A Rolling Stone

Where to start?

We went to Tyler, Texas last weekend to enjoy a Day Out with Thomas at the Texas State Railroad. The Day Out was actually quite fun - perfectly geared to younger kiddos. It wasn't overcrowded and there was plenty to keep the kids busy. Unfortunately, Moose did not sleep the night before and was melting down about two hours into it. I also had a crazy headache. Our Day Out was more like a Morning Out. Oh well. We still felt like we got our money's worth.

The hotel we stayed in was disappointing - the pool was outside, the tub didn't drain. But I have no complaints about the mattresses. The dog was also awful in the hotel room - she whined A LOT and barked every time a door closed or a person walked by. Ugh, we cut the trip early and were back in Shreveport by 12 noon on Sunday.

I went to Urgent Care upon arriving home. The headache was just awful and wouldn't go away - it was like a stabbing pain that made me gringe so badly I couldn't drive. I was diagnosed with a suspect-case of shingles. My scalp has a red rash, but no blisters. I'm on an antibiotic and pain killer, and the pain stopped completely yesterday afternoon. So, maybe we got to it early enough? Maybe it's not shingles? I don't know, but it sucked.

Oh, and Saturday morning ... my mom had a FIRE IN HER HOUSE. It started in the basement and traveled through the window and torched a chunk of her deck. Amazingly, the damage was minimal and she made it out safely. Her insurance has been very responsive, and she has new floors to pick out now :) She's living in a hotel till Wednesday, but she sounds amazingly NOT STRESSED despite the circumstances. So, thank goodness for all that. I can't believe it wasn't worse. She, of course, waited till Sunday evening to tell us because she didn't want to ruin our Thomas trip.

I started a j-o-b today. I'm tutoring at under performing schools. I had NO students show up today, so I'm off to an awesome start. Since participation is so low at this school, they're moving me to a different school ... so maybe I'll actually w-o-r-k on Thursday. It's just two days a week for about three hours each day. It pays well and Husband's schedule is pretty flexible right now, so we don't even have to pay for child care.

Bean tested for a stripe on his high white belt today and did well at the testing, but then he was called out four times afterward for fidgeting. The ONLY kid called out, according to Husband.

Oh, also, my husband has tossed my sweet kittens outside. Somehow, on Sunday, between when we arrived home and about six hours later, they tracked pooped all over the bathroom and the bedroom carpet and had smeared it around the lid of the litter box and flung a sticky combination of poop and litter onto the door. I tell you, they defy both reason and gravity with their litter box antics. They seem to be doing OK out there - they stick close to the house and are eating well, and I haven't found out where they're pooping yet ... so that could be a good or bad thing. So, now it's two outdoor kittens, a dog, and three chickens.

Chickens are laying an egg a day lately. The white one is certainly in the throws of molting.

Moose continues his reign of the Terrible Twos. You just never know with that kid. I'm getting a little discouraged with his speech ... he's still hardly saying a thing, and we've been going twice a week for MONTHS now. He likes going, though, so I hate to just stop. It's certainly not hurting anything.

So, that's that.

Sweet Home Louisiana

Made it back Thursday morning around 6 a.m. I took two 5-Hour Energy Shots to make the drive and it took me like two days to recover from the stuff. I had a similar experience with caffeine pills in college (took them for a week, completely melted down, and never touched them again). On the plus side, I made the drive in 13 hours and 20 minutes (including stops) AND painted the office when I got home. I finally passed out and proceeded to have a pounding headache most of the next day.

The house was standing and the boys, dog, and plants were alive. I suspect my husband makes a better homemaker than I do (the house was certainly tidier). However, all three guys were happy to have me home AND I was happy to be home with them (you know, after the energy shot hangover passed).

My mom is doing OK and will hopefully be back at work by the end of the month. It's been a long and miserable process for her.

My husband had a PET scan while I was gone. We got great news Thursday. The scan was clear. Thank goodness.

Not wanting my mom's lousy kidneys and my husband's cancer to take all the attention, I decided to FALL at a bookstore yesterday. It was the perfect storm - flip flops, long dress, door with metal slates, carrying a box of heavy books. I went down hard, dislocated my pinky and skinned and bruised my knee. I was so embarrassed. I don't remember falls sucking this much as a kid. My finger is in a splint (most the time, the darn thing gets hot and itchy) and my knee hurts every time my pants touch it. So, umm, fun times.

Post-fall, I dropped some items off at a locally-run thrift shop and saw TONS of plastic pots in their dumpster. I asked the employee (or, more likely, criminal doing community service) if they were just throwing them away. He said yes and agreed that it was wasteful and loaded 20+ into my trunk. Plastic pots aren't my first choice, but FREE plastic pots certainly are.

I am convincing Husband to build me a chicken coop and run. He's surprisingly on board with the idea. City ordinances OK chickens, but we need to get the by-laws for our neighborhood. Hopefully no one has thought to ban them.

Bean starts school in exactly one month! He'll be a real kindergartner at a new school. I should probably figure out how to register him for that foolishness. I am also hoping to get Moose into a private pre-school a couple days a week starting this fall.

It was Artist Sunday at church today - church members and people from the community came out to sing, read, dance, and play. There were belly dancers, little ballerinas, violin, piano, drums, poetry, stories, etc. Artists also had artwork (jewelry, paintings, collages, books, etc.) on display and for sale in the church classrooms. Very neat.

Am in the middle of three books right now - Urban Homesteading, Cutting for Stone, and a book written by a local friend. I'm enjoying all three and having a hard time deciding which one to pick up each time I get a chance to read ... now wonder I can't keep the house tidy. Ha ha.

Assembly of Blog

I arrived in Indiana on July 2, after a 20-hour drive that included sleeping in my car. To be fair, the drive from Louisiana to Indiana is prettier and cheaper and slightly shorter than the drive from Texas to Indiana. However, it's not as populated - so you must stop where you can! Little Rock is like the biggest deal you pass through. I was 1.5 miles from Bill Clinton's childhood home (eating a Wendy's), but it didn't seem worth visiting.

My mom was in the hospital for a week with a kidney infection brought on by a kidney stone. Lots of pain. She was finally released and has regained some strength ... just to go into surgery tomorrow. Fun, right? Who wants to get old? She'll be off work for nearly a month when it's all said and done. Miserable, but necessary.

I have been away from the boys for a week and a half. It's nice to catch up on sleep and sit quietly and enjoy a book, but I miss them like crazy. Life's too easy (though, my mom is sometimes a demanding patient).

I am working on turning my online life over to a new email address. It's a slow-going process, but I appreciate that Gmail imports emails for 30 days from my old account. I am getting all the blogs switched over and hope to assemble them into one or two coherent blogs in the near future.

I picked up Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life by Jenna Woginrich and can hardly put it down. I'm almost halfway through, and I've only had it a couple hours. I am currently OBSESSED with getting a chicken coop (and have selected Red Star chickens as my preferred breed - and my city does allow chicken coops in-town ... not sure my neighborhood does, but better to ask for forgiveness than permission). I also can't wait for a garden next year (I'm looking at you raised vegetable garden beds) and am starting to toy with the idea of beekeeping. I don't think we have the land to keep enough distance between our boys and the bees, though, SO I started looking at houses further out in the country. My poor husband.

So, that's that.

I am set to return to my boys this Thursday - it'll be very late or very early Friday. It's been great to be able to take care of my mom (thanks mostly to my husband taking time off work to watch the kiddos), but I am ready to get back. I've seen three of my oldest and dearest friends during my time up here - that's been great too (oh, and I got to meet two of their new babies - yeah!). I grilled for the first time - shrimp on kabobs and corn on the cob. AMAZING. Also eating lots of Jimmy Johns and Qdoba ... just because I can :)

Colorado Pictures

A few pictures of our quick weekend in Colorado:

The Long Drive and Here Comes the Realtor

Last weekend, we made a trip to Colorado to visit my husband's grandmother and my mother-in-law (she was there visiting). It was cold, but it was still beautiful. I'll take Colorado in July or February. Who knew ... I like mountains!

There wasn't as much snow up there as I was expecting, but Great-Grandma did have some in her backyard that had been there since Christmas. It was ice and made wicked-mean snowballs. Not so good for snowmen or snow angels, but Husband and Bean scooped some up and made homemade snow cones (minus the cone part).

The boys are now proud owners of snow pants - they're on the big side so, hopefully, if we get snow next winter they'll be prepared!

The kids enjoyed seeing their grandma and great-grandma. I don't think Great-Grandma has had such a wild weekend since the last time Bean visited in 2007. Bean was in a roaring and hitting stage then and she couldn't even get close to him. This time, though, he hugged her and liked her quite a lot. Moose was also sweet as could be and both grandmas loved seeing him pitter-pat all over the house.

It takes 12 hours to get up there and, obviously, 12 hours to get back. We were actually there for about 36 hours. So, it was a lot of traveling, but everyone handled it well (well, well enough). We bought a Garmin Nuvi before leaving and that little thing is great. Most the areas we traveled were pretty desolate, so it was nice to plug in the location and see how far away a restroom or gas station or food was. When you're traveling with children, seeing that it's 90 miles to the next restaurant is torture. Luckily, I had granola bars and fish crackers to tide them over.

Husband left for Red Flag, which, if I understand correctly, is sort of like a big gathering of Air Force stuff and, umm, maybe, they're like playing war games or something. I'm not really sure. Anyway, we didn't have a lot of time between driving on Monday and his departure on Wednesday.

I'm interviewing a realtor in early March. I have a huge list of things I want to accomplish before she looks at the house. I'll never get them all done - not with the regular house and the children insisting on the whole attention/parenting thing. I did get the mailbox painted (well, I still need to do the actual mailbox, but all the brick is painted), fixed the bathroom door, scrubbed the sunroom (it was gross), bathed the dog (she was grosser), and caulked some areas in the kitchen and master bath. So, those are all good things.

Now, there is taco soup waiting for me.

Update on some things ...

Husband is going away for something he volunteered for, not for training. My bad. At some point within the next year or two, he will have some training where he goes away for a while, but that's not what this is. Shows how much I know.

We're going to do a quick trip to Colorado over Valentine's Day weekend. Husband's mom will be up there as well. We decided that a week in Colorado in March will still be cold and probably snowy. So, you know, it might not be the most pleasant place to be. We still want to see his grandma, though, and it'll be a bonus that my MIL is up there too. We always like spending time with her.

For our bigger trip, we're now thinking Florida. Disney offers discounted tickets and hotels and Busch Gardens and Sea World are free to military. So, we can probably swing it. My grandpa and his wife live close to there, so we can visit them for a couple days too. We're toying with the idea of going down to the Keys (probably our favorite place in the whole wide world), but the kids probably won't be that into it. C, want to meet us up in Orlando? We can get you a discounted ticket too!

Weight Watchers is going very well. I'm learning a lot about my body and about a lot of bad habits I've adopted over the years. I'm glad on confronting all this now and not later. We have a birthday party tonight, so that will be a big test in my self-control.

Oh, and we dropped Moose off with a friend this morning. He WALKED halfway down her hallway, turned, and walked to the TV - all without holding a finger. That's some seriously walking! So, I think we can conclude that he CAN walk. What a stubborn stinker.

Bean is doing really well in school lately, lots and lots of green days. He's also getting the concept of days of the week down. He's been able to name them all, in order, for quite some time, but he's really grasping when Tuesday is or what happens on Friday and stuff. Pretty cool.

The Great Return

I haven't posted much recently, because I had a surprise on my hands. I'm terrible at keeping secrets and surprises, so it was best that I just avoided public proclamations until said surprise took place.

Moose and I got up to Chicago/Northwest Indiana this past weekend. We left Thursday morning and got back Monday afternoon. One of my oldest and dearest friends was having her baby shower - she's due November 11 with a little girl. She was quite surprised when I walked in - she looked and looked again and said, "What are you doing here?" I'm so glad I got to go.

Moose and I also made it to the apple orchard and did some shopping with my mom. We saw my cousins and my grandpa and my mom introduced me to Fish World on Facebook.

It was short trip. Hauling Moose, his carseat, and luggage around a few airports was not a lot of fun (I have bruises from straps), but it all worked out. Even our late start to the airport on Monday turned out flawlessly. Now, I have to wait till March before I return again. Which is just as well, I don't mind missing the cold up there!

Moose has a new trick. He shakes his head and mumbles, "Emm-Hmm." (Like "no.") Hilarious. He's not too keen on shaking his head the other way and replying yes to anything. While we were away, Moose really started to babble A LOT. His personality really shined through without Bean in the picture.

While I was gone, Bean had his first all-green week. He had a green day yesterday too. Bean had a great time with his dada while I was gone. Mrs. House of Toys picked him up from school Thursday and Friday, so Bean had a blast playing with two of his favorite boys. Mrs. House of Toys also got a taste of my husband's schedule ... like when he said he'd be there at 6 p.m. on Thursday and didn't get him till 8:30 p.m. STORY.OF.MY.LIFE.

Well, I have a lot of catching up to do today. My "to do" list is 2 pages long, and I just don't want to do any of it.