I'm here...

I'm here....and I'm :

Yeah....weird.

In fact, I didn't believe it - so I took 4 more tests....2 more that same day - 1 the next day - and 1 a couple days after that. JUST to be sure.

I'm still kind of in that "head in the clouds" stage. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself.

I had my first visit with a Doula at my doctor's office....we basically went over all the paperwork and she answered my multitude of questions. I'll be seeing the doctor on the 22nd - which will put me at about 9 weeks.

Holy crap you guys....I'm gonna have a baby!

Finally, the bday post is up!

So....now that over 2 weeks have gone by since my Georgia's puppy birthday - I finally got around to posting pics!
Since my parents and my brother and his crew were all coming over (with their dogs) - we decided to keep it simple and made a big giant salad and ordered a big giant pizza - and when I say Giant...I mean FRICKING HUGE.
Observe:
Look people...it is EXACTLY the same width as my dining table. Hubs had to put the seat flat in the back of the car to get it in...and I'm not even kidding you when I say that we barely got it through the front door. Biggest pizza I've ever seen....and only $33! This sucker fed 6 hungry adults and 3 kids and we still had plenty of leftovers. If you look in the picture below...you can see the size of the slices compared to the plates - yeah, they didn't exactly fit. It was pretty funny. Especially when the kids walked in and saw the box - they said "WHOA! That's the biggest pizza I've ever seen!"
(gotta tell ya, that pizza is looking pretty tasty right about now)
My put-martha-stuart-to-shame wonderful sister in law and neice even made party hats for all the dogs!

Complete with names - Jasper - Georgia - and Libby...how cute is THAT?
Course we had to try it on, but my mom had to hold her so I could get a picture

I wanted to get a picture of all three dogs wearing their hats - but it just wasn't meant to be...they were too excited about the cupcakes. Yes, hubster made them CUPCAKES. Peanut butter and carrot with whipped cottage cheese frosting. finger licking awful...

The funny thing is - when hubs went to frost the cupcakes...we noticed a couple of bites missing - and we surmised that possibly the kids decided to partake and then thought otherwise - which makes me laugh and laugh...because I can imagine the look on their faces when they realized it wasn't exactly tasty.

The dogs LOVED them though - and inhaled those things. Big hit for hubster!

Here is Libby, happy as a clam about her cupcake:

Although I didn't expect it - Georgia was even brought GIFTS...

Which hubster sat with her and opened...and found TREATS! and TOYS and all sorts of goodies:

(ha-ha - she's so black in this picture that you can't even see her face)

Here's Jasper looking on saying "hey, I want thome of thothe!"

And so we taught Georgia about sharing....and hubster got surrounded just like at little kids birthday parties...

It was a fun night! We put the cats in our bedroom so that we could leave the backdoor open and so there were dogs running in and out and kids running in and out and it was chaos everywhere....and soooo funny.

Georgia passed out after they all left and we found her sleeping with her new lizard toy

I know...I think we may have too much time on our hands - but she's our baby for now and we love her to pieces :)

So we're having a party...of sorts.

I have to announce that TODAY - my baby is a year old.
Our sweet puppy went from this:
To This:
It absolutely BAFFLES me how fast the time has gone. We got her when she was 8 weeks old, and now she's fully grown. Hubs and I look at pictures of when she was little and we wish we could go back and snuggle her!

So despite some major eye rolling and gimme a break comments - we decided at the last minute to have a pizza party tonight at our house. My parents are bringing their dog Libby, and my brother and his family are bringing their dog Jasper. Hubster found a recipe online for dog friendly cakes and made some peanut butter and carrot cupcakes with whipped cottage cheese frosting (ahem...YUCK). My oldest neice is making all 3 dogs party hats - so hopefully they'll keep them on long enough for me to get a picture. I know, I know - it's completely ridiculous to have a birthday party for your dog...but we don't have kids, and we figure when we DO have kids - we'll probably forget her birthday, so we might as well live it up now while we can. Besides, any excuse for pizza and cake right?

My brother said his friends at work were trying to convince him to go out tonight and this is the conversation that took place:

"I can't, I have a birthday party to go to"
"oh yeah? whose birthday? one of the kids?"
"uhhh, no...it's for, ummm...my sister's dog"
"dude, if you don't want to go, just say so - you don't have to lie"

I'd say this is a serious indication that Hubster and I have officially entered Nerdville with this whole birthday business.

Last night, we discovered that she was trying to send us a message about what she wants for her birthday. See, we found out that she LOVES SOCCER. Seriously, she can block and kick and she makes a darn good goalie. But her soccer ball was getting kind of deflated and easy for her to pick up with her teeth. We should have taken it as a hint that she needed a new one - but of course we are self involved...so she decided to send us a louder message.

(how appropriate that it says Attacker) And just in case you ever wanted to see what the inside of a soccer ball is made ofThe culprit was quite proud of herself, and as you can see - she is CLEARLY expecting a new soccer ball for her birthday...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY SWEET GEORGIA PEACH!

I'm sure tonight will be full of hilarity, which I will of course try to capture on film.

K

Neglect

My poor little neglected blog...I didn't mean to forsake you, it just happened.

For some reason, I feel like we've been extremely busy for the last couple of months. Yet, when I sit down and think about exactly what we were busy doing..my mind goes blank.
Last weekend, the hubster turned 31 years old - and his entire family (4 adults and 3 children squeezed into our little house) came down to celebrate. It was nice to have them all here since it has been almost 2 years since they last came, and hubs seemed to have a nice birthday albeit a touch more chaotic than we are used to.
We love our neices dearly - and since we each have siblings with 3 girls....we're just surrounded by cute girlyness on both sides. BUT, I can't imagine how my sisters-in-law handle those kids without going insane...they are so BUSY and all over the place. My father in law asked me over the weekend if I'd learned anything from watching them...and I said "yes, I've learned that I don't want three kids". HA!
I think the amount of kids a person has is a very personal decision - and of course I won't really know how I feel until I actually have them...but I think 3 would put me JUST over the edge of sanity. I think two feels like a good number. 2 kids and buncha pets would do me about right. If you ask hubster he might have a different answer though, don't they always? For men, it's just "let's have a baby!" and that's that. It's a different story for women though, it's more physical and emotional, plus we have to figure out the job situation, and the housework load gets bigger. Let's face it - even in this day and age of equal opportunity - the women take the brunt of the housework and the child rearing. I'm just sayin...it's a WHOLE different story for us wimmins.

One thing I've done, is gotten our yard spruced up a bit...planted some flowers and some veggies. I started a mini-greenhouse with seeds of sweet cherry tomatoes - a cherry tomato medley (yellow, orange and red), sherbet watermelon, and a medley of sweet peppers (also yellow, orange and red). The seedlings just sprouted so I should be able to transplant them in a couple of weeks. I also have big barrels with zucchini and early girl tomatoes growing. And I have some sugar snap peas to plant along our fence line. Hopefully it'll be a fruitful/veggieful summer for us!
Hubster was very sweet and got be a bunch of big barrel pots to plant in this year - so I don't have to worry about Georgia pulling up my plants.

Speaking of Georgia....she is currently at home playing with her cousin pooch Jasper the Bassett Hound. He's been visiting for a couple of days and she drives him NUTS by climbing all over him and licking his face. I've had to seperate them a bit so the poor guy can get some rest. She just LOVES on him.
The one thing I have noticed is that they walk SO WELL together. It's great!

I updated my book list since I've read a few since I last updated...
I'm just here, doing my thing, working, loving on the puppy and the hubster - getting ready for summertime. Hope all you readers (if there is anyone left) are doing well. I'll be back, I promise!

Breaking the rules...

Over the last few years, every time Hubster and I go into a place like Cost Plus, Marshalls, Ross, or Pier One...we are struck by some of the beautiful dishes they have. We admire them and think that one day we'd like to get new dishes, but we would just never do it. For one thing, we already had a full set of nice sensible dishes, and for another...we would never be able to decide on just ONE pattern because we liked so many!

So one day, a few months ago, we were wandering through Marshalls and came upon the dish section. They usually have such a mish-mash of stuff...you might find one plate that is really cool looking, but you'll never find a whole set. Another thing is that these plates and bowls are usually about a dollar...maybe two dollars each - which is a pretty good deal for some of the awesome stuff they had.

We stopped and admired several different plates and bowls and then we kinda looked at each other and wondered why we would have to find a whole set of the ones we liked? Why couldn't we just buy different, assorted plates and bowls that we DO like? Why would they have to match, or be part of a set, or all look the same, or even similiar?

It was at this point that we decided to break all the rules and just get all different kinds of dishes! I'd had our other dishes for at least 10 years...and hubs wasn't really too fond of them anyway. We decided that we would slowly just aquire an entire set of dishes that we liked. Nothing could match or look similiar - we decided to go for stuff that was completely different and funky.

Of course I had to take pictures and document everything :)

These our our previous dishes...beige with a blue and green stripe around the outside.

and here are some of the things we picked up that first trip....

Big Plates!

This is one of my favorites...

Bowls!

I'd say our first trip was productive! We have so much fun digging around on all the shelves trying to find the odd funky plate.

We've acquired alot more since that first trip - so I will be taking more pictures :)

Why do I need a title?

I have a recent obsession.

I find myself reading this throughout the day, catching up on old posts...wondering if anyone I know has ever posted. Some of these women are insane - and others are just stupid - and others I can totally relate to! haha

Go read True Wife Confessions and watch your day disappear hour by hour as you become sucked into the vortex along with me....

*****

In other news, I've sold 12 books on Amazon! It's a far cry from the 56 books that I listed, but I'm honestly surprised at the ones that have sold so far. It seems to be around a book a day so far. I'm happy because not only did I make room on my bookshelves, but I can actually make money off the books I've read and don't want anymore. I was going to use Ebay because the fees are less, but the good thing about Amazon is that if your item doesn't sell, you don't have to pay any fees and since I listed so many books - I figured it would really suck if I have to pay fees on the ones that don't sell. My favorite hobby is actually making us money now, which is awesome!

*****

We bought Ms. Georgia a new collar over the weekend and she is STYLIN - looking very snazzy in red...Here's a close up - hibiscus flowers...

And even though it's very yuppie of us - we got a matching leash too. The leash we had was way too thin and small to handle her anymore - she's not a tiny puppy now - she can drag me down the street if she wants to...hee!

She also has a little backyard aquaintance now...meet Gertrude:

She hangs out on our back fence at night...scary eh?

I leave you with a cute picture I found on our camera...

I haven't given up I swear!

Christmas just swooped in and dominated over my blogging time...and then going out of town for New Years, and getting into the swing of the new year at home and at work...Before I know it, here is it January 23rd.
The big clean-up of 2006 has turned into the big clean-up of 2007 - probably to the delight of any naysayers out there who know about my fabulous procrastination skills.

BUT - we had some vacation time and yet couldn't really go anywhere...so we did the next best thing. We stayed home and got things accomplished!

Well okay, we slept in and read books and lounged around and played with the puppy and then from time to time got up and accomplished something, but still...it was fantastic.

One of the major things I got done was to clean out my BOOKSHELVES. Oy Vey, they were a mess!

Here is the before...

And inside the glass doors:
And after spending hours and hours sorting books into piles of KEEP, SELL, and HAVE NOT READ YET - I finally accomplished a neat bookshelf...observe:

Inside those glass doors??

I actually have all my cookbooks in one place - yippee!

The sad fact of this whole "book sorting" adventure? All the books on the end shelfs are books I HAVE NOT READ...isn't that crazy? Look at all those books! I have absolutely no reason to go bookstore hopping for a while now - I'm simply appalled at myself. I have a huge buffet of good (well, hopefully) books to read!I did make a big ole stack of books to sell and sat down last night at 11pm and listed 35 of them on Amazon. I still have more to list, but upon opening my email this morning, I've already sold two of them! I couldn't believe it...barely 8 hours later and I already have stuff to ship out. Weird - but it was amazingly easy to list them online, so I think I'll stick with selling books I have no interest in keeping.

I read 3 books during the week I was on vacation...and I created a list over on the sidebar of the book I'm currently reading, as well as a list of books I read in 2007 - I'm kinda curious to see exactly how many I read in a year.

It feels SO amazing to actually have those bookshelves cleaned out and everything gone through and organized. That bookshelf has been taunting me for almost 2 years and now it's DONE!

Sad News

I'm sitting here drinking a Diet Coke and wishing I had a cigarette to smoke in tribute to Leslie Harpold. I was shocked to read the news this morning...and honestly I kinda feel like I was the last to know about it. I should've been paying more attention.
She was a brilliant writer and all I can say is it just sucks that she's gone. I've spent an obscene amount of time online today reading every blog post about her imaginable....and articles she was known for. She seems like a very well loved and respected person who would not have wanted a bunch of people mourning her, but rather for those who are sad to look around and appreciate life and just BE HAPPY.

Cheers Leslie, you will be sorely missed.

Here are some articles from The Morning News written by her:

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/new_york_new_york/my_guys.php

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/how_to_cook_thanksgiving_dinner.php

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/how_to_write_a_thankyou_note.php

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/new_york_new_york/to_nap_perchance_to_rest.php

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/stories/posttraumatic_postcards.php

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/how_to_road_trip.php

Productive Weekend

So I got quite a bit done on the cleaning front...not as much as I'd hoped - but hey, it's better than nothing...especially since we weren't home much on Saturday, so the majority was tackled yesterday. Here we go,

Laundry Room Before:

And from the other direction:
Gross - clothes piled everywhere...on the counter, on the washer and dryer, on the floor...muddy paw prints, etc, etc...(cat's everywhere - this room is like a where's waldo of cat's)
aaaaaaand After *sigh of relief*:

(Hi Georgia!)

Okay, I gotta boast about my brilliant hubster for just a minute here. We've had issues with the pup "partaking of the almond roca buffet" that is housed in the cabinet next to the dryer shown above. We knew we needed to block it off somehow so that the dog couldn't get in there, but the cat's still could. It also needed to be easily removable so that I could clean the litter box (which happens often since we have THREE stinky buttinskies) . SO, before I know it, my hubby has busted out some snippers and grabbed our baby gate and thus created THIS:

Is my hubs just the best or what? It's friggin PERFECT - and now I'm thinking we should market something along these lines for other folks with canines who luuuuurve the poopage.

(since we have a dog with perhaps the most sensitive stomach on the planet...this was a major issue that needed immediate attention - not to mention OY HOW SHE NEEDED A BREATHMINT!)

Moving along...after marveling over my lovely laundry room and doing 7943 loads of laundry (and I'm still not done), I went to the hall bathroom...which although not too bad, looked like this:

seriously, I can't go into any room in our house without a cat - what a buncha busybodies!

and from the other direction:

Voila!

I completed the bedroom and bedroom closet (okay those pictures are going to be HAAAAAARD for me to post because it's really embarrassing how out of hand it had gotten in there) and parts of the living room as well - but I think I'll post those tomorrow to avoid a super long post.

I must say, our kitchen is STILL clean - which honestly, is probably a record for us. There are no dirty dishes in the sink, no pots on the stove, nothing piled on the dining table - I'm haaaaappy. I love, love, love having a clean house - I feel much more relaxed and not so overwhelmed. I still have the guest room and the office to tackle, both rooms that look like a bomb went off because we've just been tossing stuff in there. BUT, tonight I will be starting on the guest room. The bed in there is piled high with presents that need to be wrapped - so I think hubs and I will be tackling that while we watch a movie tonight....just having those out of there will help immensely. I have high hopes that we can accomplish those two rooms before Christmas! MAYBE..just maybe, I can start 2007 with a clean and organized home!

Till tomorrow folks,

K

Finis!

I busted my hump getting that kitchen clean yesterday. I wanted to quit several times, but then I remembered that I had posted PICTURES of that God awful mess and given myself the "goal" of completing it. That means completing...not half-assing. I realize that I am a total ADD cleaner. I could be cleaning the kitchen and then find something that belongs in the bedroom and so I go to put that away and stop to pet a cat or something and then get distracted and start cleaning the bedroom and I'll find something that belongs in the bathroom and then start cleaning the bathroom - and after a couple of hours...I've only cleaned little parts of each room. It's incredibly annoying. Usually I put in a load of wash and then set to work on cleaning something and then I forget about the laundry and I'll find it all funky in there the following day - so again, I'll run the washer and start to clean something and then forget about the wash and then it goes to day #3 of funky clothes that have been washed multiple times but sat there long enough to get funky.

Seriously, I guess I'm not a good multi-tasker. Oh, I can talk on the phone and play on the internet and pet a cat all at the same time - but if I have a project to do, I have to focus on that project until it's done.

Last night, I had to just put things in each room and tell myself that eventually I will be focusing on that room...so I didn't need to put it away or start organizing something else. It helped that I was solely focused on the kitchen.

So just for comparison's sake - here is the "before"

and now "after" (it looks different to me, but I think it's just because it's nighttime)

Before: aaaaand After:

(Georgia's tail - ha!)

I even cleaned off the top of the fridge which was NASTAY and I haven't done it since...oh....since we moved in a year and a half ago...yikes. And of course I had to organize and remove some of the stuff we had stuck to it...

*I don't want to get any comments about the laundry room in the background because that is a whole other project of itself. Maybe tonight

And last but not least...the bar area - biggest hot spot in the house...

Before:

After!

I know this whole thing is probably boring to most readers - but I'm doing this mainly for self-motivation. Selfish reasons...but hey, I think the embarrassment of showing people the before's is worth it for the after's.

This weekend I plan on attacking things room by room - gotta get caught up so I feel ready for Christmas and so I can relax and ENJOY it instead of thinking about all the crap I still need to do at home. I mean, I know I will always have stuff to do at home - but lately it's been SO BAD that I come home, look around and immediately feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start - so I don't start, I sit on the couch and block out everything around me.

It would be nice to start the New Year with a positive mindset :)