New Car

For those of you who asked, yes, I gave up the gas guzzling SUV. I got tired of paying $75 - $80 per week to drive the thing. It only got 15 - 17 miles to the gallon, which was no big deal when it only cost $30 to fill it up but a lot more painful now.

The car I got is a 2007 Chrysler Seibring. My payments are similar and we didn't have to extend my loan out that far (I still owed on the jeep) so we went for it. I didn't take pictures of it so I pulled the ones off of the dealer website to show you.

Our weekend review

On Thursday I got a call from daycare that Zack was sick so I had to leave early to get him. Consequently, I also had to stay home all day Friday with him because of the 24 hour rule. As it turns out this wasn't quite such a bad thing because he didn't really feel 100% again until Saturday afternoon.

It was, however, a bad thing for me in respect to the fact that I had an additional day tacked on to my weekend and took advantage of it to get some things that we needed for our house.

One of these, in Zack size.....

Which he promptly used to chase around and wack at the cat. It was taken away by Saturday, perhaps he will be able to play nicely with it later this week.

One of these....

Which you have to go into the girls section to find even though my SON loves it and it is in a perfectly respectable blue, yellow and red color. What boys don't grocery shop??

And of course some of this...

Because really... how can you appropriately shop without food?? (He has proceeded to attempt to eat 90 % of the plastic food as well as chew the paper wrappers off of several things!! :-)

Moving on to Saturday... (He He He)

One of these....

We had one neon tetra alive who had been alone for about a year. It was either give up or clean the tank and get new fish. So we went with the later, emptied the water into a bucket and were in the process of cleaning the tank when we heard a crack.

At this point it was do or die. We had one fish swimming in a 5 gallon bucket in our living room and no aquarium. So we bit the bullet since I couldn't flush the fish.... and decided to get another aquarium and some new fishies to put in it.

Four of these...

Two of these...

(except ours are red)

Two of these...

And two of these.... And finally....

For good measure....

We topped off our weekend with one of these....

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Yeah, I think I'm done purchasing ANYTHING for awhile!!

18 Months

On the 12th Zackary turned 18 months old. There are so many things that I want to write about this but I can't seem to find the words.

He is the most AMAZING child I have ever met. He says more words than I can even count including knowing how to tell me no like a big boy. Something that I thought I had at least a few more months before I had to worry about.

He is loving and sweet and LOVES his animals but at the same time will not hesitate to tell you when something is not right in his world.

He has in own thoughts and opinions on how things should go and if you do not do it his way the punishment can be severe!! :-)

He is absolutely in LOVE with his daddy and makes sure he finds him EVERY day as soon as we get home.

He is now in full blown copy cat mode and will copy not only your actions but pretty much EVERYTHING you say including words, phrases and some things you wish he would miss.
He loves swimming in his pool, playing in his sandbox and has a two stuffed animal minimum in his crib at all times.

Every day he turns into more of a big boy and less of my baby.

I am constantly amazed by all of the new things he is doing and seeing him makes my heart hurt because I love him SOO much.

I love you to the moon and back Mr. Zacky Zack. Don't grow up too quickly!!

Dr Appointment Today:

31 lbs. 9 oz.

32 3/4 Inches Tall

Head size is off the charts. (He got his mama's brains!! :-)

Gone, but Not Forgotten... I hope...

Although since I haven't posted in a week and no one has seemed to notice perhaps I am forgotten!! :-(

Either way, I'm just checking in to let you know things are crazy. My work got nuts and so I am working , working, working and when I get home I'm just playing with Zack and then vedging on the couch. I had 110 feeds on my bloglines so I have LOTS of catching up to do.

Things in the alcoholic side of my life have also been crazy. Jake has not relapsed but the farther we get into this recovery the more times old garbage will make it's way to the surface. This has happened recently and we are dealing with it and I'm working on my program, which I have not been so good at doing.

Hopefully, things at work will get better and things at home will calm down and then I will be back, full time. Until then there will be a slight lack of pictures too because all we have at home is dial up and well, I think that speaks for its self.

See you on the flip side!! :-)

One Year

{{This picture has been moved to Zack's personal site}}

July 2007


{{This picture has been moved to Zack's personal site}}

July 2008

Trouble

Notice the look on his face... the look of I know I'm not supposed to but it's SOO much fun?
{{This picture has been moved to Zack's personal site}}

See the dad in the background jumping from his seat
Notice how even though he's SUPPOSED to be in trouble he looks more like he thinks this is a game...
Yeah, WE ARE in trouble!!

New Curtians

God said "let there be light" and there was light

And the small child saw that the light was good and promptly woke up at 6:15 am every morning and refused to go to bed until 8:45.

And so the parents, with their still half open eyes on Friday morning the 4th of July said that this just will not do!!

So the mom went to T*rget to procure curtains. And the curtains were hung.

And then mom and dad pulled the curtains and separated the light into darkness

And the small child saw that the darkness was good and he napped and slept late and all was right with the world again.

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Curtains for Zack's room: $200

Trips to Target: 3

Time out of my day: 2 hours

Cutting the crying and talking at nap time from 50 minutes to 5 minutes: Priceless

One day

I miss one day, one little rotten day to stay home with my son, who has pink eye for the second time this year, (Something more to add to my list) and when I get back today there are 72 items in my bloglines account.

Really? Seventy-two?? Could you guys give a girl a break and NOT post for a day... just one little day so I can get caught up? It would be much appreciated... at this rate I might be caught up by the second Tuesday of next week!!

Crossing Over

About two months ago I made a change in this site. Did you notice? For the first 15 months of Zack's life I didn't really talk about him on here much. I wrote a post about it in honor of his 15 month birthday. If you would like to read it you can go here....

Anyway, when I wrote that post and when I sort of changed directions I was unsure if I would loose my faithful readers or not. As of right now the answer seems to be not. I'm grateful that all of you decided to stay with me and I'm glad that so many of you are enjoying the pictures and the stories. I love writing about my kid and sharing him with all of you.

However, after today... I'm not sure how many of you will continue to come back. Today I'm am truly crossing over to the mommy blogger dark side...

After all, who else but a mommy blogger could come here and tell you that on Saturday my son will be 18 months old and this morning.

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He woke up DRY!!

And then...

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He went potty on the big boy potty!!!

Oh yes, I did just write that on my website, and I did just put three exclamation points behind it!!

I..

can't...

help...

myself...

It's official, I'm now a mommy blogger. May God help us all!! :-)

(Wait, before I go may I get one more WOOO HOOO for my big boy!!)

Ok, I'm really going this time...

Childlike Confusion

On Thursday we took Zack to the park. At the park there was a drinking fountain. So we taught him how to drink out of the drinking fountain.

On Friday he used his new found skills to attempt to drink from the spout of the kitty fountain.

In his defense it is sort of a drinking fountain.....

Sick to my Stomach

I have been cleaning my office the last couple of weeks. Every night I do a little bit. Last night I was looking through some old paperwork deciding what to shred and I came upon a gas receipt. In 2003 it cost me $28.00 to fill up my vehicle!!

$28.00!!!

Just the other day I filled up and it cost me close to $75.00. That is more than double the price in just 5 years!! Let me just give you a little history lesson here...

1986 - $1.00 per gallon
1993 - $1.30 per gallon
2003 - $1.50 per gallon
2008 - $3.90 per gallon

So we've got a 30% jump in 8 years, a 15 % jump in 10 years and then a 260% jump in the last 5 years??

260%!!

You have got to be F#$king KIDDING ME!! Someone PLEASE, PLEASE drag George Bush and his oil friends (who have been making record profits by the way) out of power so perhaps we can get back to spending our money on things we need like groceries and utilities instead of GAS for our cars!!

Seriously??

Re: HOBBY LOBBY-MC-30-CKS

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Please contact us to resolve this issue.

We have reason to believe the above referenced check(s) have been stolen or forged. (No SH*T Sherlock could that be because I told you this... a YEAR AND A HALF AGO!!) However, we are requesting more information. (What more could you want? I sent you a police report, and a letter from the bank showing I canceled the account as soon as I knew the checks were stolen. Did I mention that I did this a YEAR AND A HALF AGO!! Ok... just checking) If this item is related to a forgery, theft or identity theft (I think we've established this), we must have copies of your completed forgery affidavit and/or police report to clear this matter from our system. (Um yeah... got that. Faxed them to you... YEAR AND A HALF AGO!!)

Sincerely,

MasterCheck

All I can say is it's a good DAMN thing I keep things, and also that I am in the process of cleaning my office. So I find the information and call the company.

Helpful Associate (HA): Oh, I see here that there were two checks written to Hobby Lobby.

H: Yes, and I talked to someone regarding both checks and faxed you a copy of the police report back in 2006.

HA: Yes, it shows here that we have a police report on file and we have cleared one of the checks.

H: So do I need to fax you another copy to clear the other check. (Come on idiot... get with the program....)

HA: No, I will go ahead and clear the second check now.

H: Thank you. (Did I really just have to waste 15 minutes of my day having that conversation?)

The odd part of this whole thing is that this letter arrived on Friday June 20th. The same day that this happened.