Tuesday, November 30, 2010

And the Birds Sang!!!!!!

The birds are singing because I finally got it!!!

My dream camera!!!  The Canon Rebel XS that I have only wanted for 3 years!!!

Thank you my wonderful husband!!!!

I only know how to shoot in auto mode and let me tell you, I haven't got a clue what I'm doing and it takes great pictures!!  I cannot wait to see how great they will be when I do get a clue after taking some classes and practicing.

Jill's Ultimate Favorite Things

If you watch Oprah, you understand the meaning of "Favorite Things".  Her "Favorite Things" episode, or should I say episodes, just aired a few weeks ago.  How I'd love to get in on that!  It is amazing, people who have tickets to her show just think they are going to a regular taping, she never reveals when her favorite things episode is going to be taped.  Imagine the feeling they have when it is revealed that they are on the set of the taping of her favorite things.  People get so emotional, it makes me cry just watching them.  Oprah gives away amazing things, cars, cruises, cameras, fancy jewlery, just to name a few. 

I'm not giving anything away here, but I just thought it might be fun to post a few of my favorite things every week or twice a week up until the holidays.

Here goes:

Jonathan Adler (RED) Ceramic Starbucks Travel Tumbler!!  I spotted this while indulging in a Peppermint Mocha last week at our local Starbucks, I just had to have it!!  $10.95





Chock Full O'Nuts - aka "the Heavenly Coffee"  I grew up with my parents drinking this coffee, so naturally my sister and I chug it as well.  $7.50 at Wally World

Model in a Bottle makeup setting spray.  This is the only reason my makeup stayed on my face at my 90 degree October wedding.  I have been a believer ever since.  $29.99 for 2 bottles on Ebay.

PSSSSSST Spray Shampoo.  I love dry shampoo, my sister swears by Oscar Blahndi but she is single and can afford $30 dry shampoo.  I'm a stay at home mom.  Rite Aid $6 (I think $6).  Anyways, I love this stuff.  I washed my hair on Thanksgiving and then used this all weekend, didn't was it again until Monday and you couldn't even tell!

I loveeee me some Philosophy When Hope is Not Enough.  Then I discovered When Hope Is Not Enough SPF!!!  Woot!!  I love a good wrinkle preventor.  Sephora $30 ish

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Christmas Cards - Yay or Nay?

I feel like boycotting sending out a Christmas card this year.

Why?

I'm not really in the mood to spend the money on the perfect card, spending time finding the perfect picture of Davis for said card, spending.44 to mail each card, addressing 40+ cards to send out to people, 5 of which give a rats rump about my card.

2 of the people who give a rats rump are the grandmas.

The other 3 include my sister, a good friend and my aunt.

The other 35 people do what I do with the card, look at it and think wow, this is cute or wow this is really freakin' stupid, I can't believe they spent money on it, it ends up going into a card basket of sorts, or if you are really good you actually hang it up.  After Christmas, it goes into the recycling bin.

That was worth the .60 I spent on the card, the .44 cents I spent to mail it and the 10 hours it took me to address and put them all into envelopes.

Yes, it will take me 10 hours because I have a toddler running around.

Ba-Hum-Bug

Of course I'm getting a new fancy camera and I have to play photographer.  I suppose I could send a card out, just one more year.

Besides, Davis is the cutest kid I know and doesn't everyone I know want to see how adorable he is?

Hell yeah they do.

Maybe Maizy the wonder dog will make our Christmas card again.

Look for it peeps.

It will be memorable.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

I Survived!!!

I survived the biggest boozing night of the year.

If you ever participated, you know which night I'm talking about.

The night before Thanksgiving.

In my younger years you could find me boozing it up at whatever happened to be my favorite bar that year, running into old friends in town to see their families, drinking too much, going to my grandmas the next day with a severe case of morning sickness, not the morning sickness your thinking of, you know, the kind you get from partying too hard.

The last few years I have "grown up".

I got married, became a mom.

Not that fun ends when you get married and become a mom.

Your idea of fun changes.

Last night my mom and I attended a funeral for a good friend.  Afterwards we decided to have a drink at a newer, locally owned restaurant in our downtown area. 

It was closed.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Oh well.

So we went to an old standy by.

Had a few beers.

I dropped her off, went inside to borrow some Zyrtec for Davis (I know).

I was home by 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

These ARE the BEST ones yet!!!!!

Every time the amazing Emy of JEM Photography takes pictures of Davis I say, "These are the best ones yet!!".  I truly love her work and every time she takes Davis' pictures I am always in awe.  She always manages to capture Davis personality perfectly, at the age he is at the time.  I will stop babbling about them now and let you see for yourself.

JEM Photography

Friday, November 19, 2010

Friday Fragments

1. I am really, really looking forward to Black Friday.  There are some deals that this chicky needs to get in on.  Wal Mart - 5 a.m. - I am so there.

2. I finally have my husband convinced of my idea, that is only 5 years in the making.  No, we are not having another baby.  It is house related, more on this later.

3. I think Davis is the funniest kid I know.

4. Two Words: Cake Pops

5. One Word: Bakerella

6. Put 4 and 5 together and you have one happy Cake Pop making Jill!!! 

7. I cannot wait to decorate the front of our house for Christmas.  I might go all out this year since we have a white picket fence, that was also 5 years in the making, I finally got one over the summer.  I'm not going to go Clark Griswald on our neighborhood though, at least not this year :o)

8. I'm doing Weight Watchers, for the 8 billionth time since Davis was born.  This time, I'm sticking to it.

9. I had a dream that we decided to have another baby.

10. It was twins.

11. Two girls.

12. Poor Jeff

13. Poor Mommy

14. Maizy is a vicious attack dog, she pulled the ultimate stunt Monday, she bit the UPS dude.  Yep, beware of my labradoodle.  She has been a little edgy since Davis arrived.  I had a dog trainer come in last month, he helped a lot and she was doing so well with it.  But someone (me) stopped doing the training and this is what I get.  She didn't break his skin, but you could see teeth marks in his pants.  I cried after it happened for an hour.  So far the dog warden hasn't shown up, hopefully they won't.  This was a definate wake up call for us.  Back to training 101.

15. My good friends father passed away today, from cancer.  I'm so sad for her.  He has been battling for quite sometime.  The weird thing about this, yesterday while shopping at Kroger I had a feeling he had passed or was about to pass.  My thoughts are with her and her family.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

6 Months of Zoosdays

It is always amazing to see what changes over time. 

When you see someone a lot you don't notice changes, but when you go back and look at pictures or an old blog post, it hits you just how much children change over a few months.

Back in the Spring my good mommy friend, Jen and I decided we needed to put our zoo memberships to good use, we were hauling our butts and our baby's butts to the zoo every single week on Tuesdays, weather permitting. We may not have made it every single week due to travel schedules and the ridiculous heat wave we had in Ohio this summer and it may not have always been on Tuesday, but we made it there, A LOT!!  I would have to say we both got good use out of our memberships.  They paid for themselves 10 times over, I'm sure. 

I noticed that we were going to have some wonderful spring like weather this week so I asked Jen if she'd like to get a zoosday in.  It was a gorgeous day, the zoo was not crowded (i think there were 20 cars in the parking lot), the animals were very playful, it was a great day.  Best of all we were there for nearly 4 hours and our kids were angels the entire time, much like our first trip to the zoo.  Please check out Jen's blog post to see photos from our very first zoo trip with the kids, really, look, so you can see how much these two have changed.  Here it is.  I would have posted my own photos in this post, but then I remembered I had left my camera in the car that day.  Davis was 13.5 months old and Stella was 8.5 months old when we went on our first zoosday.  Davis was still taking a bottle and Stella wasn't even crawling yet.  My how things have changed.  Stella is now a mover and a groover just like her friend Davis and they had so much fun exploring the empty zoo today. Today Davis is about 19.5 months old and Stella is about 14.5 months old.  Now onto the pictures.


Siku, the baby polar bear born January 2010, our first zoo trip was the first day he was in the habitat for viewing, he got big too!!!


Mama bear, don't know her name, but check out the shot I captured!  Proof I need a Canon Rebel DSLR (hint, hint Jeff)


Infatuated by the bears

Diggin' his Uggs (yes, Davis has real Uggs people) and I know he is a boy, but come on, they are 100% cuteness


Hi Mommy!!  Peek A Boo

They loved playing on the Lion sculptures

Do we have the most fashionable kids on the block or what? 

Nice Lion

They were also obsessed with the crap they found in that hole in the ground, more so than the Lions I think. 

Trying to get "behind the scenes"

Good Bye Lions, see you next time


Good Bye Lions, see you next time

What a perfect day with great friends!!  This was possibly our last trip to the zoo, except for the Lights Before Christmas, until the springtime, unless we get an unusual warm winter day, which does happen.  What an amazing ending to a season of Zoosdays!  Looking forward to next season!




Things I Miss

I don't care who you are, there are things you miss about life before child.  And if you say you don't miss anything, you are a big fat liar!  Or Mother Teresa.

1. Waking up on my own or by the sound of my alarm clock at the time of my choosing.  Not by the sound of the rooster child at a different time every morning.

2. Not having to clean my kitchen floor after every single meal.

3. Making a meal and having whoever eats it, actually eat it, rather than cry about it or throw it to the dog.  See #2.

4. I'm going to go back to pre-marriage on this one.  I miss sitting around my adorable, 1 bedroom apartment, watching Lifetime movies all day, telling my friends who want to go out drinking that "I'm sick" because I want to watch the Betty Broderick story for the millionth time.

5. Working.  What???  I actually said I miss working??  Take me to the psych ward, stat.  Really, I never thought I'd say that but I do miss having a job, having co-worker friends to gossip with every morning about other crazy co-workers, discussing the TV shows we watched the night before, sipping coffee on my way to work, having an entire hour to myself every single day for lunch, aaaahhhhhh. 

6. Being alone.  Lynette on Desperate Housewives said it best (she says it at the end, but this clip is worth watching in it's entirity):

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Sports Wagon

We are already planning what kind of vehicle I will be getting when I turn my Grand Cherokee in next October.  Last weekend Jeff was car shopping online, he looked at a Honda Pilot (my choice), GMC Terrain (his choice) and the Acura TSX Sport Wagon.  An Acura TSX Sport Wagon??  First of all the word sport and wagon should never be used in the same sentence, let alone for the name of a car, especially not in the name of a luxury car.  Everytime I hear the word sport wagon I think of the movie Vacation.  To refresh your memory, here is a line from one of my favorite movies of all time.  This is the scene when Clark and Rusty go to pick up their brand new blue sports wagon before leaving on their cross country trip to Wally World only to be informed it isn't there.

Ed, the car salesmen: I'll get to the bottom of this.  Davenport!

Davenport: Yes, Mr. Ed.

Ed, the car salesmen: Mr. Griswold ordered a blue sports wagon, where is it?

Davenport: I don't know sir

Ed, the car salesmen: I know what must have happened, it didn't come in

Clark Griswald: Ed, I'm not your average everyday fool.  Now I want my blue sports wagon and if you can't get it for me I'm gonna take my business elsewhere!  Where is my old car?

Ed, the car salesmen: I'm just as upset as you are, believe me. Davenport! Get Mr. Griswald's car back and bring it back here! Now I can get you the wagon, there's not a problem there. The problem is that it might take six weeks. Now, I owe it to myself to tell you that if you're taking the whole tribe cross-country, the Wagon Queen Family Truckster... You think you hate it now, wait 'til you drive it.

Clark Griswald:  I don't want to drive it. I just want my old car back. I'm not falling for this. Let's go, Russ




This folks is the wagon queen family truckster, not the sport wagon, but you catch my drift.