Happiness is....

Chocolate muffins from Costco....






(yes, they were staged photos, but who cares when chocolate is involved? lol)

Yippee!!

I got into St. George again this year, I decided that I needed to run it again since last years weather was less than ideal. I was able to talk Lisa into registering with me so we'll get to go on a 26.2 mile party, woot!

Let the training begin, I'll see you again St. George on October 3rd :D

happy birthday LittleMan

My baby is 7, where did the time go? His birthday was on my last day of the semester, with the final that I have been dreading. I took the easy way out and let him decorate the cake, which means I'm the most awesome mom ever, hehehe.


This is his "what? it's my cake, I can do what I want!" look, lol. (and yes, that is my saggy butt behind him, hehe)



And the promised missing tooth shot from long ago :)

If one more thing goes wrong...

I quit!

This year has been super hard thus far, I'm ready to throw in the towel.

I have one more paper to write for my ASL literature class and the dang DVD wont play! I need to memorize a poem for my final on Thursday and I found out today that Stu got laid off. LittleMan has a nasty cough that wont go away. L ran away from home, thinks we are horrible evil parents (she is home now and is following the rules, mostly). Luckily M is being pretty normal right now.

Calgon, take me away.

Busy

I want to blog more, but I'm busy so I can't make any promises right now. I'm at the tail end of bronchitis, I'm hoping! It has really thrown me for a loop, 2 weeks I have been sick and I'm ready to be done!

To all of you complainers, you know you are jealous that you didn't have your own poop bucket to dispose of, so you should be thanking me for sharing my joy ;). I had the camera on the ground with the automatic picture taking thing turned on. It was frozen so there wasn't much smell, luckily for me ;).

things I will blog about at some point....

LittleMan lost one of his top front teeth, too cute!
M got elbow and knee pads and Stu took him to the skate park, much fun was had.
L is officially registered for Jr. High, got her shots and everything.
I am putting my hat back into the crazy world of marathoning, entering into the St. George lottery again :)
One month of school left, busy busy busy.

I will be back. Eventually ;)

Update on plumbing

If you remember my plumbing post we had some troubles with our plumbing. I went out of town for 6 days with the kids and in that time, the blockage just got worse. Stu ended up calling a plumber once sewage started coming out of that pipe, sick! I didn't know that the sewage was coming out, so once I came home and helped cap the end of the pipe...


I saw the bucket, lucky for you, I didn't get a picture of the full bucket. You can thank me with money donations, lol. Anyway, I got mad that it was left for me so Stu got a submersible pump and pumped all the liquid out he could and then he took the "solids" outside. Also lucky for you, they froze so it looks just like muddy water. But we all know what it really is, lol.


I put on my "gloves" and wrapped up the bucket then took it out to the garbage can. It was garbage day the next day so I took the garbage out to the street just in case the bucket thawed, we wouldn't have to worry about spillage taking the garbage out later. I know, I'm brilliant sometimes ;).


And another shot of me wrapping up the bucket, just because.

I'm back :)

I went running today for the first time since mid December. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I got out there. I've lost a lot of fitness but boy did it feel good pushing myself again. I'm also going to do the 100 push ups challenge starting on Monday. I want to try to get into the St. George marathon again this fall, so I need to get back into shape. If I don't get into the marathon I'll pick another one for the fall.

Here's hoping tomorrow my muscles will be pleasantly sore :D (yes, I realize I am strange, lol)

A new profession for me?

For some reason, there is an open pipe in the crawl space under my house, it was attached to a sink the previous owners installed in the garage, but now it's just hanging out down there. I just ignored it because it was out of the way and causing no problems. Until a couple of days ago....

Now it looks like this when I do laundry....




And this was my attempt at fixing the problem...


And this is what happens when you just make the problem worse...
(that's a towel soaking up the flood in the laundry room from that pipe backing up and shooting out the drain, better than a toilet overflowing I guess ;) )


Jealous? I thought so :P

(I just tried drano to see if that's enough, stay tuned.....)

Edited to add....FAIL



I guess we get to stimulate the economy by hiring a plumber :P

Overcrowding

I park in the free parking at school, it's about 1/2 mile to the school, which isn't too bad. I do ride the shuttle bus if the weather is bad, otherwise I just walk. The first time I rode the shuttle, I was one of the last ones on, which meant I had to stand and hold the bar overhead. Not a big deal for most people, but I'm short and along with that are short arms, lol. I ended up having to stand between some guys legs the whole time. Oh so enjoyable for me :P. so I've only ridden it twice since then, lol.

Picture proof, sorry for the crappy photo, it was with my cell phone while we were moving.




If you look at the arm with the two white stripes around the bicep, that is a girl that is probably 2 inches taller than me, can you see how stretched out her arm is? Yeah, rude that guys don't give us shorties a seat!

Easily amused.

I found out about pandora.com from a friend and fell in love with it right away. I currently have three "stations" on there, country, Enya type stuff (so soothing, love it), and today I added a Bon Jovi station. It has been so much fun listening to all the "hair bands" and love ballads that I constantly listened to in High School and beyond :).

I guess I needed some cheering up after waking up to the mountain of clean laundry needing to be folded and the snow falling outside, arg.

I do have 3 posts planned in my head, so hopefully I get around to them soon :)

Putting an end to the worries

I have been getting worried emails from some family members over some weight I have lost. I am a muscular person, always have been, always will be. I weigh much more than most people think I do, which is fine by me :). Anyway, I took a couple of photos of me to show that I still have my muscle and my big butt, so stop worrying ;).

And sorry for the blurr and dirty mirror, it's cold in my house so I was shivering a bit :P



Edited to add that I'm not mad or anything, I hope it doesn't come across that way. I just want to make sure everyone knows that I'm fine and am taking care of myself the best that I can :)

Update

I spoke with M again and we discussed ways to deal with teasing and he spoke with his teacher. I also spoke with his teacher and she spoke with the class about respect. M has had two good days at school, so hopefully that's a good sign.

Thanks so much for all of your advice and support :)

In need of some advice.

M, my sweet, rambunctious, doesn't stop moving, loving, sensitive, little 8 year old boy is being teased at school. I don't know that we are at the bullying level yet, but I just heard about this last night so I need to delve further into the situation. He said there is one girl and one boy that pick on him all the time, they tell him his ears are dirty (poor guy has lots of ear wax, always has), his fingernails are too long, or that his hair looks funny.

I told him that sometimes people make fun of other people because they don't like themselves but that didn't fly with him. So I told him that he can play with other kids and he said this is happening in the classroom. He said he told his teacher that they are being mean but it hasn't stopped. So I told him to tell her again that they are being really mean to him and can he please move. After school today I plan on talking to him more, seeing if anything was better today and then I guess it will be time for a conference with the teacher.

What else can I say to my sad little guy? He cried when he got out of the van today, that's when I knew it was worse than he let on yesterday. I know this is part of life, but it doesn't mean I have to like it and I want to better prepare him to deal with it. He is quite small for his age too, so I'm sure stuff like that will be used against him in the future as well.

Mama bear wants to go beat up the kids and their parents, lol. Help.

Happy New Year!

We started a tradition a few years ago, mostly because I was lazy and didn't feel like cooking, lol. But the kids love it so we continue it :). I cut up some meat and cheese, put some mandarin oranges, maybe some pineapple, crackers, just little things we can spear with toothpicks and eat. The kids have a great time every year, clean up is easy, and I win the cool mom award (even if it's only for an hour or so :P)

The table all fancied up with the "nice" glasses too! hehe

A close up of the spread, go me!

May the New Year bring much happiness and love to you all. May we all have the strength and determination to give ourselves what we deserve. ((hugs))

Merry Christmas

Nothing says Christmas in Utah like snow.

Or mini mittens and socks for the tree, aww :)



It's snowing hard out there today, crazy. I was planning on a library trip but I think we'll wait until tomorrow ;). Fine by me, I can knit more cute ornaments, each takes about an hour which makes me feel like a super power knitter, lol.

I would like to wish each of you a Merry Christmas.

So proud!

LittleMan was behind in reading when he started 1st grade, he didn't know most of his letters or their sounds. When we homeschooled he had begun reading but lost a lot of it over the summer when I let him just work on math, since he loves math! Anyway, we just got his report card, he is officially on grade level now, woohoo! His reading resource teacher works with him daily and he practices at home daily as well. His confidence has grown and he catches himself reading without realizing it, so fun!!

I'm proud of you big guy :)

M is on the left, he is pretending to be missing a finger (I think he needs to work on that trick, hehe), cousin W in the back as Spiderman and LittleMan as a fire fighter.

Angry!!

I am so angry and frustrated and mad and pissed off!! Ok, so they all mean basically the same thing, but since I don't swear I need to repeat myself, lol.

Anyway, my Personal Injury Protection (PIP) is $3,000 here in Utah and my insurance is required to pay that out, they go after the other drivers insurance for reimbursement. If the costs go over that I have to get a lawyer and fight the at fault drivers insurance. Well, I was informed that I've run out of my PIP and now I have to go through my health insurance ($40 copay) or get a lawyer.

The accident was not my fault, but the whole thing has been this huge hassle and now I get to add more to it. I'm just MAD!! gah!

Choices

LittleMan is sick, he is 6 years old, too young to stay home alone. But I have school too, is he sick enough he shouldn't go? Well enough he can walk about a mile each way to my class (yes, it's that far literally)? Me staying home isn't ideal either, only a few more weeks of school, finals are coming.

It's time like these that I second guess my decision to go back to school, I'm sure I'll have times like these when I go back to work too. Parenting, isn't it fun?

p.s. yes I love being a mom, just being a bit grouchy this morning, we'll figure out what to do.

Edited: I took him with me, he got winded pretty easily this morning but by this afternoon he is feeling a lot better. Though now he wants to go to school with me again tomorrow, lol. Thanks for the support girls, you are the best!

I am such a dork!

I was taking a quick shower this morning, our water heater runs out of water really quickly, and started running out of hot water. I decided to try and rinse the conditioner out of my hair while I shaved my legs. Well, I only did the back! I forgot to rinse the front, lol. I was rushing out the door to my chiropractor appointment when I realized my mistake.

Oops.

Yeah, so I went anyway, luckily for me, I didn't put much on the front so it wasn't too noticeable, or is that lucky? ;)

"School" pictures

I decided not to purchase school pictures this year, I knew they wouldn't turn out and they are freaking expensive. But I have been harassed by my mom, Aunt, Grandma's, and MIL about new pictures of the kids, so we decided to head up the canyon and take some pictures on our own. (and, no, the school pictures didn't turn out, hehe)

I need help deciding which ones to print for wallets and then 3 x 5 or 4 x 6's for the Grandma's.

#1 (incidentally, when did she get so grown up?)



#2
#1
#2 (yes, we'll crop out annoying man that refused to move so I could take this picture)
#1, this one has more shadow that I remember :S, so I don't think it's even in the running but here it is anyway :)

#2
#3

Yes, they are much better quality than it appears here and we'll crop the photos too. Maybe I should beg one of my sisters to come out and take pictures, they are much better than me.