the rest of the busy weekend

Sunday morning we got the kids situated with their pumpkins that they picked out the day before to get painted. They had been asking since we got home from buying them the day before. This year Zach spent some time trying to make designs and details on his pumpkin instead of smearing paint around into a mess. Rylee started to make designs and then decided it was more fun to just smear the paint around. We even got a little paint on Brienna's hand so that she could add some artwork to her pumpkin. Gary had to hold her hand to the pumpkin because she wanted to immediately put her hand in her mouth.

After this we got everyone bathed and into their costumes to go trick o treating at Algonquin Commons. The kids looked so incredibly cute in their costumes. We got the neighbors across the street and we headed that way. It was a nice day out, and since the weather is tempting to be really cold on the real Halloween I was glad they got to go and not be freezing.

After this we headed to Gary's friend John's house to carve pumpkins in his annual pumpkin carving contest. Of course this is only a contest for the older kids and adults that participate. The little ones all get a prize for their effort since they really just pick out the design and then the parents carve it out. It was a lot of fun, and since their were a lot of kids there Rylee and Zach had a great time playing.

After all of the busy activities they were all very tired. It was a great weekend, and I love giving them so much to do, especially stuff that doesn't cost a whole lot of money to do. Lord knows there is not a whole lot of money to spend around here these days anyway.

the annual pumpkin farm trip

After some nervousness that the weather was going to be crappy all weekend. We lucked out this afternoon and were able to make it to Goebberts. This morning the kids made their Halloween craft and of course wanted to wear them all day.

After Brienna's nap we took a ride over to the pumpkin farm to get our pumpkins for carving and painting. The kids wanted to do every activity the farm had to offer. This year they had some more exotic animals then in years past. The kids actually got to feed a giraffe. They were amazed at how big they were. After some initial fear they both became extremely enamored by these giraffes and their really long tongues. We went and fed some other animals as well. It always cracks me up how the goats are when you feed them. They act like they haven't been fed in months pushing each other out of the way for a handful of seed!

The kids each picked out their pumpkins, Brienna included. She kept reaching for this one pumpkin outside of the stroller with a high stem, so that is the one we got for her. Tomorrow we hope to have time amoungst our tons more activities to get them painted and carved. Halloween kind of snuck up on me this year!

tired and busy day

Last night all 3 kids decided to get up at various times through out the night. Zach was first at about 12:30am with a nightmare about "vampirates" as he calls them. Brienna was up about 20 minutes later screaming because she rolled herself up in her blanket and couldn't get out to move around. Rylee was up around 3am because her stomach hurt. Gary took her to the bathroom, and then 15 minutes later she was up again because her stomach still hurt and she had to go to the bathroom again. I am sure all of the healthy food she eats when she is not here contributes to this poor child's sour stomach that she seems to constantly have. Her mom tells Gary that she makes her eat veggies, but there is a serious doubt in the truth of that. Rylee is certainly blessed to be built like Gary, and I am sure as she grows up she will remain tall and skinny but food habits are huge with me. Growing up my parents were big on family meals that always included a veggie which is how I feed our kids. There is always a vegetable of some sort built into most meals...pizza nights excluded of course. We tell the kids that we don't eat the veggies because they are the best tasting thing on the plate but they are the healthiest. Thankfully the veggie problems have tamed a bit. She will eat almost any veggie here now because she knows she has to. It is Rylee's extremely weird cheese fetish that confuses us now?!?!

So I woke up this morning with Brienna at 5:30a to get her morning bottle. Then up again with Gary at 6:30a to get Rylee dressed and ready for school. She is always so funny in the morning when I wake her up on Thursdays. She sits up looks around and then says "Oh, good morning Mommy!" It is usually the best part of my Thursday. She has been a real trooper transitioning into all day Kindergarten and still so pleasant when she wakes up. She really loves to wear nightgowns now, and so the other day when I was at Kohl's I bought her a couple of fleece long sleeve nightgowns, and she was so excited when she opened her drawer on Wednesday night to get her pjs. She made sure to fold it and lay it at the end of her bed and announced "I want to wear this again when I come back tomorrow". It was pretty cute, and I am glad she liked it so much :)

Zach went off to school for a couple hours, I went to work out, and then took a shower to go back and get Zach from school. We went out to lunch because Zach had a perfect week at school. He loves the Pizza Hut inside of Target so that is where we went. We met a mom that was sitting next to us with a 3.5 year old little girl and a 9 month old little boy. Zach and this little girl were so cute sharing stories about preschool!

When Gary got home we went to Costco to buy diapers and then to have dinner. When we got home Gary wanted to capture some pics of Brienna with his HUGE bottle of Jack Daniels that he bought at Costco. Apparently Gary likes this pose! Here is one of Rylee at 8m and one at Brienna at 8m!

so so sore

Working out is a staple of my week, and has been for some time. I enjoy doing it and have made all the appropriate adjustments to my schedule to make sure that I can take the classes offered at our community center. I work out 5 days a week every week, and sometimes try to sneak a 6th time in there on Saturdays if I can get up in time for the 7am class. Every day the classes range from cardio/strength mix to the crazy 80's step lady on Tuesdays. Monday we did cardio kickboxing and I can barely walk today. I haven't been this sore since I started back working out after Brienna was born. It is days like today that I wish our master bath tub had jets. A relaxing bath would feel so great.

I haven't felt in this good of shape since I was on the dance team at DePaul in college. Of course there is always room for improvement, but I enjoy watching the changes effect the way my clothes fit and the size that I can fit into. Isn't that every womens favorite when she fits into those jeans that stare at her in the closet for so long! For me it is a pair of Size 9 jeans that I bought from American Eagle before I got pregnant with Brienna. Being pregnant this time was not kind on my lower body (translation - my ass needs to shrink a little more) before I can fit into them comfortably. I prefer my jeans to be a little loose before I will wear them, and these are almost there!

So being as sore as I am today is a reminder that I am on the right track. Working out can be hard work some days to get motivated to go, but I ALWAYS feel like a million dollars after I leave.

brienna the trouble maker

Now that Brienna has become so mobile she is into everything. She pulls herself up with no problems, and lately has even started to take a few steps walking around everything. Yesterday, I even caught her trying to climb into the chair in the family room. She also crawled her way toward the front door and spent a half hour playing with the lighted pumpkin that is on the bottom stair.

Today she spent a good portion of the afternoon playing on the floor with Zach. It was the first brother/sister moment that I have seen between them and it was really cute! At first, he was playing with his cars rolling them back and forth in the kitchen. Brienna was playing (chewing) with a bunch of her toys right at the edge of the tile from the family room to kitchen. Suddenly these zooming cars looked very interesting so as one would fly across the kitchen to the carpet she would grap it before Zach could make it over in time. She was quick too, he kept trying to hand her something to distract her but she would quickly grap another toy of his.

Tonight at bath time she decided she would rather climb out of the tub then actually take a bath. She bumped her head a few times and then decided it was too slippery and would finish getting washed up. Then she cuddled with me for a few minutes in our bed and it was off to sleep! What a busy couple of days for such a little girl.

i have so had enough

As I mentioned a while back, Gary is in the middle of another court mess with his ex. Today we got a packet from his lawyer with copies of correspondence between the two lawyers and of course a bill. I am so pissed off that we have to fork out more money to the lawyer because of this crazy pain in the ass. For what and for why?!?! I really would love to understand what she thinks she is going to accomplish by all of this. Regardless of the outcome and regardless what the court says he has to pay her she is never ever ever going to drive a wedge between the two of us. She can take away all of our money, she can take away all of our possessions when we can't afford to pay for them anymore, but she will never take the bond that we have. I am truly sorry that she thinks that I have taken something from her, but she really needs to look in a mirror and realize she lost his love a LONG time before I came into the picture. The reason I say this is because I know that all of this is aimed directly at me, and maybe not necessarily me as a person but anyone who would be sitting in this position as Gary's new wife. And perhaps it really is just me, who the hells knows with her.

I am just so pissed off to have to write a check for any amount of money for a lawyer we shouldn't have to be paying just so that she can satisfy some childish vendetta. Her childish behavior is ironic too, since she recently had a birthday turning 36 years old. Then again I suppose if I was a 36 year old bitter single women that can't hang on to a relationship I might have nothing better to do either then make my ex husband's life hell!

All of this in response to Gary asking for 50% custody of his daughter. Maybe she thought that this slap of another law suit would scare him away from going after what he wants, but trust me if she knew him at all she would know that this is just fueling his fire. Again, another ironic twist to all of this that she spent over 10 years with him between their dating and marriage and yet she really under estimates him in every sense.

For many that know about these struggles that we go through with her, they always say the same thing...we must have a strong relationship to overcome. I could not agree more. There is nothing that she can throw at us that will tear us apart. He tells me that he relys on me as his rock through all of this, and I try very hard to be strong for him. So that means I can vent my frustrations and forget about her insignificant presence in our lives. I am constantly reminding myself that she is nothing more then the other half of Rylee's DNA.

it's going to be a disaster

I had to call Joey yesterday, which I try to avoid doing during the two weeks he doesn't see Zach, but had to regarding this coming weekend. I have signed Zach up to play basketball through the park district, and the assessment day is this Saturday. Since this is his weekend I wanted to make sure that he would be able to take him. I don't ask him to pay for half of these things, but I do request his cooperation in getting him there if it involves his weekend. I also wanted to warn him about the recent conversation that I had with Zach. A month ago Zach had a talk with Joey about Gary not being his Dad. As I have said before I have never pushed him toward calling Gary "Dad". I guess it had finally gotten to Joey and he decided to say something to Zach about Gary not being his Dad, just Mommy's boyfriend. This confused Zach greatly, and it caused a lot of issues here. I of course called Joey about this and he back peddled saying that he told Zach Gary would not be his "Dad" until we got married. Zach remembering this asked if now Gary was his Dad after the wedding. He also asked if that meant his last name would be Cundiff now too? I explained to him that his last name would stay the same as his Dad's and that someday if he wanted to change it that would be up to him. Well he of course pronounced that he wanted to be Zachary Cundiff, even went as far as to tell my parents that was his new name we he stayed at their house on Saturday night.

Knowing how Joey is about these things I wanted to warn him so that he did not have another inappropriate conversation about why Zach's name has to stay what it is. Joey of course was mad that Zach was talking this way, and I was very adamant that he get over it before Friday and that he not talk to him about it. Joey doesn't understand that Zach is only 4 years old and doesn't understand adult concepts like marriage and boyfriends/girlfriends. Despite my asking him not to, I know that Zach will say something about it this weekend and Joey will of course have to correct him and confuse the poor child even more. This is only going to be amplified because Gary is the assistant coach for Zach's b-ball team and he was so excited about it he said he couldn't wait to go so he could tell all the people on his team that the coach was his dad. If he does this on Saturday when Joey is there, it should be interesting to say the least!!!

scarecrow festival

Sunday we took the kids to St. Charles to the Scarecrow Festival after we picked them up from the grandparents. It was pretty chilly outside, but the kids had a great time. Some of the displays are absolutely amazing what they do with the movement and creativity. The kids really wanted to ride some of the rides, but by that time Brienna had enough of being outside in the cold and with no nap. So we headed home.

The kids were exhausted by the evening which was made apparent by falling asleep in the car, and the crabbiness that afternoon. I am still transitioning Zach into no naps in preparation for next year when he goes to Kindergarten. Some days he does really well and other days not so much. On the plus side, he sleeps later in the mornings when he does not have a nap but on the down side it can make for some pretty difficult afternoons.

the wedding

I am now officially Mrs. Cundiff and despite what some people think, it isn't always best to be the first!!! The day was absolutely perfect, despite one major mishap. I was up pretty early that morning as my mind went crazy with everything that laid ahead of us that day. Brienna was up around 6:30am and the other two were up not long after that. As Gary got the kids some breakfast, I went to pick up some single roses for the mothers during the ceremony. By the time I got back he had the car loaded up with everything that need to go over to the community center. My parent's showed up and my mom stayed with the kids and my dad came with us to set up. We had everything set up and ready by 10:30am which was not bad since we weren't in there until 8:45am. We went back to the house and the hair and makeup began. She had all that completed just in time for me to get the kids ready after they got back from their birthday party. Rylee got dressed first so that Patricia (my friend and hairdresser) could do her hair and then get on to work. They all looked so incredibly cute in their pretty dresses and fancy tux!

I got dressed and we loaded up to head over. We had to be there by 2:30pm to start taking pictures. The rest of the family met us there and that took about an hour. Everyone was waiting in the room, and as we started to wait for things to begin we realized the closer and closer we got to 4pm there still was no Pastor. We started calling to find out if he was lost, checking email to see if he emailed about an emergency, and still nothing. Officially the panic began. We started weighing our options, when my wonderful aunt came up to me to let me know that she is registered as an officiant. We started getting her ready to proceed with the ceremony. During that time someone called from our Pastor's office to let us know that he was in a bad accident on the way. I felt horrible for being upset. (He did email me this morning, and he is home and just a bit sore) My aunt took about 20 minutes to write down her notes, and I went to get in place to get the party started.

My dad walked me down the aisle and all the stress seriously melted away. I saw Gary standing there and my butterflies were gone. We got to the part in which we were to read each other our vows and as I started mine I immediately started to cry. He read me his, and of course that made me cry just a little more. The whole ceremony lasted about 15 minutes and we were pronounced Mr. & Mrs. Gary Cundiff :)

We ate, had our first dance, cut the cake, danced with our guests, and before I knew it it was time to go! My brother and Tara were TREMENDOUS helps getting all the dishes cleaned and Cara and Jamie got all the tables cleaned off. We had everything cleaned up and loaded back in the car in an hour.

A bunch of us met back at our house, we changed, and went out to REALLY celebrate the evening. The kids went with the grandparents. I didn't eat much of anything that day, so the couple shots and few drinks had me pretty toasted. We got home around 1am, and since I had been up since 4am on Saturday that was pretty impressive.

Overall the day was everything I could have hoped for. Even the mishap with the pastor did not spoil the most perfect wedding ever. Besides it is so much more special to me to have a family member marry us. I look forward to spending the rest of my life being Mrs. Gary Cundiff :)

Of course I will post some better pics when I get them back from the photographer. These are a collection of the ones that everyone has sent me since Saturday.