Friday Fill-Ins

1. It's time for Friday Fill-Ins of course.

2. Work; it's not a bad place for working.

3. I must be getting old, when I got off the plane on Wednesday night my knees were killing me

4. Air Conditioning in the AZ summer is the best thing I have ever known.

5. My belly is simply expanding at a rapid rate.

6. The last time I laughed really loudly was when I was reading Unknown Mami's post about Ass Cheeks.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to Friday Night Dinner, tomorrow my plans include going to my grandparents' house and Sunday, I want to go to church and then relax!

More Bullets

Yep, more bullets - sorry, but it's the best I can do, I've been in an airport or on a plane since 8am this morning. I had to travel to Raleigh, NC to do some training at a system launch on Wednesday. Wish it would have been lighter when we got here, it's so pretty to see all the lush green surroundings when you live in the desert.

• Our plane was delayed 2 hours, so instead of getting in at 8pm, we didn't get here til 10pm.

• We're staying in a fancy schmancy hotel called the Washington Duke . It's beautimous.

• My oldest came home on Saturday, and she actually texted me while we were in the same house! That is a 'no-no' and it was immediately brought to her attention.

• My baby is almost 18 months old - and she's talking more and more, and it's making me sad that she's getting so old. Thank God I'll have my newborn fix in just 7 more months (wait, did I just say that?? I'm having a newborn in 7 months, holy crap!)

• I don't think my toe is broken, I think I just bruised it, because it feels a lot better already and I can bend it now and stuff. But it's still purple, which is gross.

• I want to be independently wealthy somehow

• Oh, I got over half way through 'Three Cups of Tea' while on my flights, and there is hope people, it does pick up and it's very inspirational - so if you've picked it up but can't quite get into it, give it a couple more chapters. You'll get lost with all the different people he meets, and the style in which it's written is kind of distracting, but just try to glean the gist of it and you'll like it. I kind of have to read it in "skim" mode.

• I don't like my Snickers to come from the refrigerator (I say this because I hadn't eaten since our stop in Dallas and I was hungry, but not hungry enough to order room service, so I looked in the mini-bar and there was a Snickers and that sounded good - but I don't like my candy bars to crackle when I bite into them, I like them to smoosh - unless they are meant to crackle, like a Crackle bar - is it spelled with a "K" though? I can't remember.)

OK, I think I'm done bulleting. Nighty night.

3 Things

#1 - When did my husband and I start acting like we were 12 years old? I accidentally left my unfinished bowl of grapes on my dresser near the TV last night. So, I got up at 6:30am with our toddler - he got up at 7:30 to get ready. When he came out of our room, and took Baby Pants outside with him, I went to our room to start getting ready. Right outside the bedroom door, on the floor, was my bowl of grapes. Oh he showed me! So, what did I do? I went to the kitchen, cleaned my bowl, and put it in the dishwasher. I'd like to say I stopped there - but I didn't. Every SINGLE night of our existence together, we do the dishes after dinner and put them in the dishwasher - and every SINGLE night, he lifts weights and drinks a protein shake and at about 9:30pm has a snack, and all of these dishes he leaves in the sink!! The dishwasher is right there man!! Anyway - every morning, like the good little wifey I am, I clean his dishes for him and put them in the dishwasher. But not THIS morning. Instead, I took all of his dirty dishes and put them on top of his protein bar that he sets near the coffee machine...and then proceeded to get ready. Oh, I SO got him back. Neiner Neiner Neiner! Seriously, can we grow up please?

#2 - I broke my toe this morning. When I got up, I realized I had also left my daughter's bottle over on my dresser (along with the grapes) and had to walk over to the other side of the bed to get it. As I did this, I rammed my fourth toe into the wooden bed frame and broke my freakin' toe. It hurt then, it hurts now, and it's probably going to hurt for a while. I think they should hang beds from the ceiling, because it's not the first time one of my little piggies has been a casualty of that bed frame.

#3 - I almost had a major freakout this morning, when I booted up my laptop and it told me some Windows updates were running and not to shut down my computer. So, I waited patiently, and when I finally got logged on - my whole desktop was CLEAR! And all of my documents folders were EMPTY! (This is my work laptop by the way, which holds every single important file that I need). I had a mini panic attack - then I thought, if all else fails I have Carbonite (which is a web-based back-up tool, and all of my files would be stored there safely). I just didn't want to have to spend all day restoring my files. Anywho, I did what any girl with a computer problem would do...I rebooted and prayed that everything would magically reappear. And guess what??? It did!! YAY ME!

Okay - that's all. Happy Friday everyone!

(And don't forget to tell me how pretty my blog is. hehe)

My Blog Is Bee-Yoo-Ti-Ful

My blog got a makeover, and it's gorgeous!! Crissy over at Crissy's Blog Design designed it for me, and I think it's just GREAT!! If you are itching for a blog overhaul, go see her!

Writer's Workshop

This is my first time participating in the Writer's Workshop from Mama's Losin' It. She gives you a few prompts to choose from, you pick one, write about it, and then go back to her website and put your name in the McLinky thing that shows you participated.

This week, I saw an interesting one, and I think it might help you get to know me a bit better, and may make some of you think I'm weird and run screaming from my blog never to return. ;) Hopefully it's the former and not the latter.

So - I chose Prompt #5 - Describe what brought you closer to your faith.

There were a few things that brought me closer to my faith, or at least put me back on my journey to getting closer to God. I was raised by my grandparents, and they were practicing Mormons when I was a kid. My grandma never really taught me stories out of the Book of Mormon though, she taught me about Jesus from the Bible. She says she felt she agreed the most with Mormon doctrines, I'm not sure why, and I don't argue it with her anymore. But, I never really felt that being a Mormon was for me - the rules and some of things I read just didn't sit well with me. By the time I was about 13 or 14, I was the only one out of our family still going to the LDS church. My grandma still said she was Mormon, but she felt bad going to church because she drank coffee and smoked. I continued going to church off and on until I was about 16, then I stopped.

I got pregnant my senior year in high school, and had my first daughter 5 months after I graduated. Her father left and was not involved. I moved back in with my grandparents, and when my daughter was about 6 months old, I met a guy, and he loved me and my daughter so I moved in with him (much to my grandparents' dismay). About 6 months into the relationship, I started feeling a tugging on my heart to return to church, not the Mormon church, but I wasn't sure which church. Since I didn't know what church to go to, I just went to Walmart and bought a Bible (yes, Walmart). Of course, we are a "drive-thru", get it quick, culture - so I flipped to the end to see what happens (this is the book of Revelation, and it can be pretty scary stuff). So, here I am, this 18 year old kid, reading about how fornicators (me and my boyfriend) were going to get thrown into the lake of fire. I said "Ohhh...we are going to hell in a handbasket". We kind of laughed it off, but not really. We eventually grew apart because I worked days and he worked nights, and I ended up moving out and getting my own apartment for me and my daughter.

I started seeing someone else (this was a bad pattern for me as a young adult, I just could never seem to be alone). I had also started a new job, and was working with a gal that kept talking about her church and how it was really laid back, non-denominational and the pastor was really cool. I went with my new boyfriend one Sunday, and it was OK, a lot different than what I was used to (LDS church is all about being 'reverent'), and these people were standing up, and singing, and clapping their hands. I wasn't sure if I was going to go back, but I still felt tugging...God's kind of annoying like that sometimes (hehe). Anywho, when I was a senior in high school, I had gotten into going to raves (and all the illicit drugs that went along with it) - but obviously stopped when I was pregnant (ok, I guess that's not obvious as I'm sure there are some women out there who wouldn't stop just because they're pregnant...but I did). Anywho, I heard about a rave that was going to go on on New Year's Eve, and I hadn't been to one in a long time, so my mom watched my daughter for the night, and I convinced my boyfriend to go with me. He had never taken drugs, so he just drank a few beers before we went, but as soon as I got there I found the ecstacy guy, bought a pill and took it. As the night went on, we were dancing, and somehow got separated from each other. The next thing I know, I'm outside, kissing some other guy and my boyfriend walks up. He looked really hurt, and he left...he came back, and I left with him. When we were talking about it in the morning, I told him that I really needed to get myself straight, it wasn't right for me to live like that, and as much as I wanted to stay together with him, I just couldn't. He understood, and he was a really good friend to me for many years later.

So, that January, in 1999, I went back to my friend's church, and turned my life over to God. I was almost 19 years old at the time. I've been on my journey for the past 10 years - there have been more ups and downs, life has not been perfect by any means, and God doesn't promise that. In fact, He says there will be more trials and tribulations for being a believer. But I wouldn't trade anything I've gone through, it's made me the person I am today, and I'd like to think I'm a much better person now than I was 10 years ago and that I'm teaching my children now to develop their faith so maybe they won't have to go through ALL of the things I went through. I'm sure they'll make their own mistakes, but as long as they know that God is always waiting for them when they're ready to come back, I think they'll be just fine.

Slackin'

So I've been slackin' on my bloggin' - I guess it's because I sort of feel like I haven't had anything blogworthy happen as of late. I'm working really hard on a project that is launching next week, so I guess much of my focus has been on that.

I guess I'm going to copy my buddy Angela over at The Hills, and if any of you read her blog (and if you don't, you should) - you may know what this means.....BULLETS!! San Diego Momma does this too - they are highly effective for recapping (and did you know that recap is short for 'recapitulation'?? I looked that up one day online). Anywho - let the bullets begin!

• My oldest daughter is coming home on Thurday from her visit with my mom. Tons of drama ensued while she was there - she actually thought I would let her live with my mom for the next school year. Uh...no. There's some sad stuff involving kittens as well, but I don't want to make this blog a downer.

• My second oldest daughter is coming home from her Dad's on August 15th. We will then have our full household back - it's going to be great...but weird at the same time.

• After everyone is back, there is going to be much back to school shopping occuring.

• During my company retreat last weekend, I got stung by a bee. I know many of you might not know this about me yet, but I have been deathly afraid of bees after being stung twice as a child, and I stored those experiences as very traumatic. So, whenever a bee gets in my vicinity, I always have a MAJOR freakout - the freakouts have calmed a little bit over the past few years as I've been trying to use my rational mind, but I always knew that if a bee stung me I would just about die from the pain (this was of course all in my head). So - I say all of this to say, that yes, it hurt, but not that bad, and only for a second - so I'm pretty glad that I got stung by a bee again as an adult so that I can now replace my traumatic memories with a not so traumatic memory.

• I am in my 12th week of pregnancy - the gas has not stopped, the breakouts have not gone away, and I'm still pretty tired most of the time. I'm hoping when this week comes to a close, that the Second Trimester Fairy will come wave her magic wand over me and I will stop farting, my skin will glow, and I'll have my energy back! (here's hoping right?)

• A few of you have asked how "Three Cups of Tea" is - well, I started it, and haven't picked it up again yet - I've been too engrossed in episodes of 'House' and 'NCIS'. What I've read so far has been pretty good - it does start off somewhat slow if you're not that into reading about mountain climbing, so I'm hoping when I pick it up again that it will get into the 'good stuff'. :)

• My toddler has started sassing - this is great...not. I totally saw her doing the "I'm Pooping" face, so I asked her "Baby Pants, did you go poo-poo?" - "No" She says as she shakes her head. "Well, you smell stinky, so I think you went poo-poo. Did you go poo-poo?" - "No!" this time more adamantly. "Baby Pants, I know you went poo-poo, so let's go change your diaper". At this point, she starts shaking her finger at me and says "Buh Duh Del Mah Nuf Guh POO-POO!" (I interpreted this to mean - "No Mom, I think you are the one that's poo-poo!"). Ultimately, I win, and the poo-poo diaper does get changed...but only after she gets her own baby wipe (to help mommy) and proceeds to stick the wipe in her private area and then rubs it all over her mouth - great.

• I got free Starbucks today - so that was awesome.

• I'm barely 3 months pregnant, and already have to wear the "Belly Band" - you know, the thing that you probably would have worn as a mini-skirt back in the day, but now it's used so you can refuse to buy maternity clothes a bit longer, and still wear your regular pants with the button undone. It's a great invention...especially since affordable maternity clothes are ugly.

• My latest funny conversation with my 4 yr old last night went like this "Mommy, is tomorrow a school day or a stay at home day?" - "It's a school day." - "Is it a show and tell day?" - "No dear, Friday is show and tell day." - "How come you know everything?" - "Because I'm a mommy, and mommy's know everything." - "Well, I know everything too, because I'm a big girl. I know what 'brain freeze' is, that's when your brain gets frozen." And then she skips away.

And now you are all caught up! :)

Friday Fill-ins

It's time for Friday Fill-In's

1. Taco Shells and Hamburger make a quick and easy dinner.

2. Three Cups of Tea is the book I'm reading right now.

3. July brings back memories of being extremely, uncomfortably hot.

4. My craving for sorbet at 10 o'clock last night was obvious.

5. They say if you tell your dreams to random people, you might need to go to the funny farm.

6. I don't have time to think it over.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to dinner with my company and our families (we're having a company retreat), tomorrow my plans include more company retreat fun at the hotel waterpark and Sunday, I want to go to church and maybe visit my best friend's mom!

I should have killed him when I had the chance

Nooooo...not my husband, the huge freaking cockroach that I ran away from in the guest bathroom this morning!! I went in there to go potty, and there he was, in all his hugeness, sitting on the bathroom sink. I of course had an internal freak out - then I tried to shoo him back down the sink drain from whence he came, because I have no idea where else the bastard would have come from. But, instead he ran down the side of the sink and behind the toilet...where I left him, because I did not want to choose that battle today.

But then later I thought, my 4 year old is going to have to take a bath in here later tonight, and she will have a major EXTERNAL freak out if she sees that thing during the course of her bath, and she'll thrash around in the bathtub, smack her head on the faucet, and I'll have to take her to the ER...and that would suck.

So, I go back in, broom in hand, prepared to battle the beast. And yeah, you guessed it, nowhere to be found. Of course I'm trying to convince myself that he didn't find anything cool in there, and just decided to crawl back down the sink drain and get on with his nasty cockroachy life in the bowels of the sewer system somewhere. But part of me knows that he's hiding in a dark place, and then at the moment I least expect it, he's going to drop on my head, I'll thrash around in the bathroom, smack my head on the toilet, and have to go the ER.

Like I said, I should have killed him when I had the chance.

(Sidenote: Deb, does this count as my PROMPTuesday since the cockroach has an evil plot to send one of my family members to the ER with his nasty cockroachiness??)

Havin' a Bad Day? Watch This!

OK, I just looked up the videos on You Tube where my daughter, Cita (who is now 7), was dancing to the 'My Humps' song by the Black Eyed Peas. She was just shy of 4 years old, and her dad recorded it when she was on a visit with him in California. At first I was mad because I didn't think it was appropriate for a 3 year old to be dancing to 'My Humps' - but you gotta admit, it's pretty darn cute and funny. So, if you needed a little chuckle today, click on the link below (for some reason I couldn't get the embed code to copy and paste properly).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J_fl2UyhwE

PROMPTuesnesday - Looking Back

Today's topic for PROMPTuesday (that I'm doing on Wednesday, yet again) is:

If you could live one year of your life over again in the identical way, which year would it be and why?

My answer would be my sophomore year in high school (94-95 I think?). This was the first year I made my school's dance company team - I had a job - my friend's had cars. I had a lot of fun during this year of high school - whereas a lot of people's senior year is their pinnacle of fun, it seemed to all go downhill after my sophomore year.

During this year I performed during pep assemblies, football games, basketball games, art festivals, and dance competitions. My friends and I all worked at the same restaurant (one of my PROMPTuesday's past describes this job) and had a blast, even though the job itself was somewhat gross. I was a young sophomore since I skipped Kindergarten, so all my friends were turning 16 and getting their driver's licenses. This of course enabled our ditching efforts. I remember when my friend Karin got her license and a brand new car - a Nissan Sentra - we decided to ditch school and drive it up a road out of Fountain Hills that never had much traffic on it and see how fast the baby could go - it could go 110, or at least that's how fast it went before we started kind of freaking out.

Money earned from working was spent at 5-7-9 or Wet Seal, or the Wherehouse (do you remember that store ? That's where we bought our tapes (singles!!) / CDs). We took un-chaperoned trips to the mall to talk to boys from other schools, and pretend we were older than we were. They had an upscale version of the photo booth at the mall, and we always had to stop there and take pictures of our cool selves.

Toward the end of my sophomore year, I discovered The Rodeo. I was friends with a few guys who thought they were 'cowboys' - if you know where Fountain Hills is, this will make you laugh (think country club retirement community). But we did have West World in Scottsdale. Again, the rodeos were not so much for watching the actual rodeo, but for meeting 'cowboys'...and underage drinking (oops, did I say that?)

River parties!! Oh yeah! Parties at the Verde River listening to country music really loud and trying to go 4-byin' (as we called it) with my boyfriend, whose truck wasn't actually a 4x4 - and getting stuck on the edge of 'Potty Hill' (it had a port-a-potty on it).

Mill Avenue in Tempe at Club 411 (they had an 18 and under night) - where we could go dancing and cruise up and down Mill listening to the 'Bad Boys' soundtrack.

Going to the State Fair - before we cared that it was really ghetto and scary.

Durango Ski Trip over President's Day Weekend!

Sneaking out of my best friend's house and driving to the Indian Reservation casino to have coffee in their little restaurant thinking that we were totally cool and rebellious.

I'm sure there was some not so fun stuff in there too...but I'd have to say I would totally relive Sophomore Year over again in the identical way.

Holy Summer Storm Batman!!

OK, so I was just sitting here, reading other people's blogs, checking my email, yada yada yada - you know, all the stuff I do at 1030pm when my husband is out riding his dirtbike at the track and I can't sleep worth a hoot.

Then, all of a sudden I start hearing weird noises outside. At first I thought it was one of our umpteen cats (you can read about them here) - but it wasn't, it was a huge gust of wind that started blowing all of our backyard paraphernalia around.

And guess what?? As soon as I started to write about it, and took the time to look up the post about my cats so I could link you to it, the darn thing ended. That's a freakin summer monsoon in Arizona for ya - they end just as quickly as they start. We didn't even get any cool lightning and thunder. Oh well - so much for a really cool summer storm post.

OHHH! But I do recall that I forgot to tell you my heebie jeebie story from a couple weeks ago! So, my husband had to go to Utah for work a couple weekends ago - so I was home by myself with the girls. Anywho, we had just finished dinner, and I was getting ready to clean the cat litter box (cuz that's what everyone does when they finish dinner). The litter box is in our laundry room, and the room has a door that leads outside. So, I prop the door open with the container of cat litter (fresh litter, not used), grab a trash bag, and then unplug my cat litter box (yes, I have the electric one that sweeps it into the plastic bin - but you have to dump the whole thing every once in awhile, or it just gets gross). I hang one of the handles of the trashbag on the propped open door handle, and lift the cat litter box out of the laundry room and onto the sidewalk outside the door. As I do this...a FRIGGIN SCORPION STARTS RUNNING AROUND THE LAUNDRY ROOM WITH IT'S STINGER ALL A-CURL!!! I of course scream "HOLY CRAP" (except for Crap rhymed with Snit) - and my eldest comes running over to see what's going on. And I'm just rubbing my arms up and down because I now have a bad case of the heebie jeebies - because what if that thing would have been stuck to the bottom of the cat litter box and then fell on my foot or something???!!! Anyway, it ran under the trash bin that we use to collect our recyclables (yay! we're helping the earth) - and there was no way in hell I was going to kill that thing myself, and of course my freakin' husband had to choose THAT weekend to go out of town. Anyway, I had to go to 3 neighbors houses to track down a dude that would come to my house and kill the damn thing. And you know what he used?? A fly swatter!! Then he put the dead scorpion in a plastic jar with a lid so I could show Aaron when he got home. Of course I immediately called him and chewed him out for being out of town when I needed him. ;) After the fiasco was over and I had calmed down a bit, I thought to myself...WTF?? I care for EIGHT CATS, and not a damn one of them took care of this little scorpion issue for me? That's it...no more food for them. (yeah, that edict lasted about 30 minutes).

And that my friends is my summer storm turned scorpion story.