Girls (fancy) night out!

Tonight Alaina and I got all dolled up and headed to a fashion show at a local church in town that we read about over in Mindee's blog. (See my list of a few blogs? See Mindee's name? Click there for a great blog!)

And when your daughter is 4 the only way to get all dolled up is Fancy Nancy style.

I even went and bought us some cute bobby pins with colorful hair attached. Check out Alaina's rocking curls . . . .

Oh and did you notice the spectacular bling around her neck? That's what I'm going to call my birthday present for myself. There were a few vendor at the show selling jewelry and I couldn't resist.

Sigh.... Isn't it pretty?


Isn't SHE pretty? She's blowing me a pretty kiss, too.

And check out the muffin that we got as intermission treats. We were singing the Aardvark intermission song while we ate.

And then I got to meet Mindee!!! I felt a little stalker-ish, but I flagged her down in a casual manner versus jumping up and down, waving my arms and screaming . . .

MINDEE! OVER HERE I'M LIKE YOUR BIGGEST FAN!

Not that I'd embarrass my daughter like that until she's at least 13 and can be mortified. But the thought did cross my mind.

A good time was had by all.

A typical weeknight at the Brenneman household . . .

Well . . .

After being sick and having 2 snow days this week, I feel like I don't have much to write about here.

So I'll break out the pictures!!!


Any night of the week you could come to the Brenneman House and find the Brenneman girls . . ..

Walking their sister

Getting tatoos
(and doing Wondertwin impressions)



Putting on their bling

Rockin' and readin'

Playing hide and seek in our new furniture

Playing with stamps (Look REALLY CLOSE at her forehead . . .)

Playing with Dolls

Putting on makeup

Watching it snow outside

But we always end with reading a bedtime story.

Blech. . .

For the third day in a row, I'm home sick. I don't care for this at all, but at least today I can rest peacefully.

Snow days for school and sick days for mommy do not mix especially when daddy is on second shift. No rest for the weary.

I've taken a hot shower, pumped myself full of meds, and eaten as much as possible to send myself into hybernation.

But now all I can think about is all the things that I could putter around the house and get done. Boo for thinking I should be constructive with my day off even if I feel like I'm on my deathbed.

Anyone want to brave the snowy, icky streets to come do my dishes and vacuum?

The birth of a nightmare

I know, I KNOW! I'm terrible at this blogging thing. But I'm sick, and cold, and trying to put a happy face on for my beautiful girls who are enjoying a fun day home from daycare with crabby/cold mommy.

So here's a fun entry that I've been working on for a while.

Hopefully Sleeping Beauty was lying when she said if you have a dream more than once it is supposed to come true, because there are a couple dreams that I have repeatedly.

The worst one is a dream that I have dubbed "Uncomfortable/Stress dream."

After a stressful day where I have been in an uncomfortable situation or the night before what is guaranteed to be a stressful day, I have a dream like this:

I'm back in High School (As if that wasn't enough to classify this as a nightmare . . .)

I walk through the big double doors into the school and everyone is standing around waiting for the first bell to ring. (This is always the biggest clue that I am dreaming, because in real life I was never at school in time to hear the first bell ring.)

Everyone is staring at me and I can't figure out why. My confusion continues for usually one to two class periods, then I usually figure out what everyone is looking at. . .

Do you see where this is heading?

Yep . .. I'm only half dresses.

Yep, that's right, every time I get too stressed out, I have my own version of the naked at school dream. I'm never really naked, I always seem to have forgotten to put my shirt on or forgotten my pants. In my dream I will usually try to brazen through the day without the missing garment while my saner self is desperately trying to wake up.

Sometimes, just to shake things up, my stress dream would take on a different tone after school dances, large social gatherings or large hectic meetings. I would dream that everyone who was at the big gathering had come back to my house to party. Actually, it is always my parents house because my nightmares love to put me back in high school. Everyone shows up after I'm in bed and I'm trying to brazen out the fact that I'm in my bed, wearing my pjs (a ratty tshirt) and trying to convince them to all to get the heck out of my room.

The worst case was the time my brother had invited all of his fraternity brothers out to our parents house for a bonfire party. I was still in high school at the time. That night, I was having the previously mentioned dream of trying to convince my brother's friends that they needed to go have their party somewhere other than in my room when I woke up to find that 2 of his frat brothers were standing in my doorway hissing my brother's name.

They were a little shocked that they had the wrong room (My brother's room was the next door down), but were glad that I was kind enough to give them directions on how to get back to the interstate.

Or course what makes the dream even more frustrating is that I know exactly when and why I started having it.

Imagine being a young lady in the 80s and totally rocking the sweater and stirrup pants look. Then imagine having a really nice elementary teacher who looks out for her students.

One day, this lovely teacher stops by your desk and leans over to ask you to come with her. She leads you to the small bathroom attached to the classroom, and tells you that there is a hole in the crotch of your rockin stirrup/stretch pants.

Teacher is so nice she has brought her needle and thread and instructs you to go into the bathroom, hand your stretch pants to her and she will stitch up the hole.

She was cool about the whole event, but I was mortified.

I can still remember exactly how I felt standing sans pants in the small prison cell like bathroom.

And that, apparently, is how a reoccurring nightmare is born.

Guess what?

By tomorrow I meant the next day, and by next day I meant YEAR.

So its been a few more days than I had anticipated . . .but life is never dull in our house and I'm finally able to sit down and compose a few words.

But first thing first.

After Alaina dropped the bomb of boys having two *ahem* TONGUES. I hustled her off to take a nap so that Jeff and I could strategies on how to diffuse the situation.

Jeff's big plan was avert and evade. After all why did we even need to correct her?

I immediately began sputtering with indignation (I've ALWAYS wanted to do that!) and replied in a haughty tone,
"Because I only associate one thing specifically with tongues and there is NO WAY I want Alaina to associate LICKING with that area on a boy!!! "

I felt that I had a pretty good argument with that point, but Jeff decided that if I wanted to approach this issue, I was on my own.

SO BE IT!

After Alaina woke up from her nap I bided my time until she was having as much fun as possible and then sat down beside her to begin the inquisition.

My first order of business was to determine where this little tidbit of information had come from.

"Hey Alaina?"

Yes? She chirpped happily.

Do you remember what we were talking about just before nap time?

That boys have tongues?

Yes, that's it. Do you remember who told you that?

Alaina glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, paused, and said Nobody.

Crap. I somehow gave away that this was a Not-So-Good issue and she was clamming up on me. But I kept at it.

Did you hear it at Daycare?

Nope

Did you hear it at the Mall?

Nope

Did you hear it on the TV?

Nope

Did you hear it at home? (I can see Jeff's eyebrow going up across the room at that one . . . .)

Nope

Did you (Deep breathe . . ..) SEE ONE? (Jeff has now raised BOTH eyebrows . . . .)

Nope

Alaina has now given me her full attention as well. I can almost see the gears in her mind turning, assessing what she can do with this powerful piece of knowledge that she has found in her possession. Never the less, I continue.

Alaina, boys don't have tongues between their legs.

Yes, they do.

No, they don't. Those are where the boys potty comes out. Sometimes that what little kids call them. Pottys.

Oh, well I'm going to call them tongues.

No, don't call them tongues Alaina. They aren't tongues and you shouldn't call them that. Please call them pottys.

Oh, OK.

And now on to the most comfortable issue to be addressed.

And Alaina, if someone talks to you about a potty, tries to show you their potty, or you see a potty you need to tell mommy, daddy, or one of your teacher at daycare. Okay?

Her eyes have widened just a bit, now as she takes the last bit in. Then a big smile brightens her face and I know she's gotten an idea to see how she can use all this to her advantage.

Oh, well Miss So-and-so is the one who told me to call them that.

Unfortunately she has named the sweetest little teacher at daycare who probably wouldn't say shit if she had a mouth full of it so I call her bluff.

No Alaina, no she didn't.

Now she's pouting a bit about not getting very far with her little plan.

No, she didn't.

So what do you do if someone talks to you about pottys?

Tell teacher. Or mommy or daddy.

That's right. Because people shouldn't talk about pottys or show them to anyone. Except if they are taking a bath, going to the bathroom or talking to their doctor.

Later as I'm telling this to my mother, she gave me a great tip. So from now on, I will be referring to words like potty as a 'bathroom word.' These things can only be referred to if you are in a bathroom. That covers bathing and bathroom rituals, so I would only have to worry about the Doctors office since Alaina take everything very, very literally.

I felt like that discussion went pretty well, but I decided I had better to talk to her daycare teacher and let her know the situation just in case something came up there. Basically my goal was just to let them know that we were NOT encouraging the speaking of 'tongue.'

The teacher got a little defensive. I guess she thought I was accusing her of teaching it to Alaina. She informed me in a bit of a haughty tone that she didn't even allow barbies in her classroom and that they NEVER talk about those things.

(I should probably mention that Alaina's teacher at daycare is probably my least favorite person there, but I figure that I'd better get used to not loving all of the people who will be in my daughter's life unless I plan on homeschooling her.)

So pretty much the only things I gained from speaking to this woman, is the knowledge that I gave someone a heads up in case this would become an issue and a little bit of sadness that my daughter who loves barbies so much isn't allowed to play with them at daycare.

Holiday Symbols

Jeff and I decided that we would be putting the tree up this year after a taking a break last year. And since we are finding ourselves in a better monetary situation, we made the decision to spring for some 'shatterproof' ornaments rather than the classic 'shards of fun' glass ornaments that we usually have.

We've been lucky enough to have Aunt Stacey's tree for the last several years. Lucky because it is a beautiful pre-lit tree.

Saturday night, (after the obligatory mourning for the Husker's loss . . .) I wisely put up the tree so all that we needed to do on Sunday was decorate.

Picture this lovely domestic scene on a Sunday morning:

We hang the garland, quickly discovering that Mommy didn't get enough packages of garland to sufficiently cover the tree.

F#@$^&&$#!!!

Now for the new ornaments! I open up the boxes and tubes of 74 shatterproof glittery red and gold orbs to find that some asinine person has decided that tiny little strings would work soooooo much better than hooks. So now Mommy is sitting on the floor, cursing quietly to herself as she ties strings for 71 pretty ornaments.

F#@$^&&$#!!!

71 of 74?

I only tied strings for 71 of the 74 because apparently the 24 gold ornaments weren't cool enough to come with strings for each ornament and I was too cranky to hunt down some matching strings in my sewing stuff upstairs. So the last 3 are banished to storage until next year.

F#@$^&&$#!!!

Now picture Alaina running around attempting to tell us all exactly how this is supposed to go.

NO! Not the shiny ones just the Glittery ones!
Kayla! Stop Throwing the ornaments!
Please hurry up tying those strings Mommy!
KAYLA! Stop touching the ornaments!
Mommy can you lift me up to put the high ones on?
Kayla! Don't touch THAT!
When do we put that star on the top.
MOMMY KAYLA'S TOUCHING THAT AGAIN!!!

F#@$^&&$#!!!

And Kayla, for almost the entire time I've been tying silly little strings, has been tossing the ornaments like she's trying out for the Olympics' first Bean-the-Cat event.She'd win the gold for sure.

F@#$%#$@#$!!!!

And as I get up to get the star I realize,I bought all these pretty GOLD decorations,

And my star is SILVER.

And as crazy as I am, that just will NOT do for our tree.
So we brought home a pretty new glittery red star when we got the rest of our garland.

F@#$%#$@#$!!!!

You still hear that cursing in the background? What do you mean you thought it was ME?!?

Nope!

That cursing going on the entire time, is Jeff. Because if there is one thing in the world that irritates Jeff in this world more than GLITTER, I haven't found it yet.
Jeff is a glitter magnet. If there is a glittery object in our house, Jeff will be wearing glitter to work for 3 weeks. The poor guy could double as a pixie.

(A very manly pixie, my dear. You wear your glitter well.)

And now for the Moment of the day. Oh dear weak of heart friends and family, avert your ears.

As we are decorating the tree Alaina casually says,

(Take a deep breathe and wait for it.)

Hey Mommy, boys have a tongue between their legs.

And now you can begin laughing your ass off.

But this post has gone on long enough. I leave you with this fun little tidbit, and I will post the conversation I had with Alaina about this tomorrow, or as soon as I can.

BLOG TAKE TWO

I had a morose blog typed up, but it was [insert appropriate negative comment here]

I can sum up the lame-ness of it in two sentences:

I couldn't figure out how to post my pretty Christmas pictures.

AND

Kayla and I have been sick.


MOVING ON!


I popped over to a new blog that Stacey found. http://www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ and am feeling much perkier.


So I will leave you with this Tale of Two Sisters.

Imagine being a twin . . . . . .

One twin is a home body, likes to cook, has kids, a minivan, cats, and a closet that would make Tim Gunn cry.

The other is a bit of a fashionista, loves clothes, Starbucks, and actually has a social life. She actually reads style books written by Tim Gunn.

Needless to say I am twin one.

But thanks to my sister living with me for a while, I am trying to mend my ways.

Actually . . . . I'm trying to look better because I'm sick of that 'You are soooooo lame' look that she delivers to me along with phrases like "Burn that when you take it off today" and "I am veto-ing that barrette in your bangs. What are you 12?"

I'm starting from the inside and working my way out because sister dearest works at Victoria's Secret and is my instant snitch for all things on sale. In the last 2 month I have purchased 3 new bras, had 2 given to me by sis, and bought about 30 smoking pairs of VS underwear.

And that's where the problem begins.

Have you ever had "Garment Amnesia?"

Garment Amnesia: def When a person doesn't recognize a garment purchased recently because they forgot what it looked like in the first place. See catch phrases like "I've been looking for this" and "Why did I ever buy that?"

My sister and I tend to lump laundry together and wash a mix of hers/mine clothes every time we do laundry. She, however, doesn't suffer from Garment Amnesia. My sister can look at a garment from 6th grade and tell you if it was hers or mine.

So tell me, dear friends, how ridiculous is it that I have to ask my sister to help me sort my laundry because I can't even identify my own underwear?

Tim Gunn, please know that I love you and am working on my fashion issues. . . .