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50 Days of Summer

Oy, I forgot to post last week's "50 Days of Summer" list. So to make up for this dreadful oversight, I spent all morning typing out last week, this week, and the remaining two weeks. Here's this week's activities and for all 10 weeks, go to the main 50 Days of Summer page. Enjoy!

In weekend news, I did meet Kristy, Mike, and Mia but not for dinner on Friday, just for snack on Saturday. Greg had a field day printing out maps of the area for them. I have a couple of pictures, remind me to upload those later!

Right now the kids are bothering me for lunch (it's almost 2pm, eek!) and my allergies are acting up. What the heck is pollinating at 97 degrees and 50% humidity? My "To Do List" is very random today and I'm thinking of skipping it all to go hang out at the gym's outdoor pool with the kids instead. Oh and to add to the randomness, I finished knitting a Christmas stocking. Have a lovely Monday!


Oh right, I suppose I should update this thing more often than once a week, huh?

I have exciting news! Well not as exciting as if I was going to BlogHer. I wanna be one of the cool kids... No, I have other news. Better news really!

KristyK is coming to dinner at my house tonight! Her daughter Mia is running in the National Junior Olympics in Baltimore this weekend. And since that's just a hop, skip and jump down the road, I emailed her begging pleading inviting her over. Unfortunately she doesn't have all her children with her, I'm positive Echo and I would have gotten along smashingly. I'm still really excited to met her in person. It's kinda like a mini-BlogHer: what should I wear, what should I cook, oh geez I better clean up those rugrat children of mine running around...


I'll be getting my scrapbooking license revoked over this one...

So let's see, when I last left you we were driving to Ohio and then onto Indiana for my sister's bachelorette party and wedding. I wanted to come back with lots of great stories and pictures to share with you. But I am a complete dork and left my camera battery charger in Maryland. The battery in the camera died after I took one picture. Luckily other people had cameras so if I beg and plead long enough I may have pictures eventually. Buy some one-use cameras you say? I did! So now I have a total of five good pictures because my kids ran off with the cameras at some point. I have about 20 pictures of the cake and a few of the ceiling and dance floor. But trust me, the five pictures I'll be showing you are very good so stick around.

Wednesday: We drove to Ohio and saw Greg's grandparents new home. They are finally moving up from Florida to be closer to their children. And this is their 16th brand new home (I'm not positive they've ever lived in an "used" home, sounds like they have always had new construction). I can't imagine moving 16 times in the first place... But welcome back to Ohio!

Thursday: The bachelorette party! Downtown Indy is much more fun than I remembered. Although they have crappy parking garages with a 6'8" height limit (our van is 7 foot tall). We went to Hooters (Sarah's request, she likes the wings and chocolate cake) for dinner with everyone including Greg and the kids and Steph's husband and kids. Kyle says it's his new favorite restaurant. hehe We then sent the husbands and the kids on their way and us girls went to Howl at the Moon. They did a lovely job of embarrassing Sarah (including a bumper sticker on her butt) and we ordered lots of beer and mixed drinks. I may or may not have been dancing on the stage at some point. But ha, no pictures! Oh wait, I think my cousin may have taken a few... As Sarah would say, good times, good times.

Friday: Off to Small Town Indiana! Friday was a complete insane mish mash of running all over God's green earth. We dropped the kids off at my parents house and went to Slightly Larger Small Town Indiana to get our nails done. Greg took this time to spend $250 at Wal-Mart. Then Greg and I washed the van and bought champagne (the clerk at the liquor store had the best quote of the weekend, when asked about different champagnes as there seemed to be only one choice, she said: "Small Town" isn't really a champagne drinking kind of place). We also sent up a tent (long story) on my parent's front yard in the pouring rain. Then by that time, we had to get ready for the rehearsal. And someone should have warned me, I had a hell of a lot more responsibilities as the "matron of honor" than I did as the actual bride at my own wedding. At least the best man was charming and witty so all the "up and down" and "fluff the bride's dress" wasn't too bad. Oh, oh! I have a picture! (The one before my camera died.) Steven and Sarah with the priest

Friday night until Saturday morning at 4am: Oh God, the flowers... I didn't even have a chance to start on them until almost 11pm (after the rehearsal dinner and then putting the kids to bed). I hit the wall at about 2:30am when I had no idea what to do with the bridesmaids' bouquets. But I finally managed to finish everything and crawled into the tent at 4am. To wake up at 7am to be with Sarah before she went to get her hair done. 3 hours of sleep following a night of only 4 hours of sleep... I don't really recommend it.

Saturday: This may have been the first wedding ever where we actually stayed on the time schedule. The highlights: myself and another bridesmaid up underneath Sarah's wedding dress to pin it so her hot pink underwear didn't show (there is a picture of this somewhere, I don't happen to have it yet), Kelly spilling pineapple juice on her flower girl dress before pictures, the groomsmen wilting their hydrangea boutonnieres before the ceremony (but thankfully after the pictures) by drinking beer out of the trunk of a car in 90 degree heat, and Greg's bridesmaid almost falling up the steps to the altar (oh yeah, Greg was a groomsman but he didn't walk with me, I had the cutie best man instead *winks*). Despite it all, Sarah and Steven were happily married and we all went to the...

Reception! Finally I have some pictures for you! Here are Kyle and Kelly as the ring bearer and flower girl, Sarah and Steven cutting the cake, and another good picture of Sarah. And yes, I have a picture of myself. But I have to warn you first. We had a slight problem with the bridesmaid dresses. As in all of us bridesmaids kept falling out the top of them. Okay so that probably wasn't a problem for all the guys there. Normally I wouldn't post a picture like this but my in-laws have already seen it so why not share it with the ten or twenty of you on the internet as well... Me. Also you can see the flowers in the background, the red roses were Sarah's and the green and blue flowers were mine. Yeah, I stayed up until 4am the morning of the wedding and the only picture I have of the flowers also has me hanging out of my dress in front of them. *sigh*

So there you have it. I'm so thrilled to have been a big part of their wedding and driving 1600 miles round trip and getting no sleep was completely worth it. But thank God I don't have any more unmarried sisters...


Doing all this wedding stuff for my sister almost made me forget that today is our wedding anniversary! Happy Anniversary Greg!

One of these days I need to type out the whole fun story which involves fainting and puking and Taco Bell. (in that order...)

I wish I could say we're doing something fun for our anniversary but the babysitter is out of town again (she was at volleyball camp last week, family vacation this week). Greg needs to work late anyways because he's taking the rest of the week off and I still need to detail the van, sew, clean, pack, shop, and make phone calls. Oh well...

(A wedding picture of us if you haven't seen it already.)

Quote of the Day: "I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life." -Rita Rudner


Week 6 is up!

It's probably going to be quiet here on the blog this week.

Somehow over the weekend, my van became the "limo" for the wedding party this Saturday. So now I have to vacuum out all the McDonald french fries and clean fingerprint smudges from the windows. Yee-ha... I used to know a guy who would detail your car for like $15, he just liked cleaning cars with q-tips (he was weird). Anyway it would probably be $150 to get someone to detail the inside of the van around here.

Um, what else? Oh, the weekend at my sister's went really well! Although the 5 1/2 hour drive was 7 hours there and 6 hours back. People should not be allowed to have accidents on the interstates I'm on.

So the week looks something like this... *digs out to day planner*

Monday: detail the van, take out the trash, do laundry, mop the kitchen floor, finish Kelly's flower girl dress, decorate the flower girl basket, and run some random errands.

Tuesday: whatever didn't happen on Monday. And I need to figure out what shoes the children are wearing to the wedding.

Wednesday: pack and drive to Ohio

Thursday: drive to Indiana and the bachelorette party (woohoo!)

Friday: manicure/pedicure (by order of the bride), playing florist, and the rehearsal dinner

Saturday: the wedding!

We'll be back in Maryland on Monday and for the most part, I won't have internet access. And sorry for the boring ass post, I only had about 12 hours of sleep all weekend.

Quote of the Day: "Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other never forgets them." -Ogden Nash


The Week in Review (because I've been way too wordy recently):

I can knit mittens. (Please send your favorite color, hand length, and $15 to katiefleck@hotmail.com)

I like pretty flowers. And my sister.

My kids drive me insane.

Preschool is too expensive here and now Greg is trying to convince me to run a preschool out of the house. Yeah like I want to deal with other people's insane children... I think I'll just homeschool the preschool curriculum with Kyle and Kelly, join a play group type thing, and cross my fingers when I ship him off to kindergarten in 2007 (and her in 2008).

Today I am doing laundry and packing us all up to go see the above mentioned sister at her new apartment in Lake Effect Snow City, Pennsylvania for the weekend. She's the first person I'm knitting mittens for because she's going to need them in a few weeks. hehe


Yesterday I was looking up preschool possibilities for Kyle (and potentially Kelly). I know, I probably should have been doing this way before July. In fact around here it seems that sign-ups for preschool are in January. January? Because that's exactly the time I would expect to think about a new school year starting in September, 9 months away. But wait, it gets better.

So I was happily googling preschools in the area and I clicked on a few and finally made my way to the tuition page. $8,865 a year. That has to be a misprint. And then there was another for $7000 a year. I finally found one for $125. Doh! That's per week. I could show you more but frankly I'm feeling rather sick to my stomach.

Toto, we're not in Ohio anymore...

I did find two decent looking co-ops for less than what I spent on my first car. But co-ops of course mean I have to help and as you know, I have gobs of spare time laying around. Especially since both co-ops have the audacity to schedule their 3/4 year old class (Kelly) and pre-K program (Kyle) at completely different times so I'd be stuck with one child during the other's class. And the whole point of preschool is to free me of my children for a few hours, right? **

The public school actually offers a pre-K program at another elementary school location (i.e. I have to drive past my elementary school and 2 others to get there) but they only accept, how shall I put it? Kids who don't speak English as their first language, have birth defects, and/or live at the poverty line. The last one confuses me. If your income is that low, how the hell are you living in this school district in the first place? Although paying the mortgage on a $650,000 house definitely makes one feel like they are living in poverty afterwards.

So... I guess I should make some phone calls and see if there's even any available spots. I am so missing Ohio and our YMCA and $100 a month pre-K program. (And they also have a 3/4 year old class at the exact same time plus 10% off the second child's fees. *wistful sighs*) I'll also check with my neighbors but since that worked so well with finding a babysitter, they probably think paying more for a year of preschool than college tuition is normal. Cheap Sane Frugal Midwest country girls are just not meant to live in the Wisteria Lane/Stepford suburbs.

** I'm already "homeschooling" most of the basics so the real point of sending Kyle to preschool is to get him used to classrooms and teachers in general. I'm thinking it may be cheaper to rent a classroom and teacher.


Who are these kids and where are mine?

The children have gone berserk and are driving me insane ("short drive").

In the last few days, they have: whined about their computer (and lack of time on it), whined about the TV, whined about going outside, whined about being outside, whined about being inside, whined about their clothes, and whined about each other whining.

They have: fought over the computer, fought over the TV, fought over who opens the garage door to go outside, fought over cereal boxes, fought over seats at the kitchen table, and fought with each other about the amount of particles of dust in the air (well maybe not that exactly but they have fought with each over nothing. *eye twitch*).

They have: asked to go outside, asked to go inside, asked to go to the pool, asked to go to the beach, asked to go to the park, asked to go to the Children's Museum, asked to go to Grandma's, asked to go to Toys R Us, and asked to go to McDonalds. All within 30 seconds every 10 minutes and repeated times 5 children all day long.

They have: touched every single thing in Michael's craft store after me repeatedly telling them not to, spilled their cereal several times in Musical Chairs The Breakfast Edition, peed in the bathroom but 6 inches away from the toilet, strung a $15 ball of yarn all through the house while I did something completely frivolous like take a quick 5 minute shower, started and stopped watching The Pink Panther a dozen times and then complained when I returned it to BlockBuster overdue, and threw french fries around the van in a show of gratitude for me taking them to McDonalds.

I am tired, I am crabby, my eye starts twitching whenever one of the children enters my peripheral vision, and my voice only comes out in this high pitched shrill "OMG, what have you done now?!?!" sort of way.

How many more days until school starts?


Pick a title:

I love my sister to pieces and don't want her to turn into Bridezilla.

Cause I don't have enough to do already.

I've watched way too many episodes of "Whose Wedding is it Anyway?"

The Crafty Insane "I can do it myself!" side took over again and is holding the real Katie hostage with a glue gun.


I spend all day Thursday on the phone (see, that should be example #1 that I'm not my normal self) working on the flowers for my sister's wedding. And also phoning in Greg's tux measurements, reserving a hotel room, and paying off the alterations on my bridesmaids dress. Kyle's ring bearer tux I ordered on eBay (the tux place refused to rent us one saying it was cheaper to buy and yep, $35 with shipping on eBay!) and Kelly's flower girl dress material and pattern are up next to go under the sewing machine needle. Also online I bought 9 boxes of these silver wedding bell favors in lieu of bubbles, birdseed, rice, etc. I just need to make sure none of the bells make it into the van on the ride home to Maryland.

Back to the flowers!** First I had to call the Decorator to see what she had planned. Luckily she was sticking to mostly ribbons, candles, and greenery so there wouldn't be any flower clashes (cause there's nothing worse than having two different shades of red roses, the horrors!). Then I called the Cake Lady to see what she was doing. "Flowers on the cake? There's going to be a fountain..." I'll buy some extra flowers just in case.

And then finally dealing with the bride herself. Her colors are a cranberry/wine/burgundy-ish red along with a lightish blue and lightish green (Sarah dear, do you want to chime in with their exact names?). Quick, name some blue and green flowers! Just a wee bit tricky, huh? I actually planned my wedding around my flowers but then again I'm a wee bit obsessed like that.

So I called the Small Town Indiana florist and was able to get all my first choice flowers through her distributor (go Small Town Indiana florist!). Sarah will be carrying fire and ice roses while the bridesmaids will have bouquets of blue hydrangea, blue delphinium, green button mums, and green bells of Ireland. You might notice an absence of white because I really wanted to avoid anyone holding "red, white, and blue". Not that I'm saying that color combo is terrible or anything but that's not the look of this wedding.

While I'm really excited about this challenge, I'm also a wee bit nervous. First do you think the flowers and colors will work? And second, we'll be driving in on Thursday, the flowers will be available Friday, definitely by 1pm, maybe earlier. (The wedding is Saturday, pictures start at 10am.) The order is 1 bride bouquet, 1 toss bouquet, 1 miniature bride bouquet, 1 flower girl basket with petals, 5 bridesmaids, 4 corsages, 9 boutonneires, and the cake flowers. And if I get bored (i.e. have leftover flowers), I can spruce up whatever the Decorator is doing.

I may be making boutonneires during the rehearsal dinner...

** I worked in a floral shop for over a year and did most of my own wedding flowers so it's not like I don't know the difference between alstroemeria and freesia.


Week 5 is up!

And according to Blogger, this is my 1000th post. Wow... I feel like I should break out a bottle of champagne and put a plaque on my wall. *sarcasm*

It was a pretty boring weekend so I made these:



My first knitted mittens. (I used the pattern from The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns and Cascade 220 Wool) They are sized for Kelly. Because everyone needs mittens in the middle of July.


I have this bi-polar thing when it comes to planning stuff. I either obsess and map out every possible detail down to its neutrons (examples: Girl Scout camp, my sister's bridal shower). Or I do nothing at all and things don't go as well as they possibly could have if I had just taken a second to think, "hmm what's the best way to do this?" An example of this? 4th of July, 2006.

We've always spent this holiday with my in-laws. The hitch this year was that we spent it at our house instead of theirs. And it would have been awesome if we had planned a little more and went to a beach for the day. But the way traffic over the Bay Bridge is nowadays, you have to be on the road by 5am or you'll sit on Highway 50 for hours. Monday evening, no one really wanted to be up at 5am or sit on Highway 50 for hours to be at a crowded beach.

So we'll go to the gym's pool! And here's where any amount of planning would have helped. I mean how hard is it to pick up the phone? (Stupid phone phobia...) Greg and I have free guest passes on our memberships but there was some confusion on whether we had 2 or 4 (in-laws=4). Nevertheless we arrived at the gym and the outdoor pool was packed. Like sardines. There wasn't an unclaimed pool chair or spot of concrete to be found. But the kids were so excited to be at the pool that they didn't care. Pool! Water! Pool!

And yeah, Greg and I only have 2 guest passes all together. $20 each for the other 2. Hmph... Change of plans!

Oh the gnashing of teeth, the wailing, the tears. And that was just my in-laws. *winks* (No really, it was the kids and you would have thought that we were torching their favorite stuff animals and sending them to child slave labor camps.)

Here's where Toys R Us saved us all! We shoved everyone back into the van and drove to everyone's favorite store. My sister-in-law and I ran in and bought a slip-n-slide (last case of them in the area according to the sales clerk) and one of those thin plastic molded 9' pools. Total cost: $20.90 Score!

Of course the kids still weren't thrilled with this. You could buy the whole world for them and they'll complain that they didn't get the moon as well. *rolls eyes* It took them awhile to agree that just maybe having their own kitchen, bathroom, and an entire uncrowded backyard to themselves was worth not swimming in chlorinated pee water with hundreds of other kids. I have pictures as proof! (Zach was shopping with Greg and brother-in-law for Boy Scout camp supplies when I took these pictures. He did get a chance to play, I was just too busy making and drinking margaritas to take the camera back outside then. *winks*)



Oh yeah, we did see some fireworks at a local community sponsored show. Other than an @sshole teenager in a pick-up truck blaring his horn exiting the parking lot ("dude, there are a hundred cars all exiting the same small parking lot, it's going to take a few minutes") and my excellent navigating from the back seat that saved us several minutes of sitting in traffic (everyone was trying to turn left into a long, long line of cars, we went right, took the next right and were home before "pick-up boy" could manage a left out of the parking lot), the firework show was nothing to write home about. Or blog in my case.

Currently Greg and Zach are at Boy Scout camp (theirs is overnight, they'll be home tomorrow), the in-laws are back safe and sound in Ohio, and the other kids and I are doing, well I wouldn't say nothing exactly but "not much" would probably be accurate enough. Next week? More "nothing." I love camp, I love company, but I also really like "nothing."


Okay so where was I?

Survived Girl Scout camp. *huge sigh of relief*

Managed to get the house cleaned up a little bit on Saturday (minus some spots on the carpet, I hate carpet!).

Greg and his family all arrived safely on Sunday and the highlight of that day was grocery shopping.

Monday we took the Metro into DC to go to the National Zoo. Which is thankfully free since we saw about 6.2 animals (the .2 were two prairie dogs). I suppose I am terribly spoiled by the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens where you practically trip over the animals. It was hot on Monday but at least the zoo was mostly shaded and also on a slant which meant we were walking downhill. Course we had no idea you couldn't exit at the bottom and reach the Metro line again easily. So back up through the zoo we trudged.

Looking back, the Metro wasn't the best way to get there. They do have parking at the zoo and we all fit in the van. We bought the Metro All-Day passes because we thought we could swing through a couple of the Smithsonian Museums. The kids were too hot and tired and it was close to dinner time when we finally made it out of the zoo. And... &@*&^$#& The Metro has this stupid parking garage fee that requires a "SmarTrip" card (and it's the stupidest freaking thing I have ever heard of). Back when Greg's sister, Greg, and I went to the Billy Joel concert in DC in April, we were first introduced to the "SmarTrip". Like as we were exiting the garage at midnight and couldn't get out because we couldn't pay the $4 fee with cash, instead needing a "SmarTrip" card sold all the way back down in the Metro station. And the card costs a minimum of $10. grrrr

So I saved the "SmarTrip" card because it still had $6 on it. Except it only had $1 left on it. Which I found out with 4 cars behind me in the exit lane on Monday. They charge you $5 to issue the damn card. They didn't mention that any where. I don't get pissed off easily but man, I'm still seeing red over this one. So I had to make everyone behind me back up, move the van out of the exit lane, and run back down into the Metro station (3 flights of stairs, an escalator and a quarter of a mile away). Supposedly you can add more money to the "SmarTrip" card but I couldn't get it to let me add less than $20. So screw it, I paid another $10 to exit the parking garage. Anyone want two "SmarTrip" cards with a $1 balance on each?

And then we got home, ate lots of good food, and I drank strawberry daiquiris until I passed out (not really, I had 2. Or 3. Maybe 4?). I did manage to create some 5 foot flames on the grill while cooking dinner (I blame the steaks, not the daiquiris). Happy 3rd of July!

Oh right, we were celebrating the 4th of July. I'll write about that tomorrow and include pictures along with how Toys R Us saved us all.


Hi!

How are you?




Week 4 is up! And geezy petes, it's July! (*mumbles* when the heck did that happen...)


If you hear about a house that was blown up in Maryland, it's because I gave up trying to clean it * with 5 squabbling children who are doing everything in their power to DRIVE ME CRAZY!!1! **

Also? There's no food in the house and I think going to the grocery store *** with these 5 children **** in the mood they are in (DRIVING ME CRAZY!!1!) may be worse than starving and having the CPS called on me. ***** Not that they wouldn't be called in anyways after I have blown up the house. ******

* My in-laws are driving in tomorrow for the 4th of July. Although I suppose if I blow up the house they aren't going to have a place to stay.

** Greg's currently in Cincinnati for my future brother-in-law's bachelor party.

*** I have vodka and Mountain Dew. We're just out of everything else.

**** The babysitter no longer answers or returns my calls. grrrrr...

***** See I didn't threaten to kill the children so put the phone down and don't call the CPS.

****** Do I have to personally clean up the debris after blowing up the house?


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All Content at katiefleck.com is Copyright 2003-2006 by Katie Fleck, All Rights Reserved.






MY FAMILY

Me, 28 years old, stay at home mom
Greg, my dear husband
Zach, 8 year old son
Emily, 7 year old daughter
Ally, 7 year old daughter (yes, twins!)
Kyle, 4 year old son
Kelly, 3 year old daughter


writer, Libra, ISTJ, scrapbooker, knitter
location: Maryland USA

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