2 Eyes Still in My Head

Yesterday I was driving home after running some errands. It was lunch time and I was trying to figure out what I could feed William quickly and get him into bed when I noticed something wasn't right. I was several blocks away from our house when I started seeing wavy lines through my vision and I was having difficulty focusing. Earlier in the day I had noticed my eyes weren't focusing correctly and made a mental note to call and schedule our yearly eye appointments. It was still happening when I got home so I made William a hurried lunch and tried to get ahold of our doctor. Of course, the office was closed for lunch. Every minute that passed made me more sure that I was probably in the process of going blind or at least loosing my eye due to low eye pressure (I thought my eyeball would deflate or something). My symptoms weren't changing and in a panic I called the 24 hour nurse line. As I wiped down a very tired William, the nurse reccomended that I go immediately to the ER - which didn't help my overactive imagination one bit. By the time I had finished washing William off, the nurse had changed her mind and told me I needed to go see an optimologist TODAY as most ERs do not have an eye doctor on call at all times. She gave me a list of numbers to call, I put William down for a nap and started making phone calls.

I'll spare you the details of the crying, vomit and running around that happened (William did all three, I only participated in the running) in order to be seen by an actual real eye doctor. The results? I had an ocular migraine with aura.

They are supposedly common in women my age and all parts of my eyes checked out a useable. I'm so glad to have 2 eyes in my head and they both work! Yeehaw! Eyes!

Fargo Schmargo (1500 miles in 4 days)

We spent our holiday weekend mainly in the car. John's family had a family reunion planned in Fargo, ND. So, we hopped into the car on Thursday and drove to Grandma and Grandpa's house in Rochester to spend the night. On Friday we got up and did it again (the riding in the car thing) and made it to Fargo just in time to check into the Howard Johnson hotel (I'm not recommending this one, if you're interested in why we can talk later) and put William down for a nap. Friday afternoon we met up with the family to play at the park, visit, have taco's for dinner and play some baseball. The excitement of the day caught up with William and I decided to take him back to the hotel while John stayed to visit. I was feeling very sorry for myself sitting on the tub in our hotel room waiting for William to fall asleep because we were missing the fireworks and 4th of July celebration. One of the things I've always been looking forward to is having kids and bringing them out to watch the fireworks and sharing the evening with our family. The red/white/blue outfits, the snacks, the anticipation, the music, the bugs, the heat, the glowy necklaces that only work for 3 hours. THAT is the fourth of July I've been dreaming about for years. However, when I really thought about the last few years, fireworks have NEVER been our priority. We've always chosen to use our vacation time for other stuff than sitting and watching the fireworks and listening to music. Here is an example:

2001: Watched fireworks with family/friends in Rochester
2002: Camped at Sinclair Island, WA. Fireworks illegal
2003: Watched fireworks by the river in St Charles, MO
2004:Camped with friends in Canada (What? They don't celebrate the US Independance Day? Obviously, no fireworks)
2005: Watched fireworks at the end of our driveway with the neighbors. And a beer.
2006: Isle Royal, MI (no fireworks because it is a national park)
2007:Sleeping in Grand Forks, ND

2008: Hotel room in Fargo, ND

2009: Watching fireworks as a family, somewhere

In the end I realized that I needed to get over myself and I enjoyed some quiet time to myself uncomfortablly seated in the bathroom tub. The other thing I realized is now that we have a kid, it must be time to make some old fashioned 4th of July plans we can enjoy as a family outside of riding in a car.

I love sign pictures! This parking space in Fargo was saved just for me!
Jim, Mike, and Ben playing baseball
William doing his best to get in the middle of the game. Kendra and Becca are playing the field while my job was to make sure he didn't get in the way or hurt.

Those are almost ALL of the pictures we took while we were in Fargo! Can you believe it? The rest of Friday and Saturday we focused on keeping our kid out of trouble and took turns visiting with family. While I'm talking about Fargo, I need to recognize the real rock stars that made our trip awesome: Jim, Kendra, Ben, Becca, and Mike. They were awesome! They included William in all of their games, played gently with him, helped him realize that he liked strawberries again, swam in the pool with him, let him nap in their hotel room and let him take a bath in their hotel bathroom before we left! They were AMAZING - thank you guys! It would have been T-O-U-G-H without you!

Saturday morning we checked out of the hotel and spent most of the day with family playing at the park. Saturday evening, we headed back to Rochester for the night. We got a late start, which means we arrived at Rochester close to 1am. None of us were looking forwad to hopping back in the car again to finish the trip back to St Louis. With a little arm twisting we were convinced to stay another day to take a break from driving and running around. An added bonus was the excellent steak dinner, cool temperatures and trip to the park with Grandpa and Grandma.

No, we don't let him drive. But, he'd like to!
Weeeeeeeee! Slide and swing were two new words on Saturday. Picture taken on Sunday.

Even though the extra day was wonderful, we still had to get back in the car early on Monday morning and drive back home bringing our trip mileage to right around 1500 miles total. It was NOT wonderful driving, but it did feel good to be back home again. Now we just have to figure out how to do it all over again in another two weeks! (Yep, you read it right. I'm going back in 2 weeks for a reunion my Grandma is planning. Should be a lot of fun, but I can't say I'm looking forward to the driving part!)

More sliding! He is getting brave by going sitting up and by letting himself go faster down the slide now...and every time he says: "Weeee!"
More sliding
John plays on the balance beam - check out the calf muscles! We both took a turn trying to walk across the wobbly balance beam and afterwards agreed that one of the best parts about having kids is that YOU can play at the park without anyone thinking you are a freak.

Probably the area he spent the most time in: driving the truck.
Big boy blue eyes

Oh no! Our kid can drive! William would not cooperate for this picture!

Happy July!

How can it be July already? My list of things I want to do with William this summer is still a mile long! We are off to a family reunion for John's family this weekend in Fargo, ND. It will be fun to see everyone and reconnect with some of John's family we haven't seen in several years.

Yahoo! All Caught up!

I am excited for one of my oldest friends! Haha! She is a few weeks older than me AND we've been friends since we were thirteen! She called tonight to share some exciting news! All of us are so excited for her family and I'll share more once she lets me know it is okay...Weeeeeeeeeeee!

I think I've posted all of our pictures/journal from our San Diego trip, so I'm excited to be caught up in that regard. Things are going on high around here as always - I'm off to bed!

17 Months Post

I'm a day late. It's to be expected if you know me. Always late. We've had a lot going on this month with traveling and volunteering a lot of our time this month at church. William is starting to really verbally blossom and is picking up at least three of four words a week. The catch is that we don't always know what he is saying. He currently has a word "duck" that we can't really figure out. Sometimes he is truly pointing at a duck, other times he sees a truck. Other times, he is stuck between a piece of furniture or strapped into a booster seat/car seat and can't move. I'd like to think he means all three of the words, but we're still not sure. The other big thing we are seeing is a huge independent streak paired with his unstoppable energy. We are seriously tired all the time from chasing him day in and day out. More and more he is insisting on doing tasks by himself and becomes quickly frustrated when he cannot or we will not let him (Yes, we are mean and will not let him shut car doors or cook on the stove). We've recently witnessed him trying to put his shoes on his feet by himself, putting the car seat straps on and off, climbing into his booster seat at the kitchen table on his own, trying to drink out of a cup without a lid, and finally blowing bubbles without putting the bubble wand into his mouth. Very exciting times for us, but exhausting at the same time. Which would explain why we didn't actually take a picture of him on the 26th. On Friday of this week, our church had a small carnival which was a lot of fun...here are some of the highlights:

Icee Popsicle for dinner? Check!
Paired with the ever healthful Cheetoes.
First time in a bounce house. They actually cleared EVERYONE out of the bouncer and let me go in with him for several minutes to play. I'm not sure that he loved (or hated for that matter) it, but I thought it was fun! It has been years since I was last allowed in a bouncing house.
Ears! This has been happening for quite awhile. Sometimes when you are holding him, he'll zero in on your face and then tell you what it is. Above is EARS. He'll say "Errsssss" and pull on them until you start to worry about permanently stretching out the skin on your face.
Peeking at Mama through the sunglasses is always a fun game
He does a good job getting the glasses on his face, but it always feels like I am about to loose an eye when he tries to put them back on my face!
Getting his face painted for the first time....he got a tiny mustache and beard- because it made me laugh!
The very dashing Mr Mustache
It's blurry, but here he is in all his glory. It does appear that the mustache goes up inside of his nose. This would be because he turned his head while being painted and it DID go up his nose.
One of our favorite games - the duck pond. William loved to pull the ducks out - he could care less about the prizes. We just had to watch and make sure all the ducks were returned to the pond at the end of the night.

CV-41 Midway, and more

I guess it's up to me to post anything about the ships we saw or the trip to the CV-41 Midway Museum (Kelly wasn't there anyway). These first couple shots were from the harbor boat tour we took. We got to go right by the piers the two aircraft carriers were moored at. In port when we were there were the CVN-68 Nimitz, and the CVN-73 George Washington. Looks like the Nimitz was in for some overhaul or something because there were a lot of cranes on it's deck and a couple trailers you typically see at construction sites. The island was also surrounded by scaffolding. The CVN-73 George Washington was in for repairs. It was in-route to Japan (Yokosuka?) to relieve the Cv-63 Kitty Hawk. However, on the trip a fire broke out in a compartment, and the carrier stopped off at San Diego for repairs. If I recall correctly, a sailor died in the fire.

A Los Angeles Class attack submarine (according to the tour guide), surfaced outside the entrance to San Diego harbor.

Here is a photo of the CVN-68 Nimitz.

The CVN-73 George Washington.

The CV-41 Midway. This is the carrier we toured. It was built in 1945, and originally had a straight deck. Over time, the deck was expanded twice (if I recall correctly) to include the angled deck. The tour guide we had taking us through the island said that because of the added deck which wasn't originally designed for, the Midway had some funny behavior because of being top heavy.

The enlisted berthing. One of the three bunks stacked, and one of those little lockers, that's all you had. The top guy had a little more space since the top of the bunk was open.

The CV-41 Midway's younger brothers, as seen through a forecastle (pronounced focs'le) porthole. I guess prior to one of the overhauls that added the angled deck, the forecastle on the Midway was open to the elements.

Later on in our tour the little audio guide mentioned that head lacerations and injuries were a common sight in the sick bay. Well, no wonder! Look at this nice pointy corner! There were a good number of other "head boppers" throughout the ship. Amazingly, I managed to avoid all of them. This is quite an astonishing feat coming from the guy who typically hits his head on an open cabinet door or something similar once or twice a day.

Grandpa McGarry looks at the wiring on the Midway. Makes your home wiring look rather simple. The wiring looked like this throughout the ship.

The junior officer's quarters. They had it a little nicer. I had a photo of the shower, but it was behind a plexiglass shield and my flash reflected off of it and it was dark and didn't turn out nice. The interesting thing was the shower was just a slightly walled off area against the outside hull. All the pipes (jet fuel, etc.) still ran through and it was almost like it was a second thought to put in the shower. A sign there claimed that the sailors on the Midway often claimed the water from the showers stank of jet fuel.

A good lesson

The brig.

A sign showing how the Midway was updated and changed over the years.

On top of the Midway was a number of different types of aircraft that have flown off it's decks (I think). This one here was a Sea King that actually picked up some of the Apollo capsules.

A view looking aft. Sort of gives a perspective of the size of this ship. Although, I admit it was a little smaller than I thought. Another interesting note (at least for me), the Midway only had two steam catapults on the straight deck. The Nimitz class generally has two more on the angled deck. Maybe the conventional power wouldn't produce enough steam to power two more catapults?

A view of some of all the aircraft on the deck of the Midway (this is the aft side). Taken during our island tour. I'm a little disappointed to find out here that I didn't take a photo of the admiral and captain's rooms. I thought I had. I guess maybe the close quarters didn't allow me to get the entire room or something, I can't remember.

A destroyer coming into port. The DDG-88 USS Preble. An Arleigh-Burke class ship, the same class as the destroyer Kelly's brother is on.

Kelly's brother also took us to the Navy base where most of the non-carrier ships are moored. We saw a couple cruisers, a lot of destroyers, one frigate, some amphibious assault vehicles, and oilers. I didn't take any photos, the large sign out front said not to.

I'd add more, but I think I need to keep in mind the interest/tolerance level of some of the folks who read the blog. Now back to your regular blogger.

I shouldn't have, but I did anyway

Laughed, that is. At lunchtime today I looked away for a minute to investigate a strange noise made by one of the cats and when I looked back, I saw this:

William decided that it was more fun to spread his applesauce in his hair than eat it. I've been trying to let him feed himself more independently with spoon/fork/hands even if it means most of his meal ends up in his lap. I guess it also can end up in the hair....bath night again tonight it looks like!

PS There is some footage being played on the national news about levees breaking in St Charles as well as some flooding. While this is happening close to us, we are all safe and dry at our house. We'll let you know if that situation changes, but so far we have no worries!