It's a hard knock life.

Today we had sun again which is amazing up here in the grey, grey north. Because it was such a beautifulday and I was finally getting some natural Vitamin D I decided to do what any good stay at home mom would do. You know, deep clean the bathroom.

I can vividly remember the first time my mother taught me how to clean a toilet. She told me "Make sure you clean really well around the outside of the toilet. Little boys miss a lot." Little did I know then how important that information would become to me later in life, living in a house with three boys. Also, our bathroom here has grout which seems to make the nasty boy locker room smell ten time worse. If you are wondering how I know what a boys locker rooms smells like it is because I spent two years managing the wrestling team at my high school and we had to collect the dirty singlets and wash them. In order to do that we had to go through the locker room. Which we did covering our noses and spraying cans of lysol as we went. But hey, I earned two varsity letters for it, so...even trade.

I mixed together my magic concoction of washing soda, Dawn, white vinegar and hot water and got to work. If you are familiar with 80's movie musicals starring red headed little girls, it was like that scene in "Annie"(which I was obsessed with and wanted to be in when I was a little girl. I mean, who wouldn't want to live in an orphanage where you are treated badly and then win the lottery of adoptive parents in Daddy Warbucks and Grace Farrell and everyone sings and dances all the time?). I am talking about the scene where Molly and Pepper are scrubbing the bathroom floors-bucket, scrub brush and all. I even sang a few lines of "Hard Knock Life" (the original, not the Jay-Z version). Dreams DO come true.  It took a good 45 minutes but that bathroom is now cleaner than it has ever been before. Ever. I even got Henry into the action:

You'll stay up 'till this dump shines like the top of the Chrysler Building! 

So now I have a sparkly clean bathroom. Well at least until bedtime when showers and brushing teeth totally destroy all the work I did. Oh well.

Don't worry, I didn't go all Miss. Hannigan on Henry.  We did make it outside for a bit to enjoy the "sunshine light".

Tobyball

My brother had been bugging me to start blogging again so here I am. You are welcome bro. This post is dedicated to you.


Henry made up a new game today. It's called "Tobyball". He got the name from the fact that he stole on of the small tennis balls that my mom's dog, Toby, plays with and brought it back home from our last trip there. He was very excited to find it in his room when we cleaned it out today. He also found a  ping pong paddle in Wesley's room and thus Tobyball was born. It seems like a fairly simple game to play. One player throws the ball toward the other player who is holding the paddle. The person with the paddle has to hit the ball, at which point Henry runs around the room touching whatever he feels is a "base" (like in baseball but with about 6 or 7 bases). Then you start over again. He prefers if the door to his room is shut (his room is evidently the only place you can play Tobyball). However, the rules change as you go along such as you sometimes have to switch places so he can hit the ball and sometimes you have to sit in the tiny chair in his room to hit the ball. Also, sometimes he doesn't have to run around the bases, he just has to go back to his "home" spot after catching the ball. You only know of a rule change when he tells you ("No! I do it!" or "No! Mama throw it."). I received several penalties throughout the game for not playing correctly. He also cheers for himself throughout the game too ("Yay! I did it!"). There are not points or any type of scoring system which is good because there are no losers but also bad because there is no way to end the game. Until nap time. Ah, nap time. Mommy always has a way to rig the game.

Hoarding: e-mails.

One of my goals this year is to clean out our stuff and get it organized. After two moves within 6 months everything is a mess and needs to be gone through (again). I am also trying to simplify and make my life easier.

Yesterday I decided to tackle my e-mail inbox. I have one e-mail I use for EVERYTHING and there was seriously stuff in there from all the way back in 2005. I am not joking. It is very surreal to re-live the past 6+ years of your life through your e-mail. Time travel without leaving the couch. I relived my time with the Hunter Spouses Club (and oh did it feel good to delete some of those e-mails!), two deployments, having two babies (did you know I did not get a single e-mail the day Henry was born? How weird is that considering I get about 5 million e-mails everyday from all my e-mail subscriptions?). There was my original approval to CinCHouse (a military wives forum that I was on and helped me out tremendously when I was first starting out).

Hi, my name is Sundee and I am an e-mail hoarder. Set me up with a TLC special!

Things I learned as I was deleting over 20,000 (yes that is a real number, I am not even joking) e-mails.

• Lots of people must like my cooking because I keep getting invited to recipe exchanges even though I never respond to them (sorry, I mean to, I just forget and never get around to it!). 
• When unsubscribing to e-mails the use the tiniest sized print possible ( like this ). You have to get out a magnifying glass to see it. And then once you click on it it usually is not a simple "you're done!" it is "Are you sure?" "It's not to late to resubscribe!""Can you take this ten page survey to tell us why you no longer want us bugging you 5 times a day with updates?" Annoying. And I know I didn't get them all so I will be doing this for another week until they all stop. 
• It is impossible to delete any e-mails from my Grammy, especially the last one she ever sent me. 
• It is also impossible to delete any e-mails including pictures of my kids. Even if I have hard copies, saved copies and CD copies of said pictures. 
• My friend Steph C. always sends updated contact information, usually on New Years. I had seriously had no idea (sorry Steph! Keep sending the update though, I promise to look at them from now on!). 
• My mother in law, my mom, and my friends Amanda and Stephanie are the only people who actually write me e-mails. Everyone else just forwards me stuff. 
• Amanda writes the funniest stuff ever. Especially when she was bored while working security at the hospital. 
• A lot of people use the excuse that their computer/e-mail wasn't working and that is why e-mails did not get sent or received. Please, people I use that excuse too. You are not fooling anyone. 
• Petunia Pickle bottom does a lot of "surprise" outlet sales. 
• You actually will NOT die or have horrible things happen to you if you do not forward on chain e-mail letters (you are shocked on this one, I am sure).
• Found a few gems in there including a recipe for Tangerine Ginger Mojitos and how to clean your silver.

Ginger-Tangerine Mojito

2 oz. rum (mt. gay)
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 tsp sugar
3 sprigs mint
1/2 tsp peeled and roughly chopped ginger
Juice of 1 tangerine

Muddle lime, sugar, mint (save 1 for garnis), and ginger together in a tall glass
Add rum and tangerine and shake vigorously
Serve over crushed ice with mint and lime garnish.

How to clean your silver:

To clean tarnished silverware --Run a quart of hot water into the sink. Dissolve one tablespoon of  laundry water softener (top shelf of the commissary near Deft) and one tablespoon of salt into the water. Place a sheet of aluminum foil on the bottom of the sink and place your tarnished silverware in the mix, touching the aluminum foil. Silver touching the foil and submersed in water should become clean in about 10 seconds.  Works best on real silver pieces - shouldn't be used very often with silver plated items which may tend to ware over time, revealing the undermetel.

 

The science behind it for geeks like me.....the salt is present to help the transfer of electrons (ionization or commonly known as a "salt bridge").  The silver oxide is reduced to silver metal and the aluminum foil is oxidized to aluminum ions. So it is the electrons that are being shuffled around, and not the elements themselves.

Now that my e-mail is all cleaned out I am hoping that I am over my e-mail hoarding and it will stay that way for a while. We shall see. 

Dating Wesley

Today Wesley came to me and told me he wanted to take me out for a date. He said he wanted to go out to eat just me and him. Cool, I am down with that. I am a huge fan of "dating" your kids so that they learn how to treat (and be treated) by the people they will date in the future. Plus, it is a good way to get some one on one time. Also, I am hoping to get them into the habit of it so that when I am old and alone they will still come and take me out every once in a while.

I took a little nap this afternoon so Wesley got me up and told me that I needed to get ready so that we could go out. I asked him if he was going to get changed (he was wearing running pants and an Angry Birds t-shirt) but he told me, "No, this is what I am wearing. I can wear what I want. You can wear what whatever you want." Cool, I down with a casual date night. I then ask if he is going to pay for dinner. He says "Um, no, I need to save my money to buy the blue ninja (from Ninjago) but you can pay and show me how it's done." Okay.....

So we get ready, get in the car and I ask Wesley what he's in the mood for. He says "Burger King." This kid really believes that because the place is called Burger KING, it has the best burgers. I mean, it must if the it's run by a king, right? Riiiiiiiight. I talk him into Cheeburger Cheeburger instead. While we are there eating our food the family at the table behind Wesley has a fussy baby about Henry's age who is probably tired and obviously hungry. I am not judging because my kids have totally acted the way this baby did (throwing stuff, screaming, crying) when in the same situation. Been there and to show some sympathy I try to smile at them to know the baby is not bothering us at all. Just as I am doing that Wesley says (quite loudly) "And THAT is why you should leave your baby at home!". OMGosh....yeah, I don't know where he is getting that from. I shush him and remind him that he acted that way at that age too and to finish his meal so we can go.

After we finish up we head over to Target so shop around and walk off dinner and because I had a few items I needed to pick up. As we are leaving, Wesley asks if we can go to Starbucks when we are done paying to get a drink. He tells me it would be a nice way to end our date. I ask if he brought his money and if he is going to pay. He tells me no, he left his monies (no that is not a typo) at home but that I could pay but "don't worry Mommy, it will be good because it is part of our date. You will enjoy it. Isn't that nice of me? Don't I have good ideas?" Um, yeah. Your idea to take me on a date and have me pay for everything worked out GREAT for you. I remind him this will not work as well when he is actually dating a girl in the future. I am pretty sure he does not care right now about that.

Luckily I love the kid and I guess I will taking him out more often since his dating skills are obviously lacking. Hopefully by the time he goes on a real date it will go a bit better than this one did.

As you all know, Wesley birthday was on Tuesday and for his birthday we decided to take him out for lunch and a movie. The movie that he wanted to see was, of course, the newly re-released "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace-Episode I".

 I can still remember the first time I saw this movie in the movie theater. It was so big at the time my high school newspaper did an article on it (in fact, I still have a copy of that issue).  I was a senior in high school (or actually I had just graduated when it came out) and my boyfriend at the time (like all males at that time) *had* to go see it. So, like a good girlfriend I went with him. I had seen the original trilogy and I was very interested in seeing what made Darth Vader turn to the Dark Side. Of course, you get none of that in this movie and not having seen the original movies as a refresher on everything before I went I was a little lost as to how it fit into the whole series. This time around it was so much better to watch it for many reasons:

 1. It was Wesley's birthday present and it is fun to take your kids to do stuff you know they will love and are excited for.
2. It is the only movie in the prequels that does not have Hayden Christensen (AKA worst actor EVER) in them. His acting makes what would be a good movie barely tolerable. It is very hard to believe such a whiner ends up as Darth Vader. When those movies come out in 3D I will graciously agree to stay at home with Henry while C and Wesley have a father/son day out.
3. The movie does contain a REALLY good actor-Ewan McGregor. Even though he has horrible hair and is not standing in a field of daffodils (Steph C. you know exactly what I am talking about!):

4. I had already seen this movie about 5 billion times at home so I knew the story line and could focus on other stuff going in in the background and whatnot.
5. Knowing ahead of time what Jar-Jar Binks is going to say means you can tune him out thus making him less annoying. I actually laughed at some his slapstick actions this time around instead of being annoyed every time he opened his mouth. 
6. I had Wesley reassure me every time something was going to happen so I wouldn' t have to worry about the outcome ("Mommy, this is the race but don't worry, Anakin is going to win!"-sorry for spoilers to anyone who has been living under a rock for the past 11 years). 




There were a few downsides though.It was in 3D. Now, normally I don't like to see 3D movies because:

1. You have to wear glasses.

2. It never looks like it is jumping out at you, it just always looks like the background is further away.

3. It gives me a headache. 

Also, they added a bunch of stuff to it and it made it quite a bit longer. Because the movie is slow on action anyway it had Wesley begging for a fast forward button. Ah, if only....

Overall, good experience. 

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