When Dad's away...

Leslie was foolish enough to leave Ben under my supervision this afternoon.

I love Ben.

Ben loves me.

We are a happy fam-i-ly.

Ben also loves to play dress up and when he's at my house, dress up involves a lot of pink and glitter and high heels. He asked me to facilitate his transformation into a princess this afternoon and I was happy to be of assistance.

Then he asked me to take his picture.

Sure thing, Ben!

It's these kinds of pictures that make Cameron super happy to have him at my house.

"i so cute!"

"i's adorable."

He'll regret it someday (especially when he sees the pictures), but for now, he's perfectly happy stomping around in his Snow White heels.

And he's perfectly comfortable with his masculinity....

Because is he's going to be a princess, he's going to do it his way.

Have I mentioned that I love Ben?

Women are that they might have joy

And I think that almost every woman I know gets a bit giddy over a sight like this:

Just because my house is rarely (never) a shining example of cleanliness and order (and smells like bacon and tuna fish right now. ya... don't come over), that doesn't mean that I don't find joy in the idea.

I think that I'll spend the rest of my afternoon in my cold storage, staring at the one spot in my whole house that is organized. It's my happy place. I'll just have to ignore what's sitting there behind me...

If cleanliness is next to godliness, I don't think I want to know where my storage room falls.

Hey! I've been looking for those blocks!

The inversion makes me hate everything

This week has been lousy. Its lousyness undoubtedly has more to do with my attitude about the week than it has to do with the actual lousyness of the week itself. I've got a bad attitude and as I like to say too often, attitude is everything. I believe I once mentioned in a post (wherein I shared WAY too much personal information about myself... sorry) that I'm prone intense moods. When my brain chemistry is feeling something, I tell you, it really commits. I wish that it would take me into consideration before it throws me into a depressive episode, but thus far, I'm just along for the ride.

Anyway, winter doesn't really help my cause, especially winter in the Salt Lake Valley where we get these miserable inversions. I know you all know about the inversions, and this is hardly breaking news. You all live in my neighborhood or within short driving distance of my neighborhood or have lived within short driving distance of my house at one point or another. So I'm sure that you've noticed how there are days when you can't even see the mountains from my house. I kept wanting to take a photo for dramatic effect, but being depressed makes me lazy, so here's one I found on the internet.

Can you believe that we live underneath that? Ew.

The gray days do get really old after a month or so, ruining my seasonally affected mood and building up to a really long, really lousy week. But suddenly, today, the sun came out, in the most literal sense.

The temperature warmed up and the sun therapeutically beat down on me. I opened the blinds and just sat there for a good long while and stared at it.

My eyes hurt a little now.

As I was snapping out of my funk, I started to realize that Lizzy was sad because Jane and her friend weren't letting her play with them. I was a middle child too, it can be a lonely place at times, so in an effort to cheer both of us up, I took her outside to play in the snow together. She was looking so cute and I need to make up for all the bed head photos I posted of her, so I broke out the camera.

Ok, that photo really puts me in a good mood.

You're killin' me, Smalls

Ok, so I really shouldn't have looked at the JCrew sale right now. I honestly almost never shop JCrew, but they have my email address and I got an email about their clearance, which had a convenient link right there in the email! AND you can get %20 off the clearance price! I can't help but check out something with a coupon attached. I'm not that strong.

I haven't even bothered looking at clothes that would fit me because I've been obsessed with clothes that would fit my kids...

You are killin' me!

KILLIN' ME!

KILLIN' ME!!!

No, I won't be buying any of it, just drooling over it all. I just can't justify spending more money on children's clothing than I do on my own.

droooooool.

It never ceases to amaze me

Lizzy's post-nap hair is truly a sight to behold.

Behold! Lizzy's post-nap hair!

She's still a little sleepy.

And perhaps slightly loopy.

And appearing as though she's been drugged.

I didn't have the time (read: take the time) to comb it out before we dined at your favorite "Mexican" joint and mine... Cafe Rio this evening, and even Brent asked me to try to "comb it out with my hands or something." Methinks he was a little embarrassed.

Seriously, how DOES she do it?

A little piece of Chas

When I found out I was pregnant with Charlie, I knew right away that he was going to be a boy. I'd felt it coming. I'm 3 for 3 in guessing the genders of my unborn children. What can I say? It's a gift. And obviously, I knew that things were going to be different with a boy around. I anticipated that he would be bigger, rougher, have a greater interest in cars and drums and throwing things down the stairs than Barbies and ponies and dancing, and I was right. What I didn't anticipate was that my boy would be the whiniest, neediest, most demanding child out of the three. Seriously, he is so high maintenance. And his scream puts the girls' to shame.

I took this video the other day when the kids found my Sonic drink. One straw giving them access to the sweet nectar hidden beneath and three greedy children always makes for a good fight. Charlie's defensive move? He who makes the most noise, drinks the most drink.

He also screams that way any time he wants something, anything at all really. We ("we" consisting of not only Brent and I, but also the girls and pretty much anyone in the room when he gets going) just run around trying to figure out what he wants so we can make him stop. We are all very well trained. He screams that way when we put him in bed, when he wakes up, when we take something away from him, when we don't get him his food fast enough or sometimes, just for the fun of it.

Here's one we took a couple of weeks ago. Not sure what his problem was. I think he was just in a bad mood.

Good times.

He makes up for it in other ways, which is lucky for him. He's also super cuddly and loves loves loves kisses and stuffed animals (he sleeps hugging a teddy bear every night, how cute is that!) and he loves to laugh. He also has these looks that I love. Looks that make you wonder what mischief he's planning in his adorable little head...

Ya, looks like that. I love those looks.

:)

That is all.

I... love lamp.

Fact: I really like lighting. Primary, secondary, third string, you name it. If you are a light, I've already taken an interest in you.

Fortunately for us, the previous owners of our house took the time to replace all the hardwired lighting fixtures before we moved in. I'm sure that the originals were probably old and outdated and needed to go.

UNfortunately for us, they replaced said lighting with the freaking ugliest, most impractical, useless lighting fixtures on the market today. I don't like it. I want it all gone. ALL OF IT... GONE. I won't rest until every single light fixture in my house has been replaced by a superior one hand picked by me.

Problem is that I also won't rest until I get a lot of other things that cost money that I don't actually have.

I'm materialistic like that.

So two years after we moved in... I've finally been looking at lighting. I've finally been BUYING lighting. Lamps, semi-flush, chandeliers. It's been euphoric. And since lighting has been occupying most of my rational (and irrational) thoughts lately, it only makes sense that I would eventually manage to justify a boring post about it.

I will now proceed.

Several months ago, I was replacing the track spotlight in our family room and I wanted to get this

But it cost this:

Sale Price: $502.95

Which is NOT in budget. So instead, I got this:

Which came broken and I still haven't been able to get the replacement piece. It's a long, sad story. And so half of it has been hanging from my ceiling ever since. Boo.

THEN, last week I was checking out my favorite website, overstock.com and I found this!

for this

Today: $149.99

Dear Overstock.com-

I love you.

-Lou

So, ya, I bought it. (against the advice of my sister. she thinks it's too fancy. fancy shmancy, leslie. what? i'm not fancy?) Not sure where I'm putting it yet, but I bought it. Then I started noticing that overstock has some really great lighting right now and for the first time ever, I kinda wish my house was bigger, or at least had a greater need for lighting fixtures, because I wants it all.

I want this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

Notice a pattern? They all sparkle.

And then there's the grand daddy of them all. It's from Restoration Hardware and if they didn't insist on my forking out an obscene amount of money to them before I could take it home, it would already be hanging over my beat up, hand me down, dining nook table.

Dear Overstock.com-

Can you help me out here?

Thank you much.

-Lou.

So ya. If you are in the need (or want) of new improved lights, head on over to overstock and get you some. You can thank me later.

Today

Today... I didn't do a whole lot. When I reflect back on all the things that I didn't do today, I kinda feel like a loser. A big loser. But I'm going to try to forgive myself because I DID catch this photo.

And this photo makes me smile. Mission accomplished.

The pig hat will hopefully someday be the pig hat part of a hooded towel. For now, it's just a pig hat, in want of a towel.