Too Long!

It's been far too long since I blogged last!  Every day I have a new to-do list and every day "Blog" has been near the top. For some reason life has been getting in the way, and I never seem to get around to it. Especially since I'm still trying to figure out the whole photo/storage thing I paid for yet can't seem to use yet.  Well, I'm tired of waiting! So much has happened the past few months and I'm sad that I haven't blogged about any of it, or tried to document the many adorable and clever things Johnny does all the time. :( I'm going to start making blogging a priority and as soon as I figure out the photo/storage thing (maybe tomorrow? John will be home because of a snow day, so he can help me!), I'll post photos. But I'm going to post no matter what...I'll assume that somebody out there cares to read what I write, with or without pictures (mom?). Anyone? No matter. This blog is more for myself and documenting my thoughts and our family's activities, so as long as I'm getting something down, I think I'll be happy. 

John is massively busy with school, working at the library, working at Whole Foods, and working for an internship. I'm busy raising the three year old, trying to be crafty, figuring out what I want to do in life, and dealing with a bunch of serious back issues.  Currently I'm suffering through a bulging disc that is pushing down on two of my major nerves in my spine, which is causing shooting pain and numbness from the waist down, and mainly concentrated on the left side of my body. It's painful, frustrating, annoying, and I just want it to be figured out. I finished a bout of steroids a few days ago and it hasn't done much to reduce the numbness (the hope was that the disc would reduce in swelling a bit and not rest on the nerves), but I have an appointment with a spine specialist/surgeon this week, and hopefully they'll be able to come up with a real solution that will help really quick.  Physical therapy is already a given, and possible back surgery in the near future. I'm praying that I don't have to have back surgery, and I'm trying to stay optimistic! Johnny is learning like crazy and being an adorable mischievous little boy. He is such a sweet kid and I truly enjoy being with him every single day. :)  Other than that, we're just kicking it in Denver until John graduates in June.  Right now we're experiencing a snowstorm and tomorrow the high is -1, but with the windchill will feel like -30!! How is that for awesome? I hate winter.  Luckily some good has come from it, because John had a snow day today and has one tomorrow, and he never gets complete days off. We're enjoying every minute of it! 

John's waiting to watch a movie with me, since the little one is in bed now. I will be sure to blog tomorrow. And hopefully John will have figured out the photo situation...I have a lot of photos to catch up on! 

Happy Birthday Rosemary! :)

{I apologize for the delay in posts. :( I bought the storage for the blog, but it is still telling me that I don't have any more storage, so I need John to be home so he can figure out for me who I need to contact in order to get it fixed.  I've been wanting to blog so much this week too, but I can't upload photos.  Hopefully that will be remedied soon!}

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Today is my great-aunt Rosemary's birthday!! Happy Birthday, Rosemary! :)  {Since I can't post photos to my blog right now, I won't be able to post a photo along with this right now.  I will add some photos on here, though, as soon as I can! I have some good ones that I want to include in this post. :)}

My great-aunt Rosemary is an awesome person and we love her very much! :)  She is an intelligent, strong, beautiful, and loving person.  She isn't afraid to speak her mind, live life to the fullest, but would also do anything and everything for those she loves and cares about.  She is a mother to an equally awesome son, and grandmother to two beautiful little girls. :)  She has a college degree and she is a very knowledgeable supervisor for the WA state agency where she is employed.  She lives in an adorable remodeled farm house that has been in our family since before she lived in it, and I have a great deal of memories surrounding that house and the wheat fields surrounding it out in the country.  Many many good memories and one not-so-great one (I was running down a hill, tripped over my brother, and almost bit my tongue off completely).  She is a dog lover and has a very gentle and energetic dog in her life - Gunner - who also wins a lot of frisbee tournaments.  :)  She has always been a very supportive and loving person in my life and has always been there for all of our family.  She is a very giving person and always goes above and beyond to make sure everyone always feels welcome.  I have always looked up to her strength, intelligence, beauty and compassion.  We all love her a lot, and I'm sure I can speak for the entire family when I say: Happy Birthday and we hope you have had a wonderful day!! We love you!! We hope to see you very soon!!  :)  

Apologize for the Delay

Apparently, one can run out of photo storage space on their blog.  I didn't know that.  I was about 90% done with the dinosaur birthday party photos for part 2 of the vacation series when I got a window that said that I ran out of my 1GB of free photo storage space on my blog.  Don't panic (like I did momentarily)!  I do have the option to purchase more storage space for photos on my blog (a must, considering how many photos I take and that I have no desire to quit blogging).  So, I did purchase 20GB of storage for $5/year.  However, it can take up to 24 hours for the storage to appear on my blog.  I just tried to finish that earlier blog post so I can post it this evening, but it still says that I don't have any storage, so I'll have to wait.  *sigh* I hope to find some time to finish the post tomorrow and then publish it on here.  I have loads of photos and stories to catch up on and I'm a little annoyed that I had to end abruptly today when I was on a roll.  Thank you for your patience, and I apologize for the delay!  [I know my mom is probably wanting the next post already, even though I already posted today, so I just wanted to explain. :)]


Hope everyone enjoys their weekend!  Today was the first day that it hasn't been hot and has actually felt like an autumn day.  I'm looking forward to some autumn festivities! :)

Our Summer Vacation Part 1: The Flight & Time with Grandmas

As many of you know, Johnny and I went on a vacation back home to WA in August.  We went for two weeks and stayed with my parents, who were also kind enough to buy our plane tickets too.  It was Johnny's first time flying on a plane as well.  I know that this post is long long long overdue, but it was just overwhelming with all of the photos.  Plus life has been pretty overwhelming and crazy hectic busy since we got home too.  So bear with me as I do these posts (I have to break up our WA vacation into several posts because it was two weeks with a lot of photos) and catch up with the other tons of photos and stories I have since then.  :)  I hope to catch up as quickly as I can so that I can start blogging on a regular basis about current events without feeling guilty about past ones. :)

Part 1

I hate flying and I had never flown by myself before, let alone with my toddler.  I was not looking forward to the flight at all.  Some things turned out to be a nightmare and some things turned out better than I expected. 

 My husband dropped us off at the airport early enough,  but the Denver airport was so crazy busy (even on a Tuesday morning) it took nearly forty minutes to get our tickets and another nearly forty minutes just to get through the security checkpoint.  Then we had to walk all the way across the airport to the very last gate, all while I'm carrying all of our carry-on items and trying to drag my toddler as quickly as possible.  We ended up getting to the gate after they had already started boarding and were two of the last people on the plane.  This was a problem because when we arrived they had given us seats on different parts of the plane (we flew with Frontier).  Um, yeah, that wasn't going to happen considering my son had just turned three.  No way was he sitting apart from me, especially if people didn't want him to scream the entire flight.  

I was told that at the gate, they would get us seats together.  Got to the gate, and they told me with a reproachful look that I should have gotten there earlier (um, yeah, I would have if they had more than one security line open and I was aware that Frontier would randomly give seats to people who didn't buy their Classic Plus tickets the day of the flight) and told me to ask a flight attendant onboard.  So I get onboard and the flight attendant pretty much tells me to wait, even though I got to them first, and then seats several other mothers with their kid first, and finally gets to me.  It took them nearly twenty minutes to find us seats together (with me standing in the aisle by myself, holding my toddler, all of our carry-on luggage, and everyone giving me scathing looks).  There were many problems with why it took them so long to seat us: 1) people had moved around and sat in seats that weren't theirs, including the two that our tickets designated, 2) the plane was full except for two empty seats not together, 3) nobody would move so we could sit next to each other, not even people who were traveling alone, 4) the flight attendant was unwilling to make people move, and 5) the flight attendant was only willing to try and find us a seat in one small section.  In the end, we ended up sitting across the aisle from each other, and this was the "best that they could do".  Yeah freaking right.  I was sitting next to two teenage boys who refused to move.  They could have sat across the aisle from each other so I could've sat next to my son. Luckily Johnny was sitting next to a mother and her son, and she was very helpful.  I was not very happy with the airline at this point.  First of all, their policy of giving random seats to customers, even if seats are bought together is ridiculous (they should at least have a box you can check if you are traveling with a small child who can't sit by themselves), and second of all, their noncommittal way of trying to find seats together wasn't exactly stellar.  

The flight itself wasn't bad though, except that I was frustrated to the millionth degree.  Johnny actually enjoyed flying and thought it was a lot of fun when it took off.  He played with his Curious George doll, he played with some activities and toys I had bought for this plane ride (we were way limited in what we could do because I was across the aisle from him).  Luckily it was only a two hour flight too.  We were so thankful when we landed (especially me, because I hate flying)!  

My dad was the one who met us at the airport, which was really awesome.  Johnny was excited to see his Papa when we walked out of the terminal into the main baggage area. :)  

My dad took us to lunch and to pick up a Veggie Tales movie that they had waiting at a store in town.  Johnny enjoyed both. :)  I was just happy to not be flying anymore!

After a nap, we had to go to town to pick my mom up from work.  We got there early so we could go inside say "hi" to people my mom works with and people my husband used to work with.  Unfortunately, Johnny was still sleeping when we pulled up and he wasn't happy when he woke up inside a strange place with people in his face trying to say "hi".  He started to cry.  So we had to take him outside to calm down.  He was lucky enough to get a lovely little goodie bag with a coloring book, crayons, and snacks from one of my mom's awesome co-workers Cami.  :)  We sat at a picnic table outside while he colored, ate a snack, watched the baby birds in a bird nest above the picnic table, and ran around in the grass. Eventually my mom finished with her work and came and joined us. 

(If you look closely you can see the baby bird beak peaking out above the nest)

My grandparents came over that evening for dinner, which was really nice.  It was great getting to see them the first day we got there! :)

Our second day, we spent with my mom, who had the day off from work.  We went to lunch, went shopping, and even to Starbucks.  Johnny even talked grandma into getting him an iced green tea latte (he loves them, and before you judge: they are mainly milk, sugar, and a little bit of green tea; a little bit of caffeine never hurt a kid; and he rarely gets them and they are always Talls).  He was a happy boy!  He even got to play in the water with his grandpa that afternoon/evening (this happened quite often). 

That second evening was when Johnny realized that we were away from daddy.  I mean, he knew daddy wasn't with us, but I don't think he realized that daddy wouldn't be there at nighttime.  The first night I think he was too exhausted to think about it.  But the second evening, he was running around and I asked him if he wanted some ice cream, and he said "yes".  As I was scooping some into a bowl, he looked at it and then he just started sobbing and yelling "dadddddddddyyyyyyyy!" over and over again in the most pitiful voice.  I couldn't console him at all.  So I sat him down on the ground and he buried his little face in his hands, with little tears spurting out the sides, while I called his daddy (I was so very lucky that John happened to not be working at that time, so he could talk!).  It was sort of amusing though because he'd take bites of ice cream every now and then even with his head in his hands and sobbing and everything. :)  


Once he got to talk to his daddy on the phone and know that everything was alright, he was much better.  But it was inevitable that at some point he was going to have a meltdown when he realized he wasn't near his daddy.  The longest he's been away from John was one or two nights, and the last time that happened was when he was 9 months old.  So he's never had a time that he could remember where he was away from either of us overnight.  Two weeks was a long time for all of us.  But luckily after that second night's meltdown, he was fine.  He would talk to his daddy on the phone, but he never cried about it again, because I think he knew that we would be going home soon. 

On day three, both of my parents had to work. Since we flew, we didn't have a car to use, so we would have been stranded at my parents' house.  However, it had been worked out so that my maternal grandparents came and picked us up so we could spend the day together.  My grandma and grandpa took us to a local restaurant for lunch, then they got us milkshakes, and then we went to a local park to play.  Johnny had a lot of fun with his great-grandparents, as always! :)  I had a lot of fun too!  It was super cute because when we got the park, it was completely empty... Johnny walked up to the playground equipment and yells "helllllloooooooo?", as if to ask, where are all the kids?  In Denver, it is extremely rare that you get to play at a playground alone.   Back home that happened all the time.  Johnny is so used to having twenty kids pushing past him to go down the slide first that I'm sure he didn't know what to do with himself. ;)

On day four, my parents were working again, so my paternal grandma came and picked us up, along with two of her other great-grandchildren (my cousin's kids: Romy and Malaysia), and we went and had a fun day.  First we went to a new park in Spokane Valley called Discovery Park.  The kids had a blast running in the water fountains.  Johnny especially loved the metal frog, and Malaysia had a blast in the sand trough building sand castles.  It was a very warm day though and after a couple hours of watching the kids run around we decided to take them to lunch.  My grandma took us to lunch and then we went back to her house in the country so that the kids could play in the pool (I swam too) and we hung out inside the house too so the kids could play.  All in all, it was a really fun day and Johnny was super exhausted at the end of it, which was a bonus! :)

My parents are in the middle of building a round planter in their yard and Johnny loved to walk along the perimeter of it on the bricks.  And the neighbor girls from across the street loved to come over randomly and play with Johnny too.

Since this was the evening before Johnny's birthday party (his second 3rd birthday party - his first one was in Denver), I spent the evening getting some things ready for the birthday party.  Because we flew, I couldn't do very much for the party before we came to WA, and since we were busy having fun, I didn't have a lot of time to make stuff.  It ended up being a more casual party than the one in Denver, which I was okay with.  :)  

Check out Johnny trying out some of the gift bag favors: 

So that was the first four days of our trip to WA.  They were some really great, fun days!  Next post will be day 5 and the Dinosaur Birthday Party. Stay tuned! :)  And we will slowly but surely make our way through these vacation posts and all the rest of my backlog of photos, so I can get back on track.  Be patient with me. :)