I packed up the kids today around 1pm to go shopping. I’ve been putting it off and we were down to our last can of frozen juice. Things get bad around here when we’re out of apple juice.

First we headed off to the bank to put our whopping check from our refinance into the bank. Which, sadly, will only go to pay off debt. Boo. Then we headed to Vitamin Cottage. Every time I feed my children a graham cracker, I feel like I’m sinning against my healthy upbringing, so I needed to get the kids some healthy, sugar free, whole grain snacks. Eden was very excited about the healthy bunny shaped mac and cheese. (And now you know what’s for lunch tomorrow.)

Being so close to Michaels, I just couldn’t resist. I mean, who could blame me? With on sale yarn right next door, how could I NOT go? Really. (Jim would say it’s part of my disease.) But, I will have you know, I did manage to keep myself out of Old Navy. It was hard, but I think I will recover.

At this point in the trip, things weren’t going that bad. I got the kids a fruit leather (all natural) at Vitamin Cottage and they were still digesting when we got into the car. And this is where I made my biggest mistake. We went to Evil Wal-Mart. Well, it was the point of the trip, to buy food, but still….Evil Wal-Mart at 1:30ish in the afternoon, I’m crazy. I would have been happy to go home and live off saltines for at least another 24 hours, I had new yarn. But one little whine from Honor reminded me that we were dangerously low on juice. So off we went to EVIL WAL-MART.

See, the problem with waiting till way past the last minute to grocery shop is that you have to marathon grocery shop. Since everything in the house has been eaten, including the yellow mustard, there’s a lot of shopping that needs to be done. Herein lies the problem….Honor can only sit still for about 2.4 seconds. We were at Evil Wal-Mart for over an hour. I pulled out every trick in the book and we were only on aisle 9. I finally stooped so low as to open the bag of raisins and that kept him at bay for 4 minutes. And I can officially say that it takes 4 whole minutes for a 1 year old boy to dump a whole box of raisins all over Evil Wal-Mart.

So somehow, through all the screaming and kicking in the Kid Fight Carts we managed to make it to the checkout line. The checkout line. Yeah. Where you’re supposed to check out, right? It’s more like the wait in line for FIVE HUNDRED YEARS line. Seriously, does Evil Wal-Mart hate me that much? I spent $163.00 there today, why would they do that to me? Why? WHY? How in the world do they expect two little children in kicking distance from each other to not scream? I wanted to scream.

Needless to say, from this day forward, I solemnly vow to ALWAYS shop alone. ALONE, I say.

Jim’s quote of the week:

“We don’t eat butter with a spoon.”

I finished 3 ponchos this weekend. One for my cousin Leann, that I failed to take a pic of before I packaged it up. (She promised to take some pictures for me when she gets it though.) It’s the stitch diva poncho. I made it out of Berroco suede in black.

I also made these little ponchos. My original goal was to make Eden a poncho, but I didn’t have a pattern. So I tried to adapt the stitch diva pattern to work. The first one turned into an itty bitty baby poncho, that I gave to Jennifer’s sister, who just had a little girl (with more hair than Eden, by the way!).
Here it is modeled on pig

And here is my second try, I should have cast on fewer stitches, but I got it to work.

It will take some doing to convince Eden that she is at the height of fashion when she is wearing her poncho, as you can see, by the thrilled expression on her face, she’s not the biggest fan.

So, yesterday we went to Taco Bell to partake in a delicious Fajita Grilled Stuffed Burrito (mmmm, Fajitas!). While waiting in line for our food, I observed a family filling their drinks. I was noticing the mom corralling the four children thinking that she seemed so sane (not to mention the children well behaved) for having raised four children. I was thinking of the things I would ask her about raising four children (since I can’t seem to be sane raising my two) when her husband walked up. He was wearing maroon sweat pants, a maroon, but not the same maroon, long sleeved shirt. Over his shirt he had strapped to his waist a brown leather belt. Attached to the belt was his cell phone. Let me repeat this in case you don’t quite have the mental picture. Sweat pants. Long sleeved shirt. Leather belt. Cell phone. I guess that raising four kids did affect someone in that family, he was the one that got all the crazy. Seriously, who in their right mind….?

I took a moment to offer a silent prayer (more like a desperate plea) that Jim will never get so crazy that he would think of going into public looking like that. Wait, not just in public, but ever. EVER. See, in a family you need to share the mental strain of raising kids, therefore I will gladly be a little crazy to rescue my husband from a fate worse than death, a fate of sweat pants and belted on cell phones.

It has begun and I will have to live through 17 more years of it. Today Eden said to me “Honor is touching me.” Who knows what’s next, maybe, “Honor’s looking at me”? or maybe “Honor is on my side”?

Fantastic.

It is so easy for me to focus on things in my life that are so hard. I wanted to take today to focus on the things that make my life so great.

I can’t even imagine how my life would be without my husband. Every time I start to think about what would happen if he died, I start to freak out (there goes the overactive imagination again!). Sometimes I’m amazed at how perfect we fit together, that we’re the only one’s who get each others cheesy jokes (trust me they’re cheesy), that he knows me so well that it can be scary, like we read each others thoughts. When I think about my relationship with Jim, I know that God cares about my life and that he gave me the perfect person for me.

My kids. The major source of my frequent frustration. They really are great kids. Eden is so bright. She says the absolute funniest things. She calls everyone “honey” (thanks grammy) and not a moment goes by that she’s not talking or singing a song, except for when I try to get her to talk on the phone, then she’s as silent as can be.

Honor is the stinkiest kid! I always said that I wanted a kid like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes and I think I got it. It doesn’t matter how hard we try, he is always playing in the toilet! ALWAYS. I don’t know how the kid does it. But he is really sweet. He loves me so much and is always coming up to me to give me hugs, even if I don’t nurse him anymore.

Jennaniah. Really this whole “raising” a teenager experience has made me wonder how in the world my mom was able to not kill me. But she is a great kid for being 16 and I really enjoy having her here. I’m so thankful that we have been able to provide a healthy place for her to live. What is life about if you can’t help people who need it. I’m glad that we are able.

I’m thankful for my house and that as of 5pm today we will have all our debt consolidated into just the house payment.
I’m thankful that we have a car that works.
I’m thankful that I’m not pregnant.
I’m thankful that Jim is able to do what he loves and can still support our family and allow me to stay home to take care of our children.
And finally and possibly most important, I’m thankful for yarn. Really I am.

I know that about 200 of you visit this website each day and I want to know what you’re thankful for. You can’t hide, I know you’re out there. Happy Thanksgiving!

Jim’s quote of the week:

-Can’t we go one day without getting jelly on the remote control?

(Such is the life with two toddlers.)

This site just wouldn’t be complete without a scarf to match! Without further ado, I present the pretending.sanity. signature scarf.

Notice the loverly knitted red rose? This scarf will soon be available for sale, as soon as I get my shopping cart up!

I’ve also completed the white and pink Jennifer scarf which will be shipped off today tomorrow.

And my grass is greener purse is mostly completed, I still have to line it and I’m going to try and reinforce the bottom and sides with cardboard.

Quite a productive weekend if I do say so myself.

Well, here it is in all it’s glory. Suprised? Please have a little bit of patience while browsing, I’m sure there are still some bugs to be worked out. If you’re seeing something really out of wack, try hitting your refresh button a few times. If that doesn’t seem to fix it, send me an email. If you’re using Internet Explorer for Mac, I can’t promise that it will look too great for you, Internet Explorer for Mac sucks. I use Safari and my husband uses Firefox, just in case you were wondering. We frequently argue about which one is superior.

I’m going to bed now, can’t. look. at. the. computer. any. longer.

Today my sister came by to take me to the un-named book store that she works for so I could use her discount to buy the new knitting mag, Knit.1. While we were out we stopped by Big Lots to check out their deals. There we bought various kinds of crackers, enchilosa, Knudsen sparkling apple cider for $.99 each and some Little Debbie Snack Cakes.

After that we went to Hobby Lobby to get a bamboo handle for my new purse that I’m knitting.

On the way home we indulged in a Little Debbie Snack Cake and of course we had to share with the kids. I try to limit their intake of sugar, so any kind of sugar that they may get their little grubby hands on, they devour. Honor fell asleep on the way home and this is how he looked when I went to get him out of the car seat.

I wonder what he’s dreaming about?