Life is fabulous

For once, in it seems quite some time, everything is looking up. Glenn has been home at a decent hour all week. By decent, I mean before 9 or 10. Today, we actually were able to spend some time at work together.

Today, Glenn had to detail a motorcycle and I needed to get over and cut the graphics for the other side of a van. Silly me did not put my logic hat on when I did the job originally. Who would ever guess that a van would want their business name on both sides? I'm starting to feel like my brain is in that post-baby fog that we all get immediately after we birth our little miracles and realize that they have sucked all of our brain power through our nether regions. You'd think after 10 years I'd be okay.

Linda and Alan were supposed to come down last night to buy a car that Alan wants to fix and resell. Unfortunately for them the title to the car is in Charlotte and won't be here for a few days. Fortunate for me as I did not have to rush around cleaning the house.

I swear Cameron is a walking disaster zone. He leaves a messy trail everywhere he goes. And when he can't take that mess, he moves on and makes a new one. He has two rooms and both are destroyed. Glenn and I have found a new use for the snow shovel....we use it to scoop up the voluminous pile of cars that Cameron insists on spreading out downstairs. Not such a big deal, except they are spread through the walkway to get from the basement to the stairs leading up to the living area. Very annoying when you have a laundry basket or bag of groceries. I have taken to walking to the front of the house to get in. Coupled with the area rug folded up and set right in the walkway from the laundry area to the inside door to Cameron's room, I hate going down to the basement.

Glenn and I have been laughing for the past week about our anniversary card. We went to Wal-Mart on our way out of town Friday night and each of us separately went to pick up a card for the next day. As the cashier picked them up, I noticed that the backs looked exactly alike, I know that most cards look alike, but, there was a plastic that folded over it. I asked her to glance at them both without us seeing them and letting us know if they were the same. THEY WERE!!! How many couples do you know who buy the same card for each other? This has been quite a card year for me. Glenn informed me in February that I had bought him the same Valentine's Day card for the past few years (except when I was away). I explained that I must really mean those words if I keep repeating them.

Yesterday, Cameron and I took our weekly drive north. First, we stopped for Occupational therapy and I used that time to put in a quick phone call to Sherry, my favorite sister in law. It was quite informative for me as she explained that Sacagawea has two pronunciations. Please don't ask how we get into these conversations, I'm not sure we know. It's always interesting to talk to her. I really wish we could have spent more time together and gotten closer when I still lived 3 hours away from her in Florida. Oh well, coulda woulda shoulda. I think we are both in a good place and more even paced together now than we were then. After occupational therapy we drove to Butler to pick up Glenn's glasses. I dropped them off when I took Cameron to June's a few weeks ago. There was a scratch in the lens. A little dustup trying to make them understand that I did not have the lenses, therefore, I cannot return them at this point. There was a note in the file with the glasses to request the lenses. After that, I headed to the best part of the day, BEST BUY. I love Best Buy, they have great stuff and even better warranty/replacement plans. I've been without my laptop since early March due to a fan issue. Here's where my day starts to go downhill. I was informed that the hard drive was damaged in shipping. They are able to replace in in the store, but need my recovery disk to reinstall windows. Luckily, I always transport my computer in the bag, which contains the recovery disk. I whipped it out and asked how long. A few hours to a few days. I went to the bank and then was forced to wander around Target hoping the computer would be done in a few hours. By 3:30, even I was done for and opted to head home. Tomorrow, I am heading to Cranberry to revisit the chiropractor, go the bank and hopefully pick my baby up. Wish me luck.

Cameron has been writing his own homework in his book this week. That is a major improvement. He had another long assignment to do this week. He had to recopy the odd problems from his math book and solve them on paper, then scan and submit them to his teacher before class today. I started him on 15 problems around 5:30 yesterday, I even helped him solve them, wrote the problems out for him so all he had to do was copy our work onto the paper I wrote for him. He worked on it until after 10 last night then had to get up at 7:30 this morning to finish. He kept waking me up to tell me he was working on it. I just kept telling him to bring me the finished project. School started at 10. He brought it to me at 9:48. I asked him to write his name on top. I was so proud, he wanted to write in cursive. I ignored the lowercase c in Cameron, but had to laugh and comment when he spelled Hazlett as Hazllett. I quickly grabbed it, scanned it and emailed it. During class, the teacher informed us that we did not read the directions correctly, it was supposed to be sent through the testing website. I resent it and hopefully he gets a good grade.

Yesterday, he took his spelling test and 6th English test. He scored 20/21 on spelling and 82% on the English test. I'm really proud of him. I sat with him through the tests and I did not even know alot of the answers on the test. I was never good with adverbs and other parts of speech.

I've done really well with my diet. I have not had any soda since Saturday at the museum. Tonight, however, we decided to go for Dairy Queen for dinner. I don't think I can count the banana split as a good dairy/fruit exchange. Cameron had a mini-meltdown as he wanted chocolate ice cream in his blizzard. Glenn nor I heard him say it so we held firm and threatened that Glenn would eat it and he'd have none. By time we got home, that vanilla ice cream was okay. We are trying to hold firm on our decisions, Cameron is using his ODD in full force to fight us. I thought I'd have to give him a second pill today as his 4 hours ended at 11:30 this morning. He did okay in class. Only a few times did he try to discuss movies and games with me instead of class. It took me a minute to remember school and promptly refocused him. Luckily, he only had 1 page of math and I skipped the spelling as he did so well on the test, as homework.

We keep reworking our vacation, so stay tuned for the final product. As of now, we are considering flying to Phoenix, renting a car and basing ourselves out of Williams, Arizona (Grand Canyon area). We figure we can get in some skiing in Aspen, show Cameron *and me* the lights of the Vegas strip and visit Hollywood, all of which are within a days drive of Williams. We can spend more time in each place and less time driving all over. I found a great attraction at the Grand Canyon that closes on December 23rd so we really were having a hard time getting there if we drove.

The Grand Canyon railroad has a "Polar Express" train that runs twice a night through 12/23. It goes from the Grand Canyon to the North Pole. They serve cookies and hot cocoa and once at the North Pole, Santa climbs aboard and gives each child a small gift.

This may be our last year for Cameron believing so we want it to be a great year. He has missed many visits with Santa through the years due to our being too busy to get him there or impatient about standing in line. This should be one great memory. After that we have not real set schedule. I found airfare leaving Pgh on 12/17 and returning 1/1 for $721.00 total for all three of us. I think that price is pretty reasonable.

It's almost 2 am and I really should get to sleep. Good night.

Oh, on a great note, I spoke with Kelly's dad the other day. She took her pre-test for the GED and only missed 2 questions. They recommended she take the test soon. Mike is supposed to go watch a video and talk to the appropriate people and schedule Kelly for the test. She should take it next week. He'll let me know if there is any kind of ceremony for her. If so, I'll have to dip into vacation money so I can fly down and see her.