dress dilemma

ok, so here are my pics. this one, i won already, and got it, but it is too big. big in the bust, and too long. but it's gorgeous, and i let my friend try it on to see if she can wear it. she says she has to lose about 6 lbs, and she's going to try b/c she loves it too.


this is a dress i put an offer on, but i won't hear back for another 6 hours. it's a size 12, so it may not fit. i really need a 14. also, the asking price was $250, so i doubt if they'll take my $50 offer. yes, i'm being cheap, but i'm not paying $250!!!



oh, and there's a slim-to-none chance that i'll look like that chick in the picture anyway.

so i went shopping yesterday, and found next to nothing. went to one resale boutique, and found a beautiful dress that fit well, but was kind of plain (all black except for a white band at the top of the bodice) and it was missing the hook and eye in the back. and needed to be cleaned. and they wanted $100 for it. no thanks. so i'll have to figure out a way to go shopping again this week. did i mention the dinner dance is this saturday coming??

random updates

i haven't posted in a while - been busy with, oh, you know, life.

sadie had a checkup, all is fine. she is 8 months, and weighs 17.6 pounds.

aidan is progessing in his speech therapy - he said "silly sadie!" at his last appointment. had me rolling. he'll say "more" and "please" but not "more, please" yet. but he can name all his colors and shapes, and most letters. and he tells me and himself "job job!" (ie - good job!) we're getting there!

i'm in training today and tomorrow... i teach a self-defense course at work called handle with care. it's designed to protect the officer as well as not injure the attacker, since we deal with juveniles. i love teaching it, and i always enjoy the yearly refresher training. i like teaching this class because so much of it involves how to address and deal with the youth we work with and influence their behavior before anything violent ever happens. i think it's great that a restraint technique class incorporates so much verbal de-escalation strategy before we even lay hand on each other. but anyway - i'm having fun.

i bought a dress on ebay for our dinner dance on feb 3. jerry thinks it looks weird. i'll show you a pic when i get it, and you can help me choose whether i keep it or bu y a new one and sell this one back to ebay.

anyway, it's time to get on home.

hasta luego.

thursday 13 #10

Thirteen Things I want for my kids 1. I want them to know they are loved, even when i'm fussing at them 2. I want them to be good. not just well behaved, but turn out to be good people. 3. I want them to know and love God, and to be involved in church 4. I want them to be intelligent. they don't have to be super geniuses, but i don't want them to have to struggle through school and life. 5. I want them to be confident and secure, and not follow the crowd (at least not too much.) 6. I want them to be healthy. 7. I want them to become responsible people. 8. I want them to live up to their potential, and develop high expectations of themselves 9. I want them to feel like they can tell me about what's going on in thier lives, no matter how old they are. i understand there will be times they won't want to, and times i wont want to know, but overall, i want them to know i'll always be there for them, no matter what mistakes they make. 10. I want them to play team sports. not only is it fun, there are so many lessons that boys and girls learn when they play on a team of any kind. 11. I want their dad and i to have a loving, committed, and happy marriage, so they can see what that looks and feels like, so they'll know what to look for in a spouse of their own. 12. I want them to know the joy of making someone else happy. That it is in helping and giving that we are blessed. 13. I want them to be happy. I list this one last, because if they have all the others, this one will follow. there are tons of other things i could list. we as parents just want the world for them. you understand. i'm always wondering if i'm doing it right. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

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random things to ponder

Here is a great email i just got.....


TEN THINGS TO PONDER FOR 2007

#10 Life is sexually transmitted.
#9 Good health is merely the slowest rate at which one can die
#8 Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an
erection, make him a sandwich.
#7 Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to
use the internet and they won't bother you for weeks.
#6 Some people are like a slinky... not really good for anything, but
you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.
#5 Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital
dying of nothing
#4 All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention
to criticism.
#3 Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars, and a
substantial tax cut saves you thirty cents???
#2 In the 60's, people took LSD to make the world weird. Now the world
is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

AND THE NUMBER ONE THOUGHT FOR 2007:
We know exactly where one cow with mad-cow-disease is located among the
millions and millions of cows in America, but we haven't a clue as to
where thousands of Illegal immigrants and Terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration.

next time we'll get a tip sheet

so we didn't win quite enough to cover our dinner....ok, so we didn't even break even. but it was fun to spend some good one on one time, drink us some beers, and talk and laugh together.

i love all the crazy names they give these dogs. here are a few notables that i remember: tmobile, makeminerare, kikkin chicken, and my personal favorite, boiled crawfish.

if you were a greyhound, what would your name be?

tomorrow's big date night!

yessirree, tomorrow is the date night! mom's coming to watch the babies. and jerry and i are going to ......



the dog track!!!!!! bettin' on the puppies! i love the dog track! maybe we'll win enough to cover our meal! wish us luck! it will just be great to hang out with the hubby, just the two of us, doing something fun and relaxing together. can't wait.

thursday 18 #9 i think

Thirteen Things about my sister Katie i think i may be stealing this idea from aimee, but i don't think she'll mind. since my last post was about katie, i'll make this one about her too! 1. She doesn't have a blog, and she doesn't comment on my blog, even though she reads it. 2. She's my twin, and i'm 17 minutes older than her. 3. She has lived in 6 different cities in the last 10 years. 4. She was the smallest player on her high school volleyball team (or if she wasn't she was close) but she was the smartest, and had the best attitude and the most love for the game, which is why she is now a volleyball coach. i don't know if she knows this, but i see her as vindication for all of us second-string, b-team players who really could have been good enough had our coaches given us a chance, instead of playing favorites or catering to the girls with the loudest parents. i think it rocks that she's now the one who decides who plays, and i know she doesn't run her team like a popularity contest. because she's cool. 5. she went to college at Trinity University in San Antonio, and got both a bachelor's and master's degree in five years. 6. she earned the nickname "mad dog" while in college, at least for a little while, because of her penchant for a certain alcoholic beverage (m/d 20/20) 7. in high school, i used to have to physically drag her out of bed in the morning. she would not get up! i always drove to school, and i would be sitting on the couch in theh living room tapping my foot, waiting for her slow butt to get ready to go. i wanted to whip her. 8. she once broke the back window of our car to get in after she locked the keys in it, instead of calling a locksmith. apparently it was really hard to do. she told mom that someone tried to break in. 9. she started signing with her daughter when she was about 6 months old, to help her learn to talk. it worked, because lucy talks almost as much as my son, who is a year older than her! 10. her given name is katherine, but she has always gone by katie. never kate or kathy. and it annoys her when people spell her name "katy". 11. when she gets annoyed, she will point her finger at you and start her sentence with, "lookit!" 12. she is very crafty, and one year, when she was taking a pottery class in college, she made clay pitchers, pots, tumblers, rice bowls and platters for everyone. i still have a "moonshine jug" that she made. I also have a bowl that was supposed to be a pasta dish, but when it was fired, it shrank too much. she stamped all of her pottery art with a flower as her hallmark. coincidentally, (or not) it's the same flower she has tattooed on her hip. 13. she won't eat guacamole or mushrooms. there are tons of other things i could list. but most importantly, of course, is that i love her and love that she's my sister! Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!


The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

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exciting news!!!

so my sister katie just told me yesterday that she's pregnant again!!!! hooray! her lucy is 1, will be 2 in may. one of the cutest darn kids i've ever seen, and my goddaughter.

i was cleaning out my closet yesterday. i decided that i won't be fitting into any size 8s or 10s anytime soon, and if ever i do, i will deserve to buy myself new clothes. so i called my sister who is always infuriatingly thinner than me, to offer her a new but slightly used wardrobe. she said sure, and as long as i'm setting things aside for her, i should set aside my maternity clothes as well.....!!!!!!!

i love that our kids are all going to be so close in age. sadie and lucy are almost exactly one year apart, and adian is 1 year older than lucy - their bdays are 4/30, 5/12, and 5/23. this one will be in august or so, so still pretty close. how fun! now if i could only get them to move south, so we wouldn't be an hour and a half apart, that would be perfect. i had to marry a southside boy.

so this saturday, my mom is coming to babysit, and jerry and i are having a date night. we're thinking about going to the dinner and a movie place nearby, where you watch the movie in the restaurant itself. not quite sure how it works, but it's supposed to be pretty cool. i was kind of all fired up to go out like we used to, go play pool and go to a bar and stay out till all hours of the night, but jerry thinks no. i'll work on him. sure it would be weird to come home drunk with my mom there, but it's a rare chance for us to go have adult time with adult beverages!

anyway, my sister said that maybe they'd come up too, and hang out with us. which i told her would be cool. looking forward to this weekend!

end of the 12 days...

so the is the recap of the 12 days of christmas gifts for the hubby - pear tart, turtle candy + dove candy bar, chikfila giftcards, 4 phone calls during the day, onion rings, eggs for breakfast, prayers, milkshake, 9 lotto tickets, my name is earl season one, and for the last two...

day eleven (pipers piping) was an itunes gift card. thanks for the idea, kelli. except that i lost the card somewhere, and havent' found it yet to give to him. but i told him what it was, and he was happy about that. and day 12 was fried chicken for dinner. you know, drumsticks. yeah kind of a stretch, but we both felt like chicken, and it was better than the idea i had at first, which was to bake a cake and decorate it like a drum. we have enough sweets around here already. jerry had so much fun with this. he told me he was going to miss getting his envelope every day. and i enjoyed doing it for him. so much that i'll probably do it again next year. so i have a year to come up with new gifts for the days. oh boy.

just in case anyone was wondering, i finally got my hair cut again. she really didn't cut as much off as i think i wanted, but it's definitely shaped better. and it's all highlighted too, which is cool. i think i might have to give up trying to color my hair myself. before when i was younger and had long hair, it wasn't a problem if it didn't look great. but now, being a working woman and all, with shorter hair, it really makes a difference to leave it to the pros. i just wish it wasn't so damn expensive. maybe next time i'll go up to the community college and get it done by the cosmetology students. i did that once before, and it looked great. it just took them about 4 hours.

so my mom called today, and said she had no plans for next weekend, and would love to come up and spend some time, and watch the babies for us so we could go out on saturday night. Huh!!?? this is the first time that's ever happened. but hey, it's cool. so now we're working on our big plans for a big date on saturday. don't want to spend a lot of money, but do want to do something we can't do with babies. we'll probably end up going to see a movie, but i want it to be more that just that. we'll see. i wish we could go out drinking somewhere, but i really don't want my mom to see me coming home drunk. i know i'm grown up and all and it's my house, but i think i'd still feel kinda funny.

so i hope you're having a good weekend. back to the laundry.

random bits, oh, and thursday 13 too

so last night was 10 lords a leaping. i figured a lord and an earl are pretty close to the same thing, feudally that is, so i got him the first season of my name is earl - one of our favorites that we always seem to miss. he was thrilled. ok, so it was sort of a gift for me too....damn that's a funny show.

the boys went back to school this morning. surprisingly, they were both pretty easy to rouse.

so on the bus to work this morning, i was sitting in an aisle seat, and the guy across the walkway from me was in the window seat. and out of nowhere, he just threw up all over himself! i think he may have gotten some on the lady in front of him too. poor guy. i felt so bad for him because he was all embarrassed, and apologizing, and i had nothing to give him to wipe himself off. the lady in front of him pulled out one of those tiny travel size packages of kleenex, and gave him one. what a cat. i almost gave him the maxi pad i had in my purse, but thought better of it. although i think it would have worked better than one stinkin kleenex. anyway, he got off at the first stop, and as soon as he left, she leaned up and told the driver, um, this guy just got sick all over the floor back here. and the driver said, um, ok. what is she supposed to do, break out her mop bucket and put the bus on auto pilot? just deal with it, lady. i'm glad i'm a mom, because a little spit up doesn't phase me at all.

anyway, so after that, another guy comes up to the front of the bus, when we were stopped at a red light, and asked to get off there even though it isn't a stop. usually the drivers don't mind, but this one said no. he was obviously in a hurry, and being kind of huffy. so he sat down in the second seat and waited til we got half a block up to the stop. let me remind you, dear reader, that it's been raining here since last night, so floors are a little slippery. and no vomit up by the front of the bus. so this guy stands up before the bus gets to the stop, all itching to get off right away, and as the driver brakes, he lost his footing and fell right on his butt! the bus stops, he stands up and says in this scathing voice to the driver, it's slippery there! and stomps off the bus. no, dude, you're supposed to wait your dumb ass in the seat until the bus stops. and i'm sorry none of us had the courtesy to wipe the floor off after we tromped onto the bus with our wet feet. i don't think the aisle is big enough for one of those "piso mojado/wet floor" signs.

ugh. people.

and so ends the feel-good of the christmas season.

or maybe i'm just pms-ing and feeling growly. probably that.

so on the the thurday thirteen......

13 things that annoyed me in the last few days.....

1. on new year's eve day, walmart actually had all their valentine's day stuff out. give me a break.
2. jerry put noah's lunch money in noah's shoe this morning before he left because he was afraid i'd forget to give it to him. he didn't say that was why, but i just know. like i'm the only one who forgets things.
3. it's cold and rainy, and has been for days. i'm tired of it.
4. last night when jerry let the dogs in, they tracked mud from the door to their crate. and he just left it there.
5. i think they have the air conditioner on here at work, even though it's 50 degrees outside. i'm cold!
5. we have a huge pile of crap on our kitchen counter that refuses to go away. no, not real crap. just papers, reciepts, books, phone chargers, coins, watches, sales ads, mail, etc. i want to just sweep it all into the trash, and deal with the conseqences if i accidentally threw away something we needed.
6. our interest rate on the mortgage is going up again. we need a fixed rate, but can't get a good rate yet. still fixing credit. grr.
7. both of our tvs are on the fritz, and we don't have the money to buy new ones. and i'm not looking forward to the argument that will ensue when hubby wants the flatscreen, and i'm too cheap and shrewish to say yes.
8. unitas is starting up again (our marriage prep class that we're a sponsor couple for) and we need to get a sitter for sadie. alec can watch aidan, but he's not quite comfortable enough with the little one. jerry feels like it's no problem just to take her with us, but i don't want to because i end up holding her the whole time, feeding her, soothing her, etc., and i can't really devote attention to the group going on. i'd get so much more out of it, and be able to put more into it if the baby wasn't there.
9. i'm the only one who hears the babies cry on the montior. and the only one who gets up in the middle of the night to sooth or feed them.
10. jerry made the comment the other day about how i must be jazzed to go back to work, since the stay-at-home mom stuff is really hard and wears me out. i had to bite my tounge before i said that even though it's hard, i'd do it in a heartbeat if we had the money, and if i thought he really appreciated how tired one can be after "just staying home all day."
11. i annoy myself with my procrastination. i'm sitting here justifying to myself that it's only a three day week with the holidays, and no one expects anything to get done in just three days. i'll wait til next week to get down to work.
12. i still need a haircut. i'm going on saturday. i want to get highlights too, but i'm too cheap to pay $80 for it. but last time i tried to do it my self from a box, i jacked it all up and ended up looking like i fell in hydrogen peroxide.
13. i have a headache and i forgot to bring my tylenol to work with me!

so you can now join me in my pissy mood, or go and have yourself a wonderful thursday!

drummers drumming?

last day at home with the kiddos before i go back to work tomorrow. ick.

today is 9 ladies dancing day, which, of course, jerry is all worked up about, because he thinks i'll be doing a strip tease. which i won't. nor will i be giving him $180 to go have 9 lap dances. (apparently it's common knowlege that a lap dance is 20 bucks. i didn't know that. i originally said that i wouldn't give him $300 to have 9 lap dances, and he looked at me all cockeyed and said where do you get 300? everyone knows it's $20 a dance. and he doens't even go to strip clubs. except if it's a bachelor party which he hasn't done in years and years. but i digress.)

it's nine lottery tickets, the scratch of kind which are called "9 in a line." so lots of nines, but no dancing. although, if we win something, i'll dance for sure!

so i'm reconsidering the 12 drummers drumming gift. i had an idea, which i'm not going to spill yet, since i'm keeping everyone in suspense, but i am now thinking that it's kindof lame. do y'all have any ideas? my 11 pipers piping is a little lame too, now that i think about it. give me some ideas!!

more 12 days

just for an update, i'm doing the 12 days of christmas gifts for the hubby. i shamelessly stole this idea from kelli in the mirror's post here.

ok, so we left off at 6, right? six geese a laying traslates into eggs. i don't have goose egges, so chicken eggs have to do.

on six geese a laying day, i got up early with him since he had to work that saturday, and made him eggs for breakfast. he just recently bought an eggmaker/toaster that cooks a poached egg in exactly the same time it takes to toast 2 pieces of bread or english muffin, in order to make a perfect egg sandwich. it even has a steamer tray for a piece of ham to heat up while the egg is cooking. jerry believes that this is the absolute best invention in the history of the world. i'm not 100% sure he's wrong on that. so i sent him off to work with a warm egg sandwich then climbed back into bed.

day 7 was hard. swans a swimming? so i looked up the song, and apparently there's a myth attached to it that the numbered items correlate to symbols of christianity that early catholics would sing so they could celebrate their faith, but not be persecuted for it. here's an example of the explanation for that.

so,i wrote in the card:
"this is my gift to you today: in the song, the seven swans a swimming represent the 7 sacraments God gave us. one of them is marriage and another is Holy Eucharist. Today, as we take communion together, my prayers will focus on you, as i thank God for you, and ask Him to stregthen and bless you and give you peace, wisdom, and faith to guide us, your family, in His path."

he got all teary and said it was the best present yet. well, second maybe to the chickfila. that's my man.

and then at church yesterday, he poked me before communion and said, hey remember, your supposed to pray for me!! he really is enjoying this, and i'm having fun with it too.

today is 8 maids a milking. i'm gonna make him a killer milkshake with the peanut butter passion ice cream we have in the freezer. top it off with some crumbled reeses p/b cups. he'll be so excited!

oh, by the way, new years was nice and relaxed. we just hung out here, and jerry took the older boys out to do fireworks. they had to drive out to the next town over, since our city has an ordinance against fireworks. they went to this brand new neighborhood out in the middle of nowhere and popped a few, but then some cars showed up with lights, and they thought they might be cops or security guards, so they hopped in the car and sped off. the kids had as much fun "running from the law" then they would have shooting fireworks all night apparently. now i'm really hoping that alec doesnt' learn to love that kind of "rush" yet.

anyway, they were only gone about an hour or so, so in that time, i was able to complete my address book that i just bought, updating it with all the addresses from the christmas cards we recieved, and file away the picture/letter cards we got. i think that was a works for me wednesday idea, and i think it's a great one. so years from now we can look at the pictures and update letters from our families and friends and remember what was going on then.

so that brings us to today. i'm awake with the little ones, but everyone else is still fast asleep, since we were up til 2 am. looking forward to another lazy day.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!