New table and sick again…

well, little Finn is sick – poor sicky.  This picture doesn’t quite show how miserable he looks but he was running a temp of 103 and had big red circles under his eyes.  Of course, it barely slowed him down.  Today he has been doing better, although he still has a nasty cough – a symptom he always seems to get with any cold.  boo.

Better news, we got our new table!  Love it!  I will definitely have to keep on top of it because it is black so it shows every smudge and fingerprint (when will I learn this?) but I love it anyway!

I wanted to make some black & white toile placemats which would look awesome (see my previous post about Walmart), but couldn’t find the toile I wanted, so I may do something else like find some cool scrapbooking paper and laminate it or something fun like that. 

My only issue right now is with the bench.  I really, really like the bench.  It is basically what sold me on the whole thing when I first saw it, but I’m not sure if we’ll keep it or not.  Don’t know if you can tell from the pictures, but in our opinion, they made the bench an inch too tall and an inch too wide.  It does not fit under or in between.  Kinda dumb.  So, you can’t push it in all the way, and it’s hard to get into – especially for the kids.  I was thinking we could use it as a decorative piece somewhere else in the house and then bring it to the table when grandparents are here (another original idea why I loved the table), but I don’t really have anywhere to put it.  So we are debating.  I like it a lot, but we may end up returning it and just getting 2 more chairs.  Sad, but it may be what needs to happen.  We will try it for another day or two and see what happens. 

I Hate Wal*Mart

Exhibit A:

I tried to sneak in with my return. I HATE returning things to Walmart because they make it such a pain in the ass. I am sure they do this to make people avoid returns. I am also sure it works. So anyway, I am like shoplifting in reverse – trying to sneak an item back IN to the store, but the old man catches me and says loudly “RETURN??”. “Yep,” I say and sadly bring him my item. Of course I am in a hurry and of course he is in anything BUT. So, he gets his scanner gun and tried to scan it, once, looks at it, twice, looks at it, thrice, looks at it, puts it down, studies his scanner, hits a few keys, picks it back up, scans it, looks at it… this goes on for about 4 more minutes. Then he finally takes some pre-printed return tags out of his smock, slaps one on there and hands it back to me and says “Here you go, this thing hasn’t been working all day.” Well, THANK YOU ancient Walmart employee then, for taking the time to prove that - both to me and to yourself, oh and wasting 8 minutes of my life in the process.

Exhibit B:

I found the best black & white toile fabric at Walmart. And now they no longer carry it. (This is also a curse I have, where I find something I love and then it ceases to exist – and I’m not talking about a few things here, I’m talking dozens and dozens, to the point where now if I find something I like, it makes Cody nervous because we both know that pretty soon it will go poof! and disappear.) So I go to the fabric dept. and there are three employees and no customers and they stand there talking to each other ignoring me until I finally say, “excuse me does one of you work here?” So, I tell them my plight and they look at me dumbly and then say well have you tried joanns? yes. have you tried hancocks? yes. have you tried the internet? yes. another time-wasting round of questions and suggestions, like “well I would try Hancock Fabrics because I know they have a lot of toile. That’s what this is called, ‘toile’ ” Thank you. Thank you so very much. Because I didn’t just say I already tried there and I didn’t know it was called ‘toile’. So they can’t give me any information whatsoever about who made it, etc. Another 10 minutes wasted.

Exhibit C:

Go to the return counter to return item from Exhibit A. The girl with zero personality acts like I am ruining her day by bringing her a return (apparently because I was so determined to actually cross the geriatric defense line and actually MAKE a return) and grumpily asks me “well, what was wrong with it?” I should have said “I bought it at Walmart.”

couple things…

So, first off, I got a new cookbook today.  I have a hard time with cookbooks for some reason.  They may look great, or have great ideas, but for some reason when I flip through the recipes, I am just not interested to try any of them.  I got a couple from the library the other day and same story.  One was about cooking and freezing your meals for a month and it’s a superb idea, but none of the recipes interested me.  Well… this book is different.  Its basic premise is to make a bunch of vegetable purees and discreetly add them into most of your foods you make for your kids.  Genius.  Although, I can’t give Mrs. Seinfeld all the credit, my mom has told me about this for years, I guess I just needed it spelled out and sitting in front of me in book form.  When I told her about this book, she said something like, “I’ve been doing that for 35 years!!  I should have written a book and made millions!”  To which my dad replied, “yeah, but you’re not married to Jerry Seinfeld so you probably wouldn’t have made millions.”  Ha, my parents crack me up.

Not to deflate Jessica Seinfeld of her fantastic ideas or well deserved kudos, but I do wonder if she would have sold so many books if she was Jessica Smith?  No matter.  The point is, I have gone through this book and have marked about 75% of the recipes to try and went to target and bought about $100 worth of produce.  So I am excited about it.  I guess somehow it hits close to home, so thanks mom for the brilliant idea, and thanks Mrs. Seinfeld for putting it all down on paper.

 

In other news, Burgundy is a big girl, officially.  First she is potty-trained and now she has the guard rail off her crib.  WE tried it for the first night last night and she did great.  Her bed is her respite and so I have been wanting to do something like this for a while.  Whenever she is sad she says “go to bed” with a pout, and wants to be put in her bed to calm down.  I have been looking for a way to let her go there without needing help in and out every time.  Voila!

 

Had to put this on here, Finn took this picture and it is possibly the greatest picture I’ve ever seen.  One day he may be a famous photographer, because he really does have an eye for it.  Luckily, I have all of his great photos saved so when he IS famous, he can make a coffee table books about his first experiences with a camera.

 

And lastly, here' is a modified idea I got from one of the little girl hair blogs I frequent.  Heart Hair!  For Valentine’s Day! 

(I can hear Cody making a joke something about having a “heart on” but I won’t)

Sweet home…

ok, I am sure my husband is kind of sick of hearing this…  Every time we go somewhere with our kids, when we leave, I say something like “well, that was fun, but MAN I wish we lived in Chicago for stuff like this because the one in Chicago is WAY better.”  I’m sure it’s gotten kind of annoying.  But you know what?  It’s true.  And I bet I’m going to keep saying it.

Today, we went to the planetarium here in Salt Lake.  It was nice.  We saw an IMAX movie about bugs.  The kids enjoyed it.  But here’s the thing, you go in, and there’s some cool stuff, and then you’re like, hmmm what do we do for an hour before our IMAX movie starts?  Go shopping at the gateway.  So we went shopping.  Then we came back and watched our movie.  I know when the kids are a little bit older, they will enjoy more of what is there, all the facts and so forth, but really, I am interested in the facts and it didn’t take me more than 10 minutes to see them all.  It took us about a half hour to see everything… and we were moving slowly. 

Also, we went to the aquarium here last year and again, it was fun, but an hour was more than sufficient.  And honestly, I was kind of put off that it was in an old grocery store.

Now really, I don’t mean to sound like a snob, and I don’t want to offend anyone who lives here and loves the attractions.  But, see…  I’m from Chicago.  I’m a big city girl at heart.  And when it comes to museums you just can’t possibly beat what there is in Chicago. 

Now granted, I haven’t been to Chicago since I was pregnant with Finn, and it’s been longer since I’ve been in many of the museums.  (I was last in the Museum of Science  & Industry while pregnant with Finn and in the Shedd Aquarium the first weekend I met Cody – so 2001.)  And I have never been in any of them as a mom.  But I remember going in them as a young girl and thinking there is no way you could see everything in here in a day.  And just the freaking buildings… I mean come on.  Just standing outside the freaking buildings is awe inspiring.  I remember  getting chills as a little girl just driving up to them. 

I guess I miss it all.  And someday soon, I really need to take my kids to Chicago.  Take them for a ride on the el, get some pizza, and just explore the city through my kids’ eyes.

So here are some cool pictures I found of a few of the many Chicago museums.  Tell me I’m wrong…

Adler Planetarium

Adler Planetarium

Field Museum of Natural History

 

This is part of the museum campus, which is beautiful and right on the lake. 

Shedd Aquarium

 

Museum of Science & Industry