Here are a few pics of the new pet hamster, Sparky. The little bastard critter was hauling ass on his wheel at 4 A.M.
He is a little hyper spazoid, but he's cute.
He also likes to poop on people. A lot.
And I realize these aren't the best pics - the thing wouldn't stop moving enough for me to get a good photo. Maybe this is a hint...
I'm having a bad babysitter day. Really. I have been rejected by two different sitters today. How many moms can claim that? Not too many, I suspect.
First, the weekend sitter situation. We sort of have a sitter, but she has a tendency to cancel on us. A lot. Like this past weekend when I really, really needed to go out. Now, we have another event type thingy and we aren't sure if we have her or not. She does a fabulous job with the kids, but we never know if she is going to sit for us until she is physically at our house.
Because of this, I have been trolling for another sitter. I have been emailing with a potential one for about 5 days now and she jsut informed me that she is moving at the end of the month. I don't know about you, but we like our babysitter to become an extended part of our family, so our immediate issue of Friday night would be ok, but not long term. And I should explain, my huband and I aren't the type who go out and leave our kids with sitters for a day at a time. But we do like to go out for dinner or a movie every 2-3 weeks. Or, at least we used to. We had a kick ass sitter before (she has ruined it for every other sitter who ever comes after her, because NO ONE will ever compare to her. Ever) and I had my parents before my mom passed. Now, we are just screwed. SOOOOOOOOO frustrating!!! I need my grown up time!!
Then, to make it even better, I was rejected by yet another sitter. I was planning to meet with her this week about watching my daughter in the mornings before her Pre-K. She emailed me today stating that she can't watch my daughter. This is the lady I was SO excited to meet because she was willing to walk my daughter to school. You see, with all of my other neurosis, I also don't like to have other people drive my kids. Call me paranoid if you like, but my husband and I do not let other people drive wround with our kids.
I had no idea how much work went into building a pool. I mean, it only makes sense, but I never thought about the actual amount of work. (edit - I have no idea why the pics are so off. I am trying to fix it, I promise!)
Here is the steel going in...
After plumbing - I still can't get over how much damn pipe there is.
After gunite (fancy word for concrete, as far as I know...)
Here's the spa
And here is the best overall shot I could take, considering how close to the ground I am.
It's coming together nicely. I'm just thankful that I have a husband that knows what's going on because otherwise I would be clueless. About this anyway. Can't help all the other stuff.
Despite the fact that my husband has been in the swimming pool industry for over 13 years now, we are just now getting our first swimming pool! I am soooooo excited - I am so immature, but I LOVE swimming.
I had no idea what went into building a pool, despite hearing stories for so long. All I can say is wow. I had the utmost respect for my husband before, but it is even higher now.
Here is the before picture:
I will find the daylight pics and then post the after pics!
In an effort to write more, I am doing a meme from Daydreaming on Paper (which is a great site, BTW.) My random topic generator came up with the following: What is the best gift I have ever given?
I have several answers to this. The first bestest gift I have ever given is the album I made for my husband for our 10th wedding anniversary. It took A LOT of work, but I did it and it made him cry. It was one of the happiest moments in my life, because I was able to give him something with some meaning. I also put a lot of hard work into and was worried sick he would be like "oh, that's nice". That wasn't the case and he shows it off everytime someone new comes over to the house.
Now I figure I have another 10 years until I have to come up with something with the same impact. That should be enough time. This got me addicted, and I made 6 albums to give away for Christmas this past year. The results weren't quite as dramatic, but I liked giving something that wasn't just "stuff". I have a tendency to be a pack rat so I try really, really hard to not perpetuate the process. I hate getting "stuff" just for the sake of giving something. To me, it doesn't serve a purpose. I also like giving something personal because I like feeling good when others feel good. It's a little selfish, but at least I can admit it.
As for material types of gifts and excluding things given to my kids, the best gift I have ever given was the Ipod Shuffle I got for my husband for Valentine's day this year. I really splurged on it (it was a lot of money to me) and prayed that he would like it. He always gets me the coolest gifts ever (Palm Pilot, MP3 player, video camera, etc) so I wanted to be able to return the favor for once. I am very happy to say that he loved the gift and listens to it everyday. Not only that, but I also got him hooked on listening to audiobooks, so we can now both listen to and argue discuss books together.
So, is it hot enough for ya?
This has got to be one of the dumbest phrases on the face of the planet. Today is sunny Arizona it will top 100 degrees. It's May, so that's par for the course, but I still hate it. Then you get these people who look at you and ask you if it's hot enough.
Hmmmm. What do they expect us to say - No, I'd actually like it hotter. How dumb is that? Then you get those who tell us to not complain, because it's a dry heat. Yeah, so is the air that escapes the oven when you've been broiling something for an hour and the heat sears your eyeballs shut. That is a dry heat, but it still sucks, right?
So, now we are stuck with the triple digit weather. Back to the leather seats burning my butt and the water left in my water bottle burning my tongue. Back to it being in the high 90's in the middle of the the night. Gotta love summer.
This could also be called my second longest blog post ever. I mean it.
Here goes...
Sloths:
We had a great start to the weekend. Hubby and I had planned to take the kids to see Ice Age 2 on Friday night. We were a little extra delayed, since we wanted to go look at houses AGAIN, so we ended up being at the theater with the Friday night crowd. This translates to idiotic hormonal teenagers who think they are cool.
Before we even began the trek into the theater, we had a situation. While walking through the parking lot, some jackass non-paying attention person almost hit our son with his car. My husband and I are always overprotective of our kids, but this jackass guy cut the corner too close and came within about a foot of our first born child. Needless to say, my husband handed off the child and proceeded to follow the guy to his parking spot.
On one hand, I was thrilled that he was standing up for our kids. On the other, I didn't want him to get into a fight. So, I hustled the kids along to the theater and waited for Dad to return. Only he didn't right away.
To pass the time, I took the kids to stand in line. After 10 minutes had passed, I started to worry. What if my husband was in the process of beating the guy senseless (which technically was impossible, since he already proved he was pretty stupid)? What if the guy had tried standing up to my husband?
Luckily, hubby called me on the cell phone to tell me he was inside buying the tickets and to come in and meet him. Why do they sell tickets inside? And why don't more people buy them inside.
Anyway, we saw the movie, and enjoyed it for the most part. I thought the scary images were a bit overboard, especially since the movie was being marketed to kids. There were also a few extra adult jokes thrown in for good measure, which I normally don't mind, but they were a little too much for my liking too. Let me rephrase that - I liked the jokes, just not in front of my kids.
The Bunny:
This is an obvious one. The Easter Bunny was good to our kids. One came away with an Aquadoodle (affectionately called a Hack-a-doodle by Crazy Hair), a Madagascar Leapster cartridge and a Chicken Little Game Cube game.
I think being the Easter Bunny is more stressful than being Santa. With Santa, you can do everything the night before. With the Easter Bunny you have to get up early enough to hide the eggs (especially since you don't want to have them out all night). How do you know that you are going to wake up early enough? What if the kids wake up during the hide?
It's all too stressful for me.
The Epileptic Goat:
On Saturday, we met my in laws at the zoo. We hadn't taken the kids since before my daughter was born, so we were excited. My son played navigator and led us around the entire zoo. He is a very smart kid and can be quite the know it all, but I have to say that even I was impressed at his skills.
On to the goat - while at the zoo we took the kids into the petting zoo. This is not a favorite of mine - I have no desire to be that close to farm animals. My husband used to live on a farm, so he was all excited. We took our kids around to pet and brush the goats and all I could think about was all the goat poop we were walking in. It was so gross.
As we were leaving we noticed a little boy standing by a goat that hadn't moved since we entered. Suddenly the goat stood up and looked like he was trying to scratch behind his ear with his hind leg, but he just couldn't reach it. Then, the goat started convulsing. The two zoo people sat watching and finally one yelled "Quick - go get Martha!"
At this point the convulsing goat fell forward, hit its head on the ground and rolled down the floor. The sound will stay with me - it sounded like a bowling ball being dropped on the floor.
This was frightening for the kids, so we hurriedly shuffled the kids along as people rushed towards the epileptic goat. I didn't even know goats could BE epileptic.
We seem to have bad luck with animals. One time at our local Renaissance Festival, one of the perigren falcons was doing a dive from like 100 feet, and hit a telephone pole head on. Luckily the bird was ok, but it was alarming to see trainers jumping over people to rush to the aid of one of the best hunting birds alive.
Unfortunately, I have a sad subsequent post, but you have to look at the next one to read how our weekend concluded...
