Change Up

You guys, it's Thursday. I've hit that point in the week where I don't care much for anything except for how fast tomorrow will come and when do I get to put my kids to bed? In spite of my own personal resignations I've managed to stay pretty on top of things this week. Exercised every day? Check. Edible meals on the table? No extraneous spending? Double check. Children fed and cared for? Check Check. Daily shower before noon? Miracle check. Nap schedule enforced? Check. Work completed? Check. Measurable time spent NOT wearing sweatpants. When has this happened in the last 12 months, check.  

I mean really, it looks like I have things under control, and I suppose I do friends. But man, sometimes control can turn into a snoozefest, especially when the weather has been all menopausal lately. Case in point, I took the boys out for a quick yog on Monday, thinking the snow wasn't supposed to hit until later. I was mistaken and was soon penitent for my colossal misjudgment as I sprinted 2 miles home in the sideways blowing precipitation. We finally made it home and after a few minutes passed in which I contemplated throwing up, because guys, sprinting 2 miles at panic-speed is a lot different than casually jog/walking them let me tell you what, my eyes un-crossed and I took a hot shower to warm up. The children? They were fine. Fortunately I had remembered to dress them warmly, pad them with blankets, and even one for the top. They were tented in. I even clothes pinned the top one on because I am not so serious about the yogging to have invested in a rain cover or anything smart like that. Why am I even telling you this story? Oh yes, to demonstrate how desperate we can get for a change of scenery. Enough so that we're willing to play chicken with some storm clouds. Obviously that was one gamble that did not pay off for me. Neither did that one time I hit the garage with my mom's van when I totes thought I had it cleared. Nope. No dice. A career in Vegas likely will likely remain out of reach. 

Thankfully, the sun came out today for a bit. The park was nice. The boys took naps. I put off my work until later and watched "Castle"on the DVR, then decided to write out this bit of nothing as well. Oh, and then I took some pictures of myself on photobooth because what else is there to do? 

raise the roof

I am very serious about this
very serious
and somewhat mournful

you really could fit a couple of quarters up there
and no, I've never tried

So that's it I suppose. Happy Confrince weekend for all you fellow Morms out there. I'm making crepes for breakfast on Sunday.

Because I can.

This Factory is Temporarily Out Of Service

Tonight I've been killing time while my nails dry (again, I wash a lot of dishes so these home manicures don't last so long), watching "The Proposal" on free preview Starz (Ryan Reynolds: boiiiiiing!!), and hip-hopping around the internets. In my journeys I visited the blogs of several family members, a few friends, and then you know, random people they link to on their sidebars. It's Saturday night, I'm allowed. The oreos and milk? Also allowed. The weekends are judgement free zones at the Verbie house. In about 10 minutes when this movie is over, we're going to pack this laptop back to the bedroom and watch another movie because why shouldn't we? Movies in bed with your husband on the weekend are pretty much mandatory when you can. Last night we watched "The Fighter" with helloooo Marky Mark (hey donkey) (there are a lot of parentheses in this post) (sorry), and an almost unrecognizable Christian Bale. I guess it won tons of awards, maybe one of them was for most bad words (SORRY MOM), either way it was pretty good.

Anyway, back to the random stranger blogs. I read a few posts a mom wrote about her 10 month old baby daughter and found myself getting all misty eyed because babies man, they grow up SO FAST! We have had our fill of babies this year. Remember how I told you that all of my immediate siblings, myself included, welcomed a new baby in the past year? Yes, lots of babies. Babies everywhere! We love to reproduce apparently. As such, I'm thinking it might be a few years before any of us decides to pop out anymore so I have been clutching onto my Fatty for dear life. 

Don't get me wrong. These babies, they are a lot of work. The newborn stage is not so much my strong suite. Now that he's 6.5 months old, I think we've finally found our groove. Naps are regular, nights are mostly uninterrupted, nursing is no longer my own personal hell. He laughs, he rolls incessantly, his hairs have grown back. My heart goes pitter patter for his gummy smile and drool laden kisses. 

What can I say? It's love. True love. 

It's now 12:35

Listen, it is 11:53 in the pm and I am still awake which is a problem. But I just painted my fingernails, which was dumb, thus proving that after 11 p.m. I can't be held responsible for my own actions and there you go. I'm supposed to be working, which obvs isn't happening. The window is open in my browser, does that count? I think I'm all wired because once the fruits of my loins were in bed, I went to the gym and ran 3ish miles. I sort of walked or held onto the side rails for dear life for part of that, but you have to start somewhere, right? RIGHT. Battlefats '11! I'm serious this time, mostly. 

I feel like I've been a good mom lately. The Fat One has been sleeping in measurable quantities, which means I've been sleeping in measurable quantities, which equals up to happiness all around. The Nub, well, he's hilarious basically. Except for the part where he rudely barges in on me toweling off after the shower and slaps my butt cheeks like they're bongos or something and says "shake your bunnies Mom!" and then asks where my ding ding is. I have yet to respond with an acceptable answer on that one. Or even better, when you ask him what his name is and he smiles and says, "Jesus". Wow, really? And all along I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT THIS ONE!  Never mind that sometimes he paints his face and not accidentally either. 

Gah. He's the best. 

Don't forget about the CSN giveaway. Last time I checked there were only 28 entries which, you know is awesome for those people, but what's the matter with the rest of you? You don't have to buy lights. CSN has like a jillion different "stores" with just about everything you can imagine. It's like Amazon, but maybe better because if you win you get $55 for FREE! I myself have decided to put my cash toward either a new convertible car seat for the Heavy One, or a cast iron skillet for ME, or maybe a rug to go under my kitchen table. Have I ever told you that I'm terrible at making decisions? Shizz man. 

Anyway, go enter if you haven't already. I like you. The End. 

She's Part Leprechaun

Hip Hop And Hooray!

It's my Connie's birthday today!!

I love this lady (obvs), and look, she can still rock a diaper bag.

Mom, 

thanks for being my bff, my mama, the best grandma to my kids, my hero, and all that I ever hope to be 

someday.

you are the wind beneath my wings, and all that stuff.

xoxo

Happy Birthday/St. Patrick's Day!!!

psst... don't forget to enter the CSN Giveaway

Sprucing Up For Spring Giveaway

I live in a house full of random light fixtures. The blame for this sad travesty can be heaped upon the shoulders of the crazy incompetent who tried to renovate this joint several years before we ever moved in. Seriously, the guy thought 20 can lights in the kitchen was a great idea (it wasn't) and also never finished what he started, so about 10 of those lights are just bulbs in a hole. It's charming, and by charming I mean ridiculous. And don't even get me started on the outdoor lighting. Let's just say motion lights that activate willy nilly are doing not a whole for my irrational fears involving a scenario where I am murdered in my bed with a rusty hook. We should probably get that worked out, before I take to sleeping with a rape horn, or carving knife. Can you imagine what would happen if Paul tried to make a move and I was thus prepared? I mean seriously...

Maybe your light situation is a bit more, erm, classy then mine, but I bet you'd jump at the chance to win some free cash you could use to give your surroundings a spring facelift, I know I would. Lucky for you, CSN stores to the rescue! They are offering one of you lucky commenters $55 to spend at any of their variety of stores. You don't even have to buy lights with it if you don't want to. They were nice enough to give me some cash too so I will be rectifying the light situation promptly.   

All you gotta do to enter is leave a comment. That's it. I'll choose a winner next Thursday and notify via email.

(so you better make sure your email is associated with your blogger profile, or leave your email address on your comment because if you don't that sucks for you)

AND GO!

***UPDATE! The giveaway is now CLOSED. 


Thanks for entering! Random.og told me the winner was #29 Caitlyn from Cat+Tadd=Sam :-)

What we do on Fridays

we eat chips and watch Tom and Jerry

(and play with photo booth)

that's all.

Cheeky Monkey

Geez, has it been boring around these parts or what? I can hear the birds chirping from here. I keep meaning to get on this business and post something of value but then I remembered that this is me we're talking about, and went ahead and had a good laugh. Oh, I kill myself, I do.

Tomorrow is Friday which also happens to be Mr. Fatty's 6 month check-up. That's right, the plump one had his happy half birthday on Wednesday which entailed a lot of the same thing he does every other ordinary day so I suppose he didn't think it was that big of a deal. I know at some point I'll have to give him a more PC nickname, but until he stops being something other than a fat cherub, I am not going to worry myself over it. Bless his rolls, I love that kid. And besides, good nicknames sort of present themselves. You can't just bestow them randomly. Am I right or am I right? I'm right.

In honor of his midway to one mark, I present the following:

Life is good around here friends, yes it is.

Stay tuned, I may or may not have a giveaway in the works in the next week or so. It might be a good one. I mean nothing like the stuff PW or heck, even Vanessa (I was a winner!) can drum up, but good enough for MLAK indeed.

30 Strangers 2011

Remember last year when Connie and I got called in to pinch hit for Justin Hackworth and his 30 Strangers 2010 project?

Yeah, that was cool. And lucky. We didn't make the first cut, but then someone backed out. The rest is history. Like I said before, the chance to have beautiful photos of my mother and I taken together by someone as talented as Justin (and for an excellent cause) was one I would have been crazy to turn down, even if my hair style at the time was sort of, special, in a growing it out sort of way. But I digress. 

It's now that time again, 30 Strangers 2011 is here. Last time I checked Justin's blog there were 355 entries for this year. The odds are long friends, but not impossible, so go on over, read up on why he does it in the first place, and throw your hat in the ring. 

You won't regret it. 

Proof That Snow Never Helped My Cause

I finally made it back to my house yesterday afternoon. Home from our escapade in Lake Tahoe, and when I say escapade, I mean escapade, on Sunday. Then a few days of not-so-single parenting at my parent's house while Paul finished up some work back in California. Having Connie and Lane around 24-7 is rather handy you know. Especially when the bedroom you are sleeping in is downstairs while all the children sleep upstairs by their grandparents. This all equals out to more sleep for you, and as thusly, is awesome.

Back to the escapading; we arrived into Reno about 9:30 pm Thursday night. After procuring the rental car and talking the man into upgrading us from clown car to Camry, we headed to the Wal-Mart for provisions. We also secured some chains for ourselves though the weather seemed fairly non-threatening and hey, we could always return them, right? Wrong. 8 miles up the road I sat in the nice heated car taking pictures and eating twizzlers while Paul did this:

Welcome to Donner Pass! Turns out the biggest snowstorm of the year arrived the same night we did. Of course. 

45 minutes later we were allowed through the chain checkpoint and trundled our way on up though the mountain. The closer we got to the lake, the heavier the snow fell, and the more cars we saw sliding off the road. Here is my question, why do they even sell rear-wheel drive SUV's? Let's file that under "questions I will never ever know the answer to, ever". By some miracle we finally made it to the community where our lodgings were located. To find our place the directions were to "turn right at the second cul-de-sac after the tennis courts". Except we couldn't make out the tennis courts, or anything else for that matter. We crept down an un-plowed road only to end up at the bottom of a very steep, very snow covered hill, in the middle of the dang night, with no one, and I mean no one, around. And then we realized the lake, you know, LAKE TAHOE was lapping to shore rather loudly right outside my window as if to say, "hey guys! come on in for a little swim!".  

So let's recap; big hill, middle of the night, blizzard conditions, lake, very slippery, Toyota Camry, COMPLETELY LOST, zero visibility, possibility of plunging said Camry into frigid lake very high, NOT GOOD (caps for emphasis)! 

Bless Paul, at this point I was laughing maniacally in a crazy sort of HEY WE MIGHT DIE HERE sort of way and I'm sure he wanted to go ahead and throw me in the lake anyway. After several attempts to get the Camry up the hill, and an equal amount of failed and quite terrifying slides back down, we eventually got as far up as we could, said a desperate prayer, and then I jumped out, wedged my feet into a snowbank, told Paul to drop it into 3rd and we'd see if I could give her a little push for leverage (since Paul and his big guns were busy trying to keep us from sliding to impending doom). And you know what? It worked. Me and my superwoman muscles handled that business. WYOMING REPRESENT, and suck on that hill of death and snow. The moral of this story is I am awesome and prayer can outfit you with some brute strength when you need it. Amen. 

The next 24+ hours looked like this: 

 7 am Friday morning, much, much more snow to follow

Once we finally made it to our cabin, essentially we didn't leave for almost 2 days and about 3.5 feet of snow later. Other than feeling so isolated it was almost creepy at times, the experience was exactly what I had hoped for. Sleep, more sleep, eating, and doing nothing. Perfect. When the sun was shining again, we went back to look at that hill and they had plowed up a bunch of snow at the top of it to prevent anyone from going down there. To see it in daylight was almost more freaky because it really could have ended up badly for us down there. But it didn't, we are alive and well, and no one gets to cash in on our measly life insurance policy after all!

Now I need a beach to recover from all that snow. Perhaps a "business" trip to Hawaii is in order? Hmmmm?  No? A girl can hope.