We had a big first for Renee yesterday! Her first tooth finally broke through! It's on the lower right hand side, where she had been chewing on things for ages. We had thought she was teething, but it can be hard to tell for the first one, but now that one is through, who knows how long before more start popping in. We'll need to get her down for my dad to check them out I guess!

But first it's going to be down to Julie's family in Lancaster. Julie and Renee will be going down for most of next week and weekend so that Renee can get used to being down there and having Mary Pat put her down to bed, because we're at just over two weeks until VEGAS!

So it turns out to be disgustingly cheaper to fly to Vegas on a Saturday vs. a Sunday, so Julie and I are actually going to be going down a day earlier than anticipated, and will be there from Saturday until Thursday. Even with paying for an extra hotel night, we're saving hundreds of dollars. Luckily the in-laws were fine with taking Renee for an extra day, so we're now all booked! We'll be flying Midwest Express direct from Milwaukee to Vegas, and will be staying the first night in the Tropicana. We figured it we're going to be saving money, let's keep saving and go for a cheaper hotel, yet still on the strip. Then the next night we will move across the street to the MGM Grand where we will stay for the rest of the time with John and Lisa. I've never stayed at either, but the pool complex at the MGM grand looks awesome! Now we just need to decide what shows we'll go see and how we'll get to places. We might give the new monorail system a try. I've heard the cabbies don't like it, but after spending way too much time waiting on cabs last trip, I'm liking the idea of more options.

Today is our five year wedding anniversary. Scary, huh? It's absolutely amazing how fast time flies. We'll be celebrating it this year by sending Renee off to visit Grandma and Grandpa Stohlmeyer while we go on a little vacation with John and Lisa. I let John pick the destination, so he twisted my arm a bit and we'll be hitting Vegas. 8-)

And speaking of Renee, I put a few more pictures of her up on photobucket, but this one is my favorite. I think she's taking a liking to solid foods and rice cereal. Just a guess lol.

And thinking of Vegas, I had another final table at Badger Poker on Wednesday night, and was poised for taking a run at a win until a person that I had dominated sucked out on the river. But anger at the river aside, I got enough points to make another appearance at the finals, so one more attempt at winning a free trip to Vegas through BP! Scott says that he's going to try something different out next series, so life on the local poker circuit could get interesting!

Sunday's engagement party for John and Lisa was a blast! Mike and Erica hosted, and they put out quite a spread. We got to see lots of people that we hadn't run into for ages. The funny/sad part is that we got to see all of their kids too. It's official: we've hit the point in our lives where parties with a lot friends in our age group will have almost as many kids running around as adults. The best part is that even though it makes me feel a bit old, I don't care, it's really fun to see them all.

More great news: Renee slept all night last night! WOOHOO! I know, this isn't too momentous for most people, but since she started waking up every two hours a few weeks ago, we finally started the routine of once she's in her crib, she stays there no matter how much she cries or screams until it's time to get up in the morning. The last four nights had been really hard, since she'd cry a lot, but it's just because she wanted to get out of bed and play. We'd occasionally check her diaper to make sure that it didn't need a change, otherwise it was in the crib. Well, last night, she went down at 8:00...and slept solid until we woke her up at 6:30! And I had to wake her up! She looked like she could have kept sleeping for a while if I had let her, but we're trying to get her on a schedule, so we have to stick with it (including on the weekends, which kinda sucks). But it was so nice to wake her up and be greeted with a big smile this morning. Especially since I was so well rested! 8-) Babies are so much more fun when they're smiling and sleeping well lol.

What is it about life that whenever you think you've got everything working ok that it has to find a way to make it more complicated? And right when you think it's completely sucker punched you, something absolutely wonderful can follow up right behind?

So Renee has been having a few problems at daycare lately. She's gotten herself in a clingy phase, and really just wants to be around Julie and me constantly. Consequently, she's been crying at daycare a lot. But up until yesterday, Lynn, the person who runs it, has been making it sound like while she has been crying a lot, babies will be babies, and that's ok. Yup, right up until we go to pick Renee up yesterday and Lynn hands us a note giving us written warning that Renee has been kicked out of daycare for crying, and that two weeks from today will be her last day. She does slightly modify that in saying that if by some chance next week is miraculously better she'll take it back and let her stay, but what are the chances of that happening? At this point given how she either a) completely lied to my face for a few weeks about what was going on with Renee, or b) is so unbalanced that she pulled a complete 180 without any warning, I don't know that I want to keep Renee there anyways, and may not send her back even if Lynn suddenly says that she'll take her. This means that by now Julie has likely given the Nature Center her 2 weeks notice, and she will become a stay at home mom. Not that this will affect us financially too much, since if you subtracted daycare costs from her paycheck, she maybe had $30-50 left per week.

This obviously completely killed last night for us, and we spent a good chunk of it feeling blindsided and pretty bummed, while trying to figure out what we had to do. Unfortunately, towards the top of the list of things that had to be done was mow the lawn. 8-) Not that I normally care about doing it, but I just didn't really want to deal with it at that point. But that's not much of an option, so after a while of us repeating "this sucks" over and over again, off I went to do something productive and mow. About halfway through I'm interrupted by Julie waving for me to come inside, and see that Renee is eating rice cereal from a spoon like a champ. We had been trying to get her started on solid foods for a few days, but she just looked confused by the strange feeling stuff in her mouth. But last night, she was taking it so well that I just had to smile. Which made the rest of the mowing a bit better for me.

When I finished mowing, our neighbors JB and Rachel were out by their grill, and yelled over to me. They said that they were trying to clear out space in a chest freezer, and so they had been grilling up a turkey for the last few hours, had just finished it, and it was way more than they could eat, so would we like to come over for dinner? Now you have to understand that while we've lived in our house for several years, we hadn't really gotten to know any of our neighbors very well. In the last few months, we had been talking with JB and Rachel on a fairly regular basis, but usually not much more than "how you doing" or "I like what you did with your garden", so this was completely out of the blue...and also had about the best timing that I could have ever asked for. I guess I had a funny look on my face, because JB asked "Do I need to call 911? You look like you're going to have a heart attack or something" Which of course made me laugh. I ran back to the house and when I told Julie that we were having dinner next door she practically jumped through the roof it was such a great surprise. And it was absolutely delicious...JB is a really good cook! We told them some of what was going on, but I don't know if they realize just how needed a random act of kindness like that was at that exact time, and how much we appreciated it.

So the next two weeks should be interesting. We get to take Renee to a daycare that doesn't want her so Julie can finish things up at her job and get ready to be a full time mom. I will be interested to look in on the nature center in a few months and see how it copes. Despite being showed no appreciation and miniscule pay, Julie did so much for them and really held a lot of stuff together for them. They barely survived her maternity leave, and she spent the next month after she got back fixing all the things that they f'd up. I bet whoever gets stuck with Julie's job will be screaming for more pay and more hours (because they only paid her for 20 hours a week, even though it took 3 people that much time or more EACH when Julie was gone to do her job) within a month, and unless they are as kind and patient as Julie is, will have quit within 2 months. And while I like the place and what they do, I think I'll just smile and enjoy it, because their management will have brought that on themselves.

Holy cow...that rant just took me by surprise! Only meant to put tiny blurb...oops. Oh, well, it's all true, so may as well leave it. *insert big sigh here* ok, now that I got all that off my chest...back to work!

Happy Birthday to Nolan John Kreitzer, born yesterday to our friends Adam and Amy. If I recall correctly he was 7 lbs 5 oz and 19".

Happy Birthday Mom.