7 Quick Takes Friday {#5}

7 Quick Takes.  Conversion Diary.  Just like last week.  :)

1.)  I need to clean my home.  Big-time.  It's a disaster in pretty much every single room.  This always seems to happen in summertime...I'm out of my normal routine and we're going a lot.  Playdates, free movies, picnics, and other assorted activities are far more fun than mopping and scrubbing.  I'm trying to be okay with a little clutter and mess here and there all in the name of summer, but it's at a point where I am comPLETEly stressed out.  Must clean.  Soon.

2.)  Is there any better drink than Thai Iced Tea?  I didn't think so.  I had an AMAZING one Wednesday night when we went out for my birthday.  We were originally going to have Indian food (which I LOVE), but then decided to save that for another time and went to a Thai place instead.  In part so I could get the tea.  It's a good thing they don't do free refills on those because you wouldn't be able to get me out of the restaurant. 

3.)  Across from this particular restaurant is a bar-type-place where there were tons of people sitting on the balcony loudly laughing and talking and having a merry old time.  It made me smile to think of how different my life must be from theirs.  Happy hour on a Wednesday night is not typically where you'll find me--scrambling to get dinner on the table for a family of seven, that is much more my speed.  The people all seemed to be enjoying themselves...but I'm glad for the quiet little life that I lead.  (Not that I would MIND an occasional happy hour out.)

4.)  The state of Colorado requires some crazy number of face-to-face training hours for an international adoption.  So our homestudy agency has these trainings that go from 9:30-2:30 on Saturdays, one per month.  There are four total that keep cycling.  We have had a horrible time lining up childcare (for four kids, all day on a Saturday, who would have thought?!) and therefore blew off the last two trainings.  (We've made it two so far.)  I'm so over it.  It's ridiculous.  The training is something you only have to do once, but this is our first adoption living in Colorado.  SO, even though we adopted two children nearly five years ago, but in California, we still have to go and sit and listen about Ethiopian culture, travel tips etc.  It is maddening.  I think the agency does a great job with their trainings, in that they provide good information for new adoptive parents, but for us it is just highly impractical.  And giving up an entire Saturday with your kids doesn't seem like great attachment parenting, but that's just me.  It's held at a library in a conference room and I cannot FATHOM why they don't offer childcare in another room there...just put on a couple of movies for goodness' sakes!  If it was just my THREE oldest kids, I MIGHT consider sticking them right outside the room with a laptop to quietly watch some movies, but Kaitlyn, at three years old, is a bit of a wild card and would probably disrupt the training.  Or break the laptop.  (Because she's done that before.)  Awesome.  Soooo, here's hoping we can get people lined up for the next ones, in the fall.  (OR, let's hope that our social worker takes pity on me after the email I sent her and decides to let us off the hook for some of the hours.)

4.)  I bought the kids some homeschool supplies Wednesday at Target.  (Colored pencils, crayons, erasers, gluesticks, etc.)  Just being in that section makes me want to pick up my own supplies and go back to school!  I have always, always loved school supplies.  Every year, as a kid, I'd get SO excited to go choose pencils and pens and a new binder and divider tabs.  It makes me downright giddy.  Interesting, because I never actually liked school that much.  But apparently buying the supplies made it all tolerable.

5.)  Does it drive anyone else crazy that Costco doesn't open for the normal members until 11 am???  I seriously feel like a second-class citizen, knowing they won't let me into the store until 11 because I don't have the "special" card.  There are some other funny things about Costco, too.  Like the fact that if you, heaven forbid, FORGET your membership card and leave it at home, you have to get a whole NEW card at customer service!  What in the world?!  What kind of archaic business practice is this?  How hard would it be for them to just put in your phone number or something to check you out?  I also have to admit that it irks me that I have to PAY to BUY THINGS.  A Costco membership, even the lowly, you-can't-get-in-until-11 one, is $50 per year.  I'm paying...to be able to pay for groceries there.  Suddenly this is making very little sense to me.  Hmmmm.  (I also feel like a criminal having to SHOW my card to get in.  But Anna loves to be the one to do it, so I'll let that one slide.)

6.)  Everyone is talking about this oil spill.  I feel a little guilty because I don't know much of what is going on with it.  The photos of birds, fish and ducks are horrific, but I don't know that I fully grasp the implications of what this means for the environment, the Gulf Coast, etc.  I don't follow why President Obama somehow did something wrong, or why this must be an example of why big corporations are bad.  Some days the news just seems really overwhelming for me.  Sometimes I feel so completely overstimulated that I like to pretty much circle the wagons and not read any news.  Part of me hates this, but part of me thinks it's healthy.  So I guess my official viewpoint is, I'm really sad this oil spill happened because the devastation seems wide-spread, to say the least, and horrible for the environment.  (Incidentally, my maiden name begins with a "P", so my initials used to be BP.  There was a new BP gas station in town and a friend of mine in high school started calling me BP, because he thought it was cool that my initials were on a big sign.  SO, I may be the only person in the United States today who, upon hearing "BP", feels a twinge of happiness.)

7.)  My kids are so incredibly clueless when it comes to pop-culture. CLUELESS.  Tuesday we saw the movie "Kit Kittredge" at the theater.  When I told my six-year-old daughter the name of the movie, she wrinkled up her nose and said, "That sounds like a tongue twister to me!"  She has no idea what an American Girl doll is.  None.  (She really enjoyed the movie though.)  Then recently someone was talking about their ipod.  "What's an ipod?" my kids all wanted to know.  Ha!  They don't really know any music artists by name, or classic cars.  They know people in the Bible, some Disney/Pixar characters and literary figures, but that's pretty much it.  I never really set out to raise super sheltered kids, but somehow it has happened.  (They DO, on the other hand, know all about a country in East Africa called Ethiopia, they know what HIV is, how to change a diaper, about birth and adoption and about infant care.  They can also all sing the Doxology.  So there's that.)  I'm sure this will change as they get older and therefore gain more exposure to various things, but in the meantime, it's pretty hilarious. 

Well that's it for this week.  I had a hard time coming up with seven things for some reason!  Hopefully I'm not losing my knack for random musings--because I just don't know how I would survive!