So last Saturday it was declared girl's day out. Being that I'm not really social with a whole lot of women, this only involved 2 of my friends at my church. I would love to say that my husband volunteered to watch all my kids and I enjoyed the day completely child free, but................. that's not exactly how it happened. Amelia is actually a girl. So, it was completely fair for her to be able to enjoy girl's day out with us, right??? Well, that was her dad's intake on the whole situation. Maynard did keep the boys and that was so helpful. We left around 9:30 Saturday morning and stayed gone until 11 o'clock that night. I had so much fun and Amelia was absolutely amazing. I never had not one problem out of her. She really shocked me at how good she was. She was perfectly happy to sit in her stroller and she even used the potty at about every bathroom stop we took. She enjoyed getting her own kid's meals and not having to share off of anyone's plate. But back to me, I think the Lord knew I needed a peaceful day and blessed me with a great one. I stopped in at Children's Place and got an awesome deal on Easter outfits for the kids. Yes, they match again, Duh!!! LOL Sorry, I know that Josiah keeps getting bigger and very soon that's going to be hard to do for much longer. I got all 3 outfits for $93. That's about what I spent on each suit alone last year by the time I got all the hemming done. Rephrase, by the time I paid to have the hemming done!!!!
Anyways, I was able to come home and be able to face everything again with a whole new breath. I love my kids, but sometimes, I just have to get away. Usually by a couple hours I'm ready to go home and see them again. I can't imagine being away from them for a whole night! Bedtime is a whole different story.
Well, duty calls! It's babygarten time at the library!!!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Winter 2012 Family Trip
Ya'll I have decided to start my own blog. I have no earthly idea what I'm doing and one day when its not so late, I will figure out how to post pictures and all that stuff. I just thought since we had some free days available to take a little 3 day trip that I would share a little bit about it with you all. (sounds like I have great faith that people will actually be reading this.)
Maynard is a contract empoyee which means he never gets off work for paid holidays or vacations or any of that good stuff. He came home Thursday evening and announced that he didnt have to work on Monday, President's day and would I like to go to Gatlinburg for a few days. Immediately, we began calling trying to reserve a cabin. Everything was booked solid because of Valentine's weekend. We made so many phone calls. We had already arrived in Pigeon Forge on Friday and finally called the Chamber of Commerce. They gave us a few extra numbers to try. Well, we were so excited!!!!! We found a cabin. Sounded just like what we were looking for. However, it was higher than what we had planned on paying, but we realized we didn't have much of a choice, pay a little extra more or get a regular boring motel room. Like any other reservation, we had to pay for the reservation over the phone. The owner said he needed to go clean the cabin real quick and would meet us at the office and for us to call when we got close. So after 20 mins the owner calls and says the cabin is ready. I'm thinking, ........20 mins. It took you only 20 mins to clean a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom cabin?? So we arrive at the office and go in to talk to the owner. He showed us pictures of the cabin and it looked fairly nice. You can look for yourself at www.gatlinburg.com/pine/. Its the one called Hilltop Hideaway. The manager explained that those pictures were kind of outdated and a little old. He even said the front yard looked like a bomb had exploded because they were laying gas pipelines and never got around to fixing it, but hey, he was getting free gas now. By this time, me and Maynard are eying each other like, "what have we got ourselves into." This is our most absolute favorite thing he said that day before we made our deciding factor, "now, you all will have to provide your own toilet paper." I'm sorry, but this man just swiped my debit card a few hours earlier for $422.79 and just told us we had to provide our own toilet paper????????????? Was we ready to go see the cabin now? "No, thank you , sir, but if you will kindly refund our money we will be on our merry way." Scary and unsettling news? His credit card machine is located at his house not in the office and he has to go home and run our credit back through on our debit card. I have grieved myself all weekend over this money. I called the bank and see where the charge was taken out, but no credit has come through yet. We called the owner and he said he ran it through, but it might take a few days for it to show up at the bank. That has somewhat caused a damper on the rest of our trip because we were budgeted an X amount of $ for the trip and now we had to pay for another place to stay. We lost $422 to spend on shopping and activities on this trip. Somehow our money has stretched like we needed it to and my kids haven't been deprived (unless you count them not getting to ride go-karts) Did you know that it cost $23 for Maynard and the boys to play putt-putt golf? That's one round of golf people, not an all you can putt-puttdeal.
So anyways, we ended up getting a good deal on a family suite motel not the nicest room there ever was, but its 2 bedroom and only $45/night and its very clean.
Day #2
We ate breakfast at McDonalds. (Maynard doesn't seem to know that other restaraunts serve breakfast too) Then we headed to The Titantic. We actually enjoyed that pretty well, except it was a little boring to the kids. Maynard and I love to read everything, but our kids were driving us insane!!! Josiah was mad because we never went up on deck of the ship. I tried to explain that they didnt include that in the tour and boy was he dissappointed. Me and Maynard didnt survive the Titantic, but all our kids did. Titus actually got to be "jack" and Josiah was a hero. Amelia married a rich man and she was a survivor too. We ate lunch at Texas Roadhouse (my favorite restaraunt) and then played putt-putt golf. We went to a few stores like Hammers and Goodwill (of course), but we didnt buy anything. We bought bologna and bread and headed back to the motel and rested.
Day#3
We slept in today. We missed the 10:30 deadline for breakfast at Mcdonalds(I promise you all, it was not intentional) so we splurged and went to Shoney's. We only had to pay for one kid's meal. Yay! Then we stopped over in a little shopping outlet where they had an Old tyme photo shop set up. I really wanted a family portrait so I just mentioned it to Maynard and he said, "sure, let"s go". I was a bit nervous with how my kids would do for us, but it was amazing. They all loved playing dress-up. The boys chose to be confederate soldiers and Amelia wore a beautiful dress. She chose her hat and all her accessories on her own. One included a huge, big gawdy, gold purse which later the photographer was able to trade a baby doll for in exchange. The pictures turned out okay, but i was plum shocked to death when it was time to pay. I'm beginning to wonder if its really bad or if I have just become a cheapskate over the years. We drove around awhile and found a bowling alley in the Community Center. It was alchol free and such a nice environment that we decided to go bowling. My boys were tickled to death. We went in to pay and understood them to say come back in an hour because they were having a fundraiser league right then. So we drug the kids away and promised to take them back in an hour. An hour later we went back. Got to the counter and they said, "Once a year we have a fundraiser day and today is that day and we are charging $15 per person to bowl. Hmmm, $60 for my family to bowl one game??? Sorry, not today. The normal charge, $2.50 per person. So we promised the kids we will try to go back the next day when it was cheaper. By now they are so tore up that I happen to look up and see a Mr.Gaitti"s. I figured that might help make up for thir dissapointment and it did help somewhat. However, I noticed Josiah barely ate 2 peices of pizza, Keep in mind that he has eaten 9 slices before in one trip. I figured maybe he was excited about playing games and didnt want to eat. Maynard said, "I really would like to go the Flea-market they have here." So we headed that way to realized they were closing in about 20 mins and the vendors were packing up. By then Maynard said, "let's just head back to the hotel." On the way back Josiah said, "I don't feel good. I think I have a fever. My belly hurts. Josiah is known for his dramatics so I wasn't too alarmed. We got back to the room and I put the kids in the tub to get ready to go to The Dixie Stampede later that evening. Josiah jumps out of the tub and throws up in the toilet. Then he says he feels better. I go ahead and give him some ibproffen because he mentioned his head hurting and I thought well this will help until maybe after the show tonight. He started acting better and we were off to The Dixie Stampede. We were enjoying the show. Amelia had to sit in my lap and I had to share my food with her in order to not have to pay for her a ticket. She laid claim on my food. She ate my garlic cheese biscuit, and my "bologna", (slice of pork), she ate my corn on the cob, a few bites of my chicken. She took over my pop and cried if I even tried to get a sip. The worst part was she took my apple turnover too!!!!! She drank so much pop that she peed through her clothes on me not once, but twice. This story gets better ya'll, I really hope your still reading. Remember the part about Josiah not feeling well before we went? Anybody know what I'm fixing to say??????????? Throughout the whole show I kept asking Josiah, "Are you ok"? He would always say, "Yes, Im fine." The only thing he was interested in eating was his soup and biscuit. We had about
15 mins left of the show. When I heard, "Mom, I'm gonna puke." If any of you all have ever been to the Dixie Stampede before then you know how you are all crowded in and sitting next to people you don't know. Well I helped pull him up to the step behind us. As soon as he stood up straight he literally puked all over a man behind us and all over their table. The man jumped up and hollered and I just grabbed Josiah and ran to the bathroom. I was trying to clean him up and I started bawling and couldn't stop. Josiah thought I was mad at him and I had to explain that I wasn't mad and it wasn't his fault, I was just upset. After cleaning him up I made the dreaded trip back to get my purse and tell Maynard why we had to leave while sobbing on every breathe. I didn't have to worry about seeing the people he puked on. They had packed up their stuff and left. We left and I continued to cry and Josiah continued to feel worse. I went to Walgreens and found him something for his stomache. I checked his temp and it was 101. He has a headache and is chilling all over. I guess this is just the joys of Motherhood as they say. We are back in the motel room and it's almost 1 a.m. and here I sit venting away at the keyboard.
Guess what? We probably won't go bowling tomorrow before we leave. Guess what? My kids are going to be so dissappointed once again. Guess what? We have 5" of snow waiting for us when we get back home. Guess what? I want to go home sweet home?
Dear friends, this was my first blog. Normally, I wont write so much, but somehow I really needed to get this off my chest. Even if I can't even figure out how to actually get this posted. Good night, Ya'll!
Amy
Maynard is a contract empoyee which means he never gets off work for paid holidays or vacations or any of that good stuff. He came home Thursday evening and announced that he didnt have to work on Monday, President's day and would I like to go to Gatlinburg for a few days. Immediately, we began calling trying to reserve a cabin. Everything was booked solid because of Valentine's weekend. We made so many phone calls. We had already arrived in Pigeon Forge on Friday and finally called the Chamber of Commerce. They gave us a few extra numbers to try. Well, we were so excited!!!!! We found a cabin. Sounded just like what we were looking for. However, it was higher than what we had planned on paying, but we realized we didn't have much of a choice, pay a little extra more or get a regular boring motel room. Like any other reservation, we had to pay for the reservation over the phone. The owner said he needed to go clean the cabin real quick and would meet us at the office and for us to call when we got close. So after 20 mins the owner calls and says the cabin is ready. I'm thinking, ........20 mins. It took you only 20 mins to clean a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom cabin?? So we arrive at the office and go in to talk to the owner. He showed us pictures of the cabin and it looked fairly nice. You can look for yourself at www.gatlinburg.com/pine/. Its the one called Hilltop Hideaway. The manager explained that those pictures were kind of outdated and a little old. He even said the front yard looked like a bomb had exploded because they were laying gas pipelines and never got around to fixing it, but hey, he was getting free gas now. By this time, me and Maynard are eying each other like, "what have we got ourselves into." This is our most absolute favorite thing he said that day before we made our deciding factor, "now, you all will have to provide your own toilet paper." I'm sorry, but this man just swiped my debit card a few hours earlier for $422.79 and just told us we had to provide our own toilet paper????????????? Was we ready to go see the cabin now? "No, thank you , sir, but if you will kindly refund our money we will be on our merry way." Scary and unsettling news? His credit card machine is located at his house not in the office and he has to go home and run our credit back through on our debit card. I have grieved myself all weekend over this money. I called the bank and see where the charge was taken out, but no credit has come through yet. We called the owner and he said he ran it through, but it might take a few days for it to show up at the bank. That has somewhat caused a damper on the rest of our trip because we were budgeted an X amount of $ for the trip and now we had to pay for another place to stay. We lost $422 to spend on shopping and activities on this trip. Somehow our money has stretched like we needed it to and my kids haven't been deprived (unless you count them not getting to ride go-karts) Did you know that it cost $23 for Maynard and the boys to play putt-putt golf? That's one round of golf people, not an all you can putt-puttdeal.
So anyways, we ended up getting a good deal on a family suite motel not the nicest room there ever was, but its 2 bedroom and only $45/night and its very clean.
Day #2
We ate breakfast at McDonalds. (Maynard doesn't seem to know that other restaraunts serve breakfast too) Then we headed to The Titantic. We actually enjoyed that pretty well, except it was a little boring to the kids. Maynard and I love to read everything, but our kids were driving us insane!!! Josiah was mad because we never went up on deck of the ship. I tried to explain that they didnt include that in the tour and boy was he dissappointed. Me and Maynard didnt survive the Titantic, but all our kids did. Titus actually got to be "jack" and Josiah was a hero. Amelia married a rich man and she was a survivor too. We ate lunch at Texas Roadhouse (my favorite restaraunt) and then played putt-putt golf. We went to a few stores like Hammers and Goodwill (of course), but we didnt buy anything. We bought bologna and bread and headed back to the motel and rested.
Day#3
We slept in today. We missed the 10:30 deadline for breakfast at Mcdonalds(I promise you all, it was not intentional) so we splurged and went to Shoney's. We only had to pay for one kid's meal. Yay! Then we stopped over in a little shopping outlet where they had an Old tyme photo shop set up. I really wanted a family portrait so I just mentioned it to Maynard and he said, "sure, let"s go". I was a bit nervous with how my kids would do for us, but it was amazing. They all loved playing dress-up. The boys chose to be confederate soldiers and Amelia wore a beautiful dress. She chose her hat and all her accessories on her own. One included a huge, big gawdy, gold purse which later the photographer was able to trade a baby doll for in exchange. The pictures turned out okay, but i was plum shocked to death when it was time to pay. I'm beginning to wonder if its really bad or if I have just become a cheapskate over the years. We drove around awhile and found a bowling alley in the Community Center. It was alchol free and such a nice environment that we decided to go bowling. My boys were tickled to death. We went in to pay and understood them to say come back in an hour because they were having a fundraiser league right then. So we drug the kids away and promised to take them back in an hour. An hour later we went back. Got to the counter and they said, "Once a year we have a fundraiser day and today is that day and we are charging $15 per person to bowl. Hmmm, $60 for my family to bowl one game??? Sorry, not today. The normal charge, $2.50 per person. So we promised the kids we will try to go back the next day when it was cheaper. By now they are so tore up that I happen to look up and see a Mr.Gaitti"s. I figured that might help make up for thir dissapointment and it did help somewhat. However, I noticed Josiah barely ate 2 peices of pizza, Keep in mind that he has eaten 9 slices before in one trip. I figured maybe he was excited about playing games and didnt want to eat. Maynard said, "I really would like to go the Flea-market they have here." So we headed that way to realized they were closing in about 20 mins and the vendors were packing up. By then Maynard said, "let's just head back to the hotel." On the way back Josiah said, "I don't feel good. I think I have a fever. My belly hurts. Josiah is known for his dramatics so I wasn't too alarmed. We got back to the room and I put the kids in the tub to get ready to go to The Dixie Stampede later that evening. Josiah jumps out of the tub and throws up in the toilet. Then he says he feels better. I go ahead and give him some ibproffen because he mentioned his head hurting and I thought well this will help until maybe after the show tonight. He started acting better and we were off to The Dixie Stampede. We were enjoying the show. Amelia had to sit in my lap and I had to share my food with her in order to not have to pay for her a ticket. She laid claim on my food. She ate my garlic cheese biscuit, and my "bologna", (slice of pork), she ate my corn on the cob, a few bites of my chicken. She took over my pop and cried if I even tried to get a sip. The worst part was she took my apple turnover too!!!!! She drank so much pop that she peed through her clothes on me not once, but twice. This story gets better ya'll, I really hope your still reading. Remember the part about Josiah not feeling well before we went? Anybody know what I'm fixing to say??????????? Throughout the whole show I kept asking Josiah, "Are you ok"? He would always say, "Yes, Im fine." The only thing he was interested in eating was his soup and biscuit. We had about
15 mins left of the show. When I heard, "Mom, I'm gonna puke." If any of you all have ever been to the Dixie Stampede before then you know how you are all crowded in and sitting next to people you don't know. Well I helped pull him up to the step behind us. As soon as he stood up straight he literally puked all over a man behind us and all over their table. The man jumped up and hollered and I just grabbed Josiah and ran to the bathroom. I was trying to clean him up and I started bawling and couldn't stop. Josiah thought I was mad at him and I had to explain that I wasn't mad and it wasn't his fault, I was just upset. After cleaning him up I made the dreaded trip back to get my purse and tell Maynard why we had to leave while sobbing on every breathe. I didn't have to worry about seeing the people he puked on. They had packed up their stuff and left. We left and I continued to cry and Josiah continued to feel worse. I went to Walgreens and found him something for his stomache. I checked his temp and it was 101. He has a headache and is chilling all over. I guess this is just the joys of Motherhood as they say. We are back in the motel room and it's almost 1 a.m. and here I sit venting away at the keyboard.
Guess what? We probably won't go bowling tomorrow before we leave. Guess what? My kids are going to be so dissappointed once again. Guess what? We have 5" of snow waiting for us when we get back home. Guess what? I want to go home sweet home?
Dear friends, this was my first blog. Normally, I wont write so much, but somehow I really needed to get this off my chest. Even if I can't even figure out how to actually get this posted. Good night, Ya'll!
Amy