What's new?

Life is such a roller coaster! The Girl starts KINDERGARTEN in 6 weeks!!!! That's just crazy talk right there I tell ya! Thinking about her waking up at 6:45 in the morning is reason enough for me to consider homeschooling her! She still doesn't do mornings... at. all! The Boy is VERY much a boy and in very much of a rude awakening when he wakes up one morning and his sister is not here... all. day. long! (That's going to make for a very long day for me!) C is also in for some changes coming up. He has been having some noticeable issues with his voice since the beginning of the year. It has bothered him enough that he finally went to the dr about it, she referred him to an ENT dr who did a scope and found a mass on his vocal chords. Since C uses his voice for "other than social reasons" they referred him to a surgeon who specializes in vocal surgeries. Yesterday C met with him and he took some images and they scheduled surgery for July 25th. C will be on complete voice rest for 7 days and then he will gradually be able to increase his vocal use to full speaking capacity 4 weeks post op and he should be able to go back to singing within 6-8 weeks. In other news... I got a new washer and dryer!!! WHOOO HOOOO!!!! My old machines where 15 years old and just so tiny and not energy or water efficient. I finished ALL the laundry in the house in 4 loads, that would have easily been 8 -10 loads in my old machines. I can't imagine how long that would take in the dryer. A small load was taking about 70 minutes to dry. :( I told C that we were going to save so much money by not using all the energy and water that we wouldn't even feel the payments. LOL It won't be that much, but it could quite possibly be 1/2!

I hate girl drama!

I'm just not good at it. I had the guts to tell someone that something they did made me feel excluded and therefore I wouldn't be joining them on an outing this week that was going to put me in the same situation. They didn't say anything at all. Didn't acknowledge it, didn't apologize, didn't deny it. Yeah, so thanks for that! Word got back to me that she said my feelings w/ another person involved so I sent an email pretty much telling her that her behavior w/ this other person made me feel uncomfortable and that I didn't want to go through that again. From this person I got, sorry you feel that way, but yeah we do that. WOW! Really??? Thanks for taking my feelings into consideration. I like to think that I'm a pretty good friend to people and that I go out of my way to help a person out and what not. So when the same isn't offered to me it hurts, deeply. I'm pretty crushed right now and what really stinks is that I know that to not cause more drama I shouldn't talk with anyone in our circles about it so yay, I get to just keep it all inside, we all know how healthy that is! So let me paint the picture for you..... let's pretend that you are invited to go somewhere with friends, you arrive and it is just the three of you. Through out the course of the time together you are repeatedly walked away from, excluded from conversations, and even while eating together at a table one of the people literally has their back to you as they continue a conversation w/ the other person about people you don't even know, while they share food all buddy buddy like and no one has given you any thought. At one point, they even walked away in the store and left you with all of the kids. So, yeah, that was a wonderful time and I really can't wait to do that again, NOT!

Blogger changed!

Blogger has changed since the last time I logged in.... I don't think it looks much different for the reader, but for the one writing.... WOW it looks sooooooo different. I don't know exactly what is included in all the changes as of yet, I'll have to do some snooping around when I get a chance. Smart phones are cool but they really hinder me. I read emails but forget to reply to them or I type out a short reply on my phone's screen and then my phone decides it doesn't want to send the email. It is really beginning to annoy the snot out of me. Also I am able to do a lot of internet browsing via my phone so I don't get on the actually computer as much as I used to. Last time I was on I saw that I can post a blog from my phone, but I don't remember how to do it & now w/ all the new changes I'm going to have to search for the directions. These silly phones are supposed to make things/life a little easier! Well, Duke's paw is all healed up but we found out a little bit ago that he has a tumor in his mouth. :( The dr thinks it is benign and it is operable. She took some blood work to see how he is doing and it seems that he is pretty healthy. It looks like he'll be having surgery in the next few weeks. :( :( :( I'm so nervous for him. The Boy is totally TWO!!!! He throws way more fits than I expected from him and he is exhausting but he is absolutely the cutest little guy in the whole entire world!!! The Girl finished her 1st soccer season and really seemed to enjoy it. She has said that she wants us to sign her up again so that is a good sign. We had fun being soccer parents too. :) She is super excited to start school at the end of August. Just about every other day she asks if it is her birthday yet or if it is time to go to school. I am sooo nervous about her starting school. More so b/c the germs that she will encounter and inevitably bring home to us. :( I'm also hoping that she doesn't become a 'behavior' problem when in reality she is just bored b/c she knows all the stuff already. I'm sort of looking forward to her being gone for a few hours a day so that The Boy and I can get a chance to do some learning together. The flip side of that is that he won't have "Sizzy" around to entertain or to entertain him. It's just then end of June and it is already too hot to do anything around here. The highs for this weekend range from 101-104 not really my idea of fun. :(

Duke got a boo boo

Long story short, in the middle of the night we discovered Duke had this boo boo on his paw. I'm posting the pictures here for a friend to see so she can give us some advice on care for it.








In other news: I just noticed that I can post from my phone.... I just may blog more often now! Woot! WOOT!

Awww I miss it!

So I just went and read some old posts and looked at some pictures and realized that I miss blogging. Who'da thunk? :)
I don't know that I'll be able to catch up from September so I will just start with from now...
Christmas! WOW!!! I've ALWAYS loved Christmas. I love the decorations, the food, getting together with family & friends and of course presents. I love giving just as much (maybe more even) than receiving!
I knew that it would be hard to Christmas shop for the kids b/c I always have them so all year long as I found stuff and if I was able to get out on my own I'd buy things that I'd find on sale and 'whatnot' and tuck it away in a closet or attic. (As I'm typing this, I just realized that I forgot to get The Boys dump truck that I got him back in June on clearance for like $3 down from the attic) Well once I got (what I thought was ALL) the stuff together, we realized the kids were going to have one crazy huge Christmas. In fact, one of the things I got The Girl, we decided not to give to her right now, we are going to save it for her birthday. :) After it was all wrapped and set around the tree I asked C what he thought and he said "we look rich". LOL Yes it was too much STUFF but it was crazy fun though!
Sunday didn't turn out at all like I saw in my head. We had planned to go to church in the am and then come home and let the kids open their gifts. Weeeeeeellllll, the alarm clock didn't go off at 7:30 like we needed it to, C woke up at 9:11 & then woke me up. We decided that he and The Girl would go to church and that the Boy and I would stay home since there was no way that the 4 of us would be able to get ready and leave the house in 20 minutes. The Girl didn't even remember that it was Christmas and was out the door w/ her daddy w/out even seeing the presents. The Boy and I hung out in the house, he did catch sight of "melmo" slippers hanging from his stocking so I let him wear them.
When C and The Girl got home though, she knew what the deal was by then (I'm sure people at church asked her about her Christmas). In the past, she was slow about opening presents and wanted to play with whatever she opened right then so it became an all day process. That wasn't the case this year. She tore through that paper like it was a race to the finish. The Boy however adopted the girls old method of opening and playing right away, so he still had stuff to open all day long.

Side note:
We had a friend with us, we've spent every Christmas with her since 2007. Her dad passed away in Feb of 2007 and her mom remarried this summer and moved away but she wasn't able to go visit b/c of work the next day. So we enjoyed having that extra set of hands now that there are two kids needing things opened and supervision at the same time. lol We were invited to dinner at a friends house, who have 2 kids S and G's ages, so the kids were able to have a blast while the grownups got to actually hold conversations! YAY! This Christmas dinner had to be the first time I didn't have lasagna or turkey for Christmas dinner. We had gumbo. It was my first time. I actually liked it! (It wasn't my favorite food but I'd eat it again.) I'm a sucker for tradition though so I'm pretty sure when Christmas dinner is in my control it will be either lasagna or turkey for me! :)

The Girl ALMOST spent the night with her friend, but we are thinking that at the last minute she had a major cause of nerves and she pulled out in the most dramatic way possible! She feigned illness!!! HELLO!?!?! She's 4!!!!! She pulled out all the stops though; gagging, crying, saying her belly hurt, sitting on the potty.... it was quite the show. As soon as we were able to convince her to get out of the bathroom b/c we were leaving.... she was fine and running around and wanted to give her friend her present and totally acting like nothing was wrong. I had to chase her downstairs TWICE to get her to actually leave. CRAZINESS I tell ya!!!

Here they are opening some gifts from Grandpa and Nanna-Beth:





Christmas present time! :)
The final product:








The Boy would hand me a present to open if it was "too well" wrapped. (good thing I got lazy after wrapping for a while b/c I left little openings for him to grab.)












This is a FAVORITE of hers:


Can't you tell??? LOL
She also got a "kids nook" that we let her open before bed on Christmas eve. It is actually a Leap Frog leap pad. On it she can play games, read books (have them read to her) it is an inter active touch screen thing and it is AWESOME!

And one of his favorites:




I'd LOVE to show you more pictures but we don't have any! This year C decided he was going to be the photographer and well, that didn't work out very well. He got too caught up in all the excitement and the camera got forgotten about. (I kinda did too or I would have grabbed it and started snapping away.)

We had a blast with the kids and I wish I could do this with them everyday! :) (sorta!)

Today we are off to visit the family that I used to be a nanny for when we lived in St Louis. They have family about 45 minutes from us and they come down once or twice a year. It works out great, we get to visit them too! :)

~til next time!