The Apperance of Evil

Well, as I've stated before, my store is closing. We sell a lot of home furnishing items such as wine cabinets and drinking glasses. Not too long ago (a few months) the store put out some cute wine goblets, champagne flutes and martini glasses. I thought they were gorgeous. Living in Utah, people just pass by them without any notice. Honestly, what LDS person is going to have a need for them or even a wine cabinet? ME of course! I have successfully talked Jesse into getting all of the glasses for when we have parties when we get our own place. I'm not talking drinking parties. I'm thinking dessert parties. How fun would that be! Also, if we are having a holiday party, what are we going to serve? Martinelli's or Welch's sparkling ciders. Tell me, where would a better place to store them in than a wine cabinet??? We can stock up on them when they are on sale, then throw them in the fridge the day before or day of! Either way, I really think they would be nice decorative things to have anyway. And getting them for SUPER cheap doesn't hurt either.

So Close

A couple of weekends ago, Jesse's brother-in-law confronted me with some news. He told me of how he and Jesse's sister had been doing so many things for the family and taking everyone on vacations. He let me know how that next week they were taking the oldest sister to Disneyland with them to be the 'nanny.' Having 4 kids and only 2 adults is kinda hard there (esp. with a newborn). So, he proceded to tell me how they were going to feel bad if they didn't do something like that for us. Jesse and I wouldn't have cared, heck we didn't even notice!

Well, they figured that since Jesse's brother-in-law's parents keep inviting us to go out to Missouri, where they are from, that's where we're going to go this summer. We're going to take a week long vacation back to the midwest. I'm so excited to actually stay in Missouri, but still, I'm a little disheartened to know that I'm not going back home. I grew up 1/2 hour outside of Chicago, so not too far from where we'll be. The real heartbreaker for me is knowing that we will most likely be going to Nauvoo for a day. That's only a 5 hour drive from my old house! I am really looking forward to going on vacation, but I'm so depressed knowing that I will be so close to home and won't even see it.

Routine

Ever since the day he was born, our little genetic wonder has always had a strict routine. Even when he was teething or our home was being torn apart, his routine was pretty stable. With me there for almost every waking moment of his, he was living the life (as far as newborns and toddlers go).

Now the routine has changed. He was okay knowing that mommy wasn't there some nights, but at least he had daddy. He did give daddy a hard time when it came to eating, but he was still a happy little boy. Unfortunately, mommy has taken on some other priorities, like school. She has decided to stick it out for the next week and a half at work to help close the doors to the store. That means for the full month of January, our little boy has only and will only see me from the time I get home from class to the time he has to nap. On those really lucky nights, he gets to see me right before dinner time when I have to go back to class. He does get me on the weekends, which he takes to his full advantage. Still, this is a really big shock to him.

My actions have shown their consequences. He is now, more than ever, moodier, crankier, and all around unhappy. I knew this was going to be a big stress on him, seeing as how he is such a mama's boy. Never had I thought his measures to letting me know how unhappy he was be this extreme. He will out of nowhere throw a tantrum for no reason at all. He attacks the dog, which our dog thankfully has no negative reaction to. His attacks and tantrums can last a good 10-15 minutes. Now, that may not seem like a lot of time, but when you are trying to calm down a child that just won't, it seems like forever. Sadly enough, daddy has been through all of this worse than mommy. He gets so frustrated, because there's no rhyme or reason to the tantrums. This frustration only leads to the little one being more irritable. The only advice that I can give to my husband is to let him cry. Let him get out all of his anger without hurting anyone or anything. I know there's not much that will change until I can start being at home with him a little longer in the evenings.

School

YAY!!!! Yesterday was my first day back at school in 2 years! I was so excited. My first and only class for the day was my child development class. I have been waiting to take this class for some time now. It's a relatively small class. I think a lot of that has to do with it starts at 8 am. For those who know me, I don't function too well until after 10 am, and even then I still haven't showered. Yes, the time killed me along with the trek that I made to get there. But it was all worth it. My teacher is one of those dorky people who tells jokes, realizes no one's laughing, then explaims, "That was a joke people." It's so funny. I think a lot of us not laughing is due to the earliness of the class. I think he understands that too.

When I got home, Carter had just woken up 15 minutes pervious to my arrival and was sitting on my bed watching some tv with his grandma. He was not a happy camper. Not only does he not get to say good night to me every night, but now he won't wake up to me 5 days a week. This is pretty traumatic to such a mama's boy. I think it's good though. He needs to know that mommy's going to have to leave him alone with a babysitter sometimes. I will say this though, I rush home immediately after classes to see him.

Almost done!

I'm on the road to finishing things. I start back at school on Monday, and I'm so excited! I've got 3 REALLY interesting psychology classes that I can't wait for: child development, lds perspective and psychology, and intro to social psychology. I understand this takes time away from my little genetic freak, but he's dealing well with me working.

Which brings to mind that I'm almost done working. Our store closes at the end of the month. That means we won't deal with the crazies anymore! There are the people we love to help who call themselves crazy, but they've never met the real crazies. There was a woman who was getting ready to cry because we wouldn't give her the information of another woman whose name she saw on some of the merchandise. She thinks she might have graduated with this other woman but isn't for sure about it. Sorry, but there's no need to freak out in the middle of a store because you want a phone number to someone that might not be the right person. Seriously, I was ready to tell her to leave when she leaned over the register and started pulling our notes out about what to do for our closing. Can people really be this possessed or stupid?

I know there are a lot of people out there who don't have a whole lot of common sense. Still, I can't wait to get away from the ones who try to come in the store 20 min. after the doors have been locked, because they just saw our store closing sign. Or the people who try to claim that they didn't know our store was closing, even though we say "ALL SALES ARE FINAL. NO REFUNDS, RETURNS OR EXCHANGES." Yet, they come back the next day to return it saying that it didn't match like they thought it would. Then they get mad at us when we refuse them. Did they not see it on the reciept 'ALL SALES FINAL'!?! Honestly, what more do they want us to do? We can't bend the rules due to the customer's stupidity!

I know Jesse will be happy when I'm done working too. We haven't had a date night in a long time. We've planned nights to go out, but due to the unpredictable schedule for my work I haven't had many weedend nights off. I had last night off, but our babysitters went out. My next weekend night off is the Friday after our anniversary which is in a couple of weeks. We don't know why I can't get more Saturday nights off when I can go in those mornings. We'll both be happy when things settle down a little more.

Holidays

The end of the year came so fast! Christmas was good. We woke up at 7:45 to open gifts. Carter was kind of skiddish about the gifts Santa brought for him. It took him him awhile to realize they were for him. It was so cute. He got a little trike rider that he rode through everyone's gifts. We realized that he was getting too many gifts. So, we had him open two at a time. Jesse's family opens gifts by going one person opens a gift, then another person opens a gift, and so on and so forth. That means for 6 people and a toddler, it can take a good couple of HOURS to get through all of the gifts. Carter was so excited to play with all of his toys that half way through opening gifts, he refused to open any more. I think I kind of like that. If only he could keep that mentality for the rest of his life.

Jesse and I feel bad, because after we were done opening gifts, we put most of Carter's toys away. We didn't want his cousins fighting over them. Plus, he had another toy coming his way. Jesse's sister and her family came down for breakfast, followed by the family gift draw. Yeah, all of the gifts that were opened in the morning were from the parents to the kids & grandchild, from the kids to parents and then from spouse to spouse. The children and grandchildren all do a name draw and then get a gift for that person. That took another hour. Then for the rest of the day it was guitar hero. I was so sick of hearing it. Then, there comes the people, esp. those younger, fighting over who's been on there and they haven't had a turn since an "hour" ago(actual time: 1 or 2 songs). This is why I NEVER want video games in our house. Then there's my little brother-in-law who gets so defensive about how the family absolutely NEEDS to have it. After Christmas, that's all I heard from him....''Do you think you could donate $20 to get it?'' "$10 or $15 is fine too." I was going out of my mind about that.

Then work was another story. We put our store closing signs out the day after Christmas. Yeah that was another brilliant idea by corporate. Not only was it crazy for the day after Christmas sales, but it was crazy, because people see a bigger sale! We haven't had a sane week of work since 2 weeks before Christmas. People are now starting to get ruder, because we can't accomodate them the way they want. We can't order things for them. We can't hold items for them anymore. We can't take any further discounts off, all because we are in liquidation mode. Then people start getting defensive about what's theirs, and how it's not fair that they didn't get there sooner to buy these things. Apparently, we need to call people about when things go on further discount. I'm sorry, I don't wear a sign on my forehead saying "will only accommodate mr. or ms. so and so." I actually had a person with enough gall to ask me how long until after a person pays for an item do they have to pick it up. All because he wanted a mirror that was already sold. He asked if there was anyway we could refund the money to the person so he could have it. The best part was that I bought that mirror he was wanting. There were so many things I could have told him to embarrass him, but I was kind enough not too. Honestly, are we going to sell the same item to 2 different people!?! I just don't understand how people think the world works.

Well, then came New Year's eve. I worked that afternoon. After getting off work, Jesse and I went to a BYU basketball game with his sister and brother-in-law. Not too long after getting there, we get a call saying that our dog was let out and took off. I was so angry and worried. He's never done that before! He's always been a good dog. He was missing for 3 1/2 hours. Thankfully, my mother-in-law and brother-in-law found him. We had basically called off the search about 10 minutes before they found him. I was so stressed out that I didn't eat anything. I hadn't eaten anything since lunch. So, when I woke up Sunday morning, I had all of the flu symptoms, the aches, the pains, nausea and a super high fever with the chills. It was awful. I slept most of the day. Luckily, Jesse let me do that. The thing that woke me up around noon was Carter dumping Piston's water dish on the floor of our room. I was able to get better gradually with me eating the little that I could. That night my body felt like I needed to gorge. I wish I could have with all of the good stuff that was around.

That was pretty much our holiday season. Over all it was pretty good. Happy New Year!