Taking team loyalty to an extreme!

Last night Ian and I sat down to play a board game. He chose to be "yellow" and I just reached in the box to grab the first color and pulled out "green." However, I was informed that I could not be "green" as that would make the colors on the board "packers" colors and that would be bad. He's such a smart boy!

My daughter, the hot dog snob

Since Kyra turned a year old, we have been dealing with allergy issues. At that time, she seemed to be allergic to wheat, milk and sometimes egg. They weren't horribly severe, but they were bad enough for us to consult an allegist. Since she was on the "low" end of the scale in terms of her reactions, he recommended we keep her diet free of wheat and dairy and then in a few months, start incorporating to see what happened. We have slowly been adding things and luckily, she seems to have outgrown the allergies for the most part.

Feeding a toddler with allergies is no easy task - especially when she is allergic to wheat. It's practically in everything under the sun! I came up with a fairly comprehensive list of all the foods she could have and it made grocery shopping a lot easier. The only brand hot dog we found she could have without breaking out into hives was Hebrew National. Now that her allergies have relented a bit, I scaled back just a bit and got beef Ball Park Franks. Will she eat them? Of course not! I have created a hot dog snob!

Ian is a math magician

After Ian got home from school today, we went through our normal routine of going over his homework for the day. They are getting ready to start a new math unit and so the teacher sends home a "Family Letter" to explain what they will be learning (actually, I think it is to secretly remind parents that we need to "brush up" on our own skills so that we can help with homework). The next unit is going to be multiplication and division.

Now, Ian is extremely talented in math. He just "gets" it (and he certainly doesn't get that talent from me). So, at dinner I said, "so you are going to be doing multiplication and division - sounds like it's going to be tough." In his best exasperated voice he tells me, "Mommy, I already KNOW how to multiply and divide. I'm a math magician!" I honestly think he was trying to say "mathmatician", but it came out so cute!

And now if you will excuse me, I am going to go practice how to multiply and divide (without a calculator).

Now that was fun!

Rich has switched jobs quite a few times in the past. Each company has its own pros and cons. Unfortunately, the cons seem to pop up well after he accepts the offer for emplyment.

The last few companies he has worked for have been duds, to say the least, in terms of company activities. In fact, when he mentioned the words "Mastertaste" and "party" in the same sentence, I always cringed. It's not that I didn't appreciate the thought, but the actual "party" was usually pretty bad. For example, last year, they had to hold the company picnic on a weekday (a Friday) and pay the employees to attend! When 4:00 rolled around, the place became a ghost town! Nothing like forced "bondng" with your co-workers.

So, last October when Rich made the move to Red Arrow, he informed me that they held employee "outings" just about every month. I groaned at the thought, but it would be a good way to get to know people. So far, we've been to the Christmas party, ice skating and now last night - cosmic bowling. But what is different from past copany events that we have attended is that these employees WANT to be there! It makes such a difference in the way the evening goes.

Last night, they rented out an entire bowling alley. There was tons of food and, as we have found out quickly in this part of Wisconsin, you can't have a party where there is not free-flowing beer. So, not only was it an enjoyable night out for Rich and myself, it was also an inexpensive one. We had a blast bowling in the dark while 80s music blasted all around us. Seriously, I felt like I was back in the upstairs gym of my high school. We also had a great group of people on our lane and that made it even better.

So now I'm ready for the next Red Arrow outing. Looks like we've finally found a "winner".

What would you call this?

Seriously. Off the top of your head, what is the first word (or 2 words) that come to mind?

To me, this is a water fountain or drinking fountain. Always has been, always will be. It can look like this, it can be one of those porcelain things, but this will forever be in my mind a water fountain.

Ah, but imagine my surprise when I am at school with Ian last week and he tells me to hold on a second - he wants to get a drink from the "bubbler". What have I done to my child? He has adopted a "Wisconsin" word. True, he has lived in this state for almost half of his life, but I would think I could "protect" him from such things. Oh well, at least we have still managed to keep him a Bears fan!

No one else thinks this is silly either

I signed Kyra up for Kindermusik classes for this spring. She's always dancing to various songs on the TV or radio, so I figured this would be an opportune time for me to "formalize" her music training. She's a little on the young side - the recommended age for the class she is in is 18 months; however, after talking with the teacher, she said that the two months wouldn't be that big a difference. I can say that after 3 classes, she's actually "getting" it. The first class, she just kind of ran around and didn't know what to think, but after a couple more classes and some practice at home, she's starting to mimic the other kids in the class. It's really a neat transformation to watch even if she still doesn't want to participate 100% of the time. It's also refreshing to be rolling around on the floor with 10 other mommies who don't find this to be silly in any regard.

Easily amazed

Last week I finally got aroudn to throwing some stuff up on eBay. I always have the best of intentions yet I somehow never quite get around to taking the pictures and getting the listings ready. Somehow the thought of saving 10 cents on my listing fees lit a fire under me and I took four quick pictures and put the stuff up for sale.

Now, I have a simple eBay philosophy: price it low and the bidders will come. As such, you will typically find that most of my auctions start at the rock bottom price of 99 cents. Sure, every once in a while I get bit and don't get as much as I anticipated, but for the most part, I find I get a "fair" price once all is said and done.

In my current lot, I listed some stamping supplies and a few punches that I have found I either don't use anymore or have found newer/better things to replace them with. One of the items was the Stampin Up ink caddy that I "had to have" when it first came out. I had a good "party" so I didn't end up paying full price for it but it still just sat for the most part taking up valuable space in my scrap room. In checking the past auctions on eBay, I found that I would be happy if I could get what most of the used ones were going for. Imagine my surprise when it closed and the final bid was only $10.00 less for what you can buy it NEW - and that doesn't include shipping. Needless to say, I am pleasantly surprised. In fact, all of my auctions ended at prices that were far better than I ever expected.

Of course, I already have my eye on some other scrapbook supplies . . .