Inspired by the Great Wolf Lodge

The girls got Patrick all tatted up tonight, ready to head back to the water park. Did I mention all the sympathetic looks I got from others there? Yes, poor me... I can't afford any tattoos. Anyway, the girls just finished up all the Valentine cards and used the leftover tattoos on Patrick. That's right, I bought the cheapo commercial Valentine card packs from Target. Last year Patrick took all his Buzz Lightyear cards to bed with him for weeks so I figure that is what the kids really want so I am not going to make the super cute photo cards that everyone else does. I love getting them though and hang them up but sorry, your kids are getting the crappy ones in return. No candy at least... like they need more of that. I just tossed the stuff they had leftover from the school carnival.

Even Steven Again

We caved in and paid the price for Great Wolf Lodge since we'd been promising the girls for years that we would take them again. I don't think we have been since before Emily was born, maybe it was that summer when I was pregnant with her and Nana got some spider bite there? Anyway, high time we went again and the kids had a great time. Well, except for Emily who wasn't feeling well so I tried to contain her germs in the room, which just led to me getting her germs of course. I took her into the park for an hour each day where she refused to wear a life jacket so I just followed her around the splash area. Patrick chatted up every boy in the slide area and tried to turn everything into a race. He finally wore himself out with 15 minutes till closing time. Sean said he just sat on the edge of the pool, zoned out. He still claims that he did not get tired there. The girls were old enough to go on the water slides themselves so they loved it. Of course they all fell asleep quickly and Sean headed out to the new casino there and won enough at poker to pay for the whole weekend. And yet I wasn't in the mood to shop....

Frigid temps and outdoor shopping do not go well together. I went to get us takeout and the traffic and parking and crowds were so bad that it took me an hour and a half-- and this was a mile away? I should have just driven to another area. I will never complain about parking in Manhattan again. So spoiled here that if I have to walk a couple blocks for anything I am all annoyed.

We are also stressed about army stuff and thus I didn't want to spend any money until that is resolved. Army is getting ready to waste buckets of tax dollars, due to their poor planning and their refusal to offer a proper salary to primary care doctors, most of whom endured multiple deployments. What is shocking to no one but the brilliant minds in charge, is that now there is a shortage of primary care docs. So they are going to take specialists and force them to go do primary care, in glamourous places like Korea. I know what you're thinking, hope I don't get those docs. Come on, it's only been 10 years or more since these docs have done any primary care, I'm sure they remember it all! But wait, who is filling the specialist slots left behind? Civilian contractors making $400k a year. Thank you, taxpayers! And guess what, now the specialists will all flee the army the second they can, thus resulting in a shortage of specialists too. Bravo army, BRAVO. Sean reads three times as many radiology studies as some other radiologists, so naturally it would make sense to pull him and put him in a position he would hate and isn't qualified for. Mimosas for breakfast for mommy?? No clue when we'll hear anything, 4 month deployment to Africa sounding better by the minute. I wasn't going to blog about this but thought I should so people know why I am so crabby.

It's not Disney!

Trying to book a room at the Great Wolf Lodge and it's $450 a night. Right... Working on plan B. Spring break is a no go this year so we want to at least have a fun weekend at some point for the kids. Help!

Krewe of Allegawaho 2012

We changed locations for Mardi Gras this year and took it underground for a speakeasy 1920s theme. The krewe called in favors from all over to make it happen, from finding a random basement warehouse downtown, to getting enough chairs for 200 people. We even ended up buying old silverware from Harry's which was cheaper than renting. The creative artistic people had the vision and spent endless hours planning how to make it happen, because let me tell you, when we first checked out that space I was a little overwhelmed. I'm more the type to order the tables and plates. I'm also the type who won't wear a drop waist 1920s dress because it's just not flattering, but I did pick out a dress that is supposedly vintage style. My hair was done in a 1920s style which wasn't super flattering in my jeans at the grocery store, but looked better with my mask and dress.

Since it was a speakeasy it was in a hidden location and hard to tell people where to go. We ended up having a jazz group playing outside the service entrance to the building, with an old car and krewe flag hanging out. I hope everyone found it... Then they took the elevator down to a junk filled room with a path that wound around to a bookcase (which is what Sean wants in the next house) which opened to reveal the speakeasy. Keeping with the New Orleans Mardi Gras theme we had cajun food from Cox Bros and it was outstanding, and I'm not just saying that because I was on the food committee or because we were starving. They brought the whole hog too. Yes, I was the first one through the line, trying to motivate people to get that part going, such a good role model.

I'm not sure what crazy drama went down after 11:30pm because at that point my feet hurt too much to dance, it was too loud to talk, someone was offering us a ride home, and our sweet babysitter was expecting us. Cell phone reception not awesome in the speakeasy so we were hoping they all survived the night. Now I need to wash out a can of hair spray and go teach Sunday school, wheee! Oh and then go clean up the speakeasy... and hear the good stories of what we missed!

To top off the awesome night

Patrick came home and peed his pants in the bathroom, making more laundry and cleaning all at once! I made him take a bath then, also because on the way home the smell of his feet were making me sick. He's four, just how much worse are those feet going to get?? I was literally trying to figure out what could have died in the car to produce such a smell.

Oh yes, and the cake walk... I sent in Barefoot Contessa peanut butter chocolate chip cookies that I had made for us but then remembered I needed to send in baked goods for the cake walk. And what did my kids pick out when they won at the cake walk? Store bought cookies of course. Not even the good ones, one container had, I kid you not, Chips Ahoy cookies in it. Well, thanks for the reusable container I guess.... Don't worry, I am getting my calories tonight from beverages.

I'm a sucker

Tonight was the family fun night for Catholic Schools Week and I got to run the sucker tree game. Sean isn't a sucker and he magically was assigned a moonlighting shift at this exact time. So I had all the kids and at least two of them were very crabby and one was close to bedtime but I couldn't leave her home. I volunteered to run a game back before I knew Sean was working but I figured the littles could just hang with me while I did it. Has anyone seen a two year old in front of a "tree" of suckers, next to a huge box of suckers? Emily sampled about 27 of them, thankfully tossing each one after just a few licks. I still feel like I need to sneak in and brush her teeth yet again while she is sleeping.

Anyway, the sugar crash was ugly, I had to force Megan to help me with them for a while. I believe she used up all her tickets to pay her friends to help her find Patrick at one point. At the end Emily disappeared while I was turning in my ticket apron and it took a while to find her. I knew she hadn't gone out the door but did start to panic after a few minutes. Megan found her playing in a preschool room and when I made her leave a baby doll behind it was a full on tantrum. I was so glad to find her...

Oh but the sucker tree is so stupid because it involves giving the tickets back based on the color on the stick. Even a second grader figures out that this is a win-win game and just keeps going and going and going. Tickets are flying all over, just a mess. The last ten minutes when I just didn't care, I don't even know what happened. At the very end, when I still had an enormous box of suckers and I was just letting kids take them. Some gave me tickets, I didn't care. Oh my God, just leave me alone and let me go home to my sweet, sweet bottle of hard cider. Do you think the right person will find this post and not ask me to volunteer next year??? I did feel like a sucker as there were quite a few families walking around both the mom and the dad with their one precious child. Really?? I am the one volunteering while my own kids run wild and/or don't get to play games because they are helping me by babysitting. Apparently not everyone else feels the Catholic guilt and responds to the pleas for volunteers. Clearly there are people who do WAY more than I do and props to them, but I think I am taking a pass until my kids are old enough to not need an eye on them every single freaking second. Sean stayed home to make the money to cover the donations we give, I will not cave to the guilt again. I'm out. Should I blog while I'm having my cider? It's an over sharing kind of night...

Perspective

So I won a local contest this week and when I picked up the prize they insisted on taking my photo. I was on my way to help set up for the mardi gras party so my hair was pulled back and looked fairly heinous. I can't do the fun ponytail, only the "work out" ponytail. Before I can even get home to find out if they posted it on facebook, I get a text message about it and asking if I got my hair cut. Oh dear. And then I see that the photo is even worse than I expected, so much so that Sean concedes that it's not the best shot of me. He blames the lighting. Thankfully they did not "tag" me so it's not showing up in my newsfeed but they did put my name. I don't dare comment on it and alert people to this post. Anyway, the worst part is that someone I don't even recognize comments that we are nice people and a good Catholic family. What? Someone recognized me from that horrible photo and remembers us from mass?? I'm sure I make quite a spectacle yanking my misbehaving children from the pew and the lighting is bad in there... so I guess this isn't totally shocking. The prize is a necklace from Tiffany and I feel kind of bad about winning it because I'm sure others would have loved it more. Let me point out that I never won anything back when we had no money for nice gifts like this. So I am trying to decide what to do with it. Offer it to the person who can convince this particular business to take down my photo?! And no, I will not reveal the business and those who know do not post in the comments. I'm so vain, but really, who isn't?

In the midst of all this someone sends me a message with a photo he found on a funny blog facebook page. It is of 6 guys posing like they are pregnant with their bellies sticking out. Umm, nude. With the boy parts tucked away. That over 1500 people commented on. And we know one of the 6 guys! Suddenly bad lighting doesn't seem so awful... I hope he got a Tiffany necklace too!