My Nemisis...

I hate laundry.

Okay really just the gathering part and the actual switching loads part.

I dread Monday's because that is my designated laundry day. And yes it's Tuesday but I have been procrastinating. 

But worst of all, I hate pairing up socks.

Hate it like I hate having sand all over my clean hardwoods or having it rain after I finally get my car washed. Hate it.

And why is it that all of the socks can't come back out of the laundry when you KNOW they all went in? Rusty is always asking for a pair of dark socks- good luck I say! I like the tidiness of having the laundry all folded and in baskets and ready to be put away (shoot I even started paying my little niece to help me put some of it away!) Everything is peachy, my system is set-- all except for the sock matching.  Is there a better way, any tricks? I mean besides the whole 'wear once and toss' thing which is utterly wasteful but sounds oh so good to me right now...

Enough with Dead Fish Already!!!

So you may remember that we had the oh-so-brilliant idea to get Braden a fish tank for his birthday last year. Then we dealt with babies being bred by the dozen, and I mean within days people...  And again a few months later...And don't forget we had to get a house sitter when we went to Europe to watch the fish-(nothin' like 5 year old drama!!!)  Now I am no fish expert (as the fine folks at Petsmart will agree) but it seems to me like fish are a lot more involved than one would think. 

Braden with Larry number 3 (I think)

For starters, the whole tank cleaning thing.  One sales person says clean the tank once a month but change the filter every week. Another says clean water every other week and the filter monthly. And another 5 people tell me something else entirely! So now I have it worked down to a system, when the tank looks like the one in the dentist's office on Finding Nemo- I clean it. Now this use to be Rusty's job, but somehow I inherited it... Oh, and I had the brilliant (seriously tho) idea of getting a sucker fish because they eat algae! So my tank is way cleaner! They are seriously ugly though and I won't put my hand in anywhere near it, they kinda freak me out. 

But then there was a whole series of fish dying, 'must be the Ph' they said so we got the stuff to fix that and bought a round of new fish. Then another few drop off and it 'must be the water temperature' so we get a heater. Then we didn't have a 'bubblier' and that must have been why those few more died. Then we got 'ICH'. Which is as gross as its name. It is a bacteria fish get that makes their scales get air under them, painful and gross.  So weeks of daily water changes, plus the medicine for it and a new batch of fish have a squeaky clean home. 

Now you may think I am exaggerating, but I bet if I checked my credit card history we would have bought like 50 fish over the last year. No joke! Currently we have three cute little gold guppies (6 have come home with us in the last week), a sucker fish "Sucker the Third" (first one lasted eons and Sucker the 2nd lasted just 48 hours), and a gold Molly fish.  Monday I flushed the silver Molly "Maggie" after she was attacked by our Beta fish. And I wasn't really sad to see her go because I knew my baby fish days were OVER! The Beta "Larry the 5th" was red this time, instead of blue and that seemed to make him more aggressive. He attacked the three little guppies and took on Maggie who was WAY bigger than him. So he got himself put in fishie time out (a small vase aside the tank to remind him what he could lose). But apparently he couldn't take the separation. He feeds on having other fish around (no pun intended-ok yeah there was) and after a mere afternoon in timeout he was dead. Sad. 

SeRiOuSlY people! I am DONE with the fishies! I swear when these last 5 die out the tank is DONE! Or at least when the other 4 die the sucker won't have anything to eat and he will probably just give up.

In fact it seems the only fish that has managed to hang around a while is Nemo! And he is a cyber pet! EEK! 

So Braden is gonna have to learn to love him some plush fish (thank heavens Webkinz makes a bunch of them)- cause I am so done with the ones we have now!

Home Sweet Home...

This month marks 6 years since we moved from our first home in Mesa to this home in Gilbert. Six years. It seems so crazy. Braden was only a few months old, we were weeks away from his first surgery and this house seemed so big.  Over the years you change things and adjust. You get more stuff, more people and more stuff. A once playroom gave way to a new nursery when Berk came around. A guest room was sacrificed so I would have an office of my own to 'girlify' and leave a mess if I wanted to. All white walls have been painted in the last few years so that the only white that remains is in the bathrooms- and that's just cause I can't decide how I want to paint them.  Ok really, the kids bath I want to paint in stripes-but the texture on the wall makes it impossible to get a clean line- so for now it is white. We've put crown moulding up in nearly every room, framed the windows and changed out all the light fixtures, nearly.  

Poor Rusty changed out three ceiling fans just today. About ten times. Is there some sort of law that says a box CAN'T have either a)the directions in it or b) all the parts included??? I swear we have made 10 trips to Home Depot and Lowe's today! Anyway.

And outside there are so many changes. A pool fence was one of the first additions, followed by a bigger grass area, and eventually chairs by the pool, a tramp and an ever popular sandbox. Out front we still have a list of 'eventually' to do, but we did cross a big one off early last year when we removed an UGLY tree and put in two new shade trees.  I really really really want to paint my house.  I have the color all picked out, I have a painters number- now I just need the OK from Rusty to spend the money! (hint hint)

It seems so funny how you can feel like you are bursting at the seams with toys and clothes and stuff and yet there is always something to be bought! We love this house. We thought it would be a temporary thing, only a few years at most. But we love this neighborhood, school, friends, ward and now we wonder if we can ever leave.  Now if we can just figure out where to put everything we've outgrown... I am praying for a storage unit for my anniversary, how romantic, right?

So Happy Moving Day Anniversary House- we love you. 

Knock Down Drag Out Fight...

It shouldn't be this hard. I mean really. In the scheme of things this is just about the easiest, pain free doctors visit any kid could go to--- but somehow Braden still managed to make his yearly cardiologist visit a day to remember. (So much so that I don't even have any  *gasp* photos to go along with this post- so I will bust out some oldies as filler.)  It is probably my fault, trying to be efficient I scheduled his dental cleaning this week too. Which he had NO CAVITIES, but in order to find that out it took me, the dentist, and three- YES THREE- hygienists to hold him down to check. Seriously? SO he was more than a little traumatized going in to today.

It is one of those catch 22's. While it is an amazing blessing that his health is good enough to only require yearly trips to the peds Cardiologist- that also means it doesn't happen frequently enough for him to remember what goes on there. Plus they moved offices and so it was a new place for him, and the nurse that took us back was new to us. I should have known when we had to tag team him to get him out of the car, but I thought once we were there it would be smooth sailing. 

Wrong.

So here is the rundown of his visits. Height, weight, blood pressure check, EKG, Echo, and finally the actual exam. As they told us today they are all 'stickers and cords' nothing to hurt or poke you with there. He cried about taking his shoes off to get weighted, what? And then looked like the ruler was gonna chop his head off when he got measured. And of course they weigh him in Kilos and measure him in centimeters, so have fun doing that conversion- oh fine, I did it for you, he was 44.something pounds and just over 45 inches. 

(last year's EKG)

Once we got into the room for the BP and EKG he freaked. Kicking & screaming, and he full on punched me! The nurse was great- sensing a brawl was ensuing he left the room and came back with stickers, a robot toy and a play stethoscope. We calmed him down, after forcibly removing his shirt for the tests and then he was great. He sat still for both and was fine. 

After a LONG wait the ECHO tech was ready for us. Can I just say first of all, those machines are the coolest thing ever. And to watch the techs work them is mind blowing. There are a million knobs and switches and a whew, here is a photo. No wonder they go to school for so long just to do one machine! Anyways. After a little scuffle to get him onto the table, biting was involved, it wasn't pretty...  But the tech was a tough lady who took NO bull crap and she told him to lay down that they had to get an image. Finally after crawling up on the table with him he settled down and they got a good looking echo while he watched Kung Fu Panda.  

After the tough tech we went back to wait for our doc. We had been there for over two hours and I was BORED- luckily Rusty had his Itouch to keep Braden amused and I played on my Iphone enough I ran the battery dead. Sad story. So since Braden's defect is really rare, and his outcome of such great health is even rarer, they always drag any medical students in to see him and hear his heart. I wish I had taken a picture of his chart. This one is about 3 inches thick, and I know he has at least one more chart in storage.  Crazy.  He listened and listened. They check the pulses in his feet and listen more. Then the med student listens.  We are continually blessed and amazed at how well Braden s still doing. He isn't on any heart medication and under no restrictions. We will go back again in a year and then the doc said we may even go to once every couple years. Amazing. 

He is such a great doc. He even told us this funny story about how his daughter had done a google search on him and a photo of he and Braden came up, and his daughter thought that he was pretty cool to be on google. So funny. So we are done for another year, the bite marks on my arm are healing, the scratched on both Rusty and I will fade and we will somehow try to think of a way to make it less terrifying for the next time we go! Now we just have to figure out how we are going to get Braden to his consult with the pediatric surgeon he has coming up (for a umbilical hernia that never healed). That outta be fun...

Happy New Year!!!

We rang in the New Year up at Rusty's family cabin in Pine. It was so nice to get away and relax. My parents joined us for a day and then the Burkinshaws came up for a day. We drove to the gravel pits one afternoon so that the kids could play in the snow and Braden could try out his new snowboard. Other than Braden's attempt to 'pet the fish' in our pond right as we were leaving the entire stay was so nice. And yes, he did fall completely into the pond and was soaked in freezing water head to toe. Nice.  And for all you nay sayers it DOES snow in Arizona. And you gotta love the snowsuits that are permanent residences of the cabin- some of them are from when Rusty was a kid! Gotta love it.