Food pantries

Quick little post!  Last night, I went to the MomsLA Holiday party, where we were asked to bring food for Westside Food Bank.  I went through our cabinets and came up with a whole box of stuff, which I then promptly FORGOT on the kitchen table, and showed up at the party empty-handed!  Whoops! :(

But all is not lost because I remembered that UCLA is still doing their food drive until December 14, and they've made it very easy for you to donate.  There are several locations around campus and some of them don't even require getting out of your car! I will be heading to parking kiosk #2 this morning with my box.  Here is more info if you are a Westsider and want to donate there:

Map of drop-off locations:
http://map.ais.ucla.edu/go/1003466

Of course, the food banks are in need all year, not just now!  But let's take this holiday season of excessive shopping and merriment, to especially remember those who are struggling just to get their next meal, and would not care if, say, the Annie's Organic Macaroni and Cheese was accidentally the green box instead of the purple box.  (Ahem, Lauren!)

Oh, and even without me, MomsLA still managed to fill 3 bins of donations, what generous bloggers!

Guest Post from my Dad: Christmas Hints 1 Through 10

This is from an email my dad sent to the family:

Coming from a large family, I picked up a few helpful hints for saving money at Christmas over the years. I thought I would share them with you...

 

    1.  E-mail each of your relatives individually and tell them that we had a drawing of names for Christmas gift-giving at Thanksgiving. Then tell each one that they got your name.

 

     2.  If you are sending Christmas cards, address them to yourself and write the name of the intended recipient on the return address part of the envelope.  Then don't put a stamp on it.

It will be returned to sender for postage and you'll save a lot in postage.

 

      3.  Find a store that offers free Christmas wrapping and buy the biggest item they have.  Have it wrapped for Christmas.  When you get home, unwrap it and return the item to the store.  You will have enough wrapping paper and ribbon for all the rest of the gifts.

 

       4.  Never buy live trees until after Christmas. On Christmas morning, tell your kids or grand kids that Christmas is still a few days away.  Then go out and get a bargain on an unsold tree.

This works really well if you keep them off the phone and away from their friends for a few days before Christmas.

 

       5.  Gather the little ones and read them Santa's obituary a couple of days before Christmas. You will lower their expectations and save on toy purchases.

 

       6.  Drop subtle hints with people for a month or so before the holiday.  For example, I sign most of my e-mails to vendors and colleagues with "Jim S., shirt size 17 X 35" Or "Jim S., who uses Titleist Pro Vx golf balls." 

 

        7.  Whenever a vendor at work asks for my address to send the staff a holiday basket, I give him the name and address of a friend who I want to remember at Christmas.

I simply ask them to write "From Jim" on the card.

 

        8. To get out of assembling that big, artificial tree you store in the garage for 48 weeks out of the year, simply tell the wife that the rats got into it.  Women hate rats.  They hate to have anything in their house that is remotely associated with rats.  You won't have to spend the day putting all those color-coded branches in the stem and fluffing the boughs and spacing the lights.

 

         9.  Gather all the little kids in the house a day or so before the big night and tell them that Santa won't bring them anything unless they leave a case of Budweiser and a roast beef sandwich on rye with lettuce and mayonnaise.

 

        10.  For a really fun-filled Christmas morning, sneak downstairs the night before and switch all of the tags on the gifts.

 

      I hope these suggestions will brighten your holidays.  If not, may a sacred camel leave a holy relic under your pillow.

 

love,

Jimmy who wears size L golf shirts

 

Homework Help

Willie decides he is tired of all this homework talk, so he's just going to help "Tister" do it himself!

But seriously, I do think she has way too many assignments. When I was in kindergarten, I don't remember having much, if any, homework. And if we did, it was probably something simple like "come back and tell us something in your house that starts with 'A'."

These nights, Lauren usually has to read for 5-10 minutes, practice "high frequency word" flashcards, do 2 pages of math worksheets, 2 pages of "word" worksheets. Tonight's were "circle the pictures that show a short i sound" and "trace, cut out "w-h-y and write a sentence using the word 'why' ". I wish she had written "WHY is there so much homework?" or "Why couldn't I be playing right now or doing anything else except this?".

And don't even get me started on the math homework. Because I did not understand the directions and had to have her skip one of the pages until Ryan got home. Even he had to read it several times before this sunk in: "Have children: 1-2 trace a line from each cube in the first column to each cube in the second column, count and trace each number, then circle the number that is greater; 3-4 repeat and then circle the number that is less."

KINDERGARTEN, people! Can't wait until a few years from now when she comes home and asks me to help her conjugate French verbs. Sheesh!

William's favorite bean pancakes: a recipe in photos

Happy BIrthday William!

Obligatory Halloween photos

Didn't get good shots of the kids this year (see yesterday's post) but I am posting these anyway so you can see Dorothy, and William wearing his "Great Pumpkin" T-shirt. He had his beagle costume on in the morning for half a second.

Last shot is something amusing from last week's farmers' market!

You Should See the Other Guy

This is the kind of thing where, if I were the nanny I'd be fired. While watching William today, he crawled over and pulled himself up to stand, using our nightstand like he's done many times before. Should have seen this as a hazard, but all the other times, it was sturdy. Only this time, he pulled the entire thing down to the floor, on top of himself.

He was screaming and when I pulled it off of him, at first I did not even notice the cuts by his eye, I was just focused on his leg being crushed. (The leg is fine.) Then there was that unmistakeable iron smell of blood, and I noticed my shirt was bloodied. I took him to the doctor and at first she thought it needed stitches but upon closer examination, found that it was not very deep. So she prescribed special antibiotic cream that can go near the eye. Probably good stuff to have on hand for future injuries that I'm sure will happen.

Meanwhile, this little bruiser is getting extra snuggles from his parents and "Lo", as he calls Lauren. I was supposed to go to my office this afternoon for an important meeting with my boss and her boss, but I had to cancel. If ever a baby needed his mama, this was the day. He's been pretty happy with all of the extra attention, and I even let him stay up late and took him to Trader Joe's in the Ergo, so he fell asleep nestled against me. Which was pretty nice.

Probably does not need to be stated, but Lauren never toppled furniture before. At least I can't remember any times that she was rushed to the doctor with injuries, other than the one time she cut her wrist. So William's living up to that stereotypical boy energy.

The funny thing is, yesterday was Halloween, and he had his beagle costume on for about 5 minutes, kept trying to pull it off and was generally miserable.  So I let him wear his "Great Pumpkin" T-shirt and that's about as dressed-up as he got.  But I could not take pictures of either outfit because I was holding him and the camera.  When I set him down to get a shot, he crawled into some dirt and got filthy.  So under pressure from the grandparents wanting to see his first Halloween, I was going to secretly dress him up again this afternoon and reenact it for the camera.  But now I  will never get a believable shot because yesterday his eye looked just fine.