Ray Bradbury

The library that I work for has an monthly book club and we invited Ray Bradbury to come speak since the April book was Fahrenheit 451. He graciously accepted and we decided to make it a public event instead of just for the book club members. We had over 300 people come and it was a great success. Mr. Bradbury even said that he would love to come back next year and speak again. The icing on the cake was that this morning when I got into work he had left a voice mail for me. He asked me to send him some of the tickets that I designed for the event. He said he loved them and would like to have copies to keep for himself.

A clean room is worth a picture.

Yes, it truly is worth a few pics. I love my daughter DEARLY and would not trade her for the world, but she is a slob. Coming from someone who is compulsive about cleaning/organizing (picture Monica from Friends) it drives me insane that Riley is such a slob. She leaves shoes, toys, books all over the place and has to be reminded constantly to pick up after herself. So I try to look at her room as HER space and let her do what she wants, but once a week she has to clean it so it can be vacuumed and dusted and change her bedding.

However, her equivalent of cleaning is pushing things under the bed, in the closet or into the four corners of the room. So every once in a while I just can't take it anymore and step in. Today was one of those days. I could have used a rake to clear things out from under the bed and the closet doors would no longer close. So after much time spent together we got it looking fairly presentable which required a picture because it won't last long!!!!

Her bookcase is even in some sort of order and since I have worked in a library for the past 15 years it just kills me that she won't keep them in some sort of order. That borders on sacriledge. LOL!

So for now I'm just trying to enjoy that the floor is not a hazard to bare feet, the closet doors can close, the books are in order and even the holes in the wall have been filled. The holes were courtesy of my Mom's dog Maila whose digging was not confined to the outside.

We went on a safari today!

Riley's class went on a safari today. They visited the savannah, the rain forest, the ocean and the desert. The kids all made their own jeeps, well I think some dad's made the jeeps, and they had binoculars made out of empty toilet paper rolls and of course they had to have safari hats.

They all walked from the school to the park next door where the parent volunteers had set up each "region" with stuffed animals that the kids had brought in. I was the customs agent in the savannah stamping the kids passports and telling them "welcome to the savannah". Then the kids got a clipboard and had to check off the animals they saw and whether they were a mammal, bird, insect or reptile, etc.

They had to search the trees for animals lurking above and make sure not to get to close to the ferocious beasts. Riley and Sierra had a close call with a tiger and had to "run for their lives".

After all the fun it was back to the school to watch an animal planet movie at the "drive in" while in their jeeps.

Dyeing easter eggs

We dyed Easter eggs tonight. Erica brought Luke over and he and Riley had a great time. Zachary decided he was "too old" for dyeing Easter eggs and preferred to have a friend over and ignore us completely (really not liking the pre-teen stage). Riley and Luke had lots of fun though and I'm glad we put them in old white t-shirts because it was quite a mess.
Luke preferred to THROW his eggs into the cups and then retrieve the eggs with his hands. We let him do his own thing and ended up with tons of broken multi colored eggs that will probably just end up in the trash, but they had fun. Everybody stayed for dinner and it was not until we were already grilling the hamburgers that I remembered it's Good Friday. So we were very bad Catholics because we ate meat on Good Friday.

We're going to have a new member of the family

Of our EXTENDED family that is. My niece, Erica (Luke's mom) is pregnant again. She is due around Thanksgiving and we are all very excited. Riley can hardly contain herself and has nicknamed the baby jellybelly. Zachary is much more subdued in his excitement, but when Erica came over yesterday he was talking to her tummy which I thought was so sweet. So I keep thinking that before Christmas we will have a new member of the family to love.

Longer school year?

We got a letter in the mail from the school district and they want to extend the school year. The kids would still only attend 180 days, but they would start in early August and end in early June. Right now they start in the end of August and go through mid-June. They want to extend the year and give the kids one week off for Thanksgiving and two weeks off in spring. I'm liking the idea since the kids will have a shorter summer and less time to get bored and also more breaks during the year when they really tend to need them. I guess all of this started because the high school is on semesters and they want the first semester to end at the winter break so they don't have finals right after winter break. So we have to vote this week and wait to see the results.

Searching my roots

Yesterday I went to my Dad's house for a barbecue and he mentioned Google'ing our last name, Opbroek. So I was sitting around today playing on my laptop and tried it. I found a lot of websites that were in Dutch. Some were small family websites with photos and I could see a family resemblence in some of them. So I started looking up other family names and tried Pistulka which is my paternal Grandmother's maiden name. I found a website that not only was dedicated to the Pistulka family and tracing the family tree, but I got to see scans of the manifests from the ship they were on and then from New York City. I found out that my great grandfather Anton Pistulka was between 1.5 and 2.5 months old when he arrived her from Bohemia. I also learned that of the 7 children in his family 5 married Opbroek's. How weird. Anyways I have frittered hours away checking out all these things and I am going to have to email the person who runs the website and give information on myself and my siblings/cousins so we can add another generation to the family tree. So you might try looking up your family names. You never know what you will find.

Here is the link to a picture of my Grandma http://www.pistulka.com/index_files/Page344.htm

We applied for our passports

Scott and I applied for our passports. Unfortunately we are not going anywhere exotic or exiting, like Australia or China. We are just going on a cruise to Mexico this August for our 15th wedding anniversary. It now takes 10 weeks to process the passport application so I am glad that we did not put it off. Now that I have it in process though I have grand travel plans, in my head at least. I dream of going all over to places I have never seen. Ahhhh, someday. At the very least we will travel to Rome in another 10 years. Scott and I both want to see Rome over any other place and so we opened a money market account and we have automatic deposits from our checks. So I told Scott that if we don't make it to Rome before our 25th wedding anniversary then we will use the MM account for a trip to Rome. Of course passports are only good for 10 years so we would have to renew it for the trip to Rome. Definitley need to make use of the passport again before that.

A positive attitude!

We had an IEP (individual education plan) meeting at Riley's school this morning. She is starting speech therapy to help her pronounce the letters s and z properly. Since both Scott and I attended speech for the same thing I guess the odds were stacked against her. The three of us met first thing this morning with the speech therapist and Riley's teacher. Riley was so excited she was literally bouncing in her seat. During her evaluation Mrs. Fitzgerald, the speech therapist, told her they would have tons of fun together playing games and reading books. Well, she surely convinced Riley because she can hardly wait. After they went over Riley's education plan Mrs. Fitzgerald asked how we felt about it and Riley yelled "super". LOL! Mrs. Fitzgerald also mentioned that Riley's other speech problem seems to be caused by an "air intake problem". She said that it's very rare and she has never dealt with that before. It can be a medical problem so we have to take her to the doctor and determine if that is the cause. I felt like an idiot that it never occured to me, but her words are being broken up because she is pausing to get air. I had thought she just needed to slow down a bit. So we will be taking her to the doctor and proceeding from there. At the end of the conference we had to sign a ton of papers including one stating that we were working on Riley graduating from high school. Talk about long term goals. Riley also had to sign all of the papers which made her feel very important.

FINALLY!

Well, we finally got Zachary's bed delivered yesterday. So here are the promised pictures. The room is not finished I still need to add the final touches, but at least Zachary is not sleeping on the floor anymore. I also had to include a close up of the baseboards since those dang things were a big headache for me. I have never installed such large (5 inch wide) baseboards and after 2 trips to home depot and the purchase of a new 12 inch power miter saw I finally got them installed. I think they were worth it though. I really love them and now I am planning to put them in the master bedroom. I found the cutest acrylic candy jars at Pottery Barn kids and I am going to get a bunch of them and fill them with Zachary's legos and I still need to get the bulletin board for his wall and the bean bag chairs which are way more expensive than I thought they would be.

Painting, painting and more painting.

I spent the day painting Zachary's room and it has left me sort of melancholy. I feel like it was just yesterday that I was painting blue clouds on the walls and putting white wainscotting on the bottom with the Classic Winnie the Pooh border. When he was 5 we took down the Pooh border and painted the top half of the wall a navy blue and he had Harry Potter stuff. Now the wainscotting is gone and we will be painting the walls a dark tan color. He is also getting a new bed since he has outgrown his loft bed with the slide and fort underneath. How did this happen he was just my cranky, never sleeping baby yesterday. I guess what really got me sad is that I realized this is probably the last time I will be doing his room before he goes off to college. I intentionally designed the room to last through the teen years with the neutral walls and his bed is black with a trundle underneath and built in drawers. He is going to have a couple of beans bags for hanging out with friends and a bulletin board and bookcase. It's just so grown up. Hopefully that excitement I get with decorating will come back soon because so far this one is just a downer. I will post a picture when the room is done.

There's nothing like a nice roaring fire on a rainy night.

It's been in the 50's today and raining so when I got home from work this afternoon I built a huge fire in the fireplace and have kept it going all evening. Well, Scott is running around in board shorts and no shirt, Riley has on summer pajamas and Zachary is wearing boxers. They are all complaining that it's too hot! I'm in heaven. I was cold at work all day, I'm fighting a head cold and the fire is going to keep on burning! Now they are all eating popsicles. LOL! It's a mock summer at our house.

Zachary visited "Dubya" at the White House

Ok, just kidding. All of the 5th grade GATE kids got to go on a field trip to Quality West Wing which is a museum that is a replica of the West Wing of the White House. I wish I had been able to go it sounded very cool. He said they started out by taking a computer quiz to tell them what political party they would be in and what Presidents were in that party. Then they learn how our government was founded, how a bill is made into law, etc. Then they got to see the replica of the Oval office where they took this picture and then the President was digitally added later. Zachary is 3rd from the left in the back row. He has his new "hide my braces" smile.

Two weeks on South Beach

Well, I have been on the South Beach diet for two weeks now and the results..... I have lost 6 lbs. I was very pleasantly surprised by the results and after the first 3 or 4 days my cravings for sugary sweets has almost completely disappeared. I have decided to stay on phase 1 for one more week and then move to phase two. I even gave spaghetti squash a try tonight since Riley has been begging for spaghetti for dinner and I did not want the pasta. I actually liked it and so did Scott and Riley. Zachary was the hold out, not surprisingly since he does not like any vegetables. Oh and on the bonus end of that I have faithfully exercised 5-6 times a week since the start of the new year and I am planning to keep that up since I always feel so much better, physcially and mentally, when I exercise.

Zachary was home sick today and I have to say that I am glad he stayed home. I was not really feeling like going to work today anyways so I had the perfect excuse and I enjoyed the day with him. We layed on the couch and watched Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi. It was a nice quiet day with my son which I realize will be fewer and farther between as he gets closer and closer to his teen years.

Cha-ching!

The kids made deposits in their savings account today. Zachary deposited $100 of his Christmas money and Riley counted up all in the money in "Piggy" and she had $53. I loved watching them fill out their deposit slips and make their deposits. This is the first time that I had them do it on their own and Riley was very cute. Her nose just reached the counter and she went right up and told the lady she would like to make a deposit because she emptied Piggy.

On another subject, my Mom is doing much better and we have not had any additional trips to the ER. Her doctor did figure out that it was her blood pressure meds that she had been taking for 15 years. Apparently it's common to develop an allergy to it over time. So he said that switching her medication will probably resolve some other health issues she was having like water retention and breathing troubles. Here's hoping.

Well, I guess that I should go. I can't avoid my messy house forever and the dryer is beeping at me for the third time.

Deja vu

So last night my Mom calls me at around 6:30 and guess what..... the other side of her face is swelling up and she sounds just like she did the night before. She actually asked "are you busy because I need a ride to urgent care". Ummm ya Mom I'm in the middle of laundry you will have to drive yourself. She can be so foolish at times. She does not want to "bother" me. Silly silly woman! So last night was a repeat of the previous night. Except that she got a steroid shot on the other hip and they also gave her oral steroids, tagament (which they explained although it's for stomach problems it's also a histamine blocker) and she is continuing with the benadryl also. She has an appt. with her regular doctor this morning at 10 for a follow up. She can no longer take the antibiotic now or her blood pressure medication. She has been taking the blood pressure medication for years, but the allergic reaction is one known side effect and so they are taking her off that one too. So here's hoping and praying that tonight won't make it a three-peat.
At least there was not an earthquake again when I got home. Although it did look like a tornado hit my house. I love my husband, but he is a SLOB. He does not seem to see all the little things that need picking up or that you need to remind the kids to pick up. Since the kids were in bed I told Scott you are cleaning up this mess, I'm going to take a hot bath and relax.

On the lighter side. We woke up this morning to a dusting of snow on the ground. It won't stay, but it was very pretty while it lasted. Hard to believe that it was 83 degrees on Monday and snowing on Friday. The high today is only supposed to reach 48. I think all of my oranges may have frozen last night because in all the confusion neither Scott or I thought about covering the tree. I hope they are still ok.

I spent the evening in the ER

I picked the kids up from my Mom's house around 4:30 and everything was fine. She called me 2 hours later and I could barely understand her. She said her face was swollen and she could barely breath. We rushed to the ER and thankfully my brother's girlfriend is an ER nurse and she was just getting off duty. She met us outside and saw my Mom right away. Thank goodness because by the time we got there one side of her face looked like it had a softball under her cheek, her eye was swollen shut and she could not talk. Turns out it was an allergic reaction to a new medication she is on. They gave her a shot and some benadryl and in a few minutes the swelling started going down. By the time we got home she was still swollen alot, but her eye had opened back up and her cheek had gone down some. So I got her settled at home and headed back to my house. I had just walked in the door at my house and we had an earthquake. Just a small shaker, but what a way to end the evening.

It's mac and cheese night tonight

Zachary got his braces on today, hence the mace and cheese for his dinner (I could not indulge since it's not SB diet friendly). Since I wore braces for 5 years and Scott had them for 3 I knew our children were doomed. The only "cool" part according to Zachary was that he got to miss the first 2 1/2 hours of school and that he got to pick colored bands.... red and black. It's an interesting look, I'll say that. I would post a picture, but he is not willing to pose for a photo yet.
When we were in the ortho. office waiting there was a 3 year old little girl that came in with her Mother. She was adorable and so outgoing. She came up and "yelled" hi to everyone then proceeded to test out every chair in the waiting area by bouncing on them. Reorganized the magazines on the table and then proceeded to climb on the chairs to try and catch the hearts that were hanging from the ceiling as Valentines day decorations. I was just thinking to myself that she reminded me of Riley at that age when her Mother said, "Riley please stop climbing on the chairs." I had to laugh out loud. I told the Mother that was my daughters name and how much alike they are. It must be the name for my Riley came hopping down the hallway and through the living room the other night. When I asked her what she was doing she said "just bouncing" and kept right on bouncing out of the room.

As far as the diet goes. I've stuck to it even though the mornings are incredibly hard. I really want sweet stuff in the morning. Other than that though it's not too bad. I'm never hungry and I am enjoying eating things like low fat cheese, avocados and nuts. Which I used to deny myself. I don't know if I'm losing any weight since it's only been 3 days, but time will tell.

I'm starting the south beach diet today.

I'm just so tired of following the weight watchers thing. I can't tell you the last time that I had a real egg or had more than a skimpy piece of cheese without thinking how many points it was. So I checked out the south beach diet book from the library and read it over the past few days. It really makes sense and I'm going to give it a whirl. I only want to lose a few pounds (5-8) and definitley don't expect to lose the 8-15 they claim you will during the first two weeks. I like the idea that I can eat low fat cheeses, eggs, cottage cheese and avocados (huge points on WW). On the other hand though I don't know how I am going to give up rice and pasta. I also love starbucks frappucinos in the morning which are loaded with sugar and so will have to go, but since I'm not supposed to have the caffeine because of my fibrocystic breast disease I guess that's good too.
I had an egg with canadian bacon, salsa and avocado this morning. Although I can't choke down the v8 juice they recommend you drink in the morning.

Another Merry Christmas!

I can hardly believe that Christmas is over already. It always goes by in a such a blur. I feel blessed that there are always wonderful gifts under the tree for my children and tons of family gathered to share in the joy. This is the first year that I did not host my family on Christmas day so I decided to invite Scott's family over for Christmas eve dinner. We had a great time and the kids had a blast. Then Christmas day it was off to my niece's house. Most of my family was there so of course it was LOUD, but fun. Riley is going to have fun with her new keyboard and microphone, thanks Aunt Kelly. She has already been screaming at the top of her lungs preparing for her American Idol debut. LOL! Zachary can hardly tear himself away from his "Legend of Zelda" game and his Robopet and I'm just trying to dig through the mess and find my living room floor again.