Free Bagels and a Retirement Plan later...

We're really real grown ups now!!

Well, atleast that's how it feels.

I always thought that we were already grown ups but two children and a house does not a grown up make.

It takes a lot more than that and I like to think that my family embodies what it takes to be contributing members of society, and now we are contributing members of the global economy :)  And I have proven, to myself...once again...what a small fuckin world it really is dammit...

I could blog about the "I didn't know you knew them!!" that I run into every day...but I'll take it one at a time.

This time, I found out that my exstepmonster's old boss runs a financial advisory branch that my exstepmoster's brother has a branch manager position at another office of, and not only do they know HIM, they started the branch of another company that the exstepmonster got the job at that moved us from one county to another...and I KNEW I knew these people...the name... names are a funny thing with me... I can retain a person's name if I have heard it a few times, but I have to have heard it a few times.. Other than that, what am I?  Psychic?  It bothered me so much that I checked with Ma and YUP... I was right... I knew that name for a reason!!

I really like the guy my company set us up with...he's my age so I feel like he really has our best interest at heart.  And what he did for my coworker and her existing portfolio?  I've been around a broker's office long enough to know some things...and I knew that I didn't want to get into the market during the recession...and we didn't have the money to do it before.  It basically would have been a glorified savings account and I can do that shit on my own man.  I'm doing pretty well for us on my own so far and that's with one of us working part time 5 months of the year. 

I am really excited to talk to the guy once Choners gets his business off and running.  Brokerman said he'd help Choni with the small business management and making sure he takes the right deductions out of his business and starts himself a self employed 401k...  It's an exciting time for us right now... It's the "What happens after you get the stuff you were working for" time. 

I mean, you chunk up your life, if you so choose, into things you were looking forward to...to go so simply into it as , when you're dating it's all about getting together and going out and having sex (i'm just being honest people)... Once you're dating awhile and serious, it's generally about getting married and getting your first place if you already don't live together...then kids or your first house...whichever goal is closer is generally the one you go for...New cars if you need them, if you don't, maybe fixing up the cars you have and/or paying them off...  Well, we have a house, two paid off cars, two kids (final inning)...now what? 

Now I am taking the time to look into the things that I think sometimes people rush into.

Retirement planning, college funds for the kids, beneficiaries, perhaps start a will/trust, life insurance, helping Choni start his business... and if there's any time or money left...a new lens for my Nikon!  Are you surprised? 

It's amazing how different the things are that my previous self and my now self are thinking about...mostly because I attained all of those goals already.  And all of it for the better!

Don't get me wrong, I still have goals and dreams that need attaining... but until someone perfects the time machine...I'll just stick to what's in front of us...

Apparently You Can't DREAM CAST Hiding Out...

Over some awesome BBQ Pork, homemade chili leftovers from Ma and cornbread muffins a la Choni, I found out, you can't really Dream Cast  Hiding Out...  We started...  We switched out Zac Efron with John Cryer based on the movie 17 Again, but that's as far as we got much to our chagrin...  It was not our finest hour and I went from "Oh?!? Are we about to have a Dream Cast moment?!?" to "oh hey there's a bus why don't I just walk infront of it..."  Extreme yes, but that's how I felt at that milisecond... 

So I just thought that it would be worth it to know, there's really not a lot to do about Dream Casting movies with three main characters...  Maybe we'll pick this back up again later...  I was thinking switching Jennifer Lawrence with Annabeth Gish... but again..  pretty much stops there... 

Instead we wound our evening down watching Justified off the ol' DVR and to bed we went!!

Hopefully, more Dream Cast-ing to come...

A Soon-to-be Former Hoardita...

Many who know me well could classify me as a mediochre grade hoarder.  I am well aware of this fact.  But as all hoarders will, I defent my piles of crap.  They are collectables, they are sentimentality incarnate...  "I'm going to use that!" or "I know what I want to do with that, I just can't do that right now..."...  the latter actually DOES happen though...

And what's more fantastic about my hoarding? 

My hubby...

I have all this stuff in our house and I am married to man with a photographic memory.  That being said, when I am racking my brain for a How To Use something I often turn to my voice of reason...which is OUTSIDE of my head...thank GOD...

I was going through a moment recently (still going through it actually) and I wanted to toss the CRAP... and for some reason my sights got set on my crafting stuff...  That day it was crap and it was in my way...it must be expunged! 

But then came hubby...and he said "Cleaning's nice and all, I'm a big believer in it, but you're gonna regret this someday soon..."  I set my sights on something else and left the crafts alone.

When Harley lost her first tooth last summer we all were thinking "Woo hoo!!"  But my Woo Hoo turned into uh-oh when my fourth dimensional thinking kicked into gear in a way I couldn't explain if I tried...  When that happens, it's like "Inception" basically...  So I went from, "Aww my baby lost her first tooth" to "do I give her a quarter? a dollar? a half dollar? where the hell is she going to spend a half dollar and what if she thinks it is cool and wants to keep it and doesn't want to spend it and her piggy bank hole will not support a half dollar and what if she loses it under pillow in her room and her room is a mess and then I have to go in there undetected after she's asleep and play needle in the haystack in her room and it's gonna be dark and the baby will be sleeping and there wont' be any way that I can get in there and rummage under her pillow and her piles of blankets for a little tiny puppy tooth and how the hell did my mom do this for two kids two years apart and slip in and out of our rooms undetected and be so ninja and..."

LIGHT BULB

We had pillows...we had tooth fairy pillows...little tiny heart shaped white lacey pillows with little tiny white lacey pockets to hold said treasure post tooth pick up... the dollar.  I caved and went dollar.  Inflation ya know? 

A pillow was a must...  A MUST... so I said all that to say this...



Side 2...One Ruffle... I know...



Side 1 The Pocket Side



Because I am a hoarder, I was able to go into a pile of my crapting and pull out the goodies needed to perform a miracle in thirty minutes.  I made a tooth fairy pillow that was able to go under the bed THAT night and ta-da!  was replaced with a crispy folded dollar bill ...  Thing 1 was so pleased with her new pillow she started working on her second tooth...which came out soon after... Now she is NOT pleased because her teeth are in a falling out holding pattern it seems.  OH well... 

I am STILL looking for areas to thin.  It's odd owning our own house now.  We aren't moving anywhere any time soon and when we would be not so much packing up things, but putting them away is when we do the really big CLEAN.  There are gems I am finding myself needing to hold onto, for now.  I have a box of oil paints that were my Gma Mary's and they've lost their viscosity and I don't like oil painting...GARBAGE!  It feels good to clean and organize and empty drawers!!  I can't wait til we can NOT feel the need so much anymore... One day... but not today ...

365 days ago....

...I went from this...

To this....

and now there's...



It's funny to me....I chuckle about it on a daily basis...how much of that day is a blur and how much of it is like I was watching it on TV and how much of it I remember like it was yesterday...or five minutes ago...

I am constantly learning and soaking in information in this classroom called "Life 101" and I have learned a lot.  I learned that setting yourself up for disappointment is dumb... It really is.  I mean, try for what you want and all...but when all you hear from some people is how things didn't go their way...maybe you're shooting a little too high honey... Knock it off...  I don't shoot at all, so I'm always pleasantly surprised with the outcomes of certain situations and that's what works for me :)  I am a very organized person, I won't lie...  But when I realized that I wasn't going to have the same experience as I did with Thing 1, did I freak the hell out?  No...did I start yelling at people and freaking on them, preventing them from doing the best job possible? No...  I rolled...  that's what I do...that's why I married my fantastic husband... because he rolls with it too...  Now I can happily say that I had the best experience possible because I went in with no expectations... because really, it's all in His hands anyways, right?  Or the Universe's hands if that's your thing.

I had that baby in just over an hour.  I experienced the water breaking...  I experienced one full hour of back to back contractions that gave absolutely NO breaks in between...  constant pain...  two pushes and BOOM!!  And it's BIZARRE to me that once that baby's out it's done... pain gone.  Next on the agenda...

We had a GREAT nurse staff, my doctor made it just in time to catch her and she was, as always, awesome to have in the room...  I am a big believer in doctors, especially when I'm being told I'm "High Risk"...  But I think I like them anyways... Let me rephrase that.  I like MY doctor.  I love her so much that even if I had a regular pregnancy I probably would have had the girls in the hospital anyways cause my relationship with my OB was so RAD!  And we grew up in the same freaking town! 

So that was what happened exactly 365 days ago to the minute...  She was born at 4:10pm and we've LOVED her every minute of every day ever since :)

The Girls

Dream Casting: CLUE

Here is the Dream Cast of "Clue" in the Judd Apatow Universe:

Professor Plum: Jason Segel

Col. Mustard:   Steve Carrell

Mr. Body:       James Franco

Mrs. Peacock:   Jane Lynch

Ms. Scarlet:    Elizabeth Banks

The Cook:       Jonah Hill

Cop:            Craig Robinson

Wadsworth:      Russell Brand

Yvetter:        Kristen Bell

FBI Agent/
Religious Guy:  Michael McKean

Telegram Girl:  Kat Dennings

The Motorist:   Danny McBride

You are welcome!!

Come On In! The Water's Fine!!!!

As the caretaker of the pool of my life...I am happy to say the pH level is perfectly balanced...

There is a black hole that is created in the universe around a certain time of year every year... something about the timing of birthday after birthday in the summer, school starting, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the K.O being Christmas and New Year's one whole week away from each other...  Just writing that exhausts me...

PLUS:  We have had the added bonus of a fourth wheel to complete our caravan of crazy so it may mozy down the road of the rest of our lives...  Marysuwho a.k.a The Terrible Teether.  Our kids are 99% awesome.  Harley's 1% is her eating habits.  She eats like a bird... I have a hard time shoving nutrition down her throat without her gagging it up.  Marysu...  teething.  She didn't sleep all night from an early age like her big sis...because she started teething earlier and actually produced teeth insanely early!  Teeth didn't even occur to us but about a million other ailments did... Harley teethed, I guess...  I mean she HAS teeth, so obviously they came in right?  Nobody really took notice.. They just showed up one day.  This one, it affects her eating habits and she gets the horrifically watery diarrhea... and sleeplessness...  very little sleeping...lots of tossing and turning and discomfort.  But now that she went through the big long stretch and has 8 teeth it's a once in a while type of thing and she has one night... not NIGHTS... no plurals...

And now that you've been disgusted by mom life... :)

I move on to the rest... the rest is good.  I am extremely happy to be boring right now.  We've done the exciting thing... I got a new planner at the first of the year realizing, " Holy Crap! It's New Year's Day and I have nothing new to write all of the ... nothing?  Nothing????  Really?!?!  No new stuff?!"  I was appalled... I looked in January of my 2012 planner.  If I hadn't known better I would have sworn I just got bored and scribbled on every single day, but that was not the case.  There were more days with "stuff" on them than not.

How does that happen?  It's a blur, truly, so don't ask me.. I'm the worst source... But Choners, he remembers it like it was yesterday... He does that... reason #153 why I loves him so's muches...

I'm NOT about to sit here and "catch up" with what has gone on since October... I doubt very many read this that don't know me... I'm not about to bore anyone to death.  I already have all those other bodies I buried to worry bout, no sense adding to my conscience... heh...

We are planning the big 1st birthday... the ever saddening truth revealing itself that it is more than likely the LAST 1st birthday.  So we're doing it up the way we want and it's gonna be a badass good ole family time...  I can't wait.  I am dying to see the family.  It's been far too long! 

I went to Target on my lunch, again... cause I needed an excuse to get out of the office and check out the $2.50 rugs they have...and everyone needs a rug covered in shamrocks...just sayin.

So my awesome other half and I have this awesome game of awesomeness...  Dream Casting... Take a movie, usually a cult classic type of film...and recast it with the "If you could get ANYONE now to play those roles who would it be"  I think I am going to start a new series of blogs called "Dream Cast: blahblahblah"  I think after I finish this half-assed attempt to play catch up and make myself feel better, I will start it...

That being said... Yeah there's really nothing else going on with this end.  Now that we are coming up on the one year mark, I am having some self realizations that I had when Harley was a year old.  There are changes that occur when you add children to your life.  I guess it's the amount of things that you realize you don't do or do differently and HOW much that bothers you is the real question.  With us, we realize there are things we do differently, but it's the business of birthing childrens...  We accept it so easily and it's not that we MISS these things... it's just different now...and then there's the REST of our lives to get it back. 

Like painting.  I love painting.  It's not some passion, like, I'm NOT the Laird Hamilton of painting.  I'm not winning pro-ams and I certainly don't get depressed when I can't paint and boo hoo... I am biding my time because I see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I just can't paint right now.  And not that I "CAN'T" either, I could, but I choose not too because I would rather avoid the possible frustration that I could be met with trying the double duty of toddler and paint...I will though.  I painted when Harley was little.  Nap times are MAGICAL! And same as sleeping time.  Kids go to sleep earlier than us because we need some alone time to discuss the day and have our moment.  Even when our moment is met over a load of laundry on a neatly made bed.  Often, that is when Daddy hits the exer-bike and I take a shower.  One day, I won't want to take a shower.  I will want to paint.  But right now, like, right right now... I want to sit on the couch and watch my girls play with their Christmas Little People... 

Those moments last only so long.  One day, I'm going to sit and listen to them bitch about how "she's got her SHIT ON MY BED!!!  YOU'RE A SLOB" and I'm not completely deluded into thinking that they're going to be angels to each other all the time like they are now.  So I want to soak it all in now...  have nice, long, crisp memories to hold onto... That way, I can have a nice doped look on my face when they try to get me on one of their sides and have to snap their fingers to get me to come to...at which time I will say, "Uhm, yeah... it's not my problem, fix it yourselves without pain or blood and we'll talk about it when your dad comes home..."  heh...