Long day...

Today has been a long day. I had a productive morning which always seems to make a tiring night. Somehow kids know when you're really tired and put on their worst behavior. It's been fun.

I also found out (but am not shocked to learn) that I didn't know almost everything about parrots. Come to find out, my birds are completely unhealthy birds. You can tell if a bird is healthy in their wing color, their beak color, and also in their beak shape and length. Having black in their coloring is a sign of malnutrition. Same with any discoloration of their beaks and when they malnourished their beaks grow longer and jagged. Eclectus's of all parrots are excellent talkers at a very early age unless they are either malnourished or neglected or both. I've read up on diet and we're on our way to getting healthy, however it will take about a year to see any progress...which is also how long it will take my birds to get the cigarette stench out of their feathers. Needless to say, I'm still glad I saved my birds from the hell they were living in, but I sure wish I hadn't paid as much.

Back from the dead

I've been thinking I might get back into blogging again, not because anyone reads this because they probably don't but for the heck of it I guess. I tried Facebook for a while and decided I wasn't a fan. Since my blog is open to the world I guess I'll follow my old rules of not mentioning my kids names or uploading their pictures. Anyway, I didn't look when my last post was but I'm guessing at least a year ago. Z and I bought a couple different dogs only to realize we aren't cut out for puppies. For the record he was just as sick of them as I was if not more. For quite a while he had his fish and I had my parakeet. My chirpy little bird has always irritated him because it's so small and can't talk. Really it's an adorable little bird though. Well that wasn't the point, the real point was that last Friday we bought two Eclectus'. They're beautiful parots and one thing really cool about this bird species is that most parots have to be sexed to know if you have a male or female. Not so with these guys. The males are a beautiful bright green and the females are red and blue. Our birds came from a dirty house filled with smoke and so our pretty birds stink. Nontgeless we love them. They are very sweetly tempermented and a fun addition to our family. Their names are Oliver (Ollie) and Roxanne (Roxi). They are supposed to be great talkers but so far ours bark and honk. Christmas is almost here and we're almost ready. Going to spend some time with my aunt and uncle shortly for the holiday. Also trying to make our own family traditions still. So far we have our Advent Wreath (a Catholic thing), setting up our tree late, no lights on the house (one day we'd like to change that..), big candy bars for kids, not too many presents, and I think that's it. I wish we had a good Christmas eve tradition and a yummy breakfast tradition. Well it's getting late and I don't want to outdo myself in my blogging. So goodnight blog world, I might see you again sometime. We'll see.

Life in a nutshell

Well summer has only just begin and is almost over all at once.  Kids have all grown up tons.  Ashlyn and I have started knitting thanks to grandma.  Baby projects have kept me busy and so has Natalie.  In my spare time I've been teaching myself to sew from what I can remember of my dear old mom's sewing lessons.  We have lots of family coming to town at the end of this month, sadly Karlie won't be here to see them.  Obviously she's disappointed, but there isn't anything we can do.  The rest of us are all looking forward to seeing our out of town family.  If you count the months by dividing the weeks then I'm 8 months pregnant now (gets confusing since there are 40 weeks but only 9 months).  This is my most active baby so far.  He's been kicking early and kicking tons!  It's nice to know he's doing OK in there so I don't mind.  I have a big court battle coming up with the ex....other than that, nothing else is new. 

Puppy?!?!

iTouch vs. Zune

At first glance the Zune looked like a great product because it was nearly the same as the iTouch but you can get the radio and it's much cheaper.  Keith bought one so he could listen to the radio at work.  Within about a week and a half his brand new Zune kicked the bucket.  He got online and figured out the warranty process so I drove it to the UPS store to be shipped back to Microsoft.  A few weeks later we got back a refurbished Zune.  Kind of BS since we paid full price now for a refurbished product.  Zune number 2 didn't last a day, so we sent it back and got yet another one.  Guess what, Zune number 3 also didn't work and we're still waiting for Zune number 4.  Now that we've had a Zune since April and so far never had one that works AND have a year warranty that somehow expires in February I'd say we're a bit disappointed.  To top it off, the warranty is only good to the original owner, so we can't sell it and have the person who buys it covered under the warranty and according to different forums it's impossible to have Microsoft refund your money. 

In the meantime, Keith broke down and bought an iTouch.  It's awesome and so is it's warranty!  It has a ton more accessories as well as apps.  As for the Zune, maybe we can sell it on ebay (if it even works) and recoup some of our lost money.

Oh BOY!

I went to the Dr. last Weds. and the baby is doing great.  We found out we're having a boy.  We're so excited!!!  We're going to name him Ryan.  We let the parents know today that it's a boy by making them a picture frame with all our kids in it and an ultra sound picture of little Ryan that said "Grandson."  It turned out really cute.  We have some cute kids, which helps.  =) 

Everyone here is doing good.  Natalie has learned how to climb on the chairs and can't get down.  She's still a little tyrant!  She's also learned to bite.  Speaking of the devil, I need to go get her off my bathroom sink now.  Guess I'll never have time to really blog! 

Over the Rainbow

I've been waiting to blog after things settle down around here.  The last several days a depression hit me that I couldn't seem to break out of.  Usually I can break out of these moods but this last one has been a hard one.  I was crying several times a day for Karlie and her non existent friends around here.  That situation has hopefully ended well because there is a girl several houses down that IS allowed to play with her and this little girl seems more Karlie's style anyway.  This girl comes from a family with six kids that moved here from out of state so they're a little nicer than your typical local families. 

Just as things were seeming crappy, I ran into a relative that I could have lived without seeing again when Keith and I took Natalie to Walmart yesterday.  He's a cousin of mine from my dad's side of the family.  When I got divorced from my ex husband he chose my ex over me.  He took me by surprise when he came up to say hi.  At first I was sort of more friendly than I would have liked to have been just because I was so off guard.  He asked me if I still had my old job.  I let him know the brief story about how my mom and sister got me fired and how I had a felony charge over the whole thing.  Later when I thought about everything I really wished that I had thrown in more things about how crappy my family is.  Oh well, missed opportunity.  Then I told him that it's OK, I'm used to family screwing me over....kind of like how he did when he chose my ex over me when I got my divorce.  The whole thing went down hill from there and I ended up telling him to not stop me next time because I don't know who he is and I walked off with my family.  It was a pretty moment in the middle of Walmart with everyone walking by looking at us while I was crying the whole time.  Ahhh life!  Thank you for these moments.  The good news about this is that I wanted to tell him for a long time how rotten I thought he was for standing by such a jerk when everyone stood by that jerk and left me alone but I'm his family and he should have stood by me.  It's finally been said and now that chapter of my life is closed.

And to top off all the bad, I haven't slept in forever.  It's like as soon as I lay down anxiety hits me.  My mind is racing everywhere and I can't stop.  This morning I was done with kids.  They've been home on spring break and I've done all the work myself while they've sat around or ran off and played.  Luckily for everyone in the house I got a nap today when Natalie did and woke up much happier than I've been all week.  I think I'm finally back to an upswing again in life.  Man I hate it when life kicks your butt!

So there it is.  My life has sucked lately but things aren't as bad as they did seem and it's getting better by the moment.  Now I'm going to go to bed and hope I can sleep.  If not I guess I'll be reading Sense And Sensibility because for some reason I'm hooked on the classics right now.

Good Night!