Betsy Bailey

It’s Labor Day weekend and given how hectic life has been for the past 10 days, I’m really looking forward to the leisure of sitting on my butt as much as I’d like for next three! I didn’t need to travel to an amusement park to experience a rollercoaster… but I’m sure glad I did!

Universal Studios and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter

A week ago today, just ONE day after Bailey’s orthopedic surgery, HM and I were packing for our all-expenses-paid trip to Universal Studios Orlando. We were specifically excited to see the brand new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park – and it did not disappoint. We had absolutely the best time. Universal really took care to ensure that we experienced some of the best they have to offer at the parks and resort.

Highlights for me included Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride in the Harry Potter park (Wow!!! We rode it twice! And when we dive-bombed the Quidditch field it took my breath away!) and the Blue Man Group performance. And butterbeer. Butterbeer is highly recommended. We tried it both frozen and unfrozen, and we tasted pumpkin juice, too.

But there was ever so much more – it was a fabulous trip and it increased my travel savvy, especially when it comes to theme parks, by several notches.

Miraculously my laptop (Dell Latitude) survived various travel misadventures (first, it was checked – long story; then I dropped it down an escalator). I was a terrible steward of its care. Of course, it could crap out any day now, too. Obviously I’m not feeling all that secure about its reliability. Scott will probably open it and tighten up the various components for me. ♥

I’m in the midst of writing up all the details of this adventure for the SheKnows travel channel. Stay tuned!

Bailey’s recovery progress

Bailey spent the first five days after her surgery doing a lot of digital drawing and resting. She was pretty doped up on painkillers. She did a little schoolwork here and there (she is enrolled in the Arizona Virtual Academy’s high school program, so all her school is at home), but she didn’t have a lot of focus. I want to feature her digital artwork here; she was very prolific during her downtime – hopefully she’ll give me permission.

By the time I returned home from Orlando Wednesday evening, she was feeling tremendously better and was mostly weaned off of the painkillers. Thursday morning she dived back into school, making a determined effort to start catching up.

At her follow-up x-ray on Thursday morning, we learned that her healing is progressing remarkably faster than the surgeon expected. He told us that you often see this when the fracture is on the growth plate and the child is in the midst of growing – those cells are extra-fast at repairing the damage. She is on track to have the pins removed a full week earlier than the surgeon had anticipated. He offered the option of removing the pins in-office or in the surgical center under anesthesia. When he said he wouldn’t know how much pain it would cause her until he tried to remove the pins (apparently they can be sticky) there was no question about how we would proceed! The procedure is scheduled at the surgical center this coming Wednesday.

I’m not sure how much longer her shoulder will be immobilized, but for now her mobility is pretty inhibited. For example, her shirt choices are currently limited to oversize button-downs. If she leaves one of the middle buttons undone, she can forgo the sling and rest her hand in the shirt opening. That has been much more comfortable for her.

Bad blog news

I started this blog on Vox in January 2007. For that entire year, I stored and accessed my blog photos on Vox – before I wised up and started storing/accessing from Flickr. Some of those 2007 entries are very photo-heavy, especially the ones from after Jake was born.

Yesterday, Vox announced they are going out of business and shutting the entire service down by September 30. They made it easy to transfer all my Vox-stored photos (498, precisely) over to my Flickr account (boy did that FUBAR my photostream chronology, but whatever) and I immediately took advantage of that.

A couple years ago, I set up this domain and WordPress installation and transferred all of my entries. Of course, all the image paths in the relevant entries still resolve to Vox, so I am now faced with the distasteful choice of letting the images disappear from those posts or undertaking the tedious chore of swapping out Vox image paths for Flickr in entries made during one of the most conscientious blogging periods of my life.

Noooooooooo.

Shoot me now, because you know what I have to do. Before September 30.

Click to see my photojournal of our camping trip to Horseshoe Lake

February 14-15, 2009: Mesquite campground at Horseshoe Lake, Verde River.

Highlights of this trip:

• The Brazaletes Pueblo ruin at the summit of St. Clair Mountain was extremely fascinating. One of the most extensive ruin sites I’ve seen (that hasn’t been developed for public interpretation, that is).

• First time camping since Scott made the dinette modification. Compared to the bench seat we had previously, the dinette is SO family friendly. The set up is much roomier and the layout is far more conversational. I liked that there was room for the hubby, a tween and the toddler to sit there while I prepared a meal and served it to them at the table. When we had the bench, there wasn’t a lot of room for other people to sit on it while I was cooking – knees in the way. And, of course, no table, so I was handing the food out. We always had to eat outside. While that is usually something we WANT to be doing, since we’re camping, after all, it was pretty cold on this trip  (got below freezing at night) so we were glad to have the dine-inside-where-it-was-warm-and-comfortable option.

• HM fell into the river once while climbing out onto a tree from the beach at our campsite. Completely drenched, from head to toe. Later, after she was dried off and in dry, warm clothes, the dog dragged her into the water’s edge from the muddy beach. Not as wet this time, but much muddier. I think HM learned her lesson and now understands why I always harp about using the gentle leader!

• It was cold weather for falling into the freezing cold river (like HM did… twice!) or sitting at icy concrete picnic table, but it was the PERFECT temperature and conditions for hiking and exploring, which we managed to do a lot of on this trip!

HM (age 11) wrote this spontaneously this afternoon (when she was supposed to be doing math homework).

No wonder it was taking so damn long to finish the assignment!

But I could hardly be frustrated with her when she wrote this awesome little baby book memento.

Jake rolled his toy eggshell, fascinated. Not for much longer, though. He soon walked over to his highchair, and played with the straps. Again, not for long. He soon decided that stretching out his onezie was much more interesting than the other two, but not for less than a minute.

Jackson, usually known as Jake was an often-distracted baby. Shoes, clothes, and toys fascinated him as far as inanimate objects. But when it came to family, Jake loved his whole family a lot. When it came to animals, Jake loved them all — at least the ones he could pet. Although he was small for his age of fifteen months, he could get into many places and make a mess anywhere, be it small or large.

Although it may seem that Jake can’t play with anyone or anything for less than a minute, this isn’t true. Jake will play with many things for quite a bit of time, until the person he was playing with left, or whatever he was playing with taken away; or he put, or threw, whatever it was into a hard-to-reach spot. And, of course, he became bored and wanted to play a different game.

After more playing and a little fussing, Jake was placed into his highchair with a graham cracker and his water. He crushed the graham cracker and threw the water on the floor. Then, he began to laugh. I guess that’s what babies do.

After making such a mess, I took him out of his highchair and he began to play again, zooming off with toys, wrestling with Bailey’s toy bear, things like that.

But, not only is Jake an active baby who loves his toys (he is digging in his toy box as I write this! ;P) he is a great listener. For example, when he threw his cup on the ground it went under the bench. A little while afterward, he wanted the cup. Mom told him to go look around his highchair. So he walked up to his highchair and began looking at it. I got his attention and pointed under the bench and told him his cup was under there. So he went under and grabbed it! I guess Jake knows more than we give him credit for. . .

Isn’t homeschooling fun? Cooking is part of Bailey’s curriculum, and today’s assignment was making Cake in a Mug! HM happened to have a half day of school today, so she joined in the fun.

It was a messy endeavor (since tweens were involved) and delicious. They made me a mug of cake, too. Homeschooling rocks!

Here’s all you do:

Microwave Cake in a Mug

adapted from Chocolate Cake in 5 Minutes

1. Assemble your ingredients:

4 Tablespoons flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil

2. Mix the dry ingredients in a mug: flour, sugar, cocoa.

3. Crack the egg into the bowl and mix it in.

4. Stir in the milk and oil

5. Microwave on high (1000 watts) for three minutes.

6. Dig in.

I had mine with some milk splashed in. A scoop of ice cream or dollop of fresh whipped cream would have been mighty fine, though. Mighty fine.