I found this sign over the weekend and just had to have it....
It gives me a good laugh every time I look at it. Don't worry MY RELATIVES don't need to make an appointment because you are also my friends. Does anyone want to come for a visit?!! I will cook for you....
Here is the window treatment I choose for the kitchen the fruit matches the tiles on the back splash. I only have two more valances to buy and the all the downstairs windows are done (6 windows downstairs). Thank goodness. I have 5 windows upstairs I still have to dress.
Have you seen the movie a River Runs Through It with Brad Pitt, we had the opportunity to have one of the scenes play out at the dinner table on Saturday. Brad Pitts character was a boy, probably around Hannah's age and does not want to eat his oatmeal (I am pretty sure that is what it was) and his Dad (Tom Skerritt) made him sit at the table until he ate it.
Hannah did not want to eat her corn, the funny thing is Hannah likes corn. Well my stubborn daughter butted heads with her stubborn parents and Hannah ended up sitting at the dinner table for a extra hour and a halve. We told her she was not aloud to leave the table until she ate her corn. She cried, tried to reason with us, even got all cute, but we held strong. I will admit there were times I just wanted to give in but it was a good lesson for her to learn. Hannah finally realized we were not going to budge and ate her corn.
It is important that the girls know that food is valuable and not to waste it and also that she is fortunate to have food. I am already very lucky because the girls love sushi, Indian food, Chinese food and hundreds of other things that most adults won't eat, so I really don't know why she choose corn to make her stand.
The very next day Hannah had made and dressed herself up in this outfit;
I thought I would write a blog that would make people laugh, of course at my own expense...I will take one for the team. It is no secret that I have done and said some pretty crazy things; the following is one of those stories.
January 2007
We had been in New York for a few months (so we were still living in the old house), the gerbils were still babies and had been Jordan's for about 3 months.
I was upstairs vacuuming and everyone knows how OCD I am about having things clean...so I had the brilliant idea to vacuum the gerbils. KIDS DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!!
So I put the attachment that you use to do the stairs on the hose and proceeded to vacuum Indiana Jones & Mocha Joe. I started at their little heads and went slowly down their little bodies. I was thinking to myself that this was a really good idea and that they were already looking shinier, but it could be better. So I took the attachment off the hose and well....I guess I was a couple sandwiches short of a picnic basket because all of a sudden Mocha Joes little butt got sucked into the vacuum. Life completely went into slow motion...so many things were going through my mind in this short period of time, such as;
Wes is going go kill me!!
How do you get a gerbil out of a vacuum?
I am going to have to clean the carpet.
Is poor little Mocha going to suffer:( ?
If Mocha was a Guinea Pig, I would not be having this problem right now.
Where are the girls...I am going to traumatize them for life...
Many other thoughts were rushing through my mind and I guess I was screaming, "Mocha! Mocha!" because the girls had run in from the other room to see what was happening and that was when I got my brain back because I grabbed the cord to the vacuum and ripped it out of the wall and Mocha plopped back down into her cage. I wish I had a picture to show because it looked like she was wearing a skirt, all of her bottom fur was sticking straight out and fluffed. Audrey and Hannah just looked at me in bewilderment, as if to say, "What were you thinking? We know not to vacuum the gerbils. Why would you?" I know that every time I have vacuumed since, they come to make sure I am not doing anything stupid or endangering the lives of small defenseless creatures. I guess it is good to have people to watch out for you even if they are 5 and 7. I can only imagine what the gerbils think when I vacuum...I bet they have some pretty choice words.
All I can say is Mocha is so lucky that I did not have a Dyson, because she would have been a goner.
Wesley gives the gerbils their weekly sand baths and they are very clean and happy and, yes, I know that I can not put the gerbils in the bathtub because they would drown...just in case anyone was worried. Though gerbils are very good swimmers.
Its probably a really good thing that Whiskers lives at the zoo, who knows what I would try to do with a Meerkat.
Well the family drama continues and I just wish it would end!! I have tried to make it end but it is like that bug that you smashed with the frying pan and than miraculously gets up and starts walking away, so your only option is to set in on fire (don't worry I have not been setting bugs on fire.)
So for my sanity I am venting to my family & friends on my trustee blog. I am not going to get into details but to make the long and short of it, we received a letter in the mail from Wes's brother and wife 4 days after "Fake Easter", telling us we were wrong for disciplining their son and that it was essentially are fault because we were not good enough hosts. So they ruined the family get together and then blame us for it. To top it all off my brother in law called me the UGLIEST word I have ever been called on the phone because I was unhappy about the ticket that was issued for disturbing the peace, when their son was throwing his tantrum. Hello people, I was in the military I have heard it all but never that word. I can not believe how damaging it was to my soul and my esteem. I am still having a hard time getting over it. I talked to my sister in law on Saturday and told her that I just wanted to stop talking about it and for the drama to cease and desist and I wake up this morning to another email from her complaining about the situation. DOES ANYONE HAVE A FLAME THROWER!!!! Wes and I have already decided that we are not going to respond but I needed to get it off my chest and I think I feel better.
Welcome Whiskers Jordan to the family. He is our new baby Meerkat who lives at the Syracuse Zoo, we adopted him last weekend. We pay for his food and any extras he might need and they do the rest. I think it is a very good deal.
Here is my ABC Tag!!! I am tagging all of my family, I am interested to see what you have to say. Copy and Paste the following on your blog and replace my answers with your own.
A - Attached or Single: Attached at the hip for 8yrs.
B- Best Friend: Obviously Wes is my best friend but my best girlfriend would be Jen.
C - Cake or Pie: I love cake and pie and tarts, eclairs... so on and so forth. I think you get the point.
D - Day of Choice: Thursday...usually really good t.v. is on and its the day before Friday.
E - Essential Item: I have to have my Kosher Salt, I can't cook without it.
F - Favorite Color: Lilac
G - Gummy Bears or Worms: Gummy Bears all the way, my absolute favorite are Chocolate Covered Gummy Bears!!! Yum:)
H - Hometown: I was born in Salt Lake but I consider my hometown to be Vancouver B.C.
I - Indulgence(s): Godiva Chocolates and clothes from Ann Taylor Loft.
J - January or July: July because it is warm even though I was born in January.
K - Kids: Audrey and Hannah
L - Life is incomplete without: Joy & Laughter and chocolate.
M - Marriage Date: September 9, 2000
N - Number of Siblings: I have 5 brothers and 1 sister.
O - Oranges or Apples: I love Christmas oranges but I also love a good apple pie...I just can't make up my mind.
P - Phobias or Fears: I have a major fear of heights.
Q - Quotes: "We don't have enough time to train a cat!!"
R - Reason to Smile: When my girls are happy.
S - Season: Spring, summer...I use to love the fall before I moved to New York but that just means winter is coming and I am so over that.
T - Tag: All my family
U - Unknown Fact About Me: I taught myself Calligraphy.
V - Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal: I am a carnivore, veggies are meant to accompany the meat.
W - Worst Habit: Cracking my neck and losing my temper.
X - X-ray or Ultrasound: Hands down Ultrasound, especially when they warm up the Gel they put on your tummy.
Y - Your Favorite Food: Chocolate
Z - Zodiac: I am an Aquarius. I actually follow the Chinese Zodiac, I am a Fire Dragon, and it hits the nail right on the head.
I look forward to seeing every ones blog:)
Last Easter (2007) Danielle came for a visit. We went to my most favorite store on Earth, Wegmans. I decided to buy an Easter Lily...actually the whole story is that I could not decide weather or not to buy an Easter Lilly or to buy Stargazer lilies, so I had Danielle running back and forth from the checkout line to the floral department. I thought it was funny!! (Note - this store is not small it the size of a Super store but ALL groceries) she did this two times. Exactly the kind of of torture that an older sister gets joy out of!!
I finally decided on the Easter Lilly and Danielle put it on the conveyor built and it tipped over and spilt dirt every where. The Wegmans that I shop at is voted the #1 grocery store in the country and it is very high end so the people who shop there did not see the humor in Danielle spilling the plant all over the place, but Danielle and I sure did. We were laughing quite hard, especially when Danielle was trying to clean up the dirt and just made a bigger mess. So in honor of Danielle I bought another Easter Lilly and made sure that I was very careful in the store, I even put a seat belt on Mrs. Easter Lilly for the car trip home.
What do the police, good food, eggs, the flu, and a cake all over the back seat of my car have to do with one another; MY FAKE EASTER!!
Alrighty let me tell you all my disastrous weekend. Have you ever heard the adage "stop while you are ahead," well I did not listen to it.
Hannah got the flu the prior Sunday and was starting to get better, I thought I was going to be in the clear for the weekend but Audrey woke up Thursday night with a fever. I woke up Friday morning and could feel that I was starting to get sick. So unhappy...but I am not going to let this stop me. I started preparing the food for Sunday and make the cupcakes for the baby shower on Saturday. Everything is going well, considering that Audrey is dying on the couch and Hannah has no one to play with so to say the least cooking was not my main focus. I make the batter for the cupcakes and get them in the oven, the timer goes off and they looked like this;
Well you could only imagine my surprise and I could not figure out what had happened, so the first thought that came to me was to call Andrea, she will know what to do. She was very helpful and we both thought maybe I had put to much batter into the tins, and to try again. WHAM it happened again with the second batch, so by this time unkind words are coming out of my mouth it is 10:00 at night and I need to have these cupcakes for the morning, ready to go. Well when I get stressed I start cleaning, I was cleaning my counter and was about to throw away my egg carton when I realized the eggs that were suppose to go into the cupcakes were still in the carton. Well Duh!!! This recipe called for 8 beaten egg whites...how does one exactly skip over that step. I called Andrea back and told her that I had forgotten the eggs, she got a good laugh:) In my defense, I was making scalloped potatoes, blueberry salad and a chocolate cake all at the same time; while taking care of my sick daughter who did not go to bed on time because she was miserable. I should of taken the fallen cupcakes as a sign of things to come and canceled the weekend while I was ahead.
Those are edible flowers
My friend Janis (who is having the baby) asked me to make my chocolate cake for her baby shower, this is what Wes and I came up with.
Wes's brother and sister's family get to the house at 11:00 the next morning and everything is going pretty smooth. We leave the 6 kids with Wes and Harlan (Wes's brother) and head off to the baby shower. I have the cake in a cake holder and everything is going beautiful until I put the cake in the car and the cake FALLS out of the holder onto the cupcake holder...THANK GOODNESS!! This does not mean that there was not damage to the cake or that chocolate did not get all over the backseat of the car. Steam was coming out of my ears, but I stayed calm and collective. My sister in laws just stood there like deer in headlights and gave me words of encouragement but that did not make the situation any better, and to top it all off I had just paid to have the interior of the car cleaned. I should of know better and just kept the car dirty. So I gingerly picked up the cake and put it back in the holder and ran into the house to get supplies so I could do surgery when we got to the baby shower. No one even knew what had happened.
My nephew Ben is 5, he is the oldest child of Harlan & Lauren, I have talked about him before. If Ben is around family functions get ruined and swimming with sharks seems more appealing. Ben is the man of the house...his parents do what he wants. He has no rules, boundaries or manners. He talks like he is two and acts like it, actually I know two year olds who act more mature.
All the kids had kept Wes and Harlan quite busy while we were gone for 5 hours, the kids were quite hyper. Harlan and Lauren's way of taking care of Ben is to give him a Nintendo DSL and let him be. Ben had already thrown several small temper tantrums and they are not normal tantrums either, think of extreme and quadruple that. Bedtime was at 8:00, Ben and Emma are sleeping in the girls room and it is time to take away the Nintendo DSL. There are a few things that you need to know for you to clearly understand this situation.
-We live in a Duplex
-Children live next door, it is their bedtime too. Steven and Alex.
-We are good friends with our neighbors
-Audrey has a fever.
So Lauren asks Ben for the Nintendo DSL and tells him that it is bedtime, he started screaming so loud and stomping his feet as hard as he could. Picking up the girls toys and throwing them against the wall where the duplex is joined and is Steven's bedroom. "I WANT MY GAME" over and over and over again, and this situation is completely out of control. I go next door to apologize to our neighbors and they told me that they had called the police, not on us but on Harlan & Lauren. Literally it felt and sounded like an earthquake was hitting their house, I could not blame them at all...I was soooo embarrassed. I kept apologizing over and over and told them that I was going to try to do something. When I came back into the house, Harlan and Lauren had started fighting because Harlan thought Lauren was disciplining Ben too much (which meant she was doing nothing), Wes finally had enough and told them to sit down and that we were going to take care of the situation.
You might be asking why it took us 15 minutes to take over but Wes's family is dysfunctional in every way and it can be very detrimental to family relationships to butt in. Remember we were disowned by Wes's sister for 7 yrs (we were dead to her) for speaking are minds...so we walk on eggshells.
I went upstairs and had Ben calmed down and asleep in 5 minutes. He just needed some discipline. NO DUH!!! I called Danielle (our neighbor) and told her I had Ben asleep and they called the cops and told them we had the situation under control. All Lauren could say was my poor baby and rock back and forth and say she was not strong enough to deal with the problem. The hardest thing Lauren has been through is that she did not get to go to Europe when she graduated high school...you can see why I would have no sympathy. Lauren has NEVER been anywhere with her kids by herself except at home, either her Mom or Harlan have been with her. That includes the grocery store, post office, ANYWHERE!!! No wonder there are so many problems. Lauren has lived in the same small town all of her life (except when she went to college) and she only lives 5 minutes from her Mom. Lauren has not left the nest and she is 34, this is translating into how she parents.
We sat down for 3.5 hours and talked to them about their parenting and how they are doing Ben an injustice by giving him what ever he wants when ever he wants. We told them that they needed to stop making excuses for Ben's behavior such as; he is a boy, their most popular excuse and then they blame each other. They think our girls are so well behaved because they are girls, we told them they are so well behaved because they have rules, boundaries and manners. We talked about them taking away his Nintendo DSL as punishment and many other things THREE AND A HALF HOURS... They agreed that they were going to take away the Nintendo. We got to bed at 1:30.
It is 6:00 a.m.
All of a sudden I hear screaming the stomping again, Ben was yelling for his game. He woke up the whole house and that includes our neighbors. We all went downstairs and Ben is whining for his game and Wes had had enough and started yelling at Ben (parentingly) and told him to knock it off, Ben started crying and Lauren just started rocking him and telling him it was alright and THEY GAVE HIM BACK HIS GAME!!! This disgusted us. I should of kicked them out of the house, it would of saved the rest of the day.
I gave up...did not talk to Harlan or Lauren and just started getting everything ready for Fake Easter.
I don't know if anyone had a good time, Ben fought will the the other cousins and threw more tantrums.
I do know that people loved the food and I did get to hold my baby nephew a lot!! I loved that. While everyone was eating I held the baby and watched everyone eat, that made me happy. Wes and I did learn a very important lesson this weekend, we have to support the girls but we also have to teach them how to depend on themselves and teach them to solve problems on they're own. I refuse to have my daughters turn to mush because they are so dependant on others. We also decided that Harlan's family will not be invited back to our house until they can take control of Ben. We have done dozens of things with them since we moved to New York but this was the straw that broke the camels back. At least it was only Fake Easter that was ruined and we have Real Easter to look forward too.
We went to Watertown (1 hour north of Syracuse) this weekend for my niece Delaney's 10th birthday. Wes and I were quite worried about taking the girls skating again, the first time around was not fun. Second time was the charm, Hannah took to the ice like a fish to water in this case frozen water she skated for 2.5 hours straight!! Audrey, the stubborn child put up a great deal of resistance, Wes made her a deal that if she skated he would too. That did the trick, Audrey got on the ice and saw that other people were falling and that she did have to be perfect she relaxed and had a great time. My girl really thinks hard before giving something new a try, but I was very proud to see her picking up speed and zipping around with a great big smile on her face. She was sad when it was time to go. The girls had these walkers to balance and skate with, I wish we would of had something like that when I was little, I think my butt would of been a lot less sore. I think Wes actually enjoyed learning how to skate and he did not fall. It was very nice having my family skating with me and doing an activity that I love so much!!
Delaney
Wes's older sister Shirley
Hannah having a grand time
Hannah pushed herself around for two and half hours
We painted the kitchen June Day, doesn't that name sound happy:)
Before
After
The kitchen is so bright and vibrant now!!
We only have the bathroom left to paint and then we are done with the downstairs.
Wes wrote this blog on his myspace page and I thought it was important enough to put on my blog;
"Try to explain to my five year old daughter, who was born in the United States to American parents, why we can not buy medicine to get her over a bout of the flu. We have insurance, but it does not cover it. We have to pay one hundred dollars. That kind of money isn't just laying around.
Nonetheless, when she gets over it, her immunities will likely be stronger than the rich brats who get these antibiotics at the drop of a hat.
So tell me why everyone should not pitch in to a public pool of money on a regular basis to take care of our populations' health. I will tell you why, because Americans are greedy, selfish, cannot be damned to help their brothers or sisters. And these symptoms progressively get worse in each American as they get richer and richer.
The rich suck, and those who have no families suck even more, because they don't give a crap about the rest of us."
I feel my husband's frustration he works his butt off to take care of us and still he feels like he is failing. It was a horrible feeling taking our sick baby to the Doctor and feeling helpless anyway, and then you can't get her the medicine she needs because you paid the bills, and did not budget in a $100 for flu medicine. We felt like bad parents.
Just because a family has insurance does not mean that they are fully covered, why does everyone assume that insurance means 100% coverage. Sure maybe if the worse illness you get over the course of the year is a cold or if you only have your yearly physical you will never see "member owes" but if you have anything really medically wrong...watch out!!
Our insurance comes out of an HRA account and I (of course the cancer) have already used it up and it is only March!! The rest of the family is suffering as a result, not to mention we will have to pay out of pocket until January 1, 2009, but that is not the kicker at least when we did not have insurance we were not paying United Health Care $160.00 a month for us to pay everything. Really what's the point, sure we get the discount, so instead of Hannah's Tamaflu costing us $130.00 without insurance we are charged $92.50, why is the cost of medicine cheaper for the insurance companies and not for the citizens of this country. I will tell you why because they CAN!!! I bet if I went up to Canada I could get the same medicine for $10.00 and that is because the people told the pharmaceutical companies they CAN'T!!!
I wonder how everyone would feel/react if they bought house insurance and you were told that you were not covered when your house burned down or was damaged in a natural disaster because you did give them "prior notice," or that they were only going to cover one room and you were responsible for the rest of the house. Why can't medical insurance be viewed the same way. No one would stand for it.
We are the only country in the western world not to have universal health care and people don't see anything wrong with that, they actually think there is something undemocratic about giving medical rights to the entire society. People like Wes and myself should not have to wait until those people get sick and then all of a sudden think its a good idea because it has now happened to them. I should not have to move to another country to get these rights, my daughter's should be able to get their care at home in America.
Audrey has started reading to the Gerbils at precisely 5:00 p.m. every night before dinner. She told me that they have a right to hear good stories and that it helps them to relax. So far Mocha and Indiana have gotten a great big dose of Junie B. Jones but I think Mocha has asked Audrey for something with a bit more drama; just as long as its not the Great Escape, they don't need any help plotting against me. Audrey is a library worker in her free period at school I think it is absolutely adorable that Audrey wants to share her love of reading with people and animals.
We took the girls bowling on Saturday and I think we have found a family activity where all of us can participate without putting one of us in peril. It was a lot of fun and very cute to see the girls chucking/rolling the bowling ball and getting excited when they would knock pins down. Wes kicked my butt, I have already called for a rematch!!
Look at my little bunny!!
