Spring Broke

I promise to never, ever, ever post anything as long as this again.

Pre Spring Break - San Diego

Jerry and I got to visit a few of our old stomping grounds and a couple friends from our SD days. It was a quick work related trip, but I jumped at the chance to visit my homeland. I think it was < 0 wind chill on the day that I headed to Cali.

Flying solo is a thing of beauty. Just me and my book. My flight from Minneapolis to LA was filled with LA types. There were two Kardashians sister look-a-likes flying first class (could have been the real deal), some Jonas Brother wannabes and a dead ringer for Shawn Johnson.

We got home Sunday night and Jerry left for Virginia Monday morning, scheduled to return Friday at 1 with our Spring Break departure set for 3.

SB Greatest Hits

Highway to the Danger Zone

Uncle Scott took us on a tour of his squadron and his plane. Super cool. Owen is in love with all things aviation now.

Happy Birthday!

Miles turned 3 the day we arrived. There was cake and spit and ice cream, yum.

TMNT Theme Song

Miles and his swords (pronounced s.word) are awesome. Leonardo has mad weapon skills. When he realized that his shell (t-shirt) was already full of 2 swords, he placed 2 knives in his underwear. Careful buddy or you'll be visiting Keaton's website.

Diamonds (OR spa days, purse shopping, fake hair pieces) are a Girl's Best Friend

A huge shout out to Kathleen Rawlins for doing Taylor's hair during our visit. As most of you have noticed, Taylor is growing up. That means she comes along on Girls' Day Out and stays up late playing games with the adults (which Anna needed reminding of several times during our stay, geesh have you read For the Strength of Youth lately?). After Kathleen worked her magic on Tay, we headed to Sam Moon, legal knock off bag heaven. I'm not big on bags/purses/shopping, but even I had fun perusing the tables full of pleathery goodness. This isn't the kind of knock off place where you need a secret password and armed escort down a back alley to purchase a Goach bag. Watching Anna nearly get assaulted by the hair piece police was pure awesome. We each left with a reasonably priced bag, though the bows on Taylor's oyster bag are anything but reasonable. Anna - I'll have you know she was asked at school if she carries around small children in it.

Kryptonite

The highlight of the week was the super hero luncheon. Completely unplanned, come as you are, no need for secret identities, super suits only. Scarebear, Leonardo, Superman, She-mo, the Masked Avenger (a.k.a. Tina the pig slaying llama or LaPush Face), Yoda, and The Baby.

Food Glorious Food

We ate a lot. A lot of really yummy stuff. Cafe Rio Burritos drenched in Anna's secret sauce, Chase-san's delish Sushi, and Anna's amazing White Chili to name my favs. 'Nuf said.

The Wise Man built...

.. his BIL's workbench out of 2 x 6's, sturdy enough to weather any beating or sword fight dished out at Rawlins Ranch. Jerry likes to be busy. When we go on vacation and visit family, he usually busies himself with any number of home improvement projects. While at Anna's he intended to fix a ceiling/wall water damage problem. So he built this:

so he could fix this:

When he wasn't fixing or building he was riding or running or swimming.

Kumbaya

On the return trip, a spring blizzard (18" in Wichita?!?!) delayed our travel through Kansas, so we spent another night at the OK Kilgores. Christy my SIL had plans to celebrate Earth Hour (no electricity) with her boys, so we joined in with the fun. It was a great way to end our trip. Jerry didn't have his guitar, but we sang some songs around a lantern and the kids took turns telling ghost stories.

Cousins!

Be Our Guest

We are the most awesomest house guests ever; we clean stuff, fix stuff, build stuff, babysit stuff. See what our customers say here and here (oops their blog is private, but trust me, they LOVE us).

Next playgroup hot spot
After breakfast at Denny's while on our road trip south (one of only 2 times we had to eat out!), the kids noticed a Chuck E Cheese next door. I LOATHE Chuck E Cheese and my reasons are another blog post in the making. I have tried my darnedest to brainwash my kids into thinking that Chuck E Cheese is of the devil. As we drive by, Owen says, "We don't like that place. Yuck!" Jerry and I smile and agree with him just as he says, "But I like THAT place!"

And for the rest of the trip he noticed every "orange place" between Kansas City and Dallas, and there are a lot of them. Nicole - cancel the Amber Alert, cuz Owen found the girls. Too bad Cedar Rapids doesn't have one, can you imagine sending out birthday party invites for a 3 year old birthday party at Hooters.

Why I hate cars
In my best Eliza Doolittle: "I'm a good driver, I am!"

I have only ever had ONE ticket in my ~18 years of driving ahem experience. But I think it's time to face the fact that I am somewhat careless at times, mostly because I am always in a hurry. Like the time when I backed into a U-Haul in our first new to us van, or the time when I backed into a parked truck totaling it in our brand spanking new to us van, or the time that I spilled 4 quarts of alfredo sauce in the same brand new to us van, or the time I backed it into our recycling can and broke a taillight, or the time when I backed out of the garage in a fit of rage and tore the side view mirror off, or the time when I tore the side rail off my dad's Volvo in high school...

See a pattern, here? Whenever I do something dumb it always costs a lot of money. The latest in my greatest "hits" is a banged up muffler. Granted I wasn't doing anything crazy, just turning into the bank, fast enough to hear the scrape against the slight incline of the driveway.

Anyone who knows us well, knows that we live on Jerry-time. And most of the time that means we'll be late. If Jerry says, "We'll be there in an hour." That means 2 or 3. So you can imagine our excitement when we left on schedule for our Spring Break trip to OKC/TX. I picked the kids up from school at 3 and we were on the Interstate by 3:24. At 3:35 we heard it. What's that sound? There it is again!

Truth be told, I first heard the sound after getting the oil changed 2 days prior. I made a mental note to mention it to Jerry who was in Virgina, and somehow that mental post-it got shuffled to the bottom of my to do list. So, instead of getting on I-80 West, we went to the Iowa City Nissan dealer to have it checked out.
Of course, it was near closing time, but they were really nice and took it for a drive with Jerry to hear the clunking and rattling and feel the vibrations in the floor. We were there for at least an hour and the kids were good sports. The sales manager even offered us a van from the lot to take on vacation, just to be safe. "Take the van, take the van!" I screamed in my head to Jerry. Alas, he wouldn't.

The mechanic and service tech explained that the muffler had a "big dent" and that the thing inside was most likely loose causing the noise and vibrations. The problem won't affect the performance of the van, just infuriate the driver with the loud constant noise (granted the noise is only heard at speeds of 65-70 AND seems to be directly correlated to high winds, also too). Good thing we were driving to OK and TX, because, it's not windy there at all.

Jerry tried a couple MacGuyer tricks to keep the noise at bay and the styrofoam stuffed in the chassis for the return trip seemed to help. Though, we think now that it had more to do with the wind being at our backs. We took the van in last week to have them look at it again - for free. The plan was to drop it off and drive to the hospital in Iowa City to see my mom. I get there 30 minutes after Jerry and he's buying a new (used) car. (Deb - if you are ever in need of someone to make decisions for you, on the spot, Jerry is your guy).

Welcome Marge, the newest member of our family.

Her namesake is Marge the lady who lived by the mailboxes at our apartment in El Cajon (Anna and Alyssa you may remember her). Marge was a nice old broad. She probably smoked 3 packs a day for most of her life and continued the habit while hooked up to her oxygen tank. After the deal was done, Jerry's comment after driving her home was, I think the previous owner may have been a smoker. My detailing & destinkifying skillz are pretty radical and are being put to the test, so I hope to have her smelling like spring rain (minus the worms, Deb) or newish car smell ASAP. Jerry suggestion was that I should dump 4 quarts of alfredo sauce in her - har har.

I hate cars.

Nana update
Thanks to Deb's regular posting and related comment threads, most of you are in the know about my mom and her latest fall. 2 days prior to our return from Spring Break, my mom had a serious fall involving Max's leash. Her face and elbow broke her fall, resulting in one surgery to piece her left humerus back together - she shattered the base of the humerus at the elbow joint. Another surgery will take place this week (hopefully) and repair the damage done to her cheek bone (more screws and a plate). She is most concerned about this procedure because of damage done to her vision. Her left eye is not in the correct position, so she sees double, though it's gotten better since the fall. The fracture in the cheek bone has also caused nerve damage and she continues to have no feeling in the left side of her face. Her stitches came out last Friday and her face is looking so much better, just in time for them to cut it up. She's in good spirits for the most part. Her days are spent doing PT exercises for her elbow, managing her pain and sleeping.

*Update* Surgery is scheduled for April 20.

Lydia's knock knock joke
The kids made cards for Nana's hospital stay last week. Lydia came up with this all by herself.

Knock. Knock.

Wohs thar?

Leaf.

Leaf Woh.

Leaf me alone, I'm having surgery.

The End.