Master Bath Update

The Great Master Bath Gender Reassignment has been underway for at least a month now. I would like to say this is because we are doing things as we can pay cash for them, but that's really just a nice way of saying The Hubs and I suffer from cheapbastarditis. Also, we are lazy.

But not so lazy that we would, you know, actually hire a plumber to do the plumbing. See above medical condition.

Which brings me to my story for the day. Yesterday I bought new sink fixtures. They are pretty. I'm assuming they are functional, when installed by someone who knows what the heck plumbers tape is and where to find it in Home Depot.
At 10pm (our normal bedtime) I looked at The Hubs and said, "Hey! Lets go install one of those sinks so I can quit washing my hands in the bath tub. I'm too lazy to bend over any more to wash." I was joking, of course. Sort of.

This is the point at which The Hubs and I both forgot neither of us are plumbers. The Hubs "turned off the water" and proceeded to unscrew some stuff that looked important. At which point IT happened.

Have you ever been to Yellowstone?

We don't need to go again, because any time we want to re-experience the geysers, we can just try to plumb something.

An hour and a full closet of towels later, we still have two non-functional sinks, but one of them is MUCH prettier.

And I was SO proud of The Hubs for keeping his plumber's crack covered through the entire affair, but now that I think on it, maybe plumber's crack is what makes one a plumber.

Ah well. Now I'm off to Home Depot again for plumber's tape, and maybe I'll see if they have a deal on cracks and pick up a pair.

Phew! Or, the Sugar Ate My Kids

Can I just say, I'm SO GLAD this week is over?

Seriously. So. Glad.

Monday: Valentine's Day~I thought our family should mark the occation in some way, so I bought the kids each a solitary box of conversation hearts. Total cost: $0.50. The Hubs made heart-shaped eggs and toast for breakfast. Then, the sugar ate my kids. Oh holy whine-fest. Who knew that ONE BOX of sugar could cause such discontent! Before 8:00 am!
We had lots of company for dinner. And of course, Valentine's Dinner would not be complete, without frosting our own sugar cookies. Oh, just shoot me now. Because the camera was lost until the end of the week, I have no pictures of this. Be glad. It wasn't pretty. Word picture: two four-year-olds, two two-year-olds, four cups of vibrantly colored watery frosting. Spoons.  Let's just say, the adults weren't going to eat the cookies.

The Hubs got me a giant box of mini Lofthouse cookies. Why he thought I needed a giant box of the one one of the foods I'm MOST addicted to, I'll never know. (but it could have been because I pointed and jumped up and down with happiness when I spotted them on our totally hip Wal Mart date). I hid them from my kids. And made The Hubs hide them from me.  If a cupcake wanted to be a cookie, it'd be a Lofthouse.

YUM.

Note: Not my cookies. My box was much, much bigger. Much.

I can't remember what happened the rest of the week, because I was in a sugar coma, but somewhere in there I made a two-layer 9x13 cake for The Hubs' birthday. It was shaped like a laptop, because I'm awesome like that. But it fell apart before I got a picture, because maybe I'm not that awesome.
The keyboard was made out of Starburst. Somehow my kids got their grubby little hands on the bag, and again, the sugar ate my children. Whinefest 2.0. If there is anything to be proud of here, it's that their whining is improving. I may have also given them the leftover bits of cake I didn't need after shaping the earstwhile laptop cake. But that was BEFORE I noticed the Starburst were gone...


Friday: For breakfast I ate greenbeans. That's how sick of sweet I was.

Weekend: We started celibrating The Boy's birthday. Of course, I needed to make another double decker cake for this most momentous of birthdays. The oldest has survived my parenting for four whole years!

WOO HOO!

None of us has any idea why he needed "a caked that is black and white. And looks like a ghost. With a spider and a PUMPKIN! "

Apparently he has his birthday confused with a more widely celibrated holiday.

(I'll post a picture with the birthday post I'm working on. Currently we have the camera, but not the USB cable to port the pictures off the silly thing. )

So, as you can see, I'm not eating anything sweet for at least a month, or until the Intense Orange Dark Chocolate Bar starts calling my name.

How are You? We're all Sick

This morning The Boy woke up in a pool of vomit and Zsa Zsa had the squirts all over her bed (and "Bankie" and favorite stuffed dog...). I didn't find out about it until after The Hubs had cleaned it all up. Well, not the Bankie or dog, but he's a guy. Details? Not so much.

Have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE The Hubs? Seriously, he's the best. Bodily excretions are so NOT his thing.

We've been passing around this stomach virus for over a week now. I'm ready to give it the boot.
Along that vein, I've purchased some heavy duty help.
I like to call them Lysol and Bleach. Since, you know, that's what's on the label.


The upside of this whole fiasco is that I've finally lost my Holiday Pounds. Let's hear it for viral gastroenteritis! The official weight loss plan of 2011.

Halloween 2010

     I don't care which major holiday it is, it does NOT start at 4am (NOTE: my birthday being the major exception. Say, for instance, you bought me a surprise trip to Cancun for my birthday. I would cheerfully get up at 4am to make the airport on time.)
Can someone please tell my son this holiday rule, because he did not believe me when I informed him of this fact...at 4am. He wanted breakfast. He wanted oatmeal. He wanted to watch a show on the wii. He wanted to go trick-or-treating. I wanted to go back to sleep! Finally we told him to get some grapes from the fridge and be happy we weren't locking his bedroom door with him inside.

He left us alone... for 4.2 seconds. 

Then he started playing the piano. 

Loudly. 

At that point I caved and turned on Caillou via the wii, changed The Baby's diaper (because she too, found it hard to sleep through the bad piano playing) and settled my kids on the couch with a sack of grapes, and went back to bed. 

It was 5:30am. 

We attended a seriously lame Halloween "Carnival" at the local community college where my kids picked up just enough sugar to make the ride home bearable. 

After naps we tricked everyone out in costumes and headed to a chili feed and trunk-or-treat. I think next year we will just eat at home and trick-or-treat in the neighborhood. 

We did a Wizard of Oz Theme, obviously. The Hubs is the Wizard. Brother-in-law one is the Scarecrow, Sister One is a citizen of Emerald City. Niece One is Dorothy. The Boy as a Cowardly Lion, The Baby as Glenda, me as The Wicked Witch (it was a stretch to really sell the role) and Sister Three as a flying monkey.

At one point the Hubs says, "Don't believe anything The Boy says tonight." I asked why, of course. 

The Hubs says, "Because, he'll be lion."  

This cape is totally vintage. My mom wore it when she was little. It's from Germany. 

(Mom, I'm so sorry Zsa Zsa got chocolatey drool on your super awesome cape. I will have it dry cleaned!)

My sweet baby niece who totally likes me better than almost anyone but her mom and dad. :D

This may be the only pudgy-cheeked photo of one of my children you will ever see. Sadly the cheeks are artificially puffy due to the tight hood on this super sweet cape. 

Ah well. 

Also, this is the perfect photo that captures what Halloween is all about.

You can see it in the sugar-glazed eyes and the intense focus on the chocolate in her hand.

SIXTH ANNIVERSARY

So, I've been married six years. Yeah, I never thought it'd last this long, either. 

Just kidding! 

Sort of. 

I'm kinda attached to The Hubs at this point. It turns out not only was he a good first husband, he's going to be a fantastic ONLY husband, which I think is brilliant news. (He's pleased as well.)

We're going on a major trip in November, so we played it pretty low key this weekend. Saturday morning we took a pretty hike around the Snake River Canyon, back behind Hidden Lake and around to other other side.

 We accidentally missed our turn and ended up scaling some rocks.

But not these rocks, 

which is what we were faced with at first glance. 

(Going down, not up. I took the picture AFTER we had safely descended.) 

The hike itself was fun and we did it in an hour, which included an orange-eating break. Here's how we ACTUALLY got down.

We liked this hike so well we took the whole family the next day. 

     Saturday night we took our buy-one-get-one-coupon to Canyon Crest Restaurant, supposedly the best restaurant in town. My humble opinion is the only thing they are "best" at is charging lots of money for OK food, and possibly the view. Matt's steak was pretty good, my fish was pretty good, but not $20+ a plate, good. Glad I had that 2-for-1! We ate on the balcony so our view looked like this,

AMAZING.

Watching the base jumpers taking leaps off the bridge all night was also pretty cool.

After dinner we went home and put our kids to bed, since I hadn't seen them very much this week. Our day finished off at the church, de-lousing the nursery, since the week before there'd been a case of lice and it took that long to get permission to disinfect it.

A pretty good day. I'll take it. :)