Ending the Hiatus

For anyone who had any doubt as to whether or not I still had my uncanny ability to turn a clever phrase...actually, it was more my doubt than anything...I have decided that I would jump on and just let my thoughts flow onto the keys. In other words, I have no idea what I am going to write, I'm making this up as I go.

I suppose the rather lengthy gap in my entries stems from Lisa's miscarriage. For some reason, life just became a little nuttier than usual at that time and blogging wasn't high on my priority list. Then, after the emotional blow of that event had subsided, there was the ongoing political furor that has been weighing heavily and inescapably on my mind. Honestly, I don't believe that there has been a single day when I haven't gone on a political tirade. I suppose working in news, especially for one of the more liberal networks, it would be a most unusual phenomenon if I were able to curb my visceral reaction to the seemingly endless fawning of the media over a particular candidate who is running for the highest office in the land. That being said...I actually did attempt to type something up on here once while on break at work...I couldn't think of anything to say except how utterly fed up I was with all things Obama. Which, ironically is what most of this entry has been thusfar. Okay...time to move on.

Let me explain some of the events that have taken place since I last wrote...no, there is too much, let me sum up...no, there is still too much, I will tell you some of the things that have happened in the past week or so. Alright, so...last Saturday, Lisa had a Pampered Chef party with my boss' wife, Judy, who also happens to be one of our anchors at the station. There were even some notable guests, such as anchor and reporter, Sarah Stokes, and reporter, Mary Rinzel, and producer/reporter, Heidi Bohl. Look at me name dropping. In reality, some people do react to it that way: "You had a Pampered Chef party with Judy Clark!" I believe that Lisa got that reaction from a number of people. I think it is really funny. They are just people. And most of them like to be treated that way...but, seldom actually do. Lisa even told me that in her time at Target, Judy came through her line and one of the other customers remarked, "You're Judy Clark! I love you!" To which Judy responded with a rather uncomfortable..."Oh...that's...um...great."

But, setting aside all talk of my notable local friends, it was a successful party and Lisa still has a few orders rolling in from an already high grossing show. Following that little soirre, we threw our bags in the car and headed up to Oakdale, MN for a marathon of Stake Conference meetings. I was supposed to be at a auxilliary leadership meeting at 2:00, but we left Eau Claire at about 2:30. But, we arrived in time for me to attend a priesthood leadership training at 4:00...well, I missed the first 15 minutes. I would have been sooner had I not taken the freeway in the wrong direction, not realizing it untill I saw Minneapolis looming large in the distance, as I passed unfamiliar buildings thinking..."Wait...I don't recognize any of these buildings." After finishing what actually ended up being a rather enjoyable leadership meeting, I got some nasty food from Dairy Queen for Lisa and I to eat as we ran out the door of our hotel to make it to the adult session. After getting back to our hotel, we tried to enjoy some quiet and relaxing time in the pool area. Some rather loud, and particularly giggly teenage girls that were the residue of a birthday party saw too it that our time there was neither quiet, nor relaxing. The following morning, we went to our final session of Stake Conference. I made certain that I was able to sit by my friend, Ethan Wickman. Meetings are so much easier when you have someone to joke around and laugh with. Well, a speaker got up who looked for all the world like a skinny Kenny Rogers. At one point, Ethan leaned over to me and said, "Brothers and Sisters, you gotta know when to hold'em. Know when to fold'em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run." I just about busted a gut. Despite how enjoyable it was...I don't know that I got much out of that talk.

Other than that...it hasn't been an overly eventful week. On all hallows eve, I dressed up in my Spider-Man outfit and worked master control at work. Fittingly, it was one of the most hair raising master control experiences I've ever had. Almost immediatly after I began my shift, I missed rolling a weather spot that airs during the Today show out of New York because they had put a break in that nobody told me was merely a list of spots to be moved to a different spot to air during an additional break that network had given us. Then, of course, there was dealing with the fact that most of our programing is now HD and the methods for getting shows and airing shows is very different. So, essentially I was flying by the seat of my pants the entire shift. On top of that, I had a nasty head cold that made the time even more unbearable. I got home and took a nice warm bath and just laid low for the rest of the evening. We had one anomalous group of Trick-or-Treaters stop by, which took up about 3/4 of a bag of candy that we happened to have. We did have a ghoulish time watching Ghostbusters in honor of the holiday. Then, it was off to bed.

Yesterday morning, Lisa had her biweekly charge of Wyatt, one of her semi-regular daycare kids. We went shopping and banking with little Wyatt in tow. When we stopped at Copps, we discovered that little Wyatt has very little love for the sun in his face. His carseat faces backwards and when we parked the sun was directly behind the car. I parked, got out, and when I went to open the door so I could get Wyatt out of his car seat, he was writhing in his car seat with a grotesque look of agony on his face. He looked how I would imagine a vampire looking in a similar position. I couldn't help but chuckle at this. Lisa said I was mean. I told her that I would have laughed even if it was our own child. Not that I wouldn't help them...but, I would still find their discomfort amusing.

After Wyatt's father came and picked him up, we spent the afternoon cleaning up the apartment, folding laundry and preparing dinner for the Solin (Bohl) family. We had been trying for over a month to have Heidi and her husband over for dinner. It was an imensely enjoyable time. I had been stewing before they came over, wondering how our conversation would be. I didn't want to bring up either of my two favorite subjects: politics and religion. I know that Heidi's political views...differ from mine. And, of course, it can be really uncomfortable bringing up religious views with a dinner guest. But, they actually did ask about the beautiful building that Lisa and I were married in. Without going into detail, we told the Solins about temples. So, a religious subject delicately picked up and then set back down without any trouble at all. Then, I think the closest we got to politics was a brief discussion of how hellacious work is going to be durring elections this next week. But, it was just a very pleasant visit.

So, there you have it. As up to speed as anyone could hope to be. I hope I managed to turn a phrase or two. It was decidedly more newsy...but, take what you can get, right? I will write again next month! (Hey, set expectations low and you will always meet or exceed them.)

Late Night Blogging

So since Dave hasn't written in quite some time and I for some reason can't sleep, I thought I'd write a little something for all to enjoy. I'm actually kinda surprised Dave hasn't written in so long. I'm sure he has had lots of exciting things he could write about. Today he finished putting up the window sealing things and he put up NEW window treatments in the bedroom (no more spidey blanket and flannel sheet). They are really nice they help keep light and sound out and help keep the cool/heat in.

My Pampered Chef biz is slowly coming together. I finally got my website set up. Hopefully by the end of Oct I will qualify (submit 4 shows) and then everyone will not only be able to do shows through my website but also order individual orders (right now I can only do shows). I will have my first real live cooking show next week (it was postponed a couple times). I'm sure I will have a ton more to say then.

My daycare is going well too. I still only have the 3 kids and none are full time, but it is working out really well. One really nice thing is that I finish with the kids at 1:30 at the very latest and Dave finishes work at 12:30 so we both have the afternoon off and can spend time together. I'm having a lot of fun with the kids. Alexis (4 yr) really likes to help me cook in the kitchen so I'm trying to come up with more easy fun and yummy things to make (we both prefer making sweets). I've also started coming up with craft ideas for Halloween. Trenton (2 yr) is happy to do whatever, though he really loves to run around outside. I'm not sure what to do when it's too cold for that yet, bundle them up well and send them out anyway? I've only had Wyatt (1 yr) twice now but both days he was pretty happy to just walk around the apartment. I figure he's 1 he can walk and he can "talk" and he wants everyone to know it. I gave him my old broken cell phone to play with and that was a great thing to open, close, push buttons on and chew on while he walked around the house "talking". They are cute kids, and even though there are times when they are driving me crazy I still love it and I'm growing to love them too. I wake up in the morning and I don't hate that I have to work. I don't get up and think "maybe I'll call in sick today" which I did almost every morning while working at Target and sometimes I actually did call in. It's really great to have a job that I actually love. (Thanks to my wonderful husband for letting me do this. I love you!)

On that note I just yawned and I think I might be sleepy now (that it is almost 11:30). Hope everyone enjoys the update.

Great Weekend

A while ago, we had a fantastic weekend with Mom and Dad. On Friday we had Mom and Dad Nigh visit from Sun Prairie. They came up on Friday evening. We went to Godfather's Pizza for dinner and talked about politics and sports. The pizza was really good despite how eccentrically the place was decorated. We had some good conversation about how delightful it is that Ned Yost is no longer managing the Brewers and about how impressed we all were by Aaron Rogers (who has since been less than impressive.) After we ate dinner, we came back to the apartment to rest and digest a bit. We watched a few Rifftrax clips on YouTube (Our favorite- The Matrix- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1TULRXHpTk).

And...since we last wrote we have seen the end to a very frustrating experience with eBay. We didn't want to write about it until after it had been resolved since we didn't want to run the risk of further aggravating an already tense situation. So...here is the tale: so, mom had given us a bunch of American Girl dolls to auction off on eBay so we had some extra spending cash. Well, a few of the dolls were duplicates. So, when taking pictures of the dolls to put on eBay, Lisa would only take a picture of one of the duplicates because...it's the same doll, why would I take a picture of the same doll twice? Well, we listed one such doll about a month ago. This doll happened to be one of the dolls that Becky had on display in her room. Never played with, never tossed around...just had out of the box on display in a smoke free home. Apparently this doll was less the tag that was on the doll that we took a picture of, which was a mint in the box doll. Again, however, we didn't feel like this was an issue since the doll was in great shape and...most importantly, it was the same doll. So, it sold. We shipped it off the day after labor day and thought that was the end of it. A week and a half later we got an e-mail from the buyer demanding that we send along the tag. We replied that we didn't have any such tag and they said that they were going to try to get us kicked off eBay and that they would go to the post office and get us charged with mail fraud. We are suddenly dealing with this aggressively vindictive person who was all bent out of shape because the doll we sent was "not the doll pictured." We even relented that we had not pictured the exact same doll but emphasized that it was the same doll!!! This was not enough. They wanted a full refund of their money plus an additional $10 for shipping. At this point we mentioned that they had neither contacted us or shipped back the doll within the 7 day period described in eBay's return policy. They said that they had contacted eBay and that eBay had sided with them in saying that we "misrepresented our item"...but we knew that this wasn't the case since we hadn't heard anything from eBay to that effect. So, we finally went to PayPal who has since determined that we should refund the original price paid and the buyer will be responsible for shipping. We are ecstatic that this is finally going to be over...but, just a little miffed that we had to deal with this idiot in the first place.

Anyway...sorry it has been so long. Life has been a bit nutty.

And I Manage Another

Wow...so not only did I post twice yesterday on my scripture thoughts blog...but, I follow it up with a newsy blog on Nighspace. That and I will probably update my scripture blog when I study this afternoon. Somebody give me a medal, or a cookie...or maybe just a comment on both blogs. Ooh, that does sound nice!

So, since we last wrote, Lisa continues to be morning sickness free. But, we're anticipating that what misery we are spared at the beginning of the pregnancy will be made up somewhere down the line. At least, that's what I think.

We have actually given some thought to the name of our future offspring. If we have a boy (Oh please, oh please, oh please!) we will name him David Gregor (David after me and Gregor after Dad and Grandpa.) If we have a girl, we aren't completely sure yet...but, we like the name Summer Elizabeth. But, Lisa hasn't given the official stamp of approval on that one yet. So, that is the speculative name of a future daughter. If we manage a son we won't have to think about it too hard and then we will have a little bit of time to think about what name we might want for a girl.

In other news, Lisa has a job again! The most wonderful part of it is: it's daycare! I had been reminding Lisa that she needed to find work so that we could scrape together a little more savings before the big hit when the hospital bills start piling up. I knew she didn't want to get her Target job back or any other sort of dead end job that she would just be miserable in...but, she had been without work for quite sometime and she is only going to get more pregnant from here on out...so, I was starting to feel the tug in my purse strings (figuratively speaking, of course...I don't own a purse.) But, Lisa was very diligent about keeping her Craigslist ad for daycare at the top of the list and she got several calls and e-mails and interviewed with one yesterday and started today. She also has an interview set up with another person this morning. So, that deal may get even sweeter. But, it is really nice to not only have Lisa working again, but working in a job that she can enjoy and a job that will allow her to be home when I get back from work. That and our afternoons will be just about as free as they have been. It is truly a blessing. One we had to wait for...but, all good things take time to be perfectly cliche.

At any rate...I guess that's really all the news I have. Life is splendid and we are quite happy. Love to all!

Guess What!

So, not long ago, Lisa went off birth control and we decided that rather than continue to prevent pregnancy by various methods we would just go for it. Well, last week, Lisa went to Walgreens to get a couple of sticks to pee on. Lisa had said that we would test on Saturday. So, I woke up at 3:00 and gently woke Lisa and asked if she had to use the bathroom. She said no and I slept for a little bit longer. So, at 4:30, I nudged Lisa awake again and asked if she had to pee. Once again, the answer was no. But she also asked why I kept asking. I told her that I wanted to test. So, test we did and pregnant we are. The picture I have included is our picture of the test result from the pee stick. We figure that she is about six weeks along. So far, no morning sickness. Lisa is just as chipper and active as ever. We have determined that we need to make walking a regular part of our routine so that Lisa can keep fit and have an easier pregnancy/delivery.

So...after waking at 4:30, Lisa and I went and helped the Javners, a family in our ward who I also home teach, move. All went well packing up and such. But, we got over to their new place and Brother Javner had forgotten his keys. Well...since most everyone helping was a member of the elder's quorum we couldn't simply wait until the key showed up. Josh Jacks tried picking the lock. Aaron Javner lifted me up onto the balcony to see if the patio door was open. But, ultimately Josh and Aaron lifted me up and I used a knife to pop the screen off of one of the windows that was only about a foot wide and I crawled through and opened up the door. After finishing our adventures with moving and breaking and entering, Lisa and I went home to prepare diner for the Javners. After we had the Javners over, we drove over to the Plaza to attend the wedding reception of one of our anchors at TV 13. It was a rather long day.

So...even though it isn't quite as cool as finding out that I'm going to be a father or fitting through a one foot window to break into a house, I do have some Wii news. I played a round of golf and shot a -10. Wow! I also played the home run hitting baseball training and hit 10 of 10 for 5,700+ feet and got a platinum medal for it!! Like I said...not as cool as an actual accomplishment, but noteworthy nonetheless.

Anyway...that's it! Bring on the comments!

All the Latest

Alright...so it has been awhile since our last post. There have been a handful of things that have transpired in the life of the Eau Claire chapter of the Nigh family. So, here I am to make sure that everyone has all of the most up-to-date information (once in awhile, at least.)

So, we have a new car! Well, not necessarily new...but, he isn't a 95' with 173,000+ miles on him. We have followed the Nigh family trend: we bought a LeSabre. While the car is working out great, the business remains unfinished...we need a name. Preferably something that rolls off the tongue like "Big Pappa". So far, all we have come up with is calling our new vehicle "Aaron Rogers", implying the replacement for a reliable old veteran. There are a few problems with this in that, for one, our new car is a decent replacement for our old one whereas Rogers has been a major disappointment. For another, there is little to no chance that we will see Big Pappa rolling around Eau Claire with someone else driving him. And finally, "Aaron Rogers" doesn't really slide off the tongue like Big Pappa did.

Still along the lines of the rebuilding process. Lisa has begun working as a purveyor of Pampered Chef products. Thusfar, she doesn't have anything set up for September. She is looking for work as a daycare provider without much success but has also put in applications at a few other places that will allow her some flexibility in her schedule. Target is a distant option...but, probably too distant for a report that she has made a repeat appearance in her employment at the retail chain.

Anyhow...things are going relatively well. We are able to pay our bills and still have fun. I have been a bit more diligent about attending my plasma appointments...which has helped. That is pretty much the story, though. We have a car, one of us has a full time job, the other is working on it and things are going fine.

21!

Its a few days late but I thought I'd write about my birthday and updates on the going ons of Nigh life in Eau Claire...Dave will be so surprised.
So first off for those who don't already know Dave and I have internet in our house now!!! It's really exciting. Dad brought his old computer to us when they came to visit and we piggy-backing our high-speed off someone else in the building (hope thay don't move soon). So not only am I writing my 4 blog ever but I'm writing from my own home.
Birthday Time! It wasn't really a grand or exciting birthday...I threw up in the morning (I think it was the juice I had with breakfast because I had more later and felt sick again). I went to work with Dave for a picnic. We are always up for free food. I searched online for a new daycare job and wrote up an ad to put on craigslist (I've made 2 contacts with that and am currently waiting to here back from them after answering some questions). When Dave came home had to go to Target because the chain of the necklace he got me (after he told me where it was hidden, I got to open at 3:00 AM) had broken (already...grrr.) Of course they didn't have the same necklace so we got a chain and went home to fix it. We both had things to do at church so we headed off and got home at 8ish and went to bed....Like I said nothing to exciting. I did get lots of phone calls from my family which was really nice. It was a good birthday!
Update on the car: So we went to the mechanic today (with Tom, Daves boss). We test drove a couple cars while Tom talked the price down $300 for us. We are going to buy a "new"(1998) Le Sabre, we both liked it a lot. As for the old car our mechanic (Sean) is going to run a copression test (free of charge, assuming it's not fixable) ASAP, to see if the car is fixable. If it is we can fix it and sell it for more or keep it and have 2 cars. We are waiting to hear back about the test and more about the damage to decide what we will do there.
Even though everything fell apart the other day things are getting better....well not yet but they are looking better and we are feeling positive again. I think I got everything, if not I'm sure Dave will add a entry soon.

Love
Lisa