Birthday party

This past weekend Tom's sisters Laura and Andrea and my sister planned a big birthday party for me since I was unable to celebrate "properly" last year for my 30th due to the fact that I was preggers with Baby D. It was alot of fun. Mom got pretty intoxicated and went on to tell everyone just how much she loves them. She was also convinced by someone that the crab rollups were made out of racoon...Nice!! My dad came after my mom and Larry left and we made a campfire and hung out around that for awhile and sang and just talked. Good times.
Dad took us out for lunch the next day with Ellen and two of her children Mary and Alice. We went to look at a house up in Humboldt...very nice old house but way too expensive and still needs ALOT of work, so I am pretty sure they will not be putting an offer in on this one.
Ellen asked if we would be willing to do some readings during the wedding ceremony and asked advice on some other things as well. I think she is still pretty unsure of us and if we like her or not. I do like her...its just weird. She is so much easier to like than Larry who is just creepy and weird. But who knows maybe one day he will grow on me. My mom sees something in him so I guess he must not be all bad.
Davis has learned so many new things lately!! He is crawling everywhere and pulling himself up on things...anything he can get to he wants to stand up. Hence he has about three bruises on his forehead right now. Last night it was pretty cold in the house and Kits decided that he needed to sleep with Davis to keep him warm. We checked on him three times last night and each time he was in the bed sleeping right next to him...and he never does that. He is such a sweet cat. When I went in this morning to get him up he and Kits were just sitting there next to each other looking at me...it cracked me up!!
Carson is all done with soccer..he is looking forward to summer camp and just having time to ride his bike and not have to go to bed so early. Cayden also just finished soccer and he is looking forward to starting baseball with the After school program. He has not played baseball in several years so this should be a challenge for him to start this up again...but he wants to and we fully support him.
Tom is still working for my dad but he will need to start looking for something else here soon since it is so slow lately...bummer.
Things are good with me...Tom and I are going to Lollapalooza this year so I am so excited for that!! Andrea will be taking care of Davis and she is so exited for that!!
We are also going on a houseboat trip this summer with Andrea, Jarret, Laura and her boyfriend Adam, Shelle and Jeff and Nate and his girlfriend Melissa.
I am wanting to take the boys on a couple little trips this summer. Adventureland for sure and possibly a trip to a baseball game or waterpark. We will be camping hopefully a couple times this summer as well depending upon if my mom decides to let us use the camper or not.
Anyway thats all for now!!

Rainy Thursday

Blah...I thought today would be nice out and it was when I left for work. Now its rainy and cold and just plain...well...blah. One good thing Dan who works in the cubicle across from me came over and gave me a ticket to the YWCA fundraiser tonight called A Taste of Hope. It is a wine and cheese tasting event and the tickets are $25 per person. So I called Shelle to see if she and Jeff would want to go because I have all the boys tonight and she said "Why don't we go together?" So I called Tom to see if he would mind if I went and he stayed with the boys and he told me that was totally fine with him. So yay I get to go drink some wine and eat some cheese tonight and most of all spend some time with my sis.
So "Grandma Tuesday" went well. We way overindulged in the tradition of "Cinco De Mayo" and I felt like complete crap the next day. But it was totally fun!! We were able to play about two sets of Volleyball before we got rained out so looks like Team Notorious D.I.G. will be making up games next Tuesday night.
Davis has been sick the past few days and is now on the mend, thankfully, with the help of some anti-biotics. He just had a bad cold and the doc said if we didn't do the meds then it could turn into pneumonia very easily. So he is taking them and his cough is so much better.
Speaking of Baby D. Man can he get into some stuff these days. He is totally able to get anywhere he wants and last night pulled himself up into a standing position on one of his toys.
Time to really babyproof the house tonight!!
Cayden continues to amaze me...I have not written about this yet but we got his ITBS scores back and he scored an overall composite of 12 grade 4th month!! He scored better than 99% of all 5th graders in the NATION!! Wow...way to go buddy!! He makes me so proud plus its pretty cool to have your own personal encyclopedia ready to answer your questions...I dont even have to google it or anything. SWEET!! :)
Carson is so excited to show me his "THREE" count them three mothers day gifts. He has them neatly hidden in his bookbag and has told me about 20 times to NOT look in his bag!!
This weekend will likely be filled with soccer and some more organizing...I need to get Cayden's room organized. I can't believe how incredibly messy that boy is!! I also hope to get the garage cleaned and some more flowers for the front porch.
Oh ya...my dumb car....is totally going to eat up all my garage sale money plus about $600 I have left over from our tax return. That totally sucks and ALWAYS happens!!! Makes me so mad. I had plans to finish up the deck and buy a table and chair set for the deck....but I guess not now. It needs new spark plugs/tune up/coolant/transmission fluid/brake fluid and computer re-programmed. Great!! After she told me it would cost about $1,100 I told her...lets go ahead and throw an oil change in there too...that way I don't have to deal with the sneaky guys at Jiffy Lube who ALWAYS try to sell me a new "oil filter" every time I go there.

Ooooh check out this giveaway...http://www.5dollardinners.com/designer-lunch-tote-giveaway/comment-page-3#comment-10600 you can won a totally cute lunch bag!!

The past week

Davis is getting so big...he now has five teeth, two on bottom and three on top. He is learning to crawl and probably in some people's standards he is actually crawling. He can get where ever he wants to go. Its so adorable to see him get up on his knees and rock back and forth and sometimes he even gets all the way up on his toes.
This last weekend Tom and Dean took him up to Clarion for dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Moore's for Andrea's birthday. I was not able to go because Cayden and Carson had a spring program at church that we went to. It was nice to come home with just the two older boys, we just hung out and I was able to get some unimteruppted cleaning time well a couple hours anyway.
We also had a garage sale this weekend...I made $421 SWEET!! I am going to use the money to buy some furniture for the deck, but the weather has been so crappy this week that I have not even gone out to look, the rain is so dreary I dont even feel like it will ever be summer.
Another random thought and update. Both my mom and dad have gotten engaged. Not really sure how I feel about it...well actually scratch that. I know exactly how I feel about that. It sucks. I am actually happy for my dad and Ellen. Even though this is the woman he cheated on my mom with, obviously they love each other. They have been together for many years and waited for each other to get divorced and now are making the step to become married themselves. Now what I dont like about it is that she has two younger children 8th grade and 5th grade along with a few older children, she is my dads age. Now I do not like the fact that my dad will likely be much more invovled with these children than he EVER was with us. I know that he loves me and always will BUT I cannot help but feel extreme jealousy over this and I will admit it. It just does not seem fair that I always craved/yearned to have a close relationship with my dad but simply never had it due to him working alot/being stressed and just generally not knowing how to connect with his children. He is in a different spot in his life now and able to provide the kind of love and attention that I always wanted. He is making efforts to really try to be there more for me now but it is still greatly lacking. I hope one day it will be something better. He told me the other day on the phone that he promised to be there more for me when Ellen and he get married and she lives here and he won' t be gone all the time. I felt so happy when he said it but now after talking with Tom about it I realized...why not now? Why not be here for me now? Your here during the week you can come over more you can spend the time with your ONLY Grandchildren. One day...
Now on to my mom...I honestly do not think she has any idea what she is doing. She has jumped into this relationship feet first...full on mad love right away with this man...Larry. (Or as we like to call him L-Dog, Laren or Karry). I had met him like twice before they decided to get engaged. The first encounter was at a picnic with my Aunt Marian and Jason and Kelly. My kids were with me and really did not or were not even really aware that my mom and dad had gotten divorced. And she has this man there introduces us to him and then proceeds to straddle him on the park bench and make out with him in front of all of us. I was about ready to go over and drop kick the motherfucker for touching my mom then realized it was just as much her doing it as it was him. Then I just got pissed, I mean come on have a little respect for us and if not for us (you know we are adults we should be able to handle it) then at least for Cayden and Carson who have no fucking clue who this dude is. Of course who has to answer the questions...me obviously...and that is what should happen since I am their mom and need to explain these things, but who is there to help me understand this?
Well needless to say he rules her life...everything pretty much revolves around "Larry" I put quotes around his name because that means I am being sarcastic, I can't even say his name with out full on contempt. He took my mom from me....I still need her...and I don't even get to because she is always with him. And now I struggle with the guilt of knowing my mom is happy but feeling just really pissed about it. Not that this is the main reason but she has babysat Davis like three times in the last 8 months. I mean come on...you live three block away from the sweetest baby ever and she rarely comes to see him even during the week....she ususally goes about 2 weeks between seeing him. That is ridiculous. Nevertheless she has two other freaking AWESOME Grandchildren that she is totally missing out on...they are only little ONCE and you are not seeing them grow up day to day like a Grandma that is able to should.
I recently asked her to watch the boys on Tuedays so Tom and I can go to Amigo's and I am going to play Volleyball. She agreed to this so I am now calling them "Grandma Tuesday's" I guess if she is not going to make the effort to be a part of their lives on her own I will force her.
I am sure that there will be more to come on this topic but I have to get to an appointment with one of my clients.

I do realize it has been awhile...I went on a bit of a hiatus so to say...we had some things happen that I did not really emotionally want to deal with on the computer because then that means I would actually have to re-hash it again. It has been long enough now that I can write about it, kinda, it will be quick because I will never forget it and dont really need to read about it again.
Shortly after I returned to work I had to work a fundraiser on a Saturday. When I came home I noticed Davis' head was swollen on the side, I took him to the ER, they did not find anything but a Hemotoba (bruise) took him back Monday because it was still swollen I was not happy with the diagnosis. They took another CAT scan, extremely long story short, he had a skull fracture. Tom swears he has no idea what happened. My thought is that he was drinking and dropped Davis and has either A.) Blocked it from his memory or B.) Is too scared to tell me. DHS investigated me...I can't even believe I have to type this. It was the WORST experience of my life to date. Everything ended up being ok, there were no charges, no long term damage for Davis. I took him to the Childrens hospital in Des Moines where they did a full skelatal exam and it all ended up being ok. But what is not ok is that Tom had no explanation. I do not think I will ever forgive him for not telling me what happened, even the truth as bad as it may sound is better to me than acting like he has no idea. If he would have told me right away I could have told DHS what happened and there probably would not have been an investigation done. The main reason for the investigation is because it was unexplained which therefor looks suspicious. DUH?! I work in this field. Anyway they did what they were supposed to do. I ever since have had to now monitor Tom. I have had many talks with him about drinking. He was not allowed (by me) to be alone with Davis if I had ANY suspicions at all that there was alcohol in the house. Sad huh that I have to worry about shit like that. I still to this day will hide any alcohol from him if he will be alone with Davis (unless its just a couple beers) ((hmm...sad again that I even said that)) Truth be told Tom has a problem, it needs to be dealt with, and it is sort of right now. I want to make sure that this is done the right way and he is able to come to the realization he needs to figure some shit out in his life and realize what is most important and stop relying on drugs or alcohol for that relief from what ever issues he is dealing with. He has stopped taking Xanax (Thank God) and cut down on his drinking alot. But he does still have a long way to go. I will stand by him as long as possible if not forever as long as he continues to grow and continues to improve. I by no means will EVER allow my children to be put in harms way and I make sure above all else that my babies come first both that they are emotionally and physically safe. Tom loves the boys with all his heart and I know that, he will be get there one day he will be the man I know he can be.