I am very very very glad that the election is in less than a week.
I am so very very very tired of the never-ending talk and debate and plain meanness by people on both sides.
Don't forget to vote next Tuesday!! And not just for president, vote for the other races as well please.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
bagging rant and other things
Why can't cashiers and baggers learn how to bag properly?? I worked in two grocery stores and I knew to bag non-foods with non-foods, frozen with frozen, etc. It's not like I had any extra training on this - I just have common sense. It wouldn't bother me as much if I didn't organize AND put small spaces between my sections of food on the conveyor belt. Then, when I rebag things right there (shampoo does NOT go with bananas!!) the cashier gets a little pissy. It's not like I was holding up the line, there was no line. I didn't make her re-do it, which I have seen people do. I didn't even say anything to her, just did it. I really don't think she was greatly inconvenienced by my re-bagging my stuff. AHHH I wish people used common sense in bagging.
So three houses I've had my eye on just got lowered in price. I guess one is out b/c there is no place for Tony to have an office space (he works from home). I told him he could have part of the huge master closet but he wasn't super excited about that idea. : ) I wish we had the cash and could just buy one outright. How easy would that be, right? LOL.
Drew is not a fan of broccoli or acorn squash. Squash was actually the only baby food he had that he never liked. We had both for dinner tonight and he didn't eat more than one or two bites. Austin did pretty well once he got some cheese on his broccoli, but hey he ate it!
We are going next week to visit my friend who had a baby last month. It should be nice, she has a little girl Austin loves to play with and a 1 1/2 yr old Drew will probably follow around. We haven't hung out since Drew was able to play with other kids so it should be cute. And who doesn't love little babies??
So three houses I've had my eye on just got lowered in price. I guess one is out b/c there is no place for Tony to have an office space (he works from home). I told him he could have part of the huge master closet but he wasn't super excited about that idea. : ) I wish we had the cash and could just buy one outright. How easy would that be, right? LOL.
Drew is not a fan of broccoli or acorn squash. Squash was actually the only baby food he had that he never liked. We had both for dinner tonight and he didn't eat more than one or two bites. Austin did pretty well once he got some cheese on his broccoli, but hey he ate it!
We are going next week to visit my friend who had a baby last month. It should be nice, she has a little girl Austin loves to play with and a 1 1/2 yr old Drew will probably follow around. We haven't hung out since Drew was able to play with other kids so it should be cute. And who doesn't love little babies??
Monday, October 20, 2008
Resisting Naps
As I sit here during nap time and listen to my youngest cry instead of sleep, I still wonder why little ones fight naps so badly. Drew has given up his morning nap and the past two days has only taken a 1/2 hour afternoon nap. Austin won't nap unless big consequences are threatened, or I make him nap with me.
I guess they didn't get the "Doerr gene" as my brother and sister like to call it. My nephew seems to have gotten it - he takes 3 or 4 hour naps AND sleeps in! How nice that must be on the weekends for my sister. Us Doerr kids (what good English!) could sleep all day if possible, and the latest I have ever slept in was 4pm. That was back in the day before I had kids. I do still enjoy sleeping in, although now a great late morning is 10am!
I wonder, in 5 or 6 years, if I will have to make Austin get OUT of bed or wake up from a nap by threatening big consequences!!
Ahhh . . . Drew is quiet now.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Three (new to me) Movies
I have seen a few movies recently and really enjoyed two of them. . .
"Fireproof" - Tony and I went on a date (yay!) and saw this in the theater. This is a great movie for anyone who is married or even seriously dating. It is very honest about some of the struggles people can go through in marriage. There is a book to go with the movie called The Love Dare (I think it is out?). This movie is made by the people who did "Facing the Giants", which I also highly recommend. I wouldn't let Austin watch "Fireproof" for quite a few years though, there are some intense scenes not appropriate for young ones.
"August Rush" - okay so I like most anything Keri Russell is in. Loved her in Felicity and Waitress is a good movie too. This movie is predictable yes but it is an enchanting sort of story about a boy who wants to find his parents and does so through music. Austin walked in halfway though this and he sat down and watched it until the end. He really liked it also. I love stories about parent-child bonds/love and this one incorporates music, another of my loves. I got to explain to Austin what a prodigy is during the movie!
"Indiana Jones 4" - I love the Indiana Jones trilogy! BUT I felt that this movie was a bit campy to really fit in with the others. Some of the dialogue and situations were just out there. It was okay and I always like watching Harrison Ford be Indy but come on people could you have thought of another plot?? It was a bit far-fetched for me. SPOILER ALERT: And Austin can't watch it until he gets over his fear of aliens (or interdimensional beings that sure look like aliens). He has had issues ever since Tony let him watch "Signs" in spite of my protests. I think I will still to the first three Indy movies.
What movies have you seen recently that you like?
"Fireproof" - Tony and I went on a date (yay!) and saw this in the theater. This is a great movie for anyone who is married or even seriously dating. It is very honest about some of the struggles people can go through in marriage. There is a book to go with the movie called The Love Dare (I think it is out?). This movie is made by the people who did "Facing the Giants", which I also highly recommend. I wouldn't let Austin watch "Fireproof" for quite a few years though, there are some intense scenes not appropriate for young ones.
"August Rush" - okay so I like most anything Keri Russell is in. Loved her in Felicity and Waitress is a good movie too. This movie is predictable yes but it is an enchanting sort of story about a boy who wants to find his parents and does so through music. Austin walked in halfway though this and he sat down and watched it until the end. He really liked it also. I love stories about parent-child bonds/love and this one incorporates music, another of my loves. I got to explain to Austin what a prodigy is during the movie!
"Indiana Jones 4" - I love the Indiana Jones trilogy! BUT I felt that this movie was a bit campy to really fit in with the others. Some of the dialogue and situations were just out there. It was okay and I always like watching Harrison Ford be Indy but come on people could you have thought of another plot?? It was a bit far-fetched for me. SPOILER ALERT: And Austin can't watch it until he gets over his fear of aliens (or interdimensional beings that sure look like aliens). He has had issues ever since Tony let him watch "Signs" in spite of my protests. I think I will still to the first three Indy movies.
What movies have you seen recently that you like?
Monday, October 6, 2008
It's all going to work out
That happens to be something Tony kept telling me as we moved up here and he didn't have a job and I wasn't happy with Austin's school and we have a civic and an old truck to try to fit 3 kids in (when I watch my nephew) and let's see what else. . .
Tony has a job now and starts training in (ironically) Indy tomorrow. Yay for that! He doesn't have to be on-call! Also he will be working from home a lot so I won't always have to take the little boys to pick Austin up from school.
My grandparents have decided they don't need two vehicles anymore and are giving one of their really nice vans to my parents. There is a high possibility that we might be getting or buying for cheap one of my parents' vans. Awesome! Then I don't have to beg my dad to borrow his van when I have all three boys in tow. He always lets me but I feel bad about him having to drive his truck which doesn't get good gas mileage.
Although I love my hubby very much I am excited about him being in Indy for 3 nights. I get my own bed and get to spread out and put the pillows anywhere I want!! Also Austin can't sleep with me because every night is school night!
I have a lot of exclamation points today . . .
I am still not so sure about Austin's school but I am giving them a semester and watching, watching, watching. I am helping out every Wednesday, so I get to regularly see what they do. His teacher is really nice and does a great job with the kids and never seems to lose any patience! I would love to set her up with my brother : ) I still feel that Austin is not being challenged with the work and I have not seen science or social studies happening. I know he is loving being around other kids, even though he doesn't love all the kids. And he learned how to give the finger/what to say in Chinese today. Don't know how accurate the kid who taught him is but isn't it just wonderful that they teach each other things? : )
Friday, October 3, 2008
Top 100 book list
Got this from Matt's blog. . .
A post I recently read claims that the average American adult has read only six of the top 100 books ever written. I'm not sure who put this list together, or what (if any) significance there is in the numbering, but I thought this would be fun. Try your hand at the list.
The Rules:
1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post. (Don't forget to tag me.)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen %
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte %
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*
6 The Bible **
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte %
8 1984 - George Orwell*
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman #
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens*
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott**
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare*
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien**
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams**
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck*
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens %
33 Chronicles of Narnia- CS Lewis**
34 Emma - Jane Austen %
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis**
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini ** (awesome!)
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the pooh - AA Milne **
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell*
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery ** (read this over and over as a kid)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding*
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan % (I've started it)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens*
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon*
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck**
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas*
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker*
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett **
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White *
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad *
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery** (french class!)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare ** (my fav shakespeare)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl *
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo *
32 out of this list, not bad. Some I have started and just can't get into them - wonder what that says about my taste in books? : ) A few I have read to Austin and are better as an adult I think. I love to read and will keep on reading books I think are good!
A post I recently read claims that the average American adult has read only six of the top 100 books ever written. I'm not sure who put this list together, or what (if any) significance there is in the numbering, but I thought this would be fun. Try your hand at the list.
The Rules:
1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post. (Don't forget to tag me.)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen %
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte %
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*
6 The Bible **
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte %
8 1984 - George Orwell*
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman #
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens*
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott**
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare*
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien**
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams**
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck*
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens %
33 Chronicles of Narnia- CS Lewis**
34 Emma - Jane Austen %
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis**
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini ** (awesome!)
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the pooh - AA Milne **
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell*
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery ** (read this over and over as a kid)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding*
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan % (I've started it)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens*
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon*
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck**
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas*
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker*
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett **
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White *
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad *
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery** (french class!)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare ** (my fav shakespeare)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl *
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo *
32 out of this list, not bad. Some I have started and just can't get into them - wonder what that says about my taste in books? : ) A few I have read to Austin and are better as an adult I think. I love to read and will keep on reading books I think are good!
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