Tony and have talked about getting married before.  Nothing serious, mostly just random conversation about it.  Sometimes I have a hard time calling him my boyfriend.  When you have kids and such and you say boyfriend it just sounds, I don’t know unstable or……I just don’t know it doesn’t feel right sometimes.  If people don’t know me or my family sometimes I will call him my husband.  I mean we pretty much are except for the piece of paper to say we are.  Heck I’ve been married before, we saw what that lil paper did for me.  It cost me over $300 to get to end it.  I know usual divorces cost a lot more but I filed myself and other than a plane ticket to get me back to Florida and the cost to file that was it.

I think the one thing that is keeping us these days from getting married is the money it costs.  I don’t need a wedding, I would be happy going to the court house but Tony wants to get me a ring, one with certified diamonds.

I don’t know, one day we will get married but what I do know is we will be together “till death do us part”.

I really am happy, I have a wonderful gaggle of kids and an amazing boyfriend.  We works hard to support his family, he is an amazing cook, he helps out around the house and he is so talented with his power tools.  He is currently in the process of making a speaker box so he can try and sell it.  He will be making me some craft storage boxes and a bed frame for Lil Tony’s room like he made for Nicki.

I was talking to my cousin the other week and she was so surprised to hear about all the stuff we do and still take care of 4 kids.  Like the cooking that we do.  She said it sounds like Tony and I are good friends.  I think that is essential in a successful relationship.  To have a great friendship.  We still enjoy each other’s company.  We joke and laugh a lot.  One of our most recent jokes is I tell him he needs to make sure we take our a term life insurance policy out of him…….ya know I probably shouldn’t go any further, I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.  We just joke about how much “time” he has left.  That I am going to out live him and we always joke about my “other boyfriend”  just silly stuff that is a complete joke and he and I both know it.  But not knowing me personally (all you in the blogosphere), I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression.  But we are in love and we are the best of friends.  I love him tremendously and honestly (I guess unless we won the lotto) I couldn’t be happier.

Sometimes I hate planning for a vacation.  I need to make sure everything is in order before we leave, bills need to be paid, house needs to be cleaned and have to make sure we pack everything we need.

I am starting to make a list of things to pack and things to do over the weekend.  One of the things I need to make sure I do is pay our auto insurance bill.  We are up for renewal and I am afraid if they don’t get a payment we won’t have insurance.

Oh I just remembered we wanted to get a new tire for our spare.  I think we have a really worn tire.  That would stink if something happened and we had to use it and it couldn’t get us to where we needed to go.

Tony did an oil change on the truck yesterday so we should be good to go.  All I will need to do over the weekend is clean the car out and make sure I can get all of our stuff in there.  Ahh sometimes I wish we had a bigger vehicle.

OMG only 4 more days until we leave.  Tony has been working 4 ten hour days so I totally thought he would have worked Wednesday-Saturday and have Sunday off but he has to work.  He has off yesterday which was still great because he had off Tuesday and Wednesday.

So we are going to leave when he gets home on Sunday, it will be around 9:30pm.  It is going to be a long night.  I can’t drive when it’s dark so Tony will be doing most of the overnight driving.  I feel bad because he will have worked all day and then have to be up all night driving.  I should be able to drive once the sun comes up.

We have a somewhat busy week.  We will be staying with my mom for the week, I think she is totally excited.  We will get to her house probably Monday around noon.  So Monday will be a relaxing, do nothing day.  Tuesday and Wednesday we still don’t have much planned, probably just hanging out.  Tony may go fishing with Bill (my step-dad).  I am going to try and see some of my friends if I can.

On Thursday we have a big dinner at my Aunt Barb’s house.  All my cousins that still live in IL or close by will be there with their kids.  So sad that I have not met any of my cousins kids and some of my cousins spouses.  I am so totally excited that my cousin Samantha switched her work schedule so she could be there.  My Grandma is going to be so happy!!

Then Friday we are all going (my mom, brother, niece and all my kids and Tony) to Six Flags Great America.  Oh we are going to have to much fun.  They have a new water park since the last time I have been there called Hurricane Harbor.  My kids are going to love it.  I am just a little worried on how they will handle an all day outing.

Then Saturday my mom is having a BBQ and bonfire.  Sunday is Father’s Day, we plan on taking my dad to dinner and then Monday my mom goes back to work so we will be leaving sometime on Monday.  Tony will still (hopefully) be on vacation until Friday or so, so we will be able to come home and relax for a couple days.  Nicki will be staying in Illinois for about 6 weeks or so.  I am sure she will have fun.

We have become pretty friendly with our neighbors.  That is so refreshing because we didn’t really like our neighbors anywhere else we have lived.  Well maybe the neighbors in Vegas but we never really saw them.  So our neighbors here really like our kids.  Whenever they see lil Tony and Isabel they say hi and talk to them, makes me happy.  So the guy across the street works for a 24 hour towing company.  He sits around most of the day, he is only supposed to work from like 5pm til 8am or something like that and it is all “on call” work.

The great thing about it is it is very flexible, but it sucks at the same time because he gets lots of calls in the middle of the night.  Kinda crazy.  He got a call the other night for an accident scene.  An 18 yr old high school kid was drinking and driving and drove in to a house.  He said it took them more than 2 hours to get the car out.  The kid did more than $30k in structural damage.  WTF!  So I am not sure I could do that, be in a deep sleep and be woken up to go pull a car from a house or over turn a vehicle.  Lil Tony loves it though, whenever he hears that truck coming or going he runs to the window and waves to the neighbor, he doesn’t see him but it is cute all the same.

I am so totally excited, only 6 more days until we leave for IL.  Seems so unreal.  Tony unfortunately has to work until 7:30 that night so he won’t get home until 9.  That is ok because that is about the time we wanted to leave.  I will have the kids fed, bathed, dressed in pj’s, the car loaded and the house in order by the time he gets home.  He will just need to change and do any last minute “checks” around the house.  Lights off, air off, doors locked, everything packed…..ya know.  But when we return home he should still have 2 or 3 days off plus he may still be on 4 ten hour days so he gets 3 days off a week and we need to get serious about completing some of our projects.

I want to finish painting Lil Tony’s room.  I want to make the same bed frame like we did for Nicki and get him all set up with Cars the movie sheets and accessories.  I would like to paint Isabel’s room but I may wait.  I want to finish Nicki’s room, put pictures on the wall and put up her shelves.  Also I wanted Tony to make a little “hut” outside for all the kids toys.  I hate that they are all over the porch, makes it look real trashy.  I also would like for him to make some tables for the living room.  Maybe some side tables.  Not sure if I want him to make a coffee table or not.  We saw some really nice contemporary coffee tables at the store I liked but it is so much greater of a feeling knowing we made them ourselves.

Let’s see is there anything else on our plate.  Just a little here and there organizational items, my craft space  needs a shadow box to hold my wood stamps and the hall closet a clothes rod.  Other than that I don’t think anything else.  I just feel we have a bunch of half done projects that need to get completed.  Hopefully we will be able to get them done in the next month or so.

I am so excited I will be getting my hair done on Tuesday.  I will be going to the beauty school in town.  I have gotten my hair done at a school before and they did great work so I am really excited.  Here is the other best part, so I went in last Wednesday to get my hair done.  It was pretty crazy in there, beauticians all over the place…I didn’t make an appt because they did say I could just walk in.  Well I guess they had evaluations or something going on the rest of Wednesday and all day on Thursday so they weren’t taking appointments.  So I made an appt for Friday because that was Tony’s next day off.  I made it for 1pm so the kids would be napping and Tony can do whatever.  I walked in and again it was crazy in there.  They said they couldn’t do my hair, AGAIN!  I was a little upset but not pissed by any means.  There was another lady in there getting turned down too and she was a little more upset than me.

So the manager or owner or whatever he was came over (he was the same guy telling the girl at the counter on Wednesday that it was ok for a Friday appt so he may have remembered me) and was very apologetic but said they couldn’t do my hair, that they had more evaluations.  He asked that I come back and I asked if Tuesday was ok, he said sure come in around 9:30am.  DONE!

As I was walking out he asked if I had a coupon, I said I didn’t (because I didn’t) and he told me to ask for him on Tuesday and he would hi-lite my hair for free.  That’s right I said, FREE!  How sweet is that!  I just hope they will be able to do it on Tuesday, I think that will be Tony’s last day off before we go to IL and I would like for my hair to be done.

Anyways, it all worked out in my favor so I am totally excited.  :-)