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Grounded

Feb 5th, 2010
by Jodie.
3 comments

So my little Princess has been grounded since Wednesday. She was supposed to be grounded just until the end of today, but yesterday, she earned herself a grounding all the way through Sunday.

What did she do? She lied.  Not a huge lie or anything . . . just a bunch of little lies. We even made it very clear that we knew the answers to our questions and that it would be in her best interest not to lie, but she chose to lie anyway.

So, she’s grounded. Lying is NOT tolerated in t his house. With the grounding, she’s not allowed to have any sweets either - as part of her punishment. When she was told there would be consequences for her lying, she said “I don’t care. You can take away all my Webkinz forever!” Um - WHAT?! So Hubby took away sweets, which might not seem like a big deal, but we have about 2 dozen left over cupcakes sitting on her counter. It’s KILLING her that Dude gets to have a cupcake each day after school and she can’t (he’s only getting them every day to make a point to her).

And today - we had planned to take them to the movie The Tooth Fairy after school because they really have been really good lately - especially this past 10 days while I was playing the role of single mom. Alas . . . no movie for Princess. She gets a babysitter. And to make it sting a bit more - Queen Taunya is joining us at the movie AND I went to Walgreens and bought 4 HUGE boxes of candy for the movie. Ya I know I’m not supposed to take candy into the movie - but that’s not the point here! Stay on task . . .

The candy is sitting on the counter for all to see when they get home from school :-)

Ya - I’m a good mom like that.

I shouldn’t let her go on the Daisy field trip Saturday, but I will. That’s really important to me. Open skating on Saturday with the family is another thing - I see a little Princess sitting in the ice rink without skates on her feet, watching the rest of us skate around with our friends.

Snowboarding on Sunday - she’ll go - that’s not fair to the rest of us to not go because she made bad choices, and there is no way I’m paying a sitter for the entire day! But, she will NOT get to watch movies on the way up there.

Yes - I’m in the running for the MOTY award.

Posted in: Because I Make The Rules, Princess.

No. You Can’t Ride The Horse

Feb 5th, 2010
by Jodie.
No comments yet

I know you’ll all be terribly jealous when I tell you how I get to spend my Saturday afternoon.

I get to take my 15 Daisy Scouts to my friend’s farm so she can tell them all about horses . . . and somehow tie that into being courageous and strong so the girls can earn their Red Courageous and Strong petal.

We will learn all about feeding and caring and riding and safety and manure and all that fun stuff. The girls will get to hug and pet and love on the horses. The girls will get to feed carrots and bread to the horses. The girls will get to get their shoes muddy without their parents yelling at them.

But they will NOT get to ride the horses . . . it’s against Girl Scout rules for Daisy Scouts to ride horses with the troop on a field trip.

I suspect the following phrase will come out of my mouth approximately 50 times in our 3 hour trip tomorrow:

“No. You can’t ride the horse. No. You can’t ride the horse. Nope. You STILL can’t ride the horse. That’s great that your Grandma’s Uncle’s Cousin’s Daughter’s Best Friend has horses that you’ve ridden before, but you can’t rid the horses here. Nope. Not even if your mom says it’s OK. No. You can’t ride the horse.”

Wish me luck!

Posted in: Daisy Scouts.

Do You Share?

Feb 4th, 2010
by Jodie.
1 comment

I used to think that I was good at sharing - until I started talking to my friends. Apparently they share much more than I do.

Do you share . . .

a bathroom with our husband? Hell no! The key to a happy marriage is separate bathrooms :-) We have an older home that has a bathroom in the master bedroom, but it’s just a regular bathroom - identical to the main bathroom right outside in the hall. In  our previous house, Hubby got the master bathroom, and I got to share the main bathroom with a potty training boy! Ya - that was fun. This time around, I get the master bathroom, and Hubby shares with the kiddos.

an iTunes library? Ya - not a chance. We like the same music for the most part, but I want to be in CONTROL of my stuff ;-) It also seems that men are incapable of rating their songs. Seriously, that’s one of the coolest features . . . rate the song and get automatic play lists. There is no way Hubby and I would rate songs the same.

a car? Um . . . a little bit. When the Jeep is here, I drive it, because I love my 10 year old Jeep! Maybe it’s because I’m nostalgic . . . it’s the vehicle we bought right before we had Dude. I leave the new Highlander for Hubby to drive. Unless he goes flying - then my beloved Jeep gets parked at the airport for a week at a time, and I weep and pout until I get it back. And speaking of sharing cars, I LOVE to drive . . . road trips get me all excited, so I don’t share the keys to the cars very often at all ;-)

an email address? This one I absolutely do NOT understand! How can you share an email with your husband, or anyone for that matter? That’s my secret way of planning things behind his back ;-) Heck, each of my kiddos have their own email address! They’re not allowed to use it unless we’re sitting there with them, and they’re not allowed to email anyone I haven’t already put in their address book (Mom, Dad, Grandmas, Grandpas, cousins, aunts, uncles, Queens, etc.). I think it’s important that we teach them early that they are in fact entitled to some privacy, but they also need to understand all the crap that is out there on the Internet and learn how to be safe. There’s no keeping the kiddos off the Internet, so we might as well work with ‘em.

I don’t want you to think I don’t like to share at all . . . I am more than happy to share the cooking, laundry, homework, and poop scooping with my Hubby. See, I’m not totally selfish ;-)

Posted in: Daily Life.

Fox Food

Jan 29th, 2010
by Jodie.
2 comments

It appears as though my little Princess picked out a Princess Cat. Yup - I believe Tonks is a Princess . . . a shy princess, but a princess nonetheless.

I moved her litter box downstairs a few days ago - didn’t want it in Princess’ room. We bought a covered one (to the tune of $25!) so Duma wouldn’t go fishing for snacks. Turns out, Tonks doesn’t like the dark. She’ll go in the litter box, but will only pee right next to the door, and she won’t take the time to cover it up or to cover up her poop. Yesterday, I decided not to have Princess clean the litter box - I wanted to see what Tonks would do.

What would Tonks do? She would choose to pee on the FLOOR next to the litter box rather than walk farther into the dark! The litter box is HUGE, yet she can apparently only pee in it once.

Let me tell you how pissed I was this morning!

And let me tell you how close I was to throwing Ms. Tonks outside as a little snack for the fox!

So am I totally screwed now that she’s pee’d outside the litter box? How do little kitty minds work?

Posted in: Tonks.

Bass Ackward

Jan 27th, 2010
by Jodie.
1 comment

Do you know what I get to do tonight? Take Dude shopping for a pair of jeans. Why? Because he’s the only 9 year old on the planet who doesn’t own a pair of jeans. Why? Because they are not camoflauge or black, so he doesn’t like them. So why do we need to buy him a pair? Because his music performance at school is in a couple weeks, and the dress code is not nice pants/shirts/shoes (which he already has from last year). The dress code is blue jeans and a plain t-shirt.

So ya - instead of having to go buy him nice clothes for his performance, I have to go buy him a pair of jeans for this specific occasion.

Seems pretty backwards to me!

Posted in: Dude.

Crackers and Cupcakes

Jan 26th, 2010
by Jodie.
1 comment

On my typical Monday morning yesterday, I was volunteering in Princess’ 1st grade classroom. One of the things they were working on was identifying cracker (dry, boring) words and changing them to cupcake (fun, exciting) words. So the sentence “My mom is very pretty.” would end up being something like “My mom is extremely beautiful.”

Last night at dinner. . .

Me: Princess, where are you going?
Princess: I’m full.
Me: Sit down. You haven’t eaten any of your chili. You are going to be hungry and there will be no snacks.
P: Oh fine.

She eats a couple Fritos dipped into her chili and gets up again.

Me: What are you DOING?!
P: I ate some more.
Me: Um, you ate some more chips. Try 2 more big bites of chili.
P: OK - fine!

She takes two small bites of chili and starts to clear her stuff from the table.

Me: Seriously? That was not two big bites.
P: looking over her should as she walks away to the kitchen with her bowl in hand . . . Well, it WAS two bites, and you said TWO bites. Anyways - BIG is a cracker word. You should use something better like LARGE or  GINORMOUS!

Oh how I LOVE her big - er ginormous - personality :-)

Posted in: Keeping Their Brains from Turning to Mush, Little Voices, Princess.

I Laughed So Hard I Wiped Out

Jan 25th, 2010
by Jodie.
No comments yet

Princess and I went to Breckenridge this past Saturday  - Hubby stayed home with Dude because he didn’t feel well that morning :-( We met Queen Taunya, our friend Betta, and her coworker Eddie from California for a day on the slopes. We had a GREAT time. It was pretty chilly with the wind and driving snow - first time in a long time we’ve had cold fingers and toes up there . . . but we still had a good time.

Princess was particularly happy because Mr. Eddie skis and he can ski fast, so she followed him around all day. We just are not fast enough for her ;-) The last 3 runs of the day, they went off the run a bit to try out “the bumps” - Princess thought the moguls were fun! At the top of the run, she and Mr. Eddie would take off and bullet down the mountain until they got to the part with the moguls. Then they slowed down while Eddie showed Princess how to do the moguls - which gave me time to catch up :-) Betta and I would hang out and watch her do these little moguls that swallowed up all 44 inches and 44 pounds of her Pink Power! After they came out, Betta and I were cheering and happy for them - and they were off - cruising down the mountain while we stood there celebrating for them ;-)

On the very last run of the day, it was just Me, Princess, and Mr. Eddie. They did their moguls, and I told them to take a different trail down to the bottom, so they followed me to the trail. Then they were off! The trail slopes to the side and has some large rolling hills on it - it’s tons of fun! Then it shoots you out to the main trail - a straight line to the lift. At the top of the last big hill, I saw this flash of pink straighten out her wedge and heard her squeal like nothing you’ve ever heard! Apparently she was mad that Mr. Eddie was quite a ways ahead of her . . . so she did 3 HUGE air poles to go faster (she doesn’t have real poles) and scrunched down into the smallest little ball she could get into to try to catch up with Mr. Eddie. I’m cruising down the hill behind her as this little ball of pink goes FLYING down the mountain screaming “Miiiisstterrrrrrr Eddddiiiiieeeee! Heeeeeeere I coooooooome!!!”

I just about DIED laughing! Literally - I wasn’t paying attention to my own boarding self and hit a bump I didn’t see and totally bit it! But damn - that image will be burned into my eyeballs forever . . . it was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen and I’m STILL giggling about it!

Posted in: Princess, Skiing, You Had To Be There.

So We Went To MN

Jan 23rd, 2010
by Jodie.
2 comments

It’s been almost a month, and I’ve almost thawed out enough to write this post.

We decided to go to MN for part of winter break. The plan . . . wake up on Christmas Day, open Santa gifts, get in the car and drive 14 hours to Grandma’s house. Nothing we haven’t done before, right?

So Christmas Eve Day we loaded up the Highlander . . . seriously loaded it to the top - not an inch to spare - and put the Snowboards on the rack (we wanted to show the kids how lucky they are to have the Rockies right outside our window by snowboarding down teeny tiny hills on icy snow in frigid MN). Then, we saw that the weather STILL sucked in the Midwest - that whole nasty worst blizzard in 20 years sucky weather. We watched and watched the weather. The Interstate was closed. Bah Humbug!

We get up Christmas morning and have a blast opening gifts . . . then we check the weather. Bah Humbug! The weather is better, but the Interstate is still closed between Grand Island, NE and Omaha, NE. We make an executive decision to wait until Saturday to leave, with hopes that the Interstate will open on Sunday morning. We were bummed and happy - the kids got to play with their new stuff and we got to do whatever we wanted since we had planned on being in the car all day and now had an entire free day!

December 26 - we get up, check the roads - still closed. Check the weather - nice. So we get a room in Kearney and start driving. The Interstate was EMPTY - it was so nice! I-80 was closed between the I-76/I-80 interchange and Cheyenned, and beetween Grand Island and Omaha - so if you didn’t get on from I-76 or hadn’t already been trapped in the open area, you weren’t getting on. We drove over the speed limit on clear dry roads the whole way. Got to Kearney in plenty of time to enjoy the waterpark in the hotel :-)

December 27 - the Interstate opened. We were OFF to MN! Woo hoo! Roads weren’t awful - but not clear. We made pretty good time, all things considered.

December 28-January 4th - we had planned to go sledding with friends, go snowboarding by ourselves, join family for snowboarding on another day, go ice fishing, ride the 4-wheeler, eat/drink/be merry :-)

Then every single friggin’ day we woke up, we saw this temperature . . . and no, it did NOT warm up as the days went on. They set new records for low highs.

02-brrrrrrr 

There was no snowboarding (dragged all that crap to MN to not use it!). There was no sledding. There was no ice fishing (the snow insulated the ice and made it unsafe to go out on it). There was no 4-wheeling (the snow was so friggin’ deep at Grandma and Grandpa’s that the 4-wheeler just kept getting stuck). The kids played outside in the snow for a total of 7 minutes before they came in frozen to death. You just can’t hang outside very long in those temps.

We even tried to go to the hotel my Mom is the controller for and use the hot tub to at least get out of the house for a while, but the hot tub was closed. Bah Humbug!

The bonus to all of this was that we got to spend LOTS of time with friends talking and playing inside, and we got to spend lots of time Grandma and Grandpa just playing games and having fun. We had a wonderful Christmas celebration on January 1 because it had to be posponed when we got delayed. Had 4 generations of family in the house, which is always awesome :-) Dude and Princess learned how to play Mexican Train Dominos, which is so much fun! We went bowling with Grandma. So ya - it wasn’t a total bust . . . but it was disappointing that we didn’t get to do any of the things we had really planned on doing. But, we’re good improvisors and had fun anyway.

When we left for our drive home on January 5th, the temperature was -27. Brrrrrrr! When we pulled into our driveway 13 hours later at 7:00 p.m., the temperature was 45 degrees.

It’s official. 13 years after leaving MN for the mountains of CO, the Boedies have become cold weather whimps :-)

Posted in: Holidays, Travel.

The First Three Geocaches Have Been Found!

Jan 22nd, 2010
by Jodie.
2 comments

Dude has been wanting to go geocaching - he LOVES to hike, and ever since we found 3 caches by accident last summer, he’s been dying to try it. Lucky him, Grandma and Grandpa bought him a GPS for Christmas (yes, he’s spoiled by his grandparents - all 6 of them!), and his Godmother bought him a Geocaching log book and portable shovel.

So last weekend, he and Hubby got the GPS all ready to go, loaded 3 geocaches into it, and we headed to the park down the street. It’s a huge regional park with tons of hiking trails and trees and ponds and playgrounds. Dude and Princess had a couple friends over, so I took one two-radio and they took the other (another Christmas gift - thanks Aunt Dawn and Uncle Pat!) and off they went while I played ball with Duma. It took them one hour to find all 3 geocaches! Each time they found one they’d call me on the radio and tell me all about it - they were so excited! And I was totally excited that they had so much fun :-) It’s so great that they are such good kids that I could trust them in the park finding the caches.

Next time, we’ll put some more challenging caches in there for a family hike. I can’t wait to get out there and find some caches - I just wish we’d had the GPS last summer when we got to go on all of our awesome hikes. I see some rehikes in our future this summer :-)

How about you - do you Geocache?

Posted in: Geocaching.

Cats and Dogs

Jan 20th, 2010
by Jodie.
3 comments

After spending her first few days in Princess’ room, Tonks decided it was OK to venture out into the living room - being carried of course ;-) Duma was happy as a clam to have Tonks out of Princess’ room . . . she’d spent the first 3 days sniffing Princess’ door wondering what the heck was in there! Tonks hung out on Princess’ lap while Duma cautiously walked up to see what she was:

td01

Tonks was used to little dogs at her previous home, but not big dogs. In fact, the paperwork may have even said she wasn’t real crazy about big dogs ;-) But she sat there nicely, watching the freaky 75 lb. lab puppy make some moves to see what “it” would do.

td02

Tonks finally had enough and let Duma know who was in charge!

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Hissing is not allowed, and we let Tonks know that. She’s been really good with Duma since then. She still listens for Duma’s collar and watches for her. And for the first week at our house, she wouldn’t even come out of Princess’ room. We started leaving the door open so Duma could go in there and check her out. At first, Tonks hid under the slide.

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But there was no hissing, which was awesome! Then she decided to hang out on Princess’ bed and check out Duma from above . . . I was kind of hoping for an ambush, but that didn’t happen.

td05

She finally got bored with the reindeer games and decided to eat dinner. Surprisingly, Duma just sat there and watched her!

td06

It’s now been 10 days since Tonks joined our family. I won’t say that she and Duma are friends, but they’re certainly learning to live with each other. Tonks ventures out of Princess’ room whenever she wants, whether or not Duma is out there. I think Tonks has even figured out that if she runs, Duma will chase her - she is a retriever after all! So Tonks just sits and and jumps from furniture to furniture. She especially likes to sit on the laps of any of us because she knows Duma is not allowed on the furniture - which is really pissing Duma off!

Princess is happy as a clam that Tonks LOVES to sleep in bed with her and that her room is Tonks’ room, too. She tells everyone that Tonks is so soft and cuddly and is just awesome. Yup - Princess did a great job picking out the perfect cat for our family. I never thought I’d see Hubby go in Princess’ room to get Tonks and have her sit on his lap while he watched the Vikings game! So much for “I don’t like cats!” :-)

Posted in: Duma, Tonks.

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