Makin' Friends Monday

So it's Monday again. Bleh. I'm in a pretty grumpy mood this morning, and I'm sure I'll rant about that later... but for right now I'm going to try and turn my spirits around with Makin' Friends Monday! Woop woop! I played along last week and I got lots of nice comments from lots of nice blog peeps and really, who can be in a pissy mood when things like that happen?

So Kasey at All That is Good usually hosts, but I'm assuming she's still out galavanting the country and Mamarazzi has been kind enough to fill in. Go on over and check it out! They both have awesome blogs!

Mamarazzi asks us to name 5-10 of our favorite things, inventions or things that have changed our lives... this should be easy enough, especially since I'm an infomercial-whore and addicted to things that once I see, I'm definitely going to need.

Now obviously, as a perfect mommy and wife-to-be I wouldn't be able to maintain my throne without saying the my entire favorite things post includes only that of my four children and fiance. Without them, my life would be dreary and ugly and meaningless.

Ok, now on to the more important things:

1. Pepsi - this has been an addiction of mine for as far back as I can remember. Without Pepsi, my days are long and boring and caffeine-less. I don't drink coffee on a regular and I can't afford fraps from Starbucks on a daily basis, so something has to feed my crack-whore addiction. Nothing else I've found is legal, has the oomph to make me move my ample ass in the morning or tastes that dang good!
2. Google - I'm nosey and an information nutjob. I have this instinctive need to fill all this empty space in my head with random knowledge. My brain is a like a vat of useless information that some day might be of use when I'm a contestant on Jeopardy or Who Wants To Be A Millionairre. One day I'll be smart enough, but until then I'm going to google any and everything.
3. Plastic containers & Ziplocks - I know it sounds stupid, but think about it this way... if you have an entire cabinet full of plastic containers, you will never need to find a way to save left-overs, freeze meats if you buy them by the family pack and don't need to use the entire 7 lbs of hamburger meat at a time, a place to put all the hair ties that comes with having a family of 4 girls, a place for the crayons that usually end up under the couch b/c the stupid Crayola box never houses them quite right if you remove them only once, all the office/desk stuff (paperclips, thumb tacks, stamps, loose change, etc) that just doesn't have an appropriate place, the tween/teen pens and pencils that you definitely have to keep separated from the Crayons. Seriously, these things save my life on a daily basis.
4. Notepads - I'm a list makin' fool. I make lists for the lists I need to make. Like today, I'm starting my list of things I need to make a list for so we will be prepared to leave for our Florida vacay 10 days from now. I need to make a list of what to pack for each child, for the man (because I pack his stuff too), the fun-in-the-sun check list so we don't burn our asses on the uber-hot Florida beaches, the snack list for ice chest on the trip there, the grocery list for the snack list so I can make treats instead of spending countless dollars on shit for them to munch on in the car... the list-making never ends.
5. Lawry's. This is a serious addiction and Andy makes fun of me for this one. In my cabinet right now I have 5 large, unopened bottles of Lawry's Seasoning Salt and 4 large, unopened bottles of Lawry's Garlic Seasoning. It appeares that every single time I'm in the grocery store, this makes the "I may not need it right now, but eventually I will so I'm going to buy it" category. I use mostly these two seasonings on meat dish I cook and I think I'm scared one day I won't have any and dinner will be ruined. I even have one bottle of each, unopened, in the camping buckets (because we are prepared like that and have two, big ass camping buckets will all the seasonings, utensils, plates, a skillet, cutting board, knives, sunblock, hair-tie bag, floaties and a checklist of everything that we are going to need for the next camping trip).

That's all I can think of right now, but I'm sure my list could go on forever. They are simple things that make my life a lot easier... which makes life easier for Andy and the kids... See it's not all selfish. I'm thinking about them too. I mean seriously, their life is MUCH easier when Mama has her Pepsi-fix while she's writing down that she needs Ziplocks on her list of shit to get at dollar store, but not before googling to see if there is a more appropriate way to store all the trial size vacay shit that she's going to buy at wally world for the Florida trip so everyone has their OWN shit and Mama doesn't have to hear shit when the kids start griping about the other one using all the shampoo and shit.

Seriously, this shit makes my life easy!