Leaving

After a long time thinking about it and hashing it over, it's been decided that it's time to move. Things aren't the same anymore, and even though I'll still miss this place with every fiber of my being, I know that the move will most likely be the best thing for me. I know that some will question my decision, and will wonder why I made it.

"Wasn't she happy?" They'll ask.

"Why can't she be content with what she has?!" They'll cry.

But I find that even though I know I may get criticism for the decision I've made, and even though my heart is protesting, my head knows that this is probably for the best.

Follow Me Here...

Mother Nature

Duke, originally uploaded by scootersbabygirl.

That's Dukie. He knew I wasn't feeling good yesterday and stayed by my side almost the entire day.

My snit yesterday? Totally caused by hormones - hello Mother Nature! I haven't had my period in a few months, and then, at 5 am this morning - SURPRISE!! That's one thing about MY period, it's like the surprise gift that keeps on giving. I never know when it's going to happen or how bad it's going to get.

So right now my lower back is killing me, and I'm exhausted with a huge project to finish up in the next few hours, but at least I know that the pain and the frustrations are caused by something specific, which is nice.

Everyone's complaining about how it's "back to school/work" day. Yeah, it's back to school day for us too. Toad actually woke up to his alarm clock and I only had to beat him upside the head three times to make him get dressed, and even though he's not excited to go back, Babygirl is stoked.

My only complaint? I have too much work to do to indulge in a kid-free hour of Rock Band 2!!

End of Vacation - and a Little Griping

Watching, originally uploaded by scootersbabygirl.

Tomorrow is the end of vacation, and while I've still been working here at home, I have been able to wake up at the lazy hour of - 7:30. Actually, a few days I slept in until 8:30 (Scott was home and up with everyone). Babygirl and Toad have been waking up late too! It's definitely going to be interesting tomorrow to get everyone up and back to school.

We played outside yesterday for an hour or so, and will again this afternoon. My SIL and her boyfriend/fiance/whatever-he-is, have been coming over every Sunday for dinner, and it's kind of nice. I love that Toad and Babygirl are growing up having their Aunt and Uncle so close. Tonight it's my turn to make dinner - I love being able to cook for more than just Scott and the kids.

I guess I'd better get some clothes on, then, so that I can head outside once again and freeze. Ah well, the kids enjoy it!

But before I go, I must tell you about my neighbor. Our Asian neighbor is very nice. She loves the kids because she doesn't have any grandchildren yet, and she spoils them whenever she's here (she has more than one house).

She also loves Scott.

Yesterday she called and asked if she and her husband could come down in order to bring down a few things. They brought down a few boxes of chocolate covered macadamia nuts (they usually do), and a jacket for Scott. A NICE jacket for Scott. A VERY EXPENSIVE jacket for Scott.

Our neighbor's son owns a company that makes outdoor items, so she occasionally snags items that were being used for display, or occasionally items straight off of the shelf. Then she gives them to Scott.

In the last two or three years he's gotten at LEAST five or so jackets from her (probably closer to six or seven now, including the last jacket).

Me? Nothing.

Now while I'm not usually one to freak out when everyone else in the family gets something except me, it's starting to take it's toll on me. EVERY TIME she comes up, she gives the kiddos something and Scott something. But nothing for me.

Maybe it's because I'm a fat-ass and can't fit into the clothes that her son makes. Maybe it's because she's Asian and men mean more in their culture. Or maybe it's just because she likes Scott more.

And let's couple that with what my Aunt said the other day - she and her daughter, my cousin, babysat the kiddos on New Years Eve so that we could go out for a nice dinner. When we dropped the kids off both the Aunt and Cousin made a point to say:

"Oh he's such a wonderful husband! To take you out like this! To call and ask us to babysit! He's so wonderful! You're so lucky to have him!"

Yes - I am lucky to have my husband. I won't dispute that. But the only reason he wanted to go out for New Years is because *I* asked if we could do something different. And the only reason he called for a babysitter is because *I* pointed out that we needed someone to babysit and that I had no idea who we should call because I didn't want to feel rude.

So *I* was behind the entire thing for the most part. And HE gets all the credit. And the stuff from the neighbor.

Apparently this post turned from being a lament about vacation being over to a lament about why my husband is "so much better" than I am.

*sigh*

Welcome back to the friggin' real world.

Happy 2009...a day late

So 2008 went out with a bang. Scott took me to our favorite restaurant for dinner, and then we hung out with my SIL and her BF and the kids until midnight. Yes, the kids made it until midnight. I'm still sort of in awe about that! What did we do the whole time?

Play Rock Band 2.

And then, the next morning/early afternoon, the BF called and asked very politely if he could come down and play. And we did. For three hours.

It's a sickness, people.

Today was different, though, as the first thing we had to do was to take both Mals to the vet. Lovely. They've had this cough thing going on for about 2 months now - just when you think they're over it, they cough some more! One has it, then the other, and I'm sick of waking up at 3 am to a coughing dog, so we ponied up the $76 and came home with prednisone and a friggin vat of antibiotics! Seriously - 2 pills per dog, 2 times per day = 80 pills!! Thank God they're not that expensive.

Later this afternoon we're heading to the grocery store (funness!) and the dump (more funness) and after I get some work done, Scott's co-worker and his wife should be coming up, to....

Well, I'm sure you know what we're gonna do.

Sick, people, just sick.

Hope your 2009 is going beautifully so far!

Cleaning the Slate for 2009

I'm not sure what resolutions I'm going to make tonight, but I thought that maybe, instead, I should clean the slate about things that are bothering me, or things that I need improvement on, before 2009 begins. Maybe it will help 2009 start off on the cleanest slate possible.

• I told Scott the other night that I don't want any more children. Those who have been reading for awhile know that I had an ectopic in the summer of 2007, and that one tube is gone and the other is double clamped. How can we have more children? Adoption. Scott was adopted and he wants to adopt a number of children. After doing foster care for a few years, I honestly don't know if I can handle the stress. I told him this the other day and he got fairly upset. We're now in the process of sort of healing from this grand announcement.
• I don't think I'm the best mom that I can be. Quite often I work instead of playing with them, and I tend to get snappy easily. I also think that I expect too much from my children sometimes.
• I need to be better at communicating with my friends. I'm horrible at emailing back, and I tend to avoid the phone more and more lately. I love and appreciate my friends and need to keep in better touch with them.
• I'm talking with my father, and that whole situation - with my mother and my father - is royally fucking with my mind. I need to get all of my priorities straight and do what is best for my children and them alone.
• I know I can work harder than I do. Quite often I procrastinate and add stress onto myself. I have done this since before I can remember. I need to start working smarter so that I don't stress myself out as much.
• I need to get my health under control. I've been avoiding some things that I need to get done, and my body is slowly showing me how pissed off it is becoming.
  
• I need to make more time for Scott and I in the coming year. We didn't have any vacation together in 2008, really, and we need to change that for 2009. Only by us having a strong relationship can we be great parents for our children.
• I need to make more time for myself. I am thinking about scheduling a weekly "Mom's bathroom hour", where I take a long bath, or a hot shower, then do my nails, ect. I can't spend the money on spa treatments around here - or won't because I'm a cheapskate, but I need to start pampering myself a little in my own home to de-stress.

So those are some of the things that I'm thinking about right now, and hopefully I can improve upon them in the New Year.

I hope you all have a happy, and safe, New Years and that your 2009 is amazing!

Holidays Over - Relaxing??

Praise Jesus!, originally uploaded by scootersbabygirl.

Are the holidays over yet??!! Oh, by the way, how awesome is that picture? It's what Toad looked like when he opened the DS on Christmas morning. Then he did a little dance - I'm so not kidding, I have video proof!

Anyway, yesterday Toad's friend came over to play for most of the day and then my mother came over to check out Rock Band 2 and to bring dinner (go MOM!).

Then, after they left and the kiddos went to bed, Scott and I played on our Rock Band 2 characters and opened up Livin' On a Prayer - BON JOVI BABY!!!! YES!

I was reminded today that New Years Eve is TOMORROW - WOAH! And we still have NO IDEA what we're doing. We were going to go out somewhere, but we can't agree on where to go out. Now there are talks of two things...

1. Of he and I going out to a nice dinner at our favorite restaurant, which is about 25 minutes away or so.

2. His co-worker and his SIL (one of my BFF's) and her fiance coming over to play rock Band 2 with us.

So I have NO IDEA what is going on, but I do know one thing - if my family is around me, and I get a kick-ass Happy New Years kiss from the hubby, I'm a happy girl.

But I have no idea what resolutions to make. I refuse to make the weight loss resolution, because I never stick to it. What resolution are you making?

Getting Spoiled

Yesterday we headed to Walmart in order to let the kiddos spend some of their holiday money. My father surprised us by gifting Scott and I with a $50 gift card to Walmart, so we figured we'd look around and see if there was anything we wanted to purchase.

On the trip down we had to stop at an ATM machine to get money out for lunch (Scott's big for cash) and it happened to be an ATM machine that I used when I was in college. I had a weird flashback - remembering that I would often try to get out something as small as $20 and would often see "insufficient funds". Yet yesterday I took out $100 and there was enough left to pay the mortgage with - very surreal.

So we hit Walmat with me feeling very appreciative of the things that we have - our house, our vehicles, and most especially our family. That didn't stop me, however, from badgering Scott to use of the $50 so that we could purchase something I've wanted for awhile...


Rock Band 2!!! I've wanted Rock Band for a long time, but Scott hated that it was wired - Rock Band 2 is almost all wireless, except the mic and hat has a really long cord. It was definitely over $50, but using the $50 towards it, along with me promising some pretty big things to the hubby, meant that we came home with the LAST Rock Band 2 for the Wii in the back of our minivan.

Scott jumped online to do some work while I hooked the whole thing up (he helped in the end, though, when I couldn't figure out why the drums weren't working for some reason - in the end, Babygirl actually accidentally got it working LOL). Then we started jamming. Toad LOVES it!!



Scott eventually jumped on the drums - he used to play drums in high school, and it was very hard to get him off of the drums long enough to eat dinner. He did let our brother-in-law get on the drums for awhile, as he loves the drums too, and between the two of them I learned pretty quickly that Rock Band 2 can make anyone think that they're truly a rock star!!


So we came home with Rock Band 2 and it left me, once more, loving how hard we've worked and how hard we'll continue to work, in order to give our children, and ourselves, things that we've always wanted.

Bacony Christmas

I've got lots of pics from Christmas I'm uploading right now onto Flickr, but I had to share this story - one of my bestest friends, Danni, sent me a Christmas package and asked Scott to wrap it - he was frustrated because he apparently bought the same thing for me. I laughed because it seemed amazing that my husband and one of my best friends bought me the same gift! On Christmas day he had me open his first (Sorry Danni) and then hers - this is what was in the package:

A whole lot of BACON SALT!!! I've been looking to try bacon salt for awhile, and they both got me some for Christmas! I will be set up in Bacon Salt for awhile!!

What's really funny is that Scott left a message on the order sheet about his order - this is what it said:

Hi guys! I'm so glad I found you! My wife has been wanting some Bacon Salt for a long time, so I'm getting it for her for Christmas. Thanks!! - Scott

And they replied!

Scott - I threw in some Bacon Lip Balm just to add to the holiday Bacony goodness! Enjoy! Tori and the Bacon Salt Team.

THAT is customer service people!

Hope you had a wonderful holiday and that it was as filled with Bacony goodness as mine was!!

The Christmas Party

The girls, originally uploaded by scootersbabygirl.

Look! Look above!! There, on the far left! The woman with the black and pink shirt and the black hair and the glasses?! See that woman?! She's a fatass and needs to stay behind the lens and not in front of it!!

Moving on.

The Christmas party with my mom, step-dad, and step-sisters and their families was on Saturday. It's the first time we've had it at my house, and the first time we've gone to it in a number of years. There was a massive falling out, and in order for there to not be ANOTHER falling out, let's not go there, kay?

Each step-sister has kids. SS1 has 2, SS2 has 5 (lord have mercy), and SS3 has 3. With our kids that's.....12 kiddos in the house. Add 9 adults and you're ready for a party - or a mental institution.

Everything was going fine UNTIL the sewer decided that it was pissed off and had enough and backed up on us. We have our own septic system, but when it was put in (long before we moved in), the dumbass who built it put in a 90 degree angle in the piping. This means that occasionally it gets plugged - especially when you've got little kids who don't pay attention to the Charmin bear commercial and use too much toilet paper.

Scott spent over an hour trying to unplug it when everyone was here, but was unsuccessful, so we had to very CAREFULLY use the downstairs toilet - making me feel like a miserable hostess.

(yes, he got it fixed the next day - a temporary fix I'm assuming. Yes, it will cost us plenty of money come the spring...*sigh*)

The gift giving went well, and there was really nothing blog-worthy about the entire situation, aside from the fact that none of us killed each other and the toilet broke.

That's NOTHING like the fact that today I left the dogs in the garage because I was trying to be nice (it's FREEZING in VT!) when I took Babygirl to preschool and did some errands - only to come home and find that they'd found the garbage bag from the Christmas party on Saturday night (nice segue, no?) and had strewn it from one end of the garage to the other.

NO CHRISTMAS FOR PUPPIES!

Guess what it did this weekend?!

Tree day, originally uploaded by scootersbabygirl.

SNOW! That's right - snow, and more snow, and more snow. Still waiting to see if Toad and Babygirl's schools will be canceled tomorrow or not. I'm gonna guess not - unless we get about a foot overnight!

We had the family holiday party, and I've got those pics over on my flickr acct. But I loved this pic - it really shows how much snow we got - LOTS. Scott had to shovel TWICE!!

More on the family party after I've recovered from all that damn manual labor LOL.

Loving my Camera

Sometimes I look at photographs and I go "wow. Oh wow. I wish I could do that." But I know that the trick in taking an excellent photograph lies in not only practicing your craft, but in catching the little moments that make the picture great.

This morning I got up early and watched last night's Top Chef (I've said it before and I'll say it again - God Bless DVR). I heard Toad get up but I had no idea Babygirl got up until I walked into the kitchen and looked down the hallway. Babygirl was laying there on the floor with two of her bears - using one to rest her head upon, waiting for her brother to get out of the bathroom.

Instead of yelling for Toad to get out of the bathroom, or continuing with my morning routine, I snagged the camera.

Good pic or bad pic? What say you?

Christmas ornaments

Me, originally uploaded by scootersbabygirl.

I remember when Scott and I first got together - we had no Christmas ornaments. My grandmother hated the idea of us not having a tree and bought us a little one that we fell in love with. It had some tiny ornaments on it and was just adorable.

Then our son had his first real Christmas and so we got a tree and started to really enjoy Christmas with our son. Once again my gram saved our first tree by giving us the 12 days of Christmas balls, which we love and, again, still put up on our tree.

We slowly started to collect ornaments, and every year we let the kids choose one ornament and we add it to the tree. Now we've got plenty of ornaments - so many that our tree is stuffed, which I love. There are, however, some ornaments that mean more to me than others.

This ornament is, I believe, the first ornament I received when I was little. It's one of the first ornaments I try to put up on the tree and it means a lot to me because it's my link to my Childhood Christmases.

This Weekend

Toad and Santa, originally uploaded by scootersbabygirl.

Aside from a buttload of work and lots of cleaning, this was an awesomely amazing weekend.

On Saturday we took Toad and Babygirl down to our local little municipal building where we got to see a great clown show (and I use the word clown loosely, because he wasn't dressed like a clown, thankfully, but did have parts of his act that were definitely clown-like) and to visit Santa!

Babygirl decided that she had no desire to sit on Santa's lap. I'm going to remind her of that when she's older and wants to sit on a boys lap. "But honey, you didn't want to sit on Santa's lap, so why sit on that boy's lap?"

Toad, however, was excited and raced to the line. He asked (ie: BEGGED) Santa for a DS for Christmas. Santa's response? "We'll see how it goes." Good Santa. Actually, I'm pretty sure there's a DS in Toad and Babygirl's futures, but I'm not sure if it will be Santa providing the DS or mom and dad!

How awesome did that Santa look? Seriously! His outfit was gorgeous and his beard was home-grown! I wanted to go crawl on his lap and ask him if I could have a weekend getaway with the hubby as my Christmas present, but I'm pretty sure the folks who put the show and treat on would have ousted me immediately, which would've sucked because Toad and Babygirl both got ice cream, a cookie, a giant glass of milk, and two presents! We're definitely heading to visit Santa at thsi particular locale again next year.

We then headed up to cut our tree. We go to a place where you can choose and cut your own tree. This year it was $20. I've been told that in some places in the nation it cost over $80 to get a real Christmas Tree. Seriously?! That's nuts!!

Some friends that we haven't seen in awhile and their children popped up on Saturday and then Scott and I indulged in junk food and Batman. A pinch of cuddling was thrown in as well. A perfect recipe for a Saturday night.

Sunday we were all a bit lazy, but in between work and stuff we managed to get the house cleaned and Toad's floor cleaned. We even got the tree up when my SIL and her BF showed up. I have some great pics of that I can't wait to put up.

All in all it was an amazing weekend. One that I hope the children will remember for a very long time.

Takaani and Kamik

Takaani and Kamik, originally uploaded by scootersbabygirl.

Remember when they were just puppies a year ago? Remember?! Remember all of the chewed up towels and the destroyed toys? Remember the poop and pee on the carpet and the mountains of food we went through (oh, wait, we still go through that). Remember how adorable they looked as puppies?

They're not puppies anymore. But damn do they look majestic.

I knew there was a reason we kept them around.