Happy Thanksgiving & Happy Birthday!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And...on Friday...

A very Happy Birthday to my good friend Carolyn and my blog friend Chaotic Mom who both have a birthday on Friday!!! Hope you both have spectacular birthdays!!!

On Friday, everyone go wish Carolyn and Chaotic Mom a happy birthday :)

Happy 30th, my friend!!!

No, it's not my 30th (that was back in March), but my good friend, Melissa (who some of you know as Frog Legs!) turns 30 today! :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR MELISSA
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!

Happy birthday girl! Hope it's a better one than you expect!

Now real quick, everyone go wish her a happy 30th birthday!!! She could use some cheering up!

Contemplating Black Friday

I cannot believe there are only 5 weeks left until Christmas! OMG! I am pretty much done with the Christmas shopping for everyone on my side of the family, but not Joe's side. We don't even draw names on Joe's side until after Thanksgiving. So, can't do anything for that yet.

So, those who have been around know that I do not like shopping. Well I hate crowds even more. So, you would think that I would know better than to even LOOK at the Black Friday preview lists which involve shopping and MEGA crowds! I hate it. I cringe at even the thought of it. But dammit, there are some GREAT deals! I remember a couple years ago when I gave in and went to Toys R Us on Black Friday...OMG! I have never seen anything like it before! I got there at 5:15am, and the line was already to the door. When you walked in, you were at the end of the line. You just had to just jump in line first thing and look at things as you got to them in the line, because the line wrapped in and out of every aisle of the store. It was INSANE.

And here I am, two years later, and the crazy thoughts are entering my head again. Should I or shouldn't I? I REALLY do NOT want to, but there are 8 things on the Wal-Mart Black Friday list that I really want/need at a GOOD price. 1 thing at Toys R Us, and 5 things at Target too. UGH!!! I can't even believe I'm considering this. I will NOT got to all 3, but I'm leaning towards going to Wal-Mart at 5am, since there are 8 things there. I know I will be totally stressed out and flustered if I go, I H-A-T-E crowds, I can't stand people in my way when I'm trying to walk through a store. I avoid Wal-Mart on weekends because of the crowds, and now I'm thinking about purposely going there on *the* busiest day with the biggest crowds of all. What is wrong with me?! Well, I guess I have a week to decide.

What about you- are you venturing out on Black Friday?

Garage/Workshop Progress

Don't have time to post much, but thought I'd upload the latest pictures of our garage & workshop building project! We're getting there- it's starting to actually look like a building now.

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things About My Oldest Son Brendan, Who Turned 6 Today!!!

1. He is a very smart kid. All of his teachers from the 2 yr old room teacher at daycare on up to his Kindergarten teacher now have commented to us numerous times each year as to how smart he is.

2. He is very artistic too. He loves to draw, color and write, and he is very good at it! He also loves books and is learning how to read.

3. He loves to watch movies. (He probably got this from me, I love to watch movies too!)

4. He can be very loving and cuddly when he wants to, and he tells us he loves us often.

5. He's a picky eater, but he will usually eat his dinner if the bribe is good enough. heehee He will almost never turn down warm bread (like crescent rolls or breadsticks) or a peanut butter & jelly sandwich though. And he would eat a whole tray of cold shrimp if we let him. But dinner is usually a struggle of some sort.

6. He seems very interested in things related to art, science, nature, and music. His teacher said he's good at math too. (He definitely didn't get that from me!) He can sing all sorts of songs and get the tune and rhythm right. He even makes up his own songs with multiple verses and chorus lines! (we won't mention that one of the many songs he made up was when he was mad at me and the song was all about how I don't love him! Talk about a knife to the heart overhearing that one while standing outside his room!)

7. He has an incredible memory! He still brings up things we did or saw when he was 2 years old and says "remember that Mommy?" I always have to dig down deep in my memory to figure out what he's talking about.

8. Although he has somewhat lost interest in them now, he is very good at puzzles. When he was 2-1/2 years old he shocked us by putting together a puzzle that was marked as being for 4-7 year old kids! He did it completely by himself at age 2-1/2 just by looking at the picture on the front of the box. We didn't help him at all. We kept buying him new puzzles, and he would put them all together without any help from us.

9. Even though they fight over toys and sometimes hurt each other, he is a good big brother to Adam. It is so cute when he helps his brother, or when they hug and play together.

10. He is tall and skinny. His weight is always around the 30th percentile, while his height is always up around the 75th percentile. His waist is so little that he wears a size 7-slim pants, and even that size slim is too big in the waist, so they have to have adjustable waists too, tightened to the tightest spot. Even then sometimes a belt is necessary too.

11. He looks just like his daddy did at this age, and his little brother looks just like he did at that age too. I'm not sure if any of my genes were passed on to either of the boys at all! lol

12. He has about 50 or more pieces of paper hung all over his desk and shelves and door of pictures he has drawn. At Halloween he drew all sorts of Halloween pictures and hung them up as "decoration". The day after Halloween he took them all down and started drawing Thanksgiving pictures. I'm sure the Christmas ones will be starting soon too.

13. HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY BRENDAN!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!

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I did it!

Well, I did it. After 12 years of NOT doing it, I did it again. I voted yesterday! I've only voted one other time in my life...the very first election after I turned 18. Then, I didn't vote ever again...until yesterday! Okay, maybe it wasn't exactly for the right reasons, I *had* to cancel out my hubby's vote on a thing or two, but still I voted! Aren't you proud of me? LOL

What a weekend!

Wow, we had quite the eventful weekend! (as if things haven't been eventful enough lately- see my TT post below to see what I mean, if you didn't already).

They were supposed to be pouring/spreading the concrete for the garage on Saturday morning, but after a series of events, they ended up doing it Friday afternoon instead. But, it had to be smoothed out with a machine every so often as it was setting up. Long story short, we still had a guy there working on it until 11:30pm. But it's done now, so that's good. It's crazy how fast things are moving though, because our loan money hasn't come through yet, so we've been having to pay the excavation, gravel, concrete, and workers out of our pocket! Yikes!

Saturday was the annual Christmas shopping trip that my mom, sister, grandma, aunt, cousin and I go on each year. (those who have been reading my blog awhile know that I do not like shopping very much). That went fine. I spent A LOT of money, but am now closer to being done. Guess that's better than not having any luck.

While we were there, Joe called to let me know he had to take Brendan to the Emergency room! Brendan had apparently climbed up one of our trees and got too high up where the branches were not big enough to hold his weight. The branch he was standing on broke and Brendan fell to the ground. Joe had been getting Adam's jacket on him and got out there just in time to see Brendan on the ground crying. He said he hurt everywhere, including his stomach, and said it was hard to breathe, so that was enough for Joe to feel like he should take him to the ER just to be sure there wasn't anything wrong internally, or any breaks, etc. So he took him in, and they checked him out and did x-rays. Everything was fine. His one foot was the main thing still hurting him, but it wasn't broken...just sprained or bruised or something. He is still kinda limping around on it, but can walk and do things. He got really lucky that he wasn't hurt any worse! He could have easily been hurt VERY badly.

Sunday was the birthday party for the boys. It was very chaotic! I do not like how that place does their birthday parties! Long story, but here's the brief version- You only get the birthday party room for 1 hour of the party. So, for the first hour the kids played and had fun, but the adults had no designated area to go, and we couldn't take the cake, presents, etc into the room ahead of time. It was crowded, loud, and hot. Then when it was our turn to go in the room, it was so small, that we didn't all fit in, so a lot of the people had to stand outside of the room, looking in through the doorway! The kids ate the cake, and about 1/2 way through the present-opening, the worker told me we only had 5 minutes left. So,the boys had to quickly rip into the remaining presents and it was crazy trying to get all of our stuff out of there. They were all but pushing us out the door. And the other strange thing is, they didn't give us the tokens for the kids until we got in the b-day party room, so the whole first hour while the kids were supposed to be playing, they didn't have their tokens for the games area. Seems backwards to me. They could climb around on the huge 2-story play area, so at least they had that, but still seems strange not to allow them to have the tokens for the game area too. So by the time we got out of the room, most people in our party left. Some stayed and played longer. We stayed for awhile to let Brendan and Adam use their tokens, and then we left too. His classmate's parents all said their kids had fun, so hopefully it wasn't too bad from their perspective, but maybe they were just trying to be nice. lol! But, Brendan said he had fun at his party, so that's what's most important. And both boys got some really nice gifts! It is amazing how cool the toys are these days! That place is such a fun place to go and play, but I don't think we will ever have a birthday party there again, (unless they change the way they do it). Too hectic!

Now I just wish I had a weekend to recover from the weekend! lol

Oh, and saw this on Uisce and Veronika's blogs, so thought I'd try it too:

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

There are apparently zero with my same first and last name combination, but 157,484 people in the U.S. with my first name and 810 people in the U.S. with my last name.

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen things going on in my world lately that have kept me from blogging much the last few weeks.

1. Early in the month (as I posted about earlier) we were dealing with all the car issues, right at the same time as Joe's birthday and our Anniversary.

2. Brendan has been having behavior issues at school. Not listening, not following classroom rules, refusing to participate in some activities, getting mad easily if he can't do something just right, and so on.

3. We went to Joe's 15-year reunion. It was fun.

4. Joe's youngest sister got married. Joe was an usher, so I had to try to deal with both boys on my own. I spent most of the ceremony outside with Adam because he was being too loud. Ugh! Thank goodness a friend of ours let Brendan sit by him while I was out with Adam. Then between the wedding and the reception Brendan got sick. So my dad and his wife (who luckily live close to the town the wedding was in) said they'd keep the boys at their house while I went back to the reception. It was a nice break, and Joe and I had fun. Then we stayed until almost 3am helping them clean up the reception afterwards! Finally got back to my dad's house, fell asleep, and at 5am the boys woke up. So, I got less than 2 hours of sleep that night.

5. Adam started climbing out of his crib, so we moved him to the toddler bed. We don't have a room for him, so we put him in Brendan's room for now. The first week was horrible, he was screaming and wouldn't stay in bed...took forever to get him down at night, and then he'd get up very early each morning. And this was the week immediately following the wedding, so I was already running on less than 2 hours sleep when this all began. I was NOT a happy camper.

6. Even though he is now going down easier at night now in his toddler bed, he still wakes up around 4am every morning, comes upstairs to wake me up, and insists he wants some milk. Since I get up around 5am-ish anyway, I usually end up just staying up after Adam wakes me.

7. Big deadline at work was during this same time period too. But I did get it done! Yea!

8. Joe was sick with a stomach thing. I was sick 2 different times (before and again after Joe). Now Joe is sick again. Ugh! He thinks this time maybe he was just dehydrated though.

9. We had parent-teacher conferences with Brendan's teacher. All the others just met with the Kindergarten teacher, but when it was our turn, in walked the gym teacher, art teacher, and music teacher too. *sigh* They all had similar things to say about Brendan, and his behavior (not listening, not participating, not following rules, etc). I felt like *I* was in trouble. lol On a good note, his Kindergarten teacher did have a lot of good things to say too, about how incredibly smart he is, and how advanced he is in writing, drawing, reading, etc for his age. Now if he could just behave, all would be great!

10. Adam's 2nd birthday was last week! Brendan's 6th birthday is next week! We are having a birthday party for them both this Sunday. I'm not ready yet! Yikes!

11. My mom and her bf took Brendan and one of my nephews to the circus last weekend! They had a great time. Brendan thought it was awesome!

12. Halloween was okay. (See photos of the boys in my Wordless Wednesday post below). As usual, I had to work at a Halloween event that night. I love Halloween, so it really bums me out that I have to work entertaining other people's kids and I can't even take my own kids trick-or-treating.

13. We started on building our garage/workshop! This is what it looks like so far, as of this morning (sorry for the bad quality, it was still mostly dark when I left for work this morning)

Now that you're done reading my list, go wish Veronika a Happy Birthday!

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Happy Halloween and Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Blogger won't let me upload the photo right now. I'll try again later.

No Thursday Thirteen Today

I'm tired, stressed, tired, overwhelmed, tired, have tons to do, tired, feeling defeated by Brendan's behavior & attitude lately, and did I mention TIRED?! Ugh! I can't shake this exhausted feeling I've had for soooo long :(

Joe's little sister's rehearsal tonight and wedding Saturday are not helping things either. lol

Wordless Wednesday

Tackle It Tuesday: Behind my desk at work!

I have so many things that need "tackling" both at work and at home, that it only makes sense for me to join in on "Tackle It Tuesday" over at 5 Minutes for Mom!!! I'm gonna need a lot of Tuesdays to get everything done, that's for sure! lol

This week I'm going to tackle the messy pile on the floor behind/beside my desk in my office at work!

This is a combination of work stuff/papers, as well as stuff from home, that needs to go back home, old catalogs, magazines, phone books, my lunch bag, even a shirt or two (?!). What a mess! Below is the before picture. I'll update with an "after" photo once I'm done!

***UPDATE***

I did it! I'm done! Wow, it looks soooo much better now. The rest of my office is still messy, but hey, at least I can roll my desk chair around without bumping into all that stuff that was behind me on the floor! lol See the "after" photo below...

The New SUV!

First a warning- you might want to stay away from me, apparently I am a bad-luck magnet!

If you read the post below, you know some of it, and then would you believe that night (Tues) my husband's truck broke down too?! And it was his birthday too! He was driving the truck and I was driving his car, since my SUV was dead. We thought we could get away with that for a few days before we went car shopping, but nope! Our bad luck continued. So, we were truly down to 1 car, and the hours we keep right now make it nearly impossible to carpool.

So, on Wednesday Joe and I both took off work (which just happened to also be our 9-year Anniversary!) and we decided to just get everything taken care of. Long story short, I ended up buying a 2006 Hyundai Tucson. I did have a Kia Sportage, and was planning on either getting another Sportage or the Hyundai Tucson SUV, but the sales guy at Kia was an ass, so I didn't want him getting the commission! (which is really strange because our Kia dealer place prides themselves on quality, friendly staff and we have always been impressed with how friendly and helpful their service department guys are, but this one sales guy just didn't fit the mold!) He was rude, and he lost our business because of it! Hyundai guy was awesome! Plus, I prefer stick shift and Kia only had 4WD in automatics and Hyundai had the 4WD manual ones AND they undercut Kia by $2000 even without a trade-in.

I totally love the new SUV so far! I've never in my life owned a brand new car before, I've always bought used ones in the past. But, with the great warranty (10 years 100,000 miles) and the fact that the used ones aren't that much cheaper, well, it made more sense to go new this time. (Plus, with the luck I've been having lately, I wasn't taking any chances! LOL!)

So, Joe's birthday and our Anniversary were not exactly what we'd hoped or planned, but oh well. At least we shouldn't be having any more car problems any time soon. *knocking on wood*

Here it is...

Back from the retreat

The scrapbooking retreat was great! I had fun, and got 17 pages done.
However, I had an eventful evening on the way home from the retreat Sunday! On my way home my SUV overheated and died. We had *just* gotten it back out of the shop Thursday night and paid $800 to have it fixed, and now, three days later it is dead. Ugh! I made it to about 2-3 miles from home, and OF COURSE I had forgotten my cell phone so I didn’t have it with me. So, I got lots of exercise walking the whole length of the gravel road about 2-1/2 miles the rest of the way to my house. Being out in the boonies, with nothing but trees, cows & gravel road ahead I had no choice but to just walk it. Doesn’t seem very long when you drive it, but it seems pretty darn long when you WALK it- especially when the ocassional car goes by and kicks up all the gravel dust in your face! (I did get an up-close view of the fields of cows, horses, and 3 deer though!) So, about an hour later when I finally did get home, we drove Joe’s car back to it and he towed me back. He looked at it and found that the radiator hose had busted, so all the water/coolant had gushed out and that’s what caused it to overheat. And the overheating caused the engine damage. So, dead/blown engine pretty much equals dead SUV. I will have to get a new one. Which I’m overdue for anyway, as it was a 1998 and had over 160,000 miles on it. But, we were hoping it would last another couple years since Joe just had to get a new one a couple months ago too. So, we’ve gone from having both cars paid off, to two new car payments again. *sigh* But, in trying to see the silver lining, I guess the good news is that I'll be getting a new car, AND I worked off a lot of the calories we consumed at the retreat! lol

Off for the weekend

In about 3 hours I'll be heading off to my weekend retreat of scrapbooking, eating, relaxing and hanging out with friends. I'll be back online Monday, I think. Have a great weekend!

Wordless Wednesday: Where I'll be This Weekend for a Scrapbooking Retreat! Woohoo!

Our weekend...Cow Slime and Tantrums and Poop, Oh My!

We had a pretty good weekend for the most part. On Saturday my dad, his wife, and my grandma were in town to watch my nephew's soccer game. So we all met up for lunch afterwards. Then I had to rush off for a haircut (that I had already rescheduled once and the lady that cuts my hair wasn't available again for about a month so I couldn't reschedule again!)

Then Sunday we took the boys on a little trip. There is a drive-through zoo about 3 hours away, and after 35 years of business they are closing down on October 1. I remember loving that place when I was a kid, so I really wanted to bring my boys to it before they closed. Brendan wasn't too thrilled about the 3 hour drive, but he was looking forward to seeing the animals. (If he's worried about a 3-hr drive, just wait until March when we have a 14-hour drive to Texas! Yikes!) It was fun, but I'm pretty sure they have already gotten rid of a lot of the animals, because there were a lot less than I remember. And most of them were not even coming up to the car. But there were a few that did (mainly zebras & ostrichs) and then right at the end there were finally a bunch of animals that were coming up to the car to get food. There were these hairy cows (looked kinda like old english sheep dogs), Himalayan cows I think Joe said they're called? that were surrounding our car and had their whole head inside my window over my lap eating the food pellets as fast as I could get them out of the bag! They were so slobbery though, that I was backing up and practically sitting on Joe's lap trying to keep from getting slimed! lol The boys thought that was pretty funny! I finally had to roll up the window and now there is nasty slime all over the window!

After that, we took the boys to Incredible Pizza What a neat place! It's kinda like a Chuck E. Cheese, a Burger King play place, an arcade, and a CiCi's pizza buffet all rolled into one with go-karts & mini golf added in too! It was great until the end when Brendan had a total meltdown/fit/tantrum because of a silly little toy prize...which was very frustrating and embarassing. He was yelling, screaming, kicking, talking back, you name it. I'm sure he was tired and so something that little set him off, and he just kept getting worse and worse. It's situations like that that we are at a loss as to the "right" way to handle it. We have become the yelling type, and you bet he got a spanking when he started kicking the sink in the bathroom, and his brother. I don't want to be the yelling/spanking type of parent, but he doesn't respond to calmer methods. And I certainly don't want him to think he can get away with behavior like that. But we don't feel like we handle this sort of thing quite right either. (but that issue is a whole other post) What to do? We left, of course, at that point. It's weird to think our almost 6-year-old was the one throwing the fit and our almost 2-year-old who is already showing signs of "the terrible two's" was perfectly behaved! lol Seems like it would have been the other way around! Oh, but Adam wasn't completely innocent either...he had a poopy blow-out while we were there, and it was all over the inside of his pants, down his leg, etc. Thank goodness I had remembered to pack an extra set of clothes for just such an occassion! LOL

But tantrums and poop aside, all in all it was a fun weekend :) LOL

Over for another year

Well, the weekend is over, and I'm glad to have that event behind me for another year. Saturday the weather was great, but Sunday we sat in the rain all day. It was not fun. But it's over, and now I can start to enjoy fall. Fall is my favorite season :) We're still pretty busy though, Brendan has afterschool soccer this week and his swimming lessons have started back up. But the soccer program ends on Friday, so next week it'll be down to just swimming lessons.

The weather is much cooler this week, and I've discovered that both boys have outgrown all of their pants...even the pants I just bought them a couple months ago. The pant legs are too short, but the waists are still too big. Brendan is going to need a 7-slim for the length, but it will be too big in the waist, even being slim size. Adam started out chunkier, but now he is getting the same body type as big brother. He could probably wear 12mos in waist, but he needs 2T for length. Do they even make a size 2T-slim jeans?! lol So, somehow I need to figure out time to go to the store and buy both boys several new pants.

As you can tell, I don't have anything exciting going on right now to write about. lol

Busy week

September is my least favorite month at work, and this week is my least favorite week, and especially this weekend is my least favorite weekend of the whole year at work. Have to work an event that goes on and on and on long hours all weekend, and we're preparing for it all week. So, I may not be able to visit very many blog pals this week. Sorry. I'll try to catch up next week!