Weekend Review

I've had a busy weekend, full of celebrating Mardi Gras, in my own special way, facing my fears, my first pair of contacts, a new haircut and actually going out to dinner as a family and having our waitress sit at our table for WAY too long. (did I mention that Oprah sat at our table with us, too? I have a picture to prove it!)

We also watched some of the Oscars. I shall start with that. I think it's been about 10 years since I've watched the Oscars, as I do not watch alot of movies. However, I really enjoy Jon Stewart, so that made me want to watch it. We watched about the last half of the Oscars and I think we enjoyed it. I think we are really smart for actually having seen the movie that won best picture. Crash. This is a great movie, if you have not seen it. see it. It's really good. It's one of the those movies that is so difficult to watch, so difficult, but once it's over you are so glad to have seen it. Just like Hotel Rwanda, you should click on this last link, it's really cool. (both movies star Don Cheadle, who I think is an amazing actor.)

On to Mardi Gras. Since my brother, Dan, lives in the outskirts of New Orleans, my parents visit during Mardi Gras, they came home last Tuesday. They have tons of parades all over the area, Anna, Noah and I were checking out the "loot" they brought back. It seriously made my neck hurt! (lots of pictures in this blog entry!)

On to Facing My Fears:

Brian and I have had a fish tank for a about 4 years. Our first tank, however, in the middle of the night, drained on our kitchen floor. The fish survived that incident, but over the following couple of weeks, they died. everyone single one of them. This was in our past home, when I was about 5 months pregnant with Anna Helen Pletcher three. (the name she tells strangers, note: she also adds her age to the wealth of information she is passing around...we will not be teaching her our address right away as I am certain she will freely pass that along.) Back to the fish. We replaced the fish with some platties, and some others fishies that have since left their earthly home, we also added an algae eater. He was little and black. We then moved to our current home--we've had a lot of turnover in our tank, but our little algae eater, a.k.a. Scare Fish, stuck around and he grew. He grew alot. Last summer we noticed that he wasn't swimming around so much and we wondered if he was dead. We figured out he wasn't, which was good because Brian and I were both terrified of him, even dead he scared the crap out of us. Not when he was little, but when he became a big, scary monster in our house, he completely creeped both of us out. (creeped is a weak word to describe this, but it will have to do.) I went to Petsmart to discuss the Scare Fish and come to find out we had purchased one that was meant for really, really big tanks. Not 20 gallon tanks. And although he would survive in our tank, there wasn't enough room in there for him to move around and thrive. They said we could bring him into the store and they would give him to someone with a bigger tank. All this was all fine and good, but did you say "bring him in?" Did that mean, physically moving him? You should see me when cleaning the tank, I FREAK OUT if he even moves a little. Obviously, this was a task we were in no hurry to accomplish. Well, last night I had a dream that whenever Brian would go to feed the fish, this algae eater would jump out of the tank and go underneath the couch. It was an awful, vivid dream that prompted me to remove him from the tank. After church we stopped to buy a big, BIG bucket. When the time came to remove him, I honestly thought my heart was going to stop. I don't know how I did it, but I got him out. (with a net and a 2 qt pitcher) Even telling this story I am getting the creeps. As soon as he was in the bucket my body felt completely limp. I covered the bucket with a towel and secured it with four clothes pins. (I was afraid he would jump out.) This was seriously facing my fear. Needless to say, he is at Petsmart and I really do miss him. I know it's crazy, but he has been our pet for over 3 years. I didn't realize how much character he added to our now boring fish tank. The lady at Petsmart said he was beautiful. :-( That made me sadder. After she took him out and put him in a tank, all alone, he just stared at me, breathing hard. I felt like I was leaving something really special. However, when I look at the pictures, below, I still get the creeps. I guess it was the right thing to do.

SCARY MOMENT.

On to our dinner at Applebee's. We rarely go out as a family. We did last night to get out of the house for awhile. The kids were great, but we had a waitress who LOVED the kids. She was 24. She just sat at our table for WAY to long, way too many times. We would be eating and she would just sit there. Don't get me wrong, she was so nice, but c'mon, have some common sense, if we didn't ask you to sit and stay awhile, please don't. Here's a picture of Noah enjoying his milk.

Anna laughing so hard when being tickled. It's hilarious.

Applebee's.

Me and my boy after we both took naps.

My extremely cute boys.

Anna after her bath. She gets so cold, she completely wraps herself up. Notice her slightly blue lips.

Dinner with Oprah. Isn't it strange that she was sitting next to me? I didn't have to move at all! We are meant to be friends. :-) Also, I got contacts on Friday. I'm slowly easing into them. Yesterday it took me an hour to put them in. Who has that kind of time?!?!