Oh, for cryin out loud!

Yesterday when we were out looking at flooring, we stopped at Target to get Dawson a birthday present, and so Chloe could use her gift card from "santa" (this is the first year she stopped believing) So she decided to get a game for her computer. She picked out a 3-D version of Pet Vet, Anmal Hospital. Can I just say I spent 3 hours playing that last night? You have to start out with bunnies first. So people come into your office, and you have to diagnose their pets. They give you a $500 budget to start with, and you need to buy food, supplies, and medical equipment. So, we start off with a bunny here and there to take care of. The vet has to run back and forth from the bunny pen to her office every time someone comes in. If you don't make it in time, the person leaves angry, and your customer satisfaction goes down. On top of all that, you have to make sure the vet eats and sleeps so her energy levels don't go down. To keep the bunnies in good health, you have to feed, play, pet, and clean their pen. Chloe lost one bunny right away, and was only down to $26 bucks, so I helped her out to build her reputation. That led to hours of me feeding, playing with, and cleaning up bunny poo, while trying to keep the customers happy, and the vet healthy and rested. Jeesh. By 11pm I couldn't take it anymore, and we shut down the game. This morning Chloe started playing again, and there is no pause, so if she went to the bathroom, or got a snack, I had to babysit bunnies and watch for customers. You have to actually examine them, and diagnose them. If it's something easy to fix, you just bill them, and they take the bunnies home, but if it is more serious, they stay with you until they are well. We haven't figured out when you move onto bigger animals. I think you have to have so many bunnies leave well first. Then you have to buy books, and find time to read, so that you can educate yourself, and help the bigger animals. I'm exhausted. We were up to three bunnies in the bunny pen, and I had to make her save the game, because I was so stressed out. I had to pee, Koben had a poopy diaper, and I needed to switch the laundry. A vet, I am not!

Two good names....

I've been doing some research on countertops and flooring, and I've come up with two places that I really like, so if anyone out there is doing flooring or countertops....

Wilson art sells laminate for countertops. They will send you free samples, with free shipping. I've ordered just about one of everything. =) Their high definition laminate is extremely cool. We will definitely look into it further when we are ready for countertops. Who knows when that will be!

We drove into Portland today to check out the Simple Floors showroom for flooring. They sell excellent laminate, and hardwood over hardboard. Their prices are phenomenal....$1.37 a sqare foot with sound padding already attached to back. 25 year warranty, and it is on HDF board, instead of MDF board, plus it has an acrylic resin in it that makes it even more moisture resistent than pergo-like laminate. Their showroom is basically an office space with concrete walls and floors, and the wood samples are set up in a circle in the room. Pretty basic, but hey, low overhead saves me money. I liked the price of Costco's laminate, but I didn't like their color choices. Simple Floors has a lot of colors, and yes, they do have more expensive laminate, and the actual hardwood over fiberboard is in the $3 to $4 per foot range, but it appears to be pretty nice stuff. I figure heck, if I can get even 10 years out of my $1,400 dollars, let alone 25, that's pretty good. Way cheaper than carpet, that is for sure. So, now we wait until the nice tax man is done with our taxes, and find out what kind of profit we made this year, and hopefully I can get this done sometime in the next few months. Yay! Picking the color was the hardest part. There is way too much wood in our house, and it is very hard to find something that goes with all the different shades we have in each room. Plus it's really hard to tell when your looking at just a sample, or just a couple of boards. Hopefully we chose well!

Well, it's time to make dinner. I gave blood a couple hours ago, and while I felt fine when I was done, I'm realizing we haven't really ate since late this morning, and I'm starting to list to one side! But it was worth it. I was unable to donate what I wanted to to the Childrens Cancer Association this year, so I figured at least donating SOMETHING is worth it. Even if it's free for me, it will benefit someone.

Spring break fun!

Ok, so it's not really fun, but at least I will feel good in the end. We are finally reaching the end of our painting project. This phase at least anyway. I have one more coat to do on the doors in the laundry room, and finally, I will be done. Every wall and door in this house will finally be painted. I'm starting to wish the dining room was a different color now though. =P Craig will love to hear that. Maybe I will ride it out for awhile. I'm happy with the colors in the bedroom and the laundry room. Everything turned out really nice.

What posesses my son to unload an entire container of wipes onto the living room carpet? Jeesh. His poor sister has had to spend her spring break keeping an eye out on her little brother while we paint. We owe them a beach, zoo, or omsi trip soon, that is for sure. They have colored, play doh'd, played with Kobens little people farm, and read books all week. Oh, and dress up. Koben is awfully cute in his spider man pajamas (short sleeved, and little shorts) along with a base ball hat, sunglasses (Dora) a bob the builder yellow vest, his sesame street tool belt set, and rubber boots. Very nice. I wish I knew how to put pictures up on here. I really need to work on that someday. I keep saying that. Right now I need to find out what is wrong with my camera. The pictures look kinda fuzzy on the screen when you are trying to take a photo. I don't know if I hit a button somewhere along the line, or what. I never did read the manual for the thing, and neither did Craig, so he is of absolutely no help. I need to go see the guy at Shutterbug.

I just have to say, I read my first Stephen King novel this week, Bag of Bones. I am not a Stephen King fan at all. My boss gave me the book and told me to read it, it is a love story. Yeah, a haunted, twisted, keeps you from sleeping for fear of the undead sort of love story. I will say, yes it was a good story, and yes Stephen King has a very interesting imagination, but I really think he could have given you the story in less than 500 pages. Harry Potter? No problem. I can blow through 700 pages of Harry Potter in a couple days. This has taken me all week. I like stories with a twist, but this book makes you think a little too hard. I think I will stick to my normal area of reading. She gave me Dolores Clayborne also.....I don't know if I will read that. However, Stand By Me is one of my all time favorite movies, and I also loved the Green Mile, so he can't be all bad, right? I wonder what kind of dreams he has. Or nightmares.

Guess I'll run, sorry this was so long, I type pretty fast, so everything comes out of my fingertips about as fast as I'm thinking it. However, right now I have a three year old blocking the screen with a piece of paper, so who knows how it's turning out. =)

Quck post....well, quick for me anyway!

Ok, so today I don't have time to go on and on, dang it!

Craig and I are off this week trying to get the rest of the house painted. I have one small section left in our room, and then it finally will be done! Tomorrow we will tackle the laundry room.

We had a great Easter...we spent the day with Craigs family and had a nice time.

Koben is doing great. The doctors determined it was just a really bad bruise to the bone. He stopped wearing his sling after day two, so I figured he was on the mend. He doesn't say anything about it now.

Sorry about the vague info on the cat! lol.....yes it was dead, and we buried it in the back yard. Stephen, I hope my kids do not try to dig up the cat....eeewww. Chloe wanted to know why we had to bury it, and couldn't just dump it in the garbage. We had a respect talk. Hopefully her and Koben don't decide to do that with Craig and I! Jeesh. Kids....gotta love them.

That's all for now...must finish our project before we run out of daylight!

Toodles!

My poor little bubby.

First off, let me say this. I think I'm a pretty good parent. I try to keep an eye on my kids. I've never had to safety lock my cupboards (is that spelled right? It looks weird) They've never been burned by the stove, they don't color on walls (sometimes my kitchen table, yes) they are relatively well behaved in restaurants. I'd say I'm doing ok. These times are so different though. When I take my kids to the doctor for immunizations, I always worry they will have some sort of bruise from something, and someone will think I hurt my kids. During the summer, Koben always looks so banged up. He is so white, those little bruises on his shins just jump out. I don't know how he gets them. I bruise pretty easily, he must also. He's a little boy, I accept that he will get hurt, but people are so weird now. You feel like you can't grab their arms, or poke them in public without someone thinking you abuse your children.

When Chloe was almost three, she fell off a rolling office chair in Craigs office when she used to go to work with him. She was eating lunch, and put her feet on the edge of the desk and pushed, and slid off the chair and bumped herself on the little wheel platform on the chair. At the time we thought she was ok (it was a Friday) but by Sunday night, we knew she had kinda hurt something because she wasn't wanting to use her arm much. She wasn't really crying, so we thought maybe she had just sprained something. So Monday we take her to the Doctor and discover she had a broken collar bone, and since they don't sling it, or even do anything with it for children, we wouldn't have been really able to do anything anyway. But it was really nice to know what was wrong. It only took a couple weeks to really heal. She would only use it as much as was comfortable for her.

So last night, Koben and Chloe, and my sister-in-law Suzi's two kids were in our room watching t.v. I had been trying to keep all of them sitting on the bed and not jumping. Koben and Anjie were the only two having trouble keeping still. Well, they are three and four, what do I expect? I tried keeping Koben out of the room, but that was just no fun for anyone. So I let him back in, hoping his almost nine year old sister and seven year old cousin could keep an eye on him. I should have known better than that. It was too much to ask of them. We have a log canopy bed. It is massive. Basically it is a four poster bed that is framed in with log on the top, and the canopy consists of smaller logs that are placed along the top of the frame, like slats, but round. The logs are just slid into holes on either side of the frame, so you can take them out. What child would not think it is great fun to swing from those poles? Even I have thought that would be fabulous if I was twenty five years younger. So, I'm not sure (because no one in the room seemed to be able to see what happened) if Koben decided to swing off of one of the bigger logs that is on the frame (which he can't get his little hands around like the other logs) or if one of the logs slid out a bit, and he was trying to stick it back in, but either way, he sailed off of the bed while standing on it, which is already three or so feet off the ground, but all I heard was screaming. And it was the type of cry you knew really hurt, because he has fallen off that bed before, but never while standing. So Craig and I mentally drew straws, and he decided to take him to urgent care in Molalla to see if they were still open. Of course ge got there at 8:05 and they close at eight, so he tried the Woodburn one, which closes at six. I am sooooo sick of urgent care. What good is it if they are only open clinic hours? What is the point then? Ugh, don't get me started. Needless to say, Craig had to take him to Silverton hospital. So I finally finally finally got the other three to go to sleep, and I waited up for my two men. They came home right around midnight, and my little bubby was in a sling. He cracked his elbow. Basically he has a contusion (if I spelled that right) or quite a bruised elbow bone, and the doctor said it looks like their is something possibly fractured in the joint, but since he is so small, and a hairline fracture is so small, it was hard to tell, but that was what she was thinking. He looks awfully cute in a sling, but I really don't want people to think that we hurt our children. I try not to think that when I see really small kids in casts, so I hope no one thinks that of me, and I really hope my little man decides it's just not that fun to jump on the bed!

And to make things even more interesting this weekend. The kids spotted from Chloe's bedroom window our cat that we hadn't seen around lately laying in the grass (guess we should go out in the backyard more often) and needless to say, she had been there awhile. So my dear hubby got to take care of that chore, with all the children staring out the window fascinated. lol. Farm kids, they aren't afraid of anything. Made me think of the time one of our small calves apparantly died in the night, and no one told me about it, and I was walking out to the bus stop early in the morning, and it was very dark still (must have been winter) and I thought I saw something in the driveway, so I shined my little flashlight on it, and it was an eyeball. They had put the calf out in the driveway for the slaughter truck to pick it up in the morning, but since I used to get up and get ready and leave the house before my parents got out of bed, no one thought it necessary to share that piece of information with me!

Still nothing exciting?

I have nothing exciting to report! I seem to spend my time reading about everyone elses lives, but I just don't have anything thrilling going on here. Thank goodness, sometimes, I think that is a good thing!

Deena, as I was reading your blog yesterday, I thought instead of you mentioning their use of free time, it would be about the fact that even in the fifth grade, those kids still have some of the worst spelling and grammar I have ever seen. All of those kids that talk about nothing but video games, and t.v., can hardly spell. It is very sad. Craig and I always read those when we are in the school, and even he comments on the spelling and grammar, and his leaves something to be desired sometimes. Chloe's work looks better than some of those ten year olds. It makes me wonder about the school system, and the parents both. Why do parents think that the school is going to teach the children everything they need to know? I understand that we pay them to teach our children, but shouldn't that start at home? I don't expect Chloe to learn all of her multiplication tables at school (if I did, she may not learn them, they don't seem to do that much anymore.) But I think some parents do expect them to learn it all there, and then they get frustrated when their children don't live up to their expectations. I do however, get very frustrated when the teacher sends home work for Chloe to do, and they only went over it the one time in class, and then when Chloe gets home, she can't remember how to do it, and even Craig and I can't figure it out because it is so confusing. I am kind of unsure about all of that! One would think they could figure out a third graders homework, but I'm telling you, some of it is so difficult to understand, I make her take it back to school and ask her teacher to re-explain it to her!

I can relate a bit about the girl who's mom won't let her go out and play. Chloe and Koben are allowed to play in the backyard all that they want. And even now, Chloe is old enough to play in the front yard by herself, but I am a bit apprehensive about it. Yes, I do feel guilty, because I should go out and play with her, but I always feel like I'm needed doing something inside, and I get so nervous about her being in the front that I make her come inside if she won't play in the back. Apparantly it is not cool to play in the back yard when you are eight. She loves to ride her bike, but she hates that I won't let her ride it in the street. I am afraid of some of the cars that come down our street so fast. Now that she is almost nine, she is allowed to ride it further down our sidewalk, but I am usually at the window watching her. What a lazy mom I am! Yes, I do take Koben out there, and we walk or ride our bikes around the block, but there are many times that she goes out alone. It is much better in the summer when we have work to do in the yard, so we can all be out there together. I'm having a hard time not being so protective. I am so much like my parents were with me that it is scary! Probably not all that bad though. I seem to have turned out ok! hahhahahaha!

Julie, I hope your mouth is feeling better. I couldn't believe the picture! I'm sorry, but after that, I too would be apprehensive about returning to the dentist, and I have never minded it. Ugh. I am so very, very grateful that I haven't had to experience anything other than fillings at this point in my life! I do not like mouth pain. It travels from your head down your entire body, and I hate that! I have one side on top, that is super sensitive to cold, and the last time I had my teeth cleaned, she blew her frigid water (seemed like it anyway) right onto that part of my mouth, even after I had told her that area was sensitive to cold. Oh my lord, I almost jumped out of the chair. And she says to me "Oh, did I squirt that water directly into your throat?" And I say, "No, just on that very sensitive area. I can't have anything cold there" Yes, she was sorry, and she is a cute little thing, so of course I forgave her, but jeesh, that causes enough pain, I don't want to imagine your pain at all. I've seen the pain my boss has had over the last six weeks though with her new dentures trying to get them to fit, so I don't think I will be telling them to go ahead and pull them all out when they get bad either. My dad spent several grand a couple years ago having those posts put in, and then the veneer or whatever it was attached. He seems to be very happy with that. I guess I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

I have blah blah blah'd enough. Everyone is healthy here, work is picking up, Easter is almost here, and we are taking spring break off, so I guess it doesn't get any better than that.

Oh, and the treadmill seems to be working just fine now. Dangit. Now I have to use it. I was getting used to that whole "dancing like no one is watching" in my living room. Maybe I will have to do both!