Friday

The day started out pretty normal. Trying to wake Grace up wasn't so easy. By the end of the week she's tired and usually can't get up on her own. Getting her on the bus is pretty easy though as she's becoming more and more self-sufficient. She was having hot lunch at school so she only needed a snack in her backpack and no homework to turn in so she was off to the bus stop in plenty of time.

The morning was warmer than the rest of the week had been. Preview of how warm it would be later? Yes. After Grace is on the bus and off to 2nd grade I usually check my email and twitter. Right after I was done with this Riley was waking up already. She isn't usually up that early, so I was hoping she'd go back to sleep, but she didn't. After she was up I made us some breakfast. Scrambled eggs for her which she proceeded to throw most of on the floor. And a 3-egg omelette for me. Adding bacon made all the difference in flavor. It was an excellent choice.

We're guessing that Riley hasn't been eating as well as normal lately because she just got a new tooth a few days ago. The interesting thing is that one day she'll eat pretty normal and the next she won't. I'm wondering if she isn't getting another one. I think we'll find out pretty soon.

After breakfast Riley and I set out on our errands. We headed to the shoe store and actually found some baseball cleats that fit me. And they were on sale. That was great. Riley was a little stir-crazy sitting in her stroller but she did pretty good. After this we headed to my favorite store, Lowe's. We planted a new Bradford Pear tree in the front yard last week and then right after I planted it we had a big storm so it hasn't been straight and it's also flopping around. So we stopped at Lowe's to get a tree support kit so it can grow straight.

After Lowe's we ran to get milk and rushed to beat Grace home. After she got home I actually got them both in the tub and cleaned up. Then Riley went down for a nap and Grace finished up shampooing her hair. After that I actually got to sit down for a few minutes before starting dinner. It was taco night. Put the meat on the fire and starting shredding lettuce and chopping tomatoes. Realized I forgot to buy avocados, so no guacamole for us. About the time dinner was ready Julie was home from work. We sat and talked for a few minutes and out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a butterfly land on a bush in our front yard. Then it hovered and it's wings were moving really fast. I couldn't believe it. A hummingbird! In our yard! That's the first time since we've lived in this house that we've even seen one. We used to put hummingbird feeders out and they never came. But apparently they like our bushes out front.

After that excitement I got everything packed up to go and we headed to the in-laws for dinner. Dinner was good and Grandma even had dessert for us. So it was a good day. Now on to the weekend. Yay!

Crazy week

This last week was crazy. Not so much for Grace having a super busy week, just a lot of little things going on. Last Sunday was Mother's Day and I got Julie tickets to 42nd Street. We're going in a few weeks. She's pretty excited.

Monday turned out pretty normal. Riley and I did make it to the bike shop and got some new tubes for the trailer. I also used a LivingSocial deal from our bike shop and got a new helmet. I was lucky to get that. Got a cool helmet for much less than it would have normally cost. My old helmet was 10 years old. I think it was time for a new one!

I was able to change the tubes while Riley was napping so it was all ready on Tuesday for her first ride. She was really excited and she really enjoyed it too! Here's a photo of her all excited about going.



We rode down to the village hall and paid our bill and saw a canadian goose family. She just loves birds and was excited to see them up close without a window between them and her. Here's a shot I took of them swimming away from us.



Then we went over to this "new" business in our town that sells gardening plants and supplies. They've been there a year and I had never visited it. Riley liked this too. Then on the way back we happened to go past the park so we stopped there. She finally got up the nerve to climb this by herself this time. I think it was because she saw another girl that was there doing it.



She did get a little nervous for this last step that she's doing here in the photo, but I just told her to hold on to the bar further up instead of the ladder and she was fine. This girl just love, love, loves the slide! It's definitely her favorite. That's why she was going up the ladder here instead of going all the way around the playset and going up the steps.

She enjoyed the ride home too but was obviously disappointed that all the fun was over when we got home. We actually took a family bike ride after dinner on Tuesday also. Riley was super excited. Now if it would just warm up again (the high today was 46 I think) we could do this more often. I know it's coming soon, but it's hard to wait when it's still so cold here in mid-May.

Here are my girls before we had dinner.



Wednesday and Thursday Grace had dance class and brownies. I suppose the rest of the week was pretty normal. Especially considering that it was cold and rainy. We weren't doing much outside. On Friday we finally made it to the eye doctor for us to get Riley fitted for her new glasses. They had been waiting for some other frames to come in that were more her color, but they were backordered. The frames we picked out were the cutest ones they had but were blue. That's alright as they are still really cute. My only concern is that people will mistake her for a boy. Hopefully her clothes will give her away. Here is a photo I took of us when she tried them on.



This weekend was crazy as well. Our nephew graduated from our community college on Saturday and Julie took Grace while Riley and I stayed home. Well actually we ran to the Home Depot for a few things. Wow was the graduation ceremony long. They didn't get home until 4 hours after it started. So Saturday was more like a weekday. Then today we took Grace to get her Nintendo DSi after church. She's really excited about this. The funny part is I think she's really only excited about the built-in camera. I don't think she realizes all the extra things it will do compared to her DS.

Well, I'd better try for a decent bedtime. The shuttle Endeavor is launching in just 7 hours. And Grace will be going to school just before that.

May? Really?

Sorry for the delay since my last post. Obviously I don't have a good track record though, so I suppose it doesn't come as much of a surprise. We have been super super busy around here. Grace had something going on each day last week. And her first communion was yesterday.

Fortunately for our house, we keep having company, so we've been keeping it pretty clean. I won't go so far as to say it's spotless (ha ha, yea right,) but it's cleaner than we normally keep it and I have every intention of keeping it this way and working towards getting it cleaner yet now that it is as good as it is.

Our entertaining started with having some of Julie's relatives over last Saturday the 30th. We were originally going to have them over for dinner back in February I think. But then Julie got the flu. Really bad flu. So we cancelled that get-together (surprise!) After re-scheduling it, we had them over last Saturday. We had gumbo and it turned out really good. I've never actually made gumbo before, but I got my Uncle's recipe (his family is from New Orleans) and it turned out great. They even asked for the recipe.

After this Grace had her last REP class (religious education) on Monday and a practice on Thursday to get her ready for her first communion on Saturday (yesterday.) Tuesday she had softball evaluations and Julie wasn't home before we had to leave so we brought Riley with us. It hasn't been so very warm here so we had to bundle up. Poor Riley's little hands were freezing. Actually all of our hands were freezing. Grace did well and saw another girl that was on her team last year. She wants her to be on her team again, so I have to remember to call and see if they can do that.

Anyway, Julie came by and picked up Riley a few minutes after Grace had started and got her home to warm up. Wednesday is dance class and Friday she had more dance stuff as she was practicing for the finale of her recital coming up next month and then she had a pizza party after that.

Yesterday was super busy for Grace's first communion and the party was afterwards at our house. Remember the clean house? Yea, we did spend some time "refining" the house in the morning, but the day went really well. We had to be at the church a half an hour before the service started and we were actually early. Yes, you just read that, we were early, by a full 12 minutes. This never happens. The only glitch was not getting back to the house in time for the catering to be delivered (taking pictures.) We had to send my cousin home ahead of us leaving the church so that someone was there. Actually I think they had to wait a few minutes as my neighbor called wondering what to do. We do have good neighbors!

We even made it to church on time today. Not early, but not late either. I can't say I made this Mother's day super special for Julie, but I think we made the day about as good as we could. This week is much less hectic and that is certainly welcome. And actually a lot of things are starting to wind down as Grace only has a few weeks of school left. Then we'll move on to the summer schedule. As always, right now I'm looking forward to it. The summer...no schedule or at least a limited one. Sleeping in...or at least mostly sleeping in. Grace doesn't seem to sleep in anymore. In fact Riley hasn't even been sleeping in all that much any more either. I really miss that. Clearly it would help if I'd go to bed earlier so I can get more sleep, but I can't seem to break this habit of staying up late.

The good thing about this summer is that Riley is old enough to go and do things we couldn't really do last year when she was only one. I tried to get our bicycles and the trailer ready for us to use today. Since Grace and Julie got home so late this evening we didn't have time to go out for a bike ride anyway. We haven't used the trailer since Grace was like 3 or 4 probably so I'm guessing about 4 years. I had been cleaning it up and airing up the tires as well as airing up the tires in all of our bikes. As I was working on Julie's bike I hear this pop and then a loud sound of air coming out. Maybe it's their age or something, but the tube on one of the trailer tires had blown a hole. I think I'll replace them both. I have a feeling that the other one will go at some point anyway so I might as well just replace them both while we're not in the middle of a trail with no pump to air up a new tube.

Grace will obviously be playing softball this summer and I'll be coaching again. I'm really looking forward to it. I feel much less anxiety than last year as I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Now that I know how it all works and how everything fits together I'm guessing it will be much more fun as most of the stress will be removed. She's also going to a half-day day camp for a couple weeks. I'm going to try and get us outside a lot more this summer. We all need it and the kids both really enjoy it.

Better start implementing my earlier bedtime. Gotta go.

Did I Mention Rain?

So today it rained most of the day. Seems like we're living in Seattle. Today was day 21 of rain this month (28 days.) Luckily tomorrow will allegedly be rain-free. I hope so as I still need to plant those darned blueberry bushes.

Yesterday was a tragic day here in the States. There was a massive storm front that spawned hundreds of tornadoes and they went through 6 states just destroying everything in their path. I've never been through a serious tornado like this one, and luckily few have as most tornadoes aren't this bad. These were just insane. A mile-wide swath of destruction is just crazy. And scary.

Riley seems to be feeling better as she is acting a little more normal. The only thing that wasn't normal today was her nap; it was a bit short today. I know she was tired since she was laying her head on my shoulder. That's what she does when she's tired. One of the cutest things she does when she's really tired is to just lay on the floor wherever she is and act like she's sleeping.

Some other "big" news yesterday was President Obama releasing the long-form version of his birth certificate. For some reason certain politicians believed that the POTUS (President of the United States) wasn't born in the United States. Some people say it's just because they disapprove of or hate or something him so much that they are just looking for anything to get him out of office or discredit him or whatever. I believe that. I don't see any other reason for this whole thing. I don't see any racism as everyone is saying now. It's interesting that they are only now saying this. How long have there been these "birther" allegations? A year?

What I find especially interesting is that the POTUS waited so long to release the document. The way I look at it, either he releases it right after the allegations are first brought out, or he ignores them and moves on. Why wait all this time and then produce it now? That doesn't make sense, especially since during his press conference after having released his birth certificate he said he found the allegations amusing. I read somewhere that he did it yesterday to try and take media attention away from his announcement about the new Secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta) and Ben Bernanke's historic press conference. That I can definitely believe. The Obama administration has used the media very well for their benefit.

On a lighter note I was excited to see that OT Gabe Carimi from the Wisconsin Badgers was drafted by the Chicago Bears today. Being a Badger fan that makes me happy and being a Bears fan I'm happy too as we have needed offensive line help for a few years. Am I convinced that Jay Cutler is the perfect quarterback for our team and the offense we run? Not completely, but Carimi will certainly help.

Did you hear about the "elders" in Korea today? The name you'll recognize is former POTUS Jimmy Carter. Sounds like his visit their wasn't very productive as the headlines afterward read "thanks for nothing, Jimmy." I've been reading a lot about Korea and specifically our involvement in the Korean war lately. I'm not sure North Korea (DPRK) will ever really cooperate with the south. They just have this deep-seeded hate against the south almost as if it's from back in the days of the birth of communism, even though they didn't get communism until later. And the nuclear situation just ruins everything. If they would lay off the development of nuclear weapons that would really help their stature in the world and especially with the south.

I saw an article just today that their was new construction sited at a nuclear site in the DPRK. The world and especially South Korea will not take anything seriously from them if they continue to develop nuclear weapons. What I did learn from former POTUS Carter's visit and press conference is that the humanitarian conditions in the north are pretty bad. Unfortunately this is what happens when you have an evil dictator like Kim Jong-Il. He doesn't care about his people at all. He has his own agenda and that's what matters. I also find it deplorable that the DPRK refuses to take responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean ship and the attack on the South Korean military base. Oh, but they have deep regret. Whatever.

Today the DPRK was threatening the south with "merciless fire" if the launches of balloons, which contain pamphlets ridiculing Kim Jong-Il & family, didn't stop. With that attitude how can they expect the south to want to meet for any kind of summit or have any food distributions. Craziness.

So Grace has off school tomorrow, but she has a birthday party to go to. We still haven't purchased a gift yet. She has started the card so she should be able to finish that up pretty easily in the morning. Looks like we'll be heading out to Target to get that gift taken care of. I'll also need to decide on something for dinner as I haven't planned anything.

Tonight I made blueberry pancakes and you'd think I had made everyone's favorite meal. I made two batches (Julie cooked most of the second batch) and they are all gone. I think I could have made more and at least some of them would have been eaten also. That Riley just love, love, loves pancakes. If I feed her them for breakfast she will eat like 6 of them. In her defense I do make them a little on the small side, but she had at least 5 I think for dinner tonight. She is pretty much the same way though with a waffle. Those seem to be some of her favorite foods. She gets very excited.

You should have seen her tonight. It was just too funny. After she finished her fourth pancake I think it was, she was actually licking her plate. And I don't mean a little bit, I mean really cleaning it off. She had blueberries everywhere: pants, shirt, face, table. This girl really enjoys her food. Here is a cellphone photo of her after she enjoyed a marshmallow bunny a couple days ago.



You can really see her eye crossing in this picture unfortunately. Try to focus on the messy face. Most meals this is how her face looks. Today she took her "extra" yogurt and was rubbing it all over her arms and hands and calling it soap (hope.)

I have a few more cellphone photos I can share. These next two are from a walk we took. She was walking her bear in it's stroller. In the second one you can see Grace racing down the hill way out in front of Riley. This was just before Grace crashed. It wasn't pretty.





This last one is Riley in a shoe box. She's almost getting too big to do things like this anymore, but she still tries. Sad to see her growing up, but I have to admit we're spending the time to enjoy watching her grow up as opposed to when we had Grace at this age. It's amazing how different you are with a second child. I'm not even sure it's only that she's the second child so much as that Grace is 8 already.



Alright, I must go and get some sleep.

Rain

Today turned out to be a little more rain filled than the weather man would have had us believe last night during the news. But the amount of precipitation wasn't really all that substantial so I guess he wasn't all that far off. Unfortunately that means I didn't get the blueberry plants I need to get planted into the ground yet. They're leafing out in my kitchen. And I haven't even watered them since they are in plastic bags and not pots.

I suppose I'll get them planted one of these days. Right now I'm watching the Blackhawks game against the Canucks. I'm not impressed so far. The Canuck defense has been pretty strong so far. We'll see how it turns out. Only a few minutes left and they're down 1-0. They're certainly capable of winning this game but they haven't displayed that yet tonight.

Everything else today went a little more normal. Except Riley was awake for a lot of the morning while Grace was getting ready for school. Lucky for me she went back to sleep again. You know you're in trouble when she's asking for a book to "read" in her crib at 8 in the morning. Like I said yesterday, she's normally up between 9 and 10. This week has not been normal for her because she's been awake early but then sleeping late. I think she might be getting another tooth. Guess we'll find out soon enough.

She did do something really exciting today when she was eating lunch. She has this terrible habit of throwing the food she no longer wishes to eat. Leftover macaroni and cheese? Throw it on the floor. Little extra applesauce from Dad? That goes on the floor. So what did she do today? She actually said she didn't want any more and handed me her bowl. BTW "bowl" is one of her favorite words. She's been trying to say "more" the last couple of days too. It's really cute. She really emphasizes the "r."

She also did the same thing when she was eating her apple (app-al.) She would be chewing off the skin and putting it in her bowl instead of throwing it on the floor or across the room. This is a very welcome change. I'm really tired of cleaning the floor and the table and her and the tray on her booster seat and the booster seat every time she eats. One fewer thing to clean...very exciting!

Now the true question is whether it will continue. Obviously I don't know but I can hope right? Thank goodness we're officially past the whole undressing in her crib thing. OMG. This went on entirely too long. It's nice to not have to change her sheets every day. And I clearly don't miss cleaning up poop from all over her and the crib and the wall. That's not fun to wake up to.

She also said a semi-sentence today. She said "Ri-Ri app-al nummy." Or maybe she switched nummy and apple. Apple is one of the few words she uses for food besides nummy. Generally ALL food is a "nummy." She really likes apples! That's good considering we have an apple tree in the back yard.

Alright, the Blackhawks lost in overtime. That stinks. Guess I can concentrate on baseball now.

Julie is much better today. I hope it was just an anomaly yesterday where she ate too much of something she shouldn't have. I still haven't gone to the grocery store. I have to go tomorrow now. We have nothing to eat and Riley has no milk to drink. Guess I'll have to start working on that menu...

What?

So today was kind of a strange day. I never knew what was coming next. Got up at my normal time but when I went to get Grace up for school, Riley was awake and whispering "daddy." I just said to go night-night in hopes she'd go back to sleep. She's never up that early. Each time I tried to wake Grace up she'd snore and complain so I left her to sleep a little longer.

After giving Grace an extra 20 minutes of sleep I went to get her up and she actually woke up this time. I don't know why I then bothered to tell her that she had 15 minutes to get ready because two minutes after we normally get ready to walk out the door she was starting to brush her teeth with her pajamas on. I was thinking there is no way she's going to make the bus, but it seemed like only one minute later she was running down the stairs with her clothes on and heading to get her shoes on. I was surprised. Good thing she had her clothes picked out already.

She did make the bus, and we didn't even have to run. Talking to the neighbor at the bus stop and she had some similar issues this morning. When I got back in the house Riley was saying hi to me. Luckily she did fall back asleep. And she slept for quite a while as she didn't wake up until 11:45. Actually that's later than normal nowadays. Normal for her these days is between 9 and 10. But Monday's are hard because she's sometimes recovering from the weekend when she doesn't always get a very long nap.

When Grace got home from school she was in a very good mood. She even watched Sesame Street with us...of course while she was doing her homework. I swear she can't do her homework without the TV on. Last week was turn off the TV week (which reminds me, she was supposed to return the paperwork for that today.) So she can do homework without the TV being on, but she seems to feel she can't. It was about this time when Julie said she was leaving work and coming home because she'd gotten sick and it wasn't getting any better.

After she got home she put Riley down for a nap and went for a nap herself. Unfortunately it was only a few minutes later that our neighbor started playing volleyball outside of our bedroom window. They practice by bouncing the ball and then "serving" or hitting it up against the side of their house. But our houses are pretty close together, so it also inevitably hits our house too. So anyway, she didn't get much of a nap. And unfortunately Julie really didn't get much better for the rest of the night. Oh, she felt better, but she still couldn't eat anything. Let's hope tomorrow is a much better day for her.

We made a ham for easter and so we have leftovers. Julie leaves this note this morning that maybe we could have ham for dinner tonight. If you read the last paragraph, you know she didn't even eat dinner, but the problem I had is that we don't really have anything else in the house to eat. So I had it for lunch and dinner. And I'll probably have it for lunch tomorrow. I haven't planned any meals for the week so I'm not certain what we'll do for dinner. I'm just hoping I don't have to plan for ham again.

I try to go as few places as possible these days. I don't want to pay to put gas in my car unless I have to. So I've been going fewer places. I'll be happy when the weather is warmer and Riley and I can get out on my bicycle and go places. Right now it's raining and the high today was a cold feeling 50 or so. Not such great bicycling weather, especially with a 2 year old.

Anyone out there use Twitter and/or Facebook? I have to say I'm addicted. But my addiction has changed. I'm not so addicted to Facebook anymore, but much more so to Twitter. I find myself posting completely different things on each one and spending much more time with Twitter. Facebook has mostly become a Mafia Wars habit and a good goto for checking in with my friends to see what they've been doing and to see pictures and things like that. With Twitter, you have a window into things you're interested in as well your friends. So I can still keep up with friends plus I can add in some news and fun interests.

I wonder why everyone isn't disenchanted with the gasoline situation. Certainly if you're very wealthy a 25% increase in gasoline costs probably isn't a big deal. But this is seriously a big expense for us. With Julie driving so many miles to work each day it really adds up if you look at it from a monthly viewpoint. 60-70 miles a day for 20 days at least each month. Luckily her car gets pretty good fuel mileage, but it's not THAT good. She doesn't get what I get and I wouldn't get much better mileage than her driving where she does every day anyway since I get my best mileage around town which is what I mostly do. So lets generalize and say Julie uses about 3 gallons of gas a day for about 20 days a month. That's 60 gallons at the new price today of $4.29 that's about $250. Then add in the gas I use and it's at $400 or so. That's like having another car payment. And what do we get in return?

Well sure, we get the money we need to survive in the lifestyle we want to live in. I definitely understand that as I pay the bills and see the money come in and the money go out. It goes out quickly when you have only one income, I'll attest to that. But let's look at a year ago when gas was "only" $2.85 a gallon. That same scenario would have put us at around $250-270 a month. Compare that to now and all my gas would be free since Julie is buying that much just for her car.

Julie was just saying tonight after the gas prices went up today that we need only wait and the price will come down. And she's absolutely right as they just play this game with you. This morning gas was $4.07 and they raised it to $4.29. Tomorrow it probably won't change, but if it does it will come down to $4.28 or maybe even $4.27. Then in another day or two it will be down to $4.20 maybe or $4.19. Then it will come down as low as it will get going forward; probably something like $4.10 or $4.14. Then it will start all over and jump 25 cents the next time to $4.35 or $4.39. So this cyclical up and down shows the general trend of only going up. It never really goes down, it just comes down to a false low that only feels low compared to how high they raised it a few days prior. The actual trend is up, up, up. I'm not surprised at all that they're calling for $6 gas by summertime. Around here we'll pay more for the summer blend of gas plus all this price gouging for gasoline made from crude oil that cost less than the gas we bought a few months ago for $3.25. It's just a big ripoff that lets oil companies get rich and crude oil producing countries get richer. And the gas we use to get to our jobs continues to cost more so our pitiful little raises are actually decreases in income because it's costing more to get to our job every day.

And how is all this going help our economy? I'm not going to spend money on anything I don't absolutely need because quite honestly I don't have extra income anymore. That all goes to the oil companies.

And...I'm off my soapbox. Have a good night.

Happy Easter

Believe it or not, I do remember I have a blog. I know...surprising.

We scored a bonus (in my mind at least) by getting my favorite priest at church today. Of course all the people that only come to church on Easter and Christmas kind of ruin it for the rest of us. I really wish us regulars could get priority seating. Is it wrong to want that? And saving seats for people coming ten minutes after the service has started? Really? What is this, high school?

I think I surprised Julie today. We parked a block away and walked into the church. As soon as we walked in you could see they had set up rows of chairs in the outer area (sorry, I can't think what that area is called.) We walked into the sanctuary and tried to see if we couldn't squeeze into one of the pews, but their just wasn't enough room. So we came back out of the sanctuary and tried to find a spot in the chairs that were set up. But those were all taken also, so I just sat down at the spot I was in when I realized there just wasn't any place to sit. It's very disappointing. Not being able to sit in a seat. I have to admit we aren't exactly early to church on a normal week, but we actually got to church a few minutes early. It made no difference.

Oh and then after church we were leaving and had made it a whole block away from church and were at a stop sign. There was a little cross-traffic, but I was hesitating at the stop sign because of the volume of traffic we'd be turning into compared to a normal Sunday service. I wasn't certain if I should go the normal way or turn and go the long way to avoid the traffic. There was this "older" person behind me and after I hesitated when the cross-traffic had passed, they honked at me. Well, let's just say I wasn't nice back to this lady (nothing illegal mind you, just a little rude.) Is this what the world has come to that even people in their 60's are in a hurry and can't wait an extra 2 seconds at a stop sign? Grrrr.

We had Easter at our house today. It went really well. The food was good and I'm pretty sure everyone had a good time. Here's to more low-stress holidays!

Really excited that the Chicago Blackhawks won game 6 of their playoff series tonight against Vancouver. It was a pretty darned exciting game. I can't wait for game 7 on Tuesday!

Grace will have her first communion in a couple weeks. We're getting ready for that now with both the things that have to be done for her actual communion service and also for the party afterwards.

We took little Riley to the pediatric ophthalmologist on Thursday and our own personal "not-a-doctor" analysis was spot-on (spock-on.) She needs glasses for now for her lazy eye with a follow-up in a month to see how she's doing with them. The good news is that we're treating her earlier than Grace was treated so there is a possibility that we could avoid surgery.

Hopefully I can start writing more regularly. Only time will tell.