carrie tagged me for weird stuff

I was tagged by carrie. Here are the rules:

Each player of this game starts with the “6 weird things about you”. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says “you are tagged” in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

1. I belch like a man (it’s true, but this is courtesy of rob – giggle!)

2. while I like being adventurous, I’d be perfectly happy just staying at home and not seeing people other than my family for days on end.

3. some people would think it’s weird that I nursed rhys until he was older than 3...before I had kids, it seemed weird to me too.

4. I am left handed. rob is left handed. neither of our kids are, though rhys seems to be ambidextrous, so we have hope. at one point, I lived with 4 sorority sisters. 3 of us were left handed and two of us were dating left handed guys (rob was one of them)

5.rob says that b/c I like american dreamer, I’m weird. now, people like debR will back me up when I say – pshaw! it is NOT weird! -- so, instead, I’ll go with this one – I’ve never smoked pot. yes, I DID go to college. I even graduated from college. yes, I’ve gotten a contact high. yes, most of my friends smoked it at least once. none of them pressured me to try it. I had cool friends.

6. since having kids, I’ve gotten a bit more phobic about things like flying and heights. when trying to cross the golden gate bridge w/rob and the kids (rhys was teeny), I had my first ever panic attack. it was an odd thing to know – KNOW – in my head that everything was okay and that the gaps in the bridge through which a 2 year old had slipped several years before had been fixed, my reaction was still one of complete and absurd panic. I was having those thoughts of the wind swooping up my kids over the side. stupid. yes. and yet.

and, b/c I’m one to break the rules, I’m not going to list the names of folks I want to do this...but if you want to do it, that would be fun. and you know that really, i'd like everyone to do it so i can go and read weird things about you! let me know when you do it so I can go and read them :)

oops...

carrie nailed me. so here i am. it's not that i don't want to blog, i just don't always have the time and energy...bad kristen, no biscuit.

there is a lot i want to blog - but i need to head to bed early. i'm subbing tomorrow and thursday and it's snowing and dangme cold. i'm subbing for 2nd graders. i've made a word search puzzle for them that i think is easy enough - hopefully not too easy.

today was a brownie meeting. i have a new co-leader. i think we're going to get together for coffee on friday - at least that's my hope. today seemed like less fun than it should have been. i need to work on that. hopefully beth and i can figure out some fun things.

jolie and the kids were up for ken's b-day - i started a post for that and didn't finish it. crap. anyway, we got to see them at dinner and traded some gifties for the advent stockings and a few other things. someday we'll get to sit and talk and have a real discussion for more than 3 minutes *smile*

jolie and karly (karly turned 2 on the 9th)

jake, jolie, and karly

jake and jolie

all these pictures were taken by rhys

we had a wonderful thanksgiving. my SIL, Connie and her 16 year old, alana were here here with their 2 dogs (styx and tabby - both border collies). Ken came for football and dinner also. it was a primarily organic and/or grassfed dinner which made everyone happy. i was delighted with our turkey from wild oats - i was very concerned about cooking it correctly - i was quite pleased that it was cooked quite well and was still juicy - yea! connie and alana brought apple pie (alana's favorite), yams, stuffing (bread), red wine, and i'm sure i'm forgetting something...OH! ham for the next morning and the green beans). ken brought some lovely french white wine, and i made pumpkin pie, stuffing (oatmeal), the turkey, salad, green beans, and rob made yummy dinner rolls as well as cinnamon rolls for the next morning. i'd hoped to have dinner ready at 3....well, we ate at 4. not so bad. we had some yummy appetizers, so everyone survived.

the kids' table.

the big kids' table

on saturday, rob, connie, and alana went geocache-ing. connie has a 4 wheel drive f250 (it's biodiesal - cool, huh?) so they were able to easily get where rob wanted to go. they found something insane like SIX caches. they also had a lot of fun.

alana on a cold hill

here she might be signing the log - there's connie's truck behind her
it may look like dancing, but there is a string that alana is holding - it was part of the cache. connie is in red watching the dance. *smile*
rob with 12 angry men. the dvd, not actual people shrunken down to surprisingly small size

on saturday and sunday rob also put up the outside lights - outside of our house looks great! inside, not so much, but at some point it will be christmasized.

and, just b/c, here is a picture of irene
and, i just want to say that i love my daughters sense of style. it always puts a smile on my face. under the purple sweater she has another sweater that also has stripes of various colors.

and now, i need to think about bed b/c it's going to be icy and scary driving tomorrow to get way across town.

and thanks again to carrie - everyone should go and give her some love b/c she helps to keep me blogging :)

b/c i'm lame and can't figure out how to get a new blogger picture - i want to get one just from my computer but it only lets me have a url...will this work? who knows.

Disneyland

Rob has a pretty good rundown of day one and how we got there...if you remember, rhys was sick. then irene was sick. did i mention that previously? she was 1/2 day behind rhys. on tuesday, everyone laid low. i was exhausted b/c i'd slept with rhys - slept? did i say slept? yeah. that would be overstating the fact that i occasionally closed my eyes. whenever i did that and sort of began to actually fall asleep, rhys would moan and need me to be awake to rub his little tum. so, i was not in my normal wide awake mode when i was supposed to be packing...packing didn't really happen until after rob got home. whoops. i just couldn't focus. and on top of that, every time that i DID try to go and pack, one or both of the kids would need me. ah well. we finally did manage to get to Pat and Bob's in Lodi. Pat had made her delicious vegetable soup. Rhys didn't want much of it, but Irene enjoyed it. so did the rest of us. i took rhys up to go to sleep and both of us fell asleep mere minutes after i finished reading Fox in Socks.

the hightlight of the next day's drive was rhys throwing up. wheee. i'd had a waterproof sheet on top of both kids b/c we were in the prius and i didn't want them to get syrup on the new car...the kids were watching a video and suddenly, there went the 4 bites of pancake. on rhys, his carseat, the sheet, and...my computer. for whatever reason, the incident happened in the middle of NOWHERE and there wasn't much of a shoulder, so rob couldn't safely stop on the side of the road to do all we had to do...so, miles and miles down the road (shades of trying to find a toilet on our way from richmond back to norfolk) we were finally able to stop and clean up the boy, sort of clean up the carseat, and get back into the car. yes the computer works. i had an extra flannel - hmmm - what to call it? not so much a receiving blanket as it's lovely and big (it was a gift from Jaye when rhys was born - it's large and serves MANY purposes for us), so we put that on top of the car seat and continued on our way. rhys quickly fell asleep for most of the rest of the trip. at some point, irene switched to pat and bob's car (smart girl!). we got to our hotel (Paradise Pier!) around 5. We had a fabulous view of California Adventure


it was actually light out - but this was the first picture we took. nice view, huh? we were VEDDDDY excited and happy with it.

rhys didn't make it for dinner, so everyone else had dinner while rhys and i went upstairs. they brought my dinner up for me and rhys had his toast. i think he had 3 bites of it.

the next morning was DISNEYLAND DAY!!!

irene had been all set to go on a million of the scarier rides, then changed her mind when it came down to it..."i'll do it tomorrow" was her mantra....but we didn't realize at ALL what the next day would bring. so, pat, rob, rhys and i did pirates while bob stayed w/irene. we went on several of our favorite rides. at one point irene thought she really needed to be back at the hotel (that tells you just how carpy she was feeling!). so we started to head back...then she rallied soon after i realized i needed my wallet.

more rides, more fun, no real awful lines. nightmare before christmas'd haunted mansion ROCKS in a BIG giant way. i went on it w/Bob and Rhys and once w/rob while pat and bob took the kids on the jungle cruise. we had dinner at the mexican place by Thunder Mountain Railroad -- it had broken down. it opened just as we were getting ready to leave, so rob and i hopped on (no line!) while, again, P&B watched the kids. then it was on to see about the parade. pat and irene stayed and saved our place for that while rhys and bob went on the paddle boat and roba nd i went on to space mountain. MAN that is a great ride. i've always liked it, but now it has rockin' music, it's faster, and it's DARKer. fabbo fun.

the parade was the same one we'd seen back in march. it was just as good. the fireworks got cancelled which was a bummer. of course, they weren't s'posed to happen until 9:30 anyway (well past when our kids fall asleep). we went back to our hotel and the kids fell asleep pretty quickly. rhys had fallen asleep on the way out of disneyland. irene was out before rob and i headed out for disneyland. pat watched the children for us while we had a wonderful time back at disneyland. it was so much fun to just go. we got some coffee, went on splash mountain (oh my dog did i get wet! i was in the very front. S.O.A.K.I.N.G. that's what i was. but it was great fun. from there we went to indiana jones and then back to space mountain. after that we perused various shops. we then walked back to our hotel and relieved grammie from babysitting duty and thanked her profusely. it was great fun to be able to go back.

here are some pictures from the day:

our hotel had a character breakfast - we'd all forgotten about that...so i was upstairs until rob called and said BRING THE CAMERA!!!

irene and daisy :)
daisy was very sweet and funny. rhys had quite the cowlick and she kept trying to press it down. it didn't work.

isn't this a fun picture of pat and bob with pluto?
irene, rhys and MICKEY! (the spot on rhys' leg is actually the remnants of a halloween tattoo)

not the very best of pat, but here are bob, irene, and pat on peter pan. the camera didn't want to take multiple pix at that point. dadgum!

here are rob, rhys, and I - the "cast member" took this for us

on the train with gramps

gramps and rhys in a funny toon town car

two silly children in goofy's house

pat and bob are sitting in front of the fountain at toon town. and in the foreground, you can see rob in the rust sweatshirt and galaxy quest hat. and if you click on it, you can see rhysie behind rob - in an orange shirt.

just before the parade started (irene and rhys anxiously looking for that first float)

day two of disneyland was less than perfect. when we made the reservations (several months ago), we were trying to figure out a time to go that would work for everyone and that was during irene's time off track. halloween didn't work b/c pat and bob were just returning from hawaii. there needed to be a bit of a break for them before traveling again. the following week (which is this week) didn't work b/c rob has to go to las vegas for a big gaming convention thingy. rob doesn't have a lot of vacation days, so our thinking was that if we went on thurs/fri, he'd only miss 3 days. well....friday was veteren's day. well, not really, but that's the day that all the schools got off. i have never NEVER seen disneyland so busy. just getting in caused my heart to beat a bit faster - and not in a good way. when pat, bob and i went to new orlean's square to find something, i was ready to pass out. the line for pirates was already more than 1 hour long - and they were putting up ropes from the outside of pirates practically to the water! by the time that pat and i were done, i'd say the line was at least 2 hours. so, we decided to head to it's a small world. it had just opened up on friday - newly winterized (holiday-ized). we were going to get in line and our friends, judy, dustin, and their daughter, abby could meet us in line. well, par for the course, it had broken down. we decided to wait there anyway and maybe it would open. about 10 minutes after judy et al arrived (it took them about 2 hours from their hotel door to us -- and their hotel was only 5 minutes away!), the ride opened! so we were able to hop on. to hear irene tell it, we had waited all day for that ride. it wasn't working properly for the 1st half of the ride, but they let us ride it a second time. so we got 2 rides for the wait of 1. that was nice. if only we'd known that we could have done multiple fast passes, maybe we'd have done more stuff. but probably not. we headed over to california adventure for lunch - took judy, rob and bob about 40 minutes to get lunch. took dustin even longer to get the kids' lunch. after that, rob took irene and rhys (rhys was just done and done in) back to the hotel. bob went with them. the rest of us headed back to disneyland to do a little bit of shopping. about an hour later - maybe a bit longer? we headed back towards the hotel. pat opted to wait for the return crew and sat and people watched for a while. rhys was still sleeping, irene was frustrated and upset that she'd gone on so few rides. i think all of us were feeling that. i stayed w/rhys. judy et al stayed with me to keep me company. the rest of the crew headed back to california adventure and went on Soaring Over California. Irene loved it just as much as before. Pat and Bob really liked it as well. they then went on the jellyfish ride (an up and down kind of ride - similar to the parachutes at knott's berry farm - but smaller - for littler kids) and then had dinner. rob had told irene that after dinner they could go on everything she wanted for as long as she wanted. the poor sweet thing fell asleep at dinner and could NOT be woken up for anything. the next morning she woke up crying b/c she didn't get to go on all the rides she wanted to go on. poor beanie.

so, all in all, it was a good trip. just disappointing that last day. now we know for sure that we really need to do the midweek thing. tuesdays are still the best days to go (in my opinion). but do not EVER EVER EVER go on a holiday. my word. just crazy.

and the pix for day two are on a different computer. sorry about that.

the kids are feeling ever so much better and we're back to the normal stuff.

GO. NOW.

if you haven't already done it,

GO AND VOTE!!!

we're losing rights right and left, but we still have this! GO AND DO IT!!!! NOW!!!! and if you've already done it, GOOD ON YA! Voting is important. I really don't care about those people who say "my vote doesn't really count" IT DOES!!!! i don't want to hear ANYONE bitching to me about the state of our country unless they get off of their duffs and VOTE! THEN you can bitch and moan all you want.

we now have TWO sick kids in the house (though rhys is seeming MUCH better today - KNOCK WOOD, THROW SALT!)
. We leave this afternoon for Lodi and then tomorrow we make the trek w/pat and bob to DISNEYLAND. All kids WILL BE BETTER! that's the law.

i'm making phone calls until we leave to make sure that people are voting and if they can't get to the polls that they have a ride to them. the race here in washoe county, and, in fact, ALL of nevada is well and truly neck and neck. we have early voting, so i voted last week. i went on sunday w/our precinct administrator (that's the wrong title -- i can't remember exactly what it is) and put those voter door hangers on doors of those people we knew hadn't yet voted.

more when i get back (unless there is wi-fi and i'm not exhausted...then i might try to post).

now stop reading and run to the polls! *smile*

Somebody's sick. We must be going on a trip.

we have a great big great and wonderful trip planned. we leave tomorrow to go to Lodi and spend the night at rob's folks house, then all of us will caravan in our priuses to The Paradise Pier hotel and spend the next two days at disneyland w/grammie and gramps (pat and bob - rob's parents). it will be wonderful and fabulous. my girlfriend, judy, and her family will meet us there on friday and we're going to have lunch at the blue bayou.

so this morning, everyone woke up feeling fine. no problems. i was upstairs folding a mountain of laundry. rob had left for work. suddenly, rhys was NOT feeling well. i came downstairs after he called for me - cleaned him up, took him upstairs to get a bath and freshen up a bit more. got out of the tub, more runs, and some throwing up. joy.

it truly is astounding how often this happens. murphey likes us, i guess. right now i'm trying to get a wee bit of chamomile tea down him and a little bit of cracker. it's no fun throwing up bile, right? it is my fervent hope that this is just a wee little bug that is over today.

more halloween

Okay -- here are my halloweenees. I thought i had more of irene -- but it might be that they were from earlier in the week...usually rob goes as a gorilla, but that costume is apparently quite hot. this year he decided to go as Static Cling. I was Super Mama. you can see a wee bit of me in the picture of rhys with his sucker.

I found more. Here is our garage -- until 10/30 when the wind whipped through our area and destroyed our people :( but it was fun to have them up for a while.

and here is irene as tinkerbell
and irene WITH her tinkerbell.

and, because i just found it recently and had scanned it, and it was from halloween, i thought i'd show you this one:
i believe this was 1992. rob and i had been dating for just over 1 year. i was a biker babe (obviously) and am drinking beer, so i must've already been tipsy. i'm wearing rob's fabulous leather jacket and a leotard from HIGH SCHOOL (what better to show the cleavage?!?). Rob was in our friend Chris' chaps etc. do you like my tattoo? and my beauty mark? how about that wildly toussled big hair? nice, huh? i can't remember where we were -- i don't think it was rob's place, but i can't remember where it was. someplace in rohnert park.

More pictures will be forthcoming

I could have sworn i told blogger to put this in the middle - whatever.

here are various stages of pumpkinness. it took quite a while to do and i'm tired b/c it's late. i'll do the outfits tomorrow.

hallween was wonderful and fun. rhys was TOTALLY into it this year. Irene, of course was into it as well. last year, rhys went along for the ride. this year he practically RAN to every house. it was great fun to watch. i was going to stay home and give out the candy this year...then saw the sheer excitement in his eyes and rob and i both decided to leave the candy out w/a note and all of us would go around our neighborhood.

irene was tinkerbell. rhys was Super Rhys Fairy - or Super Fairy Rhys. totally what he wanted to be. i had a great buzz lightyear costume from a friend. he was completely uninterested. he wanted a mask. he wanted wings. he wanted a cape. so that's what we did.

now, i need to head to bed. but i have to say that the kids and i had a lovely day in susanville with laume, her daughter, and 3 grandbabies!