Holidays 2008

Ok, I'm not trying to be PC or anything by calling it "Holidays" vs "Christmas". I was thinking I had some Thanksgiving pics on my computer as well, but I guess I don't and now I'm too lazy to change the title.



Christmas went pretty good. The kids got a lot of toys and now, one month later, they actually still play with them.



Noah sleeps with his baby every night. We read a story, then wrap his baby in a blanket, say night night baby, then we arrange all his stuffies around him in the proper order and turn on his music. Then I leave the room and he waves at me. lol

Halloween 2008

We are set to move

Well things are moving as smoothly as possible in regards to the house. As far as we know, we are set to close on the house this Thursday and the big move will be Saturday. Mom is coming down Wednesday to help us in the move. She will wrangle kids on Saturday so that the other adults can focus on packing and getting the house contents moved across the metro. Patty and Steve will be lending a hand on Saturday morning with trailer in tow. Hopefully with a combination of mini-vans, pick up trucks and trailers we can get the house moved (at least the majority) on Saturday so that all we will have left to do is clean.

We have notified the girls' mom about the move and suprisingly there was no argument or nastiness from her. She may be thinking but she hasn't verbalized it, which is nice because we don't need the added stress. I am sure that she will have a blow out once we request for our parenting time back (some time was eliminated due to her moving 40 minutes away from us). Our attorney says that if she doesn't cooperate without attorneys, he thinks it will be a "slam dunk" if we have to take it to Court. These are words I have never heard our attorney say, so I am optimistic that soon we will be working towards a better parenting time schedule with the girls.



Noah is growing as usual. He had a growth spurt and jumped from the 50% range in height and weight to the 70% range. He is 26 pounds and 36 inches long. He definitely grew this summer. He is quite a talker and will carry on a conversation with you in his rambling baby talk. He loves to say Hi, and Bye and loves to holler MUM MUM to see if he can get a reaction from me. He likes to stand by my legs when I cook and try to see if he can beg a piece of cheese or whatever I happen to be chopping up. He has an infectious giggle and people will stop us to tell us how cute he is....lol

Abigail and Kendra turned 5 this month. They also started a new preschool. Next year they start kindergarten.

*SIGH*

So we are back and it has been a long month. I went up to my parents house to pick up Noah and spend a week up there visiting. It was nice and relaxing and went way too fast. We went to the Emo Fair and got the requisite pictures on the carosel and the other kiddie rides. At first Noah hated it, screaming bloody murder. We actually had to stop the ride to get him off. But after 3 or 4 rounds on the carosel he was laughing and waving like all the others and rode the rides until we had to go home. We had so much fun and we got lots of great pictures.

After getting home from Canada, the next week mom came to visit us :-)
She got a weeks vacation and came down to visit and go to the State Fair. It was nice having her here and we were sad to see her go. Luckily Noah still has his papa here and he didnt take it too hard when nana wasnt here to pick him up. He knows she will be back soon. Just a few weeks.



On the home front:
We finally found a house, put in a purchase agreement/contract, the bank accepted, now we are just waiting to get the FHA inspector to come out and let us know what needs to be fixed in order to close on the house. We are looking to move Sept 25. We are now readying our house to be rented to another family. We are painting, finishing the bathroom and just sprucing it up a little. I must say, it is looking pretty nice.


The girls have recently started a new pre-school program at an elementary school by their mom's house. Things work a little differently there. School hot lunches are optional, not provided as part of tuition. Surprise Surprise...their mom wants to do hot lunches. We dont. So we basically told her that. If she wants the lunches, she can pay for them. I would much rather send them school lunches from home. Which is what we did this morning. Now there are dramatics about them getting milk at lunch. She is all worried about how they will get it. Kendra didnt even drink her milk yesterday. Why pay for something they wont drink. We have plenty of juice boxes and it wont kill them to have one at lunch time....yeesh!

*sigh* Alright, back to work now.

My parents kidnapped my son!....well not really

As you know, Noah is up in Canada. He has been there a looooooooooonggg time!! It has been almost a month and I am sure by the time I see him he will be shaving and driving a car--well I exaggerate a little, but you know what I mean. They (dad and noah) should be back by now, but I decided to take some vacation and go to the Fall Fair back home and it didnt make sense to have dad waste the gas to come back and then go back to Canada again in 2 more weeks. So despite missing my little guy like crazy, I decided to let my parents keep him 2 more weeks until I could go pick him up.

In Noah's absence we have been doing a little bit around the house. MJ finally replaced the brown laminate counter top with a pretty nice used one. We replaced the sink and the faucets. This past week I have been priming and painting the bathroom a mossy green color. The last things we need to do is replace the toilet, lay down the new linoleum and put up a surround for the shower. I'm sure it will look really nice when its done.

House hunting: So far, we have found "the one", but the next day when we called to put an offer in...it was sold. We have found some close seconds and are looking at more tonight. I just wish that we could find the right house soon. I hate the in between stuff. I just want to get some renters in our property and us to find a house. Cross your fingers for us.

My birthday was last week. The big 25. I don't feel any older but I do have to say it was a pretty good birthday. MJ really made an effort this year despite not having a lot of money to do it. He bought me some 2 fluffy white shower towels, and 2 matching hand towels, and he had the girls make me a card, and then we had Jim over for a BBQ...and the best part was that I was a little disappointed that I didn' pick up a cake and then up walks MJ with my favorite--DQ Ice Cream Cake.

MJ's birthday is 5 days before me. He is so hard to do anything nice for. It's like he gets all embarrassed that we want to celebrate his birthday. I bought a card for him and had the girls sign it and then I bought him some "Rainbow colored socks--but for boys". I had asked the girls what they wanted to get daddy for his birthday earlier in the week and Abigail says she wanted the rainbow colored socks. So off I went to Target. I found some black dress socks with colored squares on them--rainbow colored socks for boys. LOL The girls were so excited to give it to him.

Ice Cream

Tonight was a good night. It was warm today but not too hot...but I wasnt particularly keen on heating up the house making supper. So we decided to take the kids out to McDonalds for supper and then we were going to go out for ice cream (me and MJ had coupons for birthday ice cream).

So off we went to Mickey D's, we ate, the kids played and then we hit the grocery store before going for ice cream.

Fast forward to ice cream. I had my usual and MJ picked one of his favorites, and of course the girls chose blue ice cream. As we were driving home from ice cream, Kendra said, "it smells like ice cream in here". Abigail puts in her two cents and said "No, it smells like Triina".

LOL. I think now I figured out why MJ loves me and keeps me around. I smell like ice cream :-)

Week of Bliss?

Last Thursday dad took Noah up north to Canada. I suppose this is where I am supposed to jump up and down and revel at the quietness of being home alone with just me and michael...but the house seems empty. I miss coming home to him running to the top of the stairs to wait for me to give him hugs and kisses. I love those after work cuddles.

Granted, I do appreciate the "freedom" but I miss my little guy like crazy. Hopefully Nana and Papa are taking lots of pictures and hopefully he doesnt grow up too much in the meantime.

We did have a nice weekend though. We relaxed most of Saturday and finished cleaning up the branch that crashed in our back yard. Sunday was a little more of the same. Michael let me sleep in and he went to church, then later he changed the oil in the vehicles and I started to work on cleaning the shattered glass out of the deck from when our picnic table shattered during the storm. Later that evening I watched a movie I had taped the night before and then we went for a walk. That sums up the weekend.