Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Breanna's Visit

On Saturday morning we got up and went to breakfast at The Coral.  Had to introduce Dolly to our tradition, right?  Since she hadn't eaten much the night before, I thought she would be hungry this morning.  Not really.  She ate like 1/2 of a pancake, a piece of two of bacon, and two scoops of hashbrowns.  Of course, she had to have a cookie.  I cracked up seeing what she ate.  Cute as a bug, though, isn't she!?!

After breakfast, we came home and she helped me dismantle the desk in the old office.  Some people from church were coming to get it.  What a helper she was!  Wow, that room looks so much bigger now!  That is...until we finally get a bed put in there!  I had hoped to do that before she got here, but it just didn't work out.

After that, we spent three hours fishing cords and wires through tiny holes and behind cabinets as we migrated the computer from the old office to the new office.  Dolly was awesome.  I'm so glad she's tiny and could fit her arms behind the cabinets.  We were totally bummed though when we got to the final cable and it was to hook the monitor up to the CPU and it was too short to reach from the monitor into the CPU cabinet!  We ended up having to undo all of the cords and just put the CPU under the desk instead of in the cabinet.  Drat!  Cute pic though of Dolly under the desk and then eating cereal later in the day while checking out Facebook!

That evening, we took Dolly to Barros for pizza and wings.  She'd never had chicken wings with pizza before.  She didn't really care for it.  She only ate a couple of bites of pizza too.  After excusing herself to go to the restroom, she came back and said she'd thrown up in the bathroom and wasn't feeling well and asked if we could go home.  Her mom called me at the same time and told me the same thing.  We headed out and when we got home, she put her jammies on and laid on the sofa with her head on my lap.  I stroked her hair and she finally fell asleep.  On Sunday, she still wasn't feeling too well so she and I stayed home from church.  By the afternoon, she was starting to feel a little better.

On Monday, she and I went skirt shopping for her (we actually tried about 7 different places over the entire time she was here).  We decided to try Rue 21, but first we went to Dairy Queen.  She was craving a shake.  Okay, if she'll eat, I'll get it for her.  She slurped down the entire thing.  Yay!
We went into Rue 21.  Big mistake.  What a cruddy store.  Such immodest clothes.  We were in there a total of 7 minutes and then left.  I couldn't believe what some parents were buying for their daughters.  I think unbeknownst to her, right in front of some other people, Dolly expressed her dissatisfaction with the fact that she couldn't find anything modest.  I was so proud of her.  The other people kind of looked at her like, huh?  But, seriously, if more people would dress more modestly, maybe there would be less rapes, less unwed pregnancies, etc. in this world.
After we wasted our time in Rue 21, we walked over to the Nail Salon and got out nails done.  Dolly got a dark purple polish done.  I had them put little white flowers on her nails too.  They were really cute!
I had my first gel polish nails done in a french manicure.  I loved them!  (Later, I would do them again and regret it!)  I know I look horrible in this picture.  It was SO hot and I just did a crappy ponytail to go out and about.  No make-up.  Dolly didn't care though.  She told me she loved me just the way I was.  Thanks Dolly!  You made me feel good when I didn't look good.
After getting our nails done, we came home and made flower barrettes.  She had a lot of fun choosing the different flowers from Auntie's collection.

 We made quite a few of them.  Big ones, little ones.  I thought it was really sweet how she made sure to make one for her little sister, Holly.  These are some of them.

 She made the white one to wear when we were to go to the temple later in the week.
 See how cute they are in her hair!  Love this picture!
Throughout the week, we hung out and did stuff around the house and went to lots of places to try to find her a new skirt.  On Tuesday, she made her famous chocolate chip cookies.  
This is her recipe that she handwrote to bring along with her.
While we were making cookies, Uncle Melon Man brought in the watermelon that he had grown in our garden.  It looked awesome!  I couldn't wait to try it.  We cut it open eventually...and yeah....not ripe at all yet.  Darn.  Oh well.
Dolly thought this was the biggest container of vanilla she'd ever seen!

Now, when you make chocolate chip cookies, everyone snitches a bit or two of dough or chips.  Right?


Look at this though!  I caught her with a huge handful!  Sneaky girl!
Nah, just kidding.  That photo was staged after I did catch her eating a good sized chunk of it though!  I learned on this visit that Dolly is a junk-food-aholic!  Man, I wish I could eat like that and be as skinny as she is!
In goes the first pan!  Instead of just plain chocolate chips, Dolly decided to use Uncle Melon Man's secret "suicide cookies" combination of chips.  His chips, her dough...YUM!

I think these next pictures were from Monday night actually.  We made a HUGE pan of bacon and cheese casserole.  It is one of Dolly's favorite meals - mine too.  She worked on doing the broccoli for the side dish for us. 
Dog kept following her around begging for people food.  Finally, he gave up and just laid on the cool tile floor.  Ew...I REALLY need to have that grout cleaned.  Yuck.
Finally, Dolly gave in and gave Dog a piece of broccoli.  He loves broccoli.  She was his new best friend!
We don't drink sugared drinks in our house so Dolly helped make the Kool-Aid with fake sugar packets.  When I told her 40 of them, she couldn't believe it.  But, it was good, wasn't it, Dolly!?!?
So that was Monday and Tuesday.  On Wednesday, she and I went to the temple to do baptisms.  We had a wonderful ride all the way to Mesa.  We listened to spiritual music and talked.  When we got off the freeway, we decided to grab a bite to eat at Jack in the Box.  We then drove to the temple and were able to get a parking spot right by the entrance gate on the east side of the temple.  How perfect!  

We sat there and were eating our lunch in the car, when all of a sudden I began to see pixelated dots in my eyes.  They were coming on really fast and strong.  This was not good.  I really didn't want to have to deal with a migraine while at the temple.  We said a quick prayer and then headed inside.  I had to go take our family names over to another office to have the cards printed and while there, I asked if anyone had some Aleve.  Nobody did, but they recommended that I check in the cafeteria, so I went there next.  Nope, just Tylenol and Advil, of which neither ever work for me, but I got a packet of Advil anyway, hoping it would help some.  I gulped them down and headed back over to the baptistry.  By the time I walked through the doorway, I noticed I no longer had a migraine.  The dots were gone, the pain was gone.  

Now, I KNOW this is a "temple miracle" as I call them, because there is no way at all that that medicine helped within 90 seconds.  I KNOW it was Heavenly Father taking the pain away so I could focus on the real purpose in being in the temple with my niece that day...there were family members on the other side waiting for this work to be done for them!  I KNOW this because once we were finished and back out to the car heading home, what happened?  The migraine came back and with full force.  It was so difficult driving home into the sun with the pain I had.  Anyone who's had migraines knows how painful light is.  

Anyhow...here are pictures of us just outside the temple.  Cute Dolly and ugly hair Auntie again - although I had done it pretty that day - it was just hot and I ended up having to pull it up on our way out.

I had a lovely experience in the temple that I want to record here so I don't forget it.  Three of the nine names we took that day were sisters.  When I was first preparing the names for this family, I only had one of the sisters' names.  As I was finalizing the records for the temple, I was impressed to research further.  I looked through the census records for the time and found two more sisters!  When I did, I felt a strong feeling that these three sisters were rejoicing.  Today was no different.  While sitting in the baptistry, I could feel the presence of these three sisters very strongly.  It felt as if they were all holding hands and there was a sense of anticipation and excitement.  As the work for each of them was done, I felt them hug each other in joy.  I was overcome with emotion and tears were shed.  I again felt their happiness as I was confirmed on their behalf.  I cannot wait to complete the remaining work for them and then someday meet these three wonderful women on the other side.

We raced home, migraine flowing, and hurried and changed our clothes.  Dolly wanted to go to Mutual while she was here, so we rushed off to the church.  It was a combined activity with the young men and they were going to be playing human foosball.  I thought for sure the girls would not do it, but they did!  It seemed like they had a fun time.


Nicole Ritman and Dolly.  Nicole was so sweet - she just came right up to Dolly and introduced herself.

I can't believe our time together went by so fast!  She has grown up so much and it's hard knowing she is already 13 going on 30.  What a sweet girl.  I loved having her here and hope it can become a tradition - not only with her, but with the other nieces and nephews too!

We're off tomorrow to head to Utah to take her home and go for Scooter's baptism.  Can't wait to see the family!

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