25 posts tagged “family”

Vox just did something really stupid. I blame the huge, memory-sucking, rolling drug ad on the sidebar that convinces me that my child has ADHD and needs Vyvanse, and then proceeds to list every possible side effect. Grr. I was trying to write a post but now I'm mad and don't want to recreate it. :( Anyway, life is good and busy. I told someone recently that I didn't know what I was going to do with myself once I was done with school. They told me that I'd be surprised how my time would fill up. And how (to borrow a saying from my grandpa). All the running around and actually making a few meals keeps me busy, if not always occupied.

I even have a book to read. You actual bookworms out there are going to laugh, but I'm just not ready for "real" literature. Besides, I like books about people. It's Uncommon by Tony Dungy. I've admired Dungy ever since he was the defensive coordinator for the Vikings. So when his book came out I always said I'd read it - then the other day I saw it in the church library and snagged it. Haven't had the gumption to start it yet, though.  

The reason why I don't want to read today is that yesterday we got a Wii! Yep, we decided to join everyone else and get one. It was kind of an impulse buy, but it's really an early Christmas present for the entire family and now we won't have to get the kids anything. (They don't need any more junk anyway.) So we got it set up and the kids are playing it now. There's no school tomorrow or Friday so I can guess what they'll be doing all day. At least this is something active, which is why I'm not opposed to a Wii. Hopefully, especially with winter coming, they will actually get some exercise while they play.

I have a couple of topics for real blog posts ruminating in my head but those will have to wait. Even before Vox ate my first post, I wasn't much in the mood for being serious & thoughtful. ;)

I'm halfway through my last class. Yay! It's technically a class but it's actually a lab, and very specificially it's my clinical training, so there are no lectures involved. The lab goes M-Th from 4-7 pm and I've had to put in some extra time because I'm slow & methodical. I'm completely ok with that. I don't mind working hard, but I am truly sick of staring at notes & studying for tests.

What I'm really liking is that I can come home and watch TV and do household stuff. (If I was a better student I'd be reviewing hematological disorders for my lab, but the unknowns this week are open-book, so why?). I'm liking being able to be a wife & mom again. I'm far from being done w/school-related stuff, as my biggest hurdle - the board exam - is still ahead, but I'm enjoying this downtime at home while I have it.

I've been baking, and have even cooked a few real meals. I bought a carpet steam cleaner and have done a room per week for the last two weekends. I said this on my fb, but I'm still amazed at how brown the water is when I dump it out! The carpets really don't look all that different - fresher, yes, and minus a few spots but not necessarily cleaner - but apparently there was a lot of dirt down there. I'm really hoping to keep a cleaner house once school is done. I'm tired of living in filth.

It's kind of funny how I'm enjoying doing all these things that I used to consider a burden. I'm sure it won't take long before housework once again becomes a burden, but for now I'm going to ride the momentum and get some stuff done around here. On some level I think all I ever really wanted to be was a wife & mom so I like the opportunity to actually be those things. Run errands for Brian while he paints the house. Teach Bailey to bake. Watch the NASCAR race with Joey. That's the good stuff.

My poor blog, it's become so neglected. I promise one of these days I'll actually have something worthwhile to say. In the meantime, I'll try to scrape together a TonT.

Loathe:

• Being tired all the time.
• Watching my poor boy and his friends get crushed in three baseball games over the weekend. This was his second (and last) tournament of the season. We got to the point where we were just hoping for them to make some plays because there was no hope for them winning.
• Having to hear my little boy say, "I stink at baseball!" and try hard to fight back tears even though he was around his friends. :(  (For the record, he doesn't stink. He has some things he needs to work on, but I maintain that he's got potential to be a solid player, even if he never becomes a star.)
• Knowing that Joey's team that's been practicing for 5 weeks on a team we paid $60 for him to be on got crushed by a team of kids mostly a year older than them, that's been together since March, whose parents paid $500 for them to be on. Seriously! In third grade!
• Not losing weight like I've wanted to since we restarted South Beach a couple of weeks ago. I've lost 2 lbs. I started closer to my ideal weight this time so knew the weight loss would be less dramatic, but still I was hoping to see some better results. Oh well. Plug away, I guess.

Love:

• Watching my kids when they don't know I'm watching.
• Watching a project at work that I've been leading for almost a year finally come to fruition. We're working on getting everyone trained and will implement on July 21. The new process isn't perfect, but what process ever is? It's WAAY better than what we currently have. I feel such a sense of accomplishment, and I daresay I'm looking pretty good to the higher-ups! I had a great team, though...which goes a LONG way. I'm proud of them.
• Cuddle Time: a ritual in our house where all 4 of us pile onto Brian's & my bed and just watch something on TV. And cuddle. :) The kids are always asking, "Can we have Cuddle Time?" I love that they want to do it, even when we have to say no.
• The unpredictability and variety of midwestern weather. Last week it was pushing 100; today it's not even 70. As they say, if you don't like the weather in Minnesota, just wait a few minutes. Gorgeous weather is always nice, but I need it to change now & then. I could do without snow, though.
• Even though the games were not so great, at Joey's tournament last weekend I got to meet all of the parents. It was so much fun. In particular I spent a lot of time talking to the mom of a boy that Joey has gotten to be good friends with over the last half of the school year. Now they're on the same team for both tournament and house league baseball. I like her a lot. And the really cool thing is that they're thinking of switching their son to Schaeffer Academy after he finishes elementary school, just like we plan to do with Joey! Crazy. She said she's been praying for a good friend for her son, and to think that my guy might be the answer to her prayers just about makes me want to cry. In a good way.
• Holidays! Because they equal days off work!
• That Brian checked out the X-Files movie from the Bookmobile today. I'm finally going to see it, Kelly!

Are you bored yet? LOL

As aforementioned, I fully plan to give this blog some attention once I actually start having coherent thoughts again. :)

It's been a busy weekend! Completely consumed by running & marathons. It all revolved around the Med-City Marathon - which, in case you didn't know, is so named because Rochester has given itself "The Med City" as somewhat of a nickname. (I like it.)

So Saturday morning was the Med-City Kids' Marathon. They run 25 miles in 1/2-mile increments, and then run the final 1.2 on race day. Honestly, I'm not sure how hard my kids trained. They both swore up & down that they ran all of the 1/2 miles - and I don't think they lied. They did both have to walk during part of their mile, but that's ok - they both still finished. Maybe we should've carbed them up on Friday night. :)

 

 

 

 

 

Brian was planning to run the marathon on Sunday with his friend Erik, so Saturday night we had Erik and his family over to our house for the big carb feed. Spaghetti, mac & cheese, garlic cheese bread, and a salad for good measure. I was pretty carbed up myself, although I had no good reason to be (other than the fact that I'm going to have to temporarily give them up soon). Brian slept surprisingly well last night - I'm not sure I would have been able to. At 5:30 this morning I took Brian & Erik out to the start line in a neighboring town.

By the time I'd gotten home & showered, it was time to go out to cheer them on at the first designated marker, Mile 9. For some reason I forgot the camera at this stop. Then it was on to Mile 14:

 

Erik's wife Erin was also helping to cheer them on with their kids. We staggered the stops so that they'd have plenty of support & sustenance when they needed it. She saw them at Mile 17, and then Bailey, Joey, & I caught them again at Mile 20.

The nice thing about the later part of the race was that the runners were spread out enough that I could get out on the trail to get a good picture.

We next stopped at Mile 24. Eventually they started to approach the finish line.

As they turned that last corner to the finish line, I actually got choked up. Just because he'd worked so hard for this, and I was (and am) so proud of him for sticking to it and doing something that was stinkin' HARD. There's no way I'd ever even attempt it.

Their two goals were to finish without having to walk any of the race, and to do it in under 5 hours. As you can see, they made the time goal, and they also didn't have to walk. They said it helped a lot to have all the support that they did. What was really cool was the random support that all the runners get as they're running along. You don't have to know the people running, you just cheer for them as they run by because they're undertaking such a huge thing. It's like a giant support system.

So after we had a bit to eat, the guys headed off to the massage they'd booked. Before the massage they could barely walk, and afterward, Brian was feeling pretty good. I suppose now he thinks he's going to need a massage after every marathon. :) I think they're out in the hot tub now with margaritas - a well-deserved treat, I'd say.

Someone tell me why I decided to have both of my kids in the same month? Oh yeah, I didn't plan that.

The good part about having their birthdays ten days apart is that you get the parties done with in a couple weeks' time and then you're done for the year. The bad part, in our case anyway, is that February comes shortly after Christmas so while we're just getting the tree put away, it's time to start thinking about planning parties.

This year they both wanted slumber parties. And the only way it would work out is that we would have them two Fridays in a row. Eight eleven-year-old girls singing karaoke ala American Idol, followed by nine nne-year-old boys wrestling and roughousing ala Indiana Jones.

Just because I thought it turned out so cool, I'm putting up a picture of the dessert I made for Joey's party. Given the theme, I decided to forego regular old cake and do that dirt dessert that was so popular a few years back.

The good thing about them getting older is that they can entertain themselves for the most part, and in my experience don't seem to want as much structured activity. The part that doesn't get any easier is that you still have to make sure that no one's being mean and no one's getting left out. So even though we're not on constant duty like we used to have to be, it's still exhausting to have a slumber party, let alone having them two weeks in a row. So I'm glad that birthday season is over for another year. We do have one quasi-birthday left, I guess. My parents try to come up in February every year for a weekend, and while we'll probably have some sort of birthday cake, it won't be a party per se, and I won't have to plan anything because my parents don't expect much (God bless 'em). They don't even expect that my house will be clean, which is good because it probably won't be. And my mom never makes snide comments about the state of my house or offers to "help" me clean it up. She's awesome that way. (And in other ways too.)

Your kids do find ways of embarrassing you, have you ever noticed that? This morning during breakfast the boys were talking about how drinking even one drop of alcohol when you're a kid will kill you.  Joey went and said that his parents drink wine and that sometimes they ask him & Bailey if they want a sip. Of course all the boys were just dying and I'm thinking, do NOT go home and tell your parents that Joey's mom & dad give them wine to drink!! Imagine how that could be misconstrued. Very rarely, we give them a taste of our wine. I wouldn't even qualify what they get as a sip. (BTW, I wrote a post a while back on why I allow my kids to have an occasional taste of wine - and a great discussion ensued...and thinking back on it now I wonder if their idea that alcohol will kill you hinges off of what Amy Sue said in her comment to that post.)

Anyway, so now everyone's gone home and we're cleaning up (thank goodness for paper plates & cups, and a dishwasher for things we can't throw away! And a good vacuum cleaner) and I'm thinking about getting some homework done. Joey's playing with all his new toys (he got 4 Nerf guns!!). Today is Joey's actual birthday so he gets to choose what we have for supper. He chose Pizza Hut - works for me!!

We now return me to my regularly scheduled life.

First of all, how cute is Bailey in her new glasses? She has actual double vision. Strange, huh? I'd never heard of it. It's not astigmatism, either. Apparently her eyes truly don't work together so she sees two images. She was so excited to get them and wear them.

Second, check out my new shirt! I'd posted a while back that I saw a shirt with this saying on it and thought it was so funny. Steve Betz, being awesome, found this shirt & sent it to me.

Since I haven't written anything on here in 11 days (that's got to be a record), I suppose an update is in order. Really not much has happened around here, and I've been extremely worn out.

• Class has started and I really hope I don't drown in all the work.  This semester is something they call study guides, meaning it's all review. Which is good in that I'm not comfortable with everything I've learned up to this point. There are a lot of questions I have to answer, followed by online open-book questions and closed-book tests. I'll be done with my first one soon, one credit worth...only six more to go.
• The diet's going awful. I have not lost one pound, but I've definitely cheated. I'm not giving up, though, just modifying my plan a little. I at least want to lose the 5 I gained over Christmas, and with any luck, five more.
• We made a whirlwind trip to Illinois last week for the funeral of Brian's uncle. I think I'd only met him once, but I'm glad we could be there for them. It was a very nice service. They seem to be doing well, although now that things are settling down and they have to establish a "new normal," this might be when things really get hard.
• We decided to have a Super Bowl party this year. I did it on a whim and invited ten families (11 counting us). So far 7 of them have said yes and the other 3 haven't replied yet. We could be up to 50 people!! My house isn't really that big, but we'll make it work. These are all friends from church, and in our church this year we're trying to be better about connecting with each other - which means getting together. The more I think about it, the more I am PSYCHED!
• We have two birthdays in February in our house, so thus begins the party planning. So far it's looking like American Idol and Indiana Jones. (How much do you suppose it would cost for Indy himself to make an appearance?)

I think that's about it. Happy Monday!

Would you believe I'm actually looking forward to it?

I'm not sure what it was, but I just wasn't feeling Christmas this year.  I enjoyed it - I can genuinely say that seeing my familes was the best part. I think it was just that with all the activity, and my classes, and etc, I never really got a chance to slow down enough to really meditate on it.

The Swedish dinner I've been talking about and preparing for was on Friday.  I did it for Brian's family. Only one of them is Swedish and he was familiar with pretty much everything I made, although he said some of the things were different than what he'd had. I'm not sure what he thought of the meal overall, but the rest of the family loved it. And I think they really meant it when they said that too - they RAVED throughout the meal!  So the final menu was potatiskorv, meatballs w/gravy, boiled potatoes & onions w/dill, rice pudding w/lingonberries, pickled beets (a last-minute addition my mom reminded me to make), limpa (rye bread), hardtack (crispbread) w/bond ost (a type of cheese), and spritz & pepparkokar (thin ginger) cookies. Everyone was stuffed!  I'd made almost everything from scratch, except for the hardtack & pepparkokar, so I was rather emotionally invested in this meal.  In a way I guess I considered it a gift to Brian's family - which is why I would have been hurt if people had refused to try things (unless they'd tried them before).  If they tried things and didn't like them, that would have been fine.  Except for the kids - there's only so much you can do there to get them to even try things.  I was really impressed with my almost-13-year-old niece; she tried everything, even the pickled beets! (And Bailey tried the beets too, which I'm sure she wouldn't have if Andrea hadn't.)

Unfortunately, at the time the meal was coming together, I didn't really get to take any pictures of the food itself.  Here's a shot of my table, though:

I'm told that Swedes have coffee & rolls late in the afternoon (called fika [fee'-ka]) so I also made some cinnamon rolls (with cardamom in the dough, of course) that Santa Lucia came to serve:

 

The meal went well.  Everyone was so stuffed that no one wanted the cake I'd made for dessert!  Which is funny, because I hadn't originally intended to make it (I was just going to serve the cookies for dessert), but then I was told that we were also going to have a birthday party for Andrea that night so I should have a cake.  Andrea opened her presents but we never did have the cake or sang "Happy Birthday." And I'd even bought cool candles that burn in different colors.  I guess we'll have to wait until the next birthday to use them.

One of Brian's sisters and her family stayed at our house. They havev 3 kids near our kids' ages, so it's always lots of fun to have them here. The kids all get along really well - to the point where the boys even argue occasionally. :) They left today so now I'm just doing post-company laundry, catching up on the last few days on Vox, and watching the Vikings suck it up. (OK, so Berrian just scored a TD. Maybe they're only semi-sucking it up.) It's all good as long as the Bears lose.

I went to Target the day after Christmas. I usually do this but I wasn't planning to this year.  Primarily, this is because I was going to work a half day on Friday. That didn't happen, as I decided on Thursday that I just had too much to do in preparation for the dinner that night, and my mother-in-law also wanted to have a family picture taken (they're on my fb if you want to see them). It was supposed to be a studio picture originally, but that didn't work out. Side note: in this picture I'm wearing the sweater I picked up at Target that morning as my reward for passing chemistry. It was 75% off, which was an added bonus!

Tomorrow it's back to work! I'm kind of glad to be getting back to regular life. I really enjoyed this Christmas, but I feel fat (my own doing, I know) and I'm ready to get back into a routine. We're starting hard back into South Beach on January 1 (we're waiting so that we can have movie & junk food night w/the kids on NYE). I'm not ready to start school up again, but fortunately I have a couple of weeks before I have to worry about that (they always start the online courses a week later than the classroom courses, which is fine by me). And I'm going to start exercising again, starting tomorrow. I've been doing it very sporadically over the last month, and I'm definitely feeling it.

OK, well, the laundry's ready to be switched and I'm going to go see if the Vikes can close this out.  Later!

It's been a while since I've experienced a good old-fashioned blizzard.  I guess that's something you give up when you move into a city.  I've kind of forgotten what a real snowstorm is.  Today I had my memory refreshed: it's below-zero windchills, HUGE windgusts, many inches of snow, and drifts that you can't drive a minivan through.

This weekend we came down to Iowa to my parents' house for Christmas.  My sister & her family didn't even make it because of the blizzard warning that was being posted. (They have a cabin rented in Tennessee for this week and were afraid that if they came up here, they wouldn't be able to make it down there.)  We also knew of the blizzard warning, so had pretty much come into the weekend knowing that we may not be able to get home on Sunday. 

We came down Friday night, which was surprisingly decent considering what it'd been like earlier in the day. (School had even been cancelled.)  Saturday had a lot of snow coming down & blowing around. My brother Moon and his family came from Des Moines (maybe 150 miles to the SE of here) and just barely beat the weather. My other brother Stephen & his family live just a few miles from here but they brought their jammies, just in case it got bad enough that they decided not to try to go home. And it turned out to be a good idea, as they did stay overnight.  It was actually kind of fun for us all to hang out.  The kids were all being good and the adults weren't really being cranky either. :)  We played a couple of games and watched the Cowboys get beat in the final game at Texas Stadium.

This morning church was cancelled due to the weather so we all slept in, which was nice!  We continued the eating-fest from yesterday and around 2:30 we decided we should try to get home.  We thought that maybe by this time the plows might have gotten out and cleared off the roads some.  When we turned out from my parents' farm onto the road, they really weren't bad except for some smaller drifts and the fact that visibility was low due to blowing snow.  But that's the kind of stuff that around here, you just drive in and if you don't do anything stupid you'll be fine.

We got about 10 miles from my parents' house and had driven through several drifts when we met one that our van couldn't defeat.  Unfortunately, we don't have 4-wheel-drive so once we were stuck that was basically it.  I think it was because of the lessened visibility that we didn't realize how big and deep this one was until we were in the middle of it. Fortunately for us, my brothers were nice enough to come & rescue us.  We got back to my parents' and looked online at the road conditions.  We'd been thinking about trying again and sticking to the more-traveled routes but decided to just stay put until tomorrow morning, as Rochester is under a Winter Storm Warning tonight until 6 pm and we only have a hour of daylight left.  It just didn't seem wise with these cold temps and kids in the car.

Normally missing work would not be an issue for me at all - you all know that I'm not very work-oriented.  However, I have pretty much zero vacation time, between being sick, having sick kids, taking time off to catch up on school, having to be home for the window installation guy, and doing my clinical chemistry rotation.  Oh yeah, and there are a couple of holidays coming up too.  So I hate to miss work, but I basically have no choice. I should be able to get in by noon tomorrow. 

I'd be much less annoyed if I could at least watch the Vikings game, but the DirecTV in this area doesn't offer local channels, and therefore my parents rarely get regional games.  Oh well. I guess I'll just hang out and maybe we can play a game later or something.

Wish us luck driving home tomorrow!

I loathe:

• That there's always cleaning to be done.  It just never ends.

I love:

• Having taken today off work because the window guy needs one more day where he needs to get into the house.  I'm working toward getting motivated to do lots of homework today.  (And I wonder why I'm always behind...)  I'm buring through my PTO like crazy, but I do love me a day alone here & there.
• That I only have two tests left for school, and the chemistry one is open book!  I'm hoping to get the closed book one (on instrumentation & QA, bleh) done next week and then the open book one shortly thereafter.  I plan to prepare as little as possible for that one.  I already can't get any better than a B overall in chem (b/c I didn't do as well as I thought I might've on the last test), which is what I have now, and if I can't get a B on an open-book test, then I'm a moron.
• Getting to go down to my parents' house TWICE this month.  I like my family - and I'm lucky because not everyone can say that.
• The Swedish Christmas dinner I'm going to make for Brian's family.  I hope they like it. 
• There will be Swedish meatballs to fall back on if there's absolutely nothing else they can eat.  Which reminds me - I should make the limpa (rye bread) today as long as I'm home. 
• There will also be potiskorv (potato sausage, which we will make because the bought stuff is never very good),
• Rice pudding w/lingonberries (again, I'll make the rice pudding b/c the bought stuff is disgusting),
• And some kind of potatoes.  I haven't decided yet whether I'll do something like boiled red potatoes, rotmos (pronounced "root-moose"), which is mashed potatoes & rutabaga; often you boil this in the same water as the potatiskorv), or au gratin potatoes which are not Swedish but I associate them w/Swedish food since my grandma always made them as part of the smorgasbord she used to make every Christmas. 
• I'm also planning to make some spritz cookies (again, homemade are way better than bought) and pepparkokkar (those really thin ginger snaps - I think I'll buy those b/c they're a pain to roll out and the bought ones really are just as good as the made ones). 
• And finally, some cardamom coffee bread for them to have when they first get to our house. 
• I bought some Swedish Christmas decorations & paperware at IKEA a while ago so it should be fun!

All right, onward & upward.  Gotta get some homework done.  I was waiting for the window guy to show up so I didn't have to stop my lecture to go let him in, but it's almost 10:30 and he's not here yet.  I can't wait any longer or I will get nothing done.

• I'm making baked oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow.  You mix up the oats with craisins, raisins, nuts - whatever you want basically - and bake it with stuff like eggs & milk.  It ends up with a slighly cakey but slightly oatmeal-y texture.  You can eat it with fruit and/or milk over top.  Yum!
• It's 8:30 pm and I have to get up for work at regular time.  Brian, the kids, and the inlaws are picking me up at work at noonish for our trip to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving.  I have not packed a thing yet.  It could be a long night.  I might need a glass of wine.
• Speaking of wine, I got a bottle from a friend.  It's a grape called Nebbiolo.  This particular wine is from California but evidently (since all I know about the grape I learned from the back of the bottle) it's an Italian grape.  It's a red and from what I've been told by my friend, it's similar to a cab or other "big" red.
• Just overheard from Joey while getting ready for bed: "I just weighed myself and I weighed 96.5 pounds, and then I went and brushed my teeth and then I weighed myself again and I was 76!  I don't get it!"
• I went into Little Caesar's tonight to get a pizza for supper, and while I was waiting for it, it occurred to me that the guy working behind the register bore a striking resemblance to John Belushi.  Then I looked at the Little Caesar guy and thought, how cool would it be if that guy put on a toga!  The things I entertain myself with.
  
• All the new windows are in except the basement ones.  They look FABULOUS!  Tomorrow he's going to finish up the outside trim.  He's going to come back after Thanksgiving sometime to do the basement ones.  They're inside the cinderblock foundation, and apparently those can be quite a bit of work.  And knowing that we're going away for the weekend, he didn't want to get them only partially done.  This guy is the absolute man.  Ask for Kyle if you ever need your windows replaced.

OK, I think that's it for now.  Time to go pack!