Fellow Blogger CATHERINE!!

This is Catherine, a fellow blogger from Australia! Everybody say G'DAY CATHERINE!! (G'day Catherine!!) Catherine is better known to the blogger world as "Mum-me Half Dozen". You read that right, she is the mother of six kids and is therefore never ever bored. Her blog is always a fun and interesting read as she captures the fun and mayhem of raising a dozen kids.

And now the part you have all been waiting for! The interview!

~Question~

If you could trade places with any other person for a week, famous or not famous, living or dead, real or fictional. with whom would it be?

~Answer~

I'd trade places with a rich, upper class lady from Jane Austen's era. I think it would be fun - for a week!

~Question~

If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?

~Answer~

That's easy - I'd be Superman (or woman) because I always wanted to be able to fly. The super strength and x-ray vision would come in handy too.

~Question~

What was the most interesting thing that has happened to you in the last seven days?

~Answer~

Climbing Mount Tomaree at Port Stephens, Australia was pretty interesting. Other words also come to mind to describe this hike - words like exhausting, back-breaking and torturous, but it was also interesting.

~Question~

If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?

~Answer~

"0 - 6 in 10 years"

~Question~

If I take a look inside your refrigerator, what would I find?

~Answer~

Lots of bottles of sauce, jars of condiments, and always, always, ALWAYS some left over icing from somebody's birthday cake.

My Friend ASHLEY!!

This is my friend, Ashley! Everybody say HI ASHLEY!! (Hi Ashley!!) Ashley is one of my bestest buddies at HBU and is lucky enough to be my first interview! If you wanna get to know her more than what my interview covers (and you know you want to!), check out her blog!!

Okay! On with the interview!

~Question~

If you could trade places with any other person for a week, famous or not famous, living or dead, real or fictional. with whom would it be?

~Answer~

Mother Teresa

~Question~

If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?

~Answer~

I would read minds.

~Question~

What was the most interesting thing that has happened to you in the last seven days?

~Answer~

I'm on REC team, interesting stuff happens on a daily basis.

~Question~

If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?

~Answer~

Ashley Davis: A Memoir

~Question~

If I take a look inside your refrigerator, what would I find?

~Answer~

Cranberry-Strawberry Juice & a 1/2 eaten Snickers bar.

Interviews!

I am running out of ideas on what to do for my blog, so I have decided to interview other bloggers and some other random friends, and help you get to know them better!! Stay tuned for interviews!

PS: If you want to be interviewed, just shoot me an e-mail at kldoss89@gmail.com!!

Back on the Face of the Earth

Yes, I realize I have been gone a long time. A REALLY long time. I gave up on my own blog a while back and stuck to just stalking other people via their blogs. But I have decided to get back into the blog frenzy for the same reason I started one in the first place: I am sick of having to explain to every single person what is going on in my life.

So.... UPDATES!!

I am home for the summer. Where is home, you might ask? Well, right now I call home "La Marque" but being a college student, home is constantly changing. I think a part of me will forever call Houston home now, even if I've only lived there three years. Something about getting your first apartment (and your second apartment...) that changes your way of thinking. So long story short, being a college student has forever voided my ideas on where and what home is. I don't even know if you can call La Marque my home seeing as every time I am here, I am either living out of a laundry basket (weekend visits) or boxes (summer, aka now).

Plans for the summer? Right now, my entire summer is revolving around the youth group and babysitting. We just got back from YEC in Dallas (YEC=Youth Evangelism Conference) last weekend. That was my first official taste of spending more than a few hours with this particular set of youth before camp. It's going to be a fuuuuun summer, haha! I love them all to death, so any shenanogans they pull will be well worth putting up with! (And yes I totally used a word like shenanogans! Be quiet! It's my blog! I can use whatever outdated words I want!) They are a fun group, but the really enjoy keeping me on my toes!

Oooh!! More exciting news!! I got my hair cut yesterday, but also got it curled! This is great seeing as it takes me about three minutes to fix my hair the way I want it, but if you look, it looks like I spent hours! WIN! It's been curly several times in my life, but normally I get sick of it after about a year and go back to straight, so we will see where I am this time next summer...

I think for now, that is pretty much my update. I'm sure more stuff has been going on, but I just can't think of anything else right now. Toodles!

Christmas

Just ignore the date this was posted and enjoy the pics! :D

"Go on Kelli, open it."

Daniel pretending to ignore what's going on next to him.

Showing the ring off.

Kelli's promise ring (and feet).

Kelli and Daniel

Opened her gift from Michael and Julia and was no longer interested in any of her other gifts.

My nieces first Christmas!! (I think Kayla is on the left and Krystal is on the right!)

Not Christmas, but Kelli's birthday present from Lilli. And in case you can't tell, she decorated the frame and drew the tree by herself. Apparently parents enjoy stuff that serves no general purpose if it is given to them by their kids (memories of a million and one macaroni necklaces...)

That Dreaded 'Potty'

Yes, I have not been blogging. I am recovering from a very severe case of blogger laziness.

Disclaimer:
Parents of children over the age of two, you might find this quite entertaining.
Parents of children under the age of two, you might find this quite disturbing and scary.
Non-Parents, you might find this quite effective to use as birth control.

Don't say I didn't warn you....

So begins a new phase in my niece's life... Potty Training. Oh yeah. She's really that old. Crazy, huh? Yes, it was arranged on purpose for us to start the day after I got home for Christmas.

We are using a guide given to us by one of my friend's mom. Supposedly, it has worked for all of her kids except her oldest, who was particularly stubborn and difficult to potty train, and really do just about everything. We have tried our best to do everything right. But we are not working with just any two-year-old, unfortunately. It has become a hobby of Lilli's to make the most simple things much more difficult.
 
The first thing we started was explain to her a few times a day, every day, for a week: "In __ days, no more pull-ups! You will have panties!" At first, she would get very excited, telling anyone who would listen that she was getting panties in __ days. Then those wheels in her head starting twisting. And on day three, it dawned on her: Her pull-ups serve a purpose to her. What in the world were these people thinking, taking them away from me? So that morning when I told her "In four days, no more pull-ups", she promply replied, short and sweet, "I need my pull-up" and grabbed her chest, trying to protect the mean old aunt from taking her precious pull-up. I explained how she wouldn't need her pull-up because her pee pee and poo poo is going to go into the potty now, and how if she went potty, she would get a sticker and a piece of candy, mommy and daddy and all her family would be proud, and the angels in heaven would sing the hallelujah chorus as God himself looks down on us and chuckles a little at how easy it is to please us sometime, the classic explaination. No lie. This kid looked a me like I was the dumbest creature on the planet for even suggesing such a horrible thing. She spoke very soft, but firm, a tone that would turn blood into ice if I hadn't already built an immunity from living with her mother for 20+ years, and repeated, "I need my pull-up". And ever since that day, when we tell her what's going to happen in __ days, her only reply is "I have a pull-up", and a small shiver runs down my spine.
 
Phase Two began last night. We got the canister to put her reward candy in. My sister and I both are big on bribing. We know it's wrong, but we believe in cling to for dear life the "OMG Whatever Freakin Works!!" Philosophy. This week's bribe is named Hersheys Kisses. I poured them into a container and decorated it with jungle animal foam stickes. We also have two sheets of Spongebob Squarepants stickers for good measure. Well, the candy and sticker radar must have been going off like crazy because the next thing I know, I hear two-year-old footsteps coming up the stairs, and as soon as she gets in my room she exclaimed, "WOW! Chocolate! I want chocolate!!" I calmly explained to her that this was special chocolate and you could only get it when you go potty. So she informed me she had to go potty and ran downstairs. However, after only sitting there for 1.4  seconds, in her mind, she deserved chocolate and a sticker, so she ran back upstairs and told me "I went potty!!" I looked at Kelli and she just shook her head no and told me what happened. So it was time to re-explain to her the concept of bribery. You have to SUCCESSFULLY go potty. We aren't going to punish her for accidents or anything, but if we reward her for just trying, where's the incintive to actually really try to make it to the bathroom in time? So I gave her the speech I have practiced in the mirror for a week now, "You can try again next time, but for now, no chocolate or sticker." I looked away as I saw her eyes swell with bitter tears, a window into her broken little spoiled heart.
 
We have done everything we could to prepare her. Yet somehow, I feel like we forgot some important step. I'm not ready for her to wake up. Let her sleep just a little longer, prolong the transformation to 'big girl' for just a few more hours.

A Morning In The Life Of Me

-Wake up. Missed breakfast.

-Facebook.

-Walk into the kitchen. Mentally slap myself for going to bed early instead of doing dishes.

-Spend a few minutes figuring out what time I need to put the chicken in the crock pot to be ready by 7 pm.

-Pray that I don't forget at noon to put the chicken in.

-Begin operation squeeky clean kitchen. Put away clean dishes in dishwasher.

-Take a minute to marvel at my amazing OCD-influenced organized tupperware cabinet.

-Put away only one clean steak knife into a container that holds six.

-Contemplate how only two people can use five steak knives in one day.

-Sit and try to remember what we ate yesterday.

-Make a mental note to look into cooking knives so all the steak knives don't get dirty during meal prep.

-Sadly watch as my favorite sponge deteriorates in my hand.

-Throw a mini-party with myself to celebrate picking a bright lime green sponge.

-Three dishes later, hate the lime green sponge for not having a scrubby side.

-Wonder how I am going to get 12,463 dishes clean during the course of this sponges life with no scrubby side.

-Wonder how many dishes I actually wash in the life span of one sponge.

-Decide to one day count the number of dishes.

-Pray that the rediculously high number does not push me into clincal depression.

-April comes back from class with news of a homework assignment she has due that she didn't know about.

-Watch as April reclines with her feet on the couch, snuggled in a blanket with a book.

-Continue operation squeeky clean kitchen.

-Get crock pot out so I don't forget to put the chicken in at noon.

-Watch April as she has to reach all the way to the end table next to her to grab her phone, groaning at the energy it took and the fact that she had to get out of her comfortable position.

-Mentally kill April.

-Remember what God says about killing in your heart.

-Say a quick prayer of repentance.

-Mentally kill April again for getting me in trouble with God.

-Laugh out loud at the joke I made that no one but me heard.

-Pray that April didn't hear me laugh.

-Sweep floor, that somehow got dirty again in the last 24 hours.

-Decide to make a rule that everyone must have their feet/shoes pressure washed before they walk on my kitchen floor.

-Wonder why in the world the front door is in the kitchen anyways.

-Remember the mud tracked in to our old apartment living room carpet and feel thankful the door is in the kitchen.

-Write a post it note and put it on the crock pot so I don't forget to put the chicken in at noon.

-Contemplate the theory of post it notes, wondering who had such a sad life that they thought of the idea.

-Realize that person probably had a life very similar to my own.

-Quickly push the thought out of my head.

-Facebook.

-Blog.

-Facebook.

-Blog.

-Wonder how all this got done in only two hours.

-Wonder what I am going to do to fill up the entire day.

-Wonder what happened to my once exciting, eventful life.

-Blog.

-Hit publish.