A belated Merry Christmas!

Wow! I know this time of year is supposed to be busy, but I think this year was a record for me. Now that we live closer to Blake's family, there were (and are still) many get-togethers. And, my Mom came up for several days, too, so we got to visit with her. I really enjoyed the things we did, and met some of Blake's cousins that I hadn't seen before. James had a blast at everything, since he loves (and demands!) attention, and he had lots of opportunities to play with his cousins. Every holiday activity with MOMS Club ended up being cancelled (more than once) due to the lousy weather we kept having.

This year it was really fun to see James so excited about Christmas! He really "got" it this year. He was able to tell Santa that he wanted a kitchen, a hammer, and candy (all of which he got) rather than crying at being placed on the lap of a big stranger. He was excited to leave out a cupcake for Santa and carrots for the reindeer, and then see them gone in the morning. He also really enjoyed digging in everyone's stockings to see what we got, as well as ripping off the wrapping paper on presents. And, I was really proud of him for leaving the presents under the tree alone until it was Christmas. The only time he bothered them at all was when one of the recipients came over and he tried to give them their present right away. It was very cute.

After last year's gingerbread house of horrors http://stillheather.blogspot.com/2007/12/better-late-than-never.html , I got us a very simple gingerbread train this year. It was fun to decorate, although James kept trying to eat all the candy. Last year, it was Blake who did that.

And, our family ornament exchange was up a level this year: all of the ones we gave each other ended up being sets. I got Blake a set of recycled motherboard ornaments from ThinkGeek.com. James got a 4-piece shatterproof train set. And Blake gave me a set of 3 Thomas Kinkade ornaments that are just beautiful!

There were two downsides this year. One was last Monday. We awoke at 5:10am to the fire alarms going off. James and I had been through this a few days before, so I knew what it was, but it was a first for Blake, who had been at work the last time. It was very cold out and a water pipe had broken. Both times the problem started in the same apartment, which makes me think they didn't fix it very well the first time. The first time, it broke and flooded the apartment upstairs and across the "hall" from us, then came down to flood our neighbor's apartment. They were able to get it under control before it got to us. Not so lucky when it happened in the middle of the night. I think both residents were gone at the time, the response time was slower, and our apartment flooded, too. Nothing important was ruined, other than our day. Blake was late to work, since no one helped us with the water control (they were busy in the other apartments) and he had to use the shop vac. And I spent the day washing and rewashing the wet stuff we used to soak up the water, mopping, putting some of what we had to move back, and taking care of James, who had a stomach bug. And getting ready for Mom to arrive. We had very very noisy fans and a dehumidifier going for the next several days, but all seems to be well now.

The other bad thing was that I caught James' stomach bug on Christmas Eve. So, I missed everything on Christmas Day, except for getting out of bed for a bit to open stockings and presents. The upside is that when I weighed myself yesterday, I'd lost 5 pounds. So, if I can get the stomach flu 2 more times, I might get to my goal weight.

All in all, it has been a wonderful holiday, although Blake wants to quarantine us for the month of December next year so no one gets sick.

And the runner up is . . .

http://www.ellabridals.com/collection/index.php/gowns/publicView/84

I finally went shopping for my wedding dress. Just in time, since it takes about 16 weeks to come in, possibly longer because of the Chinese New Year. (So, apparently I am getting a politically incorrect dress.) The link above is the dress that I went in preferring, as did Lori and Blake. And it was very nice. But, there was another that was perfect for me (ok, it will be perfect, after probably a few hundred dollars worth of alterations). I can't/won't show the link to that dress, though. Blake doesn't get to see until the wedding day. It is a little bit of a shame that I didn't choose the first one, though, because Blake said that he would have to get me a nice necklace to go with it. But the dress I chose does call for some earrings!

It was a huge relief to get that done. I had been nervous and procrastinating, and it really was easy. So, the wedding plans really are starting to come together nicely. Since I am not a good planner of much of this stuff, I am so relieved that we chose a ceremony/reception site that includes much of what we need. Next, flowers, food, and favors!

An interesting photo, because I was tagged

So, Cara (who sent me a very fun secret santa gift!) tagged me for a photo game. I had to go to my 4th photo file and choose the 4th photo and blog about it. THIS IS NOT IT. But, it is from the same day, and I will explain. This is right after we got the new camera last spring. We started potty training with James. The 4th photo was of the him looking cute posing in his new big boy underpants, which I really don't want floating around the internet. This photo was on the same day, documenting another aspect of potty training -- the increased amount of mopping and laundry that had to be done during that period. We ended up giving up on the potty training within a week, started again in August, and now all is well. I am back to the regular amount of mopping and laundry.

So, to tag 4 more people. Sorry, participate if you would like :)

Rachel

Beth

Blake, who has the same photo files as me, but maybe c0uld amend the rules a bit . . .

and Danielle, who hasn't blogged in a while :)

Our love is so SHOCKING!

I thought this was pretty funny. Last night, Blake and I gave each other a little kiss in the living room. As our lips met, we got a big shock! Of course, I've also been getting shocks when I touch the baker's rack, the DVR, and various other things around here, so maybe it's not really a statement on our romance.

I'll set up the humidifier today and see if that helps.

In other news . . . happy birthday, Rod Blagojevich! What did you wish for?

Know Why?

That is James' newest thing. He says it almost at the end of every statement. He used to just say it, now he follows it up with "because it's fun", or more recently, "because it's not fun" (if applicable).

We have had a lot of fun lately, with many family events over the Thanksgiving weekend. And Blake's birthday before that. And a few get-togethers the week before that. I am so horribly behind on blogging that I am not even going to try to catch up. We have really been enjoying ourselves, but now we've been sick this week. I think it's our bodies' way of trying to get us back to normal. Kind of like "if you don't slow down, I'm going to shut you down". So, there's been a whole lot of nothing going on here the last couple of days.

The good news for me about being sick is that Blake bought Tetris for me last weekend. Which means that as James naps and I don't really have energy for anything else, I can sit on the sofa and play Tetris. With slightly less guilt than if I did this at another time.

Our plans for the weekend look pretty low key, unless we decide to go see Santa. Which we should, since the lines will get longer the longer we procrastinate. And we need a tree. Which I enjoy very much.

So, I guess the moral of my blogging story lately is . . . if there are fun things happening in my life, I will likely not blog about it because I'm busy having fun. When things are boring, I blog. Go figure.

Happy Birthday!!!

Blake turns 30 today!!! Which means that we are now both in our 30s. For 6 1/2 more months. Then one of us isn't in their 30s anymore. Let's not talk about it.

I don't have pictures of the birthday boy today. I should later. But here is a picture of my cake-baking assistant.

No, that's not a goatee. Yes, the cake is chocolate.

We're still here

Just haven't been doing that much. I got my hair done on Saturday. Highlights and lowlights, which is a first for me. It looks good. It looked really good the day I came home. Now that I am in charge of fixing it, it just looks like a brighter version of how I usually look.

I have been super lazy this week, since James caught himself from falling Sunday by grabbing and hanging onto my neck. My neck was not designed for that. Today was the first day I felt pretty much back to normal.

I also found out that my old dentist, Dr. Moan, really wasn't so good. We suspected, but he always had the newest technology and the coolest office, so we were lured back. My TMJ appliance was too loose to wear, so I went to a dentist to check on it. Who sent me to someone else. Both of them confirmed that the one I'd been wearing has damaged my bite. Of course, the specialist wanted to charge $6500 for a different set of appliances and then 2 years of braces. I looked at information online -- which I probably should have done 10 years ago -- and found that it is not recommended to do any of these things, and that I shouldn't have worn anything for longer than 6 months. So, we'll see how everything goes not wearing anything. And I will just plan on having difficulty eating sandwiches from now on.

That's really how the week has gone. Nothing exciting. We'll have to remedy that!

Across the street

One of the first things I heard on the radio when I woke up this morning was that Joe Biden was going to be in town today. Then they said the location, which happens to be right across the street from our apartment. I took this picture from the door to our building. I know, it is not terribly exciting, but I took it from the door to our building! I thought that was pretty cool.

Larry called at 7am, offering to watch James if I wanted to go see Biden. My first thought was that it would be fun, and nice to have seen both Biden and Obama. Which led to my second thought of what a pain it was to wait . . . and wait . . . and wait to see Obama. And Hillary. And Kerry. So I said no, thank you. And changed my mind 15 minutes later, by which time Larry didn't get the message. So, when James and I were going out later, we drove by and listened to a little of the speech over the speaker system. It was after 10:30. The doors opened at 7:30, and the officer said people were in line early and it filled quickly. So, not going turned out to be a very good thing.

So, then James and I had a good time at Bass Pro. I tried to steer him in directions of live fish, waterfalls, and such, and away from things like bears pouncing on deer. His favorite part was the Kids' treehouse. It didn't look like much to me, just a hollow plastic tree with 3 stuffed birds in it that you could put on a ledge. But James and the 4-year-old girl in there LOVED it. And, we saw them setting up Santa's workshop. Santa arrives in a week. James wants to tell him that he wants candy. Last year he wanted a cookie, but I think the recent Halloween festivities have influenced him. I want for Santa to bring him a toy kitchen, to which Blake said, "Um, Heather, he's a boy." But, he thought the kitchen I chose was suitably masculine, so we shall see.

On Saturday, Larry and Debbie had a hot dog roast, which was a lot of fun (except for the anxiety of having an accident-prone 3-year-old boy around fire). Blake took this great picture of James with his great-grandmother.

And, since I am going backwards in this post, here are some pictures from Halloween. James really enjoyed being a giraffe, and was the only one of the grandsons who didn't have to be bribed by Larry to put their costume back on for a picture, since he was still happily wearing it. He got it out again today. Although he also tried to knock on the neighbor's door and say "trick or treat".

I'm not completely sure, since he told me about it later, but I think this was the lady who called Blake "mean" because he was hovering over James and telling him to be careful. Apparently she didn't see when we were across the street and he almost took a tumble down someone's very steep concrete steps.

Finally, none of these pictures show it as clearly as I would like, but we all found it pretty amusing that one of the major characteristics of the giraffe costume was a very large, very padded butt. Didn't notice that about giraffes before.

And I would really like to know . . .

why Blogger sometimes doesn't give me any paragraph spacing at all, and apparently saved all the spacing for that last post.

My experience as an elderly Floridian

Well, almost.





I went to vote today. And the system they used was a different one than I've used before. But, I consider myself a basically intelligent person, so I wasn't worried. Well, after marking my vote for Obama, the page didn't look any different. I had to really push part of the contraption that held the ballot down so that the ink would take. It was hard to see and a little awkward. I had to do that each time I voted for someone on that part of the machine.





I'm glad I got my voting done. I am pretty sure I didn't place any votes for Pat Buchanan. And I really appreciate Larry and Debbie watching James so I didn't have to take him along with me for the long lines on Tuesday.



In honor of voting today, here one of the best photos of when I "saw" Obama last February in St. Louis. It wasn't all my fault. I was shorter than the people in front of me, was very far back, and it was in a darkened stadium with bright lights facing me. And I was behind the stage. :-)

No photos of trick or treating. . . or storytime . . .

But here is one Blake took of us at the coffee shop after we went out for dinner Thursday. One of the servers took our picture at the restaurant, but this one is better. I finished the acrylic album I made at Archiver's as a gift for Blake, but found that we have very few pictures of us together lately. We appear to have stopped asking people to take our picture together, and we haven't been very good at the end of the arm shots. Until I realized what the problem was. We tended to look at the screen instead of the lens. Duh. So, this is a bit of an improvement.

We had a great time on our anniversary. The new restaurant down the street is ok, but we were both a little disappointed. But, it was so nice to relax with some drinks, eat our food in relative quiet, and then go for a coffee afterwards. And to return to a quiet home. Yep, James was with the grandparents! Yeah!

Blake left for LA early on Saturday for a conference and won't be back until Friday morning. He's having a good time and says he can see the Hollywood sign from his hotel. And that he saw Governor Arnold in the airport. Then he said he was kidding about that one.

So, James and I have been entertaining ourselves here. We went trick or treating in Independence with Shane and Katy and family on Saturday, which was fun. We didn't get to stay for the parade, though, because it was naptime and James kept wanting to sit on every step or bench he saw. Since that time, he has been enjoying his candy. When I let him have it. I find that it works well for bribes.

Today we went to storytime at Borders. He actually sat for most of it and had a great time. He especially liked the cookie at the end.

Blake has the camera, so all I have are a few pictures on a disposable one and my phone. I'd forgotten what a pain it is to not know how your picture looks when you take it AND to not be able to just take a million of them and delete.

4 Years Ago Today . . .

I needed work done on my car, so I went to a coffee shop while I waited. It was a political season then, too, and I was reading What's The Matter With Kansas. The guy at the next table asked me about it, and 4 years later I wake up to find this:




I had no idea how much meeting Blake that day was going to change my life, and I just couldn't be happier about it! Happy Anniversary, Blake!

It's Raining, It's Pouring

and that makes it boring here. We stayed in and drew pictures of dogs, danced with James' truck, and miscellaneous other things. Not too exciting.

Today's picture is from when my Mom visited recently. We went back to Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead. Here is James feeding the fish.

Neglect

I have been so neglectful of the blog lately. Not because there's anything wrong, or because we haven't done anything. Just not getting around to it. So, I'm not really going to try to catch up. I'm just going to try to start putting short little posts and a "picture for the day". Capture some of those images from Mom's recent visit and some of the things we've been doing.

So, today, James and I went to MOMS Club and that was about it! A pretty average day. Today's picture is from Oct. 4, when we went to the KC Renaissance Festival. I'm sure I'll have more pics posted from this. It was a lot of fun. I like this photo because Blake was so happy with his mead. He had the cold and the warm mead. He liked them both. I thought warm mead was nasty. In this photo, James is probably looking at the caterpillar that was crawling along the table.

And, Blake made some changes to his blog, I guess, because the link that first worked now doesn't (thanks, Mom). It is actually http://geekswithblogs.net/blake/Default.aspx I hope.

Learning a new system

Blake has started a blog!  http://geekswithblogs/blake And he is showing me the program he uses for his posts.  Apparently, I can use it too.  We shall see.  The tool is Windows Live Writer and I'm excited to use it!

Border Town

All of our tv stations come from the Kansas City area, which is in both Missouri and Kansas. Know what that means? Twice as many political ads! It's not bad enough that Missouri is a battleground state for the presidential contest, but I get to hear about all the ways that both Missouri and Kansas politicians are evil, and why I should vote for the opponent.

Just a few more weeks . . . I suppose I could turn off the tv . . . but after 2 years without it . . . nah.

There are more important things to talk about

But they will have to wait. I'm a little behind on things here. I spent most of yesterday looking for my keys. I knew at 6:30 am, when I wanted something out of my car, that they were missing. I looked everywhere, with the exception of digging through the trash. Blake said he'd help me look when he got home, so I thought we could do that task together.

Blake is always losing his keys, the card to the fitness center, etc. But, I do a pretty good job of putting mine in their spot. Or at least really close.

So, it was a long day, with me getting more and more annoyed and worried about where they might be.

I asked Blake if they might be in his car. He said no, and acted like he looked. During dinner, he remembered using them to go get his wallet out of my car Sunday. So, about 12 hours after noticing them missing, and going through every drawer and freezer here, he found them. In his car. He owes me! (But at least I continue with my record of not being the one to lose these things.)

Still Alone -- Post 3 of 3

Of course, as these get read on the blog, these posts are showing up in reverse order, but so be it.

On Monday, we went to Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead with MOMS Club. Only 3 moms and 4 kids were there, but it was really a fun place. James had been there with Larry and Debbie, but this was my first time. It was a really educational place, in addition to having all of the slides and things to climb on. James got to see how to milk a cow, was fascinated by the chickens, and took his job of feeding the goats very seriously. And I learned about turtle shells always having 13 scales, which Native Americans used to count the full moons of the year. It was a very enjoyable day, until James left our group to climb up on a tractor, after being told not to. So, mean mom had to stick with the discipline and we left (after James apologized to his friends for making them wait for him to get off the tractor). To be honest, we were probably on our way out, anyway, because we were getting tired and hungry.

I have tried twice to upload pictures, but keep getting error messages. I give up. Trust me, they're adorable.

This concludes post 3 of 3, and now I think it is time for a nap.

Still alone -- post 2 of 3

On the train, with a real train going by in the background

Not really much of a "maze"

Blake is about to lose his shirt to these goats!

We kept a good eye on James.

So, last Saturday, we went to Carolyn's Country Cousins Pumpkin Patch. We got up bright and early, because the first 100 people there that day got free tickets to the Renaissance Festival. Tickets for that are $15.50 each, in advance (free for James), and it only cost us $16 to get into the Pumpkin Patch. James should have paid, but they said he was little enough to get in for free. (Ok, there's one advantage of my short genes!) So we got a bargain!

This place was so fun! It was all set up for kids, with animals to pet, a tricycle racing track, a train, a little kid sized corn maze, and SO MANY things for kids to climb and slide on. It was really a neat place.

That night, we played James' new Chutes and Ladders game again, as well as a modified game of Bandu.

Chutes and Ladders and Guinness. How do YOU spend a Saturday night?

All Alone -- Post 1 of 3

James is still playing with the toys that came on his Dora cake

Does he look happy?

The kids (and Shane)

Larry helped carry everything out to the car

Blake had a cold for about a week, and I managed to avoid it until about Wednesday. So now, James and Blake are visiting Danielle and her family for the K-State family weekend, and I am home alone. Blake pretty much convinced me that would be best, because my whiny, sluggish self would keep them from having as much fun. I agree, since I remember how Blake's whiny, sluggish self put a damper on our fun last weekend. So, I watched the debates and yelled at the tv by myself last night, slept in today (getting up only for a few minutes to turn off Blake's alarm at 6am (!)), and am basically just taking it easy. And, what could be easier than updating the blog?

So, as Mom pointed out to me -- I hadn't yet posted birthday party pics. We had a really good time at Waldo Pizza. The have different party food packages you can get, and we got the 20 people one for the 13 people who were there. It worked out great, because there were several kids having birthday parties there, and we seemed to be the only one getting the package, which sort of justified the number of tables we took over.

James really likes Dora and Diego, so we got a Dora cake and balloons, and many of his gifts were Diego-themed. As soon as I took the lid off the cake, James took a swipe at it. Blake seemed rather alarmed by that, but I thought it was pretty funny, and definitely a 3-year-old thing to do.

James had a lot of fun running around in there "playing" the video games. He really enjoyed opening his presents, although it was pretty funny when people would tell him to press the buttons on the toys to hear them -- it was so loud in there that you really couldn't hear much of anything.

We had the cake and ice cream at Larry and Debbie's. It was a much calmer, quieter environment, and gave us all a chance to talk. JAmes managed to stay awake until we got home. We didn't get home until 10:45, but fortunately the DVR had SNL on it, even though we forgot to record it. We watched a little of that, then collapsed. Or, more accurately, we were watching it, then woke up and realized it was time to go to bed.

It was a fun day!

Update

Blogger isn't being very consistent with me when I try to see what I updated on my earlier post. I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong, like when it doesn't do my paragraphs, but . . .

The story aired in the second hour of Morning Edition, but I wasn't among the few comments used. So, at least I didn't say anything stupid on national radio!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94748578

My fun experience -- aka I hope I didn't say anything stupid

At Mom's Club yesterday, Ina Jaffe from NPR (in the back on the left) was there to interview stay at home moms about their thoughts on the election. She chose the Lee's Summit group because McCain and Palin were in town last week. The person she called to set it up had never even heard of NPR, leading me to worry that I might be the only liberal there. Well, the first group she spoke to consisted of voters who had committed to a candidate. 6 of us volunteered for that group, and fortunately 3 were for Obama/Biden and 3 for McCain/Palin. It was interesting how polarizing Palin is for our group -- the 3 who support the McCain ticket were swayed to that side by her. Two of the 3 for Obama had already decided on him, and the third decided on him for sure after the Palin pick.

The interview was interesting. It was just her, a microphone (actually 2 because the first stopped working), recorder, and headset. There were plenty of background noises, as we were in a gym and there were kids running and yelling everywhere. She said this was a first for her.

I don't know when/if it will air, but I'll keep looking for it.

(I'll post about the birthday party later, but that one will take a little more time!)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94748578

Gotta Catch Up Quick!

Because we have some fun going on this weekend! James' 3rd birthday is tomorrow, and his party is this evening. We are all pretty excited for it. After about 6 months of James saying he is 3 whenever asked, he finally will be. Except that he has finally learned to say that he is 2.

Look who's turning 3!

Last weekend, we went to a Green Fair down the street. It was very small, but hopefully will grow. At least we got a CFL bulb and some information about a new recycling center opening, that I am happy about. And, the highlight was the performance of EcoElvis. All of his songs were about the environment. And, if you were under the age of 5, the music was pretty fun to dance to.

See those tents behind me? That's the Green Fair. All of it. Cost us $10 to get in!

Movin' to the sounds of Eco Elvis.

Then we went to the Greek Food Festival, which we really enjoyed. There was a bounce house for James, and fun Greek music and food for all of us. We loved the food, except for the dolmas. So now we know.

As the sticker says, we were all Greek For A Day!

The week has been pretty lousy. James has had a stomach bug, and between that and the almost constant rain (and nearby tornadoes last night), we haven't done much. As a result, it was great excitement when Blake locked his keys in the car the other day, so James and I went to rescue him and then eat out. And this morning all going to the store to pick up the birthday cake and balloons. The little things have been our entertainment!

Labor Day Weekend

We "worked" hard all weekend to have lots of fun (I know, it's corny). I'm not sure at this point I even remember all that we did.

On Saturday, we went to the KC Irish Fest at Crown Center. The first thing we noticed was that the fountains (except for the one the kids play in) were dyed green. They also had a couple of kids' areas. James made a bracelet and a crown. Later he really had fun in the bounce area. We listened to part of a talk about how James Joyce changed the English language. We were on our way to some fun music, but they stopped for a break as we got there. I ran into someone from MOMS Club with her family. We also ran into David and Theresa, friends of mine (David was my first OT boss!) from Columbia and had a nice time talking to them. It's always fun to see people you know at a crowded place, and I don't have that experience as much as I used to (believe it or not, Lori). The festival was fun, but considering how expensive everything was, and that you had to pay to get in, we expected maybe a little more. However, once we got a stout to drink, we miraculously started having a great time. It must be noted that it was a Boulevard Stout, as there was NO GUINNESS anywhere at the Irish festival. Apparently Boulevard and Miller had the beer contracts. We ended with James playing in the (non-green) fountain.

Nice action shot!

Should the woman running the kids' bounce house be smoking?

Not Guinness, but good enough

On Sunday, we went to SantaCaliGon Days in Independence. It is to celebrate the Santa Fe, etc. Trails. It was so different from the Irish Fest. One day we drive a short way and are at a big crowded festival in the middle of the city, and the next day we drive a short way and are at a festival that has a small town feel to it (in a good way!). We liked the carnival there, but decided that James would probably not respond well to the rides once they started moving. So we walked around a lot, ate carnival food (and felt lousy later), and just relaxed.

There was a booth selling subscriptions to the KC Star, with a very high pressure salesperson. He acted like he had the best deal you would find anywhere, tried to write down our names immediately, and then acted offended that we'd seen a better price elsewhere. His best price was $7.95/month for Sunday delivery. Considering that the paper is only $1.25, I'm failing to see the bargain there. But, he did give us a reprinting of the very first issue of the Star from 120 years ago. Yikes. Two big things I noticed about this paper. They were pretty graphic in those days. There was a VERY descriptive story about a woman who died and her alcoholic husband, as well as one about 5 children trampled by a team of horses (which also trampled a dog "deader than a doornail"). The other thing I noticed was that the print was very small. I have the benefit of yearly eye exams and good contacts, and I found myself squinting. How did people read this 120 years ago?

That evening, we went to the coffee shop for a cheese plate (yummy!), a beer for Blake, and wine for me. It was really, really good, and then we walked around the area to the fountain. It was a beautiful night.

Monday, Blake went golfing, James went out with Larry and Debbie, and I ran a couple of errands. Then Blake met me at Starbucks for a bit. I then went to Archiver's and have now started on our Save the Date cards. I love them and can't wait to get them sent out! That evening, Blake and James went swimming and I relaxed at home.



Since then, it has been raining, so we are staying in, and I am back to being a tv junkie, watching the Republican Convention. It is a much different experience than the Democratic one. I'm not going to start discussing all of my opinions on everything here, because once I start, I just may not be able to stop, and this post is already long enough!