Home Safe and Sound

Jeremiah and I got back from Phoenix around 2:30 this afternoon, safe and sound, without any major incidents. While my grandma flat-out refused to give up her car keys the entire drive over on Friday (and it's not like my aunt and I didn't try- repeatedly- to let us drive!), I am praising God that the rain we encountered only lasted up until we reached West Covina, 20 min. into our trip. God had His hands in our drive because, even though it's pretty much a straight trip on the 10, my grandma isn't the most skilled driver as of late. I prayed a LOT. Jeremiah did surprisingly well in the car. Scratch that- he did EXCELLENT. A two hour nap before we reached Blythe (a little more than halfway) and didn't have any real meltdowns until shortly before we got off the freeway to reach my cousin Mike's house. My cousin Jasmine (15 yrs old- daughter of Mike) very graciously gave up her bedroom for Jeremiah and I so that we didn't have to share the basement with my grandma and aunt Jenny. He was so tired that it didn't even matter that he slept in his play pen; he conked out for the entire night, hugging his bear, and then woke up mesmerized with Jasmine's bright, colorful room, her ceiling fan and the closet mirror doors. On the way home my grandma let me drive when we reached Blythe, and Jeremiah was just fine until the last 20 min. Halleluliah. He had such a fun time playing with his cousins, their toys, and seeing the huge geese and ducks that made home in the park where Cheyenne's birthday party was held. He also got a kick out of playing in the jumper with me and swatting bubbles from the huge bubble machine that Mike bought for the party. I had such a wonderful time catching up with my older cousins Paul and his wife Rayna, Mike and his wife Stacy, and my Uncle Bob and Aunt Madeline. We don't see everyone nearly often enough, even though Mike and Stacy are the only ones residing in Phoenix; the rest not too far from where I live. And I just LOVED spending some quality time with Sydney, Paul and Rayna's daughter. Turns out I'm going to be babysitting her starting in two weeks when Rayna goes back to work! I can't wait!! Bummer- I forgot to take my camera out of my duffel bag, so sadly I have no pictures from this fun filled weekend.

This week:
Monday and Tuesday- helping out at my mom's shop, last minute preparations with my mom for my brother and Lindsey's engagement party (Saturday!) There is SO much left to be done
Wednesday- Disneyland! (Surprise surprise). Michelle and her husband will be there with Braden, and we might meet up for a few rides. I won't be staying the whole day
Thursday- Mom's shop, more preparations, purchase engagement party present
Friday- set up for the engagement party (held at my grandma's house)
Saturday- Valentines day and the engagement party!
Sunday- Valentines date with Louis. I feel bad asking anyone to babysit on the holiday so we will go out on the 15th.

February!

Finally, January is over. The worst month of my life. Hopefully it wasn't a predecessor to what is left to come this year. All I can do is trust God that the rest of this year is in his hands. Not always the easiest thing in the world to do, but I am definitely trying.

Tomorrow Jeremiah turns 14 months old. I miss my little guy. I really honestly feel like I have barely seen him this month, which is nuts for me being a stay home mommy. Pregnancy, miscarriage and flu have left him in the caring hands of his grandparents for what I feel like a lot of the month. This month will be different. Louis is picking him up from his mother's house right now. She wanted to spend an afternoon with him, since lets face it, 99.9% of the time he's with my parents, even though she lives 10 min. from us. Honestly, it has nothing to do with her personally; she's just a very busy lady like my husband who works late nights and only takes Sundays off. It was nice to have an afternoon alone with Louis that didn't come about from me being sick. We barbecued carne asada, I made rice and guacamole, and watched (some of) the Superbowl. I can't stand football, and while Louis likes it, he wasn't into either team this year. Mostly we were just enjoying the HD picture on our screen. Our LCD TV has been living in our garage, being used as a monitor for Louis's computer. But since he's getting a new computer for his new job, we decided it was finally time to bring it inside, and tonight we're moving our other tv into our bedroom. I haven't had TV in our bedroom for nearly a year and a half and I"ve MISSED IT! When we switched from Time Warner to Verizon FIOS a few weeks ago, they gave us a DVR box for our bedroom. Not like I even NEED to record anything in there, but it will be nice to have more than just basic cable in our bedroom. While I'm hating the 1,000 channel line up of FIOS (it's so confusing having to re-learn all the channels I love, plus having lots of international, city programming and repeat channels), I"m loving that our package came with HBO and Cinemax. I love movies. I can watch my favorites over and over again, even if I just saw them. I don't keep the TV on too much during the day with Jeremiah, so I indulge during his naps and bedtime.

I really need to get back into taking lots of pictures of Jeremiah. I know these moments won't be around forever. I especially need to get better at uploading the pictures from my camera to my laptop, and lastly to my blog. I'm sorry my posts haven't been very visually appealing lately. I love looking at pics on the blogs that I read, Melissa's being my favorites =)

Anyway, the line up for this week:
Monday and Tuesday: helping my mom at her shop
Wednesday: Disneyland with Melissa (friend from Target, not the photorapher of the fabulous photos I just mentioned). I haven't seen her in over a year and we can't wait
Thursday- very tentative afternoon playdate at California Adventure with Michelle and Braden, but most likely not going to happen until next week. Pack for Phoenix
Friday morning- off to Phoenix with my grandma and Aunt Jenny! We will be there for the weekend to celebrate Cheyenne's 5th birthday party. We're not sure if we're staying at Mike and Stacy's house or at a motel yet; we just have to see how many people from Cali stay at their house. I hope we are able to stay there; I barely get to see the girls (Cheyenne- turning 5 and Kiara, 2 1/2) and Jasmine (15!!!). Plus Jeremiah will have more room to spread out and play than being in a motel room with three other people. We're returning Sunday. I'm going to miss my sweetie but I'm sure he already has plans with his boys lined up.

My poor lil guy

Poor Jeremiah hasn't been feeling too well since Friday. At first he was constipated, and somehow that turned into the complete opposite of constipation, if you catch my drift. He's pretty much been confined to the BRAT diet (bannanas, rice, apples and toast) since Saturday night and banned from his beloved milk, which seems to irritate his tummy more. Yesterday he was miserable for the first half of the day, but perked up after his second nap in time to go to my parent's house for dinner. Today he seems to feel fine, but still has some minor issues after eating. We've had to resort to force feeding him some pedialite and water with a medicine dropper because he flat out refuses to drink it by himself, in his sippy or a regular cup. I feel badly for him, but what can you do? The last thing I want is for him to wind up in the hospital, dehydrated and attached to an IV. I hate IVs. It hurt worse than my epidural when I was giving birth to him. I don't want him to have to go through that. So...we shall continue to pin him down and squirt yucky liquid into his mouth while he's crying =(

So on Saturday all of us bridesmaids went shopping for our dresses for my brother and Lindsey's wedding. I have to say that I am very pleased with the dress. The original plan was for all 7 of us to have our own dress in the same color, but with 7 girls of various sizes and shapes, and not a huge array of "must have" choices, you're bound to have girls that want the same dress. So rather than duking it out, the six regular bridesmaids paired up to choose the same dress (3 dresses for 6 girls) and the maid of honor, who didn't like any of our choices anyway, has her own dress. I wound up hitting it off with Lindsey's friend Stephanie (who, I didn't realize at the time, was the only other mother in the group!) and we chose a very cute dress. We were trying to decide between two dresses, and wound up choosing the cheaper one of the two because we couldn't pick which one we liked best. Lindsey thinks the other dress makes my butt look good... but my husband thinks it looks good all the time =) It did have a really cute "butt ruffle" as Lindsey calls it... but the way I look at it, the less $$ I have to spend on my dress, the more $$ I have for presents for her showers. (I tend to go a little nuts shopping for showers). Or to put towards the shower I'm throwing her. So it evens out in the long run =)

On Wednesday Jeremiah and I have a playdate at Disneyland with Michelle and Braden. Yay! I swear I've been counting down to going back since I arrived at home from our trip last week. And scouring the weather reports like crazy (sunny!!!). As far as I remember, we don't have anything else too exciting going on this week, but next Wednesday we're going back to Disneyland with my friend Melissa. We used to work at Target together and she has a pass, too =). It seems like Wednesdays are going to be our Disneyland days for some reason. Then on Friday, Jeremiah and I are going to Phoenix for the weekend with my grandma. My cousins Mike and Stacy are throwing their daughter Cheyenne's 5th birthday party at their home for a change, rather than driving out here like they always do (all the relatives from both sides live here). We are staying until Sunday. I've never been to their house in Phoenix before and am looking forward to the weekend away... but not to the drive. I honestly have no clue how Jeremiah will handle 5-6 hours in the car. We've never been on the road that long. But I guess it will be an indicator of how our flight to Washington, DC will be in April! And he'll be sitting on our lap then... oh boy.

Anyway, it's Monday. That means the Bachelor and the Secret Life are on. Goodnight!