Smooth As A Babies…

So I live in a desert. Yep. A dry, hot, boring desert.

And I have realized recently that I am not exactly the spring chicken I once was.

Shut up.

My mother, and no offense to her, aged horribly. Her wrinkles and gray hair came at an early age. Smoking probably helped speed that along.

Anyways, at my age I think I look pretty alright. People often mistake me for a lot younger and are usually surprised when they find out my real age. I don’t have grays. It’s because I am a soulless ginger. Red heads generally gray later. I don’t have wrinkles too much either. I was never a make-up wearer and I have always tried to take care of my skin.

But the dry…

My elbows and my knees…

So I bought lotion. Do you have any idea how many bottles of lotion I have in my bathroom?

16.

I counted them. Little ones, big ones, some with all natural ingredients, some with fabulous fragrances…

And you know how many of them I use?

None.

I hate being all greased up. I hate greasy hands. And mostly, I just forget it is there. I am a busy person. Who has time to lotion? Not me.

Then I started seeing these commercials for this in shower lotion. These commercials are the creepiest thing ever. LIKE EVER....

And while I don’t want some creepy lady anywhere near me or any one I like, I thought maybe this in the shower lotion would be good. I could avoid the dragon scale elbows and knees and not be a greased up pig. And if it is there in the shower, I might actually use it.

So I bought some. But not this brand, I went with Nivea In Shower Body Lotion

AND IT WAS GLORIOUS!

I no longer have dragon elbows and knees. It was awesome. I am not all greasy.

I loved it so much I bought if for Mary on her birthday. Yeah. I know I am weird.

I use the cocoa butter version. It smells good. No one paid me to say that either. I just wanted to share it with you. Because it was that awesome.

The Living Desert

Last month our home school group took a trip to The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in Palm Desert. We had a great time.

They have a neat butterfly exhibit where you can go in and butterflies land right on you. While Michelle is way too much for butterflies, Catherine made some new friends.

And we got a lot of great pictures.

Michelle also got to ride a camel. She loved it.

And feed the giraffes. Again, loved it.

There was so much to see and do there. It was great. The weather was nice. The people were friendly. We were the only school group that day and it wasn’t crowded.

I tried to take Charlie on the carousel, but he did not seem to like it.

On the way home we stopped and got pizza for dinner, which made David happy.

Just another day of making memories.

The Gift Of Magic

Last year, as my Aunt Sherri is a grown woman who is free to buy her own stuff, I decided not to give her anything for Christmas. Instead, I gave her a day. Well, two days actually.

Harry Potter Days!

We started right with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone at 9:00 AM. And the same way that book starts, we started…

With breakfast.

We did not burn the bacon. There were eggs and toast too.

We moved ahead movie after movie. We had delicious snacks. (I have a Harry Potter Cookbook. I know. I am an odd one.) I made bouillabaisse for dinner with warm bread. The next day we made Caldron cakes for breakfast. (Yes, they are the same as pancakes.) Then still more snacks and a yummy stew for dinner.

We watched all 8 movies. We had presents; a fabulous Time-Turner Necklace, a beautiful leather journal, a real quill pen, Chocolate Frogs, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans and Jelly Slugs.

It was a great weekend.

Way better than just new socks and underwear…

So There Is This Boy...

And I love him so much.

And he is the most handsome boy in the whole world.

He is my son.

His name is Charlie. He was born in October 2015. And since I haven’t updated this blog since I had the boy, I figured I would write about him.

My baby boy is a rambunctious little daredevil. He does have the devil’s red hair. He is my little ginger, the only one of my four children to have red hair like his mommy.

But he is clearly daddy’s boy.

And he is not a cuddly boy either, unless he is sick or just so tired he can’t do anything else. Then we can sneak some cuddles in.

As he is the first boy, I was unprepared for the daring escapades of a little boy. Where all of my daughters were slow to crawl or walk, Charlie was up on his feet and running before he was one. He will climb anything. He is going to give me a heart attack. My daughters were verbal early on and he is just figuring out words. He communicates with direction.

Charlie is a big fan of Zootopia. As a matter of fact, no matter how big the temper tantrum, if you play Try Everything, he will stop and dance. He will also dance to Boogie Wonderland and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Hot Dog Dance.



He is the best boy in the world. I love my Charlie.

Mickey's Christmas Carol

Every year since we have had our Disneyland Annual Passports, we go at Christmas time and enjoy the holiday atmosphere. This year was no different.

We met up with Mary, Tonya and Abby at Disneyland one afternoon and it was a great day. First we watched the parade. Michelle loves parades.

I love Disneyland at the holidays. The Haunted Mansion is transformed into The Nightmare Before Christmas. The Jungle Cruise becomes The Jingle Cruise. It’s A Small World gets a holiday theme and a break from that annoying song. It is awesome.

But this year we skipped all that for one thing.

This thing.

Michelle wanted to meet Princess Elena. Princess Elena was there as part of Viva Navidad at the California Adventure.

I waited in line for 50 minutes for this.

It was worth it.

Anyway, we walked around a bit and checked out booths they had set up with holiday foods from other cultures. We tried kugel from the Jewish booth and Michelle made a paper dreidel. We tried curry from the India booth and Michelle colored a Diwali card and made a paper lantern. We tried lamb from a Middle Eastern booth and Michelle made Christmas cards. It was fun.

We walked around and looked in the shops at all the fun holiday stuff.

Disney days are always good days.

Sing For The Moment

Yesterday my Aunt Sherri and Lin took Catherine, Michelle and me to see Sing. It was pretty cute. It was no Disney movie, but it wasn’t the worst movie I ever saw in a theater. (FYI… The worst movie I ever saw in a theater was Drop Dead Fred.)

Michelle liked the gorilla that sang. I was more partial to the pigs. Catherine liked the porcupine.

I give it a 3 out of five.

The best part was spending time with family. Especially since today my Aunt Sherri is undergoing knee replacement surgery.

We are sending her lots of love and healing thoughts.

A Revival

I am sick of social media. Facebook is so full of people who believe everything on the internet. David calls Facebook a bunch of “Dank Memes” and funny cat pictures. Twitter is only useful for news. I use it as my own special news feed. It includes nice things like when Disneyland is open and what movies are coming out. And Instagram is becoming less of family pictures and more of those “dank memes”. I am tired of it. I want to hear about my friends and family. I don’t want to be blasted from both sides with political drama and nonsense. I want to share my life with my family and friends as well. But I can’t do that on Facebook any more. No one will notice between the political drama and the cat pictures. No, I will not copy and paste to show I love America or veterans or cats or my spouse or that I support cancer research or saving the whales.

So I am bringing back the blog. It’s retro. It’s hip. It’s cool. And you know what?

IT IS MINE!

No dank memes.

No funny cat pictures.

NO POLITICAL DRAMA!

Actually, let’s just go with NO DRAMA!

Keep it to yourself.

I am quite excited about this. I finally have a place where I can record my family history in peace. Okay, so I had it all along and I let technology come and jerk me around. You don’t know it yet, but I have already written at least 15 new posts. Yeah. I know.

So get ready.

And seriously, no more dank memes.

We Are The Champions... Or Not

Fantasy Football is over for the year.

I played in three leagues this year.

The one at work was okay. I didn’t win. I didn’t expect to. It might be more fun if I actually saw some of those guys once in a while. I don't love the webiste they use.

My dad’s league was a mess from the get go. The draft happened while I was at work. I got stuck with all the losers no one wanted and it just went downhill from there. So I came in dead last. Oh well. I will get them back next year. However, my brother in law did come out on top of that. My dad sent him this fabulous trophy. My sister tried to claim it as her own, but it didn’t go over too well.

Our own home league gained some new players this year. We had a pretty awesome year. I didn’t do too badly either. But to most of our dismays, David won. Stupid David. Maybe I will divorce him so he can’t play anymore. Sucker.

It was a fun time for all though.

See you all in August!

One Less Set Of Footsteps

This week on Tuesday, my family gathered to say good bye to my Uncle Joe.

It was very nice to see so many people who cared about him and learn some interesting things about my family.

I remember my Uncle Joe from when I was little. I liked going to his house because he had a pool. And I liked my cousins since they were bigger than me and did cool stuff like play baseball and ride bikes. My uncle played guitar so there was always music.

I was not recently close with my Uncle Joe. I remember him from when I was little but, I am not really close to any of that side of the family.

Not anyone’s fault. I just didn’t know them.

Anyway, I am getting to know them now.

After the memorial service, I went to my Aunt Tina’s house to visit with my dad while he was in town. I also got to spend time with my Aunt Tina, my Aunt Mary, who was visiting from Texas, and my cousins.

It was so nice to get to spend some time with everyone.

Too bad we only do it when something bad happens. Maybe we should start planning trips for good times. A large amount of us live in the area… You know, just saying.

A New Year

6 years ago I started a new job that would forever change the ideas I had of what I was going to do with my life. I was excited to begin and learn. Excited about the opportunities it was bringing to my family.

6 years can really change things.

I still have the same job. I no longer am excited. I am usually frustrated by the whole thing. I used to care about my coworkers and now I find a lot of them are no better than inmates themselves. I don’t see good in people. I see inmates.

Not too long ago, I decided to go ahead and try and remove that awful negative part of my existence. Nope, I am not going to get a new job. This one does still provide for my family and provides a lot of great benefits. I just am choosing to not focus on my work.

It made me laugh, because it made me think of it like a call girl and “you are just a paycheck to me”.

It’s just a paycheck.

This is not my life; this is how I pay for my life.

And truthfully, I have a pretty awesome life.

Wordless Wednesday

Carolynn's 18th Birthday
April 21, 2014
Apple Valley, California

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

When we took Carolynn on her graduation trip, it was a special day for another one of our daughters as well.

It was Michelle’s first visit to Disneyland.

She got her First Visit Button and wore it proud.

She seemed very excited when we got there. She was already pretty excited on the way because she thought we were going to the zoo. (She remembered the last long trip we took was the week before when we went to the San Diego Zoo.) Then we were in the parking lot and there were Donald Duck signs everywhere. (We parked on the Donald Duck level.) She got more and more excited as we rode the tram. (TRAIN!)

Mary and Tonya and the kids also have annual passports and they joined us on our adventure. Michelle didn’t want to get back in the stroller so she was holding hands as we walked to the front gates. She could see Mickey Mouse signs and all the Disney everywhere.

We finally get in and we see Donald Duck. She is a big fan. I pointed him out to her and she looked shocked. She froze and gave a little wave. But she didn’t want to go near him. Then a short distance away, we see Mickey Mouse. The same reaction; she waved. But then she saw Minnie Mouse.

And her whole life changed.

She tried to run over to her, but there was a line. David took her to get in line and I went to buy her a hat. I came back and found them still in line. But Michelle was a crying, sobbing, inconsolable mess. I had never seen such a melt down from her.

What was wrong?

In between sobs…

I wanna hug Minnie Mouse.
I love her.
I miss her.
I said please.

OMG Kid.

Waiting is not something she ever had to do before.

Finally it is her turn.

She runs to Minnie, stops half way, and comes back. She takes my hand and walks over to Minnie and gives her a hug. Minnie wipes her little tears and Michelle is very happy. She wave good bye to Minnie and her life is complete.

I was not sure what she was going to do next, so I send everyone else off to ride rides and I walk with her slowly down Main Street. She is happily looking in shops and walking along. David calls and says he and the rest of the group were in line for Pirates of the Carribean. Okay, let’s go try that.

I find them and the wait isn’t bad. She is standing in line with “her people”. (Whenever we were not together she started asking where here people were.) We got in the boat and she sat on my lap. She seemed excited for a boat ride.

She sat quietly until all of the sudden the boat drops down a bit of a waterfall. She yelled “Wee Haaa!” Until water splashed her. She doesn’t like water splashing her. She cried a little. At another point it looks like the boat is going to go through a waterfall. She didn’t not like that. But the water didn’t get her and she was fine.

She did spend the rest of the day singing…

Yo ho, yo ho… A pirate’s life for me.

Next we went to the Haunted Mansion. The elevator ride at the beginning scared her. Thunder is loud and it goes dark and there is a scream. She calmed down and got on the ride. And she liked the ghosts. She has been telling us how much she likes ghosts ever since.

We took the train around to Toon Town. Michelle left her cuppie in the car so we went to find her a new one. They all had straws. She hadn’t mastered straws yet. But that was all they had. So we got her one shaped like Mickey and figured she could at least try it. She figured it out in a hurry. (Now I can’t keep her out of my drinks.)

While in Toon Town, we went to Mickey’s House. She liked checking it out and we waited in line to meet the mouse in person. She was getting tired by then and didn’t really want to go to him. One of the cast members took out picture. The rest of “our people” were riding a nearby roller coaster.

Michelle was sound asleep as soon as we got her back into the stroller. She napped while Tonya, David, and the bigger kids rode down Splash Mountain. I stayed with Mary and shared some ice cream with the non-splashers.

We split up after that and found Carolynn and headed out to eat. Michelle liked the Rainforest Café. Monkeys came to life over our table and they had pizza. Life was good.

After we ate, we met up with Mary and Tonya and the kids in the California Adventure. We rode a Little Mermaid ride that Michelle loved. We walked around and looked at all the cool stuff. Mary and Tonya took her to play games. She won some fabulous prizes.

We rode the Ferris Wheel. She wasn’t a huge fan of being up high. But as long as it was moving she was okay. She was getting tired.

She relaxed in her stroller as we explored Cars land; which is awesome and looks just like Radiator Springs. We were done for the night. We went to find Carolynn and head home. We watched the fireworks show and drove home. She was asleep before we left the parking lot.

And it is all she talks about since.

Can we go to Mickey Mouse’s house?

Can we see Pirates? Yo ho, yo ho…

Let’s go see Minnie.

We can’t wait for our next trip.