Eye See You

WARNING. TONS OF PICTURES. hehehe.

Holy Busy Day, Batman - hehehe. It was practically non stop, all day long. Got up at 8am, had breakfast, got the kids situated, straightened up a bit, and got myself somewhat ready.

At around 9:30am, I drove the kids over to the vision center. We were seen after about 15 minutes. Not too shabby :) They took Tom and Joe and Eme first, and Jake and I and Jimmy sat in the waiting room. Sigh. That sure wasn't a lot of fun. hehehe. Here's Jimmy and Jake in the waiting room.

Jimmy and his gum

Jimmy in the eye doctors chair (perfect vision)

So after about an hour and a half, we were all done. The insurance raised the price for a Contact Prescription, so I decided NOT to get one for Jacob. He has a brand new box of contacts at home, and once they run out, he's done. I did get him a glasses prescription, though. VERY similar to his old one.

Tom's prescription didn't change enough to warrant new glasses, so he's good for a while.

Eme needs glasses now. She was pretty excited, though. ha!

Joe and Jim both have perfect vision.

And me? Well, I have better vision now than I did before. Yup. Lost 1/2 a point. Went from 5.0 in the right eye and 4.5 in the left eye down to 4.5 in the right eye and 4.0 in the left eye. The doctor wanted to know how much sugar I ate, and I said none. I told him that I'd lost 100 lbs from my heaviest to now.

He said that it's not medically proven, but that when people lose weight (40 lbs or more) that their vision improves. Who knew? hehehe. SO, I have better vision now than I did then.

We headed home, and got ready for free lunch. I checked my old contacts, and I had a FULL unopened box of astigmatisim correction contacts (left eye). Sigh. I decided that when I went to buy contacts, that I'd try and exchange them. It's worth a try, right? That's $45 right there....

Lily was sleeping when we got home, so Maddie stayed home with her, and the 6 other kids and I headed to free lunch. Grilled cheese, fries, watermelon, and milk. They LOVED it. And there was enough left overs to bring some home for Lily for when she woke up.

Jimmy

Tom

Me

Joe

Ella

Eme

Ella and Tom

Jake and his milk - hehehe.

We went home, Maddie and I ate lunch, and Lily woke up. We were to the pool by around 1:30pm. Here's some random pool pics

Tom and I

Lily

Maddie, Lily, Ella

Ella

Maddie

Lily

Ella

So we headed home at around 3pm. I got dressed, and had Jake and Eme throw on some better clothes, and we headed to Walmart. They have a $38 special for glasses. That cost includes the frames AND the lenses.

Here's the frames that Eme picked out

And the ones that Jake picked out. His were $10 more expensive, but were quite a bit cooler. Plus, since he's not getting contacts anymore, I figured I could spent the extra $10.

And they said YES to switching out my contacts. So I only had to buy one box. They just exchanged the other box. Sa-weet! It ended up costing me $128 for 2 pairs of glasses and 2 boxes of contacts. Not too shabby :)

We had a few things to pick up from Maddie's shopping list, so we got a cart and started looking around. When we got to the produce section, we saw that Strawberries AND blueberries were both on sale for $1 a carton. Nice!

I decided that for Family Home Evening snack, we'd make mini fruit pizzas. I bought sugar cookies for the crust. And cream cheese (and am gonna add a bit of milk and powdered sugar) for the "sauce". And strawberries and blueberries for the toppings. Should be pretty good. Plus, I got enough for Captain America to have some extra for his shakes.
After Walmart, we hurried to Sonic in time to catch Happy Hour. Here's me, giving the camera a thumbs up for Sonic - hehehe. I was still unsure about whether it's diet or not. I'm a bit gun shy now...

So we came home, and started on dinner. I made pork, and mashed potatoes, and green beans. Kids seemed to like it. I made TON and TON of extra potatoes. Oops. I guess I'll have to make it into something else for tomorrow. Maybe a shepherds pie type thing?

So after dinner, I started in on the snack. I made the cream cheese "sauce", and put it in 8 little dixie cups. 7 kids and 1 adult (Maddie and I are on my diet, so we weren't gonna eat any). I also put the blueberries in the dixie cups, and sliced strawberries into a bigger plastic cup. Then all the plastic cups and dixie cups on trays. And put it on the kitchen table. It looked pretty cool - hehehe.

We all sat around the kitchen table, and had Family Home Evening. We sang Popcorn Popping on the Apricot tree, Tom said the prayer, and Captain America gave the lesson on how the Scriptures will show us the way to go, and bring light into our lives (like a flashlight in a darkened room). Then we made these. It was a lot of fun.

Jim

Eme

Joe

I got spray butter on 4 saltine crackers with some splenda and cinnamon. Yeah, not the same, but I pretended - hehehe

Captain America

Ella

Me

Maddie

Lily

Eme

Tom

Jim and Tom

Joe

Captain America

Jake

Joe's were the best, I think. He hadn't even started eating when the last of the other people were done eating theirs. lol

After making the food, Captain America brought out his guitar, and played songs for the kids for about 45 minutes. Maddie and I cleaned up the mess and the kitchen and the living room.

And me on the couch after the cleaning was done.

At 8:15pm, we put the kids to bed, cleaned up a bit more, and the grown ups watched a movie. "7 Pounds". SUCH a good movie. Well, I think so, anyway.

So, in honor of my trip to the Eye doctor today, here's an "Eye" wordart for ya! Hope you like it :) Click on the link below to go to my account to download the PNG file, and leave some love if you like my work. Thanks!

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Visiting Family

I can't believe how quickly the weeks are flying by. The older I get, the faster it goes, I think - hehehe.

So I woke up at 7am, showered, got ready, and decided which of my new Fallas Paredes clothes I was gonna wear. hehehe. I decided on this new black and white shirt. It is satiny, and feels nice. I liiiiiike it :)

All 12 of us got up and got ready, and headed for church. Captain America had an 8:30am meeting, so he took his car, I took my dad, Joe, Jim, Tom, Jake, and Ella. Madi, my mom, Lily, and Eme went in Madi's car. We got to church in time to get our regular row :)

Church was good. I helped Maddie get Ella and Lily to nursery, then we went back to Adult Sunday School class and sat in front of my mom and dad. There was a combined Priesthood/Relief Society/Young Men/Young Womens meeting 3rd hour, where we talked about Visiting /Home Teaching. It was a nice meeting.

After church, we all headed home. We changed out of Sunday clothes, and I had the kids all hang up their dressy clothes for next week. We made bagel sandwiches for everyone for lunch, and Maddie and I had my normal diet food.

After lunch, we took some pics of all the people. Looking back, we should have had each of the kids get their pictures taken with Grandma and Grandpa. Yeah, I messed that one up. hehe.

Here's Tom

And EMe

And Eme in Maddie's "room" when we put up darker blankets over the windows under the curtains so the little girls would nap better

Maddie and my mom

Lily and my mom and my dad

Jake

And me, right before I took my parents to the airport.

So after I dropped them off in time to catch their 245 pm flight, I hurried back and hung with the kids and my sister. We watched movies with the kids, and made snacks, and sat in the backyard, and just let the kids play.

We did have mandatory quiet time at one point. hehehe. Lily was napping, and we sent all the other kids to their rooms, and we just sat in the quiet. Let me tell you, it was a nice, peaceful 30 minutes - rofl!

I made shake and bake chicken for dinner, with fresh corn on the cob, and rice a roni for dinner. The kids seemed to like it :) Of course, Jimmy wanted to know what was for dessert. Nice try, Jim - hehehe.

I put my kids to bed around 8pm, and spent about 20 minutes helping Eme and Joe and Jim get their rooms straightened up. They'd trashed it, of course. It looked pretty good when I came back downstairs.

I hung with Maddie and her girls until around 9pm, when Captain America came home from where he'd been. I left Maddie and her girls to the "Bee Movie", and headed to hang with Captain America in my room. I love talking with my bestest friend :)

Click on the link below to go to my account to download the PNG file, and leave some love if you like my work. Thanks!

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Savior's Friends

Happy Sunday :) How was your Saturday? Was it nice and restful, or fast and hectic? Mine was a little of both :P

We slept in, which was nice. Of course, I forgot to blog the night before, so I was busy doing that when I first woke up. When I finally came out of my room, the kids were watching a movie, and my Mom and Dad and sister and Lily had gone to the PX.

Here's me, ready for the day

I made pudding for the kids for a snack, and Captain America headed over to Joe's to help him pack and work on his truck. After getting ready, my parents, sister, I and all the kids headed out to lunch. We went to the Burger King off post, since it had a playland that had A/C. That's a big selling point for my mom - hehehe.

Me and my big soda

I brought my own cheese, and got 2 side salads. Works pretty good. The kids ate and played and had a good time. After lunch, we headed to Walmart. And why we needed to go to Walmart (in El Paso) on a Saturday is beyond me. Sigh. The line to get into Walmart took about 15 minutes. It was INSANE! And it was 100 degrees. And I have no A/C. Yeah, it was lovely. hehehe.

Anyway, we fought the crowds, and got what we needed. It was a short trip with 7 kids... After Walmart, we headed to the Mall. I needed to pick up the phone case for Captain America. My parents and sister stayed in their car (it has A/C), and I took my truck load of kids into the mall. I made them partner up. Jake and Ella. Joe and Eme. Me and Jimmy. We walked in, got the case, and came back out. It took about 20 minutes. It's a long way to walk with little people :)

Then we headed back home. We stayed home most of the rest of the day. We watched a few movies in the afternoon, then made dinner. The kids ate it pretty well. After dinner, we hooked up the slip n slide, and let the kids play. They had a TON of fun. Check out some pics from the evening.

Me in the backyard

After about an hour (maybe not quite that long...), we hosed off the kids, and cleaned them up. I straightened up the backyard, and came inside. We got the kids all settled down, and ready for bed.

At around 7:30pm, the grown ups headed out again (minus Captain America, who was still working at Joe's). We headed to Fallas Paredes, and went shopping. My parent/sister hadn't been there before, and I just HAD to show them my favorite store. I got a few new things. I like new things, you know :)

After shopping, we headed to dinner. We went to Applebees. We got seated right away, but the food took FOREVER. Or it seemed that way, at least. hehehe. Maybe I was just REALLY hungry. That could have been it.

I got my Shrimp and Spinach salad, my sister got the Turkey Club sandwich, my mom got the Chicken Cordon Bleu sandwich, and my dad got a Philly Steakburger on a hoagie. Mmmmm.

After dinner, we stopped at Circle K so my sister could get some non-skim milk for her kids, and we got big sodas (since we just had water at dinner) and headed home.

Now, my sister is a runner/jogger. She does pretty good. And, just because I was curious, I wanted to go jogging with her. So, when we got home and put the babysitters to bed, she and I went out jogging. And I think I died. hehehe. I didn't pass out, at least. I just proved to myself how incredibly out of shape I was.

I jogged at a fast for me pace for about 1/2 a mile, then couldn't do anymore. Actually, I don't know how long it was. I'm gonna have to drive it tomorrow to see for sure. Anyway, after one lap, I was DONE. Sorry, Maddie :) I'm proud of you for doing another 2. You ROCK!

So I drug myself into my bedroom with my laptop after running, and sat on the floor and designed, cause I couldn't make myself get into my bed. hehehe. Luckily, it's been about 30 minutes now, and I'm feeling much better. I can breathe again. ROFL! We'll see how I feel tomorrow. Hopefully I won't wanna eat everything in site :)

Today's WordArt is from a Conference Talk by Henry B Eyring, and can be found HERE. Click on the link below to go to my account to download the PNG file, and leave some love if you like my work. Thanks!

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