A Girl Who Loves Her Shoes

Lauren is a shoe lover. She is the only one of my children that will leave her shoes on almost all of the time. In fact, if she sees her shoes and she is not wearing any, she will try to put them on her feet.

Tonight, Lauren found one of her dress shoes shortly before bed and insisted on putting it on. I managed to squeeze it on her pajama covered foot and that is the way she wore it for the next 15 minutes, until bedtime. At one point, I tried to take the shoe off because I thought it looked uncomfortable, but she just cried until I put it back on. She sure loves her shoes.

Jordan says, Mom has crazy hair...

This morning the kids were up before us (as usual on the weekend) and Jordan decided he wanted to crawl in our bed. He climbs in and starts playing with my hair by running his fingers through it. Now, I don't mind when people play with my hair as long as they don't pull to hard. However, a 6 year old boy doesn't seem to recognize when he hits snarls and he just keeps pulling. I scolded him a few times, but let him continue anyway. At least he wasn't fighting with his brother, which is the reason he ended up in our room in the first place.

Anyway, so then he said, "Mom I want your hair to be straight today."
I sleepily said, "Okay. Why?"
Then he said, "When your hair is curly it is crazy."

Okay, I have to admit it is a bit crazy when I don't straighten it (which is actually pretty rare these days) and I like it straight better too, but I didn't expect my 6 year old son to point that out. However, I guess it shouldn't have surprised me too much. He is the one that has been known to say things in the grocery about other people that are embarassing. He is not scared to speak his mind.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

This is a question we have asked the boys recently, and here is the response they each gave us:

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Jordan: I want to be a clown so I can always be silly.
Colin: I want to be a candy giver...(later he added to it) and a money giver.

Office Cleanup

Today I started to move all my stuff from my current office at work to my new window office. I am so excited I will finally be able to see outside. Getting a window office is a sign of seniority in our company. The problem is that the head counts have stayed pretty stable over the past several years and nobody with a window office has left the company which resulted in a long wait for me to finally get my window office. Recently, someone finally moved out of a window office to work in CA (or at least that is the rumor I heard), so the office shuffle began. Person A moved into the window office of the person that left, then Person B moved into Person A's window office and I am moving into Person B's window office. At this point in time, nobody is moving into my office. I have been in my current office for almost 9 years and at the company for a little over 10 years. I have played a support role interfacing with technical support and customers supporting our products as well as worked on test teams of 4 major products over the years with some smaller side products/projects. I have taken 3 maternity leaves, which total about 1 year of time and I will be taking my 3 month sabbatical next summer for reaching 10 years...yeah!

While cleaning out my office I found several things that show how long I have been in my office and at my current job. I think it also shows that I don't clean my office too often at work.

Here is a list of my top 10 favorite things I found:
1. My hourly timecards from Oct 1999 to June 2000 when I was an intern.
2. Product info for stuff I worked on between 1999 and 2001 (like user guides and manuals).
3. Company goal and initiative cards for every year starting in 2001 when we were acquired by Cisco.
4. Too many 3.5" floppy disks to count.
5. Contact solution that expired in 2004.
6. A card with contact phone numbers of family members and the only number that was still relevant on the card was mom and dad's home number.
7. Rubberbands that had gone hard and cracked into many pieces.
8. One of Tim's business cards from when we were dating.
9. Bus itineraries from 2003 mapping a bus route to a training class I was going to attend.
10. Too much dust.

I think this list goes to show that I should clean up my office a little more often. By Monday I should be pretty much settled in my new office and my eyes will have to start the adjustment to daylight instead of flourescent lights during the day. I think I can handle it though.

Wild Animals

On Sunday I was trying to get a picture of Lauren all dressed up to document her 15th month. However she was not in the mood to have her picture taken, so the boys decided they needed their picture taken. They gave me a bunch of hilarious poses, but this one was by far the best expressions.

We cooked up a batch of double chocolate cookies tonight after dinner and Lauren enjoyed her cookie. Then she enjoyed spreading the chocolate all over herself. Luckily it was bath night! However, just about every night is bath night for her because she manages to fill her hair with food throughout the day.

Jordan's Birthday

For Jordan's birthday this year, we just did a small celebration with the family. We had a lot of fun together and of course Jordan loved the extra special attention.

Finally, the rest of the Easter pictures

I am finally posting the rest of the Easter pictures.