Monday

WHERE HAVE I BEEN?!?!

Well, this summer flew right by me!  But not because I slept through it, no no.  I have been so incredibly busy and so much to tell!  So what's going on with me? Hmm...lets start back in May *dream sequence starts*

In May, I was preparing for one of the biggest transitions of our lives.  Goose's last day at MS&T was on the 17th and  on the very same day, my job was over.  It was the most bittersweet day I think I've ever had.  I had closed up shop for good around 3 to meet the grillz (oldest's first time making a super long drive, so again...monumental!) and get back in time for all the family coming up for Graduation the next day.  I won't lie...I cried a solid 30 miles after I left the house.  Once I had the grillz with me, we started our summer right then.  Graduation went smoothly, and everyone was so happy!  I don't think anyone was as happy as Goose though...that guy did not just one but TWO cartwheels!  His summer didn't last long though, because he moved by the end of May to start his long awaited career.  From then on, the whole family was back and forth between living in the hotel during the week and the old house on the weekends.  Our hotel room consisted of a tiny kitchenette, our bed, and a pull out couchbed that the grillz slept together on one foot from our bed.  It felt like we were on constant vacation!  Cramped but happy to be in our new city.

In June, I celebrated my sister-from-another-mister's wedding!  The whole weekend was awesome, with a fancy pants old hotel style bridal suite for us girls and getting pampered with hair and makeup the morning of, to the gorgeous ceremony by the Missouri river at Les Bourgeois Winery.  Us cool cats in the wedding party got to celebrate on the limo bus before partying at the reception.  Awesome times!  Again, back at the old house, we packed and twiddled our thumbs.  While at the hotel, we window shopped til we dropped and hung out at the pool like rockstars!  Early in June, this chromebook of mine freaked out on me AGAIN and I shipped it off to get a brand new replacement which took EONS!  Not to mention I didn't exactly have wireless that worked well enough for me to hook up to. BOO HISS.

July came, and I got to see our first fireworks display in our new city and I tell you what...I can't wait for more people to be here to experience it with me next summer!  We got to see the Counting Crows under the arch, with yet another fireworks display, and a couple of ballgames.  Meanwhile back at the old house, I prepared everything for moving.  I had a few DIY projects, had to get all the kinks lined out with moving, transferring utilities, etc.  But by July 30, WE FINALLY CLOSED ON OUR HOUSE.

Now we are here in August, and its been insane still!  We moved in on the 31st of July and jumped right in to hosting people!  We literally moved, unpacked, organized and were ready for visitors in 4 days.  It was a crazy mess of installs, deliveries, service turner-on'ers, and cleaning!  The first full week in our new house we had 2 sets of visitors over and we were on the go for a week solid.  We went to ball games, downtown STL, tours of the new city, etc.  Finally things have settled enough that I can get back into my normal routine again...and that includes keeping up with my blogging.  PHEW!  I cannot believe I wrapped up three months in one post!

Analyze that!

Am I the only one that has absolutely insane crazy dreams?  Prolly not.  Am I the only one who doesn't want to wake up because I want to know what happens next?  Maybe so.  A little insight on my dreams:

I was rafting down the Amazon River on a nicely fashioned log paddle boat with some of my friends, you may know some of them.  Rick, Darryl, Carol, Maggie, Glen...we were just rafting for a chuckle it seemed.  You know, get away from the stress of dealing with zombies.  Speaking of zombies, they were lining the riverbank smelling us because some of them *points* hadn't showered in like 3 weeks, and well...when the dead can smell you and turn away, its either because you're covered in zombie slime or you need a shower.  Good thing there's that thing called the Amazon River.  People were swimming and washing up in the river, which I didn't think was such a great idea.  I'd heard things about "magic" and people looking for "the source" and not getting out of there easily.  What is this, the island?  What's worse, that crazy magic or the zombies?  Hmm.   Seems like the magic was on break while people were washing their pits so, okay.  Man, zombies are relentless.  They were following us along the river bank, snarling and well, being gross as usual.  They were really starting to pile up.  By then everyone else was back on the raft sunbathing, and commenting on this pile up and what a nightmare that's gonna be at the end of the trek when we have to get off the boat.  Zombies can't swim, so why not just drop anchor th--wait! Oh look! A waterfall! Ideabulb!!!  We should run these zombies to the edge of the waterfall and watch them fall over the edge! Fun times!  So we did.  We dropped anchor so close to the falls that you could literally look over the edge of the boat and see the 70 foot drop down.  Somebody better fashion a bit of railing if we are staying here!  And we better hope that anchor stays.  Zombies are so dumb.  They just piled up until they fell over the edge on both sides.  Have a fun trip ya'll!  There they were at the base of the waterfall, mangled and broken even worse than before but unless their brains were squished, they were still alive down there.  Flopping like fish our of water and floating down the rest of the river, getting attacked by piranhas.  Comedy! All the sudden our boat started to slip.  We are gonna fall down the waterfall and IF we make it, we are gonna get eaten by zombie heads! Ack..what to do? 

Do you ever have a dream you wake from and so desperately want to finish it so you squeeze your eyes shut and will your body to keep thinking "what's next?" and try your hardest to go back to sleep? I do all.the.time.  

Not to worry folks, I did in fact fall back asleep.  However, I didn't get back to THAT dream....

It was a mix of vampire diaries, wizard of Oz, and alien...maybe the show V.  I was stuck in the middle of this   massive alien ship hovercrafting all over the USA.  How did I get there? I don't know! I just did.  But, I was like some super secret spy or something (alliteration!) because no one, I mean, NO ONE could see me.  Which was pretty awesome because the day-glo madness was happening all around me and I just wanted to watch.   This great and powerful whoever...let's just call him Oz...was stealing vampire eggs!  I know what you're thinking, I was too.  THAT JERK!  Okay, and maybe, 'wait a minute, when did vampires start laying eggs?  Are we sure they aren't just alligators or something?'  I'm watching this guy steal eggs left and right and how the vampires didn't know their eggs were being stolen right out from under them was beyond me.  Oz would place these eggs into cutouts into this giant purple milk carton.  It was glowing and really kinda pretty so I of course "oooh'd" when I saw it.  Once Oz had stolen like 35 eggs, he pressed some button.  Oh.My.LANTA. The eggs turned into purple glitter snowflakes and floated about the ships atrium! I clapped and clapped like a fool because it was so cool!   But one lonely vampire didn't think it so cool, she was trying to attack the great and powerful and redeem these glitter snowflakes to take back to her people.  Big mistake little vamp.  The great and powerful has an entire army of womenfolk flopping through the ship (was the floor made of a giant trampoline?) in their neon pink, yellow, green, and orange outfits.  They looked like stretchy spandex sarongs, wrapped strategically around their parts but these were not petite women if you catch my drift.  They were WARRIORS!  Warriors prancing in neon, jumping on trampoline floor, but still! You don't mess with these ladies.  They were sent to ATTACK the vampires, and not just by knocking them out with their flopping bosoms.  They shot day-glo lasers at the vampires OUT OF THEIR EYES! ALIENS!  OMG ALIENS ARE FIGHTING VAMPIRES! The other vampires caught wind of them and came out in full battle mode.   Does alien blood smell good?  *flails hands* Who will win this epic battle?  Venomous blood sucking fangs, or laser eyes and knockout boobs?  Well, I don't know the answers because I WOKE UP!

I mean, I really wanted to know who would win.  I don't think I've seen that type of movie...aliens fighting vampires?  That would be interesting. Is alien blood poison to vampires? Do aliens even really bleed?  Why would vampires hatch eggs, what are we chickens?!?

Friday

I think I really am 5

I just made up myself a sticker chart.  Yes, I said sticker chart.  Okay, I don't really put stickers on there...because I don't have any.  And  then I'd be putting stickers on my screen and then I couldn't see.

I am the kind of person who needs to write things down, many times in many places, or I just straight up forget.  So, with getting my life transitioned to a new chapter in just a few weeks (sounds so short when I say it like that) I thought I needed to make goals and lists of things to do.  I'm sure people do "to-do" lists all the time, but do they call them sticker charts? I didn't think so.  So now I have a nice set of daily chores to do, along with my other things like working out (yes I have to schedule that too or I won't do it), blogging, reading, food stuffs now that we have changed our habits, and more as I think of them.

You might say, "well if it's a sticker chart, you must have a reward at the end if you do them all."  That I do.  I have big rewards.  If I finish all my chores, I get to take myself shopping! But! I have to finish them ALL.  If I skip doing laundry or scrubbing the toilet I might as well ground myself.  That's it missy, no wine for you Friday! *looks concerned* That was mean of me.  I gotta go wash out the kitchen sink.

Thursday

Book challenge attempt #2

Uh. I failed big time last year. So I am gonna try this again! Here we go, 50 books by the end of the year.  Try harder this time girl!
1. Dark Visions, Jonas Saul
2. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien ( I read the first third of the book to get a refresher before we went to see the movie)
3. Deadlocked, A.R. Wise
4. Loose, Coo Sweet
5. At The End, John Hennesy
6. Murder on the Mind, L.L. Bartlett 
7. The night everything changed, Kristopfer Ruft 
8. Sail, James Patterson
9. LZR-1143: Within, Brian James
10. The Stand, Stephen King

Friday

Three year old wisdoms

After a particularly loud afternoon:
"All this yelling! You guys are giving me a headache"
"When we leave, you can just take a nap. Calm down"
PG pats my knee "You can take a rest now, we will watch you."

PJ: "Ohhhh man, you gotta come see this."
*points to the sewer dudes outside doing maintenance, pulling off a manhole cover*
"That guy, just broke the road!"

"Bri, I'm going poop, okay?"
(twenty seven seconds later)
"Bri I am done, come wipe my butt real good!"

Speaking of poop:
PJ: "You know something I know?  Mommy poops, daddy poops, my sissy poops, bubba poops, Charlie and Tookie poops, Tobi poops, PG poops, baby O poops.  They do it every day!...Hey do you poop?"


PJ: "It's snowing outside! Yay!"
"No, I think it's just rain."
PJ: "Uh, no. I saw a snow, you just lied to me Bri."
Well. Okay then, but it's still rain, I say. :D

PG: "Do you work Bri?"
"Yes, when you are here at my house I'm working to take care of you."
*thinks*
PG: "Babysitting is hard work, Bri.  You gotta clean all those dishes all the time!"
"Yes, that's exactly it."










Wednesday

New challenges and changes!

Well. It's a new year, and my PC has finally seen it's last days.  I had much to blog about and I just couldn't. That is, until the Goose fixes it for me. Not to mention the trackpad on my chromebook is out. Luckiky it's under warranty and I'm sending it back in. Til then I am on this phone!  so.fun. Anywhoo, here we are in a new year. And what a new year its gonna be! We are going to be making several changes around here and the first one started yesterday. We started our 30 day paleo challenge which you can find here in this post more information and a link if you dare try it yourself!

My next challenge that I totally flopped on last year was my book challenge. Life got in the way and I forgot for most of the year. Gonna do better this time. In fact, I already completed one yesterday and am gonna finish another today! Whee! Right on schedule! I'll make a new post with the list in there, to see if I do any better than my last years self. *shakes fist*

Another big change coming this year is Goose is graduating college and we are moving outta here! I have already started packing. Over achiever much? Maybe. But our last move we had three weeks to be moved here, so I am gonna get what I can done now! So packing the Christmas stuff was bittersweet. No more Christmases in this house, and super annoying that I had to actually pack things away. Like with lids! Ugh! I never! I have 10 medium boxes and three Christmas tree boxes if you like to know trivia. I had already had a mini meltdown when packing the wall decor away for Christmas,  as I had planned to pack that away for good too. All my photos and albums and some other decor is gone and it feels naked in here!  Of course the life of breezy wouldn't be without some delimma. I ran out of packing tape and I had done such a good job stuffing that tree back in its box only to be defeated by the evil packing tape! So the tree, in its open box, is still on my entertainment center where I suspect it will stay til I am reminded I need tape.

I have a big year ahead of me and I am going to live it one month at a time. This month I am focused on my paleo challenge and reading more. And maybe fixing one of these interweb devices.