Sunday Best

Mason got a new suit for church. He was SO excited about it, which is rare for him. He is usually very picky about what he will wear. Since Mason got a new suit, Cooper got Mason's old one that was too short for him. I love this one because it looks like Mason is choking Cooper. Cooper thinks he is really pretty in mommy's dress shoes.

SICK of being SICK!

Warning: This post contains a lot of whining and complaining.

This pregnancy has been my hardest yet. I began feeling sick on the day I turned 7 weeks. I am nauseous most of the time and have absolutely no energy. My poor husband has had to take on most of the duties I normally do, add that to a very busy work day, where he, at times, brings home work to do in the evenings, and volunteering at the fire station, he is one BUSY guy!

With Mason's pregnancy I began getting sick around 9 weeks, and was feeling better by 13 weeks. I was usually sick in the mornings and once I could get a good meal in me, or could puke, I'd be fine the rest of the day. I was also able to take plenty of naps.

Cooper's pregnancy was better by far, I was sick for about the same amount of weeks. I was nauseous but never threw up and the nauseousness would go away as the morning went on. Even though I had a busy little Mason to take care of, he was a great napper, so I got lots of naps in too.

This time around I am lucky if Cooper will lay down without fighting me for an hour first. Which I don't have the energy to fight him. Then once I lay down, our lovely neighbors let their yappy little dog out for his afternoon piddle break. Our neighbors house has a really weird layout. Their slider is on the side of their house, the side that our houses share. To make it an even sweeter deal, our living room is on that side, and our bedroom is above the living room, so no matter where I try to nap, I hear the yappy little poop head. I have visions of opening my bedroom window, taking out the screen, and throwing Mason's basketball at the little fur ball's head.

Have I mentioned that I have NO energy? I have no energy to do the most basic tasks like showering. I will usually shower, more for Jeff's benefit. Forget the make-up, hair do, or even regular clothes. Yup it's pajamas 24/7 for me. I'm sure Jeff loves seeing me in my PJ's all the time. If I can get the dishes in the dishwasher everyday, its a successful day!

This morning I was not feeling well. After eating breakfast, I started to feel a bit better, no energy, but at least I didn't have the urge to puke. So I decided to spend some time organizing the boys' toys, cleaning the shelves on their two-shelf toy shelf, and vacuuming the toy room, their bedroom, and my bedroom. All this took me probably 45 minutes, and I made sure I snacked and drank water the whole time, so I didn't get sick. As I was finishing the last of the vacuuming, I got really hot and nauseous. Mmmm that snack sure was great coming back up.

I love to have a clean house. I wish I could get some stuff clean without getting sick.

Someone asked me yesterday if I was excited about this pregnancy. My honest answer was "no, maybe I will be when I am not sick every waking hour". Has anyone else ever felt this way?

News

Cake anyone?

This week Safeway is having an AWESOME deal on Betty Crocker cake mixes, frosting, and brownie mixes. For every 2 that you buy, you get 3 free! I found coupons for $0.75 off for every cake mix AND frosting you purchase. I bought 10 cake mixes and 10 frosting. The total before the 12 free ones and 10 coupons came off was $31.80. My final total was $4.43. Or instead of paying $1.69 for the cake mixes and $1.49 for the frosting, I paid $0.22 each.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

Star Wars Movie

Here is the latest and greatest from the Borders Production Studio. I think the boys are having way too much fun making these.

A Cooper fit

The video should explain it all!

Mother's Day brunch

Mason's preschool had a Mother's Day brunch on Friday. Mason made me this marshmallow flower bouquet, he painted a flower pot and potted a flower. For brunch we had crepes with a strawberry cream sauce, strawberries and whip cream on top and we had a hash brown, egg, peppers, and cheese casserole. The food was really yummy.This is what Cooper did most of the brunch because he wanted one of the flower marshmallows.

Aw and last of all...me with my Mason man. I love him so much! He is such a great son, sweet and loving, with a side of, well shall I say "spice" at times.

Camping...Borders Style

A few nights ago, Jeff set up a two man tent in our play room. The boys were so excited! We told them they could sleep in the tent as long as they went to sleep. They did and made it until about 1 am and both went to their beds. They have had a lot of fun playing in the tent. It will be a sad day when we take it down. I love this one.

Car Woes

Wanna hear a really good story?

Last Wednesday night, I was driving girls home from mutual. We were stopped at a red light. Light turns green. We go. We get through the intersection. As the car begins to accelerate, I think to myself, gee the car sure is hesitating right now. Just as this thought goes through my brain I hear a big BANG! Yes a bang from under my hood. Followed by my car shutting off. The girls in my car think I have hit something, yeah right! (I would have had to have been pretty oblivious to hit something big enough to make THAT big of a BANG.) I look down at my dash, all the lights are lit. I pull over to the right hand side of the road. My power steering goes out. As do my brakes. This can't be good. I make it over to the side of the road pretty quick and coast to a stop- luckily I wasn't going over 15-20 mph when the big bang happened. I get out and look under my car. Fluid, fluid, and more fluid is gushing out. I get on the phone and call my dad, who comes down to help me out. (moral support more than anything) I then ask a few girls to call their parents to come pick them up. Then a fire engine passes us and turns around to make sure we were all OK. The 12-13 yr old girls LOVED this. Oh a man in uniform. So irresistible! The fire fighters put some kitty litter type stuff down on the puddles of fluid forming everywhere, and make sure we are OK. They pose for a few pictures with the girls and take off. In the craziness a few moms show up to take all the girls home. It finally dawns on me that I am not going to be able to drive my car home, so I call a tow truck. About 9:15 (an hour after bang) the tow truck shows up. My car was towed to a mechanic, where it sat until today because they couldn't get it in till then.

So here's the verdict: a piston broke off (I think) or a piece of the piston, which smashed a hole in the engine. So what does that mean? A) put in a used engine (with about the same amount of miles on it) for just shy of $4,700 B) Get a remanufactured engine installed for just shy of $7,300 or C) junk the car and get maybe a few hundred for it, then buy a different car with (probably) a huge car payment. What option are we going with? A.

(PS: the mechanic says engine problems are REALLY rare in Toyotas and doesn't know why ours did what it did. Weird huh?)

Oh the joys of car ownership.

The End

Bragging rights!

Mason has been wanting to go out to Cabelas for a while. He and Jeff have been there a few times, but Cooper and I have never been privileged to go, until yesterday. The one thing Mason wanted to do was play the shooting game. So that was what we did first. Mason and Cooper both got a few turns, then it was Jeff and my turn. The object of the game is to hit as many targets as you can. For each target you hit, you get 10 points and I believe you are given 20 shots. Jeff's score was 60......mine was 160! Oh yeah! Who's the pro? I think I may have hurt Jeff's ego just a bit.

I didn't get any pictures but here are a few of Mason doing the shooting game from March of 2008.

Pre-School Field Trip

On Friday Mason's preschool went to Cat Tales. Cool huh? Well actually, after about the 5th cat that was in its house, or "in the back" all the kids were ready to go home. They all whined like big babies, and frankly, I was ready to go too. Over half of the cats were sleeping, and would only come around when they were given a treat. Unfortunately, our tour guide was not qualified to insert the plastic stick with a piece of meat through the fence. Seriously. The boys before the whining began.
A bob cat

Tiger of some kind.

The brother or sister to the above tiger.

Are you beginning to see a pattern? Yup. None of the animals would get up and come close to the fence.

A Lion that was WAY far away. I had to zoom in all the way just to get this.

Here is the last tiger. He finally gave us a little "action" but none of the kids were interested by that time.

Mason with his preschool class.

So at the end they said that feeding time is at 3pm everyday and that is about the only time the animals become really active. So if you ever want to go, go then. (Now that would have been really good info to know when the field trip was scheduled)

If you give a Cooper a green marker

If you give a Cooper a green marker, he will want a piece of paper to draw on.

When you give him the paper, he will get carried away and draw on both sides.

When he notices that both sides are full, he will draw on the table.

Only using the green maker on the table will become boring to him, so he will use the orange marker too.

When he is all done, he will stand back and admire his art work.

Looking at his art work full of greens and oranges will remind him of the pumpkin he wants to be for Halloween.

He will decide he needs to draw a picture of a pumpkin.

He will need a new drawing surface, so he figures his face will do.

He will get started with the orange marker, drawing the body of the pumpkin.

Then he will remember that his pumpkin needs a stem.

And chances are, if he needs to draw a stem, he will need to use the green marker.

Why we went private

First I want to say sorry. Sorry that in order to view our blog, you now have to log in every time. I know it is a pain. I don't like to either. Hopefully in a few months when everything settles down, we will be able to make it public again. I wish there was a way to block certain people.

Jeff's former employer emailed Jeff a very long pathetic email telling Jeff that he didn't like that I posted something about Jeff being laid off. He said he didn't appreciate me talking about him behind his back. Sure, I talked abut the situation, but never did I say the name of the company Jeff worked for or the owner's name, so unless you already knew that info, there is no way of you knowing who or what company I was talking about. Plus, there was nothing personal I wrote about the owner. I never slandered him or his character or wrote any of the horrible things he would say to Jeff or other employees who still work there. I could have. I wanted to. But didn't.

He continued to tell Jeff that I only got one side of the story, and that I didn't write the whole truth. Really? Was I suppose to call you up and get your side? That is not my job. I am not a reporter.

He went on to add things that Jeff says they never discussed. OK maybe the owner came away from their "meeting" thinking something totally different than Jeff. That's fine. Leave it at that. Was an email necessary?

Then he took it a step further, telling Jeff that, thanks to him, he has had to take on more responsibility. Gee, isn't that your JOB? You are the OWNER, if you CHOOSE to lay the person off who is running a good portion of you company, and CHOOSE to not replace them with another manager to run the company, then wouldn't some of their job functions fall back on you? It's a no brainer to me. How about you? Can you say....gilt trip?

Oh but he didn't stop there. He continued by telling Jeff that he has had some complains from patients about Jeff. The owner said he doesn't believe them, but it is what the patients said. OK if you don't believe it, then why say anything to Jeff about the complains in the email? He also said that one sleep lab doesn't refer to them anymore due to "shotty follow up practices". Of course, because the companies follow up practices were top notch before Jeff started. Sure. Whatever you say dude.

We just feel like the owner is trying to justify why he let Jeff go, and is trying to convince himself that it was a good decision. The email was totally unnecessary. Right now we don't want to give him any more reasons to feel the need to email Jeff for anything. No, Jeff did not respond to the email. He actually closed the email account after receiving it.

One last thing. Before all this happened, Jeff and I really liked the owner and his wife. They always came across as great people. They acted like they cared about Jeff as a person. The thing that bothered Jeff and me more than him being laid off the way he was, was seeing how they really are as people. It's sad.

Easter 2010

Here are the baskets the boys woke up to from the Easter Bunny.

Mason's

Cooper's

In the morning the boys went straight downstairs to check out their baskets. Neither Jeff or I heard them as I was asleep and Jeff was in the shower. So when we went down, this is what we found: (And Mason had already eaten his Cadbury egg and destroyed the evidence)
Mason got a Lazy Town movie, new sunglasses, and candy.

Cooper got a Thomas movie, new sunglasses, and candy.

We had Easter dinner at home this year and invited my parents, my brother Michael, and Jeff's parents.

As soon as I got out the camera, Michael got up from the table. Yeah, he's not at sly as he thinks, I knew what he was doing, I was able to get this picture of him anyway.

my parents

Jeff's parents

See the (bad) influence my father is on my son.