Mother's Day

I got exactly what I asked for for Mother's Day: sleep and not having to cook. A typical Sunday.

I got to sleep in until 8:00! I had nursery in the boys' room at church at 9:30 and then went to church with Emma. We went out for lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant (the usual Sunday lunch spot). They have a lunch buffet and it is so good. I ate way too much. In addition to the usual stuff (chicken & beef burritos, steak chimichangas, cheese quesadillas, make your own tacos, delicious pico de gallo, cheese sauce, chicken & beef enchiladas, etc.), they had added pork burritos which were delicious. Now I'm getting hungry!

I took a looooong nap in the afternoon and then we picked up Subway and went to the park for a picnic. Fun was had by all! Michael finally went down the slide by himself. The same slide over and over. Samuel has been going down the slides by himself for a little while. And they all love the swings.

We went home around 7 and called our moms to wish them a happy mother's day.... After the kids' bedtime, I watched Gilmore Girls and ate ice cream with a brownie. Yum!!! It was a great mother's day!!

Quick cookie update

On Saturday, Emma & I made some yellow cake mix cookies and I filled half with vanilla frosting and half with chocolate frosting. I liked the yellow cake mix cookies best - probably because they weren't so thick. I liked both types of frosting. Although I think next time I'd use a different chocolate frosting. I made the kind I use to frost brownies and it was a little runny. Still tasted good, though. And I did freeze at least half of them so I wouldn't eat them. I have no self-control around sweets.

Here is a link to the recipe on my good friend's blog, if you'd like to make them yourself: http://blessedintheprairie.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/out-of-the-box/
Yum!!

My mommy van

Friday afternoon I was in an accident. I was on the way to Cost*co, driving west past the intersection by the Old*Navy parking lot and another lady going north didn't see me and I hit her car. (She had a stop sign and I didn't, so I had the right of way.) What I remember is looking left and seeing her stopped at the stop sign and looking back at the road. Emma was asking me a question and I answered her question and then there was a white car in front of me. I hit her front passenger side. It was a pretty hard hit and our van is not drivable. I tried to drive it out of the intersection and it moved, but made a terrible noise and I couldn't steer it very well. The front driver side is missing parts and the tire is pushed crooked.

A picture of the side view of the van:


My first thought was about the kids. How on earth are we going to get the kids home!? And Emma was scared for a little while after the accident. The other lady was nice about it - hopefully her insurance will be, too. And there was a witness who stopped and was willing to wait to talk to the policeman. She was very nice, too. And the policeman was super nice. Anyway, I called K and he was across the city at a work outing, but was just leaving, so he came over (which took a half hour). K called our insurance who lined up a rental van and he called his brother (who lives near us) to see if we could use their van to get the kids home. Yay for Uncle B! He came and rescued us! The accident was also near a shopping center and was on their private property so a mall security guy came and took our insurance info, licenses, VIN number, pictures, statements about the accident, etc. He stayed with us the whole time.

But it's still a pain to have to deal with all the insurance stuff now. Actually, I can't talk because K is dealing with all that. I am so thankful for that! And we are leaving to visit K's parents on Thursday. We now have a rental van...a red 2010 Dodge Caravan (I think). It's nice. But it's not my mommy van.

I'm so thankful no one was hurt and Uncle B came and rescued us! And I'm thankful for K taking care of the insurance stuff! It could have been worse. It was scary enough as it was.

The weekend

We went back to my hometown last weekend for a festival. It went really fast. Friday we left here at 7:45 am and traveled straight through and got to my parents' house at 11:15. When we drove in the driveway, Emma announced, "I already went potty." Yeah, she went in her car seat. All 3 kids slept a little bit on the way, but not a lot. After lunch we headed downtown and scrubbed streets for only about 1/2 of the parade route since Emma was "hungry, tired, thirsty" - you name it. Both boys fell asleep in the stroller and K took them back to my parents' house. Oh, and my mom & I and the kids dressed up in costumes. I'll have to post pictures later. Friday night we all watched the parade and then went to my grandma's house and hung out and then went to my parents' house and put the kids to bed. Then K & I went downtown while my mom stayed with the kids. We ate mini donuts and watched all the (young) high school kids hang out.

Emma loved watching the parades. She said her favorite part was "everything". Or "the band, the park and riding in the stroller." Saturday we just dressed the kids up in their costumes and watched the afternoon parade. I also gave them early naps so they were well rested by parade time. After the parade, Emma played in the park for a while. We didn't go to the evening parade since it didn't start until 6:30 and runs into bedtime. There were fireworks Saturday night which we let Emma stay up to watch. She had fun!

We had a (family) shower for my brother and his fiance Sunday for lunch and then headed home (about 2:30). We didn't get home until 7:30ish because we stopped for supper for a while. It was crazy but fun! It also really was great weather for the whole time we were there. I hope you had a great weekend, too!

A few things

1. If you haven't read this post, do. I was laughing out loud.

2. All 3 kids are coughing. And our good friends from Nebraska are supposed to visit this weekend. Grr. I just want them to get better so our friends can visit! They were supposed to come in February. But Michael spent most of February in the hospital. So we postponed it until this weekend. I really want them to come!

3. Emma has been pooping in the potty ever since my last post! Hooray! Even once or twice a day. So much better than in her diaper.

4. I think Emma will have a gag reflex like her Uncle R. She was helping me by wiping some spit up off Samuel while I was feeding Michael. And she was coughing and gagging a little. It was kind of funny. Then, later that day, I asked her to hold Samuel's arms (so he didn't grab any poop) while I changed a very poopy diaper. She did the same coughing and gagging. Oh my. Maybe she's just being a drama queen.

5. I think it's funny when Emma quotes lines from her latest favorite movie...Gigi: God's Little Princess. The movie has a good message. She went through a Charlotte's Web phase, too, where she was quoting lines from that because she watched it pretty often.

6. Has anyone made a photo book on a website other than Shutter.fly? I started making one at a different site, but stopped because it wasn't as nice as Shutter.fly. I think Shutter.fly is probably more expensive, but I like being able to move pictures around and put captions on them.

7. The guy that helped Emma and I bring the groceries out to the van last night asked if Emma was going to go to preschool this year. I said no, but she's been asking to go to preschool ever since. I'm not ready to have her go to preschool yet or any school for that matter. I'd miss my little Emma. Most of the time.

Signing off for now,

Music

I just have to share about a birthday gift that Emma got from my cousin. It's a personalized CD that she LOVES! We listen to it at least twice a day. Here's the link to it at Christianbook.com. She was sooo excited when she first started listening to it...she kept saying "they say Emma" in the songs. The songs are good to listen to for adults, too, except they get stuck in your head! I wake up at night singing them in my head. The CD is pretty short, though!

Now we wait

Our transfer this morning went well. We got to the hospital at 7:30 and waited, and waited, and moved to a different room and then did the transfer. We had 2 frozen embryos left (I might have mentioned this already) and both survived the thaw and looked great. We got back to our hotel at 11:30. Emma had a good time (I'm told) with her aunt, uncle and cousins. They hung out at the hotel and then went to the St. Louis Science Center. A big, big thank you to Aunt M & Uncle B for watching her so she didn't get bored in the hospital.

Now we wait for a week and a half to see if it worked. The doctor gave us a good chance of it working this time. I pray that it does!

Project Serve

"Project Serve" = a bunch of churches (I don't remember the exact number) from our city getting volunteers to serve all over the city this past Saturday and Sunday. Our Life Group volunteered to work Saturday from 9am-noon. We picked up trash. We being me, K and the two other husbands in our group. The two other wives watched the kids.

We started out picking up trash around an elementary school. There was a surprising amount of garbage. Everywhere. We also picked up garbage along a couple of major roads. You can't see much of it from a distance, but once you get down to picking it up...there's a lot of trash laying around!

It was great to help around the city and be a part of something much bigger than myself. It was so cool to see all the volunteers that were gathered at the church where we started out. And that was only a small part of the whole Project Serve. We were part of something organized by the church as a whole. There were 3200 volunteers total. Wow!

There was a worship service on Sunday night. It was exciting to see people from different churches worshiping the same God. I loved hearing so many people singing to Him. The song that ended the service was "God of This City". What a great song!! And perfect for Project Serve! And the word on the website is that they are doing it again next year...

Where's the Love

This past weekend my mom helped me put some Uppercase Living decorations on my wall. I had bought them in February, which is more than 90 days ago. By a long ways. Uppercase Living has a 90 day guarantee. Just keep that in mind.

Anyway, K did all the hard work of figuring out where the words would be centered and my mom did all the hard work of measuring to make sure it was centered and straight. I made sure they had some company.

I actually helped put the words on the wall. Mom & I started with "Love" and carefully pulled the backing off the word, making sure not to stick it to the wall too early. (If you've never installed an Uppercase Living wall decoration, you will probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but just try to stick with me here...) I figured that once a letter was started, the backing would pull off the whole letter just fine. Well, who knew the letters could stretch with the backing? Now I know, too. Here's a visual:


That would look just plain funny on the wall. I will be ordering a new Love. So we have faith & hope but no love. It looks rather lonely. The end result was supposed to say Faith Hope Love with a little swirly decoration between the words. The words that are on the wall look wonderful, but it really needs love because it is the greatest.


"Now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13

Dear Crayola,

I was thinking today that perhaps you could make some crayons for toddlers that taste bad. For those of us with children who put everything in their mouths. I think your crayons do taste kind of bad, because she tries to spit it out, but if they'd taste really bad, maybe she wouldn't take a bite in the first place.

My girl is sneaky. I can be sitting right there with her and bam! she has crayon in her mouth. So thank you for making your crayons non-toxic so that when she does sneak a bite I don't have to call poison control.

Sincerely,
A mom

Birthdays, birthdays and more birthdays

This week has been a birthday mania. You wouldn't believe how many birthdays there are around here. A couple of our neighbor's kids had birthdays this week. Three of my cousins had birthdays this week. I'm not sure how many of K's family had birthdays this week. At least 3 second cousins. Or however your cousin's kids are related to you. Crazy!

And a couple of our good friends had birthdays this week. Emma's friend N celebrated her first birthday yesterday. Happy birthday, N! You are getting so big so fast! And N's mom celebrated a birthday today! Happy birthday, N's mom! Here's to many more!!

Church aka babies strollers

To Emma, church is "babies, strollers". It's really cute how she says it, too. Like "babylow-luhs". Anyone want to guess why that's her name for church? Yup, the nursery. She spends a lot of time in there, too. Sunday mornings during church, Wednesday nights for orchestra practice and Thursday morning for MOPS...

I think our church nursery does a wonderful job, too. We go to a decent sized church so the nursery has a card with Emma's name and our names on it that we have to turn in to claim her (but they know who we are, too). And we have a family number that flashes on the screen if Emma cries for more than 10 minutes. I've only had to go back there once when she was really young, probably around 2 months old. And by the time I got back there, she was fine.

Some people can keep their kids with them in church when they are little. Not Emma. She is loud and has the tendency to cry at inopportune moments. Just recently we kept her with us during the singing part of the service (we had the month off from playing in the orchestra) since she had a runny nose and couldn't go to the nursery. She started crying loudly...when the worship leader was talking. Not during a song or anything. And we were sitting far enough down in the balcony that it took like 15 seconds to get out of there. But it felt like a lot more!

Needless to say, we are very thankful for great workers in a great nursery!

A penny for her thoughts

Today Emma and I went to the grocery store mostly just to get out of the house. They had a few Halloween decorations up already. Having a 1 1/2 year old certainly puts Halloween decorations in a different light. I mean, I think they're kind of spooky myself anyway...imagine what she or any small child thinks. I would have nightmares. There was a mummy um...greeting us as we came in. Emma just looked at him and I only wonder what was going on in her little head. For me the freakiest part of the mummy was its blank, staring eyes. Fortunately, there weren't a lot of other decorations around but I'm keeping an eye out for them. Yeah. Emma's already scared of bugs and dogs, we don't need any more fear here.

Do you ever...

want to just get out in the aisle and dance during the singing time at church? Or is it just me? I would be the only one out there and I'm a chicken, so I just stand and tap my feet or clap my hands. But inside I'm dancing and lifting my hands in praise.

A picture is worth at least 12 words

I got this photo meme from Richelle's Reflections and decided it looked like fun to do!

Here's how it works:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.

b. Using only the first page, pick an image.

c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker. Choose 3 columns with 4 rows.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favorite food?

3. What high school did you go to?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Favorite drink?

7. Dream vacation?

8. Favorite dessert?

9. What you want to be when you grow up?

10. What do you love most in life?

11. One Word to describe you.

12. Your flickr name. (alternate version: favorite animal?) (I typed in "tree" since I couldn't decide on a favorite animal and I don't have a flickr name!)

It was fun picking out pictures. They have some pretty cool ones!

About me

Here's a long meme to share some more about myself:

Gone on a blind date NO

Skipped school NO

Been to Canada YES

Been to Mexico NO

Been to Florida NO

Been on a plane YES

Been lost YES

Been on the opposite side of the country YES - I've been to California and to Niagara Falls (I live in Nebraska...)

Gone to Washington, DC NO - I would love to go there some day

Swam in the ocean YES (Gulf of Mexico)

Lettered in a high school sport NO - I didn't even play sports in high school unless you count band. ha ha

Cried yourself to sleep NO

Played cops and robbers PROBABLY

Played dolls YES

Recently colored with crayons YES

Sang Karaoke NO

Paid for a meal with coins only NO

Done something you told yourself you wouldn't YES

Cheated on an exam NO

Made prank phone calls I'LL NEVER TELL

Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose YES

Caught a snowflake on your tongue YES

Danced in the rain NO

Written a letter to Santa Claus NO

Been kissed under the mistletoe NO

Watched the sunrise with someone you care about YES On the way to meet our new nephew, we saw the best sunrise on the Platte River - we didn't stop, though, we were just driving by on the interstate. Does that count?

Been arrested NO

Blown bubbles YES

Gone ice-skating YES

Been skinny dipping outdoors NO

Any nickname? YES... Mama : )

Favorite drink that I'm allowed to have on a regular basis? Water - boring

Body Piercings? YES my ears only

Birthplace? Iowa

Favorite vacation spot? The mountains

Been to Africa NO

Eaten cookies for dinner NO, but I've eaten ice cream for dinner

Ever been on TV NO

Ever steal any traffic signs NO

Ever been in a car accident? YES

Drive a 2-door or 4-door vehicle? 4 door

Favorite salad dressing? Thousand Island

Favorite Pie? Apple, strawberry, rhubarb, peach, etc.

Favorite number? 3 (I count things by 3s - well until I get to 40 or so then I can't add 3 as well!)

Favorite movie? Cheaper by the Dozen

Favorite holiday? Christmas

Favorite food? I have to pick one?! Chocolate!!!!

Favorite day of the week? Saturday

Favorite toothpaste? Colgate

Favorite smells? Emma

What do you do to relax? Read blogs, play piano, sleep

How do you see yourself in 10 years? Hopefully having more kids to be "Mama" to

Project Day

Saturday was a good day for doing projects, so it seems. I finally got the car and van cleaned out and vacuumed. K spent the afternoon installing our birthday present to each other. A new storm door. A little late since the storm season is past, but hopefully it will keep some of the heat out. Can I just mention that I tried to help, but I am worthless at reading those installation instructions. I think they make up words. Fortunately K is fluent in reading & interpreting the instructions. Emma tried to help, too...


Eventually I just took her inside and we both got out of K's way.

Red, White & Blue

Happy 4th of July, everyone! Praise God that we live in a free country!

We are going to some friends' house tonight for supper and then (hopefully Emma will be okay with this) we'll stay for the 10 pm city fireworks. We will take her pack 'n play "just in case". There is a parade at 4 pm, too, but we'll see how Emma's nap schedule is for the afternoon. I'm the one that wants to go to the parade, though! Oh, and we have big plans to swim in our backyard pool (Emma calls it a "coo") this afternoon.

What are you doing to celebrate our country's independence?

Prayers for Grandma

Someday I will probably have to have knee surgery. Bad knees run in the family. Today, my grandma is having knee surgery. Please pray for her as she goes through the surgery and for a quick and painless recovery!

The dirt

Saturday morning, I spent an hour outside planting some already blooming flowers that I had purchased. As opposed to planting the seeds that I had purchased, but waited too long to plant. I was accompanied by my trusty sidekick, Emma. She was a big umm...help. Well, actually she just wanted to play with my shovel and try to dig up or hit the flowers. But it kept her entertained while I frantically planted flowers.

Did I mention the dirt? I don't know if dirt is the right term - it's actually clay here in Nebraska. Yuck! I grew up in Iowa where there is actually dirt. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with the clay. I just threw some planting soil in with the clay in hope that the flowers don't die within the first week.


Here's a picture of the finished product. Please ignore the daffodil leaves. The daffodils are really pretty for the week or two that they are out, but I don't like having to wait until the leaves die off to pull them out. Apparently if you don't wait to pull them out until they turn brown, they won't come back next year. Hmmm...