Pink Polka Dot Thoughts

Princess Sunshine

 

This is Princess Sunshine and she is the reason I'm so exhausted right now! It's official. I'm too old to have another baby. I wouldn't survive it!

We love her though! Of course, the kissing up on the shirt helps a little, too.

The Princess and the Dog

 

I babysat Princess Sunshine today. Cooper has met her many times, but she was here longer than she's ever been. Showing his true personality, he decided to make friends and this is exactly how it looked. He dropped his favorite squeaky basketball on her leg and then waited for her to throw it.

He was oh, so patient, too! He just didn't understand why she didn't throw it to him. Just give her time, Coop. Pretty soon, she'll be running you ragged.

(Yes, I laughed so very hard when I realized he was waiting on her to throw the ball. Mr. Polka Dot and I were both almost in tears!)

It's Raining, it's pouring...

"If I bark loud enough, that back wiper will turn on because I'm a big bad dog and I scare it."

Yes, that's how Cooper thinks...woof woof woof!

Total relaxation

Oh, how I miss thee, jacuzzi tub! Mr. Polka Dot and I had a relaxing vacation in the Smoky Mountains. Myfavorite part of the trip was the two-person jacuzzi tub. There is nothing like a soak in a jacuzzi to relax you. I spent quite a bit of time in that tub over our vacation.

I can't wait to go back(we're looking at time shares so we can visit as often as we want!) Of course, I've been dropping lots of hints to Mr. Polka Dot to get one for me for our anniversary. It's a big one this year. 20 years. Wow! And they said we'd never last...

Amazing Changes

This post is for everyone who listened to me cry, whine, complain and vent last year. If you remember, last school year was awful for The Boy. His school didn't seem to care. They didn't want to give him a chance. They lumped him in with kids who didn't care about being in school and the teachers, to be honest, didn't care about THEM either.

The Boy's grades were awful. At one point, we thought he was going to fail 8th grade. Not because he couldn't do the work, but because we didn't seem to have a school with a "team" attitude. Mr. Polka Dot and I had several meetings with his teachers and they would send us away each time basically making us feel like we were over-reacting and everything was fine--until 3 weeks before school was to end and we were called in to say he was flunking!

An honest discussion with the teachers, vice principal, counselor and finally the principal led to a plan that would allow him to make up and turn in work. Oddly, he ended the year with a 2.5 GPA when 3 weeks before, he wasn't even pulling a 1.0. Funny how voicing your complaints concerns and threatening offering to go higher if necessary to fix things can help get things going. Let's just say that Mr. Polka Dot had my full permission to speak at this meeting and say anything he wanted. And he did.

I knew deep down that once he got out of that school and that atmosphere that he would do better. It wasn't until yesterday though, that I really felt like I could take that big sigh of relief and say "I told you so."

Yesterday, was the end of the 3rd quarter at school. The Boy brought home a report card with a GPA of 3.75!

Yes, I said 3.75!

That's me smiling. That's me happy beyond words. That's me yelling loud enough for his middle school teachers to hear TAKE THAT!

Best of all? He wasn't satisfied. He wants to make a 4.0 for the semester!

I know he can do it, too.

Dinner Fail

I don't pretend to be an uppity chef or even a food blogger. I sometimes even use(gasp) condensed soup in my recipes, but I have to admit that I'm usually a pretty good cook. Things usually turn out pretty well for me...at least they're edible and no one complains.

Tonight's dinner, however was a total FAIL.

I got a coupon for the new Philadelphia Cooking Cream, so I decided to try it out. I didn't like the recipes on the package, so I thought I'd just whip up one of my own. I do it all the time and usually things turn out ok.

Tonight--not so good.

It sounds good when I type it out. Very simple. Brown some chicken breast, add some chopped garlic, onion, tomato sauce and a can of tomatoes. Once that cooked for a while, I added half of the cooking cream to it. Garlic, chicken, cheese--what can go wrong, right? Well...it turned it into something that looked like chicken in an extremely unappetizing tomato soup.

I tasted it and it wasn't that bad. It wasn't that great either, but for some reason, I thought my rotini would make it better. It didn't.

Then I thought some freshly grated parmesan cheese would help. I mean, cheese makes everything better, right? It did help some...but just a little.

It still had the uncanny resemblance to Campbell's Tomato Soup with chunks! I served it anyway, but no one ate it. They nibbled. They moved the food around on their plates, but they didn't really EAT it.

There have only been a couple of times in our entire almost 20 years of marriage in which Mr. Polka Dot has refused to eat something I cooked. One of those times was when I actually served bad chicken and didn't realize it until I tasted it. (Oops!)  This was another time. Bless his heart. He tried though.

I'm glad I made a salad and garlic bread to go along with it but it was still tempting to call out for pizza.

At least dessert wasn't a fail. The Girl made chocolate chip cookies this afternoon! Cookies for dinner. Works for me.

 

Anonymous?

Sometimes when you try to be "anonymous" on the internet it doesn't really work that well...

Just sayin...

 

A penny for my thoughts?

 

Every once in a while I find pennies in strange places throughout my house. This has been going on since we moved here about four years ago. At first, it seemed coincidental, but as time's gone on, I've come to think of them as "pennies from heaven."

I'm convinced these pennies are left for me by my dad. Yes, my dad is long gone, but I'm still convinced of it. I've found pennies on the floor, on my nightstand, on my desk and in the bathtub! Yes, the bathtub. HOW would pennies get in the bathtub?

The pennies seem to appear at times when something is going on with our family, too. For instance, I found one on the day my niece told me she was pregnant. I found one on the day her baby girl was born. Last week, my mom had some minor surgery. When I went to her room to check on her later, I picked up her shoes to move them and found a penny. That's too coincidental for me. I know it's a message from somewhere else.

Mr. Polka Dot thinks I'm crazy. He doesn't believe in stuff like this. He says people drop pennies. Maybe...but in the bathtub? Of course, I've also let Mr. Polka Dot know that if he dies before me, he shouldn't try to come back and communicate with me because I'll ignore him. ;)

One morning, I got up extra early and sat down here at my computer desk. A while later, I got up to make sure the kids were awake for school. When I came back to my office, there was a shiny penny laying heads on on my chair. Cue the spooky music because I certainly can't figure out how that happened when no one else was in here and I had no pockets that could have possibly held a penny that dropped out when I got up.

I've started collecting the pennies. I have them in a jar on my desk. Each one is a special message to me and I can't part with any of them. They've become my lucky pennies.

Sweetness

I have the most adorable little great-niece ever. Isn't she beautiful?