Tooth Fairy is a coming!

Ayman lost his third tooth tonight.  (Well, actually I pulled it.)  The tooth Fairy personally told me that te third tooth and every tooth there after only gets one dollar.

Happy Mothers Day every one!

For my mom, I love you very much.  You are my best friend.  Happy Mothers Day.

my blog is old says the brother.

My brother left me a comment saying my blog was old, so here is a post.

I am no longer the best blogger but this site isn't going anywhere.  I am giving up on apologizing.  Here are a couple of pics that sum things up right now.  Above:  Jennah biffed it hard on her face and had to get both front teeth removed.  In addition, the week before, she gave herself a wicked awesome haircut.  So she's got that going for her, which is nice.

Not that it is all about Jennah, but she is turning five on March 18th.  pictures of an awesome birthday cake to follow.

And finally, I have been working with the registry sporadically at different places.  I am going to leave things vague here because given the chance i would go off about certain people I have had to deal with, and that can mean nothing but trouble. *shifty eyes*

That is it.  Thanks for reading.

Veterans Day, John Finn, USN- Updated. (original date of Post:12/01/05)

I was in the San Diego airport on Veterans Day. My mom and I were waiting to fly back up to Sacramento. I happened to notice a very old gentleman, sitting in a wheelchair. This really isn't a big deal, but I noticed he wasn't in the preboard area. I was wondering if he knew this or if he needed assistance. Anywho, while I was scoping him out, I noticed that he was wearing the Congressional Medal of Honor around his neck.

Now being a former military gal myself, I found this to be nothing short of amazing. I decided to talk to him. I walked up to the gentleman and introduced myself. I told him "Thank You" for his service to our country. (Lets face it folks, you normally get this medal after you are dead. In fact, i had heard it referred to as: Coffin Metal Handles, instead of Congressional Medal of Honor). Surprisingly the old guy was very sharp. He was 97 years old! He told me that there had been a Veterans Day ceremony in La Jolla that day and that he was on his way home. His name was John Finn.  Just in case you don't want to click the link, I will give you the rundown on the gentleman. He received the first medal of honor of WWII. He earned this medal by manning a .50 cal machine gun,In the attack on Pearl Harbor, and going buck wild with it during a 15 minute attack, sustaining heavy injury to himself before he could be persuaded to leave his post and seek medical attention.

I really feel honored to have met this man. It certainly isn't an every day occurrence to meet a Medal of Honor winner. When I was in the Navy, I would always look on the ribbon racks of the particularly "chesty" servicemen to see if there was one (always displayed at the top of all the others) but never actually saw one outside of textbooks.. After I actually saw this and read the citation I felt really touched and thankful that that old dude was so brave and made that sacrifice.... I may be a raging liberal now, but I know something to appreciate when I see it.

Update: John Finn celebrated his 100th Birthday this past July. He is the oldest living MOH recipient. Also check this out, MOH winners have benefits and stuff.. I didn't know that. (November 8, 2009)
Update 2: John Finn passed away on May 27, 2010, two months shy of his 101st birthday. You can see his New York Times obituary/story here.  Fair winds and following seas, Lt. Finn. (September 15, 2011)
More about John Finn: NBC Nightly News 

I had no idea.

Blogger has this nifty thing called "stats" that i never much noticed before. It has only been tracking my stats since last May and since then i have only had 1k+ hits. Before I changed the design over, I had a counter (which, stopped working, but was around 30K+) I liked. Anyhoo, now i like to look at the stats. I can see from them that I get random and bizarre traffic. A lot of the traffic comes from a post called "Katb al Kitab (the paperwork)" I have also found that my top five traffic sources are as follows:

1. United States
2. Germany
3. Brazil
4. Russia
5. Canada

That is just weird to me, But hello to all of you, I am glad you stopped by. I also get traffic from: Luxembourg, Spain, UK and Finland. Hello and welcome to you folks as well. Hope you come back by sometime. Although it is ridiculously boring.

I can also see that although most of my spouses family is in Egypt, I have only had 9 hits from there since May, so clearly I have not been posting enough content for folks over there to care to look. Hmmm. I don't really know why I shared this.... It just seemed interesting to me.

Meh.

Happy Blogaversary to me!

I had no idea when my mom gave me the newspaper clipping about this new fangled "Mommy Blog" thing that I would be typing this six years later.

I started the blog when my son Ayman was about 10 months old. I wanted to basically bitch about things and share stories of my children. I totally have. Ayman is now almost 7, and he has a sister Jennah who is about four and a half now. I am glad I made this little spot on the web. We have a whole family in Egypt (Salamo aliko everyone) that gets to take a look at this to keep up with the kids milestones. I have pretty much taken the bitching out of the equation. (ok, not entirely) Sometimes I find it hard to keep up with the blog, and to keep it updated. There are so many other timesucks out there on the interwebz! But I am glad I have. It has come in handy as well. One of my fathers friends actually found him, by finding my blog. Kooky, huh?

Well that is all for now, I just wanted to give myself a written pat on the back for keeping this up so long. Here is to another 6 years, and more. Thanks for reading.

Eid Clothes, Masjid edition.

They feel the need to take a silly picture and a regular picture everytime. I am such a sucker that I cannot resist posting said silly picture. So, here it is.

An the picture that is sweet as pie. I think they look adorable; I am not biased or anything.

Eid fun, '10

Ayman and Jennah wearing thier new Eid clothes.

Crazy face pic, always fun.

What a nice picture of Jennah, Amr and Ayman. Maybe I can get someone to take a picture of all of us today. We are going to the mosque picnic for Eid over at Nelson Park. I am sure a fun time will be had by all.

An I Phone for my Dad? ummmm, riiiiiiiiiiight

So I am talking to my mom today, about how I am trying to save for an IPhone. She tells me that my dad really wants one.

OMG.

Ok, my Dad has a retarded tiny little Sony Ericsson phone right now. He barely knows how to use it. He has had it for a year. Before that he had a Nokia flip phone. He had that flip phone for like, 5 years. Seriously. By the time he went to upgrade, he could only call the past with that thing, it was so old. Now he wants an IPhone? Jebus. I can only imagine how I would be spending the next 4 months of my life if he got one. "Cassie, how do you...." Dude, I don't have an IPhone. It is for that reason that I need to get one. Last week he called me to help him find a wireless network on the laptop. Even walking him through it he could not figure it out. *facepalm* Why would he want an IPhone though? I can only imagine so he can upload the IPod part with all of his Harry Potter books on CD. LOL. If they have a Harry Potter app, I bet he gets it. On second thought we should definitely get him the IPhone, then i will load it up with a bunch of Harry Potter nerd apps and Alex and I can mess with him. (like this or this ) Yeahhhh thats it. Excellent plan.

I love you Dad. LOL.

Eid Mubarek

Happy Eid al Fitr!

Funny Eid greetings.

Dates, I ate a lot of them. They were good, Ilhamdulillah.

Muslims have a sense of humor. lol.

Jennah is just like me.

Jennah and Ayman both go to school early now, so they wake up at o715. Ayman snaps to immediately. Jennah on the other hand, doesn't. I went in the room to wake them the other day. Jennah immediately asked me:

"Mom, when I get home from school can I take a nap?"

Yes, my daughter is planning her naps, even as she just wakes up for the day. Thats my girl. My reply: "Of course you can, Sweetheart."

Just thought I would share that. My mom had this to say about the above picture:

"She looks just like you, mouth-breathing and everything!"

I love you , Mom.

Uncle Alex, DDS strikes again. At a Ports game.

And we have HD video this time! Thanks Alex, this is great!

And here is the final result:

Last night we had corn on the cob for dinner. He bit into it with the wiggly tooth and it started bleeding all over his corn. I told him, "That's it, Uncle Alex needs to take that thing out." So tonight my dad took them to a minor league baseball game with my brother, SIL, and my niece and nephew. I sent Ayman with a ziploc baggie and some tissue. This is awesome. But now I have to give him two dollars- I was only going to give him one but as you can see in the above video, they said THREE. I told Ayman that the money goes down after the first tooth, so I guess that will be better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

First day of school, 2 times.

Aymans first day of school was the 18th. He is in first grade this year. He picked that shirt out himself at the "boutique" (a fancy was of saying thrift store, lol.) He is getting so big.

Not for nothin', but my son does an awesome robot.

And here he is at his very own desk in class. *sniff* I am verclempt.

Jennah was sick on the real first day of school so we will call this Jennah's first day of school. She is also sporting a complete "boutique" ensemble, WOO HOO! It is adorable and she was very excited to go back to school.

And here we have a crazy pose, just for funsies. Too cute. Mommy is super proud of you guys, and loves you very much!

My son knows how I work; Jennah is tired.

I went to tuck Ayman in tonight. He had his covers over his head, "hiding" as usual. Like I always do, I asked Jennah: "Where did your brother go?" He ripped the cover off real fast and yelled "RAWR!" I grabbed my heart and said, "OOOH! you scared me!" Apparently, my acting wasn't quite good enough, because he replied: "No I didn't." "Oh yeah? " I said, "Why is that?" He looked up at me and said, "Cuz I know how you work!"

Dude, I love my son. Too funny.

Meanwhile, Jennah went swimming at my moms today with her brother. I noticed she got out of the pool well before him. I assumed she just wanted to dry off on her favorite chair. After a while she still hadn't come in so my mom looked outside, and the above picture is what we found. Poor little baby doll wasn't feeling good and just fell asleep sitting there. I picked her up and took her in to the house where she slept more. When we got home she slept even more. She has a runny nose and the sneezes too. Tomorrow is the first day of school. I don't know if she is going to make it or not.

Just thought I would share part of my boring day. Oh totally unrelated, It is the 7th of Ramadan. Ramadan Mubarek!

A gem from my brothers Facebook page.

Today, My sister-in-law and I did some running around while my dear brother watched the four children we have between our two families. While we were gone he posted this picture captioned:

"All four kids while Facebooking....mediocre parenting at best."

How many kids do you see there?

I love you , Bro!

Milestone: Ayman lost his first tooth.

I took this picture on August 7th, 2004 of my baby boy's first tooth. I have to say it is one of my favorite pictures of him. Yesterday, August 14th, 2010 That tooth went bye bye. It had been loose for months. I kept telling him, "You better pull that thing. The tooth fairy doesn't give you money if you eat it!" He would not wiggle it. Well, he wouldn't do any aggressive wiggling. I remember working on my first tooth like it was job. I crunched it til it made sick noises, I twisted and pulled until it hung on by a thread. Then, I finally just pulled. Ayman wasn't having any of that.

Yesterday, we were at my cousin Adam's 17th birthday party at Uncle Jim and Aunt Cindy's house. I was telling my sister-in-law Renee about the tooth situation, and how I tried to pull it earlier but was too chicken to do the deed. I mean I tried, but I just couldn't. It wasn't happening for me. Renee said: "Uncle Alex will pull it!"

Sure enough, wouldn't you know it, Uncle Alex did. Here is a picture of the amateur dentist and his willing patient, shortly after the procedure. I have to say my brother had some skillz. Before Ayman, or any of us knew it, he had that tooth YANKED. I quickly tucked a piece of tissue in the socket before he could see it was bleeding and ....

There ya go. He seemed a little shocked at first, but then he was VERY excited, and Auntie Cindy gave him a cow shaped trinket box to put his tooth in for the tooth fairy. Ayman asked how the tooth fairy knew he lost a tooth. Amr told him that she got an email or they tweeted it or something. (which was pretty funny coming from Amr.) In the wee hours of this morning, Ayman woke up to 3 dollars in his cow trinket box, in place of his tooth. I am still amazed that my baby lost that tooth. *sniff* They grow up so fast....

New look...same great taste.

Well it was time. I have had this blog going on six years with no changes to it. I saw this new template and liked it, so there ya go. I am still the same lame ass me though. Don't worry.

Change is good.

Finally............

After 17 months, I have finnally gotten my Respiratory license. Yay me! Now i just need a job. LOL.

Congratulations, Auntie Renee and Uncle Alex!

On Wednesday, June 2nd, at 1332, my brother Alex and his wife Renee welcomed their second child into the world. Sanderson Alexander Smedley was 8 pounds 2 ounces and 20 inches long. I am so happy for them! Ayman and Jennah are quite happy to have another little cousin and can't wait to be able to really play with him.

Congratulations you two! Enjoy your new addition.

Backyard Sprinkler Fun