It helps that my left blinker doesn't work and I carry a paintball gun for protection.

This will be my first post form the great state of Kansas (I will be posting a plethora of pictures later, including the largest cross in the western hemisphere. I can tell you are already salivating but I have to find my camera cord first). It is cold, windy, and road construction prevents me from turning left…EVER. I live very near the ghetto and I am pretty sure that someone was kidnapped from the mall that is about 7 minutes up the road from us on the day before Christmas (they found her alive later that same day). There are no turn lanes and I had to take a toll road to get here.

In short, I think I like it here. I have been to the mall twice (I usually avoid the mall like the plague because of my many littuns but my husband has been off work since we got here and I am leaving all of them with him every chance I get. It’s called payback and he has a lot of it coming.). They have a pretzel place and everything is on clearance (it is like heaven for a frugal shopper like myself).

It is chilly when the wind blows but I have a very stylish down feather jacket that makes me look skinny and I do love to wear sweaters. When the wind doesn’t blow, it is actually quite nice. The sun doesn’t melt the average human who mistakenly steps into it. I could get used to it.

We have only been to church once but it seems really cool. The ward is small but friendly and they all seem really nice. I wonder how long it will take me to tick one or all of them off. Not that I am trying, it just happens to be a common side effect of my being.

The one down side is those darn tornados. The weather has been so erratic that I have already not slept thorough one of those warnings. Nothing happened but just the warnings are enough to frazzle a mother with no rope (I have formulated a foolproof emergency plan that requires duct tape, a length of rope, candles, and a cement room with 6 outlets. More on that later).

I have also been alerted to the best eatery in the Wichita Metro area (This is super important to a chubby girl). It is called Freddie’s Frozen Custard. I have not yet enjoyed the custard (it is freezing as I mentioned before) but the fries are better then bacon and the burgers are yummy. I am sure this joint will kill me with clogged arteries but it might just be worth it.

This place has also had a very desirable effect on my husband as well. Since he has been here (he got here in September) he sent me flowers (2nd time in 11 years) and he wasn’t even in any specific trouble (I have been a little grouchy being a single mom of 5 for so long but that was more a continual state). Then, for our 11th anniversary, he got me diamond earrings (Generally I am not a girlie-girl who would enjoy or even wear bling of any kind but this was surprisingly pleasing to me. I might have a little girlie streak in me after all) and they are real. I was sure that spending real amounts of money on anything that is not technological might literally kill him. It is a nice development of a more then stressful moving process.

I invite any and all to come and visit (you might have to wait until some of our crap is put away or burned). We are centrally located and willing to be a pit sop on a much longer journey. I will take you to Freddie’s and show you my ghetto. Spring is prime tornado time so, depending on if you are a thrill seeker or not, you might want to plan accordingly.

For those of you who know me and care, my phone number is the same for now but will be changing eventually and I will let you know when it does. If any of you out there want my address drop me an email and I will get it to you ASAP.

Until next time, I hope that all of you had a Very Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year. I feel that my family is and has been very blessed and I wish the same for each of you. I promise that you will have a wonderful year if you look for the good and laugh about the bad (after you are done crying a little if that helps). Plenty of faith and a good sense of humor will change your life if you let it.

Love to All,
Katy

No, it's not what you think. What you are seeing is pride.

I am so completely pleased with me. Why? Because I usually make ID badge lanyards for the kid's teachers for Christmas (I figure they have enough soap) but this year Lou has a teacher that has taught one of my kiddos before and therefore has her lanyard so I got creative and this is what I made for her. I hope she likes it because I was so pleased that I almost decided to keep it to show off my massive skills.


OK, so maybe the picture isn't great but I still have the pride and pleasure of accomplishment and ingenuity. What do you think?

Merry Christmas - Carroll Style (as in my family not the music of the holidays)

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

What are we celebrating? It doesn't really matter to me (I will be there with my glow stick and blinkie flashlight in 15 minutes flat).

I love parades. I don’t exactly know why this is. I just know that it is so. This may seem like a strange statement to some of you but keep in mind who the stater is.

The thing about parades is that they have no designated place or purpose. They can happen anywhere at any time. That is what is so wonderful about parades. You want to celebrate a victory? Have a parade. You want to show off your car? Have a parade. You have buckets of left over confetti or ginormous cartoon shaped balloons? Parade. I love parades.

It is not even enough to say that I love them because it is really so much more. I will go and sit in the street on my tush to watch people pull their pets (whom they have dressed up in adorable costumes) in the back of a radio flyer wagon. (I enjoy it more when the owners are dressed up like the pets) But plenty of people will do that. What sets me apart is that I don’t have to like what is being paraded. I think people who dress their pets up are a little scary (no offense to any of you that choose to participate. I am not judging just cautioning that you might not want to include me in that part of your life.) but I will not only go to that parade, I will show up early to get a good seat and push little kids out of my way so that I get an unobstructed view and can take as many pictures as my camera will allow.

Why is this you ask? I HAVE NO IDEA!!! If you must know this is a recent discovery about myself. It has always been so; I just couldn’t pinpoint it until now.

This past Saturday, I was dropping my beloved off at the airport when I got a call from my sister in law. It was an invitation to the Tempe Fantasy of Lights Parade. I changed every imagined plan and priority I had that night to sit and watch Girl Scouts wrapped in Christmas lights march down the street pulling the generator they were plugged into (bear in mind that I am moving in 19 days and have not even come close to packing or cleaning up me or my 5 children and I have to do it all by myself). It was not only Girl Scouts. There was also a garbage truck wrapped in lights and some horse drawn carriages. It was so much fun. I whopped and hollered, waved and cheered. I just about when crazy when Sherriff Joe rolled by in sort of a Humve tank thing. I just love parades.

Some day I hope to be in a really big and legitimized parade. I have made the occasional appearance in the odd Halloween Costume parade and I have been known to do the bunny hop (which is sort of a parade (another thing that is so great about parades, you can parade any which way you want)) but I aspire to do something bigger. I want to ride on a bumpy, creatively constructed, highly flammable, plastic float while throwing candy and waving at on-lookers. I think the super bowl of all parades is the one that rolls through Disneyland. What I wouldn’t give to dress up like a princess and dance down Main Street.

Some of you who have read my writings before might think that I am being critical or sarcastic, but that is not at all the case. I am dead serious. This is just another one of those quirky things that makes me uniquely me (aka: crazy as a loon).

I Love Parades!!!

GoeCashing (It's like treasure hunting for dorks to find junk that is worthless in places that are hard to find for a reason.) Goodtimes!!!

We really do love doing this. I recommend that everyone try it but dress for the search. This one was hidden right next to the mall about 20 feet from the homeless man's winter home. I found it.

What I spent my Black Friday Money on this year (I totally didn't get a good deal. $300 used to buy so much more.)

There was a tooth involved as well, but that cost me extra. The tooth Fairy apparently pays a premium for trauma. On the upside I not only got the stitches, but the most expensive stuffed bear and High School Musical pom poms money can buy.

Grand Canyon and Train

Disney World

There is 1 thing you should NEVER mess with (well I'm sure that there are more but I am upity now!!!)...

Normally I am a pretty light person (in relation to humor and tenor of my thoughts. Not when it comes to gravity as in weight. I am not delusional) but I have hit my limit. I have had enough of this stupid election. I have decided to do what I can to teach and protect my family and wait patiently with my gun for the second coming.

What has brought this on (you ask)? I have listened to the rhetoric and watched the mud slinging. I have cowered in fear of Michelle Obama and frozen in disbelief at the miss match of the McCain’s (she is an easy 81/2 with all that money and he is teetering near a 5). I have listened and heard nothing again and again in the boring liberally slanted debates and heard enough about Palin’s wardrobe (she looks fabulous by the way). But when they continually preempt my prime time TV I really get ticked off.

It was bad enough when they did it with the debates, but that was a national thing where both parties got equal time to make me long for Canadian citizenship. But now I have to sit through Obama’s 30 minute commercial!!??!

This Wednesday on CBS, NBC, and Fox Obama has bought the 7 to 7:30 time slot for his 30 minute commercial. I thought he wasn’t an actor, why is he messing with my viewing schedule? I am sick and tired of taking political and life advise from attractive high school drop outs that can’t stay married for more than 2 minutes and don’t know who their baby’s daddy is whose only true ability is reading someone else’s words while mugging for the camera (I mean actors). I watch network primetime because I want to go numb and live in someone else’s world for just a little while. Why is Obama trying to rob me of that joy on top of my right to have a gun and the ability to keep and spend my own money? I just want to laugh and veg.

Admittedly, Wednesday is a weak night on the boob tube but it is the principal of the matter. When I want news, I watch at 5pm. When I want entertainment, I watch at 7 pm (unless I am in one of those funny places where things air at 6 and 8 and up is down).

So I declare, here and now that, because of the continual TV disruption (and the fact that he is a grossly under qualified, semi-socialist with loyalty and ethical issues, that is intent on blaming the current administration and his opponent for problems brought about by his party, constituents, and the current Democratic congress, who solves problems by raising taxes, coddling the minority, and indentured servitude to China), I am voting for McCain/Palin. I will also be watching ABC who is showing Pushing Daisies instead of the purchased brainwashing drool. I further intend to buy everything that is advertised during that first half hour and I will purchase 50% of my Christmas presents and all of my children’s Halloween costumes at The Disney Store (Disney owns ABC).

I know that not all of you will share my passion on this subject but I tend to take it personally when you go fiddling with my Prime Time viewing schedule willy nilly. He is just really lucky he didn’t choose Thursday for his little infomercial. The crap would have really hit the fan then.

Later. For Now Long Live Mickey Mouse!!!!

Can I get an AMEN? How about a big Cheer? OK, why don't you just talk amongst yourselves (I could use the distraction)?

It is 9:30 and my house is quiet. This is a phenomon (especially since the medicine cabinet wasn’t involved). I have a rare moment when there is nothing on TV and I am not in the mood for anything I’ve Tivoed (like how I just made that a verb and you all know what I’m talking about) when I can just sit and realize that the quiet kind of freaks me out.

I cannot be sure, but I think that I am allergic to quiet (there is probably a pill I could take for that). When it is quiet I feel like there is something that I need to do. Something that I am neglecting so I often go looking for it (maybe I should try to keep my house quiet more often. I might actually loose some weigh from getting up off the couch in my search).

Growing up in a house with 10 strong (and by strong, I mean really loud) personalities, I don’t know that I ever really knew quiet. That unaquantiance (if that is a word) continued on through college when I always had a roommate or two (if you count the horse) and never lived alone. Then I got married and started popping out little noise makers, and have effectively avoided contact with quiet all together. Even when we were in the same vicinity, I think I drove silence away (consciously or not) with the sound of my own voice (talking to others or singing. I have not graduated to talking to myself yet).

I am not afraid of the silence (they say the Spirit dwells there but, having always had noise, I think the Spirit is OK with a little mood music or background noise) but it is kind of sad and empty. I am used to the babbling of babies, the giggles (or wails) of children and, especially in AZ, the swooshing of the AC but there is nothing. I think I prefer the bustle, simply because I soothes me. Maybe I just like to feel like I am not alone (I am never alone but when it is quiet in my world there are usually 4 kids doing something they are not supposed to be doing which means there will soon be an abundance of work for me) and I am comforted when there is sound. I can’t even sleep in the silence. I need a noisy Honeywell fan to create “white noise” (that might just be to block out the whispers of children that refuse to fall asleep until well after the old fogies in my house need to retire).

It is weird, but I have never really thought of the quiet. I have thought about most everything else (because I have a large brain that never seems to turn off) but since I have never known quiet, I have never thought about it. I used to associate it with peace but I have known peace and quiet is not it. But, in this quiet, I have realized that people have their own truths.

Some believe that a clean house equals a happy peaceful house. That is a big steaming load of crap. My truth is that a clean house equals an uptight and grouchy mom and the eternal banishment of potato chips. Some people think that cluttered equals messy but that is also a fly attracting mass. In my world cluttered equals life, progression, and 3 kids in school who bring home heaps of papers and “art” every day. There are also those who think that rising early is a great way to start the day. In my world, you could die if you get to close to me in the morning before I have decided sleep has left me for good. Especially since I have only been able to shut my eyes for 10 minutes because I have 5 nosiy children bound and determined to make their lives harder by keeping me up all night and waking me up right after I have fallen asleep in the morning. These are the truths I have realized in the quiet.

Oh thank goodness. There goes the AC. I am off to watch last week’s The Office.

Looking For A Comfy Corner of the Loony Bin (and maybe a some cute Scrapbook page ideas)

I think that it is well established that I have a few problems. No your normal run of the mill everyday problems (I mean I have quite a few of those as well but that is not the type I am talking about) but real deep seeded emotional/psychological problems. Those of you that know me are thinking, “Well Katy we have known that for a while now. What’s your point?” But I think that I could surprise even some of you die hard Katy supporters.

For starters, I just re-realized that I have a very addictive personality. I’m not into drugs and alcohol but it is evident in other areas of my mundane life. I have a Tivo with 165 hours of memory and I spent an hour this morning deciding what must see program I could sacrifice to record Diego for my 3 year old so that he would get in the bath without a screaming fight. I have 165 hours of shows, some of which have been recorded since July and are still waiting to be viewed, and I couldn’t find one program that I was willing to delete for my baby. In the end I busted out the VCR (Do any of you remember what those are?). We are not even 2 weeks into the prime time premiers and I have a solid weekend of nonstop TV to watch so that I have room without a panic attack. I really believe that my life might implode if I miss even one episode of the Biggest Loser (Save your comments). I know that most networks put episodes online so I can watch them there but not The Biggest Loser and when you have repressed fears about being a super fat person trapped in a chubby lady’s body, it is dangerous to miss even one minute (It could push me from chubby to tubby and I can’t go there right now. I just bought a new pair of jeans). Another example issue is that I have managed to fill up half of my new external hard drive (250Gigs filled) with digital scrapbooking kits. I just keep downloading and downloading. I can’t even stop myself. Don’t get me wrong, I have made quite a few really nice pages, but 12 or 15 cute pages doesn’t require 250 G (or GB. I hope that most of you understand that to mean Gigabytes) of crap. I am not exactly sure how much crap that is because I don’t really know a ton about computer and electronic information measurements of volume but, from the way my husband reprimands me, it must be a ton of junk.

I am also pretty sure that I have OCD. Not a ton, just a little. If you have ever watched me fold my laundry you will understand this claim. I am the type of enterprising person that sells things on eBay to earn a little extra money (that is not the problem). What makes me crazy is that once I have it listed, I sit and watch it for hours knowing, in my brain, that nothing is going to happen. I don’t limit my obsessive watching to the last few minutes of the auction either. I start at the beginning (darn those visit counters. Notice I put one on my blog. I am a glutton for punishment). Some of you might not think that this is crazy but it has spread. I am in the process of selling my house right now. Yesterday we had a couple come and look at it. I left the house to make them more comfortable to take their time. I had a ton of errands to run and not enough time to get it all done so you would think that I was off doing that. No. We crazies sit in our cars parked up the street so that we can get a look at the strangers walking through our houses and see how long they stay (a nice looking older couple in an Audi with Idaho plates that stayed for 30 minutes). Yes, I sat there for 30 minutes watching (thank goodness for DVD players in cars). What is wrong with me? Not that it all has to do with crazy non-stalking that looks like creepy weird stalking. I also cannot relax when I know that every light and fan in my house is on. I once tried to leave and not worry but I had to drive the 15 minutes back to my house to turn everything off and then go back 15 minutes to the store (I am counting the time it takes to get my kids in and out of the car and then stop for a big gulp to calm my nerves). It is just another something that us crazies do.

My current living situation has just managed to exacerbate my issues. I can already feel the building anxiety that I have let my pantry and freezer get so low. Just writing about it makes me fidgety.

Deep Breath. Deep Breath.

I hope that this has not scared any of you off. I am a good person but even good people are crazy (I know most of you so don’t even bother denying it). All I know is that the nutty need to stick together (I am in no way intending to offend those with peanut allergies.) if we want to survive.

Have a nice day.

Growing Girls and Smelly Cows. Did I mention that my house is for sale?

As some of you know because I may have mentioned it (or not. I really can’t remember what I write and I don’t really care enough to read back through my stuff because I already read it once.) we are attempting to move.

To shake the monsoon dust off our boots and blow this dairy town (that is really funny because when the monsoons come in they blow up this gigantic wall of dust and so it is dusty. Also we live very close to Gilbert, AZ and no matter where you are in Gilbert you smell the sweet scent of cow manure blowing off the Dairy. I am so cleaver).

We now have our house on the market and I know that some of you are dying to see the type of squalor I’m living in (either that or you have seen it and are wondering if it is ever clean) so I snapped some photos for you. I might have to add a few on anoth blog post today. So, if you care, look for those. I am not a professional but you get the general idea. So if any of you know someone who is in need of a lovely domicile outside of Phoenix feel free to let me (or them) know.

Also my beautiful little bundle of baby girl joy has just hit her 4 month mark and some of you don’t care enough to come and see her in person so I will post some pictures of her. I should be mad at you for not being here but a baby this cute needs to be seen by everyone so they can awe at her loveliness and be sad that their babies aren’t quite up to snuff. (Too much again? Sorry, like I said, I do get a little passionate and tend to go overboard. But look at the pictures. Can you blame me?)