But, Peter, how do we get to Never Land

Have you heard of this guy?

He thinks he is Peter Pan. For realz. This "boy" dances around the United States dressed like Peter Pan and he even married Tinker Bell which if you really think about it is kind of creepy

Last November while at the airport picking up some of my besties for another weekend of sinning the following transpired

Joe comes up to me after going to get a cup of coffee and informs me that he just saw Robin Hood. In our airport. I looked at him like he was stupid and he kept insisting that he saw Robin Hood. A guy dressed in a Renaissance looking get up complete with tights.

Now I have actually HEARD of this guy before through a friend of mine but quickly burned the image from my brain and never thought of him again. Unlike my friend Kelly who was in town from Long Island and immediately knew it HAD to be the Peter Pan guy. Right, because Columbus does not have it's own fair share of freaks in tights?

so like the assholes we are we tore off in the direction Joe saw him. He was not hard to find. And like the asshole I am I went right up to him and asked him if he was that "guy from the Internet" to which he replied "I am that boy". I am not exaggerating when I say he look beat up. Like he had had a rough night with the other lost boys the night before. His endeavour to not grow up was failing because Randy Pan looked OLD

But instead of (verbally) judging him I did what any other person who do if they met Peter Pan at the airport. I asked for a picture.

Sadly for Kelly and I, he was all out of pixie dust

Have You Ever............

Tried to sell a house with 2 kids (not to mention 2 dogs and 2 cats) living in it? Yeah, well it is not easy. In fact it just plain sucks. We have so much shit STUFF. So much. So much stuff that when they are not watching I'm throwing away random happy meal toys, or small toys with pieces missing. The house is clean.....even the toy room, but the hard part is KEEPING it that way. Getting the kids to actually put their crap away when they get it out vs just leaving stuff all over the play room. Making beds every morning.....which makes me late for work! I've never really been one for making beds every morning to be honest. What is the point? We are just going to mess it up again with all that mad sex we have every single day

While I have been trying to organize and clean stuff Joe has been busting his butt doing the "manly stuff". Painting, putting in new faucets in the bathrooms (goodbye 1980's) shampooing the carpet, ect. He cusses an awful lot while doing home improvement (or putting things together that require one of those little wrench things). He is also guaranteed to say each of the following phrases...."Sonofabitch" and "This doesn't make any sense"

We have had 3 showings this first week it has been up. Today starts week 2. I'm trying very hard not to be excited about the house we want to build and where we want to build it because until we sell our house we cant do anything. I'm not one for patience. Shocker I know.

I just want it to sell and sell fast so I can go live in an apartment for 6 months with said 2 kids, 2 dogs and 2 cats. I mean who doesn't want to do THAT?

Wish us luck! Do I even have anyone left in bloggy land to WISH me luck? I know, I'm a slacker....

The price of remodeling

Yeah, so I'm not talking about the monetary price although that was a bit rough too. I'm talking about the mental price! For the next 3 days my house will be in total chaos. More so than usual.

Joe and I spent the weekend moving our living room into the family room toy room. At first the kids thought it was cool to have random furniture piled up in their space but that did not last long. We also had to clean out 2 closets that have not seen the light of day since Betty White was a little girl.

The most fun though was watching poor Joe tear out the cabinet and sink in our downstairs bathroom. It cost him 2 trips to Lowes and almost a finger. Good times. I had the task of cleaning the dining room. See, we don't so much DINE in the dining room. We have a beautiful round table in there and we use it to store our STUFF. By stuff I mean anything we don't know what to do with. I cant even define STUFF because it was truly just a whole lot of random.

Most of the STUFF in the dining room was my scrapbook stuff. It was everywhere!! I was in dire need of some organization. So, I talked Joe into letting me claim a little corner of it for my "craft". It was SUPER pretty until we moved more crap into the dining room that overflowed from the toy room



The biggest crisis of the day though? No, it was not trying to throw random kid toys away while they were not looking (I was like a ninja), it was not finding missing neighborhood children under our couches(ew)....it was THIS

Look close class....do you see what that is? That is my wine rack and in front of it is a CHAIR and tons of other crap. Guess who forgot to pull out a bottle prior to it being blocked? Guess who sent her husband climbing through it all to pull me out a rescue bottle? NOW who's a ninja??

Come Wednesday though it will be all worth it. I will have beautiful new floors and will be able to spend my free time watching my dogs try to run on laminate hardwood. And when cats puke up smaller cats on my floor a quick wipe up will take care of it. Good times? Indeed

Please go visit my bloggy friend Jenny. She has opened up a new store (oh how I wish I could sew)and is having a give a way!

Dear Tiger,

Way to go asshole.

Sincerely,
A wife who is making her husband find a new hero

PS---Reminder to self....post New Moon blog SOON

Q&A part 1

A couple of days ago I threw out a post while I was sick soliciting questions. I'm going to answer the ones I got in the next few days in between other stuff. Sometimes you just need a nudge for a writing idea you know?

First up is my pal Tooj who wants to know:
"what is my ONE favorite thing to do individually with each child and with the husband"

My most favoritest thing EVER to do with Pierce is to take him to the movies. I have always loved kids movies and used to try and steal a cousin to go with me once I outgrew them. I'm so glad he loves to go and it is 99.9% of the time just him and I. Most recently we saw G-Force which made me want to dig my eyes out but most of the time I love the movies just as much as Pierce does. Hoping to make it soon to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs!

Mallory....she is my snuggle bug. She insists on ME putting her to bed every night and that entails a story and some serious in her bed snuggle time each night. We lay face to face and sing songs together before I wiggle my way out of there. I know she wont always want me to do this so I will take it when I can.

My favorite thing to do with Joe.....honestly....raise our kids! We don't get a lot of time together to just do date nights and I do miss that but I love that he is SO involved with raising our kids. I know a lot of dad's are like that these days but I did not grow up with my father and seeing Joe with our kids just melts my heart. When we DO get away....it is usually a dinner out and that is about it. we are fairly boring people.

The Kids Said WHAT? WILL be back this week, although I only have one good one so far this week and it was not even my kid who said it!

9/11 Where were you when?

I remember that day like it was yesterday. I probably always will. 9/11 is one of those events in history like the assassination of JFK that will always be with us. Those of us who are old enough to remember will always be able to tell our kids, and our grand kids what we were doing when our world changed forever.

I was at work. Same place I work today but a different building. I was 25 years old, not married, not a mother yet. I was still dating Joe and we would get engaged about 3 weeks later. I was sitting at my desk and I received an email from a friend of mine that worked in another office that just said "a plane hit one of the world trade center towers" I remember thinking and emailing him back, "whoa, that sucks" having NO idea the depth of what was going on. I remember thinking it was a small plane in the wrong place because jets just did not fly that close to the city. I did not even bother to look it up on CNN.com. Why would I? Nothing really bad ever happens in the US right?

It was not until he emailed me again telling me about the 2nd plane that it really registered that something big was happening. By now the news was filtering through my office and people were turning radio's on to listen to the news. By now we knew that our nation was under attack.

I called Joe right away. He is in the Air National Guard and works full time at a base here in town. I remember asking him what was happening and him telling me that he did not know. Eventually he was locked down at the base, no one was allowed to leave until further notice which ended up being about 9 or 10 that night.

The day went on, 2 more planes crashed and the entire world was scared. That night I was glued to the TV watching with tears the towers fall again and again on the news. I tried to sleep that night and kept waking up and turning the TV on all through the night.

I did not personally know anyone who was hurt or lost their life that day. My roommate's best friend was SUPPOSED to be working downtown that day but she had called in sick. It's little details like that that I wont ever be able to forget.

I was able to visit Ground 0 this year and even though the memorials have been taken down and the area replaced by construction fences to rebuild I still felt the sadness to be standing there where so many people died. When Joe and I were in DC this year we got to see the 9/11 Memorial at the Pentagon and see where the building was rebuilt.

We all have different political views in this country. That fact that we can HAVE those opinions is one more reason why we are proud to be Americans. Regardless of your political beliefs 9/11 brought us all together and I hope that no one ever forgets that day and what it did to our country.

Where were you?

Awesome or Shagalicious?

Joe and I would love to move. We love our house but we have outgrown it and there are a few demands things that I would really like to have in a house. I would love a bigger yard, one that is kid friendly. Ours is wooded, not much grass can grow and pretty hilly. I would also love a 4th bedroom and a fireplace. But what I really want is a soaking tub. It does not have to be a jacuzzi or anything, just a nice big garden tub that I can chill in with a glass of wine and a good book. And no kids.

I like to go to realtor.com and search out new homes in our area. Our house is not even for sale but it is still fun to dream right. Imagine my total delight when I found a home that defeats the purpose of moving although smaller then our current house has the coolest thing EVER!!

Feast your eyes upon the coolness!!! A soaking tub IN THE BEDROOM!!!! Of course I did make a few slight changes in my mind. It would need a flat screen TV (as indicated) that could play Twilight and a(horribly drawn)wine rack built in so that I would not even have to get out to fill up my glass. Dream come true yes?

So I sent my fabulous find to Joe who proceeds to tell me that it was shagalicious and in no way cool. I tried to point out the pros....if I had a bathtub IN our bedroom he would most likely find me naked more than he does now. Add to that my flat screen playing Twilight and then you have me naked AND ready for action. Add the wine rack....naked and drunk....2 sure ways to get some action. Win Win yes?

I really don't understand his hesitation. Yes he talked some trash about moldy carpet....but DUH...the amount of distance from point a (bath) to point b (bed) would be so minimal that there would be no time for water to GET on the floor. We can buy a bathmat for pete's sake.

Sadly I don't think I will win this one. As cool as a bathtub in my bedroom would be it is a smaller house then what we have now and that just wont work for us. Don't think I wont mention renovations when we DO find our dream home.

Reason #233 Why Boys Are Dumb

I got a new toy over the weekend. It's pink, it's 10 inches and it brings me great pleasure.....want to know what it is?

Now that your minds are out of the gutter you little pervs let me tell you about my new toy! It appears that Joe and I I have a problem sharing. Each night after our kids are in bed I would plop down on the couch and proceed to monopolize the laptop for as long as I felt need to do so. I'm a busy girl, what with building my virtual zoo on facebook and chatting with my mommy board friends. Now granted we have a desktop in another room but it is very far away from the TV and neither of us would sacrifice our shows to go use the crappy computer in the other room. Finally Joe got tired of my bitching and decided that we could get my pretty pink dell mini!!

On to the reason why boys are dumb....Seriously....why can guys not ASK FOR HELP when they need it? Why do they think they can do everything all by themselves? I swear I want to tell him that even though he CANT fix our broken dishwasher he is still good in bed....the 2 are NOT related. I remember back when I was pregnant with Pierce and we had just moved into our house.....he came home one day with tons of pipes mumbling some nonsense about re-doing some GAS pipes in the basement. I picked my poodle up and headed to my mom's for the day and told him to call me when he was done if he did not blow up the house.

I digress. This issue is about my pretty pink laptop and how I needed it hooked up to the Internet NOW. Now Joe is a smart guy and he actually does know how to set up wireless on a new computer....he did it with the soon to no longer be shared laptop and I was not at all concerned that he would not be able to get my new one set up. Until he couldn't. Apparently doing the normal thing that you do to set up a laptop to wireless was not working. That was the first night. The second night I told him that he should just call the Dell 24 hour customer service line. An hour later he is still sitting there looking at my laptop. Whenever Joe is fixing something or putting it together (Pierce's bike, a table that we bought, ect) I can guarantee that 2 things will come out of his mouth at some point. "This doesn't make any sense" and "sonofabitch". I again encourage him to call Dell to which he told me that I could call them if I wanted to. mmmmmmkay. FINALLY he concedes and gives them a call.

10 minutes later my laptop is up and running. Apparently my screen resolution was all jacked up and there was a little box that could not be seen that needed checked.

10 minutes later.

Boys are dumb.

(He also told me that the first thing he was going to do once he took posession of the old laptop was remove my Twilight wallpaper and replace it with some hot chick background. When he wasnt looking I replaced it with a picture of me. HA)

Wordless Wednesday

2004

2005

2006

2007

2009

(We went to the mountains in 2008)

Random Messages to Random People

My friend Kat over at Three Bedroom Bungalow has started a fun new topic for venting out to all of the people/things that are pushing your buttons. Since I tend to find venting SUPER therapeutic I figure I will play along.

Dear Joe,
You have been out of town this week and I have really missed you. Even though it IS a work trip and not a vacation you still have not had to wipe anyone's ass but your own. Incidentally...when you told me that you were stopping in Chicago to visit your buddy ON THE WAY home from ST LOUIS and spending the night I did not pay much attention to the geography of said locations. Guess what, you are busted. When you get home tomorrow I am clocking out.

Love, Your Tired Wife

Dear Yorkie,
You are over a year old now. If you do not stop crapping in the house 5 minutes after I let you inside I just may kill you. One more thing--when you eat all of the little bone pieces out of your food and leave the square pieces and whine until I fill your already full bowl up so you can pick out more little bone pieces....that gets on my nerves. You are just as bad as the kids.

Love, Mommy

Dear Cat #1,
Cleaning up your hair balls every day is getting tiresome. Kudos though for having just enough aim to throw up all over Pierce's flip flop. I'm sure that took talent

Love, Mommy

Dear Mallory,
I don't think you or your bother will EVER know how much I love you both. However, when I tuck you into bed smelling so clean from your bath, kiss you goodnight and close your door Mommy does not want to see you again until much later. Imagine how I soiled my pantieshow high I jumped last night when about an hour after I put you to bed you started screaming like someone had set your bed on fire. Oh my poor sweet princess....did your stupid ass "moon in my room" that I wish Santa never broughtprecious LUNA turn off? Like it does EVERY NIGHT? What a crisis. I know this must be horrible for you but please don't scream like that again or I will throw Luna out your window

Love, your incontinent Mommy

Dear Pierce,
Mommy's sweet boy. You are getting so big and so so smart. It appears that yesterday you learned something about weather. When you looked at me like I was the biggest idiot you knowthis morning and told me that "The sound of thunder is NOT Jesus bowling in Heaven Mommy, it is ACTUALLY the sound of 2 clouds hitting each other" I was so proud of you, and just a little sad that you are getting too smart to be lied to.

Love, Mommy

Dear Weather On My Drive in This Morning,
SUCK IT!! I don't enjoy dodging lightning bolts. I also don't enjoy seeing my kids FAH-Reak out like we are going to die any second (although I did kind of enjoy watching Mallory try and pick her cup up with her elbows while her hands were over hear ears)Please move on by tomorrow....I have a outdoor appointment with a photographer for the kids tomorrow and I don't want to cancel it.

Cammie

Someone piss in your Wheaties this morning? Want to play along? Go visit Kat and LINK UP!!

DC Trip Part 2

We are finally home but not without a bit of drama of course. I swear I am like a magnet for it

The rest of our week was just as chaotic as the first few days. We were going non stop from about 6AM to 8PM each day. When they said we would be exhausted by the end of the week they were NOT kidding

The days are starting to run together so I am hoping I get this right. Wed morning we toured this random little jet called AIRFORCE 2!! That was SO.FREAKING.COOL!!! We got to sit in the cockpit, and in VP Biden's seat on the plane. While we were there at the base we also saw Airforce 1 come in to land but President Obama was not on it.

From there we went to the Pentagon and had a tour there. The coolest part of that was being able to spend some time in the 9/11 memorial there. It was very serene there, from the outside we could see the side of the building where the plane crashed, we stood in the area that was covered with debris

We also went to Arlington Cemetery to get a VIP seat for the changing of the guard. That was cool but even COOLER was getting to go into their quarters where they get ready to go out to the tomb. We got to see them get prepped to head out and talked to them a bit too.

Thursday was random do what we wanted day! Our escorts took us to see the White House and then over to the Washington Monument. We also spent about an hour in one of the museums...saw some cool stuff there. Thursday night was the formal banquet where the 6 winners were given a HUGE brass statue that had to be shipped to us, and some other award type things. The banquet was nice but I thought I was going to puke when I had to "escort" Joe down the stairs, through the entire crowd and up on the stage to be introduced.

Friday morning we got up at 4:15 to catch our 5:30 flight. Which got delayed. 4 times. Then got cancelled. Seriously...by this time I was SO tired that I just wanted to get home to my kids. So. We rented a car and drove 6 hours home. Seeing as I don't like to fly anyways it was not a bad deal for me.

This trip was AWESOME. It was a once in a lifetime experience and I am not sure I can ever go back to DC and just see it as a civilian. It was so cool to get the VIP treatment all week. I am so so proud of Joe for being one of the top 6 Airman in the Air National Guard.

That said....It was a long week of being nice to everyone, watching my mouth and kissing the butt's of super important people. That is exhausting. I told Joe that once we got back into Ohio that "The Week Of Joe" was over and all attention was to be focused back on ME. We have been married for 6 years and he had 6 days of all about him. That is an average of 1 day a year. Not too bad right?

Joe coming off of Airforce 2 pretending to be the President

Airforce 1 landing

If you look close you can see the difference in the coloring of the wall, that is where the building had to be rebuilt
More awards

Abe Lincoln's hat on display at the museum.

THE Ruby Slippers Some important guy lives here
So the squirrels in DC are super nice. This little guy was eating a snickers bar out of my hands. So very cute. Much nicer than geese.

Hello from DC!!! Just wanted to throw some pics up and tell you about our trip so far. We got in around 1 on Saturday. It was a 2 xanax flight not a bad flight at all. We got to our SUPER awesome hotel that is right on the Potomac and has all sorts of cool restaurants and shops around. We had nothing scheduled until Sunday so we just walked around and checked the place out, had some awesome dinner and went to bed.

Sunday I was tortured by being sent to a baseball game. Here is a picture showing JUST how exciting this game was

Add that to the fact that I wanted to dig my eyes out with a fork don't care much for baseball and it was 200 degrees out I was not sad when it was over. Sunday night we got to meet up with one of my sorority sisters who lives in this area so I could smooch all over her 4 month old baby. I think I ovulated once or twice while loving on her. Thank God for vasectomies.

Yesterday started the whirl wind madness....we were on a bus to the Pentagon by 8AM. We met some guy who I know was important but unless you are in the military and hear these names all of the time you don't so much know him. After the Pentagon we went to the Air National Guard Museum, toured that and then headed over to the State House to tour THAT. While we are there we walked 5 feet in front of Supreme Court nominee Justice Sotomoyer and her broken ankle.

We got back to the hotel around 5 so that I could cut my feet off at the anklesto chill for a bit. One quick banquet here in the hotel and then we were done around 8.

This morning, woke up to storms, got all gussied up for ANOTHER award banquet only to get downstairs and realize that the other spouses decided to skip the morning practice and meeting with another random important guy and just show up at the banquet here in a few hours. So here I sit!! After the award banquet we get to tour Air Force 2 ( I think that is the one for the VP) and tonight have dinner at a REALLY important guy's house...I paid attention this time....he is in charge of the entire Air National Guard for the country. And I forget his name. The rest of the week is more tours, meetings with random important people.

Apparently my kids are NOT rocking in a corner somewhere crying for me...they are actually having a GOOD time and Mallory has only cried when I call. Oops. I on the other hand am having a harder time than I expected being away from them and probably wont want to do this again for awhile. Enjoy some pics!

Me looking like a cow at the baseball game....

Joe pretending to argue some important legislature at the Pentagon

Joe and the other award winners at the Pentagon

The rotunda at the State House

no description needed I'm sure

In case you are new around here or came aboard AFTER Joe won this award....My husband was selected as the Air National Guard program manager of the year for the Nation. Pretty cool! This trip is where he gets his award!!

Not Me Monday

Here we go again!! It is MONDAY. Time to fess up to all of the things you did NOT do last week. Head on over to MckMama's to link up and see what everyone else has NOT been doing!

I did NOT realize that I need to remember to NOT keep track of all of this stuff during the week so that when Monday rolls around I do NOT find myself sitting here trying to remember all that did NOT transpire in the previous week.

I did NOT purposely park close to the Baby Mama goose on purpose more than once last week. I did NOT tell myself that I am better than that goose and I will park where I want....only people who are slightly unstable would carry such a personal vendetta against a GOOSE. NOT ME.

Thursday night did NOT have Joe and I traveling to the fine Wright Patterson Air force base so that Joe could NOT accept award #1 for that awesome national award he did NOT win earlier this year. I do NOT think of this first award as him accepting the "Miss Ohio" version and later when we go to DC next month he will NOT be accepting the Miss Universe National award.

Last Friday did NOT make me want to cry because no possible way did my BABY turn 3. We are NOT going to talk about it because I'm NOT sad that my baby is 3......

This past weekend was NOT drill weekend for Joe.....I do NOT hate drill weekend and cringe every month when it comes around. This past weekend Joe did NOT have guys night after Saturday's drill and just stay out at the base....which had me NOT enjoying some alone time Sat. night drinking wine and playing wii after the kids were in bed. I did NOT enjoy that alone time at all......

Saturday afternoon before said alone time I did NOT pack the kids out and head to a friends house to have a play date. Erin and I did NOT get annoyed every time we had to get off of our lawn chair to push a kid on the swing because we were NOT AT ALL hoping they would entertain each other and let us be for a bit. I did NOT take some great shots of the kids playing

Rach Rachel

Lil Lily

and Mallory.....I do NOT get irritated to never get any good pics of Pierce......

Erin and I did NOT decide to feed our kids a SUPER nutritious dinner at Wendy's so we packed them up and then proceeded to NOT get caught in a monsoon running from our cars inside.

I did NOT spend a part of the weekend bitter and cranky that I was not on the NKOTB cruise with BFF Liz....we did NOT talk about the twitter pics a few times over the weekend and how we hate all those girls that were there.

Happy Monday!!

(PS---Im NOT AT ALL getting pissed to keep coming in to edit and trying to fix my paragraphs so that they do not smoosh together....It is NOT making me crazy thinking that I might NOT have to edit HTML....which I do NOT hate doing....Im NOT thinking that you can just deal with smooshed paragraphs)

"I got a dress"

She said sounding like Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman

After assessing my wardrobe I have come to terms with the fact that I will have to do a little shopping for my upcoming trip to our Nation's capital.

Oh Darn.

Here is the problem. For over a year now my office has allowed us to wear jeans to work. This is a nice thing but my shopping for "business attire" has dwindled down to nothing.

So when Joe advised me of all of the dinners and tours that we are attending in D.C. I got a little stressed about what to wear. As usual HE does not have to worry much about this because he will be in uniform 95% of the time. We are attending 4 dinners and 3 days worth of tours that include the White House. Yeah, I can't roll to the White House in jeans.

Easy solution right? I used to have to be business casual so I can just pull out my dressy clothes from back then. Imagine my surprise when I realized that my closet had shrunk them!!!!!!! Stupid Closet.

Now I DO actually have a few outfits that will suffice....I'm not total white trash for Pete's sake. I do however need to pick up a few things.

So last night after work I went shopping for a dress for Thursday night which is when Joe will be honored for his award. I tried on probably 20 different things and came out with a dress. I considered this a success.

My next issue is that I will likely have to wear hose. My legs have not seen hose in literally over 5 years. To say I hate them is an understatement but right now I am the color of a member of the Cullen Family (God I love when I can find a reason to use Twilight in a post) and honestly I could use the benefit of a control top. Hose it is.

I'm not a fan of dressing up. I used to be....I think having kids and therefor the constant threat of being puked on or spilled on has caused me to not want to be as girly as I used to be. This week in D.C. sans children is causing me to have to get back to my girly roots.

Could be interesting. Could be scary.

One more thing.....I need to drop about 20 10lbs before then. Awesome.