Thursday 13: More Random

1. This week has NOT been good. Everything just seems to go wrong. It's nothing SERIOUS...but one of those weeks where you stub your toe and then turn around and stub it again.

2. I spent the day cleaning house. Well actually I spent the first half of the day with my kids but then I cleaned house.

3. The kids and I watched movies and played board games. Aubry won two games of Sorry. I don't think she was sorry. ;)

4. I've started creating art again. I'm not painting because I don't really have a good spot in my apartment to oil paint and all of my supplies are at my mom's...but I found my colored pencils and I'm starting a few little things. I'm excited about that.

5. Still working on grad school applications. Uuugggghhh.

6. I've been all about strawberry shortcake lately. The food, not the little Hasbro doll. ;) Ashlyn likes the doll but hates the dessert...mostly because she doesn't like "whoop cream." Silly girl! ;)

7. I bought a bunch of books after I graduated...things I wanted to continue studying in the field. I still have yet to finish the one I started first. :P I'm more than halfway done now, though! I just don't make a lot of time to read. I sit down and read 10-20 pages and then I start thinking of all the other things I need to do. Most of my reading occurs when I'm waiting. I got most of the pages read when I was in waiting rooms at the doctor's office and the DMV. :P

8. It's probably really sad that my leisure reading consists of books about criminal psychology, substance abuse, and social work theories. :P

9. Friday I will be spending the day going to garage sales with my dad. :) We've gone together the last couple years and it's always fun. I don't really spend a whole lot of time with my dad because we just don't have much in common (other than our personalities!), he's a dude so small talk usually consists of him talking about his glory days, and most of the time he's playing outside with my kids. But a whole day buying someone else's junk that we probably don't need...that's always good times. :)

10. I don't have cable but I have all my TV shows on DVD. I tend to cycle through all my favorite shows and have daily marathons of whatever show I happen to be fixated on at the time. Currently it's Grey's Anatomy. Mark "McSteamy" Sloan is so yummy. It came to me the first time I saw McSteamy on the show and now I can't see my McSteamy without thinking of the resemblance.

11. I really, really like riding on the back of the motorcycle. SO relaxing and fun. It's probably been one of my favorite "me" things to do so far this spring/summer. :)

12. The girls can't wait to go back to Botanica. The butterfly house opened this week and they're SO excited to see it again. We also need to go to the zoo and children's museum again.

13. Mostly we've been busy with a whole lot of softball. From yesterday until June 22, one of the girls has a game EVERY weeknight. That's a lot of softball. I'm not really too happy with Aubry's level this year. We are a rec team and some of the teams we're playing are competitive teams. The difference in experience is HUGE. This is the first year for our girls to be playing kid pitch and some of the other teams...they're 9 and 10 year olds and they're throwing hard and fast. It wouldn't be that bad...except two games now the other team has hit at least four of our players. These girls seem to have lots of speed but absolutely no control. It just irritates me. But...I'm not a fanatical die-hard sports fan, either, so...maybe it's just me. :P

GREAT Weekend

I'm awake with a massive headache. And vertigo. Vertigo is horrible. HORRIBLE. It's like...if you were to ride a swirling, twisting amusement park ride over and over and over...and then stop the ride. That feeling where the world still feels like it's spinning and you're going to throw up? That's what vertigo feels like. The room is SPINNING. I'm actually not too bad...until I lay down. I've had vertigo off and on before but it wasn't until the last year or so that it started to cause problems when I'm laying down...which kinda sucks when I want to sleep. I can't sleep sitting up...never have been able to recline and sleep. I guess except in a hospital bed where there is a squishy mattress and I can lift the foot of the bed, too. But at home...no.

For some people, vertigo is an ear problem. My mom has had it and the doctor told her it had something to do with "crystals" in her inner ear or something. Mine is a brain thing instead of an ear thing...just one more thing on the list of MS symptoms that I deal with. But...I have some meclizine and that usually helps a little bit. So hopefully I will be able to sleep soon. :)

But anyway...aside from that I had a really great weekend. Friday night, my oldest had a softball game. It was here and aside from being REALLY WINDY it was a pretty good game. She just started her first year of kid pitch so there's a lot of crazy pitches and walking instead of strikes and actually hitting the ball. But luckily there is a 5 run limit PLUS a 1.5 hour time limit. So that helps. After the game we came home and had dinner and showers and then went to bed kinda early since we had to be up early the next morning.

Saturday morning we headed to Botanica for their annual "Teddy Bear Picnic." They had groups of teddy bears set up around the children's garden and the girls had a lot of fun seeing everything. Of course, I got sick about half an hour after we got there. I handed off my camera to my mom and spent the rest of our visit in the bathroom. :-/ I've been having a lot of digestive problems lately which may or may not be related to my adhesive disease (where the organs in the abdomen are fused together by scar tissue). BUT...after a looong half hour or so, I met up with mom and the girls to finish walking back through the garden to leave.

I haven't finished the pictures but here is a quick one that I snapped before we left the children's garden (I'll try to share more on Wordless Wednesday):

Afterwards, we came back into town and went to my grandparents' house. It was my grandma's birthday and a bunch of the family came over for LOTS of food and good times. The adults chatted and the kids played outside all evening until it started thundering. We stayed until about 8pm or so and then we came home, showered, and stayed up watching movies. Well...I stayed up. They played hard and fell asleep before our movie was even over. ;)

Today was a relaxing day. We slept in a little bit and lounged around during the morning. Then the girls got dressed to play outside for a bit. It was muddy from the storm last night so they mostly rode their scooters around. It was cut short, though, because poor Ashlyn got stung by a wasp. It had apparently made its way into her shirt because she got stung THREE times on her stomach. It was my first experience with bee/wasp stings as a mother and I didn't like it. :( Poor kid was crying so hard. She came inside and we put an ice pack on it right away. One of them had already swollen quite a bit. She laid down on the couch while Aubry did some dishes and I fixed lunch. After lunch Ashlyn was feeling better. The two spots on her ribs were just two little dots and not red at all. The lower one on her stomach was still a bit red and swollen. I made a water/baking soda paste and covered it with a bandage to help even more. Then she was feeling all better and wanted to go play at my grandparents' house again. I let them go over for about an hour while I showered and cleaned house a bit. They got home and we had just enough time to play a couple games of Candyland before they had to go to their dad's house.

I actually got out of the house for once and went to spend the evening with a friend of mine. It was nice to just go DO something for awhile. I haven't been feeling well a lot lately so I have been kind of a homebody. But I actually dried my hair and put some make-up on and wore something other than my ratty house shoes. ;) Very low-key but great evening. And yay for Walmart being open 24-hours because I needed to stop and get a few groceries and things on my way home. Now...here I am. :) All in all...pretty good weekend!

Welcome to the Civil War!

My friend, Mark, does Civil War reenactments with 8th Kansas. Every year, a living museum in our area has a Civil War day. This year I was able to take the girls with me to see it. They had a great time! They each used their money from Easter to buy a digital camera and they enjoyed taking pictures, too. Here are a few of the pictures I took...

The girls taking photos of the soldiers' camp:

The soldiers grabbing some lunch:

Confederate soldiers headed to the battleground:

Yankee soldiers firing on the rebels:

 

 

 

Here are a couple pictures Aubry took: 

 

 

And some photos that Ashlyn took: 

 

 

It was a beautiful day and we had a great time!

Happy Happy Happy!

- I'm happy that I'm starting to actually DO more with Pinterest. It's inspired me to think of new ways to be more organized. And I've tried some new recipes. Last week I had my parents and my sister over for Crockpot BBQ Chicken. It was hard smelling it cooking for 4 hours! Aubry and Ashlyn thought it was a bit spicy but everyone liked it. Last night, I had two leftover chicken breasts and I felt like more BBQ chicken. I decided to change it up a bit...biggest thing cooking it in the sauce on the stove instead of the crockpot. I cut it into strips so it didn't take long to cook. And it tasted AWESOME. It wasn't as spicy, either, so I think the girls will like it better, too. I kinda just threw some ingredients together but I did try to put the recipe together and added it to pinterest. My cameraphone doesn't take the most awesome food pictures but I only had about 5 seconds before I started stuffing my face. ;) This summer I hope to do a lot of the craft projects with the girls that I've found on pinterest.

- I've started playing Draw Something. I've seen people talking about it for awhile and I downloaded it...but hadn't played. Last night I couldn't sleep because of vertigo and a headache so I thought I'd jump in. I really like playing it...even though it kinda makes me feel a bit self-conscious about my art skills. Especially when they can see the pictures you've "trashed" too. lol. :P I've discovered I'm really not that great at drawing with my finger on my phone. And I have a Zagg screen protector and it's kinda rubbery-ish and not very smooth so that doesn't help. But I've really liked playing and seeing what other people draw. :) My username is tinycandi if you want to play with me!

- The school called to say that Ashlyn has a fever so I went to pick her up. I'm not happy that she's sick...but I'm happy that it means we get to cuddle on the couch together until her dad gets home from work. She's asleep now.

- Watching CSI Miami makes me happy...and I'm super happy that there were new episodes this week. Of course, I haven't watched the two newest episodes because I've been busy working on pictures so I just watch reruns on my TV instead of the new ones on my computer. But they're there when I'm ready! :)

- Speaking of pictures...I finished the 1 week photo shoot of my niece! So now I just have her baptism pictures...which I'm about 1/4 of the way through. :P But I really like working on my pictures so it's not too bad. After the baptism pictures I'll have some time to catch up on my own...I have Ashlyn's music program and need to catch up on my 366day photo project.

- The weather is BEAUTIFUL. Today it's supposed to be 80 here in Kansas! My friend Mark is going to take me out for a ride on his motorcycle this week...if the weather stays nice. So hopefully it works out! :)

- My phone is dying...which doesn't really make me happy...but I am available for an upgrade in April so that makes me happy! I think I'm going to get the HTC Rezound...anyone have any experience with that phone? According to the specs it has everything I want (mostly impressed with the 8mp rear camera and 2mp front camera). Right now I have the HTC Incredible which I've LOVED but after the phone upgrade a couple months ago, my phone hasn't been the same. It randomly turns off, does funny things when I'm on the phone, and just in the last couple weeks my speaker blew. BUT...just one more month and I get a brand spanking new phone! :) Shiny new electronics make me happy.

- I'm just in a really good mood today...which is nice because I guess I've been PMSing the last week...I've been pretty darn cranky. So...being happy goes on my happy list! :)

What is your happy list? Link up and share!

Thursday 13 - Random Thoughts

1. Today I got the phone call from the eye doctor saying that Ashlyn's glasses were in! She's been waiting since last Friday and asked everyday if they called yet. So I picked her up from school this afternoon to go get them. She looks SO adorable in them...and she's pretty excited. I'm definitely hoping they will help with the issues she is having at school with reading and writing. We have exercises to do for her eyes as well...to help with her tracking/focusing.

2. Had lunch today at the Dillon's Bistro...we went with Chinese. If the Dillons that I usually go to has Teriyaki chicken, I've never had it. But that's what I had today and it was really good! A little messy...but it tasted good. :)

3. I think it's really, really cute that Ashlyn always calls her hands her "paws."

4. Aubry is growing up way too fast. She is already starting to get that teenager attitude going. I thought I would have a few years more with my sweet baby girl before heading into that stage of her life. :P

5. My super awesome friend, Kelli, gave me two boxes of girl scout cookies. I just finished the box of Peanut Butter Patties and I'm trying really, really hard not to devour the box of Lemonades all in one sitting. :P

6. We have had some pretty crazy weather here lately. I've really liked the warm days. Early this morning we had a thunderstorm with lots of sleet and some snow. I like thunderstorms...minus the cold weather. :P

7. I've been really enjoying the website sneakpeeq.

8. I wish we had more than one company in this area that provides phone, cable, and internet service.

9. I wish my tv shows were new this week! It seems like every show I like except Once Upon a Time and CSI Miami was a rerun. Booo.

10. I've been on a CSI Miami kick lately. Walter and Tripp are my favorites. In recent years I really like Ryan, too. I really like when Yelina makes an appearance, too. I wonder if they will ever bring back Suzie and Madison?

11. I'm still working on trying to finish all these pictures I've taken lately. I did get a lot of cute ones, though. Here's one of my favorites that I took of my newest niece:

I have nicknamed her Bebe...because that's what it sounds like when her big sister (who I nicknamed Bug) says "baby."

12. I also need to catch up on posting my 366 day photo project pictures. I have been taking them everyday...just not always good about posting them in a very timely manner. I think I did better when I was doing the 366 days of self-portraits because I had joined the flickr group and had a time limit of when they could be posted to the group. But I haven't used flickr in a long time.

13. I have a headache and I would really like to go to bed...but I have vertigo and it really doesn't get that bad until I lay down. So...hopefully the medicine will kick in and I can get some sleep.

And one more final thought...I'm not sure why I keep adding the label "meme" to my posts since it seems almost every single post has been a meme of some kind. :P