Quality Time

I've actually had people email me to see if I was still among the living since I haven't posted since Saturday! I'm here trying to be Housewife of the Year, an award that I will proudly place next to my soon to be acquired Mother of the Year.

My house was actually very clean and picked up on Christmas night when I had my family here for a progressive dinner (I was the dinner portion) although my SIL Karol, Darrell's older sister, told me I needed a house keeper. (Sorry Karol, I had to do it! It was too good a line not to use!) It was not said as an insult but in a "I don't know how you do it all, you need some help" kind of way... although she did say it after I noticed cobwebs on my dining room light fixture...

All that to say that my house was clean and I was determined to keep it that way. Do you know how hard it is to keep your house picked up and clean???? All I do from the moment I get up to when I plop into bed to watch my Lost Season 4 on my laptop with headphones is pick up my house. I feel like I'm in a bad episode of the Twilight zone, or in Cabin Fever, an episode from Lost Season 4 where John Locke meets Horace and the tree Horace chops down keeps reappearing standing up. I pick up the floor, leave the room, come back and what I picked up is there again. Doodoo doodoo....spooky. That was supposed to be Twilight Zone music. Duh.

So I've gotten quite cranky, all work and no blogging makes Mommy an Evil Overlord. Time for some fun. Since Christmas wiped out the cash reserves it had to be cheap. Or free. Free is good. How about the library? After I spent 2 hours making beds, dressing babies, picking up discard jammies, making breakfast, cleaning up, unloading and reloading the dishwasher, sweeping the kitchen floor, breaking up baby Ultimate Fighter rehearsals and finding library books we were finally ready to leave.

When we arrived at the library we were confronted with a sign.

I told the girls they had to turn around and take their guns and switchblades back to the car. Jenna looked at me like I had lost my mind, which of course, we all know that I have.

This was Jenna's second visit to our new library and she was excited to discover that she was not limited to checking out 2 books like she was our first visit. Her probation was over and she could check out more. How many more? The limit is 200. She better get busy.

There's a table in the children's area that has book bundles. Ryan loves this table and usually pulls up a chair and sits there looking at the books the entire visit.

Emma perusing the book shelves searching for the perfect book. That got old pretty fast.

Who wants to look at books when you can run up and down aisles?

Maybe she's interested in books after all. Somehow I think the library frowns on folding books in half Emma. I got exhausted chasing her up and down the aisles so thankfully she found the tables in the children's area and partook in one of her favorite home activities.

Climbing on top of tables. Emma, why can't you be more like Ryan? Look at him sitting there looking at books like a good boy.

I had hoped to get a couple of books but after several of minutes of leaving Emma with Julia, Julia got frustrated and I gave up.

Time to check out. Jenna's book bag was so heavy that she couldn't carry it. Two hundred books does weigh a lot! Okay, she didn't get 200 books. I told her she could get 10. Seriously, who would actually check out 200 books? I'm going to have enough trouble keeping up with 10 books let alone 200. We'd be homeless street people in a couple of months after all the fines I would owe for lost books.

Jenna was so proud of herself checking out her books with her own library card.

Ryan is checking out his books, his library card firmly in his hands.

Emma was tired of the library. We had been there all of about 20 minutes.

The kids holding up their library cards for yet another photo op. One of the librarians came up and asked if I wanted her to take our picture. They must think I'm nuts or paparazzi. Who takes pictures of their kids excursion to the library???

Jenna couldn't carry her bag so I carried my purse, Ryan's bag, Jenna's bag and Emma. Can we go home now?

No.

Next we were off to the grocery store. The library wasn't enough family fun. We needed more quality time. Nothing like a grocery store trip to fix that.

Ryan loves these car carts. In the future when he gets bored I'm just going to take him to Price Chopper and push him around in the car cart.

Julia is waiting for the groceries to be bagged and put in the cart. Most of what we got was for her party tomorrow night. She's invited 5 girls to come spend the night to ring in the New Year. Pray for me.

I was exhausted at this point. Why?

Emma has decided she's too cool for carts. Momma has to hold her.

When I adopted the first time with Jenna the big thing was to carry around a 10 lb bag of flour or a 20 lb bag of rice to get used to carrying a bigger baby. I always thought it was kind of ridiculous. What baby is like a bag of flour or rice?

Emma. My stout little future linebacker is all solid middle and short limbs and lately she doesn't seem interested in hanging on to me. Think 25 lb bag of flour with a miniature broncing bronco inside. Yeah. In fact, she doesn't want me to hold her at all. She wants down to do her own shopping. So most of our shopping trip was holding my wiggly baby and pushing a the grocery cart. Like I said. Fun quality time.

We got home, unloaded the van and I made lunch. And what comes after lunch?


Time for bed babies! Momma needs a nap!