Snow and then some!

We've got major snow here! There's about 12 inches in the back yard. School was, of course, cancelled for the day. Meg cracks me up now that she's in school as she will chant "No school, no school!" hoping for a delay or cancellation. A delay for her means no school, so that's just as good for her. It means an extra Lazy Day with Beth that she just loves to have. :)

We headed outside this morning around 10am after getting all bundled up. She was full of squeals and delight the minute she stepped outside. Obviously, this is the most snow she's ever seen. She immediately started running up the piles (then sliding down) that Greg's plow had piled up in my driveway. I had some shoveling to do, but my shovel was in Greg's basement. We started the trek to his house together, but the snow was waaaay too deep for her to continue. She ended up stopping to make snow angels while she waited for me.

I did decide that we could venture out to Blockbuster to get a movie, as I wasn't up for playing "Cheetah" and "House" ALL day long. We rented a classic...Annie and she also got a Barbie movie since she wasn't so sure about my choice. On the way home we stopped at Chicago's, or Pizza Place as she calls it and got lunch to take home. We had a nice lunch and watched the movie as we ate. She seemed to like it and was even attempting to sing along by the end. Not a surprise really! After that, she watched her Barbie movie some and help me some while I tackled the playroom/office in the house for a major reorganzation. I've lived in this house two years and I still continue to try to make room for all the toys and get things just the way I want them. I think we finally have the playroom in good shape. Now...if things will just get put back where they belong. Right?!?!

Last goat post...

Billy, our goat, left yesterdat at 2pm. Meg was heartbroken and I felt like a pretty crappy parent for bringing the thing into our home and letting her get attached. He's going to a great farm, where a little 11 year old girl will be raising him to show in 4-H this upcoming summer. I will admit that I even teared up with him leaving. Meg had a huge meltdown right away and a few since then. I swear that these types of things were NEVER mentioned in parenting books! Where the he** was that chapter that read Caution Saving an Animal's Life....Possible Trauma for Your Child!?!?! Oh well...I'm sure she'll be over it soon enough, plus Grandpa came over for dinner tonight and informed us that another set of triplets were born last night. Apparently two aren't doing so well, but don't look at me! I've been there, done that!

Things you may never have known about a goat....

In case you've been wondering, we still have our goat (Billy is his name now). To summarize our past week with him, I thought it might be fun to make a list of the things we have learned from him....things I never really knew about goats and things YOU may not have know either.

1. Goats play hide-and-go-seek. Meg and I take off from Billy and try to hide during our play time with him. Usually he follows as fast as he can, but if we get away without him seeing where we go, we can mimick a goat noise and he'll come find us wherever we're hiding in the basement. Quite entertaining...if you have a strong desire now to have your own goat for playing this game, feel free to email me, I can hook you up with one! :)

2. Goats have a great sense of hearing. Billy is in the basement, but when someone is walking around upstairs, you can hear it. He's a perfectly good "goat angel" all night long and doesn't make a peep, but as soon as I get out of bed in the morning and start moving around, he hears me and is downstairs bleating away to make sure he gets his breakfast ASAP.

3. Goats have a good sense of smell. Billy's belly is never full. When his bottle is finished he always wants more and will try to continue to nurse from my fingers. Meg would love to have him do this to her, but he won't give it a thought. I think he knows my smell as his "mother" and will only do this from me. How nice that a goat loves me like this, huh?

4. A jumping goat is hilarious to watch. I've always known that goats are playful, but to watch him jump up on his back legs and kick up at Meg or hop up and down like a rabbit is funny. On top of that to listen to Meg cackle while watching him is joy for me.

Those are just a few fun things we've learned. The good/bad news is that we may have found Billy a home. Good news because a goat really can't be raised in my basement and the home for him would be a great one. It's a 10 year old girl who wants a goat to show in 4-H. Bad news because we (yes, WE) are attached to him. Everywhere we've gone this week Meg has announced to random strangers, "We have a goat living in our basement!" She already she some major tears when I told her the possibility that he may be leaving tomorrow. We'll find out in the morning if he's leaving for sure and will cross that bridge together if we get there.

The Honest Truth from a 4 year old

Meg was trying to convince me of something, so she started in on her bargaining. Bargaining, I'm use to however, she had a new technique this time. She proceeded to tell me that if I'd give in to her request she'd let me take a nap. This was after school, and it has been a long week, so I'll admit the offer was tempting. I know, though, that there's no way she'd ever let me nap as this would require her to stop talking to me for longer than five minutes. Anyways, I told her that I didn't need a nap, so I wasn't giving in. She told me that I did need a nap and she could tell because I looked tired. I asked her how she knew I was tired and she told me she could tell it because of the way my eyes looked. HA! Think she's ever heard that before? Now...off to check the bags under my eyes and see if they really are that bad!

Stretching a Dollar (or Five)

Mamaw and Papaw are gone for several weeks. They've officially become snow birds with retirement and have "flown the coop," yet they haven't forgotten completely about those precious grandchildren that are freezing here in Indiana. Meghan and the other girls got a "miss you" card in the mail the other day that had a $5 bill in it. Meghan was insistent tonight that this $5 be spent on a toy. I wasn't really up for an outing since we were having company for dinner, so I tried to avoid it. There was no diverting her, (not even her goat friend in our basement could get her mind off of spending her $5 bill!) I told her that the only place I would take TONIGHT was Wal-Green's since it's about 30 seconds from our house. I also explained that they have a very limited $5 toy selection and that if she'd wait, I'd take her to Wal-Mart tomorrow after school where they "Roll Back Prices" and she could get a much better deal with her 5 bucks. Nope! She wasn't having it! She had to spend that money TONIGHT! So...off we went.

Here's how our trip went:

We walked in. Beauty department is first. Meg spies a decorate your own nail kit. "Mommy, how much is that?"

"$20, Meghan, you only have $5."

We move on, finding the very short toy aisle, where she proceeds to ask, "Is this it?" Uh huh! She points out many more things she's just dying to have. A baby in a stroller. $39.99. A Barbie hairstyle head. $10.99 High School Musical something. $15.99. Princess Tea Party Set. $20 (She just got one of these for Christmas I might add!) The list goes on...you get the picture. At this point, she's pretty discouraged. I told her again, that I'd take her to Wal-Mart or she could save her money (gasp...what a thought!?!?) and she could buy something bigger when she has more. Nope...she WILL buy something TONIGHT for $5 at Wal-Green's. Finally, she sees a pair of Snow White Dress up shoes. They're red and match her Gabriella dress up dress she got for Christmas. How much? $3.99. Sold! She very proudly walks up to the counter, plops her shoes and money down and makes her purchase! Whew...that $5 is gone...but the story isn't over just yet.

We get in the car to come home and she says, "Mommy, I can't wait to go to Wal-Mart tomorrow night. I wonder what I'll pick out there!" I had to explain that the money was gone. She told me that I could go to the bank and get some of her money out for her so she could get some more things. We had a nice little talk that the money Mommy puts away in her bank account isn't going to come back out to buy toys on a random night at Wal-Mart. Was she a little disappointed? Yep, but when she got home and put on her new $5 dress up shoes, she forgot all about it! Is this outfit just perfect now or what?

New "Kid" on the Block

By kid, I mean baby goat....yes that's right, in case you haven't heard the buzz we have a baby goat living in our basement. How, might you ask, did that get started? Well...here goes. Thursday night temps here in good 'ole Indiana dropped well below freezing and my grandpa's goats decided to start having babies that night. Of course! Greg went into the barn to do the work and immediately heard three of them yelling out. The doe had had triplets! Meg and I were still inside getting all bundle up in our 15 layers to prevent frostbite, so he called my cell to let me know. I took out towels to attempt to get them dryed off asap to help, but that wasn't going to be enough. By the time we got to them, their wet little ears and tails were already frozen. :( Then we discovered, after the help of my brother, that the momma goat couldn't provide any milk. :( again. So??? What did we do? We loaded them up in my 4-runner and brought them home. I'm fairly certain that it's against all city ordinances to have a goat as a pet in the city and I won't even go into what kinds of problems there might be with having one living in the basement, but who cares! I couldn't just let the poor things stay in the barn to freeze and die! Greg and I took turns getting up every two hours to feed them and check on them, but, sadly, two died through the first night.

We did manage to save one of them though, a little billy goat. Meg just loves him to pieces. She keeps wanting to name him, but I know how hard it is to keep an orphan animal alive, so we're trying to hold off on that for a while yet. He's just being called "Goat" or "Billy" for now. HA! She's already started planning how to be able to actually keep him for good in our basement, but there is no way that I'm letting a stinky billy goat stay there for too long. He's finally nursing from a bottle well today and getting up and moving around on his own. We've got one more day to be home with him and then we have to decide what to do with him. Grandpa has informed us that he doesn't want a bottle baby to take care of. I can't imagine just getting rid of him, so we'll have to see. Greg has reassured us that it will work out. (I think I may be getting as attached to the thing as Meg is!) HA! Here are a couple of pics of our new kid:

Meghan #1, Meghan #2, Meghan #3....

Just a few thoughts tonight. I seriously wonder if Meghan has multiple personalities. OK...maybe not seriously, but I do wonder. She can go from happy-go-lucky to pi$$ed off at the world (well, not really the world, just me) in a few seconds and vice versa. Case in point, we left Greg's house this afternoon, where she'd spent a great deal of time. She'd been able to go to the bathroom by herself, get her own shoes and coat on, etc... She was playing very happily with the boys. I'll call this Meghan #1, since it's my most preferred Meghan. Then, the car door opened when we got home and the whining Meghan #2 emerged. "Mooooooommy, I can't get my boots off. I can't get my coat off." My arms and hands are overloaded with all of her stuff she'd carted to Greg's so I couldn't really help. I, very nicely, told her she could do it herself. Wham! Switch to Meghan #3, pi$$ed off Meghan. Now she's just ticked that her servant (me) won't help her when she has ordered. I went ahead, walked upstairs and told her that she could not come up until she had her boots off since she'd been in the barn with them on.

Not-so-surprisingly, two seconds later, she was in the kitchen...still Meghan #3. She stomps, snorts at me a little bit, yells something at me, I choose to ignore her for the meantime, because NAPTIME is just around the corner! WOOHOO, quiet time for Mommy! After ignoring her for a couple of minutes, Meghan #3 disappears and Meghan #2 comes back. This time she's hungry. She wants a snack, but not that snack or that one.... She wants leftover noodles. I heat up leftover noodles, but that wasn't quite right. Meghan #3 comes back. At this point, I'm done. I scoop her up, tell her it's nap time. As expected, Meghan #3 is super-mad now, but with a threat of losing tv time for the week, she gets quiet quickly and sleeps soundly for two hours. Fatigue played a part, and I realize that, but it's still trying on my nerves to deal with that! I guess I am glad that she doesn't have these moods with everyone, only me!

Oh, I forget to mention one more Meghan...Meghan #4, the sweet cuddly one that gets up from a nap or out of bed in the mornings. I love, love, love that one. She'll cuddle up next to me under a blanket or in bed for a while and just chill. It brings back the sweet memories of when I used rock my baby girl to sleep every night, long before all these different moods hit.

Can you imagine what will happen with puberty and hormones? I better start stockpiling up on anti-anxiety meds now!

The Bad Kid Show

Meghan has a new interest in shows. She likes to watch "the bad kid show" on television, which is The Supernanny. She sits in awe of the horrible fits these kids throw and the awful things they do. Tonight we were snuggled up on the couch watching a new episode that had twin 4 year old boys on it. At one point on little boy was throwing a major fit about which pair of shoes to wear (Imagine that?!?!) and Meg looks up at me and says, "I don't act like that do I Mommy?" I told her that, of course, she didn't never acted that terrible, but that sometimes when she argues with me about clothing or shoe choices she acts a little silly! Maybe the next morning we're getting ready for school and she's whining about whether her pants are too tight or too loose, I'll remind her that I could always invite The Supernanny to come live with us for a while! HA!

New Year's Fun!

We rang in the new year with quite a bang! We took the kids to the Great Wolf Lodge in Cincinnati. It was
probably the most fun we could have possibly have had on a New Year's with them! They were quite wound up in the days leading up to it, so I wondered how tolerable the two hour trip over there would be, but I will say they were great. We borrowed my parents mini-van (which is soon to be mine!) which is definitely the way to travel with four kids. Meg enjoyed her DVD with headphones, although she commentated most of it to us all still and the boys texted with their new cell phone and listened to music.

When we go to our room, excitement erupted! We had a room called the Kids Kabin. It had a queen size bed for us and a sleeper sofa bed for Meg in the main room, plus a fire place and balcony (yes, they did go out there even though it was freezing!). Then there was a special "cabin" in the room that had bunk beds and another twin bed in it for the boys. It also had their own tv and Game Cube console in it. It was very spacious even for all of us. We hurried and changed into our swimsuits and headed down to the waterpark. Meg was a little leery at first of the waterslides so she and I started out in the kiddie pool with the little slides. When she had done those several times and was feeling good, I suggested we try one of the bigger slides together in a double tube. She was so sure about it, but I convinced her that there was no way she'd get hurt and that if she didn't like it, we'd spend the rest of our time in the kiddie pool on the kiddie slides. We climbed the 800+ steps (maybe I'm exaggerating just a little bit) for the first time and hopped into our tube. As we started heading down, she was quiet at first the, she let out a squeal of delight. By the time we hit the water at the end, she was already asking to head back up and try a different one. Bye, bye kiddie pool.....hello steps! We climbed those steps at least 30 times throughout the rest of that day and the next. She rode every slide they had, except the big water coaster one. We even had her convinced to do that one, but when we go to the top to get on she was just a tad too short and the guy wouldn't let her on. =( She was very proud to say she'd done all the ones that she could though! By the end of the second day, she was even going down some of them by herself!

On New Year's Eve day, we played for a while, then we all decided we were hungry. We headed back up to our "cabin" and dove into the snacks I'd packed and we ahead and preordered out pizza for later that night, since we figured the rest of the hotel guests would be ordering pizza too. The boys then headed back down to the pool to play while Miss Meg and I rested. It was a bit noisy, since the hotel provided noisemakers to all the kids upon arrival, but we did get a good our of sleep in, which kept us going until midnight! We then headed back to the waterpark for a few more turns on the waterslides, before we got ourselves ready for dinner and the lodge's big Snowball event.

The Snowball event was fun filled with clowns doing face painting, balloon artists, party hat decorating, a band with dancing and games, and a really cool magic show. We even saw a show in the lobby where it snowed at the end. Very cool! Meghan, Cody and I spent much of the night dancing away. We were right up front on the dance floor in front of them, so close actually, that the lead singer motioned for me once to come up on stage with him. I just shook my head no, those days are long gone buddy! HA! HA! Greg, Connor and Kyle took some breaks and went back to the room a little bit, but not the three of us....we are the party animals apparently! =) We did all make it to midnight, even the other three joined us for the big countdown and balloon drop. As soon as the countdown was over though, we made a beeline for our room and beds. Meghan was so funny because she's now convinced (and very excited) that she stayed up ALL NIGHT LONG! She wanted to know what she was supposed to do when we got back to the room since it was morning. I then explained that it was just very early morning, and she still had plenty of time to sleep and that she should sleep late.....but in typical Meg fashion, at just a few minutes for 8AM, I heard her visiting with the boys in their "cabin." We had no time to waste anyways, as we had to get back to the waterslides!

The kids all settled in the "grocery getter"

Decorating a New Year's hat (that I had to wear later because it covered up too much of her face painting!)

With our party favors making noise!

Getting ready to swim

Not sure the hat is quite my look

Alien balloons and face painting

As she was looking through the book, she told me she wanted something pink and girly. HA!

One of their favorite rides

Waiting for the balloons to drop

Dancing the night away!