Greetings From My Bed

This is what Matt got to wake up to this morning.

I always say he is a lucky, lucky man.

I have a horrible head cold.

Nyquil for breakfast two days in a row, today I got a chaser of Sudafed.

Now I'm just sick and stoned.

Kill me.

That is all.

What's That Smell?

Last night my husband did something that slightly annoyed me.

I know, I know, love means you never annoy your spouse.

 I know Matt NEVER gets irritated with me.

 He never gets annoyed when I stay up until 1 am talking to him about nothing, or begging him for back rubs or when I want to smooch after eating Bold Chex Mix......

But I write this blog, so back to HIS being annoying while I pretend that I'm perfect.....

Last night he knocked over and spilled a bottle of my perfume.

My favorite perfume.

My perfume they don't make anymore and you have to pay an arm and a leg to find it from dealers who hoarded the stuff in the 1980's.......

My perfume I only have a tiny bottle of and I wear it only when it is a special occasion or date night that will NOT involve Bold Chex Mix.

He knocked over my bottle of LouLou Perfume.

I have loved this fragrance since it came out in 1987.

I would go into Goldwater's at Fiesta Mall and mooch samples off the cosmetics counter.

My cousin Marla gave me my first actual bottle of it because she knew I loved it but it was too expensive for my teenage budget. They stopped making it at some point and until Ebay was born and made anything possible, I was out of luck in having this perfume as an adult.

Matt didn't spill all of it, but he did get the stinkeye from me all evening, even though he smelled wonderful.

He couldn't have knocked over one of the other fragrances in my collection like:

 This crap.

It's my hooker perfume.

I know, TMI.

There are times I choose to wear the scent of my native people, the trailer park queens.

It helps me blend in at Walmart.

I don't know what the draw is, but I love me some trashy Lady Stetson sometimes.

Recently, I have been wearing this:

For a ten dollar bottle of perfume, it's pretty good. Nice, mellow and has a sweet smell that I like. Not floral and not musky.

-

When I married Matt, I fell in love with this fragrance:

 It's a nice warm scent that doesn't overpower and you can find it at the grocery store so you can pick up a bottle of perfume and grab a box of Raisin Bran.
All the makings of a perfect date night with your husband.
-

In high school, I also discovered this gem:

Oh, Primo, how many dates to the dairy Queen and Mesa Temple grounds did you and I share?

How many teenage boys were lured in by your sweet, bargain basement attractiveness?

Primo, you and I go way back. I'll never let you go.

Never.

And to be fair, Matt knows that if he really wants me to stay away from the Bold Chex mix, all he needs to do is hop in his time machine and slap on a ton of this:

or this

Ask my High School boyfriends, you CANNOT wear too much.

It doesn't work unless your eyes are tearing up from the fumes.

What is your signature scent?

Does it make you terribly dated and old like mine?

Please tell me I am not the only one trapped in 1987.

Excuses, Excuses

Do you hear that?

It is the sound of everyone back in school after the long weekend.

Okay, everyone but Parker. He went for a few hours, puked and then came home.

He texted me from school telling me he needed to come home and why and so i called the attendance office.

"Hi, I need to excuse my son from school for the rest of the day. His name is Parker Smith, he's a Senior."

"Okay, what is the reason?"

"Well, he's sick, he just threw up at school."

"How do you know this, Mrs. Smith?"

"It's Olson, and he just texted me and told me."

"Oh, well we would prefer students not text at school."

pause

"Would you prefer they puke at school?"

pause

"Well, no but he should have called you from an office phone."

"Noted."

"So technically, you shouldn' t be excusing him right now."

 "He is in the main hall bathroom cleaning up his barf. I can either call and tell him that, or you can send an aide to the bathroom to tell him.  He'll be down in your office shortly to call me again."

"But if he's throwing up, I don't want to get sick. He shouldn't be in here."

pause

"I'll go ahead and excuse him for the rest of the afternoon, have a nice day Ma'am."

"You too."

Don't try and out smartypants me, Folks.

So Busy Saturday

What a day we had yesterday!

We spent the last long weekend working, this long weekend has been dedicated to playing.

Greyson and Romy's dad is in town, so we decided to take the girls and do a staycation here in Salt lake City with them. We're halfway through it and already we have packed in a ton of fun.

We started out taking the girls out for a grown up lunch at one of our favorite haunts, PF Chang's.

They ordered lettuce wraps, Mongollion beef, hot and sour soup and Singapore street noodles.

 Instead of an entree, I ordered my favorite, the banana spring rolls.

Words cannot describe how good this dessert is.

I love it like I love my children.

 After that we went out to the Olympic Oval and watched the speed skating for awhile.

 We decided that speed skating is only interesting on the last lap though.

 I left the stands with Jane and we both got up close to take some pictures. She and I had a nice time together just the two of us taking pictures. I managed to swing by the gift shop and buy the kid a hockey stick, too.

 We only stayed about an hour though because we had somewhere else to go.

                                

Where did we need to go?  

To Parker's first concert with his band, The Red Room Kids.

They played as part of The Next Big Thing event along with a lot of other local bands.

 The guys did a great job. They were loud, entertaining and they had the crowd jumping.

Sunnie and I were a little freaked out when it was all over, to see him so grown up and all into his own thing.

I got the whole set videotaped and will post it later or on facebook along with more pictures.

He did a great job, I'm really proud.

 Matt and I had a room reserved at the Holiday Inn Express, the one by the freeway with the indoor waterpark that we went to after the concert was over. Grey and Roe's dad stayed here at the house with my four, and we took the other three to the hotel.

They kids swam for hours while I was in heaven in the world's hottest hot tub.

 They messed up with our room pretty bad, when we first went in, we saw that there was already someone in the room we were assigned. Thankfully, they were not in the room when we checked in and we didn't have some akward weirdness there with another family.

We went to the front desk and they had sold out all of the other rooms with two beds.

Not good.

They gave us a room with a king bed and brought in a spare, but the room didn't have a fridge......

So because of all of our trouble they knocked a good chunk of money off the price of the room.

That made it about $65 dollars for the King Suite, 24 hours of a waterpark pass, and breakfast for five. It was a pretty great deal and we all had a really fun day.

We are exhausted, but I think the girls especially had a great day.

Move over Bob the Builder

I've spent the past 2 days carpeting the stairs down to the new bedroom.

I had to paint the stairwell and ceiling first, it was the dreary, original blah paint color. When I went to Lowe's (my second home) I was happy to find a gallon of high end paint that had been a mis-tint for only 5 bucks. It was a whit with a hint of yellow  in it and since this paint just needed to be bright, not actually match anything I grabbed it and spent a few hours putting on two coats of paint into the dreary stairwell.

The carpet took longer and my hands are all scraped up and I had to stop and put my hands under the heating pad a few times for my awesome arthritis, but check it out.

I am very proud of the job I did.

Matt is coming home tonight expecting me to have just barely started this project, but I put my shoulder to the wheel and got it finished while he was at work today.

33 bucks worth of new carpet, leftover supplies from putting in the bedroom carpet and a lot of hard work made a lot of difference in how much like "home" this area feels.

If Ever I Would Leave You....

I haven't been much for blogging lately, I've just been busy and my brain has been pretty distracted.

No bursts of creativity or insight have hit me lately, so I've just been muddling though.

We did have a really nice Valentine's Day.

Matt came home to a ribeye steak dinner by candlelight that we enjoyed with Grey and Roe.

I know, very romantic....

The picture is terrible, but you get the idea.

We exchanged gifts and Valentines. Matt got a new car stereo from me and I got tickets to Sunset Boulevard from him.

He's come a long way since that first Valentine's Day when he gave me a webcam and a stuffed panda.

We all have our misguided gifts.

One year I gave him a bell.

Way worse than a webcam but they can't all be wins.

Every day though, I enjoy the gift Matt got me for Christmas, my Kindle.

Love love love it.

It's not coffee, it's hot cocoa.

The new Michelle Moran historical novel came out yesterday, Madame Tussaud.

I shouldn't start another book, but I enjoy her stuff.

I finished Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince yesterday.

I cried when Dumbledore died and during his funeral.

 I knew it was coming, but I still cried.

I cried also because the original actor who played Dumbledore in the movies had passed away and  I loved Richard Harris.

One word:

Camelot.

......Sigh.....

 In my younger years he was everything I hoped to find in a future sweetheart, minus a few dozen years. I loved everything about his portrayal of King Arthur.

Rest In Peace, Sir Richard.

I am happy that I found my own King Arthur in our little Camelot. Matt is smart, brave, sometimes silly, loving, loyal and has such a strong desire to make the world a better place.

He also sings.

He's perfect, I tell you.

I've almost totally forgotten about that webcam gift five years ago.....

Load Layouts

Just a quickie...more layouts.

I'm halfway through and even though I got one layout in past the deadline, I'm still at it.

Potty Humor

Romy sleeping in the new bedroom.

She giggles in her sleep.

And she snorted once while she laughed at her dream jokes.

So Matt has been in Las Vegas all weekend at the Rugby Sevens Tournament with Zane and Chad Larsen.

They spent all day from 9am until 10 pm shouting and cheering on the All Blacks and having a wonderful guy vacation. It was a once in a lifetime chance to see all of the world's best ruckers play.

I got everything done I wanted to accomplish while they were away. The kitchen has been deep cleaned, the stuff has been moved to the right rooms and I have a few boxes of stuff to take to the goodwill.

The new room is better insulated than the old one, so the temperature stays consistent as long as you stay away from the drafty windows. It is darker and so quiet here. Both nights I slept like a log, even with Romy down here. Little details like putting a light switch by the bed and having enough outlets to plug everything in are already being appreciated by me.

But Oy, we need a toilet down here.

Arthritis Old Lady Me did not like having to climb stairs in the middle of the night to go.

What do you think?

Too much?

Oh, now..you can't honestly think my potty humor will end there.

How about this one?

Who invented this?

 If I can't get people to lift the seat or flush, there is not way they're going to think to do a load of towels while they are doing their business.

This could be fun...if I lived in Alabama.

Or Willard.

And I married my cousin.

I have to think that the fancy factor wears off when you have a cold 3am pottybreak.

The diamond encrusted toilet paper doesn't help much, either.

More  toilet blog updates ahead in coming weeks.

Oh Joy.

Don't you wish we could trade lives?

I live a charmed life for sure.

Ta Da!

 For over 4 years this room was just concrete. It took us almost two to decide what exactly we wanted to do with the downstairs spaces in the first place. 

We finally decided we wanted a second master suite there.

This past summer I painted the walls with concrete sealer and primer and Matt had  glued the first layer of styrofoam insulation to the walls.

Mid November, Matt started working in earnest to get the bedroom finished.

By Christmas, it looked like this:

With the help of Brian, the ductwork had been done so that we had heat and Matt and the boys had framed it and put up insulation.

By the end of January, it looked like this:

 And tonight, it looks like this:

WE HAVE THE BEDROOM READY!

It still needs baseboards and outlet covers and a new light and the whole house needs new windows, but I put in the carpet today and we're going to finish moving in over the weekend. That frees up a room so that Roe and Jane can have a room all to themselves and the older girls can turn their bedroom into a Twilight shrine if they want.

We've had all 4 girls sharing for a long time because Matt and I gave up the master suite in this house for the kids so they would all have enough space to spread out and be comfortable.

The master suite here is bigger than Matt's whole apartment in Chicago, so it's been nice for the girls, but the room we have been in has been a tight fit for us. It's been the dumping ground for laundry, craft projects and all sorts of crap and it's never clean because there is nowhere to put stuff.

The bedroom downstairs does not have a closet, but we put up some closet rods in the unfinished area next to it and after we get a small bathroom put in, the space will be converted to a giant walk in closet.

I'm so happy it is ready.

Thank you, Matt for being such a sweet and wonderful husband.

I love you so.

XOXOXOXO

Same Old, Same Old.....

Honestly, I think Roe is going to be sick forever.

Just as her fever blisters were healing over, she got pink eye.

My little bebe just keeps catching every bug that has been hiding out in our house all winter long.

The basement is sooooooo close to being done. I tried to get the carpet down today but I don't have the arm strength to get the tack strips hammered into the carpet, so I have to wait until Matt gets home and then hopefully he can get that in and move the heavy stuff downstairs tonight.

I'm keeping up with LOAD, here are the latest layouts from the past few days while I've been kicking it with my contagious child.

Science Project 2011

Romy is super sick.

She had fever on Saturday and started throwing up on Sunday. Monday morning she came downstairs after having puked with fever blisters all over her face.

Poor Kid.

I took her to urgent care to treat the blisters and they confirmed that she had the flu and told her no school until the fever blisters were no longer contagious.

She's been hanging out in my room watching the Food Network and her new favorite show Animal Planet Heroes. Her tender little heart cries when she sees the animals get saved and also when the animals can't be saved. It has made for some interesting conversation about the humane treatment of animals.

I had to leave her home today for the first time for about a half hour while I ran to the school to check out the science fair.Grey and Jarod worked really hard on their project.

They learned about the relationship between heat and light sources and they did the bulk of the experiment at Jarod's house, then made the display board and did some research here at our house. We took apart a light bulb to see how it worked better and I helped them make a strong conclusion with all of their data.

The boys sure are good friends to one another, I am so glad they have paired up. Grey needed a good friend and so did Jarod. I am also glad they are going to the same Junior High next year so that they can continue the friendship.

Load Layouts..

Enough of the bleah posting.....

I'm keeping up with LOAD so far.

I am pretty happy with what I have put out there this week.

To help emotionally re-set from the stress the child who lied drama this weekend, we decided on Saturday morning to do a McDonald's PJ breakfast.

Nothing like hotcakes and McGriddles to get life back on track.

McDonald's in our Pj's is an "us" thing that Matt and I have been doing with the kids since we were first together.

I love that they have good hot chocolate now, it rivals Starbuck's hot chocolate.

Matt looks just a teensy bit tired.

Also.....on the remodeling front.....The basement ceiling is done. the room has been primed and I will have the painting done by tomorrow. We will get carpeting probably tomorrow or Tuesday and then we are ready to move in.

We had the kids help texture the ceiling, it was a messy but fun job. It looks awesome, by the way. I am really proud of how the room is looking. if only the rest of our house looked this nice.

I may just be sleeping in my new bedroom this weekend. I'm excited.

We've been working on it in earnest since November.

Next, the upstairs tub goes in and then we put in a small bathroom downstairs.

Please oh please let that drain in what will be he basement bathroom be a real drain up to code.....