Archive for category life
New cardi blog
Please welcome my friend Kathy to the world of Cardi blogging… Her pretty trio of 4-legged kids can be found on my sidebar and here: http://wyncrestcardis.blogspot.com/
Have fun Kathy!
Who said "Spring"?
There honestly are not a ton of things that I LOVE about northern Alabama. It’s really fraggin’ hot in the summer, we never get snow in the winter, it’s too hot for far too long in the fall. However, if there is a redeeming season, it is by far, SPRING. It comes early and stays long. Every damned thing you see blooms, and it’s so pretty and temperate that you forget that it all makes you sneeze, too. This year I’m determined to get some nice photos of our spring here, even if it’s just with my little portable camera.
Cherry trees in bloom
And this is the valley that we live in. Every day after I drop Charlie off at school, I come back past this view and with the sun shining just so, it’s often just BEAUTIFUL. The trees are just starting to leaf up, but there are lots of redbud and cherry trees blooming. It was hazy today, and would have been much better with my better camera, but here it is anyway. In the middle of the screen you can see some rooftops…our house is in there.
Big Cove
The "mountain" that makes up one side of the valley
Do corgis shed?
Just a little.
I may have to post a photo of the pile of hair I get from the brushing episode that is coming later this afternoon. And this fuzzy gray not-quite-black-anymore dog is what I got after the bath where I washed an entire puppy-worth down the drain. Oy.
Photo Montage
Some random pictures from the past few days. We got our Christmas tree up on Saturday and decorated it on Sunday…Charlie is an ornament hanging MASTER. 
) Here’s a pic of “her” area of the tree. She kept insisting that there weren’t enough ornaments in her area when we suggested that she try spreading it around a bit.
“Honey, why don’t you pose next to the tree?”
“Could you maybe smile? Umm ok, not quite like that…”
“That’s a LITTLE better…”
Leo being, well, Leo.
I don’t know what Lizzie would ever do without Leo around to be her pillow.
A few more pictures in the “Charlie and Dogs” series. As Kate once said, she loves ‘em, the poor bastards. LOL She’s actually REALLY good about petting them gently, and they all like getting attention from her.
Here she’s waving Leo’s paw at the camera for us.
Ignore the bed head please.
Brady has gotten really distrustful of the camera in his old age. After this picture, he slunk underneath the desk behind him as if he thought I would beat him with the camera….?? I have no idea, maybe he’s just getting quirky. Yes, those of you that know him are saying “GETTING” quirky?? )
Now I'm in trouble
I put new batteries in my bathroom scale so that I can start weighing myself. I guess that means it’s time to stop being lazy about the baby weight! Not all of us can look so cute pregnant, Ariel. Bitch. 
Oh and it also gave me a chance to weigh the moose girl, Lizzie. She’s 33.5 pounds, which is significantly less than I was afraid she weighed so I’m actually rather happy with that. Consider that she’s probably 1-2 pounds overweight still so she’s not nearly as big as I thought she was. “Oversized” is hard to gauge when she lives with 2 males, one of which is 31 pounds and the other who is 28 pounds. She’s still the moose of my house though, but that’s not hard to achieve.
Time for a photo update
From Halloween…don’t you hate it when someone shows up wearing the same outfit? Jack with his cousin Cameron, who is 5 weeks younger than him.
Charlie the apple-juice-running-shoe-upside-down-butterfly-fairy. With bolero sweater.
A thankful heart
‘Tis the season, and all that, to reflect. ) Plus Jan made me.
10 Things I am Grateful for that Money Can Buy
1. My beautiful dream house. I can’t stress enough how much I love this house!
2. Delicious food…but oh how I wish I could eat ice cream. 
3. A nanny for Jack. Not only does she take great care of him during the day while I’m working, but it allows me to keep nursing him, AND she does light housework as well.
4. My computer, because as a wise woman I know puts on her blog “I love my computer because my friends live in it.”
5. Lovely things to fill my new house with. Specifically many things from Target, Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, and my purty new dishes from Williams-Sonoma. Yes, I’m materialistic! Does it make it better if I freely admit it?
6. My dogs. Although I don’t think of them as possessions so much as family members, truth is that I DID buy them. They make me laugh every single day.
7. Electricity for heat, light and most of all, air conditioning. I think I could live here without heat, with NOT without A/C!
8. Great steak! Yes this may go into #2 as well but I think it deserves a line of its’ own.
9. My car and gas to go in it. I can’t imagine not being able to go anywhere.
10. Plane tickets to visit wonderful places.
10 Things I am Grateful for that Money Cannot Buy
1. Obviously, my family…Dave, Charlie, and Jack.
2. Health of all above named family members and myself.
3. My mom, sister, and dad and their health.
4. The in-laws. I got lucky and married into a fabulous family, they are warm, loving, and have great senses of humor.
5. I’ll steal from Jan and say sleep, because most days that is THE thing I’m most looking forward to. 
6. Backrubs. This is one area where Dave usually really pampers me and I LOVE it.
7. Our country. I am not a patriot in the traditional Republican sense, but I DO love this country and having the freedom to have my own thoughts, disagree with the majority if I so choose, etc.
8. Rain, because it makes pretty things grow. Charlie and I often do this thing where when it’s raining, we’ll start listing off all of the things that rain makes grow. :wub: Her favorite is oranges.
9. Love
10. Humor
10 Things I am Grateful I Don’t Have
1. A STD
2. Any serious illness
3. Crazy family members
4. Debt (aside from mortgage and cars)
5. A deadbeat husband
6. Irrational fears
7. More kids
8. Mental illness
9. ummm…I’m getting stumped on this one.
It's official…
We now “actually” own the house. Err rather, the mortgage. Yay! Now we can get a trash can because we can transfer the utilities/trash pickup into our names…so we don’t have to sneak around the neighborhood at night dumping trash in construction bins anymore. LOL
7 Random Things About Me
A friend posted her 7 Random Things and challenged readers to do the same. I won’t be like, ahem, some people and post 101 things instead. Mostly because I think it would take me all.flippin.day to come up with that many things to write about…not because I’m uninteresting (umm, I think), but just because I’m uncreative when putting thoughts to paper. Or so I tell myself.
Anyway, here goes.
1. I am a total gadget girl. I got an iPhone several weeks ago and I’m totally addicted to this thing. I love to play computer games…ever since I was a kid and typing in DOS programs for some stupid game from a computer magazine, or playing PacMan for free at my parents’ laundromat where they had a real arcade machine.
2. I am sooooo not a girly girl. But one thing I love about some of the friends I’ve made as an adult is that they ARE girly and have made me become more girly just through association. I was raised by a woman who doesn’t wear makeup, shave her legs, or know anything at all about fashion. (no, my mom does NOT read my blog LOL) Combine that with me being a total tomboy, and you can just imagine…no, don’t even try. It wasn’t pretty. I like the fact that I now know how and what to shave, how to dress myself at least a little bit, and that sometimes it’s good to look and act like a girl.
3. I don’t really like my job that well, but I can’t give up the paycheck. I don’t HAVE to work, but I do like having the extra money, and quite honestly…while I absolutely adore my kids, I love them even more if I don’t have to be with them for 24 hours a day. *hiding* It has taken me 3 years to get over the guilt I feel for saying that…no scratch that, I still feel guilty for saying it. I feel like people will think I’m a bad mother. But dammit, I’m NOT a bad mother. Repeat to self 100 times.
4. I feel completely materialistic and spoiled for having this big nice new house. OK yes, I admit I AM materialistic and spoiled, but I’m really uncomfortable with it. When we had our fridge delivered one of the delivery guys said “so this is how rich folks live” and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. No, we’re not really rich, but it IS a nice house…we’ve worked our way up to it.
5. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever feel like a grown up. And then I wonder why on earth I would WANT to feel like a grown up.
6. I secretly like it when Dave travels for work. Not when he’s gone for very long…2-3 days is good, and no more than 1-2 times per month. Longer than that and it wears me down. But I love feeling excited for him to get home, is that sad? Probably, but I think the old adage of “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is true. Not that I love him any less when he’s here all the time, but rather just that I notice it more when I have a chance to miss him. The only reasons I don’t like it is a) he brings home the plague half of the time, and b) Charlie really misses him.
7. I have the world’s worst sweet tooth right now. It started when I was pregnant with Charlie and has been REALLY bad ever since. While pregnant I don’t really try to curb it that much, and then once the pregnancy is over I find it really hard to stop. I really want to start losing weight, but I’m appalled at the idea of giving up sweets!
A dog-showing we will go…
Life isn’t…normal exactly, but we’re getting there.
No, we still don’t own the house. In fact, since putting the sod, fence, and our shower door (the three biggies that were left to do when we psuedo-closed on the house), we haven’t heard hide nor hair from our builder asking where his money is. *shrug* I figure that they’ll call us as soon as possible once it’s all “ok”. LOL But, we’re getting settled in. I no longer feel like there are boxes EVERYwhere I look…just almost everywhere. The dogs are all here, together again at last, and are having a great time breaking in the new house. Lizzie is in standing heat which has made pack-reacclimation a little bit interesting, because she’s a royal bizzatch (especially to Leo) when she’s hormonal.
And this weekend I get a chance for my little “mommy getaway” by returning to dog showing again. I went to a small show a few weeks ago, but was told that Lizzie was, ahem, pudgy. *blush* So I’ve been dropping her weight down for our local shows here this weekend. There are majors all three days we’re entered, so fingers crossed that she can pick up her second major.