wow...

happy I don't have any blog followers... I stink at this! :)
hope to get into the routine of writing again sometime soon!

Harbor Landscape Company

Check out our new website for our landscape company:

www.HarborLandscapeCo.com

 

Please feel free to share input!

Sick Days...

Not more than a week after I was mentioning that Harbor is going on 11 months and she has not yet been sick, she got some sort of bug.  We went to bed early on Tuesday night since Kevin had been out plowing all night on Monday, and I woke up around 10pm to find Harbor as hot as an oven.  I striped her clothes off and scurried around for a thermometer.  Her temp was somewhere around 103-104 degrees!  Granted, she was sleeping through all this, but I could tell she was uncomfortable – she had been very restless the last few nights, and I now knew why.  I had figured she was having a growth spurt and was also teething… but apparently it turned into something more.

 

So, I grab my book light and start reading through my Dr. Sears Baby Book – they tell me to get some fever reducing meds in her and let her rest… give it a couple days, and if she’s not better, call the doctor.  We, of course, have no baby meds in the house, so I have to send Kevin out to Walgreens at 12 midnight (did I mention, he had no sleep the night before either!).  I gave her some meds, stayed up with her for a few more hours to notice that the fever was going down and finally got some sleep.  I gave her another dose of meds in the morning, then proceeded to read my two additional books on medical care – 1^st being “How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of your Doctor” and the 2^nd being a guide book that was published by our doctors – Partners in Pediatrics.  The first told me to hold off on the meds till she absolutely needed them.  Having a fever means that your body is doing its job fighting off infection… giving the meds can do two things – first, it can interfere with your body doing its job, and second, it can give a child a false sense that they are well – encouraging them to play and act healthy when they should be resting.  The second book was pretty much a combination of the first two.  (I have to say – I love our doctors!).  So… we kept Harbor off the meds all day on Wednesday, and she seemed sick, but ok.  Come night time, she was feeling really bad, so I gave her another dose and took her to bed, thinking that she would be out for the night.  Boy was I wrong – once that medicine kicked in she was feeling great and wanted to play for hours!  She finally went to sleep and woke up about 3am feeling awful and needed another dose of meds.

 

My mom called me while she was up being crazy, and we were trying to go to sleep, and insisted that I call the doctors.  I told her that I’d done my research, I looked for signs of anything out of the unusual, and that I would wait 3 days and call them if she was still not feeling well.  She explained how worried she was about her, but I insisted that it was all ok. 

 

Well – we had a happy end to the story with Harbor waking up on Thursday morning feeling much better… she eased into the day and was back to her old self by the evening.  I’m proud to say that I’m not one of the 90% of moms that freaks out over a fever and immediately calls the doctor! 

Almost Organic and Becoming Self Sustaining

Before Kevin and I were married, we agreed to do all we could to eventually have an organic household.  We’ve been on the journey for over 3 years now, and although we are not completely there, we’ve come a long way.  The majority of our produce is organic, either purchased from Whole Foods or sent to us from Door to Door Organics.  We’ve ordered a half a cow that we should get in December that was grain fed and free of any antibiotics and hormones.  Most of our meet is purchased either organic or natural, and we do our best to stay away from processed foods. 

We use mostly natural hygiene and cleaning products, with a few exceptions.  We still use un-natural deodorant (which really should be the next to go), shaving cream, laundry detergent, and fabric softener.  Those will all be hard switches when the time comes.   We’ve also switched to using glass containers rather than any plastic and switched from our Nalgene bottles to Klean Kanteen bottles made from stainless steel. 

Anyway, we’ve been working our way to become debt free, but we really don’t want to sacrifice our good eating habits or the use of natural products. So, we’ve decided that our next step in the process is to become self sustaining.  We’ve come up with a few steps to start the process, and many more that we’d like to achieve over time. 

1.       To start with, I’m in the process of finding a good bread recipe – the more basic you buy foods, the less expensive they are, therefore, this will cut our bread costs from about $4 something a loaf down to under a dollar. 

2.      We’re also working on getting a garden started in our basement.  Hopefully next spring we’ll be living somewhere with land and be able to harvest a large garden, but for now, we’re going to do our best to work with what we have.  All it takes is a grow light, some containers, seeds and soil – and hopefully we’ll be off to growing our own produce.  We’ll probably start off with some herbs and maybe some tomato and pepper plants, but hopefully it will grow from there.  We’re also trying to start some fruit trees – starting them off as container plants in our house that we will hopefully be able to transfer to land that we purchase in the spring.  I’ll have pictures to share in the near future!

3.      We’ve also got to make the switch to cloth diapers… I’ve been talking about doing it before Harbor was even born, but I just haven’t gotten around to ordering them yet.  I’m going to do my best to make that happen in the next few weeks.  She’s in a size 3 now, and they get more and more expensive with each increase in size! 

As for the future, hopefully we’ll have some land and we’ll be able to do the big garden, compost pile, chickens to produce our own eggs, etc.  For now, we’re just starting small. 

she's a strange one!

Almost Walking...

Doing laps in the Kitchen.

Pictures

I just uploaded new pictures on snapfish: www.harbormarie.snapfish.com.  I also ordered the pictures from her 4th month through her 8th month - 750 pictures!  That's an average of 150 pictures that I take of the child every month.  The sick part... I actually take the time to put every single picture into a photo album.  The albums hold about 300 pictures if I get extra pages - it took two books to do months 0-3.  At this rate, I'm going to be broke due to the fact that all our money has been spent on pictures!

On top of this – we just had our family pictures taken (www.jimmysphoto.com/comstock) They are great, but I just realized that it’s going to cost a small fortune to get the ones ordered that we want! 

I think we need to go into the picture business!

Teeth & Tools

Harbor got her first tooth the other day – on my birthday to be exact!  What a great surprise!  Luckily, it hasn’t had too much of an effect on her nursing.  I’m sure the day will come, but it’s still pretty low close to her gums. 

For my birthday, Kevin got me tools and a new toolbox for the house – I was very impressed with his creative idea!  I’ve been talking about wanting one since he’s stole all my tools and taken them out to the garage, but I was very surprised that he actually got them for me.  We also are getting fish for our saltwater tank – it’s been sitting there for years without fish, so it will be nice to have some life in the tank.  We actually went to get some last Saturday, but just got to come home with some live rock… ever since we’ve put it into the tank, algae has been growing like crazy!  Hopefully we’ll be able to bring some fish home this weekend.

My parents gave me cash (and a delicious steak and crab leg dinner)!  I’m having a hard time deciding exactly what I’m getting with it, but the theme is most likely going to be kitchen tools / quilting accessories / indoor gardening stuff.  Hopefully I’ll figure it out soon.

 

Something else new – Harbor has started eating dog food!  Maverick’s dishes are raised, so she loves to pull herself up on them.  I’ve been stopping her and digging handfuls of dog food out of her mouth, but I’ve given up.  If she things that the dog food tastes that much better than her food, she can have at it!  

She’s also started standing on her own.  Just for a few seconds (up to 10 seconds so far), but it’s a start.  She’s still only about 8 and a half months old – I’m worried she’s going to be walking soon!

Eating Much More and A Trip To the Zoo...

So, Harbor turned 8 months old on Saturday.  I can’t believe how fast it’s gone, how much she’s growing, and how much she’s changed in the past 8 months.  One difference we’ve noticed is her eating habits.  We started feeding her “real” food (ie – something else besides breast milk) around her 6 month birthday.  She was really interested in it for a couple days and ate about a tablespoon of food once a day.  Then, we had an incident… she threw up one day after her nap and then wanted nothing to do with “real” food.  After a few weeks of trying, we decided to let her take her food strike and sopped feeding her for a week (“real” food, that is – she got plenty of breast milk… don’t worry, we don’t starve our child!).  We then started feeding her again, and it worked… sometimes.  She just seemed to be very inconsistent with her interest in eating. 

Anyway – in the past week or so, we’ve noticed a huge difference.  All of the sudden she’s eating 3 times a day and she gobbles down more than I could have ever imagined!  It’s much more fun to feed a baby that is actually interested in eating!  I’m sure we have many more ups and downs to go through in the feeding process, but for now, we’re on a definite up!

 

On Saturday, we made our first trip to the zoo!  I can’t believe that we’ve lived here for over two years now and I’ve never made it to the zoo… Granted, we went on a Saturday and it was packed (I kept telling Kevin… “we’re self employed and make our own schedule – next time we’re coming on a week day!”), we still had a great time.  Harbor especially liked watching the elephant and the large cats – anything big enough that she could actually pay attention to.  We were there for over three hours and she was awake the entire time – although she did fall asleep as we were walking through the parking lot on the way home. 

 

Anyway – it was nice to get to do something fun over the weekend… we’ve come to realize that most of our two years here have been spent working, moving, or just catching up.  It’s a lot of work to move across the country, start a company, and have a baby!  All worth it, of course, just much different than the life we used to live. 

A little under cooked, and far over due!

Ok, I am fully aware that I’m way behind on this whole blog thing… well – life happened!  I think the last time I actually wrote was back in January, before Harbor came into the world, and well, she’s almost 8 months old now!  So, as for my blogging – it’s been far over due since I’ve written. 

As for Harbor – she came out a little under cooked.  At least as far as timing goes – she was 3 weeks early!  What a surprise she was!

Thankfully, we were blessed with a perfectly healthy, happy, baby girl.  She’s such a joy, and has been ever since she came out!  The home birth went great, although Harbor almost made her appearance before Jean, our wonderful midwife made it to our house!  I’ll share more details later, but for now, hopefully I can redeem myself by sharing plenty of pictures to document the past 8 months. 

 

Go to:

http://harbormarie.snapfish.com/snapfish

 

If you’re not already a member of snapfish, I think you may have to create an account, but it’s free and a great site! 

 

Hopefully, I’ll be back soon – feel free to bug me if I don’t follow through!

 

It's Getting Close!

So, it's been a really, really long time since I've blogged!  What can I say, things have been crazy.  Probably too crazy and it's gotten me into some trouble...  Just about two months ago, Kevin and I decided to change our route and go with a home birth for our baby.  After much extensive research, consideration, and prayer, we decided that this was the best choice for our family.  We found the greatest midwife and have been amazed at the difference in care we've received with her compared to our previous OB. 

I've had some issues with swelling (first in my feet, then in my legs, now, pretty much in all of my body) and the doctors didn't seam to be all that concerned with it.  Our midwife on the other hand, recognizes that it's a sign of me becoming pre-eclamptic and has been very concerned.  She has been great about researching my situation and has tried to continuously come up with different things for me to try to make things better.  Doing everything from dropping down to 3 days a week at work and taking it easy (being lazy) to increasing my protein intake to 150 grams a day; many different supplements and vitamins; and I even just started getting acupuncture.  We finally started to see a decrease in the swelling this morning after my first acupuncture appointment yesterday.  Let's hope and pray that our efforts pay off and that we get to stick with a home birth. 

Among all this work, I've also had to get my blood drawn a few more times than what I had anticipated with pregnancy (I was hoping for only once).  The good news, is that it's become a much less traumatic experience for me.  I used to pass out or have to lay down for about a half hour afterwards before I could do anything – it pretty much ruined my whole day.  I've now gotten to be a pro and I'm in and out of the lab in no time. 

I can think of about 20 more things that I'd love to talk about, but I think I'll keep it short and hopefully write again sometime soon. 

I'm in my 36th week, so let's hope that things get better and go smoothly for the next 4 weeks or so.  We can't wait to meet our baby in the near future!

something to blog about...

Evil woman drivers! 

To begin with, I have to say that I truly feel that Denver is full of the worst drivers ever!  Since we've moved here, I've been amazed at the people out on the road.  I've driven in Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York - but nothing compares to the greater Denver area!  Everyone seams to have somewhere to go that is WAY more important than anyone else on the road, either that, or their just out right mean! 

Anyway, I'm on my way home from work, trying to merge off the highway... there was a orange car next to me on the right, so I patiently sit there with my blinker on and slow down to merge in behind the car.  As I'm waiting, the car behind us comes flying up in the right lane and cuts me off from merging over.  Now, had I not had my blinker on for the last two minutes, and had I not been slowing down to move over, and had she been behind the orange car the whole time, I possibly could have understood her behavior.  Because she seamed to have the specific goal of cutting me off for no good reason, I honk my horn at her and continue to merge to the right (maybe for some crazy reason she really didn't see me).  She decides to honk back and hold her position.  I reluctantly backed down and slid in behind her... almost missing my exit because of her unnecessary actions.  I don't understand what would possess someone to act in this manner... obviously she had somewhere super important to go, although it seamed that she was just trying to frustrate me! 

the car hunt continues...

It's been a very long week!  After the car situation on Monday, I feel like it's put my entire life on hold!  I've spent the majority of the week searching for a new vehicle, but we just can't seam to find what we're looking for.  Probably has something to do with how picky I'm being!  We'd really like to get another Burban that's going to last us... ideally four years.  So I think we've decided to go with a used 2007... being that they're still producing them, the used ones aren't that easy to find. 

I've spent about seven hours at dealerships searching for the non-existent vehicle... I've decided to take my hunt strictly online since I really don't have that much time to spare.  I'm hoping that something comes up soon - I don't know how much longer the current Burban can hold out for!  We got him fixed, but he's still making some nasty noises!  I think he's said with all the talk about ditching him... that makes me sad!

Anyway, on the other side of things - our yard remodeling project has turned into a nightmare!  We're on our third dumpster after Kevin estimated that it shouldn't take much more than one.  The neighbors have apparently been complaining (even after we let them dispose all their trees, branches, and what ever other junk they pulled out of their yard).  So, Kevin got a call from the Town of Castle Rock on Tuesday informing him that the dumpster and all the dirt needs to be gone by this weekend.  They also informed him that we weren't allowed to bring in another dumpster unless we put it in the yard or the driveway.  Bad news was that Haul Away (awful company - bad service - don't recommend them) tried to pick up the last dumpster and it was too heavy, so the only other way to get rid of that dumpster was to bring in another one and move the dirt from one dumpster to another.  So... Haul Away came and was supposed to put the dumpster into the yard, but they put it in the street (just like the Town of Castle Rock forbid us to do), and we've spent the entire weekend moving dirt.  What a fun weekend it was!!! :-)  We even had to miss church on Sunday due to our tight time frame - Haul Away is supposed to do the big pick up on Monday - hopefully before we get anymore hassle from Castle Rock! 

We're probably about four weeks behind schedule on the yard project.  Kevin has lost all ambition to work on it so besides this weekend, not much has gotten done.  I've been busy trying to work full time, run one business, start up another and run the house!  Not much time left for yard work!  I was out there on Saturday though - shoveling dirt just to make sure that Kevin didn't stop working! 

Think that's it for now - back to work tomorrow and into another full week.  I do have Friday off, so that should give me some time to work on the other companies... I hope!  We did find one truck we like, but it happens to be in Nebraska.  I'm up in the air if I really want to make that trip or not... it could end up wasting my full day off!  Good thing about it is that it has everything we wanted in a car and way more!  I sent an email to the dealership on Saturday, but I haven't heard back... I kind of hope it's still available and that they're willing to give us what we're looking for on our trade in.  We'll see - I'm sure that something will come up in the right time.

 

Think that's all for now - very tired and need some sleep!

Night!

I hate cars!

So, this morning started out with me driving to work, pulling up the drive  and realizing that my car was making a very bad noise.  I stopped, got out, checked all my tires to make sure they all had air (it felt like each one of them was flat) realized that they all did, so I got back in and tried to drive... not much luck.  Lots of scary noises and the car jumping up and down!  I pull into the parking lot next to my building and call Kevin to come check it out and then I go to work.  Kevin gets there about a half hour later, calls me to inform me that I just have a flat tire... boy did I feel smart.  Since we have AAA, he goes back to work and we call AAA to change the tire.  I meet the guy out at the car, he changes the tire (and pollutes my entire day with his horrendous plumbers crack that you can see when he's not even bending over!), and drives away.  So I'm thinking... problem solved - this was much easier than I had anticipated!

Not so much... I get in my car to move it over to my parking lot... same problem - lots of scary noises and it starts to dance again! 

I park it one parking lot closer to my building and call Kevin... we decide to leave it for the day and have him come look at it early afternoon. 

I go back to work... nothing too exciting there.  3pm rolls around and Kevin shows up.  We determine that the back left break is catching for some reason, and making the wheel catch while the others are trying to move.  After a few laps around the parking lot and a call to the repair shop, we decide to drive it back down to Castle Rock... things went great... till I got off the highway.  Some jerk in a red van cuts me off causing me to put too much pressure on the breaks and they lock up.  I put the peddle to the metal and the car doesn't move!  Kevin parks at King Soopers, runs over to the truck, throws it into 4 low and the thing dances and squeals all the way to the car shop.  (Kudos to Goodyear, by the way... they've been great!) 

So... the Burban is now spending the night at the shop (we drove by earlier and he looked deserted and sad) and hopefully we'll find out what on earth happened tomorrow. 

 

After this adventure, we decide it's time to go get a new car... the warranty is going to be up on the Burban pretty soon, so with my luck with cars, it's just a better idea to find a new one now!

We spent two and a half hours talking to the salesman, the finance manager, and the floor manager... it completely wore me out!  (so much to the point that I can't really talk about it). 

Nothing was figured in the time we were there, but we'll see how things unfold in the next few days. 

I wasn't a big fan of the new burbans, but after checking out the insides... I think I could handle one. 

 

Think that about does it for tonight... I'm very sleepy and need to go to bed!

Our House in Michigan - Rented!

We actually got some good news today!  After sitting on our house for the past year after our move out to Colorado, we've finally found a renter that is going to pay full price!  After one bad experience with a renter paying not even a third of market rent, and then having another friend in the house for the past six months at a very discounted rate, it will be nice to not have to worry about covering the mortgage payment!  The greatest thing is that she's even willing to pay 6 months up front and sign a year lease.  I'm so happy that we don't have to worry about the house for a year. 

We did consider placing the home up for sale for the summer, but after realizing that the market has only gotten worse since we've left, it would have cost us about $20k to list it at a competitive price.  We decided that renting was the way to go for a few years and that hopefully the market will pick up at some point in time. 

The girl that is renting it seams very nice and I'm hoping that everything works out well.  I guess that only time will tell, but at least I have a good feeling about it. 

the new blog(s)!

So, hopefully this is the start of a new thing... I have such a hard time keeping in touch with people considering how busy we are with me working full time, runing the landscaping company, trying to start my own event planning company, and running the youth group!
On top of everything else, we're in the process of re-doing our entire yard - it's currently a big pile of mud!!! With all the yard work on the weekend, it leaves us pretty much no time for any of the outdoor adventures that we love to have.

Anyway - this is my blog, and I hope to write in it often... I'll come back and fill in more deatil of the above sometime soon!

Kevin also has a blog - it's located at: www.comstockpages.com/comstockpages.com/kevin-blog/blog.html