OK, so no blogging at work really sucks...I haven't been on here in forever! As for house updates, we had our walk-through this morning and it looks fabulous! I can't believe that it's actually going to be ours tomorrow! The kids are doing great down at my parents', and now, before I spend too much time online I need to get this apartment packed up!

I hope the few readers I have will stay with me during this horrible transition period! We get road runner installed on Friday, so hopefully I will be back on a little more regularly.

:)

No More Bloggin At Work!!!

OK, so I can no longer access the blogs at work. Which completely and totally sucks! And we don’t have internet at our crazy little apartment. But we get to move into our new house in 5 days!!!! I’m so excited! Here’s the timeline of my next week:

Sunday Evening: Kids go with my dad down to my parents’ house
Monday Morning: Get up and pack a little
Monday Afternoon: Go into work
Tuesday Morning: Walk through the new house with the construction supervisor
Tuesday Afternoon: Pack up the apartment
Wednesday Morning: Go to work and enjoy office Christmas party
Wednesday 2:00: Close on new house!!!!!
Wednesday Evening: Paint kids’ rooms
Thursday All Day: Mover’s bring all boxes and furniture to the house; sister and I
unpack while hubby runs cable to rooms it’s not in yet and put in
pantry shelves
Friday All Day: Unpack boxes and get house ready for kids
Friday Night: Go and pick up kids and bring them to the new house
Saturday: Finish Christmas shopping and wrapping and celebrate Christmas with
hubby’s family
Sunday: Bake Christmas cookies, go to church, hang out with kids and relax!
Monday: My whole family comes over and celebrates our first Christmas in the new
house!!


Phew! I think it’s doable, don’t you?

Last Saturday we went and did pictures…what a nightmare! The family ones turned out great, but we had a bad photographer and the kids’ ones were horrible! So they let us come back in on Tuesday and re-do their pictures. The two photographers that did them were fantastic! We had so many great pictures it was hard to choose. I pick them up Monday night, so I’ll scan them in and put them up so that everyone can see my adorable kids!

That’s about it…I have no idea when I’m even going to be able to get this post up, but we get road runner at the new house a week from today, so at least I’ll be able to post from home in a week!

Random Updates

OK, so who wants to come and help me? Panicking still, but I know I have no choice but to accept it and move on. We’re starting to put together an action plan, which will help, and I’m actually taking people up on their offers to help (so anyone reading this that would like to help, don’t offer unless you really mean it because I’ll say “OK” :) ).

I have bought the following items for my son's room: http://www.buckeyesportsstuff.com/buckeyes-helmet-mural-kit.html (it’s OK if I cheat a little bit, right?)

And

http://www.sportskids.com/superstore/Bedding/NCAA/Ohio+State/p/395478.html (very cute!)

I’m about to go on and order my daughter’s princess bedding and stuff, so hopefully their rooms will be all set for them when they come home. This brings up a little problem I have…I put my son down for bed last night (usually very easy, he just rolls over and goes to sleep) and he sits up and starts crying. I ask him what’s wrong and he says “sissy”. He was mad because my daughter hadn’t come to bed yet. And sure enough the minute I brought her in he turned over and went to sleep. What am I going to do when they have their own rooms again? Here I was worried they wouldn’t be able to share a room!

Last night we did a fun thing…we went to Chuck E. Cheeses, because our apartment/hotel is practically attached to it! But really it wasn’t crowded, and hubby had fed the kids before hand (I had dinner with a friend that is moving far away (crying :( ), and the whole 1 ½ hours of fun only cost us $20. It really should have only cost us $10, but hubby and I were having fun winning tickets for the kids :)

We have our Christmas family pictures tomorrow, and of course the kids have been sick :( This stinks because whenever my son gets sick his upper lip gets all red and chapped, so all week I’ve been drowning it in Aquafora (is that right?) every night before he goes to bed. That stuff is amazing! His lip is not bad at all…nothing a little concealer can’t fix :)

OK, now for my announcement: I think that I will win mother of the year award this year! Know why? Because I have managed to get my daughter Baby Alive and my son TMX Elmo…and I didn’t spend more than the normal price for Baby Alive and only $10 more than the retail price for Elmo. Yes, you can all give up the fight, the award is mine this year…better luck next year :) But honestly…the fact that I am doing this for my 3 and 1 year-old is insane!!! This should not happen until they are at least 5!

OK, I need to get back to work now. We will be at the house this weekend, of course, so I will try to remember my camera so that I can show you pictures of the house that we will be moving into in 12 days!!!

Panic Attacks

I seriously think I’m having a ton of little panic attacks. We are officially closing on our new house on December 20th, and I feel like there are 10,000 things that need to be accomplished before and after this. I need to make sure our appliances get there (I ordered them myself because I get an awesome GE discount since I work for the builder, and if I would have ordered them with the house they would have cost me 3 times as much). I have an awesome construction supervisor that is letting me get my appliances in before we close (this is normally absolutely not allowed if you are doing your own appliances), so I need to make sure that they are delivered at the correct time so that I am not holding him up in any way because he has to let them into the house. I also need to decide on my financing…that’s right, still haven’t locked my rate. I have to do that today. And then of course I need to pack up our little apartment-thingy. While this doesn’t seem like a whole lot, there’s more, and I know I’m inflicting this on myself, but like I’ve said before, I have a plan, and you can’t mess with my plan. My plan is to have Christmas in my new house. Or at least to be able to enjoy my week off with the kids not doing anything. So this means that we have three and a half days to move everything in, unpack, and pain the kids’ bedrooms. Even as I type this my heart rate is accelerating and I’m breathing heavier and I have this very heavy feeling in my stomach…but I really want my kids to come home on Christmas Eve and to spend the whole day backing cookies and decorating the tree. So now beforehand I have to decide how I’m going to paint their rooms…my daughter’s room will be fairly easy…I’m painting each wall a different pastel color and then putting up Disney Princess wall stickers. My son’s on the other hand will be a little more difficult – it will be a Buckeye theme, so we’re thinking about painting the walls to look like a Buckeye helmet.

I know that I can do this…even if I get very little sleep. And moving will be so much easier this time because we are at the end result…this beautiful new house that has a gigantic kitchen so I can do all the cooking I want! And all of the kids toys can come out of storage! Which by the way I’m totally using to my advantage and as an excuse for a light Christmas this year for the kids (don’t worry, by “light” I still mean a ton of presents…I usually go way overboard).

Alright…I need to stop writing now and get back to getting everything for the house organized and what else am I supposed to be doing? Oh yeah, working.

How to Get My Daughter to Eat

So last night OU played Central Michigan for the MAC championship (I think?) Clearly I did not watch the game…I was in the basement watching Grey’s Anatomy. We went over to my uncle’s house, and OU graduate, and all four of my cousins were there, all OU graduates as well, and then you have hubby and me, who graduated from there as well. Believe it or not there are many more OU graduates in my family that were not present…I think we’ve supported OU for the past 50 years! Anyway, we stopped and got pizza and I watched the first half with everyone. Guess what? My daughter ate tons and tons of pizza and fried cauliflower. Too bad I’m not the nicest mom in the world and will only give her pizza from now on. Nope, not so nice.

This is kind of a boring post because nothing else really went on. We went and looked at the new house last night…floors look beautiful! It’s looking so nice! They’re patching up the walls so that they will be ready for the final coat of paint. I just can’t wait to get in there!

The dentist appointment went great! I love this new dentist, and it’s 2 minutes from our new house. And my daughter did fabulous! She sat in the chair and let them clean her teeth, check her teeth and put vitamins on them (it was this foam stuff that she put on her teeth with a Q-tip-looking thing). I was so proud of her! My appointment was fine, I got through it ok and it didn’t hurt! My hygienist was so gentle and nice!

OK really, how boring can I be that I’m posting about our dentist appointment? I wish I had something deep to post about and make everyone think, but my brain is so fried right now from lack of sleep and moving and working really hard. I’ve got this huge project at work that I’ve been working on for months, and I’ve been working even harder on it lately. For the accountants out there: The SEC is sending comment letters to all the major homebuilders regarding how they are reporting their segments. They’ve had to restate and it’s just a whole mess. We have been planning on re-doing our segments, so that has been my project, and it’s not easy! You would think that it would be, but it’s not. It’s draining.

This weekend we are going to a festival in our new little city that will have Santa and a mini-Polar Express train (http://www.cityofpowell.us/docs/special%20events/HIP%20Detailed%20Schedule%20of%20Events.pdf), and then Saturday night hubby and I are going to a formal Christmas party for one of his clients. I hope to relax the rest of the weekend! I have to go and buy the kids their Christmas outfits because our pictures are next Saturday at this place: http://www.flashportraits.com/ If any of you have one of these close by go there! I love them! They aren’t too expensive and they so such a fabulous job with the kids.

OK, enough of my rambling and back to my work! Oh, and this morning started off horribly because these huge storms are coming through the Midwest http://www.weather.com/weather/local/43219?lswe=43219&lwsa=WeatherLocalUndeclared&from=whatwhere and as soon as I stepped out of my car it was a monsoon! I had an umbrella but I was absolutely drenched. And the worst part is that it’s Friday, so I’m wearing jeans, and they take the longest to dry. I’ve been here since 7:25 and at 9:30 I’m just now about dry. At least it’s Friday!

It's Great Having the Kids Back!

Ahhh, my kids are back! I have never been so happy to see them or missed them so much! I have no idea why this time was any different than before, but I’m thinking it’s because the kids have been with my parents the two weekends before Thanksgiving, and then we all went down there for that, and then gone the past 3 days. But now that we are moved into our lovely apartment, they will be with us! At least until we close on the new house and they go back down there so that we can get us moved in. As much as I hate having them away, I feel better that they are down getting a ton of attention from my sister and parents instead of being with us while we’re moving and having to fend for themselves as far as entertainment.

Last night we played, and played! The kids seem to really like the apartment. My daughter painted my nails (which later stained them a green color and I had to file and buff them to get it off!) and then we played with the kitchen set. My son really wanted to play make-up and nail polish with us…I kept telling him it was sissy’s and he’s a boy, boys don’t play make-up.

I’m having a hard time getting my daughter to eat. She was always a big eater as a baby and toddler (it was the big joke of everybody that tried to feed her…she would eat 3 jars of baby food at once!) but now she barely eats anything, and it’s not because she’s picky, she just says she’s not hungry. I think it’s really taking its toll on her, so last night I told her she had to sit at the table until all of her food was gone. She kept telling me she was full, bargaining 5 more bites, you name it, she tried it! My son on the other hand ate his first plate and then had another. So my son was done and I took him back to the bath tub (because even though he uses his utensils very nicely, he’s always still a huge mess!) and as soon as I put him in the water he looked at me and said “sissy?” They always take a bath together, but I told him that sissy was still eating. And every time I popped my head back in to check on him he would look at me and say “sissy?” It was the cutest thing…he always wants to know where she is if she’s not right by him. He does it with everybody else too…if we’re in the car and hubby isn’t there, he says “daddy?” and I tell him daddy’s at _____, and then he says “pappaw?” (my dad) and I tell him pappaw’s at his house, and then he says “gnma” (my mom) and I tell him grandma’s with pappaw. He doesn’t like it when everyone is not right there with him! Anyway, my daughter actually finished a lot of her dinner (I knew she couldn’t eat all of it because I had put a lot on her plate) and she finally took her bath. By this time my son was out, and I think she really enjoyed having the whole tub to herself.

The kids actually slept better than I thought they would for their first time in a new house…I heard my son whimpering a couple times in the middle of the night, but he went right back to sleep. The hardest adjustment is going to be the morning routine. Hubby has to take the kids, and we’re not used to not having a garage attached to our living quarters. So he runs out to the parking lot (which is probably 200 feet away) and starts the car, and then I in my robe (because I don’t leave for another ½ hour) help him take the kids out to the car because of course he can’t leave one in there while he comes back to the apartment to get the other one! We’ve been spoiled because every morning this week it’s been in the 60’s…it’s going to really suck when we have to do this in the freezing cold! I know that it will be really nice to have our garage back! The other adjustment was the hot water…half-way through my shower it was gone! That’s ridiculous! Oh well, hopefully this is just for two or three weeks; hopefully!

I talked to our construction supervisor yesterday and we’re still scheduled for carpet on December 8th. They were putting in our hardwood floors yesterday I guess (we’ll go see it tonight)…it’s all coming together so beautifully! I know I need to post pictures, but I always forget my camera!

My daughter and I are going to the dentist today. I hate the dentist. I have no real reason to hate the dentist…I have been told I have beautiful teeth (thanks mom and dad for the braces and the very stringent teeth-brushing regiment everyday!) I just hate having my mouth open and it always hurts me! Lately I’ve been remembering to Advil before I go. The problem is that now that I go with my daughter, I have to pretend to love the dentist! She loves the dentist until it’s time for her to get in that chair! This is her third appointment – the first she barely opened her mouth; the second she had to lay on top of me, but she did actually let them clean her teeth with that tool. I talked to her last night about going and she’s very excited, so hopefully I will not have to lay on the chair with her! The dentist that I’m going to today (don’t ask…I’m in a search for a new dentist and pediatrician!) I’ve never been to see her, but we had been seeing her partner that recently left the practice. Anyway, they have the pull-down TVs so that she can watch a movie while they work on her and while they do me, so that will be very nice!

OK, time to get back to work…I hope you all are having a great week and are enjoying the season (although I really haven’t gotten into it because I don’t want to spend any money on presents until we close on our house, and we have no house to decorate, so I’m kind of bummed).

Long Time...

Wow, I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve posted…my craziness has to end. And it should…today. We are turning over the keys to our old house today at 5:00, and then it’s sitting around and relaxing for another month until our new house is ready. Hubby and I have busted our butts the last couple of days (the kids have been down with my parents) and we are exhausted! Last night we didn’t get to bed until 2:00 am, and then I was back up at 6:15. The kids come home today, and all we have to do is sit and play in our new apartment.

I’m sad to see the old house go…it has been such an important part of our lives for the past 5 ½ years…it was our first house, we brought two kids home to this house, the kids’ rooms have beautiful murals on the walls, and we have made such wonderful friends in our neighborhood. While I’m very excited about the new house, I will definitely miss the old one.

The worst thing about the past week is that we have all been sick. And trying to move while you are sick is just no fun. I still feel horrible. But, at least the weather has been awesome! It has been in the 60’s everyday this week, so at least we’re not trying to move in the cold!

Nothing else is really going on…it’s weird being in an apartment…we’ve owned a house for 5 ½ years and it’s weird sharing things with people. When we come in at night there aren’t any parking spaces near our building, so we have to park far away, and of course our cars aren’t in a garage, and people are coming in and out at all hours of the night (oh wait, I guess we have fit into that category the last couple of days :) ). But I can’t complain at all…our apartment is very nice, and it includes everything – fully furnished, all utilities included, 1,000 square feet, and it’s surrounded by stores and restaurants! It’s the closest to city living that I’ll ever be! Here’s a link to our place: http://www.corporatehousing.com/display.asp?site=4010

Alright, back to work. I will definitely be posting more now that my mind can release a whole chunk of stuff that has involved worrying about moving out of this house.

Phew!

Wow, what a long day! The in-laws and I arrived at the site (after me driving around for 1/2 hour because I freakin' don't know the east side of Columbus) at 6:00 last night. We went and checked in at the volunteer tent, and the wonderful (sarcastic) lady checking us in just happened to be the admin for our office. She promptly informed us that we were not to get a shirt or hard hat until they needed us down at the site. Did you know I don't listen to directions? I came down to volunteer and I was getting a shirt! So we all put shirts on, and the crazy admin lady, let's just call her "Jo", actually sent someone over to tell us to take them off. Do you think I took mine off? I'm a little defiant. Anyway, we sat around for 2 hours and did nothing. They didn't need our help at all, so finally we left (they said they only needed 5 people to stay the full shift, so we high-tailed it out of there). We went to the catering tent and ate dinner, and then we just stood by the hole and watched. They ran into some problem with the ground as they were digging the basement, so as of last night they are about 3 hours behind. Did I mention how cool it was to be there at night while they were working hard to get the house done???

Once we get more updated pictures I'll post them!

My Long Day Has Started

So here I am at work, at 8:54 am, and I still have not done a single thing of work (dang you wonderful blogs that I have to read every morning). I'm a little worried about how tiring this week is going to be, and today starts it all off. At 5:00 my in-laws will pull up to my building and we will head off to the Extreme Makeover site...hubby will watch our kids and my nephew as my brother and sister in-law will also be going with us. If we are actually helping, we should be there until Midnight tonight. I say "if we are actually helping" because I was informed yesterday that there's a chance that we could be sitting around just waiting for someone to need us...ummmm my time is way too precious for that! So if that's the case, you can bet I'll be out of there a lot sooner than Midnight!

My son fell down the stairs last night, but luckily I was standing on the stairs with him and was able to catch him after only falling 3 stairs, so he only banged his mouth into the trim, and not his head onto our wood floors. He screamed, but was laughing again within a couple of minutes. I realized last night as I was falling asleep that I have some serious internal issues with raising him. Hear me out and moms of boys give me your opinions on how you're raising your boys.

I've always been scared of having boys...I grew up with all girls (except for my dad of course). I had no idea how boys worked, or how they played, and I was very excited that my first was a girl. And then my son came along. For some reason my dad and hubby are so scared of him turning out to be a sissy that they go overboard expecting him to be tough, and he's only 16 months. I also want him to grow up to be a tough boy, but I'm still his mommy, and mommies kiss boo-boos, and pick their kids up when they're crying. Whenever I do this, hubby makes a comment such as "don't worry about him, he's a boy, he can handle it. And it's hard, because I do find myself being a lot rougher with him than I ever was with my daughter, and I know that's because subconsciously I don't want him to be a wuss.

How do you find the balance? How do you show your son unconditional love without turning him into a momma's boy?

Strep Throat and a Cool Announcement!

So it was confirmed, I have strep throat. Just my luck! I'm sure I got it while teaching my daughter's Sunday School class since it's very difficult to pass between adults and adults usually get it through kids. So I didn't go to work on Friday, and after my day of antibiotics I was feeling much better by Saturday. This worked out perfectly because my mom came and got the kids on Thursday night, so I could rest all day Friday, and then Saturday hubby and I spent most of the day packing, and then we went and looked at the new house and then to dinner and....furniture shopping! We had so much fun! We realized that every time the kids are gone we try so hard to have a "real" date...dinner and a movie. But in actuality, we have a blast doing the everyday things that we used to do before we had kids - like jumping on couches all night!

So even though I'm still a little sick, we had a great weekend! So now here's my fabulous news that I've been keeping you in suspense about: M/I Homes, the company I work for, is building a house for Extreme Makeover, Home Edition this week!!! I couldn't say anything because ABC just knocked on the family's door and told them yesterday morning, so we all had to keep really quiet about it. I can't wait! I'm volunteering to help tomorrow night from 6:00 - Midnight, and then the whole accounting team is volunteering Thursday during work, and then hubby and I are volunteering Friday night from 6:00 - Midnight. Here's a link to our site that has the details:

www.mihomes.com

And then of course there's the OSU/Michigan game this Saturday here in Columbus...it's going to be a very busy week!

Still Very Sick

I feel like I'm going to die, for real. But yes, I'm still here at work. I have some sort of mandatory benefits meeting today and a webcast: "SFAS 157 Fair Value Debriefs"...I'm sure you're all really jealous and would love to participate in that webcast.

My throat hurts very badly, my head is going to explode, and I feel nauseous (someone please tell my body that I either have a head cold or a stomach flu, but not both). Honestly I think my stomach is upset because I haven't eaten anything in about 48 hours. I keep trying to make myself eat, but everything sounds very gross. Hubby made me a milkshake last night, which was really nice of him considering it was 9:30 and I had repeatedly told him I didn't need anything, but then I came downstairs and asked for my milkshake. It was cute though because my daughter helped him make it. Poor thing has no idea about really being sick...she kept asking me why I was mad and why I wasn't talking to her. I told her it hurt to talk, but she just didn't get it.

I really hope I feel better by tomorrow...I have something really cool going on next week...I can't tell you what it is just yet, we're all hush-hush, but I will tell you next week and I can't wait!!!

Thanks for enduring my boring post about being sick :)

I Spoke Too Soon

Here is the e-mail that I sent to my boss yesterday:

"Hi Boss,

I just wanted to let you know, assuming that no one in my family is sick between now and then, that I’m planning to take off the last two weeks of December (9 days). Hopefully we should close around December 15th or 18th and this way I can get us moved in and still have Christmas at my new house! Please let me know if this creates a conflict for any reason.

Thanks!"

Guess who's sick? ME. My throat hurts and I can't concentrate on anything because I'm spacey and my head hurts. But I refuse to take any days off between now and December 18, no matter what! OK, maybe if the kids were deathly ill, or throwing up...but luckily my parents will have them most of December, so I don't have to worry about the babysitter calling me and asking me to come and get them because they are still sick. I have a plan, and that plan is to take 9 days off at the end of the year and not have to go to work for 2 whole weeks!!!!

Don't mess with a woman with a plan!

Very Cool Idea

I just wanted to share this cool thing that Dating Dummy has started. If you know anyone in college, show them this for the chance at a scholarship. Like he says, every little bit helps!

Here's his blog: http://datingdummy.blogspot.com/


Here's his idea:









Can someone please tell me the secret to posting links??? I have no idea why the link to his blog doesn't work...I added it through the "post link" icon.

**Edited to add: Thank you Dating Dummy for helping me with the link posting!!! It all makes sense now why sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't...the highlighting part!!! Thank you!!!

Also, the reason that I read the Dating Dummy is to live vicariously through people's dating lives. My husband and I got married in college, so I missed out on the adult dating life, and while I would never want to change anything, I find it very interesting reading the accounts of other people's dating successes and failures!

Nothing Really to Report....

Not much really happened this weekend...we actually got some boxes packed, but other than that it was a pretty lazy weekend, which was nice!

We did learn that we were overpaying for life insurance! We had someone come out and we upped our insurance by $250,000 each and are still paying $60 less per month then we have been. I'm pretty ticked that we've been overpaying.

Oh, and I got my hair done on Saturday, which was a nice little treat.

Trick-or-Treating

Trick-or-Treating was great! My kids were adorable! We got our food ready and headed over to our neighbor's house to set everything up. Since we live on a cul-de-sac, every year we always bring all of our food and candy out to the middle and sit and talk and pass out candy. Since it was raining this year we met in one of the garages. We took the kids out right away, and my daughter actually did really well, and both of them got a lot of candy! My son kept saying "tickteat" and then he would say "tanku"...but by the last house he actually said a real "thank you"!

After we went around to the houses we sat and talked to the neighbors for a while and then took the kids in for baths. Their little hands were so cold! After their baths my husband brought home the projector that he just got at work and the kids sat down with all of their candy and watched...you guessed it, the Doodlebops!

A Doodlebop Weekend!

Hello everyone! I know it has been forever since I’ve written anything, but I am finally slowing down at work. We don’t file until next week, but the rush is over…now it’s just fixing minor things here and there.

So the biggest thing that has happened since I last wrote was that we went to the Doodlebops concert! I honestly have to say that we had a blast! It was a girls’ day out (my daughter, my mom and me) and my daughter was so excited from the minute she woke up on Saturday morning. The concert was at 4:00, and for some reason, they were having a hard time parking the people…so even though we left at 2:50 and only live 10 minutes away, we didn’t end up walking through the door until 3:40. We went and found our seats and then came back out for drinks and toys! My daughter got a stuffed Deedee, and Doodlebops cell phone (which I had just told her the day before they didn’t make), a program and a coloring book. Before the show Bus Driver Bob came out and talked to the kids and there were some short cartoon clips on the big screen (Little Einsteins were doing something). I was taking some pictures of her and just happened to snap a picture of her just as they came out:



The concert really was entertaining (I know lots of you out there hate them, but I was having a blast singing and dancing with my daughter), and they were really good about letting the kids dance wherever they wanted to. The Doodlebops kept taking a lot of breaks (I would need them too after all that singing and dancing) and there were these “Doodlebop Dancers” which I didn’t really care for, but the kids seemed to like them.

At intermission we went out and got my daughter a pledge flag that lights up. And then the second half was just as good as the first half. The one thing that I thought was really awesome about them is that they really incorporated “Columbus” into the show…our #1 Buckeyes were playing during the concert, and after a couple of their breaks the Doodlebops would come in shouting “we have something to celebrate Columbus…the Buckeyes are winning 10 nothing”! I thought that was really nice of them!

Bad parts about the show: We were in the balcony because I screwed up and didn’t get tickets soon enough. However, we were in the front row of the balcony and my daughter could easily see and had a TON of room to dance. But, during “When the Lights Go Out” the dancers brought 5 kids up on stage to sit with Deedee. My daughter burst into tears because she couldn’t go on stage. It was so hard to comfort her because I know how much she wanted to be up there and sit with Deedee. The other bad thing was she burst into tears again when the concert was over…she couldn’t get enough of them!

Afterwards we went to eat at Cheeseburger in Paradise (if you’ve never been to one you have to try it, I love that restaurant!) where my daughter got a cute balloon lion from a clown doing balloon animals while we ate. Then we went home and she told her dad all about the concert and I packed up my stuff and went scrapbooking for the night.

I think she had a wonderful time and it was definitely a GREAT day for me :)

Blogger sucks and the picture above is the only one I could upload. I'll keep trying so that you can see how truly adorable she was!

A Weekend In Review

Wow, what a weekend! Friday night we went over to h.h. Gregg Fine Lines to look for appliances for our new house. This of course was after we sent in our signed acceptance on the offer on our house! Then Saturday my mom, myself and my two kids all headed to the outlets to get them some winter clothes. Thankfully the outlets are only about 45 minutes away, and we were there from 1:00 until 9:00 that night and only went to 5 stores. I hate shopping for clothes for the kids…it really stresses me out! Thankfully I was able to get out of there with almost all of their clothes and some Stride Rite shoes (that’s right, normally $47, I got them for $29.99!) for just under $500. I think it’s a bargain really, but it stinks because I didn’t really need to buy my son any pants (his from last year still fit), and I still need to get him some church outfits, so if I was doing full shopping it would have probably been around $600 or $700. But I really only shop twice per year, and I know that I got them good clothes, and since we’re planning on having two more kids, I need these clothes to last!

On Sunday we went out to a pumpkin farm. Guess how much it cost??? $8.50 per person over 2 years old! I was ready to turn around and leave, but it had taken us a good 25 minutes to get there, so we all decided we should go in (thanks Dad for paying for us!). Honestly though, it was worth it! They had a petting zoo and lots of mazes (including a hay-bail one set up for the little ones). Then they had this huge barn with huge hay piles and really good slides where you slid down into the hay. Then we took a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch and picked out pumpkins. After we did that, we went into the little market and bought pumpkin doughnuts (I’m not a big fan of anything pumpkin, but these were GOOD!!). It really was a wonderful way to end the day. Here’s a link to the website: http://www.circlesfarm.com/farmpictures.html


Not it’s back to work and packing things up at home! We close October 25, but get to stay in our house until November 29. Our new house should be done within the first couple of weeks in December…come on M/I, build our new house fast!!!

New House So Far...

This is our new house as of right now. It has 4 bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths. It's a multi-level, so it's the cheapest square feet out there. Bascially you walk in to the main level (dining room, den, great room and kitchen). You walk down about 7 stairs and there's what's called the lower level (this will be the kids' play room). Then if you walk down a couple more stairs you're in the basement. If you were to walk up about 7 stairs from the great room you have the master bedroom and owners' retreat (read: seperate room that kids are not allowed in!). Then if you go up about 7 more stairs you have all of the kids' bedrooms and the guest room.

Here's a link to the floorplan: http://www.mihomes.com/details.asp?listingid=293350&type=P#

It's at the center of a cul-de-sac, and my parents' house will be to the right of it, and our neighbors that are moving with us will be to the right of my parents' house. The elementary school, middle school and the YMCA are right across the residential street from our cul-de-sac. I plan to die in this house!

Hopefully it should be done in the next 6 - 8 weeks!!!

1:44 PM...........

And our realtor finally calls!!! What does she say? That they have counter-offered again!!! So now the price is at $175,900, but we get to stay in the house until 11/29 and not have a house payment in November! That is awesome! We actually had a showing scheduled for tomorrow, so we're trying to move the showing to sometime today so that someone else can see it and possibly make another offer on it :) We'll see!

12:06 PM.......

Still haven't heard anything, including from my realtor! I'm a little ticked right now. I e-mailed her about 1/2 hour ago just making sure she got some faxes I sent this morning and just asking her if she had heard anything....why hasn't she gotten back to me???

11:28 AM......

Still nothing :( I really wish that people would just call in and say "no" instead of just letting the time run out!

10:50 AM................

And still no word. I'm pretty sure they're rejecting our offer :( Why else would they wait this long? They've had it since yesterday around 5:00. Oh well, hopefully other people will come through the house and love it and want to buy it.

Don't worry, there is still a slight bit of hope in me knowing that they do technically still have an hour to respond.

Counter offered.....

Well we sent in our counter offer late yesterday and they have until 12:00 today to accept or counter. I'm kind of nervous, but not as nervous as I thought I would be. Only 3 1/2 hours to go until I know something. I HATE SELLING A HOUSE!!!

I'll keep you posted!

We Got An Offer!

It's a crappy offer, but at least it's an offer! We have it listed at $179,900 and they offered $169,900, plus our refrigerator (we were planning on taking that with us). We'll definitely counter...I'll talk to my realtor in about an hour and see what she has to say. She's known for getting pretty close to asking price, she's a great negotiator!

Other than that, busy, busy, busy!

Wish us luck!!!

Oh, and here's our house:

http://www.herrealtors.com/nicole.yoder/MyListingsDetails.asp?mls=2640568&prop=4013943&ID=400

OK, is there a secret to posting links? Sometimes I can post them and sometimes I can't! If you know the secret please tell me!!!!!

Quick Update

Not much really going on here...we had a showing last night and one today, so we've spent a lot of time getting the house ready. I don't know how people that aren't neat get ready for showings...we are very neat people, and our house is cleaned by someone once every two weeks, and it still takes us a good hour to get it ready...how do messy people get everything cleaned up in time?

We've been having trouble with our daughter and sleeping. She wakes up so many times in the middle of the night, and we don't know why. She walks into our room and wants to get into bed with us. So we walk her back to her bed and she goes back to sleep, but an hour later she's back in again...we're dying here! If any of you have advice, I would really appreciate it!

Work is definitely getting busier! The books aren't closed yet, so I can't start any of my actual reporting, but we have to reclassify our segments, and that has been my major project for the last couple of months. So right now I'm working on finishing up a "prototype" for the controller to show the CFO, and then I need to research all of the new accounting pronouncements that have been released this quarter. For any of you "nerds" like me out there, here's a link to what I put together each quarter!

http://www.mihomes.com/investor.asp#

(you have to scroll down to "recent SEC filings, and the most recent one is the first one listed).

I'll try to remember my memory card tomorrow so that I can post some new pictures :)

Gorgeous Weekend!

We headed down to our parents’ again this weekend…there was a home football game. The weather was gorgeous! Saturday morning we headed over to tailgate. OU’s College of Business (My degree is Accounting and my parents are both professors in that college) had a tailgating tent with lots of food and drinks. Also set up in the tailgate area where a couple “jumping things” (the big blow-up things that kids can jump in). I spent probably a good hour taking my daughter through them. She had so much fun and she just kept telling me she wanted to do it again. Finally we had to leave because the game was starting. So we went in, and she of course cheered for a little bit...she had an adorable cheerleading outfit on (this is a picture of her with my father-in-law and my nephew, and the other picture is hubby with my son). We were all on ESPN something (I’m not sure which one, not the real one) because of the adorable little kids, and then she promptly sat on my lap and fell asleep! I couldn’t believe it…it was so loud and people were screaming all around us. My son on the other hand wanted nothing to do with sleep, and he needed it badly! So we left a little before halftime. The kids took a nap, and right after they woke up hubby, my dad and my son set off to a little house that my uncle has in the woods…lacking most modern conveniences. So what did us girls do? My mom, 2 sisters, my daughter and I headed to the mall for manicures! This is my daughter’s second official manicure, and she loved it! They actually even did it for free, which was very nice of the guy. After that we went and had Chinese food. It was a great day!

Sunday hubby and I had a long talk about how we really aren’t spending very much time together. It’s really hard, as I’m sure all of you other working moms know, to find time to make sure the kids are eating a good dinner, make sure the dinner stuff gets cleaned up, do some laundry, play with the kids, and have time with your spouses each night. We vowed to try harder, and my parents were around for part of the discussion, and they are freaking awesome! My dad told me “I don’t care if it’s 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon, you call us if you and hubby need to go out. We’re at a point in our lives where our students can miss a class or two…you guys are much more important”. He also told me this, which made me smile “besides, we have a vested interest in this…if you guys aren’t getting along, there will only be two grandchildren, and we want more!” He had a point! So we went on a couple walks yesterday and just tried to make sure we weren’t taking each other for granted as much.

OK, time to start some actual work. Just so you know, we are working on our 10-Q filing (for the non-accountants out there it’s the report we have to file every quarter so that investors can see how our company is doing). For the accountants out there, you know that I’m going to be very busy for the next 3 – 4 weeks! So I might not post as much. But every second that I get I will be reading your blogs and trying to post as much as I can!

Little Mermaid Instead of Grey's

Hubby plays basketball on Thursday nights, so when I picked the kids up last night, I knew I was going to surprise them with dinner from McDonald’s. But I also wanted to do something else that was special, so we headed to Wal-Mart. I blame it on the fact that the radio station I listen to at work on my new iPod plays the commercial for the Little Mermaid coming back out about every hour or so, and so it was like I was in a mental trance…“Must get Little Mermaid. Must get Little Mermaid”. OK, maybe not. Maybe it was the look of joy on my daughter’s face when I said we were getting a surprise inside the store, and she asked me “does it have to do with Princesses?” and I said “yes” and she asked “is it the Little Mermaid?”. How smart is my little cutie?

So we got it and dinner and headed home. While they ate dinner I rushed around trying to get laundry done and their suitcases packed because my mom was coming that night to take them to her house (we’re heading down tonight). After dinner it was baths, and then it was play time. I put the movie in and my daughter watched intermittently while playing. She coincidentally got a Little Mermaid purse in her Happy Meal. My son played basketball in the basement (it’s a finished basement) and in the two seconds that I ran upstairs to get something, I turn around and he’s around the 3rd from the top stair. Now he’s the type that you can’t run up to in a panic because he stands straight up and would fall backwards. So I got on my hands and knees and just encouraged him to climb the rest of the way up, which he did without any problem. That boy is going to give me a heart attack!

I put him to bed and finish watching the Little Mermaid with my daughter. When it’s over we start the very consistent bedtime fight. She hates going to bed. There’s no way around it, and no matter what we do, it’s a power struggle. My goal was to get her into bed by 8:45 (as I stated yesterday), but I was loving spending time with her too much to just put her to bed so that I could watch TV (that's what DVR is for!!). So, since I knew she was going to be going with my mom later, I told her that she could lay on the couch, snuggled next to me, and I would put in the free CD of Little Mermaid songs that came with the DVD. So we got ready for bed, and snuggled on the couch with all of the lights off and just listened to the music. It was the most relaxing time that I have had in a long time!

My mom came a little while later and I loaded the kids up in the car and sent them off. I miss them, but I normally wouldn’t have seen them anyway since hubby takes them to the sitter usually. We’ll get home today and pack as fast as we can and get the house ready for a showing tonight and an open house on Sunday (please, please pray, cross fingers, whatever that one of these people buys our house!) and then we’ll take off for another relaxing weekend in the hills.

What are your weekend plans? Anything fun and exciting??

It Takes Being Sick To Stop

So my daughter and I have a cold. It's not bad, but I definitely don't feel well, and neither does she. Her little nose is so red from wiping it so much, and she says her throat hurts. So last night, my son went to bed pretty early, and I moved the coffee table and made a big comfortable bed on the floor with lots of blankets and pillows. My daughter then got to choose a movie (very appropriately picked Elmo Goes To The Doctor) and we layed down with some popcorn and chocolate milk and watched it. I couldn't believe that I was actually relaxing at 8:30! That never happens! She watched the movied twice and then it was time for bed. I actually did do some laundry, so I took what was left of it upstairs and folded it while I watched Laguna Beach (It's so dumb, but I LOVE that show!) and then I fell asleep listening to the "Soundscapes" channel (very soothing, spa-like music). Nothing too exciting, but it was good to chill out for a change!

Tonight: Kids in bed by 8:45 so I can watch Grey's Anatomy in peace! Reality: My daughter might go to bed at 9:30 while I'm DVRing Grey's to watch at 10:00. BUT...since hubby is playing basketball tonight, I'm letting myself take it easy and we're getting McDonald's for dinner! I have made homemade meals every night for the past 3 weeks, and I need a break! My daughter will be so happy!

:)

Here Comes Dee Dee!

I finally bought our Doodlebops tickets! My daughter is so excited!! It's going to be a girls' day...she, myself and my mom are going to go to the concert and then probably to dinner. She keeps asking me when the concert is (not until October 28), and it's so hard because she. wants. to. go. now!!!

This is a picture of her in her Halloween costume...I won't let her play in it until Halloween because I'm afraid that the wig will get all tangled. But she knows that after trick-or-treating the costume is hers and she can dress up in it every day!

Jumped On The Bandwagon

So I never thought that I would get one, but last night, I did...an iPod. And I hadn't even thought about getting it, it just happened. On Sunday we went to Burger King for lunch, and the toy in the kids' meal was a little radio that really picked up stations. My daughter didn't put it down the rest of the day...she even fell asleep with it by her ear. So my husband thought we should get her a little MP3 player so that we could put her Doodlebops CD on it. So we went to MicroCenter, and my husband had known all along that we were going to get an iPod because 1.) I had lost my $10 walkman and I hate working out if I can't listen to/watch the TVs, and 2.) he wanted something that the kids could watch movies on. So there we were, looking at these cute little things and I was getting more and more excited. My husband picked out everything we needed...iPod (http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wo/0.RSLID?mco=6CB1CADD&nclm=iPod) the 80 GB one in black, FM tuner so that I can listen to the TVs, case (one for me and one for the kids to use when they are watching movies), and warranty. We got home last night and my husband put the Doodlebops on my old MP3 player for my daughter and she fell asleep listening to them (it was adorable, I had to take a picture, which, if I ever get time I will post). We then stayed up looking at all the movies, tv shows and music that I can put on this thing! I'm so excited!!! Needless to say we were up too late for me to go to the gym this morning at 5:30, but I'm going to go tomorrow, armed with my new toy! Working out might actually be fun now!

Not Exactly What I Had Planned...

Well, Tuesday night did not go exactly as planned. We got the house ready for the showing and left to go and pick up the kids from the sitter’s. We then went over to the post office to mail something that had to go out that night, so we had to go to the downtown one. It was about 6:40 and hubby was going to take me straight to the restaurant to meet my friends for dinner, and then I was going to get a ride home with one of them. However, on the way back to our suburb, we saw a car on the side of the road with steam pouring out of the hood and a guy that looked completely lost. We couldn’t stop in time to get him, so we went down to the next exit and turned around, got off at the next exit and turned around again. We pulled in front of him and hubby went out to talk to him. It turns out the guy was on his way back to work, so we gave him a ride to the gas station that he worked. We then offered to do anything else for him that he needed. He didn’t know of any tow trucks (he has been in the U.S. for 6 years and has never had car troubles), so we used my sister’s AAA to have him towed. I got the kids back home to feed them while hubby and my sis went to deal with the towing around 8:00…dinner started at 7:00. So I just fed the kids miscellaneous stuff and gave them baths and got them ready for bed. Then hubby came home and we ran to Wendy’s to get our dinner. The guy asked hubby if he went to church, and of course he said “yes”, so he asked him where, and he told him. Maybe we’ll see him there! I’m not holding my breath, but I’m glad that we were able to help him…I know what it’s like to really need someone to go out of there way to help you.

Last night I was good and picked the kids up and went over to the YMCA to work out. After that, we went and picked up hubby to go and look at the new house. We grabbed Chipotle because we were planning on having a picnic at one of the many playgrounds in our new city, but it got too dark because it was going to rain. Anyway, the house is looking great…I love the brick color! And they put a neat design with glass block and regular window in our basement windows. It’s coming along nicely…now if our current house would just sell! The poor kids were starving by the time we got back home…so I kept feeding them chips in the car, and when we finally got back home they devoured their quesadilla!

Tonight I plan on working out again, and then playing with the kids and having them in bed by 9:00 so that I can watch Grey’s Anatomy!

We Have a Showing Tonight!!!

Last night I spent about 1 ½ hours in the kitchen! And I wasn’t even cooking anything difficult! I was making ribs for the adults in the house (me, hubby and my sis) and veggies and macaroni for the little ones. My veggies turned out fabulous! Broccoli, red pepper, baby corn and zucchini all sautéed together. So I mixed that mixture with the pasta for the kids…they weren’t that impressed, but we all thought it tasted great! Then I burnt the first set of ribs (on the grill), so bring out the next set and hubby cooked those for me perfectly! All in all, we sat down to eat at 7:30 and I had gotten home and started dinner around 6:00. Oh well, at least it all tasted good and hubby cleaned up!

The rest of the night we played…my daughter loves to play “office”, so she had all of her pens and paper out on the kitchen table and we were a pizza shop taking pizza orders. My son walked up and took the play phone away from me and put it up to his ear and kept saying “ello”. We called him “the pizza man”, and we kept yelling for the pizza man to bring us back our phone! We had a good time. Then I literally ran around the house with my daughter on my back, and then it was up to my room to watch Studio 60 while my daughter stayed down with hubby to watch football. They make cheesy bread to eat while they watch it and they have a great little bonding time while watching football.

We have a showing tonight!!! The realtor’s office just called, and it’s from 5:30 – 6:30 tonight…do you know what that means? No lunch hour for me so that hubby and I can leave work at 4:00 to go home and clean up! Luckily we are pretty neat people, so all we really need to do is pick up the toys in the basement, make beds (I never do that in the morning – what’s the point? You’re just going to mess them up again at night), and put the dishes in the dishwasher. No too bad, but I don’t really trust my husband to do all that without me…he’s lucky, he’s a partner at his technology firm, so he gets to leave whenever he wants, no big deal. I do too for the most part, but my boss isn’t here today, it’s just the admin, and she’s a pain in the butt about PTO and stuff like that. And I already wasted 3 hours of PTO earlier this year when we had a showing that could not be re-scheduled and the people looking at it already knew they didn’t want a two-story house (that’s ours!) and ended up buying our neighbor’s house. I’m still very bitter because our realtor knew that story, and if he would have told me that I would not have wasted 3 hours of PTO cleaning the house for people that were not going to buy it.

On a brighter note, I also have my moms’ dinner out tonight…Mexican! I can’t wait! I know I just saw most of these women for two days straight this past weekend, but it will still be a lot of fun, assuming I make it there!

Fabulous Weekend!

This weekend was so much fun!!! Friday night the fam and I headed to good-old Wal-mart. I needed to get photo paper to print out pictures for my scrap weekend. So we go and walk around a little and play with the kids (there’s nothing like acting like all of the other Wal-Mart shoppers and letting your kids run wild). We hadn’t eaten dinner yet and we were starved! So we decided to eat at the Subway that’s in Wal-Mart. I was the second person in line and waited 20 minutes to get my food. Thankfully, we were in no hurry and I was learning a great lesson in patience. After eating we went home and played and then put the kids to bed. Then we started printing pictures, I did my nails and some laundry. Then we decided to watch Fun With Dick and Jane and didn’t end up going to bed until around 3:30.

My alarm started going off at 7:00 and I finally rolled out of bed at 7:30…it was time to scrapbook!!! I got the babysitter situated (hubby was going golfing) and headed out the door with all of my stuff! I got there around 10:00 am and scrapped until 11:00 that night. It’s neat because the workroom is in the back of a wonderful store. This store has everything that you could possibly want/need to scrapbook. I bought some really neat things! This place is also cool because it’s attached to Easton Town Center…which is just store after store and restaurant after restaurant all in one compact area, so you can walk everywhere! Here’s the link to the place: http://www.eastontowncenter.com/

Our hotel was right next door to the scrapbooking place so all we had to do was get our luggage out of the car and walk over there. The hotel was very nice, and I enjoyed my 9 hours of wonderful sleep. They said that the alarm went off at 5:15, but I didn’t hear it, I was dead to the world. We got up and went and sat in the hot tub for a while and then got ready for another day of scrappin’.

We went to Panera and ate some breakfast, and then at 11:15 we started up again. You could tell we were all worn out…I definitely was not working as fast as I was the day before. But we still had an awesome time! I had to leave by about 3:00, and luckily everyone else was ready to be done. So we packed up and headed to Cheesecake Factory for lunch.

After lunch I met my family at our new house so that we could walk through it and look around (it was so great to see hubby and the kids again!). Then we went with my mom and dad and sister to Whole Foods and got some great fruits and vegetables for this week. By the time we got home last night (about 8:00) we were exhausted! So I fed the kids, gave them a bath and put them to bed. Then my sister and I watched Desperate Housewives (while eating wonderful cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory) and then we went to bed.

It was a wonderful weekend and we already have our next scrapbooking night planned for the end of October!

Update to Fish Girl

One of her co-workers in Internal Audit had a discussion with her about what she should and shouldn't bring for lunch, and what she's supposed to bring in for breakfasts. I heard the conversation went really well and the girl was very happy that someone told her about the issue.

I think that means....NO MORE FISH SMELL!!!!!

:)

Scrappin' Weekend

So tomorrow is my “scrap weekend”. The original one in Cleveland was cancelled. The lady e-mailed us on Tuesday and told us she didn’t have enough interest and she couldn’t keep the prices that low with the amount of interest that she had. We were all so mad! We were really looking forward to getting away. So we all started looking and thinking of different ideas of how we could still get together and scrapbook away from our kids and hubbies :). We have a really neat store here called Archiver’s…it’s scrapbook heaven! You can see it at http://www.archiversonline.com/ . They also have a workroom in the back with tables so that you can set up and scrap all day. So that’s where we’re going! And then we’re going to stay at the hotel that’s next door. The people that I’m going with are the ladies from my moms’ group, and we always have such a good time together. I think they have such a good time because they can laugh at me and scrapbooking attempts. I’m normally a very organized person…you pretty much have to be if you’re a mom, especially a working mom, but when it comes to scrapbooking…my stuff is a mess! I honestly think it’s quite humorous myself (it’s always good when you can laugh at yourself :)).

So that’s where we’ll be this weekend. I’m kind of sad though that I won’t see my kids…I think I may have to give up the Sunday scrapbooking so that I can come home and see them. It’s nice that it’s here in Columbus so that home is only 20 minutes away!

I’ll let you all know how it went on Monday (and those of you reading this that will be there…are you laughing already? I sure am!).

The Silence Is Gone

I sit at the end of a row of cubes. When I started, I had the whole row to myself, so it was quiet and great! Then we started hiring more people, and eventually there was someone next to me. She is from Indonesia and this is her first job. She's annoying to all of us. We bring in breakfast every Friday (we each take turns) and she brought us in fish-head soup. She eats fish everyday for lunch...I hate fish, and I really hate the smell of fish, so every day at lunch I'm so disgusted with the smell that I end up leaving when I wanted to stay in and eat the lunch that I had brought. Anyway, I digress. She went back home to visit her family for two weeks. Then the U.S. wouldn't let her back in for another two or three days, so she's been gone for about 2 1/2 weeks and it has been so quiet and nice. However, that quiet time has ended...she's back.

I'll be alright as long as she doesn't have fish for lunch today.

Disagreement Over Kids at Weddings

I just had an interesting disagreement with some co-workers…kids and weddings. My boss didn’t want or have kids at her wedding, and neither did our admin. I however, loved having kids at our wedding, and to be honest, I don’t even remember them being there (but the pictures show they were!). So two very loud and opinionated people stated that weddings are no place for kids…I told them I disagreed. The one brought up the point that people are drinking at weddings…I stated that I drink in front of my kids, which he followed up with that he meant people are getting plastered…I agreed with him that kids should be taken home long before that happens. He also said it’s so annoying how they’re always out on the dance floor…annoying? I think that’s the cutest thing! Our admin said that every wedding that she has been to with kids the kids are running around, the parents aren’t watching them, and at this last wedding that she attended she had to tell a 7 year-old multiple times to stop playing with the candles. I then pointed out that I have never witnessed any like this at any of the weddings that I have attended. My boss looked at me and said that my friends are the good parents.

Is this true? Am I lucky enough that all of my friends are good parents…(thinking)…yep, that is the case. Except for one, but the children are much older now and the misbehaving is not nearly as bad. Thank you to all of my friends that read this….you are the people that let me enjoy the weddings that I go to with all of the cute little kids all dressed up!

What about all of you? What do you think about kids at weddings? Have you had bad wedding experiences?

Contest

Hey.....

There's a contest to win a free blog design at: http://bluebirdblogs.blogspot.com/2006/09/fall-into-free-blog-design.html

Check it out!

Speaking Terms Again

I forgot to post about how my husband and I reconciled. Unfortunately it was right before I left for Chicago, so I didn't have any time to post about it. A couple nights towards the end of things, he would grab my hand while we were sleeping. This was very strange...when we are fighting, we are fighting...no touching or anything like that. So finally one night he woke up after being asleep for about an hour and put his arm around me and said "don't ever leave me". I was really scared, I couldn't figure out why in the world he would say that. So I asked him why would I leave him? He said for the past couple of nights he kept having the same dream that he could hear me, but he couldn't see me, and that I would all of a sudden start laughing at him. So this opened the door to a huge discussion. It was going great, and then he flew off the handle again. But fortunately I'm stubborn and persistent and I wasn't going to bed until this was resolved. Finally we realized that although we are Christians, we really have not had a Christ-centered marriage. So we vowed to spend more time together doing devotions and reading some awesome marriage books that we have. By the way, even if you're not religious, I strongly recommend reading "Men Are Like Waffles and Women Are Like Spaghetti" by Bill and Pam Farrell...it really makes you understand how men and women are so different, and how easy it is to work together when you understand these differences. Anyway, we haven't had a lot of time to really start this, but have done it a couple of times and it makes such a huge difference! We are so much nicer to each other, and we don't take each other for granted, which used to happen a lot!

So thankfully God worked with us and I think we should have an even stronger marriage as we begin to work together. The thing with us is that we know we're "stuck" with each other forever...no divorce options here, so we had better make it the best thing that it can be! Another important thing that we agree on our priorities...God first, spouse second, kids third. This can be very difficult because it is so easy to put the kids before each other, but we constantly remind each other when it's starting to appear that way and it's corrected. We firmly believe that kids living with parents that are in a happy marriage grow up much healthier than kids that see constant fighting and disrespect in their house. Of course single parents or divorced parents don't fit in there because there shouldn't be fighting or disrespect on a daily basis (unless there is a bitter divorce, and in that case, I believe that the kids should not be exposed to that).

I could get into a lot more, but I think that I will stop now :)

Tiring Night!

My dad watched the kids yesterday. My parents watch them one day per week, and my sitter needed to switch, so my dad came up because he didn't have to teach (he and my mom are both college professors). Anyway, when I got home we loaded up the kids and went to Whole Foods. My dad is on this huge organic kick...he really believes it's better for the kids (and he eats it as well). I always used to protest (I'm the farthest thing from a hippy tree-hugger as you can get), but once I went to Whole Foods I was hooked! For those of you that have never been to one...it's awesome! A HUGE section of fresh produce and the largest meat counter that I've ever seen. They also have "normal" (un-organic) foods there so you can get an organic tomato or a conventional one. Their prices are pricey, but for the selection you can't beat it! Then I usually got to a regular grocery store to get everything else...like all the un-healthy food that we eat in our house!

Anyway, so we were there about 1 1/2 hours, and the kids hadn't had dinner yet, but thank goodness for all of the samples! My son ate apple after apple! Just for the record I did purchase quite a bit of apples, so the samples were not just wasted as my son's dinner. When we came out of the store it was pouring rain. So we pushed everything (including the kids!) into the car and headed over to the bookstore so I could run in and grab a book (you must take advantage of the opportunity to run into a store and leave the kids in the car with someone!). After two bookstore runs and no book (my dad said he'd order it for me...I have an awesome dad!) we headed home, very tired!

When we got home we unloaded everything. I separated his food and ours, and then he left on his 2 hour drive home. I packed the kids bag for today, and then drug myself upstairs into bed.

I was happily enjoying Studio 60 when my daughter came upstairs crying. I kept asking her what was wrong (my husband was behind her so I knew she was OK), but she was crying so hard she couldn't tell me. Finally she calmed down and told me that she had put a plastic bag on her head even though she knew she wasn't supposed to. (Side note...this is something she has been doing a lot - telling on herself. We're trying to be careful because I know there will be a day when she won't do it anymore, but at the same time, it's extremely annoying...I still have to punish her when she does something wrong, and most of the time I wish she wouldn't tell me so I wouldn't know). Anyway, she was very distraught over it, and luckily my sister was by her when she had attempted to put this bag on her head and quickly yelled at her. This had happened about 4 hours early, and all of a sudden she felt compelled to tell us about it, and she was obviously deeply bothered by it. However, my husband had already had a very serious talk with her about putting bags on her head just a week before. We were really torn...do we punish her? if so, how much? We loved the fact that she came and told us about it, and when we asked her why she did it she said because she was trying to be one of the fairies in Sleeping Beauty (they have those hat-things). We decided that she still needed a spanking (I don't want to hear anything about how spanking is bad...I was completely against it until I had my own kids, and now it's our punishment method and I have to say I'm very impressed with how well it works...we hardly ever spank her), this offense was too serious. So my husband gave her a spanking and then she came and laid in bed with us. I told her I was very proud that she told us what she had done, and if she hadn't have told us and we would have seen her, she would have gotten two spankings. I think she got it. Then we all fell asleep snuggling together.

Being a parent can be so hard sometimes...and I don't even mean physically!

A Week In Review

I’m so sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything…I have been so busy. Last Thursday and Friday I had to go to Chicago for a conference, so I was swamped with work on the days before that trying to get everything done before I left.

Because my company is too cheap to pay for an extra night’s hotel room (we’re talking $210 to a company that brings in $1.3 billion in revenue) we had to fly in the morning of the conference (that means I was up at 4:30 after going to bed at 1:00). We had an uneventful, short plane ride, and then took a train into the city and then were supposed to catch a bus after that. We got off the train and were looking around when a VERY nice police officer came up to us and asked us if we needed help! How embarrassing…apparently we really looked like tourists! So he told us how to get to the hotel, and we hiked ourselves and our luggage 4 blocks to the Sheraton. We stored our luggage and went to the first day of the conference.

The conference was awesome!!! It had to do with SEC regulations and filings (which I know would bore 99.9% of you) and it was so neat to learn more about what I do on a daily basis. There were a couple CFOs in the conference (which only had about 30 people total) and it was nice to hear what they thought of certain things. I also learned that there is an Accounting Hall of Fame, and it’s located in my city (again, an easy way for you to find out where I live!). We all assured the instructor that none of our vacation plans had changed…we would not be visiting it any time soon!

At the end of the conference for the first day we got to check into our rooms and then there was a cocktail reception with free drinks for us to get to know each other. Did I mention there were free drinks? You know, at first I was worried about going with someone else from my company…I kind of like to do things by myself, and then the fact that it was a guy…I felt really uncomfortable about the whole thing. Thankfully I have an awesome husband that wouldn’t think twice about me traveling with another guy…I know a lot of husbands that would be irate about that! But the guy was actually someone that I had worked with when I was in public accounting, and that night I was glad I wasn’t by myself. We had drinks (did I mention they were free?) and then we walked around Chicago searching for presents for all of our family members. Then we went and ate dinner at this wonderful restaurant! It was a Brazilian steak-type place. They had this anti-pasta bar-thing that you could eat from whenever you wanted, and then these guys would just walk around with all kinds of different meats that they would cut for you if you wanted it. You could eat as much as you wanted and we were definitely stuffed! The food was so good though! The meal was expensive (good thing we weren’t paying for it!) it was about $170 with tip for the two of us, which included drinks and dessert. After dinner we walked back to the hotel and I climbed into bed with my laptop and enjoyed the rest of my night watching TV and playing on the internet without any interruptions!

The next day was pretty uneventful…and at 4:00 we had to leave to catch our plane. The train was full so we had to stand the whole way from downtown to the airport, and along with the initial luggage that we had, we had acquired presents for our families and bags with binders and books from the conference…my body hurt all over. It felt so good to hand the bags over when we got our boarding passes and just sit for a couple of minutes before boarding the plane.

The rest of the weekend was great…Saturday we went to the zoo and then hung out at home the rest of the day, and then yesterday we taught Sunday school and then did odd jobs around the house and ran some errands.

Time to start another week! But you know what awesome thing I have to look forward at the end of this week? A scrapbooking getaway with my friends!!! We are leaving Saturday morning and not coming back until Sunday afternoon…24 hours of scrapbooking. I of course will not spend that much time on it, but it will be fun to get away with the girls!

Remembering Today

A quick post about the significance of today to me:

9/11 – This day has such an impact on me, and it’s weird because thankfully I didn’t know anyone in the towers or on the planes. However, I think just the thought of what those families and co-workers are going through is enough to send me over the edge.

Luckily for us, my husband and I had not yet started our jobs on 9/11/01. We actually got up early that day…we really never got up before 9:30, but for some reason we were up at 8:30 that morning. We grabbed our bowls of cereal and sat down to watch the Today show. The first thing we see is Katie Couric describing what had been happening…we couldn’t believe it. We were glued to the TV the entire day. We went outside around 5:00 to sit in our driveway as we normally do to chat with the neighbors and it was eerie because there were no planes, and we always had planes flying over our house as we only live about 15 minutes from the airport. But then we heard a plane (of course this made us nervous), but then we saw two fighter jets by this plane, and we realized it was Air Force One. It was flying really low (we still don’t know why…below radar maybe?) and it was really neat to see that and know the President was up there.

The rest of the week was spent glued to the television, and then on Saturday, all of the guys were sitting outside bored (no football that weekend and all of the golf courses were filled up) so they decided to paint a flag on our court (cul-de-sac for those that don’t know what a court is). My husband is a college of Engineering graduate, so he had the whole thing perfectly scaled…50 stars and the 13 stripes. It was huge and awesome! I need to dig up pictures of it. The local news came out and interviewed my husband and took pictures. People didn’t drive on it forever! The poor trash guys the next couple weeks would drive their big trucks around the outside of it out of respect…I loved the way our country bonded together during that time.

Eventually, people started driving on the flag in the court, and TV shows returned, and people started forgetting what a horrific day that was. Every 9/11 I try to absorb as much as the media will give me remembering that time…I don’t want to forget. And I completely support our troops over there…you guys and girls are awesome and thank you for everything that you are doing for us…it’s not going un-noticed; at least by me anyway! I tried to explain to my 3 year-old last night why the buildings were on fire...I told her that some mean people ran planes into them, and she asked "why?"...all I could say is that they were very mean and wanted to hurt us.

The city came by to re-pave our neighborhood last spring, and they had to get the permission of every house on the court to pave over the flag (they said that we could re-paint it when they were done). We had every intention of painting it again, but so far it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe someday…although since we’re moving, we probably won’t see it.

I say a little prayer for all of the families who lost loved ones whenever I think about September 11th; I couldn’t ever even come close to imagining how they feel.

Another Night of Not Speaking

I’m still feeling pretty lousy, but at least I had a great night with the kids last night! I came home and took my little cuties outside where they played on the swing set. Then my daughter wanted to ride her bike, and I played ball with my son. Since my daughter is now 3, and rides her two-wheel bike with training wheels pretty good, I want to start preparing her to take the training wheels off…maybe next summer! So I asked her if she wanted to ride around the block. Of course she said “yes”, so I put my son in the stroller and off we went! She actually rode fast enough for me to walk at a good pace! Then we came home and played on the deck until dinner was finished. Insert big complaint: I noticed that my husband had taken meat out of the freezer and was thawing it under hot water, but by now it was 7:15 and we still hadn’t eaten (and it wasn’t even on the grill yet). I realized that he was in on his computer doing his fantasy football. So I started making dinner (I swear, only for the kids, because if they weren’t so hungry there’s no way I was going to cook), and we finally ate. Of course, my husband and I didn’t say anything to each other. He decided that he wanted to go and look at the house and was going to take both of the kids…but then my daughter and I started looking at the new costume magazine that had come in the mail that day (with a Dee Dee Doodlebop costume in it!), and my husband asked me if I was going, and of course there was no way I wanted to be in the car with him and not talking for 20 minutes, so I said “no”. My daughter decided to stay home with me, which was great because we just kept looking at that magazine over and over again, and then I brushed her teeth and she settled into bed with me. She must have been really tired because she only watched TV (House Hunters on HGTV…addicted to it!) with me for a couple of minutes and then she turned over and went to sleep. I was awakened yet again by my husband coming up and taking a shower…I think he’s just trying to prove me wrong, but even if he isn’t it’s just plain rude to wake me up every night.

We’ll see what tonight brings…he plays basketball and my mom is coming up because she watches the kids tomorrow. I’m sure it will be just like last night….it’s so hard because the weekend is coming up and I hate the no-talking thing. I have great plans for the weekend…our local Dippin’ Dots is having their grand opening party, and Dora will be there along with a lot of other cool things. And our city is having a street fair that I want to go to…we had been planning on these things. I will go no matter what with the kids, but as I said yesterday, I feel very unbalanced when we’re in this state. There is also a HUGE football game on Saturday night…#1 plays #2 (I bet now you know where I live!) and the city is going nuts over the excitement. So even though I really can’t stand the sport of football, I will definitely be watching that game!

What a Weekend!

What a weekend. I’m not really sure if it was good or bad. It started off great! The kids were down at my parents’ house and Friday night we had our meeting with the lighting company to pick out the lights for the new house. And let me tell you, if I hear the word “upgrade” one more time I’m going to scream! Surprisingly we actually did take the “included” fixture a couple of times (maybe for the lights in the closet?), and our bill totaled less than our budgeted amount, so we’re good! Then my husband had made reservations for dinner at this really neat little restaurant that’s on the river and overlooks downtown (and surprised me too, I had no idea where we were going). Then we went home, packed and got the house ready for the cleaning guy and left for my parents’ at 11:00 that night.

Not surprising to us, my daughter was still awake when we came in at 1:45 am. We visited a little and then went up to bed. The next morning my hubby let me sleep in while he got up with the kids. I heard him put my son back down for a nap, and I heard the croupy sound while he was crying….yep, sick again. We figured he must have gotten it from one of the sitter’s kids since they all went back to school. Then my daughter slowly started developing a runny nose and cough too. Anyway, that day we set up our tailgate for the first football game, and it rained, the whole time. So I decided there was no way I was going to stay for the game or let the kids come (they were still at home napping and were supposed to come to the game when they woke up). So I spent a wonderful night at the house with my kids and my dad. That night, I got the kids to sleep and hubby, my sister, other sister, her boyfriend and myself went out. It was just like our college days! We even went to a new bar that was opened this year by someone we graduated high school with. We had a lot of fun! Sunday was spent hanging out…I took my daughter “up town” to a cute little store that has stationary and scrapbooking stuff. She LOVES pens and paper, so I told her I would get her some really neat pens…she got some glittery-ink pens, gel pens and little pens! She loved it!

On Monday we loaded up and set off. It was hard because my dad is really attached to my son (I only have sisters, so my dad never had a boy around), and I swear I can almost see tears each time he has to leave him. My son calls him “papaw”, and he’s the only person in the world that my son will jump out of my hands to go to. Even when he woke up from his naps all weekend, I would go in and get him and all he would do was point to the door and say “papaw”. Luckily my parents are building a house right next door to us, so the saying “goodbye” thing won’t have to be an issue much longer!

Then last night I was up a good part of the night with my two sick kids. The Vicks waterless vaporizer is the best thing in the world, but the problem is that I only have one of those, but I have two kids. So I had it in my daughter’s room with the door closed for a while, and then I took it over to my son’s room. Whichever kid had it in their room slept fine, so at lunch today I ran out and bought another one. Hopefully tonight they will both sleep soundly and I can actually get some sleep! I’ll let you know tomorrow!

TGIF!!!!!

So it appears that the sickness has spread…a little. My husband had it yesterday (and it’s weird because it really only lasts 12 hours), and my stomach hasn’t felt well for the past day, but I don’t feel like I’m going to be sick or anything, so maybe it’s not the same thing.

Last night my husband had to go and open the church up for his weekly basketball (he didn’t feel well enough to play, but he’s the only one who has keys that plays), so the kids and I went with him because I needed to decorate our Sunday school room. Another dad brought his little girl who was 5, and I asked him if she wanted to come into the kids’ room with me where there would be a lot of toys (otherwise she would have just had to sit and color in the gym by herself). He really appreciated that and I took the three kids into our room (the 3 year-old Sunday school room) and I quickly realized that this little girl was a brat! She would just ignore my daughter when she talked to her, and then she would get in her way when she was trying to jump over these bean bags we had in there. She also kept telling me she was hungry and thirsty, so I went to the snack cupboard and told her there were raisins and animal crackers…she told me she didn’t like either of those. And then I told her that we didn’t have any drinks in the room, and she got all pouty on me. How in the world did her parents treat her? I was in shock at how this 5 year-old was acting! Oh well, it was only for 1 ½ hours because her dad left the game early, and he really appreciated me watching her, but I was so relieved to have the next ½ hour of just MY kids!

My mom and sister came and picked up the kids last night and took them to their house 1 ½ hours away. We will go down either tonight or tomorrow morning. It was so nice with both my husband and I not feeling well last night to not have to worry about baths and getting kids to bed…we could just lounge on the couch and then go up to bed when we wanted.

I’m really looking forward to this weekend….whenever we go to my parents’ house it’s so relaxing! They have a huge house in the woods…and the city they live in really only has the university, so there’s not much to do, which was horrible when I lived there, but now that I want to go and do nothing, it’s great! I think we’ll probably come back Monday afternoon, which will give us a nice 3 days down there.

What about you? Any Labor Day plans?

Unexpected Shortened Work Day

I got the call yesterday from the sitter that working moms dread....“your son threw up”. Luckily, I have an awesome sitter who said that she would watch him for the next couple hours and give me a call later if he does it again (doesn’t she rock?!). Well, around 12:30 she called back and said that he had thrown up a total of 5 times, so I told her I was on my way! I picked the kids up (my daughter was very happy to see me!) and took them home. I took my son up to his crib and he went right to sleep. I gave my daughter lunch and then she took a nap…they both slept for two hours! When my son woke up, he kept pointing to the sippy cups and saying “dink”. So I bit the bullet and gave him a little bit of water. 45 minutes later I realized that he had kept it down, and he was ready to go back to bed. When he woke up he wanted more water, and we gave him some banana and wafer cookies (no plain crackers in the house). He kept it all down! So basically, my poor sitter had to deal with all of the clean-up and crankiness and I just had to keep putting him to sleep because his little body was worn out. So what could have been a horrible afternoon/night turned out to be fairly easy…I was even able to get some work done so that I didn’t have to take PTO since I left work! Have I mentioned how much I love my job???

Today during lunch I’m meeting with the cable/phone guy at our new house to show him where we want cable run and get our grand total of additional cables and speaker wires. I swear, we know the total price of our house, but by the time we meet with the electrician, cable/phone, lighting and landscapers we will have spent at least an extra $6,000. Oh well, at least our house will be the way we want it and we won’t someday say “oh, I wish I had put an outlet here”…I added an outlet above the door in my master bathroom so that I could mount a TV in there to watch while I’m getting ready…I have hated not being able to catch up on the news and stuff in the morning.

What Happened to the Weekend?

Well, let me tell you, I feel like it flew by! Friday night I got a “me” night…I went over to a friend’s house that was set up for 6 hours of scrapbooking! I love to scrapbook, however, I only do it about once a year :) I try to do it more, but I honestly realized as I was organizing my stuff for my night of fun that the last time I got it all out was 1 year ago! That is simply uncalled for!

Saturday ~ it appears that my son did not get an all-important memo…in our house, we go to bed late and sleep in…it’s what we do. However, my son likes to go to bed around 8:00 and get me up at 7:00 am. Now I know, most of you out there are ready to kill me because that’s what time all of your kids have always gotten up, but that is not the way of our household! The worst part about it is that he’s cranky when he wakes up, and winds up going back to sleep two hours later…hey doofus…just stay asleep!

We had to get the house ready because we had a showing on Saturday, so we spent the morning running around like crazy trying to make sure everything looked perfect. Then we went to eat and up to look at our new house while the kids took a nap. Saturday evening it rained, so we were ready to stay inside for the night when we decided that my son needed one of those Little Tykes basketball hoops. He loves basketball, and whenever he sees a hoop he goes crazy! So we headed out to get a hoop and some pizza. Of course while we were at the store I also had to pick up a toy for my daughter so she didn’t feel left out…I got her this adorable vanity set that has everything…lipstick, nail polish, brush, comb, mirror, perfume (all pretend of course…but she was a little disappointed because she’s used to the real stuff). I have a picture of her trying to put curlers in her brother’s hair! And my son loved the basketball hoop….it’s still too tall for him, but he loves to try to through the ball up, but unfortunately not as much as he loves us to pick him up so he can dunk it in.

Yesterday we got up and went to church and then went to lunch with our marriage-mentor-couple. Our church set up a program to help keep marriages together by matching couples together. Believe it or not we are the mentors! We’ve only been married for 6 years, but to newlyweds I guess we appear to be experts. We had not met the other couple yet and we were relieved to find them very normal and nice! They are a little older than us but I don’t think that’s going to be an issue at all.

The rest of the day was spent trying to take a nap (the kids slept fine but just as my husband and I were closing our eyes our little pistol, er...I mean our son, decided it was time to wake up) and going to Whole Foods for our weekly shopping trip. When we got back two of the neighborhood girls came over to play with my daughter (they are 7 and she is 3…I don’t get it!) and it was so cute to see them down in the basement playing with the dress-up clothes and playing so nicely together. We ended the night playing with my daughter in our bed…we kept telling her she should sleep in her own bed, but we were having so much fun playing, and then we laid down and she would talk to me about what we were seeing on TV, and then she just fell asleep. I love her so much, and the precious times that I get to play with just her are so few anymore with her little brother around, and I just try to cherish them as much as I can. I carried her over to her bed and laid her down and just looked at my beautiful girl who is getting so big so fast.

Doing What I Can....

I have a friend that is currently separated from her husband and about a month away from divorce. The hard part for us was that “the two of them” were our friends…my husband got along great with her husband, and then the two of us got along great…even our kids were great together. The news of the separation was shocking…nobody saw it coming, including my friend. So for the past few weeks I’ve done whatever I can think of to be there for her…as you know, I am so incredibly happy with my life, and most of all my husband, that I can’t even imagine being the in position, so I feel like I’m not doing her any good. But I sit and listen, and offer times for us to do things together. Luckily she has a great group of friends and she does a lot with them, which seems to be helping her a lot.

Last night she and I agree to take our kids to some fountains in a neighboring suburb. My husband plays basketball on Thursday nights, so it was just us girls and the kids. I stopped at McDonald’s on the way over there and picked up some food for everyone (another problem she’s going through is that money is tight now that they are paying for an extra apartment and utilities, so another way I try to help is buying her dinner and stuff like that so that she doesn’t have to miss out on the stuff she used to do). We arrived in this very prestigious neighborhood that has a huge grass hill with a rock wall at the bottom and a bunch of fountains that kids run through. The kids were all in their bathing suits and they quickly ate their dinner and starting running through the water. Even my little 14 month-old son walked right into the water without even thinking twice. When the kids were done with the water they wanted to run up and down the hill. Talk about great exercise…the hill was huge! And they all wanted to take turns with me rolling down with them. We had a lot of fun!

A couple of days ago my daughter asked me if we could bake cupcakes and take them over to the babysitter’s for all of the kids to share. Being the over-committed mom that I am, of course I said “yes”. So last night after the fountains, at 8:45, we went to the store to buy cupcake mix. Now, I don’t know if this is true in all Meijer stores, but at our Meijer, they have carts with the cars that kids can get in and drive in, and they also have a tv going with Barney and Bob the Builder. The carts cost $1 to rent, and it’s more than worth it because I didn’t hear from them the whole time we were in the store! And that’s why I decided to shop at that particular store…because it was late and my kids (especially my son) were cranky! Thank you Meijer for a pleasant late-night shopping trip! We went home and baked cupcakes with baths and teeth brushing in between baking and frosting. My daughter helped out in every step of making those cupcakes, and she was so proud this morning when she took them in and showed them to her babysitter, exclaiming “I helped do everything with these”. That right there confirmed that I had made the right decision to do the cupcakes, even though they weren’t finished until 10:30 last night. I love that little girl so much!