Sego Lily Bogger Contest

Sego Lily Day Spa is having a contest for the ultimate blogger. The winner receives a spa treatment every month for a year and gets to blog about it. What a great idea!! This sounds like the perfect job for me. Here's to hoping that this is the winning entry!

Mommy Needs a Time Out

On any given day, I find myself muttering the same words: "Mommy needs a time out." As the mother of twin toddlers it is rare to get a moment of peace. Even my bathroom breaks are interrupted by four little hands banging on the door, anxiously awaiting my return so that they can wrap their sticky little fingers around mine and pull me in different directions. I know how important it is to take time for oneself. But often times it seems like that is an impossible feat.

For instance, one day I decided to indulge myself with a long, hot bath while the twins were napping. When I walked in the bathroom, I found this: My unread magazine ripped to shreds and thrown in the tub. "Mommy needs a time out." I bet Sego Lily Day Spa doesn’t have magazine pages floating around in the healing waters of their tubs. Just aromatic, vegan bath salts. Ooooh. . .I think I can feel them effervescing already!

Another day—as I was quickly trying to moisturize, pluck and apply a dash of makeup—my dynamic duo somehow managed to tip the mirror in our bedroom over. It hit the bedpost, shattered and landed on top of my little girl. Thankfully, she came away unscathed. Scared, but unscathed. “Mommy needs a time out.” I can’t think of a better way to spend that time out than receiving Sego Lily’s Signature Facial from a licensed aesthetician. An entire hour dedicated to nourishing and rejuvenating my skin? That’s unheard of. In fact, I don’t think anyone has told me that my skin glowed since my honeymoon.

And speaking of my wonderful husband. . .
All day long I look forward to sitting down to dinner and having and adult conversation with him. More often than not, however, our dinner conversation is served with a side of text messages and phone calls from his job. The constant clicking of his fingers on the keys is one of my biggest stressors. Sometimes I feel like I am the mother of twin toddlers and a teenage son! "Mommy needs a time out. With Daddy." "Are you ready to order sir?" "Yes, the lady will start off with the cell-phone free halls of Sego Lily Day Spa. And for our main course, we will have a tandem massage in the new Couple’s Suite."

I have many goals and dreams for my life. One is to keep my sanity in the wake of twin toddlers. Another is to establish some credibility as a freelance writer. And, of course, I would love to have my own personal cabana boy to rub me down when I’m tense, feed me frozen grapes and fan me with palm leaves. Sadly, I will probably never attain the latter. Winning the Sego Lily Day Spa Blogger Contest, however, would be almost as good (if not better) because I could kill two birds with one of their Rocky Mountain Stone Massages, so to speak. I find writing very therapeutic. So having the opportunity to not only enjoy some of the most luxurious treatments from Sego Lily’s menu of services, but also write about my experience will help me keep my sanity and build my writing resume. And that, my friends, is why I should be the Sego Lily Blogger!

March Madness

It’s official! Selection Sunday has arrived and the upsets are just around the corner. Andy lives for March Madness. I remember one year when he had to work on Selection Sunday. I called him at work and held the phone up to the TV so that he could hear in real time where the teams were seeded. His enthusiasm got me hooked as well. We are both very excited to see how the tournament unfolds each year.

I’m just hoping that we can enjoy the games a little more this year than we did last year. Some of you may remember me talking about our Trip from Hell last year. I didn’t blog it because I just wanted to forget it ever happened. But time heals all wounds and I can laugh about it now. Quite a few of our friends and family traveled to Denver to watch some of the first round games. We had been looking forward to it for months! But our trip turned out to be totally crappy. Literally and figuratively. The twins were just 8-1/2 months old at the time. They didn’t seem to like their new environment the first 2 nights and cried and cried. I pulled maybe 2 hours of sleep each night. Then on Thursday, Makenzie rewarded me for staying home from the games with her by puking her butternut squash all over me. Less than 30 minutes later it was exploding out the other end. Friday it was my turn to puke. Friday night. . .Brayden's. And Saturday it caught up with Andy. So, needless to say, neither one of us could go to the games on Saturday. I didn't want to leave sick babies with a sitter and Andy could barely form a sentence. We gave one of our tickets to our nephew and the other to our friend Mandi who was going to babysit. Before the first game was even over, Andy's sister and and nephew threw up in the arena and had to come home. While they were being driven home, Andy's brother threw up at the arena. But he was stuck there because they only took one car. By Sunday night 9 out of the 15 people that were there had gotten sick. And they all blamed us because Makenzie was the first to get sick. Good times!

And, if that isn't bad enough. . .

On the way home, we stopped in Laramie for lunch. But my dear husband didn't want to fill up the car there because they didn't have a Conoco. I don't know why he is so loyal to Conoco, but he is. Anyway, he said we had enough gas to get to Rawlins. Which we would've if the wind wasn't blowing. But we had 45+ mph winds the whole way. So instead of getting 18 mpg, we only got about 10. Our gas light went on in the middle of no where! I have never been so stressed in my life. That's all we needed was to run out of gas in Wyoming with two sick babies in the car! Anyway, we kept driving and saw a sign for gas. So we got off the freeway in Arlington, WY. Ever heard of it? Me neither. But guess what? It was Easter and the gas station was closed. The sign said that the next services were 39 miles away. We knew we'd never make it that far so we called AAA. I was sooo mad! I think my tongue was bleeding from biting it so hard. But yelling at him wasn't going to make things any better. So we were sitting there waiting for AAA when a sheriff came along. He told us there was another gas station 12 miles up the road in some other Podunk town and gave us an escort there. Our tank holds 18 gallons and we pumped in 17.7. I could hear on the way there that the twins had filled their diapers, so I went inside to change them in the bathroom. Of course, there was no changing table so I had to change them on the floor. It didn't look like it had been mopped since 1974. When I went to wash my hands afterwards there was a big sign above the sink that said not to drink the water. Now tell me, if you can't drink it, how safe is it to wash your hands in it? GROSS!

The Reel World

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there lived a girl named Melinda who loved to go to the movies. Her husband managed a movie theater and they would go watch something almost every week. There were times when they actually watched more than one movie on the same day. Those were the years BC (Before Children).

Now, in the years AD (After DaTwins) her cinematic life has changed drastically. She considers herself lucky if she sees just one movie each month. Of the multitude of movies released in 2008, she only saw 13! And of those 13, only 8 of them were in theaters. Nevertheless, here are her pics and pans from 2008.

The Best

1. Slumdog Millionaire - I loved this movie because it was smart, funny, and most importantly, ORIGINAL! It was very refreshing in a day and age when every idea is recycled and remade.
   
2. The Dark Knight – I’m not a huge fan of superhero movies, but this was great from beginning to end. Heath Ledger’s performance was brilliant. And I’m really glad that Katie Holmes passed on this movie because Maggie Gylenhall was sooo much better in the role. As with all action movies, however, they overdid the special effects a bit. Driving a motorcycle up a wall, doing a flip and landing it square on both tires? Pah-lease!
   
3. Sex and The City – I was skeptical that 6 years after the series ended it would be hard to make a good movie from the franchise. But I was pleasantly surprised at what wonderful job this movie did of portraying the intricacies and intimacies of different relationships in a realistic, yet entertaining manor.
   
4. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – While a completely different movie than Slumdog Millionaire, I enjoyed Miss Pettigrew for the same reasons. It was smart, funny and ORIGINAL!
   
5. Marley and Me – You don’t have to be a pet owner to appreciate this movie.

The Worst

1. Tropic Thunder – The only redeeming factor to this terrible movie was a fat, balding Tom Cruise dancing to gangster rap.
   
2. Made of Honor – I’m sorry Dr. McDreamy. I loved you back when you were just a baby-faced geek in Can’t Buy Me Love. But nothing could buy my love for this movie.

The Rest (In no particular order)

• Baby Mama – Funny and Smart. ‘Twas the year of Tina Fey.
• What Happens in Vegas – Predictable, but still funny and entertaining.
• Eagle Eye – This movie seemed like a mediocre version of Enemy of the State.
• Vantage Point - This movie had potential, but I got tired of seeing the same event over and over again.
• Four Christmases – Entertaining.
• 27 Dresses – A fun chick-flick.

I still really want to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Rachel Getting Married. If I had seen them, I suspect at least one of them would have made it into my top five. I guess I’ll just have to wait until they come to a Redbox near me!

Happy Birthday. . .errr Valentine's Day

We hope everyone enjoyed their Valentine's festivities yesterday. We had a lot of fun making Valentine's and playing many games of "Hide the Hearts." The twins love playing this game with whatever item happens to be in season. Of course, I could only get one of them to smile in the picture after they found all of the hearts. Standard.

And now for a new feature we'll call Melinda is Losing her Mind. I found the perfect card for Andy while I was on a rare shopping trip without the twins. I was so excited! But when I got it home and started to write on it I noticed it said "Happy Birthday" on the inside, not "Valentine's Day." What in the world was doing mixed in with all the mushy V-Day cards? Stupid store! Oh well, I still really liked the card so I crossed out "Birthday" and wrote "Valentine's Day." Andy laughed and laughed at his idiot wife. Yes, I am losing my mind. Or maybe it's already gone. . .

Captain Underpants: Thwarted

Good news! Order has been restored to the Rhodes' household. Captain Underpants and his partner in crime have been outsmarted with nothing more than a couple of bungee cords. I never thought it would feel so good to outsmart a couple of little kids, but it really is satisfying!

Design on a Benji

I have spent countless hours sitting in this boring, beige room while the twins played. With a little inspiration from one of my favorite shows---Design on a Dime---I finally decided to do something about it and make it look fun. Only I didn't exactly have a "dime" to use. So my version is called Design on a Bit More Than a Benji. I am not usually a fan of slipcovers, but with my budget limitations that was about all I could do to change up the loveseat. Dan and Lois gave us the loveseat when we were first married and I think they had it for about 10 years prior to that. It was definately in need of a facelift! I made some throw pillows to dress it up a little. Poof! We have a fun, "new" loveseat.

My biggest challenge was finding a way to add some color to the walls. I really wanted to paint the walls, but Andy was adamant that they remained the color they were. I even offered to paint them myself. But he still didn't want them painted. Why? Who knows. But I found these things called Wall Pops that are like giant stickers for the wall. They are dye-cut and repositionable.

I even cleaned out the closet I was using for storage and put up some Wall Pops in there so the kids would have another place to keep toys and play.

Some of the other elements that I used to create visual interest were foam letters, a steal at just $0.60 each! (I am patiently awaiting the store to get more X's and Y's so that I can finish things off.) I also added pegs to hang things like feather boas, hats and buckets on. Hmmm. . .look at how terrible the paint lines on the wooden pegs are. Maybe that's why Andy didn't want me to paint! I created the artwork for the pictures using my computer and some photo paper. I bought the frames one at a time using my 40% off Michael's coupons and got three unique pictures for $35!

I think the crown jewels of the room, however, are the end tables/toy boxes. These were my very talented Dad's idea. If you can imagine it, he can build it. The trucks have wheels on the bottom so you just reach under the grill and pull the whole box out. There is a shelf for storage inside the table that you can put books or puzzles on. And the bed of the truck serves as a toy bin. These are awesome! Brayden loves to back the truck into its "garage."

And speaking of my very talented father. . .check out the link on the side of my blog to his Etsy shop. There are only a few things in it right now. But he is quite handy with the scroll saw. And the lathe. And any other tool you put in his hands! Like I said before, if you can imagine it. . .he can build it. If there is something you would like custom made, you can contact him at finewoodcraftsbyljm@comcast.net.

There is still more I would like to do with this room, but that's it for today's episode. Join me next time for a high-style, low-cost renovation on Design on a Bit More Than a Benji.

A Girl and her Shoes

Andy does not like to get the kids dressed. He says that whenever he does I always tell him something doesn't match---socks, shoes, whatever---and end up changing them anyway. (Imagine that. A Mom with better fashion sense than a Dad? Shocking, I know!) Today I asked him to dress the kids and PROMISED not to say a word about his choice. Makenzie looked so cute in her lavender, blue and green striped shirt. And her cute lavender pants. And her hot pink shoes? Not exactly a great match, but I didn't say a word. I left to go run some errands and came back to find the aforementioned pink shoes in the middle of the living room floor. Makenzie frequently takes her shoes and socks off and runs around barefoot. I figured this was the case. But when I took them into the nursery to put them away, Andy informed me that it was just the pink shoes she had a problem with. She took them off, threw them on the floor and went to get her white shoes. Then she held them out and whined until Andy put them on. At this point I couldn't hold back anymore. I just started laughing and said, "Smart girl!" She knew her shoes didn't match and wanted to look her best!