Day 50: Long time gone.

Thursday, November 2nd

Man, I haven't written in a while! I have been pretty busy and wasn't even home all last week, so that's why. I guess I'll start at the beginning!

A week ago Sunday I went to the Seahawks game and watched them lose and watched Hasselbeck get injured. Bummer. After the game I met my mom and Colby down the street from Qwest Field and we drove down to Portland where my mom had to go for some conference for work. We stayed at the Embassy Suites and had a really relaxing fun time. Colby loved running around the hotel and thought the glass elevators were awesome. I got a hold of one of the moms I met on BabyCenter and we met up at the mall. It is always SO cool to meet people that I have talked to for so long online. I love it.

Tuesday we drove home and stopped in SeaTac where Clint was staying for a training thing for work. We were trying to surprise him and the front desk even gave me a key to his room, but after waiting around for about an hour he didn't show up and we left. Turns out, he went out to dinner with the guys. Oh well.

Thursday I left Colby with my parents and stayed at the hotel with Clint. We went out for dinner with some of his coworkers and then had some drinks alone in the hotel bar. We were pretty pathetic, though because we were both so tired we had crashed by about 9:30pm. What do ya do?

Colby dressed up as a dragon for Halloween and we trick-or-treated first at Clint's work, and later at the mall. We got so many complements on his costume, which my mom found for $10 at Value Village! Colby had so much fun carrying his little bucket around and getting candy. He got his first taste of chocolate that day and LOVED it.

Wednesday morning Colby had his surgery to unplug his tear ducts. So far, it seems to have gone well. He's back to normal after being knocked out, but he still has some eye gunk in his left eye. The doctor said to watch it and it will probably go away, but if it doesn't she'll give us an eye ointment for nighttimes. If that doesn't work, she may have to go back in and put a stint in the tear duct, but we're hoping that doesn't have to happen. I'm so relieved that the surgery is over and done with. I can't wait for people to stop asking me if my son has been crying all day or if he has an eye infection. My poor kid is so sick of us picking at his eyes, so I'm sure he'll be glad to have them fixed too.

Today we're just hanging out. The weather is pretty icky so I think we'll stay inside. I have plenty of cleaning I could be doing anyway.

So, we got a little excited about a house on some land this past weekend. My dad told us about this manufactured home on 4.23 acres just up the street from them for only $155K! We were hoping to have a chance at getting it, since that's well within our price range, but there are a bunch of red flags with it and we aren't going to pursue it. Clint's friend Chris is a real estate agent and hooked us up with a ton of listings of houses around our price range, and there are a couple that look interesting. They're fixer-uppers, but we know that's pretty much what we're going to have to settle for since we're only living off of Clint's income. I think we're going to wait until Spring to really look at homes, though. Even if Clint does get a transfer, he won't be able to do that until after tax season, so there's no point in us trying to move before then. And, if he can't transfer it'd be a bad situation for him to have to commute all that way every day. Definitely not fun for him.

I'm so excited thinking about getting a house. I can't wait to have some semblance of a yard where I can go out on the back porch and watch Colby play in the dirt and grass. I can't wait to be able to paint and decorate and have pictures and things on my walls. I can't wait to be able to turn the TV up to a normal volume without worrying that my neighbors are going to be bothered. I can't wait to not be able to hear my neighbors getting it on. (Did I mention they're probably in their 70s?)

Ugh, I absolutely cannot wait.

I have decided to challenge myself. I want to read 10 books before December 31st, and I have already finished 5 books!

1. Milkrun by Sarah Mlynowski (Funny!)
2. The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown (Page-turner.)
3. Welcome to My Planet by Shannon Olson (Not my favorite, but okay.)
4. Children of God Go Bowling by Shannon Olson (Much better than the first.)
5. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides (Creepy, interesting, intriguing. I'm still not sure if I loved it, but I definitely didn't hate it.)

And I'm working on 2!

1. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
2. Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

Man, I love reading.

Anyway, I'd better get to that cleaning. Oh, and I have fallen off the horse as far as exercising goes, so I'm really going to try and get back into that. Wish me luck!