Long Update

Well, for the sake of keeping Grace's journal up to date, I will post without having any pictures in it.  I might be starting, "Grace's Journey #2" if I can't figure out this picture situation.  But anyways.

It's been crazy busy.  Mom mom came the 18th, so of course I got all my homework for the month done before then.  We got her hear, had an awesome week with her, and were sad to see her go on the 25th.  But with her leaving came another adventure to the cabin for Memorial Day weekend.  That was another awesome time with family, the best being the bike ride we went on (with ATV's) today for about 2 hours.  I just LOVE four wheeling in deep snow, with the fish tailing and swerves and almost out of control speed :)  I went with a niece, and it was awesome.  We screamed, laughed, joked, waved our hands in the air, got some rear in the air over bumps in the road and a quick acceleration :)  IT WAS GREAT!!!  But now we're home.  Grace watched her Sesame Street while I cleaned up, spaghettios for dinner, bath time while mommy wrote letters to some friends, and now she's giggling in bed while I relax, blog, and then go watch some "How I met Your Mother!"  But we won't be having a relaxing few weeks to come as we are leaving Wednesday at 11 to head to Utah.  Grace has Spina Bifida clinic Friday as well as a bladder pressure test and a visit to the eye doctor to prepare for surgery.  On Thursday we will be having a sedated hearing test, which I'm OOBER excited about because it will help us see how bad, or good, is her hearing.  We will also be seeing an orthopedic doctor to see if we should get Grace some ankle braces because her ankles turn inwards when she stands/walks.  But all in all, it can't be that bad.  Gas is paid for, as well as meals, housing (Ronald McDonald house) and some times they give you tickets to the zoo if the zoo has donated any.

Well, that's all for now.  Just an exhausted mama with a busy week ahead.

I've got a quick plan to share.  Grace's eye specialist came a little while ago and brought an IPad 2 with a bunch of developmental games on it, and Grace did wonderfully learning the new concepts.  So I've decided to buy her one, but need to earn/save the money to get it for her so she can have the learning apps.  Anyone have any ideas?  I'm going to start donating plasma 2x a week, hoping that will start building an IPad fund.

Amanda

MY BLOG

FOR SOME REASON I CAN'T UPLOAD ANY MORE PICTURES.  MY PICASA WEB ALBUMS ARE FULL AND IN ORDER TO POST MORE PICTURES, I'D HAVE TO BUY STORAGE SPACE FOR MORE PICTURES, WHICH IS A MONTHLY COST.  I HAVEN'T FIGURED OUT HOW TO DELETE ALBUMS TO MAKE ROOM FOR MORE PICTURES.  PLEASE BEAR WITH ME AS I FIGURE THIS OUT.

AMANDA

Randomness! Which includes sun oven cooking

05/15/12

Here is just a bunch of random stuff I wanted to share :)

I'm preparing a sun oven meal :)  Alfredo sauce with sausage.  It's called something different on the recipe but it's pretty much Alfredo in a nut shell!

 Adding all my ingredients :)

 YUM!  It looks absolutely yummy.

 After it's done cooking, this is what it should look like.  If it doesn't, then the sun didn't hit it for some reason, or your bag was leaking.

 Here it is cooked.  The only problem was that I put water in with the sausage before I added the cream mix, and so when everything cooked, the cream mix was TOO WATERY.

 So I had to cook it on the stove and add some cornstarch to thicken it.

 The recipe that is another one of our FAVORITES!!!  Thank you Dado!

The chicken for our next recipe.

 There's the sauce over the chicken, and then it went into the sun oven for 3 hours, and was delicious over rice for dinner!

 A fluff 'n stuff dog pillow with everything included except for the fluff, which I have MORE than enough of.

 The seeds/plants that went into the garden.  We bought from the store this year (some already growing plants) just because we got started so late, and don't know if seeds will actually produce.

 Here's the garden tilled, flattened, and ready for plants/seeds!

 Our awesome tiller we bought!!

 Now Grace is a big girl and gets to sit at the table with us!

My schedule of the month...crazy, isn't it.  And this is EVERY month.

 Our cute little plants...the only plants...in our entire house.  They are at the kitchen window.  The middle is a wild mix, that is now coming up (05/21/12)

 And this is where I found Grace after nap time.  She got out to play, got too tired to get back into bed, and ended up sleeping on the floor.  Doesn't look like it was too comfy, does it!

 Whining for a bit in the dog position :)

And dinner!!!

Fun stuff oh yeah!

Amanda

DIRT!

We've finally finished tilling the garden enough to order some dirt to put in it.  6 yards of compost and 3 yards of topsoil.  And finally the truck came in the late afternoon, so of course we had to go out and watch it dump our load!!

 Grace and I were watching the dirt fall, and she got a bit scared just because it was such a huge pile growing right in front of her eyes!

 There was so much dirt; even I was surprised!

 The dark is the compost, the light is the topsoil.

 All done!  Doesn't look like too much, right?!

 YEAH RIGHT!!!

 It was tons, and Grace hung out for most of the time on top of it, until she started eating it of course.

 Brad is taking a break.  He and I would switch off every so often, but mainly I watched Grace.

 Here mom, have a rock!

 Burying her hand in the dirt.

 Elvis look once again!  This is her first time EVER being in the sun with short sleeves.  I don't want her fair skin to burn!

 All the dirt piled in the backyard.  Took us about 3 hours to move it all.

 Brad is so excited his dirt was finally there that he couldn't even wait until tomorrow to start tilling.

We are so excited to be having this garden finally coming together!  This is awesome to be having a garden so quickly for our new house!  And its a bit bigger than the one at the old house.  More fun garden pictures to come!

Amanda

My Mom

So I've kept this under wraps because I'm oober excited about it and wanted to be sure, for whatever reason, it wasn't canceling.  But now, I can finally tell you all!!

My mom is flying in!!!!

She will be staying for a week, and she will get in at about 2:30 pm.  So of course I'm super excited.  So excited that I had everyone help deep clean the house.  She told me she's packed and re-packed about 20 times because she's so nervous about the plane ride!

Can't wait until she gets here!

Amanda

Working Outside!

05/09/12

So we have been working in the garden...ok...Brad has.  But I've been there a bit picking out rocks.  It's just too hard for me to help because I'm always with Grace, and when she's napping, I'm doing homework!  He doesn't mind though.  Gardening is his hobby!

 Daddy is working the dirt!

 SHEW THAT WAS CLOSE!  She totally almost bit the dust with that!  Luckily she caught herself.

 And of course she was scared afterwards...so off to the water bin!

 Hey there cutie!

 My smartie pants signing "water" as she says it.

 Trying to grab the water.  She's been having some trouble with pincer grasping something without having to search for it.  Her eyesight is about 3 inches off, so I'm wondering if it's double vision, or something else.  I'm so glad she'll see the doctor in August for her eyes.

 I just had to play with the photo a bit and put it into black and white.  SUPER CUTE!!!

 Mommy and Grace.  Usually I don't put my pictures up because I look bleh...

 KISSES!!!!

This is how we normally find her, but sometimes she just can't resist...

 So up she gets...

 and down she goes in the dirt!!

 Uh, oh...am I seeing dirt go in the mouth?  I better get closer...

 Still can't tell...I better get closer!

 Shew!  No dirt.  Just a cute elvis face!

 Watching daddy and brother Ryan.

 The two funnest toys to play with outside.

 Checking out all the rocks Daddy and Brother Ryan collected!

 Putting them in and out.

 She's head manager...has to be sure they are doing everything right!

 And this....this is how she tells me it's time for some private time!

 Chucking a rock!  Well, it was so darn cute :)  "Ready?  One...too...tree!"  And then it dropped behind her back!

And lastly...a second faster and I would have had her face between her legs, and can you just imagine her in this position saying "peek-a-boo!"

Amanda