Monster Cookies

Lessons Learned

Author: Amber

Today I stood up for myself.

I know that for most people, if something isn’t right, they let people know. And they get it made right. Pronto.

I don’t do that, generally. If I disagree with my husband or my children, I make sure they know it. But anyone else, no way. I do not stand up for myself to strangers, or to anyone outside of my small family of 6. Not even my parents or in-laws. I also do not return things to stores or send back meals at restaurants. I suck it up. Today I gathered up all my courage and stood up for myself.

This week, one of my children came home from school wearing his indoor shoes.

“Why are you wearing those?” I asked him, ready to reiterate the lecture on what having INDOOR shoes for school is all about.

“My teacher made me bring them home - they are broken.”

And so they were. After a mere 4 days of school. Indoor school wear.

Typically, we do not spend more than $20 on runners, and this has never been a problem. My kids aren’t hard on shoes and they last a long time, usually. These shoes that I type of now, well, they were of the ‘over $20′ variety, but since the boy liked them a lot, I let him have them.

So, back to today…I packed the shoes in my bag and returned to the store to have them exchanged. I did not have my receipt, because I tend to not keep things like that around longer than a few days (what can I say, clutter bothers me). No receipt equals muchos problemas.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

I entered the store and approached the Customer Service desk. There was a bit of a line with a very unhappy baby at the front of it. I stepped up to the end from one direction and another lady stepped up behind me, almost immediately. But she didn’t stay behind me. This lady slowly crept up beside me, and eventually in front of me, her front almost pressed against the woman standing in front of us. As we came to the front of the line, I turned to her and said, “Excuse me, I was here first.”

I did not say it meanly because I wasn’t trying to be mean, and if I wasn’t in such a huge hurry, I wouldn’t have said it at all. She fought me on it, insisting that SHE was there first, and was RIGHT BEHIND the lady in front of us (no kidding) and that she was next. I apologized and said that I was in a hurry and I couldn’t let her in front of me. She huffed that that was fine and motioned for me to go ahead.

I got up to the counter with my son’s broken shoes and explained the problem. After that came all the stuff that goes along with returning things - can’t do it without a receipt, 3 pages for the shoe department to call her, waiting for them to come to the desk…eventually the CSA (Customer Service Associate) pushed me aside to wait for another pair of the shoes and took the next person in line.

The shoe associate brought another pair of the same shoes and left them with me as I waited for the CSA to help everyone else in the line. I watched the minutes tick away on the clock behind the desk, wondering if I’d be able to finish this up before needing to rush home to feed my kids lunch.

Finally, the CSA got back to me. She explained that she had to try to find the receipt in the computer or she couldn’t do the exchange. I gave her 2 credit cards and my debit card to aid in this search (FYI, they keep your information of how you paid including your card numbers in their computer system for at least a month) but not a thing came up. She asked me questions like what the exact day was that I purchased the shoes and which checkout I went through.

She told me over and over that she couldn’t do the exchange. But I didn’t take that as a final answer. I couldn’t understand what the big deal was. Here I was, standing at a counter with two pairs of shoes, identical in colour, size, brand and CLEANLINESS in front of me. The elastic cord of one shoe of one pair was broken. I would have taken just one shoe, or even the cord if that is what she was willing to give!

Feeling bold, I asked why she needed the receipt. Her answer was that returns cannot happen after 30 days. My thought was that these were school shoes, and since they still have some left on the shelves, it really couldn’t have been much longer than 30 days that they’d been stocking them. I didn’t say that out loud though.

Her computer froze, and then started working again as she typed in my card numbers, one after the other. Finally she gave up her search and called the manager. The manager told her to just give me the shoes. The CSA did so, making sure to remove the tags and warn me that I couldn’t return them again, before I walked away.

I was so happy to be done with that!

As I approached the door, the “theft” alarm went off. I think I actually laughed out loud as I turned to return to the nearest cashier so she could demagnetize the shoes. I told her I just exchanged these with no receipt, and she told me that it wasn’t the shoes. I opened the cloth shopping bag I was carrying to show her that I had library DVDs in it too, and she waved me away.

I went back to my van and apologized to Jon and the kids for the wait; I had left them in there for about half an hour waiting for this all to take place. It definitely didn’t turn out to be a “run in and exchange these” sort of event.

While I feel proud that I stood up for myself and our finances, I don’t feel good that I had to make other people have a bad day. Perhaps the line lady is grumpy now, retelling the story of the girl who cut in front of her in line, and perhaps I messed up the CSA’s day too.

Unfortunately my other son’s shoes broke this past week as well. Fortunately, he didn’t WANT me to return his. Could you imagine me trying to do 2 pair? What a nightmare.

This is not the first problem I’ve had with shoes from this store. I will never buy shoes from there again.

Other lessons I learned: be brave, pay cash and keep receipts!

September 2nd, 2010 | Posted in News, Parenting, Reviews, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Belated Random Thoughts

Author: Amber

This would be my Random Tuesday Thoughts post but since I totally have no idea what day it is (still), I missed it yesterday and posted my Spin Cycle post, which actually should have been done on Friday, but I was so stumped by the question (and Aretha) that it was put off. Also, we had a very wonderfully full weekend. Too full, even, to attempt another podcast episode even though we said we were back in the saddle in regard to that.

So…here’s my randomness!

Andrew’s new favourite word: “AWESOOOOOOOOOOOME!” I have no idea where he got it from, but Josh is picking it up from Andrew. It is so cute to hear the way Andrew says it that I smile every time.

We started giving the kids an allowance a few weeks ago. The love it and are learning to divide it up into their giving, saving and spending buckets. I really want to get them some cool piggy banks that have all 3 sections, but it’ll have to wait. Maybe for Christmas…

Our weekend - Friday we took the kids to Despicable Me. I love that movie and hope to purchase it. Saturday we went out to Okotoks to check out the Highland Games. They are in Calgary this coming weekend; I’m trying to decide if I should go or not. Saturday night I hung out in my jammies with some friends and chatted for about 4-5 hours straight. We meant to watch a movie, but didn’t get to it. LOL Sunday morning was church, Sunday afternoon I had a meeting at my house (maybe more on that later) and Sunday night a friend came over and we watched a movie, chatted and enjoyed some munchies. Monday was a day off work for Jon and a day off school for D and JJ (yes, already) so we went to the zoo. Monday evening, D and JJ officially started Kung Fu. I LOVE being busy like that and if we can do it, I plan to keep life busy! As long as illness doesn’t get in the way, of course, which leads me to…

For the past few days, Daniel has had the sniffles and a bit of a cough. Yesterday afternoon, Jon was not feeling well, and last night at bedtime, Josh was starting to show signs of a cold. Surprise, surprise, Claire woke up around 11:30 gasping for air. I figured it was croup but it was freaking me out and I called the Health Link line here in town. The nurse listened to Claire (who had fallen back asleep) and told me to take her to the Children’s Hospital ASAP and that if her face starts to change colours (I had mentioned it was getting pink, then went pale), definitely call an ambulance if I needed to. Jon is the ER parent, so he got his clothes on and took her in. After some popsicles and some meds, they were both back home in bed with me around 2:15am. We all slept well after that, but today I woke up with my own head/chest/sinus cold. Throw a nice hormonal headache on top of that and today has been a complete write-off around here. My house has not been so messy in so long.

Speaking of cleaning, my list of 6 has been going well, up until today. I LOVE doing the work because the reward is so worth it and comes so quickly and is so constant. It goes along nicely with the peaceful, happy, HEALTHY (until today, of course) feeling that I’ve had thanks to my body cleansing that I’ve also been doing.

Someone asked awhile ago about the cleanse that I started with - it is the Renew Life Total Body Rapid Cleanse. I felt GREAT by the end of the first week on that one. Seriously, I love it.

Anyway, I’m on my second cleanse now and I don’t love it so much; the pills taste like pizza, but there is a liquid tincture that is very strong. Maybe people used to doing shots wouldn’t have the problem with it that I do. LOL

Other things on my mind this week included teenage boys (mine, future), wrestling, video games, space, real estate and trying to put it all together to make it work.

I was surprised this week when my two oldest boys were being punished and were given a choice between McDonald’s food for lunch or the priviledge of playing wii, one chose to spend almost his whole allowance so he could play wii by buying himself McD’s with his own money. The other boy chose to play wii and he came home and made himself a sandwich for lunch while everyone else had McD’s. And he didn’t even make a fuss about it. I’m proud of both of them for the choices they made, and for sticking to them and not making a fuss.

So…since the word count here is quickly approaching 1,000, I should probably stop. If you’ve made it this far, your prize is that you know us better than you’d probably like to. LOL

And if you’d like to comment, I’d love to read anything from you, especially if you’ve done a body cleanse before, or about what you did this past weekend, which was quite awhile ago since it is now almost a new weekend again. These weeks sure do go by fast!

September 1st, 2010 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Spin Cycle - Respect

Author: Amber

The Spin Cycle topic for this week is Respect.

It took me all day Friday to get the song out of my head, and now that it’s clear, I can get my thoughts down without bopping my head to a beat that only I can hear.

There is so so much that I can say about respect. When I think of the word, RESPECT, my brain is flooded with random words.

Respect…

boundaries

feelings

choices

each other

your elders

the law

I think that there is a serious lack of respect in our world today, and it is something that bothers me on a daily basis. I know I’ve ranted about this very issue, in specifics, here before, and I know it’s bothered others.

What it comes down to, is, I have no idea what to write about respect. It is such a HUGE thing and is so important to me that I cannot form a coherent blog post about it (as you can see).

So, in closing, RESPECT is BIG and it should be EVERYWHERE but it isn’t, and that is really too bad.

August 31st, 2010 | Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

The Zoo

Author: Amber

Today we went to the zoo. Since it was FREEZING outside, it was nice and quiet and calm and refreshing. No crowds. Actually for the first hour and a half we were there we only saw three other people. Sweet.

We have passes and go to the zoo often. However, most of the time we don’t see many animals. They have this awesome playground there and my kids LOVE it and it has benches for the parents to sit and three different structures for different ages of kids and a fence around all of it. I sit on the bench by the entrance so that I can see if any of my kids are going to run away. Of course they have never tried because this place is like heaven to them; they don’t want to leave.

Anyway, our passes are about to expire. We have one month left and we are about 95% sure that we won’t renew. The reason is that we don’t expect to live here for the whole next year and we don’t visit the zoo often in the winter so we aren’t sure that it would be worth it to spend the money. I really wish that they had 6 month passes, but they don’t.

Knowing that there is not much time left for us to go to the zoo whenever the mood strikes made us spend a little more time than normal there. Today we visited for about 4 hours. We saw animals up close and personal. We saw an owl eating a mouse just feet away from us with no cage to separate us. We fed ducks from our hands and learned about elephants. We rode the new merry-go-round. It was a great morning.

Here are a few pictures from this morning (Yes, we are wearing winter jackets in August. Seriously, I’m just happy we didn’t see snow in August this year.).

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Do you have a zoo near you? Do you like it? Do you go often?

August 30th, 2010 | Posted in News, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Happy.

Author: Amber

Today we spent the day at the Highland Games in a city near here. On our way home, I saw something that brought me such joy that I have been thinking about it for the rest of the day.

As we pulled up to a stoplight at a street near our home, Jon glanced over at the car stopped next to us.

“Look who’s beside us,” he said.

I was doing something else, but when the kids couldn’t guess who it was, I took a peek too.

The car contained people that I recognized well…well, most of them.

Flashback to September 2007:

I walked Daniel to school and to his kindergarten class. The parents were invited to stay for the first day to get the kids used to being in a new place. Daniel didn’t need me there and he ran off to participate while I followed at a distance, chatting with the other moms. One mom in particular caught my attention and we started up a conversation about having 3 sons and no daughters - we were both in the same boat.

She asked if I would “try for a girl” to add to our family. I told her that we had decided on four children, but were having trouble conceiving, and that a girl or boy would be just fine by us.

She told me that she wanted a daughter so so badly, but that she wouldn’t be trying anymore because she did not want another boy. Not even a little bit.

I understood and didn’t understand at the same time…the class ended and we went our different ways.

April 2008:

It was finally warm enough for me to pick Daniel up from school without putting on a jacket. My 7.5 month pregnant belly was finally visible to all and not hidden under a bulky coat. The mom from the first day of school approached me to ask if I was expecting, and if it was another boy.

I told her that the ultrasounds all said girl and we joked over how amazing, miraculous and surprising it was to actually see girl parts.

We hadn’t spoken in months due to her son bullying Daniel and all the feelings that came along with that, so I was a little surprised that she approached me. But it was a nice conversation anyway, and I’m glad she did.

After Claire was born, the other mom came over to ooh and aaah over her a little. She told me that I was so lucky and that Claire was beautiful.

We didn’t talk again after that.

Fast forward to today. Jon and I and the kids were sitting in the van waiting for the light to change. At Jon’s command, I glanced over at the car next to us. It was the mom I’d had the occasional chats with over the years.

She was driving and her children were in the backseat…her middle son (the kindergarten bully) on one side, her younger son on the other, and there, nestled between them was an infant. An infant wearing a sparkly headband.

Definitely a girl.

I realize that she may just be caring for a niece or perhaps a friend’s daughter, but I hope with all my heart that that little girl is indeed the daughter that she had been longing for. That thought makes me so happy, because I know what it is like to finally have a daughter that you hoped for, secretly or not, in your life. I hope that she knows too.

August 28th, 2010 | Posted in News, Reviews, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

True Story

Author: Amber

Jon is outside BBQing burgers.

He needs a plate to put the cooked ones on, and asks for one through the open patio door.

A boy (we’ll call him boy 1) runs to the door to receive the plate while I run to the kitchen to get it.

At the same time, another boy (we’ll call him boy 2) chokes out that he wants to get the plate.

I get the plate and walk past boy 2 and hand it to boy 1 because I know if I give it to boy 2, he and boy 1 will fight over who gets to take it to Daddy and the outcome would involve me cleaning ceramics out of my yard for the next way too long period of time.

SO…boy 2 runs up to his room screaming.

Fighting over who gets to help…this is a regular occurrence in our home. Boy 2 running up to his room screaming, also regular.

What was the third boy doing as all this played out? Watching TV. Without flinching or making a sound, he turned it up so he could hear it over the screaming fit.

Welcome to our home.

August 26th, 2010 | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Pretending with Claire

Author: Amber

Claire was playing with her babies.

Claire: We’re in the van, Mommy.

Mommy: What are you doing in there?

Claire: I’m drivin’.

Mommy: Where are you driving to?

Claire: I’m driving to Canada.

Mommy: That’s good.

Claire: I’m going shopping. For food.

Now it’s to Canada for food; in a few short years, it will be to the US for clothes.

*****

Claire, holding her babies out to me: Here Mommy can you hold these?

Mommy: You want me to babysit?

Claire: Yes.

Mommy: Okay, I can babysit my grandkids.

Claire: I’m glad for you. I’m glad at you, Mommy.

Mommy: Thank you.

Claire: Bye.

Mommy: Bye, have fun!

Claire: Wait, here’s their food. You can feed them.

Mommy: Thanks.

*****

It is so cute to watch Claire play with her babies. She calls them her little brother and little sister. I know she got it from a Dora episode. I think it is super sweet.

She dresses them, feeds them, gives them drinks, tucks them into bed, drives them places in the van and cradles them carefully.

Claire calls bottles ‘cups’. As an infant, she never took a bottle. We would give her one and she would play with it until I got home from wherever I was and could nurse her. So now, she feeds her babies their bottles and says, “My baby is drinking from her cup.”

I LOVE watching her do all this mommy-ing and seeing what she comes up with. Some of it is obviously what she has learned from me (”Look Mommy, I’m putting this bowl in my dishwasher.” LOL) and other stuff is all her. Her imagination is unreal! Even as I type this, she is pretending away. She just gave me the most delicious invisible candy! Yum!

August 21st, 2010 | Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

It’s the oddest feeling…

Author: Amber

I don’t know if other mothers have moments/days like this, there are some times where my kids just don’t seem like themselves.

And then I worry.

I’m not a worrier by nature. I don’t think I am, anyway. But some things just hit me in such a way, and I can’t help myself.

This describes today with Claire. She just has not been herself today.

Instead of being the carefree, easygoing explorer that she normally is, she’s been clingy. And grumpy. And sweaty.

All of her giggles and smiles came with a touch of melancholy; and that melancholy has drilled down to my very core.

Tonight as I cuddled with her on the couch and read some books, she was hot and sticky. She answered my questions about the stories with a calmness that was so soft, each word was almost a sigh escaping her lips. We read a book about feelings and I asked her, “Claire, how are you feeling today?”

“Sleepy,” she said.

Her brothers were playing nicely alone so I offered her a bath - her favourite thing - hoping that even if it didn’t perk her up, it would at least cool her off and get her out of the sticky coating of perspiration that covered her little body. She enjoyed having the tub all to herself and blew some bubbles and showed me the way that she could swim, and even smiled a few times. But still, with that air of heaviness about her. Sadness, kind of. Can a child be happy and sad at the same time? I don’t know, but I felt it.

And my memory served up visions of mothers who’ve lost their children to diseases that they fought long and hard.

And it bugged me.

And I might have cried a little.

Right now I am convinced that Claire is the sweetest little girl in the world. And absolutely anything she asks of me, will be. Just because I feel these moments are so fleeting. And she just seems so ‘off’ today. And because of the way she says, “I lud you, Mommy,” out of nowhere, with a super sweet smile, without anything other than silence to prompt her.

And I’m worried.

August 20th, 2010 | Posted in News, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Conversations with Boys

Author: Amber

Me: Please unload the dishwasher.

Boy: I don’t know where anything goes.

Me: Yes you do. I already put away all the glass and sharp things.

Boy: *SIGH*

(Enters living room, where I am sitting)

Boy: Where does this go?

(Rubs flipper on the arm of the couch)

Me: In the drawer. You know where it goes.

Boy: Which drawer?

Me: (Trying not to get annoyed because seriously, we only have two drawers in the kitchen) The drawer that doesn’t have spoons in it.

Boy: Which drawer is that? (rubs flipper on his shirt)

Me: Child! Don’t rub that all over everything - I’m going to have to wash it again. Put it in the drawer that doesn’t have all the silver things in it.

Josh: Oh, the one beside it?

Me: YES!

There is a reason that it’s been hard to let go of the “I’ll just do everything myself” attitude. I’m still working on it.

August 19th, 2010 | Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

My List of Six

Author: Amber

I am not the best housekeeper. I do not like clutter, so I try to keep our actual “stuff” to a minimum, but cleaning? Ugh. I’d rather not.

I do, however, like lists. I like to make them and I LOVE to cross things off. And when there is nothing LEFT on the list, I do a little dance of joy.

So, in order to keep myself on task, I’ve made it easy. I have a list of SIX things that I HAVE to do every day. I even made it into a little rhyme. Laundry, dishes, bathroom; sweep, mop and vacuum.

See?

Here are my rules:

Laundry - I must do one complete cycle of laundry. Wash, dry, fold, put away. Now, this could be leftover stuff in the dryer that I fold and put away, then put a new load in the washer and move it to the dryer by the end of the day. It doesn’t have to be in any specific order.

Dishes - I must load, run and unload the dishwasher at least once, again, in any order. Also, there cannot be any dishes left in the sink.

Bathroom - one quick wipe down of all surfaces, including the floor. Change the garbage bag if it’s full.

Now, sweep, mop and vacuum only need to be done on the main floor, at least once per day. Those are my rules.

This list is really nice and easy to follow. It takes care of all the stuff that will pile up if you don’t get to it every day. And the cool thing is that I usually feel like I didn’t do much in the way of cleaning at all, so I tend to go looking for more stuff to clean or organize. For example, yesterday I decided I could strip all the beds and wash the bedding and put it back on. And today, I took my kiddos and went to Zellers to buy closet organizers for my boys’ clothes. Their dressers are no longer holding themselves together. So I moved all the clothes over. I also bought a new shoe rack and got started on organizing our front closet. All that because my six things were done with minimal effort.

Obviously I don’t spend all day cleaning, so I still can have a life. And if that life takes up a lot of my day and I’m out of the house and unable to get to the whole list, my kids get to help with whatever I didn’t get to, when they arrive home from school. Yesterday Josh vacuumed while Andrew and Claire unloaded the dishwasher and Daniel folded a load of laundry. Some days they’ll have chores, other days not. Sounds good to them, sounds good to me and we’re all happy.

Now, off to start dinner in my nice clean kitchen.

August 18th, 2010 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

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