This is a "25 Random Things About Me" meme I posted on my Facebook......

1. I know this sounds corny but, from the moment I first laid eyes on my husband I knew we were soul mates (you can ask Barbara….she was there).

2. I feel safest when my entire family is home and tucked in bed…..I sleep soundly knowing everyone is safe.

3. While some people complain about their mother-in-laws….I often feel like I missed out on something great. Unfortunately my mother-in-law passed away early in our relationship. She was a wonderful woman and I miss what could have been.

4. Even though I had my first child soon after my 21^st birthday, I was still able to do many of the things people do before they settle down.

5. I have driven across the United States, driven down the east coast (several times), flown across the country more times than I can remember and visited 26 of the 50 states.

6. Of my four children, 2 of them were completely natural births…..if I had to choose between medicated birth and natural birth….natural birth wins hands down!

7. I have had the same job for almost 20 years now! It has evolved over the years to accommodate motherhood and my need to be home with the kids. I am lucky to only have to work a few nights a week….

8. I love to knit (yes Mary, I will teach you…..next time you are in town, let me know and I’ll get out some sticks and string!). I learned when I was 8 (almost 30 years ago) but have only been knitting steadily for 15 years.

9. I am a coupon user……to the point that my husband calls it a sport. I very rarely pay full price for anything and often (while combining coupons and sales) get things for FREE! Some things I never pay cash for? Toothpaste, shampoo (all hair stuff actually), razors, shave cream, deodorant, dish soap, noodles, rice, pasta, stuffing mix, frozen veggies and many more items that escape my memory right now.

10. Animals don’t like me…..cat’s tend to avoid me and dogs bark at me. But my daughter on the other hand has a way with animals. Deer, goats, sheep….they are drawn to her. While other children tend to scare off these types of animals at petting zoos my daughter quickly finds herself surrounded by them!

11. I love Neil Diamond…..really, really.

12. For someone who was born and raised in the Northeast I sure do hate the cold and snow!

13. Someday I hope to move to somewhere warmer (oh who am I kidding….I will be moving to Arizona at some point….I’m just not quite ready yet though….)

14. My friend Barbara and I have been best buds for 27 years (right Barbara?…..I was in 6^th grade…..)… The 2500 miles between us makes me sad sometimes!

15. The simple things in life make me happy……children’s laughter, the smell of a clean baby, high school football games, my husband’s smile…..the sunshine, green grass…

16. The only person I really talk to on the phone is my sister Brenda…we can talk for hours and hours everyday and still never run out of things to talk about. If for some crazy reason we miss a day…like a busy Sunday with the kids…it nags at me (“must call Bren, need to talk to Bren”).

17. I love football and baseball. The Pats and Sox….and of course the teams my sons play for (Nate will be starting freshman football this summer!!)

18. Even though I have an “almost 17” year old…it’s my “almost 14” year old that makes me feel old. I can’t believe he will be starting high school in September! That will make 2 in high school, one in middle school and one in elementary school……eeks!

19. I am not your stereotypical woman….I dislike shopping, only going to the mall if I HAVE to.

20. I love to read but have to limit myself. I tend to get so absorbed in my book I lose track of what is going on around me. The summer I was pregnant with Abby I read 32 books….

21. I recently renewed my driver’s license….I now have a “corrective lenses” restriction. I knew it was coming…..I thought it wouldn’t bother me but for some strange reason it does.

22. I have a knack for remembering dates and phone numbers……and birthdays and peoples ages (and because of the type of work I am in….fax numbers, social security numbers, pay rates etc.)…but for some reason I can’t remember what year I got married (September 28^th)!

23. I see little bits of myself in my children. Unfortunately it’s not all “good bits”…sometimes it’s the “not so good bits”….like, all of my children have the same ugly big toe that I have (who would have thought that what your big toe looked like was a hereditary trait?!)

24. It has taken me forever to compile this list…..I tend to be indecisive, often deleting this and adding that etc….

25. I have the best family in the entire world!!

He was going to wait until he was 30 to tell me.....

Some surprising information has come to light recently and I need to share it. Usually something like this I would share, right away, with my dear husband.....but, in this case...waiting until Jamie is 30 seems pretty reasonable. What I am about to tell you all, dear readers, would absolutely freak my husband out (believe it or not, he (the one who has no room to talk) is not very understanding of teenage antics).

Remember Jamie's broken arm? How he broke it while skateboarding? While in the Burger King parking lot? Well.....none of that is true! It's all a crock of bull..........

He and his friend, the one that drives the red pick-up truck, were hanging out in the high school/middle school parking lot (along with about 30 other kids........in this town that is not suspect, bad or unusual...we are a small town and the kids for the most part get along great...). For some stupid teenage reason Jamie decided to lie on the hood of the truck while his friend drove around! Well his friend stopped suddenly......and Jamie started sliding off the hood and instinct told him to put his hands down and break his fall. He hit his head (pretty severely....wish I had known the truth, I would have had the doctors examine this a little more thoroughly) and was knocked out for a second..... He came to, jumped up and claimed he was fine. He realized pretty quickly he was not, in fact, fine when the 30 or so onlookers were looking at him funny. He glanced down and saw the broken arm....... His friend drove him home (I thought it was funny the friend didn't stick around.....Apparently Jamie kicked him out because he wanted to tell me the truth and Jamie wanted to give me a line of bull....).

The rest of the story is the same....we rushed to the hospital....blah, blah, blah.

Honestly I am not surprised. I wasn't totally convinced he was telling me the truth from the get go. You know how you can just tell when your kid is lying? I even asked him several times if he was fooling around with the truck......maybe holding on to the bumper while on the skateboard. I think this has been weighing on Jamie's mind lately because he seemed a little bit relieved when he told me. I think what they did was stupid and he should not have lied...but, in light of some personal things he is going through right now, I am not going to punish him. I guarantee he will never do something like that again....he is definitely someone who "learns his lesson" with consequences to his actions (very rare indeed...especially for an impulsive teen). And since he was absolutely miserable with the broken arm....I hardly think he would risk breaking it (or worse....) again!

Ah, that feels better....I needed to get that off my chest (and don't worry...my husband doesn't even know how to turn the computer on never mind check my blog!)

Oh No!!!

I think I accidentally deleted my Facebook.......oh crap...... My friend Louise said, "You must have committed Facebook suicide".

I think I might cry, for real.

I have an email into the wonderful people who run Facebook.....hopefully they can get me back....

I am going to lie down now.

I feel so exposed!

This is the first time in the history of me and the internet that I have posted a recent picture of myself. There are 2 other pictures on my Facebook (and Myspace) of me, one from my high school graduation (20 years ago) and one of me pregnant with my first child (17 years ago).....

I think I need to lie down...I am feeling a little anxious...

Kids say the darndest things!

Between my sister and I (my younger sister) we have 8 children. She has 4 daughters and I have 3 sons and a daughter. In order of their arrival....they are 16, 13, 10, 8, 5, 5, 2, 4 months old. It's been a long time so I can't really remember the cute things the boys have said, but lately, the girls, they have been a hoot!

The other morning Breanne (8) woke up a little late and had to jump out of bed and rush to get ready for school. She says to my sister, "Mom, I am a little disney...I think I got up too fast". My sister, the woman who has 4 children and a bladder to prove it, almost peed her pants she was laughing so hard. Of course she nicely corrected her and told her she felt dizzy....not disney.

On or around the same day one of her other daughters, Kaylee (2) was watching a PBS show (Word World). My sis was in the kitchen cleaning (what else is new?) when Kaylee came in and said, "I am not afraid of the yogurt". My sister questioned, "Huh?" and Kaylee repeated, "I am not afraid of the yogurt". Bren just laughed and said, "me either, yogurt isn't very scary at all". Kaylee wanders off in to the living room to finish watching her program. All of a sudden Bren hears her saying, "I am not afraid of the yogurt, I am not afraid of the yogurt, I am not afraid of the yogurt". Curious, Bren runs in to see what she is talking about. Sure enough, right there on the TV is an OGRE! She was afraid of the Ogre on the television show....

Then, a few days ago Abby was sitting next to me on the couch, we were watching tv (probably Forensic Files or Cold Case Files.....her 2 favorite shows). She was shoveling potato chips into her mouth...really enjoying them when she pipes up with, "I am soooo allergic to these...I LOVE them sooo much". I choked on my Pepsi laughing at her! I gently explained that she was "addicted" to them, not allergic. The fact that she says she is addicted to them would have been funny in and of itself....but the whole "allergic" thing made it hysterical.

And since I am putting this all down, because neither my sister or I will ever remember these funny little things, I want to remember a couple more funny things Abby has said. Last year, or a year and a half ago, Abby dislocated her elbow at the park. From what I hear, it is quite painful. We rushed her up to the pediatric ER (my pediatrician's office was closed...we would have went there first) where a nurse quickly (right in the hallway) popped it back in, gave her a Popsicle and sent us on our way. For a few months after, every time she bumped her elbow she would cry and say she "allocated" her elbow again (she was very fearful)....... And of course when she got conjunctivitis recently she went around telling people, "don't touch my face because I have gingivitis".

She has it too....

My daughter suffers from the same disease as my husband and young son Tommy. It's called Infomercialitis......

Right now, as we speak, she is watching Mr. T pimp the FlavorWave .

Her favorite infomercial is for the Magic Bullet...oh and she loves the TurboExpress.

You know how 4 year olds can be...they never sit still, bounce around the house from one thing to another? Well, if I need her to settle down and sit for a few minutes (like when I need to make an important phone call or take a shower) all I need to do is put one of her "shows" on (we recorded them on the DVR) and she will sit there and not move, for the entire show!!

The only drawback to this is the fact that she begs and pleads for me to purchase these things. Her and my husband sit and watch these infomercials and write the 1-800 number down so I can call and order these gadgets. I'll be honest, they are pretty neat. But with a family of six, we need something that will make more than single sized foods.

Take the Quesedilla maker I got free (was a free gift with an online order). We used it ONCE. It took way too much time to make quesedillas for the entire family because you can only make one at a time. Once the last one was done the first 5 were cold.

The Turbo Express is my husband's favorite. He has been asking me to order it for a while now but I kept putting it off. The other night he was watching the infomercial again and once again mentioned he wanted me to order it. I kindly reminded him that these things are SINGLE SERVE and not conducive to cooking for a large family. "Snacks" he says, "this would be great for making snacks". So, I didn't want to have to, but I brought up the George Foreman grill.....the one we used occasionally when the kids were little (pre-Abby).....the one he "forgot" to clean, that smelled and was all moldy. The one I paid $60 for, that I tossed into the garbage.

We'll see about the Turbo Express, I might just buy it for him to prove a point. It will get used once and then be put away because it is too much trouble for a silly snack.

New Years Resolutions

1. Stop procrastinating......it took me over 3 weeks to finally call Whirlpool to come out and fix my broken clothes dryer and it took me a week to call Directv to come out and replace my broken DVR box. But, I DID call and they ARE coming!!
2. Put more money into savings......I want to have 1000's of dollars in my savings by year end.
   
3. Drink less Pepsi and drink more water.....I am well on my way!
4. Play more board games with the kids......I am well on my way with this one too! All I can say is, Abby is a sore loser....while we were playing Pretty Pretty Princess she got miffed when it was my turn to wear the crown and tossed all her jewelry at me! And the boys, now that they are older, are much more fun to play with.....Upwords and Trivial Pursuit Family edition are our 2 favorites.
5. Sew more.....I have a really cool craft center set up and I rarely ever use it! Lately I have been just knitting....I have some cool patterns for sun dresses and shorts sets for Abby...I intend to make those for the summer.
6. Blog more.....some of my friends and family (Hi Barbara) really "depend" on this blog to keep up with what's going on in the Sprinklehead household.
7. Take more pictures.....I have a nice digital camera and rarely take pictures. This bothers me a great deal, I want to preserve my memories (and since I have lost my mind and can't remember sh*t, I need to take more pictures).
8. Exercise more.....note, I did NOT say diet....just exercise (I am being realistic here....but I am guessing with exercise will come a better diet..)
9. Keep better records, file my "papers" and just get more organized in general......the reason it took me so long to call Whirlpool is I couldn't find my paper work for the dryer....it should have been filed under "appliances" in my file cabinet....
10. Spend more quality time with my husband....in all the ways a husband and wife can (wink wink)
    

Christmas 2008

Unfortunately I did not take many pictures over the holidays....... I have good intentions, but never seem to follow through. I guess one of my New Year's resolutions is to take more pictures (among other things, like take walks on the beach and save at least 5% of our income). I did take a nice picture depicting how spoiled my kids are. I set all the presents....I mean, Santa set all the presents under the tree (and out around the edges and in front of the TV) and took a picture. I also took ONE picture of Abby and that was it......




We had a nice, relaxing Christmas. We were supposed to spend Christmas day at my sister's house but Kaylee caught the stomach bug....needless to say we stayed home. I wasn't anticipating having to prepare dinner that night and was a little low on the groceries. We settled on dogs and fries and ate in front of the tube. Good times!