I'm feeling crafty

Fall always brings me to a strange place.  I feel the icy fingers of depression starting to pull at me, I have a hard time sleeping with the anxiety that accompanies the depression and thus have a really hard time getting out of bed.  I start craving carbs and more wine and chocolate.  I start looking forward to Halloween, which is one of my favorite holidays (maybe the creepy darkness matches my mood?), and Thanksgiving (a carby, drinking holiday?).  I live in abject fear of Christmas, seven kids = a budget-busting, stress-filled month.  I'll post later about my goal of trying to enjoy Christmas this year and changing the way I mentally and actually handle the gifting situation. 

Fall seems to intensify my obsessive-compulsive, controlling tendencies.  Poor family.  I'm just plain crabby.  Bitchy.  Moody.  Intolerant.  Inpatient.  It's not really a good time to touch me...seriously.  I can handle the little ones, in fact I sort of crave their affection, it's simple and asks nothing of me. 

Before this post turns into a more major (I know) downer I will shift to some of my ideas for coping with the afore-mentioned situation.  Crafts?  Let's see...keeps my hands busy, keeps my brain busy, has a positive result (!?), and it's an alone thing, which I really like.  Baking?  I do have that shiny red mixer sitting on my counter top waiting for me.   Also keeps my hands and brain busy and results in a happy family.  All good.  Reading?  Yeah right.  All I have to do is sit down and even appear to be relaxing and I am accosted by well-meaning hordes of people (of all sizes and ages).  Plus my kindle broke on our road-trip, which I have been too depressed about to even address.  Gah.

So...I have decided that my first crafting project will be this...

How to make bunting  

I love bunting.  How cute would this be hanging in Grace's window...purple, green, and blue.  Or hanging in Jack's room in patterns of plaid and stripes.  Or in Halloween prints, or over the Thanksgiving dinner table, or strung over the Christmas tree?  How about in Sun Devil colors for Liv's dorm room!  It's creative and cheap and fast.  I like it.  Now I just have to dust off my sewing machine, go to the fabric store, go the the stationary store, find an uncluttered spot in my house, and find the time.

First Day Drama

Gracie and Jack started school on Wednesday.  Grace for a full day and Jack just for an hour, I think he spent more time deciding what to wear than he spent at school.  He wouldn't allow a first day of school picture so I have no photographic proof, but he looked good.  This morning was his 2nd official school day and he was completely exhausted.  He is already tired, lots of sighing and staring off into space before it was time to go.  Luckily Samantha will be able to drop him off at school most mornings as it is on the way to her nanny job!  Yay!  And yay for all the poor people who will have less opportunity to get a viewing of me in my bad morning hair, no make-uped, wearing my jammies and Uggs, drop offs.  I'm sure Jack is relieved as well, though he is too kind to say so.  Back on the ADHD meds for him next week, maybe a little less sighing and staring and more focus will ensue.  I helped him out with his first essay last night and it was highly apparent that he still needs the Vyvanse.  Without it, he does his homework like someone who had three glasses of wine and their favorite song is playing in the background, loopy and highly distracted. 

I'm so FREAKING READY.

Grace was completely ready with her outfit, she has known what she would wear for a month at least.  Her backpack has been packed for a long time and I'm sure she would have packed her lunch weeks ago if it wouldn't have been lethal to do so.  I wish I could transfer a little of Grace's obsessive compulsive tendencies to Jack, they would both benefit.  We all would.

Grace was thrown for a little bit of a dramatic loop on that first day.  She had a substitute teacher and we were informed that her assigned teacher had decided to take a year's leave of absence at the last minute.  I tried to fish around for some gossip about what might be the reason but they were very tight-lipped.  Hopefully, nothing too serious, maybe she just felt that if she had to deal with even one more child she might jump off a bridge, not that I know what that feels like.

Haters

Today we went up to school to find out which lucky teacher will be Grace's third grade teacher this year.  Ever since we found out that her kindergarten teacher switched to third grade this year Grace has been chanting "not Ms. Sch******l, not Ms. Sch*****l" under her breath like that Brick kid in The Middle.  Which in my world meant that there was no chance in hell that she was getting any teacher other than Ms. S.  It's kismet baby.    In saying all this, what I am NOT saying is that Ms S. is anything other than completely lovely.  Truly.  In Grace's head it's really that she is being taught third grade, which she has stated recently is really the first "cool" grade, by her kindergarten teacher!  The horror.  It's probably like getting a call that you have won a fabulous prize only to find out that you have won a season ski pass...and you DON"T SKI.  (not that I am still bitter about that)  First there is excitement and then there is sadness, followed by anger and, apparently, resentment.

Anyhoo, the hater part is that I couldn't help but notice that every kid staring at that list hanging on the door was hatin' on some other poor, not-present kid, with statements like "NOOOO, not Eric, he pooped his pants in 1st grade!" or NOOO, not Bill!  He totally has ADHD!"  or NOOO, not Sookie, she likes Bill and totally uses Hannah Montana quotes CONSTANTLY to impress him."  That last one was actually real, and, yes, I have changed the names to protect the innocent.  And, by the way, Sookie should totally like Eric, he's way hotter.  But, I digress.

And I'm mad that True Blood isn't on this week.  Why are we skipping for Labor Day??  That's so lame. Still disgressing... Hope your heel heals soon, Liv.  I love you!

My Latest Phobia

Okay, so I keep hearing about how bedbugs are the latest plague.  I gave this a bit of thought whilst we are on our road trip, inspecting sheets and pillows for any sign of the little blood suckers.  I felt pretty good about the fact that I saw no obvious signs of bedbug (is this one word or two?  I'll just switch back and forth to be half right) activity, I'm not a hotel room fan by any means and am always semi-grossed out by the idea of a hotel room and what activities may or may not occur there.  But bedbugs are in a whole other realm of grossness.  Apparently they are nearly impossible to get rid of, in fact, even moving doesn't work because they just hitch a ride to your new abode and continue to terrorize.  Ugh.

After the fact, I am doing some blog surfing and come across the fact that there is actually a Bed Bug Registry.  This is good, except when you find that one of the hotels you stayed in on your trip had a bed bug report in this very registry.  Namely the Flamingo Hilton.  Figures.  It only had one or two reports, not a lot for such an enormous hotel, but enough to cause me to FREAK OUT.  Crap.  We are getting ready to paint our bedroom so this gives me a reason to tear everything apart looking for the aforementioned signs. 

I looked up all the other hotels we stayed at and am pleased to announce that none of them had any reports attached.  My dilemma now is that Mike stays at a lot of hotels on his work trips, some not so nice.  Now I will have to have him check every hotel he is even thinking about checking into on the BBR to make sure he isn't bringing home any more boarders than we already have.  Mot to mention than now I have another thing to think about at 3:00 in the morning, along with motorcycle accidents, alcohol poisoning, job loss, teen pregnancy, cellulite, bills, blah, blah, blah.

Here's the scarier part...if you pop in Seattle as a location it throws back a lot of hotels with bed bug reports, including the Arctic and the Edgewater.  Gah.  It's just a matter of time.

Happy Birthday Me!

 My life is now complete. 

Other than playing with my new toy, I am also having fun playing with Mr. Trevor...

Trevor and Kourtnie are leaving on Tuesday, Sam starts her new job on Wednesday, and Drew moves out on Wednesday.  School starts in a week and a half and I add a few more hours to my schedule the following week.  This summer went by so fast but I'm looking forward to the fall, mostly because I am anxious to see Liv.  I miss you!!

On the other side...

Cutest Sun Devil ever.  We miss you already Liv!

Grossest motel room ever...somewhere called Willows, California...sounds way prettier than it was.

Me and Liv in her new home away from home.  :-(

We saw a lot of cacti.  They are pokey.

We left Liv on Monday the 16th, and headed to Vegas to meet Mike and Jack.  Sam flew home after a night in Sin City with Momma...woohoo.  Not the way she expected to see Vegas for the first time, I'm sure.  She gambled and lost a grand total on $2.00 in a penny slot machine.  I lost $20 in the dollar slots and it took the same amount of time.

Gracie and Jack didn't like Vegas.  Me neither.

Jack taking a beating from Rocky at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas

Then the gorgeous St. George Temple.  St. George was hot, we had the bestest frozen custard in the world at Nielsen's Custard.  Nice pic, Jack. 

Next it was crazy beautiful Zion where we literally had to kick the squirrels to keep them away from us.  Damn tourists.  We had a picnic in the park next to the lovely Virgin River.  The most beautiful place in the world, I need to go back and spend more time hiking this incredibleness.

I'm so glad we took the opportunity to travel and see Utah, it helped to take my mind of how sad I was to leave Liv behind.

Me and Mike at Ruby's in Bryce Canyon.

These rock formations in Bryce Canyon are called hoodoos, it's like being on another planet.  Really eerily beautiful and the kids learned some things about geological history.

Next stop was Park City, Utah.  Totally upscale but rustic ski town.  We rode the luge slide and the alpine coaster.  Unfortunately the zip line was closed to anyone under 100 lbs due to wind, Jack really wanted to go on that.  I made myself go on the ski lift, 40 feet above ground, and I'm so glad cuz it was beautiful up there.

We spent two nights right there in the village in a cute condo with a loft for the kids.  We then drove to Salt Lake City with a quick stop in Provo....

The mother of all temples in Salt Lake.  I really wanted to sneak inside but I'm pretty sure I would burst into flames.

Inappropriate but funny.

Spent my birthday in Boise, which is surprisingly charming.  Dinner at PF Changs, followed by a power outage at the hotel.  It was over 100 degrees so our room got a little stuffy.

Spent Sunday driving home from Boise.  It only took about 7 hours, less then we thought.  It's so good to sleep in my own bed and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to complain about Seattle weather for a while.  We loved our trip though, we saw so many amazing, beautiful things.  Next year Yellowstone.

I'm counting the weeks until Liv comes home...October 8th can't come fast enough.  I'm not so sure I'm going to get used to this.  It's just very weird.

T minus 7

7 days from today.  The contents of Liv's room are stacked in the corner ready to go.  Being positive, looking forward to vacation time and seeing Gammy and Rhonda.