I’m here

Sorry.

I didn't mean to drop off the face of blogland. It happened gradually.

Chris took longer to "return to normal" than we anticipated (but he's got a clean bill of health after all the testing..it's all good)

then i typed up a grateful post on nov. 30th and never finished it.

then there were those lovely holidays and all the fluff that goes along with them. and it was great fluff. truly. but it left me behind the eight ball a bit.

then photoshop decided to quit working. after a week of back and forth with adobe support, it appears that it's a vista v. photoshop issue. so now i have to buy either the upgrade for photoshop or the upgrade to win 7. sigh. that wasn't exactly in the budget this month.

so now i can't edit photos, make scrapbook pages…and consequently, i haven't posted to the blog. but i'm working on it. i installed the free trial of lightroom in the hopes of being able to edit pics soon (big learning curve first) and i will resolve the photoshop issue as well because i'm going a little stir crazy not being able to create.

for now, know that we are all alive and well.

zoe is growing out of clothes and shoes (a rarity for her) and we are baffled as she still eats next to nothing.

tori is getting very excited for her upcoming performances of annie jr. at the end of the month. lots of rehearsals. swim team's winter swim starts this weekend as well. her other favorite activity.

connor is wrestling, writing a research paper, figuring out his course schedule for high school next year, working on his solo for solo/ensemble next month (or rather he NEEDS to be working on his solo more), doing the scouting thing (prep hikes for philmont, meetings, camp outs) and generally being the busiest person in the family.

chris is working hard, feeling good and looking forward to a good year with his company. he too has philmont prep, scout campouts and has taken on a new volunteer job with our youth council at church. the travel schedule is starting to pick up again as well.

and i'm doing POTD this year (that is 'picture of the day') and taking pictures every single day. i missed one day, but took 2 the following day. interestingly, i've only taken one photo of a person so far. i'm sure that will change but i find shooting things right now to be a little less intimidating. i hope to be able to add a link on the sidebar of the blog to my flickr account once i'm back up and running with editing software. i've started a new bible study, a new yoga session and i want to walk 1000 miles this year. my girlfriend did that and then made a page about it and i thought the idea was brilliant. i need to move more and this is a good way to start….so that's the plan. i need to get the treadmill up and running (we have non functioning outlets in our basement) and have a go. i'm still struggling with being tired, COLD and run down but i'm slowly working to correct that. this year is the year to get myself balanced.

so, thanks for asking about the blog, begging me to post on the blog, etc. i will post pics as soon as i am  able.

love!

Ice cream is to Tampons as Peanut Butter is to Jelly

they are fine things on their own, but even better together.

i've been to the store at least 4 times in the past 3 days knowing that my monthly visitor was coming soon (as in my body was SCREAMING that it was coming soon…..ahh gotta love being a woman) and i still forgot to buy any feminine hygiene products. and there were NONE in my house.  just not a good situation.

so last night, after choir practice chris asked me to stop and pick up some ice cream.  we'd had a long day with a funeral. we'd had to leave the house at 8am and got home just in time to pick up the girls from school at 3:30pm. and that was with leaving the banquet after FOUR courses….and we never got dessert. gotta love italian catholic events. wow.

so you don't read this and think me callous, this was the funeral for my neighbor's mom. i love my neighbor to pieces and i ache for her, but i didn't really know her mom. we were there as support for her and her family. i also came home and made them 2 different meals for dinner last night.

as i'm driving to target i realize that i'm walking into the store to buy 2 things. ice cream and tampons.  since we're on a "bit" of a budget here as there's not much income at the moment, i couldn't really justify buying misc. stuff.  but how would you feel walking up to the check out (and why don't they have self checkouts to save some of this embarrassment anyway? target….get self checkout!!!) so i walk around a clearance aisle and get some organic fruit strips for the kids lunches. i rationalize it because they are on clearance AND organic. that's not nearly as misc. as say, preservative loaded twinkies. i also picked up some face lotion for chris…i thought he might be out (actually turns out this was a pretty good guess on my part.)

so i walk up to the check out with tampons, ice cream, face lotion and organic-on-clearance fruit strips thinking that will not make it so obvious. of course, the first cashier i come to is a friend of mine.

the thoughts going through my head are "do i play this up with her or go to another cashier i don't know and avoid the ice cream tampon discussion?"

i decide to go to her lane because i knew she'd say something. and of  course she did.

jen: nice combo

me: yeah i think ice cream and tampons go together like peanut butter and jelly.

jen: yeah, now all you need are pickles (laughing)….i'm kidding.

me: um, i don't think chris would think that was funny since he can't do that anymore….

should've gone to the clerk i didn't know.

Happy New Year

Yeah, i'm a bit behind in posting my new year post but not as late as one might think. I agree with Torm that the new year doesn't officially start until the kids go back to school. THAT is when the new year filled with  new possibilities actually starts because the routine resumes and well, the kids get out of the house. love them dearly but it was a long christmas break. many years we go to ohio for a bit of new year's and this year we did not. so it was a low key hang out at home and read books, play the new wii and watch movies vacation.

i managed to get sucked into the sookie stackhouse books. read 6 of them over break plus a few other books. the kids were gun ho to play the new wii that we bought off of a guy from chris' office. it is fun i have to admit.

christmas eve saw us at church for two services. we took the kids to the 6pm and chris and i sang in the gospel choir. we sang "here comes the "son" by the beatles plus a few others and had a good time. then chris and i returned to church for the traditional 11pm candelight service for the first time in 10 years. we had been alternating years but connor was old enough to be home with the kids plus they were all asleep.

i didn't take pictures on christmas morning. we just enjoyed the morning, but i did manage my annual chrismon tree photo on christmas eve at church. if i had actually managed to do christmas cards this year, this would have been a nice photo to use.

or maybe this one….

season greetings from zoe, connor, tori and tiffany truffles (with the dark chocolate eyes…literally)

whoa….my computer has many issues right now but one of them is my screen is off. so between my really really bad photography skills, wrong iso and my screen colors being off….that crismon photo looks like it is glowing. oy. well i suppose crappy photos are better than no photos.

my favorite christmas moment was right after the kids got us up. we tell them they are not allowed to wake us up until 7am because we get home pretty late from church. they do respect that but that doesn't mean they aren't up at 6:10am whispering loudly and running up and down the stairs. then they come in singing "we wish you a merry christmas now get out of bed so we can open our presents". that's not how i remember the words to that song but it worked. so after waking us, they woke zo (who is not old enough to be up that early…yet) with the same diddy and we all headed downstairs. then tori told us that before we opened presents, she wanted to say a prayer and thank God for the greatest gift of all.

it was such a sweet moment. so we all gathered on the floor in front of the tree and tori proceeded to thank God for his Son and pray for safe travels for her grandparents. it totally made christmas for chris and i.

christmas was ridiculous as always. there were sweatshirts, pajamas, littlest pet shop, doll beds, chapstick (we have a hundred of these i swear but the girls can never find one when they need one), a camping sleeping bag, dumbbells, a new ipod, books, dvds and of course the wii. chris' parents drove down to see us on christmas day and we had a really nice time. the day after christmas we went downtown to enjoy tori's birthday present of tickets to wicked. we had lunch down the street from the theater and then had time to see the macy's christmas windows, the christmas sales and the walnut room christmas tree. i've never been to the walnut room and it was fun to see the chicago icon.

i can't tell you how many compliments the girls got on those coats. they are hand me downs from a dear friend who has 3 daughters two of whom are about a year older than mine so we get lucky some times. this is by far the luckiest time. these coats are just darling and the girls wore their special dresses (which were also red and black) and looks adorable.

after macy's it was time for the show. this is a horrible photo (bad lighting, crowded lobby and the wrong ISO) but i had to document the trip and they get really touchy if you take pics of the actual show.

wicked was a big hit. grandma and grandpa managed to get tickets as well (although not with us) and the girls sat on booster seats which helped a lot. zo was a bit scared with some of the loud noises and didn't understand the story but she knew the music and enjoyed clapping.

after wicked we hit watertower place because tori had birthday money burning a hole in her pocket that was earmarked for the brand new american girl store. after shopping and a bite to eat we headed home. it was a very full day.

that probably added to the veg out state that we assumed after that weekend. the downtime was nice, i just wasn't as productive as i should have been…but the books sure were good!

I Wish

I wish the Christmas tree was decorated. but i'm glad it is at least in the house. it's 12' tall!
I wish the lights on the little tree in the entry way worked (only the bottom half of the tree lights up)
I wish the lights on the garland on the fireplace worked
I wish the lights were on the garland that is supposed to be around the front door, but they didn't work so i had to unstring them and I haven't found the time to restring the garland.
I apparently have lighting issues.
I wish varsity wrestling tournaments didn't take 7 hours on a Saturday when I really needed to be doing other things (although i wouldn't have missed connor pinning those 2 guys, losing 2 other matches and getting a 4th place medal for anything)
I wish there weren't boxes all over the house although i'm grateful for all the gifts that have arrived from the family and for internet shopping.
I wish i had it together more than i do.

I hope the kids remember the effort and the magic, not the broken garland lights and the boxes.

I am in love with Anquan Boldin

I haven't talked much about fantasy football because, well, i'm not doing that well. i am 4-4-2 and although i would love to be the winner since i'm the only girl, it's taken me awhile to figure out my lineup.

before last night's game, i was down 21 points and had only one wide receiver left to play (my opponent was finished) and i know anquan boldin is good but i didn't know how good. i picked him up on a lark really. just trying to find someone who could get me some points at wide receiver (because it is NOT braylon edwards…oy.)

21 points from a wide receiver is tough. you get 1 point for every 10 receiving yards and then of course 6 points for touchdowns. but you have to have a lot of touches to get 21 points. so i was hopeful but not optimistic. and then it was the 4th quarter and i found myself only down by 5 and anquan boldin caught the ball for the winning touchdown and i won! and not only did i win against my opponent, but i also managed the high score for the week and won $25! that is the second time i've won the week and i was pretty darn excited. even did a happy dance.

so now anquan is my golden boy who will lead my receiving team this week. i hope plaxico burress gets a few more touches this week as well…..otherwise i'll have to go out hunting for another receiver next week.

A little here a little there

i think i need to do a brain purge like torm. seriously, there's just too much swirling around in my head and most of it seems to come to the surface when i'm trying to go to bed at midnight….

here's a copy/paste of an email i sent to my parents (who are cruising the atlantic after skirting spain, africa and portugal…i know, tough gig) that summarizes last weekend. wish i had a photo. didn't take one on saturday and by sunday the lake was gone.

well crap. it's gone already. my computer is 82% full so i'm constantly deleting, emptying my temp files, backing up, etc. to keep it running as i'm still buried under that big rock i mentioned last week….guess i wasn't fast enough to post this.

but it bears mentioning….

ok, that's a good purge for now. hope to be back with game pics on monday.

peace out people (as tori would say)

It’s a really big rock

the one that i'm under that is.

huge.

it's the biggest project i've ever had to do on the shortest deadline (even less than the Find Your Groove book deadline of 12 weeks) and it's crunch time. so i'm crunching. and not sleeping (not for lack of trying, i know i need sleep to function, it's just not coming easily) so i'm heading out to the coffee shop after this post to get something leaded to help me get through my work today.

but i'm really really excited about this rock. seriously excited. can't wait to unveil it and i'm really honored that i was chosen to be a part of it.

and i think this project is a good excuse not to blog, but alas, life keeps going on and i want to record, remember, post photos while the memories are still fresh.

so here's a very random update of the past weekend/week:

tori had her first soccer game on saturday. there are no photos. it was a rough game for the first half goalie and i decided that i didn't need to take pictures of her crying in the goalie box. she got better as the game went on. just needed to get back in the groove.

last thursday and this monday, we got 3" of rain. it was welcome precipitation. i find it ironic that in the midwest we can welcome the remnants of a storm that created such havoc in the carribbean.

connor had football game #2. they traveled up to a brand new middle school about 40 minutes away. the track and field was brand new and very well done. they had this cool inflatable tunnel that looked like a helmet that the home team could run thru….and then a 3'x2' scoreboard that was so small (and under the inflatable) that you couldn't really see it much less read it. seemed like a slight mismanagement of funds to me, but what do i know?

this time the chargers were victorious. they won 12-0. but they still screwed up the jerseys and once again, 3 kids had to go without numbers or try to use medical tape to make numbers. the coach was NOT happy. connor got in for 6 plays and played better than the first game. i have not been impressed with this expensive league that we have put him in. i think we made a mistake, but there's not much we can do about it now. i just hope that he can learn some skills that will be beneficial for next year during practice. because even with the lead, the coach still played most of his starters on defense. just so the other team wouldn't score.


meanwhile, 17 kids stood on the sidelines without getting much of a chance to play. connor was one of the lucky ones…he actually got in the game.

and we also watched the debut of miss zoe on the soccer field this weekend as well. she had her first kindergarten soccer game which is by far my favorite soccer to watch. i loved it when tori was in this program and it is so fun to watch zo go after it now that she is 5. she loves soccer and has no fear of the ball, the boys or falling down. she actually scored the first goal of the game and went on to score another one later on. they play co-ed, so it's nice to see the girls getting some points. i can only show one pic from the game for now…need the rest of the pics for my "rock" WINK but she was stinkin' cute.


check out the socks. they are completely doubled over back down to her ankles. sarah actually wore hers like leg warmers all the way up her thighs…hee! and the shin guards are peewee size. they are still too wide around her leg, but at least they are small enough from shin to ankle. oh, and those cleats are size 10.5. i was worried they wouldn't make cleats small enough for her.

finally, a quick fantasy football update…..
the first week was not great for me but i learned a lot. i lost my game (you are matched up against other owners in your league) to the commish of the league by 20+points. but i figured out my scout team, did my research and was online the minute you could pick up free agents and i gutted my team.

yeah, some people think that you shouldn't make hasty decisions, but since the draft for me was such a new experience i think that my free agency picks make sense. course ask me how i feel after i go up against MY HUSBAND this weekend.

ok, this is all my alloted time for this blog post.

The weekend at the lakehouse

We arrived in Hayward late friday afternoon. we were given use of a 2 bedroom lake house by chris’s partner. he also offered us access to his big house (garage only) so we could use the toys on that lake as well. here are a few of the things we’ve done so far:

bought $300 worth of groceries and cleaning supplies at wal mart (um, this is the “party” house)

washed all the sheets in the house

washed all the dishes (there aren’t many, i bought measuring stuff and a cupcake pan) and the whole kitchen (you have to know my husband….so classic him)

built a charcoal grill

swept the whole house

cleaned all the carpets

febreezed all the furniture

collected “clam” shells

tooled around on a sea doo – these are fun!

jumped off a water trampoline

got stung by 2 wasps (tori)

driven a paddle boat

played in a kayak

pee’d in the lake (tori, zoe)

pee’d in the trees (zoe, connor)

grateful for a strong bladder (me)

taken the fishing boat out for a ride

gone fishing at dusk in the fishing boat (unsuccessful but we learned a lot)

gotten milo to go swimming…but very reluctantly

taken rides in the jeep

watched amateur log rolling while eating breakfast (it was the lumberjack world championships this past weekend)

walked downtown hayward with really good homemade ice cream cones

chris got to take the family to one of his favorite bbq places…..famous dave’s (and it’s the original restaurant)

attempted to take the pontoon boat out but they forgot to tell us about the kill switch. hope to do that today.

and now the boys are golfing and the girls and i are going to make cupcakes (hence the cupcake pan) and play in the water.

i can’t post photos because they are on my computer (this is chris’s laptop) but it is beautiful here. here’s to more adventures this week.

Today

…was the first true summer day we’ve had. it was hot, sticky, muggy, hot…..i think we hit 90. we’ve been spoiled this summer with some delightful weather. we actually wore pants and sweatshirts to watch the fireworks this year…
…i paid $4.11/gal. for gasoline this morning. and i had to wait in line because that was the cheapest in town by at least .14/gal. at 7:45pm tonight i drove by that same gas station and it was $4.35/gal….the highest in town.
…i signed the girls up for swim lessons starting next week. zoe has never had a lesson and tori has had some private lessons (so i don’t worry about her drowning) but she still can’t actually swim. hoping the lessons will help a bit before our vacation to a lake house at the end of the month.
…signed connor up for steel drum lessons. if you are counting…that is his 3rd instrument this summer (french horn, regular drums, steel drums and we’re not counting hand bells as he’s off until the fall….)
…started reading “the time traveler’s wife” and i am really enjoying it so far..,
…chris had office surgery on his severely ingrown toenail. the good news is that it will be better in a few days, the bad news is that i don’t think he’ll be wearing shoes again tomorrow…

…dropped connor off at a city council meeting as part of his citizen in the community merit badge…dry stuff those meetings…

…i wondered why typepad switches the spacing after i do a draft save…

Dear Mom

Dear Mom, 

I was thumbing through a magazine and
found this list of “mom rules” that someone wrote. I thought they were pretty
good and most of them were ones that you had taught me either by telling me or
by doing. I thought you would enjoy the list. 

My mother’s 15 simple rules
By Ana Marie Cox 

1. The legs are the last thing to go.

2. When you’re sad, don’t fight it –
accessorize it. Get some gin and cigarettes, then play Edith Piaf until the CD
starts to skip.

3. Knowing how to roast red peppers will
impress more people than you’d think.

4. It’s ok to read at the table.

5. But it’s never ok to watch tv at the
table.

6. You can always substitute white wine
for vermouth in a martini.

7. Everything tastes better if it’s
served by candlelight.

8. If nothing matches, no matter. That’s
just another reason for candlelight.

9. Do not try to order in French at a
French restaurant unless you are French.

10. Unexpected gifts are the most
appreciated.

11. At work, find the people who can fix
things – the copier, mistakes in your expense report – and then be very, very
nice to them.

12. The cheap caviar is still quite good.

13. There are five things that will
always make you happy if you have them in your home: flowers, a lovely place to
eat a meal, a chilled bottle of white wine, Goldfish crackers, and a cat.

14. If you must leave a party and you
don’t have a good excuse, spill something on yourself.

        15. The proper way to end a conversation
is “I’m sorry to let you go.” 

So as I read through this list, I
wondered who the heck Edith Piaf was…..and then I started thinking about the
things that you had taught me. And I came up with my own list. 

My Mom’s simple rules and important
lessons

1. A box of Kraft Mac and Cheese is a
great comfort meal in a pinch.

2. A Kleenex in your robe pocket is
surprisingly handy.

3. Sitting at the kitchen table after
school and letting your kids talk about their day will be one of their fondest
memories.

4. I still think of myself as a “summer”
and to this day, those are my favorite colors to wear.

5. Your face is not finished until you
put on lipstick.

6. A well wrapped present is more fun to
give.

7. Herbs make just about everything
taste better.

8. Expect to be treated well by your
husband. Because you are worth it. Period.

9. Watch what you eat while you are
newly pregnant, because by the 9^th month you aren’t going to give a
shit.

10. Quality time is bogus. Kids need you
when THEY need you and that is rarely at a convenient time.

11. Do not sacrifice having a family for
a career.

12. The smallest thing on your body is
your wrists…and I used to kind of laugh at that comment. Now I’m not laughing
so much.

13. Good champagne…really good champagne
is really good.

14. It is just easier to make sure there
is the same number of gifts for all the kids.

15. There is not a rule that says you
have to show your family everything you bought on your shopping spree. In fact
it is better if you don’t.    

        16. Everything tastes better with nuts.

 I’m sure I could go on and on because
I have learned a lot and carried many of your lessons with me on my own Mom
journey. But I wanted to just say thank you for all the great advice. And tell
you on this Mother’s day that I appreciate you and love you. I hope we can
drink really good champagne together again really soon. 

Love,
wen