Cindy's Twin Adventures

The planning of another party... (the twins turn 3!!)

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Mon, 16 May 2011 22:04:22 PDT

Instead of posting all my birthday photos to facebook first, I made a mental requirement that I shall post them to my blog first since I have so poorly neglected it for quite some time. So here goes…

About a month or two ago I put on my thinking cap for what to do about the twins' third birthday. Can you believe they are three already?? It's as if my babies aren't even babies anymore. *sniff sniff*

Mackenzie as a 3 year old!

Anika as a 3 year old!

I had decided that I'm quite burnt out from throwing birthday parties…which is sad since I've only had 6 parties all together. But the mere thought of entertaining a group of 3 year olds seemed much too exhausting. These days I find that even mopping my kitchen floor is too daunting of a task. So throwing a party would not only mean hosting toddlers, but would mean cleaning my house. I have grown to detest cleaning the house. The newness of the house has worn off and now it's just a pain to clean. And who wants to invite people over without clean floors?? So I decided that I should outsource the party, like everyone else seems to do. How expensive could it be? Well, VERY expensive as I found out! I'm in the wrong business. I should open some joint kid birthday / baby-having / wedding-planning place and charge insane prices for everything. I'd be set. I think I looked up at least eight different options and the least expensive option was still going to be over $250. Some of them were $500! YIKES!! Now, as I do with all purchases I began to rationalize the cost because technically, per kid I could divide the cost in half. But even with all my rationalization it just seemed that paying all that money for a 3 year old for 1.5 hours would not be a wise investment. Instead, I'd rather purchase new toys for them that they could play with every day (or every weekend in my case since our week days have zero time for playing with toys). So an at-home party and new toys it would be. Of course that meant I needed a theme. I asked the girls what kind of party they wanted and all Anika said was she wanted a "pink" party and then Mackenzie said she wanted a "purple" party. I was fine with doing that, but what on earth do you do for a pink and purple party? Luckily my brilliant mother suggested a "May" theme where I could do a maypole dance and have May flowers, etc. So…I came up with a pink and purple Garden party theme! It was generic enough and super easy to have pink and purple and would be fine for both boys and girls.

The Invitations
Making the invitations is my favorite part of the party as it is one of the three times a year I get to do something creative so I set out to find something fun. It didn't take me long to stumble upon an idea to make little 3-D flower pot invitations and they were soooo easy! I had all the materials I wanted to use already except for the mini flower pots. And since I was only inviting a handful of kids and knew I could hand deliver the invitations, I didn't have to worry about mailing them. They were really easy to make and would have been fast too if I my glue gun hadn't broken down. I spent two evening "work slots" just trying to get the glue gun to work! Grrrrr. Below is a shot of the end product. I showed some people the photo and then found out that if people just looked at the photo they actually thought the invitation was much larger than it really is. I find the miniature size to be part of its charm so the actual invitation is only about 3 or 4 inches high. The pot is 1.5 inch at it's widest opening. The wording was on the leaf portion. The left side says "It's a Garden Party! Mackenzie & Anika are turning 3!" and the right leaf gives the date, time, location, and RSVP info.

Flower pot invitations!

And then the rain came...
I remember from Addison's party that trying to organize 3 year olds for very long is not a very easy thing to do. They can do crafts, but if you try to get them to play a game, they are either going to be too shy, too impatient, or too scared. All three year olds really want to do is run around and play with toys. They don't even care so much about interacting with others. So I was hoping for good weather (which didn't really happen). My original plan was to just set out a ton of outdoor toys and do the entire party and activities outside. Of course when the weather called for 8 days straight of rain and thunderstorms it became apparent that I had better come up with a plan B. So I did…it worked out fine but not quite what I wanted. Technically the rain stopped for the party, but everything was wet and I didn't think it would be fun for kids to get their shoes soaked or for the parents to be sitting on wet seats. So here is what I did for the party:

Flower pot cupcake bouquets

Both flower pot cupcake bouquets together!

There are two things I remember with great clarity about my birthday parties growing up: the cake and the favors. My mom always made my cakes as well as some crazy fabulous favors. So since I liked them so much, I figure it's worth it to do the same for my kids…even though about five minutes into making the cakes I usually wonder what on earth I was thinking since frosting is not my friend.

For the garden party it seemed only fitting to have a flower cake and after doing a little search online I came across the concept of flower pot cupcake bouquets. I LOVED the idea. So that meant I could do a pink one for Anika and a purple one for Mackenzie. I bought inexpensive clay pots from Michaels and painted one purple/white and the other pink/white. Little did I know it would require 6 coats of paint so that turned out to take longer than I thought, but I'll be able to let them keep the pots and plant their own flowers so I guess it was worth it. Now, I don't technically know how to decorate cakes. Sure, I can do the little stars and can pipe frosting out of a bag, but I had never tried actually making flowers before. How hard could it be? As it turns out…not hard at all!! The hardest part is mixing up the frosting colors and switching out all the tips. After all, every tip I switched out meant one more thing I had to clean. And as I already mentioned, I hate cleaning. But I think the bouquets turned out great! I don't know if the flowers I made look like real-life flowers, but I think they came pretty close. I'd even say one or two of them actually looked quite like the real thing! They are my favorite cakes yet. The hardest part was after I baked the cupcakes figuring out how to fit them in the flower pot and keep them from falling. In my head it was so easy. And then I killed a few cupcakes trying to figure it out. In the end, I'm sure there must be an easier way, but I eventually just stuck them all on skewers which went into big chunks of flower styrofoam. I dreamed of doing a bouquet where the flowers were at varying heights but realized that was going to be impossible so I just tried to make it somewhat rounded and used a ton of extra skewers to help balance some of the highest cupcakes. One bouquet turned out better than the other but I was positive that neither Anika nor Mackenzie would notice or mind. Addison, on the other hand, as soon as she saw the flowers pointed out right away that one of the "flowers" was sticking out too far when she saw it. Gee thanks, Addison.

I think the guests all like the cakes. Two people walked by the bouquets and didn't even notice they were cupcakes! Woo hoo! I'll take that as a compliment. :) The only thing I wish I had done was made better cupcakes. I only ever do the cake the day before and by then I just decide to use a box of cake mix and make them that way. One of these days I'll make fancy, great tasting cupcakes like they'd serve in a bakery. It wouldn't be that hard but it does require extra planning. So not this year. Probably not next year either. But one day…

Anika's pink cupcake cake

Mackenzie's purple cupcake cake!

Favors and fun:
Every party I like to make personalized favors of some sort. I understand the idea that kids love getting little things that make them feel special. In fact, my kids could probably sit in an empty room and be allowed to run around and as long as there was cake they would think it's a party. If you gave them cake AND a little present even if the present was one little sticker, they would think they were at a very special party. (As a side note, the twins only really care about having cake but ever since she was little, Addison has equated parties with balloons. I didn't get balloons for this year's party mostly because I just forgot and ran out of time. I was hoping they wouldn't notice. And they didn't. However, at dinner that night I was asking the girls how they liked the party and when it was Addison's turn she said the party was a lot of fun and she wanted her party to have the bounce house too. Except, she noted, that this party was missing balloons and she really, really wanted balloons at her party. Um, I guess someone *did* notice there were no balloons...oh well).

I've never really understood why the party stores charge so much for those tiny little plastic trinkets meant for favor bags. It seems so silly to pay so much for plastic bugs or rings or whatever is in there. So I try to find things that will be useful *and* are inexpensive so that if they get thrown away like many party favors do, it's no big deal. It's more the thought that counts. So this year I came up with something that could count as a favor and that I could use as a party activity as well. A double win!! Since it was a garden party I thought it would be fun to create a little gardening bag with small toddler shovels. In my quest to find inexpensive shovels I came across "color your own" flower pots. So I hatched a plan to fill a little personalized bag with some dirt, some seeds, and a little shovel. That would be the "favor" and then the activity would be for the kids to decorate their own flower pots. Once they decorated them, they could use their gardening bag to plant some seeds and make some flowers. It actually worked out great! The perfect little activity for 3 year olds. And while several stores had little shovels, the winning find was at Michaels. They not only had TONS of gardening supplies including $1.00 mini shovels, there was a 30% off coupon which meant I could buy all the supplies for the craft activity and the favors for all the kids for under $30 with some materials left over to make more. Although technically I didn't buy the dirt...I used some left over that my mom had which she so nicely put in little ziplock bags for me.

The basket of personalized "garden bags"

I also thought the kids could make tissue paper flowers in addition to the flower pots. My mom had offered to help me so she actually assembled the pipe cleaners and made the folds ahead of time so I didn't actually get to try my hand at making the flowers or get the kids to test them out. I had remembered them being so easy! But, for anyone considering this for a 3 year old activity, you may want to reconsider... They were much more difficult for them to make then I thought they'd be. Oh well...you win some, you lose some! They were pretty though, and with a little help from the parents they came out just fine. :)

You can see the tissue paper flowers in this photo... Pretty, but difficult.

I had originally hoped to have the craft time, do a "maypole" dance outside, and then let the kids play outside with the bounce house and all the toys I could pull out for the yard. With the rainy weather those plans were tossed aside so the night before I experimented to see if my giant bounce house would fit inside. Luckily, it did!! It was a tight fit but I moved the furniture in my family room and fit it in the hallway area and let the kids jump away. That bounce house has been the absolute single best toy purchase I've ever made. I bought it on a whim from Amazon on clearance for some insane deal just three days before Addison's 2nd birthday party. It arrived the day before and it was a great hit for her party. I have used it for every party and every little event I've had since then. The kids think it's the best thing ever!

So some kids played in the playroom, some kids jumped in the bouncer or played in the ball pit, and some kids were still finishing at the craft table. All the kids joined together for snacks and cake and then we spent the last few minutes of the party playing outside since the sun had come out just a bit. That way they could also do their "carrot hunt." My mom had found these adorable little carrots at the dollar store and thought it would be great fun to fill them up and then have the kids "dig" to find the carrots in the garden. It wasn't going to be as much fun to have the kids digging through wet dirt with all the rain so instead I changed it into a hunt so they each could find a carrot that was hidden around the yard. One of the side benefits of having a crafty mother is that she enjoys coming up with fun ideas as well and helps makes the party even more fun!

Tiny little pinwheels leading up to the Garden party

The bounce house fits inside (view from above)!!

Craft time!

The crackers/cheese/ham was also shaped into little flowers.

I strategically didn't do the party over lunch, but did provide plenty of snacks...and cupcakes of course!

All in all, I think the party was great. There were five other little friends in addition to my three girls. I invited the "regulars" which are basically the girls' friends by default...the dinner party club kids. BUT, because we all had kids the first round at the same time, we all have older kids. And then we all have a second round of kids the same age as the twins. Anytime we get together we have all the kids and inevitably the older kids set the tone of the party and it's an entirely different experience. So since Anika and Mackenzie don't even get their own party I figured the least I could do was to just have all the kids their own age there. I was a little nervous to ask that just the younger kids come but as it turns out for many of these younger siblings this was the very first time they got to go to a party all their own and it made them feel quite special! So it was great for all the younger kids to be able to go somewhere by themselves. I did let the girls each invite a friend from school too. Only one of the school friends could come but they were so excited to have him there and it was extra fun to see them together outside of school. I suppose I could have just invited school friends, but the kids are still young enough they don't really have specific "friends" and I find comfort in having a houseful of close friends who could care less whether my house was a mess or whether all the activities flopped or anything like that. So it worked out wonderfully!

Anika blows out her candle.

Mackenzie blew out her candle so fast I couldn't even get a photo!

And of course Addison had a great time at the party as well.

Me with the girls on their birthday!

Of course in a relative comparison, I find it humorous that the day before the party Addison (and the twins) were invited to one of Addison's good friend's birthday party. It was a petting zoo at this friend's house and there were a TON of people there. I mean, literally, more children than I can ever imagine having over to my house. The party was very nice and the weather amazingly stopped raining and the sun came out for the duration of the party. The minute it was over the rain came pouring down again. As I was leaving I couldn't even imagine a scenario where I'd ever have so many children (and parents) at my house. My party planning is clearly limited to small crowds. I am incapable of handling the stress of something like that! Only 4 months before I have to worry about the next party. :)

Free time apparently makes me lazy...and fat

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:38:27 PST

The last two weeks I have been shocking lazy. It's all somewhat disturbing actually. I'm wrapping up my project at work which means that while I have enough work to keep me busy during the day, I really don't have any reason to log in at night. Combine that with the fact that I haven't signed myself up for any extra-curricular projects, it means that once I get home, feed the kids and put them to bed, I don't technically have anything I have to do. I suppose I eventually have to do dishes and laundry, but it doesn't all have to be done each night. In theory I was all excited about all the things that I *could* do because of this temporary freedom and bliss. I had visions of organizing my files, painting some pictures for the house, exercising, cleaning up rooms, etc. But what really happened? Nothing. Absolutely nothing! All last week instead of doing anything at all I just sat down on the couch and watched tv. Oh, and I ate. I ate a LOT. I pretty much ate everything I had in the house totally scrapping any concept of my diet. Even the guilt of my weekly weigh-ins didn't stop me. I didn't multitask -- no laundry, no bill paying, no sorting through papers. I just sat there. Sometimes I just sat there with the tv on "pause" since technically I like to wait until the kids fall asleep before I turn it on for fear of waking them. I hadn't actually watched tv during prime time in months. It was delightfully fun and there are some really good shows on tv! In fact, there were some really hilarious commercials too! The first few days I felt great. I thought about the fact that I was wasting time but figured a couple days couldn't possibly hurt. The next few days, little twinges of guilt started to creep in. I simply resolved that by eating more food. One day I found my secret stash of peanut M&Ms and ate the entire bag. The next day I wanted a dessert so I made a crumb cake and ate the entire thing. The next day...you get the idea. By the end of last week I recognized that I was in some serious rut and sat back and analyzed the situation. I had spent over an entire week doing nothing but watching tv and eating (at least in the 8 pm - midnight hours). I went to bed before midnight several nights and one night I even used my jacuzzi tub to soak in a bath for the first time since I moved into my new house! My stress level was at an all time low. I had plenty of sleep, I wasn't worried about work, I didn't seem to care if anything got done around the house, and I didn't have any deadlines to meet. Is this what the rest of the world does? It can't be! Maybe that's how people end up not having time to get anything done. I have to admit it's been kind of nice. But by Friday my inability to lazily sit around and do nothing finally kicked in and I managed to get back in the swing of things. Thank goodness. Now I'm much more content. Of course I didn't quite ditch my "eating everything in sight" habit, but hopefully that's coming any day now. My willpower has been compromised.

I don't really know what was wrong with me except that maybe my body decided it needed a vacation of its own without consulting me. Perhaps I can do a better job of spending some days doing nothing and some days being productive, living a blissful life of leisure. Ha ha. Easy for me to say now. When work is easy and the kids are healthy, life is grand. Even when, I suppose, it's not exactly the life I had planned for myself. It's still pretty good. Now I think I'll go walk past the dirty dishes, feed the cat, check on the kids, and take a magazine to read in bed before I fall asleep. Ah, the life. :)

My Christmas Card Creation!!

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:18:14 PST

I promised myself before January was over I'd make every effort to make a post about my Christmas card since it's my favorite Christmas creation yet. With minutes to spare, I'm meeting that goal!

The making of the card...
A couple years ago I was flipping through a magazine that had some samples of corporate self-promotions. In one of the small photos there was what looked like a game that a company had created for the holidays. Now, I don't actually know what the point of the game was or how it incorporated the company, etc. because I couldn't see the details but it made me think it would be an awesome idea for my own Christmas card. In fact, if I had kept more than just the tiny cutout of the photo, I could give credit to the company who had the idea in the first place since I bet it was somewhere included in the magazine. I couldn't even attempt to create a game in 2009 but from the time 2010 rolled around I was determined I would do it.

The first thing I had to figure out what how on earth to make angled and curved "spaces" on a game board. Not actually being a graphic designer makes much of my lovely ideas more difficult. If only I knew what I was doing, life would be much easier!!! But these days everything is on the internet so I took a few online tutorials, read a couple articles and *poof* I learned how to make curved lines!! Of course I imagine there is a much easier way than how I did it, but oh well. Once I figured out how to layout the board I came up with a variety of things that happened throughout the year and tried to assign relative game values to them (e.g. "move 1 social space forward" or "go to time out"). I thought the game would be way too boring with all text so I selected some photos to include and then I began piecing the together which "events" would go in which space. I even did a test run with the game to make sure it was playable. The idea was to create a playable game that would let people know what happened this year with some twists of humor here and there.

Once I figured out the content and layout, I began work on the logistics. I suppose in retrospect I should have figured out the logistics first, but I needed to make sure I could actually design the card before I bothered with finding the cheapest way to produce this thing! I originally thought I'd do a game on a 5x7 card but after designing Jennifer's poster wedding invitations I loved the idea of doing a 12x18 game. Unfortunately it wasn't until AFTER I sized my entire game board to a 12x18 that I discovered the extra size would be 1/8th of an inch too large for standard postage. Oops! So I decided to make a few in the larger size but also to resize the entire board to an 11x17 so it wouldn't need an "oversized" envelope. From a "production" perspective, I wanted to keep the card very low cost so I had to be quite creative in how I got it all done. Between maximizing print space, cutting out and assembling things myself, shopping around for multiple vendors for different needs, and finding and coupons or sales, I did it!!

I didn't even attempt to take a family photo this year (it hardly ever seems worth the effort!) so I thought it would be fun to just take a few shots of the girls by themselves on the back porch one day and use those to make little game pieces. I figure it was killing two birds with one stone...I could send photos of my family for people I don't see often AND I could use them as the game pieces. I even included a shot of myself since I happened to be in a photo from the October wedding. The game pieces required a lot more cutting than I would have liked, but they turned out even better than I was hoping so it was worth it.

The last step of my game board came together only at the last minute. After talking with my helpful printer about a different job he had done, I came up with an idea to include a spinner on the game board! I originally wanted to find a way to include some dice with the game. But I looked everywhere for a tiny box/dice die-cuts to make a do-it-yourself dice set to include -- no luck! Instead I started searching for game spinners. They are, oddly enough, very hard to find!! Most game spinners were going to be way too big not to mention only sold in bulk. However, on a hunt through Michael's I found a set of spinners in various sizes in the scrapbooking section. How convenient!! I waited until the big after Thanksgiving sale to get them on sale and voila -- I had my spinners! Unfortunately it meant editing my board to include a spinner, and because the spinners were multiple sizes I couldn't exactly create the perfect size since I only wanted to design one board. I figured most people probably wouldn't care if their spinner was slightly too big or too small anyway. But once I had the spinner, I knew the game was playable all on its own and hoped people would actually play it! I don't know how many people actually *did* play, but a few people said they did with their kids and that's good enough to make me happy.

Once I had the board, the game pieces, and the spinner, I just drafted up some instructions and threw them all into a little candy bag and printed out a little bag holder. I wanted to tape the bag "topper" to the bag but that didn't work well. I tried stapling too but that just didn't seem to cut it. So instead, I hand punched holes in each of the bags and put eyelets in them. More work than I had originally planned for but I thought those little bags were so cute it was well worth it in the end. Besides, I got to watch tv while I did it, so that was nice.

The one small flaw of my card idea was that it was heavier than I anticipated, bumping it slightly over the standard mail rate. Oops! By the time I figured that out, it was too late so there wasn't much I could do about it. Luckily it only bumped up the postage a bit and was still less than if I had used the 12x18 size paper.

If you didn't get a chance to see my card, here are some photos of it. I wish I could have sent the card to everyone I wanted, but since I was sticking within my budget I only printed a certain handful and after that, I could send no more. :(

This is a photo of the card unfolded with the game pieces taken out of the bag.

The game pieces! Note that these were my "test" game pieces so they look much more unruly than the others did along the edges. I cut all the others nicely but these I was so anxious to try them out I just sort of folded and ripped. I'm impatient. And lazy too since I didn't want to go open the reserved little game package I made for myself in order to take pictures of the board.

The game instructions/pieces packet! This turned out much better than I had originally envisioned.

This is the back of the game piece package.

Reactions to the game (and how I found time)...

Now, I've received all sorts of reactions to my cards. I got plenty of delightful reactions of people who genuinely loved the card and some who even played it. Yay! I even had some people who thought I must sell the game to others, whether it be in the form of a single game or a template for cards. Some people showed it to friends or family. Some people were convinced I should be in a different career (note to those folks...seriously I'm not an artist, just good enough to fake it when needed!). And some people simply never mentioned anything. However, the most befuddling reactions were the handful of people who actually seemed annoyed by the card and those who commented that I simply must have too much time on my hands. I have my own theories on why someone would have those reactions, but I'll keep those theories to myself. But certain comments did stick with me for a while.

For anyone who doesn't work full time and manage a household of three toddlers by themselves, let me assure you I don't have a lot of "spare" time to do all the things I'd love to do. Let's face it though, we all have the same 24 hour time allotment in a day. Some people sleep, some people watch tv, some people go out, some people work, some people exercise, some people spend time with their kids. Everyone has different priorities. Except in rare cases, at some point we are given a choice of what to do with our time. My biggest chunks of "time" are spent doing things I willingly accept as a result of decisions I've made for my own life. My job takes a lot of time, but I enjoy the challenge as well as the rewards of having a demanding job. My kids take a LOT of time but I chose to have children, knowing it would be a permanent change to my life. Now, I hadn't quite anticipated the whole single mom thing but we can't plan out everything, can we?? My evenings are rather hectic between rushing home, getting everyone fed, bathed, and to bed (which is an exhausting challenge in itself since it could be described and a few hours of chaos and tantrums). But most nights I do have at least a couple hours to decide what to do. If I don't need to do work stuff, I typically fill the time with dishes, laundry, paying bills, cleaning up, logging in and doing work stuff that I didn't get done during the day, or getting other "must-do" things done. If I'm too ambitious one night then the next time I might have to use my time to catch up on sleep I may have missed previously. I multitask quite well and folding laundry and paying bills is perfect for watching tv. However, there are times when I decide my life should be more interesting than just doing the "must-do" things and I actually do other things besides the "mandatories." Some things are easy to fit in like facebook, flipping through a magazine, or even having a friend come over to catch up after the girls go to bed. But others take much more effort and time, and when that happens, I prioritize accordingly and things like my Christmas card get done!

To make the time to do the card, a few pleasantries immediately fell off my list. No TV and no facebook. Period. They are time suckers and to get it done, I just couldn't manage to use up any extra time. I also gave up cleaning and laundry. I couldn't give up ALL cleaning as I don't have enough dishes to last a full month. But I would go 5 days straight with simply just piling up dishes, one atop the other, in my sink and on the countertop until it overflowed. But that saved little chunks of time each night and then on the weekend I'd do all the dishes one day while the kids ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner (again with the multitasking!). And my poor, poor laundry. This suffered the most. I detest doing laundry; it takes so long. And the more I put it off, the more overwhelming it becomes. So while I probably did at least one emergency load a week, towards the end of my little Christmas card project, there were at least three days when I dressed my kids entirely in dirty clothes. Yep, I admit it. They weren't super dirty, but the clothes had been worn before and I hadn't washed them yet. But hey, I prioritized my card over my kids wearing clean clothes. I mean, we all have priorities.

Why'd I do it??
So I'm sure some people wonder why I'd want to spend time on a Christmas card. The answer is simple -- it's because I really LOVE Christmas cards! In fact, I pretty much love cards *any* time of the year. But when you combine the spirit of Christmas and a card, it makes it that much more fun. And while I used to do crafty things all the time in my former life, these days I just don't get to do that much of it anymore. So I use the Christmas card as a great way to express some sort of creative freedom while simultaneously using it as a way to let people know what I've been up to. It's great fun for me. I actually see Christmas cards in general as tiny little gifts of love. Some people worry that because they don't have pictures to include or anything interesting to write about, that nobody would want to receive a card from them. Not so!! I love all cards and I most certainly appreciate any little card I get because it means if only for just a moment, that person thought of me; and that makes me smile. Now, I do love pictures and I do love homemade cards, but my favorite ones are usually just the ones I think are the prettiest (or the most interesting). In fact, I might place a good, modern looking card on my desk for months, just to look at it. And I don't worry if someone doesn't send me a card. There are plenty of people who never send Christmas cards at all but it doesn't really matter. If someone WANTS to send a card he/she will and it will be a nice surprise. I actually kind of wish I could always wait until the last minute to send my cards so that nobody would ever feel like they HAD to send me a card just because I sent them one. Similarly, I don't tend to get too stressed out if someone sends me a card and I haven't sent them one. I wish I could send everyone a card, but I just can't do it, so I simply assume that any friend sending me a card understands this concept.

I hope I brought a little holiday joy by mail to anyone who did receive my card. It brought me great joy to send it out. And I should forewarn people now that next year's won't be anywhere near as complex. I might have to go the opposite end of the spectrum and do something insanely simple. We'll see. A have at least 11 months to recover. :)

Happy 2011!!

The last five months...a really long post!

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 17:50:30 PST

Whew. I can finally take a deep breath! I've had the longest list of projects for the past few months and I just finished my last project of the year. Of course since that involved sending out cards that reference my blog, I figured I had better do a blog update.

I've been super busy...busier than normal even! Of course I recognize being busy is a consistent theme in my life but this time it's not all because of work -- woo hoo!!! It's simply because I signed myself up for way too many "extra curricular" activities. I had actually been quite productive getting things done off my "101 things list" until around September when the chaos began. I'll have to blog about all my 101 list progress later and for provide an update on what has been usurping my time for the past five months (which seems to be pathetically how long I go in between posts...). Since August I created the end of year classroom gift for Addison's daycare teachers, helped my friend Jennifer plan and execute an entire wedding in two and a half months, prepared for and threw Addison a 4th birthday party, went on a week's "vacation" to the beach, participated in the RAMOM (Richmond area Mothers of Multiples) sale, celebrated Halloween and Thanksgiving, created my best Christmas card yet, designed little photo "books" of the kids, and even managed to get the house decorated for Christmas. That's a long list of things that in my good ol' days would have been done in no time. But considering my free time is significantly less chasing around three kids and working full time, it's quite draining doing such a big list of projects that didn't seem to end. But I have survived!!

The Class Yearbook
I started out my long list of crazy ideas when I decided it would be a good idea to make a "yearbook" for Addison's teachers at her daycare. Addison was in LOVE with her teachers and since she was in her daycare/preschool room for a solid year, it was certainly enough time to really get to know the other kids and the teachers. I decided I would take fancy photos of each kid and design a special book and present it as a gift. A few other parents liked the idea and decided to pitch in for the cost of the book. Unfortunately the time it took me to take and edit the pictures and design the book was more than I hoped. Luckily it turned out great and the teachers appreciated it. I even made a smaller copy for Addison so she'll remember all her friends and some of the other parents ordered a book for their kids as well. I'm glad I did it although I don't know that I'll be signing up for the same task at the end of this year! The only bummer is that my special lens for taking portraits broke! Literally, it just stopped focusing. Why, oh why must things break???

Wedding Projects
Right around the time I decided to take upon the yearbook project, my very good friend Jennifer got engaged and decided she wanted to try to make her dream October pumpkin patch wedding happen. That meant we had LOTS of wedding planning to do in a short amount of time if we were going to pull it off. For those following along, Jennifer is my amazing red headed, mural painting, super crafty, officer friend who is always helping me in some way or another. She wanted these cool poster-like invitations for her reception so I took the challenge to design an event type poster. I also created little "wrappers" that went around the posters to put invitee names on, and then I created these little "tickets" for the wedding itself. Those who were invited to the wedding portion got a ticket and Jennifer just attached them to the posters with a clip. Personally, the tickets are my favorite part! I even managed to find a place that could print them without charging an arm and a leg. Now, don't get me wrong -- I am still not creative enough to be a natural artist of any sort, so when I say I "designed" something I really mean I just "borrowed" concepts from other things I saw online and shuffled them up a bit to be what I needed. Thank goodness for the internet for some inspiration!

This is a view of the poster rolled up with the wrapper on the outside. The ticket for the wedding is attached.

This is a view of the poster for the reception. It's up on a cork board, but you get the idea. The actual poster size was 12x18".

As soon as the posters were done I needed to search for some flower girl dresses as all three kids were going to be in the wedding. We found the most perfect dress but of course it was discontinued and we were one dress too short. So the week long hunt began and I think I must have called every internet boutique out there in search of this dress. For anyone stumbling upon my blog or looking for some fancy dresses, I must call out two places I'd recommend. The first is www.pinkprincess.com. If you are buying a nice dress, I definitely recommend this place. First of all, who really wants to buy expensive kids' clothes over the internet without trying it on? Not only does pink princess have a wonderful selection and much better prices than competitors, but they also have free shipping both ways. How great is that? Worry free ordering. You won't find that type of deal at most other online stores. They were super helpful, speedy, and we would have never been brave enough to order the dresses in the first place if it hadn't been for them. The other place I'd recommend is a place called Christening Day (www.christeningday.com). I'm not joking when I say I called over 20 places searching for another size 3T dress. I even called the manufacturer. The message was clear -- I was not going to find this dress anywhere! But like a gift falling out of the sky, Christening Day responded to one of my emails and mysteriously managed to locate a size 3T dress for me. Literally, I did not believe this poor woman when she called me to tell me. But not only did she find me the dress, she also matched the lower price of the other two dresses I had already ordered from pink princess! This little boutique company gets the highest of customer satisfaction points for me. Of course they don't sell a ton of things I need at the moment, but I'd recommend them if you are in the market for Christening gowns or other dress up outfits.

Once I had the dresses I had to find shoes. That made finding dresses seem like a walk in the park. I did try to warn Jennifer along the way that three toddlers (plus her two nephew toddlers) in a wedding would be unpredictable and insane. But she was willing to accept the madness they could bring. Crazy girl! Once I found shoes then I had to find a dress for me... Jennifer being the super laid back girl she is said I could pick any color and style I wanted. Little did she know I am simply incapable of making decisions such as this! I did manage to find a dress but I would like to point out a few things I learned in the process:
1) Bridesmaids who wear JCrew dresses are extraordinarily skinny. Either that or I'm extraordinarily large and I'd like to think it's the former but either way it's slightly disturbing.
2) J Crew dresses at full price are insane.
3) If there is a J Crew warehouse sale in your neighborhood at any time, just wait until then to buy up any dress you need at a crazy discount -- it will be well worth it.
4) The world needs more burnt orange dresses, which shouldn't be too hard to do since apparently they don't exist.
5) If you've had twins and want to wear a JCrew silk dress, make sure you have some spanx.

Once the attire was all squared away, I took engagement pictures for Jennifer and her then fiance, RJ. It was fun to go out and take pictures but I quickly realized how fast the sun sets in the fall. Our start time got delayed so we didn't have much light for good photos but a few turned out okay and it it was fun to get to hang out with them.

My last wedding assignments included coming up with the favors (caramel apples -- YUM!), making acrylic cake toppers out of ancient shots of Jen and RJ when they were younger, and making some pointing signs. Oh, and in between I threw a shower for Jennifer and even managed to make little pumpkin brownie bites for little shower favors. Fortunately my mom helped assemble all the tags and bags or I might have not gotten any sleep at all the week before the wedding. And everything else was relatively easy to get done. Jennifer had some great help from her brother and some other friends and family but the level of detail of all the amazing things she put together for the wedding is incredible. For as detailed as I can be at times, I would have never had the energy to do all the amazing things she did! The wedding was a small ceremony at a pumpkin patch. Since I was in the wedding I don't have many shots but I did get a couple candids from afterwards. The weather turned out great although it was a bit chillier than we had hoped. The reception was the next day at Jennifer's new house and it was a casual event with bbq, a kids' station, a fire pit for s'mores, a mustache photo booth, and a bunch of other things. My parents were lifesavers during the whole wedding event. They helped with the kids at the wedding and the reception and took them overnight both nights so I could go to the rehearsal dinner and stay late at the reception. Woo hoo!! Lots of fun.

I hardly have any pictures of the happy couple. But as I was chasing one of the girls I snapped this photo from behind the photographer.

Jennifer -- isn't she so lovely??

Jennifer wanted a cake room instead of a big cake. Notice the little acrylic cake toppers I made from old photos of Jennifer and RJ. Her friend made the cakes.

These are pumpkin brownie "gourds" I made for favors for Jennifer's shower. They were supposed to be pumpkins but at 2 am I had to make the fast and they more closely resembled gourds than smooth pumpkins.

These are the favors I made. Well, I only partially made them. I looked all over for caramel apples and even priced out making them myself. But then I realized I could just buy them at Kroger for a quarter of the cost. Much better idea!

Jennifer made a bunch of clay mustaches and guests used them in front of a white sheet and snapped a photo with a camera set up on a tri-pod. Cute idea!

Mackenzie posing with her 'stash.

This was the S'mores fire pit before the reception started. The fire pit turned out to be a great idea.

The kids' table.

Signs pointing to various activities.

Some of the details Jennifer did for the reception.

Tinkerbell Party

In the midst of getting ready for the wedding, I threw Addison a Tinkerbell party for her fourth birthday. The party turned out quite well and the only thing that was difficult was when I dreamed up a ridiculous invitation. I decided to cut out little Tinkerbells to put on the invite using a friend's Cricut machine. That's when I discovered that those machines were pure torture and clearly not meant for things like invitations. I didn't even do the full Tinkerbell -- I totally cheated using only a handful of layers and it still took way too long. Lesson learned. Here is the invitation:

Definitely not worth the time. I'll reserve crazy Cricut stuff for when I just need to make one of something. The inside had a cute little poem in Tinkerbell font.

Luckily the weather cooperated for the party as I simply could not imagine 9 girls (three of them my own) running around my house. It probably would have given me a heart attack. But with the nice weather I set up little Tinkerbell stations outside. All the girls got wings and a skirt as their party "favors" that they could wear at the party and take home with them. My mom made a Tinkerbell costume for Addison to wear which turned out to be quite adorable. I found the wings for all the girls on ebay (although of course a couple weeks after the party, fairy wings finally showed up at the dollar store...figures!) and my mom made the skirts out of some tulle. I had a necklace station where the girls put on tattoos and make necklaces out of string and fruit loops. There was a craft station where they made little Tinkerbell ornaments, colored Tinkerbell pages and could stamp and put fairy stickers on construction paper. There was a "treasure hunt" station where the kids could search through the sand to find little gems and coins. And there was a face painting station where my friend Jennifer painted all their faces. I was shocked at how well behaved and quiet all the girls were going from station to station. I've never even seen my kids that calm! To make my life easier I made cupcakes instead of a cake and rolled out some fondant and threw together some fairy-looking flowers and sparkle dust to put on top of them. I even found some tiny little Tinkerbell cake toppers that worked well. After eating cupcakes the girls got to play Fairy Freeze Tag. Of course the concept of freezing and unfreezing seemed to confuse them so mostly they just ran around like wild toddlers. All in all I think the party went quite well and unlike last year where I thought I'd collapse half way through the party, this year was a little easier. And much more economical than trying to go to one of those jumping places.

Tinkerbell cupcakes

Searching through the treasure chest.

Face painting!

Fairy Freeze Tag

Vacation
The week after Addison's party I went on "vacation" with my parents. I have vacation in quotes since I'm pretty sure that vacation as I used to know it will no longer exist for me. I suppose it was a break from work, which is always nice. But my previous definition of vacation would be anything relaxing. For that matter, my favorite vacations are tropical resorts where I can sit and do nothing. Perhaps an excursion of some sort, but it's hard to beat sitting in the sun, getting a tan and doing nothing. This vacation was not one of those! But it was definitely full of adventure and the girls loved every minute of it. My parents got a timeshare in Williamsburg for a week and that's where we headed. We went to Busch Gardens early in the trip and my brother and little sister were there to help out. Funny how it seemed to take five adults to manage those three kids. I discovered that Addison is a complete roller coaster addict. She simply could not get enough of them! She stared with fascination at the huge roller coasters that she won't be tall enough to go on for years and talked about how she couldn't wait to go on the one with the 90 degree fall to the ground. Her favorite ride was one of the "fast" roller coasters and I couldn't believe she went on it none-the-less rode it again and again. The twins, on the other hand, were petrified of everything. They wouldn't even take a picture with Elmo. My little sister somehow got Mackenzie to go on one very, very slow duck ride and we convinced Anika to go on the bumper cars (coincidentally Mackenzie wanted to go on the bumper cars too until right before the cars started moving she hopped out of the car and I had to make a mad dash to get her out of there). But that was it for the rides for them. We did take them on the carousel but they screamed through the whole experience although I think at that point they were simply too tired. Hopefully they like more things next year. At least they all enjoyed watching Elmo and his friends dance. Anika is still talking about how cookie monster danced for her.

After Busch Gardens we headed to Virginia Beach where the girls got to play in the sand and just loved it. Those were our big trips for the week but they also got to go mini golfing (something I don't recommend with two 2 year olds!), visit the Yankee Candle Factory, go swimming, and visit a few playgrounds. Lots and lots of excitement for them. By the time we got home I wasn't sure I could make it through yet another weekend with them. The whole family "togetherness" was a bit too much for them -- those kids were fighting more than they had ever fought before since they had been together for 7 days straight without a break. Even worse, the twins had started to pick up some of Addison's habits! Scary, scary stuff. Luckily they have forgotten all the 4-year old attitude learned from Addison so life is normal again. Here are some pictures of the adventures:

Sesame Street Live!

Anika's one ride...

Mackenzie's one ride...

Exhausted!

Addison loved the zip line at the local park. It didn't take her long to learn to swing across the whole thing.

Fun at the park!

Who knew a candle store could be so fun?

Having fun together...how sweet!

RAMOM sale
Right after vacation I had to begin my next little project, which was to get ready for the RAMOM (Richmond Area Mother's of Multiples) sale. Way before my crazy hectic schedule started, I decided a good incentive to help me clear out the baby stuff on the third floor of my house would be to sign up for the fall sale. RAMOM is the multiples group I belong to and twice a year they hold a big yardsale where sellers in the group can sell their kid stuff to the public. It's actually where I had gotten a great deal of my baby gear before the twins were born. As it turns out, among all my other "projects" I didn't really have any time to even think about the sale until after I came back from vacation. So when I came back I only had one week to unpack, organize, and label all my stuff.

Well, the whole effort took much more time than I was anticipating and I spent every non working, non-kid minute for a solid week getting my things together. It was a pain! Dragging all those bins from the third floor, tagging everything, dragging them in from my car to the school where the sale was and then having to pack up everything and drag it all back home...it was exhausting. I swore I would never do it again. Until I got my check in the mail at which point I determined that perhaps it *was* all worth the effort afterall.

Ouch! Of course part of the reason why I may have been so miserable at the RAMOM sale could have had something to do with the fact that it felt like my head was going to explode. Turns out somehow I got a microfracture in one of my front teeth. The crazy thing is I was JUST at the dentist a week or two earlier for my regular cleaning and the dentist had said everything looked great. But apparently, I guess, I likely had some sort of trauma to the tooth as early as my childhood and only now did the microfracture come about and/or bacteria finally made its way inside. At the time I was fighting the third cold of the season and my immune system that had previously been keeping the infection at bay could no longer handle fighting all of that. Looking back I now understand why on earth I could not seem to get rid of my colds! The pain from the infection was so awful that I actually would have preferred to go through a long and intense natural childbirth instead of having my head feel like that. Merely touching any part of my jaw was excruciatingly painful. I survived the weekend but ended up having an emergency root canal on Monday. And luckily the infection was entirely isolated in the root so the "tooth" I see wasn't affected at all. Thank goodness for that I suppose. It made for one very long weekend...

Meow! The girls are getting much better about being excited about holidays so I'm trying to be better about decorating and making the holidays memorable for them. I love Halloween and I figure it's only another year or so before the girls all want to dress up as different things so I should take advantage of when I can dress them as I please. So this year I asked Addison what she wanted to be and she declared she wanted to be a cat. Yay -- and easy costume! I toyed around with some coordinating cat ideas but in the end I decided we'd all be black cats. I just used some leotards and tights, found some cute little accessories at Target, and tried my hand at some face painting. I think it worked out quite well. I even decided to join in on the festivities!

Christmas Card Delight
About two years ago I came up with an idea for a Christmas card. I wanted to do the idea last year, but I just didn't possibly have the time or energy to attempt it but I spent most of this year *thinking* about doing it so I knew it had to be done. These days I don't get to allocate much time to being creative or sending out cards, both of which bring me great joy. So working on designing a cool Christmas card is quite fun for me. I have to admit I think this year's card is my best yet; something quite unique! The only down side is that my next cards simply won't compare but I won't let that worry me. I can't describe what the cards are like yet because I need to wait until they actually get mailed so people getting them can see them, but next year I'll definitely post some pictures. I've probably spent the majority of the last month working on the card in my free time. I am no graphic designer so in order to even attempt half of the card I had to look up online tutorials or help to figure out where to start. At least I learned a lot of things in the process!

Christmas in the air
I'm much more in the Christmas spirit this year than the last couple of years. And the fact that Addison is very into Christmas helps push that along. I actually discovered that not only does she remember Christmas from last year, but she remembers almost every detail with vivid accuracy. Clearly, Christmas had its impact on her. Early on she asked if we were going to have a "Merry Christmas" this year, unlike last year. Confused, I asked her why she would think we didn't have a Merry Christmas last year and she explained that we didn't have a Christmas tree up like my parents had. Well, we DID have a tree up, but I only put one up a day or two before Christmas and I didn't put any ornaments on it. The thought of trying to dig out all my ornaments from boxes was a little too much. But not this year!! Shortly after Thanksgiving we put up the Christmas tree (which was an interesting episode since every other sentence out of my mouth was something like "don't touch that, move back, it's not your turn, stop pushing your sister," etc.) filled with decorations and I put decorations all around the house. I even managed to get lights up outside! The kids love all the Christmas decorations so it's been worth it. I will try to remind myself this when I have to take everything down...

In addition to designing my Christmas cards I worked on a project that I made for my siblings for Christmas. I thought of something that would be a perfect gift (or so I think it will be, anyway). I won't give away the surprise here and say what it is but it took quite a long time. So between working on my card the gifts, I haven't done laundry, dishes, cleaning or anything like that in weeks. Even Addison started to comment on the fact that dirty clothes were everywhere. I've probably been up until 2 or 3 am every night for at least the past 8 weeks with the exception of a night or two sprinkled throughout. It's crazy, I know. But I've accomplished quite a bit and it's all self-driven so I really can't complain at all.

So this brings me up to to today. Except for finishing up some Christmas shopping, I should be relatively project free (non-work project, that is). Now my goal will be to get through the holidays and then clean my poorly neglected house, which I guess is a project in itself. But at least it has no deadline. And if you are wondering why I stopped checking facebook or calling or sending emails, it's because I've been a tad occupied. I've learned my lesson now -- no more trying to tackle a million big projects all at once. Well, at least not for the next month anyway... :)

A new post coming soon... (in the next couple of days)

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:26:06 PST

So I had every intention of putting up a new blog post before I sent out my Christmas cards. And as usual, life has not gone as planned. So...out went the Christmas cards (which I'm quite excited about I might add) and no blog post. But it will be up soon! By the end of this weekend. I've already written the post which covers what I've been up to for the last five months and now all I need to do is pick out which pictures to include. It's a long one but I was trying to do it so in case anyone checked out the blog after reading my card it would have all the latest updates.

So if you stop by and no new posts, check back soon... :)

Happy Holidays!

Someone reads my blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Sun, 29 May 2011 18:33:36 PDT

Yep, that's right. I have a fan! Okay, maybe a "fan" is a strong word. But I'm always surprised when I learn that someone I don't know has read my blog. I don't know why…I suppose it is out on the internet so it's possible that someone could stumble across it. But it still seems odd. Especially since, well, I'm potentially the laziest blogger on the planet. I have been meaning to update my blog with all that I've been doing since August but I've been doing a LOT and the blog post is long. And long blog posts take time and I seem to be short on time these days. But now that we've been granted a whole extra hour due to lovely daylight savings time, I should be able to get started, right?? So for now I have a treat for all my readers. All ten of you… :)

A few weeks ago I got an email from someone from Brookstone saying that she came across my blog and loved it and would like to offer me and my readers a discount code to use on their site. Now, since I almost never shop without a discount code of course it intrigued me. And then I wondered whether maybe it was spam or fake -- I mean, who really reads my blog? But in fact, it was from a real human who worked for the real company! I told her at the time I was so insanely swamped that even the thought of looking at my blog was a bit overwhelming and asked if I could just wait a bit and for her to check back with me in November. And she did…and now I can offer you a discount to Brookstone and you don't even have to do a Google search to find it! :)

If you haven't been to Brookstone before, it sells unique gifts…the kind you'd find in those really cool catalogs you flip through while waiting on the plane and everything you see you think is the best invention ever. And if you ever get to go to a store, you can go try out all their cool things like the to-die-for massage chair that I simply WISH was in my house. It's one of those stores that I always want to stop in, even if I'm not looking for things. The same way I can't possibly walk by a Williams Sonoma without going in to drool at all the amazing kitchen tools. Or in the off chance that I'm ever in the Fan how I must find a way to get to Mongrel because everything they have there is just so fun. Uh oh. I digress just dreaming of shopping! Well, here are some Brookstone coupons for you!! I think the coupons will change each month so you can check back for the deal you are waiting for. And if you ever see the small outdoor shed go on sale and I'm not paying attention, email me right away. Because I really, really want it.

So that's it. My blog for the week. A little coupon treat for "my readers." Hee hee. I just love that someone out there thinks I have readers. :) Maybe this will also inspire me to actually finish what I've been up to lately.

A happy birthday!

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:28:02 PDT

I was excited last night because Addison is usually quite sweet when she wakes up and I thought for sure she'd come bouncing into my room to give me a big birthday hug. Au contraire! Instead, she woke up 45 minutes early crying. She never wakes up crying. She came into my room and of course I am not an early bird so 45 minutes early was unacceptable. I asked what was wrong and of course she didn't answer and kept crying. I told her it was way too early and sent her back to her room to get dressed. For some reason she didn't get dressed but just put on new underwear and came back, still crying and asked to sit with me in bed. She doesn't normally lay with me in bed but I REALLY wanted to sleep so I told her she could if she was very, very still and I could sleep until the alarm went off. So she hopped in bed and indeed, was very still. Until about 5 minutes later when she asked if she could use the potty. "Um, yes Addison. Just go!" I said, getting frustrated because I just wanted my sleep. "Okay mommy, because your bed is wet" she said.

What??#@?@? I jumped out of bed so fast, picked her up and stood her on the floor and stared in absolute astonishment that she had literally just peed in my bed. Peed in my bed!!!! This was nuts. I had visions of my mattress being soaked and yanked back the sheets and lifted up the cover, but luckily my mattress cover must have some waterproof qualities. Thank goodness or that might have set me over the edge. Right around then Vanadia decided to throw up on the floor. Also, lovely. So I went downstairs to get a towel and there I noticed that somehow I managed to leave the ENTIRE gallon of milk out last night. And while I've forgotten lots of stuff, I've never forgotten to put back an entire gallon of milk back in the fridge. Nice... Needless to say it was not the best of birthday mornings.

But the day certainly got better. It was fun getting all the facebook notices throughout the day saying someone had written Happy Birthday on my wall. I mean, you kind of feel like a rock star or something with all those little happy birthday notes! It's wild. And then I got some happy birthday emails and text messages too! Of course they were buried in the slew of emails announcing one issue after another for my project at work, but I could see them messages coming in through my blackberry and it was very nice. And then, as it turns out, promotions were announced today. Apparently lots of people read the promotion list the minute it is sent out... Anyway, I got a promotion (woo hoo!) and since this was the first official announcement of it, my inbox was filled throughout the day with the most thoughtful messages from my coworkers. Between the birthday messages and the very nice congratulatory messages -- one couldn't help but to be delighted. Then my friend Patricia was so very sweet and had cleared her calendar so she could take me out to lunch. Of course I really only had 20 minutes or so in between all that was going on at work so we just ran to the cafeteria. I probably would have just skipped lunch all together but I'm so glad she encouraged me to just sit and catch up, even if only for a short time. It was really nice to do that.

The afternoon at work was a bit hectic but I rushed home to change for volleyball and had a lovely little package from my friend Emmy. I was so excited to have something in the mail and even more excited to have a present to open!! She sent me the most lovely necklace to spice up my wardrobe. I swear every time one of my friends is sweet enough to send me something, it amazes me that they always know the most perfect thing to send. How do they do it?? Anyway, I loved it. On the way to volleyball the rain started pouring down. So volleyball was canceled but my team decided they would take me out to dinner instead! So we tried a place called Quarter Steak & Lube just around the corner (who names a restaurant Steak & Lube ??). They had tons of wings and I don't usually eat wings but got a chance to try quite the variety and I ate all sorts of yummy things. It was a great time and I began to remember what hanging out was like. More importantly, it was a great end to a day that reminded me I'm lucky to be surrounded by so many wonderful people.

I almost can't even remember the fact that it started with someone peeing in my bed at an unearthly hour. Well, except for the fact that I can't go to bed tonight until I get the sheets out of the dryer. :) I don't feel like logging into work tonight so I figured I'd update my blog. After all, it's one of my 101 list to keep it up, right?

101 in 1001

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:30:45 PDT

Tonight I do the impossible...finish a blog posting that I started EIGHT months ago. Yep, that's right folks. I started a post back in December and worked on it numerous times only to realize each time that it would exceed my 15 minute cap of blogging effort allocation and quit. But I've spent the last two weeks frantically getting things off my to-do list and so I shall wait no more…

A little history: back around the end of 2009 I got inspired. I don't know how I happened upon it, but somebody sent me a link to a website that had a link that had a link that had a link…well, you know how it goes. One of the links I stumbled across mentioned a blog writer who came up up with a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. Intrigued, I clicked on the link and thought it was a great idea! And so I proceeded to create my own list. But then I realized that writing down 101 things was actually a daunting task. If just writing them took forever, how would I ever actually be able to *do* them?? And so I worked on the list in sections but never went back to put it all in one comprehensible list. My start date is actually going to be prior to today since I wrote the list so long ago. It seems only fair (well, that combined with the fact that I actually did some of this stuff already and would like to count it in my "completed" set -- just to make myself feel better).

Warning: this is going to be one very long post. If someone reads it all, I'll be impressed. So here it is:

******************************************
101 in 1001

We all have lists. Whether they are in our heads or written down or shared with someone else, we all keep tiny little lists of all sorts of things. I have TONS of lists: projects to finish, work stuff to complete, dates to remember, things to read, etc. But this list is meant to track progress on the things I really want to do but don't HAVE to do. It's a list of 101 things I'd like to complete in 1001 days. Now, 1001 days is a LONG time. Almost three years. And a lot can change in three years! But then again, three years seems like a long time to finish things on a list. So I'm going to publish my list for the world to see which hopefully will give me some sense of accountability for getting things done off of it. I imagine every year I will need to review the list and replace some items. After all, some things might not be relevant after a year of not getting done. And as I complete an item on the list, I can happily write about the results. My time these days is extra limited so I'm not investing too much emotional energy into coming up with this list. Whatever are the first 101 things that pop to mind -- those will be on my list. Here I go (in no particular order at all):

1. Create a logo for my nonexistent photography business. I recently decided on a name for my business and even managed to buy the url. I figure that was a good step #1. This would be a unnecessary, but fun #2.

2. Come up with a better design for my blog.

3. Learn how to use my Mac better. I switched from a PC to a Mac before the twins were born when my old computer died and it was the best move I ever made. But sadly, I have never really had the time to understand all the cool features. I would love to learn how my computing life could be even better.

4. Take a woodworking class.

5. Paint the downstairs bathroom. The bathroom does not need to be painted. But every time I go in there I can't stand it. It's kind of messy. And I think that the bathroom could be redone and decorated. And since it's so small it should be a very low cost project!

6. Decorate the rooms in my house: the master bed and bath, the dining room, the morning room, and the playroom. This is a big goal so I'll count this if I do any one of these rooms.

7. Go on a girls-only vacation. I so very badly want to take a vacation to somewhere tropical, all-inclusive, and fun. The one thing I miss the very most is going on vacations. I am a massive vacation fan. I work really hard almost all the time (whether home or work stuff) so I count on vacation to get all my relaxing in. I really want to find a way to go. Not for a day, but for a bunch of days. And I don't particularly want to go alone. And I don't think I'd really want to go hang out with a bunch of other couples. So I want to go with my girlfriends. Whichever ones (or one!) are available.

8. Teach Addison to write her name. DONE -- that's right...this is done! I should probably change this one but since it was part of my original list, I'll keep it.

9. Set up my craft room. Part of the reason I loved my new house when I first saw it was that it was a bigger version of the perfect house we already had. Bigger and better. In my old house we had a room off our bedroom. That was my favorite room of the entire house. We set it up as a little movie-watching area and it had a large alcove where I set up all my crafts. It was perfect. I could watch movies while making cards. The only thing Richard wished it had was a door so that if he was sleeping, I could watch tv or work without waking him. So of course the new house has a room off the master bedroom and...it's got a door! Of course ironically now I don't actually need the door... But door or no door, I'd like to set it up so I can make my cards again.

10. Send a handmade card to at least one person every month for six months. I used to do this all the time. And I so very much miss snailmail. So maybe if I start sending more cards, then the imbalance of emails and snail mails might not be so significant.

11. Figure out how to change the start time of Henrico Elementary Schools. This is no joke. I think it's crazy that elementary school kids go to school earlier than high school kids. If I want to try to change it (which I don't even know if it's possible) I need to work quickly. I imagine it's very political and will take a lot of time and effort. And politics and spare time are not really my strengths. But I feel passionate enough about it to attempt it. I need to start soon!

12. Start an "unofficial" Hampshire email group. I was so excited to have a Homeowner's Association and as it turns out, it's kind of lame. I think the neighborhood camaraderie could easily be improved if there was just a common Yahoo group or something. It would have to be "unofficial" but that will work for me.

{Note: this is about when I realized that writing down 100 items was going to take forever….}

13. Figure out how to take care of my fancy landscaping. My new house has some pretty impressive landscaping. That is, if I didn't kill it all last year... I should really learn how to take care of it. Ugh

14. Design some business cards for my photography. This is dependent on getting task #1 done.

15. Create a wedding album for my friend Priscilla. I promised Priscilla that I'd make her a wedding album. Luckily for me, this requires her to make some decisions so I can slack on this one until she actually decides what she wants...

16. Do P90X for 90 days. The days don't have to be consecutive. If I'm not in shape at the end of that, I'm in trouble!

17. Organize, return, lend out, give away, and/or sell all my old baby stuff. I suppose it's safe to say no more babies in my near future. I must find a way to go through all my stuff and send it to the proper places. This is an extremely daunting task. My goal for this task is by the end of 2010.

18. Keep up my blog.

19. Visit a friend out of town. Note the generic version of this. I think visiting a friend would be nice and there are a bunch of people I'd love to see. So just one visit to one friend would be nice.

20. Cook a fancy dinner. I used to do this all the time and I loved it. I haven't cooked in ages. It would sure be nice to cook a fancy five course meal again.

21. Teach Addison how to ride a bike.

22. Turn Addison's room into a "big girl" room (okay, this is now done too -- I'll do a separate post on the rooms I actually did complete)

23. Take at least one Photography class or Photoshop class

24. Change jobs. When I accepted my current position I did so under complete duress and never intended to leave my career in the dust forever. Hopefully one of these days I'll find something inspiring and have the means to take a jump.

25. Write a children's book.

26. Began my pregnancy book. I'm not foolish enough to think that I could ever finish this in 1001 days but I can at least get it started!

27. Go through my clothes and declare which ones will simply never fit and give them all away. Boo hoo hoo hoo!! :(

28. Sew a Matilda Jane style dress for the girls

29. Find a decent hair stylist who won't butcher my hair and is not expensive. Um, this may take 1001 YEARS!

30. Design a cool Christmas card. I've already come up with two ideas for this year. Now all I need to do is figure out how to produce them.

31. Make enough money taking photographs to buy a new camera.

32. Potty train the twins. YIKES!

33. Get down to pre-kid weight.

34. Make little edible nests with eggs inside of them for an Easter treat. Oh my gosh -- this is done too (I guess it's a good exercise to see that although I haven't published the silly blog, at least I haven't been sitting around doing nothing! I suppose I should do a follow-up post on all the things I did already.)

35. Decorate for Christmas. This may seem like a ridiculous accomplishment but given the last two Christmases I think it's safe to say this would be a gigantic step if I could set up all my decorations.

36. Put up kids "art wall" in the playroom.

37. Take 365 shots of the girls consecutively to make a little video at the end of the year.

38. Be extra nice to people at work, even if they actually make my job harder.

39. Avoid working evenings for 80% of the work week for an entire quarter.

40. Organize my home email account.

41. Catch up on "yearly" baby photo books that I promised myself I would do but I'm already behind on!

42. Empty my inbox at work

43. Sort through all my personal emails that were sent to work and figure out which ones I should forward to my home account. Or just decide not to worry about saving any of them.

44. Create a workflow system for all the paperwork coming through the door.

45. Go to the dermatologist like my doctor told me to two years ago…

46. Organize all the "wires" around my house.

47. Install surround sound speakers in the house to take advantage of the built in wiring.

48. Get pictures taken of me. Ones that are good. Just so I am actually in a picture to show my girls.

49. Get a new kitchen table that is actually big enough for a family.

50. Publish list of must-have's for expectant moms

51. Drink plenty of water for 1 month

52. Laser my legs

53. Make fancy, special chocolate (not just the kinds in molds)

54. Coach soccer

55. Sign up for some interesting training at work

56. Look into whether it's possible to become a lawyer

57. Go to Disneyland

58. Hire an actual babysitter. Okay, so I don't really WANT to do this, but I suppose if I did this it would mark a big milestone to have a non-family member babysit.

59. Go back to the knee doctor to figure out what to do about my knee

60. Create a video of pics for each year (for as long as I have digital pictures for)

61. Convert my print photos to digital

62. Go on an adult only vacation to somewhere warm and tropical!

63. Make funnel cakes

64. Make a large painting for my wall

65. Organize and decorate my craft room

66. Take an uninterrupted bath in my tub

67. Eat all the food in my pantry. Not at once, but I want to clean out the pantry and go through all the current food I have in there. For anyone who helped me move, you know I have a LOT of food and since I pretty much stopped cooking, it's all still sitting there. It must be used!

68. Paint a mural scene on the girls bathroom

69. Learn to knit those really cool baby hats

70. Organize my garage

71. Get my hair cut by the guy on What Not to Wear

72. Get Addison's hair cut for the first time.

73. Have a reason to renew my passport

74. Convince my parents to go to Alaska

75. Replace the burnt out bulbs that are too high to reach in the family room.

76. Teach the girls that it is sometimes better to make thoughtful gifts than to buy gifts

77. Write a poem, or two

78. Watch Food, Inc.

79. Set up my exercise room on the third floor.

80. Take artsy pictures of architectural elements that look like the alphabet so I can make my own little art alphabet signs

81. Figure out how to fix my windows so the hot or cold air does not come seeping through in the middle of summer or winter

82. Fix the squishy gray stuff that surrounds my front door and my garage door so I'm not reminded every day that I'm a bum who hasn't replaced it yet

83. Organize my recipes

84. Back up all my digital files

85. Pay It Forward.

86. Organize my downstairs closets.

87. Read an actual book

88. Find somebody to help me install a little secret gate in my garden

89. Keep my nails painted and well taken care of

90. Use my letterpress embossing kit

91. Catalog my spices

92. Go visit the elementary school that the girls will go to just to see what it looks like

93. Volunteer for something

94. Enjoy some good live music

95. Find an Alanon meeting I really like

96. Play soccer again

97. Be able to run a mile without feeling like I'd rather die

98. Get my Wii age to be less than my actual age

99. Invent something

100. Try six new restaurants

101. Have a Tastefully Simple Party

So that's it. That's my list. I figure my actual start date will be April 1, 2010 (since I'm counting some of the stuff I've done in the last couple months towards my list activities!). That means I have until December 27, 2012 to get all this stuff done. Two days after Christmas. Perhaps that should be the year I do #35. ha ha ha. My challenge begins!

Oops -- has it really been 4 months??

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 06:50:40 PDT

Okay, I think it's safe to say that I'm a complete blog delinquent. I think what has happened is I've learned to somewhat manage the craziness of my life and so am therefore attempting to add more things to my to-do list. Things like projects around the house, parties for the kids, getting more work stuff done, etc. And now I've definitely confirmed I can only ever handle three things at a time. Assuming one is work and the other is taking care of the kids, I can do one other thing successfully. So, I can either work on a project, socialize, deal with an illness, unpack and organize, exercise, etc. But anything I try above and beyond three activities at a single time tends to fall off the radar. It's kind of a bummer because really I need a limit of FOUR things. If I could add "taking care of house stuff" as one of my regular tasks, then I'd be all set. But unfortunately, there just aren't that many hours in the day. Oh well.

I've thought about blogging a lot, but then I remember I haven't even sent out an update of what on earth I've been up to. So no more excuses! Here is a summary of all my excitement (ha ha ha - as if my life is exciting!) since the last time I blogged (which sadly was at the end of January, I think).

Work WAS really busy. As in *awful* busy from the end of January until about the end of March. That put a moratorium on pretty much all my activities since it's safe to say I was working until wee hours of the night almost non stop. But alas, it's normalized now and I'm significantly happier. Whew!

After I won my diet competition in January I thought I'd take a nice break but with work being so stressful, I went over the edge. I ended up gaining back several of the pounds I lost. Grrrrr. I think dieting for three months was too long for me. I was so overwhelmed with wanting to eat again, it was all I could think about. But luckily, I just did a short diet last month and even after being off the diet for a couple weeks. I'm back at a good weight. I have about 15 lbs to get to my college weight, which I suppose may never happen. But if I were to lose another 6-10 lbs, I'd be super, super ecstatic. So my new goal is to simply not GAIN weight and then when I feel up to it, dieting again.

I attempted to exercise at home but I made the mistake of trying the Jillian Michael's DVD. In theory, it's wonderful. It's only 20 minutes and it's really easy to fit in to a hectic schedule. And it gives you a great workout! Unfortunately, after one week of doing it, I literally couldn't walk. My knees were so swollen that just going down the stairs was a small feat. So only after a week of pure pain I looked it up online and apparently her dvd is one of the worst to do for bad knees. Oops. So I can't really do that DVD anymore. I need a 20 minute dvd that doesn't require massive pain for my knees! The good news is that my volleyball skills are slowly, slowly, returning. We always joke about what year we will be bringing to the court since as we all get progressively older, our skills slowly fade away. So I'm playing at least at a 2007 rate right now. I hope one of these days I can maybe get to a 2005 skill level. And every so often, it would be nice to have some plays that were reminiscent of the early 2000 days. I give up any hope of getting back to the 90's. But for now, I'll take 2007, even though of course I had already had one baby and was pregnant with twins around that time...

I've gotten much better about taking the girls out by myself. I've now taken them to the grocery store and a couple other stores a few times. This may sound easy, but trust me it's not. It's actually kind of a production to figure out what to do with them. I must keep them contained in one form or another at all time and so that's the first challenge. And I now realize that I should only attempt one outing in a weekend and never press my luck. Once I tried going out twice and it was a small disaster. Just imagine pushing a stroller down a shoe aisle and little hands on both side grabbing every single little kid shoe box they could reach and dumping the contents out within seconds. Fun times...

Addison moved to a big girl bed AND no longer has a pacifier at night! I did this a long while ago but the whole event went quite smoothly and I'm very pleased. I had been dreading and postponing the transition because she was sleeping so well and I didn't want to mess with that. But I talked up her big girl bed so much that when I finally got a chance to set it all up, she was so excited about sleeping in it for her first nap that she completely forgot about her pacifier. I seized the opportunity to tell her it was time to say goodbye to it and the next day I took her to the Build-a-Bear workshop where I told her we would turn her pacifier into a new stuffed animal. She turned hers into a Hello Kitty doll and it's been inside that doll ever since. It took a couple nights of not being able to fall asleep and some sad tears but it ended up going very well. And I love the fact she has a big bed in her room now. It makes life a bit easier, actually.

The twins turned two! Can you believe it? It seems kind of insane. I did a zoo themed party. I made monkey/zoo type invitations, made a giraffe cake, ordered blow up animals to have around the house, and made little personalized zoo puppets as favors. The girls had another set of twins over plus two other friends. Any 2-year old birthday party is more like a glorified playdate so it was nothing spectacular. Thankfully the weather outside cooperated so they could all run around and use my big bounce house to play in. The thought of 7 or 8 toddlers running around my house is still a bit overwhelming to me.

When the babies were little I remember thinking to myself that while they were definitely a challenge, they were easier than the thought of dealing with two Addisons. When Addison turned 2 she was testing all sorts of limits and still couldn't communicate well, having tantrums, etc. I found I really needed to sit and focus on her to help her when she was upset. If I could just give her a couple minutes of my undivided attention, I could calm her down and get her straightened out. But I dreaded trying to have to do that with TWO kids at the same time. And I never really even calculated the fact that a 3 year old would need the same kind of attention. And now that Anika and Mackenzie ARE 2 years old I now have, for all intents and purposes, three Addisons! YIKES! And it's every bit as overwhelming and difficult as I imagined. Luckily, despite some serious lapses in her judgement at times, Addison is now able to help out with things around the house. I've taught her how to fold clothes and pick up food that is dropped on the floor, clear off the table, and put away her socks/underwear, etc. It's not always a smooth process but even if she spends 1 minute on something productive in a single day, it's one extra minute I get to do something else. And I'll take extra time even if it's just 1 minute.

Well, I think that summarizes the last four months. Hmmm...that's probably sad. Oh well. I might have done some other stuff, but I can't remember and I hear the kids doing things they aren't supposed to be doing, so I must go before whatever damage they do is beyond repair.

Secrets revealed

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:05:34 PST

I think I'm starting to figure out some secrets of the world.

1. Nobody tells you the truth. This might be because we simply aren't equipped to handle the truth. Before you get pregnant, you never really hear stories about how awful being pregnant is. You hear stories about how much people "glow," how happy and exciting it is, how cute maternity clothes are, and how much fun it is getting ready for a new baby. But everyone sort of leaves out the details of what really happens. Well, this same little theory extends beyond pregnancy and into parenthood. Ever notice how people always tell new parents that it will get easier? Ha! Lies, all lies! It doesn't get easier. Sure, maybe you will sleep more (although that might be debatable as well) but it doesn't really get easier.

When I was pregnant with twins, I remember someone actually told the truth. I had purchased some baby gear from another couple with twins whose twins might have been the same age as mine are now. The father of the twins looked rather exhausted and when we asked whether it would get easier, he just sort of had a glazed-over look and said "No. It doesn't." Hmmm... well, at least he was telling the truth! A little scary perhaps, but in the back of my mind it helped me become partially prepared for a rough ride.

2. People very well might keeping having kids simply because they begin to realize that babies are the easiest of all stages! Innocent and sweet, wouldn't a baby be a nice distraction from the chaos of older kids?? The latest secret joke I have discovered is the entire concept of terrible two's. Compared to three, age 2 seems like a piece of cake. But maybe people call it terrible two's just to get you through that year? Who knows. But by the age of three (or 4 in some other people's cases) you'll know very quickly that age 2 really wasn't that bad. Of course nobody tells you this ahead of time... I started to think I had gone insane until I did some digging and wouldn't you know that I've found a whole host of people who think age 3 is worse than age 2. What??#@?? We need advance notice of this type of classified information!

In case you couldn't tell by my newest revelations, I think someone has snatched my pleasant, lovely, joyful daughter and turned her into quite the little creature. It's a battle of wills all the time, all of a sudden. But it's worse that that! She can think through things now and very carefully articulate just how angry she is when I tell her to do something she doesn't want to do. And she is now much bigger and stronger and she knows it. All I can say is this better be one very short lived phase or my sanity is going to be at risk! Even when she is not being difficult in this new phase, Addison is doing the strangest things. Just the other day all was fine until it was time to finish breakfast. Addison got out of her chair only to look down at her feet and fall on the floor in tears exclaiming she was too small. Too small?@?!? Where on earth did that come from? And why is it worth crying hysterically about? Luckily I was able to convince her that she'd be bigger if she got her shoes and her big, fluffy winter coat in. This of course added several unnecessary minutes to my morning routine.

My new fear is that age 4 will be worse than age 3. And then age 5 worse than that? YIKES! So you see? Babies are looking better and better each day...

Snow more diet...

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 08:31:10 PST

On the eve of my new goal of blogging more come Feb. 1st I figure I have two topics to write about. 1. The crazy snow we somehow have managed to get, yet again, here in Richmond. And 2. the fact that my diet has officially ended. While wondering if these two topics would make any sense in the same blog posting I came up with "snow more diet." Get it?? Snow/No? Ha ha ha. Okay. You are probably not laughing but it did make me chuckle and that's a good sign of just how boring my life really is. And since that's no secret, I decided to use that as my title for this post.

This weekend reminded me of how much I really hate snow. It never snows it Richmond. Well, it snows sometimes but not often. And never very much. Except for now that my parents have arrived. Since they have come, we've had three major snowstorms. That is nuts! What's even crazier is that the first two big snow storms were the only times that all three of my kids were sick at the same time. Not just runny nose, common cold sick (because that happens weekly) but really, really sick. Because of this I was sort of dreading this next snow storm. I wasn't really prepared for three really sick kids again. But alas, the streak has been broken!! Other than a couple ear infections, there were no major illnesses going around this weekend. Whew!

Luckily, the girls were handed down some delightful snowsuits so I could dress them for the weather. The first outing was Saturday in the midst of the raging snow storm. I attempting transporting them in the sled. BIG mistake. The sled (which is actually the very same sled my siblings and I used growing up) is not meant for three kids. Addison lost one of her gloves and between Anika and Mackenzie pushing her out of the sled and her feet dangling to the side, all the girls were covered in snow by the end of our little sledding trip. And poor Addison's hand was frozen. Nobody was amused and while attempting to get them all back in the garage I ended up slipping on the melted ice slamming straight down onto my kneecap. Considering the massive pain I've felt all day today and yesterday, it will no doubt take months to recover. Oh well. I did muster up enough energy to take them outside again today. It was warmer and I thought they might appreciate the snow more when it wasn't quite the blizzard outside.

Addison loved the snow. I didn't really have boots for her so I put on some rain boots. Little did I know how quickly those would come off and while she was pouncing around in the snow she lost her boots. I didn't know she lost her boots, yet there she was bouncing around the yard with incredible speed with frozen feet, never once mentioning a word. I quickly grabbed her as soon as I could and undressed her to help warm up her toes but she was determined to get back in the snow. No frozen feet were going to get in her way of playing in that snow! Anika was NOT a fan of the snow until she learned she could eat it. In fact. all three girls realized they could eat the snow and decided it was perhaps the best thing about the snow. I'm beginning to realize that if there is one thing that makes my girls happy, it's eating. Even if it's eating snow.

In addition to the snow, today marks the end of my official diet contest. I weighed in first thing this morning and wondered if I'd go crazy and eat everything in sight. Surprisingly, I did not. The newfound freedom was quite amazing. I *could* eat anything I wanted. But I really wasn't that hungry. So I had my regular Sunday eggs for breakfast and lean cuisine for lunch. I wasn't even that hungry for dinner. I haven't gotten all the results in, but I'm fairly certain that I've won the third weigh-in. I think the entire diet contest has been quite a success. I would have never been so strict had I not been in the contest and being strict paid off. I lost 32.4 pounds in the past three months. I hope to lose another 8 lbs, but I do think I'll take a break from strict dieting. I plan on keeping up the low cal, low fat intake but this time if a special occasion arises, I won't pass it up. My new goal will be to incorporate exercise into the routine. It might not be possible until work slows down a bit, but it's my goal to be exercising by March. So we'll see. Whatever happens, I definitely don't want to gain the weight back!!

I thought of how I'd celebrate my dieting success but since I didn't feel too much like eating, I decided I would actually try to spend an evening living like any other normal adult. No working. No cleaning. No organizing. Instead, I popped a movie in the DVR, opened up a bottle of wine, pulled out two extra dark chocolate Lindt balls carefully hidden in my dining room hutch, and spent the evening watching Julie & Julia, sipping a glass of wine and nibbling on two delightful pieces of chocolate. It was rather liberating although at times a bit depressing (drinking alone while watching a movie about two couples madly in love with each other -- um, ugh!). But I was glad to do it. Of course by the time I finished my glass of wine I started immediately wondering how much weight I'd gain back. Wine, unlike nachos, is one of those strange things that make me gain weight immediately. I think I've now become obsessed with weight. I don't expect this phase to last long, but I'm definitely right in the midst of it. To finish off the evening I decided to do one more thing that I haven't done in a long while. I wrote three cards. I used to send a few cards out each month. Of course they used to all be handmade, but I wasn't pushing my luck. So instead, I unpacked my box of store-bought cards that over the years I had purchased in the anticipation of sending them to my beloved friends. I had three people in mind I wanted to send cards to and filled out the cards, addressed them, and even put them in envelopes. I feel great having done that. I hope I will make it a better habit of sending snail mail more often. Nothing warms the heart like a good old fashion card.

I suppose I should head off to bed to get ready for the chaos Monday always brings. This time it will be a little more hectic with snow and ice on the ground and delayed start to daycare despite an early 8:45 am meeting. But I'll worry about that tomorrow when the alarm goes off. For now, I'll enjoy my rare and relaxing evening.

Mackenzie

Poor Addison only had rainboots...

But that didn't matter!

Anika cheered up once she realized she could eat snow.

All three girls eating snow...

One gigantic blog making up for the past five months...

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:48:40 PST

Do you ever find yourself wanting to call someone you haven't called in a long time but realize you only have a short while to talk? And then you think you better not call because it's been so long that you'll really need a long time to catch up? And then before you know it, it's been even longer and then you need a REALLY long time to catch up and somehow you end up in this vicious circle and you never catch up?? Well, maybe nobody else does that but this happens to me all the time. So it's kind of silly. I call someone I talk to all the time because that's an easier 5 minute conversation (and these days I only have time for 5 minute conversations!). Which is kind of sad since the whole point of calling someone is to say "hi" and to let them know I'm thinking of them. Oh well. So why tell this story? Mostly because it's the same way with my sad little blog. It's been months since I've blogged. MONTHS! I haven't blogged for the most part because I simply haven't had the time. Heck, I haven't even been on facebook in months. But there are times I think I'd like to blog but of course I feel a need to update with what I've been doing but that seems like it would take too long. And when on earth would I do all that?? So here I am caught in the vicious cycle.

It's been my goal for a while to start blogging again February 1st. Well, that date is quickly approaching so I figure I better hurry up and send out a summary of the last five or six months. Then I'll be free to blog whatever I want. :) So today I'm going to attempt to write up my summary.

The last time I really blogged was in August, right around my birthday other than a random post or so. That was a long time ago! I suppose a lot of things have happened since so maybe the best thing to do is to give a summary of the major things that happened (if I can even remember what's happened in the last 5.5 months!). And then anyone I haven't talked to (which would constitute about 95% of my friends) will know what I've been up to!

No blogging. The reason I haven't been blogging is mainly for two reasons: work and illnesses. The combination of the two has simply been too much for me to do just about anything "extracurricular" in my free time. If I had to blame one thing though, I'd blame work. Ever since I started a new project dealing with the lovely Federal Credit Card regulations, I've been working rather crazy hours. It was one thing to work super long hours when I was childless and could work until midnight and then still sleep in the next day. But now when I have to get up early, get the kids ready, head to work, work from 9-5:30, rush to get the kids and do the rather tiring night time routine only to then start my "second shift" of work until late at night, it makes life pretty sad. It not only means I really don't have ANY time for myself but it means all the household tasks like cleaning, dishes, or laundry just stack up. The madness should all end in the next month or two (I hope!) and luckily there have been a few times when the work has evened out for a week or so, But in general, it's been pretty stressful.

Addison turned 3!! Despite my work schedule, I was determined to throw Addison a nice little party. I've not become accustomed to using events for the kids to allow me an outlet of creativity. Addison has had a really tough year and she has done such a great job that I wanted to give her a day that she loved. So a princess party was planned! I think it actually turned out quite well. I made little "magic mirror" invitations thanks to my mom finding the most perfect reflective posterboard to use for the mirror. It had cute little royal invitation wording on it that clearly Addison is too young to appreciate. But who knows? Maybe when Addison is in her teens she'll look back and see the invitation and be ever appreciative of what a nice idea it was. Ha ha. Doubtful. It was a good craft project anyway.

I made little foam banners on sticks and made a "walkway" leading up to the "castle." Of course no party is complete without red carpet, so I put down one of those long rolls of pink tablecloth as the "pink" carpet leading up to the door that had a "Dodge" crest on it. I can tell I'm going to have to post pictures or none of this is going to make sense. When the kids arrived, each kid received a special magic wand and moved to the craft area to make princess tiaras or royal crowns. Shockingly, the kids all sat down nicely and made their crowns! I wasn't sure how "craft time" would work with a bunch of 3 year olds but I was quite pleased. After craft time, we played "Kiss the Frog" which was a version of pin the tail on the donkey and then everyone got special "princess dust" to put on their face along with nice royal tattoos. Most of the kids picked flowers, ladybugs or animals for their tattoos, but "Princess" Addison picked out a skill and cross bones. It was kind of funny… It was around this time that I looked at the clock and wondered how on earth I would survive the full two hours of the party! Luckily the weather was great and so the kids spent the rest of the time playing outside and I moved the snacks and cake out to the patio.

The cake was one of those 3D princess cakes. I made it the night before. I think it s funny how the box shows the pictures of the decorated cake and it seems so easy. Frosting is my enemy. It really is a nightmare. Shortly into my decorating I gave up on making it look like the one on the box. I think my variation turned out just fine. Two other fun party details I had were the party favors and the princess carriage. For the party favors, I bought little white toddler t-shirts online and then created customized shirts for the kids. Princess cats for the girls and prince frogs for the boys. Each with their name on it. It really didn't take long at all so that was a bonus. I think the most time consuming part was "pre-shrinking" the shirts and ironing them all. That was a pain... The other great idea I had was to have a princess "carriage" prop that the kids could sit behind and get their picture taken with. Months earlier I had the grand idea that I would create this carriage myself, but with my work schedule, it wasn't going to happen. I mentioned the idea to my friend Jennifer and explained my theory of how it would work. And since Jennifer is, well, wonderful, she made the carriage for me! It was even better than I imagined!!! I think over time we need to revisit our "design" since it does easily fall over, but it worked great for the party.

In the end, I think all the kids had fun. It was a nice, small little crowd with about 7 kids (which is funny that I now think of 7 toddlers running around my house as "small"). And lest anyone think I am superwoman, I did NOT do all of this by myself. My mom made the wands, helped put down the carpet, helped me make the little "stars" to put on the cake, ran errands to pick up supplies for me, and watched the kids the weekend before so I could go get supplies myself. And my friend Jennifer made both the carriage and the frog AND she came over the night before to help hang up decorations.

Pictures from the party

Addison turns 3!

"Princesses" Anika and Mackenzie

The Royal Castle Walkway and the Royal crest

The cake and the magic wands

The homemade favors

The Carriage and the frog

Addison as a "princess!"

Beach trip. Long ago, my parents used one of their time share slots to get a place at Virginia Beach at the end of September. Of course that was before we could imagine three mobile children. In some ways, I was sort of dreading the week. Three small kids and three adults in a two-bedroom condo when the weather was supposed to be cold and rainy all week?? Well, surprisingly the vacation went much, much better than I thought! It only took one day of looking at all the messages come through my blackberry to be instantly reminded that at least I wasn't at work. That in itself was a wonderful thing and suddenly the day because significantly less stressful. Even better was the fact that the weather cooperated. A couple days it was relatively warm (maybe low 80s?), a couple days it was rather cold, and the other days it was just nice fall-type weather.

I could only ever muster enough energy to let the kids go out in the sand once a day. That sand was ridiculous -- it got everywhere! The worst part about going in the sand was getting out of it when we were done. Inevitably, I just had to bring the kids inside and take them all straight to the bath. I despise bath time at home and that's where I have exercausers set up and big fluffy bath mats to protect my knees. Giving all three kids a bath in a tiny space with no fluffy bath mat and sand everywhere was even more dreadful. Fortunately, it was only once a day. The kids absolutely loved the sand and the ocean. For three kids full of nothing but energy, it was like a vast playground for them. Of course getting anyone to sit and play in the sand for more than a minute was pretty much impossible. This called for zone defense to stop the kids from running too far away. Since the girls never once ran in the same direction, my mom had to be on zone defense duty as well. I think my parents probably got more exercise that week than they were ever anticipating! Addison loved the ocean so much but it never occurred to her that the strong tide would swiftly whisk her away if she let go of my hand. I spent a lot of time worrying that she might take off faster than I could catch her into the water.

I wouldn't say the vacation was exactly relaxing but it was better than work and better than being at home. I didn't get a tan :( but several days I took advantage of nap time and got a nice leisurely nap in when the girls went down in the middle of the day. That was nice! When we weren't going in the sand, I basically put the twins in the stroller and we headed out for a walk with Addison walking beside. It did dawn on me that maybe this was what the life of a stay-at-home mom was like...to wake up and wonder what to do with the kids that day. I was always so intrigued over the summer by facebook updates from stay-at-home moms when each day they headed off to do something fun with the kids. I know that I'm clearly NOT meant to be a stay-at-home mom. I don't think I could do it -- it's hard work! So I was a bit surprised at how much easier life seemed to be when I wasn't working. Then I laughed and wondered whether stay-at-home moms would think that doing my job and only taking care of the kids in the morning and in the evening would be a vacation. Probably so. A week of anything different is usually a welcome break.

I spent most nights of the vacation attempting to get my emails under control. I had over 1600 emails in my inbox at the time! Which reminds me...if you've sent me an email in the last several months and I haven't responded, chances are either I haven't read it yet OR I read it and it is so far down on my email list that unless in one of my random sorting of messages I see it in the evenings, I simply haven't had time. Sorry about that. :( Over the vacation I managed to get the messages down a bit but it is a constant battle.

I did manage to take some nice pictures at the beach although my goal went from trying to get all three girls in a picture smiling, to simply trying to get ONE child to stay still long enough to be in a picture and in focus. Forget smiling and forget having the kids sit together. Even Addison refused to sit and let me take a picture. The vast expanse of open space was simply too much for her to resist. I only tried taking pictures three times throughout the week and really there wasn't enough light, the kids wouldn't stay still, and one time it was just too cold. Oh well. I also realized how badly I wanted a small little digital camera. It's such a pain to drag out my big camera and lens everywhere.

Pictures from the beach

The four of us at the beach

Mackenzie sitting still and all three girls running away from the photoshoot!

Addison playing in the sand (I love this picture!)

Addison

The twins and playing at the "sand" park

Anika!

One illness after another and another and another... I've just about had it with illnesses. The kids had a nice, long healthy streak through the second part of the summer which was very nice. But as soon as we got back from the beach, the kids got sick. And they continued to get sick over, and over, and over. In fact, I have been to one type of doctor every single week (with the exception of two weeks) from the beginning of October until now. Every single week! And sometimes, multiple times in a week. I think I'm personally keeping the pediatric and pharmaceutical industry within Richmond in business! The scariest illness in this time frame was definitely the swine flu. Luckily, Anika got it before I could hear any of the awful stories of children dying or being rushed to the hospital. She had a 105 fever for several days. The rest of us either didn't get it or had much less severe symptoms (which is a small miracle in my mind). In addition to the flu, the girls have had one ear infection after another. Addison, my "healthy" child, even managed to get sick with strep throat right when the twins both had a regular virus, followed by nasty double ear infections, and a bad case of RSV. Trying to give a screaming child breathing treatment is challenge enough, but trying to hold down a screaming child while your two other children are screaming and pulling at you to stop hurting their sister is an extra challenge. It was awful. It took me about an hour to give both twins the treatment and by the end of each one I felt battered and bruised. Of course I too got sick during all this fun and had a nasty case of bronchitis that just wouldn't go away.

Dealing with worrying about the kids being sick is only one aspect of why all of this is challenging. The other aspect is figuring out how to balance work in between all of this! If the girls have fevers they can't go to daycare and depending on what was wrong with them, I have to take them to the doctor. Both of those situations require me to be away from the office. Fortunately, I have a pediatrician who is a saint and makes going into the office much easier. Plus my parents often helped by watching whoever was sick for a day or part of the day. I suppose it's somewhat lucky that the kids kept getting sick on Friday each week which meant they had fevers over the weekend when I didn't have to miss work. Or lucky that the twins were suffering from non-infectious ear infections and so they were able to go to daycare without worry of infecting anyone else. But every time I was home with a sick kid, I was also working. I'm glad I have the option of working from home but it's double the stress worrying about a sick child and worrying about calling into conference calls and getting all my work done at the same time. Even worse when trying to do all that while sick myself. Not fun, not fun at all.

Volleyball. Once upon a time I used to be in great shape, exercising several times a week. In fact I was playing volleyball and soccer even when I was pregnant with the twins (before I knew I was having twins). But I had not done any exercise at all in over two years -- TWO long years! That is a very, very long time (previously I had gone a few weeks when I had my knee surgeries and I thought *that* made me go insane). I had been wanting to play volleyball again and my mom decided she was ready to try taking on all three kids for bedtime so my parents agreed to watch the girls so I could play again! I decided to play on my old reverse coed quads team and it was perfect. Quads is much more exercise than sixes and in general I think it's more fun. After playing I have to say it was AMAZING to get out of the house and to get some exercise in. I can't quite describe it but just being gone for two hours and not having to pick up the kids from daycare felt like a full week of vacation for me. I was more than a little nervous that I would be terrible when I went back and wouldn't even be able to hit a ball. Luckily, I wasn't as bad as I thought I'd be. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the same player I was. My reaction time has probably been cut in half (or worse!) and I move at about the speed of a snail. But I am still at least capable of passing and hitting. Small, baby steps...

Diet Contest. Speaking of exercise, I decided last fall that it was time I lose some weight. The twin pregnancy has distorted my poor little body and by the fall, I had gained back all the weight I lost at the beginning of last year. Grrrr. So I needed to find some incentive and playing volleyball for two hours just wasn't going to count as a good exercise program. I figured the best motivation for me would be to make a contest out of it. Shockingly, my diet contest drew a big crowd! 28 people signed up and the contest began on November 1st. It's a bit challenging to diet right through the holidays but for the most part I've been super, super strict. I won't be at my goal weight by the end of the contest, but I'll be pretty close. I've lost over 30 lbs thus far. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that even when the diet contest ends I'll keep going and lose another 5-10 lbs -- that would be ideal. My clothes are certainly much looser and I feel much better about myself. But sadly, most of my old clothes still don't fit even with the all weight loss. I guess some things will just never go back to what they used to be. Quite depressing. The contest has really been what has kept me motivated. Between my desire to win and my desire to lose weight (combined with the thought of my embarrassment if I didn't lose weight at each weigh-in!), I had a lot of motivation. I didn't actually win the first official weigh-in (my brother kicked my butt -- I should have known that someone bred with the same competitive spirit and much more free time on his hands could easily squash me). However, I did manage to squeeze out a win for the second weigh-in at the end of December. Whew! I used my winnings to buy a new little camera (the one I wished I had at the beach!) so that was very, very exciting. So far the collective group has lost over 200 lbs in 2.5 months. I figure at least I can say I have done a tiny bit of good in the world these past few months if I've gotten a few more people to be healthier.

The Holidays. Thanksgiving was rather quiet this year and it was a bit of a challenge enjoying all the food since both my dad and I were dieting. But it was a nice little break from work and good to see my little sister who was my only sibling able to come. Christmas was a little more hectic. I really enjoy when my whole family gets together for the holidays -- I'm a big believer in family gatherings. I also enjoyed getting to see more of my little nephew who I really hadn't had much of a chance to see since he was born. The girls managed to stay healthy for the entire week (which is kind of ironic since I was so worried about my girls being sick and contagious and it turned out that others were sick instead of them!). Addison, Anika, and Mackenzie definitely loved all the attention but with people everyone, presents galore, and being off their regular schedule, the girls were over-the-top excited and loud and crazy. Although I'm sure it was a great time for the kids, it got a little draining for me. The fact that I'm the only one of my siblings with toddlers was a little overwhelming as well. It's hard explaining that 3 year olds don't always listen and 18 month olds throw food -- it's just what they do. I hear from other parents of multiples (mostly from those who also happen to have an older child as well) that this next year is going to be the absolute hardest of all the years. I don't doubt it for a minute. Looking back, dealing with three toddlers (especially with two kids going through the early terrible two's) is way, way more difficult than dealing with a toddler an two babies. If I survive until next Christmas without going insane, I'll consider that one gigantic victory.

The other exciting holiday news was that I got to see Caitlin! The last time I saw Caitlin was January of 2008. She came for a visit over her winter break. I was hoping to go to her graduation in Florida but of course that happened right after the twins were born, so no luck. :( Then with all the chaos, there really wasn't anyway to get her to Virginia. But, she ended up coming to Virginia briefly over the holidays and I got to see her! She met the twins for the first time and visited with my siblings and my parents too. She brought her boyfriend with and he seemed like a very nice young man. I was quite pleased. I was also reminded of how much I really miss getting to see her. Caitlin is very sweet, considerate, and nice and I really hope she decides to move back to Virginia one day. That would be nice and I'd love for the girls to really get to know her more.

I almost forgot -- I managed to put together this year's Christmas card and get it out the door before Christmas arrived. Each year it has become a little challenge of mine to see if I can come up with something different to send out. I LOVE snail mail so it's a great opportunity to get to send some lovely mail to people I care about. I had a different vision at the beginning of the year but as November rolled around I realized I was never going to have time to do it. So in my search for new ideas I came across a cool idea and figured out a way I could make it and keep the cost lower than the standard photo cards you can buy from any online or local store. Plus I had managed to take a picture of the girls in their adorable little Christmas dresses that I thought would be perfect for the card. In the end, the stars aligned and it turned out as I hoped and only took the length of a movie to assemble. Not bad. I've already begun brainstorming for next year!

My Christmas cards

Whew! Okay, this was an insanely long post. Five months worth of posts, I guess. I wonder whether anyone will actually read through the whole thing? Hmmm… even if not, at least I've captured it so that ten years from now if I ever wonder what I did since I'm sure this crazy time in my life will all be a blur, it will all be right here waiting for me. I hope anyone reading this had a wonderful 2009 and that 2010 brings joy and happiness.

Diet Competion -- Need Participants!

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:22:14 PDT

After more than a six month hiatus from my beginning of the year "diet" I have begun to realize it's time for drastic measures... another diet! As much as I'd like to believe that I can wake up one morning and begin eating healthier, smaller portions, I know enough about myself to know that self-motivation is not one of my strengths. But, competitions usually give me enough incentive to try to avoid embarrassment and in some circumstances, even push me to do what might otherwise seem impossible (like not eating everything I see!).

So, I've decided to throw my own version of a "Biggest Loser" competition! And now I just need to know who is interested!

Basically, the weight competition will be based on the percentage of weight you lose. There will be 3 "weigh-ins" and if all goes well with the sign-ups, then each prize will be at least $100! There will be one short-term weigh-in for those really motivated to lose weight quickly. There will be another weigh in for anyone who stays good throughout the holidays since they will have a better chance of winning that weigh-in. And there will be a final weigh-in a month into the New Year for anyone who decides to use the New Year to kick the diet into full speed.

I suppose there are a bunch of details to the contest so I think it will be easier to describe it through a series of "frequently asked questions." Although I realize none of these questions have been frequently asked -- I'm just merely guessing. :)

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I sign up?
It's simple! Just send me an e-mail, post a comment on my blog, send a message through facebook) and let me know you want to participate. When I know approximately how many participants, I will send out the "entry fee" amount and you will either need to pay by PayPal, check, or money. Just get your entry fee to me before the contest starts.

How much will it cost to join the contest?
This will depend on the number of people who sign up. I'm hoping to get at least 10 people but maybe up to 30 (one can dream, right?) The goal is to have three $100 prizes, so if there are 10 people, each person would pay $30. Or if there are 30 people, each person would only pay $10. You must be willing to pay up to $30 to participate. (but just think -- if you pay $30 and you win $300 -- that's not a bad return on investment, now is it?)

What will I win?
Besides winning a healthier, trimmer body you will also have the chance to win up to $300! (Unless I only get a couple of people to join then maybe the winnings won't be so big, but I'm still hopeful based on folks telling me previously that they would want to participate)

When will the contest start and how long does it last?
The diet contest will begin November 2, 2009 and will run until January 31st, 2010.

What are the rules?

You must weigh-in sometime on November 2 and take a picture of your weigh-in weight. All weights and pictures must be sent to Cindy by midnight on November 2.
You must use the same scale during the entire contest. If you scale breaks and you can't fix it (and buying a new one doesn't count) then you will not be able to finish the competition.
You must wear the same clothes for all weigh-ins (or no clothes at all, if you prefer...)
Weigh-in "check-ins" are required every other Friday so all participants will know where the competition stands (no pictures needed)
Weigh-in winners will be determined by overall percentage of weight lost.
Contest weigh-ins will occur the day before Thanksgiving, December 1st, and January 31st.
If other participants share their weight with contest participants, you must not share this information with others outside of the competition
I must know you in some way. And I must know at least one other person who knows you. This is really because this contest is based on the honor system. I don't want some random person signing up who nobody has ever met and they say they lost 50% of their body weight yet nobody has any idea of what the person looks like in the first place!

How will the competition updates be tracked and communicated?
I will be setting up a private facebook event and anyone "invited" will be able to post to the event with their updates. I will post all the results on the site as well. For anyone not on facebook, you can submit all your weights by email to be updated. In addition to the facebook sight, I will be sending out all competition updates.

Is there any other reason to join a Biggest Loser competition other than trying to win money?
Absolutely! Being part of a group trying to lose weight is a great incentive to kick your diet into gear. Many people try to lose weight at the start of the year, but give up shortly after. Many people use the holidays as an excuse to eat poorly and gain weight. By joining a competition you help give yourself incentive to either get back into shape, start trimming your body, or improve your health. I am hopeful that within the facebook event, people will post diet or exercise ideas (e.g. good recipes, books, etc.) and will even share positive success stories. That type of communication will really help motivate others as well!

Why am I hosting a Biggest Loser Competition? Doesn't that seem like extra work?
Well, like I mentioned I don't easily self-motivate. But, I do like an old-fashioned challenge and that motivates me. And I really, really would like to win at least one of the weigh-ins. If I won $100 than I would buy a new little camera so I didn't have to drag around my gigantic mega-camera everywhere. And I REALLY want that camera so I'll really want to win. And if I don't win, I will have tried really hard and hopefully by doing so, I'll fit back into some of my clothes.

So, what are you waiting for -- please sign up!!!!

Could I BE more out of shape??

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:57:47 PDT

Okay, so the day after the first day of being 33 forever, I decided it was time to exercise. I mean, why not? My house looks like a tornado hit it. There are still outfits strewn all over the house from my ill-fated attempts to find matching outfits for the pictures that never happened. I've hit that threshold where I don't even know where to begin. So why start now? It will take a small miracle to clean the house so it seems kind of useless. Instead, I decided that I'd start using my Wii in anticipation of using my new birthday present -- Wii Active! I've only used the Wii once before at my parents' house when they set it up over the holidays. So I set up the game and decided to do some "training" on Wii Sports. I figured that would be much easier than Wii Active and I wasn't quite ready to commit to the 30 day challenge that my new game was going to throw at me.

So I start doing the training and it had me play some tennis, baseball, and bowling. It took all of about 5 minutes for my knee to start swelling and throbbing with pain. FIVE minutes! Holy crap. That is awful. I wasn't even doing anything! Just throwing my arms around as I pretended to hit balls. But every time I took a step, the bone on bone action that goes on in my knee due to the lack of cartilage slowly tried to kill me. I think if I were to ever ACTUALLY exercise I might die. I'm not even going to think about that right now. Anyway, that's not the worst part. So I go through "fitness" test not really knowing how on earth to play these games. For example, why did the silly little tennis girl suddenly run up to the front of the court? I didn't want her to do that! And I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to run back and apparently, that makes you miss balls. Oops. But all in all, I thought I did pretty good for my first time at these games. And then the fitness test was over and it gave me my Wii age. Oh...my...goodness. 35! Geez!!! And here I was worried about being 33 and I can't even register a 33 age on the Wii?? Yikes. After the fitness test I figured I better hit the "training" button. I only got through bowling, tennis, baseball, and boxing before I was sweaty and out of breath. Not tired, but sweaty. Um, that's not good. No wonder the machine said I was 35! And I have a sinking feeling that my arms will actually be sore tomorrow.

At least it was a few minutes of exercise. That might actually be the most exercise I've gotten since November of 2007 when I played my last soccer game right before I found out my "baby" was actually TWO babies. My goals are to eventually clean the house and unpack a little more of the upstairs in August. Then in September start the Wii Active. And then in October, start P90X. Of course my goal at the beginning of the year was to start P90X in April so I'd be done by July. Ha. You can see how well that goal worked...

The end of youth?

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:37:43 PDT

Today I turned 33. It seems kind of crazy even typing those words. I don't *FEEL* thirty-three years old. Well, parts of me do but in my mind I don't think I'm any different than when I was in my early twenties. I don't particularly feel like I'm a teenager anymore so it's safe to say I feel older than that. But the difference between me now and when I was in college and just out of college? Not much. I'm a bit more jaded now, have less of a "I can change the world" attitude, and my poor body looks nothing like it did back in the good 'ol days. But otherwise, I'm the same.

I have a lot of memories from my childhood but one memory in particular has remained fresh in my mind since I was little...and it involves the age of 33. You see, I only ever remember my mom being one age. 33. From the earliest time I remember, every birthday she had she said she was 33. It wasn't until many years later that I started catching on that EVERY year she was 33. So in my mind 33 was the age at which being young simply ended. And if you ever got there, old age was next to come. And now -- here I am! YIKES! So I think I'll continue the tradition and perhaps tell my kids I'm 33 until they start to catch on themselves.

I suppose in theory I don't think 33 is old. Not if you look at the grand scheme of things. Heck, it's probably in the prime of life! But I have to admit now that I'm no longer the youngest person anywhere I go, when I meet new people and find out that they are 30 years old I think "really??#@? that seems old." But oh wait -- I'm older than THAT! How can that be? So my poor mind is conflicted. Maybe that means that while my body is growing old my mind has stalled and is not growing much at all. Which could explain the fact that I think that I'm actually getting dumber by the day. But that's for a different blog post... One of my friends recently reminded me of a great saying. "Youth is wasted on the young." So true. Don't you ever just want to go back and borrow your body and energy from when you were little and put it to better use?? I sure do. I'd specifically like to go borrow my tummy back. And my vertical jump.

This year's birthday was considerably better than last year's. For starters, none of my family members went missing. And nobody spit up on me and I got more than 2 hours of sleep. So technically, it was MUCH better. I even decided to wear a dress to work. I rarely dress up anymore but I wore a fun dress and even put on a beautiful necklace that I received last year from a stranger whose thoughtfulness and insight was astounding. I hadn't ever really had the chance to wear it before, but I thought my birthday was a great occasion. And on top of that -- I had a GREAT hair day. In the middle of hot and humid Virginia summers, that rarely happens. My parents brought me dinner and got me some great, fun gifts and even brought little "gift bags" for the girls so it would be just like a birthday party for them. That was so cute. When my mom was telling Addison we were celebrating my birthday and we were having cake she wanted to know where the balloons were. And would you believe...my mom walked over to some bag she brought and took out three pink balloons and started to blow them up?? Now, that's some excellent mom experience at work! I was certainly impressed.

For a quick update on what else is going on... This is the season of birthday parties so just about every weekend Addison is invited to a birthday party or two. I'm hoping she can get to attend a handful of them. I was *supposed* to have a photographer come take pictures of me and the girls at a local park on Saturday. I stressed about what we would all wear for over two weeks and finally picked out outfits. This would have been my first pictures with the girls. But of course like everything else in my life, nothing seems to go quite as planned. Anika got a fever on Friday and it only got worse. By Saturday it was reminding me all too well of how sick Mackenzie was before she was admitted to the hospital. I took Anika to the doctor and asked them to test her for the same infection Mackenzie had and sure enough...same thing (bladder infection)! Good grief! Luckily, I recognized it before it became a horrible kidney infection and she had to be admitted. If I had waited until Monday to take her into the doctor, I'd probably still be in the hospital with her right now. Anyway, her fever remained at a whopping 104/105 through the weekend so by Saturday evening when it was time for the pictures, I had to cancel. I had even gotten everything ready and was all dressed up just in case her fever broke from the shot she received, but no luck. And sadly, the photographer was only coming into town this one particular day...so no pictures for me. :( I took Anika back to the doctor on Monday and her blood results came back much better, so the medication was working. Of course one illness would be way too easy. So at the same time the girls had caught a variation of roseola over the weekend as well and by Monday the rash was breaking out all over. Oh, the fun! But they seem to be on the mend finally so all is good. I'm hoping they are all healthy and better by the weekend. Not much else going on; that would require free time or the motivation to do anything -- neither of which I have right now. :)

To everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday today -- thank you!

Note to all my secret bloggers

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:09:18 PDT

Hey all you secret bloggers: I managed to make another post on my secret blog. But I imagine that since I rarely update it and you have to log in, most people don't check it regularly. So I'm sending you a not-so-secret message that you are more than welcome to check it out. :)

Soul Rejuvenation in Boston

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:05:46 PDT

It's been over two weeks since I got back from my trip and it's taken me this long to even try to post my blog about it! The same day I got back, I had to quickly transition into work mode and ended up working insane hours, some how managing to get an entire project's requirements written, reviewed, and signed-off in 3 days. Which is ironic now since we had a project schedule meeting and despite my valiant efforts to ensure the project met it's crazy deadlines, nobody else on the project appears to have the same level of dedication. Ah, the story of my life so it seems... So who knows if we'll meet the date, but at least I won't feel like I could have worked any faster. Last week was slightly slower but I have a feeling it's going to be a very long several months working on this project. At least I have a job -- I must keep repeating this to myself.

But tonight I'm finally going to finish my update from my trip. Here goes:

For those who don't know, one of my best friends from college got married a couple weeks ago. Of course I've known for quite some time about this wedding and long, long ago I began figuring out how best to make sure I could be there. It's no surprise that my parents are the reason I could go. Graciously (or perhaps foolishly) my parents offered to watch all three girls so I could go. And the most delightful part? Boston seems to be the hot spot for my friends right now and so while there I got to see not one, but FIVE close friends. That's right...five close friends all in one area!! Sort of like a Cindy dream come true to get to see so many people I care about all in one trip.

The trip was truly amazing. I wouldn't say I had much downtime -- I was much busier on vacation without the kids than I would be at home! But this busy reminded me of the busy I used to be before kids -- the kind of busy that is is good for your spirit. The weather was simply beautiful -- around 70 and sunny every day. Of all the cities I've visited I like Boston the best. It's got a great mix of new and old, the buildings aren't so tall that it blocks the sun, and it seems easier to walk from one end of the city to the other. Four of my five friends I visited actually live in Boston (the other was visiting from Ohio for the wedding). Each Boston gal had a beautiful home full of character that really matched their personalities. And each place was dramatically different: a beautiful house in the suburbs of Boston, a modern urban loft style apartment in downtown Boston, a stunningly gorgeous apartment on Commonwealth avenue, and a exquisitely quaint and well decorated home in Jamaica Plain. Each home was quite the contrast to my cookie cutter suburban home and it was great to experience such different lifestyles. Of course in the end, I'd say I wouldn't trade my current place right now. If there is anything I most appreciate about my home at the moment, it's the amount of space I have. If my place were smaller there is a good chance these girls might drive me to the edge of insanity much sooner than anticipated.

I started out the trip with a visit to see my friend Rebecca. I've visited Rebecca a few other times and I now know that anytime I visit her, I'm going to get my exercise. Rebecca and I actually went to Europe for 4.5 weeks after college and back when I was in shape she still walked faster than I did. She is quite smaller than me...in fact I found it humorous that in case anyone forgot exactly how gigantic I got carrying the babies, I can best describe it by saying that I gained 1 Rebecca. That's right, I gained an entire adult. Lovely... Anyway, Rebecca by nature walks fast. Technically I can keep up since my legs are longer, but I don't usually race around quite as quickly. Fortunately, I wasn't so out of shape that I couldn't hang. By day 2 I did find it interesting that Rebecca's version of "just around the corner" was more like "in another few miles" to me. Since the farthest I've managed to walk in the past year is from my car to my work buildings, I was not used to these distances. I was definitely excited to visit Rebecca since this time she had a little baby boy! She actually had her baby boy about two hours after I had the twins. And her little boy was just adorable!! We strolled around the city stopping to eat a late lunch and play a bit in the park. I think if my kids were old enough to be jealous, they'd be desperately jealous to live in a city. It seems so fun for kids!

Around dinner time my friend Amy came to pick me up. Amy lives in the suburbs and we drove out to her house where ate dinner in and catch up. I spent the night there and even got to sleep in. No crying babies to rush to, no sippy cups to fill. What a crazy feeling of freedom! After breakfast we headed out for my very much anticipated pedicure. Because of some last minute schedule changes we had to move the appointment from Thursday to Friday which meant she had to find a new place to go to. But the place she picked was nice although I think it was the longest pedicure I've ever had. Fortunately we were both sitting right next to each other in the chairs and so we got to catch up the whole time. I had forgotten just how much I *love* pedicures. I was still hopeful that I'd get my hair cut and so we just decided to check out the salons in that part of town to see if anyone had an opening. And lo and behold -- we found a place! Now, it's been years since I've let anyone attempt to style my hair. I've learned my lesson the hard way. Most people don't know what they are doing and it's not worth the effort trying to weed through who has a clue and who doesn't. So I sat down and explained exactly what I wanted to the stylist. She listened politely and asked if she could also thin my hair. "NO!!!!" I exclaimed as I probably jumped out of my chair. She then asked if she could layer it and I told her layering was tricky and had a similar effect over time. She made several comments while she was washing and looking at my hair that pretty much made me think she was going to do whatever she wanted. In the end, I knew I just had to let it all go when she took the scissors and slowly stripped the strands from top to bottom. She was layering my hair, plain as day. I guess she figured if I was going to come to Boston to get a haircut, I better get my money's worth! In the end, I really like it. Ask me again in a few months when it's starting to grow out and I might have a different answer...but for now I like it. And even more impressive is that she actually put two products in my hair that worked!!! Of course there was hardly any humidity that day, but it was nice to leave a salon and not have to rush home to redo my hair.

After the haircut Amy dropped me back off at Rebecca's in the city where we changed into dresses and headed to visit my friend Missy. I got to catch up with Missy and her husband a while before we headed out for a night on the town. I had made plans to meet whoever was available in the city for dinner and the Boston girls had decided on a place called Bar Lola. YUM, YUM, YUM! It was so fun. First of all, I was excited to dress up. In my quest to find a dress for the wedding I found another dress that fit that kind of looked like a Spanish-style dress (well, in my mind anyway) and it reminded me of old days when I used to dress up and try new restaurants. The place had wonderful sangria and I lost count of how many pitchers we ordered. I did discover a tiny benefit of gaining all this pregnancy weight -- I can drink a seemingly endless amount of alcohol and never even notice. I've always had a high tolerance, but this is kind of ridiculous. I don't have any desire to test my new limits but I could still be drinking that Sangria if they kept bringing it to me. Sadly, I think I'm going to crave Sangria now for months. Heck, it might be years. When I get something in my head that I really want, I crave it over and over again until I find a way to get it again. Somehow I don't think I'll be finding any Sangria anytime soon. But dinner was amazing, delicious, and incredibly good for my well being.

Friday night I stayed with Rebecca and after her husband cooked a yummy pancake breakfast on Saturday morning, part 2 of my trip (the wedding portion) began. Priscilla and Emmy picked me up and we spent the morning with Priscilla's family helping put the final finishing touches on wedding stuff. Surprisingly, she really didn't leave that much for us to do -- so it was a relaxing way to spend the morning laughing and making paper flowers. Emmy and I then began the first of MANY trips walking to and from our hotel room. Funny we thought we'd have all this time to explore Boston and I'd say we spent 90% of our non-wedding-activity time pretty much walking to where we needed to be and back! Luckily, I brought comfortable shoes and was only silly enough once to attempt to walk in heels. I learned my lesson quickly. Priscilla had decided to have her rehearsal dinner at her house and essentially it was the equivalent of having a party at her place the night before her wedding! She is much braver than I am... The rehearsal dinner/party was fun. We got to grill Priscilla's husband-to-be and we saw how clearly in love he was with her. YIPPEE for Priscilla! We also got to meet Ian's family and was absolutely impressed with the loving and caring family she is joining. She did well. :)

We didn't end up leaving the party until pretty late at night and we still needed to go check on the flowers for the wedding. So we all hopped into Priscilla's car and headed to check out the local farm that was supposed to be growing her flowers. Of course by then it was pitch black and raining and the farm was locked down for the night. But that didn't stop us from getting in to see the flowers. Nothing slows down a bride and her partners in crime! The flowers looked beautiful but unfortunately, not at all what Priscilla had envisioned or planned for. So that meant we were going to have to do some flower work the next morning. We headed back to Priscilla's hotel to check out her beautiful dress and then fortunately she gave Emmy and I a ride back to our hotel room (although us walking through the rain in the middle of the night would have made for good memories, I imagine).

The next morning we started the day with a little "shower" bridal breakfast for Priscilla and then we all went back to "adjust" the flowers before Emmy and I completed walk #6 billion between our hotel and the wedding hotel to change outfits. All the events of the weekend meant that I needed lots of outfits. I had gone shopping the weekend before in an attempt to find clothes but the best part about staying with Emmy was it was like I was back in college! Getting dressed up in college was such a blast. I never lived with fewer than six other women in my four years at school and between Emmy and Priscilla and my other roommates I always had something fun to wear. And this time was no exception (well, except that I managed to go up 3 sizes and Emmy managed to go down 3 sizes...). I got to wear one of Emmy's dresses to the bridal breakfast and she even outfitted me with ultra cool jewelry for several of my outfits. It was so fun and just like we were still in college and hadn't been apart for a single day!

Priscilla's wedding was just wonderful. She looked stunning and gorgeous and I beamed with delight to see her begin a whole new world of happiness. I was extremely sad when it was time to say "goodbye." The hours flew by and if I didn't have a flight to catch I would have found some excuse to stay and talk and party well into the next day. I was a little bummed I didn't actually get to catch up with Priscilla that much. She had lots of wedding stuff to do and was busy entertaining other guests the days before the wedding so she didn't have any real time to just catch up. But that's the way weddings go and I was simply happy to be a part of it all and to see her happy. Weddings are such lovely occasions -- so full of love, hope, and happiness for the future.

Overall, the trip came at just the right time for me. I was starting to get really down about the fact that I just hadn't been able to socialize much in the past year. I release a lot of energy through both socializing and exercising. Neither have happened and so I think it was slowly and surely driving me mad. Catching up with so many friends and knowing the kids were in great hands at home made all the difference in the world. I also found that it was probably good that I had the chance to think through a lot of the past year during the trip as well. It has been a long time since I've really talked about what happened last fall and talking about it forced me to think about it a bit and get out some emotion related to it. While I've shared snippets of my story with friends by email or by phone, I haven't had much of a chance to share my experiences with old friends in person and it's definitely a different experience. I was probably an emotional mess by the time I left Boston but I think it was good for me to get some of that out and share hugs with friends who mean so much to me. I came back tired but completely rejuvenated. My endless desire to be going out and doing something has been curbed. I could stay cooped up in the house for another year now! Okay, maybe not a year, but now I won't go insane if I can't leave the house for a while. My parents did fantastic with the girls. Of course the twins caught a cold the day I left (figures). And the playdate I had arranged for Addison got sick so that meant my parents didn't have a break all weekend from the three of them. But other than that, everything went great. Addison started to notice I was gone by Saturday night and had become a bit more whiny than normal. But when I got home they didn't miss a beat in their bedtime schedule and seemed to have a really good time while I was gone. Addison did point out that Ava's mom (and dog) didn't come get her like I said (oops) and the next day she asked when the next sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa's would be. So all in all, everything worked out perfectly. And with my new pedicure, new haircut, and even my new shoes -- it's like I'm a whole new person! Now if only my job would slow down a bit so I can concentrate on getting some stuff done around the house.

Here are a lot of pictures from the trip:

Ollie

Ollie cruising through Boston

Rebecca and Ollie

My "sangria" dress

Having fun taking pictures on our way to Missy's

At Missy's

Dinner at Bar Lola

Making paper flowers

Emmy, Priscilla, and me -- just like old times!

Emmy and Priscilla

The beautiful bride getting ready

Priscilla and her mom

Priscilla's mom

The lovely couple!

At the wedding (I suppose I should have worn makeup, but it would have all sweated off anyway by the time I walked to and from the wedding hotel so many times!)

Have I fallen off the planet??

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:37:36 PDT

Well, I haven't fallen off the planet but I've been way too busy to write any blog entries. Even now as I write this I'm almost too tired to keep my eyes open. Work has been ridiculously busy lately. I find that the busier I am at work, the more my "personal" time gets sucked away to nothing. That makes for an unhappy Cindy. The only consolation is that the past month thanks to my parents I've been able to take the kids to all kinds of adventures on the weekends. That makes it seem like I have a more to life than chores, feeding kids, and changing diapers. Whew!

For now, I have a VERY exciting few days coming up (it's Priscilla's wedding!) and hopefully I'll be able to report all about in the next couple weeks. Assuming, that is, work eventually slows down enough that I can find more "me" time in my precious few evening hours to write about it.

If any friends are reading this wondering why I haven't returned emails, or calls, or shown any other sign of existence -- don't worry -- everyone is getting the same sad, non-responsive Cindy. :( The more responsive Cindy will come back...soon!

Happy Fourth of July (okay, well 6th of July but who is really keeping track of dates anyway?)!

It's a Small World After All..

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:16:55 PDT

Have I mentioned how much I love facebook?? Well, I do. And here's the thing. I've always enjoyed knowing how old friends were doing but who really has the time to catch up with everyone?? Heck, it's hard enough to keep up with the close friends we have day-to-day not to mention the close friends who live far away. But facebook lets you stay connected in some virtual, no pressure world where it's just really, really cool. I think it was maybe a little over a year ago that I had finally received enough facebook "invites" that I figured I'd just join to see what the heck it was all about. At first I thought it was so strange and I didn't really know what to do with it. But one of the first steps you take is to go through this "friend finder." After taking a cursory glance at some potential "friends" I happened to find my old roommate from my first year at UVA! How cool! So I sent her a message and bam -- she wrote back! I couldn't believe it. It was fun to hear from her. But I didn't get hooked until maternity leave when of course I had more time to check it out.

The other thing I love about facebook is all the pictures. I just love pictures - I always have and always will. It's fun to see what people are doing, what they look like, what their kids look like. And for the friends I really, really miss I EXTRA love looking at their pictures. I wish I could see my friends more often but if I can't, it's nice to see their pictures -- it's almost like I'm right there with them... :)

Anyway, I digress from the original reason I started typing this. Without facebook, we just might not ever realize how small this world truly is. So get this... When I was little I started playing soccer and joined a travel team when I was 9. When the team traveled sometimes we'd stay in hotels and sometimes we'd stay with "host" families. I only ever remember staying with a host family once though, although it is possible that either I missed a tournament or that I simply don't remember. Early on in my travel soccer days we went to New Jersey and I stayed with a family that had twin girls. I remember it very well. In fact, I'm sure somewhere in my house I have pictures of my trip. After the tournament, I became pen pals with one of the twins and her name was Alyson Lemke and we wrote on and off for maybe a year or so (I don't remember how long we wrote but we did send a few letters each I believe). It was a LONG time ago. Fast forward to yesterday when I was, once again, waiting for the kids to fall asleep and looking at facebook. I happened to glance on the right side of the screen (I don't usually look there) and there were a bunch of pictures that various people had commented on. I saw thumbnail photo of a cute toddler with curly hair and I clicked on it wondering whose kid it was. This is when I saw that the photo belonged to one Alyson Lemke Williams. I just stared for a minute as the name caught me off guard. It sounded soooooo familiar. It took me about 30 seconds to associate the name with my soccer tournament from years and years ago. On facebook, sometimes you can see photos of "friends of friends" but that's all you can see. I clicked through the album and there was just one picture of what I assumed to be the mother and I swear it looked just like an older version of the little girl I knew! No way. Besides, how on earth would she happen to know my friend Christine? It was too late to call Christine and being the incredibly impatient person I am, I sent this "Alyson" a message through facebook. And would you believe -- it was her!!??@! Holy cow. I randomly clicked on a picture that my friend Christine happened to comment on and there in front of me was this girl whose family had let me stay at their house over 20 years ago! SO BIZARRE!

Turns out that my friend Christine was roommates with Aly in college and that she was actually in Christine's wedding. Which is even stranger since I was at the wedding and never made the connection there. What planet was I on back then?? Anyway, I just think that is so cool. And makes me love facebook even more. Now if only facebook would make the application much more user friendly, life would be really grand. But that doesn't appear to be happening anytime in the near future so I'll take it how it is. I can't wait to tell the other two girls on my old soccer team who also stayed with the Lemke's. Of course the only way I'd even begin to know how to contact them is through -- can you guess?? -- that's right, facebook!

Slowly, slowly losing my mind

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:24:25 PDT

I'm exhausted. And I mean REALLY exhausted. These kids' little minds have teamed up to try to kill me. I think that's the ticket here. Part of my exhaustion is my own fault but I think the combination of everything I've been doing plus the ages of the kids, it's enough to slowly and surely kill me. If it doesn't kill me, it just might make me go insane.

The good news? The kids spent all last week being healthy. Some illness is right around the corner, I'm sure...we wouldn't want to be healthy for more than 7 days in a row now would we??? The diaper rash is FINALLY starting to show improvement. Over a week ago I broke down and called the doctor and she prescribed something called Greer's Goo that supposedly would wipe out the diaper rash right away. At $100 I would think that this would not only fix the diaper rash but would also provide a month's worth of nutrients or some other ridiculous benefit at the same time. But it's been over a week and the rash has marginally improved but it certainly hasn't gone away. Ugh. I sure hope that gets fixed soon.

Last week I spent most nights pulling things out of the garage and on the third floor to get ready for my yard sale on Saturday. On my own I probably would have deferred the yard sale even longer, but since my HOA had planned a neighborhood yard sale it was a good way to force me into it. Of course I always forget that I don't really have all that much "free" time to get things done so most nights I ended up heading to bed around 1-2 am. Yikes! The good news is that while labeling items I was able to catch up on every single episode of "So You Think You Can Dance." I love that show! (although it does make me feel even more out of shape than I already am.) In retrospect, had I had a clue that nobody would even look at baby clothes, I could have gotten plenty of sleep Friday night instead of labeling baby clothing. Good lesson learned for next time, I suppose. Four and a half hours after I went to bed on Friday night I had to wake up to get ready for the sale. That's when I knew that getting through the weekend would be tough. I miss my sleep.

The yard sale went surprisingly well. I made a tad under $200 and I really didn't have that many "big ticket" items. The only furniture I had was a microwave cart so I thought that was pretty good. It's amazing what some other people will buy! As I mentioned above, I was a little surprised that nobody even looked at the baby items. A few people casually glanced through the clothing but I think those items need to be saved for specific kids' clothing sales. So I packed those up and will wait until the next RAMOM sale. But for those of you who know what a pack rat I am, you'll be impressed to know that I packed up just about everything else and sent it away to Goodwill! Of course I couldn't have actually pulled off the yard sale if I didn't have help. My parents came to watch the kids in the morning and Scott came over to help me set everything up and manage the bustling yard sale crowd. Scott was forbidden from negotiating -- he doesn't appreciate the fine art of yardsale-ing… I ended up closing up shop a little after noon and that's when I realized I was far from being done for the day! Luckily my parents helped me entertain the kids for the afternoon and dinner time. I'm fairly certain that my parents breathe a sigh of relief every Monday morning that they've survived helping me play with the kids over the weekend. They've become quite adventurous and we've managed to take the kids out in public a bit and have even let them have several days of "water play." But it's enough to wear us all out, that's for sure!

On Sunday Scott foolishly volunteered to help me clear out the garage so I could organize it and make space for my car. I warned him that every time he volunteers for projects, they always end up much more difficult than he ever imagined. The garage was no exception… But by lunchtime the garage looked great! I still have a few large items I need to figure out what to do with, but it shouldn't be long before I can park in the garage. Woo hoo! Of course after multiple trips to the third floor, sweating like crazy, trying to organize things in the garage while dealing with the three kids, I was completely exhausted. And it was only lunch time! The kids somehow seemed to have endless amounts of energy so I called my trusty parents and they agreed to help me take them to a park for the afternoon! I don't know what I was thinking. It was HOT out there. The temperature itself wasn't too hot but the sun was scorching. The kids liked it, though. And we got a surprise visit from my brother-in-law who was in town dropping off his mother-in-law at the airport. He met us at the park and then was able to stay through dinner time. I totally cheated on my diet and ate an entire container of hunan chicken. I needed the energy.

So last weekend was both productive and adventuresome but it pretty much wiped me out for the week. And I mean WIPED ME OUT! I didn't do a single thing after I put the kids to be on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. Heck, on Tuesday morning by the time I got up and got the kids ready and out the door to the car, I didn't even think I'd be able to stay awake driving to work. Between Addison's out of the blue meltdown and the twins all over the place, I felt like I had worked an entire day all before I ever even started the car to take them to daycare. The twins are getting way too heavy for me. WAY too heavy for me. I can carry one no problem, but when I try to carry both of them, plus all the daycare bags, plus the car keys…it's too much. Especially when they are kicking around and pulling my hair out, etc. It drives me bananas that more of the teachers at the daycare don't help take the kids out. Fortunately, every so often there will be another parent with only one kid who will be so kind as to grab one of the babies. That totally makes my day. I might just have to break down and put them in a stroller soon. Nobody will ever accuse me of starving these kids. They are CHUNKY babies! And one might think there is a side benefit of getting extra muscles carrying 50+ lbs around several times a day. But there is no muscle building. It's more survival mode now. I simply go from point A to point B and pray I don't get so weak that I drop one of them. And trust me, I've come close.

Addison's potty training is going well. She has had a few accidents though, which I understand is very common. In the last two weeks she had had three accidents at school and three accidents at home. Almost all of them were when she was playing outside. I don't think she has grasped the concept that it's okay for her to stop playing outside to use the potty. At least it's not every time... But the potty training seems like the least of my worries. Addison had the unfortunate experience of last Friday being reminded of all the traumatic events of last fall while she was participating in one of the school activities. I didn't realize the plan for the day until she was screaming all the way home and I looked more carefully at the agenda for the week. UGH. So ever since then my little Addison who had been doing so well and had been such a good listener -- well, she's become quite the handful again. She's not listening and she's screaming, having tantrums...you name it. Her attitude comes and goes (thank goodness) but it has made for a long week. A very, very long week. On top of work being ultra frustrating right now, going from one stressful environment to another and operating on a lack of sleep, I think my gray hair just quadrupled.

But, alas, maybe next week will be better. I do have to declare that I think I might very well have the most wonderful mother in the entire world. Truly. She helps balance my level of sanity (although it probably messes with her own) and her selflessness continues to astound me every day. And just when I thought this week that I would officially GO insane, out of the blue she does the most wonderful of things. God Bless the miracles we do have, huh? Life could be worse. I like to remind myself of this.

A new week, a new outlook

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:31:16 PDT

I'm taking a break from cleaning to type up a blog post. I realized I never did a follow-up update on Mackenzie -- oops! Honestly, I get so confused what I update on my blog and what I update on Facebook. All this online socializing runs together in my head. Good thing I never get a chance to actually speak to anyone by phone -- then I'd be *really* confused!

So the medicine switch worked wonders! No more throwing up. And my little Mackenzie is almost back to normal. Full out drama-queen meltdowns and everything! Whew. The only thing that is a little strange is she still isn't eating and drinking like normal. She's probably now eating like regular babies, but not like MY babies. I don't care so much about the eating as the drinking but I'm hoping she'll get used to it. I babied her with bottles while she was sick so she definitely isn't doing well with the sippy cup. And now the only health-related issue going on in my house (well, at this moment -- who knows what tomorrow will bring) is that both Mackenzie and Anika have SERIOUS diaper rash. It's awful, awful, awful. Mackenzie's rash is probably tied to the antibiotic. But Anika's? Is there such a thing as sympathy diaper rash? Well, she just might have it... If you combine diaper rash with their age-related hatred of getting changed, it makes for a very trying experience. I'm okay changing one baby but all the screaming and wrangling gets me pretty frustrated by the time I finish the second one. I sure hope this little stage moves on quickly.

Speaking of diaper changes, I decided that I really needed to get Addison potty-trained. I didn't want to wait too close to my trip to Boston. And I didn't want to risk not having her trained by the time she could potentially move to the next room at daycare. And I had been waiting to have a weekend where I wasn't worried about sick kids. But the whole sick kid thing is unrealistic I now realize, so on Saturday morning I decided to just try it. Shockingly, she didn't have an accident all weekend! And then I was worried about her first day of school -- and no accident there either! Wow. I don't know how long this will last. I actually worry that when she does have her first accident she will actually like getting new clothes on, therefore making it okay to have accidents. But we'll see. So far so good. I'll just enjoy these three days while I have them!

So that's my kid-health update. I hope I don't have any more illness stories to share for a long time. Besides, they make for very boring blog updates. I'd rather write about how I almost sent another kid to the hospital because she stuck the ant poison container in her mouth. But I don't have time right now as I must go continue to clean up this house before I get too tired...

Back at home

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:27:20 PDT

I don't think I would have ever imagined a time where I'd actually be upset that Friday snuck up on me and wonder how I'll make it through the weekend. But alas, this is my life. I'm happy to report that Mackenzie made it out of the hospital on Wednesday evening. Whew! I'm in NO hurry to go back to any hospital any time soon. She didn't have any alarms go off on Tuesday night but she did manage to get her IV pulled out. They put a little board on her arm to keep it straight and I tell you that board was no match for Mackenzie. She worked so hard to bend her arm that the tape used to hold it in place would merely snap in half. That was one determined kid. I don't know why the IV got messed up, but it did and alarms were going off left and right. Of course the nurses tried about three different times to "fix" it without pulling the whole thing out. Each time was a little torture session for Mackenzie, which was no fun to watch. In the end, they decided to ask the doctor if they could just leave it out (it was already pretty late at night). Leaving it out meant she wouldn't get fluids at night but she seemed to be getting better so that was a good sign. We'd just worry about what to do the next day when she needed the IV antibiotics.

On Wednesday, it was easier to tell Mackenzie was feeling better because she was getting quite restless being tied up to monitors and constrained from going anywhere except in my arms and maybe a foot in front of me on either my chairbed or the crib/jail in the sky (I'll post a picture and hopefully my description will make a little more sense). Luckily without the IV it was much easier to try to take her for a walk in the halls. The pediatric center has a little aquarium just at Mackenzie's height under the nurse's station so she loved it. She even got to spend some time in the hospital play room (which was rather nice, I thought) where she completely exhausted herself. It was great seeing her move around a bit more, though. Finally I started to feel a little more at ease with the whole situation. It was at that point I so very much wished I could have a shower. I had been in the same clothes since Monday and I thought I'd die. Ugh. I felt gross and was somewhat glad I couldn't leave the hospital room for anyone to see me!

I was really hoping I could take Mackenzie home that day. Not just for Mackenzie, but I was anxious for Addison and Anika to get back to their regular routine and so that Addison wouldn't worry anymore. As it turned out, her tests came back showing which bacteria she had (which meant that they could prescribe a take-home oral antibiotic) and her breathing had finally normalized. She still wasn't eating and drinking like normal but the doctor said she'd be okay to go home. YIPPEE!! Surprisingly, getting discharged didn't take very long so I was able to drop Mackenzie off at my parents' house, run home for a quick shower (thank goodness!), and then run straight to go surprise Addison and Anika by picking them up at daycare. They were both excited to see me but I couldn't wait to see how they reacted to seeing Mackenzie when we got home. Little did I know how off I'd be on what would happen! Mackenzie and Anika are best of friends -- they do everything together and make each other laugh constantly. So it would only make sense that they'd miss each other, right? Wrong. They ignored each other! It was so bizarre. Maybe they were mad that the other one left. But Addison, on the other hand, looked so intensely relieved to see Mackenzie. She had the most concerned look on her face I have ever seen and she kept hugging her and kissing her and making sure she was okay and telling her she missed her and she loved her. It was so crazy.

While Mackenzie is certainly not contagious, she definitely wasn't well enough to go to the germ breeding ground called daycare. So I kept her home yesterday and today. It's AMAZING how different life is with one baby. First of all, I can get so much done! Second of all, I could teach her so many things and have so much fun with her. It brings back so many memories of being with Addison. This is how first kids trick you into having more kids -- because having one is really so wonderful and not nearly as hard as you imagine in your head before you have any. But you don't think about the fact that the poor second kid never quite gets the attention the first one did. And of course you never think that you'll end up with twins either! I've really enjoyed my one-on-one time with Mackenzie even though I would have preferred it not be when she was so sick. I feel bad now for Anika who hasn't had a single day of one-on-one time with me yet. I'll have to try to make a special point of setting up some time that she and I can just hang out with her alone. Let's hope if I do this sooner than later she won't have any excuse to go and get sick!

Unfortunately last night I got myself all spun out of my somewhat relatively calm nature when dealing with these crisises. It was around midnight and I started to worry about Mackenzie so I got out of bed to go check on the girls. And sure enough when I walked in the room I smelled vomit. AHHH! Mackenzie had thrown up all over herself but was sleeping through it all! I couldn't believe it. I picked her up and tried to clean her up and change her all without getting her too upset and without waking up anyone else (not easy). But I was FREAKED out. Seriously freaked out. Why was she throwing up? She hadn't done this at all before and now this was something new? I thought it might be the medicine but I didn't think I could take a week of this and I couldn't imagine her getting better if she was going to throw up everything she ate and drank. So I emailed my doctor to let her know I was losing my mind with worry, which I don't usually do. And then I couldn't sleep (and no WAY was I going to let Mackenzie out of my sight so I put her right next to me in bed) so I spent 1.5 hours on google looking up throw up, anemia, kidney infections, and what it all means (Mackenzie is also slightly anemic through all of this although we don't know why). Of course you know you can find a billion different illnesses online which all worried me. And I found enough to convince myself she couldn't possibly have every one of them, but that I was seriously worried to be looking this stuff up. She had been sick way too long and it was getting to me.

I knew my doctor was not in the office today but she emailed me back and told me not to worry. It was most likely caused by foul medicine and that she would call the hospital to get the list of drugs and send in a different prescription. Whew -- have I mentioned how much I LOVE my pediatrician??? The new prescription was ready by the time I dropped the kids off at daycare and I was even more pleased that it was a quarter of the amount and I only had to give it once a day. Life was already better. Hopefully no more vomiting tonight. I'll most likely lose it if it happens again... The good news is that I managed to hook up all my cables in the office so now I've got no more excuses for not finishing the office (well, except for the whole time factor thing). But at least I was creative and figured that if I wrapped the end of each cord around a small flag pole that I could stick it behind the hutch and through the hole and then quickly run around to the front to grab it! A simply ingenious way of doing a two-person job, if I do say so myself!

And for this Friday night, I'm going to take a small respite from my diet and eat the yummy queso dip and chips my delightful parents picked up for me and eat it while folding laundry and watching the final episode of Prison Break, which I have yet to watch. It will sort of be like a vacation for me -- watching TV and eating yummy food. The folding laundry is just so that at least I can be somewhat productive and because with all these illnesses the poor kids have simply run out of clean clothes!

In the hospital

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:07:37 PDT

When I logged into my blog I realized I had two entries that I haven't even posted. Oops. I'll get to that later. But I figured for those following I had better give an update on Mackenzie!

Remember way back about a month ago when Mackenzie and Anika got the rotavirus (oh, the fun that was...)? Well, it knocked them for a loop. Especially Mackenzie who had it a little longer. And then somehow either managed to catch it again or simply couldn't get it out of her system. By last Friday she just *looked* sick to me so I took her in to the doctor. My doctor wasn't there so I saw a different one who said she didn't have an ear infection or sinus infection or anything like that so he thought she was just still trying to recover from the effects of the rotavirus (which apparently can take a long time). But then the very next day she got a fever! Ugh. I couldn't believe it. I thought for sure Anika would catch it the next day but instead Anika just got congested. Clearly she had caught the same cold, but she didn't have a fever. By Sunday I was worried. I checked Mackenzie around 5 am and sure enough, she was still burning hot. Three days of a fever seemed a bit ridiculous on top of everything else so I emailed my doctor to tell her I was concerned and ask what I should do. By the time I woke up she had emailed me to bring her in. But when I went to get her out of bed, her poor little lips were completely white. There she was standing and talking and acting happy as can be -- but with white lips. It was bizarre! Her lips turned pink again after I got her out of bed and she had her bottle but when she was eating breakfast she started breathing really fast and really hard and the area above her chest was caving in each time she took a breath. I dropped off Addison and Anika at school (and fortunately the director came out to take them out so I could hurry off to the doctor's office). At the office they did her bloodwork and her breathing rate and said indeed, she was very, very sick. And it was definitely bacterial based on the bloodwork. There was a student nurse practitioner who was helping the doctor. She explained all the results of the tests to me but she also told me all the things that it could possibly be. On one hand this was good because at least she wasn't hiding anything. But on the other hand I was FREAKED out. Of course running through my mind was the story a friend told me about someone else's daughter who was acting really sick but they didn't really know what was wrong with her until she kept running a fever and by the time they took her in and found out she had meningitis, it was too late and she died. Holy crap. I know I shouldn't have been thinking of stuff like that, but I was very worried. And Mackenzie seemed to be getting sicker by the minute. My doctor actually made me feel much better when she came in after the student had finished up. Indeed, Mackenzie was very sick but it would most likely be resolved with heavy antibiotics but because of the breathing she wanted her to be admitted to be monitored, etc. She called over and got a bed for her but because of the slow check-in time we'd most certainly encounter they said to take her to the emergency room to get stabilized.

Fast forward many, many hours. Basically they think she has a kidney infection. Caused by a urinary tract infection, most likely caused due to her system being compromised from the rotavirus and all the diarrhea she was having. The breathing (they think) was due to the fact that it was her body's way of reacting to all the pain and the high fevers. Geez. The poor kid was tested, poked, prodded, sick, and completely exhausted. I pretty much held her from about 9:30 in the morning until about 9 at night when we finally got into her official "room" where I tried to lay her down. She has an IV with fluids and she is getting antibiotics and she is hooked up to another monitor where they are measuring her oxygen levels.

The crib in the pediatric ward is rather interesting. It's sort of like a jail in the sky. I can not even imagine for a minute putting Addison in it. She would freak out. Luckily Mackenzie was so tired and not feeling well that she probably didn't care. Her monitors kept going off about every half hour or so all night long when her oxygen levels dropped too low. They called the on-call doctor and even she didn't know why it was happening. Her fever was controlled with the medicine so it couldn't have been the fever causing it. We were able to hook up a humidifier and point it directly on her face (and then cover her with a ton of covers since it was freezing) and that brought up her breathing. But of course every time she moved the alarm went off I had to try to go and rearrange it and get her breathing on track again. It was not a relaxing night.

This morning they needed to take another blood sample but they couldn't get enough from the finger prick because for some crazy reason they don't have the same tools that the pediatrician's office has. It was AWFUL. They came in at 5:30 and we had both fallen asleep and then they spent the next 30-40 minutes trying to get her blood out in numerous fashions all while she was screaming at the top of her lungs. Having only eaten two of her left over chicken nuggets, a bag of 100 calorie snacks, a scoop of mac & cheese, and a glass of gingerale in the previous 24 hours I started getting really light headed from watching her be in so much pain. Ugh. They finally gave up and I held her in the chair until we both fell asleep.

It's into the afternoon now and with a nice long nap for her after they finally DID get her blood, she is acting much better. Plus they brought her breakfast and lunch and both immediately lifted her spirits.

I'm hopeful that she'll be back and ready to go soon. Although the nurses made it seem like it would be nearly impossible for her not to stay at least one other night. In the meantime, my parents got a crash course in putting Addison and Anika to bed. Addison, surely distracted by the fact that I wasn't there didn't go to bed. I was even on speaker phone with her and after multiple times of crawling out of her crib and then screaming frantically, I had my mom give her my pillow and she went to bed an hour and a half later. Not fun for my mom I'm sure. Even more unfortunate is that she woke up two hours early and wouldn't go back to sleep. I haven't figured out what I'll do about tonight yet. The fact that Mackenzie is getting better makes me breathe much easier though. Of course back at home Anika is extremely congested and is getting a bit more sick from her cold. I can only imagine that she'll be needing breathing treatments soon. Poor kids. I HATE when kids are sick. It's awful. Oh, and since my mom is allergic to my cat she can hardly breathe either after spending an evening at my house. Fun all around.

So that's my update. One of the hospital volunteers came by to give Mackenzie a stuffed bear and a book, which she has had fun playing with. They also asked what I would like to put on her little room name tag and I emailed them a picture of her so she has a really cute picture right outside her door! I thought that was nice...

But for now, other than the obvious that being in the hospital with a baby (and babies at home!) is absolutely terrible, I am glad that it's not nearly as bad as it could be. And they don't see any reason why she shouldn't be able to get better and come home soon enough. Whew. But I'm not done worrying until all the labs come back and they resolve this breathing issue. Once all that happens, then I'll breathe a bigger sign of relief. In the meantime, I'll enjoy this mommy-and-me time as best I can. Although I told Mackenzie there were really better ways to get some alone time with me...

A good song

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:49:15 PDT

At the end of this three day weekend I'm much too exhausted to post much of an update. As I've mentioned in previous posts I do much better when my kids are healthy. I thought for sure having to deal with a full week of the rotavirus only two weeks back would be enough sickness to carry me through another month or two. But, no. Mackenzie got sick right at the start of the three-day weekend and it's probably only a matter of time before the other two get it. And when I'm dealing with sick kids and cleaning it up, combined with the realization that three-day holiday weekends are supposed to be more fun than working, I tend to get a little bit more negative than usual. And I dwell on all the things that were "supposed to be" and clearly that gets me nowhere.

But then I received a message tonight from a friend who was recently laid off with no severance package and we corresponded about some interesting parallels in our conversations with others. More importantly, she sent me the link to song lyrics that I thought were just perfect. I loved the lyrics and did a search and found a video of the song. I'm posting the video here (and the lyrics too in case you don't actually want to go listen to/watch the song). I thought it was a good song for my life right now.

In all fairness, the weekend wasn't bad (thanks to my parents as usual!). My parents helped me take Anika and Mackenzie on their first trip to a park (and the first time in a long time for Addison) and they helped watch the kids so I could get more stuff done around the house and even go to the grocery store! Plus they put together a nice wooden house in the backyard that they bought the girls for their birthday. It helped break up the weekend quite a bit although I'm sure they are completely exhausted. I also managed to get a ton of stuff done in the office (even if it doesn't look like I made any progress) and I finally pulled the weeds sticking two feet out of the bushes in the front yard while the twins were sleeping (and lesson learned that no matter how much of a hurry I'm in I should use gloves -- these blisters hurt).

I hope Mackenzie is all better and that Addison and Anika miraculously escaped the virus. But considering I'm typing this on my laptop while sitting outside the bathroom waiting for Addison to finish using the potty...something tells me that the last few days could be about to repeat themselves. Oh fun.

Here is the song ("Warrior is a Child" by Twila Paris):

And here are the lyrics:

Lately I've been winning battles left and right
But even winners can get wounded in the fight
People say that I'm amazing
Strong beyond my years
But they don't see inside of me
I'm hiding all the tears

They don't know that I go running home when I fall down
They don't know who picks me up when no one is around
I drop my sword and cry for just a while
'Cause deep inside this armor
The warrior is a child

Unafraid because His armor is the best
But even soldiers need a quiet place to rest
People say that I'm amazing
Never face retreat
But they don't see the enemies
That lay me at His feet

They don't know that I go running home when I fall down
They don't know who picks me up when no one is around
I drop my sword and and cry for just a while
'Cause deep inside this armor
the warrior is a child

They don't know that I go running home when I fall down
They don't know who picks me up when no one is around
I drop my sword and look up for a smile
'Cause deep inside this armor
Deep inside this armor
Deep inside this armor
The Warrior is a Child

Whew! And now I can sit...

noreply@blogger.com (Cindy Dodge) — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:27:09 PDT

When life gets super busy I simply don't have time for many things. Apparently, my blog is one of them. Heck, I even had to stop looking at facebook for a while since I couldn't even spare the 10 minutes a night I usually spend checking out everyone's updates. Anyway, I figure I'll just give a quick catch up of everything that's been going on so that I'll be able to get back to regular posts after this. Here we go...

Groundhog day at work
One of the reasons (among other things) I've been so busy is because of work. It's been fairly stressful because everything appears to be urgent and has to be done yesterday, of course. If I just had to do it once, maybe it wouldn't be so difficult to deal with. But every day it's like I wake up and I have to do the same thing AGAIN but with different rules. It's nuts. It's stuff like that drives me batty. However, every day I remind myself that I'm glad I have a job and hope to keep it. So I try to keep (mostly) quiet and plug away and meet all the deadlines. Unfortunately that means that I had to work most evenings the past few weeks which put a kink in my plans to make progress on getting ready for the thank you party.

Happy Mother's Day
Some moms might get breakfast in bed. Me? I woke up to poop. LOTS of it. Anika and Mackenzie got the rotavirus. Ugh. It actually started on the day before their birthday with Mackenzie and then on their birthday with Anika. Luckily they each only threw up once, but after that it was just awful, awful diarrhea. And when I say awful I mean AWFUL!!! The nastiest, most horrible smelling thing you could ever imagine. The girls never really acted sick or even bothered and except for Anika's diaper rash they seemed totally fine. I suppose I'd much prefer that to a different illness where they stopped eating and had a fever, etc. Of course it only figures that when I had to lead long meetings at work every day that they all of a sudden couldn't go to daycare. Thank the Lord for my parents who were able to watch the kids a couple days this week! That gave me a chance to alternate taking care of the kids while still conducting my meetings and hitting all my work deadlines. I was quite worried that I might have to cancel the thank you party if either the twins didn't get better or if Addison caught what they had. But Addison never caught it and by Thursday they were completely better! Whew -- disaster averted.

Cake Pops
A few weeks ago I came across an idea that I thought was so cool! Instead of doing traditional cupcakes I was going to make little cupcake-pops! After doing more research apparently cake pops are all the rage. Well, they were all the rage last year at least and so I must be way behind. Oh well. Nobody who was coming to the thank you party had ever seen them so I thought it was still a good plan. That is until I actually began to make them... what was I thinking??? The cake pops themselves weren't that hard to make. A little time consuming and fairly messy, but they were way too sweet! I had grand plans of doing all sorts of different colors but when I realized that the chocolate was not as thin as I was imagining in my head I determined that it would be a pain to mix up a bunch of colors. So I just stuck with three colors. The end result turned out okay. Not wonderful and spectacular like I was dreaming of but cute enough for kids. Personally, I didn't like them. But then again I'm not a huge dessert fan and I found out that people who love desserts and lots of sweets actually LOVED them. A lot. But if you aren't a fan of sweet stuff, you'd probably just think they are okay. After all, it's basically cake and frosting mixed up together covered with chocolate followed by more chocolate and topped with sprinkles and one more piece of chocolate in case there wasn't already enough! My stomach is hurting just thinking about them. Here is how they turned out:

Thank You Party
After weeks of cleaning, unpacking, and planning the Thank You party is finally over! I had no idea how many people could make the party but with everyone's crazy schedules a surprising number of people were able to come. Thank goodness the weather cooperated -- what on earth would I do with almost 20 kids if they couldn't play outside??? My house isn't *that* big! It was a bit hot outside but kids are resilient so I set up my bounce house and ball pit and my mom brought over her pop up tunnels so the kids had lots of outside activities as well as plenty of toys and such inside to keep them all occupied. I don't know how many people were there total but all those kids had at least one parent with them plus there were about 11 folks without kids. So it was a lot of people! My dad did a great job at the grill and except for the dilemma of having half of the food indoors and half outdoors, I think it all worked out great. The twins were delighted to see so much activity and Addison just loved the fact that she got to hang out with her two uncles! I managed to clean most of the downstairs and I even managed to personalize all the favors for all the kids. I had much grander visions of how I was going to decorate the little pails but given my time crunch, my mom and I painted some tiny designs across the top of the pails and I just wrote the kids' names on them. Here is what they turned out like:

Mackenzie and Anika's First Year
As the last little "extra" I wanted to do for the party, I created a video showing just how much the twins had grown in the last year. It's amazing how much they grow! I didn't have much time to put it all together but considering I didn't really sleep the night before I managed to finish a version that was "good enough." I created a DVD version and played it a few times on my tv. If anyone wants to see the video, here it is:

My new nephew!
For a variety of reasons I haven't been able to go visit my new nephew yet (who is doing extremely well for those of you following his story!). However, my sister and her husband came to town for the thank-you/birthday party and although they left the baby at my parents' house, they took turns coming over to the party. After the party was over and I got to clean up a bit, my brother in-law came over to watch the kids for a bit so I could go visit William (my nephew). It was fun to go see him and gosh he's so tiny! Which is kind of funny since he's probably gigantic compared to other 5 week old babies but I'm so used to the twins so he looked and felt extremely tiny. I wanted to try to get some shots of William since I sort of missed getting to try to take newborn shots. The lighting was awful and he's so long he didn't really fit into any basket-type thing so I didn't get that many pictures. But here are some of my favorite:

Okay, so that's my update! Anika is starting to walk and Mackenzie isn't that far behind. I got to meet my nephew William for the first time and with all the progress on the house I can actually foresee myself attempting to decorate in the upcoming future. What progress! My next big project is going to be to get back on my diet. I've almost eaten all the food in my house so within the next week I'll be starting again. My goal is to lose 20 lbs. I can hope I lose it by July 9th but I don't know if that will happen. We'll see!