Acomplished Day

Everyone,

Last night my head was whirling with all the thoughts of things I should do this week. I couldn't sleep. It was after 11pm. I just sat and thought and thought and thought. So I got up, flipped on the light (much to Juice's dismay, sorry darling) and wrote out a list of things I should do today and the rest of the week. Once I couldn't think of anything else, I put the list down, turned off the light and went right to sleep. It was near midnight.

Butterfly woke up at 6:30am this morning.

This might be a reason why I look like I have two major black eyes. I'm beat.

So, not only did I get only about 6 hours of sleep last night, I actually accomplished most of my things on my list. I did a load of laundry (playing with doing one load a day instead of having a laundry day...might make it easier to put the laundry away). I made laundry soap. (Yes I make my own, post on that to follow.) I did a load of dishes. I cleaned the table off and all the counters. Everyone got breakfast, clean diapers, and morning naps/movies. We went to the craft store for a project for me and Butterfly. (More on that later too.) I made a hot lunch today. I talked to both my parents. I made dinner. I took all the kids to the park (with Juice and the dog). I cleaned out 300 pictures and backed them up onto my external hard drive in their correct month and year folders.

Things that I didn't get done today but will probably get done this week include: the floors. Boy do they need a good cleaning!

So it was a very productive day. I'm hoping for another one like it tomorrow with more sleep. Maybe I'll be able to pick up the toys, do my laundry load, go through Butterfly's winter wardrobe and make notes of what I need for her, find hats and mittens for everyone, go through the mail, do some more pictures, get started on that craft project with Butterfly, enjoy my kids, hug my husband, take a nap, blog.

That doesn't sound like too much does it?

Safire

Computer Woes Explained

Everyone,

So I think I am finally back and running with my lapple. Of course, it took almost 5 hours at the apple store to get it fixed. Wanna know the problem? My hard drive was so full it didn't have enough memory to boot. Wow. I learned a lot about my apple at the store with Genius Mike (whom I spent his entire shift with). Did you know that apples make copies of files when you move them in case they get corrupted with the move? I didn't. Which proved to be my downfall.

I have over 7,000 pictures on my computer. That's not counting the home movies I've taken of the kids too. I took these pictures from the time I got my camera (Christmas 2007) till now. Last week when my lapple died, it crashed because of something iphoto did. And then when I opened iphoto again, my pictures were gone. I was on the phone with my mom at the time and she can tell you I freaked out just a little bit. That's a lot of history to be completely gone! Good thing my dad was able to talk me back from the ledge and helped me find all my pictures. Good, good.

I then tried to put my pictures back in iphoto. It crashed again. Again, no pictures were there. Again, I tried to put them in there, and another crash. This time it crashed hard and I couldn't get it to start. Genius Mike ended up starting it from his portable hard drive and we found out there was no space on my hard drive. I had to buy another portable hard drive and back up my music and erase it. I erased all of my movies (that I own in hard copy). I erased all of my downloaded stuff (not sad about that one, really.) and there still wasn't enough space to reinstall my operating system. We tried to back up my pictures to erase those but it would have taken 4 hours to do. Ouch.

We finally were able to get it going, and he warned me it would be very slow until I moved some stuff off of my hard drive. Once I got it up and running (about 5 times the normal speed) I decided to start with my pictures and get them backed up as soon as possible.

Did you know that apple saves things as you move them around? I just said that right? Well, I had no less than 9 copies of EACH PICTURE. Meaning I had around 63,000 pictures on my hard drive. Now I wonder where all my space went!

Juice and I have been taking turns going through each picture one by one and deleting all the copies. If there's an easier way, please let me know! We are only up to picture 105. Most pictures had 14-18 copies. Once I got through about 75 pictures had had over 3,000 files deleted, suddenly my lapple starts running the way it should.

I'm going to try and be better about writing since I seem to be out of the habit but if you don't hear from me, I'm buried under all my thousands and thousands of pictures. At least this way they are getting super organized. Just in time for me to get going on scrap booking again! (Lolli, you up for at least getting what you've got done?!) These poor boys don't have baby books yet and I want to get those started and the first year done at least.

Picture 106, me looking very pregnant and sick but showing off my belly and trying to be happy. March of 2008, because that's what the calendar behind me says. So I was about a month away from delivery. I was going to put the picture up for you guys to see but I really really don't want to. See here for a picture near that time.

Juice just calculated out how long this should take me to delete all the duplicates. Plus or minus 60 hours. Or 60 days if I do it for an hour a day. 2 months! Yay! So I should have it done by Halloween at least. Lucky me.

Safire

Computer Woes

Everyone,

I had big plans for this week.  I basically had nothing going on during the day (except for Monday, another post another time) and I thought I would get caught up on my pictures, blog, laundry, everything.  I figured I could do what I could while the kids were happy and work hard while they napped.  (Boys are back on 2 naps a day...yay and boo at the same time.)

Last week my photo application on my lapple crashed and so I was trying to find all my pictures on my hard drive and redo my iphoto.  Well, on Monday I was in the middle of that and it crashed again.  But this time EVERYTHING crashed.  It's hard to crash a Mac and I think I did it.  Once I got it to turn back on, all it showed up with was a no symbol.  You know, the kind of thing they put over Ps so you won't park there.  Or over pictures of cigarettes so you won't smoke there.  It was like my lapple was telling me to just not go there and let it die. 

One tiny problem.  Those pictures I was trying to find?  All on this lapple.  I was planning on asking for an external hard drive for Christmas so I could back things up.  I think this crash is 4 months too early.  I have nothing backed up. 

I spent the morning afternoon all day with my dad on the phone trying to get it to work.  Any kind of work.  I went ahead and bought an external hard drive so we could maybe boot my computer from that to get my information off before we wiped it.  No such luck.  The hard drive wouldn't even format so back it goes to the store. 

I now have an appointment with the geniuses at Apple on Saturday to try and get this thing worked out.  I'd be crushed if my computer has died beyond resussitation but I'll be a howling ball of tears if I loose all those pictures. 

I may not be on the computer much in the next few days.  I'm using Juice's computer right now and it's giving me fits too.  I'm mad at technology.

Safire

Sunday Pictures take 10, Video!

Everyone,

Here are some cute videos of the boys. One of Pirate walking! And I have no idea what that clicking noise is on the video...sorry. Enjoy!



This I thought was just cute. Sorry it's sideways!



Safire

Walking Day #2!

Everyone,

Poor neglected blog. And poor neglected readers. I don't know what happened or what excuses I can give you. I can say that Flower left here and is home and safe. Yay! We miss her. I'm feeling slightly stressed with all the kids and the fact that I have no alone time at all. The boys have suddenly decided to transition to one nap that starts at 10:30am. They sleep until about 1pm, which is when I've normally been putting Butterfly down for some quiet time. So yeah, no breaks. And no Flower to help me out. Sigh... Today I took a 2 hour nap because Juice was home and I could. I'm beat. So is he. We miss Flower.

Anyway, I did get on today to say that today is the day that Pirate has finally decided that he's going to walk all the time. So many times he fell down today and stood back up to try again. Normally he just crawls when that happened but he was determined today. He is still very unsteady and lurches from one side to the other.

But he is walking!

Safire

Winner!

Everyone,

Out of 9 entries for my lovely little giveaway, #4 popped up in random.org.  And who is #4?  My friend the Flower Maiden!  Congrats!  Do I have your correct address?  I think I do.  Have fun picking out your birdhouse and let me know what you pick!

I hope to have some time to update my blog with our big last week with Flower.  I can't believe a whole month has gone by and she is flying home on Tuesday.  Sigh...we are all going to miss her when she goes home.  School-smool...who needs school right?!  (Just kidding Flower's Mom...I know you are excited to see her and she is excited to see you.  But seriously, we love her and hope she had a great time with us.)

I've got over 100 pictures to go through so I'm off!  Congrats again!

Safire

Contest Ending!

Everyone,

My contest is ending today at 10pm. Since my mom has pointed out to me that the comment form seems to be broken (worked for me) I thought anyone could try and comment here to enter. Or you could email me at safirecat at gmail dot com to enter.

So far, you have a pretty good chance of winning. Only 2 people have entered!

Don't forget to visit the website and tell me what you like best about it.

Good luck!

Safire

So. Tired.

Everyone,

We have house guests. My cousin and his wife and 2 girls (5 and 3) are visiting our place for the weekend. So that makes 10 people we've crammed into our little house. And you know what? It seems to be working. Yay!

They didn't get in until about 1am yesterday. And today we went to Mt. Vernon and walked all over. It was a great day but my camera battery died (again!) so I have very little pictures to show for it. We had personal pizzas for dinner, went out for awesome ice cream for a treat, and played a tiny bit on the Wii.

Okay, I just fell asleep typing that sentence. Had to erase a whole bunch of f's. Must sleep.

Safire

Best Shot and a Giveaway

Everyone,
Joining in on my friend Lolli's best shot of the week blog round up. I had several favorites from the battlefield we went to earlier in the week (see here) but I really liked this one a lot.

Mostly because Pirate is trying desperately to climb up the cannon like his sister did. And mostly because he really really really wanted to see the bird's nest we found inside the cannon. It could have been just a bunch of leaves and twigs and pine needles that blew into the end of the cannon but Butterfly was convinced that it was a bird's nest.

She is obsessed with birds lately. Especially the little tiny ones that come and hop around us when we eat outside in hopes of getting some food. She loves to see them eat, fly, play, whatever. She is constantly gasping and pointing at birds lately. I'm excited for the fall when the geese start arriving in huge swarms. She's going to be in heaven.

I've considered buying her one of these:

It would be a lot of fun in the winter to be able to watch the birds eat out of our big front window. We have a family of cardinals and oriels that I'd like to see more of. I imagine even the boys would get a kick out of it.

You readers are in luck! The nice people at Teak and Wicker and More have graciously allowed me to give away a bird feeder up to $55. Your choice!  That can buy you a very nice bird feeder to put in your yard and think of us. Teak and Wicker and More has some pretty awesome stuff too. Makes me really wish that summer wasn't coming to an end. Can you imagine lounging on some nice patio furniture? How about hanging out in a hammock? Teak and Wicker and More have lots to choose from. Go check it out!

To enter please do the following:

• Visit Teak and Wicker and More's patio furniture section and leave me a comment with your favorite item.
• Join in this week to my friend Lolli's "Give me your best shot" picture round up and receive 2 extra entries.
• Follow my blog for an extra entry (sorry, new followers only).
• You can blog about the contest using this paragraph: "Living In Maryland is having a great giveaway by Teak and Wicker and More who can service all your outdoor needs from patio furniture to greenhouses." Do this and you can get 5 extra entries!
  

If you don't have a blog, just leave your name and email address in the comments.

Contest will run for a week and end on August 14th at 10pm EST. I will (hopefully) pick a winner that night and announce the lucky duck the next day.

Good luck!

Safire

Bad Thursday

Everyone,

What a crazy day this has been. It's very late so I will be brief.

We went to the dentist this morning. Since both the boys are still sick and Flower didn't need to come along, Juice and I took Butterfly by ourselves. I think she was in heaven having both of her parents to herself for awhile. Even if that time was at the dentist. She did great. They painted fluoride on her teeth that had to be left on for 4-6 hours. She wasn't supposed to eat anything crunchy, sticky, sweet, or hot. Huh. What does that leave? Cold macaroni for lunch and a cold cheese sandwich for dinner. I have two cavities that I'll have filled next week. Lucky me. Our dentist was very nice and made room for me to get them done while Flower is still with us. She is so good.

I had planned on taking Flower out tonight without the kids so she could have a little bit of a break. Kind of a thank you night for all the hard work she's done. And she has worked hard! I don't know what I'm going to do without her in about 10 days. Sad.

Anyway, we decided that we would go downtown and see Night at the Museum in the Smithsonian. Sounds like fun right? Well we were late. Then we didn't get to the museum before it closed. So the movie was no go. And we rode the train all the way down there and back basically for nothing. We thought we'd go see another movie but nothing good was playing early enough. Everything was starting after 11pm. Too late for us!

So we decided to go get ice cream instead. That was good. Then we went home. I took the babysitter home and now I'm waiting for the dog to eat her dinner. It's almost midnight. I'm feeling kind of bad that the evening didn't work out how I planned.

Safire

Trying to Get Out

Everyone,

With how bad of a cold we seem to have here, we decided we should wait and go to the beach when people are feeling better. Today we thought we'd go berry picking (raspberries this time) with friends. The friends couldn't make it, so we went by ourselves! Those raspberries were huge. But really, not that tasty. I've decided I'm not a fan of raspberry picking at that farm. The blueberries were better.

Professor thought they were pretty good. In fact, he ate most of my bucket before I noticed him.

I took the bucket away from him.

We drove to the closest civil war battle field and had a picnic there. Butterfly showed me how she could climb the canon just as the ranger pulled up with a group of tourists. Boy did I get glared at! We enjoyed our little picnic and read the history of the battle. I was all for driving around and looking at the other battle sights but Flower didn't seem too interested. They are only fields after all. And this battlefield is also a working farm still.

The boys were also done. They had fun playing with the cannon for a minute, and then needed to go home and have a nap. Everyone napped for about 3 hours.

Pirate has a horrible barking cough and can't suck his thumb because of the congestion. Poor kid. And Butterfly just coughs and coughs. Lovely. I hope they get better soon!

Safire

8 Years

Everyone,

8 Years ago today I married Juice. With all the cleaning we've been doing, I pulled out my scrapbooks and we looked over our wedding pictures together. We laughed at the picture of Flower (who was 7 at the time) catching the bouquet. I had fun remembering doing line dances with my friends, and watching my niece, Beautiful Rabbit (who was less than 2 at the time) dance along with us. I remember being left behind for the ceremony and seeing the relief on Juice's face when we finally showed up.

Our first year, I remember our tiny apartment at BYU and how I hated walking home to that place. It was all up hill. I remember doing a lot of studying and sleeping in front of Juice's classes. He did the same to mine. I remember graduating from college that year and trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do. I remember working at the MTC that summer and I just kept working there.

Our second year, I remember still being at that BYU apartment with the strange neighbors and the ward that I didn't feel a part of. I remember doing laundry and cleaning the whole place top to bottom on Tuesday, my day off. It didn't take me all day. I remember hanging our clothes to dry on our balcony even though we weren't supposed to. I remember working at the MTC in the cafeteria for 2 shifts, often breakfast and lunch. I remember working 2 Sundays a month and being happy I had an excuse not to go to church for those Sundays. I remember Juice doing A LOT of studying and me doing a lot of scrap booking. I remember he graduated from college that year, and I was chomping at the bit to leave. We spent that summer in my mom's house because grad school didn't start until fall and BYU wanted us out the day after graduation. That was also the year we drove across the country and ended up in Virginia.

Our third year, I remember loving our apartment in Virginia but being alone a lot. I had a full time job at an infertility clinic answering phones and questions. It was nice. I really liked it. Juice also had his first full time job and was going to grad school full time in the evening. His commute started at 6am, took two hours to get him to work (metro/bus rides all the way). He stopped on campus for his classes (which happened to be on his way home) 3 days a week. I picked him up at the metro stop about 20 minutes away from our apartment around 11pm those 3 days. We did this for about 7 months, and decided it wasn't worth it any more. Granted, he had great study time on the metro and hardly ever had homework when he was home. But it was just too far. We needed something closer. I was a little sad to leave because our apartment was by some really great restaurants and near Mount Vernon which I loved. We went there at least once a month. Our place also had work out machines so I used those every day. We moved to our current house in Maryland that year. It was the biggest place we've ever been in! We bought a puppy.

Our fourth year, I started this blog. I started being sick all the time. Oh wait, that was because Butterfly was on her way! My grandpa died that year. We flew to Utah for the funeral. We flew to Utah a month later for Christmas (the one Christmas we've spent there since. Holiday travel is awful.) and I had a baby shower with my family and friends there. Butterfly was born in the spring after I threw up every single day while pregnant with her. I quit my job. I totaled my car. We bought a new one. We took Butterfly to the ocean when she was 3 months old.

Our fifth year, we were busy. Juice graduated from grad school and I made him do the graduation ceremony. Butterfly was growing in leaps and bounds. We flew to Utah a few times that year. We had several visitors. We complained about the humidity in the summer and the lack of snow in the winter. I got a new washer and dryer after fighting my dying one for months. Butterfly took swimming lessons with me. Life move forward at a rapid pace!

Our sixth year, we went to Hawaii with my family. It was great. We took Butterfly on a cruise and had so much fun exploring Hawaii through a toddler's eyes. We became even more active (if that is possible) and Butterfly turned 2 years old. I got pregnant again. Butterfly and I went to Disneyland with my family. I lost the baby and got pregnant again. This time with twins. I spent the rest of that year being pretty miserable and sick. Juice got a promotion at work. I finally convinced him we should buy another car.

Our seventh year, we had the twins. We bought a van. We decided our house was too small for 5 people. We had visitors all summer long to help with the boys; Juice's parents, Flower, Bee. I spent over a month in Utah with my parents. We took the kids to the presidential inauguration. We moved forward with life.

Our eighth year so far, we've exchanged gifts. Sort of. Juice couldn't think of something to get me so I ended up ordering some movies for myself. I got Juice a video game that doesn't work (sad, have to take it back). We went out to dinner tonight while Flower watched the kids. Juice told me all about his performance review he had today and how his boss said that he spent the most time on his review. Why? Because he feels that Juice has the most potential of all his employees and Juice will be his boss's boss one day. Juice is feeling pretty good after that! We also spent a lot of time cleaning our room which hasn't been cleaned probably since our sixth year. Boy does it need it!

Happy anniversary Juice! Love you really really!

Safire

The Day's Been Disrupted

Everyone,

Who can name that movie from the title? Anyone? I've been watching too many movies lately, obviously.

Guess who else has been watching movies? Butterfly. Her current favorite is Bolt and My Little Ponies. And she watching them because she's sick. And we're watching them because the boys are laying on Flower and I radiating heat. These boys have some pretty impressive fevers. So impressive that I took them to the doctor's today to get their ears checked. I mean, why make them suffer if antibiotics will fix it?

Sadly, antibiotics will not fix this. Just a virus. Sigh...I was hoping it would be an antibiotic fix. It would make it easier on us. Especially since my cousin and his family are coming to stay with us this weekend and I'd really like to send them home without this virus.

The day did have a plan (beyond the doctor, the grocery store, the library, and the super big store because I have no qualms about infecting the rest of the town). The day had a plan written in big capital letters in ink on my calender. BEACH. Last year Flower loved the beach so much that this was our first plan made for her visit. This year we were planning on actually getting to the ocean. You know, being on the border and looking across the water knowing that on the other side is Europe. Last year we had a great time on the Chesapeake Bay. This year I thought we'd be a little more adventurous and show Flower the ocean, which she hasn't ever seen before.

We still have about 2 weeks left with her. So we have time to get to the ocean. I figured everyone would be happier if we were healthy at the beach. I hope they sleep well tonight and we get healthy soon!

Safire

Sick Sunday

Everyone,

I think Butterfly is a little better. Professor is happily staggering around the house with a sample bottle of shampoo in one hand and a play dish washing sponge in the other. Pirate, however, is burning up with fever. Around 102. He spent most of the day today sleeping and laying in our arms sucking his thumb. Needless to say he did not go to church today. I was the only one who went. I only went to teach my class and then head back home.

We've been having fun with Flower here when the kids are sleeping. She hasn't seen many of our favorite movies so we've been slowly working through them. Today has been a Back to the Future marathon. I still can't believe she's never seen these! Of course, it also makes me feel old too. These movies (among others) were important in my childhood. I remember being so excited to pull out the mattress in the couch and sit on it with my brother and watch movies and eat popcorn before bed. I remember watching this one, along with The Princess Bride, Goonies, Ghostbusters, and all sorts of other 80s movies. Watching them now as an adult I get a lot more out of them. It's been fun!

We were planning on going to the beach this week but I think we'll wait until the kids are better. Busy week for us!

Safire

Ward Picnic

Everyone,

This is the social event of the year for our ward. We have so much fun swimming in our bishop's pool and playing with all of his camp equipment. It's like a mini ward camp. Check out last years visit here. We have gone every year we've lived here and I couldn't find any other time I wrote about it. Huh.

This year I was really excited about taking all the kids there because we always have so much fun. I was worried the night before that we wouldn't be able to go because of Butterfly's fever. It was basically gone so we planned on going. Besides we couldn't miss out on our yearly picture on the alligator!

During the boys' first nap we cleaned another section of my room. I now have a scrap booking table available to use every day. I'm so excited! I also threw out a big trash bag of garbage, found a bunch of unopened mail (oops) and put more things into the attic. Gotta love this cleaning I'm doing. I hope to have this all done by this weekend.

The party was a lot of fun. We did a lot of swimming. The boys really loved wading around in the baby pool. Butterfly and her BFF Vinny stuck together like glue until his family had to go home. I'm sad he's going to be going to school this year! We're going to miss him. I think the highlight of the day was finding a grey tree frog. It was so cute! It had yellow legs and curled up in Juice's hand. We both wanted to keep him but figured having another creature in the house was just asking for trouble.

Butterfly and I went down the slide again. And she told me again that she didn't ever want to go down it again. Crazy girl. I had a good time with it! The boys were done walking around the pool a lot sooner than Butterfly was done playing in it.

We enjoyed eating bbq and Butterfly and the boys spent about an hour playing in the sand box. I was able to help out another mom rinse out her little boy's eye (he is about a month older than my boys) because another kid threw sand in his face. It was nice to help out a little. And it was nice that the boys were so entertained with the sand!

While I helped with the other mom and the kids played in the sand with Flower watching out for them, Juice played street hockey with all the other guys in the ward. You aren't really a part of our ward until you've bled at this game. It's a serious thing. Juice plays goalie a lot, and this year was no exception. He could also barely walk after the game.

Everyone had baths when we got home to rinse the sand off. That's when I noticed both of the boys seem to be sporting fevers as well. Looks like our house is sick!

Safire