A Smile Makes Everything Better

Unfortuntately, Heather...

2009-06-19T19:45:00.002-04:00

I got this idea from Mindy, who got the idea from someone else. You type "Unfortunately, followed by your name" into Google search engine and see what comes up. I was very entertained by this and probably found to many. But I sit here at work on a Friday night waiting for another 1 1/2 hours before I can go home, so what the heck, I had fun!!! And just as Mindy found, some of them are actually true and some are just hilarious!

Unfortunately, Heather was only able to pass the reading component of the tests (probably true)
Unfortunately Heather figured out the ruse and is now pressing charges against the paper (no idea)
Unfortunately Heather has surfaced on our screens in Scrubs; ads for L’Oreal & the short lived LAX (Wouldn't that be awsome)
Unfortunately Heather's early releases are no longer available for purchase (how sad)
Unfortunately, Heather forgot to follow the most important advice: Stay out of the path of runaway police motorcycles (yes because that would be bad)
Unfortunately Heather will never go away (sorry!)
Unfortunately, Heather's caseload is currently full (if that means that I am working, then yes, that is true)
Unfortunately, Heather and her pal were too busy to stop and chat (hmmm, me not chat, probably not true)
Unfortunately, Heather did not win (probably true)
Unfortunately, Heather is extremely beautiful and gets hooked up with guys that are equally beautiful but cheaters (true about the men, not so true about me ;) Love ya, hon!!)
Unfortunately, Heather's Mom is not too bright (sorry, mom that is definitely not true :)
Unfortunately, Heather's first job didn't work (neither did the 2nd job through the 10th job)
Unfortunately, Heather's mother is too busy getting established as the local veterinarian and her father too obsessed with his new sailboat (not so much about mom, but dad does like his boats ;)
Unfortunately, Heather's story beyond 'Black Jack' is something we can't go into detail about (my husband might get jealous, until he found out he could meet him in person :)
Unfortunately, Heather is married (true)
Unfortunately, Heather hates the winter — it is too long (but most people who live here hate winter, too!) (sooo, true)
Unfortunately, Heather will turn 20 fairly soon and no longer be eligible to shoot as a junior. We're looking for replacements! (If only it was my 20th birthday coming up ;)
Unfortunately Heather isn't quite making that much yet. (soooo very true)
Unfortunately Heather thinks of herself as another Judge Judy!!!! She is always right, and everyone else is wrong. (mostly true :)
Unfortunately, Heather was not able to make it to the studio but has a perfect home studio of her own in Germany (if only I had a home studio and one in Germany would be cool too).

And my personal 2 favorites of all and I think they speak for themselves:

Unfortunately Heather has to work as a hooker to pay for her retro fashion obsession
Unfortunately, Heather lost the ability to transform into Sasquatch

Riding on 2-wheels

2009-06-16T21:19:00.003-04:00

I can still hardly believe it myself, but Josiah is officially riding a 2 wheel bike with no training wheels. Unfortunately the reason for teaching him how to ride the bike with no training wheels involves running over the bike with the training wheels. Uncle Mike had given Josiah this very cool, all chrome, "boys" bike. Josiah loved that bike! But one day he parked it in between Daddies truck and trailor on the passenger side. There was no hope for the bike and the training wheels were crushed as well. The reason for the cool bike was because he was riding this pink and purle girls bike that I had picked up at a garage sale for a $5 and Uncle Mike thought he should have a cool, boys bike. Well now with no cool bike, and the pink and purple bike with no training wheels. Daddy decided that he would try and teach him how to ride. We worked with him for a few days in our yard, but it is just to hard to learn balance with ruts and whatnot. So Dan took Josiah down to our church parking lot and within 2 days, Josiah was riding with very little help at all. He had trouble starting and stopping, but within a week he had mastered (well almost anyway, since he still falls once and a while), riding a bike with no training wheels. We are so proud of our 3 1/2 year old little boy!!!

Family visits from Texas

2009-06-16T21:12:00.002-04:00

My brother Doug, his wife Dawn and Samantha and Nathan came for a visit a couple of weekends ago. We went up for the weekend so we could visit and Josiah would get a chance to hang out with his cousins. Josiah and Nathan have such a good time. Samantha too of course. But it was really great to see them all. Wish they didn't live so far away :)

Fun with Toads

2009-06-16T21:03:00.003-04:00

One day, Josiah and I were playing outside and all of the sudden we found a couple of baby toads. Then there were a lot of them...then our entire yard became loaded with them. They are everywhere and a ton of fun. We have been catching them and lettign them go for the past 2 weeks. Josiah has been catching them, putting them in his bug cage and taking them to daycare. They showed us how to create a little habitat for them, but we never did figure out what they ate, so we had to let them go. But there are still hundreds of them. Dan is afraid to mow, because he says it was be baby toad genecide. Every time you take a step you wonder if you are going to step on a toad. What a fun time for Josiah and since Dan and I joined in, we had some good family fun catching baby toads.

Be a Tourst in your Own Town Day

2009-06-16T20:48:00.001-04:00

Grandma and Papa Weaver came down for the day and joined us in "Be a tourist in your Own town" Day. For $1 you could go to any number of attractions in Lansing and E. Lansing. For $0.50 you could ride the bus all day. A big hit for Josiah!!! We were whipped by the end of the day, but we had a great time!

"I got canoed," said Josiah!

2009-06-16T20:34:00.003-04:00

We went canoeing this past weekend and it was an adventure that none of us will soon forget . The boys planned the trip, the first mistake of the day. We didn't actually put our canoes into the water until 4:30pm. 2nd mistake. As we were pushing out, Dan was going to put OFF on, but forgot and in turn forgot to zip up the dry bag. 3rd mistake. Dan, Josiah, Buster and I were all in the same canoe...4th and biggest mistake. We tipped our canoe 30 minutes into the trip. It was out of nowhere and at the fastest point in the river. I panicked, but was able to grab a hold of Josiah and Buster. I didn't realize that he could swim, so I was trying to hold onto both of them, which was fine until the bottom of the river disappeared. That is when I totally panicked. I finally let go of Buster and hoped that he would be ok. I was then able to hold onto Josiah and grab onto the canoe that Dan was able to grab when we tipped. The water was freezing to boot, which is probably what made the tip so much scarier, because it took time to get our bearings and what not. The river was moving so fast that it was very difficult to get to the side bank, but we finally did. Everyone was ok :) However the dry bag that didn't get closed up, tipped over and all the keys dumped out along with all of our towels and dry clothing. Luckily we were canoeing with 2 other guys and they were able to rescue Buster and all of our stuff. They even had two semi dry towels. Once Buster jumped in their canoe (which he really didn't want to have anything to do with, but finally jumped in), a whole bunch of water came with him and got a lot of their stuff wet too. But we were thankful for the dry towels. Dan made a campfire in record time and we were able to dry off a bit there and eat our food, which thankfully was in the other canoe. The guys went over to where the dry bag had tipped over, because it had floated upright down the river quite a ways until it hit some branches and tipped over and capsized. After many attempts and 3 guys looking for the keys, all 3 pair were recovered. After we mostly dried out, we headed down the river, but by this point it was 6:00 and we still had 3 1/2 hours to go. I was freezing and pissed off by the end of that trip. The boys had to keep stopping to go pee. Their crotches were soaked and kept having the feeling to pee, so every 15 minutes towards the end we were stopping and by that point, I was so cold I couldn't feel my fingers. I was wearing only my swimsuit, because everything else was wet and I gave Josiah my t-shirt so that he didn't have to wear the life jacket cold against his body. He also got both towels, because we needed to keep him warm. The rest of the trip both Josiah and Buster whimpered and were scared. I was pretty scared too actually. Every time we leaned a little I tensed up. I tried to be brave to keep Josiah calm, but by the end, I had very little energy left in my: P It was 55 degrees out by the time we pulled in at 9:30pm We completed our adventure all very cold, but intact and we only lost a few things. Never again will I go on a canoe trip that 2 boys planned :)

If you ask Josiah about the trip, he will tell you that we tipped. His original response to that question was that we got "canoed". I thought that was hilarious and thought we should make him a shirt that says "I got canoed on the Manistee River" If you ask him if he ever wants to go in a canoe again, he will tell you NO. We were all pretty tramatized to say the least. But we had a great time on Sunday, spending a leizurly day by the water. Dan's friend invited us up to stay at his Aunt's cabin. And it was such a nice cabin, I kind of wish we had just stuck around and hung out at the cabin all weekend, instead of driving all over creation to go canoeing. But that is life! The adventure has happened and we have a story to tell. I wonder how long Josiah will remember that adventure.

Picture update

2009-05-26T22:11:00.003-04:00

It has been quite a while since I posted any pictures, so I thought it was about time. The first slide show is from our trip to Kentucky. The second slide show is from the past month or so. Our boy is getting so big so fast! I can hardly believe it!!! Enjoy!

Garage Sale Season

2009-05-01T12:30:00.002-04:00

I know it has been a very long time. Feb was the last time I posted. I just haven't had much to post about. But garage sale shopping has begun and I have done well already this season. Anyone want to guess how much I spent on all these clothes?

In case you can't see very well, this is the tally of stuff:

11 short sleeve t-shirts (3 are in the laundry already :)
12 Long sleeve t-shirts
1 MSU Jersey (in perfect condition)
2 tank tops
3 short sleeve dress shirts
2 long sleeve dress shirts
1 Fleece coat
13 pair of underwear
1 swim suit (my favorite colors)
8 shorts
4 sweat pants
1 sweat suit
3 dress pants
5 jeans
5 winter pajamas
1 summer pajamas

And all of this for $28. So anyone out there that says they don't have enough money to make sure their kid has clothes that fit or just clothes in general has not discovered the power of the garage sale, because for under $30, I just clothed Josiah for the year. Yes he needs shoes and socks, but that is about it. I also bought his winter coat for $10 (the most expensive item, but well worth the money). The coat is in great condition and again I love the colors (orange and blue).

So, have a great garage sale season this year!!! My daycare provider has already hit me up for looking for stuff for her. She has given me an envelope with money, so that I can pick things up as I see them!! I love to garage sale, so if there is anything that anyone is looking for, I will keep my eye out for it and let you know!!

But the best purchase I have made by far is an old Samsonite beauty case. The hard case ones with a handle. Josiah found it and brought it to me and I asked him if he was going on a picnic. And his face lit up. Yah, I am going on a picnic. I then found some plastic plates and a plastic cup to add to the box and wala, he is going on a picnic and is having a blast. I think I might have paid $1.50 for all of it. Well worth the money!!!

Winter in Michigan

2009-02-17T21:12:00.001-05:00

Random pictures

2009-02-17T21:03:00.000-05:00

Financial Peace University

2009-02-17T20:19:00.003-05:00

Dan and I started Financial Peace University (FPU) a couple of weeks ago. The premise for the class is to get out of Debt by 'living like no one else today so that we can live like no one else later" The class was designed by Dave Ramsey and we are taking the class through our church. It is a 13 week class that teaches us how to control our money so our money doesn't control us anymore. The class starts by putting together an emergency fund of $1000. We were very fortunate that Dan had just worked a boat load of overtime and we were able to fund it very quickly. After the first step it was time to start paying of debt, but we had to start by putting together a budget, which we kind of had one from several years ago. I put in our current paychecks and updated it a little bit. The next step was to get both Dan and I on board with the budget which meant that Dan had to have input on the budget or cash flow plan as it is called at this point in the class :) We did that and Dan had some good input...but we still didn't know how to put the cash flow plan into practice. The following week was the best for me. It provided the forms that allowed us to figure out how much we had to spend each week so that we could go to an all cash system. this was the difficult part for me in the past that I could never get a handle on.

So we started the cash only system last week. And right away we were faced with a decision about whether to spend money that wasn't in an envelope or not. We were in Target and the new movie "Madagascar 2" came out. Now in the past I would just buy the new movie that I wanted regardless of whether the money was there for stuff like that or not. I was so torn, I was even going to borrow from my spending money for the following week to buy it, but after some deliberation, I made the decision that we did not need that movie and that we could rent it through Netflix to watch it. Three days later we got a package in the mail from Dan's mom for Josiah. It was a Valentine package and guess what was inside...yep, Madagascar 2. I could hardly believe it.

That same day that we were faced with buying the movie we decided we wanted to buy a 3rd controller for the Wii. Josiah has turned out to be catching onto the games very quickly and with a 3rd remote we can all play as a family. But once again we were just starting the FPU program and we didn't have any money to go buy the controller. So we figured out how we could pay for it. We decided to sell back a couple of games that we never played anyway and then Dan suggested we take back bottles. So together as a family we gathered up all the bottles in the house and we were off. We had enough money to buy the controller plus Valentines cards for Josiah to take to daycare. And the best part, we felt accomplished that we didn't just go buy the controller because we wanted it, not caring where the money came from.

This past week we learned about something called a debt snowball. It makes so much sense that I am not sure why everyone doesn't do this. The whole idea is that you pay minimum payments on all of your debts. Once you pay off your smallest day you role that minimum payment into the next biggest debt. So if you were paying $50 on a $100 debt, once that debt was paid off you add $50 to your next biggest debt. And you keep doing that until all of your debt is paid off. At any rate, we were able to put our debt information into a calculator and if we stay on course we can have all of our debt paid off (besides our house) in less than 3 years. Most of our debts wouldn't come due for 7-10 years. So we are pretty excited about this. We know that life happens, but we are determined to get out of as much debt as we can in as short of time as possible.

We have a great support system at our church, yet one more reason that we are loving our new church. I hope to come to you all with good news to our debt pay off.

Josiah learns his ABC's

2009-02-04T22:38:00.003-05:00

The first part of this video is of him laughing, eating and trying to sing all at the same time. Once he stops laughing, swallows what he was eating and then tries to sing, it is much better. But the whole video is cute and funny regardless of the food ;) So enjoy all you grandparents who haven't seen him in a little bit, this kid is growing right up!!!

A New Look

2009-01-18T22:32:00.003-05:00

I finally got things situated on my background. The one thing that I don't like is that the Picasa picture slideshow with the background. When I make the slideshow smaller then you can't see the pictures very well, but when I make it bigger half of the pictures are cut off. Not sure which I will choose. But if you click on the slideshow you can go to the actual website and see the pictures that way too.

But I had fun getting the background beyond the holidays! Hope you like it :)

Things are going very well for my family and I. We are all healthy, our jobs are going well and we are living life to its fullest. What more could we ask for...we are truly blessed.

A trip to the Science Museum

2009-01-18T22:13:00.002-05:00

Snowy Day

2009-01-18T21:49:00.002-05:00

Family Photo Slideshow

2009-01-10T22:12:00.004-05:00

Antics

2008-12-23T22:19:00.002-05:00

The latest little attitude thing Josiah has been dishing out is "Do you understand me?" Pretty sure he is exactly mimicking us...and yes it always comes back to bite you in the ass, those little comments. But this little comment he used on me, in a not so quiet voice in Meijer the other day. He wanted to ride in the fun video carts and I told him no, we were just getting a couple of things. And he proceeded to yell at me "Do you understand me? I want to ride in the carts!!!!" Over and over actually! Funny as hell to all those surrounding me, but slightly embaressing to the mother. :) What do you do! Sadly to say, he got that cart, because I thought it was so funny...and yes to all those parents that are thinking that is going to bite me in the ass too, I know!

He has been so funny lately. "It was an accident" is the precursor to anything he has just done that has caused a mess. The great thing is, you know almost immediately when he has spilled something, pee'd his pants, knocked something over, because he comes and tells you it was an accident. Funny kid!

Sweet kid: He has learned the song "Santa Claus is coming to town". So one day he was sitting in time out for something quite minor. But he was sitting there as good as can be and he looks at me with the sweetest little face and says "Santa is coming to town". My heart just about melted, not necessarily because of what he said but because of how he said it :) About a week later, Dan picked him up from daycare where they had made glass mugs decorated to look like Santa, filled with candy. They got out to the truck and realized they had forgotten the mug inside and Josiah looks all sad and says "Santa's not coming to town?" I have yet to hear him sing the song, but my mom caught him singing it when he was all by himself :)

He is soooo excited about Christmas presents this year. So excited that he has already opened the presents that he made for Dan and I at daycare and wrapped himself. Then yesterday he waited until Dan got to Kim's to pick him up yesterday and then proceeded to open the one present left under the tree that was meant for another kid. Kim said he had been eyeing that present all day, and he just couldn't stand it anymore, so as soon as Dan walked in, he tore open the gift. Silly kid! Oh, but the classic opening present story happened at daycare the first day she had the tree up. She had wrapped a couple of presents and put them under the tree. Never did she imagine that it would be Josiah that would have to be watched. The first day, she caught him under the tree tearing only the corners of all the presents. To cute! She got a big kick out of it :)

I am sure there are many more antics that are worthy of putting down in type, but I can't think of any more right now. Just know that he is just a silly kid right now! And a whole lot of fun, when he isn't trying to be independent ;)

Digital Cards

2008-12-21T19:58:00.002-05:00

I used a digital cards program to create the heading. I made the card, emailed it to myself, opened it and saved the image. And wala...the heading was created. I then had to match the background with the heading of course. I love having a laptop on my lap when I am mindlessly watching TV, especially on the weekends. The only bummer about this card making program was that you couldn't really do any of the designing...it was all prepackaged if you will. Hopefully I can get an updated version of photoshop so that I can use the digital scrapbooking programs.

Let me know what you think!

We had a great date day/night!

2008-12-20T23:39:00.003-05:00

We never made it to the movies, but that decision made it a better day for both of us. It meant we didn't have to rush around to make it to a specifically timed movie. Shopping was good and food was good. The rest of the night we played the Wii. I bought Mario Party 8 for the Wii for Dan (and myself) for Christmas, plus another guitar for really cheap so could both play guitar hero....way more fun:) Great day/night!!!

Visit to Grandma Julies and Birthday Party

2008-12-20T11:35:00.012-05:00

The silly cat jumped on the cake box and pushed the train into the cake and smeared the writing, but you get the jist that it is a birthday cake for Josiah's 3rd birthday :)

Josiah enjoyed the frosting on the cake the best of all.

Crayola's Glow Station was a big hit. And with my new camera I can use a slow shudder or writing with light. Pretty cool feature.

Josiah couldn't wait to open Presents, so he helped himself to opening the first one.

Party Preparations with Grandma Julie

Visit to Grandma Julie's House in the UP

Making Cookies with Mom

2008-12-20T11:30:00.000-05:00

Black & White/Sepia Fun

2008-12-20T11:13:00.003-05:00

These black and white pictures are from Josiah's Birthday at McDonalds (his choice).

The Sepia pictures were just a day during one of our first snows this year. Josiah and I were having a snowball fight.

Date Day and Night

2008-12-20T10:50:00.002-05:00

Today is a day for mom and day, aka, Heather and Dan minus Josiah. My mom and Bob have taken Josiah for the weekend. The original plan for getting a weekend babysitter was for Dan's company party hat was scheduled for last night which was cancelled because of the storm. But because of the storm, Mom and Bob came and picked Josiah up on Thursday night. So we have a whole day today free of responsibility. Every once in a while it is a great feeling.

So today we are watching the movie that I was to tired to watch last night. I got home around 10pm last night and Dan had gotten a movie. I got a glass of wine took a couple of sips, sat down and swiftly fell asleep. So much for a kid free Friday night. But we woke up nice and early today and are watching the movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth". So far a bit cheesy, but it has Brandon Frasure, so who cares how cheesy the movie is :) After the movie we are heading into town so Dan can finish his Christmas shopping. Then we are going to see a Matinee "Seven Pounds". After the movie we are going out to eat at a Bar and Grill that we have a gift certifiate for. I looked it up online and the most expensive thing on the menu is about $4 and we have a $50 gift certificate. I am figuring that even witht a couple of drinks and an appetizer we should be able to eat out here at least twice ;) Apparently this place has the best burgers in town. We shall see. Free food to me is always good food!

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

Putting 2 and 2 together

2008-12-16T21:00:00.002-05:00

1st story: we were up at my mother in laws over Thanksgiving. She keeps a salt/pepper shaker by her chair in the living room (at a perfect height for a 3 year old to grab ahold of it). And grab ahold he did. Actually the point when I saw the shaker again it was in Josiah's hands and the salt was empty. I told Julie to beware...all of her salt was gone and I have no idea where Josiah dumped it.

2nd Story: I bought this cool tupper ware thing that works great for cereal at a garage sale this summer. So I finally got around to putting our favorite cereal (Cinnamon toast crunch) in the thing back in the beginning of November. Hey at least I am using it!! As I was packing to go up north for Thanksgiving weekend, I thought I would stick the tupperware with the cereal in since it was already set for packing. Over the course of the weekend, Josiah had been in and out of the thing. Saying the cereal made him happy! Too cute! When we got home, about 2 weeks later, Josiah and I had the Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It tasted funny, but I thought it was the milk. It was a brand we hadn't had before. I actually said something to Dan about it and he said he didn't notice anything funny about it. He just thought it was 1% instead of skim. Nope, it was skim. But I still just wrote it off as something wrong with the milk. I had it again a week later and it still tasted funny, but still nothing clicked that there was something wrong with the cereal.

The 2 and 2 moment: occurred while trying to fall asleep for an afternoon nap last Sunday. Something the pastor said at church about Salt of the Earth. And then all of the sudden, out of way left field, it clicked....yep, I know you have all guessed it by now...Josiah had dumped the salt shaker into the tupperware with the cereal. The confirmation test: there was actually salt around the rim that I thought was sugar from the cereal. The taste test confirmed that it was salt. Soooooo grosse! But then again I suppose it really could have been worse. Silly kid!

ElfYourself by OfficeMax

2008-12-14T23:57:00.000-05:00

The following 4 posts are just to funny and were just to fun putting together. The fourth one that is labeled (Country Line Dancing) is actually the original ElfYourself Dance...I just named it wrong.

The bummer about them is that you will have to go to my side bar (along the right hand side of the blog) and hit pause on my "playlist" that I finally got working today. In order to get the full effect of Josiah the Dancing Disco elf...I would suggest turning the playlist music off.

Here is the link if you want to create your own elf dancers

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/

Have fun and Enjoy!!

Country Line Dancing Elves

2008-12-14T23:54:00.001-05:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The Charleston

2008-12-14T23:51:00.001-05:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

disco

2008-12-14T23:46:00.001-05:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Country Line Dancing

2008-12-14T23:31:00.001-05:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Play list and family tradition

2008-12-14T22:21:00.002-05:00

All of my changes to my blog have been inspired by a good friend who has learned from friends who have blogged before her. Check out her blog. I sent you to this particular blog post because she talks about Christmas traditions...a really great one I might add.

Our family traditions are not as elaborate, but just as meaningful to us because we have done it every year since Dan and I married. If you look over at the playlist that I have just added, there is a song titled "You gotta get up" and we have woken either each other up or our families or now Josiah every Christmas morning to that song blaring in the house. I love it! It is so much fun and just gets me excited about Christmas day happenings. One day I am sure Josiah will have to have a copy of his own, because I am sure that in the not to distant future he will be waking us up in the morning dawn. I can only hope that for this year anyway, he wakes up an heads to our room bypassing all the presents under the tree that will not have been there the night before and comes to wake us up before proceeding to open all of his and our presents. I can just see it;) What a laugh and story that would be!!!

Another tradition that my family has carried on is new pajamas to where to bed on Christmas eve. That was the only present we could open (at least in my memory). Dan's family opened most of their presents on Christmas eve except the stockings and Santa gifts which were saved for after Santa came.

I have almost always gone to Christmas Eve service at our church as well. Some years I was even able to play my trumpet at them. As of right now though, I don't know if my work will let me out early, so I don't know if I will be able to go to our church's service. I would be really sad if I had to miss it for work, but there isn't much I can do except pray that they let us out early.

Another tradition I can remember were these little stockings that were hung on the tree, about 2 inches long. There was always a few coins in the stockings on Christmas morning. A silly, but fun tradition that I remember always looking forward too. Luckily the one stocking I have on our tree already has coins in it, so I just have to remember to point Josiah in the right direction.

If I remember more, I will share, but feel free to share any of your favorite childhood family traditions. We are always looking for ones to start with Josiah now that he is of the age where he will start to remember from year to year.

New Look

2008-12-14T21:46:00.002-05:00

I am working on the header. I have just been introduced to digital scrapbooking, however the version of photoshop that I have did not download the pictures right and I was on my own to add stuff and I am not that creative ;) So I will have to do some more searching. Plus I would love to have a family picture to put on the header.

But I love being able to do a different background than the 10 templates that blogger has. So much fun and so personal. My next thing to add is music. We'll see if I get ambitious tonight. Since none of my shows are on tonight, I just might have to do some more fiddling!!!

The Monkey Dance

2008-12-10T21:33:00.003-05:00

If there is ever a time that I am feeling at all down or blue, I can simply ask Josiah to do the Monkey Dance and I am instantly happy. I have laughed to tears watching him run around the house doing this dance. He just looks like a limp noodle and I can't help but smile. So enjoy!!

I'm Back and armed with a laptop!!

2008-12-10T21:21:00.002-05:00

Once again it has been over a month since I posted. Time just gets away from me and I just haven't had much time to sit down at a computer. However, I now have Dan's old computer that I can take with me to work and happily enough, the company that resides above my work office is a computer education school. So they have an unsecure wireless network that I can tap into. Not sure if I should publicize that, but I am excited nonetheless.

So I don't even know where to start really! Work is going well for the time being. Working with 4 girls has been the most trying work environment I have faced so far. these days, most days are good, but in the not so distant past, every day was bad. So who knows what next week or even tomorrow will bring. I just try to come in every day as though no one is upset at me and I do my very best to pretend that no one ever gets annoyed with me. Because the second I do, I turn inward and that causes tension. So I try to just be open and happy as much as I can be. And you know what....it works! As long as I can stay in that mind set, work seems to be going well.

Dan is doing well. He had a bad bout with his back right before Thanksgiving! Thank goodness that by the time we were up to the UP for our break, it was feeling better. Work seems to be going along for him. His supervisor keeps forgetting that he can't take any board up calls in the evenings because he has Josiah. But other than that...ok! Like I said he got a new computer, so he is super excited about that!!! Which makes me not only happy, but excited that I too have a laptop computer of my very own!!

We are all healthy!!

I will do an update for Josiah with pictures on another post...so stay tuned! It might even happen tonight, but no guarentees.

Fun with Cody and Brady (photoshoped)

2008-11-16T21:53:00.007-05:00

During the last week of summer/fall a couple of weeks ago. A good friend of mine, Dawn and her kids, Cody and Brady. What a fun couple of days we had. One day we went to the local park and the boys played and played. Then we went to the zoo! I still can't believe what great weather we had that week. And then of course since I just went to this photoshop class, I have been playing around. I am not all that creative but I am having fun!!

Original

Black and white with some color

Original

black and white with color

Original

black and white with color

Original

Black and white

Original

Notice where Brady is looking in the original picture

Original

Notice that there are crumbs of food on the original and they are gone on the new Original

Black and white/red shirt
Original

Notice the Position of the Lama

Original

Mosaic filter

Original

Cropped

Blurred background to bring out the people

This one is kind of weird, but the background is in color and the people in black and white.

Original

Black and white with red shoes ;)

Photoshop Class

2008-11-16T00:10:00.006-05:00

Dan and Josiah are gone for the weekend and I had the opportunity to take some photography classes today. Though I have so much to learn yet, I have the passion in me to learn. Today the classes were about quality lighting and adobe photoshop. So of course I had to come home and play around. Like I said I have a lot to learn, but I had fun messing around and thought I would share what I did.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

Raking made fun!

2008-11-02T23:26:00.003-05:00

Though we all felt crappy today...we sucked it up and got outside to get our leaves raked up. It was the perfect weather, the leaves were completely dry and this would be the first time in 8 years that we get the leaves picked up before spring. So we all bundled up and headed out for some raking fun. Only this year it was fun!!! I worked really hard to get this big pile raked up so we could run and jump off our hill into the leaves and we all had a ton of fun.

And we even got a fun family portrait out of the deal. I have now trained Josiah to say cheese at the camera even if I'm not behind it. As soon as the picture has taken we both race to the camera to see the picture. Good fun!!! and in return Good pictures!!!

Quick Post for Halloween

2008-11-02T23:18:00.002-05:00

Josiah's very first Trick-or-Treat Knock...or course I had to record it for blogging and scrapbooking purposes ;)

The only reason I include this in the first Halloween post is because Dan and I laughed really hard at this picture and continue to get many smiles from it...so I thought I would share with you all. The reason for the silly face was because I was trying to get him to simply smile instead of saying cheese and this was the result...we went back to cheese for the time being ;)

Scrapbook Pages

2008-10-23T12:06:00.008-04:00

My favorites are the bigger pictures. I am not sure how to set my camera up to take better pictures of documents. I will figure it out eventually!

I had so much fun and can't wait until the spring!! I have started to save for the cricuit as well...some day!!

Canning Applesauce

2008-10-21T23:57:00.004-04:00

Last weekend, my good friend, Dawn and I spent all day (and I mean all day) canning applesauce. It was a ton of work, but well worth the sweat and aching feet that we put into it (no we did not put our feet in the applesauce ;) I was able to purchase 2 bushel of apples for $20 from a local amish family. Unbelievable apples too! They were perfect and huge. I wish I had taken a picture of them before we started, but I was thinking of only one thing and that was canning. Next year :)

Here the hot water bath is going on the left and the apples are cooking down on the right.

1/2 bushel of apples cut up, cooked and ready to push through our food mills.

Dawn using her grandmothers food mill. I think it worked better than the modern day mill at times and at others, my food mill was the one to do the job :)

Our first batch of canned applesauce. We added cinnamon into the first batch and several others, but this was our very first! Isn't it beautiful ;)

34 quarts of applesauce later and we were ready to call it a day!! But I absolutely love the end product. We didn't add any sugar and for those of us that love a tart applesauce, this is the best!!

And to end the day Ken and Cody headed over to our house, picking up a pizza on the way, for a bon fire. What a beautiful night. We joined them as soon as the sauce was completed. The boys had a blast playing flashlight tag...or simply running around with the flashlights. We made s'mores and ended the night with a display of fireworks from the local firehouse. We could just barely see them over the tree line, but it was a perfect end to a tough day :) I don't know how people do this all the time and with kids under foot!! To those of you who do, you are truly amazing women!!!!!

Old Orchard Cider Mill

2008-10-21T23:43:00.006-04:00

I can't believe that I forgot to post these pictures! I was going back through my blog and realized that I had forgotten to post about our trip to the orchard with our friends Dawn and Ken with their two boys Cody (who is Josiah's age) and Brady (who is around a 1 1/2 years old). We had a great time. The boys just ran around! I think Josiah loved the hay bale maze the most. That and riding on the wagon ride! What a beautiful day and I can't wait until next year already :)

This is a funny picture, simply because this elderly woman was on the swing and Josiah wanted to join her. I think it made her day :)

Scrapbooking Addict

2008-10-21T22:16:00.002-04:00

I too am a scrapbooking addict and don't care to seek help for it :) (commenting from Christina's blog)

I had an incredible weekend last weekend. I decided to go away on a scrapbooking retreat!! It was sooo awsome. I left right after work on Friday (which turned out to be the crazy busiest Friday since I started 8 months ago) and arrived around 11:30pm. the rest of that night was just getting settled in and setting my stuff up. I didn't do any scrapbooking because I was exhausted from work. So I was the first one off to bed.

I was however, the first one up and at em on Saturday! I got some breakfest and started getting my pictures in order to determine what I would work on first. I am going to try and take pictures of my blog pages and post them, but not sure if that will work out or not. Plus most of the people who read this blog will probably see them in person at some point anyway ;)

I was amazed at the creativity and skill that these women had. There was a group of 5 of us (Christina from church, her sister and two of her friends). And then there was another group of 3 sisters. So a pretty small group over all, but a great size, because we got lots of table space. they taught me so much about layout of my pages, to color combinations, to my new piece of scrapbooking equipment that I am now coveting, "The Cricuit." these machines are amazing. You select the cartridge with the font or the picture that you want cut out, plug it in, type the letters out or select the picture and hit "cut" and wala! Out come everything you want cut out perfectly (most of the time) for you...all you have to do is glue it down. Speaking of glue, they introduced me to this amazing paste that you can get at Michaels...and of course I didn't write down them name. But it lasts a long time and is perfect for glueing letters and pictures alike down. and the best part, is that it is only $10.99 or cheaper with the 40% off coupon ;) they said it will last them about a year and they scrap a ton.

Needless to say, I will be going again, money permitting of course, in the spring. I was able to complete 16 pages and 16 pages that I am very proud of ;) So thank you, Christina, for inviting me on my first scrapbooking retreat!

Crazy Busy...

2008-10-21T22:02:00.003-04:00

...Both at work and at home. So I haven't had time to blog much lately.

Josiah update: He is now sleeping very well at night. We increased the brightness of his nightlight. He told us that he was seeing monsters, so by adding a nightlight and giving him his own flashlight for his bedroom, it seemed to do the trick. I believe he was also going through a major growth spurt at the same time, because shortly after he started sleeping at night again, his pants were all of the sudden to short.

Now we are having sleeping during the day problems. He won't take naps anymore. We are continuing to put him down every day, but he is not sleeping. When he is at daycare he is at least having down time and is quiet. But at home on the weekends, he just screams and yells for us to come get him. Not sure what this newest phase is all about except for the fact that he doesn't want to miss out on anything. This to shall pass, right? He is just not ready to go without naps, he is so cranky and on the edge of meltdowns, if not melting down every night. Oh well, such is life with an almost 3 year old!

Me/Work: Work is going ok! Most days I don't believe that this is a job I will ever be really good at. I am not an attention to detail kind of person, but I started thinking about it and what kind of jobs out there will even higher someone who doesn't have attention to detail. I make mistakes every day. Even if they are miner, they are still mistakes and I look stupid to the others that I work with. If it was only once and a while, it wouldn't matter, but it is every day. They are always telling me to slow down, or "I do this" or "I do that". Well I do go slow and do what they are saying, and I still miss things. The thing with this job is that going slow isn't really an option. I don't like to go slow and I think I make more mistakes going slow. I don't know! I will keep plugging along and hopefully this will come together for me some day.

I think it is only one person in particular that makes me feel like crap every time I make a mistake because she is constantly watching for me to make mistakes and then tell me that she doesn't do things like that. grrrrrrrrrrrr!!! She is also the same person that doesn't thank me for doing anything that I do extra to help her out because she is sooooo very slow. She thanks everyone else for helping, but not me. Why do people do crap like that? So I continue to help her out, even though I don't have to because I wouldn't be very Christian like if I just stopped helping her because she doesn't say thank you. But man, I don't want to help her ever!! She is young and vulgar and has a very different belief system than I have, so I don't think we will ever mesh, but a simple thank you will go a long ways in this work place! Thank goodness she isn't working my shift this week, so I don't have to put up with her for the last 2 hours of every day.

A very fun thing that has happened at work, is that the person that trained me, the persont hat I had such difficulties with in the beginning has become one of the only people that I even want to talk to around here. Funny how things change and how people change. The others are so liberal and democratic that I can hardly stand to be around them right now with the election going on. I just keep my mouth shut and walk away when they begin to talk. I have my opinions, but they are as bias as theirs and no one wants to hear them anyway!! So this week is nice because the young/vulgar person leaves at 9:00 and I am free to not feel excluded from any dumb conversations or whatever!!! A low self-esteem free week :) (if that makes any sense)

Wow that was a bunch of complete babble and nonsense, but I just felt that I had to get it down and out!

Update on not sleeping

2008-10-03T13:25:00.002-04:00

Josiah is still having difficulty getting to sleep and staying asleep. I feel like we are dealing with a newborn. Last night it was almost 11:00pm before he finally crashed, but Dan said that he was up screaming histarically by 1:00am (he had turned the monitor down and forgot to tell me, so I never heard that). Dan ended up sleeping in his room until 4:00am. And then again at 6:00am he was screaming again. Crazy types of screams, ones that make you want to run right in and see what's wrong. So he could be playing us, but at this point how long do you let a kid scream. It was 3 hours last night on and off. Unfortunately we made the choice to bring him into bed with us and he never went back to sleep, except for a 15 minutes snooze there sometime before 8am. Oh well! Hopefully tonight will be better. We have no idea what is going on! Could be nightmares, his mouth could hurt, he could have a cold and ear infection and he could simply be playing his mom and dad, pushing his limits. Kids are so hard to read at this age. We are stumped.

The New Bike

2008-10-03T13:20:00.003-04:00

Thanks to Uncle Mike, Josiah now has a boys bike and a very cool one at that. Josiah loves it and calls it his cool bike from Uncle Mike (kind of has a ring to it ;) The training wheels are from the pink and purple bike, but what can you do, you can't win em all :) Plus we plan on having him riding with out the training wheels by next summer, and the purple training wheels are even more insentive ;)

We were shopping in the bicycle isle for Dan's bike and I saw that horn on his bike for only a couple of bucks and thought it would be fun to have on it. the only problem is that you can hear the horn from the back of our property all the way inside our house. Oh well, I guess I will always know where he is ;)

Thank You again Uncle Mike

Sunflowers and a sunset

2008-10-03T13:17:00.004-04:00

I think this is one of my favorite pictures that I have taken of nature this far. The windmill in the background has tricked several people. When you first look at it, is the windmill black or white?

Not a beautiful sunset, but kind of a neat picture

Grandma Julie comes for a Visit

2008-10-03T12:50:00.004-04:00

Josiah's new camera :) Gotta train 'em young!!

Josiah and Dad wrestling

Fixing the walk for Grandma Julie

Seeding our yard with more beautiful dandelions ;)

Picking Raspberries

Grandma Julie and her friend Bertha and Josiah

Julie and Bertha

This was the 7th picture in this series...they all kept looking down. What people always forget is that if you are in the picture don't try to get the kid to smile because you will never be looking at the camera when he does smile!!

The clan
Weeeeeee

This was Julie's way of getting rid of the itching from the Mosquito bites, baking soda and water. Very messy!! I would not recommend it if you have carpet or plan on sitting on any furniture. It gets everywhere :P

Taking more pictures!!

The antics of Bertha and Josiah...pretty funny actually!!

She thought that Josiah was going to hit her with the motorcycle..which she every reason to assume ;)

Playing with daddy's motorcycles from the curio cabinet.

Finally getting some fresh air!

Time away from blogging:(

2008-10-02T18:12:00.002-04:00

I have been an avid blogger lately (at least to my standards anyway), but that was because we had two computers at work to share between two people. Now we only have one computer to share between 3 people and I just don't feel comfortable posting when there are two people in the room chit chatting. Hard to focus and whatnot. I will still try and post once and awhile, it just won't be very often. I do have some cute pictures to post for the past couple of weeks, just haven't had a chance to get them posted.

Josiah is not going to bed for us right now. My mother-in-law and her friend came this weekend and his schedule was completely disrupted. The first night we got home late and then they stood right outside his door "whispering" in a tone that we could hear clear out in the living room. The second night was just another late night. The third night they decided to start packing at 9:00 at night. And since their room was right next door Josiah couldn't go to bed until they were done packing at 10 or 10:30pm. So the night after they left (Tuesday), Josiah didn't want to go to bed and fought it until 10:30, the same thing happened on Wednesday. Both mornings following he got up right at 8:30am. Not only did he not go to bed, but he woke up in the middle of the night wanting to come into bed with us. Not fun! That was at 4:30am and I don't think either one of us went to sleep until after Dan left at 7:00am. Then Josiah woke at 7:30am wondering where Dan was ("Where's my daddy?") He did fall back asleep and slept until 9:20am. Hopefully he took a short nap today and is really tired tonight, so he can get back onto his schedule.

I went to the dentist today and found out I need a root canal, actually I already new that because I have been in increasing pain over the past month or so, but he confirmed it and referred me to and endodontist. Which unfortunately for me, there are none in our network with our dental insurance. I hate insurance. I just don't get it!!! So now I am going to have to pay out the wazooo to get a root canal which I can't go without much longer. The dentist I went to today however, was awsome. I loved the staff, they remembed Josiah coming in and his story, which was kind of neat and they were just very thorough and to the point :) Finally a good dentist!!!

Changing templates again

2008-09-24T22:53:00.001-04:00

I love the polka dots, but everytime I use that I have trouble with things disappearing on the screen. I don't know if this happens to everyone, but it has happened in the past, so I just decided to change it again. I want to mess around with the colors a bit, but some other night because I am going home :)

Squash Pizza

2008-09-24T22:50:00.001-04:00

Here is the picture of the squash pizza that I was talking about in my previous post. This is minus the spaghettis sauce, but it looked so pretty that I had to take a picture.

Canning

2008-09-24T22:19:00.004-04:00

I am almost done with canning! Yesterday I did canned raspberry jam and today I did banana pepper rings. I have had so much fun canning this year. I have received several jars in return (pickled beets and apple butter from Christina, Chili sauce from Dawn, and Blueberry jam from my neighbor). I have given a bunch of my canned goods away and I love that feeling. A couple of people asked me if they could buy some from me, but I love to give it away :)

Freezer Raspberry Jam

Jalapeno Jam

Salsa and Spaghetti Sauce

Everything (minus what I have given away and plus 4 jars that were given to me;)

Update

2008-09-22T21:24:00.003-04:00

No pictures this time ;)

Tooth: But we made it to the dentist this morning and they are going to give it a few weeks to see if that tooth will firm up. Right now it is pretty loose, but it doesn't seem to bother him at all. The dentist wiggled the tooth all around and pushed around in the gums and Josiah didn't flinch at all, so that is a good sign that it is not hurting him. That tooth and one other have started to turn black, so the nerves are dying (another reason that there might not be very much pain associated with the loose tooth). So if the tooth is still pretty loose we will talk about pulling it only at that point.

Canning: I was able to can all day on Saturday. Josiah was awsome!!! I was afraid that he would give me a hard time, but to the contrary...we had so much fun! I think it was one of the best days that I have had with Josiah in a very long time. I would cut up the vegetables and he would add them to the food processor, turn it on and off. He was actually extremely helpful and he knew it and loved it. The way the food processor is designed is great for having little helpers. There is virtually no way that he could have gotten hurt. There is a long tube where the food gets added and the blade is at the bottom of the processor. He did learn how to take off the lid, but as soon as the lid becomes detached the blade stops. So he helped me cut up all the ingredients for our Spaghetti Sauce (see Christina's blog http://photomamacreations.blogspot.com/2008/09/fun-and-recipes.html for the recipe.) It is a great recipe for the mear fact that Josiah ate tomatoes, onions, green peppers, carrots, mushrooms, etc. and absolutely loved it. Dan said he ate it right up tonight. Any recipe that gets him to eat anything that can be labeled a vegetable is quite amazing. I admit that Dan and I have not done the best job keeping veggies constantly in his diet. We cave to soon and don't make him eat what we are eating all the time. Last night he had to eat over half of his meal before I gave him chicken noodle soup, but in reality I should have just made him eat it or go without. Such a hard thing to do :P Gotta love parenting!

Oh yah, I was giving an update on canning ;) I was able to can 11 pints of Salsa and 13 quarts of Spaghetti sauce and it took me from 9:00am until 6:00pm. I am still hoping to can some more raspberry jam, pickled banana pepper slices and applesauce.

Work: Ok I guess. I keep making mistakes and that is driving me nuts. I feel like I am the only one making mistakes lately. Some big ones and some not so big, but daily. I went for a couple of months not making any major errors and now within a couple of weeks it just seems like I am being inundated with them. I feel like I am being very careful, like I am taking my time and being very maticulous about the details, but I still screw up. I think pride is really getting in my way because I am embarresed that the new person sees me screw up and thinks less of me. That is what I was struggling with on Friday. But I am trying desperately to change my thinking. "I will make mistakes" and if those around me can't simply learn from my mistakes and judge me because of them, they are the lesser person. I don't want to make mistakes, I want to do a good job, but I am sure I will continue to make them. It is still a constant battle not thinking bad thoughts about my co-workers and I think it is when I am thinking those thoughts that I make my mistakes actually. I try to make them go away (the thoughts, not my co-workers ;) but sometimes I dwell on the thoughts for to long. *I know this is a huge ramble and probably doesn't make much sense, but I guess I just needed to write it down. Thanks for listening ;)

Josiah: He is doing great right now!! He is just so funny. I think he figures out every day that he is funnier all the time. He says the cutest things too. For example: this morning he asked where daddy was and I told him that he was at work. Then on our way home from the dentist we passed him on the road and his response to this was "Daddy's not at work mama, he's right there" Too funny! He is also starting to make up stories I think. He was talking about Daddy waking him up last night and puking in his bed and something about a pumpkin. I have no idea what he was talking about because not only did he not puke, but Dan never came in his room last night. I'm not sure if he was trying to tell me about a dream he was having or what. I just nod and agree :) Not much else I could.

Dan: He seems to be doing well at work. I bought him a bicycle at a garage sale last weekend and he is super excited about it. It was a Schwinn Road Bike. The tires were worn, but the breaks and gears were all in great working condition. We went this weekend and got new tires for it, but he is still figuring out if they are the right ones or not. Now we all have bikes and will hopefully be able to go for a ride some day. Oh yah, Uncle Mike rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!! He got Josiah a new, boys bike (I will post a picture later). It is awsome! It is silver and kind of tripped out or soemthing like that with gold. Kind of funnythough because we are using the training wheels for the purple bike. Mike thought that he should have a real boys bike (and I have to admit I looked all over for a boys bike because I kind of felt that way too;). So thank you Uncle Mike ;) Oh yah, we even bought a silver and black horn to add to the "Cool" bike. That's what Josiah calls it!!!

I will post pictures at another time. I uploaded them all onto my computer at home and don't have them with me at work. I will probably have to put them back on my card so I can do it at work, but we'll see!

They say things happen in 3's

2008-09-19T19:52:00.002-04:00

And so they have! You are not going to believe this, unless you have already heard, but Josiah hit his teeth again today. There was no fall involved, but he jarred the teeth nonetheless. I don't know how this could happen to a kid 3 times in two weeks time. It just blows my mind really. This time we were out visiting my friend Christina and her family. She has a 4 year old whom is pictured down below. The boys had such fun and she has the perfect yard for 2 little boys to run free.

Josiah climbed into the swing and they were having a good ole time...then it was time to switch so that Josiah was pushing. Apparently Josiah didn't know much about pushing a kid on a swing because he gave a push as you can see in the picture below. I looked down to change a setting on my camera just as the swing came back and this is the part Josiah didn't know about...he didn't move from the spot where he pushed the swing and it cracked him right on that front tooth. You can see how it was the perfect height to do just that. The next time he pushes a kid ona swing, I will have to give him a little lesson that he has to move out of the way, so that it doesn't come back in bite ya in the mouth ;)

But what can I do...he is a boy and is almost 3. He is very independent and I can't (as much as I would love to) wrap him in bubble wrap, or put a helmet with a face shield on him. I can't take things out of his life just because they "might" hurt him. He just has to learn the hard way with some of these things. Such freak accidents...all 3 of them. But I am sure Josiah can't wait to go back and swing and play with his new friend. In fact just moments after it happened that is all he wanted to do is go back out there and play.

Josiah reacts to pain in a funny way, and maybe more people react this way than I know. But he gets pretty angry. He is very unconsolible, but even more than that. He starts lashing out if you try to comfort him. He gets extremely defiant and will pretty much out right ignore you if you are trying to talk to him or tell him no. Yes I know that is part of his age. But when he started to feel better these attitudes were gone. He no longer wanted to hit people on a regular basis, he no longer completely ignored me...ignored to some extent yes, but there was such angry defiance when he was in pain. I hope this heals fast both for his sake and ours.

I called the dentist and we have scheduled an appointment for Monday morning. The tooth was jarred in about 1/4 inch and is pretty loose. Not sure if it is loose enough to have to be removed, or if they will just say that it will heal up and firm up in time. We will just have to wait and see. I don't look forward to going back to that office because he just doesn't do well there. Nothing to do really and he just wants to go outside and play. Maybe this time will be different, we'll see!

Thanks for all the prayers up to this point! And I will have to ask for a couple more prayers. If he loses that other tooth, no apples or corn on the cob for many years to come. But I am sure he will look just as cute :)

The Flood

2008-09-15T21:11:00.006-04:00

Lots of rain this weekend led to the biggest flood we have had since moving into our home. I still can't believe how much it rained and the amount of standing water in our yard. Josiah LOVED it!!! I mean how can you not love it. Puddles up to your skivvies and earthworms galore...a little boys dream :) We could hardly contain him on Sunday...he wanted outside bad. He could see the "Lakes" outside and he wanted in them badly. So I donned my sweatshirt and raincoat and out we went. I figured if I was going to have be out in the rain anyway, I might as well get something accomplished, so took a laundry basket out with me and picked all the tomatoes that had either started to turn or were nice and red. I also picked some green ones for some more fried green tomatoes (yummy good!). Josiah wasn't ready to come in, so I headed over to the raspberries and proceeded to pick 6 cups of raspberries which I am going to make into jam tomorrow morning! I am also going to try and can some salsa...we'll see! I did take some tomatoes from my neighbors garden...she has been gone for 2 weeks and her tomatoes are falling off the plant and splitting. Just makes me sick that she is letting all that produce going to waste. So I picked up the ones off the ground that were splitting. When she gets back I will take her a couple of pints of salsa because I do feel bad, but they are just going to waste otherwise.

Sunday Evening

Monday Morning

PRICELESS

Grandma Sherry and Papa Bob come for a Visit

2008-09-15T20:27:00.005-04:00

We had quite a weekend! I took Friday off from work to participate in the Annual Alumni Marching Band Golf Outing. What a blast!! I golfed with 2 people that were marching the year I was born. They were so much fun! the woman had never golfed and was just a character, and the guy looked like he still smoked pot, so they were pretty fun people to golf with.

Friday night my mom and Bob came down to watch Mallory (my niece) race in the cross county invitational which took place only a mile from where I work. She does very well! Not sure what place she came in but she definitely finished in the top 10% or so.

Saturday was a very early day for me since I had to be at the stadium by 7:30am. The rain had started the day before and had not let up all night and it decided to keep going strong all day long. It's a good thing that I love marching band so much because I probably would not have stuck it out otherwise. What a crappy day, but what fun! It is always so great to see everyone again. I have marched 7 out of the 10 years I have been out of college. One year I was 7 months pregnant :) My mom and Bob came out for the game and to watch me of course...as did Dan and Josiah, but they (ok, just Dan) was miserable. They had no plans on going to the game, but they scooted out as soon as they saw me on the way tot he stadium. Guess I can't blame then, it was raining pretty hard by that point. We left after halftime, which they wouldn't let us march because we might tear up the field...whatever, but at least we got to play :)

Saturday night our power went out, actually only half of our power. Which told us that it was not due to the storm, rain and flooding. Not a good thing. Bob and Dan became detectives and finally figured out that something in the meter box had melted and there was nothing we could do about it that night. The rigged some of the breakers so that we had power to the main things (bathroom, lights, plugs, etc.) to get us through the next week if need be. We then called this morning and they told us it would probably be over $500 (Yikes!!! Gues we shouldn't have spent our money on a new camera and a Wii, but such is life and we will figure something out). then Dan talked to our daycare providers husband and he said that he was able to take care of it himself with an electrician standing by to help out. So there is still a chance that we won't have to pay that much money!! We can always pray!!!!

Sunday morning our yard was completely flooded (see the next post for pictures), but our house was dry :) Thank you God!! A great weekend with a few little blurps of not so much fun!

Does this look like a kid who just went through a mouth trama?? Kids heal sooo very fast!!

The Tooth is Gone...

2008-09-11T20:55:00.004-04:00

...but the tooth fairy isn't going to come until tomorrow night! Then again maybe we will hold onto it until he understands a little better and not chance waking him up in the middle of the night. They gave it to us in a little treasure chest. Kind of cool! Right now he is still struggling with the pacifiers being gone. He ended up in bed with us last night because I just don't fit in his little bed and he just couldn't be pacified. Come to find out, Dan didn't give him his Motrin before bed and he might have just been in pain.

Everything went very well at the dentist today! They started out with the sedative, based on his weight. He weighs a whopping 35lbs now! I think he gained a bunch of weight while we were camping like the rest of us ;) But he is definitely getting heavy!!! So anyway, the sedative k
icked in but it didn't seem to slow him down at all...I mean at all. Even though he was swaying and tripping and falling, he just wouldn't sit still. Like I said yesterday, there really isn't much to do in that office. Shoot another family had the same idea we did...portable DVD player. but then Josiah wanted to watch the other little girls video and then he wanted to touch it and then push buttons. Little stinker! but then it was finally time for him to go back to where I couldn't join him. That was much harder than I had anticipated. I didn't want to hand him over! And I almost started to cry, but he did really well! They called me to pay the bill before he got out so that when he was done I could just take him and go and not worry about having to still pay the bill. What a great system!!!

So they ended up just having to pull the one tooth. The other big tooth looks like it dropped down quite a ways, but the dentist said that it should be fine...just looks funny. He had this perfect little mouth, with perfectly straight little teeth and now one is missing, the other one is down and out and they other two are crooked. But thankfully it didn't appear that any damage had been done to the adult teeth. Great news in fact!! The tooth came out in one piece and no bone had been damaged in the fall. They did have to put one stitch in because a good majority of the gums had been injured and were gone. If you aren't up for grosse pictures you might want to stop here, because the last one is pretty gruesome in my opinion!! But that is what it looks like. However, as you can see his big blue eyes make up for the gap in the teeth ;)

He did not want to smile for a picture, so I had to include this one because he is just so darned cute!!!

And again, couldn't get him to look at me, but still cute...the next ones aren't so cute :P

Cheese :) Ok, so this one is still cute :)
He couldn't keep his tongue out of the hole, but I don't think I could have either.This is the one that shows how the gums actually look! Poor little guy, but the dentist was pretty sure that he would probably be in less pain now than before the tooth came out just because of the way it was hanging there.

Produce

2008-09-11T20:43:00.005-04:00

When we got back from camping, we made our way out to the garden to see if anything had been produced while we were gone and much to our surprise, lots of stuff was ready to pick. I'm not sure if we will have enough tomatoes to can any salsa, but we sure are going to try. We have 8 tomato plants and only the tomatoes on two of the plants have turned red. Very bad season for Tomatoes and we got our plants in late, so we will most likely be out of the running to can tomatoes. But we got a ton of cherry tomatoes and I just love to pop those for a snack :)

Can anyone guess what these are?

When I went to the market to buy seeds in the spring, we were very late getting our garden in, so this is the mix we got. They are actually all carrots. It was the science mix :) The yellow and white are those colors all the way through, but the purple carrot is actually orange on the inside!! Kind of fun!!

A trip to Uncle John's Cider Mill

2008-09-10T21:38:00.010-04:00

What a beautiful day! My dad and stepmom met Josiah and I for a nice visit at the Cider Mill. Last year when we made this visit the weather was not nearly as cooperative. Today was absolutely gorgeous out. Blue skies, sunny and 70F. We played with the tractors, played in the pumpkin patch, ate donuts, ate lunch and played in the sandbox. A great day!!!

If any of you are wondering what has inspired the rash of blog posts...I suppose it is because I am burned out from scrapbooking and I still have all this time in the evenings to either use the computers or read. Plus I have hundreds of pictures...thanks to my new camera!! And I don't want to go 2 months and then have to pick a few pictures to post.

Halloween in September

2008-09-09T21:29:00.008-04:00

These pictures were taken about 15 minutes before he fell for the second time. I woke him up from his nap (which he was sleeping pretty soundly) to get into his costume to go for a contest that wasn't really a contest at all. The kids lined up, gave a girl their name and that was it. She put a star by the kids she thought were cute and that was that. Definitely not worth waking a sleeping 2 1/2 year old for. So I felt a little bit bad about that, but I felt even worse about the fact that he fell immediately after the contest, which I had woken him up to participate in. He so did not want to get up, he wanted to just lay there and go back to sleep. I was soooo torn! I had been looking so forward to this and I thought the costume contest would be fun, not just standing in a dumb line to have a girl pick who she thought was cute. So I have had to deal with this guilt and I have dealt with it mostly. I still feel pretty bad, but I know it was an accident that could have happened at any time. Oh yah, the bribe I used to get him up out of bed to put his costume on was to have candy later that day, which he was never really able to partake in because of the fall :( Such is life!!

(I love this picture...my flying little superman...to bad he couldn't have flown over the cement instead of hitting it head first ;O)

Shortly after the fall, we decided to make a trip to the ER, but were back in time to go trick-or-treating around teh campsites. We also handed out the candy that we had bought for handing out :) Josiah enjoyed putting one piece of candy in each persons little bag. The bummer about the candy though, is that we had left our haunted house all set up with the candy out in a bowl and some stupid young boys came in and took half the bowl. The neighbors noticed that they had been in there too long and went and rescued the bowl of candy so we had a little bit to hand out, but still kind of a bummer. At any rate, Josiah put his costume back on and we headed out to get some candy that he would not be able to eat, but he still had fun going around and seeing everything. All you had to do is ask him to do Superman and he would either put up just one arm or put both up in the air. So cute!!!

He did sneak a piece of candy, but we ended up have to cut it into small pieces and have him push it to the back of his mouth (which he was very good at doing). The doctor had wanted him on a liquid diet. Tell that to a 2 1/2 year old who just wants to eat hot dogs and PB&J's. So we just cut everything up small and made sure it was good and soft.

After trick-or-treating, we went to find out if he had won anything in the halloween contest (which he didn't), but we got to get a picture with Boo-Boo and then a bunch of cute girls at the Yogi statue :) My kid the little socialite!!

The campground has Halloween in September every year. We knew this ahead of time and I prepared for it for a couple of weeks. Getting Josiah's costume together and putting together decorations for our campsite. There was a campsite decoration contest, which I didn't win, but I didn't go out and spend hundreds of dollars like the people that won. But I had fun setting up the decorations at our campsite. I was really looking forward to that since we live out in the country and don't really get trick-or-treaters at our house.

Update

2008-09-09T21:15:00.002-04:00

Thank you for the concern for those of you who commented on my last post. We made our trip to the pediatric dentist this morning and there is good news and bad news.

The good news: The dentist believes that he will only lose 1 tooth instead of 3. He thinks that the other teeth might die and turn black, but we won't know that right away, they will turn black over time. I had a black tooth from riding my bike down the steps when I was around Josiah's age and they didn't end up having to pull it until it became absessed when I was in 1st grade or something like that.

The bad news: That tooth has to be pulled. We are going in at 8:15am on Thursday morning to have it "extracted". So this will be the first time that he will be sedated. They will give him the concoction first to make him kind of sleepy. then 45 minutes later they will give him Nitrous and then numb the area with shots. The dentist assured me that Josiah won't see the needle or anything. Most kids just fall asleep. Hopefully!!! But thankfully, he will only have to have one tooth pulled!

The other bad news: No more Dappas (better known as pacifiers to the general public :) The dentist said that they are damaging his bone line along his jaw. I don't necessarily agree because Dan's teeth looked exactly like that when he was Josiah's age and his teeth are fine now. So the pacifiers got thrown away at Kim's today. He asked for them at naptime right away because we had been talking to him about having to get rid of them and he wanted them. He finally calmed down after a little bit, but never really went to sleep. Kim had the idea to have him throw the pacifiers away and gave him a little lamb with a tape measure as a trade. He seemed to like the idea. I have not talked to Dan yet tonight to find out how it went at home. But Josiah did throw all the pacifiers at home away too. Dan told him he was a big boy now and didn't need them anymore. But again, I haven't talked to him to see if he went to sleep yet or not.

So keep us in your prayers on Thursday morning. They said we will be there for about 2 1/2 hours. And prayers that I remain good and strong for my little man.

The Good, the bad and the ugly!

2008-09-08T22:01:00.018-04:00

We are back and mostly recovered from our camping excursion. We had great times and not so great times. We loved Jellystone Yogi Bear park! The pool was awsome, the playground was 100% according to Josiah and we had some great neighbors. I took over 500 pictures and had to narrow it down to just a few to post here for everyone to see, a task that was not easy by any stretch of the imagination. This new camera is going to make it hard to select only a few pictures to blog and scrapbook. But I do love the new camera. And the longer I spent selecting pictures the more pictures I had to add to this post...so enjoy!! The pictures at the end are of Josiah's bad fall. The story is at the end too.

Yogi Bear

Flying with Daddy

Excersizing
(This picture is for Grandma Sherry :)

Camp-Fires
Roasting marshmellows, making s'mores and sparklers :)

Raining

Making the best out of a rainy couple of days

Family Pictures

Camping

This is our campsite all set up!
Go-Karting

Sleeping

My Cowboy

Swimming

Swinging

Biking

Josiah's 2 Big Falls

(The pictures that follow are graphic, so beware)

Josiah fell out of the bed in the camper and hit his face on the ground (at least we think that is what happened, both Dan and I had just turned our back when it happened). He banged up his upper lip pretty bad and may have jarred one of his teeth. His lip swelled right up and the gums were bruised pretty bad.

(Thank goodness for portable DVD players. This helped him get through the hardest part of the pain and swelling. He just hung out and watched movies for a 2 days)

Unfortunately that was not his only fall. That happened on Thursday night of our camping trip and on Saturday afternoon we were going for a walk through the campground and he tripped onto a cement slab and hit face first. This fall was bad. Again lots of blood and lots of swelling. It looked like one of his big teeth had been knocked out of place, but we couldn't really tell with all the swelling and bruising of the gums. We called our family doc and he told us to head to the ER. He informed us that Josiah would probably lose 3 of his front teeth. I couldn't believe it! How could a simple fall cause so much damage? But it did and my little man will be toothless for many years to come. We are going to the pediatric dentist tomorrow to see if they can get some x-rays to make sure there wasn't any damage to the adult teeth and to find out what other trauma happened. So please keep the little guy in your prayers. We go to the dentist at 10:00am tomorrow.

Even though we had all that going on, we still had an awsome time, as you can tell by all the fun stuff we did and fun we had :) there will be Halloween pictures posted at a later date :) So stay tuned :)

A Week away from Work

2008-08-29T20:25:00.004-04:00

My lists are completely checked off; our bags are packed, the food is packed, the toys are packed, the camper is packed and we are ready for a nice long week away in the sun, on the beach, at the pool and doing whatever we want with no work or co-workers in site.

And it couldn't come at a better time. I need a break from work, from the people at work. They drive me crazy! One day they are in good moods and fun to work with, the next day they are moody and won't talk to me (apparently because they are tired and don't want to be at work today...who does). I hate having to stick around on a Friday night until 9:00pm when our work was done at 6:00pm...but at least we don't have to stay until 11:00pm. There is a new girl here who is now the only one with me on this shift. She is young and like I said moody. I tried to help her today, but got no response, so I stopped helping. I asked if she was done and her response was "yep" as she walked by and said nothing more. What the heck. That was all she talked to me for the rest of the night?? I asked her if I had done something to upset her and she said no, she just didn't want to be here and wasn't in the mood to talk. Funny, she is in the mood to talk to everyone else around here but me. Why do I have such a hard time making friends at work...I just don't understand. I hate it when people make me doubt myself and make me feel like I am doing something wrong because they are in a bad mood on a particular day. I think mostly I care to much about what people think of me and I end up doing and saying the wrong things...but it really sucks to be stuck here for 2 hours with someone with nothing to do and they won't talk to you. I understand being tired, I understand not wanting to be here, but I don't understand being rude and short and not saying thank you when someone helps you. Can I attribute it to her age, she is almost a decade younger than me. I don't know! We just must not click or something or she just needs to get past the training phase when everything sucks. I know I did and I forget that sometimes. I will do what I can to give her her space and try not to be rude in the meantime. However, I get to be gone away from here for an entire week and I won't have to deal with any of them and their mood swings for 9 days.

30 more minutes and I am free (okay, now 21 minutes)!!!

Garage saling side note: I bought a laptop at a garage sale today for $15. Can you believe it! It came with Windows 98 and had lots of errors popping up whenever you started or shutdown. But luckily we have a copy of Windows 98 at home and can erase the hard drive (which Dan is doing as I type this) and start fresh. There is only 64MB of ram and 4GB on the hard drive, but for putzing around and playing games with Josiah, it should be fun! If I get a wireless card, I could also check my email, but it will be very slow, so I don't know if I will want to deal with that or not! But $15, what a buy!

The Menu and lists

2008-08-25T21:54:00.006-04:00

Here is our camping menu, I wasn't sure how else to pack food for an 8 day trip without coming up with a menu. That way we can decide each day what we feel like, but have everything we need on hand to make it.

Breakfast meals:

Oatmeal or Cream of Wheat
Dry cereal
Poptarts
Eggs and cornbeef hash
Swedish pancakes and ham (which reminds me I need to add syrup to my packing list)
Eggs in a nest with sausage and bacon ( from 2 Labor Day's ago).

Lunch Meals

Chicken Salad Sandwhiches
Hotdogs and baked beans
Ham and cheese
Spaghettios/Raviolis
Tomato soup and grilled cheese
Peanut butter and Jelly of course

Dinner Meals

Hobo Pies (meatballs, carrots, potatoes, onions and italian dressing cooked in aluminum foil over the fire)
Spaghetti, corn and garlic bread
Bacon and Cheese Hamburgers
Bagel Pizzas (pepperoni, ham and pineapple, black olives all cooked in our new toaster over that I got at a garage sale just for the camper)
Brats, chips, pickles
Tacos or Taco salad, whichever is easier

I have been working hard to get the camper ready. I have cleaned out all of the cubby spaces and consolidated all of the stuff. Even though we are still just storing the camper for my mom, there was a lot of stuff in there that was old and rotting, 10 year old toilet paper, dead bugs and whatnot...and it just needed to be cleaned thoroughly. There was a lot of stuff in there that was duplicated between my stuff and their stuff that I just made into one big lot and took out all the extra stuff. Much more organized and much easier to locate the stuff we need. For those of you who know me well, you know that this part of packing is fun to me. I love taking things that are chaotic and making them clean, nice and neat. I also had fun packing and organizing the food. I got a few tupperwear containers that I can put cereal and what not in them, so I got that all done today. Plus I made up the swedish pancake mix (minus the wet ingredients of course), but that way all we have to do is add a few things and Wala! Pancake mix.

Tomorrow: I am going to go shopping for the last of the stuff we need and finish making the beds. I got Josiah's bed made, and all the bedding is cleaned, I just need to make our bed. I was also going to make some cookies tomorrow, but we will see how early we get up and around tomorrow.

Wednesday: I have to do laundry and start getting bags around to pack, so that Thursday I can fold the rest of the clothes and pack our clothes.

Thursday: I am going to take pictures at the daycare again. Several of the kids are going to be leaving the daycare (because they are too old, have older siblings to watch them or are going to full day Kindergarten). So Kim asked

Friday: Take everything out to the garage that won't fit in the camper, so that Saturday morning we can back the truck up to the garage, load it up and head on out :)
Satuday: We are off to go camping :)

Day Care Fun

2008-08-22T00:57:00.004-04:00

The day after I bought my new camera I asked my daycare provider, Kim, if I could come over and take pictures of the kids. I thought it would be great way to help determine if I wanted to keep the camera. It also helped me start to feel comfortable with the camera. A long ways to go, but I was able to capture some great moments on camera.

Day Care Portrait Pictures

2008-08-22T00:47:00.007-04:00

My first attempt at posed pictures with my new camera. The sun was very bright and the kids were all squinting, but I was still able to capture some great faces :)

Hunter and Forrest

Josiah (of course, who was not very willing to pose for me...I can't imagine why??)

Mallory and Trey

Harrison

Bryant

Olivia and Zachary

Walker and Wyatt

Misc pictures from August

2008-08-22T00:37:00.006-04:00

Just a hodge podge of pictures. I have taken so many pictures with the new camera that it will be difficult to not post a crazy amount of pictures on this blog...then again the time it takes to upload pictures, save them as a small file and create the post may minimize the amount I have time for. It just so happens that Dan has not been on the computer for several days in a row and I am taken full advantage! We do have a computer in the back room, but it is very warm and not a place I want to hang out when I get home.

The following series of pictures is of Josiah catching a little frog and proceeding to play with it for almost 20 minutes. Poor frog, but miraculously the frog did survivie its ordeal :)

Playing in a tub of water (very cold water)

Driving the jeep...still a great love of his!

Playing around the house!

Dan tried to trick Josiah with pickle juice...but it must run through Josiah's blood to love pickle juice because he did not even seem to react to the new kind of juice. Quite dissappointing from the camera angle.

Dan weeding the garden!

Playing with the garden hose...if there is water, there too shall be Josiah :)

Our Garden

2008-08-22T00:28:00.005-04:00

Strawberries and Raspberries

Beets

Tomatoes (Plumb) and Green Peppers

Onions and Carrots

Jalepeno Peppers and Banana Peppers

Watermelon and Cucumbers

Not pictured are Pumpkins, Summer Squash and Rhubarb

Why so many posts in one night??

2008-08-20T23:22:00.003-04:00

I have two sick boys at home tonight :( Dan stayed home from work today with a really upset stomach and needing to be near home (if you know what I mean). He said he felt mostly fine but just didn't think he could be to far from the thrown. But since he felt fine, I was able to get out to the garden and get some much needed weeding done (the strawberries which were newly transplanted as well as the rhubarb were getting choked out and I didn't want all my hard work to go to waste. So I was greatful to get out there today. I also picked a bunch of veggies. I was finally able to get some refridgerator pickles going. And I finally got a couple of cherry tomatoes. I can't wait until the plants are loaded. I could eat them by the handful. Hopefully all the canning tomatoes ripen at the same time so my mom can come down to help me can. I just hope they don't all ripen while we are gone camping in two weeks. That would be a real bummer. Big sidebar sorry).

When I got in from gardening, Dan was dozing on the couch and Josiah had made his way to his room, lights out and in his bed. I just thought he wanted his pacifiers which he doesn't get unless he is in bed and we are now rethinking that since he can easily get into his big boy bed now. He was also complaining about his "owy back" He kept saying owie, but appeared fine. He didn't eat much lunch, but I just thought he was antsy and didn't want to sit still.

By the time I called Dan to see how he was feeling, Josiah was puking at daycare and he was on his way to pick him up. Almost 3 years old and this is our first experience with puking. Kim said that he was doubled over saying, owie, owie, owie. But she couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong and she knew that Dan was home sick so she was keeping a good eye on him. She called Dan to let him know that something wasn't right, but he was sick or anything. She had to call him back 10 minutes later to ask him to come get him because he was puking and puked until Dan got there 15 minutes later. Poor kid! She was smart to put a pull-up on him, but so far tonight he is only puking.

I got my work done by 6:30pm and took half a sick day. Because the last think you want to do when you are sick, is take care of a sick kid. Josiah sat on my lap from 7-10 when I put him to bed. He only puked one more time, but is now sleeping on his mattress up in our bedroom. Hopefully he just sleeps all night, but I am prepared for up on and off all night. This is definately new territory for us...hard to believe we have not had to deal with puke yet.

Hopefully they are all better by tomorrow...I don't like seeing my boys sick. And I am going to pray that I don't get it too, whatever it may be. We narrowed it down to bad sourcream or bad lettuce left behind in the ziploc baggie (we just kept using the same bag and there was probably bad lettuce in the bag). Who knows!

So in other words. Josiah went to bed at 10:00pm, Dan is on the couch not really moving and I have free rain of the laptop, so I took full advantage of the time :)

The camper!!

2008-08-20T23:19:00.001-04:00

I get more excited every day :)

Baptisms

2008-08-20T22:54:00.009-04:00

As I posted a while back this summer, Dan and I made the decision to find a new church back in June. The first church we attended is the church we have started to call home. Simply put, we feel at home there. We have made friends there already and we have only been there for a few months. One person that attends there I met at weight watchers quite some time ago, but neither of us attend the meetings and I kept running into her around town. So when I walked through the church doors and saw that she attended that church with her kids, it was one more reason to stay. The young girl in the baptismal pictures below is her daughter.

At the end of July, the bible studies had a get together for anyone in the church that wanted to come and the person having the party invited us, seeing that we were visitors to the church. It was a great way to meet people right from the get go. Just about everyone there had kids and they had a great time. One of the women that I met there was a fellow scrapbooker and scrapbookers instantly have stuff to talk about. Her husband is also a carpenter, so they had something to talk about. This was a party that Dan didn't want to go to because it was going to be a party where we knew noone, but I felt it was important that we go, since one of the main reasons we left our previous church was because there were very few young people and we were not involved with any of them. I am sooo glad that we did. Because in that one day, we were able to meet people that we could chat with at church. We instantly didn't feel like an outsider.

At any rate, the scrapbooker I was talking about has 2 children (Big mister and little mister). Big mister is about Josiah's age (about a year older, but they don't know that) and they hit it off and had a great time both at the party and at the baptism. Her husband is the man below getting baptized. I love my new camera...how cool that I was able to capture every moment like that.

Big Mister and Josiah

Big Mister and Josiah: Already best of friends :)

Little mister (Big Misters little brother) So sweet!Trey (a pal from daycare who also goes to our new church)
Mallory (Trey's Sister)

Showing off! I love my camera. My old camera would have never captured this moment.

A new friend from church and a cute little girl
Josiah with a mouth full of brownies A very precious moment that I was able to capture at the picnic after the baptisms.
Ella (another daycare friend who attends the church)
The group that was getting baptized in the river.
Weight watchers friends daughter right before her baptism.

Scrapbookers husband getting baptized.

New Bike

2008-08-20T22:53:00.001-04:00

I don't think he cares at all that he is riding a pink, purple and turquoise bike. Well worth the $5. I love garage sales and look forward to hitting a few more this weekend.

Ghetto Slide

2008-08-20T22:47:00.002-04:00

Look at this slide closely. What is missing???

Yep, you got it (or maybe you didn't :) but there is a support missing. I stopped on my way home from girls night out on Saturday (which was super fun and much needed by the way) in a very ghetto area along side the road. I couldn't imagine why this slide was on the side of the road (a signal that it was free for the taking). I was pretty nervous stopping, but I did it quickly and got it into the back of my vehicle. The trunk had to remain up for the 30 minute ride home, but I thought it was worth it...that is until I got home and took it out of my car and discovered why it was set out free for the taking. Oh well, Josiah is having fun and I am sure we can easily come up with a support for it. The slide itself would work out great if we ever got around to building a playground set though :)

Thanks for a fun time on Saturday girls (Mindy, Kari, Angie and Sarah). I can't wait for the next installment!!!

Random pictures...

2008-08-20T22:25:00.004-04:00

Big Boy Bed....okay, so it is still the crib, but the cage part is no longer a cage. He still doesn't know that he can get out of bed before I come into the room. Hopefully we have a little longer until he figures that out :)

He looks so big in this picture...growing up to fast!
His first big decision. I laid out 4 costumes and asked him to decide which costume he wants for our camping/Halloween in September. Isn't he so cute.

A trip to the park with Grammy.

Lunch with Papa and Grammy

Camping Lists

2008-08-19T21:42:00.003-04:00

I have begun preparations for our camping trip. We leave in 10 days and I feel like I have so much left to do. But I have made lists...boy have I made lists. I currently have 4 pages of lists...I love lists. I don't know what I would do without them. I know a friend recently posted how she has let go of the list thing because they just allow her to procrastinate...but I would never get anything done in my house or my life or at work without lists. Interviewers laugh at me when I talk about my lists...but I am pretty sure that is why I can function at all sometimes. After talking to my dad about my list addiction, I soon found out that lists were in my blood.

So anyway...onto my camping lists. We opened up the camper this weekend and started getting everything cleaned up. Plus I was going through all of the stuff in the camper and all of the camping stuff from the house. Currently it is all in the garage and I am washing all the sheets and dishes. It feels good to get all that stuff organized, figuring out what we had and what I need to stock.

So my lists consist of one page of the general house to do list, a page of meal ideas/grocery list/packing list out of our cupboards, a page of what I want in the kitchen area of the camper, what we have and what we need to still get, and a page of fun stuff/misc stuff to pack and bring.

I am having fun planning meals..because I love to eat our favorite foods while we are camping. So I am going to bake some cookies, but the rest will be bought on good sales and what not. I started food shopping last week and this week there were great sales at the local grocery store. So we are stocked up, only a few more things on the list and most of them I don't want to get until right before, like bread, milk and eggs.

I am soooooo looking forward to this trip. I am looking forward to not working of course, but I am looking forward to time with my family. I am looking forward to having dinner with my husband and child every day. I am looking forward to have Mike, Mindy and Luke join us in the food and fun. I am looking forward to the pool (so hopefully the weather is warm). I am looking forward to riding bikes (we got Josiah a bike at a garage sale this weekend, purple and pink. Dan said that he needs to be comfortable in his manlyhood so that he can ride on a pink bike, whatever, it was $5 and he will probably only ride it for a couple of weeks and be done). All in all I am looking forward to our first true family vacation.

Alone in a big building...

2008-08-15T20:19:00.007-04:00

I am currently at work on a Friday night and I am all by myself. My co-workers get to leave 2 hours before I do and since I am the only one working this shift today, I am stuck here all by myself. I don't like it at all!!! But I don't really have a choice and I still get to leave early. There are sounds that happen that make it seem like there is someone else here and they creep me out. If I stay talking on the phone or watching a movie, it doesn't seem to be to bad, but there are a lot more noises back here where I am typing this that sound like footsteps or something. So in other words this post will be short.

I am not sure why I haven't been posting lately. Mostly, I think, because I forget!! Plain and simple. I could post at night while I am at work, but I don't think of it and I am often scrap booking.

Not sure really what to update first: Josiah is in a big boy bed and doesn't seem to have any desire to leave his bed. Not sure that he knows he can yet. I am sure that all in time I will have to worry about that, but for now there is a little lock that will prevent him from leaving out the front door in the middle of the night. Potty training is complete! With a small accident here and there, but pretty few and far between, including nighttime :) We discovered that he knows how to ride a 2 wheel bike last weekend, so I think we are going to get him one for our upcoming vacation.

Segue into vacation: We are taking our first family vacation and we are heading to a Jellystone Campground and couldn't be more excited. We will be there for 9 days!!! The first weekend we will have visitors (good ole Uncle Mike, Aunt Mindy and Luuuuke; our very favorite people to camp with, although they won't be camping, just visiting during the day, it will still seem like they are camping with us). They have go-karts, putt-putt golf, bumper boats, a heated pool, hay rides, games, a dance, etc. On the second weekend we are there they are doing Halloween in Sept. where kids from the area come trick or treating through the campground. They anticipate 300 kids! I am sooo excited!!! I have started to pick stuff up at garage sales and the dollar store to decorate our camper. And Josiah is going to be Superman with Dan and I as Johnathon and Martha Kent :) Should be a great time!!!

The biggest update that I have though is my new purchase :) I had a garage sale at the end of July and we made over $450. Way more than I ever anticipated. I was planning on getting a new camera (that is of course was if I met my weight loss goal of 20 pounds, which I did). But I had no idea I would make so much money and with Dan's blessing and encouragement, I bought a really good camera, a digital SLR camera, with 2 lenses. I ended up with a Nikon D40. We did a great deal of research on them to find out what would be the best for teh money we had to spend. With my birthday money and garage sale money, this is what we settled on.

I have taken more pictures in the last week that I have taken all year and for those of you who know me, that is a lot of pictures. I went to the day care and photographed their water balloon fight, I went to the company picnic and took tons of pictures and in general have taken a ton of pictures of Josiah of course. Here are a few of the pictures I took at the company picnic...that is if they ever upload.

Ok, so this post turned out to be much longer than I anticipated. I guess I just got so involved in typing that I forgot all about the noises happening around me.

Hello Babies!

2008-07-09T11:21:00.004-04:00

Three of our good friends recently gave birth and I thought I would share a picture of all the cutie pies ;)

Kelly and Jeremiah had a baby girl: Nadia Grace, born in March.

Katie and Tony had a baby boy: William Robert. Born on May 19th.

This is Williams older brother Noah with Josiah.

Brandi and Kevin had a baby girl: Kayla Jean, born on June 16th.

Up North

2008-07-09T11:14:00.002-04:00

Josiah and I headed up north for a week long vacation on the lake! What a great week and incredible weather. We even had a rain day so we could get into town to do some shopping. I was in need of a new swim suit. Something I didn't know until we got up there and I put my old swimsuit on the elasticity had completely gone out of hte top. After much trying on and dissappointment, I finally found one that I really liked and that fit :) Happy days!

I took so many pictures (over 200) that I don't have time to post very many right now. But I thought I could post a few really cute ones that kind of summed up our week. Hopefully I will get around to posting more later...but no promises ;)

Good Bye Diapers ;)

2008-07-09T11:11:00.002-04:00

We have great news....I believe we have been successful in potty training Josiah. He had one accident (the yucky kind) when he wasn't wearing underwear last week and has gone poop on the potty ever since. And only a couple pee accidents since (which I hear can go on for several years). So we super excited about our little mans success ;) He is just growing up so fast!

June Fav Pictures

2008-06-28T06:23:00.007-04:00

Yummy good! Peanut Butter sandwhich...I could live on these ;)

Cute...

Cuter....
Cutest ;)

A visit to see a good friend Katie and her new baby :) This is her 3 year-old Noah looking cute for a cookie with Josiah.

Eating their reward!
Baby William Robert, born May 19th, 2008. 9lbs 3oz (a perfect size, if I don't say so myself :)
Driving the jeep before Church. Mom got the time wrong and we had an hour to kill before going to church, so we played in the yard. Beautiful day!

Mama and Josiah...not sure why his foot is sticking up??

Daddy and Josiah
The Pointer :)
Pointing at planes

My little helper ;)
If you can see the peanut butter or are wondering why I posted a piture of our very messy silver wear drawer...look closely. Josiah got into peanut butter and was trying out about a third of our silverwear seeing which would be the perfect utinsil to transport the yummy goodness to his mouth :)

I asked him to fill the water jug :)

Showing off his Jeep Skills

2008-06-28T06:18:00.001-04:00

Cousins come for a Visit

2008-06-22T23:02:00.005-04:00

I think Samantha and Nathan had a good time and I know Josiah loved having his Cousins visit for an entire weekend!! Hopefully they can come again very soon ;)

A visit to the local park to burn some energy off

We put the kids to work right away helping us in our garden...didn't last long, but Samantha at least helped us get some seeds planted.

Unfortunately all of our hard work in the garden was mostly washed away that night in the terrential down pours we received. Oh well, it was fun planting anyway!

Everyone had to have a turn driving Josiah's jeep...And Samantha made sure she was included in on the fun!

Nathan taught Josiah to say "Cheeseburger" for pictures, so most of the pictures from this weekend are of the kids saying "bur" :)
They kept doing drive-bys for more chips...they would stop, hold out their hands and say "more chips, please" very cute!
Samantha took this picture and it actually turned out really well. There are few pictures out there of me that I can say that about, so I thought I would include it here.
This is a picture of the 4 of us stuck in the old part of our basement during a tornado warning. Thank goodness Dan had left behind his laptop and that we had power!

They do love to wrestle. We were trying to set up the tent and they just wanted to play on it ;)
Yep, the boys are sitting on Samantha. Silly kids!
The reason this picture is so foggy is because the humidity was at an all time high. We had received 4-5 inches of rain the night before and the back part of our yard was flooded. Who needs a splash park when our back yard was one big splash pad. The kids had a ball.
Nathan especially loved the nightcrawlers. I guess the worms where they live just aren't as much fun. He also passed the love of worms onto Josiah :)
Playing in the sandbox, filled with water.
And of course after a day in the sand and mud...it was bathtime!Just a cute picture of Josiah that I took in June.

And I thought I would end this post with the cutest picture I took while Samantha and Nathan came to visit! Thanks for a fun weekend.

Pictures from May

2008-06-22T22:55:00.002-04:00

$4 at a garage sale...the best $4 I have ever spent on a toy for Josiah. Daddy got smart and put the lawn mower battery in it (same voltage) so we didn't have to go and buy a new battery :) He spends hours driving around. And even though we are bias, he is an amazing driver! He just got in and new how it worked. Just like his daddy!

Very serious about his driving and is very good at backing up when he gets himself into a jam!!
Loves to help out in the kitchen...sometimes I actually let him help!
$10 Garage sale motor cycle...he loved it of course!
Josiah and Luke going for a ride on Luke's 1st birthday in Luke's fun new bike cart :)
Before the haircut!
After the haircut!! So very handsome!

"We Did It"

2008-06-11T22:06:00.002-04:00

Straight from a babe's mouth!! Josiah went poop on the potty tonight!! Dan caught him in the act and asked him if he wanted to go on the potty and he said "Yah!!" Dan took him to the bathroom, Josiah sat and proceeded to "Go Poop" and afterwards said "We did it" Yeah! I know this doesn't mean that he is completely potty trained, but this is a huge step :) When I called him tonight I said to him "You're a big boy now" and Josiah replied "Yah, go poop" To cute! He was so proud of himself. Now will he do it again and again...that is the question! At any rate, I am pretty excited!

On the peeing front, there have been a few set backs. Probably due to potty training at a youngish age maybe. I don't know! But I caught him trying to pee on his craftsmen workbench! Thank goodness I caught him and made him go straight to the bathroom. I forewarned our daycare, just in case. The news I received that night was that he had pee'd in the toy box and then pee'd on the wall in the dining room. They looked at it as though he was a little puppy being potty trained, always looking for the next spot to go pee! That kid! But what are you going to do :) Thank goodness, Kim is very understanding and simply laughs if off ;) And then today Kim said that he didn't go on the potty very often at all. He started peeing in his pull-up. But they were also out on the slip and slide and his little body was probably confused by the wet pull-up and what not. Plus the other kids at day care have really started to get after him when he pee's outside or anywhere else for that matter, so maybe he was just being shy today. Who knows! So we were super shocked to have him poop on the potty!

What a huge milestone!!! I can't wait until we can ditch the diapers! What a savings that will be :)

News with Josiah

2008-06-03T22:06:00.003-04:00

POTTY TRAINING: The most current and most exciting news is that we are over 50% of the way to having a fully potty trained little boy. We have been working with him since January, putting him on the potty to go pee 2-3 times a day. Mainly in the morning and at night, which he was more than willing to do. We would say to go "Bubble" Pee and he would go and get excited that he made bubbles in the toilet. Then of course the best part, flushing :) Then 2-3 months ago, we put him in underwear for the day and with 1 hour he had pee'd his pants 5 times. Not ready. Then last weekend, I decided to try again. I was going to be home all day and outside for a good majority of the day. And it took. He had 3 accidents throughout the day (much better than 5 in an hour). And ever since Saturday night he has not had one single peeing accident. I can hardly believe it. He loves to "Go Pee"! We went to church on Sunday morning and I put a pull-up on him, just in case he told the teacher he had to go. Apparently he told her 5 times and it wasn't until the 5th time that he actually went. He was amazing this weekend. He started to grab himself when he felt he had to pee and would either tell us or we would ask him. I am soooo proud of him and excited! Pooping is another story, but that too is in the works. Today at day care he spent 30 minutes going back and forth to the toilet trying to go poop. Holding his back end and front, saying "Go Poop" So the interest is there, he just doesn't know how to yet. All in time. I still can't believe that he hasn't had an accident since Saturday night (morning or naps or anything :) I just hope that it continues.

THE JEEP: We bought him a Jeep (the one that they drive around and it can hold 2 kids) at a garage sale for $4. The best buy of the year!!! We knew that buying one at a garage sale would mean that we would need to buy a battery. But my genius of a husband figured out that they lawn mower battery was the same voltage and would work in the jeep. So for $4, Josiah is having the time of his life. I will post a picture when I get a chance. But he is so cute in this thing. But the crazy part is that he truly understands how to drive this thing. He can park the car in the garage and back it back out. He understands how to back up. How does a 2 1/2 year old know how to back up a car. I know adults that have difficulty doing this. He knows that if he gets stuck, to back up, turn the wheel and continue forward. How does he know this? I have no idea!! But the real kicker is that last night Josiah was driving the Jeep in the neighbors yard and Dan had told him not to one to many times. So he made Josiah park the Jeep in the garage and proceeded to unplug the battery. Dan left the car and Josiah and went back to what he was doing. Shortly after that, Dan hears the sound of the Jeep backing out of the garage. That little stinker (very smart stinker), figured out how to hook the battery back up. He understood that when Dan unhooked the battery (which Dan didn't think Josiah had witnessed), that that was the cause of his car not working. Then he figured out what Dan had done to the battery to make it not work and proceeded to fix it. 2 1/2 years old people! I don't even know how to hook the battery up to the Jeep, How is the world does a 2 1/2 year old know how to do this. Long story short: We love the Jeep and Josiah loves the jeep even more :)

TALKING: He is talking up a storm. Some of the funny things that he is saying these days: "Come Here, Right Now, Okay", "Right there, over there, down there, up there", "Josiah's turn, Okay", What doing?", We say to him "It's time to go Nigh-Nigh", his response "Really soon Nigh-Nigh", We tell his to say "Thank you" and he says "your welcome", Night time routine: I say "I love you" Josiah says "I love you too" I say "I love you more" Josiah says "I love you more" (my favorite I think).

PEANUT BUTTER: the catch all food. What do you want for breakfast "Peanut butter", what do you want for lunch "peanut butter", what do you want for dinner "Peanut butter", you get the picture!! Loves it!!!

MY FUN KID: He is just so much fun right now! Still gets lots of time-outs (which is very good about taking, most of the time), but for the most part, he is just so funny in the things he says and does. We are just loving spending time with him, which will come in handy when trying to budget because hanging out around the yard on the weekends is a lot of fun!!!

PICTURES: I will try and follow with some fun pictures here in the next week or so!

Hiatus Over

2008-06-03T21:19:00.004-04:00

I hadn't realized it had been so long since I blogged until I logged on and read that my least blog was on April 10th. Almost 2 full months, where has the time gone! I think I have mostly been focusing on scrapbooking both for me and I am also scrapbooking my stepdad's memoirs ( a very fun and rewarding experience).

So where to start!! News with me I suppose is as good a place to start as any!

WORK: I have been at my new job now for a little over 3 months now and am starting to find my groove here. I am still adjusting to working with the 4 other girls, but we have kind of gotten past the first akward phase as they learn my personality and I learned theirs. So we have had many good weeks in a row. I am back in training learning the last leg of stuff in order to be fully trained. So that will be nice to get that out of the way.

WEIGHT WATCHERS: I started back to Weight Watchers about the same time I stopped blogging and I have lost a total of 14 lbs as of this morning. So I am pretty excited about that. My goal is 20 lbs by my birthday on June 30th :) So that is 6 lbs in 3 weeks...doable, so we will just have to see. I just need to stay focused and not let stress induce eating!!

CHURCH: Another big deal in our little lives is that we have been considering checking out new churches. A huge deal since we have been at our church for 8 years. But so much has changed in 8 years and we just don't feel like the church is meeting our needs any longer. So together, Dan and I made the decision to start looking for a new church. Last weekend we ventured out and attended the church just down the street from us. And it turns out that several of the families from our day care also attend. Josiah walked in and new many of the children and we knew many of the adults. I also saw a person that I met at Weight Watchers who has small children and we keep trying to get together but it never seems to work out. We also really enjoyed the change...the way communion was given, the music especially was so simple and everyone knew when and what to sing, and we really enjoyed the sermon. Before he even started he let everyone know that he would be going a little long because he more to say than the 15 minutes left in the service. That was great. He wasn't constrained by the music program or antsy people expecting to leave at preciscly 12:00pm. And the sermon was straight from the Bible. People brought their own Bibles and there was an outline in the bulletin to follow along. I loved that! I mean using your Bible at church, what a consept. Overall, it really fit well with Dan and I andI think we are going to keep attending. I think it was a change that we really needed. The hard part is that I am still involved at some things that take place at my old church and I am not sure how that will work out. For example Weight Watchers takes place in teh choir room at the old church, so I pass the pastor's and lay assistants office on my way to the choir room. I was also taking Josiah to toddler time, which is not offiliated with the church but is located at the church. I have considered going to MOPS, which is also at the church. You get the picture. There is alot going on at that church and I don't know how or when, or if I even need to sever any of those ties. I would hope that people would understand, but I have a feeling they will not. Only time will tell!

BUDGET: We met with my good friend, who is a financial guru;) She loves helping people with their budget and has taught several classes teaching people how to get out of debt. Something we need to get in order desparetly. My new income makes it hard to meet our financial demands month to month, let alone trying to pay off debt. But we sat down and came up with some things to focus on right now. One of my first things I am going to try and do is to sell my Aztek. If I can make a profit on it (which my car salesman brother thinks I can), then I can pay off the Aztek and buy a really cheap small car that will be completely paid off. That is the ultimate goal at any rate. We are also looking into reducing our daycare rates, but not at the expense of our daycare provider. I don't come in to work until 2:30pm, but Josiah is in the middle of a nap around that time, so he still needs to get their sometime around 12:30-1:00 or so. Which means he is in daycare for 5 hours, which is considered a full day anyway. So I am not sure that we will be able to reduce that cost any. If it means losing our daycare provider, I am not sure we are willing to make that sacrifice. At any rate, we are getting a handle on our finances and we hope to make a serious dent in our debt over the next couple of years.

GARDEN: We are putting a garden in...lots of work, but I am looking forward to it this summer since I have the mornings to take better care of it :) I hope that we can keep up with the weeds!!!

THE ROOF: Memorial day weekend, with the help of the best friends in the world (Mike and Dave and Mindy for support;)) we tore our roof off and replaced it in 2 days. Small roof, but it went very smoothly!! We also had a great cook-out and bon-fire after all the hard work was done on Saturday :) I love summer!

I think that just about covers it for me :)

Daddy's Birthday!

2008-04-10T11:46:00.006-04:00

It was such a beautiful day last Saturday. A perfect day for the zoo. Dan and I had hoped to go to dinner and a movie, just the two of us, but when our babysitters were all gone on spring break, we decided to do a family thing...and what a great idea for a great day. We spent the morning having a great breakfast and making cupcakes. We went outside for a bit before naptime just so we could make the most out of the awsome weather. I had cabin fever bad and was so excited to get outside to play.

At lunchtime, we frosted some cupcakes and brought the candles out. I was absolutely floored when Josiah started to sing the "Happy Birthday Song". He sang "birthday, to you, birthday to you". Practically melted our hearts. I think that was the best gift Dan could have gotten from Josiah.

And then we were off to the Zoo!!!

Whoever put the playground right outside the zoo where the kids could see it, was crazy! For one: kids are tired when the are done walking the zoo and seeing all there is to see. Second: They cannot resist the playground and have a fit so that they can go play on it. Third: the kids are now even more tired and they refuse to leave the playground. Josiah had the biggest tantrum I have ever seen out of him. He had only taken a short nap and then was super tired!! Not a great combo. But we still had a great time!

After the playground and the zoo we were off to dinner at a Japanese restaraunt. Josiah actually ate the food we put in front of him, none of which he had seen before. I was very proud of him. On the other hand, I will not take him to an expensive restaraunt for quite some time, his food added quite a bit to the bill. Such is life and I know that beofre I know it, we will just have to deal with the fact that we can't bring a tub of dinner everywhere we go :)

Who's leading who?

2008-04-05T12:57:00.002-04:00

Easter Part 1: The outside Easter Egg hunt on Sat.

2008-03-28T11:50:00.006-04:00

Since the weather forecast for Sunday was not very good and Saturday was really nice with the sun shining and all, that we decided to hide the plastic eggs during Josiah's nap for him to find when he woke up.

Dan and Josiah killin time waiting for Cousin Jack to come over for the Egg hunt.

Getting ready to go outside for the hunt!

Mama and Daddy hiding Easter eggs in the snow for the first time. (yes these pictures are posed and Dan really didn't want me to take it, but I made him ;)

I think they had fun finding the Easter Eggs. Josiah did much better than I thought. He kept losing his eggs out of his basket and I would grab them and rehide them (in an attempt to kill time waiting for Jack and to make it last longer). But he got mad and yelled at me "No, No, Mama" So I stopped doing it :) They had fun though!

Cousin Jack and Aunt Cindy (sorry this picture is so dark, I couldn't lighten it up much more without distorting the picture.)

Grandma helping Josiah open the eggs.

Josiah discovering that there was chocolate in the eggs. I think he would have eaten it all or at least every other one, if we hadn't put it in a baggy:)

A snow ball fight ensued after the hunt was done and after the candy had been tapped into. Papa started it and we eventually all joined in. That was fun!

After we had all recovered from the Easter Egg hunt, we all headed to the Community Center to go swimming. What a great day!!!!

Easter Part 2: Easter Morning

2008-03-28T11:42:00.005-04:00

He had done such a good job looking for his Easter basket the day before that I thought he would get right to it on Easter morning. But no such luck. he was doing everything but looking. So took a picture of a couple of the distractions.

We finally set the Easter Basket up on the chair and he kept running past it...I think being silly at this point. But he was super wound up and having fun.

Bubbles, trains and balls...what more could a kid ask for in an Easter Basket (besides candy of course :)

After Church family pictures. Unfortunately, our camera is on its way out and has been taking some really poor pictures lately. So most of these pictures are not very good and I didn't have time to doctor them any. But they are good enough for my blog :)

Trying to get a picture of Josiah all by himself on the couch was near to impossible, so we just started snapping pictures of him doing his thing.

Easter Part 3: Dying Eggs

2008-03-28T11:32:00.005-04:00

Not sure I would do this again with a 2 year old in a place not my own. I was so worried that he was going to stain things that I had a hard time helping him to enjoy the fun of it. But it was still fun. Next year will be much, much easier and better (I think ;)

Easter Part 4: Searching for Dyed Eggs at Home

2008-03-28T11:31:00.000-04:00

We ran out of time at Grandma and Grandpa's to actually hide and find the eggs that we dyed. So I brought them home and we looked for them on Monday morning. He didn't know any different. But he was so tired from the weekend, that we finally woke him up (mostly by accident) at 9:00 am and I don't think he fully woke up until 10:00am. He did search and find most of hte eggs by himself (with a little bit of prodding in the right direction of course ;)

March 17th

2008-03-28T11:30:00.003-04:00

Josiah's shirt says "Kiss me, I'm Irish" which he is (1/32nd), so I figured it would be ok to put him in it. I got myself a new t-shirt and combined they cost me under $5. Not bad for 2 new t-shirts. :)

Josiah gets ahold of the clippers

2008-03-28T11:26:00.002-04:00

Josiah after the original haircut. It is so hard to cut his hair and get it just right.

It is even harder when Josiah decides to help out. I got Josiah up a couple days after I had cut his hair to find this big patch of hair missing. I called Dan and he thought that I had done that and he just didn't want to say anything. Dan had heard Josiah in the bathroom, but had assumed it was Josiah's toothbrush, not the hair clippers. Just gotta laugh at stuff like this and put the clippers up high where Josiah can no longer get to them.
This is after Dan attempted to smooth out the big bare spot in the middle of his head. I will have to say that he did a pretty good job :)

Easter

2008-03-26T11:16:00.002-04:00

We had a great Easter this year. Josiah was so much fun and I believe that next year will be even more fun. He helped me stuff the eggs with candy. One for Josiah, one for the egg, one piece of candy for Josiah, one for the egg...you get the picture. So when he was looking for the plastic eggs outside, I was sure he would find one, open it and eat the candy. But I guess there had been a big enough span of time between stuffing and finding that he must not have remembered. However, as soon as he discovered they had candy, the east egg hunt was over and the candy eating proceeded :)

Last friday (the Friday before we left for my hometown) we received 5 inches of snow...enough so that Dan had to shovel to get to our car the next morning. So crazy to be getting that much snow in March. As we headed north for the weekend, there was much less snow and no snow at our destination. Kind of backwards that you have to go North to get out of the snow.

I will post pictures tomorrow maybe...right now I am going to go utilize my time that I have during the day to continue to clean the house. So far I have the bedroom cleaned and vacuumed, the steps vacuumed and most of hte living room vacuumed. Today my plan is to finish the living room, vacuum and clean the kitchen and vacuum and clean Josiah's room. We'll see how far I get. I do love having the time during the day to get these kinds of things done around the house.

Other stuff!

2008-03-17T11:52:00.002-04:00

Things are going very well at work. This week I start working the 2:30 to 11:00pm shift. We will see how this goes. A little nervous about staying functional until that late at night, but I am sure my body will adjust just as it did to working until 9:00 pm. This week is another training week. Hopefully things go well and I don't make to many mistakes.

We had a great weekend as you can see by the pictures below. Lots of family time. I love weekends like that, especially ones where Josiah is happy and fun all weekend. We are starting to love going to the book store. Dan and I take turns watching Josiah at the train table while the other can browse. Josiah loves it, Dan loves the bookstore and I love the change of scenery ;)

I suppose that is all for now. Enjoy the pictures. Hopefully I will get into taking somemore fun pictures again. I just haven't been in the mood to take pictures for so long that I haven't had any to post. And now that I figured out how to post videos, that should be fun. Now I just need a camera that will record sound with my videos. Someday!!

Pictures Part Two

2008-03-17T11:41:00.004-04:00

Me and My Boy...I love it that he can now say cheese and that he doesn't hate the camera anymore :) This makes me very very happy!

The following group of pictures is from playing outside in the mud, on the toys and hanging out ont he front porch. Enjoy!

Dan had the fabulous idea of going shopping to buy some nerf guns. Josiah plays with them at Day Care and loves them. So we all got one and have had so much fun this weekend. I forsee that we will have to buy many replacement darts over the coming weeks and months, but we are having fun. Shoot, I think that Dan and I are almost having more fun than Josiah. A great stress reliever.

If you look closely, Josiah is wearing my headband. Too funny! I think he thinks it makes him look cool or something.

All tuckered out after a long day.

It's Picture Time...part one.

2008-03-17T11:31:00.006-04:00

Learning to say Cheese!!

Getting ready to go outside...love the bibs :)

YaY! Grandma and Papa are back from Florida :)

Go Green.....Go white!!

My little Carpenter!

Breakfast with mommy!

If there is water, Josiah is in it! A puddle, a pool, a spoonful. To Josiah any amount of water is just plain fun.

My boy is just growing up so fast.

He loves to sit on his couch and watch cartoons.

Runnin through the mud

2008-03-17T11:25:00.002-04:00

This video was taken yesterday. Josiah and I got outside to get some much needed fresh air. At first I didn't want him in the mud and then said what the heck, why not. If I was his age I would love to run through the puddles, so why should I rob him of that joy :) So away he went and he had so much fun and I had fun watching him!!!

Breakfast Dance Video

2008-03-17T11:16:00.004-04:00

This movie is silent because my camera doesn't record sound! But enjoy :) This is from one of our many breakfasts that we have been able to enjoy with each other over the past few weeks. He is dancing to Jeremiah was a bullfrog. At the very end, he decides he is done dancing and tells me to get him more eggs.

Staring off in space video

2008-03-17T11:10:00.002-04:00

Again this is silent, but no sound is needed to see that he is totally spaced out. This occurs during every meal we eat :)

Once again...a long over due post!

2008-03-10T20:43:00.003-04:00

I have probably lost any and all the people that used to read my blog and look forward to the pictures and fun little anicdotes about Josiah. Back in the day when my life seemed somewhat normal and not so out of control. Shoot...I just looked at the number of pictures I have taken in the past month and if you know me, you will know that this is unbelievable. A total of 15 pictures...yep 15. I can hardly believe it myself. I am ready for things to slow down and for all of us to get into some sort of routine. And slowly but surely I am doing that.

I officially started my new full-time job at Orchid Cellmark, a DNA paternity testing laboratory. I am a lab technician working 2nd shift. Right now I am working 12:30 PM to 9:00 PM. Starting next monday however I will switch to my permanent schedule of 2:30 PM to 11:00 PM. This might change in the summer, but will be that way for a time. I like the schedule I am working now, but am not looking forward to the change. Not really sure if I can stay awake that late working and still having to get up every morning with Josiah. I am sure I will take many a nap once that schedule starts, but we'll see. Who knows, I might like being able to take naps...I do love a good nap :)

So far the job has its ups and downs. The part where I get to be efficient, I am good at and I like. The part where I have to careful of a 7 digit number in a filing system...I am still trying to get a grasp on. The bummer is that the person training me becomes extremely dissappointed in me and frustrated every time I make a mistake, making the work environment tense. It is as though she has never made a mistake (which I know is not true, because I have witnessed these mistakes myself). Everyone makes mistakes and I am learning from them. For some reason I am having a pretty tough time learning this job...not sure if it is my age, or that for the first time I am actually being challenged. A little of both I suppose. But on days like today where I made a mistake late in the day that caused this frustration, I leave the lab feeling defeated and lacking self confidence. But tomorrow I will come in again and try to put on a smile and not confront this person, so that I can simply keep on going, learning from my mistakes...doing my best not to make more...knowing that I will continue to make more mistakes and the cycle continues. A comfort for me, is that I am not the only one that gets treated like this...crappy that others feel this way too, but comforting to know I am not alone in these feelings.

I am doing my best to stay out of company gossip. It has burned me in the past and I am trying to learn from my past. I will do what I can and keep reminding myself to keep my mouth shut...a great policy for me in general. And so far it has done me well!

Overall, I am enjoying myself here at the lab. I like the people and they love Taco Bell. I like sleeping in until 8:30 AM and am very grateful that Josiah is a sleeper like his Mama.

Well it is almost time to go home...I will continue the next time I get a break!!