Busy lives

I try to keep a relatively calm pace at this point in life but recently things have been getting out of hand. I think it is due to the ages of the kiddos still at home. Lianna is much more involved in things. That would be things that are away from the 100 yard radius I like to travel in! Annie too, is becoming more involved in things. We have a policy that "if it isn't on the calendar, it don't happen!" (Yes, I realize that the previous quote is very poor English.)
I still try to organize and keep things relatively stress free.

I realized yesterday that busyness and confusion really is a part of the American lifestyle. We have so much to do and so many modern conveniences that it can play major mind games with us. Let me give an example here, I was talking to a wonderful person on the phone. (I know he is wonderful because he was doing dishes before going to work!) I had called him and knowing he was at home I called his landline phone and not his cell. I could hear the dishwater and he mentioned that he was doing dishes and cleaning up before leaving for work in about 5 minutes. We chatted away, him plotting to call his sister shortly after midnight this morning to wish her a happy birthday and discussed other matters when suddenly with no cutting in and out, he was gone. I tried calling back to no avail.

In a couple minutes my phone rang and it was the aforementioned wonderful person calling back. I asked what had happened thinking perhaps he dropped the phone into the dishwater when he hesitated. The hesitation was followed by a rather sheepish voice mentioning that I had called on the landline phone just before he was heading to work. Turns out that in his scurry to get to the car and head for work he forgot that his house phone would only reach about a hundred yards away! He wasn't talking on his cell phone!

Now I know that the aforementioned wonderful person may read this and think, just think, about writing and sharing some of my most embarrasing moments in retaliation for this post BUT !!! he should remember that my most embarrasing moments were when I had teens and their friends around and allowed them to have late nights and many activities. Perhaps the aforementioned wonderful person should consider having children to REALLY understand that state of mind!!! PLUS, I have more embarrassing moment stories about this previously mentioned wonderful person than he does about me!!
He is pretty wonderful! :-)

Now, onto OLDER things! Today is the 26th anniversary of my being in labor for 21 hours! Today is Melissa's birthday! She mentioned to me this morning that her job considers it a paid holiday! I suggested that they should pay me, afterall, I'm the one who worked hard to bring her into this world. Why is she getting paid? She replied, "Mom, they couldn't pay you enough to make up for that." AMEN to that!!
Happy birthday honey, we love you!

Isn't summer camp wonderful?

I hated summer camp! I went twice. Once to a day camp which I detested going to and then to an overnight camp out of state. The day camp was only about a 10 minute drive from our summer cottage. The lady would come pick me up and I'd be dropped off later in the afternoon. Monday I was curious. Everyone talked so excitedly about it I thought it was going to be great.
I soon discovered that activities were done in 1/2 hour slots. Hey, I didn't want to make crafts I wanted to canoe and swim. When swimming time came I discovered that the water was really yucky. If I were at home I'd have clear water, sandy bottom and not 100 people shouting and kicking up gook. I decided I didn't want to swim afterall, well, there anyway but was told I had to. Canoeing became a problem because you had to go in a canoe with 4 people and take turns paddling. I got stuck on the floor for the first turn but those in the seats didn't have a clue what they were doing and by the time someone came and got us our canoeing time slot was up.
Tuesday morning my Mom told me it would be better - it wasn't. Wednesday I didn't want to go at all but was coerced and obeyed. Thursday I flat out refused and Friday they didn't bother coming to pick me up. I was very glad.
The camp away was slightly better but I suffered homesickness terribly. I still had the "I can do more of what I want to do on my summer vacation at home" syndrome. I signed up for the wrong activity and didn't have the guts to tell anyone until Wednesday night and it was to late to change.
The following year I won a trip back to the overnight camp but with a very giving heart (ya right) I gave it to someone less fortunate! Everyone thought I was so sweet......... truth be known I DIDN'T WANT TO GO!
Then comes my kids. I didn't encourage camp because I didn't want them to have a horrible time! When M & B asked to go I was shocked! I couldn't believe they would want to go. They went and had a good time. Mel even went a second time.
Now that Lianna and Annie are 'of age' they asked to go. Lianna went last year and was still talking about it this spring! She also went to the camp's winter retreat.
This is where my post really begins! At the winter retreat she was snowboarding and flipped. She suffered a concussion. She had swollen arm and leg on one side and a really bad headache - this being two days after the crash upon returning home! She seemed to get better but then started with severe dizzyness. ER here we come. About $1,200 later they told us that they really couldn't tell us anything! Yes, you read that right. She needed to lay low ( this is Lianna we're talking about) for a month, no horseback riding (she had just gained that privilege back after waiting a month after surgery), no sliding, snowboarding, skating etc... This didn't go over well with her but she complied.
This summer she's definitely back to normal and wants to go back to camp. She did and when she was returned to us guess what?????? Another concussion. They were playing a game tht was similiar to football without the ball! Complete with running across a field and tackling BUT without the safety equipment! Yup, she got tackled and wham! another concussion. She also took a soccer ball direct in the face but forgot to tell me that! She came home with a headache, fatigue, dizzyness etc... The head and dizzyness abated after some sleep and lots of water. Water? oh, that's right, she told me she didn't drink much water because it tasted really bad. It was in the 90's last week! With humidity! No water? She also had funny cold symptoms which I attributed to sinus trauma from the soccer ball. She is much better now and only has the cold symptoms BUT they're not from the soccer ball! It's a knock down drag out cold -- I know, I woke with it early this morning!
Annie is at the same camp this week, in fact, the same cabin! I can't wait until she gets home! I wonder what stories she'll have. They're not suppose to bring candy but we did let her take her raisins, she'd die without her power food!
Lianna says she had an awesome week and wants to go back, what will Annie think? This is her first year.
You want to know what I think?

Thoughts from a Golden

Okay cousin Carina, I heard alot about your blog diary and the human they call "Mom" left the computer running so I thought I'd sneak in and give it a try. You are a couple months older than I so perhaps you have some answers. I asked the older golden, Sunshine, but she just sighed and said, "You have a lot to learn pup". So here goes,

I don't understand humans. They tell me I'm adorable, they teach me to 'come', they praise me when I do and give me cookies and hugs. One of my favorite things, maybe even better than cookies is when the "Mom" human scratches in that certain place on my chest. So today she's bent over, on her knees on the ground. She looked so sad. I mean she was tearing all the beautiful green stuff out of the ground. She had to have been upset because she waited for a long time until all that white stuff left the ground for the green stuff to show up and now she was pulling it up. I really don't understand humans. Anyway, I didn't want her sad so I ran over to her and tried to give her a big wet kiss but she yelled at me! "Okay", I thought, "I need to put on the cuteness". I flopped down and started squirming around, digging in with my paws and looking at her with the most adorable golden eyes imaginable. She still yelled. Then MY human, Annie, came running. "Oh," I thought, "She is going to make 'Mom' see how cute I am." I was shocked that she grabbed that thing they keep around my neck and hauled me off telling me "no, no, no"!

Sometimes this bathroom thing confuses me too. If I try to go inside they get mad and throw me out. "Okay", I think, "I've got it, go outside". Then I trot out the door to the long green stuff with the pretty smelling colorful things on them to ' go' figuring they don't like the smell and the pretty things will cover it and they start yelling at me to go! I mean, I'm trying to go!

So cousin Carina, can you in your 8 months of wisdom help me?

~Yoshi

Why the 4th?

I was going to write yesterday, really! The problem was what to write. After 14 hours on the road Monday July 3, I awoke to an eleven year old peanut wanting to go to the parade. While getting ready I was preparing my mind by reminding myself of what the 4th of July was all about. The freedoms this country has are immense. There is so much we overlook. We can worship how we choose, work where we want and choose our profession, choose our college, vote, run for a political office, gripe about those who did run for office, say what we want about the state of affairs, walk through town without having a passport and buy whatever(just about) we want without said passport. The list grows and grows. We are the only country that enjoys these priviledges and while thinking about this my desire to celebrate by driving the distance to the parade was rising. I would go anyway because my little ladybug wanted to go.

While there my appreciation of what we were celebrating grew even more as we saw and heard all kinds of varying messages. What really threw me though was the woman passing out papers on why having military and war is wrong, why our present government was in shambles and corrupt etc... She was proposing that we should never go to war, never show force but have the strongest 'peace' policy ever to create peace in the world! I must interject here that among my good friends that I chose to stand with during the parade, one took her elbow and told her, "Yes, I agree, we need to have the strongest peace policy in the world and that would mean the top rated, most powerful firepower!" (can you guess who?)

The irony that she had the right to say this, choosing our country's independence celebration as her mode of 'getting the word out' was enormous. Why was it that she has this 'right'? Because of wars our forefathers fought, blood shed for her right to say there should be no war-ever!

One may not agree with a certain war or conflict but the basic truth is that if we have the ability to KEEP peace we stand strong. In a perfect world we wouldn't have to ever show force but that world isn't here yet.

I'm glad our country has the freedoms it does, we are quickly losing a lot of them and if America doesn't wake up and appreciate what we have we, as a nation, will fall. In the meantime think about what the 4th of July really stands for and how we achieved it, thank a veteran! Sure, watch for the hat and walk up to him and say thank-you!