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!