Since Alivia is now two, I've been contemplating taking her to daycare. There are a few things that bother me about my current child care situation. One big thing is that I'm not able to claim my weekly child care fee on my taxes because my sitter doesn't claim in on her taxes. Maybe I shouldn't put that out there...but it's true. So I toured a daycare yesterday and I liked it. They have a special program for two year olds. The fee is only $22 more a week than what I am paying now and I can claim in on my taxes at the end of the year. They have bulletin boards in each room saying what they'll be doing each week and a set menu and the lady said I could have copies of everything every week. I really like that. They have sheets they fill out for each kid every day that shows what they did and when they went potty. The only bad thing about this is that I have to break the news to my babysitter. I'm not looking forward to that AT ALL. I was going to do it this morning but her son was there. So I'm going to try again tonight. I'm such a chicken. I called my mom last night and said "Will you break up with my babysitter for me?" She said no. When we were touring the daycare, Alivia jumped right in and started playing with some kids. Their front door is kept locked by a keypad and each parent has their own code to get in. Alright well, I still have a few hours to work myself up to telling her....geez.

I have found something that relieves stress and anxiety better than a pedicure, manicure, massage or a facial. I paid someone to clean my house. She came in on saturday and worked for about 5 hours and she did such a great job. Yesterday I kept saying "Look, she wiped this off, Look, she cleaned this out" Rob kept saying "Yea, Aim, that's what you're supposed to do when you clean" I didn't really have a response for that. But it felt so great to have everything all clean and shiny. I got motivated and cleaned the basement and did all of my laundry. I was in such a good mood yesterday and probably will be for several days to come. We'll probably have her come in once a month or maybe every two weeks not sure yet.

I worked at the State fair on saturday. AAA had a booth there and they asked if anyone wanted to work. I had never been and thought it would be fun. NOT A SINGLE PERSON WOULD GO WITH ME...shame on all of you!! It's all good though, I was worried that it would be too hot but it really wasn't that bad at all. We were under a tent in the shade with two fans blowing. I wish I would have gotten to walk around a little more, there was a TON of stuff to do, I would have loved if Alivia was there. Maybe next year. There were alot of "special" people that came to our booth. I thought the whole mullet thing was dead but oh no, they're alive and kickin in sedalia. I saw several, but the best thing I saw all day was a kid that came to our table he had on the standard state fair attire, cowboy hat, cowboy boots, jeans with holes and a tshirt. As he got closer to the booth, the guy that I was working with noticed that there was a belt buckle on the outside of his tshirt. We were confused. When he got up to the table my co-worker said "Can I ask you a question?" The kid came up and said "What?" my co-worker said "I'm just curious how you got your belt buckle on the OUTSIDE of your shirt" The kid kinda laughed as did all of his friends and he said "There was a hole in my shirt and I figured instead of messing with tucking my shirt in I would use the belt buckle to keep my shirt in place"
He had pulled his belt buckle through the hole in his shirt.... wow.

This is gonna be a busy week, I have my bowling meeting for thursday this week, my purse party is friday, i have to work saturday morning, the st charles festival is this weekend and our sunday bowling league starts this week.

There's only so many hours in the day dear....

Last year when Rob was between jobs and trying to work for himself, he worked for a body shop when they needed help. It's a small shop and he only worked there 3 or 4 times. They called yesterday and said that one of the guys got sick and will be out for 6 to 8 weeks. I guess they were asking Rob if he would help them out. So at dinner last night he says "This is going to suck" I said "How will that work?" He said "Well, I'll be working at night too I guess" I said "Well, you don't have to do it, just tell them you can't" He said "They helped me when I needed work and I need to return the favor" I said "There's only so many hours in the day dear" he paused and said "Yea....I know" I respect the fact that he wants to help these people and don't get me wrong the money would be AWESOME but it's not worth him killing himself over. I don't know what he's going to do.....

Ms. Sassy

The other night Alivia was in the bath tub and she likes to stand the whole time but she makes me sit on the floor next to the tub!!

The other night I said "You need to sit down, you're going to bust your butt" and as usual her response was "no" I said "Why?" she said "Why??? ...Cause!!"

I don't know where she gets this stuff from but she cracks me up.

sleeping beauty

I took this picture this morning with my cell phone, she looked so cute, sleeping in her big girl bed!! There isn't really too much going on at our house, we are still working on the bathroom. All of the plumbing is done, Rob is working on getting the rest of the drywall down so he can put up the new walls we bought last week. Alivia continues to crack me up every single day. We ordered pizza last night and Rob was downstairs when it came. I said "go tell daddy that the pizza is here and it's time to eat" She stood at the top of the stairs screaming "DADDY... HUNGRY??!...PIZZA" and each time she said it she got louder and louder. It was hilarious. We took Rob's cavalier to get an inspection because the tags are due. It ended up costing $378. I'm pretty sure the car isn't worth that much. That's all I got

I got the brilliant idea to take the front rail off of alivia's bed over the weekend. I figured she's two, it's time. It's been going really good. The first night she woke up at midnight and was standing in the doorway to our bedroom with her blanket-cute as can be. So we let her in our bed. The second night she came in at 4 and this morning she came in our room at 6. So, by tommorrow we should be good to go!!

Rob was supposed to be on jury duty today (sorry rachel!!) He wasn't really looking forward to it but he did get to sleep in 3 hours today!! He got ready and drove up there, checked in, and they told him it was cancelled!! He was very excited!! He's going to get his work car inspected and all that good stuff today.

So, I'm not too thrilled about it but I'm going to attempt my fruit diet again-just for a month. We're going on a float trip in just about a month so I figured that was a good incentive. I started yesterday and lost two pounds already!! Rob said he would eat fruit with me at night. I was making a huge fruit plate for dinner last night and I was cutting up strawberries and he said "Can we dip those in chocolate?" I said "YOU can" he hesitated and said "Ok I won't....well I'll try"

That's about it for now.......

Birthday Madness....

2326=929=;;6=XROQDF>23238:4987455wp1lsi.jpeg">
2326=929=;;6=XROQDF>23238:49859:2wp1lsi.jpeg">

Well I officially have a two year old. I can't believe it seems just like yesterday!! Speaking of yesterday. I took off work to spend the day with Alivia for her birthday. We got an early phone call that my cousin and his wife had their baby. They weren't supposed to have him until today (07/17) but she went into labor early and had to have him yesterday. Amber, Ashley and I went to the hospital to visit. As we were getting on the elevator some people got off and I said to Amber "That looks like Anthony" (the son of a friend of hers) She said, "his mom must be here having her baby" When we got up to the maternity floor we got off the elevator and a guy from my work was standing in the waiting room I said "Are you guys having your baby today?" they were. We went and saw my cousin's baby and walked up and down the halls, she wanted to try and find her friend and I wanted to find the guy from my work. I ran into ANOTHER girl I know from the bowling alley that was extremely pregnant!!! It was so weird to see so many people that we knew in the same place. Alivia's party went so well.The weather was great and I think everyone had a really good time.

I'm trying to call around and confirm everything for the big birthday party on sunday. I'm so excited and the weather is supposed to be nice. This birthday party went from "let's have a combined party for jack and alivia's birthday " to "did you call and confirm the k-9 demonstration!!" it's gotten a little out of hand but it's going to be a blast. It's now officially been 7 days since i've had a/c at my house. You just don't realize what a luxury that is until you don't have it for a week!! Hopefully they will get the part they need today and we can get it fixed today or tomorrow. I know the people at the warranty company and the a/c company hate to hear my voice on the other end of the line. I figure, hey, if i'm sweating, i'm gonna make your life miserable too!! I kept anthony and jack all weekend. alivia and jack got along great and played together all weekend. We went to alex and brady's first baseball game too, which they won by the way. Rob and I went to a cooking class at dierbergs with my mom and dad on saturday night it was a good time and great food. Today is my little sister's bday. I can't believe she is 18. I'm pretty sure she should stay 8 forever. we're going to dinner tonight to celebrate. Amber told her she would get her a tattoo for her bday but she could only get it on her foot because amber doesn't want ashley to have a tattoo on her back for amber's wedding. Who cares what ashley's wants, it's only her body, it is all about amber ya know. I thought that was funny and then ashley asked if amber would get one with her and amber told her no!! Alivia is talking so good, I can't believe it, we can actually have mini conversations with her. This morning I was in her room trying to find some clothes to put on her and she was in my bed and she said "Mommy?" I said "What baby?" she said "where are you?" I said "i'm in your room" she said "okay" I really cannot believe she's gonna be two already.

So, I went to a purse party on Friday night. I bought a purse, a wallet and a very cute travel bag. I will be having a party on August 17th at my house. I'm not usually into that kind of stuff but everything was really cute so i'm excited about having my own party. Saturday one of our friends came over and completely re-did all of the bathroom plumbing for both upstairs bathrooms. I'm pretty excited about that. We had the old cast iron plumbing-now it's all updated to PVC. The bathroom is coming along-the sub floor is down so now Rob can start the drywall, that should be interesting! This week is going to be crazy. I'm watching Jack and Anthony this weekend so that should be fun! If I don't blog before then, hope everyone has a safe 4th!

The Day From Hell...

I guess it all started yesterday morning really. We have problems with our air conditioner every year-never fails. We had trouble a few months ago, and then starting yesterday morning it's 80 degrees in my house and the air conditioner is running non stop. THEN, I come home from work last night to find Rob standing in the driveway soaking wet and he looked like he had been running and he was talkin to someone frantically on his cell phone. I slowly opened my car door to hear " I was working in the bathroom and a board dropped on the water line and there's water everywhere how do I make it stop?" I got alivia out of the car and went into the house to hear the waterfall going on in my basement. I showed Rob where to turn the water off (I guess in the panic he just blanked) The ceiling in the basement was dripping everywhere and there was about 3 inches of water on the floor, the bathroom floor upstairs was soaked and had gotten about 3 feet of the carpet in my bedroom wet. We sucked all the water off the carpet and started the fans. I really wasn't freaking out too bad and the only reason was because we had actually taken everything out of the basement to clean it out and we were going to put it all back sometime this weekend so nothing got week except an entertainment center, that might be the only thing that gets ruined. I just kept saying "It could have been SO MUCH WORSE!!"
Then we went to home depot to get the part that Rob needed to block the pipe off so we could turn the water back on...they didn't have it. We had to meet my dad over at my sister's house to pick up the tables from the garage sale and return those to Jenny's brother. On the way to his house it started to rain. Then we went to the Home depot in O'Fallon and we found the part we needed. We figured we better stop and get something to eat before we went home because it was getting late. We went to the Bread Co and when we came out my car wouldn't start!!! Luckily it was right across the street from Amber's work so we ran over and took her car, went home, got the jump box and came back to my car. It started right up and we didn't get home till about 9:30. So I guess we need to figure out what the hell is going on with our A/C. I wish our warranty company would just replace it but I guess they figure if they can keep us going for 3 months at a time why bother! I'm crossing my fingers that there are no more tragedies today!

The wishing well....or maybe not

Since our bathroom in our bedroom is all torn out we have to take showers in the hall bathroom. When I am getting ready for work in the morning, Alivia usually lays in my bed and watches channel 9 and drinks her milk. Today she came into the bathroom while I was in the shower and she had a hand full of change. Rob leaves his change laying around everywhere. We had to turn on her humidifier last night because she is getting a little bit of a cough, I hadn't turned it off yet. I got out of the shower and she went into her room with all of her change. The next thing I heard change being dropped into water. I walked into her room and she had taken the lid off of her humidifer and was throwing the coins into it. One thing I can say is that she did turn the humidifier off before she turned it into a wishing well. She is so freakin smart it's scary. She talkes in 3 and 4 word sentences now, it's so cute. She also tells on people, "Mommy, Amber bite me" and points to the place where she was bitten. It's pretty funny. Last night she was trying to get a piece of mail out of the trash, I told her no and she kept trying to get it so rob told her no and she still didn't stop so rob slapped her hand (not very hard of course) she comes running into the living room where I was and then she got up and went back into the kitchen and said "no hit daddy" and pointed her finger at him!!

GARAGE SALE UPDATE
Amber's neighborhood is having a neighborhood garage sale this weekend so we left our stuff set up and will be at it again this saturday.

Garage Sale

If anyone is interested, Amber and I are having a garage sale at her house tomorrow from 6 Am to whenever. She lives off of Queensboro in St. Peters, We have signs up. We have a ton of decorations, clothes and lots of other miscellaneous items.

This week has been crazy trying to get everything set up. This week of the year is always crazy anyway. Between June 12th and June 20th, we have my mom's bday, my dad's bday, rob's dads bday, and fathers day for my dad, rob's dad and rob's stepdad. It's always a very expensive, very busy week! We're almost through it though!!

We're BBBBACCKKK!!

Texas was great....Once we got there. Monday night our flight was supposed to leave at 5:05 pm. We got to the airport and went to the gate about 4:00 and the flight had been cancelled. So they directed us to another gate to get rebooked. There was a 6:20 flight and they put us on that one. No big deal, we went and had some dinner. We went back to the gate to wait. We started hearing people say that the 6:20 flight was being pushed back to 7:50. They hadn't made an announcement so I didn't get too worried. Then they made an announcement. We were starting to get a little antsy and Alivia was getting bored. We finally got on the plane at 7:50. We pushed back from the gate and then the plane stopped and they said that the weather in Dallas was still bad and we would need to wait until 8:45 to take off. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!? A one year old on a plane sitting still for 45 minutes...great. She didn't do too bad and then we finally took off and landed in Dallas at 10:05. We were taxing down the runway and the plane stopped, they said there was another plane in our gate and it would be about 10 minutes, everone on the plane just chuckled, it was just humorous at this point. 10 minutes turned into an hour and 15 minutes, we didn't get off the plane until 11:20!!! That was the longest hour and a half flight of my life. We finally went to get our bags and then off to get our rental car--we had to take a shuttle for 10 minutes to get to our rental car and they closed at 12:00. We got there at 12:05-thank god there were still there. The trip only got better from here (it couldn't get worse..right?!?!) Our rental car was a PT cruiser convertible!! We finally got to the hotel at about 1 am. Which by the way was a one room suite with a kitchen!! Rob had to get up early to go to his class. Alivia and I slept in and then we went to the zoo. The zoo in Fort Worth was great. Most of the animals were out and about. It seems like you don't really get to see that many animals at the St. Louis Zoo. Anyway, we had a great time. We went back and took a nap and waited for rob to get done with his class. Then we all went to a really nice dinner and went to a mall. On Wednesday, Alivia and I went to the Ft. Worth Botanical garden and the Japanese Garden. It was a really nice day and Alivia got to feed the fish in the Koi pond which she loved. We went back took and nap and waited for rob. We went to dinner and an amusement park thing-we did put put and batting cages and played games in a huge arcade. Yesterday Alivia and I went to see Shrek the Third. She sat through about an hour and 10 minutes and was over it so we left and went to pick up rob. He got done early yesterday and we decided to go to the airport and see if we could get an earlier flight. We weren't supposed to leave until 7:20 last night. We were able to get on a 5:20 flight. Rob said that he might have classes coming up in Chicago and Atlanta..I said "Cool....that was an invitation right?"

brush of bad luck....

Yesterday at work, the operating system that I do everything through wasn't working right, it was going very slow and then would go down completely. So by 3:00 I had enough and called it a day. I was excited to go home though because I had gone earlier in the day to trade my cable box for the new DVR box. I've been wanting DVR forever. So I thought, ok well I'll just go home and get that all set up. When I got home I started to try to figure it out and wasn't having much luck. The only thing I had was..the box...a cable with 5 plugs on each end...and the remote. That's it...no book...nothing. So Here I am standing behind the big screen with plugs coming out of everywhere. So I got the cordless phone and called charter. When I finally got through to the right people they put me on hold...then my cordless phone died. And of course this whole time, Alivia is trying to come behind the tv too and then she wanted some milk and she's yelling my name the whole time i'm trying to do this. So I figured I would just wait till Rob got home and he could mess with it. Then I started to open the mail and saw a credit card bill, I called them up and here was the conversation after 10 minutes on hold (again, alivia calling my name and telling me to hold her babies and whatever else)

me: Hi, I just got a bill for a credit card that I cancelled
mean credit card lady: Yes I see you cancelled your account was paid off on april 27th and cancelled on May 1st.
me: Yes and I received a refund check for the overpayment.
her: Yes, How can I help you
me: Well I paid this off, received a refund check, cancelled the account and I just got a bill for $11
her: Yes, you actually shouldn't have received that check, that was a mistake, your balance is $11
me: Well, since I just paid you guys $5700 do you think you could waive the $11 since the account is cancelled
her: no, ma'am I'm not able to do that at this time
me: Can I speak to a supervisor
her: I'm an account manager.....
me: So I just paid this off and got a refund check and you can't waive the $11
her: you only paid back money you borrowed from us ma'am
me: I just think you should waive this since I received a refund check and cancelled it. It's $11
her: Yes, Ma'am it's $11

I wanted to cuss her out but I just couldn't do it. I wish Amber would have been at my house I would have handed her the phone and let her handle it!!! So then, we leave the house because yesterday was Bryan's birthday and we went out to eat. On the way there, we passed a car on the side of the road with a flat tire, Rob told me to stop because he wanted to help them. We stopped the car and when Rob got out of the car, his cell phone dropped into a sewer that was on the side of the road!!! He went to help the people and got back into the car and started rubbing his head and cussing about dropping his phone into the sewer and looked down and he had black stuff (from the tire) all over his hands and had wiped it all over his face and head.

him: Where are some baby wipes at?
me:....................I don't have any....
him: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!?!?

We managed to find ONE kleenex for him to clean off with. He was so devestated all through dinner about his phone. He just kept saying "I can't believe I lost my phone, I can't believe I lost all my numbers"

We had a nice dinner and went to the mall afterwards to get a new SIM card so I think everything is going better today. Hopefully......

privacy anyone...

As everyone knows once you have a child, you have no privacy-there's no such thing. My daughter has had quite the imagination lately. She is playing with babies and I bought her a stroller to push them around in, she feeds them and wraps them in blankets, it's the cutest thing. She reminds me alot of myself when I was a kid, she is very motherly and VERY bossy. She made me lay down on the floor of her room last night on a blanket and on a pillow and read books to her. I would start to read a book and she would lay down next to me and after she was over the book I was reading she would get up, rip it out of my hands, put it back on the shelf and hand me a new one, this went on for quite awhile--until american idol came on. I got up and told her I was going into the living room to watch tv and she started patting the blanket and SCREAMING "LAY DOWN MOMMY, LAY DOWN!!" I moved the blanket and pillow into the living room and she was ok with it. She makes me hug her babies and hold them and feed them. As you know, we are re-doing our bathroom in our bedroom. We have been using the bathroom in the hallway to take showers, I leave the bathroom door open while I'm in the shower so she can sit in there and play or whatever she wants to do. Most mornings, she will sit on the toilet and play with the brushes that are on the back of the tank. This morning she set this up while I was in the shower:





















She laid a blanket over the toilet, brought the stroller into the bathroom, and was sitting on the toilet feeding her baby-she cracks me up. This bathroom is pretty small anyway and was pretty hard to get out of the shower with all of this going on-it was too cute though.

Texas here I come

Rob has been telling me for a few weeks that his work was going to send him to Texas for some kind of training class. The other night I got to thinking....they are paying for his flight and his room. Maybe I can get a semi-paid for vacation out of this. So I mentioned it to him and then we figured out that we wouldn't have to pay for a plane ticket for Alivia because she's under two. So we decided that we would all go and make a vacation out of it!! I'm so excited, my plane ticket was under $200 and the rental car was about $150, there is no charge for Alivia to fly, the flight is under two hours....this just keeps getting better and better. Her and I will get to hang out and do things during the day and then we can do family stuff at night. I'm really excited. We'll be gone 3 nights. I did a search of things to do in Ft. Worth and apparantly story telling is a big thing in that city. I think we will do that one day, and they have a zoo of course so we will probably check that out. I can't wait!!!!

Just another Weekend at the White House...

Rob and I had such a nice weekend. Friday we went to Amber and Bryan's for a BBQ, Saturday morning my mom and my Aunt graduated from SCCCC, after the ceremony we went to Wilikers for lunch. Rob and I went shopping Saturday night, we were out of almost everything so that was a very expensive trip, but fun. Sunday we went to breakfast with my mom and dad, then to dinner at his mom's. When we got home we decided to rip out the bathroom!!! Heck, why not. Our bathroom was old when we moved in our house 5 years ago. Here are some before and after. I was a little nervous when he started ripping everything out because I just wasn't ready, but i'm pretty excited now. It only took two hours to rip everything out. We are going to replace the drywall too because it's in pretty bad shape.

just plain scary.....

2323=8:8=926=32328:8835:37nu0mrj.jpeg">

The picture on the top is AMBER!!!! The picture on the bottom is ALIVIA!!!!

The artist at work...

some many things going on....

Rob and I went to springfield last weekend and had a REALLY nice time. Amber and Bryan got all moved into their new house, it's really cute and they love it. I'm still finding their stuff all over the place though!! I'm making a big pile in the basement for them. So now our basement is completely empty and we're trying to figure out what we want to do with it. I would really love to get new carpet but who knows. I just got off the phone with my sister in law marsha, she had her baby this morning at 8, his name is aidan wyatt, he weighs 7'2 and is 20 inches long. She is down in Perryville so I think I will go see her this weekend. That was the last of the baby epidemic, noone else is pregnant-for now!! Work has been really busy which is really good for me!! Rob decided that he wanted to start working out so we went jogging last night. I'm a little sore today. We have people coming over tomorrow to look at our air conditioner. I swear, we can never just turn on the air or the heat, it's always something. Thank god we have a home warranty so we don't have to pay that much out of our pocket but still, It's been 90 degrees outside the last few days and it's about 80 in my house. I'm hoping the just replace the whole stupid thing, i'm tired of dealing with it!! Rachel and I are going to a trivia night saturday at her "church" we need more people so if you're interested please let me know asap!!!