~* Picture Time *~

Okay…many have asked about the pics of the boys…and we just got them done last Wednesday…BUT, thanks to potraits online, I can share them with all of you!!

So, without further ado…here’s my twins!

Caleb…

Isn’t he just too adorable??!!

Jonah…

Too cute eh?

All ready for Christmas!!

Eat your heart out Santa!!

Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “laughing all the way”.

Watch out world…here they come!

Well…there you have it!! My wonderful twins in all their glory!  I was so proud of Caleb…he did such a great job sitting for all of these pictures. 

Have a great week everyone!

Thank you all for your wonderful Thanksgiving wishes!!  Thanksgiving was quite laid back this year.  The kids went to their Dad’s house and so it was just Jason, Mom and I.  I made a ham this year…considering my mom made a turkey just days before Thanksgiving and I wasn’t in the mood for THAT much turkey…if you know what I mean.  The ham was lovely though and I was quite proud of my dinner.

I hope that you all had a joyous Thanksgiving as well.  This time of year can be difficult for many I know…it’s still somewhat difficult for me.  However, I’m grateful for all that I do have in my life…especially Jason and my children.  Without them, I wouldn’t be here. 

Thanksgiving Day was the 3rd anniversary of Peter‘s death…something that lingered in the back of my mind all day long.  Jason and I talked about it briefly…but the thoughts remained there throughout the day.  Maybe it’s because I miss him so much…or maybe it’s because in the short time that I had him in my life he made such an impact…or maybe it’s because I knew that if he were still alive that he would’ve been here helping me prepare that dinner.  Whatever the reason…he was here…in memory…and in spirit.  I’m thankful that I had what little time God allowed me to with him while he was here…my heart will never let me forget. 

This last week was hectic for me…not just with all of the work that I was attempting to complete before the holiday break…but also because my computer at work decided to almost give up on me entirely.  I had two viruses and numerous spyware problems with my system.  It took the tech and I a full day to straighten it out…and when we were done, I was told that I was not allowed to visit Xanga from my work computer until after my tech researched the site.  He seems to think that some spyware programs may be linked to Xanga somehow.  That’s news to me…but until it’s proven otherwise, I’m afraid that my time here is going to be even more limited.  I’ll only be able to post and visit from home now…and well, you all know how hectic things are around my house…so I’m afraid that will leave me with little to no time to visit you all.  I’m sorry my Xanga friends.

I will however do my best to at least visit on the weekends as often as I can.  I miss you all as it is…it will be hard for me to not keep up with you on a daily basis.

Anyway…speaking of that…I’m going to try to do some visiting now while I can. 

Okay…here’s the deal…

Since I just don’t see myelf having much time to be on here this week at all (it saddens me to say that…but I’ve just got way too much to do) I’ve decided that just in case I don’t visit any of you beforehand…I wanted to at least stop by and say that I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving Day and enjoy your time with your family.

I just wanted to stop in and say that I miss you all and I’m SO sorry that I haven’t had time to visit you this week like I’ve wanted to.

I hope that you have a wonderful weekend though…and hopefully next week will settle down for me enough that I’ll get a chance to catch up with you all!

As if being extremely busy lately wasn’t enough…I’ve had to deal with the perverbial office politics and egos this week as well.  I HATE that crap!!  BUT now…I’m sick on top of it all!! YUCK

Here’s the deal on the office BS…our Controller (or little Hitler as he’s often called around here) decided that HE was going to add to MY job duties.  Umm…yeah.  So he informed me on Tuesday that I was supposed to be setting up PIN numbers for employees for their fleet (fuel card) accounts at the time of hire.   First of all…I was NEVER informed of any of this before now…and second, I don’t deal with fleet or fuel cards at all!  The lady who does deal with that dept., I found out, had already been entering in that information for all of the current employees had NO problem doing it for the new employees…so she and I worked out a system to enter in the new employees at the time of hire.  Okay…problem solved right? NOPE!! Little Hitler decided that since it wasn’t being done by ME (the person that HE designated to do it) that it wasn’t GOOD ENOUGH for him!!  I do believe he stated that this “is not your decision to make Maria…it’s MINE and you’re just going to have to deal with that”. 

I don’t think so buddy!!  So I quickly reminded him that HE is not MY supervisor and that I was not informed of this change to my position prior to now and until I’ve discussed this with MY supervisor…I’m not doing shit for him!! He then said, “this has already been approved by Bob (the President) and Jerry (my boss)”.  Oh really???  Then why is it that when I called Jerry and asked him what he knew of this…he got really pissed off??  Could it be because he knew nothing of it?? YES …it would be.

So…now, I have to sit in yet another meeting tomorrow with Jerry & Bob to get this matter resolved…when I’d already resolved it with the person that will wind up doing the data entry as it is.  What a stupid waste of time and all due to one little man’s big ego problem!!!

ANYWAY…thanks to all of you for your comments and support! I love you guys!!

Sorry that I haven’t had much Xanga time the past few days.  Work has been EXTREMELY hectic this past week or so.  I was out in Falcon, CO last Thursday (it’s outside of Colorado Springs…about 45 miles southeast of Castle Rock) setting up a new jobsite and helping to train a new Project Coordinator.  I’m buried with new employee paperwork as well and I’ll have 15 more coming in tomorrow morning!!!

We’ll be hiring 30 people for this job in Falcon…and these 15 other new hires are for another job in Montana that starts in a week from now.  This is usually a busy time of year for us…but OMG!!

So yeah…I’m sorry that I won’t be around so much over the next few days…but as soon as I can I will be around to visit with you all!!

Thanks for all the wonderful comments on the girls’ pics!!  Btw…the strike is going well so far…I hope it gets better from here!

Thanks to everyone for the advice on the strike!

I must say that I DO appreciate everything that Jason does do to help me out and I always tell him “thank you” for helping out.  However, you all must understand that 99.9% of the household duties are done by ME.  This is why I’m bitching…like I said before, when you have a household of 7…there’s no reason that only 1 person should be doing it all.

Okay…enough said on that!!

I have something I want to share with all of you. It’s…

~*Picture Time*~

That’s right! I took the girls to have their pictures taken over at Sears Portrait Studio last Saturday and I thought that I’d share them with you!!

Here’s Dora…isn’t she beautiful? I know I’m biased…but she is my mini-me ya know.

Oh…and my little Corin.  Ahh…yes, my Cameron Diaz look alike…too darn cute eh?

My girls

…with some Christmas village scenery…

…and Santa hats to boot!!

I just love these pics!!  I hope you do too!

We’ll be taking the boys in soon to get theirs done as well…along with some long overdue family photos.

I’ll share those as soon we get ‘em done!!

I’ve learned that this strike is more hard on me than it is on the kids I think.  We’ll see what happens this next week I suppose. 

Now the reason that I say that it’s more hard on me than them is because my mom has a bad habit of getting involved in things that she shouldn’t.  I would love for her to actually pick up after herself…that is what I was hoping for from everyone.  Jason and I talked…well, I yelled…about this subject last night.  The fact that I am the ONLY person who actually “cleans” in that house.  When I say that I mean actually do a full cleaning.  An example of this being, when I clean the kitchen I not only do the dishes I also clean the appliances, the table, the counter tops, the floor and the stove.  Others just do the dishes…and that doesn’t even get done thoroughly most of the time.

THAT my friends is exactly what I’m talkin’ about!! Cleaning half assed!! I grew up with a father wouldn’t allow me to do ANYTHING half assed.  He told that “anything worth doing is worth doing right”.  He was correct.  Why waste your time doing something if you’re not going to do it right?

That’s stuck with me my whole life.  I learned how to do housework at the age of 5…and I’ve never been really fond of doing it, but I’ve done it none the less because I can’t stand things being cluttered or dirty!  I like a tidy house…but haven’t had one of those since I was a kid…and the only reason it was that way back then is because I made it that way!

Now…before any of you start doubting this and start asking me about my mom’s involvement in all of this.  Let me just say that when I was a child my mom worked two full time jobs and traveled a great deal.  My dad was an alcoholic and well, didn’t exactly do a lot around the house.  We lived on a farm…we had animals, we has chores (we being my older brother and me) and if we didn’t take care of things…well, it just didn’t get done and we would get the hell beat out of us by my father.  So, I was in charge of cleaning the house, doing laundry and cooking…oh and anything that my brother didn’t take care of so that he didn’t get killed later.  He was supposed to feed the animals (horses, dogs and cats), walk the dogs (they were outside dogs) and bed the horses down at night.  He rarely got these things done on a daily basis…so usually while my dad was passed out on the couch…I would sneak out to the barn and get the horses taken care of because that was the one chore my brother hated the most.

My dad always told me that when vacuuming all of the furniture was to be moved so that the whole floor got cleaned.  So I’ve always done that.  I’d sweep down the stairs with a whisk broom then dust…then vacuum.  My schedule was pretty hectic considering I didn’t get home from school until a quarter after 4pm each day…then I had chores to do…and get my homework done before going to bed.  We usually didn’t get to bed until after 10pm each night.  We got up at 5am the next morning and got our morning chores done before school as well.

Yeah…I know where I got my cleaning habits from…but my kids currently aren’t on a schedule for chores.  The reason being that they have more homework than I ever did being in school and some nights it takes hours for them to get that done…so chores isn’t exactly workable during the week.  However, I am asking them to just pick up after themselves.  If they could just do that much…then I could get a lot more accomplished.

I had a difficult time this weekend not going ahead and just folding all of the clothes that have been sitting in baskets for a week now and putting them away.  Or picking up things off of the floor and cleaning up in general.  I’ll probably break down and just do it before I lose my mind…but I’m trying to not do that so that the kids will understand that they need to take care of things themselves.

Jason did the dishes yesterday…and I appreciate that very much…but like I said, he didn’t clean the entire kitchen…he just did the dishes.  I explained to him that this is what I’m talking about…and this is why I’m so damn frustrated!

I don’t know…like I said, come next month I’ll be cleaning that house from one end to the other with a roll away dumpster at my side!  I’ve already warned them all that they better have whatever they want to keep put away correctly or else it’s being given away or thrown away.  This includes my mother…to which she said, “you better not touch anything that’s mine”…to which I replied, “then you better make sure that whatever you want to keep has found a home or has a use…because I will be going through EVERYTHING”.  I mean that…

I would like to say thank you all for your comments on my past two posts…regardless of who you voted for.  All of us had the choice of voting for whomever we wanted…that’s part of being an American and that freedom is a wonderful thing.

Although I didn’t vote for the Bush…I do feel that we as a country still need to stand united for the next four years (and beyond) while he’s in office.  I pray that we as a country can move on from the occurrences of the last 4 years and become a better and stronger nation.  However, in order to do that the President is going to have to listen to the people and come up with a new agenda that will fix many of the problems this country has now… because the old agenda certainly didn’t help matters.

Well…I’m going to get off my soapbox now on this subject…but I had to get that off my chest, so thanks for bearing with me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news…

~*I’m On STRIKE*~

Did I mention that? No? Well I am.  Not from my paying job mind you…but at home.  Yup…Mom has had it!  I work over 40 hours at this job a week and then I come home and work another 5 – 6 hours a night cooking, cleaning, picking up after all who live in that house and playing tutor to the kids.

I don’t mind doing all of that…but the fact is that I get minimal to no help from the others in the house!! To me…that’s not acceptable.  I’m the only one who works full time and do the majority of the housework and child care.  What’s wrong with this picture?

The kids are slobs…which I have a plan to remedy.  They most certainly didn’t inherit that trait from me (I think it’s learned anyway…and they learned it from my mother ).  Jason goes to school two days a week and works all but one day the rest of the week…and on his off day he studies…well, he’s supposed to anyway.  However, he does not have set hours for work and is home much more than I am…in which time he usually gets the kids off to school…but then what? 

We’ve talked about this and he says that he will try to do more to help me out.  Okay…but I know this means I’m going to have to remind him because cleaning and consistency in that area are not his forte.  My problem with this is that I’m a person that if I see something that needs to be done…I just do it.  Especially if I’ve already asked someone else to take care of it and 3 days later it still hasn’t been done.   I don’t have much patience for that…I guess it’s because I try to ask only simple tasks of people when I know that they have time to accomplish them…so when I see that it still hasn’t been accomplished days later I figure that if they haven’t done it by then…they aren’t going to.  That is usually the case around my house…unfortunately.

So I wind up doing it myself because it needs to be done and I get sick and tired of repeating myself all of the time and begging people to just pick up after themselves.  I have three children who are VERY capable of cleaning up their own messes and helping me out with Caleb as well.  I have a husband, who is great about it when he remembers to do so, but when is put in front of a television set playing sports or ESPN…well, I’ve lost him all together.

My mother…well, she’s just a slob..plain and simple.  She is a major, and I do mean M A J O R, packrat!!  She has clothes from her high school years and college.  Btw…she’s 63 years old!  As if she’s ever going to use these items again…ever!!

She has a tendancy of buying things that we don’t need or never use and then it just all piles up in one location.  My garage mostly…well, it’s more my mom’s storage unit for useless shit than a garage because in the 10 years that I’ve lived in this house I’ve yet to park a car in that double stall garage!!!  There is a narrow path that winds its way through the crap to the door leading into the kitchen.  It’s that BAD!

Inside the house…well, our once dining room has also become a place that she likes to just drop crap in…and the kids do it as well.  She buys storage containers…but the only thing they contain are themselves and lids to more storage containers.  Besides, they are buried in the garage somewhere.  That helps!! NOT  Then there is the “so called” office…which is nothing more than another room to pile shit in!! Oh…and believe me…it’s PILED!!

So I’ve decided that until the other people in my house start pulling their weight on the cleaning end of things…this mom’s on strike!!  Unfortunately, that means that I have to deal with a pigpen in the meantime. I’m sick of cleaning things just to have it instantly replaced with more clutter…it’s like quicksand!!

I will get my revenge though!! Oh yes…I shall.  I’m taking vacation the week of Christmas and Jason and my mom will have to work through that week (retail…it’s mandatory)…but I will be home!!  I’m getting a rollaway dumpster and I’m starting at one end of the house and making my way to the other end throwing away anything & everything that does not have a “home” or is useless, broken, or can’t be given away to Goodwill.

I’m DONE!! Seriously, I can’t take it anymore!! All I have to say is that once I have gone through that house and cleaned it all up…God help the next person who makes a mess!!!

Warning – Some people WILL be offended by this post.

After carefully reading the comments left on my post yesterday, I’ve decided that I have to comment on one of them.

First of all…YES I voted!! See my post on 11/2.  Not only did I vote…but I also encouraged others to vote as well!

So yes, you bet your sweet bippie as a registered American voter I have a right to complain.  I DO stand up fo my beliefs and I absolutely make a difference in my kids lives…every day.  They know how important it is to me as to who runs this country…unfortunately, the wrong man has now been voted into office twice in the past 8 years to do so. Hell, I even voted for him the first time around…something I now regret.  Once again, this is my opinion…not necessarily yours…and because this is my website I have a right to freely express that opinion.

I once believed that every vote counted…but ya know what? Did all the votes that were cast on Tuesday get counted before declaring a winner? NO  I think that facts speak for themselves.  I realize that Kerry conceded before the rest of the votes were counted…but Bush was declared the winner before then anyway by the media.  That’s not my point to begin with.

I realize that there’s a my dick is bigger than your dick contest between Republicans & Democrats…and anyone who doesn’t see that is either blind or ignorant…but then again, what’s the difference?

Americans are arrogant.  You heard me…arrogant.  Do you take offense to that?  I do.  I take offense to the fact that the people in MY country feel that they have to not only be condescending to others in their own country but to the rest of the world as well.  There are always exceptions to these statements…so if you are an exception to this…consider yourself a lucky person because you haven’t been sucked into the vortex that has become American politics.

I’m sure that many people are going to be angry with me for stating what I’ve stated…but it’s how I feel.  I have friends in other countries and many friends here across the United States…and because I’m not involved in the preverbial pissing match between the political parties I don’t have blinders on my eyes that keep me from seeing the truth.

I see what my children deal with in our schools on a daily basis.  I see what has become of our educational system. I see what people deal with in the workforce…and the lack thereof.  I see what our economy has decreased to.  I see the control that the rich have on this country and the benefits that they reap from the sacrifices of the middle-class. I see what our deficit has risen to.  I see the conflicts amongst the American people.  I see the struggles of the American people.  I see the arrogance of the American people.

In order to become an individual that can actually make a difference in this country…you first have to be able to see what’s really going on in the country.  You can’t be an individual who is constantly in denial as to your surroundings and events in this country.

So yes…I’m an voter…yes, I’m complaining…and yes, I’m making a difference because I see the TRUTH!  Unfortunately, there are many in this country who’d rather remain blind and in denial than make that difference.

I’ve never been one to be harsh towards people here on Xanga or anywhere else for that matter…not intentionally…and I don’t plan on starting that now.  However, I do have a right to my opinion and for those of you who actually know me know that I’m a very blunt person.  I don’t see the necessity to sugar coat things for other adults.  The factual truth will speak for itself.

As I stated yesterday…I love my country…but I don’t love what’s happened to my country.  There’s a difference of being proud…and being arrogant.  Americans need to swallow their pride, take off their blinders, do what we know in our hearts is right and unite to make this country one to be proud of again.  Until that happens, the only ones that we are failing…is ourselves.