You Are a Boston Creme Donut

You have a tough exterior. No one wants to mess with you. But on the inside, you're a total pushover and completely soft. You're a traditionalist, and you don't change easily. You're likely to eat the same doughnut every morning, and pout if it's sold out.

What Donut Are You?

Garrett @ 35 weeks 1 day

Profile


Fist


Starting to grow hair


Leg


He's still a he!

Christmas Pictures

Christmas Eve Pictures

Billy, Ben & Logan in their Christmas Eve pj's


Logan


Billy


Ben


Cookies and milk for Santa. Carrots for the reindeer. We also sprinkled the Reindeer Dust out on the front walkway so the reindeer knew where to land.


Logan's Loot


Billy's Loot


Ben's Loot


Christmas Morning

Ben


Logan


Billy


A couple outtakes....





Ben and I. He was crying and I was telling Shaun to hurry up and take the picture. LOL

Happy Birthday Shaun!!

My hubby is the big 3-4 today!

Love ya Shaun!!

XOXOXOXOXO

You Should Have a Blue Christmas Tree

For you, the holidays represent a time of calm, understanding, and peace. You avoid family fights, and you don't get too stressed out - even when things are crazy! You like to make Christmas about making everyone's life a little bit better. You don't get caught up in greed or commercialism. You're too sincere for that. Your blue tree would look great with: Lots of silver tinsel You should spend Christmas Eve watching: It's a Wonderful Life What you should bake for Santa: Chocolate chip cookies

What Color Christmas Tree Should You Have?

To Do List

My "to do" list. I told Shaun I needed help with laundry and the boy's room this weekend. He 1/2 helped the boys and did one load of laundry. He smirked when I asked if that was all the laundry he got done. I guess he finds it funny that he doesn't have to help out, but at 33, almost 34wks pregnant I'm not finding any humor in it at all. I'm in pain, hungry and tired. I haven't been keeping up with my gestational diabetes monitoring because there just isn't enough time in the day to do everything with that too. So in an attempt to show him that I do not sit around and nap all day I'm going to start making a list of what I do and printing it out for him. So he knows what I'm doing while he's in his lay-z-boy at the fire station.

• Diapers
• Pick up Living room
• Vacuum Living room
• Put away dishes from dishwasher
• Reload dishwasher
• Pick up my sewing/wrapping stuff and reorganize it all
• Help the boys finish cleaning their room
• Pick up Ben's room
• Make a list of what I need to buy for Christmas (presents, food, for Logan's school party)
• Need to mail out both my camera and the Wii for repair as they are both not working
• Return Wii game we rented and are unable to use
• scrape ice off of the Durango and move it when the plow comes
• shovel the front steps
• Laundry (wash/dry/put away 3 loads, put away 2)

I'm going to add/change/remove things from the list as the day goes. It's just after 10am now....we'll see how much I can get done today to make up for this weekend. At least I know better than to ask for help again.

12:30 Update

Done:

Diapers
Put away dishes from dishwasher
Reload dishwasher
Pick up my sewing/wrapping stuff and reorganize it all
shovel the front steps (tried, but will have to finish later...need the sun to hit them for a bit they're covered in thick very slippery ice)

What's left to do:

Pick up Living room
Vacuum Living room
Help the boys finish cleaning their room
Pick up Ben's room
Make a list of what I need to buy for Christmas (presents, food, for Logan's school party)
Need to mail out both my camera and the Wii for repair as they are both not working
Return Wii game we rented and are unable to use
scrape ice off of the Durango and move it when the plow comes
Laundry (wash/dry/put away 3 loads, put away 2)

11:00 PM Update

Done:

Diapers
Put away dishes from dishwasher
Reload dishwasher
Pick up my sewing/wrapping stuff and reorganize it all
shovel the front steps (tried, but will have to finish later...need the sun to hit them for a bit they're covered in thick very slippery ice)
Pick up Ben's room
Laundry (wash/dry/put away 2 loads, put away 2)
Did a second load of diapers

What's left to do for tomorrow:

Pick up Living room
Vacuum Living room
Help the boys finish cleaning their room
Make a list of what I need to buy for Christmas (presents, food, for Logan's school party)
Need to mail out both my camera and the Wii for repair as they are both not working
Return Wii game we rented and are unable to use
scrape ice off of the Durango and move it when the plow comes

Gingerbread Tree

Logan, Billy and I put together this tree while Ben napped this afternoon.


And this is why we were inside putting together a gingerbread tree.....




Spidey had the best idea of what to do during a Nor'easter. And yes.....he is upside down, hanging out of a pile of clean laundry.

Garrett's Bear

December 15th, 2007

We met up with Shaun's parents (Paul and Nancy) in Portland for lunch. We had planned on taking the boys to see Santa this weekend so it worked our perfectly.

We were in line for Santa about 15 minutes early and got right in to see him. Then we did a bit of shopping at the Maine Mall. The boys made Garrett a bear at Build A Bear. Afterwards we met Paul and Nancy at Longhorn Steak House. We had a great meal and it was fun to catch up with them.

Billy, Logan, & Ben with Santa


Billy & Logan bathing Garrett's Bear


Billy, Nancy, Paul & Logan


Ben

Walmart

Walmart sucks. I hate going to that store. I hate that everything is cheaper there, but you have to wait in line forever to check out. I avoid that place if possible, but when you live in Maine, it's going to snow, your 8yo is without snow pants and every other place in town is sold out of anything under $50 you go there. They had a whole rack of $15 snow pants, but I had to deal with long lines, a squeaky hard to push cart, and a very unhappy 19 month old just to get them. Then someone "waited" for our parking spot. I'm a hugely pregnant woman, with a cart full of junk and 2 kids. It takes me 1/2 the day to get in the car, and that's when I hurry.

After trips like that to my least favorite store I often read this blog and feel better. It could have always been worse.
http://walmartsucksorg.blogspot.com/

Get Well Soon!

My mom had to have emergency back surgery a few days ago and is starting to get a bit bored of being stuck at home, flat on her back. Please send some good thoughts and prayers her way for a speedy recovery. TIA



I love you mom and wanted to let you know that I'm thinking about you. The boys and I are sending lots of hugs to you.

Let it Snow!

Getting Ready

We've been cleaning house and getting ready for Garrett. He's going to be sleeping in our room until he sleeps the night, but will eventually be sharing a bedroom with Ben. They will be sharing the same dresser and closet as a result. Most of the baby clothes have been washed and put away. Same with the diapers. We still need to get a few more covers, but I added those to our Christmas wish list so I'm not going to worry about that until after the new year.

Here's a slideshow of Garrett's diaper stash

2007 Family Ornament

Purchased while we were in Bar Harbor this past October from the Christmas Spirit Shop
http://www.christmasspiritshop.com/

I just injected myself for the first time.

With insulin of course. LOL It didn't hurt, but really wasn't something I was looking forward to. Hopefully tomorrow's 10pm injection will be easier on my nerves.

O Christmas Tree

We got our real Christmas tree tonight and Ben loves it.

He kept walking over and hitting it (how he shows he's excited lately) so I told him to smell it. I walked over with him and smelt it and said "Mmmm, it smells so good!" He followed my lead by smelling it so I walked away and sat back down just in time to notice him licking and nibbling at the branch.

He walked away saying "Mmmm" but he didn't do it again so I think he figured out that it wasn't to eat after all. ROFL We're decorating it tomorrow. I'll have to make sure all the ornaments within his reach weren't made in China.

Although on a serious note, the lights on the tree have lead in their wires so hopefully he won't try and nibble on those. I guess all green/white wired Christmas lights have lead in the wires to make them flexible. There was a segment on the news about them the other day and they said you're supposed to wash your hands after handling them.

Burger King

The big boys were fighting over where they wanted to eat dinner (Logan was shouting Burger King, and Billy was shouting McDonald's....) and then at a red light Ben just up and yells out "Burger King!!". Shaun and I looked at each other and cracked up. He also said "Logan" for the first time today.

We ended up at Wendy's since I knew I could have a small salad and burger from there without going over on my carbs. LOL

Look! He can jump!

Ben now says "Look!" and points to the singing snowmen on the entertainment center.

He also started jumping this evening. Of course his feet don't leave the floor when he jumps, but by the look on his face he might as well be soaring through the clouds. I am charging my batteries and will try and get video of him tomorrow.

Scary stuff!

How many carbs are in a large size french fry from McDonalds???
70!!!!

http://www.mcdonalds.com/app_controller.nutrition.index1.html

So...if you get the Quarter Pounder w/cheese meal (with medium fries and diet coke) that's a total of 87 carbs. Only 17 more than a large fry. A cheeseburger happy meal with a chocolate milk has 62.

I am never eating at McDonalds again!

Well...maybe one more time...but then that's it. ;-)

How do you make a sick/teething child feel better?

Give them singing snowmen!!

Logan's Thanksgiving Show

Logan was in a show this morning with his 3rd grade class. He had a speaking part and sang a bunch of songs. He did an awesome job!!

Logan reciting his lines


Singing one of the many songs

A house full of sicko's.

That's what we are! Ben is on his second round of antibiotics for an ear infection that just won't go away. Logan and Billy have typical November runny noses.

I on the other hand am slowly falling apart. I took my one hour glucose test this week and failed miserably. I meet with a dietitian on the 26th. I hope to just be put on a strict diet, I really don't want to have to test my blood daily, but of course I will if it means a healthy baby.

Thursday evening I started having lots of pain in my left hip & thigh. Sciatic pain, or at least that's what I thought it was. By Saturday morning I was in so much pain I couldn't walk without crying and gritting my teeth. Shaun had already left for paramedic class in Portland so my parents came over and helped me out. My mom watched the boys while my father drove me to the ER. I never complain about being in pain so they knew it was bad for me to agree to go to the hospital. There after a few hours of waiting I was diagnosed with Piriformis Syndrome. I'm still in a ton of pain and supposed to call and set up Physical Therapy today. Hopefully that helps, I still have roughly 10wks left of this pregnancy. It may be a loooooong 10wks.

November 15th

November 15th marked the 6 year anniversary of Gabriel's birth.

Click the link below to see his gown, hat, birth stats, footprints, and how young Logan was that day. (Not graphic at all, it's just too wide to fit in the blog.)
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b159/laurellove06/gabrielinfo.jpg

Take the kids away already!!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,310137,00.html

Take the kids away from her. I feel so bad for those two little boys. I am far from being the perfect mother but it makes me sick to see someone with two children have complete disregard for their safety and well being. I may never be rich or famous, but I know what it's like to be a mother. She is a sad excuse for a mother. Her mother should be ashamed.

How does she know?

Our dog Bella wakes up just after 5am EVERY morning and barks to be let outside. How does she know it's 5am? Even with the time change...she's constant. Shaun worked overnight last night and I knew when I laid my head on the pillow just after 11pm that in 6hrs I would be up letting the dog out. Sure enough (what seemed like 10 minutes later) I hear her. I jump out of bed and run downstairs to let her out.

As I pass the cable box I notice the time, it's 5:13am. I let her out of her kennel and she runs to the back door. I let her out and she runs out as if she's about to burst...turns around and sits on the porch staring back at me. We stare at each other for a minute. I turn around and walk off hoping that she will go, do her business and come right back. When I go back and look she's smelling under the clothesline picking a spot. She goes and I open the door to let her in. She glanced back and then took off full speed into the darkness. The backyard is fenced in so she couldn't go far, but far enough that I couldn't see her. I took a seat on the sofa figuring she would be back in a minute..it was FREEZING cold. I go back and call for her...still no sign of that stinky puff ball. My patience was wearing out now so I grab the box of dog bones and shake them while calling her name. Still not a peep. I swear she was sitting down by the back of the fence laughing at me standing in the cold waiting for her. I KNEW she had a plan.

I go back to bed knowing that the second I get settled in she will bark to be let in. Of course now Garrett is up and moving around like crazy in my belly. I hate it when he does that and I'm trying to sleep. It makes me so sick to my stomache. Just as he starts to quiet down I hear her. I get up again, run downstairs past the cable box...which now read 5:36am and opened the back door. Of course she's right there waiting to be let in. I open the door she runs in and I run as fast as I can to get the gate shut to the living room and head back to bed.

That's when I hear a thud. I turn around go back into the kitchen to see her digging though the trashcan as if she had found a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I get her away from the chicken bone she's protecting and get everything back into the trashcan, put the trashcan on the top stair leading to the basement. I figured if the cats knocked it over...Shaun can pick it up. After all it is him who says we can not find the dog a new home. By this time she's in her kennel and settled in. I leave the kennel door open so she can get out and shut the kitchen gate to keep her stinky dog smell off the sofa.

It's 5:45 and I'm heading back to bed. Of course Garrett is awake again and now I have horrible acid reflux so sleeping is next to impossible. I hear Logan cough a few times, Billy hit the wall and they're on their way downstairs. I lay in bed listening to them fight over which transformer is the coolest as the dog chases our two cats all over the house. It sounded like a presidential debate and a elephant stampede at the same time. Thankfully Ben was oblivious and still sleeping so that meant I could try to get some sleep too. 5 minutes of 7 Ben is awake and wants out of his crib so we head downstairs to start the morning.

How in the world does the dog know when it's 5am and why does she get up at the crack of dawn just to pee? I can barely drag myself out of bed at 6:55am with a full bladder, two kids yelling, one crying and a stampede going on.

Snowflakes update

What a horrible weekend. Everything I tried to get done, didn't get done. I planned on cutting and pinning Friday, snapping and sewing on Saturday, and working on getting my measurements and pictures uploaded so that I could get the tester info up.

Friday Shaun was at a chimney fire most of the day. Saturday I cut and pinned everything only to have Shaun pull the chain out of the ceiling light so I couldn't snap or sew that evening.
Today I got everything snapped, started sewing and the day went downhill from there. My patience are at an all time low. Probably has something to do with the baby sitting on my sciatic nerve and the head cold I'm battling.

My machine wouldn't sew how I wanted it to. It ate my bamboo velour one too many times. I slipped and sewed a wing too close to the snaps so I couldn't turn and top stitch the diaper and then when I tried to top stitch the front of it so I could attach the front snaps...the machine again chewed through the bamboo velour inner yet again. What a mess. The diaper is totally unusable now. All the work for nothing.

I turned the machine off and asked Shaun to put it on top of my desk...before I threw it out the window. I still have a large and a small diaper ready to be sewn. I’m going to take a break and do those on Wednesday, Shaun’s next day off. All of my little boys are also battling a head cold with Ben being the sickest so we could use the rest.

Logo

Snowflakes logo


and a small banner

Halloween 2007

We all had a great Halloween (well except for the tv....but that's a whole other post) and it will be one the big boys remember for a long time. Grandpa (my father) came over and took them out trick-or-treating. Shaun was working hard and handing out candy at his second home, the fire department. Grandma stayed behind and kept Ben and I company. Ben got to enjoy his first lollipop ever while the big boys were out.

Billy as Optimus Prime, Ben as Dumbo, and Logan as a green skull warrior


Ben enjoying his lollipop


A peek under the masks

The second flake has fallen!

I finished another diaper tonight. This one has a fuller bottom and crotch area. I messed up the sewing part on one of the wings, but other than that it looks pretty darn good. Wish I could post some pics of it.

The soaker is beautiful! I put the outer print of the diaper on the back of the soaker so it matches. LOL I also added another layer of hemp fleece to the body of the diaper so there is well over a 1/2 a yard of hemp in this one diaper. The front side of the soaker (part that touches the baby) is topped with yummy bamboo velour.

I put one of the snaps on backwards so Shaun had to assist me in removing it. Between one of the wings not getting sewn well, the backwards snap, and my camera issues I'm feeling a little stressed so hopefully tomorrow will go smoother.

I have one more tester diaper to do for Ben and then I'll start taking my real tester diaper orders. I was thinking of making the rise longer but with the fuller coverage backside I don't think it's needed. I can't wait to get our newest diaper on Ben's cute little hiney.

Editing to add pictures....

The second flake - A Charlie Brown diaper

Inner

Outer

Frustrated

My camera won't download pictures with the printer software loaded in. So I tried taking my memory card out and plugging it into the front of the computer tower...since there's a card reader right there. I put the card in and a green light comes on saying the card is there....but the computer doesn't recognize the card actually IS there and keeps giving me an error message saying that I need to put a card into the slot before it can read it. *slaps forehead*

So tonight I tried to get the pictures of the diaper I just finished to download, didn't work. I put batteries in Billy's camera to see if I can take pics with that and download them....but all the batteries I have are dead. Well except for the two in MY camera but Billy's takes 4. *slaps forehead again*

Now I just figured I'd put the memory card back into my camera to see if I can get it downloaded onto a photo disk at CVS tomorrow....and now my camera will no longer read the memory card and says there is a "memory card error". AHHHHHHH!!!

The pictures I took better still be on that card. My Halloween gift exchange pics are waiting to be downloaded as are several pics of the boys. I'm going to cry if they're gone and the memory card is no longer usable. One step forward....two steps back.

A list of the electronics NOT working at our house:
* Boys dvd/vcr
* Living room dvd/vcr
* Boy's tv and vcr remotes
* Billy's camera (hopefully JUST needs batteries)
* My new camera (won't work if we keep the printer plugged in and software installed)
* 2 other digital cameras that I have boxed up and put away. One lasted almost 4 years (I think that's a record as far as digital cameras are concerned) and the other one whole year.
* The washing machine is not spinning well.
* The one light in our bedroom will no longer turn on.

Hyenacart

I applied for my hyenacart this morning. I won't be ready to do a stocking for at least a month...if not two, but I figured I'd get the name reserved and start trying to figure it all out now rather than waiting until the last minute.
www.hyenacart.com

Snowflakes

Here's the first flake! It's not perfect, but totally functional. I need to work on my snap placement and figure out how to make them hidden snaps...but overall I'm very happy with how the diaper came out. I can't wait to try it on Ben tomorrow. I may need to adjust the crotch width, but other than that I am pretty darn close to what I had envisioned. Trim and absorbent.

The diaper body is lined with hemp fleece and the soaker is made out of hemp fleece and bamboo velour.

Because I still can't get my camera to download pictures, these crappy scanned ones will have to do.

Front

Back

Front with wings open

Inside, snap in soaker

Please ignore the stray thread. LOL