Musical mayhem

As most of you are doing the same, we are trying to get back into the swing of things after another Christmas. I must say, this Christmas actually involved less traveling than usual, but with it coming on the heels of the accident, it felt kind of the same as always. BUSY. And while I do love the holidays, I am ready for some normalcy.... and to get this giant cat of a Christmas tree out of here! Yesterday I vacuumed and vacuumed under the dang thing, and every time I bumped a branch it'd shed more needles. 'out of trees'... my eye!

It looks pretty... but don't touch it!

Of all the activities and gifts this year, there is one memory I just have to document. The day after Christmas, we decided to engage the kids in a game since Grandma and Grandpa and little Breck were trying to rest. We all headed into the dining room and set up for some UNO action with Uncle Casey and Aunt Jill. Jill was seated in between Charlie and Ben at the end of the table, and the rest of us scattered around the remainder. The game got off to a good start, with lots of draw 2's and reverses and skips, sending Charlie into a realm of little kid excitement. He could hardly sit still in his chair.  A few minutes later, Jill jokingly remarks to me "How can you stand this"? Huh? I wasn't sure what she was referring to. She motioned with her eyes in Charlie's direction where I could see him visibly bouncing and doing miniature dance moves on his chair, while making popping and fake weird music noises with his mouth. 'Eh', I just shrugged. Nothing new in that department.  

A little while later, Jill put down her cards, faced Ben and said "OK Will you STOP that already?!" Huh? Ben, of course knew exactly what he was doing - making a relatively high-pitched, slightly sickening sounding humming music - to random tunes while he played cards. Again, I hadn't noticed. Of course, that was exactly the reaction he wanted, so he kept it up... only a little louder especially for Jill.  I chuckled. 

It wasn't long before Will, on the other end of the table, started in on his electric guitar sounds he frequently makes with his mouth. And it was me this time who set the cards down to do a double take. With all the popping, dancing, humming and electric guitar noises coming from all around the table, it was definitely noticeable, and pretty amusing at the same time. Each one was doing their own mildy-intrusive thing, not paying any attention to the other... but as a collective unit, it was annoying as hell! I started giggling and making comments about the ensemble, and Jill and Casey quickly joined in. It wasn't until little Jakey picked up the closest object sitting near him (which happened to be a toothbrush) and sang in an elevated, high-pitched voice, "TOOOOTH-BRUUUUSH" - that we all busted up laughing. It was pretty ridiculous. With all the noises and laughing going on, we had forgotten momentarily about the nappers, and started trying to focus back on the game and quiet everyone back down... which was working - except for little Jake. He caught on quickly that making noises and singing was getting a reaction, so he did the next logical thing. He reached down inside of himself for his loudest voice ever, and with one fist pumping in the air, belted out "FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!!!" 

That was it. How could anyone concentrate on UNO after that? Laughing kids started disappearing from the table, and we started cleaning up the game. A few seconds later, a sleepy grandma emerged from the hallway, clearly curious about all the commotion, and with a voice that said "you've got to be kidding me", said "Fire in the hole???"  YEP. I was sorry we woke her up, but it was hard to convey that while I was laughing at the same time.  

OH WELL. 

FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!!

Cooking with Cavemen

Our first full day of Christmas vacation has finally descended upon us. The kids are of course, giddy at the thought of TWELVE whole days away from school, and while I'm very glad to have them home... I do find myself wondering how long the honeymoon will last. Today actually went well. First we made puppy chow (the powdered sugar coated, chocolately-peanut buttery cereal mix), then almond bark pretzels, with present wrapping on deck. Since I limited their involvement in the puppy chow, that went great. I can't quite say the same for the pretzels. Neatly drizzling the correct amount of melted chocolate onto each pretzel quickly turned into trying to determine the maximum chocolate threshold per pretzel. I don't even know why I bothered to buy the 'Holiday Shaped' pretzels, as they all looked like a bunch of covered blobs by the end. Of course, as the pretzels got more and more ridiculous, the laughs got louder and louder. I finally had to give up on the cute pretzel vision I had in my head and just go with it. And you know what? It actually was pretty funny.

We started out right -
neatly arranging the pretzels per my instructions

As soon as we busted out the chocolate, the shirts came off-
and that was NOT per my instructions!

Even little Jakey got in on the action

Well... I guess that kind of looks like... a camel?

My life in Pictures

Since I've missed quite a few postings over the past months, I decided there's just no way (or time) for me to create back-dated posts for each event. And since a picture is worth 1000 words, I figured this would make up for lost time. Enjoy!

Oct 16 

My best buddies Erin and Lyn came for a visit. We drank wine and 

made huge vats of chili for my IA vs. WI football party the next day.

(and yes, my we were wearing the same shirt!)

Oct 17 

IA vs. WI tailgate PARTY!

Oct 20

 I started selling Scentsy products!  

Check out my website

 Oct 22 

I prepared bunches of sweets for our Friends of the Library Bake sale - it was a success!

Oct 27 

We attended the Corridor Business Journal's "Forty under 40" Awards banquet 

at which Ben was an honoree!   :-)

Oct 31 

we trick-or-treated with Ben's cousins

Nov 14 

we threw a baby shower for Ben's sister

Nov 26 

we had a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving with my Dad, his girlfriend,

and my brother and his lovely family. 

Nov 28  

I attended Ben's cousin's bachelorette party 

Nov 29 

 Jake got his first pair of Cover-Alls - an essential out here!

Dec 5  

we went to the parade of lights in Cedar Rapids with friends

whew! :-)

OH CHRISTMAS TREE

Every year, we head to the same Christmas tree farm to select and cut our tree for the season. It's the cutest place, operated by a cute old man wearing a cute Christmas sweater. They serve hot chocolate and apple cider in their cute little cabin, and even sell cute little marshmallow launchers, homemade treats and gifts. The kids LOVE watching the tree being placed on the 'shaker', where all the loose needles, snow (and whatever else might be in there) are vibrated off the branches. Then the crew of cute young men loads the nicely netted tree on your vehicle, and you head home on your cute little way.

We usually like to wait for snow before making the trek for our tree.  It's more fun to traipse through the snow, pulling one of the provided sleds, in search of the perfect tree.  So this year, we took advantage of the school closing and blizzard conditions and headed to Wickiup Hill Tree Farm. As we approached the gate and could see it looked deserted, we wondered if it was closed during the week???  Odd...  Because the weather??? Unlikely... Hmmm  As we got close enough to read the sign on the gate, we read the very UNCUTE message, "CLOSED FOR THE SEASON.  OUT OF TREES".  WHAT!? Out of trees!?!?!? Now what.

Both Ben and I seemed to recall seeing signs for another tree farm nearby, so we headed in that direction.  We found it without too much difficulty. When we pulled in, it too looked deserted... but I hopped out of the truck anyway and headed for the door of the house that sat on the property. When a man in a plain sweatshirt (not any hint of Christmasiness on it) opened the door to greet me, I about  jumped out of my skin. (I really didn't expect anyone to answer for some reason.)  He directed me to the trees,  and instructed me to just bring it back when we were done.  OK.  I guess.  No sled? No hot chocolate? No carpet square to kneel on while cutting? 

I guess at least we got a saw.

We headed out in the direction he pointed us in and were pleasantly surprised to see a LOT of trees.  Hmmm, maybe this place wasn't so bad?  The trees were planted with no rhyme or reason - some clumped all together, squished by the others... not in nice lines like the other place.  And because of this arrangement, we did have a difficult time finding a tree that looked good all the way around.  I don't know how many times we exclaimed, "This one is great!" and then looked at the squish, bare, brown back-side... "oh, guess not".  Darn.  Clearly, this place has never had an overflow of visitors, as it had MANY FULL GROWN (like forest size) trees available for cutting - for 40 bucks! We got a lot of laughs out some of the gargantuan trees available as "Christmas Trees".  Hardly!  

We did actually have loads of fun with all the snow.  It was snowing so hard, I eventually had to put my camera away because it was getting wet and covered.  As you can tell by my the pics, I think we had an inch on us before we left. 

Look at those flakes!! See Will back there? 

Jakey trying to catch some of the giant flakes in his mouth

Ahhhh success at last!

And who would'a thought that even without all the provided cuteness, that we'd still have a blast finding our tree? :-)  And though I'm constantly vacuuming sharp pine needles off the carpet (since the sweatshirt-guy didn't own a "shaker"), the bonus of finding an abandoned bird's nest inside the branches was worth it. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

I'm not a nurse, but I play one on TV

They said I missed my calling. HA.

Sunday afternoon, after receiving a rather distressed phone call from Grandma, I loaded my gear in our van and headed out for the UW hospital.  Grandpa was having a tough time, Grandma was tending to him by herself, and it became very clear that I needed to go there for her. I threw a bunch of clothes in a bag, arranged for Liz to watch Jacob on Monday, packaged up my half-cooked pot of spaghetti and meatballs and headed out the door.  We were pretty sure Grandpa would be heading home on Monday, so our plan was for me was to transport Gramps & Gramms home from the hospital and have Ben bring Jake to me Monday night to stay for care taking. I made it to Madison with no problems, and Grandma and Grandpa were really happy to see me, and vice versa.

Sunday night Grandma and I headed to baby Emma's for the night, which was really great. They were grateful for the company, since their original plan of having Grandma on hand for a week to help with baby, didn't really work out. Since Emma's mommy is nursing, there wasn't a lot I could do to help feeding, but I did get up in the middle of the night with them to keep them company and chat while the baby fed.  I know it sounds whacked, but it was fun.  I even changed a couple of pee-wee sized diapers.  Man, I forgot how TINY those things are! I also found a home for the food I had made, and I really enjoyed the reports of Ryan stuffing himself with it to near sickness.  :-)

Monday did not start off good.  I had a text message waiting for me announcing SCHOOL CLOSED.  Oh man.  Ben really needed to get to work.  Normally, it wouldn't be a big deal, as he could work from home - but of course - that day was CRITICAL he be at the office. THANK YOU LIZ FOR TAKING THE KIDS!!!!  (I could write another entertaining story based on the babysitting reports I got! :)  

Meanwhile, Grandma and I headed back to the hospital and were happy and surprised to learn Grandpa was indeed getting released today! Woo Hoo! Grandpa was very reluctant and a bit scared to leave the hospital and head for home. I can understand that it would be unnerving to leave the safety of the hospital and head out with amateur care takers!  I kept telling him we were gonna be FINE, we can do this! I took a course in Neckbrace Care 101 from the nurse, schooled myself on his meds schedule and got splint and exercise instructions from the occupational therapist. OK! Now to transfer these injured patients home, on the same road as the accident, at night, on snowy roads... (was colonel mustard in the trunk?)

With slow and careful driving, we got home fine.  One of Grandma's friends was waiting for us upon our arrival with dinner ready - how nice! We got Grandpa situated in a nice stiff-backed recliner and I set to making sense of and prepping his meds regimen.  OK! I was on top of making him walk, do his exercises, wear his splint and take his meds.  Grandma got bathroom duty. We made a good team! Now if I could only get Grandma to sit still and relax for ten minutes, I'd be making progress..... 

I was happy to see additional help, in the form of Grandma's sister, arrive Monday afternoon. I took the opportunity to go get them some groceries and complete their Christmas shopping.  It was pretty fun shopping with someone else's money! (Any other takers???) I returned about three hours later with my haul, chatted a bit and hit the hay, since my 6:00 am drive home would be fast approaching. When I headed out the next morning, I could already tell a significant improvement in the condition of BOTH of them. Home really is a healer! And I think Grandpa was a little sad to see his "Nurse Ratched" go home.

I'LL BE BACK.

"Papa donna be awight?"

I thought of not posting about this at all... but thought again this morning.. and decided to.  I'm sure I'll have references to the events from the last week in future posts, so I'll just get it over with. (Throat clearing) and the story begins...

As mentioned in my last post, our first niece on this side of the family was born in the wee hours on Sunday morning.  We all loaded up and headed to Madison, WI to meet the little peanut. After lots of holding and squeezing baby Emma and visiting with the new parents and grandparents, we headed for home.  (Madison is about a three hour jaunt from our home fyi). We were well over two hours into the trip home, when we got the call from Ben's brother... their parents had been in an accident.  OH GOD.

We turned around and starting heading back towards Madison to a town about an hour from where we currently were. That's where the ambulances were headed. Ben's brother had received a a call from a truck driver informing him of the accident - how scary of a call is that. Many frantic phone calls followed as we made our way back to the hospital, arriving at the same time as the second ambulance - which was inching along at the pace of a snail... not good. We unloaded all the half-sleeping kids and headed into the emergency waiting room to find out what was going on. 

The state trooper who was at the scene met with us to explain what had happened. Ben's mom had been driving on a 4-lane highway (speed limit of 65mph), when a truck pulled out right in front of her trying to cross both lanes. He said she probably didn't even have time to say "OH SH**" before she T-boned the truck. He said her wheels were turned as if to avoid the collision, but there just wasn't time to do anything. He told us the side airbags deployed (not front!!!), and the seat belts saved their lives. He also said the rescue crew cut the roof off her SUV to extract Gordy and then basically 'threw' the roof back on top and strapped it down before hauling it away.  He then handed Ben an address of where the vehicle was taken in case there were items inside that needed to be retrieved.  The doctors wouldn't let anybody back to his parents, so Ben and Casey headed to the vehicle while I prepared make-shift cozy spots in front of the TV for the kids.

It just so happened I had found an animated Christmas special on TV (Grandma got run over by a reindeer), and the kids had been pretty absorbed in it rather than the words of the state trooper.  SO I THOUGHT.  After I returned to my seat, Will looked at me, serious as a judge, and said "Grandma got run over by a Dodge truck". I just sat there looking back at him... and then giggled.  He started giggling too.  A confused giggle... and I immediately said "Will that's not funny".  He reminded me that I was the one who started chuckling.. which I was. We both smiled and acknowledged that it did in fact sound funny when it came out, hugged, and turned our attention back to the somber situation. *sigh* 

After they got the go-ahead, Ben, Casey and their brother, Jim, took turns heading back to see their parents.  I wasn't allowed and neither were the kids. The reports coming back were all the same - lots of pain, both alert, not sure what's going on. Eventually Ben came out to tell me they were air lifting Gordy to Madison due to a neck injury. My heart sank.  Ben reiterated that it was mostly for precaution -- this small hospital wasn't equipped to properly care for a patient with a neck injury.  OK.  Shortly after, the nurse came out to ask if the kids would like to watch the helicopter.  UM NO!!!!   Yeah, helicopters are cool, but not when injured Grandpa is inside!!! Duh.

After Gordy was safely away, we were finally able to go back and see Grandma. She was pretty beat up. She had broken ribs and had broken a bone in her face, so the swelling and bruising was very bad. Jacob kept repeating "Gamma has a back face?", yep she sure did.  I'm sure it hurt like hell, but she did a great job of putting on a brave facade for the boys. Ugh. 

In the morning, we learned that Becky would be in the hospital for a couple more days, Gordy as well with a fractured vertebrae in the neck and a shattered wrist - wrist surgery pending... and let's not forget sister Betsy at a THRID hospital recovering from a c-section birth...  Where to go first?  We headed to Madison first to check on Grandpa, which was a little alarming for the kids.  He was in much worse shape than Grandma,very groggy from the medication, and the big hard neck brace was a little scary.  Will worried aloud that Grandpa's neck might be longer when he got out.  :)  We visited briefly and then headed back to see Grandma before trekking home. (This started as a day trip, remember? No clothes or supplies, Ben had critical work meetings to attend, and oh yeah - what about school?) 

Did I mention there was a blizzard coming too? By the time we got home on Monday, school was already cancelled for Tuesday. We ended up BURIED here with about 16 inches of snow. No school Wednesday or Thursday either - with roads completely covered and unsafe for travel. Marvelous! Thankfully, Ben's brother lives near Madison and was able to make the rounds between patients for the family.  Betsy's husband was also able to pitch in with the visiting, since their hospital was near Gordy's. THANKS CASE, JILL AND RYAN.

Becky was released yesterday from the hospital, and is slowly on the mend. Gordy will be getting out of surgery in an hour or so, and soon everyone will be heading home. It's been a wild week, with a LOT of stress, but I'm so thankful everyone is going to be okay in time. We will be heading out again this afternoon to help where we can. The kids are very anxious to see Grandma and Grandpa again!!! 

Finally a GIRL!

Our family was very excited to finally welcome a GIRL to this side of the family!!!  Ben's sister had their first baby on Sunday morning and she is soooooooooooooo CUTE!!!  See for yourself:  

To say we've been waiting for a girl is putting it mildly.  For me, including my side of the family, we've had ten consecutive boys in a row.  After my two spectacular (now high-school aged) nieces were born, it's been nothing but boy boy boy boy boy.... you get the idea.  When I was pregnant with Jacob, I was convinced he was going to be a girl.  The whole pregnancy had been completely different than the other two... and wishful thinking had taken over.  When Will opened the envelope on Christmas that year (which contained the message from our ultrasound tech revealing the sex), and incorrectly pronounced the word I was waiting for - 'GIRL'..... by saying what was written -  'BOY'... I cried. I saw all my hopes of pink dresses and barbies and shopping and frilliness go up in smoke in an instant.   Poof.

I got over the disappointment quickly (of course) and set into waiting for someone else to have a girl.  So here we are three years later - YIPPEEE! :-)  Congratulations to Bets and Ryan - she is perfect!