I would like to thank...

I would like to thank the Pillsbury dough boy for making premade cookie dough. My life revolves around it. Last night I made 144 sugar cookies for my girls to take to school. Grace was taking them for her birthday(Dec. 27), Julia was taking them because it was her last day of school for winter break, and Sophie was taking cookies for her Christmas party at preschool. She was going to be decorating the cookies with her class. My oldest is taking her cookies tomorrow for her last day of school. So, tonight I have a date with the Pillsbury dough boy. I also iced all the cookies except the ones for Sophie.

This brings me to the next person I'd like to thank...Betty Crocker. I'd like to thank her for two reasons. One, her icing was on sale, and two she had icing with colored sprinkles in it. YEAH!!!

So, thank you to the both of you. You saved me a great deal of time, energy, and my sanity. If I had to of made the dough by scratch I would have had more dirty dishes , and who knows what time I would have gotten some shut eye. KUDOS!!!

O Sweet Child of Mine...

While I am not a huge Guns n Roses fan, I do like some of their classic songs...Paradise City, Welcome to the Jungle, and O Sweet Child of Mine. Whenever my husband goes to Wal-mart alone, he tends to come home with an assortment of new CDs. His cd buying habits are equivalent to my purse buying. He is always buying cds that were popular when we were growing up, hence Guns N Roses. I decided to take the cd and listen to it on my way to take the kids to school.

I put the cd in. My oldest daughter looks at the cd case, examining it closely. She then releases an uuuugh! Keep in mind she is 12 and is into the Johas Brothers, High Musical soundtrack, Kelly Clarkson, so you get the idea. They way her "uuuugh" was uttered was so funny. It was full of disgust. It was equivalent to when my mom would play classical music in the car. I just found it to be a funny moment for me as a mom. Of course my kindergartner asked me to turn the music down because she couldn't hear her movie. I did. My brief moment of stepping back in time to being a junior high kid ended, but I would resume the moment shortly.

I dropped the kids off at school, and was alone in my car at last. I was free...free to go shopping and free to listen to my music as loud as I wanted to. Now picture this...Here I am driving in my Nissan Quest mini-van, wearing a striped long sleeve tee, corduroy blazer, jeans, and ballet flats, and rocking out to Guns N Roses!!! It was an awesome moment even if it only lasted a few minutes. I felt liberated belting out the lyrics to O Sweet Child of Mine in my best Axel Rose voice. What a moment. It was my theme song for the day. Everyone should have one, and everyone should have a moment. All day in my head I'd sing that song. I felt great!!!

Say goodbye gall bladder

It has been awhile since I posted anything, so I decided to write about something.

Two weeks ago Thursday I started having severe pains in my stomach and back. They really hurt, and I have a fairly high tolerance to pain, after all I have given birth to four babies. By Saturday I was not feeling any better. My husband told me he was taking me to the ER. Of, course I was in tears because it was all so scary to me. I've never had to go to the ER before. Basically all they did at the hospital was give me some strong pain medicine and a pepcid ac. That night I felt pretty good. I was pain free...hmmm probably cause I was dopped up. Sunday the pain was back. Sunday night we noticed the whites of my eyes were yellow. I knew that couldn't be good. So, back to the ER we went, only this time we went to a different hospital. The hospital was great. They did blood work, ran tests, and hooked me to an IV with fluids. I also got more pain medicine. After we had been there for a couple of hours I was admitted to the hospital. The tears came back. I thought I'm only 31, I'm too young to be here. It turned out I had pancreatitis(i probably spelled it wrong). My liver, pancreas, and gall bladder were all inflamed. My enzymes were 7700 and a normal person is 65. For the next two days I was only given fluid through my IV. All I could have was ice chips. It took two days to get my enzymes under 1000. They won't do surgery until they are under 1000. It turned out my gall bladder was the cause of all my problems. It was full of stones. So, they took out my gall bladder. After the surgery I spent another two days at the hospital because of some minor complications.

I am so glad to be home with my kids and husband. I've never watched so much t.v. in my life. I am able to move around a lot easier, and each day I feel better. Gall bladder surgery is really common and most of the time it is an outpatient surgery, but not for me because of the pancreatitis. At least it is out and my gall bladder will never bother me again.

Hope none of you ever have to go through this cause it really sucks!!!
Have a Happy Thanksgiving

A Little Bit about ME

Okay, so I'm new to this whole blogging thing, but I thought what the heck. I've tried myspace and facebook, so I might as well try this. So, here I go.

I'm Rachel. I'm 30 years old(31 on Oct.27), married to the love of my life for 10 yrs, and have four beautiful girls. My oldest daughter and I share the same b-day, and we were delivered by the same doctor...crazy. She usually ends up with more presents than me. I'm still going to school and working on my BA. I am a senior and one of these days I will be done, but there is no huge rush. I'm fortunate because I get to stay at home with my kids. I feel that I've become a professional driver because that is all I do. I run the kids all over Northern California. I'm sure the gas companies love me. I'm contemplating on buying stock in Chevron.lol Well, what else can I say about myself? I'm a bit kooky and kinda dorky, but that is what makes me Rachel. I like to have fun. I'm in a bunco group which is a total blast. Once a month we get together at someone's house for dinner, drinks, bunco, and whole lot of gabbing. I'm also an avid shopper with a major addiction to purses(what girl isn't). When I have the extra time I like to read. My favorite drink is milk. I love it!

My husband owns an auto body shop, so he is always busy. He will start to get really busy once the rainy season starts. But that is what we want. I'm very proud of him. He works hard and has accomplished a lot. He recently found out he will be doing a car for the Make-a-Wish foundation. It is a huge honor, and he is really excited to be able to do something like that. Like I said, we have been married for 10 years, but we have been together for a little over 13 years. The time has just flown by. We complement each other nicely. Communication is key to a good relationship, along with learning to compromise. We never go to bed angry at each other. That is really important too.

My girls are wonderful. It is so awesome to be a mom. It is starting to get really fun because we are done with the baby phase. I loved it when they were babies, but not having to change diapers anymore rocks!!! It is so much easier for us to go on little weekend trips now. It is enjoyable because they are all able to do things for themselves. It is like we are moving into a new chapter of our parenting. This is the first year that all 4 of the girls are in school. 3 of them are in school all day, while our youngest goes to preschool 3 days a week for 3 hours. It is so odd to have me time. It has been such a long time since I've had that. I find I don't always know what to do with my extra time.

Well, I need to get going. Dinner is calling. I'll write later on this week.
Rachel