you win again

We will not be raking you up once again this weekend.

buy back my their candy - a Sonicare giveaway

I heard a comedian on the radio this week saying that 'Halloween is really our Mother's Day. On Mother's Day, we get crappy macaroni pictures with glitter that we get to sweep off the floor and brush from the couch weeks later. Now Halloween, that's a real Mother's Day - the kids go into a comatose, chocolate induced, happy sleep while the moms of the world get to devour their kids' buckets full of candy, buffet style while they sleep it off'.

Umm, yes. I do love me some chocolate.

What I don't love? The 5 pounds that I gain overnight from eating said chocolate.

My bargaining chip this year, Metro Dentalcare's Candy Buy-Back program. They will conveniently take those (up to) 3 pounds of candy (that would have certainly otherwise been 3 pounds added to areas like my butt, my thighs, my back fat....) and turn it into cash instead.

And yes, I like cash more than chocolate.

It's really only for kids 12 and under and they (the kids) will get to keep the cash (not me). I plan on telling my kids they each can buy 3 things at the Dollar Store with their cash. It will be just like I'm Santa. Oh, the power!

I learned a few things from the Metro Dentalcare YouTube channel too, like it's better to eat candy with a meal (My kids would be all over having a side of Skittles right next to the carrots on their dinner plates.) and that it's better to eat your treats all in one sitting (I *knew* shoving candy into my mouth made way more sense than savoring it!). Check it out, there is plenty of great information about brushing, flossing, going to the dentist too.

Join the movement: stop spoiling our children with Halloween candy, turn in your their candy, get the $1 per pound and spoil them with trinkets and junk instead! November 2, 4-7pm - Check out this link for the specifics. (Plus, the candy is being donated to three worthy causes: Operation Gratitude, Second Harvest Heartland and Tubman.)

But that's not all! (I feel like I'm the announcer on the Price is Right)

Metro Dentalcare is giving away one (1) Sonicare toothbrush to one of my reader (U.S. only). You know the rules; leave a comment, follow me and leave a comment, twitter this post and leave a comment.

I didn't get paid for this post. I didn't get a Sonicare toothbrush either (though I'd like one). I just get to have this warm, gushy feeling for helping you 1) not gain any Post-Halloween weight 2) putting $3 into your child's pocket for more junk in your house 3) saving your children's teeth/ reducing your dental insurance premiums 4) oh yeah, and teaching them about donations and helping others.

Happy Halloween. Now stop spookin' me with all your lurking and go enter this giveaway.

The Dream Killer

My husband called: "I'm at the costume store looking at costumes. Let's dress up for Halloween!"

Me: "No." End of discussion or so I hoped.

Him: "You are the biggest lame-o". He sometimes likes to call me 'The Dream Killer'.

Me: "It's just not fun for me anymore, plus it's a huge waste of money."

Him: "Come on, the kids will love it. Halloween is on a Saturday night. You don't have any good excuses to not dress up".

I told him "Fine, just pick something out, but make sure that it's under 20 bucks."

My husband comes home, sits down at the dinner table, ready to eat. I ask him to show me the costumes he's picked out. He gets excited "You want to see them, huh?". I'm thinking, 'wow, this must be something really good'. He rushes down the stairs; back into the garage, opens and slams the car door shut and makes his way back up the stairs with this in his hand.


I've officially lost all of my sex appeal. I'm the mother of his children...

and come Halloween, this crazy, sexy ladybug.

And to top it off, it was 30 bucks, not 20.

forgive me

I have this pit right in the bottom of my stomach that only seems to tighten as this night goes on. I'm sick, I want to throw up, that's how sad I feel for you. When your whole world depends on us keeping it right, here we go and do something tremendously wrong.

We've lost your best friend, your confidant. The one that comforts you when you wake in the middle of the night. The one that you snuggle with on the couch when you need time alone. The one that you rub back and forth over your elbow owies. The one that calms you when no one else can.

It seems like such an unfair thing for you to have to go through. You are two years old, your world should be this huge chocolate chip cookie with rainbow sprinkles world, every day.

It's not that I want you to go to kindergarten with your blankie hiding in your backpack or you keep it until it is shredded and torn from being pulled on, tugged on, tied up to... it's just that you don't get to make the decision to move on, to put your blankie on the top shelf, by yourself, and for that I am sorry.

I'm so very sorry. Forgive me.

Update: The hotel found your blankie in with the laundry (or so I assume...). Now, I just have to deal with the stigma of having your stinky, toddler slobbery blankie mailed back to us.

So you can finally stop being a pain in my butt.

Love, Mom

serendipity

Remember when I had a giveaway and I called it VACATION, GIVEAWAY but I didn't give away a vacation? I guess I'm bad a$$ like that, obviously one tough cookie. See my gangsta' sign:

At least now it finally means something and the other mommies can stop giving me that sideways, you're kinda crazy, glance when I give them my 'sign' and say "What's up mommies homies!" Yep, today I'm 33, thank you very much.

Happy Birthday to me, here's a present for you.

In the next week or so, I will be giving away a one night's stay to here along with water park passes for here!

Go on, click on them... I'll wait.

Awesome huh! Thank you visiteauclaire.com

For those of you that can't envision making the +12 hour or so long trip to Wisconsin with a minivan full of kids, I'm throwing in a $20 gift certificate to the restaurant of your choice, maybe in a neighborhood nearer to you :)

Peace Out,
Anti-Supermom aka Birthday Girl



PS- You might want to follow me right now so you don't miss the upcoming giveaway. Anyway, what blogger-birthday girl doesn't want a new follower or two for their birthday.

in my autumn

I should have known to stick to my silly, made-up-in-my-mind rules to life, one of them being: don't talk to me during a massage. I got a real massage, from a certified, non-setting-me-on-fire, technician last weekend for my birthday.

It started out with her asking me about the headband in my hair, as she's rubbing her fingers around my scalp, 'Where did I get it from?', 'Does it make your head hurt after a while?''Does it really keep your hair in place?'

I let out a little sigh from the hole in the middle of the headrest. Maybe if I answer her briefly, she'll catch on: 'Target... yes...no'.

Then she continued on; asking me about 'what I do, about my kids, their ages'; all while knuckling my back and oiling up my elbows. I guess that I must have opened the flood gates of communication instead of damning the entire conversation. Then I started thinking about how she does this for 8 or so hours a day, of course she wants someone to talk to. I started to feel sorry for her and well, obligated to continue on the conversation. Heck, it might even be fun.

Then she said I was old.

She was pinching my arm fat under my arms and stated: 'when I do this to younger customers they sometimes start to laugh, you aren't ticklish there'. The audible silence just got louder. So I said "Are you saying I'm old since I'm not laughing?" I laugh at this, she laughs with me and says nothing.

Then she said I was fat.

She was pushing on the what I thought was a knot behind my shoulder blade when she told me that I actually 'have a fatty deposit: see, it's sort-of fun; it rolls around a little'. Then I tell her 'I'm familiar with these so-called fatty deposits, that I have them all over my butt'. Again, I laugh while she proceeds to tell me about an old professor of hers that had a 'fatty deposit' on his left temple that he got removed, that I could do that too.

Surgical removal of all the 'fatty deposits' on my butt would leave me flat and a$$less.

Then she said I was lazy.

She was nearing the end of the massage,rubbing my fingers and rotating my arms around in a clockwork fashion. She says 'did you know that you don't have full motion of your arms?'

huh?

'It happens to people who sit at desks, at computers all day. Their bodies just get use to not being used correctly'. I remind her that I do not do either of these things (not really people, I'm not blogging all day).

So I guess, no more of this half-a$, arms half-way up in the air celebration when Wyatt hits the water in the toilet and not the floor - oh no, I'll be a full on, hands straight up, 'awesome job kiddo', kind of a mom, that I can fix.

Maybe.

light my fire

My husband was being a sweetheart. He knew that I was having a horrible day, the kind of day where the kids body slam one another, force each other to the ground and poke their fingers in the other person's eyes just so they can make them cry (now repeat this over and over and over).

I think in his mind he was setting up for this spa atmosphere; dark bedroom; bed uncharacteristically made with the wrinkles smoothed out and oh boy, the candles; a freakish amount of candles: tea lights on top of both dressers, on the shelves, on his nightstand and on mine.

I walked in and laughed (at least, I believe that I laughed because I'm not the type of person to take these candle-lit efforts too seriously). I jumped on the bed, cradled my chins in my heads and looked up at my husband. From the opposite side of the room, my husband smiled back at me then ever so slowly, I watched his smile turn into this look of horror.

I'm like: What the heck? I'm not even naked! Here I am all embellishing this for an extra long back massage stressed out and what do I get; this look of disgust. Thanks Buddy-Boy, this ain't leading to anything else. Promise.


Then I watched him in slow motion; him jumping up, scrambling around the bed and grabbing the corner of the down comforter by my feet. Yep, our comforter was lit up like a backyard barbecue. My husband's trying to grab it from me and run it into the bathroom, I'm trying to grab it from him, attempting to smother it between my hands. My Girl Scout instincts must have kicked in along with my brute force, because I won and smothered the flaming comforter out.

Yes, the whole scenario really was awesome for de-stressing.

At least now I'm feeling all lucky for not getting set on fire from my husband's romantic spa-night-in and my husband... well, at least one of us was lucky that night.

fairy tales do come true

Once upon a time there was a girl, a girl who liked to travel to a magical place called Super Targetland. When she would get to Targetland, she would skip through the thick forest into the back of the land called Electronics. In the town of Electronics lived these little, wonderful friends called DSLR cameras. The girl dreamed about the DSLRs, she touched them, she fondled picked them up, she pretended to take photos whenever she could (which was sometimes up to 3 times a week, because this girl loved Targetland).

Then one day, there was a surprise for the girl. One of the cameras was being banished from Targetland, marked with the scarlet clearance sticker of $420. Little Nikon looked so sad and the girl promised to bring him home.

But sadly for the girl, there were these means things called 'bills' and 'mortgage' that had to come before Clearance Nikon.

The girl visited Clearance Nikon often; just checking on him, making sure he was still there. She would make excuses of getting turkey for sandwiches, just to see little Nikon. And so, on one of those trips for turkey or lettuce or diapers, a surveyor Wizard asked if the girl would like to help and get a $15 Targetland gift card for answering some questions, which she answered 'of course, yes', the girl would never say 'no' to a free Targetland card.

The girl thought the survey spell was complete, but then the Wizard continues; 'You can do another, longer 'spell' at home. Here's a good faith $25 gift card for saying yes and you get this Flip Camera for video recording your opinions. ' "Yes, Yes" shouts the girl. The Wizard continues: 'and if you complete the spell within the next week, you will get another $100 gift card.' (Yes, the Girl was amazed as your are.)

The girl takes home the $40 in gift cards and the Flip Camera. She works on the spell almost everyday and it takes way longer than she had hoped, but she continues onward.

One evening, the girl takes a trip to Targetland, with having a little bit of the Targetland money, she dreams that she might someday afford Clearance Nikon. She heads through the forest only to see devastation, Nikon is gone.

The girl is sad, so sad. She finishes the 'spell', gets her $100 gift card and sells her new Flip camera on craigslist for another $100. She had in her hand $240 of gift cards and money with nowhere to go. It sits in her drawer.

Then one evening, the girl decides to ask one of the knights behind the counter of the town of Electronics where Clearance Nikon might have gone. He tells the girl it is gone, but that there is another Nikon in a nearby town. "The chances of it being there are slim, since it's the last one, but give them a call".

And so the girl does and it is gone, but the knight on the phone say "there might be one more at another store, but probably not since it's now $349 on clearance". The girl swooned at the news. She called yet again, the third Targetland. The knight answered and said "Yes, we have it, but it's the display model, so you would get an additional 30% off for buying the display."

Too make a long story shorter, the girl drove her minivan as fast as she could chariot to Targetland that evening, picked up Nikon for $244.97 and after her 'spell' money of $240 she only had to pay $4.97 out-of-pocket for her new little DSLR friend, Nikon D40.

The moral of the story: 'Good things come to those who wait'.

Nah, really the moral is if you are at Target on Food Sample Saturday buy one of the samples, flaunt it around so some *important* people might know you are getting it and when asked to do a survey because you purchases said sample product, say 'yes'. For goodness sakes, say 'yes!'

Mother of the Year

Mother of the Year award apparently doesn't have an intelligence portion in the competition.

I bounced up the stairs this morning, happy that I was the first one up (and secretly very happy, because I get to be 'all dressed and ready to go', but get lay down on the couch waiting for the knock on the door from the first kid that I watch, or from the screaming monitor of Wu ready to get up, but until then I get to lay on the couch, do nothing and 'pretend sleep' until someone makes me do otherwise. I love mornings like these).

I was laying on the couch thinking about what I should make for breakfast when I remember the can of cinnamon rolls in the fridge.

'Perfect', I picked my body off the couch, proceeded to the kitchen and turned on the oven. I think 'I just need to get the rolls ready and I can just lay right back down on the couch and do nothin' for a little more... bliss'.

I'm giving myself a little mental high-five because this is one of those low-work, high-yield things of motherhood, where my children (and husband) think I'm the most awesome-est person in the world for making cinnamon rolls, all warm and gooey when they get to the table, just for them.

Darn right, I'm feeling like I should be freakin' Mother of the Year.

I grab the can of cinnamon rolls out the the fridge and whack it against the counter.

*whack* (only fairly quiet, like I said, I was still the only one up and the couch was still calling me).

The can didn't budge, I figure I was taking it a little too lightly.

*WHACK*

nope.

*Whack, Whack, WHACK*

nothing.

I'm getting ready to forget this whole thing, give up the crown, forgo this Mother of the Year crap and climb back on the couch. I stare down the can hoping that I can mentally open the can by burning a laser line through it with my blazing, red hot furious eyes.

Then I noticed it, 'Peel Here'.

As in 'peel off the label' before whacking the can on the edge of the counter repeatedly.

Anyone else feel like Mother of the Year lately?

(You'll probably beat me in the Q and A portion.)

I'm not laughing

Dear God,

I know that I just wrote you and all, and that you are super busy, but I just had to check in.

You know how I was running on the treadmill at the gym and was watching CNN (OK, obviously we both know that's not completely the truth, I was watching Ellen and it was on a commercial break and I was limited to watch what was in my line of vision of being on a treadmill without falling off and twisting an ankle or getting my shoelaces stuck in the belt and landing smack down on my face... any who...CNN), remember how I learned about this brewery turning rainwater into beer? How I was thinking, 'Now God - that's getting pretty close to your 'turning water into wine' thing. Pretty cool stuff'. Remember how I was laughing to myself (and with you, I suppose) about how making 'snow into beer' would be more Minnesota style? Funny stuff, remember?

So, am I suppose to take this as a hint?

Seriously, it's not even mid-October. I didn't think Minnesota needs 8 months of snow and we both know, I'm not really going to start my own 'snow into beer' making business in the basement of our house alongside the kiddos' exersaucer and the crayon buckets.

Sorry God, but this time I'm not laughing.

Sincerely,
Anti-Supermom

typical toddler

Breakfast:

Maple and brown sugar oatmeal, pickle, red pepper, orange pepper and a little orange juice: the breakfast of champions, a least champions of indecision. (This time I didn't rip the paper towel in half.)

the little things

My husband brought our unity candle up from downstairs, lit it up and placed it in the middle of the counter. Henry turned off the lights in the kitchen and ran around with Wyatt in the dark, both with huge smiles on their faces at the novelty of it all. I giggled a little and ran off to the guest room. I came out wearing my wedding dress, it scraping the floor without it's crinoline, the beads making a dancing rhythm running across the hardwood floor.

Wyatt tells me "ooh, pretty." He requested that I sit next to him. He leans over his stool, pointed at my dress and said "Mommy's got boobies". Yes, my dear, sweet, obviously boy, boy, I do indeed have boobies.

Henry whispers something to my husband, Henry lights up at his idea. "Not yet". Ten seconds later, he can't wait, the anticipation is too much. "OK, now, but you can't see Mom". I go back to the guest room to take off my dress, fold it up and place it back in the cardboard box. Henry, Wyatt and my husband knock on the door and walk into the room; Henry has in this hand one cut-out, white, paper heart. Wyatt has the second in his hands. One for me, one for my husband.



I smile to myself that I've never gotten my wedding dress 'preserved'. These little things, these little moments are worth preserving so much more.

Happy 7th Anniversary, my husband.