Happy Birthday to one of the loveliest ladies that I have been fortunate enough to meet,pnksaph

I have not posted Ella pics in forever. Who am I kidding, I haven't posted in forever, regardless of content.

We had a big weekend, it was Petite Mere's (Matt's step-grandma) 80th birthday, so a whole half of the family was in from Florida. 21 of us milling around eating and planning the next meal. It was good fun, however, to watch the kids play together. They range in age from 16 to 5 months, with the majority of them clustered in the 2-6 range. We spent Saturday morning at a pumpkin patch/apple orchard, and got lots of good pictures.

Needless to say, I am exhausted. 3 days of no naps (for Ella or me) and our kid was pretty over stimulated and cranky. Now I'm taking a short break from working. I've been up pretty much every night until midnight working because I am rather overwhelmed at work right now. I just need a clone for a couple of weeks. That shouldn't be too much to ask.

Anyway, on to the pictures of Ella. She is one month shy of her 3rd birthday. I want to know when my baby got to big!

( 3 years! )

Happy Supernatural premiere day!!!! I can't wait to see what happens this season.

Also, I watched the premiere of So You Think You Can Dance last night. I'm not sure I'm ready for another season so soon. Poor Janine, who only gets to be America's favorite dancer for a couple of months. Glee is sitting on the DVR. I didn't love the first episode, but I liked it enough to give the second one a shot. I did love hearing Journey a'la a glee club.

We are heading to Illinois this weekend for my grandpa's memorial service. He passed away on August 22. He had been in poor health for quite a number of years, but his death was still rather sudden. We grew up next door to my grandma and grandpa, so it is hard to reconcile that someone I spent so much time with in my childhood is gone. Some of my favorite memories are the times I rode along to the grain elevator during harvest season and got to drink a bottle of Grape Nehi and listen to all of the local farmers talk. It's strange that I grew up in a relatively rural setting and now Ella is growing up in a fairly urban setting.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great weekend. Think of me as I drive 6 hours in a car with a 2 1/2 year old who is bored after the first 30 minutes!

I know I have a lot of pet lovers on my list. I am hoping all of you can help me out.

One of my partners is on the board of and spends countless hours volunteering for Spay Neuter Kansas City (SNKC). There currently is a contest for local charities to be the recipient of a festival's fundraising. Last year's recipient was awarded around $4,000.

SNKC provides free and low cost spaying and neutering in Kansas City to help control the pet population and hopefully lower the tragic number of animals that are euthanized in shelters every day. They also go out into the community and provide shelter, food, and water for animals that are kept in bad conditions (if they cannot convince the owner to give up the animal). My partner is the person who will stop on the side of the road and spend 2 hours trying to get a stray dog into her car.

While the animal shelter that is currently winning in votes is a great organization, they also raise tens of thousands of dollars each year and are very well established. SNKC is a new organization and the more pets that are spayed and neutered, fewer wind up in animal shelters.

The link to vote is here Click Here To Vote. If you could use your 3 votes for SNKC, I would really appreciate it. Also, please feel free to link to this post. Voting ends tomorrow (Aug 13) at 11:59 pm CST.

Some statistics on what SNKC can do with the money:


$4,000 would allow SNKC to provide: 200 cat surgeries OR 100 dog surgeries OR purchase 250 bags of 50 pound bags of food...

1 female cat spay can save 420,000 unwanted pets in 7 years!
1 female dog spay can save 67, 000 unwanted pets in 7 years!

In Kansas City, approximately 15,000 animals were euthanized last year just for being homeless.

Again, feel free to link to this post!

The Wiggles are coming to town this Saturday. I hadn't purchased tickets yet, even though I kept meaning to. I just bought them. First row. I suppose there is something to be said for procrastination. At least Ella will have great seats for her first "concert."

I am beyond words. I hope someone wants to discuss this, because I need to understand.

We've decided to put our house on the market. We would like something bigger, and now is a good time to buy, if you can sell. Houses in our price range seem to be the ones that are selling, so we're hopeful. If we can't sell it, we still like our house, so we won't be devastated.

But, this has meant a tremendous amount of organizing, cleaning, and purging. I went through my shoes last night. I got rid of 16 pairs. That's a lot of shoes. Some were easy choices, including shapes of heels that are no longer in style. Some were more difficult as I said goodbye to friends I had worn often but not recently. I probably could have put 3 more in the pile, but I couldn't bear to part with them, even though I haven't worn them in years. I couldn't be sure I would never think, "Damn, why did I get rid of my red Converse?"

Now my shoe collection looks small, tiny even. All huddled there at the bottom of my closet in the neatly stacked boxes (except for the few pairs bought on trips where I had to forego bringing the box home, or flip flops). I still have over 50 pairs, but it doesn't seem like very many when you look at them.

I think I deserve a new pair of shoes this weekend............

In the car Friday:

"I'm two, mommy. I'm not a child."

So, first post here at Dreamwidth. Not sure how much I will post here, but I think I might upload all my fic to have it all in one place.

I want to say a belated Happy Birthday to the amazingjanedavitt .  Reading your daily birthday posts on LJ always adds a bit of brightness to the day.  And, even though I haven't watched a single episode of The Sentinel, I still love to read your fic. 
I hope your birthday yesterday was wonderful.

Work is ridiculous.  I have all of these projects that needed to be done yesterday.  I need to clone myself and go back in time to get everything done.

I was flipping channels and Top Gun is on Bravo. I realized I was just in time to see the volleyball scene. Matt had just finished rolling his eyes in response to my "oh goody, we're just in time" when................THEY CUT IT OUT!!

What the hell? That's only one of the best scenes in the whole movie. Who made the stupid decision to cut it out for time purposes? Whoever* they are, they should be fired.

*or is that whomever? I never know.

I love Quentin Tarantino, but did anyone think he looked like Lady Elaine Fairchild from Mister Rogers on the show last night?

Two people sang Bryan Adams? Could no one bust out with some Simple Minds from The Breakfast Club?

Happy Easter, Happy Passover, and Happy Spring to all of my wonderful friends. (although, if your weather is anything like KC's right now, spring seems far off).

My sister is visiting for the weekend. She arrived yesterday. Within 2 hours of being here, Ella wanted a ring in her nose just like Aunt Natalie. I told Ella she can do whatever she wants when she's 18, but I have to put my foot down at a nose piercing at the age of 2. lol

I had the weirdest dream two nights ago. I was in an office building being chased by zombies. There was a lot of running all over the building with a group of people, none of whom I can remember now. But, we had an iPod with something loaded on it that if we could get to the building control room and play it through the building, it would stop the zombies. I was even climbing in an elevator shaft at one point. I woke up exhausted. All that running........

I had Ella's Easter pics done. I've attached a couple below the cut.

( In my Easter bonnet...... )

for geekpolice.net. We acquired a couple of really bad virus/trojan horse problems on Tuesday. I found the geekpolice website and lovely volunteer tech people help you get them off of your computer. It took some time but saved us a bunch of money having someone else fix the computer. If you're having computer problems, I highly recommend the website.

In other news, DST is kicking my butt. It takes me weeks to adjust every Spring. It hasn't helped that I've had to be up early almost every day this week.

I haven't watched ER in years, but tonight it's like recapturing a piece of the past.

Okay, I am addicted to a new game on Facebook: Vampire. I have got to get more people in my vampire clan so that I can advance and get more stuff. It's very simple to join my clan once you receive an invite. You only have to click on a few buttons in the game to create a vampire, and then if you never want to play again you don't have to. If you're on facebook and we're not friends, please look me up and friend me so I can beg you to be in my vampire clan. If we are friends on facebook, please be in my clan!!

misswitch, if you're on facebook, please find me. I tried to find you and there were like 100 people in your area with your name.

/pathetic begging over.

In other news, I have had the whole evening to myself. Ella is off at her aunt's house spending the night and Matt is off with the boys. HEAVEN! I have played Vampire and had a Supernatural marathon. I tend to hoard Supernatural on the DVR because I like to watch it in chunks.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and belated Happy Solstice to all of my friends. I'm so glad I can count each and every one of you among my friends!

Christmas has been a bit of chaos for us. Last night, shortly after putting Ella to bed and beginning the wrapping of all of her gifts and assembly of some of them, we heard her crying the "come now something is really wrong" cry. When I got to her room, she was covered head to toe in vomit, it was on her bed, her blankets, her stuffed animals, the rug on the floor and was still coming out! Matt got a bath started, I got Ella out of her pajamas and into the bath and Matt cleaned up her room. I am married to the best man in the whole world! Ella spent the rest of the night getting sick about every two hours. So, we aren't operating on a lot of sleep. She had pretty much zero interest in opening presents this morning, but has managed to play with her rocking horse and her kitchen. She seems to be feeling a bit better now. I can only hope that we are all able to get a bit more sleep tonight.

I'll post some pictures later of Ella leaving cookies and milk for Santa.

For each of you, I wish peace, love and hope in the new year!

We're going to try this again this year. But, I have higher hopes the cards will get sent as they are in the envelopes and the majority have the addresses on and postage!!

I have addresses for the following people:

gilesgirl, marsterslady, ladyoneill, jerel, scratchingpost1, pnksaph, supermom20, khaoschilde, kaymickbee, ladyforash, malnpudl, gileswench, cafedemonde

I need updated addresses for: misswitch, tx_cronopio, and dara_starscream.

If anyone else would like a card that features the kid, leave a comment with your address. I've screened them.

My baby girl is 2 today!!! I can't believe how fast these two years have gone. Everyday I'm amazed at this awesome little person who we are lucky enough to have in our lives.

Ella loves to:

Talk in full sentences
Count to 11 (don't ask me why 11)
Watch WordWorld
Narrate her life ("Mommy, I'm running, I'm running")
Put quarters in her piggy bank (she hits everyone up for change)
Read ("Read Jonjones Mommy, read Jonjones" - thank you misswitch, she loves that book, and so do we)
Be tickled ("Tickle my armpits, daddy." {I'm not sure where she even learned the word armpits})

Here are some recent pictures of my amazing, amazing kid.

( this way to the pics )

Happy Birthday to the incomparable misswitch. I am lucky to have you for a friend! I hope we all make it to Vegas to celebrate in style.






Ella and Ogee chilling in his bed on Misswitch's most recent visit in July.

Happy (belated) birthday to elementalv. Here is wishing you a year filled with happiness, fun, and maybe only 11 hour work days. :)

A belated Happy Birthday to my beloved friend supermom20. Jen was the first person to reach out to a hesitant writer on the GilesRulesBaby! yahoo group. Our friendship sprang to life and we haven't looked back. While neither of us can spend hours at a time on YIM like we used to, just like Ouiser and Clairee, our friendship is still going strong.

We were together for our first ASH sighting and managed not to make too big of fools of ourselves. We've written stories together and spent hours and hours pondering the Buffyverse, kids, and life in general.

Happy Birthday Jen!