Emma Weylin

Archive for the ‘Pink’ Category

So, on Monday my mother, my two daughters and I set out on an adventure. We went from my mother’s home (Located about 15minutes outside of The City of Pittsburgh) to my brother’s home in Norristown, about thirty minutes outside Philly. About 291 miles with the aid of Iphone’s GPS using Google maps. My genius father’s brilliant idea.

My girls and I spent Sunday night at my mother’s house so we could leave as soon as everyone was ready on Monday. (Sidebar: Sunday my husband managed to royally piss me off. Yes, I know it was father’s day, but that is NOT a license to be a jerk) Anyway, I didn’t get to bed until 4AM Monday morning, and my girls, highly excited about the trip as this was their first real trip anywhere, ever, they were up at 6AM and poked at me every hour on the hour until about 10AM when I finally dragged myself off the one of the couches in my mother’s Great Room. I mosey on into the bathroom to do my thing only to discover to my horror of horror that my time of the month came a full week early! Terror stuck. I DID NOT have my diva cup. I was sure I was going to spend the week in misery because I’d have to use those other icky methods women are forced to use to endure that time of the month.
The husband was at work. My mother would be waking soon and we’d need to pack the car and all that fun stuff and I didn’t have time to make the forty minute round trip to get it. How was I ever going to survive for four days without my beloved Diva Cup?
I text messaged my husband with my horrific plight.

He, the darling, wonderful, spectacular man, came home from work, unhooked his work trailer, went into the house and got my Diva Cup, The Diva Wash and the cute little pouch for the cup, drove twenty minutes through Monday Construction traffic to bring me my anti-bitch apparatus. Disaster averted! Husband awarded a bazillion bonus points and the end of my previous irritation with him.

He stayed long enough to help me finish getting my Mother’s SUV packed and then we had the chance to say good-bye to him before we headed on our journey. Everything seems to be going splendidly. We stop of Micky D’s for some grub before we head onto the PA Turnpike. We all make that final all important pit stop before we pile back in the SUV and zip onto the Turnpike heading in the proper direction. (At this point I should mention two things. 1. My mother can get lost in a wet paper bag and 2. While the car was being packed a black, green-eyed jumping spider hopped into the car and I couldn’t get it out so I ignored the fact it was there.)

Life is good. The girls take a nap (Since they’d gotten almost no sleep the night before.) My mother and I are enjoying our unending conversation about my Undying series between bouts of driving through construction zones. We make a pit/gas stop and we’re on the road again. The girls were unimpressed going through some of the tunnels on the Turnpike that took us through the Blue Mountains in central PA. We’re humming along on the trip and then terror strikes my little Bugs with a terrified scream. A big, huge taranchula-sized black spider with green glowing eyes attacks Willow. I had to unbuckle and turn around to save her from this enormous arachnid. (It was about the size of a penny, maybe a bit bigger, could have been nickel sized.) I wasn’t able to catch it and kill it with my shoe, so for the next fifty miles Willow sat with her feet curled up under her as she waited for the menace to strike again. Mom and I were deep in an Undying discussion when another chorus of screams erupted in the back seat. This time devil spider was perched on Mommy’s (that’s me) seat and about to eat her! I whipped around with my trusty flip-flop in hand and smashed the sucker into the shoulder of the seat, but alas, its spider powers were too great and the damn thing would not DIE! I bravely held the monstrous spider in place with my shoe so we wouldn’t lose it in the vast cracks and crevices of the car.

Nana (My mother) valiantly pulled off at an emergency stop. She whipped out her double-bladed napkin. Hopped out of the driver’s seat and marched over to the back passenger-side door. With the greatest of care, I lifted up my shoe and Nana was able to snatch up the still living spider (Even after being crushed with a double death-ray shoe) with her trusted weapon of choice and tossed it onto the ground.
When Nana returned to her post in the driver’s seat, both she and I promptly burst into fits of laugher while the girls tried desperately to convince us that the whole incident had been scary and not funny.

With the spider incident far behind us (maybe twenty-minutes) I switched the girl’s attention to counting mile marker signs. We were finally getting close to our destination. We would be at Uncle Todd’s new house soon! This was exciting. Their first long trip away from home and we were almost there.
Apparently the death-defying spider vanquishing duo (Nana and Mommy) had a weakness.

Lack of Directions.

Even with Uncle Todd explaining how to get to his home (He can’t direct a fly to dog dirt to save his life) we somehow managed to be very far away from where we wanted to be. The Iphone GPS was useless. After about an hour and half of trying to figure out where we needed to be (And my brother not knowing any land mark in the area he’s living in) we finally got to the street he lives on only to find the right turn Google told us to make was one way in the opposite direction we wanted to go in. Then I found out why my mother can get lost going around the block. Apparently the only way to become unlost is to continue to make wrong turns until you are so lost not even God can find you.

By some miracle (Mommy making Nana stop and taking control of the driver’s seat) we managed to get to a Bank of America my brother actually knew how to get to and he came and got us. I followed him to his house and finally, we’d reached our destination. It was almost eleven O’clock by this time. (Mind you this trip is only supposed to take five and a half hours and we left at 2PM.)

We’d yet to eat dinner. Everyone was hungry. Todd had no food in the house. He’d spent all his money on some furniture and of course the down-payment on the new house. So, the first night at my brother’s house, we enjoyed a lovely Mac & Cheese and Hot Dog dinner (On hamburger buns.)
We spent an hour or two talking before it was time for everyone to go to bed. Uncle Todd had work in the morning and Aunt Pen had a job interview (I still don’t know if she got the job or not.) After another hour of getting the girls to calm down enough to sleep, the house was dark and quiet.
End of the first day.

The second day was much less eventful. When Pen got home from her interview, we went shopping. They needed some lawn chairs and a table for their back deck, so my mother got them as a house warming gift. My brother had also opped out of having Mom take us all out to dinner every night we where there, so we did about $300.00 worth of grocery shopping (they needed the groceries more than dinner out – smart man). We had a wonderful steak dinner, which my brother cooked on his new grill. (Phoebe declared Uncle Todd’s Steaks were better than Uncle Corey’s and Uncle Corey is/was a chef – and I agreed with her) We got to visit with Todd and Pen, play some video games and generally had a good time, and then it was time to try to get the kids to sleep so they could enjoy their very first trip to the beach.

The next day we planned a trip with Aunt Pen (Uncle Todd had work) to Atlantic City to see the ocean and play on the beach. My mother drove the hour and a half journey with the help of Aunt Pen’s Garmin GPS unit. With only one slight mishap (we needed to get gas anyway) we made it with no problem. Nana decided she needed to get a GPS for herself (So she could finally get home from the grocery store-it’s a joke, really, it is, mostly ::Grin:: )

Now, my kids are afraid to float in the bathtub with Mommy holding them and getting their faces wet unless it’s to wash it is absolutely out of the question. They LOVED playing in the ocean. Even after Phoebe (Who is the most afraid of water) got wiped out. She declared she wasn’t going back in and that she’d just play in the sand, but after about five minutes, she was back in the water.

The trick to not getting a sunburn? SPF 50 before you get into the car and then once you’ve made it to where you’re going to lay out your blanket, slather it all on again and make sure to get the high burn spots each time you come out of the water. Like your nose and cheeks and forehead. The tops of your shoulders and back of the neck. You WILL go through about a bottle of sunscreen, but it’s worth not having two young kids (and two crabby adults) getting sunburned. Even if you want a bit of a tan, trust me, you’ll get color, it just won’t be red.

After three hours of ocean play, everyone was tired and it was time to go back to house. With the help of the trusty GPS, we made it (just missing Philly Rush hour) without even one wrong turn. Get Nana a GPS. I’ll have less grey hairs that way, really, I will.

Uncle Todd splurged on dinner because Mom saved him money by not having to go grocery shopping. We got Pizza Hut Pizza and spent the night playing video games and talking about everything and nothing. Once again it took time to get the girls to go to sleep, but a little after 2AM, the house was quiet and everyone was sleeping.

The trip back was uneventful as there were no radioactive spiders in the car, and I spent an hour the night before mapping out our exact route to get on to the Turnpike, one there, if mom got lost, I was going to revoke her license. Trust me, she lives so close to the Turnpike that if she messed up getting home, she really is no longer able to drive.

And that’s it. We got to mom’s house. The husband came to pick us up and we got home all safe and sound.

So, every year we do the same exact thing for Easter. We go to a lame restaurant with the hubby’s grandparents. At least the kids looked like they were having a good time and I am just happy another holiday is finished….not much holiday spirit, I know, but I thought holidays were supposed to be about relaxing and taking a day off, not having a boat load more work to do.
Anyway, here are the pics of the girls in their Easter fare…

My baby is getting so big! Before I know it she’s going to be a moody teenager! Yikes! I’ll take the kid smiles and easy joy while I can take it.

Hmmmm….I wounder what she knows that I don’t.

Yes. They are the most adorable kids I have ever seen.

Things have been really busy. Pink finished her first year of home-school – and passed! Pink and Bugs have both been enrolled for another year, which meant doctors appointments and all that fun stuff.
I got another year older, and so did the husband, and we’ve been married for one more year as well. Zeke’s hematoma on his ear is a thing of the past. And the Summer “Clean” project had begun. I have to restart my stop smoking effort, and I’ve been crocheting like mad.
This last week has been the real killer, though. Piggy, Pink’s cat, had to be rushed to the kitty ER last Sunday because his bladder had swelled shut. He’s been sick for a week and refuses to eat his cat food, so I’ve been hand feeding him baby food. He gets a little better everyday, but I still worry that he’s not okay. It will be a good day when he’s finally our Piggy again. Anyway, that’s the current update and I will be posting pictures of all my yarn projects soon.