Her mother has to be so proud of her!

This was sent to me in an e-mail and it is excellent!

How many is too many?

No wonder I haven't had time to blog lately. All of my computer time is spent catching up on all of your blogs. Hope asked me on Twitter this morning how many subscriptions I have in my Reader. I was on my iPod at the time and you can't see that on there but curiosity was killing me and my iPod was almost dead anyway. So I went over to the kids computer to plug in my iPod and check out how many subscriptions I had. Remember this isn't how many unread posts it is how many different blogs I have in my Reader that I like to read. I can't even post it. It is terrible! How about y'all take a guess.

Go ahead and make a guess and I will come clean later.

No fair if you are on Twitter and seen my answer but if you are curious, make a guess and THEN go get on Twitter to see the answer.

Okay now off to get groceries and be a productive member of society.

Smiles!
Jennifer

Happy Valentine's

This is a fun little Valentine's Day Meme I found on Melissa's blog.

♥ How long have you been together? 19 years, 7 months
♥ How long did you know each other before you started dating? We met at a Friday night "get-together" and he asked me out for the next day.
♥ Who asked who out? Mark asked me out.
♥ How old are each of you? Mark is 42. I am... younger than that. LOL!
♥ Whose siblings do/did you see the most? We see mine more. He sees his brothers more during hunting.
♥ Do you have any children together? 4
♥ What about pets? 2 dogs
♥ Did you go to the same school? Nope
♥ Are you from the same home town? Nope
♥ Who is the smartest? Well that is a loaded question. I'll play safe. Mark.
♥ Who is the most sensitive? Me. Mark has compassion issues. Shhh.
♥ Where do you eat out most as a couple? Rose's. It is our favorite!
♥ Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple? California for the '88 Rose Bowl game Mark played in. However we didn't technically "travel" together but we met up out there.
♥ Who has the worst temper? That is a tie. Both are bad.
♥ Who does the cooking? Mostly me but Mark chips in when the need arises.
♥ Who is more social? Mark. He talks to anyone and everyone.
♥Who is the neat freak? Mark.
♥ Who is the more stubborn? Me.
♥ Who hogs the bed? We have a King size so it doesn't seem like either of us do.
♥ Who wakes up earlier? Me.
♥ Where was your first date? Mark took me out for ice cream while I was camping at the beach with girlfriends.
♥ Who has the bigger family? Mark. He has 3 siblings I have 2 sisters.
♥ Do you get flowers often? Yes. Mark works in a Greenhouse but he still buys me flowers because he know it means more than grabbing a plant on the way out the door. Wink!
♥ How do you spend the holidays? We divide it up between our families.
♥ How long did it take to get serious? We were dating exclusively from the get go.
♥ Who eats more? Seriously? If you know us you know the answer to this. Mark eats his meal and half of mine.
♥ Who’s better with the computer? That is funny. Mark avoids the computer at all cost.
♥ Who drives when you are together? Mark is the only one who drives when we are together because if I drive he is busy telling me how to drive so he might as well do it himself. Smiles!

They got "HIM"!

I haven't posted about this because I wasn't dealing with it well. I am ready for closure now.

My 13 year old daughter got a cell phone for Christmas. She had been wanting one forever and she had found the "perfect" pre-paid one. We had told her she was too young but then surprised her at Christmas with it. She couldn't have been happier. Just ask Jen Suits. Wink!

Anyway the day we were activating it she got a phone call on it before we had even called anyone on it. I told her not to answer it because she doesn't know the number so don't waste your minutes on it. The caller left a message and the message that he left was weird. My husband called the number back with his own cell phone and told the guy that he must have the wrong number because the phone he called belonged to our teenage daughter. The caller apologized and said he thought he was calling his nephew's phone. We hadn't yet set up her voice mail so he would have gotten "you have reached such and such a number".

MISTAKE #1: Never tell ANYONE that a number belongs to a teenage girl.

So we went ahead and finished programing her phone and let her put her voice message on it for her answering service.

MISTAKE #2: Never let your teenage daughter have her own voice or name on her cell phone. Leave it with the "you have reached such and such a number".

I saved that first call in her phone book as "do not answer" in case he called again. He did but that time he didn't leave a message.

Then the weekend after New Year's she received another weird call so again I saved the number as "don't answer" so she would know to ignore it if it came in again. It was from a different phone.

Then mid-January at 4am in the morning while her phone was turned off "HE" left a message. She was at a friends house with 2 other girls. When they woke up in the morning and turned the phone on she seen she had a message. This is where I have to type through tears. The message "HE" left was more vulgar and profane than anything I have ever heard and I am an adult. My innocent daughter and her 3 friends heard at least part of the message of him explaining what he was doing to himself and what he wanted to do to her and use on her and he used her name. The father at the house she was at told her to turn the phone off and call us.

I couldn't even listen to the whole message because I was crying so hard knowing my daughter and her friends had heard this. I had to give the phone to Mark and he was a bit caught off guard as to why I got so emotional, until he heard the message for himself. We immediately called the police. They were at our house within 20 minutes. I was very impressed with that. After the police left Mark drove to the other girls houses to explain to the parents what happened so they could be informed when they talked to their daughters.

Over the last month we have pulled our daughter's phone records, the police have been pulling the phone records of the numbers on her phone and we have transferred everything on our daughter's phone over onto permanent records for the police but as of 3 weeks ago the police felt they hit a dead end. Every number we have has proven not to be his. He has covered his tracks by some means. But all the numbers we had were from a neighboring city to us. That is the part I have a hard time stomaching. Does "HE" live near us? Who else is "HE" doing this to?

I have had to pray so hard for this because it was consuming my thoughts. I told my husband that I can't keep wondering who "HE" is and how close "HE" might live to us. I gave it over to God and have had a lot of peace about the fact that God has it under his control.

We changed her phone number. Listed it in Mark's name. And left the voice message as the pre-recorded one that just lists the phone number, no name.

And then about an hour ago I got a call from the detective. They got "HIM"! "HE" has been arrested. He does live close to us and the detective wanted to give me his name to make certain that we didn't know him. We don't. "HIS" telephone records show he was making over 100 calls a night! He calls random numbers until he finds a phone with a young girls voice on the message. (Remember mistake #2) They have had a lot of complaints since ours and they all are they same vulgar messages. "HE" will be prosecuted!

I am praising God!


PLEASE if your teenage daughters have cell phones warn them to not answer calls they don't recognize and to not use their name or voice on their answering machine.

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who has prayed for Libby. Yesterday was her first day without hives. She had an appointment with an allergist on Monday. Apparently what ever set off the hives put her body into histamine overdrive and is causing her body to put out histamines over everything now. We need to use all dye free and fragrance free products until Libby is off all medications and remains hive free. She put Libby on 2 more medicines that will give us a longer lasting effect than the Benedryl. The allergist thought I was probably right about the seasoning packet causing the hives but Libby can't be tested until the hives have stopped and she is off all of the medicine. She has to be weened off the medicine so it will be awhile before we find out for sure what she is allergic to. The allergist also told me that there is always the possibility that she doesn't test positive for anything and we might not ever know what did it.

This picture was taken Wednesday before the hives hit her face.


On another note, last week Wednesday Zack signed his letter of intent to Michigan State. We are very happy for him and glad that the recruiting process is over and he can focus on his last HS track season.


Here he is with Mark and me and his HS track coach and throws coach.

Hives Go Away!

We are still dealing with hives over 48 hours from the first sign of them. She is now on Prednisone and has an appointment Monday to see an allergist. She is also taking Benedryl every 4 hours and is miserable for the 2 hours leading up to the next dose. I am hoping the Predinsone will start kicking in and give her some longer lasting relief. Poor thing!

Pictures taken at 4pm this afternoon.



Pictures taken at 7:50pm tonight right before her next dose of Benedryl.

My poor babe!

For some unknown reason my poor Libby has a bad case of hives. They showed up after dinner last night so I am assuming it was something she ate. They are worse today than they were yesterday. I have a doctor's appointment set up for her tomorrow if they aren't getting any better. Until then we just keep taking the Benadryl and try not to scratch. Doesn't she look miserable? Poor thing.

Busted big time!

My sweet son learned that if you are going to play with mom's camera you should know how to delete movies or you could video evidence against yourself on "accident". LOL! Turn up the volume to hear Zack's reaction to his little mistake.

But he loves Emily even if she isn't so sure of him.

Article of interest

Jane Bos of the Grand Rapids Press wrote a nice article on her blog about Zack.

Read it here.

(There is a typo, however, Zack's dad's name is Mark not Mike and I already corrected her for spelling Zack's name wrong (which is now fixed) so I thought I shouldn't press my luck. LOL!)

On another note, Zack will be throwing at Cornerstone College again tonight. This is the college where he "hit the wall". I guess now his goal will have to be to hit the wall higher. -Smiles!

Fun little trick

This is a fun trick that Kaylyn found in the Family Fun magazine. It is pretty impressive and sounds like it is easy to learn. Let your kids have a try at it.

Somebody Help Me!

The day after Christmas me and the girls went shopping for a new printer. I new the exact one I wanted (or thought I wanted) because I had been hearing such amazing things about it online on other blogs. Our old printer was starting to act up and it is becoming more and more difficult to find ink cartridges for it so I thought it was time to take the plunge. We bought this

(Epson Artisan 800)

little beauty at Best buy on sale and I was tickled to have a printer with all the bells and whistles that I would finally be able to print to from my laptop without having to walk over to the printer and plug my laptop into it.
Before the kids are even over Christmas break the printer is already telling me that it is out of ink. WHAT!?!? We couldn't have printed more than 50 sheets tops and they were text documents. No pictures have been printed yet. So I e-mail and I am told that the first set of cartridges need to "prime the printer" and I won't go through future cartridges that quickly.
Okay so I order a new set of cartridges at the incredible price of $52!!!! I installed them on Jan. 9 and guess what happened last night? Mind you I have been so busy I think I have only used the printer maybe 10 times total since then and again no pictures only text documents. You guessed it, it is telling me that I am out of yellow ink! I am livid!!!!! Someone PLEASE tell me what on earth is going on? I am ready to box it up and bring it back to Best Buy and buy another Canon printer like the one that we had before. Has anyone had this problem before? How much money do you spend a year on ink? I think I replaced my ink cartridges maybe 2 times a year on our old printer.
GRRRRRRRR!


EDITED TO ADD: Epson has agreed to send me a new printer free of charge and ink cartridges to replace the ones that it ate up. Cross your fingers that it solves the issue.

De-lurking Week

Did you know this is de-lurking week? I found out when I was visiting Mari, so I'm passing it on. All you have to do is go to my comments and let me know you've been here. A simple hi will do!

A fun goal met.

Zack is back into the swing of indoor track meets. He had a meet at Cornerstone College last night. The last time he went to a meet at Cornerstone College (his junior year) he learned that the throwing pit was only about 55' and then you hit a wall. No one was able to hit the wall that time but that is a reachable distance by some of the bigger throwers. That being said Zack can now throw past that so he was excited to go to the meet last night because he wanted to "hit the wall". Guess what? They moved the ring back to give 5 more feet before you would hit the wall but that didn't stop Zack. He was still able to accomplish his goal. It was a fun night. He took first with a throw of 60'1" (which is as far as the could measure obviously because the wall stopped it).

Crazy friendship

My dad sent me the link to this video. I hope you enjoy it, I did.

I'm still here!

Can you tell that the kids have been out of school? It is hard to find time to blog with a houseful of people. I will try to do a quick "catch up" of some of the fun things that have been going on around here.
Christmas day Mark and Zack left for Texas on a hunting trip. It was an early graduation gift for Zack so I guess that means he better graduate now. LOL! We paid for half of it and a close family friend that Zack calls "Uncle Ed" paid for the other half of it. Mark, Ed and Zack all went. Zack was the only successful hunter of the three and he got a buffalo and a fallow deer. I only have pictures so far of the buffalo. (Lesson learned: don't send men with a new camera. Wink!) They all had a wonderful time and continue to share stories with us.

(Zack, Mark, Uncle Ed, ? and Todd -? and Todd are "fellow hunters" that met them there along with Mike who was taking the picture.)

We had a low key New Year's Eve. We went over to our friends Jay and Lynnea's house for some catching up. Mark slept for almost 2 hours on their couch. Poor guy had driven through the night and all day to get back from Texas. He was beat. So we made fun of him while he snored. It was great entertainment. LOL!
While Mark was gone I had hinted that I would really like an iPod Touch and asked him what he thought about me getting one. He called home Tuesday night and told me to go get one if I wanted to. It was about 10pm at night when he called but all of us girls were up because I had let them have coke with their pizza and my kids aren't used to the caffeine. They were wide awake. I looked at them after I got off the phone with Mark and said, "You girls feeling like going out right now to Wal-mart and getting it?" I am certain you know the answer. We were back home a little after 11pm. It was fun to do something so out of character and my girls couldn't stop talking about it. We have all had fun playing with it. It has become somewhat of a family gadget but I still get it when I want it. Wink!
Then last Friday we picked up my niece, Emily, from my folk's house. My sister and her husband had left on Wednesday to Florida for the wedding of my sister's boss. We got to have Emily from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon. What a blessing! We enjoyed her so much even though it still didn't feel like long enough. We surprised Julie and Leo and met them at the airport. They were planning on coming to our house to pick up Emily. I remember how long the travel back home is when you have been away from your kids, you can't get home fast enough. They were so happy to see us waiting for them when they got off the plane. They hadn't suspected a thing. It was all worth it to see them both loving on Emily and her soaking every bit of it up.
So now the kids are back in school and life is returning to as normal as our life can get. Anna is in full swing with basketball and still has soccer a couple times a month. Zack is gearing up for the indoor season of track. He has a meet this saturday. Kaylyn is laying low until outdoor track season starts after spring break. Libby is enjoying a field trip to Lansing today to visit the state capital. She hardly slept last night anticipating. I was so bummed that I wasn't one of the parents picked to go along. I am sure she is having fun. Kim is her chaperone since her daughter Bekah is in the same class as Libby. Libby was excited about that.
Smiles!