Family is Awesome

I'm happy to report that my mother and stepdad are out of the hospital and home enjoying their medicinally induced vacation together.

My mother had to stay in the hospital for a few days until the doctors got her medication under controll. Now she's home and feeling much better. My stepdad found out he doesn't have to have surgery on his ankle, Yay !

My aunt Cookie has been so helpfull in the healing process. She has been taking them to the doctors and cleaning the house and helping with the farm too, she even drove them all the way to portland so Ken could go to the va.

Not only has my moms sister been helping out, but the church family has offered to help build the room for them. Hopefully nobody else falls off any ladders :)

Family rocks no matter what form they take. Blood relatives and church relatives all the same in my book :)

A Really Big Makeover

I have this friend, she's a single mom and she's been having a hard time lately. Women will understand this. When you go through a breakup or life altering experience, you usually try to reinvent yourself, like with a new haircut or color well not my friend. My friend, we will just call her (M) she has decided a new haircolor or cut was not enough. M has decided to paint the exterior of her house. I, being a good friend, thought she might need someone to talk to or a shoulder to cry on so I asked if she wanted help with the painting. Ok I thought she would have a paint sprayer and some rollers for the body of the house and then smaller brushes for the trim. I thought wrong. A single mother on a limited income can't afford a sprayer so we painted the whole body of the house with two brushes about 2" wide. Yes thats right two small brushes !

M has two kids around the same ages as my two so they kept themselves busy with video games and popsicles while M and i painted. I just have to say four children under the age of ten and nobody lost any body parts, no arguments, and the furniture was still intact, thats very rare. I'm so proud of them for being the angels I'm trying to raise. Yeah right, my kids angels, hah don't make me laugh. No really they amaze me every day. My kids are turning into the coolest little people. I'm so glad they are respectful and inocent. So many kids now days aren't so it makes it harder on those of us parents that give a damn to raise them with a little inocence and kindness.

So back to painting. M and I decided that as long as you have friendship, laughter, and a strong will you can accomplish anything, even painting an entire house with two tiny paintbrushes :)

Ladder Safety or lack thereof

My mother is not allowed to climb any more ladders! I have cut her off for life!

So my Sunday started off pretty uneventfull, I went to the softball field with Steve to get some extra batting practice till the rest of the girls from the team showed up. We were having a pretty laid back practice. I was in the outfield with my youngest sister Chelsea just gossiping about the usual crap when my son comes running out to me and says "poppa Ken is on the phone" well he never calls me. He is such a gentle man and in a totally mellow and nonemergent voice he tells me " Um I just thought you should know that your moms on her way to the hospital, she's in the ambulance going to the emergency room and I'm following in my truck on my way to the V.A. hospital" Ok so all I heard was the words MOM, AMBULANCE, EMERGENCY ROOM. So I ask what happened. He says " She fell off a ladder hit her head and broke some bones and was having a hard time breathing so they ambulance is taking her to the E.R. I'm going to the V.A. cause I think I broke my foot" Now at this point I'm trying to relay all this info to Chelsea and still listen to what Ken is telling me, but he is trying to drive himself to the hospital with a broken foot and I'm trying to calmly tell my sister that our mom is in an ambulance with broken bones and possible head trauma.

I yell to Steve " I'm riding with Chelsea and you and the kids can take the van home" I don't think Chelsea and I have ever moved so fast, In one fluid motion we jerked off our cleats and gloves, threw them in the bags, and ran up the hill to the car. We called our other sister and she was at work so she drops everything and starts heading to the hospital too.

So we get to the hospital and they let us in to see her and it's kinda like a role reversal took place. She was the kid and we were the parents. We all start with "What happened" My mom says "Well Ken needed help with the trusses and" ok lets stop there and explain a little. They are building a room on the back of their house for their hot tub. The trusses are the giant triangular support beams that hold the roof up.
The trusses have to go like 12 feet up and with no pulleys or cranes they have to taken up by hand, hence the ladders. So now that we re all caught up. My mom tells us "We were taking a truss up the ladders, Ken on one and me on the other, and the truss fell and we went down with it."

My mother and stepdad were climbing 12 foot ladders with like a few hundred pound beam and didn't think anything bad would happen.

Anyone who knows me well knows I am not the most graceful person. I got that from my mother.
This is the third, count em people 3rd, time she's fallen off a ladder! Like I said before SHE IS CUT OFF !!!

The doctors decided to admit her cause she couldn't walk by herself. They drugged her up pretty good and took her to x-ray.

She broke 4 ribs right behind her left breast, hit her jaw, and banged up the rest of her body pretty good.
We got a call from the V.A. and Ken broke his foot so bad that he has to go to Portland to have a pin inserted so they have to scheldule surgery for him, and he drove on that broken foot, ouch !

Well it's now Tuesday and my mom's still in the hospital. They won't let her go home until they can get her to take pain meds oraly. She is still on IV meds right now. They tried to give her some meds yesterday but she can't seem to keep them down. It's for the best that she stay in the hospital for a few days cause with Ken home with a mangled foot he can't get around very easy and she is the type of person to try to help him even though she's not getting around very good either. At least if she's in the hospital they can make her stay in bed and rest.

My mom and Ken love each other so much that they have to do everything together, even their yearly trips to the E.R. now thats love :) Well now they can have a drug induced vacation together at home with someone else to wait on them hand and foot ! It's room service in your own living room :)

Cancer Sucks

You know that one family member you have that is just heads above the rest. You love them like no other and you would do anything in the world for them. My one family member that is heads above the rest just found out she has cancer, not just any kind of cancer but the kind that you can't get rid of.

Last year she found out she had breast cancer and she followed all the rules, had surgery, chemo, and medication. The doctor told her they got it and all was well.

Last month at her check up they told her it came back and that it has spread thru out her entire body. They did a byopsy and found that it is worst than they originaly thought.

My Aunt Sissy, my beautiful aunt Sissy is dying and only has months to live!

When a Doctor tells you that you only have a short time left on this earth and to get your affairs in order, your mind starts racing with all these thoughts of why me and what am I gonna do first.
Not my beautiful aunt Sissy. She has not once felt sorry for herself. She has not once asked why me. She has only thought of everyone else and not gotten angry or destructive.

My beautiful aunt Sissy is the bravest, strongest, and most wonderful person in the world. She is my hero and my inspiration!

So I write this story, not to make you feel sorry for her, but to educate you on the importance of knowing your body.

For all of you who read this. Breast cancer is a killer ! All of you have mothers, sisters daughters, aunts, and girlfriends. Tell them to do self breast exams, have doctor exams, get mammograms and lets kill cancer before it kills us !

I love you Aunt Sissy and you are always in my heart !!!

steamboat camping trip report

Sorry no photos yet I still haven't got my cord to download pics from my camera but I'm gonna report on the camping trip anyhow.

We love camping and we usually go on our yearly anniversary trip by ourselves so we don't take much entertainment, just the campfire, some beer, marshmallows of course, and our selves is usually good enough for us. This trip we took the kids and I didn't plan any fun activities for them to do so they were pretty bored.

We tried to go swimming but for those of you who are familiar with steamboat knows the water is snow runoff from the top of the mountain and it's freakin cold, so the kids were having none of that!

Steve decided to take them on a little hike down the creek on the bank from our camping spot down to the swimming hole which isn't very far but you have to crawl under trees and around bushes and over alot of rocks. The kids loved it untill they got back to the camping spot.

The bugs were out of control. We went thru an entire bottle of bug spray in two days ! When the kids got back from their little hike, I decided it was time to refresh their bugspray. I started to spray Jo and she said it stung a little behind her ear cause she said she had a sore back there, so being the obsessive mommy that I am I had to check it out. She had a tick behind her ear on the hairline. She must have got it on her little hike on the creek. So now we had to get it out without freeking her out (ya right) anybody that knows Jo knows she has a pathological fear of blood ecspecially if it's hers! Steve says "okay Jo you have a tick in your skin and daddy has to get it out now so don't move" (once again ya right) Jo being her ever inquistitive self asks "what is a tick and what does it do?" Okay my bad, I let the kids watch the movie The Mummy and they are infatuated by the scarabs (like i said, bad mommy) Steve gently explains "you remember in the movie the bugs that crawl under your skin, their kinda like that but not as big" Well that went over like a fart in church cause Jo went nuts. "GET IT OUT NOW!" Luckily it was just barely in so Steve got it out with his bare hands in like 2 seconds. Mommy put some antibiotic cream and a bandaid on it and all was well.

So we are all sitting around the campfire that evening and Jo says "okay I'm done with camping now can we go home?" We have never packed up camp so fast. We left steamboat at 8:00pm
and all the way home (an hour and 1/2) all I heard was P-dog rambling about scarabs and ticks and what they do. Leave it to the little brother to be such a boy about it ! Good thing Jo was in the other car with daddy :)

One good thing about comming home early. We all got to go to Winston and have a BBQ with nanna, pappa , and the cousins, then watch the fireworks. If you ever get a chance to go, you should watch the fireworks in Winston. They are awesome !

The kids had so much fun watching fireworks. After we left winston we went to nanna and pappas to do some little fireworks. Aunt Sammie and Uncle Shawn always buy the coolest fireworks for all the kids to watch. It was a really late night but well worth it !

All in all it was a great family weekend :) Next time we'll plan ahead for the kids when we go camping and deffinatly more bug spray :)

Thats all for now peeps ! Check yall later

packing is so not fun

Okay so today is the big day. We are leaving for steamboat in 10 hours. I have to pack clothes, food, dishes, tents, and bedding for 4 people and none of them are of any help to me!

Jo and P-dog are just old enough to get in the way and too young to be of any real help and Daddy, well he's at work today so we'll cut him some slack too. That leaves just me :(

I thought the kids would never go to sleep last night. Every 5 min. they'd ask when are we leaving, how long does it take to get up there, and the question of the year, can we go swimming as soon as we get there? All good questions mind you just not at 11:00 pm :) They finally konked out and so did we like 5 min later. Oh yeah 11:05 we are party animals :)

Well I'm taking the camera with me this time, now the trick is to use it. lol
Seriously I'm the worst at taking pictures. I always say to myself "Don't forget the camera"
and then I get half way thru whatever I was suppossed to be doing and then it hits me "oh snap I left the camera sitting on the counter" I should be used to it by now and just accept the fact that I have no business even owning a camera :)

So on that note I leave you all. Wish me luck! I totally just ran to the car and put the camera on the front seat :) Hosta la vista chicas !

steamboat

So we are preping for a camping trip this weekend with the kids, and they are sooo excited!!
We plan a camping trip every year for our anniversary, but we usually leave the kids at home with grandma, but they wanted to go this year so it should be interesting.

We have the best camping spot. Our friends Summer & Art used to go there with us every summer, and now we go for them since their in Utah. It's sorta like a serogate camping experience :)

I can't wait till they come out here this summer. I feel like we haven't seen them in forever. A bunch of us couples from the old gang are gonna have a date night together when they get here, so since we all have kids now we'll all get daycare and be able to enjoy a nice dinner without happy meals and juice boxes :) I almost forgot what a hot meal taste like. When your a mom you always feed them first, get your husband his plate, redo your childrens plates cause now they're fighting over who got more chicken nuggets and why does she get the last apple juice and I have to drink grape, so you count, weigh,and measure every nugget, put the equal ammount of juice in matching cups so they don't argue over the freakin cups too, then refill your husbands glass of milk, and get him the salt and pepper that you left in the kitchen cause you don't dare leave it on the table with two small kids cause thats a whole new mess you don't wanna clean up, then if your lucky you get to make up your plate with cold soggy food and enjoy. Umm yummy :) But then after bath time the kids get tucked in and they kiss you and say "mommy I love you soo much"
and you just forget about the heartburn you now have from the cold dinner.
For those of you without kids it may sound like I'm complaining but really it's soooo worth it.

So our anniversary is actually on the 3rd so we are heading up steamboat on wednesday and coming into winston fri. night so I can work and steve and the kids can go watch the fireworks then we are heading back up to steamboat. It kinda sucks that I have to work all weekend but it's extra money for our new house so I'm takin one for the team and sticken it out :)

I'm gonna have to catch up on all the laundry and dishes for the trip and I gotta pack for all four of us so wish me luck :) I'm done blogging for now chicas so lata gata :)