Proud Mama of a 4 year old Boy

It's Evan's birthday today! Wow - 4 years has just flown by. Actually, he doesn't officially turn 4 until 9:26 pm tonight. But hey, let him enjoy his day.

He woke up this morning in a very good mood. He said, "I'm FOUR" - today is my birthday. It was so cute. I reminded him that now that he's four, he's even a bigger boy and four-year olds don't suck on their thumbs. Yeah, way to go me -- tactfully using child psychology on him. ;) He agreed and went on his merry way.

I made cupcakes (rainbow ones) for him to take to Ms. Lynn's house. When we arrived, there was a "Happy Birthday" sign and then another sign that said Happy Birthday Evan. So cute. She also decorates the house when its some one's birthday.

We head off to Chuckee Cheeses tonight for a dinner birthday. We're also meeting Evan's "twin" Greer and her family. Greer is four hours older then Evan. When they are together, its like having twins! In the past, we have had joined birthday parties for Greer and Evan. But this year, we scheduled it separately. Greer had her party at Monkey Business last Sat., and this Sat., Evan will have his at our house. We're pretty excited....I'm still contemplating on making a cake or buying a cake. I planned on making a custom snake cake, but then Evan decided he wants a Hippo cake. He's into hippos now. Anyway -- what to do? You'll have to see....I'll post pics up after his party.

On another note...we are still looking for a van. Preferable a Toyota Sienna (yr. 2000 & up). Anybody know of anyone selling one locally? We'd travel maybe 2 hours radius from our house to find a good deal. Let me know.

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Something Funny

Random Thoughts

• Happy that my friend April had her baby. Welcome baby girl Piper Louise. I'm thankful that she had a great delivery.


• Stayed up late last night and watched "The Dark Knight" - it was rather long & dark.


• Oh, I'm happy that Cy shaved his head. Yes - for 48 hours he had blond hair. It was rather amusing. I couldn't believe he did that - but he did. Must be a "mid-life" crisis or something.


• I find that Evan is growing and growing and getting bigger and bigger everyday. He's starting to answer back and well, gives some attitude too. I'm sure this is normal for a almost four year old.


• I can't believe it'll be Easter already. Time is just flying by....


• Our little garden is doing well, and the tomatoe plants and sweet banana pepper plant are also growing and doing well. We water them almost everyday.

That's all for random thoughts.

Pictures above are Cy bleaching his hair, Evan's reaction, the end results and "Garfield" shaved.

Below: Evan and Gigi - he put my pink pearl necklace around her head...poor girl!

Should I ignore it or say something?

Didn’t think anything about it until I got to work. I’m wearing green today. Frankly, I don’t care about St. Patrick’s Day. I definitely don’t have Irish in me at all. To me, it’s just another day. Note to self – don’t go to the Vista when St. Patty’s Day is celebrated. Over the weekend, we decided to get a bite to eat at Monterrey’s near my office. Uh – yeah – bad decision. Little did we know that the Five Points crowd were making their way to the Vista and already arrived. The waiter directed us to the back corner booth. We thought, hey, that’s cool. It’s in the corner – no sweat. WRONG! First next to us were a bunch of girls just gaggling over random stuff. Of course all dressed in green. Evan kept staring at the one girl who had a green headband on her head. Guess he was trying to figure out the bonging green clovers on her headband. Whatever.

The trouble became clear as soon as we reached our table. A group of six were sitting diagonally from us, and clearly they were all drunk. Cursing and foul language permeated from that table. I as a parent thought, hummm this isn’t good. My 3 year old is in his “repeat after me” stage, and it would be horrible, just horrible if he started repeating, WTF and what a B** all the time. Ah, yeah – no way. Did I mention we were super hungry? So, what’s a parent to do, but to say something. I told the waiter, um, I think we’re not going to stay. He asked why, I told him we hear some inappropriate language and its just not something I want my child to be hearing. He said, do you mean the table behind me. Yes, I said. He then said, I will talk to the manager and do something. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it. I thought to myself, man – I remember when I was single and this stuff didn’t bother me. I just let it roll of my shoulders. Totally different when you have a kid. TOTALLY!

You know what happened next, right? The manager goes over to the table (thankfully, they were finished eating and just killing time to head to the next destination to get even more drunk), starts talking and then leaves. Next thing you know, the guy who is like totally wasted already gets even louder. Is making a scene, making comments such as asking which table is it, rude comments about Mexicans, etc. Ah – yeah, I’m not Mexican dude. One of girls chimes in and starts going at it. In the end - the left (thankfully). But then more drunk patrons started coming in for dinner. We finished our dinner and left. We exposed our son to such vulgar bad language. AAHHHHH!!

I DID SAY SOMETHING and felt better about it too!

Random Blog for February

Because its been FOREVER since I posted a blog - here's a little something to catch you up:

I can't believe its already the end of February. Do you know what that means? I only have 2 1/2 months to prepare for Evan's 4th birthday party. Now is it necessary to have a party? Of course - why not! I remember my childhood days, and honestly, I can't remember having very many birthday parties. I don't know why. Must not been too memorable for me. I'm sure my mother would say otherwise. I do remember one particular birthday I had when were stationed in Virginia. Had a Wonder Woman cake and I also remember donuts hanging on a string. I actually have a picture somewhere of this particular birthday. I'm unsure about Cy's childhood birthday's. I better make a mental note to ask him. In any case - I think its important to celebrate your child's birthday. It's a special day and it should be celebrated!

We've got a few things reserved so far...the hard part is inviting kids. Do I invite kids that Evan hangs out with all the time? Do I exclude those kids who are two years younger than him or six years older than him? What to do -decisions, decisions. I don't want to hurt any one's feelings, but hey - a party cost's money! Well, it's not May yet - so I still have time to ponder over this.

WINTER JAM - went and had a blast. See clip below of Brandon Heath singing "Give Me Your Eyes". The place was packed! Girls went wild over Hawk Nelson. TobyMac was the bombdiggity!

TAXES - Gosh - its seems like I just blogged about taxes. But it was about last years taxes. This year - I didn't complain too much about doing our company taxes. I think last years preparation helped me. So, now I'm struggling to get our own personal taxes together before we get someone to file them for us. Thankfully, a very, very good friend recommended her tax guy. I called him up and he said he would be available. That's that.

PICKLES - Don't think I mentioned Pickles who is our newest addition to our family. He is a pure breed Siamese kitten from Stow, MA. He is the cutest kitten ever! We have to take him to the vet tomorrow to get his rabies shot and also make an appointment to get him neutered. Certain indications (like grabbing the nape of Gigi's neck, who by the way is our old virgin female Siamese - she's 13 yrs. old) has lead us to believe the time is now to get him neutered. Plus, we hate to see him mature and then start spraying his territory. No way!

GO TO BED WITH A GLADIATOR (that's your husband - the gladiator) - This past Sunday I heard some good and helpful preaching about learning to respect your husband. A word was mentioned during the sermon and it was "emasculate". You don't ever want to emasculate your husband. What does this mean? The word means “to socially render a male less of a man" or “to make a male feel himself to be less of a man by subjecting him to humiliation”. Guess what chica's - we as wives need to encourage our husbands - DAILY! The bible says to in Ephesians 5:22. Go google it. We must be submissive to our spouse. Taken from the pastor's blog, you can do the following to help your spouse feel like a gladiator - not a wimp.

1. Go towards him and initiate a sexual encounter with him, and do it often, when he is not expecting it. This is number one, not just because he loves sex (though he does), but this is the ultimate way to communicate to him at the deepest level that you really desire him. And since he is a guy, you don't even need to take him out to dinner or put a bunch of time and energy in romance beforehand. Is that bad - it is true. Just spontaneously initiate with him, guys need this initiation from their wives.
   
2. Verbally affirm your respect for him by complementing him in ways he would want to hear it, not ways you would say it to another lady. (e.g. I really appreciate your hard work to provide for us, I really appreciate your care for me, etc.)
   
3. Resist the temptation to give him instructions on things he already knows how to do, this feels like mothering to him.
   
4. Brag on your husband in the presence of others, including your kids.
   
5. Offer and show interest in their interests and do some of those things with them. Men like to play so go and play with them, whether it is golf, fishing, biking, etc.

On a personal note, #3 is a little hard for me since we are still in the process of renovating our house.

FACEBOOK - Yeah - I'm on FB and have limited myself from this addicting website. I can't help but check on every one's status. It's such a waste of my time -but I like it.

DISNEY LIVE - I'm excited to see Evan's face when we take him to see Disney Live at the Colonial Center. He'll be seeing Mickey and his friends, Handy Manny and also Little Einsteins. An expensive event, I'm sure. It'll be fun for him and bonding time for all of us.

Well, until next time I get motivated to blog again...have a good one!

The start of 2009

Let's see...it's the new year already? I can't believe it! The month of December has just flown by and I didn't even get a chance to enjoy it! Well, I take that back. I did enjoy the visit from my sister and her family. They were here in SC for all but two days, but it felt longer than that to me. Then Cy's good friend Aleks came last Monday and left yesterday (Friday). That visit felt short to me. Probably b/c I was keeping busy and Cy did most of the entertaining and I kept watch over Evan.

For New Year's eve we jumped in the car at 8:50 pm and high-tailed to Finley Park. At 9 pm there was a fireworks display and we made it just in time. The fireworks hit our faces and it felt like they were falling right over us. It was a pretty scene and we enjoyed all 10 minutes of it. Yep - just 10 minutes. We quickly jumped back in our van (didn't want to get caught up in the jammed up cars heading out of the parking lots) and headed to Wally World. Needed to buy some ice cream to go with the brownies I made. Hardly anyone in there....typical crowd.

We decided to put Evan down and not let him stay up with us to watch the ball drop. He stayed up last year and was a great trooper. We knew it would be best to put him down early since he had an exciting day the next day at Ms. Lynn's (in-house daycare). I'll get to that after I talk about us bringing in the new year. So, it was me, Cy and Aleks at our house. They ate ice cream and brownies, while I enjoyed fresh popped popcorn. I love popping my own corn on the stove. It's the best! We flipped channels between Dick Clark and the other station who was celebrating in Vegas. I feel bad for Dick Clark. It was hard to concentrate on what he was saying due to his health condition. He just looks like he's going down hill. He just needs to retire. Then you got Kelley Pickler in her southern accent and I have no clue what was up with her eyes..she had some weird looking makeup on. It was either watching that or Miley Sirus' New Year's Eve show. I made it and stayed up to watch the ball drop! Cy busted out the bottles of champagne we had received as a gift from someone oh, say three years ago ( it was Brut dry and Extra Dry). I'm not a drinker and toasted in the new year with a glass of water. About 12:15 am - I told the boys I'm off to bed. When I woke up, I found out Cy and Aleks finished off BOTH BOTTLES and didn't get to bed until 3 am. Bummer for them. They were hurtin', but I was more thankful that those bottles were gone. Got really tired of seeing them way in the back of the cabinet. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to get rid of those bottles long time ago. But see, I'm married to Cy. Cy - the one who throws NOTHING AWAY! Nothing. I won't go there...onto Evan's excited day!

As a Christmas gift to us and some other parents, Lynn decided to have a sleep over at her house. YES! A break from kids. And boy, we took full advantage. Dropped Evan off at 4:30 pm and were told to pick him up the next day by noon. Cy and I went out to dinner, hung out at Barnes and Noble, shared a cup of coffee at Starbucks then headed to Blockbuster to rent a movie. We agreed to watch Indiana Jones. It wasn't a bad movie. Afterwards, we got a second wind and started cleaning up. Cy's other friend Andrew was due the next morning. Had to cleanup the guest room again. Aleks was just in there, so I had strip the bedsheets off, clean the bathroom, etc.You know how that goes...

Andrew drove from Virginia and was stopping for a day/night before heading off to Texas. As I type this - he and Cy are watching football. Andrew leaves tomorrow. Then in another two weeks, Cy's aunt is driving from MA to visit us for a week.

So, as you can see - I've been busy. I didn't even set any new year resolutions either. Well, I did in my head, but it helps to physically write them down - that way I can follow through with them. Maybe I'll do them tomorrow after church. I'll at least have some time then. I'm hoping to have a nice relaxing Sunday. It's been a while since I've had a nice relaxing Sunday.

For a change, this blog is super long. I better cut it off now so that readers like you can get on with your life. I've let you in my little life for this long....stay tuned for more! Happy New Year!

Pictured Cy, Evan & Aleks @ Wild Wings

November 4th, 2008 - Election Day

This morning, it took me 4 minutes from my house to Lynn's house (Evan's sitter), then 10 minutes from Lynn's to downtown Columbia. What's happening? The only action I saw from the road was the long line of voters in front of Eau Clare HS. God Bless them!

On the morning news, they showed pictures of the long lines at the polls. I'm thankful that I'm NOT in those lines today. Cy and I voted earlier two weeks ago. It was a "spur-of-the-moment" kinda thing and I'm thankful we decided to do that. Now, we can sit and relax and just wait for the outcome. Boy, I'm ready for this election to be over. All the hoopla talk about Obama and McCain has just been a whirlwind. I thought I left "politics" when I moved from the DC Metro area to South Carolina - NOT!

Now I'm at work and out of 18 employees - we only have six here in the office. Everyone else must be standing in those long lines I saw on TV this morning. The benefit of voting today? You get a "I VOTED" sticker once you're done. Then you can take advantage and go to Starbucks - they'll give you a free cup of coffee if you show them your sticker. WOW! And I hear that Krispie Kreme is handing out free donuts too! I think its a privilege and honor to vote. If you are still undecided -- then you've got issues. Again - with all the hoopla and talk about the running candidates -- HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW WHO TO VOTE FOR??

If you have stumbled on this blog and voted already - GOOD FOR YOU! THAT'S AWESOME!
If you have stumbled on this blog and haven't voted yet - MAKE SURE YOU GO AND VOTE! The SC polls close at 7 pm tonight. Don't forget your valid ID - they will be checking.

Peace!