C is for Children

Okay, so I missed a day, but I had good intentions. We came over to my parents house to spend the weekend (plus our adventure to other extended family) and it was just so gorgeous outside that I couldn’t bear to come in and post.

So, I’m feeling better… thanks for asking! The meds are working well and I’ve learned to cut down my coffee intake. However, since I went cold turkey on day one… I had a screaming headache for two days.

My kids are so cute. They loved swimming most of the afternoon yesterday and ate dinner as quick as possible so they could get back in. Daddy bought sparklers for them to do when it got dark and let me just say, they were not too impressive! After lighting one, it would go out shortly thereafter… but I think the girls had fun anyway. We saw a few fireworks from people’s homes, since we were on the water… and then on the way home we saw a huge fireworks display. So, we pulled the car over so the girls could ooh and aah over them. After a few minutes, the oldest child says, “okay, I’m really tired, let’s go home”, then, “wait! That was beautiful, fireworks are so cool… but I’m really tired… but let’s stay.” It was pretty funny. We got back to my parents house at 11 pm and everyone went straight to bed.

The weather has been so perfect the last few days – and the bugs haven’t been bad either. I remember this time last year trying to find a solution for the pesky creatures… so, it has been a nice few days not worrying about it. I think being on the water with the breeze really helps!  (Side note, I do spray garlic oil and light tiki torches every time the kids and I go outside to play.)

B is for Blog (and other fun stuff)

Get ready to be a better blog! Join me in my challenge to post everyday!

(this looks so much better with a white background!)

Wednesday night I woke up in the middle of the night gasping for air. A horrible pain stretched across my chest and I literally thought I was dying. After eating some tums, I realized that I probably had horrible indigestion and tossed and turned the rest of the night. All day Thursday was spent in pain… it was pretty mild, but sharp pangs would hit me. By evening, the pangs were so strong that I started to panic. I knew that there was no way I was having a heart attack (no shoulder pain, no shortness of breath…) but I knew that something was horribly wrong. I called a friend to come stay with the girls and husband and I set off to the hospital.

The great part about our hospital is that Triage is set up to pretty much see you right away. Since I was having “chest pain” I was taken back to a Triage bed and given an EKG. I had been shivering, but was not cold… so we will chalk it up to nerves? However, the shivering led to Hyperventilation and my entire body shut down. Husband was trying to talk me through it (open your eyes, take deep breaths) but I became incoherent. I do not even remember them drawing my blood, although husband says I screamed when the needle went in. All I can remember is my body going numb and my hands closing up. It was a horrible feeling which just made the hyperventilation worsen. Finally husband was able to calm me down and my body started to re-adjust. They took me back for an x-ray and then kicked us back to the lobby.

Yep, like I said, the Triage part is great… but if they need to move you to a room, you have to go back out and wait b/c they need the Triage rooms. Thankfully, I was back to normal albeit the screaming chest pain…. oh, and the needle they left in my arm “just in case” I needed IV fluid.

So we sat. Finally we were called back and given an explanation. I have GERD with chemical Bronchitis. What this means is that my reflux caused a chemical reaction in my body causing the horrible pain that I am still feeling today. It might take weeks for my body to rid itself entirely of the toxins. To explain further, when I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breath it was because an air bubble (or gas, if you may) was blocking the way. When I sat up and gasped for air, I swallowed it causing the acid to disperse throughout my system and causing a chemical reaction. The good doc said this: Your body releases too much CO2 and floods itself with Oxygen. This causes your brain to think you can’t get enough air, while in fact – you have too much. Thus why your body doesn’t correct itself immediately and can go into Hyperventilation. Usually the best thing is to let the patient pass out and the body will realign. Good to know, eh? I told husband to quit bugging me! As far as the Bronchitis part… the acid disturbs your esophagus which causes phlegm. (Maybe a reason I loose my voice a lot but don’t have a cold to go with it!)

So, all in all… I am still in horrible pain. But had I not gone in, I would not know that I had a chemical reaction going on inside and would not have received meds.

A is for America

I have decided to give myself a blog challenge. Feel free to post along with me and send me your link! My challenge is to blog everyday and my topic will coincide with the alphabet. This weekend is Independence day, so I thought I’d start with America.

My kids have always loved the 4th of July. When they were babies, the fireworks pretty much scared them but they loved the colors from the safety of inside. Now they are all about dressing up and celebrating. Here is them relaxing in Colorado last year after a big meal. This year we will head out to my brother-in-laws wife’s parents house for a fun filled day of swimming and crabs! (There has to be an easier name for them?)

The rest of this post will be a tribute to our soldiers overseas. Instead of celebrating independence with their families, they will be serving all of us so that we might keep our freedom. This is always a really emotional topic for me and swells up my pride. I don’t think some people realize just what it means to be a soldier – or even the family who supports him. This time two years ago my husband was in Afghanistan. (I just flipped back to July 2007 and found no post for the 4th of July.) Anyway, as I watch people celebrate… it becomes mostly about the grilling, the beer and the friends and family…. which isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong! It is just that not many people take the time during their celebration to remember those who fought and died and those that are still fighting. (2 Timothy 4:7)

And so dear solider, I leave you with this prayer:

Psalm 91

1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

2 I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”

3 Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.

4 He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

5 You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,

6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.

7 A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.

8 You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.

9 If you make the Most High your dwelling—
even the LORD, who is my refuge-

10 then no harm will befall you,
no disaster will come near your tent.

11 For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;

12 they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

13 You will tread upon the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

14 “Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

15 He will call upon me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.

16 With long life will I satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”

Fun with food

I hate grocery shopping. There is nothing fun about it. It takes me over an hour because I am either searching for the best deals, trying to find the items that I have coupons for… or realizing that yet again, I  should have bit the bullet and gone to the nicer grocery store because this one doesn’t always have the good stuff.

So, I put off grocery shopping for another day which forces me to get creative at dinner time. After too many fruit, cheese, yogurt, salad dinners – it’s time to look in the freezer. I had two tilipia filets. Instantly my 7 year old exclaims, fish tacos! Perfect, except for the fact they were really small filets and we’d be lucky if we each got a taco. I look in the fridge, “what else needs to be used?” Bacon. There sit 4 pieces of bacon waiting to be fried. I’m thinking that I’ll probably add some of the beef from last night to the mix, somehow… but grab the rest of the salad that I had mixed the night before. I floured the fish and stuck it in a pan of olive oil. Once both sides were brown, I made some really crispy bacon. Then, I look over at the unfinished snack on the counter. Apples… sauteing in bacon fat… hm… I throw them in and set the pan in the oven for 10 mins. Amazingly, it was pretty good. I guess anything is good with bacon.

In other news, once again… the tooth fairy had to be creative. What is it about this lady? She just can’t seem to get her act together. Here we are on tooth number 7 and we are still forgetting. Husband called me a few minutes after he left for work this morning to remind me. Nice. I have NO cash. I look in his dresser and fish out a 5 Euro. Yep. I ran upstairs and gently made the exchange (tooth for money) and tiptoed back out. A bit later a happy faced kid appears at my side. “Look mom! Italy money! When I build a house for daddy, I can use this to buy a hat to wear for safety!” Um, okay kid. She wants to be an architect when she grows up.

And in even more news, I have finally utilized the library to its full potential. I enrolled the girls in the summer reading program, which only makes them read one book a week… but I told them that it was one or two a day. Then they get a stamp in their booklet each week for 5 weeks and at the end get some sort of prize. Hopefully it is good. (ha!) We are also renting movies which are due every 3 days, so it gets us back in the library. Yesterday the girls and I attended a children’s comedian/musician act. Amazing that this guy actually does this for a living… but he was pretty funny.

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover

You can’t always smell or see a fire.

Last Thursday night, husband went to turn on one of the kids night lights. It was so hot that he couldn’t even turn it on. He threw out the night light assuming it was trying to draw too much currant. We have renovated several parts of our home, including gutting the kitchen down to the studs and rewiring most of the downstairs to code. The previous owners had several things plugged into the same breaker. For example, the stove, microwave, fridge and TV were all on one (also including all of the lights and the bathroom!). The microwave alone needs it own breaker. Anyway, we have never touch any of the wiring on the second floor because it is just the kids rooms and a bathroom. Eventually husband was going to make sure things were done properly and install new plug outlets since they were original to the 1965 house. We plugged a nightlight into a different plug and the girls went to bed. The next night we left for camping and the girls just got home on Wednesday night… which everything seemed fine upstairs.

Last night, husband was helping the kids get ready for bed and the lights started to flicker and eventually went out. Immediately thinking about the plug, husband ran to the room to find the plug melted together. He went down and turned off the breaker (#7 which had the ENTIRE 2nd floor on, including a jetted tub!). When he opened up the outlet he found that there had been a fire that burned and melted the entire side of the outlet and part of the wiring. The fire stopped burning when he turned off the breaker. I came home from worship team practice to find the kids still up. Wondering what was going on upstairs, this is the scene I found:

If the lights hadn’t flickered, or he hadn’t let the kids stay up a bit later than normal, they would’ve gone to sleep and the fire would have spread.

And I’ll be by your side
Wherever you fall
In the dead of night
Whenever you call
And please don’t fight
These hands that are holding you
My hands are holding you
~Tenth Avenue North, By Your Side

I’m my own me

Ask most moms out there who they are and most likely they will respond with, “I’m a mom”. We associate ourselves with our children. It is our job, it is who we are. Of course there are times when we are alone… like when the kids are both at school, but you are constantly thinking about them, what time they have to be picked up and where they need to go next. This IS in no way a bad thing. I love my life and I love being a mom. However, for the last two days I had time to be me. I cleaned the house Monday, so I had all day Tuesday to take my time and go slow. I went birthday shopping for my nephew and just stared at all the toys, read about some new games, discovered neat science kits and found new books. I only ended up buying the one toy for Cooper – but it was fun to take my time and not have kids pulling me this way and that way to see something. I’m not a big mall person, but I wanted to get my sis a birthday present also… so, I wandered around some of the fancy stores that you need a few hours to enjoy. I found myself coming up with several ideas and fun activities to do with my kids this summer. I think it was great to rejuvenate myself. After all, I AM my own me.

All in a days work!

This weekend we went camping. My parents own an RV with two beds and wanted to take the girls to a fun camp with a pool and playground. They asked if hubs and I wanted to come along, so we did. We packed our own tent though because we haven’t been real camping since our first year of marriage, nine years ago. The trip was fun and the girls are still there with my parents. Since husband had to work today, I came back with him to try and catch up with housework. Before I get to today, let me describe our time at the campground (minus fun stuff!).

Our spot was right near the playground, which was great for the kids and easy for us to sit at our site and watch them play. (You wouldn’t believe how many kids would wander down to play with no adult in site??? crazy.) The people camping next to my parents RV were a group of two campers. They had lights linking their sites and picnic tables between the two for meals. They also had out (and always on) a small flat screen tv, a blender to make drinks and a few dogs. At night, some local friends would come visit them. The first night was okay, we had our dog in the tent with us and the people left pretty early. We did hear a few cars throughout the night – which was odd since the camp “closes” at 10 pm.

At bedtime on the second night, with my parents and the kids tucked away in the RV, husband and I sat by our fire for another hour or so. When the fire had trickled down and was well within the confines of the metal barrel, we went to sleep. Since we had heard thunder, our dog stayed in the RV. After about 30 seconds of being in the tent, we hear a loud car pull up, a flash light shine on our tent and a voice saying “security…you are going to put out your fire, right?” Yes sir. Husband goes out and pours water on the embers. An hour passes, I am in and out of sleep b/c of the noisy neighbors. Again, we hear a loud car pull up, a flash light sweeps around… noises, noises…. and then I hear an entire bucket of water being poured over the non-fire. Really? After he leaves the neighbors get loud again, their dogs start barking – they start hounding their dogs and playing along… security comes again. All is quiet… for 5 minutes when the thunderstorm starts. Okay, I can deal with this, it is a lulling sound and I fall back asleep – for another 10 mins until I am awakened by a drip, drip, drip on my forehead! So it rained most of the night and our tent leaked most of the night… but we stayed out and got on and off sleep.

On to today. Since the kids stayed with my parents until tomorrow… I have all day today and tomorrow to catch up on housework, laundry and such without interruptions. Now I am convinced that I need a mother’s helper for the summer so that I can get things done. I washed two loads of laundry, cleaned both bathrooms, the kitchen, cleaned the leather and wood furniture, dusted and vaccumed, mowed the grass and still have time to do something fun today! If I had a mother’s helper here 2 or 3 times a week – I could get all the housework done super quick, mow once a week so husband wouldn’t have to on the weekends and even go running. So… the search begins… let’s see if I can talk any of the teens I know into it…

Puppy love…

Yesterday I started researching adding another Golden to our family. Originally the idea was to look into a flunked out seeing eye dog. So, he would be around 2 years old and very well trained. After visiting two sites, I learned that the waiting list for a flunky was about 6 years. They were not even taking requests because their lists were so long. However, they did have several links to rescue dogs. I’m not sure why the thought hadn’t crossed my mind before… maybe in my head rescue dog meant mutt, and I wanted another golden. However, I was open to the idea of a few breeds until I read that Golden’s are the #1 over-bred dog and are in great need of adoption. The numbers on each site I visited were incredibly high for Golden’s – mostly because people want puppies. Most rescue dogs are over age one and the greater of them are well over 2. So, we are going to continue to research adopting a rescue Golden Retriever, if the fit seems right for our current dog, and possibly have a new family member by Christmas. I think having a younger dog around might be good for Rusty, the one eye 8 year old pup.

In other news, I think Pig Will might have the best memory of any 7 year old out there. She is right on target with her school skills (not behind, not advanced) – however, when it comes to remembering lyrics to songs – whoa, watch out! She only needs to hear them twice and she will sing them all, word for word. Honestly, I didn’t believe it at first when she sang an entire song… I had to print out the lyrics, sure that she would have one or two words wrong… but time after time she proves me wrong. I don’t get how she understands all the words – sometimes vocalist are hard to hear – or they mush words together.

Finally, the last day of school came and went. We are going camping this weekend to celebrate. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain on us!

Kick Molly

The other night, husband and I had the brilliant idea of watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Unfortunately, we did not realize it was a forever movie… and didn’t get to bed until after midnight. I have mixed feelings about the movie… but I guess, if anything, it made us both feel sappy with each other. I actually like aging – at this point. I don’t think I’d want to age backwards.

After falling asleep – a mere 2 hours passed and wouldn’t you know, I felt like someone was standing over me. Sure enough, there was a 5 year old staring at me. It creeped me out – but I think my gasp freaked her out even more. After putting her back upstairs, enough time passed to let me fall back asleep (5 mins?) and she was right back staring over me. Talk about a nightmare! When I asked her in the morning why she kept getting up (side note, I tend not to ask my kids what is wrong in the middle of the night b/c that delays getting them – and me! – back to sleep. I just tell them that everything is okay and that they are safe.)… here was her story, but first some background…

The only thing we bought the girls from our 2007 trip to Italy was two singing dolls. They actually move their heads back and forth and sing some funny song in Italian. We have no idea what the words are, therefore we can’t translate them. While we were playing with the dolls one day, we asked the girls what they named them. The 7 year old says a name which I cannot remember now. The 5 year old says, “Molly”. What a cute name, right? So PMT, why did you name her Molly? To which she replies, “because mommy, she sings the song, Kick Molly, kick Molly, kick me and Molly thinks”. Now we will never figure out what the doll is singing because we only hear the kick Molly song. So… on to the nightmare. PMT tells me that her dream was about Kick Molly singing her song and her lips were really moving. That would be enough for me to come get mommy in the middle of the night too!

Another chapter closes…

Today was the last day of preschool. Both girls attended this school, so this was the end of four years there. It has been pretty emotional for me… probably a mixture of my baby leaving babydom and the fact that I was at the school pretty much everyday volunteering. When husband was in Afghanistan in 2007, I practically lived there. The teachers have been my buddies, accepting me into their clan and letting me hang out. It will be hard next year to drive by and not want to stop in to say hi. Maybe I can adopt another preschool aged kid? Don’t think the hubs will go for that one…

… and so it goes. I can’t seem to stop time. My kids are growing up and I can’t stop them. Nor do they want me to. I asked them the other night if they would just stay little and they both replied with “no mom, getting older is fun”. WAH!

I am getting ready to plan my daily routine for summer. I want the kids to have fun just doing nothing – but I also need structure or they will start to fight. Last summer we had school in the mornings and playtime in the afternoons. We plan to go camping with Grammy and Grampy, hang out over at their house or with their cousins, go on playdates with friends and finally at the end of the summer have swim lessons again. Hopefully the next 3 months will go slow so that I can enjoy my kids. I really don’t want to have a 2nd grader and a Kindergartener….