Alyssa

Yesterday I began the day by teasing one of my friends, Kim, about having to go into the emergency room every time they go on vacation.  Not a very nice thing to tease someone about, I know, and I ended up paying for it by the end of the day.  See, Kim's little girl broke her arm while they were visiting Utah, and then yesterday Alyssa broke her arm at school.

My mom was over having Grandma Preschool with Marcus and his cousins, Eliza and Norah, so I put Becca down for a nap and took the opportunity to meet Brian's dad at Lowes to buy a bunch of bricks for the yard.  I though it would be a quick trip, but trips like that never are, so after quite a while I got in the van, turned on the key, and put my seat belt on.  It was then that my cell phone rang - the E.V.I.L. song from Phineas and Ferb.  (That's my mom's favorite song from the show, so I made it her ring tone.)  She said that Alyssa had fallen at recces and the school nurse thought that it was broken.

I went to go pick her up and decided to pick Ethan up at the same time.  Ethan was at recess by then, and they had a heck of a time finding him.  They even brought in the wrong Ethan at one point, but we weren't there to see it, because when the secretaries were told that he was coming in, they told Alyssa and me to meet him in his classroom.

With Brian's dad at our house, we had him take the first look at Alyssa's arm, and he agreed that she needed to go in to get it looked at.  He called the emergency room, and they told him that they would most likely end up sending her to the orthopedic clinic, so we just called there and set up an appointment with them.

The doctor there said that she broke her elbow in the best possible place to break your elbow.  It should heal pretty fast, and her bright pink cast should come off in four weeks.  She has to stop playing soccer, which is real sad, because she was just getting really comfortable out in the field.  Last week her coaches started giving out a soccer pin to the best player in each game, and she won the pin for last Saturday's game.  She is able to stay in ballet, though, but she needs to be careful about what she does there.


Speaking of Alyssa, did you notice her short hair?  Last Thursday we chopped off almost eleven inches to send in to Locks of Love.

before

 It's so cute, and so much easier to brush.

after

A Perfect Day

When I found out a couple of weeks ago that the kids didn't have school on my birthday, I got so excited.  I started making plans in my head, and I made a few plans with Brian, and I got really, really excited.

You know how sometimes something sounds so cool in your head, and you build it up to be this super fabulous thing, and then it happens and it's like,  "Oh, that wasn't nearly as cool as I thought it would be"?  Yesterday was not that case at all.  It lived up to every expectation in my head and even surpassed many of those expectations.  It was perfect!

Expectation  #1: I wanted to sleep in and then have blueberry pancakes for breakfast.  Becca wasn't on board with the whole sleeping in thing, but it was not a big deal at all, and Alyssa snuck out of bed (all on her own) and made me eggs and toast for a breakfast in bed.  I love that my daughter is old enough now to not only think of fun surprises, but to actually carry them out on her own as well.  Although I think she needed a little help with something, because halfway through us hearing her bang around in the kitchen, she came upstairs, not saying a word, but motioning for Brian to get out of bed with her head.  Brian said, "Carrie, I think our daughter has a strange twitch in her neck.  I'd better go check it out."  Later, Alyssa told me that she didn't want to forget to make me breakfast in bed, so she put a post-it note on her glasses when she went to bed the night before, so she would remember.  She also told me that she thought she needed Brian's help, but didn't end up needing it.

Expectation #2:  I asked for a special mixing thing for the Kitchenaid for my present from Brian.  Brian had Ethan help him wrap presents the night before my birthday, and it was so fun, because he had to go do stuff for Elders Quorum halfway through, so he left Ethan to wrap one box on his own.  It turned out to be halfway wrapped with Santa Clause wrapping paper, and I couldn't have loved it more.  Brian said the funny thing about it is that the side he left exposed was the only place on the box that had the name of the present on it, but I never saw it for the surprise to be ruined.

So after my eggs and toast breakfast, everyone brought all the presents to our bed, and I had a great time opening them.  Alyssa gave me a green necklace (just on loan, though) that she had won with her AR Reading points at school, Ethan gave me multiple hugs and kisses,and Marcus was still tired from being dragged out of bed by Alyssa (You have to remember that this was all before 7:30) that he just lay beside me and cuddled.  Brian got me a wonderful smelling Wood Wick candle, a cool card that has lot's of information about the year 1981, the mixer thing that I wanted, baking strips to go around cake pans to make cakes bake evenly, Wilton's Cake Release, a frosting smoother, and a Fat Daddio's cake turner, which is the one Ethan had wrapped.  I think my absolute favorite is the cake turner, because it was such a surprise, and because it's so cool!  I also love that Brian took something that I love (cake) and came up with some fabulous presents all on his own.

Expectation #3: I had planned on frosting my cake that morning, and boy did I frost that cake.  I think I had so much fun that I put too much frosting on it.  It's still good, but I ended up calling it a "one slice is plenty" cake.

Expectation #4:  Taking the kids ice skating.  Alyssa and Ethan have been asking to do this for the past two years, so when I heard they had the day off school I told Brian I wanted to do something fun, and he came up with ice skating.  We dropped Becca off at my mom's, where they apparently took a walk by the river, then Becca fell asleep in the stroller, woke up once and smiled at my mom before falling right back to sleep, then slept for the rest of the time.  Then we headed to the Toyota Arena and had a great time.  Alyssa did a fabulous job skating, because she has some roller blades, and I think that helped her.  Ethan and Marcus did pretty good holding on to the cones you can push around, and Ethan was even going around on his own toward the end.

After ice skating, we took the car to get it cleaned and washed for free, at the place that we get our oil changed, then we headed home with our still sleeping Rebecca.

Expectation #5:  I wanted to have an easy pizza and root beer dinner.  Instead, Brian went shopping and prepared a Disneyland dinner for me.  (He also had all of us wear our Disneyland shirts all day.)  We had Dole whips (actually we had these right before ice skating) and Monte Cristo sandwiches and bacon wrapped asparagus, along with a salad and french fries, and root beer, of course.  It was so much better than pizza.

After dinner we hung out for a bit, the kids and I played Disneyland Uno, then Brian's parents came over to bring by my present, and we had my super chocolatey birthday cake.  It was hard to eat the cake, because we were all so full from dinner, and it was so chocolatey, but that just means that there's plenty of leftovers to enjoy today.

 It was such a wonderful day!  It went better than I had planned it in so many ways, and the best part is that is was filled with the things I love most: cake, Disneyland, and my family.

This Is What We Did Today

Or, at least, this is what Marcus and Becca did.  I took pictures.

My Sweet Baby

We're working on getting Rebecca to sleep all night in her crib.  Not necessarily sleep through the night in her crib, yet.  That will come soon.  Right now the "schedule" we're on seems to be working well enough.  Then, when I start to become a zombie from night wakings, we'll work on getting her to sleep through the night.

She really started this whole process by herself a couple of weeks ago, because she's a baby that likes to have space when she sleeps.  So right now I put her down in her crib, then each time she wakes up I bring her into bed with us, nurse her back to sleep for about a half hour, then she stirs again, and I pick her up and put her back in her crib.  In writing in doesn't sound very good, but I promise you, it's working for now.  She's actually going for longer periods of time between waking, and because I'm laying down to "nap" while I nurse her back to sleep, instead of sitting in the rocking chair, I'm still getting pretty decent rest.


So anyway.  When she has a good morning, with a couple hours of solid sleep in her crib, she wakes up so happy, and the only reason I know she's awake is that I hear her talking and singing in her room.  Then, I open the door and see her standing up and smiling a huge, "Good morning!" to me.

This is the huge "Good morning!" smile.

This is the sweet, "I see you're taking pictures of me" smile.

She Loves Us Because...

I made this "I love you because..." board for Brian for Valentine's Day and put it in our bathroom.  I've been pretty good about writing on it, and I think the best part about the whole thing is that I'm more aware of the little things he does for me, and I'm also noticing his good qualities and characteristics that I took for granted before.

The day after V-Day I snuck in while he was in the shower and wrote, "You have a cute naked bum."  I thought that on the level of scandalous things I could write, this was pretty tame, but I didn't think about the fact that our children are allowed in our bathroom, and Alyssa (gasp!) can read.  So she came in later that morning while I was brushing my teeth and went, "Oooooooooooh!" and then slightly louder and higher pitched, "OOOOooooooooohhhh!!!  Who wrote that?  Did you write that or did Dad write that?  I think Dad wrote it, because it looks like his handwriting.  Ooooohhh, he likes your bum!"  I let her believe it was him.  Is that bad of me?

I thought this all was very cute, but it was then that I decided that the more scandalous notes in the future were going to be left in code.

Last night Alyssa had her ballet pictures taken, so we went in my bathroom to put just a tiny bit of blush and lipstick on her, and she stayed in there longer than me, because I also had to get Becca ready to go.  When I got ready for bed last night I found that she had left Brian and I a cute little note.

Oh, and you can still leave name suggestions on the previous posts.  I pretty much finished up with the terrain and started placing cities, so I'm going to start using those names the next time I work on it.  Which will hopefully be today, but I have to do some housework, too.  The kitchen is in great need of cleaning after taking yesterday off.

A Call For Names

So I've written two and a half chapters of my book.  (Applause goes here.)  The thing is, though, that I think it's about time to stop calling things, "Small Kingdom," "Large Kingdom," "A Kingdom," "A City," "Another Kingdom," "Completely Different Kingdom,"- well, you get the idea.  And even though I've had a pretty good idea of the general location of things in my head, I also think it's time to map everything out for good. 

I had my brother-in-law, Eric, start to make a map over the weekend, but he only had about five minutes and not a lot of information to work with.  At least that was a start.  So I took what he started, and tried working on it last night, but I just didn't have the opportunity and time with having Rebecca crawl around and eat my papers, and having to put the kids to bed, then Becca to bed again and again.  (She has a pretty bad cold.)  Between times putting Becca to bed I told Brian that in order to work on my book I either need to stay up all night long, get up extremely early, or ignore the housework. 

Guess what I picked?  Option number 3!  I haven't even showered yet today (Don't worry Diane, I'll shower before the party tonight), and all I've eaten is cake, which is an entirely different story in itself that has to do with the dog diarrhea-ing twice in her kennel and me texting Brian to bring home chocolate cake.  He brought home the new tuxedo cake from Costco, and I've discovered that if you put your piece in the microwave for about 17 seconds it is just delicious.

Anyway, I downloaded AutoREALM mapping software and have been teaching myself how to use it all morning, and now I am finally putting my map together.  (I'm making mountains right now, and it's fun.)  And this is where you guys come in.  If you want to leave name ideas in a comment, it would help me out so much.  I have a few ideas for names of places, but I need a whole ton more.

First off, I guess you could say this is a fantasy book, but I don't want it to be a it's-hard-to-pronounce-anything type of book.  Whenever people ask me what type of book it is, the only real answer I can come up with is a Shannon Hale type of book.  She's her own genre for me.

What has before been referred to as "Small Kingdom" has a sort of Celtic feel to it in my mind, but I don't want to rip off Irish or Scottish words and just having them all get mad at me for butchering their language, and I also want it to have that Celtic feel, without people automatically thinking, "Ireland!"  Does that make sense?  Small Kingdom is also very farming and fishing oriented and is right by the ocean.

Large Kingdom is more military related, and it has a very Germanic feel to it.

The bad guy's kingdom I have no ideas about yet in that sort of way.

So I think I have the names for those kingdoms, but if someone comes up with something I like better, I'll replace it. I still need names for other kingdoms, cities, lakes, rivers, roads, oceans, etc.  Anything you can think of.  I'll get back to my mountains (oh, and the mountains!  And forests!) and trust everyone else's brains to help me out.  Thank you, everyone!