Hamlet

Ugh! We've been reading and discussing Hamlet in my Literature class and so far it's been very enjoyable. Mostly this is because Shell LOVES Hamlet, so she has been working with me on it. Right now, we are focusing on how the play would be staged and by what types of actors. I am not enjoying this. I'll be working on this all night I fear.
Good night blog readers. Tomorrow is another day... :)

Weekends too!

It's going to be hard to post on the weekends and they might be pretty brief posts, but I'll do my best.
Spent the day with my dad at Pearl Street in Boulder. We try to go every year, but usually succeed in going every other. It's "our thing", nobody else ever goes. So we went and walked around, had lunch and unexpectedly found an exhibit going on of John Lennon's artwork and handwritten song lyrics. Plus the weather was perfect, around 75 degrees and there were crunchy leaves on the ground along with plenty of rust red and deep yellow ones still in the trees. I LOVE Fall!

The Boulder Theater

Pearl Street

Street performers on the mall

The traveling exhibit we went to

You couldn't take photos inside, but you could see these from the door. I didn't take it inside...

One of my favorite sculptures along the mall

Tree still holding onto its changed leaves

A lovely piece of art in front of a house on the walk back to the car

Missed One Already!

It is not a good sign that I missed a post already, and it's only the 5th of the month. :(

But it is what it is. I only promised to do my best and this is it. To apologize for my blunder, I'll post some pictures because I haven't in a while.

My dad and I have seen a Beatles tribute band play at Red Rocks for the last 4 years. My boy has come along for the last 3. We love going, not only for the great music and the fun show, but for the atmosphere as well. The scenery is amazing and the people in the audience are either hilariously entertaining or completely down to earth and lovely. The band is 1964 The Tribute and when it was time to buy tickets for this year's show, we just couldn't afford it. Luckily, a friend and coworker got some free tickets from his wife's work and gave me 3. As usual it was a great time, possibly more so since it was free!

In line before the gates opened at Red Rocks Ampitheater.

My boy with the rock behind him.

Getting closer! Even having to stand in line isn't so bad with these views.

You can see the ampitheater on the right.

The stage built into the rock. We had great seats this year!

The seats filling up. It is a general admission show and is sold out every year.

1964 The Tribute

The three of us at the concerts in 2008, 2009, 2010. My baby doesn't look like much of a baby anymore! :(

Seriously, if they are playing near you and you enjoy Beatles music, go see them. They are great!

The Question of Santa

Christmas is 52 days away. Yes I know this because my wife is already figuring out how many paychecks we have until then and trying to figure out how the hell we are going to afford it this year. My point being...Christmas is already being discussed in my house. We actually already had the kids make wish lists so we'd have an idea what is possible and what is absolutely not. Their lists were smart too. My girl actually wrote at the bottom of her list, "Not Likely" and followed it with items such as a cell phone, an iPad, and a laptop. She was close, although they actually fall under the category "Not A Chance".
When my boy started to think about what he wanted to put on his list, he asked me if he should write a separate list for Santa which is what we have had them do in previous years. That is for the larger, more expensive items. I told him to just write everything on the same one, or follow his sister's lead and add them to the bottom. This poses a dilemma that I have been dreading since we wrapped up last Christmas.
Santa Claus... A little background...
I believed in Santa with no question until I was about 12 or 13. My friends would tell me that they didn't believe or that their parents told them he wasn't real, but I held onto my belief. This was mostly because throughout the year, I knew that my parents struggled to make ends meet. I was the oldest of three and my best friend growing up was practically an only child as her sister was quite a bit older than her, and she was pretty spoiled. Whenever I brought up something that she had or that I wanted, I often heard "her parents don't have 3 kids, that's why they can afford it". However, on Christmas morning we would find gifts under the tree from Santa that I didn't think we could have afforded. This perpetuated my belief. Also, many times I heard that once you stopped believing, he would stop coming. So to ensure that didn't happen, I wasn't pressing my luck.
So one day my sisters and I were sitting in the car with our dad and my youngest sister asks him if Santa was real. She was about 8 or 9, I was 12 or 13. I can still remember wishing that my dad wouldn't answer her, because at that moment I knew. And he told us that Santa wasn't real, that it was them all along. I was so sad to hear that. Luckily, the Christmas presents continued and they still put "From Santa" on the tags, which I secretly loved.
Shell however, had a different experience. She found out when she was about 9 and was very hurt and angry that her parents had lied to her about Santa. When we first had the kids, she was against having Santa presents because she didn't want to lie to them and have them be hurt like she was. Fortunately, I won that battle but for the last 3 years she has really wanted to end the Santa charade. This also come from having less money to spend on gifts than we did when they were younger and having to pull off a big Santa gift along with gifts from us has been a challenge. I asked her to let the kids decide when to end it, that they'd let us know when they didn't buy it anymore. She didn't like it, but she agreed not to rain on their (and my) parade by telling them the truth before they were ready.
Prior to last Christmas, I heard rumblings between the two of them over the reality of Santa. I even heard my daughter tell my niece (who knows Santa is not real) that she heard if you stop believing than he stops coming and she didn't want to risk it. My niece was awesome and didn't spill the beans. So Santa brought them iPod's and they seemed thrilled and surprised, making me thankful we pulled it off yet again and a little sad figuring that it probably would be the last Santa year.
Which brings me to now, and my son asking about making a list for Santa. My kids are 12 now, and although this is about the age I was when I learned the truth I wonder if they really do still believe in the myth. I wonder if we should tell them the truth so they'll understand when they get less gifts this year. Will it make them sad to know the truth? Will it make them feel lied to? Will it take away the magic of Christmas?
To tell or not to tell...that is the question.

TV Shows

Working two jobs and taking 4 online classes is taking a serious toll on my television watching. I didn't really watch a lot of TV before, and when this fall season started and knowing that I'd have less time, I decided not to pick up any new shows this season. Just stick to the ones I already loved. The ONLY shows I planned to watch this season were Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, The Good Wife, and Bones (And when I say "watch" I do mean record and watch at my earliest convenience). Although I really enjoyed Life Unexpected last season, I decided not to try to keep up with season and maybe catch up on it over the summer online. The only new show that I was partly interested in was Mike and Molly which I hear is very cute, but again, I could catch it come summer. Now, if you know me you'll see that there is something very obvious missing from my list of must-watch shows. Glee. The thing about Glee is, when it started last season, we missed the first couple of episodes and we are kind of weird about starting a show from the beginning. So, we chose to not watch and wait until the DVD came out to buy and catch up so we could watch this season. Which brings me to my current rant...
I have the first season of Glee and have watched the pilot episode. This season is being recorded in my DVR every week. I won't watch this season without finishing last season and I have no idea when that will occur.
I've watched the first 3 Modern Family of this season.
I'm only behind 2 episodes of How I Met Your Mother.
I've seen the first episode of this season's Big Bang Theory.
I've watched the first 2 episodes of this season's Good Wife.
I am completely caught up on Bones, but this is in large part due to the fact that Shell watches it too and it comes first in priority when we have time to watch something together.

6 shows and I'm only keeping up on 1. Oh and I've been recording this season's Oprah since it's the last one and I figured she'd have some pretty good shows. I haven't seen one, yet they've recorded every day. It's insane. I think I might be able to catch up during the month between the end of this semester and the start of the next, although Christmas is thrown in there too, so who knows.
I've heard my shows are pretty good this season, hopefully I'll be able to find out for myself before long.
2 days of November, 2 days of blogging. :)

...3 months later...

There is just no way I can wrap up the last 3 months happenings all at once. It's an endless cycle, this not staying up to date on my blog. Things happen and I think I should blog, then I don't and more things happen and I think, okay if I blog now I need to catch up on what I missed, and then 3 months goes by and there is SO MUCH! So, a quick wrap up and then maybe I can finish out 2010 with regular posting.

• I got into a heated discussion with my mom the last week of July and haven't spoken to her since. It's very weird, but I'm standing my ground. I have talked to my dad, who just mentions my mom to me. I think that he's not sure how to handle this and he's doing his best. It's weird for him too, I'm sure.
• My babies turned 12 on July 30 and started the 7th grade about 2 weeks later. They're doing great. Got their first quarter report cards last week and my girl has straight A's and my boy has all A's and one B+...in Art.
• I am still working at Pet*Mart part-time along with my full-time job. It's helping us and I'm hoping that once tax refund time comes around I can cut back on my hours. It's hard and I hate being away from home so much, but Shell and the kids are picking up the slack pretty well and that has helped in a HUGE way.
• I started school the middle of August, taking 4 online classes to equal 12 credits. I have about 5 weeks left and my first semester will be over! I'm doing good and keeping my grades up. It's hard to manage time to get assignments done when I'm gone at work so much and there have been many times when I submit something just a couple of minutes before it's due, but I haven't missed any and I'm very proud of that fact. It's time to figure out what I'm taking in the Spring (registration is in two weeks and classes start in January). I can't decide if I should take another 4 classes since I'm making it now with 4, or if I should go to 3 and make it a little easier. There are obvious pros and cons with each, so it's an ongoing debate.
• My best friend and his boyfriend came to stay with us for a long weekend just before I started school and we enjoyed having them SO MUCH! We visited and were lazy and ate and drank and played games. We miss them and hopefully we'll get to see them again soon.
• I realize that November is NaBloPoMo and that today is the 1st. Do I think I can realistically post every day this month? No. Do I want to try? Yes. I will try and will do my best to post as often as I can. Hopefully my readers from long ago will forgive my trespasses and bear with me.

I think that's enough catching up for now. I have tons of pictures from our fun this summer and hope to get some of those posted. Maybe I can use that for when I can't come up with something to write about....

Whoever's still out there, thanks for sticking with me. Hopefully you'll have reason to come back again soon!

Almost the End

...of summer that is. I'm amazed that it's today already, which pretty much marks the beginning of the last month of summer. June was a nice month, pretty relaxing for the most part. Every morning when I left for work I'd leave a short list of one or two chores for each of the kids to do, and every day when I got home they were done. It was great and I think they actually kind of liked having something to check off as done. Nothing was too overwhelming. I never wrote "clean your room", but instead would write "clean off your dresser and dust it" on one day and "clean out under your bed" on another. Things that wouldn't really take that much time, but would get stuff done.
During that month, we found ourselves up against a wall, of sorts. We've been living paycheck to paycheck and JUST BARELY making it every month for too long and in June we had to use the direct deposit advance feature at our bank to pay some bills. This was a wake-up call that we couldn't keep living like that. And although we'd talked about one of us getting a second job before, we hadn't followed through on it. So as much as I didn't want to, I put on my big girl pants and applied to a couple of places that I thought I wouldn't hate having to work part-time at. Three days after applying online at big-box pet store, I got called for an interview. Two days later I received a call offering me the job. I've been working there for 2 weeks now, and I really like it. I get to talk to people about their pets and when they bring them into the store, I get to pet and give treats to them. So far, I've worked two evenings a week plus both weekend days on both of the weeks I've worked. Next week I'm working 3 weekend nights plus the weekend days, for a total of about 25 hours. I'm very grateful for the hours I'm getting, but I am tired on the days I work 9 hours during the day and then another 4 in the evening. But I do like it, which makes a world of difference.
Since my nieces got here at the beginning of July, there has been a lot of drama. Things have been tense between Shell & I, mostly because the younger of the 2 girls is pretty much the same age as my kids and so she has spent the vast majority of her visit at our house. The addition of another kid in the house coupled with the extra mouth to feed has not been easy. My sister (not the mom of these nieces), drove from Missouri with my niece last weekend for the week. My nephew (her son) flew in a few days before her and is staying through the 10th of August. These 6 kids haven't all been together in 2 years and want to spend lots of time together. But there's a catch. Everyone is "officially" staying at my parents house (which is less than 5 minutes from my house by car), but my mom shows preference for my oldest niece which all the kids can feel. So if CaNiece1 is there, everyone else wants to be at my house so they don't have to deal with it. So now there's a 15 year old boy in my house along with my 12 year old niece and my 2 kids. My sister is tired of the BS from our mom and wants to spend time with me and her nieces and nephew, so she comes over with her daughter. Who is 3 and naturally acts like it. There have been confrontations and blowups, and I'm not referring to the kids. There is still 1 1/2 weeks before my nieces go home and 2 1/2 weeks before my nephew goes home, yet I think that if they all went home tomorrow, nobody would feel incredibly heartbroken. We'd miss them and be sad because we love them all and don't see them often enough, but it's been a rough month and I think we'd all be relieved to get back to our normals.
There's so much more...but I'll get to that soon enough. I need to end this post on a lighter note, sooo....
Today is my best friend Eric's birthday. I get to see him in 3 weeks. I couldn't be more thrilled, well except if I had more money for while he's here but at least I'm not working at either job for the 4 days of his visit. Yahooo! I can't wait! :)