McDonalds and the Maiden Voyage

First of all.....

McDonalds = ick.

Steph's school had a fundraiser at McDonalds tonight. We had to go there for dinner and I am really not a big fan (anymore). It's pretty bad when I ask my 3 year old what she wants to eat from there and her answer is:

"Nothing. I just want to eat a piece of Bologna at home."

The reason I say I don't like it anymore is because apparently I USED to like it.

See, when I was in junior high school my parents decided that it was a good idea to pile all four of us (my mom, dad, older brother and myself) into the station wagon and take a nice, leisurely, cross-country trip from Southern California to Tennessee for vacation. Except that my brother and I couldn't be in the same room for 5 minutes together much less in the back seat of a packed Subaru station wagon for like, an eternity, together. I remember sitting back there with my walkman blasted as high as it would go and being annoyed that I could still hear the music from the car radio. Then my batteries would start to die after only an hour or so and I would still listen as long as I could even though the song was playing reallllllly sloooooooow and the female singers all sounded like men with a verrrrry looooow voices.

When the batteries finally died I would wait until my brother went to sleep and then steal his.

Anyways, back to McDonalds.

On the trip, everytime my parents would ask us where we wanted to eat lunch or dinner, apparently my brother and I would say in unison "McDonalds".

This may be the one and only thing we agreed on in 17 years of intense sibling rivalry. Since we didn't eat out all that often growing up, McDonalds was impressive. Clearly gourmet to food connoisseurs like us. After a mere 17 straight meals of fine dining at the Golden Arches my parents lost all reasoning and drew a line in the sand.

They designated McDonalds as the "rip your lips off" place. That meant that if anyone so much as uttered the word McDonalds one more time on that trip they would have their lips ripped off.

And they were serious.

So, the next time they asked my brother and I where we wanted to eat we said in unison:

"The rip your lips off place".

Now that I have gotten that out of the way........

This weekend will be our Maiden Voyage (as my buddy Rachael would call it) in our new pop-up camper. We are leaving Friday night and coming home on Sunday....and I am getting all excited! The campground is called Warwick Woods and it is very close to home (only about 10/15 minutes away) so that if we have to come home for whatever reason it will be A-OK. We are taking Daisy Dog with us and I am hoping to talk my brother and his fiance into joining us for one night. I'll try and post pictures sometime next week.

In the meantime, I am off to regret forcing myself to eat at the dreaded "rip your lips off place" and to deal with the cooresponding stomach ache that gourmet food like that brings.

Bad BAD blogger!!!

Wow. I haven't blogged in awhile. Sorry.

I am feeling like a bad, BAD blogger.

Not that it is an excuse for my bad behavior.....but the past two weeks have been, well, a bit hectic.

There is the same old whining that I do on a daily basis: work, school, kids, blah, blah, blah.

But on top of that nonsense, Ron and I have single-handedly been trying to keep the economy from tipping over into the dark side with as many big purchases as we can muster. We have been stimulating to the very best of our ability the past two weeks. Hilary and Barack should be calling any minute to thank us.

The first purchase was two weeks ago. You see.....Ron has been driving a minivan for the past 4 years or so. This was his idea, not mine, but it lost it's appeal when we realized that we would never have 7 children to tote around.

So.... he has been coveting trucks of all kinds for a few years and we have been saving for the big purchase for a little while. He found one that was perfect for him and we took the bait. Here it is:

Please ignore the dead grass in my front yard around the shiny new truck.....I am not much of a gardener and all things green seem to hate me with some kind of terrible repulsion that it mocks me whenever Spring arrives with it's beautiful bounty. But I digress.

Anyways, the truck was just not enough to make any sort of dent in this crappy state of affairs that we call our "economy"......so we filled the tank up with gas.

You should be laughing hysterically at that last comment.....do you KNOW what a tank of gas costs for a big a$$ truck like that!!!??? I'm sure we could have fed a small villiage somewhere.

Then we decided.....what good is a big a$$ truck like that if you don't have something to pull behind it? So, we went out and bought a brand new pop-up camper. We "camped" in the driveway on Saturday and I was so wrapped up in the excitement of filling it with all of the new goodies that we have purchased for it that I forgot to take a picture of it! We have a camping trip schedued in 2 weeks, I will make sure to get a few good pics of it to share.

Some other things going on this past two weeks:

• My mom is here visiting from Las Vegas, she arrived last Tuesday and is leaving this Tuesday. The girls had a blast with Grannie (as always).

• School sucks....but I only have one more week of this Financial Management class and then I can put it behind me FOR-EVAH!!!!

• Steph came down with some sort of mutant virus that royally kicked her behind. I have never seen this kid so sick. She lucked out and got her Daddy's immune system and usually bounces back from a cold/virus very fast....but this one hung in there for the full 10 days! She endured an ear infection, extremely high temps (the highest was 105.4.... after which I rushed her to Immediate Care), and numerous doses of that nasty pink antibiotic. You know the stuff.....the stuff that I can hardly stand the smell of yet I happily give it to my children? Yep. That's the stuff.

That's really all I've got for now. I realize that Easter was quite a few weeks ago and that I still have not posted pics of the girls in their Easter finest....I will try and do that soon. In the meantime, here is a layout that I did with them and the Easter bunny. Enjoy!

12 years of fun........

Today (April 6th, 2008) is my 12 year wedding anniversary. Ron and I have been married for 12 fantastic years today. It has gone by so fast and each year has been better than the last.

For 6 of those years there were just two of us. We lived 4 of those 6 years in Minot, North Dakota and 2 in Pennsylvania.

We have had numerous "fur-babies" in our 12 years together. Ginger was our first dog, she was an Australian Shepherd who was a GREAT lovable girl. Then came Sugar, a yellow lab mix, who was an amazing dog. We had Hampton and Sally-mander (ferretts) and a bird (which neither Ron, nor I, can remember the name of for the life of us!!!). We had Rocky, a Jack Russell Terrier who was I-N-S-A-N-E, Chloe the min pin, and now we have our sweet little pup Daisy. She is a Chi-Poo and is commonly referred to as "baby-Daisy" among the females in this house.

We built our first house together in Douglassville in 1999, and we still live there.

In 2001, we were blessed with a little girl we called "babyhead". That was 6 years into our marriage. Steph is now 6 years old.

After that came another blessing in the form of "button" or "button-bear" in 2005. Jennifer is 3.

And speaking of button-bear..........

This morning, when I woke up, daddy told her it was our anniversary today. She smiled. He said to her: "Jen, tell mommy Happy Anniversary!!!"

She said: "Happy Bag of Grocery, Mommy!!!!!"

:)

I love you Ronnie! Can't wait to see what the next 12 years will bring!