My mother, sister Jenny and sister-in-law Elise went to California this last weekend. We have been planning this for awhile along with most of my aunts, cousins and our sweet GG. We went and saw the musical WICKED in San Francisco and I absolutely loved it. I really hope to see it again unless it becomes a movie which would be even better. I wanted to buy a shirt, the soundtrack, any thing to do with Wicked but we are still watching the money.... so I refrained and was grateful that I could actually go and see the show. I kept the playbill and hope to get some pictures from Elise.
I also did a lot of firsts along with my mom, Jenny and Elise. Since we stayed at my Aunt's house in Stockton the next morning after a scrumptous meal from Uncle Bob, we went and took the BART to "the city". I was excited and scared at the same time. I have to say that it wasn't that bad and I'm glad that we did it. As Aunt Marian says, "It's for the experience".

I live a sheltered life in Reno and I stay away from downtown Reno as often as I can, but when I stepped off of BART at Powell ....I was excited for the cool mall, street shops and Lori's restaurant... but scared of the people asking for money, or the passed out people laying on the street, or how about the EMT's kicking the other man passed out on the street, the man throwing apples at birds and a crazy lady giving the man an orange to also throw at the birds, ohh... and the lovely drug deal that went on right in front of my face. My Mom said, "This is kinda scary" Marion says "I'm not scared...Its the middle of the day, their is too many people around". I decided I needed to buck-up. It was about a five block walk from the shops and where we ate to the Theatre. I tried not to be worried but I was.. I am a worry-wart thought. Cant help it.
After the show I talked to some of my cousins for about five minutes, which I wish we could have visited longer, they are all so funny.. I love them, took some pictures and left for the BART.
After getting off the Bart we went back to Stockton, had a bite at the Macaroni Grill, said goodbyes to our wonderful hosts and headed back home. I made some good time and drove home in like 3 hours. I had some great conversation with my family and laughed really hard, saying things that just ...well probably should not have been said being so late.... but fun anyway.
I had a great weekend and did not miss my kids or husband.. well maybe a little.

Bryce is extremely mobile these days, which makes things that much more exciting. He has mastered the army crawl and appears close to crawling any day now. He is also getting sick of bottles. He always acts excited when he sees the bottle but gets tired of it and leaves it half-full every time. He just thinks he's so awesome because he has two teeth. I explained to him that the teeth won't help him until some top teeth come in, but he wouldn't listen...

One issue that we deal with repeatedly is rock throwing. Our backyard is full of rocks that are apparently great for throwing at the house, the fence, the lawn and especially each other. Jaxon caught a rock in the face a couple weeks ago and got a nice black eye. Sometimes the kids like to just throw rocks as high as they can straight up in the air. Great fun! I sometimes spend as much as half an hour picking up rocks before I can mow the lawn in the backyard. Lame. We haven't found an effective deterrent yet.

In response to a number of violations, one method of punishment that we do several times each day is the "timeout". Chase has a timeout corner that he gets sent to when he is naughty. The challenge we have is that Chase gets sent to timeout and then the twins disappear. I go to search for the twins and finally find all three sitting in a row against the wall in the corner. I try to keep the twins away but I never succeed. When Chase is punished the others follow.

I never really finished up what I was talking about in a previous post. So, I had finished the physical part of the exam and had to go back two hours later to take the written exam. All would have been well except for one problem. The running portion took place on a road that was a short distance from the gym where the other tests were completed. To get to the road we walked through a field full of brush of the rabbit and/or sage variety. The run was completed and I went on my way to grab some lunch before going back for the written exam.

By the time I showed up for the written exam I was starting to get the sniffles. It didn't appear to be much of an issue initially, but shortly after starting the test I had a full-on allergy attack. I had my pocket full of paper towels from the bathroom and still had to get up half a dozen times to "clear" and restock. It hit me so hard that I thought I was going to have to excuse myself and take the exam another time. I pushed through and completed the test, but felt horrible. It was certainly one of the longest and most painful drives home ever. I can't remember when I've had any allergy attack that bad. I hit the bed as soon as I got home, but once the Excedrin kicked in I felt a lot better.

I finally got the results just yesterday and I passed handily. I thought for sure that my little outbreak would be my demise.

I donated blood last Thursday. Once again, they wouldn't let me do a 2RBC donation because they needed whole blood in my blood type. Or so they said. I begrudgingly complied. The guy who stuck the needle in me was quite aggressive and had to back the needle out after it popped through my shoulder. He didn't really have to back it out, but it did hurt so bad that I was fighting back tears. Not really, but it did hurt a lot. Really. But for all my pain I got a complimentary box of 4 poison-laced compact fluorescent bulbs. Yay! There is still some mystery about how many pints I've donated. My theory is that when I go to United Blood Services they tell me how many actual donations I've made. When I go to bloodhero.com it shows the number of pints donated. This would make sense since I know I've done at least 9 or 10 2RBC donations. If this is true then my May donation was number 40, which is 5 gallons. And I didn't get a pin. I need to get to the bottom of this. The numbers just don't...add...up...

When will I ever learn that it's easier to blog consistently than to try to play catch-up all the time? Never, that's when.

So, here's what's happened in the past month or so.

First, Bryce hit a milestone about two or three weeks ago when he got two of his bottom teeth. He was so excited about this that he wet his pants. Literally. Within the past week or so he has become skilled at sitting up on his own. He can officially remain upright for as long as he chooses. He has been an incredibly good baby. He rarely fusses and has a great temperament. He's happy to play by himself or with others as the moment dictates. With the craziness of our household this has definitely been a great blessing.

As June turned into July I had the privilege of driving a gigantic Penske truck most of the way across the United States. It was loaded with heavy stuff like food storage, so the trip was full of excruciating uphill battles and some terrific white-knuckle downhills. The trip started in Bloomington, IL and we travelled through Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and on into beautiful Reno. It freaked me out when we got to Wyoming because I didn't realize we had ever left Illinois. The event was a caravan with my brother-in-law, who was driving an identical moving truck, but with an obviously lighter load (but with a car hitched to the back).

The trip actually wasn't too bad. I counted roadkill to keep the drive spicy. If you were following me on Twitter then you already know what I saw, but in case you missed it here's the final tally:

• 1 antelope
• 1 coyote
• 1 wild turkey
• 1 disembodied raccoon tail
• 1 (maybe 2) cats
• 2 fawns
• 2 skunks
• 3 foxes
• 4 birds
• 5 possums
• 6 rabbits
• 12 deer
• 21 prairie dogs
• 27 raccoons
• 92 wild cards (mystery meat)

In housework news, I spent quite a bit of time cleaning out the garage now that we have some sweet overhead storage areas. Except that the storage isn't that sweet and it isn't that cleaned-out yet. It's still much better than it was and we have much more space to maneuver in the garage.

We also had some fun a few nights ago when we smelled a delicious burning smell - something like a burning tire. After traipsing about the house and thinking that my computer was catching fire, we finally discovered that the smell was coming from our washing machine. We were certain that the machine was spinning it's final load and would soon go the way of all the earth. It would be a more interesting story except that it has worked fine ever since. We're not sure if it has one foot in the grave or just got a bad load or something.

None of this is stuff you care about. I'm just documenting it for my own future reading.

More blogging come up soon...