Better?

Well, we had a good weekend and most of the sickness is out of the house. We went up north for the trees. We had a good time and beautiful weather, but the colors were just past peak.

Here's a few pictures:
















We also had two dogs show up at our house last night. I think that they might be purebred Jack Russells. We're looking for their owner. They're pretty cute, but the puppy keeps going after Copper, our 90+ lb German Shepard/Great Pyrenees mix. That's not going to work for too long. Here they are:



(We are calling the puppy "Sparkles" and the big one is Jack. Chase helped name them. I think that Sparkles is one of the dogs in Barbie and the Diamond Castle...)

(Jodie, you probably can't tell, but all those images are from the Jing embed code...)

I'm Alive.

I'm just so busy! Grrrr.

In a nutshell:

• I went to Michigan Tech as part of the STC dept advisory board. It was a lot of fun, and I went by myself so I had a little break from the kids.
• We're working on building a garage/barn/shed-thing to replace the well house that had a tree land on it last August. (Yeah, nine months ago. We're really on top of things!) I've decided to call the new building Fred, since it's not really a shed, barn, or garage.
  
• I'm also at nearing the end of a product release, and I'm super busy documenting Morae, our usability/user research software. If you don't know about it, it's way better than the old Unicrap usability lab and costs a lot less than the pompous fool manager guy put into that lab.
• I took Chase to Cedar Point with our friend Susanne and her son Ethan. Ethan's just 9 months older than Chase, so the boys really have a good time together. We did an evening and then a whole day at the park, followed by a couple hours at the indoor waterpark.
  

Here's pictures of the CP trip, Cory, and the Fred building.

Shining

So, I'm not a huge fan of the Rolling Stones. That I ended up last night at a sneak peak of their IMAX Martin Scorsese directed movie, is odd.

I "won" them from the local TV station. I use the term "won" loosely. I think that they didn't have that many people trying to win, so they gave them to everyone who entered. Anyway, Craig and I both went to see it last night. Aunt Sarah babysat the kids at her apartment, which is a first. The kids loved visiting.

It was good, but not being a huge Stones fan, I didn't know some of the songs and couldn't have watched 2 hours of only concert footage. Lucky for me, "Marty" threw in some old clips of the band from the past 40 years.

Things that I liked in the film:

• Scorsese freaking out because he couldn't get Mick to give him a final set list. The last second before the band came out, a producer runs in with it.
• Keith singing. At least twice, he totally messed up the words.
• Keith talks and acts just like Jack Sparrow. I knew that Johnny Depp modeled the character after him, but it's hard not to laugh watching Keith.
• Keith wearing what I can only call a brooch on his coat. It was the Pirates of the Caribbean logo. (Also had a ring like it on.)
• The camera shots and editing were amazing.
• The video and sound were amazing. You really felt like you were there.

Things that I'm going to have nightmares about:

• They are WAY too old for a 4 story closeup. Some of their wrinkles could swallow a small child.
• Men with legs that skinny are freaky.
  
• Mick and Keith's arms.
• They are all WAY too touchy feely for old men.
  
• Mick's sweaty, sweaty, sweaty armpits. (Come on, really, you haven't figured out yet that a red silky shirt doesn't hide sweat well?)

It was nice to get out, but now I wish I would have seen the U2 IMAX movie when it was out. If you're a Stones fan, I'd say go see it.

Cory, too!

So after going on about Chase so much yesterday, I thought I should mention my wonderful, adorable neuro-typical daughter. Corinne turned two at the end of February and proceeded to enter the terrible twos. Wow, does she have an attitude. Ok, she actually also has an ear infection, but that's not the only reason for the attitude.

She's really into the Disney Princesses right now. Cinderella and Tinkerbell are her favorite. She even sings the "Tinkerbell song". I got some of it on my phone last night after her bath.

Cats.

I didn't mention it before, but my cat Mica got hit by a car and died a few weeks ago. She was an inside/outside cat, and we knew it would probably happen at some point. But, she was miserable if we made her stay inside all the time.

I REALLY had a hard time with her dying. I've never had to explain to a child why they can't see their kitty. I told Chase that Mica ran away and went to a really nice place to stay. He keeps telling me that we have to have 2 cats and that we need to go to the "kitty store" to buy a new one.

So yesterday, this gray cat showed up at our patio door. I opened the door, thinking it would run away. It didn't. It came in and is the sweetest thing! He's front declawed and fixed. He's not afraid of the kids and is super cuddly. (In case you were going to check, you are still reading Sally's blog, not Jodie's...)

So for now, we're keeping him. This will change for any of the following reasons:

1. We find his owner.
2. He pees on something.
3. Clio pees on something because she doesn't like him.
4. He's too scared of the dogs.

And we didn't even have to go to the kitty store...

Jodie Must Be Really Bored...

... to beg ME to update my blog! Really, my life's about as boring as a really busy life can be. I seem to always be doing something, but never anything interesting.

So, just for you Jodie... I guess there's a few things of note going on:

1. We went to Frankenmuth on Saturday to celebrate my Dad and Craig's birthdays by eating WAY too much "family-style chicken dinner". That was followed by way too much shopping at Birch Run. (You know you're old when you get really excited to see an Eddie Bauer Outlet Store...)
2. My favorite thing is to ask Cory what a Turkey says. Her answer is "Boggle Boggle."
3. Cory's finally not fighting us when we ask if she's our "baby girl". Up until this week, she'd scream "NO! I A BOY!" at us...
4. I uploaded and bought almost 800 pictures from our trip to Disney World. Now, I have to buy some albums.
5. Craig's put in new tub/shower, new toilet, and is working on a tile floor in our ONE bathroom. (I can't quite remember why we went from a 2000 house with 3 car garage and two full baths to an 1853 house with no garage and one bath...)
6. I think it's AWESOME that there are more DZ's with blogs! I've added some of them to my list of friends. (I hope they don't mind... It's only been like 8 years since I've seen them...)
   
7. I have new pictures:

Back from Florida

And I already want to go back. It's way too cold here. To think that a week ago, I was riding in an innertube at a water park...

We had a great time, although I haven't had a chance to get my pictures off my camera yet.

I do have one of my favorite things from the trip to share though: Chase on stage as a Jedi apprentice.


How cool is that? There's a lot more to the whole show, but I was so worried that he'd be afraid of Darth Vader when I saw him come out. Instead, he went right up and kicked some Sith butt!

Happy Holidays!

All the best for the season and all year long,
-Sally, Craig, Chase, and Corinne

Don't send a lame Holiday eCard. Try JibJab Sendables!

Look at me! All Political and Stuff!

So, I actually testified at a Health Policy Hearing of the Michigan House of Representatives. Crazy!

They are looking at 4 bills that will mandate that insurance companies cover treatments for Autism. (Right now, 99.9% of them actually state that anything with a diagnosis of Autism is explicitly not covered.) Read my post from April 27 for more information about this.

If you are in Michigan and interested in helping us pass these mandates into law, please contact your senators and representatives. The Autism Insurance in Michigan blog has information about how to help.

Chase Update
He is doing soooooo great! He knows all of the Christmas songs and all of his letters. He also has this Little Leaps game thing that plays games with a controller and a DVD. He keeps wanting to play it in German. He's able to turn it to German by himself, and he even follows the directions. Maybe languages are his super-power. Maybe he really was speaking Chinese before he started speaking English? We used to joke about that all the time.

Corinne Update
Our little peanut is putting words together in almost sentences. Like, "No momma pop! My pop!" and, "No momma cookie! My cookie!" It's amazing how different she is than Chase was. I realize now just how far behind his speech really was.

Christmas
I'm about 99% done shopping (mostly online) and about 1% done wrapping. I'm going to have to work on that soon. My favorite things that the kids are getting are guinea pigs and this thing:
Hopefully, I don't regret the guinea pigs...

Also, TechSmith put out our Christmas Card. There's an online version and photo album that you should check out.

I'm Back (Again)

Thanks for bugging me April.

I've been busy and lazy about posting. I guess I needed a kick to get going. We'll see if I can start doing this more. ;o)

Anyway... I've got some pictures from Halloween through last weekend.

And, I actually included pictures of me, so you're in for a treat.

I chopped off my hair last Friday instead of going shopping. I went to Douglas J and saw Lourdes. If that sounds expensive, it was. Thank goodness for giftcards. Here's what the hair plan was:


I don't have a picture of me with the haircut, but she really got it to look just like the photo. I LOVE it!

In other big news, we booked a trip to Disney World! I go back and forth about the intelligence of this idea. We're going to be staying at a Disney Hotel for 9 nights. I'm praying now that the kids (and Craig) like it.

Well, I will try to talk to you all soon!

Amazing Race

So, my sister Sarah and I want to apply for The Amazing Race. We did once before, but at the last minute, so our video kind of sucked.

Anybody have any great ideas? If you know us, what would make you want to watch us? I know you would!

I'm still alive

I'm just pretty busy. Hopefully, I'll get back into updating the blog regularly very soon!

So, here's a couple things to make your day a little happier:





You are really cool if you know who this guy is:


Ok, at least these made my day happy! (Thanks Katie and Diana!)

Even Happier

So yeah, I'm even happier today.

Why, you ask?

1.


2.


3. I bought both.

4.

(Click picture to see full episode on NBC.com.)

5. We're going to be in Houghton on Sunday.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Happy

Despite the looming shutdown of Michigan's government, which really is very silly, I'm in a very good mood. Things that make me happy today:

• It feels like summer, even though it's almost October
• Our writing group went out for lunch to celebrate how awesome we are
• We're walking in Autism Speaks fundraising walk on Sunday at the Detroit Zoo
• I'm heading up to MTU to recruit for my company
  NMU too, but big whoop. ;o)
  
• Chase is doing great
• This is gross, but the fact that Cory puts her finger in her nose whenever she feels shy. If she's REALLY feeling shy, she does a finger in each nostril. We call that one the "Mary Catherine".
  
  
• "Decorating" a coworker's cube for his birthday
  
  

GM, Bowling, and The Family Guy Star Wars

So, GM workers are walking out. Like Michigan needs more crap. The thing that gets to me so much about the UAW is they have, what seem to me, such outrageous demands. It's hard for me to want to back workers that:

1. Get a pension
2. Feel entitled to next to free health care (and complain about $1.24 copays)
   
3. Can make $70 - $100,000 a year without a college degree
4. Refuse to do anything that might be slightly out of their job description
5. Work a minute that they don't get paid for
6. Have a clause in their contracts that the health care IS NOT guaranteed for life and MAY change and yet still are willing to fight it while creating huge issues for Michigan and the US auto market in general
7. There's more, but I don't want to take too much time

Anyway, that's the way I see it. This all may have worked 30 years ago, but now the world is different. Deal with it.

Ok. Now onto the good things.
I took Chase bowling. He loved it! They had this slide thing for the little kids to roll the ball down. Chase and his friend Ethan were pretty excited about it.


The Family Guy's Star Wars episode. Wow. This just rocked. If you didn't see it, there are plenty of clips on YouTube. Here's the trailer for it:

Trees

So, I've been reading about all my friends in Minnesota having crappy weather. I should have remembered that we get your weather a day or two later.

So now all the money I'd saved for our Disney vacation next year now gets to go for a deductible. Grrr.

The suckiest thing is that our well and pump is under the shed. We had to cut enough of the tree away last night to get a tarp on it to keep the rain out. If a lot of water got it, it could contaminate our well.

Oh yeah, the power to the shed blew, probably to do with the light that was mounted in the center of the ceiling, and we have no running water in the house today.

Thank goodness Craig knows enough to fix that today.

Anyway, at least it didn't land 10 feet to the left. It would have smashed both of our cars.

MTU
I'm going to be going up to Tech for the career fair in October. I'm also doing the Northern one while I'm up there. I'm overly excited about this. I'm also going to do a little presentation to some of the STC kiddos. Am I cool or what?


Anyone else going to be up there?

All Kinds of Fun

Ok, that might not sound sucky, but not having enough time to get all kinds of fun new stuff onto my blog is sucky.

Now, since last time, we've been to Cedar Point, a Very Special Arts Festival, the Zoo, and had our last day of Chase's class for the school year.

Cedar Point
It went really well. It's funny how Chase was terrified of some things that Ethan would go on, and Ethan was terrified of things that Chase loved! Odd how that works.
The boys were troopers! They made it through both days at Cedar Point, an indoor waterpark, two nights in the hotel, and the trip there and home (thank you Grandma for the DVD player for the car!)

We were all tired, but I think that we're going to try to do it again next year!
Here's some pictures. I finally broke down and went for the slideshow...

Torrent Very Special Arts Festival and the Zoo
We stopped over at Chase's school for a really neat little art festival that they do every year. They have several different stops along the way to make crafts to take home. The kids made buttons, necklaces, glitter cards, and also had their faces (or hand) painted and ate snow cones.

Craig and I took the kids to the Binder Park Zoo on Memorial Day. I guess that I took more video than I did pictures, so there's only a couple. The best thing about this zoo is feeding the giraffes!

Here's some pictures of Chase and Cory, and their friends, Daisy and Evie at the art festival and a few of our zoo trip.

`

Weathermen

Why is it that weathermen get away with being wrong so much? If a person in another career was wrong as many times as they are, that person would be unemployed.

Even up until the storms hit yesterday, they were still saying that today would be dry. Um, it was pouring when I left the house this morning and it's still raining. Even better, here's the forecast from TheWeatherChannel.com for Cedar Point:Thursday's our evening at Cedar Point, Friday is our whole day. I guess it's not the crappiest forecast, but hot, sunny weather seems to go with Cedar Point.

Another thing that sucks today is that Cedar Point is only open until 7pm! I guess I've never been there this time of year, so I was totally surprised that it would close so early. I'm sure that will probably be a good time to leave for the kids. I'm sure that 9am-7pm will probably be a long enough day for them, and I guess us adults, too. Sigh.

Photos
Here's some pictures from Mother's Day.

Cory before the pickle was taken away.

Cory after the pickle was taken away.
Cory after Grandma made her happy again.Chase and (Great) Aunt Kathy

Cory and Mya

Sharing popsicles

Mya and Amy

Troublemakers

Where's Jose? Can you tell which is the real bird?