and suddenly it's march

As the kid's at my school would say, "Haircut?  Or nah?"  All of a sudden it's my hair is past my shoulder blades.  After I took that picture I opted for "haircut" and I snuck away for a few hours Saturday morning and got it cut and colored. 

 It's hard to tell from the picture, but it is the lightest brown before the blond section of the little book of hair color samples.  It took about 45 minutes to process which meant 45 minutes of uninterrupted book reading, a luxury these days.  I am reading Mercy by Jodi Piccoult.  

I was happy with how it turned out and have plans next time to go even lighter.  

This little lady is officially 14 months and has been a handful lately--- into everything. She has taken to calling me "mum" but if I am out of sight she will holler "Eeeesa!!!" just like Ryan to find me.

 She continues to be a great eater.  We haven't found very much she will not try.  Recent favorites include sausage, pickles, and ring bologna.  Definitely her daddy's girl with those favorites.

I found these selfies on my phone.  I love my kids so much.

 Isaac is finally done basketball after being threatened with a technical foul in his last game for arguing with the coaches.  He had a great season and his coach recommended that he play on the travel team next year (we'll see).  Saturday he got called in as a sub for the winter soccer league (we opted out but the coach has been calling almost every game to have him as a sub) and another player straight up punched him in the face.



 We finally were able to go out to eat for his birthday dinner.  He chose Buffalo Wild Wings.  Noisy sports bars are not my favorite but it turned out to be a great place to take Hannah, since no one was bothered by her occasional screams and protests.   She has such strong opinions already and was so offended that she was drinking milk and Ryan was drinking lemonade.  

Another happy weekend.  I love when Isaac is home on Ryan's weekend off.  We already have a two hour delay tomorrow so I get to enjoy it a little longer...

A cold day at Chocolate World

It has been record breaking cold here. I know we are not the coldest or worst off in the weather department (like Boston-- eek!), but this has been out of hand.

Saturday Ryan took over with Hannah and I was to spend the morning under the covers with a good book.  I finished this one:

It was a quick easy book about an autistic man with savant abilities that my mom gave me.

Ryan surprised me by arranging for us to leave the kids with my parents Saturday night and go out on a date.  We haven't been out without Hannah in almost a year and it was almost eerie to  be in the car together and not have her with us. We went out to eat and when we came out of Panera it was snowing like crazy.  I was worried and thought we should just forget about the movie but Ryan was pretty determined that we were going to the theater.  When we came out of the movie the snow had stopped but the wind was howling and whipping our minivan all of the place on the back country roads of Leola.

We slept over at my parents house and had planned to go to church with them, but due to the extreme temperatures church was cancelled.  We still felt like getting out of the house, so we took the kids to Chocolate World in Hershey.  We decided to spring for their "design your own chocolate bar" experience.

It involved a LOT of waiting in line and hairnets for all, including Hannah.  But you got to custom make your own bar and follow it through the little minifactory, design the packaging, the whole 9 yards.  

Then we had cake and icecream with my parents to celebrate Isaac's upcoming 10th birthday.  How I am the mom of 10 year old!?

Snowy cold and wintery

Random school story: I used to wear dresses and skirts almost every day in the fall and spring.   This has been an especially cold winter and I have been wearing pants for the past few months.  I was unpacking an overlooked box of winter clothes from my closet and found a long sleeved cotton dress and decided I would wear that to school to show that I can make a little more of an effort in these winter months.  I am thinking I look pretty good and together, when one of my students tells me that it "looks like I am wearing my nightgown" to school.  Awesome.

We are trying to figure out the new normal around here with Ryan's new job.  He finally recovered from a week of pneumonia and has worked a few shifts.  His new hours are 1-8 which puts him home with Hannah half of the day which I love.  He is already making so much more money than his own job with the potential for his earnings to continue to increase.  It has been nice to have some breathing room in the budget to take the pressure off.  We are catching up on things and finally getting to things that had been put on the back burner forever.  Ryan was so proud to finally buy me a new fridge filter-- the "time to change" alert light has been as long as we have been together.   He even surprised me with a new laptop to help with my insane increased work load at school.   I was so surprised and grateful. 

Hannah continues to be, as her babysitter describes her, "appropriately destructive". She unloads drawers, she empties Ryan's wallet, dumps water glasses. She is always on the go.  The above shot was the best one I could get of her.  Most pictures I take turn out like the ones below:

She seems to be following in her brother's footsteps with hitting physical milestones ridiculously early.  Not only does she run now, she also jumps from both feet which is so cute it's ridiculous.   She has her own personality and opinions and is able to express them very well since she still only says "No!".  Like when we were eating nachos the other day and she had a fit because Ryan was handing her chips and she wanted to select her own chips.  She prefers her morning milk in a bottle, never a sippy cup.   She knows what she likes and she can let you know surprisingly well for someone who is still nonverbal.  (Yes, I have tried to teach her baby signs.  I know she understands them but she really can't be bothered to use them.  Sigh)

Isaac continues to be just an all round great kid.  He turns ten next week which blows my mind.  We are thinking about doing the Sixers for his birthday.  We continue to shuffle through after school activities for him which is a double edged sword.  He needs to get out the house.  He is a kid who actually cannot be cooped up within four walls for long periods of time.  The nights we end up without an activity he is bouncing off the walls.  But loading up Hannah and entertaining her while Isaac is at basketball/soccer/swimming/whatever can be torturesome.

That's about it for us.  Hang on, Friday's coming....

6 More Weeks of Winter

* January was a long month for us.  Ryan was traveling for 3 weeks.  I did better than I thought getting by without him, but it does make me more grateful for all of the work he does around the house and helping with the kids, especially Hannah. Sadly, he came home Friday and then woke up Saturday feeling horrible.  It seems that he has the flu (again) or some sort of icky virus-- high fever, lots of chest congestion.  Monday was supposed to be his first "official" non-training day of his new job and he is still as sick as a dog.  I tried to get him to take a sick day but he won't take a sick day on a normal day, let alone his first day.  Of course they sent him home though, to his great disappointment.  Tuesday he got into the doctor and ended up getting sent to the hospital for a chest X-ray.  It looks like his "bad cold" may be pnuemonia!

* Sunday night we did watch the Super Bowl.  Ryan typically likes to make a big to-do out of it, but since he was stuck under a blanket on the couch drinking gatorade and sucking on cough drops, it was pretty low-key this year.  Hannah got really into the half time show though.  Her dancing was intense and adorable.  Neither one of us made it to the end though.  We both fell asleep on the coach together sometime during the 3rd quarter.  I should start watching football the nights I suffer from insomnia.  It puts me to sleep every time.

* I finally finished I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb, the 800+ page book I have been lugging around since summer.  It was well written and I am glad I eventually powered through it, but I am looking forward to reading something a little lighter next.  It put me a bit behind on my reading goals, if I am going to hit 50 books by October.  We'll see.

* I would like to get a few fun things on the calendar for the kids.  I would love to take Isaac and Ryan's kids snow tubing.  I would love for us to spend a Saturday at a museum.  I would love for Ryan and I to go for a real date sans Hannah (something we haven't done since last February!).   The winter seems so long and dreary.  We need some fun things on the calendar to look forward to.

cold and wintery

This week Ryan was traveling again.  The weather has been cold, snowy and icky and the thought of spending Martin Luther King Day trapped within the four walls of our townhome was more than anyone could stomach.  Isaac asked if he could go to Arnold's, a local arcade with laser tag, go karts, etc.  I agreed.  It was actually a surpisingly good place to take the Hannah/Isaac combo.  Isaac did all the fun stuff and Hannah had fun running around the arcade, looking at the lights and dancing.  Isaac was even sweet enough to let Hannah "try" some of the games with him.  All in all, the trip lasted about 30 minutes longer than I would have liked, but it was a success.

The only other thing worth noting is I am on a couponing frenzy.  I post some of my finds on instagram if you want to follow along. In what some may describe as a sickness a passion.   Ryan knows that Saturdays will be spent driving from CVS to CVS or Giant to Giant in search of whatever the best deals of the week are that I haven't been able to stock up on.  Poor Hannah tags along too and even passed out in exhaustion on a pile of toilet paper.

This week was my best trip ever.  Not only did I pay nothing out of pocket (see that 100% savings on the reciept) but CVS paid me six bucks. 

 I got paid for buying 2 Vaseline Spray Lotions, Xtra laundry detergent, Garnier Fructis shampoo and conditioner and a thing of Palmolive Dishsoap.  In seperate trips this week, I have also scored 9 free full sized men's deodorants, Progresso soups for 38 cents a can and Oral B toothbrushes for 35 cents.  My basement stockpile is growing so large Ryan is looking into buying more storage shelves. 

January smanuary

Hello, glorious long weekend.  We are only two weeks back to school from Christmas break, but is a welcome day off none the less.

Hello fabulous skinny jeans from Forever 21.  Less than 10 dollars.  And hello to the fabulous scarf my in laws gave me for Christmas.   It complements my Canadian tuxedo nicely (I learned that term from Lena B).

Christmas is over and we are back into swing of things. Meaning, Monday night soccer with the trainer, Wednesday swim lessons, and twice a week basketball practices and games.  It is a lot, especially with Hannah in tow, but the alternative is endless winter days with the TV blaring and Isaac literally kicking the soccer ball against the wall for hours on end.  For everyone's sanity, it is better to pile in the minivan and head out.  

This past week Ryan had a week of training for his new job.  He has already done a week of training in Pittsburgh and starting today will have 2 more weeks there.  It was a good week.  He was home a lot and we found out a lot of encouraging things about his new job.  It seems like it is going to be a great fit for him.  He also found out that there was one position open and it came down to him and an internal candidate. They were sort of obligated to go with the internal person but they were so impressed with his interview that they decided to create a second position just for him.  I am so proud of him.  2014 was a rough year for us, but it already feels like things are going our way in 2015.

Without going into too much detail, I have also felt compelled to update my resume and letters of reference to see what else might be out there for me.  I don't know if anything will come of it but I figure things are more likely to be better anywhere else. A tanking economy has left me sitting at the bottom of the pay scale for longer than I am comfortable with, heading into another round of contract negotiations.  This year I am literally doing the job that was two teachers' job last year.  More work for less pay just isn't making sense anymore.  So we will see what happens.

I worked my last shift at Target.  I was feeling a little bit bad about it and wondering if I should have asked them to stay on, like, one shift a week.  Then I dealt with some really dreadful guests that last night and I thought "yeah, I'm good".  

We have been planning a big trip to Florida.  We will be spending some time with my parents at their timeshare, and visiting with Ryan's family.  I can't wait to have some family fun and meet my nephew Lucas.  Today the roads were very treacherous and church was cancelled.  We all stayed in our pajamas and watched a bunch of travel specials about Disney and Florida which got us pumped up. 

Happy Tuesday!

And it's January...

Well I don't even know if this blog has any readers anymore (besides my mom-- HI MOM!) but I am going to try to write more regularly again.  Having a baby really put me into survival mode for a year and I feel like I am just starting to come out of the fog. The usual steamroller that is back to school and then the holiday insanity is amplified by dealing with a very mobile and destructive curious toddler.  Add in the fact that my caseload this year at school is especially large, more responsibilities that used to the job of other people has now been shifted onto the special ed teacher and it left little time for blogging.  Or vacuuming. Or sending our Christmas cards. Or sleep.

Many bloggers start off the new year with a look at last year and a post detailing new resolutions.   I have my long terms goals listed as a document on my blog.  It is finally the last year for them, with the deadline being October of this year.  I am going to keep working away at those.  As far as other goals, I need to be more organized in general (really, that is the overarching theme/struggle of my life) and to make better use of our family together time.  Ryan has just started a new job which should allow us a little more financial breathing room and also the luxury of a fixed schedule.  Knowing his schedule ahead of time will hopefully allow us to plan more family experiences and see more of his kids.  Working opposite shifts has it's pros (he is home with Hannah during the day) and cons (we never see each other, I have to handle all of the evening chaos alone).  While that won't be changing, knowing Ryan's schedule for the whole entire year will really help us make the most of the times we are both home.

Aside from being more organized and planning more family time, another goal is sort of get back to myself. Being pregnant and then being broke for a year, it has been a while since I bought any new clothes, or really, anything that wasn't an absolute necessity.  I want to figure out my sense of style as a 30 something adult-- something beyond my uniform of black trousers and button downs for work and yoga pants and scoop neck t-shirts for home.  I got a compliment the other day on a coat, and I realized that I have had that coat since college, which was over ten years ago.  It must be that my clothes are so old they are coming back into style. Same for my hairstyle/color, the same since high school.  It's time for an update.

Another goal of mine is to find more time to reconnect with things I love doing.  It worked out over winter break for me to get out to a cardmaking workshop, something I used to do regularly but haven't done much the past two years.  I had such a nice time and it made me feel bad about all of the stamps and craft supplies that sit dormant and unloved in my living room closet. I would really like to carve out a little bit of time every other month or so, to get out to a workshop or get together with friends and allow myself to be creative again.

In the same vein, I also want to get off my phone and pick up more books.  I used to read almost every night before bed and now sit in the dark refreshing Facebook and playing Trivia Crack.  I have been slogging through Wally Lamb's beast of a book I Know This Much is True.  While I am enjoying it, is nearly 900 pages of heavy, emotional drama.  I have come too far to quit, but I may alternate reading it with something a little more light and fluffy.

Over Christmas break Ryan and I watched It's a Wonderful Life.  I had never seen it before, but it is one of Ryan's favorite movies ever.  I felt so bad for poor George, but I like it.  It was also one of the things on my 101 in 1001 goal list.