Giveaway Winners Announced!!

I would like to thank everyone who entered my giveaway! I've sure enjoyed the giggles. :)

Congratulations to all of you!! You are all winners! Each of you is now the proud new owner of a cute little kitten! :)

Is that what you were all afraid of? Are you glad that I'm kidding? Would you like the list of real winners now?

Since there was an overwhelming support for the vinyl lettering (I wonder why...), I decided to up this to three winners. Using a random number generator (I swear I did! This is not rigged like you all thought it would be!) the three winners are:
Kristine
Cynthia
Kathy

The winner of the Huge pile of 3T clothing is:
Brenda

I know there was quite a fight going on for the flush light. Unfortunately I don't have enough of them to give you all your own. (Dumb purchase limit!) The winner of the flush light is *drumroll please*:
Momster

The winner of the shovel earrings, and the story that goes with it is:
Debbie
And now I'm looking for coffin charms to go with them! lol

Since nobody wanted the Missionary book on tape, I entered all of you into that drawing, and the random number generator picked the winner. Congratulations:
Natalie
for winning something that nobody wants! Now you can have your very own blog giveaway to try to give it to someone else. ;)

And last but not least, the winner of the kitten... To my dismay, there were 3 winners who share this prize (since they apparently live in the same house). To the kids who wanted to remain anonymous:
HRA
ADA
IJA
you just won yourself an Oreo. I hope you're happy!! I can't believe you convinced your grandma to post that, and conned your mother into letting you keep one of the kittens! Wow did this giveaway backfire on me...

Winners, please email me at dwarthur@trilobyte.net with your address so I can get your prize in the mail. Winners of the vinyl lettering please specify what saying, size and font you would like.

Thanks for playing everyone! This was a fun giveaway, and I'm already starting to compile ideas for my next giveaway. Stay tuned! :)

Finally My First Blog Giveaway!!!

Welcome to my very first blog giveaway! This is inspired by my cousin Cynthia who had her own giveaway, which I won! Thanks for the brilliant idea, Cynthia! She gets two extra entries in this blog giveaway, since I won hers, and for putting the duck on the wall even though it made her little girl cry. Soooo sad and hilarious!

So here goes! Here are the awesome prizes you could win!

First up I'm giving away 2 custom made white vinyl sayings to make your walls talk. You pick the saying and font.




Secondly, I'm giving away a HUGE pile of size 3T girl clothing. Yes, it's used. Yes some of it has been worn by both of my girls. Come on people, it's FREE!



Where else on the internet will you have the chance to win your very own light up toilet flusher, WITH it's own battery?! If I could enter my own giveaway, this is the prize I would want to win!



Up next is a gorgeous pair of handmade shovel earrings. Yes, there's a story behind the shovels. If you win, you'll get the story to go along with these beauties!



You could win your very own (and I might mention antique!) book on cassette tape about preparing your children for missionary work. Don't fight over this one! I know it's rare, and quite possibly very valuable.



Last but not least, you could win your very own kitten! Black or white. Girl or boy. We've got them all! You pick the one you want!



Now I bet you're dying to know how you can win one of these fabulous prizes! It's actually a very simple process. First you need to leave your full name, address, phone number, email address, SSN, and credit card number in a comment on this blog post. Then you need to forward a long random obnoxious spam email to all of your friends in your address book, not including me. Then become a fan of ice cream on facebook.

If that's too much for you, I'll accept an entry by simply commenting on this blog post and telling me which prize you'd like to win the most. :) You get an extra entry if your comment makes me laugh.

(If you took me seriously on the first part of the entry process, then you're giving me permission to buy all the paper I want using your credit card)

The Febreeze Explaination

Preface: I posted my facebook status this morning as "Wendy is going to febreeze her whole life!" I got so many questions about the meaning of my status, and ended up writing this story to explain.


Warning! Not for the easily queasy! But you asked for it!

It started yesterday with a stench coming from the kitchen sink. We all noticed it, but who had the time to wash the dishes and find the smell? I lit a candle in hopes that the beautiful scent would mask it. By the end of the day, there was no other option. I had to clean out the sink and find the source of the problem. Every dish that I took out and put in the dishwasher just made the smell worse. I finally got to the bottom, and realized the stench was coming from the drain. I think something crawled in it and died. However, about that same time, the sink got clogged, and water was starting to backup in both sinks. I had to put my hands in the nasty water to hold the drain shut while I plunged the other side. It was difficult to keep the gag reflex at bay. After what seemed like 3 hours (but was probably only 10 minutes) the dead thing dislodged, and the sinks started draining again. It took several doses of vinegar and baking soda, and some Mr. Clean with Febreeze to finish the job.

I took out the stinky paper towels to the outside garbage, and my cat came running up to me. Well she had kittens just a few days ago. She hadn't bothered to clean herself up, and she stunk worse than the kitchen sink did. I weighed my options while stifling the gag reflex again. I decided at midnight that I was going to give the cat a bath. I knew this wasn't going to go well, but wasn't prepared for the reality of it. Wet stinky cat was even worse of a smell than dry stinky cat, and I had to lock myself in a tiny bathroom with her so she wouldn't escape the bath. She kept jumping out of the water, splashing muddy stinky water all over me and the floor and everything else in there. I did my best, but cats seriously don't like baths.

So it was too cold outside to put a wet momma cat outside. I figured my only option was to blow dry her. I'm sure there was a better option, but I still can't think of it. So I found out that cats don't really like being blow dried either! She was jumping at the door, huddling behind the toilet, and anything else she could think of to get away from the air. About the time she gave up and decided to just let me finish, she pooped on the floor. Remember, I'm still locked in the bathroom with a somewhat less stinky cat, and the new smell almost pushed me over the edge. Well I cleaned that up, finished blowing her dry, and went to put her outside with her kittens.

I thought it to be a waste of a bath to put my newly cleaned cat back in the nasty stinky box that she gave birth in. I figured I should at least take out the smelly towel in the bottom. Well when I took it out, I found out that she had given birth to 8 kittens, and there were two dead ones in the box. (I found the other two dead ones the day before and got them out.) I took out the towel, kittens, both live and dead, and wiped out the bottom of the box. Mom didn't like that at all. I tried to put a new clean towel in for her, but she had the live kittens back in before I could. I gave up and put them all back outside and came back in to clean up the messes I had made.

After a thorough scrubbing of the tub, wiping of the bathroom floor, scrubbing of the carpet (where she had pooped), and disposing of icky paper towels and dead kittens, I only had a pile of nasty smelling towels to wash, and myself. By now, it's 2:00 in the morning. I really don't have the time to take a shower, so I just washed as good as I could, and changed clothes. I threw the towels in the washer, and went to bed. Even my dreams smelled bad last night! Tell me how that happens! Now I'm in desperate need of a shower and a sense-of-smell-ectomy. Oh, and a little bonfire of clothes that might never smell right again.

Obituary

Chicken Tenders, aka Spike Elvis Tenders Arthur the Third passed away in an unfortunate turn of events on Wednesday, March 17, 2010. (Fortunately while I just happened to be taking a nap.)

Tenders hatched sometime in April of 2009, and soon after became adopted by the Arthur family. As a chick, he was cute, fuzzy and loveable. As a young cockerel, he was loyal, and friendly. As the alpha male, he was mean. He first started his vicious cycle on children, then moved on to anyone wearing black shoes. In his last days of life, he attacked anyone that came near him.

He is preceded in death by his sister, Alfredo, brothers, Teriyaki, Parmesan, Fettuccini, Pot Pie, and Noodle Soup. He is survived by sisters/mates, Nugget, Patty, Annie, Goldilocks and Cordon Bleu. He will be dearly missed by Hannah, and only slightly missed by Isaac and Aaron. The rest of us are glad he’s gone, and can finally go outside without returning for bandaids. Sarah cheered her dad on and asked if we could eat him for dinner.

He was laid to rest later on that afternoon in a white casket (aka garbage bag) in an undisclosed open grave. In lieu of flowers, the family would like donations made to the psychiatrist that will need to treat my children who are now traumatized from watching his death.

Laundrylypmics

With seventy eleventy kids around this house, there's bound to be a lot of laundry. This particular week (which was actually last week, but since I didn't get around to posting it then, let's pretend it's this week) the house seemed overrun by laundry, both clean, and dirty. I spent what seemed like all of 2010 washing dirty laundry, and had a mountain range of clean laundry (I've named it the Arthuralian Mountains) that needed folding and put away. I knew I would have to come up with something good to get the kids to pitch in and help me without the screaming, whining, and various other torture techniques they usually use to try to get out of work. Since the Olympics were on, and they were enjoying them, I decided that we would do the Laundrylympics. As soon as I pitched the idea to them, they were full on ready to help, and with enthusiasm too! Hannah helped me come up with events, and I got started making medals (I know Cricut time usually counts as procrastination, but this time, it was a legitimate thing!). I had the kids make flags for their countries, and we started by having Opening Ceremonies. They marched in with their flags as I played the Olympic theme song on my ipod. We hung the flags on the wall, and we were off to our events.



Our first event was Downhill Dirty Laundry Sliding. They split into teams, boys versus girls, then piled up their dirty laundry at the top of the stairs. I decided that they'd have two runs each to slide down the stairs and see which team had the most dirty laundry at the bottom of the stairs at the end of the event. The boys hurled themselves down the stairs the fastest (and head first), but forgot to grab laundry on their way. The girls went feet first, slow, and got every single piece of laundry to the bottom. They won the gold medal for that event.



At their first medals ceremony, I let the winning team choose their Anthem. They were dancing to "Only You" (the Dance Dance Revolution version) as they celebrated their win.

They had to prepare for the next event by moving the laundry from the bottom of the stairs to the laundry room. Next up was the Speed Folding event. We started by sorting their clothes into piles, according to who they belonged to. The corrupt judges (aka Derek) started a timer, and they folded as fast as they could until time was up. Aaron and Hannah tied for gold in this event with Isaac grabbing silver, and Sarah with a bronze medal.

Aaron's anthem was "Fireflies" by Owl City. They sang along with this one.

For the third event, we had a Long Distance Speed Skating Delivery. Which is just a fancy way of saying putting the laundry away. In this event, they used a laundry basket to haul laundry from downstairs (where they folded) to their bedrooms. The corrupt judge made sure that they didn't leave any behind, and timed them to see who put all of theirs away the fastest.This is Aaron struggling in the middle of his race. This event had by far the most injuries. The corners they had to rush around were sharp, and they ran into them with their hands. The EMT's on site (aka Wendy) were very good at patching the athletes back up and sending them back out to their events.


Isaac won gold in this event, with Hannah bringing home the silver, and Sarah with bronze. I'm not sure if Aaron got the 'special' blue medal this time, or if he ran off mad because he didn't win.


Our last and final event was Sock Match Curling. You see that green tub behind the medals stand? We had two of those full of unmatched socks. We dumped them in a huge pile, and let them sort through and find as many matches as they could and then 'curl' them together. Aaron whined and whined throughout this event, thinking that everyone else was beating him, and somehow cheating. He ended up with the gold medal anyway.


Not sure why Isaac is wearing a tiara during this medals ceremony. He's Isaac. Not sure why he does most of what he does.

And finally, here are pictures of my decorated Olympians.
Thanks so much for your help kids!

Sarah is 4!

Sarah was so excited when she woke up on her birthday. She could hardly wait for the party to begin. It was difficult to get the kids off to school amidst her enthusiasm. She was thrilled to see Grandma West first thing in the morning, and absolutely loved the pillow/blanket/pet that Grandma brought for her. She immediately got dressed in her new outfit.


She waited by the window, watching for cousins to come over and party with her. She enjoyed helping me make treat boxes for everyone.

Sarah loved posing for her "4" picture! Now she can't wait to be 5. I think she is growing up way too fast!

She got lots of great gifts! Thank you to everyone! We had guests over all day, and it was just a dream party for this 4 year old!

Sarah is blowing out her candles with the cousins. I think there was a minor earthquake in the night that made the cake split in half. At 1:30 AM, It was complete. By 7:30 AM, it had a crack all the way across the top. It tasted good anyway!

Sarah asked for a wedding cake for her birthday. She also asked for an Abby Cadabby cake, a Little Bear cake, a Dora cake, any other cake she could think of, and also wanted cupcakes. Glad she wasn't picky! This was as close to a wedding cake as she was getting.

At the end of the day, I tucked in a completely exhausted and thoroughly happy 4 year old. She couldn't have had a better day if she tried.

Rockport in January (Yeah, that's what I meant)

Sometime in January, we woke up at zero dark thirty to go ice fishing at Fish Lake. They tell me that if we get up that early, we'll be there when the fish are biting the best. I think we came home with a grand total of 6, maybe 7 fish between the 15 or so of us that were fishing that day. I could be wrong. I didn't pay that much attention.

It got cold pretty quick when the wind picked up. My kids are lucky they have such a great Papa who put up the tent for them so we could hang out inside with the heater. It came in handy when Aaron put his boot through a hole in the ice and we had to dry out his socks.

I seriously can't believe I'm posting this picture on a blog, let alone keeping it at all! But here I am in the tent, fishing. The kids needed a little entertainment, so we took turns taking pictures with Hannah's camera. This is one she took.

I don't know what Hannah's doing here. Maybe she had a loose tooth that day. That will teach me to blog about stuff months after it happens!

This is Isaac being Isaac. Kinda shows you how cold we weren't inside the tent. Even if we didn't catch any fish in there.

Aaron's just waiting for the fish to bite. I think we did get one bite, but lost the fish. It was still fun though. Had some fun talks with the kids, and got to tell lots of 'old' stories about ice fishing when I was their age.

Oh you want a title too?

Ahhhh! It's almost 10:00 pm, and finally the quiet settles in. Don't worry, it won't last long. Pretty soon someone will be out of bed complaining that someone is bugging them by singing, poking, screaming, having stinky feet, or being too quiet for them to sleep. After that, the quiet will be interrupted by the dirty dishes screaming for me to clean them, or the sticky floors begging me to mop them. No worries. I can ignore them for another day.

Today was a late start Monday. I'm still undecided on my opinion of those. I love to be able to sleep in, and let the kids sleep in, but they expect a 5 course breakfast that morning, and then get bored and fight a lot before school. Today was slightly better though. Hannah got up and ready to go early, and went to Grandma's to play before anyone even woke up. When she left, I climbed into bed with the boys, and snuggled with them until it was time for them to wake up. They really need a new mattress. The springs on that thing are deadly, and I doubt there is any padding left inside.

Derek spent the day in the psych hospital. No, this didn't concern me. It's him, not me. Plus, they let him play volleyball, and eat lunch. He gets pretty good treatment there. I keep asking him to scope out the good padded rooms for me, but he keeps telling me they don't have those anymore, and that psych hospitals aren't like they are in the movies. I don't believe him. I know hipaa rules keep him from telling me the truth.

Oh! I should tell you about the excitement we had at bedtime last week! (even if you don't care) I was sending Derek off to work just before 9:00, and walked him out the door. When I stepped outside, I noticed that it smelled strongly of natural gas outside. After he left, I decided that I probably should make sure it wasn't MY house that was leaking, so I could have peace of mind the rest of the night. So I walked outside toward my gas meter, and the smell got even stronger. I thought "Of course" and went back inside to get a flashlight and a spray bottle of soapy water. When I sprayed the meter down with the solution, it started bubbling immediately. I really didn't expect it to be my house. I was just checking to be responsible. So I went inside and called my emergency number. My dad. I asked him what he thought I should do. He told me to call dispatch, and said he'd be right over. Well, I never would have thought that one little call to dispatch would bring what seemed like a hundred firemen, police officers, deputies, and whoever else was there that I didn't know. By then, the smell had dissipated quite a bit, so nobody was in any rush to do anything other than look at the meter with their big flashlights. I explained to some of them where the leak was, and how I found it. They decided that it wasn't important enough for the firetruck to stick around, so they all packed up and went home. However, the repairman from the gas company was on his way. About an hour later, he had the leak all sealed up, tested around the entire house to make sure there wasn't another, and we were all set.

There you have it folks. My very first blog post. Have a happy Toothache Day tomorrow! (who invented that holiday, and WHY??)