Swaps and such

Well, a while back I decided that I would only participate in one swap at a time, to keep costs and time commitments down. The idea was: no swap until the previous swap was knitted, boxed, and sent away. I broke my rule. I did the Hogwarts Sock Swap 2 back in September/October, and neither one of us finished our socks on time. Life just does what it wants, without our permission. So I finished those socks and decided that even though the swap wasn't complete I could go ahead and do another. I did a prayer sock swap on Ravelry. That went better. My partner sent my socks right on time. They are beautiful! They are a little too long, but I'll just wear them around here. I was a couple of weeks behind on mine, but the girl I sent to (in Belgium!!) was very understanding. The plan was working fine, until a girl I know invited me to join A Few Of My Favorite Things over on ravelry. Then I noticed SecretPal 12 was up. So, I'm signed up for 2 at the same time. Neither one requires knitting a complete project; they are more putting nice packages together. And, AFOMFT is only a month and a $15 commitment so it will be done soon. The other is over 3 months. So anyway, there will only be a little overlap by the time signups for sp12 are done. Rationalization or reality avoidance: you decide.

fevers, socks, and cooking

We went to Pittsburgh earlier this month. It was a pretty nice visit. Unfortunately, hokieboy came down with something. We got to the Burgh Thursday evening and Friday morning he was burning up. He didn't whine or cry or anything; he just sat there, and didn't want to eat or drink. We went to Erie for Mother's Day (which is a whole other story) and he swam at the hotel for a long while, but he went to bed really early. Around 4 in the morning, he wakes us up saying he's hungry and he wants something to eat. Well, of course there is nothing. I didn't have any snacks in the hotel room. So I go out looking for a vending machine. Nothing near the front desk. I find the elevator and there is a soda machine and an ice machine. I take the elevator down one flight and pray there is a snack machine. Oh, hallelujah! So I buy pretzels and poptarts and cookies, all in the hopes that my little furnace will eat something! (This ordeal has taken at least 10 minutes of me wandering around barefoot in my pjs at 4 something in the morning in a hotel.) I make it back to my room and find that hokieboy has managed to wake his hokiesister, who is now thinking it's morning, even though she has only been asleep for 4 1/2 hours. I get him to come into the bathroom so hokiehubby can turn the lights out and convince the little girl to sleep. I offer up my goods. This is what my almost 4 yo says to me:

"No, thanks, I'm good. Daddy got me this." He shows me the cup of Sprite in his hands.

Happy Mother's Day to me. And thanks for wandering around at 4 something in the morning looking for food.

We made it home safely and unremarkably. Then, on Sunday evening, just under a week after hokieboy got over his fever, hokiegirl wakes up in the middle of the night burning up. Joy.

The worst part of sick children is that I can't go anywhere. I don't want to expose anyone else's little darlings if my own are contagious. So, we canceled our plans with friends. I need to see a chiropractor, but I can't make the appointment without someone to watch my kids. All my nearby people have kids. But it's all good because the chiropractor is open late and my mom is coming over tomorrow to watch the kids for me.

Knitting: I'm almost done with clue 3 on MS3. I really enjoy it while I'm doing it, but it doesn't grow very fast. I'm also making wee tiny prayer socks for my MOPS group's last meeting. This was inspired by the prayer sock swap I was doing on ravelry. Nothing else to say about that, as my laptop died with the pictures on it and my camera battery is dead so no new pictures. I got my ravelry order: a fuschia tshirt, a Bob pin, and a cute little cotton fiber bag.

Pampered Chef: all the paperwork is done and I am a consultant! My kit should be in soon! Know anyone who would like to host a show? There are incentives for hosts of shows that I close within my first 30 days!

Waking up to new adventures

Mystery Stole 3 is out of hibernation! I picked it up again after some encouragement from Jess <pixieroseknits.blogspot.com>. I'm liking it much more as I'm 2/3 of the way through clue 2. I can actually read my lace and I'm able to follow the chart much better. I finished my sock swap and sent them off last week. I'm feeling pretty good about knitting right now. I do need to decide what I'm taking to Pittsburgh with me Thursday. I doubt I'll get much done on MS3 simply because when I'm visiting with people is not the best time for lace. So I'll need to cast o some socks. I have some beautiful yarn just waiting for me in my stash. (Stash sounds so wordly: my stash is like 4 skeins.)

I have a new venture beginning very soon. I'm going to be a Pampered Chef Consultant! Yay! I've been thinking for some time about doing something to earn play money for this family. Maybe this way I won't feel so bad for taking the kids out to eat. Anyway, if anyone needs a consultant, I'm here! I should be ready to go later this month and I'm looking for people to host parties. I get a bonus if I turn in 4 parties within my first 30 days. So exciting! I hosted a party yesterday and have my first 2 parties booked already! I need 2 more before June 15th. Pampered Chef also does wedding showers. I can't wait to see how that goes!

Let sleeping dogs lie

Today began with a ring. At 7:15 my phone rings. I ignore it, thinking if I answer it the person on the other end would probably drop dead from the growl in my voice. It doesn't work. My cell phone rings. Loudly. Somebody had better be injured, because my kids are sleeping in today, therefore so am I.

I think I grumbled something like, "hello?"

It's Paul asking me for a huge favor. "Can you go downstairs and find the map (that I did not treat like the important document that it is and casually left on the dining room table that is now covered with clean clothes)? The GPS did not take me to the right place."

More grumbling from me as I stumble as quietly as I can down the stairs that complain loudly. They are almost 100 years old, afterall; you'd complain, too. I reach the dining room and hear from the room above me the pitter patter of little feet.

"I NEED TO GO PEE-PEE! I NEED TO GO PEE-PEE!!" yells my soon-to-be-4 year old.

I stumble back up the stairs to let him out of his room, vainly hoping he hasn't woken his sister.

He has.

I stumble back downstairs to the phone that I had left. Rather than look under the piles of clean clothes (hey, it's a flat surface that the kids aren't likely to pull the clothes off of), I check the floor first.

There it is. The only piece of paper on the floor. If he had looked, he would have found it.

At this point, I need to go pee-pee myself. So I take the phone and the map with me.

"Where are you?" I growl.

"At the power plant."

Guess where he's supposed to be?

The training center is part of the power plant complex.

So this afternoon, I decided to go to the post office after my 2yo woke up from her nap. Being the brilliant woman that I am, I decide to save the environment (and my money) by walking the half mile to the post office. It's been raining off and on all day, but not hard. We begin our journey, one kid walking with me and one kid in the stroller, two umbrellas in hand. One block from the post office, we see big flash of lightning followed shortly by big crack of thunder. It hasn't done that all day! Just rain!

So we moved as quickly to the post office as a 4yo's legs can carry him. (I finally got my prayer socks sent to Brussels.) Turns out that was the only talking from the storm, besides some little rumbles. After our post office business is done, we begin our little trip home. It's sprinkling, then it rains. We stop to try to adjust the stroller umbrella. It falls to the side. We go to the next tree and try again. As we start walking it falls again. This continues all the way home. Finally we make it home.

I love the cool spring weather. I love April showers. I love having my windows open. Unfortunately, these things do not always go together. It's so humid that my house is stuffy. So I try to open more windows. That works for a little while, until I'm told that it is now raining in our house. It's been an interesting day, and it's not over yet.

Yarn for Supper sure tastes good!

I took a time out last night. Paul got home from work and disappeared. After an hour I went out to find him. I didn't know how bad I was feeling until he asked me if I was okay. I just started crying. I needed to get away. So I asked if he would be okay if I ran away for a bit.

I went to Yarn for Supper at Panera Bread. That was the fastest three hours I've enjoyed in a long time. I love love LOVE my children and my husband, but I needed to be without them for a little while. I just sat there and ate dinner and knitted. I had a whole day away last Saturday, but it was a leadership training. Totally different. Light conversations and good food can't be beat. So, I'm making a new commitment to myself to take time out more often. I'll be a better mom.

She's a Walker now...

My baby sister got married today. It was a lovely party at Redwing. The bride and groom made their vows on the bridge in the Japanese Garden. The party was at the shelter nearest the playground for the enjoyment of my children. A grand time was had by all.

And I missed the ceremony. Before the ceremony began, my great-aunts were complaining about being cold and wondering if there was coffee. Looking at the time, Paul and I figured we could run up to Starbucks and be back with a box of coffee in 20 minutes, tops. So we leave the kids with my uncle and head out: the shop was maybe a mile away. We get there and ask for our coffee and pay. The girls seems excited to serve us. They find the box and then puzzle out how to put it together. Then they begin brewing the coffee. The box is almost full, when suddenly the bottom literally falls out. Coffee everywhere. So they decide they must call the manager to find out how to put the box together.

We wait. I call my cousin to find out what's going on. The wedding ceremony is over. Apparently, they thought everyone was there, so they began a tad early. Six minutes.

In the meantime, the girls at the coffee shop are having no luck. The new box is not going together. The coffee maker is not brewing actual coffee anymore. They can't get the pump on the pot to work. We tell them thanks, but we want our money back now so we can go. They offer us free coffee to make up for it. We make the decision that we might as well stay, since we've missed the ceremony anyway. Fifteen minutes later, we leave the store with 16 tall cups of coffee and creamers and sugars.

I missed the ceremony, but the coffee was free.

My willful (new) two-year-old

My daughter is two. It's official. Her birthday was yesterday, and now I can say for certain she is in the terrible twos. It's not that she is a bad child. On the contrary, she and her brother are perhaps the sweetest things on earth, randomly spouting "I love you" and running up to everyone they know with great big smiles and hugs. She is just extremely willful. She does what she wants to do, no matter how many times I tell her no. She climbs all over the furniture, tugs on my curtains, rips pages out of books, tosses toys everywhere, wriggles under the safety gate, and strips down nekkid whenever she can. She raises her head when you say her name and gives you a look that says, "go ahead and put me in time out; when it's over I'm doing this again."

All the animals at the zoo, and she plops down to play in the gravel. Two.