Merry Christmas

Well, things are now on the side of happy slopes as opposed to uphill battles. We've made it through Christmas with some great memories. Irene is old enough now to really enjoy the wonder of Christmas. This included leaving Santa homemade cookies (this was a truly impressive process for Momma, BTW) decorated beautifully and a letter to Santa as well with the help of Dadda. I can't tell you how adorable this was. If I can figure out how to upload the movie from my camera to You Tube, I'll post the movie here. It's truly adorable.

I have to say this is the first time ever that I have participated in being Santa to the extent I have. The cookies were amazingly good and the reply from "Santa" had an enormous affect the next morning. The biggest appeal was the picture I got of Irene actually looking saucer-eyed at the cookie plate in amazement that Santa had actually come and brought her a Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer! She had asked for him on Santa's lap at the mall when she went to get her pic taken with Brookie (her buddy). We scrambled for days looking for one until Kerri (Brookie's mom) put us on to the link above. There was quite the issue with that but ultimately, Grammie and Tata came through for us and found it at a Walmart up in their area.

She found her stocking next - stuffed full of goodies. So much so that she was entertained for quite some time before she realized we got to open presents (2pm as a matter of fact) when family showed up. It was truly amazing. OH! She did get to open CandyLand (with Dora) earlier on in the morning and we played 4 rounds of that. :)

After that, we had 11 for dinner that night with all the goodies that go with it - 3 desserts ended up showing up. :) Ultimately I couldn't even have dessert believe it or not. Not because I was stuffed (I wasn't really). I just couldn't look at one more piece of food. :0) It was amazing.

My parents had come in on the 22nd. So they helped to put up a lot of what still needed to be done. My father got the outside rigged up with what he could. My mom helped me inside with all the decorations, the dishes, you name it. We had gone out to dinner Sat night and sunday morning. I cooked Cajun Flank Steak (from cooking light) Sunday night. I then made filet mignon for dinner Christmas Eve night. Mom and Dad tried to convince me that ordering Chinese food was an ok thing. I said no way to that one. My brother later suggested it might have been because they had no good Chinese restaurants in their area, but I chose to think it was because they felt it was too much work :). *shrug* either way we had filet's. Christmas Day breakfast was a Dutch Baby. Lunch was meats spread out on a counter and people making their own sandwiches. Dinner was the traditional turkey spread. :) All were satisfied it appeared and we were happy to have our house back to normal by the end of the evening. Mom was awesome and did a massive portion of the dishes so I didn't have to look at them the next day. And finally,Mom and Dad headed home the 26th.

I've since then been basking in the glow of the peaceful aftermath - doing a few exchanges, getting the dog food that should have been purchased before christmas, but we were able to stretch it. :) Otherwise I've been happily sitting in my chair watching Dark Shadows Collection 13 in bliss. I have to start a new Cross-Stitch piece. I am behind already. I wanted to start making those little Amish quilts cross-stitch minis for each of the teachers for June graduation (Irene goes to Kindergarten next year). I think I have to make 6 by the end. We'll see if I make it. :)

Anyway, that was Christmas in a nutshell. We now contemplate whether to go to Tahoe for New Years. We're still debating. I guess I had better nail Marcus' foot to the floor on that soon. ;)

Off to go see the new Dr. Who Christmas Special. Happy Holidays to all!

Just Shoot Me and get it over with

There comes a time in our lives when we're just fed up with everything around us ( as much as we love it ) and just hold out our arms wide and say "Shoot me". Today feels like that. I am so stressed out and soo tired that I can't deal with anymore. I can't even work. I slept well last night so I have no idea other than hormonal issues what is going on.

so I say: "Just Shoot Me".

Disneyland: Arrival Day Sunday

So Sunday we flew down to Ontario, CA airport and got a Budget Rent-a-car to take the three of us to the Inn in Anaheim. We decided long ago that we weren't going to tell Irene about going to Disneyland until after we had flown down (or at least on the plane). She figured out from over-hearing Dadda that we were going somewhere on a plane. We were fortunate she didn't pick up anything else. :)

She was fascinated by the idea of renting a car and kept asking questions about "the white car" and why we didn't have Momma's or Dadda's car. :) It's been funny what she fixates on. Anyway, half way down I-57 I turned around (I was not driving), pointed the camera at her and we told her together that we were going to Disneyland. Photo snapping ensued as she went from dawning of recognition of where she was going to, insane jubilation, to oh my goodness I can't control myself, to I'm the cutest of them all. I'll dig out the photos tonight and post them here. :) They're adorable.

Funny enough, though she didn't talk about Disneyland after that. She needed to talk about the hotel we were going to stay out. She absolutely wanted to get into our hotel room. We arrived at the Fairfield Inn (see previous post for link) at around noonish. We were able to sign in, but our rooms would not be available until 4pm. Well... no nap for her today. We grimaced. April, Andrew, Mason, Geran, and a close friend - Brian, also were there. It was to be all the cousin's first time in going to Disneyland. They too grimaced as their 2 year old was sound asleep in the car outside. The hotel was kind enough to provide a spare room for them to put him down for a nap for a couple of hours. The rest of us ended up going to Downtown Disney for the afternoon and cruising. Much to Irene's distress, we didn't get to our room. She talked about it over and over and over for quite some time after that. :)

Our hotel is about 1.5 blocks away from the Disney entrance. Was a perfect walk (so long as you didn't have to carry around a 37lb child). We did nothing but walk while we were there. The car remained cold the entire time we were there...well cold to certain amount. It turned out to be 85 degrees down there the entire time we were there. Clothes had not been planned well *sigh*.

We walked down to Downtown Disney and spent $$$. Picked up a sweatshirt, t-shirt, and a photo book for a friend at Irene's pre-school. The store was huge!!! I took pics of the front of it. Again, I'll find and link here soon.

We walked further and found a French restaurant that made benet's (sp?). We all shared them and watched the kids dance to 80's music. Got tons of pics. Hubby then decides that the powdered sugar left in the goodie bag was too much to simply throw away and promptly ate most of it. :-O . Got pics of that too. :). We walked around some more. Saw the end of a wedding at the Disneyland hotel. Unfortunately I was too slow with the camera and ended up getting a blurry pic of Cinderella's carriage drawn by a horse with the couple in it going down a path. It was just beautiful!

We saw the Koi ponds around the Disneyland hotel and then went in and messed around at the arcade they had there. I realized that while we were walking around in there that it had been there that I had gone with my Junior High School Band to play. It was great to remember something for once. ;)

We finally got to our hotel and threw our shoes off for an hour to allow the steam to roll off. Irene was thrilled with the sleeping arrangements and we found that we had an adjoining door between ourselves and my hubby's sister and her family. So that was cool. The cousin's got to play a lot as a result.

April (Marcus' sister) had gotten reservations for 13 of us at the Naples restaurant in Downtown Disney that night. It was a nice Italian place that was entertaining from the point of view that the kids got to see them making Pizza. It was a lot of food. Irene had a hard time as she was on "borrowed time" with having had no nap. She wanted to do anything but sit still. A nice person came around offering to make animal balloons. She got a butterfly wand which thrilled her. Those that were there included Aunt Ellen, Uncle Kenny, Brian, Mason, Andrew, April, Marcus, Irene and myself. I think 4 of us got lost in the shuffle as they didn't end up making it till the following night to coordinate dinner etc. So 9 ended up being for dinner that night. We walked back to the hotel and prepped for the following day. We got Irene down for bed by 8:30pm and we followed around 9:15-ish.

Sunday: the beginning of a lot of fun yet to come. :)

Happiness is a child at Disneyland

Well we made it to Disneyland and had a blast. As you can see from the above picture, Irene just really enjoyed every single minute she could. I have so much to tell and probably should break this down to multiple posts. So I'll go with an overview of our schedule on this posting.

Sunday: Left morning from San Jose Airport and arrived in Ontario. We drove to Anaheim to our hotel called Fairfield Inn . It was located just across the street from Tomorrowland. We pretty much walked from there to Disney everyday - it was great! Spent the afternoon in Downtown Disney - the free way of walking around Disneyland without being in Disneyland directly. More details in another post.

Monday: Got up at 6am moaning and groaning because we were so sore from walking. Picked up a quick light breakfast at 7am so we could get into Disneyland at 8am. We hit Main Street first and ran into Pluto (above), got his autograph along with several others. We had reservations for Breakfast with the Characters at 9:50am. After that we were pretty much in Fantasyland and Tomorrowland for most of the day with a break mid-day for a nap. More details in another post.

Tuesday: Got up again at 6am, not nearly so sore. We were on our own today. Monday had a lot of people we were enjoying Disneyland with but didn't get through a lot of rides. So we made up for here. We got over there at 8am only to discover you had to have an early pass to get in, otherwise you got in at 10am. *sigh*. So we went to breakfast at IHOP instead. Expensive breakfast - don't go unless you're really that desperate to be in IHOP for the sake at being at IHOP. We made it into Disneyland at 10am and discovered our child was a speed demon. Matterhorn is her favorite ride, along with every other speedy ride she could make it through. No nap today as the park closes at 8pm. So we did *everything* we could and had a blast. Our closing part of the evening was getting onto the Peter Pan ride and then walking down Main Street. We stopped off in the Emporium there and got a scrapbook for the trip. During that short interval, Irene fell asleep in Daddy's arms and we had the perfect exit to a wonderful dream come true. I wish I had taken a picture of that one one. Didn't even think to. Oh! I did get a gig and half of other pics though ;).

Wednesday: Our trip home on the plane. We found out the night before that I-57 (one of the highways we had to go down to get to the ONT airport), was to be closed for a simulated terrorist attack on the Angel's stadium *rolling eyes*. So we got up at 6:30 or 7am. Brought quick McDonalds to our room and attempted to pack up all the goodies and our dirty laundry from the trip. We were able to do that and get ourselves to the airport before any issues occurred with the highway. We sat happily and had some snackies, played with our PSP's, watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on another PSP, and finally boarded our flight home in happiness.

I purchased a whole bunch of things for all of us, ranging from clothes to toys. I have to say it was the first vacation in years that I wasn't ready to go home afterwards from. There were a number of reasons, but the biggest one was: We were all together doing something as a family that involved us and only us.

I think I hate computers...

What do you think? Maybe a job change to east coast where I could actually make a living working in a stitching store???

*grumble*

Britain's Stupidest Laws

This was a great read! If you need a funny, click here.

Halloween 2007

Well, at this time last year, there was "much ado about nothing" to quote a phrase. Last year was the kicking and screaming child of 3 who was afraid to even go to the door to hand out candy. This year, you ask? Perhaps a pic would be helpful:


Yup..she's a happy camper. Needless to say we went to The Vineyards with Amber, Chris and the girls. It was adorable and fun. I had not been into Skypark or anything remotely similar so was not prepared for what I was going to encounter. It was truly a lot of fun. We went down only one square block of the place and still came out with a large stash. :) She came home and said, " Momma, I am veeerrrrry hungry." I asked her if she wanted a sandwich. She looked at me with a serious face and said, "Yes momma, I would please." And she snarfed and entire peanut butter and jelly sandwich. :) We then had to hit the neighborhood for a small amount of time after that.

Oh, during this time, we ended up leaving candy out for the kids asking them to take 2 per person. We found we were cleaned out when we got home (fortunately we didn't use the entire amount so we could still hand out some more). When moving around to the other houses around the neighborhood we talked with friends who said we didn't have a lot of kids...so we were cleaned out by ones that didn't understand the concept of honesty :(. Oh well. it's what I expected. I know Marilyn said last year they had even taken her nice bowl she had left out. I left out a ziplock container. That was left :)

OH!!! Pumpkins! I have to post our pumpkins! I did two this year.

Tinkerbell:














Malificent

Change and worry

So I have determined that Fate/God/ conspires to make sure that our household is shaken up when things are relatively calm and complete feeling. What is the point of this other than to create angst? To make us learn that change is a good thing?? What the heck!? All it does in my case is send my blood-pressure through the roof and bring the household down to it's knees because it's so disorganized I can no longer cope because change conspires to make me feel that this is so.

I know I don't make sense, that I am just rambling, but am trying to get the angst of change and the worry that goes with out out of my heart so I can think clearly. I really do love the people around me but every now and again there is something that goes astray and I just can't handle it.

I think it is time for Dark Shadows and cross-stitch to reenter my life again. I've lost my center of being.

4th birthday pics available

Well I finally got my act together and got Irene's 4th birthday pics up from a week ago Saturday. Still need to do the thank you notes - hopefully Sunday. I am making progress finally. Here is where to find the pics.:

Irene's 4th Birthday

Enjoy!

and yes..I am working on getting the La Fondue party pics up as well. Patience...patience

Getting excited about Irene's birthday

I am about ready to run around screaming I am so jazzed about our little one's 4th birthday. :) This morning I was way stressed out worrying about food and organizing everything. This afternoon after having a good lunch at El Palomar Taco bar, going over the list with Amber, and going to Trader Joes to find alternative lower fat foods for the party, I am finding things are much better now. :) Still debating on getting my entenmann's cream cheese coffee cake - we'll see who wins out...will power/pocket book or my need for my favorite coffee cake in the world! :)

Anyway..back to the grindstone..but had to pass it on. :)

Amish Quilt Picture

Well, here we go! Here is one of the latest pieces. This is the Rainbow Amish Quilt. I've added it to my Flikr photos. Hope you enjoy! Click here.

BTW: It ended up not staying in my house for very long. I ended up giving it away as a gift this weekend. :) I think I am destined to never keep the pieces I make. Oh well. I enjoy making them.

I was not ready for October!!!

Normally I am fully aware that October is coming upon us - Irene's Birthday, my birthday, Amber's birthday, Halloween and all the school stuff in between you would think I would have a clue. This year? nooooo *sigh*. Monday, Oct 1, 2007, my husband came to me in the bathroom while I was frothing at the mouth with toothpaste and said, "You do realize that today is the first of October, right?" My brain came oozing out of my ears at that point and my brain took a nose dive. "Yowww kiibbing meee.. write?" I say with toothpaste drooling down my chin (I know..you don't need these images, but I had to do it.).

He shakes his head at me and my head starts to whirl as all the things come down around my ears. I clean myself up and realize that there is *no* way we're doing Irene's birthday on the 6th (less than a week away) and her stuff from Birthday express had not yet arrived. At least I was sorta on the ball. :)

I begin to panic. Then I took a deep breath and hollered, "We're moving her birthday party to the 13th!!! I can't do it soon enough."

Hubby holler's back "why not?"

I rolled my eyes, thought of the 10,001 reasons why not and resorted to "Because no one will come to if they don't have time to prepare themselves." Seriously, wouldn't *you* need a weekend in between to go birthday shopping if you wanted to attend? I tended to not go to the one's that didn't give me a week in between time to do the shopping etc. Seriously.

I know I put my honey into a large amount of stress by changing the date, but I seriously could not get thing together that quick. He's got the party, a game tournament, and a hockey game that day. Oh well. These things happen. So I have my brain back now. Got written invites out. Now we just need to do the evites to everyone else that has a computer that I can be sure of. :)
Her birthday express stuff came in last night *thank god*. Depending on the # that say they'll be there, I may end up at K-mart making more goodie bags to send home. I am tempted to order like another pack of 8 at Birthday express but between order and their shipping it with a 3 day max ship time, it still took 7 days to get to me. Not going to risk the stress. Party store and K-mart..here I come.

Marcus wants to take me out for my birthday. Personally I don't think it's worth it..but he's cute that way. So we're shooting to go to Hula for dinner and get a babysitter. We'll see if that works out.

20th: La Fondue - girl's yearly night out.
26th: Field trip to Gidzditch Ranch - yumm...fresh pumpkin pie. This year, I am just getting 2 pumpkins. :)
Nov 2nd: Pampered chef party - Dessert party as usual. This is the time for the Christmas orders. :) Write the date down. If you're reading this, then you're coming.


Anyway...I think this a sufficient post..what do you think? :) Enjoy!

To the people I am grateful for

Enjoy!

Shake Shake Shake!!!

This weekend

Well, it RAINED!!! Yay! Saturday was a glorious pour down of rain (sorry Amber. I know it was a pain to drive in, but the first rains always make me happy). I took Thursday and Friday off of last week in order to finish cleaning my house and putting it back to the point where I could at least function again. I also got in the last of my cross-stitching in for my latest project. I finished! I'll take pics and post them to flickr soon. I have to say I am quite pleased.

Since we last talked about cross-stitch pieces and what I was going to do, I have since gotten furniture to go on the wall. I now have a nice cabinet that holds a lot of my nice crystal. So I don't need nearly as much in the way of needlework pieces to fill up the wall. I've since hung the newest piece (the amish quilt piece), on the handle of my cabinet door of one side. It definitely needs another piece on the otherside. So I am thinking I'll do one more amish quilt. After that, I might actually tackle my season pieces. We'll see. Right now I am working on some small halloween kits that would take a couple o days to finish to hang around the house. I have about 8 of them :) I'll take pics of those when I am done as well.

Anna Moo - Makin Moosic

I had a great experience of late with a company that distributes a wonderful CD called Anna Moo's Makin' Moosic. It's a great album. Irene LOVES it. If you want to hear it, Rapisody has a free listen... Click here. NOTE: This is *not* a religious album as Rapisody puts on the header. I found that halarious. It's just a great kids album.

You can actually purchase these as MP3 downloads though at another site. It was $9.99 for the download or you can get the CD for $13. I chose the download. When I first got the download I found that one of the songs (about subtraction) called Ten Fingers had a skip in it. First I sent email to them on their website but I don't think they got it. Two weeks after that, I called their phone # on my order. I called at 9pm my time which was midnight their time. I told them the issue and my order # in order to prove I did indeed order it. I got an email from them the following day, that they had pulled the download themselves and found that they too had the skip showing up for them. They were going to fix the download and send me an email asap.

Needless to say, the following day, I had that new download. What's more, they updated the entire download so that it updated CDDB so that the album cover showed up in ITunes and everything. I loved quite a few of their other albums. And will probably order another album soon. If you like the music from the link I highly recommend buying at: Songs for Teaching.

Click here if you want the Anna Moo: Makin Moosic Download

Now to find Laurie Berkner - Irene Loves this person. Marcus gets her showing up on his satellite radio all the time, on the kids radio section. It's great.

Picture to the first day at school

Ok. Here we go...here are the pics I got this morning :D

enjoy!

Why? Why? Why?

Well..it started this weekend. Irene's started asking Why? to everything we talk about. Mother of god don't let me loose my sanity now!!!!

Where's the book that answers all the why questions of the world?

*sigh*

It has begun.

First day of school - again???

Well, I have to do this..even though Irene thinks she is just going back to school. Today marks her completion of her first year of pre-school and movement into year 2. Can you believe this??? I was a nervous wreck this time last year. I think I decided to go into work that day after dropping her off..but man that was a hard one for all of us I think. This movement into the next year was marked with the use of a new school lunch bag. I know, you're saying yeah..big deal..but this one was a big deal believe it or not. Irene's been using the same lunch bag up today since she was 3 months old!!! yeah..it lasted that long. I am amazed too.

So this morning with as much grandeur as I could muster, I had her stand at the front door with her new lunch bag to take a picture. I actually have the camera here with me..but I've had no chance to get the pic off the card. :( I'll update this tomorrow with the pic so you can see.

I swear she grew another several inches it seems. Last year at this time, she couldn't reach the sink at school and only barely could reach with the stepping stool. She couldn't even see herself in the mirror when she first arrived. Now..*sigh* She can do both without the use of a stepping stool. I am truly amazed at the movement that has occurred in this year that has gone by.

Fresh change

Well I had to go and change my template again last night. I've been playing around with where I wanted my weather beacon to go there, and found that I just didn't have the right colors all the way around. Like it? I know..I am a geek. But this is quick satisfaction for those days when I am far too busy to do be able to do anything more intricate.

I'm at home this afternoon. Little one is napping and I am working on database and installs. How is that anyone thinks I am competent at the database thing? I worked on it for a cycle with BDE and IBX. I still know nothing but somehow I am here... Not sure I am happy to have ever volunteered for it. I guess that it's a good thing from the perspective of...if they wanted to move me out of IDE, I have another place to go. Although in all honesty..I would just prefer to go learn Java and try out JBuilder with Eclipse at this point.

Yeah..I am burned out. What can I do? Blog.

Reading is fun again!

Well..over the past three years, I thought that I didn't like books anymore. Reading was a chore - no matter what I did. I had struggled through Book 5 of Harry Potter, the 6th book seemed like a fast read but still took me weeks because of interruptions. After I had finished the 6th book I began to think that I just couldn't read anymore. Too many other things interrupted and when I read, I sink myself into the book. When it's interrupted when I am not ready to be so, I find it is very difficult for me to get back into the book. Of course, I didn't realize this at the time. It's only now after having finished HP 7 - The Dealthly Hallows in the space of 2 1/2 days of glorious uninterrupted time that I now understand. My hubby was fully aware that when the Harry Potter book came out those oh so many weeks ago that that weekend was *mine*. He was fully aware that he would be a "Harry Potter widower" (as he put it) until such time as I got to the end.

What an eye opener it was to realize that it wasn't that I didn't like books anymore. It was just I loved them sooo much that I didn't cope with being torn away from them when I wasn't ready. Let me tell you, that reading HP 7 rekindled my love for reading again. I was on fire to find other books I had not read yet. This last weekend, I found 3. It's very evil to go to Costco (on so many levels). I picked up 3 books. The first one was The Gilded Chamber - story of Queen Ester. It's historical fiction based on a Jewish girl taken into the Persian royal court to be a concubine and ends up being Queen. A great read (am about 1/2 way through now). Another I picked is another historical fiction book. Unfortunately, my brain escapes me what the title is or what's it about. :) I'll update this post when I get home. The last one was one I have been dying to pick up along with it's predecessors and successors: The Confessions of an Ugly Step Sister . This one I just couldn't pull the trigger at Borders cause of cost ($14.00 for paperback, $3x.00 for hardback). Amazon's price was great but I wanted instant gratification. Turns out Costco has it for $8.69 for paperback. Even better than Amazon. :) heheh Needless to say, I am very content. I haven't been stitching, or watching TV, or playing games these past week. I've been happily reading.

BTW: Harry Potter 7 is GREAT! I finished my first run through that first weekend. I just finished listening to the audio book edition yesterday in the car. I seriously need to get the rest of the audio books. It's the only way I'll be able to take time with those books for now. Reading from a book seems to be only for the first time read it seems right now. Going back to book 5 has been really hard.

UPDATE: The last book is called The Garden of Ruth. It looks fairly interesting. Both this and The Gilded Chamber were $8.69. Turns out Confessions of an Ugly Step-Sister was $10.88 or something close to that. About the same price as Amazon - but no need to wait for it to ship. Almost done with The Gilded Chamber - about 3/4 of the way through the book in 4 days!!!