B started his pre-Pre-K -- two two-week summer sessions before officially starting preschool. Not a tear was shed when he went to school. He loves it, but probably because they have trains and tracks there. Unfortunately the playground is one for mosquitoes too. His second day of pre-K, I picked him up to find he had about 12 bites, 4 of which were on his head. That and he carried a pound of sand home on his head, in his hair.

So anyway, the little guy is starting school. Enter our newest addition. She joined us early in June and it's been wonderful, but hard to get used to the whole infant thing again. Wow. She has to eat AGAIN? LOL. Eat, cry, sleep, change diaper. Heavy on all except for the sleep part! Though she is starting to sleep longer through the night, which is wonderful. She also has started smiling in response to funny faces or cooing, so the fun times are right ahead of us!

Other than that, it's been all about the business. The dog is driving me crazy. I need a maid. I hate spiders.

That's all for now, don't want to overload you or anything. ;-) Have some things to do before things get moving again for the day (baby wakes up and time to pick up the little guy from school).

Made an apple cranberry pie tonight, which was supposed to be part of tomorrow's dessert, but it was so good only one small dish of it is left. Ha! We're having a pretty traditional meal tomorrow. Roasted turkey breast, stuffing, green bean casserole, a little bit of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (canned jellied and a dish of fresh cranberry sauce).... And rice, of course. I seem to have forgotten about the gravy though. Oops. I'm sure we'll manage to whip something up. Oh, and a pumpkin cheesecake. It all sounds good, but I can't wait to eat that stuffing. My favorite part of the meal!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yay!!!

But, once the doctor came in and started, the fears subsided somewhat. He did all kinds of measurements, and it wasn't until he said Congratulations was I relieved.

The estimated due date is June 15th.

I've been taking it easy, not wanting anything to cause a problem after last time. My workouts are pretty much done with. I'm too exhausted anyway, but am hoping to take Billy for a walk today to the grocery store. Exhaustion, nausea, bloating, indigestion.... welcome back! I welcome it all back if that means the baby will be healthy.

Now I need to dig the maternity clothes out and see what I can wear. Apparently after the first pregnancy you tend to show sooner.... my clothes are getting a bit too tight!

I despise Citibank. I am using it as much as I can for now just to hit my $50 reward mark so I can cancel the damned card and get my earned cash back. The moment I see the reward hit the mark, the card is going in the shredder and I'm cancelling the account.

More to come later!

So, when I found comparable bags of rice in Walmart, I was thrilled. And then there was the whole rice shortage thing. Watch this progression of the price of the same bag of rice over a the span of 1 year 4 months:

03/28/08 - $ 9.58
05/01/08 - $10.48
06/25/08 - $12.78
09/14/08 - $15.18
10/22/08 - $18.24
07/09/08 - $18.24

Looks like the price increase has stopped.

Just thought you folks in Hawaii would like a laugh at the price I have to pay for my rice. Yikes.

Meanwhile, I'm paying $2.78 for a gallon of 2% milk. So take THAT ;-)

Right. Busy. So, what have we done this week? Mowed the lawn, several trips to the grocery store, got new passport photos, doctor appointment, went to the library, sent off passport papers, renewed membership to the zoo, laundry, searched Lowes and Home Depot for a replacement grease tray for the grill as well as a replacement filter for the AC unit, and did prep and painting in the sun room. Also drove to Orlando for the inspection on the potential site of the new store.

Hopefully we'll do some stuff outside today. The sky is clear, and unfortunately there's not much of a breeze, but a little sun will do us good. Hoping to take B to the beach and the zoo this coming week. And why not? Maybe clean the car today. Or scrub the back porch. Or maybe both. Need to do more work in the sun room though. Look forward to hauling myself up the ladder to apply caulk. Not.

Feels good to get things done without worrying about needing to do this and that for work. I have a feeling the free time will dry up soon. We'll be headed to France sometime later this summer or early fall. Should be interesting.

B tried to watch The Tale of Despereaux -- he must not have been too into it because he didn't demand that I pause it and also shut it off early in favor of doing something else. Hmm. I wasn't watching it with him, so maybe it just was dull.

His funniest thing he says now is "gods sake!" I'm sure this is because I frequently hiss "For gods sake!" I tried to convince him that the better thing to say is "oh man!" or "for goodness sake!" but he insists it's "gods sake". I really am trying to watch what I say. Oh, he still mutters under his breath "dammit" occasionally. Oops. At least he's a polite child, for the most part. Please and Thank You are always coming out of his mouth. :-)

Been pretty busy this week so far, time pretty much flies until after dinner, then the day feels a little long. Probably a good time to give in and go to bed, but then something else always comes up and now look at the time, it's 2:30am and I'm still awake.

I was triumphant in locating my passport, birth certificate, social security card, and other important items today after two days of searching. I was positive that it had all gotten thrown away during my last desk "cleaning", but just when I thought I was going to have to go to Miami to take care of the lost passport thing, I gave another look somewhere, and what do you know?! Found it!! Whew. So thrilled.

I have a list of things to do, of which includes getting a new passport, getting a new social sec. card (updating info), getting a passport for B, painting the back porch, and a few other things. But, we also have fun things to do, like make sock puppets, make some balloon animals (made my first dog tonight), etc.

As you can see, I don't really have much to say. Just thought I'd take a minute to update. Time for bed.

The summer has been wonderful before July rolled around. We spent a week in New York over Billy's 3rd birthday. Billy had a great time with Grandma and the rest of the family. We left the dog there and headed home for a few days before we flew to Hawaii for 3 weeks. Had a great time there too, the days were planned out well and we visited some places I actually had not been to. Bill got some business stuff done. We spent a long week in Maui. (A week is just too long in Maui anymore and was too windy for the beach!) Got to see Grandma & Grandpa & the rest of the family before we left, as well as some family I haven't seen for a while at Mel's baby shower.

Came home at the end of June and took a pregnancy test (or three). Yay, pregnant me. Calculations would have put me at about 5 or 6 weeks. We spent a few happy days at home, I got a doctor appointment scheduled for the following week, and then we hit the road for NC to pick up the dog. We got to see Mom and Johnny, collected the dog, and were left NC the next morning after breakfast around 10am. At a gas stop somewhere at 2pm I started bleeding. We were home by 7ish, I talked to the doctor, and he suggested I go to the ER. So, off to the ER where I spent 3 hours uncomfortably, only to leave with lab reports confirming that I had been pregnant, but the hcg levels were too low to be around 5 weeks, so likely the baby had passsed. "Sorry sorry sorry" said the on-call doctor, who then proceeded to say (jokingly) that why would we want *another* one when the one we had was TROUBLE. (Billy was quietly watching a Thomas DVD.)

Let me just say that miscarriage is the gift that keeps giving, if grief is a gift. The physical loss is ... therapy-inducing.

But, I'm okay. Other than I lost my job on Friday. So, lot's of free time. Good, because I guess I'll spend the time looking for work and creating a budget. And, finding a budget-friendly preschool.

Lemons. But I love lemonade.

Anyway, I'm not complaining. I'm in awe!

Hope you had a wonderful birthday, little "baby" brother!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

But anyway. While I wait for a few things to come around, I thought I'd take the moment to update this journal.

We had a very productive and busy weekend. Over the past week, I got a little bit of prep in to paint the spare bedroom. On Friday, I gave the room a first coat and was praying that the the second coat would not look as bad as the first. Saturday and Sunday I finished the second coat, and it looks fabulous, aside from the paint that seeps under the tape and the splotch on the ceiling that I apparently didn't see when I made it. Oops. So the spare bedroom is painted pretty in "Lavender Meadow" -- just in time for our out-of-town guests, Bill's aunt & uncle, to visit this coming weekend. I need to hurry and get the room back into a livable space. And then scrub the bathroom down. Ugh.

We also have been very busy trying to make the outside more... earthy?? We planted over 50 trees, bushes, etc the previous weekend. Our favorite is the gardenia we put in by the back porch/pool area. It's by the window, so we'll be able to open it up and let the breeze flow the sweet scent into the house. Yay! We also put in two orange trees to replace the ones that were planted not too long ago. I think those became casualties of hurricanes and maybe flooding. Don't know. We transplanted the croton and ti plants. The crotons may not make it... the ti plants are holding their own.

Little B is growing like a weed. He talks a lot, as to be expected of a nearly 3 year old. Potty training is almost there. Sort of. We're working on peeing in the potty all the time, except for night time. A server at a restaurant we were at recently suggested a book, something like How to Potty Train in 3 Days. I thought about getting it, but decided to hold off. From the reviews I read, it can work, but you have to really be consistent. I'm not so consistent. Ha ha. Anyway, we're trying to do the underwear-during-the-day-at-home thing. This is day 2. Too much information? Oh well.

Work sucks.

Fiber One Key Lime Pie yogurt and the new Fiber One Raisin Bran Clusters are AWESOME. Seriously. The key lime pie yogurt is so good, it's like eating a slice of the pie. It has a graham cracker crust taste, too! Bill and I love it. I love the Fiber One cluster cereals anyway, but I really love the raisin bran they came out with. I hate raisin bran (Kelloggs, Post, whatever) because bran just isn't really crunchy, you know? Especially after you get the milk on it. But, as with the other cluster cereals from Fiber One, the raisin bran delivers crunch WITH MILK. Love it. Try it!

Guess that's all for now. See, you haven't been missing much with my lack of updates. But, I'll try not to take so long for the next time. No promises. :-)