Things I learned today.

1)      1)    Running into the Mexican worker who is working on your house in the garage while ONLY in your swimsuit can make you feel slightly uncomfortable.  (Especially when you have to give him instructions and carry on a conversation for a minute!)

2)      2)  All pools have to be drained at some point in their life.  Our pool is 10 years old and has never been drained.  Tomorrow night I won’t be able to say that anymore.

3)     3)   Arizona is really, really, hot.  Will I ever get out of here?

4)     4)   My neck and back are sore – and have been for 2 weeks – and I think it is from my tennis lessons and the new backhand I’m hitting.  Hopefully I won’t end up having to get some major surgery on my neck where they put in titanium screws or something.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that!  So, if you had that surgery today (or some other day), I’m sure it was lovely, I’m just saying I hope I don’t have to have it! J

5)      5)  No chocolate in the house really is not a good idea – I just asked Kayla’s friend to buy me some M & M’s and I’ll pay him back.  Desperate!

6)      6)  I love it when I’m thinking about a friend or something and right then you get a text from them.  That’s kinda cool.

7)      7)  When your sink is full of dirty bowls from cereal for breakfast and lunch and snack and sometimes dinner, it means ….. it’s time to buy more bowls! (you thought I was going to say time to make real meals didn’t you?!)

8)      8)  Sometimes you just gotta play Chutes and Ladders and read the “Potty Train” book one more time with your 3 year old instead of make dinner.  Thus, the reason we have problem #7.

9)      9)  I love So You Think You Can Dance.  (But I hate that Mary lady on there.  Get her off or buy her a muzzle!!!)

 

10   10)    I love teaching aerobics.  Step early this morning, and Muscle tonight.  Funny how you can be sooooo exhausted (which I was today – dying for a nap and never got one!) yet show up for class and your adrenaline kicks in and you have a great time, then go home and die on the couch.  Again, could be part of the #7 problem! J

So there you have it folks.  And now I am going to bed. 

Wish us luck tomorrow – meeting with the stem cell transplant doctor.  Ugh, this always makes my stomach churn.  Wish I was one of those who couldn’t eat when stressed!  

A few randoms - so I don't forget.

Addi has been providing all sorts of entertainment for our family lately.  She's just one funny kid.

She is soooo in love with this boy Tanner from church.  Tanner is almost 16, and friends with Kayla.  Addi loves him.  She talks about her boyfriend Tanner all the time.  Last Sunday she came down in her dress and asked if I think Tanner will like her pretty dress and kiss her.  She has been watching WAY too much Disney Channel tween shows with her older brother and sisters.  Ugh!

Well,  Kayla is having a little crush on Justin Bieber right now (who can blame her - the kid is cute) since we just rented the JB movie and watched it.  So, Kayla jokes that he is her boyfriend and they are going to get married.  (He does need to hit his growth spurt for that one to happen though!)

Yesterday Addi decided she wanted to trade boyfriends with Kayla.  She said, "Kayla you can have Tanner be your boyfriend, and I'll have Justin Beiber be my boyfriend."  Kayla said no, and that started an all out war for Addi, and Kayla wasn't budging.  She finally came in crying to me that Kayla won't trade boyfriends and she HAS to trade because she wants Justin Beiber!  Man, the things that we worry and cry about when we are kids.

She's also in a huge princess/dress up phase.  My house is constantly draped in discarded costumes as she changes from one to the next.  People promise me I'll miss these days, and they'll be gone in the blink of an eye.  So, since she's the last, I'm trying to cherish the mess! :)  

Gonna rat myself out big time on this next one, but it is way too funny.

This morning I was going to get in the shower, but decided to tweeze my eyebrows for a minute before I got in the shower.  So of course I am in my birthday suit :) and leaning over to the mirror tweezing.  In the bathroom with me is my little appendage Addi.  (Can't do anything without this girl underfoot!)  She is holding on to my leg, walking underneath the bridge my body makes with the counter.  Then, she stops at the side of me and starts running her hand on my tummy. 

I look down and say, "What are you doing?"

She says, "I'm playing with the ruffles on your tummy."  

OUCH!!!   Calling the plastic surgeon in the morning.  :)

You know, on the bright side, she is pretty smart.  Because I wondered what the ruffles were, and leaned over and looked at my tummy, and the loose skin kinda looks like a nice row of ruffles.    That's a pretty brilliant description for a 3 year old, right?  Sad that when I stand up, the skin is smooth - lean over - ruffles. :(

Ah, the price we pay to have children.

PS - you don't get a picture of that one.  Sorry! :)

From one extreme to the other

Wednesday night we rented "Just Go With It".  Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.  Romantic Comedy - but Adam Sandler style (crude, gross, dumb)

Thursday night I went to see Les Miserables at Gammage.  People I can't name, but talent that is almost impossible to believe.

Talk about opposite ends of the entertainment spectrum!

I love romantic comedies and am very forgiving of the cliche, cheesy, unbelieveable stuff that goes on because I always love when the guy and girl end up together and live happily ever after.  Who doesn't love that?

But, honestly, the only thing I liked about the movie was that the main girl was named Kathryn and played by Jennifer Aniston.  I mean really, the only characters in movies that are named Kathryn are the old spinster school teacher (like in Anne of Green Gables).  I love how at the end of the movie he tells her how much he loves all the stuff about her - even the funny quirky stuff, and she is really pretty and named Kathryn!  That was my like of the show.  I'd let Jennifer Aniston play me any time! :)
Lane and I wonder how on earth this kind of crap keeps getting funded by Hollywood.  Can they not find better screenplays out there?

Now Les Miserables.

Lane wasn't feeling so great, and frankly, we went to see it 12 years ago and both hated it, so he didn't want to go again.  I personally felt I should give it a second chance since so many people love it.  So my friend Lisa decided she would come and "suffer" through it with me.

Let me tell you - I loved it.  Not my favorite - Wicked still owns that, followed by Phantom - but it was still excellent.

Maybe I didn't like it the first time because I was still really cheap and got the cheap tickets which happened to be in the very last row of the top balcony in the corner.  Lame, lame, lame.  Then, I didn't have a clue what the story was, and I didn't know any of the music, and I didn't feel all that great that night.  Let's just say it was the longest 3 hours of my life.

Not this time around.  Tenth row right smack in the middle is a great place to be.  You can just feel the music, the emotion, and actually see how amazingly talented these actors are.  I leaned over to my friend and said, "In my next life, I want to be a Broadway Star."  Seriously I do.  That would be sooooo amazing to be able to sing like that and act like that and dance like that and make people feel like they do because of your portrayal of something.  Man, that's what I want to be.

Of course we had to snap a shot of us with the dark stage in the background.  (It is a rather dark set)  So here's the obligatory "We were here" picture.

Now for the story behind it.  We asked a girl behind us to take the picture and she did.  Then my friend started laughing really hard and said, "Did you hear that?"
No, what?
"That girl up there just said, "Wow!  Look at that giant lady!"

OK seriously?  Ouch!!  Maybe I shouldn't have worn my 2" heels?

Do you ever just want to say WHY???

Asking WHY is just an exercise in frustration.  It really is.  Because honestly, most times there isn't an answer that you want to hear, or that even makes any sense.

This week has had a lot of "why's".

I know this isn't a blog about cancer, and Lane doesn't want me talking about him or IT all the time.  He is very private about this, and I'm about as opposite as you can get.  I need to talk about it, so I do!  I won't go into a ton of detail, I just will put this on here so you all know kinda where we're at.  I really should update the Carepages page too, Lane just doesn't want me to yet until we know what we are doing.

We got Lane's scan results last week.  He's been doing his third chemo treatment in 4 years.  It gets old. His veins are hard and can't be poked anymore, his arms hurt and have bruise marks from the needles. This time around we were doing 6 rounds of a drug that isn't as harsh as the last chemo he did 1 1/2 years ago.  He doesn't lose his hair, get really sick, all that stuff.  He really has felt pretty good through this round.  He really is a trooper.  Of course we also knew this wouldn't cure him, we were just hoping for a 2-3 year remission.  Time to get his business set up with someone to run it, find a business to buy for me to run (or oversee from the tennis court and gym! :), and all that stuff.

Well, that time is coming a whole lot faster than we had hoped.  His cancer is resisting this treatment, and has hardly shrunk at all in the first 4 rounds.  What does that mean?  Well, it isn't really working, and it is time to pull out the even bigger guns.

The problem with bigger guns is there is a lot more fallout.  It would appear we are looking at a stem-cell transplant, probably in September. Yuck.  I won't even go into all the stuff about that now.  We have to meet with the transplant doctor at Mayo Clinic hopefully next week.  He is so booked they are trying to find us a time in the next 2 weeks to squeeze us in.  Are you kidding me????  Are there that many people doing transplants there?   Anyway, we will meet with him to decide if we do the "easier" one, or the super hard one.  The thought just makes me really sick to my stomach.  Imagine what it does to Lane.
Why?

Here's another why?  Lane went with a relative of his who keeps pushing him to do Ozone Therapy instead of chemo.  He says why pump all this poison into your veins?  That isn't good.  Pump in this extra powerful Oxygen and make your body be more healthy - boost your immune system, and it will fight the cancer off!

Is this where we start getting desperate and trying anything and everything?  Almost anything sounds better than a transplant.

So, Lane went to watch his relative get an Ozone treatment.  Here's the ironic thing.  This guy is talking about how he gets them about once a week, and it really helps him get over his hangovers faster, feel better, work out harder, etc.  Here's my perfect, saintly husband, who never drank an ounce of alcohol in his life, or touched a single drug of any type ever, getting medical advice to cure his cancer from the guy who has partied HARD and lived HARD and is in great health with not a care in the world - and quite a bit of money on top of that.  Seriously, WHY???

Where is the justice in that?  He has lived so good and healthy and doing everything he's supposed to, and he's the one with cancer.

So, that's why we don't ask why.  There is no answer.

A Landlord's Life

Question:    What do you do when your renters clear on the other side of town e-mail and say they need a new fridge because theirs is broken?

Answer:  Go and buy yourself a new one, and give them your old one! :)

Makes perfect sense right?  I mean, we almost just bought a new fridge 2 months ago with the great kitchen remodel, but were thinking our fridge still worked perfectly, so why bother.  Then, when the renters needed a new fridge, I thought why buy them a nice new fridge, when we can pay a little more and get the fridge we want and give them ours! :)

So yesterday's quest was to buy a new fridge for us.  Being the "frugal" gal that I am (ha!)  I checked on Craigslist and found a 2 month old fridge these people just bought and were moving and selling.  I sent Lane down with his truck to get it.  This is one of the kind of frustrating things about Craigslist sometimes - people don't always tell you everything.  Like, we may have wanted to know it was only 2 months old, and the picture you put on there was from the website,  however, you bought it from Best Buy at a huge discount because it had 2 dents in the front!  Ugh!

So, Lane just went to Best Buy and bought a new fridge all together.   They loaded it in the truck and he came home.  Now we needed help to get it out.  Unfortunately, we might as well be living in Leisure World here (a retirement community) because all our neighbors are old, and really we can't ask them to help us get a fridge out of the back of the truck.  (Unless of course we feel like paying for their back surgery when it's done!)  Thank heaven my bro-in-law was close by and came and helped us get it in.  So, now we have a new fridge to match all our other stainless steel appliances.

However, that's not where this story ends.  We loaded the old fridge in the truck for Lane to take over to the rental house and put in there.  Things were going swimmingly (Is that really a word?)  until he hit a bump, the rope tied around the fridge holding it in place broke, the fridge tipped over, and shattered through his back window, leaving his beautiful truck now looking like this:

Shattered glass all over the back seat - some in the front seat too!

White trash moving company?

OOPS!!!

So, we may have "saved" a few bucks by giving the renters our old fridge, but I'm pretty sure those savings are a moot point now, right?
Needless to say, Lane didn't have the greatest day yesterday, but I did thank him for giving me something to blog about!

May Mayhem

So here's a wrap up on May for us.

A very windy weekend at the cabin was enjoyed by all of our family except Kayla. She is to the age where if you don't have a friend going, you don't want to go. I get it. I was a teenager once too. So, she stayed with some good friends of ours, and we took the littles to the cabin, where they really had a blast. This time was actually sort of fun for me (which is a stretch as I am not super fond of going to the cabin).

Laying around eating, reading like crazy, and watching movies while sewing bonnets for Kayla and her friends for Pioneer Trek, and a great big, long run (totally hilly) made the weekend OK I guess. Let's be honest, I'm so much more a beach and condo kinda girl. Oh well, the kids love it, so that's why we do it right? Mother of the year! :) ha!

We took a quick trip to the temple Visitor's Center with our Wolves.  They are cute little guys, although I still wonder what in the heck I am doing being their leader!  I'm pretty sure I don't ooze Boy Scout out of me!  (At least I hope not!)

(Gotta love those old people who take the picture of you, and their hands just aren't as steady as they used to be.)

Tuesday night was the last night of tennis with Dennis for the kids.  They have loved it, and will do some summer camps to keep it up!  Maybe I can get me a Sharapova or Federer? In my dreams! :)

Swimming with this one is always all sorts of fun.  Please, please, please, let her learn how to swim on her own when lessons start this week! 

She is on a major princess and prince phase.  It really is the cutest thing ever.  She always has a barbie princess in her hands, and needs them to have a prince to kiss them, etc.  She is so dang funny.

We went to the Dbacks game where we won again and are in 1st place in our division!  Lane couldn't be happier.  He truly loves baseball.  I love to see him love something and have a hobby.  (Kinda makes me feel not as guilty for all my hobbies? ha!)  Sorry the picture is blurry- my phone is cracked and being held together by clear tape - which makes the camera a little fuzzy. :(

By the way, if any of you ever need to talk numbers or business with someone, call my husband.  He is borderline savant on figuring costs, profits, margins, overhead, etc.  I swear, this afternoon alone, he figured out 2 different options of investment plans for us on the way to the game (looking for a fortune teller to tell us which one would be best),  broke down the price and profit margin of the tray of nachos we had at the ballpark (which we already knew was a total rip off - but just confirmed that with his figuring!), then figured out just about how much the Coldstone Creamery at Tempe Marketplace (where we were eating) was making per day based on peak hours of peak days, price per item sold, and subtracting operating expenses.  Let's just say I wouldn't mind owning that particular Coldstone.  Can I also just say that the Cake Batter mixed with Brownie and Caramel and Chocolate is to die for?  And now they have a Chocolate Cake Batter!  For this chocoholic, that is heavenly!

Enough about food - I'm off to bed. :)

A Happy Post!

It was brought to my attention today that I may have seemed a little sad or negative in a couple of my last posts.  We ALL know that I am NEVER sad or mad! ha!  But, actually, those times are pretty rare, so I am going to do a happy post of all the good things that happened just this week, OK?  Then you all can know that I am OK and not ready to go "postal" any time soon.

Here goes:

1) Although shattered and bent, my cell phone still works. :)

2)  The French Open started this week - so I get to watch lots of tennis.

3)  Summer tennis leagues start next week, so I get to start playing tennis! (that has been hard having 3 weeks off!  no like!)

4) The cleaning ladies worked their magic on Tuesday, and the house stayed clean for 1 full hour.

5)  Addi is so happy and loves me so much because I bought her some barrettes for her hair.  Her exact words upon finding them were, "Oh Thank you so much mommy!  Heavenly Father and Jesus are going to be soooo happy!"   I hope they are, Addi.

6) Tax return = huge = happy! :) (Maybe a new 2 or 3 carat diamond?)

7)  I get paid to work out almost every day - how great is that?

8)  My eyebrows were waxed straight, despite the fact that the lady was crying and in a fight on the phone the whole time she was doing them.

9)  My husband told me last night that I am the most amazingly talented person he has ever known.  (After overhearing me on the phone helping my friend's daughter with her Spanish homework.  I guess he is amazed that I know how to do all these verb conjugations when I only took 1 class in Mexico 15 years ago?)  Apparently he doesn't know a whole lot of people, but who doesn't like to hear that?

10)  Finally, I had some of the really good kind of chocolate, and that ALWAYS seems to make things better!

I could go on and on about how my kids are healthy, and Lane is tolerating his chemo very well, and school is out tomorrow, and the sun is shining, and I have awesome friends, and I had a Sweetcakes sugar cookie today, and am so blessed every time I turn around, but I'll shut up now!