Jodi Picoult - Excellent Author

I am on my third book by Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes. The first two books I read by her were My Sister's Keeper and Vanishing Act. I love and hate her books all at the same time. Her writing style keeps you at the edge of your seat and it is very difficult to put her books down. She leaves you wondering what you are missing; what surprises she has in store for you. Even once you have put the book down, you find yourself thinking about the events in the book throughout your day. She writes about very current issues and sometimes very controversial issues. The thing I love most about her books is also the thing I hate. She has a great way of getting you involved emotionally to her characters and to the events that are happening in her books. And when you feel like your emotions can take no more and you feel that the story is coming to an end and you can relax, that is when she brings out the big guns and hits your emotions with a surprise twist. There is always a surprise, something you were not expecting that sends your already emotional state spiraling. This is the part I hate and love. Usually when I have finished reading the book I am emotionally exhausted. But after a little time, I realize, an author who can get you that involved with their characters is worth reading again.

Teething - AHHHHH!

Okay, so this teething phase is not much fun. Addison is very fussy, she is drooling over everything and she is chewing on EVERYTHING!

I happen to notice this week that her crib has teeth marks on it now.

This picture only shows a few of the numerous teeth marks that are now on her crib.

Daniel and I have been trying to come up with a way to stop her from teething on her crib. The Internet offers a few different products that can go over crib railings to protect them, but they looked so simple, we thought we might try to make something ourselves.

Then last night it hit me. Why don't we tie her bumper around the railing. Now this fixes the problems with her chewing on her front railing, but not the back, because the back is solid and has no place to tie the bumper to. Then I realized that if we just lower her mattress again, then she will not be able to reach the top of the back railing. We need to lower her bed anyway, because she is at a height now were she could climb out if she really wanted to.

So we have solved another baby dilemma and this one didn't even cost us any money. YEAH!

Where did Spring go?

I love Spring. I love being able to open all the windows and air out the house, with the breeze flowing through our house. I love it when you can cool the house down at night just by opening the windows.

But where did Spring go this year? It went from Winter (too cold to open the windows), to a few weeks of Spring (but with high pollen, so we didn't open the windows), and now it is HOT! Way too hot to open the windows! I am talking 90's hot. And it is suppose to get hotter. I completely missed Spring and I wish it would come back!

Gone are the days of being a speed demon

Okay, for those of you who know me, you know how much I love driving and how much I love driving FAST! I have been up to speeds of over 100 on interstate, though that was back in my college days. I had all the fancy radar detectors and I knew the rules of when and where you could get away with driving fast. But more than just driving fast, my favorite thing to do was to be at a red light when I knew that the person beside me was going to try to get in front of me and I would hit the gas in my little green BMW and see them in my dust as I zoomed in front of them.

Well, those days are over. About a year ago I traded in my wonderfully fast BMW for a Ford Escape (a more family friendly vehicle). Needless to say, my Escape does not have the same going power as my BMW had, but I must say it does have more acceleration power then you would think. It has still been an adjustment. Not being able to accelerate quickly when getting onto interstate roads or at red lights has made me have to change my driving style. But until recently I was still driving fairly fast.

Then gas prices went through the roof. And I have come to the realization that saving money is more important that getting to where I am going faster. Also, the fact that there are very few places I HAVE to be at, at a certain time helps in not having to hurry. I have actually started driving just the speed limit. Do you have any idea how hard that is for me. I feel like I am going the speed of a snail. I have to set my cruise control or else I will find myself speeding again. But I have definitely noticed a savings in gas. I used to have to fill up the Escape every week and many times I would not even make it a week. Now I can typically make it a week and a half and sometimes I can go almost two weeks without filling up. Also, I used to get about 21 to 22 mpg, but now I am getting around 24 to 24.5 mpg.

The really funny thing though, is I used to be one of those people who would look at the people going the speed limit, thinking they were crazy. I have gone past cops going 8 to 10 over the speed limit and they don't even blink. So I have always thought that it was crazy for people to not at least go a few miles faster than the speed limit. It is not like they are going to get a ticket. But now I am one of the cars that faster cars pass and I am sure that they think I am crazy for going as slow as I am going.

But if going slower means I can go more places, then so be it.

Water magic

Addison is 9 months old now and is still not really crawling. The doctor assures us that this is fine, but we have been really trying to get her to crawl. Also, she has started pulling herself up on one knee and one foot, but she can't seem to pull herself all the way up on two feet. Tonight during her bath she both crawled and pulled herself up all the way onto two feet.
I think the reason she crawled is because she wanted to get to a toy at the other end of the bathtub and she knew she had to keep her head above the water. She normally just lays on her stomach and pulls herself to where she wants to go or she rolls to where she wants to go. But when there is water and she knows she can not lay down, she crawls. Now if only she would try doing it out of water.
As for why she was able to pull herself up onto two feet, I don't really know. It might have something to do with the fact that the side of the tub is lower then the other surfaces she has been using to try to pull herself up with. I really don't know. But I think it is very funny that it takes water to make her do things we have been trying to get her to do for months.

Small gifts from God

Today our community had a yard sale. Only a few homes participated. We participated and we did better than we thought we would, so that was nice. But what was even nicer is I got something for free that I had been wanting for a few months now.

I have wanted a kids size Fisher Price picnic table. The kind that is all one piece with the table in the middle and two benches on each side.

One of our neighbors came to our house to look at our stuff. She said they were busy that day and so they were not participating in the yard sale, but that they had lots of stuff to get rid of. She just happen to mention that she had a Fisher Price picnic table she wanted to get rid of. I said that I was looking for one. She said she would sell it to me for $5.

Then it got better. . . Her son collects baseball cards. Our friend Ed Russ had given us a LARGE box of baseball cards. Her son had already bought $10 worth of cards from us. When the lady brought the picnic table down to our house, Daniel offered her the rest of the baseball cards in exchange for the table. I didn't think she was go for it, but she did. So we got this table that I have been wanting for months for FREE!!!

I know that this was a small gift from God. It is just too coincidental that this lady just happen to stop at our house, just happen to mention that she had a table she wanted to get rid of, it just happen to be the exact table I was wanting, we just happen to have a friend who had given us all those baseball cards, her son just happen to be a baseball card collector and she was willing to trade the table for the baseball cards.

Thanks God!

Recycling - It's About Time

Recycling is about as easy as you could make it here for us. We have three recycling bins (small bins that you can keep in your garage) that we received when we moved into our house. All you have to do is put your recycling in the bins and put it out with the trash every other week. It is so easy, yet, we didn't start recycling until a couple of months ago. Why you ask... Well, mainly we were just lazy and maybe in the back of my head I thought that we don't really use that much that could be recycled. Now that we have started recycling it shocks me how much recyclable material we use in two weeks. In 9 days we have filled up two of our three recycling bins. Though we wasted years when we could have been recycling, I guess it is better to start late then to never start at all.