Thursday, September 23, 2010

A Day in the Life 9/22

I haven't done one of these in a while so…..

I woke up this morning early – at 6 am, today is a big day for Scott at work, so I got up with Leah last night, and I will take the kids to daycare. I have everyone dressed and ready by 10 til 7 and am loading the kids into the car, so far so good. We get to Patty's house at 7, and I am on my way to work by 7:12. Not bad.

The highlight of my work day: My one on one meeting with my boss where he explained to me that they are having an "employee recognition party" in a couple weeks and that if I wanted to be recognized for any of my projects I should create a slide to include in the presentation and send it in no later than Monday of next week.

To which I responded something like this…

Photobucket

I mean maybe I am totally missing something here, but isn't the point of recognition to be recognized by someone other than myself? The funniest part of this is that he actually told me that the primary reason for this recognition event is so that they can "prove" to all of us underlings that recognition is occurring in hopes of increasing our HR survey results in this area. Way to go, boss, well played.

While I merely survived my work day, Scott had a great day at work and was headed out to celebrate, so I made plans to dine with my parents.

It was horrible. I arrived there at 5:00 and my mom was still on her conference call. My grandma was there, but she had surgery yesterday and was unable to hold Leah. So, I volunteered my aunt Peggy for this roll. I tried to put on a movie, but the boys were not interested at all. Joey kept going into the TV Cabinet and running around with the DVD cases. Then Tyler crawled behind the TV and unplugged the Cable. My Mom could not figure out how to reset the TV. My Dad came home some time around this event and spent the next half hour working on the TV. The kids were so wild and misbehaved. I actually cried quietly a few times, but my held it together for my parents sake. Joey was hitting, throwing toys, having tantrums. Tyler was crying because he wanted a bottle, or was being beaten up, or having his toys taken from him. They were out of control. Leah was good for the most part. Finally, we ate dinner. My grandma left pretty much immediately, she was tired and probably couldn't take the noise and craziness. I left shortly after feeling completely embarrassed about the kids behavior and like the biggest failure of a parent ever.

Upon arriving home, I unload all the kids and let the dogs out. They promptly get sprayed by a skunk. The house stinks. I contemplate packing a bag and moving to my parents house. Permanently. I am exhausted, but at about 9 o'clock I remember that I have absolutely no clean work pants, so I run down to start a load of laundry. I force myself to stay awake for the hour it takes for the wash cycle to complete. At around 10 pm I drag my ass down to the basement only to find that I never actually hit the start button on the washer and still have no clean clothes. I am about to have a complete mental breakdown, but manage to hold myself together long enough to remember the steam clean function on my state of the art dryer. So…this is the moment I had been anticipating the day I stood at Sears and decided to purchase a $3000 clothes washing system. I grab my pants, throw them in and head off to bed. I am pretty sure there is no way I will survive 18 more years of this. It's just to damn hard.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Return to Normalcy

The last couple of weeks have been insane. I had my trip to Baltimore, followed by a week of training at work, then vacation and then another week of training. When I say training, I am talking about a part of my job that I actually love. Every now and again, I conduct training sessions on certain topics which I am considered an "expert". The only downside to this is having to be pretty much "on" the whole time. There is no opportunity for spacing out or taking a few minutes to check out perezhilton.com. Nope, your laptop is hooked into a huge projector and everything on your screen is magnified for the whole class to see. So, it is exhausting, but nonetheless gratifying because at the end of the day, you know you put in a full day and actually accomplished something.

We also have officially made our switch back to daycare for the kids. I mentioned a long time ago that Scott's cousin Hilary was watching the kids in our home for the summer. This is sort of an annual thing, Our day care provider, Patty, takes the summers off, so every Spring Scott and I scramble to find someone to watch the kids for a couple of months.

It's funny, because most people think that having in home care would be the way to go with three kids. But, honestly it really isn't for us. Sure, there are some benefits, like not having to get the kids up and out of the house in the morning, and not being constrained by the hours of the daycare. However, there are major downsides too. For instance, the constant traffic in the house means about three times the cleaning. Plus, we always have to make sure there is food in the house for breakfast and lunch, which is not only and added responsibility but a huge hidden expense. There are other things too, like the kids never leave the house, so they are bored and wound up. Every year, it's been pretty much the same thing. The first couple of weeks are awesome, and we think, hey, we should do this year round, but by the end or August, we are dying to go back to Patty's.

So, normalcy at work, normalcy at home, I am feeling a sense of calm that I haven't experienced in quite some time. I like it. Okay, I promised more vacation pictures – so here goes - makes me want to go back NOW!

Lunch at the Salty Dog:

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Fun at the Beach:

Photobucket

Photobucket

The Park at Harbor Town:

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

More fun in the Pool:

Photobucket

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

How do you do Chili?

Last Sunday marked the beginning of football season, also known in our house as Chili season, so we made about 6 lbs of Chili to kick it all off. I am pretty sure that Scott and I make some of the best Chili around, so I feel absolutely obligated to share our "secret" recipe.

2 lbs ground beef
1.5 lb hot italian sausauge
2 Large Cans of Chili Beens
2 large Cans of petite diced tomatoes
3 Cans Kidney Beans
2 onions
2 green peppers
2 jalepenos
2 boxes of 5 Alarm Chili Seasoning

Photobucket

And all the fixings!

Photobucket

I serve my chili over pasta with cheese, sour cream and jalepenos. Come to think of it, I serve just about everything with cheese, sour cream and jalepenos.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Vacation!!

We are back from our much needed vacation and it was AWESOME! The weather was beautiful, the the boys were great, Leah was a sweetie. We all had a great time. I took about 500 pictures, but I will just post a few for now...

Fun in the Pool:

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Poolside Dining:

Photobucket

A night on the town:

Entertainment on Hitlon Head is scarce this time of year, but we did manage to catch the last show of the season at Shelter Cove. The boys had a blast.

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

So, we are back to the grind. The kids started back at daycare this week. We are working on getting our house back in order. And getting back into a groove. Okay gotta run, more pictures to come later.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Ladybug Update

On Tuesday, we had our Early Intervention evaluation. It went really well. While we did qualify for some services, we also learned that she is really not too far behind the curve on most things. Basically, they were concerned about what they referred to as her "trunk" strength. Otherwise known in workout world as your core muscles. She is developed to the level of a 3 month old at this point, which is a 40% delay.

Her other skills are scattered. Some things she is tracking right on point with, like her social interaction, recognizing voices, reaching for toys, bringing them to her mouth...many more, other things she is month or so behind on, but still considered in normal range.

There were two other areas of concern. Her verbal skills are behind, so we are going to have a speech therapy consult and her left eye is tracking slower than her right eye, so they have recommended seeing an opthomologist.

Overall I was really pleased with the outcome, she is close to or on track for the majority of skills, but still qualified for some extra help, which in my opinion is the best of everything.

In other news, our hand surgeon apparently had some last minute "out of town meeting" (which I'm pretty sure is doctor speak for vacation) pop up on the week of our scheduled surgery, so we had to reschedule. So,the thumb operation has been postponed to October 13th.

The last couple days have been consumed with packing, and organizing, and getting ready for this trip. I've had a big week at work too, so I am absolutely ready to go.

Some pics from last night -

Leah was thrilled to be eating:

Photobucket

Right up until she got bored and passed out:

Photobucket

Joey licking the cap to the baby food jar:

Photobucket

Tyler has been trying for weeks to figure out how to get into the baby swing - Mission Accomplished:

Photobucket

So - everything is packed - we are leaving tonight. Driving straight through. Tomorrow - I will be officially on vacation.