Rebecca – Page 8 – Andelin Adventures

Quick Trip to California

I made a super quick trip to California on my own this weekend. Wendy decided she wanted to go to the temple to receive her endowments this weekend, even though she knew that a bunch of family were coming to Utah for Adam’s baby blessing two weeks earlier and that I am planning on bringing my family down three weeks from now. I was slightly frustrated that she would plan it right in between two other family events. Then, when we got word that Great Grandma Ruby wasn’t doing very well and wasn’t going to make it and we ended up in North Carolina for a week, I was more than ever, hoping that Wendy would change her mind and reschedule to make things a bit easier. But she wouldn’t and because the kids had already missed several days of school because we were on the east coast, I just couldn’t make myself load them all up in the van and take a road trip THIS weekend. I really didn’t want to drive through the night, because that was the only way we would have been able to make it work. So, being very sad that I couldn’t take my family with me, I hopped on a plane all by myself Friday night after my Girl Scout meeting. The good thing about flying alone this time, was that I actually got to read my book (The Neverending Story by Michael Ende). When we flew to North Carolina, and home again, we had all the kids and two of them were lap sitters, which meant that Kyle and I each had a kid in our lap for the whole flight, and reading a book meant trying to keep the book away from the lap child at the same time. 😛

The airplane that I was on this time, was a LOT smaller than the ones we were on to go to North Carolina. And even though I packed super light, and shoved my temple bag into my smallest suitcase so that I would only have one carry on and my purse, my carry on was still too big. The over head compartments in this plane were only big enough to hold backpacks, nothing bigger. And if you had a really big backpack stuffed to the gills, that wouldn’t have fit either. So they ended up checking my bag at the gate.

I arrived in California safely, and after collecting my suitcase I worked my way outside and called my dad. He found me and picked me up and we went to the house. It was rather late when we got there and so we just went to bed.

Saturday was rather insane. We woke up and got ready for the trip to the temple. Dad had bought muffins for breakfast, and after Wendy arrived, we were off to the temple. We got to the temple a little bit early, so before going inside, we went to check out the visitor’s center. A couple of sister missionaries showed us some of the neat things that are new in the visitor’s center, and then it was time to be getting Wendy inside the temple. The session was a 1:30pm session, but Wendy was supposed to be there at noon. Mom, being Wendy’s escort went with her, and Dad and I went to hang out in the cafeteria for a little bit.

After the session was over and Mom and Wendy and I were all back in our regular church clothes, we went out to find Dad. But we didn’t see him anywhere. He came out of the dressing room several minutes later saying that someone else was in his locker when he got there to change. Then we went out to the car, and after realizing that there wasn’t enough time to go get some dinner, we headed straight to my parent’s stake center for the adult session of their stake conference. President Francis, was being released as stake president this weekend and my parent’s didn’t want to miss it. My family has known President Francis for many years. He was the Bishop in my family’s ward when my family was baptized, 15 years ago. We finished up the evening by going to Mimi’s Cafe. I would have rather gone to The Whole Enchilada, but they weren’t open as late as Mimi’s was.

Sunday morning, we went to the general session of Stake conference, and I saw a bunch of people that are still in my parent’s ward after all these years. A lot of the people have changed, but some of the faces are still familiar. President Francis was released this morning. They announced that he has been called to be the mission president in the Rochester, New York mission, and so he is selling is chiropractor practice and they are selling their family home and he and his wife will be taking their kids to go live in New York.

This afternoon after church, I changed and got everything packed back up. I told mom that I planned on leaving my temple bag, since I will be back down in just three weeks and I will need it for that trip too. I had time to eat my leftovers from Mimi’s, and then Dad took me back to the airport. RIGHT as we were getting to my terminal, he was pulled over. I felt so bad, but I didn’t have time to stick around and find out why he had been pulled over, so I went into the airport to figure out how to get on my plane home. Later I saw that he had texted me that he had only been pulled over because there wasn’t a license plate on the front of the car. That cop must have been bored or something. I made it home safely, and Kyle and the kids met me at the airport to pick me up. And now I can get started on moving into my newly finished basement!

Entering the next Decade

Last night the kids asked Kyle if he would take them shopping so they could get me a birthday present. Kyle invited me along, basically because he didn’t want the kids picking out useless things and he wanted me to pick out my presents, so they would actually be something I would like. 😛 So we went out, and I picked out a pair of super soft fuzzy pajamas, and because my current purse is too small to hold my kindle, I picked out a new purse.

Kyle worked from home today, so that he could be here with me for my birthday. Then he went out to pick up something for dinner and to buy a birthday cake. When he got back I got to open my presents. Now I knew about the things that I had picked out yesterday, and Dinah has been constantly telling me about how I was getting some Woodstock earrings, and then the final present I also knew about. We were having chicken for dinner a couple of weeks ago when four of the kids asked if they could have a drumstick. I made the comment, “I still want that book”. In case you don’t know, the book is “Who Gets the Drumstick?” by Helen Beardsley. As soon as I made that comment, and Kyle realized what I was talking about, he went to his computer and looked it up on amazon. Being that it is out of print he couldn’t find a reasonably priced hardcover copy on amazon and went to check ebay. There he found one, and bought it right away. He didn’t try to keep it a secret, and so I knew that he bought it. I knew what was in the package when it arrived in the mail, and for some unknown reason it totally surprised him when I knew what every one of my presents was. 😉

After opening my presents, I went down the hall to put on my new soft and fuzzy pajamas, and then we had cake.

So here I am entering my thirties. Life has been very good to me. 🙂

My Donut Radar

Friday night, after Knott’s, we took the kids back to my parents house, and Dad offered to let us use his car so that Kyle and I could go out alone. We didn’t have a destination in mind at first, so we just kind of drove around. I mentioned that I would like to get donuts in the morning for breakfast. I have a thing for donuts, REAL donuts.We don’t have many donut shops here in Utah and Wal-Mart donuts really just aren’t the same. We do have a ‘Daylight Donuts’ but it’s not exactly close to where we live at all, so we rarely go. So almost every time we are in California we get a whole bunch of donuts to share. Kyle said that getting donuts in the morning would be fine, but that the donut shop we usually go to only takes cash and we don’t carry cash with us. So while we were out on our way to the track at my old middle school (I wanted to go for a run), I pointed out a different donut shop. The track wasn’t lit and the sun had gone down so we got back in the car and kept driving. I told Kyle to go over by Bradford Staduim and I pointed out two more donut shops on the way. We continued past the stadium and down towards Fullerton College. Kyle pointed out the Taqueria in the little shopping strip, and I pointed out yet another donut shop. This went on pretty much all evening. We decided to go to the Brea mall and then to Claim Jumper for dinner, and everywhere I went I would point out donut shops all over the place. We would be talking about completely different things when I would say “Hey look! Another one!” and Kyle would respond with “Huh? What? Oh.” It didn’t stop Friday night either. Saturday evening when we made a run to the grocery store to get water and things for the drive home, I pointed out another donut shop in that parking lot. Donut shops are just everywhere in Orange County, and my donut radar picked up a whole bunch of them. 🙂

Mom and Me at the Cabin

Whenever I post things that are related to girl scouts, I have to take a moment and make sure that I am in the right mindset. I don’t feel comfortable posting from the leader perspective, as there may be parents that don’t feel comfortable with me sharing stories or pictures about their girls. And so I have to make sure that I am thinking of things from the perspective as the parent, focusing mostly on myself and my daughter. 🙂

When discussing with Amy and Michelle, (my co-leaders) the activities that we wanted to do through the summer, I mentioned that I would like to do an overnighter. Maybe just a simple campout in someone’s backyard that way we were close to a toilet and not out anywhere scary or far from home. After thinking about it, Amy brought up that her family has a cabin that we could probably use. We decided to make it a mom and me since we didn’t want to be responsible for anything happening to the girls while we were away. 😉 And we decided that we would use the time at the cabin to work on earning a few badges.

The girls got to finish up their potters badge by making some beads out of clay. We forgot to bring some toothpicks to bake the beads on, so we ended up using some spaghetti noodles that we found in the cupboard in the cabin. 😛

After we baked them, the girls got to string them up to make necklaces or bracelets.

The girls also got to earn the bugs badge. It was pretty funny to watch so many of the girls scream and freak out at being so close to bugs. One of the activities that they did to earn the badge was to use a shoebox to make an observation area, so they could catch a bug and watch it for a bit.

Several of the girls had difficulties in catching a bug, but after we helped to make sure that they all had one, it was pretty funny that some of the girls would no longer even touch their box JUST because there was a bug inside. 😛

We also had the girls earn the snacks badge, and they got to do things like make and eat guacamole, make and drink homemade root beer, and each girl brought something to contribute to a trail mix (which we planned on taking on our hike with us).

When we had lunch, Amy realized that she had forgotten to bring the grapes. I think she was going to mix some into the chicken salad, and she realized they weren’t there when she was mixing it up. Then when we were helping the girls make guacamole for the snacks badge, we realized that the limes also did not make it up to the cabin. After a while, Amy’s husband sent her a text asking her if she had realized that she left behind the turkey lunch meat, the bacon and the eggs, all of which, happened to be our food for today!

We weren’t allowed to have a campfire, due to the extremely dry weather and the many fires that were already blazing all over Utah (seems like the whole state is on fire right now). The moms that had phones that had access to internet were on their phones a lot checking the status of the fire on our mountain. We even heard a rumor at one point that the city center had been evacuated. I sent a quick text message to Kyle to ask him about it, and he answered back that he had had the radio on for quite some time to get news updates on the fire and that he hadn’t heard anything about our area being evacuated.

So we knew we weren’t allowed to have a campfire, but we weren’t sure if we were allowed to use charcoal or not. We ended up starting our charcoal so that we could do our dutch oven pot roast for dinner. We went on a short hike to the water tank after dinner, and the girls all climbed up on it.

Tyra looks a lot shorter than all the other girls, but I think that has something to do with the way that her neck seems to have disappeared. She is younger than a lot of those girls, but she is not younger than all of them. After they had all climbed on the tank Amy showed them how she used to slide off of it when she was a kid and so they all had to slide off too (with the help of one of the other moms because they were all too afraid to slide off on their own). 😉

One of the mom’s helped keep the coals that we used to cook our pot roast, warm so that we could roast marshmallows later in the evening. Roasting marshmallows over warm coals was very slow business. Some of the girls actually figured out how to get their marshmallows to turn that nice golden roasted color. But everyone was able to get their marshmallows warm enough to be able to squish them between two graham crackers.

By the end of the day, as bedtime drew nearer and nearer, Tyra became more and more nervous. She still has problems staying dry at night, and she REALLY didn’t want to have an accident while we were at the cabin when we were around so many people that aren’t family. I think she was also concerned that the other girls might tease her about it. She was getting really tired and decided that after she finished her smores she had better get ready for bed. I also felt that it would be better for her to hit the sack early and actually be able to use the bathroom before going to bed, instead of her just falling asleep wherever she happened to be sitting, without having used the bathroom first. So she ended up missing the final ‘campfire’ time where Amy read the girls a story that she wrote about a girl and some Brownies, and she missed the Brownie hunt. I was sad that she missed it (actually I missed it too since I was inside helping to get Tyra ready for bed), but I really wanted to make sure she had a chance to properly prepare for bed.

The other girls came in and got ready for bed shortly after Tyra had gotten into her sleeping bag for the night. It took awhile for everyone to get a turn in the bathroom so they could change and brush teeth and use the toilet. But at last all the kids were up in the loft and in their sleeping bags. One of the mom’s was concerned with how hot it was up in the loft, where the girls were sleeping, and thought that her daughter was looking as though she wasn’t feeling very well. So they decided to go out and sleep in their jeep (I guess the seats fold down and so they could just lay some sleeping pads down and they had plenty of room to sleep). Later, after I had gone to bed, a couple more of the girls came down, one saying that she was homesick and the other just wanted to be with her mom. I tried to get some sleep, but it’s always hard for me to sleep in strange places, and the fact that some of the moms were still up talking and the fact that there were a couple of girls up too, made it REALLY difficult for me to drift off. I just laid there in bed listening to everything that was being talked about, and every time someone went into the bathroom I heard them in the hall and saw the light go on. After most of the commotion and most of the conversations seemed to have ceased and things seemed like they were going to be quiet for the night, the real commotion began. The girl that was feeling clingy and just wanted to be with her mom ended up throwing up! I heard it splat all over the wood flooring. Then the crazy rush of everyone that was awake trying to get things out of the way so they could get it cleaned up. Her mom took her to the bathroom to give her a shower to try to get her cleaned up. Unfortunately Amy’s uncle had forgotten to come up to the cabin before us to turn on the water heater, and Amy couldn’t find the key to the basement so that we could turn it on ourselves. So there was no hot water, it was freezing cold spring water. I kept hearing the girl complain to her mom that she was cold. I felt so sad for her. I think after they got her cleaned up and the main room all cleaned up things really calmed down and that was the end of the chaos for the night.

Since most of the food for today had been forgotten, breakfast plans had to be altered. One of the mom’s made a run to a local store to pick up some eggs and bacon yesterday, and so we were able to turn our loaves of bread (that were meant to be turkey sandwiches for lunch) into french toast. We were also planning on taking the girls on a 3 mile hike to Strawberry Ridge right after breakfast, but considering everyone was up so late, and the fact that one of the girls threw up in the night, we decided it would be better to scrap that and maybe just take the girls that felt up to it, back up to the water tank one more time. Other than that we basically spent this morning packing up and cleaning the cabin up so we could get everyone home. I think the girls had a good time, despite the drama and vomit. And I think we are going to plan on making this a yearly activity. 🙂

20 Weeks- The Half Way Point!

I had another prenatal visit with Valerie this morning. I am up 8 pounds since my last visit, which made Valerie VERY happy. Baby’s heart beat sounds great and everything is looking good. I asked about some varicose veins on my leg. They don’t hurt me or anything, I just think they are ugly, and they seem to be getting worse in appearance. Honestly the only reason I am worried about that is because I know that varicose veins are hereditary, and my mom has a terrible case (her whole leg and foot are covered in them). For now the veins that I am worried about are in one cluster about the size of a quarter, on my leg, and I would kind of like to keep it from spreading if I can. Valerie told me to duct tape it. She told me that she knows I think she’s crazy, but if I put duct tape on it in the morning before I get out of bed (while it’s properly drained and hasn’t had a chance to fill with fresh blood for the day) that the duct tape will help support the veins to prevent them from getting worse, and that I won’t have to wear support hose all summer long. So I’ll give that a try and see how it goes.

Oh and I’ve still got the green light to run *as long as I keep gaining weight*. 🙂 So I am going to take that to mean that I can run more than once a week, just as long as I keep packing away some weight. SO HAPPY for that!