Pixiemom

One set for the next Batman movie was up on the parking garage near Jeremy’s work. He could see it when he was working on the 15th floor. One of his co-workers got pictures of the Batmobile when they were unloading it and of the Gotham City Police Station and bank fronts. How cool is that?

You can get the whole update from Crystal’s blog. I’m just going to summerize here. The cancer in her throat is gone and there is only a very small amount left in her lungs. She has radiation again and then another scan in 6 months.

We had a family reunion this last weekend and it was a blast. I’ll have to give you all a post on that as soon as I’m ready.

The day after I posted my frustration post, Jeremy ran into the woman with the 4 bedroom home that will be up for rent. He gave me her number and we’ve been able to communicate much easier this way. We have an appointment to see the house a week from Saturday and then hopefully we’ll be moving in around mid-August.

This week, we brought James and Noelle up with us. I’ll tell you about what all we did in another post as well. I love having my boy and baby around. They do very well with each other, so we haven’t had much fighting at all. It’s been good.

A friend of ours which I told you about quite a while ago, in December 2005 when she found out she had breast cancer, and again in February 2006 when she lost her husband, has ended her battle with that cancer this week. She is now free of pain and has a perfect body. She helped Jeremy’s mom out a lot with taking care of his grandma before she got sick. Sometimes she would stay with Grandma Anna while they were gone or take Grandma Anna to a dr’s appointment. She was a great friend to us all. A few months ago, she was told that her cancer had spread and they didn’t think she had much time left. I gave her a hug and asked her how she was feeling about it and she said she was really afraid. I reminded her that God has His timing and it is perfect. That dieing meant she would be with Jesus in Heaven with no more cancer. She smiled at me and said that she just had to remember that because she is saved that she will be better off in death and that she felt better able to accept it when she thought about it in that way. She did have some legitimate concerns though. Her daughters are not saved. We must pray for them. They may not have such an easy time with her death as someone who has hope of seeing her again might have. May her sweet spirit during her struggle with cancer and death be a witness to them.

I am sad that a friend has left this world, but glad because I know she is no longer having to fight the cancer and is in such a wonderful place. Someday, I will also be going there when my time on this earth is done.

I’ve called all the 4 bedroom rentals I can find in Indiana, in Chicago, and in surrounding IL areas. None are available or other people got there before us. I asked about 3 bedroom, even though I know the occupancy rules, just to check and heard what I already knew… no more than 2 people in a bedroom, so only 6 people for a 3 bedroom rental. We’re also having trouble buying a house right now too, partly because Jeremy’s worked at his new job less than 2 months and we still haven’t sold the other house. Our savings are running low because of all the work we did on the house to get it up to par. We still have some painting to do. It’s starting to really get to me. I really don’t enjoy living in this tiny room and need to get out soon so I can have my children with me.

On Saturday, Jeremy and his brother and dad went to work painting our “For Sale” house. I went and picked up the girls and gave my mother-in-law half a day off. We went down and met my sister and her husband and picked up Tiger Lily. We ate lunch with them and then headed to a park and visited while playing around. It was nice and relaxing.

After getting back and grabbing some clothes for AnnaBeth since we were taking her with us this time, I went and picked up Jeremy and our other cats, Mittens and her baby, Charlie. We all headed back up north to our hotel.

On Sunday, since we can’t find a church around here that we are really enjoying, we spent the morning talking to AnnaBeth about Jesus and God. It was nice to have the time to focus on her spiritual level and not have to cover five different levels at the same time. In the afternoon, we packed a cooler with some drinks and took some chips with us to the beach. The rip tide was dangerous, so we weren’t allowed to do anything except have the waves flow over our feet, but that was okay because that was all AnnaBeth really wanted to do. I didn’t even put my swimsuit on, just walked around in my t-shirt and capris. We looked for little fresh-water shells and pretty rocks. I turned away from the lake while I was looking and was at the edge of where the water was hitting the beach, so I never expected it… a big wave came and splashed me up to my knees. The bottom three inches of my pants were soaked. Jeremy was laughing at me because he saw it coming. The lifeguards went off duty at 5 pm and we were still there. I couldn’t believe how a mother was letting her two young daughters (looked like Amie and Christine’s ages) go out into the waves by themselves when we were told how dangerous the tide was. The younger girl got knocked over and was started to be pulled out, but the older sister caught her. I could see them fighting the tide, but they thought it was fun and the mother was encouraging them to go further out so she could get pictures of them in Lake Michigan. We left before they were too far out, but I prayed nothing would happen to them. AnnaBeth fell asleep fairly quickly that night.

On Monday, I took AnnaBeth to the mall. She rode on the carousel and then played in the mall play area for a long time. She had a lot of fun. I got her some Dippin Dots ice cream and realized how much cleaner her shirt front was than with regular ice cream when she was done. Not a spot on her clothes, though some of the dots had rolled down her and melted on the mall floor. We also went over to Petco to get some more kitty litter and AnnaBeth loved looking at all the animals. One of the employees had a guinea pig out and AnnaBeth got to pet it and decided she wants one. Yeah, right. We headed to Barnes and Noble after that and picked up a few books. One of them, I couldn’t help buying for Noelle. It was a book about Ballet and the teacher’s name was Miss Marie, the same as Noelle’s teacher this last year. On Monday night, we watched Peter Pan. It was her first time to see it.

On Tuesday, I had a headache again. Smoke really bothers me and with this being fireworks season, I think my allergies were just going absolutely crazy. AnnaBeth and I just stayed around the hotel. Sometimes she watched a little bit of PBS, but mostly she looked at her new books and the beginning readers that I got for Christine a few weeks ago. We got out long enough to walk to McDonalds and get her some apple slices. (Forget the caramel dip, we just want the apples!) After Jeremy got home, we all went back to the mall again and let her play in the play area so she could get her energy used up.

Today! I was up early today. Jeremy had the day off and kept AnnaBeth here while I took the cats and left to pick up the other girls. My family on my Dad’s side is having a reunion this weekend, so the cats are staying with friends of ours. Unfortunately, Tiger Lily is still acting up. She started acting funny to Mittens a few months ago and I warned Amie that if she continued that we’d have to find other owners for her. Since we’re living here, we can’t have a cat screaming at another cat, so we just couldn’t keep her up here to wait and see if she’d do better. I dropped her off at an Amish farm on my way down to pick up the girls. They were quite happy to have her. Mittens and Charlie went to our friends’ house. The three girls were all packed and ready when I got there. We put everything in the car and hit the road. We were back just a little after 3 pm. We went to Walmart and got the girls some sleeping bags (AnnaBeth had already gotten one earlier this week.) and then noticed that Chuck E Cheese was open, but not very many people were there. We haven’t been there in a very, very long time because of the crowds which make it hard to keep track of our kids. The last time we went Christine was still a baby. There were only two other families there. It was so great. The kids had a lot of fun. Out of the kids, Amie had the most tickets, but Noelle had almost as many. She just hit the buttons at the right times on some of the games. I’ll have to take pictures of the pictures we got there. They are only one token each and it draws your photo, like some of those booths at the mall. After that, Jeremy dropped the little girls and me off here at the hotel and took the older girls to see the Transformers movie. I’m sure I’ll hear all about it in the morning. They just got back, but can’t talk because the little girls are asleep. Anyway, the little girls watched Peter Pan since Noelle hadn’t seen it yet and I took the time while they were quiet to get their sleeping bags out and ready for them and got myself something good to eat.

Anyway, now you are all caught up!

Jeremy has work tomorrow, but then we are leaving as soon as he gets off to go to south-eastern Indiana for the reunion. I probably won’t be back on to post until we are back here next week.

This is from Crystal’s blog:

“I want to let everyone know that Emily will be getting scanned next week to find out if her cancer is gone or if there is still more left. Obviously we are praying for her complete healing! Emily will go in on Monday, July 9th, to drink a small dose of radiation. She will then come home and go back for her scan on Thursday, July 12th. We would appreciate everyone’s prayers during this time and we thank all of you amazing people who still pray for our Emily!”

Most of the kids there at the Children’s Museum were with day camps or summer schools (depended on how they worded it, I think they were actually the same thing). Each group had their own shirt, so it was easy to tell which ones were with which group. Most of the groups were about 15 kids with only 2 supervisors. Kids weren’t taking turns very well, cutting in lines, taking things from other kids, and stuff like that with no consequences because it was absolutely crazy. In the water play room, the kids had raincoats on and it was hard to tell which kids were with which group and they all ran around crazy bumping other kids out of the way. There was one group that I didn’t mind who had a teenager watching over only 2 or 3 kids each and that group kept all their kids in check very well. Since they were like that, they didn’t have to stick together and were able to scatter throughout the museum, so they didn’t create a huge crowd at one place. Amie enjoyed the rooms where there weren’t any of the groups or only some of the kids from the good group. Because of the unsupervised kids, she really hated the water room, which I remember as being my favorite room when I was there as a kid.

I started taking my kids to the zoo and museums during the week when they were little because it was usually less crowded, but it seems that now during the school year, lots of schools go to those places and in the summer, it is these groups, so it is really hard for me to take my children. I’m wondering if it would be better to go on Saturdays now. Since all those kids go during the week, they probably don’t go on Saturdays as much as in the earlier days.

On Thursday, it was Amie’s day in Chicago. We went to the Navy Pier in the morning. It was cold and windy and Amie didn’t have a jacket, so we couldn’t do outside things. We went to the Children’s Museum there. Amie had some fun while there. It could have been better. I was a bit disappointed and will discuss that later.

We left to have lunch with Jeremy.

After lunch, we went to the American Girl Place. Amie has read through the Josefina books, except for the new mystery book, and some of the Felicity books. She really enjoyed those and since she knew about those two girls, she was most interested in the displays of them. It was almost like a museum. She really enjoyed looking around in there. Most of the stuff is too expensive for us to get and she didn’t ask for anything because I’d told her we were there to look only, but we saw part of the Molly movie that came out last November and since it cost the same as any other movie, I bought it for her.

When we were done there, we still had about half an hour before Jeremy got off and we were already at the train station, so we went to Art of Play Chicago, the Come In and Play Center. It is right across the street from where we head down to the train station. It is a free play area with games and stuff all around. When we went, it was board game week, so it had a lot of board games sitting around for use.

On Friday, it was stormy and cool all day. We had planned on going to the beach, but just stayed in and rested instead. We left and went back down to our house after Jeremy got off of work. Jeremy, his brother Jason, and their dad worked on painting our house on Saturday. They finished the kitchen and did half of the living room. More will be done in the near future, but this weekend will be spent at a family reunion for my Dad’s family. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone, especially the 3 month old new addition.

My complaint at the Children’s museum and what we’ve been doing since Saturday will be written later. I told AnnaBeth she could watch Peter Pan, so I need to post this. This computer is our DVD player at the moment.

Oh, and I posted a few pictures from the adventures Christine and Amie had while here on my Flickr.