Tamara and the Kids are On Their Way

So this is her sister Rita but I know people have been waiting for an update. I will let Tamara tell the whole story when she is safely at home but until then just to let you know her visa came today and as of a few minutes ago drove onto Washington soil and is on her way to Idaho. They should be here between 7 and 8 AM if there are no problems.

Visa Update

No visa in the mail this morning.

I called Senator Risch's office to talk with Rene. She promised to make some calls. I emailed the consulate asking for a tracking number. They emailed back asking for the address it was sent to. A couple of hours later I received a phone call from someone at the consulate. It seems that Tuesday they had some technical difficulties. They didn't print my visa. They printed it today. It is going in the mail today to my aunt's house in Vancouver. It should be there Thursday morning. My dad and will be in Vancouver tomorrow night. My brother in law and his father will be meeting us there. They are coming up early so they can attend a session in the Vancouver temple. Then we will pack my stuff up Thursday morning and then wait at my aunt's house until 10 am when they deliver the mail. IF all goes well we should be heading to the border around 10:30. Pocatello early Friday morning. Please keep your fingers crossed and us in your prayers.

Visa No Show

Looks like I will have to wait until after the long weekend to get my passport and visa back. They didn't show today. If it shows up Tuesday morning I will be in Idaho on Wednesday afternoon.

Hopefully I have an understanding employer since first day of school is Tuesday.

It is on its WAY!!!!

I got a phone call half an hour ago from the senator's secretary that my visa has been APPROVED!!!

Yippee!

It is in the mail tomorrow morning so my guess is that it will be here earliest Thursday. Probably Friday. :) I hope to be in Pocatello by the weekend!

We Love the Library

For the last month of the summer the kids and I have gone to the library once a week. It has been so much fun to introduce one of my favourite places to my kids. My aunt made Emily the cutest library bag because Emily wanted to go to "school". She carries it into the library puts her books in the return slot and heads to the kids section. She loved picking out a few movies the last time we were there as well. I have noticed that both she and Collin will grab the bag and read "their books." Especially the Dora the Explorer board book. Collin loves it. He now says: map, backpack, Dora (Dodo), camera, squeeze, bucket, Swimper; all because they are in his favourite book. Today I watched him bring me the book, Emily intercept and tell Collin she will read him the book. She sat with him and summerized each page with him watching enthralled. It was very cute!

No Visa

No Visa. I had talked myself into thinking it was coming today.

Maybe tomorrow.

How to Pass the Time so you don't give up...

Every day that passes with no visa arriving, my upbeat outlook loses a little bit of steam. Today I'm pretty much done. Landon and I have even talked about what happens if they don't give me the visa.

But I have tried to stay upbeat for the kids and here are some of the fun things we have done to try and pass the time.

Emily came in with a handful of dandelions for me. She was so excited that all her flowers bloomed outside. :) Its been so hot that my dad hasn't had to mow the lawn because it hasn't grown. But two days of small rain showers and suddenly their is a field of dandelions. We went outside and played in them.

Later we went to Donkersley Beach and played while my mom visited with a friend nearby. My kids love the beach. Emily likes to draw a circle around someone and "trap" them. You can't move until she "erases" the lines. They both loved running into and out of the water as the waves came up. I have some video that I will try and upload later.

Outdoor Movie = Fun

Our credit union in town does a movie night under the stars for everyone in town once every summer. Tuesday they hosted "How To Train Your Dragon." Emily was so excited to go! She even went down for a nap without too much fuss because she knew she would have to stay home. I love the atmosphere of having around 2000+ people get together to watch a movie in a field. The money made from the concession this year went to Therapeutic Riding Association which I am a big fan of so that was a plus. Emily was terrified of the two mascots of the credit union. I have never seen her so scared. One is "Super Savor" so he is a guy who looks like a superhero. The other is an eagle. Both have big smiles on their faces but they are costumes (like the A&W Bear.) Serena sought us out through the crowd so Emily was quite excited to have "her Serena" with her. Matt and Ashley were also there and Ashley was nice enough to let Emily sit with her as I ran to the concession to get Twizzlers. I was able to see a few people that I haven't see in awhile. All were surprised to see me still here. :) The movie started once it got dark enough (around 9pm). My mom ended up taking Collin to the car and drove him around till he went to sleep. He just wanted to run around, not so good once it got dark. Emily kept pointing up into the sky and trying to count the stars. Good memories. I love summer evenings.

Going to school

Emily comes in this morning to tell me good bye she is going to school. She says she has her mirror and she has to go. She come back a few minutes later and tells me that she is back. Then she says she needs to go back to school to read a book. I told her that if she is going to school then she might want to change out of her pajamas. She told me no. Maybe she will take after her mom who did wear her pjs to high school a couple of times a week...

Nailpolish and the bathtub

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you dumped a bottle of bright pink nail polish in the bathtub?

Emily has answered that long standing question for you...

It stains EVERYTHING.

Including herself, her little brother and the bath tub.

I came running when Collin started screaming. When I first came in I thought that they were covered in blood. Then I saw the empty bottle. Emily had already climbed out of grandma and papa's bathtub. I told her stand in the shower until I cleaned Collin off. He was in the process of rubbing his eyes. I quickly grabbed paper towel and nail polish remover to get it off his hands. Then I wiped it off his eye brow which made him scream and I was worried that I had gotten the remover in his eye. So I flushed it with water and used water soaked paper towel to get it off his face. Luckily that worked. Two days later he still has a little pink tinge to his right eyebrow. I cleaned both Collin and Emily off and then surveyed the damage to the tub. I should add that my parents had to wait till we all moved away so that they could build their dream bathroom. It is gorgeous. And now their beautiful tub was pink. Due to it being dumped into the water and then the water drained, lots of it rinsed away. (If Emily hadn't opened the drain the cleanup would have been much easier.) I called my dad to ask what I should use. (My parents had just left so that my mom could drop my dad off at the ferry because he had to leave on business for the federal United Way for a couple of days.) He told me that he was sure only acetone would take it off and that would take the finish off of the tub as well so when he got back he would call someone to come and refinish the bath tub. Not cool. So since the remover I had was acetone free I spent the next 35 minutes scrubbing out a bathtub with it. Problem was that Collin did not have a diaper on so I had to clean up messes of number 1 and 2 while cleaning out the tub. Oh the joy. After 35 minutes, a bottle of remover used up, a massive headache from the fumes, soaked in sweat from the wonderful heat and humidity and the bathtub was mostly cleaned out. A light pink color was on the bottom but I was out of remover. As I was finishing my mom got home. She said it looked like the finish was gone but hopefully it would be covered under home insurance. I wasn't too happy with my daughter. But on inspection the next day after my mom bought a new bottle of remover and got rid of the last of the pink we think that the finish is still there. My dad will have to be the judge of it when he gets home tonight.

Now you know the answer to the age old question of nailpolish in the bathtub. And now I can mostly laugh about it. I wish I could say my daughter has learned her lesson but only this morning she stole grandma's good felts and drew circles on the outside of the basement door.

Life is definitely not boring with Emily around.

(No pictures because I was in panic mode and my camera batteries are dead and the charger for them is in Idaho. Did I say lately how much I love living out of a suitcase?)