How do I trust

How do I trust that the world will be good to my girl?

How do I know it is okay for her to go to a friend's house?

How do I know she will be safe from other adults we learn to know and trust?

How do I know if someone has guns in their house or has a secret fetish?

As I snuggled in her bed with her this morning I couldn't help but think about how my sweet innocent girl is soon going to be out in the world without me and how do I know when it is okay to say go, have fun. How do I know who is truly a good person and who is not.

I know she is safe from damaging adults or adult behaviours in our house. I have always said I want her to have her friends come to our house and not vice versa. But again how do I know.

How do I find the courage to let her go? She is the world to me and I really couldn't honestly say what I would do if the world were to hurt her.

I go back and forth in how much I think about these things. But lately they have been brought to the surface again by a few things.

1st of which is the fact that when her pre-school goes on field trips the drivers are the parents of the kids. I don't "know" these people yet they want me to put my child in someone else's car. I just can't do it and I plan to drive on every field trip. She likes me to go anyway so it works out good. I don't mind taking another kid with us but I don't want her in someone else's car without me. I realize I am a bit paranoid but have I mentioned how much she means to me.

But really the thoughts that I cannot shake lately are about a co-worker who was recently arrested for drugging and raping several little girls as they would sleep over his house with his daughters. He seemed like a normal enough guy. I didn't know him extremely well but others in my department did. There was one lady who felt bad for him having troubles around Christmas time and had considered letting him stay in her house (with her kids there) so he wouldn't be alone. This was before she knew what the charges were. Thankfully she did not do this. He used to have the best Halloween costumes but now they seem extremely disgusting to me as they were always a child theme such as sponge*bob. His story truly turns my stomach. But most importantly it reminds me that you never really fully know someone. He was married with 2 young girls who knew nothing about his behaviours until the arrests. The only reason they caught him was because of the number of nasty downloads he made with one month and the fact that he would video tape his his, well you get the idea.

I am just very scared about the world in which I will need to send my precious little girl out into.

Please world be kind to her.

Still Hanging Around

I am still around. Just so terribly busy. But things are starting to calm down. Except for my husband's money paranoia. He is in full swing. I think now that the holidays are over he starts to think about how much it all costs. Of course it doesn't help that we had to take our van in again to see why it is leaking transmission fluid. That was $336 that we could have used elsewhere. Especially since this was the 3rd time this year we have taken it in.

We also have to come up with $325 by Jan. 8th to register Belle for all day kindergarten. Anyone else care to take a few hundred dollars right now???? Anyone????

Other than that our holiday was great. Belle loved every minute of it. We are still opening toys everyday. I have been off of work for the most part. I had to go in on Wednesday for a half day and am off again until Tuesday. That is nice but I always get a bit depressed after Christmas. I hate to go back to work full time (even though I am thankful to have a job) and leave Belle. I LOVE STAYING HOME AND LONG TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT FULL TIME BUT THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN!

Belle had a great birthday. I will do a separate post about that. But we all had a great time. J's birthday was OK. We had his here at home. I had gotten him a Star Wars PC game and after he opened it we found you need to have a DVD drive on your computer. He does not. So we had some gift cards and we went and got an external drive. We get the game loaded on the computer and find out we don't have a 3D graphics card. UGH. So the $40 game is costing us an extra $225 before tax just to be able to play it. The drive was $100 and the graphics card will be $125. With the extra expenses of the car that will have to wait. The bad thing is that we couldn't even return the game because it was opened. He will be the first to admit his best gift, though, was a local basketball team's flag. You can't find them anywhere. Not even at the arena gift shop. I was able to find it online and he was very happy with that. The problem finding them is that we need one with grommets for a flag pole and not the banner type. I was way excited for him to open that gift.

Well that is all for tonight.

Quick Post

I will post more about our absolutely great weekend later but I just have to comment on the children I saw at the indoor water park.

I hope I am not completely stereotyping but it looked to me that there were a lot of families that may have adopted. I don't know if I am just more in tune to this since being a part of the bloggy world and having friends who have adopted.

Obviously, I noticed the kids who looked to be of a different nationality than their parents. Again, could be a complete stereotype but I just found myself watching these kids. It was so beautiful to see these kids playing and having a great time where they probably wouldn't have had that opportunity if it hadn't been for their parents adopting them.

It really touched my heart.

Busy Busy Busy

Everyday I feel like I don't have time to sleep. I have so much to do and so little time. And work. Well that just gets in the way. Not that I don't have tons of work to do. Because believe me I do.

I was just looking at the calendar and realized I only have to work 4 more days this year. Which is awesome but also overwhelming. I have too much to get done. And too much that is getting old. But everyday I get something else thrown at me that must be done now. And then my work has to wait. And wait. Which frustrates me since it then makes me look bad. But my goal is to get up to date and have my desk be cleaned off for the new year. If you could see my desk you would understand that is a big goal with only 4 days left to accomplish it.

And for my personal life. We are taking the whole family to an indoor water park this Saturday and Sunday and I have to gather all the food, pack, wash clothes, order food, get everyone directions, and I am sure a million other little things. But.it.will.get.done.so.I.can.enjoy.myself.

This Saturday is Belle's 5th birthday. I can't believe how fast time as gone. Where is my sweet little baby. She has been replaced with a strong willed independent (when she wants to be) high maintenance mostly sweet heart. I try to tell her that I am sweet, daddy is sour, and that she is sweet and sour. She doesn't like my example too much. She then argues that she is NOT sour. That she IS sweet. he he If you notice the sour comes out easily. he he

But I love her more than anything and that is all that really matters.

Must Vent

Last night was my husband's Christmas party. He works for a retail store so they always have to be on a Sunday night so that the store can close at 6pm and they can party at 7pm.

Usually the party goes until about 9pm. Well this year J has to "help". He was supposed to help clean up but since Belle is now in school I asked if he could possibly help set up instead. This wish was granted and all was good.

We get there and we are sitting at our table. And we are sitting. And we are sitting.

They finally serve the food at 8pm. By this time Belle is just starving. And as luck would have it we ended up being at the last table to go get food. We go get our food and we sit back down. We eat.

And then we are just sitting and waiting again. We could leave but they pass out raffle tickets to each employee so we could win a prize. So we wait.

They finally start reading off the raffle tickets and lucky us we won a $25 gift card but we didn't get home until about 10pm.

And the kicker was that the kids gifts were crap. I don't mean to sound ungrateful but they really just wasted their money. Belle got checkers for kids ages 6 and up. She isn't even 5 yet. And another kid younger than her got a 63 piece puzzle. Good grief Charlie Brown. Last year they gave away those color wonder sets. Great. Great. Idea. Maybe that is why this year it seemed so bad. A different person organized it last year. This year's gift choices were coloring books (good), jumbo pencils (scary), puzzles, and checkers. Anyone with kids would agree these sucked.

I am glad we got prizes and gifts. Don't get me wrong. But all in all it was long and boring. And we are going to pay the price today with one very sleepy child who by this evening is bound to be good and crabby.


Edit: After some more thought I think they tried their best. Yes the gifts for the kids were better last year but these really weren't that bad I guess. I think I was just tired and crabby so that is what I am going to go with. I stand by the fact that it went too late for the kids (and they wanted kids there).

Baking

Well so far I have made a few dozen spritz cookies, a few dozen snowball cookies, Gribay cookies which are like a butter type cookie that melt in your mouth (these are an old family recipe), and probably 20 dozen peanut butter with hershey kisses. I have the dough made for the sugar cookies but those will have to wait until later or tomorrow.

I am tired but I am still in the middle of making dinner and then I have to go shopping.

This has been a long day. But that is ok because that is less I have to do the week of Christmas.

Holiday Baking gone wild

I fear that is what is going to happen to us this weekend. I am starting my baking tonight. I am the official cookie maker for many houses.

Don't you dare try to make cookies. My very impressive cookie tray will run your measly poorly baked cookies right to the trash. Fear me lesser cookie trays......

Ok. So I am a dork. That is my new favorite word by the way. Why you may ask. Hmmm. Not really sure. It just is. For now.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. This year I have decided to really let my Belle help me make cookies. I may regret this decision quickly but I am determined to let her help.

I really have unintentionally made others give up trying to bake Christmas cookies. I make spritz, sugar, chocolate chip, m&m, snowballs, peanut blossoms (with the Hershey kisses), gribay, and any other I feel like throwing in. I make many many many dozen of each.

I generally will put together a tray to give to my elderly neighbor next door, my sister's house on Christmas Eve, my sister-in-law's house on Christmas Day, J's work, my work, and whoever else needs a quick gift. And I still have tons left over.

The best part is that once I make all of these I don't really want to eat them. Don't get me wrong I do eat some but I don't crave them like I think I would if I didn't do all of the work.
And if I must say so myself they are usually very yummy. I learned well from my grandma how to bake.

Just don't ask me to cook. I can but I don't like to.

So happy baking to all who bake and to all who bake good night. (can you name the reference even though I changed the words a bit?)

Money Money Come My Way

UGH. I hate talking about money. But I just found out that I need to come up with an extra $400 about by January 8th.

I mean really. January 8th! That is so close to Christmas. I have to do it though. If I want my Belle (name my girl will now be called on this blog) to go to all day kindergarten then I need to come up with this money.

She will be attending a public school but if you want to go for the all day kindergarten you have to pay extra. About $2000 extra for the school year. OUCH!

But I don't have a way for her to get to and from school on a half day schedule. As it is I will still probably need to pay the extra $2 per hour for before and after care at the schools latchkey program. Double OUCH!

My husband is not at all happy with money talk and that is always a stress between us. So I think I will hold off on breaking this news until closer to Christmas. It isn't like we are completely broke but I don't know about others but I don't normally have a spare few hundred dollars laying around burning a hole in my pocket.

UGH.

Fog Lifting

I guess I should come out of my fog. I have thought about a lot of things to blog about but then just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I had read a couple of horror stories about rude people going over the line on other's blogs and just couldn't make myself post anything.

But I think I am going to get back to why I decided to do this in the first place. It is a place for me to put my thoughts. Even if they are random. I got wrapped up in who was reading this and how many and how can I get more people to read and so on and so on.

But really this is for me and hopefully a few nice people will come by and share their comments with me. I do love the comments.

So with our first official serious snowstorm this week I am lifting myself up and getting back to blogging. Boy I got dusty just sitting here.