My little friend...

is 5 years old and loves converse Tennis shoes. She loves raviolies and skateboarding. She hates ponytails and having her nails cut. She is amazing at coloring and loves to give hugs. To date she is one of the most amazing creatures I have come in contact with. My little friend also started Kindergarten yesterday.


She was such a big girl...she gave us a hug and a smile and left us at the door. Of course mommy had to make the goodbye a quick one because she was about to fall apart. Mommy didn't feel whole again until her little friend was in her arms again.




In preparation for Kindergarten we got our nails and hair done.

The finished product...


That will be our pre-school tradition. :) We picked out "the outfit" and we did some important reading.

Then we packed her lunch box with her snack...and a little something from mommy (my mom used to do do this too...cute to see it carry on...funny a lot of my friends do this too)


In the morning we had breakfast and went grocery shopping :) then we came home...Ash took a shower and got dressed. I did her hair and after some pictures we were off...



When we got to school Ash showed us her cubby...


Gave us both loves...

And was off to learn...


She is such an amazing little girl and I am beyond blessed to be her mother.

So we made it through the first day of Kindergarten...now let's see if I make it through the first PTA meeting lol

Stanford we'll miss you...

Today was Jacob's followup appointment at Stanford Children's Hospital.

For all who may not know, like, 10 months ago Jacob's pediatrician recommended we get him to a urologist to be evaluated for an undecended testicle. She recommended this "wonderful" doctor for us to go to, so of course trusting her completely, I made the appointment that day. I knew right when we walked in ,that this office was definitely NOT kid friendly. I paid our co-pay and sat down, seriously like 30 min later we were called back...that may not seem like a long time to wait but when you have a 2yr old and Ash in a less than thrilling atmosphere, it was not fun....so the nurse takes us back in the room and told me to de-dress my son and lay him down on the table and wait for the doctor to come in. OK RIGHT! I'm going to take my kids clothes off in a cold room and make him lay down on a scary table and keep him there for 20 more min?!? It didn't play out like that at all. I don't like to be trouble, but when it comes to my children their best interest always comes first especially to anyone else's convenience.
I wasn't much off in my time estimation...The doc comes in...introduces himself...is obviously annoyed that I am taking so long getting Jacob undressed and on the table (we can wait an hour for him but he has trouble waiting 3 min for me to undress Jacob)...he looks at Jake...tells me yes he needs surgery...If he doesn't get this surgery he might be sterile...this is what he's going to do...the only scary part is anesthesia...he'll have his nurse set it up...have a nice day...WHOA WHOA WHOA...Hold Up!! I was like stunned...he didn't answer any of my questions...I was seriously disturbed...then to top it off, his "nurse" wasn't available to talk too, so I would have to call her later. Here I'm supposed to just accept from this nightmare of an office that this doctor with no bedside manner wants to perform a $20,000 surgery on my son...IN 2 weeks?????
Yeah, not in Kathyland!
I got home and immediately called Jacob's pediatrician and told her of our less than thrilling urology visit and also that I really wanted a 2nd opinion...she was horrified and completely agreed. So she then recommended us to the head of pediatric urology at Standford. If you're going to go big right lol So I called to make an appointment and the only one they had was in Feb...it was December...oh well ...so I took it. In the meantime, the nightmare-ologist's nurse called me to setup Jacob's surgery...Are you joking Lady?...so I politely told her that at this time I was not ready to proceed and that I was getting a second opinion...clearly this irked her so she practically hung up on me...hmmm.I'm thinking I made the right choice already.
Fast forward to February... Jared and I load up the babes and make the drive up to Stanford...it really isn't that far, but the thought of my baby having any chance of having anesthesia makes me nervous and super thankful Jared could take the day off. We get there and the first thing when you get through the doors are these amazing play toys for the kids to play with...I knew right there, this feels so much different and better than the other place. We sign in, pay the co-pay and the kids lay in bean bags and watch Toy Story lol...they call us back and even give the kids glove balloons. lol. Way cool in my book already. So the Doctor comes in (with an intern, it's a teaching hospital) and has the intern do an initial assessment on Jake, then does an intense evaluation explaining what he's seeing to us and showing us what his findings are...oh yeah...In his opinion Jake DOES NOT need surgery and even if he did, he wouldn't be sterile because he would have one good testicle... insert relieved surprised face here. He seriously examined and re-examined to make sure and he said he was 100% sure Jake was fine. He said that he does alot of these surgeries on children and Jacob is not one that he would accept. He also said that if it would make me feel better he would re-examine in 6 months to confirm his diagnosis. I took him up on that.

SIDE NOTE*Who knew that followup would bite me in the rear when it came to switching insurance policies...I found a better plan with more competitive rates for Jare and the kids...turns out we've been paying for maternity for my husband, son and 5 yr old daughter.... LOL... anyway because the first doctor said that Jacob did need surgery and the second said he didn't and there was a followup appointment scheduled, apparently that's considered a pre-existing condition that might require an expensive surgery. Great!

Anyways fast forward to today... Today was the big day...we drove down...in out and we have offically been cast out of the urologists office :) and he said he would put in his evaluation, that none of this should be a reason in the future for any pre-existing conditions and that no surgery has ever been needed. YAY!
My heart feels a little free-er and less stressed. I highly reccommend the hospital and doctor to anyone who would ever need anything. Stanford is Amazing!

Mommies are way coooler...

On Friday, Jared flew out to no other than San Diego-practically the birth place of our twig on the Lewis family tree. He went to do what now is becoming an annual little weekend trip... shark fishing...with boys from the hood (fyi boys from the hood=some friends he grew up with and his little brother). I was stoked for him to go and even helped book his flight. Jared often has a hard time letting go and just relaxing so it was super important that he go and have a good time.



Now I realized too late that in the act of my complete unselfish behavoir :) I was setting myself up for an interesting weekend of nonstop action. By action, I mean constant fighting, which is a new and unwelcome activity in our home, which usually results in a lot of timeouts or other creative punishments, which ruin the flow and are no fun for anyone. Oh well...I was hopefull that we would have a good time, and good time we had.



We dropped Jared off at the airport on Friday morning and from there we went straight to McD's to get some breakfast. I don't usually do McD's for breakfast but I though "Why not?" kids are hungry and so am I and we're all in Jammies still. So egg Mcmuffins it was. After we got breakfast, we went home and I started in on laundry while the kiddos ate and then watched some cartoons. A little later on in the day I decided we had to go to Beverlys to get some ribbon and other craft stuff to make a gift box for a birthday party Ash was going to on SAT. Then as a treat we went by the kiddie park in the mall.



Of course in the mall we had our usually spillage of fluid in Macy's :) Jake thought the whole bottle of water would be better on the floor then in the bottle...duh! This is funny, I tell Ashley to go ask the lady at the counter for some paper towels to clean up the water...a few seconds later, Ash comes back with 3 paper towels...hmmm...maybe the lady misunderstood the situation...so I sent Ash back and told her to explain to the lady that it is a big spill worthy of more than a roll of paper towels...So Ash goes and comes back (I stayed put with Jake and to warn others of the pool we had created) and again she has 3 more paper towels... ok I think obviously I should go and talk to the lady and get a trashcan and roll of paper towels...so I tell Ash to stay by Jake and I walk up to the counter and tell the lady that the spill is huge and it's going to take a lot more than 6 papertowels to clean it up...KID you NOT this lady handed me 3 MORE PAPER towels.WTH?!! What? Did Macy's have a limit on how many paper towels they could give out? I realized right then I wasn't dealing with someone who understood english or was it just that she was really into preserving the envirnment?...Either way I cleaned up what I could with my ration of PT's and told her where it was and left...I figured I tried.



The rest of Friday was pretty cool...we had subway for dinner...Washed the cars...Had baths...then I got this insane craving for chocolate chip cookies, so of course I have to drag both kiddos out at 8pm to go to Safeway for cookies :) which of course niether one opposed. And because they were so obliging in my quest for sugar, I took them to BlockBuster(BB) to each pick out a movie. Another funny story here lol We're cruising the aisles in BB and Jake comes across the holy grail of movies...Stuart Little (numeral uno)...He loves loves loves the Stuart Little movie series and he proceeds to Double over laughing and screaming and jumping up and down. Everyone around was completely amused by his enthusiasm LOL His happiness was so infectious... Everyone who heard him (ie. the entire store) had happy grins on their faces. So then with a bucket of popcorn, teenage mutant ninja turtles(xmas edition) and of course Stuart Little we went home and ate and watched movies until we all passed out. :) Perfect end to a great day.

Saturday started so relaxed...we all woke up had some breakfast...did some chores...then we went to Ashleys friends birthday party. It was a blast, we all had fun...poor jakey there at the end grabbed a thorn bush and it cut up his ring finger pretty bad but once the blood was rinsed off he was good to go. We got done at the party at around 330, and when we got home we were all so exhausted that all 3 of us passed out for an afternoon nap. When we awoke we had some food and prepared for our first sleepover with friends. Julie brought Aves and reesey over (along with some much needed wine) and we all watched HSM ( which btw has to be one of my favorite movies now ). We had the always fun, pillow fight. Eventually the kids passed out in their sleeping bags at around 1130 and the mommies followed suit about 2 hours later. All in all it was a fun night.

Sunday was the day daddy was coming home...all four kiddos woke up early-go figure...and Julie had the house cleaned up before I could even open my eyes all of the way lol...so when it was time to go get Jare at about 9 am , there was no evidence that a sleep over with 2 5yr olds and 2 2yrolds had even taken place LOL

So I have to say totally convinced that it was a great weekend...just me and the kiddos... and another thing I'm totally convinced of...


mommies are definately way cooler.

I'm invincible...

Or maybe not...

So today I went to the dermatologists office to have a once over on the whole bod done. Luckily nothing was found, but I've been dreading this apt. for weeks now. I think the invincibilty of my 20's has definately began to fade...and at a rapid rate. I made the apt because I have lots of freckles and I was a lifegaurd for years...according to the Dr., that's apparently not a good combo and it just now dawned on me that maybe I should watch out for skin cancer. I think now that I have the relief of having been to the Doc, Im going to be investing in coppertone and cherishing my ivory skin.

Just recently I've started to think about things so differently. I've always cared about my body but I haven't exactly respected it. Things that never scared me before are definately coming into my mind now that I'm on the verge of 30.

It's wierd being me right now... something in my head is going crazy wanting to take make drastic changes...I'm liking it though...


To be continued...