Living & Laughing

A very busy Friday.

Its 9pm, and I feel as if I have been up for 48 hours straight. Sure, its the end of the week, a very busy week at that. Looking back on the week I feel a huge sense of accomplishment. I made a few trips to the vet in New Prague today, two trips to Bloomington, and spent time at the post office - and was home in time to let the house keeper in. Needless to say - I'm quite tired and should hit the sack early. The weekend has arrived, and I am already looking forward to Tuesday - the first day I can kick back!

Erick and I were able to get all the paper work gathered up for the five passports we need for our spring vacation. The pictures, the birth certificates, marriage certificate needed to document my name change since my last passport, and all those mug shots - done. On Tuesday we went over to the county office and got in line for our "adventure book" and $466.00 later we were done. Now its just a matter of checking the status of our application before booking our trip... well that and deciding between Mexico and the Carribean.

Today I had to bring Mathilda to the vet to have some dental work done. Yes it was time for another doggie dentist trip. Now both my dogs have clean enough teeth to be on the Orbitz chewing gum commericals. Gertrude had a lot of plaque build up on her back teeth, where Mathilda had it all over. Mathilda has gingavitus and is on antibioitcs now for a week to take care of her various mouth infections. Guess who's going to be brusing Tilda's teeth twice a day now.... Nina's gotta love the joys of dog ownership!

The weekend should be filled with a handful of projects I'm working on, with a dash of dance with Thea of course, and a visit from my parents who are returning from a big vacation. The girls are always happy to see Grandma and Grandpa - and it will be fun to hear about their latest trip.

Happy Anniversary Erick

Erick and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary on Monday. Yes, its been seven years already since we got married on that cruddy and blizzardy day. I had planned for a big wedding, and Erick got the small wedding he was hoping for. I guess things just work out that way. Can you tell from the pictures that we both had the stomach flu? Absolutely memorable.

Erick and I celebrated the day by going up to Saint Paul and getting birth certificates for him, and the kids so we could get passports for us all! We were lucky enough to be able to get the kids all in for passport pictures as well. Yes we basically did business work during the day so that we could get everything squared away for our trip to Mexico this spring with the kids.

Erick and I were able to sneak out for a night out without the kids for a romantic dinner in Little Canada. We went to the Porterhouse Steak and Seafood Grill - and I can't wait to go back. I am not normally a steak person but their fillet mignon was awesome! My favorite part of the meal was the Alaskan King Crab Legs I had.... best crab I've had ever. After our long dinner with wine we went for a drive and ended up in Owatonna looking for some dessert. It was a wonderful anniversary - and of course the start on our next year has been wonderful!

Picture Slide Show Below

Seven Years

Its so hard to believe that on Monday Erick and I will be celebrating our seventh wedding anniversary! I've been wondering what I should get Erick for our wedding anniversary. Really what can you get that says "Thanks for being all you are. I know I couldn't do it with out you!" A box of chocolates? Maybe some flowers? A new computer game? Socks? Maybe I should ask Thea. Afterall she was the one who picked out "Doom" for me for Mother's day.

Saturday Night

Its was an incredibly long week - with big ups and big downs. I suppose that is why at 12:21 I am still up and making a mental list of all the things I need to get to later today. I have been terrible at keeping up with emails, my blog reading, and anything remotely looking like a social life. Balance... yes I need to get back to balance.

On Friday, as posted below I took Thea to the mall. She and I were on a mission to stock up on Springtime clothes from Hannah Andersson! I am excited to see spring come and the girls give the new clothes a real test out. (I love Hannah Andersson's stuff cause it washes and washes and washes so well!) Thea was so excited once she got home she wanted to try on all the outfits she got -and it was fun to see them all. Thea sure loves to play model.

Erick and I are both working on some fun projects. Its nice to pass the extremely cold time with fun projects to work on. Its also a lot of fun when you can work together on projects. Well I am off to finish up some documents for our passports - our vacation is coming up so quickly!

My Personality Test

Your Personality Cluster is Introverted Feeling

You are: Tolerant, flexible, and open to new ideas. A stickler for integrity and authenticity. Passionate about causes, beliefs, or politics. Likely to have many "best friends" from many walks of life

What's Your Personality Cluster?

An Ordinary Tuesday

The last time I wrote in my blog was on Friday night, and I had promised that I would write more about what I have been doing. Ok its Tuesday and I am just getting to sit down and blog. Where does the time go? There must be something about weekends that make time move especially fast.

Erick and I spent our weekend working on a consulting project we took on. It went pretty well and we enjoyed working together on a project. Erick has been suggesting for ages that we do some IT consulting on the side - as a challenge, as something to do together, for fun. So in the spirit of the new year - we decided to take a chance.

In my spare time I have worked at getting some program application and database development projects for Erick to work on. I had thought that the task would be much harder than it has been. He has several projects now to work on, and loves it. I have taken on two development projects (Blogger to WP) and have enjoyed working on that too. Once I completely get up our website I will be sure to share it. So in my spare time I have been busy with things that have been a fun challenge. ON top of parenting of course.

Where did my week go?

Its been an amazing and busy week here. Really amazing. Really busy. And those are probably the only words that could accurately describe this week.

On the kid front its been a week of great accomplishments. I brought Grace in for her check up a little late. I wanted to get through the holidays before we sat down and got more vaccinations for her. She always has struggled with them, and who wants a crabby and sick kid for the holidays? (Well I had one, but I certainly didn't want one.) Anyway I brought Grace in and this was the first appointment where the doctor told me she was doing well, there were not any concerns, and she was finally A HAPPY HEALTHY TODDLER! Yes, my Gracie is finally a happy healthy toddler! Go Gracie! Thea is back dancing in full swing - which is great for her. She certainly needs to get out and dance. She is full of so much energy I find myself telling her more than I'd like "Thea quit running." "Thea quit chasing your sister." "Thea you need to quiet down." "Thea!! Don't wake Gracie!" The dance studio has put up the girls dance recital costumes and I am SUPER excited for Thea to get her's on. Both of Thea's outfits are the traditional ballerina outfits - one has a wand and the other a crown. I am SURE she will just eat it all up. She loves that stuff more than anything. Nina will be wearing a german like outfit - literhousen? It is pretty cute. I am hoping she'll let me get a picture of her in it. The jazz dance outfit is really kind of... well I think Elvis like. (Not fat elvis - but lots of sequins just the same.)

I will update this post later today.

Fantastic Friday

On Friday Erick and I decided to go on a date. We both had commented on how nice it would be to get out for a little bit - alone. Erick still wasn't feeling up to par, and to be honest I was pretty exhausted from the day. (I had 4 kids - 4 and under for the day.) However, no matter how exhausted I was, I still really just wanted to spend some time, ALONE, with Erick. So we decided to go to a movie and grab something to eat afterwords. Really it was a low key, low thought kind of date - but it was just what we needed.

Erick and I had gotten a gift certificate for the movie theater from Santa this year. We were promised some babysitting from Santa too but we're saving that for our vacation in March. Erick and I decided that we would see Night at the Museum instead of The Good Shepard because.... well we didn't want to have to think too much. We made our way into the theater to find that it was pretty packed in the back half but completely empty in the front part. I told Erick that we should sit in the front to keep away from those little bastards! (Little bastards= the 10-14 year old kids who go to the early show and sit and talk on their cellphones or send text messages during the movie.) I have found that if you sit near the screen pretty much across from the big ass speakers you can totally block out any other sound during a film. Eh? Really, this is why my parents sent me to college, cause I am THAT great of a thinker!

The Thursday Marathon

I was going to sit down and blog last night, honest I was. (I was hoping to detail the adventure at the hair salon with Thea - because it has to be one of the most embarrassing moments of my parenthood to date.) Thursday nights are always busy at my house - its Nina's ballet night - and with Erick home sick it just was a busier night than expected. Instead of sitting down with the lap top, I chit chatted with a friend on the phone instead. This marathon Thursday went pretty well, all things considering. Erick had a terrible headache that just didn't seem to let up at all. So instead of making it to the gym like I had planned, I made it to the hair salaon, and did some grocery shopping, and took Nina to dance.

The Hair Salon: I took Thea with me to the salon so that I could get my hair cut. Being Grace was down for a nap, the only real humane thing to do was - bring the kid with. Thea has been boucing off the walls on a regular basis these days, and that certainly doesn't do much for headaches. Since Thea promised to be a good girl while mom got her hair done, I decided to take the chance and bring her with. She wanted to bring along her leapad and listen to a story - and I thought that was a good idea. I had envisioned myself getting my hair cut, and Thea sitting nice and listening to a story. What a pipe dream!

Quiet Wednesday Night

Well I am happy to report that today was a much better day than yesterday. Its a little after 10, and I am having a cup of coffee and reflecting on the day. The biggest worry of the day was getting my furnace fixed - and that was done before coffee time. There is still quite abit of anger around here - and that is going to take some getting used to I guess. What she was doing was playing with fire - and then some. I certainly wouldn't let her play in traffic either. Maybe some day she'll see that its about being safe, and that is the biggest concern. I did a lot of cleaning today, I clean better when angry. I was able to get my Christmas Tree down, all the orniments put away, and any other stray Christmas items. (Go me.)

Today was the first day that Thea went back to dance. I was sad to see that they had put up a curtain so that we couldn't see her dance. The idea behind the change is to divert the dancers attention to their dance and not waving at their mom in the window. While I totally understand and can appreciate this - it stinks. They did say that they'd open it up one day a month for us to see them dance. So I guess I'll just be looking forward to the last dance day of the month so I can see my ballerina dance! (Really it is a good idea, I just love seeing her dance.) After dance Erick and I took Thea to the DQ - and she enjoyed getting a star kiss for her hard dancing work.

Really it was a quiet night at my house... one well needed.