Reasons to be Thankful

Nick's sisters and brother-in-law-to-be came for a Thanksgiving visit and it was truly TRULY wonderful. We had such a great time. Lots of fun family time, pie cooking (and eating!), board games, dinner out, cocktails, sightseeing and so much more. Gosh we had a great weekend! It ended all too soon.

I am thankful for singing really loud in the car while my sister-in-law snaps a pic of my silliness.



I am thankful for my sister-in-law Ava and our soon-to-be brother-in-law, but nonetheless still referred to as, Uncle Joe. Seriously one of the best guys ever. Nice work, Madelyn! ;)



I am thankful for table settings and the people that we were so lucky to have grace them.



I am thankful for family hugs and that our visiting Southerners were as crazy about our kids as we are.



Kate is very grateful for a plethora of ornaments for the tree - as evidenced by her slightly insane ornamental overload expression on her face! :)

More Reasons to Give Thanks

We are thankful for river sunsets. Here we have Joe, Mad and the rest of us standing by the St. Croix river in Stillwater, MN....a beautiful and quaint riverside town. We went browsing through antique stores and bookshops - a great afternoon!



Kate is thankful for her Uncle Joe and for our aquarium membership. Here we see Uncle Joe and his number one admirer, Kate, at the aquarium. They are members of the mutual admiration society.



Kate and Liam are thankful for their cool Auntie Madelyn and for merry-go-rounds. Mad took Kate and Liam on the Carousel with her. Such a great Auntie!




I am thankful for cuteness.

We are now the proud owners of.....

At-home medical equipment!!!! C'mon, now, are you really surprised to see a post relating to some sort of health ailment?! I told a friend today that if our house were not so old, I might consider investigating to see if it was built on the former site of some sort of toxic waste dump with how healthy we have all been lately! :)

But it is true, we are now the owners of one "Nebulizer". In fact, the reason I have not posted about all of our wonderful Thanksgiving activities is because the past three days have been spent in a rather sleepless fashion with several trips to the doctor because Liam apparently has Asthma. The little guy started wheezing and whistling a few days ago - it was not like croup, and was not quite a cold. My instincts told me it COULD be asthma....coupled with the fact that Patrick had asthma when he was little so it just all sounded familiar. I did not express my suspicion to the doctor because I did not want him to think I was some loony mom who overreacted. But after he listened to Liam's chest he raised the possibility himself. Long story short, Liam had to have a breathing treatment at the pediatrician today and we were sent home with our very own machine and a massive supply of albuterol (spelling?). In fact, I am up right now because Nick and I just had to give him another treatment as Liam awoke gasping and wheezing from his sleep.

It is REALLY hard to give a 20 month old a breathing treatment. It is pretty basic stuff as far as operation goes. A tiny mask emits a very fine cool mist for about 10 minutes. He does not even have to have the mask strapped on to his face, but I have to hold it close enough to his face so that this mist drifts up into his airways. Easier said than done. The compressor makes a very loud noise and Liam writhes around and swats at the mask constantly. He is also, shall we say, very loud in his protests. Eventually we will all get the hang of it and hopefully Liam will realize how fast it makes him feel better and he will learn to cope better. Poor little guy.

So - asthma. Pretty common, but kind of a bummer. We have to wait and see how it progresses and what his "triggers" are. It could just be the sudden change from chilly to frigid. He does not have smoke exposure or stuffed animals in his bed. I have always had allergy barriers on the mattresses etc. Who knows where this stuff comes from, right? Maybe he will just get it once a year, maybe it will be more frequent. Whatever happens, it is manageable.

An interesting coincidence is - my study at Yale was all about Asthma in adolescents. Mostly we focused on it in minority and urban youth populations......I just realized that I am full of stats about asthma and the socio-economic impact of treatments in urban and underprivileged youth. I can tell you about spirometer readings in the Hartford Public School district. Guess I need to brush up on some other details as a Mommy, though! :)

I will post fun pics from the holiday weekend soon. We all had such a WONDERFUL visit with Nick's sisters Ava, Madelyn and her fiancee - the wonderful Joe. It was awesome.

I leave you with a funny story about Kate:

Today in the car we were singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". We were singing together and as the end of the song approached, I decided to jazz up the ending....it is hard to translate in typing, but I kind of made it a big band kind of finish..."Santa Claus is coming, you know that Santa is coming! Oh Santa....big Santa is coming tooooooooooo" (I am crescendoing here and have a lot of jazzy feeling in the voice) Kate interjects with a VERY loud and emphatic "NO NO NO MOM!!!!! NO MOM!!!! DOOOON"T!!!!!!! DON'T DO A BIG FINISH!!!!!!!!!" I literally almost choked with laughter. I asked her "No big finish, huh? What's a big finish?" She goes "YOU KNOW! What you were DOING! When you get all loud and change the words and make it all long and taking forever at the end....THAT is a big finish. Don't DO that, MOM!!!!!!!!!!"

Well, pardon me! No Judy Garland moments for me, I guess. :)

I am Running Out of Words for "Cute"

Liam is so much fun. He is really just the sweetest boy. He is so happy and pleasant and fun. He absolutely loves cars and trains and rocketships and airplanes. He spends most of his playtime pushing around some sort of transportation vehicle and making appropriate accompanying sound effects. His vocabulary is increasing pretty rapidly now (as is often the case, Kate had been doing much of Liam's talking for him - informing me of his every need and when I am working on language with him, she tends to jump in and yell the answer before he can respond, just to let me know how smart she still is! :) Anyway, here are just a few of Liam's little sayings....

- Whenever he does something that may cause him dismay, such as drop his yogurt on the floor or pull all the books off the shelf, he follows it up when a long, drawn out, disappointed "Ooooohhhhh, Liiiaaaammmmmm"

- Cars = Cahs ; Train = Twain ; Fish = Whoosh ; Please take this or May I have that = Have? ; Please = pwweeeaaaassssseeee ; Yogurt = gogurt ; Buzz Lightyear (he is a big "Toy Story" fan) = BUZZZZZZ!!!!! (always yelled) ; Trucks = Trust ; Thank you = Teak-choo ; Books = bux ; If he has a wet diaper he points to it and says "Kinkles" (variation on tinkles) ; the bathroom is "bahfwoom" and he loves to brush his teeth so he will point to the bathroom and say "bahfwoom, teeeeef, pweaaaassse" and then point to his teeth.

He is just a sweetheart. I adore him.

Oh Deer

Do you know that in Minnesota it is the general norm for many men to take one full week of their annual allotted two week's vacation time and go travel north wearing camoflauge and hunting orange to go sit in a box on stilts or crouch in bushes for a week straight with their buddies while they wait for a doe or buck to frolic by to get their year's worth of venison?

I personally don't have anything against hunting. Man has been hunting forever and we exist today because of it (I will probably get some PETA flag now and get emails explaining that humans were actually more gatherers than hunters and the human body can exist on soy alone and deer have feelings too.) NO offense to vegetarians and vegans of the world...kudos to you, in fact, for that kind of discipline! But I just really don't care if there is hunting season....hunting is fine by me.

But I am annoyed by it - from the human perspective, not the deer's perspective. Here's my beef - or venison - - - FIRST of all, my contractor just did not show up for a week. Did not tell me so. Just bailed. Why? Because he was sitting in a tree waiting to get a 6 pointer. That is really annoying. For God's sake CALL me and tell me you are going on vacay. After a week of no shows and cell phone tag (he only got random service up north) I finally spoke to him and just called him on being hunting all week. At least he did not lie. I cannot believe how this state literally shuts down. You know it is deer opener when you go to Menards on a Saturday to buy stuff for a remodel and the parking lot is completely empty. I went to the lumber place with one of the guys last week for one hour and his blackberry kept going off....it was his hunting buddies who were texting their kills to him. He would exclaim "GEEZ that 8 pointer should have been MINE!!!! I should be THERE!!!! I found that clearing!!!!!!" At one point I actually said to him, "Um, excuse me, I am RIGHT HERE. Let's just get this done and you can get back to shooting, ok?"

SECOND, with literally 650,000 registered hunters (estimates say 500,000 go hunting during the opener) is there anyone left that is NOT hunting (other than Nick?). It is not like Minnesota is a hugley populous state. I was literally invited to three different "hunting widows" parties last week. I guess I just need a bit more time to acclimate to this. I mean - I can see the appeal of it! I do not view it with distaste or look down on it. I just don't understand it enough I guess. I can certainly see going once and it being very cool hanging out in nature....Minnesota is stunningly beautiful and after our trip north this summer I could easily see passing a whole day sitting and enjoying the scenery and peace (interrupted by occassional gunfire), watching the animals and feeling the anticipation - though personally I could not shoot one. Too pretty! But I would also fear for my life....

With half a million people with guns and bows hiding in the bushes and trees in the dusky light I just don't think I would feel very safe, even if I had a blinding orange hat on. I am too much of a control freak to trust others not to be stupid and accidentally shoot me. Literally every day since opener there is a story on the news about someone getting shot and/or killed while hunting. One guy decided to walk across a field without wearing his orange vest, dressed in cammo, holding a life size deer decoy. One guy aimed for a deer, missed, and the bullet hit his brother in the leg right across the glade from him. If hundreds of thousands of people are tucked here, there and everywhere, might a stray bullet hurt? Do they only give licenses to sure shots?

Admittedly, I don't know a lot about it. I looked it up and it actually seems pretty complicated to get a permit and you can only "bag" so many depending on where and how you hunt etc. It is well regulated and all that. I am just annoyed by the hoopla and the fact that people seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to be working for someone and then leave with no notice to go off ANYWHERE for a week. I am sure that many hunters follow the proper channels and ask for time off or give a heads up....but not all, as I can attest.

I just think of being at my job, leaving Friday, smiling when people say "See you next week!" but not really acknowledging them. Then I just hop a flight to New York City and spend a week seeing broadway shows, going to museums, shopping and eating amazing food and going to spas with my girlfriends all while cleverly evading direct phone contact with my job. That would be MY ideal bonding week. How would that go over with the boss? I guess the deer hunters would not understand the broadway baby as much as the broadway baby misunderstands the deer hunters. Oh well. Oh deer.

Fall Back...

From exhaustion! I remember our "single" days, or time before kids when the day that all the clocks turned back for Daylight Savings was actually fun in a strange way. Bars stayed open later! You could get "another hour of sleep" they say! With children in the picture "fall back" day becomes the longest day ever. Especially when you have kids on a "schedule" - and I guess I did not realize how predictable some of our actions were time-wise until today. First, you don't get more sleep because they wake up at the same time, only now the clock reads 6am instead of 7am, so psychologically you are muddled from the get-go. Then they start to get cranky around 11:30 for what seems like no reason. REALLY cranky. Then one of them starts to cry out "Eat! Eat!" and you realize that, according to their body clocks, they should have eaten by now because it is 12:30 to their tummies and food usually happens by 12:00. By 12:45 new time, they get cranky AGAIN because their bodies are saying that naps should have begun by now. Same confusion at dinner time. By 6:30pm the parent is looking at her watch wondering if it is bedtime yet (because the internal clock says 7:30) only to realize that she still has 90 minutes left. Sure, we could just let it go, but the way our life runs does not really work with a 5pm dinner and a 7pm bedtime....the kids would never see Nick with his work hours that way. So it is better to tough it out right away and just deal with it. But gosh it was a long, cranky day. Who knew one little hour could make such a difference! I almost think it would be easier to jump 5 time zones than to make such a minute adjustment. Well....maybe not, with all due respect to my international friends with kids who travel time zones often! :)

Maybe I am just tired from a great busy weekend, instead. Nick has been painting the new bathroom/hallway walls all weekend. Also we got the yard and garden mostly winterized today. I pulled up all the annual coleus and some bushes that did not make it through the dry summer. I deadheaded the perennials pruned the cherry tree for winter, raked all the leaves in the yard and got the perennials ready to be burlapped to try to save them this year from the rabbits and squirrels on the coldest of days. Nick finished up putting dirt back around the new patio and prepping it for seeding and winter fertilizing. I am always so pleasantly rejuvinated after working in the yard! It is so therapeutic and I enjoy it so much. I am learning, so we will see what makes it through this winter.

Also, Nick and I actually went on a DATE last night! We went to a great Tapas place and had some amazing Spanish tapas and beverages. Then we went to a concert - a band called Stars, that is so excellent, and a Norweigan guy named "Magnet" opened for them with nothing but a guitar, a soundboard and his gorgeous voice and it was awesome. Then we headed to Brit's pub for a bit before heading home. It was so nice to get out just the two of us! The kids were super for the sitter! Now we look forward to a week of hopefully big progress on the bathroom. Should get the tile and the wainscoting in. I love my floor tile and cannot wait to see how it looks!

OK - this post is pretty darn boring, I must say. I have talked about clocks, paint, food, and dirt. Woo. I live a life of insane excitement!

Happy Fall Back Day!

Cweepy

Kate and Liam had a great Halloween. Kate loved her Snow Princess outfit. Nick, however, is ready to sit on the porch with a big stick after I heard one of the boys at school tell Kate "you look beautful, Kate, like Queen Amadala from Star Wars". Now, being compared to Natalie Portman is one heck of a compliment, but none of us were prepared for it at age four!!! Also, a Mom at preschool told me this week that her son came home from school and told her he wanted to marry Kate. Sheesh.

Anyway, all that aside, Halloween was pretty wonderful! Liam was a puppy and I could not stop snuggling him in his outfit. He had a great time and for some reason called every pumpkin that he saw a "bottom". I would correct him and he would just repeat "Bottom!" So on every porch that we trick-or-treated at, Kate would hold her bag and politely say "Trick or Treat" while Liam would widly point to any visible pumpkin or jack-o-lantern and scream at the top of his lungs "BOTTOM!!!!!!" It was so funny. Kate told me that walking around trick-or-treating in the dark was "so cweepy". Nevertheless, she and Liam seemed to have an awful lot of fun - - with the exception of when we were on our way home and Kate tripped on an uneven sidewalk and skinned her knee which was met with much drama and wailing. She later told me that if the sidewalk had not been so "cweepy" maybe she would not have tripped. Here are some pics from Halloween!


Snow Princess




Puppy




Obligatory porch picture




Walking the princess and her pup

My Two Guys

I am crazy about these two!

Snapshots

Here are some pics of random moments in life! :)

Liam attacked his yogurt - though it looks like the yogurt attacked him. You would not believe how long this took to clean up. What you cannot see is the floor and wall mess...it was a disaster! :)





Kate saw a hair commercial the other day and said the woman had "beautiful culwy hair". She asked me to curl her hair. First we tried a curling iron....no curls. Then we tried these foam rollers. She looked so cute and dutifully left them in her hair for HOURS. She thought she was very cool. Upon unrolling them we discovered a head of beautiful STRAIGHT hair - albeit with a tad of body. No curls. I think her hair is uncurlable. Oh how I wish it were mine! Isn't she cute on the laptop? She loves the computer and is very handy with it and even types her name.






Kate doing Yoga along with her kids yoga video. She LOVES it. She does it before bed and sleeps like a log.





This is Liam eating a "Deceptively Delicious" recipe. They are homemade chicken nuggets made with a full cup of spinach puree, which is equivalent to a whole giant bag of spinach leaves. He DEVOURED these. Kate did, too. You can see the spinach once you bite into it, but the first bite is so delicious that they don't even care about the green. Nick eats them faster than I can cook them, too and they are great as salad toppers. YUM! I highly recommend.





A pic of the new patio from the second floor window. Sorry about the screen being in the way. It wraps around the side of the house to a grill patio as well. Will have to get some better pics of that up, too.

Wired

Well the weeks are full of all kinds of fun house projects. The bathroom renovation is moving along slowly but surely. The walls are up and mudded and taped. We are waiting on some backordered tile to arrive and that is holding things up a little, but I don't mind because I LOVE the tile and it is worth the wait! :) It will all come together very quickly once that is done. In the meantime, the patio project has been completed and I LOVE it! It was quite a fiasco. All sorts of issues come up with these old homes. As we found in this case, once we tore up the old sidewalk, it was discovered that when the previous owners built the detached garage and ran power to it, they basically wired an old extension cord and ran it about an inch inder ground, not encased in any sort of conduit! YIKES! It was frayed and hot and as soon as the concrete moved, the wire disintegrated, cutting power to the garage entirely.

Sooooo.....we had an electrician come to the house to help us wire it properly. A lot of times old owners overload the board in old homes and we wanted to be sure it was done right. Before that, though, Nick had to dig a trench from the house to the garage - at code depth of 12-18 inches - and run it where the soon-to-be-new-patio would be as well, then get the conduit set. Thankfully, between Nick and the electrician we got it all sorted out for the most part. There are lights in the garage and the garage door opens. The electrician told us that our garage was wired horribly and is giving us a good plan to rewire it properly which is so nice of him. There are some things that you want some help from the pros on, you know? To avoid a disaster later on.

While it was frustrating to be digging ditches and having schedules be pushed back, those are mere blips. We are so excited to be able to make these improvements and make our house more "healthy" in a sense. Giving the old gem a little new shine. I love love love our sweet little home. This sounds strange, but I almost feel like the house feels happy to be getting some good attention. It's fun!

I will post pics soon. Time to play with the kids!

Moments

Here are some pics of the kids over the past week....they are the sweetest.


Liam LOVES balloons - or, as he calls them, "Bwoons". Here he is holding Kate's bday balloon bouquet.



Our wonderful boy.



Nick and Liam watching the Cowboys. So great to have Dad home!!!!!



Kate with the hand-carved wooden truck that Nick brought back from Poland.



Ok, cover girl! :)

Just Call her Jo March

Halloween is approaching! Kate is really excited about it this year. I think she has reached the age when all that stuff - Halloween, Santa, Tooth Fairy, etc. - is intriguing and wonderful. This year I asked Kate what she wanted to be instead of basically deciding for her! At first, she told me that she wanted to be "Azura" which is the pretty blue-garbed fairy from the movie "Fairytopia". That sounded fine to me! We actually already have a great pair of dress up fairy-wings, so we just needed to find something fairy-ish and blue for her to wear. Off to Target we traipsed.

While there, Kate saw a costume that she absolutely fell in love with. It was about the farthest thing from "Azura" that one could get. The package claimed it was a "Snow Princess" costume. Kate could not stop exclaiming over it. We talked it over, determining that she REALLY wanted to be a Snow Princess MUCH MORE than Azura. I had my doubts - especially since the snow princess costume essentially looks like she should perhaps be going Christmas Caroling in the year 1852 as opposed to being of royal birth in some snowy land. But she loved it. REALLY loved it. And Halloween is about dressing up the way you want, within reason of course, so Snow Princess Kate it is! Plus, it is a super-toasty costume, which comes in handy when trick-or-treating in Minne-snow-ta. It is so warm, she may not have to be one of the kids that wears their winter coat OVER their costume.

Kate tried the costume on when she got home to make sure that it fit properly. I learned my lesson last year with Liam when I waited to try it on until Halloween night and it would not zip up! :) Kate asked that I take pics, so here they are. She is hysterical. The little Louisa May Alcott. Give her a pair of ice skates and send her down the lane to the pond with young Lawrence! (Only a select few who really REALLY get me will understand that! :)

So, enjoy the pics. Can you even handle the posing action? :) Too Funny! I don't have any of Liam. Something to look forward to! :)

A Shell

An empty shell of a room. Nothing but lathe and plaster.


A pic of the wall bump-out framed out and wrapped in plastic to try to contain the dust. It will bump close to the door frame, but small price to pay for some good bathroom space.

The bathroom restovation is underway! It is pretty exciting stuff. The old bathroom was just S-A-D. The tile was the teeny tiny inch-square tile in various shades of pink. The tub: from 1950. The pipes: original. As in 1924. The wiring: knob and tube. It had come to the point where the old tub did not drain and the 1950s medicine cabinet light did not turn on so if you wanted to take a shower, you had to do it by night light and you had to do it fast because the tub would fill up and then you had to stand in the dark and hold the drain plug "just-so" so the water would drain.

In other words. It was time.

Here are some pics of the demo. A little portion of the wall is bumped out about 18 inches to afford us that little extra space. The room is so tiny to begin with that it makes a big difference in the layout that we could configure. It will actually allow us more storage. Design-wise, we are going with what I am calling "vintage/modern". Our tub etc. will be more traditional (a gorgeous pedestal tub, a pedestal sink), with some crafstman-style high wainscoting, but the fixtures will be a little more modern with a brushed nickel finish and a gorgeous travertine tile floor that I fell in love with. It should look fresh and bright and clean and not sad and grungy like our old one. I am so excited!

Right now we have everything torn out - with the exception of some very old tile on the floor which looks suspiciously like asbestos tile. So that will remain and we will floor right over it. It is no problem to keep it, health wise. The danger is in removing it. The new wiring is done as are the new pipes. The new wall is framed. Here are a couple pics....hopefully we are done by Mid-November.

All I Want for my Birthday is.......

A thoroughly disinfected Preschool Classroom resulting in the remainder of the year being illness free for my children.

I feel like all I ever do is give updates that involve some sort of fever or trip to the doctor with the kids. I am SO sick of it! If I am sick of typing it, and you are sick of reading it, imagine how tired of it the kids and I are from actually living it! UGH!

Seriously. The children were so healthy all summer long - when we were AWAY from school environs. My house is CLEAN. Now we are back to school and Kate was sick a couple of weeks ago, then Liam got sick, and we just spent a lovely FULL week of Kate being so sick that she was essentially quarantined by her doctor and did not participate in ANYTHING for a week straight.

So, yes, you read that right....it was a week straight of me being at home with the kids 24-7 and not going anywhere....and the whole time Nick was on a business trip in Poland.

Kate came down with some very yucky potent virus called the coxsackie virus. Couldn't they pick a better name?! I mean, Ew. Anyway, it is the virus that causes Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease (not the kind that cows get) and other variations and is insanely contagious. Kate got the version that caused her to have a fever of 102 for 5 straight days and a mouth full of ulcers which made it nearly impossible for her to eat or drink. She was Mis.Er.A.Ble. Poor thing. After feeling like a total hypochondirac mother for bringing her to the pediatrician (Again)......I was somewhat reassured by my suspicions being confirmed in that she did have an official virus and it was not my fault that she got it. :) The doc said that schools are basically cesspools of this stuff. Lovely.

SO - a week straight at home with both kids, disinfecting everything that Kate touched or breathed on because I did NOT want Liam to get it. (knock on wood) The kids were actually really great and we watched a lot of movies, did crafts and read a lot of books. Kate napped a lot because the fever just wore her out, and Liam was a sweet little boy and mostly just played with his matchbox cars nonstop. I lived for the chances to talk with Nick when he could manage a call from Krakow or Warsaw just to decompress. Oh - and we have bathroom demolition/renovation going on. woo!

And though I complain, the moments of humor and sweetness are not lost on me. The snuggles from a feverish 4 year old are some of the most heart-filling, snuggliest cuddles ever. And the things that can happen while a 19-month old boy is left unattended even for 3 minutes while the parent goes to change a garbage can liner are astounding. Case in point:

I ran downstairs to empty some garbage and came back upstairs to find that I had left Liam's bedroom door open by accident. A no-no. Of course, when I came upstairs, I found LIam on the floor in his room surrounded by an incredible amount of chaos that he had managed to whip up in such a short time. Things from his drawers and shelves were strewn ALL over the room - clothes, shoes, socks, diapers, books and stuffed animals. He had managed to completely disassemble all organization in 180 seconds. In addition, I noticed a tub of vaseline on the floor from what I thought was an unreachable drawer in the changing table. It was open. With giant finger-shaped gouges in it. And Liam's face was shining with smears of petroleum jelly. Including his mouth. And he was grinning hugely. Oh LORD! Did he EAT Vaseline? First of all, EW. Second of all, the kid will not eat pizza but he will eat greasy vaseline? Third, what can that DO to him? I took a deep breath and decided IF he ate it - since there was no way to be sure - the worst that would happen would be some interesting diapers. I calmly picked up the tub to check any manufacturing info and, to my horror, saw "If swallowed seek medical help immediately and/or contact Poison Control". OH &%$@! So I called Poison Control, remaining very calm. Thankfully - and as I suspected - they said he would be fine and the worst would be some crazy diapers. GOODNESS! Why do they put things like that on there and SCARE people? Litigation fears, that is why!

Anyway - all these fevers, mouth sores, and petroleum jelly ingestion are NOTHING, really. Honestly. My sister's baby girl, Mia underwent surgery on her kidney and bladder this past week! We are talking incisions, hospitals, anesthesia, recovery...the whole thing. And a baby girl who cannot understand why she is in a hospital or why it hurts to go potty now. And a Mom and Dad who have to sit and worry about their baby while she is in surgery and whose little boy is at home with Nana wondering where everyone is. THANK THE LORD IN HEAVEN, Mia is doing well. The recovery at home now is rough because her pain can only be controlled by tylenol and motrin. She cannot take the narcotic drugs of course. Can YOU imagine having a 5-inch long incision in your stomach and not having serious meds? I sure cannot! Percocet was my friend post-op. So...my exhaustion from one Nick-less week of kid illness is NOTHING in the grand scheme. Or even in my family scheme!

I HAD to write about it, though, because REALLY. I just really have concerns about the germ situation going on. PLEASE other parents, let me know - are you experiencing this? I feel bad for Kate - maybe the CMV thing last year just really put her immune system down for a while and it will take her a while to not get everything that blows by her. But if for my birthday gift I can have an illness-free family through xmas, that would be awesome! I also would not mind anything from Sephora! HA HA HA! Just kidding!

Prayers and love to Mia and the whole Morris Crew! We love you love you love you!

Just Because

It has been a big Kate week around here and I wanted to post pics of Liam so he does not feel left out. :) Here is the big blue-eyed boy getting into all kinds of trouble.

Kate is Four!

I think that Kate had a terrific Birthday! We were supposed to have her party at a local apple orchard, but on her Bday it was raining horribly and we had it at our house instead. The orchard, after all, was a mud pit! But we had a wonderful time at the party - and gave out bags of fresh apples and recipes for Apple Crisp to our guests. Kate received some wonderful gifts and she is a happy, energetic and smart FOUR YEAR OLD!!!!! Thank you to everyone that helped Kate celebrate, either in person or by sending their well wishes! She is so lucky to have such terrific people in her life.


Kate's Apple-Themed Party Cake - soooo yummy.



Kate got two "High School Musical" barbies from her grandmother. Let me tell you that was one of the biggest hits of the birthday! She went absolutely nuts with excitement. The Barbies now regularly act out songs from the movie. She loves them!



Kate got the book "Fancy Nancy" from her Aunt Ava. She has been wanting this book for ages. She immediately went upstairs and dressed herself up "Fancy Dancy", as she calls it, right over her big fleece jacket and jeans. She walked around like that for hours. So cute.



Blowing out the candles! I cannot believe she is four!




My good friend, Sarah, gave Kate a wonderful princess hat and dress up skirt. Here is Kate modeling the gifts on top of a dress up costume that she already had on. Dress up is big around here.

Just Like Beckham

Here are some pics from Kate's soccer practice and game. She scored two goals yesterday! :) It is so fun to go and watch the games with Nick and Liam. One must remember, though, that this is preschool soccer! Games come to an immediate halt when a cool airplane or a flock of noisy geese fly over the field. :) Sorry about the fuzzy pics - I don't have the action shots down yet.

I know, I know....

I need to post a blog, I know. All sorts of fun pics and tales to tell. For one, Kate turned FOUR!!!! A lot has happened in a short five days and I promise to have pics and stories up soon. We started a new renovation here at the house, so things are kind of in disarray and covered in demolition dust.....the bathroom has been reduced to rubble. More to come when things clear up here and I have some time from steering toddler Liam away from the chaos! :)

Cute Liam

Liam is just the cutest. I just want to hug him all day long. He is so much fun. Here are some pics.

My Little Pony

Kate is very into "My Little Pony". She has been for ages (see early post about her Pony "tableaux") and I think they are great little toys. And VERY affordable! When I heard that "My Little Pony LIVE!" was coming to town right around Kate's birthday, I just had to get tickets. After a summer of me being less than mobile with the surgery recovery, and all my recent work at the U of MN, I knew that Kate and I would need some one-on-one special time.

So last weekend, I told Kate we were having a special Mommy-Daughter day with NO BOYS ALLOWED. I did not tell her what we were doing, though. First we went to lunch. As we were on our way, we passed a poster for the show! Kate saw it and got very excited. I asked her "do you think that is what your surprise is?" and her answer was "No, I don't think so. I think that show is coming in a long time and that is so people can know about it." (Impressive). I nodded in agreement and said she must be right. While at our big girl lunch, we chatted and laughed and had such a great time! Then I revealed the surprise to her and she was VERY excited. See picture below for a visual! :)

The show was really cute. The theme was "Pony Tea Party" and it was very pink and girly and adorable. Kate had a great time. I would also like to complement Hasbro - the creators of My Little Pony. The merchandise for sale was very affordable! UNLIKE the Disney Princess show where they may as well pass a collection plate around and ask you to place your wallet in it, never to be seen again. While at Disney Princess the "magic wands" were $25, at My Little Pony they were $5! So Kate actually got some goods without us having to take out a Home Equity Loan.

It was a great day. Everything went beautifully and we had such fun. Until we were leaving. As we were making our way through the skyways to the Parking Lot, a very, Very, VERY large woman - so large that she could not see small people or objects in her immediate radius - came barrelling by and literally body-checked poor Kate clear across the room with her stomach. People actually gasped. I had her hand in mind and all of a sudden this women ka-boomed into Kate and magic wands and ponies and kate went flying as her little hand was ripped out of my grasp. Poor sweet Kate. She got a nasty rug burn on her knee and had crocodile tears rolling down her face. The woman did not even stop or apologize. Kate was really upset and I was trying not to show that I was furious at the rudeness and really irritated that such a lovely day had a silly scar on it, but both Kate and I quickly recovered and spent the ride home singing along to "High School Musical". It really was such a fun day.


Kate enjoying her lunch.



Excited Kate - I just told her that we were going to the show.



The Ponies "Live". Kind of creepy, I know! :)