Saturday, July 31, 2010

Date with Daddy!

On Friday, Morgan took Sarah out on a "Daddy-Daughter Date Night" and they had an amazing time!!! Sarah picked "On the Border" for dinner. (I am pretty sure Morgan nudged her in this direction since he loves that place). There was even a "balloon lady" at the restaurant and Sarah opted for an adorable Unicorn. She was sooo excited!! Then Morgan took her over to the mall and they walked the mall and stopped by a pet store to see the animals. It was really a very Sarah-minded date! They had plenty of time to chat all about life and get to know each other better and Sarah was EXTREMELY happy to have her daddy all to herself!!!!!
Gotta love those amazing daddies!!!
......And Sarah wanted to make sure there was a picture of her unicorn included!

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Cheesecake, House construction, and a hundred dollar bill!!! (I know, they all go together so well!!)

For starters, today on Facebook was Cheesecake Day and you could partake of their delectable cakes for only 1.50 a slice!!! You can't pass up a deal like that!! I had to find a conspirator in this action, so I had to think of someone who wouldn't be shy to use a coupon......ummmm.... My sister Becky!!! Why... a) she is pregnant so she is always up for cake, and b) she doesn't have ANY problem using coupons!!! Hooray!!! And man, did we enjoy our cheesecake.. and all three pieces came to 4.50!!!
Here we all are: Uncle Jeff, Brody, and my sister Becky and myself and Will. (the older kids were at school)
Jeff chose a candybar cheesecake, and Brody knew just what he wanted the minute he walked in...Chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake!
Brody was soooo stinkin' excited! (Man, now I want another piece since I am looking at the pictures!! I wonder if they are still open at 10:41pm..... i will be back in a minute!!!!!........)
o.k. so I am not telling you if I got a piece or not.... but they MIGHT be open until 11pm... and they MIGHT have a great triple mouse cheesecake, and they MIGHT have even given me the piece for free..... Maybe.........
And I MIGHT be sitting here right now eating it and watching the Office..... (I can't even hear the kids talking instead of sleeping in the background.....yummmmmmmm)
And this girl MAY have figured out that I am eating cheesecake on the couch......

And I MIGHT have resorted to bribing her with this bite....... MAYBE!!!!! Gosh, I am just FULL of secrets, huhhhhhhh???


Alright, now that I am satisfied, back to the rest of the post...
They have been working on our house this whole week which makes my heart happy (especially after we found a foreclosure notice on the garage last week!!! Not ours, the sellers...Don't ask!!!)
Anyhow, the "Foundation Stabilizer" guys have been there this week. They have been digging very big holes all around the house near the posts.
Here you can see about 5 or 6 of the wholes in the backyard!! (Well, you can't really see them, but I know they are there..)
And here is our new view from the backdoor...
The kids didn't care about the construction going on, they just wanted to make sure their swingset still works..... (it does)
And there are big machines like this hanging around...
And somehow this water device helps to figure out how slanted the house is... maybe they should just put a ball in the middle of the floor, and see which way it rolls. Technology ROCKS!!
Here is the view from the front door looking to the left...
And here is our ripped up family room!!
And a bit of our kitchen area.... where they have been drilling up circular "poops" from the tile/concrete!
And here is Cassidy modeling a "poop" taken from the floor. Sorry to be so crude, but I don't exactly know what else to call them..... cement extracts....oh forget it! "poops" it is!
.... and I assume this is a very important part of the construction job.....hummmm
Cassidy and Will got ahold of some of the "small" wrench things they have been using...
So, that was today! Oh yeah.. I forgot to tell you about the hundred dollar bill!
So tonight we were swimming here at the apartment complex as a family and Cassidy had just jumped in and all of a sudden she says, "Mom, what in the world? I just found a hundred dollar bill on the bottom of the pool!!" I didn't believe her so I dove in, and sure enough 100 smackers, soaking wet and still real!
I looked around and saw a family eating dinner under the ramada.... Cassidy was already ahead of me (she is such an honest soul!). "Mom, we have to find out who this belongs to!" So, I didn't know what to do so I approached the family under the ramada and said... "Did anyone here by some strange chance lose a hundred dollar bill in the water?" (I know what you are thinking now... anyone would say they lost it!! But I am WAY ahead of you!!!) The dad said, "Oh it is mine! thank you sooo much!" But I wasn't convinced until he pulled out a wet wad of cash from his wet shorts and explained that he had just gone to the bank and pulled out 5 hundred dollar bills and then had suprized his daughter by jumping into the pool fully dressed (forgetting about the money in his pocket). I figured that story matched the soggy bill in my hand so we handed it over. Cassidy was so thrilled to have seen a hundred dollar bill in real life and she never even thought twice about keeping it!! I LOVE that girl!!!!

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Whatever you do..... Own it!!

I explained yesterday how I attended the "Look Good, Feel Better" program at the hospital this week and how much I enjoyed it. But the thing that stuck with me the most and I think will always stick with me is the idea to "own" your situation. I will try to explain this as best I can since the instructor isn't in my pocket to help me. Basically, I can't change my diagnosis or who I am, none of us can. But what we can change is how to "own" our situations. If I decide that I want to get up in the morning and wear sweats and no make up and just be lazy, then "own it" (meaning, own that decision and feel that it is right, don't be down on yourself). If I want to feel beautiful one day and get dolled up, "own it" and have fun. I started applying this to every aspect of my life this week and it has made a TREMENDOUS difference. For example, yesterday I dropped the kids off at school and then I wanted to take Will swimming. I decided to "own" that decision. I didn't think about the fact that I "should" be cleaning or that I "should" be doing a million other things. Instead, I decided to "own" the pool and we had a wonderful time. I think we were there for a couple of hours and played all sorts of games together. And since I "owned" the situation, I decided to make the best of it and I got into the playing and enjoying Will, every aspect of his 4-year-old self. It was beautiful!!!! After that, we came back home and I "owned" the fact that I wanted to clean and i didn't feel guilty that I wasn't doing everything else. (It also helped that Sarah, when she walked into the appartment after school, proclaimed, "oh it is sooo clean in here and beautiful!!!")
To go further with this idea, I "own" the fact that I am a stay-at-home mother that gets the wonderful opportunity to watch my kids learn and grow all right in front of my own eyes. I "owned" this last night at midnight, when I was in line at the Walgreens getting Cassidy a prescription filled because she came down with an ear infection in the middle of the night. It is an honor to do this, I LOVE my job!!!
So, the pictures today are just random ones that pertain to my thoughts of "owning" my present life.
This smile makes all my "owning" of the pool time together worth it!!!! Better than ABC's is a boy who knows all the way down to his toe nails that his mother loves him enough to spend lots of time with him!
I "own" the fact that my younger kids are in a stage of life where they like to explore and learn together. What a wonderful stage of life!
And sometimes, they can be the best of friends and my heart just melts!
I "own" the fact that my 4-year-old wants to throw a pinecone at me for taking too many pictures of him. Frankly, I don't blame him! It's like they have poparatzzi following them sometimes! (But I don't want to miss a moment of their lives!)
I "own" the fact that sometimes they will fight and have to learn how to share.
...............And that sometimes they will share!..................
I "own" the fact that they are allowed to have their own opinion. Lund and Cassidy were arguing as they got into the car after school the other day. I asked them what the matter was. Cassidy proclaimed, "Lund told the whole class that we are poor because you have breast cancer!" This kinda startled me, so I asked Lund what it meant to be poor, "Well, we don't go out to restaurants a lot!." hummmmmmmmmmmmm, I am glad this is what he thinks poor is. I am glad that he doesn't have to feel the stress of our finances or think he has to worry about it at this age. Yesterday after picking up Taco Bell for dinner I took a picture of him to prove to him that we "do eat at restaurants sometimes." After showing him the picture, he just said, "Finally!"
p.s. You could give me a million dollars and I wouldn't take four kids out to eat very often!!!
I am so happy to discover this new concept in my life. I love my life and the chance I have to live a long life now! I "own" the love I have for my kids and my amazing husband!!!
And now I am going to "own" another trip to the swimming pool....................

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Look Good, Feel Betta!!!

Yesterday I had an AMAZING opportunity!! I signed up a while ago for the Look Good, Feel Better program put on by the American Cancer Society and the day of my class finally arrived!
I decided that this opportunity would be best served as a Mommy/Daughter Date Night, and it couldn't have been any better. The Look Good, Feel Better program is designed to help women going through cancer treatment feel better about themselves. They teach you about beauty on the "inside" and then they teach you all about make up and wigs and everything to make you feel better about yourself. It is simply an amazing thing to feel pretty when you are going through something like this, because no matter how much courage and confidence you have, when you don't feel "pretty" it is really hard to feel good about yourself.
Cassidy and I had an amazing time and it was a very small, intimate group of ladies. There was only one other cancer patient there with her daughter as well and so we really felt taken care of. The instructor was great and taught us a lot of "tricks" to look better and how to mask the changes that are going on in our lives. I enjoyed having Cass there because she has been VERY interested in makeup lately and I wanted her to see the proper way to apply it and use it so when she turns 12 and her mom actually lets her wear it outside she will understand how to apply it. I also wanted Cassidy to see that cancer patients can be "beautiful", and I really felt that she left with that understanding!!
I am a better person because of this program and I think Cassidy is too.... She was also super duper excited because we left with a "Hannah Montana" wig that she LOVES to wear!!!! What a hoot!!!

Here we are on our date together... we are holding my bag of goodies given to me for the program. How awesome that makeup companies have donated all of these wonderful products!
And here is everything that was in my "kit". It is a lot of fun to play around with the various makeup colors. Will was upset that "boys don't get to wear make up!"
And playing around with the wigs was sooo much fun!!! (Not exactly my style!)
Cassidy decided that she could have an "alter ego" just like Hannah Montana does. She calls her rock star self, CJ and she loves to perform for us...
Here she is before giving us a performance at home
Boy oh boy!! Those silly boys got in on the action as well!!! We call her London!
Sarah likes to be called "Sally" while wearing her blonde do!
And this guy simply goes by Morgan when he is proving that Blondes truly do have more fun!!! he he... He is always saying that his name can also be a girls name!!

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Swim lessons and Dive Class

Before school started last week, the finale to the summer events was a sesson of swim lessons and dive instruction. I haven't ever put them in swim lessons here in the Valley, so I wasn't familiar with their classes. I think we did o.k. in the end even though I put Sarah in a class that was above her ability and I had to make sure at all times that the lifeguard who was teaching her/flirting with the other instructor was watching her. She struggled to keep up with the other kids in the class who already knew all four strokes and next year, I think I will stick her in the class below this one, just as a refresher.
Will on the other hand, enjoyed his class, when he felt the need to pay attention. I ended up sticking my own swim suit on the second week and joining his class in the water to make sure Will was staying on task. (and it was much better to not be sitting in the stands melting!)
Cassidy and Lund on the other hand were up on the boards and got sick of the "right form" for diving really quick. I think they envisioned a diving class to be a whole class of running and jumping off the diving board willy nilly. They were sorely mistaken. And even though Lund can do a front flip and anything else you ask him to do off a diving board, he had trouble with the simplicity of the "front dive". Cassidy grasped it before he did and it took him the full two weeks to master the dive flawlessly. On the last day of class, Cassidy tried to do a pike and then dive and she flipped and landed on her back. A horrible painful backflop and she was in the stands crying. I sat with her and talked with her about getting right back on the horse, so to speak. After much convincing, she got back up there only to perform the EXACT same painful back flop!!! After more crying, the only way I got her back up on the board was to get up there myself and perform a dive so they felt I was having to go through it too. Needless to say, I don't think Cassidy will be joining dive team anytime soon! Lund on the other hand, would do great if they would let him play around a little bit more.
Well, enjoy the photos of their only summer "class" they took... (Maybe next year when we are settled and cancer-free, they will get to participate in a little bit more...)
And I threw another picture of Lund in. He was being crazy at the pool at "Aunt Dana's" house...just more swimming adventures! I am suprized we haven't had any stitches this summer!