Almost Wordless Wednesday - drowning in socks!

We have 8 people in our family. That is 16 feet. That means we go through 112 socks a week! Folding socks in my house is a nightmare!

Contest of wills

My husband and I were finishing up some errands this afternoon quick in preperation for my family coming here for our Christmas celebration. He stopped quick at the bookstore (to get me a gift card, I am sure). I was going to just stay in the van and wait but my three year old right away said she had to go potty. I reluctantly got out of the van and headed for the store. My daughter and I went straight to the bathroom and into a stall next to an occupied stall. She right away said she had wet her pants (she hadn't) but she was adament she had. When she gets like that, she flat out refuses to put her pants back on. I didn't have any extra pants in my purse (although there is just about everything else in there :D) so I said to her she had to put them back on, she had no choice. She shook her head fiercely. I again said she had to. She said "No, I don't want to." I said again she had to. She of course got extremely upset at this point and started yelling "No, I don't want to!" I said to her then, "Amanda, you HAVE to have pants on when you go back out in the store rather you want to or not, you have no choice". This got a chuckle out of the occupied stall next to ours. My daughter of course still yelled out, "No, I don't want to." I said then, "Amanda, you can't go out in the store naked!" My daughter innocently looked up at me, tugged at her shirt and said, "But I have a shirt on." LOL!

After the bookstore bathroom incident, we headed to the grocery store. My husband has been battling a cold. He asked me if I had any Kleenix. I reached into my pocket and handed him one. My daughter right away pipped up and said she needed a "Kweenix". My husband told her she didn't need one because her nose wasn't running. She looked at him and said, "I need a Kweenix, I have burgers in my nose!" LOL!

The dog saga continues!

It gets better. My eldest stepdaughter called her mom as soon as she came home from school yesterday and asked her mother where the dog was and when she was going to bring it back. Her mom denied taking it. She even demanded she speak with her other daughter to tell her she didn't take the dog and that she was mistaken! I thought to myself, "Oh, that's a good one, first you teach them it is ok to steal, now you are trying to teach them it is ok to lie!"

I turned to my other stepdaughter and asked her what she really saw and she broke down in sobs. She said she saw her mom take the dog with her own eyes. She said she put the dog on her lap in the van and they drove off with the dog. She even said she begged her mother not to take the dog. She then cried out to me that her stepdad (her mom's husband) didn't want her mother to take the dog and said it wasn't a good idea. She clearly didn't want her stepdad to get into trouble too for her mother's actions!

When my husband came home from work, my eldest stepdaughter right away ran up to him and told him that her mom claimed she didn't take the dog. He said he spoke with the sherrif and that the sheriff spoke with the kid's mother. She said she knew she was lying. The officer said she believes the kid's mother gave her false information and if she does not return the dog she will be charged with that. The officer also mentioned she would stop by in a day or two to see if the dog is returned or not and question the children. This was horrific news for my stepdaughter that witnessed the theft. She dropped to the floor on her hands and knees and just sobbed!

My son handed me this yesterday when he came home from school:



He loved that dog! He used to come home from school and run around the yard and the field with her. On the weekends he would play outside with her for hours. When he handed me the artwork, he had a sad look on his face. He said he made it a couple days ago at school and now he doesn't have his dog anymore to play with.

What do you think?

About a month ago we woke up and spotted a puppy out on our back deck. We asked around the neighborhood if anyone lost a dog and no one was missing one. We decided someone just dropped her off at our place in the middle of the night abandoning her here. She is a perfectly lovely dog. We blieve she is part Healer and part Coon Hound. She is still a puppy. We estimate her age to be around 6-8 months or so. She is already a big dog. I know dogs do not reach their full size for a year to two years. She is going to be much bigger and hasn't grown into her large paws yet.

The weekend after we aquired her, my three step-children's mother came and picked up her children for visitation. She spotted the dog and instantly wanted the dog. She insisted the dog was just what she was looking for. She kindly called us and asked if she could take the dog since the kids told her the dog was abandoned at our doorstep and we hadn't gone out and purchased the dog. At this point, we had already decided we were keeping the dog. The kids live with us and they see the dog daily. Their mother lives in a tiny little trailer in town with a very small yard. We live in the country on 40 acres. We didn't feel her tiny little trailer was anyplace to keep a dog, especially a dog with the potential of getting much larger than she already is. We told her no, she couldn't have the dog.

Over the course of the past weeks, my step-children's mother has made increasingly more persistent and nastier demands that we give her the dog. She even went so far as to leaving a threatening message on my husband's phone last weekend about the dog. She then left him a second message apologizing and saying she has no rights to make demands that we give her the dog.

Last night the children once again went with their mother for visitation. My husband and I had placed our three youngest children in the care of my husband's brother while we went into town shopping. We were not home when their mother brought the children back home. She promptly loaded the dog up into her van and took the dog home with her!

We were not made aware of this theft of our dog until this morning since the children were all in bed sleeping when we came home last night. It didn't occur to us the dog wasn't there when we came home. She usually would come running up to us wagging her tail in greeting. We got home late and we were tired. We didn't even realize she wasn't there.

My husband woke me up as soon as he heard the news from the kids this morning. We discussed it and decided we needed to call the police and report it.

At first the police officer didn't understand the situation. She assumed the dog was a mutually owned dog between the kid's mother and my husband. She assumed they had recently split up and that the dog was owned by them together. She tried telling my husband that there wasn't anything she could do and that there wasn't anything wrong with her taking the dog. He right away had to correct her. He let her know that they had not been "together" for almost 10 years! The dog was ours and we got her about a month ago. The kid's mother never owned the dog. He informed her about the threatening phone message the kid's mother had left on his cell phone and then the message after that apologizing for threatening him and saying she was going to take the dog.

So far we do not have out dog back. We felt calling the police and reporting this theft was the best message we could send to the children. We do not feel the children should be allowed to see their mother make demands on something and when she doesn't get it, to just go ahead and take it anyway. This message she was sending the kids is a very strong message that it is ok to just take something you want even if it isn't yours and you do not have permission to do so. My one stepdaughter didn't feel it was a problem. She got very angry at us this morning when we said we needed to call the police. I sure hope this situation works out for the better. In the past when we have had to call the police for things my step children's mother has done, she has gone nuts and has tried getting back at us and has tried making our lives a living hell. It really is unfortunate she made this move since over the course of the past few years things have really settled down between our two households. It was best for the kids and for both families.

What do you think?

Friday Fill-Ins - Halloween 2008 Edition

1. My favorite food seasoning is chocolate.
2. Trick or Treat is music to my ears.
3. Lucky is the kid that gets the last piece of candy.
4. Pumpkin carving is something I take very seriously.
5. Many people will be out past dark tonight.
6. A Spiderman costume was the last thing I bought at the store.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to trick-or-treating with the kiddos, tomorrow my plans include sleeping an extra hour (yeah!) and Sunday, I (will) want to hide all the Halloween candy from the kids because they will be sick!

Are you spending too much?

That is what my daughter pipped up and said to me yesterday after school. She was watching a few mintues of t.v. and came up to me and posed the question. I had no idea what she was talking about. I asked her, "Spending too much of what?". She said, "Too much of your money." I said, "Yes, I suppose I probably am," thinking to myself about the current state of the economy and how expensive even the most mundane things have become. She says to me, "Then maybe you should just call or click!" LOL! Apparently she had just watched a commercial for some sort of service (I am assuming a cellular service) and they referenced other plans that were more expensive, they must have given out a phone number and a web address and she only understood or caught some of it. Kids say the darndest things!