Not dead. :P

I’ve been MIA from here for a while. I didn’t intend to stop writing, I just never seemed to get around to it.  Life has been going pretty good.  We’ve been spending a lot of our weekends taking the kids out to do things, trying to enjoy the last of summer before the weather turns cold.  I’m not ready for Winter just yet, but I am excited for Fall activities like visiting the pumpkin farm and trick or treating.  Owen is enjoying school this year, and is excited to go most mornings.  He goes 4 days a week to pre-k.  I have stopped babysitting, so it is just me and Ethan during the days.  It is nice to spend so much one on one time with him (and boy is he becoming spoiled), but it is weird to not have anything else to do all day.  I don’t know what I will do with myself once both kids are in school if I am still a SAHM.  That may, or may not be the case, as I have a phone interview for a job at the university on Friday.  I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much.  I mean, with the economy the way it is, I am sure that there are TONS of other qualified applicants. I just need to try to wow them, haha.  This job would be PERFECT.  I would literally be working in an office down the hall from Jamie.  How convenient would that be?!  But like I said, I’m not getting my hopes up, or anything just yet.  I applied a few weeks ago (after the job posting had actually been taken down), so I had pretty much decided they had hired someone else.  I was somewhat surprised when she called me on Friday to schedule a phone interview.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!  I’m hoping that they will see having Jamie’s wife in the office will be a huge asset, as he does projects for their office frequently.

We installed security cameras around our house (on the outside!) a couple of weeks ago.  There have been 2 break ins in our neighborhood over the past year which is kinda surprising because we live in a very quiet neighborhood that has a lot of older people.  I told Jamie the cameras make us look like paranoid drug dealers or something HAHA (no we do not sell or do any drugs!).  It is nice to be able to look at the camera if someone knocks on the door, and I can see if it is a door to door sales man and just pretend I’m not home. Plus if we are ever away, we can just log in remotely and check on the house.  I foresee others liking the camera idea, and will want Jamie to help them install their own.

We’ve been working around the house a lot lately trying to organize and spruce up the place.  Eventually we want to replace the siding and put on a new rood.  I trimmed the bushes out in the front landscaping and pulled the weeds.  I still need to finish that project, but it looks so much neater now.  I trimmed some stray plants growing around the fence line in the back yard.  We cleaned out the out building and bought shelves to organize.  I’ve been going through a lot of stuff in the house throwing it away, or listing it for sale.  I’ve been selling the kids old clothes. I ‘m setting the money that I make from that aside for Christmas.  We haven’t even started our Christmas shopping yet.  We had quite a head start by this time last year.  Speaking of Christmas, I can’t believe it is 3.5 months away.  This year has flown by.  I’m hoping to get the kids tablets for Christmas.  They play with my ipad and iphone all of the time, and I would like for them to have their own.  Ipads are a little pricey for how small our children are though.  We may go with tablets that are cheaper than ipads.  I don’t necessarily like the ones that are designed just for kids though.  Jamie is good at researching technology, so I will probably leave it up to him.

We have finally started making some progress with potty training Ethan.  We are doing a combination of the no pants, no diaper method, and a sticker reward system.  I’m just ready to have him completely potty trained.  I’m so sick of changing diapers. Owen was potty trained right at 3, so we are a little behind with Ethan (by a couple months). I think good communication is the key to successful potty training, and Ethan just wasn’t there yet.  If we let him go without a diaper, he will hold it until we take him to the potty.  He has only asked me to take him to the potty once so far though.  We had a couple of accidents yesterday, but that was it for the whole weekend.  The sticker reward chart I made has been really helpful.  We have some Disney Cars stickers, so I made a road out of black and yellow construction paper.  Every time he potties, he gets to pick a car and put it on the road.