Aubrie's Christmas

Aubrie had a very prosperous Christmas. Santa brought her everything she asked for...A Bike and Books, along with many other new toys.

Aunt Katie also felt the need to provide Aubrie with a new best friend...a rockin', talkin' unicorn, that not only rocks, but sings and talks.

Close

After roughly 15 + visits to Santa, this was as close as we could get. We only had to wait an hour and a half to get Aubrie's picture on Santa's rocking horse.

Christmas Party

What a wonderful Christmas Party. Aubrie had a great time with her buddies Morgan and Anna, too bad Riley was not feeling well.

Aubrie loves her new doll and all of the snacks in her stocking. Sorry that we did not get to see all of Frosty. I am so upset that we missed most of it :) Maybe I will watch it again tomorrow...three, four, five times...

Barron

Aubrie really loves her doggie...we took Barron in for his semi-annual grooming at Petsmart this morning. This is the first time that Aubrie has been with me when I dropped the dog off. She was truly distraught at the idea of leaving the store without her dog. She spend the next 20 minutes crying and screaming for her Barrn (as she calls him.) Only watching Frossy made her feel better.

On a better note, Aubrie had a good time helping me make cookies last night. Although I think her real motivation was the open bag of chocolate chips on the table.

Frosty the Snowman

I hate Frosty the Snowman...or Frossy as Aubrie refers to him. Aubrie really does not like TV and very rarely watches anything. (We cannot complain that our kid watches too much TV). In the last two days, I have watched Frossy no less than 6 times. It is the only thing that she will watch and any time the TV is on, she whines for Frossy.

Death to the snowman.

Should have stayed in bed

I definitely should have stayed in bed this morning...

I was running a little late in my morning routine, so I decided to forgo my usual breakfast at home and instead opted for Tim Horton's on my way to the job site. I ordered a French Vanilla Cappuccino, a vanilla cream doughnut and a toasted sesame seed bagel with cream cheese. The total came to $4.14. At the window, I gave the cashier a 5 dollar bill, a dime and four pennies so that I didn't receive a handful of change in return. In a sign of things to come, I received three quarters, two dimes and a nickel in change (wonderful).

As I pulled on to the 219, I grabbed my doughnut, disappointed to find a plain original in the bag, not the vanilla cream I was looking forward to (getting annoyed). As I moved on to my bagel, I realized on the first bite that they had neglected to toast it (really annoyed). I like my bagels toasted so the cream cheese melts and is not pasty. To wash down the pasty cream cheese, I took a sip of my French Vanilla Cappuccino only to discover that their dispensing machine must have needed more mix because my drink was about 98% hot water and 2% French Vanilla Cappuccino (unbelievable)!

When I reached the job site trailer, I anxiously went to the coffee machine to brew a fresh pot, only to realize that the water cooler was empty, our only source of water since our trailer does not have hard plumbing (AAAHHHH).

Generally, the work day did not go well. It seemed everywhere I turned, a new obstacle arose and the bickering between contractors was worse than usual today.

Weary after a disappointing morning, I was looking forward to the soup I had packed for lunch the night before. Upon checking my car and the trailer fridge, I realized that in my haste to leave this morning, I had forgotten my lunch (past the point of giving a damn).

Fortunately, Kristen made up for my terrible food day by have a nice dinner ready when I stepped in the door. Sitting here with a full belly, I am looking to a better all around day tomorrow.

Big Girl Bed

As those of you who were over on Friday night saw, we changed Aubrie's crib to a day bed, so she now has a 'Big Girl Bed.' For the past few weeks she has been climbing into our bed whenever we tell her to go to bed, so we thought that this might be a good time to try it in her room. After removing just about everything that she could climb on we tucked her in and waited to see what would happen...

Friday night she got up twice. The first time she must have been cold because she got every blanket out of her basket and stacked them on her bed. The second time the Cinnamon woke her up and we were woken up to "Hi Meow-Meow" repeatedly.

Saturday night was better, with her only waking up once, crying a little bit and then going right back to sleep. The last two nights have been great, slept all night!

Nap time is a bit more difficult, she needs to be very tired or else she just gets out of bed and plays in her room, but we are working on this.

Potty training comes next :(

Prima Ballerina

Not quite yet, but she loves the shoes!

I think it will be a while before we start to see progress from the dance lessons.

New Trick

We have well established the fact that Aubrie has a wonderful climbing ability. Well, she took that ability to new heights this morning. Aubrie was playing in her room while I was getting ready in the bathroom. Suddenly I heard the Lion King sound track. Being that the CD player is located on top of Aubrie dresser and thus out of her reach, I was instantly concerned. Upon reaching her room, what do I find, none other than Aubrie on top of the dresser. One would assume that she opened the drawers and used those to climb up to the top, but not our Aubrie. She used the handles on the draws and scaled the dresser like a climbing wall. I established this fact by removing her from the top of the dresser at which point she promptly returned to it to start climbing again. Wonderful...no more free time in her room.

Halloween

Daryl is complaining that he changed the blog so we could post pictures of Aubrie, yet we have not done so yet. So here is Aubrie in her Halloween costume. Aubrie really enjoyed trick-or-treating especially since she has a major sweet tooth. The only problem is that she now thinks she can go up to anyones door and they will open it and give her 'bites.' (Aubrie's code word for candy!) you can see Barron briefly in the picture. He did not care for the lamb running around the house and was very confused the entire night.

Warning to New Parents

One day I was doing the dishes and my 3-year old daughter was having awonderful time playing on the floor. At one point she said, "Mommy, lookat this," and stuck out two of her fingers. Trying to keep her entertained, I reached out and stuck her tiny fingers inmy mouth and said, "Mommy's gonna eat your fingers!"...Pretending to eat them before I went back to what I was doing.When I turned around, my daughter was staring at her fingers with adevastated look on her face. I said, "What's wrong,honey?" She replied, "What happened to my booger?

2 Minute Management Course

Lesson One: An eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing. A small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, "Can I also sit on my ass like you and do nothing?" The eagle answered "Sure, why not."So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle, and rested. Suddenly, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Management Lesson: To be sitting on your ass and doing nothing, you must be sitting very high up.

Lesson Two: A turkey was chatting with a bull. "I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree," sighed the turkey, "but I haven't got the energy.""Well, why don't you nibble on some of my manure droppings?" replied the bull. "They're packed with nutrients." The turkey pecked at a lump of manure, found it actually gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally after a fourth night, he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.

Management Lesson: Bull Shit might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.

Lesson Three: A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze and fell to the ground in a large field. While it was lying there, a cow came by and dropped some dung on it. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of cow dung, it began to realize how warm it was. The dung was actually thawing him out! He lay there warm and happy, and soon began to sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate. Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung, promptly dug him out and ate him.

Management Lessons:
1) Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy.
2) Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.
3) And when you're in deep shit, it's best to keep your mouth shut!

This concludes your two-minute management course.

Our October Surprise

And now...to test the ease of posting pictures:

Our October Surprise:

While our cousins were getting ready for Hawaii http://www.thesaevas.blogspot.com/ we were experiencing this:

Two feet of unpredicted HEAVY snow fell on the Buffalo area the evening of October 12th through the morning of Friday the 13!

Because the trees still had all their leaves, they held the snow. The weight became too much to handle and many limbs fell...including this one on our roof:

Because the storm came without warning, the street departments did not salt the roads or have the plows ready:

Because all the trees fell, power lines came down with them and the power system in the area was destroyed. Fortunately for us, it only took two days to get our power back...Nater was without power for a full week!! Regardless, we were still VERY excited when our power came back. Two days in the cold and dark, bailing our sump, storing our food outside and cooking all our meals on the grill got old real fast.

Fortunately again, it never really got that cold, so the snow melted rather quickly, but it left quite a mess behind. A view of grandpa Pietrzak's front lawn:

...and grandma Steck's yard:

That's OK though. All is right in Buffalo. The Sabres are 10-0 !

Welcome

Welcome to our new blog!

The change to a new provider was prompted by our desire for a more viewer friendly presentation, a more user friendly format, a service that is less susceptible to virus attack, and most importantly, we can now EASILY post pictures!...so unless someone advises us that this is a bad idea for some reason, our blog has moved.

I choose google because it seems to work fine for the Saeva's, and as evidenced by this post, I figured out how to use it and set up an account on my own with out the help of our Computer Science friends.

Unfortunately, the new site does not yet have a way to import old blogs, so in addition to the welcome and explanation for the change, this first post will merely serve as a link back to our old blog.

http://www.zbrzeznys.com/simplog/index.php