To Do or Not To Do List – Week 6

1. Gather Tax stuff to take to our “Tax Man” (Or woman. I’m really not picky)
2. Laundry. Wash it. Fold it. Hang it. Put it away. (Wish me luck on this one.)
3. Organize garage. Get ready for Big! Huge! Garage Sale!
4. Take Altima in for Oil Change.
5. Pick up cupcakes for Scamp’s class for Tuesday to celebrate his birthday.
6. Find out why my neck hurts all of a sudden.
7. Maybe, just maybe, start exercising.
8. Turn in my Letter of Intent for a new position at work.
9. Gather books for project I’m working on for you. (yes, even you!)
10. Spend some quality time with The Hubby. We’re long overdue.

Six

Dear Scamp,

Today you turned six years old. It’s been six never boring years, of jumping on sofas and middle-of-the-night frights. (Oh, that happened the other night? Well, it is fresh in my mind and all…) Of words and sentences and stories and Halloween costumes:

This past year has been your biggest yet, with starting Kindergarten. You didn’t like it very much in the beginning, but now you have begun to enjoy it. So much so that even today, on a day off from school, you and your brother sat playing school at our very own kitchen table.

Every day, you amaze and impress me with all that you say and do. For instance:

See this? This impressed me. You did this all by yourself. Then, you showed your friend how to do it too. Her mom was so thrilled petrified by the way.

There’s more!

Every year your swimming gets better and better. Remember when you used to swim in the pool with your life vest? Remember how long it took us to get you out of it and just try to swim all by yourself? Seems so long ago. Now you dive down to the bottom “just like the big kids do”. My little fishie, you are.

Now, let’s talk fashion:

You have taken on the job of dressing yourself, and have become quite a style guru. From long-sleeved shirts with shorts to rockin’ a fauxhawk, you have set Kindergarten style on it’s proverbial ear.

You also know how to wear a pair of bowling shoes:

You almost wanted to wear these home. Almost.

I’m so honored to have you as my son. I love you so much. Thank you for teaching me the finer things in life:

I love you with all of my heart. Happy Birthday, my favorite six-year-old:

You are awesome.

Love,

Mom
xoxoxo

Impressing The Ladies

Yes, he went to school looking like this. And he loved every minute of it. So much so, he went to school with the mohawk (or is it fauxhawk?) on Friday.

Hey!! New recipe for you at CrazedMommy Cooks! Breakfast Bars that you may or may not want to share with others. Very delicious, and I think healthy for you too. Plus, it goes with that morning cup of coffee. Go forth and make them today!

The Super Scientific Selection Process

We Have a Winner!

Here’s how we did it:

1. We wrote the names of everyone who commented on this post:

2. We then put the names into a bowl:

3. I then asked my fair minded, mohawked son to “pick a winner”:

(Fortunately he didn’t pick his nose. That could have been bad.)

4. He came up with this:

So we have a winner!!!!

Momonthego, please email me at crazedmommy at gmail dot com to claim your prize. I’ll give you a choice of a Target gift card or a Container Store gift card. Thanks to all who played, and I’ll have pictures to come of my progress.

In the mean time, I need to get back to doing this:

Like now.

Fire in the Hole!!!

I’ve been posting recipes for a while now, but I finally moved them to their own blog so they can be searched easily. Go here to see more, including a very special recipe supporting the Frozen Pea Fund.

So without further ado:

To Do or Not to Do List – Week 5

1. Actually go to all the Dentist appointments I made last week.
2. Keep working on the Official Closet Reorganization of 2008. Baby Steps, people.
3. Pick a winner for Mah Closet, Let Me Show It To You. (Soon!)
4. Post the new dish I planned to make last week. Coq au Riesling. (I made it tonight, recipe to come!) Nigella Lawson, natch. (I made it. Not so great. Not even postable. Sorry.)
5. In honor of Susan and the ooVooDay chats, (since I don’t have a webcam) post a special pea recipe to make. ( I did. It’s right here.)
6. Go to meeting I called at Spiff’s school. Also attend at Scamp’s IEP meeting this Thursday, 1pm.
7. Try very hard not to kill the staff at the meeting if they don’t tell me what I want to hear. (They didn’t, and I’m shell-shocked. Post in the works.)
8. Finish redesigning my blog. Show you all what else I have been secretly working on.
9. Enjoy my mani/pedi.
10. Have a Happy Valentines Day! (Dinner was fabulous. Day not so much.)

Mah Closet, Let Me Show it to You

For the past two weeks, on my weekly to-do list I have listed going through my closet and cleaning it out. To the casual observer, this would appear to be a simple task.

You would be wrong.

Exhibit A: Mah Closet

What’s in those plastic boxes? Shoes. Up on the top? Sweaters and handbags. The clothes on the floor are actually CLEAN AND ON HANGERS; I just have no room to hang them up. Also, in the interest of full disclosure those clothes are currently hiding several pairs of my favorite shoes that I have forgotten or was too lazy to put back in those plastic boxes on the shelf.

Hi, my name is Shash and I’m a pack rat.

So here’s my plan. Once I gather up the motivation (which could happen as early as tomorrow morning when I’m frantically searching for a pair of shoes and can’t find them); I will gut my closet and put it back together in an organized fashion (Probably this weekend). This will mean some purging will have to happen. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this? I mean, besides just tossing things out willy-nilly. I need guidance, people. I will offer a sweet prize (read: a gift card to Target) to anyone who can help me tackle this project correctly so I’m not throwing away clothes that I need or keeping clothes that I can no longer wear. Please, HELP!!!

P.S. Where’s Tim Gunn when you (read: I) need him?!?

Life’s Simple Pleasures

To Do or Not to Do List – Week 4

1. Make Hubby’s Dentist appointment.
2. Reorganize closet. Purge items I haven’t worn in at least a year. Pick clothes off the floor and hang them up.
3. It might be time for a mani/pedi.
4. Post the new dish I planned to make last week. Coq au Riesling. (still) Nigella Lawson, natch.
5. Put clean (and folded!) clothes away.
6. Pull weeds in plant beds.
7. Steam clean drapes.
8. Redesign my blog.
9. Sleep.

Neilochka’s Great Interview Experiment

As part of Neil’s Interview Experiment (Go sign up RIGHT NOW!!), I was picked to be interviewed by the lovely Bryna of A Day in the Life of Me.

1. Where do you live (general vicinity if you would like to stay vague)

I live in a small town just outside of Orlando, Florida. I grew up here in Orlando, and when I was 19, I couldn’t wait to get the heck out of here. Seven years later after moving to Connecticut and freezing my tuchis off, I was practically BEGGING to come back. Thankfully my husband liked warm weather too. I’ve lived here 8 years now, and have no intention of leaving. It’s kind of funny to now live in a place you used to pass through (when you were young) on your way back to town and think, “I have another 45 minutes until I reach civilization again”, and knowing that now you have practically become a suburb of Orlando. Weird.

2. What do you do to bring home the ‘big bucks’, and do you like it?

I am a Teaching Assistant at a local elementary school. People tell me that I should be a teacher, so I’m taking steps to do that. Being a teacher was my goal when I was in school as a student, but somehow I veered off track for quite a long while. I have since found my way home, and I love what I do. Teachers DEFINITELY don’t enter the classroom for the big paycheck, but there is definitely a huge payoff.

3. I see that you have kids… What are their names (or if it’s nicknames, how did they get them)?

Yes, I have two boys, Spiff and Scamp, ages 13 and 5.9 (He’ll be 6 this Feb.) When I first started my blog I used the first letter of their actual names, but then later changed to pseudonyms that they actually helped me choose. Spiff comes from Spaceman Spiff – a Calvin and Hobbes character that is in a roundabout way the perfect way to describe my Aspergian son. He also likes the comic as well. Scamp’s name comes from his grandfather, and it just seemed to work out well. He knows that Scamp is him on my blog, but he’s too busy right now to care about what I write. He’s much more interested in building castles and playing with Star Wars action figures. Oh, and Mario from Super Mario Bros. Both boys love video games. Good thing their parents are geeks!

4. What was your favorite vacation and why?

My favorite vacation…. this one is SO difficult because they all have favorite components to them, even if the entire vacation might not have been magical. I would have to say that my favorite vacation to date was for my 10th wedding anniversary, my husband and I went to Savannah, Georgia. The historic district is magical, and I’m dying to take my kids there. There is a possibility that a trip like that could happen soon, and I’m very excited!

5. Where is your dream vacation spot? (can you tell that I like vacations?)

My dream vacation spot is the British Isles – and a Chunnel trip to Paris. I have ALWAYS wanted to go to England since I can remember – when I was younger I used to spend Sundays at EPCOT and hang out in the United Kingdom Pavilion and pretend I was really in Jolly ‘ol England. I have also met people from Ireland and Scotland, so I would also want to visit them too. As an added bonus, the man I married has an Irish last name, so I would definitely want to check out the family ties there. I also have to admit I have a desire to go to Israel. My husband does not share this desire, so we’ll probably get to the United Kingdom before Israel. (He has already been to Israel, compliments of the U.S. Navy.)

So if y’all will excuse me, I’m off to see what cheap flights I can find from Orlando to London. Thanks Bryna!