Riley and Avery

So, I bought a crock pot. For a whopping 15 bucks ;) It has been awesome! Rudi had fallen into the habit of taking the girls out to eat 2 days a week when I'm in school, and that's just not good for anyone, our budget included. Everything I've made in it has turned out fabulously. Which brings me to another point...

I see absolutely no validity in the argument that working moms can't make their families nutritious meals, or that fast food is cheaper. It is not cheaper. No way. Just the other day I bought a pork roast for $5, threw in about a pound of potatoes (what's that? Like $1 worth of potatoes?) and a dollar worth of carrots. We had it for dinner twice, so that comes out to about $3.50 per dinner. On RARE occassions that we've eaten fast food it has always come to about $15. Even if had each gotten two things from the dollar menu, it would have been $8. Still not cheaper.

If I can prep the crock pot in the morning (and I am NOT a morning person!) then anyone can. Some recipes have called for more prep than others, like browning ground beef, but still no more than 10 minutes worth of prep, if that. There is no reason why a parent can't prep the pot and have her children turn the pot off and eat when they get home from school, rather than leaving money for fast food.

Tomorrow, we are planning on going to the zoo for Mother's Day. I will prep the pot in the morning, and we'll come home to a nice dinner. It's almost like not having to cook on Mother's Day. Can't beat that!

So, what have I made so far? Let see...beef stew was the first. Chicken corn chili. Pork roast with potatoes and carrots, cabbage beef soup (a HUGE hit with Riley in particular), chicken and dumplings, and cheesy italian tortellini. I'm sure there's more, but that's what I remember.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, I have to leave for school at 4:30, but only get home around 4 from picking the kids up from school. On Tuesdays and Thursdays Riley has swimming lessons at 6:15, so she needs to eat by 5pm sharp, again after getting home at 4. The crock pot helps a ton in getting everyone food at a precise time. Additionally, since the crock pot I got in 6qts, if I only fill it half-way or less, it doesn't take as long to cook. So, I can go grocery shopping after dropping the kids off at school, and still get everything prepped and cooked by dinner time.

The only downside to the crock pot is that Avery loves helping to cook, and if she helps she is much more likely to eat the food. With the crock pot, I prep it while the girls eat breakfast. If she does get to help, she finds it rather anti-climactic since we just fill the pot and wait 8 hours LOL! Oh well, can't win them all!

I think Riley has lost the passion for skating. On the morning of her second lesson, she wanted me to "unsign" her. Rather than putting her in Basic 2, I put her in Snowplow 2 with Caoimhe, which seemed to lift her spirits quite a bit. I don't give a flying turd if she's already been in Snowplow 2, as long as she has fun!

Riley passed Level 2 in swimming. She really likes swimming more than skating right now. I still have a credit with the rec center for Avery's dropped classes, so hopefully we can fit in one more session before moving. Swimming lessons are considerably more important to me since Portland is 60% water! And a lot of rentals that we're looking at in Maine are ON the water, so I see swimming as very important!

I am going to see if I can score a used pair of rollerblades for Riley and see if that satisfies her need for speed. It seems that a lot of the kids here are moving from bikes to rollerblades, and skating around the neighborhood is a lot better than driving so darn far for skating twice a week! Plus, I won't have to deal with the coldness in the summer. That ticks me off.

I took Riley and Avery to school with me on Wednesday because the public library is closed for 2 whole weeks (!!!) and Rudi normally takes them to story time on Wednesday nights. So, for a special end-of-the-semester treat, I brought them with me. They both did me proud and sat through over 3 hours of college history. My teachers were quite impressed with them, as were my classmates.

I have a conference at school for Riley next Tuesday. Today, while I was dropping off Riley, Rae asked Riley is she wanted to show me her multiplication. I was like, WHAT? Multiplication? Sure enough she did 6's and 7's while I was there. I think Rae wanted to demonstrate the curriculum for a pair of visiting parents of a prospective student. The mother stopped me in the parking lot and asked me about the school, and I was like yeah, we love it, it's Riley's fourth year here! The funny thing is that two of the parents of current students went to school at Golden Mountain! How amazing is that that parents from two separate families had such positive experiences in preschool and kindergarten that they think to bring there own children there after all those years? And to find that the same director is there? Pretty cool in my book!

Avery read me her first BOB book the other day. She was super-proud of herself, and of course I was proud of her too! Riley is out of the kindergarten curriculum for reading and is about half-way through the first grade curriculum. That girl loves to read!

Riley and Avery had their physicals yesterday. Riley is in the 25th percentile for height, and 40th percentile for weight. Avery is in the 5th percentile for both height and weight. They both checked out well! The doctor remarked that Avery has a funny way of talking, meaning her over-the-top expressiveness. Talking is definitely her strong point!

I did ask the doctor about Riley's frequent high fevers, and he checked her tonsils and didn't notice anything strange, and then he checked her urethra for signs of a UTI, which was also fine. But when the doctor pulled down Riley's pants, Avery said "THAT is NOT going to happen to ME!...is it, Mom?" Hope she stays that way! The doc gave us a cup for a urine sample to check for bladder infection, and Riley was MORTIFIED that she was being asked to pee in a cup! She couldn't do it, but surprised me at home my appearing with a warm cup of urine.

So, the doctor just suggested that we bring her in when she is actually having a fever. And wouldn't you know it, Riley gets a fever at 3:30 on a FRIDAY! Hopefully, if it is a bladder infection, it'll show up on a Thursday urine sample. If it's not a bladder infection, then we're out of luck until next time! Needless to say, Riley will be missing skating lessons tomorrow, as well as the Hummingbird festival she wanted to go to really badly. Poor kiddo!

My sewing machine needs to be serviced, as in it's not working. The tension is SO messed up! I know that I need a new bobbin case, which I ordered online and hopefully it will be here soon, but I think that's only part of he problem. It's really hard to find a reputable sew-vac shop! The first one I went to was run by a couple from Coney Island (my Brooklyn neighbor was like, you should have run away from there LOL!) and they sold me the wrong part and were just total scam artists. Reading reviews of their business is not comforting at all. Apparently they are not only con artists, but violent ones. Not going anywhere near there! The other place I went to, the cold elderly lady who apparently owns the place didn't listen to a single thing I said was wrong with the machine (namely, birdnesting under the fabric) and instead wrote "clean and tune" on the ticket, then proceeded to charge me for bobbin thread and top thread. Whatever.

So, I went to the quilt shop right up the street and asked them if they could recommend anyone, since they only service Viking machines. They gave me the number to a dude that comes to the house. Sound nice...and expensive. Anyway, the quilt shop gave me a rental machine for three days free, since I'm such a frequent customer. It's a computerized Viking machine from 1998, that still, after all these years, retails for over $400. It retailed for about $1300 in 1998, which is considerably more than the car I was driving at that time LOL! Nothing against the machine, but I couldn't get into the rhythm of it. I like MY machine. Using another machine is like wearing someone else's shoes. I could run my sewing machine with a blindfold on!

UPDATE: bobbin case came in the mail and it solves most of the urgent issues. Tension is still not ideal, but I'll look online and see if I can figure out how to adjust the tension internally myself. The external dial just doesn't adjust it enough. It's still usable, though!!

And that's it for my uber-boring sewing machine post!

I will post pictures and text later.

I think Riley is getting a really weird tooth in. It's about 1/4 inch behind one of her bottom center teeth, which are adult teeth by the way. It feels hard when we press on it, and she doesn't complain that it hurts like a canker sore. I'll call the dentist on Monday and make an appointment just to satisfy by curiosity. While Rudi and I are all freaked out that she'll have completely mangled teeth until she can get braces at whatever-age-kids-get-braces, Riley is totally excited, thinking that she is like a shark and just grows teeth and looses them continually. Horray.

Riley had her first skating lesson at World Arena this morning. No pictures because the place was an absolute zoo because the olympic rink was closed for maintenance and all the classes had to crowd onto the NHL rink instead. I could only get pictures through the plexi-glass, so they didn't turn out well at all. Anyway, a little boring background...USFA (or whatever it is) has a Snowplow Sam program for kids 5 and under. She completed Snowplow 1 and 2 in her lessons with her school. USFA has Basic classes for kids 6 and over that are basically the same, but more in-depth. So, I put her in Basic 1, thinking that was right, but all they did was march from one end of the arena to the other. And there were like 20 kids in the class with 2 teachers. I told the ladies at the front desk that it seemed like a bit of a repeat, and they said that they didn't know that she did Snowplow 1 and 2 (since it was at a different rink) and they normally recommend Basic 2 for experienced kids. So, she'll try out Basic 2 next week and see how that goes...The sucky thing is that Caoimhe is 5, so she was in Snowplow and not in Riley's class. Stupid age differences. But Riley enjoyed seeing her there anyway!

We are taking a camping trip down to Mesa Verde National Park in early June, as it's one of the things that we absolutely could not leave Colorado without doing. We are doing it on the super-cheap. We'll leave Sunday (6.5 hour drive!) and set up the tent. We'll have four full days there and come back on Friday. Of course, we'll see the four corners area too. I fully intend to do the touristy thing and take a picture of the four of us, each in a different state :) Why not? Now all we have to do is figure out what non-perishable non-refrigerated food we're going to eat for 5 days, since we absolutely cannot afford to eat out while there.

I am planning on doing lapbooks with the girls before we get there, so they will know what we're looking at. Unfortunately, local bookstores and libraries are woefully devoid of anything related to the Anasazi or Mesa Verde for kids. Thank goodness for Amazon.com! I bought 3 kids books for less than a dollar each. I'll peruse them and make up a lapbook. This would be the first time I made one from scratch...usually I download them from the internet...

So, Rudi's car won't start. It's either the alternator or the battery. Not the starter because it click click clicks. Part of me thinks, and hopes, that it's the battery. We did just get a new battery about a month or two ago, but the idiots at Sears twice tried to sell us the wrong battery, and Rudi questioned the size of this battery before being convinced to take it. I mean, the door locks won't even work, or the radio. Even a dead alternator can run those, right?

Anyway, TOTAL panic, as we are $2000 short of the money we need for our move, and car repairs are going to put us even further behind. We so do not need this!

I am sewing up a storm trying to get skirts to sell, either on Etsy, or at local craft markets this summer. Maybe both, depending on how many I can get done. Once I'm finished, I'm going to post them to my mothering group for help on pricing them. I am a terrible terrible horrible no-good business woman and am just as likely to give them away free to strangers as I am to sell them, so I definitely need help with pricing LOL!

UPDATE: Took the battery in to Sears for them to check the charge. It was registering 1 volt! The battery was only 2 months old, so we got a new one for free. But what remains to be seen is what is draining the battery. We are still taking the car in on Wednesday to have it checked out. I don't think the alternator is totally bad, but perhaps a faulty connection? We'll see, and hopefully it won't break the bank!

This post is getting old, so I'm letting it go...

You know, the kind that has a world map and a map of each continent inside? The kind that rolls up? OMG, a mother in my mothering group got several of them from a school that was closing and asked if anyone wanted one. I jumped on it, but fully prepared for it to be well-used and out-of-date, but functional and fun. BUT, it's brand spanking new, 6.5 feet long, just gorgeous! The kids and Rudi will have a blast with it!

Here's a link for the map from the company that made it:
http://www.nystromnet.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.Product&CATEGORY_ID=1&CHILD_ID=448&PRODUCT_ID=551
It retails for $700 and I got it FREE!!

Both girls were so thrilled to go to swim lessons! Look how happy they were when we got there!





Then lessons started (Riley did REALLY well!):






Guess who withdrew from swimming lessons? Of course, she was in level 1 last year, so I put her in level 2 this year and after getting dunked several times, she had had it. She did last the whole lesson, though, so at least she tried!