Anger Management

Exercise brings my anger out.

I've been going on regular speed walks with a friend at night. You know how much I hate running. We walk 4+ miles, depending on what time we start. Monday we walked at least 6 miles. One day last week I took Sky on a 3 1/2 mile walk, then went walking that night, probably another 4-6 miles. Once we hiked the mountain behind my house; that was a killer.

All this exercise is making me an angry person. I feel like I have to go on a huge walk every night to get all my anger out, and when I miss a day or two I am ready to bite someone's head off.

Example: I planted an herb garden about two months ago. From seed. It was doing SO great! But then I put it outside and it became inundated with gnats (what the crap?!), so I left it outside to try to figure out how to get rid of the gnats. In the meantime, Reno decided to bring snow back in style and now my basil is dead. DEAD! I am so mad. I can't even put this anger into words. I took such fabulous care of my herbs for the past two months! I couldn't bring them in because of the Reno gnats.

And now I hate Reno--hate hate hate--with it's gnats and it's snow in late April and it's freaking WIND killing off my tomato plant and all the ugly tumbleweeds everywhere and the ridiculous amounts of rock everywhere you look.

Why do people want to live here forever?? Did you know Nevada is at the very very very tail end of the education line in the US? As soon as our house can sell for a profit we are out. Maybe even before that. I'll just rent the dang house!

My plants are dead and all my hard work was destroyed in 2 nights. If Reno was a person, I would kick him where it counts. Clearly Reno would be a "him." 

I didn't go for a walk last night. I didn't go for a walk at all yesterday because it was too damn cold to go out. Yes, I said damn.

See what I mean? Anger. 

I never should have started exercising...

Win Cool Stuff!

We're having another giveaway on The Sassy Pepper!

Here's what you can win:

1. $20 of digital scrapbooking fun stuff from Gina Miller Designs Lily Pad Shoppe!

All you have to do is Fan The Sassy Pepper on Facebook! (FB has changed the "fan" option to say "like.")

or

2. Win the Bitty Baby Action set that works with Photoshop CS, CS2, CS3, or CS4 for free!

Just leave a comment on this Sassy Pepper Post!

Enter to win one or both! Don't you just love this digital age with all it's new giveaway options?

Good Luck!

Getting Things Done

Mike's car is dead, so Sky and I have been car-less for the past 2 days. If I needed the car, I'm sure I could just drive him to work but I've been using this opportunity to get things done around the house.

Isn't it funny how good you feel when you finally do something you've been thinking of doing for a while?

I've been doing all sorts of things. The floors are clean and I've been organizing cupboards and going through our closet.

And replacing the fridge filter.

It wasn't the "replacing" part that I was putting off; that took all of 5 seconds. And Mike actually did it, because I'm too short and he doesn't need a chair to reach it. Anyway, it was the buying-the-new-filter part I've been putting off.

Next up: order ink for the printer!

Lost Husband

My husband is missing. He was last seen wearing a black/white striped polo (or some kind of polo, anyway) and jeans. Brown shoes. He's 5'10", incredibly skinny and Canadian.

He's also a known tea-party enthusiast.

And has been seen attacking defenseless babies on a number of occasions.

Pay close attention, as he is a master of disguise.

And a really great dancer.

We miss him. He's probably hungry. Please alert us should you find his skinny self lying around somewhere.

First Zoo Trip!

We took Skylar on her first ever zoo trip to the Oakland Zoo while we were in California two weekends ago. What a great zoo! Somehow I had never been there before either. Good thing Leisa's zoo pass encouraged us all to go!

Sky seriously LOVED it! The very first exhibit we went up to was the chimpanzee exhibit. She looked in the cage, saw the chimps up in the trees and started to make monkey sounds. Then she turned to me and said, "More! More!"

She said "more!" a lot that day. Probably 5000 times. Mind you, that's just a rough estimate.

Here are some random zoo enjoyment shots:

Sky and Kadie were buddies. Kadie would hold her hand while they walked and lift her up when she couldn't see over the fences. So cute! Kadie is such a great cousin!

Check out those red monkey butts! I asked the big baboon why his butt was red and he answered, "Because I am a baboon...and you are not." The big dude had a whole harem of baboon babes grooming him. He was a stud.

There was even a slide at the zoo. A slide! Man, this kid loves slides...when she saw it I thought we'd be stuck at that slide for the rest of the day.

We actually drove that morning from Reno to Orinda, dropped our stuff off and went straight to the zoo. Completely skipped the whole nap thing. Mike and I weren't showered. Stop judging us. I can't believe you would just judge us like that without hearing the whole story!

One of our last stops was Meerkat Manor where we let Sky and Laney play in the tunnel:

Look at these babes we found by the elephants!

This was such a fun trip. We wish we lived closer to a great zoo like this one! Reno has a zoo, and after tomorrow I'll be able to tell you what it's like. We're going with Christy and Mia (Sky's little bff). Woohoo!

For Free?!

While we were planting some bulbs this past weekend, our neighbor's son stopped by. Sky ran up to Mike and Jason (the neighbor's son) said, "Whoa! She is so much bigger than last time we saw her!"

Then he said, "Are you going to have another one?"

Kylie: "That's the plan."

Jason: "Want a double stroller?"

And just like that, we secured ourselves a cool double stroller for free!

He dropped it off last night and Sky has been playing with/in it ever since. She sat in it--buckled, as she prefers to be--for about 40 minutes today before she'd finally let me take her out. Every few minutes I'd say, "Do you want to get out?" and she'd reply, "Nope."

I love that she loves strollers so much. :)

Oh, and weird coincidence: when we were in California a couple of weekends ago we went to the zoo and I was checking out Leisa's double stroller. This is the exact same stroller! Weird.

Someone LIVES Here?!

Amazing.

Horrible.

Lacking.

As in: lacking counter space, closet space, toilet space, standing space, eating space, sleeping space, storage space, ceiling space and overall space.

This woman lives in 250 sq. ft. That is less than twice the size of the room I am currently sitting in.

I have so many words to describe how I feel about this apartment. Good thing she decided to install those shelves so the cat can get up to the bed...

Wow.

Little Helper

Skylar is obsessed with the watering can. The thing is half her size, but check out her skillz:

(So cute!)

Scentsy Presents Bring Back My Bar!

Has your favorite scent been discontinued, like mine was?? Vote to bring it back!

Scentsy Presents Bring Back My Bar!

Or you can just vote for Lemon Lavender because I love it so much!

Lunch with Lorax

Remember when I wrote about how much Sky loves her Lorax?

Well, she still does. And she keeps trying to feed him. I find him like this almost every afternoon!

She's a Stupid B!

I cannot get enough of the Sassy Gay Friend. He cracks me up every time! Here, you need to watch these:

It's a "Martha" Thing

I just burned the crap out of my mouth "testing" this cheese dip:

Easy Meaty Cheese Dip

1 big box of Velveeta (the 2lb one--get the reduced salt if you can)
8 oz of Rotel (it's a can of mixed diced tomatoes & green chilies)
4 oz can of diced green chilies
2 packages of Jimmy Dean pork sausage (cook it up in a pan first; get the reduced fat--you don't have to drain it)
1 medium white onion, diced up (cook this first)

Just mix it all up and voila! Delish! (I like to make it in the crock pot so it stays gooey and warm for as long as I want to chow down on it.)

It was worth it. My cheese dip is gonna rock the baby shower tonight! As is my fabulous mint chocolate fudge...

Geeze. Slap an apron on me and call me Martha!

18 Months Old!

Guess who's 18 months old today?

So amazing! People aren't lying when they say time flies. This has been the happiest 18 months of my life and I am so lucky to be Sky's mommy!

Journaly Update:

Skylar has a lot of words these days, including her favorite: "yellow." She really likes to say "yellow." She learned to say broccoli last night (brrrah-co) and she's always asking for her best friend Mia. If I say, "We're going bye bye!" she replies, "Mia?"

She's a little shy until she gets comfortable around people, then she's just a hyper little monkey. She climbs all over everything and loves green beans. She's so happy most of the time, even when she's starving because she refuses to eat anything we give her.

She still loves to chase our cat, Hero, around and is constantly on the lookout for birds. Believe me, if she finds a bird you'll hear about it.

She knows all the moves to "Hands Upon My Head" (I'll make a video one of these days) and her favorite song is "No No" ("They All Surrounded Me" by Eisley). She asks for "No No" every time she sees an iPod. Can't believe what a big girl she is and that she is now officially old enough for nursery.

Oh yeah, and she loved Easter this year:

We love this girl!

Rockin' the Shades

Sky got some new sunglasses this week. She is rockin' them. 

Even upside-down!

BIG News!

Well, the news is out. Cat's out of the bag and all that jazz. We just confirmed it yesterday: I'm pregnant!

Sky is going to be a big sister! But why is this "BIG" news? What's so "BIG" about it?

It's triplets. T.R.I.P.L.E.T.S. 

I mean, we've known I am pregnant for a while now, and I must say I am a fabulous liar telling everyone "I'm not pregnant" all the time, but the whole triplet thing was confirmed yesterday.

Talk about being overwhelmed! I didn't know the meaning of overwhelmed until now. And my parents always called me The Heart Attack Kid!

I honestly don't know what to think at this point. A friend recently told me women lose 6% of their brain during a normal pregnancy. Does this mean I can say goodbye to 18%? Yeah, this statistic is crap. I think she was probably confusing numbers when she told me about that article.

Behold:

Well, anyway, there you have it!

Too bad Mike will have to raise them on his own...