Birthday Party #1: check

I have a moment, an excuse for not getting off the couch so much, and my pain meds are working (so if anything seems off blame it on those guys)- so it's time to play catch-up. More on the pain meds and their neccesity in my life later. Once again let's pretend it's not this week but last week. Got it? OK...

So we traveled down to Oklahoma once more and got to hang out with my whole family. My brother and his wife came into town from Seattle and were impressed that blazing hot Oklahoma had significantly lower temperatures then back home. Apparently Seattle had some record breaking high temps going on and no one has air conditioning over there.

Anywho we hung out, chit-chatted and the like. There was a little late birthday dinner for my Mom at Cheesecake Factory and lots of discussing problems with Internet connections and satellites. Fun was had by all! We made our bi-annual trip into Stride-Rite (since we're not lucky enough to have one of those stores around here) and got Kate some new fancy tennis shoes for school and enjoyed my Parent's new house.

Since we were down there we went ahead and celebrated Kate's birthday Strawberry Shortcake style complete with a strawberry cake. Yummy! She got an easy bake oven from her Aunt and Uncle (did you know they still make those?) and this adorable table from my parents from Pottery Barn Kids. Love that place!

So enjoy some pics from me and some courtesy of my brother that I stole off of Facebook.

Kate ready for some pizza and presents
Fun with the Easy Bake Oven
Enjoying her new bubble wand
Aidan loves the Cheesecake Factory

Friday Five 6.0

Quick Aidan is still asleep and since I'm trying to be a better blogger and have 5 things floating around on my mind here we go...

1.) Although we had a rough week with waking up in the middle of the night again and being a little more grumpy then usual, my little punkin seems to have returned to his normal self. Last night he slept 9 hours! Yippee for him! I think he had a little virus or something last week and we're over it. He's peacefully napping now like a normal baby. Check out these pictures of his cuteness.

2.) I'm feeling at peace now over all my birthday related to-dos. We've got invitations sent out, all our table stuff aquired, the balloons will wait until the big day, cake is ordered, tea party reservations made, and menu is planned. We should be good to go. Now I just have to get my house in order. Anyone want to be hired to come take care of that? Anyone?

3.) We're headed back down to the land of waving wheat sweeping down the plains tomorrow. Aren't we already there? I guess Rodgers and Hammerstein couldn't come up with a good story about Kansas and "You're doin' fine Kansas, Kansas, OK" doesn't have the same ring to it. We'll have our little Strawberry Shortcake party and see these 2 strangers. I'm excited I haven't seen them since Christmas and they've never met Aidan. In case you don't know they're my brother and sister-in-law. They're living it up in Seattle and are just about to move into their first house. Hooray for them!

4.) All of Kate's summer fun classes are over. :-( for her and :-( for me. I kind of liked that time to run around and get stuff done without having to haul 2 kids in and out of places. But she'll be in Kindergarten before we know it and she won't be telling me all day how she doesn't want to eat or sleep because it's not so fun or is boring. She's a social butterfly and she needs someone to flutter around with besides Mom and a little monkey. But we'll enjoy our last month before she's a big girl and goes off to school all day. That really is :-(.

5.) Have I mentioned I want to go on a vacation? I'm thinking here...

Birthday craziness

So I've been busy this week planning Kate's birthday parties. Yes parties- as in we're sort of having 3 of them. Up first is the Strawberry Shortcake themed party at my Parent's house. Then we're doing it up fancy at our house with Daniel's family and are doing a Fancy Nancy themed party. Then on her ACTUAL birthday we're just having a low keyed party with the 4 of us. At Kate's request we're headed to a Japanese Steakhouse. Her choice not ours.

So in preparation for this Fancy Nancy extravaganza I've been obsessed with making it perfect. It has been stressing me out much more than it should and has occupied far too much time. Thank goodness the party at my Parent's house will be low-key. After much deliberation I realized that despite my desire to be a cake decorating genius- I don't need to tackle a 3-tier cake for the first time for my kid's 5th birthday. Therefore a quick call to a bakery in the city with a nice website and voila! One problem solved.

So next I decided that if you're going to have a fancy dinner party as part of your birthday celebration then you need fancy dishes. So again despite my desire to have loads of money and the ability to just go out and buy perfect dishes- I opted for the thrift store approach. Why not use what you have you might ask? Because somehow I don't have 8 of one kind of plate that doesn't have green leaves on it. Not exactly a match for a party with pink and purple as the predominant colors. So there we are in what we refer to as a garage sale within the mall and I find 8 of this little gem.

The plate on the top stack had a sticker that said $9.00 each but none of the other plates had a tag. Some other stack of plates had a price tag on each plate. So I ask the teenage kid who's working and clearly doesn't care if it's really supposed to be $9.00 for the set. He guesses it is and I'm out the door plates in tow and the junk store is $9.00 richer. Apparently they should have been that price at least per dish. We did a little searching and discovered they're real bone china and have a real platinum trim. I'd say not too shabby of a deal.

I also found some really pretty and kind of old looking glasses at the Salvation Army. They were only $6.00 for 8 and after some re-arranging have found a new home in my china cabinet where they'll stay for safe keeping until the party. I'm guessing I didn't get as good of a deal on them but they'll do.

I finished up her invitation today- not that we really needed one since it's just family. Here it is...

I also found her a perfect birthday outfit to wear- assuming it gets here in time. After all this drama I started thinking about birthday parties when I was a kid. It surely couldn't have seemed like as big of an ordeal to my Mom and Dad as it seems to me every year for her parties. I blame the Internet.

Our little Swimmy

So Kate has spent the last 2 weeks in swimming lessons. We're quite proud of her. Despite the fact that she enjoyed splashing water on the assistant swim teacher, hanging on a little boy in her class, and I'm sure making her vast knowledge of all things known; she passed.

Not only did she pass the Preschool level but she gets to skip Level 1 and go straight to level 2 next Summer! Yeah for her! Skip what follows if you're not interested in seeing assorted pictures of my kid at the pool.

Practicing in the big pool

Thoroughly enjoying swim lessons
Probably telling her teacher something goofy
Hey! What you lookin' at?

Sittin' pretty

I like your swimsuit...

Why are you taking our picture?

Let's Pretend it's the day after my birthday

So I'm a bit behind. More on why later. So although it is not currently Sunday we'll pretend it is and have a little re-cap of the day I turned 29 again again.

I started my birthday morning in the wee hours. Little sweetheart that he is, Aidan, gave me a birthday present at 3 a.m. by whimpering until I was able to rouse myself and tend to the little bugger. I was not all that amused since I haven't seen 3 a.m. in at least a month.

This of course resulted in me feeling obligated to sleep in a little and our morning person of a daughter came bounding in and woke Daniel and told him it was time to bake my cake. The cake turned out tasty by the way but was a bit misshapen. Oh well. So after dragging myself out of bed we decided that my grandiose plans of swimming weren't going to work. Despite our hot, hot weather all week, my birthday decided to be very un-July like and was too cool for swimming. So I opted to clean instead while my gem of a husband rested upstairs on the bed. No seriously he slept while I cleaned the kitchen and living room- on MY birthday. He said it was because he got up before me to bake a cake. That IS tiring.

We later ended up heading to the big city and did a little shopping. I got a pair of shoes and the we were off to P.F. Changs for dinner. I'm not a fan of Chinese food usually. It's OK and all but I'd never rank it in my top 5 favorite kinds of food from other nations. But when we went to P.F. Changs back in December I decided it was pretty good and I wanted to go there for my birthday dinner. The food was not bad but not as good as last time.

Enjoy some more pics from the day...

Just a simple little procedure

So you may have read about my history of problems with kidney stones. I finally got in to see the Dr. this week to check on their progress. Amazingly not only did I get in right away a minute BEFORE my appointment time, but the doctor himself came out into the waiting room to call me back. See how it works Dr. D? I get to see her again next month. Yea! I had a C/T scan last week and apparently the big one is up to about 1 cm by 1/2 cm and growing and needs to be zapped. In the medical world they call it lithotripsy.

So I'm thinking no big deal I'll lay on a table and have this machine slap against my back for a while and voila. I guess I was wrong. So not only is it considered surgery, but I have to get clearance from my primary care physician and have blood work, more x-rays, and an EKG before I can have it. Oh and I'll be put completely under. Then you get to pee out little sand fragments for a couple of weeks and hope none of the pieces are bigger and cause much pain. And yes if you've never had a kidney stone the pain from a good one is far worse then the pain I experienced during childbirth. One of my best ones was during my 1st pregnancy and I thought I really might be dying. Then there's the risk of having to go through it again if the pieces are still too big. Yippee. Thank goodness my insurance is paying at 100% now. To add to the fun the machine they use is so special hospitals don't have one there all the time. It sort of travels around place to place and you have to hope it's visit corresponds with your availability.

So his office said they'd coordinate my appointment with my primary physician who I've never seen by the way. I just kind of picked her and wasn't supposed to have my new patient appointment until September. So of course when they call to tell me when my appointment for my pre-op is it's when I'm set to be in Oklahoma for a little family reunion time with my brother. I explain this and am told that the Dr. is going on vacation (lucky girl) and I can do it the week before but will have to come in separately for lab work closer to the surgery. Just call their office and explain and get it re-scheduled. No problem right? Wrong.

So I call Dr. E's office (the primary Dr.) and explain all this and get transferred back to the nurse. That's never a good sign when the receptionist passes you off because you're too hard to handle. She informs me that Dr. E won't clear me for the surgery unless I have the lab work which can't be done more then a week before the surgery. Uggh. "So can you come in later that afternoon?" "No, I'm going to be out of state. Could I just see a different Dr. for the pre-op?" "No I don't think so." "OK." This goes on until I explain that I can change the surgery date if necessary but I'm not available on that day for the pre-op. She then agrees that the Dr. isn't going to technically be gone until after Wednesday and I could get in that day but if there are any problems with my labs I might have to re-schedule the surgery anyway. "It's just lithotripsy. It's not like I'm going to be cut open," I tell her. I don't think she was amused but I got my way.

So August 3 let's hope for good zapping and surgery that starts on time. Daniel's mom has graciously agreed to watch the kiddos so he can be there with me and of course to take me home. Since apparently it is not possible to have the kids there even in the waiting room. When I asked the nurse about bringing them she said, "Oh No!" What if we lived farther away from family? You don't just leave your 3 month old with anyone. Fun times!

Twilight

So despite my best efforts to avoid the Twilight franchise, I finally got sucked in. My Mother passed on an old video store gift card she had for who knows how long and since she's not into renting movies or using gift cards I convinced her to give it a new home.

So there we were at the ridiculously over-priced Hollywood Video. I'm a Red Box fan normally if I'm going to rent a movie. You can't beat 1.00 for a movie and you can walk a few steps and get you some icky McDonalds. Can't beat that right? But anyway... we never can agree on a movie. The older I get the more ADD I become and if it's not my idea to watch that particular movie I'm likely to get distracted and do something else while it's going on. Farming on Facebook anyone?

But I agreed to try this one out since millions of teenage girls can't be wrong. EVER. If you're not familiar with the movie it's based on a series of 4 books and apparently they're going to have all

4 movies. The 2nd one is set to come out this fall. It's a star-crossed lovers kind of story with a vampire guy and a human girl. I actually enjoyed it even though vampires are not my thing. The yummy star Robert Pattinson, who clearly is responsible for much of the obsession surrounding the movie, didn't hurt my intrigue.

I wasn't quite convinced about the hoopla for this guy at first. I mean he is good looking and in real life has the accent that us American girls go crazy for. So I looked him up and of course came face to face with more images then I cared to go through. But I 'd say these women are on to something. Take off the pale vampire makeup and he's not too shabby. You decide.

So now I'm kind of hooked and am wanting to check out the books. Normally I'm a big proponent of reading the book before I see the movie. But I guess 3 out of 4 won't be too bad. So if you haven't seen it I give it my official recommendation.

Fun at Walmart

We went shopping at Walmart yesterday and I had Aidan by myself while Daniel and Kate were getting the tires rotated on the car. Gotta love a place where you get veggies while your car is being serviced. If only I could get my nails done and get my eyes checked... Oh wait.

Apparently my husband acts as a bodyguard and must give off the don't talk to me vibe more then I thought. I'm usually better about giving it off but clearly something was going on yesterday while I was shopping solo. Among the plethora of comments...

• "Ahh look at him he's so cute!"~ Yep he is.
• "Look at all that hair!"~ We know.
• "He's sleeping now so he can be wide awake at home."~ OK. Is that a bad thing?
• And my favorite: The baby pick-up line... "When you look in the dictionary under adorable you'd see his picture."~ I didn't even know he was talking to me at first then when I realized it was a guy younger than me and with a woman who appeared to be his Mother, I just smiled and kept on walking. Odd but nice coming from a older woman. A little on the creepy side coming from a 20-something guy.

a⋅dor⋅a⋅ble

  [uh-dawr-uh-buhl, uh-dohr-]

-adjective

1. very attractive or delightful; charming

2. worthy of being adored.

3. see below

Friday Five 5.0

Here they are...

1.) I can't quite get back into the swing of things. After hanging out on Oklahoma for 11 days I've discovered that amount of time being away from home really gets you off balance. I want to sleep all the time, I'm grumpy, I want to ditch all my household chores and head to the pool, or at the very least go out to lunch. I couldn't manage to get all 3 of us ready on Tuesday or yesterday for library storytime at 2:00 IN THE AFTERNOON so now Kate's library books are officially overdue. We got the notice in the mail today. I think I'm a case of needing a vacation from my "vacation." Yes being away from home doing something fantastic should do the trick. Nothing post-wedding was remotely relaxing. It was tiring and stressful. Not that I really minded helping my parents. It's only fair to return the favor they've done for us so many times. But sigh... My birthday is in a week and a day. Maybe we'll come in to some money and get to go somewhere tropical. I can dream right? I'd even settle for a weekend trip to KC.

2.) Kate's birthday party is still stressing me out. The time has come and it is now. She's gone from wanting a Strawberry Shortcake theme (overdone), to pink poodles (yuck), to a beach party (we live in Kansas and don't have a pool), to Mexican (maybe- but where did that come from), to Dora (been there done that), to girl pirates (what?!), to my idea of a "Fancy Nancy" party. It's the perfect theme for a 5 year old girl. If you're not familiar witht the books they're by Jane O'Connor and are adorable. I've even suggested that we go to a tea room for high tea and dress all fancy" with our other female family members that are supposed to be coming. She's to distractible to commit to anything. I think this might be case where I just have to say this is what we're doing- case closed! It WILL come back to bite me in the butt if I do but time is wasting!

3.) Kate is in swimming lessons this week. They're OK but I think she could have been in the older class. She seems far advanced compared to the other kids. This level is for kids her age and the Level 1 said you were supposed to be 5 before you could take it. although there are kids in there that look younger then her. She looks like she's having fun though and it doesn't hurt to go over stuff again. I keep meaning to take pics but I keep forgetting to change the camera batteries. You've only missed her splashing water on other kids when she should be listening and trying to be show off to her teacher.

It just frustrates me because the pool closes at 6:30 to the public and then the lessons start. I really have been wanting to take her swimming but little man can't go since he's not 6 months yet and can't wear sunscreen. That and trying to hold him and all and watch after her at this point would be just about more then I need. So it would be nice to go in the evenings just the 2 of us after Daniel comes home but no such luck here. I'm hoping to be able to take her tomorrow but there's a chance of rain. It figures.

4.) I love rice crispy treats. There I've said it. I'm able to admit that we might have 1 too many

cats. I spend large portions of my day feeding living creatures. I'm still in my pajamas and so is Kate. The only one who is excused from getting dressed is the one who's not still wearing PJ's. I'm bored and am back to strongly disliking where I live. My house is strangely clean downstairs but I have at least 2 hours of clean clothes upstairs I need to put away. My husband wants to know what I want for my birthday. He should know. And oh yes I confirmed via Facebook that one of my ex boyfriends is gay. If you're reading this I'm not freaked out or anything- just was curious and now I'm not. :-) Speaking of Facebook I have become intrigued by these online games you can play on there. I now have a zoo, a farm, am part of a mafia and a fashion posse. The zoo is my favorite but I don't understand all the hype with these games. Maybe I'm not playing them right.

5.)Aidan is a giant. I put him in 6-9 month clothes and they fit. I think his size 2 diapers may already be getting small. He's discovered that he can soothe himself by chewing on his hands and by grabbing a fistful of his hair. He has taken to staring adoringly into my eyes when I hold him and is amused when I make animal noises at him. Daniel determined he's ticklish and although we're not back up to the amazing 8 hour stretched of sleep at night that we had pre- Oklahoma, we're in the 6 1/2 to 7 hour range again. Yippee!

Long time no Blog

Where to start?

The last several days have been a whirlwind of activities filled with a car trip, a wedding, a car trip, a Baptism, a car trip, a move, another car trip, and a C/T scan to top it all off. I couldn't possibly detail every event that has happened of interest- even though as we all know my life is full of interesting things. So I'll do my favorite bullet-style breakdown and get things caught up!

• Before embarking on my 2nd Oklahoma journey that lasted just a touch too long, we headed to the big city of Wichita and took in some shopping. You know the one- it ended with a bracelet in an unmentionable place. While waiting for Daniel to come out of Barnes and Noble I snapped this cute pic...

That day we also got big smiles

• The next day we headed over to the good ole' neighborhood Splash Pad and mingled with people that could only be described as "State-Fair folk". Sorry- it might be mean but you know who I'm talking about. Ladies- there comes a point where it's just best not to wear a bikini. But we got some cute shots of our experience before Daniel made us leave. Poor sport!

Our little guy looking suave on a girly blanket

My attempt as we were leaving to be artistic

We then headed down to Oklahoma for my friend Erin's wedding. She an her fiance met on a flight back to L.A. after Christmas and have been together ever since. After all these flights sitting next to people she didn't want to talk to she finally got seated next to a cutie and made a love connection. I think it's a really great story. She asked Kate to be her flower girl. The ring bearer was the son of my oldest friend Audry and those two kids hit it off! We joked we may end up being related after all! They had it at the most beautiful place- The Dominion House in Guthrie.

Kate ended up forgetting to throw her flower petals when they walked down the aisle and our social butterfly looked a bit scared at first. But overall she did great and partied all night at the reception. Seriously- my girl can dance, and dance, and dance! I think they were the hit of the party! When they Bride and Groom danced their first dance so did these two right in the middle of the tables. There was even some breakdancing at one point that I'm sad to say isn't captured on film. :-( I also got to see old friends I haven't seen in forever and it was a fun time!

Here's a little sampling of other pictures from the weekend...

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• We also traveled to Tulsa for our niece's Baptism. Ava looked so sweet. She also had heart surgey last Tuesday and although she's still going to be in the hospital for a few more days she's doing great!

Aidan and Ava

• We then traveled back to my parent's house where I ended up staying unexpectedly for the week to help my parents move. But luckily my schedule, although jam packed, was easy to clear. It was very exhausting and hard work with 2 young kids in the middle of it all but we got it done. Their new house is so pretty and now they get to do the fun task of unpacking and putting it all away! I'm sorry I had to come home! :-) In the middle of it all my Mom had a birthday. So Happy Birthday to her! Thanks Mom for all you've done for us and for being so supportive!

We ended my 11 day journey by coming home for the 4th of July. I grew up right outside of the city limits so fireworks were allowed. But now I live in the middle of a different city and you can shoot off fireworks anywhere. It sounded kind of like a war zone. I just kept thinking, "I wonder how much that one cost?" It was pretty crazy. I'm kind of glad it's over and that I missed most of it- since you were allowed to shoot them off all week. This morning I had a C/T scan to check on the lovely kidney stones and we're off to swimming lessons tonight. Phew!