Its a girl!

My sister found out yesterday she's having a girl in December. Secretly I was kind of hoping for a boy for my own selfish reasons because my little Ty needs another boy cousin that's close by to play with. But, I suppose we (me and Ty) will survive with another baby girl to dress up in the incredibly adorable clothes! Now we can dress Zoe and baby Delena (just throwing that out there for name suggestions) in matching little dresses and such.

And now we sit back and wait for December 17th.....

Had a great time

I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to North Bend. My MIL and SIL are my kind of shoppers. No "I think I want to look inside this store even though I have no intent of buying anything. Oh, and I'm going to peruse every book, read every card and try to find a stuffed armadillo for my great neice."

We arrived with a plan - head to the Dress Barn! As a little note, I swore I would NEVER shop at a place that has the name barn in it. But to the credit of the Dress Barn, I really like a lot of their clothes. Tracy, the SIL, had her new Baby Aspen with her and just so happened to forget her carrier, so the plan was diverted slightly as we had to stop by Carter's to see if they might have an umbrella stroller. No stroller but LOTS OF KID CLOTHES!!!! Our favorite. It took us about 20 minutes to overload ourselves with outfits for all four kids. Boy, was that fun!

The MIL found a stroller next door at the toy store, so with that out of the way we could finally shop! As if there was any $$ left after Carter's. On the way to the DB, we got sidetracked at a kitchen store. Now that is where I can go crazy! I love all the gadgets. If I had unlimited space, I would surely try to fill it up with all kinds of gizmos that I would indeed use. I'm trying not to buy stuff that I won't use/don't need, so that makes it easier to go into such stores. I did, however, find a magnetic spice rack that attaches to the inside of my cupboard door. And it was on sale! I've been looking for this very item for quite some time so I was super thrilled. I wish my camera's battery was charged because I already have it hung up and all my spices in the containers and alphabetized. Love it!

Finally.....we arrived at the barn. Found some great outfits that I LOVE! Very happy. We stopped at a couple of other stores, made the mandatory fudge shop stop, and hit the road with the little Subaru trunk stuffed to the gillies with bags (it's a small car but stuffed nonetheless). I had a great time bonding with the girls. It made me want to take the kids school shopping which is kind of funny because they only go to school once a week.

Today I'm off on a whim to North Bend to do some shopping. My SIL suggested it yesterday, so she and my MIL are going with. We're going to the outlet malls which is quite deceiving. They make you beleive you're getting a great deal because its an "outlet." I rarely find that much of a better deal to make the jaunt worthwhile, but I do like that all the shops are in one place. We have a limited supply of big chain stores here in the big city of Wenatchee so its nice to go someplace with a bit more variety. I actually don't like to shop. Hate trying on clothes because that means I have to take off all my garb for EVERY outfit. Call it laziness. I love to spend money and get cool stuff. But I don't necessarily like to shop.

Now what I do like to do is shop for the kids. I could spend hours in the kids clothing stores. They are entering an age, though, where they have to pick the clothes they wear and try them on because if it doesn't fit just right or if they don't like how it looks, they wont wear it and I'm out the $$. Gone are the days I could grab anything and they were thrilled with something new. No. Now we're picky.

That's all. Hopefully I'll come back with new outfits that make me look amazingly skinny. Wont hold my breath, but a girl can always dream....

Our Little Village

Not to be outdone by Supermom Dawn who is always making little fairly lands, I made a little village today for the kids. It was actually an excuse to get them to play outside. The girls can sit for HOURS playing with their little figurines. And Ty needed something to do. So I made little TeePee houses tied together with vines found around the yard and then covered in leaves and grasses. After today, I think I could make it in the woods if I got lost - on a very warm, dry, short summer night....with a full backpack, a knife and a sleeping bag. Survivor Man would be so impressed.


Yes, that is Snow White, the abominable snowman, and I think Mrs. Claus under a skull cap roof. Oh, and My Little Pony came over for a visit below. Beat that, Dawn!

Overheard

Today we had some deer in the backyard checking things out. That darn dog of ours started chasing them away, and we were explaining that the deer can hear, smell and see really well. Brooklyn says "those deer must have really good contacts in."

Berry Pickin'

How does a week fly by!

Last week my friend Dawn and I headed up to Chelan. Doug had an appt so I called her on a whim to meet us up there at Blueberry Hills. We picked berries and had a great time. I ended up with almost 6 lbs of blueberries and probably 2-3 lbs of raspberries. They were only $3/lb! Heck of a price. I understand why raspberries are so expensive. They're such a pain in the butt to pick! I googled a bunch of recipes and started out making one that looked SUPER yummy. And then I got into it and all the measurements were in weight instead of cups. So, out came the scale and I must have really screwed something up because they were terrible! Threw those out and made a blueberry/raspberry crisp that was divine. I've decided I'm going to make rasp ice cream with the remainder of those, but I haven't decided what to do with the blueberries. Heaven forbid we eat them raw!
I had to include this picture of Trent with a berry on his thumb. I thought it was so cute, and it reminded me of the little boy who "stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plumb."

After the berry picking we threw the kids into Lake Chelan! So fun! We found a perfect beach and there were hardly any people.

We have carpet

That's the good news. The bad news is that its the wrong kind! The story goes that Lowe's switched a few numbers during the ordering and ordered "my" carpet for the MIL suite. And they ordered "her" carpet and installed it in my living room. After I laughed, I called Lowe's, still laughing. They actually admitted they made the mistake and are replacing whatever needs replacing for free. Oh, if only all transactions were so easy!

On another note, I went out of the house today. First time all week. I have been so shocked at how fatigued I've felt with this not-being-able-to-breathe stuff. I was made aware of my fatigue on/around Tuesday. I hadn't slept well, couldn't lay down because I couldn't breathe, I could only sit in certain chairs that didn't fold me in half thus further compromising my already quite painful air intake, and was just plain tired. I was sitting outside in one of the "good chairs" and I started to cry. Sob, actually. Probably pure exhuastion. Perhaps a bit of hypoxia. But whose keeping track.

I was so tired and sore that I had snot running down my face, into my mouth, because I just couldn't bear to inhale deeply. So I just let it run. Lapping it up like a dog (or actually maybe like a small child) Then Doug came out to see me. I think it really grossed him out. All he said was "do you want a kleenex for that?" Yes, please.

I knew I wasn't feeling well.....

So all weekend I've felt under the weather. (I know, what a boring thing to blog about) Its progressively gotten worse to the point where it was too much effort to even answer Doug when he asked how I was feeling. I thought I might have strep because of the petrie dish growing in the back of my mouth. Then last night I was pretty sure I was going to die. My pulse was 130 and my temp was 102.5! Even the sheets were hot (and not in the good way!). I never get fevers. My body's idea of a fever is about 98.9, so I knew something was up. And then today it happened again! So I went to the walk in. No strep throat. Pneumonia! I have pneumonia! I could hardly beleive it. In a way I was sort of releived because then at least I knew I wasn't being a sissy. I have an excuse for feeling oh so miserable. And slightly short of breath.

So now when I'm not sleeping, I'm checking everyone's blogs and even scanning through and reading random blogs I find. There are some pretty interesting ones out there. For example, at about 1 am last night I stumbled upon one of a very pretty young lady with a beautiful family, a gorgeous blog page and TERRIBLE spelling! I had to keep reading it because I was so amazed at how awful the spelling really was. (Now I'm probably giving everyone a complex about their spelling) She used the word "their" to mean there, they're and their. And she spelled "our" a-r-e every time! Oh, and get this - there were no periods or capital letters. Just a bunch of run on sentences. I shouldn't be so hard on her. I'm told you're either a good speller or you're not - but come on! Use some punctuation!!!!!!!(intentional overkill right there)

That's all for my ramblings. I really hope there aren't any major spelling errors on this post.... ;)

5-1=4

Chad the Chicken would be so disappointed. Much to my dismay our bird dog stayed true to herself. Me, the naive one, thought she just wanted to play with the chickens and was just watching them and chasing them and stalking them. For the past couple of months, with the exception of a couple of thwarted mauling attempts, she's left the chickens alone and has just been chasing them. And yesterday it happened. One of the cutest, fuzziest, little chickens met its demise at the jaws of Bronco. Stupid dog. (Stupid owner)

All I wanted was a milkshake

For the past few days, I have been SUFFERING with whatever bug my kids had for the ten days prior. My throat is covered with white pus, my right lymph node is super swollen, and there is something so grotesque growing in the back of my throat that it makes my stomach kind of quesy when I swallow because I taste whatever it is. I keep asking Doug to smell my breath to see if he can smell what I'm tasting. Its so disgusting. I've been chilling and sweating and chilling and sweating, and yes I'm complaining and you should feel really bad for me.
Tonight, I finally felt like eating (I've harldy eaten for three days! That qualifies as an emergency in our house). I even felt well enough to drive to the burger joint downtown (Rusty's) to get milkshakes. Its probably less than a mile from where I live, so there's no need to grab my license, right. What could possibly go wrong.
And then the mean lady says she MUST see some PHOTO ID! She's had "four fraudulent checks just this month" (WHATEVER! I totally didn't beleive that one! Its only the 5th!) I tried to charm my way out of it and I told her I knew my license number by heart. No budging. I'm still really pissed off! I just might not ever go there again. Take that!

#14 I'm thankful that I'm well enough now to complain. Must be getting back to normal.