This week’s Contest Round-Up is posted over at my new review site! Come and check out the great giveaways happening around the blogosphere this week. 

And don’t forget to check the Contests page during the week for even more great giveaways!

Tomorrow (sorry - today, it’s after midnight) will be a long, busy day. It will be the third (and last) day of our garage sale over at Kristi’s house and both girls also have soccer. So our day will look something like this:

Head over to Kristi’s and help set up the garage sale until 9:45 am.

Hannah’s soccer game from 10:00 am until 11:00 am.

Back to the garage sale. Eat lunch at some point.

Abby’s soccer game from 3:00 pm until 4:00 pm.

Back to the garage sale to help finish closing and packing up. Drop load of things that didn’t sell at Goodwill on the way home. I’ll have to run back over there once Ron gets home in order to bring the rest of the stuff home since I can’t fit our tables and all of the bins and boxes in the van while the kids are in it.

I’m planning on bringing the girls’ Leapsters and a lot of books to help keep them occupied while we’re at the garage sale, but Becca’s going to be into everything. The past couple of days were nice - the girls were at daycare, so I could just focus on the garage sale.

We haven’t made as much money this year as in past ones - mostly because we don’t have big (expensive) items to sell this time. No furniture, baby gear or big toys. We’ve done really well considering that it’s mostly baby clothes and toys though - over the two days we’ve made about $120. I think I’m going to put Becca’s carseat out tomorrow - her shoulders have hit the upper slots, so even though she hasn’t outgrown it weight-wise, she’s too tall for it. I already went out tonight and installed our booster seat with the internal harness for her. It’s not as cute of a seat (her other one had a floral pattern and this one’s just navy blue checks), but I think she’ll be more comfortable anyway. And hopefully we can sell the other one tomorrow (sorry, today!).

I spent Friday afternoon at the garage sale, but spent the morning at Abby and Hannah’s school.  See, today was ‘Special Person’s Day’ for the first grade. We’d tried for 2 weeks to try and find someone that could go, but both of her grandmothers have had surgery now, Ron’s dad had too much running around to do today (and that’s not his kind of thing anyway), and my dad lives 2 hours away. All of her aunts and uncles work or live out-of-town, and there just wasn’t anyone else who could go. She was so upset Thursday night, so I promised to drive her and Hannah to school Friday morning and talk to her teacher to see if I could go. They prefer that parents not come to this particular event, but as Abby’s teacher told me, there’s usually a few kids every year who have a parent come because there’s no other option.

So I got to see a very cute choral program put on by all 3 first grade classes, to make a craft (paper flower made out of handprints) and have refreshments with Abby and tour her classroom and the rest of the school. Since I don’t get to go to school very often, it was nice for me to be able to see her desk and visit the library and music room with her. Abby was very excited to show me around. Her only ‘bad’ moment was when I had to leave - the ’special people’ had the option of taking their student(s) out to lunch, but I couldn’t, so Abby had to stay and eat at school. But since Hannah’s class was getting out right as I was leaving, I figured I might as well take Hannah and drop her off at daycare instead of having her ride the bus - since I was right there anyway…

Yeah, I know - bad idea.  Abby got pretty upset, but she was fine by the time I picked them up at daycare later on.

All in all, it’s been a busy, but good, couple of days. I’m still stuffed up and not feeling well, but at least able to function. I’ll have to spend some major time getting caught up on all of my blog reading though - even after weeding out all of the news items, I’m still up over 400 posts to read. Yikes.

The contest round-up will be up later on today (Saturday), but over on the other site - where it will be from now on.  Head over and check it out! 

‘Night all…

It’s Friday again! My favorite day of the week. Especially when I have the day off.

Today is another busy one though - I’m taking the girls into school so I can talk to Abby’s teacher and will probably be attending her ‘Special Person’s Day’ later this morning since none of her grandparents are available. Then back to the garage sale in the afternoon. It went well yesterday - I made about $75 but Kristi made over $200 (she had some bigger items to sell, mine’s mostly clothes and toys).

I’m still fighting this darn cold - it’s one of those annoying ones where I’m congested, feel sick, my head and throat hurt, but I’m still able to function without being completely down for the count. Which is a good thing, I guess.

So anyway, I’m way behind on my blog reading and am hoping to get caught up this weekend. So I’m curious - how many of you read blogs in a feed reader of some sort (like Google Reader or Bloglines)? If so, how many unread posts do you have right now?

I currently have 619 unread posts (yikes!). But 100 of those are news items that I’ll probably skip reading when I finally get time to catch up. It’s still going to take me a while though!

Be sure to check out An Island Life for other fun Aloha Friday questions and to play along!

I’ve got a lot to update you all on and very little time since I’ll be busy all day tomorrow with no time to post. So here’s a quick rundown of 13 updates to hold you over until tomorrow night…

1. My mom is still in the ICU recovering from her surgery yesterday. It’s a pretty significant operation, requiring her to be put on a heart and lung machine and she’s still on a ventilator even now. Apparently she’s about where they would expect her to be after this surgery though, and she breathed on her own for an hour this afternoon, which we’re told is a good sign, so everything seems to be going well so far. She’ll stay in the hospital for a total of about a week - my brother’s going to go over and visit her on Friday. Right now she can’t speak and isn’t awake for much of the time, so even though I feel like I really should be there, there’s just not much that I could do even if I were. Thank you so much for all of the prayers!

2. Speaking of surgeries… Ron’s mom had her kidney transplant a few weeks ago and is doing well, from what I’ve heard. Ron took Abby and Hannah up to visit her in the hospital when she was re-admitted a couple of weekends ago for evaluation, and she went back home a day or two later. We’re hoping to get up to visit them soon.

3. I will be over at Kristi’s house all day tomorrow (Thursday) for our annual garage sale. Usually we do it the first weekend in May, but Kristi had to go and take her family on vacation (the nerve! *just kidding*) last weekend, so we’re holding the garage sale this weekend instead. Hopefully over the 3 days (Thursday through Saturday), we’ll make enough money to be able to finish some things that Ron started in our yard last year. I mostly have baby/toddler clothes and toys to sell this year.

4. I have a cold. In fact, I really should be in bed right now and will be heading there as soon as I post this. My throat hurts, my head hurts and my nose is running like a faucet. Oh yes, and we just ran out of kleenex.

5. Ron attempted to move Becca from the floor in her doorway to her bed tonight. She woke up as he was putting her in bed, immediately slid down off of the bed, gave him an angry glare and marched right back over to her doorway. Where she promptly proceeded to lay down and go right back to sleep. I just don’t get this child!

6. My review site is up and running! If you haven’t had a chance yet, stop over and take a look. And if you like what you see, please subscribe so that you don’t miss a single post. 

7. Don’t really know anything new on the job front. I put in an application for my job (yes, strange - I know) a couple of weeks ago, but apparently the new company is not giving any special or preferential treatment to those of us already working here. Their job posting was kind of sparse on information, so I have no idea what the salary range would be or even when the deadline is to apply. We’re all still on pins and needles and trading information (and rumor) as we get it. I did apply for another job that I came across in town today, but it’s a long shot.  We’ll see.

8. We got up on time today. 

9. Hannah came home from her cheerleading competition last Saturday with 2 completely different pom-poms than she arrived with. Not even from the same owners. Thankfully they were labeled (as are Hannah’s), so hopefully her coach can get them back to their rightful owners and get Hannah’s back to her. I wouldn’t be so worried about it except that the things are $16 a pair and Hannah’s are almost brand-new.

10. Abby has her next soccer practice tomorrow night. After thinking about it and reading everyone’s advice, I’m not going to mention or bring up the comment that was made by one of her teammates. If someone else brings it up, then we’ll deal with it, but otherwise, I’m just going to pretend I never heard it and keep cheering Abby on. She really does love to play, and that’s the only thing that really matters anyway. Thank you so much for all of the comments and advice - you all are awesome!

11. My nose just won’t stop running. And I’m tired. So I’m going to skip #12 and #13 and just head to bed.

Good night. 

My first review post is up at my other site - for Norton 360 Version 2.0 software.  Stop by and check it out! 

Photo by bfick
Ok, I’ll admit it. I’ve been keeping things from you. Well not ‘things’ but specifically one thing. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out, but I think everything’s set - at least for now, so I’m ready to let the world see it. 

‘It’ is my new review blog! Yes, I’m following in the footsteps of some of my favorite bloggers and starting a second blog, where I’ll do reviews, host giveaways, and share my favorite (and not-so-favorite) things about, well - stuff.

I’m a bit nervous about this, so any advice that those of you who have done multiple blogs might have would be welcomed. I’m still playing around with the template - although I like the one I (finally) chose, it still needs some tweaks and finessing. And I’m hoping to talk Ron into designing a header for it, as well as a button that people can use to link to the site.

Right now, I’m calling it, “Just a mom’s take on things…”.  And really, that’s all it is. Just my own views, opinions, thoughts, what have you. I certainly don’t claim to be an expert, but I think that I can give a fair, balanced and honest review based on how well something works (or doesn’t) for me and my family.

I’m still working on getting a domain name set up, so for now you can find the site at http://www.momof3girls.net/reviews. Please take a peek over there and let me know what you think!  I’ll have my first review up later today over there, and a second one to come by the end of the week, along with a fun giveaway (or two) to help celebrate the new site - as well as the anniversary of starting this blogging adventure here at Mom of 3 Girls, back in May of 2007. Yep, that’s right - my Blogoversary is this month and I want all of you to help me celebrate it!  So stay tuned both here and at the new site for details coming soon… 

This really won’t change things here at this blog - I’ll continue to write about our life, the girls, and anything else that comes to mind.  The only real change is that I’ll be moving all reviews over to the new site, and I’m also going to move both the Contests page and the weekly Contest Round-Up over there as well. It just seems like a better fit there, and Ron will be happy not to have to scroll through lists of contests here every weekend to find the ‘good’ stuff, as he puts it. 

So that’s about it - I’m really excited about this and hope that you will be as well.  Please consider subscribing to “Just a mom’s take on things…”.  There’s one of those handy little orange RSS/subscribe buttons right up at the top right - just click and voila, you won’t miss a single review or giveaway.

That’s it for now, I guess - hope to see you over there! 

See more Wordless Wednesday here and here

I haven’t had a chance to do much more with our front yard yet - but am hoping to in the next couple of weeks. I’ll keep posting updates as I have them.

This week, my whole house really needs to be tackled. Big time. But since I don’t want to completely depress myself and I want to show something actually getting done, I’m going to show you the only room that is currently in decent shape.

It certainly didn’t start out that way.

Becca hasn’t napped at home in months. Usually she sits quietly in her room and plays or looks at books. But, since she learned that she could walk out of her room at any time (probably linked to the whole not wanting to sleep in her bed phenomenon), keeping her in there for ‘quiet’ time has been problematic. The addition of the safety gate to her doorway has created quite a challenge for our little one. She is bound and determined to beat the gate. Whether to figure out how to climb over it, open it, or push it out of her doorway all together, she pretty much spends all of quiet time in various attempts to outwit the gate.

On Sunday, this included the game of dropping (or throwing, I’m not quite sure which) toys over the gate into the hallway. By the time that we released her from the tortuous prison which is her room and chucked all of the various stuffed animals, clothes (pulled from her hamper), books and other assorted items back into her room so we could actually get through the hallway, her room looked like this:

Being entirely fair, her room wasn’t exactly clean at the start of quiet time either. But this mess was enough to actually get me to finally step in and get it picked up. Becca can and does help to pick up her toys (sometimes), but this was way too much for a 2-year-old to handle

Here is the final result. I even emptied her hamper, although the basket of clothes hadn’t actually made it any further than the kitchen until I ran home at lunch today and finally carried them downstairs to start a load of laundry.

Now I just need to tackle the rest of the house. Oh yes, and get things sorted for the garage sale that we’re having Thursday-Saturday at Kristi’s house. And finish the laundry. The list never ends…

What are you tackling this week? And check out other Tackle It Tuesday posts over at 5 Minutes for Mom!

You know that split second of panic when you open your eyes, look at the clock and suddenly realize that yes, it does actually read 7:37 instead of 6:30?

I learned several things about my family this morning.

I learned that it is actually possible to get my kids on the bus a mere 15 minutes after waking them up.

I learned that Abby can pick out her own clothes (matching, no less!), get herself dressed, put on her glasses and be ready to eat breakfast in about a minute-and-a-half - if she has the right motivation.

I learned that Abby will do almost anything to avoid missing the bus.

I learned that Hannah will do almost anything to miss the bus.  Including sit on her bed and complain about the fact that the bus ride, “is soooooo loooonnngggg and my stomach hurts every day!”. Even though she’s never mentioned this before on any of the 100+ days that she’s ridden the bus to and from school.

And that Hannah’s reaction to being rushed in the morning is to complain, cry and only get moving when threatened with losing privileges.

I learned that even though Hannah forgets to eat breakfast on a somewhat regular basis on the weekends, she throws quite a fit when she’s stalled and taken so long to get dressed that she runs out of time to eat.

I already knew that Hannah is a drama queen. I learned that she apparently thinks we need regular reminders of this fact.

I learned that although the kids are not allowed to eat on the bus, they can bring something to eat at school. As long as there’s no bowl and spoon involved.

I’m curious as to what happened that the teacher had to make the point about that particular rule.

I learned that it is possible for Hannah to dispense with the usual cries of ‘owwww!’ and ‘that hurts!’ while I’m brushing and doing her hair if she’s distracted by other things, like complaining about missing breakfast.

I learned that Becca has enough hair now to wake up with a decent case of ‘bed-head’. Or maybe that should be ‘floor-head’?

I learned that the quickest way to get Becca changed and dressed in the morning is to offer her a Dora shirt to wear.

I learned that I  can get myself dressed and ready to go in about 10 minutes if I skip taking a shower. And that it’s ok to skip a shower one day every once in a while.

I learned that it’s an amazing coincidence to have received a sample of new face cleansing wipes the day before you have to skip taking a shower in the morning.

I learned that Pond’s makes a very effective face cleansing wipe (and no this is not an advertisement or review of any sort).

I learned that when you’re driving in a huge rush, sometimes you can actually hit all of the lights when they’re green.

I now know that it is possible, when it comes down to it, for my family to get up, dressed, mostly fed, and out the door in a total of 35 minutes - if we have to.

I learned that this is not something I want to try again any time soon.

And I learned that no matter how rushed or late I am, I will immediately drop everything to watch my child siting on her bed to read a book with one of her ‘friends’ - one of the cutest sights that I’ve seen in a really long time.

But that I will run to go get the camera so I can record and post it on my blog. 

When Abby was an active little toddler (hmm, kind of like someone else I know…), my mother went in for surgery to open up a blockage in her carotid artery. This type of blockage runs in her family - both of her sisters have now had similar surgeries as well. I know I can probably look forward to the same thing years down the road, and my girls will have to be careful as well.

The thing I remember the most from that day was sitting in the hospital’s waiting room with my aunt and trying to keep Abby occupied. I was several months pregnant with Hannah at the time - and at one point my aunt asked me how I would ever be able to handle another one. By the end of the day, I was wondering the same thing myself. After many (many!) laps around the hospital floor, in both directions, pointing out the same things over and over, I was more than ready for a break. The surgery went longer than expected, so once my mother came out and went into recovery, I said a quick hello and then Abby and I went back to our hotel room. I only had that one day off from work, so we headed home that night and I didn’t see my mother again for a couple of months.

Today, my mother is having surgery again. This time to repair (or do something to) an abdominal aneurysm. Normally they try to go in through the groin but my mother has small veins so they are having to actually open her up. It’s a surgery that’s apparently difficult to recover from, and my mother lives alone.

Unfortunately, this time I won’t be in the waiting room - I can’t get away to the other side of the state. My aunt will be there again and she will call me when the surgery is over. I’m hoping that my brother may be able to go too, but he’s been in California for the past week, and I’m not sure if he’ll be back in time or not.

I wish we (or she) lived closer so that I could help out and take care of her while she recovers. I am thankful that my aunt and cousin do live near her, that she has neighbors that she is friends with, and that my brother is only an hour away from her now instead of across the country. I know she won’t be lacking for people to help.

My mother will turn 75 years old in August and I hope that she will be around for quite a long time to come. My girls all adore their ‘white-haired’ grandma, and the weekends that she spends with us are so very special to them.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom - I love you!

Update:  I called the hospital tonight since I hadn’t heard from my aunt yet (apparently she’d talked to my brother and he said he’d call me, but he didn’t get a chance to right away). My mom was in recovery, still hooked up to a ventilator while waiting for a room to open up in the ICU. There wasn’t much else they could tell me but the nurse I talked to in recovery said she’d tell my mom that I called. I talked to my brother later on and found out that not only had my mom minimized the extent of the surgery to us, but there’s considerable risk of infection or congestive heart failure during the first couple of days after the surgery. My aunt is a retired nurse, so she was able to give Donnie a better idea of what the surgery entailed. I went online tonight and did some research as well - what she had is called an abdominal aortic aneurysm. It’s more common in older people (yep), smokers (she smoked for close to 50 years before quitting a few years ago), and men (trust my mom to go against the norm on that one). Hers hadn’t ruptured (yet). Apparently they put you on a heart and lung machine and replace the portion of aorta with a graft of cloth fabric.

Donnie and I are going to stay in close touch over the next few days at a minimum and he’s hoping to get over to visit her on Friday. He’s back in the state, but has some major things going on at work and an upcoming work trip that severely limit his free time right now. Obviously if anything major happens both of us will drop everything to be there. I’ll keep updating as I find out more - thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers for her.