ROAF – Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is a wonderful holiday. Moms do so much and it’s nice to honor her.

However there are women out there who would love to be a mother, yet have not been blessed to have little ones harassing them from dawn to dusk. At one point I was one of those women. It took us a good while to get pregnant with Rachel and the rest of our girls. Chad was always a sweetheart on Mother’s Day even when I wasn’t a mom and would get me flowers and chocolates. It can be a really hard day for some.

The lady who plays the piano in Primary (children’s church) is one of those women. She is very nice and in her 40’s, never married. I used to lead the music and I was chatting with this sister (Since we are all God’s children, instead of saying Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith, we say Brother and Sister Smith.) about what song to sing to the moms for Mother’s Day. As we talked about the music this sister did tell me that she would love to be a mom and she just dreaded this holiday. She doesn’t have any sibling so she can’t be a “mother” to nieces and nephews. Super sad.

So for our RAOF, we decided to get this sister some Mother’s Day stuff. Since I have banned the two little ones from Walmart, last Saturday we had to go to another store.

Yup, back to the Piggly Wiggly. Who in the world picked this name for a grocery store?

The girls found the flowers, there wasn’t a lot to choose from. They decided to get her a pink corsage.

Elizabeth is posing for this picture. That is her thinking stance.

Then we hit up the candy aisle looking for some nice chocolates. They didn’t have a lot of choices but we found something.

Sometimes it’s easier when there is literally only 3 boxes of assorted chocolates to choice from.

Off to the check out as the card section had 0 Mother’s Day cards.

We went with some truffles, which I have no idea what they taste like. Hopefully good.

I took the kids home, feed them lunch and went to Walmart, alone. They had tons of flowers and chocolates…and toys and games and all sorts of stuff that bring out the monsters in my kids. That is why they are banned. I found a very nice card about having a mother’s loving heart and got a bag to put it all in. Done.

Sunday we got to church before it started and pulled the missionaries aside. We explained that we wanted to give a Mother’s Day gift but we wanted to do it anonymously. They agreed to give our gift.

I know it’s blurry, but I didn’t want to get caught
so I took the picture as fast as I could.

We thanked the missionaries and then went and sat down. I looked all around for this sweet sister but I didn’t see her. We waited, we waited, church started, still looking…. She never came.

The missionaries live close to this lady and said they would take the present to her on Monday. It thought that was a good idea. I hope she wasn’t too sad on Mother’s Day and hopefully our late present will let her know that we were thinking of her on Mother’s Day.

To our church’s credit, they did pass out a Mother’s Day gift to all women ages 18 and older. There is that old saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Well it’s true. There are plenty of women out there who helped raised me, I did need a lot of help! Maybe we should change Mother’s Day to Woman Nurturing Day or something like that. Just a thought.

 

ROAF – Dentist

Yup, the dentist.

As some of you may know, I hate the dentist. I have written about it before here and here AND here. I think we should get extra brownie points  for being nice to a place I dread.

We all went there yesterday so the girls wouldn’t miss any school, its Spring Break. They had a little kids section in the waiting room. On the cute little table was a playset, Littlest Pet Shop…with no pets. We looked all over but none were to be found. After leaving Satan’s playground, we headed home and pulled out our Littlest Pet Shop toys. We picked out 7 animals and a few accessories. Then the girls cleaned them up.

Rachel types up a sign and taped it on a container to put the pets in.

I called the dentist office to made sure it was ok to donate some toys. Maybe they didn’t want them, who knows? The receptionist said they would love them and people just keep taking the toys out of the office. Who does that? I explained what we have been doing and how we like to keep it a secret so we would put the pets in a bag, tie it to the office door, knock and run. She loved the idea and said she would keep an eye out for us.

I loaded the kids back into the van and we headed back to the dentist office.

We snuck up to the door…

tied the bag on and Elizabeth knocked.

Tap tap.

I told her to knock harder.

Tap Tap.

Harder!

Tap tap.

Leia said, “I got this.”

KNOCK KNOCK.

Through the glass door they saw the receptionist coming and took off running, laughing their heads off!

The receptionist was so cute. She opened the door and said, “Why, what’s this!?” in her cute Southern drawl. The girls running away heard her and started to run faster, laughing harder. We all piled in the van with big smiles on our faces. I wish I would have taken a video of the whole event. It was a lot of fun!

I still hate the dentist.

RAOF – Dinner

Holy Smokes, I have been busy! 2 weeks ago, I think I was the right amount of busy. All within a couple of days, 3 extra things were added to my plate and the last 2 weeks I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed. Hopefully things will settle down. I’m most worried about the half marathon coming up as my running as been suffering from the new schedule. Sigh, at least the time is going by faster.

Any who, enough whining. One of the things I have to do is get some volunteers trained on helping with Care Teams. Care Teams go in and assists when there is a casualty. We provide meals, help with pets, clean the home, pick up relatives who fly in, that sort of stuff. I called one volunteer and found out she was in Utah as her father had just passed away. They had to take a red eye back to North Carolina on Sunday night. I offered to bring her dinner Monday as I knew she would be exhausted. I’m not sure if they have 4 kids or 5, but I do know they have teenage boys, and all teenage boys do is eat. Food is not my favorite way to serve as I don’t even like cooking for my own family. Plus there is the hassle of getting your dishes back and all that. Luckily Walmart has rotisserie chickens, steam veggies cooked in the microwave and mash potatoes, also cooked in the microwave. I grab those plus some milk, picked up the kids from the bus stop and head 30 minutes south.

When we pulled up to the house the kids asked if we were going to put the food on the porch, ring the doorbell and run. All our other RAOF were done secretly so it was natural for them to think this. I thought it was cute of them.

We did ring the doorbell, we didn’t run and it was answered by a young female zombie. (Maybe we should have taken off.) I asked if we had the right house and she just grunted. Soon we met some more zombies, just stumbling around looking for something to eat, as zombies tend to do. They had all just woken up. The poor mom looked so tired. I can’t imagine how it would feel to have your father pass away, your husband not around to lean on, pulling your kids out of school and fly (the price of the tickets must have been so high!) to another state for a week. As they like to say in the South, bless her heart.

 

RAOF – Quarters

This week for our Random Act Of Friendship we put quarters in the candy machines at a couple of stores. You know, the ones that are by the door and the poor mother has to walk past them to get to her car and every child begs for a quarter for candy/gum/bouncing ball/plastic jewelry/mini football helmets. I am usually tired after shopping with the kids and I don’t want to stop and search for a quarter. Now some mom won’t have to.

We started at Kmart.

I had gone to the bank earlier in the day and gotten a roll of quarters.

We opened up the quarters and went to work.

Next we hit up the Piggly Wiggly, which the kids loved because we had never been there before. It ‘s just a store but come on, that name is pretty cool.

We loaded up their machines, even the tattoo ones.

The last stop was Walmart.

We put quarters in the machines on both sides of the store.

RAOF are fun to do but I must say I wish I could see a child’s face when he glances over to the machines and sees this,

Have fun kiddo!!

Bumper Stickers. Why?

Whoa, what a fast week! I was sick on Monday and we didn’t do RAOF, then meetings in the evenings and just crazy life and the girl’s and I didn’t get a Fun Friday Foto done. Oh well. Good news is that is was a fast week. That means we are getting our rhythm back. Yay for that! Those first couple of weeks are always the hardest.  So I guess I’ll just write about something random. So not like me.

 

I was driving around and I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Kerry Edwards A Stronger America”

That was from the 2004 elections.

What makes people put a sticker on their car? Those things aren’t easy to get off. Let’s find out, shall we?

This person must have nice buns because you know people are going to look at them when he gets out of the car. So reason one, to get people to look at your body and wonder if it works right.

 

If you have seen this sticker and wondered what the heck it means, I’ll tell you. Runners like to put stickers on their car that shows the miles of half-marathons and full marathons, i.e. 13.1 and 26.2. This guy wants to let the world know, he doesn’t run and he is proud of it. Reason number 2, to let people know you are unhealthy.

 

It’s you, the idiot behind them is you. This is called passive aggressive. Instead of being direct and saying, stop driving so close, they try and make it funny while they insult you. Reason number 3, to let people know your personality type and how they could intimate you pretty easily.

 

Funny but not loud out loud funny. More like, “the world is stupid and I hate it and you guys stink but whatever, who cares” kind of funny. Reason number 4, to show off your dry humor and how much fun you wouldn’t be at a party.

 

This guy thinks he is hysterical and he isn’t afraid to show it. Reason number 5, to tell people how loud and obnoxious you are.

 

Another funny one. This person is making fun of himself and what he drives. While the 2 guys above would be too lame or too loud at a party, he would be just right. Reason number 6, to get invited to parties and haul everyone home afterwards.

 

Reason number 7 is to tell everyone you are a nerd.

So chances are these boys are skinny and rich.

 

 

Well, well, well. He tricked you didn’t he? Isn’t he something. Reason number 8, to let us all know you are broke because you spent a ton of money on a sticker for the back of your truck and that you are single and most likely will remain that way.

There we a ton of other bumper stickers that lets us all know what a big pervert you are, but I’d rather not post any pictures of those.

Do you have a bumper sticker?

P.S. I don’t, but I do have a magnetic of a Y. What does that say about me?

 

 

 

Groooss!

Today’s post is gross. Not just a little bit, but a whole lotta gross. So if you are reading this while you munch on your breakfast of Nutella on toast with a hot beverage, first of all, stop. That is unhealthy. Second of all, finish your sugar filled goods, and read this later. It will make you want to puke.

Here it is. One of the biggest challenges over in the ‘Ghan with Chad is the toilets. (See? I told you it was going to be bad!) As you saw from a few post back, the people there like to stand, STAND, on the toilet seat, squat down and poop. Naturally poop is going to get everywhere and that is gross. Guess what is grosser than that?

Weeeeeeell, people over there like to clog up the toilets. Chad isn’t sure how as he races in to use the toilets in the morning right after they have been cleaned and they work fine. (Side note: The toilets next to the Chapel is in a high traffic area and get a lot of use.) However later in the day they are clogged with poop. What do people do when they see the toilet is clogged? THEY POOP ON TOP OF THE POOP THAT IS CLOGGING THE TOILETS. Chad says it gets so bad that the toilet is filled to overflowing with poop. It bursts out of the toilet like the top of a muffin. (I hope you didn’t eat a muffin for breakfast!)

So this,

plus this,

equals this,

Terrible photo shop, but hey, I gotta go to work  in 10 minutes!

Chad’s life.

On a not-at-all-gross note, the same phone call Chad told me about the poop muffins, he also shared with me that he ran into a soldier that worked on Star Trek: Into Darkness. That is pretty cool. In case you missed it, Chad and I saw that movie in the theaters 8 times.

2 for my sister Quinette, 8 for me and 1 for my sister Julienne.

I guess you can say we kind of liked it….a lot.

Have a great day, Live Long and Prosper and don’t poop on top of other poop!

Deployment Bracelets

They are here!!

I like to wear a little reminder of my hubby while he is gone and my fabulous friend Jennifer Bass makes these amazing para cord bracelets and key chains. She started making them up in Alaska right before our husband’s deployed. Here is the bracelet I wore last deployment.

The yellow ribbon started out nice and bright but I wore this little baby everywhere. Here is proof.

 

I needed a new bracelet for this deployment so I hopped on Jenn’s Facebook page called:

All Knotted Up (Custom military inspired Para Cord bracelets & Keychains)

You can look through pictures and get some great ideas. She has charms and different kind of buttons. She can make whatever you like. A bracelet to support cancer or Autism or a keychain in your schools favorite colors, anything! Check it out.

I picked some bracelets out for me and the girls and they came on Saturday. Here they are.

Here is a close up.

 

How cute is that?! My bracelet hooks around the button, but the girls have the button sewn on the middle and a plastic clip to hook it together. This works great with their tiny little fingers.

As you can see from the above picture, the yellow bow is nice and bright. Hurry home solider, hurry home!

 

 

Fun Friday Fotos

My friend Sara and I love to send each other the funniest pictures we can find on Pinterest. While others are pinning healthy recipes and cute crafts, we are sending each other stuff like this…

Or this,

and this,

and even a little of this.

You might think it’s juvenile and we would agree with you. We don’t care and  it keeps us young.

On Wednesday I was strolling through the land of Pinterest looking for funny pictures, when I saw a photo of cat shaming. The kitty had clawed to death a whole role of toilet paper. Next to the cat was a sign that said, “I can’t control myself around toilet paper.” I laughed and thought to myself, “That is my kids right now.” You see, 2 out of 3 offspring have runny noses and they seem to think it’s ok to just throw their used tissues on the floor, especially in their bedrooms. It’s gross.

Suddenly a light bulb went off in my head and I decided to start recreating funny pet pictures with my children. The two younger ones loved the idea. Rachel is still not feeling well and went to bed. Here is the first picture we decided to recreate.

Here is our version.

Hahaha! The kids picked out a bunch of pictures to do but if you would like to summit a photo we just might recreate it!

P.S. My friend Jackie hates dog shaming pictures. She is ok with people shaming though. I wonder what she thinks of this?

P.P.S. Here is the cat picture that gave me this brilliant (?) idea!

Throwback Thursday – Chad

I was looking for some pictures of my oldest friend in the world. Wait, that sounds wrong. She isn’t my oldest friend, like 80 years old. She is the friend I’ve know the longest. In fact, I’m older than her. Natalie and I took a bunch of selfies in the 90’s, (yeah, we started that trend, you’re welcome) and I wanted to post some on Facebook. While I was digging around, I found some pictures of Chad from when he graduated from Basic Training in 2004. Check out that baby face.

The guys hate wearing their “Class A”, but women love a man in uniform!

Wait, what?

Pictures From Chad

Chad sent pictures!! Last deployment, when he had an office and a computer (wow, spoiled), he sent pictures all the time. This time he isn’t so lucky. Let’s start this slide show!

Nothing like a selfie! Check out his sweet hat, nice.

The Sanctuary. Feel free to run in there and call SANCTUARY, if the cops are after you.

The LDS church doesn’t have crosses on their churches. It’s nothing against the cross but Jesus isn’t there. He was resurrected. It was a little weird at first when Chad started wearing a cross on his uniform. After running into some people who don’t think we are Christians, I love seeing the cross on his uniform!

“Sunset on the Chad”

They have a problem with the locals standing on the toilets to poop. Yeah, they stand on the seat, squat down and poop…