things are going ok today. nothing much new to report....i'm down a babysitting kid, which makes it only five in my house today. not too shabby. it would otherwise be seven! YIKES!!

my latest crusade (here comes the shameless request) is the March of Dimes Walk America. why? because they have funded the research behind many of the treatments for premature babies. who knew that i would feel so strongly for the charity organization that kept me busy for hours on end with my grandma, reading every book i could? i remember my brother and i getting medals for reading so many books! i even won an owl because of it! LOL the things that come running back.

ANYWAY, i digress.....premature babies....when i was younger, it was simply for birth defects, as many of the children that survive prematurity now, wouldn't have back then....WHY? because of the research and development that was funded by March of Dimes monies. SOOOOOO, here goes......SPONSOR ME!!! here is the link to which you can go and you, too, can make a pledge and save babies like erin and griffin. www.walkamerica.org/sabyers.

so....there you have it, ladies and gents....my latest crusade that doesn't include paper and glue.....tho that crusade is continuously rearing its beautiful ugly head....*yawn* i was up until past midnight last night scrappin' the night away!

i really do feel like a new woman right now......i got out of the house today, DURING WORK, and went to both Hobby Lobby and the P.O. i also went thru the drive-thru to get a supersize diet coke for myself......i would LOVE life if i could do that, even once a week! it was fun to be able to concentrate on only my babies (well....and gage, too, but he's almost like mine...lol). i do know why people with three small children don't get out much, tho! ;)

so i'm feeling a lot better than last week at this time. i'm just hoping that things keep going as well! :)

today's a down day. i'm fairly tired of life. i'm tired, i'm lonely, and i'm feeling sad. i don't have the energy to enjoy my life at all. i work sixty hours a week, taking care of kids who beat up on my kids, and i want a break. i want people to talk to. i want to be able to shower every day. i want to be able to go out and get a mountain dew at nine o'clock in the morning. i want to fit into size six jeans again. i want to have the energy to scrapbook. i don't want to have to worry about money. i want my kids to be healthy. i want to not have to worry about rsv, weight gain, and physical development. i want my friends to be happy. i want my friends to have jobs. i want to go away from my house. i want to be able to have as many babies as i want. i want to be able to sleep past six o'clock in the morning. i don't want to have to worry about two year-olds biting, kicking, and whining. i don't want to have to listen to babies who aren't mine cry all the time. i don't want to have to always clean up toys in my living room.

i don't want much out of life......i just want someone to stop this thrill-ride, because i don't want to ride it anymore.

the crop went well.....for me being as unorganized as the day is long! about five girls showed up, and i sold about thirty dollars worth of product! not too shabby!

i'm tired of being sick, tho...i went for a walk on saturday morning and my sinuses really went whacko afterward! i took a nap, and felt better when i woke up, but i'm really tired of the congestion and pressure. am making plans now to go to the docs on wed. not really wanting to, as don't want to use antibiotics, but am thinking my body wants them...hehe

cleaning is something that can be addictive.....which is probably why i don't like to do it, seeing as i have an addictive personality and am an all-or-nothing kind of girl. case in point....i get the wild hair up my butt to clean the living room, voiding the entertainment shelf of all the videos that the babies like to toss on the floor every day, replacing the videos with some toys that are bigger and more easily picked up.... this turned into organizing the videos into daycare/collin/adult stashes, which turned into putting together toys that needed to be put together since february, which turned into dusting, which turned into spot-shotting the carpet, which turned into me wanting to clean the kitchen cupboards, but stopping myself before it got later than 1 am! why do things like that happen? now i know how my mother-in-law keeps a spotless house...it becomes an obsession!!

sunday was spent lounging on my mother-in-laws couch, with the same sinus issues, gorging myself on hashbrown casserole, and picking up tons of veggies off the floor, thrown down by my mother-in-law-encouraged twins.....

today's not been a bad day so far...i'm running a bit of a tighter ship these days and encourage the kiddos to help me clean the toys up....we'll see how long we can do it.....

today is the day of my first crop! crossing fingers that i can get through this 'first' just as well as the party! :) i didn't send out too many invitations, but hopefully this will help boost my confidence to start getting the word out. i'm really self-conscious, and don't want to appear pushy or weird! LOL

i'm finally starting to feel a bit better. kudos to aaron for finding some good cough syrup. he had help at the pharmacy. they know our family by our first names, and are always willing to help us get whatever we need. it's neat to have that kind of situation...makes me feel like westfield is starting to become our home. anyway, hopefully the rest of the house will recover from the cough and we can move on from it!

i need to figure out how to feel closer to collin right now. he's going through the typical seven-year old stuff, and i'm afraid i'm not very patient with him these days....i like to read books to him at night, but sometimes that doesn't become a huge priority. so, that's my biggest goal for the moment.

not a bad day so far....got lots of sleep, so that makes up for a lot! :)

these days, i'm feeling a little more comfortable in my own skin. i do have days, however, where i'm really wanting to have some down time that doesn't have to start after 8 o'clock at night. i think most people would agree with me that running from 6 am to 8:30 pm solid five if not more days a week is tiring and would get a person down. in order to have fun, i have to stay up late, therefore sacrificing my health.....which i've done! LOL

i know that part of this is my own fault....i've decided to let the twins self-wean, and am tossing up the idea of trying to nurse up until next year, too.....the whacked out reasoning behind such a decision?? i can't afford the RSV booster....i looked at the sheer amount of what it would cost us out of pocket.....$400 bucks a month AFTER insurance did it's thing!!! oh...did i mention that this is PER CHILD?? it would be my hope that if i nursed them that they would be a little more resilient to respiratory infection.....they've had their bouts of problems this year, and both are on nebulizer treatments. my thought is that perhaps i could nurse in lieu of the shots next year. and, for those of you who question their susceptibility to RSV at this age, babies born at such an early gestation (like 26 weeks), are susceptible for far longer than their full-term peers. hence, we might have to deal with the shots next year, if not for the simple fact that we've had so many issues this year. urgh!! when will it end? i moaned "i can't wait to treat them like normal babies!!" to a fellow dad of a preemie last night...to which he replied "it's never going to happen!" great! LOL

oh, well....this too shall pass, and pretty soon we will be treating them as normally as a person can when they still see the 1 lb. 10 oz. girl or 2 lb. 2 oz. boy behind the big, chubby, playful kiddos.

and pretty soon, mommy will be able to go away for a day and not have to worry about coming home in the middle of the day to nurse them! and the same mommy will be able to get out of the house before 8 pm to have some fun of her own. i think that same mommy will be a lot more happy, too! ;)

i'm sick of being sick!! *cough, cough*

ANYWAY, we all always call erin our little princess. i mean, who doesn't usually call their baby girl a princess? yesterday, i came to the realization that the only kind of princess that my daughter could be likened to is a midieval one. she was eating, with her clothes off (of course!!), all her food spread out on the table in front of her. her little fat belly was covered in food, and she was lounging in her high chair, with one leg propped over the side. she picked through her food by scraping it across the table, sifting through it to eat only the choicest pieces. the other, less satisfying pieces, were pushed to the floor.

it was a humorous thought, anyway. i just had thoughts of what a medieval king must look like.....she only needed a turkey drum!

griffin has an ear infection and a sinus infection. he slept all night without coughing or anything (thank you triaminic!).....which left me to worry irrationally this morning!

got my load of stamps! i'm pretty stoked at my stash. i got a crumb-ton for just over 100 bucks, so i'm pretty happy.

was up to midnight lastnight arranging my stamps (they come unmounted, so you have to put the bloody things together....) and cleaning my hellish kitchen.

i've decided that giving a complete blow job isn't going to be a successful mission for me. i think i've an aversion to the texture......LOL sorry, aaron! :)

as i start to feel better, griffin takes a turn for the worse and winds up with 101 fever and is going to the doc this afternoon.....eventually everyone in this family will feel better! *blah* we go back to our old doc now that our insurance changed...again. we like him much better than the other bunch o'quacks we were seeing, so we're kind of glad for the change.

nothing else much of anything to report. same old same old goings-on.

feeling better today....i figured out that as long as i keep pushing sudafed that i feel better! imagine that! LOL

got a bit of scrapping done last night! wayhay! finished up some pages that had missing journaling. pondered over those that i'd not started. finished the make-n-take swap for LP. i'm feeling in the groove....must stay there if i'm ever to get anything done.

tho i realized that if i do 200 pages this year, i might be caught completely up! LOL....if i get 25 done this month, i just might be through 2001. we'll see. it would be wonderful to be that far caught up! i have a house album and a vacation album to do, but i think that i'll be able to get those in under the 200 page mark, too....we'll see.

i might never get caught up if i scrap too many of the digipix i've been taking. i can only imagine what it would be like if i had an unending batt supply and memory card! jeez!

must go give my sacrifices of food to the natives, lest they get restless.....they could form a coup or something, and then where would i be?

feeling a bit foggy today. my nose is ever stuffed up and my voice is gone. oh, well....there isn't anyone to talk to and anywhere to be anyway, so what does it matter? LOL

i'm currently working on some things for my LP swap....a long time ago i swore off scrapbooking swaps, but this is different. it's a make-n-take swap that's aim is to use LP product efficiently. so i'm making these really cute tags....we'll see.

i also need to get stuff ready for my first show. who knows if anyone will be there, but we'll see! :) i'm nervous beyond all belief, but think things will be fine. i also need to get a flyer together for my first crop. i've also ordered some extra things (shhh...don't tell aaron!!) in the hopes that people might want to buy them as they work.....we'll see! :) {that's really a mantra of mine!!}

it is really my hope that i get this scrapbooking business off the ground. i really think i could do well at it. i just need to put more brainpower and time and effort into making it fly. again....we'll see......

i need to set up some goals for it.....so....let's see:

bookings: get three bookings for late March-early April.....to be done by March 15
Out of the Box: sell one subscription.....to be done by the end of March
recruits: one recruit (?) .....to be done by the end of March
demo album: put together the tearing kit and put LP product pages in an album....to be done by Sunday at 2:00....
demo album: get together a few pages of why LP? why i scrapbook? a little about me. etc....to be done by March 13.

i'm tired with just writing those down! LOL but i feel as though i perhaps might do a little more work to attain them if i write them out. again.....we'll see! :)

the weekend was decent. saturday night, aaron and i went to a place called 'on the border', a mexican restaurant with good food and decent margaritas. we were going to go to bahama breeze, but it would have been a 50-70 min wait, and i hadn't eaten anything since around noon and it was already 9! geezy peats you would think less people would be out and about at 9! (i know, i know....26 going on 86!)

it was a nice dinner, tho. i started losing my voice, so it was hard to talk to aaron, but it was fun to be out with just him.

sunday was spent at the hospital with jan. she sent her little boy over to my house (they'd tried calling, but my mother-in-law was jabbering to me) to tell me that she was throwing up and was really sick. so, i followed him back to their house, where i found jan sitting on the steps, sobbing because she was in so much pain. i went home to change, and then gathered up toys for her son, not knowing whether we'd be taking him with us to the hospital. wound up that her husband came home from church, so we decided that i would take her in to the ER while he stayed with the kids. we got there, and they couldn't give her anything for the pain and nausea until the doc saw her. the nurse was really rude about it. we sat there for what felt like forever, with her vomiting and clutching her side in pain. i kept putting cool cloths on the back of her neck, feeling like the biggest dumbass because i didn't know what to do to help her.

she wound up having a kidney stone, which she passed after she got home. she goes to the docs today, and hopefully they'll put her on some sort of regimen that will help her to pass any that are left. she's been having trouble with this for a while, but no one could tell her what was wrong, so who knows how many she's passed. poor thing.

i slept for the better part of the rest of the day yesterday. i'm still not feeling especially great now, but am muddling through. at least i'm not doubled over in pains worse than childbirth! thank goodness for small favors.