Wow what a week, so far...

So this week has been crazy for me.  Monday was a frenzy of cleaning.  Taylor didnt' go to school because she had a bunch of weird spots on her, so just so other parents didnt' freak out I kept her home.  Mark's mom was coming down to be here for Michael's real birthday, she couldn't make it on the weekend.  She acutally came in on Monday afternoon.  The house was a mess since I wasnt' home to clean on SAturday. 
It was really nice of her to come on Monday because Savannah had a feild trip on Tuesday so I didn't have to figure out babysitting.  So the marathon began...
Tuesday:

Feild trip to U.S.S. midway.  I really liked that.  It was a lot of fun.   The first part was spent doing some measuring and educational activities.  The last hour was spent exploring, it was really funny Savannah kept saying, "Are we lost?"  "Mom I think we are lost."  It seems like that, thankfully they have signs pointing or we would of been lost.    We saw some cool things.
This is in the Engine room.

Above Savannah is in the brig.

On the flight deck.

Sleeping in the brig I think.

These pictures are the commander's quarters. Not too shabby.

This is the sick bay, as you can see savannah is barely alive and her friend is very sick.

Their O.R.

It was really fun, when I told Savannah Dad could come on one of these someday, she said, "No way am I letting my dad live here." 

Wednesday:  What a day!  So we started by getting the girls off to school, than took off to Michael's doctor appointment.  Ended up being their for two hours.  We got to see a intern and staff.  So fun.  Michael was planning on getting two shots, but than the intern said it looked like he only needed one and didnt' need his tetnus again.  By the way this is Michael's birthday.  So I told him, "so you don't need a tetnus shot that's the one you got in N.C. in your bottum," and than he talked about how bad it hurt.  Big mistake, turns out he needed it, and I already mentioned is blood pressure before.  So after the doctor we dropped him of at school, ran to the pharmacy spent 45 mintues there and left without the medicine, went to the store, the library and grabbed Taylor.  Went home and ate lunch and took a breather, than...

WE started to make dinner for a family I was taking a meal too.  (An amazing family in our ward the mom has Brain cancer, and has been fighting for 6 years, she was pregnant with their 3rd child when they found the tumor.)  I took Michael to baseball practice, while Diane stayed and finished the brownies and put dinner in the oven.  I also ran to the pharmacy, came home made biscuits, checked dinner and it was raw!  Totally raw!  It had been in for a hour.  Ugh!  Turned up the heat went and got Michael from Baseball, watched him attack his sister with his baseball bag that has a bat in it...

Came home cooked the biscuits, thank goodness for my double oven.  It is now 6 pm.  Finally dinner is ready.  1/2 hour late.  Took it over and I ended up spending a good 1/2 to 45 minutes visiting with Alexa (the lady with cancer.)  What an amazing person.  I felt blessed being able to help take dinner.  And her husband and the kids went out to the car and sung to Michael happy birthday. 

Finally at 7 pm, we got the Islands Burger's for our dinner  The kids did really good seeing how we where eating so late.  Taylor had some problems, but she ended up eating her food as she left.  (Taylor has had a really hard time with Mark being gone.)  WE left there at 8 pm, came home and had brownies and ice cream.  Michael said no more cake!  Got the kids in bed a little after nine sat down and breathed and watched some olympics and american idol.   I forgot to mention, I was worried savannah was getting an infection on her foot, turned out to be ok. This morning.

Thrusday:

Speech at 9-9:30 am,

Take Diane to Airport

10:45-11:45 Speech Class

12:15 get Taylor

12:30 go to our lunch group, which was really nice,

Come home and crash! 

Friday:

Speech Eval

And Allergy Appointment

Baseball practice

Saturday:

So much going on, I'll see if I survive!

L.A. and Pasadena

So last weekend we went up to L.A. to visit Mark and celebrate Michael birthday with him.  So we took off on Saturday and managed to have no traffic on our way up.  We met at mark's grandma in L.A. went to IHOP, so michael could have his Belgium waffle with strawberry's and whip cream.  Mark's dad also flew to L.A. to celebrate.  Later we went to see a movie, we saw the Tooth Fairy, it was actually really cute and I thought funny.  Later we opened presents, had another birthday cake and ice cream.  Than we went off to Mark's place.   Mark is living in Pasadena right now on a Oral Surgery Trauma rotation, he sees a ton of jaw fractures, and things that he only sees a couple of times a month here in Balboa. That took us an hours drive to get there, because of Traffic.  But he lives in a really nice apartment in a nice part of town.  He's living the high life!  We walked down to a great little pizza place, Called Avanti it's really small so it took a while for us to have a seat for a party of 8, but I thougth well worth the wait.  IF you are ever in Pasadena check it out. 

Mark has a two bedroom apartment, and one room had two twin beds, it was really great.  Michael slept at Grandma's with his Grandpa too.  It was a short week.  We also ate breakfast at The Spit Fire Grill it's right next to the Santa Monica airpot, great food!  WE met up with Mark's cousins Maryann, it was fun to visit with her.  Later we drove home and I felt very alone.

These pictures are looking out of Mark's window.  Lucky him!

Happy Birthday Michael

I can't believe my little boy is 11 years old!  Where does time go?  He's had quite the birthday celebrations this year, 3 celebrations spread out.  Happy birthday Michael!  So proud of what a great student he is and the young man he is becoming.  He was also very brave this morning, he had a well check up and had to get two shots.  What a great birthday present right?  He was a  bit nervous his blood pressure was a little high, they took it four times.  The last one shortly after his appointment, he had calmed down a little.  Poor boy was in tears just before.  The intern told him he wouldn't need a tetnas shot, turns out he still needed one.  He was not at all happy about that.  But he made it through.  All in all his a healthy 11 year old. 

A great reminder

So my freind posted this link on her blog.  As she called it "a mother's livng nightmare." Have you ever left your toddler/baby in the tub just to grab something?     If you want to know what I'm talking about you need to read this amazing story... stakerzxposed.blogspot.com Or you can watch the shorter version, this is a video the dad made...http://stakerzxposed.blogspot.com/2010/02/bronson-miracle.html .(you will want to scroll all the way down and hit mute on the her music before watching the video.)  Have some tissues ready.  I could barely read the story.  Or if you want you can watch the news clip no KSL http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=9654005 But even though I may not know them, this is a really good reminder and a very touching story, and another example that Miracles do happen.

The Weekend

Oops, I forgot we also went to a Movie, The Lightning Thief.  I love the books, but I am so frustrated that the movie was totally different, I mean totally!  But it was still fun to watch.  It was fun Michael and Savannah both enjoyed this book (Savannah just hear what I read outloud at night but really liked it.) 

And...My wonderful Dad, cleaned out my pantry, which was horrible!  He found things I didn't even know I had in there.  He also cleaned out my fireplace, It had atleast 2 inches of soot.  It was pretty bad our living room smelled like a campfire sometimes. 

Suprise!

Friday night I told my kids that I needed to pick up a friend from the airport, I made michael come he wanted to stay at home.   AS we pulled up to the curb at the airport I watched Michael as he realized that it was my parents at the curb and not my friend.  It was really fun to see them so excited and suprised.  Michael said, "you suprised me!"  They made a quick trip to celebrate Michael's birthday early.  It was really fun.  We just hung out, ate out.  The weather was wonderful, sorry all you east coast people.  It was in the 80's.

Here's Michael opening his presents, he loves building these halo wars lego's.

We walked around on the beach in Coranado, the girls tried to make a "slide" in the sand. 

Michael took 3 trys to blow out his candles.  My parents are the best and my dad bought this awesome tranformers cake. 

It was fun, It was so nice to have other adults to visit with at night too.  I think I slept a lot better at night too.  Did I mention My mom and I went shopping?  Yes we did, that's always fun.

Monkey Muffins

So I made these yummy things called Monkey Muffins.  Have you ever had the  monkey bread that has cinnamon and sugar?  Well this is even better!  Here's the link http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/12/monkey-muffins/ You have to check them out.  They are on Pioneer Women cooks site.  Love her!  Anyway these are so yummy I just had one little "test" piece and am craving more.  Not something I should eat, because I know the calories are not low. 

I just used some homemade dough I had, (A Buttermilk Refridgerator dough recipe.)  I wish I had a picture but I don't so you'll have to look at her's. 

Taylor's Field Tripp

Taylor had a field tripp to Sea World a couple of weeks ago (when my computer wasn't working) I was one of the parents who got to go.  We had a lot of fun.  Here's my little group on the bus.

One of the favorite spots was of course the Sting Ray petting area, Taylor got totally soaked there, and had to take her shirt off and wear her hoody.

Our next favorite was where they had the dolphins and baluga whales (normally where you can view shamu) These animals are really friendly the lady their told us to pat on the glass and they may come up to us.  It totally worked.  But the funnest part was when the kids played tag with a Dolphin (no joke.)  It would chase them from one end to the other, they loved it.  It was so fun. 

I love Sea World!

Sweet Prayer and random thoughts

Michael said the prayer at dinner tonight and for the first time he said, "and thank you for this great military life." He has often complained about Mark being in the Military (when in reality our life would not be much different out of the military right now.) But I was still glad to hear him say it. He's trying.

Went to the gym today, I was so exhausted afterwards, I worked hard. But felt horrible the rest of the day, just totally drained of everything, yet I felt like I ate a lot of sugar, you know that low you get after too much sugar. I don't' know maybe you don't get that. But sugar can have that effect sometime to me. My body felt weak, and I felt like I was missing something, protein, iron, I don't' know but something.

I'm thankful for the sweat lady in our ward who just grabbed me and pulled me into a big hug, when I dropped off some stuff at her house. See Mark on a new rotation, which makes it so we don't see him. She knew I needed a hug.

Savannah was funny today, she couldn't stop talking, "mom do you know why it's called banana bread?" "Because it has banana and it's bread." She said some other stuff, but since my brain seems to be missing the short term memory I can't remember anything and I know there was something else I was going to write today about one of the things the kids said today, but of course can't remember at all. So annoying. Oh well.

Pathetic

So about a week ago, someone came knocking on my door. I was on the phone, Taylor aswered and it was a sales man. Ugh! He seemed to not care that I was on the phone and was very persuasive he was selling...Wonder cleaner.

And it's amazing, "Mam do you have any grease on your Drive way?" I act like I don't, "Yes you do, and show's me how it takes that off, how it takes Taylor's name off the wall, how it cleans a horrible dirty spot ont he carpet.... you get the idea. How much is this amazing products? Don't ask. Did I buy this "AMAZING PRODUCT!" Yes, I'm ashamed to say yes, I did. Is it amazing, sometimes. Does it take off your shower door soap scum? Sure with steele wool, why didnt' I just buy that, I"m sure that would take everything off. I will say, it's take off somekind of marker on the girls kitchen that I have tried every thing else on. It did do a great job cleaning my kitchen floor. But still I dont' think I'll buy it again.