We're Back From Our Winter Hiatus!

I'm hoping my winter hiatus is over.  Like most of our tv shows!  We haven't been so much busy here as sick.  Thanksgiving was good.  Our weather was gorgeous, just days before we were having beautiful sunny days in the 70's.  It was a little weird listening to Christmas music while it was so unseasonably warm. 

Oliver and Owynn

Then we all caught super mega awful worst cold ever.  I wonder if it may have been the flu, it was horrendous.  I lost my voice for almost a week and I missed two days of work.  I finally dragged everyone to see the doctor.  Everyone else was fine, but I got antibiotics and man did they help.  Apparently my throat was still all nice and swollen and red.  And then immediately after we all caught the stomach bug.  Ugh!  Christmas was great though!

Oliver, Mommy, and Owynn

  We were all healthy for the week between Christmas and New Year's, but by the time the boys' birthday rolled around we were all sick again.  I succumbed to the cold this past Friday and then on Sunday I managed to severely mess up my stomach.  I finally started feeling better Thursday night.
 The boys are doing much better now too.  I am sooooo ready for Spring and to be healthy again for some sort of extended period of time.   Between work, everything going on at home, and being sick, I just haven't had the time or energy for much of anything else.  I've barely been on the computer, never mind blogging.  On Tuesday I was able to take almost a 3 hour nap after work, it was amazing!

On a happier note John filed our taxes last week.  The company John used holds our filing until the IRS starts accepting them, which was supposed to be on the 30th.  But today John got a text saying that our filing was accepted by the IRS.  OMG! It is such a relief.  I'm really hoping we get our refund soon, we could really really use the money.  I'm thrilled though that they accepted them early.  Tomorrow is Friday and we earned jeans day again, I love jeans Fridays.  And it's Friday!  Yay for the weekend!  I am hoping to try and get some more posts together this weekend for next week. 

Enjoy your weekend!

Woohoo I added a widget! (At least I think that's what I did) and Holiday Wishes

Yay me, I figured out how to add a Facebook like button to my blog!  I am waaay excited now, this is totally a big deal to me!  I am not overly computer savvy and have pretty much been learning about this whole blogging thing as I go.  So please follow me on Facebook, help me feel even more proud of myself.  I would really appreciate it! =)  And it wasn't nearly as hard as I feared it would be.  And bonus, I didn't destroy my site by playing with the HTML!

I have been absent a bit because of the craziness that is the Holidays.  To be politically correct I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays, because I know I have readers of different faiths.  Also Merry Christmas, because this is what we celebrate in our household.  I hope this season has brought your families, happiness, peace, and joy. 

This year I am very thankful for answered prayers, lower levels of stress, the kindness of (near) strangers, our friends and family, and my husband (I don't know what I would do without him).

 I don't really talk about it much, but I have been praying more and attempting to find some sort of faith that works for me.  I'd like to think that my prayers have been heard; there have been several incidents to make me think so.  So thank You! 

To say that our budget has been tight the past 6 or so months would be an understatement.  Lately it's more like what bills can I put off or what can we do without so we have enough money to buy diapers and food.  (I can see our tax refund on the horizon now and I can't wait.)  After months and months of trying John got a job working from home, and his first paycheck literally came just in time.  The fact that he can work from home and choose his hours is pretty amazing.  I am very appreciative of what he has been trying to do for our family.  With his anxiety, I know how hard it can be for him to do this.  I feel like I don't thank him enough.

Even though work has been just ridiculously busy, my stress levels have dropped quite a bit.  I think it's because John is working and even though our budget is still really tight, we have some breathing room.  I am thankful that we can pay our bills and can actually afford to order a pizza every once in awhile now.  (I love you pizza and have missed you more than I realized.)  And our tax refund is so close I can taste it!

Because of our monetary problems we didn't have any money to buy the boys presents this year.  Although I did manage to spend a few dollars here and there on a few little things for them over the past month or two.  I want to thank again our friends, our family, and friends of our family, who helped to make Christmas very special for the boys.  I wish I could show you how their eyes just lit up Christmas morning.  And also thank you guys for helping us through this very rough patch.  Without everyone I don't know how we could have made it.       

Carven Der Pumpkin

Owynn, Mommy, Oliver

Mommy and Owynn

I did in fact get stuck working until 10pm on Halloween, I wasn't very happy about that.  Then to top it off I had to be back at work at 7am.  I was not a happy camper.  We did have a pretty good week though, aside from work.  I baked like 6 dozen Halloween sugar cookies.  I rolled them out, cut them into fun little shapes, and frosted them and everything.  I made a big deal about carving a pumpkin and we had a lot of fun!  John had to cut the top off the pumpkin, but the boys and I did everything else (well ok so I did most of it).  Oliver wasn't too into it, but Owynn had a great time.  We tried really really hard, but we just couldn't stop Owynn from trying to eat the seeds and pumpkin guts.  Mr I didn't want to eat my grilled cheese for dinner just couldn't stop! 

Oliver Checking Out The Pumpkin

Oliver stole a cookie off the table

Owynn rolling the pumpkin

Owynn stole a cookie too!

Oliver, Mommy, Owynn

Owynn...mmm...Pumpkin

We had so much fun carving our pumpkin! I am pretty darn proud of how it turned out too.  John and I spent most of the time saying "Carven Der Pumpkin", all we could think about was this video.  Man do we LOVE the Muppets!

Random Tuesday Thoughts

brought to you by Stacy

We completely messed up our sleep schedule yesterday, but man my nap was nice.  I got home from work just before 5 and we put the boys down for a nap soon after.  They weren't too happy about Mommy getting home from work and then putting them down for a nap though.  John and I were pretty worn out so we decided to take a "quick" nap too.  Ya, so that totally didn't go as planned.  We woke up at 9:30pm and the boys were still sleeping! Crap!  So the boys didn't actually go to bed until about 12:30am and I think I managed about 2 & 1/2 more hours before having to get up for work in the morning.  I am doing surprisingly okay right now.

Work has been crazy busy and the grumpy customers have been out in force.  Which I am sure will get even better since they just cut our hours (ugh! Please note the sarcasm here).  I love this video, and seriously this stuff actually happens way too often.  I have literally dealt with everything in this video. 

I am pretty positive I am going to get stuck working the late shift on Halloween and I am pretty bummed about it.   I am hoping to have a Halloween themed weekend at least.  I want to make Halloween shaped frosted sugar cookies.  I have my Mum's homemade sugar cookie and frosting recipe, they are so incredibly good.  I also want to carve a pumpkin or two.  We did this every year growing up and I haven't done it in a long time.  Now that we have the boys I want to start carving them every year.  I always loved it growing up.  It should be lots of messy fun!

Hopefully this week will get a bit better.  Tomorrow is payday and time for more budgeting, that always gets me depressed.  Happy Tuesday, at least the weather here is gorgeous! 

It's been a LONG week

I am so glad it's the weekend!  It's been a long stressful week.  After dealing with some extra super nasty acid reflux problems over the weekend and some not so fun motion sickness, John pretty much told me I had to go see the Dr.  Well that and the fact that I have been having to take way more Phenergan than normal.  Phenergan is awesome, it makes my stomach feel so much better and is great for motion sickness, but it makes me so tired and out of it.  John needed a follow up too because he is still dizzy and it's been about a month now.  So I scheduled us for a Wednesday evening appointment; I love that our Dr has a late day.  I got my shift changed at work, so I worked from 8:30-5 then got home as fast as possible, grabbed John and the kids, then rushed off to Omaha to see the Dr. at 6:15pm.  I was expecting the Dr to give John something to help his dizziness more and tell me that there wasn't much they could do and maybe try a new acid reflux medication.  Well boy was I wrong!  John has labyrinth-itis and has to let it run its course.  As for me, the Dr thinks that most of my problems stem from my gallbladder and maybe I should get it out.  Well angry four letter words...I don't want another surgery, but it would be soooooo nice not to have a stomach that hurts all the time and no more pain in my back.  Our Dr also said that there is a good chance that if I have it out it could help my motion sickness, which would be amazing!    Right now I am getting car sick way too often and I HATE it.  To me being nauseous and vomiting is like the worst thing in the world.  I avoid it at all possible costs.  Now I have to get up way early on Wednesday morning and head to the hospital to have an abdominal ultrasound.  They are checking for gallstones and I guess whatever else they can find or might be wrong in there.  So now I am all stressed, blech.

This morning I managed to get a lot done before work this afternoon!
- I dragged my butt out of bed early
- Talked to my Dr's office and scheduled my ultrasound
- Showered
- Worked on our budget
- Got the boys up, dressed, fed, and took the sheets off Oliver's bed because he wet through
- Took them to the grocery store to do some shopping including picking up something for dinner (yay me for thinking ahead)

I am pretty worn out now.  Work wasn't too bad though, we got new registers installed and I am excited about that ( I am such a dork!)  But they are so much better than our ancient systems were.  They are all touch screen and can do so much more, and are a lot faster.

This weekend should be lots of fun! Tomorrow is errand day, and I think we are going to take the boys to get haircuts.  It will be Owynn's first and Oliver's second.  I also need to do some grocery shopping and laundry.  Sunday though we are heading over to P&W's for a giant poker tournament.  I am super excited about that, plus we have a friend who is in town for the week from St. Louis!  It's going to be a lot of fun.  Well I suppose I should be off to bed, I have a long couple of days ahead of me.  I don't get the benefit of a long weekend, Monday is my holiday to work.  Which is ok, I volunteered for it, and it means I don't have to work 4th of July or Labor Day.  Oh no, Oliver woke up, night!