Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to my amazing husband! This is the 12th birthday I have been able to share with him. The 11th birthday as his wife. I look back and try to remember all of them. I remember our first birthday as husband and wife, I was at Milstar School in Georgia. I sent him dinner and a movie, since I figured that we would probably do that if I was home. I sent Forrest Gump on VHS and a gift certificate to Applebees. February 1998. That was so long ago. It is amazing how much we have been through since then. There is some cliche thing I should probably write now about how much things change and yet always remain the same....but I won't. Our lives are anything but cliche and ordinary. I love you, babe. Without all the cliche "best friend, forever and ever, soul-mate" stuff. Even though you are all that stuff, you are so much more. You are my strength and carry me. You make it all worth it.

Anyway, Billy wanted to go snowboarding for his birthday, so he went to Squaw Valley on Saturday. One of the few things I like about living here, is that almost everywhere we want to go snowboarding is free for us since we are military. We pay $15.00 for a shuttle ride from the Outdoor Rec center on base. It's nice. After a log day of boarding, you can load up your gear and sleep all the way home. Oh, and we save $74.00, 'cause that's how much a lift ticket costs for everyone else.

I told him he had to take pictures....Here's his loot:

Billy is pretty easy to please...But I wanted to do something special for him this year. I comissioned an artist to do a charcoal sketch of him and the kids. And he loved it. It's about 16x20...The picture makes it seem so small.

I also made his Grandma Fohey's carrot cake for his birthday cake, which he hasn't had since he was in highschool. It was a nice day. It is the least I could do for him. I love you, babe. Here's to 50 more birthday's together.....

Seriously

So I had weekend duty this weekend. Can I rant for a moment and tell you how much I HATE working on the weekends? Seriously. I mean, don't get me wrong, I get a huge sense of accomplishment from my job, saving the world from bad guys and jihad, I just wish I didn't have to do it on Saturday and Sunday. Oh and let's not forget that Monday was a holiday, so I had to work Monday, too. Oh, and let's also not forget that Saturday was Valentine's Day, too. If I ever meet a terrorist, I am going to ask him to please take a break from tyrany and World Dominion on Saturdays and Sundays. It is seriously affecting my family time. Seriously.

Billy and Avery had a great time, though. Avery got to wear all kinds of not matching outfits with really messy hair. She was sporting the "not quite clean" look all weekend as well. Seriously. I love that about them...They are both kids and played so hard this weekend. They pushed almost every one of Avery's toys down her slide. She was determined to get the moo up the stairs and down the slide, all on her own. Eventually she did let her Daddy help her.

My favorite part of the weekend, was coming home every night to a squealing 15 month old...Who ran just as fast as her little legs could go...down the hallway to hug me and kiss me and love on me as though she has not seen me in 5 days. Seriously.

She has let me rock her at bedtime the past few weeks. I am so loving that, too. Miss Independent has been falling asleep on her own in her crib since she was about 6 months old. Forget sleeping with Momma and Daddy. Not in a million years...unless she is sick. Seriously. I know I am a lucky parent and shouldn't complain, but sometimes, I just don't get enough loves from her during the day.

So, seriously, I guess it wasn't so bad working this past weekend. There is comfort knowing how much you are loved, missed and needed at the end of the day.

Seriously.

Happy Days

There isn't much I can add to these pictures...they speak volumes....

So we finally got Avery back to the ENT doctor, who confirmed Avery's ears are infected (really?) and prescribed more ear drops...these are stronger apparently. Anyway, she is less than thrilled when she sees me coming toward her with that little white bottle. She had to have her ears evacuated at the clinic, which is to say she was completely traumatized and violated with a long ear suctioning vacuum thing that was loud and by the length and depth at which the doctor plunged it into her ear, EXTREMELY painful. I was nauseous. I felt so bad for her.

But as you can tell from the pics, she never lets things like this get her down. She is so much like her brother in that aspect. Always smiling and laughing.

I'm just saying....

So I have been trying to upload video for almost 20 minutes and have lost the patience..

So here goes nothing.....

I think Avery is the smartest little thing. Ever. I mean, could a parent be more proud?

She's 15 months old and knows how to mimic all animal sounds. And by all, I really mean 10 or so. But come on, at 15 months old, that's pure genious!! My personal favorite is her rendition of a rooster, which is a high pitched "doody-doo" followed by a wave of her hand over her head.

And did I mention she is bilingual?

I am not sure why they call water "agua" at her daycare. But they do, and now, so does Avery. For those that know us, know that it is a weekly occurrence for Billy to be mistaken as hispanic. Puerto Rican, Mexican, Spanish, Italian, pretty much everything except Samoan...even Russian once! So he was less than thrilled to learn that one of Avery's first words was spanish. I think it is cute. I am glad we finally figured out what she was asking for. I just happened to be in her classroom and the teachers asked "Who wants agua?"

And there goes Avery screaming "Agua, Agua, Agua!" and pointing to her cup.

I know I am biased, but I'm just sayin'...15 months old?!

Lookout Harvard.

Ucks

That's what Avery calls them....

We went to Ellis Lake today and walked around for a little bit to get out of the house. Billy has weekend duty (BOO!) and needed to sleep all day. I needed to get laundry done and the kitchen cleaned. We went to Walmart to get a few groceries this morning...On the way home, since it was so close to lunch, I picked up a little pizza for me and Avery to share from the Subway in our Walmart. I got a Dr. Pepper and of course Avery wanted some, so I offered it to her, knowing she can't figure out the straw thing. She just licks the straw and then gives up. Or that's what she used to do anyway...

She definitely figured it out today. She got a mouthful and was so startled, all the Dr. Pepper came right back out. Then she wanted more, so I gave her a little and her eyes got all watery and the carbonation kinda took her breathe away. It was so funny. Then I realized I would have to get rid of the soda, so I took another sip, threw it out and told her "all gone". She bought it today, but at some point she will realize it's not all gone. How do they get so grown so fast? I swear she was just born last week!

Fast forward 4 hours after nap time and 4 loads of laundry and there we were, me and Avery, at Ellis Lake in Yuba City. As soon as we pulled up, I realized I should have brought bread. There were ducks and geese EVERYWHERE. I got Avery out of the car and the stroller out of the back and let Avery go out on her own for a little bit and the geese and ducks surrounded us and I was getting nervous becasue they were getting a little too close and aggressive, so I turned back to get the stroller, but couldn't. The geese started howling and hissing....I was pretty scared. Stupid goose. How could I be scared of a goose? Then a man with 2 kids pulled up in a Jetta with 3 loaves of bread and saved us.

We wandered around for a while. There was a pretty white pavilion and a little stone bridge. It was a nice little park. It had a trail all the way around.

Other than the "attack of the hungry, stupid goose" adventure, things here have been pretty normal. Avery has been preetty sick with one thing or another for the past few weeks. She missed school on Thursday with a fever. Her ear is infected. Weird, I know since she has tubes. Well, Avery has supersonic, resistent infection in her ear...She came down with the strep a few weeks ago and was on antibiotics for 10 days and the day after finishing her meds, she got this whopping ear thing going on. Her ears are draining, but apparently not well enough. I have called her ENT doc and asked them to request more visits from our insurance so I can have him look at it. WOW, that was pretty boring. Shoule I talk about my ovaries next? I'll save that for another, edge of your seat blog entry. Loves to all.

Exposure

In the past 10 days, Avery has been exposed to the following diseases:

Chicken Pox

Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease

Strep

and the last one is pretty unbelievable.....

SCABIES.


So we gave her a really good scrub down tonight in the bath. (Those are earplugs in her ears). If it was humane and legal, I might have tried to wash her with rubbing alcohol.

Luckily, she got Strep and not anything else.

One more reason I just want to go back to Florida.

No weirdo diseases.

Beautiful Tahoe

So we went to Tahoe on a whim this past weekend. It is absolutely beautiful there. It was mostly a windshield tour. We were not very prepared for getting out in the snow...We tried to get Avery to at least touch it when we stopped for lunch, but she wasn't very interested, given the fact that there were men everywhere.