Why mess with a good thing?

Today while shopping I went down the Halloween isles at Target. I just love Halloween, and was looking to see what I could add to my collection of decorations this year. I came upon the candy of candies for this season, Candy Corn, and impulsively put it in the cart. Yeah, the packaging said "Gourmet", but I figured it was because they used some fancy sugar, or because it was colored in three types of orange and not the usual Orange, yellow, and white. I finish my shopping, get home and place my prize on the kitchen counter, waiting until dinner and dishes are all done to dig in. Once those were done, the kids were in bed, and the husband was upstairs, I decided to tear into the bag and have a good three pieces at once. That's when things went south. I was so disgusted! These Candy Corn tasted like sour oranges! I look at my "gourmet" packaging a little more closely and see "Mango flavor." Are you kidding me? Mango? Who the heck wants that? Ugh, I tossed the whole thing, and kicked myself for not looking harder for your typical bag of Candy Corn...you know, the kind I am NOT enjoying right now!

Awesome

This totally sums up each and every one of my days.

drunk dialin'

So tonight, my girlfriends and I took it to a whole new level. Tonight we celebrateted one of our own returning to the full time work force. The celebration started out at Mike's Cascade Grill and quickly turned into a Smokey Joe's affair. Those of you that have come to Smokey Joe's with me know what a great time it is, and well...in the end we all stayed out until 12:00 AM. Our kids will be proud of us when they're in high school, right?

Good times tonight ladies! Roger Rabbit never looked so good! I can only hope our men will have just as much fun at Smokey's this Friday night!! Lucky for you, I don't know how to take the photos off my phone!!! Take care!

New TV shows and Halo 3

Well the fall TV viewing has started and Beth is in a state of Nirvana. Of course this week we also launched Halo 3. My team was issued copies at our launch event so we got to play for a few hours before the common folk started flooding the networks. Most of the group is participating in some of the midnight launch events. Not me, I only go out for the big platform launches.

Thankfully last night I managed to stake a claim on the romper room where the prime video game play takes place. As I am enjoying a little Halo 3 time I glanced at the DVR. The poor thing is cranking away, trying to record everything Beth has thrown at it. There might have been a little smoke whisping up from the rear.

Seriously the machine pulled in 6 shows in one night alone!

Madness.

Gossip Girl

Never before have I wanted so badly to move to NYC...well, not since Sex and the City. Gossip Girl follows 6 high society teens (ranging from freshmen to seniors in high school) through their oh-so-dramatic lives of privilege. I mean, the first episode had a few of them drinking in a bar and throwing parties that not ONE chaperon attended. There are a few rejects from the O.C. in the show (namely Kelly Rutherford), and if you liked the O.C., then you'll love this show. Its nice that the new "90210" of the 2000's has been moved out of California and into the dirty city of Manhattan. I guess we could call it 10021. Check it out on the CW, Wednesday nights at 9:00.

Oh Happy Day!!!

Here's a funny one I got in an e-mail today:

Last night, my friend and I were sitting in the living room and I said to her "I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug."

She got up, unplugged the TV, and threw out my wine.

She's such a bitch.....

Oh, but it's so true. Yes my friends, tonight is premier night. I have 6 shows taping upstairs and 3 shows taping downstairs. Up until now, I have lived (barely) on re-runs of "Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane", and "Clean House", but, praise the powers that be (at NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX...etc), this time tomorrow I will have almost 9 hours of NEW TV to watch. Granted, some of these shows won't last 'til next week, but I'll watch them nonetheless.

If you need me, I'll be on the couch!

Power On

Oh my…I did not think I would stoop as low as Beth and roll a blog that is pretty much a pull from YouTube.

However I stumbled across a ghost from the past. A little something I grew up with which faded into a mere memory until the power of the internet made it real again. The internet…and 2 beers.

I watched quite a bit of sci-fi growing up. I had the original The Blob movie on BETA (oh yeah, no VHS in my room thank you). Channel 59 use to have a “Dr Demento” show late on the weekends where some local jerkies dressed up like nutbags and pulled some silly stunts between each block of some classic movie.

Awesome stuff for a guy who had not quite discovered girls yet.

The first episodes of the now infamous Robotech series was watched on a broken TV with rabbit ears that required a wrench to change the channel. One of my brute sisters broke our holy oracle but we all paid the price.

Our household was not blessed with cable until AFTER I (the most golden youngest) had gone off to college.

Anyways back in the late 80’s Star Trek: The Next Generation was about to debut to the world. Right before it was this odd sci-fi show called Captain Powers and the Soldiers of the Future.

It was novel in a few ways:

First, it used computer generated special effects. This was a first back back in 1987. Remember that it took Jurassic Park in 1993 to make CGI a serious technology for entertainment purposes.

Second it dealt with somewhat complex social issues. Bad guys did not wear black, good guys did not make the right decisions. The wrong person sometimes died as the final episode demonstrated with the character Pilot perishing. I grew up with black and white categories: Optimus Prime was good, Megatron bad, GI-Joe was good, Cobra was bad.

Third, it was fairly violent, which probably led to the ultimate cancellation. It aired at a time where violence on TV was a big ticket item for those who sought to better society. The show got a lot of negative press, the toy line suffered and the show was shut down.

Anyhow finding a few clips of the show on YouTube is a pretty cool thing. It helps you spin down old memory lane for a few seconds.

Week 2 of the Biggest Loser & Prison Break

BIGGEST LOSER - Last night was week 2 of the Biggest Loser! The big finish was having the renegade black team rejoin the competition. As stated in my earlier post, the Biggest Loser is a real inspiration for me, but sometimes the contestants can really fire me up. Here they are, on an all expenses paid trip to instant fitness and they whine like 3 year olds when they work out. HELLO!!! Wake up, whiners! If working out was easy, then you wouldn't be on the show!!

Then there's the weigh in. Some of the women lost 2-5 lbs this week. Yes, yes, I know its a competition and large numbers are what we want to see, but losing 2-5 lbs in a week is amazing! The one redeeming factor about the show this week is they kicked off the person that deserved it the most...Lezlye. She was the biggest whiner and drove me nuts. Well done to her for continuing the program at home, but I'm glad I don't need to see her each week anymore!

Congratulations to the black team on their weigh-in win! I always was one to route for the underdogs.

PRISON BREAK: This is a show we started watching last year and even though it got pretty cheesy in the middle of the season, we kept it on the rotation. Actually that's a lie, we didn't even finish watching the season, but the preview intrigued us, so we added it to our list again this year.

The beginning didn't disappoint. Lots of action, drama, and H-O-T guys (sorry Rob, its true). Since we missed the last part of the previous season, I can't say for sure how Michael ended up in the worst prison in Panama, Sona, but it is turning out to be a great story. The theme of the season will be Michael trying to break himself and another man out of this horrible prison. The short of it is: Michael's nephew and girlfriend have been kidnapped by a yet unknown organization to "persuade" Michael to break out this complete stranger within a weeks time....or else. Meh, it will be a good Saturday-nap-time show.

Check the freshness date

It is funny how life has a way of, for the most part, balancing things out. Youngest is a damn cute baby. There is no getting around it. He has a hypnotic aura to him, from his cute hair to his infectious smile. You cannot help liking him.

But here is the rub: Youngest is also a fairly stinky baby. After we got Youngest home I started noticing something a little different about him. Eldest was always a sweet smelling little guy. He smelled like classic new baby™.

Youngest sort of has this musky attic smell to him. It makes me recall kids I knew growing up who had a slightly different smell to them (except for Smelly Nelly, who did smell bad back in the 4th grade). It is not really offensive or anything, just different. If we were talking flavor I would use the word bold.

Youngest seems to have sweaty hands and feet. They feel a little clammy at the very least. So I am thinking that other parts of him might sweat a bit more. A day after giving him a bath and he is quite ripe already.

Poop

Today, Eldest pooped in the potty at school. Those lucky teachers caught him just in time and he was so excited to tell me all about it (well, that and playing with play-dough) when I picked him up. This was a HUGE burden lifted from my shoulders. There's no guarantee that he'll poop in the potty again, but since he's done it once, the chances of him doing it again are great.

Who knew we parents would care so much about seeing our child poop in the potty. Its almost as great as when they first held a bottle themselves and you had that 15 minutes back!

Well done, Eldest. You truly are a very useful engine!!

mom jeans

I was watching a count down on the Style Network the other day to pass the time until my other 55 shows start. It was the top 25 fashion don'ts and "Mom Jeans" was close to the top. They played this spoof from SNL and it cracked me up.

Friends don't let friends wear mom jeans...no matter how comfortable they may be. Mini-vans are OK, mom jeans are NOT!

Yard Salin'

Yesterday was the first day of the bi-annual garage sale in our neighborhood. Since I'm not working anymore, I thought it would be a good chance to make some extra scratch for myself. I went through our DVDs, games, kitchen items, books and toys and found a few things I thought were yard sale worthy. I spent a good portion of Thursday evening pricing everything with color coded stickers. I took a lot of time to make sure I didn't price to high as to repel people or so low that I wouldn't make any money. For example, books that originally sold for $24 I priced at $5, vases I got with flowers I priced at $.50. I thought this was fair.

Well, come to find out, people that frequent yard sales don't actually want to PAY for anything you're selling. The funniest part of the day was when an older woman came by and started looking at my books. I showed her where my price list was and told her everything was negotiable, since I wanted to sell these items. She went on and on about how she's been doing yard sales for years. Well, this self proclaimed Yard Sale Diva took one look at my pricing (as stated above) and said, "Really, $5.00!? I will not be looking today, thank you!" Fine by me, lady!

Yard Sales sound like a great idea, especially when you watch people do them on TV and make close to $1000, but they're a lot of work, and not always worth the money. Then again, I did enjoy the pizza and Chinese we've had for dinner these past two nights thanks to my hard earned cash!!

Strange Things are afoot at the Jiffy-Lube

Tonight I realized just how small the town I live in is. My friend Janelle and I were coming back from parent orientation night at the pre-school, and after driving past the cow pastures, the middle school, the "Milk Barn" general store and the chain saw carving shop we came upon the Jiffy Lube where there were about four police cars with lights on in the parking lot. We both stopped our conversations and said "somethin's goin' down at the Jiffy Lube tonight!" A better country and western song verse has never been heard. Let's all go to the tasty freeze next! of course, to be fair, the tasty freeze is in North Bend, not Snoqualmie.

It Begins! Are you a loser?

Last night was the premier of my first fall show...The Biggest Loser. I love this show and have loved this show since it first came on. The series began right after my first son was born and it gave me that last push I needed to lose the weight. Granted, I didn't' lose all of it before becoming pregnant with my second, but it was still an inspiration. The show never fails to bring me to tears and to scare the heck out of me when the contestants start getting down to my weight! Of course, if I had a million dollar ranch (or college campus), a trainer, and 6 months without friends, family, or kids to distract me, who knows what I would look like in the end.

This season has its own twists and turns, the main one being that Jillian is back. She was the female trainer from the first two seasons that pushed her team to the point of puking each time. Who knows why she left, I'm sure its on the Internet somewhere, but one thing is for sure, her team will be the buffest of the three. Right now they're sitting at the lowest weight loss, but I'm convinced its because they've gained more muscle than the other teams.

Right after the episode finished I said "That's what I'll do, I'll take a photo of myself and chronicle my weight loss on the blog. It will inspire people!" Then I was brought back to reality when I realized, seeing a before and after picture that are pretty much the same isn't really want people would want to see (HA)! So, for now, keep watching Biggest Loser for your weight loss inspiration...and come to me for your laughs.

One thing's for sure, I am looking forward to watching all the transformations from the comfort of my couch (with ice cream in hand!).

Today

Today is the 6th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. I can not believe it has been that long, yet it still feels like it happened yesterday. Our prayers and thoughts go out to the families who lost loved ones in the WTC, the Pentagon, and on Flight 93. We will never forget.

School Daze

Yesterday (9/10) was Eldest's first day of Pre-School. He goes in the afternoon and for three straight hours I have one babe, that is usually napping. It is heaven on earth. There is nothing like eating lunch in peace, and I'm sure all my mama's will agree with me there. Eldest was B-E-A-T when he got home from school and had no trouble going to bed. Our little guy is growing up so fast.

Then & Now

So, as I've stated more than once, our friends from VA were just here for a visit and it was an awesome time. Being from Richmond, VA (a town most people can't seem to venture out of [no offense Kevin & Elena]), the first question people ask if they recognize you is, "What high school did you go to?" Well, as it turns out, Kevin, Rob, Elena and Myself all went to the same high school, but only Rob and I knew each other back then (proof below).

It wasn't until college (go Hokies!) and after college that we all became friends. Nevertheless, I thought it would be funny to have a little "before and after" shot of all four of us:

You Know You Like It!

Tonight I had a great night with my "mamas" and I told them about my fav song about lip gloss (yeah basically a song about nothing!). Most hadn’t heard it, so I’m sharing it with all of you! You know you'll buy it form i-Tunes. You can not deny this beat. I wish I could dance like that.

It's September and you know what that means...

The most coveted time of year for any self proclaimed TV junkie (like myself) has finally arrived. To the right, you'll see a link to "Beth's Fall Line Up." Use this list to help you push your DVR to the brink of over heating!! If you find a new show you like, send me an e-mail and tell me all about it! I may just add it to the list (if its not already there of course!).

One show not on the list that I've started to enjoy is the show on Style about Kimora Lee Simons (the name escapes me). The woman is the definition of extravagance, and since I'm addicted to all things celebrity I was hooked the instant I saw it. Turns out there are a few other shows on the Style Chanel that I enjoyed as well (i.e. Clean House and Split Ends), but sadly, I don't know if there's room for them this season. They may just have to be filler for when my regular shows go on hiatus.

I don't know about you, but I have got some serious series managing to do!

"I SAY NO!"

This is Eldest's new statement. Whenever I ask him to do something (and I swear it could be "Eldest, can you eat this bag of MnMs") he says "I SAY NO, MOMMY!" This little saying has brought me to the brink today. Here is a 3 year old telling ME what to do? now I say NO!

Eldest was pretty sick last night, so we made the trek to the doctors today. I've started avoiding outings with both boys in the car at all costs. Until Youngest can walk on his own, or until I can trust Eldest enough to stay with me, this task is just not my bag. However, when your child is sick, you suck it up and do it.

We get to the doctors today at 4:00 PM. This is after a day of watching movies, not napping and eating next to nothing (his choice mind you!). The waiting room was packed, and I couldn't get my normal seat in front of the play room to watch Eldest so I asked him to sit with me. "I SAY NO, MOMMY!" He kicked off his boots and I asked him to help me put them back on. "I SAY NO, MOMMY!" After that, I proceeded to hold him in my arms while he wiggled, wriggled, and screamed "I SAY NO, I SAY NO" over and over again. For reason's only God knows, I had left his binki and bunny in the car and after feeling the eyes of the new mom with only one child under the age of 12 months that hadn't so much as farted wrong in her presence, I stood up, picked up the boots, Eldest, the 40 lb diaper bag and Youngest in his bucket seat (who was being adorable by the way!), and walked out. Surprisingly, someone actually helped open the door for me.

Normally I would have just gone home, but I had driven all the way to Issaquah, and I wasn't leaving until I knew for sure he didn't have some weird virus that caused bad behavior. I got his binki and bunny, hugged him and we walked back in. He just put his head in my lap for a bit after that, saying "I say no" to anything he overheard. Turns out he had a 24 hour flu instead of the rare, Peruvian, bad attitude bug bite...dang!

They sure make for some good inspiration

We had a wonderful visit with some old friends from Richmond. Elena and Kevin are great people and are a most wonderful couple. Individually both of them are generously nice people, honest, laid back and casual on their attitude with life. Watching them interact together is a real treat. Here are two adults who do truly love each other and treat each other with respect. There is warmth between the two of them that is impossible to not feel when in their presence.

After being married for over 8 years and worn down through the daily tasks of rearing two boys the pieces that make for a successful couple are easily buried and overlooked. It is far easier to argue, hold grudges and resentment than to just apologize and give a hug. We forget we are on the same side and should work together instead of trying to knock the other person out of the ring.

The past four days having Elena and Kevin here was very refreshing for me personally. It helped me to refocus how I view Beth and to try just a bit harder and letting her know how awesome she and our relationship are. We have something good and we should recognize that.

They sure make for some good inspiration.

Good Times

Our house hasn't been this quiet in 5 days. Although this kind of silence is welcomed at any time of the day, its a little sad right now. Our friends from VA just left about 10 minutes ago and we already miss them. Something about seeing old friends just does wonders for the soul. Reliving old memories with people that were actually there, makes story telling at Smokey Joe's that much more fun.

I'll blog more about the trip after I've had time to go through all the photos and find the perfect one's to tell the story, but for now, enjoy our group photo at Smokey Joe's on Saturday night. We played all our favorites on the jukebox and each had a story to go with it. So fun!

Thanks for the good times Kevin & Elena!

Can I lose 10 lbs by October 22nd doing this?

HAHAHA! Starbuck's is the devil!!