adventures in babysitting

Last week Chris and I spent a majority of our time cleaning our house since we scheduled to have our house sprayed for bugs.  It was not a fun time since we are both pretty sloppy.  We had a mountain of laundry which took forever to get caught up.  My least favorite part of the house cleaning was cleaning our upstairs bathroom which we never use.  I couldn't tell you when the last time it was cleaned.  It was the bathroom that Chris' friend that lived with us used who hasn't stayed with us for a few months now.  It took me over an hour to clean, most of the time was spent scrubbing all the soap scum and dirt from the bath tub.  In fact, it took less time to clean both our other two bathrooms in our house (the one in our bedroom and the other main bathroom which never gets used and stays clean).  Needless to say, I was pretty infuriated at this and told Chris we were never having anybody live with us ever again.  Chris and I also tried to clean up our basement a little (which is used as a storage unit for various family members).  This was also a frustrating process.  I've decided that we should eventually give everyone a date by which they need to go through their belongings and decide what they are going to keep before it is all donated to the D.I.  Consider the fact that our basement is about 1000 square feet mostly occupied with stuff and 80% of the belongings don't belong to us.  All that cleaning made me pretty crabby!

This weekend we watched Chris' niece and nephew Sadie and Alex while their parents were in Mexico.  Sadie is 13 and Alex is 3.  Chris picked them up on Friday so that someone could be here when the guy came to spray the house for bugs.  I was kind of uneasy about a stranger coming to the house while we weren't home with young kids in the house but it couldn't exactly be avoided since Chris was playing in a golf tournament and I couldn't get home until 4pm at the earliest.  We had already delayed our bug spraying for long enough and were starting to get ants.  (Usually we can get away with only spraying every other year and be fine but we skipped last year.  Usually we get  box elder bugs, earwigs, spiders, and wasp nests on the outside of the house.  The down side of living next to an open field.)  It is very annoying to have ants crawling on your counter tops even after you have wiped them clean.  Anyways, we had left Sadie with some cash in case I couldn't get home in time (they were supposed to arrive in between 3 and 5).  Well I got home after the guy had left and he conveniently didn't have any change, so he ending up giving himself a $10 tip.  I had a feeling this would happen but forgot to mention it to Chris to make sure he left the exact amount.  What can you do?  Anyways, Chris was gone all evening so I was left to entertain the children.  We ended up going to Walmart (not my choice, Chris and I don't shop there because he thinks its a detriment to society, Sadie wanted to buy a few things).  We picked up a few things for the kids to eat so they wouldn't starve while Chris and I were gone.  Their choices were: Eggo cereal maple syrup, yoplait go-gurt, eggo french toast waffles and shrek push pops.  Of course I had to try all of these items to see what they were about.  All were quite good.  Alex had two bowls of cereal Friday evening and carried the box around for the rest of the weekend.  He couldn't get enough.  He also loved the go-gurt.  It was kind of odd squeezing yogurt into your mouth but is actually pretty handy when you're eating breakfast on your way to work as you drive.  The push pops and french toast waffles were equally good.  Sadie ended up trying to spend the $40 her mom had given her on random things like makeup and jewelry and ending up buying a motorcycle with rider for Alex who claimed he had to have it.  After we got back home from Walmart we relaxed for a little bit and watched tv.  Alex is obsessed with motorcycles and 4wheelers and had to check on ours every few minutes.  Chris had pulled the little one out of the shed so he was either going outside or in the garage.  Finally I brought the helmets in for him to look at so he would quit going in the garage without shoes.  I had no idea he would be so thrilled with the helmets.  He freaked out.  It actually kept him occupied for the next few hours.  He called the goggles "spyglasses".  He would put on and then take off both the helmets over and over again.  His love of the helmets didn't keep him from being absolutely terrified of Sadie when she put the helmet on with the goggles.  He kept yelling at her to quit looking at him.  The goggles had a bunch of eyeballs on it.  Since one of the helmets was Chris' and the other one was Taylor's (Chris' 8 year old brother) Alex was having a hard time keeping the helmet on his head properly.

Well since you know what kept Alex occupied all Friday night and most of the rest of the weekend, let me tell you what kept Sadie occupied for all of Friday night.  She is a little texting machine.  Since I had unlimited texting on my phone, I let her use mine.  As it got later in the evening, she asked me if I used my phone as an alarm and I said yes.  She said I could use her mom's phone (which doesn't have unlimited texting) as an alarm so that I wouldn't get woken up by her friends trying to text her all night.  I told her "well, you could just stop texting".  I guess she hadn't thought of that.  A few minutes later she said she pretended to be me and told her friends not to text anymore.  After we put the kids to bed Chris and I looked at what texts she had sent.  It was pretty funny.  The one said "this is Sadies Trevorts aunt.  She's been using my phone.  Quit calling, I've got to wake up at 4."  There was also one that said that they had woken up our 3 month old baby.  It was pretty amusing but most of the texts were nonsense like "I'm eating cereal" or who they were "love struck" over.  Now I can see how parents could be so infuriated when they get a $100 phone bill from their kids racking up texts full of nonsense.  Saturday Chris took the kids to see Kung fu Panda, and rode 4 wheelers while I was at work.  When I got home we took the kids to the mall and ate dinner at Wingers and bummed around while Sadie spend the rest of her $40.  Sunday Chris had to finish his 3rd day of the golf tournament and then had to work.  (He didn't do very well in the tournament, he always looses his cool and plays poorly,  he also snapped one of his wedges in half over his knee a few weeks ago.  What a maniac!)  I was left with entertaining the kids all day.  We woke up at 10am (I was surprised they slept this late, and I was exhausted from the day before).  I made them pancakes and eggs for breakfast.  Afterward Alex was bugging to ride the 4 wheelers so I let Sadie give him a quick ride around the field which held him over for the rest of the day.  After that everyone got their baths and Sadie wanted me to crimp her hair with my 3 barrel waver, which took a while.  We were supposed to meet up with Chris' sister Shayla later so that the kids could stay with her for the next few days.  We weren't sure when she'd be able to meet us since she was coming from the area of Park City and figured it'd be around 6pm.  We left the house at about 4 because Sadie wanted to get out of the house and wanted to return a shirt at the mall.  We ended up hanging out at the mall until they closed at 6.  Shayla hadn't called us yet so we went to Target so I could see what home decor they had while we killed time.  This is where Alex went absolutely bazerk over the power ranger toys.  He threw the biggest tantrum because he wanted to have one for his "birthday present" which isn't until next year.  This caused a few stares from people.  One little girl told her dad "he really likes those toys".  Finally we told him to pick one which he had a hard time doing since he wanted all of them.  After walking around for a while he forgot all about the power ranger so I told Sadie that we should distract him and leave without getting it.  This worked until we got in the car and he saw his other toys which reminded him of the one we didn't buy.  I had decided that we'd go over to Chris' mom's house and wait for Shayla there, Alex was screaming the whole way there, well most of it until I pointed out a "motorcycle man" (someone riding a motorcycle).  He's easily distracted.  We hung out with Chris family for a while.  Their cat had two kittens that were really cute but caused my allergies to really act up.  My eyes were itching like crazy by the time I got home and took some Benedryl.  I came home after Chris called and said he was on his way home.  Overall, the weekend went pretty well even with the power ranger incident.  Apparently Alex doesn't do very well at other peoples houses and he seemed to have a good time at our house.  Plus it wasn't that hard because Sadie did most of the work.  Chris was glad I didn't cave in and give Alex the power ranger, he is very adamant about not giving things to children when they throw tantrums.  I was very tired this morning.  Little kids really wear you out since they need constant entertaining.  It was pretty funny yesterday morning I accidentally kicked Alex when I was trying to step over the blankets on the floor.  He looked at me and said "you kicked me in the butt!"  I thought he was going to cry for a second.  I apologized and he laughed and said "do it again!" and turned around so I could kick him in the butt again.  I gave him a small kick and he laughed.  Little kids are crazy!

I also got a new phone.  It opens up to a full keyboard (this is what inspired Sadie into a texting frenzy)  Overall I'm pretty happy with it so far.  I did have a Chocolate phone which I absolutely despised.  We also went to Shield Zone to put a plastic over it to prevent it from getting scratched up.  My Chocolate had the screen all scratched up from being tossed around in my purse with my keys, and getting dropped periodically.   I couldn't get a picture of it to stay on my blog.  Here's a link to it instead.    LG enV2