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I’m exhausted today. Emma and I went to the country fair down the street. I was whooped before we even got in the fair. We had to park in a field 1/2 mile away and I had to push Emma in her stroller through the grass and sand. I was feeling kind of weak to begin with today and after that I was really tired. The fair was really nice though. It had craft booths, food, games for kids, a bandstand, petting zoo (a winner with Emma). It was nice, but it would have been better had I had someone to really share it with. Scott is worked today. So Emma was asleep before we even got out of the parking lot. I wanted to sleep but I called around about houses instead. Looks like the housing magazines are about 2 months behind and most of the houses I inquired about were sold. Scott still hasn’t talked to Fst. Sgt. yet. He has been out the last 4 days. Of course. I’m taking my hunch though and looking at houses here. It does look like there’s plenty to choose from.

Emma tried to say turtle today. It came out te-ta but you could tell she was trying. I give her a few months and she’ll have quite a few words on her list.

My sister is supposed to come down tomorrow. Our church is having “Sunday Fun Day”. I guess another fair type thing. It’s from 4-7 and good thing because it is HOT here. It is only April and it was 93 here today! No wonder I was dying at the fair!

Stolen from <a href=”http://www.cootiehog.com”>cootiehog.com</a>. Almost all of these were read because I was required to thanks to English AP in high school. I might have read even more of them as the titles are very familiar but I can’t seem to remember what it’s about, so I didn’t highlight them.

<b>Beowulf</b>
Achebe, Chinua – Things Fall Apart
Agee, James – A Death in the Family
<b>Austen, Jane – Pride and Prejudice</b>
Baldwin, James – Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel – Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul – The Adventures of Augie March
<b>Brontë, Charlotte – Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily – Wuthering Heights</b>
Camus, Albert – The Stranger
Cather, Willa – Death Comes for the Archbishop
<b>Chaucer, Geoffrey – The Canterbury Tales</b>
Chekhov, Anton – The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate – The Awakening
<b>Conrad, Joseph – Heart of Darkness</b>
Cooper, James Fenimore – The Last of the Mohicans
<b>Crane, Stephen – The Red Badge of Courage </b>
Dante – Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel – Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel – Robinson Crusoe
<b>Dickens, Charles – A Tale of Two Cities</b>
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor – Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore – An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre – The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George – The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph – Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo – Selected Essays
<b>Faulkner, William – As I Lay Dying</b>
Faulkner, William – The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry – Tom Jones
<b>Fitzgerald, F. Scott – The Great Gatsby </b>
Flaubert, Gustave – Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox – The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von – Faust
Golding, William – Lord of the Flies
<b>Hardy, Thomas – Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel – The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph – Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest – A Farewell to Arms
Homer – The Iliad
Homer – The Odyssey</b>
Hugo, Victor – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale – Their Eyes Were Watching God
<b>Huxley, Aldous – Brave New World</b>
Ibsen, Henrik – A Doll’s House
James, Henry – The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry – The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz – The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong – The Woman Warrior
<b>Lee, Harper – To Kill a Mockingbird</b>
Lewis, Sinclair – Babbitt
London, Jack – The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas – The Magic Mountain
<b>Marquez, Gabriel García – One Hundred Years of Solitude</b>
Melville, Herman – Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman – Moby Dick
<b>Miller, Arthur – The Crucible</b>
Morrison, Toni – Beloved
O’Connor, Flannery – A Good Man is Hard to Find
O’Neill, Eugene – Long Day’s Journey into Night
Orwell, George – Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris – Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia – The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan – Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel – Swann’s Way
Pynchon, Thomas – The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria – All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond – Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry – Call It Sleep
<b>Salinger, J.D. – The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William – Hamlet
Shakespeare, William – Macbeth</b>
Shakespeare, William – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
<b>Shakespeare, William – Romeo and Juliet</b>
Shaw, George Bernard – Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary – Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon – Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles – Antigone
<b>Sophocles – Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John – The Grapes of Wrath </b>
Stevenson, Robert Louis – Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
<b>Swift, Jonathan – Gulliver’s Travels</b>
Thackeray, William – Vanity Fair
<b>Thoreau, Henry David – Walden</b>
Tolstoy, Leo – War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan – Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire – Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. – Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice – The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith – The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora – Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt – Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar – The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee – The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia – To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard – Native Son

I just got my socks shocked off me. My MIL just sent me a note back after I told her about our lease situation. You have to understand that my MIL abhorred the idea of us moving away and cried on our porch as we packed the truck. She sometimes has been less than supportive of our decisions. This is the note I just got from her…

<i>IT WILL ALL WORK OUT FOR THE BEST, GOD KNOWS YOUR HEART AND HE WILL HONOR YOUR DESIRE,; IF WE JUST FOLLOW HIS LEADERSHIP. NO ONE WNTS YOU GUYS BACK, MORE THAN I DOBUT IT WILL HAPPEN WHEN GOD WANTS IT TO HAPPEN. SO I PUT YOU GUYS FUTURE IN HIS HAND, AND EXCEPT WHATEVER HIS WILL MAY BE. EVEN THOUGH IT SOMETIMES IS HARD TO DO. I LOVE YOU GUYS AND MISS YOU SO MUCH. BUT YOU HAVE BOTH BEEN CLOSER TO EACH OTHER THROUGH THIS MOVE AND THAT IS A GREAT THING. AFTER BEING SEPRARATED FOR ALMOST 6 MONTHS YOU NEEDED THE TIE ALONE AND I CAN SEE ATHAT NOW, EVEN IF I DID NOT WANT IT TO HAPPEN THE FRUITS HAVE BEEN WONDEERFUL SEEING YOU AND SCOTT GROW CLOSER TOGETHER AS A FAMILY, AND HAVE THAT SPECIAL TIME WITH EMMA GRACE, ALSO</i>

I have been struggling with the reason for being down here but if it was solely for her to let go a little and respect our decisions as a couple, then I’m all for it.

Crap. I think our “move decision” just got pushed up a little. The apartments left a note saying they had to have a 60 day written notice that we were leaving. That’s in 9 days. That means Scott HAS to go talk to Fst. Sgt. this week and find out what’s up. I have a feeling we’re going to be buying house here and not going home :(.

Well, here’s my run down

George disappointed me. It was all a mess. I don’t think he even heard the music.
Diana was good, but not great. I sang that song with my middle school’s show choir, so maybe my memories clouded my judgement because the judges seem to like it.
LaToya – great, but I don’t think her best performance?
Jennifer – I really enjoyed her for the first time last night. I thought she let the song carry its own integrity while giving it some umph
John – I also enjoyed him although the judges didn’t
Jasmine – what can I say? the girl has a nice voice, but she’s not going to win this thing
Fantasia – I didn’t get to see it because my husband was begging to see the end of Punk’d (huh?!? He NEVER likes watching MTV)

Emma is 17 months today. Wow. The latest development with her pretty much just involves her trying to talk. She’s also working on climbing on things. Things she is trying or can say:
Momma, Da-da, Kyle, MawMaw, PawPaw, bye bye(her best), cat, dog, baby, more, please (peese–it’s so cute), no, ball.
She does animal sounds: dog, cat, cow, monkey, tiger (newest, getting pretty good at that growl), pig, horse and she does the tractor sound. She also does movements with some of these.
She likes taking care of her baby. She strolls her around, feeds her the bottle, brushes her hair. Gives her hugs. Pats her on the back. Hopefully all a good sign for the REAL baby on the way.
She likes to play puzzles (which she’s really good at), read books, stroll her baby, pretend to cook, play with all of my tupperware. She still likes anything electronic. She likes to play in Mattie’s water bowl. She drapes clothing on top of her, but doesn’t quite know how to get it on yet. She’s working really hard on getting the shoes on. She has mastered getting mine on and even walks in them.
She’s only taking one nap a day. I’m lucky to get 2 hours. The first is spent in her crib and then lots of times, she lays with me on the couch and sleeps another hour. And no, I really don’t mind laying on the couch for an hour. She goes to sleep by herself at night. Since the time changed it is now 8:30 and she usually wakes up around 7. Today I was lucky and it was 7:50.
She wears 18 months size clothing but can get in a few 24 months.
She still takes her paci. She just mastered the straw and MUST have one if anyone else has one. But it’s not too fun to share because not everything makes it up the straw the second or third sip. Yes, it’s gross.
She has no clue about the potty, going to the potty, anything remotely that makes me think she might be ready to potty train early. She knows what I want to do when I say let’s go change her diaper. She runs straight to her room for the changing table. But she doesn’t let me know when she’s dirty. She has no interest in the toilet. She has no interest in what I’m doing on the potty. She has no words for what she or I are doing. She still doesn’t listen to all the commands I give her. Basically, the girl is not ready for potty training. Which I am TOTALLY fine with. I would much rather change a diaper quickly than find a potty and continually ask if she has to go. And I imagine the clean up during the learning process is fairly yucky.

So, here is a few pictures to show a few things I’m talking about..
[Read more…] about Emma is 17 months today.

Ooo I’m so excited! I just got back from the dr and it was amazing how different the baby looked. We could see the head, arm and leg buds. We saw and heard the heartbeat. I can’t believe how different it made me feel about this now! We’re having another baby!!

American Idol rocked last night…except of course when we took a little trip to the Jailhouse. That was a little, er, a lot painful. I think I disagreed with the judges on almost every performance. Here’s my rundown

George – I thought he was good. I mean, it wasn’t his best, but his voice is so sexy!
Fantasia – The best of the night, season, all 3 seasons. That was awesome.
LaToya – Excellent. Gave Fantasia a run for her money.
Diana – I didn’t enjoy at all. I thought she had too many mistakes
Jasmine – Blah
JPL – painful
John – good, but he’s no American Idol. sorry.
Jennifer – You know, she has a great voice, but I could SO see her standing on that cruise boat singing it. I’m surprised Simon didn’t say something about it being karokeish. Plus, I don’t like her attitude. She acts all nice when they say good things and then if she’s in the bottom 3 and thinks she’s going home, all she can do is roll her eyes and look very NOT self-confident.

Bachelor
Ok, so Jenny is the spy. Who know? I thought it was a brunette. I don’t think she was insistent enough about Trish. Can you believe that girl? She was completely insane. I couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. Jesse needs to wake up and hopefully Jenny’s ultimatum next week does the job. I just hate that she has someone’s spot. And for that matter, I think it sucks that Jenny is taking up someone else’s spot. I would be so mad if I had been on the show. And why was everyone gasping when he talked about waking up to a stranger all the time. Hello! I don’t want to further any stereotypes but the guy is a NFL football player, why would that surprise them?? I think so far I like Mandy Jaye. Jessica B. seems good, but maybe a little too young. And the cheerleader girl! Ack! She is a horror to watch. I want to close my ears when I hear her. If there wasn’t the spy going on this year, I think it would be pretty boring so far.

Oh, and the extended entry has a snapshot of Emma at Easter.
[Read more…] about American Idol rocked last night…except