And the Winner is...

Does your mouse have a little scrolling wheel on it between the left and right click buttons? Yes? Well, then hold down the control button on your keyboard and spin that little wheel on your mouse.
Now - is your screen as screwed up as mine? Good. Welcome to my world. I keep getting stuck in font size purgatory. I am constantly -accidentally- doing that and then I can't remember exactly how the screen was before I did it. Perhaps I should locate my glasses...

On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being "last year when my kids made me cry because they were mean to me on the day that I am to be honored, revered and served" and a 10 being the ultimate suprise Disco theme party with 500 of my closest friends and suprise guest Jack Bauer, my birthday was about a "5".

The kids were actually pretty decent to me [that would be because my husband bought them a new movie the night before and saif if they were nice to me all day, they could watch it at the end of the day] I say "Hey, I care not about the motivation or even your sincerity - just me nice to me on my birthday."

Hubby actually went to a local restaurant before I was awake and purchased a belgian waffle with strawberries and brought it to me in bed. Quite thoughtful.

We dropped the kids off at AWANAS - one of which claimed stomach ache and another who suddenly decided to subscribe to separation anxiety. Me thinks not. Unless you are gushing blood - I'm going to go take my 90 minute break "ok-bye-bye-thanks-see-ya-later". I peeled everyone off my body and ran like the wind.

Hubby and I grabbed Thai food takeout and a 5,000 ounce coke Slurpee and headed over to a friend's house. You see - the house across the street from her is going to be for rent soon. Which one?? Why, the one that is quite large with all new everything. It has been gutted - appliances, windows, doors, carpets, furnace, kitchen cupboards/countertops, toilet, showers...everything. And they are toying with the idea of renting it to us for an affordable amount. We went to take the flashlight tour (as the electric isn't hooked up yet). Stay tuned. I may be packing soon. *shudder*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And the winner is...ME!
And the winner is...ME AGAIN!!
I've got my lucky rabbit's foot and I'm back on a roll! Last month (right before we left on vacation) I got a call letting me know I was the grand prize winner of this contest I had entered. I had entered a fairly creative entry and it totally got their attention. They said "out of the almost 600 hundred entries we got - yours was very creative andd had a lot of energy to it". What did I win, you ask...? Why $1,000 in giftcards!! CHA-CHING!!!

I got to choose between several stores and ended up choosing $800 at Target and $200 at Best Buy. Which will come in handy for furnishing a new home with a whole new theme don't you think? They arrived 2 days ago and we've already done a little shopping. We bought a coffee table that I had my eye on [since we haven't owned one in about 8 years since the nasty "goose egg incident" involving a coffe table corner and child #1's head] and our 5 disc CD changer died so Hubby wanted to replace that. Wow - almost $250 later...

We also bought about $150 in "miscellaneous" items: 2 DVD's, new sheets for the girls beds, a rockin' cute pair of black knee-high boots for Chia and 6 pairs of slippers. Um, yes - that would be $51 in slippers. Slippers. For the family of 6. My big whoop-dee-doo-first-thing-I'm-buying-for-myself-when-I-get-that-giftcard is a pair of slippers! The entire family is now outfitted with with sparkly new slippers. *Are you now asking yourself: "Is my life SO boring that I have resorted to reading about a complete stranger's trip to Target to purchase slippers??" I'm right there with you - moving on...*

Then...earlier this week Hubby was the 5th caller on a local radio station and won 4 tickets to "Disney On Ice - The Incredibles at Disneyland". They send us these free passes to exchange at the box office and when Hubby went to get the tickets exchanged yesterday (and buy 2 additional ones) they happened to have seats in the 5th row left. RIGHT ON!! (I took my little sister to Disney on Ice about 10 years ago and we had the cheapest seats available and we could hardly see anything.) So - I'm quite looking forward to that. We had to pay $24/seat for the extra 2 tickets (which I never would have bought otherwise) but I keep telling myself that $48 for a family of 6 to go to something like that and get 5th row seats is actually a great deal. It's not much more than it would cost to take them all to a movie theater these days!

Ok - and because I'm obsessive compulsive: I have come up with new themes for the kids' rooms. Out with the old - in with the new!! The girls are going to have a light pink and chocolate brown room with a cowgirl feel. Not country calico cowgirl - but funky hip "this ain't your momma's cowgirl" kind of feel. The boys will have a camouflage theme. I have tons of ideas and am QUITE excited to pour my life into the creative process of creating all new rooms. Why? Because I have nothing but time people...nothing but time...

Well, Hubby is at an X-BOX gaming night, the kids are all sleeping and since we are setting our clocks back tonight and it's REALLY only 8:27pm - I'm going to go see what great things I can accomplish around my house while living out my favorite little 13-letter word: uninterrupted!!!!!

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME.."

Dach got to share my cake with me since he got jipped on his birthday cake. Earlier today he was claiming he was still "3" and that he hadn't had a birthday because he *insert wail* "...DIDN'T GET ANY BIRF-DAY CAKE AND BLOW DA CANDLES!!!"

And since I'm good natured - I shared mine. Which those of you who know me - know what a sacrifice it is for me to share my beloved and honored day.

Do you love my fabulous green velvet jacket?! Me too!! "To: Me - From: Me"

Well, it's off to drop the kids at AWANAS and have 95 minutes of free time. Thai food is the plan I think...

Disneyland Day 3 - with pics...

Ok, I'm am so tired that I think I actually just dozed off for a second in the computer chair! I'm going to make this quick. I'll have to come back and tell of of the interesting stories about Disneyland - for now here are some pictures...

Hubby (on the right) and our friend Kevin (Claire's Hubby) in the Astro Blasters ride:

Snow White with Maisie. She was SUCH a good character, she spent several minutes talking with each child asking them about their likes etc... So cute!

The ONE princess Maisie had wanted to meet was Belle, so on Thurday we waited in a line for almost an hour to meet the princesses and right when it was Maisie's turn - they switched out princesses and Belle left! So, the next day we waited in line -ANOTHER 45 minutes- to see if we could meet her and the SAME thing happened. We must have kept timing it just right, because every time Maisie got to the front of the line - it was time to switch princesses! She was always just a few feet from meeting Belle. On Friday we went down to this stage area where they were teaching all the little girls how to dance when all of the sudden 3 princesses came on stage to dance. One of them was Belle!! At the end, she came down and danced around a Maypole right next to Maisie! She was beaming:

Maisie insisted on having her face painted and was even willing to fork over $14 of her own money to do it. (Knock yourself out girl - as long as I don't have to pay for it!)

At 12:30am as we were leaving the park. Can you say T.I.R.E.D???

Dach was faithful to uphold our tradition - he wailed and sobbed all of the way out of the park that night...

We didn't get home till 2am that night by the time we walked 482 miles to the Simba parking lot *hint - DON'T park there. Drive around tho the other side and get Mickey or Goofy parking. THEY have a tram - Simba has the "walk-on-the-two-legs-that-God-gave-you" parking lot!

Many stories to tell but I just felt myself "nod off" again...

Disneyland Day 2 with pics...

Thursday was Dach's 4th birthday. We had a little party for him on Wed night since we were going to be at Disneyland all day on Thursday. Here is a picture of his party:

(Notice how he's NOT in the picture?)

Here is a picture of Dach during his party:

What can you do when a kid is that tired? Is this kid EV-ER going to get the traditional "Natalie Johnson theme party"?!?! Poor kid - last year he had a "family" party with a frosted-the-cake-while-it-was-still-warm-so-the-icing-slid-off cake. *sigh*

He slept 13 hours which was good because that was almost how many hours we spent at Disneyland the next day. Claire and her kids didn't go with us this day so it was just our own little family. It was somewhat less chaotic having just the 4 kids instead of 7 to keep track of.

After 2 hours in L.A. traffic - we finally arrived at the happiest place on earth:

Here is Maisie with the REAL Cinderella:

Mickey and the gang:

We spent part of the afternoon at California Adventure which *looks both ways and whispers* I think I actually like it better than Disneyland! That was where we met Sully:

And Mr & Mrs Incredible:

We saw the Disneyland Parade that night which was INCREDIBLE!! And of course we completed our day with none other than........................................*drumroll please*..........................................................................

That's right, you guessed it - A Screaming Child:

Disneyland Day 1 with pics...

Happy Birthday Hubby! Hubby's birthday was yesterday (the 10th) and we spent it at Disneyland! The goal was to leave the house at 8am to arrive before the park opened at 10am. The reality was it takes a loooooooooooooooong time to get 10 people (7 of which are children) ready and get 10 lunches prepared, and get backpacks packed. We left the house at 9:55am. <-- ACK!!! We are missing precious Disneyland fun!!!

By the time we went on at least 4 freeways, merged the wrong direction on a freeway split and had to turn around, parked, walked, took the tram, went through bag inspection, went through the admission line, rented a stroller, got "It's my Birthday" button at Town Hall, went potty, and bought mouse ears and autograph books it was 1:10pm!

Here is Maisie on Main Street:

We met Goofy:

Got some family photos. Thanks for smiling Dach, I appreciate that!

Good grief what craziness with 7 kids in tow!! I was picturing our children holding our hands and skipping through Disneyland in slow motion, stopping to frolick with Mickey as we all beamed with happiness!

Um, stop the fairy tale and cut straight to reality:

They were running everywhere and we were constantly in a PANIC as it seemed we were most certainly going to lose one of them. They fought over who got to ride in the stroller, they were hungry, had to go potty, and went through a constant wave of "too-hot-too-cold-too-tired-too-thirsty-itis"!!

The last ride we were going to go on was the Peter Pan one. After waiting in line for 15-20 minutes, we got on it 4 minutes before the park closed. Before we could even turn the first corner from loading onto it - it BROKE DOWN! It was just Me, Dach and Zane - everyone else was in line behind and hadn't made it on yet. We were suspended about 4 feet off the ground overlooking Wendy's bedroom and sat there for 10-15 minutes while they worked to fix it. The finally turned on all the lights and got it going enough for us to get through it and unload. Here we are stuck:

All in all we had a great time but it was not QUITE like the commercial depicted. By the end - they were OUT OF THEIR MINDS!!!!! Dach's legs and feet hurt and he actually started walking on his knees down Main Street while sobbing. He screamed (as in "shrill-freak-out" screamed) when we had to return the stroller. He was clutching it screaming, "BUT I NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

We made one FINAL stop in Downtown Disney before getting back on the tram to the parking lot: postcards. Here is a picture of Dach in the store (the time was probably around 10:15pm at this point):

Photos from Hollywood...

Heading for Disneyland in 8 hours but wanted to share some pics...

Here is Maisie & Dach having a fight (complete with shrill screaming) over the window seat. This was about halfway into the flight. I had gone to bed at 3:30am and was running on 2 1/2 hours of sleep so my patience filters were malfunctioning.

In front of a great hotdog restaurant that is actually an old train car. It's called Carney's:

Dach on the "Walk of Stars" on skanky row Hollywood Boulevard:

Our family photo with the HOLLYWOOD sign smog in the background:

Apparently, on Hollywood Blvd. anyone can put on a costume and get tips when people want their picture with them. Anyone. AN-EE-ONE!!! Even "Menopausal Cinderella":

Need a closer look? I thought you might:

All I can say is "Wow!" She was VERY nice but I couldn't stop staring at her. It was like some SNL skit: "Welcome to Hollywood! The city of dashed hopes and unfulfilled expectations... Those starring roles are hard to come by, but come on down to Hollywood Blvd!"

That's all for now - I'm sure I'll take a hundred photos tomorrow!

Disneyland Here We Come (in 5 hrs)...

We are leaving for the airport in 5 hours.

I am still packing.

Here is a picture of Dach 8 hours ago:

He is ready.

Of course all he had packed in that suitcase were 14 tee shirts and a pair of goggles.

I lost my flight confirmation paperwork and when I tried to look it up on the airlines website under my account - they said I had no upcoming flights scheduled. After 3 heart attacks and a phone call to the airline - they located my info. We ARE booked to fly tomorrow today!

Ok, well - Disneyland is beckoning and I haven't even started packing the bathroom bag yet...