Dear So and So

I got this idea from another blog. I thought it was a funny way to relieve some stress by saying here what I didn't get to say at the time. Goodness knows it happens to me all the time.

Dear Trouble-Making Mother of the Trouble-Making child at the ball field (yeah, you know who you are),
Thank you so much for humiliating me in front of a small crowd of other parents. You may not be 'the kind of person who allows other people to put their hands on your child', but you're obviously the kind of person who doesn't discipline your child and also doesn't teach him any manners. You seem to be under the impression that my dh taking your child to sit with his father was an abusive act, but it was not abusive for you and your cronies to speak to me the way you did. What a great example you are to your children. No wonder they're so disrespectful to others.

Sincerely,
The mom who has to put up with you four nights a week during baseball season


Dear Children Who Mowed My Lawn(you also know who you are),
I really appreciate your joint effort to mow the lawn last weekend. It looks great! However, if you're gonna mow the lawn, please mow all of it and not just the part that wasn't cut the week before. It's now growing at different levels in the back yard and looks like only half the yard has been mowed(which is true).

Love,
Your trying-not-to-nag Mom

Dear Loving, Wonderful Hubby,
Please spray. This week. Before the weekend when you'll be working and won't have time to do it. You know what I'm talking about.

Lovingly,
Your Trying To Be Patient Wife


Ok, folks. Your turn! Do you have any Dear So and So's you need to get off your chest?

Oh, and the bean thing . . . .

is for the birds.

It back-fired in a big way. We might try again in a couple of weeks.

I hate Mother's Day. There. I said it. Before everyone gets their skirts in twist let me explain.

To me, it's another holiday that has all these expectations surrounding it and they're never met, at least not for me.

I don't feel like I deserve a Mother's Day.

I don't feel like I deserve all the heart-felt poems or the nice things that are said about mother's on this day.

Because they wouldn't be heart-felt coming from my family.

And here's where it's going to get really ugly and controversial . . . most days, my children make me hate being a mother.

What does that say about me as a person? As a mother? As an LDS mother?

My three youngest children spent the night with their grandparents last night. My mom brought them home this morning in time for us to get ready for church. They walked in with flowers that my mom helped them pick from her yard. The flowers were very pretty, but I don't deserve them. They make me feel terrible.

My oldest son was supposed to give a talk today in sacrament meeting about what a wonderful mother I am, but he didn't prepare anything and wouldn't get dressed to go to church.

I left him at home, determined to try to make it through church without help from my husband because he's at work, and without help from anyone else because my usual helper wasn't there today. We lasted all of 25 minutes. Not our record, but close.

Why can't I make it through church with my kids by myself? Single moms have to do it. Why can't I? Why don't I enjoy my children? Why can't I get them to listen better? Get along with each other? Help each other? Help me around the house? Why can't I make it through the day without having to yell at someone to get them to do anything?

I feel like I'm drowning.

Beans, beans, good for your heart . . .

. . . the more you eat them, the more you . . . oh, wait. That's not where this is headed.

How about the more chores you do, the more beans you earn? Not following me?

Let me explain.

My bff, Toni, and I often vent our woes to each other over how to get our children to pick up after themselves and help out more around the house without hearing all the whining, complaining, and gnashing of teeth and also without having to stand over them with a stick to keep them on track. Are you following me now? *Just kidding about the stick.

Rewind back to earlier this afternoon. I was having an afternoon chit chat about picking blackberries with said bff and she happened to mention to me her bean chore system. Her wonderful hubby came up with this ingenious idea and was more than happy to email it to me.

It goes something like this: Each child has a jar with 100 beans to start. Mom and Dad have the "bank" jar. One bean = 1 penny. There is a list of jobs that can be done to earn beans. If the job is not done correctly then the child owes the bank beans. There is also a "general store" list with privileges they can use their beans for (Wii time, computer time, TV time) and a list of things they may lose beans for (sassing/being disrespectful to parents, hitting siblings, etc.) The catch is they can't spend the initial 100 beans for privileges. They must earn beans before they can use for privileges. At the end of the week they have the option to cash in any beans over the initial 100 beans if they choose to or they can keep saving. Each child also has a ledger to keep track of his beans. The whole idea is they choose what chores they want to do without mom or dad nagging.

Ingenious, right?

I'm sure there are probably other parents out there somewhere that have done something similar to this, but I love this idea because a) I didn't have to wrack my tired brain for an idea, b) it didn't cost me anything and, c) it's working like a charm. I was prepared for it to take a few days.

So far, so good. I hope I don't jinx it.

Aren't they beautious? A few mason jars, scrapbooking stickers, some beans and you're good to go. Well, technically, these are chickpeas, but they were kinda old and I didn't want to use my good kidney beans.

I'll let you know how it's going in a week or two.

Broken-hearted

 I broke my daughter's heart this morning.

She's at the age where she wants to do whatever mommy is doing. She tries to help wash dishes, load the washing machine, etc. She sees me putting on make-up so she has to put on makeup. Not a morning goes by that she doesn't follow me into the bathroom to put on her 'wipgwoss', just like mom. Sometimes she has me put on a tiny bit of eye shadow and mascara, too. She saw me shaving my legs a couple of mornings ago and had lots of questions. *mental note: make sure to keep the razor far out of reach.

This morning . . . she saw me getting dressed for church. Nothing new or different. She's usually in my room when I'm getting ready, but for some reason she took special interest in my bra. She asked me what it was and said she wanted one too. I told her she wasn't old enough for one yet.

She completely fell apart. I mean REALLY fell apart. I mean on the floor, crying like her favorite pet had died, falling-apart.

Ah, the poor girl. She doesn't realize that once she has to wear a bra all the time, it's not so fun. And if she's blessed like I am it can even be painful and uncomfortable. And she'll wish they were smaller.

Maybe, if she's lucky, she'll be blessed to be like the women on her father's side of the family. But then, of course, she'll wish they were bigger.

It's a no win situation.

Random . . . .and not so random . . . thoughts

I sent my oldest child off to Space Camp today for the next 3 days. I'm a little worried. He's never been this far away from us for this long without a family member close by. I hope he remembers to shower, put on deodorant every morning, and brush his teeth. And I hope he comes home with everything I sent with him.

I'm a worry wort.

I saw the Dr. today to discuss my lab results. Everything looks pretty good. I don't have diabetes like I feared. I need to work on raising my good cholesterol levels and  lose weight(duh!). She did say my kidney function has been compromised a little which could be from when I had gestational diabetes with Lauren or from being sick. So to try to help and preserve my kidneys I have to drink plenty of fluids which DOES NOT include diet Cherry Dr. Pepper. It's not on my list. The only thing on my list is WATER. WATER, WATER, WATER. Well, that should help with losing weight. And I'll sure have to pee a lot.

Lauren pooped in the potty today all by herself. I'm so proud! It's the little things that make us moms happy, right?

The more bills, wants, needs, obligations I have, the more I realize money just doesn't go as far as I want or need it to.

I have a cool new Scentsy car freshener for my smelly van. The gal I ordered from sent it to me as a thank you gift for being her first customer. I love gifts! My van sure needed it with 4 smelly kids in and out of it all day.

My hubby treated me to lunch today and a mint chocolate chip Italian creme soda. Ok, so that's not on my list either, but it was yummy and I did have water with my lunch.

Baby chickens eat a lot. Or maybe it's the baby goose. But they're really cute.

One example of why I can't be on the computer: In the time it has taken me to type this little post, Lauren has opened four Capri Suns and emptied them into the trash can. These are part of her two older brothers' snacks for school. Grrrrrrrr!

On that note I will have to say hasta luego!

Marathon Post

How did I let half a month go by without posting anything?! I enjoy reading other blogs so much that I neglect to update my own. I also get caught up in all the cool craft and home improvement projects that I see on other blogs that I want to try, but never make the time or have the money to do. *sigh* Oh, well . . . guess I better get to updating here.

First, hmmmm . . . oh, yeah, Easter.

We had a nice Easter lunch and egg hunt with my parents and some friends from church. We decided not to go to the big Gregson family egg hunt this year. It's just not what it used to be. I have mixed feelings about it because that's one of the reasons we wanted to move back home after Ian got out of the Navy, so that our kids could be a part of the family traditions I grew up with. But I really enjoyed sharing the day with close family and friends and not having to worry if there's enough food to feed everyone. So, having said all that, here are some photos from our egg hunt.

Lauren had to use Grandma Gregson's Easter basket to hunt eggs with. It's kinda small but she couldn't be persuaded to use her other one.

Here are Melodie and Lorie searching for eggs. These two cuties belong to my friend Toni.

Ellie had to check out her loot as she went. She's another one of Toni's cuties. (FYI---Toni (and her hubby, Aaron) have four girls and one boy so we've decided that our children are betrothed.)

Miss Sadie found the prize egg!

He cracks me up! No words needed.

Matt and his stash.

Todd, his buddy Thomas, little Miss Melodie, and my friend, Toni.

Paw Paw and the kids looking for more eggs.

Lauren won a baby with an egg she found. She also won bubbles which she later gave her baby a bath with.

Todd and his loot.

I have no idea how many real eggs we brought home, but I can tell you that that's all Matt and Lauren ate for about 2 days.

Zack's field trip to the Exploreum:

This one should really be before Easter because we went at the end of March, but we'll pretend it's next because I'm not gonna try to rearrange this thing. I'm not about keeping things in order. If  you don't believe me, come see my house. Wait. Better not. I have four kids. It's not pretty. Anywho . . . .

I was put in charge of these two riff-raff, James and Zack. They were very impressed with the T-Rex.

Zack and some of his classmates on the back of a T-Rex stuck in a tar pit.

The entrance to the dinosaur exhibit.

This was inside at the hands-on exhibits. All the kids liked this one because you could only see their heads on the platter. 

This contraption tested your upper body strength by timing how long you could hang on to the bar. 

Zack played with this for the longest time. It was a maze inside a cube with holes all along the outside of it and you had to use different shaped rods to coax the ball through the different chambers. Very cool.

I liked this one. It was the WKRG channel 5 news room. The kids could pretend to read the news or do a weather report. They both look like very tired reporters. LOL! 

This exhibit taught them about using pulleys. It was much harder than it looked.

I wanted to put a video in here, but it's taking a reeeaaallllly long time to upload. As soon as I figure it out I'll get it on here. It's a hands-on thingamajig that has to do with noises our bodies make. Yeah. Uh-huh. I bet you can guess which one the boys played with the most.

Easter Pictures from before Easter:

See? Told ya I'm all outta order. 

Since Easter Sunday and General Conference happened to be the same day, I let the kids wear their Easter clothes to church the Sunday before.

 

For some reason I don't have one of Matt by himself. Not sure how that happened. Maybe because they weren't being very cooperative that day. Yep, that's probably it.

On to the Gulf Breeze Zoo!

Now this one is in the right order because we did it last week. Woohoo, I'm catching up! But then I'll be behind again because tomorrow is the official start of baseball season. (I'll keep my comments to myself . . until tomorrow at least.)

I must now end my marathon post. I've been on this thing way too long and all hades is breaking loose behind me. 

Until next time . . . . .until tomorrow . . . until . . . . whenever.