Who cares what people think!! You'd better care!

Jasmine is really excited. After Daddy gets home from work, I'm going to go to Blockbuster and rent "The Work and the Glory." Clear back when it was in the theater a few years ago, they had commercials for it all the time on TV during the daytime. Now, I'm talking like 1-2 times every commercial break. Yeah, it was on ALL THE TIME! Anyhoo, one of the lines in the little trailer diddy that they showed was where a boy says to his father, "Who cares what people think!", and the father, in turn, says "You'd better care!" For some reason, Jasmine got all excited and quoted that line every time that it came on. So, when I told her that we were going to go rent that movie tonight, she got really excited. She doesn't know that it's really called "the Work and the Glory," but when I said to her "who cares what people think!" she immediately responded, "You'd better care!" We joined some Blockbuster movie club, so I'll also be able to rent a non-new release movie for free. I think we'll get "Book of Mormon Movie" since it's no longer a new release. Well, that's my story for the day.

Simon Birch is an awesome movie.

Last night, my family watched the movie Simon Birch. Now, that is an awesome movie. I really love the theme about God's Plan that runs throughout the whole thing. My husband and I had seen it before last night, but Jasmine had not (and Tyler wasn't even paying attention). We got it for Christmas, but just barely pulled it out to watch. ANYway, Jasmine was GLUED to the TV during the movie. She just loved Simon. She also liked the sci-fi-looking turtle doves in the pageant. Everything was going great with Jasmine watchng the movie until the pageant scene. She was very concerned when the little girl "fell" into the manger after being grabbed by Simon. When the turtle dove got his costume head kicked off by the fat angel boy, she started screaming and freaking out. It only added flames to the fire when the fat angel boy threw up on the mean Sunday School teacher. Jasmine was so upset that she tried to run into the other room while she was bawling. We finally got her calmed down and she sat with us to watch the rest of the movie. I tried really hard not to laugh. Jasmine has such a sweet sensitivity about her, and I don't want her to lose it. However, sometimes she's sensitive to the darndest things, while other things don't even phase her. I think it may have something to do with seeing little kids in trouble or distress. I guess I'll never completely understand what goes on in that mind of hers.... she definitely keeps me on my toes. That's my story for the day.

Busing mixup?!

One of the things I really love about Jasmine attending preschool is that she gets to ride the bus. So, when things get all messed up in that department, it just makes me wanna scream and pull my hair out. And, well, this being the hectic morning it's been, I've wanted to do just that! To help paint a picture of what things were like on this beautiful rainy Oregon morning, I'll just remind people that Jasmine switched preschools a few weeks ago, thus switching bus routes. I was told that it could take up to 10 days for the new bus route to go into effect, and that I would be notified about it when it happened. Well, neither of these things happened. About the latter... I decided to call the transportation department and ask when Jasmine's new bus route would start. They said that it would start on Wednesday, March 1.

Here's another "little" component of the busy morning. My husband slept in, and it would have REALLY benefited him if I had let him have the car to drive straight into work, rather than waiting for a Trimet bus to pick him up. I had to have the car, cuz I hadn't been notified yet about Jasmine's transportaton situation, so I naturally thought I'd have to take her to school. My husband called me (while waiting for one bus that never showed up) to see if I could take him at least to a MAX station, and I told him I wouldn't be ready to go with the kids for another 15 minutes or so. I would have to have Jasmine completely ready, cuz I'd have to take her from the MAX station directly to school. So, he just waited it out and got on the 8:05 bus. I hope he got to work on time. The whole part of this morning that really makes me, uh, frustrated is that as I was getting ready to pull out of the apartment complex to take Jazz to school, there was the bus, waiting for Jasmine. It must have been there for a mintue, cuz it pulled away right in front of me. I followed it all the way to the preschool. DANG! If I had only been given the correct info, I could have just let my husband take the car to work. I called the transportation office one more time, and we got the whole situation figured out. Aparently, it was a last-minute switch to have Jasmine worked into today's route, dispatch (who I originally spoke to) hadn't gotten wind of the change. I wanted to make sure she could ride home on the bus today, and SHE CAN! Yipee!

I've had a long day.

I've had a really long day. Well, at least it seemed long..... maybe it's because I was so blasted tired. It certainly wasn't very eventful. Last night, I crashed on the couch while my husband was playing Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the Game Cube. I ended up waking up at around midnight because Tyler was crying. Once I got him settled down, I went to bed, leaving good ol' Daddy out in the front room with his game. I don't think he went to bed till like 2:00 or 3:00. That is just insane! ANYhoo, I didn't have to get up again for Tyler till around 6:00 or so. That was nice. His frequent waking up at nights has turned me into a zombie (kinda like I was right after he was born). As I'm typing this, he's just woken up... I'd better go take care of him before he wakes up Jasmine... (Whew. He's back to sleep now).

Today, I had to drive out to Big-O Tires to get a tire fixed. You see, yesterday when I got the oil changed on my car, they did a ya-de-yadda point inspection thingy on the car. It was brought to my attention that the front right tire had a bulge in its sidewall. Looking at it, I was reminded of a hernia. It was a little bubble-like bulge that stuck out almost an inch. I later found out that this was most likely caused by my husband when he "curbed" the car at over 30 mph a week or so ago. He didn't notice the bulge at the time, so it's probably been growing. We didn't want to take any chances of having a front tire burst on us, so I went on down to the tire store. Back in Idaho, this wouldn't have been such a big deal, since there are Big-O's all over the place. (By the way, we have 2 yr old tires on our car from Big-O with a 3 yr warranty, so we have to go there). Here, however, the closest one is like 12 miles away. There are only four Big-O Tires in the whole Portland metro area. This one was in Hillsboro, and it took me like 25 minutes to drive there with traffic and all. And of course, they don't have our type of tires in stock-- they ordered one for me-- so they had to put a temporary tire on. I'll have to make the drive, once again, in a week when their shipment arrives. Today I was lucky enough to leave the kids home with Daddy. Next week, I'll probably have to take them with me. While the drive is long, though, at least they're service is quick. And the guy that works there is a really nice guy. He remembered me from when I replaced a tire back in August. I think it's because he's originally from Blackfoot, Idaho... about 25 miles from where I'm from. He hasn't lived there for like 30 years or so, but it's a connection we were able to make. It's always fun to see people around here that are from Idaho. In fact, before we got our lisence plates changed to Oregon plates, a couple stopped us as we were getting out of our car in the K-Mart parking lot. They saw our 8B plates, and knew we were from Bonneville county. They were also from there.

This evening, we went around and did a bunch of shopping. We ended up splurging at Bed Bath and Beyond. That store like totally rocks, dude! Every time we go there, we end up getting a bunch of stuff that wasn't even on our to-get list. Now that we finally have things arranged in this apartment the way we want them, I was able to get some things (rugs, etc) to spruce it up. It always takes us FOR EV-UR to get settled in after a move. In fact, we usually get stuff settled about when it's time to move again. I can finally say that, after 9 months, we've got things the way we want them to be here. Luckily, we plan on staying here for at least another year after our current lease is up.

Well, it's late and I'm tired. Although church doesn't start till 11:00 tomorrow, my husband has meetings beforehand. With only one car, that means we ALL have to leave early. So, I'm off to bed.

Jiffy Lube is sounding pretty good about now!

I had a busy day today. It started with me taking my husband to work, since he slept in! He had an 8:30 meeting, and public transportation, althoughg it's awesome, isn't exactly speedy. So, we drove into Portland to drop him off. Jasmine then had a 10:00 appointment with some therapists at the elementary school she will be attending this fall. She was there for 3 1/2 hrs! I dropped her off and came back home so Tyler could have a nap and I could make some stew. Well, at 12:00, I got a call from the lady at the school that Jasmine was with. She asked if she could get Jasmine some lunch. Boy, I'm sure glad she did, cuz Jazz would have been starving if she had to go the whole time without food. They went and got lunch when everyone else was having it, and they called it a "lunch party." Jasmine did a good job with the testing. After I picked her up, we went straight over to the GM Goodwrench at the auto dealership to get the oil changed. I asked them if they could please vacuum the interior and wash the outside of the car. So, we waited and waited and waited and waited and waited. ALMOST 2 HOURS LATER, the car was ready to go! What ever happened to 15 minute oil changed? The kids were at their wits end before we left, since Tyler hadn't had lunch, and Jasmine was bored. I turned on the TV in the waiting room for the last half hour or so, which seemed to help a little. ANYway, I took the car there cuz I had some quesitons about our extended warranty (and only GM Goodwrench places can fix the car if we want the warranty to cover repairs). Plus, when we got the car almost four years ago, they recommended we take it to authorized GM dealerships to get the oil changed. We have always done that, and we probably will continue to do so. I just wish they didn't take so dang long! Man, Jiffy Lube, or even Grease Monkey, is sounding good about now.

After running to the bread store and gassing up the car, it was about 5:00 when we got home. I opened our front door to encounter the welcoming aroma of homemade vegetable beef stew. I'm pooped, so I'm really grateful I put in the effort earlier today to make dinner. So, I think I'll go dish up some stew for me and the kids. My husband is still at work now, so he'll just have to wait till later to enjoy dinner.

Blabbing on the phone is fun!

A few hours ago, a good friend of mine from back in Idaho gave me a call. We talked about everything and about nothing. It was really great to talk to her on the phone (I've been IMing her a lot lately). At the end of our many conversations, I checked my phone display to see how long we had been talkig.... 124 minutes! When I realized she was using her cell phone, and that there was a possibility that she may have gone over her minutes, I fealt really bad and we ended the call. A few minutes later, she called back to let me know that she still had like 250 minutes left! She just wanted to let me know that our "little" phone chat hadn't cost her any overage minutes. That made me feel much better.

While I was on the phone with her, Tyler took a series of 7 or 8 steps all by himself, then plopped onto his diapered bottom. Several more times throughout the call, he would take 3-4 steps with no help. He is going to be walking all over the place before too long. It's so cute to see him take those steps and get so excited that he loses his balance. He is such a sweet baby! It seems like just yesterday that I brought him home from the hospital. My, how time flies!

Jasmine was out of preschool for this whole week due to President's Day and other teacher stuff going on. She'll sure be happy to go back on Monday. It's hard to believe that she'll be in Kindergarten next year. In fact, tomorrow she has an appointment with the speech pathologist at the elementary school she'll be attending.... this is just standard procedure since, up until a few weeks ago, she was in Early Intervention preschool. (She is attending a new preschool now, and she absolutely loves it.) They will determine, through a series of testing, whether or not Jasmine will need speech therapy while attending Kindergarten. This will take a few hours, so I think I'll just drop her off and have them give me a call when she's finished. Things will be much easier with Tyler.... I'd hate to wait for several hours at the school WITH HIM.

It's now time for me to get some dinner ready. I don't know what time my husband will be home from work, but I'd like to have something ready for whenever he does get here. Plus, this is like my third blog today, so I think I've been at the computer enough!

It won't be so bad after all!

Yipee! I just talked to Doug (he's like the manager dude up at the leasing office) and he said that I don't have to move the furniture and all that stuff after all. The Teminix guy will come spray around the sliding glass doors, so even ants trying to come in LATER will die. Now, THAT sounds like a thing I can deal with! I'm not going to have to vacate the the apartment or anything, either. Wow, what a relief. I'm sure grateful that I don't have a cockroach or a flea problem (or that our ant problem isn't as bad as it was at our last apartment).... then we'd have to do all the stuff on that list. I can rest easy about this whole situation now. I also made sure that we wouldn't have to pay for the pest control service... and we won't. Cool.

I still hate ants!

What to do... what to do.... ??

I just received the customer preparation checklist for preparing my apartment to have the pest control come take care of the ant problem. I'm not so sure we have a big enough problem to warrent having them come here. According to the checklist, we'd totally have to rip apart every room that gets sprayed. Everything has to be up off the floor (including stuff in closets), and ALL furniture has to be pulled away from the wall. And, for the dozen or so ants that I squished yesterday, I don't think that's worth it. Now that I look back, we did open the sliding doors in our bedroom (we have that instead of a window) yesterday morning to cool off the room. I'm thinking that the ants probably crawled in at that time... which would make pest spraying pointless, since I know we'll be opening the windows again, thus letting even more ants in. I'm beginning to believe that some cheap li'l ant traps would do a better job. Hmmm.... I'll have to talk to my hubby about it, then get back with the leasing office. I just didn't realize how much trouble would be involved in preparing the place for the Terminix guys to come do their job. GRRR!

ANTS! AAAAAAAH!

I hate ants! I know that the teeny tiny ones are harmless, and I'm not scared of them. But I HATE them, especially when they appear in increasingly large quantities in my house! Today, within like twenty minutes, I killed twelve in my bedroom and bathroom. I have been killing a few almost every day, but this is ridiculous! It's just gross! I know that they're attracted to food, etc, but we don't leave food around. We're fairly clean people, so I don't know what's drawing them in or where they're coming from! ANYhoo, I called the main office in our appartment complex and they will have pest control come by some time next Wednesday. Gee... I sure hope we don't have to do much to prepare for them to come in and spray. In other words, I hope it's not more trouble than it's worth! I'm glad that they said they're gonna take care of it, though. We had a horrible ant problem at the last place where we lived, but our landlords there didn't give a crap about taking care of their tenants. The property management company that runs this apartment complex that we're currently living in is MUCH better. I guess they're smart enough to figure out that if they want to keep tenants, then they'd better take care of them! Wow, what a concept! Whoopee!

Anyway, I hate ants.

about yesterday...

Well, yesterday was a fun day. I was expecting to watch my cousins kids for several hours last night at their house, and Jasmine was excited about that. I wasn't sure if they would need me (calling me was more like a back-up plan), but I prepared for it anyway. Around 3:00 or so, their dad called me and said that they WOULD need me to pick up the kids, but that he and his wife forgot to give the kids a key to their house. So, I suggested I bring them over to my house, since we live only lke 8 miles away. They were very relieved and grateful. ANYway, this gave me a great excuse to clean up my apartment. It was kinda messy. After cleaning, I had to run to Kmart to get some garbage bags, then I went to Papa Murphy's to pick up a pizza. I didn't know what the kids would eat, so I got a half-pepperoni, half-Hawaiian with some root beer. You can't go wrong with that! I was afraid traffic was going to be bad, so I just went straight form Papa Murphy's to the school to pick up the kids (they have after-school care till 6:00). I got there earlier than I expected, but that's ok. We drove back to my apartment and I cooked up the pizza for them. Meanwhile, they played with toys in Jazz and Ty's bedroom. During dinner, I got a phone call from their parents saying that they were on their way back, and they needed directions to my house. Jasmine was not happy about this. She wanted them to stay longer. They wanted to stay the night. However, since it was a TUESDAY night, I had to say no. Although JAsmine doesn't have school today, they do. Well, their parents got here shortly after 7:00. (I was expecting to have the kids till 9:00 or 10:00.) They stayed for a while to chat, then it was time to go. Again, Jasmine wasn't happy. I had to keep reassuring her that she would get to see her cousins again in 16 days when she and Tyler would go to their house to be babysat. We had lots of fun, even though it wasn't for very long.

After they left, I went to pick up my hubby at the MAX (light-rail train) station from work. I had to keep singing to the kids to make them happy while we waited in the car. Jasmine counted to 100, then I helped her count down from 20 to 0. After a few animal noises and ABC songs, their daddy finally arrived. Man, it can be tricky to keep a few kids happy while sitting in a car.

Well, it is now 1:00, and I am still in my pajamas. I know, I'm a loser! Wow! Ty just took three steps! He is so close to walking! He has taken up to 6 steps by himself, only to plop to the floor and go right back to crawling! It's so cute! ANYway, I'm still in my pj's because I have had a rough night EVERY night for the past two weeks with Tyler. He just cut a tooth (his 8th), and he hasn't been eating much during the day... this leaves him waking up every few hours at night because he's hungry! A little bit of milk will put him right back to sleep. Last night, he only woke up twice, (he usually wakes up 3-4 times) but then he-- and Jasmine-- both woke up at 5:45 this morning for good! I ended up falling asleep on the couch while Ty was taking his morning nap and Jasmine was watching Tom and Jerry. I then woke up to see that Dawnyel was logged onto Yahoo IM, so I chatted with her for a while while watching stupid Strongbad emails from the Homestarrunner website! Whoopdeedoo! I've had an eventful morning... NOT.

Now that I have done my duty and entered this blog, I've gotta go see what is making Ty so upset. Have a swell day, everybody!

I finally started a blog! So, there!

Well, due to the pestering of a few friends of mine, and my mild curiosity of what it would be like, I have finally started a blog. I don't know how long I will keep up with it, or to what extent I will be adding entries, but it's here. I got sick of trying to find a url, since like 99% of what I came up with was NOT AVAILABLE, so I just cheated and stole Dawnyel's url... of course, I modified it a bit. You see, I am the one that gave HER the idea for it in the first place. So, in reality, I didn't steal her idea. I'm just using something of my own that I so graciously gave to someone else. She already explained where the RubbaUndies came from (refer to her first blog at rubbaundiesluva.blogspot.com). I am the other person that was in the leg of the rubba undies right along side her, hence, "theUTHArubbaundiesluva." Not too creative, I know, but it works. And after trying about half a dozen other urls that came up as unavailable, I knew for darn sure that I'd have no problem getting this one.

To share a little bit about myself (without geting TOO personal), I am a stay-at-home mom of two children. I have a five-year-old little girl named Jasmine and an almost-14-month-old son named Tyler. My husband is a software developer in the lovely city of Portland, Oregon. We have lived here for about nine months now, and I love it. The only thing that I find difficult here is that I haven't really made any new friends. My husband and I, in making this move (from SE Idaho) have left our immediate families behind. I am lucky that I have some cousins who live near by. A little further down the road, like 60 miles away, I have some aunts and uncles, along with a grandpa. In fact, just tonight, I arranged to swap babysitting with one of my cousins. On March 9, almost 10 months after our move to the Portland metro area, we will embark on our FIRST date since our move, while my cousin and her hubby watch our kids. Wow.... it's only two and a half weeks away. I can hardly wait!

To fill the void in my social life, I have been Instant Messaging a few of my friends from back in Idaho. This isn't something we just "occasionally" do.... it's practically a daily thing now. We've been doing lots of catching up and having lots of fun. They're both married and moms as well, so we have lots to chat about. They are the ones who "influenced" my decision to start this blog. In fact, I'd better let them know about this so I will not continue to be harrassed. :)

Well, Jasmine has just finished attempting a Windsor Pilates circle workout on DVD. Keep in mind....she's 5! She just HAD to exercise since her daddy just went up to the fitness center up at the main office of our apartment complex. Now that she is done with that (she did the whole 20 minute workout), I must get her ready for bed. So, goodnight for now.