Leaving On a Jet Plane

"I'm leaving on a jet plane,  Don't know when I'll be back again."

 Well,  actually I am off to go visit one of my best friends, Carrie today.  I will be gone for 5 nights and  6 whole days.  I am so excited, it is going to be a blast.  Just Sofia and I are going.  Noah is actually really excited to be with Daddy.  They have lots of Manly boy stuff planned.  So they will have lots of fun

Leg Update

After x-rays, bone scans and numerous other tests,  Dr Katie could find nothing seriously wrong with his leg.  After looking at all the tests,  her guess is that he could have sprained his ankle and hip at the same time,  thus causing his leg to be immobile from top to bottom.  This comes from a slight colorization which means swollen something in his hip on the bone scan and his ankle in the x-rays.  This is what she said, when talking with her this morning.  He has been taking an anti inflammatory called Napperson since Monday

I was a bit concerned leaving him for six days, if he still was not walking and there was no resolution to what happened.  Last night, Kersten and his dad gave Noah a blessing.  In this blessing, it said that his leg would get better and that he needed to have patience and faith.  Almost immediately afterwards, he looks at us and says "It is all better".  He stands up off the couch and takes 3 steps,  makes a huge grin and goes bounding up the stairs.  We asked him what made the difference and he says with such simple faith that Heavenly Father did it.  He made his leg better.  This morning he kept talking about his good leg and that Heavenly Father loved him and now he can walk with no Ow's.  It really show what great faith my boy has.  

Books that Made Me Who I am....

I saw this on Emily's blog and then on Caroline's blog and Loved this idea.. It started with the question

"What books influenced you the most growing up?"

Anything by LM Montgomery.. (my favorite is The Blue Castle and Kilmeny of the Orchard)

Little Women By Louisa May Alcott (there is a boy named Laurie in it)

Anything by Rosamunde Pilcher (my favorite is Under Gemini)

Where the Sidewalk Ends,  By Shel Silverstein

Charly By Jack Weyland and anything else he wrote up until about 1997

Scriptures 

Anita Stansfield,  I got her first book when I was 14

Rebecca By Daphne Du Meir

All the Ramona Books By Beverly Cleary

Jayhawk and Return to Red Castle By Dorothy Keddington

The Babysitters Club Series

The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Reading List

I saw this on my friend Diana's blog and loved this. I seem to be seeing a lot of these lately. But it is fun and I love it.
So here is my list. Apparently the average adult has only read 6 of these books! How sad.

I have read 47 of them

If there are any I have not Italicize that are must reads please let me know

Here’s what you are supposed to do:
*The ones in Blue are the ones I have read and LOVED
*Look at the list and bold those that you have read.
*Italicize those you intend to read.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (most not all) 
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Leg update

it is not his knee, or cancer.  They have narrowed it down,  more later

Thumbs Sideways

Tonight was fantastic.  It was a night that dreams are made of.  And it was not because of what we did but who we were with and the outcome.  

My sweet boy Noah, woke up on thursday whining that his leg hurt and he did not want to go to school.  He has been anti school lately.  So I scooped him up and took him to school.  The saddest thing is that he did not walk at school.  He even sat on the grass at recess.  He stayed on the couch the entire day on thursday.  We discovered that it was his knee that was hurting him more than anything else.  I kept thinking he was being a drama king by not wanting to make it straight.  Kersten took him to the doc today.  Luckily, he does not have a fracture or anything of that kind.  From what they can see,  his knee cap is probably displaced and we need to get him to keep moving it to wiggle back in place.  They sent us some fancy patches to help with the motions.  Poor kid,  3 days of no jumping around playing Star Wars is killing him.  He even commented that he was sad cause he had to go right to sleep and could not play in his bed.  Ha Ha, I guess this is one way to quiet him down faster.

Since he is still down and has a fancy new Ace bandage,  We decided to have a fun family movie night.  He has been dying to see Speed Racer, ever since he saw the commercials for the DVD.  I made homemade pizza,  we bought some movie snacks, such as popcorn, whoppers and licorce.   We snuggled in our pajamas all of us on the couch,  with Tweet-ums crawling back and forth on top of the three of us.  She wanted to be with the person with the most interesting food.  Speed Racer was actually pretty good.  It stressed the importance of family.  Of being loyal , following your heart and of doing the right thing even if it is hard.  Noah was pretty excited about it.

Afterwards,  I had one of the best mommy moments ever.  Sofia fell asleep at the end of the movie.  So Noah said his prayers etc, outside of his room.  After potty time and brushing his teeth,  I carried him into my room for his nite time prayers.  He asked if we could sit in the chair,  I fed him in as a baby.  It sits in the corner of my bedroom.  I snuggled him on my lap.  And teased him that he sure had grown a lot since I fed him as a baby.  In Noah language he explained that he ate good food,  used his strong muscles and he turned one, two, three and now he is four and so so big.  I asked him if he wanted to talk to Mom about anything.  He nodded "Yes"  and said he wanted to talk about Stormtroopers in a bubble.  Apparently,  some Stormtroopers got stuck in a bubble and Darth Vader was going to be mad.  We talked about different ways to get them out of the bubble.  He also used the Choke force on them.  I told him Darth Vader would not like it that he used his signature move and would clash lightsabers with him.  Then in a brilliant Noah moment he said that he was Anakin and could not fight himself when he uses bad choices.  

I asked him about school.  He has complained bitterly the last week that he wants "No, school".  I asked him if school was thumbs up or thumbs down.  He waved his thumbs back and forth.  So I asked if it was thumbs sideways.  We both laughed hysterically.  He proceeds to explain to me that school was sideways because they did not let him play guns and lightsabers the whole time (this is all explained in sound effects by the way).  His teachers make him sit down and write, listen and blah blah blah.  In his exact words.  At this point I am trying to suppress my laughter.  I commented that he could play guns and lightsabers at recess.  He puts his fingers really close together to explain it is too little time and then spreads his arms really big to say that is how much time he wants.  We discussed different ways that would make school more fun and when it was okay to play lightsabers.  We talked for another 10 minutes or so.  Going back and forth with the subject,  Starwars, School,  silly Sofia,  his knee and church tomorrow.    

This reminded me how important it is to slow down.  Life is so hurried for there is so much to do.  Between all the responsibilities of all my roles,  I need to stop and just talk with my boy so he feels understood and that his opinions matter and are valid.  In some ways his owey knee has been kind of nice.  He has slowed down.  In fact forcing us to slow down also.  

I Am...

I am your parent;

you are my child.

I am your quiet place;

you are my wild.

I am your hush now;

you are my lyrical.

I am your peace on Earth;

you are my miracle.

-- From Maryann Cusimano 

"Love's You Are My Miracle"

I'm Tagged Again

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the Person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
5. Let your tagger know when your entry is up

Here is the blog of who tagged me: http://teresa-ofwhatalife.blogspot.com/
Thanks Teresa,

So I have been tagged and it actually was kind of hard thinking of things new to post about myself. I really am an open book to most people.

1.I have a dream to go back to school. I want to get a degree in Speech Language and Pathology. I would have to get a Master's to be able to practice. I could help Noah a lot more and lots of other kids also. It goes along really well with my other degree. It would be a perfect mom job. You could set your own hours if you practiced privately. Oh, well, we'll see what happens with that one.

2. My favorite computer game is Sims. I love building the houses and decorating. Then as you play your Sims, to see if they like it. I usually get bored playing the same Sim for awhile so I just go and build another house. I could waste a lot of hours doing this.. I also love Bejeweled and doing word search puzzles.

3. I really do dislike being late for things. I also really dislike being too early, I feel like waiting around is a waste of time. So in my ideal world, I am right on time for everything and so is everyone else.

4. I am very easily entertained. It really does not take much for me to enjoy myself. Sometimes this could be to a fault. I am quick to say I loved it. So it is good for me to step back and contemplate how I feel about something more than directly afterwards.

5.I get really frustrated with technology. It is just suppose to work. I don't like fiddling around with it. Once I have learned how to do something, I usually can do that forever now, I just don't want to take the time to figure it out. If someone will show me, that is much better.

6. I am a visual learner. I think that is why I excell at reading, colors, shapes and art. That is where my best grades were in school. Noah is also very visual. With his talking school, he does so much better if he has a queue.

So there you go, Some more useless information about the one and only me. Hope you enjoyed it.
Now I tag...... I know the suspense is killing you..... Amy, Lena, Nik, Carrie and Kieran