Zombies!

Whatever. No, I am not the walking dead. In fact I did not even die! I've just been...busy! With other typing. So I've been neglecting my duties updating all my loyal readers on the comings and goings of Us and our Bug.

Speaking of the Lily Bug. I'm sorry, but who told her she could grow up? Seriously! Today, while ending our Skype conversation with Alabama Grandma, Lily realizes that it's goodbye time and says "Bye" with perfect articulation and blows Grandma kisses goodbye.

What?!

Hyperventilating!

First it's using words. Then it's potty training. Next thing you know we're going to have some hormone driven teenage boy on our doorstep with Papa cleaning his rifle on the front porch. Ahhh! This is so not happening!

Deep breaths. Calm down. Eat another cupcake.

Phew. Okay. Where was I?

Along with finding new words all the time - "Bye" may seem simple and innocent, but I assure you it is not - Lily has been, how shall we put it, asserting herself and her opinions. Loudly. On the ground, kicking and generally flailing. In private and public. Seriously though, when you have dumb parents that refuse to give you a cookie or let you finish off their 16 oz smoothie, what's a girl to do? Oh yeah, and that awesome stretch of pavement in front of the driveway that cars like to do 50 mph on - parents won't let her play on that either. That really ticks her off. I suppose it is our fault. We don't let her do the "fun" stuff so she lets us know. And then reminds us of the injustices. Loudly.

Ahhh, temper tantrums. Comes with toddler territory, right? Well, she isn't a toddler! Sure, she just turned 20-months-old, but that child has not been toddling for months now. No, instead she climbs over the couch, up the stairs by herself while her parents close their eyes for a much needed blink or up onto the coffee table when they're watching, just to remind them who's really in charge. No toddling there. None whatsoever! Okay, dark chocolate time.

Aside from the temper tantrums, and oh are they plentiful, life has been going pretty well. Honestly, the tantrums don't even bother us that much because the only way to stop them is just to let her have them. If she's unwilling to cooperate, we leave her there and allow her to cry until she stops and gives us an "all done," indicating that she's ready to go on with life. Like blowing bubbles.

I guess that brings us back to words, doesn't it. Lily's words are stinking adorable and I'm not just saying that because I'm her mother and the adorable obviously transfers over...

*silence*

Okay, fine, maybe she gets it from her Papa's side. Whatever. Back to the point. Adorable. Over the past year we have gained words and then lost some again. Her first word was a very articulate "Kitty" before she could even walk. That went away for a few months while we learned "Ya," "No," "Nnnnooo," "Dadda," "Mamma," "Yum," "Yummyama," and "Mo" for more. We've occasionally played with "Gamma" for Grandma and have also added "Itty," "Apo" for apple, "A errr," for cracker, "Kitty" again, "Woof woof" for a time, "Woot Woot" with arms raised in the raise-the-roof motions much to my delight, "Shoooo" for shoes, "Hot," "Coe" for cold and "Thhppbbbtt" for Shut Up Parents And Leave Me Alone.

Quite the repertoire.

When Lily isn't talking, screaming or sleeping, she's having fun. This can be found in the form of playing in her toy box, pushing her stroller around with her baby, removing the baby and giving her sippy cup the seat of honor, taking all of our canned food out of the cupboard and lining it up on the floor, staring into Mama's book light as she contemplates the meaning of life or just being stinking cute. She loves it when we vacuum and thinks it's the most hilarious thing in the world. It's actually kind of difficult because she chases the darn thing trying to get in front of it. She loves to push buttons - even the ones on the remote and enjoys giving the dog's toys back to him. He's not actually supposed to put the toys down. At all. Or she'll come and stick them right back in his mouth. He spends a good deal of his time sleeping anymore. Coincidence?

Let's see, what else? Lily is ginormously huge now weighing in at 30lbs and 34 inches at her doc appointment mid April. My baby is almost three feet tall. When did that happen? Psh. She's now in 2T clothes and I imagine will grow out of those this summer. We've been extraordinarily fortunate to have inherited quite a bit of handmedowns from glorious friends. What would we do without you guys? Go broke I imagine.

Which moves us into the adult babies of the house. M and I are doing well. M is loving his job and has somehow made me be okay with him reserving on a weekly basis. He does half shifts, usually averaging 5-8 hours per night. Although it isn't a full shift, he still does see some action. Occasionally. On very rare instances. Okay, really, the guy's a softy. If you get pulled over, you want him to do it. Me? I'd be handing out tickets left and right, mainly in revenge at having been given two that I don't feel I deserved. Again - Psh.

Work has been going well for both of us. These are difficult economic times and it looks like that finally hit our county. We're looking at either potential layoffs this summer or being forced to take a day or more of unpaid time off each month. I would love to have the time off, but each day is close to $100 out of my pocket. I can't afford that. On the other hand, I don't want anyone fired because I only really know four girls here now and two of them would get fired because of seniority. And yes, I use "fired" incorrectly. Laid-off. I'm too lazy to go back and correct it. Either way, people may be out of a job.

M and I seem pretty secure. M is a very valuable member of his team and they couldn't function with one less person. I am one of two people in my three person department. Yep, you read that correctly. We need three people to run and we have two. Have had only two for about a year now. We got a person and then he got a better paying job. Put his two weeks notice in after working 2 days. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted!

That's probably part of the reason why work is just blech for me. I'm burnt out I think. Proactively burnt out. I know that I'm the only person that's doing what I do and I have been for the majority of my time with the county. It's really hard to do something when you know that because you just physically don't have the manpower, there's no way you can get caught up. Almost makes you just want to quit trying. Almost.

Which leads me to my last bit of info for the night. Yes, it's all about me because M isn't here to update for himself. Mwahahahahahaha....

Huh? Right - me. So I start my new Masters program on Tuesday. I'm going for an MBA with an emphasis in accounting. I think I'll be much happier with this program and the university. I'm going with University of Phoenix because it is all online. The classes are going to be hard and it's going to be long and painful (one class at a time, but for the next 2 years straight with no breaks), but hopefully if I do end up having to look for a job, the degree will help. I just couldn't stay with teaching anymore. Feel free to email me and I'll explain.

Aside from that, I've been trying to find my sanity in my reading. I used to love to read. I guess I always did. Problem was that in college, I just didn't have the time! When you have 5 classes that all want you to read a chapter in their book each night, it becomes impossible to eat or sleep much less anything else! January I made it my resolution to go back and do something that I love. This was it and I am bound and determined to keep it up. Nothing makes me happier than taking a few minutes to relax with a good book. I really needed it!

On the subject of books; I decided to do something productive with all the time I spend reading. I usually read on the way to and from work and then 2 hours in the evening after Lily goes to bed. M plays video games. It's amazing how much we don't watch TV anymore and frankly, I don't really miss it. So, with all this time I've been spending reading, I decided to start up a new blog and use it to string out my thoughts about the various stories I've discovered, dived into and loved (or not loved). You're more than welcome to take a look and frankly I encourage it!

A Journey of Books

I'm very proud of my little baby and update it regularly. Hush! Don't give me stuff about not updating this. It's much easier to give my thoughts on something I'm reading than give my thoughts on my daily life. Somehow the book is a more concrete thing to discuss. That's my reasoning anyway.

The blog is a special place for me. It has daily themes and is full of other fun stuff like contests and author interviews. In addition, I put my reviews of the books I've read up there. Right now I have about half of the books I've read in 2009 up. Each book now as I read it gets it's review posted that night but a lot of the books I read before the blog started still need their reviews typed up. I'll get to it. In the meantime I've having tons of fun. I've got a couple contests for books going on right now as well as an Author Interview of Michelle Pillow on Friday the 8th. In June I'll be participating in Host The Host blog tour as a means of promoting Stephenie Meyer's The Host. More information can be found HERE. I encourage you to check in June as I'll be giving away three copies to some lucky readers! Also, I have a contest going on for a copy of Charlaine Harris's newest Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead and Gone and a great Mother's Day Contest sponsored by The Hatchette Book Group. I'm having great fun with the blog. I've got tons of books to read, both books that I bought and books that publishers have sent me. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Okay, I think that's about it. I'm going to head to bed here since I've been typing this for a few hours now. I'm going to randomly stick some adorableness in here. Don't worry if the pictures make no sense. They are just cute for cute's sake.

Sorry to interrupt this broadcast...

Yes, I know, it's been a while! What can I say, life has been busy busy busy!

What's new in the land of the Browns? Not much really. Well, maybe...who knows! You see my problem in updating!

Since I last posted I have quit the program of study that I was in and have switched to a different university (online so it will work with my schedule but the classes will be much tougher) and an entirely new course of study. Instead of Bilingual Education, I am now going to pursue my Masters in Business Administration with an emphasis in Accounting. There were many things that went into this very difficult decision, not the least of which were the attitudes at the university I was previously attending. Aside from losing the ability to utilize Evening Care (it's really nice to have a date night out), I won't miss anything from them. Don't get me wrong, they ROCK as a university especially for my undergrad degree - but as a graduate school? Yeah, not so much. Especially the education program. My new program starts in May and it's going to be tough but I think I'm really going to like it and hopefully it should help ensure that I'm able to get a job should that ever become a concern of mine.

Moving on...

In work news, all is well for me I suppose. Work is work. I love doing the office work, love creating new materials and helping to keep our information updated and easily accessible. I don't so much like the inspections. It's more that it's just hard to find the motivation to leave my climate controlled office and go out into the freezing sleet and rain. Oh yes, it is STILL snowing. Geez!

Mike's work seems to be going well for him as well. He's bumped up in the reserves so that he is now able to go out on his own. This works much better for our schedules as he can make his nights as short or long as he needs and doesn't have to rely on anyone else as far as to when he can go out. He absolutely loves it. One part of me hopes that he keeps his job with his IT guys and the other hopes that he gets a police job. He'd be quite happy with either although anyone that knows him knows what an adrenaline junky he is. Hard to get so worked up over computers...except when he's breaking them!

Lily is doing well. She continues to grow everyday. I'm worried that she's going to be taller than me in another week or two. Perhaps I should start feeding her coffee and junk food. ;) Her hair is getting quite long and now touches her shoulder in the long spots. We still pull it up on top of her head. We use her rather tall sprout to test the weather for us now.

She is currently wearing 2T clothes. She probably fits best in 3T for her tops and 24months to 2T for her bottoms (pants especially with her long legs). Someone tell my baby to stop growing!

She now says mamma, dadda, icky, keeee (kitty), dah (down), hup (up), mmmmooooe (moo), moe (more), ahh doe (all done), no, nnnooo, nooooo, nnnnnno, yeah, yah, nanna (banana), e e e e e (1 2 3 4 5), et (x), eyoeyoeee (l m n o p), E I E I O, yum, mommy and anything else that we can convince her is worth saying. She also signs please, more and all done although the last two are signed less and less now that she says them.

New things we've done recently: Gone to visit Grandma in Alabama and had a BLAST playing on the beach while eating shells and sand and visited our aunty Kelly, uncle Josh and their kiddos. We had cake and ice cream at a birthday party (or two) while Mom sat back and cringed. We heat most of our foods although we aren't fond of most meats unless it is expensive steak. We LOVE our fruits, veggies, bread and mashed taters though so momma and dadda don't complain too much.

I think that's about it. I've been down in the slumps at times but I will try to knock myself out of it and update more often. I've been reading a lot lately and that really helps. I discovered an awesome site - http://www.goodreads.com/ that helps me keep track of the books I'm reading, I've read and ones that I want to read. I've found some pretty amazing books through there as well. :) You should be able to look me up if you feel like friending me. *Since when did "friend" turn verb?*

Okay that's it for now. A certain someone is updating our server (read: he bought a new one and is trying to figure out how to turn a toaster into a mercedes in terms of what he wants it to do) so it might take a while until the gallery is uploaded. I'll let everyone know when it is though.

As always, sorry if I missed an important event, person, place or thing. :D

It's Christmas

It's Christmas morning and as my gift to you, I am going to actually post! I know, right?! What could be better!

This won't be that long of a post but I figured there are at least a few things I could update you on, the first being that we made it to my in-laws'! Some of you might be thinking - ahhhh, the in-laws, it's always difficult to make it there, sometimes even impossible (nudge nudge wink wink). Naah, I like mine! When I say we made it here, I mean we survived the snow and managed to race ahead of the snow storm. Phew! It got a little dicey there though. I had to leave work early to go get my Lily bug and the dog. As many of you know, we now have a Trailblazer, which is a big step up from our 98 Saturn and 91 Escort. It has four wheel drive. Well, apparently that doesn't mean much when you haven't shoveled your driveway and there is 2.5 feet of snow built up with more coming. The Blazer only wanted to drive sideways into the driveway so I parked it (sideways) and me and my happy self plodded through the knee deep snow to the front door. See, our carport provides awesome shelter from the snow so we never have to worry about getting through the snow to get to the car. Plus - all the roads had been and were being plowed so we didn't have to worry about that either. It just didn't occur to me apparently, that we were going to have to be doing our own snow removal and that we would actually need to have a semi plowed driveway to come and go. Needless to say, when we get home we will be buying a shovel and shoveling our driveway. We will also be shoveling out our two other cars (which are currently non functional anyway) because they have been plowed in. So back to the story of getting over here! I did manage to get what I needed from home and kicked on the four wheel drive (high) to get out of the driveway. Picked up M and away we went! It was snowing when we left and at one point the roads were covered but eventually, once we crossed over the river (and through the woods) the snow stopped and it was bare roads, even through the pass, until we got here. Christmas Joy!

So that's our journey over. It's really not that fascinating. Lily did a great job of sleeping for the majority of the time. Normally we stop for fastfood on the way over but I always feel blech after eating it so this time I packed bread, peanut butter and strawberry jelly. I made a sandwhich on the road for all of us and Lily added some Cheese Nips and milk to the mix. Let me just say that I will DEFINITELY be doing that again! It was so nice to not have a bunch of fried food and the sandwhiches were so convenient! We didn't end up eating more than one a piece, but if anyone had gotten hungry throughout the rest of the trip I could have easily sat there and made another sandwhich for someone! Plus, we didn't really need to refrigerate anything like we normally would if we had brought stuff for meat sandwhiches. Great idea. I'm so proud of myself! Lily was too I think. She munched her sammy and then proceeded to pass out while I watched Ocean's 12 on the portable DVD player. Mike did a great manly job of chauferring me around...I mean, driving his family. Yeah whatever, I mean chauferring.

That gets us to Tuesday night (we pulled in around 11pm ish). Wednesday day was spent playing with Lily, playing Guitar Hero when she slept and doing some last minute Christmas shopping. We had to pick up a few things for the in-laws (thanks for not telling us what you want!) ;D and we had to pick up a few things for the Christmas Eve party that night. I thought we would only be gone an hour or so, but true to form (at least to my form), four plus hours we finally got home with gifts in tow. We laid Lily down for a short nap, I baked 6 dozen cookies (premade and formed sugar and chocolate chip from Pillsbury), we woke Lily up, got her dressed in her Christmas dress and off to the party we went!

The Christmas Eve party is fairly new for us. It is our second time going and man it is such a blast! I come from a very small family so huge catherings of sometimes 50 people is just so fascinating to me! The dynamics between all the family members is great to watch. The party is hosted by M's uncle's significant other and is a family tradition for her. They rent out the local grange for the evening, make stockings and gifts for the kids, play bingo for presents and eat a ton of great potluck food. SO MUCH FUN!!!

Aside from me having a ton of fun, I'm pretty sure Lily did too. She got to meet a lot of new people and had a huge floor to run around in. There was even another girl there about her age and Lily spent a lot of time following her around. We did have to do a lot of supervising, however, because Lily apparently has no issues with just poking eyes or mouths or noses if she's curious about them. :) She also got a little bossy at times and belly bumped the girl if she wanted her to go somewhere else. Hilarious. :D There were a couple touching moments where she wanted to hug the little girl and kept holding her arms out to her. We would see that and pick Lily up for a hug, but the girl had no clue what Lily wanted so didn't hug her. Lily didn't quite grasp that she could just wrap her arms around the other girl and hold on to her for a hug. Perhaps it's better that way. I'm not quite sure I'm ready to have a belly bumping pro wrestler baby just yet!

Aside from the cheeky shannanigans, Santa and Mrs. Claus came out to do presents which I thought Lily would enjoy. I think she was remembering the Santa at the mall that Momma made her sit with so she didn't quite get as close to Santa as I had thought. She did, however, go up to him and receive her present along with Dadda's help. There were some older girls that wouldn't come close (little did they realize what a close familial relationship they have to Santa) so I was proud that Lily at least walked up to him. Lily's stocking and gift were fantastic and I know she'll have fun continuing to dig into it today.

The rest of the evening went pretty smoothely. We did some more running around and spinning around. Lily loves it when you pick her up by her chest, hold her out in front of you and spin around so that her legs fly out behind her (sort of like Superman). We did that so many times that I'm getting dizzy justing thinking about it! After much spinning, running and chasing we finally sat down and played some Bingo. We all left with some great gifts and I am very happy to say that one of Lily's cousins (through M) left with one of the gifts we brought - a Sea Monkey set. Sea Monkies! Gotta love them!

We got home about 2.5 hours after Lily's bedtime. Needless to say, she laid down quite easily (which is actually pretty normal for her) and we wrapped a few more presents and stuck all of them under the tree before turning in ourselves. Sometime around 1 am I fell asleep and sometime around 5 I woke up. I can never sleep on Christmas Eve/Christmas morning so I finally gave in and just got up. Here is where you now find me - sitting on the couch, typing away with a slight headache, a very tired brain and a surprisingly large hunger pain in my stomach. Perhaps I shall finish up here and go scrounge some food up for myself.

Oh, and before I forget - congratulations to B, K and their son, M. They recently welcomed their newest little boy B! Also, congratulations to all the mommy's and daddy's (K & A and K & J!) who are celebrating their first Christmases with their little ones!

Merry Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like ...

Oh, it's been ages...again...since I've posted. Let's cut out all of the excuses and get down to the good stuff.

Thanksgiving was fun. My little Turkey enjoyed her Turkey although she did sleep a tremendous amount at Grandma and Grandpa B's house.














The day after Thanksgiving we went Black Friday shopping (we being Grandma B and myself). I got some GREAT deals and even got some presents for M to wrap for me! :D Yes! The majority of our Christmas deals were, however, found on Amazon.com of all places. We started taking advantage of their great deals on the day after Thanksgiving and since then bought pretty much all of our Christmas presents from them. It is SO nice to get packages in the mail too! It's like Christmas, but twice!

Soon after coming back from Thanksgiving we decided to get off our rears and put up the Christmas tree. It was interesting because I was sick, Lily was sick and I'm pretty sure we had jut gotten our friends the W's sick while they were visiting. Below is the progression of the tree!

Of course Lily helped - she had lots of fun taking the branches and carrying them off to different parts of the house. She also had lots of fun watching slyly as we went back through the branches, wondering if we put the wrong sizes in the wrong sections because we just kept coming up short with the number of branches we should have for the current section. :D You can see in the finished picture that some of the ornaments look a little out of whack. We have had to move some away from curious fingers and when curious fingers are flying all over the tree, one tends to throw ornaments wherever they will stick. :D

With Christmas comes presents and who brings the presents? Why, Santa of course! To commemorate this momentous occasion, we had to take Lily to go meet the big man in red! Well, we thought she was meeting the big man in red - she thought she was meeting a serial killer! We managed to get a few...interesting shots.

What else, what else! Aside from working, working, working, I have also been coughing, coughing, coughing! I've been going on almost four weeks of coughing now. I've been through antibiotics and while they helped tremendously I still get occasional coughing fits (usually when I laugh) and then I can't breathe. Not so much fun. M has been doing well. He is currently being oblivious to the world, sucked into the video game he is playing. That's the nice thing about having a wonderful daughter that goes to bed at the same time without a fight every single night. We actually get evenings back! :D

Speaking of my wonderful little Lily bug, I think she's going to be something quite special when she grows up. Some days she likes to be a dentist and inspect each of my teeth for me, other days she is an artist and paints the most wonderful masterpiece on her face using tomato sauce, sometimes she is an animal imitator (usually cockatiels) and yet other days she is a mad scientist. We have the blackmail - I mean pictures - to prove it!




What else is in the news? We got a ton of snow this week. When I say a ton, I mean - holy moley! We had about a foot, where we work had about 18 inches and 30 minutes north of that had 24 inches with more snow the more northern you go. In my department, everyone not living in town was told that we didn't have to come in, but that we still had to take vacation for it. M had to go in anyway so I went. It was a nice, quiet day! This snow has meant two things - the first being that I am SO GRATEFUL that we now have a vehicle with four wheel drive. The second being that it means we can go sledding! We have not gone sledding the entire time we have lived here, but I figured we might as well go now so as to get Lily in the habit of totally loving it! We went today with some friends to a local playground with one killer hill. Lily had fun being drug around in the sled, M had fun going down the hill over and over and I had fun going down the hill once while praying that I would flip over and go rolling down the hill while my shirt flew up or my pants fell down. Luckily, neither of those happened! We did sled for about an hour, went inside to warm up for a bit and then decided to come home and watch The Truman Show with friends. Good fun times!

At one point Lily fell down and, like a turtle, got stuck and couldn't get up.

A Holiday Poll!

Lily, Jobs, Car and Fun!

Last published on September 23rd? Oh dear, that just won't do! No wonder we're losing readers and have family calling wondering if we're still alive!

My goodness, what on earth has happened since September 23rd? Last I left you I was dying of the plague. You know, now that I'm looking back, trying to figure out what I did in September, I'm pretty sure I updated for the beginning of October. I wonder what ever happened to that post. Oh well!

The last week in September was pretty much business as normal. More work and more cruising baby. We went to an awesome teppenyaki restaurant for my birthday along with two of Mike's coworkers and their wives and one of my coworkers and her husband. It was fabulous! For those of you that have not expereince teppenyaki, you need to! It's one of the restaurants where everyone in the party sits around the grill (built into the table) and the food is cooked in front of you. There's a lot of utensil flipping, flying food and fire. Totally good fun!

Speaking of that - can you imagine - I'm 25? I know I'm not, but man I feel old saying that! A whole quarter of a century...*cry*. It's just downhill from here as everyone keeps telling me.

Let's see, what else was interesting in October. During the first weekend of October we had the Hullabaloo in the town that I work in. I was asked to be a judge for the Karaoke contest and that was tons of fun! Those singers were fantastic! Lily didn't last the entire time so it was a good thing that the contest was held just a few blocks from work. M took her back to the office and let her snooze for a while in the stroller while I finished up. I brought back lunch, we ate, she woke up and we ran off to a birthday party. Lily did okay. She was angry that mom wouldn't let her have more than a bite of chocolate cake and it was cold out. We stayed until presents were opened and then high tailed it out of there so that she could go home and sleep. Speaking of sleep - that girl went to bed at like 5:30 and didn't get up until the next morning! Poor sleepy little bug.

I believe around that time Lily was also cutting her back molars and still cruising around the furniture. Now, however, she has a full mouth of teeth. I can still see some bare gum in there, but not very much. Sounds like it might be time for the dentist! When are we supposed to go see the dentist anyway? The other new part of Lily's life is that she is walking now! One day we noticed that she stood up and took a step toward the couch, which she usually cruises on. We were shocked and wanted to see if she could do it again so we played the "walk to Mamma," "walk to Dadda" game. Lo and behold she would take steps (2-3) between us. Later we found out that she'd been walking between the furniture at daycare for a couple of days, but since we didn't know we still felt like we got to see it for the first time!

Okay, what else happened in October? M had a department change in his office. Instead of IT and Financial continuing as one department, the split into two. This meant that M got bumped up in classification to an IT Specialist instead of an IT Tech. He'd been doing that work for a while (increased responsibility and accountability) so it was nice to see him actually get credit for the work. The additional $600 a month (before taxes) doesn't hurt either. In addition, he's doing some contract IT work, so that extra money helps as well. A few weeks later, my probation at work ended and I too got bumped up and reclassified as an EH Specialist instead of an EH Technician. My pay raise is only about $140 extra a month before taxes, but still, that's more than we had!

Along with the promotions and pay raises came the death of my Saturn. I know, it sounds like an odd mix - happy things and sad things in the same sentence, but trust me, it works. Nothing really changed about the Saturn; it was still leaking oil, refusing to shift out of park and had a cracked windshield. What did change was the fact that our increased take home pay meant that we could now afford to not have to sit in a car for 30 minutes praying and hoping that it would eventually shift out of park and allow us to drive away. One day, we took half of the day off, drove up to Spokane, took a look around and ended up coming home with a 2007 Trailblazer, power locks, windows, AC, four wheel drive and sunroof with what we think is a pretty good deal. The best part is that now we can fit both our dog and child in the car at the same time. Tweak likes this and is having fun getting to run around at the dog park now that we can take him.


Other news in our lives? We've been down to Idaho to visit our dear friends that abandoned us. Their new house is gorgeous! They have had quite a number of setbacks recently so we send lots of hope their way and wishes that it gets better soon. Just this past weekend they actually came up to visit us in our new duplex. It was fantastic getting to see them and I think they should come back. Now. J, the husband in this dynamic duo, actually has a little sister that is starting her first year in college nearby. I keep thinking that we really should have her over more often. Hmmmm, perhaps a Christmas Cookie Decorating Party would be the perfect reason!

Speaking of Christmas - I'm so excited! I hope to have a new, larger dining room table by then. I really want to get one on Black Friday, but I'm unsure if we can afford it right now. We really should save our money for Christmas. Sigh. We shall see.

Oh - Halloween. It was great fun! Mike wore a sign that said Nudist On Strike while wearing his street clothes, I had a foam #1 finger and a shirt that said - Go Ceilings! (think about it - answer at the end) and Lily was a bumble bee. We went to the local haunted houses before Halloween and went up to a coworkers house and neighborhood for trick or treating. Lily had a fantastic time! Our coworker, E, was so generous in allowing us to come spend time with her and her family. Their neighborhood was gorgeous as well. I love any sort of holiday decoration and those houses were decked out! Since Lily had just started walking, that's all she wanted to do. She cried anytime we picked her up, even if it was to go up stairs that were taller than she was. The only down side to the night was that M got a pretty significant gash on his head from the overhang on someone's roof. Guess he shouldn't be so tall!

Okay, I've been writing so much lately that my brain is just fried. I'm pretty sure that this blog is going to be rambly and full of poor grammar. Oh well.

Hey, if anyone is looking for something to get me for Christmas or wants to keep their eyes out for a good deal so I can get it myself, I am really wanting to get an embroidery sewing machine. Let me know if you see a great deal! In addition, I'm looking for good deals on picture frames (black, silver or dark cherry) for the wall and shelves to put on the wall. I also need a media organizing bookshelf thing for my collection of DVD. Preferably something that Lily can't pull over or that I can bolt to the wall. She wants any sort of sorting toy so let me know if there are any great deals on those. We also hope to get her a set of those magnetic refrigerator letters. I used to love those! M, well, you know him. He always wants techie stuff!

Okay, that's it for me. I'm sure there are things that I meant to mention and forgot about, but, that's how it goes.

Before you sign off your computer for the day, be sure to check out the website of one my favorite authors - Bess McBride. She has some fabulous stories out right now and although she's new, I'm hooked and I know many others are as well. bessmcbride.com. In addition, some of her books can be found on Amazon.com. Seriously, talk about hard to put down. Her books are impossible to put down!

Oh, one more thing I forgot to include. Lily is sick. Took her to the doctor and found that she has a really red throat with some other words that I didn't understand and the doctor didn't want to explain. She's on antibiotics now and actually slept through the night last night again for the first time in a few days. Hopefully she's on the mend in time for Turkey Day!

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An update for most of September

Alright, it has technically been "forever" since I posted. F.O.R.E.V.E.R. I have my reasons though!

This month has not been a good one (in general). The beginning of September found us greeted with some pretty horrifying news. We found that our dearest friends lost one of their baby boys to SIDS. Neither Mike and I knew how to function with this news and to date we still haven't really talked much about it to each other. I still can't admit to myself that it actually happened because it just hurts too much.

Shortly after getting that news we were in full swing for the fair. That meant lots of distraction thankfully. Lots of time helping to set up the department booth, processing temporary event applications and inspection vendors. After work Thursday night I gathered up my family and dragged them down to the fair. We got to see all the barnyard animals. One of the women from work even pulled out a baby bunny for Lily to pet. She had TONS of fun. Due to a change in our weekend plans, we weren't able to have a birthday party for her on her birthday (nor were we really in the mood for it) so it was fun to at least do a little something for her for her birthday.

The next day I spent the majority of the day manning the department booth. Later that evening the family met me as I was getting off my shift and we attempted to watch the rodeo but the sore throat that I had woken up with that morning had, over the course of an eight hour day, turned into a full blown cold. I was so miserable that I told the hubby that we needed to leave. We were meeting our friend's brother so that he could follow us most of the way toward the funeral location so, while we waited, I slept in hubby's office. We did end up getting there around 6 am and got up at 8 am.

The funeral (9/6) was...beautiful but horrible. That's not something that anyone should ever have to plan or witness. I was glad to be there for our friend's though. My only wish was that we could have taken the next couple months off of work and just stayed down there.

After we returned I went back to work. Oh wait, no I didn't! Remember that cold I had? Yeah, well, it got a lot worse. I ended up taking Monday and Tuesday off work and returned Wednesday through Friday. Thursday I was all better and felt fantastic but on Friday I started to cough. Ohhhhh the cough. The cough lasted all Friday and all Saturday. Saturday was, fortunately and unfortunately Lily's first birthday party. Gramma came down for the party and oh goodness was it fun. We had a decent turn out and good food. Lily got a lot of lovely gifts, all of which she needed and loves! After presents we had cake. All the non-babies had chocolate cake and all the babies...okay, just Lily, had angel food cake topped with lite cool whip and bananas. I think she liked it. She did eat a few chunks of it, but in order to even get her to touch it I had to take her hand and just smoosh it in the cake. She must have got some of the sugar because she got super excited and then just crashed. By crashed, I mean she went to sleep at 5 that evening and got up at 8 the next morning. Not a peep from her. It was crazy!

After the birthday party we had a PartyLite party with Gramma's friend that was nice enough to come down and do one for us. Overall the party turned out very well! I was quite pleased. Our friends from Richland also showed up and stayed nice and late for us. That was fun.

So, the rest of the weekend was spent coughing. Sunday my mom came to visit before heading back out on the road. She'll be on the east coast for a few years this time so that is a little difficult. I'm guessing that I'll probably have a sibling for Lily before she's back on this side of the country (if ever). She likes it though so I try to not give her too hard of a time.

She left Monday morning and I spent the rest of the day playing with Lily at home. I had originally taken the time off because of my mom but now spent the rest of the time at home because I was sick...still. The coughing never ends! Tuesday I called in sick because I just could not stop coughing. This time, however, I spent the day dying on couch babyless. Lily started a new daycare on Tuesday. Her previous daycare is taking classes and finally got to a point where her classes were not affording her enough time to watch Lily anymore. She will be DEARLY missed. I was super comfortable leaving Lily there. Lily's new daycare seems nice so far, but I'm always super nervous about looking for daycare so we'll see how it turns out.

Wednesday saw me back at work despite all the arguments that I shouldn't be there. By Thursday, rumors were going around (I was still coughing because of the drippage into my lungs) that I had bronchitis. If you didn't know, bronchitis just means that your lungs create extra phlegm. This needs to come out so the result is increased coughing. It's not like you have a separate disease and are going to give people "bronchitis." It's usually the result of a long cold and 90% of the time is viral which means that antibiotics don't work. Barring any previous breathing problems, all that is required for treatment is rest, fluids and possibly some Mucinex to help things move along. I discovered this from the doctor that I had to go see to prove that I COULD be at work. Even though she said I was not infectious and that even if I did have bronchitis she would still tell me to go to work, Friday found me still fighting to stay there. Seriously, what's the deal.

This weekend was pretty nice. I had one inspection on Saturday and then we spent the rest of the weekend lounging around the house. Oh it was glorious. Would have been even better if my poor baby girl hadn't been so cranky. The entire weekend was a cycle of a few minutes of happiness followed by hours of crying and hours of sleeping. We think she's getting her back teeth in because they are super swollen and she is obviously in a lot of pain.

Monday was business as usual at work as was today (plus a bit of drama).

And that, my dears, is the general idea of my month so far. I am still coughing and my nose is still running but I believe that it is now due to the poor air quality. Thanks for burning your fields stupid grass growers.

Oh, one last thing. My classes are STINKING hard core. Lord these suckers are hard!

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