Well, it's been about six months since I last wrote here. I have no excuse, just laziness and, honestly, I forgot I had one of these. So maybe I can force myself to write here again? I have been taking pictures, raising kids, cleaning, cooking, the usual. Nothing earth-shattering has happened lately. I am in the process of trying to figure out Flikr so that I can embed my pictures and at the very least, keep my pictures uploaded. I might end up going back and deleting everything and making a fresh start and posting my blog link at Facebook and Myspace so that both sides of my family can keep updated. I don't know how I feel about that yet, so we'll see.

Anyway. Yes, I live!

I live? I Live!

I have nothing to say except WHOA. I have been crazy busy like whoa lately. Well, for the last three months. Sorry! Pictures to make up for it?

Mom and Dad, from Christmas. I have a GIGANTIC backload of pictures that I don't think I will ever get caught up on, but I am trying to chisel away at it when I have 30 minutes here and there.

The kids are big, and in the midst of an extended snow/cold break from school. School was cancelled for two days first because of about 6 inches of snow and then for the biting cold, which the high tomorrow is supposed to be a whopping FIVE degrees. We are staying indoors, keeping the fire burning, turned the heaters and furnace up and just waiting for it to thaw out.

I am loving Netflix lately. It's so awesome to be able to watch something whenever on my computer and getting the DVD's in the mail too. We are rediscovering all our childhood cartoons and the kids ove watching their shows too. Yay for Netflix!

Is winter over yet?

6 Quirks

Virginia tagged me and I am really really trying to update this more often so here I am.. 6 strange things about me? (Limiting it to just 6 is difficult)

- I often tilt my head to the right when typing for long periods of time. I don't know why, or what it does for me, I just notice out of the blue that my head is sideways.

- I am obsessed with pictures of strangers weddings. I stalk the internet and wedding photography blogs because I am fascinated with those moments and how happy everyone always looks. It so rarely lasts anymore, but those pictures show so much happiness and hope.

- I have only fallen asleep without reading first less than 20 times in the last 8 years. I cannot sleep without reading something first, even on vacations I have brought my PocketPC (that I read books in eBook format on) just so that I can read myself to sleep. I have read, literally, thousands of books since we first purchased our PocketPC's, and read on average two or three books a week depending on how long they are and how tired I am and how early I go to bed.

- I am the project killer. I start projects, and they die a slow death. Knitting, cross stitch, sewing, you name it, I probably have at least two projects in progress somewhere that will probably never be finished.

- I cook primarily with an iron skillet. I have a serious relationship with my iron skillet/s (I have a set of three graduated sizes) and I take cleaning and seasoning them very seriously. I only wash them in hot water and dry them on the burner and oil them with a drop of oil and a paper towel and let it reseason every time I use it. A good iron skillet is a commitment.

- I currently live with my husband's ex-wife. And yes, I am aware how strange that is!

Spent most of the day talking to Kathy and Priscilla and comparing stories about Chantal and hearing how she has been playing both sides of the family off each other. I don't know how she thought that was going to work when we are all now living in one big house but a lot of lies were revealed, a lot of Chantal backstabbing, nothing new. Chantal is going to be a not very happy person in the future, she's going to be called out on a lot of things she's said and done.

It was an otherwise quiet day. Savino has two more teeth. I am still tired and need a long soak in the bath tub and some sort of chocolate.

Still no word from the state. Tim is flipping out on me, and convinced he has not gotten the job. I keep telling him it will be OK, it's not a big deal either way.

Have I said lately how much I love my husband? He cares so much about whether I am happy or feeling OK. He kisses me often and asks me what's wrong if I don't look happy. He is proud of me doing what I need to do to get through the day. I love him so much. Kathy said to me today that she can tell how much he is in love with me, and that is reassuring to hear after 10 years of togetherness.

My life is crazy, but I feel a little more validated tonight about how I have been feeling and that I am not the only one frustrated with Chantal. Everyone else feels the same way. It is nice to know that I am not the bad guy.

It's not all drama though, here are 4 beautiful edits that I did today:

10/28/2008

Ugh. I hate being sick. More than anything else. Some icky scratchy throat/sinus/snot thing has struck the house. Me and Tim seem to be suffering the most, probably because we have been all up in each others business the last week. I feel a bit better today with the aid of copious amounts of Tylenol and naproxen, but yesterday, oh my. I ended up begging Tim to come home early from work and he managed everything while I passed out on the floor of the boys play yard and let them crawl all over me. Apparently my comatose body is endless amusement for two toddler, who knew? I slept for about an hour, maybe a little longer, before it was dinner time. I could barely hold my head up through dinner but started to rally a little bit after taking some Tylenol and getting the kids into the bath.

This morning, I think I might live, but it was touch and go there for awhile.

Chantal managed to kill her one month old cell phone last night. And she REALLY killed it, it won't come back on for anything. It's dead dead. How she managed that I have no idea. She's pissed off about it, I am just amused. There's been issues lately that I won't get into because I don't feel like it, just the usual, so karma having fried her phone amuses me. Of course, it meant that I had to give the phone I was using, her old Blackjack, back to her, but I am the least phone obsessed person here. There are literally four other phones laying around for me to choose from to use, so it doesn't matter to me. I would like a new phone, but at this rate, I will NEVER get one, so I'm not getting worked up about it.

Well, time to feed the ravenous boys. I swear, we spend half the day in the dining room

Hey, at least I am getting closer to being caught up here!

10/7/8

I am so so so happy because we have finally rented out the Little House! Woohoo! We rented it to someone who up until recently used to work with Tim's brother, and he came over and paid rent for October on Sunday. Yay! So that is one worry off our minds. I am really really glad that the house won't be sitting empty this winter.

My SIL's wedding is looming large. I still have to find Savino something to wear. *sighs* What a hassle. At least Haley is done, I got her a dress on Sunday and just have to make sure the shoes she has still fit and maybe get her a pair of tights. Of course, I have to make the cake and make sure I have everything prepared for the pictures. I need to go buy a few more SD cards for my camera because I plan to shoot in RAW at least part of the time so I can fix any exposure mistakes.

Oh, a bit of sadness. I went to take my wedding rings off last night so I could put lotion on the babies and noticed that my diamond band is missing one of the diamonds. Sadness. I was not entirely surprised though because I think the diamond that fell out was one that wasn't the right size or color anyway, it always bugged me that when you looked at the ring from the side, it didn't look the same as any of the others. Anyway, I took it into the store today and they are sending it out to get an estimate of how much it will cost to replace the diamond. It turned out one of the prongs snapped and that's why the diamond fell out so the prong will have to be rebuilt too. I am hoping it won't cost a lot because the ring didn't cost that much to begin with. I will know in a week. I had my solitaire checked while I was there too, just to make sure that I hadn't done anything horrible to it. I swear, I shouldn't be allowed to have nice jewelry anyway, I just bash it up. Thankfully, the solitaire is in good shape and the sales guy cleaned it for me. I love the sales guy that was there today, he fawned over my rings and when he was putting my information in the computer to print out a claim ticket for my band, he was all "Girl, you got a good deal!" when he looked at how much I paid for the solitaire. I don't think I'll ever shop at another jewelry store, I like them too much.

Something is going on with Jaden. I don't know what, but his behaviour the last few weeks has been unreal. Today and yesterday he was reverted back to the crying and whining that he was doing the first week that they moved in here. He hasn't been acting like that for awhile, and then it just starts back up again. I am wondering if there is something going on with Shawn that he is doing that. I don't know, but I hope Jaden settles back down soon because the crying over every little thing is unbearable. Between Jaden whining and crying and Savino on his hunger strike, these babies are wearing me down!

I need a nap so badly. I am so tired. Of course, I have to go rouse the babies in a few minutes and change diapers and get them into the car to go get the girls off the bus. At least we don't have to go to the store today. I think I am seriously going to just start going to bed with Savino. I'm always exhausted by the time he goes down, I always feel like I ought to just lay down and go to sleep but I usually force myself downstairs to work or clean or hang out with Tim. Then I don't end up in bed until midnight and then Savino wakes up at some point between midnight and 4 and the last few days several times during that four hour stretch, so there is no real rest. No wonder I am tired. I guess I just have to accept that I need an earlier bedtime. Sucks. I'm too old to stay up until midnight, I guess.

The leaves are changing colors again. I guess that means that fall is really here. And winter soon. I am not ready, bring back summer please! Ah summer, I took you for granted. Now I have to deal with impending Christmas. There are holiday decorations and Christmas crap all over the stores already and we're not even near to Halloween yet. I can't deal with the celebrating Christmas for the four months before it even happens. That's ridiculous.

We let Steve the cat back into the house on a trial basis after a haircut (I shaved him with the clippers) and a flea bath. My cat M'El has vanished. *sighs* Steve is beyond ecstatic to be back in the house. The first night back he slept on everyone's bed throughout the night. He started in Chantal's room and then came into our bedroom and was laying on Laila's bed when I got up that morning. Since then he has been super affectionate, despite having clawed and bitten the hell out of my hands while I was giving him his haircut. He looks ridiculous, just utterly ridiculous. At least it has cut way way down on the amount of cat hair we have to deal with, which was one of my big complaints about bringing him back in. If he doesn't do anything horrible, like covert peeing or whatever, he can stay inside. I am sad to say, but I think it was M'El who was doing 99% of the bad outside-the-litterbox madness.

Oops, time to get the kids.

9/30

I am waiting for Tim to get out of the bathroom and finish messing around with this DVD before I go to Wal-Mart. He took another day off because his foot is still MASSIVELY swollen, his skin is so tight too, it's very hard to the touch. I am worried about him. He's been taking the steriods they gave him and they gave him a shot at the dr's yesterday too, but the swelling looks worse, if anything. He says if it is still swollen tomorrow that he is calling off again too. I kinda hope it is just so he can stay home with me, because I love having him home!

I have to make the Wal-Mart run to get supplies for making the practice cake for my SIL Dawn's wedding in two weeks. I am making the grooms cake in the shape of a guitar. I need to buy a much larger sheet pan, the fondant, the gum paste, and perhaps different icing colors. Tim was all "Why don't you just use icing instead of fondant?". I don't know when the last time HE tried to smooth icing was, but it is a royal pain to get perfectly smooth and level. No thank you. Fondant just looks nicer, that's why they cover wedding cakes in it. I am not so psyched about how much all the supplies are going to cost me, but it's part of my SIL's wedding present from us, so I guess I ought to just consider the money as going towards that. And I will be able to reuse the sheet pan again, of course. I am hoping to get the cake done completely before the kids get home since I have Tim today here to entertain the baby so I can focus on cake making. If it turns out nicely, I will make the cake again this weekend and freeze just the cake part of it in the deep freezer so that the day before the wedding all I have to do is cover it in fondant and put the gum paste decorations on and finish it off. So, fingers crossed that it turns out nicely. I don't want to be in tears four hours from now because it looks like crap.

It has turned COLD for some reason. It seems a bit soon for it to be getting this cold. The high today is supposed to be 68, which is obviously not that cold, but tomorrow it is only 58 and will be in the upper 50's for the rest of the week. I guess I will have to bust out the babies long sleeved shirts and pants sooner than I thought. I have managed to get all their new clothes washed and folded, and I still have to put away Savino's but I gave Jaden's to Chantal. All that is left to wash is the mountain of 2T - 5T stuff. I am holding off on washing it all until I have a container to put it all in to store it.

I'm so tired for some reason. I don't think I slept very well last night. Savino woke me up RIGHT after I fell asleep, literally moments after, at 1am. He drank most of a bottle and fell back asleep. I am dying for this kid to SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT. What will it take? I don't know. He's going through a picky eating phase which is so bizarre for him. Usually he eats pretty well, if not a ridiculous amount, but the last few days he has been turning his nose up at the things he usually eats, so I don't know what is going on. I think it's his teeth, but I hope it gets better soon because he's not eating very much. I think we are going to take him in to have his labwork done today. I've been putting it off for almost a month now, I really hate the thought of them drawing blood from my baby, but it has to be done because our house is so old and I would feel better having his lead levels checked. Our house is seriously old. I wonder if we would qualify for the EPA to do renovations or whatever it is that they do if you have a really old home. I should look into that, I guess.

9/29

We are not having the best day! Well, Tim's bad day started yesterday afternoon when he was cutting the grass in the back by his truck and was stung on the calf by a wasp/bee thing. We've been battling them lately, there was a nest in the front yard on the property line between our neighbors house and our house and Tim put two cans of poison down in the nest and then ended up pouring gasoline down the hole and setting it on fire. Needless to say, he got them, but this other nest in the back he didn't even know about until he was stung. Well, at first it looked like his calf wasn't really going to swell up or anything, but today, oh my, it was BAD. His whole foot was swollen twice the size of his other foot, he looked like half-Frankenstein's Monster, half man. His calf and ankle were really swollen and it was going up his thigh. He came home from work because he couldn't just ignore it anymore. Benadryl wasn't helping, so we went off to the Urgent Care which was also his new PCP because of the fiasco with insurance with our old PCP who has a walk-in clinic. Well, we get to Urgent Care and they don't take our insurance anymore. Um, thanks?

Came home and found another Urgent Care in the next town over in WV that does take our health insurance and the doctors that practice there are also preferred providers with our insurance plan so hopefully he can switch to them, he needs refills on his medications too. He is going to try to get them to write the prescriptions so that we can do them mail-order which is much cheaper and that way he only has to go in for checkups, not just for refills. Anyway, he is out there at the dr right now while I am here so that I can go get the girls from the bus stop when its time. I didn't think he would be done in time for me to go with him, which he was bummed out about.

So, onto the poor me. I went upstairs to get Savino from his nap earlier, and he was crawling down the stairs (well throwing himself backwards down the stairs really) and I was below him with a hand on him so he didn't fall down. He was about five steps from the bottom and I went to pick him up to carry him the rest of the way, I turned to go down the last few stairs and somehow managed to trip myself, fall down the last three stairs and over the one step up to the landing all the way into the stair hallway while holding Savino. Thankfully, miraculously, Savino was comletely unscathed. I managed to twist and cradle him against my body so that all that happened was that he got set down onto his butt on the floor sitting up a little roughly. He wasn't even scared by falling, he just looked at me like "Whahuh?" On the other hand, I hit the wall at the bottom of the stairs HARD with my shoulder and left arm and was twisted half on and half off the landing. Owowow. It really hurt. At first I thought I broke my arm or dislocated my shoulder or something because the impact REALLY hurt. No, instead I just really bashed the back of my upper left arm and have a rash all down the rest of my left arm from sliding against the rough plaster/textured paint of the wall. I also managed to put a big long crack in the plaster of the wall where my shoulder hit it. I had an instant bruise and it looks pretty rough on that spot on my upper arm. It huurrt. I'm OK though, I will just have a really nasty sore bruise tomorrow and an embarassing story to tell. Still, it made the day a little less fun!

I made a few batches of Lara bars today. They turned out so good! I don't think that I have ever had dates before, and I didn't realize that they were so good! They're very sweet, almost like brown sugar. I made a big batch of Walnut Coconut bars for Tim because those are his favorite, and I also made half a batch of Apple Pie bars and half a batch of Banana Nut bars. I think the Banana Nut are my favorite so far, but I would like to try making the Key Lime Pie version too. There's about 20 bars in the fridge right now setting up, so I think we are set for the week. They're really easy to make, I wonder if anyone else outside our family would eat them. Even Savino likes them. I want to make the Very Cherry kind next as well, but I need to get some cherries for that.

Savino is cutting some teeth hard again, which means that he is not sleeping. *sighs* He is mighty cute though, and that makes up for it a little. He just started saying a bunch of new words yesterday and trying to mimic anything you say. He says, "Haley" (Aaa-lee) and "Laila" (sometimes it comes out Laila, sometimes it's just "La la" which is what we also call Laila),"Bye bye","Uh oh!", "Thank you" (Hank Oo), "Jay-d", "Kitty" (itty), "Hello?" (Eh-row?), and "Hey!". Tim was pretty stunned, we just kept saying words to him to see what he would say back, what he could manage and he would keep saying them after we asked him if he could say (insert word). He's too much. He definitely takes his milestones in leaps and bounds! He's 13 months today and I think he's right on track.

He has been standing up alone without holding onto anything quite a bit and has been experimenting with taking steps without holding on. Today he was standing in the front room while I was getting my shoes on and he was holding onto the back of the race car Power Wheel we keep in there when the kids aren't playing with it, and I said "Come on, let's go!" and held my arms out to him and he let go of the Power Wheel and took a step right into my arms! This isn't the first time he has taken a step by himself, the other day he let go and took two steps around Jaden in the play yard to get to a toy and a few mornings ago took two steps from the night stand in our bedroom to the bed. Soon, soon.

9/28

Oh my. We are in funnel cake heaven over here. Instead of driving all the way out to the Pumpkin Festival this weekend, we bought a bunch of "fair food" fixings and had a festival dinner last night. We have been buying funnel cake mixes but Tim decided he wanted to get a good recipe to make them at home and I think he found the perfect one. The downside? I can't even LOOK at a funnel cake anymore. I had one last night and half of one for breakfast and I am on funnel cake overload. I think we are going to have to give away the other 10 that are sitting on the counter right now. Too many funnel cakes!

I don't know what the plans for today are, but I am sure they include cleaning, and probably washing laundry. I am trying to dig my way out of the mountain of laundry I have. I don't know if I wrote about it, but one of Tim's co-workers gave us like 5 big black trash bags full of clothes leftover from their yard sale. There were clothes from 18months to 5T in boys and then clothes in Laila's size for girls. And I mean a RIDICULOUS amount of clothes. As in, don't go buy anymore, whatever you do. And half of them still had tags on them, they were never worn. This was excellent for Jaden because he really really needed some nicer clothes. That poor kid, I could not dress him in clothes that didn't have stains on them or weren't really worn, unless I put him in Savino's clothes. So he needed it more than anyone. Most of the clothes are really nice Old Navy or Children's Place, and half of them are expensive Thomas The Tank Engine track suits and matching outfits. Lots of jeans and pants and t shirts too, so the boys are totally set until they are about 5 years old for clothes. I am taking most of the 18 month stuff for Savino because it's all Old Navy and really nice and that's what I like to put him in. There was a giant stack of 24 month clothes for Jaden and the 2T - 5T pile took two giant bags. Laila has an entire bag full of almost new really pretty girly clothes too, all the kids except for Haley made out like bandits. Of course, everything has to be washed though, and that means about 10 loads of laundry. Fun fun fun. I have made some headway, the 18-24 month stuff is all clean and Laila's clothes are all in the washer and need switched over and then I can start on Jaden's clothes. I don't know where we are going to put all these clothes, we don't have enough dresser space. Jaden just has three tiny drawers in the dresser attached to his crib, and that's it. Laila at least has some dresser space that we can probably cram stuff into.

Of course, now I can't buy Savino any clothes, really. I might anyway! I really wanted to get him the last few peices of this rock and roll line at Old Navy, even though he doesn't need them. They're just terribly cute! Oh well. I didn't think that it would be fun buying boys clothes when I first started shopping for Savino, but I was wrong. It is fun! It's just harder to find the cute stuff, I think. You have to wade through a lot of generic "boy" crap.

I am on the hunt for the right double stroller. I found one at a flea market yesterday, but it is an older side by side model, and I don't think that is going to work for us. I really wanted to get an inline double stroller. Well, the one I REALLY want is like $250 and that's not going to happen. I refuse to spend that much money on a stroller we probably won't be using for more than a year or so. I want to find one used. Ideally, it would be one where you can rearrange the seats so the babies face each other, and then they can keep each other amused, but I will settle for one that is just inline. Though, if I really can't, I will probably go back and get the one for $20 at the flea market, I don't think anyone is going to go buy it any time soon. We just need a double stroller so I can start walking down to the bus stop again. I've been having to drive the car and it really sucks to waste the gas to just drive around the block, but there's not another option unless I have a double stroller.

9/26

Lara bars. Have you heard of these things? They're 100% all natural preservative free additive free fruit and nut "energy" bars. They're mostly dates with different fruits/spices/etc. Chantal loves the Lara bars, but they are RIDICULOUSLY expensive, like $2 a bar. You can make them at home though from dates and nuts and fruit. Chantal made some the other day and everyone seems to like them. I haven't tried them yet. I have been sticking with the SoyJoy because they are good. But I am going to make some different sort of Lara bars this weekend for Tim. He liked ones with walnuts and coconut in them. I am going to try making Cherry ones and Banana nut ones. A package of dates makes like 6 or 8 bars and costs $1.58 and then whatever you mix with it, banana chips are $1 for a big package, and we have a bag of coconut, and walnuts, and some cherry flavored cranberries. So, maybe $3 all together for 8 bars? A lot better than $2 per bar. If you're curious, the ratio of dates to nuts/fruit whatever is just 3 Tablespoons chopped dates to 1 Tablespoon fruit/nuts. I think it is more just however you like it though, not so much sticking to exact measurements. You just pulse the dates in a food processor until they become a sticky mass (it took awhile in my Black and Decker food processor, the dates were really hard and dry but eventually softened up and got sticky with some heat and friction from the food processor), take the dates out, put the fruit/nuts in, then mix together in a bowl and form into a bar shape with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge.

Savino signed "nurse/milk" to me today, asking to nurse! I about fell over! I was laying on the floor with him in his play yard and asked him if he wanted to nurse because he was burying his face in my boobs and pulling at my shirt. He sat up and sat back on his heels and did the sign for "milk". I was so impressed! He does the sign for "eat" and "more" but other than that, it seemed like he just wasn't interested in signing. I guess he is just more interested in communicating and getting more interested in signing. I am all for it! After he was done nursing on one side, he sat up and climbed over me and then did the sign for "milk" again and so I let him nurse on the other side too. He is getting so big! I just want to snuggle him up and hold him close forever.