The Stringer Family Blog

Vein Surgery

2011-12-19T15:22:00.000-08:00

So, check out my amazing, purple leg! I had surgery on it about a month ago. It is now perfectly normal and skin-colored again. It wasn't "big deal" surgery --I just had a couple of veins that had failed in my right leg and they were starting to hurt pretty much every day so I finally bucked up and got them taken care of.

Here's what my leg looked like before surgery. It's hard to get the full effect on camera, so imagine that blue vein looking even more bulgy and gnarly and you have a better idea of what it REALLY looked like!

Two hours before the procedure I had to cover my leg in lidocaine cream and wrap it in Saran wrap. Yes, those were the actual instructions. "Wrap your leg is plastic wrap." Who knew?!

An hour before the surgery, I took a Xanex. I was told it would probably put me to sleep during the procedure. Unfortunately it did no such thing so I was quite awake during the whole thing. NOT HAPPY. Gary drove me to surgery (because the Xanex was SUPPOSED to make me sleepy, you know). Once there, I got all laid out on the table and prepped and everything...and then the work began. The doctor shot me up with a numbing agent and then ran a wire into my saphenous vein from my knee to my groin, then a catheter followed that and a laser burned the vein as the doctor withdrew it.. (There were lots more numbing injections as he went along.) Also, a very strange vibrating sort of sensation while the laser was on, too. Oh, and let's not forget the lovely aroma of burning vein, too. GROSS.

Then, the doctor went to work on the gnarly veins on my calf --he plucked them out like wayward eyebrow hairs. Funnily enough, I always called that vein my "pet guinea worm" because that's what it sort of looked like to me. So imagine my surprise when the doctor showed me the veins as he pulled them out and they really DID look like guinea worms! Obviously, under normal circumstances the veins would be thick and blue and full of blood --when he pulled them out they were empty, having been affected by the burning procedure he had just done, so they just looked like long, skinny, white, twisted worms, which is pretty much what empty veins AND guinea worms look like anyway.

...And that was it! They bandaged me up with some steri-strips, then gauze over that for my calf. The dreaded thigh high support hose were next and more pressure bandages on top of that for my calf. I had to wear the hose for 48 hours straight and when I got to take it off (at night only --I had to wear it during the day for the next 2 weeks), it looked like the first picture I posted. Not so bad, all things considered.

This skinny thing is the support hose I had to stuff my leg into every morning for two weeks. As you can see, it's not much bigger than my ARM. So squeezing my leg into it was quite a feat. Also, when we went up to Washington recently I had to wear BOTH stockings on the plane to reduce my risk of Deep Vein Thrombosis since the surgery had taken place just a few weeks prior. Let me tell you, those plane rides were the most miserable I've endured in a long time. Not only did the stockings make my pants too tight, but being thigh-high, they pretty much just squished everything "extra" out the top so I had a veeeerrrry interesting looking booty as I walked around the airport. Good thing I had a big winter coat and a sweater on 'cos let me tell you --I had some seriously strange junk goin' on in the trunk!

Oh, and by the way, the Xanex DID eventually hit. But it wasn't until nearly two hours AFTER it was supposed to that it finally stuck...and not until I was taking a walk after getting home from surgery and lunch. If you would have driven by, you would have seen me staggering down the sidewalk two blocks from home, fighting to keep my eyes open. There was a point when I seriously considered laying down on the sidewalk but I was afraid someone might stop to try and help me rather than let me sleep, so I bravey (if a little drunkenly) soldiered on. Interestingly, by the time I made it the rest of the way around the block I had another few minutes of loopiness...and then it was out of my system and I felt completely fine.

Which leads me to wonder why on earth people take stuff like that for fun. 'Cos that was not fun. Just sayin'.

Anyway, here’s a link to a picture of a REAL guinea worm, just because. Really, there's no comparison to my varicosity. A guinea worm infection is a horrible and painful thing and I hope they really do manage to eradicate it as they claim they are about to do, 'cos varicose veins are gnarly...but guinea worms? NASTY! http://www.healthmasters.com/sites/all/themes/hm/parasites/guinea3.jpg

One last thing: if you have varicose veins, I TOTALLY recommend this surgery. But be prepared to be pretty uncomfortable for a solid two weeks afterwards. Not miserable. Just uncomfortable and very sore.

That is all.

Miscellaneous Halloween-y PIctures

2011-10-29T16:09:00.000-07:00

Some random Halloween-y pictures. Two more days and we can (finally) un-decorate the house. I am pretty tired of spiders and centipedes on my windows, to be honest. And the dog keeps stealing the fake tarantulas, which means I keep finding little rubber legs all over the place. And I really don't enjoy the clutter of all the small decorations, either. I don't mean to be all bah-humbug-y but I could definitely do without this particular kind of decorating!! Okay, enough complaining. Here are the random pictures I promised:

Jessica's book report --the assignment was to read a mystery book, then make a haunted house. The doors and windows had to contain information about the characters, conclusion, and so forth, from the book. I LOVE that her teachers make book reports fun and creative.

Jessica and Daddy at the Corn Maze/Halloween event we went to with her Confirmation group. Poor Daddy could barely walk due to his horrible gout, though. We all went through the scary "haunted house" where people tried to grab you and jumped out at you. It was a little scary but pretty fun.

Pre-made gingerbread house kits are the way to go, but they're still a pain in the patootie to assemble. So here's a tip that only took us, oh, a decade or more to figure out. Assemble it with a glue gun, THEN frost. The whole "use the frosting to assemble the house" thing is a waste of time, super messy and completely unnecessary! No one EATS the stale candy you've used, so for crying out loud, just hot glue the thing together! If you want the effect of the frosting, fill the cracks and trace around the edges with it. BUT FIRST USE A HOT GLUE GUN TO PUT IT TOGETHER, PEOPLE!

Ah, Rats!

2011-10-29T15:51:00.000-07:00

Rats. Yeah, we got 'em, alright.
Turns out that the previous owners of our new house conveniently neglected to let us know that SOMEONE wasn't going to be moving out of the house when they did...and that would be the roof rats.

Fortunately, we haven't heard the pitter-patter of little feet in quite a while, so hopefully we have eradicated them by one of the two methods we've utilized. First, I went around the house and trimmed all the trees that touch (or come within four feet of) the block wall around the house and the house itself. This is to prevent entry into the house.

Secondly, I have become an expert rat-catcher. First, I tried catching them with an expensive, electronic rat-zapper. But no dice. Make that no MICE. (Or rats for that matter.) Glue traps weren't effective either, so I finally moved to the old fashioned snap traps. The difference between these and mouse traps is only size --rat traps are basically mouse traps on steroids. I was worried that I would be super grossed out if I did catch any rats. Interestingly, I was not, which is a good thing because I have now caught FOUR rats (plus one that committed suicide --more on that in a moment)! Sometimes I even knock on the window when I catch a particularly big one just so I can show Gary my latest catch! Sick, right? And being the expert that I now am, I have a suggestion for those of you who are trying to catch roof rats of your own.

The "experts" will tell you that roof rats like peanut butter or cashews or raisins or any number of other items. But if we use COMMON SENSE for a moment, it occurs to us that roof rats frequent yards with citrus trees. They eat the fruit that falls to the ground and they will even climb the trees to eat the fruit straight from the tree, hollowing it out. In fact, one recommendation you will often hear is to make sure you pick all ripe fruit from the tree AND pick up all fruit that falls to the ground. To that end, knowing that the rats are in your yard specifically for citrus fruit, doesn't it make sense to use citrus fruit as bait over peanut butter and cashews and raisins? Seriously, people! If they're coming FOR the fruit, GIVE them the fruit for crying out loud!

Once I had that epiphany and started using oranges as bait I caught two rats over two nights, as opposed to two rats over four or five nights (using peanut butter, raisins, assorted candy, nuts and even corn chips.) Or maybe we just have health-nut rats. My point is, if you have rats and can't seem to catch them with "normal" bait, TRY ORANGES. 'Nuff said.

And since showing you a picture of a dead rat is really too, too gross, no matter how not-dead the rat actually looks (most of them aren't even bloody when I check the traps --just totally dead), here's a picture of my vast collection of rat traps.

I love Victor, whoever he may be, for his simple, inexpensive invention. Thank you, Victor!!

Oh, here's the story of the suicidal rat: I went out one day to put some trash in the garbage can. To open the lid, I had to lean over another, empty, trash can. As I did so, I glanced inside. And what should I find at the bottom? Why, nothing short of a dead rat! I believe it either tried jumping from the house to the block wall (or visa versa) or else got spooked by something as it was walking on the top of the block wall and fell. (Or perhaps it realized that death was unavoidable thanks to my new-found predatory skills, and decided to save me the trouble of hunting it down.) In any case, it must have fallen inside the empty garbage can and then couldn't escape, thereby providing me with my 5th, and easiest, catch.

And one more thing in case you're feeling sorry for the rats that I've killed. This new job of mine is not without risks. So far I have not broken any fingers when traps have snapped after I've set them, but when one recently snapped as I was trying to put it down, it caused me to throw another one in the air (where it also snapped). I then tripped and started to fall. I couldn't put my hands on the ground because I had already set other traps nearby, so instead, I tried to fold up into a funky fetal-position as I skidded down the small slope of sharp rocks before finally coming to a rather painful stop about a foot away from another trap. My poor tushie is STILL bruised. Score one for the rats! Ha!

More Crafts from the Queen of all that is Crafty

2011-10-05T12:54:00.000-07:00

I feel kind of silly for not realizing how completely, utterly simple it is to make super-cute paper roses.

All you do is cut paper into a spiral, roll it up, then glue it! You can tear the spiral if you want a distressed look, cut the spiral sort of wavy or bumpy...or do it the SUPER EASY way and buy a Sizzix die.

Below are some of the dozens of roses that Craft Queen Jessica made recently. The small lavender and yellow ones (and the larger blue one) at the center of the picture are made with the Sizzix die as are many of the others. A few, though, like the larger pink one touching the yellow rose, were made by cutting a spiral freehand.

Tip #1: The more wavy you cut your spiral, the better the "petal" effect. A smoother cut gives you flowers that are more like ranunculus. We haven't tried cutting a spiral with decorative scissors yet. That might be interesting.

Tip #2: Don't bother trying anything other than a hot glue gun as your adhesive. You need an instant bond to keep the flowers from unraveling too much. Oh, and try chalking the edges of the rose after you cut and assemble it for dimension. Super, super cute! Double sided patterned paper is cute, too!

Below, we have another totally rockin' paper craft from the Queen. She found directions for this one on the internet (where she gets most of her but-mom-I'm-so-bored ideas.) This was made by cutting a large circle of posterboard, then making cones of 6x6 doubled sided pattern paper and gluing them (hot glue gun) onto the circle. Another layer of the cones filled in bare spots and a large paper flower covered the center where all the cones met. (Cones were all rolled and stapled to keep them from unwinding before gluing in place.)

Jessica also glued seed beads to the small patches of the posterboard circle that showed behind the cones. I suggested she just fill those areas in the more cones but she didn't want to bother making more. The whole project took nearly two hours and she was ready to be done at that point!

Tip #1: Doubled sided pattern paper is most economical if you buy it in the form of a pack of 12x12 paper and cut each page into 4 pieces. You need about 60 cones for this project and there are tons of different styles of paper packs out there--I'd love for Jess to make me one that's neutral colors for my bedroom or the family room!

Tip #2: The flower at the center is from an American Girl paper crafting kit we found at Michaels--it had tons of different punch out, doubled sided, heavy-duty cardstock shapes that you can layer to create cute, whimsical flowers. Even though American Girl crafts are usually for girls slightly younger than Jess, this particular kit has been very versatile. (Think cards, tags, etc.)

This project ended up being somewhat bigger than 12x12 when all was said and done. This is really cute in baby colors, too!

Well, hello there, friend!

2011-10-05T12:24:00.000-07:00

I was in the other room one day when Jessica yelled for me. Turns out this little guy was climbing the wall in the family room. Being a bug-lover, I grabbed my camera and picked up the praying mantis. Getting it to pose for a picture was the hard part! When I'd get too close, it would rear up on its back legs and "box" at the lens. When I'd put it on my hand like you see here, it would promptly run up my arm. I draw the line at bugs in my hair (actually, it's more of an ear thing. No bugs in my orfices, please) so when it climbed onto my shoulder, I told Jessica to get it. It took her a few moments to get the nerve to do it, but she finally did and was able to take it out to the orange trees, thereby saving its little mantis-y life.

Pictures of the House

2011-10-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

A few pictures of the new house, mostly just the rooms that have been substatially made over. Or that are not currently a pig sty. There's always that to consider, you know! =)

The family room, before.

...and after. Gary installed the wood laminate himself, with a friend's help.

The craft room, before. Funny thing: the lighter pink of the walls is pretty much exactly the same shade of Pepto Pink that Jessica's room was since she was 3. When we bought the house I think she was terrified that we might stick her in that room and she'd be stuck with pink walls again! ha!

...and after. Same thing with the floor in here...it was Gary. All Gary.

The living room, during the hoarding months (after moving in, before unpacking was complete).

...and after. This room, by the way, has become the "hang out room" for Jessica and her friends because they like to practice gymnastics moves in all the open space. Needless to say, with Gary's office being directly across from the living room, he is not a happy camper with all the noise!

Bathroom off the family room, before.

...and after. Really the only difference is the shower curtain and a new, non-stinky, pee-stained toilet!

Closet, thy name is organized!

This is how anal I am sometimes. We have some shelves in the master bedroom closet and not only did I fill them with bins but I also labeled the shelves under the bins so you could tell at a glance what is in each bin (the bins are two-deep).

Let the Holidays begin!

2011-10-02T11:11:00.000-07:00

Imagine someone is standing at a starting line, waving a black and white checkered flag, shouting, “Let the holidays begin!”

That’s how I always feel when Jessica’s birthday approaches. It seems like the minute her birthday is finished, the three-month race to the end of the year has begun and there’s no slowing down until the New Year starts.

That being so, here are some pictures from Jessica’s birthday party (spa theme). It was interesting trying to hang streamers. This house is much harder to decorate than the old one. No fireplace, the ceilings are too high to hang streamers from, and the rooms are bigger in general, so it just doesn’t look as festive. Bummer, man!

Jessica made the decorations herself, of course!

The girls started the evening by putting on chocolate facials and soaking their feet in hot, bubbly water.

Of course, they had to eat some chocolate too, so ice-cream bars it was!

Too, too cute. And chocolatey, too!

Directions for homemade chocolate facials: Pour about 1/3 cup of half and half in a container. Add a few dollops of honey, then cocoapowder. Stir with a fork until the cocoa powder dissolves and a thick, fudge-like paste is formed. (It will form a thick, whippy texture before it gets fudgy.) Make a day ahead if you’d like, but make sure to refrigerate until you’re ready to use and allow to sit at room temperature for a few hours before you use it so it won’t be too thick (or freezing cold). Allow to sit on face for 5-10 minutes, then rinse off. Smells DELICIOUS!

After they soaked their feet, I painted their toenails. The girls all chose very different colors and "looks."

Time to make homemade soap! The girls added colored chunks of soap to a mold, then added melted soap and scents to the molds to hold it all together. When the soap hardened, the girls wrapped their bars in plastic wrap and decorated the outside with ribbon and cute paper roses that Jessica made beforehand.

Jessica's wrapped and decorated bar of soap. The girls loved, loved, loved doing this. And it was so easy, too!
Next, they made their own sugar scrub and colored labels for it. Sugar scrub: Mix ½ cup of white sugar with 1/3 cup oil. (Usually I use jojoba or some other very light oil, but for six girls we just used cooking oil.) Add 10-20 drops of essential oils and stir it all up. To use, rub on hands, especially the back of the hands, fingers and wrists. Rinse and pat dry. If you feel too oily, wash hands with soap and water and pat dry. Your hands will feel extra smooth and soft.

Time for cake and presents. We made a rainbow cake for her birthday. Jessica decorated the cake herself –it was simple but cute. And of course, since I did NOT make the frosting myself, it was NOT a goopy mess like Daddy’s was when we made the same cake for HIS birthday! HA!!!

Happy birthday, Jessica!

Miscellaneous Silliness

2011-10-02T11:02:00.000-07:00

I will be the first to admit that I find humor in funny places. Here are some random, silly, pictures from the move and our house.

This is a chandelier we inherited when we moved into the new house. We have dubbed it "the poodle light," for obvious reasons. And no, I don't know how many poodles were harmed in the making of this fixture, so please don't ask.

This is, "the weird fan." We can't really think of anything else to call it, but it IS pretty weird. Not only do both fans work, but the whole thing oscillates around the center as well, so it's as if someone is sitting on the ceiling blowing first one fan at you, then another! I personally think this is the most awfully unattractive fan I've ever seen. However, it does work well, so it does have at least one redeeming quality!

This is, perhaps, not laugh-out-loud funny, but it's so ME to do this that I had to include it. You see, we only have a few window treatments in place. We really like shutters, but they're very expensive and other things are more of a priority right now, so to save a few bucks but allow us some privacy in the most important rooms for such a thing (namely the bathrooms!) I PAINTED the windows. This is the master bathroom window. Cheesy, I know. But effective! And cheap! Niiiiice and cheap!

The pile of dog hair and dust that had settled under our bed in the old house during the past decade was so astounding that it should not be surprising that it spontaneously formed itself into, yes, you guessed it, A DUST BUNNY!

Documentary of a Couch.

2011-10-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

We all know that there are some strange and mysterious things that happen in our homes. Socks are eaten by the washing machine. Nail clippers and tweezers disapper into thin air. But many people are blissfully unaware that their COUCH has an unmatched and voracious appetite.

Case in point. When we moved our furniture into the new house I could hear a mysterious rattling sound. The cushions had obviously been removed during the move so it was clear nothing was under them. So what could the noise be? Let's find out, shall we?

The couch, after being properly anesthetized, has been laid on its back and prepared for surgery.

The stomach of the beast has been lavaged. Much to the shock and amazement of the attending surgeon, the following items were in the slow, slow, process of being digested. Some items, such as the fake food and string of beads have proven to be 8+ years old according to reliable carbon-dating methods. Most surprising, however, was the presence of not one, not two, but three remote controls. Oddly, very few pieces of Actual Food were found within the stomach of the beast. Our hypothesis is that creatures of this size, weight, and sexual maturity do not compete with dietary habits of human beings. Instead, we should be able to coexist peacefully with these magnificent animals, intervening only on the occassion that one becomes a rogue and begins dining on our technological gadgets as this one has.

The creature has been sewn up, given a round of antibiotics to prevent post-surgical infection, tagged, and allowed overcome the effects of the anesthesia before being returned to the wild.

Creative Crafter

2011-05-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

Jessica really IS a crafty kid. What? You need proof? Oh, fine. Here it is! =)

These are the Valentines she made for her classmates this year. Totally cute little robots with candy feet. She found the idea online. I only helped with the hot glue gun.

When her teacher's birthday was coming up, she desperately wanted to make her a card. But not just any card. Something extraordinary. And I think she accomplished that. Incidentally, she had no help from me at all on this one other than in coming up with the saying. She went online, found the idea, printed the Starbucks logo and stuck on the gift card we bought her. Pretty clever! (And apparently that tank top she's wearing must be her "I'm in a crafting mood shirt" since she is also wearing it in the Valentine's picture! lol)

I think this is my favorite recent piece of art. The paperdolls are from our Sizzix machine but the idea was, once again, all hers. LOVE. It's even cuter in person than in the photo!

See. Do you believe me now? We are so different in some ways but when it comes to crafting, she is definitely my Mini-Me! This girl can craft! =)

We Closed!

2011-05-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

Well, just like being pregnant, buying a new house seems to take forever when you’re the one doing the buying…and it seems like only a blink of the eye to everyone else!

Yes, that’s right. We are the proud owners of a new house. “New” being completely subjective, of course, as the house is about the same age as our old one. And it's only a couple blocks away. In fact, for months I’ve been walking the dog past the new house just because I could. Of course, every time I passed it, I found myself fantasizing about using my hedge trimmer on all the overgrown bushes and plants in the front yard! (That was the very first thing did when we got the keys.)

You might think I'm crazy, but I really love moving. It sort of reminds of making New Year’s Resolutions. You get to start over and reorganize every square inch of your house, deleting the junk you don’t need or want anymore, freeing up your space and your energy in the process.

The best part about this particular move is NOT having to find new friends, new places to shop…or risk getting lost at every turn, as I am prone to doing. (Except that I expect I will continue to take the long way to to and from the house until I get my new, slightly distorted bearings straightened out.)

The down side to the move is that we basically just finished remodeling the old house, so in many ways we are starting over with old cabinets, outdated countertops, and leaky faucets after just becoming accustomed to the upgrades we installed in the old place. (Man, am I ever gonna miss my farmhouse sink in the kitchen --that was my very favorite part of all the remodeling we did! lol)

BUT (back to the upside) at least it gives me the opportunity to try to do a better job of taking before-and-after pictures this time around!

So, on that note, here’s the first before and after picture.

Before the attack of the wild hedge trimming woman that is me.

…and after. Dude, I rock. (The only thing I didn't do is trim the big ficus trees. But the bushes and shrubs? All me, baby. All. Me.)

Now, let's not forget the cleaning. The non-stop cleaning.

The tile floor, before (right side) and after (left side). I spent considerable time up to my elbows in bleach-water scrubbing the tiles and grout with a scrub brush and Mr. Clean Erasers. (That's MULTIPLE Mr. Clean Magic Erasers in case you missed that.) The tiles were so dirty that I "used up" one eraser for every 10 or so tiles I washed and the end result is that the tiles are a completely different color than we thought they were!

And more cleaning.

Before I used up another Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. (Have I mentioned that I LOVE those things?!)

After. Not perfect, but better. MUCH better!

More pictures to come. Wait until you see the poodle-hair light fixture we inherited. It makes me giggle every time I glance up at it. =)

Eleven.

2011-05-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

Eleven. That's how old my baby is. Eleven years old, finishing elementary school and entering middle school. I am sad and happy at the same time. Jessica is an amazing kid and she's turning into an amazing young lady.

My beautiful little baby. The day she was born was the best day of my life.

My beautiful daughter more recently. I am so lucky to be her mother.

I'll stop before I wax too nostalgic. I wasn't one of those crying moms the first day of Kindergarten. I wonder if I will be one tomorrow, on her last day of Elementary school.

UPDATE:
No, I didn't cry. My daughter DID tell me, "Okay, you can go now," as soon as we all went outside to have cookies and juice under the ramada. Not that she didn't want me there...she just wanted to make sure I had enough time to go pick up Subway for her as I promised I would do for her last day of lunch in Elementary school. lol

Here's a pic of the two of us at the celebration. She's a cutie, for sure!

Mother's Day

2011-05-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

One of Jessica's sweetest qualities is the importance she places on making people feel special and important. When her closest friends have a birthday, she spends days and days working on lengthy letters that describe all the wonderful things about them. If you're familiar with The Five Love Languages, you would rightfully say that HER love language is "Words of Affirmation." Things like that are just as meaningful for her to receive as well.

She does the same thing for us on special days, too. This morning, the moment I walked in the house after taking a walk, Jessica presented me with a handmade card and the following list. It's hard to read in the photo, so I typed it below. The one that makes me giggle is F...because I totally do and it totally does! (Before you try it, be forewarned that it usually backfires with younger kids as they find it utterly fascinating and usually try it themselves for hours on end, which then irritates YOU! lol)

Anyway, Jess really put a LOT of time and effort into this list. What a great kid!

ABC’s of Memories

by Jessica

A is for All the times we’ve laughed together!

B is for Being there for me when I need you the most.

C is for Caring for me when I’m sick or have a headache!

D is for Doing gracious things for me like buying me fun games.

E is Embarrassing me when my friends are over!

F is for Faking an Italian accent which gets annoying!

G is for Giving your time and energy into bringing me to my activities.

H is for Happy eleventh Mother’s Day!

I is for I will always love you no matter what!

J is for Just about everything you’ve ever done to let me know you love me.

K is for Krazy things we’ve done together.

L is for Lazy days at home.

M is for Married daddy in 1997.

N is for Never letting me miss out on activities.

O is for Only sleeping together when Daddy is gone.

P is for Protecting me from danger.

Q is for Queen of the world today!

R is for Running together in Girls on the Run!

S is for Standing on the beach in Hawaii with Daddy and I.

T is for Tearing presents open on Christmas morning!

U is for Us reading by the fire in winter.

V is for Very tough situations you’ve helped me through.

W is for Watching our favorite movies together!

X is for Xylophones you watch me play in Mallet Band.

Y is for Yelling at each other but always apologizing.

Z is for Zebras we’ve seen at the zoo together!

Happy Mother's Days, everyone!

Aloha!

2011-04-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

We just got back from our Hawaii vacation. It was AMAZING! I've always wanted to go and am so happy we did. We were on the island of Kauai --the perfect place for us. Lots of beaches and nature stuff. Totally, completely amazing...so much so that I will stop talking already and just post pictures!

View from our timeshare!

Koi Pond in the "backyard."

One of the 200 hens/roosters we saw on our trip. They are considered a pest here!

Cool little cave by the beach!

Dolphins we saw off the front of the boat! SO NEAT!!

Jessica pretending to enjoy the "Shave Ice" (not shaved ice) that is popular there. None of us really cared for it. It was far too sweet as far as we were concerned. Yes, you DID just hear me say that! lol

The view when snorkling!

Who's crazy for buying an underwater camera now?!

Yeah, yeah, that's me. In a bathing suit. Thank goodness the bottoms are "swim shorts" (for girls, of course) because we often walked around in our suits and I would have been mortified to be wearing regular bottoms. UGH!

Kayaking, followed by a short hike, then a swim in a water fall!!

Innertubing down a sugar plantation ditch! Big smiles, but cold water!

Helicopter ride to see the Napoli Coast. Very pretty scenery.

Monk seal, sleeping peacefully. If people were fined for disturbing YOU, you'd sleep well, too! It was odd to see them lay about on the beach surrounded by people kept at bay by nothing more than a rope and a dire warning to give them their space.

Luau! Fun to watch! Yummy to eat. Except the poi. Not such a fan of the poi.

Very cool basket Jessica made. I am trying to talk Jessica into letting me put it up in the living room of the new house!

Totally cute litte family of shells and such that Jessica made. That would be Gary, me (in the skirt) and Jessica, of course!

Pretty hibiscus to finish things off.

We had a great trip but it's always nice to come home, too! The one thing we DIDN'T do during this vacation was sit on the beach, oddly enough! Maybe next time!

St Patrick's Day

2011-04-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

All we need is an excuse. Really, that's what it comes down to. Any old excuse to make crafts, decorate, or try something new, is welcome and St. Patrick's Day fit the bill quite nicely, thank you.

Fancy, right? The fan-thing in near Jessica's head is especially impressive!

I came home from my Spanish class one night to find Jessica surrounded by green construction paper in the family room. The purpose? To decorate the living room wall for St. Patrick's Day. And decorate it she did! She's quite the crafty young lady!

I'm never sure why Jessica chooses to cut her own letters when she COULD use our die cut machine.

Granted, hers are much cuter, but still! lol

Of course, I couldn't let all of her incredible decorations go to waste, so when a couple of friends of hers came over for the day we had --what else--a green lunch. Mmmm. Green food. Unnaturally green food. Yum. Gotta love it.

Can't tell what the food is? crackers with green cream cheese, guacamole flavored chips (by Quaker --they're very yummy), a fruit tray with cucumbers, kiwi and grapes, pistachio pudding, and green milk.

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

2011-04-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

We celebrated Gary’s birthday a couple days early this year. Jessica always loves to make a very big deal about our birthdays so it’s no surprise she went all out for him. She made him a crown and a very thoughtful card. We also made him a VERY colorful cake. I mean VERY colorful!

Surprise!

"Were you surprised, Daddy?"

"Well, not really."

"Why not?"

"'Cos your mom told me not to come downstairs while she was baking and you told me that I couldn't come while you went to the store."

"Oh. Well happy birthday!"

The birthday crown says, "Birthday King." It ought to read, "Super Good Sport."

We got the idea for this cake from this website www.ehow.com/how_5738726_make-fun-rainbow-cake.html but basically, you divide your cake mix into 6 bowls and add food coloring to each. You need to use the gel kind of food colors as they are more intense and you have to use a lot at that.

Oooh...pretty rainbow...

Next pour the batter in the center of the cake in order, either starting with red or purple depending on whether you want the red on the outside or the center. We used 2 boxes of cake mix and made a 2 layer cake, reversing the order of the colors.

Ooooh...another pretty rainbow...

Then bake according to directions and frost. Our frosting was (obviously) super goopy but whatever. I’m a notoriously bad baker as I tend to wing it waaay too much, so this cake is COOL, but admittedly not well constructed, but that’s ME, not the recipe! Lol

"Uh, wow. This cake sure is....uh...colorful..."

Happy Birthday, Gary!

The Ostrich Festival

2011-03-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

It’s been a few years since we’ve been to the Ostrich Festival, but we went again this year and had a good time. We saw the ostrich races, of course, as well as the jousting competition.

I tried an ostrich burger, which is supposed to be lower in fat that chicken but honestly, I wasn’t very impressed. It tasted sort of corny, if you must know. And since the ostrich was corn-fed, I’m guessing that’s why. So if YOU haven’t tried ostrich before, don’t bother. Unless you happen to be at a fair and actually want to eat something low fat and corny but otherwise flavorless. In which case, have at it. Ostrich is the way to go!
The best fun we had was when Jess and I went in the “Wow Balls,” which were…well, perhaps you should just see the pictures to best understand exactly what they were. Suffice it to say that while I don’t think anyone ever needs to try ostrich, EVERYONE should try a Wow Ball.

This picture is the only time I managed to stand up right in the Wow Ball and I wasn't even in the water! Otherwise, I kept trying…kept falling over…and kept laughing hysterically. Good time. Good times, I tell you!

Jessica managed to stand up several times. She rocks!!

Jessica tried her hand at a couple of carnival games, too. She even won a little stuffed animal for popping two balloons with three darts!

Here she is, all proud of her little yellow piggie!

Six Million Dollar Mouth

2011-02-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

I swear, sometimes I'm afraid to even THINK anything positive. Everytime I start to get a little bit cocky, things just go to hell. Take my last visit to the dentist, for instance.

I sat down in the chair for my cleaning and thought to myself, "No problem. I haven't had a new cavity in forever, my gums are always in great shape and my baby teeth (yes, I still have two) are perfect...I'll be in and out of here super fast."

HA!

I was right about the cavities. I was right about my gums. The baby teeth? Not so much. Unfortunately, one of my baby teeth, which has always been rock solid in my jaw, was suddenly NOT so rock solid.
So I had a decision to make. Within two weeks of my cleaning, I had my poor little baby tooth yanked out, a titanium rod screwed into my jawbone, and a bone graft just for good measure (to fill in the spaces where the old roots were). The weird thing is that after the first day, it really didn't hurt at all, and I find that curious. I mean, the doctor DRILLED A HOLE IN MY JAWBONE. With a drill. Then he screwed a piece of metal into the bone. Then he stuffed the holes from my baby tooth with bone-graft stuff. I'm not complaining, mind you, but shouldn't that all hurt? Just a little?

When the bone has (hopefully) grown and the graft and implant have "taken", I'm supposed to go back to my dentist and they'll screw and glue a tooth onto the rod. (Actually, I think there's an in-between step where they have to MAKE me a tooth but whatever!)

Just think, once I get that tooth, I will have a bionic mouth that will be nearly as expensive as all of the six million dollar man's bionic body parts put together, given the cost of inflation. Still, I've been told that an implant is the way to go...and that it may very well outlast my other teeth (as well it should, being practically bionic and everything.)

Tooth version 1.0. The baby tooth in question is the one with the metal filling. It's just as well it had to go --I had to have the filling replaced in it once already. If they had to do that again I probably wouldn't end up with much tooth left anyway!

The space where my baby tooth used to be. Now it's just a hole with the cover of the screw showing. (The dark stuff on the tooth behind it is metal from the old filling from the baby tooth.)

So that's me and my six million dollar mouth. Or it will be when I get the dang thing installed. This is morbid but I can't help but wonder what an archeologist digging up my grave in thousands of years will think. If my bones and hair are all decayed and all that's left is a fake tooth and a small titanium rod, what what will they make of it? These are the things I wonder! lol

Cool Art

2011-02-28T10:55:00.000-08:00

I am the Art Masterpiece volunteer for Jessica's class. Our last two projects turned out especially cool! We talked about Eric Carle as an artist before we made ice cream, cakes and cupcakes using stencils and paper that was painted and textured. These are a couple of samples Jessica made for me to show the class. I LOVE them so much I laminated them, and of course, hung them on the art wall in the new craft room!

Cool cupcake

Incredible Ice Cream

Another project we did used "found" objects to create three-dimensional collages. After the kids glued items into their shoebox lid, I took them all home and spray painted them gold. These looked very cool. Jessica only used natural objects on this one. (The collages that were fullest looked the most awesome!)

This was a super fun, easy craft. I did learn that gold is the perfect color to use as it offers complete coverage while most other paint colors do not. Also, Aleene's tacky glue is once again the glue of choice. Elmer's is too thin for this project. Small boxes, seed pods, bark, popsicle sticks, paper doilies, fake leaves/flowers, trashed CD's/DVD's, soda/food lids, pill bottles, broken toys, game pieces, etc. were just a few of the "found" items I saved for the kids to use and the boxes that were most full were the ones that looked the coolest after being painted.

Craft Room

2011-02-28T10:46:00.000-08:00

I used to be a big crafter. I've done it all: needlepoint, cross stitch, and ribbon embroidery. Scrapbooking, card making, pergamanno and quilling. Tole painting, jewelry making, leather crafts, and probably several other things I can't even recall off the top of my head. I've even had a few scrapbooking pages and cards published in idea books and magazines.

However, I'm not much of a crafter any more. Oh, I still scrapbook --but I do it digitally with my Creative Memories Storybook software so the finished product is a bound book that won't fall apart (and so I won't have to clean up afterwards!) Once in a while I might even sit down to make a card. But by and large, my creativity is limited to writing these days.

All of which makes the fact that we now have a CRAFT ROOM a bit ironic. As I was cleaning out the extra bedroom one day, it occurred to me that maybe Jess would like to move into that room and use the big bed rather than waiting for us to repaint her room as we've been talking about doing in a few years. She jumped on the chance, so we sold her loft bed, moved her into the extra bedroom, gave it a quick update with a new comforter, fabric baskets for the bookshelves, and voila! She has a cute bedroom befitting a pre-teen (in other words, it does NOT have pink walls and flower decor) AND she also has a whole room to craft in with her friends (which DOES have pink walls and flower decor).
Gary's office is upstairs so he often overhears bits and pieces of conversation between Jess and her friends. He told me that every kid who's come over since we made the switch has said, "Whoa! This is sooooo cool!"

So there you have it. Me. Cool, genius mom. With a craft room.

View of the far corner --the walls don't look nearly as Pepto-Pink as they really are! lol The stuff in the corner is my Sizzix machine and dies. Finally --they have a home and can be easily accessed.

The "art wall." I love having Jessica's art all in one place in this room!

Ahhh....My anal tendencies get to shine! I LOVE having things labeled. If I thought I could get away with it, I would probably label all my own clothes so you would know, at a glance, that I am, indeed, wearing Anissa's shirt, Anissa's underwear, and Anissa's shoes. Okay, not really, but you have to admit that all these identical labels really make me SEEM neat and organized!

The back of the door and one of my favorite organizational tools --a $7 plastic shoe organizer from Target. We have these on the back of every closet door in the house, including the pantry (it's awesome for storing kid snacks, hot chocolate packets, tea, seasonings and so forth). This is the only one that's labeled, though. It's PERFECT for keeping all the different types of markers, crayons and colored pencils organized and accessible.

The Halls are Decked

2010-12-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

I don't think I've ever gone through and taken pictures of our house when it's decorated. So here we go. Prepare to be bored to death! lol

What we have dubbed, "The Skinny Tree." Two years ago, when Chloe was still a super obnoxious puppy, she tried to pull an ornament off our old tree and pulled it down, breaking it just days before Christmas. Needless to say, while she is still an obnoxious dog, she is now an obnoxious dog who avoids the Christmas tree at all costs. This is in the living room.

This small tree is in the family room. Why do we have two trees you ask? Chloe. That's why. When she knocked down the tree, this small one was the only reasonably priced one I could find. So THIS was our tree that year. After Christmas, when prices were vastly reduced, I bought The Skinny Tree. Hence, two trees. Simple, really. We actually use both of them. When my family comes over on Christmas Eve for brunch, we use the big tree for everyone's gifts. On Christmas morning when it's just Gary, Jess and I, we stay in the family room and use the small tree. This tree has all of Jessica's handmade ornaments, etc. on it. It's much more nostalgic than The Skinny Tree (which I like too...they're just different).

I am the queen of hangy-downy decorating. For birthdays, we hang streamers from this spot (and from the window you can see in the living room, too...it's hard to see, but right now it has hangy-downy snowflakes).

The stitchery above the fire place is very special. My mother-in-law, Synneva, gave it to me when she was dying of breast cancer not long after Gary and I were married. She'd had it for years (it looks distinctly '70's to me) and had only gotten as far on it as to complete the green branches of the tree. I finished everything else and "signed" it with both of our names. The wooden tree next to the fireplace was a project Jess I did a couple years ago. We painted it, then strung light through it. It turned out pretty cute as long as you don't look at the tangle of wire in the back.

Ah! One of our Christmas traditions. Every year since Jess was 5 or so, we put a holiday-themed puzzle together, beginning the day after Thanksgiving. When it's done, we glue it, then it goes onto our "puzzle wall."

...And this would be our puzzle wall, just waiting for the latest puzzle. After next year we'll probably have to start hanging our holiday puzzles somewhere else!

Last picture, I promise! More hangy-downy decorations. World's best product for hangy-downy decorating? Command Adhesive poster strips. The only thing that would make it better would be if they actually called them hangy-downy decorating strips. Because I like to say hangy-downy. And because I like hangy-downy stuff. Like hangy-downy earrings. Why mention that? Just to allow me to say hangy-downy ONE. MORE. TIME.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Feed My Starving Children

2010-12-18T09:10:00.000-08:00

Jessica’s Girl Scout troop took part in a packing event for Feed My Starving Children last night, along with about 150 other people. The meals, which are made up of rice, soy, “chicken” seasoning, and dried vegetables, required measuring, weighing, bagging, sealing and packing. All in all, we packed more than 32,000 meals in little less than 2 hours –enough to feed 88 children for a year!

Here's Jess working with her group. She's pretty cute even WITH a hair net, huh?

The label on every bag of food. Once again, however, my computer has done some of its own thinking and decided that the image that looked perfectly fine on MY screen deserved to be rotated. Just because. So please, feel free to crank your head to the side to read it if that gives you the glees.

We got to sample the finished product (cooked) and it really wasn't half bad. The kids really liked it. It tasted very much like couscous salad. I heard one mom say they thought it tasted like some kind of Rice-a-Roni dish. Regardless, even though it was good, I can't imagine eating it as your only meal, day in and day out for years at a time.

Spaghetti Tacos

2010-12-18T08:22:00.000-08:00

Look Ma! A spahgetti taco!

Yes, you read that right. Spaghetti tacos. That’s what Jess had for lunch recently, thanks to the influence of iCarly. She thought they were great. I thought they were sort of silly. That’s probably what made her think they were so great!

A carb lover's dream.

Three...Two...One...BLAST OFF!

2010-11-08T10:48:00.000-08:00

Jessica recently took part of a Girl Scout event that was a little different than many of our usual girly-girl activities. A few weeks ago, she got to build a rocket! It was supposed to be an activity with daddy-o, but unfortunately, he had to fly up to Washington because his dad was having surgery for bladder cancer again, so I went with her instead.

When he got back, they painted it together and even named it.

They decided to paint the rocket yellow, orange and red. The nose cone and tail fins were painted first, then orange stripes were added to the red body. It was cute watching Jess and her daddy work together.

Today, we got to go launch it! Ironically, Gary had to go back to Washington again, this time to help his siblings pack up their dad’s house as it sold, so he missed this event as well.

Jess got to launch her rocket three times after an initial snafu (there was glue in the guide slot for the launcher and we had to get it cut out). Each time, her rocket shot high into the sky, the parachute opened perfectly, and the rocket glided to the ground. Jessica tried to catch it, but she couldn’t quite do it!

Here's Jess prepping her parachute. A little baby powder went on the inside to help it open easily, then three loose wads of tissue paper were stuffed in the body, then the parachute was carefully folded back up, the strings wrapped around it, and unceremoniously stuffed in the tube, followed by the nose cone.

Hooking up her rocket...preparing to launch!

Three...Two...One...Blast Off!

Wow! Look at it go!

Do you see that tiny little speck above and to the right of the light pole? That's Jessica's rocket, after it already dropped the length of another light pole! That sucker flew!

We picked Gary up from the airport later in the afternoon, and the first thing Jessica wanted him to see when we got home was the video and picture of her rocket launching.

The next thing? Why, that would be the bright red comforter I bought to replace the chocolate brown one on our bed. (I’m 40 years old, for crying out loud. I’m DONE with neutral! I need some color in my life! lol)

The name? I'm glad you asked. Introducing...The Stringer Streaker! lol

Spoooooky Halloween

2010-11-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

Once Jessica’s birthday comes and goes, I know it’s almost that time. When Halloween arrives, it’s a given. The craziness of the holiday season has officially begun!

Halloween was especially fun this year. Jessica and I spent Friday afternoon carving pumpkins and making silly eyeballs, thanks to a craft idea I saw in Family Fun magazine. We roasted the seeds like we usually do and Jessica’s assessment of them was her usual “eh…they’re okay, I guess. Not my favorite, but they’re okay.” Of course, then she proceeded to eat them by the handful. With each mouthful she said, “they are very chewy though. Very chewy.”

Our jack-o-lanterns. Jessie's is the cool one with the stem for a nose.

I know the picture is dark, but I kinda like the way this one turned out!

The eyeballs we made: Draw and color eyeball designs on ping pong balls. Cut a hole in the bottom with a pair of scissors and push the plastic "flame" of a battery operated tea-light through the hole. The color changing tea-lights are by far the coolest.

We did NOT decorate inside the house this year. I can’t seem to decorate for Jessica's birthday AND Halloween so we usually choose one or the other. Besides, Jessica’s interest in helping decorate wears out pretty quickly and Gary isn’t interested at all. It gets really old doing all that festive stuff by myself all the time, especially knowing that it will be time to put up the Christmas tree soon.

Jess dressed up as a candy corn witch (whatever that is!). I colored her hair with streaks of orange, yellow and black. I also wove some “hair bling” in her hair, which is basically super-fine tinsel. It’s cute but kind of a pain. Call me old, but tying strands of fine tinsel onto one or two strands of hair is a little more than my, uh, maturing eyes can handle. On the other hand, my fine motor skills remain excellent and I found it easier to do by feel than anything else! lol

Tell me she's not adorable! Wait, don't do it. I might get mad at you!

Jessica's hair turned out great. Check out the bling string (gold "foil" right by her face). She loved that it is meant to stay in your hair for a few days (unless your hair brush catches on it. OUCH!) so she could wear it to school. She did have to wash the color out.

We also painted Jessic's nails so they'd be all matchy-matchy with her costume. They turned out pretty cute.

I swear, this kid should be a nail-model. Her fingernails naturally look like this all the time (shape and length). I'm very jealous!

Now, about her toenails...not so jealous! The kid has some serious werewolf claws if you ask me! As soon as she trims them they grow out again. And it takes so much force to clip them that they go flying thru the air and almost always poke her in the eye. Not fun. Not fun at all.

As for me, I got really tired of my two usual costumes and decided to expand my repertoire this year. I usually choose between being the Cat in the Hat or a cowboy. Cowboy usually wins out when I’m having a big-butt Halloween since the poncho covers “it” very nicely! Unfortunately, the gyspy costume I made up sort of accentuates the booty as well but this year I decided I would embrace the whole "baby got back" thing.

Ben, my friend's five year old neighbor who trick or treated with us, was enthralled with the jingly-ness of the scarf around my hips. Not only did he pat and rub my butt four or five times throughout the night, but he also informed me that next year HE'S going to be a gypsy, too.

The "funnest" part of being a gypsy was being all sparkly and blinged out. To tell the truth, I feel a little blah this morning. No bling, no glitter, no false lashes. Back to boring old me again. On the other hand, check out the necklace I made. Cute, right?

Creepy Crawly Things

2010-11-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

Remember that poor black widow spider I found outside our backdoor a few months ago? Hopefully, the baaaad karma I accrued when I killed it was negated today when I saved two lizards who were trapped in a kiddie pool in our back yard. These lizards are very common here in AZ. They are almost the exact color of the block walls we have in place of fences. They can be seen darting along the wall all summer long. I can only imagine how hot their little feet get! Once in a while, I’ll go out and grab the paper on Sunday morning and discover that a baby lizard has crawled into the bag, too.

On a side note, we also have geckos, but they come out at night so they’re harder to photograph. (They are so well camoflauged that my camera can't seem to focus in on them, at least when it's dark out, which is when they come out!)

Check out the length of those toes! They’re a tiny bit “sticky”, too, which I suppose would account for their ability to run on the side of the wall!

I know, I know. I’m a dork! I can’t help it. I like creepy crawly things. What can I say?

The End of An Era

2010-11-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

I wish you could have been in my house with me for the past two hours. In fact, I sort of wish you could have been at my house for me over the past two hours! Imagine it if you will: twelve, count them, twelve, 10-year olds partying it up. It was a very loud and frankly, rather obnoxious, two hours. Not that any of the girls at Jessica’s party were obnoxious –they weren't. They’re very nice girls. It’s just that twelve 10-year olds is rather a lot to have in your house at one time! They’re kind of like puppies, if you must know: cute and everything, but so many underfoot is quite an undertaking! And I’m definitely a “let's keep it down, girls” kind-of-mom. I think my first lapse in judgment might have been forgetting to pick up a pair of earplugs! The second lapse was probably in scheduling the party for 6 to 8 pm. I was ready to take a bath and change into my pj's before the first guest even arrived. (It's starting to get dark by 6 now.)

Jessica planned and implemented her party this year (mostly) on her own. It was a backwards party. She sent out backwards invitations that had to be viewed in a mirror to be read and she planned the games, too. And since it was a backwards party, we did everything backwards: said goodbye as people arrived, gave out goody bags first, ate cake, opened presents, then played games, and lastly, we welcomed people when they left! Or at least that was the plan. The reality was a little different. For one thing, the ice-cream cake I made was hard as a rock so it took a good 45 minutes to defrost before I could even get a knife through it. On the plus side, the girls couldn't gnaw more than a few bites from the frozen cake, which means I was not responsible for providing them with a sugar-overload!

Backwards relays...in the dark, nonetheless!

Rock hard icecream cake.

I am sad to say that this year will have to mark the last of the big birthday parties. Those 10-year olds were just too big and too energetic to have a party this large. They are almost as big as I am, for goodness sake! Imagine a dozen clones of ME running around the house, jumping on other clones of me, trying to grab things out of my clones' hands...it would be obnoxious!

From here on out I’ll be limiting parties to just a couple of close friends. We’ll go to the movies or dinner or do something else, but no more big home parties.*

When the partying got out of contol, I made up a contest. The girls had to follow my "rules" and bounce balloons back and forth to each other, using just one hand, standing on one foot, etc. Amazingly, they all loved the game and we played it for nearly thirty minutes. Whew!

* In the event I reneg on this statement, please feel free to give me a good hard shake! NO MORE BIG BIRTHDAY PARTIES! I mean it!

On the plus side (make that the plus, plus, PLUS side), when the last of her guests left, Jessica came up to me, gave me a big hug and kiss and said, “Thank you, mom!” It’s nice to know she appreciated my efforts! She IS a very good kid.

Fall Break 2010

2010-10-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pics of our fall break 2010 vacation. We drove to California for a few days. The weather was great and we all got to do something we've been wanting to do. Universal Studios for Gary. The beach for Jessica. And La Brea Tar Pits for me. Well, okay, we never managed to make it to the tar pits. But it was still a fun trip. NOT as fun as it would have been if we'd actually made it to the tar pits, mind you, but fun nonetheless! lol

The drive takes about 5 hours and 45 minutes (including a potty break for the two of us girls who DON'T have the bladder of a camel like Gary does). Despite the discomfort of sitting, sitting, sitting for so many hours, I really enjoy road trips. Gary drives, I scratch his back and keep Jessica entertained,and her job, of course, is to ask, "Are we there yet?"

We've driven to Ca several times since we moved here --to go to Disney and SeaWorld, and of course, the beaches.

A picture Jessica took the evening we arrived. We went to the Santa Monica pier before we checked in to our hotel, had dinner and walked around. The sunset was beautiful, the pier was packed (there are rides and vendors on it), and it was also very, very stinky. Think beach-funk stink times 10. The dirty diaper I found washed up on the beach should give you an indication of the funk-smell I'm talking about. It wasn't just sea-smell we were a-smellin'!

Jessica and Daddy playing volleyball on the beach, something Jessica was DYING to do. I am best utilized behind the camera as I do not hit balls well. Or catch them, for that matter. How it's possible that I can juggle but cannot do any other sort of ball-related sport is beyond me.

One of my very favorite pictures from the trip. A rare and elusive shot of both parents-in-the-picture-at-the-same-time! And look, both my eyes are open. At the same time. Not the best picture of Gary, maybe, but whatever!

Gar and Jess visiting Mr. Crab at Bikini Bottom. See Sandy in thw background, waving? How sad that I don't particularly care for Spongebob and yet I've probably seen every episode ever made. Three times.

Jess and I. She's such a cutie.

Ya know what I hate? I hate when a shark swallows up your kid when you're on vacation. It bites.

Hey Scoob! It's, like, the Mystery Machine, man!

Every time we got back in the car, Jessica started journaling about our trip again. I wonder where she gets the urge to write so much. Odd, isn't it?

Our trip was fun, if a little short (no tar pits, remember). We drove to California on Sunday and came back on Wednesday, but it was nice to experience a change of scenery. And thank goodness Jess caught Strep the week BEFORE fall break this year. Usually she gets it a day or two befor fall break starts. =) All in all, a very good time!

Girl Scouts

2010-10-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

Jessica’s Girl Scout troop took a field trip to an airline training facility a few days ago. Of course, as the leader, I got to go too. We got to sit in the slide of the airplane (that turns into a raft), wear helmets that flight attendants put on before they fight a fire, and even put out a REAL fire with REAL fire extinguishers. That was the most fun part, of course. We even experienced an evacuation drill. It was quite exciting. Not at all calm and orderly like I would have expected. The flight attendants were all yelling at the top of their voices...I can only imagine what it would be like with smoke wafting through the cabin and hundreds of terrified passengers. Yikes!

Jessica putting out a fire.

Me putting out a fire. See! Real flames! lol

The moms. We were all relegated to coach while the girls took over first class. I told Jessica not to get used to it! Mean, huh?

The thing I love best about our troop is the way we run it. We require all families to lead 2 meetings each year. The nice thing about that is that the girls get exposed to 8 different family's interests and strengths. The girls have gone rock climbing, ridden horses, made dinner for their families, made jewelry, painted fabric & jewelry boxes, made knitted hats for infants, visited seniors at a senior center, made dinner and served homeless families. Oh, and they've sold a box or two of girl scout cookies! lol

Their next few activities: building rockets (and shooting them) with their dads and packing food for the Feed My Starving Children program! Seriously, our troop rocks.

2010-09-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

Did I ever mention the best-birthday-gift-ever that I got from Gary this year? He got me a Kindle! Whooo-hooo! I had to wait for weeks and weeks after my birthday for it to arrive, too, which only added to the excitement.

I've been downloading freeeeeeeee books from Amazon every chance I get. Think Sherlock Holmes, all the Edgar Rice Burroughs books, Dracula, etc. It’s hard to believe you can carry thousands of books in a half-pound gadget. Now wait a minute! That reminds me of something. A certain beaded bag with an undetectable Extension Charm. Do you know where I'm going with this? Minus the beading and the fact that the books won't rattle around when you shake it, of course! Who knew it was actually Hermione who invented the Kindle?! lol

In anticipation of the arrival of my toy, I purged most of the "real" books I had in my bookcase. Even though I do love emptying my house of clutter, it felt wrong, somehow, to give away all my books. Once I got past that issue, though, I really got in the groove of things and also recycled nearly 10 inches of old writing notes based on the philosophy that if I can’t read them because my handwriting’s so sloppy, it really doesn’t matter how great the ideas were. So out they went.

These were the hard books to get rid of. I confess that I bought Peeps for my Kindle. It's got the whole approaching apocalypse-theme PLUS parasites. How can you go wrong with that?!

Then, in my frenzy of purging madness, I even threw away all my old high school year books! I stopped to thumb through them as I was cleaning when it suddenly occured to me that everyone in them is...gasp! OLD!! And then I wondered why on earth would I want to keep pictures of hundreds of strangers when they were teenagers? That just seems beyond silly, doesn't it? Even the old boyfriends look way too young to be cute. In fact, I kinda got grossed out looking at the "kids" I was so in love with. I know I was a kid myself, but still. It was icky. I must be getting really old because I'll take a receding hairline and a few extra pounds any day! lol

No, really. Look at your yearbooks sometimes. You will be stunned by just how young those kids look! And you were one of them! It's sickening. Really sickening!

Anyway, with all that purging, I reclaimed some serious space in my house and now, instead of having stacks of books by my bed, there's just one skinny little Kindle. It's a pretty cool toy! I am very excited to have one. Wish it came with a beaded bag, though. =)

The birthday bouquet I bought myself. Has nothing to do with books. They were just so pretty. Plus, my house is clean in the background. Mostly. No idea what is on TV though. Who IS that guy?

The Mock Dock

2010-09-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

Well, the results are finally in and it's true. I may not be the nice person I always thought I was. I mean that. And I found proof when Marla emailed me a link to this website: The Mock Dock

Be forwarned that it's called the Mock Dock for a reason. There's a LOT of mocking going on and with the exception of the fat pictures (too close to home, I guess) I pretty much always end up laughing until I'm in tears at SOMETHING. I think the link takes you right to the turtle-dog pictures, which I find particularly hilarious for some reason. And search for "Just for Bunny" when you get a chance. The Axe commerical is, well, very funny.

On a sort-of-unrelated note, I once had someone (not a very nice someone) make a disparaging comment about how she didn't want to go to her grave and have people say that she was nice. Instead, she wanted to be remembered for accomplishing something important. (Implying that I was nice and it was a bad thing and also that I would never do anything important with my life. I told you she wasn't very nice.)

I appreciate that it's not generally the nice people who change the world, but there is a lot to be said for what being nice does do. Bitchy/mean/demanding people might achieve more in the larger scheme of things but I wonder sometimes if they ever stop to think about all the damage they do when they don't worry about being nice. I wonder if they realize that the good they do might not be balanced by their lifetime of not being nice.

With that, and my new favorite blog, in mind, there are now THREE things I want on my headstone when I die.
1. See, I told you I was sick.
2. She was very nice.
3. But she mocked.

If you have to pay per word, feel free to abbreviate: A nice, sick, mocker.

That's it. Mock on.

A Spider on Crack

2010-08-28T10:07:00.000-07:00

For the first time in nature, I saw a black widow spider last night. Unfortunately, "nature" turned out to be right outside my back door. Gary showed me a web yesterday and asked if I thought it was a black widow web. I said, "Maybe, they are supposed to make wonky webs like that." And the web was wonky. Even if you don't like spiders (I do), you have to admit that the symmetrical pattern of a spider web is a beautiful thing. This one though, not so much. It looked trashy, if you must know. Like the spider who made it didn't learn to weave and really didn't care.

At Gary's request, I went and checked on the trashy web when it got dark and, lo and behold, there she was. Or he. Make it she. Apparently the males don't have that red hourglass shape on them and our little lady certainly did. I debated the idea of catching her and turning her loose somewhere else but when I got a few inches away to try to photograph her, she kinda freaked out. Most spiders move over their webs pretty gracefully so it never occured to me that a spider's grace was directly caused by the shape of it's web. With its wonky web, this spider moved like it was on crack: jittery, jerky and rather creepily. Needless to say, I cancelled my capture and release plan and sadly, this spider is way too close to a high traffic area so it looks like her days are numbered.

Pretty cool, huh? I think you can double click the picture to see her even closer. And bigger. =)

A Giggling Puddle of Mush

2010-08-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I. Am. Not. Much. Of. A. Drinker.

However, since some of my friends took me out to dinner for my 40th birthday, I thought, "What the heck. Sure, I'll have a drink." Well, one turned into 4 and I learned something very interesting. If you drink enough, you actually LOSE your appetite. I can't say that happens to me very often. I think I ate one piece of ravioli and 2 bites of birthday flan for dinner. No wonder I turned into a giggling puddle of mush. And by the time I got home, a gigling puddle of vomiting mush.

Two beautiful women and one who thinks everything you say is so, so funny!

Below are some, but not all, of the very gorgeous, smart, loving and generally amazing friends who helped me celebrate my birthday. Did I mention that they're all H-O-T? Oh, you can see that for yourself, can't you?

I'm very lucky to have these women in my life! Thanks for making my birthday memorable!

Our Other Summer Parties

2010-07-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

Hmmm...call me a loser blogger...I guess I forgot to post pictures of the other two summer parties we had, so here's a very brief recap:

Our first party was a Book Trading Party. Each of the girls brought 5-7 books to trade. They drew straws to choose their order in line, and then they took turns choosing new books to take home.

Hmm...which book should I choose? They all look so good!

After the trading was finished, I taught the girls how to make their own bookcovers from grocery bags. Honestly, I thought they'd think it was kind of lame but they actually really liked it. Thank goodness, 'cos I'm not ready to completely lose my "cool mom" quotient quite yet. What's that you say? I'm only cool in my own mind? Oh yeah. I forgot for a moment...thanks for reminding me! lol

Making book covers.

Next activity: Making bookmarks from paint chips! The girls used stickers, scrapbooking brads, and ribbon to make REALLY cute bookmarks. The prep work was pretty easy too...we cut the color words off the paint chips and used Aleene's Tacky Glue to glue pairs of paint chips together, back to back a few days in advance. Just make sure you ask before taking a bunch of paint chips from your favorite home store. =)

Bookmark-making creativity at its finest!

...And of course, you can't have a party without having a snack! Ours was (what else?) letter shaped cookies. Duh!

Thank goodness for Trader Joe's. I had a heck of a time figuring out where I'd seen these cookies and you KNOW I wasn't about to make home made letter-shaped cookies!

You can't have a party without some kind of give away, can you? Well, we can't. The girls got to choose fabric bookcovers when their moms came to pick them up. I had to laugh, though, because one of the girls got a little upset when I told them that they would only get to choose their book cover when they saw their mom drive up. Her response was, "Ooooohhh, that's not fair. My mom's always late!"

Once in a while my frugal ways pay off. I bought a bunch of these bookcovers when they went on clearance last year. I think I paid ten cents each! =)

Our second summer party was a Percy Jackson Swim Party. When the girls arrived, they took the following quiz to determine which of the gods was their parent.

Next, the girls chose fancy cups (no idea how they relate to the whole Percy Jackson theme, but again, it was an after-summer clearance find last year and I was tired of the space they were taking up so it was time for them to find new homes!)

We wrote, "Jessica, daughter of Athena" on the bottom of the cups so the girls would know whose cup was whose.

Ahhh....a lunch fit for the gods! I think my favorite entree was Mrs. O'Leary's kibble. The girls were pretty good about trying everything but they didn't care for the Ambrosia salad much at all. Truly, it wasn't a very well-rounded meal as the girls mostly just ate a lot of Medusa's hair (this is considered to be a part of the hair and fur food group in case you were wondering).

Click to see the picture bigger. I think you can read the labels then.

Before the girls ate lunch, I made them all try a new food: seaweed. I feel kind of bad, though. There are some kinds of dried seaweed that are made for snacking purposes and they actually taste pretty good. The kind I bought, however, was NOT that kind. Apparently I bought the kind that you use to wrap sushi with. And it is NASTY. Gag you nasty. In fact, every one of the girls gagged when they tried it. However, I did get pictures of said gagging, so I guess it's all good. lol

Like...gag me with a spoon. Or seaweed.

Time to swim. But first they had to blow up their "inner tubes." No way was I going to inflate all those floaties myself!

Good thing the girls are so full of hot air! lol

Cowabunga!

I don't know why, but I really like this next picture. There's something about there being so many identical floaties in the water, I think. Too bad there are a couple bags of cans to be recycled in the background. At least it's not actual trash, I guess. lol

So there you have it! Our first two parties of the summer, just a little late. Hard to believe that school starts in about 2 weeks! In fact, one of the girls in our Girl Scout troop has already started back to school! Waaaaah!!!

Last Party of the Summer

2010-07-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

We had our last party of the summer this afternoon...a Chocolate Tasting Party! First the girls sampled seven different varieties of chocolate (all milk chocolate --we decided that adding in dark chocolate or chocolate with nuts would be like comparing apples and oranges).

The top two favorites: Cadbury milk chocolate and Trader Joe's Swiss Milk Chocolate. Godiva was a close #3.

A few of the girls were already sick of chocolate after the taste testing...but they soldiered on for the chocolate fondue. Each girl brought a different item to dip, and after a brief explanation of fondue ettiquette, the girls enjoyed dipping fresh bananas, strawberries, angel food cake, pound cake, grapes, brownies and freeze-dried bananas in chocolate. It wasn't long before ALL the girls were sick of it, though!

CHOCOLATE...Yum?!

Much to my amusement, within 30 minutes of the start of the party, the girls were DONE with chocolate and began asking for...wait for it....

"Do you have any celery? I really need some celery!"

Yes. Celery. The girls were so sick of chocolate that they started craving veggies to balance out the glut of chocolate in their systems. Celery, snap peas and baby carrots were a welcome relief! Then, after hanging around outside for a short period time time, the girls were ready to learn M&M Mancala.

M&M Mancala. Who knew it was so easy to make your own board?

The girls each took a Mancala game home. And a chocolate bar...and a stomach FULL of chocolate!

This was a really fun, low-key party. It would be a great thing to add into a big sleepover --the girls ate too much junk to be rowdy and it was easy and pretty inexpensive to throw together. Plus, how often are you allowed to eat as much chocolate as you'd like? Of course, the extra five pounds I personally put on today is kind of a bummer but what can ya do?! lol

Wow. I actually feel a little queasy looking at this chocolate. It might be a loooong time before I feel like chocolate again. Seriously. Kinda makes me think I should have a pizza tasting party. Ooooh, and a cake & cookie tasting party. And heck, maybe even a Diet Coke tasting party! lol

A Week in WA

2010-07-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Wow! What a fun week. The thing I keep going back to when I think about my trip to see my girlfriends in WA is how much our interests have changed and evolved as the years have passed. When our kids were younger, it was a given that we would spend every second scrapbooking. There were days when we wouldn't leave the house/hotel at all, except perhaps to go out for dinner. Looking back, I'm sure that's a reflection of our mutual need for uninterupted peace, quiet, and a break from the neverending demands of little ones. Go to the gym and exercise? Not a chance! We were all dead set on sitting on our kiesters and doing NOTHING!

That's been changing over the past few years, though. We've scrapbooked and crafted less, and been doing more active things. But this trip was the first one that finally seemed to "cut the cord" on the old routines. We got pedicures (a first for me), went to a drag race (another first for me), saw a friend I haven't seen in 20+ years, and even did a couple shots of tequila (wait, another first!). (By the way, if you ever want to blackmail Marla or Rebecca just call me...I've got some serious dirt on both of 'em!! )

Yes, we even got some exercise. Marla and I did 600 lunges while walking around Lake Padden. My booty still hurts just thinking about it! And you know, it was just as much fun as sitting on our kiesters always was.

Marla, me and Carolynn getting pedicures. Rebecca is taking the picture! Wow..I knew I hated this haircut I have right now but I didn't realize how MUCH I hated it until I started looking at these pictures! Ha!

Rebecca, Marla and I at the drag races. These self-portraits sure don't turn out very well, do they?! lol

We went out to dinner after the drag races and I think we all got so overheated it must have killed a few brain cells. I felt super loopy, silly and almost drunk. The spot on my forehead is chocolate of all things. Long story! =)

Fun & Funky Tee Shirts

2010-07-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

Jessica made this cute tee-shirt as a summer project. All it required was a tee-shirt, pony beads and a pair of scissors. I cut the bottom hem off the shirt, then cut skinny strips into the shirt. (I cut the front and the back at the same time). Next, Jessica beaded each piece of fringe with 3 pony beads and knotted it. We got this idea when we saw the shirts a friend's Brownie troop made.

Pretty darn cute, huh?

Tips:

1. Buy tee-shirts when they're on sale at Michael's or Jo-Anne's. They often go as low as $1.99 -$2.50 each.

2. Purchase tee-shirts that are at least a size or two bigger than you would normally buy.

3. When you start fringing, keep the fringe fairly thin --about a 1/2 inch. You also want to bead and knot one or two so you know if they're long enough. This is why you need a larger-than-usual tee-shirt, too. If you buy a normal size, you may show some tummy after you cut the fringe!

4. To string the beads onto the fringe, twist the tip of the fringe so it's pointy and try not to let it untwist until you get it through all the beads.

5. This is a good project to work on while watching a movie. It isn't exactly an exciting project to do --but it sure is fun to create the finished project!

6. We didn't try this, but it might be fun to fringe and bead the sleeves for a little variety! Make sure to cut off the hem first or you'll never get beads strung! Another idea: tie-dye the tee-shirt before fringing/beading. That'd be very cool! =)

What an Amazing Swimmer!

2010-07-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight was Jessica's last swim meet of the summer. Next year she will be in a new age group, so it was really cool that she earned FOUR first place ribbons --one in every heat she swam! Specifically, she swam in two relays (breaststroke and freestyle) and two individuals (breaststroke and backstroke). How awesome is that?!

This girl can swim!

As a parent, I have to admit that swim and dive meets are agonizing. The temp was well over 110 tonight and a little humid, too. The kids had to be at the pool at 4:30 pm and the meet didn't end until nearly 8 pm! To say that we suffer through meets is an understatement! Not only do we bring icepacks to put behind our backs, but I also bring a squirt bottle to spray ourselves with. Whew! It's hot out there!

Wow...a really bad picture of Gary and I, but a picture nonetheless

(even if we do look pretty squinty 'cos we're looking into the sun)!

2010-06-29T13:31:00.000-07:00

Here’s a fun (and very tasty) recipe that Jessica and I adapted from one I recently found on delish.com. They were originally called Lemon-Blush Napoleons, but frankly, some of ingredients were not things my family would have gone for and others were harder to find than you’d think. So here’s our adaptation. Not sure what to call them except perhaps Gone-in-a-Minute because they were! =)

Uh, and seeing as how I’m definitely a “wing-it” cook, this is, for sure, a “wing it” recipe. No measuring required. Sheesh!

Ingredients:

Lemon pie filling

Fresh strawberries, raspberries, bananas or blueberries

Wonton wrappers

Butter

Cool Whip

Preheat oven to 350. Spread a small amount of butter on raw wonton wrappers and cook in oven until slightly browned and crisp (approx. 5-10 minutes...watch carefully). In the meantime, put a dollop of lemon pie filling in a small bowl. Add 2 or 3 times as much Cool Whip. Mix thoroughly. You’ll end up with a creamy, thick mixture that tastes sort of like cheese cake. Wash, dry and slice fruit.

Allow wonton wrappers to cool, then spread some of the Cool Whip mixture on them. (Fairly thick, like cake icing.) Top with sliced fruit and enjoy. Two or three are very filling and pretty low fat.

Jessica and I both want to try this recipe with blueberry pie filling rather than lemon, too!

Wordle

2010-05-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

Have you ever made a word cloud? Very, very cool! Click the link below, copy and paste some of your own text into the box (from the create tab) and voila! You will instantly be generating your very own word cloud. What? You don't know what a word cloud is? You'll just have to go to wordle to find out!

Oh, alright. I won't do that to you. Basically a word cloud is a collection of the most frequent words used in the text you copy/pasted into the website. What makes it so cool is that the words that are used most are the largest and boldest. Words like a, the, and, and so forth don't show up so we're strictly talking about the meat & potatos of your text.

I've seen this used to provide a great visual after a brainstorming session. Seriously. Very, very cool!!

go to Wordle.net

The OTHER Toyota Rav 4

2010-05-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

Funny story. Gary and Jess went into to Kinkos the other day while I waited in the car (my mom had called). I was sitting in the passenger side, still buckled in and chatting away when two men suddenly opened both front doors of the car!

I suppose I should have been alarmed but the man who was about to sit down in the driver's seat was just too funny. The expression on his face went from shock to utter and complete embarrassment in less than a second when he realized that there wasn't a strange woman in HIS car --instead, HE was the stranger trying to get into someone else's car! His friend opened my door and did the same thing just a fraction of a second later, which made it all the more hilarious. Meanwhile, I continued to talk to my mom as if nothing unusual happened other than covering the mouthpiece and saying, "Wrong car!" Very witty, I know...but give me a break. I was on the phone! I can barely have one conversation at a time, let alone two! Oddly, the thing that kept me from being concerned about my safety (face it, the situation could have been very scary) was the rather pointless thought in the back of my head that, hey, I was buckled in so surely I was safe.

All in all, I think what I enjoyed the most was the super-speedy way those two grown men drove off in the OTHER silver Toyota Rav 4 in the parking lot. I can honestly say I've never seen anyone get in a car and take off so quickly in my life! Good fun, I tell you. Good fun!

I'm all grown up...

2010-04-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

It's funny the odd things that make you realize you're not a kid anymore. For some reason, I was struck by this when Gary and I bought a Costco membership. In the past, we were on Paul's account --Gary's brother worked at Costco and we got our membership through him. It was free, but it meant we were only allowed one card and it had to be in Gary's name. For the past few years we haven't even had that, and on the rare occassion when we needed something that came from Costco, Gary would go with a friend of his, or even more rarely, I would go with one of mine. Regardless, I have never, in my entire life, been into a Costco unless I was accompanied by another card-carrying adult.

As a result, it felt as if the universe moved, just a bit --that there was a paradigm shift, if you will, when I was handed my own card. Never mind that I've had credit cards, debit cards, and punch cards; that I have dozens of loyalty cards cluttering my keychain. And let's ignore the fact that I can legally drive a car, vote, order a drink, AND that I have my own house, a family and a job. While these things are all proof that I AM an adult, it's this silly membership card that makes me feel all grown up.

I can go into Costco without a chaperone now. Whoo-hooo! lol

First it was hanta virus, then dyscalculia, and now this!

2010-04-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

Hypochondriacs ought to be banned from the internet. No, really. You know how people who have been convicted of DUI's have to blow into a thing on their steering wheel in order to actually drive their car?

Well, someone ought to invent something that prevents certain, suseptible members of society from accessing health-related articles online, even inadvertently.  Personally, I've learned to stay far, far away from all of those websites, but unfortunately, sometimes you disover the strangest things completely by accident.

Take for example the blog called The Body Odd (link on the left side of the page).  It's my kinda site --full of strange facts that have no bearing on most people's lives, but are interesting nonetheless.

Unfortunately, I came across a post that discussed a rare condition only to realize that I HAVE IT! (What do you mean, "No surprise?")

Thankfully, it's nothing serious --it's not deadly like the hanta virus I barely escaped in Carolynn's mouse-infested garage, for example, but it IS a little on the, well...odd side. It's a condition called --get this: exploding head.

No, I'm not kidding. That's really what it's called. See, what happens is you're basically woken up not long after falling asleep by a horrendously loud sound that isn't really there, like a crash or bang.  Sometimes there's a flash of light that goes with it and then the anxiety that naturally follows when you hear a loud, unexpected noise in the middle of the night. It's more common in women than men, happens more frequently after 50, and tends to appear in clusters. It may be the result of stress and some reseasrches think the eustacian tube in the inner ear might come into play. (I'm sure there are dozens of researches fevershishly working around the clock trying to be the first to solve the riddle of this phenomena even as I write this.)

So there you have it. Exploding head. Not life-threatening. Of no consequence whatsoever, but weird. Definitely weird. And more to the point, it's a REAL CONDITION! I might have to add this one to my tombstone. Right after "See, I told you I was sick," you can list my every health concern. Dyscalculia and exploding head are a good start. Plus, there's the added benefit that they're already in alphabetic order, you know!
For the record, MY exploding head sounds like someone is slamming a pile of books onto the tile floor or else slamming several doors in perfect unison. Sometimes there's a flash of light. And there's always that startled-awake moment when I lay in bed, breathing heavy with my heart racing while I try to figure out if I heard a real noise or not.

Okay, so when I describe it, I definitely sound like a freak with this condition. But what can I say? At least it's not hanta virus!

She's Here!!

2010-04-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

Jessica, holding her newest "little" cousin, Emily Grace Smith, just 3 days old. She was born on Saturday, April 17th. She weighed in at 9 pounds, 13 ounces.

Me --trying, trying, trying to get Emily to open her eyes. No luck! =(

Jessica couldn't believe she actually got to hold Emily. I'm not sure why, but apparently she thought she wouldn't be allowed to!

...and of course, here's our silly picture. Emily really DOES have big feet, however, the angle of this shot definitely makes them look disproportionately large! lol

Spring in Arizona

2010-04-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

On of my favorite things about Arizona isn't the colors. In fact, I really don't care all that much for the dusty-greens and red earth that predominate here. I miss Washington's jungle of greens. But what we lack in color here, we make up for in texture. It seems to me tha the difference is one in perspective. In Washington you're best able to enjoy all the shades of green when you look at the scenery in a distance. Here, you have to take the time to get closer to nature. Of course, nature here is rather prickly, so you just can't get TOO close!

Trunk of a palm tree

Bottlebrush flower (?)

One of the many varieties of prickly pear catcus. This type has spines that are several inches long and the pad is purple-ish rather than green.

Flower pods on top of some kind of barrel (?) cactus. The flowers have already died. Most cactus flowers only live for a day or two.

Here's the same cactus --just not so close!

Agave. This is one of my favorite plants. Agave is used to make tequila, and you can cut off the very tip of the "leaf" and pull off the spine. When you do that, some very long strands of fiber are pulled out, too...you can use this strong "needle and thread" to stitch things with! (Yes, I've tried this --it's very cool but it really makes the agave look alot less attractive!) By the way, I have found that the tip of an agave easily penetrates jeans as well as the gluteus maximus. And if that happens, you have to have your husband pull it out, which isn't easy when he's laughing hysterically. Just sayin'.

Check out these star-shaped spines.

Totem pole cactus (?). Another one of my favorites! I love the shades of yellow and the silky texture of the plant between the spines.

A very cool cactus flower. This flower is larger than a dinner plate!

Octotillo. These plants are an indicator of limestone --so you will often find them thriving on hills with caves under them!

Yet another prickly pear cactus flower nearly ready to bloom. There are dozens of varieties of prickly pears. Some are eatable. Some are not.

Palm tree frond

Another variety of prickly pear cactus. I *think* the white stuff toward the bottom is stuff from the cochineal beetle, which is used to create the red food coloring sometimes called carmine.

Jessica's Gymnastic Team @ the Suns Game

2010-03-25T20:25:00.000-07:00

Jessica's Little Gym "Jets" team performed recently as part of the pre-game show at a Phoenix Suns game. She's the blonde with her shirt pulled back into a "ponytail" behind her back. She is at the back, on the left.

Jessica's performance at the Suns game (you tube)

Do you dare?! Jessica did!

2010-03-21T16:21:00.000-07:00

One of my least favorite chores around the house is pool maintenance. I still get a kick out of the fact that we even have a pool. Growing up (mostly) in Western Washington, I never gave pool ownership much of a thought. If I had, I probably would have immediately dismissed the idea of having a pool as something only the wealthy own, and indeed the only family I knew of who had a pool was wealthy. (They also had an indoor basketball court, for that matter.)

When we first moved here, I got a perverse joy from laying out by the pool, or (my favorite) floating on a raft with an ice-cold Diet Coke in one hand, and a book in the other. It just felt so decadently delicious and so outside the realm of anything even approximating the pleasant but rather modest lifestyle I lead. It turns out that here in Phoenix, approximately 1 in 3 single-family homes has a pool, so apparently you can have your cake (the pool) and eat it too (own a modest home). To that end, I still find it amusing when I hear myself discussing pool maintenance issues with my friends & neighbors but the work itself is not so fun.
Today I did what I've been putting off for several weeks: vacuumed the leaves from the bottom of the pool, emptied several debris collection baskets, backwashed, swept the sides, and added chemicals. While I worked, Jessica sat on the waterfall and dipped her feet in. Soon she disappeared and came back out with her bathing suit on. She said, "Don't worry, mom. I'm not going to get in all the way. Just my legs." Of course, just as you're probably suspecting, it was only a matter of time before she was completely submerged and swimming. This might not sound odd to you...but consider this: We don't usually start swimming until the end of May. At that time, the water is in the mid-to-high 70's and that's COLD to swim in. Today, the water was a very chilly 64! Brrrrr!!!

So, here are the first swim pictures of the year --I got to use my new digital underwater camera. (You may recall that our last camera died after falling into the dog's water bowl.) The water is rather murky-looking since I was in the middle of cleaning it, but wow! I'm liking my camera more and more...it was so fun (and a little scary) to put my camera under water and just snap away!

"I'm just going to sit on the water fall, Mom." Yeah, right!

Half-fish, half-girl. Does that make her a mermaid? Hmmm...I wonder!

...and check out this silly picture of the bubbles she's blowing out of her nose. Click on the pic to make it full screen to get the whole effect! It's pretty funny looking! =)

One last duty before school starts...

2010-03-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

Last year we had to put a limit on the number of school lunches Jessica could buy each week. She would have eaten school lunch every single day if we had let her. For some reason, this year she has done a 180 and has only bought lunch once or twice since the beginning of the year --and then only because she forgot the lunch she had packed.

What's funny is that with only a few exceptions, Jessica has taken peanut butter & jelly sandwiches to school every single day! At the beginning of the year when I anticipated a little more variety in her lunches, I would splurge and buy her the Smuckers Uncrustable sandwiches now and then. Once I realized that she was going for a marathon of PB&J's, we started making them ourselves & freezing them so she could just toss one in her lunch the night before without having to actually make it every night.

I'm a little embarrassed that she eats such crap for lunch every day--the bread is white (okay, white whole wheat with Omega-3's added...but c'mon...white bread is white bread); the jelly is all squishy and full of sugar (the low sugar kind doesn't freeze and defrost as well, I learned); and the peanut butter --well, at least I switched to "natural" so it's just peanuts & salt.

Each of the 18 sandwiches we made cost approximately 33 cents. Add in a container of yogurt or string cheese, some mandarin oranges or snap peas, fruit juice and a treat...and we haven't saved much on the cost of a school lunch ($2). On the other hand, we did completely avoid the issue of what to pack for lunch every night! lol

By the way, I estimate that Jessica had eaten no less than 100 PB&Js since the beginning the year, probably more. SCARY!!

Me, being nice...that is, doing most of the PB&J prep rather than making Jessica do it! She does have the duty of wrapping the sandwiches, which she hates, though.

18 PB&Js all ready for the freezer. Yum. (Sorry --a little sarcasm there!)

Spring Break 2010

2010-03-19T18:16:00.000-07:00

We didn't leave town. We didn't even leave Ahwatukee. But we DID have fun during Spring Break! We did a lot of activities that we don't usually do, and we did SOMETHING every single day, and that's what made the week fun.

Sunday, March 14th: Sleepover at our house with Katie & Syd.

Monday, March 15th: Sleepover continued...until nearly noon! The girls were so glad to get to play together for so long! Then lunch with the Big D (Ms. Dawson) at Panda Express (one of Jessica's favorite places to eat).

Tuesday, March 16th: Jess and I went to see Percy Jackson & the Olympians. Then lunch at Rubios (love their grilled shrimp tacos). Then a quick trip to Jo-Ann's, followed by an afternoon in the backyard reading books together. We also did a little jewelry making that evening. (We had to make something to wear on St. Patrick's Day, right?

The St. Patrick's Day necklaces we made. Jessica's has the rectangular pendant.

Another necklace I made. It's actually one of my favorites that I've made recently.

Wednesday, March 17th: St. Patrick's Day! I took Jess and her friend, Ali, ice skating, and then out to lunch at Jason's Deli. The girls played at Ali's for a while after lunch...and then back to our house for a sleepover that ended with Mamma Mia before the girls crashed.

Thursday, March 18th: Jess and Ali made jewelry in the morning while I got some exercise. After Ali went home, Jess and I went...yes, you knew it was coming: GEOCACHING! Our odds still aren't great --we only found 2/5ths of the caches we hunted for --the first and last ones of the afternoon.

This was the first geocache we found on Thursday. It was a fake rock! This is the first geocache we've found that contained items to trade. Unfortunately the items in it were totally lame so we didn't take anything, but we added a pack of Bella Sara cards just to be good sports.

Our last geocache of the day, part of a "Lightening series," which basically means that this cache was located in the lift-up base of a street light pole. This geocache was so straightforward that Jessica got to take the GPS unit and run ahead to find the cache.

Friday, March 19th: Ddin't do a darn thing other than go to the grocery store and listen to Jessica complian about being bore, bored, bored for hours on end. The excitement of the day was having pancakes for dinner. We did try Prickly Pear Cactus syrup, though...surely that counts as a fruit! (It pretty much tasted like some kind of berry syrup. Jess didn't care for it.)

Then, if all of these activities weren't enough, consider that in between everything, Jessica used her knitting loom to make preemie baby hats that she (and her Girl Scout troop) plan to donate to a hospital. As for me, I spent the in-between-times doing laundry and cleaning house! Surprise, surprise! =)

Jess with one of the baby hats she made. Pretty cute, huh?

This is a Black Hole

2010-03-15T17:56:00.000-07:00

This is a black hole. It is called Sagittarius A. It is NOT the same black hole that resides in my house. That one is smaller. And ours is selective about what it sucks into the vacuum of space. It lives exclusively off of mismatched socks, and, oddly enough, select electronics. I suspect that it lives in the closet under the stairs when it isn't hunting.

Our black hole made its first appearance about three years ago. We discovered that something was amiss when our cordless phone went missing. And I don't mean between-the-cushions-of-the-couch missing. Or stuck-in-a-drawer missing. I mean MISSING. Gone. Disappeared. Never to be seen again.

The black hole reappeared about a year later when the remote for the TV also disappeared.

Furniture was taken apart. Couches have been moved. Drawers and cupboards have been emptied. The thing is GONE, I'm telling you. Gone.

And now, our GPS unit has also disappeared into the vacuum of space. It's NOWHERE. Not in a basket. Not in a car. Not with a mouse. Not in the house. Not on a train. Not in the rain. Not in a tree. It's nowhere Sam, so LET ME BE!!

Our GPS answers to the name of Niro the Hero and I need him in order to get to jury duty in a few weeks. I need him in order to go geocaching with Jessica. And how will I get to the bathroom without him? I love Niro. I miss Niro. I NEED Niro.

Bottom line: If odd things begin to appear in your house, the outie-end of my black hole may have taken up residence in your home. You can keep the socks. You can keep the remote. And the phone too. But please, send Niro home. I miss him.

My Daughter, the Writer.

2010-02-23T06:47:00.000-08:00

Give me a moment to brag, would you please?

Jessica just got back her scores for the CASS writing assessment that 4th grade took in November. Out of a total of 36 points, she got 34.5. The score is a reflection of the 6 traits of writing, with a maximum of 6 points awarded per trait. Only 4 other kids in the whole school got a grade in the same range as she did, and about the same number (6.2%) achieved the same range in the entire district.

...and now, to see the following photo it will be necessary for you to awkwardly cock your head and contort your body into yogi-like positions. I have no idea why the photo rotated itself when I downloaded it. It was fine in my photo program, I swear! =)

My kid rocks!!

The joke's on me...but oh, what a joke!

2010-02-03T16:20:00.001-08:00

So...after my enlightening discovery about my previously undiagnosed math disability, I went to work yesterday and asked Danielle (the teacher I work with) if she had ever heard of dyscalculia before. She had not, so I told her about it and we had a good laugh about how it was going to affect my ability to function on the job.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I checked my mail slot and found the following bottle waiting for me:

Needless to say, I laughed all the way down the hall, through the lounge, out the door, through the K1 classroom and into our own. (And considering that all those directional terms are considered math, it's a miracle I managed to make it that far unassisted!)

Turns out that Danielle was in cahoots with Andrea, our preschool principal, so I guess my dirty little secret is O-U-T, out. She's the one who created the bottle for me. (Hence the prescription number...surely you all recognize that number --try singing it if you don't.)

So with that in mind, if any of you feel you have what I used to call, "directional deficit disorder," you can now borrow a few of my pills for dyscalculia, which really is a legitimate condition. I've been told they're quite minty and refreshing. I suspect they only have one-and-a-half calories, too! lol

I'll have to let you know how effective they are --I intend to try one right before math stations tomorrow. And a few more before helping Jess with her math homework, for sure. Kindergarten math is one thing. But fourth grade math? FORGET IT!

Dude, I think I'm dyscalculic!

2010-02-01T17:45:00.000-08:00

I came across this term completely by accident but man has it been eye-opening! I think I really do have dyscalculia! But I would consider myself a high-functioning dyscalculic! lol

This symptom list is from http://www.dyscalculia.org/ Except the red, which is my commentary. Dang, it's nice to have an excuse for all of the ways I'm defective! SWEET! Okay, here's the symptom list:

Normal or accelerated language acquisition: verbal, reading, writing. Poetic ability. Good visual memory for the printed word. Good in the areas of science (until a level requiring higher math skills is reached), geometry (figures with logic not formulas), and creative arts. (Totally me. Especially the science and geometry part. And the printed word part. And the writing. And the...well, you get the idea.)

Mistaken recollection of names. Poor name/face retrieval. Substitute names beginning with same letter. (Can't remember a new name/face to save my life. It sucks.)

Difficulty with the abstract concepts of time and direction. Inability to recall schedules, and sequences of past or future events. Unable to keep track of time. May be chronically late. (Okay, I don't think I've been late for anything in decades. Early, yes. Super-ultra early, yes. But not late. No sense of direction, though, that's me for sure! And I can't remember a schedule to save my life. I have to refer to it daily to remember what stations we have next in class, what specials are that day, and even what time lunch is!)

Inconsistent results in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Poor mental math ability. Poor with money and credit. Cannot do financial planning or budgeting. Checkbooks not balanced. Short term, not long term financial thinking. Fails to see big financial picture. May have fear of money and cash transactions. May be unable to mentally figure change due back, the amounts to pay for tips, taxes, etc. (Uh, yeah! Mental math has always escaped me. Dude, I still count in my fingers. And having to figure out everyone's "share" when you split a bill at a restaurant just about makes me break out in a sweat.)

When writing, reading and recalling numbers, these common mistakes are made: number additions, substitutions, transpositions, omissions, and reversals. Inability to grasp and remember math concepts, rules, formulas, sequence (order of operations), and basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. Poor long term memory (retention & retrieval) of concept mastery- may be able to perform math operations one day, but draw a blank the next! (To give myself a little credit, I CAN do the basics just fine with no omissions or reversals or anything, although I really do have to use my fingers even just to add and subtract. However I'm super fast at it that you wouldn't know I was counting on my fingers unless you saw them whirring away at my side!...Wow, that was embarrassing to admit!)

May be able to do book work but fails all tests and quizzes. May be unable to comprehend or "picture" mechanical processes. Lack "big picture/ whole picture" thinking. Poor ability to "visualize or picture" the location of the numbers on the face of a clock, the geographical locations of states, countries, oceans, streets, etc. (The part about visualizing locations is SO me. And I'm definitely a detail person, although I *hope* I'm not completely unable to see the big picture! Yikes!)

Poor memory for the "layout" of things. Gets lost or disoriented easily. May have a poor sense of direction, loose things often, and seem absent minded. (Remember the absent minded professor?) (I don't lose things often and I HOPE I don't seem absent minded. But get lost easily? Oh yeah. I practically need a GPS unit just to find my way to the bathroom for crying out loud! And I definitely have no sense of north, south, east or west.)

May have difficulty grasping concepts of formal music education. Difficulty sight-reading music, learning fingering to play an instrument, etc. (Clueless. Absolutely clueless. Music = greek to me. Seriously. Maybe even upside down and backwards greek. So there.)

May have poor athletic coordination, difficulty keeping up with rapidly changing physical directions like in aerobic, dance, and exercise classes. Difficulty remembering dance step sequences, rules for playing sports. Difficulty keeping score during games, or difficulty remembering how to keep score in games, like bowling, etc. Often looses track of whose turn it is during games, like cards and board games. Limited strategic planning ability for games, like chess. (You mean you're SUPPOSED to be able to do the things the aerobics instructor does? Huh! I always assumed they were TRYING to make you look bad. Who knew?! Seriously, my inability to do any kind of choreographed-anything is why I only do individual fitness activities like walk, run, weights, etc. And I definitely can't remember sports rules or how to keep score. I always thought it was because I'm so bad at sports --that my brain just wrote off sports as hopeless so it didn't want to waste space trying to remember the rules...but now I know the truth!)

Bumblebee, AZ

2010-01-31T16:22:00.000-08:00

If you are tempted to drink the thick, brown water in the pond at The Big House, this sign was meant for you.

Jessica's Girl Scout troop (and all the moms) recently spent the night in Bumblebee, AZ. We stayed in a house (appropriately called, "The Big House") for the night. The girls (and some of the moms) rode horses, got filthy dirty playing in a muddy pond, and generally hung out and had a good time.

Of course, we all ate waaaaaay too much, but I've always heard that food consumed at all-female events are calorie and fat-free. Carb-free too, if that's the way you lean. And thank goodness for that because all that calorie free food has left me with a stomachache today. Think chips & salsa, veggies & dip, M&M's, lasagna, s'mores, popcorn...groan. No wonder my stomach hurts!

The girls earned a horseback riding badge for everything they learned, and best of all, had a chance to bond a little more. It was especially nice for all of us moms to have a chance to get to know one another better. We sure do have a great group of ladies --in the 9-10 age range as well as the over-21 group! =) The trip was so fun that several moms (and girls) suggested we make it an annual event. The ranch was so reasonably priced that we might spend 2 nights there next time --the ranch is actually run for non-profit organizations and costs about $150 a night for those groups! Check out the "The Big House" at the website to see the house.

http://www.bumblebeeranch.com/

We ended the night by watching the ultimate chick flick --Mamma Mia, and of course there was a lot of singing along to the music and a little dancing, too.

Jess petting the horses.

The ranch also had pet goats that the girls got to pet. Ever wonder why goats have those creepy rectangular pupils? Apparently their pupils help them see nearly all the way around themselves. And oddly, octopi also have rectangular pupils. Who knew? I still think goats look creepy, though!

7 out of 8 Girl Scouts recommend wearing old shoes to The Big House. The 8th girl refused to get dirty because she doesn't like that gritty feeling. For better or worse, that girl would be MINE! lol

Showing off the muddy feet and muddy hands to the moms. Jessica is off to the side on the left. She frankly just didn't want to get too close to anyone when they were THAT dirty. In all honesty, I think she would have joined in on the muddy fun if she had been feeling better. She was sick all week and was just barely allowed to come on this get-away as it was.

My Soon-To-Be-Born-Neice

2010-01-31T16:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, a weird title, for sure, but how else do you describe a baby who hasn't been born yet?!

This is a 3-D ultrasound of my soon-to-be-born niece --my sister's daughter. I can't wait to snuggle her. Hopefully (for Corrine's sake) Emily will be a bit smaller than her brother! =)

Emily looks strikingly similar to the way Brandon looked in his 3-D ultrasound!

Wow, it's wet!

2010-01-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

It's been raining for more than 24 hours. If you live in Washington State, that's something like saying day and night follow one another. Here in Arizona, it's another thing entirely. Yesterday was the first day that it rained during school hours since the beginning of the year. (School started on August 12th.)

I'd like to know what schools in Washington do when it rains, because here, all recesses and outdoor activities are cancelled and we follow what is appropriately called, "the rainy day schedule." We do, occasionally have extreme heat advisories that cancel outdoor activities as well --but it usually has to hit 110 or so before that happens. We can't take the cold and wet here, but put us in an oven and we're fine. Just fine!

So, back to yesterday. Not only did it rain, rain, rain (and continues to do so today) but we also had a TORNADO WATCH in effect for several hours in the evening. How crazy is that? Tornadoes! Earthquakes aren't really a problem here, although droughts are clearly common. But tornadoes? One tree blew down in the neighborhood, and alas, my favorite prickly pear cactus collapsed (all that rain...it must have been in shock) but other than that, we did not do a Dorothy and blow away. (Thanks for that one, Marla. Too funny!)

I do have to report that the increased humidity and onslaught of precipitation have brought about some alarming new health concerns. As I was putting makeup on this morning I was shocked to see what I thought were long hairs sticking out of my nose. Upon further examination I discovered that they were not nose hairs after all, but simply the long, thread-like mycelia of some sort of fungus. You know...basically the roots of a mushroom that decided that Arizona is wet enough to call home after all.

A few minutes later I took the bandage off my knee (I knicked myself shaving last night) and was shocked to discover a large reddish-brown stain where the tiny cut had been. At first I thought that I was, perhaps, having some clotting problems...there's no way a cut that small should have bled so much. But then I realized that it wasn't blood. IT WAS RUST! Presumably the unusual humidity in the air had reacted with the iron in my blood and caused rust to form!
This is just too much. If I'm molding and rusting here in Arizona after just a few days of rain, what are those poor people in Washington hiding under their many layers of clothes and plastic raincoats? Wait. I DON'T WANT TO KNOW!

So for all you Washington residents who must suffer from large patches of rust and mold in places I can't even imagine, I am dedicating the two following photos to you.

A very rare photo of a grey, rainy day sky in Arizona. Looks like home, doesn't it?

...and now a photo of what our skies look the rest of the year (that would be approximately 350 days a year in case you were curious). It's just about the same beautiful blue as Gary's eyes, come to think of it! =) That one tiny, random cloud is nearly as rare as the grey is --we usually have no clouds marring the sky!

Needless to say, that blue sky is why we risk skin cancer, premature aging and cataracts! Now it's time for an experiement. Scross up to the picture of the grey sky and click on it to enlarge it. Stare at it for a few moments...and now scroll back down to the blue sky and do the same. Don't you feel more upbeat, cheerful and optimistic about your life just looking at the blue picture?! Imagine how amazing you'd feel if you actually saw this sky every single day! Ahhhhh!

Now, just pack your bags and c'mon down! See you soon!

Uh-oh...

2010-01-14T16:53:00.000-08:00

I guess it's official. Geocaching is in my blood now. I was running/walking while Jessica was in her gymnastics class and I ran past an area where I knew a geocache was hidden. We had looked for it on two other occasions (obviously with no success) so it's no wonder I couldn't help myself.

I started looking around again and it suddenly occurred to me that there was a single, unnecessary bolt on this sign post that I passed. A bolt that wasn't bolting anything in place. A bolt that was a different color than the rest of the signpost. A bolt that just screamed, "GEOCACHE." Sure enough --it wasn't a bolt at all, but a very small geocache. So small in fact, that I could barely stuff the log back into it after Jess and I signed it! (I took her to it the next day so she could sign it.)

Oh, this geocaching IS a fun game, indeed!

Here are a couple of pictures --I didn't take a picture of the geocache "in place" as I didn't want to give away anyone's secrets.

See! Told you it wasn't a bolt! (Jessica is all squinty because the sun was in her eyes when I took the picture.)

Here, Jessica is signing the very tiny log. We have cut our teeth on small and micro geocaches which typically hold only logs for signing. I have to say, I feel much more observant of my surroundings since we started doing this!! It will be alot of fun when we get to a regular size cache and get to trade for goodies.

This pic is blurry, but in my hand you can see the hollow center to this geocache. Jessica-of-the-blue-fingernails is holding the tiny rolled log that was stuffed inside it.

Seriously, don't you wanna be a geocacher, too?! Here's a website that shows some other devious caches --the one that makes me laugh the most is the...get this: geopoop. No. I'm not kidding. http://www.crazycaches.com/mean-devious-caches-c-23.html

Have a Symmetrical Day!

2010-01-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

Our Kindergarten class did this very cool project a few weeks ago when they began learning about symmetry. Knowing how much Jess and her friends like to draw, I knew this project would be just as fun for them as it was for our Kindergartners.

Besides, the prep work is way too easy: just cut a Hefty Zoo Pals paper plate in half and glue it to a piece of white construction paper or cardstock. Then let the kids draw and color the other half...as symmetrically as possible, of course! One caveat: some of the Zoo Pals plates are NOT symmetrical, so look before you cut all your paper plates in half or your kids may end up drawing a two-headed parrot. Which might be fun, too. It's your call! =)

Here are 3 of Jessica's first Zoo Pals pieces: bear, black sheep & dog. She specifically chose the bear first because it looked the easiest and is saving the cheetah (not shown) for last due to its more complicated pattern of spots! She is nothing if not a thinker! lol

2010

2010-01-13T13:19:00.000-08:00

2010 has just begun and it really does seem like a new year as there are a few interesting changes in our lives already.

1. After much deliberation, we decided to adopt out our guinea pigs, Abby and Caramel. Chloe has never gotten used to them enough to allow us to hold them without it becoming a major hassle. Consequently, they don't get nearly as much attention as they deserve and we've decided to give them a new home. We had several people who were interested in them and they ended up moving to a teacher's classroom at Summit, where they are already loved to bits!

2. We are now a family of new geocachers. SOME PEOPLE might tell you that geochaching is for nerds, but don't you believe them! lol Geocaching is sort of like a giant game of hide-n-go-seek that you play with a GPS unit. We are using our car GPS which makes it a bit trickier than using a hand held unit. It took a couple days for us to make our first "find" but boy was it exciting when we did! There are hundreds of geocaches within just a few miles of our house and it's fun to think of all the secret treasures and notes that are hidden in plain view if you know where to look for them! Go to http://www.geocaching.com/ to get started yourself. Go ahead. Do it. You know you want to. Or don't and just regret it for the whole entire rest of your miserable, geocache-less life.

This is what you might find if you were searching for small size geocache. This one was well hidden under the covering of a street light in a shopping center. It's only large enough to hold a log to sign your name on. We found this one super quickly because we had the GPS zoomed in so far that when I drove around a small "island" in the parking lot that contained only 2 bushes and a light post, the GPS showed us circling right around the coordinates! It wasn't a hard stretch to figure out where it must be, even though this was only our second "find."

Here's another geocache we found --the hint we were given was something like, "this looks like it belongs here, but doesn't," which is a very good hint considering that this DOES look like a sprinkler head. However, it was in an area that shouldn't require sprinklers and doesn't look like any of the other sprinkler heads in the same area. This was also a small sized geocache and only contained a log and a tiny stub of a pencil. This was the first one we ever found...or rather, Gary found it. I would have never, in a million years have figured this one out. Apparently you can buy geocache containers that look like pinecones and any number of other things to keep "muggles" (this Harry Potter word really is what non-geocachers are called) from finding them. And to keep me from spotting them too!

A terrible picture on so many levels, but Gary and I were trying to take a self-portrait of ourselves...I think we would have been better at it if we weren't trying to make sure the geocache was in the picture!

3. Gary and I have FOUR dates planned for the next two months. Okay, no plans yet, just child-care firmly in place (and that's the most important prerequisite, now isn't it)? It'll be fun to get out together and do something...anything! Hey. Maybe we'll go geocaching! Can you do that at night? Hmmmm....

4. Girl Scout cookie season is upon us! Yes, that's right. Pre-sales have begun and we did our first trip up and down the street pushing our drug of choice upon neighbors not wise enough to ignore the door bell! All joking aside, people are really great when Jess comes to the door and for the most part everyone is very friendly, even if they turn her down. And she's a fabulous little salesperson --has her spiel down pat and I don't even go up to the door with her anymore --I just stand on the sidewalk and watch her do her thing. The girls use their money to fund ice skating trip, horse back riding, Girl Scout camp, and also for some things that benefit the community. They've made blankets to donate to children in the hospital, have collected items for shelters (animal and human) and more. Cookie sales really enable the girls to do some fun things that they probably wouldn't get to do otherwise, so it's worth the time and effort it takes to sell them!

5. Jessica's 2nd quarter report card just arrived and guess who is getting straight A's?! Yes, that's right. The next door neighbor. Oh, all right. I'm just kidding. It's Jessica, of course! She's an awesome student and very enthusiastic about learning, although that's not new to 2010. But still, I'm her mom and I reserve unlimited bragging rights! And let's not forget that the end of second quarter at school means that we are halfway through with the school year! Again, that's not a change for 2010, but we sure do always look forward to summer vacation! Besides, I'm FREEZING!

Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas Eve

2009-12-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

One of our traditions is to have my side of the family over on Christmas Eve. This year, rather than having a brunch earlier in the day, we did it in the evening. My parents, brother, sister and her family, and my Aunt and her kids all come. Here are a few pictures.

Brandon (my nephew) and Jessica. He gives the sweetest kisses!

These 3-D paper poinsettias were made by Jessica as part of our decorations. She and Kaitie, my niece, made more of them. They ARE very cute and cool!

A picture of Jessica and I. Aw! Aren't we all cute and coordinated?! =)

My brother, Danny and Jessica with the gift her gave her...a set of books. She later confided to me that this was her FAVORITE gift. Sorry everyone else! She's just into books lately. What can I say?!

Brandon and Mommy opening a gift. "It's cars!" he said. "It's cars!"

It was a very nice evening and it's also nice that we do it on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day is usually very quiet for us, with just the 3 of us opening a few gifts. Although, this year, my friend Marla is coming to visit in the afternoon and she and I will probably go out to dinner and go for a walk or something.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Tradition

2009-12-19T19:54:00.000-08:00

One of the things Jessie and I do every year is go to the Millie's Hallmark parking lot in Ahwatukee to watch Santa arrive by helicopter the day after Thanksgiving. She knows that THIS Santa is the real deal because he's always the same every year. Not to mention the fact that he knows her by name. This year she did have questions about the authenticity of his beard, though.
I normally get the BEST pictures here but since my camera died a few months ago, I had to settle for the $5 memory card photo they sold. (And thank goodness they did THAT this year...normally they just provide a free polaroid.)

Jessie this year. She's getting so tall.

Jessie last year. Look at that round face!

Look at her round tummy and baby face! She looks so young! I can't believe how fast she's growing up. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry about it!

Jessie the Gymnast

2009-12-19T19:06:00.000-08:00

Jessica is in the Aerials and Jets classes at The Little Gym. Her favorite routine is the bar routine and she is just beginning to use the high bar; an amazing feat for a kid who tends to be risk averse! Check her out up there! She spends most of her recesses on the bars at school, practicing.

Jessica's Christmas Project

2009-12-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

Jessica and I made the cutest gifts for her to give to family this year. (So if that's you, no peeking!) I've been told this craft is on the Family Fun website but I've never looked it up.

Step 1 (not shown): use Elmer's blue gel glue to draw a simple design on a rectangle of muslin. Allow glue to dry. (Elmer's blue gel glue: $1.99; muslin: $1.99/yard)

Step 2 (not shown): Get glued muslin thoroughly damp. Lay out on a flat surface. Using a large foam brush, paint the entire surface of the fabric (right over the glue, too) with watered down acrylic paint (the small bottles from the tole painting aisle work fine). Use just 2 or 3 colors. Dark colors over the glue areas work best. Allow to dry flat.

Step 3: Soak dried, painted fabric in hot water until glue begins to dissolve. Use fingers or a spoon to scrape off excess glue. Rinse and wring out excess water.

Step 4: Hang to dry. This picture shows the 30+ small projects that I helped her class do to make gifts for their own parents.

Close up of the results after removing the glue.

Step 5: Use hem tape to create hemmed edges and to make a loop at the top to run a dowel through it for hanging. Add ribbon and ball ends on dowel to finish. This shows the finished project. I *think* you can click on it to see it closer --it looks just like batik when it's done.

This is another version we did. The snowflakes were much easier and fool proof since they are simple geometric designs.

How much do you hate me?

2009-11-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

'Cos I have *almost* all my Christmas shopping done! You're jealous, huh? Whaaaaa-haaaaaaa-haaaaa!!!!!!

Chocolate covered spiders*, dried bat wings and so much more!

2009-10-19T19:53:00.000-07:00

Chocolate covered spiders*, dried bat wings, sun-dried beetles, and french fried worms. That was the menu for the Halloween party we had for Jessica's Girl Scout troop today. The girls also completed the Prints and Graphics badge, assembly line-style.

However, the best part of the afternoon was when the girls (and some siblings) sat in a big circle and dared to try ALL the flavors of Bernie Botts Every Flavor Beans. Dumbledore himself would have felt right at home when they tried the flavors of earwax, grass and dirt, because when they say "every flavor", they aren't kidding!

Poor Katie almost puked when she tasted a vomit flavored one (Oiy --just the thought makes ME want to vomit!) but at least she knew enough to quit before she actually got sick!

Booger was another one that had everyone gagging, but the girls agreed that sardine, earthworm, sausage, rotten egg, and soap were pretty gross too! In the end, we had two girls who managed to chew and swallow everything I gave them...so they each won their own little pouch of Bernie Bott's Beans.

I have to say that the girls are always very good sports when I put them through these things! Poor kids!

Sadly, my poor camera recently took a suicidal dive into the dog's water bowl, so I was unable to take any pictures. But wait! There are some eerie similarities between this party and Jessica's Harry Potter birthday party last year, so you can kind of see pictures of the snacks (or at least a few similar ones) --but alas, there are none of the girls gagging on Bernie Bott's Beans. Bummer, huh?

These are store-bought chocolate covered spiders. You can tell because they're perfectly round and so evenly coated in chocolate. However, like many foods, there's just no comparison to the home-made version. Or perhaps it's the difference between wild spiders versus farmed spiders that changes the flavor so much. Who knows!

Bat Wings are among our all-time favorite fall treats. Crisp and crunchy...and they're great with salsa, too!

The spread from Jessica's Harry Potter Party last year really isn't that much different than the one we had at the Girl Scout party. We did opt for Bernie Bott's Every Flavor Beans rather than Pixie Eggs, and also decided to forgo the Love Pills. What need do 9 and 10-year old girls have with those? They think boys are SOOOO weird, after all! Who would want to fall in LOVE with one?!?

*In case you're wondering, chocolate-covered spiders taste like many other bugs --rather crunchy and nutty. Moroccan miniature tarantulas taste something like brazil nuts, while common household spiders are more reminiscent of almonds (imagine that). Alas, although spiders ARE in season right now, I ran out of time to harvest and dry them myself this year, although I did take the time to coat them in chocolate the night before. It's just as well, I suppose. Plucking all the legs off them is so darn time-consuming and the legs inevitably end up scattered all over the floor, you know.

The Domino Effect

2009-10-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

One of the things Jessica's done over Fall Break is make a lot of domino structures. She's getting quite good at spacing them juuuuust right so that all the dominos fall. She keeps asking for more dominos because she uses up the entire set!

Posing with a completed structure.

GO!

Wow! Check it out! Caught in mid-fall!

Almost done!

Yes! Now THAT was too, too cool!

Oh, the Responsibilites of Turning 10

2009-10-14T13:05:00.000-07:00

Now that Jessica's reached the double-digit numbers, she's gotten a few more jobs around the house. In addition to her other chores, she is now expected to do one load of laundry a week, and (at her own suggestion) she has begun cooking dinner once a week, as well. These pictures show the first "fancy" meal she's made.

First, she cooked and seasoned the ground beef, then laid out all the crescent roll dough in a sun-pattern. Then, she carefully scooped the taco meat onto the dough.

Next, she topped the meat with cheese and olives.

Then, she wrapped the meat with the dough to mostly cover it.

In and out of the oven, and oh-so-nicely-browned. Look at that very-proud smile!

Mmmm-mmm! Delicious!! Jessica wanted to learn to make green-bean casserole, too, so that's the other stuff they're eating.

Some other things Jess wants to learn to make are calzones, pasta, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin pie (she does love her pumpkins!). She already knows how to make several smoothies (we love our Magic Bullet blender), and how to brown ground beef/turkey.

New 'Do

2009-10-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

Change is good, right? I keep repeating that mantra to myself and today it's a reminder that my new 'do is fine. Just fine. It's only hair, after all. I actually don't mind it so much --I'm just very used to my super-flat hair so I feel very poofy. And, of course, the extra body made it alot shorter and that's always hard to get used to.

Picture's kinda blurry , but that's what you get for a self-portrait, I guess!

Six Ways You Know Your Kid is Sick

2009-09-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

...Besides the fact that she has a 103.4 F fever, that is...1. She takes her medicine without pitching a fit.
2. She WANTS to take a bath (to cool down because her fever is so high -- not to get clean, but still, a bath is a bath is a bath!)
3. She DOESN'T get upset at the prospect of missing a Girl Scout event OR school OR gymnastics.
4. She naps instead of doing handstands while she watches TV.
5. She's not hungry for a change.
6. She wants to cuddle with her mommy! (I swear, that's the best part of having a sick kid!)

Not sure what the poor kiddo has, but despite her fairly high fever and a gross, phlegm-y cough, she claims she doesn't really feel that bad...and I believe her. She just doesn't seem all that miserable, to be honest --just couch bound and rather warm! =)

2009-09-08T16:46:00.001-07:00

Can I please take a bath by myself?!

No, really. I would love, love, LOVE to take a bath by myself sometime. It's not that I get interrupted by my family or anything.

It's the dog.

Whenever I take a bath, she comes in and drops her ball in the water. Thankfully, I'm easily amused and I end up giggling every time she tries to fish it out of the water. At least, I laugh when she has one of her little balls. The ball bobs in the water and she ends up sticking her nose underwater when the ball submerges and she always looks so surprised when she ends up with a snout full of water.

But really, it stops being cute when she starts dropping in bones and treats. In fact, it's pretty darn gross. I start to feel like the meat in some kind of weird soup, if you must know!

So here is what will probably be the strangest pictures I ever post. A view from inside the tub with Chloe "smiling" as she brings me her biggest toy, a squeaky football. At least it wasn't a bone this time! But admittedly, it probably is pretty funny to hear me screeching, "Ew! Ew! Eeeewww!" as I scramble out when it IS a bone! The ball is gross enough, I promise!

I imagine Chloe saying, "Ball. Ball! BALL! I have a ball. Look at my ball! Look! Look at my ball! See! I have a ball! Want the ball? Here's the ball!" Sometimes, if the toy settles on the edge of the tub, she will nudge it with her nose so it drops in the water. She seems to enjoy making a big splash.

Now she's saying, "Wait! That's MY ball! MY ball. MINE! Where's my ball?! Why can't I get my ball? Give me my ball!"

Ice Cream Social

2009-08-29T18:34:00.001-07:00

We had the long-anticipated ice cream social at our house this afternoon. The girls (Jessica's Girl Scout troop) filled up on ice cream (and lots and lots of toppings). Many of the girls came back for seconds. And really, who can blame them? How often does a mom say, "Have as much ice cream as you want!" and "Are you sure you don't want more?"

After gorging on ice cream, the girls donned their goggles and went swimming. It didn't occur to me until later that maybe being stuffed with ice cream and then going swimming might not be a good idea. But, since no one puked, we'll pretend I knew what I was doing all along!

Jessica and Ali made a bunch of ice-cream themed drawings for the wall in anticipation of the Ice Cream Social. Cute, huh?

Check out the spread (or some of it, anyway)! We had four kinds of ice-cream: chocolate, vanilla, spumoni, and chocolate chip mint. Surprisingly, many of the girls tried the spumoni (one of my personal favorites) and NO ONE wanted vanilla. Who knew?! The other moms provided all the toppings so the girls had a wide selection to choose from: pieces of chocolate, chunks of Snickers, cut up strawberries, caramel sauce, hot fudge sauce, chopped nuts, whipped cream, M&M's, sprinkles, dinner mints, maraschino cherries, and Oreos. The yellow thing in Jessica's mouth is a long handled spoon, by the way!

Jessica, waiting for her friends to arrive. For 30 minutes before the first friend arrived, all I kept hearing was, "Can I have an Oreo, mom?" "Can I have some M&M's?"

The contents of the goody bags. Who knew you could buy ice cream cone shaped marshmallow candy, ice cream cone shaped bath fizzies and ice cream shaped lollipops? Certainly not me! Don't ask about the puppy tattoo --it was a last minute addition. We'll just pretend that he's drooling over all the ice cream! LOL

Jessica's friend, Ali, made the "Ice Cream Social" sign for our security door, just in case any one should wander by and overhear many girls who were singing and dancing to Hanna Montana's "Ice Cream Freeze" song!

Summer has come and gone

2009-08-23T16:46:00.001-07:00

The temperatures are still in the low to teen 100's. The swimming pool is still bath-water warm. But it's clear that here, at least, summer has come and gone.

How do I know?

Because Jessica spent the weekend getting her second weekly homework packet done (with many tears of frustration), and I hauled the area rug that the dog peed on outside to scrub it down. Then I cleaned out the guinea pig cage, clipped the piggies' toenails (bet you didn't know that you had to trim their nails did you?), mopped the floor, cleaned the kitchen, stripped and washed the bedding, did three other loads of laundry, went to the gym and the grocery store, cleaned out the fridge, cleaned the pool and tested Jess on her times tables, among other things.

My point is that we're back to our school-year weekends that consist of us catching up on weekly chores and responsibilities. On the upside, it's nice to start the week with a (somewhat) clean house. Hopefully, with our routine underway, we will manage to keep things under control. Or not. I guess we'll see what's on the to-do list next weekend!

Happy Birthday to Me!

2009-08-16T18:57:00.000-07:00

I just have to say that today has been a very interesting day! We have been car shopping for the past few days, wanting to take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program. We test drove a couple of hybrids (a Toyota Camry and a Ford Escape) but in the end weren't sold on them --the hybrid technology eliminates A LOT of trunk space. (So much trunk space, in fact, that it would even be a problem for our small family!) In the end, we decided on a Toyota Rav 4...so here's a picture of my new car --or at least part of it!
You can see the car better at http://www.toyota.com/rav4/ This is only my third car, ever, and it's kind of fun to have a brand new car again. (My first car, a Subaru Justy, was less than $6,000 brand new! Crazy, huh?)

The real surprise of the day, though, was when Jess and I went to Debbie's house for a playdate which turned out to be a surprise party FOR ME!!! I was definitely surprised, even if I didn't look it (I was still distracted by my new car). So thank you Debbie, Donna, Marni, Sue and Teri. You guys really made my birthday special. Especially considering the fact that I don't generally celebrate it in the first place! The gifts were wonderful but I have to admit that spending time with you was my favorite part of the day. I feel so lucky to have such wonderful, loving, and beautiful friends. I didn't have my camera with me to take a picture of my gorgeous friends, so here's a picture of the great gifts I got, instead!

Jessica made the vase the flowers are in a few months ago!

...And below is a close up of the Kim Kiefer Original bracelet from the picture above. I've played around with jewelry making for many years and I have to say that she does a GREAT job with her art!

It's hard to see the details, but the large bead in the center is very cute!

Anyway, thanks to my great friends for a very happy birthday!

A Brownie Breakfast

2009-08-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

Jessica's brownie troop are officially JUNIORS now. We celebrated the start of the school year with a breakfast "kidnapping." The girls got SUCH a kick out of being woken up by their friends and "dragged" out the door in the rush to go wake up the next girl on the list before we all went to IHOP.
Jessica wasn't sure what was going on when she saw some of her girl scout troop at the door.

Of course, you can't go wrong with a heavy dose of carbs on a Saturday morning! No one brushed their teeth. Or their hair. And most of us wore our pajamas. Even the moms. Well, except for Teri who was dressed all the way to her shiny, perfectly glossed lips! =) But then, there's always someone who has to break the mold.

Good thing I wore hot flannel pajamas with a tank top underneath because Jessica was very cold in the restaurant. Here we are with our hair mussed, dressed in our pj's, and no makeup to boot. Ahhhh....my favorite way to go out in public. Just kidding --this was a blast. The whole troop had a great time and so did all of us moms!

Just How Ancient Am I?

2009-08-13T18:50:00.001-07:00

This cracked me up: Last night, Jessica asked me what things still hadn't been invented when I was a kid. I said, "Well, there were no cell phones and no one had computers in their houses."

She looked at me with her jaw open for a moment. I could tell that she was trying to "read" me to see if I was pulling her leg. When she realized I was serious, she started laughing hysterically! She could not believe that I was THAT old.

Then, this morning, when we were walking to school, she brought up the subject again and asked, "Now, were there cars when you were little? Or did you have wagons back then?"

Really? WAGONS?!?! Wait until she finds out that there were no MP3 players and no DVDs! Maybe it's time to stop telling people that I'm 29 years old, you think? WAGONS. Unbelievable!

How to eat a cactus...

2009-08-05T17:31:00.000-07:00

This is a cactus. A prickly pear cactus, to be specific. It's one of my favorite plants in our yard. In the spring, this particular variety blooms with sunny yellow flowers and the pads (the thick oval shaped "leaves") are only sparsely covered in spines.
Below is a closeup of the fruit of a prickly pear cactus. The fruit grows on top of the pads (which are also eatable). Some fruit varieties are bright red when ripe. Others are green like this one.

The dots you see on the outside of the uncut prickly pear fruit (to the right side of the photo below) are usually covered with fuzzy looking hairs, which are the worst kind of cactus spine in existence! The hairs are called glochids (pronounced glow-kids) and they are really more like tiny, nearly invisible splinters than hairs.

They say you can use tape to pull out any glochids you can't get out with tweezers, but in my personal experience, I find it better to just stick the tape right on top of the glochid and try to ignore your taped up fingers for a couple of hours until you're ready to try the tweezers again! (No, I'm not kidding. But then again, maybe if you tried duct tape rather than the clear stuff, you'd have better success.)

Some people also suggest that you can dissolve the glochids with lemon juice (again, not effective but your hands smell great afterwards) or put a thin layer of white glue on the area, let it dry, then peel it off. (Scab-picker that I am, I couldn't stand having the glue on me long enough to let it dry so I really don't know if this is an effective method or not. If it is, it's a very time-consuming one and I would recommend it only if you have gotten stuck by a lot of glochids!

These particular fruits came from the grocery store and were already glochid-free when I bought them. That makes the .50 per fruit pricetag a bargain, if you ask me! Notice the center of the fruit, which is full of small seeds. The seeds are eatable, so I tried a few (all in the name of science) and I have to tell you that they might be SAFE to eat, but they're mildly astringent tasting and VERY hard, so they're not something I would choose to eat again!

After scooping the seeds out, we were left with what you see below.

With the seeds removed, I gave the fruit a try and thought it was very mild tasting. Something like a blend between a pear and an unripe kiwi. The red variety are supposed to be sweeter. Below: See Jessica doing her best to avoid even TRYING this new food.

Finally, taking a bite!

When I asked her what she thought it tasted like, she said, "It tastes...it tastes...just plain." I thought that was a very good description. It was a very plain, mild tasting fruit with the slightly slippery and firm texture of an unripe kiwi.

So there you have it. Prickly pear cactus fruit. Worth trying just so you can say you have, but beware those glochids!

Vacation, Part 3

2009-08-03T15:53:00.000-07:00

In the Tri-cities, Jessica's favorite thing was swimming (which is funny since she can do that at home any day) and playing with her cousin Derek, who is a year older than she is.

Caught in the middle of a dive. Pretty cool!

Teasing Derek incessantly! This IS fun!

If it weren't for the fact that Derek was laughing as much as Jessica was, I would have thought she was driving him batty! But then again, who's going to complain about a cute blonde tickling you, even if she is your cousin?

Can you guess what this landmark is? This is the view of the Grand Canyon from our plane on the way home.

Jess and I on the plane on the way home. We were very tired...we got up at 4 am to catch our first plane, then we had a 3-hour layover in Sea-Tac. To make it worse, Gary and I definitely didn't sleep well the night before. Jessica kicked me all night long and I finally ended up shoving her onto her own side of the bed.

Her response? To mutter, "Seven. I said seven!" If I hadn't been so tired of getting kicked and punched, I would have laughed!

We got really lucky at the airport on the way home, though. For the first time ever, we didn't even have to wait for luggage to be put on the carousel. It was already out by the time we got off the plane. The bus driver even stopped when he saw us walking toward him so we didn't even have to wait to catch the bus to get to our car. That was SWEET!

We got home a little after noon on Sunday (we were gone for a week) and of course, I immediately started doing laundry, laundry, laundry. Gary slept on the plane but Jess and I didn't, so we went to bed pretty early and it was WONDERFUL to sleep in my own bed. (OH so wonderful!) I think I fell asleep in a matter of seconds and didn't wake up for 12 hours! Ahhhhhh!

Vacation, Part 2

2009-08-03T15:49:00.001-07:00

Alas, once again, a vacation has passed without us managing to get a picture taken of all three of us.

On the other hand, an even more rare picture emerged: one of Gary and I together. And look, we're both smiling, too! Ah, how sweet!

Gary and Jess with Auntie Stina and her "baby", Sheeba.

A short visit to Mt. Rainier.

Sleeping in the car on the way to Grampa's house in the Tri-cities.

Jessica kept getting compliments on her hat when she wore this outfit...and you can see why. She looks very hip in a hat! LOL

Vacation -part 1

2009-08-03T15:44:00.000-07:00

We just got back from our trip to Washington yesterday. Somehow we managed to bring Arizona's summer with us and there were record high temperatures while we were there. When people talk about Arizona's climate being a "dry heat" to discount the high temps, they really aren't kidding! I was so hot and sweaty...but now that we're home again, I'm just fine! Too funny, huh?

I flew directly to Bellingham to visit my friends, Marla and Carolynn for a few days (Rebecca was in India...waaah) while Gary and Jess went right to Seattle.

One of the things they did there was ride the "ducks" which I guess are amphibian vehicles that are used for tours. When Jess and Gary came to pick me up in Bellingham, Jessica informed me that we have a new thing to do together that she learned on th tour: whenever someone sees a Starbucks, they're supposed to say, "Staaaarbucks!" and then everyone else (all together) is supposed to say, "Cha-ching!" So needless to say, that's our new thing --just so you know in case you're ever driving with us and we pass a Starbucks! LOL

Carolynn, Marla and I. We had a great time, although SOMEONE laughed when I shared a closely kept secret. Hmph. See if I ever tell anyone a secret again. Pttthht!

Jessica and Auntie Stina, picking carrots in her garden. We visited her in Enumclaw after Gary and Jess picked me up from Bellingham.

Hey, is that sasquatch? Oh no. It's just Jessica at Green River.

Gary and Jess. It took Jess a while to get the nerve up to jump in the water. The Green River was VERY cold but it was fun to go down the natural "slide" between the rocks where the current ran. The down side is that I got sunburned. I find this rather ironic --I haven't gotten sunburned the entire time we've lived in Phoenix. It took going to the usually foggy, rainy Pacific Northwest to get burnt! That cracks me up. Itches too, actually. Itches bad. Sooooo bad!

Check out part 2 for more vacation pics!

New method of pool entry.

2009-07-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

Jessica has recently started entering the pool by cartwheeling herself in.

Why? Because she can.

Ta-da! Perfect entry!

Ya gotta love a kid who feels compelled to do gymnastics 24/7. LOL

Mermastics and More

2009-07-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Hmmm...have you noticed that my purported "monthly" blog has been quite a bit more frequent? Probably a combination of more time & energy since it's summer (and I have gotten most of my summer to-do list done, after all) and Facebook withdrawals. If you haven't figured it out yet, I tried FB for a couple of months and decided it wasn't for me. Too much of a dichotomy between what being "friends" means to me and how friendships work on FB. On the other hand, I had no idea my definition of what a friend is, is apparently atypical, so at least I learned something about myself during that brief FB stint. Maybe I'll give it a whirl again sometime. We'll see.

So here I am, back to blogging, which at least doesn't limit the amount of text I can write at once like FB did. That nearly killed me, you know! I barf words out of my fingertips the way some people puke after a night of drunken debauchery! (Okay, who even uses the word 'debauchery' anyway? Huh?)

So here we are on a new topic: we had our Mermaid party last night. Two hours of night-swimming, loud-giggling and the vivid imaginations of eight nine-year olds. In case you didn't know, night swimming is much more fun than day-swimming, partly because it requires the use of a dozen, nay, a hundred, glowsticks!

Plus, as you may recall from your own younger days, the human imagination is much more active during the evening hours. At that time, nine-year old girls don't just IMAGINE that they're mermaids. They actually BECOME mermaids. And since you probably haven't had eight mermaids in YOUR tidal pool before, I should warn you that with mermaids come mermaid activities and mermaids problems as well.

My very favorite mermaid activity of the night, the one I will always cherish when I remember this time in our lives, is mermastics. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like: mermaid gymnastics. It goes without saying that mermastics requires more tail-flipping and fin-flashing than regular gymnastics. It cracked me up when the girls started doing a very human move, though. They did the caterpillar into the pool! I didn't even know they knew what that is, and it can't have been easy to do on a pool deck in their bathing suits!

As for mermaid names, some of our guests were: Marina Splashyfish, Shella Foamyfish, Sapphire Bubbletail, Amber Spinnyfish, and Azule Wrigglefish. I was Anemone Sparklefins. LOL

An abbreviated sleepover followed the mermaid party (about half the girls stayed as not all of them are comfortable with sleepovers at this time) and the girls stayed up late, giggling, just like you'd expect them to do.

Night time swimming...the glowsticks don't show up too well!

A mermaid advertisement for Pure Sea Water! No really, it IS Pure Sea Water...read the label!

Mermaid food. The worms that I had imported from a bait shop were the girls' favorites. As for me, I ate a few too many chocolate covered sand fleas. They were plump and juicy...a little like chocolate covered raisins, now that I think about it. Only a little more wriggly, of course.

The evening ended with the girls decorating a poem that Jess and I wrote. She really enjoyed reading it to everyone and pointing out our initials at the end!

Jessica ingeniously created a crepe paper mural for the party. What I love the most is the turtle she created out of poster board. It's hard to see in this picture, but it's got long brown hair and a checkerboard shell. The missing tail was surgically removed when Jessica realized that turtle tails look nothing like fluffy, round bunny tails!

Our next big event: an ice-cream social that's set for a few weeks after school starts up again. Can't wait. Nothin' like gaining 10 pounds just by OPENING a jar of hot fudge sauce. It's an automatic undo for all those lunges at the gym, you know! Doh!

Deja vu to you, too!

2009-07-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

I learned a new word today: jamais vu. If it sounds suspiciously similar to deja vu, there's a reason for it. Deja vu, of course, is very common, and is the brief sensation of having already lived through a particular experience or the feeling of knowing what will happen next.

Incidentally, one theory says that deja vu is a result of a timing problem between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Apparently, each half records an experience separately while simultaneously sharing their "recordings" with each other. But if there's a delay in the communication, then one side gets its recording from the other side just a bit late, making that side "think" it has already seen the recording it just made on its own. In effect, the slow side records its own picture of the event and then gets the copy from other side a fraction of a second late rather than exactly when it made its own recording. And that's what gives us the feeling that we've already had an experience.

My new word, jamais vu (pronounced: jä-"mA-'vü), on the other hand, essentially describes the feeling that a very familiar experience is new or novel. I didn't even know there was a word for this in the first place, and it's a very freaky experience, I have to say!

One time I woke up in the middle of the night, well aware of where I was...except that I didn't know who was in bed with me! I laid there, stock still, for several minutes, wracking my brain. I knew who I was. I knew the person next to me was a man. I knew I wasn't afraid of the man. And, yes, I knew I was married and all of that, and yet it never occurred to me that this man HAD to be my husband. For that matter, it didn't occur to me to worry that he might NOT be my husband, either. That's what made the experience so strange...despite everything I was sure of, I still had NO IDEA who this guy was and why on earth he was asleep in my bed! Oddly, I was much more concerned about the fact that there was a man sleeping in my bed than there being a man in my bed in the first place.

While I laughed about it in the morning, it sure was a bizarre experience, and apparently is much less common than deja vu. So there you have it in a nutshell. Jamais vu. By the way, presque vu is the feeling of having a word on the tip of your tongue. Interesting, huh?

Okay, I'm a geek. I know. Whatever. Brains are cool. So sue me.

(Most of this info is from "Brains that Work a Little Bit Differently" by Alen Bragdon and David Gamon.)

I do love coupons...

2009-07-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

The regular price for all these groceries: $181.42. The price I paid: $41.91. Knowing the power of couponing: PRICELESS.

I saved $139.51 between these two visits! And you thought clipping coupons wasn't worth your time. By the way, my best trip ever was at Albertson's a couple years ago. I got $150 worth of stuff for free. My receipt was $0.00 --and I mailed the receipt in for a $10 rebate!

*Okay, little amendment here. I wouldn't want anyone thinking I'm always such a great deal seeker: Ran into the store today to buy a few last minute groceries for tonight's mermaid party. I spent about $30...and guess how much I saved? Are you waiting with bated breath? Here it is....get ready for it...I saved NINETEEN CENTS!

Apparently my response was a little cheesy because both the chashier and the bagger started laughing when I jumped up and down once and sarcastically said, "Whoo-hoooo! Nineteen cents! ALRIGHT!" LOL

Movin' On...

2009-07-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

(Photo: Okay, so this was not taken on the day I had my interview...different dress, same nervous smile! I'm thinking: let's just get this over with!)

Well, it happened without me really having to do much about it. Ironically, just as the Kyrene school district eliminated Instructional Assistants for Kindergarten classrooms, a nearby private school decided to add them. Of course, the school district released 80 or 90 of us from our jobs and the private school had all of TWO openings, but I am now one of the few, the proud, the...well, the new Kindergarten Instructional Assistants at Summit.

I find it interesting sometimes when things seem to fall into place effortlessly. I'm all for hard work and perseverance...but when things happen so easily I find myself vacillating between feeling like it was truly meant to be and wondering if it was just too easy. (Yeah, yeah, we all know I have a tendency to fear the worst! LOL)

When I found out that I wouldn't have a job in the fall (we were given the news right after Christmas break) I was considering many things --maybe going back to school (Ultrasound?), or just going back into my own field (Community Health) and getting a "real" job with real hours and real pay and real responsibilities rather than a "mom" job with mom hours, mom pay and the mom-like responsibilities of working in a Kindergarten classroom.

However, the more I thought about my options, the more I realized that even though Jessica doesn't "need" me in the way a young child needs her mother, taking on a full-time "real" job would entail an entirely different life-style for our whole family. It would change the after-school activities that Jessica could do, our meals, homework habits, bed-time routine, and probably require at least some after-school care, even though Gary works at home.

In the end, I decided that my ambivalence to continue working in the school setting was probably more of a reflection of my own fears and worries than anything else. I am afraid of getting too settled into my very easy life. I'm afraid of what will happen if I suddenly need to support myself. I'm afraid of so many things! (Hear the chicken noise? Baaak-Baaaak!)

But for now, despite the fears, perhaps this is really what I'm meant to do. Jessica is almost 10. She will probably only live with us for another 8 or 9 years. I've always believed that she's the reason I'm here on this planet, so it seems that maybe a "mom" job is the right thing for me, after all. Wow, I'm stunned to think that Jessica is more than 1/2 way through her time at home, that she has already begun transitioning into adulthood.

Anyway, the school is within walking distance of our house (except for the small matter of risking heat stroke if I actually did walk most of the year); I'll be working with a teacher I already know and love; will still be working part time and will be able to drop Jess off at school before work and still carpool with friends to pick kids up after school; and the school's holiday and vacation schedule is almost exactly like Jessica's (this is not the case with some of the charter schools around here. There can be a lot of variation and that would have been very difficult to work around).

All in all, I think it will be a good fit and I'm looking to starting the job in a few weeks. Hopefully I won't get lost for too long before finding my way out of the new environment, though. You know how bad I am with directions!!!

But I HATE Math, Mom!

2009-07-12T18:22:00.000-07:00

Here is a conversation I have pretty much every single day. If it's not about math, it's about chores. If it's not about chores, it's about being bored. If it's not about being bored it's about...well, you get the idea. Seriously, this argument is exhausting. TODAY, it was *almost* bearable. But when I'm not at my most patient, the conversation usually ends with Jess stomping up to her room muttering about how no one even loves her. Life sure is tough when you're nine!

Me: I'd like you to start on these division flashcards today.
Her: Uuuuhhh! I can't do these. I don't know them. You mean I have to learn all of them?
Me: Yes, you can and yes, you do. It's still multiplication...you're just asking yourself "what times 11 equals 44".
Her : But I didn't learn them that way.
Me: Well, now you're going to.
Her: I can't do this. I don't know these.
Me: Take 5 of them and learn both sides while I'm gone.
Her: FIVE of them? That will take a YEAR!
Me: BOTH sides of five of them and it will NOT take you a year. You already know them.
Her: Yes, it will take a year. I know it will. How come I have to do five of them? Can't I do just one side?
Me: (sighing) Fine. But you have to take out the 44 divided by 11 card and put in a new one.
Her: That's not fair.
Me: It's your choice. Replace that card or do both sides of all five. I'm testing you when I get back.
Her: Uuuh! I'll never learn these! It's going to take me forever and I'm never going to get to do anything fun...
Me: And while I'm gone, get your attitude in check. Or no allowance.
Her: uuuuuuhh!
Me: (As I leave for the gym) Uuuuuhhhhh!

Eat My Bubbles...

2009-07-10T13:55:00.000-07:00

Jessica's last swim meet of the season was last night. She placed several times -two third-place ribbons and a sixth. Jessica is great at all the strokes, but her favorites are breast stroke and freestyle. She is extremely graceful in the water --she swims like a fish!

Can you read her back? It says, "Eat My Bubbles."

Trying to figure out how she placed.

Fabulous Fairy Food

2009-07-05T14:06:00.001-07:00

Shown here: pancakes, pizza, eggs/bacon, hotdog, french fries, a "monster" birthday cake, and a giant screw. (No idea where that idea came from...it was the first thing Jess made!)

The tall, long thing in the background by Jessica's wrist is a fairy bed, in case you can't tell! Also pictured: bowl of salad, pencil, lime popsicle, hershey kiss (by her thumbnail), cheeseburger, and a milkshake.

Okay, it's not really food and it's not really meant for the fairies, but Jessica and I had a great time today making miniature food from Sculpey II. Jess made most of the items you see here. The pizza she made is both of our favorite but I also like the bacon and egg an awful lot too...there's just something about the stripe of fat in the bacon she made! Jess feels that my pancakes and hamburger were probably my own "personal best" work.

I've never used Sculpey II before --only the original Sculpey product (years and years ago). This new stuff is a vast improvement over the original kind. The old stuff was so hard it was guaranteed to give you arthritis when you tried to smoosh it together. There's no way a kid could have used it. Sculpey II is much more user-friendly and you can get it at Michael's or Jo-Ann's crafts. Sculpey also makes eraser clay (so you can sculpt your own erasers), and a bendy/stretchy clay that you can use to create, well, bendy, stretchy figures (duh)!

This was a great rainy day project (except that it wasn't raining...just 107 degrees out) and kept both of us entertained for at least 2 hours!

July 1: Red, White, and Blue Party!

2009-07-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

We had our Red, White, and Blue lunch party today. It was a BLAST! We had 6 girls over. Or was it 8? I lost count with all the loud giggling and gymnastics going on.

Lunch was:

Red and blue mac & cheese. It looked very gross to me (no, I mean, REALLY gross), but the girls loved it. One of the girls even wanted to take some home with her!

Strawberries, blueberries and cool whip.
Blue potato chips which looked more purple to me, but the bag said, "blue." Jessica was disappointed that I didn't get blue corn chips until I reminded her that we always use those for bat ears at Halloween. Then she was okay with it!

Marshmallows dipped in red colored white-chocolate with blue sprinkles that Jessica made.
Red licorice and red/white mints.
Red and blue Gatorade.

After lunch the girls tie-dyed shirts (red and blue, of course), made sparkly red, white & blue hair pieces, had red, white & blue Popsicles, and did gymnastics out back. Oh, and they were all very good sports when I had them try a new red food: rhubarb. They were all anxious about trying it until I said that it tastes a bit like Sour Patch kids, and a few of the girls actually liked it, although they all thought that a quick dip in sugar definitely improved it! I made an apple/rhubarb pie with the rest of it, which was really silly of me since no one in my house is a big fan of pies (other than the chocolate or pistachio pies that Gary and Jess both love). So there it sits in the fridge, waiting for me to get irritated enough to throw it away! *sigh*

By the way, if you've ever done any tie-dying, you know what a major pain in the booty it is, right? Next time, try using the Tulip brand tie-dye paints that come in a spray bottle. These are so easy to use, the colors are pretty vivid, and there's next to no mess! You may have to go on-line to buy them as (at least here) the local craft stores have discontinued them. I ordered the red and blue from Joann crafts http://www.joann.com/joann/.

I had 2 bottles of each color and even after doing 11 shirts, front and back, each bottle was still more than half full. However, we did purposefully keep a fair amount of white space on the shirts in keeping with the whole red, white and blue theme, plus we used the crumple technique rather than the swirl technique, which seems to require less paint. Here is a YouTube link that shows you how to do the swirl design: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSrjRgLBa9U (except that with these paints you really only need to pay attention to the method of twisting the shirt...otherwise it's just spray and go! LOL

Seriously, we might have to deem this the summer of tie-dying because we've made so many tee-shirts with these paints!

Update on my Grandma

2009-06-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

My grandma passed away late last night. I'm happy to know she's not in pain any more and I know she had a good life; she left behind 3 kids, 9 grandkids, and 2 great-grandkids. She missed Grandpa terribly (he died 2 years ago) and we have to believe she's with him again.

Jessica is doing okay with news. She and I talked about it and cried alot last night knowing Grandma's time was limited, so when mom called this morning to tell us that she passed away, Jess cried a little more but seemed to accept it a little more. She opted to go to VBS to "distract herself" and we'll be going to her swim meet tonight, too.