I know, I know, it's been quite awhile since I last blogged about what is happening in our neck of the woods. I have had it on my to-do list for a couple weeks but I just keep running out of time to do, so tonight I'm making the time to do it even if I have to stay half the night.
I've still been pretty stingy with my time with Jarom. We go just about everwhere with each other, that is if we even leave the house. Together, we have been playing on the Wii and the WiiFit, working on puzzles, reading and playing games.
Personally, I've been working on some cross-stitch gifts and various other crafts, running errands, reading my books and magazines, chores around the house and getting things set up to start working again.
I will start working again soon, from home as a virtual assistant. I'm very excited. I'm just starting out with the basic project and if all goes well I will move up to individual projects where I can earn even more money. I will start with basic data entry and memos and I can move up reports, research, presentations, etc. I am very excited about. I want to work again, but I'm not quite ready to enter the outside work force. This job will allow me to create my own work schedule and therefore work around vacations and holidays so that we can see our families more. It will also allow me the time I need to study and get my teaching certification so that when the economy is steady again there is a much greater need for teachers than I can finally do what I love-my dream job as a teacher.
We had a great long weekend with my family here. My parents and an aunt and uncle came down from Oregon on Thursday evening. Friday, the guys just stayed home chatting while us girls went shopping at Bath & Body Works, Costco and Safeway. Saturday afternoon Jarom and I took them to the Charles Spinetta Winery to taste some of my favorite sweet wines and brwse the gallery. We had fun and I took the camera but forgot all about it when we got there. I love there three sweet wines and their two dessert wines. Saturday evening, my cousin Nicole and Aunt Teresa and Uncle Paylor drove up from Watsonville. Sunday was when the main activities occurred. In the morning all the men went with Jarom to go shooting behine Beale AFB, while all of us girls went to JoAnn's. In the afternoon, we worked on a family quilt. We all designed a square or two about ourselves or something that reminds us of the weekend. Coley also had a special traveling embroidery project for all of us to add too with our name and where we live and a design/picture that represents us.

It will travel to her family and special friends. When she is all done, she will frame it. Aunt Val did her and Uncle Stu's and I did mine and Jarom's then sent it home with Mom to do hers and forward to the next person.
One all that was done we started the games and activities I had planned. The first game was the multi-wrapped gift, as always it proved to be a lot of fun! Dad won the prize of a neat book I found at Jamba Juice and $5 Jamba Juice giftcard.
Once we finished I set up for our next game the Ice Cube Race.
You compete with another individual to be ther first to get your ice cube from one bowl to the next-only using two toothpicks. Uncle Paylor won this game and got some fun thumbtacks, pens, a Wizard of Oz magnet and a $10 Jamba Juice card. Following the race we went our back to take a swing at the pinata.
Mom was the first to take a turn at it and she did good breaking a pretty good sized hole in the top. Coley was the second and last person to take a whack at it. She would get a feel for it and stop it from swinging and then really whack at it! It broke open after her third swing I think and everthing came spilling out. I filled it with candy, magnets, pens, Wooly Willy, suction cup balls, six varieties of pleasure condoms, six varieties of lubricants, amongst other things. Afterward while Mom and Jarom prepared dinner, I snapped pictures of Coley and Aunt Teresa wearing the cone of the pinata and Coley wearing the ice cream part and then switching. They are so cute!

After dinner, even after a long debate to do so, I decided to follow through with my plan to do a drawing for the quilt. I wanted to be selfish and keep it, but I got pictures of all the squares and everyone creating them, so it is almost at good as having the actual thing.

I wrote everyone's names on a piece of paper and put them in a bowl that I shook and had Aunt Teresa draw the winner. Uncle Paylor won the quilt. Dad was really bummed because he really wanted it. The quilt was really cool. I got it at JoAnn's already assembled, with 16 blank white squares and some oil type pentel pastels. We each did our squares and then some of us did a few more to complete it. Once all the squares were complete I had to make our art permanent by placing a clean piece of white paper over our drawing and ironing with a hot dry iron for 5 seconds. It turned out really cool! I plan to get another one. i was thinking of doing one for our 10 year anniversary with some of our greatest memories.
Also after dinner the Wii became a HUGE hit! They raced on MarioKart, bowled, played tennis and hoola hooped on the WiiFit. There was so much laughter and hooping and hollaring as everyone cheered on the players.

About 9:30pm, Aunt Teresa, Uncle Paylor and Coley headed home. After a leasurely morning on Sunday, Mom, Dad, Uncle Stu and Aunt Val packed up the Tahoe and headed home. It is always sad once everyone leaves...and so quiet. Jarom and I didn't do much that day we just relaxed and spent it together.

Miss and Gus, of course, LOVED having everyone here to visit and love them. You know, everyone was just there for them not us. :o) Hope was quite friendly, allowing people to give her a few pets. She even spent most of the time everyone was here in the same room with everyone.
We finally got Minnie fixed and she is much less skittish, at least around us, now. She lets us come and pet her for a minute or two and she comes to sleep on my pillow once or twice a week. Hope is sleeping with us all the time now on the bed. if she is not at my feet she is squeezed between us. There have been a few times this past week that I've had all four animals with me in the same room while I read or cross-stitch.
I'm still having quite a hard time with our stairs. I've sprained my ankle again and just this evening, I was three steps from reaching the bottom and I slid down them, catching myself on the railings. My back is sore-it was almost immediate. I don't know what is going on with me. I'm not running up or down them. Other than that, I LOVE our home and being back in Elk Grove. We are still unpacking. We are taking our time as we decide what to keep, what to donate and what to throw away. I'm such a pack rat that I have binders of papers from high school. Most everything is being donated, although I have done my fair share of shredding documents. Once all that is done we will take the donations to the donation spot and then we can finally move in the pool table. I love having all the space, but also with all the donating and throwing away, everything is so clutter free. I absolutely love it!
So that is what has been happening with us. hope you enjoy the few pictures in this post of our activities. I have over 100 of our family weekend, so I just put in one of the main activities.
Have a happy and safe Labor Day!!

Jarom came home early on Wednesday. His flight landed just before midnight. He came home three days early, it was so great! We have been selfish living in Jarom and Trisha world. Just enjoying each others company again and that we are back together after a long 5 1/2 weeks. Jarom didn't have to back to work until today, so it was a nice long weekend together for us. We did go to the Schaefer's Saturday evening for dinner and haircuts. We had a lot of fun playing with Amelia and Trinity. They "painted" me pink while Gina cut my hair and did my "make-up" for me too. Jarom was "painted" rainbow colors.


Gus and Miss sure love that thier Dad is home again. They can't make up their minds at night where they want to sleep. I think they move two or three times from sleeping on the floor on my side of the bed and Jarom's side of the bed. I can tell they are much happier now that Jarom is home because they are playing more with each other. This afternoon they had a couple wrestling matches after Miss tried to take a box away from Gus that he wanted to shred. It was funny. Miss would try to take it away and he would pull it right back. Gus finally delcared war and a wrestling they went.

Jarom brought home a laser pointer. Hope loves the lasers and chases them all over. Minnie has never showed much interest in the lasers. Gus doesn't much care. We have discovered that Miss likes the laser, too. She chases is and when she thinks she's caught it she tried to eat it. It is pretty funny.

Now, we are just finishing up getting the house in order for this weekend. We have family coming to visit. I'm so exctied to see everyone! My parents and Uncel Stu and Aunt val will be here on Thursday from Oregon. Friday, My Aunt Tracy and her fiance Dustin will be here. Satruday, Aunt Teresa and Uncle Paylor will be here. Coley is coming too, but I'm not sure what day. It will be a lot of fun. I love having a full house of family, especially as I get older. We are going to Amador county on Saturday to visit a few wineries and have a picnic. Sunday, Jarom is going to go shooting in Yuba County and take anyone who wants to go with him. I'm getting a pinata and fill is with all kinds of stuff...not just candy. We are all going to add our unique personalities to a memory quilt and have a drawing for the winner. Of course, we have to have our family photo and the pool table to play pool. My game binder is put together with stickers, fun pens and paper. It is now in the dining room in the cabinet with my cookbooks, so I always know where it is.
We will fill in the gaps with eating and visiting, and then the sad time comes when everyone leaves on Monday.

This is my heaven on earth. My wonderful husband is home again and my family is coming to visit. I'm so excited!

Jarom is coming home early! He called yesterday afternoon to tell me that his class will graduate early-today and that he is flying out afterwards to come home. I'm so excited! What a nice gift and surprise for the dogs and me. His flight gets in just before 11pm, so it will be late, but at least I will have him home again and life can resume as normal.

My mom and dad will be here in a week. They are driving down from Oregon with my aunt and uncle on Thursday. Friday and Saturday, I have family driving up from Santa Cruz, too. It will be a lot of fun to have so many people here. I am very excited!

On another note, I think we are going to have to switch the dogs back to their old food-Eagle Pack. When we moved back, we couldn't find it so we switched them to Natural Balance and then Nutro. Poor Gus has had the craps pretty bad. So bad that it would make one think we had a real child in diapers around. I have to clean him up at least 3-4 times a week with wipes and baths are every other week now. I feel bad for him and for me. It almost made me sick last night. It was just all over him. Yuck! I think I washed my hands four times to get the stink off and then proceeded to take a shower.

My room is almost done. I just need Jarom to hang some more shelves for me so that I can put away my office supplies and help me put some of my storage containers on the top shelf in my closet. Oh, and put my books on the shleves below the t.v. I have in here. Maybe a few more pictures on the walls, as well.

Well, the interview on Friday went really well. In fact, I was asked to come back Saturday morning at 10am to job shadow an employee until 5pm. I accepted the offer and was back the next morning. It was a long day and from the beginning I had a feeling it just wasn't the right job for me, but then part of me just wondered if it was fear of change or something new that was making me feel that way. I stuck out the day and I was given high praise by the employee I shadowed and offered the position. Everyone was really nice, fun and outgoing, but I wanted to think things over and talk to Jarom and of course pray about whether it is a right fit for me. I was pressured to make a decision then, because it was not going to be held and in the fear of the moment accepted the job.

All the way home, I still wasn't completely sold that that is was right for me. Everything is based on performance. In this case, the performance part was the sales. If you met the sales requirements, you advanced to the next level. Third level is assistant management and then management. The sales is hard core and I'm not a sales person. I never was, I couldn't even cross-sale when I worked for the bank. It wasn't the marketing job I thought it was. Basically, you can be a manager if you are a great salesman and that can happen in 8-10 months.

I called Jarom and we talked about it and he said I needed to talk to my Dad. I planned to call and talk to Dad on Sunday, but I had my answer before that from my prayer. I was just really at peace with the decision that it was not right for me.

Jarom will be home this weekend. I'm really excited. It has been a long five weeks so far.

I apologize that I have not posted for a few weeks, but things are starting to look up. It has been a bit of a rough five weeks with Jarom gone. I miss him and I fell into my little hole off and on. It is a good thing he will be home in one more week and life can resume.

I did enjoy the short and sweet weekend visit with my Mom when she came down. We stayed up Friday night until almost 1am Saturday just talking and catching up. Satruday we browsed the vast variety of stores in the area and had lunch at Marie Callendar's. I made my herb chicken for dinner and we had salad. After dinner we sat out back and had a glass of wine. For dessert we had strawberries on angel food cake. On Sunday, we went to the first showing of Mamma Mia!, and we thought we'd beat most of the crowd, but we were wrong. There weren't many seats, so few that we sat in the very first row. We had a late lunch at Red Robin after the movie and then came home and visited for a few more hours until we had to leave to go to the airport.


I'm still working a bit on the house. My room is almost done and but together. I still have some things to find and put away. The garage is completely full still of boxes, but the main stuff is in the house and put away. I'm enjoying this clutter free living. I think we are going to donate the majority of what is in the garage. There are still some things I need like my craft books, Feorge Foreman grill and whatever Jarom needs. The items we need are already in and placed in thier new homes. I will post pictures soon...after Jarom gets home. He has the camera.

Finally, on another note I have an interview tomorrow with AdHoc Advancement, an advertising and marketing firm. I'm really excited about it and I hope it goes as well I feel it will. I love everything I've read about them. Everyone starts at entry-level and cross-trained in all areas, and they promote from within. Promotions are based not on seniority but performance. They have a range of companies in their portfolio.

I probably should get to bed. I'm so tired. Gus was sick last night and into the morning, so I was up with him. After he initially was sick he mostly just dry-heaved, but it scared and concerned me all the same.

I'm feeling better. My shoulder doesn't really bother me any more, but I'm still having headaches and my back/hip are bothering me a bit still. I can deal with the back pain for the most part, but today it bothered me more than i planned. I spent the day running errands, grocery shopping, cleaning the house and doing laundry. I was on my feet from 8:30 this morning until well about 15 minutes ago. I'm still working on some laundry but they are the dog beds and a few light lap blankets. The most important things was making sure the sheets were washed for the guest bedroom for Mom. I decided to wash our sheets too along with the comforter.
I think the headaches are the worst part of the reaminder of falling down the stairs. Tylenol just isn't working so I just have to let them run their course.

In addition to all the laundry, cleaning and errands, I got the guest bedroom ready for my Mom who will be here, well tonight, now, since it is after midnight. I just needed to put some things away and put the new clean sheets and clean comforter on the bed. Also, I gave both dogs a bath. Boy do they get dirty fast. It has only been two weeks since their last one, but they needed and I wanted to get as much hair off them as possible. They have been shedding like crazy. The only thing really left to do is the recycling. I have a box of it upstairs that I need to take down and sort and put in the bin for next week. I would have done it today, but it is garbage and yard debris day today and garbage and recycling next week. I guess it is good that it is a large bin, but I recycle so much that it fills up quick.

I went to work this morning, too, and turned in my resignation letter. Jack knew I wasn't going to come back that I need something less stressful and outside the church, especially since my depression. I just needed to make it official. I have to go back though, because I forgot my keys to the building and office and I need to return them. It was goo to see everyone and say hello. They even invited me to a barbeque on the 30th that they are having at the store. Elena is going to cook. I think I just might go so I can visit with everyone more.

I have no idea why I'm still up. I only slept a couple hours last night. It seems to be a pattern since Jarom has left.

I started back on my diet. I want to keep with the Weight Watchers format of points, but I'm tracking everything on SparkPeople.com. It is just the first day, but I did really well.

Not really much going on but that. I have just been resting my back and shoulder and loving the pups. The cats do their own thing. My mom is coming tonight and I'm excited to spend the weekend with her.

Today, was a peaceful day except for a bit of a stiff neck and sore shoulder. I slipped and fell down the stairs last night. My hip began to hurt a bit this evening. I spent the day sitting up in bed propped against three pillows with my book. I was only half through it and today I finished it. It was a pretty uneventful day except for Miss.

Her and Hope were in her with me and Hope jumped on the bed to get a drink of water from the water dish I brought upstairs for the dogs and Miss decided she wanted a drink too. Normally, she would have ran over and chased Hope away, but she didn't this time. She was incredibly sweet. She sat by the tub and waited for Hope to finish, she didn't even try to stare her down to make her leave quicker, either. When Hope finished and walked away, Miss got up and walked the few steps over to the bowl for her turn. I was just so inspired and my heart just swelled.

Finally, a while back my Dad had mentioned something to Jarom that I have been entertaining for a while, but today, my mind is swirling with ideas that I really need to organize and put on paper. Anyway, my Dad mentioned that maybe I should write a book. He loves to read our blogs and the ones I do for the 'kids'. Jarom mentioned it and I have thought about it a lot off and on. My preliminary thoughts are to write children's stories about two bulldogs, coincidentally Gus and Miss that learn manners and choosing the rigt decisions. I asked my cousin to think about illustrating it/them if I can get something written out and put on paper. I don't know what would become of them, but maybe one day they could be published. We'll see, my ideas are still rough and unorganized but I'll get there.