Ohana

For our anniversary we were able to take a vacation WITHOUT ANY KIDS. Don't get me wrong, I love my children with all my heart, but we've never been away from them for longer than a quick over night. Twice. It was long over due since really we haven't had alone time since our first child was born, 14 years ago.

Jess surprised me by booking us a get away to MAUI! I couldn't have been more excited. A little nervous because I'd never been on a plane, like ever. I had been to an airport once to pick up someone but never flown. So, we were going to make our first ever flight a nice casual seven hour flight over the ocean. No biggie. Plus, I had to find someone to take care of our kids while being gone for eight days. To make things easier we split them up, two with my mom and the other two with my inlaws.

The flight wasn't that bad at all, the flight attendants made us feel so comfortable. The only thing that surprised me was how loud the engine was inside the cabin, but I must say the peanuts were amazing.

When we landed we thought we were in paradise. It was beautiful and warm. The air smells like flowers and feels so good against your skin. I'd found my place in the world. The only other times I've ever ever ever felt that instant love were when I saw my husband for the first time and every time I first saw my children after being born. The rental car company upgraded us because it was our anniversary to a sports car, a mustang GT to be exact. My freaking dream car. It was totally meant to be too because the license plate had my dads name.



On the actual day of our anniversary we went to a luau and it was a lot of food and great entertainment. When we made the reservations at our hotel they sent a message over and surprised us with VIP seating and special treatments. I have to tell you we were treated like royalty. We got lucky and were constantly being upgraded, free gifts, and extras for free all the time and from what everyone was telling us, that hardly every happens on Maui.


The beach was to die for. The sand is so soft and the water is warm and clear blue. We swam a lot, boogy boarded and road the waves in. I had a school of fish swim around me and it freaked me out that they were touching my legs and feet. Jess couldn't stop laughing. We spent most our time just relaxing on the beach, enjoying small talk and laughing with each other like we haven't in years.

Sunset was our favorite time of day. Its absolutely breath taking. We would sit together a watch the sky turn the most beautiful shades or go for walks up and down the beach, holding hands and just having great conversation. Very romantic. Even when I almost stepped on a crab and it ran across my foot making me scream and jump into Jess' arms.

 Every night right before the sun sets the hotel restaurant does a torch lighting ceremony. To start it off they blow conch shells. The sound is an awesome deep tone that gives you goose bumps. The torches are then lit all around the resorts grounds and stay burning through out the night

Smiles didn't leave our faces the whole trip until it was time to go, then I cried. I wanted to stay and just have my kids sent over to us. The island had excepted me, the birds even likes us, they would land on the tables while we were eating and sing to us. Oh, the birds there are beautiful colors. I never got sun burned just turned brown. The locals kept telling us were one of them ( accepted by the island) and calling us Ohana. In all the trip was amazing. Jess and I bonded even more. All I can say is I can't wait to go back.   

   

Birthday Parties

This past year we had some fun parties. They were pretty simple to do. I used plastic table clothsand crate  paper  to decorate with. I learned the trick of use the same color or two and it will look like a lot more. 

Mickey Mouse

Riot is obsessed with Mickey. He absolutely loved this! 

Girl Carnival

Paisley turned a big number this year. She wanted to invite some friends from her class but I didn't know a lot of their parents and the rule at school is if you send invitations to class, everyone gets invited. So, 31 kids later I gad to think of something to entertain that many 8 year olds, boys and girls. 

My friend made this cake, she did amazing! I love the detail.

We ended up doing a carnival. They earned tickets and traded them for prizes at the end. 

With that many kids running around they were bound to get hungry and cake wouldn't be enough, so we had a refreshment table. Everyone got a popcorn, cotton candy, snow cone and water. They had a blast. 

Push It, Baby!

The dashboard lights of our SUV dimmed as I parked along side the curb of my daughters dance studio. I wished her luck and kissed her cheek before she hopped out of the passenger door. Suddenly, everything electronic glitched off. The engine still running, I noticed the airbag light come on.  

My mind went to the worst case possible and I had a vision consisting of me pinned against the seat with a deployed air bag against my face. Yeah, so I shut off the car, waited a few minutes and started it once more. I couldn't pull out of my parking spot because the cars situated behind and in front of me were too close, so I did what any sane person would do and went store browsing until I could wedge out of the spot. 

Thirty minutes later, I got back in my SUV and it started, only everything was dim and my gages acted like my car was possessed. Not joking, they were spinning, whipping back and fourth, the speedometer jumped from 0 to needle buried in milliseconds. The headlights and interior lights alternated blinking on and off. When the dome light came on the headlamps shut off and vise versa. I am waiting to look in rear view mirror and see something like the grudge girl come climbing out. I called my husband, explained the situation and he suggested I shut it down. Then asked if I was at a spot he could either jump me because when I tried restarting the ignition it acted like a dead battery. ( Yeah, the poltergeist just drained all the juice) I was close to the bank entrance but there were spots in front of me that cars could park and block my help.

So, I hung up the phone and put the SUV in neutral. Opened my door and pushed. Holy cow! Apparently a Mountaineer is pretty freaking heavy. Especially when you are trying to push the beast on ice covered gutters. Well, I got it moved down two store fronts. I was impressed with myself. Embarrassed to no end, there were two vehicles behind me with parents waiting for their kids to get out of dance, watching me. Enjoying the show. As luck may have it I found the pot hole in the gutter! Pushing from the drivers door wasn't going to work anymore. I moved to the back and really put my body into this shove. It worked! Movement!

Pushing was getting a little more difficult because my oomph was giving out, and a truck suddenly pulled in front of my SUV and parked. Hello guy?!? Did you not see me, a lady with the whitest hair in Idaho pushing her dead vehicle? Guess not. Well, pushing was done. 

I got back into my car, frozen and exhausted to wait for Jess. Finally he comes just as our daughter gets out of dance class. He got a chain hooked up to tow me home.... Across town, yay! How many of you have ever had to drive a vehicle being towed by your husband? It's a lovely experience. Especially when A: you have no freaking clue what he is talking about when he says, "You are my brakes so watch for my signals from my brake lights." (WHAT!!!) and B: he is in such a great mood from this that it would be safer to hug a grizzly bear. Oh, did I mention the chain is so short that I can't even see the bottom of his tail lights? Oh, yeah this is going to be good. 

Halfway home I got the hang of it and stopped ridding the brakes, enough anyway that his head stopped shaking. When we pulled into the driveway I didn't even say anything to him about how fast he was taking corners because then he might of noticed the scratches from when I bumped into his bumper. That's why! I just grabbed the kids, hauled them inside, and started dinner. He can't get upset at me when I am in the middle of cooking his meal. I mean I could burn it or mess it up to the point it's uneatable. 

So, lots of things learned tonight. Mostly, I need a Pepsi. That is all.  

Day 6. Mario!

The sneaky dinosaurs captured the princess. Mario unleashed a mob to her rescue. 

Day 5 Burn Baby Burn! Dino inferno!

"The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire!" That's what I kept hearing while seeing what the Magic Dinos had done last night. 

Dino's and Christmas Magic

The past few years I've watched many of my friends have a lot of fun with their kids and Elf On The Shelf. Heck, I even have a board on Pinterest of ideas if I were to ever get the doll. Notice, I haven't actually gotten the doll. Why? I've talked to my kids in the past and we've seen them in the stores, but my kids just didn't get the idea of it. They were like, Yeah, it's a toy mom moves around. Hello?!?! We are looking at it in the box and seeing you buy it. So, we never purchased one.

I still wanted to do something fun though and this got me thinking. Why not use something we already have? Need I add the toy is $30 and that could go toward an actual present. I read a link on Facebook that a family staged dinosaurs for the month of November to show their kids there is imagination. LIGHT BULB! My kids have dinosaurs! And one night I started it.

To see how they would react, this is what they woke up to.

The letter pretty much says so elves were spying on them and some of their magic they carry with them to get them back and fourth from the North Pole had accidently spilled on them, OOPPS! Now they come alive while everyone sleeps and reports back to Santa.

 It worked! They were SO excited and couldn't stop talking about these Magic Dino's constantly until I dropped them off at school. So, naturally this isn't normal and like any business public relations has to clean up, so Santa sent them a letter explaining more in detail what was going on.

When They came home they found a scroll waiting on the driveway. The squeals as they brought this in the house and read it were deafening. Now I was committed.

This is what they found the next few mornings.

Day 2

Dino workout turned into a silly game of drop the marshmallow in Rex's mouth.

 

 

Day 3

Dino dress up tea party!

 

 

Day 4

The Chair! Hit him with the chair! Wow! Dino's taking on The Undertaker?!?!

 

This has been super fun and the kids are having a blast. After they find the dino's they play and play and play with them in the set ups. I found my two year old, Riot, holding a few of the dinosaurs the other day yelling, "Wake up! Play wif me!" 

Now I just need to think up about 20 more scenes. Hope you all enjoy.





 

 

Police Escort

Our Sunday afternoon started out pretty calm as we ventured out for some family time. The three older kids on the bikes with Jess and I pushing Riot in the stroller. Half way through, Seth sped up leaving us about 20 yards behind. Dom caught up to him so Seth wouldn't be alone. Earlier, before we had left the driveway we had strongly stressed to the kids that they were to stay on the side of the road and only go around the neighborhood loop. Not too worried about there being any problems because this was our normal route.

Jess and I sped up our pace to a  jog while Paisley peddled her bike to keep up. We watched as the two boys became small figures down the street that connected to a highway. As we came closer we noticed what looked like someone joyriding down the middle lane. YEP! That was our son, Seth. happy as a lark, weaving through traffic.

Our hearts sank and we booked after him. Dom, sped toward us, panicking. He told us he didn't know what to do when Seth took off in the road. He told us he'd stayed on the sidewalk and kept yelling at Seth as the cars whizzed by honking at him. I assured Dom he did nothing wrong and it was good he'd stayed out of the road.

Meanwhile, Jess got Seth to safety and we got back on the side road that led home. Again Seth sped ahead, but headed home. Jess took off through the ball diamonds that separated us from our house to get his motorcycle to coax Seth the right way.

Well, wouldn't you know it, just as Jess leaves, a cop drives by. Seth saw him too and turned around, so did the cop. I was able to stop Seth and the cop got out and told me a few calls had come in about him riding his bike down the middle of the highway.

Yeah, there I am, all four kids, and my husband had flown the coop. Seth knows that when a police officer gets out of his car, it's most likely not good. He started to bawl. I mean, breakdown, biggest of melt downs, bawl.

On the inside I go into panic mode thinking, "How am I going to get all the kids with their bikes, the baby in his stroller, and a melting down Seth home in one piece, with a cop watching?!?! I'm going to get my kids taken away for sure."

I explain to the cop how Seth got away. Thankfully this cop knows us and is being very kind. But, I am also thinking I'm going to get in trouble some how. The cop smiles and asks what he can do to help me.

He ended up taking the baby and Paisley in the cop car and loading the stroller and bike in the trunk. Dom and I tried to help Seth get back on his bike to get home. Well, Seth is still freaking out. I totally understood, A COP IS FOLLOWING US. Like creeping behind us. I laughed. I shouldn't have but I did. I knew why Seth was flipping.

One of his favorite movies is Monster House. The kids in the show get into trouble and the cops do the same thing, inch behind them. But, those kids end up getting eaten by a house. So, I totally got why he was a little stressed.

The officer noticed too and had Seth get in the back seat of the car. This is where it gets even better. I guess the neighborhood thought it would be great to go for a walk at this same time. Well, they all got to see the cop load my son in the back seat. Jess showed up at this time on his motorcycle as well. Good timing hun. Miss all the dirty work.

Jess got escorted home by the cop with kids inside and Dom and me riding the peddle bikes behind them. Dom kept saying, "Wow, it's like our family is a parade!"

Yeah, that's us. Never a dull moment!

 

 

Lost

January 9th started out like any other Wednesday. I woke up and got the kids off to school. My oldest son, Seth kept asking if I would call Grandpa and ask him if he would take him swimming again. I promised him we would call after school when Grandpa is home from work. After some persuasion, we got Seth into the car and to school as well.

When I came back, Riot wanted to eat and then play instead of his usual morning routine. After his breakfast I bathed him and sat down to get him down for a nap. He fell asleep instantly while we watched a movie. At a little after !0"00 am, all of a sudden I heard a ton of sirens, cop cars, fire engines, and what not. This is a small town and this many sirens wasn't usual. It meant something horrible had happened. Normally I would have been on Facebook by now asking if anyone knew what was going on, but this time I had a feeling not to.

I gently put him on the couch and started cleaning the house. By the time I got around to mopping at a few minutes after 11:00, my husband walked in the kitchen door. He was talking on his cell phone. I didn't think much about it, he makes phone calls on his lunch break often, I kept at my chore. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed he was walking toward me slowly. He kept saying to the person on the phone, "Are you sure? That is not good."

I stopped mopping and looked up at him. He stopped on the bottom step and looked back at me, his face ashen. "No, she doesn't know. Bye."

My heart is pounding at this point. See, my Grandma has stage 5 breast cancer and I thought he was going to tell me that she might have been taken to the hospital or worse.

Jess walked slowly toward me and took the mop out of my hand. He told me to sit down.

"Is it grandma?" I asked.

"No." Jess put his hands on my shoulders. I instantly thought, "please don't be my Uncle Todd." (He has been having trouble with his kidneys). Jess' eyes filled with tears and he took a deep breath. "Lace, it's your dad. He's been in an accident. He's gone."

The room spun. I didn't understand what he was saying.

"What?! How what happened?" I couldn't breathe. My legs began to turn to rubber.

"He was hit by a train, I don't know anything else, but he is gone." His voice a careful whisper.

Heat flooded my head. Pain shot across every inch of my body. I heard screaming, an eerie horrible screaming. It was me. Jess was holding on to me, I wasn't standing on my own. Finally we both collapsed to the floor.

A few seconds that felt like hours, I pried myself out of Jessie's arms and ran up to my phone.
 I had to call my dad, it wasn't him. My fingers stumbled at the numbers, I couldn't hit the right ones. Finally, I dialed dad's number and heard it ring and ring and ring and ring. He didn't answer.

Our home phone started ringing. Jess answered and I could hear what he was saying, all I could hear was more screams, my screams. My hand seemed to act on its own and dialed dispatch.
 
"This is Lee Lewis' daughter, Laci. Please tell me that wasn't my dad in the train wreck?"

The dispatcher calmly told me they didn't know. All they knew is it was a County truck involved and couldn't tell me anymore. He asked for my contact info and we hung up.

No this was the stupid thing I did, I got on Facebook. I found a ton of posts talking about this train wreck in Dayton, Idaho. the driver was killed. He might be Lee Lewis. The pictures were horrible. Train cars mangled, twisted in the rails. Parts of this red dump truck, parts! It looked like a bomb had hit the train and truck.

I lost it! My stomach contents came up and I ran for the bathroom.

I called my older sister and told her what had just happened and that we needed to tell Mom. Luckily,  she was passing through the town where my mom worked and turned to go tell her.

My hand dialed another number right after I hung up with my sister, the County Sheds where my dad works.When they answered, I asked what was going on. They told me they knew it was a county truck and driver. They had located everyone and their trucks but my dads. I have no idea what was said after that except I kept asking if my dad was alive. The sweet man on the phone, paused and couldn't tell me. I mean, who wants to tell a girl their dad has died. He just told me I needed to find my mom and get my family together. Wait and someone would come talk to us. (Let me get this clear. Everyone I talked to was very kind and only trying to inform me on what they could with facts. They didn't want to say something and have it be wrong.) 

I called my sister who was 8 months pregnant at work and found out she was on her way to me. When she pulled in the driveway, I ran out to her and we held on to each other crying, falling to the ground. My husband came out and helped us into the house. My brother came over at the moment as well. All of us huddled together and cried. The person who had called my husband came to the door and wanted to make sure I was alright. He was a long time family friend and one of my dad's best friends.

During this time, my older sister had got my mom and told us to meet at my parents house, that the sheriff was on his way over to talk to us. I called my dad's brother and sister to let them know.

Everything blurred together, seconds felt like hours, days almost. My mom pulled in the driveway a little before 1:00 pm and all of us kids went out to meet her. She looked scared, but told us she had been told they didn't know if it was Dad. It could have been any of the other workers. They are just trying to prepare us if it was Dad.

Hope..... This gave us hope, even after all I had just been told. What my was told gave us all HOPE.

We sat in my parents living room, waiting. Waiting to hear anything. My sisters got on Facebook again and saw videos of the after math of the wreck. It was saying the driver had died. Silence crept in. The only thing we could hear was our cries and a train whistle off in the distance. It blew its whistle over and over and over.

At 3:30 pm, we were told the driver was for sure Lee. The Sheriff would be on his way to confirm if he had died or not. My poor mom cried so heartbroken. They were soul mates, the true definition of soul mates. They'd been together since Jr. High. They were each others lives, dad was our lives as well. A day didn't go by that I didn't see or talk to my dad. We were close. He was my husbands best friend as well. They did everything together. you didn't know that my husband, Jess, was Dad's son in law. Jess considered my dad his dad. When Jess and I would double date, it was my parents were would go out with. They are our best friends. Now he's gone. Gone in a split second.

5:30 pm, the Sheriff came over and confirmed Dad had passed away. The mortuary strongly encouraged us to not come see Dad's body. Our family decided not to view him as you could understand, we wanted to remember Lee as the amazing man of steel that we knew him.

The County honored him by lowering the flags at the court house and Police station to half mass. They also did an Honor Guard as well as a motor pergade in the percession to the cemetery. His friends, The Bar J Wranglers sang at his funral. His daughters and son talked as well as a good friend. He was honored to the fullest as he deserved.

As I have said before, I am truly honored to say that Lee Lewis is my dad.

Here is a link to his obituary

 

Looking At Life With New Eyes

Holy cow, I finally have a moment to sit down and write this. When I had my last baby my regular doctor told me during my c-section he noticed that my insides were a mess and nothing like he had ever seen before. I should go and see a specialist to check it out. Well, I thought, yeah it can wait. So a little over a year it did, but gradually every month my stomach would get more painful to touch, move, lay on, anything. The pressure almost felt like I had a baby still inside my belly. I’d had enough and made an appointment to see the specialist, thinking it was going to be a bad case of endometriosis.

The appointment came and tests were ran. While sitting in the room the doctor came in and told me I did in fact have endometriosis, but he noticed something alarming. The scar tissue had been hiding a massive tumor that was growing around my uterus and connecting everything together. As in, my abdominal wall was now part of my uterus, bladder, liver, kidneys, lungs, intestines, and bowel. He sat down and gave me the surgical options, all risky because of how much cutting would need to take place, I could bleed to death, or one of those organs could be punctured.

First things first we had a biopsy done to make sure the tumor wasn’t cancer. Those were the longest two weeks of my life waiting for the results. I didn’t sleep or eat. If I did eat I threw up. I cried all the time, thought about what would my husband do, my kids. Would they remember me if I died? I looked at my life and reevaluated everything, wanting every moment I could to spend with my family, husband, and children. I didn’t care about material things anymore. All that mattered was the time I had.

I remember the day the call came back from the doctor’s office. The sun was bright, Riot was in his highchair eating eggs. I was sitting at the table watching his little mouth move around as he chewed. Trying to imprint every detail of his face to memory. I looked at the number on the screen and hesitated to answer. After thee rings I pushed the button and heard the news. The tumor was benign, but fast growing and needed to come out as soon as possible or it would in other words smother my organs. The nurse paused and said, “You need to pay for half of this up front though. Can you bring in the $6000 this week?”

“No,” I whispered. “That is way more then we have saved up. Let me call you back after I t figure out how to pay for this.”

“We can’t go any further with out the payment.”

We hung up.

Two major emotions ran through me. Relief, it wasn’t cancer. Helplessness, I couldn’t pay for the surgery up front. I put my head on the table and cried for I don’t know how long.

I asked one of my friends who worked at a hospital what should I do. She mentioned a doctor who was very good and would work with patents who didn’t have insurance. I made some phone calls and set up an appointment with this doctor. He asked to see my file before hand as well.

We met with this new doctor and form the moment we started talking we knew this was the right way to go. He had me do another scan and found the tumor had grown more. We set the surgery date.

All went well, the only hiccup was the surgery went longer than expected. I’m so glad to have this over with and on the mend. Through out all of this, I found I have a great family and friends. They all were amazing and helped me out so much. I couldn’t have gotten through this with out you.

Snack Time

Having a snack on the kitchen floor. All is well and calm.

Seconds after I take the picture...Seriously!

OOPS!

Hey mom! It's fun to scatter these around with my hands! Notice behind him Paisley thinks this is hilarious.

And it just get better...

PLAYING WITH MY FOOD ROCKS!

How It Feels

My son made a clip to help explain to others what its like to be the only sibling who doesn't have Fragile X Syndrome. Watch and enjoy.

I miss those warm summer days when you could just take a nap outside. Glad my son could enjoy it.

One Year Old!

Riot turned 1!

 

I can't believe how fast this time has gone. Here are some highlights of his party.

One of his presents was a mini baby grand piano. He LOVES it! We think he looks like the Peanuts character, Schroeder, because Riot gets all intense when he plays.

When we sang Happy Birthday Riot didn't know what to think. You can tell by the expression on his face he's not for sure if he likes it or not.

And the cake smash! Now this he loved. By the time he was done all you could see were two blue eyes peeping through a frosting covered head.