Update-ola

Here are a few tidbits of the last two weeks:

Spotted man on flight to CA wearing a suit, tie, and santa hat. Later on the flight Bobby and I are tugging on this fluffy, white ball not realizing that it was the man's santa hat. Very funny at the time.

Pilot, who is a passenger on one of our flights, has to be reminded by the flight attendant to put his seat back into the upright position to prepare for landing. Funny part is that neither of them seemed to even notice the irony.

Jesse decides to bring up a very personal subject in the middle of the airport. This past summer, she witnessed something that no child should ever have to(or ever wants to) witness. Hubby and I on a Sunday morning thought the bedroom door was locked. Unfortunately, Jesse opens the door and very quickly and quietly closes it. She knew that it was something that she should not be seeing. Well, she really did not want to talk about this subject until we were sitting in the airport. She says, "Remember in our rental house when I opened the door and saw something? Well I think I saw something but I hope I was just dreaming. Because if it wasn't a dream than I wish I was dead. I am NEVER going to get naked for anyone that I love. Why do people even want to do that anyway?" I tried to reply as calmly as possible (as her reaction was quite comical) "It is something that people do when love each other." I was not going to enter into the many other reasons why people do it....this is an 8 year old after all. This is the same child that has also decided that she is going to adopt children because she "doesn't want her skin stretched out". Yes, she has seen my damaged abdomen.

While the kids and I are gone, hubby is in charge of the animals. He decides that we need to follow through on our previously held conversations of getting rid of the dog. Jesse was very persuasive the first round of negotiations. She said we still have a chance to train him. He's 4 months old and has not grasped at all the concept of going potty outdoors. We have done everything you are supposed to do to potty train. He has also destroyed pretty much anything and everything in the house unless he is contained to the kitchen area. Even then, he has chewed the paint off the lower portion of the kitchen walls. We have discussed this with each other and with the kids and said that it is not going to work once I start doing daycare again, as it will be much harder to contain him to a certain area of the house, it is not always weather friendly to leave him outside, and we are probably going to have to find him a new home soon. Jesse still did not want to hear any of this. We went on our trip, mentioned this to my sister, and she said "I would love to take him". I'm thinking that this is the last thing they need in their chaotic house. But never-the-less she talked my bro-in-law into taking him, I talked to Jesse again, she thought that it would be o.k. since she would still get to see Skippy. Even though I don't like to do a trade off, we kinda sorta agreed to get a kitty if we got rid of the dog. I know, you can't replace an animal with another animal, but we were getting desperate to make this a positive transition. So our puppy is going to be making his move to CA as soon as we get his shots updated and a bigger cage for his plane trip.

Bobby enjoyed getting to "hang" with his older cousin that turned 18 the day we got there. He got his first car for his birthday. A mercury wagon style car that seats 7 (including the jumpseat in the back). He was very psyched.

Both kids got to see the friends that they wanted to. Sleepovers galore. I did not get to visit the beach like I wanted to. It rained for two weeks with only one day break. Unfortunately we didn't take advantage of that one day cuz we didn't realize it would be our one and only chance.

We had a red eye flight on Sat. at 6:30 pm. Saturday morning we woke to a somewhat pleasant day and sis and I were contemplating going to the beach before we had to leave. In the next hour the wind picked up, the rain came back and it looked as if our chance had passed. Not long after that, my bro-in-law called and said that on his way back from kidney dialisys, he witnessed 150-200 foot eucalyptus tree crash down and shatter onto the highway. He then encountered many fallen redwood trees on the way up to their house. It took him a good 2-3 hours of helping to clear the roadway by chainsawing through some large/some small trees blocking the roadway. On the way to pick up Bobby from a friend's house, it took us 2 hours instead of the usual 20 minutes. Needless to say, we did not go to the beach. In fact we almost did not get to the airport in time for our 6:30 pm flight. We hauled wet laundry back to Ohio, but thanks to my industrious sister, we had dry bankets for our many late night/early morning hours spent in Sac and Chicago airports. They are still without power and probably will be for the next few days. Fun times.

This was my first new year spent above ground level. We left Sacramento airport at 11 pm, they turned on "Wallace and Grommet". I was halfway falling asleep, the kids still wide awake. Most of the people on the plane were sleeping. I looked at my watch at 12:05 am and leaned over to quietly wish my kids a happy new year. Twas strange.