excuses, excuses

i'm trying to find every excuse NOT to clean my kitchen. blogging seemed worthy for the moment. really though, i'm not all that behind in my cleaning efforts. yesterday connor took a wicked long nap so i cleaned the house from top to bottom.....literally. i start at the top and work my way downstairs. i finished pretty much everything by the time he woke up. the only thing i held off was folding the laundry (which i usually save for babysitting days anyway) and unloading/reloading the dishwasher. my dishwasher and i have a love/hate relationship at the moment. i love that i can still use it, but i hate that i have to run it during the day and watch the timer to make sure it's moving. it only gets stuck once during the cycle and i've pretty much got it down to a science. i've timed it out so i know just when to get in there and give the timer a little nudge. it makes me think of those old fabric softener commercials where the cartoon lady is up at the top of the house and the washer is running away downstairs. all of a sudden she remembers that she "FORGOT TO ADD THE FABRIC SOFTENER!!" then she comically flops and falls to the washer only to plop in front of it as the rinse cycle is finishing. i used to love those...even as a child... weird, i know.

before i got the urge to clean yesterday, i wanted to go look for a new bathing suit. good luck, right? oh, but wait! in one of my many, many trips to the mall last week i found THE suit. this has never happened to me IN MY LIFE! i have always settled for suits b/c i get frustrated really easily looking for a suit that i like, that is comfortable, that i feel is somewhat "modest"-- i know, i know, is there even such a thing? well, i grew up in a family of swimmers so i just wore racing suits for my entire life until i finally branched out after i got married and looked for a cute suit. there's a reason why racing suits were so comfy to me.... i felt like i was covered up enough to enjoy my pool time. "cute" suits don't do that. so when i was at the store and tried on a cute suit that was comfortable, i couldn't believe it. then i looked at the price tag...figures. so i was determined to find this suit at a department store (i found it at a specialty shop). i looked online and saw that lord&taylor had the designer and a similar suit. i was pumped. i've been dying to get over there to see what they had. so yesterday when nic had to come over to use the computer, i jumped at the chance to leave.

i headed over to fairlane. granted, i haven't been to fairlane in....well, years. so i had no clue that lord&taylor was no longer there! oh, and did i mention that i missed the exit and ended up having to double back big time. by the time i realized that i had missed my exit i recognized that i was really close to my gramma's old house. we used to go there every sunday and squish our whole big family into this teeny tiny little house. since i was over there i thought i'd drive by and see if i remembered where it was. turns out it's a bit farther down than i remembered. by the time i got to her street i was thinking, "ok, finally! now, let's drive by and get out of here so i can go see my new suit." which of course, i didn't get to do b/c the store's NOT THERE! i didn't want my trip to the mall to be a total waste so i drove around to the food court and went in looking for a directory. of course, macy's was at the other end of the mall, but i wanted to go see if they had the suit. can i just say the set up of fairlane STINKS. i got to macy's walked the second level, went upstairs to check out the kids clothes and thought i was going to get stuck. the escalator was broken and i couldn't find the elevator to save my life. i did two loops before i finally gave up and asked the lady at the marketplace to point me in the right direction. then i looped the second level again finding NO suits. i wanted to check the first level, but the down escalator was broken here too so i had to leave the store, use the outside steps, finally got down to the first floor and found NO suits. i'm sure they were tucked in the one corner i didn't hit but i didn't care at that point. i had walked the entire macy's and i was just wanting to get out of there. all i wanted to do was look. is that too much to ask?

hungry and tired i went home to get lunch going, and nathan called and said he would pick up something for us. what a guy!

connor is being quite a pill today. which means he's showing his pagan side. hopefully, this early nap will help the rest of the day go a bit better. this morning was quite a battle of the wills. he has no idea what he's up against. it's just typical that he'd do this today though. this is the one day i need him to take an afternoon nap b/c that way the girls can take naps too.

last friday we had lunch with gramma sanders. connor has given her the names "nanners" and "sufee". some of us kids have called her gramma susie some called her gramma sanders. he just whips out whichever one suits him at the moment. when we were at her house it was nanners. last night when we were looking at pictures it was sufee. she made quite a feast for us, and connor really loved her banana pudding!

monday was her birthday. happy birthday, gramma sanders! (i'm not gonna tell how old she is b/c i value my life...trust me you'd NEVER guess.)

don't be too jealous of her tan....she just got back from florida and she's a beach bum just like me. we can frequently be found worshiping the sun together on vaca.
connor's big fat belly will tell you just how much banana pudding he ate!!!