In the Mind of a Mom

holy long time, Batman!

2009-10-15T12:09:00.002-04:00

yup I haven't blogged all summer. holy bejeezus.. not like I have tons of readers anyway. I mostly post on facebook these days, but usually I copy the post here, for my loyal fans.. Thanks mom. :P

Leaves are are in peak color, not at bright as other years, but nice none the less.

From 2009-10-11

Columbus Day weekend turned out to be a blast! a long lost friend of mine decided to take a ride out here for a day and hang out. Her daughter came and hung out too

From 2009-10-11

This picture was taken at the park at the end of our day near our swim area. the kids had a blast playing and hanging out. we spent several hours at yankee candle for their fall festival and painted pumpkins, got faces painted, made some wax hand molds.. and some pictures

Evan has started kindergarten this year, and loves it :) He is learning all sorts of neat things like sign language, dance and tae kwon do! His favorite subject is Math.. (he can add and subtract very well), and he can even read some.. Holy Crap!!

I have been super busy with work lately driving all around and doing lab stuff.. in fact I should be doing that now, but I felt the urge to waste a few moments.. I have also been working on crocheting a few things. I'm real lousy about photographing my things though. I have made a few hats recently and now I"m working on a Wubbzy doll. If you don't know Wubbzy you obviously don't have small children in your life!. . my 2 year old loves him.

I have recently unpacked our SNES and N64 and boy have I missed them.. the husband and I have been having a great time with the SNES while the nearly 6 year old loves the mario kart on N64. the Wii still gets used as well.. mostly for golf these days.

so much has been going on, I really should take some more time to blog about things. I always read other peoples blogs rarely to I write my own.. such is life

how did mom's do it back in the day... staying home with the kids for so long...

2009-07-27T21:35:00.001-04:00

If you haven't checked out the pictures that Christine took, then you should.. I only have a few of my own as my only camera is on my phone. We had a pretty good week if I do say so myself. Of course there were funny things and frustrating things, but whatever... go with the flow, right? Poor Brady got poison ivy from the little park at the Allen street school. oops. my kids never got poison ivy there, but she did comment that it may have been growing under the stairs. Thankfully It's not that bad of a case of it, but still crappy nonetheless. We had fun playing at the park

. We also enjoyed the parks at North Parish, Green River School, and Unity Park.
Another day I dragged the gang to Yankee Candle, not so shop, but to play. They have never been!

we were playing the trumpeting horns like band geeks.. lol.. The funny thing is Christine tried first unsuccessful, but then I did, and I was successful!! (funny seeing as how she was the one who played the wind instruments while I played percussion) then she tried again and wanted to try taps but the opening was too small to do this without an actual mouthpiece. We taught Ev and James how to play it like a trumpet too. I don't even want to think about all the germs that were on that thing. whatever.. Liam playing it reminded me of those Ricola cough drop commercials.
Several times we played in the sprinkler that Christine brought (and left for us, accidentally)

let's rub mud on each other

the boys had a blast playing the the resulting mud puddle.
Evan and James were pretty much inseparable except when there were shenanigans and biting. Poor Brady was very sensitive to Liam telling him No! all the time. but if we told Liam to be nice he would then gesture to brady to c'mon that it was okay.. It was frustrating and cute all at the same time.

My sister takes more pictures than I do. Surprised?? not me. I think it's genetic. we can't do cartwheels either. never could and I don't know of a single cousin on my mom's side that could.
One of the nights she asked me where we could go to see some mountains.. "in Greenfield?" i said... "I think you actually have to be in the mountains... oh wait we can go to Poet's Seat Tower.." and so we did, and I nearly drove by the road. lol We saw the most gorgeous sunset. It was bright red and unfortunately our cameras didn't catch the color

On Saturday the weather was finally good enough to head to the River Beach! and so we did we got wet splashed and played in the sand. Can anyone else in Western Ma do a backfloat besides me? I have not found anyone that can.. I find this odd and so does my sister. as we were leaving the kids decided to get wet in the puddle in the parking lot.

only my kids swim in the big ass puddle at the swim area...

. weirdos.. the water was really warm though!

apparantly I was betty crocker 90% of the week and Christine was the maid. not intentional though and not to say she didn't cook and I didn't clean, but that's how it worked out.

junior prom: revisited

2009-05-17T11:24:00.000-04:00

Jason and I went to the junior prom last night and had a nice time. my first prom was back in 1997, and my god, have things changed...

I realized that i have fallen off the hot and current music bandwagon, and apparantly it was some time ago. lol.. Us adults were playing name the tune, and the winner was clearly the 21 year old girlfriend of the new math teacher. ha. They played only 1 rock song, 3 slow songs, the new electric-twice, and the marcarena-ugh... no ymca, no twist, no shout.. none of what one would usually hear at a party. that was odd.

I realized that i also fell off the fashion bandwagon, and half the prom dresses worn, i didn't classify as prom dresses.. when did the mini prom dress become the latest style? just seemed weird to me, as I don't think anyone ever wore a a fancy mini dress to the prom, and i'm not talking just a shorter than floor length dress, i really do mean Mini.. as in barely covers the ass... it was at that point when I realized all the adult women where wearing black dresses... except the principal who was wearing a dressy pants style getup, that had black pants and a gold top, it was nice. Some girls wore flapper style outfits, i had no idea that was coming back. lol.

I realized that kids today dance in the same manner as we did as teenagers... don't the realize that "grinding" is soooo 10 years ago?! and then there was the everybody slow dancing to a song that sounded upbeat to us... and it wasn't even the end of the night when everyone was tired either.

I realized that the adults were concerned about where the dessert was..... and then it showed up.. score.. warm apple crisp! and then we were all about "where's the coffee?".

I realized that the last 30 minutes were the longest 30 minutes EVER, the other adults all seemed to notice to as we all had our phones out checking the time every 2 minutes.

I realized I learned to drive in heels last night! lmao.. it wasn't so bad. and if you know me you know that i don't normally wear dresses, let alone high heels. I think the last time I wore heels was at my wedding.

If you have talked to me in the recent weeks I may have told you about a dozen times that I was going to the prom.. Very excited about it. lol.. It was super fun to tell people I was going to the prom, considering my age, people looked at me funny, and I was highly looking forward to a night out of free food, and no kids. it's true. funny how your priorities change when you grow older...

all in all a nice time :)

mother's day

2009-05-07T08:04:00.003-04:00

a richie's life

2009-04-19T07:52:00.003-04:00

Recently a friend of mine who has had nothing but life long issues with his family, got an email from his brother who criticized who he is, who he was, and who he is trying to be. His brother pretty much told him that his life was better because he had all of these things that cost a lots of money.. a new $30k car, a brand new this and a brand new that, and after the long list, he also said he had $30k in his checking account, implying that because my friend didn't have any of that, he doesn't have a rich life. That really upset me, because it shows that my friends brother doesn't even know him, even the slightest bit.
I don't know what I would do without my mom and sister. Recently my sister and I were talking over photo comments about how we grew up poor, but we were absolutely happy children. We have no regrets about not having a dad growing up--being raised by a single mom (since I was 1 year old), and in general a simple lifestyle. We were happy, and we didn't have lots of money by any stretch of the words. Even now as a grown up I consider my life to be very rich, and I don't have any of those expensive things that my friends brother was so arrogant about. not even the $30k in my checking account! (don't get me wrong I wish I did) but there would be so much I would do with that money, including helping my family and my husband family as priorities.

I yam who I yam.. rootbeer anyone?

2009-03-30T18:42:00.004-04:00

Can you pinpoint at least 1 specific event from your youth, that has made you the way you are as an adult? I can... my entire adulthood isn't based on this one event, but it's a big part of my personality now. I was a girl scout as a child and liked it for the most part. This is not one of those times. I was in Clarissa Colliers mother's troop and it was rootbeer float night.
Well i don't like rootbeer, and the troop leader said that after everyone had some ice cream in their float that I could have a bowl of just ice cream. okay, no problem.. well I never got that bowl of ice cream. I was very upset, and sat there and watched every other girl there eat a root beer float, including the troop leader and the other moms.. becuase they "ran out". you would think that one of the adults would offer the poor girl some ice cream, but I dont' think they did.. all I know is that I was left out, and it felt miserable.
To this day I can't stand it when a child may feel left out, say at a birthday party, if a friend has Celiac, I'll make a gluten- free cake for them or cup cakes or something because my heart just breaks when something as simple as this happens, because it happened to me. I try to be as accomodating as possible in any given situation, and I don't think anything of it.
Who would've thought that such an event would have such an impact in my life?

A meme to do, thanks to Mom

2009-01-16T18:11:00.004-05:00

un Official rules:

* You must link back to the origin blog (I linked Snaggletooth)

* Post 7 facts about yourself, whatever you choose, long, short, ect.

* Post the rules, so they know what to do.

* Tag 7 folks, n link them so everyone can hurry up n visit.

* When you're done posting your facts, go comment on their blogs,

so they'll know they gotta do it, (for the fun of it).

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

(There's no nasty curse for not continuing the chain in this meme either...)

Want fun n games?

Want questions? Want more readers n comments?

Just DO IT! N tell 'em SnaggleTooth sent ya-

ok mom, here goes:

1. I taught myself how to crochet, and I love it... when I have yarn. I also like to sew and quilt when I get the chance but without a dedicted sewing room, it is difficult to find space that is occupied by clutter or in range of the kids' paws.

2. I want to go back to school and do what I always wanted as a child? guess... tv? nope.... guess again..... lol... I'll just tell you it's easier that way: teacher.. and I'm thinking of going towards elementary.. I just have to pass the tests and take some classes before I can enroll in a program. I've got to have some money too, atleast some money to pay the bills while I go to school so it has to wait until Evan is in Kindergarten (aka: free school). I can hopefully atleast take some of the pre-req's in the meantime

3. I'm super excited about the upcoming class reunion. I hope we can make it! and I'll be super bummed if I can't.. but I will do my damnest to be able to be there.

4. an easy one. I have 2children. boys in fact.. this is funny because my 1 and only sister also has 2 boys. My mom had 2 girls when she had wanted boys.. now she's got 4! I find it hard to raise the boys, I think, because we didn't have any in our family growing up.. I like to think that I'd have an easier time with girls, but I could be wrong.

5. when I was in High school the comments I got most frequently on my report cards: "concientious", "works well with others", and "too talkative". I hated working in groups. The teachers put me with the lazy and/or dumb kids thinking I could cajole them into doing work, when it never ever worked that way. Once in history class the group members didn't do anywork, so I gave up and did it myself, not including them on the assignment. I did tell the teacher that they did diddly squat.

6. I took 2 semesters of Finnish while in college. I really enjoyed it, but was unable to take any more semesters because my senior year the professor when on sabbatical in Germany for the year. I hardly remember it though which is too bad, but I did manage to retain a good chunk of Spanish in my brain, form the years I studied that.

7. My family is the most important thing in my life.. and not just the kids and such.. everyone!

seven people who I assign to this task..
Amanda * J
Becky K
Eileen D
Christine J
Kelly H
Kristen P
kim w

December already?!

2008-11-30T10:04:00.001-05:00

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving. We did. We spent the afternoon at my aunt and uncle's. It was mellow, and great. By mellow, I mean we were all able to be seated at 1 table, I think, for the first time ever, in the Wallace Thanksgiving History books. lol. so what if my kids filled up on snacks and wanted nothing to do with the dinner. Evan kept entertained by entertaining Uncle Don with sports peg board games, and Kevin shared his Wii. All was good. Evan fell asleep on the ride home, and Liam only got cranky when he realized he was hungry... and he was happy with the cheez-its.

We recieved Evan's school picture a week or so ago, it's amazing to see the difference in just one year... he is getting older and older looking each day. It's crazy and makes me feel old. lol

We've been so busy the last few weeks that Ican't believe December is tomorrow! And did I mention I'm ecstatic about driving to my sisters this weekend? Google says it should take 2 hours 40 minutes, but I don't drive the speed limit on Rt 2 or 495, so I expect that it will take less time than that if I don't have to make any stops, and with a travel time beginning at nap time, I don't plan on making stops.. let's hope Ev doesn't have to pee. lol We made it to Newton without any stops. It's possible. maybe.

It's been far too long since I saw my sister and nephews last, a year. It was last Christmas last time we were able to get together. Cost of gas during the warm season prohibited any long distance driving, except the week we spent in VT on vacation that we had planned before gas got super expensive. But it was worth it, we had a good time.

I've got to get the gifts wrapped up before we head down on Friday, and clothes to pack, not to mention, helping in Ev's class tomorrow, a day off Wedsday because dayceare is closed, and Evan's doctor's appointment, and teacher conference before we leave on Friday! AHH! why do I do this to myself. lol.

I had a dream.... and then I woke up

2008-10-31T07:11:00.000-04:00

I was back at Wareham High- not as and 18 year old, but as my current 28 year-old self. And I was a student. Apparantly it was half way through the year or so, and I had not come to class since september or something. I couldn't remember where my locker was. hmmm. i walk by the computer labs on the first floor to see Jeff Turlik teaching a class. He was in front of the class playing a song on his guitar. It was a recent Coldplay song. I stopped to listen (I like coldplay). Upon finsihing he says something along the lines of "many people consider this very harsh style in rock".. and all I could think was, I dont' think so.. but I woulld say System of a down or Serj Tankian as fairly harsh music..

I move on.. head upstairs via the foyer, and see Nik O. We wave and smile, and he mentions something about a reunion as I go past. I did not seem to think this was not normal- as if we've been friends since the days of Hammond school... lol I see Jeff T as I round the corner, and I say, "hey Jeff, what's going on?" his reply- "I'm Mr. Turlik here", "oh crap", I say, " I forgot", he says, "many other students are forgetting to call me that too". I wanted to ask him when he left Blue-Man Group,and went back to teaching, but he was gone.

I turn left and head down the hall and see the Phinn-dog. and we get talking. I say I don't remember what class I'm supposed to be in, and he brings me down to the teacher prep area- (which never existed when I was a student) at the end of the hall. The back window area was made in to a very nice very large teacher room. so big I think they took out 2 science rooms and had that space incorporated. I say to Malcom, 'wow this is a huge teacher's room", he says, "oh this isn't the real teacher room, this is the prep area", I said, "This room can fit three of my husband's teacher's room from where he teaches at" (wtf?) Oh and some how I managed to get my paws onto a Woodchuck, Hard Cider. And was drinking it. at school. legally.

so Malcolm tryis to get me to tell him why I haven't come to school in several months, that I've missed a lot of classes, and won't be able to pass the year. I don't remember saying anything. I remember other students coming in and watching tv.

I can't remember anything after that. I think I woke up.

All this reunion buzz has got my brain remembering some weird shit.. and yes I was on a first name basis with teachers. not so weird in real life, as I am no longer a student, but a bit odd for a student to be on a first name basis. oh and the other weird thing. Nik and I were never really friends, not that we hated each other, just not friends.

I'm so smart

2008-10-02T17:23:00.001-04:00

My complete and utter inability to focus at work has to do with the simple fact that I'm bored. what's more interesting than weighing and labeling 100's of vials, peeling tape off of 4000 test tubes, and washing (then acid washing) dishes??

1 word:

Computer.

my brain just can't handle the lack of critical thinking or god.. even just interesting thinking involved with this "monkey work" (that's what my boss calls it).

utterly hysterical

2008-09-15T14:06:00.001-04:00

So I was driving, well stopped at a stop light, in fact, in Westfield, in my truck. Windows open, like usual (Love to have the windows open)
A blue pick-up pulls up in the lane to my left. Windows open. Big white burly dude driving.. think landscaper. He turns up his radio. it took me a minute to realize the song...

Hungry Eyes. Best known fromt he Dirty Dancign soundtrack. The light turned, and I drove away in hysterics.

and we're back

2008-08-10T16:15:00.001-04:00

I feel guilty having been on vacation this past week, when it seems many people that I know are grieving a terrible loss. I didn't even know her, yet I feel terrible for what happened. She was killed by a drunk driver on her way home from work. She was 25 and a mother of 3. Heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking... When my sister called me I couldn't believe it... something like that happening. I was in shock, and my heart goes out to everyone who lost a piece of them with Lindsay's passing.
______________________________________

Our vacation went well. went up to Alburg Vt (which is a long friggin' drive!) do you see how close to Canada we were? we saw Québéc many times during our stay.

We went with some friends, Jeff & Becky, and little Nathanial, and spent the week in a cabin on the lake. It was a great place. If you click on the slideshow, it should bring you to my web albums, which has all sorts of pictures in varying albums you should check out and leave comments. I haven't gotten around to leaving captions yet though, for these.

vaction last day and ride home

2008_aug vacation

2008 Vacation pictures from Becky

the weather could've been better, but hey I guess I can't complain... atleast there wasn't a tornado watch and 2 funnel clouds in nearby towns, like there was down here.

They need new weather people up there. they made us think that it was going to rain the entire week, literally. But it didn't, we actually had several decent days. one of which involved nasty icky green stuff 6 inches deep for the entire day and covered a good chunk of the lack.. I even drove Evan down to the state park to go swimming, and it was neon green there too! Jay took some pictures of it by our dock. It was gross, and I'm not really sure what it was.

The water was a warm 72-ish degrees (according to that lousy weather team) during our stay. It was really nice. The lake bottom is very rocky, but that we knew and came prepared with water shoes. Then there's the seaweed. ick. is reachest he top of the water! During our stay we got the honor of seeing the lake level rise right before our eyes, thanks to all that rain that pounded the region. the water's edge rose about 4 feet, and the depth gained was about 6-8" measured visually by looking at how high it was on the dock. it went from 6-8 inches below the bottom of the dock to touching the dock. and it's not a floating dock either, it rests on the ground. The water level rose so much, we'd wake up and say "I wonder how much the water rose today", and go down to take a look. The neighbor had to raise his dock a couple notches, after it was found to be under water one morning. He was at that thing for the better part of the day!

On the last morning, we wake up to the most beautiful day, just to leave. We drove downt he New York side of the lake and hit Fort Ticonderoga on the way. then we drove South East across VT to I-91. according to google it's nearly a 5.5 hour drive.. and boy did it feel like it too! We did make a pit stop at the outlet malls in Brattleboro to stretch and use the facilities.

Even though we were on vacation for a week, swam, kayaked and walked, and bombed around in the rain exploring New York and Vermont, and accidentally crossing into Québéc during one of our border road explorations (we turned around at customs), it wasn't really restful. The kids, man were they driving us crazy..(mainly it was Evan) but at the same time, they were probably bored and couldn't help it. I only brought 1 bag of toys, which I guess wasn't enough entertainment for a long drive and a week of keeping entertained. Thank goodness they had bored games and disney videos, even though those too were driving us a bit crazy.

it was a good week, ans really nice to get away.

feeling old

2008-07-10T09:33:00.001-04:00

I know I'm not old, I'm 28. but with the idea of a class reunion looming ahead I can't help but think about how things were 10 years ago.

One of my guilty pleasures is watching Dawson's Creek. There I said it. I like Dawson's Creek, and it's quite pathetic really. If there was a Dawson's Trivial Pursuit I'd win the game. every time no doubt. I'm not sure why I like it so much. I'd like to think it's because it's supposed to be set on the cape where I grew up, only I know that's not the case-- it doesn't look anything like the cape we have here in MA, but more like what things would look like if set in NC.. becuse that's wehre it was filmed. Maybe it's because I think that I'd be friends with the characters in the show. I had many groups of friends from the outcasts to the nerds to the AV gang. Or maybe it's because I really <3 Pacey Whitter.
The episode this week, which I am able to watch thanks to my DVR because it airs at 4:30 am) was about how Joey and Pacey have to find a way to tell Dawson about how they've been seeing each other. In the end Dawson gives Joey an ultimatum to choose, him or Pacey, and she says to Pacey that it has to end. It was quite sad really. and I'm sure my PMS stricken mood swing wasn't helping either. The only thing keeping it together for me was teh fact that I knew that in the end her and Pacey end up together shortly after and at the end of the series we find out they are married.
In the episodes leading up to the previous on we see Pacey pining over Joey, in sweet subtle ways, that Joey was oblivious to. But you could see the look in his eyes, how he cared about her.

The reason for putting you through that torturous recap is that it made me think about when I was in school back in the 'Ham. My Senior year (and part of junior year) was an odd year for me. For the first time in my entire youth people stopped making fun of me.
Middle school was a painful time for me where I was in the class with all the trouble makers, and it sucked they bullied me (and the history sub!) and threw gum in my hair on a daily basis. The teachers didn't see it, but I dreaded going to school. Then I got to high school where many of the culprits from 8th grade ventured over to Upper Cape (thank god!) yet I was still constantly being called named and being picked on. When I became good friends with Ginny Walton, it subdued, aminly because these jerk off boys (richey roomey and charles rider mostly- they alwasy chewed dip it was gross) were, I think indimidated by her. She became one of my best friends. (I miss her even now and have b een trying to locate her since I went to college with no luck- anyone know where she is?)
With her by my side I began to gain some confidence, and hold my own. I think a turning point was in Deb Hodgson's english class- eitheer 10th or 11th grade I can't rememeber, I flipped out on either Richie or Chuck, and everyone was sho shocked to see little sweet me yell at them that from that point name calling ceased for the most part except the proverbial "albino, albs" which became a nick name and "powder" from Ginny's mom.
So when it came to dating boys it came all of a sudden in my later high school years, I had many boys wanting to date me.. I didn't realize quite how many until many years later.. it was weird and I didn't know how to handle it. I did know that I didn't date younger guys. For I didn't want to create any reason to be made fun of by my classmates that I loathed. Too bad I was dating someone who was going to school in Georgia.. During senior year he decided to see someone else as well while he was home. So while at first I remained loyal, I got sick of his need to be with someone else, and I "lashed out" and started seeing other guys. Many of which weren't serious by any means and lasted a short period of time.
There are a couple of people from that time that I wonder where they are now what things they are up to, but they won't be at the reunion for they were in different grades. Don't get me wrong, I am absolutly happy with my family now and all that is going on. Even on those tough days, in the end I'm happy.

There are many people who I'm dying to see to see how they've been, and hell I'll prob even say hi to Richie and Chuck, because I'm polite, but prob won't say much beyond that. I can't wait to show off my family.

I remember--
Mr. Potatohead can make a good bong- only if taped up properly.
Shh.. Keep it on the DL.
"123" - the greatest number of times Ginny and I hit the badmitton birdie back and forth without it hitting the ground.
The day Jared got in a serious car accident and nearly died.
Dwayne beating me to get the Drum Major title and I was devastated. It was supposed to be me and Kevin! we had it planned..
1,2,3 Drums!- the chant we used to say before performances.
Making the video for Mr. Pelkey after he left us under the rule of Shawn St. pierre. I wonder if he still watches it on occasion? I know he's alive he called my sister last month!
Always having to have extra drum sticks on hand in all games and especially parades because the Melissa's and I couldn't seem to keep a hold on them.
Colorguard- and the great shape it kept me in! how is Ruth anyway?
Missing the Nerd Herd Skip day because I had an English final to take- most of the others were in AP but I was in Honors with Mr. Wilson.
Our class didn't have a skip day/trip thanks to those who ventured to canada to get drunk and tattooed. way to go guys.

I have a very clear memoryof high school compared to the last few years. it's very odd.

seriously.

2008-06-09T19:41:00.001-04:00

watch your kids at the swim area. as we were leaving today we saw the guards carrying a limp little body out of the water by the little dam. Turns out that CPR worked, or so I believe.. I couldn't really see, but I saw the guards lingering and a woman hugging a wet boy.

the other day Evan left the back gate open while I went inside to get something, and next thing we know the neighbor is holding our baby and said he was down at the corner in the street. ack! I nearly had a heart attack. scary shit.

A good friend of a friend of mine lost his son while he was swimming at a pool. just knowing that is scary enough. and I think the scariest part is that Evan doesn't get it. doesn't understand why I tell him to not go past his belly button, to stay near me and swim in the area in front of out things. He's four, and doesn't think. He gets so excited, and just does whatever. My goal last year for this year is to teach him how to swim on his own. the trick is getting him to focus and not want to play with the other kids.

stupid UMass

2008-06-09T14:58:00.001-04:00

the accounts dept at the university "forgot" to pay out departments gas card bill. our fleet consists of 2 suburbans, 1 Yukon, and a cargo van.. aka gas guzzlers.

their inability to keep bills paid has made our gas cards unusable. My truck has a 1/2 tank of gas left after today jaunt to the berkshires, and I know I can do tomorrows trip okay, but not so sure about weds.

So my boss and others are saying to use MY credit card for now and I'll get reimbursed for it. ummm.. I don't think so. we use 1 credit card, which we just paid most of the way off with a loan from the bank. I'm not about to put $120 on my card to fill my work's truck which get's 15mpg.. and that's Highway driving. AND in any given week I can fill the tank in my truck about 3 times (it has a 40 gal tank!)! putting in $10-$15 isn't gonna cut it in this beast, and if my car wasn't rattling every time the engine has to work I'd consider driving my car, and then getting reimbursed for mileage.. atleast my car gets good mileage! my car has this rattle that makes me nervous everytime I go on the highway or up a hill/mountain. and now my brakes which were new last year are doing something funny, and I have a feeling there's something fishy with the bearings.. I'm getting that noise when I turn corners.. it's faint but it's there. So needless to say I need to save my credit card moeny in case I need to fix my car.. oh and the dryer is still broke.

*edited to add* my boss gave me $100 to fill the tank with in case I need it before the dingbats in accts get the cards working again. That was very nice of him

just when we think we're getting ahead...

2008-05-06T20:20:00.001-04:00

we recieve the notice in the mail that the gas company is readjusting our payment for our budget plan. This is normal, and usually isn't that much. our payment went up nearly $50, so now it's $193. granted we have gas stove, hot water, dryer, and heat the house with it, but our usage was less last year than the year before, with exception for one month I think, and even then it was about the same!! We even got a brand new furnace, because ours was old and crappy. We also got our notice from the electric company and that payment is going up like $30 too. and Health insurance is up another $50. fan-f-ing-tastic.

This sucks, and I know we're not the only ones in this boat, but honestly when is our President going to do something to help out this country that will be more than a short term "fix". Yes I am thankful for the "free money" that is coming our way that will help pay off our furnance and the new washer we got a couple weeks ago that was a phenomanel deal, knowing that it would save us money and that the money was indeed coming by the end of next week. We'll also be saving for the vacation we've planned, and need.

Dubba needs to do something for the little guys, this is crazy. We're having a hard time paying our bills because the cost of living has skyrocketing because of gas, and the sad thing is, that under normal econimic standards (pre- $3/gal gas) we'd be fine. Thankfully our mortgage is fixed and a super duper low rate, and our second mortgage is fixed, and thank god we were able to get a loan to pay off that credit card debt that acrewed when I was pregnant/maternity leave and my boss was being a douche about my hours and pay and ended up bringing home way less money, and will now be paid off in 5 years, when there was no end in sight before. We even switched to direct tv because it's cheaper than Comcast, by about $40. Even when the new customer discount wears off it'll still be cheaper than Comcast. and Thank god we don't have to worry about car payments-that's the second mortgage which atleast the interest is deductible.

the cost of gas in beyond unbearable. Those Stupid "ANALysts" need to keep their f-ing traps shut about what they "think" gas will go to. I think they are the main reason the cost of gas has gotten so bad. They make us all freak out and crap our pants and then the gas companies just do it because now we're expecting it. why can't they say "gas is expecting to drop to $2.50/gal" Think of how grateful everyone would be, when last year we were freaking out not knowing how much more gas would be a year later! and morale in this country would start to lift! Imagine that.

/rant

"bacation"

2008-04-26T11:24:00.001-04:00

... as Evan says it, is coming to an end. I couldn't have asked for abetter week off, really. the weather was absolutely perfect! and technically I was supposed to work this week, but with everyone else in the house off (even daycare was clsoed) I decided that I couldn't work, and needed to spend time with the family.

so on Weds we headed to Boston. we took the train from south Acton and rode in to North station. We almost missed the train due to lack of parking but made it litterally 2 seconds before they were leaving. We went to the aquarium, and had a great time there until the octopus scared Evan into wanting to leave. which was okay because it was a mad house in there! OMG. I know it was vacationbut I feel like the fire code was being broken. If you've never been to the NE Aquarium, it's a fairly tight space inside and with kids running everywhere screaming and such being surrounded by concrete, it was quite loud! After that we walked over to the Children's museum via the Harborwalk path, which was nice, but took forever (it was the way the museum suggested to go.)
The children's museum was great fun.. for evan and liam.. exhausting for us! it was 3 floors of playing! we were going to go to the swan boats after, but we were so tired we said forget it. for the alk back to the T by the aquarium, we walked along the main road, and jay commented on how it used to be the highway. I couldn't believe it.. and then I remembered not having to go under it from fanuel hall (not that we went there, but in the past I have) and It looked so nice to see the beautiful buildings with all the green space in the road.. it looked like it had always been that way. As much as the Big Dig was THE biggest financial disaster ever, Boston looks fantastic now that it's done! and if you haven't seen it I reccomend that you do. We would have taken pictures, but the batteries died after a couple were taken on the train

hope all is well

Eastertime

2008-03-23T19:59:00.000-04:00

lots has been going on.. you could prob tell due to the lack of posting on my part. Yesterday we ventured out to Yankee Candle. We have the luxury of leaving 15 min away from the flagship store in the next town over. In case you were unaware, this candle giant's headquarters are located in the next town, and is one of the area's largest employers.

It's a fun place really, and if you've never been there, you can't even begin to think of all the crap they sell that isn't scented or made of wax. They have all these different areas in the store, and it's one of the places in the area that if you need to buy something for Christmas anytime of the year you can find it here. Except, which we found out yesterday, piece to our willowtree nativity set. oh well.

This weekend was their Easter thing they do. Remember I went last year with the boys? we had a good time, so we went again this year. the scavenger hunt was made easier, and we cheated by checking off the boxes without finding all the posters to get the prize because Jay was getting a headache from the candle scents. We got more of those pink bunny ears that I got last year.

While there we sat in the king's chair and visited with the Easter Bunny where Evan says he was a "little shy", hence the grumpy face of his when he was by himself. I like visiting with the bunny there because he's free. We just have to remember to bring our own camera if we want a picture. I think it's funny that with this Easter bunny you can see the eyes on the person inside the costume. lol.. that poor woman in there must've been boiling. Glad it wasn't me.

Liam has started walking finally, and of course I can't catch it on camera. Every time I try he reverts back to crawling or Evan jumps in the shot, like today for instance.. In his underwear and then either flashes the camera or his hand is in his underwear. lol so needless to say I don't really have any good videos safe for the internet.

Evan is really enjoying school and I had the opportunity last week to help in his class. Man I wish my school was that fun! I was there in the morning until about 10:45. We went to breakfast, attended morning meeting, went to gym and then returned for snack time where while they were getting ready we played the game we brought, Hullabaloo (by Cranium), Evan's FAVORITE game. all the kids had a great time with it, and some even wanted me to bring it back. I had told them maybe another time I would. and then we had snack (I made green cupcakes b/c it was st. patty's day) and after that was choice time, and thus time for me to head home. It was fun.

On a side note, I need to see the doctor because I'm having this weird issue with some nerve feelings in my hand feeling funny ever since my elbow popped a couple weeks back. and I think it's aggravated by all the driving that I do. On Friday it was particularly bad, but the dr's isn't open on the weekends so I'll call them tomorrow. it's been better over the weekend, but still sore. the main pain for the past couple of days feels like there's a bad bruise in my fingertip, but I know I didn't do anything to it. On Friday my whole hand hurt with pain from my wrist to my middle finger. It's more annoying today than painful. I just hope that I can see a doctor this week. And I also hope that if I like the doctor I can choose her as my primary. I hesitate to do so out of fear that she'll leave the practice like my last 2 doctors.. the latter I hadn't even met before she decided to leave.

We also had the recent oppurtunity to visit my family out in Newton and some others who were in town from Florida, whom I haven't seen since Evan was less than a year old at mycousins wedding 4 years ago. Man I miss having my family nearby. I was spoiled as a kid and didn't realize it. I'm thankful that my immediate family is within driving distance (albeit 3 hours). I jsut wish we all had the opportunities to visit each other more. But those pesky gas prices.... is a rant for another day.

I'm off for now, but I'll post again. This last picture is of Evan and his friend Ezra who lives across the street playing with rescue heroes.

a birthday in the mist

2008-02-17T20:39:00.002-05:00

in less than a week Liam will turn 1. this time last year I was fat and miserable

and after a rapid fire delivery of a jumbo rocket, many stitches in areas I'd rather not mention, and days worth of the weird oxygen hood thing and UV light treatments, I brought home a wonderful (sorta) little guy.

and the big brother was ever so proud
of his new brother and relieved just to have me home again.

and now I have this most wonderful little boy. who is happy, lovable, and an all around great kid

Evan has also grown up this past year too! after the baby was born he took it upon himself to potty train himself! yee ha! he loves his brother soo much, that when Mimi (great gramma) threatens to keep him, Evan says "no! he's MY brother!" It's quite amazing really. only now Evan gets frustrated when Liam wants ot play with his toys or accidentally pulls his hair.

Now, the week of his first birthday he's a totally different kid than he was even a year ago. he is eating all normal foods like a giant piglet. drinking regular milk (at daycare, but not at home), standing on his own more and more, and using some sign language. it makes you wonder what is going on in their little heads as they go through life not understanding any of it, but taking it as it is becuase it's the way it is and they don't even know that things could be different and that there's so much mroe out there for them.

The love you have for your children is like no other you've experienced until you experience it. I had no idea.

Let it be known:

2008-02-11T11:16:00.000-05:00

that I solved the great "Acetate Mystery" at work.

edited to add:
Camelia (Ph.D student) has been racking her brain trying to figure out where 70g of Acetate came from in her soil (for her research) that was dug up off of rt 25 in the basin where we have monitoring wells. They use an alternate decing agent there that is safer for the cranberry bogs, called CMA (calcium magnesium acetate) they haven't use any yet this season so there shouldn't be any in the soil. She also rinses it here at the lab. She needs that soil specifically because of the bacteria that is found there.
So for the past 2 weeks she's been testing any and everything and running soil samples to see where it's coming from. On friday we put the soil in the oven to bake it-to make sure it is dry.. we set it up to see if the shiny side of the foil had an effect different to the dull side. Today she says that the Acetate is coming from something to do with the baking, and the data from shiny vs. dull foil was the same.. hmm.. so I suggested that perhaps there is ambient acetate in the oven.. perhaps it got spilled or something.
We check the oven. Lo and behold! there is a dish of Acetate sitting in the oven drying. For it needs to be totally dry to make a standard. The oven has been cleaned, and now a test bake is in progress to see if there is any ambient evaporated acetate still in the oven.

I requested a full acknowledgement at the end of the dissertation. lol

looking back on the last year

2008-01-09T21:41:00.001-05:00

2007... looking back So I've only been meaning to write a review of 2007 for a couple weeks now... but I'm slow and easily distracted :::shrug::: whatcha ya going to do about it. 2007 started out with a new addition to the family. Little Liam.. or not-so-little Liam depending on how you look at it seeing as how he was nearly 11lbs when he was born, and now, 10.5 months later wighs in at over 25! then a few months after that I went full-time at UMass... to a benefited position doing the same stuff and stuff around the lab.
I had a great summer with real estate business and by fall I was wiped out. At the same time I decided to leave the Century 21 office in Northampton b/c I didn't agree with my broker's businesses practices and switched to an office down the street from my house, where I'm much happier and can work at my own pace, WHEN I want to. (and I'm not forced to do open houses all the friggin' time) but because of the holidays most of my clients went dormant, so now I have to contact them and check in...
The holidays went well, and we even got down to visit with my family back home! man I miss that place.. I wish it wasn't so expensive to stay there, because I'd like to visit for more than 1 day. I hadn't seen my sister in over a year nor had we met each of our babies! It's funny how life treates you sometimes.. I grew up in a house with no guys... no dad no brothers. and now it appears as though my sister and I have come across a couple of men who can only reproduce more men. lol, and now us ladies are outnumbered!

2008 is going okay so far, except for first night where jay and I were sick throwing up and such for no good reason.

my resolution? to have a cleaner home... ha.. crazy I know, but i can try, right

That was my year, in a nutshell

how was your new years spent?

2008-01-01T08:11:00.001-05:00

anyones had to be better than mine... I got home from work, and i got sick.. threw up many times. why? that's a good question.. i have no idea, but I do know that it sucked royally, and I couldn't keep anything down.. at the end of the night I had one of evan's gross pedialyte freeze pops.. that stayed down. yay.. and then i woke up a couple times last night to unload the water I had been drinking.

My husband was sick too for the same reasons.. bizarre. we had a few friends over too.. we were going to play d&d whcich we hadn't done in forever, but after jay was feeling ill we said nevermind.

I seem to be feeling alright this morning, although super achy from all teh yaking I did.. lets hope I feel better by tomorrow b/c I'm supposed go out in the field to do work along the highway. If I feel like crap still I'm not going in.

ugh

2007-12-12T14:10:00.000-05:00

so I stayed late at work on monday to make up for being late due to evan's school delay. I decide to take the highway home because it's faster. well it wasn't on Monday. I'm driving along and I hear in sound of "muffler-on-pavement". Crap! so I pull over. sure enough my muffler was making sweet love to the pavement. So I go to call Jay, and I can't find my phone. I know I had my phone, I had just used it outside of Dunkins. so after 10 minutes of moving stuff frantically, I notice I'm pulled over just in front of one of those highway call boxes. so I go over and push the "service" button and return to my car. thankfully I found one that actually works. decide to continue the phone hunt. I eventually find it on the floor in the backseat under the passenger side chair. whew! so I called jay to inform him of the situation. ok.

20 minutes later I need to use tha bathroom, and still no tow truck or statie in sight. so I decide (after much debate) to call 911 to see about how long of a wait there was (ie.. did I need to head into the woods?) well the dispatcher guy transferred me to the barracks, and as it was ringing, the statie pulled up behind me. ok.. but I waited for the guy on the other end to answer and I told him nevermind that the trooper just pulled up.. I didn't want to hang up and have him think something was seriously wrong, ya know?

so of course I don't have AAA, we talked about it.. on several occasions, but never really had the extra funds at the time to get it. The trooper called the tow company, and a coat hanger and $65 later, I was on my merry way home, with instructions to get it properly fixed in the morning.
so in the morning I call the place I wanted to go to, closed. so I call meineke.. oh good they can fit me in.. while I was there I had them check out this "rattle" I've been ignoring for months b/c I had a feeling it was going to be expensive. so the tell me it's the tensioner (ya know keeps that timing belt nice and snug) well my car don't have an ordinary tensioner.. it's hydraulic.. which means it's a very costly part. Thank You Toyota... new belt and tensioner can be replaced at meineke for a whopping $533 bucks! I asked how much he charges for labor, he says $75/hr. yikes! it's cheaper to go to the dealer. so I tell him not right now, and call the husband, and tell him the scoop and that I'll ask around.

The meineke guy was nice enough to not charge me for the new bolt for my muffler support strap, and I was on my way... to the mechanic that I wanted to go to in the first place. he calls up his part place and when he talked to the guy his reaction to the price of the part was "holy shit, that's not cheap".. lol.. and from what I understand the tensioner is a pain in the ass to get to. He says he can do it for $401. woo. It's needs to get done so I schedule for next thursday. I guess my belt is all cracked too, and either way it's not really good, and I knwo I've been putting off too long anyway. so in the mean time lets hope my belt doesn't snap and my car needs a tow.. what are the chances that it's gonna snap this week? (knowing me prob very likely)

so yesterday I'm wearing a brand new shirt.. brand friggin new... I go to a clients house and return back to work with friggin bleach spots on my shirt. WTF?! so I say to my boss, "is it possible for road salt to do this?" thinking htat maybe I brushed up against my salt covered truck. he said no, which I was expecting, but I couldn't figure out where it came from.. "unless.." i say " it was from when i stopped at the Shell to use the bathroom".. he says " I could see that.. they clean it with the bleach and don't clean it up well.. " i did shake my hands after I washed them b/c they have one of those super turbo blow dryers that distorts your skin in funny ways.. I don't like it, so i shook off the excess... grr.. stupid people not cleaning up friggin belach.. I can't have anything nice.. and this time it wasn't even my own fault! (I do have a bad tendency to drop food on my clothes. lol)

there might be a snow day friday! we'll see I guess.. apparantly the storm is moving fast.. channel 5 in Boston says the snow is coming thursday afternoon.. I'll have to check our forecast though.

for crying out loud.

2007-12-04T21:14:00.000-05:00

I got a letter in the mail today from my doctor.. she's leaving the practice and going back to working in the ER. This is the 3rd doctor I've had since I've graduated college in 2002 that left being a primary care doctor. I never even had a chance to meet this one.. I would have recently, but she was booked and I had to see a different doctor in teh practice. the doctor before that I saw once, just once.. it was the "i'ts nice to meet you" appt... and the one before that I saw twice.. she retired. The retiree's office moved and I didn't know until I showed up for an appointment and there was a sign in teh window stating they had movied 6 months prior! and I only found out she retired when I wanted to make an appointment. so then I moved my records up to greenfield and picked a new doctor. she was nice.... I only found out she left when I was sick and needed to make an appointment. Then I waited a while to pick a primary care doctor b/c I was annoyed so I picked this new doctor.. a year later.. well atleast I received a letter. I think I'll hold off on picking a new doctor.. again.. I'm doomed.

I wish I could have one of the mid-wives as my primary. I know them real well!! I saw them a bunch and they never left.

Mr. Evan's school picture!!

2007-11-13T18:48:00.000-05:00

came out Great!! I was so excited to see that it came today! don't worry, mom I've got one here with your name on it for when you come visit!

updated

2007-11-13T14:05:00.000-05:00

I updated parts of my blog today.. instead of a stagnant photo of me at the top, I embeded a slideshow of selct pictures from my web album.

I also updated my links. may I direct you to my Real Estate page that I created. visit it, and tell me what you think. It's basic, and it was created using google page creator. It looks nice and I hope somebody will find it useful :) know anyone? send them there.

I also deleted the links to peoples blog that I don't really read on a regular basis. No offense to those who I deleted. I'm just busy, and don't get to read them.

also very important:
the writers deserve theri money! Give it to them God damn it!

Birthday

2007-11-11T09:28:00.000-05:00

Poor evan. he was excited all day for his party, and then it was finally here. Evan picked up the present that Cecile brought, and then she said "That's mine".. meaning that, that was the gift she brought. a couple minutes later Evan got really upset.. he was just a bear for pretty much the entire party.. he stormed up to his room a few times. when it was present time, I went up to his room where he was all huffy, and asked him if he wanted to open them up and he said no, and then I said "are you sure?" and then he said "but everyone already just opened them, but I want to open them". ooh.. so that's why he was upset.. he thought the other kids were going to open up his presents. so I explained that no one opened the presents and that earlier Cecile was just saying that gift was the one she brought for him. and then he was prefectly fine after that..

we made caramel apples, played pin the badge on the firedog's hat, had a pinata, and cake and ice cream.. jays says, "man I never had parties like this", and I said.. "me neither" atleast that I could rememeber.

I remember always being jealous of Christine b/c she ALWAYS got invited to birthday parties. my first ever Birthday invite (from someone at school) was when I was in the 2nd grade. It was from Josh. it was a great party.. he had pony rides. (then christine was jealous of me! ha!) I had a great time.. then we were best friends for many years until he moved away thanks to Hurricane Bob destroying his house.

I also remember being jealous of Christine because she (and kristen too) always got bunches of money for their birthdays from family (like $50) and I was always *lucky* to get $10. I was always grateful for my gifts, but secretly angry b/c it was so unfair. and it wasn't just one year... it was EVERY year, I think except for one.

oh wait.. this is supposed to be about Evan's Birthday, not mine.. so anywho.. he was fine after he realized no one opened his presents. and a couple hours later was the family party.. he had a great time here.. got lots of kool toys.. some of which the grown ups had fun playing with. he got an awesome pirate ship for Jeff & Becky, the marble thing from Grammy and Mike, and a knight dress up set from Trev, and some Diego toys and pants from Mimi and Grandpa.. and from us he got new shoes and a "laughtop".. he also got some interesting toys from all his friends.

2007-11-02T10:32:00.000-04:00

how are you all? I have this bad habit of not posting. Sorry about that... This past month has been going well. The cat is doing good. she's got a follow up appointment next week. the vet had said she was a under weight so I've been feeding her kitten food trying to pork her up. not sure if it's worked, but I guess we'll find out.. getting herself locked in the attic for about 2 days sure didn't help my efforts though. (oops)

the family is finally feeling better after a rough few weeks with some nasty bug, that kicked everyone in the house on their asses.. except me.. I didn't get it. after it was all said and done, though, I woke up last friday with an earache. It hurt and I couldn't focus on anything! I went to the doctor's and got eardrops.. it worked apparantly.. my ear is now fine.

_________________________________
Anybody else still not sure who the hell their going to vote for for president. Let me just say that I tend to vote Democrat, but I'm on the progressive side of the spectrum. I listen to left-wing radio shows in the car.. (the Disney Channel has left me unable to watch news at home when the kids are around) I listen to the local AM station that has local news in the morning, and then switches to syndicated radio shows. I like it. It makes me feel informed.

After watching SiCKO my biggest thing I want to hear about in a candidate (besides teh Iraq fiasco) is what their plans are regarding health insurance. I like Kucinich's idea of Medicare for all. His plan is to phase it in over 3 years. The only other plan that I've heard talked about (not to say that others haven't been, I jsut haven't heard it) is Hillary's plan... which I absolutely DON'T support! it's pretty much teh same crap that we have going on here in Massachusetts.. where insurance will be required, and if you can't get it through you're employer you can purchase certain plans from the state from a sliding scale for fees. This is a good idea... IN THEORY!.. and of course Fmr. Gov Romney implemented this plan... let's get him and Hillary to live on say 19K a year.. and busting their ass working to do so at a industrial or manufacturing job.. and let's make them live in an area where the cost of living is fairly high.. where the median income is about 35k-40k.. let's watch them see how they pay their bills, rent, and food, and just for fun let's make them HAVE to pay for the health insurance they can't afford.. even with the sliding scale.. ha.. they would never do that, yet they expect many in our lovely state to do just this, and now Hillary wants the country to have battle this too! that's Crap and it makes me angry. It makes me angier that the media is not talking about this in regards to Romney, and to Hillary..

but at the same time, I think she'll be an okay president if it weren't for this healthcare crap. *sigh*.. atleast by the time elections come around here to MA many will have dropped out of the race and I won't have as many candidates to choose from.

and while I've got yor attention on pres candidates.. why hasn't the media gotten Romney to explain why when he left our great commonwealth, why she swore up and down that he was leaving us in $2 million (or there abouts) in a surplus when it was really in fact, a $2 million DEFICIT (or there abouts) that gave a new Gov a run for his money, and gave him a rough start in office.. (of course there is always the office furnishings and the new car)

yay for Caelan!

2007-10-15T18:36:00.001-04:00

so the cat is back, only she appears to be sore and/or weak. she's got some battle wounds on her ear and is walking gingerly. no doubt she got in a scuffle with something, and got her ass whooped.. I offered her some food.. and canned food, but she doesn't seem to be eating. if she doesn't perk up by tomorrow sometime I'm calling the vet.

here kitty kitty kitty..

2007-10-14T20:24:00.000-04:00

Anyone seen our cat?

she went out yesterday and didn't come back.. it's not unusual for her to miss the last call into the house, and she's spends the night outside, but she's always waiting to come in when the sun comes up.

but she wasn't today.. so me and Evan went for a walk around the block. The good news is that there are no kitty bodies in the streets. the neighbors hadn't even seen the cat in a while either, and she goes all over the neighborhood. It makes me wonder if someone brought her to the animal shelter. I hope she comes back tomorrow.. if not then I'll call the shelter.

long weekend!

2007-10-06T16:14:00.000-04:00

so as part of the long weekend festivities, we went to Yankee Candle for the fall festival or whatever. we bought candle stuff wel. b/c I can't help myself.. honestly it's like a kid in a candy store for people who like smelly candles. We went on a Hayride, and Evan painted a pumpkina nd got his face painted and got a balloon dragon! we had a good time.. now we're home, and the kids are sleeping, and jay will be leaving for the church supper shortly. give me a few minutes, and I'll upload some new pictures!

edited to add:

look! it's an update!

2007-10-01T11:56:00.001-04:00

so here I am on my lunch break at work, blogging. It's been a while, I understand that... but life has gotten in the way. It's funny though.. well not really, but I often think that when things happen in the course of my day that I should blog about somehting that happened.. and I never do. I forget. I'm forgetful, it's just the way it is. I accept it, and so doesn't my family. i.e. Evan will ask me for a drink, and I'll say ok I'll get it. I go into the kitchen and return empty handed. Evan says, "Hey you forgot my drink!" oops.. and then I head back into the kitchen again, get distracted, and forget his drink again. it's pathetic really, the amount at which I forget to do things. My problem is that I get distracted easily from what I'm doing, and then I forget what I was doing int he first place and start to do something totally different. then 2 hours later, I remember that I forgot to finish something, so it seems as though my day never ends.

Life is otherwise going good. Liam started his new daycare today. Thanks so much to Tamar for watching him for us over the past several months!! I know he'll miss it there!

Have I told you all that he's got 2 teeth? others are on the way.. he chews all the time... He's eating solids like a champ, and is practically crawling. it's cute. I've got to get in on video for you guys.(riiiight, that will happen sometime this century) Hell I've just got to upload some more pictures. and take some!

The weather here has been incredably dry the past couple of months.. not much rain even for our dry season!! the temps last week were in the 80's.. but still chilly in the mornings.. hard to figure out the best way to dress the kids in the morning.

the cold nights, warm days, and lack of rain has caused the leaves to start to turn. it's beautiful around here the second week of october.. that's usually the peak of the season. I'll be heading out to North Adams for work next week, and I'll be sure to stop along the way and take some pictures!

Evan has started school as well. poor kid says every monring that he doesn't want to go to school, but every afternoon when we pick him up he tells us what a great day he's had. he doesn't realize that he'll be in school for the next 15+ years so he better get used to it! lol.. he had a very difficult time re-adjusting to being somewhere everyday after spending the summer home with Jason. I'm just glad that he doesn't kick and scream any more when i drop him off

that's all for now
i'm done

county fair!

2007-09-09T09:10:00.000-04:00

we went to the county fair last night after the t-storms! it wasa blast.. Evan was so into it this year, it made it worth it to go! Evan digged the rides, which he usually doesn't do. he started off on the merry go round with Dad, and then Evan and I went on the little roller coaster, the flying airplanes, and the rocking boat, and then back to the roller coaster.. that was his favorite. He was very sad that he was too short for the bumper cars. there's always next year! and the rides were really quite fun! I remmber when we had the fair or whatever come into Cranberry highway when we were kids over where the old DQ used to be, which is now the spot with the Giant Walmart... Christine and I would ride the roller coaster, bunches of times. it was tons of fun! Evan played some games too, and won some prizes, and bought an over priced ninja set from the toy guy at the parade on thursday night... but of course it was th only thing on th cart that he wanted. he was sooooo.. excited for the parade! firetrucks, tractors, police cars, horses, oh my!

yesterday I gave my notice to my century 21 office.. i need to leave there. My broker is not a good person to work for. as a person, she's pretty nice, but as a real estate professional, she's pretty whacked. I'm hoping to join an agnecy, literally at the end of my street, andeven if I have to do some office time at least it's there, and not an extra 1/2 hour away. knock on wood for me that i can get a job there, as I really enjoy doing real estate stuff.

so yesterday after my office time, i went and showed a couple of houses to a coworker.. he who gets out of the car.. the boss from umass.. lol.. not expecting that.. Aaron wanted a second opinion. it was fine, and we had a good time. he figured out which house he wants to put an offer on, but says he wants to think about it some more. hopefully he'll wait a little bit long enough so i can figure out the stuff with switching offices.

I'm off.. gotta get the kid some food, and then clean our hovel and then the car!

I'm done

we're proud parents again!!

2007-09-02T21:41:00.000-04:00

only this time a a beautiful butterfly!!

we have 2 more to go!

TA DA!

2007-08-27T23:01:00.000-04:00

I finally worked on and finished the bag I promised to my sister for Mother's Day. hush up.. I've been working 2 jobs and taking care of a family. I'm just glad I finished it before her birthday.

1 closing down, 1 to go! The next one is scheduled on october 9th, and I've got a co-worker who's ready to buy a house too. who said real estate was slow? for some reason little-ol-part-time me is go-go-going...

Evan starts preschool on the 10th, we're all so very excited. Hard to believe my little dude is ready for school. Little does he know he'll be in school for atleast 15 more years. ugh.

ok i'm done.. i'm tired

life as it stands

2007-08-12T08:41:00.000-04:00

is a bit less crazy with 2 house deals under agreement. although one of them has become quite the headache. the buyers are getting their home loan through the USDA, and apparently the USDA failed to inform my buyers what a pain in the ass it is to get a loan with them. It doesn't help that the loan contact woman is a big douche, thinks she's all righteous, says things are going to be fine and then 2 minutes later she's coming up with yet another reason to hold up the deal. grr. according to my buyers the rural development loan program sounded like a great program, but as the deal moves forward it has come apparent that the loan lady didn't explain to my buyers the process very well, as well as what hoops needed to be jumped through and all the ups and downs. The loan douche said near the end of july for them to go find a house and put in an offer. they asked her if closing by September 1 would be a problem. she said no, so the buyers said 'okay', and didn't renew their lease at their apt. now anyone who has ever been involved in purchasing a home knows that the normal transaction time is about 2 months not 1. well we had the home inspection this pat week, and she said a couple of easy fixes needed to be done. ok. and the home inspector said the foundation needed to be supported or it will buckle (thanks to the high water table and fieldstone foundation walls).. and he added in a few other things in the report that were catorgarized at 'unacceptable'. well the loan lady says that all of these stupid little things that don't really need to be fixed now need to be fixed now before they move in so they can get their loan money. this is bullshit, and it's frustrating everyone. so now we've had her inspection the buyers home inspection, and now she needs a contractor to go in and get an estimate for all the stupid repairs so the money can be put in escrow. me and the listing agent were talking this and it seems stupid to have to many hands in the honey pot. ugh.. here's to working with the feds i guess.

Jay's great aunt's health is very poor right now, and no one expects her to live past the next couple of days. It's so sad. Jay's grandmother has 8 or 9 siblings, and most of them live in town, and even we know them all fairly well. Poor Bertha's passing will be hard on the entire family. She's lived a good long life, mostly healthy, and has a great big family that loves her to pieces. She was even one of my godparents when I got baptized about 8 years ago. It's one of those bittersweet moments in life, similar to when my grandmother died. It was and is terribly sad, cancer got the best of both of them, and both women did so much for their family and for others, and yet God decides to take them early. At the end of their lives, you're just so thankful for all that they did when they were able, and it's so hard to see them not being able to do the simplest things in life, and then you're (sadly) thankful for that they will not be suffering much longer. Jay's eldest great aunt is in denial about the while thing and hasn't been to see her sister since her health has gotten really bad. she had it set is her mind that she was the one to go first, she's nearly (if not already) 90 years old. I have a feeling that it's going to be a rough next couple of years.

+++++++++++++

on a different note, the family is doing well. the bay is huge, evan has bundles of energy, and loves to swim, jay's ready to go back to work in a couple of weeks, and me? I've been the space cadet around here.. I feel like im always supposed to be doing 12 things at once and no time to slow down. life will 'normalize' once again, right?

suppose I should get dressed now.

ok i'm done

anybody else?

2007-07-29T08:42:00.000-04:00

I know i received a comment on one of by blogs on here a couple weeks ago, and the comment never showed up. I got the email notification, but no comment. anyone else having this problem? perhaps i need to update my template.

so.friggin.busy

2007-07-29T08:37:00.001-04:00

so.friggin.busy I feel like I've fallen off the face of the Earth.. well internet Earth that is.. so not only have I been working full-time, but many of my clients who are buying houses decided that they wanted to go out this week and weekend. friday I had a walkthrough and a closing in the morning, and later in the day I showed three houses (I played hooky from UMass), Then on saturday i was in the office until noon, ran to florence to pick up a key ran to Deerfield/Yankee Candle where I met the family, and proceeded (as a family) to my first showing for the afternoon, not far from Yankee Candle, then we drove back to northampton where we looked at 2 condos with a new client, returned the key to Florence, and then went to Amehrst to look at another condo. My cousin Kelly was supposed to stop by, but she was unable and it was okay... our house is a disaster.

today is Sunday, no huge plans for today.. that I know of I need a day off thankyouverymuch.

but tomorrow i go back to work, where i'll be heading out to Boxford, and then I'll be running home to get ready to show 3 more houses to the family i showed to on Friday, and on Tuesday I'll be at work all day and then going to Deerfield to show another condo. Thank God we're going away next weekend.. phew..

and the house still needs to be cleaned. desperately. and the laundry hasn't been put away in about amonth. and man o man i've got to get the recycling out of the kitchen.. it is overflowing, and I still have got to mail that package to my sister (sorry).. Think I'll request a pick up for monday as we speak so I don't have to go to the post office

So I haven't been purposly ignoring anyone or any internet sites (DIST mostly) and blogs I normally visit and be social with. hopefully soon life will be back to normal-ish and less crazy.

but the good news is that I've got soem buyers that wnt to put in an offer this week hopefully... the ones going monday, and the other buyer, is pretty much ready too. My co-worker who just started looking yesterday will be ready by september. so it's good.. it's not a fruitless effort like with some of the others I have gone out with.

oh and little dude loves sweet potatoes.. watch for pic and video update shortly. he gobbled up more than half of the jar! he could care less about the rice cereal. (and honestly I don't blame him)

we went to beach, and I don't mean the river or a lake!

2007-07-22T07:07:00.001-04:00

So yesterday morning, we're sitting in the living room reading, when out of the blue the husband says, "Let's go to the beach",
me: "well I was planning on heading over to the river later",
him: "no, I mean the ocean".... what?!
me: "but it's so far away"
him: "where's you're sense of adventure?"
I point at the kids.. "gone"

so about 5 minutes go by, and I say "Let's go tot he beach!" so we decide to head to hampton beach in NH. we call around to people to see if anyone wants to go. perfect. Trevor is coming with!

The weather was absolutely perfect! and the kids we amazingly good in the car. Evan had a blast, and even the baby seemed to enjoy himself! of course Jay doesn't really take pictures, so I grabbed a couple, which I'll download and add when I get to the other computer. we left at like noon and didn't make it home until 10-something. but we took the long way home on 101 in NH, and had dinner in Keene. it was about 2.5 hours there. arrived at 2:30 ish. We
spent atleast 2 hours at the beach, and then headed back. Man I sure miss living close to the beach, especially one is warmer, and you don't have to get out b/c your numb (atleast at this point in the summer).

maybe today we'll head over the the river for swimming or something. who knows.

speaking of the river, I took evan swimming there on friday after work. Jay was exhausted, and the baby was sleeping, so it was just me and the Evster. While we were having a good time in the water, and little boy, about 2 years old, goes up to our stuff at the beach and started playing with evan's toys. I look around, no parents in sight? wtf? it wasn't a big deal that he came over to play, but where were his parents. Then the lifeguard goes over and tries to tell him that they belong to us, but he still wanted to play. So i asked Evan if he wanted to go play in the sand with that little boy and he said okay.

I ask the lifeguard where his parents are, she shruged and said, "He doesn't speak English". um, ok. So here is when I bust out my Spanish, "Adonde estan tu Mama o Papa?" his response, "el carro" and points to the car at the end of the row about 50 feet away. I said to the lifeguard that he says his parents are in the car, and she said she hadn't seem them in over an hour. I look over and sure enough there were some people in the car, but who really knew if they were his parents or not. So we play for a while in the sand, and I keep looking over at the car, they're not even watching, and I see them playing with the baby. I"m getting annoyed at point. but then his older siblings came over to play too. The little boy's name is Michael. They were supposed to be watching him. ahh. Even so, if they were supposed to be watching him, then watch him, don't be down the other side of the beach. and the oldest was about 11 or so. It made me angry. You just don't leave a 2 year old to himself at the beach. But I felt like it wasn't my place to go over and bitch at the parents because the lifeguard didn't say anything to them... And my spanish was not even close to good enough to start up a conversation about how they should leave their 2-year-old near the water. Especially without a life jacket on the kid. Especially after knowing someone who just lost his son b/c he drowned at a public facility during a lifeguard change.

The poor kids diaper had fallen off too. and he was trying to hold it on, when I had come out of the water the first time. It was full of water, poor kid. "panales?" (you'll have to excuse my lack of tildas, can't figure out how to get them in blogger) he nods,"si". so I helped him. He went diaperless from there on out, but he did have shorts on..
All I could think was, ' I wish i knew how to speak better Spanish so I could tell them to watch their child'.. but wait shouldn't they learn how speak English? The older kids spoke English too, so atleast I could talk with them, but how careless of the parents to leave their 2-year old who doesn't speak English at the river without anyone really watching him. I called jay, and bitched at him. looking back I wish i had gone over, but I when I left all the kids were playing with each other, and he was being watched. he wasn't going in the water at all... Jay wondered if it was the same little boy we saw on a past trip to the river that was playing by himself off by the dam. I said I didn't know. The lifeguard of all people should've gone over to tell the parents they needed to be out on the beach. does the town not have a rule about adult supervision for kids under a certain age? gah! had i known more spanish I would've gone over. That was really the thing that was holding be back. sometimes i wish i had balls.

ok i'm done.

I'm a hobbling disaster area

2007-07-11T15:17:00.000-04:00

so i got poison ivy a couple weeks ago, and i was treating it with some Benadryl cream 2% of whatever drug it is that i can't pronounce. and it seemed to be doing the trick to kill the itch. however i'm pretty sure that i had an allergic reaction to BENADRYL (wtf?!) because it got all red and splotchy. I just thought it was the poison ivy getting worse, ya know, like poison ivy does. and then i realized i wasn't having the same reaction to poison ivy this time that i had in the past.. no blistering or oozing, so i called my sister who has psoriasis, and asked her what she thought (because now it' all dry and scaley looking), and she didn't think so, b/c of it's location. so i did some hunting online for pictures, and it looks like it's contact dermatitis.. aka an allergic reation rash. great. so now i'm doing hydrocortizone 1%, and it's happy and looking alot less red now.

to top it off yesterday while i was home with the kids my monster feet got out of control and i kicked the highchair with my little toe. it f-ing hurt! and now it's all purple and stuff. I think i broke it.. it seems to have a mind of it's own when i walk. i need to tape it.

i'll post pictures when i get home from work. that's right. i'm working.

ok i'm done.

it just ain't right..

2007-07-01T16:08:00.001-04:00

i think i might have to give the baby a haircut soon.. it's just past his eyebrows! (he's only 4 months old!)

our party

2007-07-01T09:02:00.000-04:00

we had a party yesterday.. everyone got loaded.

i made my famous teriyaki steak and cabbage salad (aka coleslaw but vinegar based, no mayo) and spicy rice and kale.. everyone loved it. we had to make a drunken run to to store for desserts. thnkfully the store is only a block away.; we had enough salds to chock a horse! it was all really good though

3 or 4 games of horseshoes were played. by the time croquet was requested it was starting to get dark, and poor becky set it up b/c she really wanted to play, but i think most people were to drunk to get up. hahaha. I was holding the baby and wanted to play too but i wanted to get the baby asleep first so instead of playing croquet or Munchkin, we watched the fire for many, many hours

jay woke up with an upset stomach. not me though.. i ended up forgetting to have more daiquari's

Evan the great knight

2007-06-24T17:48:00.000-04:00

defeated the armless monster at the scottish festival yesterday! he did it twice.... gotta love the free games.

impending doom

2007-06-23T06:44:00.000-04:00

I hate driving into severe weather. There's nothing like driving down the highway and waiting for that dark cloud up ahead to start spitting out lightning. Yesterday thankfully there was no lightening, AND I managed to not actually drive into super nasty weather. ever time I approached said nasty looking cloud the road turned. This was not the case a week or so a go on our way to Hadley to go to target. we drove right through nasty weather, and I got really paranoid. It's one thing to drive through rain and have no lightening around you, say way off in the distance, and then driving through it praying you don't get struck. oh... you say to pullover and wait it out do you? well see is it better to wait it out or drive through it b/c you'll make it through the storm faster? what do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO? I say drive through it. I made that decision out on route 2 about a month ago. I was heading west, and most often the weather here moves from west to east, unless there's some weird super big low pressure off shore and we're getting nor'easter type winds or unless there's a storm system moving up from the south.. anyhoo.. driving through it makes it go by faster. Shut up. I don't want to hear you logic.. IT DOES I SAY, IT DOES!!

We had some friends over last night.. like we do every Friday night. I got drunk. lol .. off of 3 glasses of wine.. granted they were large full glasses of wine.. and our homemade stuff too! It was funny. I honestly can't remember the last time I got drunk. so needless to say I was up past my bed time of wicked early, and made myself go to bed at 12:30. I have to be at work for 9 and I knew the baby would wake my up around 6. ugh. The baby did indeed wake me up around 6, so now I'm wicked exhausted. Such is life I guess.

Things here have been going well. Jason made it through his first week home with the boys with everyone in the family still alive and with hair. the first day was a little hard, but all in all the week ended up going well for Jason. Me? I'm just working alot. I start my Umass job full-time July 1st, and doing real estate stuff on the side. I'm going to leave my office at the end of the summer I've decided. My broker does stuff that urks me, and I just can't take it anymore. So at some point I've got to contact a couple of agenies up here to see if they'll let me work with them. I'm pretty sure of one that will.

So thanks to the baby I'm losign my hair, literally. And I"m fine with it. I know it's normal and it happened with Evan and whatnot, but seriously when is this shanannigan going to stop?! I'm sick of hair, hair everywhere. I'm shedding like hair is going out of style.. thankfully I have really thick hair to begin with.

okay. I'm done. I'm tired. Take a look at the pictures i posted and linked to inthe last entry.. they're wicked cute!!

new pictures

2007-06-21T06:13:00.000-04:00

a spare moment

2007-06-07T18:17:00.000-04:00

Is hard to find these days. between the 2 jobs and tending to the family, I often find myself running crazy until the boys go to bed. I am thoroughly grateful Liam is an easy baby! He has been sleeping through the night for many weeks now, and that has helped me make it through the day by leaps and bounds. He's 3.5 months old now and weighs approx 20 lbs already! It's amazing really. the baby is snoozing, Evan is outsie playing, and the husband.. he might be snoozing on the couch or watchign tv or something.. I'm not really sure.

So as of July 1, I'll be employed full-time at Umass doing the job I'm doing now.. only now I'll be getting paid more and I'll be benefited b/c of teh full-timeness. I'll still be doing real estate part-time too. This was strictly a financial decision. trust me.. I wouldn't be working full-time at the lab if I didn't have to. We need the money to pay the bills, and besides benefits trough UMass cost less than half of what we currently pay through Jason's work. We'll be saving $200+ a month with the benefits switch alone. Hopefully by doing this we'll be able to pay the bills and buy food AND gas without using the credit card.

We realized a few months ago we were heading up shit creek with credit card debt ever since my job at UMass went hourly in October. I wasn't bringing home as much money as i had been for the past two years even though I was putting in more hours.. and the cost of gas sky rocketed! We also traded in Jay's Escape (which we loved) for a more fuel efficient car. We got a 01 Nissan Sentra. The idea was to make an even trade so we would have no payments on it. we were able to get the sentra thanks to Jay's grandparents who lent us some money to cover the difference of about 1000 buckaroos.

Luckily I have some buyers that just got an accepted offer on a house (which is practically across the street from us) so I should be getting a good chunk of money from that which we'll be able to pay back Jay's grandparents. The downside to real estate is that once you get an offer in it takes about 2 months for the closing to happen.. and it's the closing where you get your money.

that is all for an update for now.. we are apparantly off to the park!

another year has come and gone

2007-05-23T06:51:00.000-04:00

and i think the only think that's really different is the weather. lol. it's supposed to be gorgeous this week! i'm very excited.. so excited that i'm having a bbq. why not. i love having ppl over.

but all in all my birthday went well. nothing went wrong. and that's all i can really ask for.
i droveout to timbucktoo with the office to look at some new listigs. and while out on the hills i saw a farmer plowing his fields. using horses! my god i had no idea people still did this task without a tractor! (the amish don't count.. i'm sure they don't use tractors) it was neat though. and if i had my camera and wasn't in a caravan of cars i would've stopped and taken a picture.

happy mother's day!

2007-05-12T10:19:00.000-04:00

While i remember b/c i know i'll forget tomorrow.. I just wanted to wish all the wonderful mother's out there a wonderful Mother's Day!

cows and crosswalks

2007-05-10T13:03:00.000-04:00

gotta love living in the country... for many people, including myself, i don't consider Greenfield country living.. but drive 15 -20 minutes out of greenfield, and your out in the sticks... some directions it takes less time than that.

today i headed out west on the Mohawk Trail for work to the restaurant on the hairpin turn... I brought my camera. today I was headed for the Berkshires! clean crisp air, gorgeous views.. and apparantly bad well water contaminated by the highway dept (road salt)

i took some pictures of the views from the restaurant i was at. just gorgeous views of North Adams, and Mt. Greylock. on the way back i stopped at one of the summits and took some pictures there too. I love that this is only about 45 minutes from my house. As much as i miss the beauty of the beach on a daily basis, I love how it's so gorgeous out here, when you just look at it the right way. I guess any area is like this. unless of course you live in crack central than you have a different story. But a good photographer could get worthy shots of crack central if they wanted to... and felt safe enough too i suppose.

yesterday i was driving up the mountain in Leverett towards Shutesbury, when i see an on coming car (down the mountain/large hill) going very slow and behind it to cows running, so i slow way down almost to a complete stop, b/c i didn't want to spook them.. after they passed, i wondered if that was even necessary. i know when you drive past horses you drive super slow as to not spook them, so me thinking quick, just figured it be best to do that when driving around cows.. why not.so when i got to the top of the mountain i pulled in to the fire station and let them know that there were cows running down the mountain. I'm a good little citizen, aren't I?
and a couple weeks ago While out in the southern berkshires i saw 3 moose in somebody's front yard! Didn't have my camera that day though.

I'm typing this enjoying lunch today at home.. as it's on the bay back to work from rt 2. we live like 5 minutes from the highway.. andd on the way home i discovered it's officially crosswalk painting season.. it's like an obstacle course out there, dodging oranges cones and oncoming traffic... in a suburban nonetheless!

so back to work i go in a few minutes now that i'm done enjoying my calorie rich Ellio's and Coke Zero

Enjoy this gorgeous weather.. (it's beautiful and like 85 degrees!)

the new nephew has finally arrived!

2007-05-02T20:39:00.000-04:00

Brayden finally made his debut on May 1st! only 9 days late. Poor Christine wanted a diamond on her mother's ring, but it appears as though Brayden really wanted the emerald. click the picture to see the album. scott's sister had uploaded pictures on her myspace and i downloaded them, so I could share them!

Brayden!!

I can't wait to see him! he's not all bruised like Liam was.. my poor baby was all black and blue in the face.

I need a drink!!

2007-04-20T19:20:00.000-04:00

*note* this post was started on friday night, the 20th, jay was working at Target:

and anyone who knows me well, knows that I dont' ever say that.. that's the kind of night I've been having. It was going good until just before dinner. It started with the computer. Evan wanted to play a game.. okay. he finds said game and puts it in the cd tray. okay, never a problem. Well apparantly he managed to slide the chair over to the tray and wedge it underneath.. (our tower is on the floor under the desk) and before I could take it off the chair Evan is pressing the close button only the tray is unable to close. Now it appears that the drive tray is broken.

*************
2 days later:

let me begin with i fell asleep at 8:30 in evan's room and didn't get to finish my post. It was a very long night... so not only did he break the cd drive, he decided to pull the bobbin thread all out of my sewing machine,a nd while doing so, knocked some dirty dishes on the floor.. thankfully the dishes were his, and were plastic.. but they had food in them from dinner the previous night. so then i'm cooking dinner, and he wants this and that, and this and that.. and i'm frying chicken on the stove so i didn't want to go too far. then the baby starts up, and that goes off and on for a while. Evan spills juice all over the rug in the living room as he's climbing on top of his little table next to the pack and play. he's reaching for a horn (aka empty toilet paper tube) in said pack and play. he kicks everything off his table and makes a huge mess. oh did i mention? he's stark naked. ugh! eventually i finish dinner... it wasn't that long really .. maybe 1/2 hour, but it felt like eternity. then we ate, and he wants to read a story. ok. so i read a story, and it when i finish i noticed he's ripped off a pretty good size section of wallpaper! that was the last straw. i sortof yelled.. i was pissed off, but i try to not yell.. but i punished him.. no tv for the rest of the night... and no more eating/drinking messy foods in the living room. i'm sick of picking it up and him making messes. at 8:15 he asks to go upstairs for bed, so we did, and i fell asleep at 8:30 or there abouts. at some point before jay got home at 9:30 i wlaked into our room and slept there. thankfully the baby went to sleep at 8 or something.

he wakes me up when he gets home, and i tell him all the hell that broke loose in a total zombie-half-asleep state while he had dinner. i fell asleep on the couch. what time i don't know? but i was exhausted. never did get that drink. heh

*************
so i'm back at work, full throttle. and it's kicking me in the ass.. i'm just tired. work itself is fine, but at 8:30 or so i start yawning and it's all down hill from there. while i was on leave i wasn't eating that well.. and then for the last few weeks i made myself eat better, and now that i'm working again, i'm eating like crap during the day again. it's mostly b/c i'm on the road so i'm limited as to what i can bring for lunch. up until this week i haven't been eating a bunch of foods b/c the baby was very sensitive to my diet and was painfully gassy. it seems as though i can start eating those foods again. yay! but i'm still not eating as good as i should be b/c i'm nursing.. i'm supposed to be eaing an extra 500 calories a day. right. well... i did discover Caribou Coffee granola bars.. they are to die for.. they have coffee in them, and are mighty tasty! i eat 2 at a whack. lol and i'm an ice creamaholic so i eat some of that on an almost daily basis. i get the edy's slow churned (dreyer's on the west coast) it's super yummy, and healthier than regular ice cream so i can feed my addiction nearly guilt free.

today evan was a little shit at church. but the wether has been gorgeous, so i can't complain about that!i can complain about evan just waking up the baby, however. that's to be expected every once in a while.. he is 3.

but needless to say i've been super busy now that i'm at work full-time again... i mean how long has it been since i posted a blog.. i barely get the opputunities to go to the forums and read never mind post! work has been very busy for me this month b/c i had to schedule all my clients into the 2 remaining weeks of the month. may should be more calm.

speaking of work. ya'll know how much i can't stand my job at umass. well my first week back i felt appreciated for the first time in 3 years at the job. see i have a job where my boss never says anything to you about your work unless something has gone wrong, so no one eve feels appreciated. but that first week, pretty much all my co-workers said "it's so good to have you back" the boss even said it to me in the email i sent saying when i would be returning. so as of current: i don't loathe my job. not sure how long it'll last, but it's good anyhow.

Hoppy Easter!

2007-04-06T15:03:00.000-04:00

so Easter is this weekend. we're very excited. The boys and i ventured down to Yankee Candle b/c the Easter bunny was going to be there. for Free! and Evan was all excited. on teh way down i talked to him about how the Eater bunny is going to be big, but he'll be very nice, yada yada.. and Evan kept talking about how he was going to bring him "candy and presents just like Santa".. lol. i hope he's not too disappointed. it won't be nearly as much as santa would bring, but it's goodies none the less.

so we got there.. and mind you this is their flagship store, so it's huge. it's not that little nook you see ing the mall. it's practically a department store within itself. its a nice place actually. oh yeah.. so we get there, and evans so excited, and the bunny is on break "eating carrots" she said.. i highly doubt that but i digress so we venture forth onto the fun fact scavenger hunt. whoopee! it wasn't that fun, but evan behaved very well.. stayed with me while i hunted down posters so we could get our prize. we got these fantastic foam bunny ears, and a little packet of jelly belly's! when we get to the area with the bunny, evan sees him froma distance it got scared. poor kid. i was expecting it actually. so we didn't get a picture with the Easter bunny. but that's all well and good anyway. we had a good time

and where was Liam during all of this? sleeping.. the kid slept through the whole thing, and is still sleeping as i type this. i suspect his nap will end soon though.. there's always next year..

Whirlwind of a Fool's Day

2007-04-01T21:47:00.000-04:00

5 weeks have come and gone since i've had the baby, and it feels like i've never lived a day without him. b/c of his size it often slips my mind how young he still is. he weighs atleast, and i'm sure more than 14 lbs. yup.. you heard me right. 14 lbs at 5 weeks. he's filling out his 3-6 month size clothes nicely, and i fear that if i try and save money by buying diapers in bulk at BJ's that we'll end up wasting money and donating more than half the diapers to the new nephew. so we buy them at Tarjay or Wally world in the larger size there. we need to buy diapers soon, but i'm waiting b/c i'm not sure what the weight range is for the size 3's... i think we'll need those in the next few weeks. i just don't know when.

This is my last full week at maternity leave. 2 weeks earlier than originally planned, and 1 week earlier than we anticipated after i took that last week off of work b/c i couldn't do anything.. i couldn't sit or stand for more than 2 hours, and i felt just useless. i'm going back early b/c we can't do math.. we counted the weeks wrong and i already told both works i was coming back on the 9th. oops. however it's not all bad. i'm getting stir crazy being at home so much anyway.. i get bored easily.. always have. so i'll go back to work, but i won't work a full week. i won't have to drive anywhere, i just need to get in the swing of going back to work and getting the boys ready by myself in the morning. i'll take advantage and work on my morning routine, and not work a full 8 hours, and get paid. going back a bit early is helping our wallets out too. we saved all our money from tax returns to use as my paychecks while on maternity leave and going back early means i have an extra "paycheck" per se. my first pay check that i'll get when i return to work will only be half of the normal bi-weekly pay so we have a few hundred dollars "extra", that we didn't plan on. we're buying food. great sales this week, and our house is getting a bit dry. it's a good day when we are able to purchase gas and groceries and not put them on the credit card.

the last trimester of pregnancy really kicked our asses financially and we didn't notice until about a month ago. b/c of doctor's appointments and daycare cancellations and whatnot, i wasn't able to work my full 32 hours a week needed for several months at the end of my pregnancy, which meant that we have had to put alot of things like food and gas on the credit card, and boy that added up real fast. so jay has decided to get a second job at Tarjay for a while. it'll suck, yes, but hopefully we'll be able to make ends meet without adding much tot he credit card so hopefully we can pay that down, but it is much higher than we would like. jay will also be getting several stipends this spring from things at work and a seminar he did, so that will help as well. we plan on sending a bunch to the cards with that money too.

all in all life is alright. not much more to complain about. the day care situation has been resolved. our dear friend Tamar (aka Tammy) is helping us out by watching the boys for us through the end of june which jay should be able to take care of them over most of the summer. She'll then be taking the baby in the fall and evan will be going to preschool! yes you heard me.. the big pre-k! i can't believe it. thankfully pre-k is on a sliding scale fee schedule so it'll only cost us about $15/day or so. 1/2 the price of daycare. woo! speaking of which i have to go to the registration day tomorrow... i'm actually quite excited.

+++++++++++++++++++++

for most people april 1st is a day of silliness and laughter. but this is not the case to my group of friends that formed while in college. a childhood friend of jason and tyler, and several others, and then a college friend of mine and becky's and god knows how many more lost a friend on April 1st one year back in college. junior year i believe. we were living in Amherst in our little apartment with our friend Wes when we found out that Bill had committed suicide.. hung himself in the trees by the river near his apartment in sunderland. it was devastating. him and i weren't close, but he was close to many of my other friends and jason. the reason you wonder? it was b/c of a girl. she dumped him. it was stupid. every year at this time jay and i honor him, by having the sanctuary lamp burn in his honor and since on this day a drink is drunk in honor of Bill, who is told by all (from now varying points on the eastern seaboard) what a stupid thing he did. RIP.

happy birthday little guy

2007-03-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

Liam turned 1 month old yesterday... and i opened the size 2 diapers! i laughed.. it's insane.. he weighs 12 lbs 12 oz as of weds.. so he's gaining about a pound a week.. just like his big brother did. great.
my mom came out to visit with us on thursday night. it was good to see her.. it had been awhile. we hada hard time getting good pictures with the boys, but i posted a few in my web album.

that is all for now.. time to pay the bills b/c i forgot to yesterday..

boy time has flown by

2007-03-15T12:47:00.000-04:00

Liam will be 3 weeks old tomorrow. hard to believe it's been three weeks already. it has been a crazy time i must say. so on top of juggling the 2 boys in daily activities, we've been trying to get our day care situation settled.

our daycare's youngest is finally getting out of the hospital today after over a week in the hospital. poor little guy had double pnemonia, and was in the hospital down the street, but wasn't improving so the bussed the boy to Baystate medical Ctr in springfield so he could go into ICU. he's only in kindergarten. and during this time i recieved an email from our daycare, that pretty accused us of being bad parents, and how careless we've been with germ exposure of our son (who hardly gets a cold, nevermind something serious) by letting him go to daycare when she says there's illness in the house. her kids get sick at the drop of a hat, Evan doesn't. she also accused us of not caring that her little guy was in the hospital and "to show some compassion" as she put it. i must admit that had i known the day her husband called to say that their son was in the hospital how serious his illness was, i would've responsed differently. her husband called me up on tuesday morning, waking me up and simply said that their son was at the hospital. no stress in his voice. (mind you he is in the hospital several times a year for pnemonia.. he gets it alot, and rebounds very quickly) and i simply had said to him, "okay, I'll keep Evan home" and he said ok, and we hung up the phone. i had talked to our daycre on monday night and she said he had the flu and should be better by thurs at the latest.

so as days went by, i would call up to see if she was open, b/c we honestly had no idea that thier son's health was going down hill. no one said anything to us, and they surely didn't mention that they'd be closed until further notice, so it was left to us to call them and see if they were open. if daycare is "open" and we choose to not bring Evan for what ever reason you still have to pay. it's the way daycare works. so if daycare was open, i would've brought evan so i could relax with the baby. so needless to say she took offense to my calling everyday to see if she was open b/c i was endangering the health of my child among other things. well jay flipped his lid and sent her a really nasty email... which he thought wasn't nasty at all... well i read it after the fact and it was. She emailed back and said that she's going to be saving us money every month by not watching evan or taking the baby anymore! WTF is that all about? so now we're trying to arrange with some friends to watch the boys for the remainder of the school year. Everyone has since apologized, and she said she shouldn't have said anything in the first place with her being so upset about Wil. but she hasn't mentioned anything about the boys so i just assume, she still won't have them. and besides if she honestly feels that when we put leftover chinese in evan's lunchbox the next day that we could be better spending that money on paying her the full price for daycare (we were getting a discount b/c we po') among other things, then i don't want to have to justify everything we do to our daycare.. and she can fill the slots with a family that can pay full price then so be it.. we know they need the money too. and jsut for the record we spend about $20 on chinese once in a while, when it's late and we don't want to cook, or if we have company... not only do we get dinner out of it, but there's often plenty left over for a couple lunches too. we get those combo dinners, and unlike her we're not feeding a family of 6. she may spend $50 or more, but we don't. and when we do get chinese, we almost always put it on the credit card b/c we don't have any money. if daycare took credit card... that's a different topic.

so three weeks into maternity leave.. (technically 4 b/c i just couldn't work really the week i went into labor.. i was massively uncomfortable and swollen) i haven't had a chance to rest at all. everyone asks if i'm resting.. ha.. i have a 3 year old, and a newborn who needs to eat every fews hours and needs diaper changes all the time.. who has time for rest.

photo update

2007-03-14T09:25:00.000-04:00

taken this morning. Liam is 2.5 weeks old, Evan is 3 & a qtr years old

a baby story in case people want soem details

2007-03-05T14:47:00.000-05:00

(i can't belive i forgot to post this.. i had sent this out as email to people but here it is for the blog world to read)

Things here are going well. as some of you know, (some of you don't) Little Liam was born on friday feb 23rd at 4:05 am. he weighed in at 10 lbs 14 oz (!) it was no wonder i got as big as a house. and no it wasn't a c-section.. yes folks.. holy crap is right.. thankfully labor was quick. by quick i mean i woke up at 1:30, woke jay up at 2:30 called mom in law and the OB at 3, got to the hospital at 3:30, was on the monitor for 20 min, and then it was time.. yeah.. 2.5 hours. it was crazy.

Liam had some breathing problems on the first day, b/c he had swallowed some meconium during delivery, but that resolved itself by saturday night or so. he was a bit jaundice on sunday morning, but we got sent home with the light blanket, and were told to get a lab done inthe morning.. no biggie.. evan had the biliblanket.. but the numbers came back high, so we were told to bring him back to OB so he can go under the lights.. that was monday at noon.. today is weds, and we were finally able to bring him home weds the 28th.. his bilirubin numbers are no longer scary. they got so high that the doctor said that if they don't come down he might have to get a transfusion (!) but luckily they had come down enough that we didn't have to worry about that.. thank God. and i get to sleep in my own bed.. what a treat!

his jaundice is pretty much gone now and he's quite the sleeper... i couldn't ask for anythign more.

i've uploaded some pictures to my web album for you all to check out http://picasaweb.google.com/evansmom111003 enjoy!

we're good

2007-03-04T13:42:00.000-05:00

we're home and we're all doing well.. i don't have much to report other than it's going to get bitterly cold this week! keep checking my online album for pictures of the family!

Liam update

2007-02-27T12:39:00.000-05:00

just letting you all know that I greatly appreciate all the well wishes for little Liam. Liam's bilirubin shot through the roof (and htus has jaundice) so he is still in the hospital under the UV lights and it looks like he'll be there through thursday atleast. He'll be fine soon though... the good news is that the bilirubin is coming down pretty steadily, but the bad news is that Evan isn't taking my absence well at nighttime and has become very stressed b/c i'm not home to spend time with him.

hope all is well

please check out my web album for pictures of the little guy! the link is on the right --->

still no baby

2007-02-20T19:17:00.000-05:00

the most anticipated birth of the year (or so it seems) has not occured as of yet! trust us.. we're annoyed as the rest of you. lol.

I'm swollen and achy all over and is having those stupid braxton-hicks contractions all the time.. in fact it's been days.. and is practically uselss when it comes to working b/c of these contractions that don't ever stop really. thus maternity leave has started.

due date is officially on the 24th.. and we're trying all sorts of things to help this kid out. it's probably wouldn't be so bad if evan wasn't 3 weeks early, and if i wasn't so achy b/c atleast i could still be working

no baby yet update

2007-02-17T09:08:00.000-05:00

Hi all,
fist off.. still no baby.. ugh...at my appoinment on thursday the dr said i was 4 cm!.. man this is taking forever. so pretty much anyday now the baby could come. she said she'd be surprised if i didn't have the kid over the weekend. and just for the record i'v eonly gained 8 lbs this entire pregnancy! (don't shoot *ducks*) so i wonder how much i've lost. at my appoinment two weeks ago (wheni was 3 cm) i called the midwife and said.. "at what point do i call if my water doesn't break?".. her response.. "when it feels different".. wth does that mean? but okay

well all day yesterday i was having contractions, and we were getting all hopeful and stuff. i've been having the constant back ache as well for the past couple of days.

well at 11:00 last night i get woken up out of a sound sleep with one of those contractions of death. or so it felt like. so we called the doc and went over to the hospital where they could monitor the baby. the good news is that the baby's doing really well. but b/c i wasn't progressing they said we could go home. what a drag. but atleast we didn't have to sleep in those uncomfy beds.. my tailbone was killing me. i don't rememeber them being so uncomfy before.. perhaps it's b/c i'm as big as a house at the moment, and i wasn't with evan.

so here we are at home. still waiting and still having contractions and moving as slow as a turtle.

Happy Valentine's Day Osama

2007-02-13T14:56:00.000-05:00

A little Jewish girl, Melissa, comes home from first grade and tells her father that they learned about the history of Valentine's Day. "Since Valentine's Day is for a Christian saint and we're Jewish," she asks,"will God get mad at me for giving someone a valentine?"

Melissa's father thinks a bit, then says "No, I don't think God would get mad. Who do you want to give a Valentine to?"

"Osama Bin Laden," she says.

"Why Osama Bin Laden," her father asks in shock.

"Well," she says, "I thought that if a little American Jewish girl could have enough love to give Osama a Valentine, he might start to think that maybe we're not all bad, and maybe start loving people a little bit.

And if other kids saw what I did and sent Valentines to Osama, he'd love everyone a lot. And then he'd start going all over the place to tell everyone how much he loved them and how he didn't hate anyone anymore."

Her father's heart swells and he looks at his daughter with new found pride.

"Melissa, that's the most wonderful thing I've ever heard."

"I know," Melissa says, "and once that gets him out in the open, the Marines could shoot the lousy bastard.

no baby yet

2007-02-04T08:19:00.000-05:00

my appointment last thursday confirmed nothing had really changed changed.. my belly didn't grow so now i'm right on track as opposed to ahead, and i even lost a pound .. wtf?! can't complain i guess. and i'm not any more dialated. on friday at work i was having some contractions every 5 minutes or so, so i went home. and of course while i was waiting for jay to come pick me up, they stopped. but better safe than sorry... there's no where comfy to sit at work except on the couch in the main lobby aoutside the lecture hall... yeah.. 20 year-olds do not need to see me go into labor. thanks, but no.. it's where i had waitind for jay, but i wasn't about to go back up to work.. i was very uncomfortable. so we've been waiting since then for any other since that baby is eminent.

last night i was getting very uncomfortable. as the night went on the bay felt like it was getting heavier and heavier, and felt so low that if he was any lower he'd just fall out. i said to jason.. "i say 24 hours for some serious baby activity, and if not then i'll be surprised". i haven't been felling any contractions, but that doesn't surprise me one bit, b/c i never had any when i was pregnant with evan. my water had just broke when we returned home from a trip to Target, and that was that.... we went to target yesterday walked around for a while.. but no baby.

i think part of our anxiousness about having this baby, is that we're ready for him.. we've been expecting him early for months now, on this weekend... the room is ready, i'm packed for the hospital.. all the clothes are washed.. i think we're pretty much all set to bring the baby home... unlike with Evan.. Evan was 3 weeks early, and was so unexpected, that i think the only item is my hospital bag was soem travel shampoo or soemthing. we just weren't prepared.. so now that we're all prepared watch the kid come a week late or something... Oh God i hope not. that would be cruel.

we made it through Thursday, and that's all i wanted... We went to see Lewis Black, and he was hilarious! his friend that opened up for him was hilarious too. John Bowman was his name. Jay said he had overheard some people on the way out saying it wasn't quite what they expected... well for us it was... but then again wee're very familiar with his bits and his style of comedy.. i think we own all his dvd's. and some of his bits he used the other night, referenced bits of his we had seen in the dvd's so i think they were more funny for us than people who had never seen his routine before. the only thing that was bad about the show was that it was like 90 degrees inside the little theater, so everyone was boiling.. i bet people complained b/c at one point we felt a little bit of cool air coming down, and then it got warm again. thanks guys *smack*... and that we didn't have much leg room, but the theater is old, so there was nothing we could do about that. except kick the little wooden wall in front of us everytime we moved. i ended up taking my shoes off b/c my feet were swelling up.

We even went out to dinner beforehand with our friend Trevor who had a huge gift certificate to one of the really nice restaurants 2 minutes away from the theater where the show was. so we all went out.. it was really good food... and it was the type of place that if you didn't get there real soon after they opened the doors you had to wait atleast an hour for a table. our wiat was 10 minutes... we got there about 5:30 and left about 7:40 or so.. timed perfectly for the show.

and it finally happened! we got snow a couple nights ago! not a dusting like we've been getting everytime they predict snow, but we got 3-4 inches.. of wet snow that has now sunk down to about 2.5 inches. and it's going to be really cold for the next week, they say, and some more snow on the way! it's scary to think that it's February, and we *just* got our first real snow. by the time my boys are going to school, they won't even know what a snow day is... what is this world coming too.

and speaking of which why is it all of a sudden global warming is being recognized and a problem that *people* have had a factor in.. I mean, duh, C'mon.. I think we started having a major effect on the environment since the locomotive was created.. it's been down hill since then, but only back then they had no idea. the general population has had an idea for atleast 15-20 years or so that something needed to be done soon, and what 20 years later 'experts' and our stupid president say that within another 5 years or so we'll BEGIN to regulate pollution.. or some shit like that.. WTF is that all about?! what a douchebag of a president we've got folks. he just has no clue.

so i dont' get to watch the national news much these days b/c Evan is addicted to Dora the explorer. a friend of mine on myspace changed his picture to that of the lite brite guy that shut down Boston. so i sent himi a message saying that that stupid thing shut down Boston.. he replys with telling me that it's been in the news for 3 days.. ! oops.. lol. i had no idea it was in the national news.. it didn't surprise me, but i still didn't know.. that was funny, guess i've been a little out of touch with the news. we watch the local news, but i dont' get to watch the tody show in the morning anymore.. i didn't realize that iv'e been missing out.. especially since they only have real news for like 45 minutes, and then go into fluff news and human interest stories. I still think it's pretty funny that those things shut down Boston. but i'll add that many people who criticize the fact that the city over reacted to the event, weren't the ones who had their airplanes hijacked killing thousands of innocent people. we're just that much more sensitive about strange ongoings, than most communities, and sometimes that needs to be recognized.

baby update

2007-01-25T13:08:00.000-05:00

had my 36 week appointment this morning. it's looking good. i'm measuring for 38 weeks. not surprised, and i'm already dialated a little bit but the midwife says the baby isn't really pushing down on it so it could mean that i'm pregnant for a few more days or a couple more weeks.... i'm only aking for one more week.. that's all. we have tickets to go see Lewis Black next thursday night! guess i gotta get on the ball and pack my hospital bag... I want to make sure that it's ready this time around.. with Evan I had only just started packing it the day before so it wasn't fully ready yet... the baby bag is easy enough and i'm pretty sure that's ready.. except for burp cloths.. but i've got to wash them first.

oh, and technically i've only gained 6 lbs so far. lol.. but that's only b/c i lost so much earlier in the pregnancy. i only gained 15-20 lbs with evan so even for me this is a light load. the midwife says she thinks i got a big one too.. lol can't wait until i have the baby, and see how much i weigh after. i bet i can figure out how much i gained by doing the math.. atleast a rough number.

hope everyone is staying warm.. it's nasty cold out this week over here

woo!

2007-01-22T06:55:00.000-05:00

so I had a listing appointment yesterday for that house near me, and I got it... it's really not worth the price their asking but they can't afford to go any lower between paying the comission and paying off what they owe. I mean it might sell for the priced they need we'll see. my broker was hesitant to list it at $265k b/c it won't sell fast. It was sorta funny that after my Broker left, Diane, one of the homeowners said, "she looked like she didn't want to list it for that price", and i said that she was hesitant to b/c it's means that it'll be sitting on the market for a while. The homeowners were fine with that. it's really worth about $230-$240k. They seem to like me though, which is good. Thankfully, they don't really need to make any money off the sale other than just paying off the mortgage, so that wasn't an issue. They're looking at getting a house around $175 or a 2-family, so the mortgage will be way cheaper than what their paying now. taxes will most definately be cheaper as well. I'm going to be talking with her later today, and hopefully we'll be going out this weekend to look at some houses.

so that's that. Real Estate is going well.. well enough for me.. i don't want it to be too crazy right now. not witht the baby coming soon and all that. just knock on wood that i don't go into labor on feb 1st.. i bought tickets for jay and i for Christmas to go see Lewis Black in Northampton.. he's jay's favorite comedian... and i really want to go! any time after that we're good to have the baby! I'm officially 35 weeks now, and if we go by the Evan time table, that means we have 2 weeks until doomsday. if i don't go into labor the weekend of the 4th we'll be surprised. lol. watch me have this baby late instead of early.. only because we're expecting early.. that would suck.

Evans newspaper debut!

2007-01-15T17:08:00.000-05:00

saturday january 13th. Dylan is a friend from daycare. melly took them last week and mentioned a guy from the paper was there taking pictures :)

Bono says it perfectly about today..

2007-01-11T11:18:00.000-05:00

"It's a beautiful day"... indeed, Bono, it is.

so i went to the doc's this morning with Evan.. who was amazingly good. they weren't running late at all. and the good news is that the baby has flipped! yay! the head is down and it's all good from here. we even got a peek with a quick ultrasound just to be sure!

What a cutie!.. the foot one is kinda hard to see, the face ones came out good. The baby is still a boy.. i had her double check. lol. just want to be sure ya know? he's got those chubby cheeks like evan had too!

i've created a web album with picasa.. there's a bunch of evan pictures up there. http://picasaweb.google.com/evansmom111003

check them out.

i'm the type of person that only likes to blog when theres something worth mentioning. so i had to mention that of course. and i didn't mention how our new years went b/c i forgot.

our new years was pretty boring. we had friends over, and at 9:30 we're all zombies in the living room tired from work and life.. we were practically asleep, and probabyly would've been if evan wasn't off the wall... . there was nothing on the tv either. we watched will and grace for about 10 minutes, and i broke down and said.. ok, lets play cards or something. we we played cards for a while which combined with coffee and wine woke people up... i had jay buy me a bottle of sparkling cider, so i had that. when it was time for the ball to drop we paused our card game got up, watched the ball drop, said cheers, kissed our spouses, and went back to playing cards. i finsihsed my sparkling juice right from the bottle. everyone laughed.. they said we should've gotten a picture. and then at about 1 or so people went home. it was good and quiet. so that was our new years... by the sounds of it you'd think we were old fogies or something.. but nope.. the avg age is 26-27.

have yourself a beautiful day too!

i'm movin' on up... to the eastside.. to a de-luxe apt in the sky...

2007-01-10T15:17:00.000-05:00

ok so not really, but i was going to blog about my first listing appointment i just got back from, and that song got stuck in my head.

real estate is treating me well considering i'm part time and not really able to spend money on promoting myself to get business. i'm just really lucky with people calling in when i'm answering phones. so i got a call on saturday when i was in the office from this woman interested in our comission rates and stuff. so i made an appointment to do a market analysis, and we did that appoiontment today. it seemed to have gone well.

the homeowner got the house appraised last year for $275k, but i don't think that they'll be able to get that with the prices of houses coming down. even in Greenfield. cross yoru fingers for me that i get the listing.. it would be nice to sell a house... and be the listing agent.. that's where the money is.

so tomorrow morning i go to the doctor's to see how the babe's doing.. little guy still hasn't turned. grr.. i can tell by the hiccups. lol. i'll let you know how it goes.

WalkAmerica for the March of dimes and a good friend of mine

2007-01-10T08:45:00.000-05:00

We should all do something good when given the chance and have the abilities to do so. if your resolution this yeare was to help out others more, or donate to charities, here's a great one!

from my good friend Janelle:

As many of you know, my son, Jacob, was born 6 weeks early at Women & Infants' hospital in RI. He's doing great, and recovering better than we could have ever anticipated - I say to everyone that I don't really have a "sick" baby, just one that needs to heal a little bit before he comes home =) But this experience has shown me how valuable and neccesary the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) is - and how many other babies are born in desperate need of care to survive. The March of Dimes is an amazing foundation that help to raise money for reasearch to save babies' lives - and on April 29th, I'm participating in a Walk America, a 5 mile walk to raise money for this cause, in honor of my beautiful son, Jacob Michael Scott Lincoln. (Michelle, you are so amazing and I love you! Thank you for telling me about this, and creating Team Jacob!!!)

So... if you are up for a bit of a hike, come join Team Jacob and raise money for a great cause... the walk that I am participating in is in Manchester, NH, but if that's too far, by all means join us in honor at a different location. I'm thinking its going to be a lot of fun, and I can't wait =)

Of course, the other way to help is to sponsor Team Jacob. You can visit our March of Dimes website here, and donations/payments are accepted via credit card and PayPal.

and for a quick update:

he's doing great!!! 4lbs 14oz and up to 10cc's of milk every 4 hours! and of course, he's absolutely perfect. but then again, i'm biased ;-) i'll have more pictures up soon!

lots of love,

janelle

another friend from high school and is doing the walk as well! here's what she has to say:

Jacob and his mommy Janelle

Jacob Michael Scott Lincoln was born 6 weeks early on December 19^th, 2006 weighing 3lbs 14oz. He was born with Gastioentises (his intestines on the outside of his body) He has been receiving care in the NICU at Women and Infants Hospital in Providence RI. Every day Jacob has been getting stronger and stronger with the help of a great NICU team and the March of Dimes.

I am participating in WalkAmerica on April 29^th 2007 in Machester NH. because I believe in the March of Dimes mission to save babies. Please support my fundraising efforts by sponsoring me in WalkAmerica today.

Contributing to my walk online is fast, easy and secure. You can donate directly from my personal webpage with a credit/debit card or PayPal. If you prefer, I can also accept cash or check. Just click the appropriate box on my webpage.

The money we raise helps save premature and sick babies. Premature birth is the #1 cause of newborn death and the biggest threat to babies' health today, and through WalkAmerica, the March of Dimes is funding important research to find out why premature birth happens and what can be done to prevent it.

I've joined with millions of compassionate people across the country who support WalkAmerica each year. Won't you please help me in this worthy cause? Visit my webpage and sponsor me in the walk that saves babies!

With your support, there's hope.

If you would like to join our team or sponsor Team Jacob please visit our page on the March of Dimes / Walk America web site. http://www.walkamerica.org/leftyhooha

Thank you for all your support!!

Team Jacob

ok kiddo... time to flip around.

2006-12-28T12:10:00.000-05:00

so i had a doctor's appt this morning. my little dude is still in breech postition. i'm not happy about this. if he doesn't get his ass in gear and flip around it looks like i might have to have a c-section. not that there's anything particularly wrong with a c-section itself, but i don't want to have to go through the recovery of the surgery. i've never had surgery. i'd like to keep it that way. from what i understand recovery form a c-section takes many, many weeks.. and you pretty much can't do a damned thing that may in any way put stress on your body. i can only assume this includes most activites involving my 3 year old... like for instance.. getting up and down on the floor to play or even picking him up... he weighs in over 40 lbs these days! and most mornings i have to carry him downstairs to wake up before daycare. he's still little, and still requires to be carried on occasion.. when sleeping, or just for comfort, and the poor little guy won't understand why i won't be able to carry him, and getting ready in the mornings will be a disaster seeing as how he'll still be going to daycare while i'm on maternity leave. even if he doens't go.. we still have to pay b/c that's the way daycare works, so we might as well have him go. and i don't want to stray too much from our routine, such as letting him sleep in for those 6 weeks.. will screw us all up.. this kid doesn't adjust well to the time change.. gets all out of whack, so we need to stay as normal as possible.

so needless to say the CNM suggested two weeks ago to to the "breech tilts" or whatever which involves getting on my knees, and my head on a pillow.. i tried it that first day and all the blood rushed to my head in aboput 30 seconds, and was just downright painful in the face.. lol.. i know sounds funny, but it's true. so i didn't do it again that day.. and well forgot about it for the two weeks.. between working and dealing with Christmas stuff, i completely forgot about. so now i have to do it twice a day for 20 mins at a whack. great.. but i'll do it b/c i don't want a c-section unless i have to.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T10:33:00.000-05:00

Evan as Bob the builder.

me at 31 weeks prego... christmas day

a rant.

2006-12-18T07:06:00.000-05:00

i'm still itchy all over my belly and now my forearms. the doctor said it looked like hives and to take benadryl, or use the lotion if i wnat to avoid beign sleepy. i can't figure out what i'm allergic to. i dont' have allergies. but i did expect to develop some after evan was born.. well i guess i deveoped one this time around. the weird thing is, is that i haven't eaten or used anything that is new to me, so i'm having a hard time trying to figure out what causing all these little itchy bumps. i've had them for over a week now. i htink it may be the name brand tums or soemthing.. i've always consumed the generic ones, but jay bought some real ones at the grocery store for me recently when i was running low. who knows, so i'm going to try and remember to pick up some rolaids instead.

evan woke up at 1:15 or so this morning wide eyed and bushy tailed... great. he didn't fall back asleep until 6 this morning.. yeah so me and jay are working today on about 2 hours of sleep. woo. i bet you hear the excitement. the good news is that we got all of the Christmas presents wrapped last night, and i did jay's this morning after he left for work.. why not the kid was asleep and i had an hour to kill. still haven't shipped the package out that's going to the cape. hopefully today or tomorrow. we're hunting for a box that's big enough for our nephews present. apparantly my sister bought our son an electronic drum set. ha. whatever...

got to drag the kid out the door and into the car while he' s sound aleep now. thank god for global warming so i don't have to weasel him into a coat in the process. and my regular coat won't really zip any more either so thank god it's still prety warm out until i find one that will fit around my monster gut. i refuse to pay alot of money for a coat i only plan to wear for a couple of months.

enjoy your day.. i hope to take a nap when i get home, as long as i don't accidentally fall asleep driving to sutton and charlton today.

yikes!

2006-12-10T09:36:00.000-05:00

third trimester has begun.. it bagn a couple of weeks ago actually, but i'm not good at updating, so suck it up. my belly is definatly bigger, and i complain baout being fat.. although that usually happens when i need to bend over to pick something up ot squeeze by someone and can't fit. lol. at my last dr's appointment i had gained 2 lbs in the past month and 2 cm of belly. my stomach has becoem super itchy this past week. it's annoying.. it the type of itchy you get when you have dry skin, only i dont' have dry skin on my belly b/c i lotion the damn thing all the time hoping to cut down on any more strech marks. i go to the doc's again on weds.. we're into the every 2 weeks for appoints time. holy cow! where has the time gone. the baby's room is full of wine making crap right now.. we got 2 aging in the carboys.. a shiraz and a riesling. we have sooooo much wine in our basement like about 100 bottles... probably more... if not now then definately after we bottle the 2 batches that are up in the baby's room. yeah.. we're lazy about it this one. not even the crib is up. whatever. we were waiting until after christmas to do all that stuff.

speaking of which we just had our christmas party last night.. it was a hit.. everyone, but me, got loaded... it was pretty funny. and because we had the party our downstairs is pretty damn clean if i say so myself! we tend to have alot of clutter simply b/c we don't have any drawers to anythign to put stuff in, we've been looking at getting a cabinet thing with drawers for the kichen and a smaller sized draer chest for the dining room... but we have no extra money for that so... we're just looking and not buying. such is life i guess.

one of our friends, and older man in his 50's, called me "eureka" last night, and it made me smile and brought on immediate memories of being called that as a child from my great uncles, and grandfather. i still have an uncle that calls me that once in a blue moon, but that's old hat.

You know you're from Wareham if...

2006-12-07T10:58:00.000-05:00

You know you are from Wareham if...

You went to a boys and girls club dance
You have been in Mr. Jordan's office
You have waited 2 hours to get a haircut from Mike&Al's
You skipped study and went to Charlie's for pizza
You have ridden the slick-track at go-cart land
You've jumped off stone bridge and almost hit a boat.
You think people that have never seen a cranberry bog are blind or crazy.
You can point out Tesno, Shang-hi, and Swifts, without them showing up on any map.
You played Wareham Youth Soccer, JBA, Tigers, Little League, or just took gym class too seriously
Bob Perry was your ice cream man before he opened the stand
You have ridden the OWL.
You remember the Tunnel under the middle school
You went to the middle school before the renovation
At least once a day growing up you drove on Rt. 6, Glen Charlie rd., Cranberry hwy, Minot Ave, Onset Ave, or Sandwich Rd.
You have had hot dogs from the Mill Pond Diner gas station.
JBA shorts were a part of your wardrobe.
JBA shorts are still a part of your wardrobe.
Wheelbarrel and buffer are actually words…with meanings.
You wondered exactly what it was Mr. Oliver actually taught.
You participated in the DARE program.
The DARE program failed you.
You have referred to your hometown as "the Ham"
You get pissed off when out-of-towners refer to it as Ware"um"
You played basketball at the courts in the center of town.
You have referred to bike cops as rent-a-cops.
The Wareham 500 actually counts as something to do.
You have been to the x-mas parade for the candy.
You have been in the x-mas parade.
You know Gina Davis' hometown
You still remember REACH and BLONDFACES from 7th grade science with Lipof
You know of Eddie Mumbles and Crazy Walter
You went to Minot Forest or Decas
You remember the yearly bonfires
You remember the movie theatre in Buzzard's Bay
You used to go to the movie theatre in Buzzard's Bay
You were a member of team auriga, pheonix, cepheus or some other constellation in middle school
You had a moral obligation to jump rope for heart
You refer to Wareham as being on the cape even when it isn't.
Field day was the greatest day ever
You know someone who won the lottery or went broke trying.
You trick-or-treated 5 years past your prime.
Every year you went home with a letter saying you are exposed to asbestos but don't worry
You remember the Smurphs on the wall of the gym at minot
You remember before there was a Wal-Mart
You worked at Water-Wizz.
You graduated at night.
You still live there!
considered yourself part of tesno crew.
visited the hill in onset for a lil smoke session

some pictures

2006-11-19T19:55:00.000-05:00

just added: a picture of evan's birthday cake that i made for the kids. the grown ups cake was bigger and looked very similar to this gluten-free version :)

here are some pictures we took tonight.. don't mind the strech marks.. you can blame evan for those.. i do :) 26 weeks prego...

I'm not stoned or anything.. i was looking at something other than jason

evan found the christmas decorating stuff... i managed to get him to forget about the christmas tree one by saying we're doing that one another time. it seemed to work. i hid it.. better than jason hid them. we let him to the gingerbread people. why not. they came out cute huh?

evan has turned the big 3!

2006-11-13T19:18:00.000-05:00

that's right.. this past friday, Evan turned three! i can't believe it's been three years since that lovely (ha ha) night at the hospital.. just to think i'll be going there again in a few short months. woo.. we had 2 birthday parties for the kid. one for his friends around lunch time and then for dinner we had our friends and family over. it works best if you have separate parties i found, then it's not terribly overwhelming and crazy.
then on sunday we traveled to buzzards bay for a baby shower for a friend of mine form high school. it was supposed to be a surprised, but her mother let the cat out of the bag and ruined the party surprise, but she was surprised at all the people that were there. i didn't tell her that i was going to be there even though i knew that she knew about the party. after she got to the hall and hugged her family and her bestest friends, she was making her rounds. evan was there with me and almost walked right into her. when she realized who he was she looked up and smiled and got all excited to see me. i think i surprised her :) unfortunaly i had to leave the festivites early b/c our plans of having my husband play for the day in boston with his best friend got foiled... so jay came down with me and went shopping at the outlet mall, christmas tree shop, and job lot, to find that nothing was of value today for christmas shopping. he said the christmas tree shop was crazy busy wo he was there for less than 5 minutes before he left.

my mom stopped by the shower to deliver a birthday present for evan. one of the gifts was a little remote control puppy that squeaks... i mean barks.. and it walks.. he loves that thing. he was playing with it in the car the entire time he was awake on the ride home. so what if he was asleep before we got very far. then when we got back and stopped at mimi's house to pick up her car, he insisted we get it out from the car and play with it.

many of his presents this year were big construction trucks, that were not only a super bitch to get out of the packaging, but make lots of noise too. i reallyh don't mind toys that make noise, but these things are really loud.. deafening almost, so we taped over the speakers on the bottom to cut the noise level. so far so good.

and to top off the week, we discovered that we need to pay nearly 1000k to get jays car fixed. all this past week it has been making this noise that has been getting progressively worse. so we brought it in... the tie rod, the bearings (or somehting like that) and the ABS tone ring were all shot. the most expensive repair: the ABS thing. apparantly this part, no one keeps in stock anywhere b/c it's made special for each and every vehicle and comes attached to the axle, so needless to say they have to replace the front axle in jay's car. having this ABS thing broken is bad news b/c this is what tells your ABS to kick in when it needs to. so we've had a busy week.

thanksgiving will be at jay's aunts and uncles this year. i'm .. i mean 'we' will be bringing homemade rolls, and boiled onions, and a pumpkin pie too. it's hard to believe it's only 2 weeks away..

this morning the street cleaner drove down the road even though it's been raining. i was very excited to see this... i meant they were going to pave the road today! woo hoo! our road has been like an obstacle course the past month or so with all the bumps and raised structures they do before paving. i was beginning to wonder if there were ever going to pave our stupid road. when i came home today it was as smooth as a baby's bottom.. it was a nice touch to the end of the day.. !

who knew i could be famous?!

2006-11-03T01:24:00.001-05:00

another one bites the dust

2006-11-01T06:54:00.000-05:00

another halloween has come and past. and like usual in this house it has flopped once again. our little dud this year refused to go out. instead he opted for sleeping, but not before we tried going.

here he is going as Greg Wiggle...he of course wouldn't stand still so i couldn't gt a good shot, but we make do.

he was so excited all day to go, and when we got home he played for a while with the neighbor for it was a PERFECT night for trick or treating.. it was warm and not raining you could go and not freeze! hell i Was excited. i pulled out my 4 year old cape and witches hat.. i was ready. then jeff and becky show up about 5:30 and becky and i head out with evan who wanted nothing to do with it. go figure. we went 20 feet with him crying when he his lollipop fell out of his mouth, and that was the end. lol.. we went back to wah it off and he fell asleep. without dinner again. crap.

this time change is really messing him up this week. he's not napping during the day anymore, which is fine, he's usually chipper all day until it's time for bed, only this week, we haven't been getting dinner done before he falls asleep. this means that he wakes up at 1:30-2 am b/c he's hungry and then is up until 4. but atleast he's alright with me passing out on his bed or on the couch while he watches tv. so needless to say i'm tired

yay

2006-10-21T08:29:00.000-04:00

ok.. when you switch over to beta blogger it has you save you old template by default, but it doesn't tellyou how to get it back..i just found the stupid link to do that.. this makes me very happy. not that i really *love* my particular layout, but it mean si don't have to do it over! and find all my links and what not. woo!

this is what happens when i'm bored at work

2006-10-20T14:19:00.000-04:00

i thought i'd giv ethe new blogger beta a whirl.. now i have to update it and stuff, so i'm using an altra generic layout, and i have to upload links and shit, an di dont' know any off the top of my head so i'll get to it at some point. so far it's not terrible, but man i guess i shouldn't be bored at work. i'll ge myself into trouble with my blog and stuff.

i should be paying attention to my online class that i'm taking right now

2006-10-11T18:44:00.000-04:00

.. but why would i do that. i haven't blogged in a while, and i'm well overdue for an update. life has been treating me well. i think i need to add oil into my car, sometimes my car makes a slight unhappy noise wehen i put my foot on the gas... and i know i'm well overdue for an oil change. i can never seem to keep on time with that. mostly b/c i remember when we're out of money and/or i'm in a place where i can't do it.. like driving the beast for work halfway across the state.

oh well. real estate is going well. my first transaction is moving along smoothly. a friend of mine is buying a condo. hopefully we'll be closing on the 28th or so that means money.. exactly how much, i'm not sure /c i'm sure the listing agent gave the guy a break on the commision b/c he' ssuch a big wig in his office he's probably allowed to cut the commision rate a little, and then century 21 will skim some off the top too, so we'll see.

i've lost 8 lbs this month! woo.. this diet is working :) but yet at the same time my belly is getting bigger, as it should at this point.. i'm almost 21 weeks now! i'll try and post a picture soon.. it's like i got fat overnight b/c of the losing weight thing. lol.. makes me wonder how much i've actually lost b/c i'm gaining weight too as i'm losing it.. it's weird, but hey it's a good diet ;) it doesn't work well for many people though.. just happens that babies work for me!

the leaves here are near peak if not full peak this week.. they look gorgeous driving down the highway... i went through shutesbury today, and not one tree was green absolutely gorgeous. made me wish i had my camera, but didn't think of it. however if you live out of the area, don't you dare travel here b/c the locals may shoot you for driving 20 mph down the highway!

life just gets in the way of blogging it seems

2006-09-26T06:54:00.000-04:00

work has been stressing me out for a few weeks now b/c my boss is a douche. although since i nearly blew up in front of him over it, i've been feeling better. here's what happened:
a few weeks ago my boss pretty much said to me, but not in these words, "you need to take a pay cut for no good reason, or you have to find another job". what? yeah. so that sucks.. see i've been working this job for the state for over 2.5 years now, i started the january after evan was born. this ENTIRE time i've been getting paid salary, aka full-time, for a job that that on most occasions hasn't taken me over 24 hours a week to do. from the beginning i wondered why this job was paid salary, but my boss just shrugged and said whatever. okay. sounds good to me! so at some point in august he said to me casually, we're going to have to give you more stuff to do. okay i said b/c my number of clients is way less than what it once was, and i had alot of spare time within my 24 hours a week, so i assumed he was just going to give me stuff to do to fill up that extra time. a couple weeks after that i was in the middle of a phone call with a guy from the state when he says to me, "i need you tomorrow (tuesday) to go out and survey with me." i said, " i can't", he says "why not" i say, "because i have to work at my other job"... he was very annoyed. and i was pissed that he got mad at me. i told him that this job just wasn't paying enough that i needed to get a second job, and that the only day i had to go was tuesdays...

we proceeded to have a 'discussion' about how i've never had a raise at this job, but how i've never complained b/c i was getting paid for more than i worked, and how the cost of living has gone sky high thanks to gas prices, and what not.. we're just not making enough money. he says to me "well i'm gonna need you to work 32 hours" wtf?! "i say highly pissed off, "i can't afford the childcare for anymore time to work.. i've beent elling you that for over 2 years." he goes, "oh well what about tuesdays you don't get paid to go into real estate, so how does that figure?" he caught me off guard with that one. i forget what i said, but near the end of the discussion, heh, i told him that i was pregnant b/c i knew it would annoy him, and at the time i was 8 weeks, unnoticable. he has the gall to ask me it it was on purpose. and i said yes.. and he's all like how you gonna pay for that. i said, we'll figure it out. asshole. in a discussion later with another coworker, she commented on how inapproopriate it was of him to ask me that about my being pregnant. and she's right, and i was so pissed at the time i didn't notice.

the next day i told him i'd come in the extra day. i came in for 2 or 3 times that extra day, and i had absolutely nothing to do... no surprise. i literally just went online and blogged or went to the forums or whatever for 8 hours. so i stopped goin in. it was a waste of money i couldn't afford.

so about 2-3 weeks later, he asked me if i wanted to switch to hourly and a rate that if i worked 32 hours hours it would be the same as what i'm getting now, or if i wanted to just work the 32 hours for the same money. i said i'd have to think about it.

i was going to do the 32 hours a week until i went on maternity leave, and then go hourly after that, but my boss was sressing me out. everytime he would talk to me or email.. (okay well nearly all the time) he was chime in with "32 hours".. grr.. so i was only able to pick up the extra day at daycare this past week, but i had to do a thing in springfield all day weds so i couldn't go into work. i put that day on the calendar at work that i'd be out. at some point earlier in that week it donned on me that if he's requireing me to work 32 hours as full-time that i'd have no possible way to schedule doctor's appointments without a problem... my job isn't benefited so i'm not alloted any vacation/personal or sick time. so i was stressing out about it big time.. so i had emailed him last week to say just to make me hourly starting asap. last monday i think it was, he brought up the situation, and i nearly flipped out on him. he's just so frustrating b/c he doesn't understand why i'm upset about the whole thing.

if the big wigs in the department are the ones that said i needed to up my hours, fine. tell me that. it really got to me that he told me it was b/c i had another job. my job with him is adead end job for me. no benefits, no pay raises, and no way to move up, there's nothing there. it's just a job, and he doesn't see that. this is a guy who gets paid big bucks at umass who inherited enough money from the death of his father to pay off his mortgage, build a garage larger than his house, purchase a cessna airplane, build a hanger for said airplane, and buy an army transport vehicle which he often drives to work. he pretty much has no bills b/c he paid off his now ex-girlfriends studnet loan bills in exchange she was paying all the utility bills. they recently broke up b/c he left his long term girlfriend of over 8 years for a 22 year old chick from boston. he's 46 years old... he not pretty and can be downright degrading but not realize it.

so that's that work. i'm annoyed with it, but since i nearly blew up on him, i've been feeling better. real estate is going well so far. a friend is buying a condo, but other than that i don't have much going on. i've been doing some office work for my broker. she's paying me so it's fine. atleast i can hope that this job will be worthwhile, ya know. it has so much potential, unlike my stupid state job. so with the 2 jobs i've hardly had a chance to get online these days. seems like i have even less time to cook dinner. such is life, but oncei get in the groove of working the 2 jobs i'l be fine, and the house won't look quite so messy. heh

woo!

2006-09-09T08:40:00.000-04:00

so not only chirstine gonna be an auntie again i am too!

pictures from the weekend

2006-09-06T21:30:00.000-04:00

here are some shots from the weekend:

we went to the butterfly conservatory, which the kids loved, and the staff was showing off soem of the other creatures they have besides the gorgeous butterflies flying all over the place. here you see a giant hissing cockroach on my arm. it's native to madagasgar, and apparantly has as much protein as 5 hamburgers! i guess people eat these. no thanks.

Here is Christine sitting on the sandbox. she and scott took tons of pictures over the weekend.

Here's evan ad james on the turtle sandbox. it makes for a good trampoline. evan was posing nicely, james would barely sit still for 2 seconds.

here's the big sis' family looking over teh rail on mt. sugarloaf, our local mini-mountain... 670-something feet above sea level.

here's a face shot of our nephew james and his mom, my big sis.

here's my son acting like a big cheezeball while i ran into stop&shop for something.

the view from mt. sugarloaf. the connecticut river, and the holyoke range are the main members of the shot here. you can see all the farm land too that goes down the river.

a closer shot of some of the farm land

and to top off the weekend, the poison ivy i've been battling with on my right leg got better earlier in the week, but i developed more poison ivy on my feet and toes, which i blame on the cat. it itches like a bitch... although luckily the bumps aren't as bad as a co-worker at the office.. she had to get the shot. yuck

(insert witty title here)

2006-09-06T06:49:00.000-04:00

summer has come to a close. labor day weekend has come and gone, and any warm weather after this point is few and far between although we're about to have a couple days of nice weather. christine and her family came up for the weekend i had a great time. christine and scott got tones of pictures from our adventures, but we only got a few. i'll post those later i dont' really have the time at the moment. the best part was watching the boys.. they had a great time with each other.

crap, i've got to go wake up evan.

fall is quickly approaching

2006-08-27T07:35:00.000-04:00

the weather up here has definatly taken a turn in the direction of fall. woo! new england is known for it's beauty in the trees as they go to sleep for the winter. especially norhtern new england. around columbus day weekend the colors are peaked in our little nook of the state and everyone decides to drive out route 2 a clog the main highway that spans the northern half of the state. thanks alot leaf-peepers, can i kill you now? grr. it can get so bad on weekends ends that the blinky signs on the highways that normally announce constuction warnings and amber alerts now warn us locals of "foliage traffic" ha. it's a big thing out here and i dont' really know why. i grew up in southeastern mass and am used to the changing into fall colors. it's something i've experienced my entire life. i suppose i can understand someone who comes fromt he desert and see it for the first time to be in awe and see how pretty it is to live up here, but for local people to drive around and look at the leaves every.friggin.weekend just baffles me. i don't get it. drive to the store you'll see some leaves. stop causing traffic! i've always enjoyed playing in the leaves. when christine and i were kids we would make huge piles in front of the house, get on the railing to the porch and jump away. we'd have a blast. we'd also make little walls resembling a house and play neighbors or something. that was fun too. i'd evan make an effort to walk through the leaves on the way to and from the bus stop even thoughthe bus stop was only like 20 ft from the house.

the nights here are cold and the tomatoes are turning. i just love fresh garden grown tomatoes. the crap they sell in the stores over the winter are so bland and so expensive. we've been making pasta sauce with tomatoes we've been getting from the farm stand and from jay's grandmother's garden. we've got 3 grocery bags full we need to peel and boil down. we've also got to make some apple sauce this year. we ran out of the batch we made 2 years ago. we never made any last year. never got to it, and besides we had so much left from the year before.

summer is quickly coming to a close. it happens. jay starts school next week. he's looking forward to it. i think he was bored a bunch of the summer without things to do. that and he said he's sick of staying home ith evan while i'm at work. ha.. i said to him last night, "yeah, so.. you've had like 3 weeks or so at home with him while i work, i've had him for 2 years while you've worked. " he said it like it was a big deal that he's been home with evan so much, that evan's gotten on his nerves (b/c well he's 2 and he's whiney, which is understandable) and that it's different from when i have him at home and jay's at work. i don't think so buddy. lol it's alright.. now he knows what it's been like for me the past couple of years. :)

last week was our "vacation".. which pretty much meant we didn't go to work for a week, we didn't go anywhere special, although when evan was at daycare one day jay and i went to historic deerfield, which was interesting. we learned that the library has a season pass that they lend out to patrons for free so we took advantage and went. it was pretty neat. i remember going tot he capt kendrick house, and the one room school house as a kid. i wish they brought us back when we were older than 8 or 9. i thoguht they were pretty kool, and i've always been interested in local history stuff. ever since we got back form vacation i've been working alot. working my umass job as usual, and then i've been doing a bunch of office stuff over at the new job at century 21. and i worked yesterday too which proved to be good.. i picked up a buyer! and i'm doing an open house later in granby. and then it's back to work as usual tomorrow. it's been non stop it feels like, and i'm just not used to it. i've been wokring 24 hours/week for 2.5 ertty ( <--evan typed his name.. hehe) for 2.5 years and all of a sudden i'm workign full time again. i've been tired all week, which is why i haven't posted at all.

but it's time now to pay attention to my family before i have to report back to work around 12 for the open house, and jay has to go back to work tomorrow.

toodles

2006-08-22T07:10:00.000-04:00

it seems like everone posted on their blogs yesterday but me... that's what happens i guess when i have to work all day and don't really have anything evetful to mention. perhaps later today i'll post something good.

i know i already blogged about it, but my boss is making me market myself, and thus i have to make an official announcement.

2006-08-11T07:53:00.000-04:00

i'd like to announce my candidacy for governor of massachusetts....

wait wrong announcement.i don't think i could ever run for governor. i'm not good at making decisions. i'm too indecisive, or i just don't care so i just say whatever.. anyhow onto the real announcement:

I'd like to officially announce my new postion as a Realtor in Massachusetts. yup.. want to buy or sell a house? or want to know how much your house is worth in today's market.. i'm the one who can help you. even if you live far away from me you can still help me make some money. give me an email or a call and tell me what you need. if you want an estimate i can do that, but if you want to buy or sell i can refer you to someone closer to you. in another state in massachusetts, whereever. that little phone call will usually get me 20% of that agents commission.. an easy way to make a few hundred bucks, and to make my life that much richer.. so please call or email me..i need some clients. i won't be too sad if you want to wiat a few weeks or a month or two, just don't forget about me and make me beg you for business again.

i'll be mailing out official announcement cards to the neighborhood.. and to a few other people as well..

and people who live on the hill in turner's should be expecting junk mail from me in the near future and every couple of months after that.. that's the main area where i'll be marketing myself. why not.

that is all

finally..

2006-08-09T16:10:00.000-04:00

some great weather has arrived in the valley! this past week as been absolutely gorgeous.. perfect weather if you ask me. we had one day that was super humid, but some storms came through and solved that. and frankly one day of humidity is nothing. atleast it was only mid 70's-80 something degrees out, and not over a hundred and humid again. it seems like either everyone is bitching about the weather or no one b/c they're so happy that the weather has finally shaped up they don't dare say anything about the weather. similar to the winter when the weather finally breaks 35 degrees, it's like heaven. i've been caught driving down the highway with the windows down b/c the air feels so much warmer! it's the first sign spring is near... even if it does drop below zero again the next day, there's hope for warmer weather.

if anyone out east of worcester is wondering where weatherman todd gross has gone to after he randomly got fired form channel 5 or 7 which ever one he was at, he has migrated west to news 22 in springfield, and made a home here. last weekend we were watching the news and jay says.. "who the hell is that guy telling me the weather?" i said, "oh him? that's todd gross... he's from boston. he got fired from his last job and no one knew why.. must not've been able to find a job back east so he had to come out here. that's okay. he's pretty good" steve lacy, who's out in boston on channel 5 and we think we've spotted him on NECN as well. latoyia foster who's a reporter for NECN is from news 22 as well. it seems that there's a big switcharoo going on amongst the stations. i wish boston would take tom bevacqua from our area. he's dumb, looks terrible, and frankly i don't know many people that actually enjoy his weather forecasts.

i made my first round of zucchini bread the other day, and it came out well. i made 2 batches. i have enough mashed zucchini left to make atleast 4 more batches, and zucchini season is far from over! usually i make so much i sell it at the church bizarre.. why not. i can't eat it all, and one of the only other things that you can do giant zukes is to stuff them, which is super yummy. what you do is take your favorite stuffed pepper recipe, but put the meat mixture into a hollowed out zuke, cut in half lengthwise. talking about that just made me in the mood for galumpki's.. aka.. stuffed cabbage.. yum.

has anyone else bought from walmart's garden section, a hanging flower pot kit thing in a box? i bought 2 different butterfly garden ones with a gift card i got from my birthday, let me just say my birthday is in late may and they haven't done anything thus far.. well one of them sprouted, but never got further than that. i was disappointed. what a waste of money. so while i was working out in milton the other day i was talking with my clients about plants.. they run a greenhouse, and i told them about said hanging pots, and how they haven't done anthing, and we got talking on mint, and then she commented on how they did them in hanging pots, and they looked really nice. so i hacked away at my over grown mints today while evan was napping adn put some in said pots.. they look kinda meh right now, but thier thin.. gotta give them some time to fill out. jay said i should trim them so the stems are shorter.. hmm.. didn't think of that. it's not a bad idea, it'll force some growth for it to fill out. perhaps i'll do it in a couple of days. let the roots take and all that. i figure somehting in the pots is better than nothing in the pots, right?.

use common sense if you have a outdoor fire pit please...

2006-08-01T14:57:00.000-04:00

i posted this on the forums, so some of you may have read this already, but it's very important that people use common sense.

please do not put combustables in it in this heat unles syou plan on starting the fire right then and there. yesterday (7/31) i was outside and noticed some smoke coming from my neighbor's firepit thing.. it's black and metal and a cylinder shape... i said to jason, "um.. the neighbor's firepit is smoldering and i don't think anyone is home." so jay said he'd be right out to look at it... and low and behold a fire was starting b/c they left some wood or some cardboard or something in there. jay knocked on the door to see if anyone was home while i got our hose ready. and by the time i got the hose over the fence flames were actually starting. no one was home, so we put it out with our hose. now that whole deck could've gone up in flames if we weren't there to put it out. all b/c they were careless and left shit in there. they keep their pit on the deck and usually it's okay but this time it was pushed into the corner very close to the railing. when they came home 10 mintues later i told them, and they said thanks. didn't seem to concerned, but whatever. an hour later it was smoking again, and his 8 year-old and i put out the fire b/c his dad didn't seem to care, and their hose didn't reach the deck, so we used ours agian..

please be very careful with these.

my husband and i wet it pretty good the first time, but the heat from the firepit cover and the outside temp got it cooking again about an hour later! it was very freaky, but the 8 year-old and i soaked it for a good solid 5 minutes. he took the cover off so he could wet it really good and it remained off for the rest of the day. today it's back on, and i hope it doesn't fire up again. teh flammable crap is still inside and it makes me nervous now. i told the 8 year-old that the heat caused what ever was in there to catch fire, and that they should keep that stuff in there is this weather. he said but they have no where else to put it, and i told him, that they could put it in a pile on the ground until they're able to supervise the fire. he did comment that that it never happened before in all the couple years that they've had it. i said that's probably true, but it also hasn't been this hot out and that it still not safe to keep combustables in there.

when i told his dad what happened his reply was, "you should've just let it burn...." and was trying to be funny when he continued with "you ruined my plan to burn the place down"... let me add that was refering to the amount of work they have to put into the place versus the amount of insurance money they'd probably get. it bothered me that he wasn't more concerned. do i sound like a safety nazi?

weird cravings here i come...

2006-07-27T21:26:00.000-04:00

so unlike last pregnancy i have started to have cravings for food i wouldn't normally eat so much, or even at all. the past few days have been "foods that taste good in vinegar"... such as cukes, and today i had some carrots with vinegar...mmm... don't knock it.. i remember when i was very young my cousin vicki did it for me once b/c i refeused to eat the carrots... mind you this was at my aunt and uncle's (D &J's) old house.. i think i must've been three or four or something.. they haven't lived there in forever. i've always loved vinegar tho. and i'm been enjoying the balsalmic on the cukes... it's sweeter and is great alone on salads.

after dinner (which was the carrots) i had me some ice cream. and everyone who knows me, knows that i lvoe my vanilla ice cream.. yumm.. well i put chocolate on it... and those who know me well, know that i don't ever put chocolate on ice cream, and barely eat it on a normal basis. i defiled it, and it was yummy.

lookie:

my business cards came in! it's got my picture on it! the picture came out well... a friend of high school said it looks very similar to my senior picture. sort of i guess, but only now i'm grown up...

okay so it has my phone number on it... um... no harassing calls please.. but if you want me to sell your house give me a ring for i'm hardly ever in the office, and too poor for a cell phone. such is life.

our vacation in a couple of weeks has been cancelled. we were gonna go camping out in savoy SP but jay was reading the rules, adn it said that if you leave your site for more than 12 hours they reserve the right to give to someone else. well that's shitty.. we were planning on coming back to the house for one night to do laundry and so evan can spend a night at home... he gets anxiety when he's out of his bed for too long. so we cancelled that b/c we're like wtf? that's crazy. so we thought we'd go to the 'ham and spend some time at the beach... well it turns out our friend with whom we stay with is going to michigan to visit his mom... so now we're not doing that. so we're bummed, but in the end it's okay b/c we honestly don't have the money for a trip anyway.

that is all.. have a great night!

i can't seem to keep a good blogging schedule

2006-07-16T20:57:00.000-04:00

it's either often or over a week..lol.. oh well. there's not much to report other than the fac it's been bloody hot and humid around here lately. they're saying heat wave. great. i can really do without, honestly. the evening was nice we went for a walk around the block with evan and then came inside b/c it was getting dark. the worst part about this god damn heat is that it's just too hot to go swimming unless you can go swimming in the shade or swim early in the day or in the night. the middle of the day i'm stuck inside. my pregnant self just can't handle this god damn heat. the worst part is that the a/c in my car is broken. it died at the very end of summer in 2004. it'll cost like $90 to fix or something, so needless to say it hasn't been done. luckily we've been able to carpool to work this past week, and this week in jay's car which still has working a/c! we've been using his car most of the time when it's bloody hot out b/c my car gets so freakin' stifling. days like this i really do love the a/c. it makes me wonder how they did it back in the day. i can't imagine.

i'm just thankful that i'm not in the mid-west right now.. it's well over 100 degrees out it. it just out of this world b/c north dakota and minnesota are some of THE coldest states in the lower 48 states, and now it's beginning to feel like the desert up there. no thanks. i go crazy enouh here with our crazy weather patterns.

work at century 21 seems to be going well. i'm in the process of looking at properties and haven't actually started office work yet on the phones. i should be getting my business cards tomorrow or tuesday i imagine. they'll have my picture on them. i'm excited. my first business card...lol..

other than the weather there's not much to report. life here has been the same, and no work around the house has been done b/c of the weather and us working. jay's been doing some seminars this past week.

time to put evan to bed so i'll catch you later.

i took some pictures yesterday

2006-07-07T17:07:00.000-04:00

here's a link to them: PHOTOS

i didn't feel like uploading them to blogger to i uploaded them to my kodak account... check them out

oh yeah this too!

2006-07-06T18:27:00.000-04:00

let's see if you can figure out my good news! here's a hint.. there's 2 things.

2006-07-05T10:13:00.000-04:00

it's been a busy couple of weeks. i just noticed it's been awhile since i last posted, but oh well, that's what happens when your busy outside and palying and such. we put in a new floor in our back room. it's a WHOLE new room. the rug that was in here that was put in by a previous homeowner was just disgusting. granted we ground in a bunch of dirt into the cheap ass rug they put in, but the fact that their dog peed all over the rug by the door was disgusting in itself. that dog peed there so much, that it was soaked into the subfloor.. yuck. it was nauseating when we pulled up the rug, it was so gross. so we oil soaped it, which helped a bit, and then sprinked baby powder all over it and let it sit over night which helped a bunch but still not a hundred percent. so before we put down the new floor we put some gold bond over the spot again hoping that it would help. it seems to have. we put down some laminate wood floor we bought from ikea we picked up on our way home from the cape. it's sort of on the way home. i heart ikea.... altho we've learned form a friend to never ever go on the weekend. you have to go midweek, when most people are at work.

so not only did we do the floor we replaced the floor on our front porch. it needed to go. it had dry rot so bad that in some places the floor bounced a little and it was just broken at the end of the boards in front of the door. it just wasn't safe. and it looked like crap. it looks soooo much better now, and is wicked sturdy now. jay hurt himself while tearing out the floor. put a big gash in his stomach. poor guy. it stung pretty bad. the porch has been on their so long long that the nails used were the old cut style nails... nails like i've never seen before... i'm sure tremont nail makes them, or atleast used to seeing as how they shut down shop there. i injured my toe while screwing in a floorboard. it hurt. the drill bit slid off the screw and got my big toe just under the nail where it's tender... and it was fine after a while and then i go and run it over with the shoppign cart while at teh checkout... that hurt wicked bad and i was hobbling for the rest of the day. today it's pain free! yay!

and while at walmart jays glasses broke.. and broke beyond repair. they were like 5 years old anyway, and really needed to be replaced anyhow so he's at the eyedoctor's now. speaking of which i've got to go get him.

i'll try and post some pictures later of our handy work.. the only thing left on the honey-do list for this year is painting the porch railing b/c now that looks like crap with the new floor!

here comes peter cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail...

2006-06-23T10:09:00.003-04:00

we're up to our ears in lettuce! we joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm this year. this means we bought shares inthe farm and paid a few hundred dollars for a seasons load of fresh veggies every week, and right now it's pretty much all lettuce and field greens.. and some strawberries, but mostly lettuce. we still have lettuce left over from last week and after getting this weeks share of "take all you want we have plenty" we made a couple pit stops to jay's family to unload the lettuce, some ginormous scallions and radishes to grandpa. they said b/c of the rain the lettuce won't stop growing... lol.. great. but it's great b/c it means we don't really have to buy any veggies for the rest of the season (until october!) unless we want something that's out of season. we bought a "full share" this year, which they say is enough to feed 2-3 adults or 2 vegetarians for the week. they also have a 1/2 share options, and a farmstand option where you can get discounts at the stand. it's well worth it. and we're hippies i guess... it's an organic farm too. in all honesty we were indifferent about organicness, but the closer CSA farm to us, never got back to us, so whatever, we lucked out.

it's been super muggy out here the past week with the sole exception of wednesday. weds was beautiful. what a great way to start the summer! i've determined that western mass is full of poo-poo heads.. but only for this reason: there's no where where you can swim for free in a body of water around here. so for that all the people that decided that you have to pay to park at all the places to go swimming.. you are all poo-poo heads! so there. there is one exception (pictured, beach not shown) that i know of, and that's puffer's pond in n. amherst by our old apt, only there is pretty much no parking for the pnd except along one side of a narrow road. when we lived in the apartments by there i used to walk to the north beach all the time. that was the nicer beach to me b/c it was never crowded, but there's no sand to play in up there so if i wanted to bring evan i'd have to go to the main super crowed beach so he could play in the sand. the greenfield swimming pool... which is actually the green river, costs money, and so does laurel lake and lake wyola.. atleast the latter ones belong to the state park system so once you buy a season pass you can go to any of the state parks with the pass. hopefully we'll be able to buy one soon, but we get paid bi-weekly and this is not a pay week, so we have to wait... again... but there's always hope.

and b/c of this, i miss the beach. (pictured is my old stomping grounds) i miss being able to cross the street and taking a dip when i felt like it b/c it was hot and/or sticky. i miss swimming across the drop b/c i could or to see friends b/c it was quicker to do that than to walk around over the stone bridge. i miss the best beach in town only available to residents.. however i do not miss the horsefylies we always had to flee from b/c mom's allergic.. nothing like a trip to the ER on fourth of july b/c of a fly bite just to be told to take some benadryl.. oh and i definatly not miss those mutant spider crabs.. yuck..

we bit the bullet

2006-06-20T19:36:00.000-04:00

jason broke down and put int he air conditioners yesterday. we held out as long as we could.. personally i don't prefer them, but they sure do come in handy when it gets super muggy like it's been for the past couple of days. i'm not sure how hot it got today, but the past 2 days was above 90 degrees! and just a little bit ago, we got a blast of thunderstorms even with some hail. i looked at the radar after the storm and great barrington is getting clobbered... they always do. they saw tornadoes a few years back i guess. i don't remember when. we're still yet to go swimming. jay's grandparents' pool just opened today b/c they needed sand for the filter. and you need money to go any where to swim around here. we really need to get the pass for the state parks... we just haven't gotten there yet.

we're heading down cape this weekend to go to edaville railroad on sunday for thomas the train day. i hope evan has fun. i'm afraid that he'll be scared of the train upclose.. he has this things about screaming when anything too big gets too close. when you buy tickets for this shindig you get to pick a time to ride the train. we made a point to get an early morning ride so if it turns out the event stinks we can get out of there. that and evan does better in the morning. we gonna head down saturday night and then come back here tuesday morning. i don't have to work either of those days and jay is done with school!

I've finished yet another michael connelly book.. i've almost all of them, and he's written alot. i need to read Blood Work and i've got them all so far to date. he's coming out with a new one in the fall... i'm very excited. jay says i should read another author but i said that i will when i finish all of connelly's books. i'm almost done.

one of these days i'll get to taking some pictures and posting them up. i just havent' been taking pictures with all the rain we've had.

i'm curious who my kansas reader is... do i even know anyone in KS?

no witty title available yet. suck it up

2006-06-14T06:39:00.000-04:00

i need to keep my blogging up.. i've been getting lazy. but at teh same time i dont' know what to write about half the time. whatever.. so you get me when i hve somehting to talk about. or when i get the chance.

so we had our mayoral elections yesterday, and our incumbent mayor won! thank god, b/c she was away better of a candidate than the challenger. let me jsut add that our mayor is the pick of the crop,b ut does deserve another chance to wrap some stuff up. she had a lot of crap to clean out of the town administration when she took office 3 years ago as our first mayor. and the challenger Athey just happened to be part of the cause for all the shit that forgey got. so that's that.

the weather here has finally gotten better.. we're supposed to be getting rain later, but frankly i han handle one night of rain in a week. rain is good,, just not in extremem excess... people seem to be less bitter this week. people are just relieved that the sun didn't blow up on us.

evan has been sleeping alot better the past couple months.. only instead of waking up and crawling intoour bed to finish sleeping.. he wakes up, wakes me up and goes back to his bed to fall back asleep... he likes to cuddle with me. it could be worse i guess... this morning he idn't come get me until about 6 am.. which is way better than 4 am.. and then it takes about 30 seconds for him to fall back asleep and then i can go downstairs or back to bed depending on what time it is.. he's like a little alarm clock.

our next task with the kid is potty training. he'll go pee on the toilet some of the time.. but the trick will be to convince him to do it all the time and when he has to go number 2 as well.. we plan on doing this over the summer... wish us luck.

oh.. a friend of mine is working on designing me a new template for my blog! woot woot! janelle rocks like that! b/c i need one pretty badly. my current one was a freebie from bloggertemplates.com... it works, i'm just bored with it. she also found out recently that she's pregnat! and i'm wicked excited for her!

i'm getting sick.. it's *possible* that it could be allergies, but i'm starting out teh way i normally do when i get a cold... grr..

enjoy the sun before it runs away again.. no go.. that's an order!

new career here i come..

2006-06-04T07:58:00.000-04:00

i passed my real estate liscense exam yesterday! woohoo! so i'm offically able to sell houses and help buyers in MA... only now i have to locate an agency to join... i'm hoping to be able to work for the realtor we used to buy our house.. she was fantabulous!

anyone want to buy a house? i could use some clients soon.. Razz

2006-06-02T22:03:00.000-04:00

You are a
Social Liberal
(71% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(25% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Democrat

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test