Not So Fond Farewell
It's no secret that I dislike the Scouting program. Red wants to participate, and so, we do. But if it were left up to me, he'd never don that neckerchief and blue shirt again... but, this isn't about me. It's about him.
Last night was our Pinewood Derby. It's probably one of my least favorite things about Scouting. But, again, not about me.
Red was pretty excited this year. He was hoping to break a sad losing streak. You see, his first car was shaped kinda like a funky sports car. That year he didn't win any races. Not one.
The next year we had the pencil car. It looked awesome, but still didn't win any races. Not even close.
This year we chose a wedge shape hoping that it would be a little more aerodynamic. But what Red really wanted was for it to be really fun... and so, he decided to do this with his car!
That's right... he wanted it to look like a wedge of cheese with a little mouse on top!
We don't have the greatest tools, but I cut it out with a little hand saw. Red sanded, drew the holes on and then helped a little with the drilling. Then he painted and cut out all the shapes for the mouse. I glued the bits and pieces on the lead sinker to make the mouse because the stuff we had to use is pretty nasty if you get it on your hands. Then Hubby and Red went to put the wheels on... and the nails bent. They ended up having to glue them in and, apparently, that's not such a good thing.
I wish I could tell you that his car won a race. That's all we were hoping for... just one race. But it didn't. It seems that we are the worst Pinewood Derby car builders in the world. He took dead last. Again.
Red was a pretty good sport, but he was SO disappointed. It was so hard to watch him try to smile as he told me the news (Baby Girl is sick again... bad fevers and her legs hurt... not sure what's going on, but I stayed home from the Derby with her). We're going to take him to Carl's Jr. to celebrate a job well done. He did a lot of the work on the car and I'm pleased with that. Besides, it looks AWESOME!
And even though this isn't about me, I can't help but feel a little pleased that we don't have to make another Pinewood Derby car ever again!

Winter Reprieve
It's 31 degrees in Idaho where my family is at right now.
It's 74 degrees in California where I am at right now.
Which is why they are leaving Idaho and coming here. It makes perfect sense to me! The same logic is what takes us there in the summer... it is 120 here and 80-90 there.
I thought it befitting to deck the blog out in snow white for their winter visit. It may be snowing at "home" but here they will be able to bask in the sun and play out doors. The kids can't wait and neither can I! One more day till the fun begins!
I am sorry I haven't visited blogs this last week. I probably won't this week either. I'll be back to blog reading the first week in March. Till then, have a wonderful day!

More and More and More Random

• First of all, thank you for all your kind words. Last week was hard. I wanted so badly to be in Idaho with my friend, but it just wasn't happening. I appreciated all of your thoughts and prayers.
• Blogger is being weird. It keeps rotating my photos when I download them into a post... it's turned on my computer, but when I bring it on here, it rotates them. So frustrating. Maybe when I publish it, they will rotate back... or not.
• I participated in a Valentine Swap and I got the best package! (again, sorry about the rotated picture...) I got a cute little bag, a notepad, some super yummy chocolate, awesome socks, truffles and a fun card from Earth Muffin! Thank you again for the package! So much fun! I also got a fun little valentine from Carrot Jello! I felt so loved!! Thanks Carrot!!
• My parents and my youngest brother will be here on Saturday!! I can't wait for them to come visit! We're going to Disneyland one day, San Diego another day, the beach another day, hiking on one or two days... they'll probably need a vacation from this vacation ;)
• I'm sick. I knew it would hit me. Yesterday we were visiting with friends and towards the end of the visit I started to feel blah. I felt bad because we were having a great time visiting, but I needed to get home. I don't have the flu that the kids had (thank goodness!) but I do have the head cold. So fun. I have a dream that one day all of my family will be in good health...
• We bought a carpet cleaner. I decided to try it out last night (even though I felt crummy). I read the instructions, put it all together and then decided on a small area to try it out on. I was so disappointed with the results. It left weird stripes in the carpet and didn't get the spots out. The water was dirty nasty, but the carpet still looked icky. BUT, then I got up this morning, looked at the carpet, looked at the cleaner and realized something very important.... I never turned the scrub brushes on. All the dirty water that came up from my carpet was just from me squirting cleaner on and then sucking it up. No scrubbing was involved... on one hand, I'm glad that the carpet cleaner probably works better than I thought. On the other hand, I feel like an idiot.
• The dejunking has been going rather well. We've got about 20 boxes of stuff in the hall that need to go to Good Will. I was going to do a yard sale, but I'm tired of this stuff in my house. So is Hubby. Which is why he bribed me to not do a yard sale and just get rid of the stuff. We filed our taxes. We'll pay for the STUPID termites with that money and then, whatever cash is left, is mine. It won't be much, but it will be a little bit...enough that I took the bribe and I'm gonna haul off the boxes as soon as I'm feeling better.
• Okay... enough random. I'm off to bed. Baby Girl is playing. So I'm going to rest. I hope you're all having a fabulous week. I will try to do some blog reading in the next few days, but I'm not making any promises... and then my family will be here... but I will try!

Enough
First of all... the blog is REALLY close to looking the way I want it. I wanted to change the belt to this little wavy line thing, but every time I mess with the widget HTML, Blogger gives me an error message. I'll try again today. **update...fixed it! FINALLY!!** I did finally get the backgrounds the way I wanted them. If you came here within the first few moments of my messing with it, then you would have seen yellows, oranges, teals, olive greens, and pinks. I'm sure that somewhere a rainbow was weeping.

Anyway, yesterday turned out to be... well, I don't know what yesterday was. One of my best friends from high school had a tragedy in her life. Her younger brother committed suicide. I knew this kid. Their family grew up just across the street from us. He was the typical little brother who did his best to bug us whenever he could. We, in turn, tormented him. As we grew up the teasing continued on both sides, but never in a mean way. I joked with him and he tried to get his big sister's friends to laugh. I remember seeing him at a gas station a couple of years ago and we visited for awhile. He was a good kid.

Fast forward to now... he was 28. A husband. A dad. Yesterday he found enough reasons to take his own life. And no one has any idea why.

I was pretty out of it yesterday. By the evening I just wanted something mind numbing to do. I played video games. But that wasn't enough to stop the wheels in my brain from spinning. Why would he do this? What was his thinking? Were things really so bad? Why? Why? Why? The truth is, I don't know his demons. I can't judge him or his actions. I don't know what he was dealing with. But I did have a thought that struck me...

I can't understand why anyone would take their own life because I can look around and find enough reasons to live. For whatever reason, he could no longer see those things. We have our troubles and I may whine and complain, but overall, the good overshadows my life in a really big way. And for that, I am truly grateful.

My heart goes out to this family. They have been amazing friends to me and my family through the years. I can't be there with them right now and that makes me crazy. I want to hug them and try to give comfort somehow. But I'm over 900 miles away. For now the only thing I can do is make a few phone calls, send a card with my love, pray for them, and hope that somehow, it's enough.

ACK!
Please ignore the horribleness of my blog right now... I was playing around with the template and now Blogger won't let me save any new changes!! GRRR... I promise to have it looking all wonderful and stuff as soon as possible...

Waging a War
I don't have much time... You see, I have been taken hostage by viruses and only have this small window of time to get my message out to the world wide web. Those sneaky little things are making my life a bit crazy at the moment.
The first wave came in the form of head colds. Mine is gone, Baby Girl hasn't been so lucky. It's moved from her head to her chest. The evil viruses keep her up all night by making her cough. They make her feel miserable and cranky. And sometimes, when they are feeling particularly vicious, they won't let her breathe.
The second wave has been worse than the first. They attacked Little Bug with all their might by giving him fevers, making him lethargic and causing the contents of his stomach to leave his body. He's taking his 3rd nap for today and we won't discuss the 3 a.m. wake up call that involved vigorous carpet scrubbing. Those vile little beasts!
To top it all off, they have forbidden me from blogging and are enforcing their edict by causing misery in my children. Can you imagine? The nerve! I am sneaking in a moment right now while Little Bug is snoozing and Baby Girl is involved in a movie. But it won't be long before the viruses catch me and drag me back to their dark lair.
This is the reason I haven't done much blog reading this week and I ... wait... what was that sound? They're coming! Hurry! Run! Save yourselves!! I promise to make contact as soon as I can....

Randomly Random

• I blinked. January disappeared. Do you know where it went?
• Hubby brought the laptop home again. I'm watching T.V. and blogging. I love this thing!
• I just saw a commercial for a new Disney movie. Do you remember the very first "Air Bud" movie? The one about the basketball playing dog? They now have one coming out called "Space Buddies"... why?!? The first one wasn't so bad, but come on. Isn't this franchise dead? They have one for soccer and football and hockey and... and... and...The only movie with more sequels is probably "The Land Before Time".
• The state of California has been in budget crisis for 89 days. They have decided to delay sending out tax refunds for at least 30 days. But the deficit is around 15 billion dollars. Yeah. Billion. And our lovely leaders can't seem to agree on anything. Technically they have till May to get the refunds out... but we'll see if it ever really happens.
• We have termites. We got an estimate today to see how much it will cost. Did you know that termites are very expensive bugs? Stupid little things. With the lack of tax money and the possible $1,000 to clean up the bugs... our vacation plans are now on hold. Stupid, stupid little things.
• I have been pondering some very deep questions and I need your help. When you make a root beer float, do you put your ice cream in first? Or the root beer? And what about strawberry shortcake? Strawberries or whipped cream first?
• Baby Girl has a head cold. I think I'm coming down with it too. Bah.

M'kay. I'm sure there will be more random randomness coming up, but I think that's it for now.

Simplify
I like to spend money. Hubby would testify to this. Some people eat when they're bored, I go shopping. Instead of taking Baby Girl to the park so that we can get out of the house, I take her to Kohls or Target. And, of course, we can't walk out empty handed. Then I bring the random item home and I have to find a place for it. Trouble is... usually there's not a spot for it. So, it gets set down somewhere till I can figure out what to do with it. Then the next item gets put on top of the first item... and so on and so on.

We have so much stuff that it's overwhelming. I look around and I'm surrounded by stacks of things. Piles of papers. Boxes of toys. Mountains of stuff everywhere I look. It makes me feel helpless and kind of lost. No one should feel that way in their own home. And yet, I do.

I was visiting with a friend the other day. She was telling me about how she and her husband are minimalists. They keep things very simple. They don't spend money on things they don't need. And it made me wonder about why I buy the things I buy... is it just on a whim? Or do the things in my life have purpose?

Then I was reading over at Morris Moments. You see, Julie and I have a few things in common. We both have three kids. We both love my play list (hee hee). AND we both HATE laundry!! I usually just sit and whine about it. But she DID something! She figured out exactly how many outfits each kid needed and then got rid of the rest of the clothes. SO AWESOME!! Now she doesn't have as much laundry to do.

And THEN... Yvonne at The Life and Travels of Me blogged about a cleaning system that she has used in the past and is starting up again. It breaks things down into daily, weekly, and monthly chores. It's a great system!

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I've been inspired. It's time to get rid of the "stuff". I don't need it. And I don't want it any more. The kids have too many toys. We (as a family) have too many clothes. My cupboards are filled with dishes, odds and ends containers, and small appliances that never get used.

Our neighborhood will have a garage sale... probably sometime in March. And so, I'm setting a goal. I'm going to have my home dejunked so that we can sell as much as possible on that day. That money will then go into the vacation fund so that we can maybe stay an extra day on our trip!

I've tried to dejunk before by doing one room at a time. It doesn't work for me. So, I think this time I will focus on items. For example, I'm going start with clothes. And when I get that done, then I'm going to hit the fabric and craft stuff that I don't use or need. Next up will be toys and then the kitchen. After that... the garage (involuntary shudder). I'm hoping to be ruthless. I have also created a list of questions I'm going to ask myself every time I go shopping.

• Do we NEED it? Not want... need.
• What are the pros for this item? What are the cons?
• Do I have a place where I can put it without having to rearrange anything?

Hopefully this will keep my spending at a minimum. We're hoping to get some of our big debts paid off this year. It has occurred to me that if I spend less, this may become a reality sooner. I know that's not a shocking discovery, but it's something I forget from time to time. And, like I said, I like to spend money.

So, let the dejunking begin. Let the money diet proceed. And let the overwhelming hopelessness disappear!