OK. I just checked out my friend, Angie’s blog, to find this great deal! Handbag Planet is giving away 24 handbags on October 15…one each hour, to celebrate the launching of their new website. Click here to enter!
Today was a huge work day for us. Sam went with his sisters up to Topinabee today to lay to rest Penny’s ashes in Mullet Lake. Kind of a depressing occasion…but I hope they enjoyed themselves, being together and sharing memories of mom and stuff. While he was gone, me and the kids worked our butts off. We did a lot of work around the house…but mainly worked in the trailer…packing it up and cleaning it out so we can put it away for the winter. It was a lot of work, and I still have to bring in more stuff and vacuum the trailer out. The kids worked toward earning prizes. I made up a chart of boxes they could color in for each job they did. When they got six jobs done they earned a prize (sam had bought fruit stripe gum and candy bracelets for incentives) and then I made up a chart of prizes (up to six) that included the candy along with a craft and a trip to the park and a dollar. Savannah made it to a dollar, but Karson and Max only made it to the candy. It’s really hard to get Karson to do chores. He just doesn’t care about the prizes like the other two. He did do several jobs without complaining today, and I appreciated that. So I took the kids to dinner for a reward for helping out today. They wanted to go to Burger King and get the idog kids meals. I gave in. They really like them. I think they are kind of stupid, though, because they don’t even play a tune. At least they could have had part of a song on each one. All they do is light up. But they really like them, so I guess whatever makes them happy. Anyway, after that we ran over to Office Depot (Jackson) to pick up some report covers. I wanted them to cut up and use in pocket charts to highlight our sight words in our stories and stuff at school…but they don’t make the colored report covers like they used to when I was a kid, apparently. They are all clear. I did find some colored transparent plastic pockets (like the kind you can put in a binder) and I think they will work for what I need. I know you can buy these from educational resources, but I wanted them now and I thought it might be a good alternative. Anyway, I also walked to the back of the store to check out the price of the laminating film (my friend at school has a laminator and I use it a lot, so it’s my turn to get the film) and as I suspected after an expensive meal at Burger King (I can’t believer Burger King charges 3.79 for their kid’s meals…and if you want to make a healthy choice and have apples instead of fries, it’s an extra .49 cents!) I didn’t have quite enough money to buy that, so I’ll have to go by tomorrow. And as we were heading to the checkout, I noticed that there was a display on the end cap of an aisle of Color Surge paper/markers by Crayola. I love this Crayola product. It’s perhaps my favorite product ever! The markers color super bright on the special double sided color paper. I love that the paper is thick like cardstock, and I just love how fun it is. The bad thing about this product is it tends to fade, just like the color wonder stuff does…only maybe not quite as bad. It doesn’t do well in high humidity and water or any liquid will ruin it. It does laminate well though, and as far as I can tell, it doesn’t fade if it’s laminated. I won’t say anything else about, but that if you like to doodle and you like new pens, markers, stuff like that…and even if you are over 40 years old…it’s really fun to play with and I would highly recommend going out and buying some to play around with. You can always use the excuse it’s for my grandkids/neice/nephew. :) So onto why I called this post “What a deal!” I noticed as we were on our way out that the Color Surge products were on sale. for 3.99. That is a great deal because they are usually between 6.99 and 7.99. At Office Depot the original price was 7.99. So we decided to get two because that would pretty much use up the money that I had. Then I get up there to pay, and he says it’s seven dollars and something. I say “how much?” and I lean over to look at the cash register…and those Color Surges only scanned for 1.00 a piece! So I sent Savannah back to get them all. I didn’t end up getting all of them. I got 10. Which if you add it up, is a savings of around 70.00! I am always reading these blogs of my friends, Angie and Sara and they are always writing about the sweet deals they get with rebates, coupons and sales at stores. I’d love to get into that…but I so don’t have the time for it. So this kind of surprise is SO great. And my kids in art class are totally going to love using Color Surge for their projects! They don’t get to use fun products like that very often, because usually they are so expensive…and my budget for art supplies is SO tiny! Anyway, I am very excited about my great deal. I did leave a few of them in the display, so if you want Color Surge for 1.00, you might be able to get them if they are still there. Good luck and have fun!
Savannah drew this picture with Color Surge.
I was so looking forward to this weekend. The past few weeks have been really difficult to get through. There’s just been a lot going on and we’ve been busy and stressed out about all kinds of things. The weekends seem like the only chance we have to come up for air…and we take full advantage. Last Sunday we all stayed home just because Sam did (he was sick). It’s not really a good reason…but it was nice to just hang out with no agenda…nothing to get ready for…nowhere to go.
Last night Sam and I went on a much anticipated date. Big Jasmin came over to be with the kids. I think they had a really good time with her. It’s been a few weeks since they’ve seen her. They miss Mimi a lot. So we were driving up to Lansing (we often go there on our dates) and I asked what he was planning to do. And he said he was taking me shopping! What!? I was shocked. This had never happened. Apparently he had some money and wanted to buy me some new clothes. Nice. So we got to the store around 7:30 but found out they were closing at 8. So I tried on as much as I could in that half hour and we walked out with 2 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of pants for work, a sweater and three shirts. We save 83.00 because of the sales, too! It was the fastest shopping trip I have ever done. But it was fun. After that we went over to Pancheros for some yummy burritos. Then we went to see a movie I am not proud to admit I saw, but it did have a good story line. Anyway, we had a good time.
My plan for today was to get a lot of house work done. It didn’t go as planned. Sam left early this morning to help out at Penny’s Estate Sale. I was expected (mine and Sam’s expectations) to spend the whole day cleaning and really make some progress on it. It’s been a while since I have done some good thorough cleaning and every room needs some attention desperately. So tonight, Sam comes home and he’s disappointed. I am disappointed with myself and feel really horrible about not even coming close to meeting our expectations. It’s just so hard when you have four kids running around, demanding stuff, wanting to eat every 5 minutes, changing diapers, cleaning up messes! (And there were a lot today…let’s see: spilled milk, spilled water, Karson’s playmobile mining rocks, rice, cheerios, paper airplanes and all the remnants of the process of creating them - they had fun with the stapler that I brought home from school this weekend, a broken glass, spilled malt-o-meal, bathtime - need I say more, and then there are all the toys and clothes and dishes!) I seriously felt like I spent the day following the kids around and cleaning up stuff. They were not very cooperative with me today. I noticed that when I try to discipline them, they ALWAYS ask for more chances…which tells me that my discipline is not very effective…which makes it REALLY hard to get them to do anything. Sam has no problem with that…but when I am home alone with them, it is always a struggle. On top of that, Jaz is teething. Well, she has her top two teeth now, but maybe there are more coming in…I haven’t really checked. But she was very fussy today. Didn’t eat well. It seemed like every time I tried to feed her she was overly tired and wouldn’t eat much. She did not take good naps today. Especially her afternoon nap. She woke up like 3 times. She was a little congested…maybe she just didn’t feel all that great, I don’t know. It’s hard to know what to do when it isn’t obvious what the problem is. I felt like I tried everything…but nothing worked and so I was frustrated a lot today, which made it hard on the kids probably, because I felt under pressure to get stuff done, and started to realize I couldn’t and I kind of took out my frustrations on them because they hadn’t done much…but I really didn’t create the opportunity for them to do things to help clean up. They did a little. But I mean, if I would have been more about making it fun and coming up with a goal to work towards or something, it might have been more successful.
Tomorrow is another day. We will all be at church. I am going to enjoy it. We’ll come home and eat our dinner and have our “family nap time”, I’ll do some loads of laundry, put it away, and do my lesson plans probably…hopefully I will not have to stay up till 2 or 3.
I think I am starting to get sick, because my throat is sore or swollen on one side…it’s really painful. It’s probably my body wearing down…I am sure I can’t keep up these late nights too much longer without getting sick. I should be in bed right now, actually. I think I will go put the laundry in the dryer and start another load and then I am going to bed.
Here’s a picture of the kids on their first day of school this year…Savannah in 3rd grade, Max and Karson in Kindergarten.
Yeah…I know I have to go to work in five hours…Tonight Sam brought all the kids over to me at school. We stayed there till 7. I was so glad to get some extra time in my classroom. There is so much to do. The kids were great. Jasmin slept a little on the pillows in my classroom library and the kids played outside on the playground and with the blocks and stuff in my room. There are lots of things for them to do in the kindergarten room. Max spent a lot of time looking at his comic book. He is so cute trying to find words he knows and stuff. He is really doing great and I am so glad we had him stay in Kindergarten. Karson is catching on to stuff too. I overheard him under my easel reciting the alphabet chart. (A /a/ apple, B /b/ bird…) He’s been singing all his little songs he learns at school too. It’s really cute. Savannah was a big help. She helped me grade papers. Actually she just organized them and stuck stickers on them for me and wrote WOW! on the really good ones. I’ll go back through them later, but it has saved me some time. When we got home we ate and got ready for bed. Sam went back to work. He has been trying to get everything done for Penny’s memorial service tomorrow. At midnight he came home and gave me the pictures and asked me to make a display for the lobby on a presentation board. I kind of panicked a little because I was just thinking about going to bed. Well I found Sherry and Kevin’s old presentation board and cleaned it off, mounted the pictures on some coordinating paper and arranged them on the board. I wanted a few more pictures so I went digging through boxes and actually found several more I could use. There’s one of Sam and Sherry and her with wigs on or something…really funny and another one of her carving the Thanksgiving turkey. Anyway, my house is a mess, the kids lunches aren’t packed (I think I’ll let them get hot lunch) and Sam’s Aunt and Uncle will be at our house around noon…which is about the time I should get home from school. (I am taking the afternoon off) Then I am going to go pick up some kind of a top to wear with my black pants and pick up the kids and we’ll head up there around 4 or so. It will be fun to be with family and that I am looking forward to. It’s kind of hard watching the video Sam has been working on…I miss her so much when I watch it. Well, I am going to go to bed for my 3 hours of sleep. (for the 2nd night in a row)
I decided to delete that post about my first day of school under the advisement of my husband. sometimes I just start writing and I don’t think about what the ramifications of what I am writing could be. Not that anything happened…but I was venting, and I think some of those things are probably best not shared with the world. So I deleted the post. First time I ever did that. Sorry if you didn’t get a chance to read it. I’ll write more about this week later.
We arrived home at about 12:30 this morning. It was so nice to be able to walk into a clean house…though now that we’ve been living in it for approximately 14 hours, you couldn’t tell it was ever clean! We had a friend stay here while we were gone, and seriously, you can not even tell she lived here for a month. It looked exactly the same…plus it was dusted and vacuumed and just as clean as I left it. Nice. Thanks, LD.
Since waking up this morning at 7:30 (thanks to Karson wanting to play with every toy in our house) I have really appreciated being able to take my time in the shower, run as much water as I need to clean dishes without having to worry about my tanks filling up, using as much toilet paper as I wanted, my garbage disposal, and even my laundry room…where I can dump all my stuff and do it at my leisure. Though camping is fun, it is definitely an adjustment in lifestyle - and especially with 4 kids!
This summer (or the last four weeks, rather) has been really difficult for our whole family. We enjoyed our time on the road, but it just seemed harder this year. I think a lot of it had to do with Sam’s mom being sick and then dying. I don’t regret being gone or the time we spent at the fairs. Most of the time it was enjoyable…I was just ready to come home.
I start working this week. I don’t have to work tomorrow, but I am going in around 8 because I have so much to do in my classroom. I think Sherry, my sister in law might be able to come and help out too. I feel like I can use all the help I can get. I found out this weekend that I have 27 kids in my class. And though I am glad for the high numbers for our district…I am freakin out at having a class with that many kindergarteners, and I am secretly hoping maybe a few won’t show up. It’s also going to be really challenging, because the other kindergarten teacher who I was going to rely on a lot, is going to be gone for several weeks. She had major surgery (unexpected) and has to go through chemo. We are praying for her that her body can fully heal. Anyway, so they needed a sub, but I think that another teacher is actually going to sub for Randi so that we don’t have 2 teachers trying to figure everything out…and that they may hire a sub for her class. That will be fun, because me and the other teacher are pretty good friends and I think we will have fun working together on stuff.
We are still trying to figure out what to do about childcare for Jasmin and Karson this school year…but we have some possibilities. Jasmin, our nanny, has decided to move on…though she will be watching the kids for me this week while we get everything settled as I go back to work.
I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated anyone on what’s going on with all of us. Last week was a really tough week. Shelly left on Wednesday morning to go back and be with Penny and help Sherry out. So we worked the rest of the week, just me and Sam and Jasmin. Along with taking care of the kids, Jasmin also did the pictures. We did ok just the 3 of us. But we were so busy. There wasn’t a lot of down time. We got the call that Penny had passed away on Friday morning. It’s hard to think that we will never see her again. I will miss her so much, but she is so much better off in Heaven. I am sure she is having a blast. Anyway on Sunday night we headed down to Gaylord, but the suburban broke down. I had to leave sam there and drive the kids and our new babysitter to Gaylord to the hotel. (When Jasmin’s mom came to pick her up on Saturday, she brought Sarah. Sarah is a college student who was recommended by a good friend.) Then I left and went to get Sam back in the UP. He had gotten the show towed to a shop nearby. I got there around 4 am. We slept in the car until someone arrived…only to find out they weren’t doing any work this week because they are moving to a new location. So we had to get it towed again to a dealer in Newberry. Sam and I hitched the show to the truck and drove back to Gaylord. We actually have a nice set up there. There are two other free kids acts and we are all kind of together and they let us camp out behind the show which makes things very convenient. Sherry and Kevin and their two kids came up and are staying at the hotel with Shelly and Mike. We eat lunch and dinner at the camper and hang out around there all day. I think the kids are having a lot of fun playing with their cousins. The weather has been nice and cool, though I have to say I was pretty cold last night. I am hoping for time for a nap today, because last night Jasmin didn’t sleep well. I got a new formula, and thought maybe that was it. But I looked at her teeth this morning (2 front teeth) and her gums are white and swollen and now I am thinking it might be that more than the formula. Anyway, maybe I will be able to write more later. Gotta go for now.
Well we made it up to Marquette…it wasn’t that bad of a trip. We arrived around 6 on Tuesday I think. Set up camp…set the show. The fair didn’t start till today. Our shows went pretty well. We had a lot of people at our first show, but the other two were not as full. It was really windy today, and with all the sand, it made everything really dirty. After we finished the shows and cleaned up and ate our dinner (Croatian chicken from the Croatian chicken guy behind our show) we headed over to our hotel. We get a hotel room with our contract for the duration of the fair…so we brought the kids swimming. We don’t sleep here, just shower and hang in the pool during our down time. It’s nice and the kids are really enjoying the swimming pool. We were kind of surprised to find that there are no showers at this fair. (we think maybe it’s a fairly new fairgrounds) So the first couple of days we were here, we had to go to the YMCA to take our showers. It was great with the kids because they played in the kids gym and got to play in the pool…it even had a waterslide, and they only charged us 10.00 for a family day pass. We also found a great vacation bible school for the kids at a church just down the road from the fair grounds. They are doing Group’s Power Lab. The church is really cool, and the workers are so friendly. They are having a really great time there, and it gives them something different to do.
So we have three more days here and then on sunday we head to Escanaba. It’s only an hour away, so it won’t be too bad. We will be busy though on Monday because our show starts at 1 I think. It doesn’t really take too long to set up the show…especially with 3 of us.
Sam’s mom is still not doing too well. My mom got to go and help take care of her this week and I think that was good, Penny was glad she was there. Keep praying.
We are our way to Marquette. We intended to travel the entire way from Saginaw yesterday, bet we were tired and it’s a lot of traveling with kids…so last night we stopped off in Indian River to a little spot we know. It’s a really nice campground and since they have free wireless, I thought I might update you on what’s going on. So I just got done washing up bottles for the baby and getting a new stash of cheerios ready for the diaper bag. I am sitting here typing on tiny computer…it actually is half the size of a regular one, keyboard included…I’m not a very fast typer on this baby.
We hope to leave soon, this morning. Shelly and Jasmin have all the kids in a camping cabin, which gave Sam and I some much needed time to ourselves…well we have the baby, but anyway…We just finished a very successful week at the Saginaw County Fair. It wasn’t a very well attended fair, but our shows were enjoyed by most everyone who came. We had a lot of great responses, and though we started out a little shaky at the beginning of the week, by the end the shows ran very smoothly. Shelly does such a great job narrating the story. The intention is that Sam and I learn it too. I don’t have a cool pirate costume yet though…and even though I am willing, I never could do as great as she does. Sam mostly stays behind the scenes and runs the sound, but goes out and talks to the kids in between shows with Shelly. He’s even had kids ask for their picture with him.
Tear down went pretty quick the other night. Now that we are starting to figure out the tent and how it goes together. I think it will go a lot faster setting it up than the first time. It was really crazy, and it was like 1:00 in the morning when we finished packing everything up at the show. Jasmin was with the kids in the camper sleeping. Shelly had gone home to stay the night with Penny, or we would have had her help too. Anyway, we were all ready, but next to us and behind us was the ferris wheel and a car that was being given away from a drawing, which hadn’t been moved yet. When Sam pulled in of course, there was nothing there and the tongue of the trailer was on that end and there was really not a lot of room to manuever a car to hook it up to the trailer. Sam approached twice and then came in a different way that I suggested and with alot of backing up and pulling forward he eventually got lined up with the hitch and we could hook it up and back the trailer out. It was pretty amazing that we got it out of there, we thought. So Sam wanted me to take a picture with the camera phone. So I started climbing up the bleachers…not thinking about how slippery they might be when they are wet with dew…and I fell. Not off completely, just a could of seats, but hurt my leg pretty bad. It’s ok now though, just bruised…anyway, the picture of it is above, but it doesn’t really tell the story. Anyway if you want to see the pictures from the Saginaw County Fair, check out the Pirate Island website.
More later!
Sam as a pirate at the Saginaw County Fair - check out mypirateisland.com for more pics
see ya
