FaMiLy DaY

Every Sunday in the Watson household you will see something very exciting going on . . . Family Day!


This is my brother Shane and his wife Molly.

They have two little cuties, Dylan and Wesley.

Then of course there is Marc and I.

Can't forget our furry daughter Sierra.

And last are our gracious hosts every Sunday, my mom Peggy and my dad Wayne.

Now that I've got that covered I can move on.

As I was saying, every Sunday we have Family Day.  Family Day includes all those mentioned above and a strangler every now then.  Usually one of my dads friends who has no family or is hungry will stop by for a little while too.  Take yesterday for example, we were all there and then my dad's friend "Big Steve" came over too.  We call him "Big Steve" because he is almost 7 feet tall and just a big guy!

A quick background, we have Family Day every week because when my oldest nephew Dylan was born (4 years ago) my brother wanted to make sure that we got to see him often.  Its a pretty known fact with most families that the mothers and daughters stick together, this is true with my mom and I too.  So, my brother knew that Molly's family would be seeing the babies more often then the Watson side would.  Thats why its a guarantee that at least one day a week we will get to see the boys and watch them grown up.  Since Dylan is the oldest, he got to choose all of our names for us as a toddler learning to talk.  We have Nana, Big Papa Wayne, Uncle Marc and Tee Tee.  I'm Tee Tee.  I started out as Auntie and that was too difficult for little Dylan to say so he turned it into Tee Tee and thats been my name for the last 4 years now.  

So Family Day is really all about eating.  My mom goes to the store and buys enough food for a billion people and we just eat all day long.  There are always appetizers and that is when Uncle Marc typically gets "left alone with the dip" and eats himself sick so he can't have the actual lunch or dinner.  The food is mostly for Marc anyway.  He is the kind of guy that just loves to eat, it doesn't matter what kind of food it is, the guy loves to eat.  With that, he is fun to feed of course.  He gets so excited about food that you just love to sit there and put food in front of him and watch him devour it.  Not so fun when he falls into a food coma, but he does that every week so you would think he would learn by now? Anyway, here were our appetizers from yesterday.

Get ready for this!  We had two different kinds of potato chips, cheese puffs, pizza rolls and mini corn dogs!  Thats just appetizers!  You can see Marc's hand reaching in for a pizza roll in that photo.  Really, the chips are for Molly, the cheese puffs are for Dylan and Wesley and the corn dogs and pizza rolls are for the rest of us.  Marc usually eats a little of everything though.  

Then the main course about 3 hours later included roasted potatoes, tri tip, chicken, hawaiian rolls, baked beans and olives.  Yesterday was more food than usual I must admit, but it was mighty delicious.

During football season Family Day is even better because we can watch the Cowboys and our day then revolves around food AND football.  Without football we are just lost, channel surfing between gold and basketball . . . who likes golf and basketball?  Boring.  Thankfully the Angels will be coming back soon and we can watch them at least.  Of course, we did get to watch some of the Red Carpet yesterday and all of the Oscars, that was fun for us ladies in the house.  

Oh I guess I should mention what Dylan and Wesley do while we are all eating and watching sports on TV.  Well, Wesley does whatever Dylan is doing, he wants to be just like his big brother . . . sounds familiar.  So when Dylan is outside in his swing, Wesley needs to be outside in his swing too.  And when Dylan is upstairs in his playroom, Wesley is right there behind him.  Usually Nana and Dylan make there way up to the playroom and they watch movies and play Dylan's imaginary games all day long.  Dylan and Nana are BFF's.  

So I guess the moral of the blog is . . . have a Family Day and eat lots of food! :)  At least thats what happens in Placentia once a week, we seem to have a fun time :)

Time to run my firefighter wife errands for the day, off to the grocery store!

Have a great week :) 

The Life of a Firefighter Wife

So, I've mentioned my husband a couple of times so far, I think?  Well, if not, I have a husband.  His name is Marc and he is a pretty darn good husband if you ask me!  He is a firefighter for Los Angeles City Fire Department and he has recently picked up a part-time job with his friends electrician company, DY Electric.  Lately he has been a pretty busy guy between the two jobs and trying to keep his pregnant wife happy, he does a good job though.

The life of a firefighter wife is split in two I would say.  Some firefighter wives hate their husbands job as a firefighter, hate the lonely nights and live in fear every morning their husband leaves for work.  The other half of women just don't think twice about it, I'm in that category . . . thankfully!  Oh, this is my husband by the way, he's pretty cute:

That picture was taken the day of his graduation from LAFD's Academy back in 2007.  We got engaged the very next day and our lives have continued to get better and better from that day forward.

Anyway, when Marc leaves for work at 4:45am we give hugs and kisses, we say our "I Love You's" and I tell him to be careful.  At that point I go back to sleep and the thought of what he is doing at work escapes my head completely.  I never think about the dangers of his job and he doesn't tell me many stories of his life at work (which is a good thing for me).  In fact, when he does go on fire, whether it be a house fire or a brush fire, he is very excited about it, this in turn makes me excited for him.  Don't get me wrong if there is a big brush fire out there I'm locked to the TV but just because I want to see him on TV and thats it.  I never live in fear that he will get hurt or that he won't come home.  In fact, I am more fearful that he will get in a car accident driving to and from LA than I am of him getting hurt at work.

You see, LA City Firefighters are some of the best trained firefighters in the world.  It is very prestigious to be a part of LAFD and they truly are like a big family.  I know that Marc works with other firefighters who are well trained and very smart.  Above anything else, I trust that God has my husband wrapped up in His hands and is taking good care of him every day that he goes to work.  

The life of THIS firefighter wife looks something like this . . . go to the grocery store, cook, clean, facebook, blog and repeat.  Oh don't forget an occasional trip to Target of course!  This is what I do, this keeps me busy all day believe it or not and this keeps me from wondering what Marc is doing while at work.  Of course, on the weekends I spend the day with my mom.  We usually run errands, look at baby items, window shop in hopes that we will come home to a mailbox full of money one day and go out to lunch or dinner.  Today, we are not doing anything real exciting but we will make our way to Daphne's Greek Cafe for lunch and that I'm excited about!  You'd be surprised what a little lemon soup, hummus and pita bread can do for your day! :)  After my day with my mom I will do the other things on my list, mostly clean.  I'm a nighttime cleaner so I will spend most of night doing just that tonight.

Spending time alone can be a great thing.  You can get to know yourself and actually grow as a person by enjoying your own company.  I know there are people out there who just can't do that, they have to have people around them at all times.  My dad is one of those people.  He just does not enjoy his own company and he has to be surrounded by others.  I assume that the lonely firefighter wives out there feel the same as my dad, I don't.  I enjoy my time alone and my time with my dog, Sierra.  Sure I miss Marc but I don't dwell on that, he has a job to do and that is a 24 hour shift job.  Thats it.  

Well . . . not the most interesting blog in the world but I figured you should know a little something about my husband and the life we live.  Tomorrow I will have to tell you about our weekly Family Day, you are sure to enjoy that one!

Enjoy your Saturday blogworld!

RIP Glen Allen (Fallen LAFD Firefighter)

Jen

Happy Pregosaurus . . .

So what is it that can really make a pregnant woman happy?  Some might say food, reasonable answer.  Others might say sleep, again that makes perfect sense.

What makes this pregnant woman happy?  A good discount and a picture of a bass face.

So much to explain here, where do I start?

Lets start with the good discount.  When you enter the world of pregnant women it is a whole new life!  Did you know that?  There are message boards out there with endless topics about things such as bowel movements . . . or lack of, cravings, sex, doctors appointments and oh yes . . . DISCOUNTS!  The latest discount that was talked about was on www.amazon.com.  Apparently, if you click this and add that and use this coupon and that code then suddenly something will land on your doorstep for half the amount it was quoted to be!  To good to be true right?  Wrong!

You see these diapers?

These diapers were on amazon for $18.78.  After using a 20% off coupon which I got in my new Parents Magazine (that was sent to me by an awesome co-worker of mine out of the blue by the way!!!) and becoming an "amazon mom" which requires nothing of you and receiving another 30% off plus free 2-day shipping I ended up with these diapers!  Yep, you got it right, 50% off plus free 2-day shipping for 84 Newborn size diapers, if you calculate that the total I spent was $9.39!  Go to Target and you can get a pack of 30 diapers for 8.99 plus tax, I'd say I scored a good deal!  A good deal makes me happy!  I mean why pay full price for something when you have the opportunity to only pay half price?

Thats just one example of a great deal I got this week that made me happy, there were more, oh yes, there were more.

What really melts my heart though . . . . bass face!  Confused?  You should be, don't worry.  This is a picture of my little bass face:

It might be difficult for you to see, but if you look a little sideways you will see Baby Fiamengo's sweet little face and just below the face are two little dots which are little baby hands.  The nugget looks like a little bunny rabbit with its hands up like that, kinda funny.  Anyway, if you were to look closely at the face, you will see that the little bugger has pouty lips :(  Definitely looks like the baby is ready to shed some tears already . . . which if anyone knows me at all knows that shedding a tear or two or five thousand in my book is no secret at all.  So, no it doesn't make me happy to know that baby looks a little sad in this ultrasound photo but it does make me smile to see the "bass face."  Now, bass face began about 4 years ago when my oldest nephew Dylan was a baby.  When he would get sad his little mouth would turn upside down and he would look like a bass, you know, the fish?  From the first time he did this and beyond when we would see "the face" we would all shout bass face.  I'm happy to see that Baby Fiamengo is carrying on the Watson/Fiamengo tradition of bass face, it makes me smile.  Don't fret, the baby was as happy as a clam in there and continues to stick its tongue out at us every second it gets.  

So to sum it all up, what makes this pregosaurus happy (for this week)?  A good discount, a sweet little beautiful bass face and the nap I'm about to get into in about 5 minutes!

Happy Thirsty Thursday to all who will partake in the thirstiness that is Thursday! 

Me a blogger?

FTB here!  That's right, I'm a First Time Blogger, a newbie, a beginner, a baby blogger just testing the waters for the first time.


To be quite honest I have no idea what I'm doing or why I'm even doing it.  I know that I always tell my cousin Alison that I want to be just like her when I grow up and she has a GREAT blog that I love to read, you should read it too:


http://neuroticalison.blogspot.com/


If you really wanted to know my thought process with the whole blogging idea it was simply this - I work part-time as a high school counselor BUT I'm currently pregnant full-time with a sweet little baby in my belly.  I figure between being a high school counselor and a pregnant woman I should have some interesting things to write about.  Maybe?  I don't know, I guess we'll see.


To kick things off let me just give you some background.  


I've been a high school counselor for 5 years now and I love it.  Most would think to themselves, "Self, how could someone love to hang out with teenage kids all day long?"  Great question to ask yourself and to be honest I don't have an exact answer for you.  Something about being in a helping profession and directing kids, hopefully in the right way, gets me motivated.  If I have the ability to steer a student along in the right direction and keep them from making poor choices I get pretty pumped up about it.  I'm sure my fellow colleagues would agree, there is no real answer, somehow those squeaky voiced, acne faced little buggers just make you happy.  Don't get me wrong though . . . sometimes they do just the opposite as well.  


That's my part-time job.


My current full-time job is growing this human in my body, which is just bizarre if you ask me.  I'm now 27 weeks pregnant and according my "What To Expect When You're Expecting" book that would mean that I'm on the last week of my 6 month of pregnancy as well as my last week of the 2nd trimester.  I'm just moving right along and this little peanut inside me is doing all that its supposed to be doing, so I'm told.  Being that I haven't referred to the baby as a boy or girl yet you might have guessed that we aren't finding out the gender.  Gasp!  I know, I know, my husband and I are so out of the ordinary by wanting to be surprised but let me tell you, its been fun so far!  All I need to know if whether or not the little nugget is healthy and what "they" tell me as of yesterdays appointment is "Yep, everything looks good!"  Being that I'm no doctor I'll go ahead and take their word for it.  I'm sure you just have so many questions for me now that I've given you a little taste of my life, right?  Well, I would expect with the rules of blogism I should leave you hanging?  Wanting more?  


So, all of that being said.  Thank you for reading my very first blog posting.  I feel honored that you are interested in the least about the things I have to say.


I look forward to sharing more about my life and more importantly about my pregnancy with those of you that care to know about it.  


Until then, stay classy bloggers.