Locks Of Love

Little girls playing princess - without any hair to comb.

Fixing the hair of their little dolls - but with no hair of their own.

I didn't mean for that to rhyme. But seriously, I can't imagine being a little girl (or boy even) with no hair. I've been thinking about it lately and, inspired by my cousin Emily, who has given her hair 4 or 5 times, I decided to chop off my hair so a little child can have some of her own to play with.

It had to be at least 10 inches so here we go....

I miss it. But I think it will make a nice wig.

And mine will grow back.

Locks of Love provides hairpieces for children who suffer from hair loss. It can be short term (radiation therapy, severe burns) or long term (alopecia, genetic conditions).

Check out www.locksoflove.org

Mid night ramblings

It is 6 in the morning. I have been up since 3:40. I woke up with bad dreams and asked Irish to pray for me and then he got up at 4 to get ready to go to work, so I got up and got some food together for him....and I didn't want to go back to sleep so here I sit.

I found this great song on youtube by John Waller. click here to listen It has some really powerful words. It's called "Our God Reigns Here"

I came across this interesting blog. Don't you want to make this yummy dessert? SO GROSS! Kitty Litter Cake


Ok. I should try to get some sleep in before the kids wake up! In an hour! Yowzers!

Jay Leno Show/Jessica Alba

I got to see the taping of the Jay Leno Show on Monday. That was really neat. It was my first time sitting in on a show like that and it was a lot of fun. There was a lot of "hurry up and wait" going on but it was an experience.

The instructions specifically stated that you could not bring a cell phone, bags, etc. into the taping and you might as well just leave them in the car. They took all of our cell phones at the taping of So You Think You Can Dance, so I decided it would be best to just leave my phone behind. As I walked away from the car I realized how weird it felt to not have a form of communication on my person. To think that I used to never carry a cell phone around!

Irish was at home with the kids and it felt weird to be gone from them so long (well, 4 hours isn't that long) without a way to get in touch with anyone.

And as soon as I got in line I thought, "Why in the world did I come here by myself?" I realized I was going to have to wait in line for about 2 hours with nothing to read, no one to text, and no one to talk to in person! And I am not the kind of person who is good at making little small talk!

But there was a service dog there who broke the ice for a lot of us, so I pushed myself a little bit and had some nice conversations with interesting people:

2 middle aged men from San Diego, visiting for the day with their daughters who were close to my age. They made sure to let me know those were their daughters and that they would never date anyone that young : )

A guy from New Jersey who was visiting his brother. He definitely had a Jersey accent although he lived in Texas for the first 16 years of his life! He told me that he dropped his accent overnight because he was bullied in school for his Texas drawl!

An older couple with their service dog. He is paralyzed from the waist down and the dog picks up things for him, brings him his clothes in the morning, opens and shuts doors, etc. She's been with him to see a TON of shows and I hear she likes Alex Trebek. :)

The show was fun. I got to sit on the 2nd row which was awesome! Jessica Alba was a guest and was just on the stage right near to where I was sitting. Seeing her up close and off-camera (she's a really nice person) made me see for the first time how actors are just people doing their job. Yeah, they make a lot of money and have to deal with annoying papparazzi, but at the end of the day, they just want to go home to their family and live their life. The attention and the glamor are just normal to them, a part of everyday life. I always knew that but now I actually know it : )

So, Jessica Alba came down and sat right in front of us to get her picture taken before she left. A girl jumped in front of me before the pic was taken so you can only see the top of my hair. Oh well.....I'm to the right of the blond with the scarf. (I signed up for Twitter just to get this pic off of JA's page! ha ha! I'm crazy I know!)

The guys in the front with her were hilarious.

So, that's it, I guess. I'm grateful Jonathan stayed home with the kids so I could do something fun by myself, even though it was a little weird trying to talk to complete strangers! Oh well, I've got to learn sometime!

Live IN the moment, not in the future!

18January2010

The way I view life has changed during this past week and all I can say is, FINALLY! Whew! I am so glad!

Our car broke down back in June and we couldn't afford another one (and didn't want to go into debt) so I put my life on hold for a little while. "We can't go to church because we don't have a car." "We can't meet up with friends because we don't have a car." I thought that we would be without a car for a month or more and I could put life on hold for that amount of time. Well, then October rolled around and I was tired of not having fellowship with other Christians, so I finally looked up a church we knew about and found out we could get there in 45 minutes on the bus. So, that was feasible and we started going on Tuesday nights and it was a great blessing. But the rest of the time I lived within a mile radius of my house, trying to be a good mom to my kids while Irish worked long hours. We'd walk to the grocery store for a few items that we could carry in the stroller and when Irish was home, we would push a random buggy to the store and bring all of our groceries home in that! Thankfully, we live in an area where we can walk to a LOT of places. It was just a matter of making myself get out of the house to walk with the 3 kids using a regular stroller (our double stroller broke).
This December we went on vacation to visit family and while we were gone I started to realize a few things. 1. Life is SO MUCH bigger than the little 1 mile radius I've been living in. And guess what? I CAN be a part of it! So I need to GO be a part of it! 2. SO many people don't visit the things that are near to them. They live within an hour of NYC and have been once in their whole lives. They live by Six Flags and have never been. People travel all over the world to visit places that the natives don't even take time to see. And I don't want that to be the way I am. And 3. Life is too short to waste a second of it. So, instead of waiting for the future - waiting til I get more money, waiting til I get a car - I need to start living in the present and working with what I have.

So, I decided that I would go and be a tourist in Los Angeles and see the things that tourists come to see that I have yet to take advantage of after living here over 1 1/2 years! We arrived home and Irish spent the whole next week working in Hollywood and I realized that we could easily get down there. Public transportation cost $5 for the whole day (for myself - he had a week pass and the kids were free). AND it included a ride on the subway - my girls have been wanting to ride a train for the longest time and here was one right down the street!
We left around 11 on Saturday morning and caught a 45 minute bus ride to the train station. We arrived there and Sissy and Bean were so happy to get to ride on a real train! We arrived in Hollywood and spent the next few hours being tourists. It was so amazing. I felt like I was in a different world and here it was - barely 15 miles from my house! It felt bittersweet - I was having a nice, fun time and could have done it over a year ago! But oh, well, I said to myself, suck it up and quit living in the past and enjoy yourself today!
We had a great time. My 4 year old, a little bent toward the dramatic, looked around at the architecture near the Kodak Theatre and said, "I can't even say anything!" I asked her what she meant and she said, "I can't say anything - I just can't believe we're here!" I think she was trying to say she was speechless : )
We visited some friends on the way home and by the time we got back, it had been a very long day. But we had all enjoyed our time together as a family and the kids really enjoyed themselves. We spent hardly any money and had fun!
I was talking with my brother-in-law the next day and he said that he's been learning that we don't need to live for the moment but we do need to live in the moment. That is really true. I want to take each minute, squeeze everything I can out of it, and quit looking at my limitations. I want to do what I can with what I have and not waste my life or my time.

Also, living in Los Angeles is teaching me to be so grateful for little things that I always took for granted - a quiet neighborhood, a spacious house, a washer and dryer in my own home, inexpensive rent, a car that will take me 10 miles in 10 minutes (instead of the bus that takes 50!). Oh so many things!!

A friend commented on my new outlook on life and said that not only is it easier for me (and others) to live with myself, it also makes it easier for me to be able to hear from God.

So, that's all. Here are some pictures from our Hollywood trip:

Sissy waiting to get on the train

Mickey Mouse, Irish, and Bean

Little Man and myself in front of the Hollywood sign

Looking up in front of the Kodak Theatre

Sacrifice of Joy Part 3

Here is a link to the song that I mentioned in my other "Sacrifice of Joy" posts. Just click on the name below.

"I Will Praise"

In the Nick of Time!

(Picture from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Long_Los_Angeles_Metro_Rapid_Bus_2008-04-17.jpg)

I've heard many people say how Los Angeles is really unfriendly but I think the people here are so nice! I'm guessing that a woman with 3 little kids must bring out the kindness in the average person. So here's my tale....

Around 4 o'clock this afternoon I decided that we would go to church. It takes 2 buses to get down there but I talked with Irish and he said that he was headed home soon and could just meet us after the first bus and ride with us on the 2nd. So, that worked for me and I figured I would venture out with the 3 kids. After looking up bus routes and writing down all of the information, I decided we would leave at 4:45. It usually takes me less than 10 minutes to get to the bus stop but I thought I should add 15 or 20 minutes to allow for the girls walking and any unforeseeable circumstances that might happen with 3 little ones in tow.

It was cold and the monkey backpacks wouldn't fit around their coats, so my kids ended up putting the monkeys on first - wearing coats with little monkey tails protruding out of the bottom. *smile* I headed down the road with Little Man strapped onto me and with a monkey tail in each hand.

Today happened to be one of the most windy days I have EVER experienced in my entire life! Twice there were gusts of wind that were so strong I had to push with all of my might to take a step forward. I don't know how the kids managed to stay upright. Well, we made it to the bus stop and I pulled out my paper to see which number we were taking when, lo and behold, it pulls up! I thought the bus was LEAVING at 6:09 but it was supposed to deposit us at our first stop at 6:09! So, we made it in the nick of time. Seriously, we had less than a minute to spare. Whew!

A young hispanic man waiting for the bus noticed that we were there and stopped by the door, motioning for us to get on in front of all of the other waiting people. He was in his 20s and I found it surprising that he would even notice a woman with her children. As we stepped forward, he reached out and lifted each of the girls over the curb and onto the bus. So sweet. We found 2 empty seats near the front which I'm sure were vacated just for us because the bus was packed full. We road on the rapid bus which, as you can see from the picture, is a double bus smashed together. And yet it was filled to the gills.

The 4 of us sat on the 2 seats and had barely gone a couple of minutes when a young asian man sitting nearby said in broken English, "His nose is bleeding," I say it was broken English because I immediately looked down at Little Man and he was like, "No," and pointed to Bean. I looked down and saw that her hand was covered with blood and it was pouring out of her nose and all over her jacket, etc. I unzipped the diaper bag to grab something for her and a disheveled looking older caucasian man standing down the aisle said, "here" and passed a packet up through the crowd to me - it was a tissue filled with gauze 2x2s. I shouted, "Thank you!" as I grabbed one and put it on her nose. I ended up using quite a few of them and then found some diaper wipes so I could clean her.

Things settled down and the bus emptied to just a few of us. Sissy asked me a question about the bus driver and was so loud that he heard her. So he turned around and kept smiling at the kids and then when he saw that we were ready to exit, he stopped the bus and said in an armenian accent to the people on the sidewalk, that he wanted them to wait to board until we had exited through the front door.

Irish wasn't at the stop so I called him and he said he was on his way. I realized it was 6:18 (our bus dropped us off almost ten minutes late) and our next bus was supposed to leave at 6:19! I called him back and said, "We're going to cross the street because our bus is about to leave!" We headed for the intersection and as we waited for the light to change he appeared. He grabbed up Sissy and Bean in his arms and we hurried across the road. We saw that the bus was coming but we still had another road to cross. Thankfully, there were other people waiting to board so the bus stopped for them and after a sprint across the road, we made it, again, in the nick of time.

This bus driver was one of the most friendly ones I've encountered, along with the first one today, but he did forget to stop where we requested and we had to walk an extra block to church. Oh, well. It was fun and fine and we made it with time to spare and we had an awesome night at church. It was as if it was tailor-made to fit exactly what we are going through in our lives. I guess that's what happens when the Holy Spirit speaks...

A lady who lives near us drove us home so that was nice. Little Man usually goes to bed at 7:30 but he stayed awake until we arrived home at 10:30! At least he was good : )

The girls danced and played and had a great time.

We tried to sleep in this morning but it didn't work.

Until next time....

Liz

I love my sleepywrap!

www.sleepywrap.com

(This picture was taken a few months ago.)

My grandma bought this wrap for me when I was pregnant with my 3rd one. I had never heard of it until then so I didn't get a chance to use it with my 2 girls. I have used it SO much and really enjoy it (after I figured out how to tie the crazy thing!)! It's been nice to know that he is securely strapped onto me, while having both hands available to hold onto my other kids, AND not have an aching back after using it.

Today we went grocery shopping. The store is about a half of a mile away and we had to put the groceries in the stroller, so the girls had to walk home. We were about a quarter of a mile away from home and I decided to carry little Bean. I pushed Little Man (in the sleepy wrap) over toward my left hip and then picked up the 28 pounds of toddler and put her on my right hip. So I had a collective weight of about 46 pounds and I made it approximately a quarter of a mile to the house. It was a little tiring but really not bad at all. I'm stronger than I thought! And the sleepywrap made it possible to carry them like that.

Fun times : )