Hmm, can't think of a title

Yesterday the kids and I went to Ottumwa,IA to go to Target. I needed to return the stuff I ordered that didn't fit and get a few other things. It really stinks that our nearest Target is 60 miles away. Bleh. And it's a super boring, slow drive to Ottumwa. We saw several signs that said "Share the Road" and had this picture:




I only saw one on the road though. We did pass a house that had Amish type clothing on the clothes line and a carriage parked in the driveway. Sometime I'd like to learn more about the Amish and Mennonite people that live around here. I see a lot of people shopping at Walmart with their dresses and special caps on, and I don't exactly know who or what they are. They drive regular cars and buy regular food. I feel pretty ignorant about the subjects, maybe I should read some wiki articles or something.

Anyway, it was a pretty good trip to Target. The kids had fun looking at toys and Valentine's Day stuff. I got a lot of things we needed and was able to put it all on gift cards from Christmas. I hope we don't need to make another trip out of town for a while. The kids are getting a little sick of it. We are going to attempt sledding today. The snow is melting pretty fast but hopefully there's still enough to get a few good slides down the hill at the park. We'll see.

Roy's mom is in Hawaii right now. How jealous am I? Pretty flippin' jealous. I don't necessarily care about Hawaii, I just want to be on vacation and be somewhere warm! Maybe I'll join my brother and his family in Florida for Disneyworld :) Or maybe I'll take the kids swimming in the indoor pool here and we can pretend it is summer - yeah, that sounds a bit easier and cheaper.

Why oh why

I've had a bad day. I'm really really tired for some reason and I have very little patience. Blaise didn't take a nap and is now driving me crazy! The snow is no longer pretty or fun and is a huge nuisance. I ordered a bunch of maternity stuff from Target a few days ago and got the package in the mail today. Yay, something to brighten my day. But no, none of the stuff fits right. Bummer. And then, to make the day worse, I just checked to see what The Office was about tonight, and it's not even new! (Why, BTW, is it not new?!) Man, what a tough life I have! :) I know, things could definitely be worse, but it's just been a blah day and I feel like complaining.
(Oh, and most of my frustration and grumpiness stem from issues like: Roy getting a job and money issues, but I won't get into those)

I'm off to the store to get some ice cream and then to pick Roy up from work. I think he'll be in charge of dinner and bedtime tonight!

I love my Wednesdays

This is what the kids did this morning while I cleaned. One of their favorite thing to do is trade clothes. I love Blaise's rosy cheeks and the added headband. He's so pretty!

Since we changed Rae's speech with the school district to two days a week, Wednesdays are the only "no speech" day. We have no where to be on Wednesdays, so I have Roy take the van to work and I don't have to go anywhere! But I babysit at 11 every Wednesday, so it keeps our day a little structured. I do my vacuuming and mopping Wednesday morning while the kids enjoy being in their pjs and not being rushed to get ready for the day. They pretty much leave me alone because they are so happy to have a morning that is calm. Then I shower and get dressed for the day. I love it because I get to wear sweats and a t-shirt and extra comfy socks all day and no one will see me! (Except for my friend that I babysit for - but that's fine) Then we get to babysit from 11-12:30 and the kids get other kids to play with. Today I told the kids that we could go play in the snow after our friends left. It is sunny and fairly warm today, so the snow is melting fast and I knew this might be our last chance to play in it until the next snowfall.

Icicles on our neighbors house. Melting fast. The kids each ate one :)

Near our house is a church and they had plowed all of the snow from their parking lot into a huge pile. Actually, there was an old, hard pile from the last snow, and a new soft layer from this snowfall. So we walked over there and climb the "hill" and I realized it'd make a pretty good slide. The kids loved it! We did that until they were too cold. Rae says it was almost like sledding, but I think she still wants to do the real thing!

I took this from our porch. Off in the distance is the church and the hill we played on.

Now we are back inside, warmed up, and Blaise is down for a nap. I'm seriously giddy about the fact that we don't have to go out at 5 tonight to pick Roy up from work. I don't mind too much, but it's nice to have a day where I don't have to do it. And I'm so happy that Wednesdays are the day that I have "off" because it gives me a break right in middle of the week and makes the rest of the week easier. It's so nice to not have access to a car (for one day), so you aren't thinking about errands you need to run and you have time for little projects around the house.

Anyway, that's why I love my Wednesdays. :) Now I better go pay attention to that other kid of mine that isn't napping!

My overworked dishwasher

Why do I own so many dishes? Why do my two children need 10 plastic bowls and 8 plastic plates and a gazillion utensils? Why do we have 5 Olive Garden cups, 2 Ponderosa cups, 5 Christmas cups, 2 Disney cups and 4 other plastic cups? Why do I load the dishwasher every single day with all of these dishes?? Why don't they use one or two a day and I just wash them when I need them? It's not like I have a newborn and I'm totally busy and can't take the time to wash a plate before lunch. I could probably get away with loading the dishwasher every two days if I was more careful. But I've never had a dishwasher before this apartment and it's still such a novelty to me and I don't want to wash anything by hand! :) But I just can't believe how many plates, bowls and cups we've accumulated! I like having a few extra on hand for when we have friends over, but we definitely don't need that many! It's time for a cupboard clean out and time for me to start rinsing the kids' cups and using them more than once in a day!

Anyone else have this problem? My friend Dawn just blogged about this and said they bought each kid a bowl that they painted and if they want to use a bowl they have to use theirs and only theirs. I think I might use this idea when Rae is just a little bit older. And my mom always used to have our names on a cup that we had to use the whole day - that's a good idea too. Any other ideas?

I looked out my window and what did I see.....

It's finally snowing again! I really hate the snow, but if it's going to be 9 degrees outside there might as well be snow too! And I LOVE the first day of snow. The snow is beautiful and soft and easy to get off of your car and porch. I hate it when it gets packed down and icy! But the reason I was hoping it'd snow again is because Rae so desperately wanted it to. I hope we get enough so that we can go sledding. I would have been fine with absolutely no snow ever again, but since it's snowing I hope we get enough for sledding. Weather.com says it's supposed to snow for a few days. Then we can go sledding and then it can all melt and spring can come!! Right?? I can dream! Roy has a week off of school in March and I told him that if there is snow on the ground and temps aren't at least 40 then we are going to visit somewhere warm! Everyday I dream of flip flops and t-shirts. Seriously. Do realize how much faster it is to get kids out the door when they are wearing summer clothes? They are so tired of wearing their winter coats - and I'm tired of it too! If we end up somewhere cold I'm going to invest in several cute and trendy coats for myself, because my brown one does the job just fine but I'm tired of wearing it!

Anyway, sorry about the post all about weather again! It is all I can think about these days!

The joys of learning

Can I just tell you how much fun my kids are lately? They drive me crazy too, but they are both at ages where they are learning and discovering so many things! Blaise is speaking in full sentences all the time now and it's so fun to hear what phrases he picks up. Some of his favorites are: "I don't know" and "I can't, I'm busy", "what does this say?", and "what are you doing" or "where are we going". He is just so darn cute. And Rae is full of questions all the time and is never satisfied with an "I don't know" from me or Roy. She is really into rhyming and is constantly asking us if words rhyme (most of the time they don't!) She is really good at seeing familiar words and being able to identify them. Today she saw the Dominoes Pizza sign while we were driving around and she said "look mom, they sell pizza there". I usually ask her how she knew what the word was and the says "I just knew what sounds the letters made and I figured it out". I really need to start some kind of "learning to read" type program with her since she is showing so much interest. Any recommendations? I'm going to get "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" from the library and if I like it I'll probably buy a copy. (I know it worked well for my sister and her son)

Anyway, they keep me on my toes and I realize I need to be doing more interacting with them and that my job as a mom is not just about cleaning, cooking, changing and being a referee! I've been a slacker in the craft, game and imagination department! Actually, just writing this post made me realize how much their minds are developing right now and how much I need to help them along! My sister wrote this great post a while back called "Motherhood" It helps me remember that I can answer all of their questions with a yes,no,I don't know or a simple answer (which sometimes you have to do when you are busy) but most of the time I should be really helping them either discover the answer on their own or giving them my full attention and actually answering their question. Hmmm, maybe I better get off the computer and hang out with my kids! :)

Oh, and I'm declaring tomorrow to be NO COMPUTER DAY, so I won't be around and I'm sure everyone will miss me dearly. I'm finding myself a bit too addicted lately, so it's time to turn it off and take a break! :)

Here are a couple of random pics of the kids:

I picked this tent up at Target for about 6 bucks way back in Sept
and saved it for a cold winter day. It's a pain to set up, but the kids love it!


Blaise's favorite activity: making items into a hat!

Another lovely day

The weather is beautiful here today -mid 50's! A little windy, but not too bad. I picked Rae up from preschool and we went to the park for a picnic. It felt SO good to feel the sun on my skin again. We got good and dirty and got lots of energy out. Then we went and washed our van!!! Woo hoo! The snow, salt and melting snow makes for a very dirty car. I didn't have very many quarters with me so I wasn't able to do a very thorough job, but at least I got the top layer of grim off :) There were so many people at the car wash. I went to a different one first and there was a line out to the street. Today is the first day it's been warm enough to wash your car, and everyone's car looks horrible. Now my car looks really nice parked next to all the other filthy ones! :) Who knew I'd be so excited for a day warm enough to wash my car! I'm sure it will snow again soon and mess it all up, but at least I can enjoy it for now.

Rae had her first speech therapy session at Truman State today. She now has speech at the school district on Mondays and Fridays and at Truman on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Makes for a busy week! But she really enjoyed speech today and there are a lot of toys for Blaise to play with, so I think we'll be able to manage the 4 days a week.

Anyway, I wish I had some pictures to post along with this but I haven't taken many pictures since Christmas.

Ugh

The Student Loans finally have to be repaid. These are from undergraduate school - long long ago and long forgotten about. Monthly payments for what feels like the rest of our lives. I wish I had the payoff amount in my hand and could be done with it. So glad to be done with school and done with needing loans! (You know, except for that big ol' mortgage loan someday!) And I'm so glad that we were able to get through graduate school without a single loan! I guess it could be worse!

Very good class, the answer was BOY :)

Yup, here comes Isaac Maxwell Wright. Rae was a little sad that it isn't a girl, but I think she'll be fine with it. I already went through all of the baby clothes and got rid of most of the girl stuff. (I just kept one box of all of my favorite outfits that Rae wore) One good thing about having a small apartment and moving often is that you are forced to go through your stuff often. Well, that's how it is for me at least - I could see some of my sisters just moving everything and having overflowing closets. :) But I can't stand the idea of moving a bunch of junk that we don't need. And I'm always trying to make more space in our closets and storage spaces, so every few months I go through all the boxes and see what I can get rid of. I did that this week and we have 3 boxes to take to the thrift store and box of junk to throw away! My house may not be clean but my closets are organized! :)

Anyway, I wanted to write more but I'm babysitting this afternoon and my house got neglected yesterday so I need to clean it up. I babysit every Wednesday and it's fantastic because I have to get my house super cleaned and vacuumed so that the baby doesn't find anything to put in his mouth. It's great to have your house clean mid-week - makes it a lot easier to clean at the end of the week too!

Happy Birthday Chad!

I'm sure Katie planned something great for you - hope you have a fantastic day!

It's a....

I had to have a full bladder when I had my ultrasound with Rae and it was torture! I didn't have to have a full bladder with Blaise and I forgot how hard it is! I had to have one this time around and I've never had to pee so bad in my life! And of course they were 15 minutes behind schedule! Ahhh! Anyway, we found out the gender of the baby. Are we going to go celebrate with hot dogs or tacos? :) Will that dress get used this time around? Will we get to use the blessing outfit my mom made for Blaise that didn't fit him? (Do you still have that mom?) All of your questions can be answered with a simple photo: (the tech gave me a cd with pics on it - nice that I don't have to scan them this time!)



Do you know what it is?

And here's just a cute picture:

Today is the day

Today I have my ultrasound and I've decided to find out the gender of the baby. I still it'd be fun to have it be a surprise, but I'm a very "have to know, have to plan" type person and I think it would literally drive me crazy. But maybe we'll keep it a secret from everyone else and drive you crazy!

After Christmas I went to Walmart and found this adorable little dress on clearance for 3 bucks! It's size 12 months, so if we have a girl it'd probably fit her at Christmas, and if not it will be her Valentine or Easter dress! (I love that it's not specifically Christmas) And if it's a boy and my sister has a girl then she'll be getting the dress - except it wouldn't fit one of her girls till they are actually 12 months! :)



I don't care if it is a boy or girl. For some reason we keep referring to "it" as a girl but we referred to Rae as Blaise for a long time, so that doesn't mean anything.
Anyway, we'll know this afternoon and I can start going through all the baby clothes I have - woo hoo,I love organizing! Anyway, what do you think - will it be a Claire or Isaac?

Productive, fun trip

Yesterday we headed to Columbia to get some items unavailable in Kirksville. The kids were great during the 75 minute drive - entertained most of the time by videos (investing in a portable dvd player was one of our best decisions ever!) and Roy and I enjoyed some good conversation. We always pass by a Bass Pro shop on the way into town and I thought it'd be fun to stop in and see what it's like (since they are so huge and they are everywhere around here and usually have their own freeway exit).
I figured the kids would at least enjoy looking at the boats. They did enjoy looking at the boats, and fish, and everything else! We spent a good 20 minutes walking around looking at stuff. Then we headed to Petco to get some stuff for the stinky guinea pig (I am so ready to get rid of her - but that's another post) and then we went to the mall. Roy and the kids ate lunch, rode the carousel, played on the playground and walked around while I went to Target and got some maternity clothes. It was a successful Target trip. I got two pair of pants and two shirts. I still need some actual jeans though, Target maternity jeans are not made for plus sized women. I happened to walk past the shoe aisle and saw that they had a ton of shoes 75% off. Woo hoo! I got two pair of shoes for Blaise when he gets a little bigger for 4 bucks each, and a pair of slippers for Rae for $1.50 (she's been really wanting some slippers!) I love it when I can get their shoes ahead of time and get a good deal on them. Rae's shoes broke on the way to Blythe and we had to buy some full price ones at Kmart and I couldn't believe how expensive they were! I hardly ever have to buy shoes full priced!

Anyway, the kids had fun at the mall, we got everything we needed and we got home by 5 last night. Oh, and we have this little store in town that we kept wanting to go to, but it's only open Thurs-Sat from 12-5, so we never get a chance to go. But we stopped by when we got into town last night. They sell all kinds of random knick-knacks and toys and a ton of lighters. Everything is less than $5. Roy wanted to get this fish for my dad - what do you think dad? He said it really suits you :)

It's about that time.....

...Time to put the real jeans away for a while and only wear pants with elastic waistbands! My favorite, favorite pair of jeans stopped fitting me last week and now my other pair are a little too tight for comfort. I think I get to go to Columbia alone on Saturday (right, Roy?) and do some major maternity shopping. I've gotta find something decent to wear or I'll be in gray sweats for the next 4 months! I hate trying to find pants to wear when I'm pregnant - it's always really hard. Luckily I've been able to put it off this long! :) And if the weather stays as cold as it has been this week then I might just stay in gray sweats till spring!

The real you

Today my sister posted a picture of herself sans makeup/hair product/pose to show what she looks like on a regular basis. I don't have many pictures like that, because when I am in my natural state the camera makes it look even worse! I don't mind the way I look if I look in the mirror, but for some reason the camera just highlights the blotchy skin and greasy hair!


I guess this is what I typically look like and I think I'm okay with it. I'd like to have less blotchy skin, but I'm trying to work on that with proper care of my face before I resort to wearing makeup everyday. And my teeth have become ridiculously yellow in the past few years - anyone have advice for that? I cringe every time I see a close up of my teeth.

Anyway, I don't know what my point is :) The other day I saw someone from church at the store and she didn't have on her usual make up on and hair all done up (this person always looks amazingly perfect at church) and she looked so nice and natural and I thought she looked great! I guess I'd rather look natural on a daily basis and people get used to my imperfections and then when I actually get all dressed up and put on makeup everyone is shocked and thinks I look amazing :) And I wouldn't want the hubby to cringe when I wash off my makeup at night ;) (Not that he would - he hates makeup!) So that's my current strategy - what's yours?

Happy Birthday Bobby!

I don't know if you read my blog - maybe Sabina does, but probably not on a daily basis. Anyway, hope you had a great day!

I need chocolate

It's one of those days. I hosted preschool today. It was pretty easy, pretty fun, but still tiring. Rae and Blaise have been fighting like crazy the past week. They just argue and bicker nonstop!! Ugh! And Blaise had a doctor appointment this morning which ended up taking an hour! The kids were incredibly good the first 40 minutes but totally lost it the last 20. We were waiting in the room forever after the nurse left and then they had a medical student check him first and then actual doctor came and did the whole exam again. Blaise was scared of both of them. And the appointment was at 8:30, which is really early for us! I got home just in time to clean up the house for preschool. Oh, and it's super cold today. Bleh. Just a bleh day. I'm trying to make up for it by at least having the house clean and the laundry done. There's nothing worse than having a bad day and then realizing you totally slacked off and just made it worse. And it'll all be okay because when Roy comes home tonight I'm leaving him to do dinner, bath and bed and I'm going shopping alone, and I'll get chocolate. :) How's your day going?

Our visit to Las Vegas - Part Two: Christmas Day and beyond

Christmas Day Dale's sister Sharon and her son Derrick came over for dinner. Also a couple Mariah and Rob - Roy's sister used to babysit Mariah long long ago. We had a turkey and ham dinner and then birthday cake for all of the December birthdays. Then we opened some more presents!

Lighting the candles for Blaise, Brianni, Ashley, Roy and Derrick

Happy Birthday to us!

Even though I love chocolate cake I chose to have tasty cheesecake instead :)

The whole gang at Olive Garden to celebrate Brianni's birthday.

Rae took this picture - it's pretty typical of what we do in Vegas :)

All of the cousins: Kassandra, Brianni, Catrina, Rae and Blaise
Funny, they are posed in order of age but not purposefully.

We left on New Years Eve and had a great flight home. Blaise fell asleep before takeoff. We decided to get a hotel in Kansas City so we wouldn't have to drive home in the dark (and I thought it would be snowy, but there was absolutely no snow) and so we could do a stop at Target to spend some Christmas gift cards! We didn't do anything special New Years Eve, we were all asleep by 10! The next day we did some shopping and got home around 2 in the afternoon. Anyway, there you have it - our Christmas 2008 Vacation :)

Our trip to Las Vegas - Part One: Christmas Eve

Okay, I'm going to wrap up all this Christmas stuff today! On Tuesday, the 23rd my dad drove us to Needles, CA to meet Roy's mom (Baerbel) there and she drove us the rest of the way to Vegas. Roy's sister and her family were already there so we were met with a lot of chaos! We decided to stay in the guest house so that our kids could go to bed early and Blaise could take naps and no one would have to worry about keeping their voices down. It was lovely to stay out there! We unpacked, got settled, ate dinner and put the kids to bed. The next day (Christmas Eve) we heated up the pool and went swimming!

Getting started

After a few minutes in the pool Blaise decided he liked being in the jacuzzi with Opa better!

Jump!

Rae preferred being with Oma and her cousins in the pool.

I would have spent the entire time in the jacuzzi if I wasn't pregnant, so I hung out on the side letting the warm water spill over :)

Back inside the guest house all showered and clean!

And ready for Christmas Eve festivities!

Having a traditional German dinner - bratwurst and German potato salad.


And then following German tradition of opening all of our presents!

The Perske family posing for a picture
(Roy's sister, husband and three daughters)


In this picture she was saying "four" which is how many presents she had so far.

"Is this whole pile for me?" Oma buys a lot of stuff.

We got a lot of great stuff - thank you Oma and Opa! Later today I'll post about the rest of our visit in Las Vegas. We have 1pm church now and it's pretty weird. The mornings are really really long but once we get home it's just dinner and bedtime, so that's kind of nice. So, expect a lot of posts on Sunday mornings! Oh, and just a quick update, it hardly snowed at all the other night and there's currently no snow on the ground - woo hoo!

Lovely day

We just got back from a glorious place. A place where almost all sibling fighting stops. A place where arguing with mommy almost completely ceases. A place where imaginations grow. What is this magical place? The park! It's sunny and 50 degrees today (with hardly any wind) and there's no snow on the ground, so we were able to go to the park for the first time in a couple of months (except for during vacation). It was so fantastic. I pushed the kids on the swings for about 10 minutes and it was blissfully quiet - the only sound to be heard was quiet voices singing a song about flying at the park. They like to make up songs but they usually argue about who gets to sing their version. But this time they both sang their own little version and ignored each other. It almost brought tears to my eyes. I was SO happy to be outside, in the sunshine, in short sleeves!

It's supposed to snow tonight (like, 100% chance -ugh) and tomorrow the high is supposed to be 26, so I'm glad we took advantage of the warm weather! Actually, I think we are going to head back out and ride bikes and color with chalk on the sidewalk. It's too nice to be inside! (the only reason we came home from the park was because mommy had to pee!!) Anyway, I just wanted to share how happy I am to have warm weather today. If you are lucky enough to live in a place where it's NOT snowing and is above 50 degrees I suggest that you take your kids outside! :)

More pictures

Blaise wore this metal bowl as a hat almost everyday.

Ta-da!

Uncle Bryce tolerated a lot too.

HO HO HO!

Blaise and grandpa-clause

Opening a present from G&G. I wish I could sit like that!

Yay, cars!

Rae didn't much care for grandpa-clause

But she had to sit on his lap to get her present!

Not a very appreciative face! She really did like the dress but it was a
little to big on her and she was starting to get really tired that night.
I need to add a couple of safety pins and then it will fit just fine.

Granny reading the book Rae made for her and grandpa

And now showing it to grandpa

The view from outside

My dad works so hard on the lights every year - and the kids really love them!