Adrienne's photo pick

So I wanted to pick a random photo like I like to do, and I asked for Adrienne's help in picking one at random. She kind of took over the mouse and scrolled for one that included her :-) so it's not so random, but still fun to look back at pictures from the last 7 years. This is Adrienne in Hawaii in 2004:

A MUST GET for Preschoolers!!

Parents of Preschoolers: Get this DVD! It's really really good! After only a few times watching it Adrienne started to teach herself how to read and write.

http://www.amazon.com/Leap-Frog-Letter-Factory/dp/B0000INU6S/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7832264-8672707?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1175226985&sr=8-1

She liked it so much and saw the ad somewhere for "The Math Circus" and wanted it also. I was so impressed by "The Letter Factory" I had no problem with getting it, and even sprung for this 5-pack of DVDs:

http://www.amazon.com/Leapfrog-Learning-Talking-Factory-Storybook/dp/B000EHQU1W/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/104-7832264-8672707?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1175226985&sr=8-2

We've had the 5-pack a few days and Adrienne has watched and likes the new four ("The Letter Factory" is included in the 5-pack, so a dupliate for us). I know she learned a lot from "The Letter Factory" and I'm waiting to see if she'll learn just as much from these new ones before recommending it. We'll be giving the duplicate video to Adrienne's cousin Kieran for his 4th birthday that's coming up.

SICK of being SICK

So I'm 7 weeks along now. I've been feeling pretty poopy lately. The night before I took a test at only 3 weeks along I threw up, and I've been nauseous off-and-on ever since. But in the last week it's been more on than off - probably about 90% of the time, and today has been my first day of more than just nausea. This may be easier to handle if I could do anything other than sit on the couch or walk upright slowly. Anything beyond that and I start to gag and sometimes more. This morning I woke up and sneezed and that set me off! Sure hope this is a phase, I can't do anything! and the poor girls have cabin fever.

Pretty Much The Best Dancing Ever

Mike's working tonight and I'm re-watching Napolean Dynamite. I love that movie - not only for the reasons everyone else does, but because it reminds me of when I lived in Utah. The part of Idaho that's in that movie looks like the part of Utah that I lived in until I was ten, at which point we moved to WA. What makes it even more reminiscent of that time in my life is the 80's element to the movie which is when I lived there!

As everyone knows, it's so quotable...rewatching it tonight the one that made me laugh the most was when Napolean says to Uncle Rico that his video of him is "pretty much the worst video ever made" and Kip says "Napolean, like anyone can even know that."

But my favorite line isn't one of the funny ones..."Just follow your heart. That's what I do."

Groundbreaking!

Today was the official groundbreaking day and it was bittersweet...awesome to see the dirt moving to make room for our house, but not so awesome to have our power cut for the majority of the day. They cut through the line at about 3:30, and our power was back by 7:30. Not so bad, and glad it wasn't off through the night, it's just so typical of this whole project. There was a pretty decent sized pile of dirt made that the kids had a blast running up and down on. I just can't wait till they're done, and even more until the foundation is in! Then I'll really feel like this is going to happen and it's not a dream. I'll send more pictures in a couple days.

Oh, and I've been having symptoms from before I even knew I was pregnant, but they are intensifying big time the last couple days. I just hope I'm not throwing up every five minutes while I'm on paper route tomorrow morning.

Not sure where to put this observation, so I'll just throw it in here randomly at the end...today was kind of weird to me - the weather was the nicest it's been - our house warmed up to warmer than what the thermostat was set for and it was the first day I'd considered turning on the A/C, and at the same time when I'd go outside it smelled like Christmas because of all the freshly pulled out of the ground evergreen trees. It was bizarre.

The Big Day!

Today was the big day...the excavators got to work! We had a short delay this week because the setback wasn't looking like it was going to be enough and we needed to get the OK from the geotech. He wasn't able to get here until this afternoon, but once he did and we explained the situation he gave us the go ahead. I guess today isn't the official groundbreaking because they haven't dug into the dirt yet, but the excavators cleared out a lot of the trees and brush in the yard so that they can start tomorrow.

A picture of my rugrats before they got started:


Before:

During: ('After' to come once there's a hole!)

TIIMMMBURRRR!! (1/4)

(2/4)

(3/4)

(4/4)

Pulling out the roots

Screaming Banshee

I just love this e-card. Pretend it's your birthday and I'm sending it to you.

http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ecard|10001|10051|667356|-102001;-102270;66559||P1R4S|ecards

Random Photo Thang

Another random photo. Adrienne helped me pick it. This is Adrienne...one from a bunch we had done for Christmas of 2004, taken by their lovely Aunt Rachel.



So, I picked a few non-random ones to go with it...One of Colette


And one of them both

AWESOME!!

Potty training just got easier for me! Adrienne now has the job of dumping out the pee and rinsing the container and wiping the toilet seat if needed, in exchange for a few M&M's. I was absolutely POOPED after being up for route at 5:00-11:00 a.m. this morning, then doing a bunch of errands for my mom until 3:00, then I helped Mike outside until 5:00 - I disassembled one of those big tents from Costco. My muscles were achy and I was tired. Colette had been sleeping since we got home and was amazingly still sound asleep when I was done outside. So I showered, had a bite to eat, then cozied on into the couch. I was prepared to put on a show if Colette were to wake up, but I then I thought about how she'd probably pee right away and I'd have to get up from my coziness to dump it out. That's when I thought of Adrienne taking over the job. It did't play out that way though...Colette slept until 6:30! But just now Adrienne told me that Colette had peed in the potty chair and I remembered my scheme to get her to do it. But she was happy to do it for the candy, so yippy for me!

ZIPPETY-DO-DA!

We've got permits finally! Excavating will begin next week...we're finally on our way!

AWWWW

For those of you that actually make the effort to check out my blog (I'm still not sure if I have more than one regular reader), I thought I'd make today a little more interesting than just that short post I just added. So, I did the random picture thing. A little harder to do on my own, but just started clicking on folders without looking at them for too long until I got down to a picture. I like this one. This is Colette's first morning at home. Her first morning ever was spent at the hospital since she was born at 1:50 a.m. on October 9th...so in this picture she is only a little older than 24 hours. This picture really makes me look forward to this next baby! (Adrienne really took to being a big sis! All that fretting about how she would react, and it was a seamless transition! Hope Colette is the same way with this next one!)

Changes

I got home from route about 40 minutes ago and am not tired and everyone's sleeping, so thought I'd write a little bit. Actually I just made some changes to my last blog...see the paragraph about choking and the descriptions for the pictures (that way you don't have to read through the whole long thing if you already have).

I'm going in for my first prenatal visit tomorrow, so I'll know soon if there's some basis for my suspicion about what is going on...if there isn't, then you'll never know what it was :-)

Okay, I'd better TRY to go to bed now! No hallucinations tonight, although I did pass 4 cops! (and I had to hotwire the car 3 times! stupid car)

The past couple weeks

I didn't realize it had been so long since I'd written until my one reader brought it to my attention :-)

So, the last few weeks have been eventful and busy. First of all, the most exciting news has been finding out that I'm pregnant (!) and due early November. I am feeling very pregnant already. I have some theories about why this pregnancy is so different than the first two, but I'm not going to share them until I have more support for my theories so I don't sound like a kook if I'm dead-wrong.

Even though I haven't written I was keeping some little notes to myself about what I should write about when I got back to it...so now it seems funny to write about these things now that they're old news.

Some of these are route related - I got pulled over recently while on route. I see at least 2-3 cops per route night and sometimes as many as 10 or more. They really come out at night and I seem to have especially patrolled areas. So, I am always very good about driving the speed limit. But this night I was eager to get home and I was almost done. One of my routes is just down the road from where I live and I was actually driving on my road (Provost) where it is 45 MPH and I was going 60 when the cop clocked me. I pulled over right away and I never try to b.s. because I just feel so transparent, so I just told him about route and wanting to get home and feeling comfortable going faster on my road. He thanked me for pulling over so quickly and for my honesty and sent me on my way...whew! Saved me $150.

The other route story is about last week when for one reason or another I ended up going out at the least desirable time possible - from midnight to 4 a.m. (with no nap that day). By the last hour I was hallucinating. I have had many sleep deprived nights doing route and times when I've had to pull over and snooze a little to take the edge off, but only one other night years ago when I've hallucinated (saw a large black floaty mass darting across the road) and it freaked me out. This was like that only more of it and freakier. There were about 4 different types of hallucinations that I was having over and over for that last hour. I probably should have pulled over and napped, but I just really wanted to get home. I recognized the hallucinations for what they were and so they didn't freak me out too much, but they were more distracting than anything. One way that I kept hallucinating was when I'd see posts, mailboxes, stop signs, etc. - anything tall and straight sticking out of the ground - and it would morph into a person and then the person would start to come toward me. Another one was seeing inanimate objects like a bush, that would start to flicker and twitch wildly (with no wind in the air). There was also the black masses like before, only instead of darting across the road like last time, they were flying toward me. And the last type of hallucination was when I'd look at objects as I'd drive toward them, and where there's the normal speed that you perceive them coming toward you, instead it would speed up and they'd look like they were flying at me. I was telling Mike about these later and when he used to do route on 3-4 hours of sleep on a regular basis while he was in school he'd seen some hallucinations too. His were mostly the black mass hallucinations, but the weirdest one and even weirder than mine was seeing a large serpent type animal slithering along someone's yard and behind their house in an up and down U pattern - like the vikings would have described of the sea monsters they claimed to see.

So, change of subject. I had a pretty scary experience with Colette and it just makes me want to spread the word to parents and caretakers that you REALLY need to know how to do basic CPR and lifesaving skills for little ones. I've taken CPR and First aid classes MANY times over the years and I'm finally getting to where I feel like I could step up and help out if needed...one class one time doesn't cut it. One of my instructors at my most recent class last summer said it took him 7 classes to finally feel like he got it. Colette choked on some cheese and when I got to her she was red and teary, but thankfully still coughing. I pulled out the first piece thinking that was it and she would be okay then, but she was still squirming and turning blue and writhing around in a panic. So I pounded on her back and pulled out the second piece and then she was okay. I am just thankful that I had a clue about what to do, so that I could stay calm and help her and know she would be okay. Edited March 7th: I want to add that I had a scary experience like this with Adrienne when she was younger choking on a penny. I'd had several classes before then also, but still freaked out. I did get the penny out and she was fine, but the panic that I felt was not comforting at all, and I don't want other parents to have to experience that! And that was with some experience. I really think that people should go once a year to a class until they REALLY get it, then probably every 5 years or so as a refresher.

Another change of subject! Potty training. I guess it's been about 2 weeks now, and althought there's been A LOT of progress, she's not all done. She's been a little more difficult than Adrienne. The M&M's for bribery (or I like to think of it as a reward), really helped. But sometimes she just doesn't feel like it and so doesn't use the potty. I'd never liked pull-ups too much before because I didn't see how they were much different than diapers as far as awareness of an accident and so I didn't use them with Adrienne. With Colette I have been using them because of being a lot busier this time and being out of the house a lot. I just have to remember to have her go before we go and ask her when she gets back. Basically she's about 80% there. She pees and poops in the potty most of the time, but about 2 out of 10 diapers is an accident. So we'll stick with the pull-ups and m&m's until she's gone a few days of no accidents then switch her over to undies and wean her off the rewards. (FYI - She only gets 1 m&m for pee, and about 3 for poop, so that adds up to only about 15-20 m&m's a day, so her teeth shouldn't be totally destroyed when this is said and done).

Okay, so I've got ya'll almost all caught up! Yesterday and today were especally fun because my best friend Linae surprised me with a visit from Idaho! She came over yesterday and our kids played and we were able to talk for a couple hours. Then this morning we went to a park and let our kids play (it was a BEAUTIFUL, sunny and even WARM day!), and got to chat some more. Then we went to lunch, and came back her for a little while longer while we shared pictures (to come soon) - I pulled then ones I wanted of hers off her memory card, and uploaded the ones of mine she wanted onto her Snapfish account online. Isn't technology grand! While we were doing that Mike so kindly checked out her brakes that had been scraping since before her trip from Idaho (!)and they were shot...like her family would likely have died going over the passes if she didn't get them fixed before she goes home later this week. So our friend is hopefully going to be able to help her out with that before she goes, since Mike kind of got messed up a little over the weekend. I did forget to mention that...on Saturday Mike was working on cleaning up our yard in preparation for excavating (hopefully early next week!) and he was standing on the back of his truck on the bumper when he fell off and landed on his back. Because of where the truck was parked and the way it sloped off from there, it was actually quite a fall of about 8 feet or so. I had to help in in the house where he collapsed on the kitchen floor. He was pretty much okay, except for being very dizzy. All through the weekend he was back and forth between feeling fine and feeling weird...it seemed to be dependent on the levelness of the terrain. As of today he was still weird and didn't think climbing up and down ladders on a ship was a good idea...so he took off work and went to the chiropractor and doctor. The chiropractor seemed to help a lot and the doctor wasn't worried because he's been getting better and better, so he's cleared to go to work tomorrow.

Well back to my visit with Linae, here are the pictures! (Descriptions added March 7th)

Sitting on the wooden tractor at the park: Colette, Macy, Aleeya, and Adrienne


Macy, Adrienne, Colette, and Aleeya


Adrienne at 5 in the tube


Adrienne at 1 in the tube


Linae and I...Adrienne took this picture. We about peed our pants when we saw it! Neither one of us thought we were in the picture because she didn't seem to be aiming it at us.


Linae and Colette swinging (and Macy)


Colette - she wanted her hood up the whole time even though it wasn't raining.


Linae and I - from the perspective of Aleeya (once again, we weren't sure if our faces were in the shot or if it would be a picture of our chests.


Adrienne and Aleeya - two peas in a pod


Macy - this is such a great picture of her!


Adrienne and Aleeya