insta-friday 1.3.2014

Can you believe it’s already the first Friday of 2014?!? 2014! It’s crazy.

Here are a few of the pictures I’ve snapped with my phone over the last week.

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Can I tell you how much I love Famous Footwear? I loooove Famous Footwear. Like I want to sit in a tree with them.

The Man-Child needed/wanted some new shoes. The boy is seriously the roughest person on shoes ever. So he and I headed over to Famous Footwear to find some shoes for him. It wasn’t difficult since he already knew what he wanted. I pulled out my trusty little Famous Footwear app and realized I had a $20 reward certificate and they had a $10 coupon on their app. I can handle saving $30 on a $50 pair of Vans.

If you don’t have their app…get it!

And no they don’t pay me to say that…but they should!

Well I guess they kind of do with all the money they save me on shoes!

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The girlies wanted sparkly finger nails and I gave them very sparkly finger and toe nails!

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We have enjoyed some pretty amazing sunsets lately.

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We spent Sunday evening watching movies. I love, love, love that Hammie will still climb up on my lap and cuddle.

Such a sweet boy.

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And speaking of Hammie…

He finally had his last physical therapy appointment. It has been a really long 5 months and it’s nice to be done with all the mess with his leg.

He still has a little bit of a limpy run with that leg, but it hasn’t slowed him down in the slightest.

To get the full impact of this broken leg saga you have to go back to the beginning of the Chaos story. The leg he broke was the same one that had so many issues when he was little and had so many years of therapy already. The limpy is just another bump in the road that will be overcome in time. This boy is a serious miracle child!

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New Years Eve was spent with my Family. We had a great spread of food so it wasn’t a problem to stay awake and welcome in the New Year.

All the drinks from QT might have helped also…

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Well not all of us were together for New Years Eve. The Man-Child and Einstein went to the New Year Eve Dance with Cousin Emma. Aubrey stayed home with the rest of us and played games.

It’s nice to finally have cousins that are the same age as the kids living so close to us.

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On January 1st Christmas was cleaned up. I am usually ready to take the Christmas tree down the day after Christmas, but this year it took a little while longer to get the job done.

Plus my Christmas decorations had outgrown our totes and we had to add a new one this year. It drives me crazy that it’s red with a green lid and not green with a red lid… OCD much?

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By the time Christmas was cleaned up it was time for dinner and thankfully crappy pizzas hit the spot.

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I was pretty pathetic on my reading last year and this year I vow to get my reading mojo back.

This is the first book of the year…with a goal of reading 50.

I better get busy reading.

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Rainbow Loom…

Need I say more?

The girlies are getting really good and fast at cranking these bracelets out. I’m not quite sure I need 7 rubber band bracelets…and how long do they really expect me to keep wearing them?!?

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Find me on Instagram @embracethechaos

SAHM?

My favorite part of being a SAHM is definitely the Mom part, but the stay-at-home part comes in a real close second.

This week has been the perfect storm of crazy that has made the stay-at-home part a rare commodity.

Monday morning started with dropping Big Daddy off at a doctor’s office to have a little surgery to remove some skin cancer from his cheek. The surgery was going to take a few hours so I left him there and went home.

I was home long enough to pick Einstein up for an appointment at the orthodontist. He had a broken bracket and while we were there getting it fixed the doctor was nice enough to take care of an appointment that was coming up next week...and “accidently” popped his last baby tooth out. Which was perfect because that morning I had pulled one of Ham’s teeth, so at least we were consolidating trips for the Tooth Fairie.

I had just got back home and Big Daddy called to say he was done. What?!? The surgery was supposed to be a few hours. I hope that means good news. I drove back and pick him up and the bandage wasn’t as big as I expected.

He did show me pictures of the surgery site and the stitches. You’re Welcome for not sharing with you…So gross.

I got him home and comfortable and resting.

Then I took the kidlets shoe shopping…yep all 5 of them.

I was home for a short time and it was time to take the Babies to the elementary school for Meet the Teacher/Curriculum Night (really dumb idea to combine both things in one night).

We started at Ham’s classroom and it wasn’t really Meet the Teacher, because she has taught all five kidlets. Ham is soooo excited to be in her class.

Then we went to LaLa’s classroom and it was another familiar face since she had been Roo’s teacher just a couple of years ago.

Then we made a stop to visit the speech teacher. She has been working with LaLa for a few years and now gets to have both of them. I wonder if they get to go at the same time? That would be awesome.

I dropped the babies off at home and picked Einstein up for his Meet the Teacher, which is really Meet the Teachers, since he has a bunch of them. And since we go to each classroom, just like his schedule, we were there for.E.V.E.R.

And that was just Monday…

Tuesday was a little more calm.

The Man-Child had an appointment to get his stitches removed.

(yes that is the same wrist I just accidently took the bottom picture upside down)

And finally got his heavy plaster cast replaced with a smaller version.

Of course he wanted to show his school spirit with his cast.

Then later that afternoon Roo had her Meet the Teacher at the middle school. Thankfully we were able to walk over there and I didn't have get back in my subooboo.

After that it was time for the Man-Child’s Meet the Teachers at the high school. It still makes my stomach hurt to type “high school”.

We had his schedule and off we went to find all his classrooms.

It was by far the longest Meet the Teacher of all of the kidlets.

Finally my Tuesday was over.

And you know how my Wednesday morning was like.

The kidlet pick-up routine starts by picking Ham up. Then a couple hours later it’s time to pick up the Man-Child. Then off to pick-up LaLa. Wait for Roo to get home. Then go pick up Einstein.

And spend the whole afternoon in situations that look like this:

Thursday looked a lot like Wednesday…get everyone to school, instead of driving Roo I drove Einstein (stupid bus drivers), spend the morning at the hospital, leave in time to get Ham and then continue the pick-up routine, then add a stop at the Man-Child’s doctor to get a note so he can participate in his PE class.

I look forward to being a SAHM again instead of a SITCM (stay in the car Mom).

Maybe I Am Famous

I think that whenever someone has a bad customer service experience or retail experience they tell as many people as possible, but I don’t think you hear about good experiences nearly as often. Well I’m going to be different. I want to tell you an experience I had:

Since we start school in the middle of summer, there isn’t really a need for new school clothes, but there is a need for new school shoes. There are some things that I think you get what you pay for and shoes are one of them. I don’t like cheap shoes that fall apart. So I don’t mind buying “good” shoes (yes, there are times I associate brand names with good). We headed to our local Famous Footwear to find shoes for everyone. As usual, they had their buy one get one 1/2 off sale. After finding shoes for the 5 kidlets our total came to $161.90. Not bad considering that we had a couple of pairs of Vans and a few pairs of Chucks. We also left that day with a rain check for the “get one 1/2 off” pair of shoes. I was planning on maybe getting a pair of shoes for Momma. Fast forward almost 2 months and believe it or not, Big J needed new shoes for Church. So again we headed to Famous Footwear for our “1/2 off” pair of shoes. Don’t judge, but I let him wear Vans to Church. They are all black and he only uses them for Church. When we got there that evening the shoes that he wanted were on sale (yippee) but the size he needed were sold out (bummer). The sales clerk (her name is Katie) said they could just ship the shoes to our home for free. So he would have to go a few more Sundays with tight shoes. Oh well. Then when she rang up the new shoes the price came to…wait for it… a refund of $8.23. What the what? Since some of the shoes that we had purchased earlier had gone on sale we were refunded the difference in price. So we ended up with 6 pairs of shoes for $153.67, or about $25 per pair of shoes. Not bad for Vans and Converse.

So Thank You Famous Footwear for your great customer service. And they have a pretty good reward program too.

And again I will add my little note…I wasn’t paid for my opinion. I am more than happy to tell people what I think for free, but if someone wants to pay me that would be awesome.