Field Trip Day

Conner's preschool had a field trip today to the fire station. He was SO excited to be going! The firemen are all so nice and friendly to the group of 20 two & three year olds.

At first Conner was a little shy and didn't want to talk to the firemen. He stood looking with those big blue eyes in total amazement of it all. The firemen all came up to the kids and got down on their level to talk to them and told them all about the trucks and how to drop & roll. Then this fireman came out in the FULL fire outfit with the mask and all. He sounded like Darth Vader breathing. They were all a little scared of him but he also got

down on their level and let them all touch his outfit and he talked to them through the mask before he took it off to show them he was a normal person and not to be afraid if he came in their home to put out a fire.

This was the closest that Conner would get to him!>

Then they let the kids look at the fire truck and actually get up into the front seat!






All the kids had a great time!

Busy Day!

Let's see.......I got up and showered and ate my oatmeal. Drove to the eye doctor 20 minutes away for my follow up visit. I am using the eye drops for dry eyes and have to have them checked the first few months to see if it's working. I'm happy to say that his tests show much improvement and I also feel the improvement.

After the eye appointment I drove 20 minutes in the opposite direction to the cable office. I took my number and waited for it to come up on the screen then went to the appropriate window and within seconds I had a new remote control in my hand.

Got in my car and drove about 15 minutes to the grocery store. Very thankful by that time to use their bathroom. Then stopped at their coffee counter and got myself a coffee. While drinking my coffee I filled the bottom of the cart with grocery items, paid and loaded them into the trunk of car. I keep large insulated bags in my trunk to put the items in that need to stay cool as I complete my errands.

Then drove down the street to the post office and dropped off packages and checked my PO box. I sell on eBay. I use the PO box for eBay payments. I had just sold a few items and packaged them up and printed out the shipping labels last night so I was able to just drop them off at the post office.

Then down the street I go to the pharmacy. I give them the prescription to refill my eye drops. She tells me they are out and need to order and I will need to pick up my filled prescription tomorrow after 4pm.

Around the corner I go to Costco. I have my list of needed items and Costco coupons and I stick to my list.

I then drive home. My timing is off because Jim took his mom to her dentist appointment today. Just happens that as I get home she's at the dentist and so that means that Jim is not here to help me bring all the groceries into the house! So I make my several trips from the trunk to the kitchen and unload and put everything in their appropriate places.

As I'm completing my chore of putting groceries away a car pulls up in front of the house. Jim had called this morning to get appointments to have estimates to put siding on our house. We were having our first appointment!
As this man is talking to me about all the wonderful things he can do to improve our house Jim gets home and I quickly direct them to talk to each other and I go on my way to complete my chores.

I remember that I have the new remote in my purse. It needs to be programed to work with our TV. The man had told me that the little booklet would tell me how to do this. I guess he didn't know that I'm an earthling and only understand common sense English instead of the 20 pages of different ways to program it.
I end up calling the cable company and some nice woman directs me on how to program the remote and we finally have a normal TV again.

The man leaves and Jim then shows me he had brought home Subway sandwiches for us! yum.

After eating I start laundry. Jim leaves to go help with Ryan's baseball practice. While Jim's gone I complete two loads of laundry, vacuum the entire house and mop the kitchen floor.

THEN, I promptly fall onto the couch and lie there!

How spoiled we are!

Some of you may not remember what they call "the good ol' days" when we were all less "high tech" (which is what my grandson calls it).
I'm talking about the days of no computers, no cell phones, no iPods, no phone answering machines or caller ID, no video games, no high definition wide screen cable TV with a menu of all the shows and information of what each and every channel is about....and no remotes.

Amazing of how we forget those days and have gotten used to our fancy high tech items that have spoiled us and we haven't even realized it.........until we loose it.

This morning my sweet hubby stretched his arm out and bumped his coffee cup sitting on the table next to his chair. Apparently some spilled onto the TV remote. It has since decided not to work---at all.
After shaking it and pushing buttons for several minutes we knew it wasn't working. Then we realized we were doomed. It is Sunday. The cable company is not open on Sundays.
We will now need to go back to the cave man days and actually GET UP AND WALK over to the television and use the buttons on the TV to change both the channels and the volume!
Ya know, you just don't realize how many times you change the channels and need to adjust the volume AND here where I live we have a cable company that has about 950 channels to choose from! We also have a high definition televison and guess what---- if you push the channel changer on the TV instead of the cable box it goes to the regular vision and not the high definition and it won't go back.
So today if we want to watch TV at all it's not only get up to change the channels and volume but we also get to watch everything with a snowy fuzz all over the screen! yeah!

So it's a good excuse to read books,take the dog for a walk, do laundry and all the other things we are so blessed to have available to us.
Just a good reminder of how spoiled we do get to these new fancy products of the world.

Today is our 17th wedding anniversary :) I've been blessed to have such a loving, caring husband. Of course as with any normal couple there are those little annoying things that may come up from time to time but there are many more times of laughing together, long conversations, fun travels and I could count on one had or less the times we may have actually argued. So I'd say it's been a pretty good 17 years!

It has been pouring down rain since we woke up this morning. But we started the day off by going to the gym and worked out together for an hour. Came home and did some laundry, dusted and made a trip to the grocery store. Doesn't everyone do that on their anniversary?

Then we went out with our umbrella and ate a nice dinner at Chili's. Jim had tacos and I had fajitas.

We got home and have since been bundled up in our jammies watching TV movies as it pours rain outside.

Can you say"confusing and wrong"?!

I had thoughts of sewing and creating little blankets ,bags, purses and other items for kids and infants and selling them. Then came the "law". This law is about pulling all items off shelves and inspecting all products that may contain lead. WHICH INCLUDED ANYTHING, ANYTHING THAT COULD BE SOLD AND USED BY CHILDREN 12 YEARS OF AGE AND YOUNGER. That includes not only toys but clothes, books, sports equipment........you name it.

I had heard about it and read other blogs of confusing information. I just saw something about it on Fox News which not only showed large retail stores being involved in this pulling items off the shelves, but also thrift stores and small resale shops ! So I found the CPSC website. I've signed up for their recall notices. I figured I'd better look into it because I have several things that I had planned to sell on Ebay some which are for children or infants. http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09115.html

It doesn't exactly say this on their website....well, at least I can't understand it if it does say it, but on Fox News it was saying that retailers have to invest in some sort of screening devices to check ALL products for lead and pull them. However, small businesses and thrift type stores may not be able to do this due to the expense of the devices and the enormous amount of second hand products and paying the extra staff to do all this work.

Now I definitely agree that products containing lead should be pulled from the shelves. BUT, I BELIEVE THEY SHOULD OF NEVER BEEN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

The agencies that are responsible to inspect products BEFORE they reach store shelves obviously have not been doing their jobs...... can anyone say peanut butter?
What are these people doing anyway? Are they all just sitting around drinking their coffee and telling jokes instead of inspecting? I don't understand how all these products can be allowed on the shelves in the first place!

So now that they , the inspection agencies, have not done their jobs the retailers, crafters, small businesses, resale shops, thrift stores,,,,,,,,,,are all getting the rotten end of the stick and the blame of having these products on their shelves. They are having to do all the work of inspecting, pulling and loosing sales and ALSO the expense of these devices which will put some of these small businesses out of business!

AND, I am still confused as to whether or not I should be selling the second hand children items I have sitting around my house on Ebay!

The Sneeze

Everyone sneezes right? You go about your daily routines and sneeze once in a while and just keep going and not even think about it. At least I use to.

Last week I was sick with a nasty head cold. It went through it's long drawn out road to recovery and I was just about over it when the big sneeze came along. I immediately knew something wasn't good because I grabbed my stomach under my ribs and yelled "ouch" ! I had sneezed hard.

So I went through the weekend being careful not to move the wrong way and allowing the area to feel better and my cold was clearing up well. Then two days later I'm relaxing watching a movie on TV and the big sneeze came again. This time I yelled enough that Jim jumped out of his chair to see if I was alright. It felt as though my rib was coming out of my skin and going back in to jab whatever was in the way!
So the next day I was still sore and since I couldn't get an appointment with my regular doctor that day decided to go to urgent care. That's always such a fun place. First of all you have to drive around in circles for 15 minutes to find a parking place. Then you get to sit in the waiting room wondering what illness you are going to catch from the others sitting in the same room. I finally get called in to see the doctor. Being in urgent care means that you see whatever doctor is on duty. So he asked me questions and had me lie on the table and poked around in all the sore spots and then said "well, you pulled a muscle".
I was relieved to not hear of hernias or things like that and a pulled muscle was pretty familiar to me.
So I paid my $10 co-pay and my $3 to park in the terrible parking garage and came home.

Before I left the clinic the nurse told me to try to brace myself if I felt a sneeze coming on. :) Ok, so as long as I'm not driving maybe I can do that.
It's one of those things that you just don't think about until you have to!

I'm feeling much , much better now and the pain is pretty much gone but I know that one of those sneezes could bring it all right back so soon after so NOW every time I feel that tiny tingle in the sinus area I have to drop whatever I'm doing and grab myself around the ribs and hold on tight!

Life goes on

Haven't had much exciting to write about lately. I've had a virus/head cold/whatever you want to call it for the past several days and that just takes it all out of me. My body just doesn't fight these things off too quickly and I drag around for days on end feeling like a slug before it finally starts to leave.
I had an out of control sinus attack on Friday and I think I broke the Guinness book of record for sneezing. I sneezed so hard that I bruised my ribcage. Of course every time I sneezed it hurt more!

I finally remembered that I had a Neti Pot stored away. I had forgotten all about having it and had never given it a try. I was at the point to try just about anything to quit sneezing and trying to breath and feeling as though I was beating myself up.
For those of you who have never heard of a Neti Pot or haven't used one yet I have to tell you it works wonders!!
It's a device to use to cleanse the sinuses and it works! I used it Friday and Saturday and I CAN BREATH NOW!! AND NO MORE SNEEZING!

So my body is now able to start healing and I'm starting to feel better and rebuilding my energy level.

It has been raining for two days now and suppose to rain more tomorrow. God is good. We really needed the rain.

Things are starting to look brighter around here.

I'm starting to feel better. No fun to have that stuffed up head that feels like your going to fall over your head weighs too much! But now just have that annoying dry cough.
I haven't been able to get to the gym with my plugged up head but I'm getting my exercise taking my many walks to the bathroom since I'm drinking so much juices and teas! lol!

It's drizzling rain right now and suppose to continue to rain over the next couple of days. I really hope it does this time because we are SOOOOO very dry and SOOOO covered in dust and dirt that it's terrible. We need the rain to wash the dust away and get some moisture in the air.

Jim started his training tonight for his new job!

Also, Conner is wearing his Spiderman underwear and doing great at using the potty chair!! No more diapers!! Yeah!!

Just dropping in to say HI. I have a headcold and feeling yucky.