Moving Day Top 10 list

Moving day is finally here and it is safe to say that I am equally excited and nervous. Just a quick blog before we have to go pick up the Budget truck. We hired 2 guys (from a legit company) to come help Scott load the heavy stuff onto the truck and I am hoping that they are careful with our stuff and can efficiently load the truck to make the best use of space. As with the first move from Jax to Cleveland we know that this will be a 2-trip ordeal as we have so much crap. Maybe having to move it for a second time in 4 months will finally prompt us to throw stuff out once we get to Pittsburgh. I wouldn't call us "pack rats" but I'm sure there is a bunch of stuff that we're holding onto for silly reasons.

Last night, as I lay on the mattress on the floor trying to fall asleep, I started thinking about the top 10 things I will not miss about living in this house:

1. The kitchen sink backing up and making the whole house smell foul... usually happened whenever we did laundry but every once in awhile it would gurgle and back up for no apparent reason.
2. NO dishwasher
3. NO garbage disposal
4. The old electrical system and lack of three-prong outlets.
5. The washing machine draining into a laundry tub and having to clean out the drain every other load.
6. Living on a super-busy street.
7. Josh's room being ice-cold all the time
8. Only having one working bathroom (technically we have a half bath but that toilet broke shortly after moving in and we never had it fixed). Having to share a bathroom with Josh (and our parents when they came to visit) was tough!
9. The long flight of stairs down to the basement (that Josh fell down and has a scar on his face from).
10. The front door lock that sticks. It was bad enough that the lock was a doorknob push and turn kind of lock but we really got aggravated when we found that only one key would open it and even that took lots of effort. We had duplicates made but not a single one would open the lock!

Alas, I'm sure I'll find some things that I don't like about the house we're moving into but I can honestly say that there is no love lost on my part with moving out of this one. Pittsburgh here we come!!! :)

My silly little man

Josh is growing into quite the funny little boy and has taken up some funny and peculiar habits:

• He likes to stick things up his nose. Most of the time its balled up clumps of Kody's fur that he has found on the carpet. No matter how many times we tell him not to do it he still sits very quietly (a dead-giveaway) and puts it in his nostril, usually the left one. So far it hasn't been far enough up to do any damage and I hope that it stays that way.
• He repeats the same word over and over and over again until you repeat it back to him. If he's calling out "mama" or "dada" or "boo-boo" or "stuck" he will continue to say it until you look at him and say the same word back. Saying "yes" or any other word besides his word of choice at that moment doesn't work.
• He wants me to kiss all of his boo-boos. I find this one very cute and oblidge him almost every time as it is my duty as his mommy. The only time I've refused is after a bath one night he said he had a boo-boo on his penis... that's where I draw the line!
• He needs to listen to music during his bath. I guess this is my fault... I like to listen to music when I take a shower (the whole dancing and singing thing would crack anyone up if they saw me). Anyway, I bought an inexpensive iPod docking station to put in the bathroom so I could have music when I shower. I had already downloaded lots of Wiggles music onto my iPod a while ago for Josh to listen to in the car and had the brilliant idea to play it for him one night while he was in the tub. Now he insists on listening to music and even wants to listen to it when he's not in the tub. I've created a monster :) I'm trying to broaden his horizons (and not lose my mind) so the music of choice for tonight's bath was Dave Matthews Band... he still asked for the Wiggles.
• He likes to point out things and called them "silly". Of course he's still working on pronouncing his L's so the word sounds so cute coming out of his mouth. Tonight it was silly when Kody was running around the house like a crazy dog, and silly when I was dancing to a song. I get called silly a lot these days.

That's about all I can remember right now... I can't wait to see and hear what he'll do next!

Cabin Fever relief

If you live under a rock and haven't heard we've had near-record cold weather for the last few days here in the MidWest/NorthEast. Because of temps in the negative single digits with wind chills in the negative double digits Josh and I haven't been out of the house since Wednesday afternoon. On top of the freezing weather, Josh has viral bronchitis so I really didn't want to take him outside and chance making him sicker.

After 3+ days stuck inside we both had cabin fever and Josh was completely out of control with excess energy. The weather had improved to temps in the positive teens and Josh seems to be feeling better so we decided to take a family trip to one of the local malls that has a nice children's play area. Here are a few pics of Josh running around and having a great time at the mall:

The Coca-Cola experiment

I read somewhere (probably in one of my mom's million forwards) that Coca-Cola takes rust off of things and decided to put that theory to the test. We don't have a fenced in back yard and live on a very busy street so whenever Kody has to go out we have to put him on a tie-out. Simple enough, it has a metal clasp that hooks to his collar and off he goes.
Well, with all of the snow we've gotten the clasp has continually gotten wet and has started to rust to the point I couldn't get it to open this evening. I remembered the email and poured a cup of my favorite beverage, good ol' Coca-Cola, and let the clasp sit in the liquid for about one minute.
Wouldn't you know it DID take some rust off and I was able to quite easily open the clasp?!?!?!? Scary to think if it can do that what is it doing to my insides? I need to block that out of my mind...

"Stuck, Stuck"

"Stuck" is all Josh kept saying while we were outside this morning playing in, and shoveling all the snow. I say that's a pretty good description of what we are today. Plans to go to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame were scrapped. Plans to go out to dinner are tentatively cancelled. (Josh kept saying "stuck" because the snow was so high he couldn't walk through it - it was thigh high for him!)

Overnight we got 6-8 inches and it continued to snow until about 1pm today. This was our first major snow storm while we've been in Cleveland. We got some the other day, as my previous post says, but nothing like this. Luckily for us, our neighbor Doug came over with a snowblower and cleared half of the driveway for us - including the end where the city snowplow came through.

And to top it all off, it was a "dry" snow which isn't good for packing so we weren't able to make a snowman :(

I never thought I'd have to do that again!

And what might that be?!?!?!?
SHOVEL THE DRIVEWAY!!!!

We got a couple of inches of snow last night and with Scott out of town it was up to me to get the driveway cleared off... by hand... with a shovel. You can see from the picture that this driveway is looooooooong. My shoulders are already killing me!

And what was my reward for a good job done?
It started snowing again! Ugh! All I know is that Scott gets the next round of shoveling!

Happy New Year!

I'm a day late posting my first blog of 2009 due in part to a nasty hangover yesterday and secondly because we were at my in-laws house.
New Year's Eve was fabulous and I was so happy to spend it in Pittsburgh with friends. On our way to meet our friends Chris and Susan for dinner we got a call from our new landlord about the house we want to rent. I'm so happy with this house... 3 bedroom, 3.5 bathrooms, a big yard for Kody, a great deck with an awesome view. I can't wait to move in at the end of this month!
We had our first dinner downtown in Pitt at a Spanish restaurant named Mallorca. It was so different from the places we normally eat at (ie chain restaurants) but the food, atmosphere, and company were all great. We're still learning the roads in Pitt and it was snowing off and on that night so we decided to skip the bar hopping as planned and spend the night at our friends Jen & Jerry's house. We played a bunch of games and had so much fun but unfortunately I wasn't paying attention and drank WAY too much. Boy did I pay for it yesterday!
So now we're back home in Cleveland and I'm excited to get started packing for our move to Pitt (technically Cranberry Township). One more night of relaxing though... after Josh goes to bed we're renting "The Dark Knight" on PPV!