New Resolve

Family and friends must be informed of all the wonderful things Chuck does. She is changing and learning daily and you guys are missing it all. So, I will write posts more often letting you know just how great Charlotte is. Let me catch you up. 

She has a few words she says. The first one was uh-oh. I am not so sure we can count that one, but it's the first thing she would say without being coached and in the proper context. Mama, dada, no, and yum are some other words she knows. She seems to know some additional ones, but they are things like juju for drink, baba for book, and mo for more. 

She can walk but isn't confident that she can on her own. She's taken to using walls to walk from one place to another. It's cute watching her go around the whole perimeter of a room just to get something that would have taken about three steps directly.

She's still a happy little girl. She giggles more than I breath it seems. Everything is so funny. Her favorite game lately is shutting doors in mommy's face, then leaning into view with her head tilted to the side and saying hi. She has taken to hugging everything. She especially likes to hug her big pink bunny, but she has started to take Marie (a doll of the Disney cat) around with her all the time. It's funny to watch her trying to crawl with Marie. Sometimes Charlotte will put her in her mouth like a cat does with it's kill.

She just turned one and we threw her a party. It was supposed to be a tea party, but it didn't really work out. The party wasn't what I wanted it to be, but everyone seemed to have a good time and I am glad. Charlotte got to have a ton of sugar and people gushed about her for three hours, so of course she had fun. She also got some awesome stuff. Loads of cute clothes and toys/books and (my favorite) a picnic blanket. I am so grateful that I have such wonderful friends and family. I don't know what I would do without them. 

Well there are some of the basics bits of information of how and what my Snuggle Britches is up to. Thanks for your ear and have a nice day.

We live in Orem now.

We uh...forgot about this. If I'm honest.

Anyway, we're in Orem now. Moved in in March. Like, March 2nd or something. We love this place. Its cheap, and close to work. We don't have a car anymore, so we're getting a lot of exercise. Kate is looking to get into school, and so am I. I'm still working at Convergys. (Oh yeah, I got a job working at Convergys in July. Working on the DirecTV project. Free TV.) We are looking for daycare for Chuck (who, by the way, can pretty well walk now) so that Kate can also get a job. And that's about it, really.

Nevada trip.

Kate took Charlotte out to Nevada with Grandma to see Scotty's graduation. I stayed here to hold down the fort, or something. Anyway, they're back now, so I get to spend my mornings watching Chuck again, which is nice. Not much else has happened recently.

Except, oh wait. I lost my job. So I'm back to a regular sleep schedule. And I cut my hair and shaved hoping to look presentable to potential employers. Still looking for work, and waiting to hear back from the Navy.

Job/Baby/Air Force/Navy/Accident/Overdue Update.

Alllllright. So, its been awhile since we've updated. Apologies. But its for good reason, promise.

To start things off, I have a job. w00t. I started at Wal-Mart in early April. Been working graveyards, met a bunch of cool people, (which is surprising, considering its Payson) and some not so cool people (which is not surprising). Working graveyards has its pro's, but its also got a lot of cons. We'll touch on those later, but so far I enjoy the work, and enjoy (most of) the bosses, so this should work out much better than previous jobs.

I was offered a position at Pinnacle doing Tech Support, but they wanted me to work 30-something hours, and on that would be on top of the 40 hours a week I was working at Walmart. Eek. So I had to turn that one down. They also wouldn't guarantee the position would last longer than 4 months, and I didn't feel comfortable with that.

Also, we mentioned before that Kate was pregnant? Well, she's not anymore. We have a child. A CHILD. How cool is that?

Adorable, isn't she? We named her Charlotte Stowe Brady. She was born April 16, 2010 at 1:01pm. She's definitely a handful, but definitely worth it. Me and Kate are absolutely thrilled to have her. Kate will probably litter this page with pictures of her as she grows up. Kate has a photo album on Facebook for pictures of her, that she updates pretty much every other day. My dad bought us a little point-n-shoot, and Kate takes advantage of it, and takes oodles of pictures.  

This next part needs a little bit of prefacing. Karolynne had the baby on Friday afternoon. We went to the hospital at 5:30am Friday morning. At that point, I had been without sleep for about 48 hours or so. I didn't get any sleep at the hospital at all, due to the sheer anticipation and excitement (understandably). By that evening though, when everything kind of died down, I was waaay tired. Kate suggested I go home and get some sleep, and her mom came to spend the night with her. The thought of staying at the hospital didn't even occur to me (dunno why). I got into the car, and started driving home, dozing off a little here and there, but I figured that it was only a 20 minute drive, I should be fine. OBVIOUSLY, it was a stupid idea. About halfway home, I fell asleep at the wheel, and rear-ended a nice little old lady's RAV4, causing lots of damage to both vehicles. I was fine, and so was the little old lady. No injuries to report, thank goodness.

Our car (the Stratus) had a salvage title, so it was not worth very much money in the first place. Her car was a few years old, but still in pretty good shape, so it was worth a sizable chunk of money. Through a bit of bad timing, we were caught between insurance companies on the car. It had been insured by Kate's mother for quite some time, but she informed us that she was not going to pay for it anymore, and we had to take responsibility for that. We had planned to get insured with either my first or second paycheck from Wal-Mart, since we had very little money since we hadn't had any work since January. The accident happened the night after I got my first paycheck. It hadn't even been cashed yet. So, we didn't have insurance on the vehicle at the time of the accident. Luckily, the police didn't know that, so we didn't get hammered with a huge fine, and a night or two in jail. But that means I'm responsible for the damage to the other vehicle. Which could run as high as about $9,000. Ouch. Still waiting on word from her insurance company exactly how much it is and how they want to make me pay it. Because I don't have 9 grand.

In other news, with this accident and a few small speeding tickets I've gathered, I can't join the Air Force until they're taken care of. Also, I heard back from the Air Force that they didn't want to give me a waiver for my ears. Remember, this is the waiver I didn't need in the first place. So, Air Force is out. Whatever. Navy, here I come. Soon, hopefully.

So that's a lot. You can kind of see why we've been neglecting to update this. We've been busy. Sorry, we'll get better, promise.

Have you looked at the barbies lately? They are not nearly as pretty as they used to be. I was talking to a friend about it and she said, "well you don't want your daughter growing up with unrealistic ideas about beauty do you? She'll have low self esteem." Hopefully my daughter will be smart enough to one, not base her ideas of self worth wholly on physical appearances, and two to know that there will always be women that are prettier than her. I don't care what you look like, someone somewhere is better looking than you. It's the plain and simple truth. To waste time wishing you looked a way you simply don't is ridiculous. So why can't my daughter have pretty dolls to play with? 

I am so mad that everyone blames the media and barbies for these girls with low self esteems. It isn't the model's fault that you can't understand that you don't have her legs. Besides, I don't need to look in a magazine or go to the the movies to see women who are more physically attractive than I am. I just need to look around the street or room. But I don't see how that makes me any less pretty or any of my other qualities less appealing either. I am not the best at anything, but I don't dwell on that, I just work on making mysel happy and accomplishing my goals. I have sense of worth,  accomplishment, am perfectly happy, and I grew up with pretty barbies.

So quit blaming pretty pictures and figures for your insecurities. If you can't find a reason to like yourself as you are, you're not trying very hard. Everyone has something to offer and is of great consequence. Not to mention that everything has both negative and positive things about it, so if you just would tilt your head you'd see that the benefits often outweigh the detriments. Focus on that and not the length and shape of your legs being less desirable than a freaking doll's legs.

Job Update: Again.

Well, after 5 interviews this week (3 w/ Pinnacle), I got offered a job outright at Wal-Mart working as a Graveyard grocery stockboy. Just gotta wait for my drug test to clear, and then I should start the following Monday (3/29 is my guess).

Pay isn't great (just over 9/hr), but it is full time, so that'll be good. I've never worked a graveyard shift either, so I guess we'll see how this goes.

Crib and Other Such Goodies

So I have been looking online at baby stuff since we found out that we found out that we were going to have a girl. I have seen so many different cribs and liked a great many of them. There was one crib in particular  that I absolutely loved, but it was a bit more expensive than we could afford. So I pretty much wrote it off and moved on to the more practical and unbearably plain crib at IKEA. 

When I was told to register at a couple places online for the baby showers I put it on the registry even though I believed that there was no way anyone would spring for the crib. I was wrong. Tonight I found out that mom and dad Brady decided to get it for us and it's due to arrive soon! I am so excited. I cannot wait to set it up.

We got a lot of other cute stuff as well such as a few new outfits, some bibs, bath stuff including a little yellow tub, a changing pad, some blankets and burp rags, a teddy bear, pacifiers, a wipe-case, hand made booties, afghan and sweater, baby sunglasses, and a little mini fridge for the bottles when we have long trips. We also got a diaper bag, but it wasn't quite what we were looking for so we went to take it back and couldn't find anything that fit the bill. We then realized that we had some money from my grandparents that was for the IKEA crib. So we just got store credit and bought other things for the baby with it. (Little black Mary Janes.)

My mom and sister got us some books. Hop on Pop and There's a Wocket in my Pocket! by Dr. Seuss and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig!