Niecey LJisms

Oh niecey LJ. She has my heart. I love spending time with her (well, except for that time today she had a meltdown about not getting the Barbie Island Princess book with the lame story line she found at B&N). Today we were reading a story and she felt the baby kick her. She squealed with delight and every time I put my hand on my belly, she would too. If she couldn't feel anything she'd say, "Oops, it fell asleep." Later when I fell asleep on the floor, Uncle J (JJ) told her to wake me up, and she ran in and kissed me on the cheek. It was so sweet! When we were coloring in the evening, she kept asking me what color to color certain things. Most of the time I told her whatever she'd like to use would be the best. But, I got tired of that comment, so I started choosing colors for her and she commented, "I think you're finally becoming a great artist!" I told her a joke while we were coloring and doing a word search with all the words relating to movies. She was saying "moooovies" and I was reminded of a joke: "What do cows do on Friday nights?" "Go to the moooovies!" She thought this was hillarious and I told her to remember so she could tell Daddy later. At dinner, I brought up that she should share the joke she learned and she asked me to repeat it. I whispered the question in her head, and she yelled out the answer! We had a quick lesson in "humor"... She tried out some jokes on her own... followed by another lesson to quit if it comes to the point when you're the only one laughing. I explained that I had learned that the hard way multiple times! : )

Commercial

.....Hot chocolate at a gas station: $0.87.....

.....CUTE yellow fuzzy sleeper with ducky on bum-side: $7.19.....

.....Standing in line for an hour and a half starting at 5:00 am on Black Friday to purchase the FIRST store-bought outfit for our baby: priceless.....

Thanksgiving Rundown!

We had a fabulous day with tons of J's (and S's and C's). Here's a very quick recap.

*Woke up at about 7:00 am only to realize I didn't pack any underoos for JJ! (Who left my preggo brain to its own devices??) I called Walmart and surprise (!) they were open all day with normal hours. I was quite disappointed in this fact actually.

*Played with the kiddos while people did more constructive stuff like making the food!

*Ate a ton of delicious food at about 12:30.

*Lounged around until SIL LJ announced that she had a special desert. She brought out a diaper cake and they were all in on a secret baby shower for JJ and I!! It was so wonderful and thoughtful and very fun! We played fun games and opened great gifts!

*Played some guitar hero world tour (niecey LJ told cousin KC (another of our nieces) she's not a very good singer!). We found out that the red drum pad breaks easily and it happened to BIL AJ's! Boo!

*Got into some heated discussions but even more heated whist games! As nephew BJ would say "Yike!"

*Went to bed at around midnight.... only to get up and ready for Black Friday at oh, about 3:40 am.

Stampers' Paradise

This is my all time favorite stamping website. Many a minute has been spent (wasted?) here!

All Neil, All the Time

My best bud TAF and her hubby MEF came to visit this weekend. We have been having a fabulous time! So far we've:
*gone to the Green Mill
*gone shopping (woohoo!)
*had some Jimmy Johns (yum-o)
*stamped!!
*played a new game (Blokus) -- highly recommend it -- it's approved by Mensa people... : )
*went to Texas Roadhouse
*AND went to Neil Diamond!

TA's bday is coming up and MF bought her tickets to the show. He decided that we would maybe have more fun going (in a "I'd actually sing and dance along with her" kind of a thing). After hitting the bathroom for the second time in a row that night, it was time to sit down. We had awesome seats on the floor. After we found our spots, we decided it would be good to walk around a bit to kill the 20 or so minutes until Neil. I decided against any Neil paraphernalia, a decision I may regret later... : ) Then, back at our spots, and a few more drunk people stumbling in later, it was time for the show to start. The ladies behind us were hillarious in a "you are so annoying" kind of way... They kept bumping my friend TAF in the head with first themselves on their cellphone and then with their hands trying to clap. A lady in front of us was on her cellphone like the whole concert. Why would you even try to accomplish that feat? And a couple in front of us needed to get a room. Seriously. And they were older. They knew better. Neil came out and sang a few songs (obviously) and then said that the last time he was in our town it was something, something 1970. He was like, "Who was there with me??!" TAF and I were like... uh... not born yet...

He sang lots of classics and some from his new CD. He talked often about being a man of God and his family. He also said that all the proceeds from his "stuff" sales go to Hurricane Ike victims (ladies behind us must have been huge fans -- they cheered very loudly for this announcement). He also came into the crowd for two songs (ladies behind us: I will just die if he comes over. Oh my goodness. He's coming! He's walking around! No, no, he's turning. Should we follow him? Should we go out there?) TA did become a bit of a rule-breaker when she broke out our camera and took a few shots. We were close to the sound tech. booth thingy, so a guy came over and told her to put it away. Naughty TA! ; )

I can't remember the name of the second "floor" song he did, I think it was something about September nights or something? ? Anyhow, he took a lady's hand and walked with her for a while, and they danced for a little bit, and then he kissed her. On the mouth. It was wierd. Then, back on stage, he said, "Thank you beautiful lady for walking with me. Thank you nice man who was with beautiful lady for not hurting me while I walked with beautiful lady. Thank you beautiful lady for the delicious kiss. Thank you again nice man for not punching me in the face." It made me blush it was so awkward. He has this low, low, sultry voice that made it a bit creepy for me, and apparently made the over 40 crowd swoon.

TAF and I totally had dance moves to Sweet Caroline. It was great! And we thought he might leave without singing Coming to America, but he had saved it for his second encore song. The boys were super kind and dropped us off and picked us up from the concert! We were hyped up from the whole concert - hyped up enough to play three more rounds of Blokus. TAF kicked our cans, and then it was time for bed!

More "ONLY ok when pregnant..."

Jeez, I must have just popped again (it seems so gradual to me...). Because now not just at school, but at Bible Study last night I heard a comment about my "size". One of the guys, JPJ, who happens to be from India, and who happens to be a science geek, asks me and another chicky who is due the same day as me: "How big are your babies right now?" We go on to tell him that at about the 6th month the baby is about 8-10 inches and weighs in at about 1.5 lbs. He replies, "But, you guys are way bigger than 8-10 extra inches in there!"

His wife gave him a swift elbow to the side. JJ went on to defend me. He is so proud of the baby belly, too. JJ: Seriously, feel her belly! JPJ: No thanks! I'm not feeling your wife's stomach! JJ: No really! It's like hard and you can feel the baby! (He goes on to demonstrate, poking the baby until she gets fed up and kicks him back.)

ONLY ok when pregnant...

Kiddo quote for the day (after I answered his question when my baby is due):

"I knew it was coming soon because you're looking really big."


Thanks, thanks kiddo. Actually, to be totally honest, I love my baby bump. I can't wait to get BIG. I know, I know, be careful what you wish for...

Just a few of my favorite things...

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...

Here are a few of MY favorite things:

*Game shows! I'm totally addicted! Right now I'm watching Wheel of Fortune. When we lived in JJ's hometown, we had GSN. It is probably a good thing we don't anymore! I love yelling out answers and feeling smart! My favorites are/have been: Family Feud, Hollywood Squares, and Jeopardy (I feel better when it's the college edition and I know answers!). Oh, I know I'm forgetting some, but the list could go on and on!

*Crafting! I've been on a slight kick lately. Thanks to friend SV, I bought two new stamping sets: Nursery Necessities (to start making some baby cards/thank you cards) and Short and Sweet (for everything!). I've been *trying* to use up my collection - not just make a ton of cards, but actually give people birthday cards and write out thank-you notes. I'm so, so excited for my bff TAF to come visit this next weekend. I think we have a full craft day in our near future!

*Checking things off my "to do" list. Oh, also - making to do lists! Lately I've been going through practically all of my old magazines and tearing out things I'll actually use. Then I've been recycling the rest. It feels. so. good.

There will be more to come! : )

Hockey Night (Friday Night)

Friday night JJ, JJ's bro CPJ, JJ's hometown friend AM, and I went to the college hockey game. We seriously had the best seats I've probably ever had at this team's game. We were right up the center line and right behind the bench. It was fabulous! The only thing not so fabulous was the play in the first two periods. Our team stunk it up. And it wasn't for lack of chances. We had SEVERAL power plays and about even shots on goal. It just was not happening. Like the old men behind us commented, "These guys can't buy a goal." We enjoyed some Bavarian almonds (mmm... they smell so good!) and of course dippin' dots. With about five minutes left of the 3rd period (and a score of 3 [opposing team] - 0 [us]), everyone started leaving. It was kind of sad. AM even made a comment that maybe we should start heading out too. We were parked quite far away after all. But, no, no, we had paid for these great seats, we were going to stick it out. AND what a treat for those of us who stuck around. With about three minutes left in the game, our team decided, huh, maybe we should just go for it. They pulled the goalie and came out on fire. They scored not one, but two goals! It was crazy. The score was 3-2 with about 30 seconds left. They had a couple of intense face-offs on the other team's side, but couldn't come up with the tieing goal. All in all, it was a pretty sweet night and I guess the momentum from the last few minutes propelled to a victory the following night. GO [our team]!

One of the things they played between periods was this "show" where one of the defensemen interviewed freshmen on the team. It was pretty hilarious. Here's a link - check it out!

Book List

I totally stole this off of my SIL LJ's site... and aparently she stole it first. What is the saying? The best teachers are thieves? Maybe that applies to blog writing as well!

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How did you do?

1) Look at the list and bold (or make blue in my case) those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Star the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (watched the BBC version)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I did try...)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling*
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible * (I've read MOST of it....)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (started...)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Wow... this would be quite the feat... I read quite a few in high school...)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (tried this one too...)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (watched the movie...)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (watched the movie... : ) )
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (haven't read ALL of them... yet...)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (watched some episodes on TV ?)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (watched the movie)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (enjoyed it)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (movie)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

17/100... and most of them were for class... sad - but better than 6! There are some books on here that I haven't even heard of which is probably worse. I am so uncultured!

Rawwr! Attack of the Preggo Brain!

Lately I have been stoopid. Seriously. And I bump into things and am clumsy. It is so annoying because I normally work on about half a brain sometimes it seems. For example, our upstairs neighbor, BB, chatted about watching a movie with us for a while. We had a movie from Netflix and decided on a particular evening. When she came, I put in the wrong movie. Totally random. At work the other day, I was having a serious conversation with our VP and in a sarcastic tone stated that work was just way above this certain kiddo. He looked at me kind of strangely and told me that maybe I should modify it. I was like oooooh, yeah, meant to make a point about it being way below him... or that HE was way above the work. In any case, I'm just glad it's Friday. : )

I.P.

In college my friend KL would often (well, like once a month or so) take a "mental health day", where she would skip all classes and veg. out or go shopping or the like. Some of us call that the weekend, but I guess a day off during the week is what KL needed. I have been stressed to the max at work and finally took advantage of this person at work called the Instructional Para. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, specialists can check out this guy and have him cover classes. This allows specialists to get paperwork done, call parents, run reports, collect data, observe students, ETC. I seriously feel like a changed woman. I woke up this morning refreshed and ready for the day. This has not happened in quite some time! So, what did I do with my "free" afternoon??
*called two parents
*set up an IEP
*got paperwork ready for two IEPs
*(finally) responded to several emails
*filled out this report that lists all of my kiddos, along with their initial "special ed. date", latest IEP, latest 3-year eval, placement, and environment (served in classroom most of the time, pull-out, separate classroom, separate facility, etc.)
*FINISHED TYPING PROGRESS REPORTS! This was HUGE! (and should've been done a few weeks ago, but whatev)
*made a chart for CBMs (curriculum based measurements) so I can keep track of who I've gotten data from recently and just who has goals in what areas
*finished testing a kid who was gone like the whole week of state testing (phew!)
*cleared off my desk (a little)

Woohoo!! I love LOVE crossing things off my to-do list, but it seems like things in this job aren't quite that easy... they linger... forever... So, getting some things done was like glorious for my mental state! AND it doesn't hurt that we have an all-day field trip today! 1) Med. School 2) Pizza 3) Swimming at the Hyslop!

Cheaper by the Dozen

I have always been fascinated by big families. My mom is 1 of 13 and of course JJ is 1 of 9 -- and here's a fast fact: they are both #9 in their families. I find the dynamics so interesting. Not that one family is better than another one, they are just different.

So, apparently I'm not alone in my fascination. TLC has a few shows on now that showcase big families. My all time fav. is Jon and Kate Plus 8. (J&K+8). Yeah, I am that big of a dork. They may not have the hugest family, but just THAT many four year olds? C'mon. They are pretty much on a free pass to Heaven. They are so stinkin' cute too. Many people give Kate the shaft, but seriously, I totally respect her system. She has to be that organized people! All of the kiddos have definitely unique personalities and it is so fun to see them grow and change.

Just following J&K+8 on TLC Monday nights is 17 Kids and Counting. They are quickly finding a place in my heart. I love how Conservative they are. I've actually thought about writing in to them or the show and say how impressed I am with how they answer questions -- even the little kiddos seem to know why they do what they do. Their kids are so cute also! I can't imagine that many kiddos, but at least at this point the older ones help out the younger ones -- and the oldest is even getting married soon. My favorite is Jinger. She is so sarcastic it just cracks me up.

Susie Homemaker

So I'm not quite what I'd call a homemaker... yet... but I'm definitely on my way after today. I'm kind of boasting here a bit, so just a warning. I mended a pair of JJ's jeans today with my own sewing machine! I even picked out the right color thread and got my bobbin all ready to go with matching thread. I know! And I think they look half-ways decent. I mean, not like my mom, JJ's mom or SIL LJ's mom quality, but I'm still 9-ing from the whole experience.

[side note: My friend KL (soon to be KA) coined the term 9-ing to refer to the state of being on cloud nine!]

Stuck on the B's

No, I'm not stuck on bees, or even these B's. I woke up this morning at about 5:00 am (which I rationalized would've been 6:00 am just two days ago) with two songs in my head. These songs come from two of my wonderful nieces, but I don't really know why they were in my head, because I haven't heard my nieces sing them for quite some time.

Song #1 - from niecey LJ:

B-b-b-Billy
STOP!
B-b-b-bouncing
that ball!

Song #2 - from niecey AB (who I haven't even seen in quite some time...!)

B-b-b-B!
B-b-b-B!
B-b-B-l-a-s-t-e-r!

(and repeat)

This song came from a math blaster computer game aparently.