'm really not that mom that thinks her kids are the best at EVERYTHING and has to tell everyone about it, but its hard not to when you have a daughter like mine.  She's 8 months old and is all over the place.  She's going to walk before the new year, I just know it, and she's smart as a whip.  She's been the easiest baby to take care of, and on top of it all, she's down right beautiful.  Babies are cute, but she is PRETTY!  Don't take my word for it...see for yourself:

Trader Joes Anarcy

OK, I love Trader Joes, especially during the holidays!  They have the best appetizers (frozen for our convenience), and their holiday selection is to DIE for!  I bought peppermint bark and dark chocolate covered peppermint Joe Joes. If my sisters are lucky, I'll have some left over tomorrow :)

Anyhoo, as much as I love Trader Joes, it does have its flaw, one of which is the size of their stores.  However, since moving to the Carolinas, I've noticed that the opposite problem occurs here.  Their stores are HUGE by comparrison to the one in Issaquah, WA (I'm sure the people that live here think its pretty small), but their parking lot is ridiculous!  I really do think compact only spots should be outlawed.  They don't have "huge SUV/Mini-van only parking" anywhere, so why the compact spots?  They are the only spots people DON'T like, even the damn compact cars. 

This does have something to do with my little rant.  Today, I went to Trader Joes to buy some goodies for Thanksgiving.  I have a gift card burning a hole in my pocket and was dreaming of all the goodness I could get, but when I arrived, all the joy was replaced by stress and frustration. The parking lot was CRAZY!  People were blocking lanes so they could stalk people to their cars, only to find out, those people were walking down the wrong lane and crossed over to the other where another got their spot.  Yes, this was me, I was the stalker.  This happened twice!  I couldn't believe my bad luck.  So I started to drive farther away from the store, because I really don't mind walking, even if I have two kids.  Then I saw a compact spot open.  The minivan next to the spot parked all wonky, so I did the same, knowing I was taking up the spot next to me, but I figured it gave me room to get the kids in and out, and people could just deal.  Yeah, maybe I'm sounding like the asshole here.  Well, before you get all preachy, a woman (by herself in her little lexus) asked if I was leaving and I said no, I'm shopping and she was like, "oh, you're taking up two spots, you should fix that".  REALLY?  OK, I'll park INCHES from the van next to me after I put my kids BACK into their car-seats.  She didn't move, so I said, fine, get out of the way and I"ll move the van and I did.  I was INCHES...maybe ONE from the minivan next to me, but there was still no one parked on the other side, so I just got everyone out on that side and went to shop. 

Trader Joes is a happy place.  Being inside made me feel better, and not being a newb made my day!  I knew what I wanted, where it was and how to bag my own groceries so I could get out quickly and I did.  With two kids, I was in and out in maybe 5 minutes, 10 tops.  As I got back to the car, I notice someone is next to me now, but I have room to get in.  but the woman in the van next to me also arrived at the same time and was like "HOLY MOSES!"  her daughter said the same thing and I smiled and said, "yeah, its a tight fit, but we'll make it work".  She didn't seem to give a crap that I was making an effort.  She huffed and puffed about getting both her girls in the car on one side (BOO HOO BITCH), and was determined to leave before me.  A man was helping me load my wine so he could take my cart and I'm getting the kids in the car and she says to the man "Could you help me?  There is NO WAY I won't hit her car backing out unless someone guides me."  Dramatic much?  Good lord.  She can do it just fine and did!  I was walking to my drivers side as she was putting it in drive and she said "YOU HIT MY CAT WHEN YOU OPENED YOUR DOOR!"  What?  I never opened a door on that side of my car.  I went out the other side because I knew I couldn't do it without hitting her car.  But, I said, "really?  I don't think so, I didn't get in or out over there."  She eye rolls and pulls up to park on the corner to take a closer look.  Meanwhile another woman is talking to me about how this BEOTCH in the minivan yelled at her in the store and is in a bad mood.  I shouldn't take it personally.  Really, I wasn't, I just wanted to know what I did, because I didn't know what this crazy mom was talking about.  She gets out of the van, walks around it, takes a look at the van, then at me, and then drives away.  I was standing there ready to talk to her about it and she just drove off.

serves her right, because I was in no mood for a bitchy mom today.  I would have taken her down a peg with one blink of my right eye for sure.  Her gain, really, and here is what I took away from the experience:

1) Moms are crazy
2) Trader Joes is not for newbs at the holidays and if you're an experienced shopper around a  newb at the holidays, help them out, don't be a jerk and huff and puff around them.  Its will go faster if you just show them where things are!
3) Dont' shop at Trader Joes if you leave in a bad mood almost everytime.  Its not the store for you and we don't want your bad attitude making the produce go bad

Blurg to you crazy mom in the parking lot.  I bet your girls were totally impressed with the stink eye you threw my way and are practicing it on each other now.  Meanwhile, MY daughter learned how to stand her ground and scare off crazy ladies like you!

Jen's 40th Birthday Video

The Fresh Air Fund

I really love this cause, and now, for the fifth summer in a row, OneSight offered to bring their traveling optical clinic to all five Fresh Air Fund camps. 

This summer at Fresh Air camp, OneSight's staff screened 3,295 children and counselors, gave 1,757 eye exams, and made 1,629 pairs of glasses, with 1,458 of them on-site and 171 specially driven in. The team stayed at Camp Hayden-Marks for two camp sessions, to make sure every child who needed the gift of sight was screened.



What a wonderful gift these kids are receiving.  If you want to find out more about the Fresh Air Fund, click the button to the right.

Happy Halloween

My boys true form:

My favorite Haloween Video:

Damn You Pottery Barn

Damn you and your sexy catalogs that make me think "yeah, I can make my house look like that!"  I love Pottery Barn, and I love their catalogs. I get a lot of great ideas on how to organize my stuff from them.  I also enjoy making a mental list of things I want to save up for.  In our last house I bought some awesome chandeliers and had the last one for a year before leaving them for the shrew that bought the house from us.  I hope she likes them (grrrr).

Despite my love for this store, and their tempting furniture combos, today I am just fed up.  I took a look at my house, and thought, why is this so hard?  Why can't I have a house that looks lived in, but not like a disaster?  Then I remembered...I have 3 kids under the age of five, and lets face it, the set ups in Pottery Barn are total fantasy, especially Pottery Barn Kids.  Give kids chalk and they aren't going to just write on the area of the wall painted in chalk board paint...am I right?  Thought so.

So, I went to the site today and am going to share photos of the things I love, and why I can't have them until I'm in my 50s (maybe 60s...I do have 2 boys).

We'll start in the Kitchen: 

It looks so beautiful.  Couldn't you see your kids eating a home made breakfast including buscuits made from scratch in this kitchen?  You at the sink washing dishes with a red checkered apron on?  A smile on your face?

Yeah, in reality, my table is covered in Aunt Jemima syrup after the boys eat the waffles I threw in the toaster for them.  Meanwhile I survey the sink full of dishes from dinner the night before that I was to tired to do and wish I had done them, because I'm still to tired to do them.  I also wonder if I brushed my teeth before leaving my room, because if I didn't the chances of getting that done are slim.  The best I can hope for is time to put on a bra before taking Eldest to school.  Suck it Pottery Barn.

Next, lets go to the home office:

I love this office set up and to be fair, I own it in black.  Its very functional, and looks AWESOME, but this picture leads one to believe that you could actually store priceless art under your desk or leave out your key board cleaner without any worry that your children will touch them.  Let me tell you, this is not true.  This is false advertising!  My kids crawl under my desk all the time (or they did), to turn my computer off from the power strip, unroll all my wrapping paper, and play with things in my drawers (like push pins and permanant markers).  This picture is so beautiful, but just because you own it, doesn't make it so!

This is another fav.  I love how organized this person is and I have wanted that little paper/ribbon holder thingy for a very long time. I keep saying "I could probably make that myself", but never do.  The jars full of pencils and various other things are adorable, but again, they would be destroyed in a matter of moments if I actually took a que from this pic and did that in my little home office.  I also love how the desk doesn't go all the way to the wall and breifly thought about doing that in my new house, but then I remembered that I don't have a sexy lap top.  I have a desk top (that is totally hot by the way), and there would be wires and a CPU junking up the room scape (and not having it against the wall would make it easier for the baby to pull it all down on her).  Kids.

Don't have one of our over priced book shelves?  That's OK, just stack your books in a neat and orderly pile next to your desk for an instant conversation piece and a make shift table.  Its the new thing...WRONG!  nothing says "come f*ck with me" to a kid like a neatly piled stack of books. 

OK, moving on to the bedroom:

Oh Hudson collection, how I love thee.  And again, to be fair, this is what I have in my own bedroom.  I LOVE it (side note, I don't have that end table).  When it arrived I felt like a true adult.  no more Ikea bedroom furniture.  Then slowly the kids starting using the base board as a car ramp, and the cats kept "missing" when they jumped up and scratched the wood in a few places.  I also don't have the luxury of having sheets that truely match, like in this photo.  Mine are from wal-mart.  Fitting the bed is really the only criteria I have for linens at the moment, so they work.  I also love that this person has a book on his/her nightstand as if it will be waiting there for when they return.  I have lost two wrist watches since moving in because my kids take them from my night stand.  Our bedroom is just another playroom to them...*sigh*.

Lastly, we have the always elusive "entryway"

I would give my right arm for this set up.  So organized, so fashionable, so chic.  The people that live in this "house" obviously have important things to do and all the right things they need to get them done fashionably and on time.  I mean, even this ladies thermos and yoga mat match!  I can picture my kids, grabbing their monogrammed back packs as we leave to go to school.  Me in my skinny jeans and trendy shirt with a mug of awesome coffee that I brewed myself in one hand and my designer purse in the other.  All done up, but not to the point that it looks like I made an effort.  *snort* yeah right.  Remember my comment about the bra above? I wasn't kidding.  I sometimes leave the house in what I slept in to take Eldest to school.  Middle doesn't have shoes on half the time and the baby is usually still in her PJs.  I don't have to get out of the car to drop him off at school, so that has a lot to do with my minimal effort.  If I did have to get out of the car, I would certainly make sure my teeth were brushed, hair was combed, and a bra was on, but it is what it is. 

I keep telling myself that once the kids are all in school, I'll have that time to organize, do yoga, and grocery shop with a coordinated outfit on.  Thinking this makes the end of the day bearable, when I still see the dishes from the night before, now sitting under the dishes from that night and I just turn off the light and go to bed in what I wore that day, which just so happens to be, what I slept in the night before.