Sickness and Such

Dave has been sick since Sunday, so we are getting a little stir crazy around here. Strangely, no one else is sick except him (yet). I've been working on a few family updates:

1- From one school to another: Transferring the kids to another preschool closer to home for next fall involves guerilla tactics. Fortunately, I have a woman on the inside (thanks Missy) and we are almost "in".

2- Time's a wastin' - get your taxes done- don't mess with the IRS: I've scaled back dramatically on my tax clients, and fired a few people. Basically, if I don't like you, I'm not doing your taxes. I just heard a wonderful talk on "Boundaries" last week at Moms Together, so I feel fairly comfortable saying that.

3- Tomorrow is Wesley's 15 month appointment and I plan to discuss with the doctor some of his potential food allergies and issues. Please say a prayer it all goes well and I can gain some guidance into what might be causing him discomfort and how to introduce new foods. Other than that, he is doing great. He even says "hi" and "bye bye" and "mmmm" when he likes what he is eating.

4- Was anyone else sad that Oprah didn't do her post-Oscar show this year? We haven't had time to watch too much tv, but I was glad to see "Jon and Kate plus 8" on Oprah- I really like them, it makes me feel like I've got my household under control.

Dave has had HGTV on non-stop for the last 3 days, and we are a Nielson family this week so I've still got to write all of that down in our booklets. Long time friends will remember when we were a Nielson home for several years with a computer hooked up to our tv and we skewed the ratings for our demographic by watching PBS nonstop (we didn't have cable then). Oh, the good old days....watching tv without kids yelling in the background....I barely remember it....

New Pictures

Since it's a snow day, I've gotten a few things done, including uploading some recent pictures. We also enjoyed some time in our 1/4 inch of snow!

January-Feb

Trip to the District!

Because of popular demand, I'm sitting down for a few minutes to write a few observations/details from my trip to DC this weekend to see my sister Julie:

Flying alone is like a spa experience when you are used to an entourage of toddlers, diapers bags, car seats, toys and snacks. It was almost lonely at first, but I quickly adjusted and caught up on my reading like a maniac.

My sister lives in the district, so it was lots of fun to experience the city as a non-tourist (although we did a quick drive around to look at monuments, I've seen all that stuff before). It was fun to see what it's really like to live in the city. For instance- I love the Metro since I don't have public transportation in my everyday life. I also loved the people watching- again, lots of cool people hanging out in DC- including my sister of course.

We did some more work on some fashion updates/shopping/closet cleaning (this time her closet was the target). I came home with some cute hand me downs! We went to Goodwill to drop off a bunch of clothes and ending up buying lots of books to replace them. Good thing I went with a half-empty suitcase.

Julie has such a fun group of friends! I enjoyed meeting every one of them and talking about non-mommy things! It was so fun to make conversation with other adults about current events, political happenings and parties. I know they found me to be a novelty- an old married with 2 kids at home!

I finally got to see "Juno"- my first movie in 7 months- and I highly recommend it.

Dave the boys did great- they stayed at Grammy and Papas' house almost the entire time so fun was had by all. I think Wesley was a little mad at me last night, but he is over it.

Now it's back to reality- tomorrow is brunch for 130 at Moms Together so today was a flurry of errands and housework. Hopefully, there will be no snow tonight or else we'll be eating yogurt and cranberry crunch for the next month here!

a letter

Dear Sonic on Mallory Lane,

How can you already be out of the ingredients for the Sweetheart Blast? It's only February 5th!!

Love, your devoted customer

P.S. Hope everyone had a happy Super Tuesday! Yes, I voted, how about you?

Updates

It's been awhile since I've blogged- I promise I'm not one of those people who start a blog then abandons it. I've kept this up for three years, there's no turning back now!

Here's what's been going on with us:

• Daniel is officially "potty trained"! I had heard all these horror stories and the bottom line is waiting until he was old enough to really "get it" really worked for us.
  

• Wesley has been off whole milk and dairy for almost a month and is doing great. We will have a pow-wow with the doctor next month, but dealing his suspected "milk allergy" has eliminated the ear infections and vomiting (not pleasant).
  

• I think I have 55 friends on Facebook so I did get the hang of it. I'm amazed at some of the folks I've connected with from the past and how easy it is to stay in touch once you are on it. It is a spectacular time-waster, if you need one.
  

• I had a wonderful birthday. Dave and I had a nice dinner on the 29th, and tonight I had dinner with some close girlfriends. Last weekend we even had a one night getaway on a church retreat with Uncle Josh and Aunt Carolyn moving in to babysit for the night. Now we just need to find them a house in our neighborhood so we can do this more often!
  

• We are all making good progress on our new years' goals. Even Wesley, who now likes to climb on the train table and sofa and jump up and down. He has added "freestyle dancing" to his interests for the upcoming year. The other night he danced in Walgreens for our friend Adam the pharmacist there. He particularly inspired by the theme song to "The Little Einsteins". He's a hoot.
  

• There is still no stopping the grocery game train. I think we had 30 people over here 2 weeks ago to teach the system. I wish I could have more time to master CVS, but this week I managed to score a year's worth of Cottonelle there for about $15. We're getting our very own Aldi's in Franklin on Monday so I expect to be getting more phone calls from my friend Kelly the grocery dealmaster.

• Deer season is over, but the trash can wars continue. Bottom line, our next door neighbors (the ones with 6+ cars) leave their trash cans out next to OUR mailbox and we got fined (I got it reversed). Yes, some dude actually drives around and records the violations. Now I have to report into the homeowner's association every Friday morning if they are in violation so we don't get accidently fined again. I think I should get to collect the fine since I'm policing the joint. It would help reimburse our mailbox they killed 2 years ago.

• This just in from Dave: Sonic has brought back the "Sweetheart Blast" for February. Gotta go!