The Neighbor Project

Some of you may know that I'm working on being a better neighbor. So far, I have given a pan of brownies to 2 different neighbors. Okay, it was two separate pans of brownies. Now those neighbors think I'm awesome. ;D

There are only 5 more families on my street to go. It's a good thing that a WalMart bag of brownie mix is only 86 cents! Who knew that it only cost approximately 86 cents per house to become a better neighbor?

I've always thought it would be so fun to have a big cookout in front of the house. We could put our grill in the driveway. The other families in our cul-de-sac could grill out front or use our grill. I could put our picnic table in the front yard plus all of our lawn chairs. We could have a big fun neighborhood party.

Do you know what my husband would think about this idea? He would HATE it. To him, that would be pure torture.

I guess opposites really do attract.

I did it!!

I got home from having lunch at Brad's BBQ yesterday, and I couldn't stand it one more minute. I pulled up that carpet and padding from the bathroom and the hallway. It just had to be done. The padding was still soggy. So nasty!

Once I got that outside and swept all the dirt and stuff, my dad came over with a pry-bar and got the little wooden strips loose so I could get rid of those.

I got a flashlight and lifted the edge of Mark's carpet in his doorway, and it was damp too. Ugh. So I pulled his carpet up along that edge. It was a small section that was wet so I just cut a similarly-sized section from some dry pad that I removed from the hallway to replace it.

Next, I concocted a bleach/water mixture in a spray bottle and sprayed the heck out of the floor everywhere that it had gotten wet. I set the box fan to blow that way, and it started drying pretty quickly. Mark's floor dried the quickest so I went ahead and replaced his padding and put his carpet back the right way. It's a little lumpy but I did my best.

Finally, I dug out a box of carpet runner that I had bought ages ago when my dogs were not housebroken. This stuff was supposed to go over the carpet and then easily washed. We never used it, so now I have that on the concrete in our bathroom and hallway. It looks pretty awful but it's just a temporary fix. It may take a couple paydays before we can afford to put something more permanent there.

But anyway--I did it!! I got rid of the smell, I got it clean, and I didn't spend any money.

Smell, smell, go away!

The night before last, we had a toilet incident in the kids' bathroom. The toilet had a massive overflow--from the bowl AND the tank. It is a small bathroom with linoleum on the half of the floor by the toilet/tub and carpet on the half by the sink. Well, the floor filled up with water--completely soaking the carpet. Toilet water even seeped into the carpet in the hallway. I used every towel in my house just to attempt to soak up all the water. I had to stop my efforts after an hour to wash and dry the first load of towels just so I could continue the process.

I have now sprayed Resolve and scrubbed it with towels several times. Glen has had the box-fan blowing into that room for 2 days. I've resorted to leaving all the windows on that side of the house open and spraying them with Lysol and/or Oust.

It just smells so bad. I wasn't noticing it too much yesterday but when Henry got home from school, he announced that our house smelled horrible. Then he went outside to do his homework and refused to come back inside.

I don't know what to do. No one who lives in my house knows anything about household maintenance or repair. I'd love to rip up the carpet in the bathroom (and the hallway) and put something else there. BUT--I don't know how, and we don't have any money anyway.

How can we live with that stench?

Clouds

Today I decided to participate in the MomSquawk Photo of the Day Challenge. The theme was "Clouds". The picture I chose is first, but I am going to share my others here as well. In many of the shots, I am lying down on a trampoline while Mark is standing or jumping beside me.

I love the opposite-ness!

Henry and Mark could not be any more different from each other. Every day, I discover even more fascinating things about my children that make them even more opposite from one another.

I'm sure quite a bit of it is their ages but Henry never really acted his age.

8-year-old Henry disappears if there is the possibility of work to be done. He gets that from me. 3-year-old Mark is always asking to help, helping without being asked, and putting things where they belong. He is so tidy that I would wonder if he were switched in the hospital but he looks just like his daddy so I guess not. Maybe being tidy is a recessive trait . . .

At around age 2 1/2, Henry announced that he was NEVER going to use the potty. [Thank goodness it wasn't true.] Mark practically potty-trained himself.

Henry hardly ever wanted to watch TV unless it was Cedarmont Kids videos and would never have watched a full-length feature film at age 3. Mark has been sitting through whole movies for over a year.

Henry always wanted to be in my lap or next to me wherever we went. He was quiet and still and generally well-behaved in public. Mark is also fairly well-behaved in public but he is much more independent and wants to do everything the big kids do--even if it means leaving me behind.

I always had to worry about Henry choking because he put EVERYTHING in his mouth--way past age 3. Even in kindergarten, I couldn't give him "choking-hazard" toys. Mark almost never puts things in his mouth--except food. However, Mark is much worse about getting into stuff than Henry ever was. Mark likes to wallow in dirt and mud outside, he smeared an entire tub of Vaseline all over his bathroom once, and the list continues.

I love those kids!

Random Musings of the Day--

What was I thinking? I am now the secretary of my women's circle, the historian for the whole women's unit of my church, the historian for the PTA at Henry's school, and Room Mom for Henry's class.

The funny part of all that is--the more I have to do, the more I get done. It seems like I've always gotten way more accomplished when I've had a time crunch of some sort. So I guess it's good that I overcommit. Maybe.

Also, I am finally feeling some SWEET RELIEF from the horrendous pain I've had in my neck and shoulders for an entire week. At its best, the pain was just an achiness in one side of my shoulder/neck--like a crick from sleeping on it wrong. At its worst, the pain was throughout my entire upper back into my shoulders and neck then radiating up into my head and making one eye throb. OUCH. It was at its worst this morning during church but I powered through it. We ALL know that moms don't get a break even if they are in debilitating pain. After a week of Advil (which worked okay), Excedrin (which took longer but worked even better), and aspirin (which did NOTHING), I am finally feeling pretty much okay. Let's pray that the pain stays away.

Henry's fundraiser is driving me batty. He is all excited about selling to everyone we know. Two lovely people, his Sunday school teachers, placed orders this morning. BUT--they didn't give him any money. So far, about half the people who have written down orders haven't paid me. Why exactly do they think it is called a FUND-raiser? I can tell you one thing. We do NOT have the money to float it for them until the items arrive. So now I get to be a dang collector. PITB.

I am trying REALLY hard to cook all meals until Glen gets paid next Friday. We really need to stop spending money we don't have. However, today I asked Glen to pick up a pizza on his way home from church with the boys because I was in too much pain to fix lunch. Ugh.

I'm going to see Tyler Perry's "The Family that Preys" in a little while. It looks so good! Kathy Bates plays such an excellent "bad guy". I'll let you know how it is.

Later!

The Rock

Another Chickasaw Story: When I was at the playground with the boys, Mark started to pick up a large rock. I told him "no" and said to just leave it there. Later in the day, I was sitting on the front porch of my cabin watching some of the kids play in the grass. Every now and then, a parent would walk down to the playground where some other kids were playing. Mark was keeping a post right by the little road, facing me with his hands on his hips. Each grownup asked him if he wanted to go to the playground as he or she passed by him. Each time, he would pout and refuse to answer.

After the second grownup went to the playground without him, he crossed his arms and hollered, "I'm going to the playground but I don't want anyone to ask me!!!" Then he stomped down the road to the playground.

Not 2 minutes later, he is stomping back toward me, carrying the huge rock that I had told him to leave. So that's why he wanted to go without a grownup. Crazy kid!

He posed with the rock, then later he got to paint the rock when we did crafts with the kids. We even brought that rock home. I hope it isn't illegal to remove a large rock from a state park. ;D

The three of us at Chickasaw State Park

I was looking through my friends' pictures from last weekend, and I thought this one was pretty good.

What?! No pretend school?

This past Tuesday, Henry had earned 35 "Banyon bucks" in his class at school. That meant he had earned enough to sit at the teacher's desk all day, if he so chose. He told me that he was going to do that so I fully expected to play pretend school that afternoon so we could reenact it all.

But no! Henry didn't even mention the special treat until I asked him where he sat. He told me about it and was excited but didn't have any interest in pretending.

I started to think maybe he had outgrown playing pretend school (finally).

Then Henry came home today, disappeared into his room for a while, then found me and asked if I wanted to play pretend school. :D So I did. Apparently it is more fun to pretend that it is "Fun Friday" than it is to pretend that you're sitting at the teacher's desk.

Who knew?

If you don't have something nice to say . . .

Sometimes I wonder if anyone even knows that saying anymore. "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all."

I get really tired of people saying ugly things. I live in Happy Land, and that's really fine with me. So no ugly comments.

K? Thanks!

Not too thrilled with Jillian right now . . .

I've been doing the 30-Day Shred workout for a week. I get all gross, sweaty, and tired by the time I'm finished. I should be seeing awesome results.

I weighed today, and I gained 2 pounds. I don't think so.

I'll give it one more week, and if I have a gain then, I'm destroying that thing. I'm not getting all sweaty for nothing. Blah.

Camping Weekend a Success!

I was brave this past weekend and decided to take my kids to Chickasaw State Park. My Sunday School class goes every year, and this year was the 4th annual trip. Glen doesn't travel so I wasn't willing to take the kids myself until this year.

There were 10 families signed up to go, and the food/drinks were divvied up amongst everyone. My van was packed so full! I took Mark's crib mattress in lieu of an air mattress. Henry slept with me in the full(?)-sized bed. Mark slept at the foot of the bed on his mattress.

The kids played and played. It was really nice having several other families there so my kids could go with other people to the playground or wherever.

Thank goodness I had the foresight to take peanut butter and jelly as Mark ate pb&j sandwiches for practically every meal while we were there.

I came home with 103 pictures in my camera. The funny thing about that is--I lost my camera midday Saturday and didn't find it until I was packing the car to leave Sunday morning. I wonder how many pictures I would have taken if I hadn't lost it.

Somehow, I got the dubious honor of coordinating this event for next year. So it looks like we're going back!

Success.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the big green blog!

Yay! I found my original "first blog post". Here it is.

Hello! I finally got my username, password, secret code word, etc. to work, so here I am.

I'm Robin. My husband Glen (yes with one "n" and yes we pronounce it so it rhymes with "win"), and my kids are Henry and Mark. We live in a quiet suburb of Memphis, TN. I grew up here. Loved it then, love it now.

Henry will be home from school any minute so I think I'll save my deepest, innermost thoughts for another day.

Blogging is fun!

Stay tuned for the next episode, tentatively entitled "Potty-trained *or* House-broken?"