Another busy day...

So I started the day thinking ok good day to do laundry(giggles), clean up the kitchen, get a mop bucket and clean house. Well it started that way until I got a call from Bess. Apparently my neice is in town from Germany and they are going to the Wildlife World Zoo today and wanted to know if I could come. I said sure when are they going to be there. Basiclly I finally got the call from her at noon saying that her son, Randy, was on the way to get her. So finished our quick lunch and left. We got to meet Chelsie,who is Randy's daughter in law, and her daughter, my neice, Miranda. She is so cute. We had fun at the zoo and came home after almost 4 hours and had a nice dinner. Posted this and calling it a night.

David(Donna R's boyfriend), Miranda and Donna R looking at penguins.

Here are some upsidedown jellyfish... they don't float they attach themselves to the floor bottom to feed

B-Days

Call me strange but this is mainly just me. It has kind of come to the point that for me it least birthdays are just another day. I have usually had to work or this or that. So for me I actually had a nice birthday this year. I took the kids to the zoo and had a nice quiet enjoyable day. Sam commented later that afternoon. Happy B-day Dad. I forgot it was yours today. I know my kids like going to other kids b-day parties and they like theirs. I am all for that but I guess for me now a days..and no it is not a age thing..ie oh you are that old.. it is more I would just like a nice quiet day of relaxing.

New Year recap from the last couple of months

Ok it's been a while. Some pics of what we have been doing lately.
Sam's 1st grade teacher's daughter's birthday party happed on 11/22 at Castle's and Coasters. I really didn't get any pics of Sam on the rides as she was with someone else. She did go on almost every ride but the one that drops you from about 80 feet up including the big adult rollercoaster there. I was amazed. Here is a pic of Tim on the go cart course with the son of the lady of the group I was with. They were in first execpt for the last lap.

Well as you know we don't have snow here so we had to have it imported. Here are the kids in the snow at the Goodyear Jolly Holly city festival with 40 tons of snow. Tim lost his gloves and his hands got quite cold while they were in there but they had fun.

We went to a boat parade at the begining of December out at where Grandma Bess Jonason lives. Her neighbor is right on the lake had had a big party that we briefly took the kids to. They only stayed long enough to see the boat parade but they had fun. The second shot is one of the better ones that I got where the people took the frame work for a hot air balloon burner and mounted it on the front of the boat and would ignite it. It was amazing to see.



Here is a shot on the day after Christmas where I setup Tim's Hot Wheels stunt sets. Each one basicly kicks off the other one. It pretty much took up the entire space between the kitchen table and the piano in the dining room area.

Of course Dad has been giggling gleefully since he got these installed and his coworkers are grateful he kept bugging them. Christmas present to myself finally. I love them. Not the best shot. The stand are also drawers to hold stuff as well as cabinates above. Way to much storage in certain parts of this house.


Ok let me explain this one. I took the kids out to one of the local parks and Sam was sliding down. For some reason this slide would build up a lot of static electricity. You can see her as she was sliding down. Then after she got up. Her hair would literally stand on end. I was laughing pretty hard and she thought it was great as well. click on the pic for a larger shot.

Trying to bake....

I was getting a little frustrated this week. I have been working on freezer meals. This has been working for the most part. A little annoying when I get home and look at the recipe and it says Oh yea cook for a half hour then remove the foil and cook for another 15 min....starts to tear my hair out. There have been some recipes that I find that the kids really do like. Such as the pasta tacos ie jumbo shells with taco meat and cheese on top that they loved. There have been some others that the kids really didn't like so much, chicken enchaladas. The main frustration has been when I put something in the oven and I set it to start at x time, I thought it was great when it finally dawned on me that the oven has a delayed start time. Cook x min and it would be hot and ready to almost ready when I get home about 6ish. No such luck. 2 times and nada. I even made sure it would come on by testing it. So I get to scramble to make some dinner and then cook the other dinner for the next day, I have to cook it or throw it out. I am going to try again when I get the manual and try some testing this weekend and see what is going on.

On a good note I decided to make some dinner rolls. I went to the store and realized a dozen was almost $3. Bread is cheaper than that. So I found a recipe and made some last night. I had Sam help and then using parchment paper to seperate them put the dough balls in the freezer to freeze. I though this would be great to defrost and then bake as something quick. Well pulled them out this morning put some in bags and baked a few to try out. The defrost on the microwave heated them up enough that they were already rising and popped them in the oven to cook. They were great. I have enough yeast leftover that I will probably make another batch to put in the freezer for later.

Honey do...when I am the Honey

Ok, it was a handyman weekend.
Saturday - Looked into the vibrating garbage disposal. Replaced the catch in the sink of the kitchen as well as it was starting to not look good. Both weren't bad but they weren't fun either. I was a happy camper either with the kids getting along as they usually do trying to put away a box of toys in Sam's room.

I borrowed a drill from Grandma and finally got the towel rack put up in the kids bathroom. Along with a replacement toilet paper holder and a hand towel rack. It now matches the rest of the forest green paint in the bathroom as these are oak and blend in well. The kids I am sure are much happier about having a towel within reach vs being up on top of the shower curtain rod.

Sunday - After buying a recipe book for freezer meals and making 2 of the 3 meals I found that sounded good. The third was being crockpotted so that I get to make it tonight for later this week. I was tired enought that I had to lay down for a nap. When the kids woke me from my slumber on the counch I found that I was still tired and they had been cooped up to much. So we were going to try for the bike ride again.

I had two flat tires last time so it was canceled last week. I looked at the front tube and discovered that the holes were bad enough that the slime would work. So I found my spare tube and put that on the front. Then I looked at the back tire. The valve was toast so it was back to see if I have another spare tube. I did but it wouldn't work on the rims that I had on the bike at the time. So I swapped the tube on the front to the one on the back. Then I drug out the other set of wheels that I have and put one of those on the front with a different type of tube. That worked. Whew.

So I wanted to explore the neighborhood and see what was around. I knew I had a greenbelt behind the house and that there were sidewalks behind some of the houses as well. WOW. Was I shocked.. There is a ton of area where the green belts are behind the houses. We ended up taking about a 45 min ride around and the kids had fun as well. It was nice enough outside as well to enjoy and the moon was full and looked great. We are going to have to do this again.

Lions, Tigers and Picachu Oh my.

We had pancakes, as usual for one day on the weekend, this morning and I did the molds right this time with spray so they came out this morning. So here's a pic of them.

The walking disaster...... but only to herself.

Ok, first things first... Timothy has gone to school all week with little to no issues. And no calls from the school asking me to come pick him up. Yea!!!! So things are going well on that front. He is also going to sleep at night within a couple of minutes vs at the apartment where I would hold Sam's hand for 5 minutes then go to Timmy because he wasn't calmed down yet. And even then he wouldn't go to sleep right away most of the time. Since we moved into the house he has been alsleep within minutes wether I hold his hand or not. I am cutting down on the hand holding especially with him to work on the seperation issues.

We are still working on scheduleing issues at home. I though I would catch a little bit of a break with Timmy going to kindergarden and having homework but no such luck with him going to the Montessori school. No homework for Timmy. So it's find something for him to do, while Sam does her homework, that doesn't bother Sam. Then it's Daddy making dinner and then helping with homework while doing this or right after dinner. I am trying to work on reading stuff with the kids but it is hard with us getting home about 6ish and not getting dinner on the table til 6:30-7pm and then the kids are tired and are really up for doing homework type stuff. We'll see how it goes. It does's help right now that I am pretty much crashing right after the kids.

So what's up with Samantha. Well lets see here she burned her hand a little on a hot cookie sheet the other night. Then she banged her head on her bed. This morning she banged one of her toes on the kitchen table and then got her finger caught in her chest of drawers. I told her I was going to put her in the middle of the living room and have her sit on the bean bag just to make sure she didn't hurt her self anymore. She also has been playing up the drama a little this morning with the fake crying ect as well. So she is becoming a walking disaster area but only to herself right now. Well see how the weekend goes for her. Hopefully I won't have a daughter that is black and blue come Monday.

On a quick side note it seems like for me this has a been a week of wierd errors at my regular job and my side job. I finally got the signature capture program up and running for the side job and it is out for testing after a permission error on the tablet pc that they are using was giving me fits. At the regular job there was a issue with the proxy server settings on a users machine and it not allowing a user to get to a internal web page to view some reports for a program being developed. Finnally got both issues resolved but it was one of those annoying issues that lasts a day or two. And on a project I am working on it doesn't want to create pdf's for me automaticcly via code so I am baby sitting a computer that goes pop every times it creates a pdf. There are only about 20K documents to do across a couple of days....pop...pop...pop...pop....Popcorn sounds good right now I think I will make some.