Saturday, February 18, 2012

Ruby's crazy hair...

I just had to do a little post of Rube's crazy hair because it makes me laugh each morning and after every nap, and little times in between. Besides her hair getting so long, this girl has some SERIOUS body, which kind of makes her head look a lot bigger than it already is.

Good morning cute girl!

People always ask me if I tease Ruby's hair (which I do not) because it looks like she has a permanent BumpIt in. I think it does that because of her cowlick. The hair that has serious body to it naturally goes forward (would have been great for a boy head). But since her hair has become longer and heavier, it's starting to fall the right way along with her head, thus creating the BumpIt look.
Love that little poof!

Look at that natural body!

The full view from the back. Natural body and curls... lucky girl!

Happy, crazy, and mischievous girl!

And of course I had to get some pics of my cute Lyla...
Big, sweet eyes.

In this picture she was in the middle of telling me she tooted :)

Love my cute girls!

Field Trip to Marbles

So again, one of the greatest things about Duke is its program for the spouses/partners/families of the MBA students called Fuqua Partner's. A sub-group of that is Fuqua Families, which as I mentioned in my previous post, I am a co-chair for. We have a party every term, a field trip every month, and little activities in between, which are always so fun. The best part of being in charge is we get to choose what we do. Luckily the previous chair, Stacy, did an amazing job and we are pretty much copying everything she did :)

Anyway, so our first trip was to Marbles Kids Museum. This is an amazing museum for kids with SO much interactive play it just blows my mind. We had a great turn out and fun was had by all. So here are a few pics of my kiddo's there.

Ruby playing in the ambulance truck

Lyla was funny at the museum. She would just find a spot and just sort of sit there contentedly, whether it was a car or a boat. She just seems fine doing her own thing. Just another thing that she and Ruby are SO opposite on!

Lyla in the boat.

They have a section where you can shop for groceries with shopping carts and then buy it at the register, and the take it to this full blown kitchen. You have to see it to believe the amazingness of it.

The girls at the register.

My AMAZING co-chair, Haley, and her daughter Izzy. I love this picture!

Me and the Rubester

The girls on these balancing surfboards. Notice Lyla's extreme concentration...

Ruby is a bit mischievous and when she realized that I would quickly take her out of the basketball section where there are about 5-6 hoops in this small circle and a bunch of little kids trying to shoot basket's. I'm not a paranoid mom but when she stands under the basket and just laughs, she is asking for trouble! She kept returning to the danger zone despite my best efforts to keep her from them and so I finally embraced it and thought she would just have to learn on her own. Luckily, she didn't get hurt.
Rube with her "basketball".

Lyla and Izzy not sure how to cross each other on the steps.

Ruby had a great time being tickled by Izzy.

Overall, our field trip was a total success!!! Thanks to all who came!

Valentines Day Party

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but my friend Haley and I took on the daunting role of Fuqua Families Co-Chair. I am happy (and sort of surprised) to say that that it has gone pretty well so far!

Anyway, our first big event was our Valentines Day party, that we so graciously delegated to our good friend Laura :) She did NOT disappoint! She set up a Kissing/Photo Booth, as well as a Candy Walk (instead of cake). Everything was beautifully decorated and everyone there had so much fun. Thanks Laura!!

Laura and her cute family.

My co-chair Haley, and her family.

Good friends, Lyla and Izzy.

Lyla wanted to have a quick photoshoot for herself. Love my cute girl!

The Candy Walk

All the candies we happily filled our little bags up with

My sweet Ruby girl.

Lyla BEGGED for this cupcake and only ended up eating the frosting. The cupcake is the best part! Crazy girl!

And for our Valentines Day date, we put the girls to bed and cooked up some filet mignon, baked potatoes, and had a delicious caesar salad with sparkling cider. It was DE-LICIOUS! And for dessert we ate the candies we got each other while catching up on Parenthood. I got Nate a watch (which he doesn't really like, haha!) and he got me a Duke chip n' dip platter that I LOOOOVE! Perfect date night, if you ask me! I love my sexy man!

Monday, February 6, 2012

yummy yummy food

I'm not really one to post much about food on this blog. But I have just been eating so dang good lately, thanks to my new favorite food site, Our Best Bites. I've heard really great things about this site/blog, but I don't think I really understood until I started making some of their stuff. This may be a bad thing for my waist line :-/

We have all been a little under the weather here in our home and so we stayed home from church yesterday. Since it was Super Bowl Sunday, I decided that we just HAD to eat really good, even if we weren't in the company of other's. So yesterday morning we made crepes for the first time ever. They were SOOOO good! We served them with Nutella, banana's, strawberries, blueberries, and homemade whipped cream. Gosh, they were delightful. Here is the link for the recipe... Crepes. (sorry, no pics of them).

We were supposed to have the following dish for dinner last night (Super Bowl Sunday), but we had our big breakfast AND a big lunch, that we weren't even hungry by the time dinner rolled around. So we saved this recipe for tonight.

I am rarely pushed to the point of blogging about food, but this recipe set me over the edge and here I am, before dinner is even cleaned up in the kitchen. Who am I?

Orange Teriyaki Salmon (click link to see step-by-step instructions)

(pic of my leftovers)

This was simply mouth-watering! It was sweet, moist, just the right amount of fish taste, and had plenty of juices to spare so you can even use some as a sauce for rice if you'd like. Wild rice would taste great with this. Anyway, we served with baked potatoes, balsamic asparagus, bread, and salad. My tummy is so happy right now.

Eat up my friends, eat up :)

Durham friends, if any of you like salmon and want to partake of this deliciousness, let me know and I'll make this for you (you never know who like's fish)! I already have a nice fat salmon filet ready in my freezer. This will be made again soon. :)

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

What the crap is wrong with my face?!?!

So do you guys remember a little less than a year ago when I posted about me getting Cellulitis? Durham friends, I ended up removing my post because there were just too many HIDEOUS pictures of me on it... and all taken in a melodramatic fashion like this picture you see below. To make a long story short, I would not wish Cellulitis on my worst enemy. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life and I just wanted to cry, like all the time. In fact, I'm pretty sure I did cry all the time. To this day, I still have a little redness and scar tissue from my cellulitis site. But at least I don't look like Bozo The Clown, Roudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, or a severe wine bibber anymore. And the pain is gone. That's all I care about. Anyhoo... here is a little pic from that.

I kind of looked at that whole experience as a "That was the worst thing I've ever experienced" sort of thing but got past it since it is gone and make up can cover the remaining redness now.

But alas, my friends, I have had yet another issue come up with my dear face. It's called Bell's Palsy. Basically, it's the inflammation of the 7th cranial nerve that you get from a virus (I had a teenie, tiny cold) and you just happen to be unlucky to have it enter that part of the nerves in your face. The result? Paralysis or weakness on one side of your face. I am EXTREMELY lucky that I do not have full paralysis like a lot of Bell's Palsy patients, but I do get to have the facial weakness. Symptoms are supposed to last about 6-8 weeks and in rare cases, they may never go away.

So here's my little story...
About 2.5 week's ago my hearing in my right ear became really muffled and I had no idea what it was. A doctor checked it out and he said it wasn't fluid or wax and said it should return back to normal in a little while. Oh, and another thing, is my right ear is EXTREMELY sensitive to loud noises... which doesn't help when you have two little girls who like to do high pitched screams for fun :) And THEN, about a week ago I noticed some slight changes in my facial muscles that weren't exactly quite right. A few examples:
  • If I flared my nostrils, my left nostril would flare out a lot more severely than my right.
  • I couldn't lift my upper lip on my right side like I could on my left... not a huge difference but it was noticeable to me.
  • My left eye was going CRAZY. When going out in the sun, it would instinctively shut almost completely without me being able to do much about it and my right would only squint a little. Also, if I closed my right eye to take a picture looking with my left eye, I couldn't do it. It would take EVERY bit of eye strength to keep that eye open and it still wasn't enough to look through the little peep hole. When I would laugh really hard or cry, my left eye would just shut really tight and I kiiiiind of look like a crazy person.
Nate was gone for an interview most Thursday, Friday, and he came back Saturday. I told him about all the weirdness on the phone and he just said to go in on Monday to have it looked at. But when he came home Saturday and we were at a Duke basketball game, he got a good look at what I was talking about and he was like "Um, maybe you should go in tonight". Which, in Nate terms, is like "What the crap is wrong with your face"? Plus, I guess the longer you wait with these things, the more likely you are to risk permanent damage. Not cool.

So, we found someone to watch our kids while we went into Urgent Care and to make a long story short, (not to name-call or anything but) the guy was a moron and said to me "Well, not everyone's faces are symmetrical". Really? You think after 25 years of living, I would choose to go into an Urgent Care on a Saturday night because I am suddenly upset because I don't have a symmetrical face? I don't think he understood that it USED to be symmetrical. I wanted to punch him in the face. To add to it, he told me it was DEFINITELY not Bell's Palsy, he thought I was fine, and that if I am really worried (which I was), I should go into the ER. So we did.

Long story short, after seeing 2 nurses and 3 doctors (including a neurologist) they finally concluded that it was, in fact, Bell's Palsy (I should write Urgent Care guy a letter). The docs thought that was what it was but they weren't sure about my issues with my left eye and seemed a little worried about that. But the neurologist said it was because my left eye was trying to compensate for my right, which makes sense. And they said that's most likely why my hearing went to crap as well. So, they put me on some crazy steroids and some anti-viral medication and sent me on my way. Bell's Palsy sounds like such an old-person's disease and so to add humor to my situation, I tell Nate in my oldest sounding old lady voice "I have the Palsy"! Probably doesn't sound funny but at least it makes us smile :)

So here are some pics...
My "relaxed" face. This was taken the day I went into Urgent Care/ER. Notice my "little eye" on my left side and my droopy face on the right? I'm a babe.
This is what I look like in the sun when my left eye goes REALLY tiny... (phone pic & in the car)
These next two photo's are taken from my computer and are a flipped/mirrored pic. So reverse me.

Also, the next two were taken tonight. I think I am looking much better. My face gets worse when I am tired or in the sun. But other than that, you can't tell THAT much. Right? :-/

A smiling pic...
My relaxed face again...
So, at this point, I don't think you can really tell unless you are really looking at my facial structure or my crazy flaring nostrils (but who does that?) :) The medicines are just supposed to "speed up" the whole returning back to normal thing. I think I have seen SOME improvement and it doesn't take as much effort opening my left eye while my right is closed as it did before.

And just to add some cherries to this post... Both Lyla and Ruby have some wicked coughs. They are getting a little better each day and seem to be coughing less. Ruby had a slight fever but that could have been because she got 2 teeth this last week. Fortunately though, both are still their happy, loving selves. And then Nate is super sick as well. Luckily he didn't have class today and he stayed in bed for most the day. Hopefully he will be better for an interview he has in Atlanta on Friday. PRAYERS PLEASE!!!!