My Gratitude Post

As gratitude posts go, this will be kinda short. I'm just going to focus on what I'm most grateful for at the moment.

•Sweet girls who let me sleep (for the most part) on the couch yesterday afternoon while they watched TV.

•Quick and easy to make Lipton's Chicken Noodle soup, which was our "exciting dinner" last night, as that was the only thing I could stomach at the time.

•Brave and selfless men and women who have/are sacrificing and suffering more than I was yesterday to protect our country and what it stands for. (Listening to McCain's POW experiences were humbling and reminded me that I really don't have it "that bad", even when I do get my stupid migraines.)

•A wonderful, loving, selfless husband, who after a long day of work (12+ hours) stopped by the pharmacy to buy me drugs.

•Waking up this morning with only a small headache which is easily managed.

•Deciding to go to the gym today even when I really didn't feel like it.

•Inspiration and personal revelation as I have been struggling with my RS lesson for this weekend but am finally starting to feel the Lord's influence in where He wants me to take it.

So, to sum up... I'm not writhing in pain on the couch anymore. Yay! But I am needing to work on my RS lesson right now, so my Labor Day Weekend post will still have to wait. Soon though. :)

Foiled

My plan, that is. I was planning to post about our Labor Day weekend this afternoon. Then a migraine hit and I couldn't find my Excedrin. So, please accept a raincheck while I go die on my couch. It would figure that Ryan has to work late tonight. But thankfully (that is so horrible to say but at this moment, I really mean it) Enrichment was cancelled tonight. If by some miracle, I get to a point where I am not wishing I were dead, I'll come back and post. Otherwise, you know where to find me. And if you have any Excedrin, can I please have two?

Rori is 2...ish!

As you may recall, poor Rori was neglected for her real birthday more than a month ago.  Acadia was in Massachusetts and we had just gotten home from North Carolina with Ryan turning around and flying out to Massachusetts the next day.  We did go out to dinner with her and she did get one of her gifts from one of her grandmas early (Thank you Mom - she did watch some Blue's Clues on the plane!) but other than that, you wouldn't have known it was her b-day.  Thankfully, she's too young to know too! lol

So, now that we were back from all our vacations and finally together at home, we had a little party for her.  We invited some friends to come over for dinner and then cake and ice cream.  Here are some pics:







You'll notice that this year, eating her cake was a totally different experience than last time. lol













Playing with her presents:








So, Happy 2nd-ish Birthday Rori!  Hopefully next year we'll have your party closer to your actual birthday. lol

I've got some major catching up to do!

I suppose I will post in order of events that I need to catch up on.  First, I will quickly go back and revisit our camping trip to Ft. Bragg.  I made this montage from some of the pics we took.  I'm sorry the YouTube quality is lame. :S



***Note: Sound was disabled because the song is copyrited. :S

Back to School

I think we're the only school district starting school today and I'm still not sure why it is today, but today it is! 
Acadia was very excited to learn that her 4th grade teacher would be the same teacher that she had and LOVED in 2nd grade!  Mrs. G. was sweet and sent Acadia a little note during the summer saying how excited she was to have Cadi in her class again.  I think this will be a great year. :)

Last night, Acadia had me put her hair in curlers after her shower.  She didn't want it curly, just wavy, thankfully, since I was out of hairspray and that was all she could have had anyway. lol  This morning she woke up early - about 20 minutes before my alarm was set and tried TWICE to wake me up.  Eager much?  She quickly had breakfast, dressed, had me paint her nails, do her hair, double checked all the things she needed to bring today, and took a few pics.  Then Rori and I drove her to school!

I'm excited to hear about her first day.  She's very excited, was curious to see who would be in her class with her, and slightly nervous about the new music teacher since she loved the last one so much (she retired).

Here are some pics we took this morning:






Dropping Cadi off at her classroom:


Acadia and her teacher:

It's never too late to change the direction you're headed.

So, we've decided not to go to Hell. As tempting as it was. lol

Turns out a few things were getting in the way. First and foremost, we completely forgot that Cadi is pet sitting for our neighbors and they won't be back until Monday. lol... oops.
But that's okay because it turns out our friends like us enough to skip camping and instead drive all the way here to spend the weekend with us in our neck of the woods! We're so excited! They've never been here before and we think they'll love it! The only problem will be that they are very allergic to dogs. Yeah and we, uh, have one. So we're ditching him with a friend asap and then I'm thoroughly cleaning our house. I have to wash all the walls/floors/surfaces and shampoo all the carpets and furniture. In two days. Yeah, wish me luck with that.
So far things have been really quiet in our ward as far as "needs" go and since today I did get an urgent call that required immediate attention for a couple of hours, I'm hoping that will be the only "excitement" for this week and not the beginnings of a snowball effect or something. lol So yeah... wish me luck with that, too! lol

And if you're close by and have nothing better to do... wanna come help me clean my house? ;)

Going to Hell

We got a call from some friends today who are interested in a last minute camping trip. They are in Pocatello, ID. We're in Vancouver, WA. The halfway point... Hell's Canyon. None of us have been there before so we're checking out some info and are planning on going next weekend as a last fling before school starts.

And to think, I just got the car thoroughly washed and vacuumed TWO DAYS ago and only JUST TODAY finished the laundry (sleeping bags and coats) from last week. If I had known... I would have held off on most of that. But hey, that's life. And that's what you get when you try to do something spontaneously. It should be fun though! :)