With Love

For grandFather's Day

From Claire

When Girl meets Boy

Claire: (brings helicopter with toy inside to show mommy) Lady.
Mommy: Oh the Lady is in the helicopter?
C: 'copter
M: Where is she going?
C: Shopping

Day at the Beach

We took a break from renovation (since Claire and I are integral parts of demolition and remodeling) and went to the beach today. We went with Aunt Rachel and Aunt Jen and Cousin Joe and Rachel's roommate; who looks eerily like her twin separated at birth. It was cold, like 68 degrees cold, but we had a good time anyway, playing in the sand and even sticking our feet in the surf once or twice; but no more than twice, cause it was freezing.
I love how you can capture a moment in time with a picture and it looks so sweet and innocent to everyone who looks at it but if you were there you would know it wasn't really what it looks like. I caught one of those moments with Joe and Claire today. In the midst of Joe's efforts to either throw Claire into the surf or keep her from being anywhere near the fun he was having in the surf I snapped this:

Sweet huh? and the best part is, ten years from now, they will never know that they weren't best buddies playing at the beach with big, brave Joe protecting little Claire from the surf. :) Memories are funny things.

Demolition

We Own It!

We had a bit of trouble getting into it though, it took some trying and some sticking out the tongue, while the neighbors upstairs looked on, we fin-angled it and finally we were in. Now, time for some demolition!

Here are some before and after shots of the demolition, keep in mind that this was all done in one day, by three and a half guys (and no my husband was not the half-a-guy).

It amazes me! Now time to rebuild...

Things I am Glad to Have 3

I am so glad for my sister... who is a wonderful aunt too :)




I'm also thankful for friends that span lifetimes.


I guess I have a lot to be glad about...

Things I am Glad to Have 2

I am glad for My husband!

We lost nothing in the great hard drive crash! YAY! I love him so much!!! (he gets extra exclamation points)

Pictures we did not lose:



Movies we did not lose:



My husband is amazing!

I am finding it difficult to believe that you guys can comment 5 times on my post about crazy weekends and yet have nothing to be glad about... come on we started at skin and underwear... what are you thankful for?

Things I am Glad I Have

My previous post makes me feel as if I need to be expressing my thankfulness in a more tangable way so here is a very partial list of things I am glad I have. Some of them come from songs that my daughter has discovered this week since we lost Steve. Thankfulness has been a theme here lately.

I'm so glad I got skin, that's what holds my insides in.
I'm so glad I got arms, that's what holds my hands on.

Thanks you God for underwear, thank you God for underwear, thank you God for underwear, right where I am.

I'm just so glad. :)

what are you glad that you got?

Advertising

There has been a rash of giveaways lately in the blog world. I guess the recession has people thinking ... well I don't know why you would give things away because you are being laid off, maybe the thought is that we are more thankful for what we have and realizing that we have more than we actually need and we want to share the 'wealth'. Whatever the reason I have seen more giveaways lately than I have ever seen before. It makes me think I should be giving something away. Something exciting and BIG ... I am moving, closing this next Friday actually YAY! And with that in mind, I have some BIG things (lesson the exciting side) that I am not moving.. like a dining set, a loveseatwould that is extra loved, some fireside wingback chairs, a bedroom set and a lovely white crib from the 50's that has NOT meet safety standards since the 60's. I'm thinking that having a giveaway would be a great way to get rid of these things! :) However, most of my readership (that I know of) has no use for these items, nor do they have space, although miss Ami has an entire roof that she is not taking advantage of. So I will simply have a garage sale next weekend. Come on down, if you mention this post you will receive a free prize!

My Very Long Weekend

And the saga continues. This weekend I am wishing we had taken last weekend off. Being gone every weekend for a month sounded really good before today around 4 o'clock when Jim was screaming obscenities at other drivers and then at our navigation system and I was threatening to throw Claire's happy meal box out my window. How did we get here I wondered. Well, we left at 4am on Sat. to go to my friend Meg's wedding (she was lovely, there are pictures that I will post when I get Steve back) And before that we welcomed Ami to our house on Thursday afternoon, we went to the park, sat around and watched strange 80's movies with Bannana Splits (pictures of this too when Steve lives or Ami finds her camera cord) and generally hung out. So we left Ami on her own at my house during the wedding trip. She did fall prey to our traveling habits.. there was no shampoo in the shower for her to use (I think we caused her to open her trunk!!) (AH) and there were no clean towels. So she washed some and folded all my laundry. She has yet to accept any of my generous offers to become my live-in. I will get her yet, I still have about 17 hrs left with her. Sorry Mark. So After Ami arrives and we leave and go to the wedding (at 4am)(which sounded like a better idea than it was) we stopped off at Aunt Nancy the Great's place. Which is very nice. We plan to visit again. She has clean towels and several kinds of shampoo in her shower. We celebrated Steven's birthday, roasted marhsmallows, saw some chickens (we are still chatting about those) and the highlight of Claire's visit, gathered some rocks from Aunt Nancy's mud room. Kudo's to you Aunt Nancy for providing hours of car-time play for the ride back, who would have thought 5 rocks and a ziplock bag... We are home now, we were going to watch a movie, but we cant find it so the guy on vicodine went to the movie store to find us something... (Ami is still here) (She is planning to leave on Tues now, because Mark has classes so she wants to spend some more time with her sister)(she says I'm lying, again SEVENTEEN hours, I will change her mind) So overall, this weekend was just too long and full of stuff that was wonderful. My plan is to never leave my house again and just continue to relive the events of this weekend over and over and over...
I can't beleive you are still reading this, please get up, go have an adventure of your own and blog about it so that I can have something to do while I live at home for the rest of eternity. But before you go, leave me a comment and let me know you love me.

My husband is the best! Theater experiance for the same price but in a much more comfortable setting!

Revised

So I think my husband read my blog and felt bad about my recap of our weekend. So we salvaged what we could. We went to RI for the day on Sun. and spent it with my in-laws at a house up there. Fun with dogs and bugs and smores around the fire-ring! And then a ferry ride back to Long Island for a send off party for Cousin Joe (the medium one). A walk to the lake provided a front row seat for a family of geese and a family of ducks.. the babies were SO cute! Overall we packed 5 days worth of fun into two and ended up having a blast! So happy Memorial Day. (which doesn't seem like it should be a 'happy' holiday when you think about what you are 'celebrating') I hope your weekend was just as eventful. If you can top prarie dog babies you win.. that's the best thing I have heard of so far.

Sad

Our Steve (that's our computer's name) is not with us. He had to go to the Mac store to get some work done on his harddrive. Actually he needed it replaced :( We will miss him this week. We will also miss the month worth of pictures that are potentially going to be lost because of his harddrives untimely death. :( My husband beleives he can retreive the pictueres.. if he does I will declare my undying love for him (again).
In other news my husband had his wisdom teeth out, the second and last set. He followed his surgery with celebratory nerds and now lies in bed in severe pain and the stiches are still bleeding. He would like me to point out that he beleives the two (nerds and pain) are not connected in anyway. This may be true but I see at least a phone call to the good Dr. if not a trip in our future.
Claire on the other hand had a great day yesterday. She went garbage shopping with her mom and got a new slide for the backyard! She is also in the process of perfecting her whining voice and impatient stomping feet. (thank you cousin Joe for the invaluable lessons you teach us). In Cousin Joe's defense he has taught us other things like chalk drawing and fire engine washing.
Overall a great day. Sad about Steve but happy otherwise. Well Jimmy isn't so happy. So I guess it's just Claire who is defying the odds here at our house and enjoying her days with her Dad; even though he has spent most of it drugged up or sleeping off the drugs or pain. We will do better next weekend when we travel out to Bradford to see Miss Megan tie the knot with Mr Rob!

My Life in Photographic Form

I'm the baby in the corner...

A Piece of Some Peace

Nothing clever to post lately. Nothing really of note. I must take note of that lull because I fear we have passed into warp 5 and will soon be inventing warp 7. This whole buying a home thing is really a process, a long process that we are trying to cram into a little tiny container. We are buying a co-op (see pictures), we signed the contract and the sellers decided that even though they live upstate, and they never lived in this particular dwelling (it is their father's estate), and even though the unit is cleared out of all things except a year old beer and some bandaids and sanitary pads; they would like to hold onto it for another month or two. I say 'Boo Hiss'. My husband makes some calls, and we have the contract signed by the next morning. Amazing. Then we have this co-op board. They are the people who get to sit around and tell you everything they think you shouldn't do, which apparently noone pays attention to. But they are also the ones who decide if you get in or not. We can't talk to them without being preped. We must talk to Linda first. Linda has been described to me in many different terms some of the nicer ones include; nutjob, hard headed, difficult and 'She just has that title'. So several realeste agents and others talked and BAM we are at the head of a list of 20 names and they are holding a spot for the meeting there was no way we were going to get into. Great. Now we must get things in order, things that we can't possibly get in order without time travel. We need to get our mortgage approved and get forms that take weeks in just days/hours. We get it all done, I think my husband whored himself once or twice to our broker but we have the papers. (and the broker will hand deliver them to the co-op for us) I call Linda to set up the 'preping us for the board meeting' meeting. She says, 'sorry, if you had just called a day earlier we could have put you in this meeting but now you'll have to wait for the next one.' (which is next month). This makes me wanna cry, I try to get her to change her (nutjob, hard headed, difficult, ...) mind but no go. OK. My husband calls her and we are scheduled for this morning to meet and we'll make the meeting hopefully. Wonderful. Now all we have to do is get through this step and meet with the board on Monday and have a walk thru of the property and have some renovating done and we can move in. Oh and have a baby. It's a process they say. I hope the rest of it goes smoothly and without bribery and sexual favors which is how I imagine we have gotten this far.

The shortened version of our homebuying process:
We are buying a co-op. Boo hiss. Amazing. Bam. Great. Ok. Wonderful.

Just looking for some peace:

Amen! The skies are BLUE!

What is on your Luke List?

The more I watch Gilmore Girls (one episode every weekday)(probably why I have these problems) the more I find myself wanting a Luke.
*Not that I don't love my husband. I do and I am completely contented with the fact that I have him for the rest of my life on earth. He has given me 1 and 1/2 beautiful children and some wonderful moments to look back on in my old age.*
But I would like a Luke, Cause if you watch the show (which I believe everyone should watch at least once) you will notice that Luke is always there, like he just leaves the diner to fix the window in room 3 of the inn or cook when Sookie (a lovely name for a girl) gets put on bed-rest. Most men are not that handy and don't have that kind of job security/freedom. I would like a Luke and on his list I would put:
Empty the trash in the bathroom and laundry room
Pull out the refrigerator so I can clean up the granola that spilled there yesterday
Move the couch so I can sweep under it (cause I'm not sure anymore what could be under it)
Take out the air conditioners in my room and Claire's room
Just things like that. Things I can't do myself or shouldn't do myself but probably will end up doing. Or things I just don't wanna do.
I guess if I didn't watch so much Gilmore Girls I would have time to get these things done myself....

Never Too Young

Proof that you are in fact never too young to wear heels and hit the mall. :)
Just a little happy to brighten your day...

Days and Counting :)

Today I had iced tea, the kind from the mix (not sun tea like my dad likes cause it was rainy). We also had corn on the cob. For some reason that took me to my grandparent's house. It made me miss summer days eating out on the porch or around their table. I guess I REALLY can't wait till May, even my subconsciousness is anticipating this small family reunion.

Fire Hydrant

Today we a good day, and it is only 1pm. So far we have walked to the park, played there for 2 hours, then walked home to find a wonderful thing; the fire hydrants were open!

Much more fun than the wading pool full of water.

Grandpa and Joe were out too, so we raced sticks and boats down the street,

Got soaking wet and had the time of our life :) Who know what fun we will find after our nap.

This is a post for family, if you stumble across my bit of 'cyber-inter-intra-net-web' and want to give your input too, you are more than welcome, but mostly I am looking to find out if this trait is inherited or my own singular oddity.
I was doing laundry today and as I was folding all of my husbands underwear and then moved onto mine, I realized that, honestly, 'do these need to be folded?' I guess my mother always folded our underwear and encouraged/demanded that we fold the underwear when we folded laundry (rarely). But really, as Claire would ask, 'Why?'
So if you have any thoughts, do you fold your underwear or just throw it in a drawer? Do you fold your significant other's underwear? Does he think it is strange? Do you know why someone would beging this silly waste of time habit? let me know, I think I am going to try to just throw my underwear in the drawer today and see how it feels. I have yet to leave the kitchen after doing dishes without wiping the counters... Habits are hard to break, especially if they aren't yours to begin with.

*ammendment: I tried just throwing them in, and ended up quazi folding the underwear, what is our obsession with underwear drawers?

Come Visit

Ok since I love my mother and miss her SO much lately, I feel the need to fulfill her every request/demand/dream in the hopes that she will fulfill my dream/request/demand that she come out here immediately. So as requested here are some pictures of our 'new' place. (The BEFORE pictures) There are 5 rooms, you see them all right here.

Bedroom for two Bedroom for mom and dad
Living/dining/playroom Kitchen
Bathroom for the queen The queen herself
(not in the tub from the new place) but how cool that we get to keep the pink tile...

That Belly Dancer has nothing on my Claire

We practice 'tea party' today to enhance our hand/eye coordination. Mostly we just played with water. The weather was so pretty.
In other news, yesterday we signed the contract on our new home. YAY! Pictures to come when we have some after pictures, we don't want to scare you with only the before pictures :) Please do pray because timing is gonna be a little tight. (by tight I mean impossible) But since nothing is impossible for my God we are moving ahead, eating out to celebrate being poor, and folks, we are in escrow!

Iovino's Oscar

So we colored eggs...

We colored eggs, I'm still not sure why. Claire won't remember it and didn't seem any more attached to the real eggs than to the plastic ones. Jimmy, well he doesn't have a coloring egg past so he wouldn't have missed it. But me.. well we did it every year, it's like one of those traditions you want your kids to remember as fondly as you remember it from your childhood... So we colored eggs...

Ready... Set... Color...

After coloring eggs, we decided that we NEEDED to see them again,

And give them a second coat of color

Then we were done.

My Dad the Pirate King

So lately I have been finding out tons of things about my parents that I never knew about them. For example, one friend brought to light that they may have sued a man in FL in the '80's. This sounded absurd to me and turned out to be just that according to my mother, however what are the chances that there was another David Havener out there who met a Brenda and got married? Strange.
Then today I find out the my dad is being held hostage on a lifeboat in Africa... who knew, I mean last time I talked to him his phone was cutting out a lot but still there were no 'argh''s in the background or singing. (pirates always sing)
I found some information as I was investigating the pirates holding my father in this absurd manner; who holds hostages against the US navy and FBI and Coast Guard in a lifeboat? a lifeboat. What kind of sissy navy must we have if they can't take over a lifeboat? Anyway, I'm not worried, these pirates can't be very good, first let me remind you of the lifeboat, then there is this lovely quote:

"A pirate named only as Badow told the Associated Press that a "good number of well-equipped colleagues" were heading to the scene to help the pirates escape. "We are not intending to harm the captain, so that we hope our colleagues would not be harmed as long as they hold him," Badow said."

So many things wrong with this;
1. His name is Badow? That's his pirate name? come on...
2. He is talking to the associated press via satellite phone. I guess pirating has changed since Johnny Depp
3. And his language isn't at all what you would expect from a pirate; 'colleagues' 'not intending to harm him' 'we hope our colleagues won't be harmed'? Where are the 'arghs' and the crass nature?
4. They sound like they don't really want a hostage anyway... no walking the plank (can you put one of those on a lifeboat?), no ..? I dont know... I feel they should be more violent or crass....
I feel jipped. My dad is only gonna be stolen (ok he gave himself up) by pirates once in his life, and it's turning out all wrong.
Thanks a lot Hollywood for my unrealistic views of pirating.

Uh-Oh

So my dad called and he wanted some pictures of Claire and our family to put on a digital picture frame for my Grandmother. Unfortunately, I found that ALL of our 'recent' pictures of Claire look like this...

either that or her bottom half is naked. So I guess today we will have to break out the camera and take some decent shots of Claire when she is clothed. Wish us luck...

MESS!

So, we started potty training this last week... we thought we were doing really good, until I started keeping track of things today. So far today (it's only 4:30) we have been thru:
4 pairs of pants
an entire roll of paper towels (I am open and eager for any other suggestions of what is good to clean pee off of floors/ride-on toys that will not kill every acre of rain forest before we graduate to big girl underwear)
2 sippy cups (don't ask why we are on our third, you don't wanna know what happened to the other two)
4 Advil (for mom)
1 lovey bear
1 baby doll (who really just had to go potty but fell in)
and we are growing dangerously low on patience for accidents that happen less than 4 in. from the potty chair because we can't 'aim' (isn't that supposed to be a boy problem?)

So, that's where 'we' are; thinking 'we' may have bitten off more than 'we' can chew but assuring ourselves that 'we' are more stubborn than her bladder.
She really is doing well... But who would have thought that teaching her to pull down her pants would be the hardest part of potty training?!