Last Week

Still playing catch up....

Last week started with me back in the hospital for another surgery. This time it was my eye. I had a little bump on the inside of my lower eyelid for uh, ten years, that I thought was just a sty. For whatever reason (vanity, turning 40) I finally had it looked at. Turns out it wasn't a sty after all. Nope. Just skin cancer. But the very best kind of skin cancer.



So I went in and they scraped out all of the bad stuff and sent me home with an eye shield, some pain killers, and strict orders to wear glasses, sleep upright, and be VERY careful. It wasn't too awful, especially after my earlier surgery. But yes, those of you who have seen me walking around with a black eye, this is why.

Warren, my mom, the kids, and the Raw Girls took very good care of me. Raw Girls? Yep, Amy Pickle and Hannah Phillips have a new business. I had raw dinners delivered every night. It was pretty awesome.





It was a rather eventful week. Vanessa and Miles came to visit, due to a death in the family. Despite the sad circumstances, the boys got to have two nice, long play dates and even one sleepover, plus breakfast at Cafe Eclectic. Although Miles looks more like Satchel, he and Jiro are definitely two peas in a pod.




I was once again honored by the Flyer for Dining with Monkeys in the Best of Memphis poll. I managed to make it to the celebration since it was just across the street from our house.





Jiro actually spent a couple of days home with me with a cold, but he was fine by the weekend. On Friday there was a quick but crazy storm that knocked our power out for about 20 hours. It's been a long while since we lost power and the kids hardly knew what to do! We escaped to Edo and Yolo for most of the evening, got tons of sleep, and then went back into the world for more food and fun on Saturday morning.

Luckily we had our iPhones to remind us that civilization still existed!



At Edo, both Satchel and Jiro drew a picture of me. Jiro gave me "crazy" eyes and even made one of them black.



Satchel inexplicably gave me a mustache. And goatee. Maybe it was me and Warren together?



(Oh for those of you wondering about the new ownership, Edo seems to be the same as it ever was. The new owner, who was one of the waitresses, is very nice and on top of things.)

Warren left for Atlanta on Saturday for a Kendo tournament. Since the power was still out, we ventured out for breakfast. Seems we weren't the only ones with this idea. Bryant's and the Pancake Shop were both packed, and we somehow ended up at Waffle House way out on Summer. The kids were starved and now think Waffle House is the best restaurant ever. I'm not kidding. Satchel wanted to go back for lunch. Maybe he was just crazy from his new drink concoction--Diet Coke and creamer.



Sadly Jiro's soccer game was cancelled due to wet fields and Satchel's team had a bye. I'm telling you a Saturday without soccer is just sad. Merp.

Anyways, Warren hit the road and I took the monkeys out to the Corn Maze. We had the Rock-n-Romp there a couple of weeks ago, but they wanted MORE. We got in about 15 minutes on the jumping pillow.



It's not as much fun without tons of other kids there and the monkeys really wanted to shoot the corn cannon.



Motivated by winning freebies at Sonic, Ben & Jerry's, and Chik-fil-A, both monkeys had a pretty good shot record. Jiro made two out of three and Satch got one of out three. Not bad considering we watched a dad spend $4 and hit nothing.



Next we hit the Maze. I haven't been in since the kids were little, but they both bragged about how easy it was. However, when I explained that there would be no cheating--i.e. cutting through the corn--they did look a little worried.




We made it to the halfway point fairly easily, but then we got stuck in the circle of bloody sheets. Seriously we couldn't get out. So we went back to the halfway point and called it a day. It had started raining so we couldn't go back to the pillow, which had been the original plan.



So we ventured back home, discovered we had power again, and commenced lounging. The kids turned the entire living room into a fort. Can you see the cat in this picture?



We also had dinner in the fort.



We stayed up late watching movies and somehow managed to get to sleep despite knowing that the new Pokemon games came out on Sunday morning!



The kids went to hang with Gigi, I went to the Project Green Fork Loving Local fundraiser, and Warren kicked some a$$ in Atlanta.



And there you have it. Back to work this week and finally cleared to start running again. Woot!

ATL

We spent the last few days of summer vacation in Atlanta. Our main purpose was for Warren to compete in the National Kendo Tournament, held at Emory University. He's been training like crazy. I love my samurai.



He didn't do as well as he had hoped, so overall it was pretty disappointing. However, we did get to see a lot of good Kendo competitions over the weekend.



There were all sorts of things to do and see in Atlanta, but since most of our time was spent at the tournament, we didn't do too much other than hang at the hotel, swim, go out to eat, and make a quick trip to Ikea. I did manage to sneak away for a couple of hours to have a drink with my bestie from the Peace Corps, Catherine. She's been living in Ramallah for the past couple of years, so it's been awhile since we've gotten to just have each other all to ourselves.

Here, she shows me her state of the art cell phone.



And here, she models her new reading glasses purchased at the Drug Store.



We left Atlanta early on Sunday so we could get back in time to buy school supplies, cut the grass, do laundry, grocery shop, etc. We did manage to squeeze in a quick stop at Elvis' birthplace in Tupelo.



It looked like there was some serious construction about to happen behind the museum. There were lots of little old ladies scampering about. One asked Jiro to pose for her and went on and on about how he could be a young Elvis. It was pretty funny.



We were super excited to come home to such nice temps. The boys actually wore hoodies to their first day of school!



The weather was nice, but calling it hoodie weather would be a stretch.