Welcome To Crazy Town, I Am The Mayor

This past weekend was crazier than a Chihuahua peeing on a Bulldog's house. It started on Friday when my sister dropped off her three kids to spend the night. I adore my nieces and nephew, but combining them with my kids is like those baking soda volcanoes you make in Science class. It's loud, explosive and bound to be a little messy.

Around this time we also got a call to show the house three times that day (I may or may not have good news about this ;) )with the first showing being within 30 minutes of the call. I have discovered that having older children is very handy when you have a bunch of things to get done at once. I got out my whip and lion tamer's chair and put them to work getting the baby ready, leash on the dog and clean some glass. I was trying to get all the kids out of the house, the husband and the dog; when the first viewers were on the front porch.
Since we had to be gone from the house for about 4 hours, we decided to drive up to The Dream House and look around the property. It's about a hour trip and let me tell you...6 kids, 2 adults and a dog in a minivan is not conducive to The Sobriety Wagon. Once we got there and everyone had their legs stretched and wiggles out; we got back in the van and looked for somewhere to eat. I preferred somewhere with a drive through trough and an interior car wash...but we settled for some burgers and fries. Holy Cow...preteens can put away some food! As we were starting to pull out of the driveway, our dog flipped out.

He jumped around the crowded van and ended up getting his leash caught around Buzz. It took picking him up and almost choking him to death to get the two unraveled. Buzz got some nice bruises from the incident (the kind that you don't want to take her out in public because of what someone might think) The Head Crayon got a fingernail ripped off and there was some biting going on. I believe all 6 children were screaming at some point, dog barking, husband shouting orders and me...I was making some kind of weird instinct whimpering. There ended up being blood everywhere and one of my nieces took to being the Florence Nightingale of the group and passing out bandages to the wounded soldiers.

We got home and everyone had to take their baths. I stood outside the bathroom door doing something that I swore I would never do.

You got 5 minutes, soap it off and get out!

Bedtime was an interesting affair as everyone wanted to sleep (insert weird typing format...so sorry!)
on the special bounce bounce bed (blow up mattress) Once it was decided who would sleep where, the whole house got really quiet and I finally took a breath.

I am Mayor of Crazy Town.

BTW...I am having a giveaway.
Does this strike your fancy? Click the giveaway tab

From Conception to Birth - A Blog Post Is Born

7:00am - Begin feeding the children and start to brainstorm about the day's blog post.

8:00am - Wipe down children and consider writing about the healthy benefits of cereal for breakfast.

8:20am - Realize you have been reading the nutritional information on the back of the cereal box for the past 20 minutes.

8:30am - Clean cereal off the floor and consider writing a post about how many times you have to clean a house in a day when young children are present.

8:40am - The thought that you will either appear to be a whiner, inefficient house cleaner or boring squashes the idea of a cleaning post.

9:00am - Sit down to check email, community forums and Twitter trending topics for a possible blog post.

9:30am - You have now been playing Farmville for 30 minutes.

10:00am - You have now been reading all the entries on Twitter marked #iwishiknew and laughing at the typos other people do.

10:30am - You begin a post about funny typos and quickly delete it before your readers start pointing out all your errors.

11:00am - Now that the children are done with the coloring, playdough and alphabet work, you begin lunch.

11:30am - After preparing pb&j, grilled cheese, fruit and more cereal. You consider writing a post on picky children and nutrition.

11:35am - You skip that idea because you would hate to admit you just fed your child a pudding, gummy fruits and string cheese for lunch.

12:00pm - Put down children for nap. Check out community forums for a topic idea.

1:30pm - You have now been in a debate about hummus, skinny jeans and the latest episode of Dancing With The Stars for an hour and a half.

1:45 - Children up from a nap, light house keeping and dinner preparation.

*The times not represented here are a blur of laughs, tears, food, baths, diapers, potty training, etc.*

9:00pm - Find a blog hop that only requires the use of a picture for a blog post.

10:00pm - Just spent the last hour looking at baby pictures and crying. Consider chocolate chip cookie dough.

10:15pm - Decide on a picture and try to get it to load. Shake fist at Blogger's uploading system.

10:30pm - Post done.

1:00am - Wake up and think of the best blog post ever. Chuckle to yourself over the popularity of this topic and imagine yourself accepting the Bloggy Grammy.

7:00am - Wake up and can't remember what on earth you were wanting to write about...go look for another picture blog hop.

(By the way...I couldn't think of a blog post today because I have oatmeal brain.)

Life Buffet Style - All You Can Eat

Last night as I was going to bed, I was thinking about what all I had to get done. 'Cause that always makes for a peaceful drop off into sleep oblivion. Ummm-no. It got me to wondering about the phrase "my plate is full." Which got my always hungry mind to think about an "All You Can Eat Buffet"

It's funny how your mind makes comparisons of things at 1am.

Life really is like an "All You Can Eat Buffet"

You get a plate (Your Life) and go from section to section to see what you want to eat (Choices you make for your life) As you move from the fried chicken, pot roast, ham and b.b.q; you begin to put a little of each that looks good onto your plate. Then you hover over the beans, peas, corn, casseroles, etc. All the while putting small portions of everything that looks good on your plate. By the time you lug your 30lb plate back to the table, you look at your bounty and wonder how on earth am I going to eat all of this? It all looked so good at the time that you had to grab it, but once you got a portion of each; it is way too much for you to actually eat. Talk about feeling overwhelmed.

The strangest thing about feeling overwhelmed is that you chose to put every item on your plate. (Committed to your choices) You did not have to get all 6 meats offered, you could have chosen just one. If you did finish your smaller portions, you can always go back and try something else if you are still hungry.

How about making a choice in your life to simply your plate? Decide on the few things that look really good and see if you have room for the ice cream with sprinkles at the end.

Make sense? Well, it did at 1am.

Blah Blah Blogging

*Blah Blah Blogging is a term I created on my old blog. It was for when I did not have a specific topic to talk about, just a lot of Blah Blah Blah.

So if you are here then you must have gotten the memo, tweet, peep or squawk that I was moving from WordPress. It's not that I disliked WordPress, but most of my blogosphere buds were on Blogger and I loved the Friend Connect, reader thingie-ma-bob, designs, etc. and much like my bangs from the 80s; just wanted a change. I had been working with some Blogger friends about importing my other blog to here and it was discovered that unless I wanted to devote the next 15 weeks to manually transporting it, I should just start over. I added a RSS feed in the sidebar that is linked to the old blog so the posts can still be accessed from this site and are not lost forever in the bloggy blackhole.

If you are just now joining me, let me do a little intro...

First thing you will notice is that I have a tendency to jump from topic to topic not just within my blog but in a single post. I do not have ADD...

look a banana

I digress. What was I saying again? Oh, yeah; being random. I type just the way it comes in my head. My posts take no planning and have no outline. Structure is for the weak. While I am blogging, I am also mom to two of the rowdiest girls you have ever met. That means that while I am typing, I am also jumping up to make a sandwhich, resuce a horse from certain toilet whirlpool death, pet the husband, love the dog (that one might have been backwards, but ya know) throw a burnt meal in the trash and cook another one before The Man makes it to the table. It gets plain nutty around here and it shows (much like my slip at prom) through my writing.

I blog, therefore I am. You will never see a wonderful recipe or the best craft ever here. I do good with nuking a hot dog and making paper angels. I don't do contests because the only thing I can afford to give away is a smile. I will seldom ask you to look any deeper into yourself than your make-up and I will never give advice on parenting or marriage. Frankly, I have to figure it out before I can advise someone on it and I am far from that.

We are walking, we are walking...

I am a SAHM. Mostly. The Man and I do own a small side business and I often toddle off to help him out on the weekends (Note: there are few posts over the weekends) My spawn darling girls are 3.5 yrs and 22 months. I am pregnant and we don't know if it will be panties or boxers quite yet. I have been married for 10 years (this month) and will tell you right now...that better or worse thing...you better mean it! We have a "traditional" marriage which means he makes the money and I spend it he brings home the bacon and I fry it. I don't consider me cooking and him taking out the trash as sexist or old fashioned, it just works better for us (the trash is heavy and the stove requires little feet to cook in front of it. We are in our God-given roles) As a mother the one thing (other than God, that's a given) that I want my children to learn from me is "To Color Outside The Lines" (hello, blog title) Meaning...reach beyond your boundries, dream big and make your world the way that you want it to be.

Nicknames? Who's Who?

Buzz - she is the oldest at 3 1/2 years. She got the nickname "Buzz" because there was a recent incident of a lack of adult supervision and daddy's electric hair clippers. 'Nuff said.

Belly - she will be 2 in October. Her nickname is well deserved by the massive amounts of food she consumes *healthy choices of course* and the fact that she outweighs her older sister by 15lbs.

The Man - husband. The Man of the house.

Does that cover about everything? I think so.

Look another banana...

Toodles for now.