Trip to Florida

The weekend before Halloween, my best friend and I got on a plane to go spend five days celebrating her 30th birthday down in Florida with her family.

Her parents have the most beautiful condo on the Isle of Capri, between Marco and Naples. It was astounding walking in to their condo. Beautifully decorated and very spacious. It has a gorgeous linei(I have no idea how to spell that, but it means deck that looks on to water, I'd like to start calling my porch that, regardless of the lack of water because I like saying that word) The room we slept in has a king sized bed that was THE MOST COMFORTABLE thing I've EVER slept in. I love that bed, and thinking about it makes me a little sad because I miss it.

When we flew in, Stef's mom picked us up, and we went to the biggest outlet mall I've ever seen. It was closing shortly after we got there so we just hit a few shops and then went to dinner. Definitely a good way to kick off our weekend. We went back to the condo and pretty much just curled up in the fabulous bed and watched tv til we passed out. The next day was Stef's actual birthday, so we drove to Delray Beach and met her brother and sister in law at the Marriot there. It was a gorgeous hotel. We had a view of the ocean from our room.

 We went and had lunch and then Stef's mom had booked her and I massages that afternoon. I honestly was so relaxed after that massage I could have passed out for the rest of the day. But we went to Stef's parent's room and they had gotten her a cake and she opened up presents and we all had drinks and then we went down to the pool to sit out in the sun for a bit. After awhile Stef and I went upstairs and spent two hours getting ready for the night. We had a champagne toast to Stef before we went to dinner and then we made our way out.

We had the most amazing dinner at a restaurant called Prime. It was a steak and sushi place. Hand to God, some of the best food I've ever had. The sushi was amazing and we had some appetizers that were to die for.

This is all of us at dinner. Our waiter took this photo and I really wish we would have thought to get a picture of him. When we introduced himself he said his name and then also that some people like to call him Robert Downey Jr. I hadn't really looked at him when he said that, but when I looked up, I could have died, he looked EXACTLY like Robert Downey Jr. Like, had I seen him on the street, I would have thought it was the actor. It was amazing.

We spent the rest of the night at two different bars. The first was called the Office I think. It was pretty cool, very hip. It was a restaurant too, but there was standing room at the bar. I have to break here to say that Stef' sister in law is pregnant, and she was totally awesome the whole night. When I was pregnant, there is NO way I would have gone out with a bunch of people intent on getting drunk. But she was more than a trooper, she actually enjoyed herself. I wish I was that kind of selfless. ;)

The second place we went to was a bar called Caliente. It had 275 different kinds of Tequila. It was a pretty awesome little club, but the DJ kinda sucked. He was playing great music, but he would only play like 30 seconds of each song. His "mixing" left a little to be desired. We stayed there for awhile, but eventually grew tired of it, and decided to head back to the hotel. There weren't too many places that were non smoking for Stef's sister in law, so we just headed back to the room.

The rest of the weekend we did pretty much three things. Shopping, laying out by the pool, and eating. We went back to Stef's parents' condo the day after her birthday. It really was a perfect vacation. No time constraints, no worries, just relaxing. I missed the kids and I know she missed hers too, but it was much needed after a very stressful year for both of us. We definitely came back with WAY more than we went there with. It was hilarious how much stuff we had in our suitcases. Stef had to take some out and put some of it in our carry ons to make sure hers was under 50 lbs!

 So that was our jaunt down to Florida. I had a great time and I'm so glad I was there to celebrate my best friend's 30th birthday. May this be her best decade yet. I love you mama!! :)

Dan Wheldon

So many times today the tragic death of Dan Wheldon has popped in to my head. I'm really not one to obsess about sad events in the world. I care and include in my prayers the people who are involved, but normally I don't get too freaked out by things. I just can't stop thinking about how sad it is that this young husband, and father of two little boys died so suddenly yesterday.

Of course I know exactly WHY I can't stop thinking about his wife and sons. I have been standing on the brink of being that woman for the last six months. I absolutely do NOT dwell on this, but I am perfectly clear that at any given moment someone could show up here to tell me that my life and my son's lives will never be the same. I don't think about it much because it's terrifying to think about. I have no idea how I'd truly react to it. I'm sure that I would fall off one edge or the other. I'd either break down completely or I wouldn't be able to deal with it at all on an emotional level. I'd like to think at first I would just get affairs in order and take care of our life and our sons and not break down... but I also can see how easy it would be to totally shut down and not be able to do anything but cry and lay in bed.

As I let myself think about it, just for the purpose of writing this, I really hope I could do a balance of both. When something so tragic, so unimaginable happens, you know the person who is gone would not want you to be sad and inconsolable, just as if it was you, you would want people to be okay and eventually go on with life. I suppose the best way to honor someone is to continue on with your life and do all the things that that person would want you to do and to have and to experience.

The only comfort I can see for Dan Wheldon's wife is that her husband left a truly good legacy for his sons. I'm not a big racing fan, but being that I live in Indianapolis, I know who two time Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon is. Whenever the news would talk about him it would always be to say what a good person he was, a good father, and an asset to the sport. There will be no end to the stories his young sons will grow up hearing and a plethera of news coverage and video and pictures of their father. Hopefully on some level they will feel like they knew him. When it comes to my sons, on a subconcious level I know I take a million pictures and write in this blog and write in a journal to them and make scrapbooks and make sure that they know and are close to my close friends and family so that if there was ever a time I or Grover wasn't there for them, they would know exactly how much we love them and would have more than enough access to information about who we are and what we believed in.

As sad as this man's death was, it reinforces to me that there is not always tomorrow. That every day I will tell my kids and husband and family that I love them and to enjoy every moment of our journey through life. 

Lysander's 4th Birthday

Okay, the terrible twos suck... the horrifying threes suck WAY worse. So I had a 2 year old and a 3 year old up until this past Sunday... when Lysander finally turned 4!!! I swear, over night he turned in to the sweetest, most loving, and well behaved little boy!! Of course that could have something to do with the awesome party he was thrown on his birthday ;)

I woke up feeling AWFUL. Thank goodness Stef came over super early to help  me out with everything AND she brought drugs with her left over from her cold so I got through the day without dying. We finished getting the house cleaned up and then decorated and finished food. My mom got here and brought the rest of what we needed and the party started.

Lysander is my kid who is not into crowds for very long. He does it for as long as he can and then he needs some quiet. So I rushed the party along a bit so that he could get through everything before he got crabby. First everyone ate. Of course Lysander didn't want to eat the pulled pork that I made because he liked it, so all the kids had hotdogs. As soon as everyone was done eating, I immediately did presents since he had been asking for them since the first one had been set on the table.

This is only from my mom and Stef and this was when Lysander started wanting to open them!

Unfortunately we made the mistake of opening one of my mom's first and it was Transformer's Play Doh and he didn't want to keep opening, he just wanted to play!

This is my neice Hannah. She looked so insanely adorable at the party. And she was a PERFECT little girl!

This is toward the end of present opening. We were practically lost in wrapping paper. The first thing he did after we finished was ask to play with the play doh!

I had the COLTS game on and they made a good run of it... here the score was 17-0 Colts. They ended up losing anyway, and went 0-4 on Lysander's 4th birthday. Fun Fact: One week before the Colts went to the Superbowl and won, I found out I was pregnant with Lysander.

These were the best cupcakes in the world. S'mores cupcakes from the Flying Cupcake on Mass Ave. Totally the best thing ever.

Everyone was cheering for him for blowing out the candle. He was so sweet. Right after this Daddy finally called and he even talked to Daddy on Skype, which he normally doesn't do. :)

Totally weird but Lysander was all about the cupcake and Isaac who normally has the sweet tooth, took advantage of the Transformer's Play Doh being abandoned for a moment. I like this picture a lot though.

His birthday was a really fun day. Exhausting and now I'm totally sick, but we had a lot of fun. He got some great gifts, and the awesome thing about that is that it's all stuff Isaac can play with too because they are so close in age. Unfortunately since then I've been batteling this cold to no avail, but fortunately Lysander has kept up his incredible "I love you mama" attitude. Wish I could say the same for Isaac, but he never has been as terrible of a two year old as his brother was. ;)

Getting home

For some reason 15 days has become like a theme with me. We had GJ from 15 days, we went to see my dad for 15 days, and today we've been home for 15 days. First we had super fast, then we had super slow, and now I think we are back to normal, though I'll tell you what, things have not slowed down.

The first day we were back I did practically nothing. The next three days though were filled with errands and cleaning, and then a night out, and then a night in with the kids and Stef, and then a day full of relaxation with Stef and Heidar. So the first week flew by. Then the second week was basically spent starting back to preschool and getting ready for Lysander's 4th birthday party.

We also got some good news that Grover is going to be home sometime in November. Which is WAY sooner than we thought originally, so of course that was super exciting. Also a little nerve wrecking because now we have to figure out what we are going to do now with regards to the future. We've worked toward this deployment for so long, so it kind of feels like now what?

I've also started the refinancing process. That is scaring the shit out of me, pardon my french ;) I'm so ready to have this done and over with. We had some estimates already and we had the appraisal done today, so now it's all down to that and how much money we will get. I just pray every time I think about it that it will all work out and we will FINALLY get this done for good. I'm ready to stop having to stress so damn hard about this. One way or another, we will know soon. :)

And that puts me at home for 15 days. Now I have 8 more days til I go to Florida for five days and I'm sure THAT will make for some interesting blog posts ;)

15 days...

When Grover was home on R&R, 15 days went by in a blur. I didn't know that 15 days could go by that quickly. Then, two days after he left, I discovered how long 15 days could be. Don't get me wrong, I would not have done anything different, I was happy to take care of my Dad and Grandpa, but it was just one catastrophe after another. I left off with Lysander deteriorating health wise, and as it turned out, I had a trip to the ER with him as well. To be fair, I wasn't quite as freaked out when I went with him because I knew what was wrong. But he was so sad and so scared and it was just exhausting. As it turned out, he only had crupe, not pneumonia. As it also turned out he recovered way more quickly than Isaac did because two days after I took Lysander to the ER I had to find a pediatrician to take Isaac to because he stayed up all night long with an ear infection. ONE. THING. AFTER. ANOTHER.

Luckily, after that it eased up for our last week. Honestly, when I came home, it made me realize how much time I actually have to relax here as opposed to there. There was constantly something to do, something to clean, meals to fix, meals to clean up, toilets to empty(I can't even talk about that again), pills to give, diapers to change etc. What I came away from it with however, is I do want my Dad and my Grandpa to be around us more. Not that of course I didn't already know that, but somehow this trip, I really started wanting them to move closer to us. I liked being with them for two weeks and my boys really enjoyed it as well. Isaac called my dad Duf-fey. It was so cute. Even Lysander warmed up to both of them. It's amazing to me that at 95 years old, my Grandpa really takes a big interest in the kids. He laughs with them, and talks to them. Every morning he would give Isaac a high five. Every time I would take a picture with them with my Grandpa I would just think how special it is that they get to be around their great grandfather and have something to look back on with it.

Isaac and Grandpa would eat together a lot. They both like to take their time.

Isaac would wake up every morning before me and go into Grandpa's room and hang out with him. Of course Gryffin was always there too.

This is what my dad's leg looked like the first week.

We were also visited my Uncle Murph and Austin, some of my brother's friends from high school. Isaac was all over them.

And they got a chance to hang out with their cousins as well. This was the only picture that I could get of Lysander practically the entire time we were there because he was sick for so much of it. They are all such handsome boys :)

Post R&R Hell

On GJ's last night I got a phone call from my dad. He was in the hospital and had fallen and broken his ankle. Despite that during that call he said he didn't want me to come out, I had a feeling that I would need to anyway. So the next day after GJ left I spent hours on the phone arranging care for Grandpa and things for the boys and I to travel to Arizona to spend a couple weeks with my dad. I got everything packed up(which was an undertaking on such short notice) and on Monday morning my mom came over at 5:45 am and took us to the airport. Isaac was full blown sick by this point, but all in all getting through security and waiting for the plane and then the actual plane ride itself went very smoothly. We got to Arizona at 8:30 am and had a car waiting for us to take us to my dad's house.

When we got to the house I got the kids in and into my dad's room to hang out and watch tv while I got the luggage in and said hello to Grandpa. I've told a lot of people the story of when I walked into the house, but for the sake of not making anyone vomit. Let's just say my grandpa uses a portable toilet and it was full. But I summoned all of the strength I had and got things cleaned up for him and got the house smelling better. I got him breakfast and then when he was settled back in his room, the boys and I went and got lunch at McD's and then went to the hospital to get my dad. Luckily they were in the process of getting him out of the hospital so about an hour later we were on our way home with him. When we got things settled at home Lysander went to sleep but Isaac was still up so I left my dad in bed and went to the grocery to get the necessities for the boys and to pick up dad's pain meds. As I was finishing up at the store, my dad called and said he had fallen. So I went home and tried in vain to pick him up off the floor but it was no use. Thankfully he had managed to not hurt his injured leg but we had to call the fire department to come get him back in to bed. It was probably a blessing in disguise because ever since then my dad has been more than careful about getting up and down and normally makes sure than I'm around to help if need be.

The rest of the day passed without incident until the kids were going to bed. Isaac fell asleep first as he had no nap but as we were all laying there, I became more and more anxious about how his breathing sounded. I called a 24 hour nurse line that I knew of in Indianpolis and talked to an RN and she said she thought I had better go the the ER right away. Luckily by this time Lysander was asleep so I went in and told my dad that I was taking Isaac to the ER and that Lysander was asleep but if he woke up just to put cartoons on and let him curl up in the chair. I rushed Isaac back to the ER in the hospital my dad had been in and as soon as we walked up and I told them what was wrong a nurse was there to take us back. He had a temperature of 103 and in about five seconds a doctor came over and was checking him out and said she thought it was probably crupe(I have no clue if that's the right spelling) but they'd x-ray to make sure it's not pneumonia too. So he got x-rays and then he had an albuteral breathing treatment and he was finally breathing better. They came back with the x-ray results and said it was crupe and pneumonia. They started him on steroids and he is now recovering, though they said that once he's off the meds he could have a relapse with the crupe and if so I'd pretty much have no choice but to bring him back to the ER.

Not going to lie, I have NEVER been as scared as I was when I was taking him to the ER that night. His breathing was labored and he was so upset and I was completely freaked out. When the kids had H1N1 a couple years ago and kept spiking extremely high fevers I thought I knew what scared was, but this was infinately worse. When we got home around midnight I had missed a call from GJ saying he was in Kuwait and I pretty much broke down, however, Isaac was asleep and breathing fine when I brought him in so the second I layed down on the couch I passed out.

From there things have gotten marginally better with the kids and much better with dad and Grandpa. The cleaning people came so now I just have to do upkeep with the house rather than really deeply clean it. Dad is doing better every day with getting around and managing things. I've fallen into a semi routine with everyone in getting things for them and then when they don't need me getting other things done. Of course dad's dishwasher is broken right now so I'm having to do dishes by hand. It seems there is always laundry to be done, and I've done some major organzing of things, but all this will help my aunt's when they come out to take over for me in a week and a half. Unfortunately I think the next thing I will have to contend with is whether or not Lysander gets what Isaac has because his health has been deteriorating just like Isaac's was before the ER visit. I called our pediatrician but they said I'd just have to wait to see how bad it gets. I can't take him before because they won't be able to pre treat anything. So that's awesome.

The good news is, it doesn't really matter where the kids are sick. They would feel just as bad at home as they do here. Might be a bit easier for me to take care of them, but that's life. I'm really glad that I was able to come out here on such short notice because any other option was not something I was prepared to live with. Plus I would have been really worried and I feel much more secure now that I am in control of the situation out here. Yes, in case you didn't already know, I am a total control freak. ;)

The world spins on and I just keep thinking that which does not kill us makes us stronger... or something like that. ;) Fingers crossed and sending prayers up that nothing more catastrophic will happen for quite some time because I think I've filled my 2011 quota!

R&R revisited

Well, obviously I only made the daily blogging effort until day three and then I totally spaced it. So we'll give you a recap of the highlights.

We went to dinner at Grover's oldest sister's house one night and had pizza with his immediate family. That was a lot of fun. The kids had a good time playing and everyone else just chit chatted and hung out. The boys started preschool while GJ was home. They cried every time we dropped them off, but the first day was the worst. I kept it together until we left Lysander and then I totally cried. GJ made fun of me but I'm allowed to have some emotions sometimes ;) He was here for the first four days they went and by the fourth day it wasn't that bad. We worked out while they were there the first couple of days and I think GJ was trying to torture me. I was so so sore after we worked out. The second two days they went we just went home and had some alone time(I'm not being dirty, we just didn't have much time just the two of us while he was home, so we took advantage.)

Another high light was when we went out with friends on the second saturday he was there. It was a really fun night. Some of our best friends from out of town were in for the holiday weekend so that was really exciting that the timing on that worked out. Some other old friends of our came out too as well as G's littlest sister and a friend of hers. Everyone had a really great time. We went to dinner at our favorite sushi place and then went to a bar called the Red Room... and when we walked in a little before ten pm the bar was completely EMPTY. Everyone started laughing and realized that we were so lame because we all have kids. We stayed there for awhile though and had a good time before heading back downtown and dropping of G's sister and heading out to Ike's for a drink before last call and then to Peppy's for breakfast as is our tradition. When we got home I headed straight to bed but everyone else stayed up for awhile. All I knew is I had to get my kids before noon on Sunday and it was getting dangerously close to 5 am ;)

We went to G's parent's house for Labor day... that wasn't as fun as the kids were in bad moods and didn't particularly want to be there. It would have been better if it wasn't so dang cold outside on Labor day but it sure was. So we were inside. We stayed for awhile but left pretty early. Glad we got to see GJ's grandparents though.

We did a lot of organzing and things to the house while he was home. It was really nice to have him there to do things with me that I had wanted to do for months but needed his help. It was amazing how nice our house looked after we were done. On Wednesday before we left we had my mom and step dad over for dinner with the Stewarts and Fowlers. It was a lot of fun, GJ cooked out on the grill and we had  TON of food. Even with that amount of people there it was still so much. The next night we had the Smiths over and Grandma smith was still in town so she came with them and we had pizza for dinner. That too was a night evening, we made Grandma Smith a cd of music to take with her. Some of it she picked out and some of it GJ already had and put it on there. It was a nice night.

It is AMAZING how quickly the 15 days passed. It was like a blink of an eye and he was gone again. Saying goodbye was really really difficult, especially for the boys. I will save you the blow by blow but they cried all the way home and off and on for the rest of the day. Even though that was hard, I'm still glad he came. I needed the "staycation" more than I even realized. Now of course, I realize that it was just two weeks of preparing me for the next two weeks that I'd need to be extra strong for...