Easter 2011 - Family Easter Pictures

In an effort to redeem myself for neglecting Christmas Pictures this year,
I made sure to take enough pictures of the kids
in their easter ensembles to appease everyone!
(No easy task when Dom and Di stripped
down as soon as we got home!)
After getting the kids redressed and fed,
we spent a good half hour enjoying the
beautiful North Carolinian Mountain Air and got the pictures done!

The rest of the afternoon was spent being spoiled by Ed and Rody!
If it wasn't homemade Belgium waffles,
it was homemade peanut butter pie!
Dinner was a shmorgasbord of hot-0ff-the-grill
rotisserie chicken, ham, broccoli, cole slaw, fresh bread,
mashed potatoes, gravy and the piece de resistance: Monster Salad.

I have no complaints. The weekend (and the hosts) were wonderful!

Diana:

Dominick:

Brooke:

Ed and I:
:

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Easter 2011 - Here an Egg, There an Egg

Egg Hunting is only as fun as the egg hider is able to hide the eggs!

I thought I'd the Easter Bunny had done well enough, but it only took
the kids 10 minutes to hunt down 30 eggs. Dominick was quick to inform
me that "The Easter Bunny is losing his steam!"

The kids were excited to find (especially after last years fiasco) that
there were THREE golden eggs to be hunted. Each of the
eggs contained a different surprise, and it went over quite well.

(Psssh, ... losing steam my kneecap!)

Easter 2011 - Coloring Eggs

This year for Easter, we were lucky enough to spend the
short weekend with Ed's parent in Asheville!

My mom-in-law, Rody, kicked the weekend off right and
had all manner of egg coloring paraphanalia ready for
the kids when we got there!

The kids dipped and dyed until their hearts were
content!!
(And didn't manage to stain anything... including their fingers!!)

Our walks are prettier than your walks...

This morning Brooke and I went for our Sunday walk and ventured a little further from home than usual. OK, alot further from home!

We ended up walking a total of 3.36 miles and I'd have probably pushed to go farther had Brooke not insisted that we turn around. She's a smart cookie that Brooke! I'd failed to realize that the first portion of our walk (despite the peaks and valleys of the road) had a proggressive decline as we went. Which meant that the walk back was entirely up hill! It felt like death, but we did it!!

And like the title of the post suggest, I'm pretty convinced that our walk has to be prettier than your walk. With scenery like this, how could anyone choose to sit home on such a beautiful day?

Typical Tuesdays...

Last week, after ballet, I'd loaded Diana into the car and was just about to head home when a friend called and told me she'd spotted Ed across the street. He and the Officer had that particular intersection shut down for about 10 mins, so Diana and I stopped to take pictures:

Then Diana decided that she needed to get her wiggles out:

... No Frills attatched

Don't let the dimples decieve you...





THIS GIRL CAN ROCK!

JoJo our Walking Pup

JoJo had his second visit with the vet on Tuesday and all is looking good!

His Staph infection is clearing up and he's put on some weight!
He's now tipping the scales at 2.2lbs. A porker to be sure! ;)

Puppy Math

After our first visit with the Vet, he confirmed that the new puppy, JoJo, was , as we'd suspected, a Chihuahua mix breed. With the large eyes and the floppy ears, we'd already guessed as much, but the thing that had me curious were the markings on his face. They reminded me of our guard dog, Brutus, who is a Doberman mix as well. But the odds of a doberman and a chihuahua romancing each other seemed unlikely. But then I remembered that there is another dog, very small dog, who shares the same markings... The Miniature Pinscher. So I did some math... let me share:



What do you think? Could I be on to something here??

TuTu Beautiful!

Every Tuesday, sometime just after lunch, Diana will ask me the same thing:

"Is it time to get ready for ballet yet?"

Even though I assure her that class doesn't start for hours,
she'll still retrieve her leotard and tights and lay them across my bed
so that they're ready just as soon as she gets out of the shower.

But despite her enthusiasm, her least favorite part of our
Tuesday routine is always the construction of her bun.
I've been doing her hair the same way for over
a year, but it still poses a challenge for her to sit still long
enough for me to do my thing.

When I announce it's time to go, she slings her ballet
box over her shoulder and marches out the door.

We're fortunate this year that both her tap and ballet classes
fall on Tuesday and are both taught by the same amazing woman, Ms. Heather.
(Whom Diana happens to adore!)

As luck would have it,
we were early to class this week and the studio was empty, so I took a few}
minutes to get some long overdue pictures of Di and her best friend Samantha.

_____

Getting ready to leave the house:

Diana at the bar:

Practicing the splits:
(Diana inherited the anti-bendy-Odom gene, so this is a pretty big deal!)

And my favorite picture: Diana doing her Plie at the bar:

Then Samantha joined Di at the bar:

And of course, what kind of ballerina doesn't know how to goof off??

Cruel and Unusual Cystems.

It's 11:22 and I've just finished cleaning out the gaping hole just under my collar bone. I've also just finished with a pretty good cry. Partly because sticking hydrogen peroxide soaked q-tips deep into the hole really hurts, and partly because I know I have to do it all over again tomorrow, twice.

All of this because I had a cyst. A cyst on my chest which I'd lived with (quite happily in fact) for 6ish years. The cyst which had been about 1/2" wide and about 2" in length started to grow. And Grow. AND GROW. By the time my Dr.'s appointment came around the cyst had taken on the appearance of a giant, grotesque Easter egg. Dark purple on the bottom, red in the middle and flesh on the top. By my best estimations it was about 3" wide and 5" in length, and it really, really hurt.

Truth be known, if the cyst hadn't begun to abscess two weeks ago, I'd have gone another 6 years without having it looked at. It had never given me an ounce of pain or trouble and I had no intention of inflicting undue pain on myself. But that was then, this is now.

The Dr. recognized it immediately as a Sebaceous cyst and began a lengthly explanation of how and why it occurs. While I should have been listening with rapt attention as soon as he mentioned the part about "immediate removal" my eyes glazed over and I started having an internal anxiety attack. Before I knew it, I was lying on my back squeezing Ed's hand, and planning my escape route. There was no such luck.

The next hour and half involved some cutting and copious amounts of pressing, pushing, and packing. What will now be forever remembered in my psyche as the Trifecta of Pain. (There was also a lot of cussing, crying and caterwauling... the other trifecta of wimps worldwide!)

And the needles. So many needles. They would have hurt anyway, but because the skin was so incredibly infected and swollen, each pin-prick was like an injection of liquid lightning. Poor Ed is still nursing the nail marks on his right hand. (Speaking of Ed. He was amazing! He's almost as squeamish as I am, and he did an amazing job of keeping me calm and helping me through the entire ordeal. Huge Kudos to him for a job well done!)

The most horrid moments came toward the end, when the cyst walls broke the surface of the incision. There. are. just. no. words. But if I was forced to describe it, I'd suggest you cut a small circular hole in your skin and then reach in and try to extracate your colon.

When the proceedure was finally at it's conclusion and I'd lost the urge to walk toward the light, the Dr. confided to me that my cyst was the largest and deepest he'd removed in his years of practice.

I confided in him that I'd wet my pants a little.