My 3 Scents (and a funny story)

I have the nose of a pregnant woman, even when I'm not pregnant. When I was pregnant, my sense of smell was super heightened. I mean, I can smell out a soured dish rag a mile away almost. By the way, that's the nastiest smell ever to me. Number one on my best smell list is sunblock. I will do a top ten list one day of the best and worst smells if anyone would like, because as you can see I'm serious about what scents make their way to my nose. Which leads me to three new scents or scent tips I have discovered recently:

1) I accidentally bought Johnson's moisture care baby wash instead of my usual Johnson's head-to-toe baby wash for the kids. It was in a pink bottle and I thought I was just buying baby lotion. It was a happy mistake because that stuff smells so good. If you have kids, buy it and use it and smell it. Yum!



2) I love fabric softeners of all kind, but I've found that the best smelling one so far is Snuggle exhilirations' wild orchid and vanilla kiss. I'm smelling it on my clothes now. If you've ever used the perfume Pink Sugar from Sephora, it smells so similar to this fabric softener. Yum!



3) This last one is just a tip I discovered recently. If you carry a zip lock bag of laundry detergent in your diaper bag, it smells so fresh. It takes away or covers up that gum-coins-spilled milk smell that fills many a diaper bag. And instead of paying a bunch for Tide to go, just use your bag of detergent to create a paste to put right on that stain before it can set. Many possiblities with this stuff, although I was a bit nervous that someone might see it and think it was a particular drug that's white that people carry in zip lock bags. Just kidding!

Off the topic, when my sister and I were kids, we would play cops and robbers with all the neighborhood kids. Apparently, we were really playing cops and dealers because the kids who were playing the bad guys would carry around bags of flour that we'd sit and eat while the cops were looking for us. I really have no clue how on earth we knew what that was. Innocence.............hmmmm.................?

We can do it yo way, but don't get crazy!

I'm sure most of you have probably already seen this, but if not you should totally go over to you tube and check it out. Bon qui qui cracks me up! I'm not really that big of a fan of MADtv, but every once in a while they do a skit that is absolutely hilarious to me.

While you're there check out Anjelah Johnson's nail salon clip also. She's the one who plays Bon qui qui. This stand up act that she does is so funny and true. If you've ever been to a nail salon, you'll be laughing.

Wishy Washy Weather

What is up with this weather? I mean, I love warm weather as much as the next person. Well, probably much more than the next person. I'm not a big fan of cold weather. But when it's coming I just want it to come and stay until the spring when it's supposed to get warm. So, it's been pretty cool lately, and then it rained last night so I thought it would be pretty chilly today.

Picture Jack and Riley walking into preschool this morning in warm layered clothing only to have their heads drenched with sweat by the time they're out on the playground because it's so hot. I don't know how to dress my kids with this weather. It reminds me of a MadTV Jeopardy skit about Oprah (this one's real old by the way) that goes like this:

The answer was "Oprah," so they had to guess the question because it was Jeopardy. This was the answer.....er question?
"She's fat, she's thin, she's fat, she's thin, she's fat, she's thin. WHY CAN'T SHE PICK A WEIGHT AND GO WITH IT???"

Still cracks me up. Anyways, I wish the weather would pick a temperature and go with, like Oprah. Really it's not that big of a deal to me, just something to write about quickly so maybe someone will keep reading my blog. Ha! I am going to post Halloween pictures soon by the way, hopefully tomorrow.

The Shack

Just for fun, I've decided to make my own little personal book review everytime I finish a book. So, I decided to start with "The Shack" by William P. Young, which I read back in the summer. Now, I've read a few other books since this one, but I've been seeing A LOT of people with this book. So, I thought I'd give my two cents about it.

If you're expecting a deep, profound review then you will probably be disappointed. Sorry, this is all my weary and tired "mommy brain" could come up with at the time.

I kind of had mixed emotions about this book. It was a great book as far as being profound and inspiraional and such. On the other hand, though, I found it quite boring and repetitive. That might be too harsh of a description. It wasn't repetitive as far as content, but just the format. For example, there would be a whole chapter on the main character's conversation with one of the God heads and then the next chapter would be another conversation with another form of God, and so on and so forth for most of the book. The conversations were really deep and interesting and quite inspiring, but I got so bored with reading through a conversation just to be met by another one in the next chapter. I was like "come on and tell us what happens to the little girl." I'm even getting bored writing about the repetitiveness. (Please keep reading, though.)

The first few chapters of the book really pulls you in with the little girl that goes missing. If the book didn't start this way and just started with the "conversations" I probably wouldn't have finished it sadly. I'm glad I did though because it was really good. The ideas that the author put forth were so thought provoking.

The author did such an amazing job making God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit so personal, and I actually felt closer to all three. I think putting them in the forms that the author did was one reason for this closeness that I felt while reading the book. It was a good reminder that God wants that kind of closeness with us, and I think I tend to seperate myself from Him sometimes.

I think it's really important to keep in mind, though, that this book is fiction because I can see how it would be very, very easy to get sucked into it and forget that it is fiction and really is just one man's thoughts on what God would say, although I do seem to agree with him on a lot of things from what I can remember of the book.

Normally, when I read a good book like this one I would recommend it to many, but I really don't think this book is for everyone. I can see how it would be easy for someone to get pulled into it and claim it as gospel, as many did with "The DaVinci Code."

So, I loved it and disliked it at the same time if that's possible.

The Sixth Sense

First of all let me start by saying I loved The Sixth Sense. It was so unpredictable to me.

So, Monday night we were at home and I was standing in the kitchen talking to Jack, who was sitting on a barstool on the other side of the counter in front of me. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I heard the cat meowing and turned my head to look back at the door and then I turned right back around towards Jack. Then he said, “Mommy, you just scared that man behind you. You turned and looked at him and he got scared and he ran away.” I just thought he was teasing me, but I looked out the back door just to make sure there wasn’t anyone around the house.

The next day, my mom was at home and had taken Jack outside to play. They went over to a fence that divides our land from this land that has a horse on it. Jack tells my mom that he sees a man. My mom questions him about it, and he says that the man is tied up in a tree, and he points to the tree. My mom asked him what the man was wearing and he said it was too far for him to tell.

So, they come back inside and tell my sister and I about it, and we go back out there with him to further investigate and see what he’s talking about. He points to the same tree and says the man’s up there. We walk over there because Jack says the man’s asking for help. When we get to the tree I ask Jack where exactly the man is and Jack tells me that he got scared and got out of the tree and ran away, and that he was wearing a backpack.

I then asked Jack if the man in the tree was the same man he saw in the kitchen the night before, and he says, without hesitation.....yes. Weird, huh? Oh, yeah......and there’s a cemetery very close to our house. Eerie.....just in time for Halloween.

Come to think of it, he’s actually mentioned a man standing outside at night that he’s scared of. I always thought that maybe he was just saying that because he was afraid of the dark.....................or not. Creepy!

Manic Monday: Sun-In

Randomly, I recently thought back to a beach trip I went on with my friend Jamie back in the summer after like 7th grade I think. I don't remember much from the trip, just little blurbs. Like how we rode our bikes all around Seaside and visited all of the places where "The Truman Show" had been filmed. They'd just finished filming the movie and we thought that was really cool that Jim Carey had just been there. I also remember waking up sooo early so we could say we'd seen a sunrise on the beach, only to find out it was so cloudy we couldn't see anything.

There's also a few other little things that I won't bore you with, but the one main thing that sticks out in my mind from that trip was our first experience with Sun-In. Everyone was doing it. It was definitely the "cool" thing to do that summer of '97. I don't remember exactly how it turned out, but I do remember our hair getting a lot lighter (or yellow) and us getting some wide-eyed looks from people, including our parents. It's funny to think back to the junior high years and remember some of the things that were popular back then. I don't think I ever touched Sun-In again after that. I wonder if anyone still uses this stuff. Maybe it will make a comeback.

The Flea Market......really? fleas?

I've always liked the idea of having a housefull of vintage, old, but cool stuff. But I never could be okay with the idea of walking into a flea market though. I mean, really, fleas? Why this name I'd ask myself. I was convinced that any place with the phrase flea market attached to it had to be dirty. So, my actual first time in a flea market was a few months ago. And it was really cool. Now some parts were a bit dirty for my taste, but there were so many cool, vintagey things. Did I spell that right? Anyways, I loved the flea market; it was cool. It made me think, though. "Why on earth would they name such a neat, bargain-filled place a FLEA market of all things. So, I checked it out on Wikipedia and let me tell you what they had to say. (Note the all-caps.)

"The original flea market is likely to be the Marché aux puces of Saint-Ouen, Seine-Saint-Denis, in the northern suburbs of Paris. It is a large, long-established outdoor bazaar, one of four in Paris. THEY EARNED THEIR NAME FROM THE FLEA-INFESTED CLOTHING AND RAGS SOLD THERE. From the late 17th century, the makeshift open-air market in the town of Saint-Ouen began as temporary stalls and benches among the fields and market gardens where ragpickers exchanged their findings for a small sum."

Eww! Seriously? That is disgusting to me! And all these years I thought I was being paranoid. Oh, no no, these places actually got their name from the one and only flea, bug version.

I put this picture up yesterday, but here it is again:



I did get this adorable, retro looking chair for Riley for only $5 at the flea market. So, I will be back and will just have to not think about fleas while I'm there, although it will be pretty hard not to. They did have some oh so cool furniture though that I would love to get.