Just before going downstairs/on the way down:
Searching & Finding:
R & N:
Baskets:
Future Gardeners of America:
And on to Mimi & Granddad’s house…family shot:
Scooter from Granddad (though they need to grow into it a bit):
All in all, we had a good holiday. The weather was nice, if a bit cold still, we overslept and missed church, but the boys had a lot of fun & we got chocolate and a nice dinner with family. 
The ice cream truck came around today. It’s Easter Sunday, it’s still cold out, and they’re starting for the year today?!?!
Pictures from today coming tomorrow. Can’t deal with it all right now.
The boys and I dyed Easter eggs today! Here’s the evidence!
I’m a fan of the old classic kits…none of those crazy specialty things for us!
9 blank canvasses:
Getting the dyes ready:
Piggy nose!
WOW!
The boys each took a turn with Mommy’s camera:
2 casualties of dyeing eggs with preschoolers…we just peeled & ate ‘em. Yummy!
And the finished masterworks:
Happy Birthday, sweetheart!
You are truly the love of my life. Everything I try to type right now is coming out sappy as all hell, so I’ll leave it at that, okay?
I’m sorry this week has been pretty much an all-out suckfest…I’ll make it up to you. 
You have a message from the boys, too…
2008?!?! What? No. It can’t be! Can it? It is? Really…wow.
Well, Happy New Year, then!
I love New Years. The start of a new year, blank calendar, 365 days of opportunity. 366 this year, being a leap year and all.
What will 2008 bring to us?
I’m hoping to learn how to sew or knit this year. To get more organized…that’s a yearly goal for me. To get our financial situation straightened out. To learn how to be still, and content, and to just enjoy a moment without worrying about what the next moment will bring. To be happy with myself. To raise at least $2,200 and walk 60 miles to raise money for breast cancer research in honor of Aunt Ginger.
My 04/04/04 baby will turn 4 years old this year. My eldest will turn 6, start kindergarten and will ride a school bus for the first time. N and I will have to make some kind of definite decision as to whether or not we are going to add another child to our family.
2007 brought some progress to me. I finished up with going to therapy for depression, and although some days I wonder if I need to start over again, other days I feel pretty good. Hopefully 2008 will see more better days.
To you I wish a happy, healthy, successful and prosperous New Year. I hope we all see some dreams come true this year.
It may not seem like it, but there is really very little I would change about my life, given the chance. I would most like to change myself, to become a more content person. I have so many things in my life that I should be, and AM, grateful for. Naturally, there are the boys, and N, and his family. I have some really terrific friends and the only thing preventing me from being closer to them are my own hang-ups. I live in a place that is sometimes very beautiful and that is relatively free from natural disasters. I have a decent, (albeit slow as molasses) computer, which enables me to meet and keep in touch with people that it would be impossible to connect with otherwise. I am relatively healthy — physically at least (my mental health is always debatable!
Today was pretty close to a perfect day. This morning we woke up, turned on the Thanksgiving Day Parade, popped some cinnamon rolls in the oven for breakfast, saw Santa come out, and then headed out to meet Gigi & L and T for Thanksgiving Lunch. On the way home, R spotted this out his window:
Yeah, we saw a full rainbow today. It’s probably ridiculously vain to take it as personally as I did, but I’m taking this as my “sign” that I need to take it easy, be more content, and stop worrying so damn much.
Thanksgiving is the start of “The Holiday Season” and this year, I’m going to relax, go with it, and not worry about any of it. I’m not going to get so caught up in the details this year that I can’t see the big picture. But I am still going to Target tomorrow morning for that Roboraptor!!
N got home from work early today (he’s working full time now, that’s another post for when I sort out my feelings on it) and we headed out to run some errands.
We get to Target, because they have Leapster games on sale for $15. The boys still love and use their Leapsters so much that new games are definitely going under the tree. N, R & K wait in the car while I run in to grab a couple of games. I get to the aisle (and stopped to check out the Roboraptor that’s going on sale on Black Friday…that might be going under the tree too!) The games are all sold out except for Batman, Princesses, and Cars. Cars they already have, Princesses is a no. Batman is a K-2nd grade counting game so that might be cool. In some of the spots for the sold-out games they have raincheck pads but they don’t have them for the other game I’m most interested in picking up (Creature Creator or something like that) I snag one of the other raincheck tickets because I’m not sure it will make a difference and go up to the register. The Totally Awesome Cashier calls a manager over to check, and yes, it does matter, each raincheck pad is numbered to correspond to the actual game. She rings me up for Batman and I say I’ll go to customer service to get my raincheck. I go to pay for the Batman game and realize that I’ve left my purse in the car. Digging in my pockets turns up $15.75 — 15 cents less than I need to purchase the game. I apologize to the TAC and ask if she’ll hold the game and I’ll go to the car and get my wallet. I call N on the cell phone to let him know that I’ll be heading out to grab my wallet, and he says never mind because R needs to use the potty so he’s coming in anyway. I get my raincheck issue taken care of in the meantime, get back in line and buy the game. K is with me in line and the TAC is being even cooler by making sure he doesn’t spot the game. He informs her that his name is K-I-E-R-A-N, just like that, spells it out.
Hokay. Game is bought and secured in my oversized purse. We still have a BJ’s run to make so we decide to grab a quick dinner at Cafe Tarzhay. While we are there eating, TAC comes in on her break, and comes over to say “Hi, K-I-E-R-A-N!” I love this girl.
Heading out of the store and something triggers my swiss-cheese brain (TM Sam Beckett) We need more nighttime diapers for K! I sigh, send the boys back out to the car and run back in to get them. He’s SO CLOSE to being potty trained and I think he’ll be out of the overnights before we could go through a BJs sized batch. I keep hoping so, anyway.
Get the diapers, get back in the shortest line, and GUESS WHO? It’s TAC again!!! She was on her auto-spiel “And how are you today” when she saw me and laughed. Asked if the boys were back in the car, I said yeah, I just forgot to grab these, and we went on our merry ways.
Coming home after BJ’s I realized there is something else I forgot to buy…but now I forget what that was anyway. Sigh.
Today was Christmas Picture Day. Oh what fun it is to pose on a goofy fake background…but I digress.
We all get dressed up in our natural colored sweaters & khakis, R with a green turtleneck underneath and K with a red one. Merrily we traipse out the door to head off to the photo studio. Knowing it is Christmas Photo Season we get there half an hour early for our appointment and I go to sign in.
We’re wending our way through the itty-bitty clothing racks and we see another mom with a stroller heading in the opposite direction. One look at our coordinated outfits and she offers a hearty “Good Luck!” Wait…was that a hearty good luck or a bitter and cynical good luck? I find the answer as we are signing in for our 5:00 PM appointment, when I hear them calling another appointment in. The 3:30 one. Uh-oh.
Meanwhile N and the boys have discovered a stray posing stool and N is letting the boys take turns spinning on it. WHY does he always have to be the fun parent? We have a long wait ahead of us in a VERY cramped studio area with a LOT of other families and he’s letting them spin and jump around. Now I’ll never get them to sit quietly and draw or play I Spy or something. (Not that I would have had much success with that anyway but a mom can dream, can’t she?) And my chances have gone from slim to none now that he’s started them playing on the props.
The mom in the white sweater is complaining. And complaining. And she’s complaining to the wrong people. Trust me, white sweater lady, the idea to book appointments every ten minutes is NOT THE STUDIO’S IDEA. This brilliant scheduling strategy came down from some anonymous corporate honcho who hasn’t stepped foot in an actual operating studio in YEARS.
Woman who is not a manager but seems to be in charge for the moment tells us we can wander off and come back at 5:20 to check in. So off we go to the arcade where the boys are given a dollar each to spend as they see fit. At 5:20 we dutifully head back up to the studio where not-the-manager scolds N for giving her the wrong cell phone number. She called it, you see, to let us know it would be another 15 minutes or so before they’d be ready for us. And when she called, it went to an answering machine. So it MUST have been a wrong number.
We decide to hang out in the marginally less crowded waiting area. I attempt to comb the boys’ hair. White sweater lady is complaining (still? again? who knows?) this time about the quality of the images on the monitor. They shoot with film but each shot uploads to the monitor so you can see it and order your sheets and packages. Then I see J, who I used to work with at that other portrait studio, we chat for half a second and she tells me that S is working there too now. She waxes nostalgic about how big the boys have gotten and then dashes back into another sitting. (She knew me when I was pregnant with K)
Suddenly, could it be? Yes! It’s OUR TURN! Yay yippee woohoo wheeeeeeeee!!! We go in, do our thing, pose, smile, click and all is well. Head out, look over our pics, we have a couple of good ones! Jackpot! Join the portrait club, place our order and go on our merry way.
And now, tomorrow, I get to try and get a home photo of the boys together for our Christmas card, since we weren’t paying their prices for those! Yippie Yi Yay. Yeah.
Well 2005 has come and gone and here we are on the first day of 2006. I am hoping for many things to change in our lives this coming year. Obviously a big goal is to get more financially on track. I would very much like to get my depression and other personal problems under control as well. With that come other projects such as finally getting our home organized and cleaned a little more regularly.
I was not on my best behavior today at all. Without going into gory details I behaved badly and ungratefully towards some people I should really not feel that way about at all. Luckily N handled the situation tactfully (as is usual for him) and has promised not to reveal my moment of pique.
So here’s to a Happy New Year filled with improvements on all levels, and hopefully a big improvement on attitude and situation by this time next year!
Happy 2006 to all loved ones, may you have a year full of love, luck, laughter, and life!
I don’t get the whole muss and fuss about people in stores saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. It’s just as cheerful, and it covers all your bases. And it’s a heck of a lot easier to say than happy Chrismahanakwanzica!!!!
This is one topic that has been way blown out of proportion, in my opinion anyway.
