Leap Year

Shawna passed her kindergarten testing today. Yay! I wasn't worried, but it's nice to know for sure that she'll be in the same school as Paula next year. Once their both in the same big school my tuition drops by like $400! (multiple kid discount).

I just attended a Harassment Free-Workplace workshop. We get to do it every 2 years here for work. It's very imformative and always enlightens me on the fact that the little thing can be harassment to someone else.

An ice cream truck came to work and passed out free ice cream today. Mostly drumsticks, which I proceeded to eat, drop a huge chocolate nut chunk topping on my pants, melting onto my white blouse and jeans. grrrreat.

Finally, today is Leap Year. We only get February 29th once every 4 years. I went to elementary school with a guy named Kevin who was born today. We kidded him that he only had a birthday every 4 years so he was younger than us. He hated it. Not the kidding so much as the fact that he had to celebrate on Feb 28th or March 1st.
I wonder how many kids will be born today.

Observant Shawna

I need to post this here. Shawna is very observant.

As I'm getting dressed I often hear "Mommy, you have a big butt!"

I'm naked bending over to retrieve something out of my dresser
"Mommy, your boobies are really long. How come they're so long?".
(NO longer perky eh?! Now I'm long!)

Nice.

My eye is improving. The lid is more swollen but the bump has gone down. I'm being diligent in my eye drop usage and lubricating drops. I'm hopeful by the end of the week the bump will be gone.

This past weekend the girls and I went to the library. I'm a bad mom and this was only their 2nd time ever going to this library. They really enjoyed it and want to go back to use the computers. I'll take them again on Saturday. We picked up 8 books and have read them all. Paula read half of one of them while we were in the library. Her reading is so good. I don't know if I mentioned that she tested at a
2nd grade level for reading and she's only in 1st grade. Math is a different story, but at least she's excelling in some areas.

For about a week I had a huge craving for beef strouganoff (sp) so I made that on Sunday. YUMMY! I ate it last night too. So good. I called my mom for her recipe because The Joy of Cooking cook book didn't mention breading the meat in flour, which I knew she did, or the wine and chicken stock that she does as well. We ate it with butter noodles and baby carrots. So good. Even Shawna liked it.

Paula told me last night that she needs her Daddy to pick her up later from extended care because she's not getting enough play time or snack when they leave so early. I really find it amusing she WANTS to be at school longer. It's a good sign she likes being there.

I wanted to add a picture of my Grandma Aliene (pronounced Aleene) who turned 92 on the 20th. This picture was taken last year in July. She's the epitome of what a Grandma should be. Whenever we went to visit her she had every soda in her fridge. Ice cream, hard boiled eggs, made the best breakfasts and any meal for that matter. Breakfasts ususaly consisted of oatmeal, toast, fried eggs, bacon, juice and milk. Mostly what I have great memories of were her meals. She kept the cleanest house. What is so funny is when we'd talk on the phone she'd always say she was so busy. She rarely sat down for long except at night. One of her favorite shows was Judge Judy. It cracks me up she liked that show. I need to pay a visit to her. She lives in Auburn which is 2 hours from us. Usually on our way to my parents or on the way home we stop in and see her. I miss her.

owie on my eye

I have a bump on my eye that is an inflamed something or other. Today when I woke up it hurt and has hurt all day. I went to the eye doctor and he said I need to continue using the drops but more frequently. ugh! It's really irritating me.

It's raining again and will rain the rest of the weekend. I totally have so much laundry to put away. Thankfully our house cleaner comes today so my house will be clean, just not the laundry. Actually, most of the laundry IS clean, just to folded and put away.

My Grandma turned 92 this week. I can't remember if I mentioned that or not. My parents visited her and so did my cousins. She's doing well. Sadly her eyes are going and can't be corrected w/eye glasses. She's an awesome lady.

Todd works this weekend. I have a parent/teacher conference with Shawna's teacher tomorrow. Thankfully Susan is going to watch my girls for me while I'm gone. Then next Friday Shawna has kidergarten testing. I have to pay $40 for the testing! That's private schools for you.

Career Choices for the young

Today Shawna announced that she's going to be a princess when she grows up. But if that doesn't work out she'll be Hannah Montana.

Paula on the other hand said there are just too many choices. She could be a ballerina (she's not even in dance classes), a singer, an artist because she's good at drawing, an ice skater (she's never been ice skating). She claimed it's so hard to choose. Luckily she has lots of time. :0)

The kids really enjoyed the V-Day. Paula said her friend at school forgot her valentines so Paula let her friend help pass our hers to the class. I was so proud of her for doing that.

Yesterday at work we were talking about food and I started craving Chili's bacon burger. I called the hubby and said Lets Go! We all met there and had a tasty din din.

When the kids went to bed I was laying downstairs reading a book. Rosie was on the floor near me when we heard the doggie door open! It has a magnetic bottom that makes noise as it opens and closes. That darn Raccoon was considering sneaking in to look for food! Rosie started barking like crazy so the raccoon reversed direction fast. I flipped on the backyard light and saw it hop up on our side fence watching us. I locked the dog door all night to keep him out. Yikes. I really don't want him in my house.

This weekend we have no plans. We get a 3-day weekend thanks to Presidents Day. I have lots of laundry and I'm sure we'll see the Peppers a day or two. If the weather stays nice and I think it will, I'll venture out to my backyard to do a bit of garden clean up.

I have a pimply thing on the white part of my left eye. My eye doctor today said it's a swollen "thingy-ma-bob". I can't remember the name he called it. Nothing I'd ever heard before. It's due to the dryness in my eyes. I have eye drops that make it shrink and lubricant drops to use daily too.

That's all folks.....

Happy Valentines Day

Today is Rosie's Birthday. She's 1 year old today. It's also a day where card companies and candy companies make out BIG TIME. It's a total racket in my opinion but whatever. I got my girls set up with cards and candy for their classmates. I didn't buy anything. I had the girls cut hearts out of red construction paper using a cookie cutter. I also printed them out SpongeBob cards (4 on a sheet) from the computer and they attached with tape some Sweetheart candy. I gave them each a stuffed dog and candy. Todd received a card. He gave me flowers and a card.

Last night we had a visitor. For those who don't know, I live in the hills so over the past 3 years of being in our house we've had visits in our yard by a tarantula, skunk, snake, huge bugs, turkeys in the hills, deer, cows too of course. Well, remember my previous post about Do birds eat Dog food? Last night we figured out who was really eating the dog food. (The pics aren't great because we had the backyard light on).





Always something exciting happening in our neck of the woods.

Camping Pictures - New Brighten Beach

Shawna in a tree

Rosie Shmosie

The RV next to us walked their Cat. haha
The girls are in the ocean with Dina and Susanne (our friends) watching them. Todd is up on the cliff looking down. I'm at home with my cold. I show up on day 2.
Here I am. Can you stand the Sexiness?
The weather was gorgeous. To the right is Capitola.

Sunset
A family pulled in next to us and had a 5 year old girl.
Before they pulled in. Our trailer is on the right.
There were awesome trees to climb in the campsite.

Is it summer?

We had the most beautiful weekend. We camped at New Brighten Beach near Capitola/Santa Cruz this weekend. The weather was in the 70's at the coast. I was in a tank top and my kids were in the ocean! I can remember all the way back to the 1980's having warm February's and laying out in the sun. Ahhhhh....so nice. We really got lucky with the weather because the weekend before New Brighten had to evacuate all campers due to wind gusts that were taking down tree branches. Yikes. Glad that wasn't us.

Family Meetings

Yesterday I went to Walgreens to get an Rx filled and the lines for drop off and pick up of prescriptions were crazy long. So many people are sick right now. Thankfully Paula felt way better last night. She gave a thumbs up for her day.

On the flip side Shawna got a bad behavior note (Say it isn't so!!!!!) from preschool yesterday. She was verbally mean to one child and stepped on the hand (accidentally) of another child. I talked to her last night and mentioned to her again today at drop off that if she doesn't have a good day today (meaning no notes) she loses TV tonight.

Today I was talking to my co-worker who has teenagers and she says they do a meeting every month usually at dinner to tell the kids what they expect of them. However, if the rules tend to be slipping (like grades going down, too much phone usage, too much TV time, bad behavior) and any of her 3 kids start showing unacceptable behavior she'll call a special meeting. The kids hate meetings apparently. In fact, this morning her kids were all really yelling and fighting before school to the point that one child age 15 was crying. She said they were going to have a meeting. They text messaged her this afternoon that they're okay now. haha She says they'll still have a meeting. She has a sister who is a high school teacher and has really guided her on how to raise her kids. I'm going to take this to heart and call family meetings from now on. That and maybe up the time out time for bad behavior. I really need to get this under control and it needs to start with how they relate to each other in the home.

We're all sick

Yesterday Paula woke up crying. Her head cold was bad and she needed to stay home. She spent most of the day on the couch watching Hanna Montanta or napping in her room. She felt well enough to go to school today and knock on wood, the school hasn't called me to pick her up.

My cold has progressed as well. In fact, so has Todds. Both of us wished last night we were in Paula's room where the humidifier was.

Shawna has her cold as well. Mostly runny nose but there's tons of it.

Gotta luv winter.

Do Birds Eat Dog Food?

We've been wondering why Rosie's bowl is always empty when we get home. We give her plenty. More than plenty. Todd thinks something is eating it. I think he's thinking racoon or skunk. We have those in my neighborhood. Today I saw a bird waiting where the bowls normally go. Then after I put the food out I got the dog into her sweater (it was 38 degrees) and shoved her out the dog door and locked it.

While taking the girls to school Shawna sneezed and wet herself. Her bladder was full apparently. We dropped Paula off and I tried to convince Shawna to let me go inside the preschool to get her underwear from her cubby but she was too embarrassed so we drove all the way home. When I came in I caught a bird at Rosie's food bowl outside and it stole a piece and flew off. Little thief.

Todd still thinks the thief is bigger but the birds aren't helping either.

Do you know what else the birds did? Last spring I heard this noise near my upstairs window. It sounded like a scraping noise. I pulled open the blinds and a bird was pulling off and stealing my screen! Yep, he was using it as reinforcements to his nest. By 2 weeks I had a 3" tall x 43" long missing gap in my screen. A bird could fly IN to my window it was so big. Todd switched the screens so let's see what they do this year.