gut roll

I just got my computer up and running, and I'm working on getting it back to where I need it to be for work, in the meantime, I saw this video on a TV show we watch and almost pee'd myself laughing. I'm guessing his dad's a preacher.... hmmm, can't remember me or my brothers ever doing this. It was worth sharing. ((especially you dad))

off to the mooovies

We took the kids to see Wall-E; this is Jesse's first visit the the theater! He did so great, I was pleasantly surprised. I put too much thought into it, and don't give him enough credit. He sat for all but 10 minutes of the entire movie, including credits (which is complete overkill if you ask me). The movie was my first theater movie in over 2 years. I don't get much out of going and spending $5-$8 on a movie that eventually I can rent for 1.00!! HA! Jonathon likes to go to new releases w/ his dad because it's so much more interesting (according to him) to view the graphics and special effects on the big screen.

The kids really liked the movie, we went for the matinee, and I was pleasantly surprised that Jesse got in free! Ezra was excited because they have blue slushies! I was glad to have yummy popcorn, that's my favorite part of going!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today's my dad's 64th birthday! Happy Birthday dad!!! We spent the morning with dad, Denise, and Haleigh at dad's house, took him a little birthday gift and just hung out. I haven't seen Haleigh since Christmas, so it was nice to see her! We talk weekly on the phone, but it's so much more fun to spend time together in person!! We had fun hanging out with dad for the morning of his birthday. Something that came to me was that dad and I share something on our birthdays that can only be described as bitter sweet. How we can turn another year older on our birthday and celebrate having had a great year only to wake up the very next day to remember and mourn the loss of someone we loved and held close to our hearts. My grandpa died 1 day after my dad's 41st birthday, not even 1 day... he held on until just after midnight, making sure with all his might that he didn't pass away on his son's birthday. How ironic is it that now I have that same bittersweet chain of events to occur on my own birthday. I'll turn 32 this year, and one day later it will be 1 year that I've spent w/o my brother. I don't think I'll miss him any more on the anniversary of his death, as I'm sure is the same with my dad - but it becomes even more fresh in our minds and hearts to think that a year, or in dad's case, 23 years, have gone by without being able to celebrate the gift of another year lived with our loved ones. Both grandpa and my brother Mike would say "don't be sad on your birthday because of me"... dad had a fun day planned w/ Haleigh as his special guest for his birthday and I plan to be sitting beach front on mine!

Happy 4th

This morning we went to our regular place for relaxing, at the lakefront. We love it there, it's a haul, but when we go we make a trip of it and get our favorite Chinese food and run any errands in that direction that we can. We spent the better part of the morning hanging out by the water. Surprisingly it was not at all crowded!

Jesse decided to skip nap today, mostly because we threw him completely off schedule! Oh well, he survived just fine and without a grumpy attitude too! We had Jonathon's parents over for a cookout and had lots of fun hanging out. During dinner it started storming pretty good, pouring down rain and pretty much putting a stop to any plans we had of venturing out for fireworks w/ the kids. We can see them from our house, the town nearby and the speedway do pretty large shows each year, so we were able to watch those with a great view. We had to wait on our little grocery store sparklers... maybe tomorrow!

Some brave people in our neighborhood bought the 'big show' fireworks, so we were blessed with hearing that until around midnight. Thank goodness for tact, eh? I mean, we only live in a neighborhood where houses are spaced 20-30 feet apart at best.... sometimes I wonder what people are thinking. That makes me sound like a stick in the mud I suppose, and that's fine - I just know that it sounded like a cannon going off in my house every time they launched a pretty sparkly firework creation into the nearby sky.

on hold

I've been on hold more in the past 2 days then I can ever remember. On hold w/ tech support, on hold with Best Buy, Circuit City, and several other office stores... I bet I've spent 2-3 total hours today on hold.

Lots of things went on hold with the laptop pooping out. I realize that this is inevitable for me, because I work from home, it's part of what I depend on to get things done. If I did NOT work from home, I'd probably use a beat up old desktop unit for emailing, and blogging.

What else is on hold? Making reservations for the beach... I'm a dingbat, and saved every contact # for the 4 places we looked into for renting.... so I really hope those people (by email) don't think I'm a rude person for not replying to their offers!!! We found some great villa rentals in the Sullivans/Seabrook Island area of SC, near Isle of Palms (where we went 4 years ago and LOVED) and it's 20 min from Charleston! Oh well, it's not the end of the world, I just don't like the idea that I asked for info, they sent it and I'm not able to call to confirm or decline. Hopefully one of them will send me an email soon, and I can call from that!! I'm SO ready for the beach!

change in plans

I got up at 6am as usual, had coffee, checked emails, began working ... worked for about 1 hour then Jesse was up around 715am as usual. We did our normal snuggle routine and then Jonathon was leaving for work. Laptop on the kitchen table, as usual, waiting on an email from one of my employers. Jesse likes to drive with Jonathon, they usually back out of the driveway and then back in (Jesse steers the car) and then I get Jesse and off Jonathon goes to work.... after all of that we came back in, I sat down to finalize an email and my laptop was FRIED! Nothing would work!!

So - change of plans for the day. No working for me! Mind you, it's month end closing (for June of course), payroll cut off for one of my employers (I participate in making this happen for around 50 people) and I'm already backed up 2 days for the other employer because of their software failure! Fun day ahead! Too bad this iMac we have will not work with all of the programs I have to use for both companies!!

I ran out to Best Buy to see if I can find more 'memory' for my laptop - that is the first troubleshooting idea...they didn't have it in stock, so we went to Circuit City and it was on sale! Yipee - I love sales, especially when I'm not sure that it will fix the problem anyhow! Did it? Nope!! The other problem it "could" be according to the manufacturers series of beeps that the laptop makes when I power it on... bad video card. Which in this case is built onto the motherboard, and it's not cost effective to replace it. So, I must order a new laptop. I'm so bummed, all of my info (including many many videos that I haven't had time to send to smugmug), email contacts, saved emails, etc. are on my hard drive... I HOPE all of that can be salvaged!

Fortunately my employer of 8 years has offered 1/2 of the cost toward a new one. Thank heavens for them!! I do depend on a computer for work, not play - so it's a bit inconvenient for both of my employers. Thankfully, I received a back up laptop today from one of them! I'm going to be working my fingers to the bone during any down time at home for the entire holiday weekend. Yipee!

I hauled the kids back and forth all morning trying to get a solution to being out of work... I had to make the day enjoyable for all, I treated us (me and kids) to 'junk lunch' and we hungout in the back yard w/ the sprinklers and the little mini-pool we have. Waterguns were in use.

almost like Christmas...

Why is getting carpet cleaned so satisfying? For me it's almost like Christmas, it's fresh, clean and it makes me feel good inside! I am weird, I realize this. Two years ago I hired Stanley Steamer, and I was put off that they actually hooked something up in my toilet... YUCK. They said it was for draining, but there's no getting around the psychological imprint that left on me. Toilet water + my carpet. GROSS. So I searched for a less gross way to clean this time, and found these people. They're a family owned business and they're SUPER! I'm so pleased! It's green cleaning; no chemicals, 100% organic, it's pet, child and allergy friendly. The neatest part is it was dry when they were done, they use this powder like sponge stuff to clean with. Our carpet looked brand new when they left, and I was able to get a small bucket of the sponge cleaner for small spills/spots, it should last some time. They will refill it for free everytime I have them here to clean carpets. So as silly as it may be - I took before/after photos - will upload them later and send a link to our photo sharing site. I'm serious about clean floors - so I was super happy!

mmmmm M&M's yum

When we get yummy sweet treats, I like to buy something special and small. Last night I had to grab a few last minute things at the store and I found a box of 5 M&M icecream bars. M&M's have a special chocolate YUMMY candy shell... and so do these 5 icecream pops! They're pretty small in size, maybe 2" in diameter; Ezra thought it was delicious!

Jesse only ate about 1/3 of his, but he had fun with it. Honestly, he prefer's a banana over this type of treat usually... when he saw Ezra with one he had to try!

One last thing - I have two really white really blue eye'd boys!

carefree kind of day

We had a very relaxing day at the park; we went to our favorite park at the lake and found a perfect spot under some trees by the water and just enjoyed the outdoors. No toys, no music, no TV, no worries, just us - enjoying nature. It was great - and we'll likely spend alot of days this way this summer!

first carousel ride

We go to Concord Mills Mall often, and this Carousel has been inside for as long as I can remember... but I just now decided to jump on it! We had fun! We were 1 of 3 parent/child sets on board. I'm a mid-morning, mid-week mall mom - I like to go before the tourists arrive :).

Ezra was a little 'too old' for it in his opinion, but he was a wonderful big brother to enjoy the experience w/ Jesse. Ezra's in that in-between stage where some things seem to juvenile for him, and then again some are not. I love that he was secure enough in his boyhood to embrace this little happy moment with Jesse ;). Big brothers rule. Go figure that I took the video w/ my cell, thought I took 3 of them - and the only one that saved is the pacifier one!!! Oh well, I'm not trying to be in denial - my kid still likes his paci, there I said it. Excuse the poor quality, I keep forgetting to charge the digital camera battery! Jesse hugged the horse bye-bye when the ride ended... I missed getting that on video.