more must watch baby videos

Thanks to my friend Corie, I am addicted to watching baby videos on youtube, and these 2 I just can't quit watching either!!! So enjoy!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P6UU6m3cqk


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM

Some things never change

As most of you know, I used to work in a salon and spa. It is a very nice one and at the time was the only one in the area. I worked there for 5 years. I loved it. I truly miss it. I miss the staff and my clients and just the overall atmosphere. What I do not miss is the owner. She is the reason why I left, along with the reason why many others leave. It was a very hard decision for me to leave. I had a very good clientele built up along with my sonority, not to mention the money.

I just could not work for her any longer. When I first started there I was only 20. I had no idea, and she knew that. She was awesome, I could pretty much do what I wanted, we went out with the staff, she gave me money and gifts. After a couple of years I figured out why. She had no loyalty from any one. No one liked her for her. She would never ever admit it, but she knew it in her heart. It was very obvious once you saw through the clouds and smoke. I ignored it all. I loved my job, I just could not stand it when she was there. Sure we got along, but I had to, for the sake of my job.

She was so the opposite of everything I stood for, and for the first couple of years I so wished to be her, or at least have her life one day. I truly believe she is the root to a lot of evil. I know that is such a harsh thing to say, but you have no idea how much impact this woman has had on my life. It has been 3 years since I quit (which was nasty). I still think about that place, have dreams, doubting I ever should have left, and most of all doubting my skills as a therapist. She has said and did so many hurtful things to me over the course of 5 years. I was so blind for so long.

Now that were are struggling so bad with finances, I often think, I never should have left. My personal income is down by 75%. My thoughts are we would be so much better off, we would be so much happier, we would not be struggling so bad...and its all my fault we are in this income dilemma, if I just would have been strong enough and ignore her.

This has all been weighing on my lately (remember it has been 3 years, how pathetic is that!). I have had a couple of dreams, I have seen some old clients out, just a couple random things about the place keeps happening, and ultimately I am scared to death I am going to see her out soon. Not scared to actually face her, but just because I don't want to deal with it. I still have clients who go there and the other day I had a client I was giving a massage to and she was telling me about their new salon and spa that is being built. It is going to be this huge thing looking on to the St. Louis skyline. I think it is going to be pretty cool, but I was promised that when I was there, along with shares to be a co-owner and a teaching position. We even set out an announcement that we were doing this. Well anyway, obviously they still haven't done it. They have since bought the land though (well her million dollar husband, not the salon). And this client asked me if I would consider going back to work their once it was built. And I told her I would love to work with the staff that was there from like 02-04, but I would never work for her again.

Well my whole point to this forever long post is, I saw a girls mom at Wal-Mart that I used to work with. And ironically go to church with. This girl started working there Sept. 05, I quit Nov 05. In this short period of time we became pretty close. I shared so real personal feelings with her about the owner that I now know I should not have. But anyway, her mom just unloaded on me everything that has been going on there. And lets just say-"some things never change". It is still the same old place with the same issues. I had so many mixed emotions going on in this 5 minutes. Most of the people who work there was my age at the time, and they are just now finding out what going on, and they are trying to make their way out. I feel so so sorry for them, I know what I went through, and I don't wish that on any one, I mean no one. But at the same time it was all such a HUGE relief for me. Knowing if God did not give me the courage that day to quit, I don't know where I would be, and knowing I did not make a mistake and if he did not give me the courage that day he would have the next.

All this being said, those 5 years, even though some of it being so dreadful, was some of the most important and impactful years of my life. It gave me some of my best friends that I have today, it showed me the Lord, it gave me real strength and personal ambition for my life and the family life I have now. Sure I could have a nicer house with shinier things and a large bank account like her, but I would not have my family, none of that would have been possible still working for her, and I know that because in not so many words she has told me that. Sure I love money, who doesn't, but I love my life that I am so ultimately grateful for now. And with out her and the 5 years there I don't know if I would truly appreciate everything in life like I do now. No dollar amount in the bank is worth being able to go to sleep everynight with a smile on your face and a content heart.

God works in such weird ways at times. I feel like I was told to write this blog, just to get words out of my head and onto something (so ha ha, you all got to share this), and already I have so much more insight and feel so much stronger then what I did before I started it. There were times when she would try to pull God out of all of us in every way possible, and it never ever worked. It made him so much stronger in our hearts.

Fall clean up

It never fails, I can never get that breathless picture. I look through friends pictures, or pictures online and I see all these adorable pictures of their kids, especially in leaves, which are my favorite. They are just so playful and true.

Not that I don't think my child is breathless, because he is. He is the most amazing child I have ever seen. Just like any other mother thinks of their child. I just look at him everyday, speechless on how beautiful he is. But then when it comes to pictures I get so upset, my poor baby is just not photo friendly. I can never get him to smile or look at the camera. I will be singing and dancing and he will start to do the same but facing the other direction. Then he will turn and look at me and I get blurry picture.

So here are some more pictures. I attempted to rake leaves on Thursday with an 18 month old on a very busy road. Well I think everyone knows how well this turned out. Our house looked like even more of a big hoog with 2 semi piles of leaves in the front yard for 2 days. We are that house that has all the leaves that blows into the neighbors yard across the street. Thats right we are officially THAT family. While they are out side every other day raking and this is the first time we even attempted it.

Today we tried again, I insisted on helping Matt, and so did Ryan. Well I think all we did was get on his nerves. I really tried to help. I tried to get them in piles so he could get them sucked up. And all he was doing was yelling at us. So now we are inside while he is still outside working. I opened the drapes and door so we could still see him, so I guess we are still together in some form.

So here are our pictures from our two attempts. They are cute pictures full of memories, but still none frame/wall worthy.

Wordless Wednesday...bible study x-mas 2008

a must watch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk-1mla0LeU

What a day!

Last Thursday was Ryan's 18 month check up appointment. Everything went pretty good. He weighs 29.4 (90%) and his height is 33inches (75%). So all is good there. I asked Dr. Shaw about his drinking habits. I told her how much he can drink at once. He can get very demanding when he wants something to drink. And I did not know if that was because something was wrong and his body was telling him he needed liquid or if he just likes to drink. So she ordered a blood test for him. Mainly checking to see if he was Diabetic, and just checking his overall electrolyte level.

Then blood test was horrible. I went to go get it done that afternoon, and it was just horrible. They took it from his arm just like they would for us. I have never seen him cry and scream like he did when they were doing this. They did one arm, then could not find the vein, then they had to do the next arm. It was just horrible. I was trying to sing to him, but I could not quit crying either. I was not prepared for this at all. I was not strong for my baby. My tears were falling on him while I was wiping away his. But they finally got it and it was all over. He stood up and started singing and dancing again. Like nothing happened. I think he was just freaked out.

We got the result back the next day, everything is normal!!!

I also asked the doc about all his hair all over his back and shoulders. And the worst new was given to me...it is going to stay and then get worse once he hits puberty. She said since it has not fallen out by now, its not going to! I swear to you, my son has more hair then my husband does. I told her that too, and she said "oh its probably from old Aunt Bertha". Well I know its not Aunt Bertha, I know who it is...the other Morrow guys!!!

In between seeing the doc and the mean ole' blood lady we went to see Bradley (Lauren's little boy). This is Ryan's only boy friend. All he has is girl friends. I think they had fun together. It took a bit warm up, but its been since at least August since they got to see each other last. As soon as things got to be smooth sailing, it was time to go. They seem to have a lot of similarities too, just like his mommy and me. I wished we lived closer so I could see Lauren more and Ryan could see Bradley more.

Bradley really likes to wear hats, including his red bucket as a hat...and of course Ryan had to join in on this weird behavior.

bubbles bubbles bubbles...not so much

I was giving Ry a bath the other night and decided to give him lots of bubbles to play with (which gerber soap, even tons of gerber soap does not give lots of bubbles, so don't waste the good stuff). I guess I have never done this before because Ryan was in shock with all the bubbles. And I got in trouble with Matt because he walked in and saw them all, and I guess in the past when he said he was going to do this, I told him no, that he couldn't. Which I don't know why, I was probably just being crabby and thought it was a bad idea at the time...who knows ( sorry babe ). He was really upset with me.

Not only did we not get as many bubbles as we should have compared to the amount of soap I put in there. But they also went away really fast. Which was good because for what ever reason Ryan kept thinking he was supposed to eat them. He kept sticking his face in them, then all the way under the water, and then come up choking and giving me a dirty look, like I made him do it! He would come up out of the water and his face was covered with soap, he couldn't even open his eyes. But don't worry he kept doing it till all the big pills of bubbles were gone. It was fun, now I am going to buy some bubble bath at the store next time. If any one knows of any good bubble making soap, let me know!!!

This was an adorable bath moment for all of us, but I just didn't get the pictures I wanted, it was all so unpredictable, so hopefully with the "good stuff" I can take some better ones.

Wordless Wednesday - Baby Chloe

GOOOOO VANDALS!!!!

This Saturday Jason's brother had a playoff football game in Edwardsville. Timmy (J's bro) plays for the Vandalia Vandals. This is his senior year and is apparently really good, we heard his name over the loud speaker a numerous amount of times and he has received several letters from different colleges to go play with them.

Most of the games were always pretty far north for us to go to, plus they were always on a Friday night, so we just weren't able to go. But finally this Saturday we were able to go. And of course it had to be the coldest day of the year. We had a ton of fun though. I think Ryan had a really good time. He got to play in the stands and eat popcorn (I know I know a choking hazard, but he did really good with it, and after taking his first bite I don't think we would have been able to take it away from him). He held on through the entire game, we were freezing, we dressed really warm though. We all had PJ's on under our clothes.

After the game Ry fell asleep as soon as he hit the car seat he was so tired. Then the 5 of us went to Imo's were Ry actually stayed asleep almost half the time. I was a really nice way to spend a cold afternoon...at a football game drinking hot chocolate with your friends!

Dinglehoppers...

AKA...spider crickets or cave crickets.

It all started Thursday morning. I went down stairs and this HUGE spider cricket like creature was staring at me. Of course I freaked out, I just ran down there to get some cloths before I got Ry up for the morning. But I remained cool and collective. On the table downstairs was a cup. So I slid across the wall to the table and grabbed the cup. I walked very...very slow over to the dinglehopper. I creeped down to it, bent over and hardly moving at all I reached and put the cup over him .... JUMP.... SCREAM... JUMP.... SCREAM... JUMP.... SCREAM.... SCREAM... JUMP... JUMP... JUMP.... SCREEEEAAAMMM!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, my heart was beating out of my chest. The job was still not done... I still had to capture this horrible horrible creature.

So I dared to do it again... I think I was screaming the entire time, but I achieved my goal. He was covered. Whoohoo, I just saved our house from this thing. I got my cloths together and ran up stairs as fast as I could. Once I made it up stairs poor Ry was screaming and crying. Poor baby can you imagine what he thought was happening to his poor mommy. I went in there and got him and our day went on.

It is now Friday morning. I didn't think about a thing and just headed down stairs. And what do ya know, there is its little friend right next to the cup staring in at him. Total freak out mode again. So I ran upstairs and grabbed another cup.

I did the same thing, I creeped up on him, and he jumped like crazy too. And I'm not talkin' hop hop, I am talking JUUUMMMP JUUUMMMP. I did scream but not like I did before, I expected it a little more. Well he jumped into a corner, well you can't try to kill or catch something in a corner, you just aren't going to win that battle.

So I grabbed a pen lid and threw it at it. I hit him dead on, but now I think I pushed him into the corner of the wall further leading to behind the wall. So now what do I do...I grabbed something larger. I found an old chapstick. Well I threw it, hit it dead on again, but this time I chipped a piece of the wall off and can't find the thing. Now I am totally freaking out. Well he finally appeared. He was a little slower this time, I think he might have had some injuries from our battle in the corner. I get him trapped with a cup and run up stairs.

I now have 2 pink see thru cups in the middle of the basement holding digglehoppers.

The day goes on, the digglehopper are forgotten about once again.

While at my parents house for dinner Friday night, I tell the story of the digglehoppers. This is also the first time Matt has heard since once again I forgot to tell him a story. Matt proceeds to tell me he saw one a couple of days ago jump off his backpack and it scared the crap out of him. My first response is, he must have brought them in with him. Not till later did I realize he did not jeopardize his life to save his family and go after this thing to kill or catch it like I did.

So we get home put Ry to bed and head downstairs to see what we could find. I found one on the carpet. This time I stayed put and had Matt go up stairs to get another cup. This time he was putting the cup on it. Well big mistake by me. He just lunges for the thing, no creeping involved. So ofcourse the thing jumps off and is never found again.

So we headed to the corner where the earlier battle took place and there was a baby one. I moved a weight that was sitting there and as it rolled it rolled over the thing and killed it. So that was taken care of.

We searched the whole basement, we found the grand daddy of all dinglehoppers in the corner of the pool room. This one was on the wall behind the table. I found a box, we SLOWLY moved the table out of the way, we planned out our action of attack. He got him, he smooshed the heck out of him. 2 down, 1 lost, and 2 POC (prisoner of cup).

That is all we have found so far. Hopefully the others, if any others have been watching from afar and got scared of the way we handle unwanted intruders.

Today I was at lunch with some wonderful friends and one had told me stories of how a friend of hers had these and to go online to find out how to kill them.

Matt is right, quit looking for more info on them and because I won't want to live in this house anymore. Well its not that bad yet, I just don't want to go downstairs anymore.

Well I read website after website, even watched a couple of videos on youtube about these things. And in some very serious articles they all seem to agree. They can't bite or sting you. They are just very scary looking and will scare you really bad. The adults bodies are about 1 1/2 inches long. They are not spiders, they just get that name from the way their legs look. They like to hide in damp cool places. If they can't find anything to eat, they will eat linens like moths. Due to their vision they jump towards you versus away, this is not a defense mechanisms, they actually think they are jumping away from you, they are very scared of us as well. You do not ignore them, they breed very fast.

Well, I am going to ignore them. I don't think there are more, at least not many more. I am hoping Matt killed grandpa, I killed baby, and mom and dad are POC, and the family is taken care of. The last one is hopefully grandma and is old and will die due to loss of her family. I will wait a couple of days. At least as long as it takes for the ones in the cup to die. Other than that if I do take the chemical road or do the traps, I will have to know their point of entry and where they live. And I have no idea on these two things. The worst part about it is, Ry and I play down there a lot. He has toys down there, a lot of them. So until I see no dinglehoppers for one full week, we will not be downstairs, unless I have laundry to do.

If anyone has any suggestions, please please please let me know. I want my house back!

The FAMOUS E'ville parade

"There is going to be 20,000 people there", "Get there a few hours early" , " steak out your territory", "plan on being there at least 3 hours", and " the traffic alone can take you an hour to get threw"

These are the things I kept hearing about this famous Edwardsville halloween parade. There were 115 floats. The parade was alot of fun, mainly because we had the kids there. Other than that it was kinda sad. Some of the 'floats' we a bit pathetic. We had a blast though. Ryan just loved it. He actually went out there and picked up candy and put it in his bucket. It was probably one of the best nights I have had in a long time.

I did go drive by around 4 to steak out a seating area. The parade started at 6:30. Well as you would know it there were already chairs lined up and down the street. So I pulled over and put up our chairs in front of an insurance company with their permission. I left them there, and we all met back up there around 5:45. We set our territory, and we were still taken over by kids.

Most of the candy was your normal parade candy. But every now and then we would get a good looking one and we ( us adults) would immediately act like a child, like, get that one get that one. The parade was only a bit over an hour and a half and it only took 20 minutes to get out.

Last but definitely not least...these are just a couple of funny pictures of Tami, that night she was known as 'crazy Tami'! Mainly due to the fact she kept yelling out peoples name she did not know, and she kept flinging around these lighted toys she bought. And not to mention Tami just being Tami.

OCT 30- the night e'ville passes out candy...weird I know

The night before Halloween is when Edwardsville has the trick or treaters. I am from Collinsville so this is very strange to me. Halloween night is Halloween night. Oct. 31 in Edwardsville is the "BIG" parade.

We first went by Tami and Kal's, they had a little haunted house set up. Tami was a very cute Winnie the Pooh and Kal was a pirate. Ryan was a little skeptical of Winnie, he recognized the voice was still scared and confused.

Well Thursday night we decided to have some people stop by when ever they could and we would pass out treats. Not candy. I always loved getting something out of the ordinary versus candy. Plus every one passes out candy.

So I decided to give the little tikes a choice of a cool halloween plastic straw (which found out it doubles as a whistle), a spooky spectacular cup, a pencil or a capri sun. Great idea right??? Most was not all bad, but we did have some up set kiddos. And not only that I was made fun of all night long from my very wonderful and caring friend Tiffany. Even though she was on the phone with me when I was at the store picking stuff out. Some were okay with it, but others were over heard complaining as they walked away. Matt even heard one little girl say "I got a cup!" in a very disappointing way.

Well you know what, I bet they still have their cup or straw and will be asking for it at their next meal and the candy has been eatin' or thrown away, and never once thought of the house that gave them that mini bag of skittles like they would think of mine. My brother also advised me " I can't be that house on the block".

We did have alot of fun hanging out with everyone that night. It was a little weird it was in the middle of the week though. It would have been nice not to have to worry about the next day and getting up.

We brought the fire pit up from the back and made hot dogs and s'mores. It was just a perfect evening with no stress.