Thank Heaven for little girls

Especially my little girl, who is getting to be not so little these days.

Brianna had her annual Father Daughter Dance tonight. We went out and picked up a new dress, some shoes, and the accessories to go with them. She picked the dress herself, with a little coaxing (the orange ball gown she was begging for thankfully had a rip in it). She knew how she wanted to wear her hair, what color tights she wanted to wear, and she was thrilled that I let her put on a dab of my perfume. She wouldn't let Scott see her until she was dressed and ready, and she made him wear a dress shirt. LOL

I'm amazed at how big she has gotten. My little baby girl, wearing lip gloss and heeled shoes. I'm holding on to every one of these moments.

Music Man

We had quite a day yesterday. Chayse and I had a few errands to run and I decided one of them would be to swing into my local consignment shop. I'm glad I did because they had a huge sale going on. I was able to buy a huge amount of stuff for around $40! I'll sell half of it on Ebay and probably double my money, at least. See how resourceful I can be!

Anyway, after sorting through racks for over an hour, Chayson decided he had had enough. He also decided he really liked this pair of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger swim trunks. After trying, repeatedly, to convince Chayse that a size 4T was not going to fit I gave up and my 3 year old took his shoes and pants off and proceeded to tell me he would leave his undies on while he put the swim trunks on.

After that we had to make a sprint to Walmart to buy Rylan a pair of black dress pants. However, I now believe every 9-11 year old boy in Rylan's school bought their black dress pants (that are the required dress for chorus and band) from Walmart. Not a single size 10 or 12 could be found. What that meant was I then needed to drag 3 kids to Target, 15 minutes away, in rush hour traffic at 5pm and make it home in time to get Rylan to the High School for band practice at 6pm.

$50, some complaining about tight shirt collars, a bit of yelling, and a lot of speeding later.....

He was nervous to play, but he did great! It's an elementary school band, so don't expect masterful Beethoven, but it was cute. He also sings in the fourth and fifth grade chorus. If he has the famous Paine singing voice, which I do believe he may have inherited, I think he may fair better as a sax player. ;)

Extra space

There are 5 people in my family. 2 adults and 3 kids. There are also 4 cats and a large dog. Our house is 1100 square feet, with one bathroom. Obviously we are bursting at the seams.

Scott had been working on the basement for awhile, but things kind of stalled mostly due to the fact that I was holding out for Pergo flooring instead of a cheap rug. Finally, after the influx of toys entering our house at Christmas, I caved and decided to go ahead and finish the basement sans Pergo and a few other things. It's just a playroom. I need to get over myself sometimes.

Here's the finished product. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

So now we have a bit more space and the toys are out of my living room. It's a much better situation for us all. However, I hold no illusions that it will stay looking like it does in that picture. Believe me, the floor is already covered in toys. But again, not my living room. The joys of having a playroom!

Miracle?

Go New Hampshire! Go Obama!

2007's Word of the Year?

Proof that all men are pigs.

This is how we roll

Just your average Saturday in the Olandt household involving The Simpson's movie, drywall, 15 loads of laundry, and hard rock.

Scott and I have finally decided that the basement needs to be finished and the kids toys need to be down there. I am tired of my living room being overrun. So, this weekend we are finishing up the drywall and priming. I will paint this week and we will move all the kids stuff down there. It will be a happy day when it's done.

While Scott was doing most of the drywall, I washed and folded something like 15 loads of laundry. At this point everything in the house is washed and most is folded and put away. This is an amazing feat. I am amazed at how much clothing my children possess. It's scary actually. Brianna has more clothes then any 7 year old child should have.

So, The Simpsons Movie..... Rylan decided to buy this with some of his Christmas money. We saw it in the theaters and when it came out on DVD he had to have it. It has played 3 times today. While I do think it is a funny movie, Homers voice is beginning to have that nails-to-chalkboard effect for me.

And the hard rock. Well, the video explains that. Just a typical evening

What we do for our kids

I swore I wouldn't ever be one of those crazy parents rummaging through stores just before Christmas searching for some mega popular gift for their child, sort of like I'm sure my parents swore they wouldn't do but probably ended up doing to score those Cabbage Patch Kids my sister and I got for Christmas one year in the mid 80's. And yet there I was last night, running into 7 different stores, making phone calls, and begging some nice young lady at customer service at Best Buy to PLEASE hold the one iDog Amp'd left in the state for my daughter and I will come right in and pick it up, thank you.

Spending 6 hours shopping 2 days before Christmas is probably equivalent to being in Hell. Except it was cold and rainy here, which really just made it worse then Hell. At least in Hell I wouldn't be cold and wet.

I remember getting that Cabbage Patch doll on that Christmas in the 80's. I don't remember his name (yes my parents got me a boy doll) but I do remember he had lovely blond curly hair and blue eyes. A few years later I shaved all that hair off of him. But on that Christmas day I remember being thrilled that I was the proud owner of one very coveted Cabbage Patch. Tomorrow morning, when Brianna opens up her iDog, I hope she finds the same joy that I did back then. If she does, those 7 stores, phone calls, traffic, and lines in Best Buy will be worth it.

Thank God my kids didn't ask for this for Christmas!

Best Christmas Movie Ever!

I should drop out of nursing school and head here.

Merry Christmas!!

Well, Thanks Ms. Spears

So, Jamie Lynn Spears went and got herself knocked up. For those of you who don't know who she is, she is the star of Zoey 101 on Nick which happens to be a pretty popular show with the 7-13 year old crowd, of which Brianna is a fledgling member of. The show is a nice, wholesome story about Zoey Brooks who joins up at an all boys boarding school. It even won a "Outstanding Children's Program" Emmy in 2005.

Oh, and she also happens to be the little sister of the infamous Ms. Britney. If you don't know who Brit is, then you are living under a rock and don't deserve an explanation.

Now back to sweet and innocent Jamie Lynn. I had high hopes for her, despite her upbringing. I thought for sure this nice girl that my daughter and all her friends enjoyed every Sunday night would rise above her trailer trash family and be the smart one who made more of herself then a fool like her big sis.

And then she gets knocked up.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think teens who get pregnant are bad people. I don't assume they are doomed. Heck, I was a pregnant teen. But reading quotes from the Spears camp like "He took amazing care of Jamie Lynn. Anything ever went wrong, he always comforted her. He took care of her," makes me wonder..... Where the heck were Jamie's parents when some 19 year old guy was "taking care of her"?!

So my daughter gets stuck with a teen idol who's pregnant at 16. I'm not really sure what to do with that. I'm sure Brianna will hear about it either on TV or in school. It's inevitable. And I wonder, what's the appropriate way to explain teen pregnancy to a 7 year old?

On a totally unrelated note, the kids and I made enough dough to bake 20 dozen cookies. The insane thing is I still have 2 more kinds of cookies to make, which will be about another 15 dozen. I hope you all like cookies because everyone within a 100 mile radius of my house is getting some!

Thank God it's over

At least it's over for a month. Today was my final exam for this semester. It was painful, to say the least, but I made it through this one with a B. I am rewarding myself with a double margarita. Yum!

Sometimes I think people who aren't in nursing school don't understand what it's like to be IN nursing school. People think it's just like getting any other college degree. I laugh in the face of those people! If you want to know what it's like to be in nursing school, try this little experiment:

1. Don't sleep for 4 days
2. Ask everyone you know to kick you in your shins
   
3. Find a large man and have him hit you repeatedly with a bat while you ask him "How do you feel about that?
4. Give all the money you once had to Panera Bread, Barnes and Noble, and Starbucks
5. Find some random person to vomit on you
6. Find someone to make you feel totally stupid and inadequate every time you open your mouth
   
7. Repeat steps 1-6 weekly for the next 2 years (4 if you are silly enough to go for that BSN)

Do all that and you might get a little taste of what it's like to be in nursing school. But really, unless you are in the trenches it's hard to grasp what we go through or what our families go through. Poor Scott has held the fort down here for so long I am beginning to wonder if my kids remember that I gave birth to them. And while in a normal situation I would not consider eating boxed mac and cheese 3 nights a week a good thing, I am so thankful that I have Scott here to help keep things in some kind of normal order. He has really done an amazing job of taking care of things around here, even if he doesn't do it my way.

So now I have a bit over a month off. Thank God for that. I plan to sleep, snuggle my babies frequently, spend some quality time with Scott, and clean my throughly neglected house. And of course update this thing. ;)