Life With Frenchie

Although, I very well may be. I really don’t feel like recounting the whole thing, but suffice it to say, I screwed up my blog last night, manually recreated it, then was able to get my backup restored by my host, so it’s back to its old self again. Yay!!

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Now that EP and I have gotten engaged, and set a date, dreams of vacations have turned into dreams of honeymoons! I had considered going to Nicaragua and renting a house before, but now that we’re talking honeymoon, there’s no way I’m keeping house! I want to be spoiled. I still think somewhere like Nicaragua would be a neat place to consider for a getaway, but it woud have to be in a hotel if we’re talking honeymoon. Now, instead of searching for houses and other rental properties, I looked for hotels in Nicaragua.

The last time I looked up information about Nicaragua, I found out about a small village - San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. I’m the type that, once I get an idea in my head, it won’t get out. In this case, even though I’m changing gears and looking for hotels, the thought of staying in San Juan del Sur is still floating around in my head.

I came across this San Juan del Sur hotel. It looks like something in paradise! It’s not one of those mega-hotels that is the size of a small city. Looking through the pictures, I didn’t see the crowds of people you usually have at most resorts. The pictures of the hotel and ammenities just had a sense of peace and relaxation about them. I can’t wait until we pick an actual location!

Sponsored by www.laposadaazul.com

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…and I’m gonna get married!

Yes boys & girls, you read that right. I got engaged this morning! No date yet. EP says sometime in 2020! I can guarantee it will be long before then! We have to go tomorrow to try and find a band cause he just bought the solitaire and standard ring. He said I could choose a different band if I wanted. The one I have now is close to falling off. It just twirls around my finger on its own. Guess I’ll have a new section coming soon - Wedding Planning with Frenchie! Any and all suggestions and resources for planning are more than welcome!

Oh, and I’ll fill you in on Christmas later. For now, back to time with the family. :-)

Merry Christmas everyone!

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He just called me to say he was at Publix and asked if I needed him to pick up anything for my party! As I was thinking, he started suggesting things and then finally said “I’ve got it all handled.”

I LOVE HIM!

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Seriously, I can feel that invisible someone standing over me with a drill to my skull! They are trying to drill down, through my skull, and out my nasal passage. That’s exactly how it feels! I am pretty sure I know the cause of the headache - stress!

I have been going crazy trying to get Mommy’s Christmas present. I wasn’t sure what to get her, but once I figured out what the perfect gift would be, I had to find one in my budget and get it to her. Unfortunately, the finding didn’t happen until this morning around 7:30 AM. She was kind enough to say she didn’t need to have her gift in her possession by Christmas Day, but I still had to face the UPS store this afternoon. It wasn’t as bad as I thought though, so the last long distance present has been sent and as an added bonus, I found the perfect card for someone!

Tonight, I have my jewelry party…finally. EP has been awesome in getting the house put back together over the past two days. He finished the painting and cleaned up a whole bunch. I helped some with the furniture moving and putting books back on the bookshelf and weeding out the trash last night, but there was still work to be done today in the kitchen, so EP came through bigtime by volunteering to clean up the kitchen for me today so I didn’t have to do it last night. All that’s left is stopping by the store to get a veggie tray and then making to the house on time! Wish me luck!!

On a sadder note, EPs grandfather passed away today. He has been sick for a while and this was expected, but it is still sad. I only got the chance to meet him twice but he was such a wonderful person, even if he was not the same person that EP grew up knowing. I feel so badly for his family during this time and I wish there were more I could do, but I just don’t know what to do. We’re not going over there right away. EP has decided that we will wait until the funeral to make the trip, so we will be heading to the other coast in the next few days to be with his family.

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Wow. Just wow.

Jamie Lynn Spears Says She’s Pregnant
1 hour ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Another Spears baby is reportedly on the way — and it’s not Britney’s. Jamie Lynn Spears, the 16-year-old “Zoey 101″ star and sister of Britney, tells OK! magazine that she’s pregnant and that the father is her longtime boyfriend, Casey Aldridge.

“It was a shock for both of us, so unexpected,” she says. “I was in complete and total shock and so was he.”

Spears is 12 weeks along and initially kept the news to herself when she learned of the pregnancy from an at-home test and subsequent doctor visit, she told the celebrity magazine, which hits stands in New York on Wednesday and the rest of the country by Friday.

“As soon as I found out for sure from the doctor, I took two weeks to myself where I didn’t tell anybody,” she says. “Only one of my friends knew because I needed to work out what I would do for myself before I let anyone’s opinion affect my decision. Then I told my parents and my friends. I was scared, but I had to do what was right for me.”

Spears broke the news to her mother, Lynne, just before Thanksgiving, the magazine says.

“She was very upset because it wasn’t what she expected at all,” Spears says. “A week after, she had time to cope with it and became very supportive.”

Lynne Spears, already grandmother to Britney’s young sons, says: “I didn’t believe it because Jamie Lynn’s always been so conscientious. She’s never late for her curfew. I was in shock. I mean, this is my 16-year-old baby.”

She says her actress daughter, the telegenic heroine of the popular Nickelodeon series “Zoey 101,” has known Aldridge for years and began dating him in high school.

Jamie Lynn plans to raise the baby in her home state of Louisiana — “so it can have a normal family life.”

The third season of “Zoey 101″ wraps up Jan. 4.

“I haven’t spoken to (Nickelodeon) personally, but they have always been so great to me over the past years and have given me so many opportunities.”

What message does she want to send to other teens about premarital sex?

“I definitely don’t think it’s something you should do; it’s better to wait,” she says. “But I can’t be judgmental because it’s a position I put myself in.”

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So, I’ve mentioned that I’m a Girl Scout leader and I’ve made mention of some of the various activities that I have participated in with MM and the troop, but I’ve yet to really talk about my Girl Scout experience. To be honest, I’ve been avoiding it. That means that this post is going to be a Girl Scout potluck of sorts. It’s just going to have random stuff in it to try and catch y’all up and, once again, get you inside my head.

I’ve been MM’s Girl Scout leader for the past 3+ years. I started when we were in CT and she was in first grade. It was somewhat by default because I had been trying to get MM into Girl Scouts since she was old enough to be a Daisy but there was always a lack of leaders and then we moved a couple of times. Finally, in CT, I was put in touch with a very wonderful woman who’d been a part of Girl Scouting for years and she helped me get started as a leader. Really, she was the leader of the Brownie troop, but she was only doing it because the original leader had left and she already had two older troops of her own. Together with another mother, I helped take over the troop. I really enjoyed being a leader and working with the girls. I did run into a slight bump when my co-leader did not fully understand what it meant for me to take actuarial exams and that studying took a lot of time! Shortly after that, MM and I moved to Florida and I was actually looking forward to not being a leader because of how much time it took. Being a single mom and taking actuarial exams, I had little free time as it was. Well, all my plans that I made for all the free time I was going to have went right out the window as soon as I realized there were not an abundance of leaders in the Sunshine state. I was somewhat reluctant to take on the responsibility of having a troop again and even more reluctant of co-leading for fear of having another co-leader who did not understand my other responsibilities. I was extremely lucky to find a co-leader who was just as busy as was and was extremely understanding about my career and what went along with it. We started our first year in the middle of the Girl Scouting year and only had 5 girls. At the beginning of the next year, when MM was going into 3rd grade, we lost one girl and two others were only part-time because of other activities. But, as the year progressed, we began to grow.

Going into this year, I was so excited to get going again. We were going to lose another girl, but we had picked up others along the way and had prospects of more girls joining. Our girls were growing right before our eyes and we were finally getting the hang of this leader “thing”! As the year has progressed, I am sad to say, my excitement has quickly faded. We have 11 10-year-old girls in our troop! OY! Yes, I am crazy! This must be some of the most difficult years for girls and we have 11 of them! I have had to deal with attitude, disrespect, Queen B’s, you name it! And, honestly, I’m just not up to it at this point. I have already told my two co-leaders (our awesome cookie mom signed up to help us co-lead) that this year will be my last year as an official leader. I will stick around to help out as a volunteer parent, but I can not stay on and be disrespected in the way I have been by the girls this year. I understand that this has a lot to do with the age that they are and the point they’re at in their lives, but that doesn’t mean I am any more capable of putting up with it. Who knows what will happen in a year or two. Maybe I will be ready to come back, but as of now, my life is overflowing with things, and this is going to be the first to go. Some of you may be thinking “Man, what a cold-hearted wench.” So be it. But I no longer look forward to going to the meetings. I actually dread it. And until I get back to the point where I can honestly say  I want to be at the meetings, I think it’s time for me to take a break - for the sake of my sanity and health, and for the sake of the girls. They deserve to have a leader that is fully involved and if I can only half-heartedly participate, it’s best I don’t participate at all.

That being said, I still have half a year to go and the next thing we have coming up is something I still look forward to - GIRL SCOUT COOKIES! I’m actually excited about this because MM has very lofty goals for her sales this year. She wants to sell 1700 boxes of cookies so she can earn a week at Girl Scout camp. Yeah, crazy, I know…but whoever said I was sane?!?

Oh, poochie wants out….I’ll have to finish this later.

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Well, not me, but this kid sure won’t be getting much!

Dad sells son’s 90-dollar video game online for more than 9000

Sun Dec 16, 1:37 AM ET

After catching his 15-year-old smoking pot, a father sold the hard-to-get “Guitar Hero III” video game he bought his son for 90 dollars for Christmas at an online auction, fetching 9,000 dollars.

The sale took place after the father spent two weeks searching for the video game for the Nintendo Wii gameboard.

“So I was so relieved in that I had finally got the Holy Grail of Christmas presents pretty much just in the nick of time. I couldn’t wait to spread the jubilance to my son,” the father wrote on the eBay website.

“Then, yesterday, I came home from work early and what do I find? My innocent little boy smoking pot in the back yard with two of his delinquent friends.”

The man, a school teacher, who kept his identity private, said he sold the coveted video game to punish his son and discourage him from smoking dope.

The sale was a boon for the family’s bank account, since the game the father purchased for 90 dollars (US) was finally sold to an Australian who plunked down 9,100 dollars for it.

The naughty son, however, will not go without a present on Christmas.

“I am still considering getting him a game for his Nintendo. Maybe something like Barbie as the Island Princess or Dancing with the Stars … I know he will just love them,” the father said, tongue-in-cheek.

That’s just classic! Good for you, dad! Now I know what to do next time MM gets a bit too big for her breeches!

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What a busy weekend!

I think I already mentioned this, but I’m having a jewelry party this week. Because of this, I convinced EP that we needed to go ahead and get the front hall and living room painted. We decided a few months back that we were going to eventually have the whole house painted. As of Friday, we had only gotten as far as our bathroom! Neither one of us ever seemed to have enough time, or motivation, to get more painting done. We went last week and picked out a color which was an adventure in and of itself. The way our house is set up, it’s like one long continuous wall from the front door. Even though there are doorways along the wall, there’s no clear division of the wall between the entrance and the living room. We decided to go with one color the entire way but to use a different color for the kitchen/dining area. There’s not much of a division there, either, but enough of one that we could work out a way to end one color and start a new one.

When I got home from work Friday, EP had already painted the hall area with one coat. By the end of the night, we got the second coat finished and the first wall of the living room also got its two coats. We then decided to do the “back” wall of the living room in a different color to kind of add a twist to the scheme. As of this morning, we still have the back wall to do! Our house has a few “soft” corners which are more rounded than 90-degree angles. Have you ever painted those? What a PITA!!! Now’s the time to have my brother, who owns a painting business, come for a visit. LOL We also, once again, confirmed exactly how poorly constructed Inland Homes are! When painting over the archway to our bedroom, the paper covering the drywall kept coming off with the paint roller! How frustrating!

By 6:30 Saturday evening, we had only progressed one wall further from where we were Friday evening. Poor EP started on it early Saturday morning while MM and I were marching in the Christmas parade with our Girl Scout troop. I am of limited utility since my height prevents me from painting much higher than eye level for the majority of the population.

On top of all the painting, both the adults and the child had parties to attend Saturday evening. There was also shopping for a birthday present, shopping for charity, participation in the town Christmas Parade, cleaning, dinner out with the visiting comedian, and a stealth move by moi when I bought MM’s Nintendo DS while at Target with her shopping for the birthday gift! As far as she knows, I bought a gift for EP and I wouldn’t let her see it because she has a big mouth! LOL

Well, at the latest, our walls will be painted and the house back in order Wednesday night. I know…that’s 3 more days, but both EP and I have packed schedules until then. So, for now, I will continue to navigate around the bookshelf that’s parked in front of my bedroom closet and hope and pray that doggie doesn’t get a craving for any of the actuarial texts piled on the floor around the house.

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I can’t believe there are only 11 days left until Christmas! I haven’t even opened the Christmas cards, much less signed and mailed them! Also, for some crazy reason, I’m hosting a jewelry party at my house next week, so EP and I are going to be painting like mad folk over the weekend to get that done in time. Hmm…what else can I add to this crazy schedule? Oh yeah, let’s count them off:

1. Christmas parade with Girl Scout troop
2. Birthday party for MM to attend (which means shopping for card and gift)
3. Neighbor’s Christmas party to attend
4. EP’s comedian friend is in town performing this weekend, so dinner and show with him
5. Girl Scout Cookie meeting (YAY! Almost cookie time!!!)
6. Jewelry party
7. Painting
8. Finish Christmas shopping (must get away from EP to buy the last of his gifts)
9. Send Christmas cards
10. Finish client project (not very Christmas-y but, alas, it must be done *le sigh*)

I’m sure there’s tons of things I haven’t covered, but I still feel swamped.

But, it is Christmas time and I LOVE this time of year! We got the tree up this week and it’s gorgeous. We normally go to Home Depot for their trees because their prices are great! Imagine our surprise when we couldn’t find any HD trees this year! We first went to the relatively new HD by the house. There wasn’t even a tent up. We gave them the benefit of the doubt that the store was still new so they weren’t doing it this year. We then drove to the other HD we normally shop at. They had a tent - an empty tent! I talked to my friend who works there and she said that corporate office orders the trees and only ordered 1 shipment for the store! WTF?!?! We ended up going to one of those random lots where the trees are crazy expensive. Our tree was about $20 more than normal. But, I must say, it’s GORGEOUS! I LOVE our tree!

Christmas presents that I’ve ordered have also started arriving. Of course, I’m going to put off wrapping until the last minute. I mean, hey, my life wouldn’t be complete if I actually did things in advance!

So, to close this randomness, I have to figure out how to answer the whole “Is Santa real?” question for MM. Last night was her school’s Winter Wonderland. As a part of the festivities, they had Santa & Mrs. Clause there for pictures. I reminded MM that she had yet to give me her letter to Santa and she started to tell me that some of her friends told her Santa’s not real. I asked her what she thought and she said that she believes Santa is dead and it’s his brothers and sons that do the work for him! Part of me laughs at that, the other part of me wants to say “He’s not real! It’s me & EP that are buying the presents!” I distracted her long enough with my questions that she forgot that I had yet to answer her question about whether Santa existed, but I’m not sure how long I can stall! Any suggestions?

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