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Candi

books

Books for vacation

Library

I could spend hours scanning through books at the library, especially when it gets me out of sitting at Karli’s cramped dance studio. Really I was on a mission to find a couple of paperback books for vacation. (OMG, I can’t believe it’s almost here already, so excited!) I don’t want to take my iPad out to the pool and have to worry about someone snagging it while I am visiting the swim up bar repeatedly. I have to be honest, laying at the pool or on the beach reading a book is like one of the top things I am looking forward to. I care more about that then visiting the “rocks” as I like to call the various sites to see in Cancun.

I haven’t purchased any real books in awhile so I thought I would wander through the aisles trying to find some of the books on my “To Read” list on Goodreads. It was so awesome, I could pick up a book and scan the ISBN number on the back with my phone and the reviews/ratings from Goodreads would pop up. Unfortunately I was coming up on empty even though I did find several of the books I’ve been wanting to read, but they were all huge heavy hardbacks. I found a few books by Kristin Hannah and Erin Hilderbrand. I even found a few by an author I’ve been meaning to check out – Lisa Gardner. But like I said, all hardbacks. So finally I googled (don’t laugh) “Books like Twilight or Hunger Games” because let’s be real, I haven’t loved any series of books as much as I’ve loved those books. Not to mention I will be seeing Breaking Dawn Part 2 prior to vacation and would love to follow that up with something mushy love story that involves some sort of creature or event that would never happen in real life.

I ended up only finding one paperback- the first book of the series Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick. Upon reading the description it sounds pretty similar to Twilight, but I’m okay with that. I like writers who are trying to one up Twilight. How sweet of them to put out the effort to try and write a book better than the best Trilogy written EVER!!

Hush, Hush

The library had two of the other books in the series, but they were hardcover as well. I’m thinking I’ll just make a trip to Target and pick up a couple of paperbacks. I’ve been meaning to try out the first books of a couple of other young adult series that I keep hearing about. One is Divergent by Veronica Roth and the other is Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Has anyone read any of these series before I go buy them? Feedback please!

blog, holidays & occassions

Andrew’s Homecoming

Photos from Andrew and Ali’s Homecoming in October. I had to laugh because all day he laid on the couch and chilled and didn’t get up to shower and get ready until like 20 minutes before he had to pick up Ali. He picked her up and they got photos taken at Ali’s house and then came to our house and had photos taken here. Then they were off to Ali’s friends house for more photos (see below & those were taken by Andrew’s stepmom because I had to get ready for a football dance). They also ate dinner at Ali’s friends house for like 5 bucks a person since her parents own a restaurant or are caterers or something. But how cool is that? Andrew said the food was fabulous and there was so much of it. They make such a cute couple!
Andrew & Ali Homecoming

Andrew & Ali Homecoming Andrew & Ali Homecoming

Andrew & Ali Homecoming Andrew & Ali Homecoming

Andrew & Ali Homecoming Andrew & Ali Homecoming

Andrew & Ali Homecoming

Andrew & Ali Homecoming

Andrew & Ali Homecoming Andrew & Ali Homecoming

Andrew & Ali Homecoming Andrew & Ali Homecoming

Andrew & Ali Homecoming

Andrew & Ali Homecoming

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October Pictorial

Ken and I celebrated our 13th anniversary this month. 13 is supposed to be an unlucky number, but it’s been pretty lucky for us. We’ve made it 13 years and I still love him like crazy! More than anything I love how our relationship has reached a different level. I suppose this comes with age, growing old together actually feels really good. I know we aren’t that old, but you know what I mean.

Some pics from our wedding day…
13 Years Ago ;) XOXOXO

My date for the football dance (our kids league, adults only party)… some dude from Kiss. I don’t even remember which one he was. Doesn’t matter, people loved him. People kept coming up to Ken asking to get his photo taken with him.
My date for the night ;) Only my husband.

Andrew made this cute craft for Ali for Sweetest Day. I have pics of him making it and will share later, probably as a Tutorial for Valentine’s Day! I’ve raised the boy well… he likes doing nice things for his girlfriend. They recently celebrated their one year anniversary as well.
My son and his girlfriend. He made this for her for Sweetest Day!!

Andrew turned 17 this month…holy moly. I’m super proud of the young man he is becoming. He has a good head on his shoulders and we have a great relationship. We know how to push one another’s buttons, but he knows he can count on me for anything. He’s been through a lot this last year with his back injury. He has been going through tons of physical therapy and is wearing a back brace. Unfortunately he won’t be able to try out for baseball this year, but as I always say- all things happen for a reason and his grades have been amazing lately.
Happy 17th Birthday Andrew!!!

This little guy has been living at our home for awhile now. Unless there is a whole family of them we keep seeing? They really creep me out, I’m not really a fan of bugs period.
Hi Mr Manny! You are looking might thin today.

Only two of our kiddos dressed up for Halloween this year. It seems just like yesterday Chase and Karli were just wobbling through our neighborhood tripping over every sidewalk crack and getting passed by all the older kids, including their two older brothers. Here we are now, they are the only two left trick or treating and they make it through the entire neighborhood in a little over an hour. We didn’t get too many trick or treaters this year because the weather was crummy, but the kids still had fun and got tons of candy.
StayPuft Marshmallow Chase and Kitty Karli
Happy Halloween!!!

Stay Puft dude - Chase

Kitty Karli

Lastly, I wanted to share this that I found the other day. It was perfect timing since I was feeling sorry for myself and all my computer woes. This just says it all. I am VERY BLESSED as I am sure many of you are. Remember that next time when you are down and discouraged. Things could always be much, much worse.
Love this!

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September pictorial

Now that all my computer drama is over we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming. OH- speaking of programming, I totally had to cut back on my DVR recordings. I literally could not keep up with all these shows that I had set to record. There are still some shows though that are my guilty pleasures and I just can’t go without. Such as the Real Housewives of Miami. Oh my goodness, these ladies crack me up. I can’t wait for the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills to start next week. Almost excited as I am for the presidential election so happen so my phone will quit ringing all day long. We actually took the phone of the hook today.

In case you haven’t figured out, I always like to make a little photo pictorial of any photos I have from the month that I didn’t make an actual blog post about. So here we go with September’s…

Last day before summer break. I just love this photo!
Last day of summer break!

My kiddos the first day of school. As always Andrew and Blake look half asleep. Believe me I don’t like getting up that early either.
11th Grade!! 7th Grade!!

4th Grade!! 3rd Grade!!

I love to fix Karli’s hair different ways for school, but it doesn’t happen every day. The first day of school I did this side French braid that turned out really cute. I found this hairstyle from this YouTube channel – Cute Girls Hairstyles.
Karli's hair for 3 Grade! LOL

Warning…cute doggies ahead!
So sleepy... Crazy Daisy...get off the kids clean clothes!!

I turned 40, blah blah blah. End of story. Just kidding. It doesn’t really bother me all that much. Karli made me this cute sign on her bed. She is such a sweetie pie!
Hanging from Karli's bed this morning. I know you can barely read it, it says HAPPY Birthday Mom!

Karli gave me a sparkly gift bag with a bunch of her toys in it! Chase made me this I love you sign with a toy that he has.
And she gave me a gift bag with some of her toys, LOL!! Chase made me this...

My yummy ice cream birthday cake that I shared with the pups too!
PartyTime! Sharing my ice cream cake

I tried a new recipe for lasagna and it was the best tasting lasagna I have ever had. It calls for Italian sausage which I have used before and but it also calls for slices of mozzarella cheese that made it so tasty. This one is a keeper for sure! Find the recipe here.
Recipe said World's Best Lasagna...it was pretty awesome.

Finishing out the month I participated in the Toledo Race for the Cure with some friends. I didn’t sign up for the timed race though because I had not been training at all. I ran a few times during the race, but nothing to brag about. I really really wish I would have never stopped running. I felt so much better when I was running at least a few times a week. I feel like things are finally falling into place and it is at the top of my list to get back into a workout routine again! (I’m on the far right of both pics!)
Race for the Cure ;)

racecure

blog

Expectations

It’s official, I am a nerd. I was sitting there watching tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead and I kept thinking about the darn Mac and how I need to run some updates and install the latest operating system. I totally love this show even though I never watched it until 2 weeks ago when the first episode of Season 3 aired and I had spent a day and a half watching the marathon of Seasons 1 & 2 while pretending to also be a good mom. (Think lots of frozen pizza and running up and down the stairs with loads of laundry.) I was hooked and the show is awesome, but I guess I am more of a computer nerd than I am a zombie addict.

So yeah, this is basically going to be some more ramblings while I am updating some more stuff.

The older I get the more I find myself trying to figure out what it is that makes me happy. I mean, I am happy most days, but I always need for there to be more going on in my life than just being a wife and a mom. There are always a dozen or more hobbies or projects floating around in my mind and most of those don’t even get implemented. But it’s like I have to have these things that I think I am going to do, create, perfect…or I just don’t feel like a complete person. I was thinking of how long my current list of TO DO things is and as I was chuckling to myself, I figured I may as well let you chuckle along with me.

In no particular order:

Cookie Maker/Designer
I used my birthday money from my parents and in-laws and bought a ton of baking supplies so I could make the perfect sugar cookie and design them using methods like outlining, flooding, sanding and more. One website I found to be extremely helpful and also contains the sugar cookie recipe I plan on using is Bake at 350. I have all the stuff I need to make some cool Halloween decorated cookies, but I have yet to make them. Looks like I am making some cookies tomorrow night with Karli since Halloween is almost here.

Paint the kids bathroom
I bought paint for this project back when I painted Karli’s bedroom back in June. Ken doesn’t like the color and apparently I am not in love with it either since I have yet to paint with it. It’s like a dark purple-ish color and I have 3 boys and 1 girl. I know, that wasn’t a smart choice. I’m thinking a medium gray with red accents would be sweet instead.

Get back into running
For me stress and running don’t mix. I take that back, pretty much running and anything don’t mix. If I have any single thing that I have going on for the day even if it is something quick and easy it messes up my entire day and I somehow can’t find the time to run. Same with stress, if I am stressed about something I turn off everything else in my head and exercise just isn’t happening. I keep seeing all these motivation books that I want to read about running and I’m thinking that somehow magically I am going to become addicted to running someday, but I just turned 40 folks, isn’t it kinda late to start now? Okay, that was silly question, I know it’s never too late to start…which is also why I haven’t started yet. Because I have plenty of time. Ha!

Go to college, I mean help my son get into college
You would almost think that I was the one going off to college in less than two years with the amount of time and effort I put into Andrew’s college plans. I have a list of the schools in Michigan that offer the Masters programs that he is interested in which is either Physical Therapy or Physician Assistant. Only one of the universities offers both programs – Central Michigan – so in his mind this school is his first choice. He can go to pretty much any university and apply for the Physical Therapy program in his 4th year and then transfer. He would also like to consider a Sports Medicine physician as a career but the thought of all that college (13 years) doesn’t have him convinced it’s the right choice. All this crap is stressful to me for some reason. I think it’s difficult because you feel a certain amount of pressure to help push them in the right direction. {sigh…}

Blog, vlog, tweet, pin, instagram and more
I still love the world of blogging and all that comes with social networking however to be super successful at this you need to have full commitment and sort of make it your life’s goal to get “IN” with all the people that are also successful as well. So for me it continues to just be a hobby that I tend to do in spurts. I especially love YouTube and really really wish it was something that I could do consistently. The videos I was making for my “Can Fat People Do the Insanity Workout?” series are still getting excellent views, but I got so bored of the whole thing. I tried 3 times to restart the second month of Insanity and was just too bored with the program. This is still always in the back of my mind, that I want to be better at all that is involved with my blog and YouTube channel because I do thoroughly enjoy it.

Reading
I have a list of a couple dozen books that I really want to read sometime soon. I made the list at the beginning of summer and I haven’t read a single book. I’ve started a couple, but haven’t finished one since the Fifty Shades series. I’m planning on picking up a couple of paperbacks to read while on vacation next month since I don’t want to take my iPad- any suggestions for some good beach reading?

Cooking
I am always trying to find new recipes and plan weekly menus to have a variety of foods to offer my family. I wish I was more creative in this way so it required less planning and just more cooking.

Memory Books/Scrap Books
I can’t even tell you how far behind I am on my kids school and sports scrapbooks. All of the supplies sit in two bins up in my bedroom and they taunt me every day. I figure that I better have Andrew’s done by the time he graduates from high school so we can share it at his graduation party, so I better get a move on. I have piles upon piles of photos that need put into the books as well as prints that need ordered from the past two years. It’s one of those things where I am so far behind I dread even working on it.

Now that I wrote all of this down and scroll up and see all that I feel like I want to do…it doesn’t seem so bad. It doesn’t look like I have too many things to balance. I can work with all of this. It’s just going to take some planning, prioritizing and commitment on my part. Here lately I have been spending so much time with my kids with homework, reading, and studying that by the time the day is over I am too exhausted to do anything productive. The days just fly by too quickly. Boy do I miss the days when I was a stay at home mom with only 1 child in school and the other 3 at home and all I had to do all day was play and take care of the kids.

On a lighter note…both of my boys football teams made it to the Championship game for football. They both won their division and their playoff games today! One final game next week to win it all. I know they can do it!

Junior Team

Senior Team

blog, technology

I hate computers

I’m sitting here at my desk copying our music files over one by one. Well artist by artist anyways. I figured it was a good time to write an update because what else do I have to do while I wait for everything to process.

This is freaking insane. I’m really thinking the computer gods hate me or something. I am not even excited about getting the new laptops next week now because that just means more work for me getting them set up with our work database and stuff. Anyways so after Ken’s laptop getting a virus our Mac desktop started acting up and I was hurrying and trying to copy all of our photos over to our external hard drive. The last time I did this was early 2011 and I had A LOT of stuff to move over. Photos, Videos and our huge music library. Well the more I moved things the more the mac would lock up. I started deleting stuff because we had 350gig of crap on there, but it didn’t matter. Once it locked up I had to run this “repair permissions” thing which takes 1-2 hours and then it will work again but only for a short time- like 1 -2 hours as well. Plus it copies everything SUPER slow. I really feel grouchy these past few days in case you were wondering. As of right now I have all of our photos and videos backed up, but the music is taking forever. I am almost thinking we might lose everything because it just isn’t working too well. The amount of times I have to restart and repair, ugh.

This morning I took Chase shopping just to get out of the house for a little bit. He needed a Halloween costume and I had a couple of other places to stop. Do you know no one has sandals out there anymore? I wanted to pick up some new sandals for Karli and I for vacation next month (I AM SOOOO EXCITED!!!), but all the clearance stuff is gone and replaced with winter boots. Bummer. Guess I will have to find something online. I did already get a couple new pairs of shorts and a couple of bathing suit coverups. I don’t feel guilty for buying myself stuff since my 40th B-day was last month and I told Ken not to buy me anything because I seriously couldn’t think of a darn thing to have him buy for me. I felt confident as time went on I would think of something I just had to have soon! Enter new vacations clothes!

Anyways, I had a blast with Chase today. I love my outings with the kids just one at a time. I always let them pick out a special treat and Chase chose a new outfit for his build-a-bear. Shhh, don’t tell his 4th grade friends he still likes to dress his build-a-bear. He was also nice enough to pick out a cute Halloween witch one for Karli. I love how his special treats are still affordable. They older they get the more expensive the stuff they want is. For example, Andrew wanting some new sweat pants. They can’t just be Target brand (the horror!!) so I get him some Nike ones from Dick’s and they were $50 each! Wow. I don’t even have a $50 pair of pants, let alone sweat pants. I just bought myself new comfy PJ pants from Costco people. The things we sacrifice for our kids.

I could pretty much just ramble on about anything right now because I have all the time in the world. I know I still need to write a September & October update, but that sounds like too much work, finding the photos to go with what I want to talk about. Ugh, much easier to just ramble.

Wow, this copying of the music files just isn’t working. I am having to reboot and repair again and I haven’t put a dent into the amount of music I have to copy. Back to google…I need to see if there is another method to backing all of this up. Oh, I just realized all of our Apps are on there too (for our iphones). Our Mac is pretty old, at least 5 years, but geez this is ridiculous.

Update: I’ve decided to just do a clean install of the OS on the Mac and not worry about any lost music. I’ve been at this 3 days and I can’t take it anymore! Between one of the backups of music we do have and the 3 iphones and all the ipods we have in the house we have the majority of the music we want. I guess. Let’s hope this fixes the Mac.

blog, technology

Real love is Windows 8

After 13 years of marriage my husband is still so very romantic. For Sweetest Day this year he decided to get a virus on his laptop so I could spend my Friday afternoon working on his computer. The last time he did this was on Valentine’s Day. I told you he was romantic. I did finally get rid of the virus, but then a bunch of registry files were deleted thus the majority of his programs would not function. Finally I decided to just take his laptop back to factory settings. We were able to backup all of his files so not a big deal- just time consuming.

During my delightful computer experiences I received an email from Dell sharing that Windows 8 was to be released soon. What perfect timing! We typically purchase new laptops every 2 years which usually goes right along with the latest release of Windows. Ken isn’t always excited about getting the latest operating system because there are usually issues like Windows Vista (UGH!), but too bad. It was time to upgrade again. We use our laptops for everything, particularly our business, so we are on them the majority of the day. After a couple of years with a laptop it gets so bogged down and the simplest task takes seconds longer than it should. Getting the spinning wheel when I’m trying to print a document or when programs take forever to open is insanely frustrating. Ken had to replace his hard drive awhile back and he has these keyboard issues where the cursor will just randomly hop from one spot to another. So it was really time.

Dell’s customer service has not been the greatest, but they still have the best laptop for the dollar in my opinion. So I went on their website and picked us out two new laptops and pretty much just said to Ken, “Happy Sweetest Day, I bought you a new laptop and oh yea, I bought myself one too”. And let’s just say I’m happy than can be because I would much rather have a new laptop in two weeks (Windows 8 will not be released until this Friday, October 26th) than a bouquet of flowers that will die in a week or a romantic dinner that we don’t even have the free time for right now.

I picked out the Dell 17R Special Edition (Inspiron 7720), i7 processor, 3.4Ghz, 17.3 inch HD screen, 8GB DDR3 Memory, 1TB Hard drive with 32Gig Intel Smart Response (which allows programs to open super fast), upgraded Skullcandy speakers, and a backlit keyboard. I’m probably most excited about the backlit keyboard!

Computer Love

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Grossed out

Too many days have passed since I have last blogged, wow. I’m gonna just jump right in with a funny story from tonight. Chase was watching TV and a commercial for Domino’s Pizza came on. He says, “Ew Mom, why would anyone want to get pizza from there when they touch it with their hands?” So how do I respond to a loaded question like that? I basically just said that it wasn’t real like most things you see on TV. I mean seriously, the kid barely eats a darn thing as it is let alone him refusing to eat pizza because people touch it with their hands! Honestly I haven’t been into a pizza place lately to see if they all wear gloves now. Do they? I mean I know I have seen most pizza guys the roll the pizza up in the air with their bare hands. Could that really be done effectively with gloves on? Anyways, I lied to my child because I don’t want to give up my nights of not feeling like cooking and ordering pizza. I already have to make Karli macaroni and cheese on our pizza nights because she doesn’t like pizza. I know!! What kid doesn’t like pizza? But Chase won’t eat macaroni and cheese so then I would be fixing something else for him. I know, my kids have serious food problems. My life is full of very complicated issues like this. (j/k)

Grossed out!