Perfecting Imperfection

I’m exhausted.  We have been so busy it is unreal.  On top of all of that, I’ve been trying to keep up with the Flylady stuff AND stay on track with my E-mealz…both of which are going very well (we had Creamy Roast Beef Pitas today – they weren’t bad at all…)  A lot of the E-mealz recipes are ones I can see myself adding things to so that they are more to our liking.  There have been a few of the meals that we have liked, but didn’t love just because it was missing something . . . so next time I make it I will add the missing ingredient.  The Flylady thing isn’t going as well as I would like…but I’m keeping afloat.  I haven’t been able to dive into my Zone cleaning quite yet, but I’m closer than I was when I started.  My goal is to get there the second week in June – that’s a full week after a full week of no work for me…that should help because Tuesdays throw me all off.  Jerry is home all day with the kids on Tuesday and he doesn’t Fly.  Not that I expect him to and not that it’s really a mess or anything when I get home, but my sink isn’t as clean as I would like it and for some reason the kids just aren’t as happy.  It’s because he’s NOT the Mama…which isn’t a bad thing, but I always feel like I’m paying for being away all day, even if it was for work and not fun.  Okay – so, my exhaustion is causing me to ramble…on with it already.

I started doing a Sunday Wrap-Up a while back and then just forgot about it…kind of like how I forgot to keep up with other Memes that I had been doing.  Anyway – this is going to be kind of Sunday Wrap-upish. 

Here’s a pic of my kiddos with my parents…it’s the last pic I have of the kids before the battery died in my camera (which is why you won’t see any other pictures from our fun filled weekend) 

Friday night ~ I had Mommy Group and the big kids stayed at my parents’ house.  I had a great time at Mommy Group . . . the ride down was a lot of fun, too. 

Saturday ~ The kiddos came home early afternoon.  That gave me time to get the newsletter for school done in the morning.  The twins were really well behaved and I even got a few loads of laundry done, too!

Saturday evening ~ Jerry went shopping all over the place for birthday gifts and groceries.  When he came home we ate and put the kids to bed…then we watched Funny People.  I have mixed feelings about it.  It wasn’t a bad movie and it wasn’t an awesome movie.  It was just an okay movie.  I guess I probably wouldn’t recommend that you watch it because if you hate it I don’t want you to blame me for wasting hours of your life…but if you do watch it, I’d be interested in hearing what you thought about it. 

Sunday ~ by far our busiest day of the weekend.  We started out at a part for our friend’s son, Ethan.  He was turning 3 and had his party at Giggles and Smiles.  Fun was had by all – especially me because those are some FAST slides.  I took my niece, Angelina, up with me and helped her go down them.  She gets nervous with heights and any kind of floor with holes in it.  So I basically threw her over the parts that made her nervous.  I was the only adult going down the slides, though – good thing or bad thing?  I think it’s one of the things that makes me love my job so much – I’m a big kid and enjoy playing more than most kids do.  :)

After that party, we had another birthday party to go to…this one was for Jerry’s grandmother.  She turned 94.  It was a great party – two disappointments, though.  1) The weather stunk and 2) the Penguins lost. 

Well – apparently, I’m not going to get to finish this post beyond this…and I’m not loving it anyway – so, I’ll just end it with a promise to write a better, more complete post in the future….hopefully after a good night’s sleep. 

*I apologize about the absence of some of the pictures in this post - I have no freaking clue what happened or what's going on...but I don't have time to fix it right now!  :(

It's not a bad thing that I'm not finding the time to blog about my weekend on Sunday nights - It usually means that it was a great weekend and I just don't have the energy or that I am really busy with my family and don't have the time. It's not a bad problem to have! So - here's the low down on what went down this weekend.

Saturday we celebrated my friend, Derek’s birthday.  He actually turns 30 this week – but with Easter coming and all we just celebrated this past weekend.  (I run into a similar problem with my birthday, too…it’s the day after his!)

The above picture is only really funny to those of us who are “in on the joke”.  You see, when these guys were younger – much younger – they would spend HOURS kicking a bean bag around to each other.  HOURS and HOURS, night after night - “hacking”.  Well, it got kind of dark and they just couldn’t see that darn bean bag as clearly as they use to…you know eyesight gets worse with age.  So, someone suggested they use a bigger ball.  Much bigger…it was actually hysterical to watch them kick this thing around a circle.  I was just worried that one of them was going to break their ankle or leg…you know bones get more brittle with age.
 
This is proof that I had a glass (or two) too many.  I was drinking wine and really (really) enjoying it.  Here I am towards the end of the night planting a big old kiss on someone who is NOT my husband.  (For the record, my husband is taking the picture – totally not upset, I swear!)

The next day (Sunday) we had an Easter Party to go to.  I must add here that my husband was amazing yesterday morning.  It was further proof of my two (or three) too many glasses of wine that I was having a really tough time getting moving on Sunday morning.  My husband was great!  Took care of the kids and let me “recover” a bit.  He even made everyone breakfast!  What a guy!

So – on to the Easter party. 
Unfortunately, it was raining – so the egg hunt took place inside.  Here are some pics from the party.

Danika (on the left) and my niece, Angelina (on the right) with their egg hunt bags!

Nate was lucky enough to only have one little boy with him in his age category!  His buddy Nicholas!  Boy did they ever make out with the eggs/candy!

My mom’s camera has a much better picture (one where it doesn’t look like I woke Dean up to take this this picture – even though I did).  I’ll have to get it off of her!


I have no idea what is up with the goofy grin. 




You will notice that there is no picture of Danika with the bunny.  This is where my Mama Guilt comes in.  She just wouldn’t do it.  No way – no how.  She was the same with Santa.  It’s not a big deal, really…but it’s not because I don’t WANT her to take a picture with these characters – it’s just that I DON’T want her to cry and scream any more than she already does.  I know that I shouldn’t feel guilty about not making her cry – but I kind of feel guilty that I can’t get her to not cry and just take the picture.  I mean I will have all these pictures of her brothers with Santa and the Easter Bunny (and hopefully Disney Characters some day) but none of my beautiful daughter.  I may have tried to make her take the picture, but I was holding a sleeping baby and there was NO WAY hubby was going to make her do something she didn’t want to…she has him totally wrapped around her finger.

Oh – and the prompt over at Mama Guilt w/Cop Mama was about picky eaters…I totally talked about that last week!  The Nutritional Habit of my Children!

That’s about it.  We ended the weekend eating dinner at my parent’s house and watching the Pens win in a shoot out.

We have a busy busy week ahead of us…so, I’m off to go get started.  First up – laundry…so we don’t have to wear the same underwear all week!  (BTW – I hate laundry…least favorite part is the putting the clothes away part…I hate to admit how much we live out of laundry baskets around here.)

You didn’t really think that I would be able to write weekend updates on Sunday nights, did you?  hehehe  I did – but yesterday it just didn’t happen.  Mainly, because we aren’t sleeping…again.  Here is the culprit:

For reasons unknown to me – he just doesn’t seem to be able to get comfortable.  I get him to sleep.  He wakes up 40 minutes later.  I get him back to sleep.  He wakes up 20 minutes later.  I get him to sleep.  He sleeps a whole 2 hours and gets up again.  It’s exhausting!  I’m thinking teeth – maybe.  Who knows?  One more baby that was born without an instruction manual…so all I can do is guess – and drink lots and lots of coffee the next morning.

As far as the weekend goes – pretty normal around here.  This is the biggest news:

Before Haircut -

After Haircut -

I gave him a buzz cut!  Of course, when I did it it was in the high 60s and now we’ve dropped down to the low 50s…but he needed it cut.  He’ll look normal again by Easter.

Other than the haircut, we didn’t do a whole lot.  We went to my parents for dinner and the kids got to run around in their back yard for a few hours.  We had some friends over with their kiddos on Friday and I may (or may not) have had a tiny bit too much wine – I really didn’t want to have to make room for it in my fridge.  :)  I took the paper snowflakes down in my living room.  I’m still working on laundry – it NEVER ends!

For some reason, Jerry and I have been watching those paranormal shows On-Demand.  You know, Paranormal State, Paranormal Cops and Ghost Hunters.  I’m not really sure why we are watching.  Funny thing is that it scares the heck out of Jerry – and mostly makes me laugh.  It just kills me that they always try to make something out of nothing.  I’m not saying that there isn’t paranormal things that happen – maybe some of the stuff they have happen really is real…but it’s TV for goodness sake.  All that being said – I kept seeing things last night.  I would hear Dean moving around and open my eyes because I knew it was my turn to go get his binkie.  I’d see something standing next to the bed or in the hall or the one time I actually thought Jerry was sitting up next to me in bed when he was sleeping.  I chalk it up to an overactive imagination – which is EXACTLY what I think those shows do and why people watch them . . . they give us those little bursts of adrenaline. 

Before we started watching those shows, we watched the first hour of Life on Discovery.  Jerry set the DVR to record it – I’m usually not one for nature shows…but it was pretty cool.  We’ll definitely be watching the rest of them this week!

I guess that’s about it – I’ve got stuff to do today…which means it will either be a great day and go really fast or I’ll be extremely frustrated because my babies need me and I can’t get anything done.  I’m hoping for option 1 – but I’m gonna try to be patient and enjoy my babies if it’s option 2.

Here’s to a great week!  *chugging coffee on my way to make 2 bottles and grab 2 diapers*

I thought that I would use my Sunday post to kind of catch you up on things that happened over the weekend.  Not that anything too exciting happened…but it will also help me to remember later on. 

I find that I use my blog as a way to look back on the things that have happened – because I’m not remembering the little things on my own.  I have my excuses…yes, I’m still exhausted.  But it’s fun now to look back on posts like this one – where I thought I might be pregnant with my 3rd baby…or this one – where I found out I was in fact pregnant with my 3rd AND 4th babies…or even this one – where I can remember taking the kids to the museum for the first (and only) time.  (BTW – I was pregnant with the twins when I climbed through that McDonald’s playground thing…)

So – Friday’s play date was WONDERFUL!  My niece, Angelina, came over, too and it couldn’t have worked out better.  Nate and Elena played together so nice – and then Angelina and Danika were able to play together.  I don’t even think anyone had to sit on the “naughty step” all day!

Saturday, I took Danika to get her first haircut.  Here are the before and after pics :

It really isn’t that big a difference, but it is much easier to brush now…the ends were getting really tangled and knotted all the time.

We also got an email from the farm we are doing our CSA with on Saturday.  I’m really excited because it will put a lot less pressure on my husband to do a big garden this year.  He loves to garden – and will probably still plant some stuff, but he won’t need to plant as much…so maybe it will be easier for him to take care of this year.  He always ends up feeling guilty that he can’t give his garden enough attention – we have so many living things to divide our attention among already!

Saturday night, Jerry and I actually got to go out for a few hours.  It was nice – just enough time away to feel like we got a little break.  We were home and I was in bed by 12:00 am.  Yes, that’s late for me…especially considering that we had to turn the clocks ahead last night!  Ugh…

Today, Jerry went to the grocery store for me…with a pretty big order.  I’m amazed that no matter how detailed a list I write, he still ends up buy the wrong things.  I would complain more if I didn’t HATE going grocery shopping.  I’m grateful that he does it and can usually make his mistakes work.  :)

Then we went up to my parents house for a really yummy dinner and for the kids to get to see them a little bit.  Oh – and for Jerry and my dad to get to watch the hockey game together.  (Go Pens!)

All in all – it was a calm weekend but a fun one.  I’m exhausted and need to go up to bed NOW!  I have been missing my computer time, though – pathetic, I know…I may have to go see how some of my fellow bloggers spent their weekend before closing my laptop.  Eh – maybe not.  They’ll be in my Google Reader tomorrow, too!