Destin-ation Momma Birthday

{trying to play catch up around here, so the next few rounds of posts will be a little dated, but better late than never!}

last november we decided to head to destin, fl, for my birthday.  my friend wendy, who i know from my st louis days and now lives in north carolina, and her family were all heading to the beach to celebrate her brother's birthday so we decided to join the fun.  we spent just a few short days there, but it was long enough for us to decide that we could definitely get used to a little more fun in the florida sun in the future!  nick had a lot of fun playing with wendy's kids helen {they're the same age} and henry, and enjoying the sand between his toes.

all i wanted for my birthday was to have starbucks on the beach 

we got the cool parents award for not caring that they got their clothes wet!

our hotel was next to this restaurant that had live alligators & all nick wanted to do was hold him a gator.  here he is with "cupcake".

on the way home we decided to stop off for lunch in new orleans.  i've never been, and it's been on my bucket list, we were headed that way anyway, so, it was a no brainer!  we were there long enough for me to enjoy a hurricane, some beignets, take a mule-pulled carriage tour, get some beads {FROM A STORE!  get your head outta the gutter!}, and chow down on some po'boys while taking in the view of the mighty mississippi.  i would like to go back again sometime to do a little more touring, but i can officially say i've been there now!

what?  we have powdered sugar on our faces? where?!

poor little dude was plum tuckered out & crashed the second we got on the carriage

bring on the po'boys!

the mighty miss

it was quite the long drive, but way worth it!  catching up with old friends and playing at the beach is always a win-win.

xoxo ... liese f

Happy New Year 2011 (um...like 11 months ago...)!

{nothin' like talking about the current new year celebration just before the next year begins!  what can i say?  i'm a slacker & just gettin' around to this!}

brenden, emily, & nick {aka "ben"...their crazy cousin club name}...all ready to ring in the new year...at 8pm :)
we headed down to nana & pop's house to ring in the new year with uncle brent & the kiddos last year.  it was the first year since we brought nicky home with us that kris & i actually went out to celebrate.  usually we sit in our neighbor's back yard by a toasty fire, and watch the ball drop on their big outdoor screen which is always a blast, but being able to get all dressed up and head out like adults was awesome!
we celebrated with the kids before we went out, complete with "hore dee vors" for dinner, dessert, party hats & noise makers. then it was game on as we scrambled to get them all snug in their beds while we prepped to get our adult party on! 

pretty girl emily flaunting her stuff...not sure where her other sock is!

whoo hoo!  happy new year!!!

shot of the mr & i...at the beginning of the night.  good thing we got a good one in this early, cuz they got pretty silly as the night went on!  this was shortly after we arrived...the second time.  i went out like a rookie partier and forgot my ID, got carded {woot woot!}, and had to swing back to the house!  you can really tell we don't get out much anymore...and if we do...we have a kid in tow & for some reason we don't get carded often :(

brother brent, "vivvy" {as nick says..."viv" is hard for him to say for some reason...plus it's a cute moniker i think!}, me & my hot hubby

hot party chicks 

the VIP crew...really...we had a "VIP" area, which was really just a small section roped off from the general public on the dance floor.  it was nice to actually maintain a place to sit and hang out and not have to worry {too much} about being bumped into all night.

aw...how sweet...get a room! 

get enough wodka in this guy & he'll strut his stuff!

these boys are hilarious.  no clue what was going on here...but it makes me giggle every time i look at it!

we had a blast ringing in 2011 like the party people we pretended to be, but...it all came with a price the next AM!  oh well...the best part of all was getting to spend time with the family, and nicky getting to hang out with his cousins :)

xoxo...liese :o)

The Return of Dobby

last year we broke down and joined the ranks of all the other parents who are trying to keep the "Santa-ness" alive and brought the "elf on the shelf" into our home {aka "dobby"...nick named him...very cool because as you may or may not know, nick has a really hard time remembering names, much less giving inanimate objects names...& oh yes..."dobby" is the house elf from harry potter...that kid loves him some HP!}.  dobby was pretty boring last year...showed up in random spots all over the house, but nothing fun like all the ideas i'm reading this year on pinterest.  {i.e. making snow angels?!  turning the milk green?!  oh you crazy elves!...totally copy-catting those ideas this year!}.  anyhoo...dobby started off this year much the same...in fact, he didn't even show up for duty on day one!  musta gotten lost in traffic?  yeah...that's it.

more to the point...keep getting distracted by the flushing of the toilet up in nicky's room...over & over & over & over...and hearing him jump from his bed to the floor...over & over & over...  oh yeah... where was i?  oh...so we watched the elf on the shelf show the other night, and read the book, and dobby joined us on day 2.  boring spot, can't be creative cuz i still don't have all our trees decorated...yadda yadda yadda.  anyhoo...nicky's behavior has been less than stellar lately.  pretty much every november since we brought him home has been a challenge {it's the month his birth mother abandoned him, and he subsequently had a seizure and stayed in the hospital for a bit, then moved to the orphanage...quite a lot to take in for a 7 month old!}...feel sorry for him now?  good...we do too.  but...he takes a lot out on us this time of year, and it's hard to get into the "buying of presents" and the "joy of Christmas" and all that when he's just constantly fighting, arguing, whining, lying, tantrum-ing, etc!  i mean seriously - how many times can one say "i don't want to..." in a short period of time?  well...i lost count at 375...ok maybe not that many, but pretty dang close!

this past week has been so rough that at bedtime, nick exclaims "i don't want to go to bed!  i want to stay up all night and watch movies!", etc {basically says any & everything to avoid going to bed & to get our attention}.  once in his room, he plays in his bed, jumps up and down, peeks out of his room, etc, until he finally puts himself to bed and falls asleep.  last night he jumped up and down on the top few steps outside his room and tried to get our attention for over an hour before he finally went to bed...and that's only because we turned off the tv at 9:35pm and "went to bed" ourselves!  sheesh...stubborn much?!  i even told him he didn't have to go to bed if he didn't want to...he could play all night for all i cared, but...he had to stay in his room.

well..."dobby" must have finally had enough and told "santa" all about it.  and "santa" wrote a letter to nick telling him that all his crazy behaviors had better stop or there will be no presents in his sack for him...basically, nicky can stuff his sorries in a sack unless he shapes up!

we'll see how it goes...nick's been up for about 30 minutes now playing in his room...and it's 7:45am.  seriously...can't a momma enjoy a quiet cup of joe before reporting to "work"?  i have a feeling it's going to be a long day...your prayers are much welcomed!!!

xoxo...liese :o)

Liesey...You've Got Some Splaining to Do!

ok...here's the situation...my parent's went away for a week's vacation...


wait...i think i got off on a song lyric tangent there for a sec!  sigh...that brings back a lot of 80's memories!  gotta love old school rap.


anyhoo...i've taken quite the break from this here blog.  as in, it's july & i just posted about last halloween.  i had actually written that post a while back, but, darn blogspot was giving me grief with the uploading of photos and i just gave up. not to mention, i was getting frustrated with the look of the blog and the formatting, all while learning to use my new macbook pro.  i could complain all day...really it just boils down to plain ol' laziness for the most part, but you get the point.


oh yeah...speaking of that halloween post...that crazy back injury of which i spoke...yeah, well, it flared up again in november and just kept giving me grief, so i finally went to my pain management doctor and he ordered an mri to see what was going on.  to make a long story short - i do have a lower back degenerative disk issue, however, what they found, which was even more annoying, was the fact that i had several complex (i.e. nasty, not so friendly fellas) in my ovaries and a pesky splotchy thingy (technical term) on my uterus.  oh yeah - throw in some awesome endometriosis, like all over the entire girly-part region, and seems like poor kris wasn't the only culprit in our not being able to get pregnant scenario.  so...i went to a specialist and the situation came to a head with my scheduling a total hysterectomy with a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy.  huh?  basically, all my girly innards were removed.  so - at the age of 37 i am officially in surgical induced menopause.  awesome.


the good news is: my migraines appear to be a bit better, because my hormone levels are somewhat evened out.  the bad news is:  my hormone levels are only somewhat evened out and i have obnoxious side-effects which are just way too personal to discuss with the world wide web.  ladies - if you're ever bored, and sorta curious as to what you can expect when it comes to menopause...check out the website: www.hystersisters.com.  it's pretty fabulous and has been my best friend thru this process, especially in dealing with the random "WTF is going on?!" types of questions.


in summation...the end of last year, and the beginning of this year was a big blur.  there were many bouts of crying/freaking out/wondering when i would return to "normal".  i think i'm finally on the mend, but when the doctor's told me that it could take up to a year for my body to finally heal, well, they weren't joking!


and that, my friends, is yet another excuse as to why i haven't been feeling up to blogging much lately!

But I Wanna Be a Good Blogger

I've decided that it's become my M.O. to be gung-ho about blogging one day and completely laxidasical the next.  By the way...I totally guessed at how to spell that word and I was right...not too shabby...the MBA is paying off afterall.  Although, you know what kills me?  I have a rather low position in the company for which I work, and yet I can figure out how to spell and use your and you're; its and it's; there, their and they're; etc better than most of the VP's and above.  Not that you necessarily have to be great spellers or super with Grammar, to be an Executive, but come on now.  You're putting together major presentations to the Boards of this-and-that...if you're dressing the part, shouldn't you at least act the part?!  And they make the big bucks while I check the mail and order supplies for our office.  

SIGH.

Sorry.  I'm done whining for now.

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  I'm a procrastinator.  That's really what it boils down to.  I think I like the challenge that pressure brings since I'm lacking the challenge elsewhere (you'd think that of parenting would be enough!!!).  So, I wait until the last possible second to squeeze out all the posting before I have something major to do and then cram it all into a couple days.  In this case, we're planning for Nicky's 4th birthday party, and I'm leaving next week for another girls' trip - this time to Budapest and Prague with my cousin.  I'm super-excited and nervous at the same time.  I've never gone on a trip where I've not done any (ok, well, not much) planning.  My cuz is a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants kind of girl and although I completely admire that, it also scares the bejeezus out of me!  I'll let you know how it goes.  This will also be the first time Kris has had Nicky all to himself for an extended period of time...if the tantruns that have returned to the house become habit, I might not have a husband or son when I return home as they will have killed each other!

Anyway...if you've stopped by in the past few weeks, you've probably noticed that there was only one new post, until Easter Sunday.  Yesterday and today, however, I have been busy catching up, and because I like things to flow in order, I had to change the dates to match the day the event actually happened.  Hi.  My name is Annaliese, and I'm Anal.  So, backtrack a few days and enjoy our mayhem!

ps...Snoop Frog and Fo Rizzle have left the building house and are resting comfortably in the bottom of our trash can in the alley.  May they rest in piece...and no...that's not a typo...I hope they really do stay there all in one piece.  I don't want any crazy wild animals digging them out and bringing them back to us!  I'll be calling for my second batch of free frogs on Sunday - keep your fingers crossed they make the trip.

Confessions of a Blog Slacker

Hi.  My name is Annaliese and I'm a blog slacker.  I've tried to stay on top of things and post regularly but I'm so far behind right now and I've got so many other things to do before I can post!  I get so gung-ho and post several a day, then slack off for a week or two.  It's a procrastinator's nightmare really - I'm so backed up on just about everything in my life right now I think I'm sinking and I don't know what to start on first.  Would someone please throw me a life-ring?

Top 5 Things Keeping Me From Blogging:

1. Removing Christmas decor from all over the house - I swear - next year I'm only going to    have 1 tree.
2. Planning my girl's trip to London which is next weekend.
3. Shopping and Packing for my girl's trip to London, which, ironically, is for shopping.
4. Exercising - I figure for once I should keep a New Year's Resolution that I've made, and my pants are getting a bit snug from all the pigging-out over the holidays.
5. Sorting through pictures - we took so many over the Christmas holiday that I want to put some in blog posts, but that means I have to go through them first!

However, I have vowed that I cannot go across the pond until I at least get the Christmas blogging done, and for those that know me, you know how much I love London.  So, I guess I better stop talking about how I'm procrastinating, and get busy!  I know - to procrastinate even more I'm going shopping, then I'll make a list of things I have to do!

Upcoming Blog Posts (In case you need something to look forward to...)

1. Austin's Birthday Party
2. Merry (belated) Christmas
3. Father Frost Pays a Visit
4. Priceless
5. Cowboy Nicky
6. Old Nana Turns 90

Until then...