I Suck at Cooking!

So this is one of the wifey/mommy duties that I just can't get right.  I pretty much got everything else down but COOKING well is not my forte.  There is a couple dishes I can make that everyone loves but this day to day cooking thing is something I stress about every morning- what can I ruin tonight!

I go through cookbooks, websites, and even been getting recipes from Pinterest but do they come out like they should...nope!  I just don't have the cooking gene.  They kids even say "Daddy is a better cook, mommy"  "Thanks kids...I know!"  Now I just wish my hubby would cook but I can't ask him too because he works hard and shouldn't have to come home to cook. Plus I stay home M-F.  It's not his fault his wife sucks at cooking.  I even watch cooking shows to get inspired but it just doesn't work. 

Is my family doomed with crappy dinners for the rest of their at home lives (oh boy I feel sorry for hubby)?  I guess I can only hold on to the hope when he retires he will cook. Or maybe I will win a lot of money and hire one of these cool chefs and my family will eat like kings...I know wishful thinking plus I don't even play the lottery so winning money won't be happening either.  Sorry family! 

Lil Man Rolling His Eyes- Hate It!

My son is really into the ROLLING OF THE EYES lately and I just want to scream STOP IT- oh I think I have expressed my feelings on this matter to him.  This isn't really his fault since I am QUEEN of the Eye Rolling (ask anyone).  But now that it is done to me OMFG I hate it!  I am sorry to everyone I ever rolled my eyes at...oh wait never mind they all deserved it!  LOL!  Just Kidden Mom!

Yesterday I got a text from one of my son's teachers letting me know he rolled his eyes at her and they had a talk (I know the talk very well).  As mom I don't like that he has picked up this habit but as a person it's a lot better than flipping them off behind their back or talking back- they are all bad habits and shouldn't be done.  I had the "RESPECT your teachers, parents, anyone older than you" talk with him last night and DON'T ROLL YOUR EYES anymore.  As I was walking away found myself rolling my eyes...need to stop that, lol! I'm not being a very good example but at least he didn't see it. 

So what to do...not sure since this is my bad habit too.  Sometimes parenting sucks but it has to be done! 

Somedays I wish we were the Jetson's

Today trying to get my kids dressed and out the door was totally trying and with no coffee in my system I was having a hard time keeping it together.  I pick out the kids clothes at night, I let them see what I have for them and I get a nod or OK Mom.  When they get up in the morning its SUPPOSE to be stress free RIGHT???  Not with my kids!

This morning Lil Mama didn't like how the school pants fit her and then we couldn't find any other school pants (that she likes) to wear so she picks a dark pair of jeans (not school uniform).  She informs me that a lot of kids wear jeans.  Now I'm active parent that KNOWS you are NOT to wear jeans but I guess my kids know best because I turn around and Lil Man has on jeans too!  Ugh..its too damn early to fight and in my head I'm thinking well I hope you get in trouble at school so we don't have to go through this again. 

Then they are tired of cereal...yes I'm not the best morning person so making a big breakfast in the morning is not realistic in my world.  But they don't want toast or eggs they want a smoothie!  Really...fine guess that's not hard but still upset they are messing with me.  Okay so whipped up some strawberry, banana, OJ thingy and they drank it up!  They hugs made me feel better. 

I try to pack their backpacks but they are always emptying them and rearranging or whatever they do to their backpacks in the morning.  When we are walking out the door I ask...lunch, homework, paperwork all in bags...I get "YES mom" with of course the eye rolling and then off to the car.  I drop them off and head back home and walk inside and starting picking up and in my son's room I find his lunch and on the kitchen table I find paperwork that needed to go to school.  I had all that packed in their backpacks plus asked.  Ugh! 

I would love to be able to put them on a converter belt where they get dressed, backpacks packed, lunches made and OUT THE DOOR YOU GO- with no issues! 

Plus I would LOVE LOVE the Jetson's Maid!! Pretty Please!

Halloween 2011

Wow yesterday was fun packed full day!  The kids had to dress up as a book character and later in the day did a neighborhood parade. 

My Thing 1 and Harry Potter:

Then they turned into Zombie things for the nighttime Trick N Treat.



I'm just HAPPY it's over.  We stayed busy all weekend- going to parties, festivals, and events.  So after all that running around and doing this and that can you believe they gave me such a hard time when I asked for some candy.  Geez can I get a piece of candy for all the hard work I put in.  Guess I asked for too much. 

Bullied into going to the Pumpkin Patch

When I got home from working HARD on my feet for 8 hrs dealing with cafe customers on a Sunday the last thing I wanted to do is go anywhere.  But Lil Mama had other plans!

I came home and started to take off my shoes but Lil Mama says "Umm what are you doing?" I responded back " going to relax" she informed me "No you are not- we are going to the Pumpkin Patch- NO EXCUSES" and looked at me like I was the child and she was the mom.  I felt like I needed to give her the puppy dog look she always gives me and I got back from her "NOT GOING TO WORK"  wow did this little 7 yr old just used my words/actions against me?  She bullied us into going I swear!

Now this Pumpkin Patch is SAD:  where are all the pumpkins???












Also cost me $10 for 15 minutes of FUN for the kids to go on the slide.  Plus $10 for a small a** pumpkin.  They had pony rides ($7 per kid), face painting ($7 per kid), Jumper ($5 for 10 minutes) but who can afford all that??? 

But in the long run Lil Mama had a blast and that's what it is all about.  Next time though I'm finding a REAL pumpkin patch and it will be FUN for everyone. 

Kid's Homework Is HARD!

Yes, it's been about 30 odd years since I've been in elementary school but dang the MATH homework is hard (for me).  I read the problem over and over and still can't get it.  Of course I have lil man looking at me like "WTF you don't know this MOM?"  I stare back and shrug my shoulders and than we both roll our eyes.  If I'm having this issue now just imagine what I'm going to go through in the years to come.  I need to go back to elementary school I guess.  My kids do math different too...I learned last year they don't CARRY anymore but TRANSFER. 

My son's class is doing their math homework online this year and the program is wonderful.  I had a get a couple problems wrong so I could have the site walk me through the process and my son got mad at me because I was ruining his quota...whatever dude!  I needed to know how to do it so I could help if needed.  Geez! 

My daughter is a whiz at math but younger than my son so when she tries to get in the middle of his homework I ask her to back up and do something else.  I can see my son getting upset that his little sister is telling him how to do his homework.  Someday he might want her help! 

What I do like about homework is we get to sit around the kitchen table and I cook all at the same time- wonderful family time!

What is like in your house with homework???  Or am I the only one who doesn't remember what I learned in 4th grade...LOL!

Our Earthquake Aftermath

Okay so last week the Bay Area had an earthquake around 4.2 and several aftershocks. I've lived in Cali for almost 15 yrs and every time a earthquake has hit I've been in a car or just didn't feel it. I felt this one and I'm still kind of shook up about it! It was the oddest feeling to have everything under you MOVE. My hubby and I were at home so we jumped up and ran outside along with the rest of our neighbors who were home at 2:30pm. The kids were at school and they were evacuated to their safe place.

  Later that night after 8pm another one hit and WOW those kids ran to our room so fast and the rest of the night was HARD. The kids wanted to sleep with us and that wasn't going to happen. We talked lil mama onto the couch (right outside our room) and lil man well he ended up all curled up in our chair in our room. I don't think we slept well that night because the next day we were all grumpy.

Now the next night I guess there were a couple small aftershocks that happened but we didn't feel them except for my son. He came in the room about 12:30 am waking us up talking about another earthquake. I snapped at him to go back to bed because there was no earthquake and he needed to go to BED! Wow, did I feel like a bad mom the next day when the news informed us YES there were a couple small shakes last night. Ugh! Gave him big hugs apologized for my behavior and told him I will believe him next time.

Lil Mama hasn't slept in her room since and I'm not sure when she will be going back. She has her pillows/blankets/stuffed animal friends all over the couch now! Keeping fingers crossed that we won't feel another earthquake for a LONG LONG TIME because that wasn't cool!

No Cable....Blank Stare

That is what I got and more from my 9 yr old son last night when I explained that the cable is OUT. He looked at me like... WTF am I suppose to do now mom, I felt like I failed PARENT 101! Yep my 9 yr old is addicted to TV/Games. Do I take all the credit for that...nope but we won't get into that rant right now. Our cable is out because remember back when I wrote about switching to Comcast- oh my what a nightmare that was!!!! First, pretty much what they offered was a joke and we got charged anyways. When I brought up the agreement (on paper) what our DEAL was, they were like oh ...but pay the $265 (yes you see that correctly) now and next month we will give you the credit. No MF's...I want my $89 (plus taxes) deal NOW~! Let's just talk about their service...SUCKS! I hated it from day one but thought well for the price I can live with it but as the days/week went by...NO can't live with the old ass menu that is confusing plus just old! Oh yeah, how about only able to record 1 show on DVR while you watch 1 show. Nope..not happening for me on nights I have 2 shows I need to record and then watch something hubby wants to watch. Hubby has had to watch X-factor and Survivor the past couple weeks because I can't record them. I know..I know very selfish of me thinking about how horrible the DVR function is from our cable company when there is bigger issues in the world but hey in my world I'm the DVR QUEEN. So we called Comcast to tell them we no longer want their service and was told we had to pay $50 for them to disconnect the service but can't reinstall our original cable company's equipment. Ok...we will do that and save $50. HAHAHA! Now we have NO CABLE. As much as my hubby says he is techy...he really isn't but its hard to break that news to him. He was on the phone with the cable guy and getting no where! So the cable guy says we will send someone over tomorrow to reinstall our boxes and NO CHARGE. What...see that's why I love AT&T they appreciate their customers- even when we went behind their back and tried a new company. OUR BAD! Now back to last night. 8pm is the magical time we get to turn the TV on for the night. Usually we all go to our separate rooms and watch TV. Last night we were ALL looking at each other and wondering what we should do. Now no cable also means no Internet. We all went to bed early and everyone said they had the best sleep. I feel bad my kids associate so much to TV that we almost had a meltdown but we got it together and enjoyed each other. We are still without Cable (I have laptop connected to my sprint 4g card so I didn't have to go without Facebook and Pinterest) but no one knows that yet! We might have to reevaluate our night time but doubt it!

I Heart My iPad!

If you know anything about me you know I don't always think of myself first! Kids and Hubby always come first...I know i know, I've heard it over and over before. Anyways, back to ME...see I do think of myself, lol! This year with the TAX REFUND I bought a refurbished iPad from the Apple store online. Let me tell you, that was the BEST PURCHASE EVER! Granted when I bought it I used "OUR IPAD" a lot to make sure hubby was OK with me buying something like that. Even though, he just bought a PS3 it wasn't as expensive as the iPad but guess what gets used EVERYDAY...yep the iPad! Over the months "OUR" really turned into "MY" but still anytime he wanted it he can have it. I do all kinds of stuff on the iPad. My favorite APP's are ZITE and FLIPBOARD. I also have Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Kindle, Hootsuite, and many more that I enjoy daily. The kids have a couple games on there and hubby does too! My son and hubby plays a DJ Mixer Pro app all the time. I really like have Evernote on there because when I come across sites I want to bookmark to read later I bookmark them in Evernote. I have a couple apps I don't use that much but tend to down the road. I stalk FREE Apps all the time. When I first got it, the kids weren't allowed on it for months but these days I have to fight them to even get on at night. Lil Man does homework on there and Lil Mama she has a farm going on Farmville. At night when they are all done with homework they turn on the Pandora App and sing/dance to their favorite artist. They each have their own Pandora account and they get 15 minutes each to do their music thing. I'm very happy we (me) bought the iPad and maybe one day I might upgrade to iPad2 and they can have the old one LOL! What are your favorite Apps and what do you use it for?

My New Addiction- Pinterest

O..M..G! I spent some time on there today, making my pin lists and looking at this and that, LOVE THAT LOVE THIS! Someone invited me to this site awhile back but I was totally confused and left in a hurry. Well the other day I came across it again and I was WTH I've been missing a whole new world of WONDERFUL!

Here is a cute idea I found today.

You ask what is PINTEREST? http://pinterest.com/ Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests

How to sign up for Pinterest Pinterest is currently invite-only. You can request an invite from us or you can be invited by someone who is already a part of Pinterest. When you receive an invite, you can register via Facebook Connect or connect through Twitter.

If you want an invite~ email me at pamallen68@gmail.com and I'll send you one! If your on it already~ check out my pins http://pinterest.com/pamallen68/pins/