Who needs a driver's license anyway?

So I get this letter in the mail from the DMV today. It read, "Our records indicate that your driver's license has expired..."

What??

I didn't believe it, so I opened up my purse, and sure enough, it expired at the end of April. Oops. Of all the times to have to renew...it's so irritating, because I may have to get a new one as soon as we get to Colorado anyway, to get the cars registered. So I'll have this license for maybe a month or so. But I didn't want to risk driving across country with an expired license, so I just bit the bullet and went down to get it renewed.

Luckily for me, it wasn't so expired that I had to take any extra tests or anything. Um, I have had to do that before. When my Oklahoma license expired after we moved to Ohio, I never noticed, and I didn't get any kind of courtesy letter that time. By the time I finally did realize it, the license had been expired for nearly eight months. I had to go in and take both the written and driving tests again. They weren't a big deal, just annoying. The examiner didn't like the way I stopped at stop signs. Whatever.

I haven't really changed the way I drive because of it. But you'd think the whole experience would make me pay more attention to my license. Nope. I forgot again. Fortunately, I was able to go the same day after Nate got home, but the bad news was that the late fee was almost as much as the renewal fee.

I just hope that I can get out getting a new license soon.

Today's funny sayings

So Bethany wakes up this morning, and this is the conversation we had:
B: Is it Monday? (She's really excited to go to school)
Me: No, it's Sunday.
B: Is it Monday.
M: No, it's Sunday. (Yes, getting repetitve here).
B: Let's just skip Sunday.

If only it worked that way...

*****

Meagan's Sunbeam teacher wasn't there today, so they had a sub. Since it's kind of an active class, they like to have a second person as well, which I got to be. It was nice, I didn't have to teach a lesson or anything. The lesson today was on being thankful for our eyes. The teacher had the class look out the window and say what they saw. There were things from trees, leaves, cars and toys. I said I saw blue sky and a butterfly. Meagan pipes up, "A butterfly? That's disgusting!"

"I am the greatest winner!"

After the lights are turned out and the girls are in bed, they often ask Nate to take a nap with them. A long time ago, this meant that he'd lie down next to them for a few minutes, but now it's kind of evolved into him just spending a few minutes one-on-one with each of them. Usually they count or sing a song. Tonight it was my turn to stay with them, and Nate put Sean to bed. Bethany wanted to sing the "Letters Song". I don't know the real name or even the tune, but it goes throught the whole alphabet like this: A is for apple, ah ah ah. B is for bounce, buh, buh, buh....you get the idea. She loves that song. While I was singing it with her, Meagan was singing the ABC's to herself, and then I got to sing it with her again when it was her turn. When we were done, she said, "I am the greatest winner!" I'm glad she's so confident in herself.

*****

I swear Meagan's hit the terrible two's a couple years late. She's been awfully cranky lately. The other day, I threatened her with a spanking for some misbehavior or other, and when she didn't stop, I yelled, "Do you like spanks?!" She looked at me totally seriously and said, "No, I like horsies and elephants and helicopters."

*****

Meagan heard me referred to as Mrs. Terry the other day. She objected to that. She informed me that my name was Mommy Dawn Terry.

*****

Meagan is so excited to go to school. A few weeks ago, as Bethany's school bus pulled up, she decided she was going to school with her. She ran up the stairs--barefoot--and grabbed a jacket, ready to head out the door with Bethany. When I wouldn't let her go, she was so sad, and cried and cried. I explained to her that she needed to be a little bit older before she went to school. So now she runs around saying that when she gets a little bit older, she will go to school. Well, she put a twist on that one for me. Today she said, "I will get a little bit bigger and go to school and ride the bus and get a time out!" Nice to know she's planning to misbehave already!

"Your arm is big!"

Bethany: walks up to me, pulls up my shirt sleeve, then says: Your arm is big.

Me: Is that bad?

Bethany: No-yes!

Me: pauses

Bethany: Your leg is big, too. That's not good either.



What exactly do you say to that?

*****

So Bethany walks up to me today, peers in my face and says, "You're so big and strong!" I said, "I am?" Then she qualifies her previous statement, "You're so big!" Nice to know I'm loved.

My doubting Thomas

For some reason, Meagan is arguing with almost everything I tell her these days. For example, we were driving home from the store this evening, and I saw the moon. It was full and huge, since it was near the horizon. I said, "Look, Meagan, it's the moon!" She said, "No it's not, it's the sun." So typical. She argues about everything from which shoe goes on which foot to what color her clothes are. She's always wrong, but nothing can convince her of that. Mostly I just let it pass. She'll figure things out eventually. Today, though, I had one really funny conversation with her. We were in the car again, when she noticed the cup holder from the booster seat she was in had popped off the seat and was on the floor--something I accidentally did the other day when I was moving it.

Meagan: Look, Mommy, Bethany broke the cup holder.
Me: Um, actually, I think it was me.
Meagan: No, Bethany broke it.
Me: No, Meagan. I broke it.
Meagan: Bethany broke it!
Me: (losing my patience) Meagan, can you just believe me for once? I BROKE THE CUP HOLDER!
Meagan: Mom, just trust me on this.
Me: *speechless and trying not to laugh, which didn't escape Meagan*
Meagan: Trust me on this!

Hahaha...I have no idea where she even learned that...well, maybe I do have an idea. It's probably from Backyardigans. She picks up a lot of funny phrases from that show, most of which she doesn't really comprehend, but it's still funny to hear her use them.

Bethany can spell?

I was totally blown away today to find out that Bethany can read/spell more that just her own name. She was sitting at the kitchen table coloring with Meagan, when she suddenly wrote r-e-d next the red spot she colored. Then she moved on to green. Then blue, black, orange, yellow, brown, purple, pink and gray, each word spelled in it's own color. She needed help with three or four of them, but I didn't need to spell a whole word for her, except gray. I had absolutely no idea that she could do that. It was pretty cool. I guess she's learning a lot more in preschool than I thought.

2-for-1

Yesterday I got a phone call setting up a showing of our house today from 4-5:00. It wasn't too bad of a time, I figured I'd throw something in a crockpot and set the bread machine, then when we got home at five, I'd have dinner all ready.

I did a little cleaning yesterday, but pretty much spent the whole day today doing nothing but clean. In the middle of my scouring frenzy, I got another phone call, setting up a showing for tonight from 6:30-7:30. It was a bit on the late side, but I thought, Hey! I might as well get two showings out of my efforts. So that kind of scrapped the crock pot/bread machine idea.

I made Meagan take a nap when Sean went down today (about 1:30) because she's been a monster lately, and it got both of them out of my hair for a bit, too. Ha ha. They didn't sleep as long as I wanted them to, though, and when they got up, Sean was making messes faster than I was cleaning. So I picked him up and carried him around while I straightened up his messes, then we went outside and sat in the front yard until Bethany's bus got home. I didn't even let her go in the house. We just piled in the van and drove off. This was about 3:45.

I had a lot of time to kill with the kids, and I didn't even have any errands to run. We ended up going to the mall. There's a dog store there that we visited. In the front of the store was a small cage with two chihuahuas in it. One was black and white and the other was brown and white. Bethany fell in love with those dogs. She'd run around the cage, and they'd follow, barking the whole time. We left to go look at the other dogs, but Bethany didn't want to look at them, she just wanted to go back to the chihuahuas. Meagan asked me what their names were, and I told her that they didn't have names--they were waiting for someone to take them home and give them names. I don't know if Bethany realized that they were for sale before that, but she asked me if we could take the black and white one home. I've been expecting Bethany to ask for a dog for a long time now. She's always seemed to prefer them to cats. The puppies were cute and all, but just thinking about having to toilet train a dog, and letting it outside to poop on the lawn and it chewing up everything in the house--no thanks. I can barely tolerate the cats' messes at times, and when they die, that's it--no more house pets for me, thank you very much.

Anyway, after we left the pet store, they played on the indoor playground for a bit, but Sean kept leaving it and trying to run away, so I got bored with it pretty fast. Then Meagan didn't like some boys who wanted to play chase with her, and just sat by me instead of playing, and then Bethany fell and hurt herself. Yeah, it was kind of a dud. Oh, well. We met up with Nate at a restaurant, had dinner, and still had almost an hour before we could go home. We went to Michaels where I found some crown shaped candles that will be perfect for Meagan's birthday cake--she wants a princess castle. I also got some edible pink glitter for it, too. After that we went to Petsmart. It was dog training night, so there were TONS of dogs there. The girls had a blast going around asking if they could pet various dogs. They got licked a lot, and thought that was just great. Finally, after that, it was time to go home.

Now it's evening, the kids are all in bed, and the house is relatively quiet.

Haha...just as I typed that, Sean started crying. He's got a molar coming in, and I'm hoping that's what his problem is. I gave him some Tylenol, and Nate is putting him back to bed right now. Let's hope he goes down okay.

Other than that, my whole night is free, and guilt-free. The upside of all the cleaning today is that there are no chores waiting for me tonight--not even laundry to fold or dinner to clean up. It's kind of nice. I don't get many evenings like this. I'll often take a break anyway, but in the back of my mind, I'm thinking that I really should be doing XYZ. So I'm just going to kick back and enjoy it.