First Time in the Pool

We have had a few nice/hot days. Today was just way too hot. Tomorrow will be in the 90s. I was in TRU last week and saw this tiny pool, it is about 2.5 feet round and holds only about 2-3 inches of water. And, it was only $5.99. Thought it would be perfect for my little lady.

She had a BLAST - loved it and was upset to get out.

Lil J tried to get in the action. I will pull out the bigger pool for him tomorrow though.

A trip to Holland

I heard this or read this somewhere once before.....it really speaks to my life and how I try to live it. I have said many times that in life, it is not so much about the destination that you wind up at, but it more about the journey that you took to get there.


Life.....

it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that may never go away... because the loss of that dream is a significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

4 Years ago today, we closed on our house!

On this day 4 years ago, we closed on a piece of crap, pre-forclosure, dump of a house. We saw the true potential of this house and have made it a home.

Here is a link of the "before" Before is in quotes, because this was the day of inspection, and therefore was "cleaned up". The house was in 10 times worse shape the day we saw it.

We did a lot of demo work ourselves, started renovations, then ran out of money and ambition. We lived for TWO years without a working kitchen, and cooked all our meals on either a one burner camp "stove" or on the BBQ.

In 2008, we hired a contractor and finished all the work. In all, we did the following: siding, windows, insulation, new kitchen, 2 new bathrooms, new walls and ceilling on the whole 1st floor, re-finished the floors on the 1st floor, new electric in the whole house, new plumbing, and so much little such - too much to list.

You can see all the pictures on our house website.

It's a Girl....and a Boy

Ha Ha - not me. But I have two sisters that are pregnant as well. One sister is due about 6 weeks before me and the other is due 10 days before me.

The first one found out a while ago that she is having a girl. The other found out today that she is having a boy.

That will make 3 girls and 3 boys for grandchildren. So - I guess this baby will be the tiebreaker lol.

I still can't believe that my mom went from having one grandchild for 14 years, and now will have SEVEN! (this counts Lil J).

We are still set on not finding out boy or girl until the baby is born. But, it is hard to not find out when the others have.

Baby Names

Because I think this information is cool, I just wanted to share it here.

Every year, right before Mother's Day - the Social Security Administration makes public the top 1000 names for the year before. It records all new SS# applications and the names on the app. For the most part, it basically means that it records births and the names of babies born the year before. This is mostly true, but it also does include the small number of people that legally change their first name.

Here is the SSA list for 2009:
http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi


And because are so many names that are really the same name, just spelled differently - this site combines all the different spellings to get a more accurate list:
http://www.namenerds.com/uucn/pop.html

I think this information is cool, so thought I would share it here.

Cora Rolling and Rolling and Rolling

Cora figured out (finally) how to roll from her back to her belly not too long ago. She would flip herself over and would then sleep on her stomach. She has been flipping from her belly to her back for a long time.

But, today was the first time that she really figured out that she can get somewhere using these tricks.

Oh - and we weighed her the other day when we had Lil J's well visit. My "tiny" girl is 22lbs 10oz! No wonder my back is killing me.

And snce Blogger has now taken 2 hours to attempt to load my 1 minute video, here is the youtube link

CORA ROLLING