The MacDonald's

I can't believe I forgot to blog this! Last night at the Billy Idol concert there was a little girl there named Ryland that was the same age as Jaidyn and she kept coming up and talking to her. The family that she was with was apparently her grandmother and grandfather. They brought her to our table and the man (her grandfather) that was with her said "are you the grandmother?" I couldn't believe it! Grandmother! Really? I was offended, but John was even more offended, when he left he said "I can't believe he asked you if you are the grandmother, I was offended for you." I've never seen him so upset. The people sitting next to us said "you don't look like a grandmother at all, I think he had a little too much to drink." I sure hope so, not that I would want him to be that drunk to mistake me for 20 years older than I am, but I'm pretty sure I don't look like a grandmother! Do I? Yikes, maybe I need to use more Arbonne...

I've been tagged by Julie Groff 20 years ago... such the 80's girl. check out that hair! In 1988, I was seventeen years old. I was going to school at the Utah Valley Technical college working towards a degree in Fashion Design/Fashion Merchandising. I was also going to hair school at Von Curtis in Provo, Utah. I spent my free time hanging out with my best friend Michelle Horton & Melinda Allen, and Chad Allen and Dave Allen. I was dating Lyle Carbajal (I met him at Plastiques, a dance club we went to every week, he is now a famous painter), and a return missionary Jeff Abbott (I met him at a concert where he was the lead singer) I really thought he was the one until 3 years later when I met John, the perfect one for me. I remember being ve ry stress ed out because I was approaching adulthood and I was worried that I may not ever find that right guy. Some of my favo rite thing s to do was go to "Plastiques" a local dance club where my friend Dave Allen was the...

We started off today wanting to do something with Jaidyn, every so often we try and have a mom and dad date with her and it was time. So we decided that it would be fun to take her to her first concert, I absolutely LOVE Billy Idol and it so happened that he was in concert tonight! We dropped the kids off at the Baldwin's and left at about 5:00 p.m. when we got to the Grand Sierra there was already a line started. So we decided to munch out on Johnny Rocket's and wait in line. We weren't too far down the line, luckily and within a half an hour the line ended up out the doors and down the steps to the parking lot. Jaidyn was a little bit hesitant at first to go, she kept saying "is it going to be too loud?" but then as we got closer to getting into the Ballroom she was getting pretty excited. Billy Idol came out with his band and she absolutely went crazy! She was completely rocking out (she really surprised me) and the other people were really getting a kick...

I woke up today feeling much better, so much that I decided to vacuum my grandparent's entire house, including the crevices and corners. I also did a little bit of dusting. My cousin Angie came to visit with her kids, it was so nice to see her. We have been very close since we were little and basically grew up as sisters. We talk a lot on the telephone and through email but it was nice to have some time together. Luis really took a liking to her and wouldn't stop hugging and snuggling with her(he really has a way with the ladies already) Maybe fostercare is for you Angie! I spent the rest of the evening scanning in old photos and journals that my grandma has had.

I woke up this morning feeling not so well. Luis and Luhanie had a night full of chatter. We stayed up late visiting with our family and then when we went to bed Luis and Luhanie deciding that it was their time to talk, so for the next 3 hours we were trying to not loose our patience as we tried to go to sleep. (they slept in 2 separate play pens in our room). Finally at about 3:30 a.m., they went to sleep and we conked out. I woke up with this massive pain on my right side, thinking that it was probably just not enough rest and sleeping wrong, I wrote it off and we went to church. During church I was feeling fine, it was when we got back home that things went down hill very fast. I finally went in and told John that I thought he better take me to the hospital. So we packed up the kids and drove what seemed like forever to Mesquite some 25 miles away. I was in so much pain that I seriously felt like I was going to die. Jaidyn was pretty scared and kept asking if I was going...

we finally got a vacation! We have been so excited to go visit my grandparents in Logandale, Nevada it has been over 8 months since we were last there and we love going to their house! One of our favorite things is sitting up late listening to grandpa's war stories and growing up in Beaver, Utah. We had planned on leaving Reno much earlier in the day but we realized that the spare tire for the Suburban was currently on the Avalanche, awaiting the new rims that had yet to be received by UPS. Anyway if you have read my blog earlier you would know that we have recently learned a valuable lesson, that is WE NO LONGER GO ANYWHERE WITHOUT A SPARE! So we had to get that all figured out before we left. The drive down seemed to go really, really fast! The kids slept most of the way making it for a very quiet drive. Most of the time I would much rather fly than drive the 8 hours in the car, but I actually have grown to love our 8 hour drives to Las Vegas because that is the time that I...

What a GREAT day! We started off going to our last certification class for the renewal of our Fostercare license. It's hard to believe that we've been doing Fostercare for over a year now! We weren't really looking forward to the class too much as the subject was "How to save the discouraged Foster family". We figured it would be a lot of remember the reasons your doing this, don't let the system discourage you blah blah blah, but then we found out that Betty Hastings was teaching it. She was the guest speaker yesterday. A cute little white haired lady in her 70's who has been doing Fostercare for over 35 years now! (amazing) She had quite the stories to share yesterday and her sense of humor really kept our attention. So we were exited to hear from her again today, especially after yesterday's class that we took. We really were discouraged as we walked away from class feeling like Fostercare parents don't really matter, we have no rights...

We went to Jaidyn's play tonight and she did such a great job. We love you JBird!!! Love, Mom

So yesterday we started the day off going to church. When we returned home I made dinner for us and a family in our ward. Usually on Sundays we come home, eat dinner and then take naps for the afternoon. Last week John and I decided that Sundays would no longer be a day of napping but more of a family day. So after we ate dinner we decided to take a drive up to the TRI (Tahoe Regional Industrial), this is John's new project and we wanted to check out some of the changes that have gone on as well as let the kids see the many wild horses up there. So we jumped in the Avalanche and headed to the mountains. Everything was going fine and then...we found this canyon area that John stopped at and told us to watch for Golden eagles, because there is a nest nearby. The kids were so excited (more excited about getting out of the car, I think). John walked around to open the passenger side door and said "oh, crap everyone get in the car fast" I wasn't sure what was goin...

So we went out to dinner tonight just like we do pretty much every Friday night (we have a problem with that) we didn't want to go anywhere where we had to sit down for dinner. We headed toward Taco Bell and then decided that wasn't what we wanted and after sitting in the parking lot for a little while we decided to try La Super Taquerilla, we had heard from a few people that they had really good food. The kids ordered their usual Quesadillas, John got a beef burrito and quesadilla and I got a beef taco and chile rellano. The food was really good. Even Jaidyn who absolutely despises Mexican food liked it and said she wants to eat lunch there on her birthday. So we've found our new favorite spot for Mexican and lucky for us it's just down the street (or that's probably not such a good thing).

You can click on the pictures to have a large view. For quite awhile I've been using Smilebox.com to put some of my digital pictures in. The only thing I don't like about it is that you can't really customize it too much. So I came across this other website www.scrapblog.com. I've been using scrapblog.com for a few months now and I love it! One of the things we need to do as Foster parents is keep a "lifebook" for the kids. I kept meaning to start one but never seemed to get around to it. Then I found Scrapblog.com, it's basically an online digital scrapbooking program. They continually add backgrounds,and stickers to add to your pages. Then you build your pages with your pictures, you can import your own backgrounds or stickers as well. Once your page is done, you publish it, and then you can post it on your blog, email it, save it as a jpg file or print it. I figure after I've done a few pages then I'll take the jpg files down to Costco...

If there's one thing I really dislike about being the "mom" it's planning out meals! I don't mind cooking (in fact, I really like cooking) but the whole meal planning thing is just not my thing. Now since my parents have been living with us, my mom (who despises cooking, unless it involves tofu, and a salad) hasn't been much help in this department (although, she helps in so many other ways, doing our laundry, watching our kids etc..). So I did what I do best, I went surfing to find a meal planning site that would take care of it for me. I've tried a few in the past Dr. Weils recommended by mom of course, because of his health minded and holistic menu, the menu was fine, but when we got to tofu meatloaf, John wasn't all up in that idea and I had to change the menu plan (which kind of defeated the purpose of making it easy and simple). Although the meals were mostly pretty tasty, there were a few that I can say I wouldn't even feed to my dogs. ...

Jaidyn, Luis and Luhanie in front of the Reno Courthouse on 3/31/2008. On this day 7,369 pinwheels were placed in the ground in front of the courthouse. One pinwheel represented each reported case of child abuse and neglect in Washoe County in 2007. It was quite an amazing site to see so many pinwheels and pretty unbelievable how uch abuse and neglect there is just in Washoe County. That's an average of 20 calls per day, 600 calls per month.

So today we started off with another visit for Luis and Luhanie at Social Services. There was quite awhile there where their birth parents weren't showing up for their visits and so they were canceled but they've been showing up again now and it's been really hard on the kids. Luhanie is affected the most, she screams every time she sees them, because she doesn't know them at all. It just breaks my heart to hand her over, screaming for us. I can't imagine what she's going through. It's interesting to watch Luis, he's happy and singing and dancing in the car by the time we get to the second floor and he steps off the elevator he's a different kid, he becomes really solemn and almost expressionless. It's probably one of the hardest things for us to do, is leave them at Social Services for 2 hours for their visit, wondering what's being said and how they're being treated while they're there. Fostercare has been a really interesting...