Open Heart Surgery, three thousand miles, and one book

It's been an eventful past week. It all started last Wednesday afternoon on my way home from the doctors office with Leah. She had hand, foot and mouth virus. Poor thing. She's such a trooper. Hardly seemed bothered by it at all. I wouldn't have even taken her in (since it's a virus), but her foot looked infected. Anyway, that's besides the point of my story. I'm driving home and my dad calls me. He had just found out he had a major (rare) tumor on his heart and had to have open heart surgery in two days. WHAT??? Are you kidding me? This is serious. It was kind of a chaotic day. First I was going to Florida, then I wasn't. I didn't know what to do. His chance of survival was good. Very good. 95% even. So I decided to stay and make better arrangements for the next weekend. (It's not so easy to pick up and leave when you have two little ones). Friday morning arrived and his surgery took 3 hours. All went well. They had to remove a lot more of his heart tissue than anticipated because of the size of the tumor (which I'm told resembled a jelly fish). Things got a little scary at first and they had to put a pacemaker in. I decided I needed to be out there. So I flew out Saturday morning. By the time I got there (Saturday night), he was doing great. So great that he was getting out of intensive care. Well, what a relief. They took the pacemaker out and moved him to a regular heart surgery recovery floor. The next few days were spent back and forth at the hospital visiting and helping with what we could. It all went by so fast and by Tuesday morning I was flying home. My dad was doing so well that he was getting to go home that day also. He still has a good month or two of taking it easy and recovering, which will be extremely difficult if you know my Dad at all. He doesn't stop moving, which probably contributed to his quick recovery so far.

As a side note, I read Eclipse. Finished it on the last leg of my flight home, which I quite literally caught 5 minutes before it pulled back from the jetway. Guess that's what you get when you book your flight at the last minute. A tight connection. Anyway, the book was great. I thoroughly loved all THREE books and can't wait for the fourth one next Fall.

Two down...one to go

Well, I finished New Moon. It was really good. I had heard it wasn't as good as Twilight, but I must say that I think it was equally good. I need to take a break now. Two books in less than a week. My eyes are tired. I need to clean my house, play with my kids. You know...the real important things in life. Maybe I'll pick up Eclipse next week. Then I can be done. At least until next summer when her fourth book comes out. Ugh. It's gonna be hard to wait.

Lombardi Ranch (almost)

Well, it was a nice attempt. Me and some friends from my ward up here in Canyon Country attempted to head up to Lombardi Ranch. It's like a smaller version of Underwood Family Farm. Unfortunately, it was still closed until September 30th. Wish it would have told me that when I looked it up on the internet. Oh well. They had a fruit and veggie stand that was open and a couple of giant pumpkins the kids could play on. So we bought a few things and let the kids play for a while. We left with mud covering our shoes and covering the wheels of my stroller. I felt bad for getting the girls all excited to see animals and a REAL LIVE farm, so we headed to McDonalds for some lunch and playtime.



Ashlyn didn't want her picture taken, so she kept running from me. This was the best I could get.



Leah and her little friend Tucker. Aren't they cute?

Twilight

Well, that didn't take long. I started Twilight Friday night at the gym and finished this afternoon (Saturday) after reading for about 6 hours. A BIG BIG thank you goes to my wonderful husband for being tolerant of me reading all day and for playing with the girls and keeping them happy. Shame shame shame on all of you for constantly talking about this series of books and how GREAT they are. How do you have time to read??? I want to know....REALLY??? HOW??? Most of you have children too.

It's a sickness. Once I start, I can't stop. That's why I haven't even purchased the last Harry Potter. I can't get sucked into another book. Ugh. It was really good though. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have to admit, I will probably be getting "New Moon" soon. I think I need serious help.

Sometimes you gotta make cookies

When you're all out of ideas of how to entertain your children, yet there are still two hours before Daddy gets home, what do you do???? Make cookies. What else!! Yum yum. I should have gotten some pictures of the girls helping dump in the ingredients, but I didn't think about it. So here are a few pictures of the girls EATING the cookies. That's the best part anyway right?






P.S. To all you Stephenie Meyer fans, I have finally jumped on the band wagon and started reading her first book Twilight. I'm 50 pages in and I must say it's a pretty fun book. I'm sure it will only get better.

First Day of Preschool

Everyone else is doing it, so I thought I needed to also. Just kidding. It's been so cute to see all the blogs of "the first day of school". I especially think it's cute that everyone talks about how the younger sibling was so sad to see their older sibling leave them. Leah was no exception. So we went to Under the Sea to help Leah forget about it. But after only one hour there, she started going for the gate and trying to leave. Then, when we finally did pick Ashlyn up, Leah insisted on holding Ashlyn's hand all the way home. Cute little sisters.

Ashlyn had a great time at her new little preschool. She is in the "orange" group and so she got to help feed the animals on her very first day. They have hamsters, guinea pigs, a tarantula, a little turtle, fish, ducks(that they hatched from eggs). It's crazy, but very cute. And she even made a friend. We don't know her name. Just that she had "light" hair (blonde I'm assuming), a pretty necklace and a purple shirt. Funny the things that stand out to kids. Now Ashlyn wants a necklace and a ribbon for her hair. Don't know where the ribbon came from. Maybe someone else had one on. Anyhow, here are a few pictures.

Labor Day

Paul has been working on his Helicopter tutorial DVD so much lately, that we decided Labor Day needed to be a day spent with just the family. So, even though we were suppose to be at a friends BBQ (sorry friends), we spent the day hanging out together and having fun. We went to the pool in the morning and then relaxed around the house. Later in the day we went over to the mall to ride the carousel and then to BJ's for some yummy pizza and pizzookie. It was DE-LICOUS. I didn't get any pictures at the pool, but here are a few at dinner. We went home stuffed to the brim, but happy.