Blue

Introducing the newest member of our family... Blue the Beta Fish!  We picked him out at the pet store today.  When we were looking at all the fish he pointed at the one he wanted and said "So cute fish" so blue came home with us.

Blue eats beta fish food which Trevor calls "balls" because they are little round pellets.  And when we feed blue he says "Blue play ball" because Blue has a hard time sometime actually fitting the pellets in his mouth so he most times bounces it off his "nose" (umm what do you call it?) a few times before eating it.  Lately I've been chopping them in half so he can eat them easier.  Gee, I have a spoiled fish. 

Every morning when he gets up Trevor says over and over, "Say hi Blue, Say hi Fish."  Jayden likes to watch him and points at him and says "Zis" and acts like she wants to touch the tank but when I put her too close to him she whines and leans back.  She doesn't want to get too close.

It's real life

So this is a little fun blog fest hosted by Jessica. She's a most awesome chick who I went to school with. Hi Jessica! ~Waves~

Ok so here's my real life, and I did no prepping either. Obviously! Oh and don't mind the typos, spelling and gramar errors. It's late, I have a migrane, and I'm really really tired. Being that it's "real life" and all, I didn't figure you all would mind!

Here's our fridge. Yup it's as dingy as it looks in the pictures. A new fridge is on my "need" list. As I ~need~ to not have to look at it's uglinessness any longer. It served us well. I think we paid like $50 for it when we bought our house 4 years ago. Among many things are: misc. pictures, at Trevor magnet with no picture of Trevor in it, daycare "care" sheets for the day, my "I can be reached at _____ " from when I went to Arizona for work in April. What's on top, who knows, I really don't care to find out.

Though chaos may reign in most of our house, my closets are fairly well organized. Except for the entry closet by my front door. That one is REALLY bad. I have an extreme lack of closet space. The one in our bedroom is barely big enough for Travis, my closet is in Jayden's room. Plus my "craft" closet is in her bedroom. Here clothes currently are in what used to be my fabric and craft cabinets in her room. I'm in trouble when she needs a real closet. I think at that time we'll probably have to move. This is my craft closet in Jayden's room. It's just a tiny little closet, too small really to be a clothes closet. My kitchen sink at the current moment is kinda nasty. Keep in mind with the flooding last week I worked every day and a ton of hours. Combined with the fact that we were to limit water usage. Ok so I'm making excuses. But darnit I'm tired! Of course next to the sink is my favoritest cleaning product, very vinegar spray.

The back of the toilet being a flat surface is a handy little catch all for all sorts of things. At the current moment it is home to my flat iron, hair dryer, the bathroom night light with burnt out bulb, and The Toddler's Busy Book. Oh yeah, don't forget the roll of toilet paper because we're both too lazy to put it on the holder, plus you'd throw out your shoulder trying to reach it if it were mounted on the wall. Last but not least is another bottle of vinegar spray. If you happen to use my toilet, please remember to hold the handle down while you flush because it doesn't flush properly if you don't. Oh, and you might even have to do this 2 or 3 times to actually empty the bowl. A new toilet is also on my ~need~ list.

Here's my "Kitty-toes" Me-ow! My favorite work shoes were at one point uber comfy. I don't know why comfy-ness in shoes wears out so quickly. I wish I could somehow insert the soles of my crocs in my work shoes. Alas, I can't wear crocs to work. It's specifically forbidden in our dress code. These shoes are on my ~need~ list. They have a Pillow Top™ Comfort footbed, sounds comfy right? My favorite everywhere-but-work shoes are fantastic, I'm a barefoot kinda gal and these things the closest to being barefoot without violating the "no shirt, no shoes, no service" rule most establishments seem to have. They were $1 at the Dollar Tree last summer. If I would have know how much I'd love them I would have bought 10 pairs! Don't mind the chipped toenail polish. I don't know what happened to them, I painted them last night! Damn cheap toenail polish (3/$1 at target dollar section what a bargain! ~sheesh~

I suppose currently my favorite room in my house is our office. Well it's where I spend alot of time these days trying to scrapbook (ok organize scrapbook stuff.) Peaceful retreat? Not really, it's too cluttered. I need to work on that. My peaceful retreat used to be the laudry room in the basement, but now our basement is dank and damp and not a fun place to be because I have to wear shoes.

Right now my kids are sleeping, but when I snapped their pictures Trevor was loading up his mega blocks dump truck with stuff a driving it around. Jayden is walking around, yup, she's finally WALKING. That's a new development in the last few days. She also does this funny little trick where she sticks her butt up in the air as she's trying to stand up on her own. She can't quite do it yet but it's only a matter of time.

Laundry???? Which pile are you talking about? This one over here or that one over there? That pile in the corner? Or the damp pile of towels in the bathroom? We have laundry piles strategically placed all over the house it seems. It's gotten better now that I was actually able to finally use water to wash clothes. My basement depresses me lately so it's hard to keep up on laundry.

And here's my self portrait. Any idea how hard it is to take a self portrait with little ones trying to climb over you? Of course you do! Why yes I just got my hair cut! And of course these are new glasses! I own more glasses than shoes. When I get bored at work I just buy new glasses! Shhhh! Don't tell Travis!

Someday...

Jessica's post at Farm Fresh made me yearn for a solution to my own cluttered "entryway" I would love to have a mudroom or a porch. Something other than just walking into my kitchen. So here is my own problem area. The door you see is the door we use almost exclusively to come and go. Notice the coat hooks and shoe cubbies I tried to solve our issue. The cubbies are too small and make putting shoes away more a hassle than anything. The beautiful white pantry houses sippies, bibs, ton's of plastic bags, bottles no longer used and haven't been put/given away, and a bunch-o-crap.

Someday when I eliminate the cabinet I would like to do something like this in it's place. But as you can see at the moment there is no room for anything even close to it. Hmmmm... Maybe I should work on that. But if I loose my purdy white cabinet where would I let all my dishes drip dry? I don't use the dry cycle on the dishwasher because when I do it smells like it's going to catch fire. And even when I do all the plastic containers and sippys are still wet.

Maybe there's hope, I just showed the picture to Trav and he's receptive anyway.

Weather this year blows

Here in Waterloo we're experiencing record flooding. They're calling it a 500 year flood. All of the water is unreal. Everyone jokes about building an arch or coming to work by boat. The jokes are really only an attempt to make light of all of the suffering going on around us because if you don't joke about it, you could just cry. So many have lost their homes in the floods. One of my employees has been evacuated out of her apartment since Tuesday. Another has flood waters creeping up her back yard and up her street. Her driveway is the end of dry land. If the water goes much higher and it will be seeping in.

It would take much higher water to endanger our home. However, the water is so saturated I could cry and my basement would flood. Well flood even more I should say. We don't have a massive amount of water in our basement. But the ground is so wet somehow it is getting underneath our basement floor and caused our concrete to crack and buckle. We can stick our finger in the hole and feel clay. I stick my head down the basement stairwell and can hear water trickling. Much like the ambient sounds of a water fountain. Though this sound not quite so peaceful. We've had water in our basement before but not like this. But this is NOTHING compared to what's going on in the community around us.

This flooding was insult to injury for our community. The F5 Parkersburg tornado not even 2 weeks ago deeply scarred our community as well. It is a neighboring town. The receptionist of my stores optometrist's office lives on a farm 5 miles from Parkersburg. She didn't have any damage but her friends, family, and neighbors did. It was a Sunday afternoon, Graduation weekend. Many people at graduation open houses. Her daughter graduated that day. Now the school and most of the town are gone.

It's a day I'll never forget. We were in Washington for my little brother's graduation and watching the coverage on the news knowing how close it was and not knowing if there was other damage even closer to home. See video at end of post.

And my heart breaks for the victims and their families of the tornado in Blencoe, a town in western Iowa. It is so tragic. A tornado struck a boyscout camp. When I heard it on the knews all I could think of was how terrified I would be as a parent to be miles away and know what had happened, powerless to do anything about it.

All of this following record snowfalls this past winter. And a spring that seemed like it would never come because we had snow on the ground as late as Easter. That and it just recently started be spring/summer like as far as temperature goes.

I think we've had way more than our fair share of foul weather for the year, if not the decade!

Here is a slideshow I found online. I only have 1 picture taken by me en route to work, but it's only of a flooded lowlying park I drive past everyday. I have been a good girl and heeded the advice of public officials and stayed out of the hard hit areas to reduce traffic for emergency vehicles. I'd like to see the flooding in real life but I plan on staying away. I would have liked to go sandbag but instead I worked everyday including my day off so that my employees who were affected wouldn't have to worry about working. The girl who was evacuated sandbagged for most of 3 days!