New things at our house and a bad weekend

We bought this pressure canner off my mother-in-law who has 3 (!) and I've been saving some raspberries in the freezer for the occasion. We made soup in this the other night too-- from start to finish (dry beans to soup) was about an hour. Beautiful.


One of my friend's mother's passed away and my friend went through the house (she's the only child). My sister-in-law got a twin bed for her daughter, and we got this beautiful dresser. I love it. Isn't it so pretty?


Nathalie and Emily have been cranky lately, but I thought it was just the heat. Above 90 + above 90% humidity= terrible. Little did I know that Saturday morning I'd wake up and see Emily's face looking like this.

I kept staring at her, trying to figure out what was different when I realized that her neck was completely swollen. The swelling and crankiness plus the high fever made me think strep, so after her nap yesterday I dropped Nathalie off at the babysitter and took Emily to the Urgent Care. They didn't even do a strep test, just looked at her.

I'm really glad the babysitter was able to take Nathalie because I was in pain most all of yesterday and I wasn't functioning completely. I couldn't have handled two kids at the Urgent Care by myself.

Today it is still hot. I was up til 1 finishing the jams (still figuring out the pressure canner and it took me awhile), Matt worked last night and tonight so he's pretty much out of the picture and the girls are still cranky. Emily's face is swelling even more but we're giving it another day. At least my mouth doesn't hurt as much today.

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Special Moments: laying with Emily on the floor and looking at the computer then looking over at her and she's falling asleep. Where your head droops and you jerk it back, then it droops again and you jerk it back. Then I picked her up and she wrapped her arms tight around my neck. She doesn't do that a lot.

Cuddling Nathalie at bedtime. In an effort to get her to fall asleep on her own I haven't been rocking her to sleep as much. I miss that. I'm glad I could rock her to sleep last night. And kiss her chubby cheeks.

A pain in the jaw

Wisdom teeth recovery is going fine here. Today was a little painful as I decided to not take the Vicodin. Vicodin makes me all loopy and sleepy and I can't focus. I don't know why people want it so bad!

Also, if you're in the medical field you need to watch these videos on YouTube. Hilarious. Matt sees this literally every day. The beautiful thing is that pharmacies are now connected by some computer/website program that allows the Drs and pharmacies to see the number and type of prescriptions that a person has received. It's a good program.

Also, did you hear about the new law regarding porn sites and .xxx after their address? One step more to protect my children from the filfth of the world.

Spending my half birthday as a chipmunk

I got my wisdom teeth out today. I had 4--two that already came and two that were impacted. They hooked me up to the machines and put a line in me then starting pushing general anesthetic. I was feeling really relaxed and must have dozed off a little. Then I started waking up for the bottom two teeth (the impacted ones). By the time they took out my last one (and it took some yanking and drilling), I was feeling a little pain but not much. I feel pitiful. The pain came about an hour later. Then it hurt. Not too much swelling yet, but I already look like this from the gauze.

My mom sent me a get-well package. I haven't eaten the puddings yet, Mom. I've only had a milkshake. What I really want is a hamburger. With bacon. Lettuce, tomatos, cheese. Mayo and ketchup. A really big hamburger. Or maybe some Papa Johns. With sausage and banana peppers. Or maybe Arbys.

My mother-in-law, wonderful lady, drove me to and from the appointment. Matt stayed with the girlies and we hired someone to watch them while he slept after his shift. When I got home, Matt was awake. I saw him and started crying. He got me these a week ago and aren't they beautiful? I love color. I wish he were here tonight to cuddle me and rub my back.

The hardest part of this is that I promised everyone to take it really easy for a few days. So I didn't get to snuggle my babies tonight or even talk to them. Nathalie was tired and cranky and I could hear her crying. It also hurt. Tomorrow my mother-in-law said I can snuggle them while they're watching a movie if I'm good. So I'll be good.

Dads

Reaons why I love these men (from left to right):

Grandpa Pete (mother's father)-- for your sense of humor. Especially when it involves teasing my grandma to which she doesn't always respond well!!

Grandpa Roy (father's father)-- for your Norwegian heritage and your singing voice. I love carrying on these traditions in my family. I love hearing you sing.

Dad-- for you. Pretty much everything you do and have ever done.

Rand-- for raising your wonderful (and extremely handsome) son. You did a great job.

Grandpa Little (Rand's dad)-- for your dedication to the Gospel. And also for making up different stories about losing your hand so all the grandkids are confused.

Ooops...did I miss one?

Matt. What can I say? Sorry we didn't get to celebrate Father's Day this week...but that's okay since I actually celebrated it last week and got my dates mixed up. Thanks for loving me.

Fame and fortune await!

We went swimming today. I wanted to show you Emily's future career. Olympic Diver.

This little girl jumped off the diving board repeatedly, both with the life jacket on and off (I caught her). She tried to copy the big kids' moves and jumped off backwards, tried to spin, tried to flip (end result: bellyflop). She saw a teenage girl swimming underwater and tried to copy her arm movements. She floated on her back. She put her head under the water. I tried to upload the moves of her spinning and watching the underwater girl but they won't work tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

It's the Viking in her.

Some funny random pictures and what's up with us

So....it's more than halfway through June already. Is it just me or is time moving too fast? I'm determined to enjoy summer. I don't like the heat, humidity, having to run the A/C. I'm a fall type of girl but I decided to try and enjoy summer while it's here! Here's what we're up to.

Nathalie asleep with her "guck", on the way home from Indiana.

If you look closely at Nathalie's face you'll see a HUGE grin! This girl loves playing in her carseat, just not being in it.

Annnnnd she discovered chips.

Matt is training at his new job. It's a night shift job, so we're getting into that groove. He hasn't taken the NCLEX yet because the Ohio Board of Nursing messed some things up. We're still trying to work it out--so hopefully he can take his NCLEX sometime in July. Then he'll be an official RN.

Emily is my water-obsessed child. She pours things into other things all the time. She plays with water. She makes big messes. She swims like a fish.

(She figured out how to do the shovel thing.)

Raspberries have been cheap here and since I like to buy the really expensive jam, I calculated that it would be cheaper to make my own jam. I think I'm paying $2/jar for my homemade jam when I usually pay $5 a jar for the "homemade storebought" stuff. And it's better with less sugar. You should all check out SURE-JELL NO SUGAR PECTIN because it makes amaaaaaazing jam with half the sugar of regular pectin. All I'm eating right now is bread and jam.

She's also my monkey-child. She now hangs from ladders and drops to the ground from 5 or 6 feet. She is quite the climber.

I get my wisdom teeth out next week. YUCK. I am not looking forward to that. This weekend is busy because I'm trying to get things ready for a week when I won't be able to do anything! Also it's busy because Matt is GONE!!! He went camping with the Scouts. While he's gone the girls and I have watched movies, ordered pizza, made cookies, gone to parks, gone out to lunch, gone swimming, worked in the garden, made jam and taken walks.

(Nathalie is getting 4 more teeth. Cranky, cranky! We ran out of Motrin so I bought 4 more.)

We have a busy few weeks ahead of us. Our garden is finally under control, Matt got his new bike (Yay! family bike rides!), the library summer program started and we are enjoying this summer.

Nathalie struggles with naps

We're down to one nap a day for her. She wakes up too late to take two naps at this point (somewhere around 8:30). But she refuses to sleep for longer than 1 1/2 hours in the afternoon. I try to put her to bed around 8:00, but she fights me until about 8:30 when she finally cries herself to sleep because she's so tired. I put her down for a nap between 12:30 and 12:45.

She gets tired and cranky starting at 4:30.

Two things that make this worse: Emily goes to sleep at 1:30, so I get about 1/2 hour a day to get things done. And Matt works night shift now so he needs our other bedroom to take a nap from 2-6pm everyday. I'm stuck!

On Grannys and Grandpas

I can hardly believe it's been 2 weeks since we visited my parents. They flew in to my grandparent's house in Indiana and we drove over for 5 days. It was wonderful. After her initial shyness, Emily followed Granny everywhere and wanted her to do everything. Nathalie is a lot clingier these days and it took her until the last day to warm up to my parents. Forunately I got the flu the last 2 days and my mom really helped take care of Nathalie so that helped. I wish they lived closer!

Family walk. Emily talks to me about this walk every day. I have sinced stopped wearing those shorts because in this picture, they're falling off.

Nathalie accepts Grandpa.

Granny and Emily.

I wanted to see if Emily could hold Nathalie in her lap going down the slide. She couldn't.

Granny and Nathalie.

Emily and Grandpa reading Mr. Grumpy. Grandpa would tickle her everytime Mr. Grumpy got tickled in the story and she loved it.

The Cleaning Queen. She has boundless energy. She makes me look like a slob (and if you know how I keep my house, that's pretty incredible!)

This was how Nathalie felt about Grandpa the first couple of days.

What we did before our vacation

It's been busy. Here's a quick review, in pictures, of what we were doing before heading to visit my parents. Got my haircut. It was so long and hot. Matt loves it long.....sorry honey.

Took the girls to the park and snapped some cute pictures.

Curly girly.

Made lots and lots of this. It tastes SO good.

Because we picked 7 of these (but I only used 2). Probably the best strawberries I've ever eaten.

We spent Memorial Day with Matt's family, we are still finishing up our cabinets (the trim), we went swimming, ate a lot, didn't excercise, did some more swimming and had a good time.

This one time, my sister got pneumonia and I left the room everytime she took her medicine.

That was because she gagged and sometimes threw up when she took it. I don't even remember much about her getting pneumonia, except that she had to take her medicine at dinner and I ran upstairs to my room, shut the door, plugged my ears, hummed loudly so I couldn't hear the gaggin and didn't eat dinner that night. And I wouldn't go within a 10 ft radius of her because I didn't want to catch "it".

(Isn't this picture adorable? This is Nathalie in a nutshell. Can you imagine her as a teenager? )

This little girl is sick. We've all gotten it. Matt got it about a month ago (after a family event). I got it after we had a Memorial Day thing with his family (We're going to screen family events for illness from now on.)

Matt's and my illness was more of a long drawn-out, fever and chills, achiness, super sore throat and extreme fatigue that lasted for 5-6 days. So far, Nathalie has been fussy, feverish and then she threw up at the dinner table.

So I cleaned her up, cuddled her a while, and gave her a popsicle. Then I finished my dinner. Yes, I did clean the puke off the dinner table before I finished. (Emily went ahead and continued eating dinner while I dealt with Nathalie, but they're on opposite ends of the table.)

I've come a long way from my vomit-phobic days.