Quiet Book

Adam's parents stopped by recently with some more "memory boxes" of Adam's things. There were some cool things, like the musical teddy bear Adam was given by Sue's cousin Stephen (who has since passed away) when he had open heart surgery. Ryan loves this bear. There were also a lot of books Adam was given as gifts and Ryan has loved reading them!
 One more special thing was the "Quiet Book" Sue sewed for Adam when he was young. It had pages for practicing snaps, buttons, velcro, zippers, etc. Ryan thought this was pretty cool...but we're still probably going to send him to nursery instead of risking it in church!

Shopping Exhaustion

I hate shopping.

Summary of my recent shopping marathon.

Things overheard while shopping:

• Girl in dressing room: "I like this this shirts but the color is a little too Avera McKennen"
• Girl in shoe aisle talking on her cell: "Yah, I'm just in one of those moods. You know how I get so angry I could just flip out at any second. I feel like murdering a stranger." (I was the only person in sight)
• Mom coming out of Hobby Lobby: "If you hold my hand all the way to the car, you know what you get? OREOS!" I was just imagining what it would look like with that 3-yr-old eating Oreos by himself in the car seat.

First, I stopped in Rock Valley with a plan to go to all three kids' consignment shops, but since I arrived at 1:40pm, they close at 3:00pm, and I'm the world's slowest shopper, I never made it beyond Nearly New Town. Items purchased: I was pretty successful there, finding a winter coat and mittens and 5 shirts for Ryan. I also picked up 2 shirts for myself and a pair of shoes. Tip: I highly recommend this store for their wide selection and better clothes, but make sure you check brands. If the price is higher than 50% of retail, I usually opt for buying new. It can save you a ton on less-frequently-worn or name-brand clothes.

Then, it was on to the shopping mecca (as it's known to all of us in the Tri-State area) of Sioux Falls.

• Hobby Lobby. Items purchased: tons of wooden letters, and a I had to plan my trip by when each store was closing, so the first stop was Hobby Lobby. Here I got lost in the world of modge podge and floral arrangements. Besides picking out all the materials for an ambitious wall project, I also put together an entire floral arrangement...twice. (I picked out the vase, put all the flowers in it, decided I hated it, put them all back, then started over.) Tip: www.retailmenot.com will guide you to a 40% off one item coupon. I didn't buy anything too expensive, but used it on a $27 vase, so it was worth the time to find and print.
• Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Items purchased: most of the store.  1 clock, 1 giant mirror, 4 wall hangings, and 6 pillows later, I was wondering if this might be a good time to just buy a minivan already. Tip: Most people know about signing up for their email list to get 20% off one item coupons, but if you move to a new home, they'll send you a 20% off your entire in-store purchase. I took full advantage.

• Old Navy. Items purchased: NOTHING, even though I had a $5 reward.  They had between zero and none 2T boy shirts in the store and hadn't switched seasons in women's clothing so all the sweaters I saw online were nowhere to be found. Tip: We are over capris; it's like 50 degrees out!
• JC Penney. Items purchased: 2 argyle sweaters for me and a long-sleeve T for Ryan.  Penney's was where I got my first hint that this year's fall fashions may not be for me:

What could be worse than this long-sleeve maxi dress?

 Oh.  This.  (right across the aisle from the dress)

•  Gordmans. Items purchased: bag of Mambas and a tank top (and you better believe I used by 20% off coupon on it even though it was all of $4). The Mambas were excellent, by the way. Real thirst-quenchers. I got pretty into Mambas (and Riesens) after 5 years of having a booth next to Storck at the Sweets & Snacks Expo. Well done, Storck, well done. I still haven't purchased as much as I've eaten in your samples over the years, but I'm well on my way.

 
• Gordman's kept playing announcements about their "Associate of the Month" over the intercom. I'm guessing whoever he or she was, they weren't working the shoe department on a Saturday night. The whole store should have been labeled a federal disaster area. I wonder if they have an overnight crew on Saturdays...if they don't, they should, and don't sign me up.

• Kohl's. Items purchased: Welcome mat, 3 shirts and a pair of pants for Ryan. I finally found some 2T long-sleeve shirts that weren't licensed and weren't completely obnoxious, so I picked up 3--one baseball, one basketball, one football. This is how Ryan picks out his clothes and we were running low on baseball options. I got nothing for myself.

• Does anyone else walk through the aisles and think, "I hate all of this. There's nothing I would waste 5 minutes trying on and if you gave me everything in here for free, I'd probably still wear an old Hawkeye tshirt instead of it anyway." That's how I felt in almost every store, including Kohl's. Fall Fashion and Me are officially Fighting.
• Target. Items purchased...nothing interesting--we're talking toothpaste (grrrr why don't they carry the red cinnamon Crest? I hate green!), kleenex, and a big bag of Skittles.  By this time I was bleary-eyed, my hips ached, their lipstick display skipped right over my "number", and my droiny cart was about 2 seconds from being rammed into the racks and racks and racks of toddler girls clothes (ever notice how there's 3x more girls than boys clothes? Drives me insane. Tip: If you don't want to dress your kid like a lumberjack or in Cars 2 clothes, you can just forget it, because those are the 2 racks they are offering this year.
• McDonalds. Items purchased: Chicken McNuggets (for the first time in about 20 years--they were having a big 4-pc nuggets for $0.50 promotion and I am willing to eat questionable chicken parts for that price and that price only), small fries, and a frozen strawberry lemonade (the real reason I stopped at McDonald's). Keep in mind it was 9:50pm, I hadn't eaten since noon (except for the Mamba) and I had a 1.3 hour drive in front of me.

It was lightly misting most of the way home and I bet you can imagine just how thrilled I was to still be up, driving, trying to dunk my Chicken McNuggets in the dark, and knowing I just blew tons of money and yet didn't cross half the things off my list.


I hate shopping, and I REALLY hate spending 11 hours doing it.

Time to Line Up!

Ryan is going through the phase where he loves to line things up. One day when I was working in the office, he busily lined up all his zoo animals in his toy room.

Then, he started doing it with books, toys, or anything else he can carry.

My niece, Emily, went through this stage too. Hopefully it means he likes to keep things orderly and in place, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Fall Garage Sales

I had been looking forward to the city-wide garage sales for a long time and ended up finding quite a few good things for Ryan. The key to garage sale shopping for me is to have a plan. When I got the paper with the map and ads, I first go through and highlight the items I'm interested in, such as listing for boys clothes that include 2T/3T and any other toys/kids items I'd been looking for. Then, I went through and circled the sales on the map that were going to be open Wed. night so I could hit them after work. Then, I circled in a different color anything that would be open Thursday over my lunch break, and yet another color for sales open after work on Thursday. This way I only had 4-6 to go to over a 1-hour time period and wouldn't waste my time stopping at sales that didn't have the sizes I wanted, or wouldn't be open when I was available.  I probably spent a total of 3 hours shopping and paid way less than half of retail for everything--I would estimate I experienced 66%-90% savings on most buys.

Here's what I got:

• 2 pairs of pajamas (one never worn)
• winter coat and hat for next year ($3.00 total for both)
• 3 pairs of lined slick pants (my favorite thing for every day clothes)
• church outfit with sweater vest
• 2 button-down shirts
• 1 long-sleeve tee
• 1 long-sleeve thermal
• 1 NWC hoodie
• an ABC book, mini Magna-Doodle, and a firetruck book (Ryan proudly handed the lady a quarter)

Bright Ideas...that someone else already thought of

At my last job, my department was in charge of product development of new candies/novelties. Oftentime after a great brainstorming session we would come up with a brilliant idea or perfect name for a product, only to discover with a quick google search or check of uspto.gov that someone else had thought of our novel idea first.  The same thing happens to me every now and then and at the risk of making myself out to be a complete idiot, I thought I'd share a few genius ideas I've had.

1. After receiving numerous emails from colleagues with the mentioned attachment missing, I thought, "Wouldn't it be brilliant if my email program could read my email, determine whether I was talking about an attachment, then if I clicked send, it would say, 'aren't you forgetting something?'" Turns out it WOULD be brilliant. And the people at CodeTwo thought it was too. I have downloaded the Attachment Reminder and used this on my Outlook ever since. Now I'm just waiting for the "you seem to be in an angry and/or overly tired state of mind. I suggest you have a cup of hot cocoa, get a good night's sleep, and see if you still want to post that facebook status in the morning" filter.
2. In a coffee-haze overworked state at work one time, I remember thinking to myself, "I don't want to STAPLE these papers together and I don't want to TAPE them. I just want them to kind of stay together for a while but I might want to separate them later."  Enter...the paperclip.
3. After a blurry-eyed carpal-tunnel-aggravating online shopping spree trying to find artwork for our house, I thought to myself, "Why isn't there a place where I can just go SEE all this stuff in person so I can see the colors and size better?" Oh yeah...that's called a store.

Have you ever thought of a terrific idea...second?

Smooth Move, Nika

Nika is not exactly on my "best dog ever" list. She barely makes the "dogs whom I will let sleep on the floor in my living room" list, but one thing she isn't is boring. Tonight's fun started with her being hooked to her leash in the backyard as Ryan and I played various versions of "Mommy, kick the ball over here, No Mommy, THIS way." I heard some rustling and wasn't surprised to find her weaving herself around the bushes on the outside of the gazebo. It's kind of a gift. After a while, her whining intensified and I glanced over to see a speck of white showing through the latticework of the gazebo. The lattice work nailed to base boards which are set into the ground with no space under them. You're going to want to remember that for later.)

Closer inspection revealed just what a mess she had gotten herself into. Not only did she crawl under the 2-3" space under the deck, but shimmied over into the gazebo a/k/a prison area AND wrapped her leash around the center post a few times for good measure.

Here's a picture I like to call "Freedom: So Close, and yet so far away" *tear*

After 10 minutes of Ryan and I trying to lure her to walk in the correct clockwise direction to unwind herself, we literally hit a snag when her leash became entangled in the weeds and wouldn't go either direction. I finally reached my arm as far as I could into the abyss and unhooked her from her leash. She remained under there for another 10 minutes but I was finally able to coax her out. The leash, alas, is still hopelessly wrapped around the post because it turns out violently yanking on it does not, indeed, free it.

So, here's a helpful hint: If you have a gazebo (or a garbage can), don't get a Nika.

Haircut

I was so proud of how well-behaved Ryan was at his haircut tonight! He sat in the booster seat quietly staring at the big mirror and even let her use the noisy trimmer! He was in need of a cut so badly and my hack-job attempts at keeping his hair above his ears and out of his eyes needed to be erased toot suit.

Could we all agree that a trim was in order?

Ryan sat nicely under his penguin cape. He told the stylist all about his new cousin Saylor and about how he's going to have a birthday cake. When asked who might come to his birthday party, he thought probably "Gamma (my maiden name)" and "Milo."

 Getting all trimmed up!

Of course I don't have an "after" picture because while I was trying to sneak in a picture during our backyard soccer game, Ryan said, "No, Mommy. Phone in pocket."  It's humbling getting called out on cell phone etiquette by your less-than-two-year-old. So, just trust me in that he looks more like a big kid and less like a muppet who slept on its fur wrong.