In a few hours...

I should be in bed but I know I'm not going to get any sleep anyway. I never do the night before I go on vacation.

Hey, did you know that they love me in Germany? According to my site meter I get at least 2 visits a day from people in Germany to this blog. So if you're a German and you came her looking for Dvid Hasselhoff pictures or something, I'm sorry but I've got nothing. I get a lot of visiters from Canada too. So if you're Canadian and you came here looking for stories about hockey and ....... Canadian bacon or whatever you guys like up there then again, I've got nothing.

But it does raise the question: How did you find this blog and why do you keep coming back? Don't get me wrong, I love knowing that people are reading this blog! So if you are reading it and you're not a member of my family, let me know how you found me. Leave a comment. I'll be gone for a week so you'll have plenty of time. I'm just curious.

Anyway, I guess I should go up to bed to stare at the ceiling for a while now. I'll probably doze off around 3:00 and get a good 2 hours of sleep tonight. Woooooooohhhhh! Vacation!

Innocent

Last night we were getting Joseph ready for bed and he wanted to spend a little time running around naked. Ok, no biggie. Nudity among family members is not a big issue in our house. He happily pranced around the room wearing nothing but his little white socks. With hiseyes shining bright and a huge smile on his face he happily exclaimed "Take a video of me dancing naked and put it on the internet!"

How can something be both laugh out loud funny and mind bendingly disturbing all at once?

Tickers

I took down the kid's age tickers. I figured anyone who cares already knows how old they are anyway. I thought if anyone who doesn't know me saw my blog it made me look like I'm one of those moms who does cheesy things like put my kids handprints on a t shirt that says something like "Mommy's Little Angels" or something like that and I am NOT one of those moms. So the tickers are gone, never to return but the quote of the day thing might not stay around either.

I've been sick for a few days now. I looked at my self in the mirror yesterday and I looked like death warmed over. Today I look like death again only this time death took the time to put in its contacts and slap on a little lip gloss. Death still hasn't worked up the energy to comb it's hair.

I'm going to go eat some brownie soup now. Read all about it in What I Made over there on the right.

Pointless survey

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The Survey
Name:Jennifer
Birthday:April 20, 1977, same as Hitler and Sandy Duncan
Birthplace: St Cloud, MN
Current Location: Waite Park, MN
Eye Color: greenish brown
Hair Color: Dark brown
Height: about 6 feet
Right Handed or Left Handed: right
The Shoes You Wore Today: slip on tennis shoes
Your Weakness: Chocolate!
Your Fears:bees, heights and driving next to big trucks on the highway
Your Perfect Pizza: buffalo chicken without too much hot sauce
Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year: Find a part time job (aim high!)
Thoughts First Waking Up: "Why is Joseph jumping on my head?"
Your Best Physical Feature: uhhhhhh
Your Bedtime: Whenever I'm tiredd
Pepsi or Coke: Dr Pepper
MacDonalds or Burger King: Fast food is evil!
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Tea is gross
Chocolate or Vanilla: Chocolate
Cappuccino or Coffee:I hate coffee in all it's forms
Do you Smoke: no
Do you Swear: not in front of my mom or my children
Do you Sing: not in front of anyone but my kids
Do you Shower Daily: almost
Have you Been in Love:Yes
Do you want to go to College: Someday
Do you belive in yourself: No, I think I'm pretend
Do you get Motion Sickness: Yes
Do you think you are Attractive: Not really
Are you a Health Freak:No
Do you get along with your Parents:yes
Do you like Thunderstorms:yes
Do you play an Instrument:no
In the past month have you Drank Alcohol:yes, but only a tiny bit
In the past month have you Smoked:no
In the past month have you been on Drugs:I have never done drugs
In the past month have you gone on a Date:no
In the past month have you gone to a Mall: Yes, what the hell?
In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos:no
In the past month have you eaten Sushi:Yes
In the past month have you been on Stage:no
In the past month have you been Dumped:no
In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping:no
In the past month have you Stolen Anything:no
Ever been Drunk:yes
Ever been called a Tease:no
Ever been Beaten up:no
How do you want to Die: In my sleep when I'm very, very old, surrounded by my family and at Disney World.
What do you want to be when you Grow Up:I haven't decided yet.
What country would you most like to Visit:Australia
Number of Drugs I have taken:Illegal? None. RX? A lot.
Number of CDs I own: Too many to count.
Number of Piercings:2 in one ear and 4 in the other although some have probably closed up by now.
Number of Tattoos:None, but I want one.
Number of things in my Past I Regret: 1. I should have never ordered the prime rib that one time.

I'm beat

My mom came over today and we cleaned like crazy. Well, she cleaned like crazy, I got stressed and broke out in hives. And we got to do more tomorrow! I'm not complaining though because the house looks awesome.

Just a few days left before we leave for Florida! Yippee! And I haven't started getting ready at all. If I know me I'll put off packing until Saturday and then not get any sleep that night because I'm so worried that I forgot something. I am limitless in my awesomeness. I am limited in my spelling ability though......

Ha ha!

For some reason this just makes me feel happy:
http://www.youtube.com/w/Man-dancing?v=PaluLFfv0EI

The trip

The trip, she is booked. Our plane tickets have been bought and our hotel reservations have been made. We are going to be spending 5 days at the parks. Don't judge me.

Joseph's doctor has written a note that we'll be able to take to Disney World and use to get him a Guest Assistance Card. That will let us bypass some of the lines at certain attractions and use the fast-pass lines at others. That way Joseph won't have to deal with as much of the crowds and noise as you usually have to when waiting in line. I debated for a long time if we should do this or not. A tiny part of my feels like we might be doing something wrong. But when I think about it, he does qualify for a GA card and he would benefit from it. Plus, (and this is the big one) he has a lot of difficulties and disadventages that he has to deal with. He has to go to therapy twice a week, mealtimes are stressful for him, the list goes on and on. If he has to deal with all the not so great stuff that comes with being who he is then he should get some good stuff once in a while too. If his being the way he is lets him skip a couple of lines in Disney World then I think we should go for it.

Whyyyyyyy!?!?!

Joseph was watching a show on the Disney channel this morning and during a commercial I saw something that made my my blood run cold. It was a video with the little girl from the Cosby show (the youngest one who played Olivia, Raven Symone or whatever her hame is) singing "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. Why? Why? Why why why why why why why?

Why does the world need that? Why take a perfecly fine little song and ruin it like that? Why does Disney insist on bastardising all of it's best stuff? I would love to sit in on a meeting where the company big wigs decide to do this crap. I think it would go a little something like this......

Disney Guy 1: Hey, Cinderella is a classic movie loved by young and old alike. How can we capitalize on that?
Disney guy 2: How about making Cinderella 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6? We can have Jessica Simpson do the songs!
Disney Guy 1: That's good but what about some of our newer movies? How can we make more money off of those?
Disney Guy 3: I know! Let's take a popular character ..... oh, let's say Stitch for example, and slap him on all of our old stuff to make it new and exciting. And let's have him read the announcments on the monorail it Disney World. If the Momorail is good, the Monorail plus Stitch can only be better. We'll have Ashley Simpson sing a song about it.
Disney Guy 1: Ok, so we've got the Classics and the new movies covered but how do we come up with new and fresh ideas for future products?
Disney Guy 2: Instead of coming up with new ideas let's just keep making sequels to the old ones. We can use the same ideas over and over and over. Or, even better, let's re-release the old movies with added scenes that are unneeded clunky and add a new "rediscovered" song. It can be sung by Raven Symone!
Me: You're all fired. Get the hell out of here.

Yeah. So that's that. I'm a pretty serious Disney fan so they should really listen to what I have to say. All I'm trying to do is keep them from ruining their company. At the very least they should stop having Raven Symone sing remakes of Disney Classics. That's just a bad idea.

Racial slurs for kids

Joseph likes the song "Little Red Corvette" by Prince. He likes to sing it in the car because I have it on a cd that we play on the way back and forth from therapy. He doesn't know the words very well. I don't have the heart to correct him when he happily belts out "Little red corn-back!". It's so cute but so very, very close to being a racial slur. Can't you just hear it?

"Those corn-backs are coming here and taking all our jobs!"

"Some of my best friends are corn-backs!."

"I won't take my car to the carwash that all those corn-backs work at. I think they steal change out of my ashtray."

My baby likes me

Today Elle was sitting on Jesse's lap and watching me as I walked around the room. Every time I went out of her sight she would turn her head and look around all over for me. When I would go in front of her again she would get all excited, smile and kick her legs. She kept doing it every time she saw me and sometimes she would even make her "mmmmm mmmmm" noise. It was pretty cute. It's fun to see her respond to me like that.

She's turning into such a little talker! She coos and ohhhs and ahhhs all the time now. Last night I gave her a bath and when I washed her neck she giggled and giggled. It was so cute. (I know I keep saying that.) I love giving her baths because she likes them so much. No matter how crabby she is she just perks right up when I put her in water. What a fun baby I have.

Disney addict

It's amazing how "I don't think we'll go to Disney World at all" can turn into "Let's spend 4 days at Disney World" in the blink of an eye. Aye yi yi. All right. I caved. We'll be spending 4 days at Disney World. I need help. I'm a Disney addict.

Sunny days

It looks like Florida is in our future! Jesse has to do a project for the president of his company and he's been putting in a ton of extra time to work on it. He has to go to Florida to finish it up and as a thank you for all his work the company is sending all of us along with him. They're covering air fare and 2 nights in a hotel. We'll also have use of one of the company presidents cars. Woo-hoo!

We might extend our stay just a couple of days to so that we can hit a few attractions. Get ready to be shocked but I think that we will not be going to Disney World. We were all just there together and then I was there even more recently and Joseph was there even more recently than that. Plus, we wouldn't have time to hit all the parks and that would stress me out even more than missing them all. So, I'm going to check into Sea World and some other places.

Should be sweet! I'm mostly just glad to be getting away from this winter "wonderland" for a while!

Blue

I am feeling so down today. I don't know why. There's really no reason for it. Maybe I'm tired of all the clouds and gloom outside. I need a vacation. I'm keeping my figners crossed for Florida.

Oh, I think Im going to try putting Elle in her crib tonight. Could that be what's making me blue?

All grown up

Joseph has turned into a big boy over night. Yesterday he came home from school able to button his own shirt. That's just nuts. He's been working on that at home and in therapy for a long time now and all of the sudden he just go it.

Today at therapy his therapist asked him to skip. Instead of doing what he usually does (putting on a sullen face and gloomily stomping around while repeating "hop, step") he happily skipped all over the therapy room. His therapist and I were both shocked. He's never done that before. Just last week he couldn't skip.

Today he came home from school with a piece of paper that said "snow" on one side and "shi" (it was supposed to be "ski") on the other. He wrote them. By himself. Alone. I almost couldn't believe it.

It's like all of the sudden he started making these huge leaps forward. It's really amazing to watch. Elle, on the other hand, continues to lay around like a slug. Oh well, she's darned cute anyway.

We may be going to Florida for a few days in a week or so. I don't know yet. More details on that later.

Can't sleep

I can't sleep. I think it's because I'm still haunted by the dream I had last night. I dreamt that Jesse's cousin Joe (who is all of 15) was getting married. The girl he was marrying was Irish and wanted a traditional Irish wedding. I guess that involved Jesse's uncle Bill dressing up like a leperchuen. Now that might not mean a lot to those of you who don't know Bill but I don't hink I'll ever be able to see him wearing green again without snickering. We won't even go into the little jig that people at the wedding had to do.

Annoying

Son of a bitch. I was just finishing up writing a long, detailed listing on ebay and I pushed the wrong button and deleted the entire stinking thing. Aurgh. I should really know better by now since I've probably done that at least a half dozen times before.

Anyway. Life goes on. One of my New Years resolutions was to start cooking and baking more. For my own benefit I am going to journal the stuff I make. If you ever find yoursefl thinking "Gee, I wonder what Jenny had for dinner? If only there was some way to read about it!" then click on the "What I Made" link over there on the right. It's full of lots of hit, action packed recaps of what I made. Or it will be once I have more that one day's worth of stuff there. And my feelings won't be hurt at all if you don't check it out. I'm aware that not everyone is into hearing long, graphic descriptions of what someone made for dinner. I just really like to talk about it.

Kick ass soup

I made some kick ass soup last night. It was so good that Jesse and each had 2 BIG bowls and finished off the whole pot. Who knew I could cook?

I have the Food Network to thank for it really. I used to be kind of intimidated by cooking and I would rely on a lot of pre-packaged stuff to make dinner. Once I got pregnant I became (for some reason) addicted to cooking shows. I saw how simple it was to make really good food and it actually made me want to try cooking new things. Now that I'm trying new things out I'm seeing how fun it can be to try making new things. The best part is that pretty much everything I've tried has turned out well so far.

One Food Network question though: Why doesn't Paula Dean just change the name of her show from "Cooking with Paula Dean" to "Cooking with mountains and mountains of butter"?

My eye!

Joseph wanted to have a snowball fight today before he went to school. Elle was alseep in her swing so I figured we could go out for a minute or two before the bus came and throw some snowballs. We tossed a few at each other and had a grand old time. Just as the bus rounded the corner Joseph threw a snowball that hit me right in the face. I turned my head at just the right time and a big chunk of snow went between my eye and my glasses. I couldn't see anything out of that eye and for one very brief, very foolish second I though "Oh my god! That snowball knocked out my eye!"

Dramatic much Jenny?

Mmmmmmmm I said!

Last night Jesse was sitting on one end of the couch with Elle in his lap and I was sitting on the other. I noticed that she was starting to act like she was hungry so I said "Elle, do you want to eat?" Her eyes got all big and she went "Mmmmm mmmmmm". We laughed and I asked her again if she wanted to eat. Again her eyes got big and she said "Mmmmm mmmmmmmm". It was too funny. I asked her again and again and each time she made the same noise. By the 7th or 8th time though I could tell she was getting annoyed. It stopped sounding like "mmmmmm" and started sounding more like "What the hell is wrong with you woman! I said 'mmmmmm' like 10 times already. Feed me!"

Elle slept for about 7 hours without waking up last night. Soon I'll mover her to her crib. Soon. Maybe. We'll see. Who am I kidding? She's going to be in that basinette till she's 8.

Say what?

Here are some things Joseph has said recently:

• "When I'm a teenager I'm just going to hang out with my teenage friends. We'll play toys and watch movies and play video games. Yeah, it's the sweet life."
• "I'm just trying to be like you!" - in response to when I told him to stop being so bossy
• "How did people get here on the planet if there was no people to start with to have babies?" - Seriously, what 5 year old thinks like that?
• "What's my head made of?"
• "Can I have my own Christmas tree so that I don't have to look at all your ornaments and I can just look at my own?"
• "We'll need just a second please!" - yelled from the backseat at a drive-thru when someone tried to take our order before Joseph was ready
• "I love my sister ......... Can we let someone adopt her? I'm so tired of her crying all the time."

He's such a nut. My favorite is "What's my head made of?"