10 on ... Whatever day it is

1. I've been really bad the last few weeks at doing my 10 on Tuesday lists.  You may have noticed.  Now that the weather's nice we just seem to be outside a lot and I don't have a laptop, so blogging hasn't occurred.

2. I never thought I'd say so, but I'm actually glad that it's windy today.  It's cooled things (like my house) off and it's kept the mosquitos at bay! 

3. I am so sick of being a golf widow ... and there's still at least 3 months of golfing season left!!!

4. Tomorrow is our first July 1st without Mom and Dad living in Raymond.  I think it's going to be a bit weird.  We're still planning to watch the parade in the morning but then we're heading out to Cardston for the rest of the day.  I'm just sayin' that after 28 July 1sts in Raymond, this will be an adjustment.

5. My 10 year High School reunion is on Saturday, and I'm not going.  I was kind of going back and forth about whether or not to go since I haven't really accomplished much in the last 10 years.  And then Jay used my invitation to write something down and then threw it out so I didn't have any of the info on who to rsvp to or what time it's at or anything.  I did send a FB message to the person who mailed the invitation but I never heard back from them ... so I'm taking it as a sign that I'm not supposed to go.

6. I went pants shopping 2 Fridays ago and bought a size smaller pants than those I got when I went back to work in November.  Yay!!!

7. Paxton had a sleep over at Grammie and Pa's house on Sunday because Kelly's down with her kids.  Apparently they were a tornado of boy fun.  Pa tried to convince me that he'd rather come to my place than go to Cardston, but I knew that he really had all the horses running full tilt to get him home asap.

8. I am so excited that I don't have to work for the next 4 days!  I get Monday off for Independence Day since we get the American stats off from work.  And I booked tomorrow off so I could celebrate with my family.  Hopefully Paxton doesn't try to get me up at 6 am tomorrow.

9. Paxton has been a bottomless pit lately.  I'm pretty sure he's hit another growth spurt.  Tell Brocker Man to watch out, Kell!

10. I can't believe how big Paxton's getting!  We've had him to the park a few times and he can climb stuff (like ladders!) that I wouldn't think he'd have the coordination for yet.  He can go down the slides by himself too.  I love how he's learning so much, but it sometimes it makes me miss my baby :(

Not the best video (sorry I was being the safety harness and video-ing at the same time) but this is of Paxton being all big at the park

Splish Splash Just Takin' a Bath

I decided that it was lawn mowing day today since it's not super hot out ... and also because I was afraid that if Paxton walked out into the grass he might not come back (it's been a few weeks of rain and heat since I last mowed).  And because Paxton is such a good helper, he followed me around while pushing his cozy coupe back and forth (like a lawn mower).  And since we just mulch our grass Paxton gathered quite a few clippings in his crocs and up his legs by the time we were done.  So when we came back in the house I headed to the bathroom and started running a bath for the boy.  While the tub was filling I headed to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water.  Upon returning to the bathroom, I found this:

I literally was gone for like one minute.  And there was no "splash" noise or anything.  Just a boy in the tub with his clothes on when I arrived.  I guess he was just so excited to play with his new boat that he couldn't wait for me to get him undressed.

Such a Big Boy

I took Paxton for his first professional hair cut today.  It was badly needed.  He was starting to look a bit like a bum.

This wasn't his first hair cut.  My Mom gave him the first, and then Jay and I attempted the last one.  But, I thought it was time to let a professional do it since the last one left the poor boy with some extremely uneven locks.  So we headed up to Supercuts by our house and were lucky enough that there wasn't even a line to wait in.  The stylist grabbed a booster cushion for him and a pretty snazzy cape and away she went.  Paxton wasn't too sure at first, but the nice lady let him hold her spray bottle once she'd wet his hair down and then everything was just peachy.

It only took about 15 minutes for my little bum to be transformed into a big boy :(

We went grocery shopping right after the hair cut so I didn't get any pictures until we got back home.  And in true "big boy" fashion, Paxton volunteered to help bring the groceries in.  He's just ever so "helpful" these days.  I'm sure that when he's actually old enough to be helpful, Paxton'll be sure to make himself scarce when I arrive with groceries.

And then it was time for a snack since he was starving right to death (or so Paxton would have you believe).  Sorry about the applesauce all over his face.  I think he's getting better at feeding himself?

Can't figure it out

I seriously haven't been able to figure out why everything this kid does is just so ridiculously cute!

It's probably 'cuz I'm slightly biased since I did make him : )  I think he's getting cuter now that he's running/jumping/riding his horse.  He totally "gallops" around like he's riding a horse a la "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."  I even downloaded "iCoconuts" on my phone (which makes the coconut noise when you touch the screen) but we haven't been able to get a video of it yet.  He still jabbers away constantly and I absolutely love it!  Not much English yet, but he'll talk your ear off. 

Paxton loves his new slide

and taking every single stuffed animal and blanket out of his crib.  He then has to pile them all together on the chair

or the dogs

 can you spot the boxer?

and playing with his friends

(another gem for Paxton's wedding slide show)

and his car

and being sneaky

(thanks to Cristy for getting him to pose by the beer)

But the latest shenanigan was pretty stinkin' cute.  Last summer a friend of Grandma Daryl's got Paxton this water table.

She knew that he was too young for it, but wanted to get him something that he's be able to use when he was older.  So I've been super excited about what Paxton would do when he got to play with it for like a whole year.  The weather's been so crappy that I didn't want to bring the table out until we had a stretch of nice days so that Paxton could play with it for more than 1 afternoon.  And today was that day.  It wasn't quite warm enough to bring out the pool, but I figured it was warm enough to splash and play with the water table.  YAY!!!  So I hauled it out of the crawl space while Paxton was napping and put it together.  Let me tell ya, usually I'm pretty good with puzzles, but I did have to consult the instructions to put the "glacier" together.  I probably would have been ok if the middle piece hadn't fallen out and rolled behind me unnoticed while I was initally taking everything out of the box, but that's how it went down.  I didn't put any water in it since I was leaving it in the kitchen for the time being but Paxton was still pretty excited to see his new toy when he got up (and the first thing he did was knock over the glacier that I had so pain-stakingly put together).  I was checking my Facebook when Jay told me to look at what our son was doing, and this is what I saw.

I just can't hadle the cuteness!  And I don't even know why this is so cute.  It's actualy kind of ridiculous.  And slightly disturbing that he climbed up there so stealthily that I didn't even know.

10 on Tuesday (the Sunday Edtion)

Have you seen the new Norton Antivirsus commercial on tv?  The one where they explain that when you're hacked, regular cuss words just aren't enough?  Ya.  That's pretty much how my relationship with Blogger has been lately.  I upgraded to Internet Explorer 9 and all of a sudden I couldn't post anymore.  Well, that's not entirely true, the pictures would show up when I posted, but NO TEXT.  I suppose I could have just posted the pictures and let you make up your own stories.  Hmmmm ... a possible future idea?

Anyways,  I was finally able to figure out how to fix the problem ... hopefully.  I guess I'll have to wait until I post this to know for sure (let me know if you're having the same problem and I will tell you what I did).

Without further ado, here's my list although it's a bit tardy.

1. I'm terribly excited that the forecast for this week includes 4 whole days of sun without any stupid rain drops on the picture!  I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like we've been living in "grey and gloomy" since sometime last October.

2.  Jay's Aunt Jenny and Uncle Pete are coming for a visit from England on Wednesday!!!  We haven't seen them since they were here for our wedding almost 3 years ago (I know, time flies right?) and I'm super excited for them to meet Paxton.

3. I sort of threw a hissy fit this morning when Paxton decided he wanted to be up at 6:30 am.  I laid there and ignored him until 7 and then brought him to bed with us.  I didn't really think he was going to go back to sleep, but I was hoping that Jay would take the hint and get up with him so I could catch a few more winks.  Silly me!  I gave up around 7:20 when Paxton started fussing because Jay was holding him (probably because Paxton has been smacking Jay in the face for the previous 5 minutes) and told Paxton to come with me because "Heaven forbid I get to sleep in on one day of the weekend!"  So I got Paxton dressed and we headed for Timmie Ho's.  Jay's been cleaning the kitchen ever since.

4. In my defense for my aforementioned hissy fit, Jay does usually get to sleep in on Saturday and Sunday 99.9% of the time.  So I think I was completely justified.

5. We finally got a new oven (YAY!!!) and to celebrate I made 3 batches of oatmeal cookies yesterday: 1 with Craisens (because I already had some and didn't want to buy raisens while the Craisens were still in the house) and a double batch with ... wait for it ... milk chocolate and white chocolate chips.  They're a little bit orgasmic.

6. Jay brought a slide home for Paxton on Thursday night.  Paxton was already in bed so he didn't get to see it until Friday morning.  He loves it!

However, he decided on Friday night that sliding on your bum is for babies and proceded to "run" off the top of it despite the many warnings from Mom that he was going to "break his face."  He also ignored the fact that I did not want to spend the night in Emerg with him and his broken limb(s).  After one epic fail involving Paxton actually falling on his face he decided that maybe bum sliding wasn't so bad after all.

7. We got to see Kelly & Cliff and the boys on Friday when they made a flying trip down to Lethbridge.  Auntie Kizzy picked Paxton up early from daycare and they spent the morning together.  I got to meet up with them for lunch (this stupid "working for a living" gig is really messing with my social life).  Paxton and Brock are just too cute together.  Brock's a bit taller, but they're almost the same size!  Kell said that when they first saw each other Brock said "Hi Boy!" and put his arm around Paxton to give him a big hug.  Awwwwww!

8. I just finished week 9 of running on my eliptical.  This week was quite the struggle because I think I've pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve or something in my hip/butt area.  I took a few days off to see if it would get better, but it's still pretty tender.  I walked the dogs yesterday and am planning to again today to see if a different exercise helps.  Tomorrow the plan is to lower the resistance 1 level and see if that'll help.

9. One of the girls I know from work stopped to ask me how much weight I'd lost a few days ago.  I told her about 10 lbs and she said that she could definitely tell and to keep it up.  Yay!!! It totally made my day that someone noticed.  And then Kinsey said something to me on Friday, and Jay agreed with me yesterday that my shirts are fitting better.  Apparently the hard work is starting to pay off (now I just need to lay off my delicious cookies!).

10.  I ordered new shells for my Miche bag last week and I'm sooooo excited for them!

The white one is one of their "Hope" designs.  Part of the proceeds from buying the Hope shells goes to breast cancer research.

I absolutely love my Miche bag.  I'm not really a "purse" girl, but this way I can change it up and I don't have to move the contents to another purse!  I've got the smaller size as well, but I find I don't use it that often.  The big one is so convenient because I can fit all of the stuff I need for Paxton in it too.

Mutants

I know that I recently did a post about zombies, but fear not, I'm not doing a series on surviving different types of apocalypses (I'm not sure if that's a word, but I just don't really care to research the proper pluralization of "apocalypse").  No today I am discussing something quite different although I do live in constant fear because of it.  Here's the story (because there's always a story):

My alarm went off at 5 am on Wednesday.  As I lay there trying to convince my body that it was indeed time to get up I noticed that something was not quite right.  It didn't take long for me to figure out what the problem was and once I did I was wide awake.  I got up, dressed for my run (yes I know I don't run on my eliptical, but it's far easier to say "run" than "elipticise") and headed to the bathroom.  And that's when I saw the Mutants.  I wasn't surprised to see them.  I've been dealing with them for about 22 years now.  That burning/tingling/itchy sensation on my lips could be only 1 thing ... cold sores.  That's right plural.  And not only did I have 2 full blown ones when I woke up, but a 3rd developed throughout the day.

If you've never had to deal with "mouthal herpes" (as I have so lovingly dubbed this affliction) count yourself lucky.  Let me describe the awesomeness for you.  Not only must you suffer with the aforementioned burning/tingling/itchy sensation for the first day or two while various regions of your lips swell, but they also look really disgusting.  So that causes you to be super self-conscious and think that everyone is staring at the grotesqueness of your mouth.  Oh, but it gets so much better from there!  After about 48 hours of these sores being disgusting they start to heal.  And by heal I mean they start to turn into scabs.  Scabs on your lips are not really any more attractive than the actual blisters on your lips.  And if you're really lucky you can get them in the corner of your mouth so that every time you yawn or eat, the scabs will crack and bleed.  Doesn't that just sound great?  Now you know why those of us who get cold sores loathe them so much.

You might be wondering why I have titled this post "Mutants" when it's actually about cold sores.  Well, let me enlighten you.  As I mentioned before I've been getting cold sores for about 22 years.  The first one I remember having was in grade 1.  Most likely I either picked it up from my Mom or from the water fountain or some other surface at school (since first graders are not in general the most hygenic creatures).  Well, the stupid virus has mutated over the years.  I no longer get an outbreak when I could possibly do anything to try to stop them.  Oh no, for probably the last 8 years or so every single cold sore I've had has come at NIGHT.  Yes, my mouthal herpes has evolved and mutated into a sentient being that knows that if I am sleeping when it attacks I will be helpless to stop the onslaught.  It's an all out war that I'm losing. *sigh* 

I suppose I'll just have to be resigned to the fact that I'm stuck with these unwelcome visitors for life and continue with my quest to find something that makes them go away faster.  Any suggestions from my fellow sufferers out there?  The only thing I've found that sort of works is icing the tingly spot to almost the point of frostbite.  But since the mutants only come while I'm sleeping that's not generally an option.  I had a prescription for Zovirax in High School but that didn't really help too much.  I've even tried Preparation H (go ahead and laugh) since it's supposed to shrink things!  But nothing really seems to work.

Anywho.  Thanks for listening.