I love having a daughter!

She is such a beautiful child. She had her soccer pictures taken today. I bathed her before so she'd be squeaky clean. I then put her hair in two pony tails. Because her hair is curly, I twisted them so they stayed spirally. Add that to her beautiful blue eyes and her gorgeous smile and BAM! You get the most beautiful little girl ever!

I love my boys, but it's nice to have the girl thrown in there to shake things up. LOL She's a spitfire, that's for sure. I'll hopefully have her soccer pics back soon. When I do, I'll scan them (along with Justin's) and post them. I can't wait!

WalkAmerica

A couple of months ago, I signed up for the WalkAmerica walk-a-thon to help raise money for premature babies. I conned Jimmy into going with me by telling him this is what I wanted for my birthday. We raised $131 and my goal was $100. Thank you to all of you that donated money!

We got up early this morning and arrived downtown around 8:30. I signed in and recieved my t-shirt. A white t-shirt that says "I'm saving babies. March of Dimes WalkAmerica." Jackson, my little miracle, was given a t-shirt that says, "I'm a March of Dimes Wee Wonder." Those t-shirts were given to all NICU grads. I was extremely emotional this morning before the walk began. I saw all kinds of twins being pushed in strollers and it was a little overwhelming. Not only seeing them but remembering everything Jackson has gone through and how thankful I am for him. (I could probably have a good cry even as I type this. LOL But my eyes are dry.)

We walked 5 miles. I didn't know it would be that long. But the kids did so well. Jackson, of course, was in a stroller. We really enjoyed ourselves. We got some much needed exercise and we helped raise money to help premature babies. I want to think of it in honor of Pheobe and Audrey. I totally plan on participating again next year. Hopefully, I won't be crying for 30 minutes again. LOL

Beautiful!

I love a good sunset. I think all the different colors in the sky are just breathtaking. Tonight when I stepped outside for a moment with my book, I looked up and saw an amazing sight. I quickly ran inside to grab Jimmy's digicam, which when at home is on my desk. It wasn't there. My digicam was in our bedroom with dead batteries. I knew by the time I grabbed it and changed the batteries the sky would be different. So I grabbed the camcorder, which can be used as a camera. Here's what I saw.... Now keep in mind this is from our camcorder. And I'm no where near a good photographer like Jason, Margo or Heather. LOL

Blogger meet up

We had a local blogger gathering today. I dragged Jimmy along with me, though I was really worried he wouldn't enjoy himself, knowing the only person he knew was Heather. But he really enjoyed himself. He said he really enjoyed meeting Vera because she "seemed like she didn't care and had the balls to say whatever was on her mind." He is the same way, so I'm used to it with him.

It was great seeing

Jared, Mike, Vera, Eugene and Heather again. It was nice meeting Dave, Kathy (Dave's wife, I think. I was never really introduced to her) Patrick, Kit, JJ, Kevin, Jeane, Rose

, and Patrick (Vera's Hubby.) The place we met at 10-17, was perfect. I think we were the only ones there. The owner is from Germany and has the most wonderful accent! (I love accents!)

Jimmy was glad to finally put faces to a few bloggers I regularly talk about. I was happy to meet new people and get out of the house for a bit. LOL I hope Jimmy didn't offend anyone and that you all had as much fun as we did.

I was disappointed that Dan and Janet couldn't make it. I really wanted Jimmy to meet them also.

New Friends

Recently I've noticed a woman taking three children to the playground here each day. I have been taking Jackson outside often so I've had a chance to talk to her. Her name is Deanne, and is originally from Czechoslovskia (not sure if I spelled that right). Her boyfriend, Morat, is from Germany. I love both of their accents. They're both really nice and really attentive to the kids.

For some reason both seem to trust me enough to share information that most Americans would hide. Nothing illegal or dangerous, just personal. Yet, I find myself drawn to this woman and feel I could be friends with her. I admit, I'm jealous...she's gorgeous with a flat tummy. LOL However only one of those three children are hers...and I've given birth to 6, so I take that into perspective.

Today while at the playground she wanted to ask me a question, one she thought was weird. I wearily agreed to answer. She just wanted to know if I had a vacuum she could borrow because they wouldn't be able to buy one until next week when payday rolled around. I breathed a sigh of relief and said she was welcome to use my vacuum. I don't know what I thought she was going to ask. But I'm weary of newcomers getting too personal with me. LOL

Anyway, I'm happy I've found someone I feel comfortable being around that lives around here. Someone that actually watches their children like I watch mine. Her daughter seems to really like me because whenever she sees me she runs to me and hugs me. And she's very beautiful little girl. I'm just not used to other children (that I'm not related to) running up to me to hug or sit on my lap. It's really sweet.

I hope she and I can become good friends and she won't let me down by my last neighborhood friend. (Wanna know about that, email me and if I trust you, I'll share.)

Soccer and More

Justin and Korinne had their first soccer games this past Saturday. I missed Justin's because I was running an errand. But Jimmy taped it on the camcorder for me. He did excellent! As did Korinne and her team. At this age, they don't have goalies or keep score. But I have to say, their teams kicked some butt! Justin's team won 6-2. Korinne's team won 5-1.

Justin's coach has never coached soccer. So his practices are quite disorganized. When I take Korinne to her practices, I take Justin along because Korinne's coach is nice enough to let Justin practice if there's an odd number of girls there. Well Colleen Condon's son happens to be on Justin's team. The first time I met her I knew she looked familiar but I couldn't place her. I'm so not into politics, but when someone pointed it out to me, it made sense. I'd seen her on the news a few times. She's played soccer for 8 years. She was at practice tonight and I have to say, tonight's practice went so well. I think with her helping tonight, the kids learned more in one hour than they've learned in 4 practices. She was encouraging to all of the children. Which I think was a boost in their confidence.

On another note, Jay has been coming home the past couple of weeks complaining about a girl in his class that is verbally bullying him. According to him she calls him hideous looking and talks crap about us. She's never even met us. And Jay is not hideous looking. So it looks like I'll be contacting his teacher to find out what's going on. Jay says he's told her about it and has even talked to the counselor. Jay is a very sensitive child and gets his feelings hurt easily. If what Jay says is really happening, then I consider this a form of bullying. I intend to look further into it.

What the HELL???!!

We were in shorts yesterday and went to bed in shorts. Today, we're in jeans and going to bed in sweats. C'mon, it's APRIL! It shouldn't be this cold! I live in the South for a reason! It's supposed to be nice! LOL

Soccer games!

Justin and Korinne have their first games tomorrow. Justin's is at 9, Korinne's is at 10. (The rest of their Saturday games are scheduled for the same time.) I went to Dick's Sporting Goods tonight to buy their black soccer shorts and Justin's black soccer socks. Korinne's team is sponsored so socks were provided for them.

I can't wait to see how cute they look in their uniforms. I will, of course, post pics sometime this weekend of them in their uniforms.

Wish them luck on their first games. :)

Lost Bike

• Missing: One lost Mongoose bike; red, black and chrome; at least 7 speed
• Last seen: ON OUR FRIGGEN PORCH!
• If found please come to apartment ____

This is what I want to print a flyer of. The bike isn't really lost. Someone STOLE it! Why am I not surprised. We're surrounded by a bunch of hoodlum thieves! I cannot wait to move from here. We realized Jay's bike was missing this afternoon. I thought it was in our bedroom where we usually keep it. But Jimmy says he last saw it last night behind the huge bush in front of our porch. Now anyone walking by wouldn't really see it unless they were looking for it or something to steal. I spent over an hour walking around today looking on porches and balconies for this bike. Jay asked the maintenance men if they'd seen it. They hadn't, said they would keep an eye out for it but that we should call the police. Oh please. What the hell are they going to do about it? I can't remember where Jimmy stashed the paperwork with the serial number on it. Regardless they don't care about some stupid bike. I'm tired of my kids' things being stolen from our porch.

I posted recently about some little brat walking by wanting to steal Korinne's bike. And this was in broad daylight!

I'm so ready to move from this place. I love the school...well as long as it's right down the road. Not going to let them go to Spruil Avenue! But I'm willing to move away from this neighborhood. It's gone downhill so fast in the past year. I just want my kids to be able to forget their toys for one night without having to worry about some asshat taking it off our porch. Is that too much to ask?

PINKS weekend!

This weekend was AWESOME! Friday night was a kind of late night getting last minutes things for our trip to NC. We went looking for a battery for our new camcorder, only to learn we have to order it. UGH! So instead we got a cooler and snacks and stuff for our drive, as well as Korinne's and Jackson's Easter baskets. My cousin Tayler and her friend (as well as my cousins JD and DJ cause Tayler had to babysit them Saturday morning) came over Friday night. My Aunt Joann picked them all up when she got off work Saturday at 1pm. I had all their clothes and stuff ready Friday night. I packed all of our clothes and stuff Friday night.

We got up and out the house by around 8:30am. We stopped by McD's for breakfast then made a pit stop at Walmart to get some kind of AC to DC adapter so we could charge the camcorder battery in the car.

Alas we are on the road. The rental car Jimmy was able to get (there's an Enterprise in the office of where he works so we got an *AWESOME deal for Friday-Monday and any car we wanted) played burned cds so we were able to listen to all kinds of music. The kids (Jay and Justin) kept themselves occupied really well. We played the Alphabet game several times. Couldn't really play I Spy since everything was green. LOL

We reach NC state line and following the directions from Map Quest, we drive past this beautiful waterfall. We made plans to stop on the way home to take pictures.

We find out hotel easily enough. Map Quest was accurate on those directions. I'd printed out directions from our home to the hotel and then from the hotel to the drag way.

Here is where I can say Map Quest sucks ass! It told us to turn on one street, then left and follow to the drag way. However one street was a dead end! So we turned around and stopped at the nearest gas station where we bought a map of Rockingham AND North Carolina. I also asked the cashier for directions. While she couldn't give me street names she gave me precise directions and we were on our way.

We finally arrived and parked. We weren't able to bring our cooler in or any bags (other than my purse). We had to go to a special window to pick up our tickets since I'd ordered them online. Jimmy was allowed to bring his bag in. It's one of those Marlboro lunch boxes that he uses as a camera bag. They looked in the bag and saw that it only contained his camera and our new camcorder so they allowed it.

It was quite nippy in North Carolina and Jay had left his jacket at our hotel room. He still wore a long sleeve shirt and a sweatshirt with a hood. But it was still cold. (I won't be surprised if we all end up with colds this week.) When I say nippy, when the wind was blowing, it cut right through you. By the time we left it hurt to walk cause my toes were so cold and from standing in one place for so long.

As far as the actual show. It was the BEST show I've been to in...EVER! We saw some very fast cars. A jet car that we could barely follow. Some racing motorcycles, racing snowmobiles, pro-mods and then the actual All Out Racing.

The show will air in about 4 months and you may just see us in the audience. You won't recognize any of us, but you might see Jay out there in his bright orange Clemson sweatshirt. LOL

In between events, they had people throwing t-shirts in the stands (kinda like at Stingrays' games.) Jay and Justin tried so hard to get one, yet were just about trampled by grown men. At one point, I was just walking back to our seats and was about knocked to the ground by grown ass men fighting over a piece of damn cloth! So the last time they were throwing out shirts, Jimmy and Jay had left to circulate their blood/feet/whatever. Justin and I were in the stands. When I saw the girls throwing shirts out, I told Justin to run to the fence and start making noise. He did. But there were still a few grown men trying for the shirt. As I'm watching to make sure these particular assholes don't knock my son down, I see a t-shirt being thrown in Justin's direction. A grown man grabs it, turns around and hands it to Justin. My heart jumped. As Justin is running to me, I'm running down. I ask, "Did you tell him thank you?" He says yes. So I'm going down to tell the man myself thank you but he's disappeared into the crowd. Jimmy said he didn't do it for thanks or he would have stuck around. I thought that was extremely generous. Of course, Jay didn't think it was fair. But it's not like I bought the t-shirt. We couldn't afford the t-shirts anyway!

The races were over around 8:30pm. We left, went to Sonic for some real food and went back to the hotel room. We were all passed out by 10pm and up at 7:30am eager to head home. The mattress was VERY comfy but we're used to sleeping with at least three pillows, not one! LOL

Anyway, below are the pictures we took of the waterfall. Yes we stopped and took pics. It was just so unexpected to see in the middle of trees. We saw a lot of swamps, but nothing like this. So, of course, I insisted we get pics. We did cross the street to see where the water was going. And on a log in the stream was covered with ice! ICE! It was that cold! LOL Jimmy thought he got pictures of that as well, but hey we're still learning how to use the camcorder for videos and still images. LOL I'm just glad we got the pics of the waterfall! LOL

No water fight today!

As Heather pointed out in the blogroll, it was chilly today. What?! Where'd our beautiful weather go? The kids weren't too disappointed. I checked the weather for North Carolina for this weekend. And damn it's gonna be cold! Gotta break out the coats again. Don't care, gonna have a blast! WOOHOO!!!!

Spring Break

It has been a LONG week so far, with the kids being home for Spring Break. Ok it's mainly Jay. I don't ask him to do anything other than clean his room. He shares a room with Jackson yet shares a dresser with Justin. The ONLY thing in the room that's Jackson's is the crib and the bouncy seat that's stored under Jay's bed. Justin's clothes are in there and some wind up on the floor. When I tell Jay to clean his room, that includes Justin's clothes.

ALL the toys are in Justin's and Korinne's room. I expect them to clean their room. Jay plays in there with the toys yet I don't expect him to help clean in there. Justin and Korinne actually race me while I'm cleaning the kitchen and living room. They usually win. Yet it seems to take Jay all day to clean up what would take me half an hour.

He had the nerve to say he didn't think it was fair for him to clean Justin's clothes. I said "Well you drag out and play with the toys that are all over the floor in their room but I don't ask you to help them clean." Then I went further to say, "Every single day, I clean the kitchen. I don't use all those dishes. Every single day, I clean the living room. I don't play with those toys. I don't leave granola bar wrappers or fruit snack wrappers on the floor. And every single week, I do 6 loads of laundry and only a sixth of those clothes are mine. So until you can explain to me how fair it is that I do all that, then and only then can you complain to me about how unfair it is that you have to clean one measly room." He obviously didn't have an answer to that.

I do ask Jay to take the trash out also. All he has to do is walk to the compactor and throw it in. Yesterday, when I asked him to take the one bag out he started pitching a fit and said under his breath, "Sometimes I feel neglected." Now this is coming from a child that is completely spoiled. When he wants something within reason we buy it...he does work for it. It's not as if he says he wants a PS3 and we go out and buy it. But if he says he wants a new book, we're all over that.

I don't like it but the kids do get a weekly allowance. However, they have to earn it. If I have to spend all day coaxing, bribing or threatening them to clean, they forfeit the allowance. But if they do their chores, they earn it. They can also earn money by doing things I didn't ask them to do.

Because I've had Jay steal from me, several times, he's lost his allowance. He's also lost it when I've had to spend all day just getting him to clean his room. (Remember all that's in his room is his bed, Jackson's crib, the bouncy seat under his bed and a dresser him and Justin share.) So He has right now $10. When he does get money, it burns a hole in his pocket and he spends it right away. Justin, on the other hand, has saved his money for a long enough time that he has just over $100. He says he's saving for a tv. And I will buy him that tv because he'll be using his own money and he's earned it.

I have totally digressed! It's Spring Break. I haven't had a moments peace. I haven't been able to nap, which makes me cranky. LOL But despite all the arguments between the kids, we've been having a great time. We've been playing lots of board games. Today we had a water fight. The weather was perfect! I couldn't find our water balloons, so we pulled out the water guns. In the end, we had several neighbor children going in and out of their apartments with bowls full of water. It was so fun watching these kids enjoying themselves.

I had Jackson outside for close to 2 hours, longer than ever. His little cheeks were all rosy and he was so tired from playing so hard.

I know the kids will still get on my nerves tomorrow, but I'm looking forward to having another water fight with them. Or playing another board game with them. I love that their friends want to come inside and play here. At least I know where my kids are and what they're doing.

Ahhhhhhhhhh Spring break!

New Toy

For years, we've been waiting for the right moment to take the plunge and buy a camcorder. Every Sunday, we buy a newspaper to scour the sale papers. This past Sunday, we saw a camcorder that seemed perfect. It was even interest free until September if you used the store's credit card. So Jimmy applied and was approved. We bought the camcorder along with some dvds, a memory card (cause you can also use it for still pictures) and the adapter for the memory card.

I'm excited to learn it yet a little intimidated. I am technologically illeriterate. LOL I'm lucky I can work my digicam. LOL I imagine I'm going to have dvds after dvds filled of the kids. LOL