MS Walk 2009

Dear Family and Friends,
Most of you know that I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis about 18 months ago. If you haven't heard the news, SURPRISE! Anyway. My wonderful sister-in-law, Allison, did the MS walk at Legoland last year in my honor and is putting together a team to walk again this year. The walk is at Legoland again and it is on Sunday April 26th. I am coming down from Flagstaff to be a part of her team and walk for those who are unable to do so!

Although I am managing my MS naturally, and am doing quite well, we still need to find a cure. Would you please sponsor me in this walk to cure this disease? Any and all donations would be greatly appreciated. My personal fundraising goal is $1,000. If all you could give was $10, I would only need 100 people for me to reach my goal. You can sponsor me by visiting my walker webpage: www.mswalk.com/jessicabarnum. If you would like to join our team and walk with us that would be awesome too. You can join the team by going to: www.mswalk.com\bellasoprano.

Thank you all for your kind support and I hope to see you on the walk! With your help we will beat this disease!

Love,
Jessica

Sorry!

Sorry I haven't posted any new pics. The computer with all of our pics is in the shop getting fixed, I hope and our desktop is so messed up I don't dare put any more pictures on it. I will post some as soon as I can.

Irish Spring Soap

Kurtis has been developing some bad habits lately. Mainly lying and the use of bad words. Most of these bad words he picked up from the movie Goonies. It's rated PG and it had been so long since I had seen it, I didn't remember just how bad the language was. Needless to say that movie is now off limits. Now don't judge me for letting him watch that movie, because I know some of you are, I wasn't sitting there watching the movie with him. Had I been watching it, I would have turned the movie off. So stop judging me. Anyway. He picked up a certain phrase from the movie. He would say, "What the h*ll?" We talked to him the first time we heard him say it and told him that he shouldn't say that phrase. Now we had had a problem early in 2008 with him saying "Oh my G*d!" And at one point I told him that if he said that phrase one more time I would wash his mouth out with soap. He said "Oh my G*d!" one more time. So I dragged him into the bathroom to wash his mouth out. We have the liquid soap that comes in a pump. Those soaps are WAY too mild. Because as I started to wash his mouth out Kurtis says, "Hmm. It's not so bad." GREAT! It's not so bad, meaning that my punishment didn't work. So when he started saying, "What the h*ll?" I wasn't quite sure what to do that would make him NEVER want to say it again. I tried a couple things, but they just didn't have the impact. Then an epiphany came. I thought about the worst soap you would never want in your mouth, Irish Spring Bar Soap. I gave him warning about the next time he used that phrase that I would wash his mouth out with soap. He was probably thinkin', "No biggie." Little did he know. He did use the phrase again. I brought him up to my bathroom and got out the Irish Spring. He HATED every second of it! And afterwards he kept saying, "Mom (gag), I can still taste it in my mouth! (gag)" I told him the taste was to remind him to NEVER use those words again. And he hasn't (yet). Mission Accomplished!

A Word of Warning

Please, PLEASE! Learn from my experience. If you have a flat screen LCD or Plasma Screen TV you need to read this! A couple of weeks ago, I was fixing lunch for Kurtis. He asked if he could watch a movie while eating his lunch at the table. I said yes, so Kurtis went to turn on the TV. When he did, I noticed the screen was completely black and upon closer inspection I noticed a crack in the liquid crystal. Kurtis had a new styraphome plane with a plastic tip that he had been flying around the house that morning. When I saw the crack I knew what had caused it. I asked him if his plane had hit the TV. He asked, "Will you be mad?" I said, "I'll be more mad if you lie to me." He told me that it had hit the screen while he had been playing. I was so angry, not at him, but at the money that TV had cost us. It was like flushing that money down the drain, because if the liquid crystal in an LCD screen is cracked, it costs more to repair than if you were to buy a brand new TV. I read the manual and found out that an LCD screen is so fragile that if you even push too hard on the screen, like when you're cleaning it, it will crack. So I am passing on this knowledge to you to save you time and money. Of course I checked with our manufacturer, but kids aren't covered under any kind of warranty. To protect your TV, I would suggest investing in a screen protector. They are quite resonable, between $100-300 depending on the size of your TV. You can do a google search for LCD screen protectors or you could try one site that we found. www.tvarmor.com