Crazy Weather

I'm not sure what is up with the weather lately but it sure hasn't been typical spring time weather around here.  Downright cold, lots of rain...our yard is so soggy it's like walking in a marsh...and numerous storms.  There were tornado warnings posted all around the area today.  I was on a conference call this morning when a lady on the phone caused us all to jump out of our seats when she yelped.  She was in a different area, was having a huge storm go thru and had such a huge crash of thunder that she thought her house had gotten hit.  Needless to say we got her off the phone pretty quick.

These are a couple of pics took of the storm that skirted around our area last night.  They aren't quite as impressive as they were irl.

Yes, that black blob in the water is the head of the snake

If you like snakes, tonight would have been the night to go for a walk with us.  We saw not one...but two...snakes.  Now, I don't care for snakes one bit so I was not thrilled with seeing two of them tonight.  But thankfully they were contained in the water so there wasn't much chance of them climbing up the rocks to get to me before I could run away.  ;)    Keari was telling me that as I was taking the photo of the second one that it stop and started slithering it's tongue out at me.  I'm so very glad I didn't see that!

So nice of him to stop and pose for  me

I'm so happy that at the end of our walk we saw these cute little guys.  :)

No guys....mom is this way....

Crazy Weather

I thought March was supposed to me the month that started off rough and end easy. So far, April has been far more interesting. Snow on the first day in some areas of the state, and today started off just plain ugly...dark, dreary, rainy. Afternoon brought loud rumbles of thunder, pouring rain and hail. Wonder what will be in store for us tomorrow.

Alex still isn't feeling well and now Connor seems to rapidly sliding downhill which will be bad for tomorrow as he is supposed to ref 3 soccer games. Keari, on the other hand, seems to be back to her normal perky self.

On the menu today for lunch was dolphin cheese and mayonaise sandwiches. I'm not quite sure who introduced them to that combo but both Adam and Keari love them.  Keari was patient enough to wait for her sandwich to be cut into the cute dophin/heart shapes.  Adam, on the other hand, doesn't have a patient bone in his body and started eating the sandwich as soon as I pulled the bread out of the bag.  And yes, that would have meant that it was just plain bread at that point.  Told ya, not a patient bone...

 
Today we watched Tangled, which the girls have seen a number of times already. This was my first viewing and I loved it. Very cute movie! and oh so much better than that Avatar, The Last Airbender movie we watched last night.  The girls actually ended up watching it again right before bedtime with Andy and the sign that he liked it was that he stayed til the end of the movie...which did not happen with the one last night.

Guess I should think about doing some housework tomorrow but that's really no fun. Sure wish I could get the child workers in this house to do their chores...or rather do them correctly because to give them some credit, they do try to do them, they just tend to not do them very well. I keep reminding myself that one day soon they will all be out of the house and I will miss these days. Okay, maybe not so much...and not so soon since the youngest is only 2 1/2 and hasn't even gotten to the chore stage yet. ;)

First Day of School

Today was Connor's first day of high school. Amazing that he is already at that stage in his life. He seemed to enjoy his first day...talked to a few of the kids that he had met during soccer practices the last couple of days. Today and tomorrow are half days...I think they are trying to ease the freshman into high school life. He was only annoyed with one teacher today because they got homework in that class. He made me laugh as he was telling me about it.

After 3 trips to school and 2 to Subway, Alex finally has his parking permit for this year. He almost didn't get it today because I almost missed that he needed a copy of his license (I was going to pick up the permit for him because he had to work) but it did require an extra trip to Subway to get said license so it could be copied.

Connor had soccer practice tonight where he scored his first goal. Yay!

Kenzie had soccer referee training tonight, which Connor was supposed to go as well. I'm actually not sure how it went because I forgot to ask her when she got home. Oops. I got distracted by her request to sleep over at a friends house. We then got into a discussion on why she couldn't...nothing bad on her part, will just need her help with the kiddos tomorrow.

Andy and Alex are driving to Pennsylvannia tomorrow to pick up a couple of church pews. We've talked forever about getting a church pew to use at our kitchen table but have never been able to. I happened to be searching online recently and found a couple for a great price...except they won't work at the table due to them being slightly curved instead of straight. But we are planning on using one in our living room to replace the sofa, that is currently being used as a wall...no railing at the stairs due to a remodeling project many moons ago where we took down the iron railing with the intention of putting up a wooden one. Somehow that has never happened. But the plans are tomorrow to move the sofa to the kids playroom to get rid of the junky chairs in there and put the pew where the sofa is and that will act as a wall at the stairs. Hopefully it will look okay. The pews we are getting are lovely and it's quite ironic that they are numbered 1 & 2 as when we go to church we almost always sit in the 1st or 2nd pew. This is a pic of what they look like. The gentleman we are purchasing them was so kind as to clean them off some and polish them with Murphy's Oil.

With some more cleaning and polishing, they are going to look awesome. I can't wait to see what they look like in person. I'm not quite sure what we are going to do with the second pew but for the price we just couldn't pass it up.

Alex actually had to work today. He almost never has to work during the day, always the evening shift but they asked him if he could help during the day today. Normally that would not be a problem except for it being Connor's first day of school and Alex needing his parking pass. Everything worked out but there was a lot of juggling going on today. He did have some excitement towards the end of his shift. Apparently the bank across the street from their store got robbed today. The cops went around to each of the businesses asking if they had seen anything. As Alex was leaving, he saw a guy getting arrested at one of the stores down the street. I have to assume that it was related to the robbery.

Work was crazy today...I wonder if it's a full moon, I know it's getting close. I feel like I was jumping between 10 different things today and didn't get a single one done. Bad thing is I'm not sure what they all were now so I'm not even sure I'll be able to finish them tomorrow.

The weather here has been lovely the last two days. Windy, cool..has actually been chilly enough to wear jeans in the morning and a light jacket outside while playing. It's great weather for staying in bed and snuggling under a blanket. Unfortunately, with these munchkins, there no chance of snuggling under covers for very long. LOL

Unwanted Visitor

I was working this morning when Kenzie comes running into the room (Weds & Fri's are my work from home today) talking about the fish and frogs going crazy in our pond. When she went to investigate what the problem was, she found out that a brown snake was swimming around in the pond. While she watched the snake slithered out under our pool deck. Nice! NOT!

Was a nice day with all the rain showers that came thru...third day in a row that we've had rain..and things actually cooled off some this afternoon, contrary to what the weather forecasters were predicting this morning.

Andy came running in this afternoon as I was just about wrapping work saying that he was going kayaking because the wind was whipping up some pretty good waves in the river. He knew this because he'd just come back from a walk by the river with Adam. He heads out with Kenzie but they actually don't stay as long as I would have expected. Kenzie isn't quite as fearless as she lets on sometimes and didn't really like the waves trying to overturn her kayak.

Snow Clouds?

or just normal rain clouds? Either way, it looks pretty ominous outside. I think it's going to be one chilly night to be playing soccer. Connor has a makeup game tonight for the game that got rained out on Saturday. Glad it's Andy taking him and not me. I really hate cold weather.

Brr

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday we were outside in shorts enjoying a gorgeous day and today it's 42 degrees, cloudy, gray & drizzly. Glad we took advantage of the nice weather yesterday while we could.

Last Day

Today is my last day of paid maternity leave that my company offers. It's hard to believe that on Monday Adam will be 6 weeks old. This time went by so fast. Thankfully, I have leave of my own so I won't have to go back into the office until December 1 so I still have some time at home. It's sad to think that it's half over already though. Adam's doing great. He sleeps about 5-6 hrs at night now and he's starting to coo...that's always fun. I think he scares himself when he starts cooing because he'll jump sometimes. LOL

We might get lucky with Adam's baptism pictures...his acne is going away so maybe, just maybe, he won't be completely spotty come Sunday. He'll still have his nice lump on his head, though, but that will be hidden under his hat. ;) And let's hope that he'll fit into the baptism outfit...he'll be wearing one of the twins outfits but they were a few pounds lighter at their baptism than he is. I'm sure he'll be fine (she says with fingers crossed LOL).

Looks like the weather has finally decided to get with the right season here. The last few days have been absolutely gorgeous here with temps in the upper 70's/low 80's but that's definitely not fall weather. Today it's in the upper 50's so much more in line with what it should be. Still a beautiful day though.

Brr!

It's definitely not summer anymore. It's downright cold today...and very blustery. Makes me feel like Winnie the Pooh in the Blustery Day story. I think we've skipped driectly from summer to winter which for us is pretty typical. It's a shame though cause I love fall. Temps through the end of the weekend look like they will be in the mid 70's which is nice but they are calling for rain everyday so that's no fun. With put a crimp into the scheduled softball tournament and soccer games that were scheduled. Guess we'll just have to wait and see if it rains the way they say it's supposed to. I'm a little skeptical about weather forecasters because they are typical wrong. It's grey, dreary and rainy right now so they might actually be right this time.

Longest Commute

Okay, I'm sure someone out there has had a longer commute but 5 hrs is a record for me all caused by the weather system that went through our area this afternoon that produced a mix of snow/sleet/freezing rain/rain. The area I was traveling through basically had freezing rain. I was doing okay until I got about 20 miles from home even though I had passed numerous accidents along the way...so many that I eventually lost count. And they weren't just one or two car accidents...they were 6 and 7 car accidents, accidents with cars flipped over. It was amazing. Thankfully, it didn't look like anyone was hurt in the accidents I passed. It took me about an hour to get within 20 miles from home...normally takes me an hour to get home so I didn't think that was too bad considering the weather...but that's when it all changed. I got on the main road to come home and came to a stand still. Move .1 mile in an hour, then another .1 mile in the next hour and finally another .1 mile in the next hour...so in 3 hours, I went .3 miles. Not very good progress. This was all due to extreme icing conditions on a bridge up in front of me. Finally about 3 hrs 45 minutes into the ordeal, they reopened my side of the road to allow traffic over the bridge...they kept the other side of the road closed. When I finally made it to the bridge, I could see why they had closed it as it was still extremely icy even after all the salting/sanding they done in the 3+ hrs that we had been waiting. This is certainly something I hope I don't need to repeat anytime soon. And I was being tortured the entire time I was in the car because a coworker had given me some eggrolls that she had made...problem was they weren't cooked so I couldn't even eat them while I was stuck in traffic. How cruel is that??

There was one humerous part the entire ordeal. After talking with my mom, I found out that a close family friend was also stuck in the same traffic that I was. Turns out she was right beside me in the next lane. Out of all the thousands of cars that were on the road what are the odds that we would have ended up right beside each other. Not sure why, but it made us each feel a little better to know that we weren't stuck in that traffic nightmare alone.

Crazy Weather

From pea soup yesterday to a sauna today...well maybe not quite that warm but it's supposed to get to 70 today. It is the beginning of February, right? Just checking to make sure I haven't gotten into some kind of time warm and it's suddenly become May without me knowing it. And Sunday they are calling for the temps to be in the 20's. Like I said, crazy weather, and it's just another typical day in Maryland where you never know what the temps are going to be like from one day to the next.

Tailgate Repair

The tailgate panel on my car has been falling off for I don't know how long because the clips at the top that are supposed to hold it to the metal frame had broken. It used to be one was broken which was okay because there were still three others to hold it in place. One by one they've all broken until the panel was hanging loosely from the top. I finally bought a repair kit the other week and decided to replace the clips today. Simple enough to pop out the broken clips and pop in the new ones, right? Of course not! The holes that the top clips go into had also broken so even with new clips, the panel still wouldn't stayattached to the frame. The repair kit I got had a way to repair these holes as well but it entailed taking the whole panel off, placing metal brackets over the old holes, screwing those brackets into place, replacing all the clips...top and bottom...and then finally attaching the panel to the frame again. I've included pics of the instructions that came with the repair kit (not the best pics since I was teying to take them one handed while holding the baby). They may look simple enough but it was a pita to actually do. And let me tell, those self drilling screws leave alot to be desired. But I'm happy to report that I was able to get it repaired and my tailgate panel is nice and snug on the frame again. Yay!

On the work front, I received a phone call phone from my boss's boss today (he thinks I actually work for him and not my boss and who's going to argue with him since he's the VP of the department. LOL) He was very excited to know that I was available for work again and had a list of things for me to do. I also had a coworker call me yesterday wanting me to help her redo a report so I'm not lacking for things to do while home. Now I just need to get my brain out of baby mode and back into work mode which isn't the easiest thing to do.

I had an ortho appt today which has resulted in me wearing my retainer full time again. I've been complaining about a couple of teeth still touching and my bite feeling off by the end of the day since my braces came off so he's thinking that my teeth are still trying to shift. So now instead of wearing my retainer just at night now I get to wear it full time for the next three at which point he'll reevaluate how things are going. I don't really have an issue with wearing it full time cause after all the money I spent getting my teeth straightened, I certainly want them to stay that way.

It sure has gotten windy here today. We have a huge front going through which is bringing in cold weather. Once this front gets past it' supposed to get somewhat nice again. I just looked at weatherbug and we currently have winds blowing at 20+ mph and we had a 41+ mph gust at some point today. I'm glad we don't have anything out there that can blow around although I hate to think about what this wind is doing to our poor Christmas lights.

Shots, Shots and More Shots

How many shots? 5, plus an oral vaccine. Poor Kearsyn didn't know what she was in for when she went in for her drs visit this morning. That seems like a ridiculous amount of shots to give a 2 month old at one visit. Both her legs are sore after getting 3 shots in one and 2 in the other. Poor thing has been miserable since we got home. She's been screaming at the top of her lungs which she never does during the day and rarely at night...she's cranky at night but rarely does she scream like she's been doing. I've given her a couple of doses of Tylenol and once that kicks she's seems to calm down for a little while but I have a feeling it's going to be a long night. On a good note, she's gained almost 3 lbs and now weighs 11 lbs 6 oz. She's also grown 2 inches and is now 21.75 inches long. It's almost time to go through her drawers to get the next size cause she's almost outgrown her newborn/3 months clothes....most only go to 12lbs. What a big girl she's getting to be. We'll have to start giving her a bottle soon so she can start getting used to it before I have to go back to work after the new year.

Wowwee, what happened to our nice weather?? It was downright cold today and very windy with gusts up to 30+ mph. I was disappointed this morning, though, cause they'd been calling for a chance of snow last night and early this morning and I didn't see one flake. Darn!

Busy, Chilly Weekend

Of all weekends for it to turn chilly, it would be this weekend. Andy and the kids had two soccer parties scheduled for this weekend and of course they are outdoor parties because they always do a parents/kids soccer game. The chilly weather didn't deter them and they had a great time at both parties. Connor & Kenzie's party was on Saturday and Alex's party was today.




Saturday was also pick up day for our family pictures and they turned out great, if I do say so myself. They always do such a good job both with the group shots and with the individual pictures. Getting 9 people to look at the camera at the same time and keep their eyes open is not small feat. Here is our Christmas picture for this year.





On Friday, Connor, Kenzie & Tyler got to play a little bit at one of the stores in the area. There piano teacher was providing background music for the evening and had invited his students to stop by and play a few songs. It was fun for the kids even though there are alot of distractions playing in that type of environment.



Today is the first day of Advent and Tyler got to do the honors of lighting the first candle.






And here's picture of Kearsyn smiling. =) She has her two month check up tomorrow and she's due to get lots of shots so I don't expect alot of smiling tomorrow. Poor baby.

Too Good to be True

I knew it was too good to be true. Kearsyn was back to her normal nonsleeping pattern last night. At least I know she can sleep when she wants to. ;)

What beautiful weather we have been having here the past couple of days. You sure wouldn't know that it's the last week in November by being outside. Now if we could just get our yard to dry out after all that rain we had last week. It's still extremely soggy out there.

I did some Christmas shopping yesterday and actually went to a store to do it. That's a rarity for me. LOL I usually do most shopping online cause I hate having to hunt for things in the store and they rarely have want I want anyway. I was pleasantly surprised because I actually found most of what I wanted to get for my sister and her DH so they are pretty much done at this point. Yay! The kids presents have all been ordered and are starting to arrive. The only ones left to buy for now are our parents. I also still need to get a birthday present for my dad whose b'day is 12/20. We're going to try and get the family together on the 17th to celebrate. It's always hard with Dad's b'day being so close to Christmas especially now that my sister alternates the holidays with her inlaws.

Thusday is going to be a busy day. We're going to look at a private school that is having an open house in the morning. Not sure that we can actually avoid it, even though they do offer some financial aid to go there, but it can't hurt to check it out. In the afternoon, there is a Homeschoolers Open House at the college. Alex is going to be taking a Composition class there which will be good for him plus it will help lighted the load a little for Andy in the spring since he won't have to cover that subject. Also Thursday afternoon, Bekah has her speech evaluation appointment so we'll see how that goes. She's been in a terrible two's mood here lately. Hope she gets out of it soon cause she's driving me crazy. She thinks she can make up for it by flashing me her cute grin and giving me a kiss...which of course works. LOL

Haven't done any stitching lately although I really need to get a move on finishing up my Christmas ornament. I've had it stitched up for weeks...just can't figure out how to finish it. I wanted to do something different but I can't figure out what so I haven't done anything. :(