Hello?...hello?... argh! Frustrations of my life...

One of the most annoying things in the world is trying to make a call or carry on a telephone conversation with very little signal on your phone. This morning I am trying to call and order pie tins from a company whom I would like to order from online, but their website seems to be having some technical issues, so I have to call to order. That in itself is frustrating enough for me, but then to have my call interrupted several times because the signal "faded" is beyond my level of patience. It took like 5 times talking to "Elaine" to actually get the information I needed and found out that they have more than doubled in price since the last time I ordered (2 years ago) (BTW, also frustrating!) So now I need to decide if I want to order by the case, which seems to be the only way to "save" money, even though I would be paying like 3 times more than I wanted to spend, but I would get twice what I was gonna order. And I do have to order. I have been looking in the general vicinity, and by general, I'm talking a 40 minute drive in any direction, for pie tins for my weekend baking, since last week! And nobody has them! NO ONE! I called 5 - 6 different Wal-Marts, along with a variety of other stores, anybody who might even consider selling pie tins, to no avail.... So I am left with no other choice than to order them from an outside source...and not do market this weekend, because really, if I don't have pies, it's not even worth my time to go out there.

A very cool & motivating story... The Marathon ...makes me want to do one! Got to start eating right and exercising to do that though. I might have to start training...

A miracle product!!!!

So I am surfing the web last night and browsing one of my favorite sites (www.thepioneerwoman.com) and came across the fact that she has hard water in her house. We live out in the country, as you know, and we have well water that is very hard and full of minerals. It becomes very obvious when the salt in the softener is getting low, because the water starts to take on an orange cloudy hue. If the softener has NO salt then we are talking about can't-see-through-it-very-very-orange water. Not pretty. The clothes in the washer come out orange, the dishwasher doesn't clean, the kids bathwater looks like a mud puddle from Georgia (red dirt...) Anyway, I was just lamenting yesterday about having to handwash all the dishes because even though we have salt in the softener the dishwasher was not washing...it was stirring all the dirty around and making sure that every last dish in there had the same nasty coating of lime, and gunk from the other dishes. So anyway, as I was saying. I was browsing through www.thepioneerwoman.com and she introduces me to "The Miracle Product" It is called Lemi-Shine. I thought, well, what could it hurt to try. I went to Wal-mart in hopes that they would carry it. They did and I got 2 bottles of it (getting very hopeful, I was) and followed the directions for the dishwasher. I loaded up the dishwasher, started it and went to bed. I awoke this morning to a dishwasher full of CLEAN DISHES!!!! I was so excited. Not only that, but the rust stains that had been coating the inside of my dishwasher...GONE! It was completely clean on the inside! HOLY COW this is awesome! I can't wait to do it again!

And so it begins....

"I don't want to go to school". Those were the words coming from the mouth of #2 this morning. This the boy who not only had all his school supplies ready well in advance of the first day of school, but was up, dressed, breakfast ate, backpack on, and out the door well before the bus shows up the first day of school. Oh well, he will be fine...once he gets there. I just hope that he behaves on the bus. This became a problem last year. He was behaving well on the bus, but he would NOT sit still, moving from seat to seat, standing up, and not listening to the very patient bus driver when she told him to sit. He got suspended from the bus for THREE days! UGH! I really hope he has matured a bit this year and will listen to the bus driver.

Something new to him this year is HOMEWORK!! He hates it! But gets a little bit each night. It's good for him. Gets him prepared for the higher grades where there will be more of it. Hopefully he will take his brothers lead and try and finish it before coming home so there will be no work to do at home.

An Official Distributor!

I am an official distributor of the Over the Shoulder Baby Holder Sling! I placed my order today! I cannot wait to get them in. I wear mine all the time and most times cannot get out of the store without someone asking where they can buy one! Well now I can tell them... FROM ME!! I really hope that this becomes a good money maker. I was able to use the money made from my baked goods to pay for the starting supply of slings, so now I hope they pay for themselves! If you are at all interested or know someone who is let me know and I can help them out! Each sling comes with an instructional DVD. I also can get a child size baby doll sling for the little ones in your life that want to be just like mommy or daddy! Let me know!!

Good Morning to all my faithful followers. I don't have a lot to write about this morning, but just thought I would give you a snippet to read.

Got the kids up on time, and they DID catch the bus. #3 and #4 are still sleeping, so I actually got to shower this morning (WOOHOO!!) Its a beautiful morning, not too hot out yet, clear skys, cicadas are singing, the grass is mowed... I am thoroughly enjoying the quietness. I love living in the country. No neighbors to hear...I could walk outside in my pj's and no one would care. I love to walk out in my back yard and see wild rabbits scurry away... okay, they don't scurry, they hop...the ground squirrels and field mice scurry... I love to hear the different birds sing away. I like that we have a built in "privacy fence" every summer that gets to 8-9 feet tall (if you will look closely at my pic you will see that we are surrounded by corn fields). I love that if my daughter gets outside half naked, I won't have a neighbor calling to tell me to keep control of my kids. I love that we have a bunch of tall trees that my son can climb. I love that we are able to get chickens if we so desire...and no one will think this strange! We have outfitted the back yard with a 2 person hammock for swaying the day away, a firepit for roasting hot dogs or marshmallows, a swingset for our own park, an apple tree for our own "orchard", the plum tree is in the front yard, a clothesline for a nature made laundrymat, and a pitching mound for our own "ballpark"...okay, the mound isn't actually installed yet, but it's been talked about. We have a back stop and the lilac bush is the "outfield", but #1 can practice his pitching here quite successfully. Yes this is our own bit of paradise and I love it.

Country Helpfulness...

Okay, I was just reading up on the policies for the ads on my page and I have been breaking da rules... sorry... I cannot direct you to them... so you know what to do... I won't be giving any more reminders. Onward....

So today I had to take DH to work (an hour away and near some bigger shopping), so we went to the mall to do some Labor Day shopping since the kids were out of school. Got a GREAT deal at Chick-Fil-A, for those of you who are not familiar they make the BEST chicken known to mankind. All day today they are offering a FREE 3 piece box of chicken strips to all their customers. I saw that sign after I ordered (so typical). So we got our free chicken in addition to our kids meals. Yes I ordered a kids meal. You can get a 6 piece nugget, a small waffle fries and a child size drink for like $3.49. And if you are eating in, then it's free refills, so it really doesn't matter what size you get. So me and the kids each got a kids meal, even the 16yo.

Anyway, when we got back, I noticed that the lawn had been mowed. Aaargh! Our ever helpful property-mate had mowed our yard. We own 1/2 of a 2 acre plot. The other half has the farm buildings on it and is owned by a very friendly, well meaning, older (probably 70's) farmer. He spends half of the year here farming, and the other half of the year in very south Texas. Yes, our grass needed mowing, but I was actually looking forward to hopping on the John Deere and getting it mowed, tomorrow morning. I admit it was getting kinda long, but not embarrassingly tall. I have definitely seen worse...even our own yard has been worse than this. I was wanting to get the pool picked up and put away before mowing again so I could cover the bare spot left by the pool with the grass clippings, but now it is already mowed and I cannot get mad at him, because he did us a favor. But when he does that it just feels like he doesn't feel as though we are taking proper care of the property. And this being our first owned property, that kinda makes me feel... I don't know... kinda like a kid being reprimanded by the grandparent. It makes me feel like he thinks we are irresponsible. So now we just try and avoid him when he is over at his half, piddling around, and try and get our grass mowed sooner next time.

Check it out....

Just a quick post to direct you to a neat article...
http://tinyurl.com/5c4uk7