Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Great, But Sad Family Home Evening





So for FHE last night we went to my Granny's nursing home to watch a program they put on. For those of you who don't know, my Granny has Alzheimers and is going down pretty fast. She was a very classy lady. I remember how her hair was always perfect, her makeup was always perfect, her nails were always perfect. She wouldn't go outside without being perfect! I walked up to her last night and she had no make up on. At all. It was sad, not because I think ladies need to always wear makeup, but because she was so....anal I guess I could say, about it before the Alzheimers. It made me sad because I knew if she could, she would have been mortified. Anyway, we went to watch a sing-a-long they put on. It was fun. They sang a bunch of songs from their era. My Granny was always into putting on a show. She was a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with her husband. They also sang in choruses for Utah Opera. She was always one to love an audience and to put on a performance. It was fun to watch her sing last night. Even though she didn't remember most of the words to the songs, she had fun singing and waving and putting on facial expressions.

It was also very sad. It was like going to a Kindergarten program. My classy grandmother sitting in front of an audience, reading the words for the songs from a big flip chart, following an upbeat director. If she was all there, I think she would have thought it silly. But because she is so far gone, she loved it. But that's the part that makes me sad. Sometimes I wonder why Heavenly Father allows horrible diseases like Alzheimers to run rampant. My Granny is my 3rd grandparent to be diagnosed with the disease. Both my grandfathers have died from it. It's an awful, cruel disease. It's heartbreaking to go visit and not have them know you. To see my children go up and give kisses and hugs and know that she has no clue that they are her great-grandchildren. I remember when Tiaree was born, she was so excited. Her first great-grandchild, and now she doesn't even recognize her, let alone me. I remember with my Grandad, my Granny's husband, that he lost his ability to speak first. He got confused and forgot and all that, but he could still listen. He would bow his head and just listen, but he couldn't say anything. Then one day my mom put on some Mo-Tab and he sat up straight and sang every word to one of his favorite songs. It's weird how it works like that.

Anyway, I wanted to put some pictures and videos of my Granny up to share with you. All the ladies wore tiara's and boas and all the men had on top hats. It was cute. So my Granny has the blue shirt on in the front row. Her sister, my Auntie Winsome, actually lives there with her and is sitting one down from her. They are cute ladies and they get together and criticize everyone over and over cause they don't remember they've done it once already!! LOL They are from South Africa and their accents get really thick when they are together too. Auntie Win doesn't have Alzheimers, she does have some dimentia though. She is a good thing for my Granny. A constant that my Granny remembers all the time. I think it helps. I believe that a lot of times with Alzheimers the person knows something is wrong and gets frustrated and scared when they can't remember. I've seen that with all my grandparents. My Granny is the best at blowing it off though, of covering it. But she really is an actress, has been all her life, so it comes easy for her to pretend like nothing is wrong.My Auntie Win is the one in the purple shirt with the pink boa.




Here are some videos. They are from my cell so they really aren't great, but they are fun. They show my Granny's performing side, especially the last one, she is very theatrical!! Enjoy! K, I just realized that the sound isn't working at all on these videos, but you can still see her dancing, which was what I was going for! Sorry though, the sound is kind of creepy!


Friday, September 26, 2008

My Sore Booty!

So I went walking with some awesome friends of mine this morning. I need to exercise more and walking with people at a set time is a great motivator! But I am already feeling the pain! I am going to be so sore later today! I have to thank the ladies that went though. I'm glad I found out what time they go so I can impose myself on them. I really do need to get back in shape. I am on that plateau of weight loss and I really would like to head back down the other side. I'm hoping that walking will help. I'm going to try to go 3 days a week with them, but now that my kids go off track today, I don't know what I'll do. They are good on their bikes so maybe I'll let them ride with us. Maybe I'll try that Monday and see how they do and go from there. I don't want to stop after just 1 day! Here's crossing my fingers that they will be cooperative! :D Now I just need to work on weight training too. I have my awesome Turbo Jam videos that really work for that. I just need to get downstairs and do them. I don't know why I can't motivate myself to exercise. I used to! I used to work out a lot and I was doing so well on the weight loss thing, and now I'm just stuck. At least I didn't put anything back on! Well I'm going to try from now on to be better at it!!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Keighlee

So I have to post this cute video of Keighlee dancing to High School Musical 2. She makes the cutest faces when she dances! Bree got in on the end action too. They are the cutest girls! They play so well together and it's just fun to watch them and listen to them. Hopefully this will work:

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Forks Baby!!

So I am finally home from Forks! I had such a good time. It was so much fun and I made some wonderful friends. I took tons of pictures too! I had like 350 of them on my camera. I put them all on photobucket so if you want to see them you can go here:

http://s365.photobucket.com/albums/oo92/chelsmcgee/

I don't have captions or anything on there yet, but I'll keep working on it! We left Wednesday afternoon and drove through. We stopped in Boise for dinner and then got to Olympia, WA about 3:30 or so. We decided to sleep in the car for a few hours. We slept until 6:00 and then headed back out. The Olympic Peninsula is so beautiful! It was such a pretty ride to Forks. We stopped at one of the Kalaloch Beaches on our way in. They had huge driftwood logs all over the shore. We stopped at this huge cedar tree in the rain forest. It was so cool. After we got to Forks we had to wait to check into our hotel so we looked around a little. We saw the hospital and the "Cullen" house. We also had a pretty good lunch at a little burger joint. After we checked in I crashed for a few hours. When my room mates showed up I got up and showered and went to dinner with 2 of them, Heather and Stephanie. Great girls from Lees Summitt, MO. Also sharing my room was a wonderful lady from Evanston, Jerri. She's awesome and doesn't snore too bad!!

Friday we got up and went hiking in the Hoh Rain Forest. It was amazing. It was so green. Even the light shining down had a green tint to it. And the trees were huge! The Hoh river that runs out of the rain forest has one of the prettiest color blues to it that I've ever seen! After the rain forest, we went back to LaPush and went to First Beach. It was shrouded in fog and so pretty. I got soaked by the tide, it was so cold but so fun! After First Beach we went back to the hotel and got all "niced" up and went to dinner in Port Angeles. We went to a place called Michaels Divine. It was ok food. But the wait was crazy! We were there for 1.5 hours before we even got our salad. We were there for 3.5 hours. And then it ended up costing $600 more than they had said. Ridiculous! But the company was great!! Jackie got some drinks and expected the food to get there sooner and so the drinks went right to her head. She was cracking us up. Then she joked that she had to have 3 drinks to stay up with us "mormon girls"!! Too funny. Then we went looking for Snack Box's in Port Angeles!!! Inside joke and I don't want to explain but it was a blast. We stayed true to the TwilightMoms Code of Conduct though. Or as my friend said, we only bent the crap out of it!!

On Saturday we got up at 4:45 and went to the tide pools at beach 4 at Kalaloch. They were so cool! I've never seen so many star fish all in one place. Of course I've only seen tide pools once before, 9 years ago!! :D They tide pools were cool and we went back to Forks and got ready for Stephenie Meyer day. Forks went all out for it! They had Twilight stuff all over. Most places had signs wishing Bella Happy Birthday. (September 13th is Bella's birthday, hence Stephenie Meyer day being then) We went to the park and there were vendors with Twilight related stuff and cakes and Bella's truck and Charlies police cruiser and our very own TM Alabama sisters had the "shiny, silver Volvo". We had a huge group picture of everyone that came and then just of us TM's. It was fun. Then we had pizza for a late lunch and headed down to LaPush.

The Quileute tribe put on an Indian dance for us. It was really cool, not at all what I expected but neat non the less. Then after the Wolf Dance, we headed back to the beach for a bon fire and storytelling. A storyteller from the Quileute tribe told us all the Quileute legends. They were so neat. They actually have legends that they used to be able to turn into wolves and orca at will. Crazy stuff. It was very eery that night. The fog was so thick and just completely wrapped the beach. Forks was crystal clear, but you couldn't see 100 feet in front of you at First Beach. It was so fun to listen to the stories.

Sunday we got up and packed and headed for the Sol Duc rain forest which is on the way to Port Angeles. We hiked to the Sol Duc falls. They were beautiful! They fall into this narrow ravine and then flow down to a larger river. It was just cool! We were supposed to ride the ferries back to Seattle but the one was running late and the other one we could have taken, we missed. So we drove around the sound through Tacoma. It was still a very pretty drive. We passed Bremerton, WA where a Naval base is. My Grandpa worked there during WW2 as a welder, working on the Naval ships. We didn't realize they were there until it was too late to take picures of them. Oh well. We got to SeaTac on time and had fun waiting for our plane. I love flying, and this flight was a blast. There were so many TM's on the flight! Probably 20 or so. Our very own Coven Mother (creator of the TM's) Lisa was on the flight. We got glow sticks and made bracelets and headbands. The piolot actually lowered the lights more so we could glow away! It was hilarious!

Overall this was one of the funnest trips I have ever been on. The Forks area is spectacular! The company was awesome and I made friend and memories for life!! I feel very lucky to have been able to go, it was such a good thing for me. I think I needed the little get away!! Well I just looked at the clock and realized that I still have stuff to do for preschool, so I'm going to go. Enjoy my pictures!!