Recently Gavin has been experimenting with the word “No”. Now he’s always used it in one way or another. It was one of the first words he could vocalize. Which makes perfect sense since No is crucial for survival. The frequent use of the word is something that is new to the Grotesko home. Its over recent over zealous use has driven me to the brink of insanity fourteen times. Gavin has taken up using “No” for anything and everything. Out of context and completely out of it. It has extended past the so called “bad” things “No” should be used for and moved onto the good ones where “No” should be replaced with “Yes”, ie, I could ask “Gav do you want to go have fun and eat candy at the Zoo. Then snort smarties and run the aisle of wal-mart without me harping at you to behave?”, his reply of course will be “No!”. He basically doesn’t want to do anything ever. He has chosen to just exist because doing stuff is so hard.

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My favorite photo of my two favorite guys in the world. Best viewed bigger, so click the picture.

Saturday was our “Walk now for autism” charity walk. Team Gavin raised $390! Thanks to everyone who donated, you guys mean the world to us. Those of you who didn’t donate, stop being so cheap (just kidding). Anyway the walk was pretty fun. I use the word pretty, and not totally, because the walk route was lame to say the least. We literally walked in a circle over and over. It wasn’t so bad though, we were in good company with my parents and John’s Dad walking with us. There was also free Dippin Dots ice cream, which I thought you could only buy at theme parks, apparently not. On top of the dippin dots (which John had 4 servings) were free Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches, free drinks, free taffy, and free cereal. We basically consumed more calories than we burned.

I must say it was a little emotional seeing all the families in the same situation we are in. All of them sporting t-shirts they made for their teams. So many little kids throwing tantrums HA! This is the first year the walk has come to Utah and as a State we raised $215k for autism research!

A-Attached or Single?- Currently I am looking for a new husband who cleans and doesn’t always make me be the Bass player when we jam out on Guitar Hero. If anyone knows someone let me know.

B-Best Friend?- I have a few. Like the person who has been my best friend longest is Kara, then my best friend because from school is Shar, my best friend who has kids is Jessica (Thanks for always hanging out with me!), then also my sister Beck and my sis in law April. Not forgetting my Internet BFF Corrie either. Even though I know that instead of putting on something decent to go vote for Hillary you just stayed home. I am not staying mad though cause she won PA without you!

C-Cake or Pie?- cupcakes, I will eat a dozen
D-Day of Choice?- Thursdays cause John is pretty much always off on Thursdays and so we have a date from home. We get Cafe Rio and sit and watch our favorite Thursday night shows.

E-Essential Item?- Like besides TP and Tampons? My laptop. I have an internet addiction.

F- Favorite color? Brown and Pink

G-Gummy Bears or Worms?- I don’t like either. Although I do love fruit snack, but only name brand.

H-Hometown?- American Fork UT home of the Caveman.

I-Favorite Indulgence?-Shopping. Nothing feels better than getting home after a good day of shopping and looking at all the stuff you got.

J-January or July? I like January because of my birthday. Although July 11th is my half birthday, and its warm. So I will say July

K-Kids? I got a couple

L-Life isn’t complete without? Cable TV

M-Marriage Date?- July 16, 2004

N-Number of brothers and sisters? 2 sisters, 3 brothers, 5 step sisters, and a step brother

O-Oranges or Apples?-Apples, I love the Granny smith kind. We can’t keep oranges at the house because Keaty is allergic

P-Phobia and Fears? I am with Jay on this, I am totally scared of the dark. I sleep with the master bathroom light on so I can make sure no one breaks in. I also think my house is haunted.

I also have a really irrational fear of my children dying or John. I seem to always be in a fear funk about that.

Q-Quote?- When God closes a door, he opens a starbucks. True that!

R-Reason to smile?- Mostly at my kids

S-Season of choice?- I love fall, but summer takes the cake

T-Tag?-anyone who wants to do this.

U-Unknown fact about me?- I have a really hard time maintaining friendships. I will make a friend and then like a month later I am not friends with them anymore cause I don’t take the initiative to call to hang out.

V-Vegetable?- Broccoli or fresh green beans

W-Worst habit?-Spending money.

Y-Your favorite food?- Little Caesars Pizza, Fettuccine Alfredo, Chinese, and Licorice

Z-Zodiac Sign?-Capricorn

I am sure everyone has heard about the supposed “provocative” photo of Miley Cyrus in this months issue of Vanity Fair. If you haven’t go ahead and google it. My opinon is that it doesn’t look all that provocative, she mostly  just looks grungy, homeless, and drugged. The picture I found disturbing was the one of Miley with her Dad ole Billy Ray (who still knows the moves to the Boot scoot?). It made me cringe. Who poses like that with their teenage daughter? Well today when I logged onto AIM I saw I found I wasn’t the only one it rubbed the wrong way. They all turn into Lindsay Lohan eventually. Well, if they stay famous that is.

I wouldn’t normally blog about something like this, but my Gavin has a big time crush on his “Hannah Tanna”. He loves to get on You Tube with me and watch her music videos. He’s a big fan of listening to her songs on the Disney radio online. He points out her merchandise in every store we go into. One time in a party store there was a life size cut out of her. He truly thought he was talking to his beloved Hannah Tanna. So it makes me a little sad that she is already going down the path of Lindsay Lohan. I am still holding out hope that she will continue to keep it clean and be an actual role model for girls. But I remain skeptical. When she does become a skank I will blame her Nacho cheese Dorito eating, club wagon van driving, ass grabbing, my daughter is my girlfriend father.

So CNN’s website claims that the stimulus checks have started direct despoiting today and will continue through this week. So who is actually using their check to stimulate the economy?

We are going to use ours to pay of debt. See, for the past few years I have been constantly stimulating the economy. I am like a one woman army trying to keep this country out of a recession. Dare I say that if more people spent the way I have been this country would be stimulated into an erection. This rebate is like the country repaying me for all my good deads. Well that is how I try to justify it to John. Not much to look forward too knowing all 1800 smackaroos has to go to credit cards. Anyone else giving it all to Visa like us?

I will admit I feel a little jipped. Its been so long since I had a real vacation I can’t even remember what it feels like. All the vacations I take are to visit family. Albeit a lot of fun, just once I’d like to take a vacation where we stay in a hotel. Maybe see mickey mouse, or if for some reason the kids can’t come (anyone wanna babysit?), hit up some Vegas slots. What I wouldn’t give for some room service and a chance to sip mimosas by the pool. Yeah, yeah, I know its all on me that we are broke, I mean with all the spending money on one too many “Mamas against Obama” shirts (Out with the men, in with the bitchy post menopausal women!). Still I will feel jipped and live vicariously through you few who get to live it up with their government money. Enjoy it for me would ya?

As anyone who knows me has heard, for Christmas I got a Zune. Not just any Zune either, the best damn Zune in the free world. The day it came in the mail I ripped it open and hooked it up to my computer. Not knowing what I was doing (cause people I have never owned an iPod), I basically dumped the entire content of my hard drive on her. Including about 1900 pictures I had sitting on my desktop in pretty little folders labeled by date. At the time I thought I was such a dumb ass. I would now have to spend all day deleting pictures. Being the lazy girl I am, I had a great idea and decided to let future Rachael handle the situation.

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Lately I have become and huge news junkie. I spend at least an hour after the kids go to bed catching up on news. I know I should be using that time to clean our stye of a house and catch up on weeks of laundry. But if I did that then I wouldn’t get to blog about this article regarding children’s birthday parties.The just of it for those with little time. Its about parents who spend a fortune on their childs birthday party. One mom spent 5 grand for her daughters third birthday. TEN GRAND! You can get a really nice used car for that price. Anyway the article was trying to promote some website to plan cheap birthday parties for your kids. After giving the link some woman shared her story about how she was able to plan a party for $500. How cheap!

What happened to cake and ice cream? I am in shock that someone would spend so much on a kids party. I admit we went overboard on Gav’s first birthday. I’d say we spent about $350. Now when I think back on it I can’t believe how much we spent. We made a pact to do simple parties at home.

The article then suggests that maybe parents are sending their kids the wrong message. Ya think?

A few weeks ago Keaton started complaining a lot about his hands. Constantly coming over to me or John saying “My hands hurt”. He’d hold them out, get a kiss to make them better, and be on hid way. About a week ago he began clenching his right hand into a fist and leaving it that way all day long. He’d do it until his hand was pruney from sweat. It has really been worrying me and John as we have a history of juvenile arthritis in our family.

So today I made an appointment to go to the Ped. Our new awesome Ped of course was not in the office. So we went to some guy we’ve never been to before. He checked over Keaton’s hand, and basically told us that its behavioral. That he is doing it because we are rewarding him with kisses when he complains. Uh, okay. How does that explain the fact that he refuses to unclench his hand. He basically is one handed all day long, and that is just not normal. John pushed for an X-ray, so he had one. We have yet to hear the results because the hospital is apparently ghetto and makes kids wait to find if they have broken bones. I am sure his results will be fine. Which basically just leaves us in the same place.

Grrr, some times I just really hate doctors.

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On May 3 we will be joining a slew of other parents in Cottonwood Park for Autism Speaks “Walk now for Autism”. We have created our own Team Page for Gavin. We would love for any of you who live in Utah to come and join our team for the walk. For any of you that just live too far away you can always sponsor our team by donating, even $5 goes a long way. I don’t usually use my blog as a resource to hit up my readers for money. But this cause is so close to my heart that I can’t not post this. Please help us to make those families dealing with autism have more resources while we wait for a cure!

Thank You!

****Update****

For some reason if you aren’t registered as a team member I can’t see who has donated to our team. I would love to know who has donated so far so I can add you to our list. If you want to stay anonymous that is fine, but I would love to see your name up on our page!