Friday, September 12, 2008

Bad-Ass Mothers

5 kids under 5 (1 of which is newly mobile).

3 bad-ass mothers.

3 surfboards.

endless amounts of beach crap to entertain the 5 kids under 5, plus lunch.

One spectacularly beautiful day, no wind, perfect temp and clear water.

All three of us actually got in the water and caught some waves. MIRACLE. It was AWESOME. We are bad-ass mothers!

And, somehow, I scored and got to be the repeat surf mom (no one wants to go by herself). I didn't have to watch all 5 kids by my self...I am in debt for the next time!

There was a little bit of a creep factor...It was apparently National Geographic Day and we didn't get the memo in advance. We saw dolphins surfing our same waves, a friendly little otter, a couple of seals, copius amounts of sea birds including one low-flying pelican and lots and lots of sand dollars. We tried not to think about any other "animals" that could be out there with us and pondered the question, "Do otters bite?"

Maybe EMK will post some pics, hopefully, not of me in my wetsuit though!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Kitty and Dashy

I am just guessing on the spelling of Dashy (Dashie, Dashee), SO came up with it and it is, so far, the only animal or toy that has a name other than what it is i.e. Kitty, Horsey, Lambie, etc...

But the reason for this post is because Kitty, Horsey and Dashy (Scotty Dog) have disappeared. Yes, I have looked in the bed, in the dressers, in her brother's room, in my room, in the closets, behind the towels, in the bins of clothes that the kids do not fit into...I HAVE LOOKED EVERY WHERE. Now, since I know how special these particular little animal friends are, I do not let her take them outside to play with to ensure that a certain dog, who also loves a good stuffed animal, albeit for different reasons, does not get a hold of them. And we have not seen any evidence to suggest that this is where they met their demise. I also don't let her take them to school because I never remember to bring the things home that we take. They are not in my car or at either Grandparents house. I do not know where they could possibly be.

I have retraced our steps to the couple of days before the disappearance (I used to watch CSI so feel as if I am an expert in crime solving). Unfortunately, the day they went missing was 2 days before my husband and I left for our anniversary weekend. I had, of course, spent this time COMPLETELY REARRANGING MY HOUSE. I cleaned out the kids closets and put all of the too big and too small clothes into storage bins. I moved all of my bedroom furniture out of our room and into my son's room, while switching one dresser from SO's room to VO's room and another from VO's room to SO's room. I moved "new to me" bedroom furniture into my room. So needless to say, this opened up the possible places for the missing trio to be! But I have looked multiple times in the places I would think them to be and I still cannot find them. I think I even feel a little responsible for the fact that they are missing as I did leave a whole lot of additional places for them to be put and forgotton about over the course of about a week. Does that make me an accessory? And yes, I have asked her where she put them and she does not remember.


I thought I would post them here instead of on the back of a milk carton...







Oh, did I mention that these were Ty Beanie Babies? And I am not a collector, these are toys, given to my daughter, so yeah, I cut the tags off. She asks me to, she is not of a fan of the tags or "pokeys" as she refers to them. Did I write down the official name of the animal? Are you kidding? Of course not! However, that is where I made my mistake. If I could take a moment and make a small suggestion to the Beanie Baby creators and webmaster...would you mind putting in a search function so that a mom, like myself, could type in "Horse" and then just have all the horses come up to peruse? I really do not think that is too much to ask and could even help out the most avid collector who may not know the name of the creature they are looking for.

But as for now, they do not have a search function. So you can search ALL, CURRENT or RETIRED. Personally, I have no f-ing clue as to what these could be, but knowing my luck, I am guessing retired...but I choose to search through all of them, just to be sure. OVER 1300 OPTIONS TO SCROLL THROUGH. Yes, that is right, over 1300 stupid animals stuffed with beans that I perused through. I had to find the name of the animals in question before I could even begin to search for them on any other purchasing site. I did have success on 2 out 3 of the missing creatures and hopefully Kitty (a Siamese cat named Orient) and Dashy (a Scotty dog actually named Dundee) will be arriving at my house via some lovely E-Bay sellers by the end of the week...Thank goodness these are not some crazy special edition collector's items, otherwise I am sure the $2-$3 price tag each would have most likely been a little (or a lot) higher.

And I think I have figured out that Horsey is not a Beanie Baby as he was not on any of the lists. I am debating whether or not to call the hotel in Texas where I know my Mother-in-Law purchased the horse during one of their vacations a year or two ago...but I have not decided yet...I think I will see how we react to getting Kitty and Dashy back and see if we even have a mention of Horsey. But I have a feeling that I am going to be making a long distance phone call and subsequent credit card purchase from a Texas resort inthe near future. Do you think that will be enough of resititution for my part in the disappearance?

Also, anyone want to make a bet on how long after the new Kitty and Dashy arrive that we locate the missing threesome???