Life's been good to me so far

My Valentine's Day was really awesome ♥

We'd gotten small gifts for each of the kids and put them at their places at the table with their breakfasts:

Ananda - a half-pound brick of Belgium chocolate from Whole Foods, in a little owl gift bag (which she ate all of in one afternoon, WHAT?)

Aaron - a poster he can color of a rocket ship and a scented candle (which he has already burned his very short hair on somehow - he had ashes on his forehead)

Isaac - the little Valentine's Fancy Nancy book with stickers in the back, and a big heart shaped lollipop

Jake - a Monster's Inc thing he can color and hang on the wall by his bed, and a candy necklace

Elise - a Sesame Street shapes book and some socks with hearts

Aside from Ananda's and the FN book, everything was from the Target dollar section, so that was pretty great.

Some of the kids made Valentines for Oma (mil) and we went up there in the afternoon. She has a new little puppy that they all loved and it kept them distracted as she vented to me on the crazy load of crap she has to deal with. If anyone wants to pray for Grant's mother Teresa, she has a husband going through cancer that just threw her a major curveball re: trusting him ever again, and she is in charge of Mindy's 3 kids, two of whom are in-patient for psychiatric reasons right now (Nadia long term, Robby short). She was happy to get a visit and a tiny vase of flowers and a plastic gold coin and a card, and happily passed out her wayward husband's undeserved chocolates to us ;) But this woman has her own health concerns that are pretty serious, and she's only like 50.

Then Grant and I went out alone. We planned on an insanely long wait time for a restaurant and so we spent it walking around stores, laughing and making out. Then, we had the most scrumptous, luscious, foodgasming dinner ever at Olive Garden. I mean...I nearly caused a scene with my ecstasy. Oily, salty bread dipped in alfredo sauce, mushrooms stuffed with crab and cheese, and OH MY GOSH this new thing that they have...I forget the name, but it amounts to fat ravioli super stuffed with like 5 kinds of cheese, in a tomato alfredo sauce, with the most tender and amazing breaded chicken you can imagine. We were so full. And so beautiful. It was epic.

There were drunken canoodling lesbians in the booth next to us that shrieked and hid behind menus when we glanced towards them. And then Grant got the best "That's what she said" EVER in when I innocently commented on getting burned by a stuffed mushroom: "That one's juice was really hot and squirty, I wasn't ready for it. And it was A LOT".

We came back and checked in, I nursed Elise and got her to sleep and we put on a movie for the kids, and then we went up to the mall to see Valentine's Day, in a "this is going to be DUMB, but there is seriously nothing playing and we'll laugh with it or at it" way. And we did, both (more of the latter). And there were some fierce drag queens in the bathroom afterwards. Wrapped it all up hours later with Reese's peanut butter hearts and lazy lovin'.

All in all I love my husband and feel so, so lucky.

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Today, I was surprised to find it's President's Day and so my kids DON'T have dance classes, and I've had a massive influx of formspring questions. At one point I went to find my 3 smallest kids and found that Jake had loaded up a cooler with stuff from the fridge, grabbed the picnic blanket, and taken the other two on a "journey". They were lunching in the far corner of the backyard when I found them (where they rarely go - the sideyard is the "kids" yard).

Soon - the grocery store. Riveting, I know. I also have a tennis date with Grant and the Wii at approximately 2 am.

There have been some really funny things around here lately.

The other afternoon Jake came running in from the yard crying that his "piggy was hurt". I realized he meant his toe, and asked which one. He moaned out, "The ONE THAT WENT TO MARKET!"

The other evening, I was reading to A and A and Shadow (Ananda's rabbit) was in the middle of the floor with her ears straight up in the air at attention, which is unusual. I stopped reading, looked over at her, and said, "What are you listening so hard to?" and as the three of us watched, she very, very slowly lowered her ears all the way down to the relaxed position. We about died laughing.

Aaaaanyway. I want to talk about this Key West trip Grant and I took. We stopped at a local place on the way out and got some ropa vieja and plantanos with black beans and rice, and I was just moaning about the food. Cuban pound cake. They should call it Cuban hundred more pounds right on your ass cake. Oh my gosh. But we talked and laughed and stopped at a little flea market halfway down and got boiled peanuts. It was good to go all the way; we've went to Anne's Beach so many times since the last time we went all the way to the rock, it starts to make me sad. I feel sometimes like I spent a whole year of my childhood on the seven mile bridge. When we first moved away, my dad wanted to go back every weekend.

The Keys just have a certain something you don't find other places.


My Dad - the cab driver in Key West - totally hooked us UP. The island was really full, because it's the season, and Valentine's Day, AND a 3 day weekend. The first four hotels I called were full, and the next one told me $745 per night plus 11 1/2% tax, which I don't even understand how that is LEGAL, but anyway...some of the rooms were going for $1800 per night.

So he told us about this place - this place that was going to be time share condos. Million dollar timeshares. Meaning, you pay $1 million and you get to have the place for 2 weeks out of every year for the next 20 years. They built them, and then the housing market crashed, and now they've turned it into a new hotel people don't know about yet - Marriott just bought it, like, 2 weeks ago, they didn't even have Pay Per View movies set up yet.

SO! The upshot is, the Holiday Inn across the street was charging $250 per night for their crappiest places, all of which were taken. And this is what we got for $339.

( Pics of Grant and I's Key West trip ALONE!! )
Then we got some Upper Crust pizza and I decided I want a nose piercing O_o

I always, traditionally, see nose rings on totally white girls with very small, narrow, perky noses, and think that's fine, but not for me. I have a pretty big nose. Who wants to draw attention to that? But I kept seeing people with wide noses, with "ethnic" noses, whatever, with nose rings that made them just look that much cooler and I started thinking, maybe this could be a way for me to LIKE my nose.

I do NOT have those amazing lips, nothing like them...I'm still thinking about it. I think I'm going to try to photoshop nose studs on myself. Or something? Feel free to do that, or to tell me I'm crazy. I can only find pics of white girls, and black girls, with nose rings, and I have a nose like the black girls, but like I said...nothing like the lips to balance it. I love my eyes and usually want people looking at them. So maybe I'm just crazy?

I wish it was possible to find hispanic nose ring pictures, but wonder if their non-existence should be a hint :p

Grant is always calling me a gypsy, I wear a lot of long flowy stuff and multi-colored layers, traditionally, and have even started headscarves lately...so I guess it sort of fits with all that? On the other hand I'm a pretty big naturalist that hates the idea of anything fake that doesn't come off to leave bare simplicity behind (i.e., tattoos). So maybe it would be too much to have jewelry right on my face that I can't choose to have off whenever I like. Or maybe it would just be like my wedding band and assimilate into my self-image.

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I have felt so torn all day today, pulled in so many directions...I want to give the littlest kids comparable experiences to what Annie and Aaron had - explaining, interacting, teaching, reading to every minute. But I want to give Annie and Aaron a quality education that takes a lot away from them. And I want to crochet and write by myself, A LOT. And I really like alone time with Grant. I really LOVED going to sleep in a bed with just him, waking up in a bed with just him, watching movies with no shannigans, not worrying if we wouldn't hear someone over the jets in the tub. It was...great. I got back and my mother in law said, "I guess you were lost the whole time, just freaking out about the kids!!" and I was like...well...no. Not really. I knew they were fine with my awesome sister, all together in their own house, and it was only 36 hours. I LOVED EVERY MINUTE.

We did call and each talk to every one of them, before bedtime. And I did have a minute, as I drifted off to sleep, that I worried a little. Mostly though...*Shrug* I was watching someone grill my lobster tail, or putting money in some guy's violin case and telling him how extremely badass he was, or...ok, picking out things to bring home for the kids. I found really cool, cheap masquerade masks for A and A and I, for the Mardi Gras parade downtown this Saturday.

But you know what I mean.

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This was what I got for Valentine's Day.

Wait!

I THOUGHT I was getting a weekend away for Valentine's Day, and that was MORE THAN SUFFICIENT and made me really happy. But my husband also did this the evening before we left.

I've been drooling over those for awhile now...didn't really see myself with them anytime soon. I used one for a from scratch cheese sauce for our steamed broccoli and cauliflower last night :)

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So. There are two (non Grant, kids or God) good things going on in my life right now.
1. We have extra money. Because of tax returns with homebuyer's stimulus money attached, and everything from the past year.
2. I'm on Weight Watchers and have a real plan for when to get my hernia, diastasis, etc fixed, like I've been to the surgeon and set up a time line with the weight loss and all and it seems real...It's weird to imagine that I could be on ww, lose a lot of weight, get a medically necessary tummy tuck, and...be...hot. Like at least hottER, hot-ish, something like how hot I used to be, anything. Like, maybe I could (dun dun DUN) wear jeans. And jump on the trampoline with the kids. I've never really let myself enjoy any of the positive side effects of having a tummy tuck...I've just been terrified of it and tried to find ways to postpone and avoid it. And I'm still scared. When it gets closer, I'll be REALLY scared...but I'm also trying to focus on the silver lining, which is maybe not having my whole hour ruined by the 15 minutes I spend trying to find SOMETHING that fits, every day.

The biggest thing, though, is that I'm sort of coming back to life. I didn't write about it when it was at it's worst, because I shut LJ out of my mind and life when I'm at my worst and turn inward in a big way, to Grant and my little family...but there was a long period of time when I was crying - with sobs - pretty much every day. Fear of dying, flashbacks, nightmares, ptsd triggers, body hatred with scars, hanging, injury, etc, as well as the sense of LOSS, not just of birth but of the time I missed in my babies' born lives, particularly pretty much any chance to ever WEAR Elise at all...I've been a really dim and shitty version of myself for a long time now. I've clung to my faith but not grown in it. Or maybe I have? And am just now feeling it.

But this is good. This not miserable for no reason stuff, this able to handle what's happening, stuff...it's good.

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Tomorrow I've got to get a bunny's stitches taken out (this, visit #6, will be the LAST trip to the bunny vet for a long long time hopefully...), have a gyn exam and IUD consultation, and the kids have AWANA in the evening. I'm hoping to rely on God through prayer and study so that things like staying on my eating plan and homeschool lessons are easy and not a tooth and nail struggle as I shoulder it all myself. I also have curtains ironed, measured and cut, ready to be hemmed, and a whole mess of Lion Brand wool-ease yarn sorted into piles and a full two pages of color and pattern layouts for granny square blankets. I am nuts about squares. I can't even begin to tell you. Hopefully I'll have pictures of THAT stuff, soon :)