Working hard or hardly working?

I'm taking a break from working to write about working. How sad is that?

Being part of a global organization has its pros and cons. One con is that few of my colleagues actually work in the same location, so putting a name to a face is difficult. About a year ago we started a tradition of including head shots of the speakers in business update presentations.

This month my boss is preparing the presentation and wanted to spice it up a little, so he came up with a "turn back the clock" theme. So he turned to me, the resident tech geek. He wanted to put the head shots on yearbook photos from recent decades. As a tribute to his “graphic artist” he wanted my face on a mullet, so I picked one of the most recognizable mullets from the early 90’s: Uncle Jesse. Here you go.

Before

After

Mother's Day Cuties

This year I splurged, (much to Michael's displeasure) on the girls' Spring dresses. A friend of mine was having a dress sale in her drive way where we could buy really beautiful dresses for a fraction of their original price. Normally I don't spend this much even when it is a "sale price" Each dress was $39 dollars. I'm fine with a nice dress from Target or a sale at Kohl's...etc. But I thought this year I'll get these dresses and we'll get their pictures taken too.

Well, Bekah's dress is a size 2T - that's what she is, but it won't fit around her next month, she's growing too fast. And Emma hates hers. Which I find incredibly hard to believe because this dress is the closest things she's ever owned to a real "Princess Gown". Usually she runs around in the cheesey stuff you buy for Halloween and dress-up.

Oh well, I forced her into it for Easter, I got her to wear it for 1/2 of Mother's Day, (see she didn't wear this dress to church, only for our park pictures). The park pictures didn't turn out exactly like I had hoped, so I think I may be able to BRIBE her into it one more time for studio pictures. What do you think? She likes quarters, quarters work really well. And if she gives me any trouble she likes one dollar bills even more. Bribery... is this how low I've sunk? I guess so, if it works and I get great pictures out of it than I'm okay with it. If it doesn't then I'll sneak the dollar out of her piggy bank while she's sleeping. I'm kidding...yah kidding.

Mother's Day Was A Smash!

Mike made me pancakes for Mother's Day. He's so sweet. I like jam on my pancakes so I got out the peach jam and the strawberry jam. Bekah likes to take off lids and then put them back on, she's very good at it. Well, she dropped the bottle of jam on Daddy's plate and as you can see, shattered plate everywhere.

After we started cleaning it up, I realized I really needed a picture of this one. So we carefully placed her back at the table to capture my very smashing Mother's Day. I won't forget this one, thanks Bekah. And thanks to Emma and Aaron for the artwork, beautiful cards and my special bookmark. I love you kids so much!! And thanks for the pancakes Mike...they were delicious.

Aaron's Crown

So you may not really be able to see it but it's in there. Aaron has one silver crown in the very back of his mouth. The other "problem areas" only needed to be fillings and as I mentioned before we are now much better flossers. Aaron refers to his new crown as his "metal tooth", it's really kind of cute how he goes on about it, like he thinks his mouth was being enhanced instead of repaired. The slight defect in his front tooth was also repaired and he has his gorgeous little smile back.

Now this was our first experience at Primary Children's Hospital. Other than Mike and I getting a little slap happy-tired as a result of the worry and waiting we all came through it pretty okay. Aaron did have a hard time when he came out of the anesthesia, which the doctors and nurses had told us to expect. It was heartbreaking to see my little boy crying while nothing we did, (absolutely nothing) soothed him. The nurse came over and gave him something to help calm him down and to help any further nausea. About 3 minutes after she did that Aaron passed out in a deep sleep. Mike said, "She gave him a sedative! She just didn't want to listen to him cry anymore." And she most likely did, he was probably starting to scare the other children. We thought for sure once he woke up from this little nap he would be thrashing about again, but he didn't. He just sat straight up and said, "Okay, I'm ready to go home." Amen! So were we. We gathered his things and took him home.

Of course I forgot my camera. But I bought a disposable one in the gift shop and I captured almost every moment of his first trip to the hospital...so more pictures coming soon. Once we got home I made him his favorite meal...mac & cheese, (yuck! I really hate that stuff) and we watched a movie I rented from Red Box, (I love Red Box!). By the way, if you haven't already seen it, Bolt is hilarious, our entire family laughed our heads off...Two Thumbs Up!

So here's my sum-up - Flossing...Good, Mac & Cheese...Gross, Red Box...Awesome, Bolt...Hiliarious, Aaron...Very Brave!

1 Down 2 to Go!

One of my sister-in-laws published a post in her blog entitled, "How I Survived My First Trimester." I got a huge kick out of it and since we are due within a week of each other it's now my turn to describe how I survived MY first trimester. (Thanks for the inspiration sis.)

With each pregnancy my nausea gets worse! This is my fourth and it nearly did me in. I literally felt like I was going to hurl ALL the time. It came in the morning, you'd expect that...hence the term, "morning sickness" and it stayed for lunch. I was still feeling sick by the time dinner rolled around, so here's a big "shout-out" of thanks to a sweetheart hubby who took over a lot of dinner making so I could avoid looking at any raw meat. In the evening, guess what? Still feeling pretty crumby, I mean talk about overstaying your welcome, didn't anyone ever explain to this brand of nausea that that is incredibly rude. I welcomed bedtime just so I could go to sleep and stop feeling sick.

Every now and then I'd get a craving for something off the wall, (and just like with the other pregnancies) that was the only thing I could possibly fathom eating at the time. So there were a couple nights we all ate chili cheese dogs, or fried eggs and toast. Thanks family for putting up with me. Oh and let's not forget the night I just had to have a slice or 3 of watermelon. Mind you this was in early Spring. Watermelon is expensive at this time of year...thanks honey.

Energy or the lack thereof was a huge issue. So much that one day Mike compared me to a cat and we all know just how productive they are! I usually responded by reminding him I'm trying to grow a baby here and that is a full time job - I'm even working while I'm sleeping!

Ahhh, sleep. It would be so nice to sleep a whole night through without those interrupting calls of nature. But I must say it does prepare you for those late night/early morning interruptions the baby will bring. I really like my sleep and Mike nows just how useless I am without a decent night.

So all in all I really don't know how I made it through my first trimester, I felt sick and tired ALL the time, I spent most of the time looking at the calendar while calculating how much longer... Oh and I complained a lot, sorry Mike. Maybe we should ask him how HE made it through my first trimester.

T-Ball Troubles

We put Aaron in T-Ball this Spring. I thought he'd love it...so much for that mother's intuition. He played two games, the last one he actually spent part of on my lap. To his credit, he's a really good hitter, but he doesn't like to chase after the ball while in the outfield. So we had a big talk and we decided to trade him for his sister, who as it turned out was very anxious to play and enjoys it! She's already had a turn with dance and soccer, but Aaron doesn't mind a bit as she subs for him in T-Ball. I asked Aaron what he'd like to do instead of baseball and he's very interested in swimming lessons - all my kids LOVE to swim. So we'll be making a deal this time. If I pay for swimming lessons you're going to every single lesson and then if you hate it after that, you don't have to take them again. There are some really great pictures of Aaron playing T-Ball, unfortunately they are on my sister's camera, (duh, I didn't bring my camera - I thought I'd have plenty of future games to take pictures of...not so). I'm waiting for her to e-mail them to me. Then we can post pics of our little guy.

Your Eyes Will Stick That Way

Is there really any truth to what us Mom's threaten sometimes? Emma is in a crossed-eyes stage. Any time we try to take her picture she thinks it's hilarious to pull this face.