Wordless- Punkin Smooches

(taken in 2004)

You have gas?

I wrote this on facebook, and now I'm here. The gas leak is freaking me out! If I had to put the afternoon in order, without putting it in sentence form, here is what it would look like...

- perhaps I should go to school to get Juliana, even though she rode her bike.

- Get in car. Almost at school, notice gas smell, and think, hmmm, that's odd.

- Arrive at stop light near school, and see hundreds of people scattered EVERYWHERE.

- Park at the furthest parking space and wonder what in the world school has done with kids that rode bikes to school.

- Become reassured by friends that ALL kids have to be released to a parent.

- Make eye contact with a very terrified Juliana.

- Hugs and reassurance from teacher and principal for Juliana.

- Get in car to go home without bike, helmet, and backpack.

- I still smell gas. I hear sirens.

- Do homework.

- Pick up bike from racks.

- See kids and teachers still in the evacuation area waiting to go home almost 2 hours later.

- STILL smell gas.

The San Bruno gas explosion is not far from here whatsoever. It is very fresh in all of our minds. The smell of gas is still there, and it is quite scary. Clearly, we are all fine right now. Perhaps I'm just a bit paranoid at the moment.

Life

Our lives these days have been borrrrrrrrrring, as far as blogging material. While I get we do not lead extraordinarily exciting lives, I can usually pull out some decent material to blog about... nope, not this time. This is what we've been up to...

Playing with birthday presents,

and a whole lotta bike riding/outdoor time.

All stirred up

The school honeymoon period has come to an end and I DO NOT LIKE IT!

Bless this Child, pleeeeease!?!

I had to post this before I forget it...

While in the car on monday on the way home from Juliana's choir practice, Kevin asks Juliana a couple questions about church. This is more or less how it played out...

Kev: "Juliana, do you use that water near the door?"

Juliana: "Yeah, you do this with it. In the name of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit."

Kev: "I don't get it."

Juliana: "Touch your forehead, chest, shoulder, shoulder, like this."

Kev: "Whatever! I like head, shoulders, knees n' toes much better!!!!"

It is a good thing he started Faith Formation aka CCD last week. I can only imagine what his teachers are going to hear from him. Ohhhhhhh boy!

Couple more

Birthday parties are such a stress, and so fantastic too. Kevin actually cracked me up yesterday because this gathering could have been any day of the year, and he would have loved it just as much. Other than the cake, there really wasn't anything that made him stand out. We decided to open gifts at home as we always do. Not all the kids understood, but that works best for our family, sooooo, that's what we do.

Enjoy a couple more pictures from Kevin's 5th b'day party...

(almost a whole group shot. About 4 kids had left once this was taken.)

This is one of the reasons

the fog has lifted.

(more pictures another day)

The fog

... has lifted!

When you have such fantastic friends that make you feel like a million bucks, things just kind of turn around. You know who you are!

Also, one of the people I was referring to in my last post is now coming to the party. My dad! I told him I am so glad he is coming, because if he didn't, I'd have to kill him, and my schedule doesn't allow for that. :) Also, since my last post, a couple more people have canceled, and a couple others have RSVP'd "yes". I just am going to have fun with the energetic 5 year olds, no matter who is there and who isn't.

The tile guy came by too and let us know he will be here next week to fix it and not to worry too much. Ooooooooh ok, so I won't worry.

Juliana is loving her room! Phewww, thank goodness.

The fog has lifted.

not all that peachy

My blog, my time to bitch and moan. Today has just been super shitty. No one reason, just shitty. I actually spent the morning cleaning up Juliana's room since she has borderline hoarding issues. Ok ok, not really, but well uhhhh, maybe I'm not far off from the truth. I literally emptied her closet, emptied every bucket, dumped shelves, etc. Everything in her room was on the carpet, and I ended up filling two huge garbage bags full of real trash, things I deemed as trash, and more. I had another huge bag for giveaways. After lysoling and febreezing her floor 3x, I felt really really good, even though I looked and felt like a sweat monster. The room took me 7 hours to clean. Yikes.

Once she came home from school, her obsessive tendencies took over (oh yes, those are real, just in case you are wondering), and she started getting both pissed that I did it, and relieved too. That just brought on a very interesting afternoon and evening. The kids went to bed 30 minutes early because I thought my head was going to explode.

Right before bedtime, Jason calls to kindly let me know he is working late A-G-A-I-N! Not sure what late means. It's 8:48pm right now, so it could mean 2am. He's been working insane weekends and insane late nights all the f-ing time. I hate it! I feel like a married single mom. I get it isn't his fault, I just hate it. I also hate that I can be a bitch when he calls to kindly let me know about his lateness. Ughhh.

Last, but not least, as I signed on to my e-mail a bit ago, I see two messages from two different people letting me know last minute they will not be going to Kevin's party on saturday. These aren't just two people, but two important people in my life. Perhaps I shouldn't be shocked by at least one of them, but ughhhh, really???? I'm just royally pissed off and hurt too.

Sooo, if you were looking forward to seeing cute pictures of the kids or hearing about another beach adventure, I truly apologize. Life in this household isn't all that peachy, although I certainly try. I'll put on a happy face tomorrow as I bake cupcakes, buy picnic supplies, balloons, and all of that fun stuff for Kev's b'day party on saturday.

--mini update-- You can add, tile grout seeping all over our shower floor from a shotty job done by the tile guy. This better not mean another month of being without our shower. Calling landlord again this morning. So much for getting hair cut, baking cupcakes, buying party supplies, and all of that fun (and necessary) stuff for tomorrow.

FUN-tastic!

Our weekends lately consist of...

birthday parties,

and at least one family memory making event.

We're blessed to live in an area where we have such fantastic friends, family, and plenty of FUN-tastic places to create memories too.

Friday is here

He is one happy little 5 year old!

His birthday was just as I imagined a 5 year old would adore. Daddy came home about noon from work, we went to dinner a wee bit before rush hour ('cause that is super important in this neck of the woods), devoured cake, and even opened a bunch of presents too.

Speaking of this neck of the woods, please keep the residents of San Bruno in your prayers. Relatively speaking, it is just around the corner from us. Many people near us were able to see the enormous ball of flames last night from the explosion, although we didn't venture for a view. Scary!

Also, as 9/11 approaches again, I seem to get more emotional about it as time goes on. I think I was so out of it on the actual day because we had just attended a viewing of a friend that passed away, and I was 6 months pregnant with Juliana too. I had so much on my mind at the time, that it didn't really hit me until recent years. Explaining these things to the kids is interesting too. It makes everything so much more real that our children will be facing hatred, terrorism, war, and all the horrid things that come with tragic experiences. Hopefully their generation can show much more patriotism and peace in their lifetime.

Little man is 5

I wonder if I would be able to recreate the photo today, 5 years later. This picture was taken September 8, 2005. Kevin was only about 3 hours old, and Juliana was sooooo in love with her baby brother. I am in complete shock every year that my sweet little children are getting older. Of course we all get older, but my kids are supposed to stay so small forever.

Today will be a day full of pictures, balloons, cake, and presents too. Oh, and mixed in to the day will be a doc appt for Juliana, and of course, school for both kids too. No cupcakes at school anymore though. Too many allergies, and apparently the teachers are hoping that children do not get fat at school. That's our job at home. :)

HAPPY 5th BIRTHDAY KEVIN!

Twist on tweets

I'm not sure why I despise Twitter. This goofy n' pointless blog is just a whole bunch of tweets letting y'all know what we've been up to in the recent days. That's not to say I'm planning on becoming a tweeter though. It's like my posts are just a twist on tweeting. And let me end with... this is the most pointless blog post I have EVER created. :)

A BIG WEEK HERE... plan on seeing a ton of pictures.

Cooling off

Friday morning, I received a text from my friend Stephanie asking if I was going to the high school reunion this weekend. My response, "I wanted to, but did you see the guest list?" Her response, "Let me check." To make a long story short, we decided at the last minute to ditch the 15 year reunion and have a night of our own. So we got texting other friends and made it work at the last minute. Check out our friday and saturday in pics:

Swimming at my mom's house. 100 degrees is a lot hotter than it is here.

Playing at the park with Kaden. Juliana and Kevin are chasing Kaden like his two mommies do, and like the doggies at the park did too. The park was a great place for our outing on friday. We brought pizza, cookies, drinks, and lots of laughter too. There were 9 of us and 2 service doggies in training too. The kids looooooved Marlena the black lab and Ruthie the golden retriever that Stephanie is currently training. They are so well behaved... the dogs, not the kids. :)

Saturday, we went to visit my brother, sis-in-law, and of course, baby Cristian. The kids were doing their best soaking Uncle Patrick at the pool. Totally cute and fun! These are the moments that I treasure so much since living near family again.

2 1/2 month old Cristian hanging out at the pool.

Juliana getting Cristian to smile as she soaks his toes.

Goin' well

According to Jason, all went well yesterday. Obviously that does not mean anything yet, so we shall play the waiting game and find out what happens.

Other news... ummm, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Oh wait, Kev has his Kindergarten literacy assessment this afternoon. I think he'll do just fine. I wrote about 25 sentences the other day on an erase board, and he got every one of them. The sentences were like, "We are in the house." "My dog is black." Do you like to go in the car?" No problems whatsoever. Go kiddo!

Word filled Wednesday

Jason left for a very important meeting for work today. We all hugged each other at the airport and can not wait for him to get home. He's not gone for long, but it's not the same without him home. Today's meeting may be a changing day for his career since he is on a second interview. Now now, don't get all worked up that we are leaving from our 3 year vacation where we are now. Nothing has happened yet. I told my mom not to go on realtor.com or to start looking at schools for the kids or crime rates yet. If this job/position is what it says on paper, and if this job offers the right compensation, then we will have more to share and a whole lot more on our plate. Until then, I am just wishing hubby good luck and can not wait for him to get back home.