Looks like things are getting fixed finally!

So, these are the pictures taken during the last rainstorm. This is the same storm where the engineer from Manchester said we were getting 3 "catch basins". Well...they installed the catch basins and now we have a place for rain to go (instead of pooling in the street).

Yesterday they came and tore up our street. Instead of just paving over the top of our street, they decided to do it right and tear all the way down to the dirt and then put new asphalt down. Of course we will take pictures when it is finished because I know that all of your are DYING to know what it will look like having never seen a freshly paved street before.

How Nabisco is duping us!

Before I start my reason for this post, Tanya has been a little distraught lately for another reason (as Nabisco duping us doesn't seem to bother her). She knows that some people are reading the Blog, but alas, only 1 or 2 people actually post comments. This has caused her to feel that perhaps nobody is actually reading the blog and has her questioning on whether she should continue or not. So, if you want Tanya to continue posting, please comment once in awhile to let her know that it is being read.

I remember when I was young and my mother went grocery shopping on Saturdays. When she got home, the 6 boys (including my dad) would ransack the bags to see what she purchased for snacks – often causing chaos and crushed groceries. After finding the 1-2 snacks that she purchased, the finder would quickly open up and annihilate the snacks they found. My mom would complain, in vain, that the snacks were supposed to last a week. Or that the snacks were for our lunches or some other trite reason that we would all ignore. What she was able to do was sneak goodies past us so that we would, indeed, have something for our school lunches.

The few times that my mom purchased Oreo DoubleStuf® cookies, it was great because all of us would be able to enjoy the cookies. Even though the finder was able to finish off an entire package of cookies, there wasn’t enough time to do it before everyone else would see and then jump on top of the finder for the cookies. It was MAYHEM.

Now, I know what you are thinking and you are wrong! DoubleStuf®s are not just an Oreo®, they have twice as much crème filling; therefore, making them twice as good as a regular Oreo®. They have the right ratio of crème to cookie. Now Nabisco® has done some amazing things with Oreo®s over the years that they now have over 45 varieties including:

• Cakesters (ala whoopee pies)
• Winter with Red Crème
• Pure White Fudge Covered
• Golden Original
• Chocolate Mini Bite Size
• Halloween Orange Crème
• Spring Purple Crème
• Oreo with Organic Flour and Sugar
• Milk Chocolate Covered Mint
• Pie Crust
• Ice Cream Cones
• Duo Vanilla and Chocolate
• Uh-Oh with Chocolate Crème
• DoubleStuf® with Chocolate Crème
• Double Delight Chocolate Mint’N Crème

But alas, I am here to lodge my complaint. My dad (and others) has always said that when he was young, the DoubleStuf®s actually had twice as much crème filling. He said that the Oreo®s my mom had been purchasing would actually be considered single stuff or regular Oreo®s.

Well, I always thought how great it would have been to have twice as much crème filling. I even took 2 DoubleStuf® cookies and made a QuadStuf just to see what it would have been like…and it was a delight!

Have you been in the grocery store lately? If you are female, probably yes for grocery shopping; but if you are male, then probably only for snacks/beer/etc… Well, this should really strike to the heart of everyone that reads this. Next time you are there, or you may have already noticed, take a walk down the cookie aisle. As you approach the Oreo DoubleStuf®s, prepare yourself for some mischievous marketing. The first thing you will notice is the packaging of course. It is no longer transparent where you can see what is contained inside. You have to trust them when they say they are DoubleStuf®.

But be forewarned that I have recently noticed that there isn’t as much crème as there was when my mom used to purchase these decadent snacks. Even though they have decreased the amount of crème sandwiched between the 2 chocolate cookies, the number of cookies are staying constant (less crème=more space for cookies) and the price has gone up.

If this is twice as much creme filling as the regular Oreo®s, then it frighten and sickens me to think about the sliver of creme available in the regular Oreo®s now. Can you even see creme in there? Ohh...the humanity!!

So...do us all a favor and stop buying Nabisco® Oreo® DoubleStuf® until they fix this grave mistake.

Way too Happy!

No one should be this happy, but alas, Keira seems to have REALLY enjoyed her 4 hours outside yesterday as she is laughing like crazy.

Keira laughing at Daddy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mdVMohTlDQ
Keira laughing at Daddy (but distracted by the camera): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjoSMPYXjno

Apples and...

Pumpkins

Today was gorgeous fall weather. 80 degrees, sunny and breezy. Maybe they are right about Global Warming. I have never picked pumpkins when it was 80 degrees out, but I guess everyone had the same idea because the place was packed. We had lots of fun and Keira was talking the whole time (or at least babbling).
Here is Mike and Keira with a cotton candy pumpkin. ( That is really what they are called.)




We picked Apples and Pumpkins. The place we went to has a huge farm stand/general store. Keira was kind enough to spit up all over the apple tasting table. Thankfully no one was paying attention and a pack of paper towels was quickly used by Mike to clean up the mess.


She also marked her favorite pumpkin...ala puking on it. Because we all know she only pukes on things she loves.

My first......

SHOES!!!

yeah I know.... its a lame post. Our life has been rather uneventful lately. Keira has been a little bit fussy and not eating much.. We think she is teething- But the experts say babies can teeth for months before they actually get any teeth so who knows.

Yesterday I ventured out and took her to Mass at 6 pm. She was pretty good- although if I hadn't had a pacifer I am sure I would have had to leave...and I think as soon as she wakes up from her morning nap I am going to take her to the library so I can get something new to read. I know- wow I lead such an exciting life.

ohhhh we looked through the pics from Mike's birthday- There aren't actually any pics of Mike.. and the few that he took didn't turn out so well- so I doubt we will post any of those pics.

Tomorrow- weather permitting we are going to go pumpkin picking and apple picking and make and pie so hopefully we will get some cute pics of that.

Keira's new toy

Mike's sister and brother in law are lending us their Jolly jumper. Keira loves it so far- but I don't think she has realized that she can jump up and down in it. So far she has only figured out that she can twirl around in swing back and forth. It kept her entertained for 5 whole min so I could brush my teeth this morning. They also gave us their exersaucer to try out- but we haven't tried it yet.

The last of the cukes- and other non exciting news

Yesterday as I was cleaning out the cucumber plants I found this long lost cuke that was hidden in the tall grass- Hence its plumpness- And of course I had to put all these teeny tiny baby cukes in too because they are just so teeny tiny... hence I guess that makes them interesting. :o)














Mike being the genius that he is put Keira in the stroller without the car seat- so she was sitting up and facing forward. She LOVED it- she can see out now- Here she is last night as we got ready to go for a walk- She babbled and "talked " the whole time!!!
In other news today is Mike's 26th Birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIKIE!!! :o)
We are having a little spaghetti and meatball dinner party ( his meal choice) with his parents and family tonight. We will post some pics tomorrow.
As I am sure you have noticed we are playing around with the look of the blog... Not sure if it will stay this way or not..... opinions please!!!
Tanya

Monday

Well the weekend is over already. Here are some pics from yesterday- This pic has nothing to do with this post... I just think its cute.. :o)










And here is Keira sleeping while I write this.. For some reason the couch is so much more comfy than her crib...










Saturday we traveled up to Warner to clean/do yardwork at my Dad's house since he is in Wyoming till Christmas. We stopped at our friend's house to pick up some more rocks for our ongoing front yard lanscaping project. Mike's was nice enough to dig me yet another flower bed- going from the pathway to the mailbox.

GLENDI 2007

Have you ever been to the Glendi Festival? If not, then you are missing out on something SWEET (and that's just the desserts)...If so, then you are one of the 50,000 people to crowd Hanover Street (the local Greek church's location) this weekend. I guess the authentic, delicious Greek food has something to do with it.

Unfortunately, if you are little baby that lives in a boring household, all of the commotion, noise and crowds are too much for you to handle and you just fall asleep in the security of dad's arms. We wanted to go to Glendi, which means Keira wanted to go to Glendi :o) and by the pictures, thoroughly enjoyed herself.











Mike seems talented enough to eat with one hand.











But look closer and you will see that Keira is his own personal table. He dropped bits of chicken, pilaf and Greek salad all over her... And why is there half an eaten roll on her?

I told him he can't multi task because he ain't a woman or a mom... :o)











All that Greek food must have went right through Keira (she does have the Vigneau stomach).

This morning when Mike pulled Keira out of her crib he found a pleasant surprise. He started to unswaddle her and felt something a little bit wet. He thought she just peed more than her diaper can handle, but when he turned on the light, he noticed that Keira had pooped all over herself, her PJ's and her swaddle blanket...and now it was on Mike. Miraculously none got on her sheets. Hence the need for this early morning bath which she got all excited about.

Don't worry Mike licked his hands clean...just kidding, he gnawed on the large tub while taking his shower.











Mmmmmmmm......plastic tubs are DELICIOUS!!!

My first......

Gap dress!!!!!
Yes I know what you are thinking.. "How pathetic" But its an important first for a girl.... ;o) The best part about this adorable dress is I got it at a thrift store for 50 cents. I am not a big thrift store shopper but this certain store has kids clothes for 50 cents. Its hard to see the dress b/c her bib covers alot of it but I don't dare take the bib off and risk her spitting up everywhere, as she is like a leaky faucet.

Keira is building muscles/ trying to escape from her bouncy seat...









Its hard to tell from the pics but Keira's new thing is to pull on the straps on her bouncy seat and lift up her head and her feet.. ( like she is doing a sit-up) basically she is protesting the fact that she is slightly inclined and wants to be sitting up .. If she is reclining she might miss something exciting- because you know life at Vigneau house is oh so exciting.










Okay... here are the pics of the new perennial bed... Yes the flowers look pathetic now- but they will look much nicer next spring.

A new street

The new toys that Mike picked up at a yard sale for $50... :o)










The manly bulldozer

And some other truck thingie which I don't know the name of....

Actually the city is tearing up our street. During our last rainstorm, there was a guy taking pictures after Mike had already taken pics to send to the city. So we stood on the front porch as he was taking pictures and afterwards, he asked if it was like this during every downpour. Mike told him it is like that during any rainstorm. He said, that is why we are putting in 3 "catch basins". We are hoping that these "catch basins" elminate the need for Mike to go out and lift up the manhole cover after every rainstorm we get. So whats a catch basin I ask Mike after we came back inside." I haven't got a clue" he says...but Googles it and figures out it is a connection into the sewer system that stops large objects (like bottles) from entering into the sewer.












This is our street during a rainstorm....and why we need these "catch basins".

In other news...Our Internet is "fixed". Meaning we don't lose connection. The genius fix...slow down the connection to faster than dial-up :( Well...Mike is going to call and see what he can do.

Good bye grass!!!

Yes, okay, keira has nothing to do with this post... here she is playing with her toys while I write this.









Despirately trying to get something in her mouth to chew on....










HAD enough of the toys!!! GiVE ME SOME FOOD! ( don't you think she looks like Mike here?) I think he makes the same face when I tell him he can't buy any more tools today!


Well- the story starts with me on a walk..... Almost everyday for months now I walk the same route on the west side by our house ( in fact this is the route I walked when I was in labor and didn't know it yet..) anyways - There is a certain house which I walk by which has GREAT flowers, gardens and landscaping. I love to look at it and get ideas for my own yard. Well last Sunday when I was walking the lady was outside tending to her flowers. I told her Good Morning and how much I admired her flowers and how beautiful her yard was. She was very pleased and showed me around the flowers. And that was that. On Friday I was walking by her house again and she was outside. She stopped me and we chatted for a few min. I had Keira with me this time and she wanted to see her. She told me more about her yard and all the work she had done. ( Amazingly enough she rents and its not really her yard- yet she does all this work for the yard because she enjoys it). She gave me her phone number and said that if I wanted any clippings from her perennials to give her a call. Now- most of what I am planting in our yard is perennials. You buy them once, plant them once, and they come up every year. Perennials get expensive so I was excited to be offered some from her yard and she has GREAT flowers. Sunday I gave her a call and went over and she dug up several pots of various perennials. hence I enlisted Mike's help in digging up more of our front yard. We dug 2 new flower beds around the pathway in the front and planted the perennials. Of course right now they are pretty small and pathetic looking but next spring they will look GREAT. I would take some pics but its all rainy and muddy out what now. When it dries up I will post some pics. So as time goes on we will have less and less grass and more and more flowers..... just the way I like it. And last night in the middle of the night- after I was awakened by Keira's endless chitter chatter on the monitor in the middle of the night I had another idea.... Now if I can just get Mike to agree on letting me dig up yet another part of grass..... ( he is actually pretty good about letting me dig up our yard.)



Tanya

attempt # 3/ WHY I HATE VERIZON INTERNET

okay- many many hours later and attempt # 3 to post on the blog..

HOW I HATE VERIZON- LET ME COUNT THE WAYS ( written by Mike, posted by Tanya)


1.) SUPPORT SUCKS! As you know we have been having problems with intermittent connection issues. I called Saturday and ran through their troubleshooting steps to get them to send a technician out. One of the steps was – please take the cable that is running from your wall jack to your DSL modem and flip it!!! Are you kidding me…there is no ferrite or crossover pins on this thing! Whatever!! Move it away from your computer/monitor. Yeah, the FCC testing done on the computer and monitor and DSL modem allow for that much interference now that we are at the higher speed when it was fine at the lower speed?? So after 2 hours of going through his checklist, they dispatch a tech.
2.) BAD SCHEDULING! I am told there will be a tech at the house between 8 and 5. Yeah, that narrows it down. Luckily Tanya is home all day! The tech came by at 8:20AM, did some test at the pole and the drop at the house and determined that we are too far from the Central Office to get 1.5MB. Fine, but now they are turning us back to 768K. We were paying $34/month for 1.5MB.
3.) CONTRACTS! Of course, they make you sign up for a contract. If you don’t like their service, you only have 30 days to decide to cancel without being charged early termination fees.
4.) LACK OF COMMUNICATION! Nobody communicates anything. I had to call to find out what our new monthly plan is.
5.) SUPPORT SUCKS WORSE THAN K-MART! So I called after the technician left because we were still having problems. I was at work when I called and she asked if I was in front of the computer. I told her no and she said that I needed to be. So I said, “I don’t think so” and many other strong words. I went through all of your stupid troubleshooting steps previously and it is still not working after being told we were all set by the technician. She says, “Let me check my notes…ok we can bypass the initial troubleshooting”. She checked and found out the order for lower service was placed but can take 48 hours to go through, so it should be ok by 6PM Tuesday evening; until then we have to deal with the worst Internet in the world.
6.) TERRIBLE BILLING! So the new 768K DSL was going to be $39.99/month if I hadn’t called. I called and told them that I had a hard time understanding why our new slower speed is more expensive than the faster speed and more expensive than the $25/month we were originally paying for 768K back in June. She forwarded me to YET ANOTHER department, where I finally talked to someone that was American and helped me. She worked out so that our bill would be back to $25/month but couldn’t do anything about the Early Termination Fee. We really don’t want the slow Verizon again, but we are stuck unless we want to pay $79. She also refunded us $25 for our troubles.
7.) EARLY TERMINATION FEES! Because we are past our 30 days, if we want to cancel (which we do) we are stuck with paying $79 in addition to the activation fee we paid, the monthly fees we have paid and all the other time that we have spent on the phone with them.
8.) MY WIFE IS MAD! Now I have to deal with an angry wife because her Internet is slow.
9.) COMCAST DOESN’T HAVE CONTRACTS! Yet another reason to hate Verizon, their competition is faster, doesn’t have contracts and higher speed. I guess you get what you pay for L
10.) STUCK! We are now stuck with crappy Internet Service for the next 10 months!!

ahhhhh!

I have already written 2 separate posts and lost them b/c of our crappy internet so until it gets fixed (6 pm tomorrow) there probably won't be any posts....

no cable, no internet...

A few months ago we canceled our cable because at $10/month we really weren't watching anything on Channels 1-23. ( we only get channels 1-23) But something that we can't cancel is our High Speed Internet- especially since we don't have TV- Mike needs it for work and I need it to keep my sanity while at home with Keira. It's the way up keep up with my forums and e-mails.

But since we were on Comcast and the price was going to increase, we cancelled it and switched to Verizon. Ever since switching, we have had mulitple problems with the internet. In the beginning it was way to slow, so we upgraded to the higher speed (= more $$). Since then, We are constantly losing internet signal.

This makes for an extremely annoying Internet experience as every 2 minutes, the computer displays a blank page and says "page cannot be displayed." Mike spent lots of time today on the phone with various Verizon "techie" people and they have come to the conculsion that they don't know what the problem is- so I guess they are going to come out to the house and try to figure out what the problem is.

Hence the lack of posts as we have been avoiding the internet. In other news.. Mike and I spent some quality time together this morning yard saling. We managed to not spend alot of money and came home with a great deal. We found a baby jogging stroller (I have been wanting one) for 25 dollars...

Our friend Allison was nice enough to watch Keira for us. Keira was a stinker however and refused to drink the bottle of pumped breast milk I had left for her and decided to throw a fit instead... and was rather hungry when we got back. Someone is going to be having alot of bottles in her future I think!!!

In other rants and raves, what is it with people and hosting yard sales. They need to learn about how to price things at yard sales. Half of the yard sales you go to have prices close to (as in 80%) of retail pricing. Umm yeah...that doesn't work. We don't want to pay 80% for your used merchandise that you want to get RID OF. For example, we went to one lady's yard sale where they had a router and accessories priced for $100...not a bad price, but not a yard sale price. I asked the lady (because Mike is not a negotiator) if they would take less- I didn't even state any price- and she immediately, like we were insulting her, said "NO!" Excuse me, this is a yard sale RIGHT?? You are SUPPOSED TO NEGOTIATE!! Don't insult us by acting like you are giving away your router at $100...it is only 1.5HP and a Home Depot RYOBI...not a Porter Cable...not a Grizzly...not a DELTA...etc!! So we start walking away and then she gets all nice and is like..."well, what were you thinking of paying?" We say something more along the lines of $50. She says, well I could go as low as $90. So we just left.

This is a prime example on why Mike doesn't like to haggle. People make him feel like he is insulting them.

Let me tell you how negotiating works... You see an item (let's say a router) for a certain amount of money (let's say $100). You go to the nice person that is selling their "junk" and say..."how about I give you $50 for your router?" She says, how about $80? You say $60? She says $70? You say $65 and you both agree and the deal is done. She gets rid of the item collecting dust and Mike gets something to build cabinets with...it's a WIN-WIN situation...but alas...don't sell your "junk" if you intend to charge almost full price for it.

Well...tomorrow we are going to go where they understand how to negotiate...the "Flea Market"...
Tanya ( with a little hlep from Mikie)

akward veggies

I picked these wacky veggies today. The cucumber is HUGE- although its hard to tell that with my pathetic photography skills and my cheap camera ( yes I am using my old cheap camera b/c its handy) instead of our fancy high tech camera.









Not sure what went wrong with the DNA in the tomato. Wait- do tomatoes have DNA? Probably NOT. It has this pointy thingie sticking out of the top of it...

Wanna see my cookies?

This is my new way of holding Keira. Since she has decided that, although she can hold her head up, she HATES when we put her on her stomach...so this is an alternate way to do "tummy time"










Here...the ladies of the house made cookies...Yummy, chewy, vanilla, chocolate chip, oatmeal cookies. Tanya told me that she kept having to smack Keira's hand because she was always in the batter bowl with her fingers trying to eat it....oh wait, that is what Tanya does to me because I love the batter even more than the cookies themselves, but alas, I was at work.

Tanya did say that Keira was giggling when she was transferring the cookies from the hot cookie sheet to the cooling rack. She apparently thought Tanya was taking them off of the cookie sheet and going to hand them to her to eat. I told her they were "too hot to handle...too cold to hold."

See...I am a girl !!

So...we got Keira's ears pierced yesterday since she was 3 months old.

Here are the beautiful pictures.