Things I learned yesterday....

1. You should always kill the flies that are in your kitchen before you start making dinner. There is a slight possibility that one will fly into the skillet as your are browning the hamburger.

2. Never let your 19 month-old son play in the kitchen while you are cooking dinner. He might get a hold of a very large 10-pound can of juice (okay more like 5 pounds..) and drop it on your toes.

3. Giving ice cream to a 4 year-old right before bed will cause her to stay up 3 hours past bed time.

4. Putting two kids to bed in the same room at the same time all by yourself does not work.

5. I rely on my sweet husband in the evenings a lot more that I thought I did.

6. It will be a blessed day when Texas Tech's production of The Full Monty opens. I will have my husband back.

A letter to an old friend...

Dear Penske,
We are sorry we lost the keys to the truck we rented from you. Ruth says she threw them off the porch and they landed in an anthill and went underground and that's why we can't see them. She also says she hid them in our room. There are boxes everywhere and we feel there is no chance we will find them any time soon. We hope you don't mind we went to a locksmith and had him cut us a new key. Since you weren't there when we brought in the truck and had to drop the key in a drop-box, we thought we'd write a little note to explain why the key is different than the one we started out with. Anyway, we loved the truck.

Love,
The Jones Family

Ugh!

Some people need a good shaking. Or at least a good talkin' to. I failed to do either with a man I had a run-in with today.

We were at the mall playing in their little play-place. All was well. Ruth was playing tag with a couple girls her age and Gareth was crawling around climbing on stuff much too large for him. So naturally, I spent 60% of my time watching Gareth and 40% watching Ruth. It just so happened that while I was watching Gareth, Ruth tagged a little girl a little too hard and she fell down. Her father when rushing over (as if she were dying or something--mind you, the floor is padded) and picked his daughter up. He the looked over at me and said (pointing at Ruth) "Is this your daughter??"
Me: "Yes, what happened?"
Dumb Man: "She just pushed my daughter."
Me: "Oh I'm sorry, I didn't see it happen." Then to Ruth: "Ruth come here!"
Dumb Man: "Well you should watch your daughter better!" Huff-Puff

So that's all. I got Ruth's side of the story and determined it all to be an innocent/unfortunate accident. I had Ruth go apologize. We left of course because I hate confrontations and this man was pretty angry.

Here's what I SHOULD have said in reply to his last statement...

Cool Me: "Well it was obvious you weren't watching your little girl very well 5 minutes ago when she grabbed on to my daughters arm (with fingernails and everything) and wouldn't let go until Ruth's 6th time demanding she let go!....and you only have ONE kid to watch! Stupid-Head!"
Stupid-Head: "Golly-gee, I'm sorry. I'll go jump in a lake now, I feel so embarrassed for judging you when I am an even more terrible parent than I thought. Here's 50 bucks for your trouble."
Cool Me: "Thank you but I deserve more. Give me that nice leather jacket you are wearing too."
Stupid-Head: "Okay, here. Anything else?"
Cool Me: "Yeah, pick up your things and your daughter and leave. You make this place smell bad."


Yeah.. I totally should have said that. Maybe next time. Oh and that whole his daughter grabbing Ruth's arm thing.. totally true.