EASY! 
SPACEBALLS!!!!! 

Hehehehehe ya can't beat the Spaceballs!

"I knew it, I'm surrounded by Assholes!"

To all my LJ Moms!!!! Enjoy your day!

As I sit here on the chaise, enjoying this GORGEOUS evening with a cold beer, by a nice warm fire (yea, the chaise on the back patio, lol) I do feel compelled to write this post.


Of course 1) cause I have a kick ass family and kick ass friends that I couldn't live without
2) Because we have such a kick ass house that I have my flowerbeds and veggie/fruit garden that keeps me happy
( 3) OUR CREEK  )

Life is FANTASTIC 

Why oh why does the universe have to be such a heartless bitch?
Today the doorbell rang and my package from Jung came. Radishes, Onions, Garlic, Cilantro, Bell Peppers, and lord knows what else I've ordered. hahaha
Anywho.... IT'S FREAKING POURING OUTSIDE! 
WTF!?!?!
Same last week when my landscaper's Fabric came. IT WAS RAINING. 
I donno who's in charge of the weather around here, but damn it that person needs to be shit canned!

Remember my home made greenhouse? My tomato seeds bit the dust. Not sure what happened.
Anywho, I went ahead over the weekend and after laying the fabric and getting the cold weather seeds in, I sowed Tomato seeds. I've done seeds directly in the garden one year, with Cherry tomatoes, when I forgot them earlier *blush* And they did awesome. So I'm hoping this'll work out for me again. *squeezes thumbs here*


ARGH I just wanna go plant the rest of my cold weather stuff! stupid weather!

Colors of Spring

We found this behind the Zebra Grass in the front Flowerbeds. Now I know why those ducks have been hanging around!!

So yesterday was unreal! It was around 80 and sunny.
And I hit the garden :-D
I got my fabric layed down, the strawberries weeded, and then Maddy and I went to Lowe's and got some Flowers for the backporch. All I need now is one more hanging basket for it, and the Porch is done. hehe
I got my "cold weather seeds" planted, but now I'm thinking about going to plant the other stuff too, as for the next 2 weeks it doesn't look like we'll go under 40... and then we're pretty much clear for Frost (beginning of May) 
I'm wondering when the flipping seed company is gonna ship me my Radishes, Bell Peppers, Onions, and Garlic.... grrr I knew I shouldn't have ordered from them again, last time they took forever too. Bastards!

I'll upload some pics later or tomorrow of this year's garden. It's supposed to start raining later on today, and then rain through Tuesday. Which means it's time to get the laundry caught up... and upload pics. lol

And speaking of orders I'm waiting on - I finally ordered an external hard drive. I found one on sale and ended up paying only $55!! For 350GB! Sweet! My C drive is flashing red, only got like 3 GB of memory left on it, and the backup drive has only 4GB left I believe. I need to get all my pictures and Videos off of the lappy. For one, cause that is 90% of my memory right there, lol, and for 2, JIC. ;-) 

Man I've been a horrible LJer lately.
How was everyone's Easter? Hopefully good!
Ours was very nice! The weather played nice and so we had a fantastic Egg hunt, and a lovely afternoon!
And now it's back to school.  Only another month of school. Only about another month at this school, since Ally will be switching in the Fall. I can't believe my kid has a school year under her belt. WTH?! Man I must be getting old..   


Maddy has been talking up a storm lately. She's popping out all sorts of new words left and right. No is still her favorite though. Much to my dismay, lol

Hmm what else... I know this post is kinda scattered, but hey deal with it, I have a dishwasher to unload and re-load with dinner dishes, and tonight Deadliest Catch is coming back, so that kitchen has to be tip top clean by 9 :-D DVR or no DVR, I have been anxiously awaiting tonight!!!! 
So, my Landscaper's Fabric came today!! WOOOOT 
Of course it's been raining all day. And it's supposed to rain tomorrow. FIGURES. However we got 70s and Sunny weather coming in Thursday and all through the weekend, so take a wild guess where I'll be. hehe GARDEN HERE I COME! And Flowerbeds prolly too. lol
Probably a good thing that it's supposed to rain tomorrow, I need to clean the house. The ENTIRE House. Although I got all the closets in the entire house cleaned. At least something. And the Utility room is semi clean.

That's about all that's new. I'm gonna sneak another slice of the cheese bread we made for dinner. hehe turned out fantastic.

I went to change Maddy out of her convertible seat into a toddler - high back booster convertible seat, so she could reach toys easier... lol
Anywho, this seat I used to use as a backup with Winter. Not the prettiest seat -
Yea.... So not Maddy.
So, I decided to make a new cover for it yesterday -


I LOVE it! So nice and Spring like! I found it in the scrap fabric pile (there was only a yard of it left, and let me tell you, the armrests were tight!lol) as I was cleaning out my sewing closet, and Maddy grabbed it and ran off with it, and kept saying LOOK! Pretty!
So, ok, she likes it, let's put it to good use ;-)
I LOVE the look of it. Do have to say it. Makes me all warm and happy. Thinking of summer.......

I prolly won't be around much this week, I'll try and keep up with everyone's journals, but I might just have to play catch up next week. There's lots to do to get ready for Ally's Bday party, so I'm not sure how much spare time I'll get. PLUS I need to use that spare time to sew her up a fairy dress ;-) 

Stole this from a friend, it IS cute!!

This is a cute idea. Copy this note, ask your kid the questions and write them down exactly how they respond. Tag me back if you haven't done this, I'd love to hear the answers.

(I obviously asked her what *I* do and not what "mom" does... if the answers don't quite make sense)

1. What is something mom always says to you?
"Uhm.... No"
(LOL)

2. What makes mom happy?
"When I clean up my room"

3. What makes mom sad?
"Not cleaning up my room"

4. How does your mom make you laugh?
"Tickle me"

5. What was your mom like as a child?
"being funny "

6. How old is your mom?
"I don't know."

7. How tall is your mom?
"Not so big" 
(hmpf)

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
"type"
bwahahaha

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?
"clean.... a lot and wait for me to come back"

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
"Doing the hoola-hoop" 

11. What is your mom really good at?
"being a mom"

12. What is your mom not very good at?
"Uhm... building sandcastles"

13. What does your mom do for her job?
"She's our Mama"

14. What is your mom's favorite food?
""Pizza"

15. What makes you proud of your mom?
"Uhm being my mom." (awe)

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
"Uhm Tom & Jerry" (huh?! I don't think she gets this lol)

17. What do you and your mom do together?
"Play Puzzles"

18. How are you and your mom the same?
"We act alike and have freckles" 

19. How are you and your mom different?
"I don't have a driver's license"

20. How do you know your mom loves you?
"Cause she says so."

21. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?
"MawMaw and PawPaw's"

I got the seeds started today. Seems like I got a lot less than last year though...

I started 12 Cherry Tomato plants, 10 Reg Tomatoes, Hot Peppers, Long Peppers, Bell Peppers..
I also got Cucumber seeds, Carrot seeds, Cabbage seeds, Lettuce and Spinach... And of course my Strawberry patch, and we'll do Potatoes again too this year.
It seems the garden is empty . LOL 
I'm trying to figure out what else I could grow... Any suggestions? I'll prolly add on 2 things...

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned our neighbor Joe before... Last year he lost it and had all his episodes (much to the amusement of us, meaning the rest of us neighbors here)
WELL 
Right now we're still dealing with the last of this storm. We stil have 20-30mph winds here.
Joe is out there sweeping his driveway and the street... with a dustpan and handbroom.
Either he's lost it again, lord knows what triggers it, or he just stopped taking his meds. He had to have been on some meds.
Either way I believe that a time of great amusement and entertainment lays ahead of the folk here in the dead end of this street. lol

Gather 'round! It's time for me to brag, I don't do it enough!

Ally read about 65% of tonight's bedtime story!!!! WOOOHOOOO She is getting really good with her reading! 
My plan is to get her mastered in Level 1 books by Spring. 100% on her own. :-D

Maddy learned 4 new words. Now, whenever she sees a camera she poses and goes - CHEEESEEEE 
She's FINALLY saying Papa. LOL That stinker! Jim's happy though!
Danke (German for Thank you) 
Okay. EVERYTHING's okay these days. LOL 
Conversations go something like - Maddy: What's that? Me- It's a Red Rose (ie) Maddy - Ooookaaayyyy .... What's that? ......

She also discovered here Belly Button which is just hilarious. She'll yank up her shirt and go Peekboo! And poke it. ROFL 

So my plan now is to have Ally reading Level 1... by June I'm gonna drill the German. Maddy will be exploding in her vocabulary by then, and Ally will have that reading thing under control, so we can concentrate on getting fluent. At that point I'll have one year before my aunt is coming to visit us. One year to get the kids and the husband fluent. Ok, the kids fluent, and the husband able to understand, and make himself understood... lol

What a week! From half a foot of snow to temps around -10... ugh
So Wednesday we played out in the snow A LOT.
And I did turn my hounds into sled dogs. LOL It worked out great too! We took like an hour long walk with the boys pulling the sled. The kids LOVED IT! They kept yelling Mush! and the dogs enjoyed the work and getting rid of that energy! we came back and everyone was whooped. (I donno why the girls were whooped, they didn't walk two steps) The dogs slept SO GOOD! I want to do that more often! I wish it weren't so cold today and yesterday was just as bad! 
Come Spring/Summer/Fall I'm gonna need to figure out how to strap the wagon to the dogs. That's just fantastic excercise right there! REALLY gonna give them two wild boys a nice workout, they need it.

Today they're not as happy. It's so freaking cold outside, you can't be out there for more than 10 minutes at a time. So we've been out in the field oh about 5 times today. Never stayed out for more than 15 minutes though. During those 15 minutes I throw their Kong on a rope back to back to back to try and run them as much as possible in that short amount of time. It doesn't compare to a good long walk, but there's just no way. I'm bundled up like a freaking eskimo, and still within 10 minutes my hands scream despite the gloves, my face is in a world of hurting... my feet stay warm though, that's about the only thing. Not even my snowboarding pants can keep that cold out. But the boots man they rock!!! They are however approved for up to -45. Our lowest was -22 so I'm good. hehe

Anywho... Yesterday Ally and I got Cabin Fever so we decided to make some more bread, we were out... We made a Cheddar Batter Bread and Garden Herb Loaf. FINALLY a great use for all the Herbs out of the garden I've dried last year. LOL Oh and that bread is so damn good!! OMG!!! Don't get me wrong, the Cheddar Batter Bread is yummy too, but man I love herbs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So yummy! 
My "resolution" for this year is to try EVERY bread recipe in the Big Breadbook that Tonia made for me. There's HUNDREDS of recipes in that book and we've only tried a fraction of them, just kept making the same ones over and over. Not this year. I went through it with sticky notes and marked all of the REALLY YUMMY sounding ones, those we'll hit first, and then when we tried all of those I'll get to the remainder. Gonna try em all!!!!!! hehe

The girls also used the bathsalts we made today. The whole upstairs smelled so good. We didn't have a whole lot.. we made them for Ally to hand out at Xmas, and the leftovers I dumped into canning jars and put in the bathroom. I'm gonna get some more epsom salt and make some more though.. also gonna fill up some canning jars that I have from MIL and send her canning jars back along with some bathsalts. She'll have them used up by the time canning season comes around again. lol

WEll, I'm in the mood for some herb bread now. Gonna go get me a slice or two :-D

Despite some of the places I've lived, I was never a HUGE fan of Winter.
Sure, I joined the craze of Snowboarding (though briefly, my reconstructed knee cap can only take so and so much of that kinda crap) and ATVs and Snowmobiles, Ice Skating is fun, and yea, Snowtubing is a blast no matter how old you are... But in the end  - It's fucking cold. I don't LOVE the cold. I can tolerate it... to a point. And Ice is a pain in the arse, I don't care if you're trying to walk to school on it, or trying to drive to work. Unless you got Iceskates it's a pain.
But now I have a kid in school. And now Winter is a thorn in my retna. Stupid school closings and delays. Ugh
You get up at the crack of dawn... You figure out - Oh well great, our school is closed or delayed. Can't go back to bed, now you're awake...
OR you sit there, glued to the news or their website, refreshing it, waiting and watching. Are they gonna delay? Close? When they're delayed and so many others are closed you gotta watch like a fox to make sure your district isn't changing from a 2 hour delay to closing yet.... ARGH 
They're SUPPOSED to lock it in by 6:30, but on days like today that never happens!
And to rest my freaking case - When I last watched the news at 7 Pickerington Schools were on a 2 hour delay.
I just checked the website, for shits and giggles, and we are now CLOSED.
And I got up at 4:30. And Ally got up at 7. Goddamnit!!! 

Remember this little guy? 
Picked him up in July, which was when this pic was taken.
8/11 he was 17 inches at the shoulder and 23lbs.
8/21 he was 18 inches at the shoulder and 28 lbs
9/4 he was 19 1/4 inches at the shoulder and 34/5 lbs!!
 

Admittedly I have slacked since that day..
Here we are, in time for Red's 8 month stats.
Red is now 24 inches at the shoulder and weighs in at a backbreaking 85lbs!!!
He's officially outgrown (and outweighs) Dewy now!!


Growing Boy!

RIP Mama
I can't believe it's been 5 years already! 
I love you and miss you!!!!
I wish you would've been around this past month. For many reasons. So many times I longed to talk to you.

Ask my boss for a daycare isn't even applicable... where did they get that from?!