Final Rinse?

I bought some liquid fabric softener at the store the other day. Usually if I bother with fabric softener at all, I use the dryer sheets. I was going to use it for the first time so I read the direction to see what you even do with it. It said on the directions to add the liquid to the washing machine's final rinse.

This really perplexed me. How am I supposed to know when the washer is beginning the final rinse? Am I supposed to have some innate washing cycle sense? Should this be a part of my womanly instincts? Even more ridiculous, am I supposed to keep an eye on it so I know when it's coming? There are plenty of times I forget I even put clothes in the washing machine at all. Is the washing machine supposed to let me know one way or another when the final rinse is happening? Is there a buzzer of some sort? I just stood there as the washing machine filled with water not knowing what I should do. Should I call my mom and ask her? Maybe my mother-in-law or my friend who has an answer for everything household related.

Finally, I just decided to pour it in at the very beginning when I put the detergent in. What's the worst that could happen? And then I forgot about it. I forgot about it because later that evening I put a shirt on that had been freshly washed. It smelled better than our clothes usually smell. I was honestly confused about why this shirt smelled better. Had this shirt ended up with Jackson's clothes somehow and gotten washed at my mother-in-law's house? Then I remembered the liquid fabric softener that I put in with that load of laundry. I don't know if the shirt was actually softer or not. Probably not.

We're kind of silly

You can click on it by the way if you want to actually see the pictures. It's still not real big. I ordered this for our hallway in 5X30.

I stole this from another blog

But I like it. I like the song. And the video is awesome!

Hangin' with Mikey

Now that Phillip and Jakson are back in school, it's just me and Mikey on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Here are a few hanging out pictures from today. Nothing spectacular, just some pictures. He's a pretty kid.

He went down for a nap way to easily today. I'm suspicious as to whether he's actually asleep or not. I wish that stupid poodle next door would shut up. That stupid poodle has woken our boys up from hundreds of naps over the years.

Some friends of our are moving

Okay, our friends aren't actually moving until May or June but I'm already dreading it. I've known they were moving for a while now but it didn't really hit me until Sunday at church. I don't know if I was hormonal or what but I was having a hard time keeping it together. I was very briefly imagining "the goodbye" and it was just too much. I'm not much of a cryer most of the time. I try to avoid that if at all possible. I got home from church and had a good little cry while I was washing dishes. I hate washing dishes. Anyway, I know they won't be gone forever and I know we'll always be close but I'm still dreading it. It's like hanging over me, just this tinge of sadness that I can't really shake off. Good friends are hard to come by. Friends that feel like family are next to impossible to come by. And I don't want them to leave.

What?!?

Jackson said something on the trampoline the other day that was pretty strange. I meant to come in and blog about it but then the whole pit bull thing happened. Anyway, he was jumping and he said something like, "I'm going to jump so high it'll make your grandchildren stink!"

What in the world is up with that kid?

The pit bull next door

Our next door neighbors got a pit bull puppy about 5 months ago. Needless to say, we're not real happy about this. She was really little when they got her. Now she's probably at least 30 pounds and quite a bit bigger than our dog Scott. I think her name is Charra or something like that. Not sure what that means.... probably something bad. We decided that if there was going to be a pit bull next door we wanted her to like us. So we pet her from time to time and give her treats. Phillip doesn't even like dogs and he's been petting her and letting her smell his hand and stuff.

We were out in the back yard earlier this evening so the boys could jump on the trampoline. I was petting the pit bull over the chain link fence and she just decided to come right on over and play. Keep in mind that this dog is about 6 months old and she just climbed right over the fence without much effort. This is bad news, folks. We have two young kids and sissy little yorkie. Our dog is pretty big for a yorkie but he's still dinner for that dog. She probably wouldn't have climbed over the fence if I hadn't been talking to her....this time. But she is very interested in us when we're out in the back yard. I would rather her be interested in us because she likes us rather than because she wants to eat us. We thought she was going to tear Scott up for a second but she was too busy playing. Phillip grabbed Scott and zipped him up in the trampoline with the boys and went over to tell the neighbors to come get her. The owner didn't even apologize. He just said, "She doesn't bite." Are you freaking kidding me??? She's a PIT BULL for goodness sake!!!

So, I'm not really sure what we should do or if there's anything we can do. Right now she's a pretty sweet (huge) puppy but very soon she will be a terrifying dog who could kill my children if she wanted to. I'm hoping the people next door will use their brains and decide to chain her on their own. But these people have been historically very irresponsible and stupid about lots of things over the years so I'm sure this will be no different. Even if we got a privacy fence she could still climb the chain link and then just have another couple feet or so to go over the privacy fence. I'm not really sure if that would keep her out. I guess if we start to feel threatened in our yard we'll have to keep pepper spray on us just in case. I just know that if I'm out in the yard with two little boys and Scott I won't be able to protect all of us from her if she gets aggressive. We'll have to keep OFF out there to keep the mosquitos away and pepper spray to keep the pit bull away.

Do we have any legal rights that any of you know of? What should we do if she gets in our yard again? I don't know if I should call the humane dept. so it's documented or what. I really don't want to make enemies with the people next door but I am really scared of what that dog could do. I know that not all pit bulls are aggressive but they are all extremely strong with very sharp teeth.

My little graduate

Okay, Jack's not really graduating from anything. I already put these on my photoblog but I had to put them here too. I think they're so funny. I was using Jackson as a guinea pig for lighting so I could snap a couple cap and gown pictures of Tori. My favorite is the one of Jackson making the "Mikey hmmmm..." face. Phillip's favorite is the first picture in the cap. He was really not pleased to be wearing the graduation cap. I am absolutely going to use one or two of these (somehow) in Jackson's senior announcement when he graduates from high school.

Mom's Little Monster

That's what Mikey's shirt says. We got him this shirt, a monster truck shirt that simply says "Monster" and some monster p.j.s. Are we noticing a pattern?



He's the cutest thing.

Trampoline!

Christmas Trampoline clip #1 from Phillip Hintze on Vimeo.

Hintze Christmas - 2nd batch of pictures

So here are a few more pictures from today. We might have some video up eventually. The first two pictures were taken with my new (used) Canon G7. I'm not sure if she will stick around just yet. We might decide to send her back and just get a little video camera. The jury is still out.

There are a couple of interesting Phillip faces. He's very photogenic.

The last two of are of my new cool ring. It's from Nelle & Lizzy. I really like it!

Hintze Christmas morning - 1st batch of pictures

I don't have time to caption all of these. I'm sure you can figure out what's going on anyway.

First picture, Mikey about to hit Scott with a tambourine...Scott cowering in anticipation.

My new (used) camera, a Canon G7. For the times I don't want to haul my real camera around.











Last picture, Mikey throwing the ball at my camera.

My favorite Christmas picture from last year

Mikey with spots

Way back in February of 2008 (before Mikey's adoption) Mikey had a really bad reaction to penicillin. I posted a couple of pictures of his belly and back but I couldn't post any of his face yet. I came across this a little while ago and thought it was pretty funny. Jackson was looking at the picture and he said it was making him all itchy just looking at it.



You may be wondering why I'm putting dated Mikey stuff on here. I couldn't post any pictures of him before his adoption and I have been meaning to post lots of pre-adoption pictures and just haven't gotten around to it.

Just an old Mikey picture

This is what Mikey's hair used to do all the time. It started sticking up when he was about 5 months old or so and stuck up until he was a little over a year old. He's always had great hair. I'm trying to put a couple more videos on here from when he was a baby but I'm not having much luck.

Star Wars Lullaby Video

I've been trying to post this video and I'm not sure if it's going to work. The quality of this video is pretty bad but it's really cute. This was taken when Mikey was a few weeks old. Jackson was holding him and humming Star Wars music to him. It looks like Jackson almost falls asleep there at the end. I don't think I've posted this before.

Don't go to jail.

Jackson and I got out this evening and did a little shopping. We were both pretty moody and on edge by the time we were finished. Actually I was probably moody and on edge before we even went but that's beside the point. We were leaving the Office Max parking lot and I could tell that the exit I was attempting to use was going to take forever so I decided to back up....way up....back to the parking lot. Anyway, I told Jackson that I was probably going to get pulled over by a cop for doing that. And I told Jackson that I would just have to tell that cop to back off and get back in his car and leave me alone because I am in a bad mood!...or something along those lines. Jackson said that I would get arrested if I did that. So that led into our conversation about going to jail.

I basically told him that jail isn't a cool place to hang out. I told him about the bad food, bad beds, mean people, no video games, etc, etc. And then I told him that he should plan on never going to jail. He said he was too young to go jail and that you have to be legally 10 to go to jail. I said, "Yeah, you're right."

Where does he come up with this stuff? Legally 10? Is 10 an adult to him?

The day we got Mikey

Other people talk about when they "had" their babies or possibly "having" more babies. We have to use the words "got" and "get" when we're talking about adding kids to our family. It's kind of funny to me now. When I say, "When we got Mikey....." or "If we get more children...." to someone who doesn't know he's adopted, I get some confused looks.

For some reason I've been thinking a lot lately about when we first got Mikey. Phillip and I are still in awe of him. Maybe not daily but at least weekly one of says something about how we can't believe he's really ours. It just still seems too good to be true. He was given to us almost 2 years ago. That's just so hard to believe.

We received the call at about 2:30 on January 11, 2007 that they would be bringing a newborn boy to our house. I called a friend and asked if she would pick up some newborn diapers, wipes, and pacifiers. I told her I would pay her back. She showed with half of Wal-Mart's baby department and wouldn't hear of letting me pay her anything. She brought about 4 different kind of pacifiers because "we don't know which kind he'll like."

At about 5:15 he was here. A young, handsome black man brought Mikey to our house. We sometimes joke that "the stork" is a young black man. His name was Brandon. I'll never forget his name or his face. I wanted to hug him but I didn't.

When Brandon brought him to our house, the baby was in a carrier covered with a blanket. We couldn't see him right away. We were both terrified to lift the blanket. The worker went outside to get some paperwork and when he stepped out we took a peek. All of our fears of having to love a child who wasn't as cute as we were went right out the window. We could tell right away that he was beautiful beyond measure. More beautiful than any baby had a right to be. We were amazed by his eyelashes. They just looked too long to even be real. My mom was already at our house hanging out with Jackson while Brandon was making his delivery. As soon as he left, we called Phillip's parents and they came right over. I wouldn't be surprised if they were pacing by the phone when we called.

Our parents were there when we undressed him to take a look at him and change his diaper for the firsts time. I was so moved by how they loved him instantly with a reckless abandon that we were unable to muster right away. I was scared to kiss him at first, scared to say the words "I love you" to him. It felt wrong doing those things to someone else's baby. Phillip's dad was the first one I heard say those words to him. And that just opened the flood gates for him to be our son.

Against strict foster parent guidelines, Mikey slept in our bed that first night right next to me. I tried to get him to sleep in the bassinet and he wouldn't. I don't know if I slept much but he slept perfectly.

Here are some pictures of the night we got Mikey. I was noticeable fatter then.