weekend by 3s

Another meme already? Yeah, I don't feel well but am sitting here. Here goes...

what you did:
um, sleep way too much.
drop my camera on my toe. owie. I might actually lose my toenail. (my camera weighs almost 10 lbs.)
make & eat way too many rice crispy squares. (Vern bought the stuff to make 'em, the kids voted for a double batch, I added chocolate chips on a whim & then we all made 'em disappear in record time. :p)
what they said:
Brandon said my chicken fettuccine was awesome. :D
Yesterday Kirsten said I looked cute in my pigtails. She even took some pics. Then she looked at the pics and said I looked better in person. figures. lol Aw. Ej says I'm beautiful. :D
what you listened to:
I've been listening to mp3s all weekend. The last 3 were all Simple Plan:
I can wait forever
I'd Do Anything
Addicted

Gonna go heal a heroic! Night folks. :)

tagged

Ok, so Wendy tagged me with this awhile back and I've been meaning to do it. It's a crazy 8's meme that has gone around the blog circuit, and since I'm way late in doing it I'm going to omit the part where you tag 8 new people to do it. (I'm pretty sure I'm the last blogger on the planet to get around to this one anyway. :p)

Eight things I did yesterday:

1. played at the park with Maiah & Elijah
2. finally posted some pics from blizzcon on my blog (I think that was yesterday? Yeah, I'm a spaz.)
3. drank the last bottle of water.
4. worked in ps for a chunk of the day
5. did Arinne's dailies
6. made some really good cheesy potato soup
7. went with B to get him signed up for night school to finish up the last of his credits
8. did some pilates. it's been forever - it hurt :p

Eight Favorite Shows
I really don't watch a ton of tv, though Super Why is often on in the background.

1. Scrubs
2. Lie To Me
3. Two and a Half Men
4. American Idol
5. Bones
6. House
7. So You Think you Can Dance
8. Um, blanking here... can I go for a long lost favorite like Ed or Mad about You? Or how about Saturday Night Live in the days of Adam Sandler? I heart opera man.

Eight Favorite Restaurants

1. Cafe Rio. Bean & cheese burrito. Black beans. Smothered. Hot sauce please. Oh yeah.
2. Olive Garden. Though I go maybe once a year at most now. Vern can't eat there, so I'm at the mercy of girl's nights out and such. :p
3. Hires Big H.
4. The Cheesecake factory. I love a menu where I have a hard time deciding no matter what mood I'm in. And the cheesecake? Mmmmm...
5. I don't know what the restaurant at the Grand America Hotel is called, but their breakfast buffet is so good.
6. Training Table. Ok, so it's about the hickory sauce. But hey, it's the kind of thing you crave once you've tasted it.
7. Chili's. The fajita chicken quesadillas are so good.
8. Quiznos!

Eight Things I Look Forward To:

1. Um, being legal? Yeah. Would love to be a legal resident of the US - belong to the same country as most of my kiddos..
2. Of course, becoming a citizen would be even better.
3. And Brandon too.
4. Watching my kiddos grow up & become the amazing people that they are.
5. Seeing my family again. It's been more than 13 years now since I last saw Aaron or my mom. That's just wrong.
6. Handing Jeannette her wedding pics! It's taken entirely too long already. :p
7. Pudding. Every day. Forever.
8. Relaxing on a tropical beach somewhere. Sun, sand, water... yeah.

Eight things on my wish list:
Things huh, ok I got this.

1. A backup camera body so I can really do weddings.
2. And a new lens. Or 2. I really want this one
3. Um, things/stuff... Right now a cinnamon roll sounds good. I blame J.
4. It's almost Fall. I need some shoes that aren't flip flops.
5. And new glasses. Or contacts. Or something.
6. Kirsten needs some too.
7. While I'm at it braces would be nice.
8. Does a pool in my yard count? And can I have a different house/yard? :p

K, so those always take longer than I expect to answer, but there you go.

Happy Friday!!

/rawr

Brandon & Spencer in the photo booths at Blizzcon. Yeah we don't know why there were Bloodelves in the diabloIII booth either. lol I'm sure most guys were way too happy to care.The pics B took inside with Nina's camera were often blurry - it was just so dark in there. Its too bad - there were some cool things to get pics of. :pHe did get a good shot outside of the chick that I think was a winner in the costume contest. I still say the level 1 warrior guy was awesome, but yeah this one was pretty good too. lolKirsten & I resorted to taking pics outside too, since the little camera was struggling so much in the dark convention center. Of course, keeping up with Vern while taking pics of eachother on the run wasn't super easy. lol (And yeah, I know it's totally out of character for me to be wearing a "look, I have boobs" shirt - my priesty shirt was just the only gaming one I had until we hit the jinx booth. We're sweating buckets too - this was the day we should have gone to the beach. :p)And of course, here's some wii madness. I thought to grab the little camera way late at night to get a little memory shot. Kirsten & Ian are in the front, and the 2 Jasons are in the back. Or there's the way Vern introduced the guys to Brandon: "Ian (Gig), Jason (Pain) and Jason (Hy)" I'm still sad that we didn't get one of all of us, but at least we got these. Next time I'm at least grabbing my camera though. :pI need to get LV some meds (he's home sick from school today), then cuddle with this cute little girl & see if I can get her to either smile or go to sleep. Then I need to get cracking on finishing up these wedding pics. Then if I feel like I worked hard enough maybe I'll get some dailies in. Maybe tonight I'll finally do the 8 meme thing I was tagged to do by Wendy. (I keep meaning to! :p) And, and, yeah.That's as much as I'm willing to think about for now. Have a great day blog readers! :)I had to come back and add B's Ozzy concert pic. :)

back to school, sand and some cali fun :)

The first thing Kirsten did when she showed up for her first day of 7th grade was ask a totally cute kid if she was supposed to just go to her first class. He even had the same first period as her, so they walked in together. Awwww... :)

I have a totally awful headache at the moment & am ready for my nap, but first I thought I'd share some pics from our little trip. We picked the one overcast day to go to the beach, but it was still so much fun. Maiah loved eating the sand, and Kirsten & I had some fun getting wet. I don't have the pics from Nina's little camera uploaded yet, so I'm missing stuff - but yeah, here's a quick peek.I'm so sad I didn't get a shot of Maiah & Dozer together. They were the cutest! And I didn't think to get one of all of us guildies together. :( And most of the Brandon & Spencer shots are on the other camera. So are the ones I got of the crazy late night wii playing with Jason & Ian. And, and... yeah I was kind of a slacker with the camera. I'll get the wii and blizzcon shots up when we get 'em uploaded

Oh, I had to look up some videos from the dance contest at Blizzcon. lol There are some totally crazy people out there. These are kinda funny for those who know the WoW dances. Maybe even if you don't. :)

home

We made it home tonight in good time. (About an 11 hour drive.) I was so happy to see my little boys, but the smell of the great salt lake & the sight of our rented old house in an area that smells of horse poop are not my favorite welcomes. Elijah's kisses and Maiah's delight at being out of the car were definite highlights though.

CA was beautiful, and my favorite friends are loved moreso if that's even possible.

Brandon and Spencer had so much fun at blizzcon. I enjoyed the peek I got and loved my new horde shirt from the jinx booth.

Jason was so awesome to us. An extra special thanks to him for going out of his way to make sure we had fun. We did. :) Hanging out with him was the bestest! We even got to meet his little family & play some wii with (the other) Jason & Ian. (Well, I didn't play. I did dailies & spent forever getting Maiah settled down for the night. It was awesome to meet 'em though!!)

I didn't take as many pictures as I thought I was going to, but there are pictures! I'll get 'em all downloaded tomorrow and share some vacation goodness. For now though I just wanted to say we're home and fun was had this weekend. Time to get rid of a very yucky headache and work on some sweet dreams in my own bed.

'night blogland!

one last entry

...before we head to CA for Blizzcon!
I'll be spending lots of today getting my little boys packed to go to Nina's house, and myself & Maiah packed for our trip. We still have some last minute running around to do too - so it should be a crazy kind of day. Come 3 am we'll be on the road though. Woohoo!In honor of Blizzcon I figure a screenshot ought to be fitting. This one's from Dissension's first 10 man Ulduar run. (I was so proud of us & how well we did! I <3 our awesome little group of friends.)

Well, we'll be back late Sunday & there will be pictures. :)

12

She's twelve.
She's beautiful.
She's got an awesome sense of humor, a temper & a crush on Taylor Lautner. And Kellan Luntz. And Edward, but not Rob as much. She even thinks the guy who plays Dr. Cullen is cute. (blanking on his name) And the guy who plays Mike Newton. Yeah... You could say she's kind of got a thing for the twilight guys. And charleston chews. And slurpees. And cheesy double beef burritos.
Yeah... she's so my girl. :)
I'm thinking we'll go for a walk today (like most days.) Maybe we'll get us some burritos. Or Arby's roastburgers. (yum) Whatever she wants - it's her day.

Happy birthday Kirsten! I love you. :)

itchy, owie cranky sort of Friday :p

So yeah. Maiah's been dealing with allergic reactions of late. After a rough night last night she broke out in hives pretty bad this evening. I'm not sure what she's reacting to, but I ran to buy some benadryl and it seems to be helping a bit. She's still splotchy, her eyes are all red & bugging her, and she's still acting like her tongue is itchy. Poor thing - it's looking like it's going to be another rough night. :p

I'm itchy too - 2 more spider bites for me. Woohoo! Not nearly as sad as my baby girl. I'm tired though. Very very tired.

There's just so much going on right now, and Vern reminded me tonight that it's all my problem.
He had a long day at work, and came home to the pizza I ran to get for dinner, the splotchy sad baby I ran to get meds for and the panic between Kirsten & I trying to get her registered for jr. high in time. Then there was me wondering what's taking 2 of the 3 ladies who were supposed to get letters signed & notorized for my immigration stuff so long to get back to us & stressing over a letter from our bank informing me that my status as a non-immigrant is an IRS issue & I'd need to fill out some forms if we wished to keep our account from being taxed an extra 28% because my name is on it with Vern's?! (We opened the account during our honeymoon & it has never been an issue until I recieved this confusing letter yesterday. Anyway, yeah - a little stressful).

So after being home a few minutes he asked who was going to do the dishes that so badly need to get done. When I reminded him that it's been his turn for the last couple of days (he should have done them last night) he looked at me and said they were my problem - I should take him out of the rotation. (The whole idea was his by the way, and he's the only person who doesn't do it on his turn.) You see, he works. In fact he informed me that he worked 13 hours today. When he gets home it's his right to sit at his computer and do nothing for the rest of the night/weekend. I was told tonight "I worked 13 hours today so that we can go to CA next weekend." It's true. He did. But you know what my response was? Just help make me legal please. If I were allowed to work I would totally help out. I'd actually love to pay for my own trip. I'd love to at least have the right to try. So would Brandon for that matter. All he wants is to be able to work & go to school. Neither of which is going to happen any time soon. Hey, if we were legal we could get IDs that would allow us to fly there, or liscences that would allow us to drive without him if he's so put out about the trip in the first place. Then he could totally take himself out of that equation.
All I was asking at the time of our little discussion was if he was willing to follow up with the 2 ladies that have held on to those letters for a month, and if he thought that it would be okay to cash the money order that my dad sent for my kiddo's birthdays at the bank, since the money order is in my name which apparantly is suddenly an issue.
My problem.
He already worked today.
Oops.
He loves holding that stuff over my head. The problem is that it doesn't mean very much to me when I'm not given the opportunity to do the same. :p
I sound like a cranky, frustrated wife huh. :p It's just that I had a long day too. And mine isn't over. In fact, if tonight goes anything like last night I will be up until 5 am or so with a sad little girl. And apparantly I have some dishes to catch up on again, since those who work outside of the home are exempt from helping with that. It's okay. Kirsten will help me. We should finish signing the papers for her school too. And tomorrow is K's birthday - I'd like to do something (though I don't know what that is just yet.) And it would be really good if I could work on Jeannette & Kenyon's pictures sometime soon. I would like to get those done before we head to CA. It's looking iffy :( I've spent less time working on them this week than I'd like to admit.
So excuse me for asking for help Vern. You're right - you work & I don't. You are the one making it so that we can pay for things like our little trip for B's birthday. B actually has tried to work for it for months now, but that's another story. Guess I'm just playing around at not-so-important things like running out to get stuff for dinner, comforting kiddos & making sure you can eat your cereal out of a clean bowl in the morning. My apologies. I'd better stop sitting here though. Maiah needs me and Kirsten & I should get cracking on those dishes sometime soon. :p

eighteen

Today is Brandon's birthday! A memorable event in my own young life, he was the catalyst behind many good decisions and a few iffy ones. He's been my rock & my reason for so long - I'm so excited for him to be at a point in his life where he can really be working towards his own dreams & goals. I couldn't be prouder as a mom or happier as a person to be part of such an amazing young man's life.
Happy birthday B! I love you! :)

I didn't get a new shot of him for this. That'll be remedied soon. Here's what I could find for now. :)I'm sure he'll love me posting all those pics. :p In my defense they've mostly all been shared on my blog before anyway. :)

It just dawned on me... Eighteen. That's how old I was when I found out I was pregnant with him. Keith was 17. See, he's already making better decisions than us. Go B! I really am just so proud of you. :)

Tuesday

Elijah's eating an otter pop.
Maiah's asleep on my lap.
LV is on Vern's computer.
Kirsten went to lunch with Nina & grandma Nadine.
Brandon's at Mo's.
I've been working in photoshop all day.

Yeah, it's a pretty quiet day. I did de-cherry some cheesecake for Elijah. (The cherries are such a good part!) and the sun is shining in my window. Yep, we're having a good one.
Hope you are too! :)

yeah...

...that's Elijah wearing Maiah's pink pants. He didn't want to go outside in just a pullup, and that's what he found. lol He's so my crazy little frankenstein. Just grab him a packet of ketchup. :)

so yeah...

It's my birthday today. Hooray! (I think.)
It's not so bad - have a couple more thirty-somethings in me. :)I'm going to relax, get me some sun, play with my kiddos, dream about pudding, sleep in (it's inevitable at this point - it got late :p), play some WoW, maybe go for a walk. Yeah, it should be a good day. :D

Have a great one too!

Princess Beautiful

She's totally teething and miserable these days but she's still the fairest in the land. :)