A month's worth of pictures.

This is going to be a quick update, as I should be going to bed right now but wanted to write a quick blog post.  Actually I got on the computer nearly an hour and half ago to write a blog post and found Amber and Becca had both written posts (so I read those), that I received my new credit card in the mail (more on that in a minute), and I had nearly 200 pictures on my iphone that needed to be downloaded to the computer. 

So quickly about the credit card. I had just finished reconciling all our accounts the night before (I try to do this once a week but lets be real, it doesn't always happen that often).  I woke up to an email saying there was suspicious activity on my credit card and that my card may not work until I call the company and verify charges.  I have had to do this before when Paul and I have been in different towns (ML and western wa) and using cards at the same time, but all charges have always been legit.  So I call, its 6:30 in the morning, I figure it will be automated.  Well no, the charges were not mine and I had to talk to someone (a very nice lady) who took off all the false charges and canceled the credit card.  Well I just received my new card in the mail today so I was switching over all our automatic payments.  Goodness it turned out to be a lot of work and I am still not done.  But that is the beauty of a credit card, I was not responsible for a dime of the false charges.  Love it. (I would hate credit cards if Paul and I ever carried a balance and had to pay interest, but since I make money through their cash back programs and they cover my butt when false charges happen I love them).  

Ok onto pictures.  Paul and I have been having a lazy month together and I have been soaking up every minute of it.  When he gets home from work we go on walks to the park to play basketball, to the little grocery store to buy our favorite asian soda, to the park to swing on swings.  Just little things, but we are out of the house and not watching tv, and it is wonderful.  Don't get me wrong, we still watch wayyyyy too much tv, but this nice weather is beginning to remidy that a bit. 

We even made smores in the backyard...and didn't think about the fact that the fire pit would get hot and burn the grass.  We have a perfect circle of dead grass in the back yard.  If we had kids I would tell them it is where the aliens landed. :)

One day while Paul and I were out running errands there was a crazy rain and wind storm.  We had stopped by a friends house to pick up a chainsaw (he was giving us his old one because he bought a new one) and came home to this.  Well thank goodness for that chain saw!  I ended up getting cut from work the next day so I cut off all the small branches with some garden shears and then Paul and I worked together to get all the big pieces.  There are way more than the picture shows because we had to cut wayyyy back as they were broken back in the greenbelt probably 20 feet back and were laying precariously across each other and our fence (we only chopped up trees that had already fallen!). 

On our many walks we have begun to see so many pretty spring flowers bloom!  It makes me wish I had more color in my yard, then I remember I like bushes because they are low maintenance, so I just enjoy other peoples flowers. 

We had a lovely Mothers Day (on Saturday) with both of our families.  I mad my parents call and open their presents over facetime (gotta love technology) and then had Pauls family over for breakfast.  I made belgium waffles with Ambers waffle maker, we hung out for a few hours with everyone, then Paul and I went on to have a lazy Saturday where I made some awesome tortilla roll ups for lunch with turkey bacon, turkey, avacado, some cheese and spreads, and some lettuce and spinach.  We definitely will be having these again! 

We had a lot of gift cards sitting around so one day when I didn't want to cook we went to dinner at Subway and Coldstone for dessert, all with gift cards.  Then Paul said he had a fun place to hike and we found this cool sign.  Turns out the place wasn't that great (there were quite a few cars parked there with other people walking about) but it was close to standing water and there were far to many bugs and snakes for our liking. 

I just went to Moses Lake for Memorial Day weekend.  I have a strange obsession with going for Memorial Day weekend because it is also Spring Fest.  There are rides, fair food, and the hit of the weekend, the Parade.  Now anyone who didn't grow up in ML would probably think this was all silly ,but I love it.  I looked forward to it every year as a child and I look forward to it still.  I was able to celebrate my dads 50th bday with him and eat an elephant ear (split with both my parents of course).  My dad also invited Mrs. McGee over for his birthday lunch.  She has been my pseudo grandma for 23 years, as I grew up 6.5 hours away from both my sets of grandparents.  I love her so so much and it was so good to see her again! 

Paul and I just went on a mini 3 day vacation to Wenatchee and Leavenworth.  If we do have to move for Pauls job next year we would love to move to Wenatchee, so it was fun to explore the town.  We went on quite a few walks/hikes so the boys (Paul and his best friend Joel) could explore areas for grouse hunting in September.  They kept leading me up steep mountains and I was so out of breath.  

They decided they wanted to climb this rock face and I decided I would sit on a rock below.  Good call on my part.  Glad they had fun but they almost fell a few times.  

We had a lazy day at the cabin on Wednesday.  Joel and I both took a two hour nap (Paul refuses to nap), went on a hike, played settlers of catan a few times, and at 9pm we finally ate dinner.  A HUGE dinner at that.  Do you see the size of those steaks?! And we had potatoes and corn as well.  The corn was made on the bbq and it was so so so good.  Oh and not to mention the fact I had been munching on salt and vinegar chips all afternoon.  Oh and then we made jiffy pop at almost 11pm.  Ok, jiffy pop tastes gross, I prefer air pop any day.  I had fun making it, and the boys ate it. :)  Boys kinda eat anything.  

And that girls has been my life for the last month.  I am now headed into my 4 days straight of work where I hopefully wont get cut out of any of my shifts.  I have been madatory cut a lot lately (once out of turn)  and then I just requested and got a cut on tuesday this week so hopefully they wont mandatory cut me for a while, my paycheck this past two weeks is going to be 17 hours short...which is a lot when a paycheck only has 64 hours on it!  Oopsies. Oh well, all the extra rest and time to do yardwork has been absolutely wonderful. Oh and the amounnt of days I have had off with Paul recently has been amazing.  I sure do love him and LOVE when we get to spend time together.  

Ok, tata for now.  So much for a short post, it is now 10pm and I am going to bed.  

Love to all

A Real Bragger

Note:  This is a rapid second of two posts.  Scroll down to see my life update.

This is just a list of things as I do them today since the house is way behind on chores since I've been sooooo nauseous and migranous!

• I fed, watered, and poop-scooped Angela's cats (they're coming back from a short vacation today).
• I ate lunch
• I washed all the dishes
• I tidied the kitchen from stuff that didn't belong
• I wiped down the kitchen table and all the counters and cleaned the sink 
• Scooped cat litter
• Emptied kitchen trash and recycling
• Took trash and recycling to the curb
• Got the mail
• Sorted and took care of the mail 
• Swept and spot-cleaned the kitchen floor 
• Made some brown-sugar glazed carrots 
• Vacuumed the downstairs 
• Tidied downstairs
• Tidied my desk and wiped it down 
• Vacuumed the stairs
• Vacuumed the upstairs

I'll keep updating.  And I expect accolades!

I don't know what to call this

Funny that I wanted to post too, just a day after Becca!  Surely this blog will pick back up.


Verbal vomit beginning....

I guess we can start with the nonstop migraine that's plagued me for the past week.  I've hardly been able to eat from the nausea.  I discovered the best thing is to sit down with food in front of me, and every couple hours I'll eat a few bites.  It's even hard to drink water without feeling it coming back up.

I had an allergy test yesterday, and before that I had to be off any allergy medication for three days.  Which means I was blowing my nose raw and had to sleep sitting up so I could breathe.  Not a great environment for all this stuff I'm about to share:

Tack on some family drama (relatives on my dad's side.)  Since this blog is viewable by the Internet I will just summarize it without using names or details:  My aunt and uncle are suing their daughter, R, for custody of her son, C.  If you remember my wedding, R was the one who did my makeup.  My aunt believes there is neglect on R's part; I reached out and got her side of the story and now I am taking R's side.  She's made some mistakes and I believe she learned from them and now I'm on her side.  This has been stressful the last couple months as it unfolds.

A couple side stressors that involved us:

-My aunt broke into R's facebook account, found some messages I'd sent R, and used them in a court exhibit to try and shoot down the character reference I wrote R.
-Originally, R's plan b was to ask us to take C if the court ruled her unfit.  It turns out since it's a third party custody hearing and not CPS, that's not an option for her.  But for the last two months, we wondered if we were suddenly going to be parents of a five-year old.
-Family relationships are going to be changed forever.  My aunt has always had problems with my mom/dad/family so we aren't actually that surprised at how she's treating R.  But she's convinced the rest of the family of her side.  She has been known to exclude or un-invite my family to family events (classy, I know.) She's willing to hurt relationships to feed her own dislike.  What will future family events be like?  Will they attend?  Will we attend?  Will they ask us not to attend?  Will they even let us know there is an event or will they cut us from the email chain?  Do we even want to attend?

I am so grateful for:

-R, who is so grateful for my support.  I am the only family member that cared to hear her side of the story or reached out to her.  I doubt she is a believer and I am pretty certain that my mom and I are the only Christians involved in her life right now.
-My mom, who took R's side and is being emotional support for both of us.
-R's boyfriend, who is lending her money for the attorney, and also helping with her bills, since court fees have drained her savings account (she is debt-free and works full time).

Court

The court date was yesterday.  Before court I had an allergy testing appointment, so I had forty injections, nearly passed out (I did actually faint at the allergy clinic two weeks ago from a shot).  Plus I had a full force migraine, day five I think.  So then I went straight from the clinic to meet my mom at Panera.


From there we went to the court.   On R's side it was side it was just her, her boyfriend, and me, and my mom.  I thought it would be really awkward to see R's family in court and I was afraid of getting into an argument, but for the most part everyone just avoided looking at everyone else and that was fine with me.

The judge seemed very fair.  (In fact, she is the same judge who did a custody hearing for another friend, when I attended a hearing a couple years ago to support a friend!  Even the same courtroom!)  She said there is going to be a trial a year from now, and in the meantime C can stay with R, as long as a court-ordered drug test is negative.  In the meantime, another state investigation will happen (R's parents already opened a CPS case against her, which CPS closed as unfounded.)  R's lawyer yesterday told me I'd probably be part of the investigation as far as being quizzed about her character and habits and parenting.  R isn't involving her friends in this issue and so has very few people who know this much of the story.

Now

My migraine is so much better.  Still there, but better.  Nausea comes back whenever I eat but if I just sit for an hour, it seems to go down.  Zofran and antacids are helping too.  (I just learned, Zofran is what they give people on chemotherapy for their nausea.  And now I remember one neurologist told me, he believes nausea from migraines can be worse than nausea from chemo.)  I think I will take Zofran now since I just had lunch and feel a bit queasy.

R and her boyfriend invited my mom and me to go out to dinner with them and their kids tonight (Joe's working).  (Her boyfriend has a daughter from a previous marriage).  So grateful they are letting us near.

I am so impressed with my cousin.  Every bit of dirt she has ever done has been exposed, everything she is ashamed of.  She didn't try to hide it.  She told me all of it, even the stuff she knows I'm against.  And after all that I could say, "I may not agree with your lifestyle (sleeping with boyfriend, etc.) but that doesn't make a difference in whether or not you should get to keep your son and it has nothing to do with how much I love you."

a long month...or two now?

Disclaimer: I started writing this roughly two weeks ago (right after mothers day).  And I just copied this over and didn't reread it first, so have fun!  I have been entering data and reconciling church bank accounts all day and need to get out of here!  We are headed to fro-yo for a MUCH needed break on this rainy day.  

WOWWEE. It has been a crazy month.

This week is the week I have been waiting for nearly 4 weeks. The last week of April we got the painting finished and moved out of the other place (which I also had to do some painting and cleaning at) by the 27^th. Now the last of the bridal showers, bachelorette party, and all the other wedding things I had to do and the wedding are OVER. We had a full weekend with lots of driving and visiting with family (even got a trip into the zoo on Friday), and finally life seems to be getting back to normal. Our days are gaining some rhythm to them, and the house is slowly taking shape as our home.

I am pretty sure a million things happened this month. I think I may have even invented a weight loss program. Want to know a great way to lose 5 pounds? Use the becca weight loss plan: Spend 10 hours a day painting, clean two houses from top to bottom, pack and move small loads of your stuff throughout the day when you get a few extra minutes, get a puppy, and try to keep two kids happy all day while trying to make sense of chaos. Continue for a week and a half. After this point, stop painting and moving, but continue to wake up at 6:30 every morning by a child who can’t sleep if there is a hint of light in the room, unpack boxes, move furniture (having stairs helps), walk your dog (and two children – one in a stroller, one strapped to your body), and eat mainly scraps left over from your children’s meals. You may consume large quantities of coffee and be obsessed with mango passionfruit tea in the evenings to unwind before finally going to bed. Be prepared to wake up 2 or 3 times during the night to put your youngest back to bed. Put back on a couple of pounds after your sister’s wedding when you no longer need to fit into your bridesmaid dress by stuffing your face with leftover brownies.

But in all seriousness, we are very, very, very happy to be at our new house! And its nice to be able to start enjoying it. Last night we had our first dinner outside on our back porch, and Jeremy and I drank tea and sat on our swing for a long time with the dog after the kiddos were in bed last night. Jeremy and I were just talking about how glad we are that we had to move, because we never would have done it if we hadn’t been forced. We have gained all the things we have been longing for, really. An awesome yard and place to entertain, a garage with a loft (we set up a guest/music/tv room up there – we go out there when the kids are asleep, turn on the baby monitor and watch a show. It’s so fun! And I love not having a tv in the house), a loft bedroom (something Jeremy has always wanted), a Jacuzzi tub, a large kitchen, a house that stays warm and will not be hard to heat in the winter, and a great office for us both to work in. I feel overwhelmingly blessed and all the insanity is definitely worth it. Things are finding their home slowly, so there are a lot of piles still around. We did have to downsize quite a bit, but it has been a good process. We have so much less and it feels so good to be getting closer to the simple life we have been craving. We are learning that little changes over time go a long way in the end and are trying to not get discouraged by not seeing immediate results. I can’t believe all the change that has taken place in our lives as we look back over the year – who knows what this year will bring! I am anticipating much, much more.

Anyway! I just wanted to write, because it feels like it has been so long. I hope I can have you girls out some time soon! If you need a break, this is the place for it! Our yard is perfect for lounging in the son, its just beautiful. And it is so much easier to walk to the store and the dock now, because we don't have to scale the giant hill up from our house.

PICTURE DUMP! I loved looking through my phone pictures this month. Although life seemed pretty chaotic and busy, every day has been full of little blessings and the joy that I see in my children's faces in these pictures is a little overwhelming to me, because I feel like I have failed time and time again parenting them, but I see God's grace in their smiles. I was finally able to reconnect with my mommy friends in the past week, too. I attended a baby shower for a dear new friend, whose older son will be attending my preschool class next year. It was so nice to visit over a lovely brunch and catch up with her. We are so like-minded, even though she is probably close to ten years older than me, I enjoy her company very much. I also had a spontaneous playdate at the park last Monday. We headed out and I simply posted it on my moms group fb page and invited a few other moms via text and had a great turn-out. I had missed being around people a lot! And it was beautiful out. I got to say goodbye to one mommy friend who is moving to Enumclaw. She was really a cool person and we had so much in common, but I'm glad we got to see her one more time! I had another goodbye this last weekend from another friend. She and her husband and baby are quite suddenly moving to California. She has been so homesick since she has been up here, so I know she will be much happier down there, but I will miss her also. God brings so many different people in and out of our lives, but I'm glad that over the years I have been able to adopt the mind set of every relationship being a blessing for a time. We had a couple ar two kids (she is expecting her third) over last night who I only recently met, and I am seeing a real new friendship form in that. She is my age (which is rare that I find someone my age with children the same age as mine), and we have very similar ideas about parenting and schooling. So, socially, we have had a busy week, but it has been energizing for me! I LOVE having people over to our new place, it is so perfect for entertaining, and there is so much room for the kids to run and play outside.

We got Kaia fixed this last Thursday, and since then (I think it was actually all very traumatic for her – she had extremely high anxiety when I picked her up) she hasn't been as jumpy and has been obeying much better. I think part of it is that we are able to give her a lot more attention now that we are home more and not as busy, but I also think she took it almost as a discipline from me. We started letting her inside, because we want to keep her wound clean, and we want her around us more anyway, but I barely have to look at her when she does something wrong and she stops and goes to her “time out spot”. She has been doing really well though! Last night she stayed in her bed all night and even though we haven't had her in the house, she doesn't like to go potty inside and is doing so well with the kids now, I hardly have to worry. I never, ever, ever thought I would have a dog – much less an indoor dog. But, she's starting to win me over. And our floor is all tile, so its nice she can be in the main living space and we can clean up really easily, and she is pretty good about not jumping on the furniture or anything. Although, she was chewing on my rugs this morning...ah well!

I guess that's it for now. ha ha.  what a random place to end.  Oh well.

this is just quick to say - I miss hearing what is going on with everyone!!  I started writing a post on mother's day weekend, and I still haven't posted it...I thought I brought with my thumbdrive to post it today (we don't have internet at home right now, only on our phones) after I finished some other bookkeeping work at the church, and I don't know what happened to it.  It must have fallen out of my purse somewhere.  Anyway, I'm not going to re-create it right now, but life has been insanely busy, finally slowed down (a little), we love our place, and I hope you girls can come out and visit some time!  :)  Everyone must be busy since there has been so little activity on here - looking forward to updates, but hope you are all doing fine!!!

A good day

First we had a great Mother's Day breakfast at Paul and Angela's.  Angela made delicious waffles.

Then Joe and I did almost nothing.

Then I made one of my favorite dinners, fish tacos, and this time took pictures:

Joe cutting up the chipotles for his sour cream-chipotle sauce (don't worry, they don't go on my tacos!)

 Fish cooking in the cilantro-cumin-cinnamon-garlic-lime combination (which sounds really gross now that I list all those different flavors)

Fish done cooking, and cut into four beautiful taco-ready pieces

 We had some strawberry margarita mix, so I used my Cuisinart ice cream maker to make frozen margaritas.  They turned out pretty good, and beautiful!  Joe took this picture, and was very proud of the whole "blurry background" effect that is so popular these days, especially with people who take pictures of food, Angela =P

 Finished product.  Not as classy as it could look with the bag of chips, and Joe's chipotle-sour cream mix in the same container in which it was made, and with Wiggle there.  Still I thought it was pretty fancy, especially since Joe got out our martini glasses for the occasion, which I don't think we've used yet!

Nothing more new to report.