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

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

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..

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

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

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

impending doom

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

a spare moment

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

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!

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!