Adventures with kids!!

Phoenix and I decided to take an adventure with her nieces (Grumpy-AKA Preggers, Little Phoenix, and Goofy) on Sunday. The adventure really began when we brought the girls over to stay the night on Saturday night, but yeah...How many girls can we make share a room? Haha! We decided that we would look at model homes and then go to the library to see what culture passes were available...Boy oh boy did we have our day cut out for us!!


After we all made ourselves pretty and ate breakfast, we took off on our adventure. We started by picking up Phoenix's new glasses. She was feeling brave and got slightly thicker frames than her old ones. I love them! Then we took off to look at some houses. We found a row of model homes, but the houses were pretty crappy...Small rooms, crappy layouts, and just not that exciting. (I know it sounds lame, but it's cool to go look at houses...Plus, they're all decorated and you can get great decorating tips. It's like HGTV without the commercials!) So, we came up with a story about how all three girls were our kids and that Grumpy has a little one on the way, so we need a big house. The houses we saw were all like 3 bedroom...Not too cool. When we walked back through the office, the woman working there stopped us. We said we needed bigger houses. Her response was, "Well, the loft can be a room. Or the den can be a bedroom." The dens were SMALL! We said, "Actually, we like the loft look and the dens were small." Her response was a rude, "You want at least four rooms with a loft and a den!?" Duh! We have three kids, plus us, and a little one on the way!! C'mon! She suggested some other houses up the road...a ways up the road. We went there. They only had one model house. It was cool, but small. It had a Cosita (spelling?) though which was awesome. Nothing like a guest room outside of the house for the in-laws/family, right? Er, um, I mean, I would never put family out of the house...*shifty eyes*


We took off to the library to get in line for our culture passes. We decided to take whatever passes we could get a hold of. Along the way, I told Phoenix that I hoped the creepy guy from last weekend wasn't there again. We decided to have me drop them off and then I'd go park, plus then I'd have the option to stay in the car is my biggest fan was there. I dropped them off and then parked. As I walked to join them, Phoenix called to say, "Grab the camera! He's here!" BAH! I got the camera, but she never got a shot of him. Luckily, Grumpy got one with her phone and you can clearly read his, "BBW Lust Only" tat. Yeah, as I walked up, he saw me and his whole face lit up. I was avoiding eye contact though and pretended not to notice him staring at me and trying to catch my eye. When I eventually looked at him, he nodded his head at me in a greeting. I simply smiled and looked away. After listening to all the girls make jokes, we finally got our pass to the Art Museum. Trust me when I say that there is nothing quite like having your girlfriend and her nieces ranging in ages from 18-8 razz you for some dorky guy hitting on you. It's not my fault that he finds my beauty alluring and cannot resist my award-winning smile! *grins* Inside the library, Mr. I Love Big Girls tried to talk to me. I smiled and walked right past him. I'm not sure how to make it more clear that I'm not interested...However, Phoenix and her nieces have decided that all of us will be going back each Sunday to see if he's there waiting to talk to me. Ummm, yeah, I'm not going. Phoenix is threatening to tell him, "Oh good you're here! My friend was hoping to see you so she can give you her number!" I think I'm going to pass him a note next time I see him that will read, "I like big girls too..." Think he'll take the hint?


After narrowly escaping my stalker, we moved on to the art museum. We played the iPod game, which allows for everyone to take a turn picking a song. We started playing the game when we left the apartment in the morning. Anyway, it's fun to listen to everyone's choices...It's like hip-hop one minute, then alternative, then 80s music, then musical songs, etc...Good times. We made it to the Art Museum and only had to pay $4 for Goofy (the youngest niece). I was hoping that perhaps they would suck up some culture, but I'm not sure it worked. We weren't there thirty minutes and already we got a stern talking to because they touched the art. Goofy touched a piece of art that had burned books, plaster, and metal rods. I was horrified about burnt books, but Goofy wanted to know if they were real, so she touched them. I was trying to stop her, but didn't do it in time. The guard in the room freaked out, but that's because she was already scolding Grumpy and Little Phoenix for touching an exhibit with chalk...Phoenix made fun of the woman by saying, "Folks! Folks! Folks! Folks stop that. Folks!" The woman kept saying folks and then once Phoenix started this, the woman followed us until we were under someone else's guard...Whatever. I'm not sure I got most of the art at that museum. They had some surreal art, which I normally love, but this stuff sucked. Give me Dali and Magritte any day. The stuff was weird, like graffiti and one that particularly stood out was three blue boxes put together and called something like, "Blue box in three pieces"....Umm, okay. It was just weird. I was excited though to see a Claude Monet painting. I love his work. We missed some of the stuff because we sort of hurried through because the kids got restless (And by kids I mean Phoenix...Shh, don't tell her I said that.). Apparently, children aren't art lovers...


The one moment at the museum that stands out in my mind is riding in the elevator. I know that sounds mundane, but hear me out. It was the only time we road the elevator all day and Little Phoenix was all, "What if we got stuck and started to run out of oxygen...Who would we kill first?" Of course this is the first thing I always think of too when I get in an elevator and then I size up my company to decide who I'd kill first. In this case, her little sister, Goofy, chimed in and said, "Heathers! She has the most meat on her!" Apparently, she wasn't only worried about oxygen, but food too...That's it, let's kill the fat girl! (PS: When Goofy and Little Phoenix's mom met me, she immediately called me, "Heathers", as in the movie...So to the kids, I'm "Heathers".)


After getting lunch at Subway, we were off and running to find houses to look at. Before that though, we had to have a repeat of, "Let's scream in the car." Little Phoenix wanted to scream in the car, but no one wanted to join. Then, out of nowhere, Phoenix turned around and screamed at Little Phoenix, who then screamed because she was scared. It was pretty funny, you know, if you didn't count that everyone, except me and Grumpy, then screamed for a moment or two. Apparently, it's fun to scream while I'm driving. Thankfully, I saw signs for houses soon, and we all had our destination in mind once more. We found large houses not too far from our apartment. The houses started at $400,000 or so. Oh my God. I am in love. These houses rocked! We went in and got a price list, but only after Phoenix filled out their information card with phone number, name, and email address...Lame. We walked through nine of these huge houses. The most expensive was $620,000 and more than 4,000 square feet. Yeah, I'd like to publish a few books so I could afford to live in that type of luxury! All joking aside though, the house Phoenix and I loved the most wasn't the most expensive, but was still high at $530,000. It was cute though as we went to each house, the girls picked out the rooms they wanted, you know, because they're all our kids. In one of the houses, Goofy picked out her room, which was really a rounded sitting room in the master bedroom. In another house, I joked she could live in the closet, which was the size of our living room here at the apartment. Somewhere along the way, Little Phoenix began leading the tours of the houses using a fake accent. If she were a little older, she most likely would've chosen to imitate Robin Leach's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." It was fun to hear a 13-year-old's take on things, like, "Here we have a large kitchen with two ovens, an island, and a microwave." If it had been me leading the tours, I would've been like, "And here we are wasting space with this weird shaped island/bar to eat at. Plus, we're going to make you work hard because we put the laundry room downstairs. Hope you like running up and downstairs with laundry! Oh, you have a baby? Well, you don't mind that the master bedroom is downstairs and the nursery is upstairs, right?" Who designs these houses, fitness trainers!? I don't need that much exercise each day!!


By the time we were done, I wasn't sure I'd make it up the stairs at home. I was so tired...However, Grumpy was more tired than I was; she took a nap as soon as we got back. The rest of us played Sing Star for a little over an hour. The girls dedicated Hate Me to me. It was sang as, "Hate Her". Nice...Phoenix told me this is how I know the girls love me...Perhaps she didn't hear the title of the song, "HATE me". *rolls eyes* Oh well. We finished off the night by returning the girls to their own homes and then went grocery shopping...Bah!


Well, that's it for this blog. I will write again later about how we spent yesterday evening playing racquetball with Goofy and Little Phoenix...I woke up sore from all the walking on Sunday and the stairs, but then we still went to play...Surprisingly enough, I was still able to roll out of bed this morning...And by "roll", I mean, literally roll out of bed. Haha. Just kidding...Kind of. So, until next time, here's the video of our adventure...I'm sorry I didn't get any pics of the houses...Next time I will try to remember to grab the camera.