First Birthday

This blog is a few weeks late.

Amelia celebrated her first birthday on March 20.  It's hard to imagine her being one year old already.  Time flies.  She's so big now too.  I mean, like, bigger than your average one year old.  At her one year checkup (on her birthday!), she was 26 1/2 inches tall and weighed 22 lbs.  She's wearing 18 month clothes currently.  Most of her 12 month clothes are too tight on her.  It's insane!  We're even giving her some of Carleigh's old pajamas in the 2T/3T size and they fit her well.  They are the pajama gowns, so that explains it.  It's good for length.  Most of Carleigh's 2T/3T sized clothing was going to be donated, but now I'm sending it all over to Amelia's closet.  That will save me a few dollars here and there.  I bought Amelia a 2T swimsuit for our trip to Santa Monica in a few weeks, too.  The 18 month swimsuits looked way too small for her.  We got a tall girl on our hands.

When it comes to walking/standing independently, we're still working on that.  Amelia has no real interest in walking yet, which is fine with me.  She's a very fast crawler and loves getting into everything.  She can stand up on her own while holding onto something.  She loves her music table and the couch as props.  She's also not too interested in pulling herself up on objects yet either.  With food, she's good with the pincer grasp, but doesn't put the food in her mouth.  She finds it fun to pick up food and then fling it on the floor.  That means I spend more time sweeping/vacuuming the kitchen floor.  It's fine with me.  At least she's experimenting.

Carleigh returned back to school this Monday after being off for Spring break.  Her break was only a week long.  She's in school this week and next week before her five week track break starts.  Our only plans so far is to visit Santa Monica for a weekend.  Otherwise, we will be hanging out at home or at the park before it gets too hot.  Thankfully we have splash pads at the two parks Carleigh likes the most.

Not much else has been happening in our house.  We did paint our half bathroom downstairs.  It's a really pretty light blue color called Crashing Waves.  I'm going for a beach theme in that room and it fits perfectly.  Here's a picture before the room was finished.

All I need to do now is get the shelves and decorations I want and it will be complete.  While at Home Depot getting the paint for this bathroom, I picked out some colors for our master bathroom.  Not sure when we will paint that room, but at least I've got some ideal colors ready.

My mom mailed the title out to the Lincoln last week as well.  So now I have the oh-so-fun joy of going to the DMV in the upcoming week(s) to transfer everything over to my name and getting the car licensed in Nevada.  This is what the car looks like, it's obviously the blue car on the left.  The white car is our Jaguar XJ.  I took this picture after Heath washed both cars and waxed the Lincoln on Sunday afternoon.

It's not the best picture.  I'm looking forward to getting limo tint on that bad boy.  The weather is going to be heating up soon and I need the car to stay a little cool.  Also, I'm tired of people being able to see all of my business in my car.  In my S-Type, the girls had complete privacy in the backseat.  The windows were blacked out.  So I'm looking forward to returning them to that "luxury".

Our New Family Car

Since Amelia is taking her morning nap, I figured I would at least attempt to update my blog this morning.  I've got a slice of homemade cinnamon swirl banana bread and a cup of pumpkin spice coffee.

We didn't plan on buying another car so soon, but since I had one hell of a time trying to get a hold of the school district regarding transportation for Carleigh... here we are.  Honestly, I spent an entire morning trying to speak to someone, but was met with automated phone recordings and got no where.  Since the school district waited until the last minute to send out school information, this whole transportation dilemma wasn't a surprise to me.  I do not understand how these schools can be such slackers, wait, yes I do.  They take our tax dollars and then beg for more because they don't "have any money".  If only schools were ran like businesses...

Anyway, Heath has been looking at Jaguar XJ's for awhile and really wanted one.  He found the perfect one, but we weren't sure if we wanted to spend the amount of money the dealership was asking.  Heath continued to search for other XJ's, but we went right back to the one at the dealership.  Heath made an offer and they somewhat agreed on the price discussed.  So Heath went to the bank, got a cashier's check for the amount discussed, and we went over to the dealership on Friday afternoon.  Heath test drove it and told the dealership we wanted it.  We had two different people come in to tell us that we were basically stealing the car from them.  They made zero money on the deal.  They bought the car from an Audi dealership for a lot more than what we paid to take it off the lot.  The sales manager had to call the owner of the dealership to get approval for us to even buy it at the price that we did.  Who was going to say no to someone coming in with a check?  Seriously... lol  We are now happy owner's of two (yes, TWO!) Jaguar's.

We bought a 2006 Jaguar XJ8 Vanden Plas.  Here's some picture of our new sexy beast.  And yes, this thing is a beast.  It came with the 5% tint all around.  Huge plus!  It's a long wheel base, so it's about a foot longer than my S-Type.  There is so much leg room.  I thought my car was large, but no, this new car is the actual boat.

The car has mink floor mats.  That's right, PETA.  Our Jaguar has MINK(!!) floor mats.  No one is allowed to put their dirty ass shoes in our car.  I took this car out to do my errands on Saturday.  Since I had to go to Sam's Club and Albertson's, I wanted to see just how much room this car had after I put all of the bulky stuff in it.  I might just "steal" this car to go get my groceries and Sam's Club runs done all of the time now.

On Sunday, we took the new car for a cruise through Red Rock Canyon.  It was the most comfortable ride through the mountains we have ever taken.  Amelia slept through most of it and Carleigh was enjoying the views.  We will definitely be going back up there in the cooler months to take a hike on some of the easier trails in the area.

These are just a few of the pictures taken during our scenic drive.

Now that we have our second car, I can give Carleigh a ride to/from school every day without worrying how the school district will screw it up.  I really hope things get better and the school can redeem themselves.  I am not very impressed with their track record so far.  But thanks to their inability to answer phone calls, we have a lovely new car parked in our garage.

One Car Family

Heath & I recently decided to go down to one car.  The decision was mostly made because we had one car rotting away in the garage.  We sold the GTO.  Heath's car was a two door and did not fit our family of four.  My Jaguar is a four door, so yeah, we kept my car.  Obviously!  Heath had an offer on his car about an hour after posting it for sale.  He accepted the offer and the car was gone the same day.  It was so weird to go down to one car, but really, why would we need two cars if I rarely drive during the day when I'm home with the kids?  The GTO was worth more money to us gone than keeping it.  We paid off three credit cards with the money we got from selling the GTO.  We are so much better off financially with having only one car.  We will get a second car when needed, but as of this moment, one car fits us best.  There's so much extra room in our garage now too.  No complaints!

We also recently got rid of our cell phones.  We've had T-Mobile for ten years, but over the last two months, our cell service had dropped exponentially.  We tried to work with them to get the issue fixed, but no matter what happened, it just wasn't going to work out for us.  There's really only one cell tower in our area with a lot of people trying to use it.  T-Mobile's coverage map shows us as "excellent", yet we would rarely have any service.  Heath's iPhone always showed "No Service" or "Searching" and my Galaxy S4 showed one or two bars and on the Edge network.  Totally unacceptable since we are supposedly supported by 4G LTE out here.  We had a land line hooked up on Friday afternoon.  Going down to zero cell phones was weird, too.  But really, it's saving us so much money per month not having smartphones!  We will pocket almost $200/mo now.  Seriously, saving money is boss.

Our next goal to save extra money per month is to refinance our house.  We want to get rid of our mortgage insurance.  When we bought our house, we got an FHA loan.  The mortgage insurance is on the pricey side and we'd like that money in our pocket instead.  I'll be making the phone call to our mortgage company tomorrow to see what could work best for us.  It would be nice to have so much more extra money every month.

We went to Carleigh's open house for school on Friday.  My little girl is getting so big.  She's on the school schedule that doesn't start until September, so while most of her friend's start school tomorrow, she has to wait a few more weeks.  She qualifies to ride the bus since we live a couple of miles from the school.  The only thing left for me to do is call the school district to verify the drop off times for after school.  Our school district only shows the drop off times for full days.  My fingers are crossed that they aren't doing screwy scheduling for half day kindergartners.  If they don't drop off for half day kids, then guess what?  We will be off to buy our second car sooner than expected.  Oh well.  ;)

This blog was a little bit every where and I apologize.  Heath & I shared a bottle of wine with our salmon dinner tonight, so I feel a little out of it while typing this up.  There's just so much going on here right now.  So many changes and it's just crazy.  A good kind of crazy though.  I'll update this again when I'm more sober and able to make more sense.

Three Weeks

Baby Amelia is three weeks old today.  It's crazy how fast those three weeks have gone by.  She's been doing really great sleeping at night.  The past two nights, I've only had to wake up once in the middle of the night, early morning for a feeding.  Last night, she fell asleep around 9pm and woke up around 2am to nurse.  She fell back asleep around 3:30am and stayed asleep until 6:30am.  Heath takes her in the morning before he goes to work if she's up early enough.  Once she falls back asleep, he brings her back upstairs and we sleep until 8:30 or 9am.  Carleigh sleeps in just as late.  So it's nice having a newborn at home and sleeping until almost 9am every day.  Of course, we won't be able to sleep that long when Carleigh starts kindergarten.

Speaking of kindergarten, I took Carleigh to the school to get registered last week.  While we were there, the little girl who lives across the street was being registered too.  So there were two little girl's being crazy in the school lobby while us parent's tried to fill out the paperwork.  I had to tell Carleigh so many times not to run in the school.  I told her that those will be the rules when she starts attending there, too.  It's hard to tell a little 4 and 5 year old to calm down when they are super excited to see each other.  I kept telling Carleigh they could run around and be crazy outside together since we live right across the street from each other.  We have a couple of other kid's on our street starting kindergarten this year too.  All of the kid's on our street are so close together in age.  They will get to go to school together unless someone moves.

It's been warming up here the last couple of days.  I had to turn our A/C on the other day.  Our high today is suppose to be 91 degrees.  I'd like to keep the A/C off, but having two little ones at home, that's impossible.  Amelia started to get really frustrated the day it was only suppose to be 88 degrees for a high.  I could tell she was too hot and uncomfortable, so I clicked the A/C on.  We did purchase a ceiling fan for our downstairs area to keep it less stuffy.  Here's a picture of it.  It looks so nice in our open floor plan.

This fan will be nice to have when all of our family comes out to visit and meet Amelia in June, too.  We usually have to kick the A/C down a couple of degrees to keep it comfortable with all of the people here.  This time, we can just kick the fan on, or up a level, without making our energy bill too much higher.

Maternity Leave

I am finally on maternity leave!  My last day at work was yesterday.  My doctor scheduled my induction for March 19 at 6pm.  I had my last prenatal check up with him this afternoon.  I was only 3 cm dilated today.  My doctor believes that I will have the baby delivered before midnight on the 19th.  That is if the baby wants to stay put until then.  Who knows for sure when she's going to make her grand entrance into the world.  I'm having some contractions right now, but they aren't that bad.

It's just nice to finally be out of that stress case of an office.  It has been nothing but one thing after another there since September.  Too many changes all at once.  The extra days of rest before the baby comes will be greatly appreciated.  I don't know how some women work right up until their water breaks.  I didn't do it with Carleigh and I knew I wasn't doing it this time around either.  I understand that some people don't get short-term disability benefits through their employer.  I'm so thankful that I do so I can take that extra time off before I pop.

Carleigh's last day at preschool is on Friday.  She will be home with me until she starts kindergarten.  I plan to give her worksheets and art projects to do while home.  I have all of her kindergarten paperwork ready to go since registration starts next week.  It's so crazy to think I'll be sending one kid off to kindergarten this summer.  Since our schools here are year-round, I'm going to pick the schedule that gives her the summer break around her birthday.  For kindergarten, it's not really a big deal since she's only doing half days.  And you can't even consider it a half day since it's only 2 1/2 hrs a day.  The full day kindergarten is "tuition based", even for public school, so you have to pay extra.  Forget that.  I'm not trying to brag about my kid, but she's really smart and she gets bored with preschool work sometimes.  So I know she will get bored with kindergarten if she went all day.  I plan on throwing some first grade lessons/worksheets in with some of her kindergarten work to see how she handles it.  On her educational websites, she likes to play math games directed at first graders and she does pretty well at it.  So the math worksheets will be some of my go-to's.

Nothing else exciting is going on here.  We're all just waiting for the baby to come and enjoying the warmer weather.  My next blog update will probably happen after we bring the baby home from the hospital.  I'm sure there will be a time in between feedings and nap times that I'll be able to update the blog.

Happy New Year

I realize we're 19 days into the New Year, but I haven't found the time to blog recently.  I wanted to update this last weekend, but I had a cold and didn't want to type in between my nasty coughs every three minutes.

Not too much has been going on here.  We've been shopping around for a new dining room set, but haven't found anything we liked yet.  We plan on waiting until President's Day weekend to purchase one.  Maybe then there will be better sales.

Carleigh switched classrooms at school because of a bully.  It's really sad that kid's her age bully other children already.  This boy calls her names and punches her.  The teacher's in her classroom didn't seem to do much of anything about it.  This had been an ongoing issue for a couple of months.  When we called the director to talk to her about the issue, she gave us the option to have the two separated or to change classrooms.  We tried the separation thing for a couple of days, but then that same boy decided to punch Carleigh in the stomach and call her names again.  So we called the director again and requested a room change.  Carleigh's first day in her new room was on Friday and she came home so happy.  Her new teacher said that Carleigh was well-behaved and well-mannered and she loved having her in her classroom.  Carleigh did all of her worksheets and had a blast with their art projects.  In her other room, the teacher's had a hard time getting her to complete her work or even start it for that matter.  I think it was because of that boy bugging her all the time.  I'm glad she's happy in her new classroom.  She gets to leave preschool once I go on maternity leave.  From there, we will just do some homeschool stuff until kindergarten starts in the fall.

Speaking of maternity leave, I plan on leaving when I am at the 36 week mark.  That will be the last week of February.  I'll be starting week 31 this week.  It's crazy how fast time flies by when you're pregnant.  I've had some Braxton Hicks contractions every now and again, but nothing that warrants a trip to the hospital.  Hopefully it stays that way until my 38th week of pregnancy, although I'd like the baby to stay put until my 40th week.  We shall see what happens.  Carleigh was born when I was 38 weeks.

It's been in the 70's in Las Vegas the past few days.  Heath was out in the backyard clearing out the rest of the rocks today.  We want to build our own fire pit back there and then get the dirt delivered to plant the grass.  Doing the backyard ourselves is nice, but it's really hard work and takes a long time.  We didn't want to spend $2,000 to have a company come in and do it when we could save money by doing it ourselves.  It will be so nice once it's all completed.  I'll purchase some really nice outdoor furniture and spend all of my free time in the backyard.

I have tomorrow and Tuesday off from work.  Carleigh is out of school tomorrow, too.  So we are planning on getting some lunch from Subway then taking it to the park for a little picnic.  After that, Carleigh can plan on the playground until she wears herself out for the day.

Time For Another Baby?

Heath & I decided that we would like to try to conceive another baby.  We feel we are in a good position to add another family member.  We finally have a house of our own and my car will be paid off in February.  We still have the baby crib that Carleigh used as a baby as well as the stroller/car seat combo.  Carleigh is going to be four in June, so we think it's the right time to have a second child before there is a really huge age gap.  If we are successful this month, the baby would be due in January.  I do not expect the first month to be successful since I know conception can be a challenge.  I am really hoping whenever I do get pregnant that it will be smooth and no complications.  I've had a couple of miscarriages in the past before becoming pregnant with Carleigh.  The miscarriage fear is always in the back of my mind.

Heath spent all of last week in Salt Lake City for work.  He had to fly up there to train the guy at that location and clean up their shop.  It is odd they would send a manager from Las Vegas to a location that isn't even his to train someone else.  So I am hoping his company is looking at him as a possible district manager.  The district manager for that location was just promoted, last week, to a higher district manager position.  Not sure of the exact title, but that means the company probably needs to fill her old position.  It would be nice if Heath received that job promotion.  He would go strictly to salary, but at least it would be more money.

Carleigh starts her new preschool tomorrow.  She is really excited about it.  We went to the grocery store yesterday to pick out different foods she would like me to pack in her lunches for the week.  It's such a change to pack her lunches for her since her previous preschool provided breakfast and lunch for us.  Her new preschool only provides morning/afternoon snacks and milk or juice for lunch.  Carleigh picked out a really cute Hello Kitty lunch bag, which I am sure she will want to show off to all of her new friends tomorrow.  I cannot wait to ask her about her day tomorrow when we pick her up after work.

Since Heath's car is out of service right now (it needs a new radiator), I will be dropping him off and picking him up from work for a couple of days this week.  The only positive I like about it is that he will be able to drop Carleigh off with me for her first day at the new preschool.  The negative?  Using all of my gas again.  Right when I got Carleigh to a new daycare where I don't have to use so much gas, I still have to drive in that direction to drop Heath off.  At least he works right off of the freeway I need to get to work.  His radiator should be here by Tuesday.  It's coming from Arizona.  So let's hope it shows up when it says it will so I don't have to play taxi.  Heath said he was going to use his floating holiday the company gave him for working so many hours last month to fix his car once the radiator arrives.

This post ended up being longer than I thought it would be.  Please send your good vibes for the conception of our second child.  Thank you!

Happy Spring

It's so nice to have spring weather again.  The only downside is the huge amounts of pollen in the air.  When I went upstairs to wash my face last night, there was a green mucus that came out of my left eye.  It was gross.  I went downstairs and searched the internet to see what it could have been.  Nothing really stuck out to me.  I did see on one website that I could experience my eye getting stuck shut from the mucus.  That did happen to me a few times last night.  I woke up and my left eye felt glued shut.  When I rubbed my eyes a bit, I could feel dried mucus or what felt like those "eye boogers".  It really sucked.  When I searched online this morning, a bunch of stuff about pink eye came up, but my eyes aren't pink/red.  I'm thinking the eye irritation was caused by all of the pollen in the air.  It was a little windy yesterday afternoon and we were outside pretty much all day.  My eye seems a lot better this afternoon.  I get the occasional blurriness.  If I have the same problem tonight, with the mucus, I'll go see my optometrist.  I need an eye exam anyway.

Last weekend, a co-worker of mine gave us her piano for free.  She is moving to Montana as soon as her husband gets a job up there.  It was so nice of her to give it to us.  She didn't want to leave it in storage.  It needs a little TLC and a slight tune.  The tune might not be necessary as it sounds all right to me.  Carleigh is so excited to have it in the house.  I'd love to get her piano lessons so she can play us some tunes when she's older.  It's a Melville Clark piano.  It's a nice piece to have in our living room.  I'm also fortunate we didn't have to pay a penny for it.

Carleigh starts her new preschool on the 22nd.  It would have been sooner, but I couldn't find her original birth certificate.  I know it's in the house, but it's in a super secret hiding spot and I cannot remember where that place is at the moment.  I sent Heath to go pick up a copy of the birth certificate on his day off.  Then Carleigh had to get a wellness check up done and a record of all of her immunizations.  Heath dropped off all of the paperwork on Friday and now we are all set.  Carleigh is really excited.  I know the next two weeks at her current preschool is going go by so slow for her.

Speaking of the wellness check up, Carleigh is very healthy.  She is 38 1/4 inches tall and weighs 30.6 pounds.  She is so small.  The nurse drew some blood from Carleigh's fingertip to make sure she had no lead in her blood.  Carleigh came out clear and she didn't cry at all about the finger prick.  I'm so glad I have a brave and healthy little girl.

Learning Phonics

Carleigh was pulled aside for some one-on-one with a teacher at daycare. The teacher showed Carleigh letters to see how much she knew. Carleigh got all of the letters correct on the first round. She was the only kid in her class that got them all on the first try. The teacher was impressed and knew it was time to move Carleigh onto something a little more advanced. The teacher suggested Carleigh start a phonics class. So this week, Carleigh will be starting her phonics class two days a week with two other girls in her class. I'm very excited for her. She catches on quickly. I give thanks to Preschool Prep Company. I bought Meet the Letters, Numbers, Colors and Sight Words 1 & 2 from them so far. I plan on purchasing Meet the Phonics: Letter Sounds next. These DVDs work wonders. Carleigh loves these movies and asks for them all of the time. I'd like to buy her the workbooks too.

I'm still working a lot overtime. I put in 16 hours of OT last week and hope to do the same this week. My original goal was to do 20 hours of OT, but I cut it short because I was getting worn out. Turns out getting up at 3:30am and working until 5:30pm can make you sleepy by the time Thursday rolls around.

Tomorrow, I'll be faxing our updated loan application to our loan officer. We are hoping to have a pre-approval letter by the end of this week. We would like to start putting offers in on the houses we really like. The sooner we get out of apartment life, the happier we will be. I just want my own private yard and no shared walls. Of course, that also means a cheaper monthly payment compared to what we are paying here. This place is robbing us every month.