Bummed, bummed, bummed.
My right leg is acting up quite a bit. Noticed it yesterday and a lot more today. The numbness in my toes never totally went away from my last MS attack, although I really only noticed it when exercising. But now my toes are going numb on/off, and my right foot feels freezing cold all the time (it's not actually cold when I touch it with my hand, but in my foot it feels freezing), and I'm getting those weird tingly/pins&needles/cut-off circulation sensations in my lower leg.
Please, PLEASE let this just be a little thing that does not turn into a full-fledged flare-up! I just got over the last one! Aren't I supposed to have more than 3 months between flareups? It also scares me a lot that maybe this is indicative that my MS is not going to be a really slow-progressing kind. Ugh.
Anyway, for those of you who have been wondering/nagging, I DO have an appointment with my new doctor at 9:45 AM Wednesday morning. Tomorrow I'm going to get my records from the other doctor's office (hoping not to get the run-around on this).
This whole thing is just very frustrating.
On a happier note, we had a great day in Orlando yesterday. We drove up with our ward's youth so they could do baptisms, and I got a session in as well. Only negative was that I had promised the boys we would go either to Downtown Disney or to Oldtown, but the weather was nasty up there. Cold and blustery and rainy. So we kept waiting for the weather to clear up a little and it never did. We did go to the Florida Mall where there was a cool Playmobil store with a bunch of toys out on display for the kids to play around with, and then we ate at Ruby Tuesday, so I think it was ok with them. The boys behaved wonderfully in the car all the way up and down. Joseph actually fell asleep almost as soon as we started back home, and before he fell asleep we told him we would drive by Oldtown to see if it was still open and if there were any rides he could go on. But he fell asleep so we just drove home. Of course, he woke up when we got home and was just so disappointed about not getting to go to Oldtown. His eyes welled up with tears and soon there were these muffled sobs coming from the backseat of the car. Ugh! I just hate disappointing my little guy like that. It hurts my heart. I promised him we'd go for a boat-ride in the lake this morning before church. Of course then we woke up and the weather was cold and miserable HERE, but he was a pretty good sport about it. We WILL go on a boat ride as soon as it warms up a bit.
I've been very naughty with my eating the past couple of weeks, and now have 1.6 lbs to lose again. Sounds like nothing, I know, but it took me like 6 weeks to lose those last 1.6 lbs last time! So starting this morning I am being very good again. Part of the problem was not exercising much last week. And now with my leg being all weird, I'm worried that's going to cut in on my exercise too. Oh well, not thinking about that right now...
I did a photo-shoot with Melissa's 12 year old son last Thursday. It was just at sunset so the light was very orange. I like the lighting, but not the orange cast at all. This is another way in which I am limited by my current camera-- on a better SLR, I could do a white balance in which I calibrate my camera to compensate for color-casts. But anyway, the picture above is one of the ones I did last Thursday. I still need to finish proofing the rest of them, but I thought they were pretty good, especially with a subject who wasn't completely thrilled at being photographed!
The boys were totally hyper tonight just before bedtime. Joseph made up a new new version of "Ring Around the Rosies" which he shouted at full volume while jumping wildly on the bed-- in his birthday suit, no less, having just come from the tub:
Ring around the rosies
Pocket full of poopies
Poopy! Poopy!
We all fall down!
Lovely, eh? Ah, being the mother of 3 boys is always entertaining! This morning Brigham and Joseph were wrestling around yelling, "You're poopy!" "No, I'm not poopy, YOU'RE poopy!" "No, YOU'RE poopy!"
Please! Enough with the poop already! Can I please go 5 minutes without having to think about poop??
Oh, one more thing. Yesterday I went to the distribution center on the Temple grounds and got those books of scripture stories, you know the ones illustrated comic-book style? There's 3 of them, one for the OT, one for the NT, and one for the BofM. Well, the boys seem to like them quite a lot! I'm glad, as I've been trying to find ways to introduce more scripture stories to them. They wanted to read Noah's ark tonight which we did, but then the story of Abraham comes right after and that led into an interesting discussion of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son. A little difficult to explain to 4 year olds. Heck, I still don't understand that one!
Anyway, that's it for tonight. I'm going to try extra-hard to go to bed on time to try to nip this MS flareup in the bud.

Hey Everyone,
Another late Sunday night (Monday morning). So what is new?
Actually, there is something new around here, a very welcome new, I might add! Mosey peed in the potty!! He had taken off his diaper (nothing new there), and peed on the floor. I told him next time he should pee on the potty. A little while later, there he was, sitting on the potty. I think it was just for fun, really. So I told him that if he peed on the potty, he would get a treat. A minute later, there he was, proud as can be, with his first potty success! Is it possible that the end of diapers could be in sight??
Today was a pretty average Sunday. Kids were pretty good, church was good. I spent quite a while uploading some pictures so I hope you enjoy them!
I'm ending now because I really have to go to bed. Have a good Monday everyone!

Here is Ben and his boys at the beach at Key Biscayne a couple of weeks ago.

Here are Brigham and Joseph looking at the jellyfish we found stranded on the sand. Mosey is running to come take a look too!

Here is a closer picture of the jellyfish we found beached on a sandbar. We thought it was dead, but when nudged, it would sort of pulsate a little. Ben was kind enough to "nudge" it back to the water, although he wanted to just do away with it since those are nasty stinging little buggers!

Brigham and Joseph showing off their little "worms." Not sure what they were, they were sort of like tiny millipedes. They curled up into little coils when disturbed, but then would start crawling around. Brigham and Joseph were just entranced.

Here is Joseph with his worm. He was so interested in everything about it. Here he is trying to feed it a leaf he picked. I don't think it liked it, though.

Just thought you'd get a kick out of Brigham's current "posed smile." When I ask him to look at the camera and smile, this is what I get. Cute, huh? I always have to trick him and take a pic right when he looks over at me, or tell him something funny or something to get a more natural smile. But I still think his fake smile is pretty cute.

Here is Brigham with his beloved worm. Yes, this is the same one that met his unfortunate end when Brigham accidentally pulled him in half... :-( But Brigham was so protective of him for the hour or so before that!

Here is Mosey RUNNING to me with his bag of cheese crackers. I just love the way little kids run at this age.

Mosey had such a fun day at Parrot Jungle-- look at that smile!

The Goat trying to see if Mosey has any food in his hand.

Mosey checking out the cow.

The cow checking out Mosey's fingers...

Major success today!! The event we have all been waiting for, and feared would never happened, finally happened! Joseph pooped in the potty!!! He has had such a phobia for such a long time. He has been perfectly trained, don't get me wrong, he just goes and gets a pullup for poops. A week ago or so we were at Target and he saw these little potty chairs that he liked and said maybe he wouldn't be afraid if we got that one, so I did. The last several days, he has sat on the potty a few times, but wouldn't go. Finally this morning, he was looking for the pullups but couldn't find them. He said to Brigham that he was going to go on the potty (Ben was listening from upstairs), and sure enough, success! We were very proud of him, and went to Dave and Busters for lunch (this has been his incentive now for quite some time). So, maybe we *won't* have a 16 year old still using pullups.
We actually had been thinking of going to Dave and Busters last night, but decided on Chuck E Cheese instead because D&B was likely to be very crowded on Saturday night. Chuck E Cheese was quite crowded as it was. Ben was wonderful and played games with the boys so I could just sit and talk with Melissa (Curtises went with us). The big boys fell asleep on the way home, thank goodness. I knew they were tired because Fridays are outing days so we had been on the go all day.
I had WW in the morning (still on track), then after school I took the boys to "Color Me Mine," a pottery painting place for kids. Grandma Jackee made these darling plates for me when the boys were almost 2 years old, with their hand and foot prints. I wanted to make one for Mosey, too, so that's what they did. The place didn't have the exact same kind of plate, but I think it will be ok. Brigham painted a little frog and Joseph painted a shark. We'll pick them up next Wednesday after they've been fired. I felt a little bad because Mosey was pretty fussy while we were in there. I'm sure part of it was because I was paying more attention to making his plate than I was to him! Sad, because it should have been the other way around. He was also tired, though, because he fell asleep almost immediately when we got in the car. We went to the dinosaur park and the big boys played while I read in the car with Mosey. Then we went over to the rock climbing park and Mosey would probably have slept longer, but Joseph woke him up. Mostly because he wanted me to push him on the swing and I wouldn't because I had to stay in the car with Mosey. Anyway, it was ok though because I met another mom pushing her twin boys on the swing. Her boys are 9 days older than Mosey so it was fun to talk about having twins, and all that. She had 2 older girls, too, and had originally gotten pregnant with triplets. Spontaneous triplets are really rare! Sadly, the little girl died in utero at about 6.5 months, but her boys were born healthy at 34 weeks. I'm not really one to start chatting it up with other moms at the park, but I was glad I had the chance to talk to her.
Tonight was the "sock hop" at the church, our annual adults-only activity. I've been thinking that these sorts of "50's nights" are getting pretty outdated since most of the members of our ward were not alive in the 50's! But it turned out to be pretty fun. Ben and I learned to do the "pretzel" and the "electric slide." I finally got the hang of the hula hoop!! Seriously, this is such a victory. I have NEVER been able to do the hula hoop, but tonight I finally got it! It is pretty good exercise for the abs, actually. Maybe I'll go out and buy one.
Well, that is it for tonight. I think Ben and I are going to watch "Hitch" before I have to send it back (trial Netflix membership). Have a great Sunday everyone!

Happy Birthday Abraham!!! I told Ben last night that you were going to be 17 years old and he was just amazed. Ben first met you 10 years ago (well, in a few months anyway), when you were only 7. Pretty hard to believe you are only a year away from being an emancipated adult. I hope you had a good day. Too bad you weren't born Feb. 3 because then it would be on Friday and you could really go out and celebrate! I was trying to remember my 17th birthday, and you know? I can't remember! I know it was just days away from the first day of school my senior year, and we may even have been on vacation or something. But I do remember *being* 17 and feeling like at last I was an "older teenager" and was getting some respect! LOL
Well, Feb. 2 for me this year was a little tough. No particular reason why, just feeling very tired and lethargic and unmotivated and impatient. Not a good combination. I'm pretty sure the reason is because I didn't exercise yesterday or this morning (my alarm went off at 6 AM and I just *couldn't* make myself get up), and even missing a couple of days makes my anxiety level skyrocket. I didn't go this afternoon either and I really should have. It's funny how even after 2 days of not working out, and even though I absolutely KNOW it will make me feel better, I just lose the motivation to go. But I am going running tomorrow morning I have decided 100%. Nothing will stop me. And I'm going to bed in a half hour so that I will not be so tired tomorrow!
So this afternoon I pretty much did nothing. I went treasure-hunting with the boys after school, one last run around Embassy lakes before the trash trucks come tomorrow. I'm trying to get a bike for Ben, now that all the rest of us have one. I found a pretty good cruiser bike that is in good shape except for some rust on the handlebar and flat tires. Ben's not much of a bike rider, but I thought it would be fun for us all to have bikes. And if they are free bikes, all the better! I won't feel guilty if we don't use them much. So, is there any product I can buy to remove the rust from the chrome? I assume I'll have to spray the handlebars again with some chrome paint. Maybe I'll make that my project tomorrow.
By the time Ben came home this afternoon I was feeling really discouraged. The house was messy, I hadn't really gotten anything done, and I just had NO motivation. But Ben helped out a lot and got the boys busy picking things up and we got the house very clean in just an hour or so. Thank you Ben!!
And now all 3 boys are asleep in Brigham's bed. I'll have to sneak up there and take a picture before they all end up migrating to our bed, which will undoubtedly happen during the night.
Yesterday I gave all 3 boys haircuts and they look great. Brigham and Joseph are perfect about getting their hair cut, but Mosey wasn't too happy. He let me do it, though, and there's not even too many jagged spots from when he wouldn't hold still.
Huh, I guess that's all I have to say for tonight. I hope everyone enjoys Friday!
Oh yeah, the picture is from a couple weeks ago on Key Biscayne. It was getting pretty dark and my flash wasn't on and the picture was taken by some lady who came up and volunteered since I was taking pictures of Ben and the boys. That explains the camera-shake and the horizontal composition when the picture clearly calls for a vertical shot! Oh well. It's fun to get pictures of all of us anyway. I have a bunch of other fun pictures from that day which I will post tomorrow.