Heathie's Homemaking Hints

I'm no Martha Stewart or anything, but here are a couple little things I learned today while performing my housewife-y duties:

--If your house seems stuffy, just open the back door and sweep the kitchen floor. The moment you start sweeping, a nice breeze will come in and scatter all your dirt, but the house will feel much better.

--If your cat is missing, just start mopping your floors. Your cat will show up immediately, with his dirty paws, and might even bring a grasshopper friend or two.

--If you notice your dog running back and forth from the house to the yard and seemingly eating grass, there's a good chance someone left the pantry open, and he's going to town on the milk bones.

--I read somewhere that automatic car washes are more eco-friendly than washing your car at home, but chances are if your kids are still afraid of the vacuum, they will not like the car wash. They will cry [Drew] or give the car wash dirty looks [Owen] throughout the whole experience and be very glad when it's over.

Some Owen Videos.

I don't have any up-to-date Drew Videos, because he's been acting too scared to do anything.

This is Owen jumping on the trampoline.

This is Owen's new favorite activity: playing with the hose.

Our Basement Smells Like Booze

The restoration guys just came in and painted the mold-room. It stinks. It smells like beer, which I will assume is paint smell and not painter smell. We went and picked out carpet yesterday, which will be installed on Friday, so the room is getting really close to being finished. Yay!

In other news Happy [belated] Birthday to Kevin! My little brother turned 20 yesterday! It's so weird! We went to visit on Sunday, and had a little party for him with presents and yummy food, and a cake which I made. I'm pretty proud of it, even though I didn't come up with the idea myself. Here are some pictures from the party:

This is the cake that I made for Kevin. He went to the Special Olympics basketball tournament, so I made him a little jersey.




This is the mess I made making Kevin's cake. It was as much fun as it looks!

Here's a [partial] family photo: Drew, me, Owen, Mike, Casey, Lura, Marcus, Westley, Andy, Kevin.

Owen loved jumping on my old trampoline. Drew, of course, wasn't so fond. He wouldn't even

stand up on it.

Diamonds, Shmiamonds.

I went and got some Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, the other day. I decided to tackle my kitchen with them, because I'd heard great things about their powers. It turns out, those things were true! I previously thought the front of my microwave was white with beige-ish detailing. I was pretty surprised (and a little disgusted) to learn, after really scrubbing it, that it's just plain white. I also spilled some bright blue food coloring on my counter tops, and the erasers got it right off when nothing else would. Those Magic Erasers are my new best friends.
They do, however require caution, especially around kids. I got an email from a friend today, that told a story of a gal whose kid got really bad chemical burns from the Magic Erasers. The Scotchbrite brand can cause the same problems. So if you let your kids use them, have them wear gloves, and make sure they only use them on the walls or stove, or whatever; they're definitely not for use on people!

An Update

I don't know when this blogging became a once-a-week thing for me. I think it started when I decided to try to keep up with things around the house, rather than let stuff pile up and deal with it all at once. In a way, it's nice that my house stays cleaner looking, but in another way, it seems like I have less time to do fun stuff. I think I probably have the same amount of free time, it's just more scattered throughout the day in many tiny snippets, rather than a couple big lumps like I'm used to.

We did take a bunch of time yesterday to go on a fun outing with the boys. We took them to Tautphaus Park, the zoo in Idaho Falls. It is a really nice zoo for the size of town that it's in. The boys really enjoyed seeing all the animals "in person;" we've been reading about different animals, and they know all the sounds, like ducks quack and lions roar, so it was fun for them to see it all live.

In my mind, the highlight of the zoo was the monkeys, because they were the most interactive. Even though they were behind glass, they were very curious about the boys, and vice-versa. Drew and Owen put their little hands on the glass and were thrilled when the monkeys responded by putting their little hands on the other side of the glass.

The only down-side to the excursion was when my camera battery died while taking a picture of said monkeys. It was right at the beginning of the trip, too. I went to all the trouble of making sure we had plenty of memory for photos, but didn't bother to glance at how much juice the battery had. Grr. But we're hoping to go back in September, on one of the Free Admission days (assuming I can still walk at that point; it'll be about 4-7 days before Baby-Day), so if we do, I'll be sure to have an empty memory card and a full battery!

Today was also exciting, but not so much of the good kind of excitement. Today marked Drew's first trip to the emergency room. He had been playing in the back yard, and was running toward the deck when he tripped and fell, his little forehead landing right on the bottom [cement] step of the deck. The gash wasn't huge; about a centimeter long, if that, but it seemed really deep. It gushed a bit, then stopped after I cleaned it with a washcloth, but by the time we got to the hospital, it had started bleeding a little more. So I'm glad we went to get it checked out.

The cut required just two little stitches, which ended up being quite an ordeal, especially for a frightened little Drew. He cried while they applied the topical anesthetic, which was in the form of some goop placed on a cotton swab and bandaged to his head, then left to sit for about 25 minutes to "work its magic." The nurse said this was easier than a shot, but I kind of wonder. Shots don't take long, and that bandage (which went all the way around Drew's head--twice) was a major pain to put on and take off. It caused a lot of crying and wailing. On the other hand, it didn't hurt like a shot would, it was just scary.

Drew had to be "mummied" while they stitched him up. That scared him a lot, too. It involved a pillow case wrapped around his shoulders, which was also Ace-bandaged to stay in place. Of course he screamed while that was put on him. The nurse was really great, though, and sang little nursery songs and told him a story about a snowman. But then the doctor went and put a cloth over Drew's face and head to keep the hair away from the wound, and that started Drew screaming all over again.

He screamed through the remainder of the procedure, but when it was all finished and David mentioned going to get ice cream, Drew stopped screaming long enough to say through his tears, "Ice cream, please." After that he just kind of whimpered on the way out of the hospital, but was brave enough to say "'Bye" to all the nurses. Once again, I'm amazed at how resilient little kids are. The rest of the day, Drew was his normal self, running and yelling and carrying on.

I think it was too much excitement for Baby and me, though. I've been having little contractions off and on since the incident, and Baby has been kicking and poking my insides with extra force. I hate to say this, but I'm kind of glad David's working tonight; it means I get to really sprawl out on my bed and [hopefully] get a good night's sleep!