It suprised me too...

I was watching AMC last night while wrapping Christmas presents... Road House came on- if you don't know this one (and I didn't!) it's Patrick Swayze, circa 1989. Since I'm female, therefore I'm a Swayze fan (I mean how can any woman NOT be a Swayze fan? The man is so incredibly graceful and looks like he's dancing even in sex scenes!) I watched.

I do not have many celebrity crushes. There are a few:
-Brad Pitt in "A River Runs Through It"
-Robert Redford in "The Sting"
-Val Kilmer in "Heat"
(Can you tell that I've got a thing for the guys that are just a little rough around the edges and like to get into trouble....) Well, you can add another one to that short list- Sam Elliot (he's Virgil in Tombstone) in Road House. The flowing salt and pepper hair, the scruff (no cowboy mustache in this movie!) that deep raspy voice, the tough guy attitude.... *swoon*

Thanks, Juno

Thanks to Netflix convincing my husband that they are a good idea, we have a ton of movies just waiting for us.... And since we've gone to the movies, like, four times in the past two years, we have a lot of catching up to do.

Juno was tonight's selection, and it was a great movie! Smart, quirky, good music, not too heavy, it respected motherhood. HOWEVER, I don't know if like what it did to my husband. He got caught up in the "decorating the nursery" and the "baby's kicking!" talk. At the end he was "Aaaawwww, baby!" Meanwhile, I was thinking, "Ugh... Morning sickness! Third trimester! Labor! Newborn nursing schedule!" Yeah. I'm definitely not ready for another one yet.

Assignment: A Rainbow on the Farm

I'm trying... TRYING to learn how to use my camera better. As a matter of fact, that's one of my goals for this coming winter. Read and learn how it actually works. Maybe take a class. Get the right equipment to help me.

We were at my parent's house this past week, it was a gorgeous day, and the kids were napping, so I decided to take my camera for a walk. I gave myself an assignment, aimed at improving my artistic view. Find a rainbow of pictures: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple. My dad was shelling corn with his combine, so I tried to draw from that as much as possible.

Red:
Crab apples. The only thing crab apples are good for is apple sauce... or throwing at one another.

Red peppers. We have canned a ton of pepper relish this past month. My husband is very much enjoying this part of farm life.


Orange:
Corn cobs. Seldom do you see this part of the corn.

A bumble bee on a mum.


Yellow:
Corn, still on the stalk.

Shelled corn on the dump truck, with the combine in the background.


Green:
The John Deere Combine. (That was an easy one to choose to photograph.)



Innards of the John Deere Combine.

A green tomato. A hard frost was predicted for that night, so who knows if this guy survived to the next day.


Blue:
The Ford tractor that helped get the job done.


The sky.



Purple.
Violets.


Seed pods.

And finally, Black.
The craft that my mom made with Miss B.

It went okay. There are a few of these that I really like. Some are ho-hum. But that's what it's about- seeing what you did and thinking of how to improve it next time.

Artistic Expression

Miss B..... She's been wanting and wanting to take pictures. And there's no way in HELL I'm going to let her touch my good camera.

*Ahem* I mean.... Being the enriching mother that I am, I want her to encourage any interests in self-expression. Soooo, I dug out the point and click camera, put some new batteries in it, and let her go to town.

I haven't actually viewed any of the photos that she's taken, but I think her subject matter and composition are going to be..... um.... shall we say, very interesting? :)






Pictures in the bathroom, while sitting on multiple toilets. She is SUCH her father's child.

Spoiled Rotten?

The Hubs... I don't know what I'm going to do with him. He is extravagant, too extravagant, with his gift giving...

Our ninth anniversary was last week. On Saturday night we went out to dinner, just the two of us. Bella Vista on Mount Washington, reservations were for 7pm, window table. We got to see the city while it was still light out, the fireworks after the Pitt game ended, and then the sun went down and the majority of our meal was spend looking out over the city at night. A gorgeous way to spend time together and start making Pittsburgh our own, our home.

After dinner, he gave me my gift. I knew the price range, but I didn't know the future cost of my gift. He gave me Rosetta Stones' learning Italian, lessons one through five. He's giving me a year to learn Italian so that next year, for our tenth anniversary, we can spend two weeks wandering around Italy. No tour guide, no plan, just the two of us.


The Pros:
It would be a wonderful trip!!! I love spending time with just him! It would be a fantastic adventure! I mean, come one, who wouldn't love to wander around Italy in the crisp fall weather with their spouse?!?!

I'm not planning on being pregnant or having a newborn at this time next year! The kids will be three and almost two. No one will be in school, (B isn't going to preschool until she is four) so they can go stay with someone, no problem!


The Cons:
This trip is going to cost a lot of cold hard ca$h. A lot. I know we will be able to afford the trip- it's not going to put us into debt, or anything. But, we are currently in the process of saving up for the down payment on The Dream House. The big one- five bedrooms, a master bath, walk in closets, a huge kitchen, first floor laundry, swing set out back, big yard.... You know, THAT house. Currently (while we save up) we are in a three bedroom, all one floor so it seems smaller than it really is, loud at all hours upstairs neighbors, no yard, condo. I do NOT like living in this condo and want to get out of here ASAP! I'm afraid that this trip would mean spending $8,000 (I'm guessing, here) that would've gone toward a house's down payment, and will cause us to stay here in the condo for an extra year.

The kids. Where do they go? At this time next year, none of our parents could watch them. It's his mom's busy time of the year at school so she couldn't take two weeks off of work. His dad is still in a contract job, so taking two full weeks off would be impossible. My mom is a teacher- I don't think she even has two full weeks of vacation days that she could even use. It's harvest season for my dad, who is retired and almost any other time of year it would be no problem. But at planting time and harvest time, he's gotta get stuff done when the weather allows it.

This is The Hubs' dream trip. He's the wine lover, he's the one that wants to go to Europe. I know, I know, it's his anniversary too! But don't mask this gift as giving me something that I want. MY dream trip is going someplace hot- as in, all I have to pack is a suitcase full of bathing suits, sundresses, and sandals. He knows this. Every time we've gone on a ski vacation, I mention something about, "When am I going to get my cruise?"



Then today, I find out from my brother that The Hubs has been planning this for a long time. Great. How do I not offend him if I suggest we wait on this? Because I'm not saying we don't do this trip at all!!!!! I'm just saying we wait a few more years! In five years we'll have The Dream House. In five years, my mom will be retired and can watch kids. In the next five years I (hopefully) will have gotten my cruise.

Maybe I'm just spoiled rotten, and I'm unappreciative.

Thoughts??? Comments, please!!!

Done

It's over... Thank goodness. These past two months have been ridiculous... Like, I've-lost-9lbs-because-of-all-the-stress-and-busyness-ridiculous.

I've survived:
3 weeks of my husband living in a different city. He started his job at the end of July and we couldn't move into the condo until the middle of August. I don't like going two nights in a row without him around. This was torturous for me. Luckily, my parents stepped up with helping with the kids. Majorly stepped up. Like, I may owe one of them a kidney.

Moving. Packing, sorting through stuff, donating, throwing out, putting stuff on craigslist. With two mobile little kids. (Yes, 7month old SD started crawling exactly one day after we made the decision for Brad to accept the Pittsburgh position.)

840,937,638 home-improvement projects. Okay, so maybe it was more like 37 projects. Big ones like painting the garage. Small ones like nailing that piece of trim into place that we had just never got around to doing. Ones that got added to the list per my dad's suggestion while he was at the house helping. (Grrr!) Ones that I didn't mind doing- like getting the carpets cleaned (two phone calls was all the effort it took from me.) Ones that I hated- cleaning the kitchen (that took waaaay longer than we expected!)

Five straight weeks of my parents. I love them. We get along great. And this move never would've happened without them. But they are typical grandparents and can't keep themselves from spoiling my kids. Throws the kids' schedules off, their diets off, their normalcy off.

My sister's wedding in Maryland. Yes, this is in the "survived" category. First, traveling four+ hours with a 25month old and a 9month old. Heaven help me. Second, all four of us sharing a hotel room. Normally Miss B can't have SD looking at her when she's trying to fall asleep. Somehow this worked. It think the fact that she skipped naps three out of the four days we were there and therefore just passed out at night might have had something to do with it. Third, have YOU ever been IN a wedding and had your two year old be in it also? It's stressful, nerve-wracking, and busy. Yet all the fretting was for not. Miss B was perfect. As the Hubs said, if I would've imagined the best case scenerio of how she would do, she did that and then exceeded it. She stayed still, was quiet, and adorable!

Everyone getting head colds. SD and the Hubs came down with it on the Monday after the wedding. (Damn you, whoever was germy and touching my baby!) Miss B and I got it on Wednesday. There's still some random sneezes and snotty noses, but we're pretty much all over it.

Unpacking. Well, this isn't officially done yet. There are still no pictures/decorations on the wall, and a stack of boxes in the living room containing such items. BUT, the condo is definitely livable and almost baby-proofed.

Therefore, I'm done. We're having fun, and I'm not worrying about the laundry piling up and the boxes all around us. We'll take care of those things this winter when the snow has us trapped inside. In the meantime, I'm refusing to let summer be over. These past few days we've gone swimming, playing at the park, gone to the zoo, grilled out every night, eaten corn on the cob and watermelon, and this weekend we're going to water ski on my parents' boat and we're picking up the motorcycle so the Hubs and I can do some riding. I'm making up for some lost time, and loving it!

Freaking Out

Oh no... Hit the panic button! We move in 10 days and very little is actually packed. We've been too busy with Projects To Get The House Ready to sell, that packing has gone by the wayside. Until today... and when I started the actual packing process this afternoon, I realized what a HUGE, GARGANTUAN, OHMYGODTHISISGOINGTOKILLME project this is.

And to top it all off....

Tonight The Hubs- you know, the guy who isn't here during the week, will be here for approximately 48hrs this weekend (and he's planning on doing 9,374 projects in that time,) and then won't be here again until approximately 13 hours before we are actually loading up the truck to move!- calls and says, "Hey, the company picnic is on Sunday afternoon. I had forgotten about it until they were handing out tickets today. We said 'Yes, we'll go!' a month ago on the day I accepted the job. I know we thought we'd already be moved down here. I know it would be a challenge, but I'd still like to go. I hate to back out of anything this soon into the new job."

Okay, I understand the not wanting to back out thing... But A Challenge?!?! You want to leave the house around 3pm (exactly in the middle of nap time) to go to a baseball game in Washington, PA, that starts at 6:30pm and ends at God Knows When:Thirty, and want me drive back to Cleveland BY MYSELF with the kids at midnight. AND this will be the first time our (probably) GRUMPY children (you know, because we're leaving in the middle of nap time!) and your (definitely) grumpy wife meet all your brand-spank'n new co-workers, boss, owner of the company....

And that's not even counting that we would have to miss our last Bible Study class. *sob* And that we just told his parents, "Yes! Come out this weekend and help us because we have a butt-load of things that need to get done!" *ugh* And the fact that WE'RE MOVING IN TEN DAYS!



Laser beams came out of my eyes and burned a hole in his skull and melted his brain into a puddle of lumpy mush on the other end of the phone line. Or at least that's what I was trying to do.


In reality, I think there was a long silence (laser beams, people!) and then I said something along the lines of, "I don't know if that would be the best idea." To which he responded, "Well, let's sleep on it, and we'll talk tomorrow." I think I'll go with the "We really risk the kids being super grumpy, and I don't want them to be like that the first time we meet all your new coworkers" angle, rather than the "If we go, I will lose my ever-loving mind" angle. What'cha think???