Gimme!

C'mon Daddy! Give me the pretty sparkly pink bouncy ball!


Success!

Santa Sayz

I'z too sleepy. Naptime callz mee..

Frontier Flight 666

Here's Cyrus laying around the Denver airport with half of Seattle (Seattle ppl not pictured)


So, we are ready to leave for our trip to California. It's -20 outside, not counting any wind chill. But we're brave. We live in SD. We have to suck it up, right?? So, the car starts. This is good. We drive. And drive. Frost forms on the inside of the car. This sucks. A lot. Turns out the car just never really got hot enough for the heater to kick in. It was awful. 2.5 hours of AWFUL.

We get to the airport. Rejeanne is shaking. I've never seen her shake before. I felt so bad for her. I was really cold too. So, we cuddle up in line to check the bags. I ask Lee for his ID and then reach for mine. It's gone. We stopped for gas in Vermillion. Lee used my wallet to buy gas. All the sudden, I am just horrified that we are going to miss the plane and have to drive another AWFUL 2.5 hours home and scour the Coffee Cup Fuel Stop for my stupid wallet. Luckily, he only left it in the car. Lee takes the shuttle back to the long-term parking to retrieve my wallet. He gets back just in the nick of time. We nearly run to security. We futz around with shoes and baby bottle explosives testing and bolt to the plane and get boarded at the last minute. We settle in SO THANKFUL to be on the plane and not calling Lee's parents with bad news.

We're really, really settled after a half hour. That's when we find out the plane is frozen. Huh. Amazing, eh? *sigh* Don't worry though, just have to wait for the front water lines to thaw and the back lines are running. *30 more minutes* Don't worry folks, the front lines are thawed! (Now we have to wait for the back to thaw) Huh. I thought those were fine. Guh. *30 more minutes* Alrighty folks, lines are good, we just have to load the bags into the plane and de-ice and we'll be 1 hour 15 minutes to Denver. (THANK GOODNESS!) *30 minutes goes by* Rejeanne is now stripped down to her diaper and scrunched under the seat in front of us howling. I know how she feels. The plane is ready to rock. We roll out from the gate and the pilot kicks on the engine and...wait...ENGINE? This plane has TWO engines!

Pilot says only one engine is starting. We have to wait for maintenance to come out. *30 minutes later* Don't worry folks, the starter valve is frozen but never you fear, we can send a guy out there to MANUALLY start it.

Um. I DON'T THINK SO.

I'm not about to fly the friendly skies in some hoopdy that needs a push start. Besides, my kid is nearly naked and I'm not a fan of airplane bathrooms. Additionally, isn't it only a 6 hour drive from Vermillion to Denver? Do the math: 2.5 hours driving + 3 hours waiting = Closing in on Denver by car, eh?

I look around me. People are just sitting all chill. No one is saying "We're all gonna die in this plane, let me out". Well, no one but me. Not particularly caring if I get banned from air travel for the next 10 years, I get up and say "This plane is clearly broken. Since we're rolling back to the gate, we want off of this plane." So, I'm proud of myself for not having a panic attack or dropping an F bomb, but both were on the horizon. Luckily, they let us off the plane and I had my panic attack in an Omaha bathroom on the GROUND!

Apparently lots of crazy people fly, so Frontier gave us new tickets and some meal vouchers. The rest of the trip was good and I had the opportunity to discover that when traveling with two small children, long layovers are actually a good thing. So, every cloud has a silver lining and I only had to apologize to one flight attendant and didn't knock anyone out. Guess all that anger management is paying off!

Oh, I almost forgot the near death experience! When we flew into Orange County, we were in a thunderhead, which I LOVE!! Lee was turning a little pale with the turbulence and lightining flashes, but I love that stuff. Pretty much, if the oxygen mask ain't danglin', it's all good. I'm diggin' it and crackin' jokes and then I start noticing some red flashes and a quick ascent when we are supposed to be landing. Since I've nearly collided in the sky before, I had a feeling those red lights weren't part of our plane...

We land safely and the pilot says "Sorry about that fast ascent but you never can tell with those LA pilots so we thought it best to just get out of the way. Enjoy your stay in Orange County. *chuckle*" Yeah dude. Very funny. So, we're alive. Good news!!!!

We've decided we're kinda more roadtrip people...

Sorry folks!

No pics today!

School is finally over and the awful weather is scheduled to subside just in time for us to catch our plane in Omaha. If our Secret Santa is reading this, thanks for the toothbrush holders (I was actually thinking I needed these) and for your psychic abilities in knowing that my husband LOVES Chex Mix. Good job, Santa!

I'm trying to clean the house so I don't come home to a mess after being gone three weeks. My back is really slowing me down. I hope I can survive travel and different chairs. I'm so excited to see Crimson and for her to spend time with Rejeanne and Cyrus. I'm determined to get some decent photos of all of us, together, looking like a family, so keep checking back for those!

I'll probably be posting like a fiend while in California, as long as I can find a way to get my pics from the camera onto the computer out there. If I can't, I'll just play catch up when we get home.

I've decided to make Christmas break weekends a work time for me. My kids are going to be busy climbing grandma all weekend and Crimson will be at Jason's, so what to do??? My current plan is to do a set of divorce papers for a friend and work on my genealogy. Thanks to Mr. I remember Swedish from my mission, Bro. Ric Jensen, I managed to give the Swedes another try. I've had a wall on the Swedish lines since I was about 16. I finally managed to break through and I have added 3-4 generations back on all of the Swedish folks!! How exciting! It is so wonderful for me to have FINALLY accomplished this! I started out only knowing back to about 1880 with only sketchy details and very little about their locations and families in Sweden. Now, I have a TON of stuff and totally detailed back to the 1790's on most lines. There is so much more for me to find too! I just ran out of time and had to work on other things now. So, after so much success, I'm planning to work on some of Lee's family history as well. Since I'm doing so great with Swedish records (which I have to say are REMARKABLE, especially compared to the American records available in the same time frames), I'm going to work on Lee's Swedish great-grandmother and see what I can find. It's been a long time since I've been excited about researching families because I just hit so many walls and felt kinda hopeless with it. I'm glad I set it aside for so long. Technology had a chance to catch up with me! That said, if anyone wants help with Swedish stuff, I'm in the mood to do it!

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas. Hopefully, I'll be posting during CA time, but if not, I'll be back January 9th with photo overload!

So sleepy...

I'm sleepy. I'm going to try to coax Lee off of the couch and try to get him to sleep in bed. I think it is funny that he can answer my questions in his sleep. I asked him if he wanted to sleep on the couch or in bed and he says "I want to sleep on the couch but I want to lay down with you". Hrm. That's a mighty narrow couch we have. I think I'm just gonna sleep in bed...

In other news, there may be a possibility that Cyrus' mohawk will be spiked and photographed again tomorrow. I'm kinda excited about that!

We went to a very early Christmas party tonight. Rejeanne looked around more and was generally more engaged, but still stayed on a lap all night. It's still improvement though. Her speech is rapidly improving. She can say "shirt" and "stick" now so she's getting some hard consonants going on. Hopefully there will be more phrases soon.

I have a ton of homework to do tomorrow. I think I better just go to bed now. Oh, wait, it's the last week of school!! Then the week after is just finals and another semester is over. Yay!

Shock and Awe

I recently posted on Charity's blog about fire drills in elementary school. I suppose that growing up in a really bad town with a lot of violence is assumed to be a bad thing. In fact, I've always assumed it's a bad thing. But as Crimson gets older, I find myself torn. Part of me wants her to go to rough schools so she'll be able to get along with ANYONE in life and have empathy for people. The other part of me just doesn't want her exposed to that stuff. I kinda see Garden Grove as more of the latter than the former so I guess it isn't too bad.

Anyways, something occurred to me today. For as bad as Duarte was when I was a kid, it seems to have bred something special too. It was a small high school, about 1000 kids total. Just out of the people I knew there (probably about 200) there has been 2 NFL players, a VP of Goldman Sachs, a few doctorates, some housewives, some regular people, some criminals, and apparently a rock star! I've been living under a rock this century and had never heard of Spineshank or Silent Civilian. Turns out my "sleep through English class" partner in crime, Jonny Santos, is the lead singer of both bands. Even more surprising, if you like metal, these bands are both good and both very much like the Jonny I remember: not boring and bouncy yet growly.

Moral of the Story: Sometimes growing up rough is a good thing. It makes you a fighter.

If only there was a photo...

Rejeanne has already surpassed me and she's not even three!

She did a full, unsupported headstand today.