Ramblings: It's beginning to look alot like...

...we're moving. But we're not. Although at this point, most of our stuff is pretty much packed up in rubbermaid totes and bed frames are disassembled waiting to be dragged around, so maybe we'll just up and spontaneously relocate.  We could be your new neighbors! (That was supposed to make you all excited, not make you run and lock your front door and start soundproofing your exterior walls.)

We finally pulled the trigger on the carpet redo.  As big of a pain as it is and as much hassle as tomorrow is going to be, I think we'll be tons happier. Basically, the carpet we have now is like stained off-white astroturf-- so the new stuff should be 1000% better. (And yes Amy, I totally agree. Wood would be so much nicer and more durable, but for about 42 reasons we just went with carpet. One being that I'm pretty sure we may have some foundation issues and relaying carpet is so much easier than tearing out wood floors. So I'll smile and be happy with the carpet for now. And WHEN are you moving?)

I've digressed. But now I fear I will become one of those people that insists people take their shoes off even if they're only driving by and looking in our general direction. We're finally going to have nice carpet--LET'S KEEP IT THAT WAY, dangit! And the poor child that is the first to spill something or get hijacked Milk Duds smashed in the new carpet...well, he might as well pack his bag and start walking for the border. I'm sure he'll be able to start over with a nice life in Mexico.

I've used this as an excuse to pretty much deep clean and declutter all the rooms since the furniture and stuff is all pulled out and packed up. I'm proud to say we rounded up about 3 big garbage bags full of trash and junk from the upstairs.

I also had my eyes opened to the depth of Jeremy's book-buying addiction. These are full of---BOOKS. Political, biographies, history, law, you name it--we got it. Here's the kicker--they are almost all never-opened, crisp paged, still-smelling-like-the-bookstore books. I packed books for an hour. I need to plan a book buying intervention. And yah, we're storing them on the front porch (whatsup white trash) till they put in the office carpet so I can restock the shelves of our very own Barnes & Noble.

And Avery and Aidan helped me get the rest of the office ready Friday night. We spent forever going through old files and shredding years worth of unnecessary paperwork. Avery's a pro at the shredder now and even still has all 10 fingers. Aidan joined us after we'd been shredding for awhile and I got to watch the hysterical tutorial Avery gave him on how to use the shredder without "choppin' off all your fingers in there." Every now and then he'd holler at him, "No! Too close! The scissors are gonna get your fingers!" All in all, three garbage bags of shredded confetti.

If I was mean and mad at you, I'd go dump in on your front lawn and water it down with a hose. That'd be an awesome prank. But I won't. Because I don't know where that lady lives that felt the need to stop me in the middle of the grocery store last week when I was breaking up a fight between the boys in the car part of the cart (while the older two were fighting about what side of the cart they got to stand on), so she could tell me I was pulling "the wrong one" out to make sit in the front. She felt the need to EXTEND the length of the noisy and humiliating group scene by making sure I knew that Avery had been head-butting Aidan and that's why he was screaming.

But I had witnessed the whole thing and when I was yanking Aidan out of the car part, I told him if he'd sit in the front and be my helper that I would give him 4 m&m's when we got home. He happily agreed. When she came over and confronted me,  I just kinda stared at her for a minute because I couldn't really figure out why she needed to join our freak show. Then I nodded and said, "I know. The head-butter is usually my troublemaker. He'll get his time out later.  But this one's easier to bribe right now." And that must have freaked her out because she gave me a nasty look and stomped off with her stupid little mini-shopping cart. Hey random, judgmental lady in Kroger, I PICK MY BATTLES. Deal with it. Just be glad you don't have three years of my old shredded bills on your front lawn.

And speaking of WRONG, this is what my car thermometer has been looking like for the past couple of weeks. With the windy, windy, windchill, they say it's been feeling like 0. ZERO!? Are you serious, mutha nature? There's a reason why we suffer through the inferno called summer here in Texas. It's for the warm winters. Not so warm this year. Luckily it's supposed to warm up this week and I can shove the crazies in the backyard to play without worrying that they'll come in 20 minutes later with frozen or frostbitten appendages--especially considering their propensity to strip naked as part of their playtime.  Boys are so weird.

It was so cold last week (the kids were still out of school) that we had to find a variety of things indoors to keep us occupied and not at each others' throats. One day we went to the aquarium downtown and then tried to meet Jeremy for lunch since we were two streets away from his office. The aquarium was fun and a success--trying to meet up with Jeremy, not so much. He was on a never ending conference call and I was sitting with four hungry and cranky kids nearing naptime parked out in front of his building for 20 minutes with no end in sight.We gave up and crashed a chickfila on the way home. 

Kind of funny PURE CRAZY can be wrapped up so neatly inside of four cute packages, right? They LOVED watching all the sharks and kept trying to pose so it would look like the shark was about to eat them.

I'm off to time out Avery for the 30th time today (yah, I'm using it as a verb now. Gotta problem with that? I have several bags of minuscule bits of paper that might change your mind...). He peed right in the middle of the garage and then decided to start throwing random things in it. Boys are so gross. Where's a shark when you need one?

P.S. Alex's basketball team--still undefeated. Saturday's score 28-6. And if that wasn't enough to make Jeremy's Saturday awesome, he got to go watch the Cowboys win their playoff game with some clients from apparently awesome seats. I wouldn't know--I was still PACKING BOOKS.