Birthday

I celebrated my birthday on Friday! It was great! Jeremy & Anora were both surgary sweet. After Jeremy got home from work I got to open my presents. Anora got me a clock that looks like an electric coffee pot, and some candles (yummy). And then Jeremy got me a under counter radio, it's nice and even has a remote control. My secret sister gave me 2 really inspiring books and a pretty towel and basket.

You know I never cared what things looked like or smelled like. Suddenly I'm becoming girly. I like soft things, candles, lotions, smells. Huh, this is what it's like to be a woman?

then for dinner we went to Buffalo wild wings. I loved it, big beer and big screen hockey. We couldn't hear it, but at least I got to see some. I liked the food too.

Then Saturday we used the nice weather to winterized outside. We put away a lot of our funiture, and drainted and winterized the camper. We only used it twice. How disapointing!
Sunday I was all grumpy, and the house was a mess so we stayed home and cleaned and read. Just had a quiet day.

Jeremy was busy with our computer though. Recently we copied and saved anything we might need and then deleted and reinstalled Windows. We've has some problems and successes since then. Sunday he did a lot of re installing and getting our programs back up and going. Then we couldn't use our old firefox browser. It just kept crashing. Jeremy downloaded and installed a new browser, and I think I'm in love. Opera is it's name. And it is user friendly, and super quick. Now I just need to figure out how to get a spell checker! Sorry for any excess of mis-spells.

God Bless you, don't blow away!

Returns

What a circle this week has been. Full of returns.
The most pressing to me is Coffee. I've had my first cup of coffee today since last Saturday! It feels so good. I was trying to get off it, and I'll still (try to)stay off it, but it's official. I'm addicted! Headache, muscle tense, agitated!

On Thursday, I made a return to our Library. The week before school started I returned all we had, knowing it would take us a while to get into a routine. I think we'll have time to visit the Library on Thursdays now. So I went to the Library on Thursday to get an arm load of books, CD's, and DVD's. I walked though, so I had to put back, or return, 1/2 of my armload. But it was nice being there again.

Friday had returns at Walmart. I went to get a few things, including material and notions for some skirts I want to make. I found the perfect materials. The zippers, and pretties, but couldn't find the hooks I need. So I had to return all the pretty material. No sense in giving them my good money when I'll still have to go to another store anyway. So sad.

The return of a big TV in our living room! A week or so ago our TV blew up, smoky wiring and all. So we waited till Jeremy got paid, and we invested in a nice new TV. It's really nice!!!
But, no more than we got a new TV on Thursday, we have to replace the heating element of our oven!! So Jeremy picked up a new one on the way to work this morning.

And our mattress goes back to the company sometime this week. We've had it just over a year, and the springs are out of place, and a seam is coming out. So a lady from the company came yesterday to look at it. So it'll be returned too.

This afternoon we look to return to Aunt Janet's cabin. It's been so long since we've been there. We'll be having a bon-fire and time with loved ones.

I pray you are all around your loved ones today too.

Let's see the TV was 11 years old, and the oven is 7 years old, I think our appliances have hit middle age, and are dieing early deaths.

An immperfect mommy

We went out to an event and dinner with some friends recently. We took Anora. She’d been behaving so well lately, I didn’t think too much of it. But unfortunately I never stopped long enough to consider her feelings or that she was in desperate need of a nap. She was so tired; she couldn’t control her body or emotions. I was completely embarrassed.
The last time she acted that way in front of company, I was called out on it. Though they said they understood, they really didn’t. They believed that this behavior was common in our house, and wasn’t accepted well.
Now, months later she has behaved the same. And though they are good friends and I believe they understood, I’m gun shy and embarrassed. As the night continued and her behavior escalated, I got more embarrassed and upset.
Finally the next morning I could think a little clearly. I was so worried about what people thought of my parenting skills and my household, and my family; I was blaming Anora for my embarrassment. I was, and have been for months, expecting her to be perfect all the time, no matter her mood. That wasn’t fair. If I keep expecting perfect all the time, and I keep getting so worked up, I’ll maker her as neurotic and Jeremy and I are. And I want better for her. I don’t want her thinking, “what will other people think” all the time. Or “no one can see my faults”.
I have apologized to Anora for taking her out when she didn’t want to, and to our friends, for my frantic behavior. And I’ve asked God to help me relax.
I pray you accept your kids’ faults; I’ll try.

a day to complaine

While I have my health, and a lovely family. There is always something to complain about.
The network television has overlooked a downfall of the current economy. In all our downsizing, we've cut out our satellite. While we rarely miss it, I'm totally jonesing for some special programing.
In particular, HOCKEY'S CENTER ICE PACKAGE! Hockey season is about to start, a celebrated time in our house. But we have no view of it this year. It's the first time in 4 years we won't be seeing hockey. I'm a little lost. While all of our church programs get started, and we have family bonding nights, the viewing for a night was always easy, a game. But now we're trying to see all these new shows. Old ones we've lost touch with, and new ones we've never heard of. We just trying to follow the crowd and watch what everyone else likes. I do have one pleasure, the next day after a game I have the luxury to play the audio of the game on the computer while I do Moms4Moms or house cleaning.
Missing one luxury, God bless you.
go leafs, go

Wow, so much to tell you!

The biggest thing in our life right now is Chicago. Or it was; we just returned from 4 days of vacation in the Windy City. We had a great time! We arrived just in time for supper on Friday night. We ate Pizzeria Uno's signature deep dish pizza. Yum! Just for the record, we had to go there again on the way out of town too!
We did a lot of swimming, well Jeremy and Anora did more than me.
The hotel we stayed at was wonderful! Had a full breakfast with a different main dish each day! I totally want to stay there again.
We headed out to the train station hoping to get weekend tickets, but no luck. We ran into problem after problem trying to ride the train, so we just drove. We went to Lincoln Park Zoo. It was nice. I compared it to Brookfield a lot. But I think all the differences were a wash. I like them both. But Anora's favorite by far was the petting zoo and barns at the end. My favorite was the polar bear and penguins.
We had wonderful Portillo's for Lupper, (lunch and supper) We could eat our weight in those hot dogs. They specialize in Chicago hot dogs. relish, mustar, onion, tomato, dill pickle and hot peppers, on a poppy sead bun! Yes, we ate more of those before leaving too. Not only that, but we went to the grocerie store and bought the fix'ins for making at home too. It was better at home in my opinion.
Then Sunday we did a little window shopping, and went to Ikea to get some coffee mugs. But we had 2 headline events on Sunday. Legoland and a Blackhawks Hockey game.
Legoland was a suprise! I knew we would spead a lot and didn't have high hopes. I was wrong. It was a hit. Probably Anora's favorite thing of the weekend. We looked at lots of models in awe. We rode a little ride to see a lego castle. A jungle of lego amazon. Lots of areas to build legos, even a strictly girly area. There were ramps a race tracks to race your lego cars. A area to test the strench of the your lego building. And probably the best was an area to build with huge lego blocks. There was a mini factory, where she got to push buttons to make her own keepsake piece. There was a 4 d movie. That was a little too real for Anora at first. Then you end the tour with a store. We (all 3 of us were excited) had to buy 1/2 pound of assotrted lego blocks. We stayed there for hours! I was real impressed.
Then we rested a little before heading out to the hockey game. It was good. I was start struck buy the building, and the players. Bret Hall mgr of the Starts was just barley in sight. 1/4 of the arena away, and that star struck me. The Blackhawks won. The arena was almost full over 18,000 people, wich is impressive for a preseason game.
Then we woke up tired and all a little grumpy by Sunday. We made one last stop at Cabella's before leaving. They had the biggest display of stuffed animals I've ever seen! It was nice. We found a great deal on a coat for Jeremy.
Now we're back to real life. No pool, no traffic, no cleaning service, no deep pizza. But working, planning, orgaizing, cleaning, learning, is our outlook.
God bless you, I pray you are as fortunate as we are.