He's *finally* here!

Announcing the arrival of...

Bryce Anthony!
August 4, 2007
1:22pm
7 lbs. 1 oz.
18.5 inches

Bryce Anthony made his appearance at 1:22pm this afternoon! Mandy said that it was a long, hard labor and her epidural wore off, but I'll let her share the details. LOL She'll be home from the hospital on Monday. Welcome to the world, Bryce! Congratulations Mandy, Tommy, and Lauryn!!

Recipe blog

I started a recipe blog because I'm sick of storing my recipes on message boards and then having to login and read new posts, etc... just to look up a recipe. Feel free to visit. http://laciesrecipebox.blogspot.com/

La la.

So, not much new around here. Still getting settled into the new house, slowly but surely.

On the babies front, I had 20 tubes of blood drawn last Thursday, and they're running an insanely long list of tests on said blood to find out why my uterus apparently doesn't like having babies in it. With Bean's due date quickly approaching (May 25th), my baby fever is starting to come back, and I just want to hurry up and get through the first 12 weeks of another pregnancy with no freaking drama!

Ethan is awesome, of course. He's starting to pick up on more words, which is so cool. His latest words are Cracker (cah-cah), Chicken (chi-chen), and Simpsons (sih-son). He got his hair cut while we were back in Postville a couple of weeks ago, and he looks so much older now! My little boy is growing up so fast!

Catching up!

Long time, no post!

Well, the last month has been busy busy busy! We got all moved in to our new house, and we are LOVING it! We've been out in the backyard playing every single day (before it got cold again, anyway!)

The unpacking process is going slow, but we're getting settled in. I think I got the last of the kitchen stuff unpacked this morning, so at least one room is done. The bathroom is all unpacked as well, but it still needs to be painted. We got a nice new shower surround, so it looks much better than it used to.

Other than that, not much is going on. Ethan and I are going to my parents' house for a visit next week - my sister has proms on the 21st and 28th, and she wanted me home for both of them to take pictures. While I'm there, I'm going to get my hair permed again, because my stylist there is the only person I trust to do it right. :) Plus, she doesn't charge nearly as much as people do here!

I really need to work on Ethan's photo gallery - I guess my aunt and grandpa went to look at it last week and I hadn't updated since before Thanksgiving. Bad Lacie. LOL

AI Rundown - The Girls

Jordin - Awesome performance! I really, really liked it, and I really, really like her.

Sabrina - I thought she did a pretty good job, but I agree with Simon that she needs to show some more personality.

Antonella - My GOD why is this bitch still in the competition? She is totally not in the same league as the rest of them. GO HOME! *insert snotty UH!* She can blah blah blah all she wants about wanting to be unique or whatever, but the fact of the matter is, she just isn't good enough to go any further. Period.

Haley - It took me 5 minutes to even remember she was still in this last night. She's not a bad singer, she's just not that good either. And she doesn't stand out even a little bit. Meh. I totally understand why Simon doesn't know her name - I think there's probably a lot of other people that don't either.

Stephanie - A good job. We were discussing how much Antonella sucks during it, so I can't give a more indepth critique. LOL

LaKisha - Man, I wish she'd sing something different than the same ol' R&B every week. She's a great singer, but I want to see her sing something different.

Gina - Hm. I love Gina. She did have pitch problems, and my god, it's impossible to sound like Amy Lee. But I think she did a pretty good job, and I totally think she needs to stay around. I think it's probably a pretty good sign that an hour and 15 min. after the show, I'm still having problems getting through on her line.

Melinda - I love her. I think she's the best singer in this competition, and I love her personality as well. I'd love to see her sing something different, too, but she's just great.

My AI Rundown - Guys

I'm writing this out here because I'm watching it on Tivo and I don't want to read the OLU thread yet.

Blake - The beatboxing was better than the singing, for sure. But I still like him, and I think he's going to go a long way. And I can't believe none of the judges knew that song! Where the hell were they in the 90's?

Sanjaya - My god, he murdered that song, and that's the only John Mayer song I really like! And what's up with the woman hair? Seriously? PLEASE go home this week! PLEASE!!

Sundance - I thought he did a really good job. It sounded like he messed up the lyrics in a few places (though I'm sure the fuck=punk part was intentional). What does Simon mean by "indulgent"?

Chris R. - Started out like crap. Serious crap. And it never got better. Did the judges hear the same song I did? At least Simon caught the nasal stuff, but I thought it was pretty pitchy. Whatever. I like him, and obviously the judges do too.

Jared - He's a little painful to watch at times. I liked this song (moreso the fast part than the slow) but I'm tired of the guys singing songs like this. I think we need more rock in this season.

Brandon - Ethan liked him - he was dancing. LOL I think he's OK - I'm not a huge fan of this song, but I think he sang it well. I'm not sure if I like him for the finals or not.

Phil - You should see the look on my face right now! ICK! What the hell is up with his voice? He's hitting a couple of wrong notes, too, although his voice does sound a little better at the end - that seems to be a trend with him, that he starts out shit, and gets better. I wouldn't mind if he left this week.

Chris S. - My favorite of the night! I didn't know the song, but it sounded pretty good. In a night of mediocrity, he definitely shone. I do agree with the judges that he needs to pick better songs sometimes. But seriously, I don't think anyone was better than him tonight.

Mom's Night Out

I went out for supper with some of the moms in this playgroup that I'm in tonight. I had so much fun! It's kind of sad, but I haven't been out with friends for such a long time. We were at Chili's for almost 4 1/2 hours, just talking about stuff, mainly our kids ;) but other stuff too. I hope we can do it again sometime.

In other news, I'm so sick of winter. It rained almost all day today, but yet there's still a lot of snow, and it's snowing now. Blech. So now we have a huge sloppy mess, which is like the worst type of winter.

We gave our current landlords notice that we're moving out today. Haven't gotten a response yet. I'm kind of curious to hear what they have to say. Interestingly enough, they weren't going to raise the rent. I guess the rental market is crap right now, though - a few months ago, our floorplan was going for at least $100 more than what we're paying, but I just checked the MLS and it's only going for $25-50 more than what we pay now. I think our apartment is in a lot better shape than some of them, though - our landlords looked at quite a few other ones before they bought ours, and they said ours was the best. Whatever, I hate it here and can't wait to leave. LOL

Tomorrow I'm hoping we can go up to Deer Park and get some paint chips from Restoration Hardware. I hear they have really nice colors, but their paint sucks. That's why Color Match is awesome. :D

To-Do List

I hate moving more than just about any other activity. However, it needs to get done, and I am going to make a nice organized list of crap I need to do in the process. I'm going to include stuff I've already done so I can feel a little bit of accomplishment. LOL Bolding what's done.

*Clean bedroom floor
*Pack 75% of toys (sadly, I did this and we still have a ton out. Spoiled, much?)
*Clean hallway
*Clean utility room
*Go through our bathroom closet and throw out old/expired toiletries and medicines
*Go through Ethan's bathroom closet and get rid of boxes and other junk
*Go through non-perishable food and throw out old opened boxes
*Clean around my desk
*List magazines on Craigslist; recycle what's left
*List microwave, couch, grill, anything else still useful but not needed on Craigslist
*Go through our clothes, donate/sell what I don't want
*Go through Ethan's clothes, list on OLU/eBay
*Go through shed and throw away stuff in tubs that we haven't touched since we moved out of Lakeside (in 2003!)
*Gather tubs and buy boxes (partially done, I got a bunch from Craigslist but we'll still need more)
*Sort through books and list ones I don't want on Amazon Marketplace or similar
*Clean Ethan's closet
*Take bouncy seat and any other baby gear I don't want to keep to Once Upon a Child
*Go through gigantic pile of boxes in bedroom and decide what to keep
*Shred huge pile of credit card offers; opt-out of getting them in the future
*Change addresses on magazine subscriptions, bills, etc...
*PACK! (in progress!)

Are you on my list?

If you read this and you have a blog that isn't in my list over there -->, please leave me a linkie. :D

A fresh start...

So, try #5897013270 at keeping up on a blog. Let's see if this one succeeds. :D As if I needed another place to put updates about my life, but at least here you don't have to pay to see my ramblings.

If you don't know me or don't keep up on my life already, Hi, I'm Lacie. I'm 25 years old, married to Shawn, and I'm a stay-at-home-mom to Ethan. I like to pretend that I'm a graphic designer, and people tell me I'm at least decent at it.

I'm also a mommy to two angels, which sucks a lot. We lost baby #2 (Bean) when I was 12 weeks pregnant, back in November. Then we lost baby #3 (Wiggle) when I was 9 weeks in February. Miscarriages suck. Since I've now had two in a row, I get to have testing to see what the hell is wrong with me. I'm actually kind of looking forward to it - the testing could answer a lot of questions.

The biggest news in our lives right now is that we're moving! Yay! It's a 3 bedroom house with a nice big fenced backyard. The best part is that we get to move in early in exchange for painting the whole house - no more white walls!

That should just about bring you up to speed. Let's hope I can keep this updated a little better than my previous attempts.