This whole moving thing has me preoccupied cleaning the house even though we know we aren't moving until next January. I wrote this up last weekend on Sunday but just had today to post it:
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Written Sunday April 8thWell we found out the day after I wrote my last blog that Joe accepted the offer to go to Texas, and that we will officially be moving in January. It’s nice to finally know what month it will be so I know I have a little time to get ready for this!
This week was busy as usual. Monday April 2nd was my day off. I went shopping for some short sleeve shirts while the kids were in daycare. I also was enjoying the fairly nice weather – while it lasted.
Joe took a new photo of me!
was also another really nice day. We took the kids out for ice cream.
Alex was in the bag.
was fricking cold. It made me want to move the hell out of this state even faster. Joe went to the Detroit Tigers baseball game and froze his butt off. I’m glad I wasn’t him. He’s a die-hard. I would never sit in 20 degree weather to watch baseball – ok yes I would if dh was playing! ;)
Justin loves this football!
was WW night. I went up again and came home determined and think I’m going to switch to flex for a few weeks to see how it goes.
Friday April 6th I took the day off work. Yipee! Spent some time with the family!
Justin and his toy.
Closeup of Justin's eye. Love this shot. You can even see me in his pupil!
Joey playing in the tub. It looks like it's coming out of his nose but I promise it's coming out of his mouth! LOL.
This is one of my favorite photos right now. I love the expression and the splash and fun he had in the tub.
Me and my camera. I like how you can see the shutter closing in the camera.
Justin teething on a helicopter. He doesn't really care for baby toys but loves Joey's toys!
He fell over but this was a cute shot.
Joe and I have been eating great all week. Monday was Chicken Parmesan, Tuesday was chicken chimi in the oven (chicken chimis!), Wednesday was Beef Broccoli – like you get in chinese. YUM! Believe it or not – all low fat! Even better.
Joe is going to do flex with me to see how many Weight Watchers points he is actually eating. He also hopes it will keep me on track so that is nice. So far I like the change in doing flex. Let’s see if I keep it up! I hope so. I’m doing flex with core principles (eating lean meats, fruits and veggies) so let’s see how it goes. I like the control of journaling and I like the flexibility to cook with whatever I want now too – not just core recipes. I still will cook mainly core things since it’s so healthy for you and usually protein – which is good to eat. I will also still snack on fruits and veggies.
Saturday we hung out at Grandma’s house. Joey is still potty training and we had a success with #2 so we took him to buy a train. YAY!!! We actually drove into Saginaw, which is an hour away, to buy him a train. They had buy $20 of Fisher Price toys, get $20 free so we got another train that he didn’t know about and the Easter bunny gave it to him on Sunday.
Saturday evening we colored eggs. They were so pretty. Joey helped me buy putting the egg on the dipper. We had 9 different beautiful colors! I think the Easter bunny liked them very much. He left both kids great stuff for Easter.
I love this photo too. A chickadee on Grandma's porch. He's probably asking Mother Nature to let up on this cold weather already!
Joey and I coloring eggs.
Look Joey - it's GREEN!
Our final product!
Joey's easter basket.
Justin got a baby teether rattle. Joey got a Geotrax train, lots of candy and some money. When he woke up we found out the Easter bunny hid eggs all over Grandma’s living room and dining room so Joey had to find them all. He did a great job and found most of them by himself. They had candy in them and coins!
Justin's Easter Basket.
The Easter eggs that were for the egg hunt.
On Sunday we had another success so we hope this will keep up at home. We are so proud of him. Boy is potty training hard work! It’s taken Joe and I a lot of patience to get through this! We told him when he goes #2 on the potty, we’ll give him $1.00. When he has enough money to get his Geotrax, we’ll take him to the store to get one. So far he has $2.00.
Joey and his new train. He tells everyone - 'The Easter Bunny brought me a yellow train!!'.
Justin and daddy and his Easter basket.
Joe and Justin.
Joey found some hidden eggs! BTW - that plant was the plant that work sent to me when I had baby Justin.
Oh, a cadbury egg! One of my favorites!
No candy for Justin. He seems content eating this block.
He likes to chew on these bath toys too.
Sunday morning April 8th (Easter Sunday) after Justin took a nap (and I took a nap too!) we got up and went to Joe’s grandparents house on his dad’s side. We stayed for about 2 hours. Aunt Darlene and family were in town from Maryland so we visited with them and then the rest of the family came over as we had to leave. We were having Easter lunch at Grandma’s house at 1pm and it was the kid’s naps. Justin was already sleeping upstairs, and Joey was ready for his nap as he was crying and angry because we wouldn’t let him eat any more candy from the candy bowl. He had so much candy already that we told him no more.
Aunt Darlene's dog Annabelle.
Joey and his trucks.
Joey eyeing the candy at Grandma Fishers.
Justin needed a nap.
Joe's dad and Joey playing.
Nana (I think she's 97?) and Joey and Karey (Joe's dad). Joey calls him poppa.
Poppa and Joey. Love this one.
Joey playing with trucks again.
Ok, mom - I'm bored and I want more candy already!
MOM - COME HERE!!!!
Cattails on Grandm'a canal off the lake.
Other things going on:
My online friend Marcie whom I was talking to hasn’t emailed me in a month. I’m not so sure where she went. I’ve tried to get in touch with her a few times just to make sure she was ok and still didn’t hear anything. I’m very sad. I know it’s weird that I’d be sad about it because I’ve never met her. She originally wrote me out of the blue one day to ask me a question about doing weight watchers core plan and nursing her baby, who I think was a few weeks younger than Justin. We started emailing multiple times a day, each waiting for each other’s response. She was also doing the weight watchers core plan so we both shared recipes for foods we liked. Then she and I got kinda busy, but we still emailed at least every other day. She and I had everything in common. We both were on depression meds, we had other issues which I won’t mention that we could talk about, both had kids the same age, both were dieting, both were nursing, and more. We talked about cameras and she even went out and got a digital rebel like what I had and loved it! It was kinda crazy. She was a little older than me, about 5 years or so but it didn’t matter. We had even talked about meeting since she lived in Pennsylvania – not too far away from Michigan. I told her I was moving to Dallas and right around that time, I stopped hearing from her. I mentioned to her I would love to talk to her on the phone since she was so busy and we weren’t emailing as much, shared my number and right after that I stopped hearing from her. I’m not sure if it was coincidental or not. I talked to another one of my friends who has been on depression meds and she said when she got into a depression funk she totally withdrew and stopped talking to people. She said maybe that is what happened.
I’m not some psycho who just gives out my phone number to just anyone. I’ve only talked to a few people online via phone since I’ve been online over 10 years! Heck, if I were psycho don’t you think you would be able to tell from my blog? So…anyhow, I know Marcie knows my blog and I hope she sees this someday and writes me back. She came to me for help and support and then I started to really lean on her for help and support. I am assuming she is ok, and not hurt but I don’t really know. I’m just really bummed about it. I guess I’ve never really clicked with someone like that before and it bums me out to have a relationship like that end with no closure.
Ok so let’s see here. Let me list who I’ve met online before.
1. Back in 97 I think it was I met Kim from Geocities. She and I were community leaders for Geocities where we worked for Geocities helping people setup free web pages. The cool part about this job was when Geocities merged with Yahoo we got a bunch of free stock in Yahoo! We cashed it in for about $1000 a little while after. Kim was getting married and we were invited to her wedding. Joe and I traveled 14 hours one way to go down to see her. It was an extremely small wedding, less than 20 people. During the trip we went and saw Cape Hatteras on the coast of North Carolina. It was a great trip.
2. I met Melissa Z (blog to the right). She wrote me about stamping and we got together to stamp, then to scrapbook. We hit it off so well she was a bridesmaid in my wedding. We still get along awesome to this day. We get together to scrapbook every few months and she has been so sweet to give us her son’s Nick’s clothes that he has grown out of. Almost all of Joey’s clothes have come from Nick.
3. I’ve met a few other scrapbookers – Laura – I remember meeting her on a scrapbook excursion. I met a scrapbooker that was on my design team when I went to Seattle on my honeymoon. Most of the people I’ve ever met have all been scrapbookers!
I can’t think of anyone else I’ve met. Not that many people – unless they were my scrapbooking buds.
It’s been extremely cold in Michigan. We’ve had snow here – again. I’m so sick of snow! It’s April for Pete’s sake! We were watching the weather channel and Dallas had snow this weekend too! I guess it’s the first time in 69 years they’ve had snow in April so it looked like there was a cold spell all over the US. I guess I can’t say let’s move to Texas to get out of this cold weather because it looks like there is snow in Texas too!
One of the funny things Joey has been saying lately – ‘We don’t eat cats, we eat cows’. I have no clue where that came from but he says it often. It’s kinda funny! I told him we eat pig and chicken too but I don’t think he believes me!
I joined a photo a day challenge on the scrapbook.com board so you may see some creative photos on my blog now and then like the bath one of Joey. It’s one of my absolute favorites. The splash caught in mid-air and the expression is just awesome. I’m so happy about how it turned out.
That said I met with Julie, Joe’s mom’s friend that I’m doing the wedding photography for this weekend. She had a list of all of the photos she wants taken at the wedding which was perfect for me. I also took my pc over to her house to show her some of my photography and both her and her husband seemed very happy with my work so that gives me confidence to do this. I can tell she is going to have a low budget wedding so this is going to be fun. Joe’s mom is having me do it for no cost. She said she would cover equipment expenses but I don’t think she needs to. I did get a few things but she does so much for us anyhow. Plus my brother is getting married the day before and I’m going to do the photography for his wedding too so I’ll be able to use the new toys twice!
Monday 4/9
Joe and Justin.
I never got photos of the kids with the Easter eggs. So here's Justin!
The boys - both kids have an Easter egg.
Our Easter eggs - after the kids got a hold of them!
The candy!
Justin rolls all over now and is trying to crawl.
I'll get this crawling thing SOON!
I give up. Too tired! This is hard work!
Aren't I CUTE?? :)
Look at those eyelashes!
TyTy.
Justin all bundled up for our walk.
The boys. We brought along the umbrella stroller for Joey, who thought it was more fun to push it than to sit in it.
The view from across our street looking down towards our home.
The robin - spring's around the corner. It can't come fast enough!
Our home - it's a bi-level.
Joey decided to be king of the rock!
An extremely rare photo. Some of our cats do not get along (ie Alex and Kali (the two white and gray ones) so they are never in the same place. The black is Sasha, TyTy is orange, Kali is next to him, and Alex is the oldest - on top.
Friday 4/13
Those wanting additional children - you will have to deal with the fact that the older child wants everything the younger child has. I didn't see Joey even get into this but he was jumping up in down in Justin's jumparoo. This is just a RIOT! He's obviously too big!
Now and then I remember that I have a camera on my cell phone. Here are some recent photos taken with my cell phone:
Taken on 3/8 with my phone - I can not believe that someone totally filled the ENTIRE back of the car with JUNK. Can you imagine what is living in here? Yikes!!! It's filled to the CEILING. I was thanking God that he didn't walk up as I was taking this photo. It was dark outside so that's why it's very pixelated.
My girlfriend Jen is getting married and we had her wedding shower. Here is Jen and I.
Jen, I and her sister Beth (standing), who is thin as a rail after having kid #4. Amazing!
Tuesday I worked downtown with Joe and they let me work in a vacant office. I was there for a meeting on our relocation. This is the view from the office. OMG was it AWESOME!
Another view from 32 stories up in the air in Detroit.
See the Ren Cen? (It's that tall building that says GM). Overlooking the Detroit River. Across from that is Canada. Joe has a view like this every day!
I was invited to see the Piston's game on Wednesday this week. I can't say much more other than they won their championship game!
Before the game started they had these HUGE flames of fire go up in the air. It was so big I could feel the heat from back where I was!!!!
Another view of the game. Fun! It was my first Piston's game!
Justin exploring the cement and a pine needle.
Joey LOVES to play in the sand with his trucks.
Got him on a blanket because he was getting really dirty and eating grass! :)
One of my dear hubby. Isn't he handsome?
Joe took one of me!
I LOVE this one. Grandma with her shovel is standing right by a flower pot (ironically).
Can anyone say MUD?! We stripped him down at the door before he came inside Grandma's house.
Calling all scouts - my son is some baseball player already. He can throw it about 20 feet and look at him hit! Love the tongue out look! Concentration!
Justin - so cute! ;)
More mud....and tractors and puddles.
Grass, dirt, stones.
Joey washing off his hands in a puddle nearby.
Just a fun shot of the growing brush.
The wedding I'll be shooting in June is close to the water. The bride hates photos (groan) and doesn't want any done on the water! I did have to go see it though. This is in Caseville on the water - the bay - Saginaw Bay. The air was really cool coming off the bay.
I guess they have blue crab. Found this on the beach and liked the composition.
Joe's mom walking along the bay.
Justin at dinner time!
Joey taking a rest on the chair (ok, no, I posed him!!).
Justin in the grass, once again.
