It's been 3 weeks!

I took this picture this morning because it was picture retake day and she requested that I braid her hair. Too bad the cute braid won't show in the school pictures! I can hardly believe that it's been three weeks since I last posted. What a lazy bum I've been. We've had some super fun and exciting weekends to make up for really boring weekdays. Caitlin's in bed by 7-7:30pm each school night so that she can get up and out to the school bus by 7:10am. The last time I posted it was the day before Faith's birthday party and that was the first of three fun filled weekends. Saturday morning we (Caitie and I) went to Faith's birthday party where we learned about various reptiles and their habitat. We had the opportunity to 'pet' a 60 lb tortoise (this picture was taken off of Harts Reptile Rescue website, because I forgot my camera)and to hold a snake if we wanted, which we didn't, although we did pet it. Then on Sunday, we had a "just the three of us" day. (Photo again taken from the Lee Farm's website cause I forgot my camera!)It started at the pumpkin patch with a hay ride, a pony ride, and walk through the corn and hay mazes. Then we ogled the big pig, oohed over the really cute yellow lab puppies, and picked out our pumpkins, including one that I'm going to try turning into a pumpkin pie and headed home in time to see a matinee of the movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. As we love the book, we had really high hopes for the movie. Caitlin wasn't disappointed, but Ryan and I wouldn't have had hurt feelings if we'd missed seeing it in the theater. The next weekend Caitie and I were back in Mac, as we call McMinnville, for a girls weekend sleep over with Faith and Jantina. That weekend actually turned out to be so much more relaxing than I expected it to be because Jantina was starting to get a cold so we just hung out at her house and let the kids play. Ryan and Phill went fishing and brought home quite the bounty of Salmon to vacuum seal and stick in our freezer. Jantina has quite a talent for making and decorating cakes. She made a turtle for Faith's reptile themed party and this swimming pool complete with swimmer for Caitlin's birthday. We took the kids and their parents to the local swimming pool for 'family' swim which turned out to be 'Caitlin's Birthday' swim because we pretty much had the pool to ourselves for the entire two hours. The life guards were really patient and got the rope swing out two different times and helped outfit the less strong swimmers with life jackets to make it easier on the parents. After the pool it was back to our house for crafts, food and presents. Then we sent everyone home with a big thank you and went to bed. This coming weekend shows no signs of slowing down because of course it'll be Halloween! Caitlin has decided to be a cat this year and we're going to see my mom for the first time in almost two months to do our trick or treating at the beach. Caitlin had an opportunity to test her costume last Friday at school for the "PTA" Halloween Night. She was uber excited before we got there and then she was overwhelmed by the number of people so we ended up leaving early. I'm proud that she participated at all, usually she wouldn't even go if she felt overwhelmed.

Promised Pictures and a long update

First day of school. Looking too cute for words with her super sassy shirt and earth friendly accessories.
Meet EMILY PUMPKIN PIE! She was 7mo old in this picture and we had just gotten her the night before this picture was taken. This was two days before Caitlin's surgery in the underground parking garage of the hospital where my mom had just had surgery.

Visiting Grandma Cathy in the hospital while she still had hair. :) We haven't seen her since all the hair fell out because we have colds and can't risk sharing our yuck germs with her. :( Hopefully we'll be better soon though so we can go visiting!

In the hospital the day after her own surgery. Practicing walking around again. Notice the adorable silky cherry jammies. "Just because you're in the hospital, doesn't mean you can't look good." Plus I think they were more comfortable than the flannel backless things the hospital provides.

Art work created in "Hospital School"
She put the IV pole in front of her wheel chair between the foot rests and started pushing herself back to her room. I guess she was done with hospital school and I was taking too long...

Any extended stay in a hospital means an excuse to put "make-up" on daddy.

I've been meaning to put these pictures and more up for quite some time and then I finally just posted them into a "draft" and now that I have time cause I'm at work, I thought I'd actually post them with an update. Let's see....

Caitlin is completely recovered from her surgery and her post surgery infection and is "sick" again this time with a cold. She's doing well in school. She started the Spanish Immersion class last week and this week they only had school on Monday and Tuesday because the rest of the week was for Teacher/Parent Conferences. At Caitlin's conference her teacher told me that Caitlin is the most responsible child in her class. Not really shocking to any of us that know her well-she has an incredibly strong desire to not get in trouble. She's 'struggling' with the language barrier but has already made great strides. She can count to 15 and is working on 16-20 to catch up with the rest of the class (all of whom have been doing this for 5 wks not just 1!) She can sing a "good morning" song in spanish, she knows almost all of her colors and the 4 shapes that the class has been working on. What she doesn't know yet, and will come with time just like it did for her classmates, is what the teacher is saying when she says "line-up" and "push in your chair" and "go choose a book in the library". We've checked out bilingual books from the library to read to her so that she hears that language at home and we've written vocab words on 3x5 index cards to post around the house in their appropriate locations ie.. "La Mesa" for the table..She's still really excited about the program and happy to be learning a new language and I am really proud of her.

My mom is still staying strong and tuckin' along with her Chemo treatments. She had her second dose yesterday (I am writing this on 10-09-09 because the "draft" was saved when I started posting the pictures). All of her hair has fallen out and she's learning how to tie scarves over her now bald head. Luckily she's gorgeous and her head is nicely shaped so bald looks good on her. I miss her a lot and really want to go hug her, but we can't take a chance that she'll catch my cold, so the next visit will have to wait.

Today is Caitlin's best friend Faith's 6th birthday- HAPPY BIRTHDAY FAITH!!! Which means that Caitie's 6th birthday is in just 11 days! Yikes I haven't even sent out the invitations to her party yet! Faith is having a really cool "reptiles" party where a local conservation/rehabilitation group brings a few reptiles to your party for an hour to teach the kids about the animals and their habitat. The kids can hold/pet the animals and learn something at the same time. Pretty neat. Caitlin is going to have a "swimming" party at the local swimming pool during family swim which will also be fun.

Hooray for October

The puppies in the new picture at the top are of my Aunt Carol and Aunt Julie's dogs from last Halloween. Chica and Daisy were forced to endure these little outfits and last night Caitlin informed me that she wanted to go to the store to buy Emily a Halloween costume. I'm pretty sure that Emily will eat any costume I try to put on her so I probably won't waste the money to buy a pre-made one, but I will definitely make something for her! I am really excited about Halloween this year because it's fun for Caitie. It's not my favorite Holiday, Christmas still holds that honor, but it's close. Probably because the kids get all excited about trick or treating and we make decorations and then of course the candy! I love Candy Corn and almost went to the store yesterday to buy some, but when I walked in I was assaulted with Christmas decorations and got mad so I left. Sort of dumb since I wanted candy corn, but the first thing you see when you walk in a store in September (even the last day of September) should not be Christmas decor! October is also my favorite month now because it holds the birthday spot for so many important people in my life...cousins, friends, friends kids, sibling-in-law, and of course Caitie and Ryan both have October birthdays. So while Halloween isn't as important as Christmas, October is as important as December! Oh yeah, I removed my playlist because a) I can't listen to it at work-it's too distracting. b) I can always log into playlist.com if I want to listen to it at home and c) I like to listen to it while reading other people's blogs and I can't do that when I follow the link from my blog. d) I figured most people have their own music to listen too and it's just one more step to go turn the music off of my blog when they want to read it and not listen to my music.