We Interrupt This Blog to Introduce...

Dominic Frankie Santos

My Favorite Nephew

Make a scrapbook - it's easy!

Wooo-Hooo. 2 Days in a Row Counts as Progress!

Not that I'm entirely sticking to the goal of a complete sharing experience to e-mail everyone I know about just yet, but I'm here. I had the ever-loving day from hell today. I honestly got my rear-end handed to me at work today for 8 hours in a row. I was SO entirely grateful that it was my short day, and that I got to GO AWAY FROM THERE at 1400. That ought to tell you just how that promotion that I hoped for and ranted and raved about is going. I should really watch what I wish for.
Anyhow, onto the family update. Obviously, we survived the holidays, but it was a close call around here this year. On November 29th, Den came home from school sick. Hai and I had appointments that afternoon to get our dresses altered for a wedding we were going to be in on December 9th, and I had a Dr's appt for both of them an hour and a half after the fitting. We went to our appointment, and Hai's dress fit her great so I threw it in the front seat and after a short talk with the bride in the parking lot headed to the freeway. I cruised through the green light at 5 corners, heard a car lock up its brakes and looked into the other lane to see a truck PLOWING toward Hailey and I. What did I do? Slammed on my breaks so hard my rear end left the seat and POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW. I swear, if I had side impact airbags, we would have been a hilarious On-Star commercial. Mind you, I was on my cell phone and this is what OnStar would have heard after the screech of the BMW that caught my attention, then the screech of my momma-mobile and the POW of red truck hitting my car
Nikk: Oh my God, are you guys alright? Hai - are you alright? Den?
Hailey: OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD MOMMA what was that?
Dennis: HOLY! Did that truck just hit us? Momma, did he really hit us?
Hailey: Momma (frantic now) I think he broke the car.
Dennis: He's parked ON OUR CAR MOM. How is he going to get it off of there? Can we get out?
Hailey: I think you should call daddy.
Up to this point it was ALL of us talking at the same time
Dennis: Mom.....
Hailey: Momma....
Dennis: Mom, you ok?
Nikk: (using more energy than I ever knew I had I calmly said) I'm fine. Yes he hit us. Stop talking and answer me, Hailey- are you hurt?
Hai: I don't think so momma.
Nikk: Good baby, let me know if anything starts to hurt. Den, are you o.k.?
Den: I dunno know momma, I'm scared. Nothing hurts but I'm scared--- (frantic all of a sudden again) Mom, mom, mom what's he doing??

Mind you, this all took about 30 seconds, I am in the middle of a 4 lane street with a red truck attached to the front end of my car and cars are darting around us from both directions. Finally the light behind me turns red and cars stop. Does the jerk wait for me to back up? Oh, no way. He just excelerates through the rest of my bumper, tears off the grill and bumper and pulls into a parking lot. There was a saint standing on the side of the road who IMMEDIATELY called 9-1-1. I pulled into the parking lot, and look at the truck in time to see a guy who looked old enough to have gone to high school with Jesus Christ Himself crawl out. I roll down the windows, get out and walk past the remaining part of my car and ask him if he is alright. The cranky old bastard, looks at me and walks around to the part of his truck that is mangled. I wasn't sure if he understood English, and despite my ability to do so at work, I couldn't put a sentence together in Spanish because I was a bundle of nerves. I go to talk to the kids and call Atwater PD when the man walks to the drivers side of his truck. Afraid he was going to take off, I took a picture of his license plate with my phone and made him a VERY ANGRY OLD MAN. He started screaming at me, and by the 3rd sentence it was not making sense. Like demented, mental health patient garble and he was coming towards me. I'm not one to back down from a fight, but this guy was just NUTS. Enter Saint number 2. The driver of the BMW had flipped around and come to my rescue. He told me to get in the car (I was soooo already almost there) and yelled at the man to shut up and sit down. He was off duty Atwater PD and luckily for me had seen the whole thing. So I sat, PD came and they sent 2 officers. Apparently more than a few people had called about the crazy man screaming at the lady with kids after an accident. I called Justin to see if he was in town and told him "the guy has 20 years on your dad, easy." He failed to believe me, but when the truth came out dude was 90. Born in 1917. No freaking joke. Justin wasn't around, so I got back out of the car to talk to the officer. While I'm talking I hear Hai "momma.......umm, MOMMA!!!" I open the door and Dennis is FREAKING OUT. Panic Attack. Full on, about to pass out panic attack. He was scared to death that I was going to kill the old man because he has never heard anyone talk to me like that and he knows the wrath of his mom when she is pissed off. They were trying to call Den an ambulance and me a tow truck and Dude starts screaming again. I just gave the officer all my info, and BEGGED him to put my grill in the backseat and kick the bumper back onto the car so I could go home. It was 3 blocks, and after convincing him that I had a fully functinal car at home, a cell phone and a land line if we ended up needing an ambulance, he said he'd meet up with me when he was done the the old fart.
Sound like fun? It gets better.
Nikk

Failing Miserably

I am, obviously, failing miserably at this blogging endeavor. Kinda funny, since I am rarely one at a loss for words and spend more time than is healthy with a keyboard at my fingertips. Seriously, do you know anyone else who works a 14 hour day with 3 keyboards, an additional mini-key pad, 3 mouse-es ('cuz mice sounds icky!) and 4 (yes, four) different and separate computers running to keep up with them that would then come home and "log on". So, my new resolution is to try harder. We've had lots of FUN since the last update. Tomorrow, I will start to share it all and I'm very tempted to work backwards since we just got back from CABO......

Nikk

Fairies, Pirates and Race Car Drivers

That is how our Halloween looked. I'm going to pop in the pictures, and I will post later about the trick or treating hookers and my hubby's birthday.

Dennis thought he was SOOOOOOOooooo Cool as Tony Stewart.

Tyler cracked me up with the hair on his Cpt. Jack Sparrow Costume

And Hailey's wand was just too much. I know it's hideous,

but I had to convince her to wear the shoes somehow.

So those were my trick-or-treaters, and as always I couldn't wait for it to be over. Halloween is my 2nd least favorite holiday. Second only to Valentines day, which is just a lame excuse for sorry-ass people who don't love each other the other 364 days of the year to spend GOBS of $$$$ on price-gouging flowers. Please, don't waste your money. The best valentine ever? Hailey gave me one from her Dora Box that said "you are my best friend". $2.88 for the whole box at WalMart.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Not in that order.

I have a sick sense of "how things should be" and so I start with the ugly, because I havetohavetohaveto! I am one of those people who wants to see, even if I know it's going to be gross. So, to indulge those who are sick-minded like me, behold the "ewwww".....

Sorry, it's just how I work. This is the beauty that is now my husbands belly. Pretty gnarly, isn't it?

And then there is the bad. . . .

This is the nasty little devil of a contraption that they shoved up my baby's nose and down into his belly to suck out all of his stomach "stuff" so he didn't barf. They had just flushed it before the picture, it had disgusting gooey yellow-green crud being sucked out of it 24/7 for like 4 days. I seriously almost vomited when I saw the little container that it was being "suctioned" into. WAAAAAAY gross.

And then there is the good. I'm sorry, but every now and then my husband and I do something incredibly cute, and this one takes the cake for the time being. It was before his surgery, but I had forgotten about it because it was on his sisters camera. Damn, we are cute in this picture!

We were out to dinner for Rachelle and Den's birthdays, and we took all 3 of the kids to DeAngelos. I had never been brave enough to take them all there before, because my kids can be REALLY STINKING LOUD, but they were so good that night.

So, I am back to work and all promoted. Woo-ha, I'm still waiting for a paycheck that reflects the promoted part, but oh well. Justin is doing really well and actually doing a decent job of following Dr's orders. He's not lifting (much...) and not working, but he had been doing some estimates and making phone calls. He feels good which kind of bites him in the rear because he will start to push it a bit because he's not hurting. I promptly bite his head off for doing whatever it is that he's not supposed to and he waits until I'm at work or not looking to finish. Gotta love him, because there really isn't much else to do with the boy sometimes.

The kids are good, the boys are playing soccer and Den had his first goal of the season yesterday. They have both been playing quite a bit of defense this year, and Den played goalie the first half yesterday and had a shut-out then scored his goal in the 3rd quarter. Ty played really well and had a couple of kicks that made his daddy proud. Hailey is just getting more devious every day and she comes up with the funniest sayings. I told her she needed to take a shower before she could run errands with me last week and she said "I know, because I smell like a week old hotdog!". Some people kids, I swear!

Thanks for checking in on us, and leave a comment so I know who's looking.

Home Sweet Home!

Leave it to my husband to sweet talk everyone into letting him come home early. We went up on Friday with the intention of staying the night up there and hoping to bring him home on Saturday morning. For some odd reason, I headed up there without a room reservation, which is very unlike me. Apparently my OCD needed a day off and I was too frustrated from my hour long search for a STILL MISSING blue soccer sock to even think about finding a room. Good timing, because my husband used me as his excuse to get out of there "early". Yeah, early, like we got home after midnight. Yesterday was a blur trying to regather my kids, see my aunt and uncle from Arkansas, get the boys to their game and it felt like a million other things. I went back to the doctor (seriously, anyone who doesn't go to a doctor that is open 7 days a week is missing out!) and found out that I am not quite the wimp I've felt like all week. They sent out a sample of my infection from last weekend to be cultured and it was resistant to the antibiotic that they gave me. I wasn't just a bundle of nerves all week, I was also getting sicker each day until last night when I was pretty sure that I either needed inpatient mental health services or good pain pills. I got a shot of phenegran and demerol and then came home and felt bad because I knew I was feeling WAAAAAYYYYY better than Justin. He is on Vicoden, but he's been being a bit mean to his belly by taking it on an empty stomach and it has been rough for him. He is pretty uncomfortable, but he seems better today than yesterday. Tomorrow he gets his staples (all 37 of them) out and Tuesday we should be able to get ahold of his pathology results. We fully expect that it is all Castlemans, but they send everything off to pathology anyhow. Thanks for checking on him!

Wow. What a week.

Well, where to start. Justin is still in the hospital, but he is doing really well! They took out his nasty nose tube and let him have liquids today and he did good. He says that he really isn't feeling much pain at all and is being a smartass again so he isn't too far from being alright! He still had icky tubes in each side of his neck and his IV, epidural (which is really cool because he can walk, but not feel his midsection!), and catheter so he was still very wired when I left him. I had to come home to see a doctor and it almost killed me to leave him. It was way beyond my better judgement to do it, but I promised him I would make my appointment. I have a cyst or something in the female area and I also have a tubal infection. Oh what fun, when it rains it stinking POURS around here. I am just hoping that they wait for whatever they want to do to me until Justin gets home which should be this weekend. I'm crossing my fingers for Saturday, but Sunday will work for me too. I just miss my baby, and now that he can brush his teeth again I'm ready for him to come home!