Saturday, May 31, 2008

We're here!

We safely made it to Oregon. Amelia is in heaven that her family is all here to play with. She is being spoiled rotten by Grandma and Great Grandma, and I'm sure she would move in and live here forever if she could. My nieces have all grown so much I am amazed at how big they all are now. My little Lillian is walking and running. I forgot that it's been almost a year since I've seen the kids. The visit is going well, yesterday we went to the mall with the grandmas and cousins. That was an adventure in itself. With all the girls in the family, everyone is oohing and ahhing over little Anthony. The trip up here really wasn't as bad as it could have been. We stayed in a nice hotel in Ashland, and the kids did pretty well in the car. I think next time though I should just get a foam mattress so we can sleep in the car. Just kidding! It bothers me to pay so much to stay in a hotel that we are in for less than 8 hours but oh well. At least it was a nice hotel....

Friday, May 30, 2008

Um yeah.

So I'm waaaaaay behind on the posts I have to do. I should just sit here and write a bunch of posts about random stuff like vehicle tracking and vaccum cleaners, but I really don't have time. So I'll come back later and write some more. Amelia needs my attention again. At least Anthony is asleep.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Do something good!



I have two friends, Lori and Marlene, who are both doing awesome things to make someone else's life better. I've done what I could do (donate to their causes) now I'm asking you to help too.

Lori is the mother of two awesome kids and is hoping to grow the size of her family. She is working very hard at raising money so that she and her husband can adopt two special needs children. Adoptions don't come cheap and the cost is in the tens of thousands of dollars. To help her fund raising, Lori is raffling off one of her awesome quilts. The tickets are only $5 and go to a great cause. If you go to her blog you will find the info to enter the raffle on the top right corner.

Marlene has been a friend of mine since before I had children or even knew my husband. She is a wonderful, caring person. Her fund raising is for the Avon walk for breast cancer. This is her second time walking ( I think, correct me if I'm wrong Mar,) and I am so proud of her! She is hoping to raise $2500 before she walks in a little over a month. You can visit her blog here and the page all about her walk and the place to donate is here.

So there you go. If you were looking for something awesome to do with an extra $10, then go see Lori and buy a ticket to her raffle, and then go visit Marlene and help fund the fight against breast cancer. If you've got more to donate, that's even better, but if not that's okay too. Every little bit helps!
I have been a bad blogger lately! Just not online as much as I once was I guess. Darn kids are cutting into my internet time! Just kidding, I love my kids. Well most of the time. Then there are the days where I want to string them up by their toes but that never really happens. But that's not the point. The point is, um, well, I forgot what my point was. Sorry about that. Anyway.

Today is the beginning of a three day weekend, Jeff has Monday off which is great since the kids and I are leaving for our big adventure later in the week. Yes I am insane. Bright and early one morning in the near future, I will leave for LAX. There we will pick up my cousin who is flying in from Florida (also insane) and we will head for the great Northwest to see family. Then after we've visited for a while we'll turn around and do it again in reverse, leaving my poor cousin at the airport to fly home to Florida. Poor girl!

I am making my lists and checking rechecking to make sure I have everything we need for this trip. I have done the trip many times from here to my family (yes we have established already that I am insane.) However, this will be my first trip with such a young baby, not to mention with two kids, as well as my first trip that has to be timed exactly for a flight home for Connie. Usually we just go whenever and come back whenever. My biggest fear though is this is our first trip with a potty trained Amelia. In the past when I've done this trip I would stop every 2-3 hours, change diapers, I'd go to the bathroom, we'd eat some food and get back on the road. This usually takes me about 15 minutes. I don't think I'll be able to drive at my normal pace with minimal stops this time.

Oh well at least we'll have a DVD player this trip! That totally cancels out the whole stopping to let a 3 year old pee every 10 minutes right??

blah

So I've still been going to the gym. Not as consistently as I'd like, but I am going. I am not sure how much I'll get to go while I'm on vacation, Amelia does not do well in the childcare, besides it's expensive. Someday I would like to have my own exercise equipment, but we don't really have room for it now. I have been doing workout videos on the days I can't go the gym. I'll be weighing in again after I get back from my trip. That should be interesting. LOL

Friday, May 23, 2008

I am working on a little side project and I need to find an online free program of some sort that will use random number generators. Can anyone recomend one? It really just needs to be a simple one. I've been searching a little but I'm just not finding what I"m looking for. I know it's out there, I just can't find it.

Friday, May 16, 2008

It's about time...

At the ripe old age of 3 years and a few months, Amelia can finally say her name!(well sort of.) When she was first learning to speak, she called herself Yaya. Then as her vocabulary grew more complicated, she added a syllable and changed it up a bit, and became "Amaya". She has called her self that for quite a while. Then all of the sudden it was gone, and now she will tell you her name is Ameeleeya. Its a little long and drawn out, but it's definitely there. My little girl is growing up.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

My new toy


Look at what I got today. After months of no cell phone ( I lost it, then the day I found it, it went in the washer and didn't survive) I have one I like. It's an MP3 player, has an FM radio inside, besides just being cute. I'm optimistic that this phone can survive me and my children. And if not, that's what insurance is for right?

Wordless Wednesday






(If you look closely under Amelia's left eye you can see her bruise from her crash on the roller coaster. Oh and yes, I made the duck bow.)

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Tuesday Ramblings

What is up with all the spam in my email today? Gmail is usually great at filtering it, but today I have had a bunch of emails promoting Viagra, Phentermine 37.5 mg and even one asking me to help a Nigerian prince get some money to the US and if I help him, I will make a lot of money myself. Right.

Amelia is cracking me up today. She is very much into the dramatic play, and loves to be a kitty or a mermaid or whatever and she totally takes on that role. When she is a kitty she will try and sit on my chest like that cat would, she hisses and claws when she is mad and purrs and rubs on my legs when she is happy. It's pretty funny, I think she will be an actress one day. Anyway, (what was my point again?? oh yeah the acting like different critters.) So today she told me she was a robot and started talking in a mechanical voice and sounding like a robot. I asked her to go put her nighttime diaper in the garbage. Her response?(in her little robot voice of course.) "The robot is broken. Maya the robot can't put the diaper in the garbage." So I responded in my best robot voice "The mommy robot says you have to go sit on your bed in time out to be repaired if you can't put your diaper in the garbage. You choose." And she told me Maya the robot was all fixed and she went and threw the diaper away. Hey if you can't beat em, join em! And that was one less battle I had to fight today.

The Last Lecture

Have you heard about The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch? He's the professor who is dying of pancreatic cancer. Rather than curling up in a ball and complaining about what he's been dealt, he decided to do what he could for his family to help prepare them for what's coming. He said it was like his family was getting ready to be thrown over a cliff and he wouldn't be there to catch them. But, he said he did have some time left to make some nets. I would only hope that I could be that optimistic when faced with a disease with a 5% survivability over 5 years.

If you haven't yet seen his video it's available online in a million different places, you should go check it out. It might give a new perspective on things in life.

What he is facing is one big fear in life, that something will happen to me and I will miss out on raising my babies. I can't imagine what it's like to be given a death sentence when you have small children. ( I think his kids were 4, 2 and 3 months when he was diagnosed.) I'm sure it happens all the time, and most people don't get the coverage that this guy does. It's still an interesting lecture.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Busy Weekend!


This weekend was crazy. We had two birthday parties to go to, and I also had some bows to make, birthday presents to buy as well as Target and Grocery shopping. I'm tired! The Saturday party was Diego and I took both kids. It was a little overwhelming just because I would get distracted with Anthony and lose track of Amelia, which freaks me out. Especially because this party was in a front yard so the kids weren't really contained. Luckily the other moms helped a lot with Anthony, which is nice. The party today was a a princess party, it was so fun. I left Anthony home with Daddy, so I got to relax a little more and let Amelia run around. We stayed so long that the party givers didn't know we were still at their house. Us playgroup Mom's were all hiding in the back yard letting our kids run amok. It was great fun! I think Jeff and Anthony had fun together today. Now I'm going to make fish tacos for dinner.

Poor Amelia is so tired she fell asleep in her princess dress in the car, and didn't even wake up when I put her into her bed. Oh and I think she is going to have a black eye when she wakes up. Jenn has this awesome roller coaster toy at her house. Amelia went down the roller coaster and another girl walked out in front of her. Of course Amelia crashed into her and got smacked in the face with what she had in her hand. It was already bruising by the time we left the party.

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Amelia

Amelia is such an amazing kid. (Of course I think that, I'm her mom! ) Some of the things she says and does just crack me up. A few minutes ago she jumped up on the couch while yelling at me to watch out. Then she jumped onto the back of the couch and told me "Mama look out there's a big wave coming. We have to get out of the way!" Then I told her to get off the back of the couch, and she said "phew it's safe now. The big wave is all gone." Now she is running around the house with my feather duster from flylady.net. (On a side note, I love this duster! It's so soft, I think it's made from ostrich feathers, I know it works better than any other duster I've had.)

The last few days she has been watching The Letter Factory DVD. After watching it for a few days, and playing with a toy that does the letter sounds, she now knows what sound each letter makes. I am amazed at how quickly she learns and remembers new things!

She woke up in the middle of the night last night because her brother was fussing, and then she was up for two hours in my bed playing and talking to me. Of course it was exhausting because I just wanted to go to sleep, but she says some of the sweetest things when it's just her and me. She kept patting my head telling me, "don't worry Mama, I'll protect you from the monsters. I said go home monsters! Go home to your mommies!"

No real point to this post other than to say I love my kid.


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