Catch 22

I still haven't read that book, but I should.

This will be a slightly random post, though mostly dedicated to the current predicament I find myself in.

First though, I have a job. I have for 2 months now. It is the first time I've worked since Morgan was born, and it is a job that I first had when I was 17. I am a research technician for Seminis Vegetable Seed. Or, Monsanto, these days. I have spent most of my time in a cornfield, though recently we have been doing a lot of office work. And when I say office work, I mean, work at "the office." It isn't pushing papers. It's still manual labor. I am as tan as I get, and have finally lost some weight from all the walking and heavy lifting.
My mom watched my kids for most of the time, but then school started, so she started driving the school bus again. Then I had my sisters-in-law Christine, or Arielle, babysit. Morgan always complains and fights me when it is time to go home. (Is it wrong to wish that he'd see me after a long day of work and run to me and hug me in excitement, and be so happy to be with his mommy?)
While working, I listen to audio books. It's been great! Libravox is free, since the books they do are in the public domain. But I love the classics, and would probably choose to listen to them regardless. I've listened to The Woman in White, and The Count of Monte Cristo. That is one gigantic book. It took me a solid month to listen to it for hours a day. Anyway, I am currently listening to Anne of Green Gables, and it is positively delightful.

Lydia can kind of walk. She is taking her time with perfecting it, but she is slowly improving.
Lydia is so clever, though, that when she is hungry, she finds the nursing cover and brings it to me. Pretty good communicating, little girl.

Now. I've been living with my parents for almost a year. 10 months. I never intended to stay here for so long. I find that when I live with my parents I am lazy and irresponsible, and I don't spend much time being productive, and I am not as good a parent, and I am disorganized and messy, and I don't feel like an independent adult. So, through no fault of theirs, I don't like living with my parents.
I've been trying to move out, with varying degrees of seriousness, for many months. I came very close to renting a couple different places, but it never seemed quite right. Oh, and I looked into purchasing a house, since I could get a nice 3 bedroom place in a decent neighborhood, garage, fence, yard, etc. with a mortgage payment of under $500 a month. But since I haven't worked in the last 5 years, I won't be considered for a loan. That, and I am still on the title of the house in Caldwell.
Anyway, so, renting is necessary. I really want to stay in Nampa, because I love it. But I've recently realized that I love Nampa so much because I grew up in the outskirts of south Nampa. There are no cheap apartments or houses to rent in this part of town. The only places I am finding that are anywhere near my price range are pretty much made to be NNU housing, or old and yucky neighborhoods where I don't feel comfortable leaving my car for 5 minutes while I look at the rental, for fear that it will be broken into or stolen.
Still, with enough searching, I think I could find an adequate townhouse or something. A small 2 bedroom 4 plex with a carport, no amenities, for as cheap as $550/month. I've done the math time and time again. It would be tight, but I think I could afford it and all my other bills. Until I calculate the babysitter in.
So it comes to this. I can live at home and pay the cheap rent here and no other household bills, and have a job and afford a babysitter.
Or, I can move out, be independent and in charge of me, scrimp on paycheck to paycheck mode, and just maybe survive. Until December, that is, when my temporary job ends.
But if I live at home, I don't even need a job. My kids and I could get by on child support alone.
I WANT TO SCREAM.

I also may want to go to school. No, I DO want to, but I don't know how to make it happen. Plus, I want to go to school and get a BA in Literature, or something Englishy, because all I really want to be is a writer. But is that going to pay the bills? So, if I went to school, it would most likely be to trade school to learn to be a dental hygienist because I could make a decent living with that. But I would feel like I'm cheating myself. I wouldn't be doing what I want to be doing. But that's dumb of me, when was the last time I got what I wanted?
Too cynical? Fine, I'll water it down.

In reality, I should be counting my blessings. I have two great kids, who are smart, and happy, and full of sunshine. I have family who supports me, and lets me live with them, despite my noisy kids and their messes. I have a job, which I obtained very easily, even though the market here is terrible, and I enjoy the work. I have health. I have an excellent farmers tan. I have books. I love my phone. I have many willing to watch my kids. I have the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the blessings of the Atonement, without which I would be an angry, bitter, woman, among other things.

This turned out really long. But I needed a therapy write.
Kudos if you actually read it all. Or, maybe I should apologize if you actually read it all. :)

Blog Books

I decided that after all the work and time I'd put into blogging, I wanted a more permanent copy of our lives. Not just on the computer. So, I put even more work and time into creating blog books. And money. They are not cheap.
So I started from the beginning. I blogged a lot in 2008, and it quickly became evident that I wouldn't have enough room in one book for the whole year, so I broke the year into two books.

For these books, I used a program/service called picaboo. I really liked it; it was very user friendly, but my favorite thing about it was the multitude of cute backgrounds that you could find for all occasions and themes. It was easy to arrange things how you wanted them too. And one thing that I liked a lot was the feature that allowed you to make the text box lighter, so if the background was dark, the lighter foreground would still enable you to read the words. If done correctly.

A major downfall for this was the price. Ex pen sive. I had a 60% off coupon for one, and bought the other during a half off promo, and still spent a lot on them. My memory is fuzzy, but I know the pre-discount price was over $100. But I like how they turned out.

Then I got another coupon for a different company. Blurb. With Blurb I made the books for 2009. At first, I was very disappointed. Not as user friendly, hardly any backgrounds, and they were boring. But as I got more familiar with it, I found some features that I like better. For instance, you can design a template and save it. The saving part is what I liked. Oh, and the software connected to your blog and imported those pictures and posts in order that you wanted them. That was actually pretty awesome. It saved a lot of time.

I think the finished product looks a little more sleek and professional too. I like the size better. Oh, and I got a couple different kinds for these books. The one on the right has the picture and printing just on the hardcover. The left has a dust jacket. I MUCH prefer the former, and wish I had spent the $7 or so extra bucks both times. I hate dust jackets.
I also liked that I could load up the back cover of the book with pictures. I could design how I wanted it to look.
The inside wasn't as fun though.

Another plus about Blurb was the price. Much, much, cheaper.

Now I have to do 2010. And guess what? I got me a coupon to yet another company. They will be done with Mixbook.
I really like having these though. And Morgan does too. We read from them every night before he goes to bed.

Settler Park

We went to Settler Park on Saturday. My mom, Christine, her kids, my kids, and myself. It was my first time there. It was fun for the kids. A nice park.

Morgan fist played on the awesome playground area. I love that the ground isn't bark, or sand, but foamy stuff.

There was a little fountain area with fun stuff.


They had buckets that slowly filled with water, then would dump. Morgan waited for deluge, and I even caught it on camera.

Lydia played in the water too, after awaking from her nap. She loved it. I (or grandma) would hold her hand(s) and she would lead the way.






There were fake rocks to climb. Kain was pretty brave. Morgan was kinda chicken. :)




There was a music section of park. Morgan, Kaien, and Emmy played there.





Mom bought suckers for all the kids. Lydia even. Her first sucker made her so so sticky and blue.


Driving home. Ammon.


Lydia doesn't always know the right way to hold the sucker.

Morgan quotes

It is time for another Morgan Quote post. Most of these quotes have been on facebook. The ones that I didn't put there, I don't remember. Bummer! Except for one.

I had a discussion with Morgan the other night, and we disagreed and did a bit of arguing. Morgan was arguing like a 4 year old, so I said "where is your logic?" He replied, "I'm allergic to it."

The other day I was telling Morgan that we were going to go to a Relief Society thing, and he was going to go to the nursery to be babysat with the other kids. He then asked if Megan was going to be there. I told him I didn't know, and he told me, "I like Megan. She's the prettiest girl in the world." Then I think he felt guilty, so he said that I was the prettiest girl, then Lydie, and then Megan. Haha. He may have his first crush! (Megan is a girl that used to live with our family when she and her siblings first came from Korea. Now she lives with another member of our ward.)

Morgan told me that he wished he could see a dead person. He followed that up with, "I would never kill you."
Well I should hope not! And I also hope he isn't contemplating murder, just so he can see a dead body.

Morgan: I dreamed we were in Heaven.
Me: Really? What was it like?
Morgan: Forever.

Morgan said he knows when he has to go to the bathroom, because it feels like yellow.

We have a ton of house spiders in the basement. Our bedrooms are in the basement. It's gross. I hate them. They are big.
One night I was putting Morgan to bed. He happened to see a spider on the wall by his nightlight. He got close and investigated. Then he got a shoe to squash it. He got all poised to strike, but then he paused.
"Mommy, what kind of spider is this?"
"A wolf spider."
Morgan backed away quickly, screwed up his face in a giant pout, and, now close to tears, said, "But I'm afraid of wolf spiders!"

This is what they look like.

I killed the spider. The next night, I noticed there was another spider in almost the same spot. I used the same shoe to kill that one. The next night, after Morgan was in bed, the light was off, I was out of his room, he called to me and told me that there was another spider by his night light. Yeah right. He insisted. I went in to show him that he was wrong, but there was another spider there. It was even bigger than the last two. He joined their fate.

Sleeping Beauty

I have recently found that Lydia likes to sleep on her stomach more than on her back. Well, I think she prefers it. But perhaps it's just that she doesn't like it when she is left in her bed for a nap, and I leave the room. She always stands up and cries for a few minutes, until she is just too tired and falls asleep. This usually means she ends up on her stomach, and sometimes in some pretty funny positions.

4th of July

Boy am I behind. I finally have a new computer, so can finally upload more pictures. The last one had everything breaking on it, including the USB ports.

Here are a bunch of photo's from the 4th.
I LOVE Lydie's dress. And her face.



Lydia is on the cusp of learning to walk. She stands a lot, by herself, and is starting to take one step without support. Anyway, these pictures are a month old, so she wasn't as far along in her learning. Wow, kind of an unnecessary tangent, as all I was going to say was that Lydia is learning to play with this toy. She can sit on it and scoot backwards.




Morgan likes to take pictures, so I am actually in some of the photo's these days. Proof that I was a part of my kids' lives!


My Morgan. So grown up.
Siblings.



We did little fireworks that night. Morgan was excited. It was pretty windy though, which caused problems for our neighbors. They had some of the nicer, bigger, illegaler, fireworks. Right after we got outside, we saw a big orange glow over some trees, and lots of smoke. It kept getting bigger. It wasn't long before firetrucks arrived.


Fireworks are such a rip off. They cost so much, last 2 seconds, and don't vary. Here




Morgan dancing to the strobe light firework.