I Can Finally See the Light Now, And it's Shining on Me

It's spring, and I'm your sister, the mosquito on caffeine! (Or maybe daughter or  in-law, or friend, but whatevs). Seriously, having Gary out of the session has opened up so many possibilities! It's never easy to take care of extremely active kiddos ages 1-6 in a little house for months in the winter all by your lonesome, but this year was SO much better, it's just amazing! I never called Gary crying, unless if you count when he called me and I was watching Secret Millionaire. That show is amazing. Anyway, I felt so empowered by the session ending, on the last night I wrote this paragraph to Gary's family (who, unfortunately, has had various maladies lately):

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As for me, my big drama is that I'm up way too late again . . . woe is me. I'm actually feeling pretty AWESOME because the sun is shining (in the day, don't get cute), the kids can play outside, and if all goes well, Gary will be home in 40 minutes and the 2013 legislative session is over. WITHOUT major drama from us. After 3 straight years of craziness happening in the winter, we are happy with this. I feel empowered to remodel my house, get a new house, pay off our student loans, write grants for the school, organize and train on the items received from the grant, make Andrew and Lissy their baby books, train for a 15k (with a good time this time), organize my life and my children, and maybe start a business. I'll keep you posted. However, having said this, I wonder if saying it here is a bad sign. :) Really, the Lord knows I wouldn't get off Gary's back about getting a new job if we had another near-death experience this year. Gary's a good man. It all works out.

Hahaha, yeah, some of those things do not co-exist, but whatever, I felt like I had done a good job of conquering a beast. So, on Friday, we checked Josh out of school at 12:15 (only 15 minutes early, but still, he was surprised), and headed to Salt Lake. First to Lone Star Taqueria where we had some amazing tacos - even the kids couldn't stop raving. The sun was shining, and they have a lovely place to eat outside. Also, people were drinking beer there. Noah saw, and said, "What are they drinking? Please don't let it be beer, please don't let it be beer . . ." Cutie.  Then we said, "We're going to the aquarium!" The kids said, "What's a Quarium? Ahh, I love surprises!!" They did, indeed, love the quarium. You should see Lissy watching penguins (oooh . . .), Noah and Josh touching a little shark and sea urchins, Josh nailing all of the presenter's questions during the penguin feeding (first grade turns out to have some use), Noah being concerned that he had missed an animal, and Andrew being thrilled about EVERYTHING. He laughed and grinned the whole time. My proudest moment was when a little shark swam by and he pointed and said, "Look, gills!" (Turns out reading books also has some use.) We met Allison and her kids there for the last little bit since they have passes, and that was fun. After that we went to a store that sells imported and specialty items called Pirate O's. All the German candies - there. Oh, yeah. We let the kids each pick one thing, and got ourselves the specialty sodas we'd come to try. Noah said, "It's a hard choice at Pirate O's!" He speaks truth. On the way home Noah said, "This is the best day ever." And it was! We even went home and had healthy and yummy leftovers and a quick game of Dynamite with Dad. (Josh will not allow you to call it Lightning, which is what I woulda done had he not taught me.)

The leftovers came from cooking the last week of the session - so weird to have dinner without Gary when it was all light and sun-shiney outside. I think this is the first time the session has gone past Daylight Savings. However, it made for a great week. We had friends over on Wednesday night, and the kids had a blast playing, and I loved chatting. The downer of the week was when I went to PTA meeting on Tuesday night and the principal suggested the kids not be allowed to talk at lunch, and what did we think? SUCH a negative memory from my childhood, but I shouldn't have said anything. What did I think, they would believe me? So, my big fat mouth that needs to stay shut is the tarnish, but the week was good as a whole, so I'll just look forward to improving myself. Hopefully soon.

Gary started the session with a baby girl, but now he has a full-out toddler girl. Lissy has really gone all the way to toddler-hood, jabbering and playing and having to be outside. She LOVES to be outside. When she gets in the wagon, she just laughs the whole time, it's so awesome. She squeals with delight at lots of stuff, like family pictures and her favorite book. She likes to "talk" about every move she makes, and appreciates notice. The boys taught her to hold a kitchen utensil and say, while jabbing, "Hiii ya!" She kinda says, "Hee-ya" most of the time. Of course there's the dancing, too - she really is too darling. Except that she's needy and whiny often, I'm thinking it's these new teeth coming. Almost done with that!

One last tip - go to Coldstone and try the cinnamon bun ice cream. You might think it sounds just ok, like I did. No, it's amazing. With pralines, please. I understand how they made it taste like cinnamon, but the bun? Wow. On the last Friday of the session, we decided to go out and do a family thing. Usually Gary gets home early on Fridays during the session, and often it's the first time the kids have seen him since the previous Sunday night. But, on this particular Friday, he didn't get home until nearly 9:00. Better than the 2,3, 4 o'clock he'd been pulling, so we did it, we went to Coldstone, it was very fun, we discovered the amazing ice cream, and the kids fell asleep on the way home. Beauty.

Oh, yes, sorry, I know you want to hear about my sinuses. Mostly because many of you also struggle. I was worried the ENT would say surgery is the only way, but we're trying a prednisone blast (his words), and a special sinus wash imported from the valley of Cache. They recommend administering it with a NeilMed sinus rinse bottle. I will also recommend. Doesn't blast you out like the other method, but easy enough that you'll actually do it. Very helpful! I have a ct scan on Wednesday, so we shall see how it goes. He said I have a lot of cysts and polyps in my cheeks, but it's open. Bad news is I have hyper-hyper active tissues in my nose (which I already kinda knew), so there may not be a ton that can be done beyond the rinse. But it's something!

Love you all, my new goal is to update often and so it's not so long. Maybe I'll have a chance now?