Da Girls!

Pictures are uploading very strangely this time for some reason, so I can't go in and label each picture with who's in it. But this post is an ode to the girls....Tina, Laura, Laura and I think there's one of a girl named Kelly who was pregnant in there, too. We had so much fun just laying low, soaking in the sun, listening to music and hanging out!

I realize I never posted my birthday blog...I've still been thinking about it. I need to work on it some more. It's just basically a list of things I want to try...why I want to do this and then some pictures. I have been working really hard to lose weight lately and I'm up to 26lbs lost. I'm going to the gym 3-4 days a week, possibly starting 5 days this week (if I can pull it off!). I'm eating a lot less and feel so much more in control of myself. My old clothes are finally fitting again, which feels so good! I'm working on toning up and will keep working on my weight loss. I've been at this almost 3 months now and hope to just keep it going as part of a new, healthy lifestlye. We'll see....It's hard to work these work outs in consistently, but I'm making it a priority these days, so hopefully I'm creating a habit I can stick with the rest of my life! To be continued....

T Rex Cafe

We met my mom and Joe for lunch at Legends and went to the T Rex Cafe. Man, Blake was in Heaven there! I have to say, it was pretty neat!

Zoo Continued...

A cool stingray
This bear just swam right over and came right up to the boys and sat there and played with the boys for awhile!

And then this guy swung over and came right up near me...we were really attracting the animals that day

And the real gorilla...

Michael, Michelle, Logan, Me and Blake

A Trip to the Zoo

When Blake and I traveled North in June, we stopped for the day in Wichita and got to go to the Sedgwick County Zoo with Mimi and my friend Michelle's boys (Michelle met up with us later). The boys had such a fun time together and the weather was perfect! I love the zoo there--it's just the right size and the exhibits are so nice!

The breakfast cooking
The men going out on their manly boating adventure

Blake's first smore! Can you believe he made it to 4.5 years without a single smore!?!

Packing up shop

hehe...had to post a pic of my dad in that hat...

Birthday: Take One

I got to go camping with Blake, my dad, brother, Dave and his family at Hillsdale Lake near Paola at the beginning of June. It was just so much fun...I can't even explain how good of a time I had. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and spending time with Dave and his fam and my fam. It was great. The weather was perfect, too!

Kendall Can Walk!

And she finally walks!

Bryce sent me this picture of Kendall this morning...she has been doing this lately! She loves "reading"! Hehe! Doesn't she look big in this picture? I guess she is, though she went to the dr a couple of days ago for her 15-month check up and she's in teh 25th percentile for everything! He wasn't concerned since she's walking and being more active. Which reminds me...I have a video of her walking...lemme get on that!

Birthday Decor

I came into the office today with this as my greeting! Talk about a fun way to begin your 30th bday! Hollee and I along with Shamika started a group in our office who is in charge of decorating for and handling all employee celebratory occassions, such as birthdays and new babies (and we seem to be breeding quite frequently around here). Since Hollee and I carpool and I've been having to work out of the office every day lately (our computer at home is not connecting to the internet), there's really not a time that Hollee can decorate without me being here! It was so sweet of her to come in late, late at night and do this for me! I was hoping she wouldn't because I didn't want her having to stay up so late to get it done, but I really love it! Thanks for being such a good friend to me, Hollee!

I didn't get my post published last night as intended...our computer is a pile of poop, so no internet connection for me. I will work on it today...I have some additional things I need to add to it. It's not a big deal, really, just something I wrote to keep me movin through the year...

I'm not quite fancy enough to figure out how to make it small enough, but the video is not the important part....Check out my YouTube video to the right...Listen to the song...I made myself a ringtone out of it! Hehe

Touching Base

So...I've not posted in a couple of weeks. I was gone for a week and I haven't even downloaded my pictures from that trip. Things have been upside down at our house, so we're just trying to figure out which way is up. Our computer is not working (it won't connect to the internet), so I'm having to work from the office every day, which stinks. I'll have a post tomorrow...something I've been working on for a couple of weeks. I hope to finish it up tomorrow and upload it later in the evening.

Just wanted to say hello, make mention of the fact that I'm still around...hanging on...barely.

Kendall loves playing peek-a-boo and she thinks she's sssooooo hilarious! She just happened to be doing it at dinner and smeared food all over herself in the meantime....

Kendall Says....

So, Kendall has only a few words in her repertoire, one of them being the one she says in the first 15 seconds of this video. You can stop watching after you hear the word....the rest of it is just me trying to get her to say it again..lol! Anyway, she's gone 14 months without a tooth and now she's getting all four of the front ones at once! Poor baby! She's been fairly happy through it all, though. Her eye has been doing really, really well. No relapse or anything, so I think the procedure was a success! Blake's been doing really well, too...He can recognize all of his letters and numbers 0-9, which I was really surprised about since I hadn't been working on the numbers with him at all. I had him step on the scale last night and he was 49lbs!!!!! I bought him some new clothes last weekend and had to buy size 7!!!!!!!!!! My FOUR YEAR OLD is wearing size 7!!?!?!!?! He can wear 6 in a lot of things, but he's so thick that some of the more fitted styles we really have to go up a size. Plus, our Summer season is so long, I want everything I buy to last until it's time to wear jeans again, so I usually buy big at the beginning of the season. He's just growing by leaps and bounds! If he were born in Sept, he'd be going to school this year, but alas...one more year of preschool! Budget-wise, we'd love for him to go to Kindergarten, but we know it will be good for him to have an additional year to learn and mature before heading off to school. He and Kendall will go to the same school for a few months, at least, so that will be fun for them! Kendall's ready to go to his school and play with the kids--she's not shy and she loves people! Ok, that's all for now! Just wanted to add something fresh to the ole page!

I Don't Know What to Do

I had a party last weekend...sort of like a Tupperware party. There was a girl who stood up and gave the presentation to a small group of us. Yesterday I noticed there were pit marks in the kitchen, but kinda brushed it off. Then today, Bryce and I were sitting in the living room and he noticed a HUGE area very concentrated with these pic marks and scratches!!!!! It's in the exact spot the girl who gave the presentation was standing the whole night. It looks like she was wearing heels that were broken and the like nailhead under the plastic deal was exposed and she just walked all over my floors all night and RUINED them (the pictures don't even show the extent of the damage)! I mean, there's just nothing we can do to fix it other than refinish them. I am SICK to my stomach...We have invested several thousand dollars into these fucking floors and now that we FINALLY got the baseboards in just over a week ago and the project is completely finished, now the stupid things are fucking ruined! I am sick, sick, sick! I don't know what to do! Do I make the girl who wore the shitty ass shoes compensate me or is it just my loss because I hosted the fucking party? Do I even tell her about it (I met her for the first time at the party, so we're not like friends or anything)? There's no denying that it was her shoes that did this damage...There's just not a damn thing we can do to fix the damage....no amount of cleaner or scratch stuff is going to help at all. What makes it worse is that you can no longer get this wood, so we can't even order more and replace that section. We have a tad bit left, but I doubt it's enough to fix that area. And what's worse is there're pits all over the entire house....everywhere! This one area is just super, super bad. I am just hysterical right now...my hands are shaking...I just can't have anything in this life...nothing. I work hard for the money I have...why can't I just get a break every once in awhile? Just once I want to have something nice and not have other people tear it up. Is that too much to ask or is that something this day in age that doesn't happen anymore? Why did I have this stupid party at my house? Never again...I will never have anyone over to my house again...ever! God, I am so angry and upset....

Kendall's Procedure

Pre Op
Pre Op

Pre Op

Post Op

Kendall had to have a little procedure on Tuesday to open her blocked tear duct. It didn't involve any cutting or anything, though she did have to be slightly sedated since they took a probe and stuck it down into the corner of her eye and inflated a little balloon (sort of like an angioplasty) and popped the duct open. You can see in the bottom picture that there's no real noticeable bruises or anything that would indicate she had this done. Bryce and I took her into a special children's surgery center Tuesday morning at 10am, we were called back promptly, they took us to the pre-op waiting area where we hung out for about an hour and went over paperwork and answered a million questions. The anesthisiologist came and talked to us and I made sure he would be monitoring her heart and asked what he would do if she should have an episode. I was happy with his answer. He left, then came right back and said he thought she was having a strabismus surgery and that some of the side effects he had told us about the anesthisia weren't right because she would have a lot lighter dosage. Then the doctor came in and said hello along with a medical student who was going to observe the procedure. I got a little scared because he had a book in his hand that said "Strabismus" on the side, so I double checked with the nurse to make sure they weren't trying to do something to my baby!!!!! I watch Oprah...Dr. Oz talks about how they cut off people's feet when they should be doing other things and they operate on the wrong side of the body...Not this time...not gonna happen!!!!! They even put a mark on her head (that won't come off, byt the way) so they operated on the correct eye! Lol! We were afraid she'd scream and cry when they took her away, but a female nurse just carried her in her arms off to the back and Kendall sort of looked at us like she was trying to figure out what was going on and that was that. They brought her to us about 45 minutes later and she was very sleepy. I held her for about an hour, then I woke her up and gave her juice (I woke her up the night before at 1am and fed her some cereal and milk so that she wouldn't be starving since she couldn't eat anything after 2am), which she chugged down and that was it! After we got her some lunch, she was 100% Kendall again! Crawling around like a crazy girl! I have some before pics of her eye, but they're at home and I'm at work. It hs bothered her off and on since birth by crusting closed, constantly leaking and swollen. I'm sure the relief of pressure will feel good to her. All's well, though!

We were playing in the toy room the other weekend and Kendall was having a ball staring at herself in the mirror (see, total girl), so I caught a few pics of her vain-ness! Lol! Blake is so good at posing for my pictures--I'm having a hard time choosing between his school pictures, which are so good because he just knows how to do this picture thing! I guess he should after 4.5 years of having my camera shoved in his face endlessly...lol! Come to think of it...everyone in my life should be good at taking pictures! I've always got my camera ready for any occassion!!!!

I could have an entire album of pictures of Kendall crying...
Got my purse, ready to go!

Blake's super building creations!

Kendall's first pig tails!

I have tried to blog a few times, but I haven't had any new pictures! I've been slacking on downloading from my camera for some reason....Anyway, Kendall has been showing her femine traits to be quite dominant lately...She loves purses! She puts them on her arm and them "walks" on her knees around the room. She likes to brush her hair and wipe things clean with her baby wipes...she's so silly! She came home from Lesa's the other day with pig tails--she looked so grown up and sssooo cute! I was amazed she sat long enough for Lesa to get them in there so well, but I think she likes to be girly with Lesa and Haylee...lol!

Blake is proving to be quite the boy as well! He loves all things dirty and messy and boyish. He torments his sister and loves to carry her around the house like a little dolly. She gets blamed for a lot of things I know she doesn't do...lol! He's totally into dinosaurs and talks constantly about what the theme of his next birthday party will be (I think it's going to be a farm party with a petting zoo and pony rides...lol...). He's a good kid. He'll be reading soon--he's so smart! He recognizes all of his upper case letters, so we need to work on lower case letters and then the sounds each letter makes and he'll have reading down. He can even write his name! He learns so much at preschool, it's amazing. He even tells me things in Spanish at times!