As promised, I'm back to do more updating (and in my defense....Blogger was down for a whole day, hence the lateness. This was supposed to be posted yesterday).

So, the weekend after my mom went home was Easter. We decided that it worked out well to at Thanksgiving to have dinner here and dessert across the street at the Tiegens, so we did that again for Easter. Heidi and her boys came over and the Tiegens joined us (obviously). Adam made a ham and homemade rolls. He even made them in the shape of bunnies....how cute:

We had a good time hanging out with everyone, as always...and especially enjoyed initiating Heidi into our Rockband band. Look for us on the standings (Blasted Man Rabbits / tiejas). We're pretty good :-p.

The next Monday, I went with the Lucas, Tiegens, and our new friends the Smiths to Santa Monica. There were 4 adults and 9 boys between the ages of 1 and 7. It was a little crazy, but a lot of fun...minus the MASSIVE sunburn I got on my legs. I'm still recovering from that mistake. Oops.

May has been a month of trying to reconnect with friends and myself, both which I somewhat lost touch with over the past several months. I've had lunch with several friends (Krystal Wolfard, Susie Sincock, Kimberlie Tiegen, Prisca Norris) and started working out with my friend Dania...not only because of the previously mentioned physical and emotional need to, but also to spend more time with her. I started going to Zumba classes on Tuesday nights with Tricia Smith, and STOPPED having Starbucks all the time :). (I love you Elizabeth...and I love Starbucks...but we're back to having it be a special rare occasion treat instead :)). I've spent time helping out my friend Prisca who went into pre-term labor and spent a couple weeks in the hospital by setting up meals for her and visiting during her hospital stay. We got to be a part of our baby friend Jared's birthday party at his family's house...which was an honor since it was only family other than us.

And one of the most unique things that I was able to do to reconnect with a friend (whom I had honestly never had that much of a chance to connect with in the first place) was going to a Hell's Kitchen taping with my friend Krystal. I had seen the tickets available online and knew Adam would love to go, so I jumped at the opportunity to snatch them up. However, Adam wasn't able to take off work that day, so in my efforts to find someone else to go with me, (I was bound and determined to go, even if I had to go myself.) Krystal saved the day. The taping took a LOOOOONG time (4 1/2) hours, so by the 2nd hour or so, we were no longer upset about them putting us up in the balcony where it's a far shot that we'll be on the show, but were instead happy that we had seats and that they were handing out water to us. It was definitely a fun and interesting experience, regardless of if we'll make the final cut, to see how a show like that is produced. The season starts on July 19th, and we'll be the second to the final show (it was the final challenge that they taped...where they typically have the last two chefs cook dishes for 5ish esteemed chefs to judge who's are better), so I'll keep you posted as to when it will actually air when I know, myself. My next goal is to get Adam and I tickets to actually dine there in a dinner service.

To catch you up on what I've done in the art classes...I mentioned that the week my mom came begun our unit on storybook art. The other three weeks of that included "It Looked Like Spilt Milk," (We made 3 dimensional art in the style of the book illustrations with a combination of shaving cream and glue that dries puffy), "Mouse Paint" (We used rubber mice (thanks Mom) to emulate what the mice in the book did by walking them through paint and using their feet to mix colors on our paper and also created our own paper cut out mice in the style of those in the book), and "Olivia" (We created our own Jackson Pollock paintings like Olivia did after she visited the art museum.) This next week, our classes are moving to Wednesdays and we'll being a unit studying some of arts masters. I think one of the units will have to involve taping paper under the tables and having them make some Michelangelo masterpieces. :)

Well, that pretty much brings us up to this week. In my effort to get out of my emotional slump, I was going to join Curves. Well, being frugal and adding up the yearly cost, I decided I'd rather save that money up for something else and do the exercising on my own. Once I decided that, several friends have offered to help me along the way. Thus, I've exercised every day (but today...we're calling this my day off) in the morning with Kim and in the evenings with Dania/Zumba. Tomorrow night is a softball game and I'll head back over to Kim's in the a.m. It's helped me feel better about myself, be more motivated, and already lose a bit of weight...so hopefully I'll be able to maintain motivation and not get burned out.

I also had my baby friend Aly, this week, for babysitting. She's asleep upstairs, right now, and this is her last day here for the week, but she's a lot of fun. She's been in a good mood all week, which is lucky considering she spent last week with Rubeola :(....poor baby. So...since we're pretty much caught up, I'm going to wrap this up. Again, my apologies for the break in updates, but life got the better of me...and I make no promises that it won't happen again, but I'll do my best.

Happy May!

Erin

After about a one month hiatus, I'm back. To be honest, I haven't felt much up to blogging. Since my friend Elizabeth left, I've had more time on my hands, which it turns out, can be a bad thing for me. I've had my days where I've just felt a little down on things, lonely, and just plain blah. I think part of it, too, was how I had been eating and how I hadn't been exercising. But, we'll get to that...

...In the meantime, I'll pick up with some "highlights" that have happened since we left off. In the week following the last post, my mom came from Illinois to visit. We had a good, and very busy, visit. The day after my mom came, she headed with me to base to babysit Elizabeth's kids. For the first time since January, Aubrey stayed, too. I thinks she was hoping my mom would give her special treatment....hehe. After Emma Grace got done with school, we took Elizabeth to lunch at the club on base for her birthday since Mid-Week Lenten worship prevented us from being able to join her for dinner.

Thursday, we attempted to get Day Of tickets to Ellen, but a turn in events landed us in the audience of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, instead. Since the Ellen people never called back, we were going to go on the NBC Studio tour in Burbank, but I asked if there were still show tickets and was excited to hear there were. I'm not really a huge fan of Jay Leno, but I enjoy seeing behind the scenes type things, so watching how a show is produced seemed fun. So my mom and I stood in line to get in line for an hour, got our numbers and sat in line for an hour, sat in the studio for an hour waiting for the show to start, and then sat for another hour through the show. All in all, it was a fun experience and I'm glad we did it.

Friday, my mom joined us for my art class. We were starting our 4 week series of projects based on story book illustrations. This particular one was based on Eric Carle's "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" The kids painted pieces of paper and then cut shapes out to make their own animals. It ended up being a little more complicated than I thought it might be, all in all, it was a success. After class, we went to say goodbye to the Strongs. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I fully intended on not crying, but in the end, even my mom cried. I guess when you spend practically every day with someone, it's harder to let go than you'd think.

Saturday, my mom had the opportunity to reconnect with one of her best friends from her military days. While my dad was in the Navy, my mom spent practically every day with her friend Teresa Rutherford, and my dad was roommates with her husband Gordon out on the ship. They hadn't seen each other in over twenty years. Through the wonders of Facebook, they reconnected and discovered that Teresa lives a mere 3 hours from me. So, on Saturday, we decided to meet up halfway in Manhattan Beach. We spent the day walking around, had lunch together, and my mom had time to "catch up" as much as possible in the short time we had to visit. I'm looking forward to my mom's next visit and hopefully reuniting again. I think those are the most noteworthy parts of the trip. We, of course, had lunch with friends, did Rockband, went to church, and all the other parts of normal life, too....and enjoyed it all :).

And...because I don't want this to get too long and Adam's on the way home....and you like to read journal entries :)...I'm going to end this hear and pick up again tomorrow (I PROMISE! :)). Thanks for not giving up on me. Enjoy the rest of your day!