Weekend Warriors

We have spent the last two weekends doing projects outside. After being couped up all winter long with the snow and cold it felt good to spend the day in the yard. Last weekend March 22nd and 23rd we had a yard clean up. We raked the lawns to get all of the dead stuff up, we cut down the old yucky rose bush, and Bill fired up the burn barrels to get rid of all the debris. (Don't get jealous Dad, you can burn when you get here). I of course have a list a mile long of things to do both in and out of the house so I was up early to get started. Everyone helped... well I say help but truly Ashlee needs a lot more supervision than its worth. She makes a good runner though. The dogs loved to be outside and I forced "The Pops" (our cat) to come out too. The cat has been going crazy being couped up too. He runs around inside the house like a mad man. So I had him come out to be with us but he spent most of his time crying at the back door and peeking through the windows for someone to save him. After all was said and done we are now ready to get our garden area ready for planting. This will be the first year that we have had a garden or a place for a garden. It will be fun. Ashlee is going to be in charge of two vegetables as one of her YW goals. If her day outside is any indication I would be willing to bet the veggies won't fair too well. Next Week... Clean the Garage. Everyone is looking forward to it. I wish.

Lack of Collection

So the next Tuesday Tell All Idea was to talk about something you collect. Seriously I have been thinking about what it is that I collect and all I could think about is all the things that my family and friends collect. Mom for instance collects a lot of things but it has gone in phases. Thankfully she is out of the country goose collection phase, which morphed into the Precious Moment Figurines phase, that has now calmed to a white pitcher phase. I am sure there are some more but they escape me right now. My Dad collects junky cars. I think the old Ford Ranchero would have to take first place although the El Camino, the Yellow Dodge StationWagon, the Ford LTD and the plethora of Dodge Aries and Plymouth K Cars are in a close second. My Sister, Heidi has also gone through collection phases. A few that I can think of are the Little Mermaid stuff, hats, and now Roosters (thankfully not real... and while we are on the subject I find that humorous because she was attacked by a Rooster but that is another long story for another day, one that I must remember to document.) My Brother Shaun collects...hmmm...speeding tickets. I think his maximum at one time was maybe 3 or 4 (Bill is running a close second to Shaun, he is on 3 within the past 18 months) I don't know if Haley collects anything and if she did collect it it would be lost in her room somewhere. Ashlee... well she collects everything; rocks, pencils (broken ones too), notebooks (seriously I took a picture of them when we moved from Vegas and there were over 45. How many notebooks does one child need?) Now Ashlee is collecting boyfriends, luckily not at the same time. She likes someone new each week. My Aunt Carol collects shoes. I remember as a child spending hours going through her closet, trying on shoes and organizing them.

So here I am still trying to think of what I collect... nothing. So I just realized that I have a worse problem that is the opposite of collecting and that is my well known issue of clutter phobia. I don't collect anything because I like to organize and throw out. My motto is "if you haven't used it in 3 months you don't need it". Sounds great on paper but the problem is that I have thrown out things that I have realized I need to late. And that means I have to go get a new whatever it is.

So I have come up with a solution to help us all. Someone please tell me what I collect or how about each of you collectors send me something from your collection. I will then be able to say that I am collecting things that need to be thrown out. Then I will be helping you too. :)

How Many Jobs You Got?

For those of you who are old enough to remember the show "In Living Colour" from the 90's... As I was thinking of this post I was remembering the skit with the Jamaican family where they all ask each other "How many job you got? When I was your age I have 15 job." I quote that skit a lot to my family when we are talking about work. So here it is... the history of my jobs. THIS IS LONG... I HAVE HAD A LOT OF JOBS!!

First of all a question for Mom... Should I count all the lists of chores in my job history? :) Just kidding.

I got my first "real" job the summer of my junior year in high school with the City of Henderson Nevada Rec. Dept. This was a summer job and thank heavens for that. It was as a worker in the summer safe key children's program. (This might be why I only had one child.) What an experience. One day in particular I remember taking about 30 kids to the Wet 'N Wild water park. That was just insane. No mother in her right mind would take more than 3 kids to the water park at once. I was so glad when summer was over let me tell you.

The next summer in between my junior and senior year my family moved from Las Vegas back to Montrose Colorado and I got a job again with the city Rec. Dept. working in the concession stands at the ball park and the swimming pool. Now this job was not that bad. The best part of the job I will have to say was making the cotton candy every morning. I LOVE COTTON CANDY!!! I sure ate a lot though. After the summer was over I went back to Henderson Nevada for my senior year.

During my senior year I worked for Ken Gallacher at his insurance agency. I cleaned the office every Wednesday evening, took pictures of insured properties and vehicles, and also made phone calls to clients and non-clients. This was obviously before the "Do Not Call List" came out. I worked there with my friend, his daughter, Tara Gallacher. The picture part was the best. We would drive all over the city to find these house and then we had to take pictures of the front and the back. Sounds easy enough right. Well most of the time the insured was not home so we would have to get into the back yard somehow. I remember this one house was like Fort Knox and it was clear on the other side of the city. We did not want to have to come back so we racked our brains trying to figure out how we were going to get over the 7 foot block wall to get the picture of the back. (This my friends is where I tell all of the non-believers that cheer leading does teach some valuable life skills. I cannot tell you how many times the shoulder stand to a single base extension has come in handy.) So while the neighborhood dogs were having a fit I lifted my friend up into a single base extension so she could walk along the block wall to the back corner to take a photo of the back. Good Times... Good Times!

After I graduated from high school I moved back to Colorado for the summer with my parents and got the only job I could find available in this small town... Wendy's. Yes my friends I went through the "white, red and green" training. I worked at 5 in the morning doing all the prep work. I hated getting up that early in the morning but the plus side was that I was outta there by 2:00 in the afternoon (before all the crazy workers came in for the evening shift) Wendy's... not a great job. I don't recommend it. After that summer I moved to Ogden Utah to go to college at Weber State University. I got a job in the mall at KB Toys. Again this job did nothing to help with my love of children. Working at KB Toys is like having a bunch of kids over to destroy your playroom and then them leaving and you having to pick it up alone. Not fun. In addition I always felt bad for the manager and assistant manager who had made that a career.

My next job was back in Montrose at Montrose Bank as a teller. I actually liked working as a teller. I liked the fact that everything is on a schedule. You have to do the same thing everyday at the same time. At the end of the day everything is done and put away. (Yes, I am a type A personality) I worked at Montrose Bank while I was pregnant with Ashlee. I moved from teller to proof operator/accounting. I liked this even more. I sat at this huge machine all day and ran checks through the system entering the routing number, account number and amount. Ashlee hated the vibration of the machine and she would move around crazy in my stomach everyday.

When Woody and I got divorced I moved back to Henderson Nevada, because my parents moved back there too. (I know what your saying... enough of the moving!! And I totally agree!) I got a job working at Cumorah Credit Union as a teller. Well Ken Gallacher was a customer there and I worked at the drive through where he would bank each day. After working there for about three months he offered me a job at his office as the office manager. And that is where I started my insurance career. I was 20 years old. I liked insurance at first except for the fact that every thing was not finished up at the end of the day. It would make me crazy. But I liked the fact that I had a lot of opportunity. I worked in Ken's office for 6 years. I got my insurance licenses and was handling his book of business. In 1997 I helped Ken double qualify for the company conference and so I was able to go. The trip was a 10 day cruise to Alaska. It was a blast. I took Heidi. In 2000 I decided to become an agent myself but it didn't go well. I needed a lot more support and being a single mother and trying to open a business was more than I could handle both financially and mentally. My parents had moved to Virginia and they were so far away that I decided to move there with them. I got a job working for one of my Uncle Kevin's companies Akopia. It was a e-business company that designed and managed online shopping websites. (Completely over my head) I got a job as the office manager of about 40 people. I really liked it. I felt out of my league most of the time so it forced me to work really hard to figure out a lot of things. I started there in July of 2000 as the Office Manager and then by December I was working in accounting under the CFO Tim Lucas, who I respected greatly. In December of 2000 the company was going through some hard times and they had to do some massive layoffs. Well they laid off the HR manager and didn't realize that no one could do payroll until the day before. So I was volunteered to do that. In May of 2001 that company was bought out by Red Hat, Inc. in North Carolina and the operations were slowly moved there. This was at the same time that Bill and I were getting ready to be married and with him living in Denver it was obvious that I would need to quit so July 2001 was my last month there.

I moved to Denver when Bill and I got married and got a job as a Oral Surgery Assistant. How you say? Well Susan, Bill's sister, had a friend who worked there and they said they were looking for someone. I think that was my favorite job of all that I have had. I thought it was crazy that I liked it so much because I am deathly afraid of the dentist, but it was the best job. I loved watching the surgeries, taking out teeth, cutting sutures. It was great. I think if I could have any job that would be it. But the pay is not great.

After a couple moves, back to Virginia and then back to Henderson, and a few part time jobs to make ends meet (at a scrapbook store, and an apartment leasing company) I ended up back in insurance. I still had my licenses so why not. So I went to work with my best friend, Kacey, for the same company that I started with years earlier, American National Insurance. We had a great time and the office ran so smooth. The two years that I worked for her (2004 & 2005) we were the top agency in the entire company. It was really exciting to be an office of two women, juggling home, children and work and reaching that goal in an industry heavy on the man side. That was fun. But then we moved.... Again.

In 2007 Bill and I decided to get out of Las Vegas and move to a small town. We ended up back in Montrose Colorado, and I ended up back in insurance. But this time I am an Agent and I am working to build up my own book of business. I am now working for Schiller Insurance. Cody and Nancy Schiller are the owners of the business. The Schillers are long time family friends here in Montrose. It is a great place to work and... I think this will be the end of the work history. (And the moves)

Tuesday Tell All (Idea from Brook Rollins..Thanks Brook)

So I was ready Brooks blog and she talked about the Tuesday Tell All blog that she reads and how it gives great ideas for things to blog about. I thought it was awesome because I don't want my blog to just be about holidays and special events. I want to make sure that it stays a journal. So I put the link in the list of blogs that I read and I am going to start writing about the Tuesday subjects. I'm excited. I am going to try to write about a few of the ideas this week and then start regularly on each Tuesday. Go check it out. It is an awesome idea!!

P*A*R*T*...Y? Because we gotta!!

We had Ashlee's birthday party this weekend. Well I would call it more of an extravaganza!! She invited 35 people to the party. Thankfully only 30 people came. It was wild. We had a game show party and we played games from "not so familiar" game shows. Our favorite was the Japanese Marshmallow Game Show. (You gotta love Japan. Boy do they have some funny gameshows) It was hilarious and you can check out the videos at: www.youtube.com/SadiePollyPops. Then we played the Singing Bee. The kids had a blast. They danced, they ran, they played Red Rover in the dark. Everyone had fun. Needless to say I was exhausted after the party. 4 hours with 30 teenagers was exhausting. But they all had so much fun and said that it was the funnest party they had ever been to. Plus I actually got a huge thank you and a hug from Ashlee. Mission Accomplished.

Official Teenager... Ashlee is 13!

Ashlee is officially a teenager! We have had two weeks of celebration because her actual birthday was on the 8th but for scheduling reasons we couldn't have her party until this weekend. So last weekend we took her to breakfast and then her Dad, and Grandma and Grandpa Black took her to lunch. Then she went to the movies with some of her friends. On Sunday we had some cake... well we had cake... Ashlee just played with the frosting. I left the table when she wasn't quite finished and then when I came back in this is what I found.

This proves that you can never leave your kids alone no matter how old they are. The ironic part of this is the fact that I am super strict at the table. When Ashlee was little she would fear for her life if she spilled food on the table or the floor. I never allow eating with your hands or touching your food. Ashlee was never got food on her clothes becuase she knew I would freak out. So I found this humorous. I told her that if she was 3 she would be getting a woopin right now. The only thing that saves her now is the fact that she can clean up her own mess. YEAH!