New layout

Yesterday was an absolutely horrible day. Everything went wrong. To top it off, Matthew's intramural soccer games are on Wednesday afterschool, conveniently when piano takes place. I *really* wanted his piano to be during school and now he misses out on soccer. Also, I'm missing a dinner because it's during the week. I'm sure there will be other times to meet with the new mommy friends I made. It's not really that big of a deal but I got so many little straws heaped yesterday that the back just broke.

We sat through a 90-minute "presentation" on windows. Why can't these companies just come in, measure and then give you your price? To be honest, the guy was a terrible salesperson so there was no hard sell really but it's just the process. Plus, like those next-day carpet places, they seem to jack the prices up just to give you a "discount" if you sign with them that same night. We're just collecting estimates.

The carpet is done .. yeah! Now we need to paint around the baseboards for the stairs, touch up the bazillion places they scuffed and readjust the closet doors which no longer work because the carpet is too high. I don't really recommend this company. I was not very happy with the workers.

So, following are before and after pictures of my basement, which still need some work and my layout following the scrapbooking class I'm taking on www.Jessicasprague.com. Leave me a comment if you like it!





A note on the basement pictures. Our basement is small so it's hard to get a good general picture. I chose the ones I did because it shows the pole in the middle. The HVAC used to be by this pole and we moved it along a wall that goes under the stairs. We also added a closet and bathroom. The bathroom remains partially unfinished in that the fixtures and flooring are not done, but the plumbing is installed and the first part of the electric. We'll finish it up at some point. At least now we can close our storage unit when we get it emptied out. Where to put everything is another problem. I'll probably be spending a lot of time on freecycle. I guess if I haven't used (or missed) something in almost a year's time I obviously don't need it LOL!

Happy Anniversary to Me!

Today is my 13th wedding anniversary. Boy we sure have come a long way! When we got married, we were living on the top floor in a penthouse suite in downtown Baltimore with a cool view of the Orioles stadium. I drove to Silver Spring to work full-time and dh worked for the company that owned the building in which we lived; hence the penthouse apartment with a 60% discount! I think he was working part time as well.

We had no kids and I was in college part time working towards my Associates in Science, Business Management. No kids, no responsibilities, nothing to do on the weekends but whatever we wanted. Stay up late, sleep in even later, eat whatever, whenever we wanted. Take off for a weekend trip, no problem!

Boy times have changed.

Three weeks after we married, we moved to a house in the burbs we later purchased. Bennies included a driveway to park right next to our house instead of a garage across the street and free washer and dryer!!!!!!!!!!!! It also came with more to clean and yard work -- blech! Life happened while we've lived here and we're now the proud owners of a minivan and parents to four kids. Whew! There was a time we didn't think we'd have any children so it's truly a blessing.

DH is fantastic and I couldn't have ordered a better father to my children. We've had our ups and downs and it's hard to stay connected a lot of the times but we're truly committed to each other and work hard to keep things together. No that it's all that hard but it just takes some extra efforts with all the other responsibilities and things going on.

This past Saturday my SIL babysat all FOUR kids while dh and I ate dinner at RUB in the city. The food was either very good or so-so depending on what you order. I recommend the brisket and dh recommends the Lemonade ;) Stay away from the banana "pudding" which isn't pudding at all. It's more like pureed bananas with cinnamon and vanilla wafers. Not too tasty. I think they were a little short-handed in the service department but over all not too shabby.

Tonight my stepmom offered to come down so we could spend time together on our actual anniversary. Not sure where we're going yet but I'm leaning towards The Cheesecake Factory because I want some chocolate cake :D Personally, I opted out of the overnight for the kids. Charlotte is our anniversary surprise from last year LOL! And while we love her to bits, we're not ready for another "gift" of that nature.

So here's a shout out to my wonderful hubby. Love you dear and look forward to many more years together :)

My First Comment

Woohoo! I love comments :) Thanks T!

Grandma Got Lost

My grandma has dementia. She's had it for several years but it's really been telling these last one to two years. She spent the last two weeks at my uncles new home and since she's been home, she's really discombobulated and her routine is all messed up. For someone who lives on routine and depends on it to function because of memory problems, this is a really bad thing.

Yesterday she drove herself to the hair dresser or her weekly appointment. Now, the doctor told her some time ago it was probably best not to drive. And basically she doesn't except to the hair dresser and grocery. The family down there felt that was okay. My thought was perhaps you all should figure out another way to get grandma to her destinations.

I'm always hearing about old people venturing off and getting lost, dying after being exposed to the elements too long in bad weather. So yesterday she got lost coming home from the hair dresser. This is a place she's driven to on a weekly basis for YEARS! It was so scary; she was lost for over an hour. They finally took her car away. Hurrah!

But I still worry. If she's gotten this bad, how do we know she won't go fetch the mail and forget where she is? Will she catch something on fire because she's forgotten a pot on the stove? This is really hard. She's getting to the point where she may need to have more care than what's being provided. I'm not down there to deal with it. My uncle used to live across the street but he's moved due to his job. That leaves the lady that stays with her and my mother. I guess it'll have to do. I'm wondering if my uncle will take her to live with him?

My uncle and my mother don't get along because they're both cut from the same hard-headed, stubbon as mules cloth. My uncle is just like my grandad was in that there's no other opinion but his own and if you try to have one you're just plain wrong. And to that effect, there's only one right way to do things and that's his LOL! That's off topic anyhow. I'm worried about my grandma. She's more of a mom to me than my own mom and helped raise me for many years. I usually don't think about it much since she's not close by but it's going to be hard to say good-bye to her and it's happening bit by bit.

DH was in the doghouse!

My dh is a pretty good sort of fellow. He's a wonderful provider and an excellent father. He helps around the house with everything, I'd say, except cleaning the bathroom. Dishes, laundry, changing beds, vacuuming, mopping, he does it all. With the kids, bedtime, baths, errands, meals, drop of at school, again he does it all. Can't really complain all that much.

Except for last night.

He accused me of spending too much time on the computer scrapbooking, i.e. goofing off. See, after dh comes home from work, it's usually time to get the kids ready for bed, which he does. So I do some computer work or other stuff. This week the kids have taken an extra long time getting settled down he's coming down later than usual. On top of that, I did spend extra time at night, i.e. after 9p working on the scrapbooking lessons and doing some layouts using the techniques I learned in the on-line class I'm taking.

When he comes down from the kids bedtime, I'm scrapbooking. It's like 9:30 or after. It was irritating him that he was up there dealing with the kids instead of doing something more productive while I sat downstairs and played. There's a couple flaws in his theory, though. First, I made sure I had all the other chores done that needed to be done that day before I began scrapping. Second, I wasn't spending as much time doing that as he suspected because I did other stuff first. Third, he still would have been upstairs with the kids even if I had been doing something more productive.

So we hashed it out in a nice way last night. It was a productive chat. But his reaction doesn't help my guilt over doing things for myself these days. I feel guilty because he works hard all day and then comes home to deal with the kids before he even eats dinner. Then he stays up really late doing his things. But he says he enjoys that time with the kids. I'm not sure how I'd feel if the situation were reversed. I think I'd be the stereo-typical male -- wanting to come home, put my feet up and relax while the wifey gets dinner on the table LOL!

I do spend more time on the computer than I should. I'll admit that. It's a hard addiction to break. Almost as bad as my addition to coca-cola! But at least when I'm scrapbooking I feel like I'm doing something for the family and not just myself. DH thinks it's unnecessary in any event. His opinion is that I should just throw them in albums and be done with it. Our ideas about time efficiency and which tasks take precedence doesn't mesh for the most part. And that's okay.

I was trying to explain to him that as a mom who stays home I have no identity outside of the home. It's just Denise Mom or Denise Wife. I have nothing of value to talk about except how many times Mia uses the potty or what errands we ran or what we ate for lunch, etc. It's very depressing some days. I need an outlet. And if I'm not able to get out of the house to join a club, use a gym or have a job, then what's wrong with joining an online community, making cyber friends or working on scrapbooks? He just doesn't get it and never will. Some people don't and that's okay. I get it and I enjoy it, especially since I'm so shy in real life, and that's okay too. Some things we just have to agree to disagree.

Again, we had a productive chat. I always feel emotionally closer to him when we have these chats without the fight, of course. We should really have them more often. I mentioned that perhaps we should have "meetings" from time to time to assess what type of goals we have as a couple and a family and individually and how to best meet these goals. We can discuss our progress and perhaps if we are meeting goals and such on time then it won't matter if I spend an hour or two scrapbooking in the evening. Relationships are so complex.

Back to School Night + this and that

I LOVE back to school night. It's so much fun to talk to the teachers again, see the classrooms and visit the rest of the school. I'm so used to things staying the same and knowing all the teachers. This year there are a lot of new teachers and new things happening. I still find it strange that I have first and third graders!! We also picked up the yearbooks for the previous year and I can't wait to dig into those.

Madison had more troubles at school, if I haven't already blogged about those. Talking again and cutting hair. Oy! In Matthew's class, there's a small spot on the board for discipline. It appears they get their name written for misbehaviors and then tally marks for repeated offenses. Then they run laps based on the number of tallies, i.e. 5 laps for one mark and 10 laps for two marks. After that they go to the principal's office. My whole point in mentioning this is that when I first glanced at it I thought it said "slaps!" What a hoot. I took a double take because the last I heard, there was no corporal punishment. And even if there was, my son would not be part of that.

A potty training funny. Mia likes to run around al fresca and I let her because she's more apt to use the potty. With two in diapers, 1. I hate paying for that many diapers. My free diaper source has dried up. 2. I hate changing that many diapers. To be fair, Mia needs very few diaper changes but still. I did discover that the regular pull ups (Pamper's brand) have the same number of diapers as the comparable size diaper packs Mega size for the same price. However, I can get $3 coupons on the pull ups vs. the $1 coupons for regular diapers. Plus they have Dora on them, Mia's fav! To me they're all just diapers.

With Mia, if she's got nothing then she'll use the potty or ask for a diaper to go. At this point I forward her to said potty. We tried panties the other day and she just peed in those as well. The point of this long story is that Mia asked for a diaper so she could poop. I thought she just had to pee so I said go use the potty and she's like hurry mommy poopy coming. Instead of arguing I picked her up to carry her to the potty and she did indeed have a poopy coming. What a lovely site that was. Thankfully, we made it to the potty in time. That reminds me I should clean the potty.

I went to the mall and found some pants that sort of fit. There was a choice between two sizes which shall remain nameless. The smaller size was a tad tight but it's my goal to lose the last of the baby weight by the end of the year. The larger size was just a bit too roomy for me. I wish they had the middle size. I think I have 15 pounds to go. In the mirror it doesn't seem so bad but it photos I look fatty fat fat.

I got an email from Home Depot today. They don't know we have a new Lowes I intend to use instead. Anyhow, the title was free shipping on tools and computers. Yes you read that right, computers! I opened it and indeed Home Depot is selling computers. I know that computers do have hardware but I didn't realize they came under the confines of a hardware store these days. So funny.

My addition to coca cola is absolute. I must break it. That's my new challenge. Matthew and I continue to have our bedtime chats. He really enjoys his time with me and it's rather relaxing. Charlotte was holding a toy and chewing on it today. She was also trying to rollover. Growing so big so quickly. Sigh.

I'm off to try another layout before it gets too late. I stayed up til 11:30 last night oy! Here's what I made today outside the class. Night. I had other stuff to blog about but it's getting late and this is getting long.

Here's My Mid-Week Challenge

Here's my digi class midweek challenge. I wish all l/o were this easy as pasting a picture and doing a couple techniques. I'd be caught up in no time ;)


On other fronts; I went to Eldersburg for LLL this morning. I was the only attendee so I got to catch up with my friends/leaders a bit. No real "burning" questions! Called and make a carpet appt. for next Wed. When I talked to the woman last week, she said she'd try to squeeze me in that week but if she couldn't then she'd have me in this week. So I called Monday and left a message. No return call. Today I called again and she scheduled me for next week. What's the deal? I am not sure I recommend them based on timing. It's been almost a month since we ordered the carpet and were told it would be in in a couple days and installed shortly thereafter. Everything else with this project has taken for-e-ver so I don't know why I thought this would be any different. Of course, that means I get another week to hold on to my $ LOL!

It's been really cool here, only 64 today. I think I'll take my last remaining GC and find some pants that fit tomorrow. Hopefully I won't lose my diaper bag this time! I was hoping I'd have lost more weight by now but I seem to have hit a pleatuea. Doesn't help any that I keep eating fast food, chocolate and drinking coca-cola. Man that stuff is addicting.

I just caught my two-year old coloring on the stiars with marker. Her face is covered also. Oh boy! On a good front, she's used the potty several times today. I guess I should find some dinner here. I hate cooking. I don't mind preparing it but I hate thinking of stuff to fix. Tonight is Adventure Club sign up and tomorrow is back to school night. Fun fun!