Field Day

The Northwest ISD has an adaptive Field Day every year for the special needs classes. I look forward to going every year, it's so much fun! This year's was Tuesday, May 4th. When we got to the field, we found out that *everything* was water based. Grace wasn't dressed to be wet, but since she had a change of clothes, we figured we could soak her. There were 8 high school kids waiting to help with the 8 kids in Grace's class and there was only one boy in the group. So, naturally, he had been assigned to be Grace's helper for the day! Grace flirted with him all morning. She was just a little bit wet until one of the kids in her class took a water-soaked sponge and squeezed it over her head! From then on she was soaking wet.













I think she really enjoyed herself, she kept screaming (in a happy way, I promise) and laughing all morning. She enjoyed her helper being there, he was very good with her. He reminded me so much of my friend Mark. He gave Grace a hug at the end of the morning and Grace tried to pull his hair. She's so cute, I love her so much!

New Year's Resolutions

Wow, I can't believe I haven't updated this in 6 months! It's been a struggle even reading my friend's blogs because almost everyone with a blog is also on Facebook. It's taken over as the method for pumping information out to the world. For the sake of my family, I should update so you don't have to hear about things from just my Mom! I suppose it should be a resolution, even...

Things have been going well for us in the last few months. Forest was laid off in October for one day before they came to their senses and realized things would crash and burn without Forest's keen knowledge of the Library's network (at least that's how I see it!). Unfortunately he is doing the job of three people all by himself now. He is down in a room all by himself and it was kind of taking it's toll for a little bit. Thankfully now he has someone helping him a few days a week and they get along really well.

Gracie is doing really well! She seems to love her new class at Lakeview and is still a joy to take care of. In November I found out I was chosen as "Attendant of the Year" from Disability Services of the Southwest (or DSSW, the firm that takes care of Grace's respite care account) The following is the section of the DSSW newsletter that I was featured in! I love the letter the Dendys wrote, it made me feel really appreciated. Working with Grace is the best job I've ever had!

And since the scanned picture didn't come out so great, here is the original!

I've been really busy with my calling at Church the last few months (I'm the Activities Chairperson), we had two dinners in three months! Our Chili Cookoff went very well (and since we live in Texas, Mormons actually know how to make Chili!) in October but what I was really gearing up for was the Ward Christmas Party. We had "Tex-Mex" food with some really fun country Christmas decorations. The food was so fantastic but we had so much left over that I am still even sick of mexican food.

We had a very quiet Christmas! It was just the two of us and our dog. Your dog, you ask? Yes, we actually got a dog! I'm sure everyone already knows about this because he was featured in our Christmas card, but to give you some of the details...a friend of ours, Laney, put a post on FB asking if anyone would like a 2 year old Bichon Frise that her neighbor needed to find a home because her son was having severe asthma. I told her I would love to give him a good home and it all fell into place. We got him on December 14th so he was the perfect Christmas present! His name is Pippin and we just adore this little dog. I've taken him over to Jennie's to play with their puppy and both of the dogs just love having someone to romp around with. Here are a few pictures with our cute little doggie!

One of our Christmas card pictures:

Playing in the snow:



After we got him groomed for the first time:

You may have noticed all of that snow - we finally had a White Christmas! While the rain was pouring in Michigan, we had a good 5 inches of snow fall on Christmas Eve. It was snowing hard enough that it soaked my camera and I only took a few pictures when it was actually still snowing. The first picture is from when it was snowing and the second two are when it started melting. Pippin enjoyed running around in the snow and we bundled up to go play with him in it. The weather has been one big yo-yo, going from the 30's to the 70's, down to the 20's and it's supposed to be in the high 50's early next week. Right now it's in the 20's and we're not liking that too much!

Things are good for us and we hope everyone around the country is having a wonderful New Year so far!

The Best Kind of Update - Full of Pictures!

So much has been so much going on the past few weeks!

Our windows are being installed on Friday!

Our guest bedroom looks like a warzone!

Okay, it's been cleaned up since then, but we haven't started painting because we can't open our old crummy windows.

Speaking of war zones, we have had some interesting weather. Last Wednesday the Alliance Airport area was hit with a massive storm that rocked the community. Our street was littered with tree branches and our house took a slight hit. One of our turbines flew off of the roof! We have a little bit of water damage in our living room ceiling, but other than that we fared pretty well. I cannot believe that neither of our trees were touched. It doesn't even look like a single leaf is missing. We lost power for almost 3 days. It finally came back on Saturday afternoon. We are so thankful for the Wrights who let us stay with them the first night (until they too lost power) and the Dendy's for letting us borrow their mud room refrigerator and also their guest bedroom. We'd be out an awful lot of food and money otherwise!

Also last Wednesday, a city-hired contractor started digging holes on our street. We weren't notified and we didn't find out until today what they are doing. Wednesday they hit a gas main which I didn't know about until after the storm settled (which I am grateful for because storms stress me out enough as it is!). We came home from the store this afternoon and found a freshly dug hole in our front yard! I don't mind the hole so much now that I know they are installing street lights (that are MUCH needed), but none of us on the block knew what was going on. For some reason they felt the need to drive a tractor on my lawn though, which I am hoping they will fix. They apparently "fixed" it today, but as you can see from the following pictures, it still looks pretty terrible. As far as I can tell, we're the only house's lawn they did this to.

Looking at that picture makes me think our lawn is kind of scary. Forest mowed it last Monday. We got so much rain though, I'm not surprised it looks so wild!

A few weeks ago, Grace graduated from Kindergarten! She was so cute getting her diploma although she looked pretty confused about all of it. Next year she is off to Lakeview Elementary! She thankfully has stopped having seizures recently which means she has lost some benefits with MDCP. This doesn't affect me too much, I'll make a little bit less this year but work a significant amount of hours less than I did last year. It's worth it for her not to have seizures anymore!

And here are some random pictures of Grace that I think are adorable!


We broke down and got a new camera. We got a Canon SX10 and it is HUGE. Thankfully it's pretty light. I love that the view finder is "flexable". I took the picture below of Grace and I and Grace is looking at herself in the view finder. It takes amazing pictures, much better than on our old camera (which you can see in the shots of Grace above).

And because it's just so darn cute...

I guess that is everything for right now...it's been a really crazy week, we spent most of today catching up from not doing any laundry or housework for 4 days. It's amazing the things we can take for granted. Not having power impacts your life in every single way. I hope we don't have to do that again anytime soon...

brr!

I am so cold! The longer I live in Texas the more wimpy I get when it finally gets cold around here. It's actually warmer in Detroit right now, so I guess I'm being pretty rational ;)

Next week is Halloween! Gracie is going to be a Pegasus. We put the costume on her last week and she was making these funny growling noises the whole time, like she thought she was some sort of evil monster. It was SO cute. I am going to have my Mom send me my prom dress and possibly go as a "guardian angel". I went as that for Halloween right after I graduated. The dress is pink, so at least I'll sort of match Gracie somehow. Here is my prom picture, purely for nostalgic purposes:

This was taken 12 days before my 18th birthday, I haven't changed much have I? At any rate, that dress has had many good uses. I wore it then, for Halloween, my sister wore it for Halloween and she wore it to my wedding. It cleans up very well and the cut is fantastic. I meant to take it home with me when we were in Michigan last but I forgot about it. It will be nice to finally have it back.

In two weeks Forest and I are going through the Temple for the first time. We are so excited! We got all of our clothing the other day. There were two dresses that I looked at, one was on sale and the other wasn't. As we are first time buyers, we were able to use a 50% discount. I tried on the one that was on sale and it was nice, but when I tried on the second dress, I knew I had to have it. It was twice as expensive (although I only paid 23 dollars for it anyway) but I just loved it so much that it was worth the extra cost.

When we are Sealed in December, we are going to have a full house! My parents are coming on the 21st and Forest's sister looks to be coming on the 26th. I am going to push the Sealing to Saturday as well, which may work out for some who wanted to come. It's going to be a busy few months!

more pictures

I forgot to tell you that I added the other pictures from Celebrate Roanoke to Flickr. You can see them right here.

celebrate roanoke

Man I am such a slacker lately! Well, today was a fun day so I knew I had to sit down and post something about it.

Every year our great city of Roanoke has a celebration for the members of it's community, aptly named Celebrate Roanoke. They have several vendors giving away free things and information, food galore, fun things for the kids to do, etc.

I walked around with Grace for a while, avoiding the meltdown she sometimes has when her Mom is also with her sisters (she gets very jealous for some reason), although for the most part she was very good, even with the rest of the family there. Dal was off watching the UT/OU game in the morning (and UT won, yay!). On a side note, Forest had a terrible morning because the Cottonbowl (where they played today) is in Dallas, so it took him forever to get to work. Poor guy.

So, anyway, several booths had loads of candy and Grace can't eat chocolate or anything really gummy, so I thought I would try a Smartie. It touched her tongue for a nanosecond before she chucked it on the ground. I didn't think she would like it, but it was worth a shot! There was a huge tent that had several fun things to do, including caricatures, clowns, awesome balloon animals and spray-on tattoos. I was holding Grace to get hers and she looked at me with a look that said "please don't hurt me!". In the last few months every time she has been held still like that it's been so someone could inflict pain on her. She looked very cute with her little butterfly though. It stayed very well too, mine hasn't changed at all and Gracie kept whacking it with her slobbery hand, she must have thought it was quite strange. The older Grace gets, the more fun we have on outings. She finds more things fun and she seems more willing to explore new things, it's great. I took a few pictures, but the only one i have access too right now is this one:

I left my camera at Jennie's house (silly me), but I should have the rest tomorrow or Monday and I will upload them into an album.

Grace turned 6 last Wednesday and Jennie threw her a party at the Incredible Pizza Company, which is like a Game Works and a Cici's Pizza combined. I took Grace on the go-carts and she was beyond thrilled. She giggled the entire time, she was so excited. We played games and games and more games and all of our tickets combined got the girls some really fun things. Gracie also enjoyed the kids rides. I took a ton of pictures, you can find them right here!

I set up a better picture system at Flickr (still debating if I want to bite the bullet and get a paid account there...) and hopefully that won't crash a million times like my gallery was. I would get it perfect and some silly file somewhere would get corrupted. Very frustrating. It might eliminate my need to pay for server space and Flickr is much cheaper too!

We've had a productive few weeks and they have been fun. I have a lot of fun with Grace, as you can probably see. Today we went home and were relaxing and I was watching SNL from last weekend, pretty much just to see the Killers play. Their second song was called "Spaceman" from their new album and Grace just loves that song! She was laughing and bouncy throughout the whole thing. I guess the Dendys have another Killers fan :)

the 2 just doesn't work

I have discovered that the 2 on my keyboard does not work. I can use the 2 on the number pad, but that won't make the "at" symbol for e-mailing! The "D" also does not work part of the time. We have 5 other keyboards in this house, but this seems to be the one my husband likes best and insists on using. I do have my own computer, with the keyboard that I love, but it's in our spare bedroom. Our spare "oom" has no light fixture nor a ceiling fan, so it gets rather dark and hot in there. We bought a new ceiling fan for our bedroom so we are going to move the old one into that room and install the new one in our bedroom. Hopefully that will cool that room off! Then I can finally have a keyboard that won't malfunction.

It is very early in the morning, nearly 3 am. I am supposed to be up in 3 and a half hours to get Grace ready for school. I have had a really bad few weeks. My Uncle's passing has been very hard for me and my family. I have been an emotional wreck. Nearly two weeks ago I started feeling out of sorts. It was more than just my normal fibromyalgia outbursts because it was affecting my mood as well. The girls started school last week and I got up every day at 6:30. I did just fine, but I was coming home and sleeping until 1! I finally figured out what the problem was and after the week I have had I am almost certain that I had a miscarriage. Nearly the same thing happened 2 years ago, but this time the pain was more of a major concern than anything else. Friday night I couldn't do anything to feel better and I woke Forest up at 3 am. I was in tears it was so terrible. I was crying uncontrollably, I completely broke down mentally. It was an extremely strange feeling. I used to be prone to panic attacks and the last time I remember having one was in 2002, just before I met Forest. This was by far the worst one I've ever had. The pain stopped almost completely by Saturday morning, but I didn't end up working, I slept all day and on Sunday as well. I felt immensely better on Monday and have felt better everyday since. I am still taking naps after I get home in the morning but they aren't very long. I can't figure out why I'm not sleeping tonight. I have tried everything and nothing is working! I am notorious for not having a very good sleeping schedule and I know whacked out hormones aren't going to help that. I am hoping that next week I can really work on that and get all the sleep I need before I need to get up in the morning.

I really feel like I did miscarry, I can just feel it in my heart. I will probably never know if I really did or not and I would rather not know for sure. It's heartbreaking to lose something that special. I have wanted to have a child since the day we were married but I knew it was going to be a long, hard battle and I am fine with that. When the time is right, it will happen. For right now, I am glad that Jennie doesn't have to search for another care giver for Grace. I can't imagine finding someone I would approve to be good enough for her! ;)

graciezilla

I took this picture of Grace while we were at the Grapevine Mills Mall earlier this month. I was tired, so I sat down and she was getting a little restless. I pulled out my new phone (an LG EnV2) and was trying to amuse her with it. She was being cute and I went to snap a picture and got this instead:

I can't believe I captured such a fantastic Gracie moment in a split-second. She makes some of the best facial expressions. We, of course, had to call this picture "Graciezilla".

A few weeks later, I took this picture:

She is balancing so much better and I just want to scream "Gracie, stand up!" because I know if she really really tried she probably could. She was on her knees like that for a few minutes reading that book over and over again. She LOVES books, can't get enough of them. She also loves to destroy them because she loves to throw them, but we are working on that...

A few weeks ago Jennie decided to get bunnies for the girls and ordered them each a cage. She got them in the mail the other day and put one of them together. McKay thought it would be a great idea to stick Gracie in one of them. Thus, Graciezilla was captured!

She seems very happy to be sitting in a cage but the best part is that "Graciezilla" is missing her front teeth (both top and bottom!). She can still pull your hair at lightening fast speeds though, so watch out ;)

Grace started full-time school this year. It's hard to believe she is going to be 6 in just a few weeks. She has grown so much this summer and has surprised us with a few tricks up her sleeve. She is "talking" up a storm, making new noises and even calling her Dad by name. We are still working on Mama...

We've had a nice summer and now we are all looking forward to things cooling down and for fall to come again. Too bad we live and Texas, the temperature might not fall for a while...

the big move

I only wish I was talking about our big move, but I'm not. Today is the day that the Dendy family finally moved into their beautiful new house. I am so excited for them but today was a LONG day. I actually didn't do any kind of heavy lifting at all, except for maybe carrying Grace around for a bit, but I'm still tired for some reason. The house is still amazing, even though things are completely out of sorts and probably will be for a little while. I know Jennie is glad to finally be done with the apartment life, I know I am!

Forest and I decided to go see Prince Caspian tonight and took McKay and Alexa with us. It was very excellent. I haven't read the book in many many years (and I want to, but my copies of the Chronicles of Narnia are packed away!) but I am pretty sure the movie was almost spot on. There are a few changes, but minor ones. After the slaughtering of my 2nd favorite fiction novels (Harry Potter) it is a refreshing change to see them keep these fantastic books in tact. I think C.S. Lewis would be proud. After we got home, I found out Grace had been dead asleep for a while. She had a very big day too. I think all of this confuses her, she was very crabby part of the day but giddy in other parts.

I am going to get some sleep, we've got another big day ahead of us tomorrow as well!

binding my time...

It feels like the last two weeks have CRAWLED by. We closed on our house on April 30th so we are officially home owners. The only problem is that we still have 4 1/2 weeks until we can move in. I have been going crazy with spending, buying all sorts of things. As pointed out in my previous post, my couches are nested in my living room, but now they are covered with all sorts of new things. I bought a new mattress, which is also sitting in my living room in a box. It's a memory foam mattress so it's pretty tightly wrapped up and "small" but is still taking up room. Our spare bedroom looks like a storage unit and it's actually very organized, for once. We have our washer and dryer ordered and they are being delivered and installed on June 16th. I'm ready to go, so I'll sit here and wait until June 15th...

I have my schedule figured out for this entire year (through May 2009!). It's going to be a busy one too. Grace is going to school full time next year so I had to figure out how to pack in these extra 6 hours a week. I am going to be working insane hours in the summer (in one 15-day span I am working 118 hours!) and then 31 hours a week during the school year. Forest's schedule is changing for 6 weeks in June and July so he'll be back to working Mondays. He's not all that happy about it because he'll be forced to sit in traffic everyday and with these wicked insane gas prices we don't want him wasting any of that precious gas! Thankfully it's only for 6 weeks (or so they say, we'll see). Once school starts in August, I'll come over to the Dendy's at 6:45 am, help Grace get ready and then take the girls to school. I'll pick them up afterwards and work until 8. It's almost the schedule I have now, but slightly earlier. Not a problem though, I need an excuse to get out of bed in the morning or I never will.

For some reason I'm losing weight. I'm not complaining, it's good news for me, but I'd love to know what I'm doing that is causing this. I bought a book about PCOS and a meal plan that I should be eating. I have been reading through the book and am going to jump into this when we move. I'm going to stop eating certain things now and hopefully by the middle of June I'll be prepared to take this step. I am overall pretty healthy for being the size I am, but it's time to deal with this before problems start appearing. It's going to be a really tough road, but I think with the support of Forest and my friends I'll make it through the other end. I had noticed my pants were starting to look huge on me so I weighed myself the other night. I've lost 25 pounds since I looked at the scale which was probably 2 months ago. I was carrying Grace around yesterday and I had my pants nearly fall off! I have jeans that usually feel very tight when you first put them on but then stretch out in a few minutes to the right fit. I put them on today and they were too big. Then they stretched out a bit as well. I had to wear a belt to even keep them on. I am sad because I love these jeans (I have three pairs that are identical) but feel great that I'm actually losing weight! Hopefully I'll be buying new jeans soon!

a little of this a little of that

The past few days have been good. We can pretty much start breathing normally until we sign our lives away next week. Our appraisal came in at just what we needed it to and everything is good to go, so far. We are going to close on Tuesday. I am excited to get this over with but even more excited to move in! Too bad that won't be for a little while.

Speaking of houses, Jennie and Dal's house is done and they are going to close on Monday! It's such a fantastic house, I hope Gracie enjoys it and it can be a safe place for her. Both Jennie and I are so done with this apartment nonsense, we want to move in as soon as possible!

Grace's MDCP (Medically Dependent Children's Program, the program that pays for me to care for her) contract was renewed and was approved to receive 1993 hours of respite care this year over last year's 1560. That works out to about 36 hours a week. When Grace goes to school next year full time, I can only work about 30 hours a week so during the summer and vacations I am going to be glued to the Dendy family. At least I'll have a nice second home to go to! I got a raise a few weeks ago so I am overall going to be making more money this summer. Also, at the end of May I get my yearly bonus which we found out is going to be at least $400 more than they had thought. That is a very happy surprise for us!

Last night we bought a couch and a love seat from Christi Taylor, who is a newer sister in our ward. They are very nice couches, I think we will enjoy them very much. I was planning on buying brand-new couches but these are so much nicer than anything we were looking at and at the fraction of the price. She kept them in immaculate condition considering she has 4 young girls! Right now they are in our front room, looking kind of out of place! The love seat is nestled into the sofa. It's only for a few more weeks and then we can actually enjoy them!

What else is going on? I guess that covers it. We are really thankful for everything that we have been given so far this last year. It has been such an eye-opening fantastic year. About 11 months ago Jennie asked me to be Grace's caregiver and I had no idea that by doing this for her Forest and I would be able to buy our own house in less than a year! We're so blessed.

hamster heaven

I need to update more than once a week! When I don't, my posts are a million miles long. I'll try to keep this one short, I promise.

I'm pretty sure Grace said Mama the other day. We have been working with her to say it and she will, but not meaningfully. I had just fed her and turned around to clean up her bowl and she peeps up and says "Mama?" like it was a question. I turned around and said "Did you just say Mama, Grace?". She got so happy and scooted over to me and was patting my knee! I said, "Can you say Mama again?" and she kept patting my leg. I went "Ohhh, I'm not Mama!" and she just laughed. It was so darn cute. I wish she would do it again. If she could say Mama when she wanted Jennie instead of screaming at her it would make our lives so much easier!

I came home from Jennie's on Saturday and Forest said "I have some sad news for you" and I said "Oh, please don't tell me that Baby died." Well, she had. How strange is it for both of our hamsters to die exactly a week apart? I held Baby Saturday morning and she was acting totally fine. Neither of them looked sick before they died. We weren't planning on getting another one, but decided to anyway. The Dendy girls were over here yesterday and I figured they would be sad hearing about Baby's death, but I think the new hamster made up for that. I let them help us name it and the name we all agreed upon was Madison, or Matty for short. She is a big ball of fluff and so cute!

Our house is clean, for once. Pretty much everything is packed that can be packed, so I'm not sure what to do on my day off. I finally bought a pair of Crocs on Saturday and I LOVE them. I walked around in them all day yesterday and my feet felt like they were on air. I had no idea my feet could feel so comfortable. I get driven nuts by tennis shoes because I feel like my feet are suffocating and flip-flops don't give me any support. Crocs are definitely a happen medium. I'm going to buy a bunch of different colors eventually, hopefully I can get them on sale like I did on Saturday. I just love them! Now that I have great comfy shoes, maybe I'll just walk around outside all day before the dreaded heat and humidity comes...

untitled too

I had a very silly emotional moment yesterday. I was cleaning up in our spare bedroom (which is full of Dell boxes right now!) and I went to feed my two hamsters. I looked at Baby, the oldest, and she just looked really weird. She was laying funny and I thought "oh, please don't be dead!". She wasn't, she got right up when I tapped on her cage and looked at me with great annoyance. I fed her and moved down to Claire, who was also asleep. She was laying even more oddly and her eyes were partially open. I tapped on the cage and she didn't move. Our poor little Claire was gone. I kind of broke down a little bit and started crying! I know it's just a hamster, but they are like our little babies! When we got Claire, she was a blaze of gray fur. She was the fastest hamster I've ever seen, when she ran on her wheel we probably could have powered something off of it. Baby is also almost a year older than Claire is. They are two different types of hamsters, so perhaps Claire wasn't meant to live any longer than she did.

In other news, we had the inspection on the house and things are still going good. There were some cracked bricks on the west end of the house, but the inspector doesn't think they are from any foundation problems. No one will ever see the west end of the house, but just to be sure we are having a foundation expert come to look at it tomorrow. Also tomorrow, we are going to see Karmen to get the loan offically underway. I'm still a little nervous about this, but we're just giving them the information to verify what we've already told them. I'm didn't lie, so I can't imagine why we would have any issues!

I finally got my raise! It was supposed to take effect in September so on this next paycheck I am getting there will be all of the back-pay from then. It worked out for me because now that I know we're buying a house, it was like a little unintentional savings plan. I just love my job and getting paid more to do it is great. Every once in a while when things are "bad" (things most of you do for nothing, like very dirty diapers) I laugh and say that I'm really earning my money. There has not been a single day where Grace hasn't made me laugh from my very core. Next year when Grace goes to school full time, I'm going to have someway to occupy my day because I won't be working until 3! I'm thinking about going back to school and getting some sort of degree. I may never use it, but having one is something I've always wanted. We'll see! We've got a big few months ahead of us!

dramatic gracie

I took this picture the other day, Grace was so cute all bundled up in her coat and sweater when she was headed off to school. Grace belongs in a Baby Gap ad.

you are loved!

I am giving fair warning for what will happen next month. Get ready for it...I am coming to Michigan on February 10th. If that doesn't knock your socks off (if you live in Michigan, of course) then this will. Forest is coming with me! Yes, I really promise this time, we got our tickets last night. I've been promising for the last 4 trips that he would be coming with me. I may just be more excited than anyone else and the only reason I am ever going to want to leave is because I will undoubtedly miss Gracie.

On a side note, today Grace was crying at Jennie for no reason (as usual) but she had her cup of Cheerios in her hand. She handed them to Jennie, who told Grace "you can only have these if you are happy". Grace immediately started laughing, but it was so obviously a fake laugh. We were cracking up, it was so cute. She's doing a lot better, I know that she understands a huge deal of what we say to her. If she starts to cry and we tell her we're going to ignore her, she usually stops. Another fun story, I picked her up from school yesterday and if she hadn't been buckled into her chair she would have jumped clear out of it to get to me, it was so dang adorable. Things like that make me so happy that I'm doing what I'm doing, it's fantastic. Who else gets that kind of love from their employers?

Off the top of my head, I really can't think of much else that is going on. I'm really excited about our trip though, I haven't seen my sister in almost two years, I haven't seen Rob in over two years, so it will be great to see them. I realized that Rob and Forest haven't seen each other in over 5 years, long before any of us got married. A lot of things have changed, haven't they? We are planning to take a trip to Frankenmuth sometime during our visit and we're going to try to stay the night at the Bavarian Inn. It's a huge hotel will 5 indoor pools, including an adults-only pool and hot tub. It also has indoor miniature golf and a huge game room where I'm sure we will spend a lot of time. Their chicken dinners are so amazing, I think that is what I am looking forward to the most. I will just have to try not to overeat...

The weather here has been CRAZY! It had been pretty cold (even for me) for a few days then all of the sudden on Saturday it was beautiful. We hit a high somewhere in the 80's and it lasted for three days. It got a bit cooler yesterday and this morning it was cold again. I had to use an ice scraper for the first time in 4 years or so. I'm glad Dal left one for me or I would have been sitting there for a while heating my car up. I can't wait to get a garage... So, because of this weather, my fibromyalgia has been all over the place and I've been feeling stiff as a board but I take it all in stride. I move around a lot hanging out with Grace and that helps keep me from locking up. I'll suddenly feel dead tired in the middle of the day but that is another thing remedied pretty well by my job so I'm grateful for that. I can't believe I am willingly visiting Michigan in the dead of winter, at least this time I'll have a proper coat.

I also haven't updated on Courtney's progress in a while, in case you were all wondering. She is doing very well! She finally got to come home after her bone marrow transplant just after the new year and got to enter it officially cancer-free. We still continue to pray for her and hope that life can get back to normal as soon as it possibly can.

happy new year!

happy new year! jan 1 1:30 am

Well, it's official! Welcome 2008! It will be interesting to see what this year brings.

We spent most of today at Jennie and Dal's, hanging out with the girls, playing the Wii, making ornaments and eating good food. We went up to Justin to light things on fire and watch them explode. Poor Alexa almost got whacked by a renegade firework and it really shook her up! In the end she ended up having a lot of fun, but from the back of the van. Grace was giggling the entire time, she really enjoyed the lights and sounds.

Grace got the CUTEST haircut on Saturday, she looks so darling. She got a huge bean bag chair for Christmas and she was sitting in it today looking like such a big girl, I took Jennie's camera and snapped a few pictures. You also get to see one of the shirts I got her for Christmas!

what, do you think we're made of money?

Today was a very very full day!

I was scheduled to be picked up by Jennie at 9:45 this morning (and it would be the last day she'd ever have to pick me up!) but was greeted by Dal and McKay instead. So, we got over to their apartment and we all piled into the car to take a fire truck ride around Roanoke. McKay won a poster contest at school for fire safety so we were all rewarded. Unfortunately they weren't able to do it just then due to some malfunctions in their 2nd truck and we didn't want to be out joyriding in case they needed to leave quickly. They rescheduled at 4, so we headed back to the apartment.

Both the Dendy's and the Grabert's bought a "new" car today. Dal picked up his Honda Accord today while I took his Saturn off of his hands for him. So, while his is actually new, mine is just new to me. Forest had never even been in it until today, so it was really new to him! It's a nice little car, it'll do it's job in getting me around. The best part is, our insurance policy dropped a few hundred dollars due to having multiple policies and caused less than a $25 a month increase. Not bad!

After we were all done spending our wads of cash for the day (or so I thought), we headed back over to the fire station to take our ride. The trucks only seat 6 people, including the driver, and we were 7. We decided Grace was the expendable one and she sat on my lap. Grace was on cloud 9 almost the entire time, she was laughing and squealing away as we hit all sorts of bumps. Alexa was feeling car sick (I don't blame her) but managed to take pictures of random things, something she is very good at. I think it's time to get her a cheap digital camera so she can take all of the pictures she wants without wasting film. It was very fun for me, I am glad I had this after the disappointing day we had yesterday!

Grace woke up yesterday morning with pink eye, so neither of us got to go to her Christmas party! I know Jennie and I were far more bummed than Grace was, of course. I feel so bad the poor thing has to deal with pink eye. She has been so happy the past few days though, so it doesn't seem to be getting her down much.

Anyway, so, after our trip Forest called to tell me he was headed to Fry's to pick up something for Jennie's new phone (new car, new phone, new house, we're all made of money!) and found a headset I wanted. I told Jennie about it and she wanted one too! It's a Bluetooth (for you non-computer nerds out there, that means wireless) hands-free headset that converts into stereo earphones. It is very awesome and I can't wait until they are done charging tomorrow and I can mess with them. I took my new little car to pick up a present for Forest. It goes with his brand-new monster computer. This thing is a beast!! Oh yes, that also took a decent chunk out of our bank account as well, but was mostly paid for by the 3 days of pure overtime he had to work in October. So, while we're certainly not made of money, during the holidays it sure seems like we are.

I start my 4 day weekend today...and I know by Wednesday I'll be missing the laughter!

so...

I swear that I just updated a few days ago! It's been almost three weeks, really? What have I been doing? Oh, yes, it's the holidays, that part of the year when, for me, time goes flying out the window.

Everything is going well at work, Grace is getting slightly better with her problem behavior, she makes progress on so many things everyday. I have had fun going to all sorts of fun things for the girls, like McKay's choir performance and Thanksgiving dinner at school. I am going to Grace's school party tomorrow, which I am so excited for! For her many teachers and therapists, we made them a picture frame that Grace helped us sponge paint. They turned out really great! We took a picture of her painting and am going to put the picture in with a poem. Out of all of the Christmas parties, this is probably the one I am most looking forward to!

I have had fun Christmas shopping this year! Grace was the hardest to decide what to get for, but once I decided to get her some more clothes it was very easy, because she is very fun to dress. I got her a bunch of shirts from the Children's Place, along with all of the gifts for my nieces and nephew. It's such a fun place to shop and they have the cutest clothes!

Getting ready for Christmas has been interesting this year, because it's going to be just Forest and I! We have plans on Christmas Eve to visit with the Wrights, who live down the street. They aren't doing anything on Christmas Eve and they invited some of the "family-less" folks over to do a white elephant exchange. We don't have presents to open on Christmas Day (unless he and I end up getting little things for each other) so it's going to be spent munching and in the words of Forest "blowing things up with my new computer". The reason we aren't buying each other things for Christmas is because we just dropped a fairly large amount of money between our new computer and my "new" car. The Dendy's are selling me their "Bendy Dendy" car, a 1996 Saturn SL2. So, Merry Christmas to both of us! Forest is dying to try all of the new video games that our "dinosaur" won't run right now. He just needs to put the thing together!

So, if it takes me another three weeks to update, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

so clean you can eat off of it

Towards the end of my "shift" at Jennie's, McKay and Alexa decided to play with bubbles in the kitchen sink. Grace crawled in to see them and was laughing as they created a mini bubble bath. Grace loves her baths, so I'm sure she assumed it was time for that. They started to pick up the bubbles and put them on their heads and soon Grace was covered as well. Jennie came in to find all three of her girls, soaking wet and covered in bubbles. So, what else to do? Let them clean the floor! Grace was in fits of giggles and when that happens, you can't help but laugh too. I got a quick picture on my phone of the aftermath, although they were all moving so it's not the best quality. It's rather small, but you can still see the bubbles across the floor!

gracie tidbits

Some of you may know, Grace has very odd behavioral problems. This isn't rare for kids with delays, but really is the only thing about her that can be frustrating. When she sees Jennie (and occasionally me) across the room or otherwise not paying attention to her or when we eat in front of her she cries and screams. Other random things can trigger these fits as well. I would feel bad for their upstairs neighbors, but they are insanely loud themselves, so I don't feel so bad. Jennie has been seeing a doctor who specializes in behavior modification. If Grace cries because we're doing something that drives her crazy, we have to completely ignore her. Once she calms down, we have to wait about a minute to go talk to her so she can tell the difference between the bad behavior and the good behavior. We have been kind of doing this for the last two months, but not waiting the full minute. We tried this Tuesday, which was a disaster, but a good disaster. Her behavior got worse (which is normal) and she screamed for probably at least an hour. She would almost get to the minute of being calm and we'd go to praise her, but as soon as we turned around she'd wind up again. Once we fed her dinner though she was being very cute.

So, yesterday a little before dinner, Grace was screaming her head off at us and we ignored her, but the amount of time it took her to calm back down was significantly shorter. I was feeding her dinner and she was taking these HUGE theatrical bites, it was hilarious. Jennie was working on a project for McKay's class while we were watching Ratatouille, but was kind of hiding where Grace couldn't see her. She sat with me on the couch for a bit. She was laughing at the movie and every once in a while she would cuddle up next to me and just giggle. It was too cute! Grace scooted her way to the floor and poked her head around the corner to see Jennie and instead of her normal fit, she just crawled to her and laughed! Jennie ended up not needing to hide and Grace was being so good. She even ate dinner in front of her and didn't have to feed her Cheerios or play with her like she normally would have had to. We still have a little bit of a road to go, but after just one day of being very diligent Grace is already learning that crying is not going to get her what she wants. We're also trying to teach her to use the communication skills she DOES have to let us know what she wants. She's been doing pretty good with that, sometimes I have to guess what she wants, because she only says "hi", but I've become pretty good at guessing!