I Love Janet

One of my favorite blogs to read is written by my friend Janet. She is witty, inspirational, sassy, fun-loving, gorgeous, hilarious, a great mom and wife, and so many other things that shine through on her page. I can always count on being entertained and/or uplifted when I visit Janet's blog.

She is doing a giveaway on her blog right now, and it's all about service. I was going through a rough time last year around the end of my pregnancy with Braden, and I did a post about it on my blog. I recently reread this post, and I remembered how I felt from all of the service I received during that time.

Some of you have read this before, but here it is again. I shortened it a tiny bit since this post is already getting really long.

Posted January 20, 2009

The last few weeks have really been hard for me. I broke my right foot, so I couldn't drive, and I've been stuck in the house for the past two weeks slowly going crazy. And to top things off, I had the flu this past Saturday and Sunday. The weekend sucked due to fever and achiness, a hurting foot with a big clunky boot on it, and a big pregnant belly that is starting to get hard to maneuver around. It just seemed like things kept getting worse and worse. But I have to say that when things get really hard, Heavenly Father sends his angels to help take care of us:

• Like today, I went to Taco Bell (because I can now drive in my new smaller boot) and got food for the kids and a medium cherry Pepsi for myself. The guy at the window gave me a large cherry Pepsi, and said, "Here's your medium cherry Pepsi" with a wink and a smile. I don't think he knew how much I really needed those extra few ounces of caffeine, and I know he doesn't know how much I truly appreciated his extra kindness.

• My in-laws took care of my kids the whole time we were in Reno so that the kids could still have a fun vacation in spite of their mother's broken foot.

• Two weeks ago, my friends from high school and Hot Dog on a Stick Laurie and Kim called to have their kids come play with my kids. I had had a whole week of being stuck in the house with only kids, and I don't think they realized how nice it was for me to finally have a little adult interaction. Laurie showed up with breakfast for me and my kids, and Kim came back later with a nice cage for the backyard for our bunnies to run around in and some dinner for our family.

• My sister Jodi took me to my first orthopedic appointment way out in Henderson and watched my kids while my other sister Denise sat at the office with me for an hour and a half while I waited for the doctor. Then my mom treated us all to a nice lunch. And Jodi came back later in the week to bring us some more dinner.

• My neighbor and good friend Emilee took Rebecca to dance class last week and offered to take her for the rest of the month until I could drive, even though she is about six months pregnant and has her own four-year-old and two-year-old to take to the class. She also brought us some delicious taco soup last night for dinner.

• One of my oldest, bestest friends in the world Julie came by with a big dinner and some Anderson Dairy ice cream last Friday even though she and her family are getting ready for her husband to start a crazy year of paramedic school this week.

• My mom took me to my second orthopedic appointment last week and sat in the car with a movie on for my kids to watch while I was inside the doctor's office.

• And last of all, Kevin has been so wonderful through all of this. He carried me around in Reno, pregnancy weight and all, before I could really walk around in my walking cast. He helped me get in and out of the tub and helped me get dressed before my foot was stable enough to let me do these things on my own. He's been making dinner on the nights that we haven't had leftovers from our friends and family, and he's been cleaning the house so that it hasn't become too much of a disaster. When I had the flu he took care of the kids all weekend so that I could sleep it off. He even took both kids to church by himself. He knew that I really wanted to mop the floor, so he mopped the entire downstairs. He's been taking care of all of the grocery shopping since we got back from Reno, and he's been willing to go do anything I ask him to do to help me out.
  

I'm so grateful for you all, and I really don't think I could have gotten through this tough time without all of your help. Thanks for being my angels.

And that's my story of service.

No More Dolly

Yesterday Rebecca showed me the "white stuff" that was coming out of the holes in her Dolly. Today she told me that she wanted to go to grandma's house so that she could ask grandma to sew Dolly up again. I told her that maybe it was time to go to Target and find a new toy to replace Dolly. I've said this to her many times, and she always says, "No. I don't want to do that." But today she agreed that maybe it was time to throw her away.

Dolly was a present from Kevin's Granny and Grandad Kearney when she was born.

She started out bright pink and full of stuffing.

Here's Dolly throughout the years:

age two


age three

age four

Here's Dolly at age five. She's quite a mess, as you can see. Washing doesn't help anymore - it just makes the holes bigger.

And here she is in her final resting place. We will miss you, Dolly.

Update: I wrote this post earlier today, and since Dolly has been thrown away we've had two meltdowns. After the first meltdown, I gave Dolly back to Rebecca. Kevin later got Rebecca to throw her away again, and she had another meltdown before bed. But Kevin convinced her she didn't need Dolly anymore, and right now she's upstairs sleeping without Dolly. And as I'm writing this I think I might get her out of the garbage and hide her somewhere until Rebecca is older because I'm having a hard time losing Dolly too. Who'da thought?!

Sorry, Sarah

The other day I was checking my statcounter account to see who has been looking at my blog lately, and I came across a site called swagbucks.com where someone had done a search on "family isn't it about time". I've seen this search a few times on my statcounter but usually from google. I think people miss those church commercials as much as I do, and they are looking for them on the Internet to watch again.

I'd never seen this particular search site, so I went down the list of websites to see what came up. My blog address was there of course, but what caught my eye was another blog under my blog called Family, isn't it about...time?. It wasn't so much the name of the blog, but the description of the blog that grabbed my attention. The description started with Anthony Vidal, Sarah Marshall Vidal, etc., etc. I wouldn't say these two people are my friends, but I definitely know them. I was pretty good friends with Anthony's brother Eddie and Sarah's brother Loren in high school. And wouldn't you say that my blog title is eerily similar to their blog title:

Family: Isn't it about...time

vs.

Family, isn't it about...time?

I mean the dot dot dot thing is just crazy to me. I really felt like I was pretty original with this title, and now I am totally second-guessing myself. I'm almost sure I've been to the Vidal's blog before back in my blog-hopping days. It looked familiar to me when I went to it yesterday. I'm thinking that I saw their cute blog title, stored in my subconscious memory, and remembered it two or three years later when I needed a new title. I guess I should have done a search on the title before I picked it, but I just thought I was so stinkin' original that I didn't need to do that.

And now I feel like a big bad blog title stealer, and it's making feel a little sick to my stomach. I'm sorry to any of you who've been to the Vidal's blog (because I know some of you are friends with me and them) and noticed the similarity. I promise I did not intentionally steal Sarah's blog title.

So now I'm looking for a new blog title. I'm thinking about using Bowman's because I am not a creative person, and I don't want to rack my brain again for some cute, mormony title. To quote Wendy's title, Nothing Clever Comes to Mind is how I'm feeling about this whole thing. (Don't worry, Wendy. I'm not going to steal your blog title too.) And I didn't use our last name before because of all the weirdos out in the world, but I'm not so afraid of that anymore. Should I be?

I am open to suggestions.

Happy Birthday, Braden

Today is my baby's first birthday. We threw him a little party yesterday to celebrate.

He didn't really like his little cake. He stuck one hand in the frosting and was done with it. I think he might be a clean freak like his mother.

He spent most of his party standing at the back door trying to go out and play with his cousins. He looks like a little boy to me in that bottom picture. I don't know what happened to my baby!

Here are some things that Braden is doing right now:

• He went back and forth with crawling for a little bit, but now he is a full-on walker.



• He says "uh-oh", "no", "dad", "mom", "hi". And he waves while he says "hi" which sounds more like "i".



• He loves my in-laws new cat, and he squeals every time the cat somes around.



• He likes to eat Pop Tarts for breakfast. I send Pop Tarts with Rebecca and William every morning for breakfast when they go to my sister's house. A few weeks ago he let my sister know that he wanted one too. So he sits in his high chair and eats his own Pop Tart.



• Going along with that, he's not a fan of baby food. He wants to eat everything we are eating.



• He is a thumb sucker like his big sister. We pushed the binky, but through the night he would put himself back to sleep with his thumb. And now he wants nothing to do with binkies.



• He's ticklish, and he giggles when anyone tickles his belly.



• He is a little lover, and he'll still lay on me every once in a while and drink his bottle.



• He's still not quite sleeping through the night. He will about three nights a week, but the other four nights he wakes up at 4 am for a bottle.



• His hair has lightened up, and lately he reminds me of my nephew Ryder:
  
  

• He is such a joy in our family. I couldn't have asked for a better accident.

Happy birthday, Braden! I love you, Shoobie!

Old School and Back to School

• I am done with Google Reader.

I have decided it is too much pressure for me. I was limiting myself to reading blogs for only one hour a day, but when I didn't get through all of the updates in my Reader account, because I never did, those extra few updates would nag at me after my hour was up. So I am back to the old school way I used to blog - going down my list of blogs one by one to check for updates. It's made blogging fun for me again. I'm sure I will go back to Google Reader as soon as I am sick of what I'm doing right now, but for the time being, I am finished with Google Reader.

• Kevin is going back to school. He just applied for UNLV.
  
  

He has decided that he wants to be a physical therapist. He is so excited about it, and so am I. I think this career is such a good fit for him. When he was getting his EMT certification for the fire department tests, he loved all of the medical stuff he got to do. And he has taken a lot of the prerequisites already, so he doesn't have to start from scratch.

Construction was never what Kevin wanted to do, but the money was good, so he got stuck in it. It's going to be hard to be starving students for the next few years, but I think when we look back, we are going to be grateful that Kevin lost his job when he did.

It happened to us

Kevin lost his job today. We have a few different plans for what to do over the next few months, so hopefully we'll be okay while he tries to find a new job.

Thanks to the government and paying extra taxes in 2009, we have a big check in the mail that is going straight to savings. No thanks to KHS&S and their crappy severance package, we could have had a lot more money in the bank, but at least they gave us something.

This is completely unexpected and hard to handle, but I think we are already seeing that this is going to be a good thing for Kevin and for our family. I never felt like this job was a great fit for Kevin anyway. What better time than this for him to figure out exactly what he wants to do and start working towards that.

We welcome any word of open job opportunities.

I think we sold the Camry at the right time

I just got this email:

Dear Emily B,

Toyota has announced an approved plan to fix accelerator pedals on recalled vehicles to ensure customer safety. The replacement parts for the recall have started to arrive. We will be working extended hours to ensure replacement as quickly as possible. You will be notified by mail if your vehicle was involved. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact us. For the latest information, please click on the following link to Toyota's Newsroom. http://www.toyota.com/recall/

Fletcher Jones Toyota understands the concerns of our customers. We are working closely with Toyota Motor Corp. to correct the issue as quickly as possible. We will continue to closely monitor this and will send out email updates as soon as they are available.

If you have any further questions or concerns please don't hesitate to contact one of our Service Coordinators at (702) xxx-xxxx.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Sincerely,

Joe Tortomasi
General Manager
Fletcher Jones Toyota

If we would have waited just a few more weeks to sell our car, we probably would have gotten less money for it, if we could've sold it at all. Plus, I'm glad to not have to deal with this recall mess. Sorry to all you Toyota owners out there. Especially you, Jessica.