Does this make me a SciFi nerd?

Well, I'm finished. I would have been finished a lot sooner if a certain sister, who will remain nameless, hadn't confiscated this book from me...knowing full well that she was in the middle of finals and would not have the necessary time to devote to it. But I digress.

It's no Twilight, but that's not to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy it. My heart raced, my blood pulsed and my fingers feverishly flipped the pages. I'm a sucker for a love story. Couple cautions: 1. It takes about 100 pages to get into things...not my favorite, but I pushed through. 2. The story will seem vaguely familiar...1 woman, 2 guys who lover her...you get the picture. It's different, yet embarrassingly the same.

I'm giving it 4 out of 5 stars. Jared is no Edward, but then again, who could be, really? I still read it in about 2 days (on par with my Twilight series time), which in my warped world of book critiques means, "Yah, it's that good."

The Last Straw (pun intended!)

Dear Birds,

I feel perhaps that we have gotten off on the wrong foot (or claw, as it were). When you began building your nest, noisily and uninvited above my front door, I admit, I was decidedly annoyed by your presence and even more so by your “presents.” Perhaps my initial response was childish and I would like to apologize for swatting at you with the broom. I am not sorry, however, for knocking your nest down and spraying my porch clean of your remembrances.

You can imagine my shock then, when two days later I found that you had recruited more help and were again building and pooping at an alarming rate. Yesterday, when I again knocked your nest down and sprayed my porch clean, I thought your spirits would be broken and that I had seen the last of your fluttering, chirping, mud-packing villainy. I apparently underestimated your determination.

I commend you for your efforts, but I must insist that you cease and desist any further nest building on or around my property. This morning, when you aggressively attacked and fluttered your wings in my general direction while I inspected your new handy work, you crossed the line.

This is my peace offering and humane attempt at reconciliation before I must take drastic measures. The next time you are seen with even so much as a blade of grass in your beak, headed towards my door, I will not hesitate to grab my weed whacker and have a few words with you.

Sincerely,
The Resident of 4209

Be Prepared for Spontaneous Dancing

Get ready to bust a move. I CANNOT wait for the season premier of So You Think You Can Dance (tomorrow night). To all you Idol fans out there, this is Idol on steroids, 10X's better! When I told Matt that SYTYCD was premiering this Thursday he was like, "Great, does that mean you're going to be dancing all over the house again and being weird?" Heck YES! Get ready for some spontaneous dancing people!
My favorite dances are the hip hop dances (this was my favorite from last season). In my secret life I am actually a hip hop dancer and my name is really K-Dizzle...so now you know if you happen to spot me on MTV.

Woe Is Me

Now, just tell it to me straight, are all kids this naughty, or do my kids just have an extra high proportion of naughty in them? You've seen my many posts about smeared poo and the copious other naughty things my girls have done and this just seems to fit right in. I don't even know why I was surprised Sunday afternoon, to walk out and see this occurring. I had been trying to bid on a snow cone machine on Ebay and it was the last few minutes so I was watching it closely, meanwhile, I heard Jenna and Brooke playing happily together. "What lovely children I have, playing so well together," I thought. Ultimately I did not win the snow cone maker so, dejected, I came out into the front room and that's when I saw them in the kitchen. Jenna said, "Look what Brookie's doing Mommy!" Like she was completely void of any fault. I didn't know what to do other than bathe them and clean up the mess. Matt asked me later how I punished them and I said, I just tried not to laugh/cry and that's the best I could do.

I Need Some Aleve

Yesterday evening I decided that we needed to do something about the horribly ugly area around our backyard windows. So, being an impulsive person, I headed over to Home Depot and bought $200 worth of accessories and informed Matt that we had a "little" project we needed to work on this Saturday. I am now sun burnt, sore, dirty and smelly...but the backyard sure looks a lot better.

BEFORE:
This isn't even the "true" before picture, because really that used to have a TON of weeds in it. We pulled those out last Saturday because they were coming up higher than our window.Digging up all that grass with the Maddox SUCKED. It makes me want to cry just remembering it.This is about 8:45am. I would like to thank PetroMart Gas Station, without whom I wouldn't have made it until 9am.

AFTER:

The plants on the far right are rose bushes. These rose bushes will forever be a symbol of what a good wife I am. Matt wanted rose bushes and I DID NOT. I've heard they're high maintenance and I don't particularly love them. Long story short, we have 5 rose bushes and I win the wife of the year award. And if Matt ever forgets, he has 5 rose bushes to remind him. :)
I feels good at the end of the day to have something to show for all the hard work (well, it feels good figuratively...literally I feel like crap). Although, I did have my ego taken down a notch or two when I asked Jenna if she thought it was looking good (I was about 1/2 way done with the brick border). She said, "You think so. But I just think it's alright." Well, alright's better than it was before, so I'll take it!

Happy 1st Birthday Brooke!

We celebrated Brooke's 1st birthday tonight, even though her birthday was on Friday. That's a nice luxury when they're young, they have no idea what's going on. Yesterday Matt and I spent all day long working in our flower beds planting flowers, digging up weeds, laying a weed mat and unloading mulch....we even worked through the rain!! Needless to say, I was SO tired last night at around 9pm when I started making Brooke's ladybug cake. Jenna picked a ladybug. She said that's just what Brooke wanted. I guess she speaks baby language.

Not surprisingly, Jenna did most of the actual opening of the presents. Brooke wasn't really into it, but I wasn't expecting her to be. She liked playing with the toys once they were unwrapped.

It was a really fun and really messy birthday. I guess the two go hand in hand. Brooke has been a wonderful addition to the family. Things have definitely been rocky at times, and she certainly hasn't been the easiest, but I'm just counting all the blessings I must be racking up for enduring to the end!! She makes us laugh though, and for that I'm always grateful. Happy birthday Brookie, we love you!

New York Picture Montage

Here's a glimpse at our happenings from Good Ol' NYC.
We flew in at about 5pm and took the subway to our hostel (a longer experience than we planned). But we made it to Mary Poppins right on time at 8pm and met Matt's sisters who were able to get us tickets for $30. Mary Poppins wasn't really my cup of tea, but it was good if you like that kind of stuff (Disney stuff). There was one really awesome number, Steppin' Time, where Burt tap dances on the ceiling of the theater!

We took a cruise around Manhattan which would have been really awesome except it was overcast, rainy and foggy. All of which combined to make not such a great view of the buildings and things. We still got a good pick of Lady Liberty though. FAO Schwartz (toy store): I had to take a picture with good ol' Darth in homage to my new found love of all things Star Wars. And we did a little dancing on the famous piano too. That piano can be yours for the cool price of $250,000. Wouldn't that be fun in your basement?

At FAO Schwartz we also had a go with the sorting hat...don't worry we're Gryffindors.

The Yankees game was a highlight for Matt and we got SUPER lucky with our tickets. We were looking for scalpers around the stadium and were able to find 2 nose bleed type tickets for $10 each, which was good considering their face value was $25. The problem was, there were 5 of us who needed tickets. Well, after looking around for more scalpers to no avail, me and Matt's sisters decided we would just leave and go out to dinner and go shopping and let the boys (Matt and his brother in law) go to the game. Seconds after we had decided this, a guy came up and said, "I've got three tickets I need to get rid of, they're box seats but my friends didn't show up so I just want some beer money. How about $20 each?" Score! So me, Matt and Brent got to sit in box seats, 3 rows from the field and watch the game. About 1/2 way through Matt's sisters came down from the nose bleeds and joined us in some empty seats a couple rows away. It was awesome...freezing...but awesome. Oh yah, and I spent $18 on a hot dog, bag of popcorn and a soda. Gotta love it!

Wicked was the BEST part of the trip for me. The cheapest tickets to the show are $70 for balcony rear seats. Well, Matt and I didn't want to pay that much, so we decided, along with a few members of his family, that we'd try to win the Wicked Lottery. Before every show they hold a lottery and raffle off 28 FRONT ROW seats to the show. They pick 14 names and they can each buy 2 tickets for $26.50. AWESOME deal, right? Well, Thursday we tried...didn't win. Friday we tried...didn't win. I was getting pretty discouraged, we only had 2 more times to try, Saturday matinee and night show. Now you have to realized that we are talking about hundreds of people there, hoping to win. So Saturday the 5 of us show up and enter our names in the lottery and we're surveying the crowd, it looks a little smaller, maybe only 100-150 people. First name gets called, it's Matt's sister. I scream, of course, and she runs up to the front. He keeps reading names....not ours. The last name he calls is Matt's brother in law, I scream again. We're so excited, but then we realize that's only 4 tickets and we have 5 people...who's going to sit out by themselves? Well, Matt and I decided that neither of us would go (I wanted to so bad, but felt too guilty to leave Matt by himself), and that his sister Marcie could just sell her extra ticket. Then, not seconds later, the lottery man walks back out to the group of dejected losers and tells us that there is one extra ticket left, because a lady had only wanted to buy 1 instead of 2. He fishes around in the basket of cards and pulls out one card.... "Matthew Morgan!" I couldn't believe it! Seriously, I just said, SHUT UP! Matt's brother in law Brent calculated the odds of 3 of the 5 of us winning the lottery in they were 1 in 16,000. Pretty lucky, hun!? Oh, and Wicked from the front row, was phenomenal. The best day ever.Saturday night Matt and I saw Curtains with Niles from Frasier in it. He was super funny and it was really fun. We got the tickets at the TKTS booth for 1/2 off, but they were still $64 each, not our best deal, but still worth it.
Monday we saw Ground Zero, basically just a construction zone now. What was more interesting were the memorials and such located around it. Below is a memorial on the side of the fire station right next to ground zero.Right after Ground Zero we headed over to Chinatown to do some hard core shopping. Chinatown is famous for knock offs of everything from Gucci handbags to Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses to Rolex watches. I dove in head first and after a scary experience getting trapped in the back room of a shady handbag operation, the day went smoothly. Matt couldn't wait to get out of there, but I was sad to leave all my fake designer products behind. I did score some great Coach and Dolce and Gabbana stuff though. It was only once we got home that I read an article about how the fake designer purse sales from Chinatown help fund terrorist organizations and specifically helped to fund the World Trade Center bombing of 1993. Isn't that ironic, considering we had just been there.

Stock Exchange building on Wall Street.
Hershey store. We visited this store a couple times to stock up on candy.The last day we were there we took a tour of Yankee Stadium. The picture above we took in the press box looking down and the picture below is me sitting the dug out next to the phone that the manager is always yelling into. (Notice I'm holding my Coach knock off).
All in all NY was so much fun. We were excited to come home though and see the girls, we really missed them. Despite all the good and fun things we did, here were some of the low lights:

1. A rat eating through some bags of trail mix and granola bars in our suitcases at the hostel.

2. Brent finding poop on his towel after finishing his shower and having to dry off with his t-shirt instead...at the hostel.

3. Mattresses that were essentially 30 springs covered with a thin cloth-like fabric and no padding...at the hostel.

4. An elevator that was approximately 4 feet by 4 feet and took 20 minutes to call to your floor...at the hostel.

5. Taking the stairs instead...at the hostel.

6. Staying on the 7th floor...at the hostel.

7. The constant and pervasive smell of rat poop, sewage and mold...at the hostel.

8. Waiting in line for ever for the bathroom, at the hostel.

9. My blow dryer sparking and catching fire...at the hostel.

10. The hostel