Mixed emotions.

First a quick update on our week. Olivia and I went to Darrian's birthday party last Saturday which was moved in doors due to the enormous amount of rain we got her last weekend. It rained for 3 days here, but we were grateful for the much needed moisture. Here is Olivia and Bella. The kids had fun playing games and hanging out. Here is some twister madness..

After the party Olivia and I went with Alyssa and her girls to this ceramics place in the Orchard's Center called Fire it up Ceramics. It might be my new favorite thing. I am not really that artsy fartsy as my friends can attest to, but this was fun. They have all sorts of things you can paint and fire that are fairly inexpensive and would be fun gifts. Olivia painted an 8 inch letter "o" and I painted an "a" for Olivia's and Alex's rooms. We get them back tomorrow and I will post pictures of them later.

Saturday night Jon and I were able to escape our kids for some alone time since he has been working a ton. Jon and I have found a new hobby of looking at properties that are for sale in our area that we would love to own and finding that great deal with all the foreclosures out there. Jon found one last week in a great neighborhood in the area that sits on 2 acres. It is bank owned and priced well below anything else in the neighborhood. In our dreams we would love to own this home but it is a 3 bedroom ranch with an unfinished basement so we would be starting all over on finishing a basement but the home, property, and location, are all beautiful. We went to go look at the property and were able to walk through this house and of course fell in love. Too bad we have a home we would have to sell to pull it off. We went out to eat at Costa Vida (el yummy-o) and saw the new batman movie. Along with that I saw the Twilight trailer on the big screen for the first time before the movie. This of course was accompanied by the gasping of most of the girls in the theatre when it started and then giggling and quiet chatter after the trailer was over. Jon was like what is that all about and I had to explain "The Twilight phenomenon, duh." Save the date hunny for my girls night in November!!

The first part of the week we spent trying to see what the chances are of actually being able to get into this house between the mortgage company and a realtor. We had someone come and look at our home to see if we even would be able to sell it in the soft market here to get what we need out of it. We are still waiting to hear back from him but at this point it isn't looking too awesome that we would be able to get our house on the market and get it sold in a reasonable amount of time. I guess we will see what he says when we hear back.

Another highlight of my week is getting a new wireless ergonomic mouse. Even cooler, it's pink! Hopefully my wrist won't hurt as bad when I work a ton. Here it is, isn't it cool? Funny the kinds of things I now think are cool, as my husband is now rolling his eyes at me.

Olivia took a really hard crash on her bike on Wednesday and landed right on her chin. She has this awful looking bruise and a bad gash on her chin. I luckily had some left over steri strips from Cody's mishap a few weeks ago and after taking them off today the cut looks actually really good compared to a few days ago. She also bit down on her lower gums really hard since there are no teeth there yet and took out a big chunk there. ye-ouch! We see the dentist next month so we will see what he says about it. Hopefully it is ok.
So that is about it for updates, on to mixed emotions and more about my inner workings. My girlfriend Wendy's mother went into the hospital last week with mysterious issues and they came back saying she had some type of cancer. Another blogging Friend Sue's father passed away on Sunday from Cancer. I borrowed a movie from my mom called Here on Earth and the twist in the plot here is the girl has cancer and dies. I was reading a friend's blog this week about the crappy side effects she is experiencing from Taxotere (or Tax-o-terrible as my chemo nurse used to say) with her eyes watering, mouth sores, and just food having absolutely no good taste. These things I experienced myself doing this drug so I was right in line with the advice on different things to try. I hope they help Heather!! Then I rented a movie that I had heard was good last night called In the land of Women, can you guess what happens here?? Meg Ryan gets breast cancer.....doesn't die though. At least in the time frame of the movie. Annette called me this morning to tell me that in fact Wendy's mom does have cancer and they found out it is called mesothelioma. So this has been my emotional world the last week. Cancer, cancer, cancer.

I just feel like cancer is always lurking there in the corner to show it's nasty face. I take it so personally every time I hear about if affecting another person's life, taking some one's life (even a fictional life), forcing a loved one to deal with the diagnosis of a family member, watching the suffering...... I am actually grateful, as dumb as that may sound, for my cancer experience as it has opened my eyes to many things I wasn't able to see before and brought new perspective to my life. I think I will forever seek to be the supporter of women going through the same things I experienced and want to be a source of strength and comfort to them, and to anyone dealing with any aspect of cancer. I just wish sometimes that it wasn't such and emotional roller coaster day to day. That it didn't profoundly effect me to the inner core, even hearing the word cancer. The new "C" word. But perhaps that's what keeps the strong connection there for me and the strong desire to do everything I can to help find a cure, raise money for the cause, donate my time and efforts to support this cause, and forever be the supporter of other's dealing with this. I hope that in my life time we are able to see a cure to this awful disease.

Week of hair cuts.

It has been a long week. I have had to work a lot and just felt like there has always been a million things on the to do list. Jon was on call over the weekend so the kids and I went with my friend Alyssa to walk around the art in the park exhibit and craft show vendors. This is a huge deal for the city as we are know for all the sculptures throughout the city so people from all over the country travel here to sell sculptures and attend the Sculpture show. My kids always have the greatest time with Alyssa's twins who are just one year younger and are also a boy and girl. We rode on the train, which is always a big hit with the kids.

Here is the kids walking around with us to the craft booths. How cute are they all holding hands?

Then of course we had to play at the park and ride the tire swing...

Man those kids are a riot! Monday I had to go to work to attend a web conference in the afternoon. Yipee skippy. Good times. Moving on...

Wednesday I met up with Alyssa again to go and get the kiddos backpacks for school. The twins and her twins are going to the same preschool and needed to have a standard size back back with one pocket. I guess she said the ones with multiple pockets are too confusing for them which I suppose makes sense. I haven't had lots of luck finding any that are under $20 and lets face it, who has $60 to drop on 3 back packs, not this kid. So I have been waiting for them to go on sale and Kohls was the place plus I had a 15% off coupon which always helps. So here is what we ended up with...

Cars, Ariel, and High School Musical. Isn't it hysterical that Cody's backpack is as big as he is? Or should I say as small as he is?

My friend Aislinn took her daughter to get her hair cut this week. Bella has been wanting to cut her hair and donate it to get wigs made since I was diagnosed. To help cancer patients like me. How sweet huh? She finally coaxed mom into taking her and she is such an adorable little girl. She looks so cute with her new short cut. Check out her blog to see her story about that.

And this is seriously a coincidence. Last night Jon got the clippers out to cut Cody's hair and both the girls were all over that. Olivia wanted to cut her hair shorter than I actually let her a few months ago so she said, can I cut my hair to my shoulders now? So I took a deep breath and cut away.....It isn't perfectly straight so I might have to go get it fixed, but not bad for the first time I have ever really cut hair. As soon as Olivia was done of course Alex was all over that wanting the same as Olivia so here they are. Alex and Olivia to their shoulders and Cody buzzed all over. I took a bunch off Alex's hair. Just look at her picture above with her backpack compared to this one.

Nice faces guys. My new favorite from both of my girls...The eye rolling. Seriously?? Aren't they too young to be this obnoxious? Yeah, apparently NO!

Olivia will be excited to see Bella with both of them having new cuts!

Who's up to Race for the Cure?

I am finally going to be doing The Race for the Cure this year. The last 2 years I have wanted to but was too sick the first year and had committed to participating in the Hope Lives Gala to raise money for the support group here in town. I am so excited to finally be able to do this! Denver hosts one of the biggest races in the country. From the Denver Post Newspaper "The 2007 Denver Race, which boasted 61,860 participants, is one of the largest footraces in Colorado's history, and the second largest Komen Race for the Cure® in the nation." Can you believe that, it is huge! That is a lot of people racing for the cure and I am excited to be signed up to be one of them this year. I am just registered as an individual participant and would love to share this experience with any family or friends that would like to do the race. It is Sunday October 5th. To sign up to participate in the race click here and then let me know so we can car pool! Or if you would like to donate to the race under my name click here. Thanks for everyone's support to help find a cure!

Today is also Buddy Check 9 day so I hope everyone remembers to do their monthly self breast exams today and then remind all the other women in your life to do the same. Here is the message from Kim with Buddy check 9...
Here at 9News we like the number 9 and that's why we use the 9th of the month to remind you about Buddy Check 9. We hope you will take a few minutes today to perform a breast self exam and then remind a friend or family member to do the same thing. While there is nothing "lucky" about breast cancer, early detection can dramatically change the outcome of any diagnosis. Many breast cancer survivors express their luck in learning their breast cancer was in the early stages. A self exam may lead to the diagnosis, or it could be the last minute decision to book a mammogram, or maybe the cancer is found after a doctor's clinical exam. When cancer is caught, treated and eliminated, luck abounds.

Don't you feel lucky to be alive?

If so, join us at the Race for the Cure in Denver on Sunday October 5th. Register now at www.komendenver.org or better yet gather up a team of people to show your commitment to ending breast cancer forever.

Love Love Loved Lake McConaughy

This is probably my new favorite lake to camp at. Even though it felt like it took forever to drive there (almost 4 hours pulling the camper), we had so much fun. We went out with Jon's buddy Jeff from work who brought his dog Cabo and his boat. It was hot, the sand was fine and felt awesome on your bare feet, and the lake is huge. It was also awesome in the fact that you just park your camper right there on the water's edge where at Glendo you have to park behind and cable and lug all your junk and the kids junk down to the water's edge and it is a large pain in the butt. We even saw some people para sailing, that would be fun to try! Here is a picture of us in the boat but you can see how close the camper is to the water in the background on the right side of the picture. It was amazing how they did things here. All these tractors hooked up to your campers and pulled them down the beach for you so you didn't get your vehicles stuck in the sand and also launched boats right there from the beach.

Needless to say it was awesome. The kids had the time of their lives. They each got a turn to drive the boat. The girls were both a little timid about it but thought it was cool.

Then when Cody got his turn he immediately turned the wheel to the left and we all flew sideways. It was hysterical.

The kids all had a blast playing in the sand and getting buried in the sand.

Cody even tried to bury his new best friend Cabo in the sand.We had a big wind and rain storm come up for a big on Saturday which was no fun when you were outside since the sand was blowing everywhere, ouch! But Cody enjoyed watching it from inside the camper. This one always has to know what is going on!We even caught some frogs which the kids all thought was pretty neat.Until this happened....

And either from Olivia stepping on it or the dog man handling it we didn't have a very happy frog and he ended up filling up with air and getting all bloated so we couldn't take him back to our beach with us and we ended up with this....

Poor little O! All in all we had an excellent time and can't wait to repeat it hopefully sometime soon.

As far as my book, Breaking Dawn, from the Stephanie Meyer Twilight series....nobody in Ogallala did end up carrying it so we stopped in Wal Mart in Sterling on the way back, no dice, sold out. Stopped next at Wal Mart in Fort Morgan and finally got it. Sheesh! All that time at the beach and in the car I could have been reading! Blast! Oh well, have it now and I am about 1/2 way done. This one is about 750 pages though, it's a doosey. I am enjoying it just as much as the others now that some things are starting to make sense. In the beginning I was a bit irritated, but I am not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn't gotten around to it yet.

Also brings me around to the small town bit. I think small towns are great, but lets face it if everyone wanted to live in a small town we wouldn't have them. Jon and I were talking about it on the way out there and I have to say they are quaint but my bare minimum basics for a town is at least a wal mart or at least reasonable driving distance to one, say 15 min or so. Even then I would want to live within at least an hour of a mall. So I warned Jon in case he ever thought of moving us anywhere of my requirements. If that makes me "big city", I guess that's what I am...and proud of it.

Other than that things have been pretty quite on the home front since we have been home. Cody went in Monday to have his one long stitch torn out of his knee, but it was actually a breeze clipped the knot on one side and it pulled right out. He didn't even flinch. Afterwards he said, mom that didn't even hurt, not even a little bit. That was awesome. Hopefully the stitches thing doesn't become a regular occurrence.

On a funny note this one is going to be the death of me....

This child knows exactly what to do to push her mommy's buttons. She marches to the beat of her own drum. She is never in a hurry, and most especially not when I am in a hurry. She isn't fond of listening. Likes to argue about almost everything I say to her. Good thing she is such a cutie. Today after she was supposed to be taking a nap and didn't. I let her know. Mommy is a little mad at you right now Alex. This worried expression came over her face and she got right into my face and said, "But mom do you love me?" Of course I grabbed her and kissed her and said, "Of course mommy will always love you no matter what, but when you're naughty it makes mommy upset." And she asked, "But you still love me?" and I said, "of course." Then this evening she pulled the same thing with my mom when she got after her for not listening. "Do you like me grandma?" Where does this child get these things? She's never heard it from me.....silly girl.

Am I being Censored on my own blog?

So as I have come to find out, even drama can happen on your blog..... A few posts ago I apparently offended someone with my hick town comment, which I am not going to apologize for, since it was a joke after all. If you missed the drama feel free to read the comments from the previous post "What planet are you from?". I guess now would be an appropriate time to give fair warning to all the lurking blog stalkers I have (which I am totally cool with) that I am a sarcastic person and if you are easily offended and can't take it, don't read. Save the drama for your mamma! :-) I won't warn those who actually know me in real life outside of the blogging world since you all know what I am like and continue to love me the way I am and know I would never hurt anyone's feelings on purpose. Only you can choose to make something offend you, I just write about life from my perspective, not out to intentionally offend or upset anyone. So feel free to continue to read and lurk and see life through my eyes if you can pull up your big girl panties and deal with it. mmm-k!