New Moon

We went to see New Moon today. All of us girls.

The theatre was an old stage theatre that

holds about 5000 seats.

we were the first ones to arrive so we had the pick of any seat we wanted.

Stacy and Step sister Nina and I sat in the middle of the theatre.

Stacy sat down right beside me. After a few moments of the two of us

silently wrestling over the sub-standard arm rest I suggested

that she move down one seat so there wouldn't be a tussle.

Mom and Shelley sat several rows back so they could "talk about us"

and fling their legs over the seats.

Holland and Ari started out somewhere near the front of the theatre

and quickly moved when we reminded them about the werewolves in the movie.

They ended up coming up the back towards us and next thing I know

THIS

sits down right in front of me. All 6'3" of her.

Out of 5000 seats in the theatre, THIS is the seat you gotta sit in???

Re-Cap From the Day

A short re-cap of the day.

We had to rest before we ate. so sad.

A few of us grew some facial hair.

Poppy Tom did an Ode to Easter instead of Thanksgiving.

Stacy sucked up some flieswith Poppy Tom's bug sucker-upper.

Heather kissed her baby and so did we.

It was a perfect day.

Life is Good.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm up at 5;45 this morning because my body is programmed to getting up early for workouts so even on a day that I get to sleep in, I'm up.

I want to wish you all a wonderful day of fun and good food and precious time with family and friends.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Steph.

Life is good

p.s. this is my 5:45 am hair do. Had to snap a picture of it since my hair will probably never be this straight once we get down to Alabama.

And the award goes to....

Last night my cousin Heather and her husband Terry flew in for the long holiday weekend with their adorable baby Kaleb. Mom and I babysat Kaleb today so Heather and Terry could have a day at Universal Studios. All went well. I went into Indy's class this morning to read to her class. That went well so I left knowing that I had to be back at 11:45 for the Thanksgiving day feast. I signed up to bring a "main" dish which meant anything protein. I ran to the store, picked up my meat and cheese platter and then ran home to relieve Mom and Ari from baby duty. By the time the feast came around I was in no shape to go to the feast so I sent Ted to "represent" for us and have some special time with Indy. I told him it started at 11:45 and to NOT be late. He was not late, he showed up right on time...11:45, just like I told him except that I was wrong... The feast started at 11:00am and ENDED at 11:45...

And the parent of the year award goes to.....

Guess who??????

me. i suck.

Party Dresses and Footy Jammies

My niece Holland is here this weekend to finish her club volleyball tryouts. I drove down to the Burbank fire station at 5:30 Sat. morning to pick her up from my brother-in-law Tony's work. He's a firefighter/engineer for the city of Burbank.

First order of business was lunch and then a tiny bit of shopping. Indy wanted to go to Claire's. This was the last time I will EVER step foot into a Claire's again. She circled the entire store about a dozen times and still couldn't make up her mind on what she wanted to spend her $5.00 on. At that point I had a mini meltdown and told her to hurry up. She was just so overwhelmed. I had a couple of more meltdowns before she finally settled on some gross goop. I was shaking went I left that store. I will try never to go back.

My mom took Ari and Holland to a paper ball last night. They got to dress in cocktail attire and went to the fundraiser. They had to be wearing something paper so the all made paper wrist cuffs.

They all looked beautiful and went off in their chariot but not before Poppy Tom gave them a last once-over to tell them how beautiful they looked.

During the day yesterday we stopped at Target and the big girls fell in love with the holiday footie Jammie's. I had to buy them because they were so excited. I'm such a sucker!!

The girls are so close (16 months apart) that they fight like sisters and laugh like best friends. The last picture is of Ari slapping Holland after she locked her out of the house this morning. Of course she had her footie jammies. she stood outside at the front door banging on the door and yelling. Drawing all kinds of attention to herself. I love these girls like I love my luggage.

Have a good day. Life is good.

Congratulations Holland!!

This video is dedicated to My beautiful niece Holland for a super volleyball season!!

Holland you kicked ASS this season. Looking forward to watching you play in Santa Barbara next year!!

Love you Aunt Steph

still waiting

Finally went to the doctor today for this really annoying cough. I have been sick off and on for six weeks now and frankly... I've grown bored of it.

The Dr. said my lungs and pulse Ox were good so he decided to throw some antibiotics at my cough in hope that it will go away. He couldn't really do much for my bladder that has practically shut down due to my incessant coughing. Not really fun to pee your pants EVERY time you cough. I've really grown bored of that too.

So we will hope that all will be better in a few days and I will be back to normal and able to give 100% on my daily workouts.

Today was our beach workout day so we got to watch the sunrise and listen to the seals in the harbor. I brought my camera along because the kids keep bugging me for a picture of Erik. So here is a picture of our trainer who may I add is VERY easy on the eyes but we don't talk about that because that wouldn't be cool. Shh don't tell.

Erik has some serious curly hair so he's got BIG bad bed hair most days except when he wears his hat. WE made him take his hat off so we could see his hair today. So in his defense it doesn't always look quite so moppy. Oh who are we kidding. It does look this moppy every day.

Still waiting on the green light to go to Alabama and hunt for a house. There are a lot of great deals so I'm anxious to get there and see in real life what everything looks like. When we know more I will let you know but for now we are in a minor holding pattern.

Ari had a wonderful weekend in NH. She came back with her friend cup "filled" and very happy. It's a good thing she likes us because otherwise I'm not sure she would have gotten on her return flight.

Have a great day. Life is good.

Low Tide

Yesterday we took the kids and the dogs down to the beach. It was extreme low tide and glorious!! The water was warm and the beach was full of shells and tiny rocks.

Henry and Molly love to run on the beach and play in the water.

The tide was so low that the kids were able to see all kinds of little treasures.

Got the opportunity to catch the amazing sunset
and watch the sun go down,
and down,
and down,
and down
until
it went behind the horizon.
It was spectacular..

Ode to Easter in public!!

Ted and I put Ari on a plane this morning, bound for New Hampshire. She's been so homesick that we thought we'd better get her a nice little "happy" and send her home for a quick weekend to see her "people". I had the task of getting four kids up, dressed, fed, lunched, snacked, spit shined and hair doo-ed and out the door by 8:00. All was well until Indy informed me that I needed to get ut of the car at her school and go and sign up in her class to be guest reader next month. Now normally this would NOT be a problem but today... not so good. I was in my ode-to-Easter out fit of green Juicy sweat pants, green tank top and a hot pink Juicy hoodie and for the topper??? NO BRA!! I tried to get out of it but she threw me that big sad puppy dog look and threw some tears in just to seal the deal so out I went across the playground and into the first grade class. The teacher took one look at me and "knew". I said it was her fault that I had to get out of the car like this because she didn't email me back when I requested a date. She laughed and laughed even harder when I informed her that I was even "sans-bra" I said "ha-ha" now sign me up so I can get the heck outta here before the whole school sees me.

I'm home now and taking a break before I have to make 6 beds, and clean the kitchen up from this morning's breakfast massacre. Have a great day!!

Just another Thursday

Showed up for our 6:00 am workout this morning and still coughing. Still NOT feeling 100%.

Erik had us meet at the beach. Nobody likes the beach workout but Shelley and I. Shelley is out of town this weekend with her husband. He took her away for their anniversary so we are watching the kids. The beach was as usual VERY beautiful. There were tons of scattered clouds and the sun was not yet up. We could hear seals barking in the distance off the shoreline. Erik is always very peppy, being that he's only 27, he's got tons of energy and is always professional. He has us do a lot of circuit training and a bit of running and walking in the sand. He sets his iphone to ring a bell every 25 seconds or so so we can switch circuits and rotate. The bell he has on his phone sounds like a boxing ring bell so the bell rings and we are suppose to rotate only it doesn't happen because Little C is still trying to get coordinated enough to figure out how she is supposed to be doing her squats/shoulder press. So I stand there and wait and yell at her to move it along! Eric says the bell waits for no-one. I laugh because I know he has to get annoyed with our in-eptness but NEVER shows it. He has so much much patience with us and he never looses his cool. He just makes me laugh because we look like such dorks sometimes and he just keeps encouraging us.

I think he got tired of listening to me cough so he told me to take the day off tomorrow. I'm glad because I probably need to rest some more but I don't want to miss out on a good workout so I just cough and continue on at about 1/2 strength.

My Mom pulled the wheezing card so she pooped out too. That left little C to carry on at full strength. It was fun.

We arrived home to five kids who all needed lunches and breakfasts and hair and a ride to school. It was organized chaos. My step dad just sits at the counter and observes. he is amazed I think at the chaos of it all and the fact that it all gets done a nobody gets hurt.

Of to school they all go and I take a shower and go back to bed to rest and try to get well.

Just another Thursday.

Dinner Idea

Mom came up with this the other night and it was so delicious and the kids loved it!!

Stuffed bell peppers.

Brown some ground meat and add a little chopped onion/garlic/ any minced veggies/salt/pepper

Add 2 cups cooked brown rice (or white)

add tomato paste 1 can

1 can tomato sauce

cut bottoms off of peppers so they will sit flat in pan. oil pan.

cut tops off of peppers. stuff peppers with mixture.

bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes or until peppers are tender.

More Info

Thought I'd give a bit more info on our move/job as it comes in. Ted will be an oncology rep for a major Bio-Tech company. He will be calling on Oncologists and is very excited to get to learn a new group of diseases.

His territory is Mobile, Alabama which is the most southern part of the state right on the Gulf Coast. We will be able to live across the bay from mobile in a really nice town that has excellent schools (top 10%) beautiful housing. of course I've done my homework on the area and am trying to have all my ducks in a row before we go look at houses. Hopefully we will get to go house hunting in the next week to ten days. WE want to be in escrow asap so we can move right in and get the kids settled asap. Ted will have a couple of Weeks of home study before he starts training. That's a good time to be unpacking boxes too!

Will write more as I get info.

The kids are really excited. Ari will be staying here in Ca until she gets through finals in Mid January and the rest of us will probably leave a week or two before her. She is looking forward to getting herself settled and safely making friends without the thought of "moving" looming over her precious head all the time. We owe her BIG time.

The little ones are happy go-lucky to be moving on to the next adventure. They don't really have any concerns except will we have a pool or not. WE will see about that, not all homes have pools down there but some of the ones we are looking at do have pools.

Any way, I'm off to shower and get ready for the day, have been in bed all week with the flu so I'm up for getting out of the house today. will write more later.

SWEET HOME ALABAMA

WELL IT'S DONE...TED HAS FINALLY GOTTEN A JOB!! I'M WRITING IN ALL CAPS SO YOU KNOW HOW HAPPY WE ARE AND EXCITED. WE WILL BE RE-LOCATING DEEP DOWN SOUTH TO ALABAMA. WE WILL BE LIVING ON THE GULF COAST NEAR THE WATER AND THE POTTERY BARN. PRIORITIES YA KNOW.

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR UNCONDITIONAL LOVE AND SUPPORT AND FOR HELPING US THROUGH THIS VERY TOUGH BUT MEMORABLE TIME. I WILL BE NEEDING MORE LOVE AND SUPPORT AS I CONTINUE MY JOURNEY TO ANOTHER STATE IN WHICH I WILL KNOW NO-ONE. I WILL CONTINUE TO SPREAD THE LOVE AND HUMOR WHEREVER I GO AND PROVE TO PEOPLE EVERYWHERE THAT ONE CAN BE HAPPY ANYWHERE IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT ATTITUDE. THERE ARE GOOD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE. IT'S WHAT YOU PUT OUT THAT YOU GET BACK SO HERE WE GO.. YA READY FOR ANOTHER KAMINSKI FAMILY ADVENTURE???

Been sick

I've been sick in bed with the flu for the past three days. Today will be the fourth day. This morning as I got into the shower to wash the "sick" off of me I noticed that I had been wearing my underwear inside out. Enough said.

Feeling A Bit Washed UP???

Ever have those days or maybe week's when you're feeling a bit washed up? A little tired? Worn out? Defeated?

I know we all have those days and While I was photographing this boat that washed ashore a few months ago I realized what the boat symbolizes for me. Sometimes we just need to dig our proverbial "feet" into the sand to feel a little more grounded. Need to stop being adrift and get on solid ground.

My family has been "adrift" for 10 months now and I'm so ready to put down roots and settle in.

I'm ready for my own house again, my own kitchen, my own bedroom, my own yard. I know the rest of my family feels the same way. Don't get me wrong... living with my parents has been an amazing and fun experience. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. It has been wonderful, But I;m ready to move on and settle down.

I know my parents understand when I say this, They don't take it personally. They know we are not here forever. They will go through a tough time when we leave. It will be SO quiet without all the chatter and "dog" antics. I feel bad for them but I know they want us to be happy and settle in somewhere.

They will have to do some minor repairs after we leave... Whats that?? You ask what kind of repairs? Well I could write out the list but lets just put it this way..

When my parents are old and in need of a place to live it will no longer be my little sister Shelley that will be housing them...It will be Ted and me. Yes we owe them so much that I just keep telling my Dad to put it on our tab. I guess it will be me changing their diapers and spoon feeding them their baby food dinner. Yep we owe them THAT much. Anyone else owe their parents??? Nope it's probably only us.

Anyway, next time you feel washed up and need a break just step outside and put your bare feet on the ground and "feel" the strength that lies beneath you. it's there, it comes in different forms like parents, sisters, friends, a phone call home, but whatever it is that you need to feel grounded... go get it and take care of yourself.