Fashion trends

Need I say more?

Superheros

I snapped a couple of pictures of the super heros. Supergirl really enjoys Kid magazines. i need to sign up fro a bunch on them to fill our mailbox. It can keep her busy fro 30-45 mins. If you look close you can see she is checking out superman birthday party kits. the birthdays are less then 30 days away.

Fun Filled Weekend: Pumpkins, Mothers, Fathers, Inlaws, Grandparents, and Party Crashing

We have had a good weekend. Friday night started out with a trip to a Thai resturant that was pretty good. On Saturday we went out to a Pumpkin farm and the kids had a great time hoping around in the inflatable jumping thingys (whatever they are called). Then we picked out pumpkins had some donuts and apple cider and took a hayride. The best part was that Barb said as we drove up, "Siena maybe you will see some of the kids from your school here." After a few minutes we saw Nichole (a kid in Siena's class that is the child of Heidi's Dept chair), a few minutes later we saw Maycee, Madeline, and every other friend in her class. Then it begins to dawn on Heidi that Siena was supposed to RSVP to a birthday party that just happened to be at the same pumpkin farm we were at. So all of the kids in Siena's daycare happened to be at the same place and here we were without RSVP and of course no present. How embarrassing. Heidi got to apologize all over her self to the mother for crashing the party we didn't say we were coming to but accidently did.

A blog just for blogs sake

As the title implies this is a blog without much content but is being posted because I have some time despite not having much to say. For the first time in 3 months I got a paycheck today. It is nice to actually contribute to our debt again and the check went directly to Capitol One Visa. Too bad the credit card has been paying for boring stuff like childcare and not exciting things like fishing stuff or computer stuff etc. Ok I must make one small confession that I did buy a new toy on ebay. It is an Ipaq 5500. I gave my old one to mom and dad to use as a gps and of course I needed a replacement. It is essentially 3 yrs old but works great. It has wireless and so I can do wireless email, chat, internet etc at home and at work or wherever there is wireless. I am trying to get all the old stuff that was on my old one transfered to this one. It was a good price on ebay and works well.

Now I must also complain that for the first time in my nearly ten year association (with nearly 100 transactions) with Ebay I have finally been ripped off. It is somewhat my fault and I will explain. I bid on a power adapter for a new laptop. It is not an outstanding deal but at least 30$ less then what it would cost at the apple store. So I pay the second it closes as I always do and after a week not response from the seller. I send out a few emails but nothing. So then I get an email from a fellow ebayer that had also "won" something from the same seller inquiring if I had even heard anything from this seller. At this point I knew I was taken. So I complained to ebay and paypal and it is probably hopeless. Here is the advice that I should have followed. Do not buy from anyone that has less then 20 transactions. Our seller had a total of 3. Yes he had 100% satisfaction and you would think even a mega seller on ebay has to start from 1 transaction but unfortunately the ripoff artists are also most likely to sell a couple things probably to themselves or friends and them post a bunch of stuff make a killing and cut and run. So I suppose after nearly a hundred transactions it is not too bad to have one go sour but I would have rather had it be a 5$ item instead of a 70$ item. It won't slow me down too much on ebay but I will follow my advice and my gut the next time.

Sun River Weekend

This is a mishmash with the pictures. it was taking forever to upload and I didn't take time to figure it out. Soryy maybe next time. At least there are pictures.

All of the kids

Out riding the four wheelers. The kids loved it.

We had a great time in Sun River, OR. We got there a little on the late side like 12:30 or so and the kids didn't sleep in of course. We had a fun day on Saturday riding the 4 wheelers. I will post lots of pictures. Of course we stayed up too late but it was nice to tell old stories and hear new ones. Sunday we got on the road after morning meeting and were home by 8:00pm.

Back to blogging

Since we had the grandparents here and the hospital was offering work I have been working everyday for the last week. Today is my first day back to home. It is a nice change and since the house hasn't been thoroughly cleaned since I have been working it is back to cleaning. I have lots of help as you can see by the picture at right. Once again it is the challenge of trying to clean faster then the kids can mess things up. Sometimes it feels like a major exercise in futility. So far in 4.5 hours I have managed to clean 4 rooms with 4 to go. My only hope is that I will be much more successful during the nap season.nnnnbn09fioigy8i8upkiigiooiiiogioppppp[[ioiu9f--pgoy

It seems even my blogs are sabotaged by the offspring.

On the days that I am home there is also the challenge of coming up with something for dinner. I am thinking about fajitas and need to get cracking on the prep work. My son had some creative ideas for lunch and I thought I would post some pictures. Mac and cheese and milk. try it out on your family for dinner tonight.

ok I have to get back to cleaning and cooking.

Not to be outdone my son takes aturn at the keyboard Age 1.75

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Don't they say that if you took an infinite number of monkeys and let them type away for eternity they would eventually write all of the great books. I think Bob Newhart did a routine where he walked around the monkeys and checked on their progress. He came on one monkey and he read on the screen. "To be or not to be that is the gafornenplat."

I don't think think this little monkey is going to have much to publish anytime soon.

My eldest daughter's first blog - age 3.75

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Out of Retirement

After a 90+ day vacation or retirement I have returned to work. I worked the weekend and am working everyday this week. It is nice to be back to doing something and I am enjoying the job and people I am working with. I am hoping they can keep me busy enough to pay the bills and in the future it would be great if it could turn into more of a full time position.
It is pretty easy to get depressed and lose your sense of worth when you are spending all of your time cleaning, cooking, and taking care of minor children. Some previous blog posts have addressed the issue of stay at home vs working and which is more challenging. We have chosen to try to do some of all (some work, some childcare). At times it feels like you are not quite doing it right but then do you ever feel like you are the perfect parent or employee. So you are still waiting to hear what i have to say regarding the big question of what is the most challenging. It is not really a tough question. It is easier to be at work then to be home. Some would say what about your boss or deadlines or whatever. For me I seem to have a great boss, as for other stressors the only bad thing that happens at my work is that my patients die. Hmmm I guess that is not so good. I guess I have rarely been in a job that I have grown to hate. There was one and I quit and got a new job. I would say for those of you that have such a stressful job you might find another one. It is easy for me to say. It is great to be home every other day or for a brief period but the long drawn out day to day sometimes monotony can get old. I do try to be creative and do fun things with the kids but they require a certain schedule that can be hard to follow if you are constantly on the go having lots of fun.
For my conclusion:
My first choice is still to work part time spending some time with the kids and spending time working to maintain a sense of worth the rest of the world can appreciate and understand (and the paycheck helps as well). As I have said before this is a choice that we made long ago pre children and luckily we both have jobs that allow this to happen and we feel we can afford to live a middle class life we both find acceptable. I have often thought that if somehow we became independently wealthy and didn't need to work that I would still work 1-2 days a week just to keep that connection to the real world. Ok that is enough of that. I think early on in the blogging I said that I would try to keep most of my opinions to myself but one slipped out.