Hustle and Bustle

Somehow I got convinced going shopping at 5a.m. the day after Thanksgiving was a good idea this year. I've managed to avoid shopping on this day my whole life but Angi is convincing when she wants you to join her in some madness. Yes, I will admit it turned out to be a fun day but it was touch and go in the beginning.

There may or may not have been some cheating the lines and pushing of security guards to get in the door ahead of the crowd at one Target store in the central Indiana area. There may or may not have been running like a mad woman down the aisles to the electronics section once you were in the door ahead of the crowd. There may or may not have been a lot of sweating and frantic phone calls from cell phone to cell phone. In the end though, there WERE coveted items scored from behind the electronics counter. That is all I will say about our first stop on what I now like to call Scary Soccer Moms on the Loose. If you see a burgandy Honda Odessey loaded with packages and 5 crazed women in your area, be afraid, be very afraid!

We hit a total of 4 stores. We could have kept going but we couldn't fit anything else in the mini van. We saw people yelling, cussing, running, and sweating every where we went. Yes, some times it was us. I decided to behave myself after the Target entrance. Somehow that story got embellished all day long. I would like to go on record right now as saying I DID NOT throw a security guard to the ground. I was merely pushed into one causing him to conveniently move out of my way. This will probably end up being one of the stories Angi and I like to tell over and over again like the one about the throwing of a trash can and a bottle of Vodka.

As I'm sure you can figure out on your own, we had a good time. We got a lot of shopping done. We got a ton of great deals and we had a lot of laughs. I was up by 4 a.m. and didn't come home until 6:30p.m. When I was done shopping with my friends I headed to Anderson where I knew my dad would be at some electronics store buying extremely large and expensive televisions. I was correct. We went hunting for something I wanted then headed to his house to haul everything inside.

I managed to not only get Christmas done but I got Jayke's birthday shopping done as well. Now I'm onto party planning. We planned one gift exchange for the kids with my friends and I am planning an ornament exchange with all my girlfriends at my house. Sunday I am having a trim the tree get together. I have all my decorating done except the tree which I promised Jayke I would hold off on until he got back from his weekend with Mike. I am so ready for that little turkey to come home. I miss him like crazy but I'm happy that he is spending time with his cousins and having fun.

Jen and Angi call today "The Hustle and Bustle", I now know why. I certainly hustled my bustle all day long!

By the way, I am officially back in the world of blogging now. I am all hooked up with highspeed internet at my own house! Yeah!

Would You Like to Buy a Pizza for My School?

I took this evil looking child to the park yesterday. Oma and Grammy went with us but Grammy doesn't walk well and Oma had thrown her back out so it was just the kiddo and the Mommy playing. We took a walk down by the river so Jayke could throw rocks in the water and Mommy could try to teach him how to skip them. I don't think he is ready for that quite yet. It was supposed to be our last nice day for a while so we wanted to get a day at the park in.

I was surprised at how easily The Boy climbed up the rock wall. He has never done it before that I know of but he went right up the thing like it was nothing. This park has great walking trails and they have installed exercise stations along the path since I was there last. Angi and I have plans to start using it. Notice I said we have plans...not that we have done it or anything. All we manage to do is walk around department stores so far. Still exercise in my book!



He climbed right to the top of this thing too...




I have a modem now so I can get hooked up to high speed internet. It has been sitting in the bedroom all week. As you can see, I jumped right on that. Maybe I will get around to that tonight. I have been doing my scrapbooks instead of blogging. I'm officially addicted! I did remeber to charge my camera battery though so now I can start taking pictures with it again instead of my phone. I'm getting tired of texting the pictures to my email account and waiting to check it when I'm at my mom's. You can see why I don't blog as often...PITA.

I had my first parent/teacher conference. Jayke has only been going to that school for 2 weeks so I didn't know what we could have to confer about but I went any way. Just as I suspected she wanted to talk about his sereration anxiety. He has it really bad when I drop him off but he also is having it when any of the teachers leave the classroom. That was on Monday. He had school on Tuesday and again today. By today he had already gotten over it. He didn't cry at all today. He was so proud of himself too. I think we are over the hump with that now.

Another first for Jayke is he is selling things for his school fundraiser. I probably wouldn't have even bothered but they are offering money off tuition for the top 3 sellers. Yeah, they just had to go and make it a competition so you know I'm all over that. I have a list of people to hit up. We have made it to a few houses so far and everyone has been generous with their orders. Tomorrow I'm taking him to my dad's to sell him some pizzas and over Thanksgiving he can hit his dad up too. I taught him to go up to the doors and give his sales pitch. It is the cutest thing ever watching my kid hock over priced frozen goods to our unsuspecting friends and family. Brings a tear to my eye. I reminded Angi of all the pies, mums, and candles I have bought from her kids over the years before ringing her doorbell. Must have worked she bought a couple of things. We are so gonna win this thing!

He Must Have Thought we Were in The Outback

Jayke and I took a couple of walks today. On the first walk we went back behind my grandmother's house in the tall tall grass that is along the long pond. We started out to check out the buckeye tree, a favorite activity of Jayke's. We had the dogs with us so we were soon off into the tall grass to retrieve the mutts who had wondered off. Jayke thought it was great tramping around in that grass. He kept telling me he was hunting with Simon and Laynie, the dogs. I think The Boy and the dogs need to get out more often. All of a sudden I hear Jayke yelling, "A KANGAROO! A KANGAROO!" I turn just in time to see a rabbit running off through the field. Apparently he almost stepped on it in it's hiding spot down in the tall tall grass. So, not only does my child think a rabbit is a kangaroo, but my big hunting dogs (one is an actual beagle) didn't even have a clue there was a rabbit in the vicinity. Not even after it took off across the field.

We ventured over to the woods after that and found an abundance of milk weed to blow the seeds around. I was never allowed to do that as a kid. My grandpa would yell at me and tell me the farmer doesn't like them in the fields. Come on! How can a kid resist a milk weed pod just bursting with white fluffiness? Anyway, Grammy doesn't care so we blew all the seeds out of every pod we could find. We also discovered a tree stand on my dad's property with a salt lick just a few feet away. Talk about unfair advantage, not to mention illegal. Poor deer wouldn't even have a chance. I called Jim and he came and took the tree stand down and took the salt lick over to the field with the tall tall grass and the kangarabbit for the deer to be able to enjoy it safely. Jayke and I felt good after our hike and playing conservation officers. Grammy decided to take us out to dinner. Jayke got to pick...Red Lobster, his favorite. Today was a pretty good day.

Grammy and Jayke...

....just hanging out. Jayke likes to go down and sit with Grammy in the mornings.


We found out that one little girl in Jayke's class at school plays soccer with him too so we are excited about that. Also, there is a little girl in his class that lives in Oma's neighborhood! Yeah, a friend to play with at home! She's no Twila though. No one will ever take Twila's place in his heart. He is loyal. A good quality for a man to have. Too bad they don't all have it.

Still looking for a job. Not doing much else. I have started scrapbooking again though. Still no highspeed internet at Grammy's so I am not getting around to blogs regularly yet. I will soon. I'm thinking of ordering my modem tomorrow. Enough waiting. Who needs a job before they start running up bills, right?

They Almost Won

Boooo!!!! The colts lost last night. Bummer. Actually, the women at the party we went to had no idea who lost or what the score was at that point. We spent the evening in the kitchen within arms reach of the blender. My dad makes these drinks that we named "Cabana Boy Specials" because my sister sits by the pool in the summer and orders drinks from her "Cabana Boy", my dad. They are lemonade and rasberry Absolute Vodka frozen drinks and they are yummy. Anyway, Angi introduced them to her entire neighborhood and now they all make them. Last nights batch was even colored blue for the Colts big game. We weren't around for part of the game because we were making one of our trips to fetch ice from another house down the block or to cut hydrangea's...don't ask. We got the bad news when Angie's husband, Bob, came in the house in a very bad mood. (Different Angi, different house, different husband)All the kids were moping around. Not the moms though we were all happy as clams.

Here are a few of the kids from the party in the Colts gear.



Jayke ended up going home early from the party. I think he was having some effects from his flu vaccination and wasn't feeling well. I ran him to my mom's and went back. Before he left we took this picture of our Colt's babies though...



Jayke was holding the baby girl at one point but told me it made him nervous. Too cute. The other little boy is Mason. I think Jayke will end up being friends with him. He is a year yonger but has older brothers so is used to playing with older boys. I think more of the parents had on Colts jerseys than the kids. Jayke has a Manning jersey and I have Harrison. He was excited that we totally matched. I'm excited that we get to do fun stuff like this again with friends. Now if the husband was just doing it with us too everything would be perfect.

Last One, I Promise!

I know you are all probably getting sick of seeing and hearing about Halloween but I'm still trying to catch up on my blogging so this is the last Halloween related post I promise.

Some pictures of the kids we went trick or treating with...



These are Angi's kids, Maci and Matthew. Matthew was a Zombie and I don't think I managed to get a picture of him without his mask.



Brannon, Kim's son, as a Sumo Wrestler. Probably my favorite costume of the night next to Jayke's of course!



Here is Jayke and his women. The two in the middle are Haley and Lindsey, Kim's girls and the one on the end is Maci. At one point Maci and Haley were literally fighting over who was going to hold Jayke's hand. Scared him and he didn't want either of them holding his hand after that. Funny. I will have to remind him of this when he is 15 or so.
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He had a great night. Got tons of loot and totally worn out. The only bad part of the evening came when we took off his little cowboy boots and discovered there was a spot where the boot had rubbed his leg raw despite me putting knee high socks on him. We discovered the spot when he acidentally missed the toilet and peed down his leg hitting the raw spot causing him to scream bloody murder. I will be so happy when he gets his aim in the bathroom under control.

She's Crafty...

I've got a few pumpkin carving pictures to show. We carved two this year. Opa helped with the top of the first one and I did the rest after Jayke cleaned them out.







Jayke was a big help. He scooped and scooped and scooped. Seeds went flying every where. I'm glad Grammy wasn't in there to see what we were doing to her dining room.




Our first pumpkin was just a regular ol pumpkin. Mommy had to get fancy with the second one though. I had forgotten how long it takes to carve on this way and that I swore I would never do it again. Maybe I will remember next year.



That is Scooby Doo in case you can't tell. Remember, my boy is a Scooby nut?



Basically The Boy just wanted to play with the seeds and the slime while I did all the work. I seem to recall doing the same thing when I was a kid. My dad used to grow 200lb pumpkins for me when I was little. Took forever to clean those babies out. Glad I only had small ones to do.

Yee Haw!

I have more pictures of Halloween but I still don't have my computer hooked up so I am relying on my phone and my mom's computer right now to blog with. This is Cowboy Jayke. My mom made the vest and chaps from looking at a picture I found on ebay. He looked adorable and had the best time trick or treating. Scratch that...he had a good time until about half way through the neighborhood then he wanted to quit. I don't blame him, that was a big neighborhood for a little guy to walk. It was a big neighborhood for his mom to walk too.




We were trick or treating with all my friends and their kids. Jayke had two little girls fighting over him. Scared him to death. They were literally screaming at each other over who was going to hold his hand. I told him this is every boy's dream to have two women fighting over him but he just wanted me to hold his hand and those crazy girls to leave him alone. He was tired at that point too. We had already been to my mom's and out to Angi's mother-in-law's where he got a treat bag that had Disney cars in it. He was so excited about those cars he slept with them that night. We had perfect weather and I actually had a good time and didn't think about my own life for a few hours.

The next day we went over to my dad's and trick or treated there. Everyone should trick or treat at my dad's house, he passes out bags of candy instead of pieces. He passed Jayke a whole box of donuts along with his candy. Jayke gets his sweet tooth from my father.

The morning after Halloween The Boy didn't want to go back to his new school. He cried and screamed and the teacher had to peel him off of me. I felt so bad. He hasn't cried like that since we first moved to SC and he started Mom's Morning out. The teacher told me when I picked him up that he was laying on his cot at nap time and he said, "I can't take much more of this! My mom better hurry up and come get me!" He seemed fine when I picked him up. Very happy to see me.

Jayke is loving living with Grammy. This morning I had to drag them both back in the house. Jayke was down at the pond on the beach area with a huge stick getting himself covered with mud and Grammy was hanging over the side of the pier feeding her fish. I was not feeling like making any water rescues in the 50 degree weather so I told them both to get in the house. They are becoming thick as thieves. Jayke is always going to look for Grammy's cane when she misplaces it and Grammy hands out donuts and Chocolate milk when I'm not available. Its a match made in heaven.

Jayke is in the other room right now telling Oma and Opa about his traumatic expereince at the doctor's office today when he got his physical. The doctor removed his pants to check his lower region and he was not a happy camper. When he finally got his pants back on he grabbed up his jacket, shoes, and my purse and said, "Come on Mommy, we are leaving!" He was not having any of that action. I don't blame him. At least he didn't have to get a shot, he got his flu vaccination through a mist up his nose. Thank Gawd!