I've been tagged by Pookieville to answer these questions so here is goes:

1. What I was doing 10 years ago: I was working at the Olive Garden in Salt Lake City. I was living in Provo, Utah just about to move into an apartment with my brother, Derrrick and sister Karrina in Salt Lake. I would stay over at my Grandparents in Sugarhouse if I didn't want to drive all the way back to Provo that night. It was only a few days ago that I met a returned missionary named Dan as he came in to get his interview for a server position. We were only a month and a half off from getting engaged.

2. Five years ago: Dan was one month into the US Air Force and we were living at Vandenberg AFB, CA. Innie was 3 1/2 and DD was 20 months. I was one month off getting pregnant with Bug. I was loving that Dan was graduated and done with the U. I loved living just four hours from Ontario and made the trip a few times the six months we lived there. My father and sister, Jenny still lived in California backed then. So did my best friend Lisa.

3. One year ago: We were in Minot, ND we were trying to sell our house and were waiting for the final word from the US Army that Dan had been accepted. We had no idea where we would be moving but knew we had to move in the next few weeks. Innie was 7 1/2, DD almost 6, and Bug 3. I was just freaking out. We got our orders within a couple days of selling the house with a report date of two weeks from when we got them. We moved to Fort Lee, VA within two weeks and stayed there 7 months.

4. Yesterday: Got Innie and DD on the bus the I worked out at the Y, it was an arms and back weight day. Then 30 minutes of cardio and abs. Then I tinkered around at home with Bug and Dan got home early since he is still in-processing here. When the kids got home from school we went back to the Y and went swimming since it was like 90 yesterday. Came home, homework, which DD only had a 15 minute meltdown about this time, lost playing on the computer for 3 days, and ate dinner. Put the kids to bed, and watched TV. Fascinating.


5. 5 Snacks I enjoy: Yogurt, Sour Cream and Onion Lays with Cottage Cheese, Dove Dark Chocolate, and two things I can't have often but love Killian corn and 7-layer cookie.

6. 5 things I would do if I suddenly had $100 million: Have Dan retire, get out of debt, help family, build three houses : beach, mountain, and everyday, become a marine biologist.

7. 5 locations I would like to run away to: Europe, Finland in particular, Hawaii, Australia, and Montana.

8. 5 bad habits I have: I yell, I'm not nice, I'm sarcastic, I'm cocky, and when I play the piano and lose my place I scratch my face until I can find my spot again.

9. 5 things I like doing: Reading, Swimming, Blogging, Watching TV, being with Dan.

10. 5 TV shows I like: Gilmore Girls, Heroes, The Office, ABC news with Charles Gibson, and Beauty and the Geek.

11. 5 things I hate doing: Laundry, Dishes (although I love it when they are both done, the 5 seconds that they stay done), punishing the children, yard work, and dealing with stupid people.

12. 5 biggest joys of the moment: 8:30 p.m. (bedtime) that's when I get Dan to myself the kids are still all over him and I don't exist, watching the scale numbers go down I just wish they would go down faster, listening to DD read, hearing Innie do math in his head, and watching Bug hug his Dad.

Parenting Tips

Here are some things that I have noticed that I have done as a parent mainly just to survive. Some things I have done on the fly. Some things I am mortified to admit that I have done.

1. I have hid in a dark locked bathroom from my children for alone time.

2. Forgive me, I have said, "I'll give you something to cry about."

3. We have discovered there is a golden age where when a child comes crying to you, you can act asleep. The golden age is where they will tip toe away. Do it too young they poke you in the eye, too old they know you're faking and start to jump on you.

4. I have used SNL Jack Handley Deep Thoughts on my kids for my own pleasure. Example: Bug, "Mom, why is the playground broken?" Me, "Probably something you did."

5. We have used infant startle reflexes for fun.

6. We have used our children for our own amusement far too many times to mention one by one, like making them wrestle, or wrapping them in pillows and having them run at each other. Just two examples.

7. You can close an infants eyes manually and they will sometimes go to sleep.

8. Cereal and Milk served at 6 p.m. is all about presentation. If you are excited they will be too.

9. To finish Harry Potter in one day takes a lot of advanced planning. New movies and a lot of snack food.

10. I knew I no longer had any babies in the house when I no longer said, "Don't do that to your baby brother," and it changed to, "Oh stop crying, just go hit him back, then he won't do it again."

I hope my wisdom benefits someone as it has probably messed up my children.

Happy Fall Y'all

Happy Fall. I wanted to wish everyone a joyous equinox while the earth is still slightly off kilter. Lets all remember to do something fun with it. Here is the reward of my hard work. What will you do with your equinox?

To Cut or Not to Cut

Here I am again. Back to the age old question, what do I do with my long hair? I reached one milestone I don't know if I have ever reached before, I got through a TDY without doing something to it. Dan made me promise I wouldn't cut it off while he was gone. He has come home to a blond when he left a semi-brunette. He has come home to a wife with 7-8 inches shorter hair then when he left. I even got rid of a perm once while he was gone, everyone was glad about that one. That option is not on the table, by the way. There is something about him being gone that makes be get bored with my hair and then want to do something drastic.

You hear those stories all the time of the wives who can point to a piece of furniture or a painted room and say I did that when so-and-s0 was at so-and-so. I can't do that. My TDY habit at least is slightly cheaper. But now that he is home and I kept my promise I can do something to it, right?

I am open to suggestions. I am a hair, make-up clueless kind of person. My hair right now is the same more or less that it has been my whole life. My high school so-cal beach hair. I am just not blond anymore. I don't wear make-up, I only curl for church. My hair is straight, and I mean straight. I can put my hair in a bun wet after a shower and pull it out hours later to brush it for the first time and it doesn't look all that different than if I had blow-dried it. It will hold a slight curl under but mega curl, not so much. So I don't do much for it and we basically leave each other alone. I wear it down almost everyday except for cooking then we ride the pony express.

So here are the family votes, Dan is firmly against any sort of cut, he likes it long, you know, no change, when we met my hair was long so long it must stay. DD is in the long camp also, because all princesses have long hair. I have no idea where Innie and Bug are, I think they would go in the we don't care or wouldn't notice camp.

I am including a picture of my now hair so you all can appreciate how long my hair is now and a picture from the last time I chopped it all off, Jan 06, so you can also see how quickly it grows back. I have had haircuts, of course, in between then and now and still here's the difference. Sorry about the before, you know how often Moms are actually in pictures, I was lucky to find this one of me at Camp Snoopy.

Quiet House

My house is quiet and very creepy. The two youngest are in bed, on time and with no arguements. Dan took Innie to Cub scouts, I didn't have to take all of the kids and make them stay up late and then behave and not run like animals all over the church. I am just in my house. Its so weird. This peace, this quiet, I absolutely have no idea what to do.

So I blog. I read other people's made a few comments and then the quiet really started to freak me out. I feel like this is one of those times that we get a glimpse into our future and I don't know what to do with it. With Dan maybe leaving again, this could be my nights for a long time. All this alone time after ten years of never being alone, seems crazy and cruel.

So I just live life now in my head and with my keyboard? Living for comments that I am already starved for. I know what I'll do, I'll head back to school, scrapbook, volunteer, go to church, do my callings, fill time. This weird feeling will come and go probably timed with Dan's coming and goings.

Wow, I know that this post is a little strange but I have this blog to vent as much as to keep people up to date. So now you all are up to date with my latest anxiety as well as my toilet issues.

New Blog Security Measures

I got a great tip from my blog mentor. I just spent the last hour removing the children's name from the blog. We will not only refer to the "children" in code. Its so funny but you all can probably see the practicality in it right away. In my profile it says what city I live in, what my name is, and if you Google my name even my maiden name my blog is first and only on the list since my name is spelled too weird to give me competition. So then I post pictures of my children on the blog and then tell you all about them. So we will just not give out anymore info about them. So your job now is to remember their nicknames, won't be hard, and then use them in your comments. However, I will be updating their code names on a regular basis and whether or not you get their new names will tell you your security level. After I have changed their names if you receive confirmation of the change within 24 hours then you have the highest clearance, 48 hrs not so much, 72 hrs just be glad I thought of you, and after that stop reading the blog because I have no idea who you are. Now have I taken this too far?
Oh yeah, names. My first is Innie, male. Next in line is DD, pretty princess, I think you can all guess the gender, and last is Bug also male.
One last thing, I seem to be a little blog addicted this week and am quite enjoying it but it won't last. Since no one noticed my subtle count down on the side under my picture this is also to tell you to not expect to hear from me for a few days as Dan is coming home today. He got his orders yesterday. We were pretty sure they were coming by Tuesday but you cannot be sure, this is the Army we are dealing with. Anyway, orders Thursday, home Friday not bad. We haven't told the kids, we are going to surprise them tonight when he comes through the door tonight, do a movie night and head to the Lake tomorrow. Then, of course, he reports to the 101st sustainment brigade first thing Monday Monday morning.

My ode to the Commode

La toilet. The latrine. The can. It really isn't something you think about until it makes you think about it. But somehow the past two days have all been about the toilet in the Haddox home.
Bug has had some non-descript fever and a couple of throw-up scares where we have rushed off to stand over the bowl to no avail which only makes you realise, "Man, I need to clean the toilet again." So last night I went around and clean the bathrooms. Only to discover my brand new scrubber has already betrayed me, the tip has pushed down to leave metal exposed and leave scratches on my upstairs bowl. Which is having its own set of troubles. In our heatwave the water reservoir become too low and contaminated with algae, which has caused our water to taste awful. We have installed a filter on the faucet but the upstairs toilet has since needed a cleaning very often since the bowl turns green in a few days time, not the downstairs just up, its weird.
Anyway, the point of my ode is this, there are a few things I am thankful for and I realized them this evening as I stood over the downstairs toilet saying, ''No, go down, go down," the mantra all have prayed at one flush or another. DD had called me in saying the toilet won't flush so I just walked in and pulled the lever and then began the chanting. I raised the lid as I watched in horror as the liquid no one ever wants to come in contact with reached that point of no return.
Here are the things I am thankful for.
-Sandals, I don't wear footwear in the home often. The kids had just gotten home from school so I had met them from the bus about an hour previously. Without them, there would be no humor here.
-My home in Minot, it had a toilet that clogged often but didn't overflow, the training that Dan and that house gave me prepared me for this Day of Days.
-Lower-tiered towels, you all have them, the beach towels, the ragged towels, my not pretty anymore towels that happened to be clean and folded and in the closet that is next to the offending toilet.
-Plungers, once again everything aligned the plunger is kept in this bathroom.
-Dan, who taught me to use a plunger without fear.
-And lastly, Washing machines, that can wipe out the smells and horrors of this day so quickly and completely.
I am so glad I can share my travails with you because there are somethings that just can't be lived alone.

Who knew?

I've been tagged to post 5 things you might not know about me and I've decided to do this up right and be very confessional...

1. I have been known to watch Beverly Hills 90210. Not just as a teenager, I didn't ever watch it as a teenager, I mean like a couple weeks ago.

2. I have an innie and an outie belly button. I can pull my belly button out.

3. I have lost 10 lbs this summer. Not confessional, just bragging.

4. I miss North Dakota so much it hurts. Dan researches Guards jobs there at least once a month and has even made contacts there. We would do almost anything to move back. That one still surprises me. I haven't changed the car or truck plates and I don't intend to.

5. I am the only, and I mean only one who spends money in the family. Dan and I recently decided that we have to get out of debt quicker than we are so we made a lot of hard decisions. We let go of some luxury items, like Bug's preschool, its up to me now, and some cable channels, no more Jon Stewart, I miss him so much. But everything we let go only affected my life. What could Dan cut back on? Nothing, well, coming home once a month would save some gas money, but we decided against that one. Literally he spends no extra money. It is all me, my scrapbooking, my Y membership(I didn't give that up), my TV shows, my Time magazine, my other magazine. Man, did I feel like a heel. Oh well. I just have to come to grips with the fact that Dan is my polar money opposite. We have already set our first goal. We should have our first thing paid off with all the extra money we are saving by next spring then we will get a little reward, I get my Jon Stewart back.

Anyway, nothing too shocking I hope besides the 90210 thing, I figured I better start out with the most shocking and go from there. Thanks, Nikki, that felt good to get off my chest I had been hiding that shameful secret for too long and now begins the recovery, Melrose Place.