Thankful November

Today, I am thankful for having today. (Monday, Nov 7, 2011)

"Now listen, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that. " James 4:13-15Yesterday my Uncle Jerry was killed in a car accident in South Carolina. We weren't close, really. He was my mom's stepbrother, and we never lived near Jerry and Nancy, so I never really got to know him.
One of the regrets I have from my childhood is that I wasn't close to my extended family. One of the downfalls of being a military child I suppose. My cousins all pretty much lived in the same place, and my brother and I were just around for the occasional holiday. Facebook has helped bring me in touch with a lot of my cousins, but it still isn't the same. I don't want my kids to feel like they don't know their cousins or Aunts and Uncles. We do our best to travel to Nebraska as often as possible, so that we can have that relationship with Cory's family, but it is a lot more difficult to do with my family, as it requires a lot more planning and money to see them.

Jerry's death comes in the wake of the death of my friends' sister just over a week ago, and that verse from James has been rolling around in my head for the past week or so. (Although, I didn't know it was from James, that I had to look up)

RIP Uncle Jerry. The world has lost a great man, God has gained an angel.

Thankful November Day 3

Today I am thankful for my sweet, opinionated, sassy daughter. May she always keep that inner confidence that she can pull of ANY outfit. :)

Thankful November Day 2

Today I am thankful for my creative son. He never ceases to amaze me! I love you buddy!

Thankful November

Going to jump on the thankful bandwagon, a few days late.

Today I am thankful for my husband, who allows me to chase my dreams and makes sure everything gets done.

A long, long time ago...

One day, back when I had a toddler and a baby, I posted on this blog. Not very regularly, but occasionally. Now, I have a big boy, and a toddler who is well on her way to being a big girl. I'm not really sure how that happened, how I let nearly two years go by since updating this place.
I have excuses, as does everyone for why I don't do it. But my biggest reason is I'm lazy.

Today (well, yesterday) was my 34th birthday. And as far as birthdays go, it was pretty good. The kids were very excited. I went out to a fun lunch with my coworker and had some margaritas. Another coworker brought in birthday treats. I had my horrible (HORRIBLE!) electronics class today, I brought in cookies to share with the class. Then it was over and the family took me out for dinner.
I had a great day, really I did. There was just one little part of my day that sucked, and it's been in the back of my mind the rest of the day, weighing down my heart.

While I was reading through the birthday messages on my wall I came across a post from a friend of mine. Her sister was killed Wednesday in a near head on collision. I didn't know her sister, but my heart is breaking for my friends who have to say goodbye to their baby sister. She was 26 years old.
I can't imagine losing my brother. I don't know what to say to them. I have never been where they are right now, and God willing I never will be. But it certainly makes you reassess things in your life.

I want to enjoy my life more. I want to be remembered as someone who laughed a lot. Not someone who is stressed out and crabby. I need to figure out how to get to that point. I want to be able to enjoy the time I spend with my family.

I find writing is a great way to help me feel more balanced. I am thinking about applying for the Creative Memories Design Team.

This is an incredibly rambly post. Sorry. My brain is all over the place right now.
I'm going to try to post more often, perhaps if I am doing it more often, I can be more concise. Maybe not. I'm not going to promise anything exciting. Just words.

Hug your family.

Thrush in mouth is worth two in bush?

Thrush it is. Although annoying, not the worst thing that could happen on a short week with a long weekend involving too many plans for a sick baby. She just looks like she has been eating chalk. Nothing major, right? I hope so.

We are getting ready to head to the Hubs family for Thanksgiving, we are going to his sister's house (the pregnant one) It should be a good time.

Long weekend, short week

Elinor had a fever all weekend, and I think she may have thrush, I need to call the Dr. about that. We are home today, even though she is feeling better. Since she had a fever yesterday, she had to stay home from daycare today. But we got up nice and early to take Fin in to school, since Daddy had a very early trip today. Yay! Then we stopped in to the office to get some coffee, and came home, where I discovered the white mouth in the bathtub. She is napping now, and I will check it again when she wakes up, or maybe I'll just call the Dr first to get an appointment, just in case. I don't know.

So I started out thinking I was going to type about something totally different, but my brain took a detour. It has been doing that a lot lately.

I am having a three day weekend, a two day week and then a 4 day weekend. It would be nice if all weeks could be like this, minus the cranky baby.

MamaNessa

Things are crazy when you have a 2year old and a baby. Just some quick updates and tidbits from the kids.
Finley is getting so independent, he can put his shoes on himself, and his coat. He recently moved up to the toddler/preschool room (it's a room for older toddlers and younger preschool kids) and they stress self sufficiency. He also spends a lot of time in the "Thinking Spot" for hitting/biting. Any thoughts on how to stop that kind of behavior? One of his little friends in the Caterpillar room must say "Oh Man" al lot, becasue Fin has been saying that all the time. A typical conversation:
Me: Finley, pick up your coat and hang it on your hook.
Fin: Nuh-uh.
Me: Fin, please hang your coat on your hook.
Fin: :Giggle: no!
Me: Fin, hang your coat on your hook or no George!
Fin: Ohh man!

Elinor is 8 months old now (really, 8 months, when did that happen?) She weighs 18 lbs, is crawling like crazy, pulling herself up to standing, and starting to cruise around furniture. And I thought maybe she'd wait a little longer than Finley did to walk. I don't think it's going to happen. She also is VERY vain, and loves it when people say what a pretty baby she is. She also likes to look at herself in the mirror, where she coos and giggles at herself. She blows a mean raspberry, which is cute, unless it is 1am and Mom is trying to get her to go to sleep. Her feet are tiny. She is still not in a size 3 shoe. (Which is pretty much where Finley started out.) She likes food, on her terms. If she doesn't want to eat, or doesn't like what you offer, she smacks the spoon away.

Fin loves his baby sister, and likes to kiss and hug her. Infrequently he tries to pick her up, but I think he's learning that he isn't allowed to do that.

She is not allowed to play with his toys, which includes pretty much everything we own, but he has been known to trade her a sock for whatever object she has that he wants. She doesn't mind, chewing on socks is one of her favorite things to do. She just crams it in her mouth and goes. It's pretty funny to see.

Well, that is just a little look into our world right now. I don't know when I will post again, since I am really not sure where the time has been going lately!

And again with the Hiatus

Highlights of the last year:
Stubborn baby, I guess it's a surprise (my last post!)
Getting bigger and bigger
Finley moved to the toddler room at daycare
Messed up holiday trips
4 Christmases
Impromptu trip to Washington
Getting tired of being pregnant
Finley turned two on March 14th
It's a GIRL!
Elinor Olyn was born March 19th, 2009
Maternity leave
New scrapbooking toy, my KNK Maxx 24"
Summer
Henry was born June 29th
Went to visit my family in Washington to meet Henry
Finley moved to the preschool at the daycare, Elinor started daycare.


That is the past year in a nutshell.

It's a....

We had our "BIG" ultrasound today, and baby wasn't giving up the goods for ANYTHING. So we are having another surprise baby! Everything looked good, baby is sunny side up and breech, so that might explain why I'm not feeling much movement, except for the occasional well aimed kick to my cervix or bladder. I will try to post a few pics when I get home to the scanner and update the post.

News from the Abyss...

So this has been an exciting summer. One where I felt like crap 90% of the time, and slept like 15 hours a day. We found out in Mid July that we are expecting baby #2, just in time for little man's second birthday. I guess we were aiming for two years apart, I just figured it would take a little longer than it did. Our due date is March 26th, but since it will be a repeat C-section, they want to do it about a week before my due date, making it around the 19th, only 5 days after little man's birthday. I am still deciding if we want to try for St. Patty's day instead, but I am just not sure about that. We are just out of the first trimester, and boy am I glad. I was so sick, much sicker than I was last time, and tired, ugh, I can't describe it! I thought i was tired before, but man, that was nothing!

Speaking of little man, he is 18 months old now, and I still can't believe it! He is getting so big, and so independent. He goes up the stairs standing now. He doesn't get that he is getting a little brother or sister yet, but it's a little early.
He knows what his belly button is, and where it is. He new favorite game is poke mommy in the belly button. Ouch. But it's cute. He also knows what his foot is. I say show me your foot and he kicks it up in the air.

This week has been rough, since little man is teething, again. This time it is his last molar and I think some canines. Hopefully lots of them, so we are done with teeth for a while. I remember back when he had none yet,and I was thinking, is this kid ever going to get teeth, now I just want him to be done. But he HAS gotten 10 teeth in under 6 months.

Okay, back to work for just a little while, then home to my family! Yay!

New Words!

So, little man has learned a new word. Lawnmower. That;s right, he says lawnmower. He dosen't say mom, or mama, or call ME anything, but he can say lawnmower, and even knows the sound one makes. It is really kind of cute.

Scrapping

I enjoy scrapbooking, which a lot of people think is a strange hobby for me. I enjoy the feel of the paper, and all of the stuff that you amass when you really get into it as a hobby. I am a stuff collector, and I have a lot of it. I love stuff. Sometimes I got up to my scrap space just so I can move my stuff around. I do also use some of my stuff to do some scrapping. My newest venture is that I am a Creative Memories Consultant. I originally joined last year because I was going to spend a lot of money at a show I hosted, and a lot of the things were in the consultant kit. Then in December, I deactivated, because I couldn't afford to buy more stuff. In May they gave recently deactivated consultants the opportunity to come back for free, so I did. But this time I decided to make a go of it. Maybe earn a little extra money for maternity leave, should I ever need to take it again.

That's all I have today. I'm tired. One of the cats knocked over a glass of water very early this morning (onto my laptop), and I have pretty much been up ever since. Joy.

15 months, fathers day, flood, flu

What a weekend. Little Man turned 15 months old this weekend. Daddy was off all last week fighting the flood in Waterloo, IA, and came home just in time form me to have the Flu (or Food Poisoning) on Saturday, then left again on Father's day to go to Quincy, IL for a little more flood fighting. Whee! Who knows when he'll get to come home.
So forgive me for the short message, but I am still feeling a little under the weather today.

Foof

Hi there all. I am a member of the BzzAgent program, and one of the things in my Frogpond today was Foof. Now I don't normally think the Frogs are worth anything to me, but, I hate ads in my browsing, so this is right up my alley. It is a Firefox plug-in that blocks ads. You can also set it to show you relevant ads, but I have mine set to totally block. I like it so far.
Check it out:

Foof

I also put a link to it on the right hand side over there-----> It's under Places I go.


**Interested in joining Bzz agent? Let me know and I will send you an invite. :)

Tag.. I'm it!

Mary tagged me for this little do-hicky... so here goes.

What was I doing 10 years ago?
Let me think back to ten years ago... which would have been the summer after my sophomore year of college. I was getting ready break up with my boyfriend of almost a year and a half. Well, it was about to happen, HE did the breaking up, not me. He had just graduated, and was moving to Florida to go to flight school, and didn't want to have any attachments. I was heartbroken. Then I left to go home for a month for my brother's wedding. I was a mess.


5 things on my to do list today:
1 Work, and actually get some work done.
2 Clean my kitchen, after Little Man goes to bed.
3 Wii, maybe
4 Get a lot done on my project here at the office, that's right, work.
5 Work on organizing my scrap space, and maybe do a little scrapping.

Snacks I enjoy:
Mmmm. Snacks. I like chocolate, donuts, cookies, popcorn, cheese. Pretty much, I like snacks. :)

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Invest for a healthy annuity, then spread the wealth, some to children's hospitals, cancer research (I had a cousin die from cancer at 17 years old) make sure my family (parents, inlaws, siblings) are living comfortably. I would stay at home with my little man, and I would get some hobbies done.

Places I have lived:
Ready? Okay, I was born in Hastings, NE; Bladen, NE; Talahassee FL; Omaha, NE (Offut AFB); Rantoul, IL; Puyallup, WA; Mildenhall, England; Lakenheath, England; Lincoln, NE (college); and Davenport Iowa (current). Whew. Can you tell I was a military brat?

Okay... I'm tagging... umm, Anne from pumproom confessions, and well, I don't know. Back with more tags in a bit... maybe. :)

Joining the Wii-volution

We finally got a Wii yesterday. Yay! We bought it at Best Buy. The only reason we did is because Hubby won a GPS at the conference he went to a few weeks ago, and we already have a GPS, so we returned it for store credit at Best Buy. And they just happened to have Wii's in stock. Yay. So today, my arm hurts. A lot. But it is a good hurt. Now I just have to wait for somewhere to get Wii Fit in stock.

Totally not me...

So I don't normally blog about the political circus going on in America right now, but I have to get this off my chest. Really. IF you don't like it, tough. But check back later for a non-political post.
I have serious issues with the delegate system, and the electoral college in general, but they are in place, and it isn't going to change. But that is not what I want to write about. What really torks me off is the Florida and Michigan delegates for this year's primary. Rules are rules, people. (And really, this applies to things other than politics too.) Why is it that YOUR STATES broke the rules, but it is the DNC's fault your delegates weren't going to count? What is our country coming to that makes it okay to break the rules and then whine about not getting what you want (i.e. the delegates you 'deserve') Yes, voting is a right, and an important one to boot, but why didn't someone say, "If my vote won't count, why should I go out and vote." Tell your elected officials to put the primary back to it's proper time. Stage a protest against your state, who is so needy and power hungry that they wanted to shape this election, and therefore broke party rules so they could vote earlier than the rest of the country. Don't tell me they didn't try to schedule their primaries before the caucus and primaries of Iowa and New Hampshire. Moving their primary up so far caused a lot of problems for those states, and you don't hear them whining about how having a caucus on January 3rd ruined their holiday vacations. (For the record, it did, we had to cut ours 4 days short.)
So Florida, Michigan, step up, and be adults. Don't say you will never ever vote for Barack Obama because HE stripped you of YOUR delegates. HE had nothing to do with it. The DNC and the candidates did what they all thought was fair to give you the delegates you lost fair and square. Don't say "I'm switching to Republican," or "I'm voting independent" because you didn't get your way.
Okay. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Please check back soon for our regularly scheduled, non-political post. Oh, and don't hate me for my opinion. :)

As Promised...

Some pictures. Bad ones, but pictures all the same. I don't have any of me standing with any of the bridesmaids, but I will post a picture of each.

This is me. Don't I look happy? Two of the brother's in law had on matching pink ties.

These are two of the bridesmaids.

So the colors were REALLY close. It worked out really nicely! All of the wedding pics I took are poopy, so I'll have to get better ones from the rest of the family. :)

Ahem, An Update

Sorry it's been so long, I have been busy. And tired. And for some reason, I could not log into blogger yesterday. All poor excuses, I know. But too bad. :)
So I am WAY behind right now on NaComLeavMo. Because like I said, I couldn't get blogger to load yesterday. Annoying.

The wedding was fun. I didn't take many pictures, because the Little Man chose to cry starting 30 minutes before the wedding, and didn't stop until 10-15 minutes into it. So we missed the walking down the aisle, and the homily. We did get to see the vows. Which made me happier. I just couldn't believe that my happy boy, who rarely fusses, was all out screaming for 45 minutes, at that particular moment. Oh well. I think he was tired, and hot, and hungry. Not a good combo.
My dress matched the bridesmaids dresses wonderfully, so the pictures all look pretty neat. I have to find the camera, and I will see if there are any good ones on it.
Well, that is all for now, I need to do some actual work today. Yeah.