What is your favorite time of the day?

Mine are the hours between 5 and 7pm.

Trick-or-Treat

Our church's Halloween party was held last night.

Due to poor planning and a secret death wish, I decided to take my kids to a local super center during rush hour to buy a bag of Halloween candy.

The store was swamped and all of its employees were either on break or operating in slow motion, or both. Our first stop was the bathroom, where we waited seven excruciating minutes for a female employee to do her business...while humming an Usher song.

"I've gotta go real baaaad," Kellen warned, crossing his legs. There was only one stall in the women's restroom and the men's bathroom was closed for maintenance. I started to sweat profusely. Fortunately, the crisis was averted.

Things improved dramatically when I got into the checkout line. There were four people in front of me and things seemed to be moving fairly quickly, despite the fact that the cashier inspected and commented on every object that passed through her price scanner.

"I love that toothpaste!" she squealed. "I didn't know that it came in fruit flavor. I'm going to have go get some after my shift!"

"You use this toilet paper? Do you like it? I'm not satisfied with the kind that I've been using and am looking for a change."

"I go through tampons like crazy too. It's smart to buy so many boxes at one time."

Long before I reached the front of the line, I had decided that I was going to play deaf.

During the checkout process, three of my children stayed glued to my hip, their eyes fixed on the bag of candy.

"Do you think we should test the candy before the party to see if it tastes all right?" my daughter asked.

Cortlen lost interest in the candy as I pulled out my wallet. He wandered a few feet away to a large circular clothing rack positioned next to the store's exit. The rack was overflowing with adult Halloween costumes that I would rather him not see.

My son said that he was just standing next to the rack when it tipped over, spilling hundreds of pregnant nun outfits and plastic boobs onto the ground. Fellow shoppers said that he was less standing next to the rack and more hanging from it.

"Oh. My. Gosh!" I cried in horror.

"You need to watch your children more closely," said the cashier.

"Can I have a piece of candy?" asked my daughter.

"What's this?" asked Cortlen, holding up the garter belt belonging to a "sexy witch" costume.

Mileage Club

Several times a week my seven year-old son almost misses breakfast because he can't find his shoes.

He takes them off in weird places, and usually not at the same time. On Monday, we found his right shoe in the back of the car; its match was under the sofa.

"There is going to come a morning when your luck is going to run out," I prophesied.

Today was that day.

"I can't find my shoes and today is Mileage Club!" he heaved, his eyes wild with panic.

Once a month, all of the students at my kids' elementary school are marched out to the soccer field and are asked to run one mile.

I was buttering toast when the end of the world was announced. "Bummer," I replied.

A frantic search turned into a full blown meltdown as the house failed to yield the desired objects.

There was no point in talking sense into him at that point; all we could do was make the best of what we had...which was a pair of church shoes.


In less than an hour, my son will be running four laps in shorts, a t-shirt, and slip-on penny loafers.

My seven year-old daughter has reached the point where she demands privacy in the bathroom.

Normally I would applaud such independence. On the issue of personal hygiene, however, I am torn.

Based upon the evidence found at the scene (unopened shampoo bottles), I can safely say that she has not washed her hair in over a month.

Based upon the same body of evidence (mounds of empty conditioner bottles), I can say with equal confidence that her scalp is sufficiently moisturized.

"It's kind of like washing your hands without soap," I explained as gently as possible.

My daughter rolled her eyes.

Last week, I kept close tabs of the bottle of conditioner. On Sunday, the bottle was full. By Thursday, it was empty. On the days in between, my daughter's hair stayed permanently wet; it was that greasy.

On Friday, I produced a quarter from my pocket.

"You only need to use this much conditioner every day," I said, pointing to the size of the coin.

My daughter looked at me like I had pushed her over a cliff.

"If I only use that much conditioner then I will have to comb my hair!" she wailed.

The injustices of life are great.

The Missing Cat

"THE CAT RAN AWAY!"

The scream could be heard for miles.

I was cleaning out the litter box when I heard the good news.

Millie is our food aggressive pound cat who earlier this week ate through Kellen's lunch box to get to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

"We saw her running down the street!" our daughter cried in a panic as she grabbed my husband's hand and dragged him outside.

I failed to see the urgency in my daughter's request. My husband, who refers to the cat as his second wife, saw things differently.

By the time I got Cameron strapped into the stroller, the rest of my family members were scaling a neighbor's fence.

"What are you doing?" I yelled. As much as I like strangers running through my backyard, I'm sensitive to the fact that not everyone feels the same way.

"I see her tail!" Cortlen explained as he disappeared behind a cement wall.

Several minutes later, my husband and children came out of the neighbor's front door. Evidently Cortlen was mistaken.

Shortly after this embarrassing episode, I lost interest in the search and walked back home. Once inside, I made my way to the kitchen to finish cooking dinner. Inside this room I found my nemesis, lapping up spaghetti sauce out of a saucepan on the stove.

Early Dismissal

Every Wednesday, the public schools in Orlando let out an hour early. In theory, these early dismissal days are awesome because they provide me with the time to do things with my kids that can't be squeezed into regular school days. In practice, things haven't gone quite as planned.

For the past three weeks, I've offered to take my kids to a variety of fun places including the water park, the zoo, the playground, and the movies.

On all three occasions, they've chosen to stay home and pick fights with me and each other instead.

Snack Time
Darling A: "Stop chewing with your mouth open."
B: "I'm not! You stop chewing with your mouth open."
A: "I'm going to kick your chair until you stop chewing with your mouth open."
B: "If you do, then I'm going to kick your chair back."

[insert ugliness]

While attempting to play a game of UNO
Darling C: "He's looking at my cards!"
A: "You were looking at my cards first!"
C: "Was not!"
B: "I never get any wild cards. It's not fair!"
A: "All of you are cheaters!!!!!! I'm not playing anymore."

[insert cards being thrown across the table and stomping off]

While cooking dinner
One of my darlings: "Why do you always make such disgusting food for dinner all the time?"
Me: "Because I like to hear you complain about it."
Different darling: "I'm definitely not eating that."
Me: "No one is going to make you."

After telling them that they need to take showers
Dirtiest Darling: "Why do you always make us take showers?"
Me: "You haven't taken a shower in three days."
DD: "I'm not doing it."
Me: "It's happening."
DD: "I'm not taking my clothes off."
Me: "No one is going to make you. You can take a shower with your clothes on, just make sure to soap up real good."

[insert fully clothed shower]

Me: "How'd that work out for you?"
Formerly Dirty Darling: "Awesome."

[insert new family tradition]

Ten minutes before my husband is due home from work
Darlings: "What are you doing?"
Me: "Putting on my shoes."
Darlings: "Where are you going?"
Me: "Out."
Darlings: "Can we come?"
Me: "Negative."
Darling A: "I knew it. You never take us anywhere fun."

Ziploc Bags

Two year-olds are awesome.

Some have favorite plates and cups. Mine will only eat out of resealable sandwich bags.

Put a spoonful of peas on a plate, and they're likely to end up on the floor. Ladle them lovingly into a clear plastic baggie, and they're a portable treasure. The same goes for the rest of the food groups.

I would have never put up with this with my first three, but there's something about my youngest that inspires me to encourage bad habits.

Tonight my husband caught me scooping lasagna into a baggie.

"You cannot be serious," he said.

I dumped the lasagna back into the pan.

"Sorry dude," I whispered to the man in the high chair.

My husband looked at Cameron. "How does he eat his oatmeal every morning?" he asked nervously.

Ignorance is bliss.

Pumpkin Patch Photos

On Saturday afternoon, my husband and I took the troops to the local pumpkin patch.

My older kids were still in their soccer uniforms and my two year-old was shirtless (thanks to his daily puke).


Despite all of this, I didn't feel inadequate until I started snapping photos.


Something I realized almost instantly: I was the only person on the premises without a camera the size of Siberia.





And a tripod.

The Accident

On Wednesday afternoon, I ran over Kellen's foot with my car.

It's not as bad as it sounds. We were at the DIY car wash and I was moving the car from the vacuum station to the washing stall. I was driving approximately .2 miles per hour when Kellen decided to open the car door and hop out. He found out the hard way that that was a very bad idea.

"You tried to kill me!" he screamed as he hopped up and down on one foot.

Two minutes later, he was jumping all over the place and asking if I would be willing to spray him with the hose.

"You're good?" I asked.

He was fine until we got home. When he saw all of our neighbors, he started to cry and claimed he couldn't walk.

"My mom ran over my foot with her car!" he wailed.

Eight people gave me the stink eye.

The accident escalated to massive proportions the next day at school.

"Kellen told his teacher that you hit him with your car," Cortlen told me. "He also told the lunch ladies."

"Fantastic," I replied.

It's been three days and no calls or surprise visits yet. I hope we're safe.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

I love parent-teacher conferences because in them I learn new and fascinating things about my children...

Like that my daughter is addicted to band-aids and occasionally sticks pencils up her nose.

And that Cortlen fake fights with his friends at lunch and routinely ties his shoelaces together in order to make himself trip and fall.

And that Kellen excuses himself to use the bathroom every ten minutes.

"Tell him to hold it," my husband told the teacher.

"I feel uncomfortable doing that if he has a medical condition," the teacher replied uneasily.

We assured the poor woman that the only thing overactive in our son is his own imagination.

"I am so mad at you!" someone barked when I picked him up from school this afternoon. He slumped in his seat and folded his arms across his chest.

"Sorry to crash the party," I told him.

"I can hold it in all day," bragged my daughter.

As she said this, I noticed that she had band-aids wrapped around all of her fingers.

"You've got you're own issues to worry about," I told her.

"Where are we going?" Cortlen asked as I turned into the mall parking lot.

"I'm buying you a new pair of shoes," I told him. "Velcro."

Bike Fest

The cashiers at Wal-Mart are endless founts of good ideas. Last year, one inspired me to try coloring my own hair using a shower cap with holes poked through the top. On Friday, another one suggested that I take my children to Orlando's annual Bike Fest.

"What does one do at said bike fest?" I asked her.

Before answering, the woman asked me to stop talking in the third person.

"My husband and I go every year," she told me. "You'll love it."

I glanced at my watch. It was 4:30pm and my significant other had already warned me that he had to work late. The thought of entertaining my kids for three hours inside my house was significantly more frightening than the unknown. So we went.

It wasn't until after we got to Bike Fest that I remembered that where there are lots of motorcycles, there are also lots of cigarettes, tattoos, piercings, and men who bear a striking resemblance to Saint Nick.

(this guy was not at Bike Fest, but his twin was)

"Why is Santa drinking beer?" my daughter hissed, pointing to a leather-clad reveler with a gigantic snake tattoo on his bicep.

"All right, time to go," I informed the troops. We lasted exactly 2 minutes and 13 seconds at Bike Fest.

On our way out of the gates, we were stopped by two women wearing Hooters t-shirts and short-shorts. They handed each of us buffalo wings on toothpicks and pointed us in the direction of a tent where we could buy more.

"Those cheerleaders were super nice," said Cortlen as we continued on our way.

"Mmm hmmm," I replied.

House Shopping

When we first moved to Florida, we thought that buying a house would be super easy. Orlando is one of the cities in the U.S. hardest hit by the current housing crisis and there is a lot of inventory on the market.

Unfortunately, all of the houses in which we are interested are owned by people who can't afford to sell them.

In the past four months, we've made offers on five different houses, all of which are in the same very nice, well-maintained, large master-planned community.

House # 1: Short Sale
The owners of this house are both professional chefs, which explains why they ripped out three perfectly good bathroom vanities and replaced them all with wine racks. There are frogs in the pool, the yard is a mess, someone or something peed on the living room carpet, and there are several bad words carved into the drywall in various rooms in the house. Other than that, it was in pretty good shape.

After three months, we heard back from the bank. Their counteroffer was for $65,000 more than any house in the neighborhood has sold for in the past year. The bank wouldn't move and the house is still on the market.

House # 2: conventional sale
The current owners bought the home in 2007 for $200,000 more than the house is currently worth. Ouch. For understandable reasons, the owners are trying to minimize their losses. We negotiated for over a week, but ultimately had to walk away after the owners held firm on a sales price that was $75,000 more than any house in the neighborhood has sold for in the past year. Almost four months later, the house is still for sale. Two weeks ago, the owners increased their chances of selling the house by RAISING their asking price by $15,000.

House # 3: conventional sale
This house is located three doors down from house #2. We signed the contract and felt pretty good about things until the home inspection revealed that the oven and microwave didn't work and four windows wouldn't open. Oh, and there was also a leak in the roof and a massive problem with the pool. And the home appraisal came back significantly lower than our purchase price.

House # 4: same situation as house # 2 except that in addition to an unreasonable asking price, the homeowners also hadn't paid their home owner's dues for five years and, as a result, they have a massive lien against their house.

House # 5: Short Sale through Bank of America
Need I say more? It's been almost four months, and we've heard zippo.

House # 6: We looked at this house on Saturday. We liked it and told our agent that we wanted to make an offer. When our realtor contacted the listing agent, she learned that the owners have stopped paying their mortgage and home owner's dues. Rad. The house is currently occupied by renters who own five dogs. Double rad. If we were willing to pay the list price, and close in December 2011 (when the renters' lease expires), then they would consider selling us the house.

Yikes.

This housing market is a mess.

The Magic Medicine Cabinet

Yesterday, I took Cortlen and Kellen to the pediatrician for their seven year-old wellness visits. After checking their heights and weights, the nurse handed the boys two small Dixie cups.

"I need urine samples from both of them," she told me.

The boys looked at the cups, then the nurse, then back at the cups. It took them a moment to put everything together.

[insert celebration dance]

Things got a whole lot better when the nurse showed the boys the magic medicine cabinet.

"After you're done," she told them, "Put your cup in there." The nurse pointed to a cabinet hanging on the wall, one side of which opened to the bathroom, the other to the nurse's station.

The idea of putting a cup filled with urine into the cabinet was exciting enough. The promise that the cup would magically disappear was more than they could stand.

"Can you ask the nurse for seventeen more cups?" Cortlen asked me through the bathroom door.

"Open up," I ordered, pounding on the door.

Eventually, my sons emerged.

"Just so you know, I'm going to have to go to bathroom again in two minutes," Cortlen warned.

"You're not getting any more cups," I warned back.

The nurse bit her lip to keep from laughing.

"The magic cabinet only works one time per day per person," she told them.

"I'll be back on Monday," Cortlen vowed.

"It's Not That Big of a Deal."

I've repeated these words to myself at least 100 times since flashing my father-in-law this morning.

Fifteen hours later, I am still struggling to believe them.

The unfortunate incident occurred at approximately 6:15am this morning. Shortly after turning off the shower, I realized that there weren't any towels in the master bathroom. Although undesirable, it wasn't the end of the world; there was a stack of clean ones ten feet away on top of my dresser. The journey from shower to dresser would have been uneventful if my husband had remembered to close the bedroom door when he went downstairs to feed the kids their breakfasts. Alas, he did not, and at the exact moment that I leaned in to close the open door, my father-in-law happened to walk past it. Our eyes met in total and complete horror. I was 100% naked.

I spent the next ten minutes curled up in the fetal position in the back of my closet.

"This might be my worst nightmare," I told my husband as I rocked back and forth.

He crouched down next to me and apologized. Then he suggested that what happened wasn't that big of a deal.

On this point, we have a difference of opinion.

Two hours later, I had the pleasure of driving my in-laws to the airport. The ride wasn't at all awkward; my mother -in-law counted the number of McDonald's restaurants she saw out the window while my father-in-law busied himself with a map of the Magic Kingdom.

"The next time I come, I want to spend more time in the gift shops," he said to no one in particular.

I can only imagine the conversations that will take place this weekend in California.

Friends/Neighbors/Children of In-laws: "How was Orlando? What did you see?"

Father-in-Law: "More than I bargained for."

Ugh.

High Quality Halloween Costumes for Kids

For the second straight year in a row, my sons have begged me to buy them Optimus Prime Halloween costumes.

I don't have an ethical problem with my children dressing up as gas guzzlers or weapons of mass destruction; I do, however, have a problem spending twenty dollars on what basically amounts to a screen-printed pair of polyester long johns.

"If you want to know the truth, I'm not a big fan of that costume," I told my boys while standing in the middle of the Halloween aisle at a local super center. "Is there any way that I could talk you into picking a costume that isn't see through?"

Through the subsequent conversation, I learned that my chances were very, very slim.

"What if I made you a Transformers costume?" I asked them.

My boys were curious and, justifiably, a little bit suspicious. "What do you mean, make?" they wanted to know.

The minute I mentioned the words "cardboard box," they started to get nervous.

"I don't like that idea at all," Kellen told me flat out.

Cortlen was more open-minded. "If you make me wear a box to school, I'm not celebrating Halloween this year," he announced.

I bought the long underwear, but only because I'm planning an imaginary ski trip (you know, one of the trips you plan but never actually go on) for my family this winter and I figure that the costume eventually will earn its keep.

Breakfast for Dinner

House guests bring out the best in my children. They also make them hungry.

My husband's parents are visiting from California this week. Upon arriving home from the airport, the grandparents were greeted at the door by a pack of hungry wolves with atrocious manners.

"When are we going out to eat?" they asked, licking their lips. It was 10:30 at night.

We had to pry the wolves off their prey.

The next morning, I woke up to find all three of my older children curled up next to their grandparents in bed. The senior citizens were sleeping. The seven year-olds were telling their relatives how much they loved them.

"Do you know what I really like to eat for breakfast?" Kellen whispered. "McDonald's hotcakes!"

At 10:30am, someone under the age of eight suggested that we spend the afternoon at an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet.

"Don't you ever feed them?" my father-in-law asked me and my husband.

"Not exclusively junk food," my husband replied.

"Let's have doughnuts!" said my daughter when my father-in-law asked what she would like to have for dinner.

As I write, dreams are coming true.

Do you see why no one at my house likes me?