I want chocolate. I'd probably settle for baking chocolate... which is not good... if I wasn't currently sugar free. I've been OK until today and now I WANT ALL THE SUGAR BUT MOSTLY CHOCOLATE. Want.

*ahem*

I can attribute this craving to several things. One being hormones, and also that I am sick with an achy body and sore throat. Secondly, three of the kids are also sick. Third, we had about a million and three things scheduled this week and it's just annoying to not feel well and deal with grumpy kids who also do not feel well. In my last blog I was talking about Miss L and how sweet and loving she is. Well, in the true spirit of a three year old, she has been a holy terror this week. JUST TODAY she tried to drink the honey bottle while hiding under the kitchen table so I couldn't see her (I could), she pee'd on ... everything... she didn't take a nap, she poured her entire cup of water on the couch and also filled up the cup holders, and she pushed the step stool over to my spice cabinet, climbed up on the counter and took out my Halloween sprinkles and helped herself to the orange sugar variety.
 All over my couch.

Um... I don't know who ate those sprinkles...

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On the upside, D isn't working overtime at work and it is kind of ridiculous how short a 40 hour work week feels after months upon months (years?) of overtime. The nutty cat seems to have mostly calmed down and is happier now that he's outside. We got good and bad news at the vet about Penny. Good news is she doesn't have cancer or a tumor, but the bad news is that she does have liver failure and we're not sure why. So, she's on special medicine and food but right now she seems to be doing well except for thwarting me at every turn when I try to get her to take her pills twice a day.
Things I've tried:
hiding pills in treats
hiding pills in food including cheese, hot dogs, peanut butter, lunch meat & anything else I thought she'd eat
smashing up pills in dry food, wet food and people food
shoving pills down her throat and hoping she swallows them, then shoving them down again when she spits them out

Things that have worked:
Shoving pills down her throat repeatedly.

It's fun.

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 I'm also trying to book a summer vacation for a family reunion type thing and since we weren't really planning to take a summer vacation (remember Disney? That took all our vacation money.) it's proving difficult to find somewhere we can afford. If we DON'T go, I will hear crap about it forever... but we also have to make at least two other trips this year and hello? Six people on one income here. I have a feeling that we won't end up going at all, and YES I DO want to go to the beach, but sometimes being a grown up means not spending money you don't have, so yeah.

Did I mention I really want some chocolate?

sweet, sick, pets, ears & v-day

* Miss L is in a phase where she still has that baby voice but says grown up things and makes my heart thump a little louder. She's so sweet (when she feels like it) and randomly says, "I wuv you!" and "Sanks!" (thanks) to things. Of course she's also sassy as heck, and dramatic and bossssssssy. She's my pal though; a total mama's girl.

* Pet drama is abounding right now. Remember when our cat started beating up our other cat? Well, we eventually re-homed the victim cat because nothing we tried was successful and we were all miserable. (especially victim cat) Things were fine for several months, but now crazy-screw-loose cat has turned on the dog. I don't know what we are going to do about it, but the vet said that sometimes indoor-only cats get a little nuts and take their aggression out on inappropriate targets. So, for now we are letting him explore the back yard in hopes that actually being outside would help. So far it's not helping. He seems more aggressive than before. Poor Penny is petrified of him.
Speaking of Penny, I took her to the vet yesterday for annual shots and when they ran her blood work they found her liver enzymes were through-the-roof high. So, for now Penny is on 7.5 pills a day, and next week she's getting an x-ray and then we'll decide where to go from there, depending on what they find. Words like tumor and mass were thrown around and the vet was very concerned so that does not comfort me. She's almost 9, but I admit I thought she was in good health. (Besides being heartworm + which we already knew and are treating.)
Oh, and I couldn't even tell D the cost. He didn't want to know and that is definitely a good thing. Too bad we can't take money out of our health care savings account to pay for pet care. *sigh*

* I'm sick. Again. We had a pretty good run of good health after Christmas, so I guess it was bound to happen. This has been a rough winter for me. Ever since I got sick with pneumonia in Aug/Sept I have been sick off and on.

* D's ear got torn during rugby last week and he kept saying it felt weird inside. I convinced him to go to the ENT and turns out he ruptured his ear drum. How hard do you have to get hit to rupture your ear drum? Stupid rugby.

* Valentine's Day is coming... and I can't get into it this year. I usually have all sorts of sweet ideas cooked up for D and the kids but this year I'm just going through the motions. I know it's not cool to like Valentine's Day, but I DO. (usually)
I got the kids each a tiny box of chocolates and D some shirts. I bought plain old cards in a box for their school parties. I saw some cute ideas on Pinterest, but 32 valentines for $3 just can't be beat. Easy and cheap.

Apprehensive

I was apprehensive about going to Disney World, to say the least. Taking four young kids anywhere is a job in and of itself, so I was nervous. I did end up getting Safety Tattoos and those suckers stayed on and made me feel a bit better if anyone happened to wander off. (Spoiler: No one did.)

Anyway... we had an AMAZING time! The kids were really good, the weather was fantastic and everything went pretty smoothly. Seeing the wonder and excitement in them was like a week full of Christmas mornings!
No wonder people go to Disney all the time. I mean, when I went without kids I truly didn't understand it, but now? I totally get it.

We had planned to go to Magic Kingdom for 2 of our 4 days, but we ended up riding/seeing 95% of the things we had planned to in only one day so we changed our plans and headed to Epcot for our last day.
Besides the 4 Disney parks, we also went to Downtown Disney and the LEGO store was the highlight of that day. We toured the Orlando Science Center on another day "off" and swam and played mini golf at the resort on our other off days.  We only ate out a few times since we had a full kitchen in our condo, but the highlight of our food adventures were Rainforest Cafe (ribs. yum) and Chevy's (chipotle cream sauce on enchiladas? Yes please!).

I'm not big on huge crowds of people, and it was much more crowded than I hoped, although this is supposed to be a slow time of year, so that was the only thing that was a disappointment. However, it's Disney so I somewhat expected that!
Miss L was still too short to ride a lot of the bigger stuff, but being that a LOT of things scare her right now, I think it's just as well. (I don't like most rides anyway, so it wasn't a sacrifice to stay behind with her.) I was glad we waited until she was 3. There were no diapers to deal with, no potty training issues, and no one melted down if we missed naps - which we did 7 of the days were in Florida. haha
I can definitely see us going back, although we'll need 2-3 years to save up for it again!
Highlights in picture, below: