Another Busy Week!

We finally finished swimming lessons today!  We had a makeup session this morning since we got rained out on Wednesday.  Ms. Debbie informed me today that Nicholas swam underwater through a hula hoop today!  How exciting!  This week he has been going underwater, jumping in from the side to open arms, blasting off the bottom of the pool using his legs so that he can surface at the top of the water, and jumping from the steps in the water toward someone in the deeper part and swimming a few feet!  This is major progress from the last two weeks!  Remember it was only a short time ago when he ran screaming from the water. 

Ed is working this weekend and then he will be off to Pittsburgh on Monday morning early.  He has his interview there and will be home on Wednesday.  I have to put together a list of things for him to inquire about since I cannot go with him.

Wednesday I start my 2 CPE classes to qualify for my teacher recertification.  They will last 6 weeks and provide me with 48 hours of CPE.  I will then only need to complete 10 more hours online. 

Our next few weeks will be much calmer in the morning.  After that, Nicholas will start his week-long camp at Jump & Jungle.  The camp will last M-Th from 11:00am-4:00pm (I think…I need to check the time). 

Oh!  We found out Nicholas’s teacher’s name this year.  He is in Ms. Wuenche’s class.  Our neighbor friend Will is also in Ms. Wuenche’s class too!  He is super-excited about that!!!

Well, it is about nap time, so I am going to get off here!  Have a great week!

Housecleaning, Swimming Lessons, and an 8th Wedding Anniversary!!

We have finished yet another week at the Ozuna house.  This week started out with piles of laundry and things everywhere and toilets to scrub, but I got that under control by Tuesday afternoon.  I then started doing some extra cooking yesterday.  I made 3 extra containers of Pinto beans for the freezer (we ran out) and froze 3 rolls of wheat pizza crust dough (I’ve never done that before, so wish me luck when I get them out of the freezer…I don’t know what they will be like).  Today we had homemade pizza with portabella mushrooms, mozzarella cheese and basil/oregano from the garden—YUMMY!!  It was good stuff.  I am trying to improve my pizza each time I make it and I think I have made some good strides.

What else is going on?  Well, Nicholas started swimming lessons this week.  He is enrolled for 2 weeks of swimming lessons.  So far he can kick and breath out of his nose while putting his head in the water.  He also went under and picked up some swim toys on the bottom step today.  These are pretty major strides for the boy who would not go and ran away from the teacher on Tuesday, had mom in the pool with him on Wednesday, had mom sunbathe outside of the pool while he was swimming Thursday, and today—I actually got to work out while he swam!!!  Baby steps, people!!!

Christian’s week has been pretty uneventful.  In so many ways he is getting so big (he can say his ABC’s, count to 13, and recognize almost all his letters), but at the same time he really still eats, sleeps, poops and plays—that’s about it.  I completely attribute his knowing all these things to two things:  Blues Clues & his brother.  Every night when I put them to sleep I listen in on them on the monitor and smile as they take turns singing songs and counting.  It’s really music to my ears! 

Eddie has started back to work.  Tonight and this weekend he is on night float (works 5 or 7pm to 7am)…so he is not around much (not more than an hour or so) each day.  I had him read my post “Out of the mouths of doctor’s babes” yesterday and he said it made him feel good.  I like to find things that help him through his medical training.  It makes me feel good and I know it reassures him with his crazy schedule.

One bright spot—he has Tuesday off!  He took the day off to celebrate our 8th anniversary (14 years if you count dating).  We plan on doing swimming lessons, working out, picnicking with the boys, going to the Parade of Homes here in Lubbock, and then going out to eat (sans boys)—Thanks to some friends we are going to have a date that night.  I will watch their kids the next night for their anniversary.  Cool that our dates are back to back.  Great friends too!

Well, you all have a wonderful week!  I hope it is as good as ours have been lately!!!

Snapshot of our Vacation

Amidst all the laundry (Delia is probably wondering how on Earth we still had dirty laundry upon arriving home), cleaning house, grocery shopping, and swimming lessons, I have not been inspired to write about our vacation until now. 

We went and saw all the grandparents this past week.  The boys had a blast, Mommy and Daddy had a couple of evenings off, and we spent time with our dearly loved family.

Here are some shots from our trip to San Marcos and San Antonio.  For once, it seems as though I did not take any pictures and Ed took all of them.  Usually I am the one behind the camera around our house, but I guess I did not think about taking pictures this trip.  I am noticing that all of these pictures were taken while we were with my parents.  We really should get more pictures of Grandma and Grandpa Ozuna in here next time. 

Above:  Christian at Grandma Spencer’s house.  Nicholas in the trolley at the San Antonio Children’s Museum.

Below:  Nicholas in the bubble exhibit at SA Children’s Mus.

 

Above:  Christian and Mommy in front of the one of the displays at the Children’s museum.

Below:  Nicholas and Christian ringing Grandma Spencer up at the store.  Despite the old timey cash register, Grandma noticed that Nicholas still scanned and “beeped” everything at the register. 

Above:  The boys looking at the airplane radar

Below:  The boys flying the airplane.

Above:  Mommy building a house.

Below: A rare mother-daughter picture.  My mother did not look at the camera, but what’s new?  She hates her picture to be taken.

Above:  At the playground at Landa Park with Grandpa Spencer.

Below:  Christian and Mommy on the playground.

Above:  Christian  on playground equipment

Below: Nicholas and Grandpa Spencer playing Golf

More golf

More golf

The train at Landa Park.  The conductor of the train is from Brownfield (where I taught when we first moved to Lubbock).  We saw him last year and he had this same conversation with me.  It goes like, “Where are you all from?  Lubbock?  I lived in Brownfield for 4 years in the 70’s.”  I’m guessing he sees way too many tourists to realize that we’ve had this exact conversation twice now. 

Picnic in the park.  My favorite pictures this trip:  The boys with Grandpa Spencer.  This is a great shot!

 

The above pictures were from our weekends during our trip.  During the week we stayed at Ed’s parent’s house.  We didn’t get any pictures, but the week was filled with snuggling with Grandma and Grandpa Ozuna, playing with cousins, swimming, making mud pies, spraying insects with RAID (I walked in on this one—Not a happy mommy), mosquito bites, date nights, Herbert’s Tacos, eating / meeting with old friends…even a movie (Wolverine).  In all it was a wonderful week.  The rides there and back weren’t bad either—just long.

From the Mouths of Doctor’s Babes

http://www.mothersinmedicine.com/2008/07/guest-post-comment-from-daughter.html

 

This is a comment on a blog that I read about today.  As the wife of a husband who is often working and not available to our family all the time, this was very reassuring.  I will make a point to let my husband read it as well.

Preschool Graduation

Today Nicholas graduated Pre-K!  I have always been skeptical of these mini-graduation ceremonies and have even been the person to rant about them.  After attending I felt that it was a wonderful way to celebrate going to kindergarten.  The kids got to get excited about what lies ahead of them.  I got some great video and a couple of pictures. 

The big surprise of the day was that Ed was able to be there!!  We didn’t tell Nicholas just in case he was unable to come, but he was able to and it made the day so much better!

Nicholas started going to Holy Spirit Parent’s Day Out and Preschool this past August.  His teachers were Ms. Marcy and Ms. Katie.  He attended two days a week and made great friends there.  Unfortunately his classmates will all attend other schools, so he will have to make new friends at his new school this year, but he enjoyed playing and learning with them everyday this year. 

 

Above: A picture with his teachers, Ms. Katie (left) and Ms. Marcy (right)

Below:  Nicholas standing in place below his Name Sign.  Don’t you love the graduation hat?  It is one of those cardboard type (like the old Burger King Crowns)

Another Week at the Ozuna House

Well, another week has flown by! The boys and I have been without Daddy for the most part this week. He's managing to get through this weekend of awful call duty. He went in on Friday morning at around 5:00am and it is now 8:30am Saturday morning and still no sign of him. He should be home to sleep in a little while. He will sleep all day today and we will see him to eat and spend a little time with us this evening before he goes back to bed to start another call day/night tomorrow. He will be post call on Monday morning--he'll sleep and we will see him for dinner again. Then the new week starts for him. Thank goodness he is done Friday and we will have him all to ourselves for a week. The boys miss Daddy and so do I. :)

We have kept ourselves busy this week. Nicholas went to school Tuesday and Thursday. They are winding down for the school year. Next week will be a big one as we will have a trip to the petting zoo here in town, and then his graduation ceremony is Thursday. ;) I'll get pictures and video to share on both days. Look for it to come up next week sometime.

Christian and I chilled out most of the week. We went to the Falls every morning on schedule except for Thursday. Ed needed us to bring his pager and I wanted Christian in bed by 11:30 to let him get plenty of sleep before picking up Nicholas from school.

This morning the community center is having their Summer Kickoff Carnival. The boys and I plan to head out and spend the morning over there playing games. The boys are excited about it. This will give Ed a chance to have some peace and quiet in the house today while he is sleeping and it will get the boys out of the house without costing us money. Win-Win!

I have not cooked much again this week. We also did not make it through all of the meals I planned. I still have tonight and tomorrow, I guess. I improved on my freezer Lasagna, we had grilled steaks, fresh French Bread, and homemade mushroom and cheese pizza (YUM!). I love my breadmaker! The french bread and pizza crust are so easy to make in it. I made the pizza crust last week and froze it for this week. It takes me 5 minutes to put the french bread together and creates nothing to clean up except for the pan and it is nonstick! Score!!

Another thing I have been doing this week is messing with photo editing in Photoshop Elements 5.0. This is the program that I got for scrapbooking a couple years back. I like it, but I am still learning it. This is the first program I have truly had to work at learning. It is not as user friendly as other programs. The product is worth it, but if it were not for the free video tutorials that I find on youtube and other similar programs, I would be completely lost. Here are a few of the photo editing projects that I did this week.


This first picture is from the September 11th Memorial that is put out every year here in Lubbock. Nicholas and Ed and I went out there a couple years back and walked among the flags. In this pictures I played with changing the image to black and white and highlighting just the one flag with color. I later found a much easier way to do the same thing....whew! next time I will do it the other way. :)
This next picture was taken by Grandma last year when we went on summer vacation. My mother loves this picture and I hope she really likes the improvements I made on it.
This last picture is kind of "scrapbooked". It is my favorite picture of Nicholas. He had just turned 2 when I took this picture during a summer rain storm. He was having so much fun playing in the rain. Precious!
Here are the originals, just in case you wondered:

Family Update (not on Friday)

Hey Everyone! This week has been a tiring and trying week for the Ozuna family. Ed is working many, many hours. He's been out of the house by 5:00am and back home by 7:30pm or later almost all week (he got home at 6:30pm Friday). This has meant that although he has struggled to stay awake long enough to play with the boys (or just read them a book to put them to bed), most nights the boys only saw their daddy for about 15-20 minutes. I've tried to make things easier each night by having the boys completely ready for bed, dinner done, etc...but it doesn't make up for the lack of time that the boys have with Ed. Today he is on 24 (more like 28) hour call. This means he was out by 5:00am again this morning and will not be home until after 7:00am tomorrow morning. This will make for a pretty boring Mother's Day at our house, but I have gotten used to sketchy schedules. We'll celebrate, just not tomorrow. He will go back to work bright and early Monday...and resume this same schedule next week. Then, next weekend he will be on 24 hour call both on Friday and on Sunday...only to resume the work week again. Finally, on the 23rd of May, we will leave to come home and visit all the Grandparents for a week!!!

We are all looking forward to this time to both be home with Daddy and see our family. Ed and I will relish the idea of a night out by ourselves too.

So, what have the boys and I been up to this week? Well, Nicholas has been at school on Tuesday and Thursday just like normal. He brought home a "secret" Mother's Day Gift that I am not to look at until Sunday. I am so excited and I will get a picture of it and post once I have it in my greedy little hands. :) We went and worked out every morning this week (as usual). Christian and Nicholas both love to go to the workout facility each morning and play with their friends. Since we go at the same time everyday, they have made playmates with some of the other "regular" kids.

Today we went to the library and sat in for a book reading. The library was fun...the book reading, not so much. The man who is selling the book wrote it to help raise money for Dyslexia. That is a great cause! I actually saw the guy and the book at Hastings a couple of months ago. I looked through the book then, but unfortunately it was for an older kid. The paragraphs were too long and referenced things my 4 year old wouldn't understand. However, when you are read books, it can sometimes be lots of fun! We decided to listen to him read the story because the last time we attended a library story time it was loads of fun for the kids. Unfortunately this felt very impromptu...no chairs...guy didn't have his reading glasses...no one else showed up...he read about 6 pages before realizing he had not shown the kids the pages....and he stumbled through reading it. I am happy to say that my kids did really good throughout the entire reading. Nicholas actually stayed with most of the story after he started showing pictures. Christian was "all done" with the book much earlier than it took to read the book. We left when the reading was done and he did not sell a book to us, unfortunately.

I had almost an entire week of limited cooking. This has been AWESOME! I tried OAMC (once a month cooking) a long time ago and did not like it because it took so much time! Of course we also did not eat everything that we made. I brainstormed another idea last weekend and on Sunday last week I made one week's worth of dinners (plus a couple of double dishes to freeze). My goal has been to have no leftovers left in our fridge by the end of the week. I am trying to use all the food we make and spend less money while doing it. So far it worked this week and also allowed me to tutor without having to cook all at the same time during the day. This was nice because I didn't burn any of the food. This week we had Lasagna, Enchiladas and Pinto Beans, Grilled Pork Chops and Grilled Pineapple, and Chicken-Cheese-Rice-Broccoli casserole. We were also supposed to have a chicken soup, but I didn't realize when you cook a whole lime in your pot it bitters everything. Lesson learned!

Another thing I am trying to work on is using less ziploc bags. I would say that on average we use at least 20-30 bags a week (snacks, frozen foods, leftovers). Last week I read 2 things: a ziploc bag takes 1000-2000 years to decompose AND you can turn bags inside out and dishwash them on the top rack to reuse them. I tried this and it did work. The only problem with the method is that the water gets into the bags and makes a big mess when you open the dishwasher. So, I decided I am just going to try not using them. I made an inventory of all the items leftover in my fridge, and all the items in my freezer. I am keeping the lists on my fridge and I update them when things change. This has resulted in us not having thrown away leftovers...AND NO GROSS GROWTHS in plastic containers in my fridge!!! Yay! We are using less baggies and more plastic...and I am doing well with this so far!

Tomorrow's plan? Well, at this point I figure we will get out of the house and let Ed sleep. In the morning we will go grocery shopping. I will make all my dinners for next week (plus some other freezer items) tomorrow afternoon while the boys nap. Then Ed will wake up in the evening, we will have dinner, and we shall see what else we do! :)

To all of you out there, Happy Mother's Day!!