A Nice, New Kitty

I keep forgetting to post about our new kitten that we got. I told you about our devil cat that we had gotten from the humane society and how we took her back and got the third degree for doing so. Well, we exchanged her for a kitten. We had decided that a kitten might work better for our family. They tend to be more adaptable. We got a pretty, little long-haired torti kitten. She is very friendly and sweet. And, most importantly, she likes us and doesn't seem to mind the noisy kids all that much. She is about 11 weeks old and we named her Daisy. When I learn how (I know I keep saying that) I will post pictures of her. She does need to learn to run away from our youngest daughter. She thinks it is funny to pick the kitty up by her fur and pull her tail. Ahh, kids.

Last Day of August

I can't believe it is already the last day of August. Where did the summer go? Kids already go back to school next week and we start another Awana year in two weeks. Wow! I remember when summers seemed to last forever.

Today I had a doctor's appointment and I reached the 32 week mark. I have to go back in 2 more weeks and then every week after that because of my history of delivering early. I am really praying that I will go full-term this time. My blood pressure has been good this pregnancy. My back is killing me though. My doctor thinks that the baby is head down and in the anterior position. That is very good news. I just hope that he doesn't roll over. The girls were both posterior when I went into labor with them and they turned just before they were born. That made for a lot of back labor. Yuck! Anyway, hopefully this pregnancy will end differently than my first two.

Jury Duty Selection

I just got summoned for jury duty a few weeks ago. I didn't really mind too much to start with because I am a stay-at-home mom and it doesn't affect my financial status and I have relatives in the area that can watch my girls. I did start to mind when my oldest girl got very sick the night before I was supposed to show and my husband spent almost 5 hours with her in the emergency room and didn't get home until about 2:00 a.m. We were worried about meningitis because of the symptoms that she was describing to us. It ended up only being tonsilitis and she is fine now. Anyway, my number got called and I tried to explain to the judge that it would be difficult for me to sit on that jury because of my daughter's condition and needing to take care of her. He wouldn't excuse me from my service-just from that particular panel. Well, since I am due to have a baby in just a couple of months and with a history of delivering prematurely I decided to stay on. Luckily, either the defense or the prosecution had compassion on me and my situation and let me off of that jury.

Two days later I had to show up again. This time I did get picked. I had a feeling I would be. Why not? I am not very vocal when it comes to the voir dire questioning. There are some people that you just know won't get picked. Luckily, that trial ended with a plea bargain the next day.

What I am wondering is how does someone like me get summoned for jury duty so often. I am only 24 years old and this was my third jury duty summons. Well, I shouldn't say summons. The last time I was sent a questionnaire I got out of it because it had been less than two years since the last time I served. But, my point is, three notices in four years. How does that happen? I know it is random selection through the DMV and voter registration and I do have a driver's license and I vote. But, how is it that some people go their whole lives and never get called, or when they do their panel gets cancelled, and others like myself get called every few years.

I'm beginning to wonder if it has anything to do with me getting pregnant. The first jury I served on four years ago was when I was pregnant with our first daughter. The second notice I got was when I was pregnant with our second daughter and now I am pregnant again and had to serve again. Kind of weird. Makes me wonder what will happen if I ever get pregnant again.

Fair Week

I guess that title is kind of misleading. Last week was fair week. I made two trips to the North Idaho Fair this year. On Friday night I went with my mom and my two sisters to see the rodeo. That was a lot of fun. The rodeo clown, Flint Rasmussen, was one of the best rodeo clowns I have ever seen. He had the whole crowd cracking up several times.

Yesterday all of us went to the fair. Our family tradition is for all of us to go on Sunday for the demolition derby. I have been going with my dad ever since I was about 5 years old and I think I have gone every year since then except for one year about 4 years ago. Now my husband goes along and this year we took our 3 year old daughter for the first time. She loved it! We were very disappointed though. They only had 8 cars in the whole thing! We couldn't believe it. Usually they have quite a few heats to get to the final heat, but this time there was just one. And, it was over pretty quickly. Needless to say, it was very disappointing and the worst demolition derby we had ever seen.

On a happier note, we did get to enjoy huckleberry ice cream cones and a deep fried Twinkie. I probably gained a few pounds at the fair which isn't good at this stage in my pregnancy, but oh well. With how many trips I made to the bathroom with our daughter maybe I walked a few calories off. :)

Manito Park

On Saturday afternoon we took the kids to Manito Park on the South Hill in Spokane. If you haven't been there before I highly recommend making the drive over there. You won't be disappointed. We weren't able to see everything that we would have liked to because we were all getting hungry and the kids were getting tired and cranky.

My husband's favorite part of Manito is the Japanese Garden. They have a neat Koi pond and a pretty waterfall. It is very tranquil there. I love the Rose Garden and Duncan Garden. The Rose Garden is full of all kinds of different roses and Duncan Garden has all kinds of different flowers and a beautiful fountain in the middle of it. When we drove by it on Saturday there was a wedding party there. I don't know if they got married there or if they just had their pictures done there, but it is such a beautiful place for a ceremony or pictures.

They also have a conservatory, a huge duck and goose pond (don't fall in-the water is kind of gross) and a playground. I think the playground was the kids' favorite part of our outing.

What I like about Manito Park is that it is all free fun. And it is so relaxing and enjoyable. It is a great place to take along a picnic lunch or a book. And don't forget the old bread for the ducks and geese. I know I have said this before but one of these days Steve is going to teach me how to post pictures and I will put some of Manito Park on here.

I'm Baaack!

After a busy weekend I finally have found the time to post again. I am sitting her trying to remember all of the things that I did or that we did as a family.

My sister showed up unexpectedly on Thursday night. We weren't expecting her until sometime on Friday. She showed up at our house on her way to my parent's house around 8:30 so that her 2 year old could use the bathroom. Only a parent would understand. :) The kids and I went over to my parent's house on Friday afternoon to visit with my sister and so the cousins could play. Her daughter is one year younger than my oldest and her son is five months younger than our youngest daughter.

My sister moved over to the Seattle area in June while her husband was in Iraq working for a civilian contractor. He is from that area and they had talked for a long time about moving over there. I have seen her a couple of times since she moved but it's not the same as her living close by. I guess I am lucky that Seattle is not farther away. I am the oldest of 5 kids and she is 2 1/2 years younger than me. We come from a really close family so it is kind of weird for her to be gone. Oh well. If I don't see her before she said that she will come sometime after our baby is born. And that time is going to be here before I know it.

Surgery a Success

Well, our daughter had her surgery this morning. It was hardly a surgery. It took about 5 minutes for the actual procedure. But then we had to wait for her to wake up. That took a little while. She has been a little fussy today, but not too bad considering what she went through. She can now stick her tongue out past her teeth. Hopefully, now she will start to speak soon.

We went to the humane society today to return our cat. We might go back this evening to try to find a kitten. I'm just not really looking forward to dealing with the people there. I know they mean well and they love the animals there. But they weren't very understanding when my husband took the cat in to return her. They seemed to think that we had done something wrong and that was why the cat wouldn't warm up to us. When my husband told them that she tried to attack our 3 year old the woman he was speaking to told him that it must have been because she was chasing her. Our daughter wasn't chasing her. The cat was just acting like an animal. They also told us that we should give her more time to warm up to us. How are we supposed to let her warm up to us when she hides in our garage for 36 hours and freaks out and tries to attack us when we try to catch her? We would like to have a cat that wants to be around us and that can handle noisy children. The humane society gives you 14 days to return an animal if it doesn't adapt to your family. Obviously, they realize that not every animal works out for every person. They should teach their employees and volunteers not to give the third degree to every person that returns an animal for whatever reason. That is why they have the 14 day return policy. My husband and I were just really frustrated when we left there earlier. Hopefully, we will just find a nice kitten that will work out and we will be done with the place.

Case Closed

We found her! When I say "we" I mean my husband. The cat was hiding somewhere in the garage the whole time. She is going back to the humane society tomorrow though. I know it sounds mean, but when we were trying to catch her she was hissing at us and trying to attack us. I realize that she was scared and felt threatened, but we have two young kids here at home and another one on the way and we need an animal that can be trusted. We also want one that prefers our company instead of hiding from us. I think we will exchange her for a kitten because they seem to adapt quicker.

Our youngest daughter is getting her tongue clipped tomorrow morning. The hospital called today and told me that now we don't have to be there until 7:00 instead of 6:15 like we were told earlier. I'm sure everything will be fine but I am still nervous for her.

Well, I must go. My husband is bugging me to come watch "24" with him. We are in the middle of season two and we love the show!

Still Missing

Well, our cat is still missing. I don't know how we are ever going to find her, and I don't know how she is ever going to warm up to our family if she never comes out of hiding.

This evening we are going out to dinner at Chili's with my in-laws. Yum! I love their Cajun Chicken Pasta and their chips and salsa. After dinner we are taking our oldest daughter over to my parents' house to spend the night there. She is spending the night because we have to be at the hospital tomorrow morning at 7:00 for our youngest daughter's surgery. I am nervous for her. I'm sure everything will be fine. It's just a five minute procedure. I can't be in there with her until she falls asleep since I am pregnant. Steve will be in there though. I guess they don't want me to be exposed to the gases. Hopefully, I will be able to be in there during the procedure.

Well, I gotta go. I need to pry myself away from the computer so that I can go do the dishes. Yay!

A Mystery

We seem to have a mystery in our household. It appears that our cat has not disappeared. She is just really good at hiding. I went out to our garage this morning just to see if there was any evidence that she was still there, and lo and behold, it looks like she used the cat box and kicked cat litter into her water bowl. We have looked all over that garage and so I have no idea where she is hiding. It is a perplexing mystery. Stay tuned...

This P.M.

I don't think I have much to say this evening. My husband and I are babysitting his nephew for a couple of hours. The girls and him are spreading toys all over the living room floor. Not too many arguments yet.

We have decided that our cat has run away. Steve came home and looked all over the garage just like I had and she was nowhere to be found. Like I said earlier, she must have hitched a ride with Steve this morning because that was the only time she could have gotten out of the garage. Hopefully another nice family will take her in and she will stay with them longer than she did with us. I guess she wasn't meant to be the cat for us. Too bad, so sad. I think next time we will get a kitten.

Lost Kitty

As you can see from the title we are missing our kitty. We didn't even have her for a full 24 hours before she went missing. We adopted her yesterday from the humane society and brought her home last night. We named her Tiki. She was kind of freaked out when we got her here because our youngest daughter screamed almost the whole way home. After we got home she hid. My husband spent a good portion of the evening putting a cat door in the door to the garage because that's where her cat box has to be. That was very loud and she wouldn't come out while he was working on that. This morning when we got up we found her hiding under our bed. We got her out for a little while and then we let her go to do her own thing. She ran and hid in the garage. Now I can't find her. I have looked in what seems to be every possible place for her in the garage and in the house and no luck. I think she might have hitched a ride to work with Steve this morning. He is going to look for her when he gets home this evening in case I have just missed her. I hope she is still around. She was a really sweet cat and she purred a lot.

I can't even post a picture of her because we didn't have her long enough to take one. I guess we have learned our lesson about adopting older cats. Tiki was over 2 years old. I think a kitten might have adapted more quickly to our noisy household. At least that's how my experience with cats has been. Well, I'm not giving up yet. Maybe she will just coming walking out of her hiding place later today or my husband will find her when he gets home.

A Beautiful Day

What a beautiful, hot day today was. The high was somewhere in the 90s. We went up to Lake Pend Oreille this afternoon after we got home from church. We met my parents and brothers and sister up there and spent the afternoon playing in the lake. We have a family friend who owns a place on the lake with a private beach. A couple of weeks ago we went up for the weekend, but today was just for the afternoon. We usually try to make it up there for at least one weekend every summer. It is such a wonderful way to relax.

My grandpa owns a boat and lets my dad pull it up there. He took it today and we went out on it so that my husband could get in a session of wakeboarding (probably his last chance of the summer). We were going for about 10 minutes or so when the boat died. My dad finally got it started again after a few minutes and he decided it would be best if we took it back in for the day. We didn't want to have to row back to the dock. My husband was disappointed that he didn't get to go out longer but he was glad that he did get to go out for a little while. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach. Everybody swam except for me. That lake is cold! I just had fun watching everyone else play.

Well, I don't have much else to say tonight. Hopefully soon Steve (my husband) will teach me how to put pictures on here so my blog will be a little more interesting and exciting. I'll be back sometime tomorrow to blog again.

Saturday Afternoon

Today has been a very uneventful Saturday. I was supposed to receive a phone call at 10:30 this morning from someone who is supposed to help me get started on Ebay. He never called. I thought that was very rude and unprofessional. If you set up a time to call someone you should call them. I had made my husband stay inside (he could have been out mowing) because he wanted my husband to take part in the phone call since he is going to be helping me with my Ebay stuff. Needless to say, we were both upset that he didn't call. We weren't particularly looking forward to the phone call but we made sure that we were here to receive it. Things like that really frustrate me.

Tonight we are going over to my in-law's for dinner. We usually go over there on Saturday nights and eat pizza and watch a movie or visit. We try to spend a lot of time with our families because they are very important to us. And we think it is important for our kids to spend a lot of time with their grandparents. I didn't get to spend a lot of time with my grandparents when I was younger because none of them lived very close until I was a young teen.

Well, I must go for now. I have to go wake the girls up from their nap soon so that we can get ready to go to Gramma and Papa's house.

Scroll Down

I forgot to say earlier that last night I added a ticker at the bottom of the page. It shows how far along I am in my pregnancy and how much time I have left until my due date.

Another Day of Blogging

I am getting on here kind of late today. We took our youngest daughter to the ENT specialist today to get her tongue clipped. The problem was that she wouldn't let him get a good look in her mouth. So, she has to have outpatient surgery at our hospital to get it taken care of. The doc said that was typical of tongue tied patients her age because most of them don't like people sticking their hands in their mouths and he doesn't like the idea of handling a sharp object near the mouth of a fighting child. I don't either. At least at the hospital she will be given a local anesthetic. The drawback is that we have to be there at 6:15 am. Oh, and also the fact that now the doctor will be charging us over $500 for the procedure. I don't even know what the hospital will charge us. *sigh* Oh well. I know that God will take care of us.

Now my day is going kind of slow. I rested for a little while earlier. Being 7 months pregnant I have to make time to do that. We have Bible study tonight at church. We are studying through the book of Exodus on Friday nights. I haven't been there in a few weeks because we took a weekend trip up to Lake Pend Oreille a couple of weeks ago and last week my oldest daughter was getting over tonsilitis and I had a very sore back the whole weekend. Part of me can't wait for this pregnancy to be over. The other part of me knows that the end will be here before I know it and I am not ready. For me the end could be sooner than most because both of our daughters were born prematurely. With the oldest my water broke at 34 weeks and I spend a week in the hospital before they induced me at 35 weeks and our second daughter was born at 36 weeks. I am really praying that this pregnancy goes full term.

Well, I must go for now.

Good Night

Well, another day has come and almost gone. I really should be getting to bed soon. I had a great time tonight at my Home Interiors show. Only 5 people came but it was worth it nonetheless. It looks like I will be getting a lot of free stuff! Yippee!

I am not looking forward to tomorrow morning. My 19 month old daughter is tongue tied and we are taking her tomorrow to have it clipped. I feel so bad for her. We are having it done because she still doesn't say more than a couple of words and the doctor thinks it may be because of her tongue being tied. Her two words that she does say are "please" and "yuck". She does know some sign language too. I'm sure that everything will go well but I feel bad for her just the same.

Well, I best be off to bed. I can't stop yawning and it is getting harder to keep my eyes open.

Good Morning

Good morning all! I have a busy day today. I have to do housework (yuck!), go grocery shopping and get ready for my Home Interiors party that I am hosting tonight. I always leave everything for the last minute. I don't know why.

This will be the last Home Interiors party that I will host for awhile since the baby is due in a couple of months. I'm sure my husband is glad. I love their stuff (especially the candles) but I always spend more money than I should. Pam (my Home Interiors consultant) always has such great deals and she knows I am a sucker.

Today is another cloudy day here in Post Falls. I think it is supposed to clear up later. I sure hope so. This isn't the kind of weather we are supposed to have in August. I think the high is supposed to be around 77 today which is about 10 degrees below normal. This weekend is supposed to be back up in the 90s though. That is a little too hot for me. Boy, I sound like a whiner. Anyway, I like it between 80 and 85.

Well, I must sign off for now. Have to go scrub toilets!

Ebay

I am hoping to start selling on Ebay soon. I have been buying there for a few years. I haven't bought much-just a few things here and there. But I have decided that I am going to try my hand at selling. I'm probably going to start out by selling things from around the house, but I would eventually like to make it more of an income. It would be nice to have a little extra money since we are a single income family. There is a lot of potential out there for money-making on Ebay (or so I have heard). We'll have to see what happens.

Me

ME

I guess I should describe myself a little bit...

I am a 24 year old stay-at-home mom to a 3 1/2 year old daughter and a 19 month old daughter. Baby #3 (a boy - yippee!) is due on October 26th. I have been happily married for 6 years.

As you can see from my title, I am an Idaho native. Where I live in North Idaho it is hard to find us natives. My husband is not even one. He is a Southern California transplant. We live in a beautiful area with lots of lakes and rivers and mountains. We have decent weather here most of the time. Except for right now. It's raining.

We live in Post Falls, Idaho which is in between Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and Spokane, Washington. There are probably a little over 20,000 people in Post Falls.

My husband works at our church which is North Country Chapel. He edits radio programs and is a sound technician. As I said earlier, I stay at home with our daughters and I feel truly blessed that I am able to do that.

Well, I must leave you for now. I shall return.

In the Beginning

Hello to everyone out there. I am very new to this whole blogging thing so you will have to bear with me as I try to figure everything out.

I have recently started visiting a very good blog site called Huckleberries Online. I will provide a link when I learn how to. :) My husband has a blog on this site and so I thought that I would give it a try too.

This site will probably just consist of pictures and my random thoughts.

Well, let's see if this works...