this is our life...

politcal news of the day

i've watched al franken's run for the senate for a while now, so it was good to see him be sworn in as the democratic senator from minnesota today. takes the dems to 60 in the senate...way to go team!

also read a funny article about sarah palin today...in no way did it change my opinion of her choice to leave her appointed office, but i digress. the article pokes fun at the naysayers out there and it did make me chuckle. it was writen by one of the guys from POLITICO, who are frequent guests on npr.

i'll try to get up some 4th of july photos tomorrow, and a shot of my bruised appendage. good times!

i *heart* yogurt

nate eats yogurt almost everyday, sometimes twice a day. and it's usually messy.

 

 

nate and luke

 

dad got luke about 10 years ago, when beau was overseas and fairly soon after sam had passed away. he is a gentle, slobbering giant, with the biggest head i have ever seen on a lab. nate absolutely loves him, and follows him around the house slapping his back and giving him hugs.

ouch...but it could have been worse

after i posted last night, i had aaron take some pics of my leg for posterity's sake. my plan is to take more after friday, when i can take off the stocking. here is the best one:

sorry, i don't have photoshop on the laptop so i can't brighten it up some. but the outside veins really were monsters, snaking from my upper thigh to my mid calf. the fact that i am as pale as a ghost does not help.

so the procedure did go well today, you know, for having catheters stuck up my leg and everything. it went very quickly; i was in the chair at 8:10 and walking out to the waiting room at 9:45. dr. k was great as well as carla his nurse and shannon the tech. i've really worried carla over the past few weeks with TONS of questions!

i didn't really see what was going on during the procedure, and all i could feel were the first 2 shots of local anesthetic, the catheter as it traveled behind my knee...but just a little...and the shots as he went up my leg to my groin. i took a xanax, which probably helped me some, but i did tense up and had to breathe it out a few times. the actual radio frequency part only took 2 minutes, and i could feel that a little bit. so don't believe them when they say it's painless. let's say, it's a slightly stinging soreness.

i have to wear the sweet stocking-girdle combo 24/7 til friday, then only during the day after that for a month. yeah, no showers until friday. oh well, could be worse really. i go in for an ultrasound to check out everything on monday, then back in a month for a follow up visit. then we'll schedule the left leg. i told dr. k that i want to do all of the procedures this year so i won't have to pay any more. and as soon as i can take off the bandages, i'll let you all know what the leg looks like.  

bye bye nasty blue veins!

after years of compression hose and sore legs, an inability to feel comfortable in shorts and constant insecurity about dresses, i am finally doing something about these damned varicose veins! tomorrow at 7:30 i report to the outpatient center at uams for a radio frequency ablation procedure on my right leg. the website i've linked to is very informative, and i just learned a few things myself by reading it! i was hoping to ride bikes this weekend, but oh well...anyway, i'm really looking forward to this! i'm sooo beyond ready to stop wearing these dang hose. aaron is going to take before and after pictures, so i'll be sure to post them tomorrow, after my xanax wears off ;). i'm looking forward to some down time, too, just in time for the 4th. anyway, off to bed....5:45 am will come very early! later-

moving

we spent the evening at dad and martha's house tonight helping them load the lift truck with 30 years worth of stuff. if you've ever been in my parent's house you know it's full of beautiful and very breakable things, and did i mention that they have been in this house for 30 years? so there's 30 years worth of pretty glass objects?

aaron added it up, and he's moved 13 times since he graduated from high school, and i've moved 8 times since i graduated, so it was funny to listen to martha second guess herself as she's packing and moving boxes around. she's been here since 1979, and dad's been here since 1990, so they have been more stationary than us. she packed some HEAVY boxes, but between dad, aaron and beau they got most of the house loaded up. aaron is going over there tomorrow night and we are both helping on wednesday with the major move.

nate had a ball ordering us around and telling us where to put the boxes. he got to eat marshmallows and run around the garage for the last time. we told him that's the last time he'll play at their house and he seemed pretty cool with it. i'm the one with a bit of anxiety. martha says it hasn't hit her yet, that it probably will in a few days when she's not home. she said dad was pumped about the change, looking forward to putting in a new garden. i think they are both ready for a change.

nate also had a clean bill of dental health today from dr. jon. aaron said he was such a big dude, letting christy the hygienist clean, scrape and floss his teeth without a scene. and he sat in the chair all by himself, letting her squirt water in his mouth and suck it out with "mr. suction". he got a couple of turtle toys and a box of matchbox cars out of the deal.

as for me, i want to do a 4th of july door hanger with nate...maybe a wreath of popsicle stars painted r/w/b? a flag? and i really want to scrap some more, if i could only get off this damn computer.

great weekend

i'm sitting on the couch, slightly sunburned and smelling of sunscreen....some of my favorite things about the summer. second to cold fruit and early sunrises, late sunsets. and tank tops.

we had such a great weekend. nate and aaron were out of the house friday night, so christy and i attempted to scrapbook. yeah, not really successful. we just drank, noshed and talked until almost 11. it was so good to hang out and talk, it had been way too long. i slept okay that night; it's always hard to sleep without my boys here.

i met up with them early saturday, as well as papa and mamoo, and went to the austin family reunion at greer's ferry lake. carroll's gone to this since he was a little kid, and although it's not nearly as big as the old days (uncle buddy said there were 110 people there in '69) our group of 26 had such a great time. aunts barbara and shirley keep it all in line, cooking catfish and hushpuppies, and everyone brought food for the lunch/dinner. buddy's grandson james and his wife salina, with their 4 of 5 kids were there, as well as cousin darren and his wife alice, and their 3, all between the ages of 3 and 12. the parents are our age, nate got along wonderfully with all of their kids, especially darren's older boy who took nate on his first solo bike ride around the campground. i only freaked out once and went to find them on my bike, but they were just tooling around. nate was so proud of himself, as he should have been!

we rode bikes around for a bit, and went down to the lake for a couple of hours. i didn't bring my swimsuit, so i sat on the edge and watched everyone play. i practically ended up soaked from the groin down, but that's okay. james and salina's little girl had a BALL riding in the bike trailer with nate...i believe they will have to purchase one very soon for her. all of the older boys were so great with nate; dragging him around and watching over him. they were such a blessing on this trip; they really made the day great!

nate did not nap, and wanted to play non stop, but he did almost passed out on the chaise lounge a few times. kiddo stuck it out, but the ride home got him. he lasted about 3 minutes down the road. i'm really looking forward to the next year's get together, and hopefully we can see each other in between.

today, as aaron was leaving to ride with pj, nate told him "happy father's day" without me telling him to do it. i think aaron's smile could not have been much bigger. so sweet. we made him a card and wrapped his present from nate while he was out riding: a book about all the hiking, biking and canoe trails in little rock. he found some new trails in the book and is excited to try them in the next bit.

i went to the grocery store while nate napped, and when i got home he and aaron were painting a picture together...another heart melter! we spent the hot, hot, hot afternoon inside, but drug out the pool in the front yard around 3:30. nate and i "swam" while aaron did a few little things in the back. the water was nice and nate and i had fun playing with his cars and bouncing off the edge of the pool into the water. i grabbed him up to run back up to the store to get some prescriptions, and he picked out a sweet new harley davidson heart-shaped tattoo that now adorns his left forearm.

he has a new dinosaur island movie that is horrible, so of course he wants to watch it every night. really it is quite terrible, so we only watched it for a bit. before bed, we introduced him to the old school pink panther cartoons which made him laugh out loud! another throw back today...who is that guy who wore the internal organ/skeletal system suit that we would watch in elementary school? he was on pbs today, and nate actually got up and "exercised" with him. i found the older version of this dude pretty creepy, but hey, if it's educational...

so, that's the weekend in a nutshell. it's been so much fun. happy father's day to all of the dads in my life, most importantly my dad and my husband. love you so much-

clouds

we were on our way to lowes saturday when nate said, "oh! i forgot! i need my camera to take pictures of the clouds!" i happened to have mine with me, so i gave it to him. this is what we got:

 

there are SO many more, if you want to see them i uploaded them to nate's picture album. i love how his finger is in almost all of them, and how the lens is smudgy from him "cleaning" it. lots of great shots of backs of car seats, buildings, knees. great stuff...makes me happy.

lazy

i have a problem with not being productive. i have a tendency to not let things just go...i have to feel that i have made the best use of my time. today, the exception. we had big plans of a morning bike ride to krogers, but my tire was flat and we didn't have any more tubes, so i let nate and aaron go on their ride and i went to the grocery store. it was there i decided to be a bum the rest of the day.

oh, the hours spent in front of the tv were glorious. we have 4 pbs channels, thanks to the digital conversion, and i watched cooking shows for a long time. then high fidelity came on, and all three of us watched that for a bit. it's the clean version, so there was no serious cussing...nothing little pitchers don't hear anyway.

i did end up making a wonderful ravioli bake for dinner, and vacuumed the house. but my house is small, so that only took 30 minutes. i did walk the dogs for about 40 minutes. made up for the lost bike ride. except my dogs are out of shape and i was practically dragging frank at the end, so there was a lack of real cardio exertion.

so tonight, maybe i'll scrap, maybe i'll veg out some more. definitely need to shower. have a great evening-

heifer village

this is one of the many things that makes me so proud to be from little rock...we are the headquarters for heifer international. if you don't know about them, go here and be enlightened. this weekend is the grand opening of their heifer village, an interactive center designed to teach how you can make a difference and help end poverty and hunger in the world. yes, little ol' you has the power!

the whole weekend is a celebration at one world drive, and we wanted to be a part. there was SO MUCH to do, we could have easily been there for hours. but here's what we came away with-

here's the new center, that sits right behind the heifer headquarters' totally green sustainable building. there were dozens of tents set up with learning and craft activities, like brickmaking

how to make string

 and how to weave

 we ran into several friends

this one was JAMMING so hard to the dan zanes' concert that nate didn't recognize her. really!

fed lots of animals at the petting zoo

we did lots of stuff with our big bud cody, including recycled bottle piggy banks (future she's crafty blog idea!) and hand tracings.

then it was time for the dan zanes concert, and if you have kids and have never heard of this guy he is REALLY fun! little zydeco kick to his kiddo tracks. as nate describes him he's the guy with the white hair and the orange shirt and the git-tar.

after that we went into the actual center, very briefly before nate decided he needed to go home. poor kiddo was tuckered out. we'll have to come back sometime when we can really look at the exhibits. here's an example of the gas you could help save by buying your food from locally grown sources.

we took the trolley back to the river market then onto the house for naps. it really was a great morning, and i can't wait to go back and visit.

this is the kind of thing that i want nate to get, to really drill down deep into his soul, that every action has an effect...every little thing that you can do helps. give your time, your heart, your mind, the resources that you have. all the little things can mean so much.