Not My Finest Mormon Moment

I hope that when people think of Mormons, they think of someone with a good, moral character.  Today I was not feeling like that at all.  In fact, I told my kids to ignore my behavior because it was just that bad.  

Today I lied, went to the store on a Sunday, and made a drug run.  

Yep.

Pretty bad, right?

Well, Ryan's brother and his family are up visiting from Utah for the Thanksgiving holiday, and his brother chose this time to get strep throat.  Michael had a fever and has been sleeping most of the last two days.  Ryan offered our family doctor as a possible solution for someone who needed a fair cash price, and might even be able to consult on a weekend.  Our doctor goes above and beyond for his patients.  This is nice for us, but I feel for his wife.

Blair was worried about Michael yesterday when she (and everyone else) was down for Christmas tree shopping.  We offered Dr. Weaver, and this morning via text, Blair thought Michael was desperate enough to need medical attention.  So Ryan sent them Dr. Weaver's phone number, and Michael got a phone consult.  There are no pharmacies where my in-laws live (they have a grocery store, a Mexican grocery store, a gas station, a tiny post office and library, and that's the whole downtown area), so Dr. Weaver sent the prescriptions to our pharmacy.  As soon as I heard that, I called our pharmacy to make sure they saw it ("What?  We got a prescription sent in?  Oh, ok, we'll go check on that.") and since I couldn't very well pass myself off as a Michael, I could pass myself off as his wife. (Strike 1)   In-laws know things like dates of birth.  We played phone tag a couple of times while they found it, figured out how much the cash price would be, and when it would be ready.  Ryan pretended to be Michael over the phone too, and asked if his "brother" could pick it up for him because he wasn't feeling good.  Yes, so long as he knew the right date of birth.  Easy peasy.

So we picked up the medicine, at the store, on Sunday.  (Strike 2)  Then Ryan and I drove to the halfway point between my in-law's town and ours for the medicine drop off.  (Hello drug run.  Strike 3)  Ryan's dad drove Michael down, and as soon as Ryan handed him the bag, Michael was into it.  

Not exactly how I was wanting to spend my afternoon and evening, but oh well.

Errands

I don't have a full-time job.  I barely have a part-time job.  I am a substitute for teacher's aide in our district, so some days I work and others I don't.  I look at moms who work with and without kids at home during the day and I am amazed they keep it together.  In my own situation, I think it's good that I have time I spend at home to keep things running smoothly.  Well, not smoothly, but definitely not as crazy as if I worked full time.  This mommin' thing I do already takes up plenty of time.

Take this morning, for example.  Ryan had a 7 am meeting and was unable to take the middle school girls to school, so that was my first trip out this morning.  The second was to take the elementary school girls to school.  The third was to volunteer in Maddie's classroom, then trips to the Dollar Tree and Walmart.  (The twins are having a birthday party this weekend, and I had stuff to prepare.)  Once I got home and my bags unloaded, I got a text from Ryan saying he had blood on him, and could I please bring him some clothes?  It was lunch time, so I glanced wistfully at some left-over enchiladas in the fridge before grabbing some blood and hole-free slacks and shirt for Ryan.  (I found a hole in an important area of a pair of his slacks on Tuesday, and then a kid ripped his shirt sleeve yesterday.  It's been a rough week.)  I put out the big pot on the table just outside the front door for a lady who was supposed to come pick it up sometime over the next hour and sent her a text explaining my absence, and away I went.

I got to the school and sat in Ryan's office until he could find a spare few minutes to change.  I figured it would be best if I stayed to collect the bloody clothes so I could wash them sooner rather than later.  When Ryan finally came, he explained that some little kid had been out of control and bitten his hand.  When Ryan pulled his hand out of the kid's mouth, a loose tooth had come out too.  Hence the blood on his sleeve and slacks.  And Ryan was late for a meeting.

While Ryan was changing, his principal had come in and asked if I had cooked the turkey for tomorrow yet?

Nope.  Haven't really been home long enough to cook a turkey today.

So she pulled me into the office staff food/fridge/supplies closet and showed me how she had carved up the one she had done.  I assume I just look inexperienced and she was trying to be helpful.  I guess the turkey needs to be in smaller pieces and drizzled with the turkey juice so it doesn't get dry.  It would be such a bummer if the staff did not have perfectly done food that no one wanted to sign up to make.  (Are you picking up on my sarcasm?)

Well, I have just two hours until it's time for me to pick up the middle school girls from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and from there my day gets crazy again.  Emma has choir practice, and the rest have primary program practice, and Elizabeth has a piano festival Saturday we are still preparing for.

Style

These girls crack me up.  They have their own definite sense of style and certain clothes that they mostly keep for themselves.  See that black and white striped skirt that Maddie is wearing?  Well, we have two and Maddie alternates them so she can wear that skirt 3-4 times a week right now.  For a little while Annie and Maddie were both wanting to wear that skirt which once belonged to Elizabeth.  When I was shopping at Target for their birthday I happened to see that they were making the same one we had already, so I grabbed another so Annie and Maddie could each have one.  That hasn't worked out so well because Maddie is wearing them both.  But it works out because we have two pairs of the jeggings that Annie loves to wear, and one had been intended for Maddie.

                                                

Cookie Dough

There are times I think we are making progress in treating our family with kindness, and other times I think we've made absolutely none.  Tonight when we were making chocolate chip cookies, Ryan took the beater off the KitchenAid mixer and offered it to Annie and Maddie.  Maddie was in the kitchen, and Annie was slightly further away in the family room.  Maddie was to Dad in about a step and a half and declared, "Annie doesn't like chocolate chip cookies," while grabbing the beater in her greedy little hands.  Annie was in hearing range and was outraged, "I do too like cookies!"

Anything I've ever said about my twins looking out for each other is a lie.  They are happy to throw each other under a bus if it means getting cookie dough.

Family Pictures, part two

It had been about two years since the last time we took family pictures.  Last Christmas I took a couple pictures of the kids myself to send out on our Christmas card.  The pictures up on our wall were reminding me that the kids are changing and it was time to change things up a bit.  Purely for documentation purposes, of course.  Not because I was ready for new pictures on the wall or anything.  It's hard work trying to come up with a Pinterest worthy color scheme.  Not that I do a good job, but it's definitely the trend to have coordinating clothing, not matching, and I do like our pictures to look nice.  I mean, if you are going to shell out the big bucks for pictures, then we had better look dang good.  So I pour over our clothing, try to pick out what we have and how to make it all go together.  Then I give up and go shopping.  Emma, Elizabeth and I all got new shirts, and I bought the two scarves too.  But the sweater and necklace I'm wearing are the same ones from our pictures two years ago.  (Shhhh....)  I think I have a tendency to use similar colors.  You can't really go wrong with navy, am I right?

We took pictures at a friend's house.  I asked if we could, and Tara kind of rolled her eyes.  Her husband has wanted to do pictures by their fence and by the wheel line, and Tara wasn't keen on the idea.  Now she doesn't want to copy ours (she had to admit that they did turn out nicely), and I told her that as we aren't displaying our pictures at the same location, it shouldn't be an issue.  Besides, we took some of ours at the cemetery too.  Again.  That makes three times.  I think that might make us a little creepy, but it's really pretty there.

Family Pictures, part 1

Happy Halloween

Spending Halloween at someone else's house makes for a crazy afternoon and evening.  But even still, we spent the evening with Ryan's parents and that was fun.  We've never done that before.  Our ward did their trunk or treat Saturday, and Rick and Kim's did their on Halloween.  They invited us up and since we didn't have any other plans, we went.  I picked Emma and Elizabeth up from school, where we quickly did as much of their costuming as possible: Emma's makeup, braiding Emma's hair, and Elizabeth's makeup.  We discovered that just using a hairnet under the pink wig wasn't enough to take care of the bulge that is Emma's thick hair.  So I did a couple of french braids with the ends bobby pinned out of the way, and that worked a lot better.  Then we made sure we had candy, the rest of the costumes, and headed out to pick up Annie and Maddie from school.  Once we captured them, we drove down to Ryan's school and picked him up before hitting the road to Royal City.

Once we arrived at Rick and Kim's, it was time to put on the twins costumes, help Emma into her wig and freshen her makeup, paint Annie's nose black and we were ready to go.

 Caitlin and her girls came too, with Leonard and his daughter.

 Emma chose not to wear the pink shoes again.

After gathering way more candy than we would ever need, we went back to Rick and Kim's for a tamale dinner and watched Hocus Pocus until it was time to head home again.