Grill cleaner?

What a wonderful fall day we are having! It’s in the mid 60’s and you can just feel fall in the air. I LOVE IT! I could handle weather like this all the time!

I picked up one of our freshman cadets this morning. Courtney and I headed up to the Academy. I was unclear as to just where we were going to meet our cadet, and I arrived about 15 minutes prior to our meeting time. So, Courtney and I got our and walked around. She insisted on walking herself once we were on the Terrazzo. The funny thing is that terrazzo is made of a marble grid, and between the marble is pebbles cemented in. Courtney kept trying to pick up the pebbles and she was getting frustrated because she couldn’t get them to come up. It was very cute. She tried and tried and tried.

We walked over towards the Chapel since I thought that might have been one place we were supposed to meet. Church was just getting out and suddenly our cadet who’s a Junior was right in front of me! So, we had a nice little chat before he headed off.

I finally caught up with the cadet I was supposed to, and off we went. I told him that since Hubby is out of town, there isn’t much good food in the house. So, we stopped at Jason’s Deli for lunch. Courtney and I shared a meatball sub and Toby had a tune melt.

We came home after lunch, and Toby headed for the basement, and I put Courtney down for a nap. Then I went outside to start cleaning the grill. Yuck. Since we now have the smoker, we put our grill in the garage and we have decided to sell it. But, it was pretty gross, so I spent about an hour and a half scrubbing it. I still have some of the pieces I took off it to scrub, but I needed a break. I am waiting for my ice tea to finish brewing.

I think our cadet is probably sleeping. I just walked past the stairs to the basement and there is NO noise down there.

I know, I have been blogging every day! This keeps Hubby up on what’s happening here too.

Courtney’s new thing is “UP” when she wants up. But when she wants down she says “UP” too. Usually you know what she means though as she is trying to get down.

Well, I need to go research how to get all this grime off a grill. If anyone has any good advice, let me know!!!

Can I get a free visit?

I forgot to mention the fact that when we all met up for lunch the yesterday, Courtney just wanted to hang with Grandpa most of the time. She is hooked on Grandpa right now. The rest of us are okay to be with, but Grandpa was bringing out the smile every time.

The poor kid can’t get a break. She woke up at 5:30am Saturday morning screaming. And I mean screaming. So, I went and got her and we came downstairs and rocked in the lazy boy for a while. She fell back asleep for a while. At 7am I was able to get 6 oz of pediasure in her and then she went back to sleep on me. At 8am, I tried to feed her some breakfast; all she ate was about 2 bites of a waffle. And all she did was cry and be miserable. So, I put her down for a nap. She slept an hour and then woke up screaming again. So, I went in and got her. I was planning to take a shower so I brought her into my bathroom and gated her in with me. As soon as I put her down she would cry and cry. So, I sat on the floor and picked her up. I laid her in my lap and she fell asleep again. This just isn’t like her. So, I called the pediatrician’s office and they said come in right away.

So, we went in and they got us back pretty quick. It wasn’t our regular doctor, but it was another one that we see pretty often if our doctor isn’t available. He came in and looked her over. No fever, no more poop issues, and her weight was back up. Now, remember, we were just there on Thursday. The doctor on Thursday thought her left ear might be heading towards infection. But today, the left ear looked great. The right ear however, was not so good. So, she is on antibiotics, again, but pretty powerful ones this time.

I was able to get some turkey in her for lunch. I held her and she sat on my lap in the lazy boy. She drank about an ounce of pedialite and about 2 ounces of pediasure. At 12:30pm I put her down for a nap. She didn’t wake up until 4:30! I hope a 4 hour nap did her some good. She was pretty miserable this morning. But since I stopped the diary, I am seeing a huge difference with her bowels. Now if I can just get all of her put back together within a week, she should be good to fly.

I was able to get her to eat some dinner tonight. She loves crackers. So she must have eaten 15 of them for dinner. She also had cantaloupe, ham, and edamame, and washed it all down with Juice.

Then she had a nice long soaking bath. She still isn’t interested in playing much, but hopefully tomorrow she will be more back to normal. I put her down and she was out like a light by 7pm!

Well, I think I will go enjoy a well earned margarita and then a long soak in the tub myself!

Fire!

It’s amazing how fast things happen around here! Let’s just say I was missing signs that the baby was struggling with ‘(poop) issues’. And those signs came to a head this week. So, Thursday morning, I took her to the pediatrician’s office when my gut just kept telling me that even if they just tell me all her symptoms are due to teething, I needed to have her checked out.

Well, the pediatrician found there was blood in her stool and so it looks like she still has GI issues. So, she is currently off dairy again. Which is somewhat okay because the stuff her GI Specialist wants her drinking is lactose free anyway, so the pediatrician said that was fine. But cutting out other dairy, such as cheese, is a little harder.

But even being off dairy for 24 hours now, there is a difference. So, it does indeed look like her body just isn’t ready to handle dairy yet. No biggie. I guess we will spend more time with the GI doc now.

We met up with the Zeigner girls for dinner last night, as Tony is also out of town. We ate at Jason’s Deli, one of our favorites! Since Courtney is now walking, that is pretty much all she wants to do. She sat for a short period of time while she ate some turkey and wrap, but then she was done and wanted to be up and walking! Well, I wasn’t done with my meal, so that was a little bit of a struggle. Just makes me really worry what plane travel is going to be like.

Have you heard of Craig’s List? If you have not, I highly recommend it. I sold Courtney’s last can of Elecare on there. Granted I bought it for $20-ish and sold it for $10, but at least I made some money back on it and it didn’t go to waste. I also have one of Courtney’s reflux pillows on there. I had interest at first, but the lady who was interested didn’t call me like she said she would.

Today I sold one of our 4 direct TV satellite dishes for $10! I checked the wanted section and saw that a lady not far from our house was looking for one. I called her yesterday and this afternoon she came and got it! Yea! A whole 2 more items out of our house. I have many more I wish to sell! It’s a great place to sell and buy things! And check the wanted area to see if you can help someone with something they need! www.craigslist.org Then you can select your area. LOVE IT!

There is currently a pretty big wildfire burning in Manitou. If any of you are familiar with the Cog Railroad that goes up Pikes Peak, the fire is right in that area. They think it was human started, and they are trying to bring in air support. However, the winds are to erratic for the air support, so they only have ground support currently. The flames and smoke are pretty visible from all over town. Feels like they are scared of what it might do.

Susan and Zak flew into town late last night. They are both in a wedding this weekend of some of their high school friends. We were able to get together for lunch today, as that was their only free time. After lunch, everyone came to our house and Zak took Courtney’s 1 year old pictures. Then they headed home as the kids have the rehearsal and dinner tonight. Tomorrow all day is wedding stuff and then they leave early Sunday morning. So, I was happy to get a few hours with them at lunch time.

I don’t remember if I posted here before or not, but Susan was recently in a car accident. A guy ran a stop sign and broadsided Susan. She was okay, a few minor aches and pains and bruises. The insurance company ended up totaling her car. So, last Wednesday they went and got a new car. They got a 2001 PT cruiser that apparently is loaded. They seem very happy with it! I will get to check it out at Christmas when they drive up here.

Well, I am smoking a turkey breast for a party tonight, so I must go tend to that now!

4 cadets

It’s been busy here. Last Friday night we had dinner with an ex-coworker of Brian’s who moved to town a year ago. He and his wife joined Courtney, Hubby and I at Rock Bottom. Afterwards, we followed them to their house so that we could meet their kids. Their oldest loves kids and loves to baby-sit! BONUS! She even teaches Sunday school because she loves kids so much. So, Courtney spent some time playing with her.

On the way home one of our current cadets called. He was wondering if he could come over for the weekend. We said sure. He asked if he could bring a few friends. We said okay. So, after we got home Hubby left to go and pick up 4 cadets. While he was gone doing that, I set up the two twin beds in the basement, plus the air mattress, plus sheets and pillows for the couch. So, everyone had somewhere to sleep, as they were staying until Sunday.

I forgot just how much teenage boys can eat. Saturday morning they ate lots of eggs and bacon and hash browns. For dinner, lots of meat was consumed. Sunday morning it was stacks of pancakes. I can’t tell you how much milk and juice we went through! And about 2 packages of cookies, plus microwave pizza’s and lots of soda. Thankfully we still had some left over from our parties. But they said they had a great time. The watched a ton of movies. They also slept a lot. Both Saturday and Sunday we woke them up around 11am.

Sunday afternoon I spent with my friend shopping. Both of us left our kids at home with the husbands. It was a very successful shopping trip. I purchased about 4-5 pair of pants I can wear to work. I spent too much money of a pair of jeans I fell in love with. And I bought a few other splurge items. It sure felt great to spend the time with no kids, with my friend, and splurge on stuff for me. Yes, most of it was for work, but it was what I needed and I had been avoiding buying forever.

Tuesday was agility night. We tried out our new babysitter and Hubby came with me to agility. Bristol is doing so well, he moved on to the next step on the teeter-totter! So, one more step and he is doing the full teeter-totter! Maggie starts agility next Monday night. I am really excited to see how she does.

Today Hubby left for Okinawa, Japan. He is going to Camp Courtney! He is teaching two classes there. He left this morning, Wednesday, at 6am out of Colorado Springs. He should be in the air for about 16 hours. But he will land in Okinawa, at 9:30pm on Thursday night. That’s just odd. He will lose 15 hours along the way somewhere. But, he will get it when he comes back. Looks like he will be going back to Japan in about 4 weeks, but Tokyo next.

The baby is getting pretty proficient at walking! She doesn’t fall down as much as she used to. Pretty soon, I think she will be running!

Well, it’s getting late, so I best be off to bed!

Yep, full out walking!

Okay, so we have full out walking now. She is still a little unsteady, but around the house, she prefers walking to crawling now. Tonight she walked from our family room to the front door. She did have to stop a few times and rebalance herself, but we have a walker!

It’s so cute to watch! And amazing! I guess we all pretty much take for granted walking. But watching her struggle with balance reminds me that walking isn’t as easy as it looks! I love watching her learn!

Tomorrow we have her 1 year check up. This translates into more shots, yuck! I wonder how much she will weigh. A few weeks ago she was almost 18 pounds and she has been eating like a horse since, so it will be interesting to see!

Today was my last day helping out at WnW. The new manager is on his own now. I think he is ready and I think he is a great fit for the store.

After my morning at WnW, Hubby picked me up and we headed to FedEx. Specifically the main FedEx hub here in town. We had 2 cases of laptops, and 2 boxes of class materials to send to Okinawa. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to send this stuff to Japan. I have spent several hours on the phone and internet with FedEx. Finally a FedEx rep on the phone told me ‘just take it to the local FedEx hub’. So, we did. We had to fill out 3 forms, but we are pretty sure it should get there no problem. You never know with customs in another country! We have to keep a close eye on tracking it on its journey. If it gets hung up anywhere we have to call FedEx right away. Such a learning process. Typically we do all our FedEx shipping right on line, but not this time!

Last night was a long night. About 2am the Copper-Chopper as we call it (the police helicopter) buzzed the house. I also heard a lot of sirens. The copter was soon circling pretty close to our house with the spotlight trained on something on the ground. And then there were more sirens. It was very loud and it woke both Hubby and me up. Of course Courtney slept through it. But I watched it for about half an hour. Finally it left. But soon after it left the Flight for Life copter arrived. That is the medical chopper for one of our hospitals here in town. The hospital it flies for has the best trauma ER in town. But it sure is odd for the Flight for Life to pick someone up in town. It typically is used more for out of town pick up’s! Like far remote towns and such.

Apparently about ¼ mile up the main road from us, a drunk driver was driving too fast and tried to turn into 7-11. He didn’t make the turn and flipped the car. The driver was ejected and severely injured. The passenger was also severely injured. The Flight for Life helicopter took the driver to Penrose Hospital and apparently he didn’t make it much past arrival there before he passed away. The passenger was taken to Memorial Hospital and has been listed in serious condition last I heard. So, in total I was up for about an hour last night while all this was going on.

Well, I am exhausted and I need to go move laundry before bed. Hope everyone is well!

Full out walking, just around the corner!

I am amazed by Courtney every day. She seems to be changing and growing right in front of our eyes daily. She will now take several steps in a straight line in the right situation. For example today when Nana arrived, Courtney walked a good 10 feet from me to Nana. She has really been practicing today. So, pretty soon she will be running!

Let’s see, what else did we do this past week, I am trying to remember. I worked 3 days at WnW. They have a new manager now and he is coming up to speed pretty quickly. I am scheduled to work 2 days next week, and then I should be done! I don’t mind helping out, but I miss my regular schedule with Courtney. Mainly because when I work both jobs, she stays at daycare all day, and she only naps for about an hour there. So by the time she comes home, she is quite grouchy and needs to go to bed early. So, I don’t get to spend much time with her.

We found out this week that Hubby will be going to Okinawa, Japan to teach a class! He will be gone for a week at the end of September. Then he comes home and 3 days later, the 3 of us head out on a mini vacation. We are going to fly into Roanoke and spend a few day’s with Hubby’s parents. Then we will go down to Charlotte for 2 days for Hubby to teach a class. Then we will drive back to Hubby’s parents’ house, and the next day Hubby and I will head back down to Charlotte while Courtney stays with her Grammy and Granddad. Hubby and I are going back down to Charlotte to see the race! We have awesome tickets on the start/finish line at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

Hubby and I will stay in Charlotte the night of the race, because it is a night race and trying to drive back up to Virginia would take forever. The hotel we are staying in is 14 minutes from the track, but with the traffic, it may end up taking forever!

From there, a few days later, Courtney and I will head home. Hubby will head up to the DC area to teach another class. So, a week after we get home, Hubby will come home.

Last night we had our ‘Grown-Up’ party celebrating making it one year! Hubby smoked a turkey breast and 2 briskets. Kelly and Tony made several sides. The food was all fabulous! Everyone raved about it! Kelly makes this incredible artichoke dip, that was gone first. My favorite meat was the turkey breast. I thought the flavor was amazing! I am pretty sure it was a good time had by all. Courtney was upstairs asleep through all of it.

The way her room is, it is over our garage. It works out so well, because that way she doesn’t hear much of what goes on downstairs! So, she wasn’t disturbed much. The only time she did open her eyes was when the dogs, who were also locked upstairs, barked. But she went right back to sleep.

I am having a hard time remembering what else we did this week. And I took the sheets off the bed this morning, so I better go put some on so we can go to sleep at a reasonable hour! Hope everyone is well.

Courtney's First Party!

Thursday night was our annual Patron dinner at the Zoo. Every year it’s nice, and this year was no exception. It started with the tram brining us from the Zoo entrance to the Lion area for drinks and appetizers. The lion’s recently had 4 cubs, and they have a camera in the den that plays on a TV screen in the Lion viewing area. So we were able to see the 4 cubs playing when we arrived. The Daddy Lion was out in the yard so we could see him, and occasionally he would remind us that he was there by making loud roaring noises. Meanwhile, the mom would come in and out of the den where the cubs were. By the time we headed to dinner, all 4 cubs were pooped out and fast asleep!

During drinks we were offered an opportunity to go up to the “Budgie Buddies” exhibit. Only a few people took up the offer, so there was a total of 5 people to go up there. This was there special summer exhibit. In the bird area are lots of different types of finches, parakeets and cockatiels. Part of the ‘experience’ is that you walk into the free roaming bird area (indoor) and they give you seed sticks to feed to them. The first time we went in there I think it was opening weekend and it was packed so it wasn’t very fun. But Thursday night, it was right before dinner and there was no one else there, so they were starving. We walked in and we had them on our head, shoulders, and hands. We got to feed them as many seed sticks as we wanted, and it was so neat!

Dinner was served in the new Moose lodge. The zoo recently built a new indoor event area. I think they said it should be able to hold up to 300. Something that I thought that was really neat was the fact that they had garage door type doors that opened up to reveal the view of the city. So, from the table that we sat at we had an incredible view of the city lights and it was a beautiful night! Dinner of course was wonderful. It was a buffalo tenderloin, artichoke risotto, asparagus and scallops. Dessert was an Oreo mouse that was fabulous!

We had left Courtney at my parents’ house for a night of fun while we were at the zoo. Apparently she ate like we never feed her at home. They gave her a bath in a plastic tub on the kitchen table and she finally fell asleep at some point. When we got there at 9pm she was out like a light.

Hubby got a new laptop at work, so he has been playing on his new Dell laptop all week. Seems like they are always able to find reasons to buy new toys!

Saturday we had Courtney’s first birthday party. We got the Hot Taco Bar from Qdoba to have here at home. They provided steak and chicken, 3 types of salsa, guacamole, sour cream, lettuce, taco shells both crunchy and soft, and cheese. They also provided cookies and brownies. It was easy to set up and everyone said it was yummy!

After dinner, Hubby and I ended up opening Courtney’s gifts for her. The only thing she was interested in was the ribbon. We only opened up the gift that people brought that night. She has a few other family gifts that she will open on her actual birthday.

After gifts we had cake. We got Courtney her own cake. She dug in and had a blast playing in it. I am not sure how much she actually ate. But she had it everywhere, in her hair down to her toes! I need to wash her shoes today.

After she destroyed her own little cake, Nana gave her a bath and got her ready for bed. Around then people started to leave. I think she had a great time and she was POOPED! She slept until 8am this morning which for her is rare!

She is saying new words all the time. She now says ‘nig-nig’ for night night. And it sounded like she said diaper today when I was changing her diaper. We are pretty sure she said Maggie today too. She now says baby, and my mom said that she said ‘ganda’ for Grandpa the other night.

She is still really close to walking. Last night she would take 3 steps between her two daycare teachers that came to her party. She prefers to walk as long as she has someone’s hand to hold.

Well, she just got up from her nap and now wants everything to do with my computer, so I better run!

Almost 1 year old!

So, last Thursday I noticed that Courtney had a cut on her thumb. No biggie. Then Friday, when I picked her up from daycare, I noticed that the cut had turned into a large red lump with a nasty looking pus pocket at the top. So, on the way home from daycare, I called the doctor’s office. The nurse told me that if it was still the same or worse the next day, to bring her in.

We woke up the next morning, and it was still awful looking. So, I called and got an appointment. That is the second Saturday in a row that we were at the pediatrician’s office. What a way to start the weekend.

We saw the Nurse Practitioner. She popped it, and took a sample. She also checked Courtney’s ears. She still had an ear infection in her ear. She had been on amoxicillin all week, so the NP said she needed new antibiotics. So, she got her a new prescription. On the way home from the doctor’s office, Hubby called from the airport, he had just landed in Denver.

Hubby made it home around 2pm that afternoon. Once he got home, I went out and ran errands. I got to pick up decorations for someone’s first birthday party next weekend! It was exciting! I am really looking forward to her party! I can’t believe it has almost been a full year all ready! This time last year, my butt was parked in the hospital bored to death!

That afternoon we smoked a roast and it turned out GREAT! It was a big roast and we had lots of leftovers. This came in handy the next day.

Sunday morning we caravanned up to Denver with our friends to take the 3 girls to the Aquarium. Yes, we have an aquarium in Colorado. It’s not super exciting, but it’s something. Courtney more enjoyed people watching than fish watching. Hailey and Kinsey both seemed to really like looking at fish. We ate lunch in their restaurant, which was built around a 150,000 gallon fish tank. It has 2 sharks and 42 varieties of fish. We got to sit right next to the glass to eat. I really enjoyed that. The food was pricy, but I thought it was a neat experience. At one point there was a diver and she came up to the glass and waved at Hailey. Hailey waved back to her. It was adorable.

We then all headed for home. That evening we were set to have our cadets and family over. Labor Day weekend is traditionally parents’ weekend at the Academy. So, our cadet who is now a junior and another one of our cadets, who is now a sophomore, said that they would like to join us for dinner with their families. When we got home we put a ham on the smoker. I also chopped up red potatoes and put them wrapped in foil on the smoker. I made a cheesy zucchini casserole and we also heated up the left over roast. We ended up with 11 people including the 3 of us, for dinner. Almost all the food was gone, there were no meat leftovers.

We had a great time with everyone. Last year Hubby did the parents’ weekend thing by himself since I was in the hospital. So, he all ready knew one set of parents that I hadn’t met yet. They also had a few brothers and sisters with them as well this year. So, most of the kids spent the night in the basement playing Wii when we weren’t eating dinner. It was a great time, and I really enjoyed meeting all the parents.

Monday morning after Courtney’s breakfast, we headed off to pick up Nana and Grandpa on the way to the Zoo. We got there about 30 minutes after opening which worked out great. We fed some giraffe’s, petted the baby wallaby; she petted a turtle that was out roaming about. Courtney got a great laugh out of the hippos and giraffes. We stopped at the kids’ playground and Hubby took her down the slide several times. This was her first experience on a slide. She loved it. She wanted to do it over and over. She also rode on the carousel. By the time we walked all over the zoo and saw everything we wanted to see, it was getting to be lunch time, and the zoo was starting to get crowded. So Grandpa took all of us to Red Robin for lunch.

Courtney was one tired little girl after that. So, we took her home and she had a long nap. Then we had a quiet evening at home. Courtney played in the basement while Hubby and I cleaned it out. Later, Hubby and Courtney played outside while I pulled weeds,

We are having the carpets professionally cleaned tomorrow, so we have been really doing some cleaning. We have a large, and growing, garage sale pile. So, before the weather turns really cold, we may need to hold a garage sale to try to get some of this stuff out of our garage. Hubby keeps saying ‘there is no more room in the garage’, but somehow we end up squeezing more stuff in. But if I want to be able to use the snow blower this winter, we will have to get rid of a lot of it.

Courtney’s day care is closed today. The college was closed for the holiday, and then to even out classes they close on Tuesday as well. And whenever the college is closed, so is daycare. So, Hubby is working from home today and hanging out with the kid. I went home for lunch and spent some time with them as well. It was really hard to come back to work knowing that she is at home and I could be spending time with her. But what do you do?

I ordered her cake today for her celebration this weekend. I am really excited about it! I know she won’t remember it, but for some reason, it feels really big to me! Her day care teachers are going to come to the party, I just love them, so I am excited about that. Ms. Kay is just one of those women that everyone seems to love. She has a glowing bubbly personality about her. The party invites were kept to a few and just to people who she is really familiar with. So, she shouldn’t be overwhelmed. The weekend after, the Zeigners’ and us are going to host an Adult party celebrating the fact that we all made it thought the last year! That should be fun, as I feel we all have a lot to celebrate!