There's a blizzard, and Tex and I are stuck in Colorado

I decided to venture out

Huckababy #2

5 months and counting

I thought this might be a good place to provide updates for those who are interested in following along until our new little guy arrives. I’m 5 months along (21 weeks to be exact) and this pic was taken on Thanksgiving. Seems like every Monday folks at work are saying I grew over the weekend. I’m starting to feel pretty pregnant and can’t believe I’ve only got another 4 months to go. He’s due on April 24th, but Texas was 2 weeks early so I’ll give this one until the 15th or so. We’ll see if I’m right.

I’ll be posting the ultrasound pics tomorrow or Friday so check back if you’d like to see him. We think he’s pretty cute. :)

Updates

Well, it's been a while since I made the time to post here. Lots has happened since September: being pregnant, dad was diagnosed with cancer (both parent's in one year, can you believe it??) and my aunt passed away.

Pregnancy is going fine. We'll find out what it is in 2 more weeks and hopefully I can keep updates going here. Baby is due at the end of April. I think it's a girl, but Scott's not so sure.

Dad found what turned out to be a tumor on his side a few months ago. Had it biopsied (sp?) and his doctors were unable to determine what kind of cancer it was. The way his doctor explained it, its like your driving on the freeway and you know that all of the things around you are cars (cancer). Usually they have labels or you can tell what kind they are by how they look. Dad's don't have labels and don't look like any of the usual cars you see on the road. He's been scanned and scoped from top to bottom and no other tumors were found (thank goodness). They took it out a few weeks ago and sent it to the national tumor registry to help get it diagnosed. We should be hearing this week or next what the final pathology report says. So far there are no plans for chemo or radiation. Depending on what the diagnosis is, they may just keep an eye on him and do regular scans and check-ups to see if anything else pops up. So, lots of hurry up and wait. I think we're all feeling optomistic at this point, but that may only be because we've had just enough time to relax and let our guard down. Hopefully everything turns out ok.

My Aunt Irene (mom's sister) had been diagnosed with breast cancer about 6 years ago and had been doing well since finishing treatment, etc. Unfortunately this year she began suffering from back and neck pain and found out too late that she had developed bone cancer in her spine. By the time they found it in September it had already spread throughout her body. She passed away in October about a week before dad had his surgery. Poor mom had to fly out for the funeral the day of his surgery. She and Andy barely got to see the surgeon and hear that dad had done fine and they got all of the tumor out and then they had to head off to the airport. This has all been really hard for her, with all of this on top of her own cancer diagnosis back in June) and I know we're all hoping that next year will be a quieter one.

So, there's my last two months (ugh). Being that Thanksgiving is coming up, in spite of all this, I know I still have a lot to be thankful for. Mom is healthy. My family is healthy. We all have jobs and the things we need. Things could be worse and I'm thankful they're not.

My little artist

Thought I'd share these pics of Texas and his new easle that his grandpa made for him. He loves to paint and is very particular about what color he wants to paint with. I think his first piece is pretty great.

Museum of Bad Art (MOBA)

Andy sent this to me and I just had to share it. The Musuem of Bad Art is a collection of art deemed "too bad to be ignored." There isn't a single piece I haven't liked. Check it out.

Too funny

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/08/24/fake.bomb.ap/index.html

Hour 3.5, road closed....Vegas or bust

Put me on the waiting list, please

Seems as if some scientists think they are close to creating technology that will allow invisibility. Wonder how much THAT will cost?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/08/09/feature.invisibility/index.html

Darn

I thought of something really funny to post while I was driving home, and now I can't remember.

Maroon 5's MTV Video Award

Yep, that's me standing in the bathroom of Maroon 5's guitar player, holding the Moon Man. Pretty cool, huh? Apparently the Grammy's are at his parent's house. Darn.

How exactly did I end up in said bathroom? Well, his sister is the girlfriend of an old friend of mine from school and she was having a going away party (she's moving to Nashville). She was giving us a tour of his new house ($2M place on a hill just below the Griffith Observatory, overlooking all of Los Angeles......not too shabby) and there it was, in the walk-in closet (where else would you keep it, really?).

(Just for the record, I was trying to be cool and would never have asked to take my picture in his bathroom, but she made me do it.)

Happy Birthday to us!

Got a question?

Check this out http://answers.yahoo.com/

4th of July bike parade in West Garden Grove

Good news

Mom came home from the hospital today and her doctor got the preliminary lab results. The bad news: it was definitely cancer (there was a 2% chance it might not be). The good news: it looks as if the tumor was completely contained within the kidney. That means other than yearly CT scans she is considered "cured." It's a little weird to go from "you're healthy" to "you have cancer, we took out your kidney, now you don't have cancer" all within two and a half weeks. I think we're all still trying to process it but we're exstatic about the news and looking forward to her speedy recovery.

Surgery went well

Mom is doing good, all things considered. She wanted to know if we all had dinner and kept apologizing for being so tired. Oh, and when will she get to see Texas. The doctor said that everything looked good and we should have the pathology results in a few days. Hopefully they will just confirm that it was in the early stages and had not spread. So......a little more waiting and then we should all be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

Those su-u-mmer niiii-iiiights

I've been moping around like Olivia Newton-John in a nightgown humming Grease tunes for three days. One, because it was on TV over the weekend and, well, they're catchy little tunes. And, two, because being at Disneyland on Sunday, all humid and summery-feeling, made me remember a few trips to Disneyland before, on similar balmy summer nights, with some special boy I had decided was worth taking there. (que: John Travolta)

There was the first one in sixth grade. We shared the same birthday and decided that we should go celebrate together. His best friend was "going around" (oh, the 80's) with my sister who, of course, was also sharing a birthday, and we invited another "couple" to join us. If I remember right, my parents also went, but let us go off on our own and check in occasionally so that they could buy us food (only being in 6th grade, we had no money; I wonder if they bought all of our tickets......that would cost you $420 these days, yikes!). Looking back, I wonder if they weren't sneaking around following us all to make sure we were behaving.

What do I remember most about that day? A bird pooped on my friend's head, the boys bought my sister and I matching Minnie Mouse charm necklaces with our names on them (which we wore for months; I think Laura still has hers), and I almost got kissed for the first time while riding The Haunted Mansion. The poor kid asked me if he could, I said "sure," and then he never actually did it. Oh well, I was probably too young anyway. It didn't keep me from floating on cloud 9 the rest of the summer until I went on to Jr. High (he was the same age but in a grade lower) and he promptly dumped me for a younger woman. I believe I remember crying on the couch, listening to some Whitney Houston song. Oh, young love.

Another Disneyland date that I remember was my birthday again. The summer I turned 18, I think. He was a boy I had liked for a few months. It was hot out and I had a cute new outfit. He was sweet and fun. It was another double date with my sister (being twins, you tend to spend birthdays together) and it was the summer that Fantasmic premiered. He waited two hours with me so that we would have good seats to see the show. I was walking around all dreamy-eyed until the night ended with him trying to get a little too friendly out by his car. I don't remember speaking to him much after that.

There was a guy in college that I went with, "just as friends" but by the end of the night it was "boyfriend" (after all, it IS the "happiest place on earth"; that's bound to make you want to fall in love, right?). Times with friends old and new (ah, dogboy, those were the days). The smell of sunscreen and popcorn. The Electrical Parade. And every night ends the same.....your arms around someone special, watching the fireworks, thinking that there couldn't possibly be anything more romantic.

So, I suspect I'll be "hopelessly devoted" for a few more days. Or at least until I can get these darn songs out of my head.

We went on the new Pirates ride! That's Captain Jack hiding behind some barrels.

Where in Disneyland are we?

Update on Mom

Mom is having surgery on Wednesday to remove her left kidney. She's in good spirits (relatively speaking) and is making jokes about writing something on her abdomen that says "Open Here." Just a little joke for the surgeons. She'll be in the hospital through the weekend and should be home in time to party it up for 4th of July. Ok, maybe not party, but I'm sure we'll get her out to wave around some sparklers or something. I mean, having a vital organ removed is something to celebrate, right? (ugh) After the surgery we'll know for sure whether or not it has spread anywhere else, and we're all hoping for the best.

Goin' to a concert

..............................

......what do you say when you find out that your mom has cancer? jeez, it feels weird to even type it. but that's what we found out this week. you're never quite prepared for something like that. sitting here trying to type this i'm still not even sure where to go first. there's the shock, then the "how bad is it?", then you assume the worst and hope you're wrong. and all the while you're secretly trying to steel yourself up for what may be one of the hardest things you have to go through in your life. and i'm not even the person who's sick. i can only imagine what she is feeling.

mom's got a tumor in her kidney. the good news is that all tests indicate that it has not spread anywhere else. she'll have surgery to remove the kidney and all should be well. so, we'll just keep praying and i know that as a family we'll get through this together.

We survived

And he was an angel, to boot. Who knew traveling with a toddler could be so much fun. He slept on the plane, was happy in the car and danced at the wedding reception. I think I might just have the best kid EVER. :)

On the road again

Tomorrow Texas and I are heading out to Burlington, Iowa (along with the rest of the Clark clan) to attend my cousin's wedding on Saturday. Flying with a 20-month-old should be pretty exciting. Here are my top 5 things to do with a toddler on an airplane:

5. Let him stand on my lap and peer over the seat in front of us. People love it when kids bang on their head with toy trains.
4. Watch his favorite DVD's and turn them up loud enough so that everyone for 5 rows can hear
3. Let him run up and down the aisle, stopping to greet each person and block the beverage cart
2. Changing his dirty diaper in the tiny little bathroom, during turbulance
1. Listening to him scream for the last 30 minutes of the flight as his ears try and adjust to the change in pressure

I figure it's going to be pretty rad.

What a month....

Things that happened this month:

• My brother turned 36 (Happy B-Day Drew!!)
• I celebrated my second official Mother's Day
• I had to put Texas in daycare for the first time (a heartwrenching experience for us both)
• My cousin and his wife had their second baby (welcome Jarrett Christopher!!)
• I went on an awful business trip to Jacksonville, FL and caught a nasty bug on the way home and I'm sitting here with a temperature over 101 and I feel like crap

So, for those of you who were wondering what happened to me......there it is, in a nutshell. Now I'm going to go back to the couch, where I have spent most of the weekend, and drink some more OJ and hope that tomorrow I miraculously wake up cured.

Minnie's Moonlit Madness

Why bother?

After reading the following story on CNN.com, I wondered what might make a woman want to get married again at age 104. And after 20 husbands, no less.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/05/02/malaysia.wedding.ap/index.html

Someone suggested I watch "Harold and Maude." Since I've never seen that movie I'll just have to come to my own conclusion. Probably for the sex, right?

Things Texas said this weekend

Ok, so I swore this wouldn't turn into daily postings about how fabulous my kid is, but I just can't seem to resist the temptation to note a few things here and there. A sampling of things he said to me or those around me this weekend:

"Hey, Ted!" - yelled across the yard to my 85 year-old neighbor next door
"Oh, mommy" - when I spilled yogurt on him at dinner
"Eeeeww, nasty" - while changing a particularly stinky diaper
"Pee yew" - see: above
"Goog grief" - just about any time it applies
"Oh MY!" - because he was so excited about a bunch of airplanes and helicopters flying around
"Esqeeze me" - after he burped (I'm not kidding)
"What are you doing?" - repeated back to me any time I asked him
"Close the door" - so that he can sit in the "big truck" all by himself; generally followed by "open it" (mommy opens the door), "close the door" (mommy closes it), "open it" and so on....
(On a side note: like all little boys before him, he got to "drive" daddy's truck for the first time today. It was pretty cute to see him sitting on daddy's lap, his little hands on the steering wheel and a huge smile on his face)
"Hi, baby!" - to a little girl in another shopping cart at the grocery store, his little arm waving to greet her

It's a little surreal to hear yourself reflected back in your little boy's ever expanding vocabulary, and a reminder of just how much they are a part of you. Do I really say "good grief???"

I picked Pickler

Yes, I like to watch American Idol. I'm not obsessive or anything. LOST took top priority last night and I flipped back occasionally to see who was going to go this week. But, I have to say that I liked Kelly Pickler. As naive and simple as she is, I was glad to see that she didn't change too much from the country bumpkin that she was at the beginning. Along with the rest of America, I let out a little "oooohhh, honey" when she didn't know what Simon meant when he called her a minx. I thought she had a great voice, for someone who had never had any lessons or training. It would be nice to see someone like her make a go of it.

Ever have one of those days.....

......where you just want to bang your head against your desk, throw your computer out the window and quit your job? Well, I've had one of those weeks. You know it's bad when you and your co-workers joke about jumping out the window but realize that it wouldn't do any good because it's only a two story building and you'd just end up back at work in a wheelchair or something. tGif

It's a beautiful So Cal day

The paperclip guy

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/04/17/paper.clip.to.house.ap/index.html

Queso?

Texas had his second Easter today and who knew that a 19-month-old would get the concept of an Easter egg hunt. He had so much fun we did it 3 more times by the end of the day, and each time at the end he asked "more hiding?" He even knew to say "yay!" when he found an egg and put it in his "baket." It was pretty cute.

In honor of Easter Sunday he learned the words "queso" and "hola" at Sunday school today. I'm not sure what they have to do with Jesus rising from the dead to forgive us of our sins, but I suppose he'll be asking for more queso at lunch instead of more cheese like he usually does. "Hola, mama. More queso, por favor."

Ok, one last cute kid story for the day: Just before we were about to walk out the door, I found Texas standing particularly close to the TV. When I asked him what he was doing he promptly replied, "I poopin." If only we could all watch TV and poo at the same time.

Happy Birthday Tal!

Test Monkey

Neat! This was sent from my camera phone. What can't you do with your cell phone these days??

This is called a "moblog," or mobile blog, for those not in-the-know. Which, until yesterday, included me. Apparently folks are using their camera phones to snap pics and send them to their blogs to journal trips to far off places. All I have to share at the moment is my son's monkey.

Happy Easter!

Can I get one of these at work, please?

http://www.metronaps.com/

Yuck

I was using a computer in our conference center at work today, while on a break from a class I was taking, and saw the grossest thing. There was a booger stuck to the partition separating my computer from the one next to me. And not a small one either. It was big, and probably pretty gooey once, from the way it was sort of smeared across the fabric. How, in the middle of corporate America, does a booger end up in a place like that? Are there a few of those little boys left (cuz ladies, you know it wasn't one of us) who used to like to pick 'em and stick 'em and just never outgrew that nasty habit? Did someone have a kid in there? Either way, seems like someone woulda cleaned it off by now. Eeeeeeewww

Happy Birthday Scott!

Yep, he's another year older today. I'd swear he doesn't look a day over 35. ;)

In honor of this special day, check out his website and listen to a few new tunes:

http://www.thecarolinemovement.com/

If you're on MySpace, you can also check him out there. Just search for The Caroline Movement.

(Scott, seriously, I think it's time to update the website. Just a thought) :)

Finally....

I've been telling myself for months that I was going to start a blog, and here it is. Just a fun way to take a few moments out of my day to reflect, rejoice, regret, reenact, and generally just get stuff off my chest. I work full time and then come home and work some more, and sometimes you just need to download some silly thing you heard, did, observed, and this seemed like a good place to do it.

If you're here it's becuase I invited you, so feel free to post a response to anything that suits your fancy. On the flip side, don't feel like you have to check in regularly, or at all.

Well, here's to my first post. I have to admit, it's kind of exciting. :)