Las Vegas Mama

My parents are made of gold. And you know how precious gold is these days, right? So you can imagine how precious the two of them are, seeing as how they are well over a valuable few ounces in weight. They are in town this weekend and are allowing me to completely take advantage of them. One of the special joys in my life is when they come for a visit so that I can completely abrogate my parental responsibilities and make them raise my kids. At least for the weekend. And what am I doing while they feed, clean up, and entertains my kids? Nothing. Seriously, nothing. I might be sitting on the couch while my mom reads to them. One of my girls has to go potty. Instead of getting up and helping them I just call out to my mom from my cozy little spot on the couch, "Maaaa? Can you help herrrr?" And she totally does. Or maybe I want to go run errands. "Mom, I'll be right back I have to run some errands. It'll take me an hour, max." And I breeze out the doo...

Here is the next set of my chore chart drawings. Here is the first set . Today's set includes mostly mommy and daddy chores. Here is daddy taking out the trash - it's my fave one so far. He likes to relax in this outfit when he gets home from work. And here is a sheet for the rest of them. For the mom/dad chores they are more obvious and plus I know how to read, so the depictions for us are minimal and some have words. The chores are: Menu planning, sweep kitchen, do laundry, wash dishes, set the table (kid chore), and the upper right picture is "pick up after yourself when you get home from work" (dad chore). If you are making your own chore chart like me, I suggest printing them on a pretty color, laminating them and using velcro to stick them to your poster board chart. Since my kids cannot read yet, I am putting a picture of each family member at the top of the poster board, and the pertaining chores go under the picture of each child or family member...

I have been looking online for some free clip art depicting girls doing chores so that I could make my own chore chart. Part of starting the homeschooling next week also involves other really ambitious things like starting the girls on a set of specific chores and running our days on a schedule (ha!). But I could not find any clip art that I liked, so I decided just to draw my own stuff and hope for the best. And because I love you all I am going to post it on here so you can download it for free. I am not done yet, I still have other chores to draw, like setting the table and things like that. If I get favorable comments (or any comments at all for that matter, since I think mostly everyone has given up on me by now because of my lack of posting) then I will also post the rest when I am done. These are all princess themed because I have 2 girls and one on the way, so why even pretend to be neutral! Here is a princess for the task of making your bed: And here she is picking up ...

Do you hear that sputtering sound? That is the sound of my engine running out of energy and fizzling out. I am not talking about my car. I am talking about my body. And how it is not yet 10am and I am already done. Last night I woke up at 5am to use the bathroom for the 4th time, and when I got back to bed I simply could not fall back asleep. My brain got to thinking (stupid brain, of all the nerve!) about the things I have to get done this week. For those of you who only know me for pretends on this blog and not for reals, I should tell you that I am going to be homeschooling Ivy starting on August 29th. So I have been busily putting together all my supplies and writing a basic Spanish and a basic Music curriculum to supplement the Catholic Heritage curriculum I already bought. I am sure there must be something out there for young kids in those topics, but since she already understands Spanish and is really flighty about Music, I figured I would just start her off where she needs ...

I received an invitation to review Chuck E. Cheese's new pizza... they completely revamped it for the first time in like 30 years. When was the last time you went to Chuck E. Cheese? Before this year, the last time I had been to one was when I was a kid. And that was a long, long time ago. What do you remember of this place when you were a kid? I remember a dark, dirty interior with creepy animatronic animals(?) or puppets whose eyes went CLICK CLICK when they blinked loudly during their song performances. Even as a kid I was not much of a fan of the place. So when I had kids, I stayed away. Finally, a friend invited me to a play date there and I decided to just go for it since it had literally been decades since I had been to one. I was so pleasantly surprised to find that they were bright, clean, and the animatronics had been replaced with movie screens and only one animatronic Chuck, who didn't seem to click quite as loudly as he used to. The games and rides were lots ...

I thought you would all appreciate knowing that the Carousel at the District in Green Valley Ranch is FREE for the rest of the summer (probably until Labor Day)! It used to be $2 per ride. Also, on movie nights there is free popcorn. Woot!