I still didn’t sleep too well, as I kept checking him a lot, but that’s OK, he slept without fever and that’s all that matters.  We might just get to start our New Year soon! 

We are on our way to recovery!

I have nothing against the Titans, don’t get me wrong, but I’m just not a huge fan.  As for the rest of them, please I wouldn’t walk across the street and watch them play for free.   The only good thing will be watching a couple of them lose further down the line. 

As always I will sit quietly and just wait to see how it turns out.  I know what will happen to a couple of teams, we all do, but you have to just be patient and wait.  What a waste when teams are just “in the way” of real football and get in the way of good play off games.  That just sucks.  Oh well, maybe next year.  Not for us really, we have kind of passed our prime, but so many other teams could be playing right now instead of the teams that are there representing the AFC, how sad. 

As I said, I guess I will see if the Steelers do their magic and if not I can always flip to the NFC and give them my support.  I hate when I have to do that, it’s so not my thing.  I just can’t back a bunch of cry baby, trash talkin’, back yard playin’ losers though!  Nope, can’t do it.   It will be sweeter in the end to watch them fall on the A**! 

Seriously, I am amazed at the lengths this country is going to in order to try and fight back at Israel troops.  They have built tunnels underneath their city, land mines and all sorts of bombs to fight off the Israels, but I’m not sure it will be enough to hold them off.  I am truly amazed at how some of the foreign countries fight and I do thank God each and every day that it stays on foreign soil.

These people with the bombing and the tanks and the land mines just amaze me.  I can’t imagine my city just blown up in the middle of the day with innocent people and children just terrorized for no reason.  We need to realize each day how fortunate we truly are in the US. 

I joke about Anderson, but he is over there giving us the updates and for that I do pay attention and learn more than I normally would from most!

A child with a fever is a life stopping event.  Yes, it sounds tragic, but it’s true isn’t it?  If you have a child with a cold, allergies or the basic “thing” you can deal with it and you can pretty much keep your daily life in tact, but a fever, well that just changes everything.  Why you non-child having people might ask?  Well it’s simple - a fever means that there is infection and if you don’t know what it is and if the Dr. office is already closed for the day you are trapped.  Then you must treat the fever every 4 hours switching between Motrin and Tylenol and the party begins. 

During the peak of the fever the child will do any of the following:  throw up, cry, become lifeless to the point of you panicking, act as if he/she is from another planet talking and carrying on in “fever language” or a mixture of all of the above!  Now then, you administer the medicine (some children take it calmly while some have to be held down like the Exorcist!) and then as the fever medicine begins to seep through their body they begin to become somewhat normal again, but here is the kicker; you are looking at 3-4 hours of normalcy before the craziness starts up all over again and if you find the the infection is virile this is the only treatment you will do until this illness passes. 

I know this, as we have had a virile infection since New Year’s Eve.  No treatment is available except fever medicine and you must wait for the infection to leave the body.  This leaves you and the child sleepless, and wondering is this will EVER pass.  A child with a fever literally stops your life.  I looked at the calendar today and couldn’t believe it was 1/4/09 already.  How could we have already jumped so far into the new year?  Life has passed us by so quickly because of this sickness.  It blew me away.

Mother’s do a lot for a child and sometimes I wonder if we really give them the credit they deserve!  No, I’m not writing this to get the “atta girl”, as most that read this are mothers!  I guess I’m writing it to say to them - I know its hard being a mom, working 8 hours, taking care of a house, cooking, cleaning, laundry, getting people where they need to go and then you throw in a sick child and things just go a little crazy.  You wonder the next day, “How did I get through that day with 3 hours sleep?”  ha ha.  I am TRULY BLESSED, as I have a mom and a family that help out so much.  They are there for me and that means the world to me.  I depend on them and for that I am thankful. 

We are better today, finally and we did go the Immediate Care Center early this morning as after 4 days with 103 fever, we were finally scared to death.  As we thought - virile so we are waiting it out!  Another night and hopefully we can start our New Year out the right way! 

I’m not usually one for all the blood, guts, and gore, but if you just get into the storyline and the plot, it’s really good.  Heck, half of it could so never happen so you just have to go with it, but dang this was just an awesome movie.  Morgan Freeman does a good job as always.  He does pretty good playing the bad guy.

One thing, if you’ve seen it, didn’t expect the train scene - that was a surprise to let that happen to so many people!  I was sort of shocked by that scene!  Almost too much killing for me, but nonetheless, the movie just rocked. 

Great action flick if you are into this kind of thing so if you haven’t seen it like me, check it out. 

New Year’s Day was filled with fighting over the taking of fever medicine and making Christmas vanish from our house.  After a very long day all evidence of Christmas is packed safely away in storage and the house is clean again.  (for the moment anyway).

At least we are throwing up, (yet) and that is one blessing about our illness and I’ll take it, but it’s been a long first day of 2009, I can tell you that.  I’m appreciative for the day however as I needed an extra day to get caught up since I too had been sick last weekend.  Once you get behind it’s very hard to get caught up when you’re a mom isn’t it? 

Well as 1st days go I can’t complain, at least we are starting out clean with all the Christmas stuff put away and we are very clean at this point in time.  Once I get home from work tomorrow I can continue my quest to get caught up to move further into this New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone and I hope you guys had a GREAT FIRST DAY!

Jerry bought me some for Christmas and of course they were red, green and white icing.  On Valentine’s Day I always try to get up there to buy the red, pink and white ones too.  I LOVE them!  They are simple, yet delicious.  One of my favorite cookies actually.  I’ve never really seen them too much in the Kentucky bakeries, but maybe you guys have them, I’m not sure. They are great for kids too because they are small, not messy and just fun with the colors for parties.

If you do, try them they rock.  If not, let me know and I’ll pick up some for you so you can try them.  Maybe I’ll let you be my Valentine!  Too late on the Christmas cookies, I’m SO not sharing!

I guess my thought process was that more folks go out to parties.  Guess I was wrong on that one.  Kroger was a mad house.  The lines were back in to the aisle.  I was cracking up.  People were all stressed out, as I guess they had places to be and they were angry at each other, it was hilarious. 

I did see one guy that had a worse chip habit than me, his cart was just LOADED with chips.  I was wondering where his party might be happening.  I thought this might be a party I could actually have some fun!  Once I was in line I did start to notice all the different items in people’s carts.  You had ranges from lower class carts of chips and salsa with soft drinks all the way to shrimp trays and champagne.  I guess you can get it all at Kroger with one stop shopping. 

The lines did move fast, I have to give them that, they were prepared.  They had almost every line opened and were herding them through like cattle.  I was in and out of check out in about 5 minutes.  The parking lot was packed too.  Huge mistake, but then again I just didn’t think it through.  I guess I will prepare next time!

I truly like my job, I’m not saying that to suck up, give me a break, it wouldn’t do me any good where I work anyway!  My company pays you a paycheck to come to work and do your job and they expect you to do just that, and I get it AND I agree.  OK, that being said, I like what I do and I do like the people that I work with (OK, yes we all have a few we don’t like, get real).  However, when you are not allowed to be who you are, or use your talents it tends to make you feel useless and I had felt that way for a very long time.

Lately thanks to some great people who believe in me I am able to be the person I am and hopefully let others be who they have needed to be for a long time too.  Today for example I was actually given responsibility all on my own, I know to most of you that have real jobs that sounds so lame, but to me it was a milestone.  It was HUGE.  I was grateful to be given the opportunity! 

It’s never easy when you downsize because it means more work for less people, but when you have talented people who want to work AND have talents that they haven’t been able to use - well guess what, that work won’t be so bad.  Yep, we are going to roll into 2009 kicking some tax, 403b, customer service butt and I’m proud to say we won’t be stopped by anything!  OUR TEAM ROCKS!   

I hope everyone is ready and has their plans complete.  We have some of our plans worked out, but not all of them of course.  We have to work until around 4PM so that makes it a little bit of a rush but that’s OK.  It is what it is right?

Still plenty of time to get home and get ready to bring in the New Year with the ones you love.  Are you thinking about resolutions for the New Year?  Don’t believe in them?  Mine are a little different this year actually, a little deeper and serious this year and not the general ones that I usually make.  I think I have some things I want to really try to accomplish this year so I thought I’d start off fresh!

Well good luck to everyone and I hope you get your plans lined out!  It’s almost time to start all over again with a clean slate!  ha ha.  Some of us need it right? 

We had leftovers in the fridge and the smell of the pizza just made me sick to my stomach.  I love that pizza, but the thought of going there just isn’t something I see happening for a very long time - how sad.  Have you ever given up a place before because you got sick?  I remember I gave up KFC for almost 2 years due to food poisoning; I couldn’t even go near the place.  It was awful.  I think I gave up McDonalds for about 2 years when Amanda was getting older for the exact same reason.

It’s not so bad when you don’t really like the place, but Bonnie and Clyde’s?  That is a killer for me.  Thinking of it still makes me sick right now so I guess it will be a while before I can try it.  Dang this stupid virus! 

Well at least I didn’t ring in the New Year with it!  I had the misfortune of getting this stomach virus that is going around.  I got it yesterday morning and it hit me like a Mack Truck.  I woke up around 5:00 AM and thought for a second, “Gee I don’t feel so well.”  Within seconds I was totally sick.  I went to the Immediate Care Center with my mom and they had to give me a shot so I could stop getting sick (which the shot actually made me throw up so that was worse!).

I went home and slept the entire day away in a drug induced coma so that was OK I guess, but this morning I felt awful.  I had to come to work because we are already short staffed due to holidays and bad management decisions so that being said, I’m here and not feeling too great. 

If you get this you might as well plan on at least 24 hours and a trip to the Dr. because you can’t stop the sickness yourself, it’s too harsh.  Just deal with it and try to get medicine fast! 

Over the holidays I have overheard several people give out their personal, security information over the phone for various reasons.  I have heard social security numbers, pass codes, passwords, mother’s maiden names, and I have even heard one particular individual give instructions as to where she hides her house key.  Why, because we work in cubicles and we have no privacy. 

However, here is the thing, we have offices and conference rooms and we also have lunch hours.  This is when I would give out this information and handle this type of business.  You will never hear me give this personal information over the phone so anyone can hear me do it; even in our environment.  Why, well for a couple of reasons actually but still, it’s just not what you should be doing so others can hear you.

Just think if you worked at a very large company with people coming and going, mail people, service people, repair people and you have no idea who can hear you.  There you are just giving out information and you don’t who might over hear you and do something with your information.  Is this cynical of me?  Perhaps, but with so much fraud in the world today should we be so careless?  I think not. 

It’s just an observation because when it does happen then you always hear the person say, “I don’t understand, I’m SO careful.” and the thing is, I don’t even think people realize how carefree they are sometimes with that type of call or information when they are calling their bank or maybe a relative to give out information.  I think we should be because of some much fraud in the world today.

I got the Official GT Xpress 101 for Christmas.  Has anyone seen this on the Infomercial?

It’s one of my favorite Infomercials and I always wanted to buy the thing, but of course I didn’t.  Well Jerry got me one for Christmas.  I was so excited.  Yes, I’m going to use it and yes, I’m going to make exciting meals in 7 to 9 minutes and some are going to be from leftovers.  ha ha

I have already started memorizing the cookbook that came with it and I am going to the web site tonight to get more recipes to try.  I swear, I have watched the infomercial probably 20 times, how sad is this?  It’s mostly because I can’t sleep late at night and I’m flipping channels but I always seem to stop and just get hooked by this thing for some reason.  It just sucks me in but NOW I have one and I’m so ’cited I could pee my pants! 

I told Jerry we could ring in the New Year just making 7 minute meals.  OK, so I’m not the most exciting gal in the world, but this is my life so let me live it alright?  I’m excited that Santa had one in his bag.  I told the girls at work they’d stop making fun of me around the middle of January when it’s freezing outside and I bring it to work and whip out some great lunch in 7 minutes, yes I said 7 minutes from leftovers.  ha ha.

If you want to try it out, just give me a call and I can whip you up something in a jiffy moment!  I can’t wait to try it out and when I have my top 10 recipes I will blog them for sure!   

Big morning, big moment, drum roll please……….he walks out, he looks at the bike (very seriously as Noah is always serious), and he says, “please take off the streamers (which we forgot and they were kind of girlie), then he says, “the water bottle needs to go on the side, not the front” (with which we reply, OK we can probably fix that) and then without a moment’s hesitation his eye catches the race track set up in the corner and he screams, “A race track, I really like this race track” and from then on out it was all about the race track.  So much for the yellow bike.

He did get on it later for a few moments, but not the reaction you’d think seeing how we had talked about it for MONTHS ON END!  He was even more excited about his yellow, rain boots because, as he told us, “He had wanted them for a long time!”.

Kids crack me up!  It was a great day and he was an angel until he fell asleep.  He loved everything and my living room currently looks like a damaged ToysRUs store!  It’s sad!  It was a great day and we will need the weekend to recuperate. 

PS:  The Flippin’ Frog game was fun and Noah did love it.  We played and of course, he was the yellow frogs!