OMG I'M OLD!!!

I know, I know, it's been forever since I've updated this blog!! And just look at the changes that have happened since then!! It's gotten a whole new facelift!! Isn't it snazzy??!! And the best part is I did it ALL myself!! Yep! I'm awesome like that!! Let's just say in the past almost 6 years I've spent at home I've really become quite the computer nerd!

Any hoo on to other news! First, the boys are both in baseball this year. Calvin is in the AAs and actually had to try out this year. He was picked to play on the A's and so far they're doing well. It's a whole new ball game this year (no pun intended!) they actually play to win this year and don't get any trophies unless they place. Unfortunatly Calvin's heart isn't really in it this year and we're all fairly certain this will be his last year playing baseball. We still have our Zach Attach though! He's always been the kid that LOVES balls! If it don't roll or bounce he doesn't want anything to do with it! They finally opened up the league to include his age group this year. He's in T-ball and his team is the Angels (Woo hoo! Our family loves the Angels!) He's one of the youngest on his team but that doesn't stop him from hitting the ball as far as possible and sliding in to home plate wether it's neccessary or not. He claims to be "the best baseball player ever!".....we can certainly see that happening one day!

Our sweet boy Baxter finally got the big snip! Thankfully it calmed him down a BIT. He's always been a tad on the hyper side but we still love him. I was VERY anxious and nervous for my parents to visit with their dogs....Baxter hasn't been around other dogs since he's been with us. I was VERY pleasantly surprised to see that he could handle being around my parent's foo foo dogs.....tho they didn't really care for him much. My Pa seemed to really love his new "grandson". He bought him a gentle leader collar and it's made a WORLD of difference. Our rambucious boy has come a long way and I can honestly say I just might be a dog person AND a cat person! He's a funny boy and I grow to love him every day.

Poor boy!

Now for the biggest news! I turned 40 on March 26th! Holy shit! When did that happen??? How did I get this OLD???? Well, I no longer care how old I am and that's probably because it was the BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!! My Mom and Pa and Jess and Gilbert came up to see me and it was fabulous! Jess and Gilbert and I went out on the town and did the Freemont Zipline!! OMG it was amazing!! So so so much fun!! 800 feet of line almost 70 feet above the ground and under the lights of Freemont Street!! What a thrill ride!! If only it lasted longer!! I highly recommend it if any of you find yourselves here in Vegas.

Can you find Jess, Gilbert and I?

The night of my actual birthday we had a karaoke party here at our house. Not a lot of people came....just close friends and family. Our boys played karaoke hosts and they were pretty funny. Not at all shy about singing. I was so happy that my Aunt Patti and Uncle Glenn showed up as I hadn't seen them in a few years and my Mom hadn't seen them in over 10 years. I didn't realize it until a few hours passed by but it was Glenn's birthday too! I appologized for being a birthday hog.

Belting it out!

Calvin singing It's A Wonderful Life....Our wedding song

Superman Dwayne has been a busy guy! When he isn't at work he and the boys were busting their butts to finish our atrium in time for my birthday party. They all worked very hard (Dwayne the hardest of course) and it was well worth it in the end because it turned out beautiful! Then for both our birthdays and a housewarming gift my wonderful parents bought a super fabulous patio set for it! Now it's like a whole other room to our house! We've sat out there many times since then and enjoyed some drinks by the fire place. Sandi and I have our regular Toasting Tuesdays where I make dinner and when we're done eating all our boys go play upstairs while she and I enjoy our wine in the atrium. It's so cozy and relaxing.

Taking out the rock

Leveling the sand

And the finished product!

The fabulous patio and furniture weren't my only presents! My parents brought me their 7ft antique trunk from 1872! They've been talking about downsizing for years and I've always told them I have the perfect spot in my dinning room for that trunk when they're ready to get rid of it. To my pleasant surprise they loaded it up and brought it for me.

Here it is

In all it was a Wonderful Birthday Weekend! It's always a wonderful time when my family comes up to visit. I miss them all so very much. I hope my parents move up here when my Pa retires in a couple years....hint hint!

Let me think if I have any other news?

My knee is healing great, although I still have a bit of a limp. I was released from my dr's care as of the first of this month. I had a hearing about my case a few weeks ago and thought it didn't go well, but recently checked the mail and found my denial has been REVERSED! I think that's good news but I'm sure the workmen's comp insurance will appeal it so we aren't out of the woods yet. Fingers crossed it all goes through and we don't have to pay anything out of pocket.

On April Fool's Day Dwayne and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary! I can't believe it's been that long! There were some very rough patches along the way but now things are GREAT! I can honestly say we're now happier than we've ever been and it feels so good.

Calvin was again tested for the Gifted And Talented Education program and was finally accepted. It's for students who are in the top 5% of their class and tend to think outside the box. He will spend about an hour and a half each week working in another classroom on advanced projects. We're very proud of him and he's really excited about it.

I'm painting again!! And it feels so good! I did a painting of my dear friend Kristen and it turned out pretty good!

If you want to learn more about her and her painting you can check out my painting blog here. We turned it in to a Tshirt at Zazzle.com for her various races she and her family walk in to raise money for cancer research. They're selling like hotcakes and we're both really excited about it!

I believe that's it now, yall are all caught up on our little clan. I will try to do better about keeping this updated, but you all know how that goes (wink wink). Until next time.....this is The Birthday Girl signing off.

Things Are Progressing

Well 2010 has come and gone! Wow, I can't believe how fast the year went. There were some rough times throughout the year but it ended on a very good note.

Thanksgiving was great. It was so nice to see Lori and Denton and it was great to have our tiny terror Zach Attack back home. I really missed him a lot. He had a fabulous time up in Seattle! He even got to play in the snow! A huge storm rolled through while he was there, he almost wasn't able to come home! We don't get much snow here (although we did just a few days ago!) so playing in the snow was a real treat for him. He also got to go on many other adventures with Aunt Leah and cousin Lili. It seems his little cousin Lili was quite enamored and fell in love with him. There's funny video of Lili invading his personal space because she just wanted to be close to him. I think it eventually got to him because he can be heard saying (while growling) "I don't like it when she's stuck to me!". I'm glad he got some of his own medicine, now he knows what his brother and our dog are feeling when he's mauling them. I send a HUGE THANK YOU out to Leah for taking very good care of our Mr Tiny!! I hope he wasn't too much trouble and didn't leave sweet Lili with any bad habits (or words! LOL)

Calvin turned 9 on December 20th. I can't believe he's that old now! Time really flies when you have kids to torment! His birthday was very low-key this year because we made him a deal months ago that we'd give him $100 in lue of a party so he could get whatever expensive toy we couldn't afford! No one ever came to his parties any way because all the parents were either out Christmas shopping or were broke from doing it. The poor kid, I really wish I would have been paying attention to the calendar when it came to baby making....for his sake and mine! Any way, the usual suspects came over (The Ferencys) as well as my brother Cody who live here in Vegas. We had Calvin's choice of dinner....steak, mash potatoes and broccoli. Then came the cake. Well, just take a look at the photo above because it speaks a thousand words....I KILLED IT!! I didn't properly grease the pan and both of them stuck to the bottom and fell apart, there wasn't enough frosting on the planet to put them back together again. It was very funny but sad. So we sent Eddie and Calvin to the store to buy a store made cake. I think maybe from now on I'll just give up baking and stick to the cheesy store bought ones. Lesson learned.

I don't know how I did it but I managed to do almost all of the Xmas shopping myself!! Dwayne and I attempted to do it together and he got a bit overwhelmed once we walked in to any store. So I had to take the bull by the horns. Yep I limped my butt all over Target, Toys R Us and Ross. It took a few trips but I pulled it off. I even got everything wrapped before Xmas Eve! What?? Sandi and I had a Santa's Workshop/Wine Night at her house. It was nice because I got to leave the presents there (because I'm a gimp ya know and there were just too many for little ol me to carry out to the car!) I'd say the boys made out pretty well considering times are a bit tough.

Sadly though, our smarty pants Calvin figured out who Santa is this year. Yep, he compared Santa's handwriting to mine and it was a perfect match. I wish I'd had my thinking cap on at that moment but I didn't so the cat was out of the bag. After that he came to the conclusion that the same goes for the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. At first he was cool with it all and then the more he thought about it the more bummed out he became. Then being the Drama King that he is he burst in to tears and told us "he couldn't believe how foolish he'd been for the past 9 years to believe in something so silly!" UHG! We explained that all kids believe in things like that, that's what makes them innocent and it's a part of being a kid. Then we made him promise not to tell Zach the truth. Since then he's let a few things slip out like "Santa is a fantasy!" but thankfully Zach is too small to realize what he's saying. After all this went down I watched the movie The Tooth Fairy with "The Rock" (OMG is he a handsome devil! Rawr!) and it's all about the innocence of believing in things and I admit it made me a bit verclempht about the whole situation. Our baby is growing up! :O(

Our New Year's Eve was a bit of a bust this year. It was very low key with just the Ferencys (big surprise I know!) and our neighbors from next door. Well, our neighbor's youngest daughter came down with strep throat so his wife stayed home with her and he came over with the oldest daughter (and his cooler of booze!). O.M.G. did he get trashed!! YIKES! Not only was he trashed, but his true redneck colors came shining through! Yall wouldn't believe the stuff that came out of this guy's mouth. Not that we were surprised by any means, I mean after all he had a Sharron Angel sign in his front yard this election year. He finally stumbled home about 10:30 and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief. After that the party started as we had MANY hardy laughs at his expense. Kinda mean I know but trust me if you were here you'd understand! Dwayne returned his cooler a few days later and he informed him that he was done drinking. Good idea dude! I mean I've had my share of TWIs (Talking While Intoxicated) but at least when I'm doing it I'm not sounding like I grew up in the Smokey Mountains, married to my first cousin with a gaggle of kids with really bad teeth and thinking I can pray the gay out of my fabulous brother!! GAWD!

The following Monday when Calvin woke up to go back to school (Yay!!!) I heard this loud "OH MY GOD!!". I leaped out of bed (well sort of, I can't move very fast cuz I'm still a gimp remember) thinking I'm gonna find a money tree growing in his room or something else OMG worthy. Nope. He screams at me to look out the window, I hobbled over to the window thinking maybe the money tree was growing in our yard but what do I see instead? It's SNOW!! In 2 short hours it dropped about 2 inches at our house. It truly is beautiful when it snows. Calvin thought school was canceled because when it snowed about a foot in 2007 they canceled school. They figured us desert rats can't drive in the rain let alone the snow! I gently broke the news to him that he had to go to school but I would be a good mom and give him a ride (while wearing my pajamas of course). He threw on his clothes, gobbled down his breakfast and spent his few extra minutes outside in the backyard throwing snowballs at the block wall while our dog pranced around like a pony. Good thing too cuz in an hour or so all the snow had melted......which is why there's no picture of it! I move at a snails pace these days and by the time I found the energy to bundle up and go outside.....poof it was gone!! DOH!

My knee has been healing slowly but surely. It's been a very long 2 months of being in a brace not being able to bend my knee. Try putting your undies on without bending your knee.....it's not easy trust me!! I've also had to give up trimming my toenails so now I have "ghettoes" so long I could climb a tree as fast as our cat Archie! Today I finally got a new brace that allows me to bend my knee up to 90 degrees....I'm able to bend it maybe 10 degrees at the moment. The hardware inside feels very strange and really kinda creeps me out, I'm going to have to mentally get over that. I should start physical therapy in the next week or so, uhg the thought of that sends shivers down my spine. I'll do it though because I gotta have my dancing knee back by March when I turn 40. This metal "Forest Gump Leg Brace" is not the kind of fashion accessory I want to be sporting along with my birthday tiara that night! That would only scream "Look an old lady celebrating her birthday in Las Vegas".

The only bad news I really have to report is that stupid Workmen's Comp has decided to DENY my claim!!! I know can you believe it??? They claim when I fell it wasn't while I was doing my job and there wasn't anything to make me fall. Whatever! We're pretty mad, well so mad we got a lawyer. He seems to think he can get it approved because I had no choice but to walk down that particular hallway to my desk the whole 3 days I worked there. It's going to be a long process, he said to expect about 6 mos to a year before it's settled one way or another. It's so disappointing because I never wanted it to come to this, but they're given us no choice.

Well, I believe that's it for now. We hope you all had a safe and happy holiday season. May 2011 be your best year yet.....cuz you know the world is going to end in 2012. Phhhhttt! I'll believe it when I see it!
Love you, mean it!
Gimpy and the Boys