This morning I woke up with Joey and Joe slept in. At about 9:30 I asked Joey where Joey was and he ran for the bedroom and jumped into bed with him. For the next hour we all laid in bed and cuddled and laughed. Joey had both of our attentions and was so happy. Even MIL's dog Hazel B joined us. What a fun time.

Joey went to bed at 11am for his nap. This is earlier than normal. Joe and I headed out to the malls to try to get a few more people shopped for. We hit Target first and one of the things I really wanted were totally sold out. I got a rain check. Then we got Joey a big wheels for $22. It's that bike he rides on with the two wheels in th back and the big one in the front. He'll love that.

Then we went to the mall and got a few things from Sears. My dad is done being shopped for and we got a few things for MIL. She's 1/2 done.

Then we went to eat at TGI Friday's - yes again this week. I got the chicken and cheese quesidillas and they were very good. Then we split a cheesecake at the end. YUM.

When we got home we gave Joey a new Thomas car - it's Percy and he is a limited edition metallic green. He loved it. Joe had some extra tracks he pulled out and made this elaborate tracks for Joey. He loves playing trains or anything with Joey. He's just a big kid and a great father. Joey loves him so much.

The other thing Joe loves doing is playing ball with Joey. Joey can kick the ball so well now and he can kick it high. I was laying on the floor when I got this cool shot. I love how the ball has been kicked in the air.

I saw this fun little game on Jen's blog and thought i'd play along too. just google your name plus "needs", (eg. "briana needs"), then record the first ten search results. too funny! here's my list:

1. Brianna and Brooklyn need to have a warm, nurturing, energetic adoptive family with lots of time and attention to give to them
2. Briana needs to learn proper bowling etiquette.
   
3. Briana needs $73 more before she can afford the bike.
4. Eight-month-old Briana needs clothes, size 3 diapers and size 1-2 shoes.
5. Briana’s gains come slowly, partly because of her need for extensive support and
   encouragement in order to communicate in any environment
6. But I still think Brianna needs a sibling.
7. This year, they checked into a YMCA day camp, which was willing to work with the
   family to accommodate Briana's needs.
8. (didn't really find too many others - but check out the one below!)
   

and drum roll - my favorite:

10. Brianna needs her parents to help her manage her mood swings

Oh and most of mine resulted in p*rn because Brianna B**ks is a p*rn star and whenever my name is googled on the internet, her always comes up too - even though mine is spelled Briana. Useless knowledge for you! Oh and the bowling etiquette one above, yep, it was a comment about one of her tapes. More useless knowledge. Do you feel your brain rotting yet?

The craziest thing yet? I found this link on the internet. Another girl did a 'needs' blog entry, and someone with the name Briana commented in her blog she's afraid to do a 'briana needs' search because she doesn't want to find out what the po*n star needs. Hahaha. See, I'm not the only Briana with this problem!

Did I shop? Yes I did. BUT I did not go out with all those crazies at 4am. I went to Walmart at 9 am with MIL and we had a good time. I spent $145 on odds and ends and got only one Christmas gift. Dh was quite angry. Add to that my $82 Fashion Bug purchase (I did save like 50% though!!) and he was really not happy. I was supposed to go CHRISTMAS shopping, not Briana shopping! I got a bunch of new clothes for me! :) No really, at WalMart I got some things I said I was going to get anyway. The extra things I got was a bunch of fabric to make Joey some new blankets. He loves his blankets and we found some train patterns! We brought it home and he loves one of them so much he's been dragging it around all day.

MIL and I went to eat at a local diner. Their food was awesome. I got like the worst thing on the menu - a saugage and mushroom omlet smuthered in sausage gravy. I have to admit it was awesome as all heck! YUM!!!!! The service was awful but the food was great.

Then we went shopping at Fashion Bug. They had %15 off everything, on top of their sales, on top of the $10 off coupon I had. I got a cute sweater/turtleneck with stripes and it has a cute scarf to go with it, and then a pair of jeans, and two pairs of stretchy pants for work - brown and off white. They make me look sooooo skinny! I thought I got something else too. I can't remember now - go figure!

I took a pregnancy test today. Nope, not preggo. I guess it's not as fast this time as it was the last time when I got preggo with Joey. Maybe we will have good news by Christmas.

I got three scrapbook pages done last night. Melissa - I finally got the page done I started at your house 4 weeks ago! LOL. I've actually started and stopped that layout 4 times before it got finished. I'm happy with the final product now. I did two other layouts. Since they are for the December spotlight for Scrapjazz, I'll post them the first of December. I finally got out of my scrapbooking slump. Know how? I started to scrapbook in 8.5x11 size. Oh yes and I like it. I've always done both but I think I'm going back to 8.5x11 for awhile. It's smaller and I don't feel like there is so much open space for me to fill.

MIL bought me a huge Turkey roaster oven at Walmart today and a electric toaster oven for Christmas. I LOVE my gadgets. I have like every kitchen gadget known to man! I have a huge pantry cabinet totally full of my gadgets. Kitchen-Aid mixers, blender, food processor, waffle makers, steamers, hot sandwich maker (like for grilled cheese), bread maker (I've hardly used this one), quesidilla maker, deep fryer (don't hardly use this one either - too fatty), an electronic griddle, a george foreman type grill, toaster, and more. I can't even remember all of them that I have! I love them all. If you try to take any away from me, I'll have to hurt you. hehe.

I went shopping tonight - grocery shopping, and spent $62. I saved $21 in coupons! They double up to a $1.00 there so I got a lot of stuff close to free. MIL and I like shopping. It's kinda fun to clothes shop now that I've lost weight too - I do have to admit that!

The photos above are of Joey eating a cooking last night and licking the frosting off the container. Isn't he cute? I do have to say I love my 50 mm fixed lens. I can open the aperature up to 1.8 and it really blurs out the backgrounds nicely for nice people photos.

On the same note, if you want to learn about photography - go get the book KISS Guide to Photography. I'm almost done reading it and it's EXCELLENT! I've taken some photography classes a few years ago and this still taught me a lot more than I already knew. I got mine from the library and maybe you can to! Let me know if you do and if you like it.

OH and Joe went hunting tonight and shot a spike horn buck. I have photos but I'll spare you. I did get one cute one of Joe in his hunting orange holding Joey. Of course Joey saw the buck, but doesn't really get it. Joe was just happy to have some venison!

I guess that's about all. I'm enjoying my new IPOD, especially when I'm scrapbooking.

I back dated the last few entries so make sure to check below for new ones.

Oh and I have to say I'm amazed at how many people visit my blog. I added that counter last week sometime and it's over 350! I wonder who is visiting me!? If you are visiting, make a comment. You can sign in as anonymous and just put your name in the comments section. Even if you are just browsing on by, sign in!

Later today – We finally made it up north! Yay! No more crappy driving conditions for us!

We had an excellent dinner and wonderful desserts. Both Grandma and Joe had the flu last week so they were hardly able to eat anything – and we angry about it. They wanted to EAT today – but they got full so easily!

I had a lot of fun doing photos today. The family photo I did on a tripod and timer.

The food was excellent. See our photos here. Grandma had a bread roll that looked like a turkey and of course, I had to include a photo of our favorite pumpkin roll. YUM!

I woke up at 7:30 am to the sound of whistling wind. I did not think it would be blustery today. I looked outside and everything was white and looked BAD. So we didn't go up north last night and it looked worse today!

How come it freaking snow storms every damn holiday? Last Thanksgiving we had so much snow trees came down. Last Christmas it snow stormed so bad we weren’t sure we’d make it to my parent’s house for Christmas. The Christmas before that (03) it was the same way.

Well this Thanksgiving is no different. We got a few inches of snow, the roads suck because of the blowing winds and we still need to go up north to Grandma’s house. So off we are going. The roads really suck. Some of the road is a sheet of ice, some of it is just wet and some of it is snow covered from the winds. I hate Michigan. If our family wasn’t here, Joe and I would move. We’ve talked about it before but we wouldn’t do it with family here. We would move to a warmer climate. We agreed that the winters are too cold for us anymore. The subzero winters are just no fun. Actually it was in the 90’s for awhile this summer and when it dropped to 70 degrees I was really cold. I could totally deal with really warm weather!

The good thing about waiting a day is that we can make sure the cats have extra water and food, clean the cat litter, and I can feed the fish one more day. I just hate being away from them from long periods of time.

We had to stop at my boss’s house to get the pizza kits that he got for me. I was supposed to get them the Wednesday that Joey was sick, but I wasn’t at work, so he took them home for me. We have been on our way up north 4 times and we either missed the exit, Joe was sick, or some other reason didn’t get up there. We finally got there today and I got my little Ceasar thin crust pizza kits. YUM.

Joe is already speculating what type of foods we will have today. I’m excited about it too. He wants the pumpkin roll. I made it two years ago for Thanksgiving and it’s awesome.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Wednesday I went to work. I didn’t even see Joe. I have been so busy at work. Joe called me and asked me if I wanted to go out to lunch. I wasn’t even expecting him in the area. So we went out for a late lunch. It was so nice. We ate at TGI Friday’s. I loved my French onion soup but I got the pulled pork sandwich and it wasn’t that great. Joe was just happy to be done with work for the week. When we were done with dinner, he went home to pick up Joey. The snow had already started to fall and the roads were slushy.

I went back to work. My boss asked if I wanted to have my end of the year review. I said that was fine. It went extremely well. He said I outperformed expectations this year. I was happy with that. I had a very successful year at work this year. That was a great way to start my holiday weekend.

The roads were ok when I went home last night but because this is the first real snowfall where it affected the roads the roads were a mess with accidents. It’s because people go to fast, they think they are GOD because they drive a SUV or a truck, and because they don’t give enough room between the car in front of them.

When I got home I couldn’t even get up our steep driveway. The van went sideways because the driveway was a sheet of ice under the snow. I ended up parking across the street in the driveway of the house that no one lives at. They are trying to sell it.

I went over the neighbor’s house to ask them if they could stop in on Saturday to check the cats and feed our fish. I took them over some refill filters for the cat waterer I bought them for taking care of our cats during the time we were on our cruise. Of course they said yes. They are good neighbors.

Joe and I were debating whether to go up north or not. The roads were just getting worse and the snow was still coming down.

I don’t know why but I have to clean the entire house before we leave but I do. I do the dishes, make sure no laundry is stuck in the washer and pick up here and there. Finally by the time I was ready to go, Joe said he was too tired and he wanted to stay home. I was relieved because I didn’t want to take 3 hours (double the normal time) to go up north in the crappy conditions. So we stayed home. Joey and Joe played until about 10 pm and then finally Joe told Joey it was time for bed and he was very good about going to bed.

Once Joey went to bed, he started to whine. We went in there and he was saying ‘blackie, blackie’. Backie is his black cat that Grandma made years ago from Joe’s mother’s black coat. I packed blackie away to take up north that day and didn’t put it back in his bed and he wanted it. Joe took blackie to Joey and he went right to sleep.

This week has been nothing less than interesting.

On Sunday Joe's mom told us about a cool place down the street - a local diner - that had a huge train setup in it. So we went there for lunch and they looked like they had the entire Department 56 Snow villege and had a Lionel train around it. It was cool. Here are photos of Joey at the restaurant, and the train below. He was so excited to see the train - see his expression?

After lunch we went to Joe's mother's house to play with the dogs. She lives on the lake so we got these really cute photos. Joey loves to play outside by the lake!

Joe got really sick in the evening. We were staying with grandma and grandpa up north. We weren’t sure if Joe was going to make the ride home. So I packed the car, since he was so sick. We loaded everyone up and I drove off. Not even 3 miles down the road, Joe tells me to pull over as he gets sick outside. Once he was done, I told him I was going back to grandma’s. We would go home on Monday.

He said, ‘No, I feel fine now. Let’s go’.

So off we went. We got another 10 miles down the road and he got sick again. He said this time, to turn around. We called Grandma and said we were coming back. There was no way we could make the hour and a half drive home.

Joe got sick 2 more times on the way home. I was so glad when we got to Grandma’s. The crappy thing was he HAD to work the next day because it was a big deal for work to close out the corporate plan.

So we all slept in until around 8am and then called work to say we were coming in around noon and started our trip back home. Poor Joe was feeling better but was really sore.

So I worked 4 hours, then came home to get Joey. Joe didn’t get home until about 10pm.

Tuesday rolls around. I told Joe I was going to my parents after work, since he was working late – again. This is the second week straight he’s been putting in crazy hours. It was 60 hours last week.

I had a Dr. appt for my ear during lunch. I went to see the ear doctor and he agreed that he no longer thinks that ear tube I’ve had since 99 is working and decided to take it out. He numbed my ear canal with multiple shots of Novocain and it didn’t really hurt but I could HEAR the Novocain going into the canal – it sounded like it was going into the cartilage. Then he pulled out the tube and then inserted a ton of medicine that was lotion like into my ear. He said that it should be in there about a week. So what’s the crappy thing about all of this? I couldn’t hear a darn thing!

So I went to my parent’s house for the evening. We had a great time. Joey played and I just hung out. It’s nice seeing my parents. I took over the new organizer that I bought from Costco last week for my dad to put together. Joe had hardly been home so I knew it wasn’t going to put together for awhile by him. My dad put it together and it’s even better than I thought. I’ll have to take a photo of it. Joe saw it the next day and like it too. He agrees that when Joey’s toys are separated into different types he plays with his toys more than them all being thrown together in a bin. We have bins for his balls, cars, and his Thomas trains and the top holds all his books.

Joe didn’t get home until about midnight Tuesday. I was already sleeping.

1. I loved this comic. I hope you do too. Moms everywhere will appreciate this one. You may have to click on it to see it bigger.

2. If you haven't heard the new song by Faith Hill and Tim McGraw called Let's make love, go out and listen to it. I'm not a country fan but it's a beautiful beautiful song. They sound so beautiful singing together. Wow.