Awesome post coming up!

I've got a wicked cool post coming that you definitely want to come back for! I have about 4 million pictures to go thru first, but trust me - it'll be worth the wait! Not a long wait, mind you - a day or 2 at most to give me TIME to go thru all those pictures and find a way to do the subject of those copious photos justice.

Very soon! Until then... have a great day!

Not enough sleep = too much food

Is it just me or does everyone eat more when they're overtired? Saturday night Kyan had an extremely high fever and had to go to the ER in the middle of the night. We were there for hours and subsequently didn't get much sleep. He's fine, btw.

But Sunday, we slept until 10:30, obviously didn't go to church (couldn't take a sick kid anyway) and spent the (warm, beautiful) day in the house. He was supposed to be resting, but since the Motrin finally brought his temp down and he was feeling better, he wanted to play. He was very, very sad he couldn't go outside, and I was tired, crabby, and overfed. It was not a pleasant way to spend the day. It ended well, with all 3 of us sprawled out on my bed watching the Simpsons, so it could've been worse, but it also could've been tons better.

One day of being derailed isn't anything to get too upset about. It's going to happen and I need to get my mind set that even when it does happen I'm not going to let it completely derail me. One bad day I can live with, a lifetime of bad days will kill me. So I guess I keep plugging along.

Tonight is Kyan's drama class at 4, then we're having veggie lasagna for dinner. It's a new recipe and I can't wait to try it! I'm pretty psyched! I love this whole foods/veggie rich way of eating! I'm hoping to go on a bike ride since this isn't church cleaning night, but if not I'll do some sort of workout -- Zumba, tai chi, or find another good aerobic work out. I need to check my OnDemand channels and see what I can do for free! IF the dog will let me. :-S

So, it's Monday, and while the weekend didn't go quite how I hoped, today is a new day starting a new week. Begin again!

Prog rock = addicting!

Everyone's got that one band or two they love that most people haven't heard of, don't they? For me, it comes down to a few progressive musicians or bands that aren't very well known, but should be. Most people don't understand why prog is it's own genre, but if you do some googling, you should be able to figure that out pretty quickly! I just want to point out 2 of my favorites because I've been listening to them pretty much constantly recently.

First, the incomprable Kevin Gilbert. Go here to check him out. He is AMAZING! The world lost a musical genius when Kevin passed. My 14-yr old son loves him too and that makes me SO proud! I knew the kid had good taste... just like his mama! :-)

Today I'm listening to Spock's Beard. Also awesome. Still around, however with a different lead singer than they had when I first heard them. Check it out, totally worth it.

Now, I completely understand that neither of these may be your cup of tea, and that's cool. The world would be a colorless place if we all loved the same things. I just wanted to highlight the music that makes me happy.

She lives!

I abandoned this blog some time ago, but this week I came back and read thru the entries and was amazed at how many of my boys stories I'd forgotten! What an amazing thing to have!! Kyan was 14 mos old when I began blogging and is now 5 and ready to start kindergarten! Jaben was 9 - now 14 and heading into his first year of high school! So much time has gone by, so many things have happened... so many stories undocumented.

A lot of things have changed since I stopped blogging semi-regularly, probably too many to write about right now. However, since I've decided to try to start up again (w00t!), some of those things will probably be mentioned. So, that's good.

I want to change the name of the blog and will be thinking about that, as well as the design, because neither of those things really feel right to me at this point. But! More stories to come, hopefully more humorous than not.

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaackkkk!!! And hopefully will eventually gain some readers. Cuz don't nobody come here no more.

So much

Yep, I'm still around. Sort of. And I have so much to say here, but much of it I'm not quite ready to say yet. Things I don't want to talk about but at some point will need to. I'm just not there yet and don't know if I'll ever be able to share them here. So many things to think about and changes I know I need to make. To be more open, to make sure everyone I love really knows I love them, to show them their value, to write love on all their arms.

Just know, I'm okay, the boys are okay, we're hanging in all right. 2 weeks until Jaben goes to Lead America and I hope he's fine. I'll be worried the whole week, so the kid needs to find his cell before then.

Today we're going to see UP and later I'll be working on an ad for my uncle and aunt's business. Beyond that? We'll see. It's the weekend, I don't have to have it all planned out.

Literally A-Ha

Children of the 80's will love this! I know I did!

Hehehe....

Done with www.yearbookyourself.com -- ME, thru the years...

HONK!

Wanna see a picture of me with 2 cute guys?

Jaben and I went with some friends on Friday night to see HONK! at the Huron Playhouse. I get the tickets for free thru my old job (ahhh, a perk I will sorely miss) and we just had the bestest time! It was a great show - funny, sweet and the actors are wonderful!

Of course Tina put up a post about it right away - complete with pictures - so go here to see what she had to say... and to see that pic of me with 2 cute guys!

They're even cuter in person - trust me!

Beth's bachelorette party - or - my cousins rock

am sooooo tired!! When you're 35, it's probably not the best plan to go out with a bunch of 25 an unders. But omg it was so much fun!!!! Sometimes it's just the BEST to be one of the DDs... I got such a kick out of watching everyone. ;-)

We had the limo for 8 hrs, and most of the girls were drinking the whole time. We had a scavenger hunt thing that our moms put together - things like getting a pic of the bride kissing a bald man on the head, getting a piggy back ride from a stranger, and having a random guy practice walking her down the isle. Tooooo funny!! We went to Hooters for dinner and the waitresses put Beth (the bride) up on a chair and made her do "I'm a little tea pot" - THAT was hysterical and we got many pictures of it. By the time we were done, some of the girls were very much trashed. My favorite cousin was sooo trashed, another cousin couldn't walk straight, and my sister had to be poured into the car to be driven home. I kept checking with her the whole way to make sure she wouldn't vomit in my car. THEN I remembered the child locks were on in the backseat! Panic - but her gf was in the front with me and swore that if Kel was going to blow she'd get the door for her in time. Fortunately that was unnecessary. Thank goodness, new car and all.

I had to get up at 8 this morning to take Jaben to his viola lesson, so I am wiped out today! I still have to make the "this way to the wedding" signs for the reception and start getting Jaben ready for camp next week, so no rest for the weary. Sleep is for the weak anyway, right?? I needed that night tho - we had such fun and really? My cousins rock!

Yay blogger!

I just finished writing the MOST BORING BLOG POST IN EXISTANCE, hit publish, had a blogger error, and am no longer the proud author of the MOST BORING BLOG POST IN EXISTANCE.

Damn.

Except I just typed bamn, and had to fix it. Wouldn't want to rip off Emeril.

*sigh*

I am not going to be able to re-create the MOST BORING BLOG POST IN EXISTANCE (however I'm afraid this one is a very close second) so I guess I'll stop now.

Someone better do something amusing around here soon. I really need something interesting to write about!

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

I'm like, 15 again!

All five original New Kids on the Block members – Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood and brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight – will appear together in the Today Show's courtyard on April 4!!!



Now excuse me while I drool a little bit...

Gotta love that Fit!

I am LOVING my new little car!! Nothing to report yet on the promised amazing gas mileage, but the car itself rocks! The color is more copper than orange, but I’m calling it orange. We LOVE it! Jabe and I had a ball driving it home last night.

Kyan… well, not so much. I asked him on the way home what he thought of Mommy’s new car…

“I don’t like it.”

Me: Why don’t you like it?? I LOVE it.

Ky: It’s different.

Apparently Kyan’s not a big fan of different. Still this morning, putting him in the wonderfully new-smelling car to head out for the day he wanted to know why we were driving **this** car. He said we needed Mommy’s big white car. Well, it was silver, but whatever. I guess we’ve found out Kyan doesn’t like change.

He’d better get used to the Fit tho. He’s going to be learning to drive in this car!!

Hopefully will be able to post pics soon.

Bullet point weekend

I can only manage bullet points today. Sorry. Why? Because...

• I've caught Kyan's cold and it SUCKS. My EARS itch - from the congestion, I think - but omg it's miserable.

• Easter is tomorrow! And how did that happen??

• We're coloring eggs today.

• People are coming over to help color eggs and my house is TRASHED thanks to my being sick.

• MORE FREAKING SNOW. Enough already.

• Will try to get pics of egg dying and post up later. For now, gotta run.

• Happy Easter, y'all!

Busy week

Sorry no posts, I've been very busy this week. In fact, this needs to be very short. Between work being crazy, Kyan being sick, and the thousands of other things I need to accomplish (and am NOT), blogging has had to take a backseat. Again. Aren't you sick of me repeating that? I do have to report that Jaben's orchestra concert was so good last night!! None of my pictures came out tho and I'm so unhappy about that. I'm going to try to photoshop them into usefulness, but I'm not holding my breath. When all the orchestras performed together (intermediate [Jaben's grade], middle school, high school) for some reason they put the little kids in the back and I couldn't see Jabe! Towards the end of the song I spotted part of his face between some people, so I zoomed in on that with the video camera. Yes, we've got video but no good stills. And it's such a bad shot you can't even tell he's playing - he just looks like he's standing there - but at least you can tell he was up there.

He looked so cute in his little shirt and tie!! THAT, I got a photo of before we left and I can try to post it later. I think he's just a handsome kid.

Time is short, bear with me and I'll try to have a more interesting/entertaining post soon!

Thinks I've been thinking

I come up with all kinds of interesting things to blog about in strange places. Like, the shower, on the potty, driving in my car... you get the idea. So I was thinking it'd be cool if I could somehow log in, like with some kind of voice activated device, kind of like one of those goofy looking Bluetooth things, and just blog it before I forgot it.

I initially thought of some kind of embedded chip, but that brings up all kinds of issues I don't want to deal with. So yeah, I want a bloggy bluetooth. It probably exists, and even if it did, I'm sure I can't afford it.

Also, I want to be able to better organize the shows on my DVR. Why aren't there folders? It'd be so convenient to have a folder for each member of the family, so that everyone's shows would be separated and I wouldn't have to scroll thru 14 Spongebobs, 6 half-watched video game shows, 5 Einsteins, 6 Blue's Clues, and a couple of pre-teen movies and To Catch a Thief's to get to the ONE thing I've recorded this week. Please, DVR people... folders.

Lastly? Procrastination is bad. Need to dry hair, need to wash leaked on sheets (no, not by me! We have a leaky pull up to thank for that), go thru Jaben's camping stuff, and maybe, just maybe wash a dish.

Aftermath

Just a couple of quick shots of everything shoveled out. It took us 4 hrs to do this. I don't know if you can tell from these pictures, but the snow ended up being a little over knee high on me. And I'm 5'5".

Front walk


Back






In case you wondered, NO we do NOT want any more snow this winter!!

Got snow?

We do! I'm MORE than willing to share, if you'd like. So much for our weekend plans. Instead we'll be holed up in the house at least for today. Maybe we'll be able to dig out tomorrow. We'll see.

A few snow shots...

Lovely view out my front door. 10 points to whever can find the sidewalk!



Same street, different angle. Usually you'd be able to see our porch in this shot, but with the snow it's a bit... um... buried.



A few from the back...









Update: It's now almost 5:30, it still hasn't stopped snowing and I'm beginning to wonder if it's going to! This is insane. The snow in my driveway is easily knee-high and it's going to take forever to dig out. The roads are all closed except for emergency so it's not like we could go anywhere even if we could get out. This absolutly sucks. And it's MARCH! I'd post new pics but the batteries in my camera are now dead. *sigh*

I voted - did you?

Whether your primary is today (ours is!), or has already happened, I hope you voted! I would love it if you voted for the same candidate as me, but it's not a requirement. Just VOTE for someone!!

coughObamain08cough

*********

Tonight is the Boy Scout red and green banquet. We made cookies and actually didn't burn most of them! Major improvement over last week, let me assure you.

Kyan doesn’t want to go tho. I mean, I’m sure he will. His not going would mean me leaving the house without him – and we know that’s not going to happen. I can’t imagine he would want to go… it’s not about him, he has to eat food he’s not familiar with, made by people he doesn’t know, sit still and not play…. Just not the place an active 3 yr old wants to be. But I’m betting he won’t stick to his idea of “stay home with bama (grandma).”

Speaking of Kyan, cute little story I posted on my message board I thought I’d share here.

Yesterday morning Kyan had on these drawstring sweats that had pockets. He put his hands into the pockets and was walking around that way (loves his pockets, that one) and I commented that he looked like a little old man when he did that. Ky gives me that cute little mischievous grin, hunches his shoulders, shoves his hands further into his pockets and uses them to hike his pants up as high as they'd go, bent his knees and waddled in an "old guy" walk across the living room. Cracked. Me. Up!

All over the place

My thoughts are all over the place today, so hang tight and we’ll see if we can make sense. Ha! Good luck with that!

Weds is the closing on our old house. I never did get over there and take a few more pictures or copy down Jaben’s growth marks on the wall. I’m not going to get there tonight either. I guess we just have to say goodbye to it and move on.

I signed Kyan up for preschool in the fall. If it works out, he’ll be going Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-11:30am. He’s only 3, I don’t feel he needs more than that right now. Maybe next year I’ll be able to work him into one more day for the 4-yr old class to prepare for all day kindergarten when he’s 5, but one step at a time. I had a ride all worked out for him, but that fell thru. So I was panicking, in spite of having 7 mos to figure it out. I think it might be okay tho – my cousin said she might be able to do it, so ** whew **. Kyan can go to preschool after all. He needs it, and better still, he wants it. I’m excited for him to get to do this – I think he’s going to love it!

I’m trying to figure out if it’d be possible to get rid of my car. Not to be carless – I wouldn’t be able to get to work that way. But to get rid of the Liberty and get something more fuel efficient and, if I was lucky, with a lower payment. That’d be nice, but it’s probably not likely. I owe too much yet, I think. I’m not necessarily upside down (I researched), but I’d still end up tacking what I owe onto a loan and that might negate any fuel savings I could get. But it has to be considered, and possibly researched because with gas prices at a ridiculous $3.19/gal, and probably $4.00/gal by summer I cannot afford to drive my Jeep anymore. I HAVE to have something that uses less gas. I don’t have the money for what could be $65.00/week for gas. If I could get something more fuel efficient for the same or a lower payment, I’m okay with basically paying for a car and a half over the long run to be able to get by week to week right now. KWIM? So if you’ve got any suggestions or ideas, please share!

In other news, one cousin is getting married (!) on the 4th of July this year (yay Bethany and Josh!!) and another cousin is pregnant and due in Oct. I need to see what baby clothes I have from Kyan so she can have them if she wants. My kids are growing by leaps and bounds, things are crazy as usual but I think we’d be bored if we were less busy. I did get a great nap on the couch yesterday with Kyan and that totally rocked, especially since naps are a luxury I can’t normally afford.

Yeah, I know I’m still all over the place. Rather fixated on that car and all I have to do tonight – like make cookies (again – and I won’t burn them this time!) for the scout’s red and green banquet tomorrow night. It was supposed to be last week but got cancelled due to snow. Shouldn’t be a problem this week.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Maybe I’ll sleep better tonight and the rest of the week (couldn’t shut off the brain last night) and have a more comprehensible post in a day or so. Thanks, if you stuck with me!

Probably rambling

I've got a few things I want to talk about but no structured post (unusual, right?) so I'm just gonna write.

First things first. I know you're all (all 2 of you) dying to know if I'm smoking. Well. *sigh* Don't tell Jaben, but yes, I have been. Somewhere in the vicinity of 4-5 a day, which is HUGE for me. But still not where I want and need to be, which is at 0. So I'm moving on to nicotine gum. I've got 3 or 4 in the pack I've been cheating with all week, so once those are gone that's IT. I'm buying the gum tonight, so I'm sure there'll be more whining posts to come. But I need to want to have to do this. Just my way my time. Just... don't tell Jabe. Please. I'll have that conversation with him when I'm ready.

I have to tell you – Kyan rocks!! He’s been wearing his big boy pants for 3 weeks now and he’s doing so awesome! I’m almost ready to call him totally trained, but not quite yet. He goes when he needs to, but he still wants me to come with him. He will tell me he needs to go and runs off to the bathroom, but I’ve got to say, “I’m right behind you!” or he’s not fully comfortable. Usually. He is still wearing his pull ups to sleep, but to be honest I don’t care if he sleeps in pull ups until he’s 6 as long as he’s using the potty during the day. We had a bit of trouble with the pooping part, but once he did it, it was easy. He’s doing incredible with it now!! So yay Kyan for getting past this final milestone for PT-ing! He has been naked trained for so long and I’d gotten to the point where I thought he’d never underwear train. He’s just doing so good and he’s so awesome!

Next week is our annual trip to Kalahari! We’ve made the reservations and got an amazing deal! There were no good packages available online, so my mom called to see if they had any corporate deals associated with her company. I don’t know if what we got is due to her company or just something we got lucky with, but I only paid $98!! Amazing!! The best I could’ve done online was like $269 so this is a major savings. No “specials” to go with it like what we had last year, but that’s okay. We saved a LOT on this deal and with the expanded water park, we’re going to have a blast even without all the extras. Can’t wait!!

Jaben had his review for Boy Scouts last night, to see what rank he will be at. He was shooting for Second Class, and he thinks he should have that, but doesn’t know yet. I can’t wait to find out! He loves Boy Scouts and hopes to some day become an Eagle Scout, so this is very important to him. He’s got the Klondike Derby this weekend, which is a one night camp, and the next day they compete against other troops doing Boy Scout related tasks. That’s about as far as my understanding of the whole thing goes, but he’s excited about it. Oh, and he’s started his drama classes up again (Oliver! And we’re hoping for the part of Dodger cuz he’d ROCK that part!), AND his grandma bought him a guitar and lessons! Jabe’s a busy boy these days, that’s for sure.

I need to post new pics of these boys – they’re growing so fast! My sister sent me a camera (thanks again!!) when she sent Ky a birthday gift (Fisher Price camera that he LOVES – I should post some of his pics too) so I should be able to get some decent pics of them soon. And Ky’s birthday pics should come in soon. And I never posted the Christmas pics. So yeah, I need to do some picture catch up!

Guess that’s it for the random ramblings. If you got this far, you rock! And um… thanks for reading. I’m sure this read worse than one of those “Christmas Newsletters”!