Proof That I Love The Girl

If there was not enough proof already, Friday was proof that I love Natalie because I roughed it and drove through DC traffic to get to her. I hate driving through the city. I avoid it as much as I can. If I have to go into the city I try my hardest to take the metro around and never have to drive in the city. I did it yesterday and did it for Natalie. I got there without getting lost, but when I got there, I accidentally parked at the Children's hospital and had to hike a ways to the rehab facility. I needed the walk so no complaints!

The rehab facility she is in now is amazing. The physical therapy room is in an atrium. full of sunshine and cheeriness. She was sitting up in her wheelchair watching TV when I came in. She was watching a rerun of Home Improvement on a fuzzy station. I asked how the TV was and she said "it's crap." I had a feeling on my way out to grab two of her fav movies to watch at my house, "Walk To Remember" and "How To Deal" (both Mandy Moore greats). She climbed back into bed and we made me get my big booty into bed with her and we watched "Walk To Remember" from her mom's laptop. We did that until they came in to wheel her away to more physical therapy. Her mom and I snuck away for lunch during that time. Natalie still can't eat food. But she asked if she could go because she was hungry. I felt so bad. Her mom assured her that it was just hospital cafeteria food and that it was going to be gross. Natalie said, "I bet they have really good fries." I was so sad for her.

When we got back from lunch she was sitting in bed watching the movie. They took her to the game room during physical therapy. I asked how it was. Her reply was "lame." She said they played phase 10. I asked if she would want to play with me next time I came back. She said, "sunday." She begged for me to come back on Sunday, so I am going to go up there tomorrow. I am glad because I did not get enough time with her on Friday. I would spend each day with her if I could.

I think she is doing amazing. She is very cuddly. She is strong. I love her.

Check out her most current status and some more pictures at her site.
http://www.nataliesrecovery.com/Natlies_Recovery/Blog/Entries/2009/1/30_Pictures____.html

Another Forgotten Birthday

I really want to try to stay on top of things but I am channon and that is hard for me. But I know my sister and I know that she will forgive me. She is one of the most forgiving and patient people I know. She easily forgives people of their short comings. I am grateful to have her in my life as an example.

Happy Birthday Christen...(one week late)

Thank Heavens For Good Friends

Thank You Maranda For These. Maranda did a photo shoot for our family and I asked Scott to shoot a few of us together. Maranda sent them to me last night. They made me smile. Thank you! I needed a good smile. We have been friends since the summer before jr. high when we met at our first year of girls camp. We had an instant bond because of our love for cool music and cool shoes. We were a little different and recognized that in each other. We still have these two things in common....cool shoes and cool music.

www.urbanchicportraits.com

Strike A Match

Another fun Valentine's Day gift idea. The template is already created in Heritage Makers and the template can be found in the template gallery. Here is a view of it. All you have to do is go in, drop in your photos and then change the text. You have time to order them and then they will be on their way. Just cut them out, staple in the candy and you have a Valentine's Day card to impress all of your friends or make sure that your kid is the coolest kid in the class.

I have one more Vday gift that I am working on too. Now I have three wonderful gift ideas and just have to figure out which one or ones to use. I will post the third tomorrow.

Funny Fridays With Natalie

I saw Natalie yesterday, My Fridays With Natalie. My biggest fear in all of this would be that Natty would never be the same. She is a very uplifting and silly little girl. I was so scared that she would lose some of that. Yesterday confirmed that she is still Natalie. She is still so funny and silly!!!!! She was very alert. She smiles and communicates through sign language because her jaw is still sewn shut. She spells things out. Thank goodness she took sign language last year. She nods her head a lot.

When I first got there the physical therapists came in to work with her. They got her to sit up in a wheelchair. This was her first time up out of the bed. They wheeled her out to a window so she could look outside. This was painful for her back and her bum so they took her back to the bed. She tried getting out of the wheel chair by herself. We had to hold her back. The therapists asked her some questions like where are you? She signed h o s p i t a l.

After that her sister Kara came to visit. That sure seemed to make Natalie's day. Kara read her some letters and cards. While reading her a letter from someone the speech therapist came in. She had Kara ask Nat some questions about the letter. They asked her who the letter was from. They asked yes no questions and had her give thumbs up and thumbs down. They asked her if the letter was from a girl on her cheer squad and she gave a thumbs up. Then the therapist asked if the girl was good at cheer? First Nat shook her hand like "sort of" Then they asked her if Natalie was better than that girl and she gave a big thumbs up. No offense to the girl. I think it was Nat just being silly Nat. She is so funny. We all laughed really hard!!!

Kara and I worked on Nat's nails. We gave her a mini pedicure and manicure. Her mother massaged her feet with lotion. She loved that. In fact every time I would get close to her she would kick out her leg and wrap it around me to trap me in so I could sit with her and massage her leg and stretch it for her. Kara was sitting on her bed with her and when Kara left Nat tapped the empty space on the bed and I said, "you want your mom to sit by you?" She pointed at me sharply and tapped sharply. It was funny. So I took my place. What I did was read to her all of her facebook messages. She loved it so much.

Another sign that she is still Nat: Her mom and Kara made her a list of friends and she was supposed to look at the list and tell her mom who she wanted to come visit her the most. She pointed to everyone on the list. It was so funny. She is little miss social butterfly and that has not changed.

My other favorite thing: her listening to the IPOD. She listens to Kara's ipod and she is very funny about the songs she likes. She would make a funny face and that was sign to change the song. If she liked the song she would move her head back and forth and dance to it. You could tell she was trying to sing it. She would even start moving her arms and hands to the music. So cute. All of these signs made me so happy to know that she is still my natalie.

I gave her some cards Maelee made for her. One of them made me laugh so hard!!!! I wished I would have made a copy of it. It said Natalie on the front and on the inside it read, "We are friends but you say we are sisters." And that is it. So funny. Natalie is always trying to convince Maelee that they are sisters. Maelee has been very sad about not being able to see Natalie. I am going to take her up to see Natalie today. She is excited. Natalie is very cuddly and I know she will love Maelee crawling up into her bed to cuddle with her.

A Big Night Of Miracles

I found this picture yesterday in one of my photo files. I took this pic at a YW activity

Anyone who has been reading about Natalie on my blog and praying for her needs to read this. I am so happy. I can't wait to go see her tomorrow. It will not come fast enough. I am so anxious!!

http://www.nataliesrecovery.com/Natlies_Recovery/Blog/Entries/2009/1/22_A_BIG_night_of_Miracles!.html#

Had A Ball

(this is the only picture I have for now. I took my friends point and shoot so I did not have to lug my big camera around. I have not gotten my pics off of her camera yet. I don't have many, but I will post what I have when I get them. For now this is all there is.)

Scott and I attended the American Legion Inauguration Ball, In Salute to the Medal of Honor recipients. We scored tickets on Friday the 16th at 7am. I got on line and ordered dresses right away. I ordered two because I figured one of the two would work, but guess what....the dresses showed up Monday at 2pm and neither one of them worked....arghhhhh!!!!! So I called up my friend Sylvia, asked if she could watch Delana for me, I knew I could not go dress hunting with a 2 year old. Sylvia watched Delana while Maelee and I hit the mall. I tried on over 50 dresses. We were there for almost 8 hours. It was torture. I am a plus size gal which makes it very hard to find a dress. Plus I am most comfortable being very very covered up. And that is a hard thing to find these days. It took me 7 hours to realize that the dress for me was the 3rd dress of the 50 I tried on. I had to find a jacket for it though. I found a nice jacket at a dress shop. Funny story about the shop I found it in....

I saw a little dress shop. A nice cute girl greeted me. She was a skinny little nothing girl. I asked her if they sold any women sized dresses. She did not know what I was talking aobut so I said plus sizes. She said, "oh yes, we carry up to size 16." I kind of laughed and cried all at the same time. That little girl has no idea what plus size is. To her surprise, they did have a few dresses that were my size. I did not get my dress there, but I did like my jacket I got.

So now onto the ball ...... we had a great time. Scott was SO HANDSOME!!! We were standing in line for coat check and a gentleman behind us said, "You know the Marines really do have the best looking uniforms." Then a man in front of us turns around, I think he was Navy, and he said "Hey I take offense to that." One look at his uniform and Scott and I had to laugh. The Navy guy had these huge neon orange lapels. Scott really did have the best uniform.

During the reception in the beginning we walked around and everyone was so friendly. A lot of people walked up to Scott, they were very interested in talking to him and asking about his different medals. One of the honories of the Medal of Honor wanted to trade his Medal of Honor with Scott for Scott's Joint Chief Medal. Scott gets to wear a great medal and badge because he worked for the Joint Chief of Staff when he worked for General Pace. Mostly everyone else there were officers, and the people at our table were mostly interested in Scott and his job. They were all so impressed. One officer said to me, "you do realize that your husband is a rock star right?" I was so proud of Scott.

My favorite story of the night: Scott's boss, General Conway, the Commandant of the Marined Corps was one of the guests of honor. One of his office aides was there with him and came up to Scott and told him to make sure we go say hello to the boss. Scott did not want to because he sees him everyday and he wanted to leave the Commandant's time open for others to greet him that never get to see him. But I wanted to go see him. I have only met him once, at Scott's promortion a year ago. I drug Scott up to the Commandant and there was a little line and we stood back waiting. There was a three star General from the Air Force there and he called out to Scott, "Hey Staff Sergeant, come here. I will get you an introduction to the Commandant. I will take care of you." We kind of laughed and Scott said, "actually I see him everyday. The General looked confused. Scott explained that he worked at his house. The general asked what his specialty was and when Scott said cakes he asked him to come work at his house. Then we got up to see the Commandant and the Commandant turned to the other general and said "hey, he works at my house. " The airforce General said, "I know, I am trying to talk him into coming over to my house to work for me." The Commandant got mad and said "hey, he works at my house." It was funny, especially when the Air Force general offered to get us an introduction to the Commandant.

So we did not see the president. He did not make it to our ball. We were hoping for it. President Bush made an appearance at this ball at the last two Inaugurations. No Obama, but we did get to see Marg Helgenberger of CSI. I don't watch the show, but I did recognize her. She was the MC. Then at the end they announced a guest speaker. It was Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut. He gave a wonderful speech about the space program creating dreams and incouraging young children to study science. He talked about how we need to no longer compete with other countries over space programs, instead we need to combine our resources and research with other countries. I thought it was a neat idea.

There was a band there that played, no one famous unless you read Bride Magazine. They were voted number one three years in a row by Bride Magazine. The crowd chuckled when the band was introduced that way.

The night was wonderful. We made it up into the city with no glitches. Smooth traffic and the city was full of so much energy. Everyone was so happy. It was fantastic to be up there. I have to say thank you to my husband. I know he was exhausted and that he took me because I love this kind of thing. I love to get dressed up. I love to be with him and see him in his uniform and dance with him. Scott worked Inaugural events Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night from 4pm until 4am. And then he had to be to work this morning at 4am then go to help a friend out tonight at a dinner party until probably 11pm tonight. So he has been running on very very very little sleep. If he had his way he would have been home Tuesday night catching up on sleep. So thank you Scott for taking your girl out on the town. I loved all of it.