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!

Spring Has Sprung!

In the past several months, I have come to realize how heavily I rely on my planner.  Things often get so busy that, if I didn't write down what I was supposed to be doing, I would completely forget to do things.  Last week was no different, though most of the chaos was unplanned.  Thus why I haven't gotten to this entry earlier.  I had a whole paragraph typed out to explain how my week went, but I decided not to include it since much of it was a blessing in disguise and a chance for me to learn about giving of myself and sharing my resources.  While it was crazy, it was a huge blessing for me to be able to serve in the many and various ways I was given the opportunity to do, and thus, I don't want to detract from that by making it sound like it was a burden by listing it all off.


Regardless, it WAS a busy week, and this will be no different.


Some highlights of the past week are worthy of mentioning, though.  In the midst of all the chaos, I was able to grow some friendships that I hadn't otherwise had the opportunity to do.  Tuesday, I was able to go to lunch at Panera with Michelle Farmer, someone I originally met at Wayside and have ran into on several occasions, but never had the chance to get to know much in depth.  We had a great conversation (so much so that we didn't realize that there were literally people standing around watching us waiting to snag our table the minute we moved) and I'm looking forward to getting to know her more as time goes on.


I also had the opportunity to go on the Edwards' Officers' Spouses Club Retreat.  I have to admit that I was initially severely hesitant to agree to go.  Over the past several months of being involved, I've found it somewhat hard to connect with many of the ladies in the group.  I realize that the majority of them are older than I am and already have kids of varying ages which I've learned is a barrier for most people.  I also don't live on base and am not actually a military wife, which also makes it harder for people to relate to me, though I try my best to relate to them.  In addition, I've found some of the common interests of the club don't as much apply to me (I'm very frugal, hate shopping, I'm not much for dressing up or fashion, etc.).  And to add to all that, I've found myself to be very busy and time management has led me to miss several of the events.  All that being said, leading up to the retreat, I have to say that I wasn't even sure I was going to be a part of OSC, next year.  In hindsight, I am glad that I went.  While all the above qualities still apply, I feel like I did have some breakthroughs with several of the ladies.  I added many new people to my Facebook friends (which we all know makes friendships official, right ;)?), as well as getting to know some ladies that I didn't know as well a lot better than I would have, otherwise.  The ladies that I spent most of the weekend with were really great and made me feel like a part of the pack.  I didn't once question myself amongst them and didn't feel like any of the things I was lacking (kids, military affiliation, etc.) mattered to them.  The ironic part is that several of them will be moving away in the next months.  However, going to the retreat has made me rethink my position on "renewing my membership," so to speak.  I have met some really cool ladies, even in the last couple weeks. It still might take a little more convincing, but hopefully some of those cool ladies will help me weigh the pros and cons of it all when decision time does come around.  I guess I didn't even mention in all that what we actually DID at the retreat :-p.  We headed to Temecula, CA and walked around Old Temecula.  It's really cute and has a lot of nice shops and boutiques.  We also did some wine tasting, olive oil tasting, ate at some nice restaurants, did some sight seeing, and hung out.  There are some pictures (the ones I'm in, anyway) on my Facebook page, but since it's not my album, I can't share the link on here.  (Sorry Grandma).  Long story short, I'm glad that I went.  I think one of my favorite moments was went Michele was lost looking for the hotel when the Pink song came on and she belted, "Took a wrong turn...once or twice...."  Good times :).


As for my art classes, last week we learned about how you can use colors to express your emotions.  We read "My Many Colored Days" by Dr. Seuss and looked at how the artist used different colors in his paintings to represent different emotions.  Then we talked about how they made some of the colors they used.  The kids picked out some colors that they wanted to paint with and we painted self-portraits of us happy and surrounded them with things that made us happy.  All the kids did a great job.  They got to share with their friends about what they painted.  One little boy told me that his was actually him sad because he was sad at home, and the others all painted themselves and talked about that, as well.  This week, we'll talk about warm and cool colors and paint landscapes with whichever they like better.


We lost our softball game, last week, but we tried our best!  I actually caught a fly ball and got someone out at first (not in the same play, but both things I was proud of :)).  Regardless, hopefully losing the past two games will help insure that we won't get demolished like we did last season.  The last couple games have been more fun than last season, so if it keeps up that way, hopefully it'll be more enjoyable. 


Anyway, I'm heading into town with Adam tonight to meet up with the Wrights and Strongs for dinner at a newish restaurant in Lancaster called BEX.  It's our first time there, so I'm excited to see how it is.  Until next time....

March Madness

Well, the second of the two baby friends I watched today just left.  I guess that gives me a few minutes before Adam comes home to try and cram in a journal entry.  


My second art class last Friday went pretty well.  I was shocked to have five children in my class as I thought there were only five signed up, one was absent, and I only had 3 there the week before.  Regardless, things went well.  It was a little more chaotic this go around since the three new children were all boys, two of which weren't really sure about staying without their parents...and thus didn't.  I wasn't that uncomfortable with them in the room...and actually taught them something new, as well, so that made me feel good.  We learned about shades and tints by coloring on black paper, doing some paint mixing in plastic bags, made a value scales and a couple collages.  I think they had a good time.  I think this week we'll learn about using color to express emotions.


I said that Adam's been working a lot, and this weekend was no exception.  He worked most of the day Saturday and Sunday morning, but I'm sure he didn't mind missing my Scentsy party as a result :-p.  I had a good time with the friends that made it to my house for the party (thanks for coming!) and Adam and I headed across the street afterwards for some pizza and Rockband.  Sunday, Adam (like I said) worked in the morning and I headed to church.  We both got home around lunch time and then caught up on TV shows we watch that we had missed with the crazy week we had (I think I was home for about one night last week!).


A lot of our friends have been going through some really tough times, lately, and that's been on my heart a lot.  There's been a lot of illness, death, and other really hard things going on.  If you wouldn't mind joining us in sending up a collective prayer for friends and family that need some strength right now, we sure would appreciate it.  My prayers and thoughts are especially with the town of Byron, IL and the friends and family of Megan Clift over these next two days.


I've been working hard on collecting donations for Relay for Life.  My church has put a team together and I'll be walking the relay in less than 2 weeks.  Thanks to many of my friends and family, I very quickly surpassed my original goal of $100...and by pretty quickly, I mean in less than 4 hours.  I decided to increase my goal to $250, and I currently only have to collect $10 more to reach that goal!  I am amazed at all of your generosity and am so grateful for your contributions and to be able to help American Cancer Society more than I originally thought. To think that I was initially hesitant to even participate (I'm a little busy :-p) and knowing how much you have backed me up makes me that much more grateful that I decided to do it, afterall.  Thanks!


The highlight of today for me has been watching Colin "play" guitar.  Here's a picture:

He was very careful with the pick and refused to play it any other way.  He also, surprisingly, only dropped it inside the guitar once!  I think we have a future rockstar in our midst.  I'm gonna miss him when he moves in a few weeks!

Well, Adam's home and I have laundry to do.  This might shock some of you, but you can't get much done with a baby around :-p.  I hope all of you had a good week/weekend and look forward to hearing from you soon.    -Erin

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I can say that since I haven't posted since last July, right?  I can't believe how fast time gets away from you, but feel blessed that I've been busy enough to neglect this journal (as strange as that may sound).


Life has been a whirlwind since we returned home from our Christmas trip to Illinois.  I've stayed busy with Homemade Gourmet (which I coincidentally started doing just last journal post :-p).  I haven't tried too hard to schedule parties since I've also stayed quite busy with other things, but I've had events pretty regularly every couple weeks or so.  I decided to dedicate my profits from that to our friends in ministry that we regularly support.  It's taken a quite a while to even accrue a profit to speak of, but hopefully my friends will soon reap the benefits.


I also started teaching my friend Elizabeth's daughter Aubrey preschool at my house the week after we got back.  While that was short lived (she wasn't quite ready for that, yet), I do still watch her younger brother Colin (and occasionally one or both of his sisters) at least twice a week.  They are fun kids and keep me pretty busy, but I'm going to miss their family when they move next month! 


On top of those two things, I recently (as in today) started teaching art classes at Edwards Air Force Base.  While I was initially VERY apprehensive about starting something new in my life and about how they would be received (by both parents and children alike), today's class gave me a lot of hope and joy about teaching.  This session I have just one class of 3 and 4 year olds.  The five of them signed on to learn about color and todays lesson we dove right in with a lesson about primary and secondary colors.  We mixed colors and made color wheels and rainbows.  The kids were SO great.  They were super attentive and responsive and seemed like they had a great time.  Aubrey is in my class there, too, and I was really proud of how well she did.  Next week, we'll learn about shades and tints.  I'm excited to continue forward and to watch the program grow.  In fact, it went so well that I'm toying with the idea of starting a class in collaboration with the Palmdale Mom's Club so non-Edwards people can be involved, as well.


In other news, Adam and I went to Death Valley camping a couple weekends ago.  I'm very glad that we went early in the year.  It was already really warm.  Not unbearably so, yet, but we did each drink at least a gallon of water per day we were there.  There were a lot of really neat things to see, though, that we don't have in this neck of the desert.  It was nice, too, just to get away for a weekend together.  We hadn't been on a trip for a while, so the quality time with no commitments was very enjoyable.  Here's the link to some of the pictures we took that I've posted on Facebook:


ttp://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070384&id=48701321&l=f0da58d746


Adam and I are taking another swing (pun intended) at softball, again.  Our church signed up for the Spring league in Lancaster and our first game is tonight.  If you ever wanted an illustration of the difference in weather between the midwest and here, starting your spring softball league in Mid-March should do the trick.  And if that wasn't enough, the last game of summer league was on my birthday (IN NOVEMBER!!!).  I wasn't too fond of my experience last go around, however, we found out after the season was over that we were misplaced in the top bracket of the league because one of our qualifying games had been smoked out by a wildfire.  This season, the city promised to put us in the lower bracket, so hopefully we won't get stomped and it'll be more fun for me :).


So, I think that covers a good chunk of the notable happenings going on.  In any free time we come across, we've been enjoying spending time with our neighbors and trying to reconnect with some friends.  We had what seems like TONS of birthday parties to attend, I've played bunco a few times, Adam's working on finishing building a workbench, and I have tried to keep up on the house.  We play a lot of Rockband, try to keep up with some TV shows, but mostly find enough time once all that is scheduled in to come home and crash.  


All that being said, I'll do my best to do better on keeping you up to date on our lives.  If you're ever curious and this doesn't suffice, I'm always just a phone call away (which is much easier for me to keep up with since I can multi-task while I chat!)  I'd love to catch up with you when you and I have coinciding free time :).  Until then, peace out!

Well, talk about time getting away from you!  I can't believe the month is already over!  Needless to say, I've kept myself pretty busy.  I'm honestly wishing I had a huge cup of coffee right now, and the day isn't even close to being over!  Luckily, I purchased a planner at the beginning of the month, so even though it's been crazy and I'm kind of wiped out, I don't have to remember what we did to be able to tell you :).

This month, I started a new direct sales business called Homemade Gourmet.  It's basically a company that sells dinner mixes, drink mixes, desserts, etc. to make cooking super quick and super easy.  I am far from a chef and I don't really like cooking, so this was right up my alley.  I am so excited to be able to make awesome food for Adam to come home to instead of having to rely on him to make dinner from what we have lying around and do it before our stomachs eat themselves in hunger :-p.  Things have been going pretty well, so far.  I had a "cook-off" party to get my business somewhat off the ground running.  It's been kind of a slow start, but it's definitely a relationship business, so I've been doing my best to build my contacts and referrals and get the ball rolling that way.  My friend Elizabeth has been gracious enough to double book a party she was already having and include my business in it, as well...so my first official party will be August 7th at her place.  Hopefully I'll get some bookings off of that start moving forward some more.

We've also been working hard on building relationships with our friends and neighbors.  Up until this week (which is too busy to even attempt) we've been having friends over for dinner pretty regularly (which Homemade Gourmet also is awesome for....especially since, for one of the meals, all I had to do was throw it in the crock pot and have it ready when they got here).  We've also, sadly, had to say goodbye to several of our good friends that have moved, this month.  Camille and Will, Bethany and Paul (and Stevie), and Leanna and Nathan (and Makaela) have all hit the road.  We'll miss all of them, but are sincerely hoping that our paths will cross very soon.

Adam and I have also joined a softball league with our church.  We had our first game a couple weeks ago and our second one this Friday.  While the 9 p.m. start time isn't really ideal for me, it is far too hot (100-120 degrees) to do it any earlier than that.  Our first game was really successful, and it was really fun to see how well everyone did!  I'm looking forward to our game on Friday...if the league would ever tell us what time it's going to be at.  

Last week was quite the busy and random week for me...but very rewarding because of that.  Monday, I got to have coffee with Sarah Tyndall, a girl from our church.  We actually graduated with the exact same degree, so it was fun getting to sit down and talk to someone we both could relate to (there's too many engineers around here that don't get it ;)).  

Tuesday, I ended up spending the whole day over at my friend Elizabeth's playing with her daughters to give her a break and some adult conversation :-p.  

I spent the next morning with her, as well.  We took her daughter to preschool, her other daughter and son to the doctor, and then spent the rest of the morning hanging out with my friend Jen and her two kids.  When I got home, I set to getting the house ready for dinner with the Fodges before we had to say goodbye, and then they rushed off to rehearsal at church, and we rushed off to The Well for some heart to heart with Pastor Todd. 

Thursday, I stayed home to let Ryan and Sandy's (who also moved...but only about 3 blocks away, so we permitted it.  That and they're renter is the new vet, so we approved of that choice, as well :)) cleaning crew into their old place.  While they worked, I had visits from Laura Gulley, Leanna to bring Makaela over while she ran errands, and Daniela our new neighbor from down the street.  When Daniela left, I got a call from Kim asking for help getting a splinter out of her elbow.  Then Adam and I scarfed some food down and headed to church for worship practice (Adam just dropped me off, not actually rehearsed. :)).

Friday, I spent the day doing stuff around the house and baking pecan pie muffins for Saturday.  Kim and Jason had us over to play Rockband and have dinner that night, which was SUPER fun.  We're looking forward to doing it again!

Saturday, I sat at Ryan and Sandy's garage sale with Ryan all morning.  They were gracious enough to let me set up a Homemade Gourmet table (hence the pecan pie muffins for samples) and I think it was good exposure.  I'm not sure if anything will come of it, but it never hurts to get your name out there...and i definitely handed out a bunch of cards.

That night, we headed down to North LA to have dinner with Adam's cousin Dan and his new wife Amanda.  We went to the Eclectic Wine Bar and Grille thanks to the gift certificate we got for signing up as NPR subscribers last year.  It was really expensive, but nice to splurge and great to spend time with family.

So that, in a nutshell, brings us up to this week.  Yesterday was a pretty easy going day for me.  I spent most of the morning being lazy and then caught a burst of motivation around 2 and worked on straightening up the house and cleaning some boxes out of the garage.  And today, I practice for worship rehearsal with Heidi, spent a little time across the street at the Tiegens', worked on prepping my new Homemade Gourmet catalogs, ate some lunch, did some work for Create, and now this.  In less than 30 minutes, I'll also be off to church again for the first day of Create (our art camp I mentioned several entries ago).  It's going to be 3 nights of teaching kids about Jesus, God, and printmaking.  I'm pretty excited about it, and while there won't be tons of kids, I think it'll be a lot of fun with the ones we have....and good practice for if we ever do it again with a larger group.

So, with Create the next three days, worship practice Wednesday, and our softball game Friday, I'm bracing myself to be pooped by the weekend.  However, I'm very excited to say that we'll be spending the evening with none other than Candace Hatchett in Pasadena on Saturday...and that we'll also be heading to Redondo Beach to hit up Adam's friend Bob Wilson's homebrew party.  I'm playing piano at church Sunday, so with all this excitement and not much sleep...this could be interesting :).

Well, we hope everyone has been having a great summer, and that you do your best to make the most of the rest of it.  I have to say, I'm super excited about some of the things we'll be doing in August....but I'll leave you on the edge of your seat, for now :).  Thanks for all your love and prayers.  Things keep getting better in CA, and I'm super excited to see what happens in the months ahead!  Happy rest of July!

It's update time, again.  Unlike the last couple weeks, this one has gone by pretty fast.  Perhaps that's because I spent the last 3 days making curtains.  Regardless, I can't believe tomorrow is Friday...and that Adam doesn't have to work for the next 4 days.  Both are crazy notions to me, at the moment.

So, to pick up where we left off: Last week was a rough week for me as far as being emotional goes.  It's safe to say that adjusting to a new place is definitely not something that happens over night (or is even complete after over a year).  I was really disappointed that we didn't get to see the Woods' while they were in California, and that more or less snowballed into me feeling a lot of loneliness and homesickness for my friends and family back in the midwest.  Saturday was no different.  I was really antsy and, while we had planned to spend the day relaxing and doing nothing, we ended up filling it up the morning and afternoon with grocery shopping and softball shopping.  Then we headed to Adam's friend Keith's new house to check out his new digs.  We ended up staying up really late (mostly because I was being emotional :-p) and then hitting the hay.

Sunday was Camille's last day at The Well and Arianna Niebling's baptism.  Both left most of the church in tears (I say most because I know at least one person (Adam) was not crying.)  To add to the fun, we also went out to a surprise lunch for my friend Christy Starr's 30th birthday.  We ended up going to the restaurant we swore we'd never eat at again after we had gone with Adam's aunt and uncle Julie and Jack, but it was for a good cause.  We learned yet another important lesson, though...do not eat out (especially at this place) right before softball practice.  It definitely didn't sit well.  And to add to the discomfort, the 106 degree temperature taught me what it's like to be seconds away from passing out.  Good times.  Needless to say, the rest of the evening was spent drinking a lot of water and trying to recover.  

So the last few days, like I said, I've spent the better part of making curtains to try and save on our cooling bill.  Strangely, some of the fabric I used seems to have an unbearable odor to them now that I'm done.  I've washed them 3 times, today, so we'll see if that did the trick.  Otherwise, I'll be making at least three more pairs of curtains before I call it quits.  I took a break from sewing, today (the sewing room gets quite hot during the day, so it was a welcome change) to paint.  I'd say I finished the gray, but some touch ups still need to happen, so I'm reserving the celebration until I feel completely done.

In other news, we met a couple of new neighbors, last night, and got to know the next door neighbors a bit better, too.  It was quite interesting.  The couple that just moved in across and down the street seem pretty cool.  He (Lee) works on base and his wife (Daniella) is from Germany and is going to go back to school in a month full-time to get a nursing degree.  They just moved from a rental in California City.  I somewhat volun-told Adam that he was going to help them get stuff inside, and though they didn't really need much help (Lee's dad came in to help) it was good to go say hello.  On the way back, we stopped next door to say hello to Tim and Sirell who were sitting out on their patio.  We figured it would be nice to talk to the neighbors we've "known" longer, too :-p.  We learned that Sirell is pregnant with her 11th child  and has served as a surrogate for the last 7 pregnancies.  She has 3 children of their own, and then 6 surrogates with another on the way.  I've never met a surrogate in real life, so it was really interesting to learn that we live next door to one.  She said this is her last pregnancy, but she keeps in touch with all the families she's carried for.  Crazy.  

So, I guess I'll take care of what is somewhat of an elephant in the room for me, on this day.  For people that don't know, four years ago today, my dad passed away very unexpectedly of a brain aneurism.  While I think about my dad everyday, there's certain days and moments that are harder than others.  Our family does their best to be strong...that's just the type of people we all are...and we try not to dwell on the day in a negative light, but there's so much of my dad still around during this time of year that's it's hard not to tear up and relive the moments of that day.  So much has happened in the past four years, and yet, it's still really hard to believe it's been that long since we had to say goodbye.  Thankfully, we have very understanding, loving, and supportive friends and family that surround us, hold us up, and give us strength.  Thanks for all your love and prayers.  You will never know how much it means to us that we are not alone.  Thank you.  That's all folks.