Oh The Joys Of Winter

Sadly, I have an annoucement to make: Please throw your pumpkins away. There will not be a pumpkin throwing party this year. I kept hoping the snow would melt so we could party, but instead, we still have snow and my pumpkins rotted. boo! I asked Sam to scoop up the orange piles that once were pumpkins, and toss them in the garbage can. He did toss them, but one of them bounced off the garbage can lid and into a tree on the side of our house. So, if you drive by our house, play the "can-you-find-the-pumpkin-in-the-tree" game as you go by. Just trying to make your drive a little more entertaining. You are welcome!

Wow, we got slammed with snow last week! Check out the snow in the kids playhouse!

This is what I saw when looking out my front door. Look how deep we had to shovel to find the pavement!

Then we had these deadly daggers hanging from the roof across the entire front of my house. Carson was outside messing around and got hit by one. He just laughed. Then I lectured him about how dangerous they could be. I went outside with a rake and started swatting at them to break them off. A neighbor boy went by and said "Mrs. Sweet! That is dangerous!" and just then I knocked one off and it hit Parker. Sad for Parker, but a great object lesson for Carson! Just trying to find the silver lining here...


Speaking of Parker...one night he was sucking on a ring pop leftover from Halloween. It was taking him FOREVER to finish it and it was bed time. I told him to leave it on a plate in the kitchen so he could get ready for bed. A few hours later I walked past the kitchen to see this:


Not sure why but he had put his sucker in water and the water totally dissolved his ring pop! Good one! I was laughing about it with Sam and Sam said, "oh, I put it in water." What?? I asked him why and he just shrugged his shoulders. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I'm learning this more and more as the years go by. :)

Do you want to know a grievance of mine every winter? My finger tips crack. It seriously is so annoying and it hurts like CRAZY! It's like a papercut on cocaine (get it?? cocaine/crack? I'm so punny). No matter how much lotion/bag balm/neosporin I use, my fingers just crack all winter long. It's quite hideous actually.


But guess what I love? I love these bandaids:


They seriously rock. I wish I could just buy the fingertip bandaids because I never need the knuckle ones, but DANG they work so good! The off brand ones suck rocks. The Band-Aid brand never leaves that sticky substance on your fingernail. So even though cracked fingers hurt, at least I can type on a computer fairly well wearing fingertip bandaids!

Yesterday I spent practically the whole day making candy. It is one of my favorite holiday traditions! This morning I was cutting and wrapping caramels and nougat. Carson got out of the shower (sweet hair!) and asked if he could help me. I was thrilled! I took a video:


Carson is such a trooper. If I'm frustrated with him or pleased with him, he's always perfectly happy. Case in point:

For a few weeks now Carson will come home from school and his socks are SOAKING wet! He even wears boots to school! Every day I give him a lecture about not stepping in huge puddles because apparently that's what he's doing and the water goes into the tops of his boots and soaks his feet. It's so gross because we have to take out the liners of his boots and dry them daily. Every day his response is this high pitched (Think of Screech on 'saved by the bell') "SORRY!" and then he goes about his merry way. On Friday Carson came home and said "hey mom! I know why my socks are getting wet every day!". He then shows me how the tread on the bottom of his boots have separated from the sole and they are basically little flaps that open right up to his boot liner. So basically he just steps on wet pavement and his socks get wet. I said "so you haven't been stepping in deep puddles?" He says "nope". I then ask him why he never told me that and he sort of shrugs and said "Idunno". Weird kid. If that were me I'd be making darn sure my mom knew that I wasn't an idiot and that it's not my fault the stupid boots don't work! Carson just doesn't let it bother him.

It's just like the time I thought Carson was missing his target when going to the bathroom because around the base of the toilet was often wet. I was sooooo mad and kept making him clean it up. Come to find out the toilet was leaking, he never missed his mark after all. When I apologized he just, once again, shrugged. Funny kid!

Having said that, we tried finding boots for him this weekend but couldn't find anything that he liked. Sam said "guess he'll have to bread bag it!" If you've ever had Moon Boots I hope you understand the bread bag reference! It made me laugh pretty hard!

Guess what doesn't make me laugh hard? My stupid eyes. Ever since October I've had problems off and on with my eyes. Lately I can't even wear my contacts because I put them in and about 2.431 seconds later if feels like a bomb of Tobasco sauce goes off in my eyes. Once I pry my contacts out, I spend the next 4 hours wiping tears off my cheeks, closing all the blinds in my house because the sunlight hurts, and blowing my nose. It's quite the sight to see. I have gas perm lenses so it's not like I can just throw away my contacts and try on a new pair. I've cleaned them and taken good care of them but something is not right! Good thing I have glasses as a back up because I'm about as blind as they come. However, I'm not a fan of wearing glasses, especially because I taught Cameron to lick his finger and wipe them on my dad's glasses as a joke. Payback is a bee-otch.

I finally grew up and went to an opthamologist instead of an optometrist. After he made me put in my contacts so he could examine my eyes (of course this was after I begged him to not make me), he discovered that my contacts were not round enough for the shape of my eyeball. Imagine putting a plate on top of a beach ball. See how the edges of the plate stick out and don't conform? That's what I was doing to my eyes with my contacts. That's awesome I say as tears are streaming down my face from the Tobasco bomb. So he ordered me some new contacts and I'm hoping and praying that this takes care of my issues (oh and I'm hoping it's not too expensive!)

The best part of the eye doctor experience: My dad came with me to my appointment so he could hang with Cameron and possibly drive me home in case my eyes had to be dilated. Well, the appointment took forever! My dad was desperate to keep Cameron happy so as luck would have it, there was a little toy room just for kids with a kid size door in the waiting room. As luck wouldn't have it, Cameron wouldn't play in there unless my dad was with him. So, being the fabulous Grandpa that he was, he CRAWLED into the kid cave and played with Cameron. You should have seen the waiting room patients laugh as we went to leave and my dad crawled back out of the kid cave! Gotta love CARL!!