Funky, funky!

So I've been in a bit of a funk lately... I'm not sure what my deal is but I've just been feeling really down. Despite having a great family with two little boys that I am just crazy about and a hubby that's crazy about me... everything I could possibly need as far as a roof over my head, a job, awesome friends, two cars in great shape, etc... I can't seem to snap out of this funk. You might recall a post or two a few weeks back where I was experiencing something similar. I'm definitely noticing a pattern here between being cranky, sleeping way more than normal and my patience being worn way too thin with the boys.

I'm doing everything I can to try to get my mind in a better place... Yesterday I got my nails done:

Tonight I'm going out with my best girls for a night on the town, but not before we have a family dinner at Traildust to celebrate all the May birthdays (Gavin, Ria's little girl and Tiffany's little boy are all Taurus birthday babies!). I'm not sure where all we're going tonight but a night with my mama's always makes me feel better!

In other news... there is some new talent in our home. Gavin has figured out that he knows how to roll his "r's"! It is hilarious - I will see if I can finger out how to take a movie of it so I can share with you. And even more hilarious, Persephone, our Siamese mix, has learned how to flush the toilet. I'm not sure why she finds this a good thing to do, but apparently she's been doing it for awhile... unbeknownst to me of course! So we are sitting at the dinner table last night and the toilet flushes in the powder room. I do a quick head count and indeed we are all sitting there together... there are four heads. No one should be flushing the toilet! The kids, of course, are already on to this and know it's the cat and about peed their pants laughing at me and my shock.

Hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend... I am looking forward not just to tonight but to a cookout tomorrow with Shawn's family as well as some relaxing on the couch with the magazines that are calling to me...

School's out for the summer!

Since I think it's fun... Here is a flashback from Tyler's first day of school:

Today he "graduated" from Kindergarten...

It was a really cute celebration... The kindergarteners prepared two songs to sing for us. They also showed a slide show of their school year, which was really cute (and they even gave everyone a copy of it on DVD!). I'm really pleased with Tyler's school so far... And I can not believe this year has gone by already! And in just a few months, my little boy will be going to school full time in 1st Grade!

Tyler's really looking forward to summer... The pool will be opening this weekend (though it's chilly here - we won't be able to go until it warms up a bit!). I'm sure he'll spend lots of time at the playground... And best of all we have a family vacation planned at the end of July with my parents, sister, brother and their families. The boys have a blast with all of their cousins!

It's hard to think about summer being here when the high today is 58!

Anyway, here's one last photo to leave you with... We went to Mimi's Cafe for lunch (thank you Mamaw & Papaw!) to celebrate Tyler's special day!

Short!

Unlike most weeks, I worked on Friday to make up for being off Monday with my parents and Jason. So this was a really short weekend!

Tyler survived being grounded... and I think he might have learned his lesson! He has been having a hard time listening to people lately - his parents, his grandparents, his teacher and even his brother. Hopefully the thought of being grounded again will help his ears work a little better.

I realized that I had not yet showed you our finished patio. Oops! We've been working really hard on the garden - I'm growing a vegetable garden from seeds (except for four tomato plants) and so far only the green beans have sprouted. They are growing really quickly though so it's fun for the boys to watch. Aren't they cute?

We have had a fun weekend. Saturday I skipped my workout because my iPod was dead... so we did a half ass clean (read: we used Lysol wipes to clean the bathrooms and kitchen, a swiffer duster to half ass dust and then half ass vacuumed). Then we headed down to Shawn's parents' house to pick up his mom and our niece and headed to the Farmer's Market. Even the boys love a Farmer's Market because of the samples and friendly people... it's always a fun way to start spring! Next, we couldn't be so close without going to lunch at Croc's. Besides, my Mother-in-law had never been there! It was my duty to introduce her to our favorite downtown restaurant! :) Next we spent some time with Shawn's parents before heading to see a movie at Harkins. They have a kid center there so we didn't have to worry about a babysitter and the kids had a blast while we were being entertained! It was a pretty good movie, but then again I'm not usually disappointed where Zach Braff is concerned!

Today we ran around all morning like chickens with our heads cut off... While we were at Home Depot we looked through the paint rejects ($5 each!) and found a gallon of paint in a color we'd been wanting to use to paint the powder room, so we picked it up. Fortunately for me, the bathroom is too small for both of us and I'm too short to paint 10' ceilings, so Shawn painted while I planted seeds and worked on my garden. It's hard to see the color well here and it's not quite dry yet, but here's a pic of it in progress...

So now we have two rooms that don't have white walls... I'm not sure what we'll paint next, though we have some colors picked out so it's just a matter of time now that spring is here and we can open up the windows a bit!

Grounded!

Today Tyler got grounded for the first time. He made it 5 1/2 years without doing something bad enough to warrant such an action. But today it had to be done. They have a system at school for behavior monitoring. When they are being good they stay on "green light". When they do something wrong one time (that isn't too serious) then they get moved to "yellow light" and if they are really bad or persistantly bad, it's "red light". Today Tyler got put on "red light". He started at yellow, which would have been bad enough but kept on being stinkery (yes, that is a word.... at least in my world!) and she had to move him down to red. He has been on red light one other time this school year and was informed that the next time he'd be grounded.

So today when I came home from work I got to hear all about it. He isn't sure why he was misbehaving but did seem to understand that he'd made a mistake. He apologized and accepted his 3 day grounding (he pled down from 1 week because he told me repeatedly and without prompting that he was sorry) with no whining or back talking or attitude.

So until Friday afternoon he will not play outside, nor watch TV, and will go to bed 15 minutes early. He swears he learned his lesson and will not ever be on "red light" again, so we shall see.

Oh, and there was a flood at my work. It wasn't too bad but a picture Tyler colored for me was destroyed and the carpet was wet and squishy all day. There is nothing like coming back from a 5 day weekend to your office all awry! Oh well... Other than all that it was a good day.

Gavin's birthday weekend and more!

Gavin had a great birthday and got SO many presents! He is really into Spiderman right now and he has now accumulated more Spiderman toys than I ever thought possible! He even got a new Spiderman bicycle, which is great because he really has outgrown his old bicycle... My cupcakes were a success... I ended up making them with a baking mix and then made my own icing because I couldn't find any without They turned out to be pretty yummy and Shawn helped decorate them to look like a spider web. I think it was a success!

We had a great time with my parents this weekend... We were busy as usual but did get to relax and play some cards also.

While they were here, we went hiking at a new park that we found... we went to see Red Rocks... went to Dinosaur Ridge... went on the Alpine Slide as well as some other rides at Heritage Square... ate pizza at Beau Jo's... had a night out on the town with Jason (Shawn's oldest friend who stopped for a quick visit on his way to MN for business) downtown... and went shopping in Estes Park.

Tyler made me a really sweet gift at school for Mother's Day and I got to sleep in a bit that morning while my mom took care of my kids. Which I needed because we had been out until 2:30am the night before and that was way past my bedtime!!

All in all it was a great weekend and though I'm exhausted because I didn't sleep enough and I am trying to get over my cold, I can't complain about a thing. :) Hope all the moms out there had a fantastic Mother's Day and have a great week!

My baby is 4 today!

This will be a quick post as it's almost time to take Tyler to school and my parents are on their way here from the airport right now.

Today is Gavin's birthday! I can not believe my baby is getting so grown up! Here is a picture of him at about 6 months old... We don't have any newborn pics saved on this computer unfortunately so that's one of the earliest I have. Wasn't he a cute baby?

We have a fun weekend planned... kind of. My parents are here and he's really looking forward to celebrating tonight with his whole family - Shawn's parents and sister and her family and my parents. I'm not sure exactly what we'll do the rest of the weekend, which is what I meant by kind of, but I'm sure we'll come up with something good. I'll update later, of course. :)

In Tyler news... he fell down in the window well yesterday. If you haven't been to my house, picture a three foot drop onto rocks. On his back. So far there are no bruises, but he was really shaken up about that! I think he's Ok but it was really scary. I need to stop procrastinating and get a cover for the one near where they play.

Our cat, the whore of the neighborhood who graces random neighbors with her presence by just going in their houses as she sees fit to... is tearing up peoples' screen doors. One of my neighbors cornered Shawn at the gym today asking for suggestions on how to keep her from tearing holes in their screen door. So now Shawn is demanding that we declaw her since we can't seem to keep her in the house (she's really sneaky and runs out each time we open the door). Ugh. I hate to declaw an indoor/outdoor cat because she is defenseless against the other cats and dogs she harasses.... but I can't afford to replace the screen doors of the neighborhood.

And finally, it looks like we're moving towards a transfer date at the end of June for the surrogacy. We're skipping the mock cycle, which is usually used to determine amounts of hormones necessary. I'm happy about that because I'd rather put as few hormones in my body as possible, so this is good news. Unfortunately I might have a conflict with my boss's vacation as I have to go to CA for 5 days. Luckily I have a wonderful friend, who just happens to have worked for Allstate in the past, who can help cover for me while I'm gone. So I might just get to keep my job, despite my insubordinance! Whew! This is all moving along rather quickly but I like that I'll mostly be pregnant through the winter - I'd have a March due date if I get pregnant right away - and that's the most comfortable time to be pregnant. And maybe my ice cream cravings won't be so bad.... because it's hard to want ice cream when it's freezing outside, right? Well I can hope...

Anyway that's all for now... Cross your fingers that I can pull off a good cake for Gavin - I'm going to attempt a Spiderman themed one. Those of you who know me know that I do not have a creative bone in my body, so hopefully this will go well. If not, it'll make for a good laugh for my readers, eh?

Have a great day!

Ouch!

For not having a lot going on this weekend, it ended up being pretty packed, as usual. And painful as well! But I'll get to that in a bit....

Thursday was the jewelry party at Amy's house. It was really fun! Ria came with me (though Erica was sick and had to sit this one out) and because she was with me I got 10% off. Sweet! I can't turn down something on sale so I got a couple things for Mother's Day... and it wasn't ALL for me. :) Amy's hubby, Ria's hubby and Shawn stayed here with all the kids while we were at the party, which was an exhausting experience I think. Amy's little girl, Addie, is quite the little spitfire and clobbered all the other kids (she is the youngest, by over a year!). The kids had fun, though, despite getting bitten and hit with plastic hammers. ;)

Friday was the usual errands, laundry and attempt to catch up from all those I neglect throughout the week! That night I made a dinner that even my boys didn't complain about - fresh corn on the cob and pan fried Cod. It was actually pretty yummy!

Saturday I had good intentions to work out but ended up catching up on Oprah and hanging out with Shawn instead. That night we ran errands and then met Ria and her family at El Jardin for Cinco de Mayo. We got a free meal for the boys as well as free sopapillas for Gavin's birthday. We stuffed ourselves silly and I have never wanted more than to throw up in my life! But we had a really good time with the Wickers, as usual. :) We tried something new, too - Italian Margaritas!

Today we spent the day working in our yard. We bought a swing for our patio (thanks to Shawn's folks!) as well as some stuff to make our gardens. I am doing bulbs in thefall but we wanted to put mulch in now to make it look prettier. We picked up a couple bushes for the back of the house and got some seeds and topsoil to make a vegetable garden. I hope it works - I have never done a garden from scratch before so we'll see.

I'm supposed to be getting some herbs from a client this week so when we get it all put together, I'll be sure to post some pics. For now, I'll leave you with a picture of Gavin's first black eye. He isn't really complaining now, but he had a run in with a monster Frisbee and needless to say the Frisbee won. He's Ok but it looks pretty nasty! Click on the pic for a closer view if you want to...
Hope you had a great weekend...

Not dead... yet.

But I kind of wish I was. This has been quite a week... I'm quite stressed out today so please pardon any rants that come out of my fingers. We've been super busy and there is no end in sight so I thought I'd say hello to all of you in blog land before I get caught up in the rest of this crazy week.

Right now Shawn is attempting to read books to our kids, along with Addie (our Indiana neighbors' little girl). Addie is trying to read back to Shawn while he's reading to them so it's not going well. He had the choice between bath time and reading stories, however, so I'm quite enjoying this. It's nice having Addie here because she is quite entertaining while we deal with the current issue at hand.

Our patio.

Why, oh why, did we want to create a back yard oasis? Our little peace of heaven in the suburb? With (eventually) a place to sit with a glass of wine while we BBQ? Or relax with a good book on the swing? Was it really too much to ask?

Everything was going smoothly, with the exception of the lengthy amount of time it's taken to complete it (remind us, next time, not to pay cash.... in full... before the job was completed... to our satisfaction). So yesterday our patio was finally "complete" ... except for the sprinklers that needed capped and the rusted pieces of metal that needed to be put away. Today, however, when the sprinkler guy came to figure out why the hell we couldn't turn on our sprinklers, even though everyone else on the street's were on, a flood appeared in our backyard. Great.

Apparently, while they were prepping our patio to be poured, a pipe was cut. And not capped. So now, each time two zones of our system are turned on, water magically appears from under the patio. Shawn thinks he can tell where the problem is. The bad news is, it is under the patio. So somehow either a) our yard will have to be dug up or b) our patio will have to be broken up while the pipe is fixed and then re-poured. I am not paying for a dime of all this, but it is really stressing me out!

So thanks for listening to me bitch...

We did have a nice weekend, though it's hard to remember that far back at this point. We farted around with the sprinklers all weekend trying to figure out how to get them turned on, and did some yard work. Shawn got to go to a baseball game with his friend Jarrod. The boys and I played at the park... Shawn and I got to go to see Mall*Mart, the musical with Ria & her hubby, Thomas, where they were celebrating opening weekend, complete with hors d'oeuvres and wine. I drank a little bit more than I should have so I was sleepy. It was a good show and we went to get another drink afterwards but I woke up the next morning with a killer headache! Nothing a little water couldn't fix... We went to Goodwill because they were having a kick-ass sale - 50% off everything and 99 cent kids clothes! Sweet! Of course, we spent too much money as usual, but somehow it doesn't bother me as much when I come home with a whole trunk full of treasures for $55. One of which was a soccer goal for the backyard that the boys have not stopped playing with since!

In other news... Gavin's birthday is quickly approaching, as well as a visit with my parents and Jason. Amy, my Indiana neighbor, is having a jewelry party on Thursday that Erica and Ria are joining me for. I'm going to pick out my Mother's Day present for the boys to give to me. Which I find exciting. :) So things will pick up, hopefully, by the end of the week. Oh, and I sold a couple policies today, so that was a nice start for the month. Hopefully things will keep looking up.

Louie, the patio guy, is coming at 8:30a tomorrow to fix the flood in the backyard... Keep your fingers crossed for us. Once it's done I'll take a pic.

Have a great week!