The Election

Ok, so I am beginning to hate both choices. I liked McCain/Palin for a long time, Obama is too damn socialist for my liking, but now McCain is too. So I have my own theory. Obviously our country has some moral issues. I have discussed this with a few of you, but if you haven't heard, stick with me here.

I am voting for Mickey Mouse as he is the best known mascot for Disneyland "The Happiest Place on Earth." Then I think we should change United States of America to Disney America. My reasons:
1. People don't steal at Disneyland. I have been there a ton of times, and even with strollers you can leave stuff under the stroller and people don't touch it. Where I live if it's not bolted down people think "finders keepers" yet it wasn't a lost item.
2. People are having too good of a time to kill anyone else
3. The economy would improve as Disney employs a ton of people.
4. Who doesn't love Disney? Disney is loved around the world, and it would improve other countries views of America.
5. As the world loves Disney, again improving the economy, we will see more tourists traveling the country.
6. There is an underground world that hides all the behind the scenes and negative stuff, so we can focus on the positive and making things better.
7. There are fireworks everynight (I'm kind of a kid and love my fireworks)

I know I had a few more reasons but I will have to edit them in when I am more awake!

Growing too fast

Holy cow! Travis almost army crawled off my bed today! Ok so it was a modified army crawl; he pushes up with his feet tucked under his tummy and then thrusts forward till his little arms are under him. Then he pushes back up and repeats. Can someone tell him that he is only four months and he needs to slow down!!! If he is going to be my last he needs to take things a little slower!

OOPS

Wow, I haven't posted in a while! That is exactly why I didn't think I could do this! So I have been utterly obsessed with the Olympics and life is just getting in the way of it ;). Beyond that I have some awesome news... I finally (after over a year of searching) bought a minivan. It is a 2006 with low miles and VERY clean. I LOVE IT. My babies have air blowing on them to keep them cool so I am happy. When I told my dad I had great news he asked if I was pregnant... how exactly would that have been good news???? I have two kids under two, does it sound like more fun to have three under three? ha ha.

Even better news, I took Travis to the doctor and he is still perfectly healthy and HUGE. He is four months and weighs 16.5 pounds and is 26 inches long. This is my first real sized baby! The girls were still miniatures at this point. Heck Heidi was just over this at her first birthday! But then again he has been my healthiest, so I will go with it! Oh, and since he was losing his newborn hair we shaved his head yesterday, leaving just enough for a mohawk :)
In the last few weeks I have been doing TONS of crafts including making sock monkeys and tote bags and wipes, knitting scarves and whatever else I can think of. My goal this year is to do a home-made Christmas, but with all items people want or need. It would be so much easier to just give everyone easy stuff, like a pillowcase :)

Heidi started school again. 2nd grade already, she is loving her class, and for the first time I am happier with her school. I am very involved on the PTO again this year and am starting the year feeling burned out, but I hope momentum will build soon. If anyone wants to save their box tops from their general mills products you are more than welcome to send them to us to support our school.

A funny story... A little over a week ago we had Travis doing tummy time and all of the sudden Julie decides she can ride on him. We got her off of him, but then she got back on, and I decided I had to have a picture. It was so funny. Thankfully she hasn't done it again.

OMG On Monday I Forgot to Mention

I can't believe I forgot to tell the best story about the weekend. So I brought my dad home from the airport on Friday, and hadn't mopped the floors yet. Well I gave Julie a small cup of KIX cereal so she could eat it as she walked around the house. She decides to dump them on the dirty kitchen floor and eat like a dog, picking the cereal up with her mouth. YUCK. So then I decide to sweep them up and got a few in the dust pan and kept sweeping. BUT when I went to put the next few in the dustpan I saw my crazy girl eating like a dog FROM THE DUSTPAN!!!! YUCK! OMG I wanted to barf, but settled for laughing hysterically. From this my dad decided I never feed my kid ha ha.

This week has been boring and I'm not sure what else to talk about. I almost forgot. Good news the market was up today and yesterday!!! Maybe I can make some money soon!

It's Monday

My goodness, this weekend was crazy. So my dad came to town to surprise my brother and that all went real well. Saturday night we went to this great Greek restaurant and had dinner and some entertainment. Poor Raul is not into Greek food and he took the night off to go, so on our way home we got him his favorite gourmet meal at McDonalds. The restaurant was very cool, other than the fact that it was incredibly LOUD. The place was pretty small and there was a live band and of course a dance floor. Towards the end of dinner a belly dancer came out and was dancing, she did a good job; however, she startled me. She was singling people out and dancing around them for tips and stuff, then she clanks her hand cymbals on either side of my head (I hate loud noises right at my head) so I look to the left and I see a whole lot of boob in my face and turned my head back and couldn't stop laughing, I laughed so hard I was crying. Then she went up to my brother (who is recently bald by choice) and rubbed his head for good luck, but he wasn't enjoying her belly dancing and wasn't thrilled. Poor dancer didn't get any tips from our table. We left before they did that big Greek circle dance, but we did see some people break plates. $2.00 to break a plate, they have not met my family, we break plates at home for free (well free until we have to replace the set.) lol. It was a really nice time.

We had a babysitter for Saturday night. Then yesterday morning Heidi and I got up and made a home made carrot cake and cream cheese frosting from scratch. YUMMY! There is so much left over frosting, and it would be like a sin to throw it away! After making the cake we went to my mom's community pool to go swimming. Julie was swimming between my brother and Raul quite a bit. It was quite impressive, no floaties. Then back to moms to relax and hang out.

My sister and her family had to head back to Tucson last night, something about working and needing to make some money and bills, who knows lol. Boy did we trick her we packed a bag and stowed Heidi away. Vikki thinks it's a good thing for Heidi to come hang out for a week. You know, she is so helpful with the kids. Then I got a call on her way to work this morning...
"HEIDI HAD US ALL UP AT 5:00 AM!!!!!!!!" Well the real story is Axel woke up and needed to go potty and Heidi used her excited voice she uses when Julie needs to go, and that woke Axel all the way up, and then Vik couldn't go back to sleep either.

Right now other than Raul yelling at Julie for tearing apart the kitchen, our house is pretty quiet. Time to go clean something!!!

Mouse

My dad and arts n' crafts n' stuff

Another GREAT day. Before we get to the arts and crafts let me tell you about the rest of my day (since the arts and crafts were done a few days ago lol) My dad came into town this morning!!! I was so stinking excited. Yes, I just saw him in May for my graduation, but we miss him so much. The only thing that would have been better is if his wife could have come as well, she is always so much fun, but someone's gotta work, right? Anyhow, I managed to keep this a secret for almost a week. Why the secret? Well, my brother turns 30 on Sunday and my dad thought it would be really fun to surprise him, he was trying to wait till his party on Saturday night, but I don't think Heidi can keep her mouth shut that long, so Heidi called and said she had a surprise package at our house and it's BIG. Hopefully he will stop by on his way home from work. But it would be fun to wait till the party too. I really hope my brother is as excited by this as I am. Also, last night I booked tickets to go see my dad in Oct. Sun Country airlines ran a special that it would be $200 round trip per person, well Julie and Travis still fly free, so that is three tickets to buy. If we had gotten the same trip on US Airways one person would fly for the price of the three of us! WOOHOOO! We will be there for Heidi's birthday. Ok so onto the arts and crafts. There is this great gal who makes cloth diapers who lives in Northern AZ. (If you are interested go to www.daribums.com and make sure to tell her that Marci sent you!) I wanted to have more embroidered diapers so I asked Rikki if she could send me fabric cuts and I would embroider my diapers and send them back, so guess what... they are all done. I keep forgetting to go to the post office and send them back though :( I will make sure I get there tomorrow. I am so excited to have these fabric cuts transform into diapers. I know what you are all thinking, cloth diapers YUCK, but you are so wrong, they are so darn CUTE! Take a look at my embroidery. What do you think?

Holy Cow, I'm a Cow

Ok, for those of you who don't know me well, if you google the words "pack rat" you are bound to find a picture of me in some of the posts. I will say I have only known one person to keep more stuff than me, and one of my children is named after her. She was like a grandmother to me and I looked to her for advice on many things, however, being a pack rat was not one of them, but I think it just rubbed off onto me!

What does that have to do with being a cow??? Good question. So today I found an OLD calendar (with really cute pictures of Angels in it) and photo of me from my jr. high track days. I remember being thin but not how hard I worked at it. For example:

Here is what a saturday in my life when I was skinny looked like:
Wake up @ 7:00
Stretch till 7:30
run 7:30-8:30
walk 8:30-8:45
Stretch 8:45-9:00
Work out video 8-9 pm
tredmil 9-9:30
In bed by 10.


Here is a calendar day from a random summer Friday
5:00 wake up
5:20 Stretch
5:30 use stationary bike
6:30-7 situps
7-7:30 lunges and squats
10:30 walk to the mall
11-5 work
7-7:30 pm situps.

Reading that I can remember that I would watch tv on a stationary bike in my parent's room, do sit ups during commercial breaks and omg did I watch my food labels.

Why did I do all that??? Another great question. Well, my entire family has struggled with weight issues, some more than others. I was scared to death to look like I do TODAY :( I was hell bent on making sure I was never heavy. I am sad to say that the girl I was in Jr High and High School, would be lecturing my ass to the gym and back 30 times a day.

I have working at losing some of this baby weight. I am going to the track 5 days a week, and am getting in a minimum of 3 miles each time and once and a while (if I go in the morning) I will ride my bike there. I am eating less, but still have bad habits. I play Wii fit (so much fun).

So here I sit all mad at myself for being fat... hmmmmm I guess I should go do 30 minutes of sit ups and get off my tail! The Jr. high track photo is now on my fridge and hopefully it will motivate me to do better.

Before I get movin' I do want to mention that I am proud to say that my brother has conquered most of his weight issues and looks amazing. I am so darn impressed that he took the steps necessary to get his life back, and to be healthy. I am also proud that my sister has been very dedicated to the gym and getting healthy and has lost most of her baby weight. Hopefully they will kick my ass and get me in gear. I don't wanna be the fat kid of the family, hopefully soon our family won't have any fat kids! (Do you hear the inspirational music drowning out my words?)