A {small} Post

March is almost upon us and I thought I should go searching for a new desktop since mine is still showing a dated one of November. lmao So, of the ones I looked at tonight the one from Shabby Princess is my favorite, although looking around a bit more I really like Michelle Underwood's desktop freebie. Hmmmm, decisions, decisions.

Today I'm going not going to write about the whole situation on the house, I need to leave it alone for a bit. My poor friends have heard more one-sided, agitated rambling from me in the past couple of days, I'm sure they would appreciate me laying off a day or two ;)

Tom is passed out on the couch, American Idol is on and the boys are upstairs anxiously waiting for 8:30 to come around so they can have dessert. So here I sit by myself. I should take care of scheduling some bills or something, but that can wait until tomorrow. I think I will sign off here and go work on a layout or something.

thoroughly {frustrated}

I am thoroughly frustrated with our situation. Not to say that things weren't frustrating over the weekend when offices were closed and we couldn't get any information, but it has steadily gotten worse throughout the week. Here we are almost into Thursday and we have NO solid information about anything.

The realtor I think is hesitant to help us anymore because technically we aren't in a lease anymore, so her company is no longer responsible or accountable. Mr Landlord refuses to put together a competent sentence. He is always going around in circles and not really saying anything productive or helpful. Tonight in fact when Tom called him and informed him that we are now getting letters from a lawyer about the foreclosure on the house like its ours, all he had to say was "You guys should be fine. You are in the US Military and you have rights." I don't know what kind of rights he thinks that service members have, but if the house is being foreclosed on and headed to public auction the person that buys the house will probably not want to have to deal with us. I really don't get him and I'm getting more and more frustrated as time goes on.

I emailed my grandparents to see what they think we should do. I know ultimately it is our decision and we will make the end decision, but it's nice to hear what other people think. The realtor emailed me back this morning when I wrote and asked for some listings of rentals in our price range and she said that we shouldn't have to give 30 days notice since we are technically not in a lease anymore. Speaking of which, Mr Landlord is again trying to screw us over by telling Tom that the base legal offices have walk-ins on Monday, Wednesday and Friday - when Tom tried to tell him that he called today and they said Tuesday. And that is just to get in there, explain what you need to talk to them about and then they give you an appointment time. Mr Landlord isn't sure when he'll get the lease he's getting drawn up back from his "legal channels" - but maybe next week.

Opinions? Suggestions? Let me hear them, I'm happy to listen. I can't imagine that this situation is a cake walk for Mr Landlord, but he's currently living in a house - we are the ones who might not have a home in 17 days.

One good thing is that in the list of rentals the realtor sent there was one that was under our housing allowance (bonus) and it is within the same school district (double bonus!). I want to jump on it since it's such a low rent (well...considering) but I don't want to jump the gun. I think thought that tomorrow the two boys & I will run out and go see it. It's only about 5 min up the road so it wouldn't really be a huge big deal. My only concern is Mr Landlord giving us a hard time about little to no notice and him skipping out on returning our security deposit.

I'm leaning pretty hard to just getting the heck out of here though. Then we have to worry about lease length with the new landlord - we know we'll be out of here in Oct/Nov, so cross your fingers that they will ok a 9 month lease, or work with us somehow.

Well, it's way late and Mr Man is still up - I should head to bed...

{one} less stress

Whew! I'm glad to say that we have one less thing to worry about now. Unfortunately it's not about the house (didn't hear a word from anyone today). We've been looking into getting a new car to replace our truck that has to be turned in when our lease is up in April. A few months ago we were set on re-leasing, then we changed our minds and decided we wanted to try to get a lower payment so we were going to go used. I've been searching CarMax because I didn't want the hassle of going from dealer to dealer trying to haggle prices while dragging along 3 kids.

In my searching I've found quite a few trucks that looked like great deals. I thought that we would be looking to lock something in here shortly so I asked my dear ol' brother for some pricing advice and he said that the few I had mentioned sounded a bit high in price to him. Then he proceeds to tell me about an '05 Yukon that his old bosses are working on and will be ready about the time we need it. It sounds like a great deal to me, Tom thought so too. So, I am just happy to say that it is one less thing we have to worry about at this moment.

Now, if only the house situation would fall into place. No one seems to want to work with us though and I'm really concerned. Hopefully tomorrow we'll hear more, I can't wait to not be stressed about this. The other two boys' birthdays are coming up here soon and I just want to not be transitioning into a new house again right before their birthdays.

Where's a phone that isn't dead?!?!

That was what I was thinking to myself too many times today. We bought a new cordless phone set with 4, yes count them 4, handsets. I didn't hook up one to "save" it. Somehow during our landlord drama over the weekend we didn't charge any of the 3 that are hooked up. So this morning and I start to receive and make phone calls, they each start to die on me, one by one.

Nothing new to report on the foreclosure front. Mr Landlord swears that things are ok and that we will be ok. I'm not so sure about that, I told the realtor as much also today. I also found out from Tom that Mr Landlord wants to draw up our lease extension himself, I don't like the sound of that.

All I wanted to do this weekend was sort through my stash of digital pictures and maybe get a bit of scrapbooking in, but I'm so frustrated with the whole situation that instead of doing what I wanted I sit here and my mind just slips away. I'm done with being so mentally and emotionally drained.

Happy news! A good friend of mine just found out she's pregnant! Yay - we're so happy for you & your family :) I was dragged into looking at crib sets online this morning with her - she's such a bad influence on me! Looking at all those sweet sets, the clothes and the many pictures of babies made my eyes watery and I wondered where my babies went.

Before I get all flustered again (seems to be my motto the past week or so, I'm getting myself so built up with emotion that I just bust out with the tears) I'll share a few photos I just edited. The one of Alex hiding is from tonight. The ones in the snow are from last Thursday.

{This Property} for Public Auction

That's right, our landlord has apparently has defaulted on his mortgage. We got a letter addressed to Occupant yesterday. It was from a debt collector and it said that due to the mortgage not being paid, the lender has accelerated his loan and requires to be paid, basically. Since he hasn't been paying (not sure on exactly how much he's behind or anything) they are going to auction off his house at a public auction on March 13th, 2008. How wonderful for us!

Funny thing is Mr Landlord assured us last night that we "should be ok" until Oct/Nov when we are due to PCS out of here. He was supposed to come by today to get the letter, but instead called and said he couldn't today so he'll be by tomorrow. He asked Tom to not open any of his mail in the future and to not open anything that may already have arrived open. Ugh - we didn't open his mail - it was addressed to the Occupant, we occupy this house - I thought it was an ad or something. I open things that aren't obvious what they are so that I can shred it if it seems to have too much personal info in it.

One good thing that happened today was that I received my order of 14 12x12 layouts that I ordered from ScrapbookPictures.com. Wonderful service, fast processing and turn around. I am SO happy with my prints (and so is Tom) that we may even pay to have some printed even when there isn't a sale running.
So that's our wonderful weekend. Unfortunately because it is a weekend we have to wait until Monday to try to get anything taken care of. So, if I start to be MIA for a bit it's because we're trying to find a new place to rent and move.

Headache Thursday

So today was a rather uneventful, unproductive day for me. I about had a breakdown while making quesadillas tonight after coming back from Wal-Mart.

One productive mark of the day was that I was able to actually to sell the crib set today. Yay! :) I don't feel bad about it at all, but it's just a set of sheets. ;) lol

I've been enjoying my Adobe Lightroom trial. I'm hoping to have enough money set aside by the time my trial is up to purchase it from the Academic Superstore. I am trying to figure out how to save the photos and the whole Library thing, I'm sure in time I'll get it all straightened out. There are a lot of great presets available out there, I was surprised to see how many people were graciously giving them away. Bonus! lol

Well, I should get ready to head to bed. Nothing like a headache to make you want to call it an early night.

... To-Do: find some cute smilies to use in posts...

Little man is 2

I can't believe that my littlest man turned 2 on Sunday! He thoroughly enjoyed his birthday. We went to iHop for a late lunch, then he napped, once he woke up he opened presents and then a little later we had cake. The cakes didn't turn out how I wanted, but that's ok I guess. I need to learn how to make my own frosting, I know it's not hard, it's just not something I've mastered yet since we don't make a lot of cakes.

I have a long list of things to get rid of. Hopefully ebay or Craigs List will help me out with that, but if not - it's all going to Goodwill. Unless there is someone who is willing to come down and help me have a yard sale ;) I just don't want to do it by myself. Tom would help with the sale if he needed to, but everything else would be left up to me. I don't know what to do, I just want some of this stuff gone before we move.

Well I should remove my butt from this chair and do something more productive. I did get my new plated washed and put away! :D lol Tommy will be home from school shortly and then there is dinner to make so I really should probably go attempt to clean up the cereal mess I hear being made in the kitchen as I type...

A boring Saturday night

So, it's after midnight on a Saturday night and instead of hanging out playing Xbox or watching a movie with my hubby I'm chilling on the floor in my room on my computer because his friend is here for the weekend. I don't "hate" this guy, I just have a strong dislike for him at times. I don't want to make him feel bad and make him feel like he can't come hang out, but he doesn't come and just hang out - he totally turns our life upside down. Yeah, it's only a weekend, and I don't cause unnecessary problems, I get it. I guess I just realized that I feel super left out and isolated when he comes to visit. Thankfully it isn't much, but still. I had such high hopes to get some things done since the hubby would be occupied, etc - but heaven forbid! Why should he bother to deal with the kiddos? So, I spent a good portion of the evening dealing with the kids. Which is totally my responsibility, but not totally by myself.

Anyway, so the project I was going to start on for my friend Sam has gotten pushed aside. Hopefully it's nice out tomorrow and they can take the kids outside and I can get that started for her. I also have to make Alex's birthday cake...my littlest man is going to be 2 tomorrow! Where has the time gone???

Since I don't have an awesome connection up here I won't bother to try to post any pictures. I should get a decent sleep since I will undoubtedly have to try to entertain the kiddos quietly upstairs as long as I possibly can. Then I have to go clean, do laundry, bake Alex's cake and all the other things I wanted to do for myself. There are a bunch of ideas for layouts that I wanted to do, plus try to find my serial number for PSPXI and send it to Sam. I don't use it, so I figure I might as well pass it along to someone who will.

Til tomorrow ...hopefully blogger (and my wireless connection) will cooperate so I can post all the birthday pictures we'll hopefully get tomorrow.

Roses and frustration

So, my wonderful hubby had 2 dozen roses sent to the house the day before Valentine's Day. The reason for the day before is because the last 2 or 3 years that he's had them sent on V-Day is that they haven't shown up til 8pm on VDay or until the following day. So, this year he decided to try to beat the rush and have them here the day before. They are beautiful and I got a very pretty red vase with them.

The frustration is with Tom's monitor at work. He had "web orders" for 29 Palms a week and two weeks ago. Now he has "web orders" to Camp Pendleton - where does this guy want to send Tom? I told him we should decide and get some actual orders so that we can get our name in on the housing list as fast as we can. Definitely for 29 Palms, maybe for Pendleton.

Other than that I'm still not feeling all that wonderful. Still out of it and just not physically feeling all that great. DH's got a friend coming up this weekend. Which will leave me cleaning up after 4 boys. The 4th who is not very good about cleaning up after himself or anything. Tom and I are going to have some intense conversations about major life events this weekend, well probably Monday after his friend leaves.

Want some pictures? ;) Ok, so no pictures for the moment because the stupid connection keeps getting reset. Maybe tomorrow.

Sickness

Yuck...this sickness is running through my house. First is was Tommy on Thursday night and Friday. Then Monday night it was Alex first, then Anthony. I began to feel gross about 1/2 way through the day an had to call Tom. I really thought I was going to have a puking fest myself. Thankfully it didn't get that far, but I was hot then cold all day, my stomach was killing me and I was extremely queasy all day.

Tom was so good about it yesterday, he knew that my throat already was hurting plus with being up with the kids all night I didn't sleep well. So, he called into work in the morning and told them he was going to let me sleep in and get Tommy on the bus for me. Awww, I thought it was so nice of him. Then around 12:30 I had to text him to tell him I felt so crappy, at 1 I got a call that he was on his way home. So thankfully I was able to sleep as much as I please yesterday. If I had known though that Alex was going to take a 3 hour nap right after I texted Tom I don't suppose I would have needed to.

I still feel gross today, but better than yesterday. Tommy & Tom had 2 hour delays to work & school because of the freezing rain we got last night. I almost missed getting Tommy on the bus because I closed my eyes for a few minutes. lol I have a bunch of things to take care of today but I still want to just sit around and watch tv.

Oh and on a positive note for me, I had planned on trying to quit smoking yesterday. So by being sick it helped my quest. I just hope that I can hold out today & tomorrow. I've heard that once you get over day 3 you can cope easier, or something. I just hope that if I can do it, then maybe Tom can too. Well, wish me luck!

Happy Saturday

Well, technically, it's Sunday already, but since I'm still up, we'll say it's still Saturday ;)

I was so proud of myself with keeping up with blogging on here, shows what happens when life gets in the way. lol The Digi Chick has some challenges going so I've been trying to do those (these give me lots of great ideas for other layouts), plus clean the house, organize things and take care of the kiddos. Speaking of which, poor Tommy got a 24 hour bug on Thursday night and was got sick around midnight and wasn't up for school on Friday. Poor kid, you could tell he really didn't feel well since he really laid on the couch all day and slept on & off throughout the day.

I finished up a few layouts though for some challenges. One is still on my desktop, so I'll post that another day.

This one is for the Scraplift challenge at TDC. We were supposed to look at Tami's gallery and choose one of her layouts to "lift". I chose her layout My Boy and this layout of Anthony is what came out of the inspiration I got from her original layout.


These other two weren't for the challenges, just some photos I wanted to get scrapped. All credits can be found by going to my gallery at TDC. I'm hoping to be able to get some time and get all my layouts uploaded to DST and RAK (maybe if the site isn't shutting down) soon.

I think that's about all for now - I should go get my smallest munchkin to bed for the night so that I can possibly get a decent nights sleep for a change. Tomorrow is a hopeful day of getting some baby clothes packed up into moving boxes (as long as we come to an agreement that the movers probably won't open them to re-pack them) and list some things on ebay.

New Canon dslr

Canon has announced it's new model of the Rebel, the XSi due to come out in April. I can't wait to hear some reviews on it (from people rather than websites) and maybe hope with high hopes that I can upgrade mine. Although I'm slightly torn between upgrading to the newest rebel model or really upgrading and getting the 40D. While I'm in no position at the moment to purchase either of these cameras, the price difference between the body only XSi ($799) and the 40D ($1299) isn't that much of a difference when you consider the price of the 5D ($2499) compared to the 40D. Like I said though, I'm really in no position to buy one at the moment...good thing the new XSi doesn't come out til April. ;) lol

My big oops for the week...

So, we received our tax return back in our bank accounts about a week or so ago. Once payday came around I scheduled a payment to pay off our credit card. So, I log onto the credit cards website like always and schedule the payment to be made on this past Friday. I write it down in the checkbook, no problems...Until this morning when I checked our other bank account and found a NSF fee of $25 staring at me. WTF!? Almost immediately though I realized my mistake, I forgot to switch the bank account it was supposed to come out of.

So I called Citibank where I was connected with a customer service representative that could barely speak English and didn't understand my concerns and questions. I asked him what their policy was for something like this, ie are they going to try to take the money out again? My statement shows the balance as if the payment had been made, so I asked when their system would update. No reasonable response. The only thing that I did understand from him was I can either wait a few days and re-schedule another payment or I can transfer the money into the bank account and see if they try it again. Ugh!?! After getting off the phone I realize that even if I wanted to transfer the money it still wouldn't do me any good, it would take about 2-3 days for it to hit my other account nevermind the fact that the receiving bank will undoubtedly put a hold on the funds.

So, I still need to call and see if they can cancel the payment altogether as Kathy suggested. I don't know what I would do without her voice of reason sometimes. ;)

Look at Tommy go!

So I finished my layout for the anything goes challenge at The Digi Chick. The extraction isn't perfect, but before I print it out I will probably touch it up a bit. All those pixels were starting to give me a headache and I wanted to get it posted to the challenge gallery before I wanted to re-do it or start a new one.

It was another nice day today so Tom took the kids outside for a while. He was trying to get Tommy to get comfortable on his bike and try starting out on his own. He got it a couple of times and even turned around on his own once. I'm sure with more time outside he'll get more confident and be ready to ride around the neighborhood in no time.



We tried to take pictures of the kids this morning. I had this great idea to get these cute heart shaped lollipops from Target and take photos of the kids to do Valentines cards with. What was I thinking??? While we were trying to unwrap the lollipops we realized they were broken in a couple spots, despite our efforts picking them out in the store and being super careful with them. We did get a couple good photos. I've already edited them the way I want so now all that is left is decide the size Valentines cards to send out, then design them up. I'm doing the same card to send to everyone, so if the kids will leave me alone for a bit tonight I can get that done.

Now, if I could only get Tom to chill out for a bit when the kids need something and heaven forbid he needs to remove himself from the couch to do something for them. Ah, but what would I have to complain about then?? lol ;)

My first post here

So here it is! Aren't you excited?! I bet that you are! ;) This is my blog, my place to talk about things that I might not necessarily feel comfortable with writing about on the blog I keep updated for the family.

So, my life is pretty mundane for the most part. There will be weeks that go by and nothing really notable or interesting happened. And then there will be weeks like this last week that exhausted me emotionally by the end of the week.

I love taking photos and therefore will probably post a bunch. I also am pretty proud of my digital scrapbooking, so if I feel so inclined I will probably post those too ;)

Just to break in the blog right, here are my photos for Feb 1st and 2nd. (I'm attempting to take a photo a day for 2008 - although I started on the 8th of Jan and have missed a day or two so far.)



This one of Tommy is from today. It was so nice out when we got home from our errands that we made the kiddos stay outside for a bit. We've been trying to get Tommy onto his bike to learn to ride it with no training wheels. So, today was the day and while he didn't go far, it wasn't long before Dad let go and he went a little ways down the road without help. :) I feel horrible that he's almost 7 and just learning how to ride with no training wheels. There just wasn't time or the right area before. Hopefully the next time we can get out there he'll remember today and know he can do it.



This one is for Feb 1st. When Tommy got home from school Tom broke out the pistachios and was trying very hard to convince Tommy to try one. He insisted that he wouldn't like them and it took him about 10 minutes to try the first one. lol When he did he liked them so they inhaled a bunch of pistachios together.