Bestie update

Erin recently finished her chemo and radiation treatments. Girlfriend was a trooper while carrying around a fanny pack for 6 weeks. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Her doctors will decide in 4 weeks whether she will have surgery. And it's a good thing she has four weeks, because in a couple weeks we have some living to do in Vegas. Cancer took her away from Black Friday shopping. I'll be damned if it will come between us and our Vegas birthday trip!

There is still a little more to come, but Erin said it best tonight that there is a sense of a light at the end of the tunnel. It's a HORRIBLE pun considering the circumstances, but HILARIOUS when taking into account our awful sense of humor.

Cancer sucks, but seriously, Erin has made it look effortless. The bitch didn't even lose her hair and she is now 3 lbs from her goal weight.

Since I didn't get a picture of her with her fanny pack, this is basically what it looked like.

Just for the LOLs.

Dos is almost two

My baby. Remember I called him Dos foevah ago?

He is doing this now.

And apparently dieting and watching his cholesterol.

He is practically grown up.

Taking on the 1%

I fought The Man. And I won.

I have been staging an epic battle for a couple months against Wells Fargo and I'd like to take a minute to beat my chest.

Long story short: I was not provided a refund. If you want to read the long story, here is a screen shot from my complaint to the Better Business Bureau--which is also the same letter I sent to every corporate person I could Google. (God Bless, the Googs.)

A week later I got this.

I am so gloating.

PS- If any of you know Megan, please send her a link to this blog. TYVM.

I'm just a ray of sunshine.

The bestie and I planned our joint retirement party via Google chat today. I suppose it's okay that we aren't at the same school as long as we have Google chat.

Our retirement party will be Vegas themed, of course. And immediately after we eat our cake--I imagine them to be playing cards with our faces on it and the number of years worked in either hearts or diamonds--we will jet off to Vegas.

Alas, we have miles to go.

January is particularly torturous. After spending money like fiends, we go on a budget. After baking and eating like it's 1999, we diet and exercise. After having two weeks off from the classroom and no essays to speak of, we are thrown into the longest month of the year. Long and painful is January.

I miss waking up when 2nd hour should be starting. I miss making fresh lunches rather than the leftovers in my mini-fridge. I miss getting to plan whatever activities I want with my favorite people.

This was the last night before school started back. Zoo Lights!

Joseph, Baby Will, the other Jeff D., Jessi

Thank god for the Wheat Thins. They were the only thing keeping him in the wagon.

Resolutions

I usually don't make resolutions. I feel they are just a list of the first things I will fail at in the New Year. I know, I am such a ray of sunshine.

This year, Jeff and I decided to make family resolutions, because...well, if you're going to fail, do it as a group. No, actually, we realize there are a LOT of things we could improve upon as a family and the new year gave us a reason to scratch the surface.

Here we go.

1. We will be better friends. Jeff and I are hermits by nature. Two months after we had B, our parents practically staged an intervention to get us to come out of the house. It's a miracle, but we have a lot of awesome friends and they often want us to hang out.

Our first resolution is to dedicate more time to all our friends. We have designated Friday nights to be our night to socialize at home in the form of drive-way drinks (awww, the suburbs, right?) or a time for us to try out a new restaurant with our peeps.

2. We will be organized with chores. After 4pm you will often find us in the living room parked in front of a TV, laptop, or phone. It's not very productive or inspiring. Yes, we are exhausted, but there are so many other things we could be doing. We noticed we spend more time on the weekends running errands, picking up the house, or doing last minute planning for the week, when we could spread it out over the week.

We've designated each day of the week with some household chore so we don't spend our well-earned weekend working just as hard. Mondays are for cleaning bedrooms, Tuesdays we take care of the floors, Wednesdays are bathrooms, Thursdays we take care of the upstairs, Fridays we take care of the downstairs, Saturdays are for the garage and/or yard, and Sunday is laundry. We will also meal plan on Sundays for the whole week.

3. We will focus on the family. We love spending time together. In fact, B often requests us "to be a family", which means we head upstairs and play hide and seek, peekaboo, or just cuddle in bed. But we want to start getting out of the house as a family more. Each family member is given a day where they can pick an activity. Monday is Jeff's night, Tuesday is mine, B gets Wednesday, and Cash is up on Thursday. When we explained this to B, he was overjoyed that if he wanted to go to the park with his bike then we ALL had to do it.

So, there they are. After a couple days we are doing a great job. My favorite is cutting back on the TV and a cleaner house. Hopefully we can keep this up, or we are about five years from being the Bundy's.

NYE!

Jeff and I were bound and determined to go out for New Year's this year. The year before we were house bound sick, the year before that I was seriously pregnant, and the year before that I watched Jeff snore as I watched TV at midnight.

Yeah, adult time was necessary stat.

We thought we had secured a babysitter until at the last minute we realized we didn't. Panic, blame, and depression set in until a family friend swooped in offering up her daughter and her friend. It was game on.

After I took a nap so I knew I could make it past midnight, we started the night with a group of friends for dinner and drinks. (No pics, because I was just TOO EXCITED to be out.) Then we headed out to a fun bar called Irish Republic. I got felt up in line by the bathroom by another woman ("I thought you were wearing a dress! You're not wearing a dress, though!") and I was stone-cold sober, but I had make-up on, I was surrounded by people over 21, and no one was demanding a snack or cartoon.

When we got home our amazing sitters surprised us with a picked-up house. They adorably were stunned we paid them at all. I think they were pleased enough with the NYE buffet I left for them.

It wasn't drunken debauchery for New Year's Eve, but I save that for weekdays.

An Ode to Winter Break

Alas, Winter Break, it was quite the eventful. I have mixed feelings about the last couple weeks. There were many highs and lows.

Lows: getting the stomach flu, the inevitable bill from Jeff and I both in the ER, not getting cured in the ER, wasting my time with a migraine

Highs: Cash is utterly obsessed and in love with me.

On day one, Cash kept giving me the skeptical eyes. He was pretty sure the wrong parent was home and he was somehow being punished. However, we are now BFFs, cuddling for minutesssss, and we have our own language. There is never enough time for us to share Cheez-Its, watch Gaga and LMFAO on YouTube, tickle/annoy Bradley while he is watching cartoons, or for me to catch him as he throws himself off high places.

Case closed. Winter Break was a freaking success.

My Cashy is all man. He loves to walk around with his hand in his pants. Charmingly enough he will also put food in there for later. It's a treat to watch him pull out Cheerios an hour after breakfast.

Christmas Catch-up

The lack of pictures is mainly due to the fact I was barely conscious December 24-27. I hate being sick, but to be sick on Christmas--my favorite holiday--well, this leads me to believe my karma account is in the black.

But, also, I am not a fan of taking a picture of the Christmas haul. Something about that seems tacky and it screams, "Come rob me!"

The quick and dirty of it is the boys were endlessly spoiled. Usually Jeff and I anticipate the grandparents will take care of the toys and fun stuff, so we do practical things like clothes, diapers, wipes, etc. IDK what was wrong with us this year, but we went above and beyond.

B was gracious enough to love everrrrything. "Ohh, underwear!" "Awesome, a whole box of Mac and Cheese!" "Yes, slippppperrrrsss!"

Thanks, son.

He is particularly in awe of his Leap Frog Tag Reading-thing. He is a book-whore in the making, so the fact he can sit and read a book by himself is pretty much heaven to him. I won't lie, it is for us, too.

Cash has more balls and cars than one child needs. It's ridiculous, really. And sometimes he doesn't even play with them; he'll just walk around in a daze, arms full of as many cars or ball as he can manage.

Jeff got boring things, like golf stuff, and garage stuff, and hot chips. He loved it all, of course. Then again, he's like B and gets tingly over socks and underwear.

I hit the jackpot this Christmas. My in-laws and parents set my feminist ways back some with a Food Saver and a KITCHEN AID MIXER. I know all you smart bitches out there registered for one, but I was more interested in tile and curtains back then.

Anyway, lots of spoilage. Hopefully all your Christmas hopes and dreams came true, but I doubt it since cars didn't start flying and my earrings can't make me a rock star yet.

New year, new stuff

Hello, 2012. I hope we will be friends.

Obviously I made the changes I was threatening. I know you were all waiting with a serious case of Anticipation.

I thought and thought until I got sick of caring what a name could be, until I realized one of my favorite quotes would do.

Thanks, Dodie. (AKA, the awesome novelist who dreamed up A Hundred and One Dalmatians*).

* Not the other name for my blog.