Inventors Galore

I'm back from my weekend in Chicago with my mom and aunt. As a reminder, we were there for the Everyday Edisons' casting call for inventors. My aunt was the one with an actual invention, and then my mom and I came up with ideas so we could join her.

None of our ideas were picked, but that's okay. The real fun of the event was seeing all the other crazy inventor people there. I was so entertained by the whole thing that I even started making a list on my iPhone of bad invention ideas. I'll admit that my idea wasn't groundbreaking. (My idea was a "Nanny Pack" where you put together fun games, toys, etc. all in one bag to entertain kids.) But some of the people at the casting call were just crazy. Here are some of my favorite unusual ideas of the day.

*One person had the idea of having this mystery ball. When you turn it over, it gives you inspirational messages like "You can do it," "Success is in your future soon," and stuff like that. (Anyone thinking Magic 8 ball here?)
*The same person wanted to present a second idea about how you can make Ramen noodles in a cup. Hmmmm.
*One woman wanted to put HARD, PLASTIC organizers in the bottom of a purse, so you can transfer them from purse to purse. Okay, this sounds good in theory, but who has hard, plastic organizers in the bottom of a purse?!? Weird.
*One guy created an elastic strap that goes OVER a baby's head to hold its bottle. This way, he said, the parent doesn't have to get up to give the baby its bottle back if it drops it. (There are so many things wrong with this one. I just don't know where to begin.)

So, yes. There were some crazy inventor people. But we sure had a lot of fun. And after we got done standing around in lines for most of the day, we still had time to go to Navy Pier. And after that, we went to a sketch comedy show at Second City. (That's where a lot of comedians and Saturday Night Live people have come out of.)

Good weekend overall. Here's a picture of us riding the Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier.

Little cutie

As you can tell, Anna loves her dress, shoes, purse and umbrella. Jack is a big fan of the umbrella, too. I can tell this umbrella is going to break pretty soon. Luckily, we know a certain grandma who will be going to San Francisco next month. If she makes her way to Chinatown, maybe she could pick up a few of these $1.99 umbrellas. :)

San Francisco!

Steve and I are back from our long weekend in San Francisco. We had a blast. Sadly, my camera was dead so I only got pictures with my iphone. But never fear, we were there with our friends Troy and Danielle.

Danielle got great photos, so I'll share them when she gets back. She's still in Napa, enjoying some great wine.

I saw Chinatown where I got Anna this great classic dress with matching shoes, a purse and a "pretty" umbrella. (She LOVES it and even insisted on taking everything to bed with her.) Then we saw Fisherman's Wharf where the seals hang out and you can see Alcatrez. Yesterday, we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and into Muir Woods just outside of San Francisco. It was so peaceful in the woods. I loved it!

So all in all, it's been a great trip. Now I'm gearing up for next weekend. My mom and aunt are flying in, and we're all going to "audition" for this invention show on PBS. The auditions are down in Chicago. Did I mention this to anyone?

Yep, my aunt has a truly great invention. And my mom and I just threw together a couple of ideas so we can all stand in line together. I'll let you know how it goes.

Crazy, Nutty, Expensive Weekend

My crazy weekend started on Saturday. I had this children's writing luncheon to go to. I'm not a big fan of these luncheons to begin with, but that's another story. But I had already paid for the luncheon and I was going to hear this young editor from a big publishing house, so away I went.

Everything was going fine...I had my cute spring blazer on and I was driving Steve's car with a GPS. And then I get pulled over. The dumb cop in this fancy little neighborhood pulled me over for going 30 in a 15. (For the record, do you know how HARD it is to go 15 mph, especially in a sporty, manual sedan? It's hard!)

I was really annoyed because he first called me "sir," but didn't apologize for it. Then while he's writing me a ticket, he stops a bunch of male bike riders for breaking some other dumb law. But does he ticket them? No! At this point, I'm pretty sure that the cop hates all women. And not only that, but I'm crying. Actually, crying would be an understatement. I'm actually blubbering. The cop takes about 30 minutes to finish my ticket because of all this delay. And by this time, I'm past "fashionable late" for the luncheon. And, I can't stop crying. So even if I were to go late, I would have caused quite a scene. (I'm one of those ugly criers. My whole face gets red and blotchy.) So I went to the mall, got the kids some shoes and then went home. Lame, lame.

To be honest, the ticket wasn't that bad. It was under $100 and "no points," which is good. I was silly for getting so worked up, but whatever.

On a better note...the whole family we went to the Brewers game today (Sunday). It was really busy and packed, but we lucked out and got the end seats on a back row. Score! They kids made it until the 7th inning. Not bad at all. Our goal was to see the Sausages race (Brewers tradition), and we made it. Here are some of my favorite moments of the day...

*Anna was eating peanuts when I realized she wasn't actually swallowing them. Somewhere in the 5th inning, she opened her mouth and spit out a huge mouthful of peanuts into my hand. Gross!
*The Brewers mascot is Bernie, and he stands up on this big platform, waiting to slide down a giant slide when they hit a homerun. Jack was watching him like a hawk, and he kept waving to him and shouting, "Hi Ernie! Are you going to slide?"
*We went up and played in the kids area for a while, and Jack was helping Anna get up on the places that were too high for her. He waited patiently for her, and if someone tried to push her around, Jack would go back there to fight for her to get through. It was sure cute.
*When we came back from playing, Jack was mad at Steve for eating all the peanuts. He promptly demanded they get more.

That's about it for out weekend. Next weekend, Steve and I will be in San Francisco, and Steve's mom is kindly coming down to watch the kids. I can't wait to go!

Sore Loser

I'm going to admit it. I don't like to lose. And not only that, but I hate to lose at Scrabble.

Steve and I have been playing Scrabble for years. No wait. Let me rephrase that. Steve has been beating me at Scrabble for years. It's very frustrating. No matter how hard I try, I never win. And like I said, I don't like losing. In fact, I'm such a bad loser that Steve often swears that he'll never play me again...ever.

Now some of you might wonder, "What's the problem? Why can't you win? Aren't you a writer and editor? Don't you work with words every day?"

Well, yes. Yes I do. But my crazy wordsmith of a husband was an English major. And apparently English majors conquer Journalism majors.

So this weekend, I convinced Steve to play Scrabble with me once again. It's probably been 2 or 3 years since we've played. That's how bad of a loser I am. I pout (and sometimes yell), so Steve doesn't like to play. And he certainly isn't going to let me win. So we're playing and everything is going fine until I play a word that really isn't a word. I tend to do this. I convince myself that a word is really a word, and I "take a chance." It usually doesn't pay off, which means Steve challenges me and then I lose my turn. This is when I turn into Evil Stacy. Losing your turn in Scrabble is the worst thing EVER! It's very hard to come back from. Needless to say, I lost. In fact, I lost twice this weekend. The second time, he didn't even challenge my fake work of "redot." You know, like to dot your i's. So then you would need to redot them. (By the way, I looked it up Steve and it's not a word!)

Sadly, I was a sore loser, and Steve says he's never going to play me again. I feel bad for turning into Evil Stacy. (Sorry sweetie!) I hope that one day I can beat him at Scrabble. But I think I'm going to have to figure out how to get him to play me again first. Until then, I'm going to study up on my Q, Z, X and J words.

A Little Bit of Princess in Everyone

Anna has never been a girly girl. Of course, she is only 2, so I don't want to stereotype her just yet. But she's always been my little independent, outspoken little baby and girl.

I never wanted to push the frilly stuff on her just because she was a girl. But it just goes to show that kids will develop however they want. Jack, for example, was never a truck boy. But he sure loves music and making up stories. Isn't it funny how they develop personalities early on?

Anyway, Anna just recently started demonstrating some major princess behavior. I think it started when we watched the move, Enchanted. This is the Amy Adams movie where she goes from being a cartoon princess to a real-life one in New York City. I know it sounds silly, but it's actually pretty good. Well, Jack and Anna love this movie. Anna especially gets a little twinkle in her eye when she watched princess Giselle. She even does the dance motions when Giselle breaks out in song.

Then the princess behavior continued when Steve got her some pajamas that are in the gown/dress style. Anna recently decided that she didn't want her feet covered at night anymore, and Steve is eager to please his little girl. I think Anna would wear these dress pajamas all day if we let her. So we'll see how this princess thing develops. She still doesn't want me doing much with her hair to make it pretty. And she's certainly not timid. But it's fun to see kids grow up and develop.

I'm still trying to get a good video of her doing the motions and dancing. Stay tuned...

Easter with Snow

I think I jinxed the weather with my recent lovely Spring posting. This Easter weekend, we were greeted with roughly 2 feet of snow. So instead of a lovely, sunny Easter egg hunt on Saturday, we went to an Easter egg hand out at a local school. We actually thought they were still going to "hide" the eggs in some way, and were quite disappointed to find out they were just handing out plastic bags instead.

But we didn't let it get us down! We had a blast coloring eggs. Then I got woken up at 7 this morning because the kids were SOOOO excited. The Easter Bunny hid eggs in our basement, and they couldn't wait to find them.

This afternoon, we went outside and made snowpeople. Of course, if I were talented, they would have been snow bunnies. But I'm not. However, we did use celery for the arms, plastic Easter eggs for eyes, carrots for the ears and an Oreo cookie for one of the noses.

Last year during Easter, it was snowing and cold. This year, we were covered in snow. I swear, one of these years it's going to be nice. Otherwise, I told Steve we'll just have to go to Oklahoma for Easter one year.

Here Comes Spring

Tomorrow (Thursday) is the first official day of spring. Of course, no one around here really counts on good weather until after Memorial weekend. But we couldn't help but enjoy the gorgeous sunshine today. It was almost 50! That's the thing about living in Wisconsin. The winters are cold and you can get sick of all the snow, but the summers more than make up for it, in my opinion.

I grew up in those sweltering, humid summers, and I much prefer the lovely Wisconsin weather that time of year. When it hits low 90s here, people start complaining.

I'm sure we'll have a few more freezing cold days before the nice, warm weather gets here, but I love these little sprinkles of spring. Today, Jack asked me where he could find the flowers, but I had to tell him they weren't here yet. Then he asked me if we could get his pool out so he could swim outside. I had to explain that we would first have to wait for ALL the snow to melt, not just some of it.

Ahhh, spring! And then comes summer!

And the birthdays are over...

We had Jack's birthday party on Saturday at this inflatables place near Steve's mom. Jack was in Heaven, playing with his cousin. They were running around like crazy kids on all these inflatables. Climbing up, sliding down, etc. I got in on the action, too. In fact, I got a little carried away and was actually launching myself in the air and crashing down.

It came back to bite me, though. I was SO sore on Sunday and Monday morning. I guess I was using muscles that I never knew I had.

Unfortunately, I did not get pictures because I forgot my camera. But I'm hoping Uncle Scott got some good ones so I can share some later.

On an Anna note, that girl is talking in all kinds of full sentences now!

"No Jack. I want to do it!"
"Mommy. Sing rock by baby."
"I take my candy, too!"
"Jack. I want to turn light off!"

Oh, and this morning, Anna was trying to drink from the vegetable oil bottle. Now, don't judge. We had muffins and had used the vegetable oil. But she definitely got a little swig because she had an icky look on her face.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Happy Birthday to my good friend Heather, who has a laugh that is contagious, a loyalty like no other and the cutest little redhead that I've ever seen.

Daycare Crisis

I admit that I analyze and analyze and worry too much. Even the title of this posting is a little misleading because we are not in an actual crisis.

We've always paid a lot for daycare, and it's always bugged me. But it is what it is. Child care isn't cheap, and the kids love their teachers. We've been at the same place for nearly 4 years, but we have thought a couple of times about switching. Not because we don't get good care there, but more to save money.

So recently, we started thinking about switching again. We even went so far as to fill out the enrollment information and write out a check to the new place. But then something happened. We gave our notice, and the director at our center called me today. She was very sad that we would be leaving and wanted to know if there was anything she could do. I pretty much brushed her off, but then it really got to me. These are all teachers that have known our kids since they were drooling, breast-fed babies. They really care about them and enjoy us as a family. And you just can't buy that.

So guess what? After my analyzing and number crunching, we'll be staying right where we are. We're going to get a slight price break, which will help, but the bottom line is that the kids are happy. (I made Steve call the new place and break the news because I am weak.)

Jack will be starting a 1/2 day K4 program in the fall anyway. And then after that is school full time. Hmmm. It's weird to think about. Don't worry, though. I'm sure I'll do plenty of analyzing and analyzing and analyzing between now and then.

Balloon failure

Jack had a good birthday. They showed his card on the air, but they didn't read the poem. He thought it was pretty cool, though. The one thing Jack was so bummed about is that he didn't get a balloon on his birthday. I should have thought of this, as that was his favorite part about Anna's birthday. But rest assured, we're having his party next weekend with Steve's side of the family and there will be balloons.

In other news, our basement remodeling project is complete. We just have some finishing decorating touches to add. We gutted the bathroom, got rid of some closets and got new carpet. It looks great down there.

Well, that's about it I'm afraid. Kind of boring from our end. Happy Monday!

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Jack...

One of the TV shows we watch is the Goodnight Show on Sprout. They're always having promos about "Send in your birthday card. We'll read it on the air."

They stressed that creativity is important if you want to get your card chosen. So we put together a birthday card, and I put together this poem about the birthday boy, who happens to be 4 today. My little man isn't so much a cake person, as the poem explains. (The picture here is Jack pretending to be angry in his birthday crown from school. It cracks him up.)

TODAY IS JACK’S BIRTHDAY,
SO WHY IS HE SAD?
“WE CAN’T FIGURE IT OUT!”
SAID HIS MOM AND HIS DAD.

“I KNOW THE REASON,”
SAID HIS SISTER NAMED ANNA.
“I’LL TELL YOU ABOUT IT,
AFTER I FINISH THIS BANANA.”

SHE SAID, “TODAY IS JACK’S BIRTHDAY,
BUT HE DOESN’T LIKE CAKE.”
“A CHERRY PIE IS REALLY
THE DESSERT YOU SHOULD BAKE.”

SO JACK’S MOM GOT TO WORK
AND MADE THE PIE OF HIS DREAMS.
“YUMMY! YUMMY!” JACK SAID.
“I AM THE BIRTHDAY KING!”

Work just became a little bit cooler...

Yesterday, the CEO of our company made a public statement. "Jeans are OK," she said.

We were watching her address everyone via Internet, as she's based in NY. As soon as she said it, there were a round of cheers. Of course, no one was sure it would apply to our offices, but we all secretly hoped. At least, many of us did. Then today, HR sent an e-mail.

Jeans are OK! I'm so excited. Who cares that I only have 2 pair of jeans that I actually wear? What a great excuse to go jean shopping! Can you tell that I'm excited? I could throw some more exclamation points in!

I know it's kind of silly to be so giddy about something so little, but you have to take what you can get. Ahhhh, jeans. :)

Shopping for Shoes

I was in NYC last week briefly for a business conference. It's not like I do a lot of traveling for work like Steve does. In fact, this was my first business trip ever.

I settled into my hotel room by about 6. I briefly considered just staying in and relaxing, but then I realized there was no way I could do that. This way my only window of opportunity to be in NY before my flight home the next day. I love this place!

It was raining, so I popped open my umbrella and started walking. Soon, I realized that I was along Fashion Avenue near Madison Square Garden. Oooo, Fashion Avenue! Since it was crummy weather, I quickly took refuge in a Macy's store that was an entire block long and like five or six stories tall.

On the first level, there were all kinds of handbags and perfumes. For a few brief seconds, I thought about how cool it would be to buy a $200 or $300 purse from Macy's in NY, but then I came to my senses and starting hitting the sales racks in the clothing areas.

Oh my goodness....there were a lot of clothes to look at. It was insane! I ended up with a pair of jeans and a shirt. Then I asked someone where the shoes were. Level 5. I headed up to level 5 and started searching the sales racks, which is what most of the women there were doing. I found a couple of pairs that I really liked. Then I discovered the catch. They had one shoe out on the floor and its mate in the back. So here's how it worked: You find a shoe that you like and check with a salesperson to see if they have your size. Then if they do, the search is on. They can bring you half of your dream shoe, but you have to search the entire floor to find the other one in your size. This sounds easy, but it is not. I found some great 1/2 shoes that were amazing deals, but their mates were mysteriously missing in my size 9. I only spent about half an hour doing the shoe game before I called it quits. I decided it wasn't worth it after all.

My trip was quick, but I managed to squeeze in a little fun. Now I just want to go back to NYC for some good shoe shopping.