Romeo! Romeo! Let down thy hair!

Or whatever those lines are....

Wait!  Here lies the slipper of my one true baby who is trying to escape his nap time!  Wherefore art thou, oh sweet Jesse!  If I were but to find the foot that will fit this tiny slipper, I could know whose head it is that must meet yonder pillow! 

Ah!  I see yonder socked foot!  And could it be?  Yes, it is but the dainty velcro shoe that matches the one that I behold here!  Come back, sweet baby!  Thou canst run from thine true destiny!  Thy will be mine to snuggle and tuck into thy wee bed!

One of the Signs...

...of a true man.

On the floor, diapering the baby, ready to tuck him in bed for his after-church nap.

Sigh...

I Have a Proposal for You...

 When Jimmy's boos, John, went to France for 10 or so days, I was asked to help Jimmy hold down the fort at the shop.  I agreed, thinking that it would be a simple task of helping deliver orders and maybe write an e-mail or two.  I mean, why not?  I used to do this all the time.  It's old hat to just take it up again for a few days, right?

I even went so far as to celebrate my ignorance by slipping into a little bakery in town and getting a little taste of France for the family.

But then, I saw the huge stack of papers...34 to be exact...that were stacked on the desk awaiting my attention.

It was a solicitation that we needed to write a proposal for.  It was for a company that we have been doing business for over the last 7 years or so, so John and I both thought that it would be no problem to just put in the basic info and send it off just to keep our company in the door.

But that was not so!  We needed to write a full proposal for a job that we were already doing...and it was due the week after John got back!

Well, neither John nor I have ever written a proposal like this, and the cost of getting one done professionally was was out of our price range, so, with John half a world away, it was up to me to write this proposal!

Of course, the first thing you have to do to be able to respond to a document is to understand what exactly it is that the document is asking for in the first place.  It took me the first 3 days just to read through the thing and cross out what didn't apply to us, mark what did, and highlight what I didn't understand.  Let's just say that there was so much yellow on those pages they probably would have glowed in the dark.

Then, I made a list of my questions and sent to off to the person who posted the solicitation in the first place, and his answer was that basically, we didn't need to do anything with the first 32 pages, but all we needed to do was listed on the last 4 pages, one of which was mostly blank.

With that news, I redid my markings and got on with it.  John was back by now, but since I had already started the whole thing, it was much 'easier' for me to just finish it and let him do the marketing stuff that he needed to be doing.

Anyway, I did the best that I could and turned that bad boy in on time on Friday morning.

Oh, and can I just throw out there that in the middle of this whole thing, we also went through a name change for the company, so all of our numbers, DUNS and CAGE and registrations, had to be switched to reflect our new name.

Anyway, come Monday morning, we got the notice that the solicitation was cancelled and we could resubmit in a few days after they post it again.

What?  Really?  All that just to have the whole thing cancelled?  Can they even DO that?

Well, I guess so.  But at least it's done for when they decide to open it back up!

C'est la vie!

The reason why...

Here is the reason why I have not been posting very often lately:

I can't get my computer to upload pictures.  Not off my card directly, nor if I put my card in a reader with a USB attachment.

And I want to post things like the pictures of Elizabeth at the ball, and other things like that, but since I can't upload pictures, then it makes it hard to say, 'Elizabeth went to a ball.  She was beautiful!'.  I mean, she was, and so was Fifth Child Annie, but you really need pictures to tell the stories!

We are working on it.  Jimmy has promised to look at it.  I hope he is successful.

Til then, I'll just have to put up postings with no pictures!

One a Month

In our family, we have a birthday every month from February-July.  Jesse was in February, and in March it was Gabriel's turn.  Then comes Elizabeth in April, Jimmy in May, me in June and Jo in July.  

Part of the 'resolutions' that I have made concerning our family is that we will be sure to celebrate everyone on their birthday.  Jimmy and I have been trying to reduce the 'gifty-ness' of Christmas, and so to compensate for that, we have decided to do more for each child's birthday.  We figure it means more that way anyway.  Each child can be specially recognized on their special day with a special day and their presents.

We can't always have a party on the actual day of the birthday, so in order to be sure that everyone can gather around and celebrate at least a bit on the actual day, we have started a new tradition of doing a special breakfast.  This worked even better for me since I had given up sweets for lent, and Gabriel's birthday falls right in that time frame.

Our weeks are often very busy, so we planned ahead and Elizabeth made a huge stack of pancakes on Tuesday.  She did a wonderful job on them!  They were perfectly formed and evenly sized with just the right amount of brown on them.  Beautiful!  We took those and wrapped them up with wax paper between them and put them in the fridge.  Then, Wednesday night, I whipped up a batch of whipping cream and put that in the fridge, too.

Thursday morning, I got up early and heated a stack of pancakes in the oven, leaving one cold to put on the top.  I cut a hole in the top one to put the number '3' candle in, and then stacked it on top of the warm pancakes, stuck the candle in and decorated the whole thing with the whipped cream.

Then everyone came downstairs and in their pj's we sang happy birthday, Gabriel blew out the candles and we had cake!  Pancakes, to be exact.  It was so much fun!

Next, we opened presents.  Well, actually, we opened present, singular because what I ordered for him online had not gotten here yet.

He was very particular about not ripping the paper, and finally he had to get some help from his big sister.

Yay!  A train puzzle!  He and Jo wasted no time in putting it together on the floor while I dropped Jimmy off at work.  It was a great start to a special day!

Then, when his other present FINALLY got here about 5 days late, he got to open that one, too!  I have a picture of it, but I can't upload it for some reason, but it's the cutest little guitar.  It's actually a musical instrument and not a toy, really.  It has metal strings and a very nice body that is white with different colored and sized polka dots all over it.  He absolutely LOVES it.  Elizabeth has a ukulele that we brought back with us from Hawaii, but that was more of a toy with the plastic strings that broke quickly and wouldn't stay in tune and he wore that one completely out, so we decided to go ahead and get him one of a little better quality.  He carries it everywhere and likes to take it in the car and strum it while he listens to and sings his favorite songs on the radio.  So cute!

So, we have not yet had an actual birthday party for him with a traditional cake and friends over and whatnot, but we did celebrate, and hopefully we can pull something together soon...before Elizabeth's birthday!