This is the life: November 2010

I've slowed down with the blogging lately, but here's a story for you.
Last week, I decided it would be a good idea to tag along with John when he drove down to Mesa to do surgery there. He goes down every other week to get some extra surgery days in, since winters here are slower. This time, he needed to start at 7 in the morning, so the company got a hotel room for him to stay in the night before. Since he was already going and there was no school for veterans day, we jumped in the car with him so we could go shopping for snowboots (not too many stores here), and go surprise my mom and play with her for the day in the warmer weather.
Sometimes I have the best ideas.
This is how the plan went. We made it to the hotel, and took John to work early so we could have the car. We didn't want to wake my mom up early, so we got kind of nasty McDonald's breakfast and went back to the hotel. Kate's pancakes were "dross" and Jackson didn't want his "big tater tot" (hashbrowns), so they took my yogurt and fed each other instead. Since my food was gone, I got in the shower. While in my peaceful shower, I heard someone come in the bathroom . . . and someone else follow. Then I heard crying. I looked around the curtain to see vomit all over the floor, with my two girls standing there staring at it. Then I saw the green-filled toilet - which Olivia explained is the reason for her puking. She went potty, and the sight of what came out of one end made her throw up from the other end. It was all over her clothes, she was upset and feeling sick, Katelyn was standing there as a spectator but couldn't get out without stepping in the mess, and I wasn't exactly dressed to clean it up and rescue them. It was awesome.
I grabbed a towel for me and a couple for the floor. Olivia stripped down and went out and laid down in her shirt only. Five minutes later she was back on the potty. After cleaning up, I washed my hands, and saw two strings sticking up from my make-up bag by the sink. I went to pull them off - those dumb strings were cockroach antennae! I pulled up a huge cockroach from my bag by his "strings." I hate that tricky cockroach. My kids came to see what I screamed about, and we caught it in a cup and put in the toilet. He could swim. It got to the side faster than I got to the flusher, then it HELD ON to the side of the toilet bowl while the water flushed past it. I ran out to see what injury Jackson had just inflicted on Katelyn, while at the same moment Olivia had to run back to use the toilet AGAIN. She saw the roach under her right as she sat down. At hearing her scream, I went back into the bathroom. I flushed again, but the roach held on. Through three flushes!! While Olivia stood there trying to hold the runs in. She hates that cockroach, too. We finally got him down, Olivia got everything out, and Jackson finished off my breakfast.
Olivia seemed to be feeling better, so we checked out of the hotel. (I'm sure the maid loved the pile of towels we left for her in the bathroom).
Next stop, Nana's house again, to surprise her with our visit. Oh yeah, it's her day to work at the temple! Surprise for us - we can't even see her until lunch time.
But there's always boot shopping while we wait. We went to Target. Weird, John was right when he said Phoenix probably doesn't have many snowboots. But the Target worker told me, "The Target stores in like Minnesota probably carry them," so that helped.
No Nana, no boots.
I walked around Target a little longer, until I was done with the, "Can we buy this?" "No" conversations. Back to my mom's, and she was there! Hooray!
The best parts of the story are pretty much over . . .
The day improved with some yummy lunch at Nielsen's frozen custard (that can make up for a lot). Then we picked up John and played at the park for a while, and got dinner before we had to say bye and head home.
John doesn't believe me about the roach - but it's a true story. Watch out for brown strings.

I really liked my kids costumes last Halloween. This year, nothing too exciting. Jackson wore a hand-me-down dragon costume and a red punch mustache.
I was working on a ladybuy costume for Kate (after seeing how cute the one was my sister was making), but she wasn't too excited about it. My neighbor brought over a few, and Katelyn saw this blue dinosaur and was sold on it. So she was a di-saur, with a crooked head piece all night.
I did make one costume - Olivia wanted to be a bunny, but she wanted to look like a real one, "with ears that flop back, not just stand up straight." (You were probably wondering if that was a real rabbit sitting there. Nope, just my amazing fleece rendition). She was a little offended when people asked if she was the Easter bunny. "No, I'm a regular bunny." Get it straight.
She must have heard me talking about how much more fun homemade costumes are (even though I only like to make them if they're fast and easy), because she ran around the house in her long-eared hat singing, "I have a homemade costume!"