Halloween...

Today is picture day!

I told daycare that I would come in and take photos of all the kids in their costumes. So around 9am I fed Joey some breakfast, and then we got ready to go to daycare. I helped around with their snack at first. They were eating bright orange frosted cupcakes. All of these kids are under 3 years old, so you can only imagine the mess that was made - and I got it all on camera!! Mostly it was just a big orange cloud around their mouths, which made them strongly resemble clowns.

After cleanup it was time to take photos. Some of the kids were so good. Some were not happy (like my child). Here are some of my favorites that I took. I do know for next time that I would like to get another few yards of the fabric that I bought, and sew it together so I have a WIDE backdrop. Sometimes I thought my backdrop was too skinny to get adequate photos of the kids. I had kids hanging all around me the entire time, including my own. It made it kinda difficult but I got threw it and Dena (the head of the center) was sooo happy with the results.

I left Joey at daycare and I got my teeth cleaned. Yeah, how exciting is that?

I went back up to daycare that afternoon around 3pm when Joey woke from his nap and he did not want to leave. Now this is the second day in a row that my child has not wanted to come home. He's having such a good time at daycare with all his friends, that he doesn't want to leave. I guess that's good. I know he's getting good care if he likes it that much. So I stayed a bit and let him play with his friends and watch the Wiggles and dance. Finally I asked him if he wanted to leave and he did. One of his friends, Andrew, came up and gave him a hug and a kiss. Then he gave Paige a hug and kiss. Then Ben and another kid all came up to give him a hug and a kiss. It was sooooo cute. They've never done that before and it was soooo precious!! I met a lot of mothers today. They all said 'WOW, you are Joey's mom? He is SOOO big! My kid is (insert age here) and Joey is so much bigger than him!'.

That night I cleaned up the house. Our house has been a disaster since last Thursday night when I got all those toys from Melissa. Joey has been playing with them and they have been all over downstairs. Plus all of the stuff we had up north was thrown into the living room upstairs so I needed to do some tidying.

Finally I put dinner in the oven (remember my premade dinners from this weekend that I froze?). I put the meatloaf in and let it go. I made some rice and put some beans on. Joe ate dinner. I got all the candy ready.

At around 6pm we started to get a few people. Joey was upstairs playing with his Thomas trains. I had to go up there three times to tell him there were people at the door and to come see. So he comes down and he's sooo fascinated by the costumes. We had a LOT of kids come to our house last night. The funniest thing is he would NOT leave our candy alone. He kept trying to eat all the candy. I finally decided when Joe got home he was going trick or treating for his OWN candy!

When Joe finally got home (traffic was bad because everyone left early) we both ate a quick dinner and then I took Joey out trick or treating to the neighbors while Joe manned the door with the candy. Joey did so well I took him around the block. He was soooo cute. I carried him between houses and then let him walk up their walk to the porch. He said really softly 'trick or treat' but it wasn't really clear, because he can't really say it yet. He would even be walking up to the house saying it the whole way up the walk. Then I had him say 'Thank you' and 'Good-bye' to everyone. He did a great job. He loved seeing the dogs at the houses and had to stay to pet them. Everyone LOVED his costume. Said he was soo precious.

We finally rounded back to our house and I told Joe to turn off the light. He was going with us to take Joey trick or treating. So we went around another block. Joe had a blast watching Joey go trick or treating. He said to me that this is an experience that's going to stick with him forever. I don't think you ever really appreciate Halloween until you take your children around. It sure was rewarding for us!
Joey wanted all the suckers to himself when we got home. I this cutest photo of him hiding in the corner, holding onto three suckers, with his mouth wide open in happiness. He's sooo funny. We gave him a sucker and he was on cloud 9!

Here are a few of my favorite shots from today...

Paige. Joey and her are great friends.

Another of Paige. AND she is sooo cute!

Abe wasn't really happy about it but I LOVED this pose.

This is Evan - Joey's other bud. I love his expression!

Of course, you think Joey would cooperate?
The Photographer's kid - NOOOOOO....

Our Sunday by the lake

This was like the 4^th weekend in a row that we went up north. Many of my friends and family are frustrated because we go up north all the time. They want to do things with us, but we can’t, because we are going up north.

Let me explain – Joe’s grandparents raised Joe from a pretty young age. His mom and dad divorced when he was around 3. His dad only lives about a mile away and he stayed with his dad every other weekend.

His mom’s second marriage wasn’t very good. They fought more than she liked and he wasn’t a nice guy. Joe’s mom thought it would be best for Joe to stay at his grandparents house (her parents) so he wasn’t involved with any of this.

So years went by and Joe lived with his grandparents. His mother worked hard. So every night Joe stayed with his grandparents and they would get him ready for school in the morning. He went there after school. When his mother got home from work, he went to his mother’s house for the evening and then went back to his grandparents for the night.

So this is why Joe is so close to his grandparents. When we go up north, we stay at his grandparent’s house. They have an extra room that we stay in and Joey has a crib next to our bed. We have been doing this ever since we started dating. I guess our parents are pretty lenient.

But this is WHY we go up north on the weekend.

1. We really don’t care for the city life. In a perfect world, we would live in the country. Our reality is we have great jobs in the city, and we moved about as far away as we could stand and are in a small town, but it’s not country. When we go up north on the weekend, there is no crazy traffic, no idiots blaring their stereo, it’s just a nice, relaxing weekend!
2. We LOVE seeing Grandma and Grandpa and Joe’s mother and Joe’s dad’s side of the family. It’s like an all in one shot when we got up there since they all live in a ½ mile radius.
3. We love spending time with family. We are family people and we would rather spend time with family than party. If you were to ask me to go to this kick butt party or go see grandma and grandpa, I’d pick the latter.
4. I want Joey to remember his grandparents and remember they are good people. The way to do this is to have him be with them as much as possible.
5. It’s just relaxing. That’s about all I can say. I can scrapbook, I can cook, I can just relax. It’s great.
   

So that is why we go up north and we go up north so much. Many of our friends have family that lives close by. Joe’s family doesn’t live that close and his grandparents can’t travel that long to see us, so we go to see them.

So that is the story behind that.

So this weekend we went up to see our grandparents. It was a great weekend! Today is Sunday. Last night I got two scrapbook pages done and 4 happy birthday cards! I like how the pages came out too! I did a page on my birthday celebration at work from 2002 and a page about my brother and I called Siblings. It used pictures from 1984 and I feel good about it. Sometimes it is so hard to scrapbook older photos but this paper worked great!

I finally decided that I can’t cook at night anymore unless we want to start dinner at 8pm. So grandma and I spent a few hours in the kitchen this morning preparing 5 meals and getting them ready to freeze to cook later this week! I can’t wait to see how this works out because this was so much fun to mass cook a bunch of meals and then have them ready for later this week. My friend Caroline hired a personal chef that does the same thing for her and her husband. The lady comes in and cooks a bunch of meals for them, and then freezes them for them to prepare later. At WW this week Jinny also said that I need to cook ahead and freeze. It seemed to be a thing people have been saying and so I figured, I can do that too. I’ll let you know how it works out.

I took a nap when Joey finally went down at 2:30. I always take a Sunday nap.

When we woke up we went to his mom’s house. She had a small pile of leaves in the front yard she showed him how to play in. Then Joe and Char decided to go ahead and rake up a BIG pile of leaves in the back yard. We took Joey in back and threw him in and he went underneath! It was so funny. He would only go in after Joe went in and then he was fine with the leaves. He loved it.

Before we left, he kept saying CoCo. That’s the horse so we took him to see CoCo and Charlie and I got photos of him petting the horses. At home he goes around saying CoCo. It’s so cute. The horse he was petting here is Charlie and he says Charlie too.

I do a lot of photography with the 50mm fixed lens I have and I LOVE it. It blurs out the backgrounds and makes for very very nice images. That is what all of these were taken with today. I’m so happy I bought this camera lens!

Will write again this week!

Joe and Joey by the lake

Joe and Joey in the leaves. Joe is buried.

Took a photo of Joe in the leaves!

The view of the lake

Joe and Joey moving with arms and
legs in the same position again!

Joey looking out at the lake.

Dad was throwing rocks in the lake.
Joey decided to be like dad. See splash.

Love this photo. They were looking up at a plane.

Mixed up emotions...

Yeah, my friend Caroline has been bugging me to update. I know I know...I'm behind. You know why - because I'd rather sleep! My days are so full of running around that I don't get to do those things I want to do. If I do them, I sacrifice sleep. Last night I had the opportunity to update my blog, but instead I went to bed at 10:30 - which is early for me.

The past week has been a rollercoaster of emotions for me. Joe came home slightly after the cruise and said he may be interested in having another child, sooner rather than later. I was already in the mindset that we were either only having one child, or we were waiting a long time between children.

So I was pretty upset for awhile. My birth memories came flooding back. I was a basket case and very upset. I sent a note to my babies group and there were a few moms who went through a very similar experience and shared it with me and talked about how they healed. After a lot of tears, I finally think I 'got over it'. For those that don't know (it may be a bit graphic) - I was induced because of Joey's kidney problem. I was in labor for 2 days. I pushed for 5 hours straight. Normally most doctors let you try for 2 hours and c-section you. I was forgotten about. I stretched out my bladder and left me without bladder function for weeks and in diapers. My uterus would not immediately contract like it’s supposed to when the nurse starts to press on it. Instead when the nurse pressed on my uterus, blood shot across the room. People went running, so I started to bleed and had to have a HUGE shot put in my leg to help my uterus start contracting back down. I lost a lot of blood. I lost feeling on the top of one of my legs for almost a year from nerve damage from the pushing. After Joey was finally born, I pushed so long and so hard I was cross-eyed and couldn’t even SEE him. I was left with too much to deal with right after giving birth and no answers on the problems I was having. Not to mention the doctors were in our room constantly looking at Joey and his kidney problem. The poor kid had a welt on his head where his head kept rubbing back and forth in the birth canal! Till this day I still have some minor bladder problems. I’m too young for that – I was 25!

So I finally think I got over this traumatic birth. I made an appt with my OB to talk about what the plan would be if I were to get pregnant again. I wasn’t doing anything without a plan and assurance I would not have to deal with that again.

Thursday rolls around and I see my doctor, who I love (unfortunately he wasn't on call when I delivered). He tells me that he would like me to c-section, which I'm totally happy about. I'm not going to chance my bladder getting out of whack again. That's just awful. We had an awesome talk, and I get out of the appt ready to have another child. I covered all my bases too. WW will still let me go, but I can't weigh in – fine with me. Daycare gave me a quote for both kids. I'm finding out all this information and doing legwork.

This week I even was carrying one of the 4 month old babies at daycare. Joey was so good with her. He gave her hugs. I was all geeked.

I tell this to Joe. I'm all excited.

He then tells me he's not even sure he wants kids. I think he got freaked out. It became ‘real’ to him.

I swear I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.

I know he does not realize the intense emotions I went through to get over my birthing experience, meet with my doctor, thinking about all the could be's and then to be told this. I'm crushed, upset and back to where we were before.

Today at daycare Joey would not come home. Usually he runs up to me, and says bye bye and is ready to drag me out the door. Today he was playing with his friend Evan who’s only a month older than he is. He only comes twice a week. They kept running to the door, back to the living room, to the door, to the living room over and over. Evan’s mom came to pick him up and Joey still did not want to leave. I couldn’t believe it. I guess he had a good day at daycare today! Dena tells me Joey learned something today – to talk in a deep voice. He’s done this around us before but it must have been new to them. They say to Joey in a deep voice, “Joey, say Momma’ and just says in a deep throaty kid voice ‘momma’ as we all crack up. When I got there Dena’s son, Christian, was playing with Joey. He’s 7. They were running around, chasing each other, and just enjoying each other’s company. They are all so cute.

It’s so much fun watching your child play with the other kids! Joey gets along so well with all the kids, older and younger. He’s very charismatic. I’m not just saying this because he’s my kid. I’ve watched him play with other kids when he doesn’t know I’m there (I’ll sneak up on him at daycare) and he’s always the ringleader. You know in school there was always the kid that everyone wanted to be friends with or hang around? Joey is that kid. He’s very outgoing. He’s the kid that will see anyone, a teenager on the sidewalk, a person making sandwiches in the store, or the lady in the waiting room at the doctors office, and he says hi to them all and expects a hi in return. The kids love to play with him, and crowd around him. I’m actually a little surprised, he’s kinda pushy – like most 2 year olds are and I think he takes his size to his advantage. He’s much bigger than other 2 and 3 year olds. He’s 3 feet tall and not even 22 months old! I hope he keeps this outgoing, fun personality he has. I love it and it’s so good for him!

When we got home Joey went right to the toys that Melissa gave me yesterday. Melissa came and met me for lunch. It’s so nice to go out with my friends – I miss them so much! I took out the train set she gave us and put it together. I could not figure out how to get this train to move. Finally I figured out it has a remote control. I put batteries in that and the train and away the train went. Joey was in awe and so happy. He just watched the train circle him as he sat in the middle of the tracks. I tried to show him how to use the remote but he got quite impatient and wouldn’t do it. So I sat there just holding down the up button so the train would move forward.

So after all these emotions, tonight Joe comes home and says now he thinks he is ready for a child. Well he said he’s never ready but we are thinking long term and think it’s better to have children close together. There go those emotions again!

This was the conversation when Joe got home to Joey.

Joe said, ‘Joey, do you want a brother or sister?’ and without missing a beat, Joey looked at Joe, shook his head and said ‘No’. That’s it – just ‘no’. Joe and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. His response was so punctual right after the question!

So later I asked Joey – do you want a brother or a sister. He runs up to me and says sister, sister, sister, like I would magically produce one. He’s so cute!

After Joe came home and was upstairs, Joey dragged him into his room and to his Pepsi change jug. We’ve been showing Joey how to save money and give him change to put in it every day. Well he did not forget today. He took Joe by the hand and showed him the jug – like ‘Hey dad, where’s my money?’ Joe and I burst out laughing again. Smart kid – he already knows how to ask daddy for money for his jug every day! Hahaha.

Up to grandma’s house for the weekend again. I need to get a few scrapbook pages done. I’m hoping to cook this weekend and see if I can get some dinner’s ready for the rest of the week. I’ve never done the prepare and freeze thing, but I’m going to give it a try. It would be nice to be able to have a home cooked meal in the evenings again!

Oh and you can see Joey's much shorter hair in the photo above!

I'm not a big fan of cold, but the ONE thing I love about cooler weather is I just love soaking in our (small) bathtub. There is nothing better than filling up the tub and soaking for a bit and getting nice and toasty.

Today was my day off. Yay! Joey woke at 6am. I though, OMG he will not go back to sleep. I rocked him and tried to get him to go to bed and nope, he started to cry. I said, Joey, you are going to go to bed in mommy's bed. I took him there, he rolled up and went right to bed. I was like OMG. I have never done that before. In the past if I tried that he would think it was a fun place to play. This time he just conked out. I guess he just wanted me there. We slept until quarter to 9!

Then we got up. I got him breakfast. Then we changed. We got ready to go out. He got a haircut today and it's sooo cute. They pretty much buzzed his hair. It was sooo cute. Then I took him to daycare. He was NOT happy with me. I had to do some errands. I went to Salvation Army to drop off a few things and got Joey some clothes and books. Then I went to get our ink cartridges refilled. I got a new Perry Ellis Wool Long coat from the resale shop. I paid a lot for it - $68 but I figure it's a lot cheaper than brand new and I needed a new coat. Then I dropped off the dry cleaning. I called daycare, he already went down for a nap so I went home and napped. I picked him up about 3. We've been home playing all afternoon.

We went out back today and I got these photos. I cleaned up the back patio. I got everything ready for storage. Our patio looks so much better now without all the stuff out there.

Went to curves today for the weekly weigh in and I gained 2.5. I think I need a kick in the ass. Joe and I are arguing about the overtime he's putting in and we can't seem to reach an agreement. It just sucks for me because he gets home after 7 every night. Today he went in an hour early and only left 10 minutes early and because of bad traffic was still home later than normal. I don't know what type of agreement we are going to come to. The only logical solution is to move closer to work but I HATE the city and do not want to move closer to Detroit. I have no clue...

Yeah, I've been so busy

I know I should be posting more. I think I'm feeling guilty for not getting my cruise pages on here quicker so I'm not updating at all. What a dork I am! Well the cruise day 4 is going to be a BIG blog. That is one of our excursions and I have a lot of photos. I need to get my duff in gear and get it listed!

Last week on Saturday the 15th I worked 5am until 10:30 pm putting in a new system for work.
Sunday I worked a bit more verifying the system.
Monday I worked 8am - 11:30 pm. You tired yet. Yeah, I was too.
I worked a part day on Tuesday, then Joey was up and only slept about 3 hours on Wednesday night so I stayed home with him and called in Thursday. Friday it was back to work.

This weekend we went up north to see the grandparents again. Saturday evening Joe's dad and his family had a Halloween party. I found out something - Joey's costume is way too small. Pisses me off actually. It says fits a 2-4 year old. Joey is NOT EVEN 2! He's 21 months. Ok ok, I know he's like really tall but come on!!! So anyway, here are some photos of him. He makes a very very good lion! OH and DO NOT TELL ME my son looks like Teen Wolf with his costume and coat on. If you have not seen that 80's movie, you will have no clue what I'm talking about but he does really resemble Teen Wolf (Michael J Fox). hahaha.

That evening after we ate we went on a hayride. There were a lot of us. Joe's dad manned the tractor. Uncle Jeff jumped off the tractor quite a few times trying to scare the kids. His youngest, Jessie, thought that he had fallen off and we left him so she started to cry. Then she finally figured out he did it on purpose. Joey had a big hat on him and we wrapped him in a blanket, and he had on a coat so he was very warm, even though it was probably about 45 or so outside. It was a fun time. We'll have to make that a tradition.

Saturday night I scrapbooked. I got two pages done. One page on our Memorial Day party at the Dziekan side (my side) from this year and one on our house closing from 2002. I also did a card. It's nice to get back into scrapbooking but I still feel like my pages are outdated. I hate that feeling!

I'm getting a little worried. I need to get on the scale tonight. I have no clue but I think I gained some weight. I've been a bit careless with the eating since we got back from the cruise and it's bad. I did subscribe to the body clutter menu mailer (www.savingdinner.com) and I'm excited to start that. I love the menu-mailer. Leann's recipes are soooo good. Joe loves them too. Maybe having a meal plan everyday may be a good thing.

That's about all. I get to stay home tomorrow - yay! I have a bunch of errands to run so I'm excited about that - mostly because it involves SHOPPING! I'm going resale shopping again. I think I'm addicted!

Oh and no fall photos yet this year. The fall leaves have been pretty drab!

Joey and Joe

All of us

We took off his costume. Just hanging out now.

Photos by the light up pumpkins. Joey and I.

Joey and Joe at the end of the hayride.

Day 3 - Cruise

Well day 3 was our 3rd day on the ship. Day 4 is our first excursion so we were trying to make ourselves busy today.

Our breakfast. I ate egg beaters with mushrooms on a bagel, Apples with cinnamon, sausages. Joe tried a bagel with lox and liked it but said it was very rich. He also had a ham omlet, apple wedges and backon and sausages.

Joe and Jason went to play shuffleboard as Caroline and I sat on the deck and tried to get some sun. It was kinda cool that morning.

Lunch Joe had a steak sandwich and chinese egg drop soup.
I had chinese egg drop soup and awesome pasta.

We went to Trivia again that afternoon. Of course, I still wasn't that good at it!

Joe and Jason went to watch a movie.

We watched passenger feud.

Dinner was lemoncello night. I'm sad I didn't have my camera for this. We got 5 shots for $3.95 and it was awsome. It was lemon juice and lemon vodka. Caroline, Clara who's a little older than my mother's age and I were doing shots. Clara was outdoing me! By the third I was about done but they kept egging me on, so I kept going. They would say, ok, ONE, TWO, THREE and we would all do a shot while all the other tables nearby were watching. We had a blast!

For dinner I had bean soup, veal, salad and lemon sorbet.
Joe had swordfish, veal (2 entrees again!), shrimp cocktail, salad and chocolate for dessert. It was also our annivesary night so we got a small anniversary cake. Now you know why I was mad we didn't have our cameras!!!?

We got our B&W portrait done.

We all went into the casino and lost Money. Not that much but enough. I found a slot machine with a TON of nickles in it. I lost all those too! We lost about $14 playing roulette.

I got really tired early that night because I stopped drinking. Joe and I got in a little tiff, which depressed me and then I got all sad and started crying because I missed Joey a ton.

Day 2 Cruise - Sunday

By popular demand, here is day 2. I'll discuss my hectic week(s) in the post after this.

Day 2 I woke at 6am. It would have been 9am eastern so it wasn't early for me! I noticed my sink was clogged. Needed to call someone to fix it.


Breakfast was egg beater mushroom omlet, warm cinnamon apples (2 servings!), fruit.

We had our spa treatment this morning. Caroline had a nail and hand massage/treatment. I had a hair/sculp massage treatment. I was thinking it was just a head massage. It was so marvelous. She put these oils in my hair and massaged them in and they smelled so good and relaxing.
Then she also did my back and shoulders. It was one of the best spa treatments I've ever had. WOW. When I was done I felt like a million bucks. She rinsed my hair for me and boy, I felt relaxed. Caroline was jealous. She didn't much like her treatment and said mine looked awesome and boy, was it ever! Joe and Jason said they sat on the deck and drank during our spa treatment. I'm not surprised!

We went to morning trivia. We did ok. The guy asked some really hard questions! It almost wasn't fun because it was so hard. Ok, I'm not really good at trivia anyhow - ok, I'm really bad at it! I went and my teammates were good, but I didn't much contribute!

Lunch: I had a mai tai (started early today) and it was the drink of the day - only $3.95. I had veggie burritos, salad, fruit and pumpkin pie. Joe had mussles, smoked turkey, mexican sandwich and pumpkin pie. YUM.

After this we sat on the top deck and drank.

We had wine tasting this afternoon at 3:15. It was fun. Caroline and Jason are BIG wine drinkers. I liked doing this because I learned how to drink wine the correct way, but I really do like the sweet drinks better. They had a very sweet dessert wine that I really liked while we were there.

We sat by the pool afterwards. I got a mint chocolate martini. The guy filled the glass up and I didn't understand why this other guy at the bar was kidding me about the large glass until Caroline told me it 100% alcohol. I was like, you have to be kidding me. I didn't drink it all - it was too much but it did taste like a peppermint patty! Joe had a Jack and coke.

We had a formal dinner this night. OMG I have not dressed up like this since my wedding, and that was in a wedding dress. I had a blast putting on the glam and I wore a floor length silver dress.

Dinner was wonderful. We finally met the missing couple that wasn't there the first night. Joe and Clara. Wonderful people.

For our formal dinner I had fruit, lobster bisque with shimp soup, salad, pasta with veal and mushrooms and souffle for dessert. Never had souffle before. It was very good.


Joe had lobster bisque soup, 2 shrimp cocktails, lobster dish with mushroom cream sauce AND a beef tenderloin dish (he ate two entrees most nights) and Joe had a chocolate torte for dessert.

After this we went to see the show the Piano Man. I was in LOVE. I'm a HUGE fan of 80's music and this show was tunes from Billy Joel, Barry Manilow and Elton John. Joe didn't much care for it but I loved it so much I told him I could see it a million times!! I loved the dancing and the great tunes. I was sooo happy!

After this we got a formal photo done and I love how it turned out. Cost me $22 to buy it as a 8x10!

We then went to the Newlywed game that evening. That was sooo funny. They ask the women to leave the stage and ask the guys to answer questions like what is the weirdest place you've ever done 'it', and more. One guy had his entire wife's family there and he was sooo embarrassed to answer any of these questions with them in the room. They actually ended up winning and they were just married. Jason said normally it's always won by the people who've been married 50 years or so. That couple was so funny - they hardly got any right. He was talking about him taking viagra. We were laughing soooo hard! While watching the show Caroline and I had some drinks. I had another Mai Tai, Caroline had a Martine and Joe and Jason had cogniacs. What an awesome day!!!

Joe and I.

One of the 4 or so pools on the ship.

Joe and Jason enjoying a drink

Jason posing for the camera during wine tasting.
He's a riot!!

Joe trying the wine during wine tasting.

Jason and Caroline at the bar by the pool.

Caroline and I in the club during the Newlywed game.

Another picture of Jason. What a camera ham.
Yes he made these funny faces on purpose!

Our first formal portrait!!