Popcorn Kernels Don't Go There

Today was just one of those odd eclectic days that seem to happen rather frequently with young children.

I thought for sure my husband was supposed to be to work at noon today. So, I cook and serve lunch at ten-thirty, we were out of diapers, so the girls and I take him to work so I could get some (outgrew our cloth ones, haven't been able to afford more, yet I know if I wasn't spending money on disposables, I could. Hate the irony of it.). Ended up getting a small package of diapers for night use and a had a great coupon for Pull-Ups which made it cheaper than the store brand so I got those. Hopefully soon we won't be needing those and I can save up for a better stash of cloth diapers. Anyway, we get home and I put the Beans down for her nap and get the laundry started for the day when Hubbs emails me on his first break. He told me that he was supposed to have been in at two, not noon, but they let him work two extra hours (I thought for sure he was to be there at noon. Until I checked my day planner and found out I was the one who messed up...I don't mind the extra two hours of pay, but it meant I could have gone shopping alone for the first time in ages). After Beans woke up, I gave the kids popcorn for a snack. They have always been good about eating popcorn so I wasn't worried. I called my mom, who wasn't home so I talked to my dad for a half hour. While I'm on the phone, Bugs comes over to me and says she has something up her nose and to get it out for her. I look into her nose and discover an unpopped kernel of popcorn in her left nostril. I bid Dad a hasty farewell and try and get Bugs to blow through her nose while I'm holding the right nostril shut. She blows through her mouth instead. She really starts to freak out a bit and starts to sniff in as hard as she could and sticking her finger up there in an effort to pry it out herself. I take her to my bedroom and lay her down on the bed and pull out my tweezers, praying I could get a good grip on the kernel. The second Bugs saw the tweezers in my hand she starts throwing her head back and forth and flailing her arms and legs and screaming "Don't hurt me!!! Don't hurt me!!!!. I quickly see that talking to her about not moving and I won't hurt her isn't doing any good, so I decide to try to get her to blow one last time. I show her what to do with my nose, offered up several desperate prayers to please let it come out, plug her right nostril and tell her to blow through her nose. The popcorn kernel came shooting out of her nose and bounced off my chest. I had hoped we had passed the stage where random items are shoved into odd orifices. She's almost three and a half. I guessed wrong. Now to survive this stage with Beans....and hopefully Bugs learned her lesson...My dad called back five minutes later to check on the Bugs.

After playing EMT, and being relieved that we weren't out the ridiculous copay for urgent care, I was very shaky the rest of the day. I didn't get half of what I had planned to do done for the day. Oh well. My kids survived today, at this point, that is what matters.

Going to have to pick my husband up from work in about an hour. I can't wait to have him home for two days in a row next week. Tomorrow and Monday. Haven't had two off in a row in over month except for his requested vacation days over New Years.

Speaking of husbands, what out of the ordinary nice thing have you done for yours lately? Not to brag, but last night I gave mine an hour long massage after he got home from work (he closed). He really enjoyed the surprise of it. And he's thanked me several times today, mentioned how great he feels a several times and I think he really appreciated it. Have you done something to show your husband how much you appreciate him lately? It doesn't have to be an hour long massage, or anything expensive. Maybe just baking him a batch of his favorite cookies and slipping them into his lunch as a surprise, or maybe a copy of that new book he's been wanting to read and then you take the kids out for a few hours so he can get a start on it. Really, it could be anything to make him feel special. I want to challenge you to do one thing as a surprise for your husband this week to make him feel special and cared for.

Have a blessed Sunday and into next week. I've got a busy few days coming up between church and small group tomorrow and then Monday we are going to the salvage grocery store for our monthly stock up. I still have cereal and bottled juice from the last trip. Opened my last package of cheese today. I love the salvage grocery. It basically is just items that got damaged while waiting to be put on shelves at the big chain stores. Cereal boxes that got whacked with a box knife while the pallet was being cut open, boxes that got crushed and dented cans. The one we go to also gets restaurant overstocked items and things that are no longer at the restaurant that were limited time promo items. It is a great way to save a ton of money. I can totally fill the trunk of our car for a hundred dollars. I can't do that anywhere else.

Our Very Memorable Christmas Day

To start, it snowed. It started about five thirty on Christmas Eve and we actually got five or so inches. It doesn't normally snow down here until the end of January, and to say the girls were thrilled is an understatement (I'm just grateful it started to melt off a bit yesterday and the road in front of our house is no longer a two inch thick sheet of ice)

So, Bugs wakes us up at about seven on Christmas morning. She has this insane love of early mornings (how, we don't know, neither her father or I are morning people). So, we cuddle in bed until she happens to see the snow out our bedroom window, which at that point, there was no stopping her or her excitement. Funny thing is, she hadn't noticed what all was under the tree yet at that point.

So, at a little before eight, she and I come out and we start our cinnamon rolls (yes, I used a tube, figured the time exchange for tubed verses homemade on Christmas day was worth it, and yes, I did get generic). She loved helping. While she was helping, she looked into the living room and noticed that the tree wasn't the same as when she went to bed. She got all excited to see that Mimi and Poppie had sent presents (and there were a few from Mom and Dad). She was wanting to rip into them right away. She was sent to wake up her sister as the rolls were finishing and they got to open their stockings (little dolls from the dollar bin, stickers and candy canes along with a few more items from the dollar bin, and new hair clips for each of them because ours end up missing on a regular basis). We then sit down to eat and the girls were enthralled over the stockings (if I had let them, they wouldn't have moved for hours). We then opened up what my parents sent out and the few things we had gotten for the girls. By now it is ten in the morning, and I realize I needed to have gotten the ham in to cook for LUNCH at least two hours ago. Ooops on me. So, I lug it out of the fridge and started reading the directions. I got the ham at 99 cents a pound for a full ham the week before. It was a great deal. It weighed 18 1/2 pounds. No way it was going to be ready for lunch. I read the cooking instructions that came with it, and it said to bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes a pound. I look at the clock and start doing math. I gasp. Redo the math. Nearly 9 hours? Like, supper at bedtime? So, to hasten the cooking for dinner, I cut the ham into three parts (mistake number 2) and coat the two smaller parts with my glaze and cover it all with foil and threw it in the oven and nearly start crying.

My husband was like, it's ok. We have the money to go for Chinese for lunch, we'll just have ham for supper, it will be great. I agreed to the plan (thankful our Chinese restaurants are super cheap around here [cheaper than fast food for our family] and the girls still eat free due to their ages). So, until lunch time, we decide to go out and play in the snow. The girls have a blast and my husband shovels the sidewalk and the driveway. This was the Beans first time in the snow and she fell in love. Until her boot got caught in a small drift and she stepped out of it, and her sock and right into the snow with her bare foot. At this point, she starts screaming like someone was trying to kill her. I go and scoop her up to see what the problem was and her poor foot was red and cold. I go to shift her into a better position for holding her (at 22 1/2 months she's bigger than her sister was at that age) and I take a step and my left ankle decides it is a great time to roll and sprain. So, Hubbs stays outside a bit longer with the Bugs and I and the Beans go inside to tend to our wounds. Beans gets plopped into a bubble bath and has the time of her life in it (I added extra bubbles, she loved it). And I put my foot up. The rest of the fam came in and I had to give the Bugs a bath in bubbles too.

We get the girls dressed in clean and dry clothes and Hubbs goes out to scrape the car. He opens the driver side door to turn on the defroster, and the door refuses to latch. He gets a bit freaked out. I told him it was probably ice and to let it warm up. Of course, he didn't come in to tell me until after he had scraped the whole thing. He decides that if he can't rig it closed, he'll just hold it shut and we'll still go out for Chinese, I just have to shift when he tells me to. I'm like, no way. And if we have to go that route, how in the world was he getting to work the next day? He said he'd work on it. He then asks me to go out and check the door to see if I can find what was wrong. It worked perfectly for me. So either the seatbelt got stuck out and he didn't notice it, or there was ice and it melted, it was fixed. He still doesn't believe me over the ice as he can't see how ice can get on the latch (um, it was raining and turned to snow when he got off work the night before...)

So, we head out to our favorite Chinese restaurant. We knew they were supposed to be open (it was on their sign). We get stuck trying to get into their parking lot. We notice there are no cars, no car tracks and it looks strangely like it is closed. So, we go to leave and we get stuck in a drift over the road on the exit. Hubbs gets out of the car to push it while I try driving. We rocked it for twenty minutes on one of the main streets of our town. Someone finally did stop and five minutes later we were freed (traffic was kind of heavy at that point). We get going towards another Chinese restaurant and arrive, without any more delays at one in the afternoon. We were starved.

We get home after nearly getting side swiped by an SUV (snow and slick roads only happen like two days out of each year, so no one down here knows how to drive in it. I miss living where there is snow because the people knew how to deal with it) and the youngest goes down for her very late nap and Hubbs and Bugs watch a movie on the computer while I lay down. Then, at about five, I check the ham. The thing was overcooked. As my husband termed it, we had pig jerky for supper. It was so dried out. And for some reason, the mashed potatoes tasted like dirt. My butternut squash I had steamed was great though. However, I was the only one who liked it. Oh well, it meant more for me.

So, that was our Christmas day. Totally not what any of us had planned, but wouldn't have traded the experiences for anything. Kind of like my favorite Valentine's day. Hubbs and I were courting, and we went to the big town 45 minutes away and the brakes on his car decided that they were going to go kaputz. He then wasn't able to get me the bracelet he wanted to as he had to replace his brakes instead. It was a fun and enjoyable day trying to get that fixed and back to town. I did get a giant teddy bear out of the deal though. That year, I got him some nice glass Anchor Hocking bakeware. He was on his internship at a church three hours from where I was living and teaching and he had never owned his own bakeware. I still use it and every time I do, I remember that Valentine's Day.

I pray you had a blessed Christmas day too.