Busy week

Ugh - it's been over a week since I posted. I feel like any of my computer time this past week focused almost exclusively on my hellish volunteer work. I keep reminding myself that it is good that I didn't leave the group in the lurch when I discovered there is no way in hell I'd be able to get my child transferred to their school next year. I'd already committed to doing this big board position that would have been REALLY hard for them to fill had I dropped out. But I still can't stand working on it.

In better news, I got to go hold little 6-day old Gabriel last Monday! What a beautiful child. Almost made me want another, but not quite. It did make me stop complaining in my head about lack of sleep. The next morning when I was standing in the shower, groggy from having gotten up twice with one kid and once with the other the night before, I suddenly realized that I may be tired but it was nothing compared to what Kim and Jav are feeling these days. Having a newborn in the house wanting to eat at all hours (and not always going right back to sleep when done) makes a person tired to their bones. So I figured I just needed to turn the violins off in my head, suck it up and go downstairs and have my morning coffee so I could continue my day.

Last bit of news for the day is since the State Fair opened on Friday, we decided to skip church and head over there first thing tomorrow. Yay - corny dogs and funnel cakes here I come!

Hooray for babies!

I am SO happy. One of my very best friends finally had her baby. I can remember back when Jim and I weren't sure if we wanted to have kids. One of my bosses who I'd known for ages (all of us quite drunken at a bar in Houston after the company Christmas party) was feeding me the line about how you can't know how wonderful it is to have kids until you actually have them. Well, it's true. I try to not spout that opinion myself because I know people who don't necessarily want to have children, and I know Jim and I would have had a very different, but happy, life without our urchins. But we had no idea how wonderful things would be or how much we would love those little guys until we had them. And now Kim and her husband will be able to discover that same thing, which I think is wonderful.

Also, I'm finally reading a book loaned to me by my good friend Christi. It's called "Operating Instructions" by Anne Lamott. It's based on the journal she kept during the first year of her son's life. It is absolutely wonderful. She has some great observations (any woman who has birthed a boy I KNOW has had some of the same penis thoughts - hey, we don't have them so we are a little freaked out by them; plus her comments on the yucky umbilical cord stub are dead on). She also is just an eloquent writer and has some great thoughts that make me smile:

"They took us all to my room, Sam and Pammy and Steve and me, and I nursed the baby for the first time. None of us could take our eyes off him. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He was like moonlight."

"His hands are like little stars."

And I loved this line, talking about how a friend of hers described how insane it is having a newborn baby around: "He said that even with a mate, it's like having a clock radio in your room that goes off erratically every few hours, always tuned to heavy metal music."

I'm off to Half Price Books next week to find a copy for myself.

Face painting fun

Grace finally experienced face painting this weekend. In the past when the opportunity arose she would always say "No, not today" when I asked if she wanted it done. Yesterday was done by teenagers at our branch library's LibraryFest, so it was not too impressive. But today was at the 20th anniversary party of our neighborhood Whole Foods (the only Whole Foods still in it's original building) and they had one of those really cool face painters there. It was a girls-only afternoon at the party and we had a good time. In addition to her face painting Grace got a balloon animal, we got to taste a ton of different foods, and I won a $25 Whole Foods gift card!

All the other little girls in front of us wanted butterflies, but Grace was determined to get a rainbow.

A better picture of the face art. She also had a little rainbow eyeshadow on the other lid, and until she ate the anniversary cake she had pink glitter lipstick on too.

Of course Alex wanted his picture taken too. Lately he almost always winks when he poses, so we get a lot of pictures like this one.

Little late in posting this

Here's the picture of Grace's first day of school this year with Miss Andrea and Miss Bettina.

Farewell Ann

I couldn't have said it any better than my sister did.

Goodbye Dell; Hello Apple (Help Me Everyone!)

Got a call today from the Dell service guys up at the mall to tell me that NONE of my info on my hard drive was retrievable. So that, combined with the crazy bad service I got from Dell (and the fact that my new computer wasn't going to ship until Sept. 20), made us decide to suck it up and pay the extra to just go ahead and get me a Mac. So I called up the Dell sales number at the store, waited an unbelievable amount of time because they couldn't find my order I'd made THROUGH THEIR STORE, and finally cancelled the new Inspiron Laptop.

Went to the mall after Alex woke up from nap, walked into the Apple store, and walked out shortly after with my brand new computer. I'm now a proud owner of a groovy little white MacBook. Yay!

Here's where I need the help. Since no data was retrievable off the old laptop, I have NO email addresses. So I need everyone to send me an email so I can rebuild my address book. You don't even have to write me a message - just a blank email I can pick up your address off of would do (but I might email you back to get more addresses if I know you have them). Thanks everyone!

Slave to Dell

Well, we discovered today that my stupid Dell Inspiron laptop is apparently disposable. I was informed by the service guys at the new Dell store at Northpark (which I have to admit is terribly convenient) that the hard drive is totally crapped out. To replace that, restore the operating system and recover and transfer my data would run anywhere from $575 to $650. I hop online to find a new Inspiron pretty damn close to what I had (even a little bit better) can be had for $649. And I'm told that my data can be transferred for free if I purchase another Dell (saving me about $200). So much to Jim's dismay, we are now waiting for that new computer to show up - because for some insane reason you can't actually PURCHASE the computer at the store, just place your order and it's shipped in from Austin.

But the new one has a cd burner, which my old one didn't. I'm going to be vigilant about backing up that data every so often, so when this new one dies on me 3 to 6 months past the warranty (which seems to be standard for the ones I get), we actually WILL become a total Mac family.

AAAGH

I got the "blue screen of death" on my laptop last night. I've been up since about 430am listening to poor Alex cough and freaking out about losing everything on my computer. I'm hopping on Jim's computer to check email, etc., but of course all my passwords (including the one for the blog) pop up automatically on my computer, so I'm having to do some serious guessing to get back in to some of my websites.

Mom, I'm calling you this morning to find out who you and/or Christi use now for servicing.

But it's only been a week...

I hate going a week (or longer) between posts.

I've been a little busy lately with my volunteer stuff (church, that my heart is into; and elementary school that my daughter will now NOT attend, which my heart is definitely NOT into). We're enjoying the wonderful holiday weekend; the kids and I are very happy that Jim has an extra day with us. The weather today was awesome; we decided we don't care if the sky is gray if that means the temperature stays in the low 80s. We're looking forward to a visit tomorrow from former neighbors Kevin, Ashley and Izzy. And Grace starts her final year of preschool this Tuesday - Alex starts his first real day of Mother's Day Out on Wednesday - so it should be a pretty exciting week.