In a funk

I know it's been a while since my last post, but I've got a good excuse - I've been in a funk and just haven't been into blogging or much of anything else lately. But I'm back now.

Work has just taken a complete toll on me. I don't sleep well at night and my body just finally gave out on me. I'm utterly exhausted by 1:00 every day and I try about 10 times a day to fight the lump in my throat. Not exactly sure what the entire root of it all is, but there's just a lot of stress at work and I seem to bring it home with me and just can't keep my arms around the whole mess. But I'm fine now - bouncing back. I had some time to relax this weekend. Hopefully next week is better, although it's month end which is always stressful.

Ok, so let me think about the last 2 weeks...not that much to tell, but last weekend we had our block party which was fun. I forgot to take many pictures until later in the day. We had a jump house for the kids - of course Hannah was afraid of it, but ended up going in a little as the day went on. She had fun and we did too with our neighbors. Here are a few pictures.

Then last Sunday, we went to the Feast down in Little Italy. That was good too and Hannah had fun at yet another fair. She sure is enjoying all the carnival rides this year...her favorite at all the fairs is the cars that go around in circles.

Here she is with her deep Italian roots eating some pizza from Corbo's - YUM!

And here she is playing a game - she won a 50 cent frog that we paid $5.00 for!!!

Then this week was pretty much a blur. Yesterday, I hung around the house trying to relax most of the day. I did do some laundry and cleaned a little and then I decided to try to find something relaxing for me to do. I decided I would make Hannah a quilt. Since many of my friends kids have a quilt from me, I thought it was now about time for Hannah to have a quilt from me. I've been wanting to make her one for a long time, but just haven't had time - wonder why?? So now that she's 2-1/2, it's time for her to have a special quilt all her own from me! So I went to Joann's to try to find one to make and buy fabric. This "therapy" almost backfired on me. I got so overwhelmed trying to find the right fabrics that after being there for almost 2 hours, I started putting everything back and quitting. Then I regrouped a little and changed my original plan of a green and purple one and decided to go for more colors. That plan worked a little better. I went home and Tony was watching the Browns lose and I washed and ironed the fabric. I beat Tony in a game of hold 'em and then I went to bed.

I got up this morning and Hannah and I went to church and then we met Tony for breakfast. I went grocery shopping and then came home to watch Mary Poppins with Hannah. I french braided her hair today - it was cute, but most of it fell out by dinner time.

Here she is sitting at the computer - one of her favorit things to do!

I started cutting fabric for the quilt and Tony made dinner. He's been great this week - real helpful and trying to get me to relax, which I realize I'm not good at!! He gave Hannah a bath and I finished cutting the fabric for the quilt and that's about it. Here's a sneak peak at the fabrics for her quilt....I'll be sure to post the finished product when it's done, which hopefully will be soon. I'm going to try to work on it a little every night to give me an outlet. I also may try to get some projects done for Christmas after I finish this one.

The Rainbow

So I forgot to mention the rainbow sighting. We were on our way to dinner Sunday evening around 5:30 or so and as we were driving, Hannah commented on the gray clouds. She always talks about the blue sky and when it's cloudy, she asks what happened to the blue sky. Well, she was just talking and I was only half paying attention to what she was saying until she said, "A Rainbow, I saw a Rainbow!" I looked off to my right and sure enough, there was a big, beautiful rainbow!!! She then proceeded to tell me "Jesus painted that rainbow". I just thought this was the coolest thing, first that she spotted it all on her own (and to my knowledge, this was her first real rainbow sighting) and then I thought it was really cool that she knew Jesus was the one who made it happen. I've been doing a terrible job at getting us to church very often, but we do try to talk to her at home about Jesus and we say prayers every night. I'm just glad that she is growing up learning about God and I'll try to do better to get her to church more often!

Another week flew by

Where do these weeks go? Last week was busy as usual. I was so tired all week and couldn't seem to get a good solid night sleep, which made for even more tiring days so full of "busy". I fell asleep on the couch Monday evening and Tuesday ended up staying late at work. I had to run to pick Hannah up at daycare and then took her back to the office with me. I had intended on only being there a short while, but ended up staying until almost 7:00! She was really good for me, she colored at a table in the office I was in and she also sang many songs! I'm not so certain my boss, Tony, enjoyed the seranade, but I thought it was cute!!

Not sure what we did Wednesday and Thursday, but I know one of those nights I ended up on my computer trying to do some work. I had it in our bedroom while Hannah watched Backyardagains and Wonder Pets. She also "worked" on her computer next to me!

Friday night, Tony went to a concert and Hannah and I stayed home. We played outside for a little while. She's into riding her train that she got from Grandma and Grandpa K on her first Christmas. It has a track that goes with it, but she has a blast just riding it around the driveway!

Then we went in to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. I was SO impressed!! Those Chinese people are something else. The news was hyping up the event, but it really was so fantastic - I was so entertained. Hannah liked watching the fireworks and reminded me about being afraid of them at the party (on the 4th of July). I wasn't able to stay awake for the entire thing - I fell asleep some time about 1/2 way through all the countries marching in. I didn't see the US team, but that's OK. I think the best part was the show before that whole part started. I keep asking Tony to look it up on the internet to see it, but he just doesn't seem that interested? That's OK, he's actually been watching it with me and he wasn't so into it before they started.

Oh, so as I was typing this, I thought of some funny things Hannah has said lately. Last week in the car, I called her "dude" - not really sure why, but it sounded funny so I did it. She responded by saying, "I'm not dude. I'm Hannah Grace" When I kept saying it, she said (in such a proper tone) "Are you Kidding me?" I say that quite often and I realized it even more when I heard my little one saying it just like I do!!! It was funny. Then tonight, I was teasing her - I forget what I said to her, but she said, "Mommy, you're drivng me crazy!"

Ok, on to Saturday. We were sort of lazy in the morning, but then I cleaned the house and did laundry and Tony did yardwork and cut the grass. Hannah stayed in PJ's all morning and even played out on her slide in them! After she napped, we got her dressed and got ready to go to the county fair. We call it the "big fair" so not to confuse her with the one we had on the square here in town last month. We got Hannah a wristband to ride the rides, which ended up not being the best deal since she only rode about 6 or 7 rides. We let her ride a couple, then got her something to eat. We went to see the animals after that. My family is such city-slickers! Tony thought all the animals were being abused and hated that some of them were going to market after the fair and Hannah was afraid to pet the baby cow! We all did pet the goats and thought the baby pigs were really cute! But the tour of the animals didn't last too long.

Tony and I grabbed a bite to eat and then Hannah rode a few more rides. I got her to ride the airplane ride which goes in circles, then goes in the air and back down again. She was Ok until just before it went down, the hydraulic thing let out the big sound of air, which scare her to pieces and ruined the rest of the ride. She cried until it stopped and said she didn't like riding the plane! I didn't get a picture of her crying because I had to "console" her each time it went around telling her it was almost over! But here she is when it was still a fun ride!

Sunday, I was bound and determined to find some good shopping deals - and I did!! I hit Rite Aid, CVS (twice), BJ's, Marcs, Giant Eagle and Walgreens. I got quite a bit of groceries and did some stocking up with things on sale and used several coupons. I ended up spending $119 and saved an additional $49.12 - that's 41%! Ah, I felt so much better now that the deals returned! And then I did one more big bonus buy! I was online at http://couponmom.com which has a link to http://restaurant.com and I bought a $25.00 gift certificate for an Italian restaurant, Bucci's Brick Oven, that we like here in town - for (drum roll......) TWO DOLLARS!!!!! You can go directly to restaurant.com and get $25 gift certificates for $10, but if you go through couponmom.com, there are often even better specials and this one was 80% off (look for the promotion code). Now, some of the rules that go around the use of these have a bit of a catch to them, but their all very ligitimate and it's still a heck of a deal! Our catch was that you had to spend $35 minimum, which meant I had to spend $10.00 above my gift certificate amount, but it's not difficult to get to $35 there and really, spending $12.00 for a $35 meal - GOOD DEAL to me!! Check it out ~ the only thing I had an issue with was that the restaurant.com site took forever to load, but you get the certificates emailed to you and you just print them off! Pretty cool stuff!

Work was just plain old busy today, nothing exciting or really noteworth. Tony had softball and Hannah and I just hung out. I painted her toenails tonight which she thinks is so cool! She's such a great kid!!

A good weekend

So the garage sale wasn't so worth it. I think it was a lot of work preparing and spending 2-1/2 days sitting to only make $230. Although, I did get rid of a lot of stuff and it was $230 that I didn't have before, so I guess I'm glad I did it, but even more glad it's over! We threw out just about everything that didn't sell and a garbage picker just loaded up his truck about 10 minutes ago!!! What do those people do with all that stuff???

Hannah turned 2-1/2 this past week. Here's what she does now when I try to take her picture.

I told her she could have some animal crackers if she took one nice one, so I got this.

And then we took her to Portrait Innovations Saturday to get "professional pics" and she was so not cooperative that the best we got was this. It made choosing one easy since none were that great. I'll be sending copies to everyone, but this time, you only get this one pose - we didn't spend a lot on pictures this time. Anyone interested in the 10x13 size???

Friday night we went over to Dawn's house for Kendal's 13th birthday. I can't believe how much of a young lady she is getting to be! Krista was home from school so it was good to see her too. Jack's sister Tracy had her American bull dog puppy over - she is SO cute!!! Hannah answered my question about whether or now she'd want to go swimming in their big pool when she came running in from outside crying after John was pushed into the pool by Krista. She did NOT want to go in the pool!

And today we woke up and I just wanted to have a nice family day so I suggested we got to breakfast and the zoo. It was such a GREAT day together! And it was a great day to go to the zoo. We got there early so there weren't a ton of people and the weather was sunny and warm, but not hot. Hannah was finally at the age that she could really enjoy some of what she saw. Here we are with her as we went in.

And here she is jumping like a kangaroo

And then we stopped for a treat

We stayed until a little after 2 and Hannah was out within minutes of getting back in the car. She had a tiring day and it was a fantastic day together as a family!! We need to do that more often! Wonder if busy can stay out the way for a while???

Busy, that's all I can say (now w/ pics)

OK, so I fell off the face of the blogging world for a couple of weeks - no surprises from anyone I'm sure! But here I am and all I can say is I'm so busy!! It's really not a cop-out either, I'm truly so busy that I get up each day, go, go, go until I crash at night! I never seem to have enough time to get what needs to be done at work and then we come home, make dinner, eat and do a little this or that and we even seem to struggle to get bathtime in for Hannah often enough! It's terrible! But it's a good terrible - life is pretty good to us right now! Sure there could be better things going on right now, but I have very few complaints and it does make things much easier that way!
So on to where I've been and what's we've been doing..........

Well I'll start with recent and work my way back until I can't remember (which will only be a few days ago!!!)

I took some vacation days today and yesterday to have a garage sale. I couldn't have been any LESS enthused about doing it! I've been trying all summer to get the house cleaned out room by room to get rid of stuff we don't use (or forgot we even had). I did well early in the summer, but then busy got in the way again and I crammed all the work into the last week. It is nice though to have my sewing room back to some order!!! I may even look real hard to find some time to start another quilt!! I have some new babies that don't have a Mary's Makings quilt and they surely deserve one!!! I gave Hannah my first one the other day - she thought it was great. I would still like to make one that's really just for her! She uses the one Maggie made her, but I would like to make one for her too - we'll see about that!

I got the attic cleaned out Wednesday night too. I was a disgusting sweaty mess after that! It's hot up there, but it's sort of "organized" now, so that's good. As for the garage sale, Thursday was what I'd say fairly successful. I got rid of most of my "better" things. No baby clothes though, which is OK because I'll either take some of the name brand stuff to second hand stores or just donate to Salvation Army. I only put out stuff that I probably wouldn't want if there is ever a baby #2. So far today, only two browsers and I've been here over an hour already. Not looking too promising! I have quite the set up though. I'm sitting in the corner of my garage in front of a fan with my laptop - I love wireless technology!!! I actually did quite a bit of work stuff yesterday and today I can do whatever I want - although I'm still connected to work stuff (what a vacation day!!!)

Tuesday was my dad's 60th birthday!!! Happy Birthday DAD!!! We met them for dinner at Longhorn that evening. Hannah had a meltdown about going potty there. She told me she had to go, but didn't want to go on the public toilet. We went in there 3 or 4 times before I finally got her to go. I bribed her by telling her she could have a lovey in the car if she just went. (I didn't go through with it, but only because she didn't ask!!) I think she was tramatized by public toilets from the mall - those automatic flushers don't see her because she's too small, so it flushed while she was on the potty and it's a really loud flush. Poor thing!!! She'll hold it though until we get home.

Monday night was pricing stuff out for the garage sale. Same goes for Sunday night. Sunday during the day, we stopped over at my neighbors to play in the pool and slip-n-slide and then I did my shopping (by the way - worst bargain shopping day in weeks).

Saturday, Tony left for a golf outing in Columbus and Hannah and I cleaned the house, which included garage sale clean up stuff and then went to the library and mall that afternoon/evening.

Last Friday we went to Jerry & Shelly's after work. I haven't seen baby Reese since the 4th of july. We had dinner and played a couple rounds of corn hole and Hannah and Maci played together.

That's about all I remember except I stressed out last week one day and ended up in tears, which made me even more mad because I don't let myself get like that there too often. We're all so busy and tasked to do so much that I pretty much lost it when I had to do this completely non-productive report that served no purpose. Sounds stupid, but after I tried pushing back on my Region Management about how counter-productive it was and that to do it meant that I wasn't going to be able to do the things that were important, I just lost it. The good thing was that on Thursday, my Region Manager was in our office and apologized to me about the whole ordeal becuase he FINALLY realized after hearing from everyone else in our region that I was right and he shouldn't have asked us to do it. Oh well - work is stressful and busy and I just hope one day it's all worth it!!