Thank you, Thank you very much! Stylish Blogger Award

I was awarded the Stylish Blogger Award by three wonderful blogs (two in the same night and another a couple days later). Thank you very much to Aimee at Classified Mom , Mrs.Tuna at Working Woman's Guide to Dinner or If I Cook Chicken A La King One More Time I'll Kill Myself  , Dizzy C's Little Book Blog and to Frugal Invitation !!! I spend a lot of time playing on my computer instead of cleaning like I should, so its nice to be recognized for it. I sincerely appreciate it.

As with anything else there are rules and the rules are:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you the award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself. 
3. Award 15 other bloggers. Sorry I changed mine to 8 newer bloggers. See below for reasons.
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award.   

Seven things about myself. Am I supposed to share seven things I haven't shared before? Because that would be difficult, I share a lot!

ONE

I like red hots and hot tamales a lot, but I don't like spicy food.

TWO

My house is always a mess and it drives me crazy, but I don't have the energy or motivation to keep up with it. I spend time playing with my 2 year old and playing on my laptop computer instead of all the cleaning I should be doing. When I say it drives me crazy, I mean it drives me bat crap crazy. My most favorite thing in the world is coming home to a surprise cleaned house. (HINT HINT - as my birthday is this weekend and my many children are always asking me what I want for my birthday, I don't think they realize how amazingly happy that would make me!)

THREE

I am incredibly afraid of the dentist! I have serious tooth issues, any talk of tooth pain, tooth related injuries, or dental procedures (even the sound of a dentist drill like in Finding Nemo) freaks me out. The last time I went to the dentist I had sleep dentistry done, which by the way was AWESOME!

FOUR

I hate it when my house is silent, but I am always telling my kids to be quiet. When no one else is home I always have something on for noise.

FIVE

I really enjoy football. I am one of those women who actually understands the game of football. I am not fanatical about it or anything like that, but I have a favorite team and like it. I am not one of those women who pretend to like football for their husband or boyfriends sake. I have even been known to watch the games without my husband even being home, although I try not to because I want him to wait for me (we use our DVR so we can fast forward thru commercials).

SIX

My laptop computer that I use everyday all day is missing keys because my adorable son pulled a bunch of them off and I could only get about half of them back on. So this may explain some of my typing errors...The letter P, M, the comma, the period, and some control buttons (that I never use) are in a baggy and the X button doesn't always record the tap. I would love a new computer, but I really don't need one.

SEVEN

I am cheap. I hate to spend money on anything. I love to buy stuff, but I hate spending money on that stuff. Figure that one out. I have an even harder time spending money on myself. I love to buy stuff for my kids and husband, and I always can find stuff I know they will love and want. If someone wants to buy me something and asks me what I would like, I can never think of anything! (Except really expensive things).

Now the really hard part is awarding 15 blogs with this fun award. Its hard because I follow a lot of very wonderful blogs! So many blogs have gotten this award, I have even seen some who didn't care and ignored it. Ok, their choice. But isn't the whole point of blogging having readers and doesn't that mean that if someone says hey your doing a good job here's an award, shouldn't you at least say thanks? So I had to figure out some kind of system to award 8 blogs (not 15 because its too hard, I love all the blogs I follow). So here is what I did; since I am relatively new to blogging myself I can empathise with other new bloggers who are trying to keep up with the really speedy and high tech blogs. My first filter was to narrow it to blogs with less than 250 followers (with more than that you already know you rock and have probably gotten this or other awards before). The second filter is you write personal posts (meaning not just reviews, giveaways, or business blogs...if you do giveaways and personal posts or reviews and personal posts than I didn't filter you out.) And the final filter was if you recently were awarded an award for blogging. And to be honest, this really didn't help all that much in picking blogs to award. 

There are so many blogs I love. The following blogs I chose because they make me laugh out loud and I look for new posts from them every day (and they fell into the above categories).

Accidental Baby Maker

Baby Makes Two

Don't Come To My Circus and Try to Wear the Top Hat

In the Land of Mom

Memoirs of a Marine Corps Wife

Raising Marshmellows

this talk ain't cheap

three thirty three

Blog Dare with Bloggy Moms - I need to catch up!

I would like to try and keep up with the Blog Dare, and my husband would probably make that no trying only doing quote... but I will be trying.

So to catch up on the first 4 prompts....

1. Resolutions :

I don't normally make resolutions simply because life in our house is pretty chaotic. I have daily lists of things I need to accomplish, things I want to accomplish, and things I wish I could accomplish. I have goals and although that sounds similar I don't think it really is close.
I do plan to get more exercise this year because of a health scare we had a month or so ago. We got the equipment we need for more exercise, so done. More exercise, that can be my resolution.

2. To do list for 2011:

I would like to complete potty training with my 2 year old son. I would like to get my daughter's A1C level down another full point, if not more. I would like finish the indoor fix-its on our home (painting, trim, knobs, etc). The final big one for 2011, I would like for the adoption of our 3 older girls to be complete.

3. Morning Routine :

Our morning routine is choreographed chaos. My husband wakes up and gets out of bed anywhere between 4am and 4:30am. He showers, dresses, and goes to work. When he is leaving that is when the older girls need to get up. So either he or myself go from door to door knocking (quietly so as not to wake the 7 year old and the 2 year old up yet).

I go downstairs and start the coffee, the lunch making, and continue the cleaning up from the previous evening. Then it seems like every morning I have to go and wake the girls up again. They really aren't morning people, not that I can blame them. I hate mornings as well.

With my oldest who is a Type 1 Diabetic, we go through; did you test, what was it, did you eat, did you do Symlin, do you have insulin in your pump, a good battery, your test kit, test strips for your kit, and a snack in case you go low?

Then it is back to lunch preparing, homework reminding, no you can't wear slippers as shoes, don't forget to brush your teeth and your hair, now go go go go or your going to miss your bus!

Then I get to sit for a few minutes, and start all over with our resident drama queen Haley the 7 year old. Wake up, get dressed (which sounds easy enough right? Well something is always irritating to her. Pants too tight, not tight enough, socks poking her toes, shirt is itchy, wants to wear short sleaves but its 20 degrees out, shoes too tight, or shoes not tight enough). Then she is dressed and ready to eat, brush, brush and go. Which usually is compounded by no you can't take any toys to school, no you don't need to take extra books, no no no...its time to go go go!

And thats the point when I flop down on the couch, cuddle up with the 2 year old and we say yay!

Thats my morning routine.

4. Secret Single Behavior :

So since I really have continued my secret single behavior I am going to go with it.

Pj's. I like Pjs. I like to be in Pj's all day. I run to change into clothes right before my husband gets home from work because I don't want him to think I haven't been doing anything all day long. Even though I know he won't think that and he is usually aware I have spent the majority of my day in Pj's. But I do it anyway.



5. What prompted me to begin blogging:

We moved from California to Virginia a little over 2 years ago. All of my family and friends are in California. We have 5 children including our first son who was only a week old when we moved. I needed to feel some kind of connection to them and to find a way to share our everyday musings. I can write and put up pictures and everyone can see them. I feel like I am more connected to them.

After a little while it has become the only way I get to vent and communicate with other adults who have similar issues and situations like ours.

I love reading about other peoples day to days and it helps me feel normal.

So this catches me up on all the topics for the blogging dare. Until tomorrow when I can focus on one topic...or maybe one from bloggy moms and one from my own mind.

update: Screw it, I give up. I just don't feel like blogging about all those topics.

• 

Semi - Wordless Wednesday

My adorable son Ethan. He ran upstairs, went into our bedroom, locked the door behind him, and laughed alot! It took me a few minutes to find the little key thingy that opens the door and when I opened the door this is what I saw! How adorable is he? Eating my chocolate Santa...

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I Don't Like Pizza

I don't like pizza. Yep, I said it out loud. I don't like the smell, the taste, or the texture. I don't like it at all.

I am sitting here at the bar while my children and my husband are chowing down on cheese pizza and pepperoni pizza. They are having a blast being loud and eating pizza.



When I was pregnant with our son Ethan in California it was even worse. My stepdaughter (technically once removed but I don't follow that rule) is 22 now and she lived with us, our nanny/helpful live in friend, and of course my husband and the girls all love pizza. If it were up to them it would be pizza 4 to 7 times a week.
Well when I was pregnant the smell caused actual physical illness for me. Thankfully that went away, because my family's love for pizza didn't.

Now we have pizza once every week and a half maybe. And that is plenty for me! I almost feel like I am breaking some American tradition by not liking or even tolerating pizza. Am I the only one? Is there anyone else out there who dislikes this classic American grease fest of food?

Well I guess I am just weird then. I don't like pizza.

Common Sense

At what point in  most people's lives does common sense become evident? If it ever does, because we all know people who never seem to have understood common sense. However, that's really not what I am referring to. I mean common sense in our children. When does common sense make it to the part of their brains they use? Although as I write this I am thinking to myself I really do know a lot of people who can't seem to use or have any common sense whatsoever...so I guess we can open it up to everyone.

Now of course using the 2 year old as an example is much more fun and understandably he hasn't reached the common sense territory as of yet. But like I said its is fun, so here it goes.

Over the last few days my sons favorite thing to do has become going upstairs (under the disguise he is going to his room to play, more of an assumption on all of our parts) and taking a lovely glass ball ornament from the small Christmas tree that overlooks the foyer below, and tossing it over the railing to the floor below. It makes the most amazing popping and smashing noise all at once. I can see where he would be mesmerized by this fun activity. It is kinda cool, the noise, the blast radius of the colored glass ornament, and the sparkly mess left behind. Not to mention the words that daddy seems to shout out each and every time he does it. Then someone comes running, turns on the vacuum and cleans up the mess.
To a 2 year old, that's some serious entertainment! To mommy and daddy its a pain in the tush and a worry someone will step in the glass and cut their foot open (daddy worries about mommy doing it mostly because I clean it up a lot and I am a total klutz).
So common sense says don't throw ornaments and break them on purpose, no matter how cool the sound, because someone could get hurt. Easy one, right?




Common sense has many different interpretations which I found very interesting (which means it will be boring to you so I promise to be brief with this stuff). According to Aristotle, the common sense is an actual power of inner sensation (as opposed to the external five senses) whereby the various objects of the external senses (color for sight, sound for hearing, etc.) are united and judged. Where John Locke proposed one meaning of "common sense", each of the senses gives input, and then something integrates the sense-data into a single impression. This something is what Locke sees as the common sense — the sense of things in common between disparate impressions.

Ok so enough philosophical stuff for you that can be confusing and mind boggling therefor if it doesn't directly have any affect on you, its boring. But to me interesting.

So how does the average teenager gain and begin to use common sense? That is the mystery. There seems to be a time between toddler hood and teenager where they can understand common sense and actually use it, but then it slips away like a thief in the night.

I think they know about common sense, understand it, and could use it if the situation demanded it (to acquire something they wanted or for their own personal safety of course), but there is that "teenager code" that states although they are allowed to be kind, loving, supportive, and even helpful at times, but they must also fight all laws of nature tooth and nail. I swear if my girls could defy gravity, just to prove they could, they would!

I have far too many examples of no common sense in my teen aged girls that would fill this post to the brim of complete boredom and who wants to read all that? Not me. You know what your kids are like when they have no common sense. Well mine are the same...and sometimes worse.

The battle for common sense in our home is like the picture above...rolling waves, pounding surf, unreachable to anyone out there in the waves... so apparently if you can grab it, contain it, and use common sense in your life your a set above the rest!

"Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes." Ralph Waldo Emerson