Adventures with a 5 year old...

So this weekend, we "borrowed" my little cousin (who I call my niece and she calls me her aunt, thats just how our family works), I may question whether terrible twos extends to five year olds, while it was definitely an adventure here are the highs and the lows:

Most Entertaining things

1) Visiting the apple orchard where we went on a hay ride, picked out a pumpkin and went through this great corn maze with a treasure hunt for kids

2) It seems like with a five year old there is always something to do, it is sooo go go which can be nice when it isn't your norm

3) She went to sleep at like 7:30pm

Not so Entertaining things

1) 7:30 am Wake up

2) the if I'm good will you buy me this x 100

3) Her absolute terror of our not so frightening Basset Hound 

OOOOoooooh the Obama Excitement

So as the worst new lawyer ever, and I don't mean that in the I suck at my job kinda way (I may very well I just don't really know) more the has worked less than 2 months and has had to take time off for her husbands surgery and her mouth surgery I feel generally guilty that I don't work enough, but NOT guilty enough to resist asking if I could go to the Obama rally, it was two blocks away and a straight shot view from my office, who could sit by and watch history in the making from 10 stories up, not this girl.  I was really pretty impressed with La Crosse, a turn out of 15,000 or somewhere near there is really pretty great for a town of like 55,000!! In the grand scheme of things I even had a pretty good place in the massive crowd.  I think it was a great speech generally and one that was worth listening to regardless of your political background, he is just so charismatic, or maybe he just seems that way because we have had 8 years of horrible public speaking by Bush, not really sure.  Needless to say it was worth standing there in the chilly line almost two hours before it started to hear him speak for 40 min, this is by far the first election I have cared to hear someone speak or had the opportunity, I even went out today and put our sign in our yard, J is wondering if it will inspire anyone else on our street to put out signs.  I was a bit bummed I didn't get any pictures, for whatever reason I though cameras were a no no so I went sans mine.  We had this guy who was right behind us who sketched pictures of the crowd the whole time we were there, he was a pretty good artist. I really enjoyed seeing the diversity in the crowd, children, adults, people of all ages and backgrounds, coming together with hope for change, it definitely made you want to act, so I said I would try to keep this blog from getting too political so I will just leave it at no matter your party, just please remember to take the time Nov. 4 to vote! I won't even try and tell you who to vote for, well unless you drive by my house =)

Fall is in the Air

Well it is now time for Oktoberfest to end, which really signals the start of Fall.  It was a bit crazy this year in that we normally aren't very organized we just kinda show up at the parade to sit with whatever friends took the time to reserve spots and pretty much just enjoy the work they put into it, well not this year, this year we took the bull by the horns and organized our own parade spot. Some of you may think Im crazy like what is this person talking about but let me put it into perspective this is like a 6 mile parade which thousands of people attend.  The parade is on Saturday and by Friday morning at 8am people have already put out their chairs, blankets, couches etc. some are even camped out, why camped out you say?, because they know that because of problems in years past you actually aren't allowed to leave things on the curbside unattended before midnight, therefore at 4pm that day the City came through and took all those naughty peoples things and threw them away.  So fast forwards to 11:30 pm when we show up to stake out our spot, realize all the good ones are taken, but then by miracle some really nice guys explain to us that at 12 they plan to move up and over a bit and that we can have this L shaped spot that gives us about 5 feet of prime curbage, gotta have the curbage for the kiddies as that is where the candy gets thrown, so thanks to them we got pretty lucky. So we had to run back get more sheets since our tarp wasn't big enough and stuff to hold it all down over night, came back and set it out and sat there til 12:30am to make sure it wasn't going anywhere, then back home to be asleep around 1, so we could get up at 6 to head back and make sure our stuff was ok (the parade is at 10).  Then at about 6:45 I get a text saying our shirts were in but at the southside so we had to fight traffic and no parking to get to it, while in the area we headed over to festival to get some snacks and ingredients for bloody marys, we were back and at our site by 8:30 where we hung out til the rest of the gang arrived.  It was a long rough parade though the weather was beautiful, it was full of kiddies that were too tired, fighting over candy (who throws one piece for like 7 kids) and the fact that it was like 80 something, by the time it was all over with (at like 2) I was totally beat and starving, we tried to head to this awesome drive in but due to the parade traffic was miserable so after like 20 min of no moving we headed to Holmen to go to their drive in, got all the way there and found out it had closed the Sunday before, total bummer at this point we are sooo starved we just head to McDonalds.  While it was definitely a ton of fun it was super exhausting, next year we already have a list of things we need to do differently like bigger tarp, 4 wheel cooler not 2 wheel, remember to buy vodka the night before, just bring a bag of candy and randomly throw in front of kids.  Anyway I will post some pics later and while I know I made it sound miserable if any of you are ever anywhere near La Crosse during Oktoberfest I do highly recommend you go!! 

Where or where has my blogging gone....

Eeeks it is soo busy around here, and not in the I have such an exciting life that I have no time to blog kinda way.  Rather it is the I drive like 70 miles to work and stay in WI usually 3-4 days a week.  Who knew I would be home again sleeping on my mom's couch in my mid twenties.  I have to say mid twenties because I cannot accept that I am on the side now closer to 30, that Birthday came and went the 17th of September and let me tell you it was the first birthday I truly did NOT want to celebrate.  Though it was a lot of fun, one of the upsides of staying in WI is I get to see and spend a lot of time with my family, so on my birthday my grandma, aunt and mom and I went shoe shopping at Macy's (about as good as it gets in La Crosse) and out to a movie.  We went to see the Women, and here silly me made it through the ENTIRE movie without even noticing that there are NO MEN in the movie, just women, I guess hence the name.  It was definitely cute but in a heartwarming chic flick way, not the comedy I expected.  This weekend though I am super excited for the Maple Leaf parade, and some good old Oktoberfest fun, I am sure there will be loads to blog about because people do all kinds of silly and crazy things at Oktoberfest, and Im really excited for this year because we are getting shirts (see image above), all due to someone else's awesome creativity not mine.  

Retail Details I hope I will never need to know again

I think today may may may have been my last day at the store in the mall, and while I was there I couldn't help but think of this strange skill set I have developed that hopefully I will never need to use again... such as:

1. The ability to be able to fold almost any item of clothing into a teensy teensy tiny perfect square, without even using the stupid folding boards (yes Im that good, 10 years of retail will do that to you) While some of you may be thinking I could use this skill in my own house and save loads of space in my drawers, closets etc. please see the 10 year part above, NEVER AGAIN in fact it kinda makes me want to empty all my drawers onto my bedroom floor and play in the clothes like kids play in piles of leaves, ahhh the chaos and messiness of it all, I LOVE IT!

2. The ability to totally lie to a person about how something looks on them- I know you're thinking Im awful and Im talking about selling you something that looks truly awful on you but really most of the time it's just trying to find a nice way to tell you not to buy it, like while that fits you really well Im not sure that pink complements your skin color why don't you try this blue shirt as opposed to wow I never knew a human could so closely resemble a flamingo  

3. Biting my tongue at repeat returners- perhaps the biting my tongue think will come in handy when I have kids but as for retail, really people TRY THINGS ON unless you shop here all the time and I mean like every week, stuff changes, things fit differently and rarely are you ALWAYS a size 10, also when your favorite store is closing in 3 months and your whining to me and asking me why we are closing, WELL its because you just bought $400 of clothes online and just returned them all at our store (pssst that affects our sales)

4. Add ons- This one isn't so much a knowledge but all those annoying greeting, add on sale things we have to hit you with, like hey you can save 10% if you open a ____ credit card today, yup you would save $2.00 on that sale sweater and it will affect your credit score forever, sounds like a stellar deal huh, sign here please, or if you just spend $28 more dollars I can give you this excellent coupon that you can't use for 3 weeks and will probably lose or forget about but come on please please please  buy that shirt over there so I can get rid of these coupons and be able to stop asking you this!! 

5.  Store Set/Back Stock- The mental map of where things are in the store, where they are in the back room and all the little techniques I can use to convince you we really don't have it in back, while some people just flat out lie and say no we don't have that, I usually go look for things because then I get to sneak off to the peaceful back room and take a sip of latte before I can come out and sorrowfully tell you that no we do not have that in a size 10, there is a chance we could get it in next week and that you could try back then because hope always seems to get you to leave me alone, people like hope, and I have found that if you don't go to the back and check for it people don't believe you when you say no I'm sorry we don't have that in back or we are all out of XL's since we only usually get like 2 in but people automatically presume your lying I swear its like people think our 1400 square foot store has a backroom the size of Walmart and how on earth could we ever ever be out of anything in anyones size, sometimes we only get things in 1 of each size and then because we are greedy greedy associates we buy half those for ourselves, its our reward for dealing grouchy customers so when I say we don't have a small I know because I bought it yesterday so go buy it online so you can return it in the store like you always do

Ahhh farewell retail, how I will miss you not!!!  

Sisterhood Tees!!!!

I know this is a bit outdated but as someone who absolutely loves the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books, owns the movie and took her younger sister to the newest movie (Have to hold on to my youth somehow and I really think these are great books with good values and entertaining to boot) I absolutely loved Hillary Clintons reference to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits, and then today I found these TEES!!! and fell in love!!! Now if only I could figure out which one I want.  My birthday is in 13 days and I think it would make an excellent present!! Along with cupcakes, we can never forget about cupcakes!! I love cupcakes, maybe even more than these tees, but its close very very close!

I know its an obsession with names

SOOOOO while I totally don't want to go in a whole political direction, I get way enough of that talk at work from my ultra conservative colleague, has anyone else stopped to wonder about Palin's name choices for her kids, they seem a bit non republican for such an ultra conservative. Also while Im hoping she named her daughter for something other than a motor speedway, that is all that pops into my mind when I hear her name and for whatever reason that triggers thoughts of the Mazda zoom zoom commercials, I think in my mind her daughter may forever be nicknamed zoom zoom. Sorry while other people boggle the more important issues such as economics and foreign policy, I wonder about things like name choices, sigh.