I didn't think I would be so sad

This last week was fall break. It was a lot of fun. The bathrooms did not get cleaned, the floors were not mopped, and only a minimal amount of laundry was done. But we did make multiple trips to the park, we went to the zoo, the natural history museum, and plenty of reading books tickling, and cuddling. I really had a lot of fun this week, and I think my boys did too.

Now I'm feeling sad. School starts up again tomorrow. Back to rushing in the morning, and leaving my 5 year old in the care of someone else for six and a half hours. Alan has a wonderful teacher, but really, 6 1/2 hours? Why couldn't it be a little shorter? I feel like I am saying goodbye until Thanksgiving. It's funny how I was so ready for school to start but now I wish I had a little bit longer.

At least I have plenty of things to keep me busy. You know, the bathrooms, mopping, and of course laundry.

The kids got pretty worn out after all we did this week.

Whatever it Takes

Well, at least he's eating dinner.

I know my family is all laughing at this one because I was certainly the worst eater in my house and it is only fitting that I got one of my own.

I Know it's Not Halloween

But who can resist playing dress up?

You'd think I would have learned by now

This summer we had some crayons go through the dryer. Yes we had melted crayon over everything. I wanted to cry. Actually I may have cried, I don't remember. I did my research on the Internet to try and find a solution to getting crayon out of clothing, and there are about a million ideas out there including using gasoline (no thank you). So I decided to just use my favorite stand by stain solution and it worked! Only one shirt out of the whole load ended up having to be thrown away.

You think I would have learned my lesson but even though the kids are absolutely forbidden to put crayons in their pockets (like that makes a difference) I did laundry last week and sure enough we had a crayon go through the dryer again. I don't like doing laundry as is but having to check all the pockets adds like half an hour. So I came up with two lessons I learned from this experience.

1. Check the pockets before I do laundry
2. NEVER buy cargo shorts/pants for my kids (way to many pockets to check and my kids will always use the most obscure one to hide things in).

If you want to know my fantastic stain removal recipe it comes from the Tightwad Gazette

Add one cup each of powdered Cascade and Clorox II to 5 gallons of the hottest water to come out of your faucet. Soak overnight (or a couple days in my case), and launder as usual. This has worked great for me with the crayons as well as a myriad of other stains.

A First for Everything

There are a lot of firsts in Kindergarten. The first day of school, first loose tooth, and of course a first love letter.

I'm curious to see if the letter actually gets delivered. He has a tendency to be in love one minute and forget about it the next. I'm glad I got to archive this though.

Fresh and Easy

Do you have a Fresh and Easy near you? It’s my new favorite store. One was built near us last spring, but sounded kind of expensive to me so I didn’t go for a while. I finally went a few months later because someone had said that they had awesome flowers and I needed to buy flowers for someone. I was just going to buy flowers and check out the store but ended up filling my cart. You see they have theses fantastic 50% off deals. If food hasn’t sold by the “sell by” date it goes on 50% off. And it just so happened that I went a few days after Memorial Day, so all of the meat that they packaged on Memorial Day needed to sell. I bought about 15 lbs of meat and came home and froze it.


This last time I went there were a lot of breads at 50% off, french bread, wheat bread, tortillas, naan (they have great naan), and pita bread. And all that stuff freezes great! And if you need to pick up something else at the store, their normal prices are . . . well, normal. $1.59 for a dozen eggs (unfortunately that’s normal now), $1.15 for a cake mix. They are really decent prices. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Fresh and Easy has coupons for $5 off $20 or more. I get them frequently in the mail and you can always get some at the store food for the next week. Last time I went I forgot my coupon (curses!). At the check out they asked me if I had a coupon (even though 90% of what was in my cart was already 50% off), I said I didn’t, so he gave one to me! Did I mention that they have great customer service? I have at least 3 people ask me if they can help me every time I am in the store.

They even do 50% off with flowers. These only cost me $2.00!

FYI the best time to go is around 10 am. They have normally finished marking products down but they haven’t all sold yet. Don’t worry if they aren’t done yet. If you see something that isn’t marked down but should be, just ask. OK I’m done advertising, just check out the store if you get the chance.