More catching up

I realized the other day after the fact that when I posted about President’s Day that I still had a week or so of posting to do and now it’s been a couple weeks since that and I have A LOT of posting to do. I’ve been doing that thing again where you start a post, realize that you need to have your calendar close by or your photos already uploaded and since you realize that you’re woefully unprepared, you close out of the post unsaved and promise that you’re going to post TOMORROW. Well, I have a lot of “tomorrows” to post for and who knows how long I’ll manage to stay awake at this point, so this may be more summary than actual posty goodness.

We’ll start will February 18th, as that is the first day on the calendar post-15th that I have a) something written on and b) photos for. In the morning, G, my mom, and I hit Lowe’s for the second time in a week, this time in order to buy those fabulous kid-size-but-very-sturdy gardening tools that we’d seen earlier in the week. We also scored some Gerber daisies (two varieties, it turned out), which we later planted in a small grouping in the front yard.
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That afternoon we picked the kids up from school, drove out to my in-laws house, and prepped & decorated for a family dinner.

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The next day we got up, got ready for the day, and then G and I headed up the hill for his best friends birthday party at the local community center. Fun was had by all, including me (I got to talk at length with an interesting woman who’d held a similar ministry position to mine back in the day)! 🙂
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After that we headed out to church, then back to town to visit with my parents. Sunday was, again, basketball and more basketball, followed by Nick working overtime and the kids and I cleaning up the house and catching up on laundry and such. Monday was President’s Day, which I already blogged at length about in my last post. Tuesday was my appointment with the rheumatogist, which I blogged about here. In case you don’t follow that link, the long and short of it is: new meds and I have to see another doctor about my pre-hypertension. Yay. I spent the rest of the day cleaning and taking kids to piano lessons and Greg got to spend the night with his Nana and Pa.

Wednesday I hung out with my parents a bit, which was weird all by myself. I went home and cleaned house until it was time to pick up kids. Around 4:45 we met up with some other scout parents and took a group over to the Lady Apache Basketball game (well, I took the kids, but Nick and his dad and G eventually showed up there). DSCN0953
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Thursday I had my appointment with my PCP, wherein I found out that due to family history, I needed to start on a beta blocker and watch my health more closely. Yay. Friday was a normal day with kids going to school, homework being done, chores, etc. We drove down to CS Friday afternoon/evening. Saturday the kids played ping pong and watched movies. My friend Sarah and her new baby came over to visit, which was lots of fun.
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G loved playing Peek-a-boo with little Serenity. 🙂

Sunday the kids went fishing at the park, then we drove back home in the afternoon.
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Monday was a regular day for us, with the kids at school and later B had scouts. Tuesday marked Nick and I’s 14th anniversary of our first date, so we had the babysitter come over after piano lessons, so we could go out to Sonoma Grill and the bookstore afterwards.
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Wednesday, March 2nd, the car wouldn’t start, as we’d miscalculated the gas mileage (our gas gauge does not work). I walked the kids in to school, a 45 minute round trip. This, of course, put us in the marginal zone for being late for our 2nd glass appointment (the replaced glass from last week having cracked once we tried opening the window). They said that the guy was running a bit late anyway, no worries, he’d be there by 11am. Well, by 11am we had a friend lined up to help us fill our gas tank. The glass guy was, of course, terribly late, so while we waited we had a playdate at our house.
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That family left after lunch. The glass guy, despite being only “45 minutes” away at 10:30am, showed up at 2:35pm. Needless to say, we won’t be doing business with the Glass Doctor again.

Thursday the 3rd all the kids went to their various schools & I had lunch with my friend Em and her daughter H. We discussed the Wii game Animal Crossing in great detail, as my whole family is obsessed with it, and H. is an expert player. That evening I went out once again with B’s Tiger Cub den (and one other), this time to tour the local TV station during the evening broadcast, which we were supposed to appear on, but due to scheduling and technical difficulties, we did not appear on. Ah well, the tour was interesting and the kids had a pretty good time.
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Friday, March 4th. we went over to my friend JP’s house for a playdate. G loves her daughter K, so all was well there.
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Afterward we spent the afternoon cleaning up before hosting a family from church for dinner. We had a fabulous time with our friends and the kids loved making a movie “show” and videotaping it for our later viewing pleasure. 🙂
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Saturday was a church day, then afterwards Nick headed out to Men’s Club while the kids and I headed out to Pizza Hut with Nick’s parents and sister and her girls. Sunday was yet more basketball, Nick working more overtime, and us cleaning more of the house. Monday was the first official day of Spring Break. D has spent several nights at his Nana and Pa’s house. DSCN1093 The younger kids and I made a picnic lunch and toured Mrs. Lee’s Daffodiil Garden before heading our to our friend’s house in Gladewater for the afternoon. We played at their house, then played over at R’s school playground before coming home for the evening. DSCN1130Today we spent the day playing video games and hosting a playdate with one of Ben’s friends DSCN1159and missing our D. Tomorrow he comes home, though, and B will get his turn at Nana and Pa’s house. 🙂

That’s it. Hope that was coherent enough for you. More photos can be found at flickr.com, of course.

Thanksgivings R Us

We’ve had about 5 Thanksgivings this year. I am full up to the brim with turkey and may die if I have to have it again this year.

Our first Thanksgiving was on Nov 17th at Nick’s work. Greg and I were only bringing stuff up to Nick, but we got invited to stay, so we did. There were lots of non-Thanksgiving-like foods (7 layer taco dip, mac&cheese, broccoli/cheese casserole) there, so we mostly got some of those, so as not to kill ourselves too early in the series.

On Nov 18th was G’s MDO Thanksgiving event. I admit here that I totally missed it. I completely forgot it was happening. Really all they did was watch Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and eat popcorn, so it’s not like I missed much. Here’s a picture I took afterwards of him in his “Native American” vest.
Greg in his Indian Scout vest from MDO Thanksgiving

Nov 19th we spent washing & packing for our trip to Austin for Real Thanksgiving(tm) at April’s house. We drove down first thing Saturday morning and spent the day there eating and eating and then watching the A&M vs. UNL game (it’s very trippy to watch that with someone who formerly worked at UNL and now works at TAMU all while in Austin, it really is). I have zero pictures of that event because I still didn’t have my camera cord in yet. I took tons of photos on my sisters camera, but she didn’t have an internet connection to upload to, so the photos are stuck there until Christmas. *sigh* Sunday we got up, ate a really huge breakfast, divvied up the leftovers, then hit Whole Foods for more goodies before heading back home.

Nov 22nd-24th it was just me and all three kids at home. We cleaned out their room, top to bottom, including all their dresser drawers and closet messes. We weeded out anything that was stained or had holes or just wasn’t loved. We ended up keeping only about 1/3 of G’s clothes, 1/2 of B’s and nearly all of D’s (he had the least). One day we spent literally half the day at the zoo.

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Another day we picnicked in the living room.

Greg wanted everyone to picnic, but it was too cold, so we indoor picnicked.

Actual Thanksgiving Day we got up and played Macy’s Parade Bingo while watching said parade. Around 12:30pm our guests arrived. We’d asked at church who didn’t have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving and so we ended up hosting a nice couple that we hadn’t met before. They weren’t able to visit family because of work and their family that was supposed to come was unable to due to recovery from a car accident, so we all had the meal together. Nick fixed his favorite new recipes from all those Thanksgiving shows that we’ve watched over the years. 98% of it was great. The remaining 2% was edible, just a bit watery. We had a fabulous time and now have two new fiends at church. 🙂

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Friday we stayed home. The kids watched movies and played outside. Nick watched football games. I cleaned up messes and did laundry and played with kids. It was a good day, too. We ended the day with the house just as clean as it was before the guests arrived and I’ve managed to keep it up that way every since. Saturday Nick taught Sabbath school to the younger kids.DSCN0259DSCN0277

That night we had yet another Thanksgiving type meal at Nick’s parents house (though we call it the Holcomb Anniversary Dinner). The kids had fun running around with their cousins and roasting marshmallows on the fire. The rest of us had fun talking and eating. We had a family picture taken of just our little family and another one of the extended family (although not on my camera; I need to get a copy of that still).DSCN0293

Sunday we spent recovering and eating yet more leftovers.  Now it’s the last day of November and I refuse to eat any more leftover Thanksgiving. Bwahahaha.

Box Car Racing

Tonight was the Box Car races at our Scout Pack Meeting:
Tiger cubs line up with their box cars.

Tiger cubs line up with their fairly large cars for the parade around the cafeteria.  B was very excited to be an official racer this year after a few years of just racing the other “babies” at the meetings.

A webelo helps Greg fix his box car tire.

A webelo helps G put a tire back on his box.  Apparently I picked up the wrong side of velcro when gluing and affixed two scratchy sides instead of one smooth & one scratchy.  The tires had to be velcroed on because there was a rule that the tires needed to be taken off and put back on by each scouts “pit crew” in between laps of the race.  There wasn’t any other younger kids there for G to race this year, but he did get to run around with the older kids after the official races were over, so that made him very happy.

Webelos & their box cars.

The Webelos line up with their cars on stage for picture taking.  Notice how most of theirs are tiny?  That’s because after 3 years of scouting they’ve figured out that a smaller car means a faster racer.  The kids with bigger cars are new to scouting.

Box car racing!

Outside just before the race started.  We were pretty sure the instructions called for lighted headlights, so our boys glowed out in the darkness. All the racing photos came out as a blur.

back to normalcy

Yes, I am still alive. No, no one asked. I just assumed someone out there might care. Hmm.

In any case, I’m home again. I’ve actually been home since Friday night, but my best friend came up for the weekend and we spent the time playing instead of doing useful things.

Last week I flew to California to meet my birthmother and my half-brother. The week went really well, much better than I expected. They’re very nice people. We exchanged gifts, did some much needed talking about important things, had a few meals. It was nice.

The weird part is that I felt like I was gone for six months and my outlook on life has totally changed. I hadn’t thought much before about all the things I have and all the wonderful trips I’ve been on and stuff. Now it’s all that I think about. I am so totally blessed in life. It could have been so very different for me. I just…wow. Yeah.

We’re all going to keep in touch. It was a nice visit. Hopefully they’ll come out to visit me once I’ve moved into a house.

In other news, we’re house hunting again. We have an awesome realtor and we know where we’re looking and what kind of house we’re looking for. We think we’ll prolly find one within the next month or so. I have no idea how we’re going to get out of our apartment lease early, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes.

I spent yesterday redecorating my bedroom. It needed it. I repainted some picture frames, framed some other art, hung it all up. I also made a canopy of sorts for my bed, which looks awesome. I’m working on painting my dresser blue. I’ve got it half-way done and Nick is bringing me more paint when he comes home tonight. 🙂

Today I’m working on a picture album for last year. Yeah, I know, I should have had that done before my trip to California, but some things just take longer to get to than others. Oh well.

Have a great day!

Productive…

Well, the meds have finally kicked in and I’m feeling good for the time being.

Took David to Mother Goose Time this morning…which was fun, but I was so out-of-it that I accidentally left the trunk open. Luckily there was nothing worth stealing in there. 🙂

We went to Target this afternoon to get Little Man his winter clothes. I spent way too much money, but it was fun. 🙂 David got 2 pants outfits and a snow suit. I got a fake poinsettia, 2 cheap festive place mats, and a corner wire shelf for the kitchen.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving

Hello…hope everyone out there had a great Thanksgiving. I know I did (and that even takes into account the fact that I’m still sick). 🙂

We went up to see my in-laws, and my family (the Larson’s joined us for Thanksgiving day. The day after, we Holcomb’s all went to the zoo. Tyler has an awesome free zoo. 🙂 Baby giraffes are cool.

Saturday we went to church and I was dizzy enough to need help standing up. That was fun.

That night, Nick and I had a date night. We had dinner at a fairly good Mediterranean restaurant, then saw the Harry Potter movie. Oh, it was lovely. I want to see it again already. (Of course it did make me want to reread the book, so that’s what I’m wasting my time doing today)

Yesterday we were mostly lazy…ok, me and Mandy were lazy. We watched “I Love Lucy” re-runs for most of the day. Other people did useful stuff, I’m sure. I felt like crap, and only left the couch in order to go back to bed in the afternoon.

After I woke up, my little family drove back to Dallas. woo-hoo.

I have a doctor’s appointment again today. Seems I’m going to spend most of my year at the doctor’s office, doesn’t it? *sigh* Oh well. She said come back if I wasn’t well in two weeks. It’s been longer than that. My ears still feel like exploding. Bleh.

Anyway, that’s it.