More Birthday Fun!

It's time to celebrate another birthday in our household! This past Monday, my used-to-be-only-5-lb peanut turned NINE! Where does the time go?? As I told you earlier, we do parties every other year for our guys. So Gavin's birthday was a pretty low key day at home. But he did get to have a couple of friends stay the night, and he had a blast! (And I am thankful that the house is still standing! lol)

Gavin's Lego Harry Potter cake.  Took me two hours to make the perfect Harry layer by layer & I managed to screw up the wand.  Don't make fun of me! ;)

Blowing out candles, laughing at Natalie's rendition of "Happy Birthday to You, you smell like a zoo..."

Having cake with Carter & Gabe

What sleepover could be complete without glow-in-the-dark grillz?? lol

Of course I have a story for every event in our family. Thankfully I have a kid who goes with the flow.
So we ordered Gavin a Kindle Fire for his birthday from Staples. They were out of stock in the store, but offered to ship one to our house free of charge. Awesome. Done. It came in two days & I thought we were golden, but of course not! The box looked like it had been drop kicked and had clearly been opened and poorly re-taped. The Kindle inside had a dent in one side and was half opened with a box cutter or something on the other side. Uncool! Especially since we didn't pay the $50 for an extended warranty, we didn't want to keep it knowing it was more than likely damaged.
SO... We returned the damaged Kindle. But! In that few days' time, they released the shiny *new* kindle! After some discussion, we decided to order Gavin the newer one (straight from Amazon. No more of this silly Staples business). Unfortunately that meant he needs to wait. Bummer. But my kid is excited anyway and happy we decided what we did. He'll get to have birthday all over again when the mail comes on the 22nd! :)

Present time!

Doubled over "I can't breathe" kind of laughter from his brother's card.  It had some kind of hotdog/weiner reference.  Oh boys! lol

Opening the mock Kindle Fire.  I wrapped one of his books & taped a picture of the kindle fire to the front.  He was excited, then quickly confused.  I'm a mean mom. ;) lol

Part Two: Natalie Cuteness
Okay, so I have no segue from birthday to housework, so I'll just make this part two because its so darn cute & totally blog-worthy.
Miss Natalie helps her daddy at the house on the days that I work. This day he gave her a project: hammering her name with nails.

So proud! :)

She did such a good job and was so proud of herself that he had to use the board she used on the house.

The wall of the back room, Natalie's board

Now Natalie will be forever a part of this house. Even if it's inside the walls and we're the only ones who know. ;)

Our Anniversary

So I was talking with my hubby the other day and he randomly asks, "So, are you going to blog about our anniversary?" LOL! I said no, I wasn't planning on it because I posted all of those pictures on Facebook. {insert Mathew's best hurt bunny look.} Well apparently he feels like I need more happy stuff on here that isn't clouded with "I wish this damn house wasn't taking so friggin long!" statements... So here ya go! :) If you saw all of my photos on Facebook and feel like you got a good enough idea, feel free to stop reading. You won't hurt my feelings. ;) Otherwise, I'm happy to fill you in on our fabulous day!

Love! <3

 Sunday, September 2nd, was our twelve year anniversary. (plus two years of dating makes 14 years together! Holy cow that's a long time). So on Saturday, Mathew decided to take me on an all-day date. I don't think we've ever done that!  We called up the kids' favorite babysitter Tim (would totally recommend boy babysitters btw. They rock!) and we headed out to Franconia Notch, NH for a nice hike. We got really lucky I've gotta say. We got in the car and pretty much just randomly picked a place nearby to go! But the trail we went on was absolutely beautiful.

(Seriously though, can any mountain around here not be??)  It was a loop: up to one lookout point, over to another, then back down. At the first lookout point, Bald Mountain I think it was called, we found a nice flat rock to sit and relax for a while and have a little picnic. This I knew about. What I did not know was that he brought caviar & mini bottles of wine!

Too sweet! Then we finished our hike in perfect time to head to a movie. We went to see Hit & Run, a movie we had no expectations of going in, but we actually really liked it! (and our movie theatre is super cheap so we couldn't lose. Just four bucks a ticket! It's okay. You can be jealous. lol)

Finally, we got lucky again where we chose to go for dinner. We went to a restaurant at our local ski resort and we hadn't been there before. Food was great, nice atmosphere, and plenty of gluten free for me! Yay! (though it is kinda weird looking out over a ski lift with green grass...)

So anyway, that, in a nutshell was our anniversary celebration. Especially compared to our anniversary last year (read: flat tire and damaged trailer on the side of the road in the Bronx!) we had a pretty spectacular day! LOL!

Seriously though, we've been through entirely too much stuff in our 14 years together.  So many of you have no idea.  The things I have shared with you all here over the past year are only the recent trials & tribulations we've had to overcome, and certainly not the worst.  We've been through more than most couples have needed to endure in their entire lives, and we're only in our thirties!  But I've gotta tell you, I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.  For every moment of heartache there has been a hundred moments of unbelievable joy.  Through all of the pain we've gone through, we've been blessed to experience love we never knew existed.  We are not at all blind to the fact that we are so incredibly lucky to have our soul mate to lean on, and we will never take each other for granted. We work hard at maintaining what we have through all of the good times & bad.  And we were so lucky to celebrate this year in this new place we call home.  A place that we hope continues to bless us with more happy memories over the next many dozen years to come!

So much to blog, so little time!

Wow this has been a whirlwind of a month!  We've had so much going on that I haven't even had time to share it all with you here! lol  So now that I have a moment to take a breather (and a reliable internet connection!) I'll catch you all up on our crazy life.

So the month of August has been pretty ridiculous, and most of it is due to our rental house.  You see, we've been staying in this super tiny, super awful house for the last year.  Totally okay, because it's just temporary, and as these things go the rent was cheap.  But we were only planning on our house to take a year & it's not even close to ready yet.  Our lease is up as of Sept 1.  So even though this place was awful & we were all on top of each other (all three kids sharing one bedroom!) and it was super ugly & depressing, we really didn't want to go through the trouble of moving just to move again.  Been there.  Done that.  Bought the t-shirt.  But our landlord was being kind of a jerk.  We've never given him any reason to be, but I guess that's just how he rolls.  So, as I mentioned in my last post, we were kinda in panic mode trying to find an option for a place to live or suck it up & agree to his ridiculous terms.  Well, in a rare moment of luck for us, we were able to find the impossible: a house to rent month to month that was twice the size of where we were with close to the same rent and ready for us to move in!!
Minor snag though: the house is for sale & can be sold at any time & we'll be screwed... Details.  We've decided not to dwell on that part and assume that it'll all work out.  Not really any other choice!
Sooooo.........

We packed up in a matter of a week or two and moved out.  (OMG we've got a lot of stuff!)  Mark's birthday was on the 23rd, we moved out the majority of our stuff on the 24th, moved a little more the morning of the 25th, then had a birthday party for Mark (more on that in a minute) in the afternoon.  Then we had to have the house unpacked & nice looking for two Monday morning showings!!  Gahh!  Then working nights for three nights & today I get to go to the old house & scrub carpets & touch up paint.  You SO wish you had my life, right?! lol!! ;)

We're getting entirely too good at this. :/

But now we're in a much more comfortable house that we are much happier to be in until our HOME is finally done.  Matt has been working nonstop getting as much done as he can before winter hits.  We're still hoping to have it livable in a few months.  Fingers crossed!  And if we quit running into major issues that we weren't planning on it would be more likely to happen. Like needing a month to re-pour the foundation on the porch because it's standing on A brick... or needing to reinforce all of the floorboards because they are not stable enough or close to current code... or tearing off all of the siding just so Lowe's can take two months to get the siding we need in stock... You know.  That kind of stuff! lol  But Matt's doing to best he can & that's all I can ask.  It'll all get done and it'll all be worth the headache (and the backache!)  This is what it looks like now.

A little siding & paint will make a world of difference.  But as you can see we're making progress!  All of the grunt work is almost done & the more fun putting-it-all-back-together part will come next.  I think I'll have a happier hubby at that point. ;)

So anyway, as I started to say above, amidst all of our chaos, life goes on & we definitely had some fun stuff happen this month too.  My birthday was the 9th & my family spoiled me rotten.  I had to be a grown up & work despite my birthday, but that's okay.  My work family is pretty awesome too. ;)  Then on the 23rd my oldest baby turned TEN!!!  Holy cow where did the time go!  He's more than halfway ready to leave the nest & I feel like we're just getting started! :'(  But instead of dwelling on that I'm going to enjoy every moment with him now and I think despite the move & the craziness we did a pretty good job of celebrating him.

Well first I need to tell you the story of his party.  It's even more comical because seriously we can't even manage to have a 10 year old's birthday party go smoothly! lol  So we were planning at first to have a laser tag party.  Contacted the place that does it, waiting for them to open for the season, and then we were about to send out invitations.  Then I get an email: Sorry, we're not doing laser tag this year.  WHAT!?!  Grr!  Okay, I have an easy going kid & he says, "no problem Mom.  Let's have a pool party instead."  Cool.  So I call up the local pool, tell them my plans & they say "No problem."  (Even better!  The pool is free!  Bonus for Mom!)  So invitations go out, life is good.  Well thank God the boys happened to be playing with a neighbor the Monday before who happened to mention the pool closing early!!  WTH!?!  Sure enough they closed on the 19th unexpectedly.  So then we had to scramble for plan C!  $150 later, we arranged a pool party at the indoor pool at the local hotel, called all of his friends & all was right with the world again. Saturday we had his party & it was lots of fun!

Why yes.  Yes I did make a cute little cake with complicated fondant people despite being in the middle of moving.  Yes I did.

Mark approved! :)

Swimming pool fun!

Mark & his goofy buddy Jeremy

Pizza!

Give them pizza & cake & a balloon fight riot ensues!

Phew!  I'm exhausted! lol  And in just over a week it'll be Gavin's birthday!  Thankfully we started an "every other year" rule for birthday parties years ago.  He'll just a have a couple of friends over instead... though that may wear me out too! lol

Thanks for reading my novel!  Now I'm off to scrub carpets.  I live such a charmed life.  ;)

AGAIN!!

I know I haven't posted in a while, and I really do have some fun things that I would love to catch you all up on.  Happy summer and all that.  But right now, I need to make a short & sweet post begging for some prayers & good thoughts for our family. 

Right now I'm trying to refrain from typing out every curse word in my vocabulary.  It wouldn't accomplish anything, but maybe it'll make me feel better! 

So here's the scoop: next week, on my birthday, marks the one year mark of our purchasing our house.  September first marks our end date on our lease for the house we are renting.  We've been talking with our landlord about extending our lease for a couple of months so that we can finish our house.  He's been "thinking" on it for a week now.

Guess what?  No go.  That it unless we want to continue our lease until MAY!
@#$%^&&*())!(@**@&#&&^#$^!!!!!!!!!!

So here we go again.  House we own has no walls, no electricity, no plumbing.  We have nowhere to live unless we a) are unbelievably lucky enough to find a place that will be large enough for our family of five & will take us in on a month to month lease, or b) we suck it up & keep paying on a place we have no intention of living in by the end of the year.  There is no option c) get an extended stay hotel like last time.  There isn't one for one thing & I can't even fathom the thought of doing that to my family again.  Option a is very very unlikely because, hey, we're in Vermont & home owners aren't stupid.  No one wants to move in two feet of snow & they don't want to be stuck with no renters come December (hence our current landlord's decision).  So we either have to move again just to move again or pay money we don't really have until spring to just have a crappy place to stay for a couple more months. 

I think I'm having a panic attack.
@#$%^&*!

Needing some good vibes guys.  I'm seriously losing it.

If You Can't Stand the Heat...

One of the things I really worried about when deciding to move to Vermont was the summers.  I truly thought that the only way summer would be fun was if it was at least 90 degrees so that you could lay out in the sun & go swimming, and do all those fun summery things.  Mathew laughed at me, saying that Vermont would still have summer - it wasn't Antarctica for cryin' out loud - and it would still have the occasional hot day, but it would be more mild all of the other days.  And we could still go swimming and do all of those things, but be able to actually breathe outside while doing it! 

I hate it when he's right.  :/

So now we're out of the proverbial "kitchen."  (Yeah, yeah, I know that expression means something else entirely, but for this purpose I'm using it for actual heat.  :P lol)  This summer has been so nice!  We've had the occasional day in the 60's, and a day or two of 90, but for the most part it's been upper 70's to 80ish and very comfortable.  I can see why they don't find a need for air conditioning in homes here.  It's just fine with an open window, and it get's down to the 50's at night, so no big deal.  And frankly, for the most part, you're outside playing anyway, so who cares! :)

The kids are doing their fair share of playing so far.  We've never been big "over-schedulers" in our house packing the kids' days with a ton of activities (so far anyway), but they're keeping busy.  They started golf lessons - super cute in their little polo's & plaid shorts ;) - and they'll all start swim lessons next week.  Maybe starting guitar lessons here too soon if we can get it coordinated.  Besides that they've just been hanging around Matt at the house trying to get some work done. 

You know you want to live here...

I'm really really ready for this all to be done & get on with our lives.  Our self-imposed deadline for moving in will be here in about a month & a half and we've barely begun the process of putting it back together.  It's SO not gunna happen.  Poor Matt keeps getting hurt, the injections in his back aren't helping anymore, and it's seriously too damn hard to do it all with your own two hands.  I can only be there so much to help and when I'm there I'll be the first to admit I haven't the slightest clue what I'm doing! lol  But slowly but surely we're getting there, and I keep telling myself it'll all be worth it in the end.  In the above picture you can see that we got all of the god-awful siding off finally.  Yippee!  I'm sure that'll make a huge difference.  Plus all of the trees are cut down & out of the way, so that's great too.  It would be great though, if we could get some free help.  Maybe Phineas & Ferb could come by... they'd have it done by lunch! 

Good thing we live just a few miles from Danville! ;)

Field Trip!

This place is so flippin' awesome. (Or wicked awesome as the locals would say! lol). How cool is it that with just an hour or two's drive, we can have so many options for such incredible experiences! I hope we never take for granted what a blessing that is.

So nearly every kid in elementary school goes to the zoo for a field trip at least once in their lifetime. Nothing new there. But for a Vermonter? Well that means just a quick jog up to CANADA! Seriously people! (Or am I the only one who thinks that's super cool? lol). Yesterday, Gavin's third grade class took their field trip to the Zoo de Granby in Quebec; just a short hour and a half drive from our home town. His teacher and principal were kind enough to let Mark out of class to allow our whole family to come along, (and a sweet co-worker was kind enough to switch shifts with me too so that I could attend. Thanks again Sarah! :)).

Gavin's Third Grade Class with Mrs.C (best teacher ever)

So here's what you need to know about the providence of Quebec.  They speak French.  Almost exclusively.  Much more so than any other area of Canada.  And from what my friends tell me, they kinda look down on us American folks who expect them to know English.  (I guess choosing Spanish for my language elective in high school was an epic fail. :/)  But although the staff at the zoo spoke French first, they were all very nice & tried to take care of us English speaking Vermonters as best they could.

This sweet lady told us all about this owl.  We did not, however, understand a word she said.

I'll always be partial to the St. Louis Zoo.  It's where I grew up, it has a ton of great exhibits (and let's be honest, it's free.)  But I've gotta say that this zoo was pretty great.  The kids had so much fun!  (Except they didn't have Red Pandas. :(  Sorry Aunt Caroline! ;))   Aaaannddd... it was not only a zoo, but an amusement park & water park as well!  Though we didn't have enough time to do the amusement park stuff this time, we did enjoy the zoo and got to play at the water park for a bit. :)  Of course, I can't resist sharing a few pictures.

Gavin & his buddies Lucas & Carter (and Mark too! :))

Petting Sting Rays

Feeding birds in the bird sanctuary

Birds climbing ALL over Gavin!  Funniest thing ever!  (Except poor Lucas behind him.  He was fortunate enough that one of the birds left a "present" in his hair! lol!)

All the kids playing in the wave pool at the waterpark

Natalie & I getting some waterpark fun too :)

SUCH a fun day!  We will definitely be back!  Though we might brush up on a little French first lol ;). 

Okay, I think that's it for all of our travels for a little while.  Maine, Florida, Mexico, and Canada all in the span of about a month!  Phew!  I guess we better focus on actually fixing up our house now huh?  Darn it.  Guess it won't fix itself. ;)  Back to the grindstone!

The Wedding Cruise

As many of you know, we spent last week celebrating the marriage of my youngest brother-in-law John and his new wife Caroline on a 4 day cruise to Key West & Cozumel, Mexico.  I started to type out the summary of our trip while waiting in the airport (as my kids flung their flip-flops at each other out of sheer boredom), then didn't get to finish.  Then I got home & had to unpack & never got to it.  Then I've been dealing with this crazy constant dizziness thing & never really felt like sitting in front of a computer (which I totally still have by the way.  Ugh, it's awful feeling like you have a constant
hangover! :S)  So anyway, blogging about our trip has been looming over my head and I really wanted to do it justice, but at the same time not bore you to tears with the mundane play-by-play.  (Who knew blogging could be so stressful? lol ;))

So I will direct your attention to facebook for a bit more comprehensive collection of pictures.  (I took over 500 and pared it down to 66.  You're welcome! lol)  And like I said, I won't bore you
too much with the day to day details.  But I've gotta say how incredible it was to see so much of our family!!  We've gone from living essentially up the street from everyone in St. Louis, to just a day trip away from everyone in KC with some fairly frequent visits, to living 1500 miles away.  Plane tickets are expensive for a family of five, and frankly I don't think Matt or I could survive another 30+
hour drive one way! lol  So needless to say we haven't seen everyone in nearly a year & that was worth every penny in and of itself.  There are still a few members of our family that weren't able to come & that really sucks.  We hope to see them soon too!



John & Caroline's wedding was simple, personal, and absolutely beautiful.  Their love for each other exudes from them and it was such a priviledge to be part of their day.  Caroline is perfect for John,
and I'm so excited for her to be a part of our crazy family!  John was just a kid when Matt & I got married (twelve I think), so now I feel super old that he's a married man ;), but we are so very happy for them!

The happy couple

The cruise was great.  We visited Key West & went on a trolley ride of the island, and then we stopped in Cozumel where our family chose to visit some Mayan ruins & hang out on the beach for a bit.  On the boat we ate (and ate and ate...) some great food, swam & played on water slides, played minigolf, and had lots of fun-in-the-sun family time.  Plus it's great that the ship has a kids club.  Kids have fun getting away from us, we have a built-in babysitter for some grown-up time:
win win! :)  (See there?  Four day trip scaled down to one easy paragraph.  I can be concise when I want to! lol)
Here are just a few highlight pictures in case you're not a facebook friend.  (Or in case you didn't feel like flipping through all 66 of my pics! lol)



Sunset on the ship



Sloppy Joe's in Key West





Checking out the ruins of San Gervasio

Beach Fun! :)





Mayan god Henna Tattoo's for the boys



John & Caroline playing the Newlywed Game with the captain.  So hilarious!



Mathew's other brother Martin celebrating his 30th Birthday!



So, as you can see, we had a great time!  Of course we had some drama trying to get home.  But that's just par for the course with our family! lol  It's always something.  I think Florida hates us, frankly, because something always seems to go wrong there (car accidents, etc).  But after Delta Airlines bent over backwards to get us home safely, it was no big deal.  Now it's back to work & back to reality.  Thankfully, we now live in a place that we're happy to come home to! :)