Misty

 Venture #1
I've been doing silk flowers for people's wedding as a hobby for a couple of years now, just because I have fun doing it.  I've never really paid too much attention to how much it actually costs to do them until last week.  I'm doing the flowers for Jon's brother's wedding, so was calculating how much different options would cost for them, then out of curiosity I looked up how much other places charge for flowers, both for artificial and live ones, and realized I could actually make money by selling flowers :)  I wouldn't make insane amounts of money or anything, but I could definitely see myself making enough to be able to quit Convergy's.  I'm in the process of getting a website set up so that people will be able to see examples of things I've done before, the website will by synergyfloral.com.... but don't look yet :)  it will probably be up in about a week or so.  Also, my sister in law will be doing cake decorating, so we can kinda combine the two.  Her website will be synergycakes.com, but for now that's just forwarded to my site and once we get it set up on it's own, the two will still be linked.  For now we're focusing on getting the flower part of the business up and running. 

Venture #2
Since my sister in law (Beth) and her family will likely be moving up here sometime this summer, they've been looking at housing.  Earlier today they saw a duplex for $105,000, each side had 2 bedrooms, so we could buy it together and each pay half the mortgage, which would probably be about $300 each.  Well, we called the realator for that one and found out it was actually sold last week :( 

We've since found a few other duplexes that are not quite as good of a deal, but still good, so I'm going to go look at some of them tomorrow.  With those ones we would probably end up paying about what we are now ($400-ish).  So, good, but not great.  But, once we moved out we would be able to make a little renting them out.  Also, we could buy it now and rent it until 1) we sell our current house and 2) beth and jeff move up here. 

As we were looking at duplexes we noticed some buildings with 4 units in them for sale, this is where the business venture part comes mostly into play :).  With the duplex it would mainly be for us to live in, but with 4 apartments we could each take one and have 2 to rent out, most likely reducing our share of the mortgage to $200-$300 each, possibly a little less or more depending on the place we buy, so looking better than the duplex option. 

There is also one place with 6 apartments that was in the paper that we don't have many details for, and one for 7, also in the paper with few details.  They're both about $30,000 more than the 4-unit places we've looked at, so maybe possible if we want to go that big.  One possible good thing about the one with 7 apartments is that the guy selling it just wants someone to take over the existing loan, which would potentially be easier than trying to qualify for it ourselves.  We still don't know much about these 2 options though and they might be to the point where I'd consider it too risky with our current incomes, so the 4 unit places or one of the duplexes is looking most likely right now, but these 2 are also possibilities. 

So... I guess this means our house will be going up for sale soon.  I actually really like this place too :(  But, I could easily like another, and, once we finish some of the current projects (re-doing part of the kitchen and a couple things the yard outside) with some gift cards to home depot jon got from work, we actually might be able to make a profit off of this place when we sell. 

I always meant to post all the blogs I put on MySpace on here because most of the people I talk to on MSN don't use MySpace.  Well, I FINALLY got around to doing it, I'll try to do it same day from now on, or at least with in a couple days :)

 We had an ultrasound on Friday and found out that the baby is a girl.  They checked a bunch of other stuff too and everything looks good.  We did have a rather uncooperative baby though, the doctor was about to give up (after checking for the third or fourth time to see if it was a boy or girl) but then she finally decided to stop sitting on her feet :) 

So, not that we can pick without paying ridiculous amounts of money, but for a long time I had always wanted to have a boy first when I eventually started having kids, mostly because I had always wanted an older brother.  But in the past couple of years I've not cared so much that my brothers are younger and not older (besides, I guess I kinda got 4 older brothers when I got married).  Anyway, I was pretty neutral about what I wanted for a while, then last year my sister and sister-in-law both had girls, so then I started to think a girl would be good because the baby's 2 closest cousins (that we knew of at the time -- only 2 cousins actually) were both girls.  They will both be about a year older though.  By the time we actually found out what the gender was I was changing my mind frequently and was actually pretty neutral about having a boy or a girl, so I would have been okay with a boy too, but I'm excited it's a girl :)

Sorry that was kind of long :)  I'm just sitting here semi-bored at work, so can tend to ramble since I have the time. 

Anyway, now we get the fun task of picking a name :)  I want something not common, but not so unusual that either no one is going to be able to pronounce it or they're gonna get teased relentlessly.  Good think we still have about 4 months to keep looking.... 

Oh, and as for how I'm feeling.... things haven't been that bad since about the beginning of January.  Before then I was thinking the chance of me ever deciding I wanted to be pregnant again were pretty slim... and while I still think I REALLY sucked, I got through it right?  So, we'll see, I might decide more kids are okay after all :)  About the only downsides right now are the kicks in the bladder and shrinking room in my stomach.  The baby really isn't sticking out much right now, so guess it's just squishing everything inside to make room, but like I said, it's generally not a problem, more of an occational annoyance. 

Well, guess that's it for now, hope everyone enjoyed my blogs for today :)  If not... I suppose I'll get over it... maybe... :)  They definitely kept me occupied for a while while I work. 

 I just sent this story to Michael (my brother, he's on a mission in Ecuador right now.)  So since I have it all typed up and it's funny, thought I'd post it here too :)

A few days ago I woke up and noticed that our front door wasn't quite latched all the way.  I didn't really think much of it because it's happened once or twice before, it also wasn't actually open, just not quite latched shut.  So I just shut it then went on with stuff I normally do. 

After work we were trying to find the cats and we found mouchet, but we spent like 20 minutes looking (and there's not that many places to look in our house) for muchu when I remembered the door had been open a little in the morning.  So we got some flashlights and went outside, but didn't see anything.  Jon was going to check under the house next door (which no one lives in) because there is a black and white cat there sometimes.  While Jon was doing that I decided to check under our house too.  We didn't have any really big holes, but there are a few places he could have gotten in.  So, I took some panels off and he was sitting about 5 feet away under the house from where I had taken them off. 

We tried shining the laser pen under there to get him to chase it and lure him out, but he got scared when we shined the flashlight on him and went and hid down on the other end of the house.  We kept just watching him and trying to get him to come for about half an hour, then we stuck mouchet under there on a rope to see if that would work, but we still couldn't get him to come out.  Finally I decided that if he was too scared to come out for his toys (we tried a ball that jingles that he really likes too) or for his brother, scaring him more might get him out.  So I waited at one end and jon hit the side of the house really loud where he was and he finally came out.  He must have been really scared too, when he saw/heard me he came and curled up really tight next to me.

For the rest of the night he was really jumpy and tense and then for the next couple of days we never saw him looking out one of the windows, which he usually LOVES to do, he'll sit there and stare out of them for hours.  He's back to his normal self now though and sits by the window staring out all day :)  Sometimes it kind of makes me nervous though because we aren't exactly supposed to have pets.... but it's our house and the guy who owns the land it's on is almost never around anyway. 

Well, at least now we know that if he does escape he doesn't go far from home :)  He would have had to been out there about 12 hours too... poor kitty, no wonder he was so scared. 

 .... but some how I let Jon talk me into trying it.   We have to vacuum up cat fur off of our furniture fairly frequently (mostly due to Mouchet, Muchu doesn't shed much).  So, today while I was vacuuming Jon suggested we just vacuum the cat instead, then we'll get all the hair before it sheds everywhere.  At first I just laughed at him then when back to vacuuming.  But, he kept trying to talk me into it and I finally gave in half expecting that Mouchet would get away before the vacuum hose came anywhere near him... he's REALLY hard to hold on to when he wants to get away... 

So, jon pinned him down on the LoveSac while I tried to vacuum him with the hose part.  A few seconds later I noticed a bright yellow stream of something coming from the cat.  Less than a second after that I realized the cat was so traumatized that it had started to pee.  I stopped the vacuum and started to yell at jon to let the cat go, he saw the bright yellow stream and thought that some thread or something was stuck in the vacuum.  As he let the cat go he realized what it had been. 

I've never actually seen a person get so scared that they pee their pants... but I've heard of it and this is prove that kitties do it too!  (without the having pants on part)  So, if you have a cat, be careful not to REALLY scare them.

Poor Mouchet hid inside our box spring (his favorite hidding place) for at least an hour.  Muchu hid in there with him and seemed suspicious of us also, but we coaxed him out after about 15 minutes or so with one of his toys.  Now they're both back to their usual selves, Muchu attacking everything and Mouchet just curls up in my lap and purrs. 

So, hope everyone got a good laugh out of that :)  It really was quite hilarious... I laughed so hard for quite a while, and my stomach really hurt after... but it was so worth it.. one of the funniest things I've seen in a while... poor kitty :)