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Monday, February 21, 2011

lucky number 7


Today is our anniversary and I have probably spent maybe three hours with Jason today, thirty minutes of those while we were both actually awake. Our lives are just in a crazy place right now and we are lucky when are paths spin in the same direction for a few minutes the first few days of each week. I am also not a sentimental person and I don't get bent out of shape if I can't celebrate the actual event on the actual day. I'm just thankful that my husband loves me and that he tells me that every day. Most times several times a day.

This morning my friend and I were waiting for the kids to come to school. We usually stand outside the door and greet each one of them. Two of the boys arrived together, and trailing them were their dads and one of the little boy's moms. One of those dads was in full uniform and he wore a look on his face that I've seen before. His parents hugged that little boy, and his mother's voice wavered but did not crack. My friend and I were the ones trying not to cry as this little boys family was so brave.

Spending my anniversary with husband this year, in the same time zone on the same continent is just an extra blessing that I've learned along the way to not complain about and be thankful for.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13

Thursday, February 17, 2011

the letterman list of retail

My friends and I always said that we would write a book about the retail lovelies that we encountered on a daily basis in the store. Some of our favorite stories that you may not believe to be true unless you actually lived them, because if you don't work in customer service, it's hard to believe that people are actually that special. For those of you that have never actually experienced the joy of serving the public in this capacity I'll give the letterman list of retail.

10. The lady who wanted to return a pair of shoes that were eleven months old because they were "too squeaky". Never mind the fact that these shoes looked as if the child had used them to train for a marathon in mud puddles and oh by the way, came into the store wearing them. I returned them. Sweaty feet and all.

9. The lady that wanted to return two pairs of pajamas at full price. Only she had one top and one bottom from each set.

8. Skeletor..theif extradoinare with her tinfoil bags. She makes the list because she's the first person to ever call me a honky and a cracker all in one sentance. Impressive.

7. Cleaning up bloody and peed in underwear left in the dressing room. Probably TMI and you would think given my weak stomach this would be closer to #1 but sadly, it is not.

6. The man that wanted a specific pair of boots located on Christmas Eve, after said boots were located by some miracle of God himself at a store 15 minutes away Mr. Crazy wanted FedEx to pick them up and deliver them on Christmas Day. Yell at me all you want buddy, I don't work for FedEx.

5. The teenagers lovebirds that took turns masturbating in the rounders.

4. The original PITA that came in almost every Sunday night at 5:45pm with her twin daughters to have a forty-five minute fashion show and never bought a single thing.

3. The lady that ran under the gate as I was closing it on Christmas Eve screaming that "AT&T said she had 1 minute left to shop!" and wielding a cell phone at me like a sword. Do you think she left the store in one minute?

2. The crazy lady that screamed at me and banged her fist on my counter of the registers calculations of discount coupons, meanwhile her child is breaking the window apart and her other child is robbing me blind. She ends up throwing two bags of clothes across the counter at me and has to re-enter the store four times to return stolen items from the clepto.

1. The lady that insisted we were having a huge sale. We were not. She wanted the coupon and the discount code we were offering to our customers. I didn't have a code. There was no sale. She left, she would be back with the information. She returns and show's me the calendar in our catalogue. The huge sale she's interested in...Daylight Savings Time


My tolerance for nonsense is pretty high. Extremely high in some cases. That being said I am also a stickler for good customer service. If you can't even make an effort to provide it, I would prefer you not even waste my time and get me to someone that can help me. Jason has been waiting on his cellphone to be delivered since Monday. It was supposed to arrive on Tuesday but we found out it was shipped to the wrong address. When I called the "customer service representative" she suggested I go take it off of the porch of the house it had been delivered to. Seriously. I mean, a customer service representative advising stealing. Does it get any better? I kindly explained that it was about a 35-40 minute drive in rush hour traffic with 4 children and I didn't think stealing a phone off of someone's porch and getting arrested was the correct approach and was there another option? Her response: Just be quiet and let me think.. Okay this is going downhill fast and she must really, really be having a bad day. I ask to speak to her supervisor. No.
Excuse me? Are you going to help me or not? Her response "Helping you would require that I leave my desk, and I'm not going to leave my desk right now." Enough is enough is enough. I can say that in all of my years of retail and customer service I would never have spoken like that to anyone. If I would have I would have been looking for another job. And people say they can't find good help?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

and then there were none

Almost two weeks ago Will developed a horrible case of strep throat. Jason took him to urgent care on a Saturday morning and they put him on antibiotics. On Monday he was still running a pretty high fever so back to the doctor they went. At that time, our pediatrician decided to treat Drew as well because of the close quarters and the fever he had been running.
Drew as you may all know is a thumb-sucking extradodaire and we washed his hands like crazy. We also covered him up in germex if we couldn't get to him with actual soap and water. Everything from under the sun is going around here right now:strep, stomach bug, flu, chicken pox, a fever virus that last 7-10 days, you name it I don't want it. Anyways, we are sanitizing that kids hands like crazy. About the same time Drew stops sleeping at night. He starts waking up every single night between 12 and 2 am screaming at the top of his lungs. If we get him and bring him to bed with us there is a fifty percent chance he will go back to sleep. If we leave him up there hoping he will go back to sleep on his own he just screams. Jason and I are baffled. This is the same kid who has slept completely through the night since he was about 8 weeks old. What in the world is going on?? It has to be a lot worse than teeth. He also stops napping and just screams for the entire two hours. Regardless of what we do, he just yells and screams. We have tried everything and the screaming continues. After 8 days of not napping he is pretty grumpy and falling asleep at school during lunch. Jason and I almost feel like we have a newborn.
We're eating breakfast on Monday morning and look over at Drew. Usually when he is finished eating, he sits sucking his thumb and twirling his hair. It really is the cutest thing ever. There he sits with his hand on his chin just sitting there waiting. Jason tells me to look at Drew. He's not sucking his thumb and he hasn't been for days. He's just sitting there with his hand on his chin in his highchair. Waiting patiently like he's been doing it every day for the past 19 months. What?! This is a baby that was literally born sucking his thumb. And he quit? Overnight? We are baffled and a few days later Jason applies some germex and accidentally gets some in his mouth. Drew quit sucking his thumb because germex tastes absolutely horrible.
On Tuesday night Drew wakes up screaming again around 1. We are used to and usually wait him out a little bit hoping he will fall back asleep. The kid doesn't nap and we are exhausted. The screams get louder and all of a sudden we hear a huge crash. Drew has thrown himself over the side of the crib, opened the door and is coming down the stairs. Ugh. Let me tell you this night is getting better. Jason and I discussed what are best option was and we decided to turn our crib into a toddler bed. No more baby beds at our house. Drew went right up tonight, got in his big boy bed and even put all his stuffed animals inside his bed. A huge difference from last night and the nights before when he gets mad and throws them out. I kissed him goodnight and shut the door. He did come crying at the door for a few minutes and then he went and got back in the bed. Thank goodness naptimes are the most brutal parts of the retraining him to sleep again.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Ten on Tuesday

1. If you thought you were going to get through a weekly post without reading about someone else being sick again this week you were wrong.

2. Isabella won a prize trip to the ER on Sunday night with a fever of 104.6..can you feel my excitement about another sickness through this post? I'm feeling the love.

3. We have now taken a quarantined household approach. Isabella is upstairs. Amelia is sleeping in the room with Will. No one is allowed to go by Isabella until she is fever free for 24 hours and I am draining every last drop out of the antibiotic bottles. I also feel somewhat like the medical professionals at the hospitals, washing their hands on the way in and out of the rooms.

4. Would you believe that in between all the sickness and the trip to the ER, Jason also lost his Blackberry? Well he did and then it got ran over into one hundred pieces. Who's laughing now? Probably everyone but a) the person who's phone got ran over b)the person who didn't realize they cancelled the insurance.

5. I would say it's now considered a family war against the Blackberry handheld device. I've never been so excited to see the release of the IPhone4 in my life.

6. Will received a toy firetruck from Mrs Joan yesterday. His sirens and his firemen have been working ever since. If he quiets down enough to show you the truck, he'll slam it on by to tell you it's Mr Rowe driving..

7. Will is serious about two sounds, horses and fire sirens. No one, and I mean no one makes a better fire siren than, Will.

8. I have worked and worked with Drew on located his body parts for the past several weeks. We've finally got ear, nose, mouth and eyes down.

9. Drew has decided that he is against napping recently. He is also against sleeping through the night. He cries and cries and cries. Awesome.

10. We made our fourth attempt at heartshaped cookies last week. I finally found the perfect size cookie cutter here in town. I'm getting much faster at icing them and iced approximately 35 cookies in an hour. Not bad :)

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

ten on tuesday

1. Let's have a little state pride in our weather..this is getting saaaad. If we can make it through the rest of the winter with out the dreaded white stuff falling I'll give you a War Eagle and a Roll Tide. But only one.

2. Unless you're a bear hibernating in the woods, what exactly is the point of winter anyway? We drive by the pool every day on the way to school. Amelia and Will say every single day 1)Hi pool. 2)Is our pool open today.

3. Drew went to see the pulmonologist and was officially classified as a level four asthmatic. One step away from being the worst. We're on a new plan and our goal is to have him not coughing and congested every single day like he is now. Right now he sounds like he needs to cut down pack of Marlbolo Reds.

4. Our anger reveals more about us than it does about others. I read this on Patsy Clairmont's page and I've been pondering it greatly. As a mother I try very, very hard to choose my words carefully each time before speaking. A far cry from my late teens and early 20s when I would have just open my mouth..

5. So what sounds more appealing on your weekend that strep throat and an ear infection? Anything.

6. Amelia lost her earring somewhere, somehow yesterday. I check those things regularly and noticed after her bath last night. Do you think I have one single stud earring in the house that's not an actual diamond? No mam. Super Sammy to the rescue again. I'm thankful for the supersitter living a block away.

7. I overheard this last night "Wheel (other people pronounce this name Will) if you don't bring my baby down here, I'm fixin' to come up there. Do y'all hear me?"

8. That pretty much covers all questions regarding the children's accents. Yes, they have them.

9. Amelia told her teacher at school today that I quit cooking dinner two weeks ago. Jason does do most of the cooking right now and you can't get anything past that girl.

10. We checked Will's tonsils yesterday to see if there was any improvement in the swelling. These things were massive and he was still running a fever after three days on the antibiotic. Anyways, Jason feeling around on his throat and Will's response "Daddy, it's not nice to touch your friends. You have to keep your hands to yourself."

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Ten on Tuesday

1. I celebrated my 32nd birthday on Sunday with some Gigi's cupcakes, my four amazing children and my awesome husband.

2. My goal was to give birth to four kids by the time I was 30 years old. I missed it by six months. Now that I'm 32, I'm going to sit back and enjoy the show.

3. Bella completed her entire AWANA book last weekend and is now beginning her review sessions. This was a huge accomplishment and we are very proud of her. I'm not going to lie, she was pretty proud of herself.

4. Bella woke Drew up this morning and he buried his face further into his bed with a firm, uh-huh. Oh good, a morning person..

5. I went to Nashville this weekend for VBS training. I am meticulous about packing my suitcase and arrived with just enough time to freshen up before running over to our first meeting. I pull out my toothbrush case and low and behold..no toothbrush.

6. Swiper the Fox in this case is a certain boy with blonde curls that adores brushing his teeth. And probably cleaning the toilet with my brand new tooth brush.

7. Purchasing a tooth brush in a hotel gift shop should be illegal. $4.97..they must really like their toothbrushes and know that we are desperate.

8. I went to five different meetings while at VBS training and I guess I got a little excited saying "ye-ye-ye-YES to va-va-va-VBS" because when I come out of the first meeting my good friend says nice facebook status update. Interesting I say.

It looks a little like this..qwhwshdioshsi sdoiowiaoiewu oaiuwoaw

I am a stickler for locking my phone and think I somehow must have forgotten.

9. Day two, another random post. My friend teases me and asks if I'm actually paying attention and asks if my account has been hacked. I begin to wonder because I am positive it's locked and has been all morning. Other than the notifications from the people wondering what in the world "qwelsiQAdisldi qtisdlsdi" is supposed to mean. I call Jason and have him change my password just to be sure I haven't been hacked.

10. After arriving home, I log into my account and look at the weird messages. I see that a few pictures have been posted to a few of my friends pages. All have the mobile Iphone stamp underneath. Ahh, mystery solved. My account was compromised after all..by my crazy kids!