Oh the joys of apartment living

via google images/istock photo

Some new neighbors moved in below me awhile back. It's not been a good experience.

Now let me preface this by saying that in the neighbor department, especially being on the 2nd floor, our downstairs neighbors have it pretty easy in my mind. We are out the door in the morning between 8:00 and 8:30 most days and we don't get home until around 6:00 or 7:00 pm most nights. Sometimes even later. We eat dinner and the kids play outside with friends for the majority of the evening most days then it's off to bed for them between 8:00 and 9:00 pm. The only real days we are home more than a few waking hours are Saturday and Sunday, but even then we do cleaning and shopping, church and dinner with the fam. So we aren't consistently home anyway. I don't do any loud cleaning (vacuuming, laundry, dishwasher, etc) after like, 10 pm out of respect because I know that stuff can be kind of loud and believe that is tough, seeing as how most days thats the only time I have to do my cleanup stuff. Not to mention exercising.

Now I'm not completed jaded as to think we are perfectly quiet neighbors. There are three boys up here and they get riled up. There will be a little running around and some wrestling, but I really REALLY try to keep it to a minimum. So sure, we are probably kind of noisy but all in all we really aren't home often enough to be a bother. (*Also note, our quiet hours are from like, 10 pm to 7 am or something like that...you will want to remember this for later on)

BUT.

These new neighbors of ours.....my gosh. They have mastered the art of pounding on the ceiling. I'm pretty positive that they have a broom or something in every single room of their house, because they don't miss a beat. If we so much as walk wrong on the floor they pound at their ceiling not 1 second later. Here are some recent examples.

On Saturday we got Ryder his costume and he was SOO excited that he was doing a little skip in the kitchen while I was opening it up (at like 6 pm*) and we got a pounding. A week or so ago the boys were playing with some friends after dinner and came in to hide from a monster or something. They shut the door kind of loudly and surprise, surprise...we got a pounding.
The boys have a bad habit of running down the hall when they are exciting or grabbing something to play with and every single time, a pounding.
If we walk on one section of the floor by the kitchen that has a little squeak to it, we get a pounding.

The best yet...my bed is kind of squeaky so if I have toss and turn nights, my bed squeaks a little (obviously). Now this isn't like a hugely loud thunder rolling squeak, just a squeak. Well I was having a toss and turn night last night and the bed squeaked. At like 2 am. And literally right in the middle of the squeaking I hear a pounding. I was kind of out of it and wondered if maybe something had fallen because it hadn't registered yet what pounded so I sat up, took inventory and then laid down which resulted in me hitting my head on the headboard a second later. And not even one second after that...a pounding.

Could someone please tell me how a squeak from the apartment above could wake you up at 2 am? Its not like it was squeaking for hours on end...at most there was a minute of squeaking while I turned and adjusted my blankets.

REALLY FOLKS?!

Do you have nothing better to do with your time than sit in your apartment with a broom and bang on your ceiling every time we make a noise?

I really need to hurry up and figure out what I'm doing with my life and moving, because if I'm going to stay in Cedar it's time to find a new place. I can't take this much longer, it's getting ridiculous.

Checkin In

Its been a minute, I'm sorry. Life has been a little crazy. Same ol' crazy stuff but crazy all the same. Work is fabulous...frustrating at times but fabulous. I've still not decided what I'm going to do about moving to St George yet. I need to figure it out soon, but there are sooo many pros and cons that pretty much equal each other out. We do need to figure it out soon however, because Christmas break is rapidly approaching for school. And holy cow can you believe that??? Halloween is next week then Thanksgiving then BOOM Christmas will be here before we know it. This year has been jam packed with amazing experiences and has sped fast at lightening speed I'll tell you what.

I also have about 3 posts in the drafts section I'm working on, one of which is about my absolutely AMAZING experience with the girls of my family at Time Out For Women. It truly was such an inspiring and beautiful weekend. And you will hear all about it soon.

Anywho, thats all for now. Its late and I need my beauty sleep! Have a good night ya'll and more to come later on.

National Infant and Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Day

My Candle

Today, October 15 is National Infant and Pregnancy Loss Remembrance Day (or something to that effect). There was a call for a wave of light at 7 pm in all time zones tonight...I unfortunately wasn't home at my time but its 7 pm somewhere so my candle is lit.
So I remember my sweet Grayson today and the other angel friends he has made in heaven. My heart goes out to those who have suffered the loss of a child tonight. Much love.

One Of My Favorite Things

This post is 100% random. But I had to share a love of mine. 

I was needing a change of pace on my laptop background so I started looking for images and was reminded of one of my very favorite things in all the world......

All images via Google Images

See a trend? There is nothing more loving and endearing to me than a forehead kiss. I have no idea why I feel this way, but it's true. In a perfect world, my future husband will give me forehead kisses often for no other reason than to show his love. Is it only me that thinks forehead kisses are somethin' special? Somehow more sweet than a normal kiss...

Anyway.

On to gush over more sweet forehead kiss pictures until I find a perfect one more my background...have a good night ya'll!

Weekend In Review

We had quite the weekend. Nate decided to go see his dad while Tyler stayed home with Ryder and myself. So on Saturday, we decided after doing a little bit of conference watching and house cleaning to go to Home Depot for the....whatever it was....that was going on there. I have no idea what the event was but it was fun. We were able to see some cute puppies, talk to the Search and Rescue folks and pet their dogs, see the fire fighters and climb in the fire truck, and the boys' favorite part which was building/painting their own trucks.

Tyler building his truck. Hammer and nails and everything!!

Ryder painting his truck. Aren't the aprons adorable?

We also caught the last half of conference with Grandma/Grandpa and then decided to go to a movie. Thank goodness for our Historic Downtown Theatre here in Cedar, we were able to see The Odd Life of Timothy Green for $2 a ticket. I can't even tell you how much better that is then paying $40 just to see a movie with me and the kids (thats including treats, but tickets are at least half that). We were able to treat Grandma to a movie and Betsy/LJ came with us too! It was a very cute movie that wasn't so much geared towards little kids as I thought it would be but a really good movie all the same.

Sunday was a great day, we listened to conference and played with toys. I have to admit I dozed off a few times but all in all the messages were good and just what I needed to hear. And of course off to sunday dinner where Nate came home and let me know he had rolled the 4 wheeler. I think I was in shock at the moment but after it really digested I'm sure happy he was okay...I've known people to get really hurt by doing such and wow.....just happy he was okay...
We decided to go for a walk after dinner and ended up at the boys' school. The kids were going down a super fast slide and Betsy was able to get the funniest vid of Ry! See below...

And that brings us to today.....at the Home Depot event I was given some ID packets for the boys and so for family night tonight I decided we better go over Stranger Danger and put together our kits. We watched a Stranger Danger vid, made a plan of what we would do if someone were to rob us/we had a fire/something else happened and had a fun time getting fingerprints and DNA swabs (these kits were all out!). I hate talking about that kind of stuff because I don't want to even think it could ever happen to our family, but it's better to be prepared than to have my boys get hurt because they don't know what to do.

The fingerprint kits

DNA swabs

All in all we had a wonderful weekend. We missed having Nate join in on the fun but I'm happy he had fun despite the crash. Hope ya'll had a good weekend too!

One Foot in Front of the Other

The boys and I had an experience today. Remember how I'm trying to better myself and all that jazz? Well today I had the chance to do so. We went to Smiths after our SEP meetings to get some dinner and such. Outside was a guy and what looked like his girlfriend playing a guitar for food. I didn't pay much attention to them really and forgot they were even there shortly after going into the store. Then it got interesting.
Muffins were on sale and since muffins make a good go-to breakfast in the morning I stock up. Generally two packages will last me all week (the boys help eat them too) but for some reason I got three instead. As we were walking out the door I saw the couple again. They weren't asking for anything in particular, just said that they were hungry. So when we got to the car, I looked over the items we had bought and really, the only thing they would've been able to eat without some heat source would've been some muffins. I asked the boys if they wanted to share our muffins as we had gotten an extra pack. And of course, they said yes and offered to take them over. I don't know what the intentions of the couple was, and I kept wondering if they really needed the help or not. Did we do the right thing? But when we drove out of the parking lot the girl was snarfing down the muffins like they were going out of style and it helped me to remember that it is not my place to judge whether or not someone really needs help or not but it is my job to do what I can to serve them. I think it was good lesson had for all.

As mentioned before, we had SEPs today for the kids. Tyler is of course excelling and the teacher loves him to death. Nate, who in the past has always been above average since the day he began school, is now a grade lower in reading than he needs to be and his reading comprehension is too low. And although he loves math, he is having a hard time understanding. He is also having issues turning in homework. Does this happen with age? I've realized I need to be more proactive and we will be working on reading and homework every single night together. Something I've unfortunately not been great at.

And lastly to report, we had a wonderful Family Night tonight. Our friends invited us to go play kickball with them and some other families in that neighborhood and we had such a great time! I haven't played kickball in years but it was so much fun to be able to get out with all the kids and the families, and to gain new friends in the process. I feel blessed to know such wonderful people. I really am blessed, just truly blessed.