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Friday, November 21, 2008

Update

I have officially survived my first trimester!!! This is a GOOD thing. Hopefully I can stop puking soon and my odds of miscarriage have dropped significantly. Also I've gotten back all of my early screening test results for Downs, Trisomy 18 & 13, cystic fibrosis and a bunch of other stuff and they're all NEGATIVE *big sigh of relief*. And I should hopefully find out the sex of the baby around Christmas time! Whoop!

So thats what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving!

Friday, November 7, 2008

I'm Pregnant!

For all those who haven't caught on yet or simply want more details:

I'm PREGNANT!!!!

Yes, we did this on purpose so you can congratulate us.

I'm 11 weeks along as of now, which is 4 weeks further along than I thought I was! lol. I had my first ultrasound Weds. We went in there expecting to see a little raspberry with a heart beat and up on the monitor was BABY! And I'm going "WOW......." and my ultrasound tech goes "How far along did you say you were?" and I told her "Seven weeks and some change." Her response: "Yeah, thats wrong." So after measuring everything they determined that I was 2 days shy of eleven weeks pregnant. 

Personally this completely rocks because it makes my due date May 29th instead of June 21st so that is that much less Arizona summer that I'll have to be big pregnant for. The doc said the baby looks great and had a good strong heart beat. Personally it was really surreal to see the kid on the monitor. I've been there when other people have had OB ultrasounds and its always amazing but it was the first time the little want thing was pointed at ME. Such an amazing feeling. The other reason that I'm thrilled is that this means I'm almost through the first trimester so hopefully I can stop puking soon. 

The puking is what tipped me off about the pregnancy though. Cuz like 2 months ago I got a kidney infection and then I got better except that I stayed really pukey and was incredibly fatigued. SO I had a sneaking feelings might have actually worked like they teach you they do in health class so I took a pregnancy test and it was like INSTANTLY positive. So I went and told Adam and we both did the happy dance and now here we are!

And now I want a pickle.....

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Guess what!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

More kitten pics!

And to start you off this lovely afternoon we have a couple shots of the men in my life. Aren't they cute??!


As you can see here Indy likes to give kisses. Its sweet when its not 3 am and you're being awoken by a sand paper tongue attempting to lick your whole face. 

And here we have Violet in one of her many attempts to kill my computer. Note that she's about to shut it down just by walking across the key board. She is RATHER talented at managing to hit the most "ACK!!"-worthy keys possible. 

And this is one of the kitten's favorite places to play. We bought this new laundry hamper for the master bedroom and if they're not attacking each other inside of it, one is out side and one is inside trying to get each other through the fabric. Its pretty funny. 

And this last pic isn't one of my babies but its in honor of their latest trip to the vet. They are both clingers- Indy especially. He likes to ride on your shoulder around the house anyways so taking them to the vet means you have to remove him from my shoulder with a crowbar every time the vet wants a closer look at him. Especially after the FIRST time she violated him with a thermometer. 


I've also determined that I don't have kittens. I have Furkeys. Thats short for furry turkey, b/c they are the biggest WEENIES! If I want to have a chance of eating something without them wanting to try to steal it I have to eat at the kitchen table and even that isn't always safe anymore. Indy is BY FAR the worst. He is Mr. Furkey. With Violet you tell her no and she backs off. You might have to once a week nail her with a squirt gun when she gets obnoxious but you have to nail Indy REPEATEDLY with a squirt gun before he'll back off! Its like he can't believe you really mean HIM.  

And he's such a weenie about it, he comes up and rubs against you and purrs like a freight train and tries to shove his face into the middle of what ever you have! And if you catch him in the act- like you walk in the room and he's face first into something he shouldn't be and you yell "NO!" and you can clap your hands, or come running, or hiss or yell or whatever, and he'll just glance at you and then try to shove as much in his face as he possibly can before you grab him!! Its like "I'm in for it so I might as well get as much as I can while the gettin' is still good!"

Weenies I tell you! 

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Blah.... Blah.... Blah....

Hi Folks!

So you haven't heard from us in forever because, well initially it was laziness/busyness/work but most recently (aka the last week) I've been sick. It was no fun. I got a VIRAL kidney infection. How crappy is that?? I can't even take antibiotics to kill it. Of course, they gave me antibiotics initially while they were testing to determine what exactly was making me sick and yeah those made life MUCH worse. I've never reacted that bad to an antibiotic before. Like the whole list of "common side effects" yeah I had them. The only things I didn't have (gratefully) were the ones under "if you have the following side effects please contact your doctor immediately and seek immediate medical attention". 

Either way the last week as been unpleasant. But at least I can sit up now, and think straight, and as long as I don't try anything more impressive than walking to the kitchen and back for more water I don't wanna puke. The upside is that this level of boredom has led me to attempt knitting once again. 

Mind you I've been crocheting since my grandma taught me when I was 12 and I can do that with my eye's closed (literally). But I got VERY BRIEFLY taught how to knit on my mission (in a car ride to a church meeting) and I've only attempted it about a half dozen times and NEVER finished anything. Mostly b/c knitting in a lot of ways is WAYYYYY more time consuming than crochet. I crochet 10 stitches and dang you've got something to show for it. Ten knit stitches? Yeah not NEARLY as impressive. And MUCH MUCH more difficult (at least I think so b/c I have to pay CLOSE attention to my knitting and my crocheting I can do while I read a book/watch tv). 

Well in my illness I was looking at the free craft patterns on Joann's website (the fabric store) and they had a really gorgeous wrap thing that was knit and promised to be a weekend project and use only one skein of yarn. So I'm trying it. So far I've determined that the one skein bit is b/c this is one of the biggest frickin' skeins I've ever seen! And the directions given for free off the website are NOT accurate.... but I did manage to finagle out how to do it. So I managed to get a couple inches, figure out the pattern and have now ripped out the whole thing and am starting over due to a STAGGERING number of mistakes. But I have hope that if I try again I'll get it right this time (or at least not wrong enough it will unravel or anybody will be able to TELL that its screwed up). 

The kittens are doing well. They scared me a bit this week - Tues Indy slept most of the day, didn't beg for my food like he usually does and then puked twice that night. Then Weds Indy was perking up by the afternoon but now Violet slept all day and puked once. Today they're both doing okay and we're just VERY watchful. They have an appointment with the vet to get their next round of shots tomorrow so hopefully that will go well. But I just have no idea what could have made them sick. They don't hardly get any people food (maybe a little tiny bite of tuna or cracker - yes they eat crackers, in fact thus far I haven't found anything they won't try to eat), they're indoor only kitties and I hadn't changed their food or nothing. So I have no clue what they got into or caught that made them sick. 

But anyways I'm rambling. Can you tell I'm bored?


Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Just so you know

Hi Folks,

Sorry for being a slacker and not posting forever. Its been busy. 

Good news:

1. My family survived Hurricane Ike!!! Thanks to their excellent preparations they really didn't fare too badly. They put plywood over the windows, had a generator to keep the fridge, freezer and ONE fan going, had a couple hundred gallons of water and lots of food. They were out of power for a little over two days, they had some branches out of the trees and the like but were otherwise VERY blessed and they're okay. They were VERY grateful for the generator so at least they could have COLD beverages and fresh food. They even got their land line working today and cell phone reception is getting back to normal. 

2. Adam got the time off work so we get to go visit my folks for Thanksgiving!!! YES! WHOOP! I am SO excited! AND we're hoping to go to the Renaissance Festival the day after Thanksgiving so that will ROCK. The Texas Renaissance Festival is the largest in the nation!

3. The kittens are doing GREAT! They just had a trip to the vet to get their first round of shots and they're now up to weight (they used to be way underweight) and growing like mad! They've more than doubled their weight since we got them! And Gabby and the kittens are getting along MUCH better now. 

4. The kitchen sink now drains. Although I may never call my home warranty again. I decided to give them a shot since they were 20 bucks cheaper than the other plumber I would call (one of my friends from church - his uncle is a plumber and comes highly recommended by like half the congregation). Well, the home warranty people can't come out until today (the sink clogged on SATURDAY), which probably should have been my first warning. So he shows up does his thing and then declares that he can't get his snake any further than 6 foot down and that I have old cast iron drain pipes and they corrode and collapse when they get old so that will have to be ripped out and replaced. Oh and the home warranty doesn't cover that and it will be a couple grand and depending on where my drain lines run it might involve jackhammering up my foundation. If I'm lucky I'll only have to rip up the back porch. In the mean time I'm running with a drain line smaller than a pencil, don't run ANYTHING other than water through there. I still have standing water in my dish washer when he leaves but water drains okay from the sink.

So after he left and I managed to keep from puking at the thought of having to tear my house apart I decided to call my friend's uncle. He said he'd be there in 30 minutes (I'm already loving this guy). So he's here in less than 30 minutes,  goes in there and does his thing, comes back out. My sink is draining fine, my dishwasher is drained. He says he got his snake down there 15 feet. The wonder plumber says that its a little tight but it's draining just fine and there's no need to replace anything until such time as he can't get his snake down there (which is not today!). 

So lesson learned: home warranty is a bunch of weenies. I called them and spoke to a supervisor to place a complaint, they say they haven't gotten the report back from the contractor yet so they can't say or do anything and they're saying that they can't give me a refund on my money (which I think I should get on account of them not doing jack crap and lying to me) b/c thats the flat charge for coming out to my house. At this point I'd like to shoot them with a bazooka. 

But at least I can wash dishes again which means my sink won't smell forever which is exciting. 


Monday, September 8, 2008

More BRAGGING!!!

And THIS little cutie is Emily's little sister Leah! Is she not one of the most BEAUTIFUL babies you've ever seen!!! Look at those BIG blue eyes! This first shot is her in her bouncy seat. She LOVES this thing. When she was little bitty this was one of the only places you could get her to sleep in.


She's such a happy baby! She even likes her car seat!


And this is her 'frimmin' suit. Liz has a little kiddie pool in the back yard where she takes Emily and Leah to swim. They LOVE it!


And here's Mom and Dad with Leah! Aren't they all cute!

Now this photo cracks me up. Apparently Leah was VERY disturbed by the sight of Emily tearing into wrapping paper opening presents on her birthday. Well, Beth thought the face was just too funny so she called her name and snapped a picture just in time to catch this rather disturbed expression.


I just need to BRAG!

So I have two of the cutest nieces in the known universe! So they're each getting a picture post of the latest shots of cuteness!

This is my niece Emily! She is 3 years old and she is also visually impaired. But that doesn't stop her from climbing the furniture and getting herself in the STRANGEST positions! This one is her hanging between the couch and the coffee table at my mom's house. Note the glass in her hand. She ALWAYS has to have something in one of her hands. This means she manages to do all of this ONE HANDED. What can I say? She's talented!




This was her graduation photo from ECI (Early Childhood Intervention - a group that provides therapeutic support for disabled children in their homes). She was NOT happy about the hat (hence why Louis is holding her hand down in the photo). 

And here are a couple more pics of her being her cute goofy little self! Isn't she BEAUTIFUL???




Thursday, August 28, 2008

Meet the Kittens!

So Adam's Uncle is an attorney and most unusually runs a kitty cat rescue out of his law office. Well, one of their clients found these two 4 week old kittens at one of their construction sites, they'd been abandoned. Well, they need a bit more care than they can do easily so I have offered to foster them. I haven't decided if we will keep them or not. The cool thing about fostering is that it leaves me free to help other kitties in the future. Right now they're called Salt and Pepper but that may change. We'll see. I believe the white one is a boy and the dark one is a girl. Right now they live in a very large dog kennel when not being loved on. 





Its very sad- someone broke BOTH of their tails. Pepper's break is just a little kink towards the end of her tail but Salt's tail is like nothing I've ever seen. Its like a U-bend. The poor thing. But the markings on his head crack me up. Its like he's got a toupee. 

Gabby!

So for those of you who might not know we adopted a kitty cat the first week of March this year. Her name is Gabby and she is WONDERFUL. But since she's a rescue kitty and she's a long hair cat, her fur was all matted when she was rescued and she had to be shaved. So she had one funky hair cut when we got her. So I've decided to do a picture post of her progress thus far. The first two pics are the day she came home. The little blue t-shirt is b/c she got cold without her fur. 


This was the day she took her t-shirt off. Since she didn't shiver or nothin' I just left it off. 


You can see here she's finally starting to look more orange and less pink/white. And getting some tufts of hair. Its goofy - she got her belly fur FIRST and then seemed to grow in tufts from front to back. 

Last but not least this is from this evening. She has STRIPES! WOW....



Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Shower Saga

So in our master bathroom there is no tub only a floor to ceiling glass shower stall. Right now there are only 2 things I can say about it that are positive:

1. The water pressure out of the shower head is pretty good.

2. The steam feature (it is also a mini steam room) will come in handy come the cold and flu season. 

So our home inspector noted that the water went from cold to hot to cold. We requested that the sellers have a licensed plumber come out and fix it. They agreed. Our realtor stuck his arm in the shower during our final walk through and said that the water got warm. Like an idiot I took his word for it and didn't investigate further. 

Well he's right- it does get warm - IF it is the first thing of the day to be used. B/c first you get the cold water that has been sitting in the air conditioned pipe, then you get the warm water thats been sitting in the pipe outside, then it goes back to cold and it STAYS THERE. 

So for the first 2.5 weeks of our home ownership the only way to take a shower and not catch a chill was to turn the steam on and jump in and out of the cold water. I'm sure there is a spa somewhere that will tell you thats healthy but its NOT what I want when I'm tired and want to relax. The reason we don't just use the hall bath is:

A. There's no shower bar in there and shower bars are surprisingly expensive and since we just bought a house we're a tad broke right now. 

B. Right now the cat box is in the hall bath tub b/c its out of the way and that way humans can actually use that toilet with out having to straddle a litter box. 


So upon realizing the shower was NOT repaired I called my realtor, who called the sellers realtor who gave me the name and number of the plumber who was supposed to fix the problem. So I talk to this guy and he sounds very nice and apologizes and says that the hot water was off when they were testing so they just replaced the valve seals and didn't check for temperature. He say's they'll be there Weds (LAST Weds) at 9:30 am to fix it. 

Wednesday at 9:10 am he calls. The last call of the day on Tues turned out to be major and they have to go back this morning. He'll call me around 1-2 pm and give me an update but they will definitely fix my shower by 6 pm tonight. 

5 pm Weds. No call. I call him and get voice mail and leave a message.

I call Thurs, leave message. 

I call Friday, voicemail is now full. I call my realtor and start screaming. I also start hunting for this guy and his business online- he's no where to be found. His company can't be found with any search engine and the only listed number under the same name isn't him (allegedly)....

Saturday, the phone now goes direct to voice mail, which is still full. 

Sunday night he calls me back. Apologizes profusely. Says he went out of town and assigned me to one of his lackeys who apparently flaked out. Swears he will be at my house personally Monday morning at 9:30 am. 

Monday, he's here at 9:10. Jumps right in. Works for nearly two hours at which time he calls me into the bathroom to present to me hot water coming out of my shower. SWEET. I ask him what was wrong- he explained that one of the post needed to be cleaned so the hot water valve was getting stuck shut. He cleaned the post and voila. 

The catch: He tells me that my valve is a $1000 piece but that its so old they don't make replacement parts for it and that its been re-vamped so many times that there's no more brass in the thing to sand down so the next time it dies it will have to be replaced. He also says that the reason its dripping after shutting off is b/c the shower head collects water and it should shut off (or thats what the guy who replaced all the seals told him). I buy it b/c yeah it does drip for a bit and then stop.

Well now it drips constantly. Nice RAPID drip too. Hasn't stopped yet. I've even fiddled with the handle. I called and left a message with his voicemail today about it. He hasn't called me back.

So this evening I go to step into my long awaited luxurious warm shower....... to discover that yes the water does get hot now. In fact it gets scalding. It also gets ice cold. It does NOT get anything in between. So instead of my lovely warm shower I got alternating blasts of hot and cold as I struggled to rinse my hair in the 2 second intervals of warm water between the boiling and the freezing. 

WOW. I am SO AMAZINGLY not happy right now. I'm going to raise holy heck first thing tomorrow morning b/c I am NO HAPPY RIGHT NOW. 

Thursday, August 14, 2008

They say having children opens your eyes. Well, one of my nieces is severely visually impaired. She is about to turn 3 and as far as we know she can see some bright lights and possibly colors. Every day she opens my eyes to a part of the world I knew virtually nothing about. 

When we first found out she was blind, my initial reaction was something along the lines of "Well that sucks but we can deal with that. After all mom and I are half deaf." I had NO CLUE just how much MORE impaired a blind child is than a deaf child. And more than that - I had no clue just how completely screwed up the world of VI child support is (VI = visually impaired).

For starters: in the USA there are no VI specific speech therapist. They just don't exist. And ALOT of the techniques you use on a sighted child to teach speech DON'T WORK on a VI kid. There are almost NO TOYS for a blind child. She needs things that have cool textures and make noise, and move and flash bright lights. Things that just sit there or you look at are boring. Do you know how few toys there are out there that fall into that category for kids past the 1-2 year mark?

OH! and get this: My niece is blind but otherwise she has no other impairments. She is developmentally delayed but that is b/c she's VI, not b/c of any sort of mental shortcomings. So prior to age 3, all of her various therapists have come to my sister's home to work with my niece. Well, as of her third birthday she has to start attending the local elementary school to receive services. 

As part of her intake evaluation to start at the school they administered an IQ test. Well based on the results of this test the school wanted to label my niece as mental retarded. Needless to say the family and her previous therapists were outraged. The measure used to determine her IQ used questions like "Can she interpret facial expressions?" and "If you throw a ball at her can she catch it?" which have ABSOLUTELY no bearing on the intelligence of a BLIND child. Can you believe it?? 

My brilliant sister was able to sway the panel in her meeting today by asking the person who was arguing for the MR (mentally retarded) diagnosis  to: 

"Please close your eyes. Okay, thank you. Now I'm making a facial expression at you. Can you tell me what the expression means? Now I'm going to throw a ball at you. Catch it. Oh, I'm sorry you were unable to do either of those tasks, I'm afraid we can't ignore your low score. You're now mentally retarded." 

Some how that managed to get the point across.  

I can't decide which all of this makes me want to do more- hit a whole bunch of people upside the head with a clue-by-four, become a lawyer so I can sue their hindquarters into providing the same caliber of services they do for non-visually-impaired children, go into politics so I can help revamp the process to make it easier for these people to get the help they need, continue in psychology and specialize in research on therapies and implications of disabilities on development and hope I can learn stuff there to help. 

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

I almost forgot

I need to give kudos to Allie Brown for her AMAZING layouts! There are so many gorgeous ones to chose from for FREE so I might just be changing the background on a regular basis. 

Check her out: http://alliebrownslayouts.blogspot.com/

Painting the Office


So the wonderful guys that helped us move stacked all of our book boxes in the office on the wall where the book cases need to go. So after a couple days of shifting the towers of boxes and getting all the book cases in place I took a minute to take a breather before I started unpacking the book boxes. Thats when I realized it- If I EVER want to paint this room- I have to paint it NOW, before I unpack all the boxes. So we rearranged the room - AGAIN - and painted the two walls that the book cases will go on. Then we'll move everything back and unpack the boxes and then we'll be able to paint the OTHER two walls. So yeah. Progress. 

Of course the largest wall in the office is painted brick. I've never painted brick before. After yesterday I'm not sure I ever want to paint brick again.... This is a pic of me and my fearless friend Rebecca who helped me paint the brick-wall-o-doom. Note that I am covered in paint and she's painting with a baby (don't worry its non-toxic low odor latex paint) and she's spotless. Don't ask me how she does it. 

For those who's monitors may be off the wall color is robins egg blue. The trim got painted bright white today!

Welcome!

Hi Folks!

So I've decided with the purchase of our new home that the Flei Family needs a FAMILY blog. Adam and I both have individual blogs that get used more or less occasionally, but I wanted something for both of us that is directed at our family and friends (read: I want an easy way to post pictures for my Mommy). 

So here it is! Flei Paper (pronounced Fly Paper) is now here! We'll see how well we keep it updated.