family...

I've been lucky enough to have been spared alot of drama from my in-laws for awhile. Unfortunately Tom and I are knee deep in drama. Tommy and Anthony start school on the 2nd, their school open house is the 28th of August, Tom and I agree they should both go especially Anthony. Now, here is where we run into the drama; the MIL and SIL wanted to take the boys for the last 2 weeks of the summer which normally wouldn't be a problem until about 2 weeks before (almost 3) when I found out when the open house was. SIL will have the boys during their open house, and she seems to think that our opinion doesn't matter and she doesn't want to bring them home or let us come get them. I told her about this as soon as Anthony went to his kindergarten testing, I told her that we would call the school and see if we could get the boys in to meet their teachers before hand. Noone asked us when we dropped the boys off last Saturday if they had met their teachers, so maybe the lack on communication is on my part for not specifically telling them that we were not able to get them in to meet their teachers. I called, Tom called; we tried.

Saturday when we got home after traveling all night SIL calls and asks if she can have the boys all week. I explain the situation, again. I tell her that we tried, but we do with what we have. She sounds like she is mad at me, I tell her that I'm sorry we couldn't have made arrangements otherwise, and that I will come get the boys or meet her halfway. She says she's not mad, just disappointed. She says that she's not going to be able to come down for a long weekend to visit like they are accustomed to once we move to CA. This of course makes me feel horrible, but it's nothing we can control. We go where they send us, we tried numerous times to get his orders changed to Lejeune, but even moving there wouldn't enable her to be able to drive down for a long weekend. We get off the phone and I could tell she was more than irritated with me.

So, tonight the MIL called Tom and had to have her say because SIL has called her a couple of times upset about having to bring them home earlier. Tom is on the phone for 15-20 minutes explaining, again, why it is important to us. She asks why can't we just go and get the information for the boys. Then she says she understands and is caught in the middle. She says that if they had known ahead of time (anyone remember 3 weeks?) they could have switched weeks so SIL would have had a whole week with them.

I'm really tired of it all. I feel like we are being punished by them for getting orders to CA (which we've tried to change) and now for wanting the boys (mainly Anthony) to go to their school open house and meet their teachers, get their bus tags, etc. We have to be flexible with Tom's job, we change what we can, adapt and make the best of what we can't change. With everything else we are trying to accomplish trying to organize I don't need this right now. We aren't trying to be mean, I want Anthony to meet his teacher.

Ugh...that's my rant for the day...still waiting on a yes or no from the house we really want, but that's a whole other story.

back from SoCal

So, the hubs and I are back from SoCal. That was a long flight back, very glad that we didn't have the kids with us.

We got up super early to fly out there and stayed the whole week at the Pechanga Resort & Casino. It was nice to stay at a nicer place for a change, and we got to gamble for the first time! lol We won a little, lost a little, in the end I think we came out $14 ahead! lol Big winners that we are.

We saw some houses nearly each day of the week. Monday we went to Oceanside and saw the houses that were probably in our price range and we were assured that we didn't want to buy any of those. Tuesday we saw houses in Temecula to buy that were generally about twice the size, newer and in a much better area. Wednesday we saw 2 rentals, one that we loved and one we would settle on. lol We still have no firm answer on anything...which frustrates me. The other was running a credit check when we left to head down to San Diego, why they don't have an answer yet is frustrating.

We drove around a lot and saw a bit of Temecula's Wine Country, found all sorts of stores, we went down to Oceanside and walked around the street fair thing they had, wish we had more money, lots of stuff I wanted lol. We picked up some souvenirs for the kids and saw Pineapple Express. Friday we had to kill time around town just in case we got an answer so we saw Death Race. lol Afterwards we drove down to Coronado Beach. We tried to see Lisa Lampanelli on Thursday night, but they were sold out. It was nice to be able to do whatever we wanted, but we were out there for a specific reason and we had to kill more time waiting on call backs, it was frustrating. We both thought we would be busier so we didn't plan to do anything except go down to the beach at Oceanside one afternoon.

Will post pics later.

new iPod

So, my dear, sweet husband was trying to do a good thing and get me something I had been wanting for awhile. And he even thought ahead and wanted to get it so it could be used on our trip this weekend. It arrived yesterday and I opened it once he got home, and I reacted so badly when I opened it and saw what it was. I am ashamed of myself, it's not that I didn't appreciate the thought - but when I opened the box it was a brand new 80gb iPod. I know that we don't have the money for that. Plus, we had agreed over a month ago that getting me a new one (yes, I already have an iPod, no it's not broken - but it doesn't play videos, and that's what I wanted) was a silly idea and it would be a waste of money. If I really wanted to watch movies that badly I could borrow his iPod if I should need to.

I hurt his feelings and I feel horrible about it. Today he says to me, "Sell your old one and don't worry about the money. Just open it." So, after dinner I did. I lifted it out of the box it came in, which is remarkably smaller than the box my other iPod came in. It's much thinner, but heavy. As I was spinning it around admiring the silver shiny-ness of it I noticed something on the back. Hmmm, what is that I though to myself. After closer inspection I realize that my dear husband had it engraved for me. After reading it and realizing that if we had returned it I would have never seen it, I felt like a complete ass. I should have just accepted it yesterday and been horribly grateful that he thought to get me anything at all.

I love him so much. Although at this moment he's a bit irritating. lol ;)

To our favorite woman
From all your favorite boys

Friday Letters

I almost forgot that Kathy told me about this today. I decided that since Alex is wielding a crayon I must stay in the same room to keep an eye on him, so I figured I would check it out the Friday Letters blog.

It's got great prompts for you to write about. It would be wonderful for scrapbookers. I'm wondering about creating a blog for it myself and maybe creating a notebook to write in my own writing. I am going to start with prompt 1 when we get back (or on Friday if I have time) on the blog, maybe a blog of it's own, haven't decided yet. Creating a notebook filled with letters in my own writing really calls to me. I love having letters, I've kept all the ones that Tom wrote me while he was deployed each time. There are services, such as blurb that will create a book out of your blog, so I suppose, when the time comes, I could always order one of those.

Just another thing for me to add to my to-do list. This would be a great project though for me while we are driving across the country in October. I won't have housework to keep me from it and that time with the kids will help me remember their quirks that I love so.

{funny things}

So, while I was visiting Andrea's blog today I saw her post a little cartoon about photography from WhattheDuck. I decided to go to the website to see more, I am so glad I did. The cartoons are so funny! Great shirts too, maybe I'll add one or two to my Xmas wish list ;)

We are trying to get everything pulled together for our trip this weekend. I'm finding that I'm going out of my fool mind trying to remember everything. Remind me not to leave everything til the last minute, I'm really feeling quite ill. Tom's been so busy at work too the past few days. Thursday, early morning, late night in the field; Friday early-ish morning and regular time off, but busy; Saturday, duty; Sunday, misc errands and then today was another early day and in the field all day. He's passed out on the couch currently. We're snapping at each other due to stress & lack of planning on our parts.

I'll post more another day, I have some stuff I should get taken care of before I need to try to get to bed.