March Madness

Lexi was telling me a story about something naughty that someone did at daycare, which may or may not have been true, you never can tell, and then she told me, "Mom, these are all the bad words that you can't say. Stupid. Dumb. Holy crap. Messing around. I think that's it. And messing in Brittney's room and messing in Courtney's gum and messing in your purse and your gum. That's it, mom." Well then, I'm doing pretty good in the bad word dept by that standard.

We've spent a good amount of time this weekend watching basketball and following scores. One of the owners at Sean's work put up $100 for the winning March Madness bracket, so we filled one out for that contest. Then a few of my boys at school asked me if I wanted to join their group, so I filled out a different bracket for that. I've kinda been keeping track of that one while Sean keeps track of his work one. He's doing better than I am, because I picked Pitt for the championship, and they got eliminated last night. Major bummer.

My little kids are having a hard time remembering that they have manners and how to use them (they've been kinda bratty is what it amounts to), so we are doing the old standby, the marble jar. In other words, we're bribing them to be good. It's going great for now, of course, but we'll see if any of the behaviors generalize into habits once the bribing is phased out. That's always the trick with behavioral modification stuff, I guess.

I'm so excited for Bon Jovi on Tuesday. I wish I had something hot to wear. I wish I could look hot if I did have something hot to wear. I lost 3 pounds. Then Brittney made peanut butter rice crispy treats and I ate half the pan. Stellar. I started reading this new diet book at breakfast yesterday morning, and in the introduction it said Have you ever finished a meal and felt unsatisfied? and I said Yes! Just now! and flipped through the book to see what it would suggest for such a problem, and instead of easy answers it had all this crap that looked like lots of effort and work, so I put it down and haven't picked it up again since. Looks like I might have to buckle down and do it.

Sean and I were just talking about emergency preparedness stuff right before the earthquake in Japan. His dad was talking to him about it, and Sean told him that our theory is that we need to store a year supply of money, not food, so that's what we're working on (so far, I think we have one week saved up, go us) rather than stockpiling food. Because in most disasters, a 72 hour kit and a month's supply of food and water would be more than sufficient. I don't think his dad was very impressed with our plan or our logic. A year supply is just overwhelming. And Sean and I agreed that the most likely disaster that we would have here is earthquake or job loss. In the case of earthquake, if our house is destroyed and/or the Great Salt Lake floods our home, our food storage would quite possibly be lost, but money would be very useful. Obviously same goes for job loss. The only time a year's supply of food would really be beneficial is if food sources became highly contaminated, and what's the likelihood of that, says I? Doh. Two days after our conversation there are nuclear reactors leaking radiation in Japan. Oh well, I'm still just going to start with our 72 hour kits and move on from there. I had them done a few years ago, but it's all expired and needs to be updated. Spring Break might just be a good time for that.

I'm so ready for a trip somewhere warm. I've been trying to talk Courtney into going to Dixie next year, which she would love. I just want to have an excuse to go down there.

March Party

It's March! We made it through January and February! To celebrate this amazing feat of endurance and perseverance, we had March Party last week. The weather wasn't really warm enough for anything outdoors, so we did our favorite indoor activity: eat dessert. We went to Yogurt Stop, and I made yet another fabulous concoction.

I really, really need to lose weight. I'm starting to look like Homer Simpson, but with more hair. We went to the mall a little while back, Courtney, Brittney, and I, and it was so depressing. I usually try to stay out of there because it always makes me angsty for a while afterward. I would like to be more fashionable than I am, but I don't have the money or the body to wear anything cute right now.

My poor little Joshy needs clothes so bad too. If I get pants that fit him better in the waist, they are floods. If I get him pants that are long enough, they fall off when he runs, even with the adjustable waist. He was walking into school the other day, after I fought him to wipe the booger off his nose and brush his teeth, and I noticed one of his cow licks was sticking up. Poor kid. One day Courtney took him to school and she didn't notice that his hair was sticking straight up on the side he slept on. So after school I was like, Dude, that's some crazy hair you've got going on there, and he's all, "Yeah, this one kid said I look like a wolf!" He thought it was a pretty cool thing to look like, so I guess no harm done. That's one thing I love about Josh. He just doesn't care what other people think yet. He wanted his fingernails painted green and black, so his sister did it for him, and when some kid told him it looked girly his response was, "OK..." He doesn't care. He made a key chain to clip on his backpack, and he used all kinds of beads, including pink beads and flower beads, and someone again told him that was girly, but it's still hanging on his backpack. Josh's teacher read Pippi Longstocking to the class, and he loved the whole idea of "going finding," and so he is always out looking for "treasures" (garbage), and then he combines that whole idea with his love for Man vs. Wild, and he takes his treasures and uses them to "survive" in the backyard. It's pretty cute, except for the part where I'm always finding his garbage in places where garbage should not be.

Tonight was the best night of my TV life. Russell was voted out of Survivor. And he cried, and I laughed as he cried. We decided we needed to celebrate afterward, and the prospect of donuts was raised, and there was much rejoicing, and then Sean and I looked at our waistlines. Donuts were vetoed. We celebrated with banana bread and vegetables. What a party.

February goals: I did OK at sticking to my budget. I think I did the best I could. I did pretty well at trying to get things done without mental whining and dragging of feet. I improved, at least.

March goals:
* I have to find a way to at least start some weight loss. A few pounds would be great. My back went on strike last week, and I spent any moment possible sitting or reclining for 3 or 4 days, and that didn't help the current weight gain trend at all. The scale creeped up another 2 pounds. Got to reverse the trend. I can't even be specific right now about how I'm going to do it. I just know it has to be done.

* Organization stuff. Fix some problems with the chore schedules. Adjustments to dinner time and Lexi's breakfast time. Get everyone in to the eye doctor. Get bids on some work I need done on the house.

* Get some yard work done. Some flower beds that were never cleaned up in the fall, and get ready for potatoes and onions. Maybe peas? Maybe lettuce?

* Hang up the picture frame I bought like a year ago.