Cupcake Extravaganza and more...

So April and May had a lot of birthdays in my work world. I have found myself baking a lot these past few weeks, with hubby of course being my sous chef sorta. He calls himself that. Last week I made a Lemon Raspberry cake from scratch and oh my goodness, it was so good. I never had tried anything like that before and well, I have pics but they are on my Facebook. I guess I will add them later cause I am too tired to hook up my iPhone to get them off of there. Then I made a homemade Coconut Rum cake with real yummy RUM... and tonight it's my famous White Chocolate cake in cupcake form...Don't worry, there will be no CCC. No tonight will be white chocolate butter cream icing in a swirly and spiky fashion. I might even add a dash of sprinkles. A DASH not a whole covering. Some people go overboard, see Cake Wrecks. One of my most fave blogs to visit daily.

Anyway, while I love to bake and love to see people eat it and enjoy it and tell me I should open a bakery.. HA HA HA... I am TIRED!!!! You see what time it is, right? Yea. LATE. AGAIN. It does make my heart happy though...

Tomorrow, err, today is HAPPY HOUR... And I am SO going to that. Gotta get my drink on and celebrate a slight vacation from baking cakes.. OH wait. I have a son who has a birthday on Saturday... CRAP! OH yea, birthday celebration will be on the FOLLOWING weekend instead of actual birthday. WHEW cause mama needs a break! He keeps giving me requests for certain kinds of cakes. I think I ruined it when I made him that kick-ass pirate ship cake. THAT WAS FUN. I had never done anything so elaborate before. Anyway, he has a passion for cooking, that boy watches Food Network more than I do. :) I will never forget the first time I came home from work and he was watching Paula Dean stuffing a chicken with a can of beer. He likes to get cook books at the bookstore. I encourage it though. He even made his own recipe, with my help, for an Eggplant dish that is well.. delicious!

So now that I have yammered on forever... I guess I have to go frost those cupcakes now...

Wow!

I have one reader! That is amazing! LOL Thanks Deanna! :)

So I got a new laptop yesterday. Our old one died a most untimely death and I told my husband I wanted one. So for Mother's Day, I got to pick one out. I was going to go for a lowly i3 or something but ended up getting a super duper i7. I was looking at a Sony cause my brother swears by them. I ended up getting an ASUS. Now I thought ASUS was sucky probably because of those netbooks. But the more I learned about them, the more I found they are pretty freakin' awesome. Turns out that they make a lot of the components for other PCs. So then I remembered when I built my last PC that I used an ASUS motherboard. So I ended up getting the ASUS. It was an all around better computer on paper.

This is my new laptop. ASUS G73Jh. It is very sleek looking, apparently modeled after the F117 stealth fighter, which happens to be the reason Brian joined the Air Force. lol So I guess it was meant to be!? :)

So far, I love it. It is so fast, faster than my current desktop. It has a huge HD screen, which is great for my graphics and web design. It is an i7-720 with 6GB RAM, 500GB hard drive, though I now know I can upgrade that to a 1TB. It has ATI 1GB dedicated graphics card so I can play my games with no worries as well as have a few Adobe products open. :) I can already see the difference. OH.. and one thing I love, it doesn't pre-load all that CRAP like HP and Sony and the others load on it. I can just run it and the only stupid crap I have to worry about being on here is the stuff I put on it. :) So, needless to say, I am a happy mom for mother's day this year.

OH and to top it all off, I got a yummy edible fruit bouquet with balloons and a bear from my boys. It was sitting on my desk at work yesterday. :) I feel super blessed to be the mom of these two guys. My boys rock!!! Hope all you mothers out there that happen to glance at my page, well have a WONDERFUL mother's day! :)

Dear Blog,

I am so sorry that I have neglected you. I have had a lot going on but every time I came to you to talk about it, I felt it was just boring and unnecessary to share. I know, it was selfish of me to keep you out but life got in the way. I will try to make it up to you. I am pretty sure that I have no readers anyway... but just for you, I will try.

HSG and other TMI news

Hubby and I are going through a round of fertility stuff. After finding out his sperm count was on the low end, he went to a urologist and found out he has varicoceles, which is like varicose veins in the scrotum. Fun stuff huh? There is a fix for it (surgery) but his Uro wanted him to do another SA (semen analysis) to be sure. He did and my doctor said, "Hey, we can work with that!" So, now the plan is to go ahead with the fun tasks (shots, ultrasounds and blood tests galore) of a double IUI next month. Before I can do that though, I had to go through an HSG which stands for something actually longer and harder to pronounce. I did it today. I was told it would be horribly painful and to brace myself but my experience was not painful at a all. Want the TMI? Ok, well they take some dye and they stick it up your uterus and see if it goes out into your body cavity thru x-ray. If it doesn't then that means you have a blockage in your tubes which could prevent ovulation/pregnancy. But the good news is, my tubes are not blocked and everything looks hunky dory! YAY!

So now I am supposedly especially fertile and will be working on that this weekend! Then be ready for next month... I am excited, nervous, and apprehensive. So many emotions because we have been trying for so very long. Plus it has been 11 years since I gave birth! To add to the pressure and emotions, it seems I am surrounded by pregnant people! A lot of the people I care about and who are close to me are either pregnant or about to give birth or just gave birth... and it has been tough on me. BUT I a hopeful that this is now our time. Please pray for us to have a little lemon of our own. :)

The Package Deal: A Sloppy Review

So here I am wide awake at nearly 4 A.M. when I have to work today. Oy! Silly me for picking up a book when it's time to sleep! OH! AND I mowed part of our acreage so I should be totally SACKED OUT... but no, I guess my sleep time will be on the carpool to work with the hubster. That seems to be our routine lately. Sleep on the way in, sleep on the way home. Sometimes sleep when I get home too. Not sure what THAT is about because my blood sugars are FABU. Anyway...

The reason for my late night vigil this evening is because I just finished a book. The Package Deal by Izzy Rose. Being a stepmom myself, this book totally jumped out at me in Target screaming, "BUY ME NOW! " The minute I read the first page, I was hooked. I totally dug this chic's style and humor from the get-go. I found myself stopping and re-reading something aloud to my husband, get a chuckle, and continue on. The book is about a stylish, career woman who finds herself in love and engaged to a dad of two boys. Boys that, strangely, remind me a lot of MY boys. Then promptly moves across the country with no job and becomes a full-time stay-at-home "mom" of sorts. Yikes!

Izzy did a great job of relating her story in a way that I could still relate to in a serious way. The "how the hell did I end up here?" and "what the HELL am I doing?" totally rang true with me as I found myself asking those questions many times in the early years of our marriage and then even more so when we got custody of OSD. How does one take care of children that is not of your loins without stepping on toes and boundaries, etc? I knew how to parent my OWN kids but when it came time to deal with the stepkids, I was lost. I seemed to find my way eventually and we had our ups and downs. This is what Izzy tells in her story. The ups and downs, the triumphs and the heartaches that every family has but in her case, this was all new territory and I think she did a bang up job! If you are a stepmom or even if you aren't, go pick it up. Be ready to laugh and cry as you recall your own issues you faced in your (step)family sagas. And check out her blog/stepmom battle cry for help site at www.stepmothersmilk.com.

Speaking of my own stepkids, we have still not seen the SKs. Bri calls every time it's "his turn" and there is always something else. OSD sent Bri a message on facebook that she "was in town and wants to come by for a visit". Well, obviously, she knows we don't do last minute and Bri told her that we couldn't do anything that evening but call and we can set something up. Cause it's not like we wouldn't LIKE to see her cause we would! I don't know where all the anomosity and hatred is coming from. Her reply to him was something along the lines of "I won't be able to come back up there until after the spring semester. Oh well" SPRING semester? I told Bri to write her back and say, "Well see you next spring!" but he didn't. I don't know if he wrote her back at all. He is not a very outspoken man about his feelings but I know this whole thing with his kids is hurting him. It has been peaceful on the BM front, I think, only because the kids haven't come over. Anyway, I miss them and I, unfortunately, don't think they will ever come over again without a court battle. I don't want that. We already did that and it seems we are back at square one anyway. Plus, peace is nice.

What's Up?

I haven't been posting much cause well, there has not been a whole lot to say. I open this every day and then my mind goes blank.

There are things going on, though. Yesterday was my youngest step-daughter's birthday. She turned 9. All day long, I reminded Brian to call her. He never did. This frustrated me cause well... it just did. We haven't seen them since Christmas, cause P always says there is something going on so they cannot come over. We could enforce this, of course, but that would mean going back to court, which we cannot afford. So all the little things he can do to keep in touch will mean a lot but I think, he has given up. Which makes me sad.

A wants the car I bought her last summer. I bought it for her. I intend it to go to her. However, after Christmas, when she basically broke my heart, I am reluctant to even talk to her. She really hurt me with all the crap she was saying. She caused a lot of unnecessary drama and just flat out hurt me for the last time. So there for awhile, I just didn't want to give it her. I am sure that is all kinds of wrong of me, but I cannot help what I feel about it. I have prayed many many times about this issue and I just have to let go of the hurt. I want her to have the car. I got it for her. I know she does not care about the sacrifice we made to get it. This is weighing on me a lot and I think I am probably giving it too much thought.

I am working on my resume because a Senior Designer position opened up at work. While I feel I can do the job, I feel I am qualified to do it, I am reluctant to apply cause of my own self-doubt. I am in the process of "designing" my resume to make it look cool cause that is what everyone is telling me to do, I just want to do it and get it over with and I find myself lacking in creative vision of where I want to go with it. OVER A RESUME. SILLY I KNOW. I am praying for God to show me the right path to take here. I know if I do not apply, I will be kicking myself and thinking what if, so I WILL apply. I just know that with my boss telling me that I have "everything they are looking for in a senior" in my mid-year review, if I didn't get it, I think I would be so mad! lol A very wise co-worker told me to think of it as God's plan. If I don't get it, then He has something else in store for me. I know this to be true. I just have to trust in Him.

My health. UGH MY HEALTH. I am so sick of not being well that I just get depressed about it. With the mastoenterocolotis (that they have no idea is the cause) and the celiac disease and the diabetes and PCOS and all the other crap that I have going on... it is a wonder I get out of bed everyday. Since we have been trying to have a baby for oh, six years now, that has been weighing on my heart too and it is all because of the above that I am having trouble. We are going to seek help again. We are praying so hard about this. My health and the fact that we want our own baby. My clock is ticking away at a feverish rate and since I just turned 35, I feel like I am quickly running out of time! I go back to the GI on June 3, to tell him that well, no change, the allergist said that I was negative for any food allergies. So now what? I go back next week to see my diabetic doc to see how the new insulin is working. I will probably have to be put on humalog as well. Five injections a day scares me. So far I have been doing ok with two. I have seen a great difference in my numbers which is good but it is still erratic and affects everything I do. Hopefully I will be able to see a fertility specialist soon.

Nick is about to get braces. After camp. Chris turned 11 and is going to camp for the first time this year. Lots of stuff going on... So I guess I finally got a post out. LOL

May you all have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! Thank your soldiers! I come from a long line of military men... including my husband and my ex-husband, my brother, my father, both of my grandfathers... aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.... that I have SUCH A HUGE respect for those in the military. Which leads me to another topic... those Army commercials! They make me mad. lol I mean if my son said... I want to join the military. I would be proud. Yes, I would be worried cause there is a war going on, but I would be PROUD. Ugh! OK enough of that.

IKEA Rambling

It has been ages since I have posted on here. Mainly because some people think that I write my blog so they can pick it apart and make it sound like I have some kind of agenda. Well, honestly, I could care less what anyone else thinks about me and mine. I am not living for these people. I live for me and my family. They always come first and the hatred that is spread like poison is just a ridiculous waste of everyone's time.

Anyway, my post is about IKEA. We had not been there in a long time but we went today after work. Our goal was find our son a new bed. Well, who the heck can go in that store without coming out poor?! I just love it. Every time I go in there I just get ideas. Now I know the quality is not top notch but that is not why I buy stuff. Most of the purchases I make are like home decor or something... today was no exception. We ate dinner there and spent a good three hours. We cannot go there without spending some major time. I think it is because we live so far away from there that it just doesn't make sense.

We did manage to get the bed... plus a little matching bedside table. New sheets, duvet, a down comforter, lamp plus lampshade, rug, and a bunch of odds and ends and by the end of it all we were so beat down tired! We managed to squeeze everything into my car. Brian had to ride with his head cocked to the side cause something was so long it invaded his head space. LOL We just laughed about it.

It really is the little things that you treasure. My son is spending the night with a friend and is going to his baseball game tomorrow so I hope to surprise him with all his new stuff tomorrow. I am SO excited to do things like this. His birthday is in a few weeks so he is going to love to show off his new room with his friends.

Well... this was just a rambling of my thoughts at the moment... I will try to post more often... I have a lot going on in my life that I just need to blog about to kind of relieve the stress of it all.