Chuck E Cheese

David took Riley to drill weekend, so I took Regan shopping for some jeans for camp this summer, and then took her and Elise to Chuck E Cheese. I don't know why, except it's been a long time since we had been there and I forgot how mind numbing it could be. But, the girls enjoyed it, and Elise had a blast, so I guess it was worth it (maybe).

Elise got to ride on the rides, and at first, she wasn't too sure about it, especially the one where you ride with a big plastic Chuck E, but then she didn't want me to get her off of it! When Chuck E came out and walked around, I thought she was having a seizure she was shaking so bad, but then she was trying to go to him, so we sat at a nearby table while he did a birthday party and she "talked" to Chuck E the whole time, it was so cute! She really did NOT want to leave, but it was way past her bed time! She has finally been sleeping through the night, yay me!

Riley at the Range

Riley had a "field trip" to Schlitterbahn today, for the 8th graders. It was a end of year, end of STAAR test, graduation type trip. He had fun, and came home tired and thankfully, not sunburned! (He listened to mom and re-applied sunscreen!) Regan wasn't too thrilled that Riley got to go to Schlitterbahn, and her choir field trip was to an "old folks home"!

But David was wanting to go to the range and I didn't feel like going, so Riley went to shoot a few rounds. He's getting so big and teenagery looking.

Awards Ceremony

Today was Regan's award ceremony. She got an award for A/B Honor Roll for the whole year! So proud of that girl for overcoming her challenges to excel this year! She passed her reading and writing STAAR with flying colors, but did not pass the math STAAR by 2 questions! So, that means she will have some extra help next year since it will be critical for her to pass to move on to the next grade. BUT, all of the math questions were word problems, and she wasn't given accommodations for math, only reading and writing. So I think she did pretty great.

Here she is with her award, and her teacher, Mrs. Templeton.

And Elise was so tired after the award ceremony, but she had a great nap! She's standing great in her crib, we had to lower the mattress a level already!

Happy Memorial Day!

Well, we didn't do too much for Memorial Day. Riley had his friend Yosh spend the night, and Regan spent the night with a friend, and we were home with Elise who is still contagious so not going out anywhere. David smoked a brisket and we just hung out at home. Working on crawling and standing with Elise. She's getting better at crawling, not quite there yet, but she has one leg that just won't cooperate! She has been on her hands and knees and her elbows give out and she konks her head! But she just keeps on going, she's a tough old bird!!  So here's a video of her crawling (with a photobomb by Princess), or trying to crawl, to Riley, and of course, a picture of the yummy brisket!

Trip to the ER

Well, since Elise doesn't have Medicaid still, until we go to court next time (hopefully she will be able to get it then) CPS told us anything that she needs medically, needs to be done at Dell Children's and they can back date her Medicaid. So, when she had a rash that got out of control, that meant a trip to the ER. When I was there with Regan just a few weeks ago, they told me their waits can get up to 8 hours long! So I was not looking forward to spending an entire day in the ER. So, after Elise's nap, I packed her bag with PJ's, extra toys and bottles, and headed on down. I prayed on the way, "God, I would LOVE to be in and out of here in under 3 hours. Well, under 2 hours. Under 1 would be great but probably unrealistic, so 2 hours maybe?" And, God heard my prayer, we were in and out in less than an hour and a half! (I should have stuck with 1 hour!)

Anyway, Elise has got to be the happiest baby to ever be in the emergency room, she was all smile's and just adorable in her little hospital gown. They knew right away what it was. We thought she was getting bug bites or something, and she ran a fever the other day, but only for a day, so I wasn't sure what was going on. But she has Hand, Foot and Mouth disease, and her diaper rash turned into Impetigo, basically a skin infection. So, we got prescriptions for oral and topical antibiotics, and we were out of there!

She's doing better, but still not eating, she has sores all inside her mouth, poor thing. She doesn't like the taste of her medicine, so I am having to figure out creative ways to get it down the hatch. But, I'm glad she's going to be feeling better, and that we know what this is. The doctor had told me it was a yeast infection previously, so we've been trying everything diet-wise to figure it out, and just nothing seemed to work. Glad we know now and it's on the way out!

Court Update

Well, court was good/bad I guess. I was hoping for easy, but we know nothing in life is easy! We got there right on time, talked to our CPS person, and overheard her talking to someone who turned out to be Elise's lawyer, and really liked that guy! But 40 minutes later, the baby daddy comes in, with his new "fiance". Now I will disclose right now, I don't like this guy. Regardless of what I think about him, he's proven himself to be a violent drug addict. I would rather chew off my own arm than to see Elise go with him. And I know he's "the dad" but I promise you 100% that David has been more of a father to her in 6 weeks time than he has since her birth. I'm sorry, but I have no respect for someone who will try to kill his 8 months pregnant girlfriend by choking her until she passes out, 3 times. Putting the baby in fetal distress is not a way to get on my good side.

So the mere thought of him trying to get full custody makes my blood boil. That combined with the fact that he's considered "indigent" since neither he nor his girlfriend work, and that entitles him to a court appointed attorney, that just sends me over the moon mad. So, basically, because he decided, probably on Tuesday, the day he got served, that he wants to be a dad, we are now in limbo while he meets with an attorney. Elise is not in the custody of the state yet, which means she has no Medicaid yet, which means last night when she was running 101.5 fever and we didn't know what was wrong as she cried all night long, well, not much we can do about that. Cause dad can't pay any medical bills, and he's holding things up in court now so we can't get therapy started or get her MRI done.

But, I guess the good side of this is, he is so far from being an acceptable dad, that it will take longer then the 12 months he will have to dig a way out of his mess. He has no job, no place to live (he's supposedly moving in with his mom which as already been declared unfit by CPS). So he will need a place to live, a job, and take a lot of parenting, and hopefully anger management classes. I think she would have a better shot being raised by timber wolves, so I don't think he's likely to get any of this taken care of in a timely manner. But still, we wait.

Kenzie did not show up for court, and was not at the address she gave CPS so was unable to be served. If she doesn't show up soon, she will be listed as abandoning Elise. That might be easier, it could be harder, I don't really know at this point.

Just a mess. But for now, and for the near future, Elise is still with us, and will likely stay with us. Baby Daddy will get supervised visits, but he wasn't happy about the stipulation that he come alone, without his fiance, and we get to have a scheduled one hour a week, so no more of us waiting for hours only to be stood up, once again, by him. He has only seen her once in the 6 weeks we've had E, so I don't think we will have too many dealings with him.

Well, I'm sad that it didn't go as we hoped, but I'm happy that I think once he fails to meet the requirements, we can be done with him for good. I'm ready for him to be completely out of the picture and let's get this show on the road. This baby needs her forever home!

Regan's Choir Concert

Regan had her (almost) final concert of the year! They did great, it was "fine arts" night, so the book fair was in full swing (we all know how much I *love* book fair!) and they had art lining the walls from the art club, and the dance club had several performances, and then the choir sang about 6 songs. They did great, and Regan loves it! She signed up to do safety patrol next year, so she's also been having practices for that after school. She gets to help the little kids to their cars when their name is called at the car pool line in the afternoons. She loves it already.

(She's on the far right, light gray shirt, with a white feather in her hair!)

Hunter and Elise

This is just a cute picture that David took. They love each other!

Build A Bear End of Year Girl Scout Party

Build A Bear keeps coming out with super cute Girl Scout bears, and our leader bought them all for the girls, so we had our end of year party at Build A Bear again! Probably not too many more years for our girls to be into Teddy Bears, so I'll take it! The bears are "Thin Mint" bears that had mint green ears, and even come with a scent of mint that you can put in your bear so it smells minty! They have a cute "Thin Mint" outfit too. So we all met at the mall for an early dinner, then headed down to build our bears, and then back to the food court for Thin Mint ice cream and passing out patches and cookie prizes. I had Elise with me, so she was a handful. But, she got to build her very first Teddy Bear, and she loved it! She would grab a hold of it and just hug it tight and lay over on it to smush him up. It was so cute. She got to stuff it, and then I took her over where there is a pretend bath tub with air jets coming out so you can "fluff" your bear and that freaked her out some. But, she loves her bear, she's been sleeping with him every night. We named him "Snowball".

So that was the end of our very busy, something every night Girl Scout week!

Girl Scout Mountain

Girl Scout Mountain

We had an awesome opportunity to have some professional pictures done for our Girl Scout troop. Since they are coolie selling super-heroes, we decided to go with that as a theme. They scaled Cookie Mountain! Our troop always sells more cookies than any other troop in our service unit, by far, so we thought this was a good way to commemorate that. We had a huge mountain of cookie boxes and the girls got to wear different capes, or tiaras, sunglasses, whatever props they wanted, and just have fun with it. And unbeknownst to us, the photog had the moms pose in the same places where our daughters were for the group shots. It was fun, even though most of us were NOT prepared to have our pictures taken! No makeup, no clean shirt (baby spit up on mine) etc. But, it was fun, and we had a good time laughing at our cookie dad (he handles all our financials of cookies, I just do the ordering, re-ordering, pick up and delivery). It was fun, and the photographer let us have access to all the pictures so we can print whatever ones we want to keep.

Weekend Update

Well, we had a busy weekend! On Friday I had to get everything together for Regan's Girl Scout bridging/camping trip. She's bridging to Cadette now! I'm so proud of her for being so involved in Girl Scouts. I think they are such a great organization and she is learning so much. We found out today, the girls might get a Senate Resolution drafted to acknowledge their Bronze Award! How cool is that?!

Anyway, got her ready for camp, had to take Riley to what might be (we are praying) his new high school next year. He is supposed to go to Pflugerville, and we want him to go to Hendrickson. They have an award winning JROTC program, and if he sticks with it, he can get into the Naval Academy without a letter of recommendation from a Senator (but I know we can get that too). So, I took him up to the school to turn in paperwork to do a JROTC summer camp, and the guy in charge (I can't remember if he was a Sgt., Lt, or what. All those initials confuse me) anyway, he wanted to give us a tour of the ROTC wing of the school and show us everything. He was very nice and said if we needed any help with any of the transfer paperwork, he would do whatever he could to help us out! This is a HUGE answer to prayer because we have been praying for Riley to be able to go to Hendrickson for a long time now, and we've been told at every step of the way that there was just NO WAY it was going to happen. They are a closed campus and not taking any transfers. Well, they just so happened to hire another ROTC instructor and that made an opening for more students! Thank God for our answer to prayer!!

So, after our tour (and me freaking out about how big this school is, 1/4 mile from one end to the other, and how big the kids are that go there, and that my baby bird will be going to HIGH SCHOOL next year) I had to rush home and get Regan to her GS leader's house to head off on her trip.  Then Riley had to meet one of his friends that is about to go to the Naval Academy for movie night, and David and I decided to drop in on Danny and Shari D. for a while. Hadn't seen them in forever so it was nice to catch up and see them!

Then on Saturday morning, the boys volunteered at our church's annual Single Mom's and Military Wives Oil Change. I am usually there to help with the kids but I figured I would just stay home this time and deal with my own! But they were there most of the day and I think they said over 300 mom's came out! They got their oil changed, hair and nails, waxing, free childcare, massages, etc. I love this event, and hated missing it this year. But David has served at all of them! Proud of my man!!

Then after the boys came home and rested some, David and I took Little Bit to the pool for the first time. I wanted to see her swim so bad! I had gotten her the cutest little bathing suit and floaty, and David really didn't want to swim, but I knew I couldn't handle it all by myself, so he got his bathing suit on and came with us! And guess what, she LOVED it! It was so cute. She got in her little bee floaty and sat there for a bit, chewing on the bee antenna, but once she realized she was sitting in water, she started splashing around like crazy. David would swim around her and come up and it would freak her out how he was doing that. It was cute. Then we headed home to get her ready for bed cause all that swimming tired her out!

On Sunday, she looked so cute for church. She got a little upset after a while, she's really having some separation anxiety lately, not wanting to be far from me at all. But she got to ride in the big 6-seater stroller and get pushed around the halls, so she really liked that! I was on the schedule to do check in for the 2nd service so we were there a little longer than normal. Then I took Riley to the brand new opened Torchy's Tacos (one of my favorite taco places, and they just opened in Round Rock!) and then had to rush to get Regan from her camping trip. She said it was fun, but they didn't get to swim afterall so she was pretty upset about that.

Then, I bought a sewing machine and had to go pick that up, and came home to try to take a nap with Elise, but it was a very short lived nap. She was up a lot the night before with a stuffy nose, so we were all pretty tired and cranky.   Well, that was more like a novel, but it was a long, busy weekend. And now that school is almost out, we will probably be getting more and more busy! I will be glad to be able to sleep in though. I really miss sleep.

Digital Photography Badge

The Girl Scouts had signed up for several badges to be earned at the Microsoft Store at the Domain, but we only got into one of them, they filled up super fast! But, the one they got into was "Digital Photography" and at least that one sounds fun!

We dropped Regan off at the Domain and ran to Costco for David to get his tires rotated, back to the Domain to check on Regan and have some dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, and then we picked Regan up and ran back to Costco to get the car, and some sleeping bags for the Girl Scouts.

Busy night, but the girls had fun, Elise had fun, and the pizza was good.

Lake Pflugerville

We decided to take Hunter to Lake Pflugerville to see if we could swim, and maybe, possibly, hopefully, wear him out a little bit. Well, he can swim, and quite well, and we didn't come close to wearing him out! That dog is like the Energizer Bunny, too bad I'm not.



He loved it. The water was a little cold (for Riley) but once Hunter got in, he was swimming back and forth and around and around. He had a great time. There were other dogs there too so he got to make some friends, and run around the lake and swim some more. I see a lot of lake trips in our future!

Happy Mother's Day

After our exhausting Diva Day, we headed over to Mimi and Papa's to celebrate Mother's Day a day early so we could all take a nap on Mother's Day!! Hey, it works for us. I made potato salad, we grilled burgers and hot dogs, and ALL the kids and grandkids were there, plus some. It was a house full! Elise enjoyed seeing her cousins that are little like her, they played together a little bit. We played games and just had a good time.


On Sunday, it was my day to do set up and breakfast for the green room at church, so we had to get there pretty early to get that done. Then after church we had a quick bite for lunch and went back up to church to take down and help set up for lunch. Then took the kids to see a house we liked (we are thinking of selling our house and buying a new one) and then took Riley to a friends house, and then home for my Mother's Day nap. No lie, it was probably the best gift I got! It was so nice.

Regan made a bookmark for me at school, and she and Riley gave me the sweetest cards. David bought me a book, and flowers, and a card, and he surprised me with dinner at Perry's Steakhouse! It was super nice! It was a really great Mother's Day.

Elise Update

Elise

We have a court date, thank goodness. Kenzie has decided to move to Dallas, so for a while they talked about moving the case there, and I was praying they wouldn't. She moves around a lot, so I don't want this case bounced around with her. So, for now it's staying here, which is great news. I'm not exactly sure what all the process and procedures are, and all that, but I know at this court hearing, they are seeking to give the state custody of Elise, and she would still be placed with us, but would give us more options. Right now, Kenzie is supposed to be keeping up with her Medicaid, and she let it lapse, so now Elise can't get the therapy and MRI that she needs. And David and I can't get her put on our insurance since we aren't her "legal guardians". I'm the temporary guardian.

Anyway, please be praying that God's will be done for this baby! I know what I want to happen, and I'm praying that it's also what God wants to happen, and I'm praying that it will happen smoothly, and with as little disruption to Elise as possible. She's come such a long way in the 5 weeks we've had her. She is sitting up on her own now, and so proud! And she is starting to crawl, she will get up on her hands and knees and rock back and forth. She's starting to pull herself up, she will get to her knees and kind of freak out and let go! But she's making progress and she's such a happy and healthy baby now. I don't want anything to happen to set her back.

We appreciate the prayers! And I will update as I can. I'm trying not to go into too many details here, but feel free to email me about the situation if you want.

PAW Service Unit Awards Banquet

Tonight was our last PAW Service Unit Meeting! We are splitting into two service units next year, so we will be in the one called "Pecan Trails" So tonight was our awards banquet and they decided to go all out and have a dinner and everything.

Our troop won an award for selling the most cookies, for I think our 3rd or 4th year in a row! We sold 7,896 boxes as a troop! That's awesome! So the girls got to go on stage and receive that award. Then they got to go on stage and receive their Bronze Award for planning and hosting our Diva Day event that was so much fun! They will get their pins in about 2 weeks, but tonight they got their certificates and their Bronze patches. They were so excited about that, it was a lot of hard work and it paid off!

I was recognized by our troop as an "Outstanding Volunteer" which was very nice! Makes crazy cookie season worth it! And then they did the Presidential Service Awards. There are Bronze, Silver and Gold level. This is awarded to people who do community service, whether through Girl Scouts or church, or whatever. Since Regan and I volunteer at church also, and their Bronze Award is considered community service, we were both awarded one! Regan received the Bronze Presidential Service Award, with over 50 community service hours, and I received the Silver Award, with over 450 hours! Regan loved her pin, but wasn't too thrilled with the letter that came with it, signed by Barrack Obama! But, it was nice to be recognized, and I love that our service unit had so many people that give back to the community!

Diva Day!

The girls have been working on this day for months! Literally, months. We started planning this last summer. Girl Scout Juniors can earn their Bronze Award, and then as Cadettes they can earn their Silver Award, and then as Seniors they earn their Gold Award, which is equal to a Boy Scout earning his Eagle Scout award. It's kind of a big deal! So, we have been working on this for a long time.

The girls decided for their Bronze Award, to host a mother/daughter event for our Service Unit. We planned, we shopped, we coordinated, we collected, we advertised, we made lists, we did all kinds of things! Finally, the big day arrived.

Our theme was "Diva Day" a mother/daughter spa day, the day before Mother's Day. We had 7 stations, with 2 girls working at each station (and 2 moms) and we rotated every 20 minutes. Regan and her partner, Kendall, had the "Diva Salon" where we had chair and foot massagers set up, and feathers for their hair, and colored hair spray. The girls would alternate being the hair sprayer, and I was in charge of putting the feathers in since it required pliers, and people didn't want a 10 year old coming at their scalp with a pair of pliers!

Other booths we had were "Diva Nails" where there was a hand wax treatment and nail polish. "Diva Photo Booth" where we had a ton of props, fake mustaches, feather boas, hats, sunglasses, tiaras, etc. and everyone could get their picture taken with their moms and friends (that was a HUGE hit!) And we had a treat booth where everyone got ice cream with their favorite Girl Scout cookie topping!

I think the girls favorite part of the day was Mr. Dewey, he worked for the church that let us use their facilities to host the event, and he was there helping us out if we needed anything, and the girls talked him into letting them spray color in his hair, and paint his nails, and get their picture taken with him! He was a very sweet man, and such a good sport!

It was a long, exhausting day, but the girls had a blast, we got awesome feedback from everyone, and they did a great job earning their Bronze Award! Next up, Silver!!

Puppy Post!

I know I haven't updated on the puppies in a while. Mostly because the new one just bugs the living daylights out of me! He's just SO MUCH work!! He is quite a handful, and I already have my hands full. But, he's sweet when he's tired. Which just isn't often enough. But, here's a picture that shows how much he's grown. He used to love to sleep in Princess's bed, and now he's outgrown it quite a bit. And Princess got her yearly shave cut to get ready for summer. She looks like a rat. Hunter literally did a double take when he saw her for the first time! I thought he would stop trying to grab her by the hair and drag her around, but now he just tries to grab her at the back of her neck like a mother dog, and drag her around. She does not appreciate it.