Going to the Holy Land

Just preparing everyone for a potential absence again.

We will be leaving on Sunday to go to Israel. We are going to see my family and friends there, but also to celebrate my Grandma's 80th birthday with her. I can't wait for everyone to see Ari because the last time she was there was when she was 15 months old (last year) and she has totally changed since then. Everyone is going to love how independent and sassy she is not to mention how adorable!

We plan on touring some of the time that we are there and hopefully, if I remember to pull out my camera, I will have some great touring as well as family shots. I'm not sure about the access I will have to my computer, so posting after Saturday will be hit and miss at best. I do get back a week later and will post then.

For now, my days are filled with last minute things I need to get done. I've even made a list a mile long of everything we need to pack so I don't forget anything. When I say a mile long, I'm not joking! Traveling with a little one for 14 hours to a foreign country for a week is just asking to have back pain through an airport. Oh well... that's what vacations are for... Right? Recuperation! We'll see if it turns out to work that way.

My brother and his wife flew over yesterday. They had a layover in Brussels and lo and behold, the people of Brussels who work in the airline industry decided to have a strike. The airline that they were on had to put them on a bus to Amsterdam and they caught a flight out of there. The bus ride was hours long and delayed them quite a bit. They finally did fly into Israel, but as it turns out, the airport there is a complete zoo. Apparently, there are planes coming in from Georgia (the country not the state) as people try to escape the war breaking out. It's just nice to know that they finally made it to the hotel and all was well with them.

Now I can only pray we don't have any adventures like them. We have a direct flight, so hopefully no surprises. I don't DO surprises. Hehe...

I'm off to bed to dream about lists and all the things I have forgotten.

Where's my money?

Just a funny little story I had to share.

So.. I'm getting ready to take my daughter and my mom somewhere but afterwards I know I am going to be running to exercise so I throw on exercise clothes. I look in my jeans pockets to see if there is anything there that I should be taking with me and I spot a dollar bill and think, what the hell. Of course, my exercise outfit doesn't have any pockets so I put the dollar between the waist band of the exercise pants and my belly thinking, I just need to remember to move it to my wallet when I get downstairs.

Fast forward to the bathroom of the LA Fitness and guess what falls on the floor as I pull down my pants. Hmm.. oh ya. Where am I gonna put this now... Okay... so it went in the bra just for the duration of the bathroom visit and once I'm finished I put it back at the waist thinking, well, it made it through exercise, it can make it to the car. As murphy's law would have it, as I am walking out the door of the LA Fitness, I feel something on my hip, INSIDE my pants. *gulp* Okay.. stay cool. Keep walking... Ack! Now it is at the juncture of my leg and hip. "I JUST HAVE TO MAKE IT TO THE CAR!" Keep walking... Um... Now it is stuck to my thigh. "PLEASE DON'T FALL OUT IN THE PARKING LOT!" and...... WHEW! I made it! I made it!

Moral of the story: Don't "waist" your money! Hehe...

Ari & Jasmine

Ari has made a new friend and her name is Jasmine. With Jasmine's mother's permission, here are some photos of these girls. They are quite a pair!

We went to the zoo one day and the girls found this caterpillar to climb all over and of course at first they wanted to take it all for themselves, but they learned the fun of sharing.

Unfortunately, I missed the main event, but we said, give kisses, and the girls actually gave each other a smooch. It was so adorable! This was right after.

Then we caught some music and hula hooping and the girls just had to jump right in. :)

On another day, we visited Jasmine, her mommy Jade, and her sister Pearl at their house. Once again, the girls showed they could share. They also showed they made good cats! How adorable is this?

The girls also take dance lessons together and are always looking forward to seeing each other in class. Recently, we went to the mall and while walking around they held hands with each other and walked around giggling! We love it!

Be Back Soon

Every day I think... I will be able to find the time to post something fabulous tonight or at the very least post an update about Ari and every night I find my self so busy/tired/distracted that I just can't pull it all together. I appreciate all of my loyal readers checking in with me and I do promise I will be back to my writing and updates per usual very soon.

For now, I will leave you with a quickie.

My miscarriage: I know I posted that most web sites say to contact your doctor if you are bleeding for more than 2 weeks, but after about 2 1/2 weeks (I gave myself leeway) it dropped down to very light almost spotty bleeding and I thought... today will be the last day.. I'll wait until tomorrow to call the doc. This has gone on for an extra 2 weeks of me putting off having a medical intervention since it was so light. I think that I have finally turned that corner and can start planning for our future again.

Ari: Still reading up a storm. She's gotten sick again with a cold and so we have had to keep it low key for a few days which with Ari means high energy but stuck at home. So yesterday, after being totally stir crazy, we took her for her first nature hike and we all had a blast except that it got way to hot way to fast so we were only out walking about 45 mintutes. Still... she had a great time and we all got some fresh air and exercise. Ari has also discovered dressing up and here is one example of that:How cute is she? Neigh!!! She has also started getting super affectionate by giving out hugs. :) It's really cute.

One of her favorite books right now is a sing along as you turn the page book by Raffi named Baby Beluga. It was introduced to her in her music class and she has fallen in love with it ever since. Now, she actually tried to sing along which brings tears to my eyes its so cute.

My Mom and Dad watched Ari this weekend so we could go see X-Files. I thought it was okay. Definitely not my favorite, but if you like the show, it passes for a long episode. Last weekend, for the second time, I saw Mama Mia (I saw it the weekend before as well). I LOVE this movie and totally recommend it to anyone who likes Abba music. Even if you don't like Abba music but love theater and movies that just make you feel good, this is the one you want to see. The weekend before, it came in direct contrast for me, it was a movie full weekend, with Dark Knight, which I also thought was great, but definitely extremely dark.

Anyway, Ari has a new friend and some amazing pictures with this new friend, but I still need to confirm with the mom that I can post them. Hopefully, that will be the next post. That and another opinion piece soon. :)

Again, thanks for sticking this through with me. This wouldn't be nearly as much fun without knowing you'all were out there (even my lurkers)! Hehe...

Quick Addendum to Such Language!

Today Daddy walks Ari up to Safta's house and points to the sky and says, "Look. There are clouds over there, but no clouds over there." Ari looks up at the sky and says straight faced, "That's weird." Hehe..

Some of her more memorable quotes lately...

"Don't trick me!"
"Don't chase me!"
When telling her to do something she doesn't want to do... "What did you say?" LOL

And best of all... Safta taught her to say... "Happy Birthday Mommy!" Awww.... So sweet!

Such language!

Ari was literally a chatterbox today. She talked all day long. I'm surprised she was able to say anything at all by evening. Here are some of the cute and funny highlights.

We were at JC Penny and my mom found her a fold out chair. We opened it to see if she would like it in front of the really nice cashier woman who had been helping me. Ari sat in it and I said, do you like it? She said, "Yes! It's nice and warm." LOL

We are in the car and all of a sudden she just says, "I still never got my rocketship." Huh? and LOL I tried to figure out what rocketship she was talking about, but never heard another thing about it. Hehe... There is some unclaimed rocket ship out there that my daughter is thinking of. :)

We are in the bathroom before bed washing our hands. We sing Twinkle, Twinkle while washing our hands because that is the length of time you are supposed to wash your hands for. Anyway... Ari starts singing and part way through the song, mommy thinks she is so cute singing that she kisses her on the head. Ari stumbles on the words, forgets her place in the song, and says, "OH MAN! (that's a quote from Swiper on Dora), Start over." Then she starts her song over again looking at me like, "you aren't gonna mess this one up too, are you?" Hehe...

Still in the bathroom, it is time to brush our teeth. Ari takes her toothbrush and turns on the water, she wets it and then realizes that it is ALL WRONG! She wants the water quieter. She turns down the water to just a trickle, shakes her toothbrush all around so the offending loud water that was on it would fly off, and then re-wets the toothbrush with the now correctly volumed water. I was lucky not to pee my pants for this one.

Finally, we are in her bedroom, just changed for bed, I usually say goodnight at this point and leave Daddy to read books, so I said, can I have a hug? She ran over and gave me a hug. :) Then I say, "Okay. Now a kiss goodnight." And we exchange a sweet little kiss. Awww... She starts to walk away, turns around, and says, "Kisses all over! Kisses all over!" Runs back into my arms for kisses all over her face. I am about to cry just typing this.

She can truly have me rolling and crying all day long. Children are so amazing!

Bay of Play, Flags, and Planters

If you haven't been there, I love the new Bay of Play at Sea World. Ari had such a good time on a recent visit. I didn't get a lot of pictures, because a lot of our time there we were just the two of us, but once my mom joined us, we caught a couple of cute pictures of Ari getting to meet Grover. She was so excited!


For the fourth of July, every year, there is a really nice real estate agent that comes to our neighborhood and deposits these little flags in everyones yard. It always makes for a nice fourth of July surprise. :)
Remember me alluding to a planter in an earlier post, well here is what my husband and his father built during this most recent visit. We wanted a raised garden so it was easy to maintain without bending over and they did an amazing job! This is just the first. We plan on doing two more. :) Isn't it beautiful?

This next picture shows you starting from left, that we have two roma tomato plants and an artichoke plant.
Next to that, we have four strawberry plants and finally 4 Japanese cucumber plants.

We are not sure how all of these will do, but we can't wait to see and eat! In the next two planters we plan on putting some herbs and other vegetables. We may even get a second artichoke plant and move the strawberry ones over to one of the other planters since they tend to grow out a lot and who couldn't use more artichokes. :) If you have any suggestions for things to grow, we are all ears. The things we are considering but were told some are more winter season while others we could plant now are: peas, baby carrots, onions, string beans, and maybe even corn. For herbs, I'm sure it will be like basil, thyme, mint, oregano, and pretty much all your basic herbs.

As far as how I am doing personally... for anyone still interested in knowing more about miscarriage, read on, others feel free to skip. So today was the worst. Apparently, all that minor cramping pain was leading up to a big tahdah and that was today. Intense pain (took 2 motrin) and loads of ickyness. By tonight though, I'm back to moderate bleeding, so I hope that means I have made it through the worst and am cresting over that hill.

As a good friend pointed out in the comments of an earlier post, it is a process. I am a big believer that medicine is best used when it is absolutely needed. Our bodies go through so many day to day process and then there are big events. Just because they are big events, for me, doesn't make them less a process. I am a big proponent of natural birth. I think the birthing process (notice the word there) is something that the body just goes through and when you go through it, certain things like hormones and such are all released at the appropriate times, the body reacts to things at the appropriate time, etc. When these process are altered, who knows what we are doing to our bodies experience and reactions. Maybe I'm just coming off as some big tree hugger. Truth is, one day, for those that haven't heard it before, I'll post Ari's birth story, but needless to say, neither I nor she would have made it without modern medicine, so I don't dispute the wonders that medicine does provide us with. I just believe, like with Ari, it should be used when there is no choice. I decided that principle held true with this as well, and I think, letting it follow its own path has let me come down from the hormonal high of pregnancy at a steady pace. I definitely couldn't imagine dealing with todays pain on top of all the pain from previous days all mushed into one. That seems like it would be so hard. There was definitely a part of me that wished to just get it over with, but.. ouch! The gradual definitely worked for me.

Anyway... this means there probably won't be too many more posts touching on this subject. :)