Stinky Times!

We have had a skunk living under our house for a few months, maybe a year. We have never encountered it so we did not really do anything about it. It is easy to forget about creatures under your house when you are only presented with a smell from time to time that dissipated within a few hours. We have also seen an opossum taking advantage of the lack of screen on a few of our vents too. It has been on our to do list but somehow we never got around to it. That has now changed.

Since we have been home, my husband encountered it 3 times in less than a week so a mission was campaigned to take care of the skunk before our children were sprayed. He picked up a trap from his grandparents house and last night he and Erik set it.

Within a few hours Erik heard it go off and got his dad.

YUP, they caught it.

UHHH, now what?

Turns out Brad thought he would have a few days to figure out what to do when he caught the skunk not a few hours. We scoured online what to do and started trying to get hold of people we knew with trucks to relocate it.

BTW You are not allowed to have a pet skunk in the state of California although they are considered good pets. It is recommended to remover the scent sacs. Gee, I wonder why? (Useless information found on the web when trying to figure out what to do.)

In the morning, my husband called animal control and they sent someone out to us on a urgent call. (They came in the afternoon so obviously not that urgent.)

If you were wondering, skunks are not considered threatened or endangered in California so Animal Control shot(Yes, with a gun!) the skunk in our backyard which causes the muscles in a certain area to relax and this is now causing our house to stink, especially in the bathroom. I am unable to blame any of the males members that currently reside here although they stink it up frequently too.

Just for the record, I never laid any claim on the skunk however my kids are another story...

Erik had preference to relocating it.

Matthew: "Animal control is not very nice since they shot our skunk."

ADD/Mom Conversations

My husband told me today (and not for the first time either) that I am going to give him ADD since he can not follow me when I hold multiple conversations with him at the same time. I did not even notice until he pointed it out since I do this with my friends all the time. How else are moms supposed to communicate?

Here is how it goes:
Mom1-"Did you hear that so and so is having a baby? No, baby don't eat that off the ground. Ugh! He thinks he can eat anything, no matter what!"
Mom 2- No, I didn't. I bet she is excited! Thats okay mine does it all the time, too.
Mom1-"Yeah she can't wait! I know but I have preference to him not eating off the ground especially at Target. Oh did you know Target is having a sale on diapers?"
Mom 2-"How long have they been trying for? Eww! Mine completely grossed me out the other day when she picked something off the street and put it in her mouth before I could stop her. How good of a sale?"

and so it goes on while 4+ children are running around clammering for our attention as well as whatever other distractions there are pets, strollers, cashiers just to name a few. Mind you I did not put the actions in the dialog since that would make the post very long!

BTW-We also text this way which does cause confusion at times but for the most part is quite easy to understand unless you are a guy and then we might give you ADD since we can not seem to stay on the same topic!

My Other

I have been realizing that I do not praise my Other enough. He helps out significantly around the house especially when he can tell I am getting grumpy.

Now, I know you are saying who her NEVER!

Try not to spit your coffee (soda, for you Randi) at the computer from laughing so hard!

Lets just recap the day as one of those days and then right after we came home and I was deciding what to make for dinner since what was planned (Yes, I plan my meals out and for a month at a time too!) would not work and the back up plan was eaten the night before....

THE POWER WENT OUT!!

Great! I was deciding whether or not to make a chef salad since I din't really want to chop a bunch of stuff up, and I was hearing these whining noises about what else we were going to have for dinner because we couldn't just have salad and... Let me tell you again if you didn't catch it the first time...

THE POWER WENT OUT!!

Well, now we are definitely having chef salad since I now do not have a microwave, oven, stove or anything else that needs electricity. (For the record my stove and oven are gas but it takes electricity to light them and I am sure not volunteering to stick my hand down there to light it!)

Now I can go on for days about how annoying 4 boys are when they find out that something that they always rely on is no longer working. The two oldest had to flip the lights switches about 10 times each to make sure that indeed the lights were not working and not just 1 light switch because that would only be mildly annoying but every light switch in the ENTIRE house or at least they would have if I didn't stop them after the 4th one. Then the bazillion questions started and this was after Daddy showed them a cool way to get the flashlight to work even though we only had 1 D battery instead of the two we needed. (Yes, D batteries are going on the shopping list.) He took a C battery and some quarters and VIOLA we had light! Enough light to chop vegetables at least. Then we had to have a safety talk about fire since after we lit a few candles. (The free candles from Target came in handy tonight!) During this time Taggy decided the best place to be was in my arms (Really are you surprised?) and was not happy that I set him on the counter beside me but settled for that when he found out his other option was to be placed back on the ground. The nice part was Jeremiah and Matthew now wanted to be right by me and helped out by washing the salad fixings until there was no more items to be washed and then Matthew grabbed my butcher knife to help me finish cutting up the celery. Then we had to have another safety talk. (Side note we had not been home for even half an hour by this point.)

Speed forward... After I finished assembling dinner and was ready to bring it to the table, the Power came back on! Do not get me wrong I was very grateful for it because I would not have been able to eat dinner if it did not, (I have this weird thing about having to see the food I put in my mouth.) but I was a little frustrated I could not use the food processor to make my job of chopping a little easier.

Speed forward... Our family is now eating dinner and we have made rules about no extra bodily noises at the table (You should have seen that one coming after all we do have 4 boys!) and tonight we had to include laughing. Not the normal giggle or chuckle or even laugh but the food coming out of your mouth because you are hysterically laughing about something mildly amusing your dad says. (He gets it from me since I do this especially when I am tired so I know I shouldn't complain but EWWW!)

Speed forward... The whole point of the story, I know you are thinking FINALLY but I did speed through quite a bit of it so Brad sent me out of the house to have some time to myself to regroup while he put the boys to bed. The hardest part of the day he went ahead and took care of so I could get a break for a bit. I came back much more relaxed especially since my house wass quiet and reasonably picked up or maybe it was the chocolate chip cookies I bought YUMMY either way wasn't it sweet!

Thanks Honey, one of the many reason why I LOVE YOU!

Couponing

I have a new hobby that I have not blogged about but have talked about many times. I am a couponer and I love it so I will probably be posting quite a bit more on some of the deals I am able to find. I am not extreme by any stretch of the imagination. For all of those of you who caught the "Extreme Couponing" episode on TLC, I am not anywhere close to that. I have purchased quite a few really good deals one of them being last night. I also was able to buy about 50lbs of hamburger meat for $51. I saved so much a manger had to come by and override the register. Also, I was able to get 6 12packs of soda for $10 plus CRV and received a snickers and a small bag of peanut butter cups for free. I am not a huge soda person but my husband is. Unfortunately, I was not able to do much more than that since the store was wiped out but I received rain checks and plan to go back! Couponing has allowed us to budget our food and household items (cleaning products, hygiene items plus diapers and wipes) for our family of six for consistently under $300 usually $250 a month and that is with stocking my freezer to the bursting point and donating items to people in need. I know if I was more consistent I could lower that amount but there is a trade off between time and money. Also, I easily reach burnout since our family already seems to be so busy. I treat it as a hobby and my husband will tell you I am addicted to saving (or the endorphin rush it brings!) but then I also noticed he does not complain when I buy him products he enjoys especially the ones that were previously out of our budget!
On a side note, from the same blogs I use to coupon, I went to Old Navy last night and scored 3 pairs of jeans/pants for me for under $5.00 each, a shirt for $1.57, a fleece pull over for Jeremiah for $2.97, fleece hats for the kids for $0.57, and more!! My couponing habits are definitely here to stay!!

We are Back!

Our vacation in Maryland was wonderful mostly due to the awesome hospitality my brother and sister-in-law extended to our family. We took trips to D.C. My husband and I were able to go out to dinner at a tasty Indian food restaurant childless. The holidays were fun even New Years which we normally do not really celebrate. My brother cooked 3 different kinds of New Years food all of which were delicious. I cannot begin to describe all the experiences my family was able to enjoy. I will try to do a more detailed post later but since we arrived home we have been jam packed with obligations. It seems that quite a few things were pushed off to be completed when we came back so now my husband and I are rushing around playing catch up. Even now I am checking the clock to make sure I get to my next appointment on time so I am off!

"Leaving on a Jet Plane"

We are flying out today. As usual I did not get done nearly the stuff I wanted to. I am sleep deprived and praying that the plane trip goes well. I have art supplies, games (electronic, card and travel), blankies, tags, snacks  water bottles to fill after we get through security all packed and I will still inevitably forget something. Hopefully, security will go fast and we will not be on the news because my children decided to say something that the guards took as a threat. I can already see it happening. My oldest will be joking with number 2 and they will make some inappropriate comment about being a hostage or a terrorist or whatever. They will think themselves the funniest boys on the block until their mother screams at them because now they are being escorted to the holding area. Now you know one of the reasons why I am sleep deficient and one of many nightmares that make me wake up suddenly. If we miraculously make it through security, and survive cooped up on a airplane for over 7 hours with four young boys, are able to drive over an hour and a half in the middle of the night to my brother's house, we should have an awesome time. I say should because have you ever been in close quarters with 4 little boys for an extended period of time? I am not too worried about the oldest, but number 2 gets grouchy when he is tired. Number 3 does well if he gets a fair amount of attention. If he does not get that positive attention, he is one of those lovely children that will then get the attention anyway he can. Plus, he is my wanderer. I can see it now; we will miss our flight because he has meandered off to another gate and was so fascinated by watching the plane traffic. He will not notice his parents frantically searching the airport for him. Then there is Taggy. Now as long as he has a tag, is in eyesight of Mommy (or sometimes Daddy now) he should be fine. (Once again, the dreaded should statement.) However, if he decides that he has to be held constantly and have his favorite toy in just a certain way or he will cry endlessly like we are horrible parents for not submitting to his baby authority. He will cry in such a pitiful manner that everyone else will think we are terrible parents who beat him mercilessly or just wonder what we were thinking having all these boys and then choosing to take them on a airplane when we cannot control them even a little bit. ;-P As you can tell, I am not stressing not one little bit. I could go on and on about all the scenarios that have already flashed though my mind and given enough time I will definitely come up with quite a few more scenarios and something tells me none of them will come close to the reality. Until I can update you on what actually happened please, please, I beg of you please keep us in your prayers!!

Balls!

Let me set the stage for you: My oldest son and I are at Target. We are out quickly couponing before we leave tomorrow. I am looking for the Travel Hungry Hippos game, and the candles in the Christmas section. I am not finding either but the search continues.
All of sudden, quite loudly, I hear "Wow! Look at those balls! I don't think I have ever seen balls that big before." I am now quickly scanning to see what he could be talking about. I have two women looking at me. Continuing to scan a bit more frantically, (Let me remind you, Christmas section, not Sporting goods, not toys, Christmas Section) I really could not figure out what he was talking about.
Finally what felt like 10 years later, he points and says, "See, they are huge balls!"
OH, the ornaments, the really big looking ball ornaments.
The ladies are trying not to show any emotions.
I quickly validate his statement before he says anything else, "Oh, those Christmas ornaments are big."
As I am getting the looks, I question out loud, "Was I the only one ... I was pretty sure he had no idea but..."
The younger of the two women laughing quite loudly now replied, "Your face was probably what was the funniest."
It more than likely was since I panicked. I knew that he had no idea what he was innocently implying but there was no way I could tell other people that. Instead of not worrying about what others thought, I did the exact oppisite of what the Lord tells us to do and worried about what the world thought. I would like to say lesson learned but I am a slow learner. Look at my blog post about "Do not Leave Your Laptop Unattended" if you do not believe me. Still it is a little funny to tell other adults when the children are in another room.