Dreary Day

Just a grey, blecky day here. And of course I had to go out in it today because I had an eye appt this afternoon. The good news there is that I didn't need new glasses. My prescription barely changed in the last two years. Yay!

I've been working from home one day a week for about a year now and my boss just approved me to work another one from home. I guess her boss wasn't too thrilled about it but was willing to give it a try. He's from the old school where he thinks everyone should be in the office all the time. I can do just about everything I need to from home and most meetings I attend are by conference call so the need to be physically in the office is minimal. Maybe one of these days he'll get more telecommuting friendly but for now I'll be happy with the two days.

Evaluation Report

I forgot to update about the meeting we had last week to go over Bekah's evaluation. The report said what we already knew...that her developmental levels other than speech were where they should be or above level. She was 26 months when she was evaluated and all her scores came in 28 months - 33 months. This was for cognitive, social/emotional, adaptive/self help, gross motor and fine motor skills. Her speech evaluation showed her at a 20 month level (instead of 26) which just barely qualifies her for their program. They're going to come to house twice a month to work with her and also to show us things we can do with her during the times they aren't here. I'm still totally impressed with how quickly she can pick up sign language and she now has quite few that she uses regularly like more, please, thank you, mess, shoes, coat, milk and drink.

We went to my parents yesterday to celebrate my dad's and Kathy's birthday. It was a nice visit although the boys/guys spent most of time in front of the tv watching the Ravens game. LOL Afterwards, mom took Connor to go see Eragon. Alex had seen it with his youth group on Saturday and really enjoyed it. Kenzie was so upset that Connor got to go to the movies with mom. Never mind that Saturday afternoon, she'd gone to birthday sleepover party that also included going to Build a Bear workshop, getting smoothies and pizza and then going out to Fisherman's Restaurant for dinner.

I tried doing some work today but it didn't go very well as Kearsyn was a complete grump today. I'm not sure what was up with her but she sure wasn't happy. It was also a very late night last so that didn't help things any. It was beautiful outside today so we took outside for a little while. Andy swung with her on the swing while I jumped on on the trampoline. I'm going to be so sore tomorrow...as Andy so kindly said, I'm no spring chicken anymore. LOL Oh and speaking of the trampoline, the younger kids have been banned from it after Tyler tried to hang himself on the top of the enclosure net. He got two huge scrapes on the underside of his chin around his neck where he flew up and got his neck on the top of the netting that is supposed to keep him in the trampoline. Guess that only works if you aren't trying to jump higher than the netting which is what Kenzie and Tyler were trying to do.

Tonight we went to the Christmas party for Alex's youth group which was at the youth group leaders house. What a gorgeous house it was too. He made half the house from trees that he'd cut down from his own property. How cool is that? The walls, flooring and ceiling were left the natural wood that had been made into planks (no bark on it) and he had a loft area with a cool spiral staircase. I know Andy and Alex are hoping to get invited over when the weather gets warmer (that sounds funny since it was 68 degrees today) to shoot paintballs since the guy owns 15 acres of wooded land. How fun! The kids did a huge Yankee Trader game and it was such a hoot watching them pick a present and them steal presents from each other. The biggest kid there ended up with a girls bag with lotion in it. It was hilarious! The gift Alex unwrapped was a great hot chocolate set but someone eventually stole that from him. He ended up having to go back to the pile and unwrapped a big box of bubblegum which he was just as happy with and no one tried to steal. The hot gifts of the night were a lava lamp and the hot chocolate set. The kids got really into it. Bekah made a new friend and it was fun watching them "playing" cards and putting out poker chips. They sure start young. LOL

On Our Way

I called our insurance company Wednesday and had the kids pcp changed to the new dr, so effective 12/13 they are now patients of Dr K. I figured since insurance thought they were his patients, I'd better drop off the registration paperwork at his office so I ran over after dinner to turn that in...plus it gave me a chance to get a look at the office. What a nice trip that was, 5 minutes and I was there. I got to say hello to Dr K. as he was passing through the office on his way to see a patient. I had a nice chat with the office manager while turning in the papers and filling out another form for her so now they are officially patients there. So far so good. Let's hope it stays that way when we actually have our first appt in February. I was talking to the office manager about the shots given during the 4 month visit and Kearsyn will be getting another 4 shots and an oral vaccine and then at 6 months, she gets another 4 shots and an oral vaccine. Good grief...doesn't that seem like an awful lot of shots for someone so young? So far she's had 9 shots and an oral, so by the time she's 6 months she'll have had 17 shots and 3 orals.

Alex is very excited about tomorrow as he gets to go see Eragon with his youth group. Connor, on the other hand, isn't quite as excited because he wants to go as well but he doesn't know that his mommom is planning on taking him to see it. She's not sure she can do it this weekend...but one day soon she will. Kenzie is going to a sleepover birthday party tomorrow so she's looking forward to that. She's going to be eating at a nice restaurant...I'm kind of jealous cause she'll be eating better tomorrow than we will. LOL Wednesday is my dad's birthday, so we are all going to my parents on Sunday to celebrate. My sister and her DH are coming over so it should be a nice time.

So far I've worked 5 out of my 8 makeup days for work. I was able to redo two of the reports so that my boss could review them over the weekend...he loves to work on the weekend. The rest of us hate it because we know come Monday that there will always be a list of things for us to do. I only have 3 more days to make up and I'll be glad when they are done. I'll work Monday, Wednesday and Thursday next week and then I'll be done working until the new year. Of course, that means I'll actually have to start going back into the office on 1/2/07...wow, hard to believe it almost the new year...which I'm so not looking forward to...but I know everyone there is. ;)

Tailgate Repair

The tailgate panel on my car has been falling off for I don't know how long because the clips at the top that are supposed to hold it to the metal frame had broken. It used to be one was broken which was okay because there were still three others to hold it in place. One by one they've all broken until the panel was hanging loosely from the top. I finally bought a repair kit the other week and decided to replace the clips today. Simple enough to pop out the broken clips and pop in the new ones, right? Of course not! The holes that the top clips go into had also broken so even with new clips, the panel still wouldn't stayattached to the frame. The repair kit I got had a way to repair these holes as well but it entailed taking the whole panel off, placing metal brackets over the old holes, screwing those brackets into place, replacing all the clips...top and bottom...and then finally attaching the panel to the frame again. I've included pics of the instructions that came with the repair kit (not the best pics since I was teying to take them one handed while holding the baby). They may look simple enough but it was a pita to actually do. And let me tell, those self drilling screws leave alot to be desired. But I'm happy to report that I was able to get it repaired and my tailgate panel is nice and snug on the frame again. Yay!

On the work front, I received a phone call phone from my boss's boss today (he thinks I actually work for him and not my boss and who's going to argue with him since he's the VP of the department. LOL) He was very excited to know that I was available for work again and had a list of things for me to do. I also had a coworker call me yesterday wanting me to help her redo a report so I'm not lacking for things to do while home. Now I just need to get my brain out of baby mode and back into work mode which isn't the easiest thing to do.

I had an ortho appt today which has resulted in me wearing my retainer full time again. I've been complaining about a couple of teeth still touching and my bite feeling off by the end of the day since my braces came off so he's thinking that my teeth are still trying to shift. So now instead of wearing my retainer just at night now I get to wear it full time for the next three at which point he'll reevaluate how things are going. I don't really have an issue with wearing it full time cause after all the money I spent getting my teeth straightened, I certainly want them to stay that way.

It sure has gotten windy here today. We have a huge front going through which is bringing in cold weather. Once this front gets past it' supposed to get somewhat nice again. I just looked at weatherbug and we currently have winds blowing at 20+ mph and we had a 41+ mph gust at some point today. I'm glad we don't have anything out there that can blow around although I hate to think about what this wind is doing to our poor Christmas lights.

Pleasantly Surprised

Kearsyn didn't do as bad last night as I feared. She was only up once and went right back to sleep after eating. She's feeling much better today, thank goodness.

I received a phone call from work this morning and ended up spending the majority of the afternoon and evening logged into work trying to fix a programming problem. I finally figured out what was wrong with one of the files but I'll have to log back in tomorrow to fix the other file. I was too tired at that point to do more. This actually helps me because I was going to be short on leave and working some from home help me be able to stay off until after the new year without taking unpaid leave, which we can't afford for me to do.

The kids had their piano practice today and came home with a surprise. I mentioned in an earlier post that on Friday they played with their teacher a little at the store he was playing in. Well, the store gave each one of the kids $5 for playing there. How nice is that?

Nothing much else happening here...Taylor had Secret Garden today and we forgot to take the van in to get the oil changed. Oops! We'll try to remember to drop it off tomorrow.

A Quiet Day at Home

It was wonderful waking up this morning when I wanted to...not having to worry about being up at the crack of dawn, running around to get a shower, get dressed, get my lunch together and then making the hour drive to work. I was still up at 5 though, my normal waking time, so I got up and bopped around the boards for a little bit then went back to bed. How nice that was! Guess it'll take a little while for my internal clock to readjust to not needing to be up that early. I was able to get a number of things done while logged in to work today although I am at a slight disadvantage since all my notes are at work. If I had planned this better I would have grabbed them before I left work on Tuesday. LOL Not to mention straightening up my desk. What a mess that was! When I work on a report I usually spread all the papers I'm using out on my desk so I can refer easily from one to the other. Sometimes when I leave in the evening, it's not worth putting them all back together in the folder just to pull them all back out in the morning. And that's exactly what I'd done when I left work Tuesday...left them spread out all over my desk. Luckily I have a nice coworker who straightened my desk of for me. =)

I made one short trip out of the house today to get the emissions test done on my car...thought I had another week to get it done but I was mistaken. While I was out, I also stopped by the post office to mail a mini rr and a finishers too piece since I couldn't hand deliver them while at Hershey like I had planned to today. I was able to talk to Jo Anna yesterday and it sounded like they were having a wonderful time up there...and buying lots of stitchy stuff.

A very nice friend brought dinner over for us tonight. How sweet was that? She wanted to do something for us after hearing about what's been going on with the munchkin. The dinner was a delicious noodle casserole and much to my DH's surprise, all the kids actually liked it. They usually grumble about sauce being on noodles...some like, some don't...but they all liked the dish tonight. There was also yummy rolls, applesauce, milk, butter and cookies. A complete meal. And there are even leftovers, so we have lunch for tomorrow. =)

Tomorrow is another milestone for our chickie eggs...they get to be taken out of their rockers in preparation of them hopefully starting to hatch on Monday. I recandled all the eggs so that we could try to remove any empty eggs. Wow, what a difference a week makes...most of the eggs are completely black now which should mean that there is a chickie in there. Even most of our questionable eggs are looking good. So the numbers now look like 17 with chickies in them and 5 that are empty. Now to wait and see how many of the 17 actually hatch.

I've also been getting some stitching in. I decided Tuesday night, while having all the contractions, that I needed something mindless to work on so I started Tanya's Halloween Gameboard Mystery Stitch A Long. I figured I could handle stitching a bunch of boxes in one color. LOL I'm almost done with the orange boxes...only two more rows to go then I can switch to the black ones.