39 OMG He's Almost 40!

January 22nd will be my baby's 39th birthday, I can't believe its almost here. When we got married, way back in 1998 I swear 40 looked so far off and now (sigh) it is just around the corner. Of course I am 1 year, 2 months and 27 days younger than him but still it is all happening so fast. He's definitely still the man I want to grow old with and spend the rest of my life with its just that 13 years ago growing old still seemed pretty far off. Todd's mom told me when I turned 32 that I was pushing 40 and I laughed at her because by her logic she was pushing 100 but now we really are pushing 40. Ahhhhh! I can tell I am not going to age gracefully or willfully. Most of the time we still act like we are in our 20's, we still like to party with our friends (but now we want to be in bed no latter than midnight or it takes 2 days to recover), we still like toys and doing active things. but sitting down and talking is good now too. We still look pretty good, (I hope) but it definitely takes more effort (and in my case money) than it used to. (Sigh again) I wish we could pick our favorite age and remain that forever. I would be 25 forever because I still looked good with no effort, I could stay up all night and still get through the next day. I was young but had been through enough to not be stupid anymore like in my teens and early 20's. Coincidentally that was when we got married and other than my kids being born it was the happiest time of my life. Oh well I think the fountain of youth is about as out of reach as winning the lottery but just so y'all know I ain't going down fighting (unless I fall and can't get up :).

Things I Will Miss

I have a really good lead on a job right now, probably the best lead/ chance I have had in over 1 and a half years and I am hopeful but trying really hard not to get my hopes up too high (sometimes it is crushing to not get it). I started thinking though of the last 2 1/2 years of "vacation" and there are definitely some things I will miss about being home so I am writing this poem in my head as I type. Forgive me if it doesn't come out right.

When I go back to work I will miss having alone time and reading lots of books.
I will miss school awards, spelling bees and class parties.
I will miss the alone time I have by myself to read or write or just sit and veg.
I will miss picking up my girls from school everyday and holding their hand while we walk to the car.
I will miss taking a shower at noon on those days it is 20 degrees outside and only 60 in the house.
I will miss games of Mario Cart after homework is done and having a good dinner ready at 5:30.
I will miss playing my I Pod at top volume and singing out loud because there is no one to hear.
I will miss a lot of stuff just off the top of my head and I am sure there is more that I just haven't said.
When i go back to work I will miss a lot but the time I've had with my kids, well I'll miss that the most.
CF 1-14-11

Something New

     Well today was Cheyanne's school conference which I am usually a pro at only this year we did something new. Cheyanne's middle school does what is called a student led conference. The students and teachers put together a packet of her work from last semester, her report card and they have a script telling them how to go over things with the parents. So at 9:30 this morning I went to the school gym and my child walked me through her packet and grades. We discussed her strengths and weaknesses and what she needs to improve on for the next semester. I think I prefer meeting with the actual teacher but I understand that this is difficult when they have 6 different periods and different teachers so it was still a good idea. I was impressed however with how Cheyanne handled it. I think her having to put it all together was a good thing and made her more aware of her responsibilities as a student and helped her see what she needs to work on. All in all her grades were pretty good, she had all A's and B's except for Math which has always been a struggle that was a C. She didn't make her pay point this quarter as her deal was to have nothing lower than a B- in any subject but she seems eager to work on it.
 

Cold

It is funny how there are different degrees to being cold. There are days when I am cold at 68 degrees and then there is the cold of the last few days where 40 degrees when the sun is shining is actually kind of nice. Today is one of those days that I think I am just going to be cold no matter what. I turned up the heater from 60 to 65, I am wearing a beanie cap in the house and my feet feel like they are going to fall off. Even the sun looked cold to me today so I snapped this picture and named it Cold Sunshine. It is kind of silly to personify a heavenly body but to me I think the sun is cold and needs some mittens. Anyways I just wanted to whine for a bit and now I am going to go read a book under the blanket on the couch and cuddle with the dogs. Hopefully I will thaw out.

Snow Day!

The first snow of 2011 is here and the girls get to stay home to enjoy it. Snowline School District is closed today due to inclement weather so it is our first snow day ever. The girls are soooo excited they have been waiting for the snow forever it seems like. It is not even 8:00 am and they are out the door, dressed like the kids in the old malt-o-meal commercials trying to build a snowman. I'm inside where its warm wishing Todd would make me a fire in the fireplace. I'll post some pictures of the girls enjoying their first snow day experience latter after I have gotten dressed and had some coffee :).

Happy 2011

 Cheyanne

 Heather

 Todd & me after riding around on the ATV

 Sunset from our house

 Cool cloud

 Heather & Cheyanne

Sunset from our house

I have mixed feelings on saying goodbye to 2010, on the one hand it was a pretty hard year money wise, job wise (for Todd) and I am glad to see it go with the hopes that 2011 will be even better. On the other hand we had some good things in 2010 that I am thankful for like moving up here to the middle of nowhere, the girls and us have made some new friends up here, we've had plenty of new positive experiences up here and of course the horses. 2011 just seems like it should shape up to be a little easier. Todd is waiting to hear back on a new job which will mean less stress for him and a little more money for us. We should hear back this week so please pray that it works out. We are pretty settled into our new life in the sticks now and enjoying dragging the property on the tractor, talking to the ladies at the post office when we go pick up our mail, the girls enjoy their new school and Cheyanne seems to be blossoming there academically speaking and socially. Heather is right on track to be on the Honor Roll again, really picking up music very easily and generally just seems to get "it". Todd and I have spent more time together talking and laughing again. It all just gives me hope that things will be okay again. So I'm ready 2011, ready for everything. I am posting some pictures of the girls and a few sunsets I took in the last couple of days. We are expecting snow today (90% chance) so i am keeping my fingers crossed that it shows up. It would be a perfect way to start our new year and end the girls and Todd's Christmas Break. Happy New Year everyone (Mom & Chris) I love ya! (If there is anyone else who reads this you have to let it show, just in case Happy New Year to you also).

I Think of You

I think of you when I see the color purple
I think of you when I am out riding
I think of you when I see your face in your children
I think of you every holiday when you aren't there
I think of you when I just need a friend to talk to, laugh with, cry with
I still think of you, every day without fail and I miss you
CF 12-07-10
It was 4 years ago today that I lost my baby sister. It has gotten easier but I still miss her and wish she were here with us. I love you Brat.

Snow?

I woke up this morning to let the dogs out and I couldn't believe it we got snow last night a whole 1/32 of an inch of snow. I wasn't even sure if that was what it was because there was so little. I had to keep going around to all the windows looking. I finally decided that it was snow but not enough to bother waking up everyone in the house. We didn't get any more snow but it sure was cold and really windy which makes the 38 degree weather seem like 20 degrees. We bought a tree today and the girls got it all decorated, its beautiful. Todd and I were standing outside looking at it and he decided it was one of our best trees ever, I laughed because we feel that way every year. Todd's parents go home tomorrow, Todd goes back to work and the girls go back to school so I will be all by myself again until Christmas break. I haven't decided how I feel about it yet, I could use some alone time but I think it is going to feel really empty and quiet the first few days. I finally got a hold of my Dad today also he had been MIA since Thanksgiving due to a major storm and power outage wear he lives. I spoke with him Thanksgiving morning and he had been without power for 96 ours already and was hoping to be able to get out and into a hotel room that night which he did. Hopefully the storm that is supposed to hit tonight and tomorrow will be a little easier on them, I am keeping my fingers crossed and saying a prayer. Well got to spend some last few minutes with the in-laws before they leave tomorrow. Fisher out :)

Winter is Here

Boy has it been cold up here! We woke up this Thanksgiving morning to frozen water in the dog bowls and our fish pond was frozen over with ice. Tonight the low is supposed to be 17 degrees ahhhhh! The last time I was that cold was on a vacation in Big Bear. I haven't made up my mind yet if I am going to enjoy winter up here in the high desert but I am feeling a little more optimistic about it since I finally got a coat. It arrived in the mail yesterday and I am soooo glad it is here. I can retire my hoodie and finally be warm or at least not freezing. It is supposed to warm up a little during the day and we are expecting rain on Saturday. Let me tell you 50 degrees sounds like a Hawaiian vacation right now. Well don't have too much else to say just wanted to complain about the weather a little.

What a Day

We have had quite the month so far and it isn't over. Todd's parents flew down on November 16th and are staying with us until November 29th. I won't lie and say it hasn't been challenging having 2 extra people in the house for over two weeks but it has also been nice getting to see them again. The girls are enjoying it immensely and Cheyanne has even given up her room for them to stay in. Today though was a very tiring day in which we spent about 4 hours at the VA hospital in Loma Linda to get my father in-law's medications filled. It was a lot of driving and waiting we left at 8 am and didn't get home until 5 pm. While I was at the hospital I had a lot of time to look around and I was pretty disappointed with the way some of these vets were treated. We watched one Vietnam Vet in a wheel chair pull himself along for awhile without any help until I watched him try to make it up a handicap ramp and roll back down. I asked if he needed help and ended up pushing him around the entire hospital. I didn't mind that at all, he needed help. What I minded is that before I asked him I watched two orderlies and a security guard walk right past him, look and keep on going. When I pushed him all the way around to the main entrance the concierge lady looked seriously surprised that I did this when I didn't even know who he was (I still don't). I am perplexed, I can't be the only one to of ever helped a guy out there or at least I sure hope not. Both of my grandfather's were vets, my father in-law, my step father, my step sister and brother from my dad's first marriage, my cousin in-law and some people I have been lucky enough to work with in the past and some of the guys and girls I went to school with are vets or are still in the military and if they would of been the one who needed a push I would hope someone would do it. These guys and girls gave up a lot for their country and I wish people would say thanks sometimes not only on Veteran's Day but everyday. When you see someone sporting their Navy, Army, Marine or Air force hat (vets love their hats :) take a good look and if they need a hand offer it or just smile say hello, say thanks. If I am not back on here Happy Thanksgiving! Take Care.

When Your Babies Are Growing Up Too Fast

In less than 24 hours my baby will turn 8 years old. I am not sure why it sounds so old to me but I really feel like it is all happening so fast. She has changed so much in the last year and seems so much more grown up this year than last. I still call her Little One though and I am guessing I will when she is 20, but she just isn't so little anymore. This year she started soccer, has scored a goal and is this fastest one on her team. She is in the Third Grade Honor Chorus at her school, is taking a beginning music class at school and came in 17th place out of about 65 kids ages 1-12 at the annual Megan's Wings Run last Saturday. She calls people on the phone, can do most of her homework by herself and is getting good grades. She likes to cook, play with the dogs, draw and try everything, but she still holds my hand when we walk to school and sits on my lap.
My big baby has really changed this year too and is now 11 1/2 and beautiful. She tried out for the volleyball team this week at her middle school and had her first heartbreaking disappointment when she didn't make it. She started gymnastics last month and has been making all sorts of new friends. She keeps her room clean! She just seems so much more mature this year than last year and is working harder this year at school than ever before. I'm actually very proud of her and believe that she is growing into a wonderful young lady but I miss her needing me. It is such a fine balancing act that you have to do as a parent. You want them to be independent and confident but still protect them. You want them to be able to handle things on their own and are proud of them when they do but a little disappointed that you're not quite as important anymore. Oh well. Tomorrow is Heather's birthday and Cheyanne's will come up before I know it. My babies are growing up.

Snow! Wind! Sunshine & 70?

Thursday morning we woke up to a pleasant surprise about 2 inches of snow. WOW! It is the end of April and we got snow. I woke the girls up at 6:00 am with a whisper of "look out the window" and they were dressed, brushed and fed by 6:30 and out the door. They were so excited to go play in the snow I couldn't really deny them the opportunity. Cheyanne and Heather played outside until 7:30 then went to school where believe it or not the kids are not allowed to play on the play ground when there is snow :(. The rest of the day was just windy and cold but not cold enough to keep the snow it had all melted away by 10:30 and sounded like a rain storm streaming off of the roof. It left quite the muddy mess. Today is was sunny and 70 I haven't even put a jacket on.

On other things the house is coming along nicely and I am sure it will look beautiful when it is done. We are almost done with the flooring and I am half way done with the painting. Last weekend I somehow turned 37 but I am not sure how it happened though. We didn't do too much celebrating because we were working on the house but Todd did take me out to dinner to King's Fish House in Rancho and I had the always yummy Parmesan crusted sand dabs and some shrimp cocktail. Tomorrow we are going to the Lemon Festival to hang out for awhile and hopefully see some friends then it will be back to working on the house for me again and back to work for Todd.

One Whole Month

Well we have been up here for a whole month now and still aren't fully settled in yet but we have made some progress. I have managed to paint the living room, Todd put up closet rods in the closets so we could hang up our clothes, took out the 3 dead trees right next to the house, trimmed some of the other trees, Todd hooked up the phones line so I could have a computer, put up a fence and we took down the Christmas lights. I still have to paint the whole rest of the house and will be working on that this week. I am hoping to do some of the flooring this weekend but we have another glitch so I don't know if that will happen.
We took a walk around here over the weekend and explored some of the dirt roads and "bunny trails" by our house. There are a million rocks out here so next time we go for a walk we will need to carry a backpack to carry the girls loot back in. They both have been interested in rocks since they could walk and I am thinking about getting some geology books so they can figure out what we have. I am a little rusty on my rock identification so I could use a brush up too. The other thing I need to get is a bug I.d. type book, there are so many bugs up here and as I found out Saturday even the harmless looking little caterpillar out here is really a demon in disguise. I thought that venomous caterpillars were only found in places like the Amazon or Florida but no they are here too. They fall out of the tree, land on you and you don't even know it until you brush up against it and your arm swells up, turns read and hurts. Crazy buggers, and I was worried about rattlesnakes.

Our First Snow

Well, we had our first snow at the new house today. Unfortunately it didn't last long enough to stick but we sure had some interesting weather today. The day started out cool and breezy (when I say breezy I mean a constant 30 mph wind with gusts of 50+ ) but it was only 51 degrees so it was still nice just chilly. At about 1:00 we had hard snow pellets, then lots of wind, more snow pellets and then huge gigantic snow flakes for about 2 hours. It is now almost 10 pm about 30 degrees with a wind chill factor of about 10 and clear as a bell out there. Hmmmmm. That is really all I have to say about that. It is freaking cold!!!! But you should see the stars and the mountains if you can stand to be outside long enough to look. :)

Out of the Stone Age

Well I am finally back, I had to take a few weeks off to get moved and then we had problems with the phones lines but I am back from the stone age yippie! We are mostly loving the new house but have had some issues that have made this a difficult move. Most of the issues have been with the plumbing, for the 1st week we had our keys we only had half of it working and hot water only in the bathrooms. We also didn't have any heat for the first week and although we have heat now we have a lot of breaks in the ducting so it isn't running as efficiently as it should. The guy is outside preparing an estimate right now for $2100.00 yikes. Pretty sure we can do that ourselves to. Todd says living here is like being on vacation and I agree but more like one of those vacations where you work like at a dude ranch or something. I haven't seen any cute guys bringing me fancy drinks and nobody has stepped up to give us a massage although I could sure use one. Anyways I am cutting this one short just wanted to let y'all know we were still here.

Some People

I cut this from an article on MSN about our recent storms. Please read below and see if you can answer my question.

"Dog rescued Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said 82,000 Californians were still
without electricity.
Also Friday, crews made a dramatic helicopter rescue of
a dog stranded on a flooded ledge in the Los Angeles River.
Crews first
dangled a life vest and float ring down to the dog. The animal ignored the items
and began sloshing through the current before stopping on another section of the
flooded ledge.
A helicopter then lowered a rescuer, who scooped up the
frightened animal. The chopper transported the dog to safe ground.
It was
not immediately clear how the dog got in the river."

What the heck did they expect the dog to do with the life vest ? It just made me giggle, I mean duh.

Use Your Imagination

View from house
Outside of house

Kitchen

Dining

Family

Living Room

Like the title says please use your imagination because I believe there is a lot of potential here. The view is beautiful and all of the windows face South towards Writewood so it will be beautiful when it snows. We will also get some snow up there but not too much. The other side has a desert view. There are plenty of trees planted on the site which I really like. I will post more pictures latter but wanted to give y'all an idea of what we are getting ourselves into. When we start working on it I will do a before and after photo comparison.

It is soooooo cold!!!!

I woke up this morning and boy was it cold. It was 31 degrees this morning when I dropped the kids off at school. I actually felt guilty because this is Southern California we don't exactly have fur parkas in our closets. The good part was it wasn't raining today. Yippie!!! I got to go on my walk this morning and although I looked like the kid in the old Malto Meal commercials when I left; I was stripping off my gloves and hood and unzipping the hoodie by the time I got to 18th street. I feel great, I love walking on crisp winter mornings and you should of seen Mt. Baldy. That is one of my favorite things about my walk is the whole way up Euclid I am treated to a beautiful view.

The rain is supposed to come back tomorrow night and it is supposed to warm up into the mid 50's tomorrow so that will be a welcome relief. The worst part of this rain then freezing temps is that it freezes the water in between my doors on my car and then I can't open the sliding side doors to let the kids out at school. I have to let them crawl through the front seat.

Well that is about all I have to say for now except wish me luck for fantasy football. Right now I am in 2nd place in my division and I am headed for the playoffs. So let us keep our fingers crossed that I keep up the good work and take it. I COULD GO ALL THE WAY!!!

Can't Think of Anything Clever This Morning.

Well it is raining which is really great except it is throwing a wrench in my exercise routine. Last week my friend Anita and I started walking up and down Euclid every morning 2.2 miles at 2 mph. It has been fun, we just stopped whining going up hill, I have almost got my new shoes broken in and now it is raining and 44 degrees outside.

Christmas is almost here I can't believe it. I am not even sure that I ever fully got to enjoy Thanksgiving and I feel like I just went to a Halloween party and now everyone has their lights up and I just took my bats down. Somehow I need to get decorated, get in the "Christmas Spirit", and shop within the next 3 weeks. Ahhhh!!!!!

Speaking of Christmas we did do something to get us in the mood. We went to the Upland Christmas Parade on the 5th with our friends John and Anita and some of their friends. It was fun and the girls definitely enjoyed it. they even had an elephant in the parade which kind of made me nervous because it was about 3 feet way from my kids in the front row and I watch too much animal planet. I really, really, really didn't want to end up on Your Worst Animal Nightmares but the elephant was cool and just did her thing and the kids thought it was really cool.

Next year we decided (Todd, John, Anita and I) that we will all buy Snuggies and enter into the parade as U.S.A. the Upland Snuggie Association. It doesn't seem that difficult to get into the parade there were quite a few of us going "huh? What or Who is that supposed to be?". It will be fun if we do it, we are even going to get Snuggies for the dogs and kids. I'll keep you posted.

Last but not least the girls got into the adult Halloween costumes last night and I took some pictures. They have been looking for creative ways to entertain themselves since they are grounded from the TV for two weeks. This was pretty creative and a little weird.