Friday, August 15, 2008
Update on the Ticket
I received a registered letter today informing me that the police department was changing the charge on my ticket. The new charge is failing to yield right of way when turning left. I had had a couple of people tell me I should fight the ticket since I really didn't run a red light, but someone figured out the mistake and changed it. So I guess I am stuck paying the - gulp! - $172 fine. That was one expensive migraine!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Just One of Those Days
Yesterday, I should have stayed in bed.
And I really wanted to. I had gone to bed the night before with a terrible headache that I had hoped to sleep off. However as my consciousness slowly awoke, searing pain met me every time. So I kept going back to sleep, hoping that next time I started the waking process it would be different.
It wasn't. I had a full fledged migraine on my hands. Or head.
I finally got up around 8:30 (all my plans to get up early and cut out Dr. Pepper have been severely defeated this week), and fed the baby. Kora and Aubrey had fed the other kids already and cleaned up the kitchen, thankfully. Kelly called to check on me and strongly suggested that I go to the chiropractor. Although I didn't really feel like getting out of the house as I was also strongly fighting nausea and couldn't stand the sunlight, I decided that it would be better than suffering all day.
So I got all the kids into the suburban and headed out. But the motion of the car and the bright sunshine made my nausea ten times worse. Kora asked me, "Should you be driving?" I asked her, "Who else is going to drive me there?" She conceded the point while talking about when she was going to learn to drive. I was concentrating on not loosing the breakfast I had finally eaten.
As I turned onto the service road near the doctor's office, I was seriously about to loose it. I was thinking about how once I got past this nightmare of an intersection, with tons of construction and closed lanes, I could get out and hopefully get relief. The car in front of me turned left and naturally I followed. I looked up just in time to notice that the light was green. What didn't register was that I no longer had the left turn arrow. The light was green, but so was the light for the oncoming traffic. In my nauseous, miserable state, it didn't occur to me that this was a problem until I had to swerve into the construction area to avoid getting side swiped by the other cars.
In my foggy headed state I barely even registered what had happened. The girls thought all those other cars had done something wrong. I mumbled, "No, it was me." Just as the siren started blaring behind me.
Oh great. Sure enough, I get pulled over and given a ticket. Ironically the ticket is for running a red light, which technically I didn't do. I did fail to yield the right of way, but I had a green light. Oh, well, I thought, I'll take online defensive driving again.
Wrong. I read on the ticket that you cannot dismiss a ticket via DD if the offense was in a construction zone. Great! I can't wait to tell Kelly this one.
The chiropractor did help, but it always take a few hours for complete pain relief. I have a couple of vertebra in my neck that get out and press on my spinal cord area. All the drugs in the world don't give the relief that our wonderful Christian chiropractor can give.
I spent the rest of the day in somewhat of a haze as the pain slowly died down. Just when I thought everything was OK that evening as the kids were going to bed we hear a terrific crash, and Lauryn screaming. We run in there and the dresser has fallen over on top of Lauryn! I think both of our hearts stopped.
Just then Lauryn crawls out from underneath - stark naked. She got knocked pretty good in the eye, but was unharmed otherwise. We still aren't sure what happened, but we think she opened all the drawers at the same time, and the weight was too far forward. The only thing that was broken was her coin bank. It could have been much, much worse.
Then the baby refused to go to sleep. I rocked her to sleep three or four times, laid her down in her crib and up! she would pop. I had really thought we would be past this by four months old and time for school to start. Evidently I was wrong. Needless to say, it was a little late when I got to sleep last night.
If I had just stayed in bed, none of this would have happened. Right?
And I really wanted to. I had gone to bed the night before with a terrible headache that I had hoped to sleep off. However as my consciousness slowly awoke, searing pain met me every time. So I kept going back to sleep, hoping that next time I started the waking process it would be different.
It wasn't. I had a full fledged migraine on my hands. Or head.
I finally got up around 8:30 (all my plans to get up early and cut out Dr. Pepper have been severely defeated this week), and fed the baby. Kora and Aubrey had fed the other kids already and cleaned up the kitchen, thankfully. Kelly called to check on me and strongly suggested that I go to the chiropractor. Although I didn't really feel like getting out of the house as I was also strongly fighting nausea and couldn't stand the sunlight, I decided that it would be better than suffering all day.
So I got all the kids into the suburban and headed out. But the motion of the car and the bright sunshine made my nausea ten times worse. Kora asked me, "Should you be driving?" I asked her, "Who else is going to drive me there?" She conceded the point while talking about when she was going to learn to drive. I was concentrating on not loosing the breakfast I had finally eaten.
As I turned onto the service road near the doctor's office, I was seriously about to loose it. I was thinking about how once I got past this nightmare of an intersection, with tons of construction and closed lanes, I could get out and hopefully get relief. The car in front of me turned left and naturally I followed. I looked up just in time to notice that the light was green. What didn't register was that I no longer had the left turn arrow. The light was green, but so was the light for the oncoming traffic. In my nauseous, miserable state, it didn't occur to me that this was a problem until I had to swerve into the construction area to avoid getting side swiped by the other cars.
In my foggy headed state I barely even registered what had happened. The girls thought all those other cars had done something wrong. I mumbled, "No, it was me." Just as the siren started blaring behind me.
Oh great. Sure enough, I get pulled over and given a ticket. Ironically the ticket is for running a red light, which technically I didn't do. I did fail to yield the right of way, but I had a green light. Oh, well, I thought, I'll take online defensive driving again.
Wrong. I read on the ticket that you cannot dismiss a ticket via DD if the offense was in a construction zone. Great! I can't wait to tell Kelly this one.
The chiropractor did help, but it always take a few hours for complete pain relief. I have a couple of vertebra in my neck that get out and press on my spinal cord area. All the drugs in the world don't give the relief that our wonderful Christian chiropractor can give.
I spent the rest of the day in somewhat of a haze as the pain slowly died down. Just when I thought everything was OK that evening as the kids were going to bed we hear a terrific crash, and Lauryn screaming. We run in there and the dresser has fallen over on top of Lauryn! I think both of our hearts stopped.
Just then Lauryn crawls out from underneath - stark naked. She got knocked pretty good in the eye, but was unharmed otherwise. We still aren't sure what happened, but we think she opened all the drawers at the same time, and the weight was too far forward. The only thing that was broken was her coin bank. It could have been much, much worse.
Then the baby refused to go to sleep. I rocked her to sleep three or four times, laid her down in her crib and up! she would pop. I had really thought we would be past this by four months old and time for school to start. Evidently I was wrong. Needless to say, it was a little late when I got to sleep last night.
If I had just stayed in bed, none of this would have happened. Right?
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
A Trip Down Memory Lane: An Addendum
My mother-in-law found a couple of pictures that I didn't have from our proms. Here's the junior prom again. I think my mom-in-law was going for some sort of refined gangster pose. :-)
And here's the dress from my senior year. This one illustrates the skirt I was talking about. This was very "in" at the time!
And here's the dress from my senior year. This one illustrates the skirt I was talking about. This was very "in" at the time!
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Junkie
I love the Olympics. I can't seem to help just watching them. When I was growing up, my mom would lift the time limits on tv watching during the Olympics. Maybe that's where it started. Regardless, I love watching all these sports I don't usually get to see. Two years ago during the winter Olympics, I got into curling of all things. Now if the network would just leave off all the dramatic bios and time fillers, I'd be perfectly happy.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Anniversary
On our tenth anniversary, Kelly surprised me by taking me to Ruth's Chris Steak House. Even though we had never paid that much for a meal before, it was soooo good! We loved it and decided then and there to come back on our 15th anniversary.
So for the past couple of months we have been talking about going back to Ruth's Chris. So that's what we did. If you've never been there, you are sure missing out! Kelly had made a reservation, so when we told them who we were, the hostess replied, "Oh, happy anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. smith. Right this way." She then scattered rose petals on our table.
The hostess came over and greeted us by name every time. We started of with an appetizer of calamari in a sweet and spicy Thai sauce. Yum! Then we had a salad, followed by the main dish. I had a petite sirloin, while Kelly had two smaller petite sirloins topped with shrimp. The shrimp were so large he shared a couple with me. I paired this with a really good Riesling. (Yes I know you aren't supposed to do a white wine with steak, but I'm not big on red wines and I love Riesling!) We topped it off with a chocolate chunk bread pudding. I didn't think I liked bread pudding, but this stuff was wonderful.
Not only was the food good, but the service was unparalleled and so completely spoiling. They even used a little metal scraper thing to clean off the white tablecloth between courses. Just save up before going - I refuse to publish how much dinner was, but we could've bought enough groceries to feed the whole family for a couple of weeks! Good thing we only go every five years...
We went with very full tummies across the highway to see The Dark Knight. The best movie either of us had seen in a while. I can see now why there is Oscar buzz for Heath Ledger. His character was disturbing, eerie, all those things. The only downside was the casting for "Rachel." Maggie Gyllenhaal was totally wrong. She was too bubbly and not nearly as sophisticated or complex as the part was supposed to be. But it was such a great movie, that it didn't matter too much.
Well, I doubt this topped last year's anniversary announcement, but we still had a great time.
So for the past couple of months we have been talking about going back to Ruth's Chris. So that's what we did. If you've never been there, you are sure missing out! Kelly had made a reservation, so when we told them who we were, the hostess replied, "Oh, happy anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. smith. Right this way." She then scattered rose petals on our table.
The hostess came over and greeted us by name every time. We started of with an appetizer of calamari in a sweet and spicy Thai sauce. Yum! Then we had a salad, followed by the main dish. I had a petite sirloin, while Kelly had two smaller petite sirloins topped with shrimp. The shrimp were so large he shared a couple with me. I paired this with a really good Riesling. (Yes I know you aren't supposed to do a white wine with steak, but I'm not big on red wines and I love Riesling!) We topped it off with a chocolate chunk bread pudding. I didn't think I liked bread pudding, but this stuff was wonderful.
Not only was the food good, but the service was unparalleled and so completely spoiling. They even used a little metal scraper thing to clean off the white tablecloth between courses. Just save up before going - I refuse to publish how much dinner was, but we could've bought enough groceries to feed the whole family for a couple of weeks! Good thing we only go every five years...
We went with very full tummies across the highway to see The Dark Knight. The best movie either of us had seen in a while. I can see now why there is Oscar buzz for Heath Ledger. His character was disturbing, eerie, all those things. The only downside was the casting for "Rachel." Maggie Gyllenhaal was totally wrong. She was too bubbly and not nearly as sophisticated or complex as the part was supposed to be. But it was such a great movie, that it didn't matter too much.
Well, I doubt this topped last year's anniversary announcement, but we still had a great time.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The other half of the girls
As promised, the other three girls.
Lauryn who loves her baby sister.
Brynna loves her glasses, and has been on a braid kick lately.
Hailey has been lisping around here with two missing teeth and two braids as well.We have two three year olds in the house. This is Lauryn with an attitude - the my-life-is-so-rough Lauryn. The Lauryn we want to sell - no! - pay someone to take at times.
This is the cute Lauryn, the one that makes us laugh continually.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
The Snips Heard 'Round the World
Or at least all around the house.
These are our two oldest girls, Kora (11.5) and Aubrey (9.5). This what they looked like Thursday afternoon.
This is what they looked like 30 minutes later.
CJ, Aubrey did this just for you - you've always wanted to trade hair, so now it is your turn to cut about 12 inches off!!
Actually, the girls are going to send in the ponytails to Locks of Love, to be made into wigs for kids who have lost their hair.
And the girls are still amazed at how easy and quick it is to wash and brush their hair now. But I'm still doing a double take every time I look at them. So many times I have wanted to cut their hair; but now, I'm a little sad.
Now for something totally unconnected to haircuts. Ashlynn! My dad requested some new pictures of Ashlynn, so here goes!
More pics of the three other kids tomorrow. And coming soon, our anniversary date and other changes around the house!
These are our two oldest girls, Kora (11.5) and Aubrey (9.5). This what they looked like Thursday afternoon.
This is what they looked like 30 minutes later.
CJ, Aubrey did this just for you - you've always wanted to trade hair, so now it is your turn to cut about 12 inches off!!
Actually, the girls are going to send in the ponytails to Locks of Love, to be made into wigs for kids who have lost their hair.
And the girls are still amazed at how easy and quick it is to wash and brush their hair now. But I'm still doing a double take every time I look at them. So many times I have wanted to cut their hair; but now, I'm a little sad.Now for something totally unconnected to haircuts. Ashlynn! My dad requested some new pictures of Ashlynn, so here goes!
More pics of the three other kids tomorrow. And coming soon, our anniversary date and other changes around the house!
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