1-11-07

Hard to believe that my little baby Dylan is 3 years old today! He is growing up way too fast! We are celebrating with cupcakes tonight and then Sunday we are having a birthday party. He picked the Cars movie theme. Should be lots of fun!

Today we went to Walmart to get Dylan three year pictures taken. Well, I checked when we first got there to see if there was much of a wait. The photographer was having technical difficulties and said come back in a half hour to see if he was able to fix things. So I said OK. Well, last year when we had pictures taken I was LUCKY to get anything worth keeping, so I told Dylan that if he smiled really good for me then he could pick out a toy. Well, since we couldn't get right in to get the pictures done, I made the mistake of letting him pick a toy first. So we payed for our things and then went back to see if we could get the pictures taken. It was fixed thank goodness! So I let Dylan pick a couple of the backgrounds that he liked. He seemed really excited about everything. Well, we get in the little room and I sit him on the table and he lets the guy get one picture that wasn't very good, and he wanted to get down. He refused to let him get anymore. He was putting his head on the floor. I tried bribing him with everything...Happy Meal, returning the toy he picked out ect. Nothing worked. Then the photographer pulled out a background of Thomas the Train. THAT DID IT!! Hooray for Thomas! Once Dylan saw that he was all for getting the pictures done. Of course we did the rest of the backgrounds BEFORE we did Thomas. LOL So I did get some half way decent pictures. The smiles look a little un-natural, but I was happy to get what I got!

Also, I couldn't believe it....the first gas station I passed on the way to Walmart was priced at $1.99!!! I couldn't believe it. FINALLY under $2 a gallon. Then when I went a little further past Meijer's they had gas for $1.94!! Wonder how long this will last?

1st blog entry of 2007

Happy New Year all! Hope your holiday season was as nice as ours although we did have a couple bumps along the way. The first "bump" happened on Christmas Eve day. My brother-in-law called Alton and was in tears I guess because he was being evicted from his apartment. He had to be out by 3pm on Christmas Eve! So all that day Alton and Bobby moved his stuff into our garage. We set him up a room in our basement for the time being. It's not been too bad having him here because he pretty much has everything he needs down there....bathroom, ect. When my other brother-in-law lived with us he was in what is now Dylan's room, and he had to use our bathroom. I did not like that one bit! The only bad thing we've had to deal with throughout the whole thing is that EVERYTHING he owns smelled like cat urine! He lived with two other guys, and one guy has 9 cats living int he apartment and none were spayed!!!! It's not that the cats actually peed on his stuff, just the stench from the nasty apartment got on everything! So he's washed all of his clothes and put Frebreeze on everything so the smell is pretty much gone--Thank goodness! I just hope that he is able to get on his feet and get his own place very soon! We'll see. He has many problems.

The other bump we had is that one week later on New Year's Eve Alton, Dylan and I all woke up with nasty colds. So needless to say we stayed home on New Years and watched the ball drop in Times Square. I think that was the first time we stayed home and didn't have anybody over for New Years. But we are all pretty much over the colds. Dylan got over his very quick! So that was a blessing. so if you're praying one night and you think of me, send a prayer my way that our guest can get up and on his feet in the next few months! Thank you!!!!

The Polar Express

For those of you who have never seen The Polar Express movie I totally recommend that you do! It is so cute! Especially at this time of the year! I watched it for the first time a few days ago. Dylan loves it, so when they aired it again I recorded it for him. If you have a "non-believer" of Santa Claus definitely let him/her watch this movie! It may just change their mind!

Alton's Work Christmas Party

Yesterday was Alton's work Christmas party. And as usual we went to a comedy club for dinner and a show. But before we go to the show we always go to Alton's bosses house for horduerves and a gift exchange. Well, this year I lucked out a got a good gift...a box of chocolate pralines. But Alton on the other hand was ambushed. These people that he works with are sooooooo raunchy. This is what they did. They know Alton is totally against gay marriage ect. ect. So they made sure that he got a certain gift. This gift included condoms, a bar of soap, and the movie Broke Back Mountain. These people are so dumb!!! I don't know why they can't just buy a normal gift. And some of the other gifts that people received were a porn DVD, and a blow up female doll!!! SO SICK!!! Just so they can get a laugh! I dread this party every year, because it's always the same ol' thing. Of course we are talking about a group of guys, but come on! Be civil for one day of the year when your wives are with you! At least the food and show were good!

Our visit to Santa

Yesterday was our annual visit to Santa at the O.P.C. (Older Persons Center--A place for people 50 and up) with my in-laws. They have an awesome Christmas set up each year for the public. This was our third year going and I think it was the best so far. You would not believe the work they do with the decorations and all the set up. There must have been close to 50 Christmas trees all decorated differently! Not to mention tons of poinsettia plants, Santa Clauses, and other decor. This year to my surprise Dylan would not sit on Santa's lap. So I had to sit in Mrs. Claus's chair with Dylan on my lap in order to get a picture. The previous two years he went right up and got on his lap with no problem. Then after the picture I tried to get Dylan to get his face painted. There was a whole sheet of pictures to choose from, but he wouldn't do it. I even did it thinking once he saw me do it then he would. No such luck! I got a really cute snowman painted on my cheek. They also had a craft table where you could make a picture frame for the pic with Santa. He didn't want anything to do with that either. So I made one. One thing that he was VERY interested in was a train that they had set up. There was a model train club who brought that in. They had a ticket booth where you got a ticket and a conductor's hat. You should have seen this train. It was the length of the whole room, and it was a big room. It had a whole city built around the train tracks too. Complete with a police car that had a corvette pulled over to a farm scene with lots of little chickens all over. It was the neatest thing! Then one of the trains had a camera on the front of it and at a certain point on the track you could stand there and see yourself on a little TV screen. So neat! Trying to get Dylan away from there so that we could go eat lunch was like pulling teeth. He DID NOT want to leave the room. Of course he threw a tantrum and embarrassed me, but once we got into where lunch was he saw there was a high school choir singing Christmas carols so he was interested in that a little. They had brought in food from a Wendy's restaurant that had donated and also had their own food. So after we ate Dylan and my father-in-law went back to the trains while my mother-in-law and I checked out the baked goods that were being sold. I bought some Christmas cookies and a chocolate chip loaf. YUM!! Everything sold goes to charity! I wish everybody could see this! It's such an awesome event.

Hello

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. We did. We were able to spend quite a bit of time with my brother and sister in law, that came from Georgia, so that was nice. We learned how to play a new game that they brought with them called Apples to Apples, so that was fun.

We finally got our Indian summer this week. The weather has been beautiful. Today we are supposed to have record breaking temps. Close to 70. Today the sun isn't out though unfortunately. Then by Friday they are talking snow. Lovely! LOL Yesterday I raked up four bags of leaves, but you can't even tell. Alton has been telling me that he was going to get our lawnmower out and mulch them all up, but he never has. I just wanted to get the stuff around our drive way and in front of our deck up, because the leaves keep getting dragged into the house on our shoes. Then they wind up in the kitchen!

Woes of the holiday season!

Isn't the holiday season supposed to be a happy time of year? This year is already giving me a headache! We are having a hard time dividing our time between Alton's and my sides of the family. I know a lot of people alternate holidays between families, but I am trying to avoid doing that. The hard part is that for each holiday--Thanksgiving and Christmas--we have family coming in from out of town that we want to be able to see. It just seems that on the holiday we are constantly running from place to place that we hardly have a chance to enjoy anywhere that we go. And if we don't go to certain places it just doesn't seem like the holidays. So if anybody reads this and has any suggestions I would definitely like to hear what you do if you have the same situation. LOL

Haircut

Today I got my hair cut. It's been over a year since the last time it was cut. I decided to go to a new girl that my friend is friends with. She did an EXCELLENT job! I love my hair!! I told her how I wasn't quite sure of what I wanted done, so she let me look through a style book. There really wasn't anything that jumped out at me. So she suggested some long layers. So I said go for it. I was pretty much up for anything except short. Now the whole thing is getting it to look like how she did it!!! She blew it all dry and flipped it up in certain places. I hope I can do it. The best part is that she only charged me $20!! Awesome!!

November Already

Can't believe it's November already!! Hope everybody had a fun Halloween last night. We went trick-or treating in our neighborhood. There weren't many people handing out candy, but that didn't matter because Dylan was ready to quit after about two blocks! All he wanted to do was go home. I have no idea why! At the last house that we tried to get him to go to all he would do is sit in their front yard. LOL The people were sitting on their front porch even! All he had to do was walk up and get the candy. He wouldn't do it. So that was the end for us. Maybe next year he'll be more into it. Alton and I were kind of bummed, me especially because Halloween is my favorite holiday. Oh well.

A sickly week

Tuesday morning I woke up to Dylan being sick. He had thrown up in his bed. YUCK!! This is the first time he's ever been sick since he's been born. By Wednesday the throwing up was gone, but it was coming out of the other end very badly! And then come Wednesday night I got the privilege to start the whole process. Today I am felling much better. My body seems to be a little sore from all the dry heaving I've done though. I'm waiting and dreading when Alton gets it. Hopefully he's lucky enough not to get it. We had been at a birthday party last Sunday and I think that's where we got the sickness. My cousin who's birthday party it was is also sick. Thank goodness it's behind us now and we're feeling much better!

Our Weekend

Alton had the weekend off, so that was nice. Friday night we surprised my Mom with a new dryer. Theirs wasn't working and was like 30 years old so we got her a new one. They were going to try and repair it. My Dad thought he knew what was wrong with it, but he's not really in the shape to be trying to fix a dryer. She was really surprised! We got them to go to my grandparents house for dinner so that's when we got it in the basement and hooked up.

On Saturday morning we had to take Alton's parents to the airport and then
Saturday evening we had some family and friends over to watch the Tiger's game. Alton cooked ham and ribs on the grill.

Then Sunday we went to my cousin's birthday party. He turned 2. So that was interesting with a bunch of little kids running around. For the evening we ordered pizza and watched the Tiger's beat the Cardinal's! So we had a very nice weekend!

Amazed

Once again my son Dylan amazed me. Last night it was close to bed time and he was playing with an old cell phone that is now his. We were just sitting on our bed waiting for Daddy and all of a sudden he punches out OUR phone number and says it at the same time!!! I think we've talked about our phone number a couple of times, but not to an extent that he would remember it! So I told him to say it again and sure enough he knows it!!! I couldn't believe it. So today I asked him to say it again and once again he remembered it. Then I called my parents to ask them if they had been working with him on our phone number and they said no. So I don't know.....Maybe the kid just has a REALLY good and fast memory! He sure made me proud!!

First Snow

You would have thought it was the middle of January here today. It was snowing like crazy and the wind was soooooo strong! And 32 degrees. No accumulation of course, but it did cover the vehicles and the leaves that were on the ground. I am so not ready for this yet!!! I'm still trying to figure out where Summer went!

Baby again.

I don't really know if this is normal or not, but Dylan has went back to "baby talk". I don't know why, but every so often he'll start saying goo goo ga ga over and over. And he expects me to understand what he's saying. This started after seeing himself as a tiny baby on the video I wacthed a few days ago. Kinda weird.

Ever noticed?

It was so funny....Today at the grocery store I picked a ckeckout line that had a young guy working it. So I put all of my stuff up on the conveyer belt and I was standing watching the guy ring it up. Well, my purchase included a certain feminine product......tampons. So he was ringing using both hands and then came time for him to ring the tampons. He used TWO fingers to run them across the scanner and put them in a bag. He put nothing else in the bag with the tampons. It was like he was going to get a disease from them or something. I was cracking up to myself! So next time you have to purchase that kind product and you don't have a woman ring you up, watch how the guys handles it. You might get a real laugh for the day!

Where has time went?

Yesterday while I was looking for a video to transfer the film from my camcorder I came across the video that had Dylan's first ultrasound on it. I hadn't watched in a very long time so I stuck it in. After the ultrasound comes film of Dylan every couple weeks from the time he was born. I was sad yet happy while I was watching. Sad because I miss Dylan gurgling and drooling and happy because he's doing more new things every day. So does that mean it's time to have another baby? LOL And then I came across my sister-in-laws wedding video. I put that in and watched as well. She and Stephen were so happy and excited to start their life together. Who would have thought things would end up the way they are now. Watching those two videos sure made me think how lucky I am to have that on tape and to have the family that I have .

Last Day of Vacation

Today is Alton's last day of his vacation. He is REALLY bumming! He's dreading going back tomorrow! He said he's ready to retire! LOL We didn't really do much all week, but it was nice to have him home all the time. We had such yucky weather all week! I had wanted to take Dylan to the zoo, but there was never a nice warm sunny day, so we didn't do that. We did get him an aquarium though. We set it up yesterday and went and got fish today. He loves it. Back to the ol' grind tomorrow:>(

Autofest Weekend

We are back from our weekend at the Frankenmuth Autofest. We had a blast! It was so nice to get away! The Auto show was spectacular. There were over 2000 classic cars at the show. And by classic I mean from 1973 and older. You would not believe some of the things that people had! There were cars painted with flames on them and then right behind them they had a mini duplicate of the car, only it was a trailer that is hauled behind the car. UNFORTUNATELY I forgot to take both my camera and video camera. So I have no pictures to share. But it is definitely something to see. Alton was in his glory when we heard the horn from the General Lee off The Dukes of Hazard. Immediately we HAD to find where the car was. When we did I thought he was going to go into shock. Owning a General Lee is his ultimate goal. We found out that the owner of this one lives in White Lake. Very close to us, so he said he'd be willing to help Alton restore one if he was to come across a Charger. We'll see. The only bummer of the day(Saturday) was that is pretty much misted all day long. So some people didn't take the tarps off of their cars. It was very chilly. But the weather didn't wreck our good time!

Vacation!!!

Well, as of 8:00 last night Alton started his vacation. He hasn't had a real vacation in a few years, so he is very excited about having the time off. He don't go back to work until next Monday. Today we are heading up to Frankenmuth to their annual Autofest. We've entered our 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass. The dog is at my brother's house and Dylan is staying with Grandpa and Grandma, so we get the weekend away to enjoy the Autofest. We aren't really sure what we will do for the rest of the week. I guess we'll pay it be ear.

9-5-06

Hope everybody had a nice Labor Day weekend. We did. Didn't do anything special, but we got a lot done to the dump truck that we bought. It's for the business that Alton is trying to get going. A hauling business. Like if somebody needs dirt hauled or if somebody want to clean out their garage and needs the junk hauled away. We repainted it and our neighbor did some welding work on it for us. The truck looks 100% better now. It is a little beat up, but it has low mileage and runs great, and for the price we couldn't beat it. Before we had a trailer with side on it to haul with, but then everything had to be unloaded by hand. Way too much work. Now everything dumps out! It's great! So if anybody needs anything hauled, let us know!