Month: April 2010

Everyone back at school today. Shorts and skirts, it’s hot here. Edda’s in ballet’s 2nd position, it’s a wonder she doesn’t just tip over. (Now I look at the photo again, and it does appear that she is tipping over onto the couch).

Vacations (or any out of routine thing) seem to amplify Edda’s disabilities. While we were on vacation, I would have a little pangs of despair because even though we take Edda everywhere and try to help her have a good time and encourage her to interact with bubbles, Easter egg hunts, playing in the river, getting to know her cousins, I know she’d rather be watching Blue’s Clues in the comfort of our living room which somehow just kills me. When I’m in my regular routine, I don’t brood about it as much, mostly because of a self-preservation thing, but on vacation in the middle of nowhere, there is a lot of down time to think and brood.

Both Jeremy and I came home to boatloads of crap at work to do – I’m trying very hard to hold it together this week at work, it’s bursting at the seams. Jeremy is traveling this week and he had to attend two meetings over the phone while going through airports. One while waiting to leave DC, the other on the layover in Chicago. Blah, blah, blah.

Edda has not been falling asleep very well. A lot of screaming and yelling for about 90 minutes. It’s usually my job to put the kids to bed, but it has been trying for the past week or so. Maybe jet lag? Maybe reflux? Jeremy thinks Edda and I are arguing because often after 45 minutes of screaming and yelling, Jeremy takes over and not 3 minutes later, Edda’s asleep and sometimes so is Jeremy.

Eliana is taking an evening photography class so I’m letting her borrow my camera for a few weeks. I’m going back to the parent’s camera, the Kodak EasyShare C533. We’ll see what I can coax out of it.

The Strickers have the most beautiful and thoughtful home. Not super fancy, just well thought out and most of all clutter-free and very organized. Edda loved their house, a ranch style house on one level and nothing to trip over. Perfect Edda environment. Everything has a proper place (or as my mother says, it’s purple place) and I’m trying to figure out how to make our tornado of a house more like theirs which I know is completely hopeless. My goal this week is to hide the trash cans and the laundry baskets.

Taxes. Still haven’t finished them, but I think I can e-file early next week.

So this is Doris’ birthday present to me. (Sorry for not getting it posted sooner, Doris) Laff the funny thing is that I knew what Doris was getting me before she did. She sent it from some website that’s gives out random gifts that are at retail, worth more than $10. So here it is. Thanks sis! It’s a “Le Pinch”. Some wind up toy that supposed to climb over books and stuff on a table. If I had a video iPhone, I would record a video of the thing in action, but sadly, I’ll wait until June. 🙂

Still in Austin on Easter Sunday, we celebrated with a hunt and Cascarones!

Toured Austin. Doesn’t that wheelchair look too small for Edda? In January, I called the wheelchair company and they couldn’t believe that I needed to buy a wheelchair, they insisted that they lasted at least 4-5 years. So I said OK and now I look at this photo and it looks too small to me…

A pedicab ride:

Bookpeople:

On Friday, we flew to Austin where we spent the weekend with our pals the Strickers!

Vince learned to fire rockets (I got a good picture of the Port-A-Potty Rocket!)

Here’s Edda hanging out with the folks hiding from the sun during the rocket countdown (you can see them wayyy in the background of the flying port-a-potty picture).

Sheila has a new job with the school system where she does hearing and vision testing for the kids all over the county. Turns out I no longer have 20/20 vision in my left eye.

After a few hot days, it was brrrr cold. We wanted to go to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, but we were flooded out:

And went to a trout hatchery instead, where the manager of the trout-ery was very nice and informative about his operation…

Back to Silver City to have lunch at Jalisco’s cafe, where Ruben had fun tormenting Vincent ;).

We drove into the “city” (45 minutes, Silver City) and enjoyed a hot chocolate.

There was grilling and s’more roasting. The light was just beautiful at this particular moment.

After Ben, Johanna, Felix and Ruben arrived, the fun really began. Vincent’s choice of hat/sunglasses really sends him over towards the more hooligan side of fashion.

Edda is the real trooper, we made her trudge up and down over hill and dale. She was a good sport a lot of the time. These vacations always seem to highlight Edda’s disabilities, it’s always a touch emotional for me with all the cousins playing around and Edda struggling with everything…

We have been home for only a few hours – back from a spring break trip to New Mexico and Austin, TX. This New Mexico trip was inspired by Katherine, Jeremy’s mother, who has always wanted to live in New Mexico and loves being in New Mexico. She bought some property almost a decade ago in conjunction with the Nature Conservancy and now is ready to build herself a home on the property near Gila, NM. I have never seen Katherine so happy, making plans for her house and watching all of her grandchildren play together in the cold snow-melt rivers and getting dusty every day.

Gila, NM is not very close to anything, it was a 3.5 hour drive from the El Paso airport where we flew into. We were stymied by a dust storm which forced road closures and we detoured around the road closure which added another 2 hours to the trip.

We were saving a box of Legos for Vince to build once we got to our bed and breakfast, but at some point, he was really frustrated with the drive, so we opened it in the car, hoping that the pieces wouldn’t be sucked into all the crevices.

We finally made it to our little cottage which is about 4 miles off the main road on a little dirt path.

The next day, we visited Fort Bayard, and even thought it was really sunny, it was really, really cold. We did not pack very well for the cold mornings. Edda, in particular, would have appreciated some gloves.

As we left Fort Bayard, we noticed that the town’s coffeehouse was hosting a showing of birds of prey. We saw a captive golden eagle and a peregrine falcon. The golden eagle can kill a sheep. Yikes. The golden eagle is an endangered species and normally not allowed to be trapped by private citizens, but there is someway of obtaining a golden legally and Zoltar’s owner spent a long time telling us how he got the permits to have a pet golden eagle.

From Mom & Dad 🙂