The Hills 4-23-08

Hanging out at O'Aces before I went to the airport - I was sad to leave them :( Move closer!
Justin on the big kid play set - he didn't even want to go near the baby set. Looks like he's not going to use his playset in the backyard much anymore!

Eating his cottage cheese....he is such a big boy! He can eat his yougurt and applesauce by himself too now! He is not always 100% clean when he is done, but he does surprisingly well!


It's been absolutely beautiful out here since I got home! Here is a pic of Quincy yesterday - for those of you who know Quincy, you know that he is normally (always!) at the door whining to come inside. He actually stayed out for almost 5 hours yesterday without whining to come in!!

Chuck Wicks Concert

Okay; I don't like negative stuff on the top of the blog for too long, so I will blog about the concert on Friday night! It was as far from negative as you can get - I had SO much fun!

I think that I had more fun before the concert though! I got to Santa Fe Station pretty early, figured I would play a little blackjack and hang out somewhere new. I went into the Chrome Showroom where the concert was going to be to see where our seats were because there was no seating chart when I booked them. When I walked in, Chuck's drummer Trey said "hi nice lady" and came over and we started talking. I told him I just wanted to see where our seats were and I'd be out of their way. Then he introduced me to the other guys in the band and Chuck's tour manager. They were all getting stuff set up and said to come back in about an hour for sound check if I wanted to. Of course I did! It was really fun; I was the only non-employee in there and they did a lot of songs. It was his first show using ear monitors so they were trying to get them calibrated. I got to meet Chuck and talk to him and the guys for quite awhile while they were fixing one of the feeds (I sound like I know what I'm talking about, huh?). They were all really fun and super nice! Unfortunately I don't have any pics from that becuase I didn't want to be "that" girl. I thought it was nice enough that they let me hang out with them, I didn't want to turn into crazy fan. I was surprised though because I had sent him a message on myspace telling him that I was coming to see him from Illinois and that we were having a mother/daughter date... When I met him and he asked where I was from I told him Illinois and he knew the story! He asked where my mom was and I told him at work still....then after the show, he said to her "you must be the mom who lives here in Vegas". I was impressed that he actually maintains his myspace and not his record label! For those of you who like Country music, I highly recommend his CD!

Our seats turned out to be perfect! We were in the 4th row right in the center. During "Mine All Mine", Chuck came down into the audience and sang right to me! I did let mom take a picture of that :)








Chuck!











"Mine All Mine" - one of my favorite songs!















Great seats!














Jerry his tour manager took this one up really close, but it turned out pretty good!

















We had such a fun date :)

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay; a quick venting post and maybe later I will post about my vacation and some pics of Justin.

Vent #1: I made it home safely last night - I wish I could say the same for my luggage. There were two flights after mine and she said that I should hear from them by 8am with a delivery time for my bags....still no word; I really hope that it will be returned. I had my leopard print jewelry saver with all of my jewelry in there - dumb I know; lesson learned.

Vent #2: Our house in Elgin failed the radon inspection. I was not going to blog that we had a buyer for our house because I didn't want to jinx the sale, but it's getting screwed up anyways. We will now have to pay to install a mitigation system, plus the buyers have about 10 other punch list items. We are telling them that we'll do the radon system, but to go you know where on the other stuff - it's pretty minor anyways (sump pump back up battery dead, attic fan doesn't work - WTF we didn't even know we had an attic fan, they want a hand rail for the bottom steps below the landing to the basement - it's like 3 steps, and some electrical stuff)- and they are getting a fabulous deal on the house to begin with. Please pray that we can come to a fair negotiation and be done with this house! I just feel like they are being pretty petty considering the purchase price. We shall see....

Ugh.

The Hills 4-13-08

Hello! I don't have much time before my computer battery dies, so I am just going to leave you with a couple of videos and pictures! We had a fun weekend - Friday was the last Rivermen game...they were up 2-0 and lost 5-2. Hopefully they pick up some talent before next year. Could be worse....we could be Detroit Tiger fans :) J/K!

Saturday Katie and Josh brough over pasta, garlic bread and wine - we had a FANTASTIC dinner!!! It was fun to hang out with them again; it's been too long! Now that they will be living in Metamora, we will be together a lot I am sure!

Today we just hung out and chilled. It was a nice relaxing weekend. I leave on Thursday morning to go out to Vegas - mom and I are going to a Chuck Wicks concert on Friday. It's just a quick 3 day trip...Justin is staying in Illinois because I am flying out of Midway. 2 hours in the car plus a 4 hour flight at bad times would not make for a happy baby! Plus some mother/daughter time will be great - we have not had that since I was pregnant with Justin (laying in the ghetto pool in our backyard!) :)

Happy Belated Birthday Uncle Ryan!!!

Sorry this is a couple of days late!!! We love you!

Go Samantha :)

Samantha Fox (our friends Dave & Stacy's daughter) is quite the little star and was on CBS news this week! She is great friends with Abbey Curran who is Miss Iowa in the Miss USA paegent tonight - she is the first contestant with a disability to be in the competition! Samantha is also going to be in People magazine this week... We are so proud of you Samantha! You can do anything you put your mind to :) With all of your TV spots your Dad is going to need a new Tivo - you're filling it up!

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4006074n

bummer...

We were all really excited for Justin's first swimming lesson tonight! We got there about 15 minutes early and Justin and I played in the zero depth pool with the waterfalls and stuff - then at 6:30pm we went over to the therapy pool where they do the water babies to find out that it's cancelled because they just saw lightning outside :( It's big picture windows that look over the water so they had to close the whole pool. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of an indoor pool??? Oh well. I will hopefully get pics at our class on Thursday!

The Hills 4/6/08

Eating Jello with Grandma Brooks
Going on our first bike ride! He LOVED it :)











We found a nice little park that is only about 1/2 mile from our house - we had so much fun!

Yesterday Rob, Justin and I went out in the front yard to cut out overgrown shrubs, etc and the neighbors came over to play with Justin - it was a huge help and Justin had a lot of fun with them.








Ready to go play outside Sunday morning!

Love from Sparta, WI

Hello! I miss my husband and my baby. I am in WI for a training session for work. I can't really complain because I only have to travel out of town maybe a few times a year. It was really hard this time though because as I was crossing the WI/IL border I got a call from daycare that Justin was sick. My first thought was that he had the strep that I had last week. Rob took him to the doctor and he has an ear infection. I don't know if he lost the tube again or not becuase Justin would not cooperate enough for him to see. Thankfully Grandma Brooks was able to drop everything and come to GT Hills to help Rob out so he didn't have to take the rest of the week off of work....we really appreciate it!

I feel horrible not being home to take care of my sick baby. It is one of the worst feelings in the world. I know that my job has a lot of "pros" as far as the flexibility of being a mom, but the timing of this one is horrible. I hope Justin still loves me when I get home! If not, I will take him to a hockey game and life will be better again :) Speaking of which, there are only 3 more games! Uh-oh...hope he likes the Chiefs baseball games as much as hot-key!

Pics later this week when I get home to take some! Hope all is well with everyone!

Tuesday Evening in the Hills

Justin handed Rob the camera and said "picture", so Rob pointed it at him and he smiled pretty :) Every night we get his book of prayers that he got from Jacobs last year for Easter - he folds his hands and we read prayers. He's kind of folding them here too...I will have Rob try to get a video of our night prayers one of these days; it's so cute!













Tonight we went to visit the Wisley family and meet Beila. She is 8 days old and absolutely perfect! Justin was not too interested in her, he played with Samantha the whole time. I held her for almost 2 hours and didn't want to put her down! I miss the sounds and smells of a newborn...I think I might want one! Beila was 7 lb 2 oz, but she is down to 6 lb 5 oz I think? She's so tiny :)








I have the fever too AJ! No I am not already pregnant; we had just eaten Olive Garden for dinner and i have a full belly!















Dave and his little angel :)