Checking in

Okay, we have no word of the day today. Just lots of other words.

Joel had an accident at work the other day in which he suffered a concussion and needed 7 staples and 6 stitches in his head. He's uncomfortable a lot and won't admit it, but he stayed home today from work, which is exactly what he needed.

Softball is going excellent still. We are 10-1 right now. We've lost some good players due to vacation but hopefully we can make that up. We have 3 more games left, which is sad :(

I don't have much else to say right now, but I wanted to say something. Can't ever keep my mouth shut, right?

The word of the Day

The word of the day today is

LOVE

I love it when people act like jackasses and prove that I am right.

I love the feel of my daughter's hand in mine. It's a feeling I won't feel forever.

I love apologies. I hate to give them, but sometimes it's necessary and it does feel good.

I love Big Brother.

I love impromptu midnight water fights with friends.

I love that Dominos delivers pizza in the middle of the night.

I love texting. The fact that you can communicate so instantly with people who are not right there with you is amazing.

I love when my son is tired because he stayed up too late reading a book.

I love that the sky is blue and the sun is shining.

I love that I have certain friends and family who I can count on no matter what and vice versa. They know who they are and they just smiled because I said this.

I love that I have friends that I can consider my family.

I love that I still have softball in my life. No matter how many times I say I am done, I can't let go and I'm glad that I have people who push me to continue. I don't know what I would do without that in my life.

I love that I know that I am strong enough to let toxic people go from my life and I feel better about it.

I love pasta.

I love a full tank of gas.

I love reading a book in which I can read a whole chapter without interruption.

The word of the day

HATE

I know, it's an ugly word, but sometimes it's necessary.

I hate poor grammar. It really doesn't take much to double check what you wrote. Sometimes I make mistakes, but usually I try to fix them. Once in a blue moon doesn't kill me, but when people chronically make errors it makes me twitch.

I hate picking up small pieces of paper all over the house. *cough* MADDIE *cough*

I hate Zsu Zsu pets. Immensely.

I hate Maddie's Barbie house. When you open and close it, it makes a sound that is similar to a cross between a baby bear dying and nails on a chalkboard.

I hate cleaning the bathtub, which is why my kids take showers against their will. They (Maddie anyway) prefer baths.

I hate dogs. I hate dog barking.

I hate allergy season. My husband and my son have the worst allergies ever. This time of year is the worst.

I hate insomnia. When you can't sleep, you think. Thinking is bad. Thinking keeps you awake. Thinking causes insomnia and insomnia causes thinking. Sounds bad. Hate.

I hate shoes. Why can't we all go barefoot all the time.

I hate my knee.

I hate sticky floors.

I hate wet floors that make my socks wet.

I hate accidentally vacuuming up something, hearing it rattle around for a few minutes and wondering if it was important, then just giving up and hoping it wasn't.

I hate listening to my 12yo whine about his problems because I would give anything to go back to 12 and have to suffer through 12yo problems rather than 35yo problems.

Why

Today is a day of questions one must ask oneself. These are mostly rhetorical questions, which are the kinds that keep me up at night. Amongst other things

Why does my daughter bark like a dog?

Why, when I cannot sleep at night, does my bed seem smaller than usual?

Why does it take two frozen pizzas to feed my children when it used to take one to feed the whole family?

Why do my kids insist on liking two different kinds of pizza?

Why does the garbage truck have to be so loud at 6:30 in the morning every Wednesday?

Why do I have so many single socks?

Why does my DVR fail during the best shows? How about we have signal failure in the middle of Hannah Montana, or TNA?

Why do they have school supplies out before we even get the list of what we need? Is it a scare tactic? It worked, I'm scared.

Why did the weather cool down just as we got our pool to be absolutely perfect? Why can't it be 90 degrees now?

Why are my feet so big? Why can't they make cute shoes for girls with size 11 feet?

The mysteries of the universe.......

Welcome to the Jungle

I guess instead of daily blog posts, I'm down to weekly blog posts. I guess it's better than nothing, right?

We played one softball game Thursday night. We beat them 28-3. It wasn't pretty, but it was fun. I went 4-4. Well, pretty much everyone did, haha. The other team was completely clueless. Not to mention we are awesome. After the game we all went to DQ to celebrate Maddie's birthday and that was awesome!

Last Friday Tara took Dylan with her to Parker's 13th Birthday Party in Odessa. So it was just me and the little one. We had a girls day. First thing she wanted to do was try chinese food. Um...okay. So we went to Golden Lion. She loved the pork fried rice. She even loved the tea. She tried everything, which shocked me a little. She didn't so much like the chicken chow mein, which shocked me again. I thought she'd like it. We went to Barnes and Noble so she could spend some of her birthday money. She bought a few books and read some in the car on the way home. At B&N we ran into her preschool teacher. Only, I couldn't remember where I knew her from and neither did Maddie. So we sat there talking awkwardly for a few minutes. It wasn't until we were walking away that I remembered where the heck I knew her from. At that point it would have been weird to turn around and start talking to her again. Joel had a golf tournament that day so he wasn't going to be home until late. Maddie and I went out to dinner to Stella's, which is her favorite place (one of them anyway). When we got home it was still hot hot hot so we went in the pool. It started to cool down and the water was actually warmer than the air! LOL

Saturday Maddie had 3 parties to go to. One was for her two best friends, Lily and Georgia. The 2nd was for Lea's baby shower. The 3rd was for her. It was her final birthday celebration with Grammy and Grandpa (Joel's parents). Since Dylan wasn't there she was kind of in her element. She put on a talent show - herself being the only contestant; we had to vote on which of her talents was the best. It was fun. She was loving every minute of it.

Dylan came home late Saturday night and on Sunday he and Joel went to the Mariner/Yankee game. Maddie went to Mam's and I had to work.

So, as you can see, our lives are boring as usual. This time of year mostly is just work, softball, sleep. Not that I am complaining, it doesn't get any better than that. We have two more games tonight. So far our team is 3-0. I wonder how long we can keep up the undefeated status. We are a pretty good team and the teams we have been facing are....not so good. Go Yank-A-Part!

Happy birthday Madelyn!

Seven years ago right now I was a miserable woman. I was FAT. My baby was 4 days late. I was supposed to be induced first thing in the morning but they were too "busy" and said call back later. So I waited 5 minutes. Then another 5 minutes. At one point I may have waited as long as 6 minutes because I had to use the potty.

Finally they were sick of hearing my whiny voice and said "come in at 11:00." I think we were there by 10:00, but I can't be certain. Joel wanted this kid out of me as much as I did.

Finally around 12:00 I was able to get into a bed and get the party started. I had strict instructions to my doctor that said "NEEDS DRUGS IMMEDIATELY." Well, the nurses may have been angry with me for calling 2 million times because they wouldn't let me have the drugs. Now, I wasn't actually in any pain unless you call having a gigantic child inside of you. Two hours into the labor, I was starting to feel some pain. The nurses were real close to feeling some pain too because they were still holding back the good stuff. Finally my doctor shows up at around 3:00. I knew she'd be on my side. She asked why I hadn't asked for the epidural yet. I told her the nurses were sadistic buttheads. I got the epidural. After the epidural kicked in the doctor came back and decided to break my water to get the show on the road since I was still only dilated to like 4 or something.

After the fun time of having your water being broken by a knitting needle or something to that equivelent, the doctor told me what to expect and that I would probably be in labor another 4-6 hours and that she was going to go have dinner and come back and check on me.

Now, I had the epidural, but it wasn't totally covering all the pain or the sensation and something didn't feel right at this point. I said I thought maybe she should check down there cause things suddenly felt different. She went in for another exam and guess whose little head was slinking on out?? DON'T PUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wasn't pushing. I was simply breathing. DON'T BREATHE!!! Awkward. Now I get to see these nurses scramble to get the birth ready. I think it took like a half a sneeze to get her out. The doctor said "thank god your water didn't break at home cause she would have ended up on your kitchen floor."

So we had a 9 pound little girl born at 4:54 p.m. on July 8, 2003. She hasn't been the easiest kid to raise, but she's been a blessing all along the way. She brings us so much joy and happiness and laughter. She completed our family, and I didn't even know we were incomplete!

Drum Roll Please

Today the brand spanking new Yank-A-Part softball team takes the field. My dad's wrecking yard business sponsored our team this year so we got those awesome new shirts you see above you.

This year Joel is doing most of the "captain" responsibilities because I didn't want to anymore. You can take the girl out of the captain position, but you can't take the captain out of the girl. I spent a great deal of time negotiating his "line-up" last night, but in the end I realized I needed to step back and let him handle this. He can be the one to listen to people complain (including myself, obviously).

I am really excited about the team this year. It's not about how good you are, it's about how much fun you have and how well you get along, and we definitely seem to have that in our favor. We got a lot of new players, but they all came from somebody who knew somebody already on the team, so it's not like they were strangers or anything.

I had requested the afternoon off today because Rachel has vacation this week and I wanted to spend at least one day of it with her. I got the whole day off and I'm pretty psyched about that. It's going to be 90 and the pool is all ready for my big butt to sit in it. Or near it. No bikini though, Rachel, sorry to disappoint. I've retired the big brown monster for the year.

Here comes the sun!

After what seemed like the longest and coldest spring in history....summer is finally upon us. So we passed the 2 minute window in which Pacific Northwesterners stop complaining about the cold and the rain and start complaining about the heat. People all over the US call us big fat babies for whining about the heat, but one must remember that the average NW household does not have air conditioning. Myself included. I, however, will not complain about the heat. Here is why:

1. I love it.

2. It never lasts long. Probably in about 2 weeks we'll be back down to 65 and overcast for a few more weeks.

3. I love it.

The only reason I don't like it is because I have to listen to everyone else complain about it. The same people who a week ago were complaining about how cold it was.

The other reason is my son. Anytime the temperature gets above 75 degrees he gets sick. Not like a cold sick, but throw up sick, headache sick, gonna pass out sick. This is partly because he doesn't drink enough water (any). I used to be the same way as a kid, until I grew up and thinned out my blood a little.

Sure, at 10:00 tonight when my bedroom feels like a sauna and the sweat is making me stick to my sheets, I may utter a word of hatred towards summer, but I won't mean it, I swear.

Dan with a side of BEANS

I'm just going to stop apologizing for not blogging. So this is me not apologizing.

I went and saw the midnight showing of Eclipse last Tuesday with Rachel. The movie was awesome! However, I am not so sure that a midnight show is in my blood anymore. Perhaps I could just wait until the next day to see the movie. It was a complete zoo. We got there at 10:00 (yes, 2 hours early) and it was already packed with people. When it was time to leave it took us almost 30 minutes to get out of the parking lot. I didn't get to bed until after 3:00 and then after watching such an awesome movie, who can sleep?

Friday was birthday. I turned 35, which seems a little high to me, but when I did the math it kept coming back at 35. Considering I will have a teenager in a few months, 35 isn't that bad, right? On Thursday we went to pizza with my dad and Cheryll and they gave me a new (much needed) printer for my birthday. We decided to mix Maddie's birthday in too, so she got some new clothes and the Ipod she's been wanting.

Friday was camping day. Dennis spent the night with us Thursday and I had lots of intentions to take the kids to see Eclipse, but I barely had time to do what I needed to do to get ready for camping.

Camping was fun. Last year we went to Dosewallips and this year we went to Belfair. Last year our campsite was so small you could barely move. This year it was much bigger. It was also much louder. So many people and SO MANY DOGS! I swear we were the only people without any dogs there. There was a little stage with seating between our campsite and the bathroom so the girls and Quinn made good use of that A LOT.

Saturday night Tara and Brad came out for dinner and brought me brownies and cookies and truffles for my birthday (thanks Tara!). Dan made a huge pot of beans, which he tortured the rest of us with for the rest of the night (hence the blog title post - Dan came up with that).

I have pictures on Facebook. I'll just leave you with my favorite.