I didn't sleep well last night.
It's spring in Tracy and that pretty much means-WIND. Holly heck, was it windy last night. Normally, not a huge deal...but last night the wind was so bad it was catching in the exhaust fan on the roof of the house....which, apparently is right above our bedroom. It was making the most awful sound. Think of the biggest mosquito you could possibly imagine. Now think of that mosquito buzzing right in your ear. That's the only way I can think to describe it. I think I could have just ignored it and slept through it. But Pete...no. Pete was having a little man fit about it. And then every time I would hear it, I was wondering if this would be the time he got out of bed and tried to shoot the noise with a shotgun. I mean....it was bad. But there was nothing we could do about it. How do you stop some weird noise on your roof in the middle of the night?? Much tossing and turning from both sides of the bed last night. Then...to make it just a tiny bit worse...about 1:30 in the morning, a second noise started accompanying the prehistoric mosquito noise. Our neighbors just recently put their house up for sale. The sound was their metal sign flipping around and smacking itself on the the wood post. *sigh* it was crazy times last night.
So not much else going on around here. Besides the wind, its been so nice outside. So we've just been hanging out, going to the park, cleaning up the yard...that kind of thing.
I'm also trying to plan our Second Annual Easter at the Ranch party. Last year we went up to the ranch, had a BBQ and Easter egg hunt for the kids. It was really fun so we decided to do it again this year......only bigger. Last year it was just our family. This time....well this time I don't even know...Pete just keeps inviting people! Which is fine....except that I've been put in charge of organizing food and the all important Egg Hunt. Do you know how hard that is when you have no idea how many people to expect? Or how many kids there will be? Any suggestions on how to do a super cool egg hunt? I'm thinking of organizing some sort of fun things for the adults too. If you have any ideas, please let me know!!
I think that's all I got for now....

Back in Business.

At least I hope we are.
Over 200 dollars, countless hours on the phone and a week later, I think, I hope, my computer is fixed.
Apparently we had a whopper of a virus. Actually once all the scanning and deleting were done, there were over 450 suspicious, malicious, trojanish, wormish, adware, spyware and all kinds of junk on this computer. Yes, that is not a typo. Four HUNDRED and 50 baddies on here. I asked the technician...what did I do? How did it get so bad? And he didn't have an answer. He said sometimes it just happens.
One thing I can warn everybody about is a trojan or something called Spyware 2009. This is a major baddie. It acts just like Windows or your antivirus telling you that you have a virus. It asks you "do you want to stop this attack?" DON'T CLICK ON ANYTHING. NOT EVEN "NO". The technician said even if you click on "no" it still downloads it to your computer. And it ended up preventing all the antivirus on my computer from working and preventing us from downloading any other program to delete the bastard. (pardon my french) I was on the phone yesterday from about 2 in the afternoon until 7 o'clock last night while the tech fixed my computer remotely (from India).
Anyway I hope we got it taken care of.
On to other things...
We had a blast at Disneyland. Gosh, I just love that place. I ended up going on a couple of rides by myself (because the kids were too little so Pete and I just traded off with them) and after that experience I decided I could absolutely go to Disneyland all by myself and have a great time. Of course, its much more fun to share the experience, but if given the opportunity I'd go all by myself. I just love it so much.
The kids had a great time too. Megan (although you cant really tell from the pics) LOVED it. She loved every ride we put her on and just soaked up the whole experience.

Jake liked it too, although I was thinking he might need some therapy afterwards. See Pete and I are kind of mean. We put that kid on every ride he was big enough to go on. Including Space Mountain and the Hollywood Tower of Terror. YEP. Space Mountain is my favorite ride and I was so excited for him to go on it. He went on with Pete and when he got off I was like "come on! go on it with me!!!" and he didn't say anything. I said "didn't you like it??" He just looked at me for a second and then said. "It was STUPID." It actually scared the crap out of him. I guess we're mean parents. Oh well, it was good for him. :) After being home for a while he's calmed down a bit and decided that he had a great time. His favorite ride was Splash Mountain which really surprised me considering it has a big drop off at the end. Megan's favorite was probably Pirates of the Caribbean. (smart girl! i love that one too) Anyway, it was a great time. I'm so glad we went and got to have some time together. Megan was absolutely attached to her daddy the entire time. No one else was allowed to push her stroller-ever. It was sweet.
Last week we were blessed with a couple of really beautiful days. Thursday I took the kids for a picnic at the park and Friday we spent all afternoon cleaning up the yard. I'm so ready for the warm weather!!

Saturday it rained again so I spent most of the day cleaning up the house and doing a little scrapbooking.

I was lucky, Jake went to a birthday party and Megan took a good long nap so I basically had the afternoon to myself. It was nice.
Oh, and one more thing...I'm pretty sure this made national headlines--4 police officers were killed in the line of duty on Sunday here in Oakland. I was shocked and saddened to find out that one of them lived right down the street from me. I didn't know him personally, but I always saw him and his wife and kids out in the yard, they always were very active in the neighborhood. He worked for the Oakland PD since 1991. Anyway, I'm just very sad for his wife and children and if you're the praying type, if you could just remember the families of these guys who lost their lives, that would be great.

*ugh*

I don't even know what to write.
I'm so irritated beyond belief right now.
We had a super time in Disneyland...and right now I just want to go back! I just want to go back to vacation!
Right before we left, I'd had a few problems with a virus on my computer. I had virus protection and I thought that it had been taken care of. But as soon as we got home I noticed there was obviously still a problem. By Monday afternoon I was on the phone with the internet security company for probably 2 hours or more. We thought the problem was taken care of. Come to find out...that was just the beginning. Monday night Pete was checking his emails and all of a sudden all kinds of weird stuff started happening and then the whole thing shut down. At one point there was even random sound bytes coming out of my speakers spontaneously. It was really crazy.
I got back on the phone at 8 am Tuesday and spent the majority of the day either on my phone or on the computer (or both) trying to fix it. At one point, I was on the phone with tech, my other line was beeping in my ear..I look at the phone and see it the school calling. I put the tech girl on hold, answered the phone fearing something terrible had happened, only to find out that Jake had spilled water all down the front of him and needed a change of clothes. I then had to grab my cell phone, text my SIL (who was super busy) to come over and get some clothes and take them to Jake. It was just kind of insane. The last straw for me last night was when I received an email from Tech Support that instructed me to unintstall and then reinstall my virus/security software. I followed the directions just as instructed to. After I'd uninstalled and began reinstalling, I was prompted for a product serial number. uh.....WHAT?! The product was installed at the factory, hence I did not have a serial number. Well, I DID have one...but I uninstalled the program and was not instructed to retrieve the number before I uninstalled the program. This might seem like common sense to some...but I really don't know that much about computers. You've got to spell it out for me. So there I was...after about 8 hours of installing, uninstalling, creating system files, waiting for emails etc... and then looking at this blinking cursor as it waited for some magic number I did not have. {insert brief period of tears here.}
It seems stupid to get so worked up about something that...really?...in the big picture....what does it really mean? NOTHING. But unfortunately, in the age we live in, it almost seems impossible. Of course, I use the computer mostly for casual stuff. But I've begun paying my bills online, and we run a business...all of Petes business stuff is stored on this machine. To think of not having a computer...well honestly, kind of freaks me out.
At this point the computer is still broke. It seems silly to even be on the internet when the internet is what is causing all this crap. But I'm still waiting for an email as to what to do next.
And now the crazy sounds are coming out of the speakers again. AHHHH!!!
Anyway, I'm dreading getting back on the phone today. I can't even bear the thought of talking to another techy. I can't even bear the thought of uninstalling or reinstalling anything else. I wish the genie could just twiddle her nose and fix it.

I've started and deleted this post about three times in the past week. I guess the long and the short of it is....I just don't have anything real interesting to write about. And I keep staring at a blinking cursor wondering what to type next.
One thing that's been on my mind lately...my neighbors. We have some really great ones and some really snobby ones, and some really irritating ones. One thing I will not miss if we ever move from here is the neighbors with the crazy dogs. You remember...the Attack Dog that jumped on Jake? The thing is..they're actually really nice people. They always say "hi" when we see each other. They've invited us to BBQ's. They even throw doggie biscuits over the fence to our dogs. But they drive Pete and I absolutely NUTS. Here's the thing...and I admit, some of it is my issue, because it really involves MY dog....But these neighbors come home at like 1 o'clock in the morning. And as soon as they open their garage door, MY dog starts barking like crazy. And of course it wakes us up. We lay there for a minute hoping they'll just go inside and she'll stop. But then the neighbors let their Attack Dog loose in the ally-way. (because it's the only 'safe' time they have to let the dog out lest it attack someone) And that just makes my dog go even MORE crazy. And the people just stand out there in their driveway and talk and laugh and....whatever like it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon. And my dog just keeps on barking. And then I get up and bang on the window. But she still barks because the Attack Dog is now sniffing on the other side of the fence. And then Pete gets up and goes downstairs, then outside and yells at Maggie to be quiet. And the people still stand out there like it's no big deal. But it is a big deal at 1 in the morning! And then then they finally go in and I lay there wide awake. And then I decide I need to get up and pee. So I get up again and go. And then I lay back down and stare at the ceiling for another hour before I finally fall back asleep.
*whew* well that was a rant, yeah? It's just so annoying. I will not miss that.
Only 2 days until we leave for Disneyland! Jake is finally getting the concept of time. We've been talking about, and talking about, and talking about this trip for weeks. And we keep saying "soon!", "soon!" "couple more weeks!". But you know to a kid...really that hardly makes any sense to them. Finally on Friday Jake understood just how soon the trip really is. I told him just 5 more days. "Five more weeks!?", he said. "No, five more days", I said. "ooooh", he said. But I could tell he still didn't quite get it. So I put it kid terms: "two stay-at-home days and two school days and then we're going". And that was the ticket. So all this afternoon he's been going around yelling...One more school day! One more school day!
Today I went and picked up a bunch of snacks for the drive down. It's only about 5 or 6 hours from our house, but regardless....Road trip=major snack fest! I also picked up lap boards, coloring books and crayons for the kids to keep them occupied. We have a portable DVD player...but it's pretty much a P.O.S. so I'm planning ahead in case of DVD meltdown. And as Pete says, (in his big man voice) "we never had that kind of stuff when we were kids! They will learn to behave in a car just like we had to". Which of course, he's right....but all of us moms know how handy that little machine is sometimes!
Anyway, so I guess that's it. I'll be back next week with pictures! :)