Paci...

R is 3 years old has still has his "bobi" (not sure where he came up with that name, but that's what he's called his paci since he could talk). He just gets it for sleeping, and we've been reluctant to take it away because of all the moving and big changes he's been going through (we felt it was more important to get him potty trained than to get him off the bobi first).
I've been talking to him about how he's a big boy now and pretty soon he won't have his bobi anymore. He knows it will make his teeth look funny (which he of course thinks is funny) too.
I was talking to him about it again this morning as he cuddled in bed with me holding my hair and sucking away contently, and I realized it makes me sad to think about getting rid of it. For one, he's my baby, and without that bobi there's really no "baby" left. Two, he's such a good sleeper, I worry that if I take it away he won't sleep as well. And three, I will miss it.
I've taken pictures of him with it (and scrapped them), but the thought of no more bobi still makes me sad. I know I need to get over it and just do it one way or another (any ideas on how?!?). *sigh*


(I haven't forgotten about pictures... I'll get some up soon!)

My Exciting News

My favorite designer, Britt-ish Designs, had a CT call a few weeks back that I applied for, and just found out the other night that I got on!! Her stuff is awesome, and so easy to scrap with, I use it all the time as it is, so I'm super excited to be part of her team.

Sorry to leave you all wondering! It wasn't being announced until today, so I couldn't say much before then. No baby, no house news (yet...), just scrap stuff.

I promise to be back later with LOs and pictures. We just got back from the beach and my kids are hungry, so I have to make this short.

We're back

Sorry, no pictures tonight (because I'm being lazy), but I did take a few that I will post later. The verdict is still out on whether I will keep my new camera or not (did I mention I got a new camera?) It's a p&s, nothing super exciting, but I've been wanting something that works a little better than my old one for things I don't want to bring the "big" camera to.

Anyway... We had a great time on our weekend away! Alan Jackson was so much fun to see, and the Giants game was great (up until the 8th inning anyway... *groan*). Like I said, we got cheap tickets in the bleachers, and while I think that would be a perfect place to sit with the kids, we won't be going back there on our kid-free trips. I think the best part about center field bleachers was that I got to watch Aaron Rowand from behind all night. lol It was pretty hard to see the pitcher and batter from there though. We also squeezed in a little shopping, which always makes me happy. :)

I got some SUPER exciting news tonight! ...but I can't tell you yet. You'll have to check back later in the week to find out what it is. :)

Well, the Giants just beat the Dodgers, I better head to bed... I'll try to get some pictures and new LOs posted tomorrow.

So Excited!!

Matthew's been in Redding for the last two days, and he just called and told me to get Giants tickets for Saturday night. We're going down tomorrow to see Alan Jackson, and he said sense we're going to be down there anyway we might as well go. I'm so stinking excited! Just the two of us all weekend, Alan Jackson, AND Tim Lincecum is pitching Saturday night. I just bought bleacher seats, they were $11 off because that's how many strikeouts Timmy got in his last game, figured we better go with cheap tickets sense we're going to be doing two nights in hotels and gas, food...
Anyway, that's where I'll be this weekend, woohoo!! :)

I'm on a roll!

I've gotten so much done now that I have my internet back. I found and booked a hotel for us yesterday, ordered new business cards last night, signed up for a new photo lab I've been wanting to try, made dentist appointments for the kids, and made a doctors appointment for me. We're going to go play tennis with our neighbors in a few minutes and then I need to find someone to come remove the hornets nest that's on the house. I talked to the relater who's listing this house thinking she would want to have it done, but it doesn't sound like she's going to take care of it, so I guess I will. I also need to find a place to sign M up for dance classes. If anyone local knows of a good place please let me know!
I know a lot of that could be done without internet, but gosh, it's so much easier to use google than it is to pull out a phone book. lol!

Update, Pictures, Layouts...

I have internet again!! Woohoo!!

Okay, so let's see... we got moved, got everything we needed unpacked, and the house looks good, but the garage is full of boxes (both packed and empty, I didn't see the point in breaking down boxes until we know if we'll be moving again or not). The house is on the market right now, it's had 4 showings since we've been here, after no showings for the two weeks before we moved. It's making me nervous, but so far they haven't told us to move. I think the owner will be taking it off the market sometime next month, and if it doesn't sell we will probably try to work something out with her so that we can buy it. It's way out of our price range, but we've talked to her and she's willing to work with us so maybe we can pay some now and some later or something... I would be so happy just to know that we wouldn't have to move again. This is a house we could stay in for a while, anything else we would buy wouldn't be a long term house.

Anyway, it's good to be back. It's cold here (hasn't gotten over 60 the whole time we've been here), but at least the air is clear. Here's a picture I took from our driveway the night we were loading up the moving truck...

Scary, hu? I'm so glad to be out of the smoke!

Here's some more random pictures from before and after the move...
R found his sunglasses while we were packing and had a great time dancing in our dresser mirror
M took a nap in her new closet

R brought all his stuffies to bed with him (notice we didn't put the bed rail back up, he's fallen out of bed twice and I have to stick a pillow next to him before I go to bed every night, but it's still easier than the bed rail)

Going through trip pictures while I was without internet I found this one, I love it! lol

The kids wanted to leave this all set up for Daddy to see, I told them I'd take a picture instead. lol

They asked me to take this one yesterday

And now onto layouts... With no internet I did get a lot of scrapping done!

credits

This one was actually done before we moved, I just had to play with this picture.

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Whew! That was a lot of LOs to post!

Today is lazy day. I have a ton of stuff to do that I've been waiting to get done until I was online, and I need to find a room for Friday night. Matthew finally decided that we would go to Alan Jackson, so now I'm scrabbling to get everything lined up. It should be great though, I'm excited!

We're still alive

I've been without my internet for over a week now. My mom brought her laptop down so I could check my email and stuff today, I miss my computer though! I haven't been able to download any new scrapbooking stuff, but I have gotten quite a few pages done! My internet should be up on Tuesday afternoon. I ended up having to switch companies after going round and round with our old company.
So, there you have it. We're moved, I just don't feel settled in at all without my net. lol

I'm back

I got some more packing done and I'm just back to say that I really hate moving. I swear we JUST did this. The worst part is that we're moving into a house (that I'm VERY thankful be be able to live in, btw) that we don't plan to be in for long (gosh I wish we could just buy that house and live there for years and years). We plan to buy a fixer-upper (even more of a fixer than this last house), and once the market turns around we will either sell it or rent it and build/buy a house we plan to be in for a while (...if you wanna hear God laugh tell him your plans...). I get overwhelmed even thinking about moving that many more times before we can stay put for a while, and the thought of having to do all that work to ANOTHER house makes me want to curl up in bed and never get out. Matthew keeps saying that at least we'll be able to do what we want with the house, but even then we can't move it to a nice family neighborhood. There's only so much we'll be able to do, and I'm never going to really feel like it's home and want to unpack everything and really decorate. I hate that I haven't had new pictures on the walls for over a year already, and now it seems like it will be forever before I can get some up. I'm so tried of moving all the time, I want a HOME.

2 Boxes

So I'm supposed to be packing today and moving it into high gear to get things ready to move. I've gotten 2 boxes packed so far. *sigh* Packing is SO overwhelming! I don't even know where to start in most rooms. I better go call my mom and have her come tomorrow to help with the kids so I might actually be able to get something done!

Trip Recap

Whew! We got home last night around 8:30 and I was in bed just over an hour later. We were busy almost the whole time we were gone. We had tons of fun, but it was definitely not a relaxing vacation. Here's a recap with tons of pictures. :)

WEDNESDAY: We left the house just after 8 and after one stop in town to drop something off at Matthew's shop we were on our way. We stopped once for "lunch" at 10:30 and then tried to tell the kids it was nap time (hahaha). That didn't work, but they did pretty well the rest of the drive down. When we got there we hung out and played for a bit, and then I went with MIL and SILs to get petties.

THURSDAY: Wedding day! We got up early (for me anyway) and worked on getting food ready all morning. By 12 we were pretty much done and just kind of sat around until it was close enough to the wedding to start getting ready. We headed out there at 4:30. The wedding was at Lover's Point in Monterey which is such a beautiful spot!!
Here are the kids practicing dancing before we left...

And my cute little man at the wedding

I took a bunch of pictures at the wedding, I will be working on editing them AFTER we get moved. :)

FRIDAY: 4th of July... The day started out slower, Matthew and a few others took the kids to play tennis at the courts where MIL use to live, and on the way they got lost and ended up wandering though a used car lot. When they got back from tennis Matthew and I went back to the car lot to check out a van he'd looked at there and we ended up trading our car it. We're now the owners of a 2003 Honda Odyssey. I'm loving all the extra room and features! The automatic sliding doors are AWESOME! No pictures of the van yet, but it's dark gray with a slight blue tint. :)
We got back and had a bbq with a bunch of family who were down for the wedding, and then some of us took off to head back to Monterey Bay for fireworks. It was SO MUCH FUN!! There were a ton of people there, but we were able to park closer than we thought we'd be able to and we got a great spot on the beach. The kids played in the sand for a while and then we hung out on the blanket and snacked while we waited for the show. R LOVED it and didn't want to stop playing in the sand for anything. He was super cute if I do say so. :)

The fireworks were really cool, but I didn't get any great pictures. It was just too crazy down there to even think about trying to be a photographer. I'd love to take a tripod and really play one of these years, I've seen such cool pictures from others!

SATURDAY: We didn't really do much on Saturday, but it still felt like we did. We did some shopping (I was looking for Giants shirts for the kids), and later went for a walk. Nothing much, but like I said, it still felt busy.

SUNDAY: Giants game day! We ended up walking around the whole outside park to get our tickets, but it was pretty cool to see some things that we've never seen before (like the back of the scoreboard in the outfield and where the players park). R fell asleep right after the game started...

But he didn't sleep for long. My Aunt and Uncle were sitting in the same section as us, it was such a fun surprise to see them there!
We sat at the very top of the stadium. I've never sat up that high before. It was a great view, but kind of a weird angle. Every ball that popped up looked like it was going to go out of the park. I really love trying different seats at that park, it's fun to see it from different view. I still want to try the bleachers sometime, but I think when Matthew and I go later in the season we're going to go back to first level seats. That's where we sat the first time we went, but we haven't sat down there in a while. Club level is pretty fun too, but we're both ready to get close to the action again!
We won't talk about the score (how did Zito win and Cain loose?!?), but we did get to see Aurilla hit a home run.
Here are a few more pictures from the game...

After every Sunday game they let the kids out on the field to run the bases. I didn't think our kids would want to do it (they were tired!), but they did and they loved it! I think I might have been more excited than them though. lol How cool is it that we got to go ON the field?!?

After that we headed home...

Today is unpack and relax day (after running errands this morning). It's super duper hot this week (110 right now), and we need to have this house all packed up by Thursday night. I'm not doing any of it today though. lol The pool is filled up outside, ready for after naps, and I might try to scrap some Giants pictures. Tomorrow I will pack.

UPDATE

We won't be homeless! I just talked to my mom's old neighbor and it's going to work out for us to rent her house. I am so thankful!

Random Stuff From Our Crazy Life

Let's see... we made it home Sunday. The road closed right after we went to the coast last week, and we weren't sure whether it would be open or not. It was VERY smoky the whole drive, but not as bad once we got here. We can see blue in the sky again!

The kids were spoiled and got to go to the park a lot while we were there

We also went to my SIL's mom's wedding (you fallowing?) on Saturday. Here's a cute picture I got of M dancing with SIL's nephew, how sweet is that?

This one I just think it silly. I have so many silly pictures of R sleeping.

We still have not found a place to rent as of right now. Yesterday I called my "last resort", apartments built by the same guy who build our house over there. We'd stayed in them while our house was being built, and I knew they would be safe, clean, and pretty cheap. There was one 2 bedroom left, and we were told we could have it if we got the 5 page applications (yep, one each!) in that day. S0, Matthew came home from work, we filled them out, and got them faxed in. Then at 4 the manager of the apartments called to say they're now requiring a 6 month lease (something they were not doing last time we rented from them). I really don't want to live in a 2 bedroom apartment with no laundry hook-ups for 6 months, so I had to tell her we didn't want it.
I started freaking out after that. I'd already looked everywhere I could think of, things are either gross, expencive, in a bad area, or require a lease. We've moved way too much, and every time we do it there is so much stress involved. I'm so tired of it, I just want it to be easy for once!
Not even an hour after that I got a call from the lady who use to live next door to my mom. She has her house on the market and has already moved across the country and is paying 2 mortgages while she waits for it to sell. I'd left a message for her last Friday asking if she might consider renting us her house while it's on the market, but after not hearing from her all weekend I figured it wasn't an option. When she called she said it sounded good to her, but she needed to see what her relater though.
So, that's where we sit. I'm crossing my fingers and PRAYING that the relater thinks it's an okay idea, or else we may be homeless. We move in 11 days and I'm not sure where else to look.
So, there's the big long update on that.
Escrow seems to be going fine. Inspections were done last week and they came back "clean" except for the bucket in the attic. It was there when we bought the house, and we think it's from an old leak. We didn't have any trouble with water all winter.

In more fun news, it's looking like we're going to get to see Matt Cain pitch on Sunday. I'm so excited, first because he's not Zito, and second, because he's one of my favorite pitchers.