It's like this...

According to tradition in my family, when it's my birthday (notice I don't say when it's anyone elses birthday), no one can refuse my request. My one request? That my children come with me and sit for this picture. Well, this one was taken with my cell phone camera. The real one is coming in the next week or so. I've had them taken each and every year since 1989. That means this girl on the right has been photographed with that jolly man in red every year for 19 years. The Boy? Every year since 1991. These two? Every year since 1996 and 1998 resepectively. I have all the years of Santa pictures in a large frame with beautiful matting. I've filled an entire one up and am three pictures deep into the next one. I hang them up each Christmas and then spend a few moments marveling at the march of time across the faces and bodies of my children. It brings home to me how much has changed---but one thing hasn't and won't ever change. My love for them....

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Our morning went from swim lessons for Ash at Children's Hospital... Then to the hospital cafeteria for nourishment in the form of a cheeseburger and fries. Here she is in the throes of opening a packet of mustard. I'm not sure it was a fun experience for her, but the rest of the meal was consumed with a dearth of facial contortions. Well, almost. Then I took her back to school and went on with my busy day..until we ended up back in Children's Hospital and not in the good fun part of the place. The ER. She became very dizzy, a sharp pain in her head and another one in her chest making it difficult for her to breathe. Her Daddy showed up after work to wait with me and help me with her. I was grateful that he came. It was a very long wait. VERY. LONG. Did I mention the length of the wait? Yes, verily it was lengthy. Too long. We finally made it into an exam room and I was so tired that I nearly had a fit of the giggles because our ER doc looked like Sheldon from Th...

I LOVE IT! It's stressful and weird at times becuase I'm simply a conduit for communication but I am loving it. A lot. I'm also learning more vocabulary. Some of it is a challenging, especially for someone with ADD. If I let my attention slide for a second it's a disaster. Thankfully that only happened once for a fraction of a second. I am loving it. Yessire. I still enjoy teaching but I think interpreting is a tad less stressful and complicated because basically all I have to do is show up and...talk. The hard part is getting all the people involved to talk one at a time and wait for me to interpret what they've said. Sometimes in an emotional meeting with four teachers, therapists, principles and parents things can get a bit....tense. Other than that...fun!

We picked up Steph in Puyallup yesterday evening and she went to church with us this morning. Her cousins Jessica and Nicole were excited to see her and before the service began they visitied. During the meeting they visited, with their cell phones unfortunately. (Note to self: remove cell phones from offspring during church hours) This is a pic that Jess took of Steph behind her and some few people behind her. But it's nice to see the love. (I get my girl for a whole week! Yay! I'm sure she'll lighten my bank account while she's here)

Last night we had the Big Cousin Sleepover. It was supposed to be an evening of movies, lots of snack foods with sugar, trans fats, hydrogynated oils and chemicals difficult to pronounce, then little or no sleep before we embarked on our journey to see TWILIGHT! Here's how it really went down: I fell asleep. Ashley fell asleep. This all happened before the cousins even arrived. When they did arrive, I sort of roused myself long enough to hear that they wanted to go home and sleep if the party wasn't to be on. They did stay however, and we made up for not consuming bad food that night by consuming bad food this morning. Here are the girls with waffles, strawberries and oodles of whipped cream. Yum! Then we scurried to the theater to see Twilight. Here are the girls and Lance waiting in line. We waited and we waited. I'd purchased the tickets earlier in the week and we were the second group in line, so that was nice. What you can't see is that it was c-c-c-c-c-c...

As I sit here writing I am listening to the giggles of my girls and their friend Kylee. She's spending the night because her mom was called out tonight (she's a flight attendant). The giggles and the laughs and the happy sound makes my heart happy. I should be telling them to go to sleep because it's late---and I do, albeit a bit half heartedly. I'm loving the sound coming from their room. Being happy is a gift--one I've had trouble hanging on to in the last few weeks. But things have changed and improved. I made the decision to be happy despite things and then the situation that was causing me such pain improved. Being happy is a good thing. On Monday I took the girls and their cousin to Greenlake. I'd like to say it was a peaceful time but we were accosted by some insane man who began yelling at us, kept yelling and being rude. It frightened my girls and made Ashley cry. So I did what every grown married woman does in that situation. I called my 76 ye...