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.

Lately...

...I feel like I'm living in Utah:

(picture taken in my neighborhood in Las Vegas)

I love all of the snow on the mountains.

And this isn't even half of what's been on those mountains over the past couple of weeks. It makes it feel like we actually have seasons here.