Here comes the sun do do do do......

We've all done it.
Spent hours letting the sun caress our bare skin. I've done it more times than I can count.
I was the little girl with freckles who's nose was ALWAYS sunburned.
One summer when I was a pre-teen I went to seven peaks with my friends. At my friends house getting ready to go we looked for sunscreen. She had two small bottles. We chose the better looking hardly used bottle over the obviously much used surly tried and true bottle. Had we looked closely we would have seen that the one we chose to bring was not water proof. That sunscreen was basically good for nothing as we ran in and out of the water, sweated up and around the stairs to the water slides and probably never reapplied when we sat to dry off and eat snacks on our towels...
That night my body was basically one big blister...
Once when I was pregnant with Bear I went swimming and because I wasn't planning to spend any time just sitting in the sun, and because the pool was in a shady area, I didn't put on a single drop of sunscreen. The sun burn that followed left me looking like a lobster. Not only had I spent hours completely surrounded by the sun, but to wash off the chlorine from the pool I took a really hot bath. (i really do know better, but i was pregnant at the time and the blood just wasn't flowing to my brain properly;) The hot bath water made my burning skin burn even deeper. I remember laying on a blanket in my living room red and naked as a new born, screaming baby. My body cold and my skin stretched tight.
I could go on and on with stories like those....
Having suffered so many sunburns, I know how to tend to and treat them, I know how to get the sting out.
Add a cup of apple cider vinegar to a bath of cool water and soak in it for fifteen minutes. This will take the sting out and help the burn to heal faster.
Aloe Vera has never made any SUN burn of mine feel any better. Of course it's helped with regular burns, like the time I got a bad burn on my arm and Phil brought a mostly empty bottle of blue aloe vera burn gel and left it on my porch in the early morning hours with a note telling me to put it on my burn... We had only been out on a couple of dates at that time he was already stocking up on "brownie points" lol!
Another sun burn treatment involves something called sunbreeze and a night emulsion cream it smells weird and is really uncomfortable, but good golly it works...
My favorite treatment though, is lavender oil. I mix it with cetaphil lotion and rub it all over any kind of burn any time I think about it. This one is the best one for kids. It feels nice, sinks right into the skin, and best of all it has a nice relaxing scent. In the summer time its awesome to have a bottle of it in the refrigerator keeping it nice and cold when you apply it.
So yes, I know how to tend to sunburns, I know how to make wearing clothes bearable, how to tolerate having someone put their, hey how's it going let me touch you and massage you, hands on your sunburned shoulders causing that breath catching pain...

I am a sun lover, a sun addict. I want to stay outside soaking up the sun long after everyone else is sick of it. When the temperatures reach into the hundreds, I am disappointed because it forces me into the shade. And in my 28 years of sun loving I've learned to put on sunscreen and put it on every chance I get..
This week hasn't been the warmest or the sunniest, but close enough. I've spent the whole week out in my garden, at the park, and sitting back in my lawn chair watching my kids play.
All done under the influence of sunscreen. SPF 50, reapplied periodically.
I first noticed a problem on Wednesday. Though I'd worn plenty of sunscreen especially on my face, my nose was quite red. That night my hands and face were on fire. Dazed and confused I was thinking it was a hot flash.
WTF!
Thursday I started to notice that it hurt my skin just to have the sun shine on it. With my bare hands, face, and feet bearing the brunt of it. It literally feels like a fire burning on my skin, yes I do know exactly what that feels like...
Torture.
Friday I had an appointment with a gastroenterologist for my tummy troubles. A doctor is a doctor, lol, so I asked her about it. She told me that with the antibiotic that I've been taking, its probably photosensitivity.
No amount of sunscreen keeps my skin from burning, and no amount of lavender oil takes the sting away.
My hands arms and feet are hardly red with burn, there were tiny blisters on one arm for only one night and they were gone by morning.
This really can hardly qualify as a bad sunburn, and yet it hurts more than any burn I've ever experienced. Washing my hands, putting on lotion, a gentle breeze; my poor hands have hardly been able to stand these things.
Yesterday when we went on some errands I couldn't go without wearing long pants, a long sleeved sweater, a hat and some gloves. I am sure I looked totally lame with the temperature near or reaching 80 degrees...
Fortunately I have finished the round of antibiotics so hopefully my skin can go back to normal now.
And it better, because who knows what's waiting for me around the next corner...

And Lyon says....

"Hey mom! Did you know there's another way to spell Lyon!? "

"Hey mom! Someday can we go to the supermarket!?"

Cupcakes...

I have this tendency.
I DO NOT like being told what to do.
Being bossed around.
Not getting to make my own choice/decision in a matter....
I hear "no you can't" and immediately start planning how I CAN.
Interestingly enough you'd think I'd have used this rebellious nature of mine as a means of getting into trouble...
You'd think I'd have been breaking all the rules and heading out on the high way to hell, lol!
But no.
Somehow my brain uses my rebellion for good not evil. ;D
Growing up I was told and taught that my peers would try to pressure me into doing naughty things like drugs, alcohol, etc... I took that "knowledge" and swore my peers would never pressure me into any of those things. As it happens, to this day I've never even been offered a cigarette, I've never smoked one on my own accord either, lol! In fact all those things I was warned I'd be pressured into, I never was....
Superman happens to be the oldest of his siblings. With all the responsibilities and trail blazing that come with being the oldest he's been instilled with the right to ask his siblings to do and accomplish tasks.
Every single time he does this I am over come with intense feelings of rebellion. And I tell him that he can't just tell other people what to do!
This usually ends in fits of laughter on my part when I recognize that my stubborn rebellious nature has kicked into gear for someone else's sake, lol!
Incidentally my older siblings often tell me what to do, and guess what, I usually do end up doing what they've asked... Sometimes anyway...
So my point.
For the last two weeks my stomach has wanted very little to do with food. Common sense tells me to back off the solids and go for liquids such as juice and broth. So what do I do? I eat burgers and hotdogs, soda and ice cream, chips and burritos.
Yesterday I went to maceys and got a box of cupcakes. I've never liked cupcakes, and yet I ate 4 of the 6 cupcakes. Just because my stomach tells me not to...
Most of the time (just in the last two weeks) above mentioned food ends up being violently rejected by my stomach, barfing is getting to be as regular an occurrence as washing my hands, lol!
Fortunately every now and then I manage to stubbornly refuse to throw up long enough to digest something. Like the four cupcakes,
I kept them down, success!!!!
Which may account for the weight I've gained in the last two weeks, lol!
And now that I recognize my irrational rebellion of broth, I can rebel against it. It's a carrot juice for breakfast, broth for lunch kind of day today.
Just try to tell me it's not, go head and try ;)

And Lyon says...

"Hey mom! There is nothing better than keeen-wah (quinoa) and bay-bwades (beyblades)"

Doctor Jones...

I went to pick up Lyon from pre-school today. Before Fenix and I left our house we made sure to lock up. All doors and windows secured we headed out.
On our front door we have a "hotel lock" chain installed. Not so much to keep people out as to keep little toddlers in. We don't usually leave with it locked, but I didn't think about it as we left through our garage.
I got Lyon, ran a few errands, and then returned home.
My truck doesn't have a garage door opener so when we pulled up on our driveway I decided to just park there and go in through the front door. Arms laden with coats, bags, keys, and phones I made getting to the front door as difficult as possible. Struggled to get the handle and dead bolt unlocked only to have the door jerk to a hard stop when it'd opened two inches. The hotel lock held firm.
Arms still laden with their burden I back tracked to the garage door and typed in the code. The door opened a foot before jerking to an abrupt hault. What the heck!
I put in the code again and again, but that door wasn't going anywhere. I groaned, it is freaking cold outside today, lol! So I did the only thing that there was left to do.
I handed my phones off to Lyon and rolled through the gap under the garage door in pseudo Indiana jones fashion. It was a lot harder than I thought it'd be. Had that door been in the process of shutting I don't think I would have made it before getting squished, lol! But I managed, I got back up and was able to open the garage all the way so Lyon and Fenix could walk on in. they would have none of that. So I closed the door leaving a two foot gap so they could roll in just like me :D

Photog...

Superman just absolutely cracks me up.

I'm like "take a picture of me"

He's like "no"

I'm like *said in a high pitched sarcastic laughing scream* "you have to" 

So he takes my camera and readies to take the picture.

I stand there posing like a freaking nerd.

I stand there,

I keep standing there......

Finally I ask if he's taken the freaking picture already.

He has.

Later I look through my pictures and find that what Superman has done,

is he has not in fact taken just a picture of me.

No, the man has made a video of me standing there posing like a freaking nerd.

And it cracks me up!

Lol!!!

And Lyon says...

"Fenix, you are so beautiful when you cry."
Said while looking at a picture on the iPad of Fenix crying, lol!

And Fenix says...

Fenix-Mom, I'll be the mommy, you be the baby and I'll be the doggy.

Me-okay, but first I need to start this laundry washing.

Fenix-No. Babies don't stand up. Lay down on the floor and roll and say goo.

Me- *laughing* k, as soon as I start this laundry.

Crabby

Yesterday we went swimming in the ocean. The beach is covered in lava rock and stuff. It is surprisingly sharp. I didn't think that my feet had gotten cut, even when my big toe started to sting. I tried to look and see if it was bleeding it didn't look like it. I started to wonder if I'd been stung by a jelly fish, lol! It wasn't until we went back onto the beach that we could see our feet were bleeding. Fortunately the cuts aren't to bad, and we were happy to stay and play on the beach for while. We sat on the sand and let the sun warm us up as I was freezing cold, after being in the water for at least a half hour.
Once I warmed up I went exploring the little tide pools, I found one small one that was a nice and circular. I reached my arm all the way to the bottom to grab some sand and pieces of coral. They were pretty so I brought them over to Superman and then he came with me back to the tide pool. I reach in for another handful and when I brought my hand out I saw I'd grabbed a sand coral, and a BABY CRAB!!! It was tiny, and white, it may not have been a baby, but it looked like one. Lol, it was so cute and would curl up tight next to the rocks in my hand. I held it for a bit before going to put it back where I got it, before I could get it home, it jumped from my hand into a pocket sized pool and curled up tight into a crevice where I couldn't get it. I felt bad that I took it from its home. It was really neat though and I can't wait to go snorkeling and get a good clear look in the deeper parts of the water.
I LOVE IT HERE!!!

Tide pools

We have been having such an amazing time in Hawaii! I am loving the humidity, the heat, the sun, the clouds, the waves! This morning Phil and I went out to the beach that our condo sits right next to. It's full of rock and coral, etc. we watched as the sun rose up behind us bringing sparkle to the water. So pretty! Phil saw a group of people gathered on the beach and realized there was a seal over there. Of course we walked over to take pictures and video. We stood watching for a few minutes until some man (local I think) came up behind all of us and yelled at us to leave the seal alone. I didn't realize we were bothering the seal, if so it was innocently done. I didn't think it warranted being yelled at, lol! I really think he ought to have come and stood in front of the group of people and kindly asked us to give the seal more space...... But whatever, it was cool to see the seal, I'm so glad Superman found this condo, it is awesome!!!! :D