My little Natalie is FOUR!

I know every mom looks back on every birthday their kids have & says "where did the time go?"  But seriously!  Where did the time go?!?!  I feel like it was just last week that we were holding that tiny little baby girl in our arms, and now she's so big I can hardly carry her!

So her birthday was actually the 8th, but I had to work, like, constantly since then, so my apologies for the late post.  But here's some highlights of her birthday fun!

First, daddy treated her to some pretty pink roses & a Tangled balloon for his little princess.  

Cheese!

Momma had to follow suit in her typical neurotic style & make a ridiculous cake for just the five of us... (well the four of them, because I can't eat it! lol)  But she loved it anyway & that's all that matters! :)  Since I can't have a big family party for her like I did for the boys at this age, it's the least I could do!

In case you didn't know, those are characters from her favorite show, the Bubble Guppies!

While daddy was making her a special birthday dinner, we let her open her gifts from her Pa-Pa that came in the mail.  Cinderella & a homemade Hello Kitty blanket!  She was thrilled!

Poor girl had to stare at that package for two days! Like I've said before, I'm a mean mom! ;)

Happy Birthday to You...

"Hey Mom!  When you cut the cake, I want to eat Molly's head!" lol  Silly girl! ;)

Then it was time for presents from Mom & Dad & "her" boys!

She's not spoiled at alllll.... :/

She had a couple of favorite gifts.  Her big gift was her very own camera!  She always wants to steal mine, & I never want to give it up because, well, she's little & breaks things. ;)  So she got one she can go nuts with!

Well of *course* it's Hello Kitty!

This little girl tells me she wants to be a "doctor for kids" when she grows up.  Warms my heart! <3  So she got her very own baby doll complete with stethescope & syringe!  I don't think she's put it down since she got it!

Giving baby her medicine.  Too cute!

And, it is also noteworthy what she decided to name this baby.  The other day, I told her "love ya bunches!" and she was very confused.  She said, "Mom, why did you call me Bunches?"  I said, "no sweetie, that just means I love you a lot!"  Well she still thought that was pretty funny & has been calling me Bunches ever since.  Now, she says that's the name of her baby!  rotfl!  Love my silly girl!

Finally, one of the only things she actually asked for was some bubbles.  Not an easy task in October, but daddy found some cute ones, & she took them out for a spin the next day.

Such pure happiness right here! :)

 Not necessarily an eventful day, but we had a very happy girl & we all enjoyed celebrating her!

Hopefully we'll be off to the pumpkin patch this afternoon, so I hope to have a post of Fall Vermont Fun really soon!  Thanks to all of my faithful readers out there.  I'm up to 5,000 hits this afternoon!  Love you all! :)

"Good Fences Make Good Neighbors"

Or in our case, Mr. Frost, a good fence brings out the batshit crazy in our neighbor!

On the 19th, I finally put up the fence that I've been meaning to put up for months. There's not much that I'm able to contribute to building this house, so I was ÜBER proud of myself for getting it done & doing it right.

Ta-da!  Fence is up, round #1

It transformed our otherwise blah little yard & made it look somewhat pretty... or at least that we were trying anyway. ;). We had so many people who were parking in the next door lot stop to tell us how nice it looked, or to thank us for fixing this house. Super sweet people who are the epitome of this town. We left for the evening feeling pretty darn good.

Our neighbor, however, did not have the same good feeling.

I had to work the next day, so Matt went to the house alone. Sometime overnight the jerk put up a string indicating that we were over his property line on one corner. Did I mention that said property is a PARKING LOT?!?! (And a poorly maintained one at that). If it were somebody's home, I would be falling all over myself apologizing for my error and would rectify it ASAP. But a parking lot??? Even the space I did use left plenty of grass between the fence & the gravel. So... I don't get it. Why the big deal?

Matt called him in the morning to try to work it out. He started out trying to be as nice as possible about it, even offering to maintain all the grass on the other side & plant flowers, but he was quickly attacked! The guy went crazy!! He started yelling about how we did it on purpose, that he's sick of us walking through the lot (you know, so we can take our kids down the street to the gas station to the only bathroom we can use... silly us), that he was mad we drove through the lot when we moved here to park our construction trailers behind the house (on our property). He said he was sick of our mess & was going to call the city on us for it (as so many residents are overjoyed & complimenting us on how much better it looks already... Mmm kay...), and then he starts questioning our permits... Simmer down dude! Well I don't know exactly how that conversation ended, but I can tell you I did see the later text. "I want that fence removed TODAY or I will remove it for you." Well considering he already dented the fence somehow when he was putting up the ridiculous string we didn't want to take any chances. It just wasn't worth the argument. So that evening Matt took it all down. :(

We probably could have made a huge ordeal out of it. Should have demanded to see a survey, given him the opportunity to destroy our property & go after him if he wanted a fight. But the truth is we just don't have the energy to fight anymore. We have had to fight for so much that has been owed to us and for all the ways we've been wronged over the last couple of years that this one just seemed so trivial. This is not the place where we wanted to ever have to deal with those kinds of problems ever again. Besides, from what I understand, the Chinese restaurant has a ten year lease on that lot, which means this man is going to be our "neighbor" for a very long time. We'd better make nice now.

So even though I wasn't at all happy about it, today I finished putting the fence back up.

Pardon the construction mess.  We built the back room today too!

 
I was getting more & more angry as I kept finding rocks & humongous roots that needed to be hacked so that I could properly place the stakes, a problem I didn't have the first time. I was thoroughly annoyed that instead of my pretty right angle that fit perfectly up to the house I had to put it at this stupid funky angle that left a space of useless grass for no reason at all. Grr!!

The difference of space that all the fuss was about.  Notice the amount of grass there still was, not to mention the general crappiness of the property in question...  Whatever dude.

But it's back up now, and it still looks pretty good. And I now have one very happy puppy who can run & play.

Copper hugging my leg saying "Thanks Mom!" ;)

And if this man even lets "his" grass grow a fraction of an inch too long? Lord help him. ;)

Ballerina Girl

I don't know about you moms of girls out there, but for me, one of the first things I looked forward to as soon as the doctor told me "It's a Girl!!" is ballet lessons.  It's something I grew up with & loved, & I very much wanted to share that with my daughter someday.  I'll be honest, I would be pretty heartbroken if she was never interested, but thankfully for me it's all she's talked about for at least a year, & the time has come!  Her first lesson was on Thursday, & she was SO excited! 

Getting ready at home

Gotta try on those fun tap shoes too! ;)

Look at my pretty tutu!

I got this, Mom...

A little shy & nervous.  She needed a little pep talk from Momma, and finally teacher's hand to hold, but she did great!

Natalie & her new friends!  About time to close the door Mom & Dad!  See you soon! :)

Once she got over her shyness & jumped in, she had a great time!  I was so proud of her, and I think she was proud of herself too.  It's still pretty hard for her to meet new people & step away from mommy & daddy, but she did such a great job.  And she's been talking about all of the things she learned ever since! I think tutu's & costumes, tights & dance shoes, rehersals & recitals will all be in our near future!  (Yay! ;))

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.