Oh What Do You Do In The Summertime......

I know we have only been in this house for 2 1/2 weeks but there are some things that just have to be changed and the outside lights were one of them, and the flower beds needed my special touch, but that is a whole other post.

Saturday I went out garage-sale'ing and found some brand-new-still-in-the-box-outside-lights for a killer deal. It was time to put them up. The sun was shining and it was finally not raining and most of the light-bulbs on the old lights were burnt out. Definitely time to change out those lights. So as I am up on the ladder working away, Sweet-boy and "B" decided to make box people out of the boxes.

With a little instruction on the proper technique for punching out holes in the boxes using a screw driver, they were happily on their way to making something wonderful.
Sweet-boy going to town on the right place for a arm-hole.

"B" kinda scary with the screwdriver.

"Can you see me mom?"

All done and ready to parade around the neighborhood.

"B" with plenty of air-holes in the box.

All this from a couple of boxes.

I love watching what kids come up with to entertain themselves on a nice summer day with nothing but two boxes and their HUGE imaginations.

Yahoo!!!

It finally happened!

The tooth that has been the joke at dinner, the ever present thing on my Sweet-boys lip- is no more. We have a gap in the smile and Mom is ever so happy. I just wish it had not been 4am that the dear little tooth decided to "POP" out and leave it's home. All that yelping and screaming that early in the morning is not good for sleeping nor my heart-rate, but all good things never happen in the still of the night, do they?!
Three teeth gone, how many more to go? If he is anything like his sister he will loose them in bunches. But for today we are happy with this one new gap in the smile.

Here comes the sun!!!!

Finally the sun came out. It has rained and rained and if it was not rainy it was cloudy and cold. Not very good pool weather and my little fishy kids have just been dying to go to the pool. We loaded up our stuff, met our friends at the pool and started to have some fun.
The kids finally in the water.

Drama Queen looks like she is tackling the English Channel.

Sweet-boy showing me his entrance into the pool.

It was a great day, one where I slathered on the sunscreen on everyone but me. So mom is glad that the rain has returned, she needs time to recover from her first burn of the summer.

Can someone get rid of this tooth?

For over two months we have had a wiggly tooth in our house. Normally it is Drama Queen that is falling apart but finally it is Sweet-boy that seems to be ready to loose the baby-teeth. You would think that with all the whooping and hollering that goes on when a tooth is lost that he would want in on it?

NO!!!!

We now deal with a kid that has his front tooth hanging out all the time, looking like something that I have seen somewhere before......... But where.......And then I remember, "A Year Without A Santa Clause". This is one of my most favorite Christmas, Rankin-Bass cartoony movies of all time. Needless to say that everytime I see my little guy, I smile. He is very watchful over his tooth and wants it to fall out when it is ready. So for now we watch and wait. But I think I will go and watch that movie, all because of a tooth.

The Petti-bomb-skirt

So the kids in our Utah ward were all wearing these skirts - the pettiskirt. I looked at them during sharing time thinking that they would be easy to make, just alot of gathering. Then I talked to one of the mom's that had made one, it took her 8 hours to make just one and as she explained it to me, my eyes glazed over. Suddenly the hefty amount that they wanted on the internet was nothing compared to my sanity. So I ordered one, had it sent to Idaho and it was here waiting for us when we arrived.

She looks so grown-up.

Can you believe she will be in middle school next year - yup Mom is having a hard time relating to that. But for now she is my "Sweet-pea".

The Big Move Part 1

Finally the day had come; the big move, the truck was rented, the house was packed and we were anxious to get things loaded and get going. The kids were a big help in loading the truck with all the boxes. I think they liked playing with the dolly more then moving boxes.

Look at those hard workers, they really helped alot!
DQ playing in the trees in the park one last time. We will miss the big trees, but I am sure we will find some more to climb by our new home.
Saying "Good-bye" to friends.

All our stuff either in the truck, on the lawn or in the garage. We had so much help that the house cleared out in about an hour. What took the longest was realizing that we had too much stuff to fit on the truck and having to unpack the truck and get the essentials on for the initial trip.

The truck is packed and this is all the furniture that will need to remain behind till we can come back for it. What a mess, but also amazing that we have that much stuff. I am the purge queen, so I was surprised that we had any left-over, but we do.....

Finally we are off...... The Man drove the truck with his car hauled behind. It was quite the caravan. (Don't look now Dad but I am taking this picture while I am driving - ahhhhhhh).

Finally the state line comes into view and we are feeling that much closer to our new life, our new adventure and what we hope will be happier times.

Our new home - we are so happy that we are here. It was great to arrive at "Home" to have so many people be there to welcome us and help to get our home off the truck and into its new residence.

Now we can really start saying, "there is no place like home......."

Stay Tuned for the "before and after of the move". I hate unpacking but it needs to be done.

I can never wait for anything

The Man works for Canon and so you would think that we could get some cool things......yep we do. I got a great camera for

'just cause" and a printer to finally print off all those pictures that I take.... So when the parents camera died we decided to get them one. Since I can never wait to give gifts to people we gave it to them - NOW!!!! Look at all those instructions that are never going to be read.
It is a tiny power shot and is so small and cute that I was wanting one too. We could have gotten it in Pink and Purple, but Dad was glad that we didn't.

Sweet-boy gets to be the first picture.

Happy Mother's / Father's Day folks!!!

Did someone call for a Doctor?

I was a little late in getting out of bed, so in our house that must mean that there is something wrong with Mom, heaven forbid that I could be tired or something..... But here came my in-house medical crew - Doctor Sweet-boy and Nurse Drama Queen.

First they needed to ascertain the extent of my illness - "Mom, are you in there?"
It was determined that I was suffering from the most severe cases of foot neglect they had ever been seen. Doctor Sweet-Boy removed the cancer from my toes while Nurse DQ assisted.

The need for serious intervention was determined and a new medical device was used in removing all remaining dead tissue from my foot - (love my Pedi-egg).
This is where Nurse Drama Queen really took over, she scrubbed and rubbed till my foot was nice and smooth.

I am glad to say that the patient survived the operation and is looking forward to another procedure as my feet are in dire need, again.

Gotta love the in-house medical crew.

D-CNA

It is official folks.

I have officially, but not officially(2-5 days for the state to issue my license #) and by that I mean that I took my last State Mandated Test for my CNA Licensure - the dreaded skills test - where I demonstrate my knowledge on none other then a manikin in a hospital bed.

I was so nervous that I thought I was gonna throw-up, plus the 4 hours of sleep didn't help, nor the ingestion of 2 super large Cokes to get me hipped up for the test.

BUT I DID IT,

and as Momma C says, now I am certified as Dangerous where prior to this I was just really dangerous thus D-CNA!

This is what I looked like when I got home - yeah it kinda scared me too! But I am done - YAHOO!!!!!

Last Day of School

This is Sweet-boys teacher.

She was so wonderful and such a great teacher to have for First Grade. Our gift to the class was of course Sweet-boy's favorite treat - full size chocolate bars for everyone. It was a bitter-sweet moment as I have really loved working with his teacher, this year was really great because of all her endless patience with my little guy.

Thank you Mrs. Carr!!!Drama Queen with some of her classmates.

The kid wearing the backwards cap ate all the time. He always asked me for food even with his stash in his desk. I have never seen a kid eat so much, all the time. We will miss this funny kid. His little sister was in Sweet-boys class so we got to know them real well.

The best 5th grade teacher.

Helping out in her class was so fun, it was always something new and different and I got to work with all the kids not just a group. Thank you Mrs. McDonough for your first year teaching you were wonderful and we wish you many more successful years teaching.

The petite girls in DQ's class. She told me that not only was she the smallest in her class but in the 5th grade. This was the big discovery on one of their field trips. Poor thing, but we have lots of time for those long legs to catch up with the rest of her.

1st and 5th grade completed - check!
On to our next year with new schools and a school system that sends their 6th graders to Junior High - not too sure that mom is ready for that one.......

Why Grandpa is the Bomb!!!

There it was, the e-mail that almost made me want to be anywhere but here this weekend.

It is Thomas' visit to our local railroad and this was the reminder that it was time for us to buy our tickets.

No, not me.......

Let me explain.

I love Thomas, I buy Thomas stuff for Sweet-boy, I love the movies, I love building tracks for his trains to live on for a day and I love the corniness of it all, so why do I cringe? Well, last time we went with the whole family I was a month post my Hysterectomy, so the clanging of the train was a new experience in pain for me and my "Happy Pills" were not able to compete with all that jarring. Plus we are currently in the midst of packing and that was a time constraint that I could not deal with.

I e-mail Grandpa Extraordinaire!!!

Would you attend Day Out with Thomas with your little buddy?

Of course was the reply and so we got it arranged.

It was a logistic feat as Sweet-boy was on a school field trip and would need to be picked up from there by his Grandpa to be able to attend. Needless to say all powers to be were very accommodating and it went off without a hitch.

Here are my happy boys returning from a fun filled day with each other and seeing Thomas.

See that, one little guy that just ♥♥♥loves♥♥♥ his Grandpa. He got a Thomas tattoo on his hand and will not wash it off. He even asked if we could re-do Thursday so he could spend the day with Grandpa again.
Thank you Dad for doing that, you are the best Grandpa, not surprising since you were the Best Dad!!!

Here comes the Cat......

I have been a little bit MIA as of late so I need to let you know why. The cat is coming out of the bag........ We have been taking alot of weekend trips to here (any quesses?) and not just for the excuse of seeing our BFF's.

It is because we are finalizing a job and a house and getting ready to load our lives into one of these again and head North towards what we call - HOME!

In 1998 my husband dragged me kicking and screaming to Boise, Idaho and it was the worst and best thing that has ever happened to me and my family, see funny story here. We moved away in 2002 and have been trying to get back ever since then, and now the time has come. We are packing up our house, making final arrangements and moving forward in our lives where it has felt that we have been spinning our wheels for 2 years, waiting. I told The Man about three months ago that come the end of May we were moving, I did not know where but we needed to move on and take charge of our lives - the rest the Lord would need to deal with cause I could not anymore and here we are moving forward.

So wish us luck as we bid our place in Utah good-bye and move back to Boise, to friends and a place that is home to us. I cannot wait, it is the first move that I have really wanted and am excited about......

Week in Review

A blog that I haunt does the week in review. I like the idea and think that with my increased level of "lack of time" to consistently come up with great, witty, daily posts, we will do the week in review.

So here we go..........

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Took my written CNA test on Monday. Not bad it was all computerized and it was very similar to the lame tests that I had been practicing on. I hate these tests because you have to dummy yourself to ensure that you understand their questions. I wonder if anyone from the state level has taken one of these tests since conception. Some were so insulting that I wondered if I was not completely misreading the question. When I was taking the class I talked with my instructor on how the bookwork and the quizzes did not reflect the same information - this was a great mystery to all of us. I think that this is why she will be going through them all and correcting them as her Master's Project. But sadly I will not be a benefactor of that change. Anywhoo,..... I took the test at the closest facility and it was a massive testing center, on everything. Problem number one. I was placed in the back of the room on a computer and for a while it was quiet, then two (sorry stereotyping coming up) nit-wits (you all know what I mean, 20 year old space-cadets) came in to take another test. They were placed right beside me, I wondered at the wisdom of this when there were clearly other locations they could have been placed at, but there they were. I continued on with my test, able to think because it was quiet, when they started their test, it was a keyboarding test of all things. So for the next 30 minutes all I heard was "click, click, click and then snapping of the gum". I was dumbfounded at what I now had to test in -a very disruptive environment. So needless to say that of the 30 questions that I had answered I was sure of their accurateness, but the remaining 70 I was not so sure. I slowly read the questions and thought about the answers among the "click, click, click, snap", hoping that any minute they would finish the test. FINALLY they finished and got up, as noisily as they could, snapping that @^*$%%# gum the whole time. I took a moment to regain my composure and resumed the test. After all that, I was told that I had to wait for 2-5 days for the results to be mailed to me - what? So I left thinking that I might have not done so good, but there was the hope. I received the envelope and made The Man open it. He asked me what I thought I got and I said 90%, but it was better then that - I got a 94% overall and in some areas I got 100%. So that was a great something in the mail for me. I will take the skills portion on the 26th and hope to nail that one too. This one is worse, it is pass or fail and I am really nervous about that one.

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Wednesday, The Man took me out to lunch and to an afternoon movie. We saw the new Star Trek Movie, which I really recommend. If you were a Treky watcher when you were young you will really enjoy this one, the casting is dead-one and it was fun to watch the same mannerisms that we saw in the original cast duplicated in this one. Great two hours!!! He also bought me an MP3 player, I know big deal everyone has one, well not me, we are technologically backwards at our home - so this was a big deal. I would like to say that I love it but of the 2 minutes that I have listened to it, I am not sure I know how to work it. Drama Queen is seen with my gift in her ears most of the time now - oh well - I can share.

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The Man took me away for a weekend visit with my BFF. It is rare that both the spouses and all the kids get along but we do and it is always so wonderful to go and visit them. It was an early Birthday present and one that I really enjoyed!!!

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So that is my week, I wish that I could say that next week was going to be easy and not another week of running like a mad woman, but that is life as the mom.

First Celebrity Swine Flu Fatality

And we all know who the carrier is.

Tagged by the number eight

Top 8

My 8 favorite TV Shows
1- Castle
2- Law & Order
3- Dancing with the Stars
4- American Idol
5- Local News
6- Life with Raymond - reruns
7- WipeOut - so funny
8- America Funniest Home Videos

8 Things I did Yesterday
1- Laundry
2- Errands
3- Returned and purchased other Mother's Day gifts ( I know I am so picky)
4- Took my CNA written Test
5- Helped at my kids school with end of year testing
6- vacated my home twice for showings
7- had my tires totated
8- took 2 loads to the DI

My 8 Favorite Restaurants
1- Japanese Steak House
2- Out Back
3- Olive Garden
4- Panda Express
5- La Puenta
6- Cheesecake Factory
7- Johnny Carino's
8- Morelias

8 Things I am Looking Forward to
1- School being over for the year!!
2- Spending time with my hubby
3- Visiting my BFF
4- Payday
5- Swimming in the pool
6- having no schedule
7- Warmer weather
8- camping trips

8 Things on my Wish List
1- Future Posibilities
2- A secure future
3- Some $$ in my savings account
4- Disneyland
5- A trip with just my hubby
6- a puppy
7- Time to read
8- A better economy

Now I have to tag 8 people so I look forward to reading all of yours.
1- Heather
2- Caroline
3- Megan
4- Emma
5- Elana
6- Laurel
7- Rhondalue
8- Kate

The Pomp and Circumstance

This is a day that I never even thought would be an option for me.

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I decided that after so many semesters of trying to finish nursing pre-requisites and having to back out mid-way that I needed to do something in a more timely manner and something that I could also ensure would get my foot in the door and also to see if indeed I wanted to really be a nurse, when I grow up.

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So I enrolled in the Certified Nursing Assistant program at SLCC. It was a 9 week self-paced course that I determined should really only take me 5 weeks to complete. As with everything that I do, I became obsessed to complete the course before my kids Spring Break but to also complete it with the highest score of my class. I am glad to say that I did just that, in fact I completed it much sooner than my completion of my clinical portion. All I hoped to obtain was a chance to make a difference in a patients life by helping that person get better and walk out the door of a hospital, well on their way to complete recovery. It also is a skill that will enable me to be more marketable - I hope.

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But what I got was an opportunity to do something that I have never done, walk at Graduation. When the letter arrived telling me that I could participate in this celebration I was dumbfounded, and of course my family was so happy to support me in doing this, that the decision was made. The kids especially were delighted to come and watch mom accomplish something that was really hard on all of us in sacrifice of time. So early this morning, before most people were leaving for work we were up and dressed for the momentous occasion.Photo Opts with all the beautiful tulips the kids planted last fall.
The kids so happy to be out of school for the day.

Can you see me in the melee of people. I had to stand on my chair and scream and yell to get their attention.

I was waiting to see how badly they murdered my name, it was really hilarious but so great to be in the moment.

Look at me, I was close to tears and so happy to have my sweet family there to support me. I also felt the love and well wishes from all my friends and family far away. It was a great day and one that I hope my kids will remember. We are starting a wall of achievement where all our degrees will be placed, I want my kids to reach for a better life and know that it is an expectation in our family.

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What a great day - hail the college graduate, class of 2009!!!

Why it is Crucial to get some Girl Time

For the past four years my BFF and I look forward to getting together with 18,000 of our closests un-known sisters and spend two days being uplifted, rejuvenated and renewed. It is such a wonderful experience to do this, for four days we have names, we get to do whatever we want to do, even have mint brownines for breakfast if we want too, but that was not such a good idea. We laugh till all hours of the night and feel like teen-agers again until we call home and hear from our kids. Then they proceed to tell on Dad of all the things that he is not doing right. We console them and then chuckle that Dad is dealing with this and we get to ignore it all for another day.

So why is it Crucial to get girl time?

It is not only really, really necessary for the mom, helps with her sanity, but it really does make your family miss you. When I got home, I was tackled with hugs from my kids, Sweet-boy did not let go of me for the longest time. Drama Queen was not satisfied till she let me know all the things that had not gone as normal and that they had had Eggo's for dinner the entire time I was gone. My house is very messy and needing of a good scrubbing, laundry is it's own monster and the cookies and goodies are dangerously low, but I can see over all that. I have a renewed sense of who I am, that I make a big difference in the world and in my own little circle. Thanks Crazy Lady, WC would not be the same without you.