It's hard to believe it's been a few days since I last posted. I can't begin to tell you how glad I am that this month is almost over.

When I last posted I was with Hubby and all 3 kids in Lake Tahoe for my cousin's wedding. Wonderful wedding (they live on the North shore so it wasn't one of those cheesy wedding chapel type weddings), but the reception kind of sucked because I was pretty much playing babysitter the whole time.

On top of that, my allergy to pine pollen reared it's ugly head. Hubby decided to ask me if I was interested in moving there when we retire. I pretty much told him what he could do with that idea.

So in between that, and Cancun, and everything else that's been going on . . . like I said, I'm SO glad this month is over!

Unfortunately May is looking to be just as busy . . . and even more stressful.

I've been busy cleaning house today because my brother-in-law is coming up on Wednesday to stay with us through the weekend. That's because my father-in-law (a man who is essentially my 2nd Dad) is going in for open-heart surgery on Thursday morning.

I am more than a little freaked out about this . . . but it's also one of those times where I'm trying really hard to be strong for Hubby.

But on top of that, my own dad informed me about a week ago that his cancer is back. He was diagnosed with a slow-growing form of lymphoma about 6-7 years ago. His chemo was very mild and he went into remission very quickly.

Even though my Dad told me it nothing to be freaked out about . . . I'm freaked out big time.

Man . . . I SO need to go to a baseball game right now!

It's been a long week and a half.

I was all set to talk about Cancun (pics included!) on Monday the 16th and then I woke up the news of what happened at Virginia Tech. I know it's been a while now, but the whole situation sort of put me out of the loop for a while. I don't know what it was about the situation that hit me the hardest . . . thinking about my own kids and what those poor parents must be going through, the fact that I live a mere minutes from my own college alma mater (Sonoma State University), or just the terribly senseless loss of life that happened.

Whatever the reason, I was not in the best of shape.

It turns out that April is not a good month for me emotionally. There are other reasons why, but I'm not going to go into them today.

For anyone who reads this . . . please keep in your prayers the Kott family. They live up here in the Sacramento area. The same week of VT, I saw a story on one of our local newscasts about a 6 month old boy, Trevor Kott, and his family. The day after Trevor was born last October he was diagnosed with an extremely rare leukemia and the doctors gave him weeks to live.

But he did live . . . for 6 months.

The family had been organizing bone marrow drives to try to find a match for him. Unfortunately but the time I saw the story, the drive in my town had already happened. I had been reading his parents' blog when the sad news came . . .

Trevor passed away peacefully this past Tuesday, April 25.

The family is still hoping to continue working on organizing bone marrow drives in Trevor's name. If you can, PLEASE get yourself swabbed.

For more info you can go on www.TrevorKott.com

I'll update more later . . .

I'M BBBAAAACCCKKKK!!!!!

Actually I've been in recovery mode since we got home on Thursday night . . . that's why no updates until now. And since it's VERY late I'm going to give all the gory details of our trip tomorrow or Monday (with pictures to boot!)

One baseball note . . . even though my Giants are in last place right now, Barry hit 2 homers yesterday and our old friend Russ Ortiz had ALMOST a complete game. He was with our 2002 team that went to the world series . . . but left the next year. After coming close to retiring (thankfully he didn't!) he's been working on his mechanics and looks like our pitcher from 2002.

YEAH!

More later . . . .

Well . . . finally all has worked out!

I'm so glad I love living in the Bay Area because given the amount of time I spent in the car today driving back and forth to the passport office in San Francisco (and poor Hubby having to do it TWICE!) . . . I don't know if I would have dealt with it as well as I did.

So don't be suprised if I don't post until after next Thursday when we get back, and hopefully I'll have pics up by next weekend.

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!!!!

HAPPY OPENING DAY!!!

I know, I know my Giants got routed today by the Padres on this their opening day . . . BUT what a game it was!

My favorite part was watching the pre-game show because they had more than half of the Giants' All-Star players there. It was so fun seeing a bunch of the guys from when I first became a fan in 1987 . . . Matt Williams, Robby Thompson (one of the reasons why I have a #6 on my jersey, the other being our former 1st baseman - JT Snow), Kevin Mitchell, and of course Will "the thrill" Clark. I was tearing up remembering one of the best games I ever experienced . . . seeing the '89 Giants beat the Cubbies in the 5th game of the NLCS to win the pennant and head to the world series.

I didn't get to go to any of the WS games that year . . . I had to wait until I went to game 5 in 2002 when we played against the Angels (my other most memorable game I ever watched).

I know I've had to listen to everyone and their brother say how they don't expect the Giants to do anything this year (with quite a few people saying they'll finish dead last). But that's what I love about opening day . . . there's always hope!

So here's to baseball 2007 . . . and GO GIANTS! :)

Alright . . . so I'm at least one step closer to getting a passport.

So this morning I wake up at 3AM AGAIN to call the passport office.

On the other end is a fairly cheery customer service rep who comments when she finds out I'm calling from California, "Oh, my first call this morning came from California too. What is it, like 3AM out there? You girls should be in bed."

To which I reply, "Well, if I knew for sure that I would be getting my passport in the next five days I wouldn't have to call."

She was very sweet, and pretty helpful. She answered all my questions . . . unfortunately when I asked about picking up the passports at our local office instead of having them sending them, she had already sent off the expedited request for the rest of the passports.

So I can't make another request until Wed morning.

AAAAAAAHHH!!!! Another 3 AM morning call!

CRAP!

After this little bomb shell, she mentions that if I get an appointment I don't need all my papers because the office already has it. I told her the earliest appointment I could get (last Thursday) was on April 11. She tells me to recheck the automated appointment service because at that time every day, they repost the canceled appointments from the following day.

After I thanked her she put me through . . . I didn't have high hopes.

I go through the appointments and find there are no afternoons appt. until April 13. HOWEVER . . . after going through the appt. for every day this week, it happened.

Friday April 6, 9:30 AM.

You could have knocked me out of my chair . . . and not because I was half asleep.

SO . . . we'll see what happens come Friday. Otherwise, I'm getting ready for Cancun.

WE'LL SEE . . . .

I have to say the past four days have been . . . dare I say . . . blissful.

Got a lot of gardening work done with Hubby, Kid #1 had a suprise after-school movie and sleep over with his new best friend on Friday, Kid #2 got A LOT of craft time, and Kid #3 had lots of opportunities to practice baseball and basketball.

What's the one thing that's screwing the whole thing up?

I am waiting to see if our passports will be showing up so we can go on a trip to Cancun that we've been planning since December.

Okay . . . this is just a mini rant because I'll admit this is partly MY FAULT.

Last December (around Christmas) my mom calls to ask me what I think of flying the whole family to Cancun and meeting her at a resort that my Aunt and Uncle have a time share at during Spring Break.

I think . . . okay . . . this could be fun.

She then warns me that the passport rules will be changing and that all 5 of us (including the kids) will need passports. Now . . . neither Hubby or I have passports because we've never had the inclination to do much traveling (we're BIG homebodies).

So after the haze of the holidays finally cleared, I'm ready to look for my birth certificate. I have all the kids' in the S-D box and Hubby had just gone to San Francisco in November to get his for his real estate license. I check my S-D box . . . nothing. I check all my personal effects (including my baby book) . . . nothing. I finally call my mom . . . nope, she didn't have it either.

Hubby finally goes online and orders ONE copy from one of those Birth certificate services (since I was born in Los Angeles). After about two weeks I get my BC the beginning February. The day after, all 5 of us went to the Post Office to order our passports.

The gal tells us we don't need the expedited service because even though they're working about 8 weeks out, we should we them in time for our trip (April 7).

Okay . . . my mom comes up for a visit the weekend of March 17th. She asks if we have our passports yet and I tell her, "Not yet but we should have them soon." I go online and check the passport website. It stated our applications are being processed and we should receive them the week of April 2nd.

Last Tuesday I checked again . . . no date is posted for when we should be receiving our passports . . . .

SHIT!

So then I spent three days trying to get through both the main passport line and the automated to see if we could get an appointment at the SF passport office. On Thurday night I finally got through the automated line . . . the earliest appointment isn't until April 11th . . . the day before we're supposed to be coming home from Cancun.

I noted on the website that the passport office opens at 6am EDT . . . that means . . . yes, I did get up at 3am California time to try to talk to a human being at the passport office.

Did I get through . . . YES!

Did she tell me that our passports would be making to us before our trip . . . NO!

Apparently all she could do was flag our application as URGENT and hope for the best.

There was nothing else I could do.

I proceeded to stay up for another hour coming up with a bunch of questions as to WHY we we're going to be getting our passports and trying to figure out all the angles as to how we could make this work.

So in about 4 hours I will be getting up so I can call and hear someone answer all my questions and still tell me we're screwed.

The only good thing out of this is I did talk to my mom on Friday and gave her the lowdown on what was going on and that I was exhausting all my options. After the eventual "I told you so," I did tell her that if things didn't work out for Cancun, that we'd come down and visit her in So Cal and spend Easter with her.

That seemed to do the trick.

So . . . I've got everything crossed in hopes that I can still salvage some of my upcoming spring break week.

Stay Tuned . . . .