A week at camp

Rachael and I just got home from a week at Girl's camp. We had a great time. Rachael was a JC this year. She loved being a JC. She was in charge of the 1st years. She would have loved to have her cousin, Jessica, in her group, but she didn't. She really loved her first years though. Here are a few photos of her doing JC activities/skits. In the first photo, she is doing a yoga skit. The legs are not her legs. They belong to Brittney, one of the other JCs. In the second photo, they are doing a game that is sort of like Deal or No Deal. She has her shirt and shorts on with her bathing suit over them, with socks and stilletos. Isn't that just sexy ?!?! It was a really fun game with lots of silly activities that the girls had to do. They all had a blast doing the games. It is likely to be played again in the coming years.

I was the camp nurse again this year. Rather than having an assistant, there were 2 full nurses. Since we didn't have the golf cart this year, the other nurse was the roaming nurse. She went out to the activities and treated any injuries/problems out at the activities. I stayed up at the office and in the cafeteria area. I was probably far busier than the other nurse was because a lot of the girls wait until they are up by the office to get the small things treated, like bug bites or medication for aches and pains. We have a new camp director and stake young women's presidency this year, so there were a lot of things different. The girls only did out door, non-water activities in the morning and they were allowed a little more free time. It made a huge difference. I had only 2 or 3 girls the entire week with heat related illness. I mostly treated insect bites this year. I actually got to do the crafts this year. I have never had time in the past. I still came home exhausted, but I didn't feel as worn out at camp as usual. I also didn't have any girls that needed to be driven to their activities.

Here is a photo of our ward at the end of camp. We always stop at Dairy Queen on the way home from camp and get lunch. We take a photo in front every year. It was a really good year.

I'm not really sure why I am posting anything since I don't really have anything to say. I want to start posting a little more often though. I figure something will occur to me as I start typing.

May has been a really busy month. Rachael has had her VIR show. VIR stands for Visions in Rhythm. It is a pre-apprentice performance dance troupe. They did a big show on May 2nd and now she is getting ready for her academy demo. That is what Tapestry calls their recital. They don't do frilly, expensive costumes like they did at Jackies. The teacher usually picks out a simple costume and it can't be over $15. It is a huge relief not to have to spend a ton of money on costumes, especially since Rachael is taking 4 classes plus VIR. She was in 9 dances for VIR. She has 3 performances this coming weekend. I also have to do concessions and flower sales with VIR at each of the shows. I think Stan and the boys will only need to go to 2 of the performances since several of her dances are repeated in several of the shows.

Jeremy had cross over with Cub Scouts on Tuesday. We had a picnic at Mary Searight park, then the award ceramony. He is now officially a Wolf. It looks like I will be the Wolf den leader again next year. I'm going to ask one of the mom's to be my assistant and see if we can trade off each week. It will be nice to share responsibility. There is one mom there that helps me a lot anyway.

My body sure is messed up lately. Aside from my normal MS problems, I started having problems with my stomach in the fall. I had to have an upper endoscopy and they found that my stomach wasn't digesting food fast enough and it was causing reflux and esophagitis. They started me on 2 medications for the problem. It pretty much took care of it, except I quit having a menstrual cycle. One of the medications is causing that problem, so now I have to take another medication to fix that problem. I went off the offending medication for a week, but I was miserable. I lost 3 pounds that week because I was having trouble eating and felt nausous all the time. Being off the medication for a week didn't bring back my cycle anyway. My gyn put me on a 10 day coarse of progesterone to see if that would cause me to start, but still nothing. I know this is probably more information than you ever wanted. I am so frustrated by all of this. I hate having to take one medication to treat the side effects of another medication. Will it ever stop? The endocrinoligist wants me to take this medication to treat the problem but this will make the medication for my stomach ineffective and could cause interactions with my migraine medication that could potentially be life threatening. Not fun. Welcome to my world!!!

Not a bad post for not having anything to say.

BTW, I lost another 1.4 pounds at Weight Watcher's this week bringing my grand total to 60 pounds, although only 53 since starting Weight Watcher's.

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted. A lot has been going on around here. Rachael has had her license for about a month now. It has been nice not having to run her to dance all the time. It is still nerve racking for me sometimes. I worry about her when she is on the road. On Saturday, she is driving herself and Aashlie to the stake dance. Normally, that would be no big deal, but the dance is in Marble Falls, which is a 55 minute drive from our house. I'm sure she will get out there fine, but it will be late when she comes home and that makes me nervous. There won't be a lot of traffic, so that will be good, but I still worry. I guess the worry never stops though.
Here is a picture of Rachael in her prom dress. She has some photos she took at prom and I need to get those from her. Boy, our house looks bad. We are going to be getting siding put on next spring. We need to paint and we have some rotting wood on the house. Anyway, I digress. She looked beautiful and so grown up. She went with her friend Daunte. His dad rented a limo and 3 or 4 couples shared the ride to the prom.

I have had a really long week this week. I had to have a root canal done on Tuesday. I went to the dentist Monday with a tooth ache. I had a cavity filled in December and she told me it went very close to the root and may end up needing a root canal later. It did. I couldn't eat anything on Tuesday and survived the day on milkshakes. Wednesday was a little bit better, but I still had to eat mushy food. I'm back to normal now. You can tell my looking at my house that I haven't felt well this week. It is a disaster.

The kids are all doing well. Jeremy is so funny. I was leaving the house the other day and it was just him and Rachael at home. In a very sultry voice, he tells her "now that we are alone, what do you want to do?". He is too young to be saying things like that. I'm going to have to watch him when he gets older. Andrew has been really enjoying his cooking class. He has been doing it every other week, but I think I am going to sign him up for weekly classes for the summer. Once he gets a little faster, then I will start having him cook dinner. He does a good job at baking and making simple things like pancakes. He is really slow when he has to cut things. I would rather he be slow though than have him rush through and cut himself.

Rachael had her dance show a few weeks ago. It was called "To sleep, per chance to dream". It was all about dreams. She had a dream solo about deja vu. She did a great job. The group dances were amazing. They all did such a great job. She has become an amazing dancer. She wants to become a professional dancer/choreographer as well as teaching dance and maybe opening her own studio when she gets a little older. I think she will do great.

Our final trip on our vacation was to Philadelphia. We went to independence hall, saw the liberty bell, Franklin's printing shop, and the first post office, which is still functioning. It was really neat to stand in Independence Hall. You could actually feel the spirit in there witnessing that the Declaration of Independence was divinely inspired.

That pretty much wraps up our trip. I'll post some family photos I took next time. Now onto what has been happening around the house. Rachael had her prom this past weekend. It was the Priest/Laurel Formal on Saturday. She was suppose to go with Jovence Vital, but he ended up having to work, so she called up Dante Clark and they went together. Dante had asked her to the Mormon Prom, but she had already told Jovence she would go with him. I haven't downloaded my camera yet, so I will post photos later.

Also, Rachael got her driver's license today. We tried to get it last week, but every time we went, the computers were down. Stan took her today and they finally had success. She drove herself to dance this afternoon. I haven't gotten a call from her, so I am assuming she got there ok. I'm not as nervous about her driving as I was in the beginning. Teaching a child to drive is a very nerve racking process. She has turned into a pretty good driver. She is very cautious when she drives. She never speeds, although sometimes she is guilty of going too slow. It is kind of nice not having to take her to dance. I will still need to driver her out to St. Stephen's next week for tech week for their dance show as she has never driven there and she doesn't think she can find it on her own. I don't want her getting lost. I drive with her on the first day and hope she can find it after than because I have a schedule conflict on Tuesday and won't be able to get her to tech. I may have to find a ride for her if she doesn't think she can find it alone. That is my biggest fear with her driving is her getting lost. She isn't very good with directions and knowing where she is going. She can easily get herself to and from dance going multiple different directions, but that is pretty much it. I know it will get better as she starts driving more.

Days 4 and 5

I didn't forget to finish our vacation post, but things just got a little busy. I'm trying to get the boys room painted so Stan can get the new floor installed. I have about 1/4 of the room done and lots more to do.

So, day 3 and 4 were spent in Washington DC. My biggest regret was that I completely forgot that a high school friend of mine lived in DC. I'm sorry Michelle. I wish I would have contacted her prior to going so she could have met up with us there. We had a great time. We got there about 1 or 2 pm and walked around the monuments. We saw the WW II, Vietnam, Korea war monuments, the Lincoln memorial, the Washington monument and the Jefferson memorial. It was a lot of walking and I was really worried about it. I really only had trouble with the last leg of the trip when my bad leg started spasming and it became difficult to walk. I was actually pretty proud of myself for being able to push through the walking.

We stayed the night in a hotel in the Washington area, in Virginia actually. We decided we wanted to go to the Aerospace museum that was in Virginia since it held the shuttle. Stan really wanted to see the shuttle. It was about 30 minutes into Virginia but it turned out to be a good choice. My parents said the Virginia museum was way better than the DC one. We drove back into DC and went to the aquarium. That was a waste of time and money. We have way better aquariums here in Texas. Next, we went to the Natural History museum. That was pretty cool. I was so tired after those 2 days of walking every where. We got home at about 10pm that night and crashed pretty much right away.

Day 3

I know what you are thinking, what happened to day 2. Day 2 was a Sunday, so we went to church and hung out around the house and did nothing. Day 3, we went to Hershey. I would have loved to been able to do the amusement park, but it wasn't opened yet. We did a trolley tour of the area, saw Mr Hershey's home, the school he and his wife opened and the town he built. We learned a lot about Mr. Hershey. He was a very generous man and worked hard to build his company after going bankrupt several times. After we did the trolley tour, we went back to the main area by the factory and did a little ride that showed how chocolate is made. It was pretty cool. We also toured through a museum about Mr. Hershey's life. Andrew surprised me while we were there and bought a cook book full of desserts. He is interested in learning how to cook more, especially how to make desserts. He made some cookies while we were at my mom's from a recipe in the book. They were really good. We are thinking about signing him up for some cooking classes at Young Chef's academy.

Our vacation

We just got back home from a 10 day vacation to Pennsylvania. I had planned on blogging while I was there so I could keep you all posted on our trip, but I forgot that my mom was on dial up and it was so slow managing any type of photo. I also didn't have a lot of time. We were on the move constantly during those 10 days. I am going to start with the first day and post about a different day each day I blog. I don't want to create a ridiculously long blog post by giving you the details of our vacation all at once.

We got there on the 13th. By the time we got to my mom's house, we had been traveling all day (we flew) and it was almost 10pm. We were exhausted. My mom rented a camping trailer for us to sleep in since she lives in a small home. It was a little cramped, but not bad since all we were doing was sleeping in there.

The next day, we went to the Crayola factory. It was about an hour away from my mom's house. The kids had a blast, and so did we. It was cool to see how they made the crayons. I had no idea they did it that way. They heat up the wax, then pour it into a mold that will make like 100 crayons all at once. They mix the wax around then drain it off and scrape it, cool the crayons off and dump them out. It was cool. Here are a few photos we took at Crayola .