Vacay

Well, we made it! Back to Oklahoma and man is it warm here. I was outside today in my capris and a t-shirt with no shoes and it felt nice. My kids were able to run freely without being bundled up like little snowmen. We did the trip differently this year and left the night before, drove for a few hours, stopped to sleep and the trip the next day was much, much more managable. I hate that 14 hour drive. Too long. It was nice that we broke it up a little. And now we have been warmly welcomed at Grandma and Grandpa's house where I can ignore my children more than usual because Grandma is here. I love it! Oh, and I am in a much better mood than I was the last time I posted. Sorry bout that. I guess I was just having one of those days. I am especially happy because my Cowboys beat the New Orleans Saints last night. It was a nail-biter there at the end, but they pulled it off. We needed it. Whew! You should have seen my happy dance! It was a doozy.

There was little to no excitement for the trip down for which I am extremely thankful. The only time I got a little flustered was when my children had to pee at some dinky, filthy, convenience store bathroom. There was no changing table of course so I was trying to change Sam standing up and the diaper broke. Audrey was already on the potty and Katie was unbuttoning her pants, so I ran out to the car to grab another diaper quick. When I got back, Sam was standing in the corner with his pants around his ankles peeing into the middle of the floor. Geez! Then Audrey freaked out about how gross this was and how she didn't want to accidentally step in it on the way to wash her hands. She had a little meltdown which created a tiny furor amongst all of us lukcy enough to be trapped together. By the time Vince knocked on the door to make sure we were okay, I was ready to bite someone's head off. Namely, his. It was his fault after all, right? We finally made it out of the bathroom and back on the road without further incident.

When we arrived, Grandma brought out an early gift for Sam. One of those little push-around popper toys. You know the ones. They should have been outlawed many years ago, but for some reason continue to exist, much to the delight of grandparents who love to exact revenge on their children. I'm going to be sure to take that to my Dad's house, who used to go crazy over those stupid toys when I was a kid because of all the racket my brothers and I made with ours. This is the same man who used to get together with his cousins and friends and a few beers and bet on which animal the see-n-say would stop on. "The cow says, Moooooooooo." Which sounds like a pretty good idea now that I have kids and our beer pong table has long since been put away. Shoot, any kind of activity that involves adult beverages sounds like a winner to me. I think there's some rum upstairs and some diet coke too. Anyone in?

Have a Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year too. We'll get together later to melt down all those popper toys when I get back home.

Poor Crock Pot

I killed my Crock-Pot today. I'm such a bird-brain sometimes. Got the roast all set to go, plugged it in, turned it on, and walked away. About an hour later I went to warm something in the microwave and noticed that something had flipped the breaker. That happens a lot with the microwave. If I try to use it at the same time as something else, it pops the breaker. The problem was that I hadn't used the microwave so something else had popped it. I looked at the Crock-Pot and it was off so I investigated and found that I had apparently gotten the cord stuck between the crock and the outside wall and it melted through the cord. Ruined my nice, big Crock-Pot, dangit. I loved that thing. I finished the roast in the oven. It turned out pretty good, if a little dry.

We are getting ready for our annual trip to Oklahoma and Texas for the holidays. I'm ready, but I'm not. It just takes so much out of us to travel that far. I'm really not looking forward to the drive. Sam gets really upset because he's a little monkey and hates to be strapped down. He just screams sometimes and there's nothing I can do but listen. The girls do a little better, especially now that they each have their own DVD player. Not to mention the amount of money that it takes to get us there and back. We are a little strapped right now. We just had so much happen all at once that it really took any extra that we had. At least we had that extra I guess. We'd be that much more behind if we hadn't. But I promised my mom. She's hosting for all of her siblings and their kids. There will be lots of people there. Some that I haven't seen in a while. We are trying to buy a camper before we get down there so that we don't have to stay in a hotel. I did just say we were broke, didn't I? The camper we are looking at is a small, 15 year old toy hauler. The amount that we pay for a hotel will just about pay for a third of the camper. And we do like to camp, so we would use it quite a bit. Anyway, we'll see if we end up getting it.

Not much else going on lately. Just getting ready for Christmas. I was done buying gifts early, so I feel ahead of the game a little bit. The problem with that is, I see stuff that I know the kids would like and want to get it, but have to keep reminding myself that I am done and they don't need anything else. I want to buy things because they are on sale and because there are so many kids that don't have anything and I want to get them things too. I can't afford to keep buying things just to give them away, but I can't help it sometimes.

Katie told Vince the other day that her left hand was allergic. As in, her right hand was hurting, but she couldn't finish because her left hand is allergic. Oookay. She has said many more hilarious things, but I can't remember them of course. She's so dramatic. Sheesh! I can hardly stand another complete and total temper tantrum over nothing. Ridiculous. She's having another as I type. Over clothing. She was dressed, now she's not for some unknown (even to her, apparently) reason and I asked her to get dressed again because she has AWANA tonight. Insert meltdown here--"But I'm TI-EHRD." Yeah, me too kid. Me too. I'm really not in the mood. I'm really close to just putting them to bed right now and skipping AWANA and taking out these STUPID, BARKING, PEEING ON MY JUST-CLEANED-CARPET $#^@^$% BEAGLES with my bare hands!!! Can you tell I'm not in a good mood? Maybe I should stop for now. I think there's some ice cream in the freezer calling my name. Actually, AWANA sounds pretty good right now. 2 hours without 2 of my kids. Yeah, I'm all about that at this point. I wonder if they take beagles?