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By Alyssa, November 4, 2011 3:50 pm

I’m writing this post for my dear hubby, Haus, who never asks this question, because he’s awesome, but I’m sure he thinks it constantly.

Here are the reasons in the last two weeks why it has taken me so long to leave the house:

1.  I am the milk cow for an adorable one-month old and she said “I’M HUNGRY” but it sounded like “WAAAHHHH!” just as I was headed to the car.

2.  The van side doors froze and I had to load all of the kids, including the baby in car seat, through the front passenger door (true story).

3.  Dirty diaper… again.

4.  I’m answering your text that says, “Where are you???”

5.  The boys were “helping” me with my sewing machine instead of listening to me tell them to get in the car and poked the sewing needle through their finger as I was walking out the door (yet another true story).

6.  Snow boots, hats, gloves, winter coats… oh the joys of leaving in the winter.

7.  I forgot my wallet, made it up the street and figured out I didn’t have my phone, closed the garage, and forgot whatever it was I needed for the purpose of leaving the house (man, I wish this one wasn’t true all. the. time.)

8.  Three kiddos five and under… ’nuff said.

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By Alyssa, May 26, 2011 3:58 pm

- I like you too much to have your conversation constantly interrupted by, “Moooooommmmm!”

- I’m changing a poopy diaper

- I hear it ringing but have no idea where the boys stashed it

- I’m in the bathroom (or debating whether you will hear the toilet flush)

- In a public place chasing down the kiddos

- Too tired to talk

- I forgot to take it off of silent/vibrate

- I’m playing monsters or spies or pirates

- I’m in the shower (some days this is at 2 p.m., just being honest)

- I’m driving (we made a rule to not answer phones in the car after watching this video)

- I’m talking to Haus (he trumps all other callers)

- Dealing with spilled milk, laundry, dishes… take your pick as they happen daily

- I’m in line

- I’d rather text… hate to admit that if you really want to get a hold of me, text me.

P.S.  Thanks to my BFF, Ames, for inspiring this post with #12 from her list

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By Alyssa, February 10, 2011 5:38 pm

So I thought it would be fitting since my last post was a pic of my sweet, angelic little dudes to tell you how my day was yesterday.  I realized Tuesday night that I had a crap-load (that’s a lot) of errands to run on Wednesday and no one to watch the boys.  They were coming with me.

First stop, the Apple store.  Wait… first stop, the “Don’t even think about bringing a two-year-old in here” store.  I set up an appointment through the Genius Bar thinking I would not have to wait for long, but I guess in this Apple store it’s more like the Average IQ Bar.  After trudging through the leftover snow with purse, laptop, and my two bundled dudes, I waited in line by the Average IQ Bar and set about getting the little dudes to play video games a few feet away.  Bubba was so stoked.  Seriously, you just want me to sit here at this chair my size with my own iMac and play Diego??  One kiddo taken care of.  Zeke wasn’t so pleased.

You see right when we walked in he saw 30 lined-up, plastic silver balloon ball looking things on the floor and wanted to go back to them… NOW.  WHY the Apple peeps thought that three rows of ten two-foot plastic-like balloons was a good thing to put on the floor as decoration, but so obviously not to touch is beyond me.  I spent the next couple minutes running up to the front of the store to grab Zeke away from the “Ba-wooonns!” as he was screaming and praying that someone would call me up next.

Someone did finally help me.  I bought a cable adapter to hook my laptop up to the TV… an adapter that ONLY Apple sells so I had to go to their stinking, not kid friendly store to buy it.  About the time I pulled out money to pay, I realized Zeke wasn’t next to his brother playing video games anymore and, oh-by-the-way, the little black ball chair wasn’t there either.  It only took a second to search the crowded store to see that he had rolled that chair all the way to the front of the store and was determined to take it home with him.  Oh boy.  Shoving a bit of money in the dude’s hand, I dashed over, grabbed Zeke, and the cumbersome 3-foot foam ball chair thingy.  Returning the chair, I straddled Zeke on my hip and tried to take my change and the adapter as Zeke proceeded to kick off his boots.  Thanking the clerk for the item I grabbed boots, purse, wiggling two-year-old, mesmerized 5-year-old, and rushed out to the car.

I think it was about the time we made it to the car that I realized I left my laptop by the kid computers. REVERSE, held Bubba’s hand, Zeke’s squirming body, purse, boots, rushed through store, grabbed laptop, REVERSE with all items back to car.  Got to the car with everything and THEN couldn’t find Bubba.  Almost panicked before he popped out from behind another car he thought was our car.  It took a full three minutes sitting sweating in the front seat of the Camry with the boys buckled in to regain my sanity.

After that madness and a few uneventful errands, we stopped at Chick-Fil-A to celebrate being done.  The boys played in the play land, and I plastered myself in a booth thinking calm thoughts.  You may be asking yourself, what could go wrong in Chick-Fil-A?  Nothing did go wrong the first few minutes.  In fact, I even had a few minutes to myself among the chaos of Chick-Fil-A at noon to read a few pages of the Outlander series I’m addicted to and take a bite of chicken.  Then Bubba ran up.  Mom, he’s stuck.  Zeke is stuck, Mom!

Upon inspection in the play land , I found that Zeke was not stuck, but had been rather brave .  Instead of staying in the one story portion of the play land, he had ventured for the first time ALL the way up to the three story part.  I sent Bubba back up to retrieve him and almost started to admire the little dude’s spunk. Those thoughts vanished after cajoling, begging, then calmly instructing him to come down. I surveyed my options.  Squeeze myself through the maze of staired-tunnels or the slide.  I chose the slide.

I have to pause here and laugh… oh man, what was I thinking?  I had tights on under my jeans thus no traction, and figured that out around the second of three corkscrew turns.  About five minutes in and drenched with sweat, the claustrophobia hit as the only way I could maintain my ground in the bright yellow, monstrous slide was to press my back against the top of it and cling with my finger tips to the tiny grooves at the end of each section.  I yelled up that if one more kid tried to slide under me they would be sorry, muscled my way around the final curve with my arm, grabbed Zeke by one arm (thank goodness he was curious and had positioned himself at the top of the slide) and FINALLY made my way back down…Zeke headfirst and me scraping the last of the studded embellishments off my back pockets.

I thought about calling Haus after I had everyone back home tucked in for quiet time, but would he really believe me?  Sigh… that, my friends, was an absolutely true telling of yesterday’s errand day.

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By Alyssa, January 19, 2011 8:55 pm

Are there any really funny movies out there anymore?  This post is going to be short and sweet as Haus had me get up at 5 in the morning to work out with him and I.am.so.tired.  I tried to zone out tonight with our Netflix mailer, Tropic Thunder.  That movie… not funny.  In fact we turned it off after five minutes.

So now I’m asking, are there any good comedies out there?  I’ve turned off three movies in the last week or so because they were so stinkin crass I couldn’t stand it.  My favorite movies to watch at the moment are my kid’s favorites too.  Despicable Me… hilarious.  Bolt?  Sorry, peeps, but I could watch that movie about a billion times just for the scenes with Rhino.  I thought How to Train your Dragon was super cute too.

Please, somebody give me a couple good, non-animated comedies to watch.  The only one we’ve seen lately that I loved was I Love You, Man and that was even on the edge of toilet humor.  Looking forward to your recommendations.

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By Alyssa, January 17, 2011 10:36 pm

I’m not a techie, but I built this website by myself.  It took hours of research and way too many late nights to create “From Military to Mom”.  When I started the website, I didn’t have the money to pay a web designer and had to figure it out myself.  When it all vanished in a milli-second a few days ago, I couldn’t even form the words to explain to Haus what was wrong.  That’s right, opened up my site, and all my posts and pages were gone. G.O.N.E.

After searching a few forums using the tag “Posts gone”, I found that I was not alone with the disappearing act and most bloggers had their issue magically resolved in a few hours or the next day.  Sweet relief, I thought.  I’ll just wait till tomorrow and it will all be fixed… little Internet fairy will move on to bug someone else.  The next morning, however, everything was still gone.

What should I do? I practically screamed to Haus while he was trying to watch his beloved Seahawks.  I could see the response in his eyes.  Build a deck, budget the money, string Christmas lights, change the oil in our vehicles, these I can help you with.  Web programming?  Not so much.  I’m so sorry, hon, he said.  Ahhhhrrhrhrhhghhh, I lamented to the computer.  Alright, Alyssa, you built the website using google and forums, now fix it.  I went to wordpress.org and wordpress.com first (which p.s. so you know, wordpress.org is for self-hosting sites like mine, and wordpress.com is for peeps that want to set up a wordpress blog… believe me, I know).  I scoured the forums for answers and couldn’t find a contact number ANYWHERE so I called my host, GoDaddy.  24/7 support, their website boasted.  We’ll just see about that.

Within a few minutes, I was connected with Ty, the GoDaddy guy.  He asked me if I had backed up my database and  I thought, hmmmm, would I be calling you if I backed up my database?? but instead told him that unfortunately, no, I hadn’t backed anything up for some time.  After twenty minutes on hold, he told me that my files were “corrupted” and that I could either figure it out myself (he said with a smidge of disbelief) or I could pay them $150 to reenstate my website.  Wait, pay you what?  I asked.  Pretty sure it was this point Haus yelled something not so kind to the phone about GoDaddy that Ty clearly heard. Can you blame him?  The Seahawks were losing and the peeps that caused the problem were trying to charge me to fix it.

I told Ty as nicely as I could that I would call him back but hung up only after he explained to me yet again how HARD it would be for me to fix the problem.  Next I phoned my friend and computer whiz, Ben, who told me to check my service agreement with GoDaddy and my database with them.  I’ll give you a really quick synopsis of the thousands of words in my service agreement… GoDaddy is not responsible for anything and will charge you if you need help even if it is their fault.  Nice, right?  Deflated that I hadn’t just backed up my stinkin database, I was about to call Ty back and fork over $150 when I found this…

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/all-postspages-gone-in-firefox-but-fine-in-safari

Sure enough, I followed the steps that “Tech Wizard James” suggested, prayed as I ran the repair on my posts table, and BAM everything was back, restored, fixed, PERFECT!  I jumped up and down and screamed I DID IT, I DID IT, I DID IT until Zeke started crying and Bubba said, Mom, you are yelling really loud.  Man, oh man, I gotta tell you I’m still ecstatic that it worked.  So what’s the moral of this story?  Here’s my list…

1. Back-up EVERYTHING!  I’ve installed a widget that will automatically send me a back-up of my database and will not continually use the export tool on wordpress to ensure I have everything saved.

2. You don’t have to be a techie to fix computer issues.  Google it, read every forum you can find, don’t give up.

3.  GoDaddy and other big host companies are a business.  READ YOUR SERVICE AGREEMENT.  After this experience, I’m looking for another host.  Any suggestions?

It’s good to be back.  And, I know, I know, I missed a few days this month posting… don’t worry.  I’ll make up for it!