Wednesday, March 31, 2010

He's Home!!!

YAY!! After 3 weeks of The Man being gone and the kids driving me batty the entire time he is finally home. I am so glad for him to be home. I missed him terribly. The kids missed his terribly. T would cry almost every night about how he missed his daddy. This made me sad because there was nothing I could do to make him happy at that point. This is the first time daddy has been gone that it really affected him and it made it harder for me. He has even asked daddy to make sure he is going to be home when he wakes up before he goes to bed the past couple of nights. I hope that he can get enough comfort in the fact that daddy is home by the time daddy has to go back to work next week so that the break downs do not start over again.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

My Grump Of The Day

I am going to preface my grump today with the parts I do like about being a military wife. I do like the military because we have a steady paycheck. We get dental and medical benefits. We also get housing benefits and retirement options. And I must say The Man looks amazing in his uniform. But besides all those good things there are a few bad things. Next month I will have been married for 5 years and The Man has been deployed, at school, or TDY for about half of that time. The time he has been home we have had to struggle through constantly changing work shifts. I have been lucky enough to have The Man work the day shift for approximately 1.5 month total in the time we have been together. Most of the time he is either working the 3p - 11p shift never being home for homework, dinner or bedtimes or he is working the 11p - 7a shift attempting to sleep during the day and being extremely grumpy while he is awake. He has been gone for 3 weeks now fixing a broken airplane and this has been a rough 3 weeks for me. We are in a foreign country with no family and I have all of 1 friend here. Of course as my luck would have it that he would be gone while my 1 friend's family was visiting and I couldnt just call her and whine when my children were misbehaving. The rest of my friends are in several different states and of course different time zones which I still have not figured out. It is quite lonely not having anybody to talk to other than my children. When I married The Man I never figured this would be an issue. I had one son and worked a full time job. I had plenty of stimulation throughout my days. Now I have three sons and am a stay at home mom and feel like I do not get enough stimulation in my day any more. I love the fact that we can manage to make ends meet with me being home but I really want to be one of those super moms. You know the kind who have nice clean houses all the time, their children listen perfectly and they always look put together. Sorry for my grump of the day but I am feeling pretty sorry for myself today.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Ebates Headache

So as I mentioned about buying the soccer shoes for my son and going through ebates to get the deal, it has been nothing but a headache. I did not get any money back from them when I shopped through their site because I used the "we miss you" coupon that adidas sent to my email. Well apparently you cannot use a coupon found elsewhere when you are using ebates. This is not the first time I have been denied the money for some reason or another but this time I was able to at least get an explanation. At the moment I am waiting on the money sitting in my ebates account to be deposited into my Paypal account and then I will not be using them any more because I feel like I can earn money faster with Mypoints and Swagbucks as they have other ways of earning the points than just shopping online.

Monday, March 22, 2010

The Other Female In My House

My dog is a big huge baby. She is a labrador-bullmastiff mix weighing in at 120 lbs. She was a $100.00 mutt that I finally convinced The Man to let me get after I was gifted $100.00 in a tip for doing my friend's hair for her wedding. She was a tiny little thing when we got her and she was squirmy but loved her cuddles. We drove almost an hour to go pick her up. She was the only chocolate female puppy left. The others were all solid black and most were boys. I have always had a soft spot for a chocolate labs and I wanted a girl puppy since at that point I was outnumbered 2 to 1. We drove her home and I got to be the one to take care of her every deed. The Man deployed for a few months 2 weeks after she came to live with us. I was pregnant with son #2 and I managed to successfully potty train her and make sure that she didnt chew up anything other than her toys before he got back and I had the baby. I was a sucker and let her sleep with me while he was gone that time and several others. I found that she is a huge comfort to me. She hogs the bed like The Man. She farts like The Man. And she snores just like The Man. She is almost 4 years old now and I cannot get her on the bed anymore. She doesnt have the spring in her to get up there by herself anymore and she weighs too much for me to lift her up there. It makes me sad so I try to lay on ther floor or her bed as much as I can so that she still gets the spoiled cuddles that she deserves. She is awesome with the boys. She lets them play all over her and she just lays there. I almost wish there was a way to recreate her so that I could have her forever. I love the dog. We girls stick together.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

My House Is Relaxing Now

It is amazing how relaxing a clean house is. Since The Man and I got married almost 5 years ago we have just had too much stuff. Even though our house wasnt messy it was most definatly cluttered and unorganized. I decided this is my year of change since this year started a new decade in my life. I was not going to keep looking at the clutter and keep getting frustrated because I felt that my house was a pig sty no matter how much I cleaned. I have been going through room after room and trying to figure out if the things we have are things we need or actually use. If it is not in one of those two categories it must go. My house over the last week or so has finally started to feel like a comfortable place to be for me. It is still a work in progress and probably always will be but my hope is that if I can keep one step ahead of the clutter I will not dislike being in my own home. Do you have any tips for keeping the house clutter free?

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Half A Pork

I was looking on our local ad list yesterday and noticed a local farmer selling half a pig for 75 Brittish Pounds (or about $115). This is an extremely great deal because it works up to less than $2.50 a pound of meat which is considerably less than the commissary. I wrote to the farmer and asked him what all this included since I have never ordered directly from a farmer before. He said it would include all the meat from your half of the pig (approx. 50 lbs) already cut up and bagged including pork sausages from the excess. Once The Man gets home from his TDY we are going to do this as I would love to have a ham, pork chop, or ribs since we havent been able to swallow the price of pork here.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Yesterday

Yesterday was a really bad day. The Man has been gone TDY for over a week and for some reason this trip has been very hard on me. I have been through deployments, deployments during pregnancy, TDYs, and training making him gone for a good portion of our marriage. I think I have dealt pretty well on all of them except the first one after we got married til this trip. We got paid and so I decided it was time to go grocery shopping which being the weekend meant I had to take all three boys. I decided since most times they are in great moods in the morning I would take them after breakfast before they got hungry and tired. This logics did not work for me. A trip to the store that probably should have taken me about 30 minutes took me over an hour. I was all prepared with my shopping list and coupons knowing I was going to be bringing them along. The two older ones decided to fight and pick on each other and run through the store like maniacs. This made me crazy. I was so upset when I left the store I broke down and cried a bit. This attitude from the two older ones continued through the rest of the day.

The baby was pretty good during shopping but he is a needy child. He constantly needs me near him. He cries a lot and for reasons I dont understand. I make sure he is fed, clean diaper, drink and cuddles and sometime this just doesnt make him stop crying. The only other thing I can think of is he is teething again. I do not know what to do about teething besides give him some tylenol which I dont like to do since the teething neclace broke. I really believe that necklace worked miracles but havent been able to replace it as of yet.

I also decided I needed to shampoo my carpets since someone spilled something purplish on it. I tried to get my kids to help me pick up their clothes and toys and this just led to more fighting. I cant imagine how hard it is to pick up about 10 items that belong to you when someone takes care of almost all of your other needs. Everytime I ask for one of them to do something I seem to always get the "but why?" or just flat out ignored. I would really LOVE to know the secret behind a mid to large size family and their tricks of getting the children to help and being able to keep things in order.

I am so glad yesterday is done!! Today was much better and I hope tomorrow will be even better.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Today.....

Today was not a great day. I am off to bed. Tomorrow has to be better.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Friday Family Movie Night


On most Fridays we pick a family movie, eat dinner in the living room and enjoy each other's company. This week The Man is gone so it is just me and the boys. They wanted to watch Where The Wild Things Are. I have never actually read the book even though it came out when I was a kid. Not knowing what the movie was about I found it a bit confusing but love the characters.I can relate with Max on his feeling of running away when it feels like someone who it supposed to love you doesn't want to pay attention to you. It is also very hard to fit in and make everybody happy sometimes. I think the ending is beautiful in the fact that Max goes back home and you can see the love between mother and son. I think I will try to get the book for the family once I get enough swagbucks for more amazon gift cards.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

I Am A Chicken...

There are days, like today, that I feel I have accomplished nothing but running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I spent all day cooking, cleaning, and taking care of my children but my house looks no better than it did before I tried cleaning it more. The reality is there are two or three (when oldest is out of school) little ones that run behind one of me and make more messes while I am still cleaning up the one they just got done making. Then when I go in the kitchen to make dinner or any other meal, they seem to feel they have free reign to make even more messes. I will never lay claim to being the world's best housekeeper but I don't think I am horrible at it either. The three of them seem to know just how to do it so that I feel I am NEVER done. I never remember my house being this hard to keep up when I was working. I think it is probably because I was gone too much for it to ever have a chance to get really messy. I love my boys but man I sure would love it even more if they liked cleaning as much as they like making messes.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Classico Pasta Sauce


I am amazed at this pasta sauce. I have been buying the cheapest kinds in the cans but decided to try something new when I found a coupon to make this sauce about 20 cents more than the cheap brand. I was excited to pick up the jar and see the pieces of garlic in the sauce. We love garlic in our house. Then I read the ingredients and there is no added preservatives and I can understand all the ingredients in the jar. This is a plus since we are trying to be thriftier and healthier. The jar is unique in the fact it is a mason jar although the company says not to reuse them for canning. It would be really nice if they would make them in actual jars that could be reused to do home canning.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Preparing For A Garden

The weather today was gorgeous. It was a high of about 48-50 degrees and sunny. The Man and I took full advantage of this and started preparing for a garden. The Man told me when we got orders to England that we would be able to have a garden since it wasn't too hot like Tucson was. We dug out our area and took all the weeds and branches to the compost bin. We then mixed in 7 bags of soil. I will have to get more soil because this was not nearly enough. We already have winter onions and garlic in the ground which should be ready in June. My garlic looks wonderful. My onions look pitiful. We shall see how they turn out soon enough. I also planted my first potato grow bag today. I have three of these bags and will plant them about 6 weeks apart so that we have potatoes longer. In our new dug out garden area we have planned to grow tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. We would like to grow more but jsut are not sure what to try. I also have two strawberry bags. In one I will grow herbs and I think I will try strawberries in the other. This is my first full year attempting a garden. A few years ago I would not have thought gardening was for me but I realized just with the few things and short growing time last year that gardening is almost theriputic to me.