brotherly love and a disclaimer

As you may notice my blog's look is changing up a bit. I'm seriously considering having something custom designed, but I do get bored easily. Maybe if it was something I paid for it would stick for a while. That and I don't know if I want to stick with my current name. I've been mulling over some possible names, and haven't come up with the one. Any ideas?

Now on to the real reason for this post.

I have to share some recent photos.

Look at how close they're sitting!They're actually getting along!
Are they ill? Nope, they just really do love each other!

I couldn't pass this up! They must have been watching a movie together and AW fell asleep in LB's bed. If either of them knew I posted this they would kill me and then die too.
Melts my heart!

twilight and a new year

First I'd like to say I hope everyone had a safe New Year's Eve. We stayed home as we've done every year now since Y2K. Sometimes we've had friends over, sometimes just the kids have had friends over, and sometimes it's just been the four of us plus whatever furry, or scaley, critters we may reside with. Last night we had friends over. It was nice to be able to just hang out with good friends, ya know?

I am sort of sad to see 2008 as history. It was a banner year for us. I got my first deer...with our family car. My kids turned 15 and 12, and as with every one of their birthdays we're blessed to have the happy and healthy children we have-even if they get into trouble, sometimes. Big B retired from the Air Force after 21 years and 21 days! He went straight to work, well after a week off, and is lucky to have the job he does. I started nursing school while simultaneously finishing my Bachelors in Psych. Those are just some of the highlights! My point is, I'm grateful that we had such a blissful year.

We stood by some friends who weren't so lucky. Many had loved ones who passed away.

We even have friends who lost their house to fire, not once, but several times. Actually it was all from the same incident, the fire just kept reigniting. It happens. The first day only the second story was damaged. The next morning the other neighbors and I awakened to a glowing early morning sky. The house was completely engulfed in flames. Evidently the power company is supposed to take the meter unit away from a property when it has caught fire, so that there isn't any chance of reignition from a live source. Even if the power in the house is shut off there is still power from the main source at the street, to the meter. Well good ole Dominion didn't do the job.

This happened in March and by September the family was back in their newly re-built home.

This year should be somewhat more tame than last, but will still behold a few milestones.

The first thing that comes to mind is LB will turn 16...and then get his driver's license three months later. In VA you turn 16 and three months (after having had your learner's permit for 9 months) and then you may go to coourt to receive your privilege.

AW will turn 13...leaving Big B and I living with two teenagers!

I guess it will be a banner year for milestone birthdays since Big B will turn 40.

I will finish my first year of nursing school, hoping that it will sum up to a first year if I do transfer. If not I may be looking at one extra semester.

Hopefully everyone, our loved ones especially, will remain healthy and we wont see anyone close to us depart this fine earth. In years prior to 2008 we lost someone pretty much every year since 2002.

Well enough about the past, present and future!

I guess that's not entirely accurate because I wanted to mention I have jumped on the bandwagon and have begun reading Twilight. I'm not usually one to follow trends, but just had to see what all the hoopla has been about. I'm hooked. It must be said that the book is definitely easy reading, and that's appreciated considering the material I've been reading lately. Sometimes Meyer's style is a little difficult to decipher what she means. I think it may come down to regional language differences. I'm loving it nonetheless and will have Twilight finished today and will move on to New Moon, and the other two books. Then it will be time to view the movie!

I couldn't even tell you if it's still in theatres or not. There will be some waiting involved if not, because I will be done with all four books in no time.

I did post a while back about some things that needed to be accomplished, at all i want to do and also at made some changes , and most has been accomplished. After I've finished the Meyer books, I will set out and read the nurse books I've got stacked up.


I also need to go through AW's closet still and do some scrapbooking!

The boys go back to school on Monday. So it looks like I'll have plenty to keep me busy whilst being left all alone!

I forgot to mention: My 20 year high school reunion is this July!!!! We're going to party like it's 1989!

random in december

I was foolin' around with my Canon Powershot the other day and took a bunch of random photos.

This is the half moon window in my great room. Loved the view of the clouds.
Here we have DC. He's 14 y/o now and has hyperthyroidism. He doesn't let it get him down.



I thought this was interesting. It's just some decorative swirly stuff I have in a vase. Makes for an interesting, and abstract photo. Just the way I like them!

These are just a few of the close-ups I took of Irwin. I love how crisp they are.

rocked my world

Yesterday I ended up experiencing firsthand what it must feel like to be raped. OK, that may be a little dramatic, so maybe we'll downgrade the melodrama to a claim of emotional assault.

Our bank account was drained by a little over $300 without my consent. The assailant was my 12 year old music fiend. Originally I thought it was both the boys, but no it was just AW. BZ was cleared after checking his ITunes account.

AW racked up around $345 in charges for songs, videos, games and movies on ITunes.

I can see where this would not be hard to do.

He did redeem himself with the visible remorse you could see on his sweet face, and the attention he paid to doing things normally against his usual repertoire. For example he usually has to be begged to put his dinner dishes into the dishwasher. Not last night!

There wasn't much the poor boy could do, but hand over what he had left of his Christmas money. That was about $50.

It didn't look like ITunes was going to do anything to help the matter, until today when I checked and apparently they're refunding $295 of the charges!!

Now I feel a little better. And the boy may live. We were going to let him anyway. This just makes it easier.

have you ever been so angry???

Imagine my rage when I signed on to my bank account this morning only to find the balance far lower than I had expected. The real rage ensued upon seeing exactly why this was so. There are 8+ pending debit card purchases, at about $42 a piece to ITunes. Well, two of them were less than $10....but who gives a crap!?

I stormed into Satan's room, at approximately 8 a.m. to awaken him from his deep slumber, demanding his account information, and for him to descend the stairs to enter it in and explain himself. I feel slightly bad, because I also had to go wake Lucifer up for the same reason. I don't feel bad because of that, but because of the fact that only one of the purchases was made by Satan, the rest were made by 12 y/o Lucifer.

Yes, at times like this they are referred to by their devil names.

It doesn't help that there is no phone call support for billing/purchase disputes at ITunes. You have to email them. Either that, or you can go in and opt for the "report a problem" choice. You then click on "report a problem" that shows up next to the item in question, and fill out the form.

So, we're talking over $300 in purchases. The average purchase was $42. That would be great if that was for one item. Each order, at about $42, had about 20 or so songs, and then some videos, or movies to go along with them...at least.

The average purchase on ITunes would be the songs at 99 cents a piece....$42 equals 40 or so songs...if songs are all that a very bad boy purchases!!!

You try and fill in reports for each song, video, or movie!!! I did it for several and then got wise and decided to opt for emailing customer service. I had to make a list on MSWord of the order numbers. You can't cut and paste from ITunes because they wont let you select for copying and pasting!

Hopefully they'll resolve this matter via these methods, otherwise I'll have to wait until the "pending debit card purchases" are no longer pending and have the bank dispute them.

Happy Frickin' Holidays!

Well, up until this morning the holidays were quite nice.

Mom and Dad were here for the week and I took them to the airport yesterday. I bawled half the way home. It takes about an hour and I knew I had to stop to pick up a few essentials for dinner, so I got myself under control as quickly as possible.

Have you ever been to a Wegman's grocery store? I had never been and it was very cathartic, to say the least. It's like a food mall! You could literally spend hours upon hours in there! There's even a seafood bar, to go along with the huge bakery, deli, and wine store.

I don't frequent these elite grocery stores often, and would never do full-on food shopping at one, but they are fun to go into for the infrequent purchases.

The pane Italiano was quite yummy. It was warm still, when I picked it up out of the bin. It went along nicely with the stroganoff type dinner I made out of left over roast beast for dinner last night. My father-in-law and his lady friend are here for a visit and I had to throw something together.

Christmas morning


The following two pictures are of the boys opening up the boxes I wrapped their Ipod Touches in. Darn those Ipod Touches!

just a tad tired, but found a gem

Hmmph, I am so very exhausted, but need to stay awake a while longer. My mom and dad are coming in, in the wee hours of the morning. So it will probably be about 2:30-3 a.m. before we're settled back here at home and ready to head to bed. We'll leave in about 45 minutes to go pick them up from the airport.

In the meantime I am reading up on some other student nurses' or new nurses' blogs. I came across these tips from Christy at My Journey from a Student to a Nurse and just wanted to share. Christy is now a practicing RN and has been for about a year now, I believe, and these gems are from when she was deep in the thick of her schooling.

I did everything I set out to do today, and then some. As far as "straightening up" LB's room, note to self: never think walking into a teenagers room is ever going to be simple. If a tree could be reincarnated out of all the paper I found under his bed we'd have a 100 year old oak on our hands! Yikes! His room took me a couple of hours. I also cleaned the kitchen, the bathrooms, and my bedroom. My back hurts.

I baked one of the types of cookies I planned on and that would be the pumpkin chip cookies. They're scrumptious as always. I got the recipe from a friend's mom who had been visiting a while back. She's since passed on and I love that we carry her delicious recipe on as a tradition in our house during this wonderful holiday season.

Have I mentioned I'm tired?

just can't stay away!

The peppermints are glued together with hot glue. Yeah, it hurt sometimes! I love how it turned out!
I've been pretty busy the past couple of days, making up for the lost time from being slowed down with the abdominal pain. I did go Friday for my ultrasound and the tech didn't see anything remarkable, but of course deferred diagnosis to the radiologist. The pain has not come back. That evening I worked on some crafts while we watched The House Bunny. The boys played Spiderman on XBOX 360. Later we watched The Dark Knight.

Saturday we spent cleaning up our computer room. There were stacks of papers that needed to be sifted through, and my bookshelves were a wreck. It's technically Big B's room, as it's his sports themed room. He's a big fan of the Phildalphia Phillies, Eagles, and Flyers. There's memorabilia smeared all over the place. Oh, and we can't forget Nascar! There's a little section of wall dedicated to it, mostly Dale Jarrett. But yeah, I've let things go over the past few months and the place looked like a train wrecked in it. Now it's all neat, tidy, and organized! We watched Mamma Miathat evening. We had seen the Broadway version in NYC, and loved it so I couldn't wait to see it when it came out in theaters. We never got to go!

AW went over to a friends house for a sleepover, and one of LB's friends came over to our house to crash.

Yesterday I wrapped presents, organized my closet (the train had made its way upstairs), and sewed the boys a couple of stockings.

These are the stockings. The green one is LB's and the red and black one is AW's. The tree is what I worked on Saturday evening. It's a little cone with balls and buttons I hot-glued on it.

Today I need to clean the bathrooms, the kitchen and my bedroom. Oh, and I need to straighten up LB's room. My mom and dad are coming in for the week and they stay in his room. We only have a three bedroom house and LB has our old queen-sized bed. Heck, he and AW end up sleeping downstairs on weekends and during holiday break anyway!

They fly in at 12:30 a.m. Big B bought the tickets for them with some of his mileage points and that was the best time he could get, and the best route...considering the weather. They'll fly from Texas to ATL and on into VA...avoiding the Midwest. He's so smart!

Our tree. AW and I decorated it.

The star is made out of a white pipe cleaner and Borax. The photo doesn't quite capture how it sparkles.

See the little black and blue ornament? AW painted it. He has a thing for Geico. Don't ask me why!

This is our china cabinet decked out for the holidays. The snow family up top is placed there because I found them in the jaws of one of my resident Labrador Retrievers. They take that retrieving thing a little too seriously sometimes!



Minnie had to get in on the action. Sandi was undoubtedly snoozing upstairs on my bed.

Now I must go scrub toilets! Where's Cinderella when I need her!? I could never do that to a person though. We'd scrub together!

Both boys are elsewhere now. AW stayed at his friend's house again, and LB went to the friend's house who came over Saturday night. So I woke up to peace and quiet today. Of course that's how it would be anyway as the slugs sleep late on days off from school. However! I will be able to get everything done today that I need to without warding off requests from teen and pre-teen boys once they've awakened! I really do miss them when they're not here, though.

After cleaning I'll bake some cookies. I plan on baking snickerdoodles, pumpkin chip cookies and nutty spice oatmeal cookies. Yummee!

christmas week

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy holidays! Probably wont be posting much this week.

happy anniversary girls!

Last year on this very day I had a reduction mammoplasty done. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made!

Here is a before and after.

ever feel like an alien?

I feel so much better as of yesterday afternoon, after taking my first dose of Nexium. Interestingly enough and this is going into TMI territory, and hopefully I'm not repeating something I've already said, but anyway-somewhat coincidentally, I accidentally started my quarterly (I take Quasense, a generic of Seasonale) on Monday, the same day the abd pain had started. I say accidentally because I somehow (maybe amidst the stress of studying for finals???) forgot to take 4 of my BCPs last week! Oopsy!

Along with yesterday's first dose of Nexium I also stopped menstruating. Back in 1992 I was diagnosed as having had endometriosis, post exploratory laparoscopy. I ended up pregnant with my now 15 y/o soon after and haven't suffered from endometriosis since.

I have my ultrasound this morning. I don't think it's likely that they'll find anything. I think it's either acid/nerves related...or maybe endometriosis sneaking back up on me. I did start my pills right back up from where I left off and my actual menses is supposed to be this coming week. If it is endometriosis then in theory I would most likely go through this pain again, next week. Merry Christmas to me.

Let's just hope it's acid/nerves related.

Nonetheless I am feeling tons better, like my normal self and now I can finally enjoy this holiday season.