Pimp my Ride, Strawberry Shortcake

So - the night before last I had a very vivid dream. I was in a parking lot and there was something illegal going on with another van in the lot. Nothing too strange there. However - in my dream the van was pink with Strawberry Shortcake all over it. No reason why. I tried to emulate the van - couldn't really capture it though...

Tagged....

~A~ has tagged me with a meme.

Here goes....

1. Who was your first prom date?

Terry - he was also my second, third and fourth prom date. Here is a prom picture...when you see my hair, remember this was the 80s

2. Who was your first roommate?

My freshman dorm-mate in college. I moved out half-way through the year because we could not get along as roommates. We were friends afterwards and even shared an apartment later which worked out OK since we had our own bedrooms.

3. What alcoholic beverage did you drink when you got drunk the first time?

Christian Brothers brandy taken from my friend's parents liquor cabinet.

4. What was your first job?

I worked at Old Mill Pottery- a large craft store. It wasn't too bad for a first job. Sometimes I had to vaccuum and that was bad. I also had to bag peat moss on occasion.

5. First CD you bought?

I honestly cannot remember. My first tape was Journey - Frontiers

6. When did you go to your first funeral, whose?

I actually have never been to a funeral. My grandparents' funerals were all out of state and my sibs and I did not go.

7. How old were you when you first moved away from your first hometown?

18 to go to college. I lived in the same house in the same town until then.

8. Who was your first grade teacher?

Mrs. Pittman. She was so old-school. She would rap your palm with a ruler if you did something wrong.

9. Where did you go on your first airplane ride?

England to live for a year when I was 3

10. When you snuck out of your house for the first time, who was it with?

Hmm - well I never snuck out when I was supposed to be in - but I did sneak my first boyfriend in.

11. Who was your first Best Friend and are you still friends with them?

Diana who lived 2 houses down. No - I am not. I got in touch with her a few years back but I only got one email and didn't hear from her again.

12. Where did you live the first time you moved out of your parents' house?

A dorm at Purdue University

13. Who is the first person you call when you have a bad day?

Luke

14. Who's wedding were you in the first time you were a bridesmaid or a groomsmen?

Julie - college roommate. The dresses were purple crushed velvet with “dog collars”.

15. What is the first thing you do in the morning?

Take my thyroid medication

16. What was the first concert you ever went to?

Neil Diamond with a friend's family when I was about 8 or so.

17. First tattoo or piercing?

No tattoo - I got my ears pierced when I turned 18 at college. My dad wouldn't have allowed it when I was living at home.

18. First celebrity crush?

Morten - lead singer of A-ha

19. First crush?
Hmm - probably Matt W.

20. First sexual experience?

All I will say is it was not with the prom date from question #1

The tagging will stop here because most of my blog friends are men...they are not so fond of the meme.....

Turn your head

There was an article about this product in the paper yesterday. What a unique idea.

http://www.turnyourhead.com/

Songs for a long, empty road

On a board I am part of, my friend ~A~ asked the question,

What songs would you love to listen to while driving down a long, empty road?

Here is my answer - if you read this and you have a blog - consider yourself tagged (or answer in the comments of you don't).

1. Big Log - Robert Plant
2. In a Daydream - Freddy Jones Band
3. Lake Charles - Lucinda Williams
4. Song Two - Blur
5. Going the Distance - Cake
6. Sunset Grill - Don Henley
7. Snowin' on Raton - Pat Green
8. Road to Nowhere - Talking Heads
9. Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2
10. Here I Go Again - Whitesnake

Paying the man

So - yesterday I tackled the medical bills. This is something I do about once every three months. Being an accountant (in my former life) it feels counterintuitive to leave a bill sitting for three months. However, I have learned that if I were to go through these bills once a month I would waste a heck of a lot of time looking at incorrect bills. If I give them a few months to send the bills out they are more likely to be correct after a few months.

So my stack of bills (picture is coming if stupid blogger will only let me add one) yielded five checks, and five phone calls. Yup - 3 of the bills were just plain wrong. Actually a fourth was wrong too - but I paid them the right amount and sent them a spreadsheet showing them the correct figures.

If I didn't have a CPA I would be paying a lot of money I didn't owe. I really feel for people who do not have the training to decipher a medical bill. So many people are being screwed.

Videos of the kids

Check out Luke's blog for some video snippets of my kids..

Sick Sick Sick

Last Monday I had the stomach flu. I got it again Thursday night. Yesterday (Monday) I had another bout of Mastitis. I am so tired of being sick! My body is so dragged down right now. Unfortunately nursing moms are susceptible to mastitis when they have been sick. I am going to try to get back on my vitamins and try to figure out some way to boost my immune system.

One good thing that happened is the on-call doctor agreed to prescribe me antibiotics without seeing me last night. I convinced myself all day that I would get better as the day went on but my fever rose right after the office closed.

I laughed out loud yesterday while readin my breastfeeding book " Now is the time to pamper yourself so you can get well before attempting to resume responsibilities. Enlist all the help you can from your partner, extended family, friends, neighbors or members of your church. For at least two days, arrange to be relieved of all your duties, except brestfeeding your baby.....etc etc"

So I guess trudging through the snow with an infant carrier to deliver Julia to and from her classroom this morning and shopping at Wal-mart was not what the author intended.

Choir - Sunday, March 19 2006

After 2 weeks off I got to sing in church today. It was so nice to be back singing.

The Offeratory was: "Lord, You Are Our Life" by Dauermann. You can here it here. The song is written for a choral group, Liberated Wailing Wall who sings "jewish gospel music". They are a part of Jews for Jesus.

The Anthem was "Be Still My Soul" - arranged by Bird. It is an beautiful arrangement of the classic hymn. You can hear a clip here.

Now if I could just start singing two services again. As it is I wake up Lauren to eat at 6:30, leave the house at 7:00 - rehearse at 7:30, sing from 8:00 until 9:00 and then it is time to feed her again at 9:00 - so I really can't sing at the 9:30 (for which I need to be in the rehearsal room by at least 9:15). Time is flying though! She will be a year old before I know it and weaned.

Stroller skis

http://www.basiccomfort.com/item.asp?item=20052

These actually might have come in handy a few times in NYC when we had several inches of snow. Too funny.

Valley boy?

Nathan has started using verbage he is picking up elsewhere. About 2 weeks ago he started saying things such as "I was like, 'what are you doing with that?'" He does it constantly and I know Luke and I do not. He does watch Scooby Doo and Shaggy uses like alot - but I don't think he uses it in that way.

As of today he has started to use the word bummer. Luke and I occasionally use it but Nathan is clearly trying it on for size. He has been muttering it, like tonight when he said, "only two! what a bummer!"

It is such a funny thing to hear your child create their own way of talking and trying on new ways to expres themselves. I just hope the "I was like" phase doesn't last too long.

My little turtle

Lauren is 4 months old today. Where has the time gone? At my last report she was rolling like mad. Now that she mastered that skill she is trying her hardest to sit up from laying on her back. She lifts her head as high as she can and holds it up until she is too tired. She will keep the pose in the picture for 10 seconds or more. It is crazy and also quite humerous.

Awesome weekend

The blog has been quiet as we have all been in Chicago all weekend. Well - I did manage to slip in the Steak n Shake post. I LOVE Steak n Shake and they do not have any in Colorado. We got in Thursday night and by 10:30 Friday morning I had to have it. So off Luke and I went to grab some and I scarfed it down in the car and the kids were none the wiser. We also had it again late Friday night. Yummmm.

Anyway - we were in Chicago to see Matt (my cousin, Luke's friend...well not just my cousin because he and Beth are my friends too) get his head shaved for St. Baldrick's. Luke and Matt went into the city around noon and Beth and I brought all the kids in around 2:00.

The event was in an irish pub and it was loud and crowded but fun. Nathan had the honors of shaving Matt's head. We weren't sure he would even consider doing it but he thoroughly enjoyed himself. Afterwards we hung around for awhile and the kids had sodas and food. Nathan was all smiles. He truly enjoyed the bar scene. I even nursed Lauren while we were there...that was a first for me.


Beth and I packed all the kids in the van and headed out. We had an "only a mom would do this" moment when one of the children had to pee while we were stuck in traffic. There was an aborted attept to use a water bottle and a successful pee into a mug while driving along.

The kids had lots of fun playing and adults enjoyed conversing and catching up. Saturday night my brother, Aaron, Luke's sister, Anna, her boyfriend, Nick, and friends (who will remain nameless and that is a story I won't get into) joined us for pizza. It was great seeing everyone.

We returned late night to bad weather here in Colorado but eventually made it home from Denver.

I was wary about how hectic this trip would be but it far exceeded my expectations and was worth every difficult moment (of which there were few).

Twice in one day.

Oh yeah.

Funny and sad

First the sad...

I went to Wal-mart yesterday. I glanced at the clearance rack in the boys department. They had a pair of boys snow pants for $5. They were too big - maybe the right size for Nathan in a year or so. I wanted to buy them and pack them away. I just couldn't do it. I just cannot buy clothes ahead for Nathan. I picture myself coming accross the pants and Nathan is no longer with us. This is not the first time this has happened. For some reasons buying clothes based on a bigger older Nathan is one step I just can't quite take. It was a big bummer in what was just supposed to be a routine grocery shop on a morning without the big kids.

Now the funny...to me anyway

Nathan was smelling a plastic bag (why do kids have to smell everything?).
He told Julia it smelled like oxygen. These little warped things from his medical life always make me laugh.

Also -this morning Luke finally proved to Nathan and Julia they were not drinking Seventy Delight. He had Nathan read the bottle. We had tried to tell them it was Sunny but they didn't quite believe us.

Potpourri

I have several things to blog but I will be lazy and do it all in one entry.

Geeks R Us

So - Sunday night Luke and I were in bed watching TV. He leaned over to kiss me and our glasses clinked together. We chuckled about that being geeky. Then we reviewed our activities of the day. Our HD TIVO's hard drive had died the day before. So - we bought a new one - stuck it in our desktop and put the TIVO OS on it and popped it back in the TIVO. We then took the old TIVO one reformatted it - found it was workable again and fiddled with all our drives in the computer, moved some data around and put it back together. Pretty geeky activities. Of course - I did have a hard drive residing on my bedside table for over a year from when we hacked our bedroom TIVO. That's a good sign too.

How to traumatize your five-year old

Poor Nathan. I went through a car wash today. He hates this particular one because it is very loud. He started screaming when the water started. I looked back and soap and water were streaming in the pop-out windows in the back of the van by him. I promptly closed them - no big deal - but he was so upset. He just cried until it was over. Unfortunately I couldn't stop laughing.

Why I LOVE Colorado

I love the weather in Colorado. It is almost always sunny and the weather has great fluctuations from one day to the next. Not so long ago it was -12. Today it was 70. It will still snow and get plenty cold before summer but I love these *bonus* spring days we get here and there.

Living my life three months at a time

That is my reality. Now that Nathan has had clean scans we have a three month reprieve. I literally will only plan ahead in three month increments. Last spring we had the whole summer break planned out and then Nathan relapsed. It was so disappointing to have to cancel plans. I guess I am feeling burnt by that.

One of the fun things to plan in this period is a visit to my parents in Hilton Head. Nathan and Julia adore the beach, pool and grandparents there and have been talking about the trip for weeks already.

I just can't really describe the way it feels during scan time. It is as if someone is flipping a coin. One side says "your child gets to live..go on and have a normal life for 3 months" the other side says "your child is going to die, but first he will have grueling treatments and months of pain"

It makes it hard to live a normal life. Living a "normal" life is what I aspire to do and is something I work very hard at. That is really what it is all about for me. I don't think anyone knows how much work it really is for me.

We have a roller!

Lauren has been trying so hard to roll over. So, of course the other day when we were in NYC I walked away for a moment and came back to find her on her tummy. This morning she repeated the feat two more times for us. She is trying to go from tummy to back but is a ways away from that. She is our earliest roller at 3.5 months. Part of me is a little sad that she is growing so fast!

Le Pain

As in "the bread". My favorite place to eat in NYC is Le Pain Quotidien. It is a french bakery with divine salads and sandwiches (tartines) and a cappucino to die for. Nathan requested McDonalds for lunch and so that is what he had and then Luke and I had lunch while Nathan at a belgian brownie.

Yum.