I'm sooooo happy. Happy happy happy!!! Do you want to know why? Jeremy is downstairs setting up our new TV. Now, I'm glad to have a new TV, but my joy is over the death of the entertainment center. Does anyone remember the incident shortly after Jeremy left for Iraq where the thing fell over? I hate the entertainment center -- HATE IT!!! It is constantly leaning (though, has been reinforced with plywood to stop it from careening all the way over), one of the doors is ripped off and there are huge chunks missing from the front of it. Add to that the fact that the damage to the base has made it impossible to move, so cleaning behind it is impossible (not to mention impossible to plug/unplug wires), and I am so ready to say goodbye to the thing. Woohoo!
I wonder if we have a baseball bat with which I can smash the thing to smithereens?
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Just a few quick pictures from Christmas!
Jeremy's side of the family:
The little ones on Christmas Eve:
My side of the family:
Santa Claus came to visit the kids at Grandma & Grandpa M's:
Hannah excited about her new IPod:
The little ones on Christmas Eve:
My side of the family:
Santa Claus came to visit the kids at Grandma & Grandpa M's:
Hannah excited about her new IPod:
More to come later...
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Uggghh...I hate road trips!
Disclaimer: I started this post more than a week ago. And it has been sitting there incomplete because I've just been busy.
Not that I didn't enjoy spending the weekend visiting with Hannah and my family this weekend, but the road trip itself is rather, well, awful. Seriously, yesterday -- the day we drove back home -- was wretched. But before I go into it, let me tell you about the weekend...
I was able to pick Hannah up from school on Friday and we spent the evening just hanging out, which was nice. Saturday, my parents were busy running errands and picking up my sister and her husband from the airport. So, we wandered to Toledo on a mission for Tony Packo's. (For those of you who don't know, Tony Packo's is a Toledo favorite for hot dogs, though I always get the chicken paprikash -- mmmmm!) We also made a few stops to pick up some of our Ohio favorites that we can't get in North Carolina. Saturday evening my mom broke out my dad's Christmas gift a bit early -- a Wii. I'm not normally a video game person, but this was a lot of fun. Bowling has to be my favorite, but just making ours Miis was entertaining enough!
Disclaimer: This is where I actually started typing today. And I'm already fuzzy on the rest of the weekend in Ohio. We did have a lot of fun, though. I'll have to load pictures some other time, because I can't work on the desktop computer (where my pictures are stored) while the kids are awake (way too much stuff out up there for the to rifle through).
The bad part of the weekend was the trip home, which started off with Ross puking all over himself and his car seat about 30 minutes from my parents house. Ugghh....talk about gross. It took a good 30 minutes at a gas station to clean the mess up. Have you ever tried to get puke off of a car seat with paper towels and wet wipes? Yeah, it isn't very effective. Thank goodness for Febreeze!!! After we stop and picked it up, the stench in the van became bearable. I must be suppressing bad memories however, because I don't remember much of the rest of the trip -- well, except for the fact that I rode the last 45 minutes home with my IPod on and turned up loud enough that I couldn't here the kids screaming. Yeah, it was THAT good of a trip!
Not that I didn't enjoy spending the weekend visiting with Hannah and my family this weekend, but the road trip itself is rather, well, awful. Seriously, yesterday -- the day we drove back home -- was wretched. But before I go into it, let me tell you about the weekend...
I was able to pick Hannah up from school on Friday and we spent the evening just hanging out, which was nice. Saturday, my parents were busy running errands and picking up my sister and her husband from the airport. So, we wandered to Toledo on a mission for Tony Packo's. (For those of you who don't know, Tony Packo's is a Toledo favorite for hot dogs, though I always get the chicken paprikash -- mmmmm!) We also made a few stops to pick up some of our Ohio favorites that we can't get in North Carolina. Saturday evening my mom broke out my dad's Christmas gift a bit early -- a Wii. I'm not normally a video game person, but this was a lot of fun. Bowling has to be my favorite, but just making ours Miis was entertaining enough!
Disclaimer: This is where I actually started typing today. And I'm already fuzzy on the rest of the weekend in Ohio. We did have a lot of fun, though. I'll have to load pictures some other time, because I can't work on the desktop computer (where my pictures are stored) while the kids are awake (way too much stuff out up there for the to rifle through).
The bad part of the weekend was the trip home, which started off with Ross puking all over himself and his car seat about 30 minutes from my parents house. Ugghh....talk about gross. It took a good 30 minutes at a gas station to clean the mess up. Have you ever tried to get puke off of a car seat with paper towels and wet wipes? Yeah, it isn't very effective. Thank goodness for Febreeze!!! After we stop and picked it up, the stench in the van became bearable. I must be suppressing bad memories however, because I don't remember much of the rest of the trip -- well, except for the fact that I rode the last 45 minutes home with my IPod on and turned up loud enough that I couldn't here the kids screaming. Yeah, it was THAT good of a trip!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Another Running Challenge!
I forgot to mention at the beginning of the month that I'm planning on running 50 miles again this month. I'm mostly doing it to combat holiday eating, but also because I've not been running as much as I should, so I'm trying to get more miles worked into my weekly routine.
I'm giving up on trying to map my miles, as most all of our subdivision is not mapped on any online program. Instead, I'm taking my slow average (12 minute miles) and backing into the mileage based upon time. So, thus far, I have 7.5 miles in. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking when I planned this, since I'm not supposed to run for two weeks following my surgery. I'm hoping Jeremy will clear me for running after my next follow-up exam, else I'm going to have a couple really busy weeks at the end of the month!
I'm giving up on trying to map my miles, as most all of our subdivision is not mapped on any online program. Instead, I'm taking my slow average (12 minute miles) and backing into the mileage based upon time. So, thus far, I have 7.5 miles in. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking when I planned this, since I'm not supposed to run for two weeks following my surgery. I'm hoping Jeremy will clear me for running after my next follow-up exam, else I'm going to have a couple really busy weeks at the end of the month!
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
I can see, I can see!!!
So, the surgery went really well last week. It was amazingly fast -- I think we were in and out in about an hour. My only complaint is that you have to stay awake for the procedure. I'm not good with anything that I would call "being fussed with" (like blood draws or anything involving a needle). The two Valium they had me take weren't exactly enough to keep my nerves at bay (even though Jeremy had promised me that I wouldn't care about anything once I took them). I did pretty well with the first eye, but he did have to stop lasering for a moment on the second eye because I was squirming too much. I think the 2nd eye was worse, because I knew what was coming. And, of course, I almost passed out afterwards just from sheer nerves. I really didn't feel anything during the procedure, though it was weird to be able to see them lifting my cornea off my eye.
I did have A LOT of discomfort by the time we got home (which took a while, because the Valium caused me to get a bad case of the munchies -- I wanted just about every junk food available). My eyes burned really badly, much like the time I got jalapeno juice on my contacts. I took a 45 minute nap (which was all the longer I could rest, even with a third Valium in me) and felt a little better, but was MAJORLY sensitive to light. The kids and Jeremy were down the street at John & Betty's, so I headed down there. Of course, there are a lot of Christmas lights up, which I rather loudly cursed as I tried to walk with my eyes closed down the street. And then, abruptly, about 30 minutes later I felt better. And the light sensitivity got a lot better. And it has been really good since then. I've had some problems with dry eye, but that is normal. The first several days I needed to lie down in the afternoon just to shut my eyes and rest them, but that has passed, too.
I should also mention that I could see rather well, though not perfectly, right after the surgery. By the next morning my vision was fabulous. I'm 100% pleased with the surgery and would do it again in a heartbeat (though, I would ask for a stronger sedative).
I did have A LOT of discomfort by the time we got home (which took a while, because the Valium caused me to get a bad case of the munchies -- I wanted just about every junk food available). My eyes burned really badly, much like the time I got jalapeno juice on my contacts. I took a 45 minute nap (which was all the longer I could rest, even with a third Valium in me) and felt a little better, but was MAJORLY sensitive to light. The kids and Jeremy were down the street at John & Betty's, so I headed down there. Of course, there are a lot of Christmas lights up, which I rather loudly cursed as I tried to walk with my eyes closed down the street. And then, abruptly, about 30 minutes later I felt better. And the light sensitivity got a lot better. And it has been really good since then. I've had some problems with dry eye, but that is normal. The first several days I needed to lie down in the afternoon just to shut my eyes and rest them, but that has passed, too.
I should also mention that I could see rather well, though not perfectly, right after the surgery. By the next morning my vision was fabulous. I'm 100% pleased with the surgery and would do it again in a heartbeat (though, I would ask for a stronger sedative).
Thursday, December 3, 2009
I'm getting fried today!
That is, I'm getting Lasik this afternoon. And I'm REALLY excited. I've been wearing glasses since either the 1st or 2nd grade (do you remember, Mom?) and contact lenses since the 7th (I believe, though it could have been the 8th). I can't see ANYTHING without corrective lenses -- I would never ever misplace my glasses because I couldn't get far enough away from them in the first place. So, wish me luck!
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
A great weekend!
So, we had a really really nice weekend with Hannah and my parents here for Thanksgiving. I was shocked, once again, to realize how tall Hannah is getting. Here is a photo just to give you some perspective:
Your kids aren't supposed to get that much taller than you, are they?
We, of course, spent Thursday having the big Thanksgiving dinner. I love to cook and thoroughly enjoyed the chance to dust off all my holiday recipes and specialty gadgets.
We were even brave enough to attempt a family picture. This was the best we got:
And I tried something completely new this year -- we made a gingerbread house. And, no, it wasn't from a kit. It was quite the interesting process and I have lots of ideas on how to make it go smoother next year. The dough rolling was quite the process (there was just a little cussing involved -- luckily, only Hannah was participating in that part). The directions said to roll the dough out on parchment paper. Do you know how hard that is? The paper just slides around on the counter (and, yes, I could have taped it down, but I was also trying to turn it every couple of strokes). And then once I got the pieces cut out I couldn't transfer them to the cookie sheet without stretching them out. I finally discovered that I could cut them out on the parchment paper and then just transfer the parchment paper to the cookie sheet. It went much smoother from that point. The assembly was much much easier than I thought it would be. And, of course, the kids loved the decorating part best. Here are a few shots of the process and the final product:
(This is Ross being dramatic about the noise the mixer makes.)
Your kids aren't supposed to get that much taller than you, are they?We, of course, spent Thursday having the big Thanksgiving dinner. I love to cook and thoroughly enjoyed the chance to dust off all my holiday recipes and specialty gadgets.
We were even brave enough to attempt a family picture. This was the best we got:
And I tried something completely new this year -- we made a gingerbread house. And, no, it wasn't from a kit. It was quite the interesting process and I have lots of ideas on how to make it go smoother next year. The dough rolling was quite the process (there was just a little cussing involved -- luckily, only Hannah was participating in that part). The directions said to roll the dough out on parchment paper. Do you know how hard that is? The paper just slides around on the counter (and, yes, I could have taped it down, but I was also trying to turn it every couple of strokes). And then once I got the pieces cut out I couldn't transfer them to the cookie sheet without stretching them out. I finally discovered that I could cut them out on the parchment paper and then just transfer the parchment paper to the cookie sheet. It went much smoother from that point. The assembly was much much easier than I thought it would be. And, of course, the kids loved the decorating part best. Here are a few shots of the process and the final product:
(This is Ross being dramatic about the noise the mixer makes.)
As usual, the weekend with Hannah went entirely too fast. I'm glad that we'll be seeing her again in just three short weeks to celebrate Christmas. I can't wait (though I am totally not ready for the trip -- lots to do)!
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