Screw italics. How is there STILL no sarcasm font??

I had a little tantrum in the notepad app of my phone last week. This past Wednesday went MUCH better, but I thought my tantrum was still worth posting:

Do you know what's not annoying? Staying late at work every Wednesday for professional development (when Wednesday has the toughest classes). 

You know what's not annoying? When you've had a really tough day of teaching a few really rude students and you come home to children who are acting ever so slightly psychotic. 

You know what else isn't annoying? When your husband decides to test his fancy new smoke detectors at 9 pm to make sure that when one goes off, they all go off. Btw: they work. ALL of them. Yay! 

And do you know what's not annoying? The Rugrats-themed hold music that the hubs has on speakerphone at top volume while he continues to test the smoke detectors. (Seriously. Google the Rugrats music, then blast it on repeat. Not painful, at all.)
 Also not annoying: the chewed-up chocolate Advent calendar that the dog left all over the rug. Now he'll have the runs and Charlotte will be one pissed-off little elf. SO not annoying. 

Do you know what else isn't annoying? When your shins still feel horribly bruised from the ski boots you buckled your giant man-calves into a full week ago. It's fun walking around feeling like you've been kicked repeatedly by evil midgets. (Dwarves, little people... Whatever. Too busy not being annoyed to be politically correct.) 

It is also not at all annoying when one of your students waits until the class is over (and the next group is arriving) to throw an entire bucket of squares on the floor. Math manipulatives make excellent confetti.

Maybe I should've made this some kind of counting activity...

 So, I'm over it today (it is Friday, after all), but I'm sure this list has growth potential. 

What about you? Anything you'd like to add?...

Wardrobe Malfunction

I feel like it has been a while since I had a good wardrobe malfunction to report. Not to worry, friends. I'm up to my old tricks again.

Two weeks ago, I took a pair of jeans out of the closet that I hadn't worn in a while. (I'd gotten too big for them.) Imagine my joy when I realized that I could actually button them without feeling like I was doing damage to my internal organs! I buttoned them up (with no pain) & thought I looked pretty good. Until I got to work.

Before my first class, I went to the ladies' room. It wasn't until I pulled my pants down that I realized that I could actually see THROUGH the thighs of my jeans. Apparently, I'd put the jeans back in the closet with worn out thighs - Why? Why didn't I throw them out?? - and it had been so long, that I'd forgotten all about the holes. (It's a tough life when your thighs rub your jeans right out.) 

Luckily, I have good friends at work. How do you know if you have good friends? Here's one quick rule to measure by: Will your friends stand behind you and basically look right up your ass to make sure the holes in your pants don't show? No? Then you don't have very good friends. 

I managed to make it through the day without flashing my thighs at anyone. I also managed to throw those babies right into the trash when I got home. (Or, right onto the floor. Where they will end up in the laundry and hanging back in my closet for me to repeat the same mistake on another day. It's hard to keep track of these things.)

I'm pretty sure the whole "ripped jeans" look isn't meant to show you the floor when you have to pee.

Here's to making it through the week without any body parts busting out of their casings. 

HEY! If you enjoy the blog, why not become a follower? I'm the one who is buying pants. You can also stalk find me on Facebook and Twitter. Like the page and follow me!

**And be sure to visit my Zazzle store. Don't you need a new coffee mug or apron?

-->What about you? Have your clothes failed you lately? Feel free to share your story in the comments below...

Tuesday's Tip (#43)

Here's a tip for you:

Lock the dog door.

Otherwise, you may wake up early and decide to walk through your living room and narrowly avoid stepping on the carcass of a murdered possum. Because, of course. Why wouldn't my dog go out in the middle of the night and kill a possum to bring back for me as a gift? Silver lining: I'd rather have a dead possum than a live one in my living room. 

P.S.

Be glad I decided to draw the line at what is Instagram-worthy. No corpses. 

Tuesday's Tip (#42)

Here's a tip for you:

Deny.

Mentally, I'm going to be at the beach today. I still can't believe summer is over. My kids don't go back to school until next week, but I've got a full week of professional development this week. Wasn't it just June 25th?? How is this possible? So, I'm in denial. I'm going to participate. I'm going to learn. But a little part of my brain is going to have her ass planted in the sand with an ice cold beer in hand. Changing my desktop background to this:

BEACH!

Maybe next week, I'll embrace this inevitable time of year and get a pumpkin spice latte. Until then, I'll be pretending to work on my tan. 

Have a tip to share? Or some imaginary sunscreen? Feel free to leave a comment below...

...& be sure to check back every Tuesday for a new tip!

On The Other Side

I had a revelation this summer: I'm coming out on the other side. 

I have (finally) gotten past the most needy stage of the kids' development. They are really independent now. (Well, as independent as any five kids under the age of 11 can be.)

From February of 2003 to April of 2012 I was pregnant, nursing, or sometimes both. Add another year for when Charlotte was still a 2 year old and you've got ten straight years of neediness. This summer was when I realized that stage is over. 

We've gone on two vacations this summer. I had a revelation on the second one while I was sitting near our fire pit late in the evening. The grown-ups were enjoying the fire, good music and conversation and it was getting late. So I told the kids to go up to bed. And they did! They all just walked up the stairs, brushed their teeth, and went to bed. I could still hear them goofing around from outside, but that quieted down as they dropped off to sleep. It's amazingly liberating. 

I enjoyed every minute of having babies and toddlers (why else would I have had so many?), but this stage is quite nice. When I say, "It's time for the beach," they get their own bathing suits on. Even Charlotte. And hers is only backwards thirty percent of the time! I don't really know what to do with myself. But, I do know enough to enjoy it while it lasts. 

Because I know all of you moms with older or grown children are laughing at me. You know what's coming next... moody teenagers. That's why I'm going to revel in this brief lull in parenting duties while I can!

That's freedom, right there!

Wordless Wednesday - Annual FOAM DAY!

It's Foam Day, again. This is my annual post where I tell you that I'm never bathing my kids again after they spend a straight hour in foam that smells like liquid Dawn...

No, they're not all mine - my niece is there, too.

I'm fairly certain these are the six kids I brought, but it's really hard to tell.

Patrick

Lucy

Regan is in there somewhere.

Sophie & Lucy

Sean

Charlotte

We even ran into our other cousins that we hadn't seen in ages: Cameron, Tyler, & Ryan!

Tuesday's Tip (#41)

Here's a tip for you:

Preview your playlists.

A couple of weeks ago, Sean had a play-date with one of his little friends. I don't know the parents all that well, so, when they came to pick up their son, I invited them in. I had the speaker out on the deck and it was hooked up to my phone playing some random "Top 25" playlist from Beats Music. Basically, it's just the top 25 pop songs for the week. It didn't even occur to me that there would be a song on there that had questionable lyrics (or that these aren't the "radio edits"). 

So, there I was chatting politely - and totally tuning out the music that is on the radio - when PJ started making crazy eyes at me. I assumed he was trying to tell me I had food on my face or something when he kept looking at me urgently with those crazy eyes.

I seriously wasn't getting the message. He just kept looking like this and I kept wiping at my face like I must be covered in something. (Thanks, Crazy Eyes, for helping me illustrate my point. OITNB)

I just wasn't getting his hints when my friend, Dawn, saved me with, "Wow. That's quite a song." Up until that point, I wasn't even focused on what was playing. And then I heard it. Not just a few bad words, but really explicit rapping all about what some nice young gentleman would really like to do to some fine young lady. I flew into the kitchen to grab my phone and skip to the next track and prayed these poor parents weren't listening too well. 

So, the next time you're having company (especially people you barely know), preview your playlist. Unless you like to make a first impression with sexually explicit lyrics. Then, just hit shuffle and see what happens.

Have a tip to share? Or a Wiggles CD? Feel free to leave a comment below...

...& be sure to check back every Tuesday for a new tip!

Death By Bubbles

My kids have reached an age and stage of independence. It's a wonderfully liberating time as a mom who had five kids in less than seven years. Which means I get a little too comfortable with my freedom. Take bathing, for example. 

We have a big jacuzzi tub that fits at least three of the kids. They love taking bubble baths in the tub. Now that they're all getting so big, they can set up the bath with very little help from me. It's a win-win situation - they're getting clean and they're staying out of my hair. 

Except for when I don't supervise and they decide to use half a bottle of shower gel to make the tub extra bubbly. Sean and Charlotte turned on the jets and had bubbles up to their chins. This wasn't too much of a problem. They were just extra squeaky clean. It's that I never considered what would happen after the little fools drained the tub and the bubbles popped. 

It all went downhill when I needed to take a shower. The edge of the tub is quite high, but I didn't think twice about stepping right into it. I no sooner put my right leg into the tub than it slid across the scum left behind by millions of (now dirty) shower gel bubbles. My right leg went flying and my left leg slammed into the ledge that runs around the edge of the tub. I ended in a bizarre split with one leg in the tub and the other outside of it. Great day for the lady parts. This fun little gymnastics stunt warranted a swear that I only save for very special occasions and rhymes with brother-trucker. 

I couldn't find a recent picture of Sean and Charlotte, but I found an old one from when the big kids used to take bubble baths together:

That, my friends, is extreme bubble-bathing.

Unfortunately, the combination of all of those bubbles and my natural grace led to this: 

As a general rule, I don't usually post pictures of my fat thighs for all of the internet to see, but that bruise is too fantastic not to share. 

Every day it's a different color. I'm like Rainbow Brite. I can't wait until it turns yellow and brown in a few days. Super attractive!

I guess the lesson here is to supervise the use of my shower gel or, at the very least, teach the knuckleheads to scrub the tub after one of their extreme bubble baths. 

HEY! If you enjoy the blog, why not become a follower? I'm the one who is applying sticky butterflies to the bottom of the tub so I don't slip. You can also stalk find me on Facebook and Twitter. Like the page and follow me!

**And be sure to visit my Zazzle store. Don't you need a new coffee mug or apron?

-->What about you? Have your kids tried to kill you yet? Feel free to share your story in the comments below...

FleurtyBands

A few months ago, I made a friend on Instagram. Her name is Jasmine (some of you might know her as Fleurty and Fit). She has been an inspiration to me because she started losing weight and getting fit the old fashioned way. She discovered that there really is no secret formula other than to #StopEatingCrapAndMoveYourAss (by far, my favorite hashtag). Jasmine has been a great motivator to me and we've struck up a really nice friendship (even though we've never actually met).

In addition to being that little voice in my Instagram app who tells me to go to the gym (& cheers me on when I do), I noticed she had some really cute headbands that she wore while she was working out. Jasmine figured out that she could easily make headbands with a velvet backing that would stay in place no matter what workout you're doing. Soon after, an Etsy shop opened with a new Instagram account and Facebook page to follow. I kept seeing her pictures and I finally ordered some for myself. Now, I can't stop talking about them.

About a week ago, Jasmine was looking for a few people to write a review of her headbands. I told her I'd be happy to - I'm always telling my friends about them, I may as well write about it. She offered to send me a free FleurtyBand, but I told her not to bother (unless she wants to replace my favorite pink one that got washed away in a huge wave on vacation {sob}). 

FleurtyBands are seriously one of my favorite things. They're really cute and definitely not just for working out. There are so many styles that you can be like me and wear them to work or for a night out. They're also really inexpensive. When I got my first order, I took my cupcake headband (because I am The Cake Beast, after all) straight to the gym for a trial run. I literally ran for 30 minutes and it never moved. As hot and sweaty as I was, it stayed right in place.

Here are some of my own FleurtyBand pictures (but check out Jasmine's page, because she has SO many styles to choose from):

Here's my personal collection of FleurtyBands. I think it might be time to add to it!

My cupcake headband passed the test! It's adorable and completely stayed in place for my entire workout. (Sweaty gym selfie, anyone?)

So, go check out Jasmine's FleurtyBands - they're fashionable, functional, and really inexpensive. Plus, they're handmade by one of the nicest people I've ever (not really) met!

Tuesday's Tip (#40)

Here's a tip for you:

Dress for the weather.

I don't mean wear a raincoat if it's raining or mittens if it's cold. I mean don't wear a cute skirt that is going to blow up over your head Marilyn Monroe-style when you're going on a (windy) harbor cruise. If not for my nude spanx, all of the folks on the second deck would've had quite a show. Although, seeing as the spanx are nude, they might think they got some kind of weird "I've got the anatomy of a Barbie doll" show. I literally needed a team of people to get back down the stairs and prevent a major wardrobe malfunction. 

So, learn from my mistakes. Harbor cruises = pants, shorts, and clingy things that can't possibly move. Unless you like that Marilyn Monroe look. 

I can promise you that I didn't look even remotely this cute trying not to flash the entire conference on the boat.

Have a tip to share? Or a pair of shorts? Feel free to leave a comment below...

...& be sure to check back every Tuesday for a new tip!

Summer

My job comes with the best perk ever: summers off. I thoroughly enjoy being off for the summer with my kids. The schedule is relaxed, there's no rushing around... We can just go with the flow. For the last two weeks, my kids have been sleeping past 9am. It's wonderful. I can lay in bed continuing my marathon of Homeland or reading a trilogy of books back-to-back, drinking coffee and no one disturbs me. After the stress of working my first full-time position since I had kids, this summer has been a Godsend. 

This isn't a real post because I'm too busy watching Homeland and drinking coffee, but here are a few pics from our vacation on Martha's Vineyard (more about that later):

So many flip flops to keep track of...

The daily bike ride to the beach 

Beach fun!

Charlotte and I (& a red solo cup)

Family shot

HEY! If you enjoy the blog, why not become a follower? I'm the one who is totally relaxed (for once). You can also stalk find me on Facebook and Twitter. Like the page and follow me!

**And be sure to visit my Zazzle store. Don't you need a new coffee mug or apron?

-->What about you? Are you enjoying the summer? Feel free to share your story in the comments below...