Are You Kidding Me?!

Where to begin on this lovely little tale of my gazebo. The gazebo that was a nightmare to put together. The first day of assembly was a short day for school and so I recruited my kids and the neighbor to help hold the columns while I put the base of the roof on. This took a couple of hours and some complaining about "kids should be able to play" but we endured and they were paid in drinks from Sonic (happy hour pricing of course!) This structure sat like that for a couple of days because I now needed the help of adults to get the skeleton of the roof hoisted up on the base and secured. It now set like that until the day before Emma's birthday when I decided to tackle the rest of the thousand pieces. For 1 person it was a complete nightmare and I ended up having to take most of it back apart because I couldn't get the cap pieces on the bottom edge of the roof screwed in place without help and the tiles kept getting blown out by the wind. So Nate and I spent Saturday morning before the party cursing the stupid structure and finally getting it to the last stage of the support brackets that went on the inside. Has anyone ever put together Ikea furniture? No words just pictures. I happen to really like that style of instructions except for when the pictures are so black and horrible that you can't even see what is going on in the picture. This is what we had for instructions. No words only crappy blurred, blacked out pictures to surmise what might be going on in this picture. I had to keep saying to myself, "if I were piece V1 where would I go?" Seriously!!!!! So It came time to put the supports on and low and behold I was missing nut bolts that needed to be inserted into the skeletal structure of the roof before assembly. Where was this on the picture??????? So we decided to bail on the project because it looked like it was fully assembled until we could figure out what we were going to do about having no support brackets. We didn't do a very important thing when you live in New Mexico where we have micro burst of wind that like to roll through town whenever they feel like it.....secure it to the ground!!!! So 2 days after the party on my way home from picking Jordyn up from school I found this in the backyard.......................

I just stood looking out the sliding glass window and said to the universe, "Are you kidding me?" After pondering for a millisecond how such a heavy structure was going to be righted again I realized there was no point because one of the legs was bent. Also a cap piece that was painstakingly secured into position was somehow no longer screwed into place which you can see by the picture below. My next concern was for the extremely expensive pool cover my useless metal gazebo was now resting on top of. When the other kids got home I had them ever so carefully help me move the dumb thing up onto the patio without ripping the cover.

Where this story is funny to me is that I decided that I was being punished for flipping the neighbor the bird every time I drove by his house that day. Why was I flipping off the neighbor you ask? Because he is a Jhole, that's why! He is the former business partner of the builder whom we are now suing and we needed to have a cement truck drive through the back of his empty lot to get to the vacant house's lot next to us so we could build a fence and he said no.....because he's a jerk! I guess I still have some hostility towards the guy. :) Luckily our neighbor on the other side that we actually share a wall with told us we could drive through as much as we wanted so we are having the wall built as a type right now. The other thing that is funny is that we have been interviewing landscapers and one of them that I thought I was going to like ended up annoying me. He was at our house to give us a presentation the day the gazebo was upside down on the patio. After 5 min listening to his lack of a presentation I was done with this clown but stuck it out in case Nate's cheap nature was going to win out in the end. So when he was done he noticed that the gazebo was upside down and offered to help move it. Knife to the heart. His divine justice was that he ended up putting it right on top of all the dog poo in the yard! Nice. Wow this story is getting really long........ Anyway I managed to get the whole thing taken apart the next day in a little over an hour (funny since it took 4 days to put together) while stopping to pick up dog poo along the way so I could get to the next piece to be removed. I got it all loaded into Nate's truck when he got home from work (he helped with that part) and sent him off to Costco to beg for them to give us our money back. Sing praises and hallelujah they took pity on us and gave us our money back after doing some laughing! So............ we had a gazebo for 2 days.

My Day

Ok, don't think bad of me for what I'm about to say, but I recently discovered that I'm not a big fan of Mother's Day. It feels like a bunch of hype with everyone running out on Saturday night to get Mom flowers and gifts to say they love her and treat her nice on 1 day of the year. To be fair, I kinda feel this way about all Holidays, but since this is the Holiday right now we'll stick with this one. My Mother's day perfect gift would be that my kids would actually pitch in and help around the house without being threatened with their lives on every day of the year. That they would have respect for their things and for me. That they would take a break from trying to kill each other every once in a while. That the toilets would magically clean themselves and all the socks would find their mates and dinner time wasn't a battle of wills, that dog poo would disinegrate the moment it hit the ground, that everything would stop breakinga and that Nate wouldn't have to work so much. If I could a few more brain cells implanted in my head that would be awesome as well. But, these are not the things we get on Mother's day....... Instead we get a day much like any other with a couple of gifts that are ment to make up for the rest of the year. :) Here though is what makes the day worth it.......when Ethan said to me "Mommy, you look really pretty today. You're the pretties Mommy and if I didn't have you for a Mommy I wouldn't have a pretty Mommy." Then later in the day when Nate and I were laying on the floor he said, "aw you guys are so cute. Together you're cute, not together, you're not cute." Jordyn has been really clingy lately and when I ask her what is going on she just looks at me with those puppy dog eyes and says, "I just love you so much." Or at night when I tuck her in with a major routine of hugs and kisses and handshakes we squeeze each other as tight as we can and she always says "never let go."

So what gifts did I get this year? The day started out with the traditional breakfast in bed which I do always love and then I got my gifts. The gifts for me is more about seeing the excitement in their eyes at giving me the gift than the actual gift itself. Emma made me a flower pen with a poem she made up herself. Jared made me some perfume from flowers in his science club. Ethan made me a flower pot with a flower in it and Jordyn made me a hot plate with her hand traced in it that was "cooked 2 times." They also went to the store Saturday night and got me the items that I had picked out for them...... a pillow for the bathtub, a head scratcher thing and they also got me a new towel rack for the kitchen. Later in the day Emma and I decided we needed some chocoate covered strawberries so we made some and the rest of the kids covered themselves in the chocolate as their way of helping. Then I was on the computer for awhile blogging about Emma's birthday and Nate got tired of waiting for his turn on the computer so he fell asleep on the floor. I joined him on the floor and the kids laughed when they walked by and saw us laying on the floor. They wondered if we were dead and then decided to dog pile on us. Then after laying there for so long concrete set in and we lost motivation to get up. Nate took care of dinner and while the little one's were trying to help Jordyn ended up getting bonked on the head so Ethan was holding an ice pack on it for her. She kept saying, "it's alright Ethan, it was an accident." He apparently was the cause of her head getting bonked but she was comforting him. Then to cap off the day Ethan decided that the hole he made in the net of the trampoline just a couple of days prior that I painstakingly stitched back together was something to be tested out again so he proceeded to throw himself into the net head first repeteadly until he ripped a much bigger hole in it this time. Insert lecture on respect for things and the money it takes to buy and replace things.

What it all boils down to is that these are the days that fill our lives and make up a family. We learn and grow, laugh and cry and most importantly love and through it all, no matter what, we "never let go!"

Emma's 12th Birthday

My little girl is growing up so fast. I'm so excited for her future and also so wishing I could make time stand still for just a little longer. This is also the first year she has been unable to give me a list of what she wants for her Birthday. Is there really nothing she wants? I guess that can mean one of 2 things, either she is spoiled or she really isn't into many things. We'll figure something out I'm sure. Everywhere I go people are always telling me what a sweet girl I have and how much they love her and want to take her home with them. Every teacher she has ever had sings her praises and wishes that they could keep her again for the next school year. My Emma is a very sweet natured girl who loves to help others out, is very smart and good at most subjects in school, she's a hard worker, she takes things to heart, she's very trustworthy and is an awesome big sis to her little shadow, Jordy. She is a true joy and pleasure to have in our family and I am very proud of her!

To celebrate her Birthday this year she decided on having a swim party. This turned out to be a bit of a stressful situation since the pool heater was broken, and still is. There was much drama and suspense trying to get the pool fixed before the party and it just didn't happen. It almost got fixed but of course when the repair man finally made it out to our house he fixed the problem and discovered yet another problem which required a part he of course didn't have!!! Luckily it has been really warm the last few days so the pool naturally heated up to 80 degrees all by itself. the only down side was there was no hot tub. So in the end all was well and good with the pool for the party. Too bad the grass in the backyard looks like crap! :) We had her party early to avoid people being out of town, but still ended up with a bunch of friends out of town and she was worried no one was going to show up, but she ended up with 6 really awesome girls at her party and they all had a great time. I got a cd with luau music on it and will have stuck in my head for the next several days, "hot, hot, hot" and "lime in the coconut." I just sat out on the couch in the "luau hut" and read my book during the party...... finally a party that was totally relaxing!