So yeah...

I said I was going to try to catch up two weekends ago, obviously that didn't happen. Still no time now, I'm seriously behind on stuff. So I'll keep looking for an open window of time to write.

CATCHING UP - BIRTHDAYS WEEKEND

This weekend we helped to celebrate birthdays for three young men at two different birthday parties!

On Saturday we went to my cousin Jenny's to celebrate her son Justin's 4th birthday. It was great that we were able to go because I hadn't seen my cousin Jenny and my other cousins Kate or Kristi (her sisters) in FOREVER! It's probably been since high school. Wait...Kate and Kristi came to my wedding reception, and I've run into Jenny several times around town...but this was the first time with us all together, and their mom Kathy and dad Mike were there as well! Plus Bryn came, so it was almost like old times when our families got together - the only ones missing were their brother Mike, my parents and Camille!

A little background on how we all met. When we first moved to Poulsbo, and Jenny heard Camille's last name was Lybbert, she got to talking with her about the possibility of our families being related because Jenny's mom Kathy's maiden name is Lybbert. I don't know exactly how we're related, but I think Jenny and her siblings are second cousins to us...or close to that.

So once we found out we were related, we had some family get togethers once in awhile, and I know Bryn and I spent some time at their house in the summers just hanging out playing good old games like Red Rover, running through sprinklers, and sleeping in tents :-) Good times...

But like so many of my relationships since high school, I'd lost touch with them, but we regained contact this last winter through myspace!

So, back to the party - it was lots of fun, and Jenny is a wonder woman, pulling it all off while her husband was deployed.

Sunday we went to my sister Bryn's house to celebrate my nephews Kieran and Johnny's birthdays. Earlier in the month Johnny turned 2, and Kieran recently turned 4. Here are some pics from that one!

The birthday boys! Kieran and Johnny:
Birthday boys again...(see Adrienne's Tink card in the background?)

Kieran
Johnny
The cakes:

Pinata!

CANDY!!!

CATCHING UP - NEW DO'S FOR THE GIRLS

I realized awhile ago that the girls and my hair looked pretty much the same - all the same length, no bangs, brown, straight.

I thought we should each get some individuality - starting with my hair in April in Mexico. Not what I wanted, but other people seem to like it, so okay for the time being.

(At my nephews' birthday party)

Then I started to think that some of the fantastic curl that Adrienne used to have might still be there hiding under the straightness. This was because she still had some curls in the hair around her face. Also because last year when we took in the stray cat Frodo, in his short 1 month stay (before I broke out in a terrible allergic reaction) he left us 3 girls a little gift - ringworm. Adrienne had it the worst - she had one up on her shoulder, and at the time I cut her hair off her shoulders to chin length so that the ringworm wouldn't spread onto her scalp (harder to deal with and creates bald patches where it grows) - well, I guess I didn't get to it fast enough because a few months after we seemed to be ringworm-free, I did notice a bald patch in her hair (luckily not noticable). After it was treated and gone and the hair started to grow back, it came in curly among all the straight hair! So, anyway, I got the idea that it was the weight of her hair that took out any of the remaining curl (it obviously would never be as tight as it had once been) - well that seemed to work!

(Adrienne tight curls - at age 2 1/2 - at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii)

(At my nephews' birthday)
So, Colette was left. Her hair is like mine - thin, pin straight. At this age I don't want to fuss too much with it, and I still don't even know what is best for my hair, so I'm not going to know what's best for hers! (I need Nick Arrojo!) So all I decided to do with hers to give her an actual style is the standard for kids - a bob with bangs.

(At my nephews' birthday party)

A quick one

Just wanted to say hi to everyone. We've been busy with house stuff lately. I've had a bunch of stuff to write about, and haven't gotten around and a lot of it is old news by now...pictures from a wedding in April, more stuff about Mexico and pictures, etc. So, I'll try to get to that sometime this weekend. Even though it's old news I'm putting the stuff on here, because this blog is part journal for me, and partly to update family and friends about what we're up to. If it seems boring to anyone, then you can just not read!

CATCHING UP - CALVIN

Mike's brother Robert and his wife Rachel had a baby boy! His name is Calvin and he's beautiful. Rachel's blog (see my links) has lots of great pictures of him. But here's a sweet one of him that's not on her blog - our mother-in-law Kathy sent it in an email recently:
Unfortunately we haven't had a chance to go to see him yet, but we will be seeing him for sure at his big sister Charlotte's birthday party in July. WELCOME CALVIN!

Little Shop Of Horrors and Heroes

So I've seen "Little Shop of Horrors" with Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene several times...I like the singing, and the two main characters Audrey and Seymour, but the actual storyline is pretty darn creepy, and I'm not usually much for creepy.


I especially idolized Ellen Greene for her singing voice (I've got "Suddenly Seymour" on my playlist), and I'm just wondering if it's because of that, that I noticed in a split second that Sylar's mom last night on "Heroes" was played by Ellen Greene...did anyone else notice? When I told Mike, he said he'd thought she looked familiar.

Foundation Pictures

The foundation was poured yesterday and the forms came off today. It's hard to explain what you're looking at, so just marvel at all the concrete and the three dimensional-ness of it all!:







For those that haven't been to our place, you can see the crappy brown trailer we live in now...this will be quite a move up!

Procrastinating

I'm trying to get the house back to the baseline clean today before I dig in to deeper cleaning, but I'm losing steam right about now. I don't want to take a nap though, so I'm just going to procrastinate here a little. Just going to do a random photo search..............


This is of Mike and Adrienne on the very short hike to the Dosewallips Waterfall, probably about 3 years ago. It's one of our favorite day escapes...just about an hour and a half drive away, and very peaceful. We usually go up Mt. Walker to check out the view on the way, and then on the way back stop in Quilcene to get ice cream (they've got bubble gum flavor)

Here's one of the waterfall:

FOUNDATION

The foundation is being poured as I write this. I will take pics when the forms come off...maybe tomorrow? SO EXCITING!

THE MEXICO TRIP! (FINALLY)....and some other stuff

Okay! Finally, I'm sitting down to document my trip to Mexico. But, now that I've waited so long, it won't be just about that. Sorry...I'm not a writer, I'll probably jump around a bit. Hope ya'll can follow me.

I guess first I just want to say that last night sucked! I was going to bore you all with the details, but I'll spare you...basically, a combination of poor timing with poor choices of foods to prevent nausea, ended up making me more nauseous, and so I couldn't relax to go to sleep (I had a bad experience when I was younger of going to bed nauseous and waking up...well, don't want to get too graphic here. Since I don't have a mom to clean up after me anymore, I couldn't relax). So anyway, I didn't get to sleep until 7:30 a.m.!! But somehow by a stroke of great luck the girls slept a few hours longer than usual (Mike kept them up late), so I got almost 3 hours of sleep, and a few more at Colette's naptime.

Okay, so on to the more exciting stuff:
Mexico was great! Much much better than I had anticipated. A little backstory -

When I was 4 my family went on a road trip to San Diego to visit my uncle and family...we went to Disneyland also (a bummer for a 4-year-old, just too short for all the fun rides!), and popped into Tijuana for a few hours to shop for souvenirs. The car we were driving had hit a deer and had a huge dent in the front. This drew a lot of attention by the street vendors...there were people hanging all over the car saying "Body work! Body work!" and it totally freaked me out. That's about all I remember of that trip.

Then, when I was 13 we went on another road trip for Spring Break (also including Disneyland - definitely funner that time! - and many other stops - Salt Lake City and St. George Utah, Las Vegas, and Tijuana again! We didn't have the body damage that time, but same as before, we just stopped in for souvenirs. I don't know if Tijuana just cleaned up a lot in the last 14 years, or if we just happened to visit a very seedy area of the city, but my impression of Tijuana was not a good one. So...that's what I was picturing I was going to, but I was trusting my parents who had been to this dentist many times over the past 10 years with only positive things to say about him.

My mom was planning a trip there anyway, so I went with her. Big relief for me since I would have been completely lost without her - she has all the connections. It was partly because of those connections that things turned out so beautifully, but also because it really wasn't as bad in Tijuana as I had pictured. We flew out early on Thursday morning and when we arrived at the airport in San Diego, there was a van there waiting for us. (Side note: My mom just had a lapband surgery done there about a month ago...the clinic she went to has a shuttle that picks people up at the airport and takes them to the clinic. The doctor's were out of the office that week for a conference, so their driver was free to take us wherever we needed to go.) There were only 3 things that put a damper on the trip, which I would still say turned out a 9 out of 10 - one of the 3 things was getting into and out of those vehicles from the clinic - They say "Obesity Good Bye" on the sides. (My dad said they should say "Sveltness Hello" :-) That was a bit embarrassing, but a small price to pay to have reliable transportation with people we could trust.

The next of the three things was that when we arrived at the dentist's office at about noon, my mom got me settled (or so she thought) and then took off to the clinic for her intended reason for the trip - to get a fill for her lapband. Everything was still so new for me, and I had some questions about the dental work that weren't getting answered because of the communication barrier. I finally was able to get them worked out, but just the feeling of being plopped in a foreign land with strangers that couldn't understand me had me a little concerned for awhile! All turned out well though and I was very happy with the quality of the dental care. The first day he looked at my mouth and determined what I needed (since I still didn't even know the number of root canals or crowns, or even fillings I would need), then I had one root canal done, the one from January needed to be cleaned up, the one from a few weeks ago prepped, and the crown I had done a few years ago needed to be replaced. That was it! It was on the lower end of what I thought I might need done...according to the dentist here, I might have needed one more root canal, and I suspected I had some cavities that needed fillings.

After that we went and checked in to our hotel (again, driven by Julio from the clinic)...all I did that night was continued to read the book I'd started on the plane. We ordered room service for dinner. I wanted authentic Mexican - it was okay, but I have to say, I think I like Americanized Mexican better. Everything tasted just slightly off. (Another side note: Either it was something about Mexico, or I just got incredibly lucky...I wasn't sick on the trip, the food didn't turn my stomach like it might have - "slightly off" might have been enough to do it in the past few months, and I didn't gag during the dental work which was another concern. Take that back...the last day I did gag a little, but it was a short visit, so I made it through)

So, the second day we were back to the dentist's office about 10:00 or so and I had the post and cores done for the new root canal, the couple week old root canal, the couple months old root canal, and the few years old crown was taken off and prepped for the new one. All of the work I had done cost $1,370, here it would have been about $5,500.

My mom was telling me about a spa that some of my extended family went to the last time they were in Tijuana - another service that is cheaper being in Mexico. I have had different spa services done individually (but not at a spa-that was a first), or maybe at best two-at-a-time - like mani/pedi, or haircut and eybrow wax - but never so many all at once. I hadn't planned on going to a spa, but since it was so much cheaper and I had the time I sprung for it (I had budgeted $2000 for the whole trip and I only went over by a little - that's including the hotel, food, flight, souvenirs, everything. Even still we saved at least $3000 or more just on the dental!). So this is what I had done - facial, eyebrow wax, massage, manicure, pedicure, and haircut! It was SO nice! The people were very friendly. One of the doctor's from the lapband clinic is the owner of the spa, and his wife gave me a ride back to the hotel! But, this is also where the third thing that put a damper on the trip took place - I picked the haircut out of a book. I had a short haircut done in August that I'd been trying to grow out ever since. I've been trying to get my hair all one length and this haircut was supposed to get it there. The picture was of an inverted bob - so chin length, but slanting from the back to the front following my jawline. Well she stacked it in the back and then it slopes down in that angle, only it's shorter than my jawline. So my hair isn't one length and it's too short. The cut itself is actually cute now that I'm used to it, so it's bearable, just disappointing that I'm back to square one since I still have the same goal in mind for my hair. So that's Friday...all in all, it was a really great day.

Saturday morning we left early so I could do some shopping for souvenirs. Another perk to having the connections...our driver almost the whole time was Julio, but that morning Carlos was filling in until Julio got there later, and Carlos knew one of the vendors on the strip of shops that had a bunch of souvenir stuff. So, he took me to his friend and told me that he would take care of me and be sure to give me a good deal so that I wouldn't have to haggle. See below to see the pictures of what I got...

Then we went to the dentist to get the crowns on...it was a quick visit, about a half hour. The crown that got replaced was my first crown, so I had nothing to compare it to, but now I know that it was screwed up from the beginning...it was never tight against my gums. These crowns feel and look wonderful...just like my natural teeth.

So from there Julio took us back over the border where we met up at a restaurant in San Diego with my lovely cousin Ruth Ann who was so sweet to drive down from L.A. just so she could spend a little time with us. We had lunch, but then we had to get to the airport. Everything went smoothly, and we even arrived in Seattle a full 1/2 hour early! Luckily, Mike was early too, and it was perfect timing!

Well, that's pretty much it, although I have some more pictures I'm going to put up later when I get them, and a few more comments, but that's most of it!

But keep scrolling past the pitures for a little post trip stuff.

The souvenirs:

For the girls...

For me...(amethyst, Mike's birthstone. So sparkly!)

For Mike...(safe)

For the house...(wanted something that would fit in with NW decor, but still cool that it's from Mexico)


Mike's got this car as a gift for the girls, and it arrived the day I left...I guess this is Adrienne's favorite direction to drive in

It is as fun as you would think it is...(wanted one of these when I was little)




So, post trip: I came back all relaxed and feeling wonderful, excited to see my family, while Mike had three days with the girls and was stressed. He says his strong point was making them clean up after themselves (something I'll have to continue), and his weak point was keeping Colette from using her Pull-ups. When I talked to him on Friday night he told me he was "sick of kids". This just made me laugh...every few months I get to that point and say something to him...his reply is always something like "shame on you". Of course it's never really about the girls, but just stress in general, but it was funny to me that I only get to that point occasionally, and after two days he was there.

So, Sunday...pretty much a lazy day. Like I'd said before I didn't feel sick in Mexico and thought I'd be feeling better from here on out...but don't know why...maybe stress, maybe it's these small cramped quarters, maybe it's in my head...but I've been sick every day since. Thought it was just pregnancy stuff at first, but by Sunday night I could tell there was something else there as well. I was getting chills, and body aches, and a head ache.

Monday morning I woke up feeling seriously ill (okay, well not serious as in I was going to die, but serious as in I couldn't take care of myself or the girls alone). I had a fever, but I was freezing, and it hurt to move at all. I finally worked up enough energy to get up to grab a phone nearby to call Mike (sometime in the night the girls came in the bed and crowded me out, so I was on the couch)...I asked him if he could call in to work so he could help me out. He did, and he got me some Tylenol and covered me up real good, and we went back to sleep. Sometime before I woke up the fever broke, and things turned up from there, but I was still very weak, so still nice to have Mike around. I was worried about the baby because I know that the reason pregnant women aren't supposed to go in hot tubs is because it's dangerous to raise the body temperature of the mother. So I looked up about it online and it looks like the baby should be okay...it's sustained fevers of over 102 for more than a day that get dangerous. Mine was for a few hours...don't know how high it got. So that's my sad story...I'm really starting to feel like a big bummer every time I write. Basically, I'm not predicting about when the pregnancy sickness will go away anymore...when it does, it does. It felt like torture before, but I'm getting used to it now, so...whatever!

Tomorrow I'll FINALLY catch up on cleaning after a normal night's sleep, and then on to the deeper spring cleaning I've been trying to get to for a few months...I'll have to hurry if I'm going to make it while it's still Spring! Hope all is well with everyone!