We didn’t need to worry

Well, we had our home visit the other day and it turned out that the dog person is one of our neighbors!  She’s a dog breeder who lives down the street and showed up with one of her own dogs: a 7 year old retired champion Great Dane.  Have you ever seen one of those dogs up close?  H-U-G-E.  Where I come from we call something that size a pony, but he had no idea how big he was.  He was so good and gentle, we were pleasantly surprised by him.  He weighed in at the vet’s last week at 140 pounds.  Yeah.  His owner weighs about 105 pounds.  What can I say?

Anyway, we just talked with her for a little while.  She asked us some of the questions that the people who actually own the dog sent her, but not all of them because even she thought they were a bit much.  Then she emailed us a copy with her answers and we saw that one of the questions asked how she perceived our marriage to be!!!  LOL!!!!!  I KNEW there would be a question like that!  I mean, they sent her a list of 40 questions!!!!  Too funny!  She wrote that she thought we were very nice and that our children were well behaved (which they actually were), and she noted –drum roll please–, that our home was “clean, neat, and tidy.” I like her!!!

So, now we wait to see just how worthy of this puppy we are.  I swear, it’s easier to have a baby than to adopt a dog.

Home inspection

I’m getting ready for a home inspection that we are having tomorrow afternoon. We are “adopting” a puppy, and apparently the “dog people” want to know if we are good people, so someone is coming over tomorrow to check up on us. I am a firm believer that to show I am a good person, I will clean my house from top to bottom because that is how I was raised. The last thing I want is for the “dog person inspector” to think that we are not worthy of adopting a puppy because we have dust on our furniture. There will be no dust on any furniture around here, NO SIR!

And I’m thinking that before the “dog person inspector” comes over, I will walk up and down my street to make sure all my neighbors have neat lawns because I want to show that I live on a civilized street, which is worthy of adopting a puppy. I know, I’m good.

Already this morning I have cleaned my kitchen and dining room and I have done one load of laundry. I know, I’m good. After some errands I will attack the living room, family room, bedrooms, and do some more laundry, and dammit, we may need to eat out tonight because I don’t want to get my kitchen dirty. All this is being done with NON toxic cleaners, thankyouverymuch. We are good people. We deserve a dog. We (will) have a clean house. My mother will be proud.

These are some photos of my clean house taken around Easter time. Proof that we are good people. Even though I have to take photos to remind myself what exactly my house looks like when it’s clean, because God knows it doesn’t last long, (we are still good people, though).

Conversation with the neighbors

I just went to get my mail and 2 of my neighbors, K and C, who are in 3rd and 4th grades (I know, I’m cool), were outside watering K’s lawn.  C yells, “hey Cathy!  can we wash your car?”

Let’s just stop here for a quick side note:  I LOVE my car.  It’s like a “person” to me (shut up!  I do not need a therapist!).  I know 3rd and 4th graders—they won’t be careful and my “person” car will get scratched and my heart will be wounded forever.

I look over to my “person” car and mentally tell her that I will not let anything happen to her.

So I say to the kids, “No, not today, but thanks!”

Without skipping a beat C says, “well, we can’t do it anyway because P (another 4th grade neighbor— no, I do not live inside an elementary school) is not with us.  He’s part of our team.”

So, la di da to me!  They weren’t gonna wash my “person” car anyway.  Whatever!  That would have been the best car they ever would have washed!

Earth Day

Though today is officially Earth Day, my town has decided to celebrate it this coming Saturday. A few months ago, I can’t remember exactly when, I think it was last summer, I started getting really irritated that so many of the chemicals found in all of our household products, clothing, and food were so dangerous. Why are they even there?

We started buying organic food (we do not exclusively buy organic) and researched non-toxic household cleaners. Luckily there is a lot of resources out there that have already done all the work so finding out what I could do to have a healthier household was pretty easy.

None of the changes my family and I have made have interfered with our lifestyle. The only thing that I do find still a bit odd is that now I use cloth napkins at dinnertime and fleece washable cloths in place of paper towels. We barely use paper towels now. I think I find it odd because I’ve never done it before. However, we LOVE the cloth napkins. I bought some on ebay, and then I found a wonderful “shop” on etsy where I have bought all my children’s cloth napkins from. She uses great child friendly prints and is very reasonably priced.

That’s it. That’s my little speech on Earth Day. We certainly don’t do everything right around this house, but we’ve been pretty good with some things. Stay well and live green These are just some of my “green” products. The napkins on the left (orange/green/blue colored) are from littlesprouts.etsy.com, and so are the red and orange crotched wipes in the bottom center of the photo.

For now I think I will stay

I REALLY LOVE to blog.  REALLY.

There are some nasty sleaze buckets out there,  but tough luck to them.

Just to be on the cautious side though, my photos will NOT show faces of anyone, if I actually post a photo of a person.

There.  I win.

A New York hangover

Good morning everyone.  We got home late last night from visiting the grandparents in NY this weekend and attending my beautiful cousin’s bridal shower yesterday afternoon.

We all had a wonderful time but boy am I tired!  I’m now trying to decide why I shouldn’t go to my friends house to be surrounded by a friendly and funny group of women while the kids play, but I can’t convince myself that being tired and having a couple of loads of laundry to do is a good reason.  Does anyone want to drive us there?  NO?  Darn.

Shutting down….

Hi!  The creepiest thing happened.  Someone stole some of my photos from my flickr account and used them on their bowling site.  My friend informed me of this when she went on their site to book a party.  Who knows which other photos, if any, they stole.

So, this next week I will be shutting down this blog because I just feel completely creeped out.  I will, however, continue to read all the blogs I love and comment now and then.

Goodbye.

Nature hunt

We had a great nature hunt this morning with some friends.  It was colder than we would have liked, (spring, where are you?!) but we put our warm clothes on and went into the woods out back and went hunting.  We used our trusty magnifying glasses and binoculars  and we came up with some pretty good stuff.  The kids searched for leaves, rocks, tree bark, and bird feathers.  They also found pine cones, huge rocks with moss all over them, fallen branches, and flowers beginning to pop up.

What a great little science project for these little ones to do.  I got the idea at Lapaz Home Learning.

Computer Dude. Will work for video games.

This is my 4 yr old son (sporting the pony tail).  He is Mr. Computer.  He can spell his name, count to 100, and kick your butt on video games.  My husband got a free hand me down lap top from someone he works with, and uploaded a bunch of preschool games on it.  He also added pool, dominos, chess, checkers, mazes, battleship and a ton of other games  I don’t know.   Somehow, my 4 yr old taught himself how to play, even though he can’t read yet.  Bill Gates, are you reading this?????

He loves pbskids.org and recently discovered noggin.com.  Our biggest challenge is not letting him use he computer for too long.  If it was up to him, he’d play on it all day.

How long do you, internet peeps,  let your preschoolers use the computer for in a 24 hour period?  How long does the Gates family let their kids use the computer for?  Let me know.

IKEA Goodness…

In the last 2 weeks I have been to IKEA 6 (SIX) times. No, I do not think I have a problem, why do you ask? I went with my kids, with my husband and my kids, with my sister in law (she bought stuff too), with my daughter, by myself, and with my girlfriend, and I’d go with you too if you asked. I bought the 2 rugs that I set side by side (stole that idea from their showrooms), the Pello chair, and the Ektorp Jennylund chair because after 7 1/2 years of marriage, 2 addresses, and 2 children later, we are DONE with hand me down living room furniture!!!!! Yippeee!!!

Don’t you just love the strange names IKEA gives all their furniture? Ektorp. Poang. I love it. We also bought a new couch that should be delivered within the next 2 weeks (hopefully–though it’s not from IKEA). That 6-8 week wait is just about killing me, I know, poor me.

I’ve been thinking about why I love IKEA so much, and I realized it’s not because they pump happy gas from their vents, well, actually, they might, but it’s because I can afford everything there. Seriously!! It is the affordable store for the average middle class family. That makes me very, very happy Not that I need everything they sell, but I’m glad I can buy it there if I need it. Load off my mind, I tell ya. Their stuff is just so cool and pretty. Maybe I can get a job there? I can be their tester. I would test all their products, and I’d do it for free!!!! I should not be a cashier because I know I would exam everything people are buying, and then I’d ask them what aisle they found it in, and then I’d jump over the counter to go grab myself one. That would make some people angry. So I’ll just stick to being a tester.