Resisting Temptation

Next week is the last week of Upward Bound, so Zaven will be coming home soon. Then in not quite three weeks, school starts. Next summer he'll have his last summer of Upward Bound and then he'll be going to college. So these last few weeks of summer are some of our last few weeks where our whole family will be together and not overwhelmed with school, sports, lessons, etc.

I want to go on vacation. I want it bad. It's been a rough summer.

But we can't afford a vacation.

I try to be a frugal person, save money when I can, coupon shop, etc. So we've tried 'staycations' in the past. Can I just take this opportunity to say how much I hate staycations? They're great if you live in Chicago or New York where there's a ton to do and even the people who live there can't have done everything... or if you live by the beach or the grand canyon where no matter how many times you've been it's still exciting and new. But for those of us who live in a small town, chances are we've been to every interesting place so often they know us by name. 'Real' vacations are a break from your normal life. Plus real vacations involve someone else cleaning up your living quarters while you're out and about, eating out so there aren't dishes, and staying where your kids can't pull out every toy they own because all those toys and books and videos are back at home.

Sure you can eat all your meals out since you're saving all that money by not paying for airfare, gas, and hotels. But that doesn't take into account how cheap I am. On my vacations, we drive rather than fly, stay in priceline hotels (with free continental breakfasts) at bargain prices, and fix sandwiches in the hotel room so we only eat our lunch mean in restaurants. It doesn't feel bad doing this on vacation because we remind ourselves that the money we're saving is paying for all the cool things we're doing during the day. But fixing sandwiches at home for dinner doesn't feel at all like a vacation because the money we're saving is only paying for the trash pickup and the electric bill.

I keep a pretty close eye on our budget and I know how much we can and can't afford. We CAN'T afford a vacation.

Maybe I'll win the lottery.

Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

I know I don't have that many readers. But I didn't mean to abandon the few I did have. It's been a long time since I posted and I'm sorry about that. I'm hoping to just start fresh but I feel I owe an explanation. But just like in the Princess Bride, there is too much. So, let me sum up.

Zaven and Caly both had big birthday bashes for which I prepared fancy cakes, etc. Both parties were big sucesses.

My mom had open heart surgery. She's doing great.

Part of our kitchen floor started to sag wildly. Scott cut a 3 foot by 12 foot hole in the floor so he could do repairs. The subfloor is rebuilt but there's still a lot of construction going on so the kids and I have been staying at my mother-in-law's house.

My pets had babies. We are now covered in puppies outside and kittens inside. I'm hoping to give them away soon, but it's hard seeing as I've been staying in another town and Scott has been up to his ears in rebuilding our house.

So that's the summary of the past couple of months. Hope yours went a little more smoothly.

Avoiding the fire by jumping into the frying pan.

I should be cleaning house. I NEED to clean house. It's a total wreck. But I hate cleaning. On top of that my stove is currently disassembled and all over the kitchen floor, the kitchen faucet has quit except for a small dribble, and my dishwasher is only getting the things on the bottom rack clean. So what should be a simple job of loading the dishes now involves walking through the kitchen on tiptoes so as to avoid stepping on the stove, washing half-loads in the dishwasher, and carrying water in from the bathroom.

Of course I have no similar excuse for not doing laundry. I just don't feel like it.

So... instead of cleaning, I'm sorting a bunch of our clothes and de-cluttering the closets. It won't result in a clean home, clean clothes, or clean dishes. And it involves as much work as doing the dishes and more than doing the laundry. So it doesn't exactly make sense. It just feels slightly less futile.

Spending money

Well, it's been kind of a sucky week. Zaven had his wisdom teeth pulled and got a dry socket. The other kids and I all had colds and felt crappy. And despite the fact that Zaven was finally able to get his learner's permit (aka Dr. Lisc), he's not been able to drive because he's been on painkillers all week.

BUT... we did get our taxes done. That's a huge deal for us. Ours are usually complicated and time consuming. But since we have four kids all living at home, we usually get some money back. This year we lucked out. The taxes weren't complicated AND we're getting back a bit more than we usually do. So, that leaves us with a little bit of spending money.

As you probably already know, I'm one of those coupon loving freaks who tries to go to the store and get a few hundred dollars worth of stuff for 57 cents after taxes. Sometimes I even manage to do that. I get all my shampoo and toothpaste and deodorant for free and have boxes of toiletries that I got for free in storage in the basement. So what does someone like me do when I have extra money?

Well, it's kind of complicated. Part of me really, really wants to just go crazy and splurge on whatever it is I want at the moment. After all, I'm always scrimping and saving and squirreling away. I deserve to get to spend this money. It won't be coming out of our regular budget. It's more like a prize we won.

Of course another part of me knows that even if we don't need extra money right at this moment, we eventually will need it. We don't have much in the way of an emergency fund right now. On top of that, even if we did have an emergency fund, there are dozens of other things that this money could do that would really have a positive impact on our lives. We could put it in an IRA, invest in some much needed home repairs, or buy a more fuel efficient car.

So... what will it be? Frugal or fun?

Both. Last year we paid off an old bank loan. This year I'll be paying off my credit card. I like to be debt-free. It means I never have to worry about late fees, LOL. But I don't owe much, so I'll still have most of the money left over. Most of that will be just put in the bank. But some of the money will be for fun. I like fun. I'm thinking that maybe Scott and I will go on a weekend trip without the kids. We haven't had a vacation without kids along in over a decade.

So my only questions are, where will we go and what kind of a deal can I get on our hotel room?

The mess.

I've been trying to get rid of stuff. That's part of my 2010 goals. I want to be more organized and as soon as I started trying to organize our stuff, I realized that we have way too much of it. Part of that is natural. We have four kids. Each comes with their own set of interests, likes, and dislikes. So they each have different books, toys, etc. But I'm realizing that a big part of it is my own desire to indulge them. I don't keep a lot of stuff for myself. I regularly purge my own junk. And if I didn't have the ambition to take back up a few crafts (crochet, sewing, painting) when Quinn gets back in school, I wouldn't have any junk at all. But when it comes to everyone else's stuff, I have a much harder time letting it go.

I look at an old toy and I remember how much fun Zaven had with it... and I keep it. I SAY it's for Quinn, but honestly he has no interest in it at all. It's just that I want him to have interest. And the same thing goes for books, clothes, etc. I even find myself doing it with Scott's stuff. I want him to be happy, to have hobbies, to do fun stuff. So I don't make him get rid of the stuff that has been sitting around, unused, for years.

But I've decided that what my family needs is more space and less clutter. So I'm on a big purge. And even though it's going to take a while, I already feel better. Each area that I clear makes me feel a bit more excited and happy. I don't miss the stuff at all.

The elusive Dr. Lisc

I write lists. I could tell you that I developed the habit to help combat the confusion of having four kids around. But in all honesty my mom says I've done it since I learned how to write. It's a good thing, though. I have an awful memory for the mundane details of life like getting milk at the store or remembering to change the sheets regularly. Writing lists of what I need to do, need to buy, need to remember... that keeps me on track. And it keeps me from being an incessant nag. I just write down what I need the kids to do and they're in charge of getting it done. But there is one thing that has been on the list for about 7 months. Dr. Lisc.

Last summer, Zaven turned 16. So I added an item to our family to-do list. Get him a driver's license. Only I always misspell license. I spell it liscense. And when I wrote it down on the list I abbreviated it Dr. Lisc. Caly promptly asked, "Who's Doctor Lisc and why do we need to see him?" And so began the search for the elusive Dr. Lisc.

During the summer months, Zaven was away at Upward Bound. No opportunity to even study for his permit.

Once he was home we kept forgetting to stop in at the courthouse to pick up a manual. But after several weeks we remembered. Only guess what? They don't print driver's manuals any more. You have to download them from the internet. And it turns out that they're a bit thicker than I remembered. The document is about 130 pages long. Printing out 130 pages is out of my budget. So Zaven would need to read it online. The job off capturing Dr. Lisc just got a lot more complicated. We have one computer in our home, several people who want to use it, and only a small window of time that Zaven has free in a typical week. He's on a swim team, in an art club, takes music lessons, etc. Add to that the fact that when you put a teenaged boy in front of a computer, studying for a test, even a driving test, isn't what he has in mind. So the simple job of reading and studying a short manual ended up taking about 3 months. And we began to refer to Dr. Lisc as 'The Elusive Dr. Lisc.'

But eventually Zaven did study the manual and was finally ready to take the written test. Only Dr. Lisc had other plans in mind. First we found out that the courthouse in never open when he's out of school and not in an afterschool activity. In fact, the courthouse in our town doesn't administer the test, so he'd be going to the next town over. So even if he left school and went directly to the courthouse he wouldn't get there before they closed. And going to get your permit is not an excused school excuse. So we waited for a day when he had a dental appointment so he would already be out of school with an excused absence. Then we went to the courthouse... only to find that you can only take the permit test from 8-10:30 AM on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Dr. Lisc slips out of our grasp yet again. He's wily, that Dr. Lisc.

The dentist told Zaven he'd chipped a filling and would need to come back in to have it repaired. He also needed to get an appointment with an oral surgeon to see about taking out his wisdom teeth. I set the filling repair up for the next Friday so that he could also take his permit test while he was out of school. We double checked to make sure he had his social security card, birth certificate, letter from the school, etc. Then we headed to the courthouse. He made it as far as the eye exam. Due to his poor vision in one eye (from a cataract when he was 5), he would need to have a form filled out by an eye doctor before he could take the permit test. They assured us that his vision was good enough for him to get a license as long as he had all the mirrors on his car. But he had to have that form filled out first. I was beginning to hate Dr. Lisc.

Our usual eye doctor didn't have any openings for a month. I called around and found one who could see him in a week, also on a Friday, but in the afternoon. The hunt was back on. Dr. Lisc could evade us for only so long. Realizing that it would be too late in the day to make it to the courthouse before 10:30 after the eye appointment, I called the oral surgeon and set up Zaven's initial consultation for the following Monday morning. If all went according to plan, Zaven would get his eye doctor forms filled out Friday, and still have an excused absence Monday morning that we could use as a cover to stop by the courthouse and finally capture Dr. Lisc.

The eye appointment went well. And it turns out that Zaven's prescription has changed. He will be able to pick up his new glasses Monday after school. Oh, and by the way, he would need to have those new glasses with him when he took his permit test. It says so in the small print on the form they wanted his eye doctor to fill out. So even though he'll have an excused absence on Monday morning, he won't be able to take the test until Wednesday morning (not open Tuesday, remember?) and he won't have an excuse to miss school then. And the school office staff is beginning to realize that Zaven is out of school a lot. They're giving me suspicious looks these days. And I've run out of legitimate excuses to check him out. He's already been to the dentist twice, the oral surgeon, and the eye doctor.

The elusive Dr. Lisc has escaped yet again, and I'm not sure how we'll manage to capture him. But I'm now muttering lines from Moby Dick about stabbing at him from Hell's Heart, so giving up is not an option. Currently I'm thinking we'll fake a case of Meningitis or Malaria or something and try it again on Wednesday. But one way or another, Dr. Lisc is going down.

and a Happy New Year!

Wow! I can't believe it's been so long since I posted anything. Well, I won't waste your time filling you in on the last few weeks. Christmas was fun and surprisingly relaxing despite having a cold, but other than that, it's pretty much been life as normal here.

But there is one nice thing I've been meaning to post about, and I think it will be a nice first post for a new year and a new decade.

Just before Christmas, our school had their annual middle school Snowflake Dance. Caly always goes to the dances and she was super excited to go to this one in particular. She'd had someone ask her to the dance, but knowing that he had stronger feelings for her than she had for him, she declined and decided to go with her friends. She wore a full length dress, brand new high heeled boots, and looked fantastic. After the dance when I picked her up, she was giddy with excitement. But she wasn't excited about a boy liking her or asking her to dance. Instead, she was excited about something very different. You see, every year at the dance, the eighth grade elects a king and queen of the dance. Traditionally, no one campaigns or asks for votes for themselves or anyone else. They just vote for their friends. But this year all the kids were passing word to each other to vote for one particular person. So when the time came for the vote, almost every student there had heard about the plan and they all voted for the same person.

No, it wasn't for Caly. It was for one of her friends, someone she's known since they were in diapers together. He's not a close friend though, because despite being in the same grade at the same school, they have hardly ever had classes together. You see, he's a special ed student who is only mainstreamed in some of his classes. Yes, you read that right. The king of the dance is a special needs student. And in case you were wondering, no, it wasn't a prank, a joke, or even pity. He's just a really nice kid, and the other students wanted to make him happy. They like him.

Caly said, "He was so happy! At first I thought he was gonna yell, and then I thought he was gonna jump, and then I thought his face was going to break from smiling so big." As soon as I heard, I called Scott, because Scott is friends with this boy's grandfather and I knew that Scott would be excited. So I called Scott and then Scott called his grandfather to make sure that he'd heard what happened. And apparently his grandfather had arrived at the dance to pick him up early and was there in the back of the room to see it happen. I'm not sure I can really appreciate what that must have felt like.

But what a wonderful way to end one year and bring in the next.

MeRrY ChRiStMaS!!!

OK. It's not Christmas yet. But I've been SO busy that who knows If I'll remember to post before then. You would think that things would calm down a bit, but not really. Today alone Zaven has a trip to Lexington to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Caly and Zaven both have a swim meet (that Zaven can't attend due to going to the concert), and Caly has a chorus concert (that Caly can't attend despite having a small solo due to the swim meet). And every day is like that! We've got a half dozen multiple overlapping events that we're obligated to attend this month. Plus school goes right up to the 22nd. We usually get more time off, but they shortened the break because we'd had several days cancelled because of the flu a few months ago.

On the plus side, many of the activities we've been involved in have been just wonderful. Zaven had his strings concert last weekend (he plays cello) and it was beautiful. I enjoyed it so much. His teacher has a gift, I tell you. Those kids play better than some professionals I've heard. I've also really enjoyed how excited the kids have been about all their various events. Caly got to go to the Nutcracker with my parents, and she loved it. She's also been attending the youth group at her best friend's church and has been talking about all her new friends non-stop. It's nice to see them enjoying life so much, even if it is hard to organize.

'Tis the season to be busy.

Swim season is here. Yes. Swim season. In the middle of winter. The school team has begun having meets. Swim meets are fun, but they aren't like football games or soccer games. Those events don't last six hours. A typical swim meet lasts all freaking day long.

Zaven and Caly went to the first meet of the season today. They left directly from school without coming home. They got home just after Caly's bedtime. Most meets aren't on school nights, but there will a few more that are. And there's a meet almost every weekend for the next two months. There's even one during the Christmas break. Many of them are away meets, which means that you have to add a few extra hours for transportation.

However, there are a few upsides to swim season. First off, Zaven and Caly get a ton of exercise. Not as much at the meets as they do at the practices, though. Most of the time spent at the meets is just waiting for their races. They're actually in the water for only two or three races each, so maybe 15 minutes plus the warm up time. But the daily practices get them a lot of exercise. The other good thing is the showers. We only have one bathroom in our house, so having the two older kids get their showers in the locker room every afternoon is pretty handy.

But all in all, it's just a busy, busy time. And they're in other activities, too. There's their teen mentoring program (they're the ones being mentored), chorus, cello, art club, Upward Bound, STLP (which stands for something unknown but involves Caly making videos every week after school), and of course the city swim team which is different from the school swim team. And for the city team, Zaven volunteers and helps train the beginning swimmers, so that means he stays for two daily sessions, not just one. Plus there's homework, chores, school dances, hanging out with friends, visiting family, and the time teens require to just veg out.

Fortunately for us, most of their other activities are just once-a-week sorts of events. The only thing that really takes up time is swimming. And despite how much time it takes up, I can't help but think that it's really, really good for them. It may kill me... but hopefully it will help them live healthier lives.

The cookie jar

We have... had... a Santa shaped cookie jar. I hated it. First off, it was ugly. Second, it had a sensor that made it say "Ho! Ho! Ho!" incredibly loudly if anyone so much as jostled the lid. Even with duct tape on the speaker and ancient batteries you could hear that thing go off anywhere in the house. And third, it was irregularly shaped both inside and out, with lots of little nooks and crannies that made it almost impossible to clean.

Today, as we were bringing the first of the Christmas boxes out of the basement, I broke it. I broke the hinge on the lid, and apparently I broke the electronics too. And Zoe cried and cried and cried when I threw it away.

I promised her I'd buy her a new cookie jar. A new Santa-shaped cookie jar that talked if we could find one. She was not the least bit consoled. She loves THAT jar. That hideous, annoying, plastic monstrosity of a jar. Sigh.

But I did not dig it out of the trash. I just couldn't. I will find her one that she loves just as much if not more. A nice quiet one with smooth insides that I can get clean so I don't have to worry about putting cookies in it after it's been in the basement for a year. And I will fill it with cookies. I promise.

Money -- wish I had more.

Financially, the last month has been good in some ways, not so good in others. All my Christmas shopping is done, I didn't go spend crazy at all last month, and I got back on track with my coupons. All in all, we made big progress on reducing our spending. On the down side, we didn't make nearly as much money as we did before Scott stopped teaching. So despite spending less, we're not saving more. :( On top of that I still sit here with a busted TV. If I buy a new one, I will not be able to pay cash. But TV is the one thing Scott really enjoys at the end of the day. I could live without it and just watch shows online. Scott hates that. So I think we'll be buying one soon. Thankfully, this is the time of year for good deals on TV's. I just hope it's a REALLY good deal.

I'm so impressed.

You guys won't be impressed. You have no idea how much of a mess my kitchen was before we started cleaning and even if you did, you'd probably just be disturbed that someone you know is that much of a slob. But I am impressed. My kitchen is so clean that it has an echo. An honest to God echo. Of course I keep noticing small things that didn't get done. And I should clean the windows and inside the microwave. But man it is SO much nicer than it was. Now I just have to do the rest of the house, LOL.

Tired, but happy.

Today has been so tiring. Scott took Zoe and Quinn's to his mom's house this weekend so the bigger kids and I could try to get caught up on some of the cleaning that needed to be done. I spend a lot of time cleaning... but so much of the time it doesn't really get clean. Not like it should, at least. First off there's the usual business of trying to put things away with a toddler around. I pick up, but Quinn follows behind and takes things right back out. Then there's the fact that I am seriously allergic to dust. Housecleaning literally makes me sick. If I do too much at once, I have trouble breathing. Then there's the fact that there are six of us living here. That means that every day I need to do at least a load of dishes and a load of laundry just to keep up. That's not progress, that's just maintenance. Finally, there's the shopping, doctors appointments, errands, and extracurricular activities of a family with both teens and toddlers. I spend a lot of time in the car. So most of the cleaning I do is just trying to keep things from getting worse, not actually making them better.

But today... that was real progress. Zaven and Caly and I decided to pick one room (the kitchen) and spend the weekend on it. We picked the kitchen. Today we cleaned out the fridge, the freezer, the deep freeze, the top of the dryer (where for some reason all the odds and ends collect), under the table (where we tend to shove stuff to get it out of the way), and the pile of laundry in the corner. The kitchen ISN'T clean yet. We still have more laundry to do, a few more dishes to do, the stove top, and a few boxes in the corner. But man it is SO much nicer. Plus I now know exactly what's in the freezer. I have it organized and we got rid of some things that had been in there forever.

So I'm really tired, really happy, and not so exhausted that I can't finish it up tomorrow. Sure it's just one room. But by the end of the weekend it will be one really clean room. And since it was the worst mess of any room in the house, it feels really good to finally get it the way it should be. Hopefully it will be progress that we can maintain and build on.

Meanwhile, things seem to be going well with the meal planning. Weekends are harder to plan for, but I'd expected that. We tend to juggle our schedule a lot on the weekends, so we've not stuck to the plan exactly. But weekdays have been pretty successful. The only weekday that we didn't stick with the play was Thursday. The kids had picked that day for Scott to make a Pork Roulade, mostly because Zaven and Caly knew they'd be at their Teen Mentoring program during dinner and they wouldn't have to eat it. The both tolerate it, but they don't love it. Scott and I think they're nuts, LOL. Anyhow, Scott and I were both super tired Thursday, plus we had a fridge full of leftovers. So we decided to save the ingredients for later and just finish off some of the things in the fridge. Since I'm new to the planning, I forgot to have a day or two each week for leftovers. I'll remember next time. The one thing I really like about the meal planning is that it makes shopping simpler. I can take a copy of the meal plan with me to the store and make sure I have all the ingredients for the next week. Hopefully it will soon mean fewer shopping trips as I'm able to stock up on sale items and save them for the upcoming dinners. That would be a huge plus to me. Another good thing is that because I posted the plan in the kitchen, Scott, Zaven, and Caly are all able to go ahead and start dinner if I'm busy with Zoe or Quinn. We're getting dinner done a little earlier than we used to this way, and we're definitely eating a more balanced diet.

So probably none of that was of any interest to you guys at all. But I promise some really fun pictures of the kids soon. Quinn was dressing up the other day. I got the best pictures, but I haven't loaded them onto the computer yet. I will though. And they'll be worth the wait.

Cross your fingers

It looks like Scott's car may be an easy fix. Well, I say that because I'm not the one fixing it. So let me rephrase. It looks like Scott will be able to fix his car without spending a ton of money. He found a $10 part that's broken. It's job is to not let the car start unless it's got the clutch depressed. The sensor is messed up so that it always thinks the clutch isn't being pressed so the car can never start. Hopefully, that's all it is. Of course it took him 2 and a half hours to find the sensor, but you have to love a man that knows how to fix things. It would have cost a fortune to pay a mechanic. He says that it should be easy to reassemble now that he knows what went wrong. So once the part comes in (this afternoon) he should have it up and running pretty quick. IF that was the only thing wrong. So cross your fingers, folks. I need the luck.

I must be jinxed.

Last week our television quit. It suddenly went black right while I was watching. It still had sound, but no picture. Of course it is JUST out of warrantee. I've called the local repair place but haven't been able to speak to an actual person. Maybe the guy who runs it is busy making repairs? But no luck even on getting an estimate of how much it would cost to fix.

Then today, I had some errands to run in Lexington. It was a beautiful sunny, breezy day. Perfect weather. Scott had wanted to take the kids to his mom's house so we traded cars. His car doesn't have enough room for all four of them. He headed south, and I headed north in his car. I did all my shopping, then turned around to head home. And at one of the intersections his car stalled and died. And it would not start. Of course the traffic was flying up behind me and swerving at the last minute to avoid me and scaring me to death. Finally someone stopped to help me push it out of the road. There was no way I was going to try and push it out by myself since that would have meant standing beside the car to steer while pushing. The traffic was way too scary for that. I had my cell phone and called Scott. He was of course at his mom's house, hours away. But he called a friend who came to pick me up. Then he called a different friend who had a roll-back truck that could carry the dead car home. We still have no idea what's wrong with it. I hope it's cheap to fix, though. If not, we won't be able to afford it.

On the plus side, if I had to be stuck at the side of the road for an hour, it was at least a nice day to be outside.

Meal planning

Well, I've never been a big believer in meal planning. At least, not for our family. In the first place, our lives are very unscheduled. I try hard to keep things organized, but Scott doesn't work a nine to five job, and even when he did he always had a variety of other obligations that meant that I never knew exactly when he was going to be home at the end of the day. And even more difficult than that to overcome is my crazy 3rd-grade taste buds. I have the dietary cravings of an 8 year old. I want the same lunch every day (and HAD the same lunch every day for about 12 years or more), don't like veggies at all, can't stand my foods touching each other... It's nuts. I'm trying hard to expand my choices, and over the years I've been somewhat successful. But even so, I am insanely picky. Add to that that I have a four page list of foods I'm allergic to and you have a real problem with menu planning. So when I look at the monthly meal plans you see in magazines, they're always filled with things that I can't imagine ever wanting to eat.

Of course the problem is that I have a family and even if I can't stand a wide variety, they need it. Scott will eat anything. ANYTHING. 'Possums, skunk, groundhog, rattlesnake, alligator, buffalo, octopus... the list goes on. Whenever our kids were scared of monsters, we'd always reassure them that if a monster did show up, Daddy would put a pat of butter on it's head and swallow it whole. And they always accepted that as a reasonable solution to the problem. Problem solved. Daddy will eat the monster. He eats everything else, so why not?

The kids don't eat quite the same variety that Scott does. Who does? Yet they're much more open to new foods than I am. But whenever life gets hectic or I get sick (and I've been sick all week) somehow we end up having spagetti every night for dinner. It's the fall back food. Zero variety.

So last night I finally caved. I made a list of everything that I like to eat. Then I had Scott and the kids add anything else they could think of to it. I was surprised to realize that there is a lot more variety in our diets than I realized. The problem is not that we don't have any options. There were dozens of things on the list. The problem is that we don't keep the ingredients for those options on hand all the time, or we run out of time to shop or cook. Spagetti is fast. Dinner is ready in 15 minutes. But with a tiny bit of planning we can have other things ready nearly as fast.

So I typed our list onto a spread sheet and broke the foods down into the basic food groups (plus an extra list of casseroles and one course dinners), then printed it off. I also printed a blank monthly calendar and we've spent the past couple of evenings picking out dinner for each weeknight for the next month. Right now, I'm not bothering with breakfasts or lunches because usually that's just Quinn and I. The older three kids all eat at school and I never know if Scott will be home for lunch. Plus Scott is a great cook and more than able to whip himself up a better lunch than I can manage. I'm also not making any weekend plans because I never know if we'll even be home on the weekends. Our extended families both live in the same town about an hour and a half away. We never know which weekends we'll be visiting until the last minute so I feel like it's OK to wait on those plans until we have a little more info.

All in all, I'm happy with the progress. None of the meals are very fancy, and right now I'm happy if there's at least one veggie served and I'm not worrying about keeping it perfectly balanced with low saturated fats and whole grains and organic foods. Anything's got to be better than spagetti 4 nights in a row, right? For me, the goal is to just try to do a bit better than we have been. The rest will come in time.

Happy Halloween!

We had such a lovely weekend. The weather didn't want to cooperate. It had rained all Saturday morning. But it cleared off in time for trick-or-treat. We had to have the kids wear some extra layers under their costumes, but it all worked out.

This was an exciting year for our kids. Zaven was away for the weekend with Upward Bound. They went to Columbus, Ohio for two days, to an amazing science museum, and to a live production of Young Frankenstein. Zaven was excited to see the musical because the movie is one of his favorites.

Meanwhile, the rest of us headed to Somerset to visit with relatives and trick-or-treat there. Scott's sister was visiting with her family, so Zoe was thrilled to be able to trick-or-treat with her cousin William, who is just a few years older than she is. It was also a treat for Caly because William's older sister Heather was there. Heather is 20 this year and she and Caly have just started to make a real connection. After they'd helped take the little ones trick-or-treating, we let the two girls walk downtown for some festivities going on there. Caly was really excited to be off on an adventure on Halloween. Because we so often trick-or-treat out of town, she doesn't get to wander with friends and she's missed that feeling of independence and playful mischief that so many of us associate with being a young teenager at Halloween.

Of course the biggest treat this year was Quinn's first fully-aware Halloween. He's dressed up every year but he didn't have any idea what it meant or that there was candy involved. This year he knew that people were doing unusual things and that he was wearing a costume, and he was able to say trick-or-treat and understood that doing so got him candy. He was in seventh heaven. He was not the least bit scared of all the costumes and decorations, and he loved the walking at night and going door to door. He was even patient about waiting until we'd gotten home to dip into his pumpkin basket of candy, and he only took a little prompting to say thank you at each house, although sometimes he said it in Chinese (a trick he learned from the TV show Ni-hao Kilan). At one point in the night he started shouting "Awesome!" after he got his candy. But the kicker was today. He came to give me a tight hug and then stopped to look in my eyes and told me, "I love." Then he hugged me again. "I love." Then he hugged me one more time for all he was worth, stopped and looked in my eyes, "I love Halloween."

It's only been a day since I posted...

...but it feels like a year. I don't think this is the swine flu. I'm pretty sure I already had that when it first made the news. This feels more like a regular old cold, not that those are fun. Zaven and Caly are past the worst of it. Zoe and Quinn don't seem to be having as hard of a time as their older brother and sister did. I, on the other hand, feel like hell. I hate being sick. I catch everything that comes around, though. Before I had allergy testing I caught things because the allergies weakened my immune system. Now I take allergy shots and I don't get sick as often as I did. But I have to get my shots in the doctor's office so I'm exposed to sick people every week. So even though I don't get sick as often as I did, I do get sick more often than most people. I'm also a big wimp when it comes to colds. I can handle childbirth and kidney stones and broken toes... but when I get sick I lay around and whine and feel bad for myself. It's not pretty. So yesterday and today I mostly just complained and moaned. I think I'm past the worst of it. I feel a lot better than I did 24 hours ago.

On an unrelated note, I noticed for the first time yesterday that the 'patient' (*read that as victim) in the game Operation is completely naked and the only reason you can't see his genitals is that his fat belly covers them. I've played this game for well over 3 decades and just now noticed. Behold my amazing powers of observation.

Alas!

This is the first week of really cold weather this year. Technically, it's not even "really cold" yet, but it's cold enough to have a fire in the wood-burning stove. Because we live in an old house, the change of seasons means a lot more to us than it does to most people. Our insullation is so-so, our heat is a wood-burning stove, and being the only heated building on an 86 acre farm, the change of season also means an invasion of all manner of living creatures. Typically, we get a few mice at this time of the year. We also get bugs.

Bugs are designed to lay eggs in the late summer and those eggs are genetically programmed to hatch if the temp drops low for a while and then comes back up. Nature's plan is that they would lay dormant for the winter and hatch in the spring. But because of how we heat our house, waiting until the nights are more than just a little chilly before bothering with putting in a fire, that hot/cold/hot thing also applies to our house. So things hatch. And this time, what hatched was not something like ladybugs. We had a nest of hornets in the attic apparently. And they hatched in Zaven's room. He got stung on the arm once. We attacked them with chemicals and killed what Scott estimated as a hundred. We moved Zaven and Caly downstairs for a few nights until we were sure they'd all been found and killed. But today Zoe disobeyed Scott and tried to sneak upstairs to play. She got stung on the sole of her foot. Ouch!

Bad as it is for her, it's no picnic for the rest of us. She is a major drama queen, so she's been laying in my bed whining about her foot for hours. It's not that I don't have sympathy. But I can't give her more medication yet or do anything for her. And she isn't hurting so bad that she can't be distracted from it. She's been out of bed to eat pizza, pet the cats, get crayons, tell me a joke, etc. Each time she is fine until she remembers that she's hurt. Then it's the end of the world all over. I'm not too sure how bad it really feels at this point. She's been known to cry for 20 minutes about a cut on her hand but not even be sure which hand is the injured one.

I'm hoping she'll get bored and fall asleep. We gave her benadryl as well as ibuprofen so she should be able to nap.

***edited to add that I was right. She quit whining completely as soon as Zaven and Caly got home and I told her they could decorate the porch for Halloween.

October

Every October we decorate our porch for Halloween. Part of it is just to celebrate the season and the joy of Halloween. But part of it is so that we can really get it clean. We are pack rats by nature and also we have two dogs and God-know-how-many cats. The porch gets cluttered and cobwebby and covered in mud, toys, boots, chalk, tools, and just about anything else you can think of. October is our month for getting it in order.

This afternoon we drug everything off the porch and swept it clean. Tomorrow we'll probably hose down the walls but we didn't get to that today. Instead, we started a fire in the fire pit and burned all the branches we lost from the trees in the last big storm, plus some of the left over wood scraps from the bunk beds. The kids loved the fire. Plus the air was crisp in that lovely October way.

Tomorrow, we'll actually wash the walls and scrub the concrete and then finally decorate the porch. Maybe Sunday we'll go get pumpkins.