The Jones Girls

Tonight was Savannah’s school fundraiser at McDonald’s.    The truly neat thing about this was the teachers and principal were helping out in the kitchen cooking the food!!  Savannah’s teacher, Miss Tarbell, was cooking the French fries.    McDonald’s gave 15% of all proceeds of all sales to our school from 4pm-8pm.  Very generous of them!!

Thank goodness Cliff went with me.  There must have been over a hundred people in that restaurant and 50 of them were in the play area.    It was packed!

We were suprised and happy to see Vanessa and her mom with her girls there.   Her girls, Tiffany and Stacey also go to Savannah’s School, El Portal. So we all sat together.

 I ordered Happy Meals for the kiddos and got some food for Cliff and me too.    The girls were no way interested in food…they wanted to PLAY!!  And play they did!!   

We lasted about an hour there and then headed back home,,,with LOTS of uneaten food that was the girls lunch the next day.

Today was Crazy Hat Day at Savannah’s School.  Savannah has this awesome hat that is the shape of a Nemo Fish that we got her from Sea World on her 3rd birthday.  Today was the perfect day to show it off!!  I had gotten Savannah a really cute orange outfit for school that she hadn’t worn yet and it went perfect with her fish hat.

When we rolled up at school, Savannah jumped out of the car and quickly threw her hat off, for fear of embarrassment that she was the only kid in her class wearing a crazy hat.  Then she saw some other kids wearing their crazy hats then she relaxed and I helped her put her fish hat on.  She looked so stinken’ cute lined up for class!!

She was a hit in her class today and all of the kids thought she looked so cool in her fish hat.    Savannah was in her true element…she loves her fish.

Today we went to the Halloween Pumpkin Patch and Carnival at the Puente Hills Mall.    I negotiated a great discount rate with the owner for our La Habra Moms Club…$5 per kid for 5 rides and a free pumpkin.   Normally the prices are $3 per ride per kid and $2 for a pumpkin.  I basically saved $20 for each kid…a good deal for certain.  So all of the La Habra Moms were thrilled to go to this event.

All of my girls had way too much fun.  They went on a ferris wheel for toddlers, a couple of bouncy houses, the swings ride where 2 girls got to sit together for each swing, and feed and pet all sorts of animals at the petting zoo-baby pigs, a baby calf, goats, sheep, chickens, etc.    Then the girls picked out their pumpkins and we took lots of fun pictures with the cute Halloween backdrops around the pumpkin patch.  The weather was a perfect 78 degrees and we all had so much fun.  We will decorate the pumpkins next week at the park with all of our friends.

Today I took Amanda to see Dr. Wright @ Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.  Getting there was stressful.   Apparently, every road in La Habra is getting repaired and they are re-doing every ramp for every sidewalk in La Habra because apparently a few years ago when La Habra put handicap curbs on all of the corners, they didn’t follow the handicap guidelines and didn’t make them wide enough…nice mistake…costing us tax payers millions of dollars for this stupid mistake.  Then the onramp for the freeway has been closed for 6 months with no end in sight.    Long story short, I had to drive side streets to get to the freeway which tacked on an additional 40 minutes of driving…Nice!! (NOT!!)

I forgot to mention, there was an appointment fiasco yesterday. The appointment desk called me and tried to reschedule my appt.  I told them no way.  My appt was made 4 months ago back in June and there is way too much involved to rearrange things in such short notice, and besides this appt was critical to find out if Amanda needed to have another surgery on her thumb.    They told me Dr. Wright switched from mornings to afternoons on Tuesdays.  They said they would have a supervisor call me back.   Well, a supervisor called Cliff’s cell phone, not our home phone and when I talked to them and asked them why they called his cell phone, they were rude and told me never mind.  Ok, now it was time that I called the manager of orthopedics…I am pissed.   So I speak to Shawn and he proceeds to tell me that my appt was changed from 11:15am to 2:15pm.  I told him no one told me and I would have been waiting up there for 3 hours when I checked in at 2:15pm.   This really pissed me off and he was embarrassed that  I was not told about the rescheduling time.   I told him could come in at 3pm after I picked up Savannah from school.   Then he told me not to bring the other girls to the hospital due to the H1N1 virus..oh great…   So now I had to find a babysitter in super short notice.   I called Sabrina and thank goodness she was able to babysit for me.   So we were all set…

Anyway, I get to Children’s Hospital and of course the parking lot is full.   I don’t want to be late for Amanda’s appt so I do the valet parking for a whopping $10 – no choice, just did it.

We checked in and they informed us Amanda needed to go get X-rays for her right arm, wrist and hand.  So we are waiting in line and finally get out of X-Rays in about 40 minutes.   We go back to the waiting room and then get called in to see Dr. Wright.   By now it is almost 4:30pm.   We see Dr. Wright 20 minutes later. 

During our whole time at the hospital, I am constantly sanitizing our hands and making sure Amanda minimally touches anything with her hands and not put her hands in her mouth, nose and eyes.    We had to hit the bathroom twice for potty breaks so hand washing was at a premium too.  I was trying so hard to avoid this H1N1 virus.

Dr. Wright evaluates Amanda and tells me the best music to my ears.   She said Amanda had huge progress since June and her range and use of her arm, wrist and new thumb have exceeded their expectations.  She said no additional surgeries are needed and we go back in a year for a check up.  Hopefully we are done with surgeries.  Yahooie!!  Praise the Lord!!  

We happily went on our merry way and joined the gazillion evening commuters and got home at 7:30pm.  

Way to go Amanda!!  You have been through so much and you are such a trooper.  Time and time again you have shown your courage, strength, and drive to live.    You are forever my joyous chld and my true miracle baby.   l love you my precious.

This week is Red Ribbon week at Savannah’s school in recognition for Don’t do Drugs.  The kids wear red bracelets and red ribbons on their shirts all week and get to participate in fun activities all week.

Today all of the kids got to wear their clothes inside out.  So Savannah looked hilarious in all of her clothes inside out.

Today Savannah brought her giant stuffed elephant to school for show and tell for the letter “E”.   Turns out every other kid brought an elephant for the letter E also…too funny!!

I found the EASIST recipe to make caramel popcorn.   Use 1 cup of brown sugar and melt in pan with 1 cup of sugar.  Drizzle over popcorn and mix.   Then make popcorn balls or just serve as is.

I had some friends and their kids over from my La Habra Moms Club and we all made this in my kitchen.  It was so much fun and tasted so GOOD!!!  YUM!!

We also melted caramels and made caramel apples.  Double YUM!!

There is nothing better than caramel popcorn during Halloween time!