Happy New Years Eve!

It's cold! It was 38 on Red's walk this morning. There was actual ice in the grass. It's been raining so there was water in the water retention and it was frozen. Not thick slippery ice, thin crunchy ice. I told Connor to go down there and step on it. He wouldn't. He got close but the grass was also frozen, which freaked him out. So I had him hold Red's leash and I went down and crunched some ice to show him it wasn't scary. It didn't work.

So I had to bring Red down there and hold his hand while he carefully put his little shoe on the edge of the ice and CRUNCH! He thought that was pretty cool. He talked about it for the rest of the walk.

"Imagine if rain was frozen! That would be so cool!"
"You know what frozen rain is called?"
"What?"
"Snow!"

My poor little Arizona boy.

New couches!!

Ever have one of those days when you are just running on adrenaline by the end? Where you just want to sit down, but can't... or don't dare... cause your brain won't stop. You think, I'll just do one more thing. Just this one thing and then I will sit down and relax.

I had a day like that today. It started with the zoo. You know you are going to be tired when you say your day "started" with going to the zoo.

I met my sister in law and her kids there. So three hours at the zoo with 4 kids and my sister in law. Then McDonalds with everyone. Which by the end of McDonalds I was ready for the rubber room.

Connor wanted my nephew to come over, which I said was fine. A few hours of two boys in front of the Wii doesn't bother anyone.

When I got home Larry asked me if I wanted to go to Costco and pick up the couches we saw there yesterday. YES! So off to Costco we go. The Costco by our house only had the love seat and not the couch. So we got that, went home and dropped it off, and then went to another Costco that did have the couch in stock.

Phew.

Then we called my brother in law to
A. help us bring the couches inside and
B. pick up my nephew.

While we waited we loaded up the van and truck with the old couch. My brother in law showed up and helped Larry bring in the couches while I smooched on their baby.

A stop at Good Will to drop off the old couch and then off to dinner.

Home to rearrange the new couches about 15 times to decide that we liked them best the way they were originally. Finally, can I sit down on my new couch? Really? Cause I'm beat!

Merry Christmas

It totally didn't feel like Christmas this year. Too busy I guess. This is the first year in a while that I didn't want to take the tree down on Christmas night. Here is it the day after Christmas and I still don't feel like taking it down.

I've also discovered the purpose of Legos. This is something that has always been lost on me, but Maddy needed help putting together her Harry Potter Lego Game so I went up there to help her. It was kinda fun.

Anywho... Here is my annual Christmas Gift List.

Laptop (typing on it right now!)
3 bottles of wine
a wine trivia game
a book about wine
a wine bottle decoration thingy (it's cute)
wine glasses
a book to keep notes about what I think of different wines ("wine stuff" was on my list)
House season 1
Desperate Housewives season 6
Ruby earrings, necklace, and a ring
Epic Mickey (Wii game)
A shirt
Tealight lanterns
Vegetable steamer
Money (I'm not saying how much :))
Winter Hat
Apron

Crap... I'm sure there is more, but that is all I can think of right now. Pretty crazy huh?

How was your Christmas?

Drama in the cul-de-sac

I should probably tell you about my dads trip. He stayed with us for a couple of days. It was nice. The kids had a blast having grandpa around. I could also wish you a very Merry Christmas! But instead I will tell you about the goings on of the cul-de-sac last night.

First off let me remind you of last year's christmas eve.

So last night Larry and I are having some drinks by the light of the Christmas tree and just talking cause you know how it is going on vacation and having house guests. We haven't spoken to each other in like 5 days. So we are sitting in the living room with no lights on except the white lights of the tree.

Larry hears something going on outside and gets up to look out the front window. He says "There is some guy out there that looks like the belongs in the Grateful Dead. Long grey hair. He's taking stuff out of a pick up and putting in on the grass."

So I get up and look out the window of the front door. And sure enough there is some old hippie dude walking around under the street light and a huge white pick up truck. With him is this tatooed punk looking guy. I can't see what they are doing cause whatever they are putting on the grass is behind a huge bush. But they are acting really strange. They would work on whatever was in the grass for a minute and then one of them would go out into the middle of the street and get down on his hands and knees and look at their work.

Keep in mind that it is 10:00 at night on Dec 23rd. What on earth are they up to?

Then a giant gets out of the truck. No seriously. A giant. This guy was HUGE! He made the other guys, who didn't look little before, look like midgets. He wasn't fat, just BIG in everyway.

Then the big dude takes the truck and parks it right next to our house in the street. So Larry goes out into the back yard to see if he can overhear them talking. I go to the window and now they really start to make me nervous. They pick up whatever was in the grass, which now I can kinda see made of shiny metal and start running around the cul-de-sac. But all crouched down and hiding behind bushes.

I'm seriously ready to call the cops at this point.

Then Larry comes back in and they are hiding behind bushes right infront of his car so he flashes the lights. This startles them but they don't leave. Which now I'm curious because if they were up to no good I would think this would get them to leave.

A few seconds later the three of them are pushing a car down the street on this dolly thingy. They push it over behind the truck that is parked next to the house and we hear hydraulics.

Ahhh... repo men.

That explains everything.

Our vacation in the clouds

Just got back from our weekend in Sedona. I had planned on doing some hiking, seeing the stars, walking around in the little artsy shops, and seeing the big red rocks. Ehhh... It didn't really work out that way.

It rained the whole time. So no stars, no hiking, and clouds so low they were blocking the mountains. However, that does mean that we were literally IN the clouds. And there was almost no one else there which was cool.

We had the nicest hotel room I've ever stayed in. It was a one bedroom apartment at this resort type place. Very cool. I don't think we saw one other guest the whole time we were there... not that I can think of anyways. They had a fire pit like 5 steps away from our door. The first night we went out there and sat by the fire and drank Hot Chocolate. Cozy.

They have a festival of lights this time of year and we walked around that. That was pretty neat. We did walk around the little shops on the second day and then we went to a movie. Tangled. It was really cute. We all liked it a lot.

When I asked Connor about Sedona he said "Tangled was pretty good. I liked Tangled. I liked the lights. I liked the telescope. I liked the hotel. I liked the merry go round with the reindeers."

That about sums it up. Looking forward to my dad's visit tomorrow and then Christmas!! It's going to be another crazy week!

The cough heard around the Target

You know you are sick when you get up in the middle of the night to Google the symptoms of Pneumonia. I'm just saying.

I woke up this morning feeling like I had just run around the block when all I did was walk into the bathroom. So I made a drs appointment. Before I went made sure that I memorized all the symptoms so that I could make sure I was correctly diagnosed with said Pneumonia. But I don't have it, regardless of what the websites say.

I do however have Bronchitis. Which at least let me know I was not crazy. I also left with 4 prescriptions, which I don't know, seems like a little overkill. I got an inhaler (since I was out of breath just walking from the waiting room to the exam room), two different cough meds (one for day, one for night), and some antibiotics. My plan was to not fill both the cough meds but I just went ahead and fill them all, that's how crappy I feel.

I called Larry after my appointment to let him know I was done and that I was headed over to Target to get my meds. He asked me to pick up both his cholesterol meds and his allergy meds. Which meant that Maddy's asthma meds were also needing to be filled. I worked for three years to get their monthly meds on the same schedule, so now it is a hard and fast rule that if you pick up one, you pick up both!

So I hand the pharmacist my four prescriptions, and then ask for the other three I need. Gosh... 7 different meds for 3 different people. She was like... ehhhh... It's probably going to be like 30 mins. Which I expected.

So she rings me up, $100! Jeeze! I gave her the money and a joke about opening my own pharmacy. Then she reaches into her drawer and takes out two gift cards. "I only have two of these left, you can have them. There's $10 on each." Sweet! I don't know the rules on the magic gift card stash, but I was greatful. I'm sure they are meant for the little old lady who gets like one pill at a time cause that is all she can afford. But I still really appreciated it. It was probably my raspy, crackling, I'm-so-sick-I-shouldn't-be-in-public voice that got me first in line on the sympthay train.

Hello hello!

Look at me... two posts in one week. Let's keep up the good work!

So yeah... My van got hit while parked.... again. I was dropping Connor off at school and another mom was basically trying to parallel park in front of me and clipped the front corner of the van. I went and got an estimate, $400. Which is totally ridiculous, but what can you do?

It's funny cause as I was pulling into the school parking lot I was thinking about how embarrassing it would be to hit something. Cause it's crazy in there, 100 cars going everywhere. I was thinking how I would be less concerned about the damage than I would be about having done it. You know? And then this mom, who I've talked to here and there over the last few months, comes up kinda snuggles up to me and says "Is that your blue minivan right there? the Kia?" and I say "Yeah, why? Did you hit it?" lol. She puts her forehead against my shoulder and says "Yeah. I'm so sorry!"

So you know... hey. It happens, what can you do. They will fix it. I'm more worried about being without my van for two days. Luckily... if you can call it that... two clients canceled this week so I have to work today and then not again til next Tuesday. So I don't NEED my van until then.

But anywho... got to run.

2011

Hi! Long time no talk... I know!

The year is almost over. Can you believe it? I can't. It was a pretty crazy year. New friends, new job, dog owner, landlord, college graduate. Doing the final paper work for Clear Sky, started The Grime Fighters. Lost 20 pounds.

Next year will be even weirder. I'll be the mom of two school aged children. No kids home with me during the day?! Wild!

But you know why I'm really writing today? Because it's New Year's Resolution time again!

My 2010 resolutions were:
1. Get my associates degree: Basically done. I have to take my finals but I have an A in both classes so I'm going to say done.

2. Pay off non mortgage debt and not take on any new debt: ehhh... not so much. My non-mortgage debt has been greatly reduced but buying the rental property certainly doesn't count as no new debt.

3. Get my hair done at least 3 times: done!

4. Do something together as a family at least once a month: done! Easy.


Ok, so New Year's Resolutions for 2011. CRAZY!

1. All non mortgage debt paid off: Ha! We will try again. Mortgage debt only! Both houses included. I don't think that I'm goint to pay one off this year... although, that would be AWESOME!

2. Read 25 books: Could be easy, could be hard. Let's see. I'll have to keep a list somewhere. I'm not really sure if this is a strech or not.

3. Paint the living room: I've lived here 6 years and I've been meaning to paint for about 5.99 years. It's ridiculous. Let there be paint!

Ok, I'm going to call that it. Something financial, some personal development, and something I've been putting off for too long. I think that is a good mix. I should put in there to blog once a day. But let's not get carried away here! Although I really do want to blog more. I know I've been busy... but hopefully things will balance out a little better this year.

Til next time....