Who designed this place?!

Recognize this? It's your average smoke detector. You're supposed to change the batteries every year. They should be found in every room of the house or at least in appropriate spots. Now if you're supposed to change the batteries, wouldn't you place your smoke detector in an accessible spot? Well take a look at where one of our detectors is located.

How on earth are we supposed to reach this?

This is the stairwell. The detector is located about halfway down the stairs and obviously out of reach. To make matters worse Thursday morning the detector started chirping, letting us know that the battery was running low. Thursday night around 10:30 as we were heading to bed it started chirping again. ARG we forgot about it until then. It chirped several times throughout the night and was chirping again Friday morning. Peter had Friday off and went and got a ladder from his parents house. Only problem is how do you reach the detector from the middle of the stairs. This was a regular ladder so the legs were the same length and not adjustable. So what do we do??? Mind you the detector was chirping all day Friday so the first thing on Peter's mind was fixing the detector and make the chirping stop. So what does the engineer think of? Well while the ladder is folded he leans it up against the stairs. My job is to hold the ladder from falling over while Peter fixes the detector. It wasn't easy, but in the end he fixed it. About five minute afterwards the dang thing chirped again, but we haven't heard it since then.

Peter drew this picture on the computer to help you get an idea of what we did to fix the problem. Mind you I was given the option to be the one on the ladder, but that didn't sound fun to me and I'm a good half a foot shorter than Peter. I would've had to climb up farther on an unsteady ladder.

On a different subject...looking back at the second picture you see our stairwell is a bit empty. There's a light on the wall and a framed needlework that I did. We have the huge space above the light that is empty and Peter and I are taking any suggestions on what we should do with the space. Or really with any of the space on the wall. We really need help!

A Berry Fun Time!

Today we went to the Carlsbad Strawberry Fields and picked our own strawberries. We invited Mary and the girls to go with us. We all had a ton of fun. Claire enjoyed snacking on the strawberries as we picked them. She ate the stem and all. She even tricked us all when we told her to put the strawberry in the bucket. She put her hand in the bucket with the berry in her hand and then she pulled it back out and shoved it in her mouth as fast as she could.

Check out Peter's hair :) It was a bit windy today.

This weekend Camille has "All Star Wizard Bear" she keeps it for the weekend and writes down what she does with the bear. She gets to tell her class that she picked strawberries with the bear.
Afterwards we went to the Carlsbad Outlet. We came back empty handed, but Mary got some really cute outfits for the girls. We enjoyed going to Carters and Osh Kosh B Gosh. The baby stuff was soooo cute!
Here are some lillies that we planted from bulbs. We had too many bulbs, that I basically just over crowded them. Some grew really tall (the dark pink ones) some grew medium height (light pink) and some of the light pink ones barely grew at all and then started flowering. I think next year I'll dig them up and give them a little more space. We totally love the flowers and were well worth the purchase.

Aren't they beautiful!

Attack of the creepy crawlies!

There is never a dull moment at our house. We have this resident spider that likes to make our hearts race whenever we miss smashing him and he crawls under something and isn't seen again for the next few weeks. For example a few months ago we found this giant spider on our wall. I thought it would be great to smash it with a shoe, but I missed and it crawled under our tv stand and wasn't seen again for awhile. About a week ago the spider (we hope it was the same one) showed up while we were doing laundry on the side of the door jam. I came face to face with it and nearly fell over backwards trying to get back. Genius here gets her shoe again even though Peter is adamant about it not working and that we should get the vacuum instead. I apparently missed the turbo spider and he ran underneath the washing machine. Peter has let me known several times since then that the vacuum would've solved the problem. So then there's today. Peter's doing the dishes and screams "AAAAHH he's back! Get the vacuum get the vacuum!" I say smash it and he yells no get the vacuum. I swear my shoe worked all the time when I was younger. So here I am hefting the heavy vacuum down the stairs. Peter plugs it in turns it on and the hose attachment comes undone, the spider crawls into a small space between the wall and the cupboards. It eventually comes back down and is sucked up. As soon as it has been sucked up Peter throws the vacuum attachment at me and starts doing the spider dance. As soon as the attachment hits me I let go of the vacuum and it falls over. I am laughing so hard I can hardly stand up. The spider is in the vacuum so Peter decides to vacuum the house, only problem we have stuff all over the floor which makes vacuuming hard. Okay so adventure number one is done but Peter is still on the edge.

Adventure number two: I'm upstairs doing laundry and Peter screams! And then he keeps on screaming...."OOOH it's crawling out of the cup!" "Alright I'll do whatever job you're doing and you need to come do the dishes." Me-"I'm doing laundry, you want to put the laundry away?" P-"No I'm going to take the trash out." Now how is that doing whatever job I'm doing? I don't take out the trash, he always does that. Peter comes upstairs and tells me that the next time I take a drink to work and bring it back I need to wash it out right away. I start busting up laughing. The week that I was sick I had a cup with orange juice in it sitting by the bed. Apparently I never drank it and as Peter took the lid off he was surprised to see it growing mold.

Back to adventure number one: Peter keeps randomly turning the vacuum on for a few seconds and then turning it off :)

Who does this belong to?

Peter and I got new phones and a new phone plan a couple weeks ago. We decided to go with the prepaid option since we don't chat on the phone very much and when we do we usually call other Verizon people so we get mobil to mobil for free. Now with the prepaid option I had to give up my old phone number which was a huge bummer for me. So if you didn't receive an email from me containing the new phone number...send me an email and I'll tell you our new numbers. Oh yes and our phones are identical or at least were identical until something came in the mail today. Can you tell who this phone belongs to?

So did you figure it out? I had so much fun making this and it was well worth $20. Apparently you can make these with just about any Disney character and you can make them to fit on lap top computers too.

Sleep

Do you know what it feels like to get nearly 24 straight hours of sleep? I do! I came home from work Friday early sick. I had a mild fever that was draining me of all energy I could possibly have. I got home at 2 and promptly fell asleep. I woke up at 4 and was back laying down with my eyes closed by 4:15. Do you know how exhausting it is to walk to the bathroom when you feel miserable? I slept until Peter woke me up at 8 for dinner. I ate really slowly while in bed because there was no way he was getting me downstairs and because I just didn't have the energy. I went back to sleep immediately afterward. I woke up at 10 am Saturday morning. Mary came over to sleep on our couch and she brought me Tylenol. Only problem was they were long pills and pills and I don't get along. So peter crushed them and put them in applesauce and well it tasted pretty gross. I went back to bed and was up at 1ish, then asleep again because I was just so full of energy. I was out until 6. Apparently I needed another nap and went back to bed until 8. Feeling loads of energy I managed to stumble downstairs and find the couch. I had a fever of 102...yup I felt great. I enjoyed oatmeal with crushed Tylenol...talk about ruining the oatmeal! Around 10pm I felt the fever finally break....Hallelujah! Or was it? So the downside of having so much sleep was I was then awake until 2:30am this morning. Finally this morning I had enough energy to make it to urgent care. And what did they tell me???? It's just a sore throat and a fever, nothing more. Take some throat drops or sore throat spray and you'll be fine. Gee thanks.

So I've spent my entire weekend sleeping. How about you?

My dear sweet hubby has taken good care of me this weekend. He went out to the store late Saturday and came back with roses for me. He said they were from our future babies. Awh how cute! He also made strawberry rhubarb crisp tonight. It turned out well. I'm sure I'd enjoy it more if my throat didn't hurt so much, but it is very good. We're thinking of making strawberry rhubarb jam too....doesn't that sound good? We just need more strawberries and rhubarb.

***Added Monday-Well well well guess what? I got a call from urgent care just a few minutes ago. Though the short test came back negative the long test came back positive...I have strep. I knew I wasn't complaining for nothing, my throat really hurts! It's a good thing I decided to stay home from work today too. I'm contagious up to 24 hours after I have medicine, which means no work tomorrow either. I just really hope Peter doesn't get this...it is awful!!!!!

"I said I don't like bugs...what part of that do you not understand?"

Those are my famous words of the day. I figured that a story like this should probably be announced, since I am so good at poking fun at my dear hubby, I should also point out my complete dislike for bugs as well. So we'll take today for example. Our art teacher/primary childcare person came inside with a bucket and a small shovel (kid toy). I am sitting at a child's table when Erika came up to me with the said bucket. She says, "Do you want to see what I have? We found it on the playground." Note to self, for future experiences the correct answer is NO! I tell her that I really don't like bugs so not if it is a bug. She shows me anyway. She bends over and has me peer into her bucket. I JUMP out of my seat, scream and run into the other room exclaiming, "That is not funny! I told you I don't like bugs!" Not to mention that I feel like I have just had a heart attack or will soon be experiencing one and am having a hard time catching my breath. Meanwhile one of my students is shouting, "Mandy that's not a bug, that's an arachnid." Yeah no kidding a spider falls into the bug category for me. So after I'm in the other room one of my co-teachers says, "Oh she showed you the spider, oh I should've told her that you wouldn't like that." Yeah no kidding! So the spider was like a quarter pounder. It was one of the biggest I've seen in a long time. And having it that close to my face was definitely not even remotely funny!

A few hours later Erika came up to me and asked if I had forgiven her yet...I'm still thinking about it.