Kicking off the Summer!

I am OFFICIALLY in Summer Mode!

My last day of Internship was Wednesday. Thursday, I had to go back to HSU for my “Exit Interview” from the the Teachers College/Internship program. I was so nervous and I know I stumbled over my Impact on Student Learning defense presentation, but I made it through. Afterwards, I had lunch with my brother and B and Stephen. (Stephen was there for classes but we had to go separately because he had to attend a state sport event in a town not far from Arkadelphia after he left college.)
 
When I got back to town, I picked up Christopher from his daycare then we “went to Cruizzers to get a sip.” This is one of Christopher’s favorite things right now and he asks to do it almost every day when I pick him up. Cruizzers is a Sonic-type drive-in that we have here. (They’re way better than Sonic – we have one of those too, and I’m not sure how it gets enough business to stay open.)  Cruizzers half-price drink is from 3-5, which is perfect for getting out of school. We have been going maybe once a week since the weather has gotten warm! Christopher gets a small Sierra Mist and I get a Cherry Diet Pepsi. I have quit buying the canned CDP because I am trying to cut back on (NOT COMPLETELY CUT OUT) caffeine.

We came home that afternoon and I decided to cut back the bushes that are in this small flowerbed between our front porch and sidewalk. There are two different types of bushes that grow there – azaleas and something else. The other bush grows really quickly and crazy and had been needing a good trim for quite awhile. There were like 6-8 bushes total… way too many for the space available. I got out the electric trimmers but the battery gave out on me not long after I started trimming them, so I decided to go ahead and cut them way back with some loppers.

Um, yeah. I got a little carried away…

Friday morning, I had to go back to Arkadelphia again for the Internship Award presentation. It was a pain to have to make the trip again since I had just gone the day before for a 30-minute interview, but I did, as it was required.  I was glad I went, because I received an award! I was so shocked – I couldn’t believe it! I received the “Outstanding 7-12 Intern” award. SO EXCITING!!! There is one “Outstanding Intern” awarded to each group of interns based on the grades they are going to teach. (One for those who are K-12, such as art, music, & PE; one for P-4; 4-8; & 7-12) then one of the Interns who received the “Outstanding” award for their area is chosen as the Overall Outstanding Intern. I did not receive the overall Outstanding Intern award, but I am honored to have been in the top 4 of all 83 interns in the program this year!

The winners are chosen by a survey that goes out to faculty of the college and faculty in the public schools where we were doing our internship. There are certain qualifications that must be met in order to be able to be put on the nomination list, then professors, high school teachers, principals, etc, are able to choose from the nominees and place their votes. I’m not sure who all voted for me, but I was so surprised to be chosen! They named off several “honorable mentions” before calling out the winner of Outstanding 7-12 Intern and I honestly did not think it would be me!

Enough with that. =)  After I got back to town on Friday, Christopher and I had to try out a new sno cone stand in town. I’ve seen people at it every day after school for several weeks but never stopped for myself. I figured there was no better way to kick off summer break than with sno cones! Christopher got a grape one and I got wedding cake – my favorite. We enjoyed them on the back porch after we got home.

Before we got sno cones, we stopped at Atwoods to buy a few plants. (HAVE I MENTIONED I HAVE A PROBLEM?!?) I had been thinking about it all day and decided that I wanted to completely dig up the bushes that I had cut back in front of the house. I bought a few new, much smaller azaleas, a few dayliles, and some ground cover. I plan on stealing some variegated monkey grass (liriope) from my mom’s house.

I started digging up the bushes this morning. After the disaster I had a few years ago at our old house digging up century-old holly bushes (not really, but their root systems were a bitc you-know-what) I swore in the future, I would just leave well enough alone. Yeah, well… not so much. Stephen had a golf tournament this morning, so Christopher and I loaded up on water and tools and started digging. (Well, I did. Little man – not so much. He rode his motorcycle {tricycle} around and “helped” me a little.) I worked for several hours and dug up several root systems before giving in to the heat (I overheat easily and when I do – it’s not pretty.) and coming inside. I spent the rest of the day cleaning AT the house and doing laundry. (It’s a disaster area, really.) I am hoping to finish the new flower bed tomorrow or Monday and will post pictures then. =)

Stephen got home from his tournament around 5 and we headed back outside. He and Christopher swam (C’s first time in the pool this summer – he loved it!) and then Stephen mowed the yard while I did a little cleaning up in the back yard. Bliss!

 

(PS – I know the kiddo looks like a crazy hippie child. He keeps telling me he needs a haircut. We have one scheduled for Tuesday!)

It’s been awhile.

Soooo.

It’s been awhile.

The reason I haven’t blogged this semester? It’s sad.

I would take my laptop to and from school every day. Most days I would pack it up from school, put it in the car, and then leave it in there overnight. It was just easier that way. In the past, most of my blogging was done in my chaise lounge, in front of the television, while Stephen and I were relaxing at the end of a long day. Not to mention, my nights are quite full, especially since the time changed and it stays light so late. My afternoons this semester have consisted of picking Christopher up from daycare, coming home and (most days at least attempting to) clean up the mess that we’d made that morning getting ready for school.  Usually there was an errand than I needed to run or I would go to Curves to work out or something that took up another hour of my afternoon. Then before I knew it, it was time to make dinner, bathe the kiddo, and get my stuff ready for the next day. Lots of nights it’s 9pm before I’m having my “me” time, so blogging just got put on the back burner, unfortunately. I hate it.

I do plan on catching up on the good ol’ blog over the summer, as well as trying to keep blogging on a semi-daily basis.  I have no idea what is in store for us this summer, but it might very possible involve moving and it better most definitely include a new job for me!

Today is my last day of student internship, which is absolutely crazy. This semester has gone by faster than ANY spring semester has in the past. I have to to a Defense/Exit Interview tomorrow in Arkadelphia, then a luncheon in Arkadelphia on Friday. Then the next Friday, I’ll graduate! So exciting. =)

Other things I’m looking forward to?  Cruising in less than three weeks, summer break, Fourth of July, swimming, tanning, spending time with my family, a small family vacation this summer (maybe just visiting a zoo or waterpark), grilling hot dogs, planning Christopher’s third birthday party (WHAT?), blogging, photographing, and sleeping in past 5:30.

It will be the first summer in five years that I am not working (Walmart), and/or pregnant/on bed rest (for four weeks with C -- July 21 till the day he was born on August 18) or taking college classes. I have a feeling I will have a busy summer as far as looking for a job and getting all set up for it (i.e. possibly moving, professional development, setting up my classroom, etc.) but as of right now there is nothing that I HAVE to do and I am SOOO looking forward to it. {Knock on wood.}

Now, for an iPhone picture dump. (No good blog is complete with it.)  Here are some randoms I’ve taken recently.

This past Saturday, I had a much-needed girls day shopping in Hot Springs with my mom and Britney. This was the back of our car at 9 that night. Doesn’t B look happy? I got a lot of new clothes for this summer and for the cruise.

The next day, Stephen, Christopher and I drove to Owasso to visit Stephen’s grandfather. Stephen’s mom and Leonard were also visiting with Stephen’s grandpa. Christopher was very excited about seeing everybody! He keeps growing.

Another reason I love summer! Plants! I go crazy overboard with flowers every year. I love them! One time back at the beginning of Spring, we were in the garden center and I told Stephen to pick out a plant that he liked for the backyard. (Because then it would be even, you know, I have my plants and Stephen can’t gripe about not having any himself. Haha.) He came back to me with a tomato plant. Crazy guy. Anyway, these are my first two homegrown tomatoes! I don’t like tomatoes but I told Stephen I would try one because he swears they’re better homegrown.

Again, crazy with plants. I’ve never been able to grow petunias before because at our old house there was no good full sun areas. There was a huge tree in our front yard and we didn’t really go in the back yard much (although there was also a huge tree back there that also shaded a large area.) I’ve always loved the way petunias look and I kept seeing different colors and varieties this Spring. I kept buying them and buying them… I have five different pots with petunias. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more (I’m thinking red/white/blue) pop up sometime in the next few weeks.

That’s all for now!

April Fools!

My parents always pulled April Fools Day pranks on my brother and me when we were kids. I don’t remember if we’ve/I’ve pulled any pranks since Stephen and I got married. The year after we had Christopher, Stephen and I thought about pranking his mom and my parents and telling them that we were – surprise! – pregnant again. (Christopher was only 7 months old at the time) but then we actually DID think that we might be expecting (and I was FREAKING OUT) so we decided that wasn’t the best joke.

This year we pranked Stephen’s mom by calling and telling her that the pool at her house (the house that Stephen and I are currently living in) was leaking. Doesn’t sound that funny now, but hearing the panic in her voice… it was funny at the time!

For my parents – well, I’ve been wanting to “toilet paper” my parents house for a long time. I’ve tried to get Tyler and Britney to do it with me a few times at Halloween, but they are chicken and refused to help me. Stephen pretty much refused to help me, too. But for whatever reason – be it lack of sleep or a momentary lack in judgment, Stephen agreed to TP my parents house for April fools while they were at church last Sunday morning.

We kept it to a minimum. Nothing that they couldn’t easily clean up. No toilet paper 20 feet high up in trees or over the top of the roof of the house. Just some… decorations.  It was my first TP’ing adventure and it was a blast! I can’t wait to do it again. Haha!

Wordless Wednesday!

{after picking Christopher up from daycare on Monday}
Christopher: “I wanna go GEEGEE’S HOUSE!”
{GeeGee = my mom}

Me: “What if we go to the park and play?”
C-Monster: “Go play at PARK? YAAAAY!”

Christopher’s surgery

We love ACH!

I wanted to document Christopher’s surgery! It was last Thursday – March 28th. We headed to Little Rock on Wednesday afternoon. My parents met us there; my dad had been to an appointment in Hot Springs earlier that day. We met up with my sister-in-law, Britney, and ate at Cantina Laredo in Little Rock. One word… yum. We love Cantina Laredo.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Presidential in Little Rock… it’s just a few miles from Children’s and they offered us a really good rate since we were there for a procedure at the hospital. We were supposed to be at ACH at 7:45 on Thursday morning. We were called back to a room pretty quickly and Christopher changed into his special new pajamas. Several nurses came in doing pre-op stuff, as well as a doctor (not the attending, but one of his surgical residents) and the anesthesiologist. All of the staff at Children’s are SO nice! It was really a great experience.

Playing in the pre-op waiting room before being called back to a private pre-op room.

We spent almost two hours in the pre-op room waiting on everything to start. Christopher was being so sweet and funny. He did so great waiting on everything. There were only two people allowed in the room at a time so Stephen left and left my parents take turns coming back to visit for a few minutes. Christopher hadn’t had anything to eat or drink all morning long and it was 9:45 before they gave him some of the “goofy juice” to help him relax. He was pretty funny on the juice… like a little drunk three-year-old. Hilarious! About 10 minutes after they took him back to surgery! We were told it would take about an hour, then he would be moved to recovery and when he woke up we would be called to the recovery area.

 
Waiting in the pre-op room. 
  
The one above is blurry, but he was giving me a kiss. The one below is him hiding. “Mooommmy! I hide!”

The pictures below are after he had the goofy juice and was being taken back to surgery. You can tell by the look on his face that he isn’t quite his normal self. Just feelin’ good…. haha!

 

I would say the surgery took between an hour and an hour and a half. It seemed to go by pretty quickly. Stephen and I got ourselves some breakfast and visited with my parents. There was a couple from my church whose son was also in surgery that morning and several members from my church were there to support them, including our pastor and a deacon. {They had no idea that Christopher was in surgery on the same day; neither me nor mom had mentioned it.} They sat with us for awhile and prayed with us during and after the surgery.

The doctor eventually came out and let us know that the surgery was over and successful! There was a possibility that they might need to do an additional surgery to complete the procedure, but it was not necessary in Christopher’s case. We are thankful for that… one surgery will do just fine, thanks!

About 10 or 15 minutes after the surgery was over, they called us back to the recovery area. It is a big room partitioned off by curtains where they take the patients directly after surgery. Christopher was awake and sitting in a nurse’s lap. He cried when he saw me (a very sad, painful, scared cry that broke Mommy’s heart) and I was able to sit in a rocking chair with him while the nurse watched his vitals and gave him pain medicine for about 45 minutes to an hour.

He was able to drink apple juice – the nurse said he had gulped down a bunch of juice right after he woke up and she actually ended up taking it away because she was afraid that much juice all at once would make him sick! Ha. I didn’t bother telling her that we still water down his juice at home – not to mention he loves juice anyway – so when he was given the opportunity to have “full-flavor” juice he drank it all before she could take it away and water it down! He also got to eat a good portion of a yummy popsicle. :) Poor thing, he would eat a few bites then put it down even though he liked it and wanted it… he just didn’t have it in him to finish it all.

 

Only two people are allowed in the recovery area at a time, so Stephen took turns with my parents and they came back one at a time for a few minutes.  Stephen made a phone call to his mom to update her on everything, then came back and stayed with us until they moved us to a post-op private room.  The nurses in post-op allowed my parents to come in so that all four of us could sit together. We were in that room for maybe 30 minutes. They gave us all of our post-op instructions and called in an order of oxycodone to the ACH pharmacy. Christopher got a bit more juice and was offered another popsicle but he didn’t eat any of it. I would guess we were in that room maybe 30 or 40 minutes total? Then they took out Christopher’s IV, waited on the doctor to sign off on our dismissal, and gave us our walking orders! Before we left, I ran to the pharmacy to pick up the oxycodone prescription.

We left out of Little Rock immediately and headed home. Christopher threw up right after we hit the interstate – just a tiny bit – and then he fell asleep and didn’t wake up until about an hour away from Mena. He cried for about two minutes asking to get out of his car seat then fell back asleep and stayed asleep till we got him out of his car seat at home! We got home around 4ish and he stayed up for awhile watching “choo-choo” and snuggling. He had a little bit to drink and some crackers, but threw them up not long after he ate them. I have a suspicion that he was reacting to the oxycodone the same way that my mom and I do – it makes us throw up, too. Both times that Christopher was sick and threw up, he had been given a dose of oxy within an hour before.  So - I didn’t give him any more oxycodone and called the doctor’s office the next morning to get a different pain medicine.

Watching choo-choo after we got home.

On Thursday night, Christopher was just pitiful. He didn’t feel well and was probably in a little bit {or a lot} of pain. He wasn’t happy laying down, sitting up, being held, etc etc… he laid down but didn’t really sleep, wanted up, wanted back down… he ended up falling to sleep around 7 and slept for a few hours then was awake again for a few hours. Around 11:00 (I was so exhausted and so was Stephen) he actually told us he wanted to put up his toys (some little cars he had been playing with on the sofa) and go to “seep.” (So cute… he feels the the need to rub his eye when he’s talking about going to bed or being sleepy.)

His recovery has gone wonderfully! No complications and he has just been in the best mood. On Friday you would have never guessed that he had had surgery the day before. The actually surgery (in the best way that I can put it) consisted of going through his belly button with a camera to find the test.icle, then making a very small incision in his pelvic area to bring the test.icle down, then they used a few sutures to put it in its proper place and keep it there. Amazing that they were able to do all that in just an hour, all via laparoscope, and Christopher was able to go home the same down and run around the next day like the wild 2-year-old that he is.

We love our sweet boy SO much and we are so thankful that everything went so smoothly and that Christopher is home safe and sound!

Photographic Update

Shut the front door! I blogged twice in one day!
Scroll down or click here to read my post, “Adventures in Potty Training!”

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Last Wednesday, I logged on to Carnival’s website and saw this:

Which led me to do this on Wednesday afternoon…

My hyacinth is blooming. I absolutely love hyacinth. It smells heavenly! I just wish it bloomed all spring and summer long! I’ll be sad once it goes away.

These pretty babies are (were – this picture is a week old) blooming right outside of the doors that I walk through to go into school every day. They always make me smile and are a good start to my work day. =)

On Thursday, I returned to Henderson so that I could waste an entire day for no reason for a “Hot Topics” day. While waiting in the library for Stephen to finish up an assignment so that we could get the heck outta Arkadelphia go home, I hopped on a computer to read some blogs. Obviously, the fine staff at Huie Library is not using my $60 Library Fee (PER SEMESTER – plus $15 each summer session I’ve taken) to buy frigging canned air. There’s no telling what nasty things are growing in their keyboards. Think I should send this picture to them? Gross.

I took this picture of Christopher a week or two ago. I used the Red Stamp app on my iPhone to create a postcard to send to Nana and Pop Pop. The picture of Christopher is perforated so they can pop it out if they ever choose to do so. They loved it!

Last Friday night I wasn’t very hungry. I had bought a box of Lucky Charms for a St. Patrick’s Day themed Bunco party I hosted last Monday, but I had forgotten to use it during the party.  It sounded good for dinner, so that’s what I had. It’s been forever since I had Lucky Charms… I always eat the cereal part and save the marshmallows for last. I’ve done that since I was a kid. I also do that with chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream… I eat around the cookie dough and save it for last then stuff as much of it into my mouth as possible. It’s really an attractive quality…

I had bought Almond Milk about a month ago for making smoothies and I’d only used about a cup of it for one smoothie. I decided to try it in my cereal. I couldn’t tell the difference between this and regular milk. I believe it’s something I’ll keep around.

My super hero… love this boy!

Today (Monday) I’m feeling yucky. I was sick yesterday, too… head cold/sinus type junk. Not to mention girl problems, ifyouknowhatimean.

My sweet hubby brought me this during lunch today. Caffeine for my headache. Yes, please!